KenTexts

Crisis in the Early Church 2: Letter to the Romans

2012-01-17T09:21:00.000-05:00

This is the second of three sermons about a deep crisis in the very earliest Church, at the time of the apostles. This crisis prompted Paul, first of all, to write to the Galatian Christians, and we took a look at that in the first sermon. To quickly repeat: Hebrew-Christian missionaries from Jerusalem came with a different “gospel”, according to which Jesus Christ came into the world in order to convert all people to correct observation of the Mosaic Law and thus become true children of Abraham. Clearly, from the book of Acts, this was a very strong and influential faction in the Jerusalem church adhering to this so-called gospel. Paul severely, categorically condemned their “gospel” in the epistle to the Galatians, asserting that these people wanted to enslave people all over again, that the Holy Spirit, given by God to those receiving Christ by faith, constituted the proof of God’s already making us His children, and concluding his heartfelt, even passionate letter with these words (read Galatians 6:14-18).

And now, Paul sees need in writing to the Romans, and if we read between the lines it becomes clear that the crisis continues. Most likely, these false missionaries were spreading slander against Paul and his gospel, trying to convert everybody to their own “gospel”. And on the basis of what we noticed in Galatians, and what we’ll see in Romans, it’s quite simple to guess what these slanders sounded like:

Paul blasphemes against God’s holy law.
Paul hates the nation of Israel.
Paul preaches a dissolute, unlawful way of life.

In this Epistle to the Romans, we will hear Paul’s response.

To start with, why write to the Romans particularly? In chapter 15 we find out that Paul is preparing to visit the Roman church; moreover, he wants them to help him travel on to Spain, to proclaim the gospel there. Also, we find out in chapter 16 that Paul had a lot of friends—even a relative!—in the Roman church. So it’s quite understandable that Paul wants to dispel the rumors and slander, to correct false understandings, to reassure those in doubt, to comfort those close to him and to prepare the ground for a good visit and further collaboration, and overall to defend the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is, therefore, a critically important letter for precisely this moment both in the early life of the Church and in the apostolic work of Paul.

So what does he start the letter with? (read 1:1-6) Just as Paul said to the Galatians, here he again asserts his direct calling from the Lord to preach the true gospel to Gentiles. Two times here he writes the word “called”: he is called by God Himself to apostleship, and “you”, the Romans, are called to belong to Jesus Christ. As for Christ Himself, the apostle here writes something that, typically, we take to be an exposition of the two natures of Christ, but I am convinced that here the apostle is emphasizing something quite different; perhaps my explanation will help you to come to grips with such strange phrases as “through the Spirit of holiness” and “by his resurrection from the dead”. After all, we know perfectly well that Jesus Christ was the Son of God before his resurrection from the dead; moreover, it’s rather difficult for us to understand the relationship between “declared by the Spirit” and his being God’s Son. So this is a quite problematic passage, in that it seems to deal with the topic of Christ’s two natures but its phraseology doesn’t at all correspond to the real biblical teaching about those two natures! But remember the two things we noticed in the epistle to the Galatians. First, the death and resurrection of Christ changed everything; we no longer belong to the old world. Second, in the Spirit of God we experience a wholly new kind of life; we see, understand, perceive everything differently, on a new plane—indeed, before all else we perceive Christ Himself in the dimension of the Spirit, not the flesh. I’m convinced that here, too, in Romans, Paul is not so much comparing two natures of Christ as much as talking about two “worlds”, two eras, the former and the new, about that world in which Jesus of Nazareth is just, to those who discern by “the flesh”, a descendant of David, and that world in which, to those born of the Spirit, he is the risen Son of God, the Lord of life Whom we know by the Spirit. This is a crucial concept and truth in all of Paul’s teaching and preaching: are you in Christ, in His Spirit, do you belong to him? If so, then no preacher of the Gospel of Law will manage to deceive you, because you already see with new eyes. It’s in this light, and against the background of everything Paul wrote in his earlier letter already mailed off to the Galatians, that we can perhaps feel in a new way the thrust of Paul’s famous words in 1:16-17 (read).

In general, in chapters 1 and 2 Paul exposits the proper view on the matter of law—in the history of the world and particularly the history of redemption. We may sum it up this way: “We are all sinners, whether we have had God’s Law or not; in any case there is a law in our hearts and it has carried out its task by demonstrating that no one can keep it.”

(Read 2:5)

All broken law has ipso facto accomplished its assignment, and there’s nothing more it can do. Good for you, broken law! You’ve done your job! Therefore, as we read in 3:21-22a (read), there is now a “new righteousness”, something new in Christ, apart from law, since providing us this new thing, this righteousness, was never Law’s job to begin with. This is exactly what Paul was trying to drive home to the Galatians.

We might formulate it like this: Any law that would presume to stand at the end of the road of God’s plan of redemption, like a goal or final destination, is a false law. Only Christ stands there, at the end of that road, and waits for us with open arms in eternal love. Yes, there was a Law somewhere along this road—a stage in the journey—and it fulfilled its role.

In chapter 4 Paul raises the matter of Abraham. Why? It’s clear why. Because the controversy was continuing over how a person can really be justified before God. The false missionaries assumed that the best answer was their answer: to completely embrace the Law. But Paul’s answer goes (read 4:13, 16-17).

As for the 5th chapter, I’d title it “To Those Already in the New Life”, because Paul says (read 5:1), and the key word here is “therefore”, which connotes “since”, “inasmuch as”—you might even say “only if”. Only if we have been justified do we have peace with God. Only if you have received this grace and reconciliation with the Lord can you understand why no law can ever add anything to this perfection of redemption. Our real life began with God’s feat of love (read 5:8), and our future consists not in law but in His perfect will (read 5:10) and the whole sense of our present life consists in peace with Him (read 5:11). In the rest of chapter five Paul explains in detail how, when all is said and done, GRACE EXCELLED LAW PRECISELY INASMUCH AS SALVATION HAD TO EXCEL OUR FALLEN CONDITION AND HELPLESSNESS.

Let me repeat that. The sense of Paul’s teaching can be summed up this way: GRACE EXCELLED LAW PRECISELY INASMUCH AS SALVATION HAD TO EXCEL OUR FALLEN CONDITION AND HELPLESSNESS.

In other words, law required everything we could give, and when we gave everything, law wasn't satisfied. But grace required everything God could give, and He gave everything, and grace was satisfied. Grace was fulfilled, and her fulfillment is salvation to us.

In this light, can you feel how that so-called gospel of the Jerusalem missionaries was, in Paul’s eyes, such a horror? It can never possibly reach the depths of God’s love; on the contrary, it conceals them!

Paul’s answer to anybody who’d accuse him of preaching an immoral lifestyle is found in chapter six: (read 6:1, 2, 8). But even so the foundation of such a transformed life is still God’s gift, not law: (read 6:23).

To anybody who’d accuse him of blaspheming God’s law, Paul replies (7:12) and (7:14).

And then in chapter 8, when the apostle is delving even deeper into the matter of our new life, we find the most striking echo of his letter to the Galatians: (read Romans 8:15-16, then Galatians 4:6-7). It’s perfectly clear that Paul is looking, in both places, at the same deep truth, the truth of the very basis of actual life in Christ and connection with Him: we are already His children, by the fullness of His grace (read 8:17).

I think Paul suffered. I think he wrote his epistle in tears, but he also declares in utter confidence (8:18) and moreover (8:26a).

Over and over again, both in Galatians and Romans, Paul returns to this thought: You, believers, have the Holy Spirit—you already have Him. Why does he keep coming back to this thought? Because this is precisely what the false missionaries were trying to refute! This is the key issue in this historical controversy in the early Church: they assert that, unless we become Hebrews in the full sense, we’ll remain outside the blessings of God, but Paul boldly announces (8:39).

After that, three whole chapters are devoted to the matter of the Jewish nation. This is clearly a continuation of the argument with the heretics. Paul demonstrates explicitly why his rejection of the false Gospel of Law is no sort of rejection or hatred of the nation of Israel itself. He says (read 9:3). But what he goes on to say (read 9:6-7) brings back to us vividly what he said in Galatians 6:15-16 (read) which, in turn, illuminates the sense of Romans 11:26 (read)! Yes, indeed, all of genuine Israel, that is, Abraham’s children by faith, will be saved! The lesson for us is, this ancient conflict between the true gospel and the gospel of the Jerusalem missionaries, that is, between the gospel of Christ and the gospel of law, is no conflict between Jews and Christians, or between the Old and New Testaments, and by no means is it a conflict between a stage in God’s plan, which is the Law, and the perfection of that plan, which is Christ Himself. That’s impossible. Rather, that ancient conflict was between the actual Gospel of Christ and an abominable distortion of it, a “Gospel of the Law”.

For us in Christ, no kind of hatred toward a nation of people can ever be justified. All nations, all people, are equally summed up in sin and their need of salvation by God’s grace. That's Paul’s answer to this whole controversy and scandal and crisis in the early Church. And I am sure that not all were satisfied with his answer. They insisted all the same that the Law and Israelite nation occupy a prime position in the Gospel. And when they finally realized that they’d never prevail over the gospel of grace, they took a radical step, a tragic step, but we will talk about this when we look at the Epistle to the Hebrews.

In conclusion, I want to remark that the last chapters of Romans, starting with chapter 12, are very close in spirit to the 5th and 6th chapters of Galatians. That is, in both epistles, the apostle, in these final sections, summons the believers to show, to manifest in action, the life of the Spirit, to demonstrate the power of this new world in Christ, a world that now exists in us. (read 12:1) Insofar as the Way of Christ remains on the level of theory and ideas, it remains powerless and irrelevant. So the very word “Therefore” at the start of chapter 12 is far more meaningful than simply a grammatical conjunction. It’s a deep theological conjunction, because the whole significance of this “Therefore” grows directly out of all the deep truths Paul has painstakingly unfolded in the first eleven chapters. He’s saying to us, “In light of all this divine grace and new life in the salvation of Christ, how do we live accordingly?”; therefore we must live like this: (read 12:1 again).

And if we do live like that, the way Paul sketches it out in the last chapters of Romans, then we can, humbly yet boldly, respond to our world and to any who accuse us, just as Paul responded to his accusers: (read Galatians 5:6, 22-23 and 6:15-16).

Amen.

Galatians - CRISIS in the Church's first days

2011-12-02T07:25:00.001-05:00

Sometimeswe conduct a series of sermons on some book of the Bible, like for instance aGospel or Epistle, and we very slowly work our way through the book. If Iremember correctly, we spent a whole year—or two?—studying Romans on Sundaymornings.

I havenothing against such an approach, but I'm also a proponent of variety! And thisis one of the reasons why I plan to deliver three sermons on three epistles:Galatians, Romans and Hebrews. But the more substantial reason is that thesethree epistles, taken together, pass on the story of a certain crisis in theearly Church, a crisis I suspect most of us don't know about. But it'simportant for us to know about it, because knowledge about this historicalcrisis will definitely help us, in the first place, to better read HolyScripture with understanding and, consequently, to apply the meaning of theseevents in our lives.

The basicmethod of interpretation I apply here can be called "mirror reading".When I look into a mirror, I see what the mirror reflects. Likewise, when Iread a letter, I see what situation the letter reflects. For example, if I finda letter on the ground, pick it up, and take a peek to see what it says, maybeI read:

Dear John,

No, no, athousand times no. I love another. Forget me.

Maria

Although Idon't know Maria or John, I already know a lot about them, and about thesituation that this letter reflects. It tells me that, probably, John askedMaria to marry him, and not just once. It tells me he loves her. It tells methat, quite likely, she had some feelings towards him as well, or he'd probablynot have been so persistent. But in the end she decided she loved another more(maybe he was rich).

Such amethod of interpretation can be called "mirror reading", or simply"reading between the lines"! And this method is an important part ofinterpretation. In fact, it's common sense!

I have awhole course that I teach on Galatians at the seminary. But we don't have timehere and now to conduct the whole course. So rejoice! There won't be any testsor papers. Today I'm going to share with you the most essential and keyconclusions of my course, and I hope they will be illuminating to you. Maybeeven shocking.

First, Iwant to tell you the generally-accepted interpretation of Galatians. It goeslike this: After the apostle Paul preached the news of Jesus Christ to theGalatians and they became Christians, there came false teachers preachingJudaism, preaching the Law. They wanted the Galatians to depend on rules andlaws rather than grace and faith. Therefore, Paul wrote this epistle topersuade them that grace is enough, that "by grace we are saved, not byworks", and law mustn't be added to grace.

Thoughthere are legitimate elements in this interpretation, it is all the sameinsufficient, and slightly distorted.

And now, onthe basis of the Epistle to the Galatians, here is the story of a terriblecrisis that took place in the earliest Church of Jesus Christ:

After Pauland his co-workers brought the good news of Christ to the inhabitants ofGalatia and established churches there, there came other Christian missionariesfrom Jerusalem—Hebrew-Christians, too, like Paul—and told the Galatians thatPaul had preached an illegitimate gospel to them. Moreover, they claimed thatthey were authorized and sent by the very Mother Church, Jerusalem. The trueGospel, according to them, went like this: "Inasmuch as Jesus perfectlyfulfilled all the requirements of the holy Law, and besides that took away ourjudgment for our non-fulfillment of it, now the door is open for all to becomethe children of Abraham, true Jews, receiving the Law and becoming members ofthe Jewish nation." There's their "gospel".

Notice, forthem it wasn't a question of adding laws and rules to grace—no, for them thequestion was: who is a true son and daughter of Abraham and member of thechosen people? For these Jerusalem missionaries, the Galatians believers hadnot yet joined the number of Abraham's children and chosen nation. To them, theobjective of the Messiah's coming was that finally all the families of theearth could observe the whole Law as the Way of Life.

Thegenerally-accepted interpretation of Galatians says that these falsemissionaries wanted to add law to grace, to supplement grace with law—gracewasn't "enough", but grace-plus-law would be enough. But no, in point of fact, they were sayingquite the opposite: they wanted to add Jesus Christ to the Law! To "fillout" their Judaism with "Christianity". To them, the Law hadalways been "enough", only inaccessible because of our humanimperfection. But now, thanks to Messiah, the Law is accessible to all. Youcatch the difference? In their theology, the Law ends up superior to Christ.

Therefore,the epistle to the Galatians isn't an argument between law and grace; it isn't an argument between faith and works—not at all! It's an argument between two gospels, between two missions, between the mission of Paul and the mission ofthese preachers from Jerusalem. And the essence of the argument goes: how can webecome genuine children of Abraham and heirs of God's eternal promise accordingto His holy covenant? Paul's answer is simple: "Dear (but foolish!)Galatians, you already have become!"; the answer of the Jerusalempreachers is: "No, not yet, not until you enter the Jewish nation."

Now, we'regoing to take a look at the whole epistle, to pinpoint Paul's arguments for hisposition, for his Gospel.

More likelythan not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:"Paul wants to say that he was the one sent by the mother church and thatshe authorized his gospel, but don't believe him!" But Paul stunseverybody when he responds "non-programmatically", saying (Read Gal.1:1-2; 11-13; 15-17). Paul isn't about to play their game: "who did the JerusalemChurch give the green light to and who didn't she give the green light to…."No, he openly announces: God revealed Christ to me and authorized me to revealHim to you. My gospel isn't from man.

More likelythan not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:"Paul came to Jerusalem and promised there that he'd preach our gospel,but he immediately broke his promise." We read about this conference inActs 15:4-5 (read); there's the faction in the Jerusalem church; this wasdefinitively a political crisis.

And whatdoes the apostle Paul say about this? (Read Gal. 2:1-2). A word about the lastassertion: Paul is not saying here that he met in private with the apostles inorder to make sure he hadn't been preaching the gospel in vain. Nothing of the sort. Nowhere in the entire NewTestament does Paul ever suggest that he had doubts about his gospel, that hesuspected his preaching might be a waste of time. And why would he suddenly doso here, in this epistle of all places? No. He means that he insisted on aprivate meeting with the apostles to make sure first that they were going tostand with him and his gospel in the open conference, in front of everybody.Otherwise his having come to Jerusalem at all would have been a complete wasteof time (idiomatically, "running in vain"). In that case, Paul was ready to say, "So long! I'm outta here.I'm not wasting my time with this" and go back to the work God appointedhim to. But Paul never even contemplated the idea of abandoning the Gospelrevealed to him by God Himself.

And as weknow, the apostles responded to him by… (read 2:9-10).

More likelythan not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:"Your precious Paul offended, insulted, Peter himself, and all becausePeter—by the way, a Jew!—was observing the Law! How dare he!" Probably theGalatians anticipated a response from Paul like, "No! Never! I would never in my life do something so awful!" But again Paul is an unorthodoxdisputant. What does he write? (Read 2:11) "Yes, I opposed him—he waswrong! Until the faction from Jerusalem showed up, Peter was happily hangingout with the Gentile brothers in Christ, but as soon as they showed up, he shunnedthem. That was wrong, and I told brother Peter so."

What do youthink? Was it painful to Paul to do that? Of course. Did his reputation amongthe churches suffer because of it? Of course. Did the false teachers takeadvantage of it to spread slander about him? Of course. This was a real crisisin the early Church; it was a theological crisis, a political crisis, aspiritual crisis, a soul-searing crisis.

In thethird chapter, the apostle adduces the essence of his argument (3:2-3); inother words, "Dear Galatians! You already received the Spirit!!" Thisone concrete fact concludes the whole thing. God wouldn't have given His Spiritto those who weren't His children. But he did it, when all you had done wasbelieve in Christ. End of argument. There's nothing left to figure out. Paulwas within in his rights to end the letter right here—if he could be sure theGalatians would get it. But with a broken heart he says, "Oh, foolishGalatians" and teaches on. He reminds them that God's law never justifiedanybody, that the promise was given by God when there was no law, that the Lawwas given to lead us to Christ (while those other preachers were saying theopposite—listen to this, because it's a horror: Christ was given to lead us tothe Law!), and Paul again reminds them in chapter four (read 4:4-7); "Youalready received the Spirit, the Spirit of the very Son; that means you aresons, His children." Then Paul, in heartbreaking terms begs the Galatians:(read 4:12-16).

Then Paulcompares these two gospels, that is, the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and theso-called gospel of this faction. The comparison goes from 4:21 to the end ofthe chapter. We don't have time to examine this in detail. I just want to saythat here, where Paul talks allegorically about Sarah and Hagar, about twocovenants—the covenant of flesh and the covenant of promise—about twoJerusalems… he is not comparing God's Law and grace; he is not comparing theOld Covenant and New Covenant; he is not comparing Judaism and Christianity. Heis comparing his mission, his calling, his gospel and its fruits, with themission, the gospel and its fruits, of those Jerusalem missionaries. The"present Jerusalem" he talks about here isn't the Law—it is, in fact,the church in Jerusalem! At least, it's the faction from Jerusalem that wants to give birth anew to slaves. Let me say that again: the faction from Jerusalem,claiming the authority of the Jerusalem church, wants once again to give birthto slaves. But we, Paul says, thanks to Christ, belong to the heavenlyJerusalem, we inherit the heavenly promise that resounded once to ourfather-by-faith Abraham, and like him we have received the promise by faith,thanks to the Son who fulfilled all and unfolded the promised new creation.

That’s why,precisely in light of everything he just said, the apostle exhorts (read 5:1),and also (5:6).

More likelythan not, the Jerusalem missionaries were saying this to the Galatians:"Paul summoned you just to believe! But what about how you should live?How are you supposed to know the way of righteousness?"

But Paulanswers: (5:16) and again (5:19… etc.). Paul doesn't list all the possible sinshere; he's giving them a 'for-instance.' And again (5:22… etc.), Paul doesn't exhaust the list here; again, it's a 'for instance'; he's saying, "All this shouldbe obvious to you; why would you need the Law to know this?".

You see why these words are written here, at the end of this epistle? If they were writtenin a different epistle, they'd still mean something, but not what they meanhere. This isn't just "the practical section", like we usually say,as if Paul wrapped up the "theological part" and now he says,"Oh, by the way, here's a general list of rules for your life", or asif he totally decided to change the subject (!). Nothing of the sort. If wewant to understand chapters 5 and 6 of Galatians right, we have to understandthat this whole epistle is one, single theological argument, and the last twochapters are the essential part, where the apostle calls on the Galatians tofinally manifest this life that will prove their election and inclusion inGod's nation by grace. And that's how the Galatians will finally shut themouths of the Jerusalem missionaries—they'll be left with absolutely nothingmore to say.

By the way,the real climax of the whole epistle is 6:7-8 (read). In other words: Choose!Either the way of the Spirit, Whom you received as per my gospel, or the way ofthe flesh, as per their 'gospel'—because their pseudo-gospel is in point offact the way of the flesh, not the way of God's promise, election and newcreation.

This isabsolutely the climax of the argument. And Paul is ready to sign his name. Heseems exhausted. He says ("That's it…", read 6:17) and also (6:14),but he adds one last "punch" for his opponents (read 6:16); it'sperfectly obvious in the light of the whole argument he's just made that this"Israel of God" is none other than all believers who've received thetrue gospel whatever their ethnic origin may be—they are all now "God'sIsrael". This closing "punch" indubitably drove the Jerusalem factionwild with fury. It's a total negation of their whole pseudo-gospel.

And withlove the apostle concludes his epistle, (read 6:18).

Oh, if onlythat were the end of the crisis. But next time we will see how the continuingcrisis compelled Paul to write a letter to… the Romans.

Communion Meditation II

2011-08-15T08:06:00.001-04:00

EX 24:8 Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words."

The covenant –a covenant of blood. Blood speaks to us about life, it reminds us that we depend on God alone for our life. Blood speaks to us also about death, that death is the penalty for our sin. Blood speaks to us about sacrifice, because sacrifice is God’s means of forgiveness.

But here is a question: what possible connection could there be between the blood of animals and heaven? On the one hand we have something which is very material, very earthly, very limited: the blood of animals, which was spilled in an earthly ritual, and sprinkled on the people. On the other hand, we have a spiritual crisis of cosmic proportions: the alienation of man from God. What possible connection can there be between the two? Before trying to answer this question, let’s read what happened next:

EX 24:9-19 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself.

After the covenant was announced, and the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on the people, God called Moses and elders up to the mountain. And there they saw God. How can this be? The Bible says no one can see God.

I believe that nobody can truly see God in all His infinity; God is beyond the comprehension of any of His created beings. There’s only one who truly knows God in all His infinity--it’s the Son who came from God. But here the Bible tells us that Moses and the elders saw the God of Israel. So, they must have seen God in some measure, as God allowed Himself to be seen. What is interesting, though, is that the Scripture here doesn’t explain what God Himself looked like; instead of that, there is an amazing description of something under the feet of God, something like a pavement of sapphire, and clear as the sky. What that was, we don’t know, but clearly it was something not of this world. I can’t interpret it for you, except to suggest that it tells us that God is not part of this world; He is the Creator, He is not part of the Creation. And again this forces me to ask: how could earthly sacrifices be effective in closing the spiritual rift between man and such a God as this? But before we answer that, let’s read the end of this account:

11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Here is the mercy of God. No man can see God and live. But these men saw God and lived. Again, as we said, no man can see God, no man can comprehend Him in all His infinite nature. But God somehow allowed these men to see Him, to see a true representation of Him, let’s say a “side” of Him, and even to eat and drink in His presence. He did not raise His hand against them: this speaks to us of the mercy of God, it reminds us that the true desire of God is to freely fellowship with man, without any hindrance, without any alienation.

This is a wonderful picture. But of course, Moses and the elders came down from the mountain. They lived the remainder of their lives, they died and were buried. And what then? That glorious moment on the mountaintop was only a moment. But what about eternity? There were only about 70 men up there on the mountain. For them it was wonderful. But what about all the rest of the people who ever lived in human history? What hope do they have to fellowship with God, to eat and drink in His presence? Who can truly bring heaven and earth, God and man, together?

Yes, it was a wonderful vision, but it leaves us with these questions: What possible connection can there be between earthly sacrifices and the eternal God? How can the alienation between God and man be solved once and for all?

Let’s look into the New Testament, at one place where the writer deals with this problem, the problem of the terrible distance between the earthly and the heavenly:

HEB 8:1-2 The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.

Jesus Christ is our High Priest; He is not like the other high priests – why? Because he doesn’t have to offer a new sacrifice every day for his own sins and the sins of the people. He has no sins himself, and His sacrifice is the perfect sacrifice accomplished once for all. His sacrifice is actually that one true sacrifice that all creation was waiting for. All the other sacrifices were only representations, they were like photographs which cannot be the actual thing itself. But ultimately, just as there is only one true God, there could only be one true sacrifice, there could only be one true means of reconciliation between man and God.

Jesus became that one true sacrifice, offering up His own blood in the sanctuary of the one true God. He doesn’t serve as high priest in an earthly temple, which is only a representation; he serves in the true sanctuary of God. What is that sanctuary? Where is it? How can we possibly say? I am sure only of this: the true heavenly sanctuary is the place of closest fellowship with God. Perhaps it is God Himself. Jesus doesn’t bring the blood of animals to God. He offers his own blood as the price of our salvation.

And so we ask: how could an earthly sacrifice could solve an eternal, spiritual problem? How could physical blood seal the spiritual rift between man and God? In Christ the answer is miraculously revealed to us: It’s because He who died on the cross was the One from Heaven. In the cross we see heaven dying so earth might live. The blood of Christ was the blood of the incarnate God. His death was the sacrifice of God for the forgiveness of sins. In Christ, God Himself exhausted the pain of our sin, and released us from our debts. If you really stop to think about it, there was no other possible way. That was the only way God could have forgiven our sins: He suffered the consequences of our sins Himself.

This is the amazing revelation of Jesus Christ – what no one could have imagined; that in Christ, God Himself was reconciling the world to Himself. This is how an earthly sacrifice could reconcile man and God.

I think that’s what the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews is trying to tell us. He says that the earthly sanctuary is only a representation. The priests and the animal sacrifices are only a picture. But Christ is the actuality. A weak analogy would be to compare when we were little children and we played house, pretending to be the papa and mama, and real marriage. Real marriage is the thing itself; there is no more picture. You cannot even compare children playing house to real married life.

It is like this with our Lord Jesus Christ: His life is our true salvation; His death is our true forgiveness; His blood is the true price fully paid.

And the deeper we unite our hearts with this truth, the better we understand reality itself.

Jesus said, “I have come to bear witness of the truth.” Jesus knew about all reality. When he gathered his disciples for the Last Supper in the upper room, He knew perfectly what was about to happen, and why, and what it would cost Him to carry it out.

MT 26:26-30 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom." When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Remember Moses and the elders up the mountain top, sitting in the presence of God Himself, and eating and drinking. Here again, God has called his servants to sit with him, to eat and drink. And as Moses sprinkled the people, with the blood, sealing God’s holy covenant with them, in the same way, Jesus presents the blood of the covenant to his disciples.

But there are differences. Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of animals. It was external, and temporary. But Jesus says, “Drink.” He also says, “Eat. This is my body, this is my blood.” With these few simple words, Jesus reveals the true depth of the sacrifice He will make. He will give himself up totally for our life. He will make Himself our true spiritual food and drink forever and ever. “I am the Bread of Life”, Jesus says. But the bread must be broken before you can eat it. Jesus was ready to be broken. He longed for the fulfillment of the Father’s plan; He looked ahead to the ultimate joy of His Father’s kingdom, when people from east and west, north and south would come and sit down at His table and fellowship with Him forever-- not only 70 elders on a mountaintop or twelve disciples in an upper room.

When we look at Jesus with His disciples around the table, we see a picture of God’s kingdom, the kingdom which is coming. Jesus gave Himself up to the cross and death, so that you and I could join Him at His fellowship table forever.

In the book of Revelation, we are allowed to catch a glimpse of this unimaginable glory, in chapter four when John was taken to heaven and he saw the throne of God. Someone was sitting on the throne; the one sitting there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian; a rainbow the color of emerald encircled the throne. And around the throne were 24 other thrones, with an elder sitting on each of them, all dressed in white and wearing golden crowns. Lightning and thunder came from the throne and seven lamps burned in front of the throne, and there was something like a sea of glass in front of the throne, as clear as crystal. Again we see elders sitting in the presence of God. Do you think that when God called Moses and the elders up to the mountain, that by this God let them understand a little bit what heaven was really like? I think so. And when Jesus gathered his disciples together for the Last Supper, was that also a picture of God fellowshipping with His people? I think so.

But there was only way to realize this reality.

(Read Revelation 5:1-14)

Today we are called to the table of the Lord, to share His body and blood, to recognize the price of our salvation in the death of Jesus Christ, and to confess Him as our true Savior and coming King. The Lord Himself is with us when we obediently observe this ordinance. God is with His people, and He is worthy of all glory, honor and praise. This table is a representation of reality, of deep spiritual reality that exceeds our comprehension, and yet God invites us to take part and understand. When we participate in this supper, we taste in a small way the future exultation when people will come from east and west, north and south to sit at the table of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ's Ascension

2011-06-17T10:19:00.001-04:00

This sermon approaches the event of Christ's ascension a bit indirectly. As I assumed the other preachers would start with Acts 1, I decided to take a different route.

It's easy to guess that, when a sermon is on the ascension of the Lord, the Bible text will be Acts 1. Therefore, I decided to take a look at other places that either indirectly or directly talk about the ascension of Jesus Christ. The first of these is Matthew 28:16-20 (read).

The ascension isn't mentioned here, but this is the last "act" of the Gospel of Matthew—the most important, significant words of Jesus Christ just before he ascends to the Father in Heaven. This is the commandment to the Church from the One who was eager to return to where he had come into the world from. Here Jesus isn't talking anymore about what villages to go to together with the disciples, he isn't teaching them in parables, he isn't healing anybody, he's not rising early in the morning to go out and pray alone, with his disciples rushing around anxiously to find out where he has disappeared to. Those days have passed! This is the risen Lord, the Conqueror of death, the Eternal Word/Logos, whose gaze is fixed on reunion with the One Whose redeeming will he has perfectly carried out. A sense of anticipation permeates everything Jesus says here. These are more than "parting words"; these are words spoken from a whole different viewpoint already. Even though Jesus is still on the earth while he speaks, the words sound just like what we could expect to hear from the ascended Christ seated at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. The Great Commission says, in brief, that the light of the risen, ascended Son of God illuminates life's whole purpose here in this world. The Great Commission is not only an assignment to us on earth; it is Christ's own "job description" in Heaven through us.

I'd like to direct your attention to a mysterious element in this event – (read v. 17: "…but some doubted").

This perplexes us for two reasons. First, why did they doubt? Or actually, what were they doubting? And secondly, why does Matthew mention it at all? And so abruptly, just dropping it as soon as he mentions it? "Some doubted" – no elaboration. It's a bit like someone explaining principles of algebra to you and suddenly announcing, "You know, I just adore pickles", then going right on with the algebra.

It's a bit like that here. We call these final words in Matthew "The Great Commission" because Jesus, having appeared to the disciples, commands them to preach the good news everywhere in the world. And as a rule we practically never even pay attention to that odd little "glitch" in the text about how some doubted. But it must be there for a reason!

Here's a useful secret for Bible interpretation. When you bump into a phrase, or statement, or verse that doesn't seem to… "correlate", seems odd and out-of-place, sometimes the thing is that you shouldn't be trying to understand the difficult spot in the light of its context; instead, try understanding the context in light of the difficult spot! Quite possibly, as a result you'll find that the difficult spot throws the whole context into a new light and becomes clear at the same time itself, too. If we try that approach here in Matthew, what do we discover?

The eleven disciples have come to the mountain. They've seen Jesus, very likely from a distance at first. Some of them immediately start "worshipping", as the text says. What does that mean? Possibly they started shouting, "It's Jesus! It's the Lord! He is risen! Praise God!" But others doubted. What does that mean? Maybe they weren't so sure who they were seeing in the distance. I can imagine them saying, "Wait a minute. Not so fast. What are you saying? Who is that? Is that really him?"

And in response to this, what does Jesus do? Verse 18: He approached them. He came up to them. He came close to them. Did you ever wonder why it says that? Maybe it's precisely because he was far away from them at first, when some started worshipping while others... didn't. But I don't think that when Jesus did this—that is, when he walked right up to them—I don't think any of them were doubting any more.

Jesus not only came up to them—to all of them, to the worshippers and the doubters—in order to dispel any doubt, but he also pronounced words of assurance. The "Great Commission" isn't only a "commission"; it's a word of assurance precisely to those who were doubting. Jesus assures them all: "All authority has been given to me". That is, "You don't need to doubt. It's me, who the glory and power have been given to forever. It's me, who died and destroyed the kingdom of death with my invincible life—I am alive forever. Be confident, because it's me—I will always be with you to do the Father's will through you."

When we read the Great Commission in the light of that one, odd, troubling phrase in verse 17, suddenly we sense the deep mercy of Christ, the grace of Christ, in what he tells the disciples. The doubt makes more sense of the Great Commission. Jesus doesn't condemn the disciples who, after all, came to meet him on the mountain according to his instructions! They didn't come here, after all, in order to doubt! They came to see and believe. Some didn’t want to be reckless, they were hesitant to jump to a conclusion, to believe that the person up there on the mountain was the One who died on the cross. But Jesus, the risen Lord of life, approaches them all, assures them all, promises always to be with them all, and hands them all the highest calling, to proclaim His news to the whole world. This is the calling of Heaven itself; there is no higher honor. And, yes, Jesus handed this honor even to the ones who had doubted, who maybe said, "Hold on, not so fast; let's make sure that's him." And, having given this honor to the disciples, Jesus returned to the Father.

Now let's look at another place in Scripture that doesn't pop immediately to mind in connection with the Ascension. It's Matthew 3:14-17 (read).

I preached on this passage before and suggested that in Jesus' baptism you can see the whole history of redemption. Take a look – there's Jesus, identifying with the people, taking part in the same "Baptism of Repentance" as they did, just like later he will carry their sins to the cross, and there he is going down in the water, just like later he'll be buried in the earth, and now he is rising from the water, just as later he will emerge from tomb alive. And then the heavens open, just like later they will open to receive him in the ascension and then the Holy Spirit descends upon him, just like the Spirit will descend later on the Body of Christ, His Holy Church, and then the voice of the Father in Heaven exalts Jesus, just like later God the Father will exalt the Lamb, His Only-Begotten, before all eyes in the eternal kingdom. This is a stunning enactment that prophesies everything our Creator and God intends to carry out with this very Jesus who, one fine day, quietly walked up to John to be baptized. It's no surprise, therefore, that Jesus said to John, "We have to do all this in order to fulfill all righteousness."

Every element of his baptism serves to fulfill the perfect righteousness which is God's salvation. God's salvation is God's righteousness carried out to the very end. In salvation God's righteousness itself is totally realized. We usually think that Jesus is talking about human righteousness here, when he says that "all righteousness" must be fulfilled—the perfect righteousness God demanded of Man but only Jesus could fulfill. But I think that when Jesus says, "all righteousness", he really means all righteousness; that includes the righteousness of God that was manifested to the uttermost limit in the accomplishment of redemption.

And how does this relate to the ascension? Here's how. Just like all of God's acts, the ascension of Christ also fulfills God's righteousness, just like Jesus baptism prophesied. The whole story fulfills "all righteousness." It is right and good and... needed for salvation that Jesus ascended to the Father. It was right, and good, and loving and merciful that Jesus came up to the disciples to say, "Look, it's Me. I truly have all the power and authority, I truly will be with you always." It was perfectly right, and good, and needed, and righteous, for Jesus to return to where we can't see him, at the Father's right hand, where he intercedes for us ceaselessly, and from where he mysteriously, miraculously remains with us here at the same time, together with the Father and Holy Spirit: "Whoever loves me will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." And this also was right, good, needed, and righteousness—the righteousness of God that would never have been fulfilled if Jesus had not returned to the Father.

In conclusion, let's look at one direct account of Jesus ascension, in Mark 16:19-20. (read)

In the Gospel of John, Christ told his disciples, "It's good for you that I'm going away, because if I don't go away, I cannot return to you to be with you." Here in Mark the meaning of this is clear: Jesus, now received into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, is working with us, confirming his work in us, establishing our work in himself, magnifying the fruit of our service for him, yes and its eternal meaning and glory in the Father's sight. By leaving to return to the Father, Christ made our life a part of heaven. The apostle Paul says, "He has blessed us in the heavenlies." And again, "He has hidden our life with himself in heaven." We are in him, and in him we have a heavenly inheritance. We have a heavenly inheritance precisely because God's Son, Christ, chose to approach us, to come close, when we were far away and doubting. He chose to walk right up and meet us in our doubts, our weaknesses and faults. He came closer. He picked up our guilt and shame and carried it in himself to the cross in sacrifice. Yes, and raised our souls in himself in resurrection. Yes, and brought us with himself right to the throne of God, and hid our life with himself there, in anticipation of the day when we shall appear with him in glory.

And that is how the only Savior fulfilled all righteousness. As for us, we mustn't doubt but trust, follow, and aim for the works that the ascended Lord will fulfill through us to his glory.

Before he ascended, he approached his disciples in love, right where they were. Who does he want us to approach in his love, that a soul might be saved?

First Sermon Back in Ukraine 2011: "Let Us Make Man in Our Image..."

2011-03-22T11:20:00.000-04:00

This is the first sermon I preached in Ukraine after returning in January 2011 from my Aug-Dec 2010 furlough in the States. The sermon can be considered a highly condensed "take" on the series of sermons I did several years ago, "A Holy Place, A Holy Purpose", which is also posted on this blog. The advantage of this one is, of course, that it gets the gist across in one convenient bite-sized piece.
A particular stylistic touch in this sermon does not, sadly, translate from Russian to English. The very last word of the sermon in Russian is "sotvorim", which means "we will make", from John 14:23 which, in the exact Russian word order, reads like this: "Who loves me, that one will observe word My, and Father My will love him, and We will come to him and {an} abode with him… SOTVORIM." It works beautifully for "sotvorim" to be the final, dramatic conclusion in Russian, because the same word, with its implications, plays a key role almost from the sermon's beginning. Unfortunately, this element of sermonic suspense and climax is lost with the English word-order, with "we will make" rather swallowed up in the middle of the sentence. Besides which, it doesn't even echo "Let us make (man in our image)" in English the way it does in Russian, where it's one and exactly the same word in both places: SOTVORIM. So, having made this something-of-an-excuse, I hope that there is still plenty of worth in the sermon, even without the fine linguistic nuances.

(There is also a slight wordplay at the very end, in Russian, that disappears in English. When the text says, "thanks to His grace", in Russian it sounds like "blah-gah-dah-RYA Yivo blah-gah-DAH-tee", the word for "thanks (to)" coming from the same root as the word "grace.")

By the way, "let us make" is one word in the original Hebrew, too, if I remember correctly.

(Read John 5:39-47)

On the basis of this passage I want to take a look at the first chapters of Genesis, the narrative about the creation of the world, of man, about the Fall, and try to specify there, even if a little, the testimony about Jesus Christ, about who he is, what he's like, what the eternal mystery of God's being and love is, and about how one and the same Person radiates through both the narrative in Genesis and the words of Christ in the Gospel of John.

Before opening Genesis, highlight the following key words from John in your mind:
Scripture
Life
Testify
Glory
Love
Father
Believe

And now we open the first page of Holy Scripture, where it says, "In the beginning." And this is a testimony, testimony to the inscrutable uniqueness, the singularity of God. In the beginning of everything, when nothing else was yet, God chose to commit the act of creation. This was God's choice, God's affair, God's intention and aim. Without our advice, without our participation, commentary, observations—yes, even without our existence before the sixth day! Only God is acting here.

And yet, in this testimony about the unique, singular, sovereign deed of God, we bump into unexpected words in verse 26: "Let-us-make [sotvorim] man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In this plural "Us" can be heard testimony about Jesus Christ, who said, "I have come in the name of my Father", who spoke about the glory that is exclusively God's, who once prayed, "Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the creation of the world."

"Scripture testifies of me", Jesus told the people, and precisely so the Scripture here, in the words "Let us make", hints at the eternal love that was in God and which God was before the creation of the world: "Let us make". You can't mention the plurality of Persons existing in the one eternal God without speaking of love, because love, which God is, consists precisely of the eternal interrelation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It's a remarkable fact—and I consider it not only a fact but also an essential part of the sense and significance of this revelation—it's remarkable that the first time in Scripture where God says "Us", when Scripture first testifies of a plurality in the one God, it's right where God is pronouncing his intention to create man. Think about that. The very concept of "We" first materializes in Scripture in connection with the creation of man. Only here does God say "We"—not when He said, "Let there be light" on the first day, not on the second day, or the third or fourth day, not on any day but the sixth, when He says, "We will make…."

Why? Because only man will be made in the image of God, and the essence of that image is relationship in love. Scripture says that God said, "We will make Man", and then it tells us that He created them, man and woman, and gave Man the right to rule over creation in subjection to no one other than God alone. Being a created reflection of God's nature, Man was endowed with the capacity to choose, to be responsible, to think, to strive, to imagine the future, to develop as a person, grow in love, be in relationship with Man and God, and to peer into the mysteries of his Creator. "We will make man in our image."

Only the eternal God could pronounce the word "We, and He exclusively endowed with this capacity the Man created in His image. He endowed Man with the capacity to love.

But Jesus says with grief in his heart (John 5:42), "But I know you. You do not have the love of God in you." Imagine this. The very Person who once, in the shining glory of God, spoke the word "We", says here in the Person of the Incarnate Son of God, "There is no love in you."

No love? But then what about the image and likeness of that eternal love which God IS? What's left of that image and likeness where… there's no love?

But the eternal Son, whose whole life's meaning—the whole meaning of Life itself which subsists in him—this eternal Son lives for the Father's glory, the glory of the Father with whom he says "We." His whole life's meaning is love. Love is glory with God His Father. And this same Son says in grief, "How can you believe when you receive glory from each other, but the glory that comes from the only God—you don't seek?"

Human glory—yes, there is such a thing—human glory consists in the fact that the One God endowed Man with the image and likeness of the eternal living Creator. To seek a different glory is to strive towards death.

It's no accident, therefore, that when Man fell in sin, he did it looking for another glory. (Genesis 3:6) "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and was pleasing to the eyes, and desirable because it gave knowledge…"

(Genesis 3:5) "You will be like God, knowing good and evil." Man wanted that knowledge. Man, the only creature in the whole world created in God's image, wanted to become "like God", as if he wasn't already "like God"! He was! In his capacity to love, to communicate, to exert himself for the good and glorious, Man was already "like God", since God invested His image and likeness into him exactly for that. That was God's gift, to man alone.

But the devil fooled Man, deceived him into seeking a different, somehow "better" glory—the glory of the knowledge of good and evil, rather than the glory of the knowledge of God Himself.

And having known evil, Man became evil. That's what the Deceiver hid from Man when he said, "You will know good and evil." Man couldn't know evil without experiencing it in himself. Receiving the words of the Deceiver, our first parents instilled into their entire race the inclination to receive deceptive, seductive words. So Jesus says to those who were rejecting him (John 5:43), "I have come in my Father's name, and you don't receive me, but if another comes in his own name, you will receive him."

The One who eternally says "We" in love with the Father, came to us in the name of the Father, but they didn't accept him. But if a deceiver comes, they’ll accept him. Imagine what grief that is to the One Who once said, "We will make Man in our image and in our likeness."

The second time in Scripture when God speaks of Himself using "We", is after God has declared the punishments to Adam, Eve and the snake. (Genesis 3:22): "And the Lord God said, 'The man has now become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat and live forever.'"

It's no accident that when, yet again, the eternal God speaks in the plural, about "Us", the word is pronounced in an event directly tied to the very nature of God and man's likeness to Him. There was a grain of truth in what the snake said to Eve; tasting the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Man really did find out what evil means, similar to how God knows. But the difference is that God, understanding what evil is, doesn't experience it but remains holy. But unholy Man, having become sinful, mustn't live forever in that kind of condition. That would be an utter distortion of the marvelous original idea of all creation. It would be not only an offense to God but grief to all humanity and creation itself.

Therefore, God—yes, the very same God who is love and who created Man in love—this same God says, once more in the plural "We", that Man mustn't live forever in such a state, in the disfigurement of sin.

By punishing and exiling Man, God saved Man from an eternity of sin, an eternity of life in sin. For when God said, "Let us make man", in His love He intended better for His children – unimaginably better. So even punishing and driving Adam and Eve from the Garden, God is being a Savior.

In the fifth chapter of John, Jesus asserts: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." (vv.39-40)

Compare: in Genesis we read how God forbade Man to touch the tree of life. And that was mercy on God's part. But here in the Gospel we read how the same God, "having taken the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man," doesn't forbid at all. On the contrary, He practically begs the people, with love, to come, take, receive perfect life from Him, life bought at the price of His own life in our place. But they don't want to. They don't believe.

"If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" (Jn. 5:46-47)

But God , who says "We" within Himself in eternal love, so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have real eternal life in freedom from sin and the joy of pure fellowship with his holy Maker. God, who once revealed His love in the creation of Man, and revealed it again by excluding Man from the tree of Life, displayed the whole essence of His saving love in the sacrifice of the Son, in the sacrifice of the One with Whom He said, "Let us make man in our image", the One who is "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being", the One who thirsted for the glorifying of His Father by the sacrifice of His own life for the redemption of Man. So loved us God. So intent was the Maker to carry out everything to return us to His fellowship and knowledge, to the knowledge and fellowship of the eternal, holy God—so we would be "like God, knowing…" love and holiness.

Jesus Christ offers this new fellowship, thanks to His grace, when he tells his disciples these words (Jn. 14:23): "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and [we will] make our abode with him." (and our abiding place with him we will make.)

(IN RUSSIAN, THE ECHOS OF BOTH THE "WE" AND "WILL MAKE" FROM GENESIS MAKE A PERFECT POETIC AND DRAMATIC ENDING TO THE SERMON, AS THEY ARE THE FINAL WORDS IN THE SENTENCE.)

Something New

2010-08-10T21:21:00.000-04:00

The only thing I’ll say about this sermon is that I did get a few grossed-out looks from the congregation when I talked about where the water we drink has been.

Today I felt like talking about something new. So that’s the theme of today’s sermon: Something New!

So let’s start by looking at what it says in 1 John 4:15: “God is love”. Now wait: that’s nothing new. That’s an ancient, an eternal truth! Yes, I agree—this is an ancient, eternal truth, but I say nevertheless that this is something new. New, because God’s love constantly makes everything new, constantly opens up new possibilities, again and again restores and refreshes and revives and renews.

Here’s a good analogy: when somebody offers you a glass of pure cold water on a very hot day, and you drink it, you never say, “Phew, that’s old water!” Even though, in fact, it is… very old water. That water has been here on the earth from the very beginning of the world. Nowhere on earth is there any such thing as “new water”; no new water is being created. All the water located on our planet has already been drunk by countless people, animals, insects, trees, plants and has also been returned over and over again into the ecological system where it’s purified and refreshes and revives us yet again. And every time you pick up a glass of that fresh, clean, cold water, especially on a sweltering summer day, it seems to you that you are the very first living being in the whole universe to taste this particular glassful of crystal clear life-giving water, and it fills you with satisfaction and gratefulness. That “old” water is just about as “new” as anything you could ever wish for!

Of course, this is a limited, physical analogy for a spiritual truth. In fact, divine love unimaginably exceeds this analogy because, unlike water, God’s love actually does increase and grow; there is more and more of it; it unceasingly comes into new being, in God’s desire to bring about good for the objects of His love. It is always new, and… it has always been. It never grows old, and yet… there’s nothing older than it! God’s love is always able to open a new door for us in life, especially when we feel worn out, empty, useless.

In the Gospel of John 13:34, Jesus Christ speaks this command: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This is a new command precisely because the life of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ unceasingly makes us new and capable to love in a whole new way, in unity with His desire to love through us. (Verse 35) “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

If we go back to the first epistle of John, in the fifth chapter we read the following words: (5:1) “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” The whole secret of love—if it really is a secret—unfolds itself in this verse. In this one short verse is exposed the whole Gospel, the news of salvation, the meaning of life, new birth, even a glimmer of the eternal mystery of the Holy Trinity—from which proceeds all divine love. Imagine: all that in one verse! Let’s take it apart….

“Whoever believes...” Here’s faith, the key to reconciliation with God. For us it all starts with this, when by faith we receive God’s gift of eternal life.

“…that Jesus is the Christ...” Here’s the content of our faith, the central fact of history that changes our whole past, present and future.

“…is born of God.” Here’s new birth; it’s an enlivened spirit, a new, living relationship with the living God in mutual knowledge.

“Whoever loves the father…” Here’s love for God; in the heart of the born-again person love is born for the Father who bestowed the new birth. This is love, born in the image of the eternally loving God, and the proof of that love is love towards His children, as it says, “…and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well” and we read further (v.2) “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.”

I hinted that a lesson about the Holy Trinity is found here, so what is it? The lesson is that our new birth arises exclusively thanks to the only-begotten Son of God. Thanks to the Only-Begotten of the Father we become “begotten” of God. Moreover, thanks to the eternal love ceaselessly communicated within the Holy Trinity, without beginning or end, the possibility is made real for us to taste and know and generate genuine love. Genuine love will always be love in the image of Him who loved and gave Himself for us, Jesus of Nazareth. Genuine love will always be a response of joy toward God the Father, with that same joy with which the eternal Son of God unendingly exults in the presence of His Father. And genuine love will always be the cause for obedience to the Father’s will, the natural consequence of a desire to bring Him pleasure. (Verses 3-4) “This is love for God: to obey his commands, and his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”

The psalmist says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” “Taste!” “See!” That means, “Find out for yourself! Experience it!” Taste the fresh, clean, enlivening water of God’s love; it is water for the soul. This water is always new.

In Samaria on one hot day, Jesus, tired after a long journey, asked for water from a woman whose sins and griefs were totally open to him. Encountering her suspicion and curtness, and still not having gotten even a drop of water, God’s Son Jesus in all love offered her living water (read Jn. 4:13,14). These words sounded out to this woman on that miraculous day when she found God’s love and forgiveness, sounded out from the lips of Him whose love redeemed God’s creation, of Him whose Father one day will say, “See, I am making all new” and in His incomparable love He will wipe every tear from the eyes of His children. That’s the kind of love that sounded from the lips of Jesus to that poor woman on that hot day so long ago in Samaria.

Let that love sound in our hearts every time we draw near to God and each other. Let it reveal itself through us to those around us, in forgiveness, in patience, in help, in compassion and joyful fellowship. And let God's always-new love become for many the refreshing, enlivening water of new life in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

CATASTROPHE!

2010-07-06T08:14:00.002-04:00

This one speaks for itself. I’ll just add that the approach here is one I find useful on rare occasions, i.e., where I mostly lay it out first in my own words and only then “cinch” it with scripture passages, left (mostly) to speak for themselves at the end. Oh, by the way, some reflection on Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe” played some role in prompting me to compose this sermon.

Every catastrophe has a future... and the future is God's.

A number of recent events have me thinking about the meaning of “catastrophe”. We all know about the worldwide economic crisis that’s been going on for over a year now. We see that the nations of the world are in turmoil over what’s going on: the riots in Greece, the threat of total financial collapse in countries from Spain and Hungary to Japan. And as for America, the so-called richest country on earth... the reality is that America is essentially bankrupt. America can’t exist at this point without borrowing massively more than it actually has. I call that bankruptcy. A report last month on the generation of new jobs in the economy seemed very encouraging at first. 441,000 new jobs were created! Everybody said hooray! But then reality struck: 400,000 of those jobs were temporary jobs created by the government hiring people to collect the 2010 census! It turns out there were only 41,000 real new jobs last month. To make clear how bad that is, 150,000 new workers enter the job market every month. That means there were jobs for less than a third of them, not to mention the other 8 million officially unemployed and millions of others who don’t even show up on official records. That’s catastrophic.

And now there’s the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The southern coastline of America is turning red like blood. The fish and birds are dying. The water is turning into poison. They still can’t stop the oil that is spreading farther and farther. And it’s not only floating on the top of the water. It’s also forming a thick layer on the bottom—and that’s killing the sea creatures that depend on the ocean bottom for their food. It’s already a catastrophe and we still don’t know what else it will lead to.

Recently we had a catastrophe in my church denomination in America. Our “Bishop”, that is, the president or senior officer of the whole denomination, was killed in a car accident. Just 53 years old, with a wife and four grown children. In fact, he was planning to go to Canada the next day on a fishing trip with his sons. An overwhelming, heart-breaking shock—a catastrophe for his family, friends and a whole church denomination with thousands of members.

Catastrophes come into our lives, whether physically, emotionally, financially.... And people’s reactions to catastrophes include fear, anxiety, doubt, anger and loss of faith. And that brings me to the main idea of my sermon today, which is this:

If I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for catastrophe, I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for life.

Let me repeat it: If my faith isn’t ready for catastrophe, my faith isn’t ready for life.

Why? Because catastrophe happens. That’s reality. So if I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for reality, how can I have a faith that’s ready for life?

We don’t want our faith itself to suffer ruin, collapse, catastrophe. Therefore, we always need to be assessing our faith. Do I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter what happens? Or am I hanging my faith on a particular scenario that I expect Him to produce in my life? That’s a critical question.

Why is it critical? The obvious reason is that it could decide whether or not your faith stands strong in the day of catastrophe. But I’ll quickly add that I’m not so naïve as to think that some stark, terrible “day of catastrophe” absolutely comes into the life of literally every single Christian. We don’t all lose loved ones in their youth. We don’t all suffer long-term, debilitating illnesses, or bankruptcy, or a broken home or public disgrace or injustice or persecution. Some people live comparatively peaceful lives from cradle to grave. But listen carefully: even if you’re in that category, the question I asked is still a critical question for your life: Do you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ no matter what? Or is your faith faith in a pleasant, preferred scenario you expect him to arrange for your life?

Why is that a critical question? QUALITY. The quality of our faith will determine the quality of our lives, the quality of our spiritual being and growth, the quality of our joy, our peace, our hope, our relationship with God, our existence. If we have a faith that’s ready for catastrophe—a no-matter-what faith in Jesus—then we have a faith that grows, grows deeply in the knowledge of God whether or not the catastrophe comes. If I don’t have a faith that’s ready for catastrophe in the future, then I don’t really experience the quality of life in Christ now. And if future catastrophe destroys my faith in Christ, I probably never had it to begin with.

I recall a woman I knew long ago, who went through possibly the worst catastrophe anyone can: the loss of a child. Her 18-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident. As a result she gave up her faith, saying she could no longer believe in a God who would let something like that happen to her.

Now I have to ask the following question, even if it sounds cold and cruel: Didn’t this woman know, before her son was killed, when she was still “believing in God”, that there were other mothers in the world whose sons were getting killed in motorcycle accidents?

Of course she did—how could she not? We all know it. It means, therefore, that, on a certain and very real level, she was content to believe in a God who let other mothers’ sons get killed in motorcycle accidents... as long as it wasn’t her son.

So, she didn’t really lose her faith, because she never had it to begin with. It wasn’t real-world, ‘no-matter-what’ faith in the Person of Christ; it was faith in a Preferred Scenario.

I know. I sound cold, cruel, unsympathetic: “You can’t know the agony in a mother’s heart, so you can’t judge!” No, I’m not unsympathetic. The pain I feel for her tells me I’m actually full of compassion. But I know that other mothers and fathers, and husbands and wives, and sons and daughters, and dearest friends, have gone through catastrophes just as awful but have come out of it with a living faith. Why? Because they had real-world faith, faith that works in the real world where terrible things like this happen. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ no-matter-what. As a result they came through the pain with God’s peace, hope, strength, joy—in short, a good reason to really live. “I have come”, Jesus said, “that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

If I speak what sound like hard words about that poor woman, it’s not from a lack of compassion but the opposite. It hurts to see her stuck in despair and bitterness, with no way out. I want to see her really know the comfort of God’s awesome power, the healing comfort of the living Christ. But as a rule that happens only when we have faith that’s prepared for catastrophe ahead of time.

And, I think, especially in these times we need faith like that! We need to check, evaluate our faith, and make sure it’s firmly fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ—no matter what happens. Because then our faith won't fail us—for He is "the same yesterday, today and forever". The future and eternity belong completely to Him.

“Heaven and earth will pass away”, Jesus said.

Catastrophe? You bet it is!

“But my words will never pass away.” In the midst of catastrophe—unshakeable assurance, a rock-solid ground to stand on.

In 2 Peter 3:10-13 the apostle writes (read).

The earth and all that is in it will be burned up and dissolved. A catastrophe? Absolutely! But can you believe Peter says this is something we’re actually looking forward to? How can that be? Catastrophe and hope: how can they exist side-by-side? It’s impossible, isn’t it? No, not when we are in Christ. Because our whole faith is founded on a catastrophe and a glorious hope.

(Read Mark 15:22-26.)

“And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.” Catastrophe. Personal, physical, torturous catastrophe, lived through, moment by moment, drop by drop, to death.

(Read Luke 24:25-26.)

The Risen Lord is telling his disciples: No catastrophe... no faith! No suffering... no glory! And if you stop to think about it, Jesus is also saying: “No past... no future!” Because every present catastrophe, just like every passing second, is obviously, logically, going to immediately become a past catastrophe—a past catastrophe caught up in the rushing stream of time towards the future that finally belongs to God and His promises. “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken...” If the catastrophe of the cross hadn't happened, there’d be no future.

(Read Luke 13:34-35)

The heartbreak of Jesus Christ: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem....” A past catastrophe, a future certainty. Your house is left to you desolate, but the time will come when you say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” No-matter-what faith in Jesus perceives every Past and every Present in the light of the glory of a coming day. Yes, even when we perceive it through tears, just as Jesus wept.

Our faith is based on a catastrophe: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe it seems obvious why I would call such a terrible death catastrophic, but... the resurrection? That's not a catastrophe, is it? Isn’t that something wonderful? Well, yes, it is – truly wonderful in every sense: great, amazing, miraculous. But it’s also catastrophic. A catastrophe is a total change of order, the turning upside-down of everything familiar; it’s an earthquake, an upheaval, a revolution, an end and a beginning. And the resurrection is certainly all those things. And we know the resurrection was really catastrophic for the devil: it obliterated, demolished, shattered the power of sin and death forever. Definitely a catastrophe, and what a glorious one—hallelujah! Without catastrophe we’d have no salvation, no faith.

Finally, I want to amend, to adjust a little bit, something I said before. I said that some people seem to get through life without major catastrophes. But please listen carefully: If we have this no-matter-what faith in Jesus—faith that sticks to Him no matter what else may happen—then I guarantee you we will suffer and catastrophe will come.

You might be thinking that if I worked for an advertising company they’d probably fire me, judging by the advertisement I just made for faith in Jesus.

Alright then, let me clarify what I’m talking about: If we have that kind of faith, then we will suffer because we share the sufferings of Christ, and we will experience catastrophe because, for one thing, Jesus will revolutionize our lives. (Philippians 3:8-10) “I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord... that I may win Christ... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings”, says the apostle, and I trust we can say the same.

Need I add that none of us can escape catastrophe in any case, because each of us has a date with eternity, the physical catastrophe of death. But if we’re in Christ, death is something we’ve already come to ultimate terms with, thanks to Jesus: (Gal. 6:14) “...God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” says the apostle Paul, and I trust we say the same. (Gal. 2:20) “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me: and the live which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” So says the apostle, and so says No-Matter-What faith in Christ.

At his own approaching appointment with eternity, when nearly everybody had abandoned him and the state was going to execute him, the apostle wrote to his dear son in the faith: (2 Timothy 4:7-8) “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”—not “lost the faith”; kept the faith!—“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

When he could have protested that it was all unfair, and his friends were traitors, and God had failed him, instead Paul lived and spoke faith, no matter what: (2 Timothy 4:16-18): “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Our faith was born in catastrophe and glory. Faith in Jesus, no matter what, will turn every catastrophe into an expectation of glory. Every catastrophe has a future, and the future... belongs to the Risen and Returning Lord Jesus Christ, “to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen!”

Two Questions on Forgiveness

2010-06-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

This one essentially boils down in sermonic style key theological ideas I wove into a paper that I presented at a Dorothy L. Sayers Society convention some years ago. There I spoke on an article Sayers wrote, “On Forgiveness”, during WWII. That paper wove together Sayers’s views with thoughts from Charles Williams, William Blake, C.S. Lewis and others. Oh yes, and me. My small contribution there is distilled into the sermon here.

   (Read Ephesians 4:32)

   The apostle Paul tells us to forgive one another just as God has forgiven us in Christ. That naturally raises the question: how has God forgiven us in Christ? The better we understand that, the better we can forgive one another like God has forgiven us! We find a very helpful clue in Matthew 26:28 (read).

   So, God in Christ has forgiven us by suffering and dying, spilling His own blood for the “remission of sins”. That word “remission” means “putting away”, getting rid of them, making them gone, like they never existed to begin with.

   This raises two difficult questions, and in essence my whole sermon will circle around these questions.

   The first question: If we must forgive similar to how God in Christ forgave us, does this mean we must suffer and die every time we forgive?

   The second question: If not, and if we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us, and saying, “I forgive you”, then why was God not able to forgive the same simple way? Why the cross, the suffering, the blood and death?

   Two difficult questions. But in my opinion the answers to these questions happen to disclose the very essence of our faith. If we ignore these questions, we allow the very meaning of forgiveness and the sacrifice of Christ to slip out of sight.

   I will discuss these two questions in reverse order, because the first one will remain unclear until we figure out the second. So again, the second question went “If we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us and by saying ‘I forgive you’, then how come God couldn’t forgive the same simply way, without the cross, the suffering, the spilling of blood and death?

   An important question!

   It will help us to look at Matthew 6:12, very familiar words in the context of the “Our Father” (read).

   “Debts”. The key word is “debts”: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

   What do we owe God, by rights? By rights, we owe Him our life , and all that is in it. This is love, faithfulness, holiness, truth, obedience, worship—that’s what Man owes God, since the very creation of the world! For all his belongs to God; it is all from Him and for Him.

   But what is sin? Sin is the violation of this order, the order in which we freely pay our debt of life to God with joy—sin ruins that order. When Man first sinned, he stole from God what belonged to God, which is life itself and everything in it, as I already listed—love, obedience, faithfulness, etc. Here’s a paradox-question for you: Can you steal from yourself? Can you steal from your own self what belongs to you? Can I steal my glasses from myself? As a rule the answer is no. But here’s the paradox: when Man sinned, he stole his own life! His life was his but he stole it. Stole it from whom? Stole it from God, because ultimately everything belongs to God. But not only from God, because Man couldn't steal his life from God without also stealing it from himself—depriving himself of it, forfeiting it.

   (Read Genesis 2:17)

   From his very creation, Man was a debtor to God for his life—for the life that came from God. And interestingly, there were two ways to repay God this debt: either to live, literally live this life for God, in love and the knowledge of Him, or to die, to forfeit the life that he couldn’t properly manage for God. In any case, life belongs to God and exists only for His glory’s sake.

   And so I return to the second question: Why couldn’t God simply say “I forgive” without requiring the suffering and death of Christ?

   I think the answer will be easier to understand, now that we’ve talked about “debts”.

   By not demanding from us the life we owed Him, God essentially relinquished the life that was owed Him, that belonged to Him. And this reality concretely materialized in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because, you know, forgiveness doesn’t consist of words alone. Forgiveness is an act. Moreover, it is an act of forfeiture, of loss.

   If you owe me five dollars and I forgive you the debt, that’s all very well and good for you, of course—but I’ve lost! What have I lost? Five dollars, of course!

   Even if someone offended me in a more abstract way—let’s say it’s not money we’re talking about; let’s say someone was spreading gossip about me. If I forgive that person, what do I lose? I lose the right to expect moral compensation, to expect that he will somehow undo what was done, rewind time itself to make it so that the wrong never happened. By the way, who can pay off a debt like that? Who can rewind time? Nobody! And so it turns out that, by forgiving, I am actually liberating myself from the expectation of the impossible!

   And do you know how that expectation of the impossible manifests itself in life, what it’s called? Bitterness. Or, as one lady responded in a church where I asked that question: “Torture!” That’s right. It is. It’s bitterness and torture absolutely worth getting free of, because that’s just no way to live.

   And so, forgiveness is an act of forfeiture. Even if such forfeiture liberates the forgiver, all the same it's a loss. Forgiving us the life we owed Him, God Himself lost. He gave up, in the very Person of Christ, the life that was His by right, the life we owed Him. He carried Himself the full weight of the offense that no one could possibly have made up to Him.

   And there’s the answer to the second question. God so loved us that He gave His own life in Christ, to make up our debt, and this is forgiveness. That's "why" the cross, the suffering, the death....

   And now I think we can very briefly and simply answer the first question, which went: “If we must forgive one another similarly to how God forgave us in Christ, does it mean we also must suffer and die in order to forgive?”

   The answer is... “Yes”.

   Maybe not literally, and of course not to the salvation of the whole world, inasmuch as it’s not against us the whole world sinned or to us the whole world owes life itself. But, inasmuch as our Savior materialized all forgiveness and the source of forgiveness Himself, by His death, in love, and made us (as the apostle Peter says) “partakers in the divine nature by the power of His resurrection”, we have power—yes, and a debt!—to forgive in imitation of His forgiveness: relinquishing, giving up, what’s ours by right, not expecting impossible recompense, carrying ourselves the weight of the offense and loss, and trusting everything into the hands of Him who is faithful.

   Doing that, we liberate ourselves from the debts of our debtors; by the power of the Risen Life of Jesus Christ we die to the offense and live to God, in the freedom of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. That’s the great secret of forgiveness, and what a tragedy that it is a secret! Forgiveness frees the forgiver—yes, even God! God who’s forgiven us is now free to love His children without ever again recalling the sins that He has put away: “...This is my blood, shed for the remission.. the putting away... of sins....”

   So let us likewise free ourselves through forgiveness from every wrong done to us, in imitation of our God and Savior.

   (Read Ephesians 4:32-5:2).

Easter Sermon IV: Two Conundrums

2010-06-25T12:04:00.004-04:00

In spite of this being “Easter Sermon IV”, it is actually a very old one I preached, years ago, in our church as well as our college chapel. It is, in part, an extended reflection on an observation by C.S. Lewis, that only a sinless person would be capable of incarnating the perfect “repentance” (i.e., return to God, the Hebrew “shuv”, which means “returning”) of which, paradoxically, he was in no need personally (being perfect, repentance is inapplicable to him). The evil person, on the other hand, being in desperate need of repentance, is incapable of performing this good work. That is one of the “conundrums”. The other is the odd sort of distinction Paul makes in Romans 4:25 with regard to the “parts” of Christ’s redemptive work, i.e., which parts accomplished what. Finally, an observation of my own on the Baptism of Christ, an observation that arose in the course of my teaching the Gospel of Matthew at our college—to the effect that the Baptism serves as a depiction, in symbolic form, of the entire redemptive act of God in Christ—helps me to tie these two “conundrums” together theologically and resolve them... in a way that seemed appropriate for an Easter sermon....

   First conundrum: (Romans 4:25) “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

   Usually we think of salvation as one whole; we say, “Jesus died and rose to save us.” But in this verse, Paul seems to divide salvation into two parts. He says that Jesus died for our sins, but was raised to justify us. Now what can that mean? Why is the resurrection especially connected to “justification”? Paul said it, so it must mean something!

   Second conundrum: How can a bad man do a good thing? What I mean is this: Repentance is a good thing; it means giving up your sins and returning to God. But who needs to do this good thing? A “bad” person, of course. And the worse he is, the more he needs to do it! But the worse he is, the less he can do it. Now, a perfect person could easily do it... but he doesn’t need to. So there’s the paradox! The worst person most needs to repent, and he can’t. The perfect person can easily repent, but he doesn’t need to! And even if the best person did, in some sense, repent, what difference would that make for the worst person? It doesn’t help him, does it?

   So those are our two conundrums. And now, even though our focus today is Easter and resurrection, I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the baptism of Jesus Christ. Why? Because there is a theological picture in this baptism. And I think the picture will help us to solve the conundrums I’ve laid out and at the same time help us more deeply celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection and all it means for our lives.

   (Read Matthew 3:1-17)

   In this baptism we can see the whole story of salvation concentrated in one moment and one person. The story is acted out symbolically, concentrating on Jesus as he embraces this “Baptism of Repentance”. Now, John the Baptist was horrified that Jesus would do such a thing. Right before this, John was announcing that the Messiah was coming to baptize with fire and the Spirit! But here Jesus appears on the scene and what do we see? Do we in fact see the terrifying Lord of hosts radiating fire on His enemies, like John’s words would lead us to expect? Not in the least. Instead we see a simple man at the riverbank, humbly waiting in line for his turn. You know, it reminds me of Revelation where the elder tells the apostle John, “Look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah!”, but when John looks, what does he see? A Lamb.

   John the Baptist did his best to stop Jesus. He knew exactly what this baptism meant, and what it meant was: Jesus didn’t need it! Because it meant repentance. He seriously tried to stop Jesus from going into the water, probably several times, saying, “You mustn’t do this; it isn’t right; I can’t baptize you– you should baptize me!” (Just think about what that means....)

   But Jesus says, in effect, “Come on, John, let’s get on with it! This is the way it’s meant to go. We’re supposed to do exactly this, to accomplish the total fulfillment of God’s righteousness.” And with that Jesus goes into the water and... repents.

   Now you’ll tell me, of course: “Wait! Jesus didn’t repent, because he never sinned. Besides, the text doesn’t say that he repented.”

   In answer to the first objection: yes, I know Jesus never sinned. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

   In answer to the second objection, the Scripture clearly says that this mass baptism John was holding out there on the Jordan River was a baptism of repentance. It was “Repentance Baptism”; in other words, if you do the baptism, you are repenting. You can’t separate them; that’s how John preached it, that’s how everybody took it. And when Jesus submitted to it, neither he nor John stopped to make a preliminary announcement: “Attention, everyone! Let’s make it perfectly clear that in this one special case this is not ‘Repentance Baptism’! There’s absolutely no connection in this case between the two ideas!” You see, to say that repentance wasn't implied when Jesus got baptized is practically the same as saying he wasn’t baptized at all. Because “Repentance Baptism” was the only kind of baptism going on out there that day. And that’s the one Jesus took.

   In front of everybody and without clarification, explanation or modification, Jesus submits to exactly the same baptism as all the others. Others are going down into the water confessing their sins, “I stole from my brother! I told lies about my neighbor! I had adulterous thoughts!” And now Jesus goes into the water, too, like the rest. Perfectly natural for anybody watching to assume Jesus was a sinner like them. Why wouldn’t they? They didn’t know who he was. Maybe they noticed Jesus didn’t confess any sins before he went into the water; maybe they noticed that John didn’t want to baptize Jesus; maybe they thought that was rather odd.... Nevertheless, Jesus goes down into the water, like a repenting sinner.

   Now imagine John’s total bewilderment. What in the world is going on here? It’s all upside-down, all wrong.... It makes me think of Jesus’ disciples later, when to their horror they witnessed Jesus hanging on the cross – their feeling must have been similar: “This can’t be happening; it’s all wrong.” But here’s the thing: it wasn't wrong. Precisely so Jesus was supposed to “fulfill all righteousness”. The only one who never needed to repent, the Perfect One, does a “Repentance Baptism”. But for what? For whom?

   In our imagination, let’s look and watch that Baptism story again and see the story it tells: Jesus comes out of the crowd, heads for the water, goes under it, comes up, heaven opens, the Spirit descends, a voice speaks. I believe that Jesus is telling John, and us, that this very picture itself is fulfilling all righteousness. But how? In what sense? Let’s take the picture in parts....

   Jesus comes out of the crowd, steps forward as one of the people, participating in their Repentance Baptism – but more than “participating”, he will actually do the perfect Repentance Baptism for them, like they can't. He steps forward as one of them; He won't stand aloof from the people. To the contrary, he will in a sense be them, for them—but on a level and dimension beyond anything they, or we, could conceive. Jesus will carry their guilt in a repentance and surrender to the Father’s will like no one else could. And why? So he might make them new, in himself. This will fulfill all righteousness. This will make righteousness real in every single person Jesus carries in his heart down to the waters of repentance.

   So Jesus stepped out of the crowd, and then headed straight for the water. Nothing would stop him. This was what he came for.... “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” “I must do the works of my Father”; “He set his face toward Jerusalem”. Exactly like Jesus headed straight into the water, that’s how he headed straight to the cross. John couldn’t stop Jesus from getting into the river; nothing could stop Jesus from fulfilling the Father’s will. nobody could stop Jesus from going to the cross. No one ever obeyed the Father like this before. This also fulfills all righteousness; this also makes righteousness real. Real, in Jesus.

   Then Jesus went down under the water. Just like God will bring Jesus’ soul down into the very depths of death, on that day when Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, breathes his last breath and dies, the day he is buried in the earth. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then, Jesus immediately came up from the water. Just as three days after his death, he came up from the earth, out of the grave in glorious resurrection. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is RISEN!” Death couldn’t hold God’s Holy One. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then heaven opened. Just as heaven opened to receive the Son of God 40 days after the resurrection. In Jesus’ ascension, heaven and earth are united, and we have access to the Father through Him. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then the Spirit descended. Just as the Spirit descended again on Jesus’ people, the Church, in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: I will send another Comforter; I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you; I and the Father will make our dwelling place within you. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then the voice spoke from heaven: “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God blessed His Son, openly announced His perfect pleasure in Him before all the people. There will be another day when the whole creation, the whole universe will recognize God’s Son. And at His Name, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   You know, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden, righteousness died. The right relationship for which God created man— died. Ever since then, God in His grace has labored in human history to restore—yes, to fulfill—this righteousness, make it real again.

   The crowning conclusion of this divine labor was righteousness’ ultimate materialization in Jesus. And in the Baptism this stunning story is portrayed in miniature—it’s acted out; it’s announced to the entire creation. It all happens and “comes true”—in Jesus’ personal identification with the people, in His self-sacrifice for them, in His resurrection, and in His renewal of them; they become a new and righteous people by Him, and this surely fulfills all righteousness.

   No wonder Jesus wouldn’t let John stop him but said “We have to do this....” The heart of God couldn’t settle for less.

Romans 5:16 “Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. 18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

   In verse 19, Paul talks about the obedience of the “one man”, and I can’t help picturing the one man Jesus stepping out of the crowd, to do it all, the one man Jesus on the cross, paying for all, the one man Jesus coming out of the tomb, having won it all.

   It makes me think of Matthew 7, as well, where Jesus says we must “enter by the narrow gate and the straight path.” I know we usually picture a long straight path – that’s our earthly life – leading finally to a narrow gate – that’s the gate of heaven. But I truly don’t think that’s what Jesus is talking about. If you read it carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus talks about the narrow gate first. Only then comes the straight path. First we enter the narrow gate, and why is it narrow? It’s narrow because, ultimately, it all boils down to one man. The gate is Jesus, and the righteousness he fulfilled. Over all the millennia of human history, God was narrowing and narrowing this gate down to one man—through Noah, Abraham, Israel, then one tribe of Israel, then one family from that tribe, then one child from that family. God brought the whole eternal work of redemption to fulfillment, finally, in this one man—the one who stepped out of the crowd that day, and said to John the Baptist, “Let it be so, John, because this is exactly the way we must fulfill all righteousness.” We enter the kingdom only through the narrow gate, the One Man, surrendering to his will like he surrendered to the Father’s will. And then, after entering through him, we walk the long, straight path—with its sacrifices, tests, temptations, purification and sanctification. And that way, “all righteousness” continues being fulfilled, continues happening, in us.

   So this finally brings us back to the two conundrums we started with: why is it the resurrection of Christ, specifically, that justifies, and how can a bad person do a good thing; i.e., how can a sinner do the right thing and repent the way he should? Perhaps you already realize that these two conundrums are really one.

   And the answer should be clear now, especially if you remember that the verb “justify” means “to make righteous”. It’s only because of the resurrection that Jesus can bring the righteousness fulfilled in his life into our life. No resurrection—no justifying! Only because he is alive can Jesus’ righteousness live in us. His righteousness lives because Christ lives. In His earthly life, Jesus incarnated the truest repentance and self-surrender to God, he lived out unwavering obedience that presses forward, every step closer and closer to God, no matter the cost, through every fire and test. Which is what every sinner ought to do; which is what no sinner can do. But Jesus did it. And now He can do it, and does do it, again: in you and in me... because he lives. “Because I live, you also will live”, Jesus tells us. “Living”, for Jesus, is nothing else than living for God. That’s perfect repentance, that’s righteousness, that’s sanctification, that’s life in the risen Lord.

  And when does this life, this righteousness, this sanctification happen for us? Not just on the day we become a believer, but every day of our life. The whole Christian life is a life of repentance, in the sense of return to God. It’s a continual returning, ever closer and closer, from imperfection to perfection, from darkness to light. This is the life Christ made real for us when we couldn’t. This is why Jesus stepped out of the crowd. This is why Jesus rose from the dead. This is why the Risen Lord lives in our hearts: to fulfill all righteousness.

Romans 6:8 “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”

   God made man to be righteous. Thanks to God’s great love and grace, man will be righteous. Because Jesus lives, you and I can live—really live. Because he returned to God, you and I can return to God, every day. He lives in us to make it happen. As the apostle writes, “the life he lives, he lives to God.” The life he lives in us, we live to God. Paul writes, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus”. We can do this, for Christ is risen! He lives in us to do what he has always done: the will of the Father. We show we are his when we let him fulfill that will. To save us He died, to justify us He rose. And in the power of His resurrection, He invites each of us to enter by the narrow gate, the gate of His own risen life, and walk the straight path with him, in a life of return to God, in his strength, no matter what the cost. Let us glorify the risen Lord Jesus Christ by surrendering our life to him, so that in us and with us he can go on fulfilling the righteousness that glorifies the Father.

Easter III (2010)

2010-06-24T08:03:00.000-04:00

Yet another Easter sermon! This sermon was, oddly enough, prompted by my “leisure reading”—a book called “Hope Against Hope”; the author: Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam who died in a Soviet prison camp in 1938. The book made me think... about a lonely, “anonymous” death in a prison camp; about the untold suffering of the countless “unknown” in this world who never “got [or get] a break”; unhappy lives that end in unhappy deaths, lives that are as fully and richly known to themselves as mine is to me but seem to go unrecognized, unshared... or even if shared and cherished, as Mandelstam’s was with his wife and friends, to be coldly, criminally dispensed with by such an evil as Stalin. The intense and intensely personal passage of death, the question of its meaning, and what it means to whom, and how all of that played out in the death of Jesus Christ as much as any other human being... and how that continued to “play out” right into resurrection... that’s the train of thought, more or less, that yielded the following sermon, which I delivered in my church during the Easter season (not on Easter itself, as I was home sick that day).

[A language note: several times in the sermon I refer to Jesus’ “final word” on the cross, but that doesn’t quite work in English, of course, where it’s three words: “It is finished”. In Russian (and, if memory serves, in the original Greek of the scriptures) it really is expressed with just one word. The Russian word is “sovershilos”, the past tense of a verb meaning (much as the Greek verb it translates) to perfect, bring to completion, commit (e.g., a crime), carry out, perform (e.g., like a duty). The final “s” in “sovershilos” is a suffix that makes the word reflexive (or “passive” if that makes more sense); thus, “it” is completed/finished. Finally, there’s no need in Russian (or the Greek) to literally express “it” here, so a result the whole thought is expressed in just one word. I will continue to refer to Jesus’ “final word” in this sermon, even though it is actually three words in English. But now you know why.]

Also, I am quite aware that the following phrase, “...poorest, last remaining inhabitant of a deserted village” is loaded with contradiction/tautology: if you’re the only person in a village then you’re obviously the poorest, not to mention the richest, one there, and if you're still there, then the village is manifestly not “deserted”, at least not entirely. So be it. Cut me a break and take the sentence on the level of what it means to say rather than the “mathematical” exactitude of its logic – thanks! “Poorest” means “very poor”, as in “poorest person imaginable”, and “deserted” here implies, of course, “by everybody except you”.

Finally, for an Easter sermon, it may seem to focus a lot on death, but then... what would resurrection be without death?

   “I was dead and, behold, I am alive forever and ever!” (Rev. 1:18)

   The psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills— where does my help come from?” (Ps. 121:1) That’s fine, but what if you can no longer lift your eyes to the hills, or to heaven, because death has closed your eyes? What then? Moreover, what if you died rejected, abandoned, cursed by this world? What does it mean then to “lift your eyes to the hills”?

   One day the eyes of a man known as Jesus of Nazareth closed in death. There was no life left in them; they were lifeless matter, just like stone. In this, Jesus was the same as every other descendant of Adam who ever died. He left his body utterly dead... and the word “dead” doesn’t mean “almost alive”; it doesn’t mean “potentially alive”; the word “dead” signifies non-living matter, no different in that sense from stones, or air, or the paper the pages of my Bible are made from. Jesus died, and the body he left was cold matter; those eyes were no more organs of sight then than the hair on our heads of the pebbles on the seashore.

   But what happened? Jesus opened those eyes. Imagine. Eyes that had been dead—no longer eyes, even—opened at the instant of glorious resurrection power. And everything in Jesus—his body, his hands, his heart, his mind, his spirit, his eyes—all was Life. And I think... could it be, maybe at the moment, those lips that had been dead and now were become Life, pronounced anew that final word: “It is finished”?

   Who knows? It’s possible! Because “It is finished” doesn’t only mean “It’s over”; it can also mean “all is begun”. When all your preparations for a dinner, for example, are finished, that's when everything can begin! Life itself testifies that when all it finished, then all is begun; there is no ending without a new beginning. Only when the earthly life of Christ ended on the cross—“It is finished!”—only then could the resurrection of Christ also be “finished”—carried out and done. And only then did everything begin for you and me: (read 1 Peter 1:3).

   Christ’s resurrection is the source of a new birth for us all. Only that life which had never been before—the life of the resurrected Christ, the life shining through eyes that once closed in death—only that life gives new birth. For a new birth must come from a new source.

   “And in God’s great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope”—‘living’ because Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ and Son of God, is now alive forever—“through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

   “From the dead.” All was lost, and all in this world on which it was possible to hope, was dead. And then, and only then, God gave birth to living hope in Jesus, who was dead but now is alive forever and ever. The resurrected Christ is the source, the eternally new source, of eternally new life.

   Jesus’ resurrection is the birth of a new birth for us all. Without that resurrection our new birth would never have been born in Him. But there would never have been a resurrection if not for that death. Before those eyes could open anew in glory, they had to close in the universal loss of death.

   I say “universal loss of death” because, having become Man, God embraced the death that belongs to all people, the death that awaits each of us from the moment of birth, the death that, for each of us, exists uniquely and separately and makes each of us solitary before God. There’s a paradox for you: death is the ultimately personal experience that is everbody's experience. That’s the paradox: each of us has to go through what no one can go through... except “me”—in this case, each of us being a “Me”. Though all people die, only one person can die his own death, and as far as that goes we’re all equal. No matter who you are: an emperor or the poorest, last remaining inhabitant of a deserted village dying in utter obscurity; no matter who you are, how you lived, who’s nearby—if anyone at all!—the very last experience of life you experience alone, alone before God. At the moment, the moment of departure, no labels, no roles in life define you. You aren’t Mom or Dad, you’re not a boss, you’re not a doctor, not a friend or enemy, not rich or poor, not a husband, not a wife—you’re just you, the “you” you were from the very moment of your birth: you, departing, not on the shoulders of your friends but by yourself, alone. And no matter how much those around you may love you, just as those last faithful few who stood by the cross to the very end loved Jesus, all the same the ultimate moment of departure, the moment of passage, belongs to you alone. And in that we are all the same; you could be a concentration camp prisoner or the most powerful dictator, but in that we are all the same. Death is the personal, singular instance of meeting eternity. It closes the eyes of each one separately, singularly, and God knows the death of each one singularly.

   In order to fully embrace what we all go through, Christ had to embrace what only He alone could go through, that is, the personal, unique, singular death of one human being—His. He had to close his eyes, too, in death’s ultimate alienation from this world. When Christ took his final breath on the cross, he tasted to the absolute last drop what it means to be a human being come to life’s end.

   There’s the depths of divine love for you. Dying his own human death, which no one else could die, God became like all humans who must die their own human death, including the most anonymous, friendless, forgotten child of Adam there is right now somewhere on the Earth—and at any time, I think, there is someone somewhere on Earth who fits that description. And now the death of such a so-called “nobody” shakes the entire universe because, now, that death, precisely in its uniqueness, is like the death of the Only-Begotten Son of God, like the death of God Become Man. And so Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus God’s Son, Jesus Christ, made the personal death of each of us an occasion for hope. Why? Because He opened His eyes again.

                                      (Read 1 Peter 1:3 again.)

   “I was dead, but am alive forevermore....”

   Very long ago, a man named Abraham left his house, his country, his motherland, his heritage, his gods, his past and, yes, his future as he had always understood it. He left all this at the summons of the one living God, for whose sake he was ready to be a wanderer and alien in this world. And at just an age—75 years old—when a person has every right to expect that life’s tempo will decelerate, that the time for new adventures has passed, it so happens that at just that age God calls him out—literally, out of everything familiar to him, to go who-knew-where.

   In the 13th chapter of Genesis, starting from verse 8, we read (read 8-13).

   Abraham had already left his country and come to the land where the Canaanites and Perizzites lived, where there were plenty of dangers and threats. Here he is, already at a rather advanced age. He has no son to leave an inheritance to, and now he’s even conceded to his nephew, who took for himself the best part of the land. So here stands Abraham, in essence with no future. We could understand it if he said to himself, “How did I wind up here? What am I doing here? Why did I come here? What sense is there at all in my life now? What was it all for? Did God really need me to come and close my eyes in death here instead of Haran? What’s the difference? In any case, this is the end of my story.”

   But Abraham had faith. One day he accepted God’s revelation, in which the promise was spoken: (read Genesis 12:1-3).

   And here at last it is done, finished. Abraham stands on the promised land. But he’s still an alien, foreign, nobody in this land, and to all appearances his life is approaching its conclusion; it seems to be the end, over, finished. Yes, he did once accept God’s promise, but it’s totally unimaginable at this point where that promise could take him further. And precisely at that moment the Lord God speaks to Abraham: (read 13:14-18).

   “Lift up your eyes... and rise. Walk through the length and width of the land, for I will give it to you.”

   That’s the power of a new birth into a living hope. That’s the power of the divine might of resurrection: Lift up your eyes, Abraham. Lift up your eyes, Son of God. Lift up your eyes, every child of God redeemed by the holy blood of the Lamb. Lift up your eyes and rise. Walk through the length and width of the land, for I am giving it to you.

   That is hope reborn, when all earthly hope has failed you: “I was dead but now I am alive forevermore”, says the One who took our mortality upon Himself, Jesus Christ.

   “All authority in heaven and earth are given to me,” says the One who was rejected and killed, Jesus Christ, Whom God the Father exalted, giving Him the Name that is above every other Name.

   “I am coming soon!”, says the Glorified One, the eternal Son of God who once cried out in the tortures of the cross, “It is finished!”

   “I lift my eyes to the hills: where will my help come from?”, asks the psalmist. “My help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” And the One sitting on the throne said, “Behold, I am creating all things new.”

   Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. “Into a living hope!” “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?”

                                                   It is finished.

The Peace That Is Always Now (Isaiah 26 and Colossians 1) [The Spacey Sermon?]

2009-10-19T03:58:00.038-04:00

Finally I’m back! (The blog still shows the original date of this post, back in Oct. 2009, but as I write this, it's actually May 13, 2010!) I left this site, and this specific post, “on hold” for five or six months, during which I was doing... well, a lot of other things. Including teaching courses and overseeing our school’s accreditation process.

The last thing I left here was the introduction to this sermon... without the sermon. Not very nice of me. Sorry! It’s time at last to post this thing, for better or worse. Now, here’s the introduction as I posted it back in the fall:

This sermon was, let’s say, experimental. I quite blatantly took two passages that hardly sounded similar and “forced” them to talk about more or less the same thing. That may seem like a mishandling of scripture, but in my own defense: 1) if you’re at all honest (as I hope I am) you can only “force” scripture to “say” something if in fact it does say it in some way, however between-the-lines or under the (historical-theological) surface that may be, and if the text really doesn't say, by even the remotest stretch of the imagination, anything like what you’re getting at, then all the “forcing” in the world isn’t going to yield results – again, assuming you’re honest; 2) there is a certain, general “safe zone” within which it’s not terribly difficult to posit conceptual intersections between different parts of Scripture, inasmuch as all Scripture pretty much talks about God, man and their relationship (entailing, of course, sin, salvation and sanctification). Granted, there is a spectrum of plausibility. On the one end, it’s quite easy to explicate the spiritual principles which, say, Isaiah 40:1-5 and 2 Corinthians 1:3-8 present virtually in unison. On the other end of the spectrum, it would be quite a clever trick to do a sermon on the “one idea” contained in Philippians 2:19-24 and Numbers 26:52-56 (and if I hear someone do it, I owe them a cake)! I am certainly not into clever tricks for the sake of clever tricks. But the two passages examined in this sermon spoke, for me, sufficiently powerfully about a single reality and a single attitude (faith) that they warranted such “forcing” (I hope you’ll find that the passages themselves don’t object too loudly to my handling). I’d say, then, that the following comparison falls somewhere around the middle of that “spectrum of plausibility”.

Let me just add now that this sermon is probably one of my more... mm, esoteric ones (one might offer the term “spacey”), but I’ll leave that to your judgment. I have radically re-worked it from its original Russian version, more than any other sermon on this blog. It is essentially a “non-Russian” sermon now. And, to tell you the truth, I probably would not venture to deliver it, in its reworked form, in one of our Ukrainian churches. I was tempted to just toss this sermon out, because it was getting perhaps too weird, but for some reason I really wanted to stay in the saddle and let it gallop to wherever it ultimately wanted to go. And I did... and it did.

You judge.

Let’s begin by reading Isaiah 26:1-3 (read).

“In that day....” The prophet says a day is coming, no matter what. No matter what the present reality looks like, that day is approaching. It’s a “future fact”, one of the “facts of life”!

And what will that day be like? It says God’s people will be singing: “We have a strong city....” So why strong? The city is strong because God has made salvation its walls and ramparts. The city’s strength actually consists of God’s salvation!

And that's why the future promises to bring joy: “Open the gates!” It’s a time of openness, when nothing negative remains. It’s a time of welcome. Welcome for whom? “Open the gates... so the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.” Welcome to the righteous nation, the people of faith! Under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, Isaiah foresees a time when God possesses a totally faithful and righteous nation, a people all His own, who love and glorify Him forever. The greatest family reunion ever. This is glory, triumph, everlasting peace.

But then verse 3 suddenly shifts focus and the whole thing gets very personal. You could say we “zoom in”. We’re no longer talking about a nation, not even about a family, but about one person—in fact about each person whose “mind is steadfast”, who trusts in the Lord. Instead of a city or gates or walls or ramparts, the prophet hammers on the personal meaning of what he just said—because, while it’s wonderful to talk about a glorious far-off future, the question must be asked: “But what does it mean to me, right here, right now?”

And so the prophet Isaiah expresses God’s personal promise: God will keep each one whose mind is fixed on Him in perfect peace. Why? “Because he (that’s you and me, the believer) trusts in you (that’s God)”. The cause and effect is totally clear: if you’re trusting, then you’re already not worrying. It’s “ipso facto”: when you’re trusting God, He’s already keeping you in perfect peace. That’s how it works. Trusting Him, we find the peace and confidence we need to face whatever life throws at us.

Trust is essentially the same thing as faith, and our faith is essentially the same thing as the peace of knowing what God has done and will do. And what will God do? He will fulfill His perfect plan.

“Fulfill”—that means “complete”, “carry out”, “finish”, “totally realize”-- you might even say "commit", like the way we say a person has "commited" a crime; God's plan is going to be totally "committed"! And what that all finally looks like, the ultimate and forever-reality, will be 100% what God Himself is absolutely and totally delighted with. (Do you need a lift today? Just think about that...)

Now when we remind ourselves of the time in history when Isaiah pronounced these words to Israel, we see why Israel needed this reminder in advance. Because destruction and exile still lay ahead for Israel. The time was coming when such words would sound like “The Impossible Dream” – a time when the Jewish people were banished from their homeland, prisoners in another country, with their great city and temple left behind lying in ruins. At such a time, words like, “We have a strong city... Open the gates, that the nation may enter” would sound like wild fantasy.

But just like when Jesus said to his disciples, “See, I have told you all these things beforehand”, Isaiah’s prophetic words must have been—should have been—a bedrock of comfort and hope to the nation in exile. With all the confidence of divine inspiration, the prophet audaciously proclaims the impossible-yet-certain future God has sent him to proclaim: “This will happen, Israel. It is going to be. And the only way for you to endure what’s coming is to be certain of it, with total trust and peace in God.” And that's what’s called “faith”: faith in God’s facts.

In a particular and very real way, the future—God's future—is already a fact right now, just as much as past historical events we read about in our schoolbooks. Why? Because the powerful reality of God’s future defines the present. And since the present is clearly a “fact”, then we can't call the future that defines it anything other than a fact, too!

Now, we can’t see it yet, but in fact, what God’s doing now is directly linked to what He will do in the future: the two work together like gears in a machine. One turns only because the other does. And in this case, it’s not just the present turning the future, but vice versa, too.

For example, when Abraham willingly offered up Isaac as a sacrifice, what that event meant already came directly out of the fact that God also gave His Son as a sacrifice and didn't spare him the way He spared Abraham’s son. The lesson, the parallel, but most of all the meaning, were always there—why? Precisely because both events were always there, in the total picture, in God’s absolute knowledge. In that sense, both events were already “now”, fully in play, operating together like two gears engaged in motion.

It’s in just this way that Isaiah offers the Israelites of his time God’s perfect peace in the fact of a strong city whose walls and ramparts are made of God’s salvation. Yes, even though destruction and exile haven’t even come yet. Even though the nation’s return from a future exile isn’t even conceivable yet! And yes, let me add, even though to this very day we can’t say that there has ever been a totally righteous nation, nor have we seen with our own eyes a city made of salvation. This prophecy still hasn’t fully been fulfilled. In spite of all that, the prophet Isaiah audaciously, without apology, says to his people... all those many, many years ago... speaking in the present tense: “We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts; open the gates...!”

This is the present tense of faith. It brings all times – past, present and future – together into one perfect fullness, a totality. This is the faith that knows God’s “big picture” is unfolding right now. This big picture encompasses all the past and all the future. And where, precisely, does it encompass all the past and future? Where else but now? It’s always right now, “at the moment”, where the past and future are unfolding, in the coming-into-being of God’s eternal purpose. Right here in the right-here-and-now the meaning and significance and power of the Red Sea parting and the falling walls of Jericho and the birth of Christ and the Cross and the Resurrection and Pentecost and the Tribulation and the Second Coming and the New Heaven and New Earth are all God’s present, immediate action, the unfolding of His design in the right-here-and-now.

Yes, some of these events are past, some are future, but the only place where any of them are actually dynamically, generatively operative, in immediate, productive power and meaning, happens to be right now. Because there is no other place than right now. “Right now” is the real moment, when the real God really brings the real meaning of all these events continually into being.

That’s what I mean by present tense of faith. If I may offer a couple of illustrations....

I’ve heard (I hope it’s accurate, but I don’t really understand these things!)—I’ve heard that in a hologram (you know, those 3-D images you can see in a little field of light, like a figurine, except there’s nothing solid there)--in a hologram, each part that makes up the image also contains in itself the whole image. Well, there you go, that’s what I’m saying about the “present tense of faith,” about all God’s past and future being here in the right-here-and-now.

Another illustration.... When you’re stopped at a train crossing and you watch the train go by, you see only a few of the train cars at any moment – maybe four or five, maybe a dozen or more if there’s not much around to obstruct your view. But if it’s a re-e-ally long train, there could be a hundred cars attached that you don’t see yet. They’re moving, they’re on their way, they’re actually moving together with the cars in front of you—it’s all one activity, one motion—but you don’t see them yet . And the cars that have already passed out of sight, they too are still moving, still part of this one single event, but you don’t see them anymore. Some cars have already passed, some haven’t come yet, but the who-o-le thing is a-a-all happening right now. The past, present and future of this train are all “in motion”... right now. And if any one of those three weren’t directly in motion right now, then none of them would be.

God’s work is like that, and our future – the future in Christ that God has already settled – is moving, it’s working, it’s speeding on its way, connected to the past and present: it’s all one train and you can’t disconnect the cars! God’s future is guaranteed – you know why? Now get ready, because here comes the strangest statement in this sermon: God’s future is guaranteed because there could be no past in God’s plan unless there were a future. If God weren’t going to do all the things He’s going to do, He wouldn’t have done all the things He has done. If there were no future in God’s plan, there would be no past in God’s plan—the “train” wouldn’t exist to begin with.

So the only way there could be no Second Coming of Christ, no New Heaven and Earth, no Marriage Supper of the Lamb, would be if there had never been an Ascension, or a Resurrection, or a Calvary, or the feeding of the five thousand, the wedding in Cana and water turned into wine, the first Christmas Day and the angel announcing to the young girl Mary that she would be the mother of God’s Son. But there was. So-o-o... there will be. Because the whole train is moving. The gears are engaged and you can’t disconnect them. It’s too late to disconnect them. And where can we see that moving train? The only place we can ever see anything: right now in front of us. We see it through the eyes of “present-tense-faith”.

(No, not a faith that believes only in the present, but a faith to which all of God’s plan is immediately and powerfully present!)

The “perfect peace” that the Scripture speaks of, the peace “that keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”—what is that? I believe that that’s the peace that comes from living inside of a story that is perfect, inside of a “now” that wondrously encloses, enfolds, encases the glory of God’s future, like that hologram where every part contains the whole thing. If God’s future climaxes in glorious triumph and everlasting peace, then that glorious triumph and everlasting peace are the ingredients of our present-tense-faith, right now. Because now is when it’s all moving, on the move, happening: “We have a strong city whose walls are salvation....”

More than seven hundred years after Isaiah proclaimed his prophecies, a different man in a very different set of circumstances wrote to a group of people from a radically different background than Old Testament Israel’s. This was Paul, writing to the Christians in the city of Corinth. And where we now begin reading, Paul is speaking in very different terms than the prophet Isaiah. But I think if we listen closely, with the heart, we’ll find that Paul is ultimately writing about the same thing (read Colossians 1:15).

Here we don’t read about a city which God has built, a city whose walls are salvation. Instead, we read about the One who is God’s firstborn, the very image of the invisible God. And we read further (read verses 16 and 17). We have moved beyond the city and are looking at the whole creation, at everything that exists, physical and spiritual, in all times, from the beginning of the world. And its entire structure depends on Him, the Firstborn of God and Firstborn from the dead, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”. He is the foundation, the beginning and end of everything.

This is the very God to whom Isaiah directed the eyes of Israel, saying, “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock” (26:4). And here in the epistle, Paul directs the Colossians’ eyes – and ours – to the same Lord who is the eternal Rock. And again like Isaiah, Paul directs our attention to a certain city, whose walls are salvation, whose gates open wide to all who believe—only this time the “city” is called a body (read v. 18). The body is the Church, and Jesus Christ himself is Her Beginning.

Catch what that means: Jesus, the firstborn from the dead, is the Church's beginning. Paul is conveying something stunning here, don’t miss it! The picture he’s drawing is this: the Church originates in resurrection. Jesus Christ is the firstborn from the dead, and the firstborn from the dead is the Church’s beginning– the Greek word is “arkhe”, which is the “start” and “source” for everything else. In modern talk we might say that Jesus is the “go-ahead”... and why is He the “go-ahead” for everything else? Because He is the firstborn from the dead. Only starting with Jesus do you have a life that has dealt with death, once and for all, and says, Alright, let's go, let's begin!

A whole new dimension of life—glorious, unconquerable, resurrected, bursting through the bonds of death—is the Church’s own bursting into being. The Church originates in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Do we have a city whose walls are salvation? And right now? Oh, yes. For we are the Church, whose very Origin is Living Salvation Himself, the Resurrected Son of God Jesus Christ. He was born from the dead first, so that we would be born in Resurrection-life. If we can expect resurrection, it’s only because He is risen; if we have life, it’s only because He lives; if we have the hope of seeing God’s face, it’s only because God’s face has appeared in our world in the face of Jesus, the image of the invisible God. And if we anticipate ultimately being God’s perfect children, it is only because Jesus became the perfect Man. Do you catch what Paul is getting at? In everything the supremacy—the “first-ness”, the “beginning-ness” and “source-ness”—is Christ's.

To “present-tense-faith”, the past that God has committed in Jesus guarantees the future which God is also committing, right now, in Jesus. And Jesus is forever. So we are "forever", in him. Yes, we have a strong city whose walls are salvation....

In the days of Isaiah, when the prophet predicted tribulation and exile but also redemption and return to a city of salvation, it sounded like something fantastic, impossible. And again in the time of the apostles, and in our time, all of this can sound fantastic, like an impossible dream. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves it isn't impossible. On the contrary, it’s the Rock and Foundation of our past, present and future; it’s the Gospel on which we stand: the Gospel of salvation by faith in the resurrected Son of God: (read verses 19 and 20).

   All things... all things. Beyond the barriers of time and history, beyond the seeming unchangeableness of the past, beyond the mysterious darkness of the future, He reconciles all things through the death of the very One in whom all things have their beginning and source. It sounds fantastic, impossible, but He has done It.

   In Isaiah 26:12, the prophet says, “Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us.”

   In Colossians 1:21-22, the apostle says, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you, by Christ’s physical body through death”.

   He has done it all—and why? “To present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation...”. “Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished...”—yes, even a new life out of death, and freedom from accusation —“you have done for us.”

   “To present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation (v. 23) if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel....” If. If. “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith. You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord is the Rock eternal.” (Is. 26:2-4)

   “If you continue in your faith”... “for the nation that keeps faith”... “for the one who trusts... “trust forever”... “established and firm, not moved from the hope”....

   If we just keep faith, the future promises joy: the joy of Christ, the joy of God; the future promises a day—a day that is coming, no matter what; the future promises open gates and a welcome; the future promises to usher you right into God’s presence, absolutely perfect and delightful to Him; the future promises reconciliation of all things in heaven and earth—including all your pasts, presents and futures, and the healing of all their wounds. To sum it up, the future promises us a future and promises it to us now, if we just keep faith.

   God is on the move and He will not be stopped. Because of Jesus, God’s future is your future and your present is God’s growing story—a story of ultimate glory, triumph and everlasting peace. And because that’s what it will be, that’s what it is, right now. Isaiah saw it, Paul saw it; with the eyes of present-tense faith, we see it too: We have a strong city now; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts now, and God will keep in perfect peace, now, whoever continues in faith, established and firm, not moved from the true hope revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Life the Food of Life, or, The Rise and Fall of a Paradox

2009-09-30T05:00:00.005-04:00

This one is more of a “meditation” (the fancy word for “light, short sermon”). I delivered it at our church on Harvest Holiday (in Russian, “prazdnik zhatvy”). Usually the Americans call it “Harvest Festival”, but “holiday” is actually closer to the meaning of the Russian, not to mention the fact that the conservative Ukrainian Baptists would hardly take a shine to some of the historical nuances of “festival”.... This is not a state holiday in Ukraine but a Baptist church tradition. (There is no Ukrainian “Thanksgiving Day” yet, though the way western influence has flooded in, I do not doubt that there will be, eventually. Even if only for an excuse to eat turkey.) Each church chooses a Sunday somewhere between late August and early October on which they will celebrate the harvest, with a big, beautiful display of the fruits of the earth, along with a huge loaf of bread and an equally huge Bible, in front of the pulpit. Traditionally, especially in the villages, the service is followed by a great big lunch, though in the city churches this is not quite as common. I have vivid memories of the cauldron being hauled out into the yard, after the service out in a village church, and loaded up with all the fixings for borsch, stirred over the fire. Great fun! Finally, on a more “technical” level, I admit ahead of time that my language here, regarding eternity and, in particular, my use of the past tense of the verb “to be”, is quite casual and inexact (it was a holiday, after all...). I say, for instance, that there “was a time” when God “was” simply life, i.e., before Creation. Of course, God is life now, not just “then” – and more to the point, before Creation there wasn't “a time” to speak of, anyway. But I chose for the purpose of this sermon simply to speak on a you-know-what-I-mean level. Therefore, I will trust that you know what I mean.

(Read Genesis 1:11, 12, then Genesis 1: 29-31)

God gave man the fruits of the earth for food. Now there’s two of the many things which didn’t exist before Creation: man, and food! We don’t think of that very often: not only was man non-existent before the Creation but so, obviously, was food! God didn’t need food, after all. Life existed perfectly in God with no need of support or sustenance. God is life, the source of His own life. But when God created living beings in a material creation, then there was need for food. Physical creatures needed physical support and sustenance. God is the source of His own life, but man is not the source of his own life. Man needed food.

But wait! Be careful! We will make a mistake if we think food is the source of our life. Life doesn’t come from the food we eat. Life uses the food we eat, but the life is already there in us. “Where?”, somebody asks. Ah, that’s a very good question. Where is “life”? The answer is, we don’t know! We see the outward effects of life, just as we see the leaves of the trees flutter in the wind, but we don’t see life itself, just as we don’t see the air that moves the leaves. And life is even more intangible than air, because we know that air is a mix of physical gasses, even if we can’t see them. We can feel air, we can put air into a bottle, we can examine it in a laboratory. Even air is matter. But life can’t be poured into a bottle or examined under a microscope. Yes, you can examine a living thing, like a spider or a person, but you can’t put life under a microscope. You can’t take life out of an animal, run your experiments on it, and then when you’re done with it put it back into the animal and say, “Thank you very much; you can run along and play now.” You can’t say what color life is, or what it smells like or what shape it is. You can’t go to the drugstore and say, “Give me a vial of life, please!” (though there are some companies that would like you to think so!). We can find stars and planets in the most distant corners of the universe, but we can’t find the life that exists inside each one of us.

As for food, it helps life, but it isn't life, not even the source of life. When Scripture says that God gave Adam life, it doesn’t say God gave him a spoonful of honey or a big glass of milk. No. God breathed life into Adam out of His very self; the essence of what makes God God, His life, became the essence of the creature made in God’s image. The source of our life is God. So, really, we can say that the source of our life is... Life! Because God is life. Just like the source of love is Love, because God is love.

Food is a wonderful and delightful gift from God, and He has given us many, many varieties of it. Most of us have favorite kinds of food. Some of us love carrots, some of us can’t stand carrots. But there is something we all have in common: we need food; we even “love” food. You know how people commonly talk: “I love pizza”, “I love ice cream”. We don’t all “love” the same foods, but each of “loves” some foods.

Now here’s an amazing paradox: on the one hand, our bodies cannot live without food; on the other hand, food isn't the source of our life! It’s almost illogical, but it’s true: we can’t live without food, but food doesn’t give us life. How do you explain that? Well, I think we might say that food helps our bodies to keep up with the life that’s in us. Adam had life before he had food, so obviously the food didn’t give him life. But food allowed Adam’s body to continue holding that life inside, and grow with that life. The life, though, came directly from God. There’s only one source of life.

This leads us to the following conclusion: life cannot life without life. I’ll say it again: life cannot live without life. There was life in Adam without food, but there was never life in Adam without God, who is life. That’s why I said “life cannot live without life.” It’s the same thing as saying “life cannot be without God”.

Now, for God, this is not a problem. He has always been the source of His own life. But for man this is a problem. We are not the source of our own life! And on the day when man sinned against God, God said, “You will die”. Death came in and interrupted the connection of life to life. Man cut himself off from the source.

Only if we understand this can we begin to grasp the magnificence in the words of Jesus Christ in John 6:32-40 (read).

These words make me think of four “times”. There was a time when God simply was life. Then there was a time when God gave life – to Adam. Then there was a time when God gave food to the living Adam and his children. But then, there was a time when the living God became “the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” This is JESUS.

All the parts of this amazing story come together in Jesus Christ because he is the Bread of Life. Why is he the Bread of Life? He is the Bread of Life because he is God, the very source of life. He is the Bread of Life because he became man, so that our humanity might be saved by his humanity. He is the Bread of Life because he dwells in the hearts of his people, nourishes and sustains them with his own self. He is the Bread of Life because he satisfies the deepest need of the soul: our hunger for the love of God. Jesus says, “No one who comes to me will I cast away.” God’s perfect love radiates through these words. The love that filled the life of God in eternity expresses itself on the lips of Jesus: “I will not cast away anyone who comes to me.”

Jesus is the Bread of Life because true life can exist only in perfect harmony with God’s will. Remember, death came in the Garden when man rejected God’s will. But the Bread of Life says, “I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.” Perfect harmony. And what is this will? “The will of the Father who sent me is that I lose nothing of what He has given me but raise it up on the last day. The will of the one who sent me is that whoever sees the Son and believes in him, will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life because he gave something physical, something earthly and material in order to save us: he gave his body, his life: “I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. The bread I give is my flesh, which I will surrender for the life of the world. (6:51)” He gave physical “food” for our spiritual life. Jesus’ body and blood became the saving food of life. As Jesus says further: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. (vv.54-55)”

At the beginning I pointed out an interesting paradox, that our life depends on food but food doesn’t give us life! But now, when we speak about the Bread of Life, the paradox evaporates like mist in the sun. There’s no more paradox, because now the source and the food are one. The living Bread is both the food of our life and the source of our life. This is Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life – who has life in himself because he is from the Father who has life in himself. And Jesus promises that whoever takes this life, this bread, this food for the human soul, will have life forever, in God and God’s love.

For God loved the world so much that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.

Titus: Three Mountain Peaks

2009-09-14T03:58:00.003-04:00

This sermon started out as a valiant attempt to cover the whole epistle at once. I quickly realized that was too tall an order. In the process, however, I was deeply impressed by three glorious “peaks” in the epistle, where Paul zooms out to view the whole marvelous picture, and it was quite a curious thing how the same word showed up on each “peak”....

Today I want us to look together at three glorious “mountaintops” or “peaks” in Paul’s epistle to Titus. These three peaks open up to us the heart of the apostle. They describe his understanding of all reality, they tell us what he understands as the central significance of everything that exists. Everything else that Paul writes in this epistle flows out of this central understanding. Let’s look at each of these peaks individually.

(Read 1:1-4)

To me, the central word in this part is “hope”, and the central phrase is “the hope of eternal life”. If you took out that phrase, then this whole part would lose its sense.

As Paul puts it, the hope of eternal life serves as the base for faith and knowledge. Paul says we have knowledge of the truth. Of what truth, exactly? Of the truth that eternal life is found in our Savior Jesus. Paul says that we have faith. What kind of faith, exactly? Faith in the Savior Jesus; we believe in him as Savior, as Redeemer of our souls, as the Lord of life. Both this knowledge and this faith rest on the hope of eternal life. Hope is our expectation, and all our expectation is completely wrapped in what we know and believe about Jesus. We entrust all our expectation to him because we know who he is.

This hope of eternal life is the gift of God, the greatest gift which changes everything. This gift changes our past, our present and our future. Therefore, this gift has to be announced, as Paul says in verses two and three: God promised this hope, and at the right time revealed it, and appointed Paul, and many others, to announce it to the world. It has to be announced precisely so that it can change everything for as many people as possible. This gift of hope is the meaning of life, and people who don’t know about the gift don’t know the meaning of life. This is why Paul talks about how God has now brought His word to light and made Paul a proclaimer of it.
And so, the key word in this first part is “hope”, the key phrase is “the hope of eternal life”, and this hope undergirds our faith and knowledge. This hope is the news which the apostle proclaims. For the apostle, the destiny of the world is defined by this hope. And, yes, the spiritual maturity of the Christian is also defined by this hope – why? Because, as Paul explains, this hope undergirds knowledge of truth, and knowledge of truth leads to – what? To godliness. If I lose hope, then I stop knowing the truth, and if I stop knowing the truth, I cannot live in a godly way.

So you see, these thoughts are not abstract or “philosophical”. They’re terribly practical. Our hope will define our behavior. If our hope is true, then we’ll have a deep desire to live in correspondence to it. And to know more and more about it. We will love that hope, because we love the Source of that hope, our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the principles of reality. They lead to many practical issues and applications, in the areas of behavior, of church leadership, of doctrine and order in the church. And this epistle is a very practical epistle with concrete instructions on order, on how to appoint leaders, on teaching, on family life, on relations with government and society, etc. But– all those things means absolutely nothing if you take away that hope. And when Paul writes his many instructions, it’s all aimed at one goal: that the hope of eternal life might continually grow greater and deeper and more glorious and spread to more and more people until the day of Jesus Christ’s appearing. This is the light in which in we can understand this epistle to Titus.

The next mountaintop I want to look at is found in 2:11-14 (read).

Well, you know what? The central word in this part is... hope! And the central phrase is “while we wait for the blessed hope”. But we can't understand what it means to wait for this blessed hope unless we really understand what the first statement in this part means: “For the grace of God has appeared to all men.” Paul is underlining the fact that this great event in history is directly relevant for literally every person in the whole world. The central question of life for every person can be put this way: “Do you know what happened?” That is, have you heard the news? Do you know what your life means? You can know what your life means only if you know what happened. Because what happened, at a concrete moment in history, precisely with this Person Jesus Christ, and in him, this reveals what your life means: “The grace of God has appeared to all.” The life of Jesus Christ, the feat accomplished by Jesus Christ, the word of Jesus Christ, the power of Jesus Christ, this is the “grace of God appearing to all” people in world history – concretely, personally.

People everywhere worry about who the next president will be, or what will happen to the economy, or who’ll win the World Cup. But the answers to any of these questions don’t change the fabric of the soul. They don’t transform you. But the “grace of God appearing to all” changes concretely the fabric of the soul, it bears life where there was no life. This grace gives, together with life, a hope that is totally intertwined with that life. This is a life lived in the blessed hope of His appearing.

Because this new life strives towards reunion with Christ, strives in sanctification, strives in expectation, strives in hope. This new life, born of grace, strives towards the fulfillment of Jesus Christ’s own desire: (v.14) “...to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.”

This desire, this goal, this hope of God, is inseparable from our hope. By God's mercy, His hope has become our hope. His hope is incarnated in our lives, through our behavior, in spiritual growth, in the revelation of the character of God’s Son in us. Yes, I know: these are intimidating words, because each of us realizes how far we still are from perfect Christ-likeness. But I want to say words of encouragement and comfort today: Hope, God’s hope, our hope in Christ, can’t do anything else but spur us on. It reminds us that there’s only one direction: forward, in Jesus. Forward to the fulfillment of “that blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus”.

And then we come to the third peak, in 3:4-7 (read).

It won’t surprise you that I find the central concept of this part in the last sentence: “...having the hope of eternal life”. This part talks about how each of us in Christ can testify from personal experience. Paul tells Titus, “You and I were just like all the others in the world who haven’t come to know Christ. You and I know, Titus, from personal experience what it means to be saved– saved by love, by God’s kindness. We know what it means to receive a gift that we could never even have dreamed of, that transcends comprehension.” (v. 3...) “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” But... God saved us. This is what we were, but God saved us. We were foolish and hateful, but: “God saved us.” Astounding words. I trust that you have noticed the stark, dramatic absence of any transitional state or condition. The apostle doesn't say, “Yes, Titus, when you and I finally woke up and realized what wretches we were and decided to clean up our lives in a major reformation project, then God was finally happy enough with us to save us.” No. We were disobedient and deceived, but God saved us. No transitional stage, no merit, nothing earned. There's the richness of God’s mercy and kindness. He took our whole pathetic state in hand and resolved the issue Himself. We never had anything to offer by way of help in the matter, and correspondingly God didn’t wait around for it. He saved, He cleansed, He poured out His Spirit and made us new. Salvation is God’s glory, God’s praise, God’s credit.

And for our part, knowing that salvation is God’s accomplishment, we can hope to the very end. We can anticipate the ultimate accomplishment of God’s glorious work. The hope of the glorious conclusion of redemption is as strong as the perfection of God’s salvation is full. Now there’s a rather complicated idea, so let’s hear it again: the hope of the glorious conclusion of redemption is as strong as the perfection of God’s salvation is full.

Actually, we can say that in a much simpler way: God has done, God will do. And in this, as Paul writes to dear Titus, is all our hope of eternal life. The very same divine love that compelled Jesus to the cross in complete self-sacrifice is the love that now strives and strains forward to reunion with the redeemed. To the extent our spirits respond to what God has done, to that same extent our spirits thirst, in hope, for what God will do. And we’ll be able to deal with the multitude of issues in life in the power of the glorious gift, the hope of eternal life in the Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ.

From Jude, in Light of the Emergency

2009-09-01T09:30:00.002-04:00

It’s not often we get a single sermon covering an entire epistle. But when the epistle is only 25 verses long, that’s not such a tall order. Yes, of course, it would be quite possible to do a “sermon series” even on a short epistle like “Jude”, pulling each verse apart concept by concept, syllable by syllable, drawing all sorts of extrapolations and scriptural cross-references (not to mention a colorful and preacherly illustration or two). I feel, however, that that sort of thing is done so much that we actually lose something of profound worth. We lose the good, clean, solid punch of the particular, unique idea of a single epistle, the way it would have hit the first hearers when it was read out loud to them (all at once, not over a year). The problem with the sermon-series-approach to working-through-an-epistle is this: after a church has spent a year or two on, say, Ephesians, and the church folks are marveling over how the pastor could “get so much out of it”, if you ask the church folks, “So... tell me what Ephesians is about!”, you may get blank stares in return. “About?” Well, it’s “about” everything the pastor talked about for the last two years, of course, which was... pretty much everything. Problem with that is, when something is about everything, it tends to be about nothing in particular. And an epistle actually tends to be about something in particular. This is why I enjoy preaching epistles in large chunks – if it’s a short epistle, then the whole thing in one sermon. If it’s a long one like Romans, then at least a chapter at a time, to really try and encapsulate the key idea or two the apostle was working out. By the way, I will post a series of sermons I delivered on Romans here a bit later, where I take this approach.

(Begin by reading the whole epistle of Jude.)

Jude wanted to write the believers about the holy faith “delivered once and for all to the saints”. That is, his initial plan was just to write and teach them about the truths of the faith, perhaps to write about Jesus’ atoning death and about the resurrection, perhaps about the Holy Spirit, maybe about the second coming of Christ and the coming judgment. But here is the fascinating thing: something changed Jude’s plans. He changed his mind. Why?

Jude recognizes a grave danger in the church, and feels compelled to address it, to deal with it. So he devotes this whole letter to the problem. What is the problem? It is people inside the Church who are distorting and denying the gospel by their teaching and their lifestyle. They show no real repentance or faith, and their main goal seems to be to recruit admiration clubs around themselves. In short, they have never understood that the Church is the Lord’s. They think of the Church as their own private little playground.

Jude attacks this problem by giving the believers a quick history lesson, reminding them that all this is nothing new. God has always known about these people, He always judged such people in the past, and He told us through the prophets that such people would arise in the end times. Jude goes on to say that we who truly devote ourselves to Jesus Christ must beware of such people – yes, certainly, pray and hope for their salvation, but also be careful. And the best response to the danger they pose is to purify ourselves and live in the true power of the Holy Spirit, with overflowing confidence that God is going to perfectly complete His eternal plan for us in Christ. Which reminds me of the apostle Paul’s words: (Philippians 1:6) “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” The lesson in Jude is that the antidote to spiritual corruption in the Church is not timidity or denial. The only antidote is the “the most holy faith delivered once for all to the saints” – the very faith Jude originally wanted to write about. That faith is the victory over every lie and temptation.

Jude was probably a brother of Jesus – that is, one of Joseph and Mary’s children. If so, consider how meaningful the first few words of this letter are: “Jude – brother of James, slave of Christ.” In the early days of Jesus’ ministry, his brothers and sisters didn’t believe in him, and now, here, Jude calls himself a slave of Christ. Consider the spiritual earthquake that had to happen in Jude’s life for him to recognize who Jesus really was. Just think about the total transformation God brought into Jude’s life, and how much that meant to him. If you can grasp that, it will help you understand, too, why Jude was so furious over seeing the real meaning of Jesus get manipulated and distorted in the Church.

It’s precisely because of how deeply Jude treasures this Church that he starts by addressing the “called”. “Called”! Believers are the “called” of Jesus Christ: “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” What great comfort that must have meant for Jude: the assurance of God’s calling, of God’s choosing, of God’s love graciously poured out, as life’s bedrock reality. How important it was for Jude, then, that believers should really understand the meaning of this calling, and have the joy of living it out.

Remember that at that time the Church didn’t use the word “Christian”; they had to refer to themselves, as a group, with other words. We read these words in scripture: such words as “saints”, “brothers and sisters” and “the called”. These words tell us something about how they saw themselves and how they grasped God’s work of salvation. Now as for us, we often refer to ourselves as believers or Christians. But how often do we call ourselves “the called”? It’s worth meditating over, because that’s what we are! It’s both a high honor and a high responsibility. There is no greater love than the love God shows by calling us and giving us life in His Son. There is no higher calling than to serve Him.

Some people learn from their mistakes; others simply repeat them or even make them worse. Obviously, Jude is not going to repeat his mistake of disbelief. He is going to fight for the faith, for the truth that was revealed in Christ. And his letter makes it clear that he means we all should be joining this spiritual battle to defend the purity of the truth. That’s also what it means to be called.

Jude first planned to write a “teaching letter”, but it turned more into a “warning letter”. Nevertheless, Jude hasn’t completely abandoned his teaching instincts. He gives the readers a history lesson in the sorts of sins that are now raising their ugly heads in the Church.

The sin of disbelief was an old story with plenty of examples. Jude reminds the Church about the generation of Israelites who never made it to the promised land because of disbelief. The sin of pride is even older; Jude reminds them of the angels who refused to be content with their assigned place in God’s order. Jude ironically uses the same verb “keep” twice: the angels refused to “keep” the place God made them for; therefore, God is now “keeping” them in a place they weren't made for. It reminds us that God’s judgment is righteous. It is not God who rejects people or angels; it is they who reject God. Finally, in this terrible trio of sins, Jude reminds the Church about Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin of sexual immorality and how the fire from the sky foreshadowed the eternal fire of judgment on sin.

So this is the “terrible trio” Jude is compelled to warn the Church about, precisely because he has gotten wind of the fact that there’s some sort of group going around in the Church acting like these are perfectly acceptable: disbelief, pride, sexual immorality. If Jude were simply warning the Church that such things can be found in the world, it wouldn’t surprise us in the least. But he’s talking about people who have joined the Church and are spreading this among believers! This is what’s so horrifying, almost unbelievable, to Jude the slave of Christ.

To make the point even stronger, Jude contrasts these people with the great archangel Michael who, if anybody might be excused for acting high and mighty, perhaps Michael the Archangel could. But even Michael kept his place. Knew his place. Loved his place in God’s glorious plan. Never showed arrogance, faithfully followed God’s perfect will.

“But these”, Jude says, “but these”; in your English Bible it may say, “But these men” or “But these people”, but actually in the original Jude didn’t even waste that many words on them: he just says, “But these...”. These are dreamers, living in a world of fantasy, puffing themselves up with imagined spiritual power. There’s a lot of this around us today, too. You only need to turn on your television to watch it. Their great boast is that they have the Spirit of God and can do many miracles, and they’ll even send you a miracle in the mail as an expression of gratitude for your “love gift”. These boast about the way that they exercise power over the devil and demons. Instead of genuine faith in the person Jesus, they sell the name of Jesus like a magic amulet guaranteed to protect you from everything bad. The concept seems to be that the louder you shout it, the better it works.

I have noticed that such people often lose the ability to think coherently. They don’t even seem to believe they should think. Instead, it’s like they really believe their heads should be constantly buzzing with direct verbal transmissions from the Spirit, which leaves no room for anything so “unspiritual” as thinking, of course. And I’m sure you see what that leads to: if you disagree with such a person, he’ll tell you you’re disagreeing with God. After all, all his thoughts are God’s thoughts. So how can he be wrong? What a horrible state for any person to come to. He is a danger to the weak, the naïve and trusting and, even more, he is his own worst enemy, because he believes every lie he tells himself... since he thinks it’s all coming from God.

Jude gives the Church several illustrations of this kind of person: There was Cain, who wasn’t content with second place; it had to be his way or no way. There was Balaam, who was willing to sell “ministry” to the highest bidder, promising to “loose” the power of the spirit world any way he wanted. There was Korah, who decided with his friends that nobody had a right to authority that they couldn’t have, and that Truth was defined by opinion poll. You could call Korah a very early post-modernist!

Jude gives a few more illustrations: these people are like shepherds who feed only themselves; picture the poor flock of hungry, distressed, helpless sheep, watching the shepherds feed themselves! If those poor sheep really understood, then they would know these shepherds have nothing to give them.

We, however, are not literally sheep; God has given us understanding – yes, even the mind of Christ. So Jude calls us to exercise intelligent discernment regarding such people. They are empty clouds blown by the wind. They are blown along by the wind of their own caprice, their own fantasy, saying it is all from the Lord, but there is nothing substantial in it, nothing that can truly nourish the soul. They are like fruitless and rootless trees. Their so-called fruit is false: it is not from God. If you dig deeper, you discover they have no roots: no faith, no relationship with Christ, no obedience. Though they may present an image of great spirituality, though their faces may seem to radiate peace and joy, on the inside they are actually like roaring ocean waves in a storm or like wandering stars that have no home.

Though they are spiritually fruitless, they do bear a certain fruit, a particular concrete result, in the Church: division. Division begins when such people start distinguishing between the so-called spiritual and the so-called unspiritual in the church. Not surprisingly, the “spiritual” are the ones who agree with them. Which is really amazing because, as Jude says, “They are devoid of the Spirit.” When this game starts in a church, it is like a cancer; if it is not removed, it will destroy a church.

So what is the answer? What measures must the Church take to see that this sort of disease doesn’t take root? Start an Inquisition? Hunt for heretics? No. Jude says, “Build yourselves up.” Build ourselves up in what? In joy? In power? In worship? No. Build yourselves up “on your most holy faith.” It goes right back to the first sentences of Jude’s letter: he wants the believers to stand up for the true, pure faith which was “once delivered to the saints”. In the NT, “the faith” is, before all else, the central historical message about Christ which was preached by the apostles – the message of God’s great act and the saving power of that message. “The faith” is also the way of life that grows out of new birth in Christ – a life formed by holiness, love, self-control, humility, wisdom and faithfulness to the scriptures. Jude calls this faith “most holy” and it is holy because it is faith in God’s “holy servant Jesus.” Christians build themselves up by having fellowship with the Lord and his people, by adhering to the gospel and the Word of God, and by worship in spirit and truth – especially by remembering the Lord at his table. This is the way of life which shows who belongs to Jesus Christ.

Now, to some that sounds dry and uninteresting, even unspiritual. Where are the fireworks? Where’s all the shouting and jumping? How do you show your spirituality? I have to ask: why is that spirituality? It looks physical to me. What makes it “spiritual”? I’ve seen people act that way at football games; does that make them spiritual? Please don’t misunderstand me: I have nothing against joy or emotion. But we make a big mistake when we equate outward, visible manifestations with spirituality. Such spirituality is too easy to fake. Jude doesn’t say “build yourselves up in spirituality”; he says “build yourselves up on the most holy faith.” It is the faith that will make you spiritual in the truest way.

A key element in building ourselves up in this most holy faith, Jude say, is to pray in the Spirit. How do we do that? Well, I think the testimony of the New Testament is clear and unambiguous: we pray in the Spirit when we pray from a heart of faith that yearns only for Christ’s exaltation. We pray in faith in the name of Jesus; we pray out of the same whole, childlike faith in which we first invited Christ into our hearts. We pray in the same faith by which we received baptism, when we confessed Christ before the world as our Lord and Savior. We pray in the same faith we have when we receive communion, remembering the body and blood of the Lord. The prayer of faith in Christ is prayer in the Spirit. Such prayer will not often accompanied by ecstatic feelings or supernatural manifestations. Often, it will be difficult and require perseverance. It will always, always require faith. And it will always reach the throne of God.

I began by saying how Jude wanted to write the believers about this most holy faith delivered once for all to the saints, and how it turned instead into an “emergency letter”. I mentioned that the emergency was the great danger Jude saw in the Church – the invasion of disbelief, pride, immorality – and also how Jude started off by reminding the believers that God saw everything beforehand, how it was all an old story already. Well, now at the close of this letter, Jude says it again: this was all predicted; none of this throws God’s plan off-kilter; you just hold on to the most holy faith, to the glorious expectation of Jesus’ coming and his total victory, and you'll be all right! Just hold on. You don’t have to fix everything; you only need to hold on to the One Who does.

That’s what makes this most holy faith so glorious. That’s what makes this good news so great. It is great and glorious news not just about what God has done, perfectly, wonderfully for us in the past. No, it’s news and a faith that swallows up our whole past, present and future in one single sweep in absolutely perfect completeness. The “good news” isn’t only that “Jesus died for your sins on the cross and rose from the dead”. The good news is also that He’s coming again with victory in his hand, that our life is hidden and kept in Him to the very end – and the very end will be a beginning, in Jesus, that never, ever ends again. Such grace, such perfect-ness and absoluteness of hope! Cain, Balaam and Korah couldn’t grasp grace like that; their pride wouldn’t let them. Same thing with their partners in disbelief in the days of Jude and the early church.

When you can’t grasp grace, you’ll grasp something else: pride, immorality. But when you can grasp and embrace God’s grace, and gaze in awe at the glory of Jesus’ salvation, then the Cains, Balaams and Korahs in the world will never defeat you, and they will never defeat the Church.

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Stones or Faith? (John 10:24-31)

2009-08-18T07:57:00.002-04:00

No introductory comments necessary!

Read John 10:24-31.

In verse 24 the people press Jesus to speak openly, “When will you tell us who are you?”, and Jesus responds, “I have told you.”

How and when did Jesus already tell them? Well, look at verse 7 in this chapter, “I am the door”. And verse 9, “Whoever enters through me will be saved.” Verse 10: “I have come that they might have life”. Or verse 11: “I am the good shepherd.” And verse 15: “The Father knows me and I know the Father.” One more – verse 16: “They will hear my voice and they will be one flock with one shepherd.”

So tell me, has Jesus really been covering up the essence of his earthly mission? Not at all! He is openly declaring the meaning, promise and divine intention of his coming. Nevertheless, the people go on asking, “Who are you?” Jesus’ answer is “I have told you, but you do not believe.” And that, of course, is really what this is all about. Regardless of how many words the Lord says, if the people’s hearts are unready to receive, then, no matter what, their next question is still going to be “Who are you?” Because, not believing, they don’t hear. In that case, words become useless. Even miracles hardly help. Jesus says, (vv. 25b-26a), “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify of me (26) but you don’t believe”. So neither words nor signs seem to make any difference. Why? Jesus goes on: “you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep, as I have told you. (26b)”

“Not of my sheep” – there is the essence, the crux, the core of this issue. Over and over Jesus has spoken of this relationship, a relationship in which the sheep know the shepherd, know his voice. As in verse 3 (read), and verse 4 (read); likewise, verse 14 (read) and verse 16 (read). For those who “have ears to hear”, Jesus makes it clearer than day what he means. In front of the people stands not only a teacher, not only a prophet, indeed not only Christ as many anticipated “Christ”. Rather, before them stands Christ as he really is, in himself, and it turns out that the real Messiah, Christ, cannot be defined according to human understanding. It turns out that the critical element in Christ’s call isn’t whether or not he corresponds to our assumptions, but whether our hearts hear what he's saying, whether his words reveal truth and life to our hearts.

Jesus can’t tell the crowd, “Yes, I am everything you were waiting for”, because they could never have imagined the Messiah as he really turned out to be. In fact, Jesus does them a kindness by not saying, “Oh, yes, I’m the Messiah.” As we know, Jesus talked that way only on the rarest occasion. It’s interesting, by the way, to take a look at the moments when Jesus did speak so bluntly. As a rule, it wasn’t when the people or their leaders were demanding an answer. It was more often when a person whose faith was just coming to life needed assurance.
We see such a case, in fact, right in the preceding chapter, in 9:35-38 (read). This man had been blind all his life, and Jesus gave him sight. Imagine.... And this man refused to denounce Jesus for the healing, even though the Pharisees threatened to throw him out of the Temple forever. So, all in one day, this man received sight he had never had in his whole life, and he was exiled forever from the most sacred place of his religion. Again, imagine the emotional earthquake that day was for this man. And in the midst of this earthquake, Jesus comes to him and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The poor man answers in desperation, “Who is he, Lord, so I can believe in him?” And Jesus gives him the answer he wouldn’t give to the movers and shakers of society when they demanded his credentials. He says, “You’ve seen him; you’re talking to him.” Just as Jesus also said to a woman at a well one day in Samaria, a woman disgraced for her sin and shunned by society, a woman who, just starting to catch a faint glimmer of light, let the half-suspicious, half-hoping words slip out, “They sa-a-ay that... when the Messiah comes... he’ll make everything clear....” Jesus looks her straight in the eye and tells her, “The one talking with you right now is he.”

The key element in these cases was that the person’s heart was already starting to open to the deeper reality of Jesus. And wasn’t demanding or ordering Jesus to line up with some already formulated checklist for Messiah. Jesus offers God’s gift of life to those whose hearts receive him, just as he is, in the fullness of his glory, yielding to him in full faith. The ones who receive him like that, he receives, just as they are. “Just as I am, without one plea, but that the blood was shed, for me. Just as I am... I come, I come.”

But why didn’t the Pharisees and the crowds understand? It was because they didn’t believe. And why didn’t they believe? (read 10:26-27) But what makes a person not Christ’s sheep? It’s the absence of any desire to meet God, to have encounter with him, to know and love the Creator. It’s attachment to self that doesn’t admit the possibility of the life-change that God brings.

The sheep belongs to the shepherd; it is his, and it trusts totally. But the bystander, the stranger, doesn’t belong to him, and doesn’t want to belong. Do we desire encounter with God, are we willing to trust everything to Him? If so, God opens up truth to our hearts. Jesus said to the people, in John 7:17, “Whoever is willing to do [God’s] will, that one will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I’m just speaking for myself.” If a person has the desire, if he’s ready to receive, if he sincerely seeks, then the Lord will find him. While we’re in chapter seven, look at the next verse, verse 18. This verse sparked me to meditate further on these matters. I noticed a fascinating parallel. (Read 7:18)

Jesus says about himself that he is not seeking his own; rather, he seeks the glory of the one who sent him. We can make a parallel here to his followers, the shepherd’s sheep. The good shepherd’s sheep also don’t strive for their own, but for what will glorify God. In this way, they are like the good shepherd – maybe partially and imperfectly, but in their hearts resounds the summons of the one who desires above all the glory of the one who sent him. So this is what they want, too. They hear him and become like him. They follow him and he knows them. And he can say anything to them, and they’ll willingly receive it. He can say something like this to them: (read 10:28-30)

Here is Christ, just as he is. Who can receive such words, such a Christ who says such things as “I and the Father are one”? The nation insisted, “Tell us plainly!” So Jesus did: “I and the Father are one”. It was clear from the start, wasn’t it, that this is where it was all heading? Who else could be within his rights to say things like “I am the door; whoever enters through me will be saved”, or “ I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me”, or “I have power to lay down my life and power to take it up again”? Only the one who is one with the Father. This is the one who promises eternal life and actually fulfills the promise, who holds the believer in his hand, in the hand of God, and keeps him from the enemy. Jesus didn’t come to line up with some definition of the word Christ, but to define in his very self what being the Christ of God is. By his words, by his works, by his love and grace and self-giving, and by his power and authority, he did define it – and it is everything he is.

But when Jesus Christ made it clearer than day who he was, the people who had been demanding that he do so, did what in response? Well, they didn’t say, “Thank you very kindly for that!” (read 10:31-33)

There is the difference between the good shepherd’s sheep and the “non-sheep”. You saw how the non-sheep reacted. But the true sheep hear, receive, contemplate and submit to his word. They look at the one who is saying these words and think: if such a one, such a Person, who does such miracles, whose words radiate such truth and grace – if such a one as this says such words, then they’re true. It is precisely in this Jesus that God Himself, the Lord who is our shepherd, has visited his people.

But those who were ready to do nothing but judge his words and refuse to know him, they, of course, picked up stones. Stones or faith – these are the two responses to the Good Shepherd’s self-disclosure. Stones or faith. Outrage or love. Rejection or embrace. The response we make will show whether or not we belong to the flock of the true Good Shepherd, who gave his life for his sheep. Who gave his life, and took it up again, not because that was what people expected, but because that’s who he is. “Tell us who you are!”, the people shouted. Well, look at Jesus, listen to him, with a heart for God... and you’ll know.

The Triumphal Entry (III)

2009-08-14T10:07:00.004-04:00

Here is yet one more Palm Sunday sermon. For a Palm Sunday sermon, it devotes what may seem an inordinate amount of space to events following Palm Sunday, i.e., the Crucifixion (as if one could ever devote an “inordinate” amount of space to the Crucifixion...). But the intention behind this is twofold: 1) to drive home to the listeners’ the amazingly consistent prophetic theme running through all the events of Holy Week, beginning with the Entry, as foreshadowed in Psalm 118; for example, have you ever noticed that Jesus cites the same psalm to the Jewish leaders as the crowd quoted to him the day before? - it all seems to be a single, unfolding story already “told”, in a veiled way, in the psalm; 2) to “crystallize”, in light of this permeating motif, the way in which the Atonement truly consummates, in ways only God (“...the Lord has done this”) could have designed, what the crowds on Palm Sunday were really talking about... even if they didn’t know it. In short, this sermons tries (how successfully, I will not venture to say) to be a portrait of the divine hand actualizing the divine will, no matter what people thought they were accomplishing.

Read Isaiah 63:1-6, then Matthew 21:1-5, then Philippians 2:6-8

Even in his humility, Jesus’ greatness shone. It shone through his love, through the truth that he spoke, through the power that he demonstrated. Jesus healed people of their sicknesses. Most of all, he healed them of the sickness of heart, which comes from sin. He healed them from anger and envy, from fear and hatred. He showed them that the most important liberation is not political liberation, or economic liberation, but liberation of the heart. He brought them the fresh, clean water which is called new life. Many tasted this water, and they sensed the great power which brought them this new life.

And so, when Jesus rode into the city they shouted “Hosanna!” “Hosanna” means “Save!” In Hebrew it sounds like “hoshiyana”. Actually, the root of this word is the same as the root of Jesus’ Hebrew name Yeshua. And we know why Jesus received his name: because the angel told Joseph, “You will call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”. And so it comes about that the crowds now cry out to the Savior, “Save! Save!” And they call him Son of David. That shows how great their hope was for a Messiah, a son of David who would establish the true kingdom of God. Just as the prophet Zechariah prophesied, their king really was coming to them. The prophecy was fulfilled on that day.

The people greeted Jesus not only as Son of David, but also with the words of Psalm 118. In Psalm 118:26, it says, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” In Hebrew it sounds like, “Baruch ha-ba b’shem Yahveh.” Let’s look at that passage, starting at verse 25; we’ll read verses 25 to 29 (read).

These verses speak of joy; they speak of salvation. They speak of God’s mercy. They praise God who is our light. But they speak also of sacrifice (v. 27). Without sacrifice for sin there is no forgiveness because the debt of sin must be paid. Interestingly, in this psalm where it talks about joy and light and thanksgiving and mercy, it talks also about sacrifice. This is inescapable, because we live in a fallen, sinful world. And when we look again at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, what do we see? Immediately after he came into the city, where did he go? Into the temple. He went to the place of sacrifice. The Lamb of God came into the city with one purpose: to present himself to the Father as the perfect redeeming sacrifice. The crowds who shouted for Jesus didn’t know that. When they shouted joyfully “Save! Save!”, they didn’t know he was really going to do it, or how. But Jesus knew, and was ready.

And yet, the Lamb of God did not die in this temple. All the lambs which the people offered in sacrifice had to die in the temple. But not God’s lamb. Jesus was rejected by the priests. The true Lamb was sent to die outside the walls of the holy city. Jesus knew about this, too. The day after his triumphal entry, Jesus was again in the temple, the temple he had cleansed, just as he came to cleanse our hearts, and he saw the chief priests and elders and... (read Matthew 21:42). Jesus quoted psalm 118, the very same psalm the people quoted when they shouted the day before, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The same psalm that talks about the Messiah’s glory speaks also about his rejection and suffering. Jesus was the only one there who saw the whole picture, the glorious and the terrible sides.

It is most probable that the place where they crucified Jesus was an abandoned stone quarry, a place where there was no more stone of good quality. Jesus literally died in the place where the builders rejected the stones. And dying there, Jesus became like one of the stones rejected by the builders. And who were the builders, the supposed constructors of the nation, the chosen people? They were the priests and elders, the Pharisees and scribes, the ones who claimed the authority and had to answer for it. They should have recognized the nation’s cornerstone, Jesus Christ, when he appeared, and welcomed him as Savior of the world. But they rejected him and sent him to the cross, to die outside of the city where all the other rejected stones lay, in an old, worthless quarry.

It is quite possible, too, that when Jesus worked as a young man, he didn’t work with wood but with stone. The word in the Bible that we translate as “carpenter” could just as easily refer to a stonemason, and given the lay of the land in Nazareth, it seems to make more sense. If so, then the spectacle of Jesus, who humbly worked in his youth with stone under the blazing sun, building walls and homes, now cast outside the walls of Jerusalem and his Father’s house, thrown away like a broken, useless piece of rock to die in an abandoned stone quarry, nailed to a wooden cross built just to torture him to death under the blazing sun, becomes, if possible, even more shattering. But if it is more shattering, it is also, hard as it is to conceive it this way, even more glorious. Because the actual, ultimate reality which we must see in this terrible, terrible spectacle is the fact of the stone which the builders rejected turning out to be the cornerstone of God’s eternal salvation and kingdom. “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous [that means “miraculous”!] in our eyes.” You see, the psalmist isn’t saying, “We think it’s really swell”; he’s prophetically saying, “we recognize this is actually a miracle” – no one could have pulled something like this off except God Almighty. And in the final event, Jesus’ rejection by the world was so final, so absolute that no one but God Almighty could have made that terrible, lonely cross into the triumph of atonement and everlasting glory.

Remember, Psalm 118 is a psalm of salvation. It’s about God’s stupendous miracle of salvation. And precisely this terrible death – the Lamb’s death outside the city – is the actual thing itself, really happening before the world’s eyes. Here on the cross, and here preaching in the temple, and here riding into Jerusalem, is the Rejected Stone whom the Father is making the Cornerstone of His true temple, of the spiritual house He will dwell in, His living temple the Church.

And that is how this man, Jesus, the Lamb, did what the people cried out for him to do, “Hoshiyana – Save! Save!” That is how he accomplished his only desire: to complete his Father’s will.

When Jesus entered the city, many people asked, “Who is this?” (verse 11). He came in the name of the Lord, but they asked what his name was. One day, though, no one will ever need to ask his name (Philippians 2:9-11)... “for the Father has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name (vv. 10-11).

We began in the book of Isaiah, and we will finish there also, with Isaiah 65:17-19 (read).

On the day when the true king, Jesus Christ, appears, there will be rejoicing in the new Jerusalem and the Son of David will sit on the throne of God, and "we will be glad and rejoice" in what He has done.

Parable of the Talents: Why Talents Aren’t Talents

2009-07-10T10:16:00.002-04:00

You may find this a refreshing departure from the usual "talents" sermon.

(Read Matt. 25:14-30)

It will help you to understand the parable better if, for a moment, we put the modern meaning of 'talent' out of our minds. The word 'talent' in this story means money. A talent was a particular quantity of money in Roman and Greek societies. But where did the other meaning of 'talent' come from? Actually, it came from this parable! Because, through thousands of years of church history, preachers have applied this parable to the lives of their hearers, asking, 'How are you using your "talents" for God?' Of course, they first said 'talents', in quotation marks, as a metaphor for abilities and skills. But this went on for so long that, finally, the word 'talent' completely took on the meaning it has today. In other words, no more quotation marks. Because everybody had forgotten the real meaning of the word, anyway. But that created problems.

The main problem is, we tend to read the parable and take the word 'talent' in the usual modern sense, as an ability, and that creates two more problems: 1) we oversimplify the parable and miss its deeper meaning; 2) we misuse the parable, especially when we apply it to each other. Maybe somebody already wants to object, 'Wait a minute! Are you saying that God doesn't want our abilities, He just wants our money?' No, of course not. The word 'talent' in the parable does mean money, simply because that’s what the word means, and that’s what the people in the story are talking about. But it would be totally wrong to interpret the parable as saying, “God is only interested in your money.” But it is equally wrong to interpret the parable to say, “God is only interested in how talented you are.” Both interpretations are wrong. The money in the parable is talking about something bigger than both money and talents, the way we think of talents.

It will help us to understand this parable and all parables better if we keep in mind this concept: two worlds. There is the world inside the parable, where people interact with each other and relate to each other and do things for their own reasons, and then there is our world, where we read the parable and draw from it metaphors, and parallels, and applications. Let me give you a very simple example, very easy to understand: you all know how Jesus said he was the good shepherd, and how the good shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost sheep. Now, Jesus didn't say that the good shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost drug addict! That would make no sense. Shepherds look for sheep, not drug addicts! Inside the world of that simple picture Jesus gave us, the shepherd is a shepherd and the sheep are sheep. But, when we relate that picture, as a metaphor, to our world, then we know that Jesus is speaking of God's great love toward sinners, and how He will do everything possible to find lost souls, including the drug addict, the thief, the murderer and, by the way, the person who seems to perfectly fine.

And so we come back to this parable. Inside the world of this parable, the master is a real master, the slaves are real slaves, the money is real money, the hole in the ground is a real hole! And the master's words in verse 27 mean literally what they say: the slave should have put the money in the bank and earned some interest on it! He wouldn't even have needed to roll up his sleeves and work, he could have simply put the money in the bank, and at least he'd have earned something! Something is better than nothing! But nothing is worth precisely nothing, which is why the master calls the servant 'worthless'. The master gave the servant something and the servant made nothing out of it. That's what happened in the story, in that world.

And now, how do we interpret it, apply it to our world? What lesson do we take from this story? In the parable, the master gave the servants money and expected a profit from it. In our life, what does God give us and what does He expect us to do with it? As a hint, I want to suggest that it’s no accident Jesus immediately followed this parable with a prophecy of his second coming, when he will separate the sheep from the goats. And what is the criterion in making the separation? (Read Matt. 25:35-36)

It is interesting that Jesus says nothing here about preaching a sermon, or singing a solo, or playing the piano or washing the church windows. All those things are good and necessary, but sometimes we interpret this parable as if it were only talking about that: about artistic abilities or housekeeping chores or what we do in the service on Sunday morning. It's not. It's a parable about life. A parable about what we do with life, who we become inside, and how we show God to others. Ultimately, your talent – that is, the spiritual currency God has entrusted you with – is your life; it's the gift of life itself. The master in the parable gave his servants money and they were judged by how they used it. God has given us life. That is the precious 'talent' the Master has entrusted us with.

We can look at this priceless talent in different ways: it is the time given to each of us on this earth, to find God and His love. It is our capacity to respond to him. It is the possibility of loving people. This ‘talent’ is God's summons to climb the stairs of holiness through a transformation of heart that bears fruit in works of love. I want to say that again: this ‘talent’ is God's summons to climb the stairs of holiness through a transformation of heart that bears fruit in works of love.

The scriptures portray such a life in many different ways. For example, we all know the passage in Galatians where Paul mentions the “fruit of the Spirit”. There you have a picture of God’s investment bearing fruit. Likewise, Ephesians 4:22-5:1 (read). The apostle is talking here about a wholly new way of life, a new mind, new eyes for seeing the way God sees, and feeling with God’s heart. Because of God’s precious gift, we can throw off and leave behind the old man and become actual imitators of our heavenly Father. Romans 12:1-2 talks about the same thing in fewer, but very powerful, words (read). “Be transformed”, “imitate God”, “be living sacrifices” – this is what the parable of the talents is all about. And the money called “talents” in the story stands for the open door God gives each one of us to enter in to the richness of the Spirit and life in Christ. Yes, yes, of course, this will be demonstrated in certain practical ways in our daily lives, and I don’t ever want to suggest that singing in the church choir or cleaning the sanctuary are not part of that. But what a terrible mistake we will make if we think that that’s all the parable was meant to teach.

In conclusion, let me repeat that we should be careful how we interpret the parable of the talents. When we oversimplify it, we use it incorrectly. Let's be honest, sometimes we exploit this parable to force people to do what we want them to do. We want a brother or sister to sing a song and maybe they don't want to. And what do we say? 'Remember the parable of the talents, brother! God says to use your talents, so you’d better sing this morning!' So we quote the scripture to convince the brother it's God's will for him to sing – work a little “holy guilt” on him - when in reality it’s our will for him to sing! The parable doesn’t actually say anything about doing a solo in church. In fact, to hear how some people throw this parable around, you’d think the whole parable was about singing!

We shouldn't use scripture that way. Instead of applying the parable to others in a shallow way, it would be better to apply it first to ourselves in a deeper way: to examine first how we are using the real ‘talent’ - the precious truth and life – which God has invested in us. We’ve all received this talent. Even the “untalented” brother or sister, in today's sense of the word – the one who can't sing, can't play an instrument, can't preach, can't build anything, it seems they can't do anything... and maybe they can't! – that person, that child of God, still possesses the great, real, indescribable Talent, with a capital T, of God. And we don’t help him or her by forcing them to come up with something we consider a ‘talent’, with a small “t” - as if the parable doesn’t apply to them until we can define how well they do needlepoint or fix a car. No, no matter what they can or can’t do – and praise God for all the abilities He gives us – but, no matter what they can or can’t do, every child of God possesses the true Talent, the secret treasure, the hidden spiritual glory, the eternal newness that is life in Christ. And every child of God can make so much out of it, and we have to help each other do so, as we grow into the glory of the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Light on the Road to Bethany (John 11:1-10)

2009-07-08T09:01:00.002-04:00

(Read John 11: 1-2)

With these simple words, the Gospel writer John lets us know that something special is going on here. Jesus had already been healing many whose names we don’t know. But here it says a “certain Lazarus” was ill. We read his name, Lazarus, and that he lived in Bethany, and who he lived with, that is, his sisters Mary and Martha. And if that is not enough, John specifies that this is the family from which one of the sisters... (read verse 2). Have you noticed that John reminds the readers about that event as if all we need to do is turn back a few pages and find it in the gospel? The funny thing, though, is that that event is located later in the gospel, after this chapter, not before it! What it means is, when John says to his readers, ‘This is that Mary who anointed Jesus once and wiped his feet with her hair”, John doesn’t mean, “like you already read in this book”. No, what he means is, “like you already heard about, dear readers.” John is writing first of all to believers in the first century who first heard these stories in spoken form, and he assumes that when he mentions the story of Mary anointing Jesus, the early church knows perfectly well what he’s talking about, even though he hasn’t gotten to that yet in the written version. And, of course, in the same way, as they read this Gospel from the very first words, “In the beginning was the Word”, they already knew that it would tell about the crucifixion and the resurrection and Jesus’ many, many glorious words and deeds. And as soon as they read here that Jesus got word about Lazarus’ illness, they already know, “Ah, this is the story about how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead!”

All the same, none of them probably ever heard the story with all the detail that John includes here. That’s part of the reason for the written Gospel, to fill out the story and go deeper into the spiritual impact of it. I don’t doubt that John chose precisely the most important details that would teach us more about the very meaning and glory of Jesus Christ.

Now, we’re not going to talk today about the whole story of the raising of Lazarus. We’ll just focus a bit more deeply on the first part of the chapter, about what happened right up to heading out to Bethany. But just like the church of the first century, we also know the rest of the story, and let’s keep it in our minds as we meditate over the “preface”. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. We know it. And reading the run-up to it, we know that Jesus knows he will do it, and he knows why, and everything he’s doing and saying before the event is in the light of the awesome glory and power he is about to reveal.

(Read verse 3) Word came to Jesus: “the one you love is ill”. But Jesus already knows that the one he loves is not merely ill; he’s going to die. And precisely in this fact Jesus recognizes the promise of glory. That brings a question to my mind: if the Son of God sees in the death of his beloved friend the promise of glory, then what do we see only gloom and despair in?

In verse four, Jesus says, “This illness will not end in death”. But... Lazarus died! As a rule, if a doctor says some illness won’t be fatal and then the patient dies from it, we say the doctor was wrong! But when Jesus says that this illness –the illness of this dying, perhaps already dead man – is not going to end in death but in God’s glory, knowing that he will glorify his Father precisely by raising this man, Jesus Christ happens to be talking about the realest thing of all, the most fixed and certain and true and concrete and genuine. Because thinking that this death represents defeat for all possibilities of God’s activity in Lazarus’s life, that’s actually what is unreal and an illusion. Lazarus’s death is no defeat but an occasion for glory.

Back in chapter nine, verses one to three, Christ expresses the very same truth just a little bit differently. (Read vv. 1-3) For Christ, God’s action is uninterrupted and continually present. Ultimately, God’s intention plays the central role in everything that happens. And in Jesus’ life on earth the entire sense and objective of his being was to continually perceive and carry out that intention. The Lord also knew that, as long as he walked in this world, he was the world’s light, and while there is light you can work – in other words, there was nothing that was going to stop him from doing what his Father was determined to do through him. It was that simple. Jesus would never stop, because it was time to work, right up to the moment when it was time to embrace death itself in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice to the Father’s will.

In this light it’s easier to follow what Jesus says further (read vv. 4-5). “People don’t work at night, they work in the day. And it’s day now, so let’s work. I’ve brought the light, I am the light. Why wouldn't I do my Father’s work now?” And for us these words (v.5), “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” are as relevant now as they were when Jesus walked the earth. This is a promise not only to the disciples who listened to Jesus speak it, but a promise and encouragement to us, because Jesus is in the world even today, not in the flesh but spiritually indwelling his body, the Church – the Church he purifies and prepares for glory.
This same Christ, who now abides in his Church with the Father and the Spirit, and sanctifies her, this is the very same Jesus who on one sunny day in Palestine long ago heard the words, “Your friend is sick”, and answered, “This is to God’s glory”, and when he said that he wasn’t just wishing, he was defining reality. And he knew that not just sickness but an actual death would turn into God’s glorification. What are the circumstances, the situations, the problems in your life today that Jesus knows all about, just as much as he knew all about what God would do through Lazarus’ death? You know, just as with Lazarus, it’s truly the case that, sometimes, the circumstances have to get, not better, but worse before God’s glory unfolds through them.

But let’s not make the mistake of thinking that, until we see that glory, God’s doing nothing, taking the day off. The essence of faith is that even when it seems that things are only getting worse, without a glimmer of hope, the heart stays fixed on the truth of God’s continual presence and intention. True faith doesn’t sleep until God does something. Genuine faith always perceives the advance of God’s will and gets stronger for it. Faith is a way of seeing. In order to see physically, two things are needed: eyes – at least one! – and a source of light, like the sun. Well, the spiritual realm is no different. To see spiritually we need both eyes and sun. But the spiritual eye is faith, and the sunlight of our faith is the very Person of the risen Son of God and his glory. (Read 2 Cor. 3:17-18)

And so we return to the “preface” of the raising of Lazarus, to listen to the words of the Light of the World. (Read John 11:4-8) Of course, Jesus could well have responded, “No, you needn’t fear that. They’re not going to stone me, in fact. Something else is waiting for me there....” But Jesus took the moment to repeat the lesson he gave them earlier, one they seem not to have understood: (read vv. 9-10). What does that mean?

Jesus would have “stumbled” in the darkness if, hypothetically, he had promised his disciples that no one would stone him and then they had actually stoned him in Jerusalem. He would have stumbled in the darkness if, with the horror of the cross looming before him, he had run away, and if they had caught him anyway and led him to the cross as he struggled and screamed. But Jesus didn’t stumble, the Light of the World didn’t get lost in the darkness. In fact, he had this to say about his soon suffering; (read John 10:17-18).

The light of the world never stumbled, and he will help us not to stumble. It doesn’t mean we won’t go through hardship or grief. But not stumbling means not losing faith, not giving up your assurance in God’s presence and intentions, not losing hold of the absolutely certain hope in the ultimate outcome of God’s glory, which overflows with goodwill towards us.

Unexpected Words (Luke 9:37-46)

2009-07-07T07:46:00.003-04:00

This sermon takes a section which is, probably, rarely preached on as a single unit. For me, though, the uniting concept was the string of “contrary” responses Jesus gave and what those responses said about the deepest spiritual reality, or realities, underlying these incidents. As I pictured the boy’s father receiving his restored son back with exultation and, most likely, tears, and with Jesus watching, it suddenly hit me with a jolt that Jesus may have been thinking at that moment of his own heavenly Father and the reunion towards which he was pressing on with everything that was in him. And just as the boy had to go through terrible suffering before being restored, it is altogether reasonable to suppose that, at that moment, Jesus connected the suffering awaiting him with the image of restoration, reunion.

While it is typical for us to read Jesus’ stark, seeming non sequitur about the Son of Man’s suffering as a “lesson” to his disciples, perhaps our reading is too... dry. It doesn’t do any violence to the sense of the text or, more importantly, to the meaning of the Person, to imagine Jesus telling these things to his friends, “out of the blue”, with a choking voice and agony of both pain and love, in view of the moment. They could hardly be expected to grasp, just then, “where that came from” or why. Later, they may well have understood not only what Jesus was talking about, in terms of concrete facts, but why he talked about it precisely then.

In the five very brief “vignettes” included in this section, the running theme seems to be that Jesus is now, more than ever, entirely consumed with one thing: the ultimate consummation of his complete, selfless surrender out of love. The egotistic, petty and vindictive preoccupations of those around him at this time stand, therefore, in even more appalling contrast. They also illustrate just how terribly alone Jesus was in a world of men – alone, but for the Father.

(Read Luke 9:37-40)

We can’t call this a commonplace situation; we don’t run into something like this every day! But you can say that during Jesus’ earthly mission such situations were fairly usual. In the presence of God’s Son on the earth, evil forces for some reason manifested themselves more starkly, more blatantly, as if they couldn’t help showing themselves before the authority and holiness of Jesus. I would expect them to hide! But God’s presence somehow draws even hostile spirits. They rush out to try and oppose him. During his labors on earth Jesus cast out many such spirits, and here we find yet another instance.

But suddenly Jesus makes a pronouncement that is not typical; we never heard him talk like this before: (read verse 41, excluding last sentence). Amazing! None of our teaching about God’s love prepared us to hear, from the lips of the loving Redeemer, such utter exasperation. But that’s exactly what Jesus expresses. He’s “had it” with the total absence of faith, the spiritual obtuseness of humanity. And, quite naturally, he groans, “How long do I have to put up with you?”

Maybe you think that that doesn’t sound like love! But I want to say that this is supreme love: love with both eyes open, love that doesn’t fool itself about the nature of those who are loved, love that keeps going to the last drop of strength. This is love speaking, even as is aches and yearns for home, pines to see the Beloved One, but love that is ready to endure to the last drop of blood, ready to wait, ready to serve, ready to die for the beloved ones, even if they don’t understand, even when their stubborn spiritual shortsightedness tortures him. With these words Christ shows again that he truly is man – not a sinner, but man – and he grieves for the fallen-ness and appalling ignorance of those who, from the very beginning, were supposed to reflect divine love and glory. This Jesus is surely the “man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief”. But he is also the man and God of love who says, even in the most crying frustration, “Bring your son to me.” And what happens then? (Read vv. 42-43a)

Everyone is marveling. There’s incredible excitement and joy. But it’s exactly at that moment that Christ pronounces these completely unexpected words to his disciples: (read 43b-45).

Someone might say, “Look, this is a happy moment. The boy is completely delivered from all the tortures of the evil spirits, this father has gotten his precious son back, everybody’s jumping with joy. Why does Jesus have to suddenly throw a damper on the party with words like these?” But again we have to say that the voice of love is speaking here. Perhaps, as Jesus saw how ecstatic that father was to get his dearest and only son back, thoughts came rushing to Jesus’ mind – images and expectations – of his own reunion with his true Father, and how that reunion could only come through tortures and grief and death. Perhaps, too, looking at his closest friends, his followers, as they celebrated together with the crowd, Jesus needed to remind them of the actual, ultimate meaning of his being here in the world. Maybe Jesus needed understanding. He was, after all, a man – the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – and for some reason, at that moment, his own approaching agony and his longing for home were very real to him.

Imagine Jesus' disappointment, then, when the disciples couldn’t understand. And not only that, but started bickering with each other about something totally different and useless. (Read vv. 46-47)

It’s no accident that, as a response, Christ turns their attention to a child. You see how a certain theme subtly continues? God’s Child, whose hearts longs to see the Father, who is getting ready to give up his very last breath in a sacrifice of love to Him for the sake of lost humanity – in fact, precisely that lost humanity standing around him at the moment arguing over which one of them is number one, king of the castle – God’s Child, in response, takes a child by the hand. Perhaps he stands with that child silently for a few minutes until the disciples who are busy arguing finally stop long enough to notice (God is patient), and finally the last disciple shuts his mouth and looks at Jesus and the child, and instantly feels humiliated, because he knows that he, all of them, have been making fools of themselves. An embarrassed, mortified silence. And Jesus speaks, (read verse 48).

In other words: genuine greatness, genuine excellence, doesn’t come from how you look at yourself but from how you look at the most insignificant, the most helpless, the most needy in this world. And if you become like them, you become like Christ, who made himself nothing, right up to dying on a wooden cross – and precisely by doing that, rose above all things in heaven and earth.

After a shattering lesson like that, you might expect complete silence and serious self-examination. But people always manage to come with some kind of “But-!”. I think parents especially know what that’s about: “But...! But...!” And here dear John comes up with an objection: (read verse 49).

In other words, “Yes, but, Lord, we still have to sort out who’s who... right? It’s up to us to say who’s close to you, who’s way out there. We have to discern, to judge, set the boundaries.”

Jesus’ answer is very simple: (read v. 50). That is, “Your assignment, John... Johnny... is to look at me, follow me, be for me, not against this one or that one, let alone standing in judgment on those who aren’t against you. Judgment is in God’s hands, but God’s love is reaching out to the whole world through your hands, your life. Get with the program, Johnny.”

Obviously, it was still a little early for John and company to get it, because look what happened next: (read vv. 51-55).

The Zebedee brothers had a pretty clear idea what condemnation looked like, and they were rarin’ and ready to see a real show of messianic power. They’d have loved to say, “Ha! You didn’t want to accept us, and now you’ve gotten what was coming to you. Next time you’ll know better.”

But Jesus rebuked them. He didn’t argue with them, didn’t debate the issue with them, didn’t even stand another child in front of them as an example; he just rebuked them: “You don’t even know what kind of spirit you’re operating on.” And then, Jesus turned his face and headed to Jerusalem. Because, until it’s all done there, these disciples will never get it, will never know what condition their spirits are in or what it means to love with God’s love even to death, and beyond, to all eternity.

But I think that now, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after his ascension to the Father, after the coming of the Spirit and the revelation of salvation and grace, I think we better understand. And I think Jesus’ unexpected words about suffering and humility and spirit aren’t as unexpected or quite as mysterious to us as they were to the disciples then. Rather, I trust you and I are pressing on to materialize and live out, here and now, the meaning of Jesus’ words: in patience, humility, love and a heart that yearns for the Father in Heaven. That’s Jesus’ gift: to understand what he meant, even what he felt, and to know his heart. And when we know his heart, we are never alone.

Matthew 7 (Sermon on the Mount)

2009-07-02T06:10:00.007-04:00

This will be my longest of introductions, but I think it is important and hope it will prove interesting.

While my sermon is mostly on Matthew 7, it is really intended to give a rather sweeping overview of the entire Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), in as few words as possible. The operative interpretation behind my message is that, by paying strict attention to the historical, cultural and theological context, the Sermon on the Mount must be taken not as some loose “bouquet” of proverbs, aphorisms, inspiring ideals and “practical applications” but, rather, as a single, coherent, logically developed summons to the nation, to the real people listening to Jesus that day – a radical summons to abandon a worldview grounded in relative (comparative) righteousness, social approbation and cultural identity.

The summons is even more radical and audacious in that, in place of that familiar, more-or-less comfortable worldview, Jesus presents – starkly, without apology – himself as the center, the touchstone, the authority, the very meaning of the new worldview – a worldview to be accepted for no lesser reason than that, very simply, it is reality, the way things actually are.

In short, the “narrow gate” is Jesus and the straight path is the new life of the kingdom upon which one sets out after entering through Him. (Notice, please, how this interpretation diverges from the customary one as depicted on Sunday School room posters, where the straight path leads up to a narrow gate/pearly gates, i.e., into Heaven at the end of life. To me, that interpretation totally misses the stark option Jesus was laying out to his immediate hearers. The gate isn’t at the end of the road but the beginning.)

Before the Jewish nation in about the year 30 AD there are two paths available: 1) the “wide gate” which will (whether they know it or not, but Jesus knows it) lead only to the end of the world, i.e., their world as they perceive and construct it (70 AD), and 2) the “narrow gate”, which is Jesus himself, the living portal of God’s kingdom, where true righteousness both commences and is consummated in knowing him. Having entered the kingdom through him, their true identity before God can never again be threatened, no matter what happens to the temple, to Jerusalem, etc. They will become the genuine kingdom of the Spirit, in Christ.

Understood in this way, the Sermon becomes less the “beautiful”, “inspirational” piece of “literature” some would make it out to be (though ultimately it is far more “beautiful” than that) and more of a scandal and outrage to the socio-religious norms of the time. Jesus’ sermon epitomizes C.S. Lewis’s famous observation about Jesus leaving his contemporaries (and us) very few intellectually honest options, i.e., to take him as “liar, lunatic or Lord”. If, as Jesus says in the conclusion and summation of the sermon, he is actually going to be the One to whom all souls answer on the last day, then the whole sermon is true and the only reasonable thing for his hearers to do that day was to throw in their lot 100% with him, no matter what. If he is wrong, however, then any talk of the “moral beauty” of the sermon is simply nonsense.

Someone might object that I am being naïve taking the Sermon as a conceptual whole – that, for one thing, it is unlikely Jesus actually “recited” these three “chapters,” word-for-word, all in one go just like we have it recorded. And, for another thing, what we have in writing is in any case the composition – no matter how accurately recalled – of Matthew. We can’t interpret the Sermon solely on the basis of what we think Jesus was saying to those people that day or how they took his meaning; rather, we have to take into account what Matthew wanted to say to his audience, too.

My responses to those objections:
1) there is no reason to assume that Jesus did not or could not have pronounced this entire message, virtually as we have it recorded, all in one go. It’s not really that long a sermon, particularly for the pre-television world (when people still had attention spans) and particularly when there is a vital conceptual center driving the development of the thought with passion. We all know quite well that when there is one thing we desperately wish to get across as vividly as possible, it is quite normal to explain the idea at length, with multiple illustrations, applications and extrapolations. The Sermon is a perfect example; in fact, in terms of length or complexity, it is hardly an extreme case. I would even call it a rather compact nugget! Moreover, even if Matthew 5-7 encapsulates teaching pronounced by Jesus over a period of days, that fact doesn't argue in the least against the tight conceptual flow of the Sermon either in Jesus' telling or Matthew's recording. You could make the argument, after all, that Jesus was preaching only one thing for three years.
2) Yes, we are “getting” the Sermon through a) the “filter” of Matthew, b) the passage of time between event and composition, and c) the materialization of new contexts, i.e., the early Church to which Matthew is writing, a (somewhat) different audience than Jesus’ there on the mountainside (though Israel was, after all, God’s “church” [qahal] and the raw material, the initial stock, of Jesus’ new ‘qahal’). This is hardly an objection. Matthew’s world, and the early Church’s, is still the world, and audience, Jesus addressed on the mountainside. The challenge of Jesus was no less audacious or outrageous expressed through the Church and its writings in the middle first century than when Jesus himself pronounced the words on earth only a few years or decades earlier. The challenge, the import and virtually the entire socio-cultural context was the same. Therefore, Matthew’s “message” is faithful to Jesus’ “message”. It is the same message: the early Church is the “poor in spirit” whom Jesus challenged to enter the “narrow gate” and entrust their eternal lot to Him, seeking first the kingdom and God’s righteousness. They have cut their line to the dock and set sail with the Captain of their salvation, Jesus. (For some, however, the ride eventually proved rather too adventurous and they started looking longingly back to the dock... which is what the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is about. But that’s another story. Sort of.)

To appreciate the meaning and importance of chapter seven, which is the climax of the Sermon on the Mount, we really have no choice but to quickly sum up chapters five and six! Believe me, this will be quick.

The essence of what Jesus is saying to the people around him, starting from the Beatitudes, is this: “People, everything is about to change; it’s already changing. The kingdom is coming, and its laws and principles aren’t what you think. You’ve got to be ready to think in a new way, to see in a new way. For example, blessed are this world's 'losers', the ones whose hearts are broken over the evils around them, and in them. They’re the ones who are ready to receive what's coming: the kingdom. You can’t enter the kingdom unless you’re willing to live for it and be the salt of the earth. How do you do that, you ask? Simple: your righteousness must be greater than even the Pharisees’ righteousness! What? Not so simple? The Pharisees are experts in righteousness? They know every trick in the book when it comes to keeping God’s law? Not so fast. Let’s talk about righteousness. You’ve heard them teaching you about everything it says in the Book: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t break your oaths. But I’m telling you today that God’s standard is unbelievably higher. God looks at the heart. God doesn’t look at what you’re not doing; He looks at what you want to do. You’ve all been very well trained to be religious: you know when to fast, when to say your prayers, when to give money to the poor. And you get a nice pat on the back from the world when you do. But I’m telling you today that God’s standard is unbelievably higher. He looks at the heart. It’s time for you to decide what you want more: a nice pat on the back for being religious, or maybe rejection, suffering, even death for wanting what God wants and doing what God does. So decide. Do you want the kingdom? If you’re ready to surrender yourselves totally to God, I promise you, your Father in heaven will take care of you better than anyone could. But you’ve got to put Him... and Me... first.”

And that is my condensed version of the first two-thirds of the Sermon on the Mount. And now we come to the dramatic, even shocking climax. And if you were a Jewish man or woman listening to what Jesus was saying that day, I guarantee you, you would have been shocked.

So we come to chapter seven. Chapters five and six were like a picture which Jesus drew, a picture of a beautiful country, and he is inviting everyone to follow him there. But to go there, you have to get into Jesus’ ship, the ship of salvation. And Jesus is the captain of that ship. It means you have to leave your old country with all its traditions and laws, and you have to obey the rules of the ship. I think this is what Jesus is telling us in chapter seven. I think he’s saying, “Now you know where I want to bring you. Are you ready to go? If so, get in the boat and don’t look back. You can’t live the old way anymore. You can’t think the old way anymore. This is a new life with a new foundation, new responsibilities, new promises and, yes, new dangers.”

Now please remember: these events we read about in scripture aren’t just words on paper; these aren’t people in a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci or statues who never change, never feel anything. These are real people, who cough and sneeze, who scratch where it itches, who get sunburned – for instance, when they’re standing outside listening to a carpenter from Nazareth preaching. These are specific people who love other specific people, probably hate a few specific people, too, and don’t spend much time at all thinking about the rest. And now picture Jesus there on the mountain surrounded by his disciples and this crowd – there are no halos in the picture, by the way – and he is announcing that a kingdom has come, though nothing seems to have changed very much if you look around. But Jesus sits there and teaches the nation from the mountaintop, almost like, well, like God giving Moses the law on Mount Sinai. And in that crowd there are most likely some Pharisees and other bigwigs, and they’re not dumb. They get it. And they’re probably thinking, “Who does he think he is?” And Jesus’ subtle hints – and not-so-subtle hints – about the Pharisees’ so-called righteousness don’t fly over their heads, either. There are extremely uncomfortable moments during this Sermon, especially for any bigwigs who happen to be in the audience.

I think chapter seven begins with exactly such an uncomfortable moment, when Jesus talks about judging. Now, we usually understand this section to mean that we shouldn’t criticize each other. Some people even think this part of the Sermon says that we should never say that anything is a sin. The words, “Judge not, lest you be judged” are the favorite slogan of different groups who organize big demonstrations in support of sinful lifestyles. You’ll see Jesus’ words “Judge not!” painted in big letters on the signs they carry in their parades: “Since Jesus said, ‘Do not judge’, you have no right to say that anything is a sin!”

Now we have to ask, is that, can that really be, what Jesus meant? That it is always wrong to identify an action of any kind as sinful, or even just plain wrong? I don’t think so. In fact, when we look at Jesus’ own life and how he condemned evil acts, we know that can’t be what he meant. Otherwise, he broke his own rule!

No, the whole logical flow of the Sermon on the Mount, and the situation in that society where Jesus was speaking, make it very clear that Jesus is simply continuing the central thought that started from chapter five, verse one: it's time for you to abandon your old life. And what was that old life? To a great extent, it was a religious system, very much run by the Pharisees, based on comparing: who’s the best keeper of the law, all 613 laws of it, not to mention thousands and thousands of interpretations. The Pharisees were the Taliban of Jesus’ time, the religious watchdogs: judging was their job. And if you wanted to be anybody in society, you’d better get yourself a degree in judging, too! For us, the word “judging” has a very negative connotation – in fact, precisely because of the Sermon on the Mount. But I think the Pharisees would have been delighted with that job description, just like the women in Iran who walk the streets with their sticks ready to give a good beating to any female who isn’t sufficiently cloaked. I think the Pharisees would have boasted, “Yes, we’re the ones who make everybody toe the line, who make sure nobody breaks God’s law... as we interpret it.” In that specific, suffocating environment, Jesus’ meaning is very clear, and it’s also radical, dangerous and threatening to the religious big shots of the time. He is saying, “No. No. God never made you His enforcers. In His kingdom, you’re out of a job, guys. And your whole system has completely the wrong focus.” As soon as Jesus brought up judging, the crowd had to know what the subtext was; they lived in it all the time. I bet there were a few carefully hidden smiles among the simple folk, and maybe some scowls and glares among the Pharisees in the crowd. “Instead of making judges out of yourselves,” Jesus tells them, “what you really have to do is become experts in personal holiness, and if you can’t see the difference, then you haven’t understood a word I’ve said so far.” Of course I’m paraphrasing, but I genuinely believe this meaning was obvious for those people there in that place at that moment. Let’s look closer at the allegory Jesus presents – a very famous allegory.

“How can you see the splinter in your brother’s eye and not see the plank in your own?” I think it’s fair enough to say most people interpret that to mean, “How can you see the eensy-weensy little fault in somebody else and totally miss the monstrous flaw in yourself?” I have to tell you, I don’t agree with that interpretation, popular though it is. If that’s what Jesus is saying, it completely contradicts his whole point. It doesn’t actually make sense. For a lot of reasons.

For example, there have got to be cases where the tables are turned (right?) and the fault in my life isn’t nearly as terrible as the next guy’s – like, maybe he’s a murderer or something. In that case, Jesus’ allegory doesn’t apply to me. I get an ‘out’, a free pass, I can judge my brother because, this time, he's got the plank and I've only got the splinter.... But we know that can’t be right. Jesus was laying down a principle that applies to everyone. So there’s got to something more in this besides simply comparing how big one sin is against another.

And that brings up another reason why I can’t accept the usual interpretation. The whole point here is that it’s time to leave that old religion of proving who’s better than whom. Now, how does it make sense if Jesus bases that whole point on an illustration that depends on comparing one person’s sin against another’s - that is, the plank vs. the splinter? If Jesus is saying “You can’t judge, because your sin is bigger”, that’s already a comparison! It doesn’t make sense.

Finally, it doesn’t make sense because Jesus says, nevertheless, that when you take care of the plank in your eye, you can help your brother get his splinter out. So, obviously, the point is not that you must never recognize where someone else needs correction.

For all those reasons, the usual interpretation just doesn’t work for me.

Here’s what I believe Jesus is actually saying to those people, in that time, in a way they would really get, and good. If I have a speck of wood in my eye and you have a speck of wood in yours, and they’re the same size (because nobody can really have a plank in their eye), which speck should be more obvious to me: the one in my eye or the one in yours? Of course, the one in mine. It’s in my eye, after all. I can feel it, it hurts, it should be my main issue of the moment: how do I get this thing out of my eye? Because it’s in my eye, it should be like a plank to me, the biggest thing in my field of vision. If it’s not, there’s something wrong with me. And the very idea that I wouldn’t even notice it and at the same time look at you and say, “Whoa, have you got a tree trunk in your eye” is crazy. And yet, Jesus is telling the people of his time that that’s precisely what they’re doing, and it is crazy. It’s not a matter of whose sin is bigger. Comparing isn’t the issue; in fact, that’s what they’re supposed to stop doing. It’s a question of whose sin you notice most of all- yours or other people’s. Jesus is saying that, in this kingdom of righteousness where he reigns, we must each become an expert in splinter removal, first from our own eyes. In other words, experts in personal holiness. Because we belong to Him. Because those splinters don’t go with love for Him. The subject is the hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is the love of God, and the priority on living the life that brings Him joy – and not only Him, but us, too. When we do that in our own lives, then, yes, we certainly will become examples and a help to others with their “splinters”. In fact, your example might be so powerful that you’ll help your brother or sister grow in spiritual purity and the knowledge of God with hardly a word.

And then we run smack into a very difficult statement to interpret (read v.6). But I have to say that if we stick to the whole flow of thought that started in chapter five and is now reaching its climax, this verse suddenly becomes much clearer. Usually we take it out of context and make it mean, “Don’t waste your time witnessing to people who are only going to make fun of the Gospel.” That’s what I’d call a “good try” interpretation, but it really has no connection at all to anything that Jesus is talking about here. So I think there must be a better one. If Jesus has been talking about saying goodbye to the old world and welcoming the kingdom in him, then this odd, mysterious allegory certainly continues that thought. And I do believe that the crowd standing there would have caught the gist right away. Jesus is saying, You can’t mix the new with the old. You can’t take what I’m giving you now and go back home and try to mix it in with the religion of the Pharisees and all that way of thinking. It won’t work. In fact, it will be a disaster. It will be like coming to a pigpen full of hungry pigs with a basket full of pearls. You throw the pearls to the pigs and they greedily go running for them... till they realize, “We can’t eat these”. Then you’ve got some really angry pigs on your hand, and they might start looking at you like dinner. That’s what will happen to you if you try to follow me and at the same time keep dancing to the Pharisees’ tune, trying to keep them happy, too. It won’t work either way. You won’t really be following me, and you won’t keep them happy, either! It’s a lose-lose proposition. Spiritual compromise is never “win-win”. Jesus’ message to the people on the mountainside that day, and to us today, is: if you’ve gotten into his ship, it means you’ve cut your ties, you’ve left the dock, and the new wine will never fit in the old wineskins. You can’t go to the world for your dose of “relevance”, of popularity, acceptance, significance, self-esteem, whatever. It’s not there anymore. Now, Jesus explains as he continues this message, you depend totally on God for all that, and the Father is ready to give you every truly good thing that you need: ask, and it shall be given to you. He loves to give, and your task is to be like Him – to love giving and doing to others as you would like them to do to you. That’s life in the kingdom.

It’s very hard, it’s not natural for us to live like this, but it’s the only way. Most people are going the easy way, the way of the flesh, but God calls us to go through the narrow gate and follow the straight way. Jesus is the gate and following him is the straight way. It’s not easy and it requires total devotion, but it’s do-able, because He walks the way with us. Yes, there will be fraudsters who try to lure you off the path, but you will know them for what they are, because they don’t line up with the truth. By their fruits you will know them!

And then Jesus says this amazing thing: On that day many will come to me and say, Lord, Lord.... We read these words and hardly even bat an eye. We think, “Well, yes, of course!” But imagine what this sounded like to the people standing there, listening to this young man, around thirty years old, from a poor village, without much education, no connections, no status, probably even talks with a lower-class accent – and here he is telling them, “On the last day humanity’s judge will be... me!” Some listeners may have thought it was a joke. Others may have thought it was craziness. And certain ones may have begun thinking that very day: “This Jesus is a person we must get rid of.” It is hard for us to really grasp how big a risk Jesus took, from a human point of view, by saying these words, because we only see the words on the page. And we believe that Jesus truly is Lord. But we don’t see the actual scene where Jesus pronounced these words, where people had no idea who he was, where they could have arrested him on the spot, or even stoned him. To really get in touch with that is to being understanding what a powerful show of courage and faith this is; it’s the model of truth-telling, no matter the cost. You’ve got to have confidence to tell truth like that. Jesus has total confidence in the authority of His beloved Father in heaven and the concrete reality of what he was saying. With faith in Christ, we can have similar courage to speak truth, even when the world calls us crazy, or worse.

So you can see why the people were so amazed that Jesus spoke as one having authority. He even said he would judge the world! This is a huge declaration. Such a declaration certainly requires proof. In the following chapters of Matthew, we see this proof over and over again, where Jesus demonstrates his authority in many ways. Isn’t it interesting that the very first word someone says to Jesus after this great sermon is “Lord”? That was the leper whom Jesus healed. And after him the centurion also says, “Lord, I know that you have authority” and Jesus heals the centurion’s servant from far away, with just a word. And then Jesus prove to the Pharisees that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus sends his disciples out on a preaching mission and he gives them – what? – authority. You see, this idea of authority was very important for the people of Jesus’ time. I think it’s very important for us, too. Probably none of us wants to have total authority. None of us wants to be president, for example. Sometimes I worry that the only people who want to be president are crazy –and that would mean we elect crazy people to govern us! But all of us deeply desire the assurance and security of knowing that we have honest, strong and benevolent authority over us. When we hear about corruption in government, when we think our leaders have lied to us, we get very upset and angry. If we can’t trust the authorities, then everything in life seems shaky and uncertain.

But Jesus has proven his perfect and trustworthy authority and power. We will all answer to him some day. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promises that if we devote ourselves to his kingdom, if we make him captain of our ship and author of our salvation, then we’ll be like the house on the rock that stood firm even when the wind and waves beat against it. We won’t fall. How do we do that? Believe in Him, don’t look back, don’t mix the new with the old, grow into experts in personal holiness and devotion to God, trust your heavenly Father for all that you really need and, most of all, grow more like Him all the time, because He is perfect.

The Temptation in the Wilderness

2009-06-18T10:01:00.004-04:00

This is simply one of my favorites. I think that's because, every time I "preach" it, the riveting drama of that scene in the wilderness arrests me all over again and what Jesus really means to the world (whether or not the world knows it) and, most of all, to God. The word "hero" comes to mind, but it can never suffice.

(Read Matthew 4:1-11)

Jesus is in the wilderness. There’s no food, no water, no friends, no shelter. There’s also no temple, no synagogue, not even a Bible.

But what is there? In the day there’s scorching heat, in the night, bitter cold. There’s rocky ground. There’s loneliness and silence. But there’s also something else. Waiting for Jesus there in the wilderness is an enemy who wishes Jesus only evil, who strives with all he’s got to destroy this Jesus, knowing the central role Jesus plays in this key moment of the world’s existence. And therefore, the devil mercilessly capitalizes on Jesus’ hunger and fatigue, trying to find his weak spot, his vulnerability, to get the upper hand on him and ultimately finish him off. This is the enemy Jesus talks about in the Gospel of John (read John 8:44).

In these temptations it’s clear how the devil launched his attacks at the most sensitive element of the human soul: self-knowledge. We use various terms for this concept: self-esteem, self-awareness, self-understanding, self-image. But we can sum it all up in one question: “Who am I?” I think we have all had the frightening experience of waking up in the middle of the night – maybe when you’re on a trip somewhere – and not knowing where you are. For a moment or two there’s a very unpleasant disorientation! But it all comes back quick enough. Now imagine how much worse it is to not know who you are – to really not know what your name is, where you come from, or anything that has ever happened to you – to have no idea what the word “I” means. If you’ve never experienced it, be very glad. Because it’s a terrible place to be. And this is the place the devil is trying to get Jesus to with the continual repetition of one word, “if”.

(Read Matthew 4:3,5)

In the utilization of that one word “if” echoes all of the devil’s hatred for Jesus, all the insidiousness with which he tried to plant doubt and fear in Jesus’ mind.

But take note: Jesus never even responded to the hint. He refused to even recognize the suggestion. He didn’t argue, saying, “What do you mean: ‘if’? How dare you! I am absolutely the Son of God!”

If Jesus had started arguing that way with the enemy, then the enemy would already have won, because he’d be dictating to Jesus the terms of the argument, he’d be deciding the meaning of this confrontation. In that case, Jesus would have been defending himself, talking about himself, focusing on himself, in the same way the devil’s questions were focused on Jesus. As awful as it sounds to even say it, Jesus would have been following the devil’s lead.

Unfortunately, this is precisely how Eve reacted to temptation. She allowed the devil to dictate the terms of the encounter, the “rules of the game”. The devil raised questions that exposed God’s express word to doubt – “Did God really say...? – and Eve decided to try and explicate, to elucidate the matter to the devil (as if he didn’t know), and that led to nothing but her finally caving in, and we know what that meant. And the devil knew very well how much more it would mean if he could pull it off again, this time, out there in the desert, with Jesus.

But the Savior of human souls’ response is on a different plane altogether. He never permits the devil to dictate terms. He doesn’t cave in to insinuations about his identity. In fact, he doesn’t even give them the time of day. Jesus wasn’t about to debate the issue with the enemy. Instead, he fixed his gaze on what I would call the “actuality of the truth”. That is, the truth that is not merely conceptually true, theoretically true, but the truth which is, in fact, what really is – the way things are. That is the truth that is real and defines us and can always be leaned on, because it is. It actually is. We can abandon ourselves to it because it is greater than we are. Ultimately, this truth is God.

Look at Jesus’ answers to the devil in verses 4, 7 and 10 (read). You’ve probably heard many sermons already where the preacher points out that Jesus always responded with the same words. And what were those words? (“It is written”). Yes, and the lesson is always identified as “We must use Scripture to overcome temptations”. Well, you have heard that lesson many times. So I want to point out something different that maybe you never noticed. In every one of Jesus’ answers there’s another word, too. What word is it? ...... (Yes) The word is “God”. Did you ever notice that before? Every time the devil attacks, saying “If you're the Son of God... thrown yourself off the temple... I’ll give you all these things... you, you, you”, Jesus answers saying, “God. God. GOD.” Jesus throws himself totally on the reality that surpasses, transcends, overcomes this particular situation. He is completely directed by the all-encompassing truth, the truth that is his shelter and refuge here in the wilderness, his bread and water, his comfort and strength, his all in a place where he has nothing.

And it is here precisely that we find an utterly profound lesson in this event. All of Jesus’ attention there in the wilderness was fixed on God alone. And the profound paradox of the profound lesson is that by fixing his attention on God, Jesus threw off every attack on his own self-image. Paying no attention to himself, he saved himself. Not worrying in the least about who he was, he proved who he was.

Let’s read what it says in Matthew 16:24 (read).

Jesus is not pronouncing empty theory here. Jesus is testifying from personal experience. He went through this in the wilderness, and not only there. And He came out the winner. This tells us that it can be done; it’s realistic and it’s do-able in life, even in our lives. Christ went through this and, living in us, will get us through it, too. The one who lives in us by grace is the one the apostle Paul says the following about (read Phil. 2:5-11).

Just as the reality of God transcended the devil’s attacks, so Jesus always transcends whatever situation we may find ourselves in. The truth of God is our shelter in the wilderness, our bread and water, our liberation from the enemy’s attacks and a sanctuary for our hearts. There we are never alone.

But if we depend on external things, if we lean on what’s tangible, then it’s hard to find and stay in that spiritual place of strength and freedom. And sometimes God allows us to find ourselves in the wilderness, where we don’t have, perhaps, the usual feelings, no spiritual comforts or even desires, and in such a spiritual wilderness a deep question arises: can I stay faithful, can I even remain a Christian, especially when the enemy shows up and says, “Are you really a Christian? Look, you’re in the wilderness. What makes you any different from anybody else? What does this ‘faith’ of yours mean? It’s not faith; it’s just... an opinion. Well, fine, everybody has opinions. So what? Why pretend your opinion makes you anybody special? Who do you think you are, really?” And in all those temptations the key words, yet again, are “you, you, you.” The devil’s attacks will always turn our attention on ourselves. But here’s the thing: we are not the Author of faith, we are not the eternal Creator, we are not the source of life, we are not the triumphant Savior, who is risen and returning. we are not the answer, but the ones who depend on the Answer – the Answer Who encompasses, embraces and keeps us now and into eternity itself. There is no other answer to the devil’s attacks but to fix our eyes on Christ, on his word of life, on the unshakeable expectation which he has won for us with his death and resurrection.

(Read Hebrews 12:2)

A Holy Place, a Holy Purpose (Part Three)

2009-06-17T09:10:00.002-04:00

This is the concluding sermon in our little series. I have to admit, this final sermon could ITSELF be three sermons, but I’ll try to pack a lot of ideas into this one message, touching on each idea at least a little bit.

In the last two sermons, we thought about the Garden of Eden as God’s holy place of fellowship with Man. The Fall interrupted what should have been a wonderful, spontaneous, natural growth in loving knowledge between God and Man. It also interrupted, I might say, threw a monkey wrench into, Man’s proper role and appointment in the sphere of creation. Man became incompetent to shepherd the created order into its God-intended perfection. But at the Fall the work of redemption was also launched, in which God labors to bring Man back to the holy place. And over the course of those labors, God gives us glimpses and reminders of the original design – a design that inheres in and informs the pattern and aim of redemption. On the mountaintop God appeared to the elders of Israel, surrounded by glory, and they were awed that they could see Him and live. For a moment the veil was lifted on the vision of ultimate holiness, and Man fellowshipped with God and ate and drank in His presence. But the veil came quickly down again, and the incredible, astounding vision became symbolized – you might say, locked up – in the ark of the covenant behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. And the cherubs were part of the curtain and part of the ark, reminding us all of the holy place we lost long ago, when the cherubs were placed on guard in front of the Garden and the way to the Tree of Life. The whole rest of the story can be summed up with one question: how can man get back; how can Man pass again through the cherubs and the terrible sword and come to the Tree of Life in God’s holiest place?

Now please put on your running shoes as we will be racing together through many passages that trace this story and these images through history.

The prophet Isaiah says these words (read Isaiah 2:2-3).

Just as the elders of Israel met God on the mountaintop, so the whole world will one day be summoned to God’s holy mountain, to hear the word of the Lord from God Himself. The mountain speaks of excellence, of supremacy; it stands as the theological center of creation, out of which radiate God’s glory and holiness. Physical symbols like the temple or the ark of the covenant, though they are holy because they are God’s, are nevertheless only shadows of the real thing, as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews explains. Indeed, Jesus Christ sitting on the mountain teaching his followers was much more of a fulfillment of this divine design than any temple or ark could be.

Then Isaiah sings a poetic allegory for us (read Isaiah 5:1-2).

Who is this “one I love”? It is of course the Lord. And He has planted a vineyard, as He once planted a Garden, and the vineyard is Israel. God did everything possible, provided everything necessary, created the best conditions in which Israel might become a representation, a picture of the perfect design God had for Man in the beginning – even if only in miniature and approximately. The Garden was a place of fertility and fruitfulness. And here God has appointed Israel to be a place of fertility and fruitfulness, to taste something of the intimacy between God and Man that had been lost. Ideally, Israel would become a new center, like the Garden, from which would radiate out the glory and good news of God’s kingdom. But this vineyard brought only bad fruit and grief. The curse of sin continued to wreak its destruction – but notice, all the same, that the original design and desire of God persist. God does not give up.

Then in chapter six, Isaiah receives the vision from God (read Is. 6:1-3)

Perhaps we rush to conclude that the seraphs of Isaiah’s vision are entirely different creatures than the cherubs, because they have different names. But these names are simply descriptions. Just as you could say that I am a teacher and an American and a missionary. But I’m still one person. The meaning of “cherub” is not entirely clear, but the meaning of “seraph” is much clearer. It means a “fiery one”. I think it is quite possible that these seraphs, in fact, are the cherubs, and the term “fiery ones” describes what they looked like at the moment, standing before God’s throne. They glowed, they blazed in the unquenchable glory of His holiness, the same holiness that radiated in the fiery sword and the burning bush. And they proclaimed the holiness which is whole entire meaning and existence.

In all other passages, it is only the cherubs who are linked this way with God’s holy place and glory. Later in Ezekiel, when we read about God abandoning the temple in Jerusalem, there is no mention of seraphs, as such, but the cherubs are there. And they are quite similar to the seraphs – understandable if, in fact, they are one and the same thing. And if the ark of the covenant symbolizes God’s throne, with the golden cherubs molded right into it, then I think that’s even more proof that the seraphs standing next to God’s throne are cherubs glowing with a fiery glow. But even if I’m wrong and they are different kinds of beings, they still have more in common than differentiates them. They all guard and exalt the holiness of God. They all shout, “Holy! Holy! Holy!”, the seraphs here and the cherubs in the book of Revelation. They are immediately associated with God’s glory – Isaiah sees the temple filled with God’s glory and there are the seraphs; Ezekiel sees the glory of God departing the temple, and with it go the cherubs. When the cherubs-seraphs appear in the story of redemption, clearly it says something about the holiness and glory of God. They are telling us something about the real order of things in the heavenly places, about the centrality and eternality and sacredness of God’s presence. An order meant to be reflected in all the earth, and which one day will be.

But there’s one more part of the vision we really cannot let slip by: (Isaiah 6:8) “Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here I am, send me!’”

You remember that we observed in Genesis how God spoke in the plural, “We”, two times, and both times were involved with a fundamental issue of Man’s nature and God’s relationship with him? God spoke this way when He created Man and again when He expelled Man from the Garden. Now, again, God says “We”, and once again it involves a fundamental aspect of God’s timeless design for Man. God is doing His missionary work, the pursuit of Man that started as soon as He sent Man away from the Garden. Isaiah sees the vision of glory and hears the seraphs cry “Holy! Holy! Holy!” and the first question, the only question, to be decided is, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God is not content to remain a prisoner behind His own veil of holiness. He is not content to hear only the seraphs cry “Holy!” He is not content to leave Man outside the Garden wall, exiled, estranged and lonely. Ultimately, God is not content to have only a temple as His holy place. God’s true holy place must finally be the heart of Man, a place of holy intimacy. Glory, holiness and mission; these three realities are inextricably bound up with each other.

But this story takes many turns, often tragically. We have spoken about Man’s exile from the Garden, but how often do we think of God’s exile from the temple? Let’s read from Ezekiel 10 (read vv. 9-15, then 18-19).

Those “whirling wheels” strongly remind me of the flashing, twirling sword that appeared with the cherubs in front of the Tree of Life. I can’t say for sure that it’s the same thing, but I know at least they have this much in common: they appeared together with the cherubs precisely at the landmarks of history when God withdrew His holy presence from Man. The appearance of the cherubs and the mysterious fiery symbol, which itself didn’t fit any human definitions, speaks, I believe, of the incomprehensible, un-graspable holiness and glory of God, as well as the tragically fallen state of Man that makes him incapable of understanding what he sees. It reminds us of what we lost in the Fall. Here in this vision we meet the cherubs again, and they are engaged in a tragic task. They are accompanying the glory of God out of the temple. God is abandoning His house; the dream is dead, the glory has departed. Most heartbreakingly, just as the cherubs reach the entrance, the last step before utterly deserting the temple for good, they stop. The glory of God stops there, above them, as if pausing to take one last look, in grief, before the final goodbye. And then they go. The house is empty. The day when the shekinah glory inhabits the temple of Solomon is over, and will never come again. Because God never does exactly the same thing twice.

The good news, though, is that God will do something even better. His glory is too great – He will not allow anything to defeat Him.

When Christ appears on the earth, he tells his disciples: (Jn. 15:1) “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” and (15:5) “I am the vine; you are the branches”, and he tells the Samaritan woman at the well, (Jn. 4:14) “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” And again he says to his disciples, (Jn. 15:8) “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” And yet again (Jn. 10:10) “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

That is, Jesus comes to the world, to the lost children of Adam and Eve, speaking again the language of fertility, fruitfulness and abundance, the language of the Garden.
Desiring the knowledge of good and evil more than the knowledge of God, man became incompetent and ignorant, but Jesus speaks of true knowledge, the knowledge that man needed most from the very beginning:

(Jn 10:14-15) “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”, and, (Jn. 15:15) “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Jesus speaks also the language of holiness and intimacy: (Mt. 5:8) “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”, and (Jn. 15:3-4) “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I will remain in you”, and (Jn. 14:23) “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

The heart of man finally will be God’s home. God has accomplished His holy desire. And the good news is that God’s holy desire is also our blessedness.

Like the Garden, and like Israel, which were centers of divine action and purpose, centers which were supposed to grow and radiate the glory and holiness of God to the whole world, now Jesus uniquely, perfectly fulfills it all in himself. Now there are no walls, no borders, no veils! Jesus says, “Mt. 5:14) “You are the light of the world”, and, (Mt. 28:18-19) “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations....”
As no one else could, Jesus passes through the cherubs and sword, tearing apart the veil of holiness and pouring his own life’s blood on the ark of the covenant, exchanging his death for ours. The glory has come home again to the Temple, not like before but even greater. The heavenly creatures that Isaiah saw as they cried “Holy! Holy! Holy!” now cry out again, as we read in Revelation 4 (read Rev. 4:2-8) and they sing a new song to the Lamb (read Rev. 5: 9-10).

And God will have his holy people, in a new creation, in perfect love and never-ending joy: (Read Rev. 22:1-5).

A Holy Place, A Holy Purpose (Part Two)

2009-06-17T04:36:00.005-04:00

I suppose I should note that this trilogy of sermons was not, in fact, designed for a church service. They’re a bit heavy for regular church services. These three sermons were composed for our chapel services at the Bible college, for an audience of students.

In the last sermon we thought about the Garden of Eden and Man’s expulsion from it. Now we’ll go on and look at key moments in the history of redemption that recall that scene and, at the same time, point to the future.

As we continue to read the story of God’s acts in human history, it should not surprise us it, here and there, we catch brief glimpses of that Garden, reminders of the last images Adam and Eve saw when they left the Garden in grief. Why shouldn’t it surprise us? Because the grand movements and tides of God’s history take their very sense and meaning from that original place where God and Man enjoyed holy fellowship. The end of the story, where everything is heading, must in some way be similar to the beginning. Why? Because that’s the very meaning of redemption! Redemption means bringing back, restoring what was lost. And if so, then we can expect to see a similarity between the beginning of all things as God made it and the end of all things as God will make it.

No, I’m not saying that the future will simply be an exact copy of the past. I believe that God never does exactly the same thing twice. In the future, a completely redeemed creation will be something more and greater than the original creation was. In what ways? No one knows all the ways, of course, but here’s at least one way: in God’s eternal kingdom, Man will forever be Man redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; this is a reality that would never have been if man hadn’t sinned. That doesn’t make it good that man sinned; it just proves God’s power to conquer the worst evil and darkness and to accomplish an even more glorious purpose than anyone could have imagined.

But – ! Even if the future creation will contain a greater glory than the original, all the same the future creation cannot negate the original. God’s design for the first creation was holy and good, and His fellowship with Man in the Garden was wonderful. God’s design for a new, redeemed creation will not negate that but only raise it to greater heights of fulfillment – just as Jesus did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it.

Whether we recognize it or not, the whole meaning of the Garden is still a present, determinative meaning in the affairs of God and Man; the Garden is still essential to who we are, and to Who God reveals Himself to us as. The holiness and intimacy, the fruitfulness and fertility, the Lordship and glory – all these living realities of the Garden are intrinsic to the spirit of redemption, both in its present operations and its final consummation. It is therefore inevitable that these realities would be glimpsed again and again in the history of redemption.

Let’s look at two passages that offer us such glimpses. The first is Exodus 24:8-11 (read)
Suddenly the elders find themselves in the very presence of the living God. They “saw the God of Israel”. They didn’t fully understand what they saw. Under his feet was “something like” a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky. What it was exactly, they didn’t know – or else they would have told us! They saw something that was beyond their understanding, but they knew that this was God. It is a shocking, unexpected moment. They knew that, by all rights, they should have been struck dead instantly but, astonishingly, they live. Not only lived, but ate and drank before God! And “He did not stretch out His hand against them.” Man had not experienced anything like this since... the Garden! The Garden also was a place where God came and fellowshipped with Man, and where Man ate and drank and enjoyed the bounty of God’s creation. And in the Garden, too, God did not stretch out his hand against Man. This astonishing, frightening event on the mountaintop is like a veil being momentarily lifted, allowing a glimpse into realities that have always been there, behind the visible world. For a moment, the elders of Israel are allowed to be where no one should be, and to see what no one should see. Why? After the nation’s long exile in Egypt, they need a vision – a vision that speaks of both the beginning that Man lost and the future that God will restore. They needed this vision, or God would not have given it to them. Only God has the prerogative to depart from the norm like this, at the time and place of His choosing and for His inscrutable purposes.

Even so, notice that they received this vision only after going through the blood. Before there was glory on the mountaintop, there was the spilling of blood and the words, “This is the blood of the covenant.” Later in history a different meeting between God and His chosen people takes place, but the glory is hidden in human flesh. And there is again eating and drinking, but a different voice, one greater than Moses, says, “This is the blood of the covenant.” And even though this scene would appear less dramatic to any observer, in a real sense the disciples in the upper room were seeing God even more truly than the elders of Israel did on the mountaintop. As Jesus said to Philip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” And they ate and drank in his presence and he did not stretch out his hand against them, but called them his friends, and, after they had sung a psalm together, he led them out into the night, and to a garden and a cross....

But let’s return for now to the book of Exodus. Immediately after that incredible vision on the mountaintop, in the very next chapter, we find God’s instructions for the building of the Tabernacle. And we read these words (read Exodus 25:17-22).

When the elders of Israel were on the mountaintop it was as if the veil had been lifted for a moment, the veil separating Man and God. But then the veil falls again on the scene, the departure from the norm is concluded. It is not yet time for Man to remain freely in sight of the vision of God and live. The veil comes down again on this departure from the norm and now, instead, the ark and the Holy Place will be the witness to this past and future reality. Once again the cherubs appear, just as they did when Man was banished from the Garden. Just as they guarded the Tree of Life, now they guard, once again, God’s holy place. Specifically they guard the “atonement cover”, the most holy place on earth. The atonement cover is the testimony of the blood which will pay the price for the sins of the world. Just as the real cherubs stood in front of the Tree of Life together with a supernaturally blazing sword that swept and slashed in every direction, so these golden cherubs stand over the place where the blood must be spilled. The only way back to the Tree of Life is through a sword, and through blood. The cherubs will allow nothing but pure holiness to enter there. The cherubs face each other, but they do not look at each other. They gaze forever at the atonement cover. The holiness of God is their sole occupation - you might say their obsession, their only reason for existing.

The cherubs appear not only on the ark of the covenant but also in the veil that hides the ark in the Holy of Holies. (Read Exodus 26:31-33) How can we help but notice that, first, God explicitly pointed out that the golden cherubs must be made of one piece with the atonement cover and then He says that the cherubs must be worked into the veil. That is, they must be part of the veil, part of the barrier separating Man from God’s holy presence, just as they are part of the atonement cover that demands the sacrificial blood for restoration and return. The curtain and the ark both speak about the integrity, the wholeness, of God’s purposes. There are no shortcuts to the ultimate accomplishment of His plan. You can’t leave any part out. It will all have to be thoroughly, absolutely, perfectly carried out. There is no way back to the Garden except through the cherubs and the sword. There is no way into the Holy of Holies except through the cherubs and the blood. There is no way “back to the future” except to cross, somehow, through the terrible curtain of holiness, the divine holiness which the cherubs worship and protect.

The vision on the mountaintop has been taken away, and Moses has gone on alone to receive the Law from God’s hand, the law that convicts of sin and makes manifest to everyone why Man suffers his present exile from the holy place. And the heavenly glory has hidden itself behind the curtain, separated from Man, guarded by cherubs, waiting for the day when one Man will reunite the past and future at the cost of his own body. Through the tearing of his own heart he will tear the veil, too, the holy curtain that divides the Father from the children made in His image. And the cherubs will then cry out, more gloriously than ever, “Holy, holy, holy! Worthy is the Lamb!”

“Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood people from every tribe and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.”

From the very beginning God’s intent and design was one holy people for Himself. He will achieve His purpose and nothing will stop him.

God gave the elders of Israel a vision because they needed it.

So do we.

A Holy Place, a Holy Purpose (Part One)

2009-06-15T07:37:00.003-04:00

This and the following two sermons constitute one series. (These are longer and heavier messages, by the way!) The general gist of the three sermons together is this: Man was created from the very start to be God’s unique, sacred, holy dwelling place, in love and mutual knowledge, and this thread of meaning can be traced in certain fascinating, and generally overlooked, images and themes that develop and grow from Genesis to Revelation. The concluding simple picture of the round world, and what is meant by it, are taken from the poem by C.S. Lewis, “Poem for Psychoanalysts And/Or Theologians”. I discovered in a certain commentary on the Internet that this poem was originally called “The World is Round”. The commentator found Lewis’ alteration to the longer title “inexplicable”. To me, it’s anything but inexplicable. I find Lewis’ final choice to be both delightfully ironic and movingly wise. You could write a whole book about that title. Or at least, Lewis could.

(Read Genesis 3:21-24)

I want to begin by addressing a common misperception about one of the first, most important events recorded in the Bible – the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In our imagination, thanks to picture Bibles and works of art and posters hanging on Sunday Schools walls, we see Adam and Eve trudging away from the Garden, dressed in animal skins, cowering in fear and shame, while behind them stands the angel holding the sword.

The picture is wrong.

Now, maybe the picture is alright as far as Adam and Eve go. They may have looked just like that. But the picture of the angel is all wrong. For a few reasons. Look carefully at the text. It never says that the angel was holding a sword and, in fact, it never even says there was an angel there at all! On top of that, whoever it was that God did put there to guard the garden, the Bible says there was more than one of them! So the picture we have in our minds – one angel holding sword – is just about as wrong as wrong can be. And this is the starting place of my sermon today, and the next few sermons that will be connected to it, not because I’m a stickler for details or I just like being picky. This is the starting point because God has invested a profound theological lesson, in fact a heartbreakingly glorious revelation of Himself and His purposes, in what really happened there at the Garden. If we love God, then of course we want to understand His lessons right, so we can know Him and His ways more and more deeply all the time.

Now, about the angel... who wasn’t there. The Word actually says that God put cherubim there. A better translation, as maybe some of your Bibles have, is “cherubs”, because the Hebrew word is “cherub” and the ending “-im” is like the English “-s” – it just means there was more than one of them. Now when I mention “cherubs”, the very first thing we absolutely must do is delete from our minds all thoughts and images of cute little naked winged babies, the image with which the word “cherub” has become associated in western tradition. That picture has nothing at all to do with real cherubs. I doubt you’d find anything in the least bit “cute” about real cherubs. I doubt Adam and Eve did. They were probably terrifying.

How many cherubs did God place in front of the Garden, blocking the way to the tree of life? Text doesn’t say. But usually in the Bible there are four cherubs whenever they appear – and that’s several times: in Exodus, Ezekiel, Revelation, possibly in Isaiah. And what did the cherubs look like? Again, you can refer to Ezekiel and revelation to find out, and we will be saying more about the “what” and the “why” of these cherubs in the next few sermons. But for now, just think: “the four living creatures”. If anything, they look more like animals than what we think of as angels.

Now we turn to the sword. Somebody might ask, “Well, alright, then. If there were four or more cherubs, then which one was holding the sword?” That’s easy – look at the scripture. The answer is, none of them. The text doesn’t say anyone was holding the sword, and if you read the description very carefully it looks like no one could have been holding it. It says that God placed cherubs and a sword in front of the Garden. The sword was a flaming sword, flashing back and forth. What kind of “sword” is that? I don’t know, but it’s definitely impressive! It was just there, blazing, somehow flashing, maybe slashing, back and forth, perhaps even revolving. Between this and the cherubs, the message was clear: approach this tree and die. Imagine what a heartbreaking message that is for God to send.

And why did God banish Adam and Eve forcefully from the Garden, with such a terrible sight blocking the way back? Why was it so important that they not go back? What does this tell us about the Garden, and about God, and about man? These are the questions we want to explore together.

The text gives an immediate answer as to why God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden: “And then the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” These words reveal a great mercy. Tell me, what’s worse than being a sinner? It’s being a sinner who can never die. This is something beyond our imagination. To be a sinner means to live in a ruptured relationship, alienated from God, even from your own self, not to mention other people. Imagine how horrible it would be to live eternally in that condition. God saved humanity from such a fate by expelling Man from the Garden – at least, until Man would be ready to come back to this holy place and eat from this tree.

What else do we notice in God’s words? We notice that He speaks in the plural: the man has become like one of us. There are only two places in the story of creation where God speaks this way. The first is when God says, “Let us make man in our image.” So the first time that God speaks in the plural, it is uniquely, significantly in connection with the creation of Man. God didn’t talk that way when He created light or water or stars or animals. Only when He created Man. Could that mean something? I think it does! I think it reflects the fact that, unlike all other created things, only Man reflects the triune being of God. God is in His very self, a Being of relationship. Even without anyone else existing, God is Himself a perfect relationship of love. And Man, uniquely in God’s creation, is a creature of relationship – relationship within himself, relationship between people and, ultimately, relationship with God. I believe that this is why God speaks in the plural here, because this part of creation, Man, especially connects to the “Us-ness” of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When God created Man in His image, God created Man in the image of relationship, in the image of love.

And now, only the second time in the whole story of creation, God speaks in the plural, saying, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Here the revelation about who God is that started in the words “Let us make man...” grows even deeper . Once again, God’s speaking in the plural is directly tied to His dealing with Man. Only with Man. This time, God is comparing the creature Man to Himself – Man is now “like one of us, knowing good and evil.” Now, someone might ask, “What’s wrong with that? Didn’t God say He wanted man to be in His image? Wasn’t Man supposed to be like God?” Well, that’s easy: the answer is a clear yes-and-no. Yes, “like God”, with personality and a free will to freely love Him. But no, not like God in the sense of being God, or overriding God’s decisions. Here, Man grabbed for himself something God said wasn’t for Man – or at least, not yet. But Man grabbed it, and now Man knew what good and evil were.

Again, someone might object: what’s so bad about knowing good and evil? God knows good and evil and that doesn’t make God a sinner. Exactly. Because He’s God. We’re not. God can do no evil. He cannot be tempted with evil. But He knows evil, because He knows all things. God must know what evil is, and He can know it without being it. But here’s the big difference between God and Man. Man cannot know evil without being evil. At least, that was true at the time of Adam and Eve, in the infancy of humanity.

Think about what that tree was called: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I have said that God is a God of relationship. “Relationship” means knowing. When we know a person we have a relationship with him. When God made Man, He made Man to know Him. What Man needed to know was God, not evil. That’s about as plain and simple as I can put the whole idea: what Man needed to know was God, not evil. God was all that Man needed to know; there could be nothing better. There was nothing that tree of knowledge could offer to outshine the discoveries waiting in the daily walk with God through the Garden. The relationship between Man and God was – again, to put it simply – just fine; it wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it. More than that, it was holy, sacred, inviolable. The Garden was their sacred place, a place of fruitfulness, growth, and not only in the material sense. It was the holy meeting place, and nothing could improve on the growing love and understanding there between God and His children. But instead of knowing God, Man chose to know good and evil. Unfortunately, Man cannot know “good and evil” without knowing evil – it’s a package deal. But to be in the process of knowing evil is to not be in the process of knowing God, who is holy. I cannot be experiencing evil and experiencing God simultaneously. To the extent I choose to know evil, I choose not to know God. That’s the choice Adam and Eve made.

Oh, yes, Man does gain a certain kind of knowledge from the experience of evil – that’s why God called the tree a tree of knowldege (and God doesn’t lie) – but it is not the sort of knowledge Man needs. When they grabbed the fruit of that tree, Adam and Eve gained a knowledge which didn’t enrich them; rather, it deprived and impoverished them. They learned precisely what they had no need to know – that was a first in all creation, that Man, the creature made in God’s image, expended time and energy and free will and personal initiative on something that was totally useless and destructive. Imagine! And having learned what they didn’t need to know, they lost what they did need to know. They lost their personal knowledge of God. Gaining knowledge, they lost knowledge. The knowledge of God was knowledge of a different kind. It was primordial, of the first order, before even the knowledge of good and evil. With that ultimate knowledge, Adam and Eve, in fact, didn’t even need the knowledge of good! They only needed to know God and fellowship with Him in His special place, in their special place, the Garden. There was no temple, no Holy of Holies, no Jerusalem, just Man and the Garden. And the knowledge of God – more magnificent and than any knowledge of good and evil. (You know, I don’t think it’s any accident that Jesus told his disciples, “You will be holy”, not “You will be good.”)

As I said, there was no temple, no sanctuary, no city where God had placed His name. If there was an holy place for God’s dwelling, it was the earth itself, and especially the Garden, and most especially of all, Man Himself. Man was God’s special holy place – special, pure, beyond price, exclusively God’s. And the inconceivable holiness of that relationship made everything it touched holy, too. The holiness of that love-relationship between God and Man was appointed to radiate out and raise the entire creation to the status of holy place and a total offering of love to God. I don’t believe it was simply “Man’s job”, as they say, to “take care” of the earth, like you ask a friend to take care of your dog when you go away on a trip. I believe rather that this was supposed to be man's participation with God in His holy purposes, to creatively, joyfully make the whole world in a fitting “temple” for God’s glory. In that sense, the first missionary was Adam. God gave him a mission to go out and subdue the earth, to make it all a perfect “house” for God’s love-relationship with Man. That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the earth the way God first made it, that Man had to go out there and fix things. No. What it means is, God filled the whole earth with a potential that only Man could materialize. This was a task that demanded the very best talents and wisdom God gave man, but it would be a work that brought the deepest satisfaction and pure delight, not frustration and disappointment.

But when Man chose to know evil instead of God, he stopped being a “holy place” for God. He became unholy, unfit, inappropriate for God’s fellowship. He became like the square peg in a round hole, a misfit, a stranger, unfit to carry out the Maker’s wondrous plans for creation. All we need to do today is look around us, at the violence, the corruption, the degradation of the natural world, to see what a misfit Man turned into in this world. No wonder the Scriptures say that the creation is groaning for the appearing of the true children of God. Because the whole world, as well, lost its meaning when Man lost the Garden. Like when you see a puppy on the street and it’s obviously been abandoned and it breaks your heart. That’s the condition the whole creation is in, wondering where its master has gone and why it’s been left all alone. The terribly irony is: we’re right here, but it doesn’t know us.

So the terrible historical irony is this: having grabbed the fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve become incompetent and unfit. Incompetent to realize their true appointment and meaning; unfit to remain in the holy place where they enjoyed face-to-face relations with God. Sin is a terrible college. It gives you knowledge that makes you incompetent and unfit.

Therefore, they were banished. They were no longer fit to inhabit the holy place; they had become foreigners, alien to God and He to them. The glory that before had been their delight was now a stabbing pain to their eyes; the holiness which had been the very air they breathed, was now a burning fire they couldn’t stand. Adam and Eve were banished because they had to be banished. They could no longer endure the vision of God. So he expelled them from the Garden and set a guard, the cherubs and the sword. Every time we meet the cherubs in Scripture, they are serving as guards of the holiness of God. We will talk about them more in the next sermons. I just want to emphasize one idea now: usually, when we think of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, especially with our familiar but incorrect image of the sword-wielding angel, somehow the focus, the center of attention is Man: look how sad they are, and look at how that angel with the sword is there just to keep them from coming back. It all seems to be about Adam and Eve. Today I want to suggest that the central meaning in this event is God, far more than man. The cherubs are there to guard and glorify God's holiness; the sword serves as a symbol of the infinite, unknowable reaches of God’s holy being, from which Adam and Eve had cut themselves off. The whole picture speaks of what Adam and Eve gave up and lost, which is nothing less than God Himself. Really, from the moment they ate the fruit of the tree, their exile and wandering had already begun.

But so had the redemption! Behind the wall represented by the cherubs and sword, inside the holy place that became off limits, the Tree of Life still stood, and waited. God created it so that its fruit would be eaten, eventually. God would see to it that its purpose would be fulfilled, no matter what it cost. For not only Adam and Eve had suffered shattering loss. God did, too. We often think of the grief and pain of Adam and Eve when we look at pictures of them leaving the Garden. How often do we think of the pain and grief they left behind them, behind that veil of impenetrable holiness? About the devastated love of God for His lost, wandering children? Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones who found themselves behind a wall and shattered. Man could never make himself fit for the Garden again, or worthy to eat from the tree of life. Without God’s help, Man would be a wanderer and a stranger in a hostile world forever, finally good for nothing. Was that what God wanted when He said, “Let us make Man in our image”? It couldn’t be. And how could God Himself possibly stay there, like a prisoner, behind the bars of His own untouchable holiness, exiled and alienated from His very own image, the creatures He made His children? It couldn’t be.

From the moment that Adam’s exile began, the redemption began, too. Because it had to. As soon as Adam failed in his “missionary work”, God had to become the missionary – reaching out, reaching ahead, forward, to the . From the moment Adam started suffering, God started paying the price. Yes, and even before that, for Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Slain, because that’s the only way back to the Tree of Life. Right through that sword that blazes and flashes with God’s unutterable holiness, the sword that will kill you if you dare to come close. But there’s no other way to reach the Tree. And Man had to get back. That is the whole meaning of history. With each step that Adam took, wandering in this big world, farther and farther from the Garden with its memories of the face of God, with every step Adam was taking a step closer, too, because God was at work, bringing him closer and closer, back to the Garden, back to the Tree, closer and closer to reunion.

It was a big, dark and unfriendly world Adam and Eve were thrown out into. Yes, the world is big. But it is also round. God made it that way. And He chose in His blazing love to make the end of the road a beginning. And His holy purpose will not be defeated.

Easter Sermon II

2009-06-13T08:01:00.001-04:00

A year or two later, the next time I was in Armenia for Easter, I preached the following sermon in several churches, including some where I had preached the other Easter sermon (so I made sure I had a new sermon!). The style in this sermon is significantly different, more stream-of-consciousness – perhaps even “machine gun” at times, though careful intonation will make it seem less so. An unusual (for me) element in this sermon is that I freely weave the biblical quotes into my own words. With one or two exceptions, I don’t stop to say, “Let’s turn to 1 Peter 1:3” or “As it says in John 11:25...”. And that’s why you’ll see nearly all the scripture passages in this text, not the usual “(read text)”. This sermon picks up on the “peace” theme of the Triumphal Entry II sermon, so there was a conceptual link for those who heard that one a week earlier. The main thing I tried to do here was to present as many stark pictures as I could of the results/effects/outcomes of the resurrection in “real life”, precisely for the nonbelievers who would be likely to make an unaccustomed visit to church for Easter day. The concluding thoughts echo the earlier Easter sermon, but they are more directly evangelistic.

“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will never die.” Jesus Christ spoke these words to Martha at the gravesite of her brother Lazarus. With these words, Jesus let her – and you and me – know that he himself represented the central moment of all human history, the very center of God’s salvation for us all. Everything depends on this and this alone: that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Without the resurrection there is no forgiveness of sins, no reconciliation with God, no hope of eternal life. The Apostle Paul wrote: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless – you are still in your sins.” But Christ is raised! The angels said to the women at the tomb: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” And so our hope is perfect and will never disappoint us, as the apostle Peter says, “God has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Born again! Because of Jesus’ resurrection we have new birth. Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live”. For us to live, Jesus had to rise from the dead, to fill us with his resurrected, victorious, imperishable life. But to rise, Jesus had first to die – in order to redeem us, “with precious blood, as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless”. This was the only way to solve man’s deepest, most critical need – the need that, if it is not solved, then no other needs can every truly be solved. Or even if they were solved, in the end it would still mean nothing. If this first, all-pervading need is not solved, then everything else in life is meaningless and lost. The need is: peace with God. Jesus gives this peace. When he appeared, resurrected, to the disciples, he said, “Peace be with you.” This was a new kind of peace, which no one had experienced since the Garden of Eden: peace with God. Jesus made this peace possible because he took away the terrible barrier between us and God. Our sin, which God cannot accept, was taken away in the body of Christ when he died. Like a curtain that separates two rooms, our sin was torn apart when Jesus’ own heart broke on the cross. Jesus made the way to God open and clear again through the sacrifice of his own life. This is why Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Only his death tore open the curtain that was separating us from God. This is also why Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, when he appeared to her after the resurrection, “Go to my brothers and say, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Only Jesus’ resurrection could make his Father our Father again, too. “I am the way.... No one comes to the Father except through me.” Because Christ has risen, we can call God our God and Father. We can know God again as a friend, not a stranger. We can find the source of life, and all the sense of life, in close fellowship with our Maker. And he accepts us completely, because of his perfect, glorious, beloved Son Jesus.

All of human history is the story of Man’s need for God, for the true meaning of life. The very beginning of the story tells us about the terrible tragedy, the wrong choice which our first parents made when they chose pride instead of love, self instead of God, sin instead of obedience and freedom. if they had remained in perfect obedience to God, they would also have known perfect freedom and no other desire except to please God. But when they forsook obedience they also forsook freedom. They made themselves slaves of sin. And to this day people still deceive themselves, thinking that they’re free when they are really slaves to their own sins. They have no strength, no power over themselves; they cannot stop themselves from harmful, destructive actions; they poison their bodies with drugs, alcohol, tobacco; they poison their minds with immorality; they poison their relationships with pride and selfishness – and they can’t stop. And yet, they think they’re free. What a successful deception the devil has performed! There’s only one thing that can defeat such a powerful deception. Hebrews 2:14-15 says (read text). And 1 John 3:8 says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”

It was considered a great event in America when Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, and many thousands of black slaves became free citizens of the United States. But how much greater is it that God has destroyed the power of the devil in the life of countless millions for the past two thousand years by the power of the Resurrected Christ! People have been liberated from the fear of death, from pride and hatred, from greed and selfishness, from self-destruction and cruelty, because Jesus lives. The power is his. The life is his. And the victory is his. Jesus Christ says, “I am the first and the last, and the Living One, and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and hades.” We should not be surprised that God accompanied the birth of His Son with a star in the sky. People shoot fireworks into the sky to mark great events, such as Independence Day. But no event in history was greater than the arrival of the Great Liberator of human souls. No greater victory was ever won than the victory over death. When a war ends on earth, it means one kingdom has conquered another. When Jesus paid the price of our sins on the cross and then rose from the dead, it meant that the kingdom of God had the total victory over sin and death, over everything that could stop us from coming to God. The way was clear. The wall fell down. The veil in God’s temple, which hid the holiest place, was torn in half, and God’s holy presence was open to all who come through Jesus. The prophecy was fulfilled that said, “He will swallow up death for all time” (Is. 25:6). And now we can say together with the apostle Paul, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”

Today the choice is every person’s: to be a citizen of the victorious kingdom, or the defeated kingdom. Jesus said, “No one can come to the Father except through me.” Jesus is the “narrow gate”; he is the “door”. He is the only victory and the only way that God has given – given at the highest cost and with supreme love. He is the only way into the kingdom. There is only one thing that can stop any of us from going through that door and finding God’s peace and friendship. It is we ourselves – our pride, our disbelief, our unwillingness to admit we are sinners and accept his forgiveness. For many people, that is a wall that stops them from accepting Christ. It blocks them from receiving the free gift of life from him. God offers freedom freely to us; we can’t buy it – Jesus paid the price. But God leaves the choice with us; only we can choose to accept or reject.

I am confident of this, however. If we even take a small step toward God, He is ready to take a large step toward us. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”! When we come to him, admitting that we have nothing, and that we do not deserve his salvation, and we certainly can’t buy it, and we ask him to cleanse our sins and accept us, then we are poor in spirit. To such poor ones the risen Son of God has promised the kingdom forever and ever. Jesus said to Martha by Lazarus’s grave, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Christ is Lord, Christ lives, Christ is returning, and Christ will bring the kingdom of God into the heart of everyone who believes – right now. Jesus asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” There is no more important question in the whole world. Your eternal destiny depends on your answer. The risen Christ continues to ask every heart, “Do you believe this?” To those who believe, the risen Christ gives eternal life as a free gift, in his overflowing love. May the answer of each of our hearts today be the same as Martha’s: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into the world.”

Easter (I)

2009-06-11T08:21:00.000-04:00

This is the first Easter sermon I preached in Armenia. I recall the surprising, even jolting enthusiasm and excitement with which the congregation stood and exclaimed at the end, “He is risen indeed!”

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Easter is the day when those words are uniquely fulfilled! God did not simply love the world. He did not simply give his Son. In fact, by this God reached, achieved the whole desire of his grace: He met our ultimate, unimaginable need. He created a new day, one in which Adam’s children can walk with him again in friendship, without shame or guilt. He sent his Son. And he didn’t simply send his Son, but he gave him up for us. And he didn’t only give him up for us, but he received his Son back, too, risen, triumphant, clutching with his nail-pierced hands our salvation – the prize, the victory. Christ is risen! The stone which the builders rejected has been made the very cornerstone; it is God who did this and it is a miracle to us all! Only the Lord created this new day; only he gets the glory for it. Our job is to rejoice over it, to be thrilled with it.

Let no one think that this day, the day the Lord has made, is one simple day that will pass and be forgotten. No. The prophecy speaks not of a 24-hour day but of a new age. It’s the day in which God has made the rejected stone into the very cornerstone. He has made the rejected Christ into the very center of His whole plan and will and purpose and eternal relationship with us – Christ, the Resurrection and the Life. This day will never end, because Christ is risen forever. No one can wrest salvation from his nail-pierced hands; he has conquered sin and death. “It is finished!”, he cried from the cross, and now he sits at the right hand of the Father on high. Yes. He is truly risen.

What is this “resurrection”? Why is Jesus’ resurrection unique? Doesn’t the Bible tell us about other people who rose from the dead? Yes, God in his power raised others from the dead. There was Lazarus, for example, or the widow’s son or Jairus’s daughter. But the key thing is this: they all died again. That wasn’t resurrection in the ultimate sense. Jesus Christ is, so far, the only one in all human history who has risen in the true resurrection. He is the firstborn from the dead, never again to die.

No one here should think today that Easter is simply about “life after death”, that we Christians get all excited about Easter because it proves that death isn’t the end. That’s just wrong. There’s a vast, an immeasurable, difference between “life after death” as most people think of it, and resurrection. Those who don’t know Christ talk wishfully about “life after death”. But the followers of Jesus know there is a resurrection coming. We don’t rejoice over the mere fact that this life isn’t the end. God forbid! In fact, you could say we rejoice over the fact that this life is the end! What I mean is, God has put a definite end to this life, the old life, the life lived in a fallen, sinful world. In the death of Jesus, God closed the book on this chapter of the story. “It is finished”, Jesus cried. And in the resurrection, God unveiled the new chapter, the actual never-ending story; he gave birth, through the Son, to a new creation – redeemed, indestructible, full of grace and glory.

The apostle Paul tells us that Christ is the firstborn from the dead, the firstfruits of those who will rise like him, those who have a share in him. Therefore, we who have a share in Christ can shout together with Paul, “Death has been swallowed up in victory! Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”

Jesus Christ says, “I was dead, but now I am alive forever, and I have the keys of death and hell.”

So for those who are in Christ by faith there is a sure victory, a glorious hope. He has made them new creations, children of God, as Jesus told the Sadducees (Lk. 20:36): “They can never die again, but they are like the angels, and they are the children of God, for they are the children of the resurrection.” The apostle Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, all has become new!”

For this glorious purpose the Father sent the Son into our rebellious, dying world: to make a new creation starting in his very self, to become the first of many children of the resurrection, to freely bestow perfect, eternal salvation to each who believes. “For God so loved the world that gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Friends, eternal life is not simply life-after-death; it is new life. It is the life which our risen Savior possesses within his very self and gives to whomever he wants (John 5:26): “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given it to the Son to have life in himself.”

Because he is risen, because he is triumphant over sin and death, and because he is the very Son of the Father – “light from light, true God from true God” – he has the power and right to bestow this life on whomever he wills (John 10:28): “I give them eternal life and they will never be lost, nor can anyone take them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Because he is the Father’s beloved Son, in whom all the Father’s pleasure abides, we have confidence that we too are pleasing and acceptable in God’s sight – because the Father accepts us in the Son! “Our life is hidden with Christ in God,” the scriptures tell us. There is no safer place where our life can be hidden than with the triumphant, victorious, conquering, risen Son who sits at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus’ people don’t wonder about life-after-death, because in their union with Christ they have already died and new life already fills their souls in him. We aren’t waiting for life-after-death, but for the final revelation. The apostle Paul writes (Col. 3:3): “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” This is our whole hope, and it is a sure, fixed, unmovable hope – because He is risen.

On this Easter day there is no more important question each of us must answer than the one Jesus asked Martha by the grave of Lazarus. Jesus said (Jn. 11:25): “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even if he dies, yet shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

I ask you, “Do you believe this?” Perhaps you are not sure. Perhaps you have never taken the step of faith to receive him. He waits for you, He calls you. Through the Holy Spirit the risen Christ invites you into his fellowship, into the reconciliation of Adam’s children with God. He offers you grace – the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. There is no more important question, no greater need in life, than this. For this, for you, the Father gave up his Son and then received him back into glory. He wants to receive you, too, together with his Son, through his Son, with his Son, cleansed by Christ, reborn in Christ, and a child of the resurrection and child of God, just as Christ promised. Don’t delay. Receive him and become a child of the resurrection.

And if you do believe with your whole heart, then you can say together with me, “Christ has risen! He has risen indeed!”

The Last Supper

2009-06-11T07:10:00.009-04:00

This sermon was first delivered on a Maundy Thursday evening in a small village church practically in the shadow of Mount Ararat on the plains of Armenia.

(Read Luke 22:14-15 and Psalm 118: 22-24)

Jesus greatly desired to eat this Passover together with his disciples. This should amaze us. Jesus clearly knew that this was his last supper, that right after this supper come indescribable sufferings and agony. Who could look forward to that, or to anything leading to that? Jesus perfectly understood that the world was about to completely reject him, that soon he would be crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And yet Jesus says, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before my suffering.” How can this be?

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 55, verses eight and nine, it says: God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.... But as the skies are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
We can apply these words to all people, with the exception of only one: Jesus Christ. Jesus’ thoughts were, in fact, God’s thoughts and his ways God’s ways. Jesus’ desire and will were one with the Heavenly Father’s. And what exactly is the Heavenly Father’s desire? That all might be saved. “For God so loved the world...”, proclaims the Scripture. And Jesus also so loved the world, that he thirsted, he longed for the completion of redemption, regardless of the fact that redemption happened to cost him the highest price of all.

You remember how Jesus once said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I long for it to be fulfilled!” That clearly tells us how much Jesus shared one will, one heart and desire with his Father – the desire to save a perishing humanity and restore it to free relationship with God. And so it is with complete sincerity that Jesus says, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you....”

In America you might hear people say, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day were Christmas?” Or perhaps, “For the believer, every day is Easter!” People say things like this because these are joyful, delightful, celebratory holidays. But it’s interesting that you’d never hear anyone say, “Oh, how I wish every day were Good Friday!”.

But if it weren’t for Good Friday, if it weren’t for the cross, then there’d be no Christmas, no Easter, no reason to rejoice, no Gospel at all.

The psalmist says, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” So what day is it exactly he’s talking about? It’s the day of salvation. “This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our sight.” What exactly is it the Lord did which is so marvelous, so miraculous in our sight? He made Christ the cornerstone of salvation, the very center of His overflowingly benevolent design and intention towards us. This is definitely a marvel, a wonder. But what did it take? The psalmist goes on, “The stone which the builders rejected....” Without the rejection, there would be no cornerstone, no new day of salvation, nothing to rejoice and be glad about. For Jesus, the scorn and agony and dying had to take first place. And it is right on the edge, on the verge of this living nightmare that Jesus says, “How I longed to have this Passover meal with you....” This is the ultimate love, the true love that resounds across time and space to every human heart and gives itself without limit.

Isaiah 53:10 says, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” For our well-being the Lord saw fit to do this. Who can comprehend love like that? It’s not for us to comprehend, but we can believe, we can receive, and we can offer ourselves back to this very love.

And when we love him, we accept not only his love but his sufferings, too. And his sufferings transform our lives. When we resist sin, the sufferings of Christ strengthen us, as the apostle Peter said (read 1 Peter 4:1).

The sufferings of Christ comfort us, as the apostle Paul said, (read 2 Corinthians 1:5).

His sufferings are close to us in our hope of the future, as Paul said in Philippians (read Phil. 3:10), and as Peter also said, (read 1 Peter 4:13).

Jesus told his disciples, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before my sufferings.” Do we desire to eat this Passover with him? Are we willing to turn away from anything the world might offer us in order to embrace the sufferings of Christ? Are his sufferings more precious to us than any of the pleasures of sin? Are we ready to die with him, in order to live with him? Will we accept that great love he holds out to us? And the last question: are we ready to take the body and blood of Christ, uniting ourselves to him, and then to get up from the table and follow him out there, to where he’s going, to the garden, to the scorn and torture, to the crucifixion and the tomb, and to resurrection?

If we’re ready, then let’s prepare our hearts, cleanse our consciences and ask the Lord to make it so that our thoughts are more and more like His thoughts and our ways more and more like His ways, so that we might be able to grasp deeper and deeper all the time just what it really means that “the stone which the builders rejected has been made the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our sight. It is the Lord who made this day; let’s rejoice and be glad in it!”

Triumphal Entry Sermon (II) – “Peace Will Conquer”

2009-06-11T04:35:00.001-04:00

This is the Palm Sunday sermon I preached in Armenia a year later.

(Read Matthew 21:10-17)

Sometimes when we witness to people, they ask us questions like, “If Christ saved the world, then why is there still so much evil? If Christ came to bring peace, why is there no peace?”
But I would like us to think now about Christ himself, entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, knowing what lay before him – the rejection and the suffering, the cruel death on a cross; think of Christ doing this for the world, out of love and obedience to the Father in heaven. Certainly, Jesus could have asked some questions, too! He could have asked, “If I’m bringing them peace, why do they hate me? If I’m their savior, why will they kill me?” Did Jesus ask himself these questions? I doubt it. I believe he didn’t need to, because he already knew the answers.

People are very quick to ask questions. Often the questions aren’t really questions but accusations, or a strategy, or a manipulation. The last thing the person asking wants or expects is an answer. What’s more, they certainly don’t want anyone, least of all God Himself, to ask them a question in return.

In Matthew 21:16, some people ask Jesus a question: “Do you hear what those children are saying?” What was it these people were trying to determine? Whether Jesus’ hearing was good? No, of course not. Did they even expect a thoughtful response? I don’t think so. What they expected was for Jesus to shut those children up! And many apologize for having let things get so out of control. But instead, Jesus asked them a question, which started, “Haven’t you read...?” Think about that: “Haven’t you read...?” Jesus pointed them to God’s word. It’s the same thing with those around us today who ask, “So where is this salvation, huh? What exactly is this ‘peace’?” We can answer as Jesus did: “Haven’t you read...?”, and direct them to the word of God.

For example, have you never read where Jesus says (John 14:27), “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Here, Jesus points out a special peace – real, essential peace, the peace that comes from a restored relationship with God. Can the world give such peace? Absolutely not. Not even when there is outward, visible peace – for instance, when nations stop warring with each other – not even then can the world place real peace in our hearts. Jesus came, in the first place, to grant this most necessary peace to those who willingly receive it. And to do that, Jesus knew very well what price he had to pay.

And so, he willingly say on that donkey and rode through the city, freely offering his life as a ransom for you and me. He came to bring peace, but he knew that rejection must come first. He came to save, but he knew that a terrible death must come first. He was ready to pay that price, without question. This is his love towards you and me.

The truth is, God has brought peace. God is bringing peace. And God will bring peace. But not peace as this world understands it.

We know very well the prophecy of Zechariah which Jesus fulfilled in his triumphal entry (read Zech. 9:9). But now, let’s read the next two verses (read Zech. 9:10,11). Do you think that Jesus, who knew very well the prophecy in 9:9, also knew about the next two verses? I do. I think we hear the words of Zechariah on the lips of Jesus when he says, “This is the blood of the covenant, shed for you.” And Zechariah says, “Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.” The prophet also says, “He will proclaim peace to the nations.” Will God finally bring peace to the world – peace of a visible, external, universal kind? Yes, He will. And “his rule will extend from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” But on that day it will be too late for those who do not receive his peace now. His peace is salvation. His peace is life. People say, “Where is this peace?” We ask in reply, “Yes, where is it? Is it in your heart, or isn’t it? If not, then it is no surprise you can’t see it anywhere else.” We say in reply, “Look at Jesus, meek and lowly, riding into Jerusalem, a king riding on a donkey, not with a crown or royal robe, not with a sword in his hand, but with only an overflowing heart of love for you. He rides into Jerusalem to be a sacrifice. He wants to come into your soul as Friend and Savior. Then you will know peace.”

God has brought peace. Do you know this peace? He is bringing peace; to those who don’t know Him He offers salvation, eternal life, forgiveness of sins in the blood of His precious Son – peace. And, God will bring peace. In His time, He will restore all things, coming as king to reign forever. Then we will be able to shout together with the prophet Isaiah (Is. 62:10-11): Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations. The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: “‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.’”

The Triumphal Entry (I) – “Jesus in Control” (Luke 19:28-35)

2009-06-10T09:45:00.005-04:00

This is one of two Palm Sunday sermons I composed in Armenia. My teaching trips to Armenia are often around Easter time.

(Read Luke 19:28-35)

We see here that Jesus is in control. We need to remember that Jesus was never a victim of circumstances. Jesus never depended on others for the success of his ministry. Yes, he loved them, he gave them every possibility of being his disciples, but he never depended on them.

(Read John 2:23-25)

Jesus knew what was in man. He knew that the heart of man was inconstant and unfaithful. Jesus knew that even his closest friends would deny him. But he loved them, and he continued to go forward, obeying the Father’s will, fulfilling the plan of salvation. Yes, Jesus knew what was in man, but he also knew what could be in man. Jesus was there when man was made in God’s image; Jesus knew the beauty and the glory which were in man in the beginning. Of course he knew, because he himself is that beauty and glory. He is the image of God.

Jesus knew.... Circumstances and events never shocked him or overpowered him. Here in Luke 9, Jesus shows himself as the Lord of events. He tells the disciples beforehand that they’ll find the donkey tied up, and what the owners of the donkey will say, and how the disciples should answer. Later, when we read about the crucifixion, we must remember that Jesus was not a victim of circumstances. He was the Lamb of God, who went willingly to the cross for you and me. Remember what Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own will, and I take it up again.”

But maybe today I’m saying what should really be said on Friday, when we remember the Lord’s death. Traditionally, today is a happy day, when we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Yes, we should rejoice today, just as the people rejoiced on that day long ago. And we should rejoice even more than they, because of what God has done in our lives through this same Jesus.

But... Jesus knew what would happen shortly after this triumphal entry, and we also know. So this is part of the story which we cannot ignore. The Lord knew that these people greeting him on this day would soon reject and kill him, but here is the amazing thing: he allowed them to praise him. Why? He loved them and he was going to die for them. Also, regardless of the unreliability of the people saying the words, the words themselves were true. They were words that needed to be exclaimed. The words were true even if the hearts weren’t (read Luke 19:35-40). This moment was a moment of glory, even if the people didn’t understand it. The truth is bigger than people.

Jesus’ words are true to this day. If we don’t praise him, then the stones themselves will shout his praise. The glory of God is the one, single, unique reality behind everything. All creation is groaning for the day when God’s glory is fully revealed. We, who are God’s children, understand that and we also groan for that day. And we rejoice to think of it.

Jesus allowed these people to praise him, even though they would reject and kill him. Here the great grace of God shows itself. Also, Jesus was serving His Father. Nothing could stop Jesus from obeying the Father. God’s word predicted – “Behold, your king is coming, meek and lowly and riding on a donkey.” Jesus came to fulfill all the Law and the Prophets, no matter what it cost, even if it meant receiving praise from those who would prove untrue. In the end, of course, it cost Jesus everything.

Look at Jesus now, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, with all the people waving palm branches and shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Look at the crowd. You see Jesus’ closest friends there. They’re ecstatic. They think this is the beginning of the kingdom on earth. They don’t know that in only a few days they will run away in fear and abandon Jesus. In that crowd, also, are those whose lips are still and voices silent, and their eyes full of hatred. They want to eliminate this Jesus. To them he is dangerous, a threat to their power and comfortable position. Also in that crowd are those who have almost no idea, really, of what’s going on. Maybe they never heard of Jesus of Nazareth before – they simply heard the noise, came to see what was happening and joined in the fun and excitement, and so they’re shouting with the rest, not even knowing why! Such is the power of a crowd. A very dangerous power.

And Jesus knows all this, and he goes on – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, presenting himself to God for all these people, giving himself to all these people even as He gives himself up to the Father in ultimate love. The real glory of this “Palm Sunday” is not the triumphal entry or the loud welcome Jesus received; no, the real glory is hidden in the heart of that young man riding on the donkey, the heart of him “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame.” He knew, but he went on, for us.

Did Jesus feel joy on the day of his triumphal entry? I believe he did. Not because the people were shouting for him; he knew what was in the heart of man. But Jesus’ joy was to do the will of his Father; he rejoiced in glorifying his Father. I believe Jesus also rejoiced that his mission would soon be over, finished, and that a new day would dawn for the children of God. John 1:11 tells us that he “came to his own”, that is, he came to that which was his own creation – in fact, he even made those stones that would cry out in praise if the people didn’t! But, “his own did not receive him”. Even in his triumphal entry they weren’t really receiving him – they didn’t really know who he was or what it meant to choose him, or what it would cost. They didn’t know his heart and will; they couldn’t share his love for the Father. At least, not yet. “But, to those who received him, to those who believed in his name, to them he gave the right to become the children of God, children born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

For us this is the joy of the triumphal entry. We see Jesus our King who comes in the name of the Father. And we know he has come to make us children of his heavenly Father. This Jesus, meek and lowly and riding on a donkey, has come to offer us his heart, so that we might be like him. he has come to give us peace – not peace as the world gives, but true peace with God – reconciliation and fellowship. This Jesus has come not to enjoy praise from unbelieving lips but to reveal the true glory of God, so that even the stones will cry out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Have you received this king into your heart? Has he made you a child of God? Have you received the peace he offers? If not, then you are like one of that crowd – maybe shouting and rejoicing, but not knowing why, still in the dark. If you welcome this King, Jesus Christ, into your heart and life, then you can rejoice in truth, with knowledge and understanding, because you will know him. He will open your eyes to see more and more who he truly is. And he will also let you know who you are – a sinner saved by grace, a reborn child of God, a servant of the King. Then, with all God’s children, you will wait with confident hope for the day of his return. He will come triumphant to receive his people as his Bride. He will finally answer the groaning and yearning of all creation, which waits together with the children of God to see him and shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

The Word that Changes Everything (The Calling of Peter, Luke 5)

2009-06-10T02:42:00.004-04:00

It is not at all subtle here that I’m looking at the incident recorded in Luke 5 - Jesus’ calling of Peter and his fellow fishermen - through the lens of Hebrews 1:3, where it says that God “sustains all things by His powerful word”.

(Read Luke 5:1-7)

Jesus was teaching. He wasn’t fishing. Nor did he come with any announcement, “Just watch, I’m going to give the biggest catch of fish you ever saw.” No, Christ was about His business. He was teaching. God is always occupied with His own business – it couldn’t possibly be otherwise. God’s business is always a perfect business and in fact the very essence of everything there is. Jesus was teaching the people, revealing to them the truth of the heavenly kingdom, unfolding to them His very self as Savior, Redeemer. And the people so excitedly responded that Jesus had to get in a boat and teach from there, because there was no room left on the shore. And in all of this, even in the fact that there was no room left on the shore and Jesus had to get into a boat, God was continuing about His holy business, carrying out His perfect plan.

Peter also was about his business that day, a fisherman’s business. But at just the right moment, God’s intention for Peter began to materialize – stunningly, vividly; right at the moment when Jesus Christ needed Peter’s boat. And whose boat was that, by the way? Yes, it was God’s boat. Because all created things in all the universe belong to the Creator. If, as it says in Hebrews 1:3, God sustains all things by His powerful word, then it follows that all things all the time play some sort of role in God’s perfect intentions. Of course, it’s not always clear to us what God’s intention could be in one situation or another, since we’re not God! But there is a great gift that’s been given to us; it’s called faith. Even when we can’t see, when we don’t understand, we can do this: believe. We can know that God is acting, is taking things somewhere, and that the outcome of His activity will be supremely glorious.

Jesus sat down in Peter’s boat and continued his teaching. At that moment there was only one assignment for that boat: to serve as a pulpit for the Son of Man. A glorious assignment, don’t you think? That little boat never expected such a privilege, never dared to dream of such a thing. Moreover, its owner, poor Peter who assumed that this day would be a regular humdrum day, no better, no worse than any other day, is sitting there in the boat stunned, stopped dead in his tracks by the sudden presence of Heaven itself in the words and power of Jesus. Perhaps he’s too overwhelmed to think anything at the moment but, “My God... my God....” And at this instant in time and eternity, Peter’s whole world has changed, because the one who sustains all things by the power of His word is sitting in Peter’s boat and teaching the people.

The Heavenly Son condescended to become the Son of Man, to enter our world which is His world, to open up the glory of His grace to the eyes of sinners to transform the fallen into the redeemed. Of that glory the apostle John writes (John 1:14), “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And here on this very day Peter looks upon the glory of the Only-Begotten, hears the truth of heaven from His lips, and life becomes something altogether new. And the Son of God is altogether capable to this very day to come to us, wherever we may be occupied with life’s everyday humdrum affairs, and utterly change our whole world, starting before all else with what’s inside us.

I quite imagine that if anyone else had said to Peter (read v.4, “...Push out into deep water...”), Peter would have given a rather different answer! But not to Jesus Christ. To Jesus, Peter says (read v.5). Peter was already different, had already become someone else. He could have hardened his heart, as many others did, but in contrast to them Peter began instead to love. “Lord, I don’t understand this, and I fished all night with nothing to show for it, but it doesn’t matter: if You say to do it, I’ll do it.” It is miraculous how the One who sustains all things by His powerful word with just a word pierced to the very heart of this strong-willed fisherman.
We also often need a word, just a word, from God, for Him to pierce to our deepest heart with transforming truth. But His word is not always the word we expected. Like Peter, we need to be ready to answer: “Lord, I don’t understand, but all the same, if you say it, I’ll do it.”

And that’s what Peter did. And the result was, they caught a great quantity of fish, so much that their nets began to break. The One who sustains all things by His powerful word, who one day turned water into wine, who multiplied the bread and the fish and fed multitudes, that very One transformed Peter’s “daily bread”, his perfectly common, humdrum livelihood, into a manifestation of divine glory. Those fish hardly expected that they would become the manifestation of the power of Christ, but when the call came, they answered and with alacrity! They sped to the nets when the One who sustains all things by His powerful word called. And what was His purpose? Just to give Peter and company the biggest catch of their lives? Make the biggest one-day profit their business ever saw? Throw a humdinger of a party and invite the whole town? No. The Lord demonstrated his power in order to conquer the heart of a self-assured fisherman.

(Read vv. 8-11)

And when the boat and the fish and the nets had fulfilled their assignments, Jesus Christ and His new disciples left them there on the shore. Let somebody else, maybe a pauper, sell the fish, let it be a blessing to him and his family. But to Peter, John and Andrew, Christ says, “I will make you fishers of men.”

God’s business is to seek and save human souls, to the glory of His name. The One who sustains all things by His powerful word will utilize anything He wants, everything He has created, to do that. As the apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:16-17 (read: “...And he is before all things, and all things by him exist.”) This is the same one of whom the apostle John writes (John 1:11-12), that he came to his own, but his own did not receive him. But as many as did receive him, those who believed in his name, to them he gave the right to become the children of God.

When is the End? (Acts 12:1-19)

2009-06-06T07:24:00.004-04:00

This one is just special. The lessons I took from the passage mean very much to me personally, and I have been deeply gratified to hear from others that the sermon helped them through critical moments in their lives. The whole sermon could be summed up in one idea: God is working out something great, and there is never a time when He's not. When we really grasp what that means, there is genuine liberation of the heart. It does require faith, however....

Let’s think for a moment about everything that was going on before the twelfth chapter of Acts. First, you had Jesus Himself fulfilling His mission on the earth. The disciples followed Him for three years. It seemed to be a successful, joyful period. Crowds were gathering to hear Jesus. The disciples were ready to set up God’s kingdom on earth, when suddenly – the cross. The end. Everything finished. But, not so! On the third day, Jesus rose. And then He ascended to heaven, and then came the Holy Spirit, and thousands of people turned to the Lord. A new beginning, a mighty movement, “full steam ahead”, when suddenly – Stephen is stoned to death. Shock, grief. Oh, yes, the Church knew that such a thing could happen. But knowing something might happen and seeing it with your own eyes are two different things. I can imagine the newborn Church suddenly grew profoundly grave and reflective. Could it be... maybe... this is the end? Perhaps the Lord gave us a very brief time, indeed, to spread the news and now, we will be led as lambs to the slaughter? Perhaps His coming is already at hand? Quite possibly such thoughts circulated among them. After all, they couldn’t know that we would be here talking about them two thousand years later! As they were going through these things, these weren’t storybook events, they were real live, happening-right-now-to-us things. And the question was (as it always is), what will tomorrow bring?

Earlier in my life I did a fair bit of acting on the stage. It’s a lot of fun to play a part in a play. For a little while you live in a different world, you’re a different person. And you know all the words you’re going to say, and everything that’s going to happen to you, and how others are going to treat you and how you’ll react to them. And, you know how the play ends. But real life isn’t like a play. When you wake up in the morning you don’t have the day’s script sitting by your bed where everything’s written down – exactly what you’ll say, how others will reply, how they’ll treat you, how you’ll react, or even whether this day is going to bring you more joy or more grief. Real life isn’t like that. But we easily forget that the people we read about in Scripture were people just like us, not characters in a book. These are not figures in a painting by Da Vinci. Peter didn’t have a book of Acts sitting by his bed, where he could check it in the morning and find out, “Ah! Today the Holy Spirit descends on us in tongues of fire and I preach a sermon to three thousand people!” It’s important to remember that Peter and all the others in the Bible were the same kind of people living in the same kind of real world as us. Why is it important? Because God moves in the lives of real people, not in the lives of storybook characters. We discover this in the scriptures and we can take encouragement from it.

Let’s read Acts 12:1-5 (read).

Why did Herod do this? Did he do it because the Bible told him to do it? Of course not. Like Peter, Herod also didn’t have such a “script”. He did this because this is the kind of person he was. Herod thought mighty highly of himself. You remember what he did at his big birthday party? He pronounced a proud promise to demonstrate to one and all just how magnanimous, and rich, he was. But then, in order not to lose face in front of the guests, he fulfilled his foolish, foolish promise, even though he really didn’t want to. Herod behaved like a fool, worrying about what others thought of him. He was ready at any moment to commit reckless, cruel actions if it meant that he’d get honor and praise from others. And so, Herod – the same Herod who killed John the Baptist – now kills James, because it made the people happy. And again, imagine the jolt this was for the young Church! James, a young man, all at once, gone. But he was one of the ones who walked with Jesus for three years, he was one of the special three who saw the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’s daughter, he was with Jesus at the last supper and in the Garden, he was in the upper room when the Risen Jesus appeared and on the Mount when Jesus ascended to heaven, he was there at Pentecost, at the birth of this mighty movement of God, one of the Twelve destined to lead the Church for years and years, maybe even till Jesus comes again. But they killed him, he’s gone. Just like that. It can’t be. There must be a mistake. It seems totally unfair, wrong. But it’s reality. For James the road came to an end far sooner than anyone expected. God allowed James to glorify Him with his early and heartbreaking death. It was truly a sacrifice, a loss for the Church.

And so, Herod, steered by the opinion of the people, next arrests Peter. If the death of one of these Christians added points to his popularity ratings, then why not two? And now Peter has every reason to think that the end has come for him, too. But it turns out that God has other plans for Peter.

(Read vv.6-11)

In the midst of a very serious situation I find, nevertheless, a bit of humor. Peter wasn’t expecting an angel. When the angel appeared, Peter didn’t say, “Well there you are, finally!” On the contrary, Peter thought this was all a dream! And the angel deals with him rather like a child. First he gives him a nudge in the side, says, Hey, get up! Peter opens his eyes but he’s still in a dream-world and blinded by the light, and I think our dear Peter would be lying there still if the angel hadn’t micromanaged the situation, telling him every single thing to do! First the chains fall off, and then the angel says, “Get dressed”, so Peter gets dressed. Then the angel says, “Put your sandals on”, so Peter puts his sandals on. Then the angel says, “Put on your coat and follow me”, and Peter does it all like an obedient child, though he has no idea what’s actually happening. And you know, there are times in life when we, too, cannot grasp what is happening. Here Peter is like a helpless child. None of us likes being in a position like that. We like to present a completely different image, as people completely in charge of things. But there are those times when we stand face-to-face with the depths or our helplessness. It reminds me of the catastrophe of September 11th. That morning a lot of people came to work, at the World Trade Center – executive directors, computer specialists, international bankers, the movers and shakers of the world economy. And suddenly, all in a moment, they were trapped, at the windows of the 90th, the 100th floor, and all that they had left in life was a choice: to jump to their death, or to burn to death. Utter helplessness. Blessed is the person who always recognizes his helplessness and God as his helper. When we know this, then God will send into our lives a multitude of surprises, but we can accept them, with God as our helper. Surprise, James! Today, you will give you life for Christ and enter everlasting joy. Surprise, Peter! Today isn’t your day. For you there’s still work to do.

(Read vv. 12-17)

The Church was praying. What words do you think they were praying? I strongly doubt they were praying anything like, “Lord, please send an angel who’ll make the chains fall off of Peter and then lead him out of the prison. And make sure that the gates open up all by themselves and none of the guards even notice Peter walking out. Could you do that?” Even though I’m sure the early Church had enough faith to accept that God could do such a thing, I doubt they had the imagination to ask for it! They were asking God to save Peter, though they had no idea how He might do that.

So then Rhoda hears knocking and goes to the door and sees the last thing in the world she was expecting to see – the answer to their prayer! Surprise! Do you know that God will performs surprises like that in your life, too? He will answer your prayers in ways you never imagined. And sometimes you will need more faith to accept the answer than you needed to make the request. As for Rhoda, she couldn’t believe it!

Again, I find humor in this scene, when they finally let Peter in. Peter had to wave his arms to shush them all up! Why? Because they were making a racket and he had to quiet them down to get a word in edgewise. It is kind of funny here how Peter has changed roles. The one who was just the dazed child whom the angel had to lead by hand has now become the papa who has to quiet down his over-excited, chattering children! I imagine some of them were already expounding their theories on how Peter got out, while others were asking, “What were we praying for? Peter’s not in prison – he’s right here!” And nobody’s listening to poor Peter, who happens to know exactly what happened. ‘Cause he was there! So finally he quiets them down and says, “Now I’ll tell you all what happened.” And when we, like Peter, will allow God to take us, too, by the hand and lead us in ways we don’t understand, then at the end of the day we all will have something to tell others, and with authority, because we know. We were there when God worked.

And then Peter leaves for another place. God didn’t save Peter for Peter to march boldly into Herod’s palace and say, “Ha, ha! You see how God saved me?” God gave Peter, and us too, common sense. If God saved Peter from Herod, it meant Peter other places to work, other deeds to do for Christ. For Peter this wasn’t the end. But for others, it was.

(Read vv.18-19)

These guards were sort of in the same position as those people who came to work at the World Trade Center that terrible day, never imagining that that day was their last day. But it was. And not only for the guards but reading a bit further we find that Herod’s life suddenly came to a miserable end. At precisely the moment Herod was basking in the praise which rightly belongs only to God, he received an absolutely unexpected blow, from a Power higher than his, and he died in agony, with his body consumed by worms.

At the beginning of the sermon I asked, “When is the end?” You might ask, “The end of what?” Actually, it could be the end of anything! Maybe the end of a difficult period of your life. When is the end? Even the end of a wonderful chapter in your life. When is the end? Perhaps the end of particular suffering, pain, illness, trial. When is the end? Or life itself. When is the end? And what will it be like? We don’t know when it will be or what it will be like. And we usually don’t know, as a rule, what new beginning these endings in our life will lead to. But we know this: God is for us and not against us. God is the helper in our helplessness. God is real and moves in the lives of real people – people like James, and Peter and you and me. And when we trust Him, then He will turn that unknown ending – whatever it might be the end of – into the occasion for His glory. And He will turn every ending into a new beginning, most of all that ending when we take our final breath, and then begins our real, never-ending story.

The Rock in the Wilderness

2009-06-04T08:11:00.001-04:00

This sermon is based on what you might consider a... “creative” interpretation, i.e., that the “big picture” meaning of the event where Moses struck the rock and water came forth for the nation is the sacrifice of God Himself for the salvation of His people. Following on that, the reason for God’s severe punishment of Moses the next time Moses struck the rock, which God never told him to do, is that Moses distorted and ruined the whole theological lesson (otherwise called a “revelation”) with which God intended to invest the event. The lesson: don’t play games with God’s revelation. As I said, you may consider this take to be “creative”, but I feel there is compelling evidence in the scriptures for it. The ideas may be a bit complicated, but I tried my best to make the sermon – since it is a sermon – conversational and “folksy”. In order to bring home to my listeners from the very get-go just how significant it was that God told Moses to strike the rock where HE was standing, I present the notion of Moses, at his first encounter with God, attacking the burning bush with his staff.

Let’s begin by reading Exodus 3:5 (read).

What if Moses hadn’t obeyed God? What if, even, he thought he was having an hallucination, and to snap out of it had taken his shepherd’s rod and starting flailing away at that bush? What then? Why is it so shocking, so inconceivable, even to suggest such a thing? Because we know that God’s holy presence sanctified that place. Moses had to revere the place of God’s self-manifestation. He had to take off his sandals, because it was holy ground. Consider what 2 Chronicles 30:27 says about God’s dwelling place (read) – it is a holy place. Psalm 2: 6 says (read) and Psalm 11:4: (read). What makes the temple holy? God’s presence, just as it made holy the ground where God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush.

When God appears, you can’t even touch the place where He is, much less do violence to it. At Mount Sinai the Lord said, “Be careful not to go up on the mountain of even to touch the foot of it; anyone who touches the mountain will be condemned to death.” Why? Because God is there.
But then how do you explain the place in scripture, and the event in history, where God says to Moses, “You will go to a place where you’ll see Me standing and you’ll strike that place with your staff.” Such a thing happened. It’s described in Exodus 17:4-7 (read).

The nation had risen up against God and His servant. They were ready to kill Moses and return to slavery. God would have been perfectly justified in wiping out the nation. On the contrary, though, He says, “Strike ME.” Well, He didn’t say it in exactly those words. But if in every other instance to violate the place of God’s presence was the same as violating God Himself, then I think we are right in saying that striking the rock on which God was standing was the same as striking God Himself. Moreover, just think about what it was the Moses had to do this with: “The staff with which you struck the water, take in your hand and go” – the staff with which God judged Egypt’s sin and brought death to the River Nile, the Egyptians source of life! There on the River Nile the staff became an instrument of God’s wrath, the channel of His power over all the forces of evil. And now, Moses is supposed to walk right up to God, where God is standing on the rock, and what that same staff, strike it. Only this time, Moses won’t be punished – as he would have been if he had done something similar at the burning bush; and the nation won’t suffer death, as the Egyptians did when the River was turned to blood; this time, a river of saving water will gush forth from the rock for this stubborn and rebellious people!

There’s only one other place in the Bible, one other statement of the Lord, that I can compare to this. It’s what Jesus Christ said to the Jews: “Destroy this temple and I will raise is in three days.” Or perhaps also these words (John 12:32): “’And I, if I am lifted up, will draw all people to Me.’ He said these things to indicate the kind of death He would die.” Destroy my body, lift Me up on the cross, and I will give living water, the bread of life, to all who come to Me. Who else do we see here but the God Who once said, “You will strike the rock where I am standing and water will come out for the people”? Like the staff, the cross became simultaneously the instrument of wrath and salvation, of punishment and propitiation, of humiliation and power. One cross, two effects: judgment and mercy. it reminds me of what the apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians (1:18): “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Perhaps these similarities, or correspondences, or parallels, can help us understand why God reacted so severely to what Moses did the next time water was supposed to come from the rock, as we read in Numbers 20:7-12 (read).

Notice, this time God said absolutely nothing about striking the rock; He didn’t even say anything about Himself standing on it! What we have here is a drastically different picture in almost every way, and for a good reason. This is no longer a picture, or illustration, of punishment judgment. God’s intention here was very different, because God never does exactly the same thing twice. Everything God does is something new. And just as it is written in Hebrews 10:10, “By this same will we have been sanctified by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”, in the same way Moses was to strike the rock “once for all”. The second time he was only to speak to it, and it would have poured forth living water immediately. Why did God react so severely to Moses’ misdeed? He says, “Because you did not believe Me, to display my holiness before the sons of Israel, you will not lead the nation into the land which I am giving them.”

Some say that God punished Moses because Moses got angry, or proud. But the Scriptures don’t say that. Besides, even people like Samuel and Elijah got pretty mad in their time, and we don’t see God punishing them like this. Or some say it was because Moses sinned. Well, excuse me, but Moses was a sinner! And you could say that King David sinned even worse, not only against God but against the whole nation. It happens. But what made this particular sin especially grave? “You did not believe Me,” says God, “to display my holiness.” It is an amazing paradox that when Moses took his staff and hit the rock where God was standing, he was in fact believing God and displaying God’s holiness – exactly because that’s what God said to do. In that case, Moses was correctly carrying out his role in God’s historical, redemptive plan. He was telling the story right. But this time, he wasn’t supposed to hit the rock, because... Christ cannot be crucified again. Those rocks, the first of which was to be struck and the second of which was to be spoken to – they were Christ, Christ foreshadowed. As the apostle Paul asserts (1 Corinthians 10:4): “And they all drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank from the spiritual rock that was accompanying them; the rock was Christ.” And just as it was forbidden to strike the rock a second time, so Christ cannot be crucified a second time.

(Read Hebrews 7:25) Christ intercedes for those who come to Him with their needs and tell Him about them, just as Moses was to speak to the second rock, not strike it. (Read Hebrews 7:26-27) Just as Moses had to strike the first rock, Christ had to be struck before the water of life could flow from Him to His people. But just as Christ now lives forever and is with us always, so the Rock figuratively accompanied the nation through the wilderness, not to be struck a second time but to answer when the nation called upon Him. That Rock was Christ. And God made this history a holy depiction of our salvation. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:6, “And these things were pictures for us.”

Perhaps now we begin to understand why God reacted so severely to Moses’ striking the second rock. Just as much as God cherishes the accomplishment of redemption through His beloved Son, that much, too, does He cherish the correct foreshadowing of that redemption, in the way He intended it, in history. Moses, in a burst of his own frustration, ended up distorting and violating one of the holiest images of Christ - yes, even the very presence of Christ - in the Old Testament. That touches the very holiness of God. And Moses committed this error because he failed to believe God. God’s instructions weren’t enough; Moses thought he could do better. And trying to do better, he only ruined a holy revelation. He failed to believe, and it is no coincidence that faith is the key to the salvation that Jesus came to give. In every way, Moses’ failure ruined a holy moment in God’s historical revelation of redemption. For that, Moses was prohibited from entering the promised land.

How does this relate to us?

Just as the Rock, figuratively, accompanied the nation all through the wilderness, so we, in an even greater and more glorious way, are accompanied all through life’s journey by Him who said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Just as Moses was only to speak – not strike! – the second time, so we need only to speak to Christ in faith and He will hear and respond to our need. Just as every place where God appeared in the Old Testament was holy, so His dwelling place today is holy. And what place is that? The apostle Paul says (2 Cor. 6:16), “We are the temple of the living God.” It is no less dangerous to violate this temple than it was to strike for the second time the Rock that was Christ. Let us do nothing that could bring harm to the people of God, the Bride for whom Christ shed His blood and for whom He is now preparing the marriage supper of the Lamb. When the people of Israel doubted God and demanded water, God gave them water, but He also rebuked them for testing Him (Exodus 17:7): “And [Moses] called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’” Let us not tempt the Lord by doubting Him or causing quarreling and strife among His people!

If the manifestations of God in the Old Testament were great, how much greater is it now that Christ has come to live in our hearts? We should never think that, because they were eyewitnesses of such direct demonstrations of power, the Israelites had a higher responsibility than we do to revere the Lord’s holiness and to sanctify His name in their lives. On the contrary, we have the higher responsibility, for what was then a foreshadowing is now a reality, what was a holy depiction is now, in the fullest sense, a holy experience. You could say that what happened with the nation of Israel and the Rock in the wilderness has now happened with us again, only fully, and perfectly. So that in our case we can say that (read the whole passage of Hebrews 12:18-29) “you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire....”

A Short Communion Meditation

2009-06-03T04:51:00.002-04:00

This brief message is appropriate before or after observing the Lord's Supper.

When I was in Israel I visited a shop one day where they sold souvenirs and knick-knacks and stuff like nice-smelling soaps and candles. As I was looking at these things the shoplady came over to help me. She didn't speak English and my Hebrew was quite rudimentary, so we were mostly talking in sign language! Until, that is, I unconsciously allowed a Russian word to slip out. Her eyes opened wide and she exclaimed in perfect Russian, "You speak Russian! Why didn't you tell me?!" I could just as well have asked her the same question. She was, of course, from Russia and upon this discovery we were able to converse freely. She asked what brought me to Israel and I mentioned I was there with a group of Baptist pastors. She began to ask me about my faith, and as I explained she listened very attentively. Until I came to the crucifixion. Then she stopped me abruptly and said, "Stop! That I cannot accept. The Messiah hanging on a cross? Never!"

I'll say more about this shoplady in a few minutes, but let's turn now to a passage of scripture. (Read Matthew 11:2-6). "Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me." How mysterious these words must have sounded. Jesus has described the most wonderful miracles: the blind see, the lame walk! This is all good news. Surely everyone was rejoicing! What was there to be offended at, what reason to fall away? Why did the Lord add these mysterious words? He did so because he knew, perfectly, what was coming....

(Read Matthew 16:21-23). Doesn't Peter sound much like that shoplady in Jerusalem? "No, this cannot be! I won't accept it!" In this confrontation we learn how much God's ways are not our ways. "You're not thinking God's thoughts", Jesus tells Peter. Man's thoughts are naturally focused on this life and this world. God's thoughts are higher, and they are perfect and eternal. Here in this passage we see a paradox. Peter wanted to protect Jesus' life. We'd call that a good motive. But Jesus rebuked him for it, even called him a "satan", that is, an enemy. Peter wasn't thinking like God. To God, the salvation of man was worth the sacrifice of His Son. Jesus considered his own life less important than the salvation of man and the glory of his Father.

But man doesn't think like God. What God calls important, what God considers of the utmost value, what God is ready to give everything for, man calls foolishness or ignores completely.

In that shop in Jerusalem, when the woman said she couldn't accept a crucified Messiah, I told her she wasn't the first person to say that. Two thousand years ago the apostle Paul met the same objection. You see, I wanted her to know that her argument was already an old, worn-out one! (Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25) Remember, Jesus says, "Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me."

To this day God holds out the cross to the world, the cross as the place of redemption and forgiveness - Christ on the cross as the Sacrifice Lamb. And God says to the world, "Will you surrender your own thoughts, your own wisdom, and receive my love and salvation? Will you receive My Son?"

Jesus on the cross... this is not philosophy, this isn't mere religion, this isn't clever words of human wisdom - this is God's infinite love fully unfolded and salvation for everyone who receives him.

We have a beautiful chorus we sing in English: "Oh, how he loves you and me; oh, how he loves you and me! He gave his life - what more could he give? Oh, how he loves you; oh, how he loves me; oh, how he loves you and me."

That is why, to this very day, as the apostle Paul wrote, "whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Cor. 11:26)

Today we proclaim his death and will go on proclaiming it until he comes, even if it is "foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews", because it is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." And so Jesus said, "Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me."

The Lord’s Discipline (Hebrews 12:4-11)

2009-06-03T04:29:00.002-04:00

This sermon is similar in theme to the previous one, “Fire”; that is, it concerns trial and purification in life. Only this one is more squarely based on a particular passage, where it talks about the Lord’s discipline/punishment in Hebrews 12. This was also one of my early sermons in Ukraine, before I was capable of composing a text in Russian myself. This one and the “Fire” one were composed in English, but for translation, of course, so that their style is quite “basic”. By the way, I am indebted to C.S. Lewis for his reflections on the advantage of actually embracing the notion of “punishment” in one’s spiritual formation.

(Read Hebrews 12:4-11)

I always used to find verse 4 somewhat intimidating. The verse seems to rebuke, to say that we have not suffered sufficiently for our faith. Finally, though, I realized that I wasn’t getting the writer’s real point. Now I see that verse 4 is an encouragement, not a rebuke.

The verse says, “You have not yet resisted sin to the point of shedding your blood”. Does this mean that the readers are weak Christians? That they’re unspiritual? Not dedicated enough? And by the way: how does one resist sin to the point of shedding blood, anyway? Let’s be frank: this is not a daily reality in our lives. We don’t bleed when we resist temptation. The whole notion seems very distant from real life.

This only shows, though, how dangerous it is to interpret a verse of scripture in isolation from its context. If you read the verse all by itself, it sounds as if the reader is the center of attention, as if God is saying, “You haven’t resisted sin enough! When you resist sin so strongly that you bleed, then I’ll be happy with you.” But when we read the verse in its context we see that that’s not at all what it’s saying. In fact, the verse is an encouragement, not a rebuke.

The writer is comparing the readers – and that includes you and me – to those who kept their faith through terrible tribulations, who were even killed for their faith as they stood against the sin of a fallen world. The writer is talking about actual trials, testings and persecutions, and in this light we can easily understand what he means about “shedding blood”. He lists these people in chapter eleven, and of them the final and greatest is Jesus Christ. The writer points this out powerfully at the beginning of chapter twelve.

And it is then that the writer turns to you and me and says, “You see what those people suffered? Dear friends, maybe you are suffering the attacks of sin and temptation, but you can endure this and much more, just as they did.”

In America we have a saying, “A little sweat never killed anyone.” In other words, hard work isn’t bad for you; actually, it’s good for you. Likewise, the writer here is saying, “Learning to endure never hurt anyone.” Quite the opposite, in fact: learning to endure temptation and resist sin will make you perfect. So, continue to trust that every temptation and tribulation can be turned to God’s advantage. God’s discipline – yes, even His punishment! – will finally lead you to true spiritual success.

“Punishment” – that’s a heavy word. Especially when we use it in connection with God. Especially when we use it in connection with God. There are many people in the world who consider themselves very modern and enlightened and would say that this is a primitive, unenlightened concept. “How superstitious to think of a God who punishes! You are simply taking an idea from human experience and applying it to God. But if God really exists, He is surely much higher than all our concepts. We cannot talk about Him punishing, or even say that He has emotions, or desire, or will. Those are human traits. We certainly mustn’t imagine Him punishing, because that is an unpleasant, negative, human practice, which isn’t worthy of God! If God exists, He only loves. That’s an idea which we can accept.”

People who talk this way (and there are very many of them) become their own ultimate authority. They create a God to their own liking and then they congratulate themselves for their cleverness and creativity, calling it “inspiration”. Of course, we are all capable of the same error; maybe even we all do this to one extent or another. We must be very careful about that. We want to worship God as He is, as He knows Himself to be. We don’t want to worship some God whom we have simply formed in our imagination.

Here in Hebrews 12:6, the writer quotes from Proverbs (3:11,12), where it clearly says that God punishes. Whom does God punish? Everyone He accepts as His child. Therefore, this is a punishment that bears good fruit. It is a punishment which improves and even transforms, which frees the children of God. It serves to bring them into the fullness of true humanity.
It is guaranteed that in all our lives there will be difficult circumstances. We will all meet suffering. Every person will taste disappointment and grief. We will all be hurt by the foolishness of others, and by our own foolishness. This is inevitable.

But for believers there is an immeasurable advantage. We can see the hand of the heavenly Father behind every circumstance. This lifts our temptations and tribulations to a higher plane and gives them positive meaning. Even when God punishes us, there is a loving purpose in the punishment. That means there is hope for the future.

For those without faith, life’s trials are ultimately meaningless, fruitless. What a terrible emptiness! We trust in a perfect Father who is not capricious, not impulsive, but in everything wise and loving. Our common sense tells us that earthly fathers must punish their children. Why would the heavenly Father not need to do the same? And much more wisely! Because earthly fathers punish imperfectly, sometimes unfairly, sometimes only to vent their own anger, not really thinking about what their children truly need for their healthy development. But the heavenly Father never loses control of Himself. He never punishes impulsively. Everything God does is an act of holiness and truth, of supreme wisdom and grace.

So let’s take encouragement from these words. Accept the Lord’s discipline when it comes, even His punishment. Be grateful for the love of your heavenly Father. Allow His discipline to reach its goal – that is, your sanctification, both your joy and God’s joy. You have not yet resisted sin, or a sinful world, to the point of death, as many of God’s children have done and are still doing today. And even if it came to the point of standing up to sin at the cost of your life, what then? You have the promise of heaven, of the presence of Christ in all His glory, together with the heroes of the faith who went on before us. So take courage and press forward in faith, fixing your eyes upon Christ Jesus.

Fire

2009-06-02T10:11:00.004-04:00

This sermon is one of my oldest "Ukrainian sermons". Back when I could hardly speak Russian and when I was traveling almost every weekend to village churches together with my friends Vova and Pasha, I would often preach this one, with Vova interpreting. It's a topical sermon, on the general idea of the positive nuance of the "fire" metaphor in Scripture as related to personal spiritual experience. I must acknowledge the Catholic writer Thomas Merton for the metaphor of the wax and seal. That's what "got me thinking" and led to the broader reflections constructed around that central image.

The Bible has very interesting things to say about fire. Usually we think of fire in connection with hell, with eternal punishment. "Fire" has a negative, frightening connotation. We mustn’t overlook the positive connotation of "fire" in the Bible, though. The Bible clearly tells us that fire is not only for punishment. No, “fire” is part of the believer’s daily experience….

Matthew 3:11 says, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Here, John the Baptist is predicting the ministry of God's Son. He’s telling the crowd gathered by the water’s edge, "You’re going to be immersed by the Messiah into God's Spirit – and into fire!" The people must have been wondering, “What can he possibly be talking about?” We can well ask the same question today. Perhaps John intended to present God’s Spirit as fire? There’s truth in that, to be sure; the scripture says, "our God is a consuming fire." Or maybe John meant to depict the work of the Holy Spirit as a “fire” that burns away everything that displeases God, whatever isn’t of eternal worth. That could be, too. The apostle Peter spoke of very much the same thing. He said that our faith must be purified just like fire purifies gold - but the purification of faith is of far more lasting worth; even earthly gold, no matter how pure, will ultimately pass away, while faith purified in God’s spiritual fire is of eternal value.

The scriptures also tell us that we’ll be tested by fire on the last day. That is, the quality of our life and ministry will be tested. Paul tells us "that Day will appear with fire and the fire will test everyone's work to show what sort of work it was."

Therefore fire is inevitable, even for the believer. Not only is it inevitable, it’s to be desired. Why? Because it's God's will! And God's will is always perfect. You remember how Jesus said with deep emotion, "I came to set fire to the world, and I wish it were already burning!" Jesus' fire is the fire that changes lives. It’s both a wonderful and terrible fire. It purifies life – I mean real life, by destroying the false “life” that hangs on, even in believers. That’s definitely painful. But the pain is necessary, even blessed. If we resist this fire, we resist God Himself, to the detriment of our own present and future fulfillment.

Let me make an important clarification: when I talk about fire, I don't mean emotion! I don't mean our own zeal or anything that comes from ourselves. I'm talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. I don't mean feelings; I mean the tests of life – the troubles, the persecutions, the temptations, our battle against sin and the flesh. I believe God can use all of these like fire, to purify us for His holy purpose, for His glory on the day of His appearing. His Spirit will wrestle with us and use the circumstances in which we find ourselves as His means for sanctification.

No one is exempt from this fire. Jesus said, "Every person will be salted with fire." Isn't that a strange picture? Imagine shaking a salt shaker, and out of the shaker comes… not salt but fire! That wouldn’t add much in the way of flavor to your mashed potatoes! But the fire of God adds the wonderful “flavor” of holiness, of Christ-likeness, to our lives.

That's the purpose of God's fire: to make us like Him, children who manifest a resemblance to their Heavenly Father. This work must advance in us. The apostle Paul warns, "Don't extinguish the fire of the Spirit!" (1 Thess. 5:19), because, if you do, you’re extinguishing your own true fulfillment, the joy for which God created you and redeemed you.

Our lives need to be like wax in the fire of God. By His fire we are softened, so that God can easily impress His nature into us. What happens if you take a seal and press it into cold, hard wax? It doesn't work. The wax can't receive the impression. What's more, the wax will probably crack and break. But soft wax is ready for the seal; and by receiving the seal, the wax receives a new identity. A believer needs, at the core of his being, to be like that wax, softened by the fire of God's Spirit, ready to fully receive his new identity.

And what is that new identity? The apostle John says we don't know yet what we will be, but we know that we will be like Him… why? "Because we shall see Him even as He is." In other words, our lives will be like soft wax, ready to completely receive the image of Christ, ready to identify with Him in perfect love. Perhaps an earthly analogy is the way that lovers see themselves in each other’s eyes....

In the book of Revelation, Jesus Christ himself advises us to buy gold that has been purified in fire. This gold is the holiness of a devoted life, and it comes only by fire. What a high and difficult calling! Yes, of course it's difficult! Jesus himself said that the way was narrow and few would find it. But, this way is also the only way worth going: the way of faith, of endurance, of suffering, of victory, the way of fire and cleansing. The Way of Christ.

In Revelation, Jesus Christ promises a new name to all who endure. And here’s something very interesting: "No one knows this new name except the one who receives it." Maybe you thought that in heaven there's no private property? That everything belongs to everybody (like an ostensible communist paradise)? Not at all. In God's kingdom your name is yours alone, and nobody else has a right to it. No one else even knows it! Why? Because your new name is you yourself, it is what only you can be for God. It is the fullness of who you are. Remember what it says in Ephesians? We are God's "workmanship". One day the Lord will put His seal of approval on the final, finished, perfect product – you! And that seal of approval is your new name. Your new name is the expression of an idea – a perfect and beautiful idea, an eternal idea, an idea which originated in God Himself when He created you. You are that idea.

Allow God to continue bringing that idea to perfection, even through fire. Willingly accept the fire that purifies. Understand that this is God's loving work. That will help you to give thanks and endure. God is faithful and He will complete His good work in you.