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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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

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)

(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.