Psalm 88 is similar to many other psalms in that first, it’s a prayer, and second, it’s a lament — the psalmist is struggling. We see this often in the psalms.

But Psalm 88 is dissimilar to other psalms — or really, it’s unlike any other psalm in that it has no resolution. Other psalms will feature moments of disorientation and darkness, but by the last verse, they spring forward, they bounce back, they recite hope.

But that’s not the case in Psalm 88. The very last verse, where we’re expecting the light to break through, says, verse 18:

“You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.”

We can see it there on the page in verse 18. Darkness literally gets the last word in Psalm 88, which is why this psalm has been called “the saddest psalm of the Psalter.”

It’s uncomfortable to read; it’s uncomfortable to preach; it’s uncomfortable to listen to, but here we are this morning, and I want to know: Why does God give us Psalm 88?

Now, we know the answer to that question is because somehow it’s good for us. By God’s grace, he loves us and he’s committed to our everlasting good in Christ — we know that’s true and that’s where we should start any time we ask “why” about anything: God is good. He loves you. And he’s sovereign.

So a better question might be: Why is Psalm 88 good for us? In God’s wisdom and love, why do we need Psalm 88?

I think there are three reasons. We’re going to look at each one, but first let’s pray again and ask God for help.

Father in heaven, by your grace we are here with your Word open before us, and we ask for your help. We reject any assumptions that there’s nothing here for us, and we reject any pretense that thinks we can gain anything from you in our own strength. Our souls are needy and you must feed us. Do that, please, in Jesus’s name, amen.

The first reason we need Psalm 88 …

Soul trouble is a real experience in Christian life.We don’t know the historical details behind this psalm. The superscript tells us that it’s from a son of Korah named Heman the Ezrahite — and there are a couple different “Hemans” in the Old Testament; we’re not 100% sure which one this is, but he’s not to be confused with He-Man, the cartoon from the 1980s. This is Heman the psalmist, but beyond that, we don’t know much about what’s going on. We don’t know of a certain event he’s responding to. And that’s on purpose.

It’s important for us to see that the trouble in Psalm 88 is not an external physical enemy, but it’s personal and spiritual … and the thing with personal, spiritual trouble is that it can happen anywhere at any time — in the Middle East in 600BC or here, today — and it can happen for all kinds of reasons, some that make sense and others that make no sense.

In Need of a CategoryThe fact is it’s trouble. The psalmist says in verse 3,

“My soul is full of troubles.”

And we can understand that … he has a troubled soul. Soul trouble. And this a category we need. There is such a thing as a condition of soul that’s like being on the edge of the grave, he says in verse 3. He uses lots metaphors to describe the experience …

Verse 4:

“I am counted among those who go down to the pit, I am a man who has no strength.”

To paraphrase him, he’s saying,

I’ve been betted against and drained of life, verse 4.

I’m like a zombie and useless — discarded with the dead, verse 5.

I’m forgotten and forsaken by God, verse 6.

And this is the psalm. You heard it read. It’s this kind of talking pretty much the whole way through, and it just goes from bad to worse, to finally darkness. This issoul trouble— it’s a condition.

Or, it’s what some have called “spiritual depression.” That’s the title that Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave it back in the 1960s (the word “depression” was not used back then like it is today). But he explained it as an experience in the Christian life when you’re in a prolonged state of spiritual discouragement, heaviness, or lack of joy — and not because of some sin, but it just is.

This experience has also been called “the dark night of the soul.”

Or also “divine absence.”

They’re all talking about the same thing. It’s an experience of intense spiritual dryness, disorientation, and darkness — it’s when God has permitted himself to seem far from you.

We need a category for this.

So call it what you want — “spiritual depression” or “dark night of the soul” or “divine absence” — I’m calling it soul trouble (to use the words of verse 3).

But the main thing is that you know it’s a thing. It’s a real experience in the Christian life, and some of you know about it all too well because you’ve been there … or you are there now.

And we don’t like to be there. We don’t want to be here. But we can’t just make it stop.

Others Have Been There, TooWell, first thing we all should know about this experience is that when you find yourself there, you’re not alone and it’s not uncommon. Historically, we have lots of examples of past saints who’ve been there.

Charles Spurgeon spoke openly of his own soul trouble. In 1858, he preached a sermon to his church titled, “The Christian’s Heaviness and Rejoicing,” and in that sermon he said,

I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for …

He battled this all throughout his ministry. Spurgeon can help us.

But personally, I’ve been most helped by John Bunyan, another Baptist ancestor and pastor. Bunyan lived in the 1600s but we can read him today, and he talks about his struggles openly in his autobiography. He called his experience “many turnings and goings” upon his heart. That’s another way to say Ups and downs. Back and forth.

I want to read to you an extended quote from Bunyan, and it’s in Old English, so hang with me (it’s printed in the handout if you want to follow). He writes this:

I have wondered much at this one thing, that though God doth visit my soul with never so blessed a discovery of himself, yet I have found again, that such hours have attended me afterwards, that I have been in my spirit so filled with darkness, that I could not so much as once conceive what that God and that comfort was with which I have been refreshed.

I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under, and yet at another time the whole Bible hath been to me as dry as a stick; or rather, my heart hath been so dead and dry unto it, that I could not conceive the least dram of refreshment, though I have looked it all over.

Do you hear him? His Christian life is like a roller coaster. He sees and then he can’t see. He has affections and then no affections. Rivers of refreshment; dry as a desert. And it doesn’t make sense. You ever been there before?

Brothers and sisters, you’re not alone.

As the Word of God!We can read about the experiences of past saints, but even better than that, God gave us Psalm 88. We can read the experience here as the word of God. We can walk with this psalmist as he’s in the darkest part of the valley.

Verse 7:

“Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.”

You’ve isolated me, verse 8. I’m shunned.

I pray to you every day but you don’t listen.

Why do you reject me? Why are you hiding from me?

I’m overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. I’m being destroyed and I can’t get a break.

I’m in the dark.

Soul trouble. That’s what this is.

And we need Psalm 88 because soul trouble is a real experience in the Christian life. God gave us this psalm so that we know what to do with it.

That’s the second reason we need Psalm 88.

We learn to take our soul trouble to God. Okay, so Psalm 88 is bleak and despairing at face-value, but when we look closer, we can see that it’s not without hope, and that’s because of the most obvious fact of this psalm: it is a prayer. Which means, everything that is said here is said to God.

Look at this with me, verse 1:

“O Yahweh, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.

Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!”

Verse 9:

“Every day I call upon you, O Yahweh; I spread out my hands to you.”

Verse 13:

“But I, O Yahweh, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.”

Do see that? You, you, you! The psalmist is bringing his soul trouble to God even as he knows that God is the one in control of it.

The God We Can TrustThat’s the amazing thing of the very first line in verse 1. He starts this whole psalm with, “O Yahweh, God of my salvation.”

Now why is that important?

It’s that he addresses God by his covenant name, Yahweh. The name “Yahweh” is the name that God revealed to Moses (and the people of Israel) as the grounds by which he can be trusted. This revelation is one of the highest moments in all the Bible. It is Exodus 34, on Mount Sinai: God passed before Moses and proclaimed his name:

“Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…”

God proclaimed himself to be the God who is there, and who is there to save. He is the present, saving God — Yahweh. That’s his name! That’s who he is! He is the present, saving God even when we can’t see, even when we may not feel it.

The psalmist acknowledges this reality right from the start. He’s in the dark, but even in the dark he comes to the God of promise, the God of covenant faithfulness, the God of his salvation. That’s what it means to call God by his name, “Yahweh” — which he does in verse 1, verse 9, and verse 13.

The psalmist feels forgotten, but he has not forgotten who to tell it to. Verses 1, 9, and 13 frame this psalm. He’s saying, Yahweh, I’m a mess, look at me. This is where I am. I’m a mess, but I’m your mess … And I’m coming to you.

We are taught here to do the same thing.

Three Possible ScenariosThere are really three possible scenarios we could be in. Track with me here:

The best scenario — this is not to have soul trouble — this is when God is close and clear. It’s what John Bunyan was talking about when he said “God doth visit my soul with blessed discoveries of himself.” We read the Bible and we can see! And we’re mainly thankful! Don’t you want that? It is “heaven on earth”(that’s what the Puritan Thomas Brooks called it). It’s the best scenario.
The worst scenario — this is to have soul trouble, to feel all the things Psalm 88 feels, but it’s to run away from God.It’s to abandon God, reject God, refuse to pray. That is “hell on earth.” God, keep us from that. It’s the worst scenario.

So there’s the best scenario and the worst scenario, and Psalm 88 is neither of those. So what is it?

It’s the second-best scenario. It’s to have the soul trouble, but to bring the soul trouble to the God who ‘feels’ far away. It’s to call him by his name, Yahweh, the God of my salvation. It’s to say, I’m a mess, but I’m your mess.

It’s not the best place to be, but it’s the second-best place to be, and sometimes God calls us to second best.

Part of Our Vocab?And again, in terms of a category, this is one that I want us to have in our church. I think it’s a big problem in the local church when everyone pretends like they’re in the best scenario when they’re not. Everybody we see, we say, “Hey, how are you?” And it’s constantly, “Great! Great! Great!”

I want us all to know: we don’t have to say “great” if it’s not great.

But then what do we say?If it’s not great and somebody asks you, “Hey, how are you?” You can say, “I’m doing second-best.”

Could we make that part of our vocabulary?

If we’re doing second-best, let’s tell one another, and help one another. God loves you right there, in that valley, in second-best. He loves you. He is the God of your salvation. Take your soul trouble to him.

Psalm 88 shows us how to do that.

Third reason God gives us this psalm …

Jesus has endured the darkness for us.The Book of Psalms overall is meant to be a guide for our worship. The psalms model for us how to live the life of real faith with all its ups and downs, turnings and goings. And it’s amazing how we can identify with such an ancient text. We forget sometimes that this was written thousands of years ago. And yet, we can read it and we get where the writers are coming from. That’s astounding. We have an ancient faith, and the psalms are for our faith.

But the psalms are not about us and our faith.

The psalms are mainly about the Messiah. Some psalms are more overt here than others, but every psalm, taken in context, is meant to point us to Jesus. The same goes for Psalm 88.

And I think that becomes clearer the more we slow down and hear what the psalmist is saying. As dark as our own situation might be, there are parts of Psalm 88 that stretch beyond our experience.

Wait, It’s Not That DarkAs it turns out, I ran into my own soul trouble this past week. True story. I didn’t cry for an hour like a child, like Spurgeon did, but I hit a snag, I was spinning my wheels for a bit, and providentially, I’m in Psalm 88. But the more I meditated on it, I was like, Yeah, I’m not there. It’s not that dark.

And I think we all have to say that by the time we get to verse 7.

This is one we need to see together. Can everybody find verse 7? If you don’t have a Bible, we’d love to give you one, but for now look on with a neighbor if you need to. We all need to see verse 7,

“Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah”

Now notice he doesn’t say, “It feels like your wrath is upon me.” No, he says, “Your wrath” — ḥēmāh, your fury, your rage — “your wrath lies heavy upon me.”

And I read that this week and said, I’ve never been there. Some of us in this room have been in some really dark places, but none of us have ever been there.

When you get to Psalm 88, verse 7 — the wrath of God heavy upon me — you read that and realize: there’s only one person who’s ever been there and lived to talk to about it. His name is Jesus.

And look, he went there for you. We can say, he went there for me.

He Went There For YouHe went there, to that ultimate place of darkness, and he suffered that wrath, so that we don’t have to.

Which means: as dark as it might get for you, you can remember that Jesus has already gone there and beyond there — on the darkest of days, from a hill called the Skull, after he cried forsaken, after he said It was finished, after they sealed the tomb with a stone, he went there, to the grave where his companions became darkness … but then he looked Death in the face and he said You’re done. … And he left. He got up.

He was raised in death-defeating, indestructible life which he has right now, for you, where you are. You might feel alone, but you are not alone. He will never leave you. He will never forsake you. Jesus is not afraid of the dark, and because of him we don’t have to be either. Praise him! Praise him! What a Savior!

Jesus, thank you for your great love for us. And thank you that the proof of your love is in your wounds. We know that you’ve not abandoned us. You’ve not forgotten us. But you’re here with us always and you hold us even when we hurt. And we can’t see. You’ve got us. We praise you, Jesus. We praise you.

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There are some people who really like to travel. There are others who really like the ideaof traveling, and my wife and I belong to that latter camp. Because though we’re certainly interested in other areas of the world — curious about the geography, architecture, and culture of other cities — we’re far less interested in paying the cost and taking the time to go to any of them. And so, what we do instead is watch online travel videos.

As you could guess, online travel videos often only ever highlight the most beautiful and the most impressive parts of the cities that they feature. And this is not by accident. They are, after all, often sponsored by travel agencies who want to convince you, the viewer, that you really ought to go there.

In a way, Psalm 87 is not unlike our modern travel videos. This psalmgives us a look into one specificcity. It features some of the rare beauties of that city. And, its purpose is, without a doubt, to convince us that we really ought to go there.

And what we’re going to do this morning is move through Psalm 87, and do so with the help of three main concepts: City, Citizens, and Celebration. Let’s pray, and ask the Lord for his help.

Father, you are the maker of heaven and earth. And you are the maker of this great city that we are about to read about. Open our eyes to the wonders that are there. Awaken us to the surpassing splendor of the city called by your name. Call us toward it, and do so through your Spirit to the honor of your Son. Amen.

So, once again, Psalm 87 is a psalm about a city. And we’re looking at it along the lines: City, Citizens, and Celebration. We begin with the city.

CityVerse 1,

“On the holy mount stands the city he founded;”

Notice how, when read slowly, the sentence seems to pull us upward phrase by phrase. First, we’ve got a mountain: “On the holy mount.” And, of course, a mountain, by its very nature, requires that we raise our eyes upward to acknowledge it.

The path through the mountain is a climb. The entrance in, requires ascension. You must rise in order to reach it. Mountains are not hidden objects, let alone insignificant ones. Mountains epitomize the land in which they reside, and demand their recognition to the north, south, east, and the west of them. You can miss a body of water. You can be blind to a valley or lowland. It is hard to ignore a mountain.

And, as we can see, the mountain in Psalm 87 is no ordinarymountain. It is holy.

“On the holy mount.”

Holy means set apartfrom what is sinful, unclean and common. Set apart so as to make it fit to be in the presence of God. Holy things are blessed things because they get to be near God.

And so Psalm 87 is about a mountain upon which God can rightfully dwell! A mountain upon which God “places his feet,” so-to-speak. A mountain upon which God builta city.

Still, verse one, “On the holy mount | stands the city | he founded;” Can you imagine? A city whose designer and builder is God. Follow me on this: The Planning Director for the City of Saint Paul is named Nicolle Newton. And the Planning Director for the City of Minneapolis is named Meg McMahan. The Planning Director for the city is named: I AM, Yahweh, “I am Who I am.” The God who places his footstool upon the earth and sets his throne in heaven.

Wouldn’t you want to live in the city made by the very one who: “Forgives all your iniquity, heals all your diseases, and redeems your life from the pit,” and “crowns you with steadfast love, and satisfies you with good, and works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. Who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

If the God of the universe had a city, well then wouldn’t you want to go there?

And in verse two, we’re told even more about this city. Namely that,

“The LORD loves this city. The Lord loves the gates of Zion, more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.”

Note that it’s not saying, “God loves no other city but this one.” But it issaying that of all the places, and of all the cities God loves, there is none so loved by God as this one.

And, we should ask, in the Bible, what does God typically do when he loves something? When he reallyloves something? Perhaps some of you might remember from Numbers and Aaron’s blessing in Numbers 6:24-27. What does God typically do when he reallyloves something? He puts his name on it. God puts his name on what he most loves. Said another way, God puts his name where his heart is already.

Hence, verse 3,

“Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.”

God loves this city. He, by putting his name upon it, has committed himself to its flourishing. The city that has God’s name upon it is the city that should rest assured, “God is for us, therefore, what could be against us?”

So, Psalm 87, is a psalm about a city. That’s our first main concept — the city itself. Second, the citizensof the city.

CitizensNow what actually sets us up for this next section is that little phrase we see there in verse three: “Glorious things of you are spoken.” It’s clearly addressing the city, yes? “Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.” And, so, it begs the question: What are the glorious things being spoken of this city? And, honestly, this is where things get interesting.

Remember back in our intro, we compared Psalm 87 to a modern travel video. We said, Psalm 87 is not unlike a travel video in the sense that it highlights the beauties of a city in order to convince people that they really ought to go to that city. Where Psalm 87 differs from a modern travel video however: The beauties it features are not towering buildings and impressive architecture. Not picturesque parkways and pleasant boardwalks. There’s no mention of beaches, or blue skies, or even sunshine. Those are the beauties features in modern travel videos — the stuff. The featured beauties of the city in Psalm 87 are people — the city’s citizens.

Look with me at verse 4, as the psalmist himself takes a back seat, and God himself speaks. Verse 4: “Among those who know me” God is clarifying to whom he is about to speak. To those who know me. Which, in biblical language, means those who have a relationship with God. Those who love and are loved by me.

It’s to thatgroup of people who know God that God now mentions, or proclaims:

“Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush.”

And you might think: “What about them? We’ve been talking about the city of God. The holy mountain. The city he made. The city he loves. Suddenly, God steps into view and says, “To my followers over here, let me tell you about Rahab and Babylon; Philistia, Tyre, and Cush.” What about them?

I mean, if you have much familiarity with the Old Testament, then you likely don’t need me to tell you that most of these nations were historical enemies to God’s people. They had fought wars against God’s people. They had lured God’s people into idolatry, and many other forms of sin.

I mean, you see Babylon in that list, right? Babylon was the nation that broke down the walls of God’s city, Jerusalem. Babylon killed the Israelites king, the Israelites killed its high-priest, and exiled most of its people. Babylon even burned God’s Holy Temple to the ground (2 kings 25).

And Philistia. Philistia was constantly at war with God’s people throughout the period of the judges and the kings. At one point, the Philistines even stole the Ark of the Covenant and set it up next to one of its false gods — as if to say that the God over Israel was on par with their god Dagon.

And don’t let that first one trip you up — you see Rahab? The Rahab here is not the Rahab who hid the Israelite slaves and defended God’s people. That’d make for a positive character in this list. Instead, Rahab here actually refers to Egypt. And one way to know that is to simply turn over to Psalm 89, only two psalms after this one, where it says in verse 10: “You crushed Rahab like a carcass; You scattered Your enemies with Your mighty arm.” Rahab is an enemy. And Isaiah 30:7 makes it even clearer: “Egypt’s help is futile and empty; therefore, I have called her Rahab Who Sits Still."

And so, we’ve got Babylon (who destroyed God’s Temple), Philistia (who stole God’s Ark of the Covenant), and Egypt (who enslaved God’s people and, plague after plague, resisted God’s will to let his people go).

So again, we ask, what about these nations? Why bring them up here in light of God’s Holy Mountain and God’s beloved city?

Is it to clarify that these are the nations who arenot welcome in God’s city? That these are the peoples who dare not set foot upon God’s mountain?

Given the background, this is exactly what we’d expect God to say next. But he doesn’t! He doesn’t! In fact, as the ESV translates it, God doesn’t even say anything at this point. Instead, it’s the people, those who know him, who speak up. And here’s what they say, verse 4,

“This one was born there,” they say.”

Born there. And again, more emphatically, verse 5,

“And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her;”

Babylon, born in the city of God. Philistia, born on God’s holy mountain. Egypt, born within the gates of Zion. Do you see what its saying?

These surrounding nations, most who’ve historically been enemies to God, and enemies to God’s people, are not: Merely going to be visitors in God’s city, though that alone would’ve been shocking enough. They’re not going to be temporary residents of God’s city. “Here’s your pass, expires six months from now.” But they’re going to be citizens. They’re going to receive a declaration of citizenship so complete, so real, so permanent that it could rightlybe said of them, “They were born in this city! Born within these walls.”

There is no one — no human being, no political group — who could ever orchestrate such a grand transformation as this. But God could. And God does.

Verse five, when read in full, says:

“And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her;’ for [or, because of the fact that] the Most High himself will establish her.”

God’s going to do it. He’s going to make it happen. The God who founded this city is going to fill it with former enemies.

And, in verse 6, we get to watch him do it. “The LORD records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’” The language is that of a king taking a census. Much like what Caesar Augustus did in the gospels. He, too, declared a census — an official counting of the people. Which meant that all the people, Joseph and Mary included, had to go and be registered, each to his own town.

Droves and droves of people flooded the major city-centers in that time. People lined the streets, filled the cities — it’s no wonder Mary and Joseph could find no room in the inn.

Well here in Psalm 87, God is taking his census. Which means his people are coming to his city, and in that long line of people, we find Babylonians, Philistines, Egyptians, and, I might add, Europeans, and North Americans, and people from every tribe, nation and tongue. They’re standing in the line. They’re heading toward the gates. And when they finally arrive at the entrance, God is there. Pen and paper in hand. Looks up at them, total foreigners, former enemies, and declares — Born here. Inscribes: Born in my city.

It’s an amazing story. And, if you are a Christian, it is your story. It is. If you are a lover of Jesus. A follower of Jesus, then God has written over your life — not enemy, not foreigner, not illegitimate, not insufficient, but born here.

“Born here.”

Hebrews 12:22-23 says, of Christians:

“You have come to Mount Zion and to the cityof the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled [And where are they enrolled? Where’s the true city?] in heaven.”

“The assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.”

Do you see it? Psalm 87 foretells of the King of Heaven’s great census, and, if you are a lover of Jesus, you’re in it. And Ephesians 2 reasserts this marvelous reality:

“At one time you were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ… So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, (Eph. 2:12-13, 19).

Do you see it? The story of Psalm 87 is your story. God has always had a city. You’ve not always been its citizen. But, now you are, thanks be to God — the one who fills his city with former enemies. And he calls that a good thing. Diverse peoples, varying cultural norms, a multiplicity of languages, wide-variety of skin tones and facial features. God loves it all. Do we?

So, we’ve had City, and now Citizens. Last C – Celebration.

CelebrationVerse 7,

“Singers and dancers alike say, ‘All my springs are in you.’”

What’s the rightful response to God’s great city? How should its newly welcomed citizens enter in? With Joy. With excitement. With leaping, dancing, music and song.

These citizens of Psalm 87 are not walking into the city of God, and they’re certainly not dragging their heels through its gates. And the reason they’re not, is because they know the city’s worth. They know they’re bound for the city God loves! They think, “I’m a card-carrying citizen of God’s holy mount.”

And so, they’re going to sing because of it. They’re going to dance because of it. And they’re not going to be the only ones. Everybody whose coming into this city is coming in with joy in their hearts and a song on their lips. Friends, if ever there was a thing worth celebrating, this is it.

And now, hear the words that are echoing throughout the city:

“All my springs are in you.”

Springs. Think rivers. Fountains. Sources of clean, fresh, flowing water. In the Old Testament world, a spring meant life. You needed one to drink. To cook. To bathe. To farm. To keep your flocks and herds alive. No sinks in any of these houses.

And so if you find a spring, man, you’ve found life. And the citizens of this city are saying, “Every spring of water. Every source of life, joy, and satisfaction. Every single one that has ever been found ultimately flows from here. Which means, what?

You’d be a fool to search for springs elsewhere.Think about it friends. In Psalm 87, the peoples of Babylon, Philistia and so on — They’re not saying “we found some springs back there, but there’s ones here just a bit better. Just a bit more plentiful.” That’s not what they are saying. And why? Because they had searched for water in Babylon. Had worked for water in Egypt. Had paid for it and dug for it in Philistia. Had even thought for a time that they’d found it. But it all proved empty.

I mean, it’s just simple logic: If they are saying, “All my springs are in you,” then how many other springs did they find outside God’s city? Right?

And so, given all that, how much sense does it make for a citizen of God’s mountain to go trekking into Babylon in search of other springs? I mean, seriously, we’ve got to take people at their word when they say: “Look, I’ve been there, I’ve done the money thing, I’ve done the party thing, I’ve done the hook-up thing, I’ve done the self-worship and self-exaltation thing and, in the end, none of it made me to sing. None of it made me to dance. None of it made me to say, ‘life can be found here.’” I found no other springs, save the ones I found in God’s holy city.”

Brothers and sisters, aim all your life toward this city. You will find no other springs elsewhere. God owns all the springs.

And so, Christian, what springs are you seeking to drink from, in this season, that do not ultimately find their source in God’s city? What sources of joy and satisfaction are you seeking that do not ultimately flow from God’s hand?

The time has come to walk away from those things. The time has come to leave Babylon. Turn yourself, turn all that still remains to be turned. Turn it toward God’s holy city, and sing, by faith: “All my springs are in you.”

Lastly, non-Christian: the gates of God’s city are currently open. Every day people, from diverse nations, and diverse situations, are saying — “I’m in. I want the springs. I want the city. God, I want to be a citizen.” You can become a citizen today. Like, right now. It can be said of you, in this moment, “Born here.” You can just pray, simply,

God, I’m done with my sin.

I’m done trying to find life in everything but you.

I need your Son Jesus.

I need the sacrifice he made for my sins.

Receive Jesus. Receive entrance into the city.

Now, what leads us to the table this morning is, just that, Jesus’ sacrifice. He died for us. His body was bruised, his blood was shed for us. And this table commemorates his sacrificial death, and when we eat from this table, we do so in anticipation of Jesus coming again.

Because this table represents Jesus’ shed blood and broken body, I gladly invite those who are trusting in Jesus’ death on their behalf, to take and eat this meal with us. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass for now, but encourage you in this moment, turn to Jesus, see his glory, come to him by faith that you may have life.

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Psalm 86,

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2 Preserve my life, for I am godly;
save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God.
3 Be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all the day.
4 Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
6 Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer;
listen to my plea for grace.
7 In the day of my trouble I call upon you,
for you answer me.

8 There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
9 All the nations you have made shall come
and worship before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
10 For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your steadfast love toward me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

14 O God, insolent men have risen up against me;
a band of ruthless men seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant,
and save the son of your maidservant.
17 Show me a sign of your favor,
that those who hate me may see and be put to shame
because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

This Sunday begins another summer in the psalms for us at Cities Church, and after several years, we’re now more than halfway through the book. The psalms are something of the Bible’s prayer guide and songbook. They teach us, in more than a hundred shapes and sizes, how to sing and how to pray. They model the inner life of genuine faith — the emotional life of a follower of Christ. They give us the mountains and valleys that come with trusting and following him. And there are great mountains, and great valleys, that come for anyone who follows Christ.

Psalm 86 is a valley psalm. It’s a desperate psalm — not a hopeless psalm, but a desperate one. It teaches us how to pray when trouble comes.

Do you know how to pray when trouble comes? Not just: “Lord, help me” or “fix this,” but do you pray about trouble the way the Bible prays about trouble? I know I don’t always pray the way this psalm prays.

Preparing for this sermon, I was reminded of a prayer we prayed before meals in our home growing up:

“God is great, God is good, and we thank you for this food.”

I have no idea where the prayer came (maybe my parents made it up), and I don’t entirely understand it. “God is great, and God is good. . . .” Isn’t great better than good? Maybe “great” means big, mighty, awesome, and good means he’s for us? Whatever it means, I’m so thankful for those thirteen simple words.

How many children grow up in homes where they never acknowledge God has anything to do with the food on the table? How many children never hear their parents acknowledge God at all (except maybe to use his name in vain)? But I heard — PB&J after PB&J, spaghetti after spaghetti — “God is great, God is good, and he’s the one who gave us this food.”

It was a good prayer for 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year old heart and mind — and yet if you and I had lunch this week and I still prayed like that, there would be something off, right? Hopefully I’ve grown some in the ways I express my thankfulness for spaghetti. Hopefully I still grow in thanking him.

I wonder if some of us are praying 4-year-old prayers about trials. We haven’t learned how to pray grown-up prayers about the trouble in our lives — and we all have trouble in our lives of various kinds. We haven’t said, like the disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And that’s my prayer for this morning, “Lord, teach us to pray, in this case about the hard things in our lives.”

Four Prayers for Any TroubleBefore we try and learn how to pray about our trouble, we need to ask about the actual trouble here in Psalm 86. Why is David crying out to God like this?

We don’t know a lot, and it takes a while before we really learn any details about his situation, but we do find out what’s going on near the end of the psalm. Look at verse 14:

O God, insolent men have risen up against me;

a band of ruthless men seeks my life,

and they do not set you before them.

We have plenty of insolent men in our day, but we don’t call them that. Insolent men are rude men who don’t show respect for others (even the king). They’re troublemakers who stir up division and hostility. These horrible men are trying to kill the king.

We don’t know who these particular insolent men were, and unfortunately there were so many insolent men who tried to kill David throughout his life that we can’t even guess which ones these might be. Can you imagine? I don’t think any of you have ever gone to bed knowing someone is driving around looking for you, trying to kill you. That was normal for David.

He was in serious trouble here.

And while our trouble is different from his, I believe God means for David’s trouble to teach us how to pray in our trouble, whatever trouble we face. I want to summarize the lessons in four simple prayers:

Meet my need.
Glorify your name.
Teach me your way.
Gladden my heart.

Grown-up prayers don’t need to be long or complicated. There are precious lessons for us in these four simple prayers.

Prayer 1: Meet My NeedFirst, “Lord, meet my need.” David doesn’t mention the insolent men in the first verses, but he does start right off by praying for what he needs in the moment. Beginning in verse 1:

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,

for I am poor and needy.

Preserve my life, for I am godly;

save your servant, who trusts in you — you are my God.

Be gracious to me, O Lord,

for to you do I cry all the day.

In other words, meet my immediate need. These guys are really trying to kill me, and I’m asking you to stoop down and intervene on my behalf. Do something about this, God. I know there are millions of people on earth, but I’m asking you to focus your infinite wisdom and strength to protect one of those millions from a few men.

When you think about what the psalms are — these divinely-inspired prayer-songs, meant to be studied, memorized, and rehearsed for thousands of years — it’s kind of wild how specific some of them are. God clearly wanted us to hear godly saints pray for specifics. It’s one of the great gifts of the psalms (and of all the prayers in the Bible). We get to hear real people pray about real stuff. God knew we would have our own specifics (and he knew that our specifics would be really different from theirs), and he wanted us to know how to pray for specifics.

Do you still pray for the specifics in your life, even the little specifics?

Philippians 4:6 says:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

God wants us to pray for specific needs — large or small, anything and everything. If you’re anxious about something this morning — about anything — he wants you to pray about it. One way God accomplishes his God-sized plans for the world is to address you-sized needs in the world.

Lord, meet my need.

Prayer 2: Glorify Your NameOkay, so the first prayer — “Meet my need” — is a real and good prayer. We pray for specifics — like when mad men are trying to kill us or when the youngest child’s eye starts swelling suddenly. David really wants God to intervene in his actual human life and change something. Meet my need! That’s not the highest prayer in Psalm 86, though. And this is where our prayers start to grow up into fuller maturity. Let’s start in verse 6:

Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer;

listen to my plea for grace.

In the day of my trouble I call upon you,

for you answer me.

He’s still asking for help. Give ear to my prayer — meet my specific need. What does he say next? This is the second prayer: “Glorify your name.” Here’s how David prays it:

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,

nor are there any works like yours.

All the nations you have made shall come

and worship before you, O Lord,

and shall glorify your name.

For you are great and do wondrous things;

you alone are God.

Why would he pray like that? Lord, I need you to protect me from these bad guys. They’re trying to kill me, and I need you to stop them. “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.” Why does he pray like that? Why would he suddenly go from his particular need that day to the promise that all nations are going to worship this God?

David prays like this because our confidence in asking God to do anything in our lives is rooted in his commitment to do all things for his glory.

God will glorify his name — we see this all throughout the Bible, from beginning to end — and, amazingly, he chooses to glorify himself through showing kindness to us. He pours grace on undeserving people like me — grace to forgive me and save me from hell, grace to change me and empower me to live more like him, and grace to meet my very practical needs — to provide the food I need, and the home I need, and the job I need. God spreads his glory by loving his needy people.

And so we don’t just pray, “God, deliver me from insolent men because you like to help people.” (He does.) No, we pray, like David, “Meet my need, because meeting my need will show the world what kind of God you are — that you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, that you never abandon your children, that you own everything in the universe and will spend your infinite riches to care for us, that you have the power and authority to heal any illness and mend any relationship, no matter how hopeless it seems right now. How glorious will you look, God, if you do this! Glorify your name through my need.

This prayer — for God to glorify his name among all the nations — serves at least two great purposes in trouble, though. First, it grounds our hope that he might actually do something. He’ll care for us because that’s how he reveals his glory. But second, a prayer like this widens our eyes beyond our immediate need or heartache to remember what God is and will absolutely do in the world. “The nations you have made shall come and worship before you.” That’s going to happen, no question — no matter what happens in my little circumstances here. And when that happens, all my little (or big) circumstances will be made right.

Oh man, things are hard right now — really hard — but I know what you’re doing in the universe. And I know no one can stop you. And when you do it, I won’t have to pray these prayers anymore. Praying “glorify your name” gets us out of the ruts of only praying about our needs. You’ve probably been here. I know I have been. Our prayer lives can become almost all about the job, the job, the job. The spouse, the spouse, the spouse. The child, the child, the child. The injury or sickness or weakness or conflict. Praying like David lifts out of our need to see the bigger picture. God is glorifying his name all over the world, and one day soon all the nations will worship him. That doesn’t mean we don’t pray meet-my-need prayers; it just puts those prayers into perspective.

God, meet my need, for your glory.

Prayer 3: Teach Me Your WayThose aren’t the only two prayers in this psalm, though. When trouble comes to David, he prays, meet my need, glorify your name, and then, third, teach me your way. Verse 11:

Teach me your way, O Lord,

that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name.

Let this trouble, this trial be an opportunity for you to make me more holy — to refine away more of the remaining sin in my life. More than peace or relief from this trouble, I want greater godliness. Notice he says, verse 2: “Preserve my life, for I am godly.” He doesn’t think God’s using this trouble mainly to confront him (we see that in other psalms). But even though he believes he’s doing the right things in this case, he wants to be even more like God. God, use this trouble to sanctify me. Teach me your way, O Lord.

This is James 1:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2–4).

And don’t just teach me to do certain things (and avoid others). No, this prayer is much bolder than that.

Teach me your way, O Lord,

that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name.

I don’t want you to just help me do the right things (and not the bad things). I want you to change me somewhere deeper than my doing. I want you to change me in here. I want you to unite my heart toward you. I feel how distracted and divided my heart can be, and I want my whole heart to be united, aligned toward you.

And I know that you often change me for the better in here through something hard out there. Do you think that way when trouble comes? You get bad news of some kind. You feel hostility or opposition of some kind. Do you think, Oh, God’s about to make me more like God. I know I don’t always think that way. I think, I don’t like this. God, why this? Why now? Why this long?

I’ve talked before about a bad leak we had in our kitchen late last summer. Well, that trial isn’t over yet, now more than nine months later. I won’t get into all of it, but it’s been a real trial. I call it a “small-t trial” because we’re praying for some of you going through far worse. But it’s been a trial. And in my low moments, I haven’t had a Psalm 86 heart about it. I’ve had a can’t-this-just-be-over attitude. We’ve wrestled with God.

Reading these verses again these last couple weeks, as the back-and-forth with the contractor took another bad turn, was so good for my soul. Oh Lord, this is getting worse again, you must be about to make me more like you. . . . Lord, deliver me from bad actors, for we are godly. We’re doing all we can to deal with this in a way that honors you. But we’re not content to be delivered. We want to be sanctified. We want the fire of this trial to burn off more of our sin and to prove and fortify whatever in us pleases you. Teach us your way, O Lord.

And, at least in this psalm, we want you to make us more like you in one way in particular. This brings us to the fourth and final prayer. This one’s the most surprising to me.

Prayer 4: Gladden My SoulI really want you to see this fourth prayer. We’ll start again in verse 3:

Be gracious to me, O Lord,

for to you do I cry all the day.

Gladden the soul of your servant,

for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

Do you pray like this when trouble comes? Not just, “Get me through this,” but “God, make me happier in you, even now, even here.” Gladden my heart in this darkness, this valley. Give me reasons to rejoice in you, reasons bigger than all the pain and uncertainty I’m experiencing right now.

I want to have faith like David’s. It was so dark in his life at this moment that he can’t see around the corner — he’s not sure if he’ll survive — and yet he can see enough to enjoy God. This reminds us of the Christians in 1 Peter 1, who were being grieved by various trials, and yet Peter writes, verses 8–9,

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.”

All David can see is hostility and deceit and loneliness, and yet his joy doesn’t rest on what he can see. It rests on what he can’t see, because he knows he can’t see the most important things, the most precious things. His treasure is in heaven. His citizenship is in heaven. His hope is in heaven. And so his valleys, even his darkest valleys, hold a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. The world can’t explain this kind of joy — in David or in you.

And it’s here that we remember that David is not only teaching us to pray here in Psalm 86, but he’s also teaching us to sing. The psalms were not written merely to be read and recited. No, they were written and memorized to be sung. As we walk through some especially dark psalms this summer, it’s good to be reminded that these are songs. This is worship. Is there anything more Christian than singing through suffering? God is teaching us to bear what we have to bear by lifting our voices in praise — because songs like these say more about reality than our eyes ever could. Our eyes betray us, but the psalms never betray us.

We always have a reason to sing about who God is for us and what he’s done for us, and that’s where I want to close.

You Have Delivered My SoulAs we prepare to baptize two people now, they’re coming to declare that God has delivered them. He hasn’t delivered them from pain and suffering yet. In fact, they may experience more trouble because they’ve chosen to follow Jesus. Many do experience more trouble. Maybe you have suffered more trouble in your family, your neighborhood, or your workplace because you’re a Christian. Jesus says,

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

These two haven’t been delivered from all trouble, but they have been saved from the worst trouble. And David prays that way right here in Psalm 86. Verse 12:

I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,

and I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your steadfast love toward me;

you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

I might die, but I’m not going to die — because you have already delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol, from that awful prison called death. I’m still suffering for now, but you’ve already delivered me. . . . How much more boldly can we sing this now, in Christ? This is Hebrews 2:14–15:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

And how did he destroy the one who has the power of death and deliver those who were enslaved to the fear of death? By dying at the hands of insolent men.

And he didn’t bear it with groaning, but with gladness.

“For the joy that was set before him, [he] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

In other words, when insolent men came to arrest him, abuse him, and crucify him, the Father gladdened the heart of his servant. He took the cross for you, with joy. And if he could bear that trial with joy in the Father, surely I can bear my small-t trials with greater joy in him.

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John 6:60-71,

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” 70 Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

“Here you go, take a look at this.”

That’s really all I said, but I’ll tell you the whole story …

Years ago I worked for a Christian resource ministry called Desiring God (it’s a ministry we’re still connected to and love) — well, back in those days our office was on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, and for a short season I worked in the customer service department. My desk was closest to the door right next to the sidewalk, and from time to time if we had a visitor drop in, it was part of my job to greet them.

So one day a gentleman came inside and he said that he’d like to discuss how we could all work together to blend several different religions to become one. He said it didn’t make any sense for religions to be divided because they all basically ‘believed the same things.’

This guy was a seeker, and I wasn’t trying to discourage him from that, but I told him that all religions did not believe the same things, and that the Christian gospel is unlike anything else, and as a example, I said “Here you go, take a look at this” … I handed him a book then titled, What Jesus Demands of the World by John Piper — it’s a book 50-chapters long, and each chapter focuses on a different command Jesus gives, and I figured that if the guy read some of the things that Jesus actually said, he’d change his mind.

Well the guy came back the next week and he was mad. He gave me back the book and said, “I’d like to teach a thing or two to the author of this book!”

He had read what Jesus says and he was offended … and I still think about this from time to time, and I wonder: Why exactly was he offended? What part in particular did he not like? And then the bigger, existential question: Why was he offended by what Jesus says and I’m not (or at least not ultimately)?

This is the question: Why do some people love Jesus and others don’t?

You ever thought about that before?

Our passage today is all about this. At the end of Chapter 6, the longest chapter in the Gospel of John, we’re going to see the human response to what Jesus has said and there are two main lessons we find here — and the relevance of these lessons will become obvious.I think we’re gonna be able to see ourselves in this passage, but before we look at the first lesson, let’s pray again and ask for God’s help.

Father, you know better than any of us all the different places we’re coming from this morning, and you know what you want to say to us through your word. Would you, in these moments, open our hearts to hear from you? Give us humble hearts to receive the words of your Son, in faith. We ask in Jesus’s name, amen.

The first thing we learn in this passage …

Those offended by Jesus are expected.Here at the end of Chapter 6, John narrows the focus from the “crowd” (which he’s mentioned four times in this chapter) to now he says “disciples.” But when he uses the word “disciples” here, he’s not thinking about the twelve disciples, but he’s talking about followers of Jesus more generally. So imagine three categories of people:
There’s the “crowd,” the broadest number of people who had the miracle lunch (10,000 or more when you count men, women, and children).
Then there’s “the Twelve” mentioned in verse 67 and 70 (these are the twelve disciples whose names we know; they were closest to Jesus).
But then, in the middle, there’s who John calls “disciples” — which is less than the crowd but more than the Twelve. Somewhere in-between (these are folks who followed Jesus after the miracle lunch and they’ve heard all of his teaching in Chapter 6).

And according to verse 60, of this middle group, these more generic disciples, “many” of them did not like what Jesus was saying. The collective voice of these disciples is at the end of verse 60. They said:

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”

They’re talking about all that Jesus has been teaching, but especially the part about his flesh and blood, and we know from verse 61 that this was a grumbly statement. Jesus knew they were grumbling. Verse 60 was not a humble, teachable response — they weren’t saying, “Jesus, we don’t get it, would you help us get it?” — nah, they were frustrated with him — which means they were angry.

You Ain’t Seen Nothing YetAt the beginning of this chapter these people were well-fed, now they’re fed-up,and look what Jesus says to them at the end of verse 61. He says,

“Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? …”

What Jesus does here is really important. There’s a tone I don’t want us to miss. So just to make sure, everybody find Jesus’s question there at the end of verse 61. I’m gonna read it again. I want you to get it. Find verse 61. That question at the end, Jesus says:

“Do you take offense at this?”

He’s saying: Do you take offense at this, my teaching? Oh you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Jesus is saying: You think my teaching is difficult. You don’t like what I’m saying. Just wait until you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before!

That’s verse 62 — now what is Jesus talking about?

Well, at one level, Jesus is talking about the final manifestation of his true identity. We know from the start of this Gospel that Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning. Jesus was with God, Jesus is God! — Jesus is God the Son, the one through whom all things were made, and he has all authority over all things, and in his ascension he is going to resume his seat on his throne in glory. That’s in view here.

But also, on another level in the Gospel of John, the event of Jesus’s exaltation — his resurrection and ascension — is combined with the path he takes to get there, which is the path of his cross. So in this Gospel, Jesus being “lifted up,” before it means lifted in glory, it means lifted in shame. Before the ascension of Jesus took him up above the heavens, he was nailed up on a cross. And John, the writer, intends that double meaning of ascension in this Gospel.

Tripping Over the TreeSoJesus, in verse 62, is talking about his cross, and he’s arguing here from the lesser to the greater. The cross of Christ is the ultimate scandal. It’s the most offensive fact of Jesus — that the Messiah would be crucified! That’s outrageous! It’s insane! So Jesus is saying: If you can’t handle my teaching (lesser), there’s no way you’re gonna be able to handle my crucifixion (greater).

The teaching of Jesus is small beans compared to how he’s going to be killed.

See, Jesus is explaining in verse 62 — If you’re bothered by my sayings, just wait until my sacrifice. If the difficulty of my doctrine undoes you, what about the degradation of my dying? If you’re troubled by the truth you’ll certainly trip over the tree.

And this kind of tripping, this stumbling over the cross,is to be expected. The apostle Paul tells us this, 1 Corinthians 1:21,

“It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles…”

The cross of Christ has been the problem for people going on now for two thousand years, and it’s still the problem today. In fact, today, there’s a lot of people who would at least ‘say’ that they like the teachings of Jesus. Now they have his own version of his teaching — they’re probably not thinking about the over 20 times he talks about hell — but overall, most people are okay with Jesus as a moral teacher.

It is his cross that is offensive.Why?

It’s because the cross makes a very negative assessment of humanity. Because the first thing the cross says is that we are all sinners who need to be saved.

Bad News FirstA few years ago I met a neighbor at a coffee shop and I invited them to our church, and they asked me right away, “Oh, is your church affirming?” Now, they were talking about gender and sexuality issues, but I just told them that our church doesn’t affirm anybody — “All are welcome, none are affirmed!” — now I didn’t make that up, but that’s what I said — none of us are affirmed and that’s why Jesus had to die!

Jesus didn’t come into a world full of people who were doing okay without him. He came into a world of sinners destined for God’s wrath and at the cross he says to every single one of us: You are separated from God! You deserve judgment! You are wrong!

People don’t like to hear that. That’s a “hard saying.” And it’s so hard to hear that some people can’t get past that bad news part to the good news part. But listen to the good news!

At the cross, Jesus is not only saying “you’re wrong,” he’s also saying “You’re loved!” You’re wrong and you’re loved!

It’s not just that you’re so sinful and screwed up that I had to die for you, it’s that you’re so loved that I willingly died for you.

I came to die for you.

I pursued the cross for you.

Nobody takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord, and I laid it down for you!

Look, get this: if we don’t know we’re sinners, that love means nothing to us.

But if you can handle the bad news first — if you can not be offended by the first part — then the second part is the greatest wonder in all the history of the whole world. Jesus Christ really loves you.

But many people never get there. It’s a fact. We learn here it’s expected. We know from Jesus, from Paul, from history — those offended by Jesus are expected.

Now, here’s the second thing we learn in this passage.

Those called to Jesus will come and stay.We start to see this in verse 63, and speaking of unpopular teachings of Jesus, this one could be top of the list. Not only are we all sinners, but Jesus says in verse 63:

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.”

In other words, Jesus is saying, You can’t save yourself! … You need to be saved but you don’t have the power to do anything about it.

But Jesus says he does — “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”

John is reminding us in verse 64 that Jesus is fully aware of how everything will play out, but this is a hard saying:

You all need to be saved,

you can’t save yourself,

only I can save you,

and some of you won’t be.

Then verse 65 is most clarifying. Jesus explains,

“This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Does everybody see that in verse 65? Do you hear what Jesus says?

Nobody can come to Jesus unless the Father grants them to come.

That’s what he says! And oh, we humans don’t like that!

You mean to tell me that the most ultimate decisive factor in the universe is not my own will but it’s God?!

Yeah, exactly.

That word “granted” in verse 65 means simply to give;and “coming to Jesus” is another way to talk about faith — therefore, Jesus is saying that our faith in him is a gift from God. If any of us has faith in Jesus it’s because God gave it to us. And Jesus is just repeating here what he’s already said twice in Chapter 6.

Verse 37:

“All that the Father gives me will come to me…”

Verse 44:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

Effectual CallingThis is the biblical doctrine that historically has been called “effectual calling.” You hear that? Effectual calling.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith has an entire chapter titled “Effectual Calling.” (The same teaching is found in our Leader Affirmation of Faith, see 8.3.) But in the 1689 Confession, Chapter 10, paragraph 1 reads like this:

Those whom God hath predestinated unto life, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ …

Paragraph 4,

… [others] not being effectually drawn by the Father, they neither will nor can truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved …

And the footnote attached to this sentence says “John 6:65” — that’s our verse. Believer in Jesus, this is your story. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings here, but look, the reason you believe in Jesus is not because you’re smarter than people who don’t believe. It’s not because you’re better. It’s not because you’re lucky.

It’s because the Father granted you to come. Why are we here this morning? Why am I here? God is why! It’s because of God. It’s because he chose me before the foundations of the world and in his timing he effectually called me!

Paul tells us the same thing again in 1 Corinthians 1. Go back to 1 Corinthians 1:23,

… but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

If Jesus Christ is wonderful to you, that is God’s doing. He called you. And this is really good news.

Look at this — verse 66…

You Leaving, Too?After Jesus said verse 65, this middle group of ‘disciples’ had enough. Verse 66:

“Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

They basically proved his point. And then in verse 67 Jesus looked at “the Twelve” — so this is not the middle group anymore, these are his closest disciples, his chosen Twelve — Jesus looked at them and said,

“Do you want to go away as well?”

And man, what a question! Do you hear that question?

Jesus is gentle and lowly, and he’s direct and to-the-point. And as this middle group is thinning out, he says to his Twelve, Y’all leaving too?

Christian, Jesus asks that same question to you. I’ve heard him ask me that. I’m almost 40 years old, which is not old, but I’m old enough to know of too many people who have “turned back and no longer walk with him” … and every time I find out about somebody else, I hear him ask me: You leaving too?

You’ve thought about it. At some point, if it hasn’t yet, it’s going to cross your mind. Would I — could I — ever want to do life without him? …

The answer is No.

We answer again and again the way Peter answers here in verse 68. This is Peter’s highest moment, in my opinion. It’s very similar to his confession of Jesus in Matthew 16. Peter says the right thing here.

Called and KeptJesus says,

“Do you want to go away as well?”

Verse 68,

And Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Jesus, we’re not going anywhere. We know who you are. You’re the Messiah! You’re the Holy One of God. You’re the only one who can give us life.

And in Matthew 16, after Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus repeats the same theology there that we see here. He says in Matthew 16, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (see Matthew 16:17). Jesus says here in verse 70:

“Did I not choose you, the Twelve?”

So just in case we were to think too highly of Peter (some do) — in case we were to give Peter the credit for his right answer — Jesus reminds us one last time that he’s the one at work. He’s the chooser. He’s the revealer. He’s the Savior. And if you’re called, you’re kept.

This is why the call of the Father is such good news. Look: if our faith was something that we could accomplish, it’d also be something we could lose. If we came to Jesus on our own, then we could leave him the same way.

God the Father is the reason we come to Jesus, and that is the reason we stay.

For Our SecurityJohn mentions Judas again in verse 71 as a reminder that Jesus is sovereign over it all. Jesus is not surprised by anyone who leaves him. He knows those who are truly his — and he’s gonna tell us more about this in Chapter 10, but the goal here, like it is there, is not our unsettledness, but our security.

Jesus is not teaching us this so that we say, “Oh no, what if I’m not called?” He’s teaching us this to assure us that our faith is grounded in a reality much stronger than ourselves. He’s giving us a behind-the-scenes look here. It’s like he’s saying: this is what is going on at headquarters, but your concern is the field-assignment, and that is to believe. Our concern is to come to Jesus and to keep coming to Jesus — that’s what we do — and we do it in the confidence that God is working.

Those offended by Jesus are expected; those called to Jesus will come and stay — and if you’re here this morning there’s good reason to believe that you’ve been called (because you believe in Jesus!) — or you’re being called today …

The Gospel of John compels me to go here, and to invite you, everybody in the sound of my voice who has not come to Jesus yet,you can come to Jesus today.You can take that step. Verse 37, Jesus says,

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

The Father is working. Take the step. Come to Christ! Trust in him! Say to him, from the heart:

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m done trying!

You came to save me by dying on the cross and being raised from death!

I put my faith in you!

That is a prayer of faith, and that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableAnd for those of us who have come to Jesus, who trust in Jesus Christ, this morning we can rest in the fact that he’s our Savior, not ourselves. He called us, he keeps us, thanks be to God!

We receive this bread and cup in that miracle. That’s why this Table is for Christians. If you believe in Jesus this morning, we invite you to come to him yet again, and give him thanks!

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John 6:22-59,

On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

As I have looked at the passage before us, John 6:22–59, I have prayed that we wouldn’t labor so hard for bread that perishes, and that we would all labor even harder for the only Bread the satisfies. That’s my whole sermon in a sentence: Don’t labor so hard for bread that perishes, and labor with all your heart and time and money and strength for the only bread that satisfies.

So many people — and sadly, so many Christians — live their whole lives for the wrong kind of bread.

Pastor Jonathan talked last week about how chapters 5–8 are establishing Jesus as the Son of God, with all of the authority and power of heaven. And the verses we looked at last week in chapter 6, verses 17–21, are the height of this long, glorious look at Jesus. It was dark and windy and dangerous in the boat, and the disciples were far out to sea, no one in sight. And then someone was in sight, someone they knew. And then he wasn’t just in sight, he was in the boat.

And then, immediately, the boat that was lost at sea was safe on shore. . . . He has authority over wind and waves, over gravity and currents, over time and space. When no one could get to the boat, he could get to the boat. He can get to your boat. No matter how dark it is, and how far at sea you feel, he can get to your boat — and he can get your boat home.

And now we come to our passage this morning. Crowds were gathering. I mean, why wouldn’t they gather? He’s just fed five thousand men and their families (and we know, in this church, that there were some boys in those families that ate as much or more than the men). Of course the crowd goes looking for him. They even tried to make him king, we saw, in verse 15. What else would we expect them to do? If a man is doing the things Jesus was doing, shouldn’t they want to be near him? Shouldn’t they want to see what he’s going to do next? Shouldn’t they want someone like him to be in power? How else should these people respond?

And yet Jesus doesn’t like how they’re responding.

Verse 25: When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him,

“Rabbi, when did you come here?”

Jesus answered them,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

Oh this is so important for us, church, as we walk through the Gospel of John and meet Jesus. This crowd teaches us that it’s possible to be utterly fascinated by Jesus, follow Jesus, even believe Jesus can do spectacular things for us, and yet totally miss Jesus. You can be looking for Jesus, and not really looking for Jesus. He acknowledges here, “You are seeking me,” but you’re not really seeking me. You’re here for the wrong kind of bread.

And that’s the question this text asks us: Why are you here? Why are you in this room this morning? What do you really want from Jesus? I see three bad answers to that question in these verses.

Bad Reasons to Seek JesusThis crowd came looking for Jesus, but he isn’t happy about how they’re coming.

“You are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

You’re seeking me for the wrong reasons. And what are those wrong reasons? I see three bad reasons for seeking Jesus in these verses — you could think of them as three moldy loaves of bread — and those are my three main points this morning.

They were seeking Jesus to solve earthly problems.First, the most obvious one: They were seeking Jesus to solve earthly problems.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

The first bread that perishes is actual bread. They chased him down because he fed them, and they wanted him to do that again (and they worked pretty hard to get that bread — traveling over land and sea to find him again). They came to Jesus to solve an earthly problem.

And their problem was a real problem. They really needed bread. Jesus himself said so back in verse 5. He asked Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” These people needed to eat, and Jesus knew that they needed food, and he performed a miracle to feed them. He really fed them. And yet when they come looking for another meal, he calls them out. “You didn’t get the point of all that bread.”

We might scoff at them for being so worried about bread, but I wonder if, deep down, some of us are really here for the same reason. We’re looking for Jesus because we need him to do something for us. Maybe it’s literally the next meal — you’re not sure where the next few paychecks are coming from. And if you are sure, you’re not confident they’re going to cover the basics. You’re here because you really need someone to turn a few loaves and a couple fish into something much bigger, and you heard Jesus can do that.

This wasn’t just about bread, though. You know how I know that? Because they tried to make him king. Verse 15:

“Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.”

They wanted the next meal, yes, but this is about way more than flour and yeast and metabolism. They don’t just want Jesus to solve their lunch problem; they want him to solve all their problems. Their sickness problems. Their money problems. Their living-under-Roman-government problems. This was their chance for God’s people to be back in power again. If he could do all that with a little bread, what else could he do for us?

They were seeking Jesus to solve their earthly problems — but Jesus came to solve much deeper ones. What does Jesus say to them? Verse 27:

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

We’ll see in a minute that this exposes a second bad reason they were looking for Jesus, but for now, what is this bread that never perishes, the bread that endures to eternal life? Jesus says, verse 35:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Do you want to know the point of all those loaves and fish, the 5,000 men and their families, the twelve baskets left over? Do you want to know the point of the boat, and the storm, and all that darkness? Do you want to know what I was really trying to say?

“I am the bread of life.”

I was giving you lots and lots of bread so that you know you needed something more than you need bread. You think you need bread, you need money, you need healing, you need a king, but you really need me. And if you have me, in a real, meaningful way, you have everything you need — no matter what else you need right now. And you have everything you need not only for this short life of bread and bills and fears, but for endless years to come — forever.

And to make sure we hear the point, he keeps repeating himself. Okay, you missed the point when I made all that bread for you. I’ll use words now:

Verse 33: “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

Verse 35: “I am the bread of life.”

Verse 48: “I am the bread of life.”

Verse 58: “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

He repeats it over and over and over. I gave you bread to feed you, yes, but also to tell you that bread will never satisfy and sustain you. But I can save you, satisfy you, and sustain you. You have a deeper, more fundamental hunger, and it’s to know and enjoy me, through faith. You’ll always be deeply, unshakably hungry until you learn to feast here. Are you hearing what the bread is saying? The crowd knew Jesus could feed them, heal them, even rule over them. They didn’t know that Jesus himself was the greatest thing Jesus could ever give them. Do you?

They were seeking Jesus for a list of things to do.There are two more bad reasons, though. First, as we just saw, they were seeking Jesus to solve earthly problems. Jesus said to them,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

And how do they respond?

When he tells them to stop chasing him for the next meal and to work for the food that endures to eternal life, they latch onto the “work.” They ask, verse 28,

“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

Okay, Jesus, if we’re doing the wrong thing, then tell us what to do. They came to Jesus for a way to prove themselves to God. Just tell us what to do to please God, and we’ll do it. They wanted a religion they could control, perform, and earn. Just tell me what to do, Jesus.

Why would they respond like that? He’s telling them, “I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life. I can satisfy you.” And they’re like, “Yeah, but just tell me what to do so that I’m okay with God.” Why would they think like that? We should know, if we’re honest enough with ourselves. They might have lived in the Middle East a couple thousand years ago, but this isn’t foreign to us. They think like this because they want a religion, a salvation that only requires them to do enough — to do this and not that, to give this much, to show up this often, to practice certain habits and avoid certain sins. That’s a religion, a Christianity they can stomach, because it’s a religion they think they can control.

Don’t you want a religion you can control? God, just tell me what to do. Be here on Sundays. Join a community group. Give some money to the church. Read your Bible. Be kind to people. Be honest at your job. Avoid certain websites and channels. That’s a controllable Christianity — but that kind of list, by itself, isn’t Christianity. What must we do? Again, Jesus doesn’t like that kind of seeking.

They ask what they must do, and he answers, verse 29,

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

You want something to do? Believe in me. That’s all that’s required. If you’re really seeking me, believe that I am the Son of God sent to save my people from their sins and fill the deep, gnawing holes in their souls. I am the bread of life, and all you have to do is sit down and eat. You must believe in me. You must want me. You must lay down all your self-righteous doing, and be justified and satisfied through faith alone. They were seeking Jesus for a list of things to do for God, but Jesus didn’t want their list of self-righteousness (they didn’t have any righteousness to offer, anyway). No, he wanted their heart, their faith. We aren’t justified by what we do, but by believing who he is and what he’s done for us.

He is the bread of life. Our work is to believe in him. Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but [do work] for the food that endures to eternal life.” Labor for this food — not to earn it, but to taste it, enjoy it, be filled up with it. Are you laboring to see and enjoy the bread of life? Are you waking up early enough to see him? Are you surrounding yourself with people who help you see and enjoy him? Are you cutting things out of your life that get in the way of seeing him? Again, I want us to stop laboring so hard for all the bread that perishes — and to labor with all our heart, time, money, and strength for the only bread that satisfies.

How hard are you working, in this particular season, to know, enjoy, and share the bread of life?

They were seeking Jesus to erase all their doubts.Okay, two bad reasons down, still one to go. He rebukes them for their focus on their earthly needs. He rebukes them for trying to please God with a to-do list of works. What do they do next? How do they respond this time? They go after a third moldy bread. They said to him, verse 30,

“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?”

This one might be the most wild. I mean, where have you been? He just fed five thousand men and their families with five Wonder breads and a couple walleye. What more do you need to see? You didn’t just see, you ate — and you ate as much as you wanted. But it wasn’t enough, was it? No, third, they were seeking Jesus to have him erase all of their doubts. Okay, well if you want us to believe, you better give us some more reasons to believe. We’re going to need some more signs, Jesus, some more miracles.

It’s wild to think they needed to see more than they’d already seen — and yet it’s not that wild, right? Because we all want to see a little more. We know we live by faith and not by sight, but we’d sure like a little more sight. It doesn’t matter how much God has done for us, we’re always going to crave a little more certainty. Could you just do the thing with the bread one more time?

Yeah, but could you do it again? This is what battling unbelief is like, and it’ll be a battle until faith becomes sight. We’ll always have to face doubts of various kinds, because if Jesus erased all our doubts, we wouldn’t have to believe. And Jesus says here that that’s the one thing we must do: believe.

So how does Jesus handle their asking for more signs? They were seeking Jesus to have him erase all their doubts with more miracles, but Jesus answered their doubts instead with promises. Let’s start in verse 35:

Jesus said to them,

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.”

You’re seeking me for things to do, and what you need to do is believe. But you don’t believe. You think it’s because you haven’t seen enough yet. That’s not the real reason, though. He goes on, next verse:

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

He doesn’t turn the hungry away. There’s enough to feed everyone, and he won’t stop giving until you’ve had all you wanted. But you won’t come unless the Father gives you to me — unless he draws you to me. That’s exactly what he says a few verses later, in verse 44:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

Why does anyone believe? Why do you believe, if you believe? It’s either true or it isn’t, and if it isn’t, we can’t just flip a switch. Anyone can decide to attend church, or read the Bible, or be kind to neighbors or co-workers. We can’t decide to be spiritually hungry. We can’t ultimately decide what we believe. Why does anyone believe in Jesus? Jesus says it’s because God draws them — because he gives, by the Spirit, the appetite he requires. God demands the impossible — that we believe — and then he does the impossible: He makes us hungry for him.

That means if you came hungry for Jesus this morning, you should thank God! He drew you. He didn’t have to draw you, and he drew you to himself. He gave you the gift of your hunger for Jesus. This crowd didn’t have what you have, not yet anyway. Some people in this room don’t have what you have. We should fall on our faces every day with thankfulness. He drew me.

He drew me, and he’ll keep me. Here’s the promise. Do you want a promise for lingering doubts that plague you? It won’t be another miracle, another big answered prayer. No, next verse:

I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Only those who the Father draws will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never cast out. And once they’ve come to me, I’ll never lose them, no not one. Why do you believe in Jesus? Because the Father drew you to see what you see and want what you want. Why will you believe in Jesus tomorrow? Because the same God that drew you and satisfied you, he knows how to keep you believing. You may feel fragile and vulnerable. He’s not fragile, and no one and nothing will snatch you from his hand.

Why Are You Here?So again, I’ll ask, why are you here this morning? What do you really want from Jesus? Do you see yourself somewhere in this crowd? Are you here mainly hoping Jesus will solve some heartache in your life? Are you here hoping Jesus will just tell you some things to do so that you can be okay with God and get out of hell? Are you just hoping Jesus will do something to erase all your doubts about him? I hope you hear Jesus saying again this morning, verse 51:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

And this, this brings us to the table. These next verses, John 6:52–59, inspired the words we use to serve the bread and the cup during communion every single week:

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on 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. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

Or, in our words, “His body is the true bread. His blood is the true drink.” He wasn’t talking about literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood — they didn’t do that then and we don’t do that now — but it’s a real metaphor for what happens when we believe in and savor Jesus through faith. God gave you food, bread, so that you would know you need Jesus. God gave you drink, so that you would know you need Jesus. And as we eat the bread and drink the cup together, we remind ourselves and each other: He’s the only one who satisfies. He is the bread of life for anyone who believes.

Why do we cut up the bread into 500 pieces? (Well, to avoid 500 people manhandling the loaf one by one.) But also to say there’s enough of Jesus for everyone. Come and eat until you’re full. The message might be clearer if we gave out whole loaves until you were full, with lots of baskets left over — like Jesus did — but we think this says it well enough. You don’t have to go home hungry today. If you enjoy this meal, by faith in Jesus Christ, you don’t ever have to be hungry again.

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John 6:16-21,

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

One of the tensions we feel in preaching the Gospel of John is how to get the right balance in explaining the narrative strategy of John and then also showing the practical reality of who Jesus is. We need to look at the text, to see what’s going on, and we also need to look through the text to see the Person it’s showing us.

In other words, Bible study by itself will not change your life; it’s encountering Jesus that will change your life — andencountering Jesus comes by giving attention to the Bible. The book is God’s gift to us to show us Christ. We learned this in Chapter 5, verse 39 when Jesus told the Jewish leaders,

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

So see they had the Bible but missed Jesus — that’s possible! That can happen! But we don’t want to do that. We want to see Jesus through the Bible!

That’s a theological, affectional commitment of our church. And it’s relevant for this sermon, because our passage this morning is really important to the narrative strategy of the Gospel of John.

Chapter 5, verse 1, all the way through Chapter 8, verse 11, is a section in this Gospel that features the confession of the identity of Jesus. That’s the theme. Who Jesus is as God the Son comes to the forefront in this section, and the direct center of this section is our passage today, Chapter 6, verses 16–21.

And as you might expect, the center-point of this section is also the highest point where John gets his message across the clearest. Jesus’s authority over the sea (which is what’s happening here) is one of the most definitive declarations of Jesus’s identity in all of his earthly ministry. And I want us to be able to see this in the text as straightforwardly as John is telling us.

So we’re going to look at this story this morning in its three natural parts: Setting, Conflict, and Resolution. Those are the three movements going on here, and we’ll start first with the setting.

Movement 1: the SettingHere it is: the disciples are in the dark and alone.

Verse 16 tells us what happened after the feeding of the five thousand. Remember from last week that Jesus withdrew from the crowd. They wanted to force him to be king, in defiance of this Father’s will, and so Jesus got out of there. And now in verse 16 it’s evening. Jesus’s disciples went down to the sea, got in a boat, and started sailing across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. John is just telling us step by step what they’re doing. But in verse 17 John reminds us of two important details.

Everybody look at verse 17 and get ready. I want you to see this. Everybody find verse 17. In the second sentence of verse 17, John writes,

“It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.”

Now why is this a reminder?

Well, it’s because we already know both of these things: In verse 15 John told us that Jesus withdrew by himself (he’s not with his disciples), and in verse 16 John told us it was evening.

This means the reason he mentions these things again in verse 17 must be because they’re important.

So as readers, we need to keep these two things in mind. The disciples are in the dark and they’re alone. That’s the setting.

Movement 2: the ConflictHere it is: the disciples are frightened.

Now verse 19 tells us point-blank that the disciples were frightened. This is easy to see. The bigger question, though, is why they’re frightened. Go to verse 18 for a minute…

Verse 18 says that the sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. Apparently, according to people who know these things, the Sea of Galilee is infamous for storms. It’s something to do with the geology and weather — because the sea is surrounded by hills, and there’s unpredictable wind patterns and temperature changes — storms happen a lot here, and this one happened fast. But it would have been something the disciples were used to, and in fact, according to verse 19 they made significant headway in the storm: they rowed about three or four miles out into the sea, in the storm.

Now I don’t know if any of you have ever been three or four miles out in the Sea of Galilee — I’ve never been there — but I have been deep-sea fishing one time off the coast of North Carolina, and it wasn’t long before we got far enough out in the ocean to be completely surrounded by just water in every direction, and I mean completely surrounded by water as in you feel vulnerable ... and I mean you feel vulnerable as in you don’t expect to see a person walking up to you.

And I was there in broad daylight. The disciples are here in the dark, in a storm. And verse 19 says they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near their boat, and then John tells us “they were frightened.”

We might think, based upon how this story is going — dark, alone, storm — we might think that it’s the sight of a figure walking on the water that scared them. When we read this account in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark that’s the impression we get.

Both Matthew and Mark say that when the disciples saw Jesus they thought he was a ghost! And that was enough to scare them. But John doesn’t say that. John says explicitly that the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea. And since John names Jesus this way he implies that the disciples recognized Jesus.

And I think that is actually why the disciples were frightened.

See, in John’s account, they were frightened not because of the setting, and not because they were startled by a figure walking on the sea, but they were frightened precisely because they knew it was Jesus walking on the sea toward them.

They knew what this meant! They knew it meant that Jesus is God and that they were now in the presence of God, and so the disciples do what we see basically every person in the Bible do when they encounter the presence of God: they’re afraid!

I think there’s another Moses-wink going on here. (Remember the Moses-winks from last week? They are the several littles clues in Chapter 6 that allude back to Moses, and this is another one.) What’s going on here is called a theophany. That word means God-appearing. It’s when God appears to a person — they encounter the presence of God. And in the Old Testament, the most famous theophany involved Moses. …

Moses and the burning bush. Now it’s interesting that in that theophany, when Moses first sees the burning bush, he’s not afraid, he’s intrigued. He sees it and says I’m gonna check this out. And that’s when God spoke to him from out of the bush. God said take off your sandals because you’re standing on holy ground, and then God said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”And immediately then, after Moses knew who he was talking to, we read, Exodus 3:6,

“And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”

Moses was afraid after he recognized the encounter to be an encounter with God, and I think that’s the same thing happening here. The disciples are not afraid of the unknown, they’re afraid of the known!

They know Genesis 1:2, that it was the Spirit of God who hovered over the face of the waters. They know Job 9:8 that it is God who “alone stretched out the heavens and trampled [upon] the waves of the sea.”

They know that only God can do what Jesus is doing here and therefore Jesus is God, and that’s why they were frightened! Because no longer are they just dealing with the Prophet who is like Moses (and greater than Moses), but they are in the presence of the God of Moses.

Everything changes here. It gets flipped around. Jesus is not in the place of Moses anymore, but he is showing himself in the place of God and the disciples are in the place of Moses. They are biblically afraid, like Moses was. They’re frightened.

That’s the conflict in this story. It’s standard, expected, and essential … anytime mere mortals encounter the glory of Yahweh. … But now the resolution.

Movement 3: ResolutionHere it is: Jesus speaks.

This is verse 20. (This is still kinda like the burning bush, but it’s even better because of how it ends.) Everybody look at verse 20. This is what Jesus said to the disciples as they were afraid. He said:

“It is I; do not be afraid.”

Now the second part of what Jesus says is a command (do not be afraid), but before the command is a declaration, and some of you might recognize it, but it’s not super clear in our English translations. Most English translations put Jesus’s first words here as “It is I” (because that’s how we talk in English). But in the original Greek this is just two words.

Everybody track with me here, okay? I want you to get this: the two Greek words are egō eimi — which, literally goes like this: egō means “I” and eimi is the verb “to be” — it means is or am.

So put the two words together! egō eimi. What is Jesus saying here?! Do you see it?

In this theophany, as Jesus is appearing to his disciples, showing himself to be God by his very action over the sea, and as they’re frightened in his presence, he then speaks and he says I AM!

So no wonder this story is the center-point and the highest point of this section in the Gospel of John. The identity of Jesus cannot be more in your face than this! Jesus Christ is God.

Jesus shows this, Jesus says this, and then he says, “Do not be afraid.”

And that’s the real resolution.

It’s that God reveals himself and he says this — it’s that God himself who created everything, who has authority over the seas, he is standing in front of the disciples in human flesh like theirs and he says You don’t have to fear.

Why not? Why shouldn’t they be afraid? Shouldn’t we all be afraid if we are literally meeting our Maker in the middle of a storm? Jesus is their Maker and Judge — on what basis does he tell them not to fear?

Well, I think it’s because of what Jesus has already told them in Chapter 3, verse 17, that

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

One day Jesus will come in judgment, but not right now, not in this story and not today. Because for now Jesus is on a rescue mission! Jesus has come as their Saviorand as our Savior. That’s what he says! He is not the “I AM here to condemn you.” He is the “I AM here to save you.”

He is the I AM with you!

I AM for you! Don’t be afraid.

And this is where, if we step back a little and look at this entire story as a whole, it becomes an illustration of conversion …

This story is actually our story … this is everyone’s story who trusts in Jesus.

Let me go back and show you …

The Picture of ConversionRemember the setting, the disciples were in the dark and alone.

That word “darkness” is important to John. He uses it a lot:

He starts this Gospel, in Chapter 1, verse 5, by saying that Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

In Chapter 3, verse 19 John tells us that Jesus is the light come into this world but people love darkness rather than the light because their works are evil.

In his first letter, 1 John 1:5, John says, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

So for John, darkness is a bad thing. Darkness is anti-God. It’s a metaphor for lostness. And so it’s interesting that John tells us that the disciples are in the dark here, and to make matters worse, Jesus is not with them. Again, John repeats both of these things in verse 17.

The disciples are in the dark and without God, and we’ve been there before haven’t we? … I’ve been there …

Now, look, I grew up going to church — we were a three-times-a-week churchgoing family — but I remember being lost. And it was weird because I was so close to the light that I knew the right things to say, but I was so much in the dark that I knew I really wanted a hundred other things more than I wanted Jesus.

Which means I wasn’t good at either part. I was like a friend who shared this with me recently: he said he was sinner and a saint and lousy at both. That was me: I was no good at following Jesus, and I was no good at running from him. That’s lostness, man.

What happened?

He showed up. He came for me. He confronted me in a kind of storm, a fork in the road, and I knew who I was dealing with. Jesus is God, just like the Bible says. Everything I heard about Jesus is true. He has the authority. He has the power. My life is in his hands. And somewhere in that whirlwind he pointed me to his cross.

I can’t be good enough. I can’t earn his love. But he loves me anyway. By his grace, he died on the cross to save me. He came to save me where I was. And I don’t have to be afraid.

And guess what?

When Jesus showed up like that I was glad to take him in my boat!

That’s verse 21 here! Once the disciples hear Jesus speak and he tells them they don’t have to fear because he is the I AM (here to save you), they’re like Get him in the boat! And that’s us too, right!?

When we meet Jesus, when he shows up and we know who he is, and we take him at his word, we are all in with him.

He is worthy of nothing less than our everything.

And that’s what it means to trust him. He’s our only hope and we want him in our boat, in our lives, and we’ll go wherever he goes, we’ll do whatever he says. He’s our God.

And maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve come to recognize Jesus as who he is and you’re wondering about the next step. The next step is to ask him to save you. It could be a simple prayer like this,

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m done trying.

You died on the cross for me and rose from the dead.

You are God, save me.

I’m inviting you to trust in Jesus Christ today. And for those of us who have, let’s be glad he’s in our boat!

Let’s pray:

Lord Jesus, you are God. You are great and you are good and we delight in you. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for showing us who you are. Thank you for saving us! We praise you! With everything we are, with everything we’ve got, we praise you! We praise you! Amen.

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John 6:1-15,

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

One morning last week it occurred to me, in a fresh way, that God’s mercy to me has always been deliberate. Whatever good God has ever given to me, he meant it. He meant to give it to me. It was on purpose. And that’s true for all of us.

The only kind of kindness we ever receive from God is purposeful kindness. This means there’s not a single blessing in our lives that is arbitrary or whimsical — and that goes for everything big and small — from a cup of coffee to a roof over our heads, from a good parking spot in a crowded lot to a dinner table crowded with children.

Every good thing in our lives is from the hand of God on purpose.Purposeful kindness.

And when we get this truth in our heads, we start to see it everywhere. It’s all over the place in John Chapter 6 in this story of Jesus feeding the five thousand — which, by the way, this miracle is unique because it’s the only miracle of Jesus that is recorded in all four Gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell this story because it was monumental for the early church. Through this miracle Jesus is shining brightly as the fulfillment of Old Testament hope, and in the Gospel of John especially, the main message that John wants us to get is that Jesus is greater than Moses.

Jesus has already said in Chapter 5, verse 46 that Moses wrote about him, and now we’re going to see how he surpasses Moses. That’s the narrative strategy going on here, but I don’t want us to be too fixed on the narrative strategy that we miss the wonder of Jesus’s heart in this story —his purposeful kindness is on display.

And that’s our focus. I want to show you the purposeful kindness of Jesus in three ways. Here’s the first:

Jesus is a patient provider. Let’s start in verse 1 and notice that it opens with a new setting (and it’s all important information) … Jesus is back in Galilee (where he’s from) and there’s a “large crowd” of people following him. That phrase “large crowd” is used twice, and we learn later that it’s large as in likely over ten thousand people.

Now why was this large crowd following Jesus?Verse 2 says it’s because they’ve seen his signs. We already know from Chapter 4 that the Galileans really loved the signs, and so here they are again coming to see more.

Important InfoThen verse 3 says that Jesus went up on the mountain — John doesn’t tell us what mountain because it doesn’t really matter — we just need to know that Jesus was on a mountain. And this is important because it’s an allusion to Moses. It’s what we could call a ‘Moses-wink.’ (John gives us several little clues in this story to remind us of Moses; you could call them Moses breadcrumbs, but we’re gonna call them “Moses-winks.”)

The most famous mountain in the Hebrew Bible is Mount Sinai where Moses received God’s Law — we know a big part of Moses’s ministry was on a mountain, and then the other big part of Moses’s ministry was, of course, leading the Exodus — which by the way, verse 4 tells us it’s Passover. Passover is the annual feast in Jewish life that remembers Moses leading the exodus (so verses 3 and 4 have back-to-back Moses-winks).

Jesus is on a mountain, during Passover — and there’s a large number of people following him — and look what Jesus does in verse 5.

The text says he lifted up his eyes.

This could just be the basic information of what he did, except that earlier in Chapter 4, verse 35 Jesus commanded his disciples, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.”

Jesus was telling them: Recognize the work of God in the world and join in! And that’s exactly what Jesus is doing here! He’s about to work the work of God! So there’s a drumroll. We’re on the the edge of our seats.

But then he asks one of his disciples a question.

Humorous IronyHe has twelve disciples, but this time he’s talking to Philip, who was from that area, and he asks him, verse 5:

“Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

And I think there’s meant to be humor in this question. Because the question, at face-value,is crazy. There are thousands of people here, Jesus, what do you mean buy bread?

In fact, everybody look at verse 6 for a minute. This is one I really need you to see, verse 6. Everybody, verse 6. This is John the narrator talking — Verse 6:

“[Jesus] said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.”

So this means the question in verse 5 seems so absurd that in verse 6 John as the narrator has to chime in and explain to us that Jesus is up to something. John is saying: Hang on and watch this.

And at this point, I think the main thing that separates this story from a modern-day sitcom is a laugh track. Now we’re gonna try something we’ve never tried before. Do y’all think we could make our own laugh track? …

Now I’m gonna read this dialogue and when I point at y’all, laugh together. We’re gonna make a live laugh track. Because there’s humorous irony going on in this story andit’ll make sense to you. You’re gonna see it. Here we go:

Jesus, looking at thousands of people, says:“Hey Philip, where are we gonna buy bread so that these people can eat?” [laugh track]

Philip: “16,000 dollars worth of bread would not be enough for each person to get a bite!” [laugh track]

Andrew: “I gotta kid here whose got five loaves and two fish.” [laugh track]

See, this is a sitcom! It’s a situation-comedy.

And then Jesus says, “Have the people sit down” — which instantly takes this scene from comedy to He’s gonna really do it. He’s gonna feed these people. And we’ll get there in a minute, but the first thing that stands out here is that Jesus is even taking the time to have this dialogue with his disciples.

He Takes Care of ItVerse 6 tells us that he knew what he was going to do; so he could have just done it, but instead he chooses to involve his disciples.He chooses to slow the whole thing down to double his giving — because not only is he gonna give food to this crowd, but now he’s gonna give a lesson to his disciples. And this takes amazing patience. And every parent in this room gets this. …

I’m at home and I’ve got to fix a broken cabinet door, so I’ve got my wood-glue and some screws and a clamp and my drill — I’m ready to go — and then one of my dear children walks in and says, “Hey, Dad, can I help?” And in that moment I’ve got to decide: Do I wanna make this go twice as long and be twice as stressful?

You bakers in the room know what I’m talking about. Sometimes you just wanna make a batch of cookies … and then sometimes you want your five-year-old to help. It all depends on your patience level.

Look at how patient Jesus is here! I’m guessing Philip failed this test. A better response would have been to answer Jesus’s question with another question. Philip should’ve said: “Jesus, you can do all things, would you feed them?”

See Andrew gets a little closer (maybe he remembers Jesus turning the water to wine), but neither of these disciples get it exactly right. And notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke them. He doesn’t shake his head in frustration. He just takes care of it.

One day we’re gonna find out how many times Jesus has done this for us — how many times we’ve not had it right but Jesus was our patient provider.

There’s a prayer of thanksgiving I pray often that goes:

Jesus, thank you for the blessings in my life I was neither capable of achieving nor wise enough to ask for but which you sent anyway.

Thank you for the particular mercies you’ve bestowed on me and for all the ways you’ve been patient with me — for the ways you’ve helped me change and break bad habits and patterns of thought, heart attitude, and practice; and for the ways you’ve protected me from the fuller consequences of my own blindness.

He’s so patient with us. He just takes care of it. One way the purposeful kindness of Jesus is on display is that he is the patient provider.

Jesus is a generous host. In verse 10, Jesus tells the disciples to have all the people sit down, and there are five thousand men. Now if you add the women and children it would at least double the number (that’s where the 10,000 number comes from; some scholars estimate 20,000 total) —either way, this is a lot more people than one paper-bag lunch can serve. That is the most obvious thing going on here. Again, it’s comically obvious.

But Jesus took that little lunch, he gave thanks to his Father, and in verse 11 “he distributed [the lunch] to those who were seated.” And he didn’t ration out the food, but he gave everyone as much bread and fish as they wanted, verse 12, and they all got full.

And then he told his disciples to gather up all the leftovers, which ended up being twelve baskets — so they ended with more food than they had when they started; and each of the twelve disciples had his own basket to carry. Which means each disciple would’ve had a tangible reminder of what Jesus does with basically nothing but a willing heart. (By the way, that’s our only hope in ministry — our hope is that Jesus does it this way, and that he’s the one who gives us a willing heart.)

Putting on a FeastNow I want to draw special attention to two details Jesus does here. The first is that Jesus distributed the bread. Now I don’t think this means he himself gave a slice of bread to each person individually — the disciples helped him spread it — but the point is that Jesus was hands-on in this experience and none of it was required.

There was a crowd and they were hungry, and all he had to do was just say something. He could’ve just said “Hunger, be gone.” Jesus has the power to just speak and instantly make the empty stomachs not feel empty. He could have just said the word, but he didn’t do it that way.

Also, he could have just limited everyone to a slice of bread — just tear off a piece — but instead it’s Take all you want! Which means Jesus is putting on a feast here — this whole thing is about more than solving hunger. That’s not the point. The point is that Jesus is showing himself to be a generous host.(So he’s kinda like Moses with the manna, except that he’s greater!)

He makes this wide open space his dining room. The ground these people are standing on, which John tells us was lush with grass, becomes banquette seating.

Last week, our younger kids, at their school, did a production of Beauty and the Beast. And my favorite scene of the play, by far, is when Belle is in the castle and the staff invite her to dinner, and the kids altogether sang maybe the greatest Disney song of all time, Be Our Guest. It starts:

Be our guest, be our guest

Put our service to the test

Tie your napkin ‘round your neck, chérie

And we provide the rest

Look, that’s what is happening here, except the “we” is an “I.” Jesus is hosting all of these people as his guests. And it’s to everyone’s surprise.

The disciples apparently didn’t even think about Jesus doing this.

Nobody in this crowd expected this — they were looking for signs, yes, but they couldn’t have guessed this. And that’s what makes it even more amazing!

This is the part that puts Jesus over the top as a generous host. It’s that none of these people deserved this. Jesus knows they’re not really seeking him. He will say later in verse 26 that the only reason these people are sticking with him is for the free food. And look, he knows all of that now! He knows that on the frontside and yet still, look what he does!

He not only gives to those who can’t repay him; he gives to those who don’t even want to repay him.

I feel like if I were there, I’d say:

Jesus, your strategy here is all wrong (and I know because I’m a church planter). See, what you win them with, you win them to. Jesus, you’re making shallow followers here. You’re just meeting their felt-needs and creating a positive experience — at least make the parking bad.

Jesus knows all of the pitfalls here, and he does it anyway. Why? …

Because he’s generous. Because he loves people. Because he wants somebody in that crowd to know he’s generous and loves people — because he wants us to know.

What if the purposeful kindness of Jesus on display in John 6 is actually for us who are reading this story two thousand years later?

Let us marvel at how Jesus is a generous host. And let’s learn from him.

Jesus is loyal to his Father’s will. The conclusion to this miracle is the response of the crowd in verses 14–15, which was not humble worship, but ignorant zeal. They recognize, first, because of this miracle, that Jesus is the prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. That’s when Moses himself said,

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.

This is not a Moses-wink, this is a straight up Moses-spotlight. Jesus is that ‘prophet like Moses.’Moses wrote of him, and he’s greater than Moses.

The crowd is 100% correct in their assessment of Jesus in verse 14. But it goes sideways in verse 15 because they wanted to take Jesus by force and make him king. This means that these 5,000 men are a mob-in-the-making, but they’re not against Jesus, they want to ‘promote’ him.

And that’s exactly why Jesus gets out of there. But why?! They wanna make him king, Jesus is a king, why doesn’t he go along with this?

Jesus walks away from thousands of ‘loyalists’ because he is loyal to his Father’s will, and the path to the throne prepared by his Father requires a cross. That’s the reason why.

Jesus is the Prophet. Jesus is the King. And Jesus is also the Lamb, and soon enough the will of his Father is gonna lead him to Jerusalem, as one theologian puts it, “not to wield the spear and bring the judgment, but to receive the spear thrust and bear the judgment.” See, Jesus’s ascendancy to glory won’t come through popularity and prestige, but through suffering and sacrifice. Which he endured for us.

Do you see, his loyalty to his Father’s will is our salvation? That’s what he’s after. That’s why the Father has sent him.

He will be crucified in our place, slain for our sins, taking the punishment we deserved. Jesus will die and be raised to live forever so that we can too.

Jesus says, verse 40:

“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Church, it is good news that Jesus is loyal to the will of his Father. It’s good news that he does not buckle to the demands of our ignorant desires.

Because if we were there, we would have wanted to make him king too. Like Peter, we would have deterred him from the cross. But he went there anyway even as we stood in his way, because he follows his Father’s will, not ours, on purpose. This is grace unmeasured, love untold!

This is the purposeful kindness of Jesus to us!

Jesus is a patient provider.

Jesus is a generous host.

Jesus is loyal to his Father’s will.

And that’s what brings us to the table.

The TableWhat can we do but just thank him? This morning let’s marvel at the glory of Jesus. That’s my invitation to you now.

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John 5:30-47,

I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

These last few Sundays we’ve been slowly walking through the scene from John chapter 5, which takes place at a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda. There, a man who’d longbeen paralyzed began to walk again. Not thanks to medicine or machinery, but a miracle. Jesus, the God-man, had simply spoken, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” … And the man did.

Well, the Jewish religious leaders didn’t like it, because the day on which he healed the man was the Sabbath. And then they really didn’t like it when Jesus defended his action by saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” In fact, his words soenraged them that, verse 18, they were:

“seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

Faced with the religious leaders’ anger, Jesus did not retreat. Instead, the remainder of chapter 5 captures Jesus’ response to these leaders in which he makes some of the most stunning claims in all the gospels:

Whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise (v. 19).
The Father loves the Son, and shows the Son all that he’s doing (v. 20).
As the Father gives life, so the Son gives life (v. 21).
The Father desires people to honor the Son just as they honor the Father (v. 23).

Notice these claims of Jesus don’t only concern him, but God the Father as well. His claims, in other words, are not merely about him as an individual, but about him and God and how they relate to one another.

So it’s for that very reason that, when he gets to verse 31, he concedes:

“If I alonebear witness about myself, my testimony is not true.”

Not meaning that his words couldn’t be trusted. But that since his words concern him and the Father, we should expect them to be backed not only by him, but the Father as well. And through the rest of this chapter, Jesus is ultimately going to show that they are.

So what we’re going to do this morning is trace Jesus’ argument, and see two things: reasons and roadblocks. Reasons to believe Jesus’ claims, and roadblocks tobelieving Jesus’ claims.

Reasons to believe, roadblocks to believing.

Let’s pray, and ask for God’s help once more….

ReasonsSo, reasons and roadblocks. We’ll begin with reasons, and Jesus gives four of them. The testimony of (1) John the Baptist, (2) Jesus’ own works, (3) God the Father, and (4) Moses. Let’s start with that first one, John the Baptist. Turn to John 5:33. This is Jesus speaking.

John the BaptistJohn 5:33,

“You sent to John [ie. John the Baptist], and he has borne witness to the truth.”

Borne witness — testified, spoken aloud, audibly confirmed — the truth of what Jesus himself was claiming. And when did John bear such witness? Well, in chapter one, where he said: That Jesus, though he’d come after him, actually ranks before him because, “He wasbefore him” (1:15). That Jesus, in fact, ranked sohigh above John, that John was unfit to even stoop down and untie his sandals (1:27). That Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (1:29). That Jesus is the “Son of God.” (1:34).

Jesus says,

“You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth.”

Now, lest we get the wrong idea here, Jesus quickly clarifies why it is that he’s saying this. It’s notbecause he feels insecure and needs John to back him up. Nor because he feels attacked, and wants to defend himself. Often, those are our reasons for responding. Someone confronts us, challenges us, and our immediate impulse is to pounce and defend.

That’s not what Jesus is doing here. Rather, as we see in verse 34:

“Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.”

So that you may be saved. How remarkable? I mean, think about it: Who was he saying this to? The very religious authorities who, according to verse 18, were actively seeking to kill him!

I mean, Jesus knows the heart of man. He knew all about Nathaniel in John 1. All about the Samaritan woman in John 4. Jesus knows the heart of man, and Jesus knew these people were wanting to kill him. To destroy him. To put him in an early grave. I mean, how much do you have to hate someone to actually want them dead? And not only dead, but to be the one who causes his death?

And yet Jesus, knowing all of that, looks them right in the eyes and says, “Just so you know, the reason I’m saying these things to you is so that you might be saved.” He’d already told them back in verse 24,

“That whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.”

And now here he is, trying to get them to hear it. Trying to get them to believe it. We asked: How much do you have to hate someone to actually want them dead? How much more do you need to love someone to actually want to save those who want you dead?

Friends, isn’t Jesus wonderful? Isn’t he magnificent? Don’t skip over verses like these. Linger long over the heart of God as its revealed in the pages of Scripture. Allow yourself the time to be made glad as you see, “My Savior, is just so good!” He seeks to save his would-be persecutors.

So, first reason to believe Jesus’ claims is the testimony of John the Baptist. Here’s the second reason: Jesus’ own works.

WorksVerse 36,

“But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John [Note: “Greater,” so he’s ratcheting up his argument]. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.“

Works like, in John 2, when Jesus turned about 150 gallons of water into wine, without even lifting a finger. Or later in John 4, when Jesus healed a man’s son who was deathly ill, without even being in the same town as him. And just recently, in John 5, when Jesus told a paralyzed man to stand and the paralyzed man did.

The feeding of the 5,000, the walking on the water, the giving of sight to a man born blind — all of these works are still to come.

Yet, even now, Jesus says: my works act as words. They proclaim: God has sent me.

So, first reason to believe is testimony from John, and second the testimony of Jesus’ works. Third, is the testimony of the Father himself.

GodVerse 37,

“And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.”

This of course is the heaviest hitter in the argument. Should the Father affirm the Son? Well, we need no other evidence. And Jesus is saying that he, in fact, has “borne witness.” But the question again is, when? When did the Father bear witness about the Son?

Well at least one place was at Jesus’ baptism. There, when Jesus had come up out of the water, the Father’s voice rang out from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:11).

And look, God tells no lies. God calls something good, he means it. God calls something evil, then that is what it is. God calls someone his beloved Son; with whom he is well pleased. Well, you better believe he is.

So, we have the Father’s witness in Jesus’ baptism. And, I believe we’re meant to see we have the Father’s witness in all of Scripture as well.

Look with me, verse 37,

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his wordabiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures [(ie. God’s word)So I see a connection between God’s witness, God’s voice, God’s word, and the Scriptures — all getting at this concept of the Father’s witness of the Son] because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”

The Scriptures at that time, the Old Testament, Genesis to Malachi — “They’re about me,” Jesus says. The Father’s word is about me. And that’s why in Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus interprets all the Old Testament as things concerning himself (Lk. 24:27). The Old Testament is about Jesus.

So, believe the testimony of John, the testimony of Jesus’ works, and the testimony of God the Father both at Jesus’ baptism and in the Scriptures.

Last, believe the testimony of Moses. And this actually signals our transition from reasons to believe, to roadblocks to believing. We’ve got three reasons to believe. Here’s a fourth — it’s Moses — but it’s at this point Jesus puts his finger upon the roadblock to believing.

RoadblocksMosesLet’s begin by considering the fact that Jesus has just called all of Scripture to account. Saying the Scriptures, which would’ve already included the writings of Moses, bear witness about him. So, Moses has already been counted as witness, yes? So, why is it that Jesus references him here specifically? Why does he, as it were, set Moses in the spotlight before them, and say “You know, Moses, he too has borne witness about me”?

Verse 45,

“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Why the emphasis on Moses?

Well, it’s because these religious authorities had prided themselves upon their obedience to Moses. They, in fact, had built their entire lives around following the Laws of Moses. In their minds, they were set apart, and far greater than everyone else, because of their diligent study and expansive knowledge of Moses. Moses was, in this way, their one major stepping stone to self-worth, social rank, and salvation. And Jesus, is going to take a hold of it.

You ever watch Charlie Brown as a kid? Charlie Brown, the well behaved, inquisitive, yellow shirt with zig zag stripe, cartoon young boy? If you did, then I want you to imagine the religious leaders right now as Charlie Brown. Jesus is Lucy. And the writings of Moses are the football. You guys remember what Lucy used to always do with Charlie as Charlie ran up to kick the football? She’d hold it, “Hey Charlie, here’s the football.” And then just as Charlie ran up and was about to kick it she’d pull that thing away and Charlie’s leg would swing on up into thin air carrying his whole body with.

Jesus knew these religious leaders. He knew the confidence they had in their grasp of Moses and ability to follow the Laws of Moses. So, Jesus takes Moses’ writings, and says, “Religious leaders, this is Moses. You think you got a hang on Moses. You’re kicking into thin air.”

Jesus puts the writings of Moses right down in front of them and says: You don’t even believe his writings. You don’t even understand his words. You think that if he were here today, he too would be pointing a finger at me, and yet it is he who wrote of me. And should you continue in your disbelief, it is also he who will stand as your accuser, on the last day.”

Again, verse 45,

“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope.”

And so we’ve got to ask the question: what’s gone wrong here, so as to lead these religious leaders to not even believing the one in whom Moses wrote? What’s gotten in their way? What’s their roadblock to believing Jesus?

Was it merely intellectual? A problem from the neck up? Read Jesus’ indictment:

You have not heard God’s voice (v. 37)
You don’t have God’s word (v. 38)
You do not believe the one whom he has sent (v. 38)
Therefore, verse 40, “You refuse to come to me that you may have life”
And then, verse 42: “But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.”

What a daring indictment!

“You don’t have the love of God within you.”

It’s like he’s saying, “You who accuse me of breaking God’s Sabbath, don’t even love the God who gave you the Sabbath. You don’t love him. You know things abouthim. You teach things about him. You’ve convinced othersthat your life is all about him. And yet if we were to put your heart under the microscope and scour its every corner for signs — what you most enjoy in this life, what you most savor in this world, what your treasure really is — at no point and in no place would we find even a hint of love for the God you claim to worship.”

That’s what it means for a person to not have the love of God within them. To not have it is to not have it. And why? Why is there no love for God in their heart? Because there’s already a love for something else in his place.

What is it? What, at bottom, is the roadblock to belief in Jesus? We need everyone in the room, myself included, to ask this question. What, at bottom, is the roadblock to belief in Jesus?

Ask it for your unbelieving neighbor, your non-Christian co-worker, your sibling or parent who has walked away from the faith. And ask it for yourself lest you too make shipwreck of your faith in Jesus.

What is the ultimate roadblock to belief in Jesus?

It’s this — uncontested thirst for your own glory. Uncontested thirst for your own glory. That, brothers and sisters, is at the root of unbelief.

Not a problem in your mind, not a problem with your upbringing, not a problem with God’s so-called lack of evidence. No, no, no. When it really comes down to it, when all is truly laid bare — thereason for man’s refusal to bow the knee to Jesus is owing to man’s thirst to have others to bow the knee to themselves instead of God.

Jesus asks, Verse 44:

“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

Answer, you can’t. You cannot seek to glorify yourself and God simultaneously. Why? Because God’s glory contests all others. God’s glory outshines all others. God’s glory makes our glory look small, and we, in our sin, don’t like looking small.

Think about it: The painter who wants to think himself the greatest in the world, will detest the museums where Da Vinci is celebrated. Just as the writer who wants to think herself the greatest in the world, will avoid the conversations in which Shakespeare is honored. The singer, the actor, the architect, and the salesman; the mother, the teacher, the doctor, and the lawyer — should they prefer the belief that they are the world’s greatest — will intentionally and aggressively shield their eyes from the masters of their field so as to not look small standing next to them. They’d rather be blind and think themselves greatest, than open their eyes and realize they aren’t.

Friends, God is the ultimate Master. The Holy one. The eternal one. The sovereign, glorious, and omniscient one before whom we don’t hold a candle. Should you prefer project “increase self-glory,” how could you love, pursue, praise the God who says, “My glory, I will not give to another”?

Jesus’ question is one we must regularly ask ourselves: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

So, hear the warning: Belief in God is impossible where praise of self is preferred. Hear that warning, and, now, hear the good news.

If you are here today and you take joy in the thought of God being God — being radiant in splendor, held high and celebrated, praised and adored and enjoyed in the heavens…

If you know that Jesus is wonderful, and are glad that he’s wonderful…

If you have tasted how good it is not to have to incessantly labor for even an ounce of momentary worshiped, but to simply delight in worshiping the one whose truly deserving of it anyway…

If you treasure being loved, forgiven, and brought near to God, so as to gaze upon his beauty all the rest of your days…

If it pleases you to say, “Oh, Father, not to us, but to you be the glory”…

Well, it would seem that God has begun a work in you. And your life now as a Christian is a life of simply asking, “God, grow my heart in greater enjoyment of your glory, and greater distaste for my own.” Really, all of the Christian life simply comes down to those two corresponding realities: greater enjoyment of God’s glory, greater distaste for your own.

ApplicationFor Christians: Ask God, right now, “Search my heart for where uncontested thirst for personal glory still remains. Show me the places, the people, the things in which my prayer of my heart has not been, ‘Hallow be thy name’, but ‘hallow be my own.’ Convict me, change me, give to me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Turn my inborn impulse away from self-glorification, to the happy life of glorifying you.

For Non-Christians: Remember, Jesus said what he did in John 5 “so that people might be saved.” His desire this morning, in other words, is not to be your accuser, but your Savior. Ask him to show you, right now, for the very first time, that his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, is actually that one great thing for which your heart has been craving all along. To show you that it will only be in your celebration of him that everything in you will finally be made whole.

God made you to revel in his glory, not rival it. God made you to commune with him, not compete with him. Rest — your real, full, deep, lasting rest can be had if you are willing to throw in the towel of project “increase self-glory,” and take up the song of the glory of God. Do it now. Say: “God, make yourself great in my life now.” And then, enjoy God’s glory, to your soul’s delight.

The TableWell, what brings us to the table this morning is the fact that the Scriptures that bear witness to Jesus — to his glory, his majesty, his identity as the Son — bear witness also to his death. Death on behalf of those who, by nature, scorned him, mocked him, and considered him smitten by God. Death as a piercing for our transgressions and crushing for our iniquities so that by his wounds we could be healed.

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John 5:24,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

Anytime we see Jesus start a sentence with the words, “Truly, truly” it means that what he’s about to say is really important and it’d be good for us to just hear this again. So, John 5:24,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

Now it was Jesus saying things like this that (in one sense) got him killed on Friday. But because what Jesus says here is true is why he was raised on Sunday.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This is the core creed of Christianity.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried.

[But on the] the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end. …

These are facts about Jesus and the Gospel of John makes them clear to us, and I wanna repeat to you what Pastor David Mathis said last week — we see it here in verse 27 — it’s that the Father has so exalted Jesus that he has made him the final judge of all humanity.

The Nicene Creed just affirms what Jesus says. One day every single human being will stand before Jesus and answer to him. This is not theoretical! This is not symbolic! This is heart-pounding literal.

One day, a day like today, a moment in time, each of us will look at Jesus, right in his face. We’re going to look at his human face … which he has right now — and we’re going to see his eyes. We’re going to see his nose. We’re going to read his lips as he speaks. And we will absolutely know that the Divine Judge is a man like us, who became like us to save us.

Everybody will know that on the Last Day — even those who reject Jesus will know then that they have rejected their only hope of salvation.

We’re all gonna see him one day. You are going to see Jesus, and for what it’s worth, I believe that my job mainly is to help prepare you for that moment. There’s a trillion things going on in our lives, and they all matter, but the thing that matters the most is that you are ready to meet Jesus.

And so to that end, for this Easter sermon, looking at John 5:24, I wanna repeat to you three truths about reality I hope you always remember.

You can hear Jesus today.Look at that word “hear” in verse 24: Jesus says, “whoever hears my word.”

And the nice thing about the word “hear” is that it can have a couple of meanings. At the most basic level, it means to literally, audibly hear something.

To hear involves sound waves entering the ear canal and causing the eardrum to vibrate, and then these vibrations are transferred through tiny bones in the middle ear to the inner ear where they’re turned into electrical signals that then travel to the brain which then interprets the meaning. That’s what it means to hear. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about in verse 24.

That’s also not what my mom ever meant when she used the word. I don’t know if this is a Southern Mom thing or if all moms do this, but often growing up when my mom would give me instructions, she would end her instructions with “Do you hear me?”

I can promise you that when she said that she was not thinking about my ear canal.

What was she saying then? She was talking about obedience. She wanted to make sure I was gonna do the thing she said. She wanted me to heed the words, to take action on the words — and that’s what Jesus means in verse 24. To hear the words of Jesus is to believe. Jesus is saying the same thing two different ways in verse 24: to hear his word is to believe God the Father who sent him.

Jesus is talking about faith, and we’ve already seen that our faith is the purpose of this Gospel. John wrote this Gospel so that people would read it and believe in Jesus (John 20:31). And that was not just the purpose in the year 80 when John first published this Gospel, but that’s the purpose today, every time we open this book. Because all these years later, we can still not just ‘hear’ the words of Jesus, but really hear him.

You can hear Jesus today.

That goes for all of us, and look: we should hear him. We should do what he says. And Christians, isn’t that what we want?! We have his word, and everyday we wanna say: Jesus, we hear you!

But for those who don’t yet believe, if you don’t yet hear Jesus, I hope you can hear him tomorrow. And if you don’t hear him tomorrow, I hope you get a chance to hear him the next day, but there’s no guarantee. This is what’s called the urgency of the gospel.

It means that there will come a time, at some point, when you won’t be able to hear Jesus anymore. But you can hear him today. And so today (as the Bible says, Hebrews 3) — today, while it is called “today,” don’t harden your heart toward Jesus, but really hear him. Believe him. On his behalf, I’m calling you to believe him right now.

You can hear Jesus today.

If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.Now there are some grammatical details in verse 24 that I’m gonna make a big deal about.

For the first one, I want you to notice the first time the word “has” is used, right before the words “eternal life.” This is in verse 24, and it’s one of those things that I wanna make sure you really see it, so help me out. Verse 24, everybody find the word “has” right before “eternal life.”

“…whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life…”

That’s a present active verb. It means not that you have had it, or that you will have it, but you actively have it now. You possess it now. It is yours in this moment.

John repeats this for us: John 3:36, “whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” John 6:47, Jesus says, “Whoever believes has eternal life.” And John 11:25, Jesus with the same point says, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die…” — which means this physical body here over, there’s a flatline — Jesus says “yet shall he live.”

Believer in Jesus, listen — you have, right now, the resurrection life of Jesus in you and it is inextinguishable, it’s indestructible, it’s irrepressible, it’s unfading, unfailing, unyielding — even though, look, tribulation will come for you, and distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword — they’re coming for you, but the resurrection life of Jesus in you is ever-bright, ever-true, ever-new. It does not drift, it does not dim, it will never die. Happy Easter! This is what it means to be a Christian!

Because of what Jesus has done, we will live forever. You have that life now and the best is yet to come.

If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.

If you have eternal life you have been changed.Again, let me show you another word in verse 24: The one who believes in Jesus has eternal life, which means, the end of verse 24:

“He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

I want you to focus on that second time the word “has” is used at the end.The end of verse 24: the believer in Jesus “has passed” from death to life. “Has passed” is in the perfect tense, which means this is an action that has been completed in the past. It still has an ongoing effect, but we look back on the perfect tense. At some point in the past, this action has happened. What action?

Passing from death to life. That word “passing” means literally to change, or to transfer. It means to move from one place to another.

And when Jesus says death and life here, he’s referring to spiritual death and spiritual life, and he’s saying that for those who believe in Jesus — who have eternal life and don’t come into judgment — they have in the past been changed. The theological word for this is the word “conversion” (which means to change or transfer). And conversion happens at a moment in time, it’s the moment of saving faith.

When someone puts their faith in Jesus, when they really hear him, when they believe him, the Holy Spirit is at work in that moment to make that person spiritually alive— or to use the phrase from John Chapter 3, this is to be born again. It means we are converted/transferred/changed from spiritual death to eternal life.

Last month when I was at my grandmother’s funeral, her pastor (who used to be my pastor) said something I thought was amazing. My grandmother was a godly woman. I never knew her when she was not a Christian, and most people would say the same thing. She grew up in the same church her entire life — she’s buried right by the only church she’s ever been part of.

But there was a time in her life when she was spiritually dead. And her pastor, Preacher Billy, said “When people tell me they’ve been a Christian their whole life, I tell ‘em that’s too long.” He’s right. Nobody is born a Christian. You have to be changed to be a Christian!

Now this doesn’t mean that every detail in your life is completely different just like that — that’s what discipleship is about; for the rest of our lives we learn together to obey all that Jesus has commanded us — But there is a change.

There is a decisive move from facing condemnation to no condemnation, from hopeless to hope, from without God to having God. There’s a change from spiritual death to eternal life. And it all starts with hearing Jesus.

You can hear Jesus today.

If you hear Jesus you have eternal life.

If you have eternal life you have been changed.

And I want you to know this church believes in conversion. We believe that it’s a necessity and we believe that God the Father is working until now, and Jesus is working, and he’s still saving people. Which is why this morning there are ten individuals who are coming to be baptized, as a symbol of their conversion.

By our faith in Jesus we become united to him in his death and resurrection, which means that when Jesus was crucified, our old selves that were destined for death, were crucified with him. The cross of Christ was the death of our death. Baptism shows that as the person is buried under the water. But just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we are now raised with him as new creatures, on a new path, toward a new destiny. We have come out of the grave of spiritual death and we have new life. Baptism shows that too.

And in just a few minutes, I’m eager for you to witness the baptisms of ten people who each have different stories and the same story — they heard Jesus, they have eternal life, they have been changed.

Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus and his word. Thank you that you are working right now, in this room, in these cities, in our world — you are at work for your glory and our good, and we praise you. With everything we’ve got, we praise you. Magnify your glory this morning, we ask, in Jesus’s name, amen.

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John 5:19-30,

19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

It’s Palm Sunday, and I do love “Holy Week” and these last seven days leading up to Easter next Sunday. And that last verse we just read sounds like Holy Week, does it not? Jesus says in verse 30,

“I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

On Thursday night, Jesus will kneel in the garden, and in those final moments before soldiers come to get him, he will pray, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

How do you get your soul ready to say “not my will but yours be done”? Answer: you don’t say it for the first time in garden. You say it in John 5:30, and you say it in John 6:38: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” And you pray it every morning and throughout your life: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Day by day, you condition your soul to will God’s will.

I’m not saying you train yourself to bite your lip and not do what you want but what God wants. Rather, you condition your wants. You train your desires and delights, like Jesus did. When he says “not my will,” he means not what my human, creaturely will would will apart from God’s will, but rather, with God’s will in view, and with a love for God and his will, and with my will formed to embrace and cherish God’s will, I will, with my human will, what is also the divine will I share with my Father.

One Little WordLast week in John 5, we saw Jesus heal a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. How did he heal him? With his voice. One little word:

Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. (verses 8–9)

The Jewish leaders see the man carrying his bed and say, Hey, you can’t do that on the Sabbath! So, they make their way to Jesus to press him about it. And Jesus could have entered into the fray on their terms. He could have said, I didn’t break the Sabbath. I only said a word and healed a man who’d been paralyzed for 38 years. But Jesus doesn’t respond on their terms. Instead, he says, in verse 17,

“My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

“My Father” — now these Jewish leaders are “seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (verse 18).

That’s the issue on the table, the issue to which Jesus responds in verses 19–47. This morning we’ll look at verses 19–30, then next week, verses 30–47.

There are a few key concepts on the surface of verses 19–30. You heard them in the reading of the passage. Twice Jesus mentions “marveling.” Verse 20: he wants them to marvel, to be shaken from their unbelief. And verse 28: he says not to marvel yet because something even more marvelous is coming.

Also on the surface is the relationship between Jesus and the Father, and their working in synch to give life and execute judgment.

But what’s harder to see at first pass is how much the word of Jesus, or the voice of Jesus, knits this whole section together. It was the word or voice of Jesus that started this controversy. How did Jesus heal the man? He spoke. No bandages or braces. No oil or medicine. He just says, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

Who else works like this through simply uttering his voice? Answer: God. How did God create the world? Through his word. And he gives life through his word, upholds the universe through his word, and sends his Word, who gives spiritual life through his word and in the end will raise the dead, good and evil, through his word.

Then, how is it that Jesus gets himself into hotter water with the Jewish leaders? Through his voice, his word. He says, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” So they want to kill him all the more, and think he’s “making himself equal with God.” And now Jesus will again speak in verses 19–30. So, let’s see three marvelous words he speaks with his voice, and about his voice.

The voice of Jesus commends his Father. (Verses 19–20)Jesus’s first response to the charge that he is making himself equal with God is that it’s not what they think. He starts with “it’s less than you think.” But then he’s going to say, essentially, “it’s almost what you think,” and then finish with, “it’s more than what you think.” But first verses 19–20:

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.

So, first, Jesus deescalates: “the Son can do nothing of his own accord.” And he’ll come back here in verse 30: “I can do nothing on my own.” It’s almost the exact same humble, dependent words — he just says “I” in verse 30 and calls himself “the Son” in verse 19. Which is important.

Jesus mentioned his Father in verse 17: “My Father is working till now, and I am working.” So, God is his Father, and he is the Son. And the first thing he says about that, which distinguishes Father from Son, puts Jesus in the humble, dependent position of sonship: “I can do nothing on my own.”

Jesus is not the Father. And the Father is not the Son. There are not two Gods. Jesus is not “making himself God” alongside God. This is not ditheism. Rather, this will come to be known as Christian monotheism.

But then, granting that dependent, humble sonship, Jesus escalates things again. At the end of verse 19, he says, the Son does “whatever the Father does,” and then in verse 20: “the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.” So, not only is this Father-Son relationship less than what the Jewish leaders assume, but it is almost what they assume. Jesus is not independent of his Father, but neither is the Father independent of the Son.

This passage, along with many others, is why Christians confess the doctrine of “the Threeness,” the Trinity. There is a threeness in the one God — and very soon in this Gospel we’ll hear more about the Spirit. The claims Jesus makes in John 5 reveal within the one God a plurality of persons. The Father is God. And the Son is God. But the Son is not the Father. What’s striking in John 5 is the ordered equality between Father and Son. Consider what Jesus says the Father does in these verses:

The Father acts first; the Son sees what the Father does and the Son does likewise.
The Father loves the Son and shows the Son; the Son is beloved and shown.
The Father has given all judgment to the Son, that all might honor the Son like they do the Father. And the Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment. Not vice versa. Not reciprocal.
As we’ll see in verse 26: The Father has life in himself, and he grants the Son to have life in himself.

If we wanted to sum up the relation between Father and Son we might say the Father gives, and the Son receives. The Father gives cues; the Son takes them. The Father gives the Son guidance and direction, and gives all judgment to the Son, and gives honor to the Son, and he gives him “life in himself.”

A word for fathers in the room. (This is relevant for mothers too, but especially fathers.) Fathers, if you had to name the difference between you and your children, what would it be? You wouldn’t say, I’m human and their children. No, you’re human; they’re human. Human nature is not the difference between father and son. Soon enough, the children grow up, and you’re all adults together. Rather, what you’d say, most fundamentally, is that the father begets his children. That is, he and their mother give them life. They generate the children.

And a good father keeps giving to his children, giving himself, his energy, his attention — yes, his money, but oh so much more than just finances — your presence, your listening, your patience, your counsel, your prayers, your example, your priorities, your love. You give and give and give, until one day, they are ready to give and give and give to give life to the next generation.

So, Dads — and Moms too, but focusing on Dads right now — Dads, that’s the very heart of our calling: give and give and give. And it’s a glorious honor and profound joy. To be like our heavenly Father who gives and gives and gives. And Dads, we’re not God the Father. Human dads get tired; we run on fumes, we get empty; we sin; we’re impatient, unloving, unsupportive, distracted, inattentive, emotionally absent. But the difference between a good human father and a bad one isn’t that one makes mistakes and the other doesn’t. The difference is whether the human father, when in sin, when empty, when failing, knows and goes to his heavenly Father to get help — both forgiveness and fresh effort.

Dads, your energy, your emotional resources, your love is not bottomless like our Father’s. And that’s okay. Because your fundamental identity is not father but son; your Father has life in himself, and his capital-S Son, Jesus, our brother, has life in himself, and they never tire and never empty. You know where to refill when you’re empty.

The voice of Jesus gives life to whom he desires. (Verses 21–27)Jesus says at the end of verse 20, “And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.” Impressive as it is to heal a man who could not walk — and do so with only a word — Jesus and his Father have greater works in store, to make people marvel, and so shake them from their unbelief.

Now, verses 21–27 are very dense. Let’s first read verses 21–23, and talk about the honor of the Son (and then verses 24–27). Verse 21:

For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life [that is, he is God, this is what God does], so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

We’ll say more in a minute about the Father himself judging no one but giving all judgment to the Son. This he does, Jesus says, “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.”

And then comes the inverse: “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” And there is scarcely a more incendiary word in our world today. Not that it was easy then. Can you imagine, a man in flesh and blood, standing before the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem saying, “The one true God, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, has given all judgment to me, that all might honor me, just as they honor him”? So, it was incendiary then. And in our pluralistic world, the offenses multiply. This is not only a word for Jewish people today. This is a word for Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and various folk religions, and the so-called “irreligious,” and for anyone presuming to be a Christian. Check yourself here, not just your neighbor.

This is the question for every religion and every human: Do you honor God? Do Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and nice, charitable secular people honor God? Verse 23 says the issue is this: Do they honor the Son? What do they do with Jesus? How do they orient on Jesus? What do they believe and say about Jesus? Do they honor the divine Son for who he is, and what he says, and what he has accomplished, or do they dishonor him as simply a moral man and good teacher and influential person? Which makes him into a liar or lunatic.

Jesus is the dividing line in every soul: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).

So, the negative word, the distancing word, is “No Jesus, no spiritual life.” But what about the positive word? Verse 21 says, “the Son gives life to whom he will.” What about them? Verse 24:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. 25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

Oh this is such good news. The voice of Jesus gives life, even now, to those who hear him with faith. Verse 24 is in the present: “whoever hears my word and believes,” and Jesus says that person “has eternal life.” Not: will have, someday. But: has, right now. Jesus says the hour “is now here, when the (spiritually) dead will hear his voice and their souls will live.”

And there’s one more “has” in verse 24. If you hear Jesus’s word even now, and believe in him and his Father who sent him, Jesus says you do not come into judgment but have (already) passed from death to life.

The all-important question this morning is, Do you believe in him now? Has he opened the eyes of your heart to see him in his glory, and believe his words, and receive him as sent from his Father, and trust him for the forgiveness of your sins, then have eternal life in your soul already? Now, you don’t have the fullness of all that eternal life will be — no sin, new heavens and new earth, glorified human body, surrounded by those who love and worship Jesus. But that simple faith in your soul — that coming awake in your heart to Jesus — is new life in your once spiritually dead heart. And that new life is the first taste and beginning of the full eternal life we will experience when Jesus returns.

When Jesus says about you, “He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life,” you know how we might say that in the words of Paul? “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This, friends, is justification by faith alone. If you believe now in Jesus, eternal life has begun in you. If your faith is genuine, it is the very life of God in you and will endure to and blossom one day into the fullness of eternal life. Already, through faith, there is no condemnation.

And marvelous as that is — almost too good to be true — Jesus has one last marvel for us in verses 28–29.

The voice of Jesus will raise all the dead. (Verses 28–29)It’s one thing to heal a paralyzed man with a word, and take on the Jewish leaders by yourself. It’s another thing, then, to speak a word and give life to a dead soul, as you choose — and an increasing number of dead souls. But Jesus takes us to one further level in verses 28–29.

We saw the “now” in verse 25: “an hour is coming, and is now here.” So, I take verses 21–27 to be about the present, from the first century to the 21st century. But these last two verses turn to an hour that is coming, and not here yet. Look at verses 28–29:

Do not marvel at this [the power Jesus has to speak life into spiritually dead souls even now], for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

Earlier we heard that the Father “has given all judgment to the Son.” Verses 24–27 fleshed this out in terms of the spiritual life the Son gives now to dead souls. But verses 28–29 give us what it will mean in the future. Not only does the voice of the Son — springing from the will of the Son, perfectly in sync with the will of the Father — give spiritual life now to his people, but one day the voice of the Son will ring in the ears of all the dead: “all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.” Come out to what? To the final judgment, with the Son presiding.

We skipped over the phrase “the Son of Man” at the end of verse 27. These verses are so dense, and Jesus is laying it on so thick here, that the end of verse 27 comes and goes by so quickly. But it is a stunning claim.

“Son of Man” is an ambiguous phrase. It could just mean a man, or human. Like Psalm 8, “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Or, throughout Ezekiel, God calls him as “Son of man.” It’s a humbling term. “Son of man, know your place. Not only are you a man, but the son of one.” But “Son of Man” is also the name of this enigmatic figure who steps forward in a vision of the final judgment in Daniel 7:

As I looked,

thrones were placed,

and the Ancient of Days took his seat;

his clothing was white as snow,

and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames;

its wheels were burning fire.

10A stream of fire issued

and came out from before him;

a thousand thousands served him,

and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;

the court sat in judgment,

and the books were opened. . . .

. . . and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

14 And to him was given dominion

and glory [honor!] and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed.

So, two meanings for the phrase “son of man” — one humble one, and one exalted. And throughout Jesus’s ministry, as he refers to himself as “the Son of Man,” it’s often tough to tell exactly which one he means. But here in John 5, with the final judgment in view, it’s clear what Jesus means, even if he passes over it quickly. And it’s Daniel 12 he alludes to when he mentions the resurrection of all, some to eternal life and some to judgment. A messenger from God says in Daniel 12:2,

“those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

And now Jesus says, My voice will do that. I am the God-exalted Son of Man, and my Father has given me the authority, as man, to execute judgment. One day soon, I will speak, and all the dead will hear my voice. And if they have believed in me, and have life in them from me, I will raise their bodies and glorify them and they will pass into the fullness of eternal life. And if they have rejected me, and not had life in them but continued in evil and unbelief, I will raise their bodies and send them into everlasting judgment and shame.

Which brings us back, in verse 30, to Jesus’s humble word he started with in verse 19. The divine Son never goes rogue in willing what he wills, or saying what he says, or doing what he does, or judging how he judges. Jesus says,

“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

Resurrection LifeSo, we come to the Table, and we remember the one who knelt in the garden. One day soon the Son of Man will sit in judgment over the nations. But during Holy Week, we remember what he achieved to offer life to sinners like us.

The one who will sit in judgment is the one who rode in honor into Jerusalem on a donkey and staggered out in shame on Good Friday carrying his own cross. He’s the one who knelt on Thursday with sweat like drops of blood as he faced the cross for sins not his own. He’s the one who was crucified on Friday, lay dead in the tomb that night, and all day that final Sabbath, till early Sunday morning, when his Father, who raises the dead and gives them life, gave him the indestructible life of the new creation — the very life that is in us now who trust him by faith.

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John 5:1-18,

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

One of the realities of our humanity is that we can be wrong sometimes.

Being wrong, a lot of times, isn’t a terrible thing, we know we don’t always get it right — but there are some big things in life that we can’t afford to get wrong because the stakes are too high. And Jesus targets one of those things in our passage today, John Chapter 5.

It’s all about the way that God works in this world.That’s the focus in this passage — it’s the activity of God, the power of God, the working of God in this world. We must get that right. And we find here two things it is not, and one thing it is.

And that’s the outline of this sermon. We’re going to consider two misconceptions about God’s work and then thirdly, we’re gonna see how Jesus answers both.

Father, the unfolding of your word gives light. This morning, we ask, that by the power of your Spirit, shine on our hearts, and speak to us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

God’s work is not impersonal to us. John starts in verse 1 with the setting of this story: Jesus is back in Jerusalem, and he’s in a particular part of the city John describes for us. By the Sheep Gate (in the northeast part of the city) there was a pool called Bethesda.

This pool would have been a pretty big rectangle — think the size of a football field — and then surrounding the pool is what verse 2 calls “five roofed colonnades.” This is a shelter held up by columns. There would have been a shelter surrounding the four sides of the pool, and then a shelter through the middle section, and verse 3 says that under this shelter, or in these colonnades, lay a “multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.” Keyword there is “multitude” — down in verse 13 John says that there was a crowd in the place, so we should imagine here:

A long pool, surrounded by a swarm of people. And many of the people in this area would have been disabled folks, many of them were likely homeless and they found shelter here.

So imagine this to look like a homeless encampment. There’s lots of people who hang around here, and there’s shopping carts scattered around and backpacks and pallets and stuff laid out.

And one person in this multitude, verse 5 says, was a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. We don’t know the exact details of his condition, but most likely he was paralyzed in some way.

Everybody find verse 6 for a minute. There’s an important detail to the story in verse 6 I want you to see. John 5, verse 6:

“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’”

Again, imagine what’s going on here: It’s a swarm of people. People everywhere. But Jesus saw this one man in the crowd and he knew he’d been there a long time — now how’d Jesus know that?

We’re not sure. Maybe he knew because he knows things, or maybe he asked around, either way, Jesus was interested in this man. He knew he’d been there a while, and he wanted to know what the man was looking for. So Jesus asked him, verse 6, “Do you want to be healed?”

And this is when the action starts. Kind of like in Chapter 4 with the Samaritan woman, Jesus asks the questions and that’s when things start to unravel …

The Unraveling BeginsThe man responded to Jesus with an implied “Yes” but he jumped straight to the problem. Look at verse 7. The man said:

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

What in the world is he talking about? Again, there’s some unraveling here …

This is the situation that was going on: during this time in Jerusalem there was a superstition that God would occasionally send an angel to infuse these pools with healing power — the waters would apparently be stirred up — and whoever would get in the water first, would be healed. (So it was like part healing, part contest.)

The reason the man had been there by the pool for a long time was because he was waiting for his moment — and apparently a lot of other people were doing the same. Remember it’s a multitude of people. They’re all looking for their chance. But each time the ‘magic’ came, this man was too disabled to get himself in the water first. So he was constantly just missing out.

So I think the man’s reply to Jesus in verse 7 is an indirect request.

Try to track with this: in verse 7 the man is telling Jesus his problem to see if Jesus would solve this problem by helping him get to the pool. Because this man thinks that’s where the power of God is. He thinks God’s work is in the pool, and he thinks his problem is that he doesn’t have anyone to help him get access to where God works — and he’s telling this to Jesus! Which is super ironic, isn’t it? We’re supposed to read this and be like Oh my goodness! We should think: This guy has it all wrong.

He is complainingto Jesus about not having access to where he thinks God works.

All he needs is for Jesus to say the word, like Jesus did in Chapter 4. He just spoke the word and 25 miles away the fever broke!

The Vaguely SpiritualWhat this man gets wrong is that he thinks the work of God in the world is impersonal to us.

According to how this man viewed the world: he believed that God was the one behind miraculous things — God was the one who made the water magic — but that’s the thing: it was the water that became magic at random, arbitrary times, which means the power of God is disconnected from the person of God. This thinking disconnects the work of God from the will of God.

And this kind of thinking, this misconception, still exists today in those who we could call the vaguely spiritual. That’s the title I’m putting on this thinking. These are people who don’t deny the existence of a higher power — they’re not atheists — but they’re also not committed to the God of the Bible.

And you find this everywhere. I remember one Sunday I was talking with someone after the service and they were going on and on about Sedona, Arizona and this rock formation that has divine healing power. It’s making the work of God impersonal to us. That’s what the vaguely spiritual do.

A lot of these people might even consider themselves to be Christians, but they really only appreciate the ‘inspirational’ side of things. They only want the self-help stuff — which is an attempt to have blessing without relationship.

And this is where we start to see that the belief that God’s work is impersonal is not just something people get wrong, it’s also a preference.

People are very interested in the good God can do for them, but they’re not interested in daily trusting him. A lot of people love the idea of ‘getting from God what we want without having to deal with God on his terms.’ See, that prefers to keep things non-committal and vague.

The vaguely spiritual are ‘spiritual’ enough not to be atheist, but ‘vague’ enough not to be subject to God’s moral demands. But look: that’s wrong … Wrong.

That’s not how God works. God’s work is not impersonal to us. Here’s the second thing we see about God’s work in the world.

God’s work is not dictated by us. Jesus says the word, heals this man, and then John tells us, verse 9,

“Now that day was the Sabbath.”

Verse 9 is like a hard right turn that takes us into what seems like a whole different topic. We go from pool superstition to Sabbath controversy like this. Verse 10 says right away that the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed:

“It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”

And it’s interesting here how the man deflects the blame. He said he took up his bed because the man who healed him told him to. Baked into that statement is a recognition of authority. It’s like the man is saying, I’ve been paralyzed for 38 years, and a man just showed up from this crowd and told me to get up, and I did. So yeah, I’m just gonna do whatever he says.

Look how they respond, verse 12. Again, they just want to know who healed him and where he went — not so they can meet Jesus and be in awe of him, but because they want to correct him.

And again, the irony here is thick. The only person who does not need to be corrected in this story is Jesus. That’s how misguided these people are!

And in case you were wondering, there’s no law in the Old Testament that says you can’t take up your bed on the Sabbath. The statement in verse 10 that it’s not lawful is according to the Mishnah — that’s Jewish oral tradition. A bunch of rabbis had analyzed the Sabbath command and came up with 39 categories of prohibited work, one of which included that on the Sabbath you can’t carry anything from one place to another. That was their rule. So the Jewish leaders here are not trying to defend God’s word, but this is their own word.

Again, there’s irony: they think they’re defending God’s law, but they’re actually defending their misapplication of God’s law in opposition to God himself!

I wanna make sure you see what’s going on here: These Jewish leaders meet this guy who has been paralyzed for 38 years and now he’s not! He’s up! He’s walking! They don’t give him a high-five! They’re not amazed by the fact that this man has been healed! But instead they interrogate him because according to them the timing of his healing didn’t make sense!

For them, this healing, which was God’s work, happened when it wasn’t supposed to, and that became their concern.

The Legalistic HenchmenWhat these Jewish leaders get wrong is that they think the work of God in the world is dictated by us. According to how these people viewed the world, they believed that God did miraculous things, but only so long as it fits with their expectations and their standards. The issue here is that they’ve disconnected the work of God from the word of God by making it subject to their own word. They’ve separated the power of God from the freedom of God by putting themselves in the place of God.

And this kind of thinking, this misconception, still exists today in those who we could call the legalistic henchmen. That’s the title I’m putting on this one. These are people who believe that God is at work in the world, but they’ve drawn very clear lines of where that work can happen and where it can’t, and anything outside their lines is rejected. If it doesn’t fit in their construct and conform to their rules then it’s dismissed.

And this is where we can see that this belief also — the belief that God’s work is dictated by us — is not just something people get wrong, it too is a preference. Because it means that we as humans are the ones in control. The ‘legalistic henchmen’, see, never get corrected, but they’re always the ones doing the correcting, because “they’re always right and they’re the only ones who really do God’s work.”

Now there are very few people who would admit that they think this way, but it’s out there.

It’s the inability to appreciate God’s work in things you had nothing to do with. The legalistic henchmen are so blinded by their own man-made ideals that they miss the work of God when it’s right in front of them. That’s what’s going on here. And it’s wrong … Wrong.

That’s not how God works. God’s work is not dictated by us.

So let’s just track what we’ve seen so far in the pool superstition and the Sabbath controversy. Two misconceptions:

So far we know that God’s work is neither impersonal to us nor dictated by us. We don’t wanna be vaguely spiritual or legalistic henchmen — so how should we be?

How should we understand God’s work in the world?

God’s work in the world is what Jesus is doing, who is both personal and active. I want you to see how Jesus engages both of these misconceptions.

First, let’s go back to what Jesus said to the paralyzed man. This is for the vaguely spiritual. Jesus says to the man in verse 8,

“Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

Verse 9: And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

I want you to see here that there is a beautiful contrast between where this man was looking for healing and what he actually experienced.

He is looking to somehow find his way into that pool because he thinks the work of God is impersonally connected to the water, meanwhile, the true work of God is in the person of Jesus Christ who finds his way to this man. In this crowd, Jesus saw him and learned about him and healed him.

And look at verse 14. After the healing there was some commotion and Jesus withdrew from the crowd. But verse 14. Look at verse 14:

“Afterward Jesus found himin the temple …”

Not only did Jesus see him that once, and learn about him, but Jesus was looking for him again. How much more personal can this get?! Jesus found him again!

Look, some of you in this room should know that the reason you’re here today is because Jesus has been looking for you. Jesus has found you.

Look what Jesus says in verse 9. He says,

“See, you are well! [Yes, you’re walking! I just hear the joy of Jesus in these words! … Then he says:] Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Jesus here is calling this man to a new way of life. He’s calling this man to true faith and repentance. What is worse than being paralyzed for 38 years is to be able to walk but still die in your sin.

You know one thing about the Gospels and these stories is that they show us real-life people who encounter Jesus, which makes me think of other real-life people who have encountered Jesus. People at our church.

This story makes me think of Jean Swenson, our dear sister. This man had been paralyzed for 38 years, and Jean has been there for 45 years (and she has an amazing testimony — if you’ve not heard it, Jean wrote something for our church I’m gonna share this week).

Jesus has not healed Jean’s body yet, but Jean has experienced the work of God in her life in the most important way. She has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She has been forgiven. And Jean has a perspective on life that we all need. She says, “My value lies in something that can never be taken away…and that’s the fact that God loves me.”

Do you hear that? “God loves me.”

Jean knows: Jesus sees her, knows her, he found her.

There’s nothing impersonal about that.

Jesus Is WorkingLastly, here, I want you to see what Jesus says to these Jewish leaders in verse 17. This is for the legalistic henchmen.

Now John gives us a summary statement in verse 18 — the reason these Jewish leaders despised Jesus is not just because he was breaking their man-made rules about the Sabbath, but, end of verse 18, “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

Jesus was doing that in verse 17, when he said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

See, implied here is that God the Father is always working. God doesn’t take breaks. He neither sleeps nor slumbers, Psalm 121. God is exempt from having to stop work on the Sabbath because we need him constantly to uphold the universe. We need God to always keep things in orbit and sustain life, and the Jewish worldview understood that. Jesus says, The Father is working until now — and they all would have been like, Yes, of course — but then Jesus says, and I am working.

And they knew what he meant. Jesus was saying that his working, what he’s doing, is what God is doing. What God is doing is what Jesus is doing.

Jesus is not one of several different ways God works, but Jesus is the only way. God’s work in the world is never apart from Jesus, but it’s always through Jesus, centered on Jesus, lifting high Jesus. We will see more of this in the Gospel of John. Jesus will say in Chapter 14, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

That is the final answer to our question …

God’s work in the world is what Jesus Christ is doing, and he is both personal and active. Jesus finds us where we are, he calls us to himself, and he is doing this all the time. He’s active every single day.

Which means, as for God’s work in the world, we should be neither vaguely spiritual nor legalistic henchmen, but we should be attentive to Jesus Christ. Focusing on Jesus Christ. Remembering Jesus Christ.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableI’m convinced that the greatest need in the Christian life is to keep Jesus clear in our hearts. We need to remember his realness in all of life. And that’s something we do on purpose together at this table each week.

We remember that the definite work of God in the world was when Jesus died for us on the cross. Jesus was working then, and Jesus is working now by his Spirit every time the message of his cross is heard and shared and embraced. And that’s what we’re doing at the table.

If you’re not a Christian yet — if you’ve not put your faith in Jesus — this moment is an invitation for you. Trust in Jesus. That could look like a prayer of the heart that says:

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m done trying.

You died on the cross to save me, and I trust you. Save me.

And for those of us who have done that, who have trusted in Jesus, we receive this table with thankfulness, and we remember Jesus and his work in our lives, in our church, in this world. Rejoice in Jesus Christ.

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John 4:43-54,

43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.

46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

To get started this morning I want to tell you the first thing I told our middle school baseball team this past week: it’s that the most important thing in your lifeis your faith in Jesus Christ.

Now there’s a lot of important things in life — there’s big things, critical things — but the most important thing is your continued, abiding, daily faith in Jesus, and that’s what I want to talk about this morning, because that’s the main theme in our passage.

We’ve already said (and we’re gonna keep saying) that John’s purpose in this Gospel is that we believe in Jesus. John cares a lot about our faith and the nature of true faith— and that comes through in this story, verses 43–54.

So for today’s sermon, we’re gonna look at these verses and I want to show you three aspects about the nature of true faith. And these are aspects that, as we look at them, we should evaluate our own faith in their light.

Here’s the first:

True faith goes deeper than gawking at signs and wonders. This is the broader message coming through in this whole section and I know it’s gonna make sense to you, but I need you to track with me, okay? There’s a lot of details here, so get ready. We’re gonna start by looking at verse 43.

“After the two days he [Jesus] left for Galilee.”

Now where did he leave from? Where has Jesus been (that we’ve seen) over the last couple of Sundays? Samaria.

So Jesus has now left Samaria to go to Galilee, which means we need to do a little geography check-in for a minute. In ancient Israel there were three regions stacked on top of one another: Galilee in the north, then Samaria, then Judea. Let’s try to follow where Jesus has been: Remember Chapter 2 starts and Jesus is in Galilee, at the wedding at Cana; then, in 2:13, he goes to Jerusalem to go to the temple, which is in Judea (south); then in Chapter 4, verse 3, “[Jesus] left Judea and departed again for Galilee” (going north, and what’s in the middle of Judea and Galilee? Samaria) …

So Chapter 4, verse 4: “[Jesus] had to pass through Samaria” (that’s what we’ve seen in Chapter 4) — Jesus spent two days in Samaria, but now he’s back on the road to Galilee.

And Galilee is where he’s from. Nazareth is in Galilee, and Jesus grew up in Nazareth, but notice what John includes for us in verse 44. This is a little note in the text just for us, verse 44. Everybody look at verse 44:

“Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.”

That phrase “own country” is literally the word “fatherland” — it’s another way to say “hometown,” and in this case, it’s not talking about Galilee specifically, but it’s talking about the land of Jewish people — which includes both Galilee and Judea. Basically, this meansnot Samaria. The land of the Samaritans is not Jesus’s “own country” — but the land of Jewish people is. That’s the point.

And so we’re set up here to see a contrast between the way Jesus is treated by his own people in his own country and the way he was just received in Samaria (not his country). And verse 44 would suggest that the difference is going to be a negative response in Galilee. “No honor,” verse 44 says.

Why the Welcome?Now look at verse 45. It’s just the next verse. You’re right there. Verse 45:

“So [or therefore] when he came to Galilee [his own country], the Galileans welcomed him …”

Now wait a minute! Verse 44 just said no honor in his own country. Verse 45 says his own country welcomed him. How does that make sense?

Well, it has to do with why they welcomed him. We gotta keep reading, verse 45:

“the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.”

Which means they had seen Jesus bring the mayhem. Remember that in Chapter 2? They saw him pushing over tables and cracking a whip — it was a scene! He turned some heads. He got their attention. They wanna see more of that!

Now, skip down to verse 48. In verse 48, Jesus is speaking to this official who’s son was sick — we’re about to get there — but first I want you to see this part.

Jesus is talking to this official, but when he says “you” in verse 48, it’s plural. Jesus is actually talking about the Galileans overall. He’s speaking to the official in verse 48, but he’s saying: “Unless y’all [unless all you Galileans, Jewish people, my people] — Unless y’all see signs and wonders y’all will not believe.” That’s their problem. Now how is that different from Samaria?

Samaria Was DifferentRemember there’s supposed to be a contrast between Jesus’s own country and where he’s just been in Samaria. So then, what was it like in Samaria? Fruitful! People believed!

It started with the Samaritan woman who believed in Jesus and then by verse 41 a whole crowd of Samaritans believed in Jesus, but the details here are really important. We gotta pay attention to this. I want you to see this in verse 41. Look back up, Chapter 4, verse 41:

“And many more [Samaritans] believed [in Jesus] because of his word.”

So they believed in Jesus because of his what? Word.

That’s the contrast. Jesus’s own country, his own people, they just wanna see a spectacle. They wanna light show. Give me that head-turnin’ buzz-worthy drama! Their faith is as true as a roller-coaster ride is eternal.

But the Samaritans … there was nothing flashy there at all. It started with a conversation at a well at noon. Yet the Samaritans believed Jesus because of his word.

And we’re supposed to see here: that is true faith!

It goes much deeper than gawking at signs and wonders Jesus can do, but it’s about Jesus himself. Because what he gives us in his word is himself.

Look, I don’t know what all of you think faith in Jesus is, but it might be much simpler and deeper than you imagined — most basically, faith in Jesus is taking Jesus at his word. What he says is … because of who he is. So what you do with his word is what you do with him.

Here’s the second aspect we see about true faith …

True faith often emerges among real-life needs.Now we’re gonna talk about this official in verse 46. Jesus is back in Cana, in Galilee, and verse 46 says,

46… And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked [or begged] him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

We don’t know too much about this official — just they that he was a royal official (that’s what that word means — most likely he worked under Herod); so we know that, and we know he was a man; and we know he was a father who lived in Capernaum where his son was sick.

Capernaum was around 25 miles east of Cana, by the Sea of Galilee, and so this official’s travel from Capernaum to Cana would not have been easy. It would have been 25 miles uphill. And that helps us understand more his request. It was not a mere “Hey, Jesus, if you got a minute, would you consider helping me?”

That word translated “ask” in verse 47 has already been used twice in John Chapter 4. First, in verse 31, when the disciples urged Jesus to eat, that word for “urge” is the same word translated “ask” here in verse 47. It shows up again in verse 40, when the Samaritans “asked” Jesus to stay with them for a couple more days. They really wanted Jesus to stay.

So this word means an earnest petition. Like begging. Which means we should imagine this official, wearied from his journey, finally seeing Jesus, and he pleads with him to heal his son who is on his deathbed.

And what does Jesus do?

He takes this moment as an opportunity to address the problem of shallow faith. This official is desperate, and it’s almost like Jesus looks over him, for the sake of everyone else, all of Galilee, and he says, “Y’all are all about the signs and wonders, and that’s not truth faith.”

The Locked-In DadIt’s like Jesus starts going all “rabbi” on this guy (and whoever else is listening) — Jesus is teaching about the nature of true faith. This is important! Listen up!

And notice how this guy replies in verse 49. He’s ‘super intrigued’ by what Jesus says! He’s been ‘waiting his whole life for this theological conversation’ —is that what we see? No.

Jesus says what he says about faith, and the man says back to him:

“Sir, come down before my child dies.”

This official is locked in on one thing. His child is sick. And the word for “child” in verse 49 is different from the word “son” used in verse 47. A son can be any age — every man in this room is a son — but that word “child” means little child. It’s an affectionate term.

So here’s what’s going on: This man comes to Jesus because he wants his son to be healed; Jesus teaches about true faith; the man replies: Sir, if you don’t come now my little child will die.

And that is a clue for us that this official is not really after signs and wonders. He’s not looking for a show. He’s not motivated by the thrill of entertainment. He just loves his little boy, that’s all.

That Desperate EnergyI think all the parents in here could put ourselves in this official’s shoes. We get this — we love our children, don’t we?

But as I worked on this passage, I thought especially about parents whose children have been terribly sick. And there are more than a few parents in our church who have been there. We pray often for them. And I thought of Logan and Stacy Brennecke.

The Brenneckes have five children, and they’ve experienced suffering as parents. In 2014 they lost their daughter at six days old, and today their youngest son, Theo, who is three, has been on our prayer list his whole life so far. He was born with some complications — He’s had four surgeries, including a kidney transplant. He’s had countless procedures, worked with 12 different specialists, and in the last two years he’s been in the hospital about 100 days.

And praise God, today he’s doing well! But I was able to connect with Logan and Stacy this week because I wanted just to hear more about their experience in light of this passage.

In hearing from them, Stacy talked about one of the hardest parts in their experience is being told there’s nothing you can do to make your child well. She called the feeling a “desperate energy.” She’s been there more than once, but about one experience, Stacy said,

I felt claustrophobic — I was stuck in a tight space, unable to get out but frantically trying to. I would’ve done anything, gone anywhere, acted the fool in front of anybody, if it would just help my child.

See, that’s where this official was in this story. He was at home, in Capernaum, a father by his little son’s bedside, stuck with that desperate energy. And then someone told him, “Sir, Jesus of Nazareth has come back.”

In verse 47 of this story we don’t know anything about this official’s faith, just that he heard Jesus was back — this Jesus who was different, this Jesus who had caused that scene in Jerusalem, who claimed to be the Messiah.

For this father, it’s only hearsay, but what if there’s a chance?! So he goes. He goes to Jesus. He meets Jesus. He pleads with Jesus, and in verse 50 Jesus replies:

“Go; your son will live.”

And what does it say at the end of verse 50? You gotta see this.

Verse 50, after Jesus says “Your son will live,” we read: “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.”

So for this Galilean, he has faith like the Samaritans did. Because he believed Jesus’s word.

Where We LiveAnd we might think, wait a minute. He didn’t come to Jesus because he wanted Jesus, he came to Jesus because he wanted his son to live.

And that’s right, but, the initial reason why he came to Jesus should not make us continue to question the sincerity of this man’s faith. The fact that he wanted his child to live just means he’s a real person. He lives where we do. He lives in real life, with real needs and longings and love for his children. Get this: true faith emerges from this, from real life.

Understand that a lot of times what comes first is not “standing amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene,” but it’s falling desperate before him because you need help. Often it’s real-life stuff that leads us to Jesus. We know this in our stories.

For a lot of us, we were living our lives, doing our own thing, and then something went sideways. Living got hard. We were leveled by a need and we found ourselves in a mess, and somewhere in that mess we heard about Jesus — or we remembered Jesus — and we thought, “Maybe he can help.”

And guess what? He can.

See, a lot of us started by looking for answers over here, and we ended up finding Jesus, and that’s okay. This gets to something super important when it comes to faith: listen, it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.

Which means two things:

One, if you’re here this morning and you’re currently in a mess, if you’re in a desperate situation and you’re not really seeking Jesus but you find yourselves here, I want you to know that’s not strange. That’s how it goes. You don’t have to have your life all figured out first. You don’t have to have your “theological Ps and Qs” in order. Most of the time, true faith emerges among real-life needs. You’re in real life, and then you meet Jesus, and then you take Jesus at his word.

And this is his word to you this morning — listen, this is the gospel word of Jesus to you — he says:

“Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

I love you. I died for you, if you come to me. I will forgive you all of your sins and I will make you a child of God.

Wherever it is you’re coming from this morning, right now you can take Jesus at his word.

Second, if you’ve trusted in Jesus in the past, which is a lot of us, the question today is, Do you trust him now? Believe him now. Keep taking him at his word!

And if at times it seems like your faith is failing, if your trust dwindles, you can pray what another desperate father once prayed, Mark 9:24,

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

And Jesus will.

True faith often emerges among real-life needs.

True faith rests in Jesus who is powerful and kind. This man believed Jesus’s word and went on his way back to Capernaum, and on his way back his servants met him on the road. They had good news. They told him that his son was alive. He’s recovering. And the man asked them what time his son started to recover. (Which is fascinating. This is dramatic irony. As readers, we know why he’s asking this question, but his servants don’t know). They tell him, His fever broke yesterday at 1pm. And the father knew! That’s when Jesus said the words “Your son will live.”

So verse 53 says,

“And he himself believed, and all his household.”

So this man’s initial, simple faith is now followed by an abiding faith that spreads. His whole household believed. Like with the Samaritan woman, true faith gets shared.

Who Our Faith Rests InBut I want to end here by saying more about who our faith rests in. I want you to notice the power and kindness of Jesus in this passage.

First, his power. All he had to do was say the word. The very moment Jesus said “Your son will live,” 25 miles away the fever broke. Look, he who commands the wind and the waves also has power over sickness. Jesus has power over fevers and kidneys and MCLs and you name it. Jesus is powerful.

And also Jesus is kind. Notice a change that happens in this story. This official, who is a father, is not actually called a father until verse 53.

First, it’s formal. He’s an official from Capernaum. He’s a Galilean. Then he’s called a man. But by the end of the story, in verse 53, for the first time he’s called “the father.”

And I think this shows us the kindness of Jesus to meet all of us where we are.

We come to him in our need and he meets us as those who are needy. Which does not mean, listen, this does not mean he always gives us the healing we want. Sometimes he doesn’t give us the Yes we want in that moment, but, he always gives us himself. And he helps us.

Sometimes that means he just has to carry us. Be near to us. If he doesn’t make the pain go away, he will bring you through the pain. He’s kind. He’s kind. Jesus is kind.

And I can’t help but think that Jesus’s kindness to this father shows that Jesus must know something about a father’s love for his son. Jesus doesn’t know this because Jesus was a father — he wasn’t — but he was a son — he is a Son, the beloved Son of God the Father. And the Father’s love for Jesus is so glorious that Jesus wants us to know what it’s like (see John 17:24). That’s why he went to the cross.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableAt the cross, Jesus game himself for us to make us the children of God, and at this table we remember that. And we come here to rest in him. We come here to remember his death for us, and his word to us: We are loved. In him we are forgiven. We are children of God.

That’s why this Table is for Christians. This table is for everyone who has put their faith in Jesus. And if that’s not you yet, you can just pass the elements down the row, but don’t let the moment pass. As we’re hearing and singing this song, I invite you to believe in Jesus. Put your faith in him. And if you’d like, I’d love to talk to you more about that after the service.

Now, to those who trust in Jesus, let’s rest in him and give him thanks…

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John 4:27-42,

Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

I want you to imagine yourself walking down a hard-packed, weather-worn trail. An arid wilderness of dry, cracked earth all round you, the heat of the midday sun upon your skin. And a group of twelve Jewish men walking alongside you whose faces seem to all-too-closely match that of their surroundings — they too appear worn, vacant, and tired.

You ask this group of 12 men where they’ve been traveling. They say they’ve been on a journey — one that had begun with a wedding up in Cana of Galilee — a most festive occasion, they say. From there, they’d traveled south to Jerusalem in Judea. After spending some time there, they’d begun their travel back up to Galilee, cutting through Samaria on their way.

Earlier that day they’d left their Rabbi back at Jacob’s well to rest while they headed into town to buy bread — much needed sustenance for the remaining miles in front of them. And now, with Jacob’s well just a few hundred yards out in front of them, and their master’s form seated beside that well now visible just off in the distance, they were growing more and more eager to, at last, sit down, eat their bread, and rest.

And then, they fall quiet. You assume it’s because they’re so sapped of strength. But a few minutes later, you look up, and discover their silence is owing to another reason. Before them stands their Rabbi, and he is no longer alone. A woman from Samaria is there as well.

In this morning’s text, we’re going to cover the second half of this unexpected scene involving Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Last week, Pastor Marshall preached through part one involving the private conversation between Jesus and this woman. Today, we’re going to walk through part two, which will have us looking on at this scene mainly through the eyes of the disciples. Along the way, we’re going to see two ways Jesus uses this moment to invite his disciples — they and us included — to become even more like him. Let’s pray and ask the Lord for his help.

So, part two of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And we’re looking for two ways Jesus uses this moment to invite us to become even more like him. Let’s begin with the first one — Jesus invites us to see as he sees.

See What Jesus SeesSo, verse 27, the 12 disciples return to the well to find notJesus alone, but Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And we shouldn’t think it incredible that they find the Samaritan woman there. They are, after all, inSamaria. And while its true, most of the townspeople would’ve gone earlier that morning to draw water from the well, it’s not unthinkable that at least one woman, especially one so socially despised and rejected as her, should’ve chosen to come to the well midday.

However, what isunthinkable, is the fact that Jesus had not immediately turned his back to this woman upon her arrival. Jesus had not sneered at her, jumped to his feet, and stomped off in disgust. Instead, Jesus began conversing with her. He, a Jewish man, had turned his gaze upon her — a sin-stained, Samaritan woman.

And when his disciples see that, they’re stunned. Verse 27:

“Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman.”

They marveled. They wondered. They began thinking to themselves, “This is not a part of the plan. This is not the point of our travels. We are in Samaria, not because we’re wanting to linger here, much less engage the Samaritan people in conversation. We’re here to get in, get rest, and get out. Samaria is just a sidewalk to us — an unfortunatesidewalk, an unseemly sidewalk — but a sidewalk, nonetheless. And we mean to step over it as quickly as possible.”

Well, you could imagine the awkward tension of that moment. I mean, the disciples are just standing there. Jesus and the Samaritan woman have wrapped up their conversation, and the disciples enter in, and just stand there. Silent. Stunned. Looking on in dislike and disbelief.

And the Samaritan woman notices. In fact, my guess is that she took one look at the twelve tense, standoffish disciples and thought, “My, how astonishingly different they are from their master.” She sets down her water jar, turns around, and hurries back into town.

Pause for a moment… How do we account for the disparity of that one moment? How do we explain the stark difference between Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman which had been so full of love and consideration and the disciples’ interaction with her which had been so cold and disinterested?

I mean, think about it, their entrance made the woman want to leave. Made her want to turn away. She took their arrival as her signal to exit the scene.

And for all they know, she’s headed right back to a life of shame, isolation, and unrelenting soul-level thirst. And the disciples don’t run after her. They don’t say, “Wait, come back, stay here with Jesus. You don’t need to leave. We want you to stay. We want you to linger before the one who can help you, save you, satisfy you. You’ve found Jesus, don’t walk away from him.”

No, they don’t say any of that to this woman, because they don’t care two cents about this woman. “She’s gone,” they think, “and so are our troubles. Now, Jesus, its time to eat.”

How do you explain the incredible gap between Jesus’ love for the Samaritan woman, and his disciples complete and total lack thereof? Well, I believe Jesus explains it for us in verse 35. We’re skipping over a few lines that we’ll get back to in a moment, but for now, take a look at verse 35. It is here, I believe, that Jesus exposes the problem:

“Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest?’ Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.”

Notice all the sight-related language in that sentence…

“Look”
“Lift up your eyes”
“See.”

Think about it… What is Jesus trying to teach here? What is Jesus trying to show? It’s this: the disciples have a problem with their vision. A problem with their sight. Though they have begun to follow him, it appears they have not yet begun to see like him.

For them, all they saw in the Samaritan woman was a nobody. A nuisance. A being not worth their time, or effort, or attention. They failed to see her as Jesus saw her.

And so, now with the entire town of Samaria approaching — note how verse 30 says, they (the people of Samaria) went out of town and were coming to him. So we’ve got the entire town of Samaria approaching. And Jesus takes that as an opportunity to correct his disciples’ vision. Verse 35,

“Look, lift up your eyes, see that the fields are white for harvest.”

“I want you to see,” Jesus is saying, “These Samaritans are not nobodies. They’re not unimportant to me, or unimportant to my father. They’re not people I want you to dismiss, or ignore, or avoid. They’re the harvest. They’re the prize. They’re the yield we’re here to receive. The exact harvest I’ve led us here to find. The exact harvest I’ve led us here to reap. Samaria is not our sidewalk, it’s our mission field. Do you see? Look, lift up your eyes, can you see them, can you see them, how I see them?”

Cities Church, when we look out at the world, out at the multitude of non-Christians all around us, do we see what Jesus sees?

When we see our neighbors hanging out in the backyard together, or our co-workers typing on their laptops in the office, or our classmates walking by us in the hallway, or our family members seated next to us at the dinner table — do we see them, do we see those people, the way Jesus sees them?

What if Jesus we’re to say of us, friends — you’re missing the harvest. You’re ignoring the harvest. It’s ready, it’s ripe, I’ve prepared it, I’ve brought you here to find it and reap it — do you see it? Do you see it?

Or, do you see a wasteland? An empty field? A sidewalk? A bunch of people who are quite simply not worth your time?

If so, then we need to repent, and pray and commit to daily praying, “Jesus, make us to see the way you see. Help us to recognize the harvest field that is the world all around us. Help us to envision, if he were standing right beside us at work, or in the neighborhood, or at the dinner table, how you would care for, and speak to, and invite to drink and be satisfied. Help us to see as you see.”

The first way Jesus invites us through this text to become even more like him — He invites us to begin seeing as he sees. See with eyes focused upon the harvest. Now, the second way Jesus invites us to become more like him. For this, we’ll back up in the story to verse 31.

Be Satisfied as Jesus Is SatisfiedThese are the first words the disciples speak upon their return to the well, just as soon as the Samaritan woman has left them. Verse 31:

“Rabbi, eat.”

We’ve brought back the bread — let’s eat.

And Jesus’ response to them takes them a bit off guard. Verse 32:

“But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’”

You know, I said that to Amelia once. I had packed a lunch for work but then left it in the fridge — you guys ever do that? Well, my wife felt terrible about that because she assumed it meant me taking on a full days’ work on an empty stomach. I got home later that day and she said, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to run your lunch up to you.” And I said, “it’s okay, I have food to eat that you do not know about.” And it was true, I did. I had like half a dozen frozen burritos in the staff fridge at my disposal. I was good to go.

It’s a bit of a funny story, but I share it with you because when Jesus says this to his disciples, “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” his disciples assume something along the lines of burritos in the fridge. Like, perhaps he had an extra loaf of bread he’d been carrying around. Perhaps a passerby gave him some food while we were away. Or maybe one of the other disciples had given him something to eat prior to heading out into town.

That’s why in verse 33 they begin asking one another: “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” I mean, if Jesus says he has food, then he must’ve gotten it from somewhere.

But the truth is, Jesus had not gotten his fill of bread. In fact, he had not taken in any physical food whatsoever. His stomach was just as empty in that moment as those of his disciples. But his soul was full!

See, he had found sustenance at that well. He had found heart-enlivening provision while conversing with the Samaritan woman. He had enjoyed a feast — one that had satisfied his soul far more than any four-course dinner ever could. But what was that feast if not food?

Verse 34,

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

My food is the joy-giving recognition of God’s smile upon me as I carry out his will in the world. My food is to receive real, necessary sustenance through obedience to him.

For no, just as Jesus said to Satan in the wilderness after being tempted to turn a stone into a meal, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” He’s not trying to be cute in that moment. Not trying to be clever. In fact, he’s quoting there from Deuteronomy 8:3, not because he’s trying to be cute, or clever, but because he believes it! God designed us, you see, to crave a certain satisfaction that comes only from him and living for him, and crave it far more than we crave our bread and water. And security and rest.

Obedience to God, living for God, going out to gather the harvest for God is literally God-given food for the soul. Jesus had come upon one of his Father’s beloved — a woman dying of soul-level thirst. A woman who’d been drinking her entire life from wells that held no water. And he showed her where true life is found. He showed her where her thirst could be quenched. He made her alive! He made her to see! He saved her! He changed her life’s trajectory for eternity. And in that moment, it did not matter that his stomach was still empty. His heart was full. His soul was full. He was full and well-satisfied.

Do you believe that if you were to engage in the good work of the harvest — the good work of going out into the world to win people to Christ — that tiring as it may be, challenging as it could be, it would actually produce in you a sort of joy and fullness no amount of feasting and rest and relaxation ever could? Do you believe that?

If you don’t believe me, then take a stroll up and down Grand Avenue this afternoon, and meet the hundreds of people who walk these streets as men and woman living entirely for themselves and entirely for their comfort. They’re in the prime of life, and in the greatest of health, and have the fullest of wallets and the most comfortable lifestyles — and they’re empty, bored, and lifeless.

Afterwards, get on a plane, travel to the most poverty-stricken, war-torn most hellish places on earth and find Christian missionaries there who could’ve lived on Grand Avenue, and could’ve chosen a life of comfort, and who gave up all the money they had in order to become poor, and hungry, and friends to all the needy souls around them, and find them to be tired, a bit worn down, and yet radiating with joy!

Friends, have you been starving your souls of the much-needed sustenance found by those who seek after God’s harvest? Have you — in your hurry, in your self-focus — been skipping meal after meal of hearty, filling, joy-giving ministry to others? Have you been fasting from the experience of God’s smile upon those who do the work he prepared for you to do?

The disciples had bread in that moment, I doubt they felt full.

The woman had left her water jar, I doubt she felt thirsty.

Jesus says, I believe in reference to the Samaritan woman, verse 36:

“Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”

Jesus saw those Samaritans, those fields ready for harvest, and, O, it made his heart to swell. The Samaritan woman led all her townspeople toward Jesus, and O, how it made her soul glad.

See, joy is being had, my brothers and sisters, by those who have entered into the good work of the harvest.

By those who are bringing others to Jesus to drink their fill of living water.

Joy — soul-sustaining, heart-filling, spirit-enlivening joy is being had by those who are doing the will of him who sent us, which Jesus tells us in Matthew 28:

“Go and make disciples.”

Verse 36 states,

“Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”

Will you, today, get in on that joy as well? Will you, today, begin tasting the spiritual food of carrying out the Father’s will?

First way Jesus invites us through this text to become even more like him — He invites us to begin seeing as he sees. Second way, he invites us to be satisfied as he is satisfied.

Share Your storyNow, a word of application. Because many of you may be thinking: “I’m seeing it, I’m seeing my neighbors afresh, I’m seeing them with eyes of love and care rather than dismay and disinterest. And I’m wanting to be filled, I’m wanting to be satisfied by the kind of joy that comes from sowing and reaping of the harvest. But how do I do it? Where do I begin? What do I say?”

And really, there is no one way to answer that question. In fact, I encourage you, following the commission, to ask a few people around you how they’ve sought to answer that question. But for now, there is at least one way we can answer it, from this text. Look with me back up at verse 28: The woman goes back into town and says to the people, verse 29,

“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

She gave them her personal testimony. She says, “Come, let me tell you what Jesus has done for me.” She didn’t offer an intellectual defense for Christianity — though it wouldn’t have been wrong for her to do so. Instead, she told her people what she knew. And that is that no one had ever treated her so kindly as this man. No one had ever spoken so directly to her as this man. No one had ever so known her faults, and yet loved her all the same, as this man. “Would you like to come with me to meet him for yourself? Would you like to come see for yourself if this be the Christ?”

Brothers and sisters, in a world of fake-news, and phony salesmen, and people who are more concerned about what’s on their phone than what’s on the heart of the person in front of them, there is incredible power in the genuine, humble, love-driven sharing of personal testimonies.

Did Jesus rescue you out of a pit of depression?
Did Jesus cover the shame you felt was visible all over you?
Did Jesus guide you by a wisdom far greater than your own?
Did Jesus calm the mountains of anxiety that you’d been suffocating under?
Did Jesus save you from a life dedicated to the hollow approval of man?
Did Jesus heal the pain you experienced from growing up in a broken home?
Did Jesus love you when you felt unlovable?
Did Jesus care for you when you felt uncared for?
Did Jesus protect you when you felt fearful?
Did Jesus draw near to you when you felt all alone?
Did Jesus free you from judgment, assure you of his love, lead you to the Father, provide for you an inheritance, build a room for you in heaven, promise you what no human being (no mom, no dad, no husband, no wife, no friend, no confidant) could ever promise you — that “He would never leave you nor forsake you?”

Did Jesus save your life? Did Jesus satisfy your thirsty soul?

If so, you should tell someone. If so, you should share that story with another.

No, our testimonies don’t always lead to others immediate salvation. That was the case for some upon first hearing of the Samaritan woman’s testimony. Verse 39 says,

“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.”

Not all of them did though. Some remained skeptical. Some were not yet sold. But they were intrigued enough to travel to the well. Intrigued enough to go and check out Jesus for themselves. Intrigued enough to ask Jesus, verse 40, to stay in their town just a bit longer. And Jesus did. He, a Jewish man, expected to despise these Samaritans, gladly stayed two days later in their town, with the result that, verse 41:

“And many more believed because of his word.”

They said to the woman:

“It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

And just as John the Baptist, I trust the woman was all-too-glad for her and her testimony to fade into the background as her townspeople met Christ firsthand.

Picture it brothers and sisters: Your non-Christian neighbor, your non-Christian co-worker, your non-Christian family member coming to you, maybe months after you shared your testimony with them, saying, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” What joy would erupt within you? What soul-satisfying sustenance would you take in at such a moment.

Cities Church, see as Jesus sees. Be satisfied as Jesus is satisfied. And go out into the harvest, with testimony ready upon your lips, and take joy in the work alongside the other sowers and reapers you meet there.

The TableWell, what brings us to the table this morning is Jesus’ sacrifice of his body in death upon a cross for our sins. Without this ransom which he paid there so that we who trust in him might be forgiven of our sin, we’d have no good news to share. No harvest to reap. No joy to take in. No future feast in heaven at Jesus’ table to look forward to.

Because that is what this table represents, it is for those who are presently trusting in Jesus. If this is you, please eat and drink with us. If this is not you, whether you have yet to receive Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection for you, or believe that you are presently living in disobedience and are in need of repentance, please allow the bread and the cup to pass by. The pastors will come, let us serve you.

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John 4:1-26,

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Before we get into the story here in John 4, and the conversation with the Samaritan woman, I just wanted you to see something unusual and beautiful here about Jesus.

In the last chapter, Jesus is ministering to a curious Pharisee, a teacher of the law, a ruler of the Jews — untouchable. And yet Jesus reaches out to him to invite him in, answer his questions, and challenge his thinking, to draw him into the kingdom. This is a guy from the highest, most intellectual, most religious stratosphere of society. . . . And then here, just a few verses later, he’s stopping to minister to a sexually-immoral, socially-alienated woman — untouchable. And yet Jesus reaches out to her, engages her questions, and invites her to drink from his fountain of living water.

These two couldn’t be more different. He’s a Jew, a leader in society, steeped in Scripture, rigorously observing the law; he’s a man and he comes at night, and we know his name: Nicodemus. She’s a Samaritan, and an outcast even in Samaria, in and out of relationships with men, far less familiar with God’s law; she’s a woman and they meet in broad, scorching daylight; and we don’t even get her name. These two people couldn’t be more different — and I believe that’s utterly intentional. What do I take from it?

It doesn’t matter who you are this morning, Jesus has something to say to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a politician or a prostitute, a priest or a thief, a CEO, a stay-at-home mom, or a college student, a Jew, a Samaritan, or a lifelong Minnesotan — Jesus has something to say to you this morning: something convicting and renewing, something hard and something really, really good. It was true with Nicodemus, and it’s true here with this woman, and it’ll be true here in this room — if we have ears to hear him.

Give Me a DrinkOkay so we read here, verses 1–3, that Jesus leaves Judea because of pressure from the Pharisees (they were getting jealous and angry), and so he heads for Galilee. And you had to go through Samaria to get to Galilee. But “Samaria” was a bad word for Jews. Jews hated Samaritans, and Samaritans hated Jews.

But he had to pass through Samaria to get to Galilee, and as he did, he gets tired from all the walking, and so he finds a well where he can stop and get a drink. It’s the sixth hour (probably about noon), the hottest part of the day. No one draws water at noon in Samaria. They come earlier or later in the day when it’s cooler. No one comes at this time. But while he’s there, a woman stops at the well. A “woman of Samaria,” so this is Mrs. Bad Word. And as we’ll find out in a minute, she’s here at the well in the hottest part of the day for a reason. She’s likely ashamed to be around the other women — because of all the men she’s been with.

Despite all that, Jesus says to her, verse 7,

“Give me a drink.”

You can tell how surprising it was for him to even talk to her, because of how she responds, verse 9:

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)”

No dealings. Not even a cup of water in the heat of the day.

Why did Jews and Samaritans hate one another? In the beginning, the nation of Israel had twelve tribes, one each for the twelve sons of Jacob. And the capitol of that nation was (and is) Jerusalem. And Israel still had twelve tribes when Solomon was king, but when he died and his son Rehoboam took over, he ruled badly and alienated 10 of the 12 tribes. So those ten split off in a mutiny against Jerusalem. They formed a new northern kingdom, and they made Jeroboam their king. That makes them traitors in Jerusalem. And Samaria was the capital of traitor nation.

Foreigners moved into the northern kingdom, and they inter-married with the Jewish people, making the people less and less Jewish over time. Eventually that mixed race is called “Samaritans,” after the capitol city. For the Jews, it was synonymous with “half-breed” or “impure.” They despised Samaritans. One scholar writes,

“The ethnic and cultural boundary between the Jews and the Samaritans,” one scholar writes, “was every bit as rigid and hostile as the current boundary between Blacks and Whites in the most racist areas of the United States.” (From Every People and Nation, 163)

Imagine refusing someone something as small and critical as water, simply because of their ethnicity. That’s how malicious this rivalry was.

But Jesus isn’t offended. He answers, verse 10,

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

You think you’ve got me figured out, that I’m like every other Jewish guy you’ve heard about, but you have no idea. If you knew who I was, you wouldn’t have waited for me to ask for a cup of water.

She’s of course confused, so she says,

“Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

This water’s been just fine, and for hundreds of years. As far as wells go, this is a great well. Why would I need different water? (And besides, if you had better water, what would you even put it in?)

To which he replies, Has this water really been enough for you? And if it has, why do you have to keep coming back here like you do? Here’s how he says it:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

What do we learn about this “living water”? When you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again. It might be hard for us to feel what this would have meant in that day. We have clean water everywhere we turn, coming out of every faucet in our homes. In that day, they had to carry these buckets back and forth, back and forth — for drinking, for cooking, for bathing. Water was a huge part of their lives. And Jesus says, you drink from my well, and you’ll never be thirsty again. You’ll never have to do this walk again. But he goes even further than that.

“The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

When you drink this water, you’ll never thirst and you’ll never die. You’re going to live forever.

The woman still doesn’t totally get it, as we’ll see, but she’s heard enough to be sold:

“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Give me this eternal water service, the gallons just showing up at my house every day. I don’t want to come out here over and over and over again. I hate coming out here in the heat of the day. Please give me some of this special water you’re telling me about.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’”

Seems straightforward enough. If you want what I’m offering, go grab your husband and we’ll talk more. It’s not straightforward, though, not at all — and Jesus knows that.

“The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’”

A little awkward, but not necessarily a problem (not yet). But, again, Jesus knows more than she thinks he does.

“Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.’”

Okay, so we’re not really talking about water at all, are we? This isn’t about Jacob or buckets or H₂O. Her well was men. She had been trying to quench her thirst for love, for security, for life in the arms of romance. He asked her for a drink because he knew how thirsty she was. She was dying of thirst inside, and she had tried well after well after well — Greg, then Ryan, then Jared, then Dave, then Scott, then Tony (who knows what their names were). And she was still so thirsty. She was more thirsty than she was before she met the first guy.

Sin is the anti-well, the anti-fountain. And some of you are drinking there every day. Maybe you’re like this woman, and you’ve thrown yourself into relationship after relationship. Maybe your wells are online, in the dark places of the internet. Maybe you’re fostering some bitterness or anger. Maybe it’s indulging in alcohol, or over-eating, or binge-watching. The first time you put your bucket in, you got enough for a drink. And then a little less, and a little less, and a little less. Now you’re scraping the dirty bottom for a thimble, for a drip of water. But you’re so thirsty, so you keep trying. Put your bucket down. Whatever it is, put it down and walk away. Don’t drink there anymore! Come to the fountain of life and you’ll never be thirsty again.

And all you have to do is ask. Did you hear that in verse 10?

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

Why would he give it? Because you asked. All you have to do is ask!

Right here, in these verses, is a well, a spring — and it will never fail you. You don’t even need your bucket anymore, because the well’s inside of you. “The water that I will give him will become in him” — in you — “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Which Well Will You Choose?So which well will you choose? What’s keeping you from asking? What’s between you and the fountain right now?

Jesus overcomes three great hurdles, three great barriers in this story, the kinds of barriers that might be keeping you from coming to the fountain. Three great barriers, and you could summarize them like this: six husbands, two temples, one wall.

No Sin Is Too GreatFirst, six husbands. Well, five husbands and the boyfriend. But six men wasn’t too many. It might have gotten her canceled in town (she had to go draw water by herself in the heat of day), but six men didn’t disqualify her from this well. No, these six husbands tell us that no sin is too great. You know that, but I want you to know it. Some of you know it, but you don’t believe it. You don’t. You think your sins are too great, too bad, too many. This woman’s in the Bible to tell you that’s not true.

We don’t find out that she’s been with so many men until verse 18, but Jesus already knew in verse 1. He knew and he still stopped to talk to her. He still offered her a drink. He offered her the only drink she’d ever need, the one that would quench and heal all the aching dryness inside of her.

He wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with her. He wasn’t too ashamed of her to bear her sins and make her his own — if she would just ask.

So will you ask, will you forsake all your other wells, and drink from this fountain? Will you believe, repent, and be forgiven?

No Place Is Too FarSecond, two temples. When Jesus knows about all her husbands, she realizes he’s a prophet, and so she turns the conversation to how and where to worship. Verse 19:

“Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

She’s bringing up an argument between Jews and Samaritans. When the northern kingdom split off from Judah and Jerusalem, they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim (that’s the mountain she mentions). The Jews in Jerusalem obviously didn’t think that temple was legit, though, and so that was another reason to hate each other.

She realizes this conversation’s not really about water, or even about her husbands, this is a conversation about worship. And worship happens, in her mind, in either that temple or that temple. Jesus says to her,

“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

For hundreds and hundreds of years, God’s people worshiped in one big temple, a building — 150 feet tall and a million and a half square feet. It’s a big, massive dot on Google maps. But it’s one big dot. Not anymore, Jesus says. Up until now — up until me — you had to come to a place, a temple to offer right worship to God. Now, you can worship him anywhere. You can worship him at 1524 Summit Ave in St. Paul, Minnesota in a country that won’t even exist for another couple thousand years.

What do these two temples tell us in the story? That now, no place is too far. The hour has come when true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth. True worshipers worship in spirit — not just with our hands, and knees, and gifts, but by the work of the Spirit inside of us. This is what Jesus just told us in the last chapter, verse 5:

“Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

And true worshipers worship in truth, that is, they worship according to how God has revealed himself in his word and in the Word made flesh, his Son. Those are the essential ingredients: God’s supernatural work in you by the Spirit and God’s supernatural revelation in the Bible, most fundamentally in Jesus. And now, in Jesus, if you worship in spirit and truth, you can worship God anywhere.

You don’t have to come to this building to worship Jesus. You should absolutely join a local church and faithfully attend their gatherings, but you can worship Jesus in the temple high on the mountain or down by a well in the heat of day, in the sanctuary on Sunday morning or alone in your bedroom on your knees. Because of Jesus, you can meet and worship God in any place. And one day soon he will be worshiped in every place, when his glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. No place is too far.

No Wall Is Too HighThird, the wall. Jesus calmed the raging storm with a word, and he brought down the mile-high racial-ethnic-religious wall between Jews and Samaritans with a drink of water (with less than a drink of water, because as far as we know, he never got the drink). This raging hostility — between Jews and Samaritans — this hostility tells us no wall is too high. This Jesus overcomes every conceivable boundary and hostility between us. So what walls seem too high today?

Are they in the Middle East or Asia? Jesus had to pass through Samaria — and he has to pass through Iraq, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He has to pass through Cameroon, the Philippines, and Turkey, where our global partners serve right now. Those are high, high walls. And no wall’s too high. Why does he have to pass through those hard places? Matthew 24:14,

“This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

One day we will sing, Revelation 5:9,

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

Do you want to reach an unreached people with the gospel, to help bring down walls around the world so that people dying of thirst might finally hear about Jesus? You won’t find a wall too high. Jesus can bring any wall down, and he can do it with a cup of water. How much more might he do through you?

You won’t find a wall too high in the Middle East, and you won’t find a wall too high in Minneapolis. In your neighborhood. In your family. These walls are a lot closer, so they might look and feel a lot higher, a lot thicker, (in the case of family) a lot more sensitive and painful.

How could God ever save him? Or her? There’s no sin too great, no place too far, and no wall too high. Do you still believe that — even for them?

The Father Is Seeking WorshipAnd why is no sin too great, no place too far, and no wall too high? Because, verse 23, the Father is seeking people like us to worship him.

“The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

Despite all the barriers, it’s going to happen. Why? Because the God of heaven is out looking for them — he’s meeting them at wells and in temples, he’s finding them at big Christian conferences and in conversations at the gas station, he’s using parents and neighbors and little-league coaches and roommates and co-workers — he’s seeking. He’s seeking worshipers.

Does that sound selfish to you? “The Father is seeking worshipers.” If one of you talked that way, it would be gross, right? If I said, “Pastor Daniel is seeking worshipers who will worship him,” you’d say he shouldn’t be a pastor. We’d think he’d lost his mind. We don’t like people like this. So why is it any different with God? Why can he do everything he does for his own glory (and he does do everything he does for his glory)? And why can he tell us to do everything we do for his glory? (“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”)

Because he’s worthy of all the glory — more than we could ever give him, more than the sun and moon and stars and mountains could ever say — and because his glory is the best news in the world for people like us.

Why do I find so much hope and comfort in him seeking worship? Because when this God finds a worshiper, he gives us the spring of living water in him. Worship is our well of living water. And if he wasn’t seeking, we’d never find him. That’s how blinding sin is. This God reveals his glory by satisfying the dry and weary souls of the undeserving, of the sinful. I want a God like that. And he’s the only one there is.

And this Father was so relentlessly committed to finding you, knowing you, saving you that he sent his Son into the world to die for you. The woman says, verse 25,

“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

And Jesus says to her (maybe the clearest, most shocking statement he makes about himself in all the Bible):

“I who speak to you am he.”

And in that moment, she hears what we’ve known since verse 1: The normal-looking Jewish man standing by this well, at the heat of day, asking her for a drink, is the Savior of the world, the Son of God, the Messiah.

This brings us to the table. One of the sneaky startling things about this passage is hiding in verse 6. We read right over it.

“. . . so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.”

Jesus was wearied. It should take our breath away that the Son of God was wearied. He didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself. He got tired like we do, and needed a drink like we do. He was willing to be wearied for you. And far more than wearied, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross.” This long, hot journey from Jerusalem to Galilee, through terrible hostility, it’s a picture of this whole Gospel, of the whole Bible. Jesus was wearied for you, betrayed for you, pierced for you, crushed for you, so that you might worship him in spirit and truth — and never be thirsty again.

He’s still seeking. Will he find worship in you?

This table, this meal is a meal for the members of Cities Church, but if by faith in Jesus Christ you have to come to drink at the fountain of living water, we invite you to eat and drink with us. If you’re not yet a believer in Jesus, we’d ask you to let the bread and the cup pass. But let today be the day you put your bucket down and follow Jesus.

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John 3:22-36,

After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. 23 John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized 24 (for John had not yet been put in prison).

25 Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” 27 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

31 He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. 32 He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. 33 Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. 34 For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. 35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Okay, to get started here, I need you to use your imagination for a minute. Imagine that you’re in a helicopter and you’re flying over Jerusalem — say the helicopter is an eyewitness news station that you’re a part of — and so you’re flying over Jerusalem to see what’s going on — also it’s the year 28(so there’s some time travel involved here, but you’re using your imagination).

Well, you’re flying over Jerusalem, over the outskirts, in an area known as the Judean countryside, and you look down and you see a little pocket of people — there’s a leader and some followers — and more people are coming to them and they’re dunking them in the water.

Then you fly up a little more north of Jerusalem, in the countryside and you notice another little pocket of people — there’s a leader and some followers — and they’re also dunking people in the water.

You realize you’ve seen, basically, two identical pockets of people:two different groups led by two different men in two different areas outside of Jerusalembut they’re doing the same thing — that’s the setting of our passage today. That’s how John, the writer of this Gospel, sets this story up.

But now imagine that you jump out of the helicopter (with a parachute) and you come down to one of these pockets of people — and it’s the group led by John the Baptist — and you overhear a dialogue.

There had been a discussion between a Jewish man and the disciples of John the Baptist about purification — that’s all we’re told in verse 25 — but apparently that discussion sparked some confusion for the disciples of John the Baptist and so they came to John the Baptist to talk with him in verse 26 and here is where the real action starts.

And there are three main things going on here that John, the writer of this Gospel, wants us to see. And I think that if we can track with these three things then we will understand this passage. So three things, really simple:

Questions Continue
Mission Complete
Jesus Clear

We’re gonna look closer at each of these three things and we’re gonna find in each one there’s something for us to take away. There’s some practical connections that we need to make. So I’ll pray again and we’ll get started.

Father, you are good and you do good things. Even in the midst of our hard things, we know that you’re at work and you do not make mistakes. We ask that you give us now everything we need, to hear from you and to trust you, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Questions ContinueNow there’s not a question mark in verse 26, but these disciples of John the Baptist are bringing a question. Look at verse 26,

And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”

So these guys had found out about that other pocket of people outside of Jerusalem which was led by Jesus, and they found out that they were doing the exact same thing that John the Baptist and his pocket of people were doing — and these guys were confused by that.

Now some have read this and assumed that the disciples of John the Baptist are jealous here; that interpretation assumes they don’t like the fact that more people are now going to Jesus than to John. And that could be true, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Notice that these guys recognize in verse 26 that Jesus is the one John the Baptist bore witness to back in Chapter 1. They’re saying: Hey, that guy that you were telling us about — the one that you said some pretty amazing things about — he’s over there doing what we’re doing.

See, the implied question is: If the one you said you were here to point to is now doing what you’re doing, why are you still doing it? (This is the question at least that John the writer wants us to wonder as we read this story.)

Don’t get too distracted by the details of verse 26 because it’s really just there to set up what John the Baptist is about to say in verses 27–30, and the main thing we should see here is that the reality of Jesus raises questions. We’ve already seen this in the Gospel of John. Everywhere Jesus goes, there’s more questions.

In Chapter 1: Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

At the wedding, Chapter 2: Why have we kept the good wine for the end?

At the temple: Who do you think you are to bring this mayhem?

Then, Nicodemus: Can a grown man enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born?

We’ve already seen Jesus raise questions, and here questions continue (and they’re gonna keep coming), but at this point, let’s drill down into what the question is. Basically, these guys are asking: since Jesus is now here, what do we do?

You get that? They’re asking: How do we make sense of what we’re doing in light of the reality of Jesus?

To Ask EverydayAnd I want you to know that question has never stopped being asked — in fact, that’s a question we should ask ourselves today.

How does Jesus being Jesus change the way I live?

And first, we might think broadly about the whole course of our lives and all of our big decisions. If it were not for Jesus, things would look very differently for most of us (I know that’s true for me!) — but let’s not settle with that broad kind of thinking. Take another step.

For example, you might first think … “Because of Jesus I’m a mother.” Okay, yes, but it’s more than that. Because of Jesus you want to be a certain kind of mother. What kind? How does Jesus being Jesus make you a certain kind of mother?

Another example: “Because of Jesus, I give” — and that’s great, but take another step. How does Jesus being Jesus impact the ways you give, and how much you give, and to where?

One more example: You might think: “Because of Jesus, there are certain things I don’t do” — and that’s good, but how does Jesus being Jesus change the way you use your time? What do you give your energy to? How do you think about your purpose?

See, the fact is: Jesus has come! Jesus is real. It’s like he’s right over there. So what do we do now? Today? Tomorrow? The next day? Since Jesus is Jesus, how should we live?

The questions continue. And that’s the question for us.

The second thing to track in this passage is …

Mission CompleteThis is in verses 27–30 where John the Baptist answers his followers, and what he does here is he gives the concluding explanation of his ministry. Like in Chapter 1, he says again, one more time, what he’s all about. He starts with verse 27:

“A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.”

Now that’s a true statement all across the board. Every gift we have is ultimately from God. But John is saying this here about what God has called him to do. He’s had one job this whole time — to point people to Jesus. That’s the job God gave John the Baptist to do, and he says he’s done it.

He says to his followers, Hey, you guys can vouch for me. You’ve heard me say, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

You’re telling me that all are going to him — and they should be! This is the point. Jesus is the bridegroom; I’m just the friend of the groom, verse 29.

And just like that, John the Baptist uses a wedding metaphor. And this is important. When he mentions the “friend of the groom” here he’s talking about the best man. That’s the idea. That’s how John the Baptist understood himself. He is Jesus’s best man.

Have any of y’all ever been to a wedding when after the ceremony, at the reception or wherever, there’s a big receiving line?

Well, have y’all ever seen it that when people are lining up to meet the bride and groom, the best man is over in the corner of the room, and he’s trying to get people to form a line to see him? Ever seen that before? Have you ever heard of a best man who is confused that people wanna see the groom?

Of course not! This is a perfect image, John!

For those of you who have a wedding this summer — a lot of you, actually — understand this: the best man has one job. (Now I know today he does a couple of things — there’s the ring and the speech and all that — but traditionally, the best man had one job). He was to make sure the groom gets to the wedding. That’s it. That’s what he’s for. And when the groom gets there, the best man is done. “This joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

See, this is the fadeout moment for John the Baptist. And his whole ministry has been looking forward to this. He’s known the whole time it’s not about him. His one job has been to prepare the way for Jesus — to clear the way for us to see Jesus — and John the Baptist says here, “I’ve done it. Mission complete.”

And I’m so happy for him! I love that he experienced this! I love that he says mission complete, but it makes me wonder: Do you think we’ll ever say that?

Our Mission NowJohn the Baptist was able to begin his ministry with the end in mind, and here he’s reached the finish line. He did it. But when it comes to our mission, is it possible for us to experience that in this life?

At one level, no. When we think of the mission Jesus has given us — “make disciples of all nations” — one day that mission will be complete, but not here. Technically, mission complete for us comes in the New Jerusalem, in heaven.

So then what does that mean for now?

Like for now, are we just spinning our wheels trying to climb a mountain we’ll never reach?

If that’s how we think about our mission, that’s pretty depressing and non-compelling.

So think about it like this: although we may not see the full mission complete in our lifetime, the things we do today on mission have an eternal impact. Our actions have eternal consequences. They matter.

As a local church, last year we focused in on our mission — we exist to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

This means that we don’t just want ourselves to be happier in God, but we want more people in the Twin Cities to be happy in God! That’s over 3.7 million people! That’s gonna take some time and look, we probably won’t get there in the next 50 years. And that’s okay. It’s not our responsibility to do it all, but we are responsible for a part.

Our cities are full of lost people who must be found, and hopeless people who must find hope, and drowning people who must be saved — and we have a life boat. And we can and should make a difference.

One day, in heaven, it will be mission complete for us like it is for John the Baptist here … but that mission complete does come in part through what we do now.

Questions continue …

Mission complete …

Jesus ClearThis is verses 31–36, and it’s where John, the writer of this Gospel, speaks up with his own commentary. Now that John the Baptist has officially faded out, John the writer wants us to focus in all the more on Jesus. Like he did in Chapter 1, John here tells us who Jesus is. He tells us seven truths about Jesus:
Jesus is above all (v. 31)
Jesus has seen and heard from God the Father (v. 32)
Jesus utters the words of God the Father (v. 34a)
Jesus has been given the Spirit without measure by God the Father (v. 34b)
Jesus is loved by God the Father (v. 35a)
Jesus has been given all things by God the Father (v. 35b)
Jesus, therefore, elicits a consequential response (vv. 33, 36)

You can track each one of these in order, but I’m just gonna highlight one here in closing (one and a half). It’s in verse 34, and I want you to see this — I also wanna make sure you’re still with me. So everybody, if you can, find verse 34. Verse 34,

“For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.”

Now, when John is telling us about Jesus here, he’s doing it in contrast to John the Baptist. Remember John the Baptist was an Old Testament prophet, and John wants us to know that Jesus was much greater than just a prophet — he comes from above, and he’s not just told what to say, but he’s actually seen and heard directly from God the Father because he’s been with the Father forever. So what Jesus says, the Father says, “for” or “because” the Father gives Jesus the Spirit without measure.

That’s also meant to be a contrast with John the Baptist, or really with any prophet. It was commonly understood in the Jewish worldview that as God spoke through the prophets, God gave a measure of his Spirit to each prophet for their assigned task. Every prophet received the measure of the Spirit that was required for their assignment.

Well John is saying that it’s different with Jesus. He’s more than a prophet. He doesn’t just receive a bit of the Spirit for a one-off job, but he’s been given the Spirit without limit. His job never ends. Jesus is constantly, always, revealing God to us. He’s always making God known. He’s always the way back to a relationship with God.

And the Spirit is always with Jesus doing that work. The Spirit was doing that work when Jesus was here on this earth, and the Spirit is still doing that work today, as the message of Jesus continues to be told. One way to say it is that anywhere Jesus is made clear, the Spirit is at work.

Closer Than a Copter ViewAnd that elicits a consequential response. This is verse 36. And it’s really simple: Whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life; whoever does not obey him — does not believe him — the wrath of God remains on him.

That’s verse 36, which means we all have to make a choice about Jesus. Whenever we hear about Jesus we come to a fork in the road: will we believe him or not?

Those are the only two options for us when we encounter Jesus. And this book has been written so that we encounter him.

See, a lot of times in life, we can try to stay with only that helicopter view of Jesus. We kinda see him from afar, we know about him, but we don’t wanna get too close to him. We don’t wanna have to make a choice about him.

But the Gospel of John doesn’t let us do that. This book gives us closer than a helicopter view. This book brings Jesus right here in front us. John is all about making Jesus clear to us — and we should choose him. Believe him. Trust him.

Questions continue.

Mission complete.

Jesus clear.

That’s what’s going on in this passage, and that’s what brings us to the Lord’s Table.

The TableWe come to this Table each week, first, because Jesus told us to — he told us to come to this table and remember his death for us. The bread represents the body of Jesus, and the cup represents his blood, and as we eat and drink this bread and cup we are saying together that Jesus is our hope. That’s why this is a meal for Christians.

If you’re here this morning and you’re not yet a Christian or if you’re not sure, I’m so glad you’re here and I invite you, Put your faith in Jesus! Believe him! — and I’d love to talk with you more about that. I’ll hang out down here after the service as usual. Come talk to me.

So for those who believe, if you trust in Jesus Christ, let’s eat and drink together and give him thanks.

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John 3:16-21,

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Okay, I’ve got really good news and really bad news — which do you want first?

I’ll explain the bad news first, but let me at least start with the good news just by reading verse 18. Here it is, verse 18:

“Whoever believes in him [in Jesus] is not condemned,”

“…but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

This is super straightforward. Everybody get that?

Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned (that’s really good news!)
Whoever does not believe in Jesus is condemned already (that’s really bad news, for those who don’t believe).

And a keyword in both statements is the word “whoever” — that’s whoever as in anybody …

Whoever as in — it doesn’t matter who you are or who your momma is; it doesn’t matter where you’re from or what you’ve done; it doesn’t matter how you look or the place you live or what anybody else thinks about you — it doesn’t even matter what you think about yourself — “whoever” is the broadest, most inclusive way to refer to humanity.

Whoever means whoever — this is every human on this earth, it’s any person you could ever think of, whoever is all of us all the same — and the apostle John says there’s one thing that makes the main difference with the whoevers — it’s: Do you believe in Jesus or not?

John has written this book so that we would believe in Jesus, and he wastes no time putting the fork in the road here.

Will you believe in Jesus and not be condemned?

Or will you not believe in Jesus and be condemned?

Those are the only options for us, and I hope that you hear this as both really good and really bad. It’s really good if you believe (it’s amazing — I want this to be all of us!) but it’s really bad if you don’t believe … or if you love those who don’t believe (which I hope is also all of us).

Cities Church, God is speaking to us today in his word, in the good news and the bad news, and that’s my focus in this sermon. I just have two points, and you’ve already heard them. I’ll say a few more things about each one, but before we move on, let’s pray again:

Father, right now, your Spirit is at work like the wind! He does what he wishes according to your will! And we ask: would you will that he give life this morning! Give life! Revive life! Make us to see reality at it is. In Jesus’s name, amen.

For the first point, there’s more on the bad news, here it is:

We’re going down. Y’all ever been in a situation before when you realized: “Oh no, this is not good. I’m doomed.”?

You could call it the “moment of reckoning” or a “mayday moment.”

I’ve had more than one of these but the moment that stands out was one time when I was a kid when I accidentally hit my brother in the face with a shinguard and knocked his front tooth out. I wasn’t worried about him — he’s tough; I knew he’d be fine — I was worried about telling my dad. I felt doomed. If you know the feeling, it’s like your ears get really hot and something gets stuck right here. It’s not pleasant.

There’s a historical figure who knew all about these moments — it was a woman named Violet Jessop. Maybe you’ve heard her name before. Violet was a ship stewardess and nurse in the early 1900s who is famous for being a passenger on three different ships — the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic. (You recognize that second ship — the Titanic struck an iceberg and Rose let Jack freeze to death.)

But get this: the Olympic, in 1911, collided with another ship and in 1916 the Britannic hit a naval mine.

All three ships turned into disasters and Violet Jessop survived each one, which means she lived through at least three real moments in her lifewhen she would have heard the words, and realized, literally, “We’re going down! … I’m in a situation that is doomed.” …

She felt that three different times — isn’t that crazy?

I want you to know verses 18–20 are meant to give us a similar realization.

Original SinThe truth is, the coming of Jesus has a dooming effect — now, that’s not the purpose for why Jesus came (we’ll get to more on that later, but verse 17 is clear: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.”)

Jesus didn’t come with the purpose to condemn the world, but a result of his coming, and people not believing in him, is that it makes clear that people are condemned already.

In other words, the reality of Jesusreveals the doom that already exists for everyone who does not trust him. Verse 36, the last verse of this chapter, says that for the one who does not believe in Jesus, “the wrath of God remains on him.”

Deserving the wrath of God is something else that we all have in common — and it goes back to what’s called original sin. We all face condemnation — we all face doom — because we all sin … because we choose to sin … because we inherited sinfulness.

The first rebellion of our granddaddy Adam infects us as humans. It defiles us in all faculties and parts of the body and soul. None of us are just humans, we’re broken humans. We are bent away from God. Our default thinking is that if we need to be saved, we can save ourselves. We are “by nature,” as Paul says in Ephesians 2:3, “children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” If we reject Jesus, the wrath of God remains on us because we start with that verdict.

Verdict Exposed We all start with the verdict of condemnation because of our sin, but we don’t know that until we’re confronted with the gospel. That’s what John is saying in verse 19,

19 And this is the judgment [another word for judgment is “verdict” — this is it:] the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

See, people love the darkness but the darkness is all they know until the light comes — so, they don’t actually know they love the darkness until the light comes and they hate the light; they want to avoid the light.

Why? Because the light exposes them.

The problem with this exposure is not that it makes these people look bad in front of others — we don’t avoid the exposure because of what others might think — but we avoid the exposure because in the light we must face the verdict.

The light shows things as they really are; which means the lovers of darkness can’t be oblivious anymore to what the darkness means. The light is what makes everyone finally realize: “This whole thing is going down. … I’m in a situation that is doomed.”

Why I’m Telling YouAnd let’s be honest, if you like your situation, if you love the darkness, you don’t want to hear this. So most times you stay away from places like this, or if you come, you plug your ears and stiffen your heart and you try to protect yourself from the fear of condemnation by pretending there’s no such thing.

If that’s you, I’m so glad you’re here, and the best thing that could happen right now is for the Holy Spirit to rush through here like a mighty wind and open your eyes. Because the bad news is that if you don’t believe in Jesus, you are condemned.

And I’m not telling you you’re condemned because I’m trying to be a jerk — I’m telling you because there’s a way out.

This is the second point …

Jesus was sent here on a rescue mission.This is verse 17. And you gotta see this. Everybody find verse 17. Verse 17, get ready to finish the sentence for me:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be [saved] through him.”

Now “saved” is an important word in this verse, but another important word is the word “send.”

Track with me here:

“God” here is referring to God the Father, and “Son” is referring to Jesus — and along with the Holy Spirit, we should think Trinity. This is God in himself from all eternity happy and satisfied — the Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the bond of that love.

And John tells us that God the Father sent Jesus his Son here, into this world. And God the Father did that because of his love, verse 16,

“God so loved the world that he sent [he gave] his only Son!”

I want to make sure we get this right: Jesus did not come here so that God the Father would love us; but Jesus came here because God the Father loves us.

John will say later, 1 John 3:1:

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

I can’t improve what Pastor Marshall said last week, so I’ll just say it again: We are loved by God. … By the triune God — the Father who chose us in love, the Son who came to save us in love, the Spirit who pours that love into our hearts. This is love, love, love.

That is why the Father sent the Son. Amen. Now keeping hanging with me here:

The word for “sending” in Latin is the the word “missio” — which is where we get our word mission. And there’s range of meaning for how we use this word, but most of the time when we use the word “mission” we mean an important assignment or ambition. It’s something that we aim to do, that we’re sent to do. So I think it’s appropriate to speak of Jesus as having a mission — his mission is what he was sent to do. What was that?

Verse 17 says he was sent to [do what again?] … to save.

And that’s save as in rescue. That’s save as in the ship is going down and we’re all on it and we’re all doomed … unless someone is sent to save us.

What we find in these verses, very clearly, is that God the Father sent Jesus here on a rescue mission. Jesus came here to rescue us. Will you be rescued?

Two Big OpportunitiesJesus was sent here on a rescue mission, and that leads to two big opportunities for us this morning … one opportunity is for those who are here and don’t yet believe in Jesus and then the other opportunity is for those of us who are longstanding committed members of Cities Church.

1) To Those Who Don’t Yet BelieveFirst, if you’re here and you don’t yet believe. The light shines this morning and the message is plain: If you don’t believe in Jesus you are condemned, but if you believe in Jesus you are not condemned. If you trust in Jesus, he will save you, and he will do that right now.

And look, I don’t mean to ignore the complexities of our various circumstances. I know that we all come from different places, and that faith for some feels really hard. I understand that. I don’t dismiss that. But I do want to emphasize the wonderful simplicity of the gospel as John puts it here.

There’s a lot more stuff you can think through and we can talk about, and I’d be happy to do that, but it is also biblical to cut to the chase, put Jesus in your face, and ask what you’re gonna do with him.

Your greatest need in all your life is to be saved, and Jesus came to save you. Will you be saved by him? Will you put your faith in him?

This is what that looks like … you saying to him from the heart:

Jesus, I’m a sinner who needs to be saved,

And I know you came here to save me!

You died on the cross and were raised from the dead,

You are Lord and I trust you.

Believe in Jesus and you will be saved. That’s the first opportunity this morning.

2) To the members of citiesHere’s the second, and this one is for those of us who are part of Cities Church, the members of this church, if you’re all-in here, this is for you ….

We, as disciples of Jesus, we’re on a rescue mission, too. Or really, the better way to say it is that Jesus continues his rescue mission and now he involves us — by his Spirit he works through us. Which means: the ministry of Jesus through us, our church’s ministry, what we’re about, most fundamentally, is a rescue mission.

And man, it’s so important that we get this. I’ve come to realize, for myself and for all our members, that we will give little effort to make more room in this church until we understand we’re on a rescue mission. When I say “more room” I don’t just mean physical space, but I mean first at the heart level, in our imagination.

I’ve got this image. I’ll tell you about it … it’s a choice between two different ways of being for our next decade …

The first way is that we’re a nice cruise ship and we’re just coasting along, and every now and then, when we’re not on our phones, we might glance out over the deck and we see some stuff going on down in the water, but we don’t really bother — just keep cruising. That’s one way.

The other way is that we’re a life boat sent out because there’s been a storm, and that stuff going on down in the water is people drowning, and so we’re going out trying to get as many people in our boat as we possibly can.

Church, see, we have a choice — Will we be a cruise ship with high walls, maybe throwing a rope down every now and then? Or will we be a life boat, going out in the storm, leaning over the edge, saying “Get in the boat! Be saved! Jesus is real! Trust him!”

Cruise ship or life boat? Who do you want to be? And if it’s not a life boat, then what are we telling ourselves to make us think that’s okay?

God, make us a life boat.

Church, let’s give our lives together to be a life boat.

Father, we know that by your Spirit you are at work in our lives and in our church and we ask for more. Don’t let us get in the way, but give us humble hearts and yielded spirits. Give us a deepening gratitude for what you’ve done in our past, and a growing passion for what you are yet to do, what you are able to do, what we believe you are pleased to do for your glory and our good. In Jesus’s name, amen.

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John 3:1-21,

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

I have prayed over this morning, this message, these verses because I believe some of you came in needing to feel loved by God again. I know some of you need to feel loved again. You don’t feel loved right now, at least not in your worst moments. You might know that you’re loved, but you struggle to know it — and even more to feel it. There’s something clouding God’s love for you — different clouds in different stories.

The cloud might be a relationship. Maybe a parent has been especially overbearing — or especially absent. Maybe a child has changed and started responding in ways that are confusing and painful. Maybe a spouse has grown distant, or distracted, or irritated, or worse. Maybe you’re a young family battling sickness — and I mean battling, going to absolute war with the flu or RSV for weeks on end. Maybe you’re in a job you hate, but you feel stuck. Maybe you’re in a job you love but might lose. Maybe you’d love to have any job at all. Maybe you feel stuck in a cycle of sin that you have tried to break, maybe for years. Maybe someone keeps sinning against you. I have my clouds this week. . . . I have needed to be reminded that the God of heaven, the Maker of mountains and oceans, sunsets and freezing temperatures, the final Judge of every human soul, the most powerful, most holy, most valuable being in this or any universe loves me (loves you). Do you know that? Not just in your mind, but in your heart — in every bone and muscle in your body. I want you to know this love like that.

I want you to feel how loved you are. And to do that, I’m going to take you to the most familiar verse in all the world:

“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

You know these words by heart, but I’ve prayed that you might have ears to hear them this morning as if you’ve never heard them before. I want the love of God to wash over you and give you strength to endure whatever makes you feel loved any less.

Four Loves in One VerseWith these next 30 minutes, I want to show you four loves in John 3:16 (and by extension, John 3:1–21). I see four loves in this one verse, and I think this verse can help us make some sense of the other 20 verses in this passage.

God Loves the UnlovelyOkay, so four loves in one verse. First love: God loves the unlovely.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son. . . .”

When you hear Jesus say that word “world,” I wonder what you hear. Do you hear “world,” and immediately think of places like Kenya, Japan, and Brazil? Or do you hear “world,” and think darkness, wickedness?

“For God so loved [sinners], that he gave his only Son. . . .”

The former is certainly and beautifully true — God does love and has redeemed people from all tribes, tongues, peoples, and languages (Revelation 5). And it was provocative, in Israel, for John to say that God loves the world, and not just Israel. But I don’t think that’s the main point here. No, the main point here is that God loves the unlovely. He loves sinners. He loves the world who despised and rejected him.

This “world” is the world immersed, drowning in sin, the entirety of humanity — today, 8.062 billion people, every single one of them perishing apart from faith in Jesus. And we see that when we keep reading, verse 17:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world (sinners), but in order that the world (sinners) might be saved through him.

Why would Jesus have to clarify that: God didn’t send me to condemn the world? Because the world deserved condemnation. We deserved condemnation. Romans 3:23,

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We all have sinned and do sin, and that sin deserves condemnation, punishment, death. The wages of sin are death (Romans 6:23) — and not just death, but a never-ending, always-dying death.

See how ugly this world really is, next verse — how ugly, unlovely we were apart from Christ:

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. . . .

We didn’t just do bad things; we loved bad things. That’s the world Jesus sought out. That’s the world God loved. We were evil people — plotting evil, doing evil, savoring evil, and hiding in shadows — and yet God loved us, even while we laid in the dark. He didn’t wait for us to come out of the darkness looking for him; no, he sent his Son, the Light of the world, into the awful, wicked shadows to find us and save us. God loves the unlovely.

We named our son “Sorin Pierce” because of verses like these. Sorin means “sun” in Romanian. I’m not Romanian (Faye’s certainly not Romanian), but we went looking for something that meant light (preferably two syllables, and starting with S). And we wanted to see that light pierce the darkness — the darkness in us, the darkness in our son and other children, and the darkness in the world. We named him Sorin Pierce because our God has a heart for those in darkness, because he loves the unlovely.

God Loves BelieversSecond, God loves believers. Where do I see that in verse 16?

“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Now, this verse would be enough to say that God loves believers simply because it says he saves us from perishing and gives us eternal life. Like I just said, we deserved death — the worst death, a death in which we die and die and die forever — and he gave us the opposite, the very best life imaginable, a life so good, for so long, we can hardly believe it’s true. God loves believers. But there’s more to this love in these verses.

How does God love believers? Does he send his Son into the world and then wait around for someone to believe? This is how I used to think about salvation. God sends his good news out into the world, the gospel, and then he loves those who choose to love and believe in him. There’s more to this love, though. And this gets us into the first fifteen verses of our passage. Verse 1:

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’”

Jesus was turning water into wine, healing the blind and sick, seeing people’s minds, and the religious leaders were taking notice. Clearly something supernatural’s happening here, but it’s not happening in the ways they expected. So Nicodemus comes looking for an explanation.

He comes in secret, at night, and essentially says, “Help me understand what I’m seeing.” Jesus answers, verse 3:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Say what? . . . Nicodemus is even more confused and so he asks,

“How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”

Jesus has this pharisee so turned around that he asks if an adult man has to climb back into his mother’s womb. It sounds a little like the kinds of crazy questions a curious 5 or 6-year-old might ask. Jesus answers,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

He’s not talking about a womb birth. We had two babies born into our community group in the last couple months, two different families — Ambrose and Annie. He’s not talking about that — but he’s using that to talk about something else. He’s talking about a spiritual birth, a birth of faith. He’s pointing to the miracle of physical birth to describe something even more miraculous that has to happen in us in order for us to believe.

Anyone can be amazed by a man healing blindness, or turning water to wine, or reading people’s minds — whoa that’s pretty cool. Something profound, something spiritual, has to happen in our eyes for someone to see those same signs and worship. Or, in the words of John 3, to see what Jesus was doing and saying and believe. Believe what? Believe that this man, born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, is the Son of God, the Messiah, and that he came to die in order to save sinners.

That’s where Jesus goes, verses 13–15:

“the Son of Man (must) be lifted up [we know now, lifted up on the cross], that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

So, for someone to believe in Jesus, they have to see the kingdom of God. And to see the kingdom of God, we must be born again by the Spirit. How does that happen? Jesus explains, verse 8:

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Translation: We don’t know. How is someone born of the Spirit? We don’t know. You can’t predict, much less control, the Spirit. It’s like trying to herd the wind. No, God gives life to whoever he chooses, that’s the point. This love doesn’t wait for a response. This love goes into the darkness and brings sight to the blind. This love brings the dead to life, a new and second and greater birth.

So when I say, “God loves believers,” I don’t just mean he loves those who love him. I mean he actually gives the love we have for him.

If you know Faye and I’s story, you know that it took me a long time to convince her to date me. We met at a wedding. She lived in Los Angeles. So I called and called and called to try and win her. She actually came out to Minnesota to visit her family here. We hung out during her trip. I thought everything was going well, and so I told her how I felt and asked her to be my girlfriend.

She said (and I quote), “You’re a really nice human being. And I enjoy our conversations. But when I think about a relationship, my heart is cold.”

I said, “Like ice cold or lukewarm?”

She said, “Cold.”

She went back to California. And so I called and called and called and asked, and then called and called and called and asked. She was still colder than a Dairy Queen. Later that year, I was in LA for work, and she was willing to hang out again. I thought it was going well (you’re learning some things about your new pastor here), and so I told her how I felt (again), and asked her to be my girlfriend (again). She paused for a second, and then said (and I quote), “Sure.” I was obviously over the moon with sure. And here we are, ten years of marriage, and three beautiful children.

I share that story here because that’s not the picture of love we get in John 3:1–21. We might imagine a lovesick God who desperately calls and calls and calls and asks, and then calls and calls and calls and asks, just waiting, hoping, begging for a “Sure.” No, this love reaches into the darkness, into the grave, and he pulls his lifeless bride out, breathes life into her body; washes her from head to toe so that she is clean, radiant, beautiful; replaces her heart of stone with a beating heart of flesh; and then performs supernatural surgery on her eyes so that she can see — and when she does see him, in the face of Jesus Christ, she loves him. Of course she loves him! She can’t help but love him. We can’t help but love him, right? Because his love, by his Spirit, awakens love.

I think the whole conversation with Nicodemus is a window into who believes in verse 16. No one can see the kingdom of God — that is, see, believe, and worship — unless he is born again by the Spirit. This God not only loves sinners, but he sends his Spirit to awaken sinners. If you look at Jesus and see your Lord and Savior and Treasure, God’s done that in you. You are born again. You’re not the same person anymore.

God loves those who believe — everyone who believes — with a life-resurrecting, eyesight-restoring, love-awakening love.

God Loves His SonOkay, God loves the unlovely (he loves sinners), and he loves believers (he awakens us and enables us to see). Now, the third love in John 3:16. I wonder if you see it. This third love is the love on which the others hang. There would be no love in this verse, in this Gospel, in the universe without this third love.

Third love, God loves his Son.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

The sentence doesn’t make sense unless the Father really, really, really loves his Son. This is how much God loved us — he gave the Son whom he loved. And this love (of the Father, for the Son) is going to come up again and again in this Gospel. Just a few verses later, Jesus says, verse 35:

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.”

In John 15, in his final words to his friends, his disciples, he says,

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

We have never seen nor experienced a love like this one. And this love — from eternity past, long before the foundation of the world — was so sweet, so intense, so pure, that it spilled over in a world, a universe. God made the world in order to share the love they enjoyed within the Godhead — Father, Son, and Spirit. That’s what Jesus prays in John 17:24:

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. . . .26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

God has always loved his Son, and will always love his Son.

And yet to really show the height and width and depth and glory of this love, the Son had to die. If sinners were going to not perish but have eternal life, someone had to die for our sin. And that someone had to be perfect, infinitely lovely, spotless, blameless, pure, holy. That someone was the Son of God, the Son we meet in Jesus, fully God (God enough to make galaxies and move mountains) and fully man (man enough to sweat and bleed and die, really die).

In John 10:17, in maybe the most surprising verse of all about this love, Jesus says,

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.”

We might think the Father would love the Son less because he sent him to die (we might think a father hates his son because he gave him up like this), but the Son himself says just the opposite. The Father loves the Son precisely because —“for this reason” — the Son laid down his life and then took it back up again. God loves his Son. He so loves his Son, more than we can put into words. Certainly more than I can put into a few hundred words in this sermon. And yet as much as he loved him — infinite, immeasurable love — he gave that Son, that Treasure, his very Heart, for you. And that brings me to the fourth love in John 3:16.

God Loves YouGod loves the unlovely. God loves believers. God loves his Son. And finally, God loves you. And I don’t mean all of you; I mean each of you.

God so loved you that he gave his only Son, so that if you would just believe, you will not perish — you don’t have to die that death — but have eternal life.

As John relives this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, and as he hears Jesus say to this confused and curious pharisee, “. . . the Son of Man [must] be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life,” John can’t help but jump in and say, “For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” You can almost see him turning from Jesus and Nicodemus to us and asking, “So do you believe? Do you see? Will you relent from your sin and step under the waterfall of this love?”

Like Nicodemus, I suspect someone’s hiding in here this morning. He came at night, in secret. You’re here in broad daylight, but you’re still hiding. You’re going through your Sunday morning motions, because someone might ask questions or give you a hard time if you didn’t. But you’re not sure what to think about Jesus. You’re quietly anxious, you’re miserable, you’re looking for answers and you don’t want anyone to know. But you’re here hoping something might finally click and make sense of all your questions and longings and heartaches. And so I want to look you in the eye, or as many of you as I can anyway, and tell you: God loves you. God loves you. He really loves you.

If you believe, all four of these loves are yours.

Are you weighed down by your sin, wondering if anyone (much less God) could love someone like you? The holy God loves unholy people, he loves the unlovely and undeserving. He loves sinners, even you. Do you believe?

Do you look at Jesus and see the Son of God? Do you believe he is who he said he was, that he died for your sins so that you don’t have to and that he rose from the dead so that you might live with him forever? Do you love him? The love of God gave you those eyes, that heart, that love.

Do you see how much he loves his one and only Son? Do you see the holy, happy love that made the universe? God gave that precious Son for you, on the cross.

The TableThat’s what we rehearse each week at this table.Jesus’s body was broken for you. His blood was spilled for you. The wrath that was meant for you fell on him. What more does God have to do to prove his love for you?

Does he have to heal that sickness? Does he need to send a husband or a wife, or a child? Does he need to give you that job? Does he need to change your parent or child or spouse? Faye and I are praying all of those prayers for someone we love right now, and we want God to do all those things. We really do. But I want you to hear this morning (I want myself to hear this again): God doesn’t have to answer that prayer to prove he loves you. He doesn’t. In Jesus, he’s already proved it.

Behind all the clouds that keep you from feeling loved by God, there’s a blazing, irresistible, unstoppable love — bigger and hotter than the sun. He loves you. He loves you. He really loves you.

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John 2:13-25,

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

The setting of a story is one of its most important parts. If you want to fully understand the significance of an action, then you need to knowthe when and where that the action takes place, and so that’s where I want to direct our attention right away.

The SettingJesus is in Jerusalem at the temple during Passover week (and this is a very different setting than that wedding at Cana we just saw last week). Jerusalem during Passover week was the busiest time of the year because worshipers from all over would have flooded the city to visit the temple and make sacrifices — and John tells us that Jesus is right in the middle of this. He’s at the temple. Verse 14:

“In the temple he [Jesus] found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.”

Put your imaginations to work for a minute and try picture this:

First of all, the temple was a massive building. It was a total of about 36 acres, which is like 27 football fields combined. And again because it was Passover, the normal population of Jerusalem would have swelled to be around 2.5 million people.

So think: big number of people in one city and a lot of them are coming to this big building — that would have been the first thing you noticed if you were there — but then John tells us that Jesus found people at the temple who were selling stuff. There were some selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and there were others who set up basically first-century ATMs. This was a full-out marketplace set up at the temple, and for a decent reason.

If all these worshipers had traveled to Jerusalem to sacrifice, they needed animals for that, and so these animal salesmen had set up shop in the area closest to where the buyers needed the animals. And because these buyers came from all over, the money-changers were there to make sure people had the right currency to buy the animals.

What’s happening here is pretty basic human reality: Events influence supply and demand, and that supply and demand shapes markets.We see this sort of thing all the time today. This is why parking prices downtown go up when the Wild play at home. We have all kinds of examples of this. There’s nothing unusual about it, and nobody at the temple thought anything of it — but Jesus found the people who were doing this and he started making a whip of cords.

I don’t know the last time you made a whip, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you just do in a minute. Jesus has a plan here.Whatever is about to happen, this is a pre-meditated situation.

Verse 15 tells us that, with this whip, Jesus drives out all these animal salesmen and their animals away from the temple. So whatever your imagination volume-level has been, crank it up!

Try to picture this: Jesus is cracking a whip and oxen and sheep are running everywhere in a crowd of people. Then Jesus dumps out all the coins of these money-changers; he flips their tables, and he tells the pigeon people to get their birds outta here. This is absolute chaos.

Honestly, it reminds me of one of those Allstate commercials (you know what I’m talking about?) I’m waiting for Jesus to say: “Get Allstate, and be protected from Mayhem like me.”

Jesus is mayhem in this story! He’s making a mess.

And that’s the setting here. We don’t get to the meaning of this until verse 16, but already we can tell this is very different from that wedding we were at last week.

Two Truths to SeeLast week, at that wedding, Jesus was the hero. This week Jesus is the headache.

Last week Jesus provided the wine. This week Jesus cracks the whip.

And here’s the thing: we need all of it.

All of Chapter 2 is meant to show us who Jesus is, and there are at least two things we learn about him in our passage today. And I want you to know that something here could be the most relevant truth about Jesus you’ve ever heard. I’m not kidding.

Because these are not merely truths about who Jesus was, these are truths about who Jesus is … like right now. And when he confronts us, like he does here, it has an effect. And my prayer has been that you open your heart for Jesus to do what he wants. So let’s pray that:

Lord Jesus, as we study your ways this morning in the Gospel of John, we ask that you would have your way in our hearts and lives, in your name, amen.

Here’s the first truth we learn about Jesus:

Jesus is the cleaner of what’s his. Again we don’t even start to get an idea of what’s going on in this crazy scene until the end of verse 16. Everybody, if you can, find verse 16, and look at the end of the verse, the part in quote marks. Jesus says,

“Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

That’s a big statement. Jesus is criticizing these animal salesmen and money-changers (and he criticizing everybody else who’s okay with what they’re doing) — but the problem is not so much their commerce, but it’s where the commerce takes place. They were doing all this at the temple.

This would have all been happening in the Court of the Gentiles, which was an area set aside for Gentile God-seekers — but instead of that area being open for prayer for all nations it was crowded with money-making. The house of God, the place set aside for the worship of God, had been made into a house of trade. Matthew, Mark, and Luke stress this point. The problem here is misuse, which reveals unfaithfulness, which requires judgment. That’s real here.

But at the same time, if we’re tracking with the Gospel of John, the most important thing that Jesus says in verse 16 is not about the business deals going on, but it’s that he calls the temple “my Father’s house.” Don’t let all the animals distract us from this!

Focus on AuthorityThis is the first time in the Gospel of John where Jesus calls God his Father — we already know this about Jesus from Chapter 1 — Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father, and he has made the Father known — but this is the first time where Jesus himself says that. The temple, he says, is my Father’s house.

And that’s why Jesus did what he did. The focus here, John wants us to know, is on the authority of Jesus.

And we can tell that’s the issue because that’s exactly what the Jewish leaders targeted. Right away, after this scene, they wanted to know what grounds Jesus had for doing what he did. They don’t argue with him about the “house of trade” comment. They say, basically: Who do you think you are?

And it makes sense that they would think this way. We have to understand that these Jewish leaders considered themselves to be the authority of the temple. To them, they were the ones in charge of that place.

So it would kind of be like if you got home this afternoon and you went into your house and you found a stranger in your kitchen rearranging what’s in your cabinets. The first thing you’re gonna say is not, “Why’d you put the coffee mugs there?”

You’re gonna wanna know Who are you? Who do you think you are?

That’s the conflict that’s setting up the dialogue, but first, by the end of verse 16, as the readers of this story, we know more about what’s going on here than the people in the story Jesus is talking to.

That’s often the case in the Gospel of John. John as the narrator helps us out along the way by telling us little things here and there to give us a fuller picture of what’s going on. So as readers, we know the grounds Jesus has to do all this. We know what he means when he says the temple is my Father’s house. More than authority, Jesus has ownership! The temple is his.

And in simple terms: Jesus has the right to clean what’s his.

Until It’s “My Stuff”And look: nobody would have a problem with any of this until Jesus claims to be in charge of something they thought they were in charge of.

We’re all fine with Jesus going and cleaning stuff up and rearranging dishes … until it’s my stuff, my dishes.

This is where we need to zoom out for just a minute and remember New Testament theology. The apostle Paul tells us that as Christians we ourselves become the temple of God because the Holy Spirit is in us. The dwelling place of God is in us by the Spirit! And the implications are clear. Paul says: “You are not your own” (1 Cor. 6:19).

Not if you’re a Christian.

If you’re a Christian it means Jesus is in charge. And sometimes that means he’s gonna have to overturn a table. He might have to make a little bit of a mess. He’s up to something good,but it might be uncomfortable.

It might not make sense. It might be a little mayhem. But remember Jesus is the cleaner of what’s his, and to be his is a good thing.

We learn that right away.

Jesus is the shame-bearer we need.In order for this to make sense we need to see how this passage is structured. Notice that verses 18–20 is the actual dialogue between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. They ask him a question; he answers; they respond. It’s straightforward. But then on both sides of this dialogue, in verse 17 and verses 21–22, John chimes in as the narrator to give us a fuller picture of what’s going on.

Because of the way the paragraphing is laid out in our English translations, it might look like verse 17 goes with verse 16, but it’s better to understand verse 17 as setting up what comes after it. Verse 17 and verses 21–22 go together. They’re both places where John is speaking.

So the dialogue with Jesus is here (verses 19–20), but John introduces here (verse 17) and John concludes it here (verses 21–22).

Verses 18–20We’re gonna look at both parts. First, the dialogue with Jesus.

In verse 18, the Jewish leaders demand an explanation for why Jesus did the whole thing with the whip and tables at “their temple.” They want to know, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”

They rightly interpreted Jesus’s actions to be a claim of authority. They got that message. But now they want him to prove that authority. And Jesus says, All right.

Verse 19: Jesus answered them,

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Verse 20: The Jews then said,

“It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”

And the dialogue is over.

That’s it. It’s a short exchange. What’s really important here for John is that we understand this dialogue through a certain lens.

Verses 21–22 and 17That’s why John tells us right away in verse 21 that Jesus of course wasn’t talking about destroying the physical temple, but he was talking about his own body.

Jesus himself is the new temple. He is the dwelling place of God embodied as a man. And the proof that he has the authority to run the physical temple is that he’s going to be destroyed (by the very people he’s talking to) and he’s going to rise from the dead. Whoever has authority over death is the one in charge.

Now John admits that the disciples didn’t understand all of this when Jesus said these words, but later on, after the resurrection, that’s when everything clicked for them.

Now why is it so important that John tell us this in verse 22? Why does John have to come in here in verse 21 and clarify that Jesus wasn’t actually talking about the literal temple?

Verses 21–22 all have to do with how John introduces this in verse 17.

Everybody look at verse 17 for minute. It’s a short verse, and I want you to see it.

Verse 17:

“His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”

This is from Psalm 69, verse 9. Remembering that psalm is what makes sense of the dialogue in verses 18–20. When John says in verse 22 the disciples “believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” he’s talking about Psalm 69. They believed that Scripture and connected it to what Jesus was doing.

So then what is Psalm 69 about?

What Is Psalm 69?Let me go back and read more of Psalm 69. This is a psalm of David. Listen to this, Psalm 69, verse 7:

7 For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach,

that dishonor has covered my face.

8 I have become a stranger to my brothers,

an alien to my mother’s sons.

9 For zeal for your house has consumed me,

and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

10 When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting,

it became my reproach.

11 When I made sackcloth my clothing,

I became a byword to them.

12 I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,

and the drunkards make songs about me.

Psalm 69 is a psalm of shame. David, the psalmist, is bearing shame and dishonor, and he’s speaking as the Messiah. That’s how the New Testament authors understood this psalm.

A clear example is Psalm 69 verse 21, which says,

“They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

Where else do we see that?

All four Gospel writers tell us that Jesus, when he was on the cross, was offered sour wine.

Psalm 69 is about the Messiah’s shame. The Messiah had been speaking up for God’s sake. He was zealous for God’s house. But in his faithfulness to God, his own people turned on him. “His own people did not receive him” (John 1:11), but instead he became the lightning rod of their insults. The reproach and dishonor the people had directed at God was directed at him. That’s what he means: “the reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen on me.” God-haters became Messiah-haters.

The Shamed MessiahThe Messiah was shamed. He was dishonored.

That’s the message of Psalm 69 and John wants us to keep that in mind because we see it start to happen in this dialogue.

When Jesus says “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” we know what he’s talking about — John makes sure we know — but the people Jesus is talking to don’t know and they shut Jesus down here. When they reply “It took us 46 years to build this temple” that’s a “gotcha” statement. It’s a mic-drop. If you were there on the ground, seeing all this happen, you would have thought that Jesus just got roasted. They shame him.

And see, John is trying to help us understand Hey, it’s okay — a shamed Messiah is the true Messiah.

Just in case we think this whole thing is going to be a party … all wedding feasts and high-fives … Jesus just kicking butt and taking names … taking charge … he’s the new temple … he’s come to show us God … he’s manifesting his glory — this thing is going to be easy.

No it’s not. Not if you want the true Messiah. The true Messiah is a shame-bearer. People didn’t hoist him up on their shoulders and trot him around in victory. They esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted (Isaiah 53:4). And that didn’t just happen out of nowhere on the cross, but that was part of his entire ministry.

And the Old Testament would tell us this is to be expected — the Messiah is a shame-bearer — but I want you to know that a Messiah who bears shame is the Messiah we need.

How Does He Help Us?Shame is one of the most powerful forces in our world. Right next to death, it is every human’s greatest fear. And when I’m talking about shame, to clarify, I’m not talking about a feeling. I don’t mean shame as a subjective, personal sense, but I’m talking about shame as a social verdict. Shame is to be exposed as unworthy and rejected. Shame is when your worst nightmare for yourself, true or not, is put on display for everyone to see, and they see it and agree that you deserve rejection.

That’s what the old medieval village stocks were about. You know that wooden thing you put your head and arms through and people throw rotten tomatoes at you. The whole thing is about public humiliation. So was the dunce cap teachers put on kids 50 years ago. Today it happens all kinds of ways online. Public scorn. To be shamed. It’s all downstream from crucifixion. That’s what I’m talking about.

So how does Jesus bearing shame help us?

He shows us there is a reality more powerful than the shame we fear, and that reality is the verdict of God. The eyes of God are the only eyes that really matter — and Jesus knew that whether he was getting pats on the back at a wedding feast or insults in the aftermath of mayhem.

Jesus was not defined by man’s opinion — he knew what was in man (verse 25) — and he knew that what man would say about him will not be the same as what God says. There’s a disconnect, and the same goes for us!

“If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household?” (Matthew 10:24)

Just like with Jesus, there is a disconnect between what the world says about us (and sometimes what we even say about ourselves) — there’s a disconnect between that and what God says. So what does God say? What is God’s verdict of us?

To all who receive [Jesus], who believe in his name, Jesus gives them the right to become children of God (John 1:12). That’s what God says. He calls you “my son” or “my daughter” and that’s the reality that will overcome and outlast any shame.

And that’s what we remember at this Table.

The TableAs Christians, we come to this Table each week to remember this ultimate reality of who we are. We remember what Jesus did for us to make us his own. Even if there’s a little mayhem going on, we’re his and he’s good.

And so Christian, son or daughter of God, you who trust in Jesus, come to this table, eat and drink, and let us give him thanks.

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John 2:1-12,

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

I had not experienced the Joe Rogan podcast until last month — with its three-hour conversations. But I heard he hosted a Christian apologist from Canada named Wes Huff.

At one point early on, they were talking about the beginning, whether creation, or “the Big Bang”:

Rogan: However many billions of years ago there was nothing. And then all of a sudden there was something. . . science requires one miracle.

Huff: When people ask me about . . . the miracles in the Bible . . . I say “Well . . . if the first miracle happened, if everything you know [came from] nothing [then] Jesus turning water into wine . . .

Rogan: That’s an easy one.

Huff: Well, yeah. That’s a party trick.

Rogan: Yeah, exactly. It really is nothing compared to the birth of the universe. But [people today are] convinced at the creation of the universe, and we’re very skeptical at other miracles.

Huff: Yeah, very odd.

Rogan: Yes, it’s very odd.

This morning we come to that “party trick.” And the Rogan and Huff conversation might help us put a piece of it in perspective.

The fundamental miracle is that we’re here. The world exists. You exist; you are alive. Once there was nothing, and now, everything you know! And if that original miracle happened, which it obviously did, then multiplying loaves, giving sight to the blind, turning water into wine, and even raising the dead — those are not the real issues.

Life, existence, the world as it is, that’s the original miracle, which clearly happened — and these other lesser miracles are secondary — important but secondary. And in that light, such miracles are not as imponderable as your average unbelieving person today might first think.

Not Just Water and WineBut how does that help us this morning with “water into wine”? Well, perhaps like this: the most shocking reality in John 2 isn’t that water became wine. What’s most stunning is this person named Jesus. This story is not finally about water and wine. That’s secondary. The story is about Jesus. It’s not about science and whether this can happen; it’s not about alchemy and whether we might be able to repeat it. The point is what the miracle points to — that is, whom the miracle points to.

Which is why John calls this a “sign.” See that in verse 11:

“This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

A sign is something that points beyond itself. It signifies. And what does this miraculous episode signify in John 2? John says it “manifested [Jesus’s] glory.” That echoes what we saw a few weeks ago in John 1:14:

“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In this Gospel, John is giving us glimpses of the glory. John has seen Jesus’s glory and believed in him. And so he carefully writes what he’s seen, that we can see it too, with the eyes of faith.

Verse 11 says that in doing this miracle, and revealing his glory, Jesus’s “disciples believed in him.” That, John says, in 20:31, is the purpose of the book, chapter 20, verse 31,

“that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

The Gospel of John was written to give us life (now and forever) in the name of Jesus by presenting him to us in his glory that we might find him compelling and believe in him.

So, let’s ask this morning: How does this story breed faith in Jesus? I’ll highlight three in particular.

Three Glories of JesusLet me give you a word ahead of time about where we’re going at the end: I want to invite you to consider Jesus this morning like maybe you never have. I’m not going to ask you to raise a hand or walk to the front, but I am going to ask you not to get in the way of this Jesus decisively changing your heart and your life.

I’m not asking you to make a decision today, as much as not get in the way. If you came here not believing in Jesus, or not quite sure what to think about Jesus, I’m asking you to let your guard down for a few minutes, and look with me at these three glories. See if Jesus presents himself to your soul as compelling, and whether he evokes your trust.

Jesus Is the Good Son (verses 1–5)First, he’s a human son to Mary, his earthly mother. Verses 1–3:

“On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”

Put yourself in Mary’s shoes. She has raised this amazing boy, now a man. And while his sheer holiness must have been frustrating to her sin at times, can you imagine what it must have been like to have the sinless, eternal Son of God, in full humanity, as her earthly son? Just think of the ingenuity of Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, her husband, Joseph, had died. We don’t know when or how. But now Jesus is in his thirties, and for years he has provided for his mother. She has leaned on him as her man, and what a good son he must have been.

So, Mary’s helping with this wedding, perhaps for extended family, and they run out of wine (which is a huge disgrace at a wedding!). She comes to her son, who seems to always fix her problems.

Just recently he left carpentry behind to take disciples and travel around as a teacher, and he’s there at the wedding with his disciples. So Mary tells him, “They have no wine.” Jesus, help. You always know what to do, my good son.

Then comes verses 4–5 and Jesus’s surprising response:

And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus’s response is abrupt. It puts distance between this good son and his earthly mother. Instead of calling her Mother, or something more endearing, he calls her “Woman.” Which is not disrespectful; it’s true. But it’s a stiff arm. And a surprise.

As we move through the Gospel of John, we will see how Jesus’s mind and awareness is often operating at a different level than the person he is speaking with. Mary states the practical problem at hand: “They have no wine.” Jesus hears wine, and he thinks of his calling. The Old Testament has promised a coming messianic age in which, says Amos 9:13–14,

“the mountains shall drip sweet wine,

and all the hills shall flow with it.

[God] will restore the fortunes of [his] people Israel,

and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine.”

Jesus hears whispers of the coming age, which he has come to bring in, but there will be a price, and he says, “My hour has not yet come.”

What will become very clear in the Gospel of John is that Jesus’s “hour” is the time of his death and resurrection — the moment of his glorification, when he’s lifted up on the cross to die for sins of his people, and then lifted up from the grave in the new life of the resurrection.

And this hour that Jesus has coming will not come from any human initiative. No human will suggest the time and the way Jesus will bring in the new age. Not even his dear mother.

Jesus will take his cues from his heavenly Father, not his earthly mother. And how does Mary, who could have been offended, respond? She responds humbly, in faith. She trusts him.

This is an awesome moment for Mary. Jesus has just distanced her (his own family, his own mother), which is necessary but surely unpleasant for her. Yet she responds in faith, and gives the wedding servants the timeless advice “Do whatever he tells you.” Which is what she would tell us still today.

So, in verses 1–5, we see that Jesus is the good son. He is the earthly son of Mary, the one she has relied on for years, and she trusts in him even when he gives her this necessary pushback. And even more than Mary’s good son, he is the Son of his heavenly Father, and does his Father’s will, as we will see.

Jesus Provides the Good Wine (verses 6–10)What does Jesus do next? Verses 6–8:

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it.

Verse 6 mentions the six stone jars used for Jewish rites of purification (key detail). To fill these, the servants must draw from a well about 150 gallons of water. This is no small job. It likely took some time. Mary has said, do whatever he tells you, and the servants do it, as much work as it is. Then, once they’ve completed the job, he says, “Draw now and carry to the master of the feast.” This is like the emcee today, the guy on the mic.

What is Jesus doing with these six jars? Remember, Jesus already has in mind his “hour.” The coming hour of his death and resurrection, when he will usher in the new age, is not here yet, but in the meantime, he’s going to give this modest wedding, and these servants, and his disciples a glimpse of his coming glory. A taste of the glory.

The stone jars were used for Jewish purification rites, for various washings according to old-covenant laws and traditions. And Jesus wants the servants to fill up these six stone jars to show that the old way, the old covenant, is coming to its fulfillment. Then Jesus will do something new.

Jesus brings with him a new covenant, a new era, a new age, one dripping in sweet wine, rather than endless washings and ritual cleansings. The old was grace (huge water jars, filled to the brim); the new is grace in place of grace (1:16), the dawning age that drips with wine.

Now look at verses 9–10:

When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

Like Mary speaks even better than she knows in verse 5 (“Do whatever he tells you”), now the master of the feast speaks even better than he knows: “you have kept the good wine until now.”

The master of the feast thinks it was the bridegroom who provided the good wine, but the servants know it’s Jesus. It’s Jesus who kept the good wine till now. And it’s Jesus’s Father who in his perfect timing and plan has kept his good wine for now.

Ultimately, what the master of the feast says is true about God, and about the way he works in the world and in history, and in particular in the old covenant with Moses and now the coming new covenant in Jesus: God has kept the good wine until now.

By “now,” John means the church age — from the first coming of Christ until his second. We live now in the era of the new covenant; membership for God’s people is not by birth, but new birth; not by family, but faith; and so the new covenant rituals, baptism and the Lord’s Table, are based on faith, not family. The church is not a group of people born into Christian families; the church is a born-again people.

What about the significance of wine here? The wine of the new covenant has multiple meanings. First is the Old Testament imagery: wine is associated with joy and celebrations, feasts and weddings. God’s Messiah will come to rescue his people and bring them into joy, gladness, celebration, song.

And yet, what else does wine represent (especially in these jars of purification)? It’s red, like blood. And if you drink too much of it, it makes you stagger. Which is why a cup of wine can represent blessing or curse, depending on the context and use.

The wine of this new covenant is rich with meaning. On the one hand, it’s the joy and celebration of God’s people finally united to him and near to him, living with him in final bliss. And on the other hand, the cup also represents the curse we deserve, which Jesus drinks to the bottom as he sheds his blood for us. At the cross, Jesus drinks the cup of our sin, that we might drink his cup of joy.

(You might ask, whether this use of wine in John 2 has practical significance for us today, in whether we choose to partake, or not, in alcohol. It’s a good question, but not the main point here. Let me save that for the article in the church email this Friday.)

The point in the Old Testament prophecies and the point here is the glory of Jesus. He brings such blessing and joy and celebration, that wine, among other pointers, signifies the riches and abundance of his goodness and glory for his people.

So, Jesus is the good Son, and he provides the good wine of a new-covenant relationship with God in him. And finally . . .

Jesus Embodies the Good Groom (verse 9)Verse 9 mentions the bridegroom: “the master of the feast called the bridegroom.” This is the man whose wedding it was — and he was responsible for the feast. And when it is discovered that the wine has run out, he’s the one on the hook. This is his oversight, his failure. So, by turning the well water into wine, Jesus is getting the bridegroom off the hook, and in doing so he’s showing that he himself is a superior bridegroom.

In the next chapter, just a few hundred words away, in John 3:29, John the Baptist will talk about Jesus as the bridegroom and himself as the bridegroom’s friend. John says,

I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. 29 The one who has the bride [the people, the church] is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

(Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus portrays himself as the bridegroom in Matthew 9:15; 25:1, 5, 6, 10; Mark 2:19–20; Luke 5:34–35.)

So, what’s the bridegroom image mean, related to Jesus? He came, as the divine Son of God, to care for his people, the church, like a good husband. To save all who believe in him from their sins. And to love and lead and protect and provide for his bride, the church. To be our ever-strong, ever-providing, ever-reliable, ever-loving husband. Not just individually, but especially together as the church.

This good Son, who provides the good wine, embodies the good groom. In Jesus, God himself has taken on our flesh and blood, that he might give his flesh for us, and shed his blood for us — which brings us to the Table, and with it, the invitation I mentioned at the beginning.

Take the Next StepOkay, I’m not asking anyone to raise a hand or walk to the front, but I am asking you: Are you seeing any glory? Is this Jesus moving on your soul, in any compelling way? Is he opening your eyes? Is he stirring in your soul? If he is, I want to encourage you to welcome his work. Receive him. Embrace him. A miracle is in progress. Let it happen; don’t try to stop it.

What’s next? You could start with a very simple conversation with someone you came with, or with Jonathan or me. We’ll be here at the front after the service if you want to speak with a pastor.

And for any here who would say that you believe, but have not yet been baptized, to identify publicly with Jesus, we have a baptism on March 2.

And for the kids among us, say, ages 8-12, including teenagers too. Maybe you’ve grown up in the church, and you believe in Jesus, and it can be tough to know when to take the step to move toward baptism. We want to help with that this spring. Pastor Mike Schumann and I will be doing a two-week baptism class for kids during Sunday School on April 6 and 13. Sign up online.

For the rest, who have believed in Jesus, and been baptized in his name, we come to this Table to drink his cup of blessing. Jesus drank the cup of our curse and shed his own blood, that through faith in him, we might have the good Son as our all-supplying bridegroom.

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John 1:35-51,

35 The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Can you recall the first time that you really saw Jesus? The first time you truly began to understand who he is? The first time when all his goodness, all his glory, all his worth began to really sink in and you saw him? You saw him. And, in a moment, your entire life recentered around him?

For some in this room, that moment may have happened a long time ago. Perhaps when you were very young. For others, it may have happened fairly recently. For still others, you may not recall a specific moment, but perhaps a season, where it just steadily grew more and more apparent to you, “Jesus is King, Jesus is everything.” For some here, you may have no idea what I am talking about right now. You’ve never seen Jesus this way. Perhaps you want to. Perhaps you’re open to it.

If that’s you, be assured, you are in the right place, because this morning our text is really about two things: Seeing Jesus (in the ways just described), and sharing Jesus.

People will see Jesus, really see him.

Then, they’ll go and share Jesus with someone else.

As a result, that someone else will also see Jesus. On and on and on

It is the heartbeat of this text — Jesus seen, Jesus shared, Jesus seen, Jesus shared.

It is also the heartbeat of the church. At least, it ought to be. For if we truly are seeers of Jesus, then it only makes sense for us to be sharers of Jesus as well. Toward that end then, we’re going to trace this story of Jesus seen and Jesus shared with an eye toward two encouragements for sharing Jesus with others. So, Jesus seen, Jesus shared, and, along the way, two encouragements for sharing Jesus with others.

Let’s pray and ask God for his help…

Alright, so Jesus seen, Jesus shared. And that first one, Jesus seen, has already shown up in John.

In John 1:14, John the Apostle writes,

“And the Word [Jesus] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In John 1:32, John the Baptist says of Jesus,

“I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.”

And in verse 34, John the Baptist says again,

“I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

So Jesus has been seen. And now, beginning in verse 35, Jesus is going to be seen by more and more. Look with me at John 1:35.

Jesus Seen: Andrew and the Other Disciple“The next day again John [that is, John the Baptist] was standing with two of his disciples…”

Two of his followers. Men who, as followers of John, would’ve already been interested in spiritual matters and expecting John’s invitation to go forth as Jesus followers.

It’s no surprise then that, in verse 36, these two disciples do exactly that. Upon hearing John proclaim, “Behold the Lamb of God!” they immediately turn and go after Jesus… And just imagine the smile upon John’s face when they did! “At last, they’ve found him!”

Well, Jesus sees these two former disciples of John now following him and asks, verse 38: “What are you seeking?” “What is it that you want?” What are you following me for?

Are they in search of entertainment? Wanting to see impressive miracles and hear captivating speeches?

Are they in search comfort? Hoping Jesus will solve all their problems and make their lives easier?

Are they hoping for wealth and prosperity, and thinking Jesus is the way to get it? Are they looking for a supplement to an otherwise fairly good life?

There’s more than one reason to go after Jesus, right?

So Jesus asks,

“What are you seeking?”

Their answer, still verse 38,

“‘Rabbi’ (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’”

It is agood response. Better, in fact, than they perhaps knew. For the truth of the matter is what these two men most needed in that moment — more than they needed anything else in all the world — was to simply be near to Jesus. Their souls, whether they knew it or not, were dying for nothing less than him. And, indeed, so are ours.

Amazingly, Jesus doesn’t respond by saying, “Get away from me.” Or, “Show me your credentials.” Neither does he merely give them his address, which alone would’ve been a kindness to them. Instead, he invites them in. He invites them near. Verse 39,

“Come and you will see.”

See what?

At one level, they were going to see Jesus — a man who looked just like them. Two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes. And they were going to see him in a home — one that looked just like theirs. Small, simple, nothing to write home about.

But at a whole other level, while in that home, while listening to Jesus, they were going to see that this was no ordinary man. This, Jesus, was indeed the long-awaited Messiah. The long-awaited Christ. The promised descendant of David, who would defeat God’s enemies, build a house for God’s name, and sit upon a throne of glory forever and ever.

Hence, Andrew’s words to his brother following this event: Verse 41,

“‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ).”

That’s what Andrew saw in Jesus. And his first thought afterwards was, “I want my brother to see it too.”

Verse 40,

“One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ).”

You catch the flow of the story so far?

John the Baptist sees Jesus.
He then shares Jesus with his disciples, “Behold [it means look! See!] the Lamb of God.”
Those disciples go and see Jesus.
At least one of them, Andrew, then goes and shares Jesus with his brother.

Jesus Seen: PeterSo, verse 42, Andrew brings his brother, Simon Peter, to Jesus. And Jesus says of him, verse 42,

“‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).”

Now, in that moment, did Peter see in the face of Jesus the same Christ, the same Messiah, that his brother Andrew saw? We don’t know. The text doesn’t tells us. But what we do know, from the rest of the New Testament, is that Peter did eventually see it. In Matthew 16, Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s answer was remarkably similar to his brother’s. Matthew 16:16, “You [Jesus] are the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the living God.”

So Jesus seen, Jesus shared, Jesus seen, Jesus shared.

But one thing I want to note amidst this continued rhythm is what appears to be just the slightest degree of variance. And the variance is regarding who the particular persons are who are doing the seeing and sharing.

For example, the whole thing begins with what we might call the spiritual A-team of that time. John the Baptist sharing Jesus with his disciples. But then it moves to one of those disciples (Andrew) sharing Jesus with Peter (who, unlike his brother, is not labeled a disciple).

John the Baptist → one of his disciples → someone who was not a disciple.

Now, if we’re meant to detect that slight shift, and I believe we are, then it seems we’re also meant to detect an even greater shift in what comes next. Namely, the sharing of Jesus by someone who had not been a disciple of John, with someone who, at least initially, puts up some resistance. See it with me in verse 43.

Jesus Seen: PhilipVerse 43,

“The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip…”

Again, nothing here about Philip being a disciple of John (like Andrew), nor a sibling of a disciple of John (like Peter). Nevertheless, Jesus finds him anyways, and says,

“Follow me.”

It’s a call much like that of Andrew’s in verse 39,

“Come and you will see.”

And the effect is likewise similar. Just as Andrew, after seeing Jesus, went and shared Jesus with Peter, so Philip, having now seen Jesus, goes and finds Nathanael. Look with me at verse 45:

“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote...”

That’s basically long-hand for we have found the Messiah. The Christ. The one foretold by Moses and the prophets. But then comes a wrinkle. Still verse 45:

“‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’”

Not Wanting to See Jesus?Now, pause here for a moment. Do you know why those two disciples of John, back in verse 37, went after Jesus in the first place? I know we’re moving backward here a little, but stay with me. Do you know what it was that allowed those two disciples of John, as well as Peter, as well as Philip, to see Jesus? To have interest in Jesus? To come to the point of understanding Jesus for who he truly was?

Was it the fact that they were living in a time when people commonly thought about and talked about spiritual things? That they had grown up in a context, ancient Judaism, where people commonly anticipated the coming of the Messiah? Do you understand their spiritual interest and spiritual sight to be a direct result of them being pre-conditioned and predisposed towards it?

If you do, then you likely already put these men of John 1 into a category far different than all the unbelievers currently around you. Your co-workers, after all, don’t seem to ever think about spiritual things. Your neighbors aren’t on the lookout for a coming Messiah.

And since they’re not, then we’d certainly not expect them to, if they were to have Jesus shared with them, actually go after him the way Andrew, Philip, and Peter did, right?

Brothers and sisters, could I remind us of something this morning?

God is the one who draws the human heart, not worldviews. God is the one who woos people to himself, not cultural contexts.

To be sure, God often uses God-conscious worldviews and God-focused contexts to draw people to himself. Hence, the many people in this room who grew up in a Christian home and are now Christians themselves.

But rememberwhat God tells us in the Word about the human heart. It is a thing far too dead in sin and far too set on following the course of this world for any mere context — no matter how God-conscious, God-focused it may be — to draw them to Jesus.

Do you know why Andrew left John to go after Jesus? Do you know why Philip saw Jesus as Messiah? Do you know why you and I are worshipers of Jesus today?

It is because God worked a miracle! Had he not, not one of us — neither you, nor me, nor Andrew, nor Philip — would’ve ever gone after Jesus, at least not in a way that’d be of any spiritual profit. The truth is that in order for anyone to ever truly see Jesus, God has to work a miracle. God has to draw them in to see. And, that’s exactly the work that God has been doing for the last 2,000 years.

First TraitAnd so, the first encouragement for sharing Jesus with others: God draws people in to see. People who are far from him, who are initially disinterested in him. People who claim to be dead set against him. God draws people in to see. Because he can, and because he wants to. So, we put in our effort. We still extend the invitation. Andrew got his brother. Philip pursued Nathanael. But God is the one who ultimately draws people in to see. He did so with each one of us who are believers in this room this morning. He did it, and he can do it again. God draws people in to see.

Now, back to our wrinkle: Philip talking to Nathanael.

Jesus Seen: Nathanael (part one)Verse 45,

“We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Now look right there. Nathanael was not expecting, let alone looking for, a Messiah from the Podunk city of Nazareth. He’d not been pre-conditioned for that. His worldview couldn’t seem to put those two details together which is why he responded the way he did in verse 46,

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip does not take that as a sign he should give up. “Whoa, okay man, sorry I brought it up. I guess I’ll cross you off my list of potential converts.” No, he doesn’t do that. Instead, he just says,

“Come and see.”

And Nathanael does! Amazing.

Second TraitNow, here is a second encouragement for sharing Jesus with others.

First encouragement: God draws people in to see.

Second encouragement: Jesus is a sight worth seeing.

Here’s what I mean…

Philip did not try and lure Nathanael in with treats and trinkets and balloons, though those things in and of themselves are not bad.

Philip did not launch into a philosophical argument or verbal challenge of how Nathanael’s worldview was wrong and his own was right, though there may be a place for that.

And Philip certainly did not waiver, thinking, “Perhaps Nathanael’s right. Perhaps a Messiah from Nazareth really is a bit far-fetched. Unimpressive. Unlikely.”

Philip did not do any of those things, and you know why he didn’t? Because Philip had seen Jesus! He had seen his glory, seen his goodness, seen his power, seen his beauty. He had seen, in Jesus, the greatest thing he had ever beheld in his entire life.

Therefore, his one and only aim in that moment was to just get Nathanael in front of Jesus. Just get him to lift his eyes up to Jesus and see him too! I mean, Jesus can take it from there. His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth, is more than sufficient to captivate any unbeliever no matter how seemingly far from him. Jesus is a sight worth seeing.

Do we know this? Do we believe this? Are we convinced that if our unbelieving neighbor, our unbelieving co-worker, could just see Jesus, that that’d be enough? Brothers and sisters, Jesus is not a semi-impressive individual. He walks on water. He gives sight to the blind. He heals the paralyzed. He never lies. Never sins. Never disappoints. His love is deep beyond measure. He is God in the flesh! He is a sight worth seeing.

So, first encouragement: God draws people in to see.

Second encouragement: Jesus is a sight worth seeing.

Now, back to Nathanael.

Jesus Seen: Nathanael (part two)Philip and Nathanael go to see Jesus. Turns out, Jesus is way ahead of them. Verse 47,

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to him, ‘How do you know me?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’”

Nathanael’s jaw drops. His eyes widen. He then answers,

“‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’”

Nathanael saw Jesus.

Now note: when we see that phrase, “Son of God!”, it sounds like Nathanael is calling Jesus God — calling Jesus divine. And while Jesus is God, fully divine, it’s far more likely that what Nathanael meant by “Son of God” in this text was Jesus is Messiah. Jesus is the King of Israel, just as he says next. And the reason for that is because the Messiah, the long-awaited king-figure of the Old Testament is also called a son of God.

Psalm 2:7,

“I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”

2 Samuel 7:14, God says,

“I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.”

So it seems Nathanael, Andrew, and Philip are all essentially saying the same thing in slightly different ways in this text — Jesus is the Messiah.

And Jesus receives all the variations of that title that they give him. It’s interesting. Remember earlier when John the Baptist had rejected all his supposed titles… “Are you the Christ? No. Are you Elijah? No. Are you the Prophet? No.” Here, Jesus receives all his titles: Lamb of God, Messiah, One who Moses and the prophets wrote, Son of God, King of Israel. “Yes”, says Jesus, “I am Messiah. And now, watch as I blow the lid off your understanding of who the Messiah really is.”

Jesus Seen As GreaterVerse 50,

“Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”

Greater than the Messiah? Really?

Verse 51,

“And he said to him ‘Truly, truly, I say to you [and the “you” here is plural, so he’s referring to more than just Nathanael], you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

That’s incredible. What Jesus just did is take two major Old Testament references, smush them together, and say they’re all about him.

Let’s take that first one, “…you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending…” It’s a reference to Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28. When Jacob, in his sleep, saw a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels going up and down on it. And it’s his interpretation of the event that is truly breathtaking. Listen for the emphasis, Genesis 28:16,

“Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”

The gate. The doorway. The point of entry between earth and heaven. Jesus, taking ahold of that story, is now saying here, “I am that gate. I am that point of entry between heaven and earth. The angels are going to ascend and descend upon me.”

“And who am I? Well, I am the Son of Man.” This is a reference to Daniel 7. And I’m going to read it, and what I want you to mainly focus in on is where this scene from Daniel 7 is taking place. Daniel 7:13-14,

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days [that’s God the Father] and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Where is this vision taking place? It’s taking place in heaven. The Son of Man is King, in other words, not just of Israel, but all of heaven. And Jesus is saying “that’s me.” Jesus can be the gate between earth and heaven because he’s come from heaven down, for his people, with the invitation, “I’m going back up to reign as King, and if you receive me, then I will take you back with me to be where I am. Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, you see that I am the Messiah. You will soon see that I am a Messiah far greater than anything you ever expected.”

Welcome Others to See Him TooFriends, have you seen Jesus? Has God drawn you in to see Jesus? Has he been revealed to you through God’s Word and in God’s church? Has the sight of Jesus changed your life? Changed your eternity?

Be encouraged, share Jesus with others. Share Jesus with others.

Invite your neighbor, though he may not care two cents about Christianity, to come and read the Bible with you. Invite your co-worker, though she thinks little if ever upon spiritual matters, to listen to a sermon on the gospel. Invite your family member, though they may be dead set against all forms of organized religion, to hear what you so love about Jesus.

And invite people here. Invite them to see Jesus in the book of John. I know there aren’t often a lot of empty seats left, but look, I’ve been around this church enough to know that if you come even just 15 minutes early you’ll have plenty of seats to choose from. Invite people to see Jesus. They will not be disappointed. Jesus is a sight worth seeing, and God can draw them in to see him.

The TableNow, what brings us to the table this morning is the fact that Jesus, Messiah, King of Heaven came down to earth, ultimately, to die for the sins of the world. He shed his blood, had his body broken, so that forgiveness of sins could be made possible for those who receive him — so that forgiven people could rise with him into heaven for all eternity.

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Psalm 19,

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
8 the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
9 the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.

12 Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me!
Then I shall be blameless,
and innocent of great transgression.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

I’m calling this message, “Foundations for the Future of Cities Church.” There are more than two foundational pillars of this church. But I’m going to focus on two because Psalm 19 focuses on two. The first foundation is the glory of God. The second foundation is the word of God. And these two foundations answer the questions, “What is ultimate reality?”—the glory of God, and “What is ultimate truth?”—the word of God. And what we will see is that the glory of God and the word of God find a perfect, personal union in the Son of God Jesus Christ, our Rock and our Redeemer: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

If you’re a child listening to me right now, you might be thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of big words. I’m not sure this sermon is going to be for me.” Listen carefully as I point something out. Every child I’m aware of who has been taught along the way that there is a great God who made everything, eventually asks, “Daddy, who made God?” “Where did God come from?” Which is the same as asking, “What is ultimate reality?” This sermon is about the questions of children. The great questions are children’s questions. When a child is taught very early, “You must always tell the truth. You should never lie. Don’t ever say something is true when it’s not true.” Sooner or later a child is going to ask, “Daddy, who decides what’s true?” And that’s the same as asking, “What is ultimate truth?”

By reality I mean what is. And by ultimate reality I mean what has always been, and which defines all of reality, namely the glory of God. God never had a beginning. He has always been there. And he has always been glorious. Ultimate reality is glorious, because God is glorious – infinitely great, infinitely beautiful, infinitely valuable. Everything else, including the entire universe, and 8 billion human beings, is secondary, dependent, derivative. Ultimate reality is the glory of God.

By truth I mean reliable communication of what is, and what ought to be. And what ought to be is defined by what is, which is why God said, “You shall be holy because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Holy is what I ought to be. Why? Because ultimate reality is holy. And what ought to be is determined by what ultimately is. “You shall be holy because I am holy.”

I was led to choose Psalm 19 as the focus of this message largely because I am so burdened by the prevalence today of a kind of Christian who does not like to think in terms of ultimate reality and ultimate truth. They are allergic to those categories. They are kept at a distance and in their place are malleable, fuzzy ideas of tolerance, acceptance, love, justice, compassion, respect, openness. But as soon as you bring ultimate truth or ultimate reality to bear on any of those ideas so as to give them some measure of definition and clarity there is resistance. Truth and reality are felt to be a kind of straight jacket, limitation, constriction, restraint. Even though Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free . . . . So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:32, 36).

So the burden that I bring this morning is to say, Cities Church, if the ultimate reality of the glory of God and the ultimate truth of the word of God cease to be the cherished pillars of this church, you will cease to be a true church. And if the kind of Christian that is allergic to ultimate truth and ultimate reality and the clarity and the definition and the doctrine that flows from them gravitate into the eldership of this church, that will be the beginning of the end. I believe you have a body of elders now that get this just right. Follow them as they follow Christ. Exult joyfully in the ultimate reality of the glory of God. Exult joyfully in the ultimate truth of the word of God. And exalt personally and gladly in the perfect union of the glory of God and the word of God in the son of God our rock and our redeemer Jesus Christ. You will see in just a moment why I stress the words, “joyfully,” and “gladly.”

Now turn with me to Psalm 19. And if you think that was a long introduction, in fact it was exposition of this chapter. Everything I have just said flowed from my meditations on this chapter and I believe is explicit or implicit in Psalm 19. We have not been spinning our wheels.

Verses 1-6 is about the ultimate reality of the glory of God. Verses 7-11 is about the ultimate truth of the word of God. And verses 12-14 is David’s response climaxing in the reference to the Lord as he is Rock and his Redeemer.

What Is Ultimate Reality?The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, 5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. (Psalm 19:1–6)

What’s the point of those six verses? There is not a single word there about you or me or any human being. Those verses are entirely about God and how his glory is revealed. What is David doing? He is answering the question: what is ultimate reality? What is behind the universe? What’s the point of the stars and the moon and the sun and everything we see? And his answer is: The point of the universe is to declare that God is glorious. And to proclaim that a glorious God built this with his hands.

Sometimes you will hear a skeptic say, “If Christianity is true, why are there billions of light years of space and as far as we know trillions of uninhabitable stars many of which are millions of times bigger than the sun, while earth and its history is a tiny blue dot in the midst of this wild, vast universe of unimaginable power?” The message of the universe is not first about us. It’s about God. In fact, since David said he built this with his hands, and psalm eight says he did it with his fingers, we may conclude it was easy, and is very much like a peanut that he carries in his pocket. The point of the universe is that God is glorious.

Verses 1-2 speak of the heavens declaring and proclaiming and pouring out speech, all of which sounds as if we are supposed to hear something. But verse 3 clarifies: “There is no speech, nor are their words.” This is a wordless declaration, a speechless proclamation. Then that last phrase in verse 3 (“whose voice is not heard”) I think means something like this: The heavens have a voice, but it is not a heard voice. It’s a seen voice. Because he goes right on to say in verse 4 their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. A voice without speech, words without words. And there is no limit to this voice that we hear with our eyes—this declaration, this proclamation that we hear by seeing the work of God’s hands. You remember the way Paul picked this up in Romans 1:20, “God’s invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived . . . in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20).

Then, perhaps most amazing of all, from the end of verse 4 through verse 5 David zeros in on the sun. And what he says about the way the sun proclaims the glory of God is mind-boggling.

“In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.”

When you look at the declaration of the glory of God in the rising of the sun to its setting, what you are to see is a glory — a divine glory — that is like a bridegroom coming out of his tent and walking toward his wedding. What you are to see is a glory — a divine glory — that is like a strong runner who loves to run and therefore runs with joy. Picture Eric Liddell, Chariots of Fire, head back, arms flailing, smile on his face, feeling a joyful pleasure of God on his life.

What’s the point? I mean stop and think, this is amazing. This is mind-boggling. What else can the message be but that when you rightly see the glory of God it is an ecstatically happy glory. Happiness in God who thought this up, to make it this way. And happiness in us if we rightly see and savor the revelation of God’s glory. I remember the night of December 20, 1968, lying alone on my bed in the motel room in Barnesville, Georgia, the night before I was to marry Noël, and thinking tomorrow morning is the day I have wanted for two and a half years. And I was so happy. Still am.

If you see the glory of God as it really is, this will be part your experience—the enjoyment of the glorious overflow of God’s joy. And David is not ignorant, nor was Jesus, of the horrible suffering of this world. Jesus said that God makes the sun rise on the evil and the good. David wrote before antibiotics, before anesthesia, before any knowledge of infection, before motors, or electricity, or refrigeration, or indoor plumbing, or central heating, or air conditioning, or 911. It was a hard and brutal world. And in spite of everything, when he looked up at the rising of the sun he saw a bridegroom on his way to his wedding, and a man running with joy. That’s why I said, “Cities Church, exult joyfully in the ultimate reality of the glory of God.”

What Is Ultimate Truth?Now we turn to verses 7-11 which focus on the ultimate truth of God’s word. How are verses 7-11 with their focus on the ultimate truth of God’s word, connected to verses 1-6 with their focus on the ultimate reality of the glory of God? There is more than one right answer to that question. One answer is that verses 7-11 are written to answer the question: “What if I look at the heavens and I don’t experience the glory of God and the gladness of a bridegroom or a happy runner? Is there something wrong with my eyes? Is there something inadequate about the heavens?” And I think David’s answer to those two questions is yes. God’s revelation of himself in nature is inadequate for all that God wants us to know and experience of his glory. And yes, there is something wrong with our eyes, and looking at nature cannot fix it, but the written word of God can.

As I read these verses look for six ways the written word of God is named, nine ways the word of God is described, and seven ways the word of God affects the reader.

The law (instruction) of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

9 the fear of the Lord [viewed as the focus and aim of the word] is clean, enduring forever;

the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

He names God’s word as law (instruction), testimony (God’s witness), precepts, commandments, fear, and rules. He takes the one diamond, the word of God, Scripture, and turns it so six of it’s facets show.

Then he describes it. God’s word is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, righteous, more precious than gold, sweeter than honey. In other words: It is complete, it contains all you need as a reader or a listener in order to know God as he ought to be known. It is flawless and will never mislead you. It is precious beyond estimation, because in its completeness and flawlessness—more valuable than the most valuable thing on earth, and sweeter than the sweetest thing on earth.

And then he gives the amazing effects of this word on us. It revives (v. 7a). It gives life. You, O Lord, have the words of life. It makes the simple wise (v. 7b), keeps you from being a fool. It creates joy in the heart (v. 8a) for example, when it goes beyond sunshine, and shows the final meaning of the bridegroom and the runner. So the ultimate reality of God’s glory and the ultimate truth of God’s word are both joyful. They both are designed by God to make us glad forever. It enlightens the eyes (v. 8b)—which many of us need when we look at God’s glory in nature, because we don’t see the bridegroom exulting or the runner rejoicing. It endures forever (v.9a) and will never let you down. It keeps back from sin (v. 11a) and leads to final great reward (v. 11b).

In other words, God’s communication in his Word is fuller and more effective than God’s communication in nature. Both are good and do what they were appointed to do. But the Word is better.

I called the glory of God in verses 1-6 ultimate reality because the point of those verses was that the glory of God is why the universe exists. The glorious God was there before anything else. Everything else exists because of God to show the glory of God, and therefore the glory of God is ultimate. There is nothing before or under or over the glory of God. It is ultimate reality.

And the reason I call the word of God ultimate truth in verses 7-11 is because of the sixfold repetition: law of the Lord, testimony of the Lord, precepts of the Lord, commandment of the Lord, fear of the Lord, rules of the Lord. Nothing is repeated more often than this. The word, the Scriptures are from God and about God and for God. And God is ultimate. He speaks the truth (v. 9), and since he is God the truth he speaks is ultimate truth.

Cities Church, these are two absolutely essential foundations for your future. The glory of God as ultimate reality and the word of God as ultimate truth. Without these you will not be a true church.

But there is a paradox here. When a church embraces the glory of God and the word of God as a treasure better than gold and the sweetness better than honey two things happen: joy overflows like a bridegroom coming out of his tent, and humble brokenheartedness bounds. The more clearly you see the beauty of God’s holiness, his glory, and more deeply you are pierced by the living word of God, the happier you will be because of him, and the sadder you will be because of yourself. The more sweetly you embrace the glory of God, the more keenly you are aware of impurities in yourself. Other words at the end of verses 1-11, we need a Redeemer.

We Need a RedeemerLet’s read verses 12-14,

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. 13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. 14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The last word of the Psalm, in Hebrew and English, is “Redeemer.” Justification by faith was a reality in the Old Testament. The apostle Paul based his teaching on Abraham. That’s what David means when he says in verse 12, “Declare me innocent from hidden faults.” People who are not innocent in the presence of God’s glory need to be declared innocent. You do. I do.

But for God to be just and yet declare guilty people to be innocent there needs to be a Redeemer. A very special kind of Redeemer. So God’s word teaches us in Romans 3 that God put Jesus Christ forward as a Redeemer because God had passed over former sins like David’s, and so that he could pass over ours and declare us innocent and keep us back from the sin that leads to death.

The Old Testament sacrifices, the Old Testament priests, could not do it. The glory of God and the word of God need to be more then the voice of nature and the voice of scripture. They needed to become a redeemer—a perfect personal union of the glory of God and the word of God. And that’s who Jesus Christ is. John 1:14,

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

So there is a third foundational pillar for Cities Church. The first is that ultimate reality is the glory of God. The second is that ultimate truth is the word of God. And the third is that ultimate reality and ultimate truth came to us in Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Therefore, Cities Church, on your tenth anniversary, declare this: We will be built on and we will rejoice in the foundations of the glory of God and the word of God and the son of God as a treasure “more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

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John 1:19-34,

19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

Today we’re gonna talk a lot about John the Baptist, and I’ll admit it feels a little bit strange because John the Baptist was so much not about himself. I think that if John the Baptist were here he’d tell us to Hurry up, move on, don’t spend too much time on him — But we’re still gonna talk about him because the Bible talks about him, and here in the Gospel of John he’s not just in Chapter 1 but he also shows up in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 and Chapter 10. John the Baptist is an important person in this Gospel, so we’re gonna talk about him, but true to the wishes of John the Baptist, I’m gonna try to keep the part about him brief and I’ll end with why he matters for us as a local church in St. Paul, in the year 2025.

So for the sermon, I got two things about John the Baptist and one thing about us.

Father, thank you for your Holy Spirit and for the Holy Scriptures. And thank you that as your people we can gather together for worship. As your children, this morning we have come eager and expectant. We want to hear from you. Speak our hearts, we pray, in Jesus’s name, amen.

First thing about John the Baptist …

John the Baptist is a bridge. Remember the first time John the Baptist is mentioned is back in verse 6. Almost out of nowhere verse 6 says:

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The purpose of this mention in verse 6 is the same as the purpose of the mention in verse 15:

John the Baptist is the one who brings the news of the eternal Word into history. Remember this Gospel starts in verses 1–5 with this tremendous explanation of the Word — the Word is God, is life, is light — and this is deep and wondrous and it stretches our minds, and then John the apostle, the narrator, he interrupts this depth with verse 6 to tell us that God sent a man named John … and John came to tell us about this Word.

Verse 14 picks back up the wonder of this Word, telling us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” — and we saw this last week: this is a profound statement — this is dense theology; it’s full of Old Testament allusions — and then, Boom, again, there’s John in verse 15! Same guy from verse 6! John bore witness about this Word made flesh.

Mining the FitAnd I know that in some of our English translations verse 15 is put in a parenthesis, but it doesn’t have to be. Verse 15 actually fits nicely with what comes after it and I want y’all all to see this. So look with me. Chapter 1, verse 15 … 1:15.

Verse 15:

John bore witness about him [Jesus], and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ” 16For [or because] from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

“Grace upon grace” — now what’s that mean? Well, let’s keep reading …

Verse 17:

“For [or because] the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Track with me here, okay? Verses 15–17 are a series of explanations: Verse 17 explains verse 16 explains verse 15.

Verse 17 is a contrast between the law (which came through Moses) and grace and truth (which came through Jesus). These are two different moments in the history of redemption: The ‘law/Moses’ is a stand-in for the old covenant; and ‘grace and truth in Jesus’ is the new covenant.

And that explains that phrase “grace upon grace.” Another way to translate that little preposition “upon” is to say “in the place of.”

John is saying: From the fullness of Jesus we have all received grace in the place of grace, because the law (which was one grace) came through Moses; but grace and truth (a better grace) came through Jesus Christ.

John is saying in verse 16 that in Jesus we have received new covenant grace in the place ofold covenant grace.

And remember verse 16 is supposed to explain verse 15 about John the Baptist. But how?

Well, it’s because in the movement from old to new, John is the bridge.

A Foot on Both SidesWhen John stepped onto the scene of what became the First Century, there’s no doubt that he was an Old Testament prophet. It had been a long time since Israel had seen a prophet, but John was sent by God as a prophet to Israel with a message. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John the Baptist is this “Elijah figure” who was prophesied in the Book of Malachi — the other Gospel writers tell us that John the Baptist literally dressed like Elijah. He was an old school prophet leading a Jewish renewal movement. Even within Islam, they recognize John the Baptist as a prophet. Historically, this is a fact. Josephus, the Jewish historian, described John the Baptist as a moral-political troublemaker — which is prophet material.

So John the Baptist was this Old Testament prophet and he came at an extremely important historical juncture. It’s like John the Baptist has got one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the New. He’s got one foot in Promise and the other in Fulfillment.

Imagine it like this: Say you’re going on a hike. We’ve got some hikers in here, right?

You’re going on this hike, and it’s a long one — there’s a lot of ground to cover. It starts with a nice garden, but then there’s a big river (or two) to cross, there’s a high mountain, there’s a desert, at times it gets really dark and quiet, and kinda spooky. There are some signs along the way pointing you forward, but this terrain goes on and on (for 39 books).

But then you come to the edge of this thing, and there’s like a ditch between you and the other side. And you look over at the other side and it’s full of color, and they’re having a party over there — it’s a 27-book long party!

But you’re not exactly sure how to get from where you are to there. And that’s when “There’s a man sent from God whose name was John” — he’s standing where you are but then he’s able to reach one foot over to the other side and he says, “Come on!” He becomes a bridge.

John the Baptist is the biblical bridge from the old to the new. That’s what he is: a bridge. That’s John the Baptist as a category. The second thing to know is that …

John the Baptist is a voice.Verse 19 brings this all down to the ground even more. This marks the beginning of the official testimony of John the Baptist, and it starts with questions. John the Baptist was making a splash; he was gaining a following within the Jewish world, and the Jewish leaders wanted to know what’s going on, so they send a delegation of men to look into it (we learn in verse 24 that it’s the Pharisees who sent this delegation), and that’s important because the Pharisees were a sect of Jews who were looking for the Messiah. They were devoted to the Hebrew Bible and they knew it said a Messiah would come, so they have that anticipation, and it’s reflected in the questions these men ask John.

They ask five questions and he responds to each one. That’s verses 19–23, but I want to situate these verses within the whole of Chapter 1. Altogether, in Chapter 1, the identity of John the Baptist is referred to eight times (either by himself or by John the apostle). Seven of the eight mentions of John the Baptist are either negative or a deflection. The overwhelming majority of the times John the Baptist is talked about it’s either about who he’s not or it’s about how great Jesus is — He ranks before me! I’m not worthy to untie his shoe! The only time we actually see a positive statement about John’s identity is verse 23. Y’all look at verse 23.

Just a VoiceThe delegation that’s asking him questions basically gives up. In verse 22 they say, Okay, look, you keep telling us who you’re not, but we gotta tell our leaders who you are. What do you say about yourself? (What a question! We’re gonna come back to that!)

But look what John the Baptist says, verse 23:

23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

John the Baptist tells us that he’s getting this from Isaiah, and we can turn back to Isaiah 40, verse 3, and we can read where Isaiah says this. Isaiah 40, verse 3,

3 A voice cries:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

John the Baptist is saying: That’s me. I am the voice.

Y’all know that singing competition show called The Voice? …

It really has nothing to do with this. Except that, as I understand it, when that show started, the difference between that singing competition and all the others was that the judges could not see the contestants, they could only hear them. The genius was that they were de-emphasizing physical appearance, and focusing completely on the sound of the voice. So it’s called “The Voice” as in just the voice.

And that’s what John means here — except that he’s de-emphasizing his person entirely! He’s solely focused on what he has to say. The voice is defined by its witness to the word. The Word is what he wants you to hear!

So hear him — The Word, Jesus Christ, he is before me! John says …

He’s higher than me! I’m not even worthy to touch his feet! He is that great. Behold, he’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! He’s gonna baptize with the Holy Spirit.

John is saying that Jesus is bringing the kingdom of God — the promised end-time kingdom, where the Spirit is poured out, where God judges and saves — Jesus is bringing that here. So you better get ready! All of y’all better get ready!

Preparing the WayThat’s what Isaiah was talking about when he said a voice cries “prepare the way of the Lord.”

He doesn’t mean prepare the way for the Lord as in Jesus’s way to us needs to be prepared. Isaiah is taking about our way to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t need any help. We’re the ones who need the help.

In the context of Isaiah 40, Isaiah is prophesying about the end of Israel’s exile. He’s saying the road from exile to restoration should be made straight. Clear the way. Level the ground. Make the pathway from a dark exile to a restored Zion CLEAR — he’s not talking about how the Messiah gets to us, but it’s about how we get to the Messiah.

That was the mission of John the Baptist. He was a voice — just a voice — sent for our sake.

He’s a bridge and he’s a voice — two things about John the Baptist.

Now one final thing about us.

We should be like John the Baptist.Within all of redemptive history, John the Baptist is the model witness to Jesus Christ. He’s the paragon that every witness to Jesus thereafter is supposed to look to. That’s why he matters to us as a local church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2025.

We want to have a voice like his, and there are two things especially that standout. These are two things from the example of John the Baptist that I pray would be true of us.

We should clear the way for people to get to Jesus. And I’m thinking first corporately: Cities Church — are we clearing the way for people to meet Jesus or are we getting in the way?

That’s a question worth asking. Jesus is the cause of our existence. We are here by him and for him, and he’s everything to us. And we want more of him. We want more of him for ourselves and we want these cities to have more of him through us. Corporately, we want Jesus to take our utmost — all that we’ve got, all we can give — we want him to take our utmost for his highest.We’re a church committed to his fame. We want him to be impossible to ignore in the cities. We want people to know Jesus. Amen?

So are we doing that? Are we helping people know Jesus? What about people who currently don’t know him? Does our being a church make any difference for the people in these Twin Cities who don’t know Jesus?

That’s a question for our church corporately, but what about you as an individual Christian? Does your life — does the way you live, the way you work, the way you interact with neighbors and others — does your life forge a path for people to get to Jesus or does it put obstacles in the way?

Hey, let’s be like John the Baptist!

Let’s make straight — in this 21st century post-Christian land — let’s make straight a highway to our God!

Every valley lifted up,

every mountain and hill made low,

uneven ground made level,

rough places made plain — let us resolve, altogether and as individuals, to do everything we can to clear the way to Jesus, not be in the way.

We should remember it’s Jesus people must get to, not us. I’ll say it like this: we want to clear the way for people to get to Jesus while also remembering that we’re not Jesus.

This gets back to that amazing question in verse 22. They asked John the Baptist: “What do you say about yourself?”

This is the question: how do you understand who you are? Everybody has some kind of self-understanding, so what is ours as a church? What do we think of ourselves as a church and what would we say about ourselves if asked?

Well look, the first thing John the Baptist says when he’s asked this question is “I am not the Christ.” Don’t rush past that. This is really important. It is absolutely essential to know that in the work of being a witness it is not yourself you are pointing to.

You need to know that right from the start. If you’re planting a church, you need to know that. And I can’t think of a better time to remember this than on our 10th birthday, which is today (we’re gonna celebrate next Sunday, but it was this Sunday, ten years ago, when we first gathered to worship as a church). We’ve been doing this ten years. Ten years. And ten years is a milestone, because now we’re way past imposter syndrome. We feel pretty legit, and maybe we stand a little straighter now. Maybe we can start to think, Hmm, look at us. Maybe we feel a little increase in our self-understanding.

STOP IT. Don’t go there. Remember who we are and why we’re here. It’s not for ourselves. The goal is not our comfort. It’s not that people would know us. Hey, we are all about Jesus. Who the Twin Cities need is Jesus Christ, not Cities Church. Jesus must increase, we must decrease.

We show him. We point to him. We clear the way for people to get to Jesus.

Clearing the WayAnd I want to end like that: if you’re a guest with us this morning, or if you’re here and you don’t know Jesus, I want to tell you about him.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to this world as man to reveal and redeem. He came to show us what God is like, and he came to reconcile us back into a relationship with God. The short way of saying it is that Jesus came to save sinners, which is all of us.

We were condemned because of our sin, but Jesus went to the cross in our place: took our sin upon himself, he suffered the punishment we deserved. He was crucified, dead, and buried, and then on the third day he rose from the grave in victory. Jesus defeated sin and death, and now in Jesus forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. If you turn away from trying to be your own savior, and if you put your faith in Jesus, he will set you free. He will make you alive. You will become a son or daughter of God — not because you’ve earned it, but because of what Jesus has done. So trust him. I’m trying to clear the way right now. If you’ve never put your faith in Jesus, put your faith in him now. Say to him:

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m done trying.

You died and rose to save me,

and I trust in you.

Put your faith in Jesus.

And if you have, if you are a Christian, we now come to this Table to remember what he did.

The TableAt the Lord’s Table, the bread represents the broken body of Jesus, and the cup represents his blood. Together, this is a symbol of his sacrificial death for us. So when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are saying This is our hope.

We have been united to Jesus by faith, and we eat and drink to give him thanks. So if you are a Christian this morning, if you have put your faith in Jesus, we invite you with us to this table.

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John 1:14-18,

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

“The Word became flesh” —

the Word that was in the beginning,

the Word that was with God,

the Word that was God,

the Word through whom all things were made —

that Word became flesh.

God became a man.

Eternal God in skin and bones. And he dwelt among us. Which means he was here, on this earth, rubbing shoulders with people like you and me, and John says, “we have seen his glory.”

John is talking about himself and his friends. He’s talking about the historical eye-witnesses of Jesus — these are the people who literally saw Jesus when he was here — They saw his nose; they saw his teeth when he smiled; they heard his voice; they touched his body — John and his friends, people like us — they saw Jesus in person.

But John doesn’t just say here that they saw Jesus, he says they saw his glory. Now the word “glory” is one we use a lot, and remember the glory of something is its weight and wonder. It’s the beauty or the radiance of a thing. And John says he saw that of Jesus. John saw the glory of Jesus.

That’s why he is writing this book! We’re reading the account of someone who saw the glory of Jesus — and so the question is: Do you wanna see it?

Does anybody here want to see the glory of Jesus?

Because that’s what John is gonna show us ... he wants to show us what he saw.

And I’ll be straight with you, if you read the words in verse 14 — “we have seen his glory” — and they mean nothing to you,that’s a problem … You either care (or come to care) about his glory or the Gospel of John (and Christianity as a whole) will make no sense to you. So I think this is something we gotta talk about. The plan today is pretty simple: God willing, I just want to answer two questions:

What do you most need to see?
How do you see it?

Father, by your Spirit, we pray: speak to us your Son, amen.

What do you most need to see?Well, what do you think the answer is? When it comes to your life right now, what do you think you most need to see?

There’s no doubt that when John writes verse 14, he’s thinking about a story from the Old Testament. Any of the first readers who knew the Hebrew Bible, would have made the connection right away — and we can make the connection too. Because that word there for “dwelt” is actually the word used for “tabernacle” in the Greek Old Testament. John is saying literally that the Word, God, became a man, and “tabernacled” among us. He “set up his tent” among us.

This by itself reminds us of the Book of Exodus, where we read that in the Old Covenant the tabernacle was the place where God’s presence dwelt with his people. But then there’s more — The word “glory” in verse 14 — that John “saw his glory” — that also alludes back to the same time in the Book of Exodus, and it reminds us of Moses’s prayer in Exodus 33. This is one of the most important moments in the whole Old Testament — we gotta turn back there. Everyone, if you can, go to Exodus Chapter 33. Hold your spot in John 1, go back to Exodus 33.

The Exodus 33 ConversationFor context, the chapter right before 33, Exodus 32, is one of the lowest moments in Israel’s history. While Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving the law, the people were rebelling against God and worshiping a golden calf. And God told Moses about it while he was on the mountain, and God said he’s done. The people are stiff-necked — they’re hard-hearted — and God says: I’m just going to wipe them all out and make a great nation out of you, Moses.

But Moses intercedes for the people. He goes back and forth with God, begging God not to destroy the people. And God relents. God sends judgment but he doesn’t wipe ‘em all out, and he tells Moses and the people to leave Sinai and go to the Promised Land — but here’s the thing:God says I’m not going with you. You’re such a sinful people that if I were near you, I’d consume you.

And Exodus 33:4 says this was a “disastrous word.”

The people are sinful, but they’re not completely stupid — they know that without God being with them they’re cooked, so they mourn. And Moses goes back to talk with God. And you can read this whole dialogue in Exodus 33, verses 12–23, and we are supposed to read it like a dialogue. Moses talked with God like a man talks with his friend (verse 11). So we’re supposed to hear this as a conversation:

Moses says,

God, I’m in a mess. You’ve told me to lead these people but you’ve not told me who’s gonna help me. You just said you’re not coming with me. But you’ve also said that you know me and I have favor with you. So, I’m stuck here. Help me.

And God says: Okay, Moses, my presence will go with you.

And Moses says: That’s the only way I can go! You going with us is what makes all the difference.

God says: I’ll be there, because you have found favor with me and I do know you.

Then Moses says, “Please show me your glory.”

And I want everybody to see this. Look at Chapter 33, verse 18,

“Please show me your glory.”

Just five words in English.

The Crisis We’re InBut I want you to see that this simple prayer has a profound context — and the context is not comfort but chaos. Moses is not having a great day and then he wants a little glory like it’s a cherry on top. This is not a Bible-verse-on-a-coffee-mug kind of moment. But Moses wants to see God’s glory like his life depends on it — and not just his life, but the life of an entire nation depends on it; and it’s not even just about the nation, but this is about God’s reputation in the world. Moses is desperate here. He’s in an absolute crisis. That’s why he prays the way he does.

So get this: how you understand your condition will determine what you think you most need.

That makes sense, right? Your assessment of ‘how you’re doing’ will shape what you think you most need to see.

And this is where too often it goes sideways for us, because too often we get this assessment wrong.

I was at the gym the other day, and like most gyms, there’s TVs mounted up on the wall — four of them in a row. There’s a bunch of treadmills in front of them, I guess in case people wanna watch TV while they’re walking. And on these TVs, in this moment I was looking …

The first screen was a daytime talkshow with some has-been celebrity
The second screen was a news story about how they’re now saying coffee is good for you
The third screen was a news story about how outdoor activities extend your biological clock
The fourth screen was a pharmaceutical commercial — which are all the same, somebody riding a bicycle and smiling …

And everybody, like hamsters, walking and watching, and what’s the message there?

Well, what’s being sold there is going to conform to what most people consider to be their biggest need — and in a word, it’s improvement.

That’s how a lot of people understand their condition: “I need to improve.” So we look to the influencers and we listen to hours of podcasts and we keep buying the stuff — just to make ourselves a little bit better, to make things a little bit easier, to make our lives a little bit more comfortable.

And look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve, but what if I told you our condition is a lot worse than the need for improvement? What if I told you that we’re actually in a crisis, all of us — and it’s a crisis not unlike the one Moses was in.

We Need GodSee, Moses knew that without God, it’s over. Over! Moses cannot do life without God … and we can’t either. We can’t.

Now we live in a world that sells us the lie everyday, on every screen, that we can! We’re told to think that everything we need can be found here — from ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. But that’s not true. We need God. You need God.

And the crisis is: Where is he?

You ever felt that crisis before?

You need someone whom you have never seen, someone you cannot find. The evidences of God are all around us, but he’s invisible. How do you know that when you pray you’re not just talking to air? Because sometimes it can feel like you’re talking to air. This is one of the reasons we have a world full of fillers, substitutes, idols. “We don’t know where he is.”

Moses knew he needed God (he knew God is real) — but he still needed the assurance from God that God would meet his need for him.

Moses is saying: I need you! How do I know I have you?

That’s why he prayed: Please show me your glory.

Show me your weight and wonder. I need to see who you are. I need to see your glory.

That is what we most need to see too. Whatever it is you’ve got going on — whatever pain you’re walking in, whatever uncertainty you’re navigating, whatever oblivion you’re scrolling through — what you think you most need to see might be wrong. Because what we all most need to see is the glory of God. We need God, and we need to know what he is like.

That’s the answer to question 1, What do we most need to see? Question 2 …

How do we see it?“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Look at those words at the end of verse 14: “full of grace and truth.” Grace and truth.

This again sends us back to Exodus 33, to see how God answered Moses’s prayer.

After Moses says, Please show me your glory, God says, Exodus 33:19,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ …

So Moses is about to see God, except God tells him: You can’t see my face. It’s too radiant. But go here, in the cleft of the rock, in this little ditch I have for you, and wait for me there. I’ll pass by and let you see a little bit.

So Moses does that. And Exodus 33:5 says,

5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

This is God telling Moses his glory. Verse 6:

6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” …

And those words “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” could be translated “full of grace and truth.”

Moses, that’s my glory, God says. I’m kind and merciful, and I always do what I say. I’m faithful. I am the God full of grace and truth. I’m telling you who I am …

That’s in the old covenant. But then, in the new covenant, when the Word became flesh — God himself in skin and bones, God the Son sent from God the Father — then God was showing us his glory. John saw it. He saw the glory of Jesus, full of grace and truth.

Look at Jesus ChristAll of the steadfast love of God, all of his faithfulness, all of his mercy and righteousness, his grace and truth — who God is for us— was manifest in Jesus. Verse 18 tells us that the God who cannot be seen was seen in Jesus. Jesus has made God known.

Look, you need God, but where is he?

You need to see his glory. You need to know what he is like, but how?

How do you see the glory of God?

You need God—where can he be?

You need his glory for eyes to see.

You long to know what he is like:

simply look at Jesus Christ.

All of who God is for us is made known in Jesus, and all of who Jesus is makes God known.

To see Jesus is to see God. And John has seen him. He wants to show us. So we’re for this. Our greatest need is met in Jesus.

Is He Really?My favorite theological book on the incarnation is by a Scottish theologian named T. F. Torrance. Torrance served as a chaplain for the British army in World War II (Alister McGrath, his biographer, tells this story; Glen Scrivener does too). Torrance had a powerful experience on the battlefield that changed his life.

Torrance had received great theological training, his doctrinal ducks were in a row, and for most of his time as a chaplain, he could keep studying. He brought books with him everywhere he went. But there was one incident, October 17, 1944 — Torrance wrote about … His battalion was in Italy, and the Nazi army had strong defenses in this one city in the mountains, so the Allied Forces decided to launch a night attack.

Torrance, as a chaplain, had to carry a stretcher to go and find the wounded, and he was under fire most of the night, and then at dawn, just as the sun started to rise, he came across a young man, 19 years old, who had been shot during the night and was bleeding out. Torrance knew he was minutes away from death. He recounts this moment. He writes:

As I knelt down and bent over him, he [looked at me and] said: “Padre, is God really like Jesus Christ?”

Isn’t that an amazing question? The dying solider understood the crisis. He knew what he most needed to see. Is God really like Jesus?

And Torrance said,

“The only God there is, is the God who has come to us in Jesus. He has shown his face to us and poured out his love for us as our Savior.”

Do you believe that this morning?

Christian, do you know that’s true?

Maybe you would say, Yeah, I know that. I’ve looked to Jesus. I’m saved. But now I’ve got other things. I’ve got bills … broken relationships … besetting sins — boredom.

But see, this is where I want to say: looking to Jesus is not a one-time thing. We don’t just look to Jesus once and then its crisis averted. But we look and keep looking, because the real crisis behind every trial we walk through for the rest of our lives is to know and remember what God is like. That’s the question you’re asking in your pain, your confusion, your apathy — “God, what are you really like?”

Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus.

This is why we want to be a church that remembers the realness of Jesus in all of life.

My prayer this year is that we see Jesus afresh through the Gospel of John. I want us to refocus everything about our lives on him — I want us to see him and know him and love him more than anything else.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableOne of the things that will be clear in the Gospel of John is where we see the glory of Jesus most vividly. If Jesus makes known the grace and truth of God, is there a highest point of that revelation? Yes, it’s the cross.

We see the glory of Jesus clearest when he is glorified, and Jesus being glorified in the Gospel of John is when he was lifted up on the cross. The glory of God made known in Jesus Christ is seen supremely in his death and resurrection — a God who stoops and serves and suffers for those he loves. Bleeding, arms stretched wide in sacrifice for us — that is our God. And that’s what we remember at this Table.

The bread and cup represent the broken body and shed blood of Jesus, and so today, when we hold the bread and cup, think Glory! This is what God is like. This is what grace and truth means.

And that’s why this Table is just for Christians. If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, I’m glad you’re with us, and I’d love to talk with you and I would not embarrass you for anything in the world. I know what it’s like to be where you are, so after the service, I’m gonna stand right here and just be available. Come talk to me.

Now, if you trust in Jesus, if you’ve seen his glory and you believe in him, let’s eat and drink together.

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John 1:1-13,

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

The first Sunday of a new year is a good time for a new series — and to give spiritual focus to a new year. New years are like new beginnings. The old is gone. It’s over. You can’t change it. Now the new has come. All of 2025 lies ahead. What might this new year bring? And who might we be together as a church in 2025?

I’m not sure we could find a better new-year’s passage than these opening verses of John, because what they mainly do is celebrate Jesus. That’s how we will start 2025 as a church: making much of Jesus, considering him, enjoying him, marveling at him — which is how John opens his Gospel.

Three Excellencies of JesusThe apostle John, who will five times call himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (13:23; 19:26; 20:2, 7, 20), knew Jesus as closely as anyone during his earthly life. And as his dearest friend and companion, he begins his Gospel in awe, in a spirit of worship. Perhaps you felt the dramatic flair as you heard these verses read.

John begins like a show that opens with fog on the stage. He talks about a particular person, but uses images, and doesn’t reveal this person’s name until verse 17. This person is the Word, he says, capital W. The Word of God who is with God and is God.

And he is the true Light. Other lights are secondary at best, and he eclipses them when he shines in his full strength.

And this world was made through him, John says, and he came into the world he made, and the world did not know him.

Who is this person? We’ll see next week in verse 14 that he became flesh, human, and dwelled among us. Then finally comes verse 17: the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through . . . Jesus Christ.

So, John begins in this dramatic, worshipful spirit with elevated and “rhythmical prose.” These opening verses are not poetry, but they are stylized, carefully chosen words with short, punchy sentences and striking repetition of key words:

Verses 1–3: beginning, word, word, God, God, word, beginning, God, made, made, made.

Verses 4–5: life, life, light, light, darkness, darkness.

Verses 7–8: witness, witness, light, light, witness, light.

There is fog and rays of light as John introduces and anticipates the key themes that are to come. And as John worships in these opening verses, he celebrates three particular excellencies of Jesus Christ.

So, here’s our plan: let’s celebrate with John these three excellencies of Jesus as we begin 2025.

Jesus Is God’s Word to the World (verses 1–3)That is, he is the divine Word. This is the lead image in these verses; John starts with Word and comes back to Word in verse 14. Until he names him as Jesus Christ in verse 17, he is the Word.

Why Word? John could have started, with his dramatic flair, in so many ways. Why start with Word? Why not Son, S-O-N? Why not sun, S-U-N? Why not Christ or King or Lord?

John writes in Greek. And the word for word in Greek (logos) has a certain intrigue. It often was invested with philosophical significance. Logos was provocative, yet at the same time, its connotations were not too fixed and singular. It was flexible enough for Christian use.

But more than that was the Hebrew background. The Old Testament is chalk full of the divine Word: God’s word to his prophets, and God’s speaking through them to his people. And John starts with “In the beginning,” which brings to mind Genesis 1, where the Bible begins with “In the beginning...”

And you know what (or who) is the sleeper in Genesis 1? The Word of God. Eleven times Genesis 1 says, “God said”; four more times, “God called”; two more times, “God blessed.” If you ask, How did God create the world? What did he do to create? How did he act in Genesis 1? The clear answer is he spoke. He said. He called. He blessed. He made the world through his Word (as Hebrews 11:3 says, “the universe was created by the word of God”).

But more than even that, as we’ll see in this Gospel, Word anticipates the fullness of Christ, in his coming, as God’s final, decisive Word. Jesus is not just a revelation of God, and even a very special revelation of God. He is the climactic and decisive revelation of God to humanity.

As verse 18 will say, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

And Jesus will say to Philip in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is God’s Word to humanity.

All God’s lowercase words are preparing the way and pointing to his uppercase Word, Jesus. God’s singular word, for all time, for all humanity, is Jesus.

So, John begins his Gospel in verses 1–3:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Here John bundles together two essential truths about this divine Word. One, the speaking, self-reveling, self-disclosing of God almighty — is God himself: “the Word was God.” And this divine Word is not just God’s own self, but two, he is God’s eternal fellow. He was “with God” — which is not an adversarial with but a with of peace, love, mutual joy, shared life. It’s a with of intimacy, companionship, personal relationship — a with-ness of persons before creation.

The divine Word is God and with God. One divine essence, as the church would learn to say, and (here) two divine persons, as we’ll soon see in this Gospel — Father and Son. (And soon enough a third divine Person will emerge!)

What do we mean, then, when we celebrate Jesus as the Word of God? As God, he is fully divine, fully God, God himself. And as God’s Word, he reveals God, perfectly. He proceeds from God to reveal God. He makes God known to us. Jesus shows us God and tells us about God. He is God himself and the climactic and final place that we look to, and listen to, that we might know God. He is the divine Word who became human: Jesus Christ.

Tangible Word in 2025So, how might we make it tangible here at the outset of a new year? What difference might it make in 2025 that Jesus is the divine Word, God’s word to us?

Well, for one, know this about yourself, and learn to live in light of it: you were made to receive a Word from God. Or, say it this way, God made you to hear his revelation and respond to him.

One of the strangest things about you, next to your nose, is those holes in the side of your heads. Have you ever thought about that? You have holes, God-designed holes, on either side of your head. And you know what those holes are made for? Words. Not just sounds and noises. Mainly words. The height of human hearing is receiving words.

God made us to hear the words of our fellow humans, and he made us to hear him through his word, whether read or heard from someone reading aloud or heard through preaching. God made our souls, our inner person, to feed and live by hearing words through our ears. Like Jesus said, battling Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, and quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Try this for 2025: What if you attempted to have God’s Voice, through his Word, be the first voice you heard in the morning? Not the word of texts and emails and notifications. Not the anxious voice of national news. Not the endless scores and numbers of ESPN and fantasy football. Not the broken English your aunt posts to Facebook, or the clips from your niece on TikTok.

What if day after day, the first voice you heard was God’s through his Word, Jesus, through his word, the Bible? How might your soul live, really live, if you started the day hearing God himself, feeding on God himself, in Jesus, rather than on the gravel of news and other noise?

Jesus Is Our True Light (verses 5–9)Divine Word is the main term, but true light is the dominant image (light appears seven times in verses 4–10).

In the rest of the Gospel, we’ll see light is about salvation from our sin and the death sin deserves. But here, right after verses 1–3, light is first about creation. The Word shines in his world and makes sense of the world like no other light. Verses 4–9:

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

Three quick clarifications. First, look at the word “overcome” in verse 5. Other translations have “comprehend.” A good word that’s a close equivalent in English is “grasp” (another is the verb “master”). You can grasp someone physically and overcome them; you can also grasp something mentally and understand it. I think that’s what John means here: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” This anticipates the rejection theme we’ll see again in a few moments, and throughout this Gospel.

Second, see the word “true” in verse 9. We will see this over and over. When John says “true,” he doesn’t just distinguish true from false, but the real and genuine from rival claims — true bread, true worshipers, true drink, true vine. Sometimes, he means ultimate. The light that came before was true (in nature and in the Old Testament), but now the true light has come, the ultimate light. It’s a contrast with what came earlier and anticipated what was to come, and has now come, in Jesus.

Creation itself and all the more the Old Testament and Israel and its temple and regulations gave light. But now the true light has come, the definitive light, the climactic light, the ultimate light.

Which leads, third, to that phrase “gives light to everyone.” What does John mean that Jesus, “the true light . . . gives light to everyone”? Or better, how does he shine on all humans?

His shining on all humans does not mean he saves them all, or even that all humans hear the name and full story of Jesus. They will not hear his name and the truth about him if Christians don’t send and go and tell. What “shine on all humans” does mean is that Jesus divides humanity. His light divides the world. We’ll see this in verses 10–13. Before the light comes, all are in the darkness of sin and death:

John 3:19,

“…this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”

John 12:46,

“I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”

Because of sin, our world is in darkness. The divine light shines enough to condemn through creation. And the divine light shines through the law and prophets and God’s first-covenant people. Then in Jesus comes the true light, and for two thousand years, he has been the decisive issue in the world. What you do with Jesus, how you respond when the true light shines on you, either leads to life, or keeps you in the grip of death.

Which brings to mind a famous statement by C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

Jesus, the true light, is the one person who makes sense of the world. Or, Christianity is the faith that makes the most sense of the world in which we live. Its account of the world’s goodness in the doctrine of creation. Its account of the world’s pervasive darkness in the doctrine of sin. And its account of hope and redemption in the coming of the Divine Word, the true light, to secure for us real life. Which leads to the third image, and the one that meets us most deeply where we are as humans, as we’ll see in verse 12.

Jesus Gives Us Real Life (verse 4)The Gospel of John has much to say about life: God’s life, human life, spiritual life, abundant life, and the most frequent mention, eternal life. For now, we’ll just touch on this theme, and then we’ll enjoy it scene by scene in the coming months.

Just as the backdrop or contrast for light is darkness, so the contrast for life is death, or perishing (10:28), wrath (3:36), and judgment (5:29). Life begins with God. Jesus, like his Father, has life in himself (5:26). He creates and gives life, and he is able to give spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead because of sin. Jesus is “the bread of life” (6:48), “the resurrection and the life” (11:25), “the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6).

In verse 4, Jesus, as God, is the source of all created life: “In him was life.” As God, he breathes life into all who live. But they are born into sin, and walk in darkness, under divine wrath and the just sentence of death, destined to perish forever. But Jesus lays down his own life to give life to his people (John 10:11, 15, 17; 15:13).

This life is eternal, indestructible life, and it begins now, in the heart, in this earthly life (4:14 and 6:27, 33, 35; 6:63; 8:12; 10:10). We drink and eat now, by faith, and have divine life already in our souls by the Holy Spirit. And this spiritual life now leads to eternal life, which is the most important meaning of life. (Life eternal is already in those who believe: 5:24, 39-40; 6:53-54)

And what is the essence of this eternal life? John 17:3: “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Death and Life in Verses 10–13How, then, does the life that is in Jesus relate to verses 10–13? Remember we said that Jesus, the true light, divides humanity. All are born into darkness. The light shines, and some come to the light; others turn from the light. Verses 10–11:

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him [the rejection theme we saw in verse 5]. 11He came to his own [that is, his own land or home], and his own people did not receive him.

The point here is life. Those who reject him, who is the life, do not have life — life in their souls now, and eternal life in the age to come.

But then, verse 12:

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right [“authority”] to become children of God, 13who were born [birth! That’s life!], not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

There are two key elements here in having this life that is in Jesus. First is the legal, the “right.”

What does John mean by “the right” to be children of God? This is right, not might. It’s not power; it’s authority. Official, formal, objective arrangements have been made such that there is a new covenant people, new covenant children, who are not based on ethnicity but faith. Not on first birth, but on new birth.

When the Divine Word himself came, when the true light arrived, he brought with him a new formal arrangement for the people of God. Their right to be God’s children, heirs of all his promises, and recipients of all privileges comes not through natural, human birth. John says: “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man.” How, then, does it come?

That’s the second element: the subjective. The heart. The inner person. You are not born into his new-covenant people, but born again into his people. We call this “new birth.” What is it?

God himself is the source of this new life in the soul. It is birth “from above,” birth by his choice, spiritual birth in his timing. Our action and choice is not determinative but God’s. But we experience it.

The cry of this new life, then, is believing in Jesus — not just faith (noun) but believing (verb). It’s active, not static. John emphasizes this in his Gospel by never using the noun for “faith” (pistis), while using the verb “believe” (pisteuō) 98 times.

Which leads us to John’s stated purpose for why he wrote this Gospel, 20:31:

“…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

That would be worth memorizing and praying regularly for yourself and others in 2025: John 20:31: Father, help me to believe and keep believing that Jesus is the Christ [long-promised human hero-king], the Son of God [both rightful king of Israel and eternal second person of the Godhead], and that by believing I may have life in his name.”

If you’re with us this morning, and you do not yet believe, this Gospel was written that you might (for the first time) believe and experience real life in your soul, and one day, eternal life.

And if you believe in Jesus already, as perhaps most of us do in this room, this Gospel was written that you might keep believing, and grow stronger in believing, and deepen and enrich your experience even now of the real life in Jesus.

The essence of this new life is not the external, outward circumstances of our lives that we’re so prone to focus on. The essence is in us, the inner person, the heart, the desires.

And so we end with the word “receive” in verse 12: “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Receive Jesus with JoyWhat does it mean to “receive” Jesus? To receive him is to believe in him, but in what way? How do you receive him?

You can receive something you don’t like. You can receive a blow to the face. You can receive a pink slip. You can receive a traffic ticket. That’s not the kind of receiving we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about receiving as a burden, or receiving with apathy. Jesus means to be received as a treasure.

What’s so amazing about this new birth, from God, is that he gives us a new heart. He puts in us new desires, so that when the divine Word comes to our ears, when the true light comes to our eyes, God’s own life in us doesn’t recoil from Jesus, or ignore Jesus, but receives him with joy. I believe in him. I enjoy him. I prize him. I treasure him.

This heart is the heart of my prayer for us as a church in 2025: that we would receive him with increasing delight. Week after week, in the Gospel of John, glad reception. Give me more of Jesus. No apathy. No boredom. No burden. But eagerness. Joy.

Our question for a new year is this: Where are you going for life? Where are you going for joy? Where are you trying to satisfy the deepest longings of your soul?

Are you trying to drink it? Eat it? Watch it? Play it? Perform it? Accomplish it? Scroll it?

I sat down next to a guy on a plane a couple months ago, just scrolling vigorously. Like he wanted life. He wanted joy. Like his soul was thirsty and he was trying to find something to satisfy. And he kept scrolling and scrolling, and I thought there’s no way he can do this for more than a few minutes. And he scrolled like that, seeming so thirsty, for the whole flight from Atlanta to Springfield, Missouri.

Are you like that, in front of a screen, at your job, in your eating and drinking, in your relationships, in your exercise, your automobile, your home decor — just vigorously clawing to find satisfaction there?

What would it mean for you to “have life” in Jesus in 2025? Really have life? What needs to go? Or diminish? And what do you need to receive with joy more often and more deeply?

Church Alive in ’25And so we come to the Table to feed on Jesus for spiritual life, and drink in his grace, for life in our souls.

Cities Church, let’s seek to be fully alive in 2025 — alive in Jesus, and alive to Jesus.

If you have new-year’s resolutions, fine and good. Eat better. Exercise. Fine. Good secondary resolutions. But what are they serving? What’s the focus? What if the focus were this: real life in your soul — Holy Spirit given and sustained affections for Jesus?

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Numbers 36:10-13,

“The daughters of Zelophehad did as the Lord commanded Moses, 11 for Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married to sons of their father’s brothers. 12 They were married into the clans of the people of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of their father’s clan.

13 These are the commandments and the rules that the Lord commanded through Moses to the people of Israel in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.”

On this Christmas Sunday, by God’s grace, we come to the end of our series though the Book of Numbers. We’re gonna be looking at Chapters 33–36, but we’re going to focus especially on Chapter 36 and the daughters of Zelophehad. As we just heard, the story of these five daughters concludes the Book of Numbers and for good reason. There are at least three lessons that we should learn from them and that’s what I want to show you this morning.

The first lesson is …

There is a lesson to be learned.So let’s zoom out for a minute and remember what the Book of Numbers is all about. It’s the story of two generations of Israelites.

There is the first generation that God rescued from Egypt but they failed to enter the Promised Land because of their unbelief. (They all died in the wilderness.) Then there is the second generation that emerges in Chapter 26 and they do inherit the Promised Land because they believe.

The first generation was faithless — they did not trust God, so they did not do what God said. The second generation was faithful — they did trust God, so they did what God said.

And as Christians, when we read the Book of Numbers, our headline takeaway is: “Don’t be like the first generation; be like the second generation.”

The apostle Paul confirms this takeaway for us in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10. He says that the Book of Numbers is meant to be an example for us. There are lessons to be learned here. This book is designed for our Christian moral development, and a lot of it is cautionary: Don’t worship idols. Don’t set your heart on evil things. Don’t commit sexual immortality. Don’t grumble. Don’t be a sucker in the moments of temptation. Don’t put Christ to the test.

These are all warnings we find in Numbers that Paul highlights in 1 Corinthians 10. They’re all things that the first generation did to their own demise. So learn from that. Don’t do that.

Which is really helpful, by the way. We need instruction like this. We need good examples. To simply say “Have faith!” or “Trust God!” is true and it’s always relevant, but oftentimes things can be a little more complicated. We need some more help! We need to know what it looks like to have faith! What do we do if we’re trusting God? (Or, what do we do if we’re not trusting God?) Numbers has shown us this. There are lessons here.

And therefore, one of the first things we should think when we read about the daughters of Zelophehad is, “What can we learn from them?” There’s most likely a lesson here for us. They are in this story for a reason, so what is it?

There is a lesson to be learned — that’s the first thing to learn.

God wants your faith.Now again, this is simple and straightforward and it’s something we’ve already talked about in this series: What does God want from you? Wherever you are, whatever you’ve got going on, what does God want from you?

God wants your faith.

This is a lesson we see again at the end of Numbers, but it’s a lesson made in a profound way, and I want you to see this …

First, for the context, the last four chapters, 33–36, are a true recap of the book: Chapter 33 recounts the journey of the people of Israel over the last 40 years, from Egypt to here in the plains of Moab, on the brink of entering the Promised Land. Chapter 34 lays out how the land will be divided and who the heads of each tribe are. Chapter 35, still on the topic of land, explains the inheritance of the Levites and the cities of refuge. And then in Chapter 36, which could seem a little random, there’s this story of the five daughters of Zelophehad. It’s still connected to an issue with the land, but it’s more than that because this is not the first time we’ve read about the “daughters of Zelophehad.”

Bookended by Exemplary FaithThe first time they show up is in Chapter 27. We read about them in Chapter 27 and in Chapter 36, and that’s really significant. Here’s why…

Remember Chapter 26 is the second census. It’s what introduces the second generation of Israelites who are supposed to be different from the first generation. The second generation is the faithful generation, and we read about them from Chapter 27 through 36. Which means, if the daughters of Zelophehad show up in Chapter 27 and Chapter 36, they’re the literary bookends of this faithful generation.

We read about them in Chapter 27 as the intro to this generation, and then we read about them again in Chapter 36 as the summary of this generation. So these daughters form a kind of package that must tell us something about this second generation, and by that fact alone, I’m looking for a positive example here!

I’m clued in that there’s something important about these daughters that we’re supposed to take away, and it’s probably got something to do with having faith. So see, just the placement of these daughters in this story is pointing in that direction. Their example should be what’s ringing in our ears when we leave this book!

So, in that light, let’s go back to chapter 27 and see what they did.

God Calls Them RightLook back at Chapter 27, verse 1 …

This is right after the census has been reported. Everyone from the first generation has died, and the inheritance has been passed to the second generation. And, as was the custom in the ancient world, the inheritance went to the sons.

But there’s a problem, Zelophehad had five daughters and no sons, and these daughters had a legit question: Unless their father’s inheritance was given to them, it would disappear. It’d be lost.

So these daughters, who names were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah — all solid Hebrew names — they came to Moses and Eleazar, explained the situation, and asked that their father’s inheritance be given to them. Well Moses wasn’t exactly sure what to do in this situation, so he brought this case to the Lord.

Which is all going according to plan. Back in Exodus 18, do you remember Jethro’s advice? The disputes among the people were too many for Moses to handle himself, so he appointed judges to help him carry the burden. But if there was an especially tough case, that came straight to Moses, and then Moses went to God. This is one of those. These daughters did right to bring this to Moses, and Moses did right to bring this to God. We’re on the right track here.

And we know this for sure because God says so. I want everyone to see this. Look at Chapter 27, verse 6,

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘The daughters of Zelophehad are right. …”

Then God says to give them their father’s inheritance, and there’s more details here we’ll get to, but the thing I want to focus on for now is that God says these five daughters are right.

There are not too many instances in the Bible where God says so clearly about humans, “They’re right.” They’ve spoken right.

Wouldn’t you love to hear God say that about you?

First off, everybody loves to be right … And we really love to be told we’re right … So what about when God tells you you’re right? God says, Correct. Well done. Nailed it! … what if God says that about you?

Whether you realize it or not, that is actually what you want more than anything in the world. This is not just affirmation, this is divine affirmation. That’s really what you want behind your spouse’s affirmation. That’s deeper than your parent’s affirmation, or your friends’, your colleagues’ — you want divine affirmation, which is more than you being right, but it means God is pleased with you. God is happy with you. He says to you, Right! You’re right!

And we know from Scripture, that’s only possible when there’s faith.

The Judge of All the EarthThe daughters of Zelophehad are motivated by faith — They had faith to “draw near” to Moses and Eleazar (that’s a special phrase, to draw near). They had faith to submit their hard case for Mosaic review. And they had faith to do this because they knew, ultimately, the God who judges is just.

They were thinking what Abraham thought in Genesis 18:25, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” These daughters trust that God, who is sovereign over all things, will do what is right. Which means their confidence is not in their case per se, but it’s in God. They are entrusting their future to him.

The real message then of these women is not their rightness, though they are right, but the real message is the righteousness of God who always does right — and who is therefore worthy of our trust. Do you know this about God?

This doesn’t mean that he gives us everything we want immediately, but it means that everything he does is right, and we are right to trust him.

The daughters of Zelophehad model that kind of faith for us, and we should be like them. God wants your faith.

Third lesson:

Our Redeemer has come!Let’s go back to the details of God’s ruling in Chapter 27. Heads up: this can get a little complicated, but try to stay with me. I’ll keep it as basic as I can.

God said, Yes, the daughters of Zelophehad are right, give them their father’s inheritance. And then he makes this a general statue for all of Israel when they have similar cases …

When it comes to a father’s inheritance: If there’s no son, it goes to daughters; if there’s no daughters, it goes to his brothers; If he has no brothers, it goes to his uncles; And if he has no uncles it just goes to whoever is the closest relative.

The whole point is how to keep your father’s inheritance. The solution is that a kinsman preserves it.

But then in Chapter 36, a new possible dilemma is brought up. The daughters of Zelophehad were from the tribe of Joseph, and some of the heads of that tribe started thinking: Wait a minute, if these daughters inherit Zelophehad’s land, but then they go and marry a man from another tribe, then that man will end up getting the land. It could end up that all of Zelophehad’s inheritance is taken over by another tribe. So what do we do about that?

See, they found a potential hole in this case law — there was still a possible scenario that would defeat the intent of the ruling to preserve the father’s inheritance. And God says, again,they’re right. Like the daughters of Zelophehad, the tribe of Jospeh is right.

And what we see here is that the heads of the tribe are actually following the example of these daughters in chapter 27. They’re thinking about the future, about the land — they’re motivated by faith. This is very different from the first generation, remember?!

That generation was so faithless that they were too afraid to enter the land. This second generation believes God so much they wanna get down to the details about how the land inheritance will work, not just for that moment, but long into the future. There’s an amazing contrast here between the second and first generations. The second generation believes God’s promise. Faith is at the root.

And so here’s the solution: the way to ensure that the father’s inheritance stays within his tribe is for the daughters of Zelophehad to marry within their tribe. Now they can marry whoever they want, but he’s just gotta be within their tribe.

A husband within their tribe is the only way to ensure that their father’s inheritance isn’t lost. So chapter 36, verse 10: “And the daughters of Zelophehad did as the Lord commanded Moses …” — that’s basically how the book ends.

The example of faith is central, we’ve talked about that. But there is another underlying logic here. This is something that shows up first in Leviticus, and then is explained more in Deuteronomy 25 — it’s the role of the kinsman redeemer.

The logic is: if an inheritance was on the verge of being lost, like in this case, a brother or relative of the man who died, a man within his own tribe, would redeem the potential loss through marrying the woman. That principle is emerging here, with the daughters of Zelophehad, but it comes up later in the Bible’s storyline, in a real-life example.

Taking Us to JesusThere was a man named Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem, of the tribe of Judah. He was married to a woman named Naomi. They had two sons, one married to Orpah, one married to Ruth.

Well, Elimelech dies; and his two sons die; Orpah goes back to her family. So it’s just Naomi and Ruth, and of course they’re not going to be able to preserve Elimelech’s inheritance … until they meet one of Elimelech’s relatives, Boaz.

Boaz becomes the kinsman redeemer — he marries Ruth and they have Obed; Obed has Jesse; Jesse has David, the King. These names all show up in Matthew Chapter 1, in the genealogy of Jesus, of the tribe of Judah, born in the little town of Bethlehem.

See, the daughters of Zelophehad’s faith, their concern for their father’s inheritance, their concern for the future, paid into the future of Israel’s Messiah. The logic of their case law became part of the story of the genealogy of Jesus.

And so when we read about these daughters at the end of Numbers, we see the example of their faith, but even more than that, we see a thread here that takes us to Jesus … To Jesus who became our kinsman redeemer. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas.

Except we were in much worse shape than these five daughters were, much worse than Ruth. We had no inheritance at all in the Promised Land. We were destined for wrath. We were without hope in the world.

But then came one who became our kinsman. One who took on our flesh, became like us in our humanity, and he paid the price to redeem us.

Church, our Redeemer has come!

Jesus took all of our debt and he gave us his inheritance — he has given us the right to be called the children of God!

Right with God, by GodIn Christ, you call yourself a child of God, and you are right. God says you’re right. And it’s by faith alone.

So let that be the last thing on our minds as we close the Book of Numbers.

To borrow from the Heidelberg Catechism, answer 61:

It is not because of any value my faith has that God is pleased with me.

Only Christ’s satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness make me right with God.

And I can receive this righteousness and make it mine in no other way than by faith alone.

And that’s what brings us to this Table.

The TableThis table is an invitation to Jesus Christ. We come to him with our hands open — help me, Jesus! You’re my hope! We come to him in faith, and we come to adore him.

And so if that’s you — if you trust in Jesus Christ, if by faith in Jesus you are a child of God, let us eat and drink together and give him thanks!

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Numbers 31:13-20,

13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the chiefs of the congregation went to meet them outside the camp. 14 And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. 15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? 16 Behold, these, on Balaam's advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves. 19 Encamp outside the camp seven days. Whoever of you has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day. 20 You shall purify every garment, every article of skin, all work of goats’ hair, and every article of wood.”

“Kill every male among the little ones.”

If I told you, that’s a quote from Scripture, and asked, “Where’s it from?” Some might say, that’s Pharoah, when he orders the destruction of newborn Israelite boys in Egypt. Others might say, with Christmas fresh on our minds, that’s Herod, when he orders the destruction of infant boys in Bethlehem.

An angel had warned Joseph in a dream in Matthew 2:13:

“Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

Joseph obeys, and ironically Egypt becomes the place of safety, and the land of Israel becomes the Egypt where baby boys are slaughtered by a bloodthirsty Pharaoh, Matthew 2:16,

“Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the [magi], became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under.”

However, that ominous quote, “Kill every male among the little ones,” is not from Herod or Pharaoh; it’s from Moses — verse 17 in Numbers 31.

It’s one thing to hear that from Herod, who obviously is a bad guy (one of the worst in all the Bible). But it’s another to hear words like these from Moses, who is not only a good guy, God’s guy, but who speaks on God’s behalf. When Moses says this, he’s not speaking for himself but for God. This is God’s command: “kill every male among the little ones.” God said this, through his chain of command in Moses. So, how do we renounce the evil of Herod at that first Christmas, and yet honor Moses and God himself?

This is a dark subject for the Sunday before Christmas. But isn’t this what we teach our children? Advent is a season of waiting. And,

“Where are we waiting? In a land of deep darkness.”

But then we say,

“What are we waiting for during Advent? For the light to shine on us.”

The slaughter of infants is not holly-jolly. Numbers 31 is not all merry and bright. But this is actually the real setting for Christmas — a desperate, cursed, evil world in which surprising light dawns.

Unfinished BusinessAt this point in the book of Numbers, a new generation has arisen. The previous generation has perished during forty years in the wilderness. Now, only Moses remains and he’s about to die. But before he departs, he readies this new generation for the conquest to come.

Which means Moses finishes well. Even after striking the rock twice and being barred from the promised land, Moses doesn’t crumble into self-sabotage. He gathers himself. He finishes the race. He dies well, by preparing the next gen in these chapters: he will teach them the pattern for holy war as they conquer the land, and just principles for sharing the spoils. He still cares enough to get angry and speak words of rebuke, and then make thoughtful provision for the next leaders after he’s gone, in chapter 32.

And as we come to chapter 31, the main item of unfinished business for Moses, not to leave to the next generation of leaders, is Midian.

So, what rays of Advent light might we see in this land of deep darkness on the Sunday before Christmas?

God will destroy the enemies of his people. (chapter 31)If you are his, in Christ, God will destroy your enemies, our enemies. It’s just a matter of time. The adversaries of God will not be left forever to wreak havoc on his people. In love for his people, he will see to the destruction of our enemies, whether in the end, or even in this life, if God chooses to have his final judgments break into the present. Which is what happens with Midian.

Let’s not forget what happened with the Midianites in chapters 22–25. They are not innocent. They see that Israel has defeated two nations east of the Jordan River. They are in dread of Israel, and so they send for a prophet named Balaam, to pay him to curse Israel. But God keeps Balaam from cursing them, and instead gives him words of blessing. So Balaam fails to derail Israel. But in chapter 25, some men from Israel, now living in such proximity to Midian, are drawn into idolatry and immorality with their new neighbors. God’s judgment begins with his own people when 24,000 die of plague (about 4% of the men). Then, God had said at the end of chapter 25,

Harass the Midianites and strike them down, for they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor [where the idolatry happened] . . . . (25:17-18)

So, now, chapter 31 addresses God’s righteous vengeance on Midian. Look at verses 1–3:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Avenge the people of Israel on the Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” So Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.

This will be the last war campaign before Moses dies. But don’t miss who’s calling the shots. It’s not Moses. God is the one who says, This will be it for you, Moses. And God says in chapter 25, “Harass the Midianites and strike them down.” And God says now, “Avenge the people of Israel on the Midianites.”

So verse 7,“They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses.” This chapter turns on that phrase, “as the Lord commanded Moses” — in verses 7, 21, 31, 41, 47. In the word of verse 3, this is “the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.”

So Israel’s warriors kill the Midianite men, and take the women and children captive, and bring them back to Moses. And Moses is angry with the officers. They have not completed the task. So he says in verses 15–18, which make us cringe the most:

“Have you let all the women live? Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

Verses 25–47, then, address how to divide up the spoils (and young girls): in two parts (for the warriors and the congregation), and then distribute 1/50 (of half) to the Levites and 1/500 (of the other half) to the priests.

Finally, we learn in verses 48–54 that they have taken a count of Israel’s warriors; none are missing; and according to the Exodus 30, the officers make atonement for having taken a count.

Advent LightThere’s a summary of chapter 31. Now we ask, How can this be? How can God — through Moses, but originating with God — order the destruction of these Midianites, including the infant boys?

Christmas is helpful here. It doesn’t answer every question, but it puts the destruction of the Midianites in some fresh light when we see it side by side with Herod’s destruction of the boys:

Herod, Rome’s puppet king, is watching out for himself, seeking to preserve his own fragile power; Moses is the prophet of the living God who hears from him and speaks for God, not for himself, as God is the one who brings divine justice on the enemies of his people.
When the magi don’t return to report where to find the child, Herod is furious (with unrighteous anger); Moses, as God’s prophet, burns with righteous, godly anger when God’s people do not live up to their calling as God’s people.
Herod, in sin, from his wicked heart, orders the slaughter of infant boys in Bethlehem; his kingly order is horribly unjust, and profoundly evil. Moses, on the other hand, orders God’s people, at God’s initiative, to act as his instrument to destroy the Midianites because of their sin. Mark this: the Midianites are not innocent before God. He does them no wrong in judging them and ordering their destruction.

The destruction of the Midianites is not the same as Herod’s destruction of Bethlehem’s boys. This is the Lord’s vengeance, not Moses’s, not Israel’s. The question is not whether Midian is innocent; the question is why God doesn’t destroy Israel as well.

And Christmas has a clarifying word to speak into this unnerving episode in Numbers 31, and in the conquest of the land to come in the book of Joshua.

Christmas is both the reason we cringe, and the resolution to this darkness. When Jesus came at Christmas, he split history in two. We cringe like we do today because we live on this side of Christmas. We’ve been influenced by the ethics of Jesus. And the grace and compassion and comfort brought by Christmas have made it possible for us, to our fault, to soft-pedal how dark and sinful and evil this world is — and what sinful people and nations like the Midianites, and us, justly deserve. Part of why we cringe at this is because we have such a shallow view of sin, beginning with our own. We should be cringing that we deserve the same.

When we say we live in a land of deep darkness, what do you think we mean? Deep darkness — a world so evil that infants are slaughtered, whether wickedly in Egypt or Bethlehem or America, or justly by God Almighty before whom all stand guilty and he does no one wrong. And if he so chooses, the holy God can use imperfect Israel as his instrument to recompense the profound wickedness in Midian, and Canaan, even as he later will use wicked Babylon as his instrument of judgment against Israel.

To be clear, with Christmas, with the coming of Christ, and the bringing in of the supra-national church age, God will never again commission his covenant people to execute his judgments on other’s sins. After Christmas, God does not do it this way anymore. Now, his fullness of times has come.

And when we get a glimpse in the book of Revelation, what do we see the church doing, as God’s judgments fall? We are not administering them. We watch in awe, and rejoice, as Jesus takes care of business. In the end, God’s people will observe his judgments, and praise him for them, and say Hallelujah, but we do not execute our enemies for God. We wait for him to execute his judgments for us.

So, to be clear, if some imbalanced person tells you that God told him to kill someone, you tell him, I guarantee you that you are wrong. God did not say that. That’s from your own head, or from Satan. You have profoundly misread the era. God’s covenant with one particular nation-state in the previous era made that possible, while still unusual. But now Christmas has come. God does not work like that, not after Christmas. God will never call his new-covenant people to what he says through Moses here.

So, #1, God will destroy the enemies of his people — and we, his church, will watch in awe and praise as Jesus does the work with the word of his power (Revelation 1:16; 2:16; 19:15, 21).

God will not destroy his people who repent. (chapter 32)Now we come to chapter 32. Moses faces another threat — this time from within. In verses 1–5, the tribes of Gad and Rueben ask to settle down east of the Jordan River, outside the promised land. What in the world? Here we go again. This is a crisis moment. God’s people come up to the edge of the promised land, and two tribes, Gad and Rueben, see that the land east of the Jordan looks good for livestock, and they have livestock. So, they ask, Can we stay here?

In verses 6–15, Moses responds by remembering the Lord’s anger. This has happened before, forty years ago. The people’s faith failed, and God sent them back to the wilderness for forty years. So, Moses rebukes the leaders of Gad and Reuben. Verses 14–15:

behold, you have risen in your fathers’ place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the Lord against Israel! For if you turn away from following him, he will again abandon them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all this people.

So, the threat is destruction. Then, amazingly, in verses 16–27, the new generation of leaders in these two tribes respond with humility. They are not stubborn like their fathers. Their hearts are soft. They receive Moses’s rebuke, and adjust their request, and the chapter ends in verses 28–42 with everyone happy: the warriors from Gad and Reuben will join the rest of the tribes in securing the promised land — in fact, they will lead the way, and Gad and Reuben (now joined by the half tribe of Manasseh) will expand the lands of Israel to the good pasturelands east of the Jordan.

Win, win, win — but it started with a failure of faith. It started with sin. Yet Moses engaged, and God was gracious with his people, the two tribes listened and changed their tune, and responded humbly. And so God does not destroy Gad and Rueben and the whole nation.

Two Words for UsEarlier we mentioned Moses finishing well. How admirable that Moses cares enough to speak the word of rebuke. He’s old. God’s told him he’s about to die. He could just phone it in and say, Whatever, like King Hezekiah will do many centuries later. But Moses cares what will happen to God’s people after he’s gone. He cares enough to be angry. His anger over such a crazy request shows how much he cares.

I wonder if when you hear of anger, you assume that’s sin. Is Moses angry? That must be sin. Not so fast. Anger can be righteous or unrighteous, godly or sinful. In Ephesians 4:26, Paul says,

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

Anger can be holy, righteous, and good. Anger is not necessarily sin, but soon leads to sin if you let it linger. Righteous anger is godly, to observe something that’s not right, and to care about it. Not just say, Whatever. Righteous anger prompts to action; it summons Moses to say what needs to be said. It makes him bold to rebuke. And then Gad and Rueben respond with humility, alter their plan, and what emerges is better for the whole nation.

When you feel a flare of anger, ask it questions. Anger, how are you trying to help me right now? What holy, patient, loving step do I need to take to address this perceived injustice in a way that is reasonable and wise? Am I seeing that right, and if so, what is God calling me to do?

A second word for us here in chapter 32 is how our actions (and our presence and absence) affect the hearts of others. When Moses objects to Gad’s and Rueben’s initial request, he doesn’t just say, “Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here?” But he also talks about the effect on their hearts. He says your bowing out will “discourage the heart of the people.”

Our world may look at this, and ignore timeless social dynamics like this, say, “Just let them choose where they want to live. What’s the big deal? Let everyone choose for themselves.” But it’s not that simple. Your decision to show up or stay home, to continue with the community or head for the pastureland affects other people. Which is really relevant in church life, and especially in smaller groupings like CGs and Life Groups. Don’t overlook the power of your presence to encourage the hearts of others. And don’t ignore the power of your absence to discourage the hearts of others.

So, #1, God will destroy the enemies of his people. #2, God will not destroy his people who repent. But now what? Who is this God? Is he the God who destroys, or the God who does not destroy. How do we put chapter 31 and 32 together? Is this the same God?

We finish with two texts from outside this passage. One I came across this week, reading through the Minor Prophets, as I do every December. I came to the end of Micah, and read these stunning wordings of grace to his people in the last three verses (7:18–20):

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

and passing over transgression

for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

because he delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins

into the depths of the sea.

You will show faithfulness to Jacob

and steadfast love to Abraham,

as you have sworn to our fathers

from the days of old.

Then, back to back, next page, there’s Nahum, and what’s the first thing out of his mouth for Nineveh and the Assyrians (1:2)?

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;

the Lord is avenging and wrathful;

the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries

and keeps wrath for his enemies.

So, who is this God? Is he the pardoning God of Micah or the avenging God of Nahum?

Part of the answer here is in whom the prophets are addressing. Micah is talking to God’s people, his “remnant,” his covenant people, sinners who have repented. To them, God shows compassion and steadfast love.

However, Nahum is talking to the Assyrians, who are the adversaries and enemies of his people. To them, God is full of righteous wrath and vengeance. It all comes down to whether your sins are covered with his covenant people, or whether you remain unshielded as his adversary and enemy of God.

So, we finish with a Christmas text, and final ray of Advent light.

Jesus came to pardon his people and destroy the devil. (1 John 3:5, 8)I love 1 John 3:5 and 8, and especially during Advent, because here together John gives us two expressions of why Jesus came.

Verse 5: Jesus “appeared in order to take away sins.” That is, he came to die in the place of his sinful people, that those who are in him, by faith, would have their sins covered, and their enemies destroyed, and live with Jesus in unending joy forever.

Verse 8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” That is, Christmas is holy war. He came to ruin Satan, and destroy his works. And oh was the devil at work in ancient Egypt. And was he at work in Midian, and in Israel, and in Herod and Bethlehem.

The God of Christmas is a pardoning God because Jesus takes away the sins of those who genuinely repent. And the God of Christmas is an avenging God, who will right every wrong in the end.

This crooked and cursed and sinful world, this land of deep darkness, is the one into which Jesus came at Christmas. Which means the great joy of Christmas comes precisely in the midst of this age’s pains and horrors, not by repressing, ignoring, or reframing them.

Death and sin and destruction don’t ruin Christmas; they are the reason for Christmas, and why Christmas is so precious. The darkness around us, and in us, is why the light of Christmas shines so bright. Ignore the darkness, or pretend it isn’t there, and your Christmas light will be dull and faint. But acknowledge evil, own your own sin, recognize the size of your need, and the light of Christmas shines out in its true greatness.

Christmas’s brightness doesn’t depend on all being merry and bright. It is brightness in the midst of much darkness, real merriment that comes after and in the midst of real tragedy.

Why Jesus CameAs we come to the Table, we remember why Jesus appeared — that is, why he came at Christmas. He came, on the one hand, to war against and to destroy the works of the devil. And a day is coming when he will return and speak the word to enact eternal destruction to the enemies of his people — to our praise and applause.

This Table celebrates his taking away the sins of his people. He bled and died, gave his body and blood, that we the guilty, who deserved destruction, might receive his compassion and love.

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Numbers 26:63-65,

These were those listed by Moses and Eleazar the priest, who listed the people of Israel in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho. 64But among these there was not one of those listed by Moses and Aaron the priest, who had listed the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. 65For the Lord had said of them, “They shall die in the wilderness.” Not one of them was left, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.

Okay, let’s start this morning with something we tried a few weeks ago: if you are under 20 years old raise your hand, hold it high. Everybody get a good look at these hands.

I’m gonna do something today I’ve never done before. This is a different kind of sermon — because I’m going to speak directly to those of you who raised your hand. This is a sermon to everyone under 20 years old — which means either Gen Z or Gen Alpha. I’m looking at you. I’m talking to you.

And if that’s not you, don’t check out. Stay with me. Because I hope that what I say to the kids among us will be a model for our entire church. What I say won’t do any good if all the rest of us don’t get behind it. So we need the whole family here. This sermon is directed to the kids, but it’s for everybody.

And first, let me explain how I’m getting here from the text.

The Second, New CensusChapter 26 is a census. It’s just all numbers of the tribes of Israel, but it’s an important point in the storyline of the Book of Numbers because this is the moment when the attention officially turns from the old generation to the new generation that has taken their place.

And I want you to see this in the text. We just heard these verses read, but look again at verse 63. Everybody find Chapter 26, verse 63. This is referring to the second census, verse 63 says:

So there are two different censuses mentioned here.

The first census, mentioned in verse 64, was in Numbers Chapter 1 and it took place in the wilderness of Sinai.

The second census is the one here in chapter 26 and it took place in the plains of Moab, right on the edge of entering the Promised Land.

The full count of the first census was 603,550.

The full count of the second census was 601,730.

So it’s around the same number, but the thing we’re supposed to see is that except for Joshua and Caleb, not a single person counted in that first census is still around for this second census. Because they all died under the judgment of God.

There has been a full-out replacement here. And the text makes this clear. Verse 64 says that “not one of those” listed in the first census is listed in the second. Verse 65 repeats this: “Not one of them was left, except Caleb and Joshua.”

So this is an all-new generation. And with the newness comes both hope and suspense: Could it be that this new generation, about to inherit the land, will trust God more than their parents did? Or, will they only repeat the failures of their fathers? Will the new generation be more faithful or less?

Applied to Our DayAnd see, this is the kind of question, at this point in the story, that sparks our own reflection about our future generations. Historically, that’s how many Christians have read this part of Numbers. This section of the story gets applied to our own day and we realize that …

Unless Jesus comes back first, every generation will eventually become the older generation.(One day, for those of us who didn’t raise our hands, our time here will be done and what is presently the younger generation will be leading the way.) So then — How are we preparing the younger generations to do that?

Charles Spurgeon, our favorite 19th-century Baptist pastor, understood this two-way dynamic. He once wrote of Numbers 26,

If we are now serving God [current generation], let us do so with intense earnestness, since only for a little while shall we have the opportunity to do so among men…. Live while you live.

[And] at the same time, lay plans for influencing the rising generation. Lay yourself out to work while it is called today.

And part of our work, non-hand-raisers, is to invest in the hand-raisers.

And so that’s what I want to do this morning. This is not a normal exegetical sermon. We don’t find these points that I’m going to say directly from the text, but instead, with the text as a kind of foundation, I want to offer three encouragements to the rising generation. I have three commendations for you kids, and the first is this:

Get married and build a family.The most obvious thing about the census in chapter 26 that we’re most likely to overlook is that these are all families. The word used is “clan” — a clan is a smaller unit under each tribe, and it’s made up of a husband and wife who becomes a father and mother to sons and daughters. These are families that are listed here, and they exist because the people of Israel are doing what God commissioned mankind to do back in Genesis. In Genesis 1:28, God told Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over [it]…”

And that’s been happening. Remember that’s what made Israel so unpopular in Egypt. This people kept increasing! They kept multiplying, as God promised Abraham they would. God blessed the people of Israel as they were extending the first and most integral institution for human civilization, the family.

It’s not a political statement to say that the family is the foundation of human society. That’s just a fact and it’s been this way since the very beginning, and the Bible just assumes that we understand this, and most cultures always have. The family is special, and it starts with marriage.

What is marriage? Well marriage is a covenant ordained by God where both a man and a woman promise to be a shelter for one another. And it’s so significant that, like with other covenants in the Bible, there’s a name-change. As one writer explains, the wife traditionally takes her husband’s name, to show that she is bound to him, and the man takes a whole new title — the title of “husband” which means house-bound (see Wiley). The husband is bound to his wife and to what makes a house, and this is where we get to children. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes so-and-so with a baby carriage.”

That’s how it works, but I want to clarify something: when husbands and wives start to have children, they’re not simply having children, but they’re building a house. They’re building a family.

And again, families are special. Everyone everywhere gets that families are special — even in our highly individualistic culture and even where there’s so much family brokenness. We all know the family is still special and so I want to encourage you, kids, to lean into the specialness of family. And I don’t mean just the family you’re part of now as a kid, but dream of building your own family one day.

Now, I understand that marriage will come at different times for each of you, and that some of you may remain unmarried for life or experience a season of not-yet-married longer than you would hope, but exceptions aside, hear this: do not sideline marriage and family in pursuit of something you think is more important or that will make you happier.

Melissa and I were watching a show the other night, and randomly one of the characters took a dig at marriage and said: “Show me a couple that has been married for 50 years and I’ll show you someone who didn’t accomplish anything in life.” And I threw a flag right away and said Wrong! That kind of thinking exists in the world and it is maliciously wrong!

If you want to “accomplish” something that lasts, if you really want to make an impact, I tell you what I tell my sons: If you wanna change the world, do whatever Jesus says and love one woman with everything you’ve got for the rest of your life.

What I’m saying is this: kids, one day, get married and build a family.

Second encouragement:

Double down and fill the gaps.Years ago, at a coffee shop close by where I lived, I met a man named Jack. He would come in the same day every week for a coffee and donut, and in a casual conversation I found out that Jack was a WWII veteran. So I asked him if I could meet and talk with him when he came in, which he let me do. And I really enjoyed getting to know Jack — he was this man from the Greatest Generation. He had seen so much life and yet he was present and engaged and he had great stories. But Jack was old, and months later he passed away. And after he died, his son sent me the eulogy he had written for him, and it was even more fascinating to get to learn more about this man who had become my friend for just a short period of time.

And one of the things that stood out to me in the eulogy was a joke that his son made about Jack hating the music his children listened to when they were teenagers. Apparently his kids would crank up the radio and Jack couldn’t stand to hear this new band his kids liked, and you know who the new band was? The Beatles.

I read that and it occurred to me that Jack was so old. He was so old that there was a time in his life when The Beatles were too modern for him! And Jack did what is so classic for the older generations to do: he looked down on the younger generation.

And this got my attention because the younger generation to him was the older generation to me. I didn’t really have a dog in the fight, but it confirmed this two-way generational dynamic that’s almost as old as the sun: Older generations tend to think the rising generation is in decline, and the rising generation tends to rebel against the older generation. One looks down their nose and the other rolls their eyes.

That’s the way it’s always been in the world, but we should make it different in our church.

And that really does start with those of us who did not raise our hands earlier. It is on us — the non-kids — to grow a church that is a haven of encouragement to the rising generation. Now that doesn’t mean that we break our necks to entertain our kids and make this place like Disney World, but it does mean that we believe God is at work in our kids and we want them to know that God’s joy is deeper than the universe. We are here because of God’s joy and we are headed back to God’s joy, and so we want to be God’s smile to our children. That’s for us, non-hand raisers, and it’s a heart thing.

The Example of PhinehasNow for you kids these days, let me tell you about Phinehas. The story of Phinehas comes in Chapter 25. We saw it last week. Phinehas was the son of Eleazar, the new high priest, which means he was the grandson of Aaron. The Bible doesn’t tell us his age, but he was most likely a young adult, a teenager. And as the story goes in Chapter 25, there was rampant, high-handed sin and idolatry in Israel’s camp, and Phinehas stepped up to stop it.

He had great zeal for God! And God commended him for being jealous for God’s glory and turning back God’s wrath, but I think the lesson for you kids is that Phinehas doubled down on faithfulness and filled the gap where it was lacking.

Pastor Mike Schumann showed us last week that Phinehas was just doing what God has said. He knew the first commandment, “You shall have not other gods before me.” And he knew his family was supposed to guard the sanctuary. So Phinehas knew what faithfulness meant, and he doubled down on it.

Apparently his dad, Eleazar, wasn’t doing what was needed (neither was anyone else of the 625,000 or so people who were there) so Phinehas said “I’ll do it!” Except he didn’t say anything because nobody was asking. He just grabbed a spear. He saw an opportunity where faithfulness was required and took the initiative to be faithful.

So, rising generation, hand-raisers, look, you don’t have to drift. That’s what a lot of people say you’re gonna do. But don’t. There’s no drifting here. There’s no decline here. Phinehas is doubling down on what is good and right and true, and he’s filling a gap where it is required. Kids, be a Phinehas!

We want you to be more solid than we are.

Which means we’re admitting: we don’t have it all figured out. We don’t have a current well-calibrated sense of our future regret (also known as blind spots). We’re trying our best, I promise that! I feel good about where we stand! We want to serve Jesus with our utmost for his highest! And as you seek to do the same, there will be things that you’re going to be able to do better, so do them.

Kids, look, one day it’s going to be your turn to double down on faithfulness and fill the gaps where it’s required. And I say this to you with confidence, because we believe God is at work in you.

That brings me to the third encouragement…

Be filled with the Holy Spirit.At the end of Chapter 27, we read about when God told Moses to appoint Joshua as his successor. God reminds Moses again that he’s not going to enter the Promised Land, because of his unbelief in Chapter 20, and so Moses asks God to appoint a man to take his place. Israel needed a new leader for their new generation, and God chose Joshua.

And it’s fascinating how God describes Joshua. Chapter 27, verse 18:

“So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit…’”

Was Joshua courageous? Yes.

Was he a leader in faith? Of course.

Did he have good training and experience? He did.

But God doesn’t mention any of those things here. He simply calls Joshua a man in whom is the Spirit.

And so rising generation, let that be true of you.

Listen, you’re going to be good at so many things, but, you can do nothing of any lasting value apart from the Holy Spirit. You need the Holy Spirit. So be filled with him. Which will mean at least three things:

Devotion to the BibleGod’s work through his church is always a work by his Spirit and Word. That’s been true of every movement of God in history. And the converse is also true: Show me a so-called church or place that belittles and sidelines the Bible, I’ll show you a graveyard. And that’s what some people have come to expect of churches.

I’ve got a funny story for you. We recently heard what some of our Summit Avenue neighbors think of us. It was few months ago, one of our members was at a Summit Avenue neighborhood meeting, and he was standing with an older generation of men who didn’t know he was part of our church, and one of the men said, “Yeah, it’s something what’s happened over there at that old church. That new congregation is one of those, you know … (and he wasn’t sure exactly what to say but he goes) … they’re all, you know, you know, they’re all happy clappy.”

You can call us “happy clappy” if you want to, or you could just say alive. Because that’s what we are. We’re alive, and it’s because of the Word of God. We take this Book seriously. We care about this Book.

And rising generation, hand-raisers, care about this Book even more. Read it and memorize it and sing it! Let it be a lamp for your feet and a light for your path. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit you will be devoted to the Bible.

And also, you’ll have…

Wisdom in this worldWe know it’s a myth to say that wisdom comes with age, because that’s not always the case. Now we hope that as we get older we get wiser, but it’s not automatic … because wisdom comes from the fear of the Lord, and that means you don’t have to wait for it until you get old.

We learn this in the Book of Job. After Job’s first three friends have their moments to speak, and each one is kinda missing the mark, there is a fourth friend, Elihu, who speaks up. He says that he’s been holding his tongue and he waited last to speak because he was younger. He deferred to the older, which was polite, but then he says, it’s not many years that teach wisdom, but it’s the “breath of the Almighty that makes one understand” (Job 32:8).

And the Book of James tells us, if you want wisdom, ask God (see James 1:5). Ask God for wisdom, rising generation!

If you’re filled with the Spirit and long to be wise,

Ask it of God—he freely supplies.

And this wisdom is not just general information about things, but it’s the Spirit-empowered ability to apply biblical truth to everyday life. It’s learning to see all of reality through the lens of Scripture, and then to act accordingly. This kind of wisdom is constant awareness that God is active in the world and we get to be part of what he’s doing.

If you’re filled with the Spirit, you will be wise in this world. And being filled with the Spirit means, third…

Loyalty to JesusAnd this is really the source of the previous two. When it comes to what you think about the Bible, the real question is what you think about Jesus. If you believe Jesus is who he claimed to be then he is right about everything he said, including what he said about Scripture, which was pretty amazing. Jesus taught that the Bible is true, infallible, and permanent and that it’s ultimately about him. So if you take issue with any of those things, you’re taking issue with Jesus — don’t do that.

When it comes to wisdom, we need wisdom because we’re serious about following Jesus in this world, which can get complex at times and there’s gonna be opposition. We need wisdom because we want his guidance in those details.

So, rising generation, hand-raisers: it all comes back, honestly, to our love and loyalty to Jesus, and that is the central work of the Holy Spirit. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

It’s the Holy Spirit’s work in your life that makes you born again as a believer; it’s the Spirit who binds you to Jesus by faith and makes his cross wonderful to you. And I really mean wonderful. Loyalty to Jesus is not a wooden adherence, but Jesus becomes your treasure. He is your good king, and his yoke is easy and his burden is light! It is your joy to say “Whatever you want Jesus! I’m yours.”

See, this loyalty to Jesus, then, really means a deeper fellowship with Jesus by his Spirit, and that’s what I want most for you.

I pray that Jesus would become your all-consuming passion and your all-satisfying treasure … and that the Spirit would lead you every day to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and fulfillment of all God’s promises to you; that the Spirit would empower you to renounce Satan in all his temptations and schemes; and that the Spirit would help you to obey Jesus and follow him as your Lord, Savior, and Supreme Joy. The Spirit does that. And kids, may he do that in you!

Could you do me a favor one more time? If you’re under 20, raise your hand. Okay I’m looking at you. Receive this, I encourage you:

Get married and build a family.
Double down and fill the gaps.
Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableWe come each week to this Table to remember Jesus. We remember that he came to save us — he died in our place on the cross by his free and absolute grace. Hey, we don’t deserve his goodness. He loves us because he loves us. And when we receive this bread and cup, we’re resting in him. We are resting in his love for us. And so this table is for those who have trusted in Jesus.

If you have not yet put your faith in Jesus, let the bread and cup pass, but don’t let the invitation pass. This morning you can trust in Jesus. You too can rest in him. Just come to him in faith.

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Numbers 22:1-6,

Then the people of Israel set out and camped in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan at Jericho. 2 And Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. 3 And Moab was in great dread of the people, because they were many. Moab was overcome with fear of the people of Israel. 4 And Moab said to the elders of Midian, “This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field.” So Balak the son of Zippor, who was king of Moab at that time, 5 sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the people of Amaw, to call him, saying, “Behold, a people has come out of Egypt. They cover the face of the earth, and they are dwelling opposite me. 6 Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

Well, in Numbers chapter 22, we read that the Israelites have made it to the plains of Moab. Which was near the Jordan River. Near the city of Jericho. Near the long-anticipated promised land of Canaan.

What this signals for us then, is the beginning of a transition, a passing over of the baton, from the first generation of Israelites who failed to trust God in the wilderness, to the second generation of whom God said, “They shall inherit the land.”

And it’s no coincidence that as bookends to this section of Scripture (Numbers 22-25), we find two contrasting men on either side.

One, who like the first generation, seems to know a thing or two about God, seems to claim a sort of allegiance to him, yet proves, in time, to be far from him. His name is Balaam, and his story will run through chapters 22, 23, and 24.

In chapter 25, we’ll see the second man, Phinehas. A man who not only knows about Yahweh and has given his allegiance to Him, but demonstrates that allegiance through action.

So the aim for this morning is to analyze these two men, asking, on one side, What are the marks of worldliness? (And we’ll spend the majority of our time there,) and what are the marks of godliness? We’ll then end with a look at a third question: what are the promises given to the godly?

What are the marks of worldliness?
What are the marks of godliness?
What are the promises given to the godly?
Worldliness (Balaam)So, first question: what are the marks of worldliness?

We’re asking because, as Christians, we believe that examples of worldliness like these are in Scripture for our benefit… That we might inspect them, and so learn from them of how not to be.

Just as Paul says, regarding these Old Testament examples of worldliness, 1 Corinthians 10:6,

…these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”

And in his very next sentence, he references this very narrative here involving Balaam, saying:

We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did [that is, the people we’ll meet this morning in Numbers 25] and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.”

Application, 1 Cor. 10:12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”

The marks of worldliness are here to serve as lenses into ourown hearts. Lenses through which to look and ask: Where do I see remnants of this yet dwelling in me?

With that, let’s take a look at Numbers 22. So, as Peter just read, Israel is in Moab, and they’re not alone. The people of Moab and Midian are there as well, and they’re in “great dread” and “overcome with fear” on account of mighty Israel’s arrival. Balak, King of Moab, fears war with the Israelites. He knows he cannot defeat them by force. But, he thinks, “perhaps I can through sorcery.” Enter Balaam — the Gentile prophet for hire.

In verse 6, King Balak sends his messengers to Balaam, saying, “Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me.” And whether its a show of flattery, or something he actually believes it, Balak says of Balaam what should never be said of anyone other than God. “For I know [Balaam] that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

What follows can be a bit of a confusing story. Confusing because it can leave us a bit unsure of what to do with Balaam. What should we make of him? Is he godly? Is he worldly? At first glance, it can seem tough to tell. After all: Balaam is going to refer to God by his covenantal name, Yahweh. God himself is going to speak to Balaam andthrough Balaam for the good of his people. In challenging moments, Balaam is going to claim that he’s under obligation to speak only what God tells him.

Those sound like marks of godliness, right? Well, they’re not. And that’s going to become increasingly apparent throughout these chapters. In fact, we can begin to see that as early on as verse 8.

After all, just put yourselves in Balaam’s shoes for a moment, and ask yourself: How might I respond, were these messengers to show up at my door, and say, “Our Master Balak wants to hire you to curse Israel, for he knows that he whom you curse is cursed and he whom you bless is blessed,”?

How might you, given all you know of what God has said and done concerning this people Israel, beginning in Genesis, and stretching all the way through Exodus, Leviticus, and this point in Numbers. What might you say to these men?

“Get lost,” right?

Israel is the apple of God’s eye (Zech. 2:8). Israel is God’s treasured possession (Ps. 135:4). The people with whom God has made a covenant. The people of whom God said, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). You don’t love God and curse his people, do you?

That is not Balaam’s response. But, rather, verse 8, “Lodge here tonight, and I will bring back word to you, as the Lord speaks to me.”

First Mark of WorldlinessWe’re looking for marks of worldliness. Well, here’s the first: Worldliness considers sin, ponders it, weighs it in a balance. It says, “Wait here a moment, while I calculate whether this is worth my disobedience to God.”

It does not slam the door upon sin, as it ought. It does not resist sin at first sight, as it ought. Instead it demonstrates a deadly patience toward sin, allowing it to linger, and make its case, and then mull over its prospect.

Where is this kind of mulling over the prospect most likely to happen in our lives today? I’d venture to say that’s its most likely to happen with a screen open before you, and the thought beginning to work its way into your mind: Perhaps this click is worth my disobedience to God.

Worldliness considers sin. Balaam should’ve slammed the door in the face of those men. Instead, he welcomed them in.

Let’s pick up the speed a bit.

Second Mark of WorldlinessBalaam’s going to inquire of God — “Should I curse this people?” God’s going to give his response. And it’s not complicated. Verse 12: “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” End of story, right? Not exactly.

Balaam willturn away this first group of messengers, but King Balak will simply send back more, and with an even sweeter offer, in verse 16:

“Let nothing hinder you from coming to me [Balaam], for I will surely do you great honor, and whatever you say to me I will do. Come, curse this people for me.”

But Balaam’s already got his answer, right? God has told him clearly not to go. So why does Balaam say this, in verses 18-19?

“Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God to do less or more. So you, too, pleasestay here tonight, that I may know what morethe LORD will say to me.”

What more? God has given you his answer Balaam — What more need he say?

Do you see what’s going on here? Balaam is feigning ignorance. Pretending he actually does not know what God wants of him… Sure, God said not to go the first time, but what about now? Perhaps there’s a chance he’s changed his mind. Perhaps there’s more nuance to his answer. Perhaps there’s more that needs to be considered before I completely shut the door here.

Here’s a second mark of worldliness. Worldliness pleads ignorance. It claims: I just don’t know what God thinks about this thing. I just don’t know what God thinks about me sleeping with my boyfriend. I just don’t know what God thinks about me going to this party. I just don’t know what God thinks about me cheating on this test.

The fact is, most of us know all too well what God thinks about these things, and many others — we just doesn’t like it. Least not by nature. And so, we play pretend. We shut our eyes and stop our ears, and say, “Well, since I really can’t know for sure…” Second mark of worldliness. Worldliness pleads ignorance.

And like the kid who just keeps shaking up the eight-ball till he finally gets the answer he wants, Balaam is just going to keep “inquiring of God,” as if he didn’t know any better, till God finally lets him go.

And God will. God will give him over to what he truly wants. “Balaam, you want to go, you can go,” but, verse 20, “You can only do what I tell you.”

Third Mark of WorldlinessNow, just a show of hands quick: You ever experience a bit of car trouble while out on the road? Flat-tire, over-heated engine, the kind of thing that forces you to pull over on the side of the road? It’s amazing, even in our “post-Christian” age, people still tend to attribute that kind of thing to an act of God. “An act of God prevented me from making it to my intended destination.”

Well, at this point of the story, Balaam is going to experience not a bit of car trouble, but a bit of donkey trouble. Three-times over, his donkey is going to prevent him from making progress toward the plains of Moab. And amazingly, Balaam is never once going to consider that it may actually be God whose preventing his progress. His donkey will. In fact, unlike Balaam, the donkey is going to see the angel of the LORD standing in his way with sword drawn, and that’s the reason he’s going to stop these three times.

During stop number 3, God’s going to do something remarkable. In verse 28, he’s going to open the mouth of Balaam’s donkey to speak to him. God can use Balaam, a prophet-for-hire as his mouthpiece, and he can even use a donkey to do the same.

God then opens Balaam’s eyes to finally see what’s in front of him. Verse 31,

“Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand.”

Jump down to the middle of verse 32:

“Behold [says the angel], I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me. The donkey saw me and turned aside before me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let her live.”

And now, just consider all that Balaam has experienced of God up to this point: God has spoken to him, twice. God has opened the mouth of his donkey. God has revealed an angel to him. In just a short while, God himself is going to speak through him. And God’s even going to use him to bless his people.

But you know what’s really alarming? None of these experiences will ultimately change Balaam’s heart.

Sure, Balaam’s going to be humbledin verse 31 — Frightened by this angel, he’ll not dare go beyond what God says to him, for fear of his life.

Balaam’s going to begrieved in verse 34 — confessing his sin of ignorance (I didn’t know the angel was there) but not his rebellion (I shouldn’t have even been there in the first place).

Balaam’s even going to show some interest in God’s people — 23:10, “Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his [meaning Israel’s]”

None of it will fundamentally change Balaam. Like the parable of the soil and the weeds, Balaam’s apparent interest in God will be choked out by the cares of this world.

Balaam’s EndAnd that’s not conjecture. Scripture tells us that Balaam’s last act, following these events, did not involve a dedication of his life to God. But a back-door method for getting paid. The advising King Balak and the women of Moab — “Look, you can’t curse Israel, but you can seduce them.” As Numbers 31:16 reads, “…on Balaam’s advice, the women of Midian caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord.” As 2 Peter 2:15 reads, Balaam did this because he loved gain from wrongdoing.

Third, and most alarming mark of worldliness: Worldliness can experience God and go on unmoved. Brothers and sisters, beware of heart-absent Christian activity. In your Bible reading, prayer, church life — beg God to awaken you to his glory. Plead with God to change you from one degree of glory to the next. Ask God, “Father, show me your glory through this act of worship before you.”

What are the marks of worldliness?

Worldliness considers sin, feigns ignorance, and can even go on unmoved by the experience of God.

So, that’s Balaam. Our portrait of worldliness. Far more briefly now, we’ll look at Phinehas, and he as a portrait of godliness.

Godliness (Phinehas)Turn with me over to chapter 25, and see that it opens with the Balaam-incited episode between the sons of Israel and the daughters of Moab and Midian. Verse 1,

“While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor.”

They were seduced into idolatry.

God’s response to this peoples’ sin, just as in other times, was righteous wrath. Plague breaks out. Verse 9 tells us that 24,000 Israelites died in this incident — likely finishing off the remainder of that first generation of Israelites of whom God said would not enter the land but die in the wilderness.

Now, 24,000 is a large number. But it would’ve been even larger had it not been for Phinehas. Again, we’re looking for marks of godliness, and what we’ll see in Phinehas is essentially the opposite of what we saw in Balaam.

It begins with the disturbing scene of verse 6:

“And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting.”

Israelites are literally dropping left and right because of the plague. Mourners have gathered near the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. And in the sight of everyone, this man Zimri takes a Midianite woman in his hand and leads her to his chamber, nonchalantly walking past the Holy Tabernacle of God as they do so.

Worldliness considers sin, yes? Godlinessdoes not — but strikes it down from the start. So, verse 7:

“When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand.”

He does not consider following suit and he too grabbing the hand of a Midianite woman. He grabs his spear instead. First Mark of Godliness: Godliness opposes sin from the start.

And why does he? What’s so wrong about taking this Midianite woman? Maybe Zimri really likes her. Maybe she likes him. Maybe it’s really no big deal. Worldliness feigns ignorance, yes? Godliness doesn’t.

God has said, Ex. 20:2-3, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.” Yet this man is bowing down to these Midianite gods.

God has said, Numbers 15:30, “But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people.” Yet this man is carrying out his sin in the sight of the whole camp, and without a care.

God has said to Moses and Aaron, Num. 3:38, “guard the sanctuary…protect the people of Israel. And any outsider who [comes] near [they are] to be put to death.” Yet this man is bringing a Midianite woman right past the Holy sanctuary, threatening to defile it as they pursue their end.

Worldliness feigns ignorance, yes? Godliness respondsto God’s word. Phinehas knows what God had to say about these things. So, again, he takes his spear.

Lastly, Worldliness experiences God and goes on unmoved, yes? Phinehas, as Aaron’s grandson, member of this second generation of Israelites, had seen all that God had done, heard all that God had said, throughout the years of the wilderness wanderings. And he did not go unmoved by them. He became captivated by the glory of God through them, and jealous for the spread of his glory in the world. As we read in 25:11, Phinehas did what he did out of jealousy for God’s name. His heart won over to God’s.

What are the marks of godliness?

Godliness opposes sin from the start.
Godliness responds to God’s word.
Godliness is jealous for God.
PromisesSo, we’ve got Balaam and worldliness on one side. Phinehas and godliness on the other. In between, promises given to the godly. Briefly, one of the most encouraging things to note regarding these God-given oracles of Balaam in chapters 23-24 is that for the most part, they’re simply reaffirming the promises God has already made to this people before.

For example: To Abraham he said, Gen. 22:17,

“I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.”

Numbers 23:10,

“Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel.”

Ex. 29:45,

“I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.”

Numbers 23:21 reads,

“The Lord their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them.”

Gen. 22:17,

“…Your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies”

Num. 24:8,

“God brings him out of Egypt…he shall eat up the nations, his adversaries,”

The fact that God is reiterating his promise here should greatly encourage us. For though this first generation has proven faithless, God remains faithful. His promises still stand though the first generation failed to receive them. For, as 23:19 states,

“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”

God never fails to keep his promises. Which means that, as his new covenant people, when Jesus says things to us, like John 10:27-30:

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand..”

And we think, “well, yeah, but what about my inadequacy? My failings? My sin? Won’t my shortcomings erode God’s promise to me? In the midst of such worry and anxiety, we remember:

“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”

A Coming KingNow, I had said that most of these promises simply reaffirm the promises God has already made to this people. But what brings us to the table this morning is the introduction of a new promise here in Numbers. The promise of a coming king.

In 24:17, we read:

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed; Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed. Israel is doing valiantly. And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivors of cities!”

This coming king will rise up out of Jacob. This coming king will crush the enemies of God’s people. And indeed, he already has. And in this season of Advent, we’re waiting for him once more. What brings us to the table this morning is the reality that King Jesus has come and disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame. He has crushed our greatest enemy, death itself, through his own death and resurrection, in which robbed the grave and stole Hell’s keys, and now bids us all, “Come to me, and I will give you eternal life.”

This meal which represents Jesus’ broken body and shed blood is a meal for those who love this King Jesus. So if you’re here today and you’ve trusted in Jesus, then we invite you to take and eat. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass for now, but encourage you in this moment, turn to Jesus and receive this King and his promises offered to you.

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Numbers 21:4-9,

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

What do you want from me?!

This is a question that’s probably been asked more than once, but I’m thinking about a scene in one of my favorite movies, Simon Birch. It’s a good movie; you should go watch it; I won’t ruin it for you; but there’s this one scene when Simon, a 12-year-old kid, is visiting the grave of his best friend’s mom. It’s in the evening and Simon is alone at her grave; he is blaming himself for her death; and his best friend, Joe, is looking for him. And in the distance, Joe is calling his name, Simon! Simon! And Simon hears his name but thinks it’s God talking to him, so he looks up in the sky and says, “I’m right here. What do you want from me?” It’s a great scene.

Have you ever asked God that question? You ever wondered it?

I think we all have — or we will — come to certain places at certain times in our lives where we just want to know as plainly as possible, “God, what do you want from me?”

Well, this morning, I think we find the answer to that question in Numbers 20–21, and put most simply here it is: God wants your faith.

Whoever you are, if you want to live, God wants your faith. And in today’s sermon, I want to show you how Numbers 20–21 make this clear. Let’s pray:

Father in heaven, we ask now, with your Word open before us, that you would help us open wide our hearts to you and what you want to do in these moments. Speak to us and accomplish what you will, in Jesus’s name, amen.

The first thing made clear in these chapters is …

God wants your faith whoever you are.Now a lot has happened since the last time I preached. It was only three Sundays ago, but we’ve covered Chapters 13–19, which means almost 40 years have passed in this story. Throughout those years, the people of Israel have been in the wilderness of Paran as the consequence of God’s judgment. And that wilderness judgment, remember, goes back to Chapters 13–14.

Chapters 13–14 are really important in the Book of Numbers. Back in Chapter 13, remember, God tells Moses to send 12 spies into the Promised Land, one spy for each of the tribes of Israel, and these spies were supposed to go into the Promised Land to see if the land was good or bad, and if the people who lived in the land were strong or weak.

Well, after 40 days of this spy mission, the 12 spies return to Moses and the people, and they all said the land was good, but 10 of the spies said the people in the land were too strong for Israel to overcome. They said that if Israel attempted to go into the land, they would be destroyed. But then two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, disagreed and said, No, we shouldn’t be scared! Let’s take the land. God will give it to us.

And so, of the 12 spies, the two spiesCaleb and Joshua represented faith and courage, the 10 other spies representedunbelief and fear — and the people sided with the 10. All the people rebel. They don’t trust God. And so God brings judgment. He says that every person who is part of the people of Israel from 20 years old and upward — everyone except Caleb and Joshua — are gonna die in the wilderness.

God sentences the people to 40 years in the wilderness — one year for each day the spies were spying out the Promised Land. That’s what has been going on from Chapters 15–19.

Miriam and Aaron DieAnd we see at the beginning of Chapter 20 that this 40 years is coming to a close. We are now in the first month of the 40th year, which means we are about to turn the page. A transition is coming.

We see the hint of this transition right away in the death of Miriam, Moses’s sister, in Chapter 20, verse 1. The story doesn’t elaborate anything here, it’s just one sentence, but this is important. Y’all find this sentence with me. Chapter 20, verse 1. And the very end of verse 1:

“And Miriam died there and was buried there.”

Why is this important? Well it’s because Miriam, along with Moses and Aaron, were leaders among the people — Aaron was the high priest, and Miriam was a prophetess and song leader. Well, Chapter 20 starts with her death, now look how Chapter 20 ends. Skip to Chapter 20, verse 28. I think you need to see this too. Chapter 20, verse 28,

“And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar his son. And Aaron died there on the top of the mountain.”

So Chapter 20 starts and finishes with “And Miriam died there…” and “And Aaron died there…”

There’s been a lot of death over these almost 40 years, but now it’s the leaders. Two of these leaders die; they don’t enter the Promised Land; now only Moses remains — but we need to look closer at Moses in Chapter 20.

Moses Does Not Make ItChapter 20 is where we find the famous tragic story of Moses striking the rock. It’s almost an exact repeat of a story in Exodus 17, and it starts with the same situation we’ve seen over and over again with these people: The people have a need; they think God won’t meet the need; so what do the people do? — They complain. They whine. They grumble. They shake their fists at God. And Moses says, God, what do I do?

Well, in Exodus 17 when the people were thirsty and did this, God told Moses to strike a rock, which made water gush out, and God provided for the people in this amazing way.

But here, in Numbers 20, verse 8, look what God says to Moses. We need to read this carefully. Numbers 20:8,

“…and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 8Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.”

Y’all double-check me here, but does anybody see the word “strike” in Numbers 20, verse 8? …

God tells Moses to speak to the rock. Agree?

Well look what happens in verse 10. Moses got the people together and said, verse 10:

…“Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.

And it seems like, Oh, okay. That worked out. But then look what God says in verse 12:

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

Heads up: Moses doesn’t make it into the Promised Land.

This is a big deal, and the Bible wants to make this clear. We don’t just see this here, but it’s said again in Numbers 27:12, in Deuteronomy 3:26, in Deuteronomy 32:51 — Moses does not make it!

Whoever You AreMoses will die in the wilderness because, according to the text, he does not believe God. That is what the text tells us, and I don’t think we need to speculate more details than what we’re told.

If we’re reading carefully, we see that Moses does something different in verse 11 from what God says in verse 8 — he doesn’t speak to the rock, he strikes the rock — and then God says in verse 12, “you did not believe in me.”

Later on, referring to this event, in Numbers 27, God says Moses rebelled against his word; in Deuteronomy 32, God says Moses broke faith with him in the midst of the people.

So the Bible makes this clear: Moses did not believe God, which was evidenced in that he did not do what God said, and that’s why Moses didn’t make it into the Promised Land.

Which means, God wants your faith whoever you are. It doesn’t even matter if you’re Moses … or Miriam or Aaron. It doesn’t matter who you are, God wants your faith.

At the very least, this gives us some wonderful clarity, because it means that from the greatest men and women to ever live, to the simplest person you could ever imagine, God requires the same thing. He wants every type of person to trust him.

So, get this: for everyone in this room, you don’t have to wonder what God wants from you, because what he wants from you the same thing he wants from every human, whoever they are. God wants your faith. He wants you to trust him, which means you do what he says.

So we’re all in this together: whatever we got going on, wherever we’re coming from, God wants our faith whoever we are. Chapter 20 makes that clear. Now let’s look at Chapter 21.

God wants your faith if you want to live. We’re gonna focus here on verses 4–9. You heard it read earlier, but let me set up the scene for you. We have another situation yet again when the people became impatient and they spoke against God and against Moses. They did the whole: You brought us out of Egypt to die here! There’s no food and no water!

And Chapter 21, verse 6 shows us God’s response. It’s straightforward. This just happens. Ya’ll look at Chapter 21, verse 6. You’re gonna wanna see this. Chapter 21, verse 6:

“Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”

Now this is just one verse and the story moves on right away, but wait a minute! Can you imagine this? “Fiery serpents” is another way to say poisonous snakes — these are the kind of snakes that if they bite you, you die. And this makes sense to us because these kind of snakes exists today. Snakes like the black mamba, king cobra, saw-scaled viper, diamondback rattlesnake — these are snakes that when they bite you, they inject hemotoxins into your body that destroy your red blood cells; your blood clots, it basically turns into concrete, and you die in agony. Can we give thanks to God that we don’t have any of these snakes in MN? I know people complain about the cold, but it’s a good thing we don’t have poisonous snakes. It wasn’t like that for me growing up in North Carolina.

We were doing an ice-breaker question at a big staff meeting a few weeks ago, and the question was about your greatest fear. And if I’m honest, since I was a kid I’ve had this fear that a snake would be hiding under the rim of a toilet, waiting for me. Just imagine that. … When you least imagine it, bitten.

That kind of thing is happening in Numbers 21. It’s snakebites everywhere, and it’s not that these snakes magically appeared, but they had most likely already been in the land. There are a few other places in the Torah where God mentions the wild animals in the land (see Exodus 23:29; Deuteronomy 7:22); and in Leviticus 26:22, God says that as a curse for disobedience, he will “let loose the wild beasts against you.” I think that’s what’s happening here. Up to now, God has been restraining these creatures from harming the people, but now, as judgment, God let’s them loose, and it’s mayhem. Look what the people do in verse 7:

And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

And God answers the prayer. He is going to send salvation to the people, but notice the unusual way God does this in verse 8. … God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, set it up on a pole, and whoever is bitten, if they look at the bronze serpent, they’ll live. That’s the only way to survive. I want you to see this in verse 9. Verse 9 says:

“So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”

Now it’s pretty straightforward what you’re supposed to do if your snakebitten, but the question is: Why?

Why did God do it like this?

It seems unreasonable to us, maybe even a little bit absurd in this context, that God would bring healing from a curse by looking at a symbol of that curse.

We don’t know exactly why this way — we just know this is what God said and if you’re snakebitten you better do what God says — which means you trust him — if you want to live!

So yeah, it might not make a lot of sense to you. You might have all kinds of questions, but how many questions do you wanna ask while your blood is turning into concrete!?!?

The fact is, when you realize that you’ve been snakebitten — when you get the severity of your situation — the only thing you wanna do is look! Where’s the bronze serpent?! I gotta see it! I just have to see it!

John Calvin comments on this passage that this whole thing showcases “the peculiar virtue of faith, that we should willingly be fools, in order that we may learn to be wise only from the mouth of God.”

Calvin says, and I agree, that God is offending human reason on purpose, so that it’s crystal clear that it’s not ourselves who rescue us, but it’s only by the grace of God.

This whole scene, then, is an amazing picture of faith in Jesus — and you don’t have to take Calvin’s word for it, because Jesus himself told us this.

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, one of the most famous passages in the Bible, Jesus says this amazing sentence. He says:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

And I think the connection here is multi-layered. In a way, Jesus lifted up on the cross is like the bronze serpent on the pole — the symbol of judgment becomes the source of life. And this lifting up was not just the actual event of the crucifixion, but it’s the telling of that event; it’s the preaching of Jesus. Jesus lifted up is our witness to Jesus.

But the main connection that Jesus is making is not between himself and the bronze serpent, but it’s about what we do — it’s that we must believe! The deeper connection in what Jesus says is between us and the people of Israel, and it’s that we’re all snakebitten. We’re all sinners who are under a curse and we’re condemned. We’ve been separated from God and we are going to die, and the only thing you can do — if you wanna live — is look! Look to Jesus!

Don’t look to yourself. Don’t look to how good you are or to how many decent things you’ve done or to how smart you might be. Don’t look to others — to who your family is or who your friends are or to what others think of you. Don’t look anywhere else. Just look to Jesus. Trust in Jesus — if you want to live. That’s what Numbers 21 is telling us.

And this is something that I think we need to settle. Just get this clear in our hearts. Whenever we find ourselves in a place where we wonder: God, what do you want from me? If we’re ever looking up to heaven saying that — Here I am! What do you want?

Here’s the answer that is true every time: God wants your faith. Whoever you are, if you want to live, trust in Jesus Christ.

And if you think all this sounds simple, it’s supposed to. This is God’s word for us today. Some of you who have been walking with Jesus for a long time, hear this again: keep trusting him. Keep looking to him, for eternal life and all its details here.

And for others of you who are snakebitten and condemned, what are you doing? You’re looking to all these others things, but they will not give you life. This morning, I’m lifting Jesus high for you! Look to him! It could mean that you pray a straightforward prayer like this:

Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m sorry for trying.

I believe you died on the cross and are raised from dead for me.

I trust you. Save me.

That is a prayer of faith, and it’s what God calls us to as his people, and that’s how we come to this Table.

The TableAt the Lord’s Table, we as God’s people remember the death of Jesus and give him thanks.

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The passage that we just read comes at the end of a section of narrative in Numbers. It comes right in the middle of the whole section we will cover this morning, which is Numbers 16-19. Not only does it come in the middle of the chapters for this morning, it comes right at the middle of the book of Numbers as a whole.

We see at the heart of the book of Numbers, which has been a theme in the Pentateuch as a whole, the question of how can an unholy people come near a Holy God? Or vise versa, how can a Holy God come and dwell in the midst of a sinful people, without them being consumed by his Holy justice?

We have seen this focus in the books of Moses (the first 5 book of the Bible). The book placed right in the middle is Leviticus, which gives instruction about sacrifices, laws, and the duties of the priests. And right at the heart of that book, right in the middle, is instructions for the Day of Atonement, where the priest once a year will enter behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy place, to make atonement for the sins of the nation.

So it is not a coincidence that the tabernacle and the priesthood seem to take center stage, once again, in the book of Numbers. We will return to that theme at the end this morning. But first, we are going to look at what comes prior to this story, and what comes after it.

In Chapter 16, we see three distinct acts of judgement connected with rebellion, grumbling and unbelief. After the three acts of judgement, we will look at three provisions from God for the people of Israel in Chapters 17, 18, and 19. That is the high level outline this morning; 3 acts of judgment, and 3 acts of provision.

Would you pray with me as we get started?

Three acts of Judgment from God (Ch. 16:1-40, 41-50)Hear again verses 12 and 13,

“And the people of Israel said to Moses, “Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Everyone who comes near, who comes near the tabernacle of the LORD, shall die. Are we all to perish?”

This is the desperate question we see in response to all that has happened in chapters 16 and 17. Death, because of God’s judgment related to sin, is all over the camp. So let’s look back at the acts of judgment that led up to the people crying out to Moses. The first story incapsulates two of these acts of wrath.

Korah’s Rebellion (Numbers 16:1–19)Numbers 16:1-19,

Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?”

When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Korah and all his company, “In the morning the LORD will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him. Do this: take censers, Korah and all his company; put fire in them and put incense on them before the LORD tomorrow, and the man whom the LORD chooses shall be the holy one. You have gone too far, sons of Levi!”

And Moses said to Korah, “Hear now, you sons of Levi: is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the LORD and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that he has brought you near him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? And would you seek the priesthood also? Therefore it is against the LORD that you and all your company have gathered together. What is Aaron that you grumble against him?”

And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and they said, “We will not come up. Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also make yourself a prince over us? Moreover, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up.” And Moses was very angry and said to the LORD, “Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, and I have not harmed one of them.”

And Moses said to Korah, “Be present, you and all your company, before the LORD, you and they, and Aaron, tomorrow. And let every one of you take his censer and put incense on it, and every one of you bring before the LORD his censer, 250 censers; you also, and Aaron, each his censer.” So every man took his censer and put fire in them and laid incense on them and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron. Then Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the glory of the LORD appeared to all the congregation.

Korah, who was a leader among the Levites, has banded together with Dathan and Abiram, who are leaders from the tribe of Rueben. They have gathered 250 well-known leaders, from the whole camp to come and rebel against the leadership of Moses and Aaron. This is not a small group of complainers, this an organized revolt that has a sizable group with it. Besides the leaders mentioned, there are 250 well-known leaders that have joined in along with them.

We need to see a few things here to appreciate the magnitude of what is going on. First lets do a historical fly by. Here we’ll see revelation and rivalry…

Starting back in Genesis, in Genesis 49, Jacob calls his 12 sons together so that he may tell them “what shall happen to [them] in days to come.” And in his speaking to each of them, it says that he “blessed them, blessing each with a blessing suitable to him.”

Genesis 49gives us prophetic blessings,that fit his sons and will play out in the coming generations. It gives usrevelation into the coming days. There are three things to see in the first few blessings:

To Rueben, the firstborn, he says: “[you are] preeminent in power, but you will not have preeminence”
To Levi, he says: Their “weapons of violence are their swords.” Their anger is fierce and their wrath, cruel. God says: “I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”
To Judah, he says: “your brothers shall praise you.” “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.”

Exodus 32gives us a glimpse of this playing out for the Levites. This is the infamous story of the golden calf. Moses has been up on the mountain for a while and the people become restless. Along with Aaron, they make themselves an image to worship. Moses comes down and sees the wickednesses of the camp and how Aaron has let them stray.

Moses says, “‘Who is on the LORD’s side? Come to me’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.” They are then commanded to slaughter the wickedness around them and about 3,000 fell that day. And Moses said,

“…today you have been ordained for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of his son and his brother, so that He [God] might bestow a blessing upon you this day.” (Exodus 32:29).

The Levites are blessed for their faithfulness to God and execute his judgement. We see their warrior-like fierceness, and an ordaining that will fulfill what is said back in Genesis.

Numbers 2gives us a glimpse of these “prophetic blessings” playing out for the tribes of Judah and Rueben. As the camp is ordered, Judah is placed in the first position over all his brothers, first in the first camp which will be on the east. While Rueben is listed as first in the camp on the south side, the second camp.

This is the same order used when it comes to Numbers 7 with the contributions for the tabernacle. Judah goes first. The firstborn tribe of Reuben is not the leader, the tribe of Judah is.

In Numbers 3,we see the redeeming of the firstborn from all the tribes. So rather than all the firstborns, being taken to serve before the Lord, they are redeemed and replaced by all the sons of Levi. The firstborns of the tribes are swapped out for the whole tribe of Levi. Service of the Lord before the tabernacle is concentrated under the Levites. So what may have been brewing for quite some time, is rivalry among family as God’s revelation starts to take place. God has chosen leaders different than the natural order.

And it just so happens, that Korah, Dathan and Abiram all camp together in the south camp, so they have had some time to talk. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram suspect that Moses and Aaron have carved out their own position of power, which they think they have equal or greater right to. (But we have seen this many times already in scripture, that God’s choosing is not restricted by natural order. And there issue is ultimately with God, although they focus the blame on Moses and Aaron).

We see their astounding wickedness.Last week Pastor Mike Schumann highlighted how unbelief adds and removes things from what is true. And in this passage we see much of the same: They disregard God’s choosing and say that Moses and Aaron have gone too far by exalting themselves over the people of Israel. Their plea is that “everyone is Holy,” yet they really just want to lead. They are suspicious and suspect that Moses and Aaron seek to punish or kill the men who have confronted them by exposing their ploy for power over the people of Israel. They say: “Will you put out the eyes of these men?” They describe Moses as making himself prince over them, so they won’t take any of his commands anymore… “Don’t tell us to come up to the tabernacle.”

They give a jaw dropping account of what has transpired:

“Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also make yourself prince over us?” (Num. 16:13).

A land flowing with milk and honey in the Bible is exclusively used to describe the promised land, that they refused to go into only a few chapters earlier. And here, this wicked rebellion describes Egypt as a land flowing with milk and honey that Moses has taken the people from.

This is absolutely stunning, I don’t even know what to say…

We see the power of sin and unbelief.We either have men who have been jealous of Moses and Aaron this whole time, despite God’s provision through them again and again, and now see an opportunity to overthrow them because they have not received the Promise Land… They are unchanged by example after example of God’s grace….Or, we have sin and unbelief that is so potent that these men change their opinion of all that has happened. They so quickly see it all differently now, because they don’t like their circumstances. Their unbelief darkens them to all God has done, and in borderline blasphemy, they call Egypt “a land flowing with milk and honey!”

A word for us here: Be careful to not get caught up in the sins of others. Gossip, slander, grumbling. Do not get entangled in the sin of others. A few men of the camp, maybe talking to much around the campfire, ended up gathering 250 known leaders, which will lead to the demise of them all.

So the rebellion, with leaders from the tribe of Levi, and Reuben, and 250 other notable leaders, who likely have natural first born privileges, contend with Moses and Aaron, and this is taking place in two different places, with two different challenges. And the Lord will respond with 2 different and fitting judgements. You have the 250, with Korah standing before the tabernacle, and you have Dathan and Abiram staying in their own camp.

These two locations highlight two different challenges to Moses and Aaron. One to Aaron and his Priesthood, and one to Moses and authority.

Korah, a leading Levite, desires to lead the Priesthood and kick Aaron aside. Dathan and Abiram, are done taking instructions from Moses and seek to lead.

And as the stage is set “the glory of the LORD appeared to all the congregation.” The Lord tells Moses and Aaron to separate so that God can consume them all. Moses pleads for the people to not be killed based on one mans rebellion. God tells them to command the people to separate from the camp of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. So Moses goes to them and commands the people to separate, and says, verses 28-30,

“Hereby you shall know that the LORD has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the LORD has not sent me. But if the LORD creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the LORD”.

And immediately as Moses finishes speaking, the Lord acts in judgement. To those who contend against the leadership of Moses, and seek to exalt themselves over the Lord's chosen, they are brought down alive into the earth.

And to those who contended against Aaron as the high priest, their incense is not accepted and, verse 35, “a fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men.”

This was a terrible and fearful day in the camp of Israel, a significant rebellion which was against God, experiences of just wrath directly from Him. God defends Moses and Aaron. We would think that the people now see, but it is about to get worst. Verse 41,

“But on the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron and said ‘You have killed the people of the LORD.’”

The very next day, those who survived put their lot in with those who were judged in Korah’s rebellion, and sided with them! One of the literary themes in this passage is the assembly of God versus the assembly of Korah. Those who belong to Yahweh, and those who “belong to Korah.”

The very next day the people cry out and complain that Moses and Aaron have killed the true people of the LORD. Then the glory of the Lord appeared again. God tells Moses and Aaron to separate from the people again, and they hear that a plague has already started to wipe out the people.

Moses commands Aaron to light his censor from off the altar and to run into the midst of the people, to make atonement for them, and he ran and stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stopped. And when the plague had subsided, he returned to Moses. 14,700 died that day, in addition to all who were killed the day before.

Here is the scary thing: Our hearts have the same seeds of sin and unbelief as Israel in the wilderness. They have that same capacity for wickedness, slander and unbelief. If not for the grace of God, we would fall into the same suspicion, the same grumbling, they same self-deception, the same unbelief. Our ability to deceive ourselves should be terrifying. Apart from God’s grace and work, that is the capacity of your heart!

You need to see that. You need to understand that. And when you do, the grace and rescue of Jesus looks like amazing news. We understand the “power of the gospel for salvation.” It was no small thing to save you, it took supernatural power, for God to overcome your sin and your heart, so that you may be alive, to see and believe in him. And not have eyes that are so blind to his grace and provision over and over again.

Death is all over the camp of Israel. But God is committed to his people. And in chapters 17, 18, and 19, we see three provisions for Israel which bring hope and stability.

Three acts of provisions for life from God (Ch. 17, 18, 19).Provision of the priest, provision for the levites, and provision for the rest of the camp.
God Reaffirms leadership and the priesthood in the camp (Ch. 17).God reestablished the order that was for Israel’s good. The wheels have been coming off, it was all falling apart, and God reestablished order out of increasing chaos. He does not abandon his plan or try something different, but he establishes again the order of the community that was given prior and brings it back into shape and form.

12 staffs are brought, one from each tribe of Israel. Aaron’s staff is placed among them and they are all brought into the tent of meeting, so that God will show his people who is Holy and who he has chosen by making their staff bud.

Aaron’s staff alone is chosen, it not only buds, but bears fruit and undeniably shows that the Lord has still chosen Aaron and the Levites to be near his house.

And God says, verse 10,

“Put back the staff of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels, that you may make an end of their grumbling against me, lest they die.”

God graciously gives the people a sign of his chosen leadership, and it is a perpetual sign tohold back the grumblings of rebels so they don’t die.

Much like the censors of the 250 that were taken and hammered out as a cover for the altar, to remind and warn the people that only the sons of Aaron can come near and offer incense on the altar.

These signs don’t remove the wickedness in Israel, but are described as holding it back, stopping it from breaking through to cause death.

God reaffirms the duties of the priests and Levites (Ch. 18).Numbers 18:1–3,

So the LORD said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your father’s house with you shall bear iniquity connected with the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear iniquity connected with your priesthood. And with you bring your brothers also, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may join you and minister to you while you and your sons with you are before the tent of the testimony. They shall keep guard over you and over the whole tent, but shall not come near to the vessels of the sanctuary or to the altar lest they, and you, die.”

The Levites will serve with the priest, they will guard and help, and bear the burden together. There is mutual responsibility, a failure in duty could cause both to die. And they will serve as a buffer between God and the people.

God also gives provisions to the Levites, because they will not have an inheritance in the land. They will be provided for by what is brought to the Lord. And as we zoom forward toNumbers 35 we see this fulfilled as they are given cities throughout the land, but not given their own portion.

Sound familiar?

Genesis 49,“I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”

We see the fulfilling of what was spoken of them back in Genesis. They are a warring people that will be scattered among the people of Israel, but they also stood by Moses and the Lord at the golden calf, and have been ordained to the burden and privilege of serving before the Lord.

God provides purification from death to enter back into the camp (Ch. 19).Numbers 19:2–5,

“This is the statute of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish, and on which a yoke has never come. And you shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. And Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall be burned.”

There are some similarities in this offering and the offering on the Day of Atonement. Both involve action outside of the camp and both are entrance rites. The Day of Atonement sacrifices were to cleanse the priest so he may enter the Most Holy place. The red heifer ashes were to cleanse those who had been near death so that they may be cleansed and return back into the camp.

The Lord provided entrance back into the camp for those who were ceremonially unclean.

Only through the Priesthood of AaronBefore we close, we need to return to the miracle of Aaron’s staff flowering, and what it means.

For Israel, God is saying: Only Aaron and his sons may come near … Aaron’s staff buds, shoots, blossoms and bears fruit. The other staffs remain dead sticks. There aren’t many ways to the presence of Yahweh. Only through a sacrifice for sin mediated through whom God has chosen. And when Israel saw this, they responded with great fear.

But, God is also saying: I will bless all the people through Aaron and his sons. Them coming near to God was not for them alone, but for all the people.

It was not asign of death on the other leaders, but a sign of life for all through the mediation of the Levites. Aaron will stand in the gap between death and life for them.

There is another place in which we have heard a description like this before. Of branches, and blossoms and fruit. It’s the golden lampstand, with its seven branches and cups like almonds blossoms.

The lampstand gave light to the Holy place, and shined on the 12 loaves of bread that represent the tribes. The priests were also to put Yahweh’s name on the people of Israel by saying “may the Lord bless you, and keep you, may the LORD makes his face to shine upon you...”

Aaron’s staff shows once again that the Lord through His priests will abundantly bless his people and will shine on them. There is abundant life and blessing that is still offered to the people of Israel. God has not left his people, He will still dwell in their midst, and he will hold back their sin until he one day conquers and removes it for good.

And we have the greater reality. Jesus stands in the gap for us, between life and death, but more than holding back sin and death, he defeats it. God will bless us, and keep us, and make His face to shine upon us, but only through the mediation of Jesus. Jesus is the only way back to God.

Israel problem wasn’t their circumstances, it was their unbelieving hearts. Better food won’t make them believe, better land won’t make them believe, rescue from wrath over and over won’t make them believe. And apart from Christ, our hearts are the same. But God, through Christ, has given us new hearts. And because of this, we will make it though our own wilderness. We won’t make it because God gives us favorable circumstances, but because we have faith in the Son of God who loved us and died for us.

The TableThe only way to be reconciled to God is through Jesus. And that is what this table represents. Jesus’s sacrifice cleanses our consciences, and gives us new hearts. Hebrew 9 says exactly this as it looks back at Numbers 19. It says:

“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

His life, death, and resurrection is for you. If you believe in Jesus, you are welcome to this table.

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In Numbers 13, we find God’s chosen people in Paran, standing on the verge of the Promised Land of Canaan. And we might imagine standing in anticipation, waiting, looking off in the distance, for the site of twelve men. For 39 days they’ve been awaiting these 12 men. Now it is day 40, and the twelve men begin to appear on the horizon.

From the way it looks, these twelve men are not empty-handed. Far from it, in fact. Some of them are hauling sacks of pomegranates. Others are carrying baskets of figs. At least two of them are shouldering a pole from which hangs a cluster of grapes larger than anything they’ve ever seen before.

The 12 men reach the outer camp, move in toward the center where they find Moses and Aaron, and then, begin to share the news of all they’ve seen throughout their 40-day exploration in the Promised Land.

Numbers 13:27, ”And they told him [Moses], “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit…” But before smiles can appear among the people, and relief and rejoicing can erupt within the camp, downlike a hammer falls the killer of all good news…the word however.

“We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However…” However what?

Verse 28,

“However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan...”

The land is good, say the twelve…however…

In this morning’s sermon, we’re going to witness one of the greatest tragedies ever told. A tragedy not brought on by famine, disease, or sword. But by a far graver foe. One that had been lurking within each one of those Israelites waiting in the wilderness that day, and, in varying degrees, lurks in each and every one of us here this morning.

And that is unbelief. Unbelief. And for those who are helped by outlines, this story is going to teach us four things about unbelief: (1) What unbelief cuts out, (2) adds in, (3) and leads to, and (4) how we should respond to unbelief. What unbelief cuts out, adds in, and leads to, and how we should respond to it.

So, the report given by the spies is that the land is good, however… And with that one word “however,” at least 10 of those 12 total spies betray their forgone conclusion that what lies before them in Canaan is not a land of promise, but a land of sure and certain death.

Well, upon reception of such a foreboding report, you could imagine the people begin to pick up on the doubts of those ten men. They begin to exchange glances with one another. Whispers are heard. A general sense of gloom begins to spread amongst the camp.

Caleb, one of the other spies, stands up and tries to quiet the growing sense of despair, but his voice is quickly drowned out by the other ten who counter, Numbers 13:31, “We are not able to go up against the people, for…” and now just pause.

What’s going on here? Why has the mood so suddenly changed? Unbelief has descended upon the camp. And what does it cause the people to do?

We said this story is going to teach us four things about unbelief. Here’s the first…

What Unbelief Cuts OutSee, because here’s the thing, this peoples’ unbelief in this moment — “We are not able to go up against the people” — is not taking place within a historical vacuum. Like, they weren’t all just suddenly dropped into Paran without a backstory. They’ve not just been heading out to the Promised Land on a whim.

But what unbelief has done, in a matter of seconds, it seems, is cut out from these peoples’ minds the memory of all the Lord their God has told them regarding this land — namely, the fact that for over the last 800 years, God has been assuring them, “I am going to give this land to you.” Stretching all the way back to the day God first spoke to their father Abraham, Genesis 12:7, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

And spoke again to him in Genesis 13:15, 17:

“For all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever…Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”

And again, to him, in Genesis 17:8:

“I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

And when Abraham was no more, God kept the promise going with Jacob, saying to him, Genesis 28:10-13:

“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring.”

And as Jacob’s people, the Israelites, traveled down in Egypt…and found themselves overpowered and enslaved there…even as all hope of their ever returning to the land seemed totally lost…even there God spoke to Moses from a burning bush, Exodus 3:17:

“I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

He even promised to Moses, Exodus 23:20-24:

Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared…“When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.”

Why just a few chapters back we heard Moses say to his father in law, Numbers 10:29,

“We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’ Come with us, and we will do good to you, for the Lord has promised good to Israel.”

And if that weren’t enough, just forty days earlier, just as these twelve were setting out, God spoke to Moses, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel.”

I mean, how many times is God going to say it? “I’m going to give it to you — you just have to trust me!”

But when push comes to shove, they won’t. They won’t. Instead, in an act of high-handed, widespread, shocking unbelief, the people pull an Adam and Eve — we trust our understanding concerning this thing, not yours. Unbelief, my brothers and sisters, is an old, old story.

What does unbelief do? First, unbelief cuts out all recollection of God’s promises to us, wipes them from our memory, causes spiritual amnesia to the point where we say, “We are not able to go up against the people…In fact, we’re not sure why we ever thought we could.”

What does unbelief do? First, unbelief cuts out all recollection of God’s promises to us. And, unbelief cuts out all recollection of God’s presence with us.

God HimselfLook with me again at Numbers 13:31,

“We are not able to go up against the people, fortheyare stronger than we are.”

Notice, theyare stronger than we. “But where is God?” He’s entirely absent from view. All the people instead is usand them and no other. Which is amazing considering that this whole scene is unfolding before Moses and Aaron who, as we’re told earlier in Numbers, camp just outside The Tent of Meeting.

So somewhere in the background of this whole thing are the Levites, the priests, the Tent of Meeting itself, and the cloud of God’s glory emanating out from it. But none of that makes any difference in this moment. For this people, it is as if they’ve suddenly awoken from a heavy sleep and concluded God’s presence among them had only been a dream.

And in such a godless frame of mind, all this people can arrive upon is a conclusion drawn by simple math, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” You ever do that kind of math? You ever forget to consider God and his power and promise over your life?

What does unbelief do? Unbelief cuts out all recollection of God’s promises to us, and God’s presence among us. That’s what unbelief cuts out. What does unbelief add in to fill the void?

What Unbelief Adds InSee if you can tell for yourself. Go with me to verse 32. Numbers 13:32-33,

“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

God, we might say, has a stabilizing effect when it comes to our understanding of the world. When he is in our worldview, and in its center, the peoples, places, and things all round him remain in proper size, scale, and proportion. But, when God is cut out, everything destabilizes — causing the peoples, places, and things around us to begin to balloon far out of proportion. To play off Ed Welch’s phrase, “when God becomes small, people become big.” That’s exactly what’s going on here.

With God cut out from view, the Israelites look upon the people in the land and think, “They look big. They look scary.” As we read in verse 33, “We seemed [when we looked upon them] to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” We seemed to ourselves like easy-to-squash bugs, and they thought the same.

What does unbelief add in? Unbelief adds in a picture of man the size of God himself. See, because here’s the thing: God has designed you and I to have God in our worldview. Should we choose to take him out, the position of deity does not vanish. It simply gets replaced by another. And right now, those peoples in Canaan have become that replacement. They’re larger than life in our minds. Before them, we’re tiny grasshoppers.

So, unbelief adds in a picture of man the size of God himself. It also adds in a distorted view of what life was like prior to God.

Distorted View of Life before GodTurn with me to Numbers 14:2,

“And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!”

Don’t miss this. They’re basically saying, “Our life in Egypt as slaves was better than life right now with God. And our life would’ve been better had God never intervened. And if God would’ve just minded his own business and left us alone, oh how much simpler and easier things could have been for us. But it’s only been since God’s taken over that all these problems have come in.”

This is a distorted view of what life was like prior to God. A view that labels God, rather than our sin, as the problem. Unbelief peppers us with this distortion of memory, in order to add in its final, most vile ingredient of all — the view of God as our enemy.

God as enemyNumbers 14:3,

“Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey.”

Who is God in this picture?

A God who tells his people of a good land, only to bring them into a land that, verse 32, “devours inhabitants.” A God who lifts his peoples’ hopes up high, only to send them crashing down. A God not of bless you and keep you, lift up his countenance and give you peace, but curse you and disappoint you, lift up his anger and pour out his wrath to you.

See, with God’s good promises and good presence cut out. Unbelief pulls a slight of hand — adding in man as God, the view of life without God as the good life, and a skewed picture of a god whose only enjoyment is to bring us pain. Have you ever found yourself picturing God this way?

That’s what unbelief cuts out and adds in. Now, third, what unbelief ultimately leads to.

What Unbelief Leads ToFor this I’ll have us go to verse 21. Numbers 14:21, where God says, “But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord...” — And you’ll want to note the irony there because there’s more of that coming — God says that all the earth, which includes Canaan, will be filled with his glory. The Israelites are making the claim that Canaan will continue to be filled with the glory of these enemy nations. God says, “No it won’t! My glory will go forth intoit, and, from there, into all the world.” “Truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord…[but]…” Verse 22,

“None of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it.”

But rather, verse 29:

“Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell,”

There were six hundred thousand men numbered in that census back in Numbers 1. Six hundred thousand men who were to follow the Lord wherever he called them. Six hundred thousand men who were to trust in the Lord no matter what enemy or danger laid before them. Six hundred thousand men who were so closeto finally experiencing the joy of seeing God’s promise to them fulfilled. Six hundred thousand men who’ll become six hundred thousand desert graves in as little as 40 years.

Where does unbelief lead to? Death apart from God.

To the people who had said, Numbers 14:2, “Would that we had died in this wilderness!” God says, “okay, you will.”

To the people who had said, “Our little ones will become a prey [if they follow God].” God says, no, they won’t, but, as verse 24 tells us, all of Caleb’s descendants will possess the land, and as the book of Joshua shows us, so will all of this generation’s descendants as well.

But as for them, they will die in the desert. So will all who ultimately fail to trust God. This is unbelief’s end — death apart from God.

So, we’ve seen what unbelief cuts out, adds in, and leads to. Fourth and finally, how should we respond to unbelief?

How to Respond to UnbeliefAnd it’s simply this: when unbelief threatens to cut out God’s promises and add in a false view of God, belief counters by taking hold of God’s promises and reassertingGod’s true revelation of himself. And that is exactly what Caleb and Moses do in this story.Taking hold of God’s promises and reasserting God’s true revelation of himself.

CalebWe see the taking hold of God’s promises with Caleb. And, you know, this is of special significance to me because I named my son after this man. (Which, in a way, is a feat, because as a former fifth grade teacher, you tend to have a lot of boys names already scratched from the list by the time it comes to naming your own child. Can’t name him that. Can’t name him that. Certainly can’t name him that.)

But when my wife and I went to name our son, we named him Caleb because, as his parents, we want him, and indeed all our children, to grow up and respond to unbelief like Caleb of Numbers 14 did. As one of your pastors, I too want all of us to grow more and more to respond to unbelief like Caleb of Numbers 14 did.

See, because when Caleb is outnumbered 10 to 1, and the ten are making that claim that, “The land is good, however…” Caleb does not buckle under the pressure. He doesn’t simply go along with the crowd. He stands up and says, Numbers 13:30,

“Let us go up at once and occupy it for we are well able to overcome it.”

And when he hears, Numbers 13:32, “this is a land that devoursits inhabitants.” He responds, Numbers 14:7,

“The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey.”

Caleb knows that this is precisely what God has already promised to do for them. And when cowardice begins to claim, Numbers 13:33, “We were like grasshoppers compared to them.” Then with courage, he proclaims, Numbers 14:9, “Do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us...”

And when his fellow companions say, Numbers 14:3, “The Lord is bringing us [in] to fall by the sword,” he remembers the covenant, the tent of meeting, the cloud of glory and says, Numbers 14:9, “…Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us.”

Caleb shows us how to respond to unbelief by taking hold of God’s promises — “he’s going to bring us into the land just as he said he would.”

MOSESMoses shows us how to respond to unbelief by reasserting God’s true revelation of himself.

See, after the Israelites fail to trust God, God could’ve totally destroyed them right then and there. One reason he doesn’t is because Moses intercedes before God and pleads on their behalf. In so doing, he calls upon God’s passion for his glory among the peoples’, Numbers 14:15,

“Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say, ‘It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’”

Moses reasserts what he knows to be true about God — his desire to be glorified among the peoples’, and the fact that he’s hitched his glory to this particular people, Israel. He continues, verse 17:

“And now, please let the power of the Lord be greatas you have promised, saying,[so he’s reasserting what God has already revealed to him concerning himself, namely that he is, verse 18, the Lord who is]‘…slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”

Moses reasserts, God is not our enemy seeking to disappoint us and bring us pain. He is our God who is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and who pardons even this fallen, faithless, wayward people.

ApplicationHow do you respond to unbelief? You respond by taking hold of God’s promises, as Caleb did, and reasserting God’s true revelation of himself, as Moses did.

With that, I want to close with two brief notes of application — one for the Christians in this room, one for those here who’ve yet to trust Christ.

For Christians, ask yourself: where do you see unbelief in your life right now? You’ve trusted Jesus, he’s got a hold of you, and yet for all of us this morning there are yet areas of our life, areas of our heart, where unbelief still reigns. Where is it in you?

In your continuing to pursue pleasure in certain sins? Perhaps not believing if you were to fully and finally turn your back on that sin that God would be enough for you? If that is you, might God be calling you today to trust him to be enough to once-and-for-all put that sin away. To say, “God, I know that I will not lack so long as I’m with you.”

Is unbelief in your life in terms of a job you want, a spouse you want, a family you want? You’ve been trusting in God for some time now but recently you’ve felt the pull to stop trusting God and begin putting things into your own hands instead. Begin making little exceptions, little allowances, slight loosening of your morals, boundaries, and non-negotiables. If that is you, might God be calling you today to recommit your trust in him. To say, “God, I’ll continue to follow you whether you change my circumstances or not.”

Is unbelief in your life causing you to play it safe? To avoid risk? With regard to making disciples, with regard to living on mission, with regard to giving toward ministry to the unreached, or going yourself to do ministry to the unreached? If that is you, might God be calling you today to pray, seek counsel, and risk if God continues to say “go.” Say to God, “God, if you call me to go, I’ll go.”

Last word, for non-Christians. Might God be calling you to make today the day you first put your trust in him? I urge you, do not go another day in the wilderness of unbelief. Do not take another step toward death apart from God. Turn from self, turn to God, receive his invitation into the true promised land — heaven with God forever.

Now, in just a moment, we’re going to be joined up here by a few individuals who have, indeed, turned from self, turned to God, and received his invitation into the true promised land. And they’re wanting to be baptized as an outward demonstration of that inward reality. And as we witness these friends going down into the water and coming up again, let us remember, we who trust in God do not die in the wilderness apart from God. But rise to heaven to be with God forever. Let’s pray.

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When I was a teenager, one day I was hanging out with my friends at the mall, and I was filling out this form to win a new car. (We’ve all done that before, right?) You know there’s always those new cars at the mall, and you can win them for free — you just have to write down a lot of information. So that’s what I was doing, and then suddenly this mall-walker approached me and he says, “Son, what are you doing?”

I said, “I’m trying to win this car.”

He said, “Well did you read the fine print?!”

And I wasn’t very smart, but I was respectful, so I said: “No sir, I did not.”

And then, with a look of contempt on his face, he said, “And that is what is wrong with your generation!” And he turned around and mall-walked off.

And I’ve never entered another sweepstakes in my life. True story. What the man said landed. I don’t have time to read the fine print (who wants to do that?), but I also don’t want to be what’s wrong with my generation, so I just leave the whole thing alone.

But that’s not our approach to the Old Testament!Like the apostle Paul says, we believe that everything here has been written for our instruction, even the fine print, and that’s what we’re gonna look at today. And I’ll go ahead and tell you it’s not pretty. In just two chapters here, Chapters 11 and 12 — there are three different complaints; God’s anger is mentioned four times; and people die with food in their mouths.

The fine print is bad. It shows us a nation in decline, but that’s not what it would seem like at the end of Chapter 10.There’s a stark contrast in these chapters I want you to see: there’s the shiny new car on one hand, then there’s the fine print on the other hand, and then there’s what it means for us.

And that’s the outline for this sermon. If you like outlines, I’m going to call these movements. There are three movements we’re going to track in this story:

See the shiny new car
Read the fine print
Take something home

Father, thank you for your Word and for this gathering. We ask now for you to bless the unfolding of your word. Let there be light! In Jesus’s name, amen.

See the shiny new carSay you’re strolling through the Old Testament, in the Book of Numbers, and you come upon the end of Chapter 10. In verse 11, we read that Israel is finally, actually leaving Mount Sinai. The first ten chapters have been preparing for this, but now it’s happening. That cloud that is the manifestation of God’s presence begins to move, and verse 13 says, “at the command of the Lord by Moses” the people follow. And they follow in a certain order. The tribe of Judah is first in line.

Judah’s ProminenceWe begin to see in Numbers the emerging prominence of Judah, and it’s what we’d expect by now if we remember the Book of Genesis. If you remember, in Genesis 49, when Jacob blesses his 12 sons, he gives this amazing blessing to Judah. He says,

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Genesis 49:10).

Judah is special in God’s plan. This is the tribe that King David will be from, and eventually this is the tribe Jesus is from. Jesus is the Lion from the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), and we see Judah’s importance start to play out in Numbers. Judah is first.

Abrahamic PromiseBut not only that, look at Hobab in verse 29. Hobab is Moses’s brother-in-law, which means he was a Midianite (a Gentile). But look what Moses says to him in verse 29:

“We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’”

Bible quiz: Where did God first say he’d give this land to Israel? What book of the Bible?

Answer: Genesis. This is God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:7. Abraham was in the land of Canaan and God said to him, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Moses makes a direct quote of that promise. He knows about it. He says, verse 29:

“We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’ Come with us, and we will do good to you, for the Lord has promised good to Israel.”

Moses says this again in verse 32:

“And if you do go with us, whatever good the Lord will do to us, the same will we do to you.”

So get this: Moses is expecting that the Lord will do them good, and he’s saying to this Gentile that if he sticks with Israel, God’s blessing on Israel will be a blessing to him. Moses seems to think that through Israel the Gentiles will be blessed.

Bible quiz: Where does Moses get that idea? What book of the Bible?

Answer: Genesis. Again, this is in God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12! God told Abraham that he would bless him and make him a blessing. All the families of the earth — Gentiles — would be blessed through him.

And that is happening here! It’s like Moses has taken Genesis as his script, and he’s just checking off the boxes. The blessings are flowing. God is doing it!

This is a shiny, new car, and nothing makes that more obvious than verses 35 and 36. The fulfillment has begun, and you can kind of hear a good movie theme song in the background.

And whenever the ark set out, Moses said,

“Arise, O Yahweh, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you.” 36 And when it rested, he said, “Return, O Yahweh, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel.”

This is epic! Count me in! I’m ready to sign up and be part of this thing. Let’s go!

But wait a minute.

There’s some fine print. This is the second movement.

Read the fine printAnd I want you to see that it really does function like fine print in the storyline. Look back at Chapter 10, verse 12. I want you to see this. Chapter 10, verse 12.

Verse 12,

“…and the people of Israel set out by stages from the wilderness of Sinai. And the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran.”

This is their departure/arrival. They leave Sinai and settle in Paran. Got it?

Now turn over a couple of pages to Chapter 12, verse 16. Chapter 12:16,

“After that the people set out from Hazeroth, and camped in the wilderness of Paran.”

This is when they get to where we’ve already been told they end up. Chapter 12, verse 16 tells us the same thing that Chapter 10, verse 12 tells us. The people go from Sinai to Paran. From the high view, we already know this from Chapter 10; then Chapter 12 repeats it — so what’s the point of Chapters 11 and 12 in-between? Well it’s the fine print. The details.

Three Complaints to ComeAnd this is how it starts, 11:1,

“And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes…”

The Jurassic Park theme song is over and this is not good, but we need to pace ourselves here. This is the first of three complaints we read about in Chapters 11 and 12. For each complaint,

God responds in anger, Moses prays, and the place where it happened is given a name.

So we’re gonna track these complaints by the names. If you like to think in order, think of it like this: Sinai is where they’re starting from; Paran is where they arrive. And there are three stops in-between: Taberah, Kibroth-hattaavah, Hazeroth. (And those are all the Hebrew names transliterated in English, but for the meaning in English, these three places mean Burning, Craver’s Graveyard, Separation — and I’m gonna talk about them like that.) First …

Complaint #1 — Burning (11:1–3)We don’t have too many details here, just that the people complained about their “misfortunes” — and that word for misfortunes is actually the Hebrew word that means “evil.”

That’s how the Israelites were thinking about their hardships. They complained about the evil they had experienced, and immediately, if we’re reading carefully, we’re supposed to pick up on a contrast. Because in the previous chapter, just a few verses earlier, we read the word “good” three times. Moses says Yahweh has promised good to Israel, and with whatever good Yahweh does to Israel, they’ll do good to Hobab. It’s all good according to Moses. That’s God’s heart.

But then the people are complaining about evil. Hardship. Misfortune. And we don’t know exactly how they were complaining — maybe they were commiserating in small groups, maybe a guy was having a private conversation with his wife, maybe they were alone in their car in traffic — we don’t know, but however they did it, it was hatred of God.

They considered their situation to be evil, and they blamed God for it. And God heard it.(Because, heads up, God hears everything.)

And his fierce anger was kindled. In response, he sent fire among the people and burned up the outlying parts of the camp, which implies that if you were hanging out in the outlying parts of the camp, you were consumed by the fire. And this terrified the people. There’s fire around them! Is it gonna stop? Is it coming in?

So they cried to Moses; Moses prayed to the Lord; the fire died down; the place got its name.

All of this happens in three verses. Pretty straightforward. There’s not a lot of details on purpose.

Because this first complaint is meant to be a kind of preview for what’s to come. In case we got too excited about the end of Chapter 10 and we think we’re gonna win a shiny new car — because it takes less than two weeks to get from Sinai to Canaan, we got this! — well Chapter 11 opens by thumping us between the eyes and says: Not two weeks, try 40 years. This is going to be bad, and the problem is not God; the problem is the people. That’s what this place, the Burning, tells us. But now let’s look at the second complaint.

Complaint #2 — Craver’s Graveyard (11:4–35)This is kind of a spoiler alert, but this place is called Craver’s Graveyard. So good luck. There’s a lot of fine print here. I’ll be quick.

It starts with “the rabble.” I want you to see that word in Chapter 11, verse 4. Find that for just a second. 11:4 — the word “rabble.”

Verse 4,

“Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again …”

One question we need to answer is, “Who is this rabble?”— and I want you to see that this verse tells us they are different from the people of Israel. The King James Version actually translated the word as “mixed multitude.” These people would have been non-Israelites who came with Israel when they left Egypt. Another good translation of this word is “riffraff” — this is a negative group. They’ve tagged along with Israel and now they’re the ones who had the strong craving. But notice that it’s the people of Israel who complain.

So the riffraff at least influenced Israel, but it’s Israel who is whining, and it’s Israel who says, “Oh that we had meat to eat!” — And just a heads up, this gets really gross. The people say:

“We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

And it’s fascinating in this story, because right away in verse 7, as an aside, we’re told again what manna is. It’s like the writer is saying: Let me remind you about the stuff they’re complaining about.

And it’s all very positive. Manna’s appearance is like a bdellium — that’s a precious stone from the Garden of Eden; it’s incredibly versatile in terms of what you can make with it; it tastes like cake; and it falls from heaven. Verse 7 defends manna and it’s meant to be a correction to the complaint.

Because, first off, there was no free lunch in Egypt. That’s a lie. The only free food these people have ever experienced was the stuff that falls from heaven — and that’s another difference.

Look at the food mentioned from Egypt: fish, cucumber, melons, leeks, onions, garlic. One thing that all these food have in common is thatthey come from below. It’s not a coincidence. This is grave food. So Yahweh has been providing heavenly food that literally costs nothing — it falls down from heaven — but they’re craving grave food that will cost them their lives.

And Moses was done.

The people are weeping and whining, and verse 10 tells us that the “anger of the Lord blazed hotly.” And the ESV says Moses was “displeased.” And that’s not as strong as the original word here. The word behind “displeased” is again the Hebrew word for “evil.” Literally, the verse says “it was evil in the eyes of Moses.”

And Moses wants out, and he tells God starting in verse 11. And some readers take Moses’s words here as another complaint, but I think we should tread carefully in how we view Moses. He knows more about what’s going on here than we do. He’s God’s prophet, and God does not correct him here, but instead, God helps him.

See, the reason Moses is dejected is because he knows how this is going to play out. He knows the people haven’t learned anything. He knows they’re too evil to make it to the Promised Land — even if God gives them what they want. Because God says he will.

God says he’d send them meat, but down in verse 21, Moses knows that even with that provision, it won’t be enough for the people. God could empty the ocean for these people and it still won’t be enough. Their lust, like all lust, is insatiable. Always craving, never satisfied.

So Moses responds the way he does here because it’s certain he’s going to see these people die, and frankly, he can’t handle all that carnage by himself. He knows this thing is going down, and he just can’t bear that burden alone, and God seems to understand.

Because he tells Moses to choose 70 elders from the people; God will share his Spirit with them; and they’ll be able bear the burden with Moses. (And there’s a little story within the story that we’re gonna come back to, but for now skip to verse 31.)

God does indeed send meat — he dropped quail for them just outside the camp. And people who craved meat went out to get it, and as they were eating it, while the meat was still in their mouths, God’s anger was kindled, and he struck them all down. And the rest of the people buried them there, and the place got its name: Craver’s Graveyard.

Then they left there and came to a new place — and a new place meant a new complaint — complaint #3.

Complaint #3 — Separation (12:1–16)We’re still in the fine print, and one detail to notice about the previous two complaints is that God’s judgment took place just outside the camp — The burning was the outlying parts of the camp (11:1); the cravers gathered the quail outside the camp and were spread out (11:31-32).

Remember how the camp was set up: the tabernacle, God’s presence, was at the center; there was Moses and Aaron, and the priests, and then the Levites, and then the tribes of Israel, and then the outer camp.

Well, all the mess was happening out here for the first two complaints, but look at Complaint #3, Chapter 12, verse 1:

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. 2 And they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. [Because, again, heads up, the Lord hears everything.]

And if we keep reading, we see that God defends Moses, and he says of Moses the most honoring, commending words that he’s said about any man besides Jesus. Moses is the meekest man on the face of the earth; he’s been faithful in all of God’s house; God speaks with him face to face.

We learn very quickly that Miriam and Aaron’s complaint about Moses is unjustified; God’s anger is kindled once again; Miriam is struck with leprosy; Moses prays; Miriam is separated from the people outside the camp; they waited for her seven days and after she was brought back in, they leave, and the place gets its name: Separation.

There’s a lot of details we could pursue in this complaint, but the main thing to see is where the complaint is coming from. This is not outside the camp, but this was about as close to the center as you can get. Aaron was the priest; Miriam, Moses’s sister, was a prophetess (she was a singer, a female vocalist). These are two people upfront. They’re leaders. And even they complain.

This is the nail in the coffin about the condition of these people. From the outside even now to the inside, it’s a mess. It’s dysfunctional and toxic — as readers, our hope is all but lost.

And there’s a kind of whiplash. We go from the shiny new car and lots of hope, to suddenly we find ourselves in these details, bogged down into something we just want to get out of — like Moses did.

Personally (and this was new for me — I’ve always been more of an Abraham-guy than a Moses-guy), but I felt sorry for Moses this past week. I felt heavy with him. I would not want his calling … and if y’all were like Israel here I wouldn’t want my calling.

But here’s the thing: you’re not. We are not like Israel. And this is what we take home from this story.

Take Something Home Let’s go back to Chapter 11 when Moses appoints the 70 elders. There’s a mini-story in verses 24–30 that I want to show you.

It’s an amazing scene: God sends his Spirit on these elders and they start prophesying — and the prophesying here was word-ministry. They spoke words of guidance. They were confirming that they can help Moses instruct the people. And there are these two guys who apparently kept prophesying after the others had stopped. Their names were Eldad and Medad, but their names mean “God-Loved” and “Beloved.” Which, in light of what we’ve been seeing, these are positive names. It’s a glimmer of something good.

Well they’re prophesying, and one guy hears them and runs to tell on them. And then, suddenly, there emerges a new character in Numbers, a man named Joshua. Joshua is Moses’s assistant, his disciple, and he says, “Mr. Moses, stop these guys.”

God-Loved and Beloved were doing word-ministry, and Joshua thought they were undermining Moses’ authority, but actually they were serving it. Moses is not concerned. He says this is a good thing. Don’t be jealous for me. He says, verse 29:

“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”

All of sudden, piercing through this dark story there’s light. And it leads us to imagine a different kind of people, under a different kind of leader, perhaps one whose name is Joshua.

See, there’s no doubt this little story is meant to be a marker of hope. It’s a foreshadowing of the New Covenant community. Because what Moses wishes does happen. Even later in the Old Testament storyline, God speaks through the prophet Joel about this new covenant community, and he says,

28 “And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

29 Even on the male and female servants

in those days I will pour out my Spirit. (Joel 2:28–29)

So the Holy Spirit is not just for Moses, and just for the 70, but the Holy Spirit is in everyone who then has the ability to do word ministry. This is all true of us right now.

Right now, every Christian — every member of this new covenant community — can take this Book in your hands and you can go to any other member in this community and you can open this Book and help them. You can encourage them with God’s word. You can show them what God says.

Get this: what we have church was a dream for Moses.

We don’t have to worry about God’s anger toward us, or about him striking us down, because God has already done that.

And I’m not talking about this place called the Burning, or the Craver’s Graveyard, or Separation, but I’m talking about the Place of a Skull — Golgotha.

At that place, God’s anger burned hotly and he poured out fire, as it were, on our sin. On our complaining and craving, God poured out his judgment — but it wasn’t judgment on us, it was judgment on Jesus as our substitute.

We are not like faithless Israel because our sins have been atoned for, once and for all, by the death of Jesus Christ. And he has given us his Spirit to believe. He keeps us. Jesus is able to save us to the uttermost, the whole way — and this morning we rest in him. We worship him. We give him thanks.

That’s what we do at this Table.

The TableAt this Table, we as Christians come here to remember what Jesus has done for us. Together, as a brothers and sisters in Christ, as members of the new covenant community, we say Jesus, thank you. Jesus, you are strong and kind and we trust you.

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One of my favorite parts of being a father is bedtime. It also can be one of the hardest. But often it’s one of the sweetest. We read. Sometimes we sing. At the end, we pray, or a give a blessing.

The most frequent blessing I repeat is that famous priestly blessing we saw last week at the end of Numbers 6:

“The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

But as good as that is, the best part may actually be the afterward. Don’t miss that final verse, 27, which says,

“So shall they [the priests] put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

God is binding himself, he says, binding his own glory to the blessing, the good, the joy of this people. He is making them his special people. As God, he made all; he is over all; he can have whomever he wants. But he has chosen Israel as his covenant people; he will be their covenant God, and they will be his covenant people. He smiles on them. He delights in them. And so their life as a nation will reflect on him. His name is on them. His glory is bound to them. How it goes with them will show him to the world.

God Wants You to Use NumbersWe have almost four chapters to cover this morning, from 7:1 to 10:10. That’s a sizable section. In fact, the sermon this morning is shorter than our passage. So, how might we go about approaching four chapters in one sermon?

Let me start with three verses in the New Testament that might help our approach to Numbers. Paul said to his disciple in 2 Timothy 3:15–17,

“…from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings [that’s the Old Testament Scriptures, including Numbers], which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture [including Numbers] is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

I see three truths here about the Old Testament in general and, for us, Numbers in particular:

First, Numbers is breathed out by God. This book is from God. It is his word to us. His word, from inside him, so to speak, breathed out in his voice, through his prophet. How amazing to have the word of God, as we do in Numbers.

Second, Numbers is able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus. This book is eternally valuable and priceless, that is, able to help us receive God’s rescue from our sins, and from the hell we deserve — and that rescue is not apart from Jesus but “through faith in Christ Jesus.”

And, third, Numbers is profitable (Greek ōphelimos) — that is, helpful, valuable, beneficial, useful for the Christian life. It is useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in right living. God means for us to use Scripture — did you know that? Not use as in abuse, but use as in do something with it. Take it off the shelf, read it, meditate on it, know it, cherish it, imbibe it, feed on it, have it change you from the inside, and extend out into your outer and external life, in obedience and holiness. Use it. Do you?

So, brothers and sisters, this is God’s word, breathed out from him for us; it saves eternally through Jesus; and its useful even now in our lives.

Now, let’s lay these three truths onto our approach to Numbers 7-10 this morning. We’ll ask three questions:

(1) What did God breathe out here for us to know? What do these chapters tell us? Here I’ll summarize the chapters.

(2) What might be useful here for us in our Christian lives? How might these chapters teach us, reprove us, correct us, train us in how to live?

Then (3) most importantly, how do these chapters make us wise for salvation through Jesus? Where do we see Jesus here, and what might we freshly appreciate and love about Jesus in these chapters?

So, (1) what to know, (2) how to live, and (3) who to love…

What Do We Need to Know? I’ll start with a disclaimer about knowing. Knowing with the mind or head knowledge is increasingly devalued in our day. We live in the Information Age. Mere knowledge can be so easy to come by. That’s true. And, mark this, when we come to the Bible, to God’s breathed-out Book, to what he wants us to hear and know, we need to make some careful distinctions.

For one, while we may live in the Information Age, we also live in times of great biblical illiteracy. Christians don’t read and know the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, like we once did. Many of us don’t know Numbers! And this is a problem for us. How will God’s breathed-out words work on us to draw us to Jesus, and how will we put his word to work in our lives, if we don’t know his word?

We have to start somewhere. We start with knowing. And we confess: Bible knowledge is not the goal of the Christian life. But it is vital and precious, for starters, that we know God’s breathed-out words.

Jesus thought so. Again and again in the Gospels, he says, Have you not read? And Paul thought so. Again and again in his letters, Paul says, Do you not know?

Yes, Christianity is far more than just knowing God’s breathed-out words, but it is not less.

So, let’s ask, What do we need to know here in Numbers 7-10? Let’s take a quick flyover of these four chapters, before we land to linger in a couple places.

These first ten chapters of Numbers are where the promise of God dwelling among his people actually begins to happen. God had said in Exodus 25:8, “let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” And Exodus 29:45, “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.” The book of Exodus ended with his glory coming to the tabernacle, but at that point his Dwelling is outside the camp of the people. Promise not fulfilled yet.

Then Leviticus focuses on the priests. And now, in Numbers, God situates his people around him, tribe by tribe. He dwells in their midst, at the center. This is the joy and wonder and glory of these opening chapters of Numbers: God, in all his holiness, is dwelling among his people, despite all their sin.

God’s sinful, rebellious people cannot approach his holiness on their own merit or on their own terms. If there will be any nearness, any dwelling together, God must take the initiative. Which he does. In fact, he delights to do so. He smiles —his face shines — on his people. Nobody’s twisting God’s arm here. He delights to dwell with his people.

In these opening chapters, then, he sets up the camp that will journey through the wilderness from Sinai to the Promised Land. And what must you do before heading out? You need to stock the house.

Chapter 7Chapter 7 gets the nation ready to hit the road. All twelve tribes provide the Levites with six wagons to transport the Dwelling. And all together the tribes stock the tabernacle with the animals and furnishings the priests will need for the sacrifices — and the main point is that all the tribes are all in. This is the fellowship of Israel. I can’t help but think of the meeting in Rivendale. Twelve companions. Each tribe is all in.

Now, the tribes are not all the same. They each have unique identities and histories. And there is an order; Judah goes first, not by accident. Still, each tribe contributes equally to the stock needed for sacrifices.

The tension builds as you read chapter 7. First, Judah contributes on day one: one silver plate, one silver basin, both full of fine flour mixed with oil; one golden dish, full of incense; one bull from the herd, one ram, one male lamb a year old; one male goat; two oxen, five rams, five more male goats, and five more male lambs a year old.

Then comes Issachar on day two. You read on. Same gifts. Day three: Zebulun. Confirmed, exact same gifts. Day four: Reuben. Ditto. With each day, each tribe, we find out if the next will be the same as previous. Will some tribe drop the ball, or try to show out? Finally, day twelve, Naphtali, and it’s confirmed: all twelve are all in, an equal fellowship of the tribes. All have an equal share as the covenant people of God.

And yet, within the covenant, there is still order among the twelve. The camp is divided into four sections, each with one tribe in the lead.

But the striking impression given in chapter 7 is not the tribal chiefs or the section leaders but the fellowship. All twelve tribes share in God. They are equal partners in the covenant with Yahweh. He is their God; they are his people. The distinctions among them, and their various orderings within the camp, do not make any of the tribes any more, or less, the covenant people of God.

Chapter 8Then comes chapter 8: lamps and Levites. Verses 1-4 bring back the lampstand already mentioned in Exodus 25 and 37, but it’s worth mentioning here, at the end of chapter 7, because of what it means: God shines his light on the twelve tribes (like the shining of Aaron’s blessing). The lampstand is arranged across from the bread of the presence, 12 flat loaves representing the 12 tribes. The light is the smile of God shining on his people.

Which then raises the question about the one tribe that was set apart: Levi. By serving in their role they make it possible for the people to approach God, on his terms, rather than incurring his wrath. So, the rest of the chapter 8, verses 5-26, brings us to the appointment and installation of the Levites. Remember the Levites are different than the priests. The Levites are a whole tribe. The priests are just Moses’s brother, Aaron, and his offspring. The priests perform the sacrifices; the Levites guard and move the mobile Dwelling. And the Levites are not appointed because they are best fit to curate a museum, but best fit to take a fight.

They are warriors, the warlike tribe. They will guard the holiness of God’s Dwelling in the center. Later in Israel’s history, when the Dwelling becomes fixed and doesn’t need to move (the temple), the Levites will lead in singing, clean the Dwelling, and kill the sacrificial animals for the priests to then offer up. But for now, they’re the guards, assigned to protect the premises of the Dwelling, and move the tent from place to place.

Chapter 9In chapter 9, now, the camp is about ready to head out, at last. The people celebrate the first Passover since being freed from Egypt. One year has passed since they went out from Egypt. Verses 1-14 review the Passover details and make provision for those who miss it, because of uncleanness or travel, to celebrate it one month later.

The rest of the passage tells us how God will lead the people on the journey. The visible cloud and fire, confirming God’s invisible presence in the Dwelling, will tell the camp when to remain and when to set out (9:15-23). And we’ll say more about this in a minute.

Chapter 10Finally, two silver trumpets in chapter 10, verses 1-10, will signal for the people to gather together or to break camp. If the priests blow both, the congregation gathers. Blow only one, and just the chiefs gather. Sound an alarm (with short blows) and the tribes on the east side, led by Judah, break camp. Another alarm and the south tribes set out, then west, then north. Next weekend we’ll turn to 10:11 (through chapter 12) where we’ll see the cloud first lift and the people head out.

How Might We Use This Text?Now I want to come back to 9:17-23, which we read before the sermon. Its repetitions give it a kind of poetic quality that sets it off from the rest of the sections. These are the directions for the journey and how God will lead the camp. He will decide when they stay put, and for how long, and when they go, and how far they go. When the cloud moves, follow the cloud. When the cloud stops, set up camp.

God himself, through his cloud and fire — his Spirit — will set the rhythms and cadences of the journey. And he doesn’t tell them the plan ahead of time. Following him will require daily observation and readiness. The camp will move through the wilderness at God’s pace and in God’s timing, going God’s direction. His people’s journey will not be according to their own preferences and choices but his.

Can you imagine your life being like this? Daily, hourly watching and wondering when the cloud will move. Or while on the journey, getting tired, and waiting for the cloud to stop? How much might this unnerve some of us? And how much might this be a balm to others? I’m sure this would frustrate some of us deeply, and thrill others of us.

Which raises the question for us of what it’s like for us today, in the new covenant? God still leads and guides his people’s daily movement or abiding, their going or staying, and God still does so in his own unpredictable, often inconvenient timing. Back then he prompted them with a visible external spirit/fire (the cloud) but now he prompts us through his invisible indwelling spirit/fire, the Holy Spirit. God gives us his word. He shapes our souls with his speech. And the risen Christ has poured out his Spirit that we might receive him, and he might dwell in us, in a way he did not for the people of the Old Testament. It is awesome to have the Spirit of God in us! And to have God’s word in Scripture, and have fellows in the faith to counsel us.

Consider two dangers, among others, for us today: (1) the first is quintessentially American: we ignore the indwelling Spirit and don’t pray for and seek to be sensitive to his promptings. We just go about our lives and make our own decisions, like the secular world, in practical atheism. Or (2) the super-spiritual alternative: we seek to be led by God, through his Spirit, but don’t exercise caution (about own indwelling sin), but are overly simple or self-serving, about his possible promptings. We presume God’s speaking with a clarity that he is not. His promptings in us are not the same as God’s speaking to Moses.

So, instead of saying, “God told me . . .” we say, “God may be prompting me ...” We first seek to become a kind of person who can discern God’s will (Romans 12:2). And we pray for the Spirit’s prompting, and seek to be sensitive to his leading, and humbly seek confirmation from his people, our fellows. And then we speak and live without presumption — without presuming to be our own master, and without presuming, “Thus sayeth the Lord . . . .”

Who Do We Love? Or we might say, where do we see our Lord in this text? Where do we see Jesus, through whom all Scripture, including Numbers, makes us wise for salvation?

We could talk about the altar, where the priests were to make daily sacrifices, and for which the tribes provided all the stock of chapter 7. In Christ, our altar, once and for all, is Calvary, the cross of Christ, where the precious Son of God, our great high priest and the final sacrifice gave himself once and for all that we might draw near to God.

And we could talk about the trumpets. As Jesus himself said, one day he will return “with power and great glory” and “will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds” (Matt 24:31). Or as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise.” (see also 1 Cor 15:51-52)

Or we could talk about the great substitution of chapter 8, verses 16-19. The Levites are substitutes for all the firstborn of the tribes of Israel. Instead of taking them for service of the tabernacle, God substitutes the martial tribe of Levi (Moses’ and Aaron’s own tribe) and gives them to the priests to guard and transport the Dwelling (8:16-19).

But let me finish with just two: first, this marvel of Moses speaking with God “face to face.” These chapters turn on God speaking to Moses:

6:22: the Lord spoke to Moses, saying…
8:1, 5, 23: the Lord spoke to Moses, saying…
9:1: And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness…
9:9; 10:1: the Lord spoke to Moses, saying…
And 9:23 connects God’s speaking to Moses to the 12 mentions of God’s commands in these chapters.

These chapters turn on God speaking. And how?

The key verse is 7:89. Listen for the emphasis on Moses hearing and God speaking:

“…when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him.”

At the center of the people is the Dwelling. And at the center of the Dwelling is God. And what does he do? He speaks, and speaks, and speaks.

Now, a question that comes to mind is, Did Moses see God? We’re going to hear next week, in chapter 12, verse 8, God say, “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord.” And you might remember from Exodus 33 that “the Lord would speak . . . to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (verses 9-11). Face to face?

What does that mean? How did Moses speak with the Lord? It means something. It’s an expression of how clearly Moses heard from God and how closely he could speak with him.

However, it’s qualified, and “face to face” is explained with “as a man speaks to his friend.” “Face to face” is an idiom, an expression. The point is closeness and clarity. Literal beholding is unthinkable — until Jesus.

In Christ, a day is coming when we ourselves will see God face to face in the face of Jesus Christ. We will see him as even Moses could not see God. And till then, God’s audible word remains at the center, as so precious to us, for knowing who God is, and who his Son is, and his Spirit. At the center of the camp was God’s word through Moses. And at the center of the church is God’s Word in and through Jesus. And one day we will see him face to face.

Our Lamb, God’s SmileFinally, the Passover lamb, which brings us to the Table. I’m sure there was so little that wilderness generation understood. They did not know the fullness of what God was up to. They didn’t know that God himself would come as the Lion of Judah and as the final Passover Lamb. They didn’t know that there would be a once-and-for-all altar at Calvary, and that one day God’s trumpet would sound for Christ’s second coming. They didn’t know the fullness of substitution, and that Moses speaking so closely with God would one day be surpassed by all God’s new-covenant people seeing Jesus face to face.

But you know what they did know, or should have? Oh they should have known grace. As they made arrangements to celebrate that first ritual Passover at Sinai, one year after the original Passover in Egypt, consider all that had transpired in that last year. They had grumbled and grumbled. They had doubted God could save them at the Red Sea. They had grown impatient waiting for Moses and forged a golden calf to worship. Oh what it must have been like to celebrate that first Passover — not as spotless, self-confidence people but as humbled, self-consciously sinful, desperately needy, undeserving people, recipients of grace, not achievers of merit. And yet God smiled.

Which is how we come to the Table, this fulfillment of the Passover. “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). And the word of God, including Numbers, is able to make us wise for salvation through him. To secure for us the grace of God’s smile on us and delight to welcome us to his Table.

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Well it was typically right around this time of year when, every year, as a kid, our family would pack up our bags, load up the car, and travel up to Lutsen, Minnesota. Anyone ever been up to Lutsen before?

It’s a beautiful area. It’s also an area that’s four hours away, by car, from the cities. Which, for me as a kid, might as well have been eternity.

So, like most kids, in an effort to offset the boredom that I would experience during the four-hour long drives, I began to develop and perfect my road trip set up, which involved stuffing all my drawing supplies into the cupholder and against the window to my left, placing my CDs and no-skip Sony Walkman to my right, usually on top of an overhanging suitcase of some sort, and then stacking a pile of Sports Illustrated for Kids magazines about a foot tall on the floor below my feet. I’d get that set up just right, squeeze on into what remained of the seat, and then buckle in for the journey.

And it was typically about 20-30 minutes later when I’d begin wonder, “Why are we still parked in the driveway?” “Why have we yet to go anywhere?” I mean, I’m clearly ready to go. Why isn’t this car moving yet?”

I’m guessing you’ve been there before. And if so, then believe it or not, you know something of what readers of the Bible can, at times, experience when reading through these first few chapters in the book of Numbers — a kind of fidgeting, watch-checking, growing sense of impatience.

Why We Grow ImpatientAnd there’s a reason for that. The fact that we’ve now, by this time in the narrative, been gearing up to go somewhere for quite some time.

What I mean is that, ever since Exodus chapter 19, following God’s miraculous rescue of his people, the Israelites, from Egypt, we’ve been parked in the wilderness of Sinai. And not with intention of staying there indefinitely. But, with the intention of eventually moving on from there, to the Promised Land – the land of Canaan.

And yet, as Exodus comes to its close and gives way to Leviticus, and Leviticus comes to its close and gives way to Numbers, in Sinai we yet remain. And so, as readers of the story, we begin to wonder, “Why are we still parked in the driveway?” “Why have we yet to go anywhere?” I mean, I’m clearly ready to go. Why isn’t this thing moving yet?”

But here’s where our true colors really show, as a people. Here’s where it becomes clear that either we’ve already forgotten the significance of all that’s been going on throughout this stop in Sinai, or we never really grasped the significance of it all in the first place. Here’s what I mean: it was while in Sinai, that God made a covenant with this people and gave them the Law (Exodus Ch. 20-24). And it was while in Sinai, that God took up his earthly residence in the Tabernacle (picture a somewhat large, tent-like structure), filling it with his glory as a cloud (Ex. 40). It was while in Sinai that this Tabernacle (dwelling place of God) became the Tent of Meetingbetween God and his people. And that was through the establishment of the Priesthood and the sacrificial system.

And so, hadthe people not lingered in Sinai, and had not all the events of the second half of Exodus and the entirety of Leviticus occurred while here in Sinai, then we’d be looking at quite a different picture at this point. A people who still have no formal relationship with God, still have no experience of nearness to God, and still have no covering for their sin before God, heading into the Promised Land alone.

You know why we so often get impatient as a people? So often ask, “God, why are we still parked here?” It’s because though we do, by nature, desire comfort, and though we do, by nature, desire prosperity, and though we do, by nature, desire to dwell in the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey – we do not by nature desire God. We desire his stuff, we desire his space. And we think our salvation lies in getting it, rather than getting him. We disregard the ultimate treasure, God himself, and go out in search of pocket-change instead.

It is a mercy, absolute mercy, brothers and sisters, that God parks us from time-to-time in the wilderness. It’s there we often realize that what we really need in life is God. And if we gain him, we will have gained all we ever needed.

Israel was parked in Sinai for that: Creation of a relationship with God through covenant, experience of that relationship in God’s presence, a presence enabled by the mediation of the priests and the sacrificial system.

Now, here’s the thing though. By Numbers 1, all those boxes have been checked. And we’re still not going anywhere. We’re going to yet stay here in Sinai till Numbers chapter 10. Why? With covenant made, Tabernacle created, sacrifices in motion — What is it that’s still lacking?

We’re going to attempt to answer that question through the remainder of this sermon. And we’ll do so, Lord-willing, with the help of three R’s: Roles, relationships, and realities.

RolesLet’s begin with roles. And this first point will be our longest of the three. Roles. God is going to assign roles for his people to play throughout their journey in the wilderness. First one we’re going to look at is that of the priest.

You can see in Numbers 3:1-3,

“These are the generations of Aaron and Moses at the time when the Lord spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai. These are the names of the sons of Aaron: Nadab the firstborn, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. 3 These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the anointed priests, whom he ordained to serve as priests.”

Now, if you were with us back in the fall of 2022 for our series through Leviticus, you might remember that the role of the priest involved carrying out the daily sacrifices upon the altar of the Tabernacle — sacrifices which served as a necessary covering for both their sins as well as the sins of the people.

But the people who could qualify for this role represented only a very small percentage of the total population of Israel. From all those belonging to the 12 tribes we narrow down to those belonging to one tribe, that of Levi. From those belonging to the tribe of Levi, we narrow down to descendants of Aaron.

Is it only thissmall percentage of the people who get a role to play? Is it the priests, and then everyone else simply along for the ride?

Enter, a new role, the Levite.

LevitesTurn back with me to Numbers 1:50-51,

“But appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it. They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall take care of it and shall camp around the tabernacle. When the tabernacle is to set out, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up. And if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death.”

So here’s another role, that of the Levite, whose job it is to set up, take down, transport, and guard the Holy Tabernacle at which the priests offer the sacrifices.

So the Priests, the smallest group, they carry out the sacrifices at the Tabernacle. The Levites (a slightly larger group — those remaining from the tribe of Levi who were not also in the line of Aaron), they guard and carry the Tabernacle.

So the funnel widens once. It’s going to widen again. Turn back with me, once more, to the very beginning of Numbers, chapter 1:1-3.

SoldierNumbers 1:1-3,

“The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, 2“Take a census of all the congregationof the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head. 3From twenty years old and upward, all in Israel who are able to go to war…”

Here’s a third role — that of soldier. This represents the largest group, pulling from the remaining eleven of the twelve total tribes. And as we can see down in verse 46 of chapter one, the total number of those who receive this role is 603,550. Which, quick note here…

When God first called Abraham and said, “I’ll make of you a people, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore for number,” does anyone know how many descendants he had at that time? …Zero. So, book of Genesis, God says “I’ll provide for you a nearly uncountable number of descendants…beginning at…zero.” And, wouldn’t you know, a few hundred years later, here in Numbers, more than half a million descendants of Abraham walking around, and that’s only including the men in the camp who are old enough for war. Does God keep his promises?

So priests, Levites, soldiers — three distinct roles for the people of God to receive prior to heading out on their journey. Three distinct roles that though very different from one another, clearly depend upon one another in order to function.

For, how are the priests going to carry out the sacrifices at the Tabernacle if the Levites fail to guard the Tabernacle and it ends up becoming defiled?

And how are the Levites going to guard the Tabernacle, if the soldiers fail to guard them when enemy armies approach?

And how are either the Levites or the soldiers going to dwell anywhere near the camp, and guard anything at all, if the priests fail to carry out the daily sacrifices?

See in this design, the priest cannot say to the Levite “I have no need of you.” Neither can the Levite say to the soldier, “I’ve no need of you.” Rather, it is when and only whenall of these roles are working properly together, that the camp of Israel will be able to move forward as one — out of Sinai, into the Promised Land.

How about us? How about our camp? Do we have a role to play here? God says we do. He says in Ephesians 4 that there are certain roles he’s given. Some, apostles prophets. Some the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. And those for the sake of equipping the largest role of all — the saints (that’s all of us). Equipping the saints for the work of ministry — that’s your job description. My job description — the work of ministry. The work of helping one another attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. That’s the role God’s given us to play.

So we should ask, “how am I doing in that role? How am I leaning-in for the good of the whole? And how might I lean-in just a little more in effort to build this body, and help us move forward as one?” God gave roles for the Israelites to play within the camp back then. He gives us roles to play within his church today.

So, why have we not yet left Sinai? What is it we still lack? First R — roles. God’s people had roles they still needed to receive.

Second R, relationships. This one will move a bit quicker.

RelationshipsFor this one, I’ll ask you to turn with me to Numbers Chapter 5. I know we’re jumping around quite a bit this morning, but I believe it’s worth it because it’s going to help us better understand this section as a whole. So, Number 5, verse 5, and I want you to listen for the emphasis:

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, when a man or woman commits any of the sins that people commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess his sin that he has committed. And he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong.”

God is establishing here rules for relationships. Rules for regulating and righting wrongs within relationships.

Neighbor-to-NeighborAnd this first rule here, verse 5, applies to neighbor-to-neighbor relationships. It says, “if you wrong your neighbor, here’s what you must do to make it right. You first confess your sin, then give back the full amount, plus a fifth, to that person to whom you did the wrong.” Clearly, God is concerned with the health of neighbor-to-neighbor relationships within the camp.

Now, just as we moved in concentric circles in terms of roles — soldiers, Levites, priests. So once more we’ll move in concentric circles in terms of relationships. Neighbor-to-neighbor at the widest point in the funnel. Moving further in we come to the relationship between spouses.

Spouse-to-SpouseChapter 5:11,

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12“Speak to the people of Israel, If any man’s wife goes astray and breaks faith with him,” And now if we had time to read from there through the rest of chapter 5 we’d discover a public process laid out for righting wrongs between spouses. A process that would either result in proving the husband’s accusation was unfounded, his wife has been faithful, and her good name should thus be reinstated within the community. Or, in proving her husband’s accusation was accurate, his wife has been unfaithful, and she will receive from God the curse of barrenness as her punishment. Either way, a sense of justice, and righting of wrongs, will be recovered in the relationship between spouses.

Neighbor-to-neighbor relationships. Spouse-to-spouse relationships. What’s at the innermost circle? Our own relationship with God.

We see this final movement, chapter 6, with the Law of the Nazirite.

Self-to-GodWe can see the set up for it in Numbers chapter 6:1,

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord.”

See, we’re looking at the level of the individual — his or her relationship to the Lord. And we’re seeing a means laid out here for the individual to especially dedicate him or herself, solely to the Lord, for a set amount of time.

Again, if we had time to read the rest of this chapter, chapter 6, we’d see that the Nazirite vow involves not cutting your hair, consuming alcohol, nor going near a dead body throughout the time of the vow.

And when the time of the vow was over, you’d conclude by bringing with you a very costly gift to sacrifice at the altar before God — one male lamb, one ewe lamb, one ram, a basket of unleavened bread — you’d even cut the hair you’d grown throughout the time of the vow and put that, as well, upon the altar. And then you’d burn it all up, right then and there, before the Lord, as a way of communicating to him, “Lord, I am fully yours, all I have is yours.”

So, relationships — with neighbor, with spouse, and with God. God is concerned to have health in all these spheres, all the way through the camp. Once again, we’ll ask, how about us? Are wedwelling in right relationships in all three categories?

Is there perhaps a wrong you need to right between you and another person in your community group?

Is there a wrong you need to right between you and a spouse, a family member, even a close friend?

Is there not necessarily a wrong to be righted, but an opportunity, for a time, to intensely pursue the Lord with a passion, persistence, and commitment perhaps you never have before?

God gave relationship rules and regulations for the Israelites to abide by within the camp. He gives relationship rules and regulations for us to abide by within his church.

So, why have we not yet left Sinai? What is it we still lack? First R — roles. God’s people had roles they still needed to receive. Second R, relationships. God’s people had rules for their relationships that still needed to be established.

Third, final R — reality. A reality finally to be experienced.

RealityNow, for this, we really need to draw our attention all the way back to one of the first things God said at the outset of this season in Sinai. Back before the establishment of the priests and sacrifices, back before the construction of the Tabernacle, just after the making of a covenant with his people. And I’ll just read this one to you, from Exodus 25:8, where God said, “And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst.” Let them make me a sanctuary, because… I don’t merely aim to make a covenant with them. I don’t merely aim to dwell within their general vicinity. I don’t merely desire to bring their priestsnear to carry out sacrifices while all the rest remain scattered elsewhere. Rather, I aim to dwell in their midst.

And now with all the pieces finally in place, God is going to do exactly that — turn this aim into reality. Numbers, chapter 2, verse 1. Go there with me, I want you to behold this verse. Numbers 2:1,

The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “The people of Israel shall camp each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ houses. They shall camp facing the tent of meeting on every side.”

On every side.

Now, here in Numbers, for the very first time, this people are going to form as one around God. God is going to be their central heartbeat filling and sustaining them all with life. God is going to be their sun, keeping them together within his orbit. God is going to dwell in their midst, they are going to camp facing him.

With Moses and the priests to his immediate east, where the doors of his Tabernacle open. Moving clockwise from there, will be the Levites making up the central ribbon. Then, to the east once more, will be the tribe of Judah, clockwise from there, the remaining eleven tribes all around.

Their new reality, as a people, will from now on involve: Waking up with God in their midst, laying down with God in their midst, working with God in their midst, resting with God in their midst, seeing him as their center, seeing him as their core, seeing the God whose delight it is to live among his chosen people and gladly pour out upon them his abundant joy and love.

And, if this is hard for you to imagine, like, you just have a really hard time believing God actually desires to live amongst his people, is actually delighted to live amongst his people, is actually glad to make them glad with his presence…Then look with me at his first act upon assembling his people together as one. What is it, we could ask, that comes most naturally to God, upon the bringing together of his people? Cursing? Frustration? Annoyance? Ambivalence? When he, for the first time, has his people gathered all round, what is, we could say, his knee-jerk, immediate reaction?

To bless.

The first words out of his mouth are blessing. Go with me to Numbers 6:22, final word here, and it is the capstone of all that’s gone on thus far,

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, 24 “The LORD bless you and keep you [hold you, protect you, be your shelter and shield]; 25 the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you [as his face made Moses’ to shine, so now may his smile shine upon you and pour forth its bright rays into your heart and life]; 26 the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace [Give you his Shalom, give you his experience of, “All is right, and all is full, and all is well because my God is here and he loves me]. “

This is the blessing that, as one writer puts it, now readily flows forth from God, ushering forth from the Central Tent — encompassing the whole, and casting the light of his face on every Israelite within its bounds (Morales, 166).

This is the great reality of God’s people now realized.

And brothers and sisters, it is only a foretaste of a greater reality still to come. For just as God assembled his people in the wilderness, so will he assemble us into his kingdom. Where it will be declared, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God (Rev. 21:3). Where God will bless us, keep us, and make his face to shine upon us in the face of his very own son whom we will then behold (Rev. 22:4).

That is, my brothers and sisters, where we are headed. And we are headed there as a people, as a body, as a camp, trekking through the wilderness together, and onward into glory.

The TableAnd this is what now brings us to the table. For at this table, we eat together as God’s people — bought with his blood, sealed by His Spirit, bound for his Kingdom to behold his face and experience his peace forever.

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Father in heaven, thank you for this moment. We are here by your grace! Your Word open before us and your Spirit active in us. Speak to us, we pray, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Today we’re starting a new series in the Old Testament book of Numbers, and I just want to go ahead and tell you that this book is going to surprise you. If you’ve read the Book of Numbers before you may have noticed that, unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of numbers. There are two big census reports of Israel in Chapter 1 and Chapter 26, and there’s also a few parts that might be a little hard to understand, but mainly, this book is packed with action and suspense …

There is conflict and resolution, obedience and rebellion, espionage and war, celebration and complaint, blessings and curses — There is meat that falls from the sky, the ground that swallows men alive, a rock that gushes water, poisonous snakes that kill people, and a donkey that talks.

It’s an amazing book, and the main point overall is that we might learn how to live with God on the road.

The ultimate goal of everything (and I mean everything) is that God’s glory be magnified in our hearts being satisfied in all that he is for us in Christ — and that means that God is our God and we are his people, and he is with us forever. That’s what heaven is! That’s home, Christian! But we’re not there yet. For right now, we are on the road, we’re still on a journey, and the Book of Numbers is meant to help us.

We’re gonna be in this book over the next 11 weeks, and what I’d like to do today is give you a short introduction to this book as a whole. And I want to tell you three things that the Book of Numbers is gonna help you do (and this goes for everyone, but I’m especially thinking about those of you who heard we were doing a series on Numbers and thought, “Oh man, Numbers??”.

Here are three things you can prepare to do in response to this book:

Enter the wild
Hear the word
Heed the warning

And before we look closer at these three things, I want to make sure we’re all on same page when it comes to the storyline. For the last several years we’ve been working our way through the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Numbers is book #4 of 5, and it only makes sense if we understand it in the context of these other books. So let’s back up for a second and remember where we are.

Genesis

Everything starts in Genesis 1:1 — “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” God is the First Cause. He’s the Unmoved Mover. He is dependent on nothing, but all things are dependent upon him, which magnifies his glory. After Adam’s fall into sin, the entire world was corrupted and broken, but God, by his grace, was determined to have a people who lived under his blessing. And so he chose Abraham and blessed him — God said: I will bless you and make you a blessing; through your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed, and your descendants will be as many as the stars (Genesis 12:1–3; 15:5–6). And God also promised him a certain land — the land of the Canaanites (Gen. 12:7; 15:18–21; 26:1–5; 28:4; 35:12). God repeats this promise to Isaac and then to Jacob. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, and he has 12 sons.

Exodus

Fast-forward to the Book of Exodus, and all the children of Israel had migrated to Egypt because of a famine; they had grown in number, which threatened Pharaoh, so he makes them slaves, but then God raises up Moses to lead the people out of Egypt in the exodus. God does this dramatically, through many signs and wonders, executing judgment on the false gods of Egypt (see Num. 33:4). The people of Israel escape, through the Red Sea, and they journey to Mount Sinai.

And Mount Sinai is the place where God comes down on the mountain to speak with Moses. God gives Israel the law and instructions for the tabernacle, which will be God’s dwelling place among his people.

God will be with his people, but how? That’s the vital question that emerges in the story. How will this Holy God, Creator of all things, dwell with this sinful people? — because one thing that becomes clear by the end of the Book of Exodus is that the people of Israel are sinful. They grumble about almost everything. They’re bent away from God. So how can a people like that have a relationship with this God?

Leviticus

That’s the big question that Leviticus takes on, and the answer is atonement. The Day of Atonement is the center of the Book of Leviticus, and Leviticus is the center of the Torah. Through blood sacrifice, the people’s sins can be forgiven and they can worship God — they can live with God’s presence at the center of their lives! God makes a way for sinners to be close to him, and this is all pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s Leviticus.

Numbers

And now here is Numbers. For location and timing, Numbers opens and the people of Israel are still in the wilderness of Sinai. This is continuing the Book of Exodus. Numbers 1 picks up where Exodus 40 left off. So Leviticus comes between Exodus and Numbers because of its theme, but in terms of timing, Numbers happens right after Exodus.

The people of Israel had built the Tabernacle and received the law, and now they’re just about to set out on a journey from the wilderness of Sinai to the Promised Land (that same land that God promised Abraham back in Genesis).

They’re leaving from where they are (Mount Sinai) to go to their promised home, but they don’t want to leave the presence of Yahweh. That’s the whole point of the Tabernacle — it’s a mobile dwelling place for God. The people must have God go with them — as a cloud by day and fire by night.

And this is the answer to Moses’s prayer going back to Exodus 33. Remember God promised Moses, “My presence will go with you”, and Moses said to God — one of the high points of Scripture — Moses said,

“If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do …” (vv. 15–17)

So the Book of Numbers focuses in on God’s holy presence going with his people, even as they go deeper into the wilderness. That’s where we are.

Three things this book will help you do …

Enter the WildBack in 1992 there was a guy named Chris McCandless who died of starvation in an abandoned bus on Stampede Trail in Alaska. If you’ve seen the movie or watched the documentary or read the book, you know the story. He graduated at the top of his class at Emory University, but gave away all his money and accomplishments to become a vagabond, and he ended up hitchhiking to Alaska — because he wanted to be deep in the wild. He wanted the adventure of the wilderness and it killed him, and he’s been criticized for this.

Apparently, he was ill-prepared and under-equipped for where he went. He went hiking and didn’t even have a map, and sadly, if he did have a map he would have seen that he wasn’t as remote as he thought. With a map, he could have easily walked out from where he was to safety. So this a tragic story — it was an avoidable death in the wilderness.

And we’re actually gonna see this same thing in the Book of Numbers. The people of Israel are also in the wilderness — but it’s not because they want to be — they’re in the wilderness because God leads them there to test them, because he wants their faith. All they have to do is trust him, but they don’t, and therefore a whole generation of Israel does not make it out alive. A big part of the story of Numbers is a whole generation of people dying an avoidable death in the wilderness.

That’s what the wild can do to you.

And this is important for us because, similar to Israel, we as Christians are currently in the wild. It might not feel like we are, but it’s true. Notice in verse 1 we’re told that the story of Numbers is taking place after God rescued his people from Egypt. The events of this book are after salvation but before making it home. The in-between. That’s where the wilderness is, and that’s where we are.

As Christians, we also live after salvation and before making it home. Jesus has rescued us — he has died for us and been raised from the dead, we are free in him — but we’re not in heaven yet. This is the in-between. We need to recognize that we’ve entered the wild … and not all of us make it out.

And I’m just being honest with you. I’ve been a Christian long enough to know some tragic stories of people who fall away … and it’s all avoidable. But how?

We’ve entered the wild, and now we ask: How do we make it through the wild?

Hear the WordNow in our English Bibles, we call the Book of Numbers Numbers, but in the Hebrew Bible it’s known as bĕmidbar — which means “in the wilderness.” Those are the very first words of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible. The book starts: “In the wilderness Yahweh spoke to Moses.”

And one fascinating little detail in the Hebrew that we can’t see in English is that the words for “wilderness” and “spoke” in that first sentence sound the same. The Hebrew word for “wilderness” (or desert) is midbar; and the Hebrew word for “spoke” (or word) is dibbur — midbar … dibbur.

This would be like us saying wild and word. Wild … word. They kinda sound the same.

And ancient Jewish interpreters picked up on the wordplay here — that the words just don’t sound the same, but they’re closely connected in this story. And this connection is made plain in the Book of Deuteronomy, the book right after Numbers.

In Deuteronomy Chapter 8, reflecting back on the Book of Numbers, Moses says:

2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

I want you to get this, and this is a little bit of spoiler, but here it goes: the only way that Israel can live in the wild is to listen to the word.

And if we had to capture that in a single idea it would be the idea of guidance. I think that’s what we could call the overall theme of the Book of Numbers.

If Genesis is Beginnings, Exodus is Rescue, Leviticus is Atonement, Numbers would be Guidance. That’s what it means when God’s presence goes with his people. Where God guides, the people go. And that includes literal direction in this story, but it’s also more than that. God’s guidance is moral — he is showing his people how to live together as his people, under his care, trusting him everyday. That’s what guidance is for.

Need Guidance?Anybody in here need any guidance? Do you think our lives in this world, in the in-between, need to be guided by God?

Absolutely.

This is why God has given us the Bible — we have his word to us in Holy Scripture!

Look, we have get over our worry about legalism when it comes to daily Bible reading. Can we just grow up out of that? Settle this: reading the Bible is not what makes God love you. Okay? Settled. And, now … I don’t know how you survive as a Christian without reading the Bible.

We need God’s word for the life of faith like we need oxygen. Don’t think about Bible reading as a duty, but think: Do I want to breathe?

You’re not reading just to read; you’re not trying to check a box, but you need to know how to live in this world. You need to hear from God on how to live in the wild! We need God’s guidance! And there’s a book for that. God has given us his word.

Church, hear the word.

Heed the WarningThe Book of Numbers can be divided up or outlined in a couple of different ways, and one way is to see the book as really the story of two generations.

The first generation goes from Chapter 1 through 18; and the second generation from Chapter 20 through 36.

The second generation is faithful and they make it to the Promised Land, but the first generation is faithless and they die in the wilderness.

Numbers is a fascinating book in and of itself, but then we also have the New Testament, and in the book of 1 Corinthians Chapter 10, the apostle Paul makes some comments about the Book of Numbers that are pretty important.

In 1 Corinthians 10 most English Bibles put a little heading there that says something like “Warning Against Idolatry” because that’s what Paul is doing. He gives a warning, and look where he goes:

In verses 1–5 he talks about that first generation in Numbers. God had rescued them from Egypt; they had seen God’s provision, nevertheless, verse 5: “with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” That was the first generation — we’re gonna study all about this over the next several weeks. But notice what Paul says in verse 6.

1 Corinthians 10:6,

“Now these things took place [the events in Numbers — these things took place]as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.”

Again, look at verse 11:

“Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”

And that word for “instruction” could also be translated as “warning.” Paul is saying that the purpose of this book — the reason the events of Numbers were written down — was so that we Christians would read it as a cautionary tale! Verse 12:

“Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”

According to the apostle Paul, this is the attitude we should bring to this book.

Sober up, church! Listen closely! Take heed!

Do not be like the first generation in Numbers.

In short, flee idolatry.

Flee IdolatryPaul mentions idolatry twice here, in verse 7 and verse 14. And that tells us that, fundamentally, Israel’s problem of unbelief in Numbers was a failure to obey the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

That was the real reason behind all their grumbling and suspicion — they didn’t worship the true God! And this all comes to light in Numbers 25.

Numbers 25 is the last event of the first generation, (right before Chapter 26 gives us the census for the new generation).

And in Chapter 25, this is verse 1:

“While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. 2These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor.”

Now this is eerily similar to Exodus 32 when Israel made the golden calf, except this is worse! In Exodus 32, the people clearly break the second commandment, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image” (Exodus 20:4), but here in Numbers 25 they’re not making images, they are literally putting other gods before Yahweh!

It’s like Numbers has pulled back the layers and got to the real issue. The people of Israel have not learned from their sin in Exodus 32, but they’ve doubled down in it. They’ve dug in their heels to make clear they want other gods besides Yahweh — which is disgusting and ridiculous and terrifying.

We don’t want to do that! We must flee idolatry!

And in the Book of Numbers, we’re gonna learn how to flee. We are going to heed Paul’s warning and we’re going to reject idolatry.

And so we should expect a kind of testing through this book over the next several weeks.

And I want to invite all of us, through this series, to open our hearts to God, and ask him to search us. We want him to expose any idols we might be harboring. Is there anything that we might want more than God?

Questions to ConsiderAnd to get us started with that heart attitude, I’d like to close with some self-assessment questions. And I know this is a little different. We’ve never done this before, but this is an intro sermon. I want us to prepare for this book, and so here are a few questions for us to think about…

(1) When it comes to entering the wild …

Do you demonstrate a recognition that this world is not your home? How does your life show that you’re on a journey to heaven?

(2) When it comes to hearing the word …

Are you determined to love what God loves and to do what God says? How often do you look to God for guidance?

(3) When it comes to heeding the warning …

Is Jesus your all-consuming passion and all-satisfying treasure?

If he’s not, who is?

The TableThe Book of Numbers is a kind of call to action. It’s an “on your feet” book, but the action is faith, and faith is the empty-handed embrace of who God is. We bring nothing to him, and this Table reminds us of that.

We come to him, hands open, to receive his grace, to lean on his mercy, to rest in his love, which he has shown us most vividly in the death of Jesus for us.

This Table reminds us of that, and we give God thanks for the gospel.

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What is the difference between a mission and a vision?

Six weeks ago I kicked off our series “We Are Cities Church” by talking all about our mission, and today I’m gonna close the series talking all about our vision — and so what’s the difference between those two words?

When we talk about mission, we’re talking about what we’re sent to do.

Vision is what it looks like if we get it done.

Mission is assignment, vision is success.

Mission is action, vision is the result of you fulfilling the action.

So, let me connect this to our passage this morning, Revelation 7, verses 9–12.

Revelation 7 ConnectionThe whole Book of Revelation is basically all vision (John is describing what he sees in the future, and the purpose is to encourage us). So in Revelation 7, notice what he sees, verse 9:

9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

This is a scene. John has seen this, and we’re supposed to see it with him. That’s what vision does. Vision is meant to be envisioned.

So what are we envisioning here? What do we see?

It’s a crowd of people from all over the world — every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages are altogether. And what are they doing altogether?

They’re saying with a loud voice, verse 10:

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

These people are saying this to the Lamb, before his throne — and the Lamb, of course, is Jesus. So see this: these people are worshipping Jesus along with the heavenly host.

Who again are these people?

They’re people from all nations worshiping Jesus. Revelation 7 is a vision of Jesus-worshipers from all nations.

Can you see it?

Back to Matthew 28This vision is the result of some action that’s been fulfilled. But what action? What assignment must have been done in order for there to be Jesus-worshipers from all nations?

Oh, we know this one! Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

See that’s the mission! That’s what the church is supposedto do — make disciples of all nations — and when the church is ultimately successful, when the church gets that done (which she will get done!), these disciples of Jesus from all nations will be worshipers of Jesus from all nations forever.

The disciple-making mission of Matthew 28 is what leads to the Jesus-worshiping vision of Revelation 7.

What you do — mission; what it looks like when it’s done — vision.

In the ultimate sense, Matthew 28 and Revelation 7 is our church’s mission and vision. And it’s the mission and vision of every faithful local church.

This is non-negotiable. To be a real church means to exist with the mission to make disciples of Jesus for the vision of Jesus being worshiped forever.

That’s why we’re here. And we are here.

Applied Here and NowWe live in a particular place and time — we live within a particular culture with it’s particular challenges and opportunities. The “first half of the 21st century in the Twin Cities” has its unique provisions and needs, resources and limitations, blessings and burdens.

And the question is: How do we apply that non-negotiable mission and vision to when and where we are?

Well when it comes to our mission, we’ve tried to capture that with more details in the form of a statement. What do we mean exactly when we say “make disciples”? We mean that we want to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

And that word “disciple” includes a four-fold calling:

We are Jesus worshipers
We are joyful servants
We are generous disciplers
We are welcoming witnesses

These are the kind of disciples we want to be and make. This is our mission. And when it comes to our vision — that Jesus is worshiped forever — how does that look now? How does that future reality get reflected here?

That’s what I want to tell you in this sermon.

With the Book of Revelation as our ultimate vision, I want to show you five facts about our vision here. And these facts are not part of a statement — I don’t expect you to memorize these things — but I’m trying to paint a picture for you. This is what it would look like if we are effective in making joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

We are a healthy, vibrant church entranced by God as our all-satisfying joy. Again, this is something you have to imagine. We’re talking about a vibe here. And the vibe is that we are a happy people. It’s something that you just feel in the air when you’re here and you’re around us. We have joy — and it’s not joy in our circumstances, because those are changing everyday — but we have joy down deep in our souls because God loves us.

And we know God loves us because he has proven it to us — it’s that when we were still sinners, dead in our sins and undeserving of anything good, Jesus Christ died for us.

Jesus took the punishment for our sins!

Jesus removed all of our guilt and shame!

And on the third day, he was raised from the dead.

Jesus has secured our eternal life and freedom in him. He has given us his Spirit as our Helper, to guide us in his truth. Jesus has drawn us into the joyous fellowship that he has had with the Father before the foundations of the world.

We are now “in on” the divine smile that is behind everything.

And do you know what that means? It means that we can smile here.

Hey, it’s gonna be okay. We are the richest people in the world! Did you know that even the hard things in your life are being used by God for your ultimate good? Look, there’s not a hair that falls from your head without the will of your Father in heaven, in fact, all things must work together for your salvation!

God sees you and knows you and loves you, and he wants you to know that he loves you. Because the more you are assured of his love for you (and how much you don’t deserve it), then the more you’re gonna be humbled and filled with joy, and then the more you’re gonna be poured out in love, and this all amounts to magnifying the glory of God. And that’s the point!

The purpose behind it all is that God’s glory be magnified in our being satisfied in all that he is for us in Jesus.

We’re a happy people because we have God — “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy!” (Psalm 43:4)

Can you see it? We are a healthy, vibrant church entranced by God as our all-satisfying joy.

Also …

We are deepening our knowledge of God for a life of faithful discipleship and gospel advance.We’re a people happy in God, and we’re a people who seek him.

“4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord;

teach me your paths.

5 Lead me in your truth and teach me,

for you are the God of my salvation … (Psalm 25:4–5).

We want to know God and the ways of God, because our faith is according to knowledge. The more we know about God, the more we can trust him. This is why Jesus says that making disciples means that we teach one another all that he has commanded us. We’re supposed to learn together how to follow Jesus.

So get this: we don’t learn to get fat heads. The end-goal is not what you know, but it’s who you are becoming, shaped by who you know. Christ clear for Christlikeness.

We will be a well-taught church, able to discern truth from error, not tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of human doctrine, but we’re gonna speak the truth in love and we are gonna be transformed (see Ephesians 4:14–16).

We are a truth-telling outpost that serves as a refuge from the world of lies that surrounds us, but even more than that, we are a church that lives in the wonder of who God is. Yes, we will defend God’s truth, but first we are amazed by God’s truth! This is what The Cities Institute is trying to do.

It’s a recovery project to bring back the primacy of teaching in the local church, because that is the church’s history. In the earliest days of the church, people were coming to Christ from all kinds of different religious backgrounds. That’s what mission to the Gentile world meant. You had all the pagans who were getting saved and they had no Bible background. And so the church realized: if we don’t teach these people sound theology, they’re gonna mix some stuff up and eventually it’s going to ruin our witness, so the early church had a “teach or die” mindset.

They were just listening to Jesus, because Jesus said to teach. That’s part of what discipleship is. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to seek to know God, to be amazed by him and transformed by him, to faithfully follow Jesus and be his witnesses.

Do you see it? We are deepening our knowledge of God for a life of faithful discipleship and gospel advance.

We are actively organizing our lives to share our joy in Jesus with others. One of the great things about church planting is that sharing the gospel is on the front-burner of how you live. Every encounter with other people could turn into a spiritual conversation. You know God ordains divine appointments, and so you’re just looking for them.

I remember when we first moved into our current neighborhood. It was 12 years ago — Elizabeth was five. Melissa and I taught her that the reason we lived where we did was to tell our neighbors about God. I remember Elizabeth actually told our neighbors that. Not kidding. People would be out walking their dog out in front of our house and Elizabeth would be like “Hey, we’re here to tell you about God.” And it was true! And all of us thought that way.

But here’s the thing: we’re all just so busy now. There’s so much going on, and over time, sharing Jesus is not on the front-burner, but it gets moved to the back, over to the side, and before you know it, you’re just running through the motions like every other lost person in these cities.

I’m not saying don’t be involved in stuff — be involved, plug in, be active, but do it as a Christian. Everywhere we go we are a welcoming witness to Jesus Christ. We are opening wide our arms to make Jesus known, which means we want to double our joy.

I remember a story years ago that Pastor John Piper told about his dad. His dad was a passionate evangelist who had been in ministry for decades, and one day, toward the end of his life, Pastor John asked him, “What the key to your joy?” How have you remained so happy for so long?

And his dad said: “soul winning.” Leading other people to Jesus.

See, when you’re happy in Jesus, you wanna share that happiness with others, and when you do, your happiness doubles and deepens. It’s like a fountain that just keeps overflowing.

We say to God, Psalm 4:7,

“You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound!”

And that’s never gonna satisfy them, I want them to have this joy that I have in you!

That’s the prayer we take everywhere we go. That’s what we’re looking to do … in our neighborhoods, and in our work relationships, and at those school events, and through all those youth sports — we want to share Jesus. We want more people to be happy in God. And they will be.

Through our witness, more and more people will trust in Jesus and be baptized. Because baptism is that symbol. Jesus gave us baptism as the way to declare that we are alive in him. And right now we have baptisms three or four times a year, but what if we had baptisms 12 times a year? What if so many people start coming to Christ through our witness that we start having “Baptism Sundays” every month!

Can you see it? — we are actively organizing our lives to share our joy in Jesus with others.

Also…

We are deliberate to invest in the faith of future generations.We believe children matter. All children matter: pre-born children, little children, growing children. Children matter and families matter. And we all believe this whether we’re unmarried or married, have a house full of kids or no kids at all, whether we’re empty-nesters or newly-weds — we all share this conviction because of the Bible.

And when we think about where we’re headed as a church, I don’t know if there’s anything more important to remember than this: At some point, we’re going to be handing the torch to our children.And we need to be preparing for that hand-off now.

This is a new way of thinking for us compared to how we thought ten years ago when we first planted this church. When you’re planting a church, you’re just trying to get off the ground. You’re starting something brand-new and that takes a lot of attention, and so we poured a lot into that, and we also had kids so we did ask: “Hey, what do we do with the kids?”

But see, that’s not the question we’re asking anymore. In those early years, we were trying to build something, and we thought What about our children? — but now we’re trying to build something for our children.

Does that make sense?

We’re better now at thinking more long-term. And that’s certainly the case with this steeple project. What we’ve done here is no “flash in the pan” restoration, but we’ve done it the way we have for our children’s children. That’s the way we’re thinking now. We’re building something for future generations. We’re investing in the faith of those who will come after us.

And this is something that comes naturally to women as cultivators and nurturers, but now this is something our men must think more about as builders. I just had a conversation last week with a few of our men in their thirties; they’re all business leaders who’ve been transformed by Jesus; and they want to use their skills and expertise to start companies and create jobs and to build a legacy of generosity. See, it’s thinking big picture. Long-term.

I heard a story years ago about the Reformer Martin Luther, and I can’t actually verify that this conversation really happened, but supposedly, somewhere at some point, Luther was out walking with some of his students one day, it was a beautiful fall day like today, and little Hans spoke up and said, “Herr Doktor, if you knew that the world would go to pieces tomorrow, what would you do today?”

And Luther looked at him with a smile and said, “I would plant an apple tree.”

His point was that he would do something most of which would not immediately, directly benefit himself — he wouldn’t sit under the shade of that tree and he wouldn’t eat any of its apples — but those who come after him would. And that’s how we’re thinking now.

Can you see it? — we are deliberate to invest in the faith of future generations.

And speaking of planting, fifth and final:

We are a healthy, vibrant church with a high priority and capacity to multiply more churches in the Twin Cities who are entranced by God as our all-satisfying joy. In other words, we are a church who plants more churches like ours here.

Since the very beginning, this has been the way we talk about vision. We want to multiply people, multiply Community Groups, multiply churches.

And overall, to date, we’ve sent out six church planting couples to start new work, and countless couples to support new work. And I miss these people. Our budget misses these people. But we believe in Spirit-led sending — it’s a value of ours — and we want to do more of it. Wherever you wanna go in the name of Jesus, we’re gonna get behind you!

And when it comes to our vision for here and now, it’s to plant more churches in the Twin Cities metro, and there are a few reasons why:

Growth leads to spreading.We learn this from nature. As an oak tree grows and matures and is healthy, it produces more oak trees. There comes a point when that oak tree itself is not going to get any higher and wider — it’s solid and full and maxed — but it’s got these acorns, and that’s what will make the one tree become two and three and four — this is where forests come from.

And that’s the way we see it here. We’re gonna use every square inch of this building for our church — and we do have some room, and we will make some room — but we want to see God work in the lives of more people than we can fit in here. So we’re gonna multiply this and do it more places than just here. We’ve been planted, rooted, and now we’re branching out.

Spreading (or multiplication) makes a bigger impact than centralization.One strategy might be to move this whole thing to a third-ring suburb, get a smoke machine, and try to triple our size. See, this is the thinking: let’s just make this bigger, whatever it takes (it’s centralization).

But that’s not the long-term thinking. Multiplication, not centralization, makes a bigger impact for a longer period of time. We want Jesus to be impossible to ignore in the Twin Cities. If you come to these cities, we want it to be Jesus in your face. And you may not believe him — like our state government right now you may reject him — but you will not be able to ignore him, and you will recognize that these cities are saturated with churches of men and women and boys and girls who believe and live like Jesus is real. Multiplication.

Planting reminds us that this whole thing is so much bigger than us.This vision to plant more churches in the Twin Cities is both impossible and possible at different levels. At the level of impossibility, it’s just us. I don’t know about you, but every morning I wake up I’m just happy to be here for another day. I made it for another one!

That’s a lot of us, right? We’re just trying to survive — I’m just trying to get my kids to school on time and not forget that they have to be picked up — and here I am talking about starting a multiplying church planting movement that aims to make more people happy in Jesus forever — it feels impossible, at one level.

But then at another level, we remember God, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do no exist, and he is often pleased to bring his people to places where he must be who he says he is. …

It is possible with God that he put it in the heart of a man and his wife to lead a new church plant, and then that he’d put it in the hearts of others who would plant with them. It is possible that they could build a team of 20-30 people who would want to branch out and be a new church. God could do that — God could do it once, twice, six times, fifty times — north, south, east, west — and before you know it, there is a movement of churches everywhere you look in these cities entranced by God as our all-satisfying joy. Can you see it?

Impossible, and possible — and certainly way bigger than us. That’s where I want to live. Don’t you? If we’re going to multiply, we need God to be God!

That’s our vision, church — but remember it’s our vision here and now, until Jesus comes back. We can’t forget the ultimate vision.

Longing for New JerusalemThere may be just a few of you in here who were there on December 14, 2014. We were less than a month away from officially becoming a church, right at the starting line, and we had a meeting in the cafeteria at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis. And I gave a short message about our vision and I want to read to you what I said. Here are the exact words from December 14, 2014:

Church plants can be high-adrenaline work. Many of us have been meeting since August, others since March, and some have been dreaming of this thing for five years, and we are getting close. I mean, this event right now [in the cafeteria] is a testimony to God’s faithfulness to us, to his blessing on this vision and this church and what we want to do in the Twin Cities for his name.

And with all this waiting and anticipation, with Cities Church just about to get off the ground, let me remind us (me!), that we have not arrived. That is the temptation, you know. As God blesses this thing, and we pray he does, there is going to be this subtle thing that happens where we want to start patting our ourselves on the back. We’re going to feel like we’ve made it! Here we are! This is the dream! But no, it’s not. Because, you see, our goal — our ultimate goal — is not a new church plant, but a new Jerusalem.

Amen to that ten years later. And may we say that ten more years from now, and ten more years from then — and if Jesus hasn’t come back yet, may our children’s children say that! Because what we most want to see

…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Jesus-worshipers from all nations. That is where we’re headed, Cities Church. That is what we want. And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableHere at this Table we remember the death of Jesus for us, and we give him thanks. We come to this table to rest in him and to worship him together.

And because of what this table means, it’s only for those who trust in Jesus. If you’re a Christian, we invite you eat and drink with us. But if you’ve not yet trusted in Jesus, let the elements pass, but look: you can become a Christian this morning, if you just put your faith in Jesus. Right now, turn from your sin, and ask Jesus to save you.

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I recognize that another event outside this building has the attention and hearts of many of us in this room this morning.

Show of hands: How many here know and remember Pastor Kenny and his wife Malaina, who we sent out last year to plant a church in the Orlando area? Well, as we meet here this morning, Horizon City Church, led by Kenny, is having their first public gathering in Winter Garden, Florida.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that at the very time when we’re turning our focus to being welcoming witnesses that we remember, and pray for, a man who embodies what it means to be a welcoming witness. So, if you feel a little distracted this morning, I get it. In fact, you might do well to keep Pastor Kenny in mind during this message, as a living lesson in being a welcoming witness.

To be clear, what’s going on in Winter Garden, and what’s going on this morning at 1524 Summit Avenue, is vastly more important that any marathon or any American football game in London or anywhere else in the world.

Growing Up and OutThis is now the fifth in a series of six sermons, called “We Are Cities Church,” on our vision and values. As we’re approaching our tenth anniversary as a church (this January), we have found ourselves in a new season of church life.

In broad strokes, you might see our first five years, from 2015 until COVID, as a time of being planted. And these last four years have been a time of becoming rooted here on Summit Avenue.

Now we sense ourselves coming into a new season — of what? What would you call it? What do you call the next phase after being planted and rooted? What is an acorn planted and rooted for? To grow tall and wide. To stretch up high in worship and spread out in witness to the world. We’re in a season of new growth and stretching and spreading our branches — of bearing fruit, we pray, and dropping acorns we hope will become new churches.

So, for this new season, we’ve considered how we might freshly express our unchanging mission: we want to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

And we have a fresh fourfold way of talking about the kind of disciples we hope to be and multiply. Each of the four brings together two realities to clarify with an adjective what kind of nouns we mean.

First, we are Jesus worshipers. This is the vertical aspect, the up-reach. We are not just theists, or even monotheists; nor do we simply admire Jesus as a great moral teacher. Rather, we worship Jesus. That’s what it means to be Christians. We not only worship God but worship his Son.

Second, we are joyful servants. That is, we are not dour servants, doing our duty while biting our lip. Nor are we shallowly happy sluggards sitting around dedicated to self-service. Rather, we aim to have happy hearts behind our helping hands. We gladly provide shade for those scorched by the sun, and strong branches to give safety for those harassed by wolves.

Third, we are generous disciplers. What do we say here — providing life-giving sap? We are not miserly mentors, nor generous donors, but generous disciplers — up close, involved, giving of our own time and energy to help others grow in the faith. Last week we saw this vision in Acts 20 of personally speaking God’s word and living his word in real life while investing in the lives of a few.

“Disciplers” is the big addition to our previous way of talking about a threefold calling as worshipers, servants, and missionaries. We still say worshipers and servants, but now we’ve added disciplers, and updated missionaries to witnesses.

So, fourth and finally, we are welcoming witnesses. Here we’re talking outreach in particular. Not just up in worship, and in through service and discipling, but out in Christian witness to an unchristian world.

Welcoming witness means we are not okay being cold, off-putting witnesses; nor are we warm, welcoming pushovers. We are welcoming witnesses: those who open wide their arms to others to make Jesus known and enjoyed.

So, we give the rest of this message to welcoming witnesses, and here’s how we’ll proceed. First, let’s go to Acts 2, and the string of texts that follow it, and see the welcoming witness of the early church, and how it grew. Then let’s consider what it means to be a witness, and then what welcoming adds to witness. You can call these three truths for our welcoming witness.

The church and the gospel grow together.Acts 2:40 says that Peter “bore witness” to the gospel of Jesus, and verse 21 says that the people “received his word” — we’ll come back to this.

Then twice we hear about additions, that is, growth:

Verse 41: “there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
Verse 47: “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

And this is the beginning of this remarkable theme in the book of Acts — the word growing, increasing, multiplying.

So we hear in Acts 4:4: “many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.” So the (gospel) word is heard and believed, and the number grows.

Then Acts 6:7: “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem . . . .” Number grows, as word grows. Specifically, number multiplies as word increases.

Then Acts 12:24, very simply: “the word of God increased and multiplied” — many more heard and believed and joined the church. So too in Acts 19:20: “the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.”

The word, the message of the gospel, grows as people hear and believe in Jesus and are added to the church. Word growth and church growth go together.

What If GodNow, I know that some of us hear that — all that adding and increasing and even multiplying — and think, Oh no, I just want a small church. We look around this room and think, There’s already enough people here. Already too many! No more increasing, please. Okay, maybe just a little adding here and there, but no multiplying!

We might think of it in terms of church size, but perhaps that’s really a misplaced diagnosis. I suspect it’s not really about church size as much as the rush and pace and complexities and relentless frenzy of city life. Our modern metropolitan lives are so crazy, we just want church small and simple, thank you. But our discomfort with gospel growth may really have more to do with our unrecognized calling to the city.

You know what’s good about city life? There are so many people nearby. And you know what’s so hard about city life? There are so many people nearby.

To be honest, just about all of us at Cities Church have small-church preferences. And you know what? It turns out a lot of us have small-church preferences. So many of us, in fact, that after a while, we small-church people find each other, and don’t have a small church anymore.

What might help us is to do business with the time and place to which God has called us. Brothers and sisters, you live in a very large city. Twin Cities. Depending on who’s counting, this is the 12th to 16th largest metro in the United States. And this is where God has put you, whether you own it or not. Maybe God’s loosening your roots and means for you to head to the hinterlands, but for now, if you live in the TC metro, you live in a very populated urban and suburban area. My hope for us as a church is that we would recognize our present calling, and embrace it, and persevere in it, and let it inform our expressed desire for small church.

I get it. Most of us have some native bucolic longings that in the complexity and stress of city life we might try to pour into church life. Brothers and sisters, there are other ways to channel your rural dreams than into a church on Summit Avenue. Drive out-state to an apple orchard next Saturday, or get an AirBnB for a weekend. Take a trip in Duluth; visit the Brainerd Lakes area or Boundary Waters. Explore MN. Drive across South Dakota. And then come back to the big city, and own that we are a church in the city, and that it is good to have so many people nearby, and so many people to bring close to Jesus and into joyful discipleship.

It would be very easy to look around week after week and think we don’t have any more space. We don’t have room for witness. We don’t have room to welcome others in. We don’t have space for more baptisms, at least not many.

As pastors, we are wrestling in this season, and want you to wrestle with us, Lord, what are you calling us to?

We want the gospel to increase and multiply. We want the church to grow and mature. We want to generously disciple many, and send them out like Pastor Kenny, and add to our number those who are being saved. Would you join us in praying for it?

And would you join us in praying for Macalester? Amazingly, we’ve been seeing a new trickle of students from Macalester. What if God would be pleased to turn that into a stream, and into a river? What if God sent us 100 Macalester students? What’s your gut response to that? Is it, “Oh no! We don’t have room for many more people!” Or does your heart burn, “Yes, yes, do it, Lord, answer our prayers, make us a welcoming witness to Macalester, and Summit Avenue, and in these surrounding neighborhoods”?

You are never alone when you witness to Jesus.The key verse that sets the program for the whole book of Acts is Acts 1:8:

“…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Because of Acts 1:8, we often use this word “witness” for “sharing our faith” or “speaking the gospel.” Have you ever stopped to ponder what this word “witness” means for us as Christians?

What is a witness? A witness is someone, who, for the good of others, chooses to testify to something they have seen or heard. Usually the witness did not choose to see or hear what they did. They didn’t initiate the experience. The event chose them, so to speak. And then, for the good of others, they choose, they agree, to testify in court.

So, to be a witness is both humble and brave. Something happened that you didn’t do, but you saw it or heard it. And now, for the benefit of others, you testify to what you saw or heard or know.

John the Baptist is a classic example of the witness:

He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. (John 1:7-8)

Brothers and sisters, pressure’s off! You’re not the light; you’re just the witness. Jesus is the light, not you. It’s his work, not yours. It’s his grace, not yours. But this I know: I once was blind, but now I see. I’m not the light; he’s the light. Look at the light!

And not only do we witness like John but we never witness alone, but as we witness to Jesus, and what we have seen and heard and experience, we simply add our voice to the company of witnesses: to the witness of nature (Acts 14:17), and the witness of conscience (Romans 2:15), and the witness of Scripture (Acts 10:43), and to the cloud of witnesses that surrounds us (Hebrews 12:1).

But the one I find most encouraging of all is that the Holy Spirit witnesses. Acts 5:32: “we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

The Spirit is the divine Person who works through and with the word to give it life and growth and increase and expansion. And God has given him to us; he dwells in us. You never witness alone when you bear witness to Jesus.

Over and over again in Acts, the Holy Spirit fills Christians and empowers them for witness (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 13:9), just as Jesus promised in Acts 1:8: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses...”

We adorn our witness with hearts and hands that welcome.Witness is the noun. Welcome is the adjective. Welcoming witness means that we adorn our gospel witness with the warmth and deeds of Christian love. Word is central in witness, and welcome adorns word.

Biblically, a related concept to “welcoming witness” is hospitality, which is literally “love of strangers.” There is usual human kindness, where we welcome and love those who love us, and there is the unusual kindness of Rahab welcoming the Israelite spies (Hebrews 11:31) or the natives of Malta showing hospitality to the shipwrecked apostle Paul (Acts 28:2, 7). Love for strangers is so important to Christianity that hospitable is a requirement for office in the church (1 Tim 3:2; 5:10; Titus 1:8).

For Christians, love for strangers means both that we welcome fellow believers in uncomfortable ways (Romans 12:13; 14:1; 1 Peter 4:9) as well as that we welcome strangers and unbelievers (Heb 13:2; Matt 25:35, 38, 43).

Why would we do this? I remember I had a book as a kid called Never Talk to Strangers. It was not a Christian book. So, why would we do this? Why would we talk to strangers? And have a heart for strangers to know Jesus? And take action that we might welcome strangers to Jesus and witness to him?

Because this is what Jesus has done for us. We were hungry and he fed us with the bread of life. We were thirsty and he gave us to drink from the well of living water. We were strangers, sinners, rebels, estranged from God, and he welcomed us.

Christians learn to love strangers, and learn to be welcoming witnesses to those strange to us and estranged from God, because God himself loved us when we were yet strangers. His love for strangers compels us to be welcoming witnesses, rather than fearful of and suspicious of the strange and God-estranged.

Three Spheres for WitnessSo, I end with three spheres of our welcoming witness, perhaps in increasing importance:

1) We are a welcoming witness at 1524 Summit Ave.

Each Sunday, we have a welcome team. You can participate in that. And let’s not leave all the welcoming of each other, and strangers, to the welcome team. So, some welcoming happens on the way into this room, but mainly, after we worship, oh what amazing ministry, what welcoming witness happens on these grounds. Please don’t run as a pattern. Linger and be welcoming witnesses.

Then all week, as we meet people nearby, and represent our church, as we frequent businesses nearby, as we repair the steeple, and keep the lawn, we want to be together a welcoming witness to Jesus on Summit Ave and to these surrounding neighborhoods.

2) We are a welcoming witness as we go out into other spaces during the week.

So, your work, your school, coffee shops, gyms, ballfields.

Just Thursday, I was given a new book called You Will Be My Witnesses (by Brian DeVries). I got it from someone in another city who had no idea I was preaching on “witnesses” this Sunday. It’s very good. Chapter 5 summarizes the pattern of Christian witness in Acts like this, which is very applicable to our relationships with unbelievers across the metro: Christian witness is (1) usually preceded by prayer, (2) often explicitly Spirit-directed, (3) generally spontaneous, (4) with the church community itself as the dominant form of witness (DeVries talks about “contagious Christian living within an attracting church community,” 120), and all that, as we’ve seen, (5) with gospel communication central (and “authenticated by . . . faithful living,” 121).

3) We are a welcoming witness in our homes.

Sometimes we talk about someone having “the gift” of hospitality. It may be true that some are more naturally inclined toward good hosting, but hospitality is not something that falls from the sky (or not). It is first God-given love for strangers in the heart, and that love is either cultivated and grown (whatever your natural inclinations), or neglected and suppressed; and if it’s cultivated, then that love overflows into practical, tangible outward deeds and welcome.

I close with five practical, nitty-gritty ideas for welcoming witness in our homes.

1) Pray about being hospitable and budget for it. Pray over who you’d like to invite into your home, and don’t let the very minimal costs keep you from the very maximal rewards.

2) Think in concentric circles of “strangers”: first, those who are not strangers at all: friends and family. Okay, that’s very normal hosting. Then think of those who are strangers in that they don’t live in your house but are fellow believers. Then don’t forget those who are strangers according to faith. In other words, Christian hospitality incorporates both fellow believers and nonbelievers. Make use of it for both, for hosting Community Group and hosting unbelieving neighbors.

3) A word for dads. I wish this lesson didn’t take me so long to learn, and that I didn’t still have room for growth. But it did, and I do. I’d love to save some younger husbands some grief if you’ll hear an old man’s counsel: dad’s energy is key for hospitality. Husbands, fathers, we don’t wave a wand and expect wife and kids to start singing, “Be Our Guest” — not for long. Dad, your masculine heart and hands and arms are critical; and so is her feminine heart and touch — and everyone knows her part is vital, but yours can get forgotten, especially by you. Don’t forget it.

Brothers, lead the way in prayer, planning, preparation, service, and cleanup. Put your male body to some use. Many marriages (not saying all) would be helped if dad sweated hospitality prep for more, and mom sweated it less.

4) So, a word to the ladies: some of you may have to lower your expectations for domestic and culinary excellence. I promise, it is worth being hospitable, even if a perfect pic doesn’t wind up on IG. You don’t need to impress; just love. Use paper plates, and the house doesn’t have to be perfect.

5) A next-level consideration might be having a guest room, or plan for overnight hosting.

Making a practice of welcoming others into our homes can be good for your marriage, in having shared mission and ministry together. It can be good for our kids, in the people they’ll meet and interact with and learn from. And it’s good for us to have open homes, open doors, open lives. An open home brings accountability with it that does us all good. Satan loves isolation and closed doors. And welcoming others into our homes might be not just an important way, but the key way in our times to witness to our faith in Jesus.

Housekey?I remember the moment in evangelism class in seminary. The professor’s name was Steve Childers. He asked the class, “You know what will be the key to evangelism in the 21st century, don’t you?”

I’m sure he could see on our faces how eager we were for his answer. Wow, the key, we were thinking. This is huge. He knew he had us. So he paused and smiled and waited. And he waited. And just when I was almost ready to burst with, “Just c’mon already!” finally he lifted the curtain: “Hospitality.”

In an increasingly post-Christian society, he said, the importance of hospitality as an evangelistic asset is quickly growing. Increasingly, the most strategic turf on which to engage the unbelieving with the good news of Jesus is the turf of our own yards and homes.

When people don’t gather in droves for stadium crusades, or tarry long enough on the sidewalk to hear a gospel presentation, or look up from their phones, or take out their earbuds, what will you do? How will we be welcoming witnesses? Where will we testify to the unbelieving about what matters most?

Invite them to dinner.

Witness and Welcome at the TableEach Sunday, this Table forms us to be welcoming witnesses. First, this Table witnesses. It speaks a visible word to us about Jesus, his sacrifice of his body for our sins, and his new covenant inaugurated in the shedding of his blood. This Table witnesses to him, and as we partake we proclaim his death until he comes.

And this Table welcomes — not without spiritual conditions but indiscriminately within the conditions of confession this Jesus as Lord, Savior, and Treasure and having had his name put on you publicly through baptism.

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So this is sermon four of six in our series entitled: “We Are Cities Church,” the goal of which has been to communicate who we are, especially now that we’re in our tenth year, and have gone from being a church planted to becoming a church rooted right here on 1524 Summit Avenue.

Back on September 8, Pastor Jonathan began this series with a message on our church’s mission, in which he said: “Our mission has always been, and will always be, to make disciples of Jesus” becausethat is what Jesus tells us to do. And when it comes to what we mean by making disciples, we mean making “joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.”

Now, what do those joyful disciples look like? What are their defining traits? Four things…

As joyful disciples of Jesus we are Jesus worshipers, joyful servants, generous disciplers, and welcoming witnesses.

And two weeks ago, Pastor David Mathis preached on that first one, Jesus Worshipers. Last week, Pastor Jonathan preached on the second one, Joyful Servants. And this week, if God allows, I’ll preach on the third, Generous Disciplers. Let’s pray and ask him to do so.

So, we — asjoyful disciples of Jesus — are Jesus worshipers, joyful servants, and, now, generous disciplers. To which, you might question, what is a generous discipler?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Here’s my definition: A generous discipler is someone who gladly and purposefully seeks to help other Christians follow Jesus.

You like the definition? Good. But, what’s with that, “other Christians” part? “A generous discipler is someone who gladly and purposefully seeks to help other Christiansfollow Jesus.”Why not just “other people?” Why limitit to Christians? I mean, don’t we want to help those who are not yet Christians to begin to follow Jesus as well?

The answer is yes — emphatically, yes! We most certainly want to help those who are not yet Christians to begin to follow Jesus because that is what Jesus commands us to do in Matthew 28:19 — a passage we recite at our commission each and every Sunday — where he says, “Make disciples of all nations.” That is, make people who, though they previouslyhad not been followers of Jesus, are now followers of Jesus. And that process of — making those who, though previously had not been followers Jesus, are now followers of Jesus, sometimes referred to as “evangelism” or “witnessing” — is what we’re going to drill down on in next week’s sermon, our final defining trait — welcoming witnesses.

But the focus for thismorning’s sermon is, assuming that we do in fact make disciples, what we should then do with them, once we’ve made them. That is, after we’ve shared the gospel with someone, and they’ve received Christ, and they’ve been baptized in his name, are we just to then say, “Alright, well, see you in eternity?” I mean, yes, Jesus calls us to make disciples. But is that all he calls us to do?

See Jesus has more to say to us in Matthew 28 about this process of discipleship. He says,

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teachingthem to observe all that I commanded you;”

Do you see the transition?

Make disciples, baptize them; and then teach them.

Make disciples, baptize them; and then show them how to live.

Make disciples; and then, we might say, gladly and purposefully seek to help them follow Jesus.

It is that portion of the equation, that helping of current followers of Jesus to continue to follow Jesus, that we are focused on this morning as generous disciplers.

And so, with that, I want to turn your attention to the text, Acts chapter 20. And I’ve got two things that I want to show you here from this text this morning. Two methods, if you will, for helping other Christians to follow Jesus.

First: Christians help other Christians to follow Jesus by speakingthe word of God to them.

Second: Christians help other Christians to follow Jesus by livingthe word of God before them.

You want to help other Christians to follow Jesus? Then speakthe word of God to them and livethe word of God before them.

We’ll focus first on speak.

Speak the Word Acts chapter 20, beginning in verse 17, for some context,

“Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.”

The “he” there is Paul. So Paul is in Miletus, and while there, he sends for the elders of the church in Ephesus, saying, “Hey, come join me over here.” For some perspective, this is not like a quick trip out to a friend’s house. That’s like a 2-4 day journey on foot that he’s just called them on. 30 miles as the crow flies, but more like 60 when it comes to all the twists and turns on the path to get there. But despite that distance, these elders in Ephesus hear the request, and they come.

Verse 18,

“And when they came to him, he [Paul] said to them: You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia…”

So he’s calling them back to the time they had spent together in Ephesus. And he’s summing up his activity while he was there as, verse 19,

“…serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; 20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house.”

Now, Paul had spent nearly three years with those believers back in Ephesus. Three years! And what had he been doing throughout those three years? Among other things, he had been, verse 20: “Declaring” and “Teaching.” Mouth open and speaking to these Ephesian Christians. And what had he been speaking to them about?

Well, he had been speaking to them about, “…anything that was profitable...” See it there, in verse 20?

“…declaring to you anything that was profitable…”

Now, at first glance, that makes it sound like Paul had been casting the net pretty wide in terms of things to speak to these Ephesians, right? I mean, anything that was profitable? Like, really anything?

But just compare that somewhat vague statement with another statement of his, down in verse 27. Because while in verse 20, he says, “I did not shrink from declaring to you…anything that was profitable.” Look down with me to verse 27. In verse 27, he says almost the exact same thing. Almost. Verse 27,

“…for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”

Now, do you think Paul means us to read those two things as separate bodies of content? Like, “I didn’t shrink back from declaring to you anything that was profitable, nor did I shrink back from declaring to you the counsel of God?” Are those two things separate? Or, are they synonymous — the one clarifying the other?

I think we could paraphrase Paul’s words here as, “Elders of Ephesus, verse 20, you remember how ‘I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable’ that is, verse 27, how ‘I did not shrink from declaringto you the whole counsel of God.’”

See, because the fact of the matter is, if you’re in search for the body of words that can most profit a person’s soul, in search of the corpus of truth that can most bring true soul-level benefit to a person, then you need not look further than to all the words that God has already spoken.

And Paul is telling them, “Remember, I didn’t hold back a single word that would’ve been profitable for you. For, I didn’t hold back a single word that God has said.” The whole counsel of God.

How do you gladly and purposefully seek to help another Christian follow Jesus? First, you speak the words of God to them. And all the words of God to them. You hold not one of them back.

Why the Whole Counsel?Now, at this point, someone may argue: “Time out, that was Paul. Of course, he discipled others that way. He was an apostle. But look, I am not an apostle. I am an average, run of the mill Christian. Isn’t it enough for me to simply seek to help other Christians follow Jesus by speaking portionsof God’s word? Like, can’t I just share with them the parts of God’s word that are especially comforting? Most encouraging? Or least likely to upset them or convict them about areas of needed change in their life? I mean, this book has some hard sayings — just take the gospels: Jesus talks about Hell, and the fact that some people are going there. Jesus talks about crosses and how we must take up ours to follow him. Jesus talks about sexual sin and how it’s better to pluck out our eyes than take part in it. Jesus says we can’t serve money. Jesus says we can’t live for the praise of others. Jesus says he alone is the way, truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through him. Are wereally to speak thosewords when seeking to help another Christian follow Jesus?”

Well, what did Jesus say?

Make disciples, baptize them, and “Teach them to observe allthat I have commanded.” And he gave that commission not just to Paul. Nor just to the professionals. But to all who would claim to follow him — including you and me.

Brother and sister, are you obeying Jesus in this regard? Who in your life right now needs you, needs you, to speak the words of God to them — even those that are both most difficult for them to swallow and most profitable for them to hear?

So, Paul had spent three years speaking God’s word, all of God’s word, to the Ephesians because he knew that that was what Jesus has called his followers to do. And because he knew God’s word was not going to be the only word the Ephesians were going to hear.

What’s at Stake?Look with me down inActs 20:29-30. See it there with me. He says,

“I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

See what Paul had were eyes to see the battle going on in the world for words and how each and every one of the Christians around him who he was seeking to help follow Jesus were living in the midst of that battle. And every day, following his departure, there were going to be twisted things like lies, deceptions, and half-truths reigning down upon them from all sides. From within, “among your own selves” and from without, “fierce wolves out there.” Each with the aim to hit and puncture and sink into their souls, so as to draw them away from Christ and toward the wolves instead.

Now, just think for a moment — is our world any different than that? I mean, consider someone you know from this church. Someone who is just a bit younger, a bit further behind in their faith than you. Maybe they’re in your community group, or your life group. They’re likely here this morning, maybe seated near you right now. Now do you have eyes to see the battle for words that that person lives in? Do you have eyes to see that that person, a half-hour-or-so from now, is going to walk out of this place, get in their car, and go home? And tomorrow, they’re not going to come here. They’re going to go to work, or school, and then maybe the gym, or the store, or to see a movie, or to enjoy a concert, or to visit a friend, or to spend time with a family member, or open a book, or turn on a screen, or pick up a magazine. And as they do, ask yourself: how many wordsout thereare they going to see and hear between now and next Sunday? And how many of them will be twisted — laden with lies, fanged with falsehoods, aimed at leading that person not to Christ, but away from him? A hundred of them? A thousand?

Are there any wordsyou might be able to say to that person this week to help them keepfollowing Jesus, rather than turn away from him? Is there any way you might be able to, gladly and purposefully seek to help them follow Jesus by speaking the word of God to them this week?

Paul knew what Jesus had called him to. Paul knew the battle his fellow Christians were in. That’s why he spoke. And that’s why we should to.

So, as generous disciplers, we want to gladly and purposefully seek to help other Christians to follow Jesus. And the first way we want to do that is by speaking the word of God to them. The second way, is by living it out before them.

Live the Word Go back with me to verse 18,

“And when they came to him, he said to them: “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia.”

And you know, its interesting — the church at this time was neither rich nor powerful (least not in terms of how the world measures those things). Even still, this was the Apostle Paul. Surely someone in Ephesus has got a nice guest house somewhere outside the city for Paul to stay in, right? I mean, “Paul, get yourself set up somewhere out of the riffraff of commoners and townsfolk. Get somewhere cushy and secluded. You got important stuff to do, to read, to write. You can’t afford to be interrupted by all these nobodies.” Right? Wrong.

Paul did in Ephesus just the same as he did in every other city he visited — he lived among the people. Rubbed shoulders with commoners.

“You yourselves know how I livedamong you...”

“Okay fine,” we say, “but at least Paul impressed these commoners while he was there, right? Showed them he was a cut above the rest — how strong, how intelligent, how skilled he was right?”

Wrong again. Verse 18,

“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tearsand with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews.”

Humility, tears, and trials. I mean if Paul was trying to impress, then clearly, he failed. Good thing he wasn’t. He let his tears fall. His humility show. He bore the marks of trial not because he was trying to impress anybody, but because he was living in response to God’s word.

TearsHis tears were there because God’s word had told him that he should love people and care about their souls. His tears were there because God’s word has told him what happens to souls if deceived by twisted things and led away from their Savior. His tears were there because God’s word had shown him that the loss of a person’s faith deserved them. He was not aiming to impress people, but help people to follow Jesus. And so he let his tears fall in the process.

TrialsLikewise, Paul’s trials were there because God’s word had called him to the front lines of battle. His trials remained there because God’s word had assured him that the battle was well worth fighting no matter how heavy or tiresome they got. He was content to have his trials there and to show the marks of them to others because God’s word showed him that in times of trial, his weakness showed most, and God’s power shined greatest — and that was a good thing.

HumilityFinally, his humility was there because of God’s word, not his skill. God’s word, not his eloquence. God’s word, not his work ethic. God’s word, not man, was able to guard these followers of Jesus so that they kept on as followers of Jesus even in the midst of the battle. He says, verse 32,

“And now [that I’m leaving, and false teachers are coming…] I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give to you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

What enabled three years-worth of humble service to the Ephesians? The fact that he knew the power for his ministry was not in himself, but in God through his word.

Brothers and sisters, go back to that young man or young woman who you had in your mind just a bit ago. The one who is just a bit younger, a bit further behind you in their walk with Jesus.

What if you were to begin discipling them today?

What if you were to begin gladly and purposefully seeking to help them follow Jesus by speaking God’s word to them, and living God’s word before them, this week?

And what if, after you kept at it for three years, they were not impressed by you?

Like, what if, as you discipled them, there came moments when you didn’t have the answers, but were willing to seek them out alongside that person?

And, what if, as you discipled them, it became apparent that even you are not yet totally sanctified, but are hoping to grow in sanctification alongside them?

And what if, as you discipled them, there were no fireworks, and no fanfare, and no accolades, but instead, a thousand little moments, filled with the unimpressive and ordinary stuff, of speaking God’s word to that person, and living God’s word out before them?

What if you did that? Well, then you would then be doing exactly what Jesus has commanded you to do. Making disciples, and then helping them to follow Jesus by teaching them to observe (to live out) all that he has commanded them.

Cities Church, you can do this. You can help others to follow Jesus.

With Bibles open, you can speak the word.

With front doors open, you can live the word.

With the desire to impress behind you, and humility flowing out from among you, and even with trials raging all round you, and tears welling up within you —You can help others to follow Jesus.

And one last, quick word before we close. Cities Church, not only can you do this, but you can do so generously.

Do So GenerouslyVerse 35, final word,

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Do you see it? Jesus said, that it is more not less, but more blessed — more happy, more joy-producing, more delight-inducing — more blessed to give than to receive.

To give than to withhold. To give and expend yourself for the good of others, rather than preserveyourself the supposed good of self.

We don’t want to be begrudging disciplers. We don’t want to be exacting disciplers. We don’t want to be duty-driven disciplers. Jesus tells us we should want to be generousdisciplers because it is not less, but more blessed to give.

The TableNow, what brings us to the table this morning is the fact that Jesus did not call his disciples to himself begrudgingly. He did not teach them his word disinterestedly. He did not cover up, but unfolded his life before them. And on the night he was betrayed, seated among his disciples, he invited them generously — take and eat, this is my body given for you.

This table is Jesus’ table. A fellowship meal for all who profess faith in him.

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“We are Cities Church” means that we take our orders from Jesus, which he gives to us in the Bible.

We are who we are and do what we do because of what he says.

That’s most basically what it means to be his church. We are a band of his disciples — and a disciple, most fundamentally, is a follower or an apprentice.

We are apprentices of Jesus, and a couple of weeks ago we saw that means we get our mission from Jesus. Jesus tells us what we’re supposed to do: as his disciples, he sends us out to make more of his disciples.

Since the very start of our church a decade ago, that’s been our goal. Our mission statement has been a direct quote spoken by Jesus himself in Matthew 28:19, “make disciples.” That’s what he said, and so that’s what we’ve been about; that’s what we’re still about — except that now we just want to say more.

When we say “make disciples” we mean “make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.”

And when we talk about disciples, we have in mind a fourfold calling that we find in the New Testament. First and foremost, #1, a disciple of Jesus is a Jesus-worshiper. Pastor David Mathis showed us this last week and Wow, it was good!

We are Jesus-worshipers, Pastor Mathis showed us.

Jesus Is Super ClearAnd today we’re looking at a second part of our calling: We Are Joyful Servants.

And I’ll be honest with you: this is a softball sermon. And here’s why: There are only two places in Scripture where Jesus just says straight up: Hey, look at what I’m doing, now you go and do the same thing.

Now Jesus doesn’t need to tell us this plainly to imitate him because, again, that’s what a disciple does. To be a disciple, or an apprentice, is to follow your master, and that goes for everything about your master. So in all of Jesus’s life and character, we should follow him and conform our way of being into his way of being. But for some reason, Jesus wanted to be super clear about two ways in particular that we should be like him, one is in John Chapter 20, but the first we see here is in John Chapter 13.

Seeing John 13:15Go ahead and look at verse 15 here. John Chapter 13, verse 15. You’ve already heard it read, but I want you to see this again. Verse 15 — Jesus says:

“For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”

So there’s no mystery here to what Jesus is saying, but I just wanna make sure we’re all on the same page. The first thing he says is: “I have given you an example.” And what’s an example? It’s something to imitate. And then Jesus spells it out even more. He says the purpose of the example is … “That you should do just as I have done to you.”

See what I mean when I say Jesus is being super clear?

He says Here’s an example, do what I do.

And if we are truly his disciples it means that we’re gonna say Okay! I’m in.

Are you in? We wanna do what Jesus says!

If we’re onboard, then it means two things:

We’re gonna focus on the example of Jesus
We’re gonna figure out how to do what Jesus does
Focus on the Example of JesusWhen Jesus mentions his example in verse 15, he’s talking about something he just did, which goes back to verse 1. So I’m going to take us back to verse 1, and here’s what I’d like to do…

Instead of just giving you some bullet-point observations of Jesus’s example here, I want to us to try and imagine the scene. Jesus gives an object lesson here. He does a thing that his disciples see, so I want us to try to see it too. I’m gonna ask that you try to use your imaginationhere as I tell you a story, okay?

It had been a crazy week for Jesus (kinda like when we have a crazy week, except this was much crazier). Jesus started the week by coming to Jerusalem. It was the Jewish Passover and the city was packed, but Jesus didn’t just enter the city by foot, like he normally does when he enters cities, but this time, he found a young donkey to ride into town, and as he rode it, crowds, who heard he was coming, lined the streets and threw down palm branches, and they said “Hosanna!” (Which is Aramaic for Hooray! Hooray!) “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

And Jesus’s disciples are excited. They had just seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead! Jewish people were believing in Jesus! This is big, and Sunday to Wednesday is a blur! Greeks are now seeking Jesus, and Jesus says his time has come!

There’s some confusion among the people (and the disciples) about this, but Jesus is locked in.

And then it’s Thursday night. Jesus is having dinner with his 12 disciples, and he knew something nobody else knew: At this dinner he knew that within 24 hours he’s going to be brutally killed, and everything about everything will change.

And he’s with these men, these men who he’s spent everyday with for the past three years. Can you imagine how well he knew these guys? They were his friends and he loved them. And now he’s at the table and he’s looking at them, full of love, and he knows how all of this is gonna play out.

He knows about Judas. He knows what Peter will do. He knows all the others are gonna run. There will be so much pain. But he also knows he’s going home. Jesus knows that the Father is happy with him, that the Father is going to honor him and exalt him, and make him shine. The Father has given Jesus preeminence over all things, and Jesus knows it. Jesus knows who he is. He knows where he’s going. And if we could see with our mind’s eye what Jesus was seeing in that moment, it’s blinding light. It’s unspeakable, blazing joy. He’s the freest of kings.

But then Jesus gets up from the dinner table and he takes off his nice shirt. And he goes and gets a towel (and it was probably a damp towel — you know we always look for damp towels for things like this).

He ties the towel around his waist, fills a basin with water, he kneels down, and he takes the feet of one of these guys, and he’s starts washing them. I don’t need to tell you how gross feet are. The water turns brown, and Jesus is wiping these feet with the towel around his waist. This man created Jupiter. He spoke the oceans into existence and now he scrubs the toes of men, and Peter didn’t want him to. Peter said No, Lord, not you. You’re never gonna wash my feet.

And Jesus said, Peter, if you don’t let me wash your feet, you’re not with me.

And it was an amazing moment. Peter said, Fine! Wash my feet! And my hands! And my head!

Peter says I am so with you — but he wasn’t that with him, because Jesus is about to tell Peter that he’ll deny him. Jesus knew Judas was about to leave dinner early to betray him.

Jesus knew everything and he washed all the disciples’ feet. And when he finished, he took off the towel, now soaked, and he puts back on his nice shirt, and he goes back to his seat at the table, and all the guys are looking at him, and he says: “Do y’all understand what I just did?”

And of course they didn’t really understand.

So Jesus tells them, “You call me your Teacher and Lord, and you’re right. That’s who I am.” These guys already recognized that Jesus is the one they’re supposed to imitate.

So Jesus says, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”

And I think we just need to sit in this for a second. This was the most amazing dinner in human history. How could you be one of these disciples and ever have dinner the same way again?

This was an unforgettable dinner, for these disciples and for every disciple of Jesus who has come after them.

Jesus gives us an example. He demonstrates how he wants us to be. And we need to figure that out.

Figure out how to do what Jesus does.We need to figure out how we do what Jesus did. I don’t think Jesus means that we should literally wash feet — I mean, you can — but it’s more than that. Jesus wants us to be servants. That’s the name we’d put on his example. That’s what he’s demonstrating by washing feet.

He wants us to be servants like him, and if we’re keeping his example in mind, to be a servant like Jesus means three things:

We serve at a cost.I want to start here with the cost of serving because there is a real cost … because we’re talking about real serving …

It’s serving, not partyin’.

It’s serving, not keeping your hands clean from the grit and grim of difficult things — Jesus had to change his clothes!

Serving does not mean finding your happy place. Everything does not go perfectly. That’s what makes it serving!

WilliamCarey and Sacrifice?I love the legacy of William Carey. He was an English Christian who served as a missionary in India from 1793–1834. He’s considered to be the father of modern global missions, and he was a Calvinist Baptist. William Carey is my guy.

And toward the end of his life, he made this famous quote about all the work and ministry he had done. He said, “I never made a sacrifice. Of this I am certain. It was no sacrifice. It was a privilege.”

In the 41 years that William Carey spent in India he had to rack his brain everyday to learn and translate several local languages and dialects. He experienced frequent illness, including malaria and dysentery, often without good medical care.

In 1807, he suffered the tragic death of his wife after she got sick. And of and on, over four decades, he faced constant opposition from Hindus and Muslims and he struggled at times with loneliness and isolation.

William Carey made a sacrifice.

There was a cost to his serving. Now what he means by “I never made a sacrifice” is that the end reward is so good it eclipses the cost. Like after a mother has given birth to her child (Jesus uses this example). Once the baby is born, it’s just joy! — so much joy that you’re not even thinking about the intense pain that you were experiencing five minutes ago, which was painful (I’ve been in the room a few times!) But the reward eventually transcends the cost — that’s what William Carey is saying. But there’s still a cost, and while you’re paying, it’s not a party.

Troubled in SpiritIt is amazing that in this narrative of Jesus serving we’re reminded constantly of what these disciples are gonna do. Judas’s betrayal is mentioned in verse 2, then again in verse 11 and verse 18, and the whole passage is about Judas from verses 21–30, and then this chapter ends with Jesus foretelling Peter’s denial. All of this in this chapter about Jesus serving — do you think Jesus was giddy about all this? You think Jesus would say none of this hurt? That there was no cost? Is that what we see when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Already here, at this last supper, John tells us in verse 21 that Jesus was “troubled in his spirit.” And John knows, because, remember, John was sitting right beside Jesus! There was a cost here.

Brothers and sisters, if we serve like Jesus we serve at a cost too.

And so if I could say so gently, when it comes to serving, some of us need to stop trying to be more spiritual than Jesus — don’t ignore the cost; count the cost. And then tell Jesus he’s worth it.

2 — to be a servant like Jesus means …

We serve from freedom. There’s something here we need to clarify: Jesus was a servant, we’re called to follow his example and be servants too — but servants of who exactly?

Are we servants of Jesus or servants of others?

And the answer is both. And that might be obvious to you, but I think it’s important how this comes through in the text. Jesus doesn’t use a lot of servant language in the Gospel of John. The first time he mentions us being servants is one chapter before this one, in Chapter 12, and then there’s a few key places in Chapters 13, 15, and 18, and in all these uses — every time Jesus talks about us being “servants” — he’s talking about us being his servants (see 12:26; 13:16; 15:15, 20; 18:36). We serve him.

And of course we serve others too — that’s the whole point of our passage today — when Jesus says “you should do just as I have done to you” he implies “you should do to others.” In verse 36 he repeats the same idea and says, “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

So yes, we serve others, but there’s an important connection here we need to see: it’s that we can never serve others the way Jesus served us unless we are first his servants.

“You Are Serving the Lord Christ”Our calling is to serve Jesus first, and then as his servants, following his example, serving him, we serve others.

And I love the way Paul captures this in 2 Corinthians 4:5 — this is a verse to memorize. Paul says about his ministry:

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

This is profound. Is Paul serving Jesus or others? He’s serving both, but it’s even more than that: because in Paul’s serving of others, he’s actually serving Jesus too. Paul serves Jesus by his serving of others, and in his serving of others he’s serving Jesus.

William Carey translated the entire Bible into six different Indian languages. He translated part of the Bible into at least 29 different languages and dialects. Which was painstaking work. He would have spent hours and hours hunched over his desk, laboring by candlelight, serving, but get this: he wasn’t merely serving the people who would read his translations, but he was serving Jesus! So finally, we have the whole Bible in Bengali! Here, Jesus, it’s for you.

Hey mom and dad, when you feel at your limit with what you can give your children, and you wonder if it’s ever gonna do any good, remember that you’re not merely serving your kids in what you do, you’re serving Jesus in serving your kids. Here, Jesus, this 10,000th PB&J, it’s for you.

People at work — employees — when you’re tired at work and you’d rather be a hundred other places, you can work heartily for the Lord, not men — because “you are serving the Lord Christ”(see Colossians 3:23–24). Here, Jesus, this report, this project, these tasks, it’s for you.

We serve Jesus first!

And get this: serving Jesus first is the only way we can serve from freedom.

The Freedom of a ChristianServing from freedom means that our serving is not constrained by anything. It’s not forced by some desired result, but it’s willingly!

Serving from freedom means we serve because we want to, not because we’re trying to get something. And the reason Jesus is the only one we can serve this way is because Jesus is the only person who loves us purely by grace.

We don’t have to earn his favor or score points — he’s already given us his favor! We have all the points! And he has given them to us not because of what we’ve done — it can never be because of what we’ve done — but it’s all because of his grace.

The grace of God is a life-changing discovery. Just ask Martin Luther.

Back in the early 1500s, Martin Luther read the Bible and was transformed by the gospel of God’s grace. We are saved not by our works, but by God’s grace through faith in Christ. And there were a lot of people who did not like that, and one reason was because they said:

Hey, if people know they’re saved by grace, not by the good works they do, then they will stop doing good works. We have to tell them that their works earn their salvation, so they’ll keeping doing them.

And in the fall of 1520, Luther published a small treatise called The Freedom of a Christian (still is an amazing book!). And Luther argues that the gospel demolishes that way of thinking. He says the gospel implies two things:

1) A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

2) A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

This is what the gospel does. First, it means we’re free!

Luther says salvation by grace means “every Christian by faith is exalted above all things so that nothing can do the Christian any harm.” He writes,

As a matter of fact, all things are made subject to [the Christian] and are compelled to serve him in obtaining salvation. Accordingly Paul says in Romans 8, “All things work together for good for the elect” and in 1 Corinthians 3, “All things are yours whether … life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ’s …”

He just rejoices! He says:

The cross and death itself are compelled to serve me … This is a splendid privilege and hard to attain, a truly omnipotent power, a spiritual dominion in which there is nothing so good and nothing so evil but that it shall work together for my good … Christians are the freest of kings!

It’s amazing, brothers and sisters, how free we are in Christ! Ultimately we are untouchable! All by the grace of God, not because of what we do.

But then, how does that affect what we do? How do we kings and queens treat one another?

Luther says that because we are so free in Christ, all we care about is divine approval and therefore we are freed to serve. Luther writes,

[The Christian] ought to think: “Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit on my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes that this is true.” …

Behold, from faith flows forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For a man does not serve that he may put men under obligations. …

But as his Father does, distributing all things to all men richly and freely, making his sun rise on the evil and on the good, as his Father does, so also the son!

[The child of God, the Christian] does all things and suffers all things with that freely bestowing joy which is his delight in God, the dispenser of such great benefits.

Brothers and sisters, we serve from freedom, and do you see that it’s when we serve from freedom that we serve with joy?

That’s the third and final point. To serve like Jesus means …

We serve with joy. We serve with joy — because our salvation is secure in Christ.

Because my salvation is secure in Christ, I don’t have to serve you to get Jesus to love me. I get to serve you because Jesus loves me.

Do you see? Because we are so free, our serving one another is not a have to, it’s a get to.

We serve as the overflow of our joy in God — joy we have by grace! That’s why we are joyful servants.

Serving with joy is not an add-on — it’s just what makes sense in light of what God has done. And it is the example of Jesus.

Jesus knew who he was, he was free, and he knew the cost, and yet the Book of Hebrews tells us that “for the joy set before him, he endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

Still a cross, still a cost,

But joy he found beyond the pain,

Joy that carried him from loss to gain.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableAt this table each week, we remember this dinner that we’ve talked about. We remember the sacrifice of Jesus for us — that Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved us to the end.

The bread and cup represent the death of Jesus, which means, they represent his love. And when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are resting in his love. This is why this Table is for Christians. This remembrance is for those who have put their faith in Jesus.

If you’re here this morning and you’ve not yet done that, you can just pass the bread and cup to the person beside you, but don’t pass on the moment. If you’re not a Christian, today is the day of salvation. Today you can trust in Jesus. You can just pray, simply:

Jesus, I can’t save myself — I’m sorry for trying.

I believe you died for me, you are raised from the dead.

I trust you. Save me.

You can just pray that, or something like that. You can rest in the love of Jesus this morning too.

The pastors will come, let us joyfully serve you.

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Last Sunday, we began a new six-sermon series called “We Are Cities Church.” We’ve been through some distinct seasons in almost ten years as a church, and now find ourselves on the front end of a new one. You might summarize our first five years, from founding to COVID, as a time of being planted. And from early 2020 until last summer, as a time of becoming rooted.

Last fall we talked about coming into a new season of growth in the life of our church, and as part of this last year, the pastors have given time to revisiting who we are and what we’re called to as a church.

Last week Jonathan said, “If you’ve been around Cities Church for a while, we don’t expect that you’ll be surprised by anything you hear. If you’re brand-new, we’re excited for you to meet our church, and if you’re semi-new, we hope this might fill in some gaps for you.”

Jonathan finished the sermon last Sunday by introducing a fresh expression of our stated mission as a church:

Our mission has always been, and will always be, to make disciples of Jesus. That’s what Jesus tells us to do. And when it comes to what we mean by making disciples, we want to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

This morning, and the next three Sundays, we’d like to flesh this out — in particular, we want to introduce a new fourfold way of capturing what we mean by “joyful disciples of Jesus”:

We are Jesus worshipers.
We are joyful servants.
We are generous disciplers.
We are welcoming witnesses.

Until now, we’ve talked about our threefold calling as worshipers, servants, and missionaries. Now, we’d like to take that same pie, and cut it into four slices, instead of three — and add some adjectives. So, next Sunday, we’ll focus on joyful servants. Then, in two weeks, generous disciplers. And in three weeks, welcoming witnesses.

But this morning, we begin with what is first and foremost, and what remains most unchanged and totally untweaked from day one to year ten: we worship Jesus.

We have it on the back doors, with no plan to remove it: We worship Jesus. We love one another. We seek the good of the Cities.

If you want to know what’s the first thing to say about Cities Church, it’s this: we worship Jesus. For outsiders who ask, Who are those people? And for insiders who ask, Who are we? There is nothing more fundamental than we worship Jesus.

So let’s ponder what each of those three words carries for us. What do we mean by “worship”? And what’s significant about that “we”? And why do we say “Jesus,” and not just “God” or “the Father” or “the Trinity”?

And as we do that, we’ll make some connections to the passage we just read in John 12:20–26. Let me give you three reasons why our first and foremost calling is to be “Jesus worshipers.” Let’s start with the word worship.

God made you to worship.Not just us, but you. This is very personal, and all important. If you don’t realize this about yourself, much of your own life will be confusing, and if you do know this, and own it, then far more of your life, and your thoughts and your desires and impulses, will make sense.

God made you. You were created by him. You do not simply exist. You are not matter plus chance plus time. You have a Creator, who had designs in making you, and the overarching design is that your life reflect the worth and value of the Creator. In other words, God made you to make much of him, and (good news!) that through enjoying him, and expressing your heart’s satisfaction in him through words and deeds.

Or, we might say it this way: God designed you to worship him — in body and in soul. Not only are your eyes and ears, and lips and tongue, and arms and legs, and hands and feet designed to display the value of God in his created world, but also your mind and heart were made to glorify him. God gave us brains and emotions that we might think true thoughts about him, and experience fitting feelings about him, and in doing so, glorify him.

In other words, God wired us to be worshipers. To be human is to have a heart that worships. You will worship someone, or something, or yourself. And the problem with humanity, called sin, is not that we cease to worship but that we turn from God to worship other things. Sin is worship gone wrong. Romans 1 diagnoses our condition like this:

…what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The 17th century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal put it like this:

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

In John 12, some Greeks, seeking to fill the infinite abyss, come to Jerusalem to worship. Look at verses 20–22:

Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

So, some Greeks show up in the capital city of the Jews. They have come to worship, John says. God made them to worship, and they are seeking. Their hearts are restless, and who knows how far and wide their restless hearts have led them in their quest to find the only one who fills the infinite abyss.

And now they are very close. They have come to Jerusalem, of all places. In fact, in making this request to one of Jesus’s disciples (the one with the Greek name Philip), they are even closer to the end of their quest than they could have imagined.

Come HedonisticallyLet’s make something clear about worship, about these Greeks coming to Jerusalem, and about us gathering here together this morning. Hebrews 11:6 says, “without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

“Draw near” is the language of worship. With hungry souls, we draw near physically to this building — or for them, to Jerusalem — but most importantly we draw near in our hearts and minds, that is, in our attention and focus. We turn our minds and hearts, and our words of praise and postures of worship, to God. And Hebrews 11:6 says the kind of drawing near that pleases God is the kind that not only believes he exists but that “he rewards those who seek him.” He fills the abyss. He satisfies the soul. He feeds the hungry in spirit.

God is pleased by those who take their longing, restless, aching, thirsty souls and draw near to him for satisfaction. He is pleased by worshipers who draw near, starved for him. Worshipers who come hedonistically. The heart of worship is satisfaction in God. And the praises we offer, and hands we raise, in worship on Sunday, and the words we speak and lives we offer all week, these are not mere expressions of hearts satisfied in God but, as C.S. Lewis says, they are the appointed consummation of our joy in God. Our emptiness, and his filling, lead us to fullness of joy in worship. We worship not just because we’re satisfied but to be fully satisfied.

God made you to glorify him by enjoying him forever. Or, we might say, God made you to worship.

God made us to worship together. These Greeks do something very natural by coming to a designated place of worship at a designated time of worship. They “went up to worship at the feast” in Jerusalem. Not only do they personally long for God, and want to know him and appreciate him and praise him, but something in them longs to gather with others to worship together. The Creator is worthy not only of individual, private acknowledgement and reverence, but corporate, public praise and worship.

Corporate worship is a public act. The God-given human longing is not only to worship God in our hearts privately, and in our homes privately, but we want to gather with others to declare our praise together. We were made for corporate worship.

In corporate worship, we hear together God’s word read and taught and preached, and we respond together in praise, in thanks, in song, in prayer, and at the Table, and in the giving of our finances, and in giving our attention and effort to strengthen each other in our common faith.

And in it all, remember the essence of worship: satisfaction in God. Our lives as individual worshipers seek satisfaction in God, and we gather in corporate worship to seek our satisfaction in him together.

God made us to glorify him by enjoying him together.

God made us to worship Jesus.I said earlier that these Greeks speak better than they know when they say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” They have come to Jerusalem to worship. They have come seeking the true God, and to fill the infinite abyss in their souls. And apparently, these worshipers hear about this Jesus, and they are intrigued. They’d like to meet him.

So, they approach the disciple with a Greek name. And Philip tells Andrew (another Greek name), and they ask Jesus about it — and Jesus pivots in a way no one is expecting. And we hear no more about these Greeks after this. Their coming, and their inquiring after Jesus, signals something for Jesus. Look at verses 23–24. Jesus answered them,

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Now, where in the world did that come from? Simple yes or no, Jesus: some Greeks are asking to see you. You willing to see them? And Jesus says “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What’s that?

First, what is this “hour”? So far in the Gospel of John we’ve heard several times that it’s not yet been “his hour.”

At the wedding feast at Cana in John 2, they run out of wine, and Jesus’s mother comes to him, and he says, “what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4).

And in John 7, Jewish officials are seeking to arrest him, but John reports, “no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come” (John 7:30).

And again in John 8:20: “no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”

But some Greeks arrive in Jerusalem, to worship at the feast, and they want to see Jesus, and now he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Greeks have come to worship. That is, Gentiles, the nations, the non-Jews are here, like the magi, and they’ve come to worship.

It's a signal. Some Greeks are here for worship, which means Jesus’s climactic hour has come. The prophecies are coming true! The nations are coming to worship Israel’s God. So the Messiah, then, must be drawing near to the moment when he will complete the work the Father sent him to do. His hour has come to go to the cross.

This, of course, is not the answer they were expecting — the disciples or the Greeks. However, their wish to see Jesus has not been rejected but redirected. It was an admirable wish, deeply so. They came to Jerusalem to worship, and they asked to see Jesus. They are on the trail — and if they remain in Jerusalem, they will soon see the most important sight of him, crushing as it at first will be.

If you want to see me, Jesus says, my time has come to be seen, to be lifted up, to be “glorified” — which will not mean leading a charge to overthrow Rome and seize the crown, but it will mean laying down my life. Like a grain of wheat, I give myself to die first — then I will bear much fruit, among Jews and Greeks.

These Greeks who have come to worship, will indeed see him, and get a sight far greater than they could have anticipated or imagined — far more horrible, and far more wonderful. They will witness the depths of his humiliation that will prove to be the very height of the glory of the one who truly is Israel’s long-promised heir to the throne, as shocking and unexpected as it will be.

And as they see him — in his divine and human excellencies, united in one person, and culminating in the cross and its aftermath — they will have all they wished and more in the request they made expressing the deepest longing of every human heart.

The desire to see Jesus was far more profound than these Greeks could have guessed. They wished for amazement in the presence of someone great. And what they got instead, at the cross, anticipated the heavenly vision the apostle John would receive while in exile on the isle of Patmos.

In John’s vision, in Revelation 5, none in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth, is at first found worthy to open the scroll of God’s divine decrees of judgment (for his enemies) and salvation (for his people). Sensing the weight and importance of the moment, John begins to weep — perhaps even wondering if his Lord, the one who discipled him, the one to whom he’s dedicated his life as a witness, is not worthy. One of heaven’s elders then turns to him, and declares, Revelation 5:5,

“Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Having heard this, John turns to look — and what does he see? Not a lion. He says in verse 6:

“I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes . . . .”

We might wrongly assume this was a disappointment, that John, hearing “Lion,” experienced some letdown to see a Lamb. But that is not how John reports it. This Lamb is no loss. The Lamb is gain. The one who was just declared to be the only one worthy is no less the Lion of Judah. He is also the Lamb who was slain.

The Lion became Lamb without ceasing to be Lion. He did not jettison his lionlike glories, but added to his greatness the excellencies of the Lamb. He is a Lamb standing — not dead, not slumped over, not kneeling, but alive and ready — with fullness of power (seven horns), seeing and reigning over all (seven eyes).

And so it will be for the worshiping Greeks in John 12 who wished to meet Jesus. Whatever disappointment they experienced in the moment in not having their immediate request fulfilled, and whatever devastations they endured on Good Friday as they watched in horror, it all changed on the third day. Then their desire was answered beyond their greatest dreams — not just to see Messiah, but God himself, the very Lion of heaven.

And not just divine, but the added lamblike glory of our own human flesh and blood, and that same blood spilled to not only show us glory but invite us into it — Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian.

Which leads to that last question we asked at the beginning: Why, as a church, do we say “we worship Jesus,” and not just “God” or “the Father” or “the Trinity”?

One, worshiping Jesus is not at odds with worshiping the Father or “the Trinity.” No one is happier when we “worship Jesus” than the Father (and the Spirit!). And no one’s happier for us to “worship the Father” than Jesus, our mediator.

Here in John 12 alone, Jesus speaks of himself being “glorified” — which will mean, among other things, his being exalted to the place of worship. And then he prays in verse 28, “Father, glorify your name.” Then the voice comes from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” So, who’s being glorified, worthy of worship, Jesus or the Father? This is a glimpse of the back and forth we find throughout the New Testament.

But why would we say Jesus, and not the Father? There is a special fitness in humans worshiping the God who became human, and died as human, and rose as human, and lives forever, as human, for our eyes to see, and ears to hear, and words to praise and eternal lives to exalt. Jesus is the litmus test of true worship.

We were indeed made for God — with an infinite abyss only God can fill, with a restlessness of soul satisfied in nothing less than the divine. And even more particularly, we were made for the God-man — for the greatness of God himself who draws near, in our own flesh and blood and circumstances, in the person of Christ. The lionlike greatness of God in his divine glory is sweetened, deepened, and accented by his lamblike nearness and human excellencies.

So, we exist to glorify God by enjoying Jesus together forever. We exist to worship Jesus.

See and Savor JesusAs we come to the Table, let me ask a practical question: What is currently fueling or draining your ability to see and savor Jesus?

You exist to worship Jesus. What’s helping that? What’s blocking that?

As we receive these emblems of his body and blood, and so encounter him in faith, and nourish our souls in him, let’s consecrate ourselves afresh to him.

This is our first and foremost calling: “we worship Jesus.”

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So today we’re starting a new sermon series that’s gonna go on for the next six weeks, and the title of the series is: “We Are Cities Church.” The goal is simply to tell you who we are.

The reason we wanna do that is because, going back to last year, the pastors recognized that God was bringing our church into a new season, and so we took that as an opportunity to hit pause and begin a process of re-clarifying our mission and vision as a church. We wanted to get down to the foundations and ask, in a fresh way, who has Jesus called us to be and what does he want us to do?

So this series is about that — and if you’ve been around Cities for a while, I don’t expect that you’re gonna be surprised by anything you hear … if you’re brand-new, I’m excited for you to meet our church … and if you’re semi-new, I hope this might fill in some gaps for you.

Today I’m talking about our mission and we’re gonna be looking at Colossians Chapter 1, verse 28. We’re gonna focus on just this one verse, and I’d like to ask you to do whatever you gotta do to get this verse in front of your eyes.

Father in heaven, thank you for the Holy Scriptures, and thank you that we have them! In our hands, we have your very word to us, breathed out by you. Your word is “more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb” — and we know that your word is for our good. So, by your Holy Spirit, we ask, speak to us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Colossians Chapter 1, verse 28. Everybody look at verse 28.

Verse 28 starts with the word “him” — Paul is talking about Jesus:

“[Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

Now when it comes to the mission of our local church, there are at least three things we learn here from the apostle Paul, and #1 is this …

Know the play you’re running. So when I was a kid I played a little football — I didn’t play a lot of football, just a little —I pretty much peaked in 8th grade. But that’s when I played for the Four Oaks Middle School Cardinals, and I was the starting quarterback (and the only reason I was the quarterback, I think, is because I could say “down, set, hut” in the deepest voice). Because it really didn’t matter who the quarterback was. We ran an I-Formation and every play I was either giving the ball to Melvin, my tailback, or to Jason, my fullback.

We ran a true smash-mouth offense and it worked. All we had to do was get at least 2½ yards every carry, and we did most of the time. We were pretty good, but we were good not because we had the best talent, but because we knew our game. We knew the play we were running.

And I think we see the same thing in the example of Paul in verse 28. We’re gonna look closely at verse 28, but first let me back up a second and show you how we get there.

Paul’s Mission StrategyBefore verse 28, in verses 24–27, Paul says that God has given him an assignment for the sake of the church. God has called Paul to make “the word of God fully known” (verse 25). What used to be a mystery is now out in the open (verse 27) — and it’s “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Now remember Paul is saying this to the church at Colossae. Paul is saying to this Gentile church that an amazing thing has happened: It’s that Christ is in you, Gentiles! Christ, the Jewish Messiah, is a global Savior. He’s not just the hope of Israel, but he is the hope of all nations — Jesus is for everybody from anywhere who trusts in him.

And when you trust him, you become united to him — His Spirit lives inside of you and you become so joined to Jesus that all of his benefits as the Son of God become your benefits: you are declared righteous before God; you are forgiven for all your sins, you are adopted as a child of God with a future. And you have the hope of glory, which means, you will be with God in his joy forever.

God has sent Paul on a mission to make that known! That’s verses 24–27, and then in verse 28, Paul tells us what he does because of this mission. I think we can call verse 28 Paul’s mission strategy.

And if you’ll bear with me for a minute, I want to explain a little distinction between the idea of “mission” and “mission strategy.”

Think about it like this: A mission is what you’re sent to do; and a mission strategy gets into how you do it.

Now we know as a church that our mission is to make disciples of Jesus. This is what Jesus has sent us to do. He tells us this in Matthew 28, the Great Commission, that because he has all authority over all things, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” That’s what we’re called to do as a local church and it’s non-negotiable.

And now when it comes to how we do that — when it comes to our strategy — we’re supposed to learn from the apostle Paul. This is how the New Testament is set up: in the Gospels we have the life of Jesus and his commission to us; in Acts we see that commission happening and the gospel advancing; and then in the letters we get into the details of gospel transformation and practice.

“Christ Clear for Christlikeness”Look again at what Paul says in verse 28. Because of Paul’s mission to make the word of God fully known — to witness to Jesus and make disciples — he has a simple strategy. It’s a straightforward action-purpose. He does an action for a desired purpose.

ACTION: Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom.

PURPOSE: So that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

Do you see that? Action-purpose.

Paul is saying I preach Jesus for the purpose of making mature Christians.

Or another way I think we could summarize Paul’s mission strategy is to say:

Make Christ clear for Christlikeness.

Now there are more details and tactics when it comes to how we work this out, but I want you to see thatthis is the basic strategy — for Paul and for us. For our mission to make disciples of Jesus, the most important thing we can do is show people Jesus, and the highest goal we could aim for is that everyone become like Jesus.

And it’s not complicated. One of the things I love about this strategy is that we don’t have to be superstars to do it. All we need is 2½ yards every carry — we just need to know the play we’re running. It’s been the same play we’ve been running since the very beginning.

Back on January 18, 2015, in our very first church service together, I preached this verse, Colossians 1:28.

In that first sermon, I highlighted two things: I called it our work and our goal. I said our work is to proclaim Christ and our goal is for us and others to be complete in Christ.

Christ clear for Christlikeness — same thing. That’s the play we’ve been running, that’s the play we’re going to keep running. Church, know the play.

Here’s the second lesson from Colossians 1:28 …

Remember Jesus is the ultimate difference-maker.1928 was a rough year for the St. Louis Cardinals (we got swept by the Yankees in the World Series and we’ve had hard feelings ever since), but ’28 was a great year for moms.

Because in July of 1928, a man named Otto Rohwedder from Iowa, finally debuted this machine he had spent years inventing. It was a power-driven, multi-bladed bread slicer.

And it was shocking. It could take an entire loaf of bread, and in seconds, it could make a beautiful block of perfectly identical bread slices each about an inch thick. It was incredible, and of course what do you do with bread like that? You bag it, distribute it, and sell it.

Within two years, bags of pre-sliced bread were in grocery stores all over the country, and the first major brand to do this called itself Wonder Bread. And there’s no doubt how big a deal this was.

You may not realize this, but your life has been impacted by the bread-slicer. You have never had an experience with bread that was not affected by this machine. This doesn’t mean that you always eat pre-sliced bread, but it means that if you’re not, you know you’re not. Like, if you want unsliced bread, you intentionally have to go out of your way to make that happen. The bread-slicer was a difference maker.

Centered on JesusAnd in the same way, but on a more cosmic, ultimate level, Jesus is a difference-maker. Here’s what I mean: ever since Jesus came into this world two-thousand years ago, nobody has been able to think about God or this world the same way.

Now this doesn’t mean that everybody believes in Jesus, but it does mean that you cannot ignore him.

You either believe Jesus to be who he says he is, OR you have to come up with some theory that denies him (and those theories have been attempted since he was actually on the ground here).

So there have always been only two options: you either believe Jesus OR you don’t believe Jesus — and if you don’t believe Jesus then you know you don’t believe him. You intentionally do not believe him.

Whatever you do, you can’t ignore Jesus — the magnitude of his claims and reach of his impact are both too great. Nobody has changed the world like Jesus has and said the things that Jesus said. So you can’t side-step him. Everybody must make a decision about Jesus.

And because this is true, it makes sense that our mission strategy centers on him. It’s him we proclaim.

And look, I’ll tell you, the pressure is always to make it about something else. We’ve felt that here at times over the last ten years. You’ve probably felt it in your relationships, with your friends and family and co-workers.

I was having lunch with a friend last week over at Macalester and we were brainstorming the idea of starting a Bible study on campus, and he said Well, you know, the thing is with college students is that they just wanna talk about the issues. “The issues.” And I get it, but here’s the thing: Jesus is real.

We can get to the issues, but the question that every thinking person has to deal with first is Who is this man? Who is Jesus?

So we talk about him. What we need is to see him and keep seeing him, and to show him and keep showing him — first and foremost, beginning, middle, end. Everything absolutely comes back to Jesus Christ. Who do you believe he is?

Jesus is the ultimate difference-maker, and so Paul says, Him we proclaim.

Sweeping and BuildingAnd then Paul explains more of what that means. He says it means that he warns everyone and he teaches everyone with all wisdom. Warning and teaching.

That word for warning is sometimes translated “admonish.” It’s the idea of putting things in order, or clearing things up. The word “teaching” is the idea of positive construction. It means we’re building something. And there’s an important dynamic between these two.

It reminds me of when I was a kid … my dad used to bring me to his job sites and pay me to sweep the floor. And there was a little bit of a process involved. The first thing I had to do was get rid of all the big leftover material, and then I got the broom, and the whole idea was to make the place ready for the next subcontractor, so that construction could continue. Because, see, something was being built.

And this happens when we proclaim Christ. Sometimes the reality of Jesus means that people (including us!) need to do some sweeping. I wrote an article for you two weeks ago called “The Vital Unmasking” and it was about the Holy Spirit’s ministry to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. It’s that if we’re trusting in false saviors, we need them to be exposed, right?

No alternative to faith in Jesus ultimately works, and if you’re not trusting in Jesus, you’re trusting in an alternative. We need the Holy Spirit to convict us of that (which he can do even right now; you can ask him to do that). If you’re here this morning and you know you’re not a Christian, you are trusting in some kind of fake savior and that doesn’t end well. The proclamation of Jesus warns you. He’s the only way.

Sometimes we’re sweeping, but then we’re also building. We’re seeing Jesus, and then we’re seeing all of life in the light of Jesus. We’re learning how to build the house of our lives on the rock, because the rain will fall, the floods will come, and wind will blow, but our house will stand because it’s founded on the rock. That’s a big part of what we’re doing in our Sunday morning classes and in The Cities Institute (mark your calendars, November 1). We’re building, teaching.

This is our strategy: Make Christ clear.

It really does all come back to him. Jesus is the ultimate difference-maker.

Third thing we learn from Paul for our mission strategy …

Aim for Christlikeness from the heart.This is more on the purpose, the goal. Paul says we proclaim Christ “so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” That means to be complete in Christ, to be grown-up in Christ. Paul is talking about Christian maturity — true Christlikeness.

And I wonder what you think when you hear the word Christlikeness? What does it mean to be Christlike?

If you’re like me, you probably think that to be Christlike means to act like Christ. It’s about what we do, how we behave. I used to think that, and to give credit where credit is due, the writings of Dallas Willard have really helped me here.

Willard pointed out something so obvious that it feels crazy to think we could miss this — He points out that Jesus teaches that the heart is the center of the human person. Jesus says that our sinful behaviors flow out of our hearts. That’s the problem.

So then, when we imagine Christlikeness, how can we imagine anything less than our hearts being transformed?

Willard says conformity to Christ must arise out of an inner transformation. The main goal, then, of Christlikeness, is not that we act like Christ, but it’s that our hearts become like Christ’s heart.

I don’t want to just appear like Jesus, but I want my heart to be like Jesus’s heart, which means my thoughts and my feelings and my dispositions and my choices become what Jesus’s would be if he were in my shoes, because they’re flowing from my heart which has been made like his.

This is heaven. Does anybody want heaven? In heaven, we will be transformed to be like Jesus, not just in how we look, but in our truest self.

And get this: how God effects that transformation is not by just zapping us and making it happen out of nowhere, but it’s a work that he is doing now, a little bit at a time, by the Holy Spirit.

And we want it. For this we toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within us. There is grace-fueled, Holy-Spirit empowered effort to reach this purpose, for all of us, for everyone. For me and for you. That’s the purpose of making Christ clear. Christ clear for Christlikeness.

It’s like what the Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne said (in his 20s). He prayed, “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be.” We want to be as Christlike as is possible this side of heaven.” Christlikeness from the heart.

Joyful Disciples of JesusNow imagine that … Take a second here and picture yourself being more Christlike from the heart. If you are that kind of Christlike, how are you? What are you like? … picture yourself.

Now I would bet that a lot of you have just pictured yourself as having less fun and being more serious.

Now why do we think that?

Did you not know that God is happy?

In his presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. We have the glorious gospel of the happy God! And if we are made to be more like him, doesn’t that mean that we will be happy, too?

The Bible teaches that God in his essence is love, and therefore, joy. “This is the my beloved Son in whom I’m well-pleased!” — the Father says of Jesus, This is my eternal Son I love, in whom I delight!

This means that joy is deeper than the universe. We came from joy, and headed back to joy, and that means the more Christlike we become, the more joyful we become.

This is so fundamental to being a disciple of Jesus, and it’s so important to our church, that we want to be more explicit about this in how we talk and what we do. We want to be and make joyful disciples of Jesus.

What’s New and ComingThis is a new way we want to start talking about our mission. Our mission has always been, and will always be, to make disciples of Jesus. That’s what Jesus tells us to do. And when it comes to what we mean by making disciples, we want to make joyful disciples of Jesus who remember his realness in all of life.

That’s why we make Christ clear for Christlikeness. And over the next four sermons, we’re going to tell you more about this. There are four aspects to being joyful disciples of Jesus. It means …

We are Jesus worshipers.

We are joyful servants.

We are generous disciplers.

We are welcoming witnesses.

That is who Jesus has called us to be and then to multiply — That is Cities Church.

Now we come to this Table.

The TableThe Lord Jesus Christ is everything to us, and he has given us this Table to remember him together each week. The bread represents his body broken for us and the cup represents his blood shed for us, and when we come here to eat the bread and drink the cup, him we proclaim. We are making Christ clear to one another — we are saying that Jesus is our hope. We have been saved by him, and we adore him. And if that’s your story this morning, we invite you to eat and drink with us.

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Last week, we were doing some work on our basement bathroom, getting ready to host a family of seven. A couple days before the family flew in, we were putting some final touches on the paint and installing a nice vintage mirror Faye thrifted and a couple cute shelves when she noticed that the mat in front of our kitchen sink was unusually wet — like, not the 4-year-old-spilled-her-water-wet, but wetter than that. We hung the mat out to dry and put it down again that night and went to bed.

The next morning, the same thing. And we noticed that our flooring was beginning to swell and warp. We were dead tired from all the work downstairs, our seven guests were coming in 24 hours, and we now have water coming from we-know-not-where. Well, we now know where — some combination of a dysfunctional dishwasher and a badly configured drain pipe. They ultimately had to rip out the floor, and the sink and part of the wall, the pipe, the dishwasher, a number of our cabinets in the process.

So we’ve had some low moments this week (tired moments, discouraged moments, wrestling-with-God moments). To be clear, this kind of low is light and momentary compared with what some of you are suffering right now, but we’ve had our low moments, and I’m sharing about them with you because I was stumbling through them while I was preparing to preach these verses — and they ministered to me deeply. And as they ministered to me, I prayed for you — because we all have low moments of various kinds, and so we’re all regularly in need of reviving.

And while the low moment for Israel here was a severe judgment (likely exile), this really is a psalm and a prayer for all our low moments in the Lord. We’re going to look first at our need for revival, then at our hope for revival, and lastly at the fruit of revival.

Our Need for RevivalLike I mentioned, the central prayer of Psalm 85 is this prayer for revival, for restoration. Verses 4–6:

Restore us again, O God of our salvation,

and put away your indignation toward us!

Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

Will you not revive us again,

that your people may rejoice in you?

Israel experienced these cycles in the Old Covenant. God would show up with stunning mercy and rescue them from their enemies, like he did in Egypt and at the Red Sea (and then dozens of times after that). Then they would eventually grow comfortable and complacent and start chasing after idols again. Then God would judge them to humble them and lead them to repentance. That’s where we find them here, praying in another valley of judgment.

And, by God’s grace, they’ve woken up and come to their senses (at least these Sons of Korah have), and so they pray: Restore us again, O God. . . . Revive us. . . . And there’s remarkable faith and power in these prayers. They could have just prayed, “We know we’ve sinned against you, so forgive us,” or “Comfort us,” or “Let us back into the land,” but no they prayed revive us, restore us — literally turn and give us life. Do something inside of us that we can’t do in ourselves. Awaken our weak and wandering faith. Burn away whatever’s keeping us from you. Stir our hearts into flame again. Start a revival right here, between our lungs.

And they asked him to do something impossible like that because they knew he works those kinds of miracles in human hearts. He’s not just sovereign over forests, thunderstorms, and elections, but he’s sovereign over fears and feelings and faith. The apostle Paul knew this about God and had a painfully low moment, and so he says, 2 Corinthians 1:8–9:

“We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

The God over your low moments is a God who raises the dead. Of course he can get you through this. Of course he revive your dull and struggling heart. So pray bigger prayers, prayers like this one, Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Revive my sleepy heart. Revive my aching heart. Revive my wayward heart.

IS GOD ANGRY WITH ME?Now, before I say more about this reviving God and our hope in him, the question I wrestled with more than any other this week was whether we should still pray verses like verses 4–5:

Restore us again, O God of our salvation,

Put away your indignation toward us!

Will you be angry with us forever?

Will you prolong your anger to all generations?

Will you not revive us again. . . .

Does God still get angry with us like this? When we go through low moments in faith, moments of serious trial or doubt or temptation, is God angry with us? Are we tasting indignation in those moments? And there’s three things I want to say to you.

First, if you believe in Jesus — if you’ve been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — there is therefore now no condemnation for you. Your days of wrath are over. God has already put away his wrath and indignation, once for all, by crushing his Son in your place. We don’t have to wake up and wonder if we’re going to live under wrath today.

If we belong to Jesus and live in him by faith, we’re living all day, every day under the Father’s grace and mercy and love.

He’s not angry with you like that anymore — I hope you can believe that. He loves you like a father or mother loves a child — even more than good fathers love their children. In Christ, his love doesn’t waver, and his mercies are new every morning. They’re new today.

Now that’s not to say that our sin doesn’t displease him. It does. And this is the second thing to say here: even beloved, forgiven, no-condemnation children can grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). And so God still disciplines us, like any good Father would, and that discipline is often very painful. But that pain is never wrath. It’s fatherly love. It’s not punishment. It’s a keeping pain, a refining pain. Our low moments, in Christ, are all acts of love meant to lead us to more of him.

That being said, and this is the third thing, if you’re knowingly persisting in some sin right now, verses like this should make you tremble. Unrepentant sin makes him very angry. It fills him with righteous, violent wrath. Israel’s exile was an awful judgment against their unbelief — and it’s now, here in Psalm 85, a merciful warning to us about what happens when we won’t walk away from sin. Those who are his will never taste his wrath — never — but those who pretend to be his while living in sin have every reason to fear.

If that’s you, you should pray, “Put away your indignation toward me! Will you be angry with me forever?” Give me faith to finally believe and repent and walk in the light! Give me eyes to see Jesus for who he is — Lord, Savior, and Treasure, a Treasure far more valuable and satisfying than anything sin has ever done for me. And give me courage to finally put my sin to death by your Spirit.

The Hope of RevivalOkay, so we’ve felt Israel’s desperate need for revival here. They’re languishing in exile — spiritually, relationally, emotionally. They’re feeling the consequences of God’s anger, and they know he’s right to be angry. Their suffering isn’t injustice. So what can they appeal to? What can they possibly say to the God they’ve sinned against? They have nowhere to stand now — nowhere but mercy. Verses 7–8:

Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,

and grant us your salvation.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints. . . .

We know how wicked we’ve been. We know we don’t deserve your forgiveness and comfort, but we’re asking for it anyway, because we know who you are. You’re the God of steadfast love. You’re the saving God. And so even while our lives are anything but peaceful — even while wars rage and our enemies make our lives miserable — we trust that you will speak peace to your people, your saints.

Where does that confidence come from? They can have this kind of confidence, despite how far they’ve strayed from God and how much they deserve his judgment, because this God has revealed himself to be a certain kind of God. At Mount Sinai, God passed by Moses and declared to his people, Exodus 34:6–7 (and we hear these verses all through Psalm 85):

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. . . .”

He doesn’t have to be that way with sinners. He would have been totally just to just wipe us all out. But that’s not who he is. Even when he was obviously angry with Israel (and, again, he was right to be angry), the psalmists here knew he would speak mercy again (to those who were truly his). And they knew this, in part, because he had done it so many times before. This is verses 1–3:

Lord, you were favorable to your land;

you restored the fortunes of Jacob.

You forgave the iniquity of your people;

you covered all their sin. Selah

You withdrew all your wrath;

you turned from your hot anger.

You restored. You forgave. You covered. You withdrew your wrath. You turned away your anger. In other words, we’re not asking you to do something that you haven’t already done for us. And we’re not asking you to be anyone other than who you’ve always been. We’re asking you to be who you’ve been and do what you’ve done — again.

And when we look back, we have so much more to say than they did, don’t we? Our past is even better than their past, because we know Jesus. They could remember what God did in Egypt, and the wilderness, and Canaan, but we have Bethlehem and Calvary. We can pray:

“Jesus, you came into our world, born in a manger. For our sake, you were obedient to the point of death on a cross, you were pierced for our transgressions, you were crushed for our iniquities, you were wounded so that we might be healed, you were poor so that we could become rich. You suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. And three days later, you rose to conquer death and give us life.”

The Sons of Korah couldn’t say that yet, so they said: You restored. You forgave. You covered. They would have died to pray the kinds of prayers we get to pray, the prayers we pray every day — in Jesus’s name.

And yet you, some of you, you still doubt God’s mercy. You don’t want to doubt his mercy (and you might not even admit that you doubt it). You don’t want to feel all the guilt and shame you carry around with you. And yet — for a hundred different reasons (in your mind, and in your story, and in your family) — it’s so hard to believe he’s like this. I hope this prayer makes that kind of mercy feel possible again.

Israel had utterly rejected God for the millionth time, they knew they deserved what they were suffering — and they still knew God would be merciful to them. Even now, you will speak peace to your people. I hear God leaning in, through these verses, to say to some of you, Beloved, how much more do I have to do to prove my mercy? God loves to revive the undeserving, yes even you, because he loves to show mercy — it’s who he is.

The Fruit of RevivalWe’ve looked now at the need for revival — then and now. We’ve looked at our hope for revival: the merciful God, who raises the dead. With the time we have left, I want to look briefly at three fruits of this kind of revival. When God works this spiritual life and resolve in a people, what happens next? I see at least three kinds of fruit here.

JOYFirst, this kind of revival fuels our joy. This is a pretty wild way for sinners to pray, really. God, we’re suffering right now because you’re angry with us. And you’re right to be angry with us because we’ve rebelled against you — blatantly and persistently. But we’re asking you to forgive us anyway, and not just forgive us, but to make us really, really happy. “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”

How can they pray like that! How can they sin like they have and then turn around and ask for joy? Because they know that God wants them to be happy. That’s the only way to make sense of this verse: We believe you’ll be willing to revive us because we know you want us to rejoice in you. And he does! That’s the kind of God we have. It’s literally too good to be true, but the holy God of the universe is personally, sovereignly, and eternally invested in making you happy. Has anyone known a god like this? He doesn’t just want an obedient people — he’s not looking for slaves who will do what he says — no he wants his people to be as happy as humanly possible in him.

And, notice, they pray specifically for a joy in God. “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” In other words, this isn’t the kind of rejoicing we did when the plumber fixed our leak this week. Don’t get me wrong, we were all kinds of happy that the floor was dry, and we were thankful for dear William and the good work he did, but this is different. Yes, God promises to provide relief and establish peace for his people, but they don’t only rejoice in him for what he does. He is their exceeding joy. We heard this last week, in Psalm 84, didn’t we?

How lovely is your dwelling place,

O LORD of hosts!

My soul longs, yes, faints

for the courts of the LORD;

my heart and flesh sing for joy

to the living God. . . .

A day in your courts is better

than a thousand elsewhere.

Find the best circumstances, in the most beautiful place on earth, with the very best people, and they’d a thousand times rather be with God. Happiness, as Pastor Jonathan told us, is getting to be with Jesus. Jesus himself says, John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” In other words, I want you to be as happy as humanly possible — joy to the full — like I am.

So, as we pray for God to revive us, we’re looking for more than relief from suffering, or reconciliation in a relationship, or freedom from temptation. We want greater, fuller joy in him. God wants you to be as happy as you can possibly be, and you’ll only find that much joy in him.

FAITHFULNESSJoy isn’t the only fruit of this God-wrought revival, though. There’s a second fruit, and it’s hiding in verse 8:

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints,

but let them not turn back to folly.

Restore us, O Lord, and then don’t let us to turn away from you again. The root Hebrew word for turn back is actually used several times in this psalm: You restored the fortunes (verse 1). You turned from anger (verse 3). Restore us again (verse 4). Will you not revive us again? (verse 6). And then verse 8 (the Hebrew listeners would have heard this word repeated), “but let them not turn back to folly.” You’ve turned and restored us in the past, Lord. We want you to turn back and give us life — and then don’t let us turn back to our sin. Our faithfulness to God is a second fruit of this revival.

Again, this is how far his mercy reaches. He not only forgives us and satisfies us, in Christ, but he also preserves our faith in him and works obedience in us. He has plenty of power to keep us from turning. And so when he gives new faith, or when he revives weak or wandering faith, that faith always produces new life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Where, in your life, are you being lured back into folly? What besetting sins tempt you to turn away from this mercy? Ask God for a revival with resolve — a resolve to reject all the temptations of folly and embrace how he’s called us to spend our short lives here before glory.

GLORYAnd that leads us to our third fruit: glory. When God revives us like this, we experience greater joy in him and we turn away from sin and temptation (to greater faithfulness) — and so glory fills the land. These are three great fruits of revival: our joy, our faithfulness, and his glory. This last one may be the most encouraging thing I saw all week. Verses 8–9 again,

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints;

but let them not turn back to folly.

Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him,

that glory may dwell in our land.

What does that mean? If God gives this kind of revival, and unleashes this kind of joy in us, how would his glory “dwell in the land”? What are the Sons of Korah imagining here? There’s no indication here (that I can see, anyway) that they’re looking for pillars of fire or mountains of smoke. No, I think they’re mainly imagining God’s glory in and among his people. They’re thinking of all the evidences of his presence and power in their relationships, their families, their neighborhoods and workplaces. God will be glorified when his people live out their faith in obedience with joy. “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you . . . and that glory may dwell in our land?” Because when your people are satisfied in all that you are for us, you look great — you get the glory.

And this is what we want to happen in these Cities. We want this to happen all over the world. We want this glory to fill the whole earth as the waters cover the sea (a sensitive picture for us after our water issues the last couple weeks). But that’s what we want — we want glory streaming down and swelling up to fill everything we see and know, and that happens through our faith-filled rejoicing in God.

The Kiss at the TableWhen the Sons of Korah kneeled down to ask for mercy, they sang one of the most beautiful pictures in all of Scripture, verse 10,

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;

righteousness and peace kiss each other.

It’s beautiful because it’s scandalous. When it comes to sinners, how can righteousness and peace ever meet, much less kiss? God is perfectly righteous — he never does wrong, excuses wrong, or overlooks wrong — holy, holy, holy. And we’ve all sinned, even this week, even this morning. And any sin, even one, against a holy God deserves the fullness of his wrath in hell. It would be evil for God to simply speak peace over our wickedness. And this brings us to the table.

Righteousness and peace meet in Jesus. They come together, like two massive beams, at the cross. And they don’t just meet — they don’t just reluctantly agree to work together for a couple years — no, they kiss. There’s no tension or distance between these two, not when they meet in this God, in this gospel. They kiss, for all who believe, beneath the broken body and poured out blood of Jesus. Because of Jesus, God’s not angry with you anymore. He stands ready to forgive you, to revive you, and to fill your hearts to bursting with joy, all for his glory.

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Do y’all know why people go to the State Fair? … Because they want to be happy.

Y’all know why people don’t go to the State Fair … Because they want to be happy.

We were at the fair last night, and it won’t be the last time we go. I tend to enjoy the fair. I love that it’s called the “Great Minnesota Get-Together” — because it does that. We live in a day when there’s so much division; it’s amazing that we can still be brought together … for food on sticks. We all love the food! We at least have that in common, right?

We actually have a lot more in common than that. In fact, did you know that the longing of every single human heart is basically the same?

Every human being, most fundamentally, desires to be happy. This is without exception — and you don’t take my word for it! This is the repeated observation of the world’s greatest philosophers all throughout human history.

Those who have thought most deeply about humanity and what we really want, they all agree that the ultimate motivation for everything we do is our own happiness, whether that means going to the fair or not going to the fair. We might do different things, but those different things each have the same goal. We all want to be happy.

I know that about you. I know you want to be happy.

And this morning, if you’re willing, I’d like to tell you how you can be happy. We see it here in Psalm 84. And it’s straightforward.

Three different times in this psalm the word “blessed” or “happy” is used. Right away, I want you to go ahead and see this in verses 4, 5, and 12:

Verse 4, Blessed (or happy) are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!

Verse 5, Blessed (or happy) are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Verse 12, O Lord of hosts, blessed (or happy) is the one who trusts in you!

These are beatitudes like in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The psalmist is telling us the way to supreme blessedness. He’s saying: Hey, here is real happiness! Happiness is found in three ways.

And that’s what I want to show you in the sermon: Three truths about what happiness is. We’re going to look at each one, but first let’s pray:

Father in heaven, this morning we gather here in your joy. Would you shine upon us? Speak to our hearts. Show us your glory. In Jesus’s name, amen.

In Psalm 84, we learn …

Happiness is getting to be with Jesus.Again, we see this in verse 4, and the keyword in verse 4 is the word “house” — “Blessed are those who dwell in your house …”

Just listen to how many times this idea of “house” is repeated in Psalm 84. The word “house” is in verse 4, but look at verse 1,

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!”

Then verse 2,

“My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.”

And the word “courts” and “house” are mentioned again in verse 10.

“Altars” are mentioned in verse 3.

Then verse 7 mentions “appearing before the God in Zion.”

Different words are used but it’s all the same idea. The theme here is the presence of God, and at this time in Israel’s history, God’s presence would have been in the temple. The temple was an actual building built by King Solomon in 950BC — and it was the focus of Israel’s worship because within the temple, in the holy of holies, is where the ark of the covenant stayed, and that represented the presence of God. So when the Israelites thought about God’s presence they thought about the temple.

So for us, in Psalm 84, we should think:

God’s presence = the temple; The temple = God’s presence.

But now why is Psalm 84, all of a sudden, focusing on this?

84 in ContextOkay, well remember what we’ve seen in the previous psalms, going all the way back to Psalm 73. From Psalm 73 to Psalm 83, they’re all Psalms of Asaph — Psalm 84 is a psalm of the Sons of Korah — but if we were to go back and look at the Psalms of Asaph, from 73–83, we’d notice that the theme is God’s judgment on Israel through their enemies. Psalm 73, the first psalm of Asaph, starts with Asaph reveling in the presence of God. In Psalm 73, Asaph says to God,

“I’m continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel. … For me it is good to be near God.” (vv. 23–24, 28)

The nearness of God is my good — Psalm 73! But then after 73 it’s judgment, judgment, judgment. Israel has rebelled against God, and God judges them by allowing their enemies to triumph over them.

And that was the actual experience of the first readers of this psalm! Remember the individual psalms were all written at different times, but the Book of Psalms was compiled and organized later in Israel’s history when they were in exile. Israel had experienced judgment. The temple, the place of God’s presence, had been destroyed.

In 587BC — just 363 years after the temple was built — the Babylonians, enemies of Israel, came into Jerusalem and demolished the temple. And that’s when God sent Israel his prophets who told of a newer, greater temple that would come in the future (see Ezekiel 40ff).

And so talk of the temple here in Psalm 84 is meant to be partly a memory of what the temple was. It’s nostalgic. Psalm 84 is put here so that people in exile would read this and think: Wow, those who got to be at the temple were so lucky.

Psalm 84 is partly about the memory of what the temple was, but it’s mainly about hope in what the new temple will be.This is really important. The topic of the temple in Psalm 84 is pointing to the hope of its restoration. One day God will dwell with his people again. That’s the message here.

Story of the TempleAnd this is where we begin to see one of the most central messages in all the Bible: it’s that God will have a people for himself in his presence. God’s people in God’s place.

That’s what the Garden of Eden was. Adam and Eve were God’s people, created in his image to reflect his glory in the world. They lived in God’s presence and were meant to enjoy and expand his presence. But then, because of their sin — what happened? They were exiled from the Garden, banished from God’s presence.

Then later God chose Abraham, and he told Abraham that he would bless him and make a nation come from him. Then there’s Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob becomes Israel, and he has 12 sons, and they all end up enslaved in Egypt, but God raises up Moses to set them free. Israel becomes a nation, and God leads them out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and God says he’s going to bring them to his own mountain where he’s going to be with them (see Exodus 15:17). And he told them to build the tabernacle where he would meet with them. In Exodus 29:45, God says,

I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 46 And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.

See the point? This is God with his people. The tabernacle was temporary until Solomon built the temple. But the temple was also temporary, because it was destroyed. Now a “Second Temple” was built around 518BC. Herod the Great later renovated that temple around 20BC and it was glorious. It was beautiful, but even that was still temporary. And when Jesus came to Jerusalem, he said as much.

What Jesus SaysDo you remember what Jesus did when he came to the temple?

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 2, Jesus comes into the temple and turns over tables and wrecks the place. He says, basically, You’ve got it all wrong. And the Jews asked Jesus how he could presume to make such a judgment. And “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’” (John 2:19).

And the people are confused by this. What in the world is he talking about? It’ll take decades to rebuild this temple. But then John tells us that Jesus was speaking about “the temple of his body” — wait a minute, John. Do you mean Jesus is the temple? Do you mean that Jesus is the presence of God with his people?

Yes, that’s exactly what John means. Because Jesus is the Word of God made flesh to dwell among us. And Jesus did. Remember what Jesus told the woman at the well in John Chapter 4? He said that now the place of worship is neither here nor there, but the place of worship is me. Jesus said it was himself. Jesus says: I’m the temple. I’m the way to God. I’m the place where God dwells.

Jesus is who the physical temple had been pointing to this whole time. Therefore, Jesus is the ultimate vision of Psalm 84.

“Blessed are those who dwell in your house” means “Blessed are those who are in God’s presence” which means Blessed are those who get to be with Jesus.

Those are the ones who are happy. Happiness is getting to be with Jesus.

The Greater HappinessBut, are any of us with Jesus right now?

No.

Now, we know people who are. Kayla is with Jesus right now, but we’re not. Jesus and the “church triumphant” are together in the heavenly dimension, but we’re here, in this world, and that’s why Jesus has sent us his Spirit. His Spirit is our Helper. His Spirit is the minister of hope who lives inside us as the “down-payment” of that greater happiness that is to come.

So, what does that mean about happiness now?

I love dogs. Not all of us do, I get it, but a dog is my favorite animal, and I enjoy a good dog video. For some reason, I get a lot of dog videos in my feed. The other day I saw this video of a dog in a living room, and on the TV there was a cooking show zoomed in on a pan frying bacon, and this dog was standing at this TV, licking the screen. The dog was licking the bacon on the TV screen — and I thought: “Is that like joy in God in this world?”

We know there is a greater future happiness, but is our happiness now just like a screen version of what will be?

No, because of the Holy Spirit.

Because of the Spirit, our bodies become temples (see 1 Corinthians 6:19), and when we gather together like this, the Spirit is here and active in our midst, and there is real happiness in this. We are not licking a screen. It is possible for us to experience sublime happiness in God in this world because of his Spirit, but even the highest experience of happiness in this world is only a faint foreshadowing of the happiness that we will know when we get to be with Jesus. I mean to really see him … to stand beside him. When, as Revelation 21 tells us,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

Real happiness is possible here, but it is only a small, real taste of the fuller happiness to come when we get to be with Jesus. According to Psalm 84, happiness is dwelling in God’s house — happiness is getting to be with Jesus. Fact.

Happiness is wanting to be with Jesus.This is verse 5:

“Blessed (or happy) are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”

The keyword in verse 5 is “highways.” It’s the idea of journey and direction. It means you carry in your heart the reality that you’re not yet where you’re meant to be, but you’re headed there, and you want to be there.

Verse 5 gets at the level of desire — and Psalm 84 is loaded with desire language. Just look at this:

Verse 1, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” — that’s an assessment. The psalmist is saying that God’s presence is lovely. It’s desirable.

Verse 2: “My soul longs, yes, faints.” “My heart and flesh sing for joy” (or literally, cry out) — this is not a moderate desire. This is not just some thing the psalmist does on the side as long as other things don’t conflict. The psalmist is positioning his entire life in pursuit of this thing he cannot live without.

He wants to be in God’s presence so badly that, in verse 3, he envies the birds, and in verse 10 he says it’s better to spend just one day in God’s presence than to spend a thousand days somewhere else. …

Now, a lot of times, a thousand is better than one. Do you want me to give you a $1,000 or $1? But see, in verse 10 it’s not the same currency. The psalmist says it’s better to have one day with God than a thousand days anywhere else. And he’s not done in verse 10 …

Would You Rather?Any of you like to play party games? I think the best party games are conversation games, and there’s a ton of them out there. Do y’all know the game “Would You Rather?” You ask a question with two options and the person has to choose — Would you rather have the power of flight or the power of invisibility?

And sometimes there’s a dilemma …

Would you rather get a paper cut every time you turn a page or bite your tongue every time you eat?

Would you rather never go to the state fair ever again or be forced to go all 12 days every fair for the rest of your life?

These are questions that help us get to know one another. We learn what we really care about, our values — that’s what we see in verse 10.

The psalmist says,

“I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

Now a doorkeeper is a lowly station. Think about it: you’re always right on the edge. You’re making a way for everyone else to get in, but you have to stay put at the door. It would be more comfortable todwell somewhere. Because then you’re kicked back and relaxed. You have a seat.

You put those two things beside one another — opening doors or sitting relaxed — sitting relaxed is better. But those are not the options here. It’s not the action that makes the difference, it’s the place.

The psalmist says he’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked. He’d rather be lowly and last in line in God’s presence than to be esteemed and comfortable among the wicked.

This is another assessment. He is telling us what he wants. And church, oh that we would want Jesus the way that this psalmist just wants to be near God!

Desire As the Difference-MakerI can tell you that one of the biggest problems of Christian witness in this country is that too many so-called Christians don’t really want Jesus. We know this exists, but I think it would still be shocking to us how many people claim the name of Christ when it’s convenient, but they’d trade him in with a snap for the trifles of this world. “You want power? Popularity? Influence? Do you want to be liked?”

Whenever we find that there is no “Christian backbone,” it’s because there is no Psalm 84:10-desire.

What do we really want? Do we want Jesus?

Or do we, like Demas, in love with this present world, really just want other things and we try squeeze Jesus in? (See 2 Timothy 4:10)

See, it’s one thing to know the fact of happiness — it’s getting to be with Jesus — but do you want the fact?Do you want him more than comfort, more than success, more than being liked? Church, Jesus is worthy of our wanting!

See, a big part of the real happiness possible in this world is in the wanting it. Are the highways to Zion in your heart? You’re not home yet, but you’re headed there, and you wanna be there!

That makes a difference in life. It means when you go through the Valley of Baca you make it a place of springs, verse 6. That’s a desert land. It’s where things are difficult, and there’s not a lot of fruit. But even there, you have living water, and you know you are going to be with him. Happiness is wanting to be with Jesus.

Happiness is trusting that Jesus wants to be with you. This is verse 12:

“O Lord of hosts, blessed (or happy) is the one who trusts in you!”

This is not a generic trust, but it’s trust in God as he has revealed himself. This is trusting, verse 11, that God is our sun and shield, that he bestows favor and honor, that he does not withhold anything good from those who walk uprightly — that is, his people who trust him. God is good and he does good. That’s the basis of this trust. And the psalmist is even more specific in verses 8–9.

“In Jesus’s Name”Most of Psalm 84 is all statements; verses 8–9 are the only petitions. The psalmist is asking something of God, verse 8: “O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!”

Now in verse 11, the psalmist says that God is our shield. Here in verse 9, he is asking God to behold his shield, who is the anointed. Do you see that?

In that first line of verse 9 he says: “Behold our shield, O God.” …

Then he restates that same petition in the second line of verse 9. “Behold our shield, O God” as in “Look on the face of your anointed.”

And the anointed one, in the Book of Psalms, is the Messiah. The psalmist is asking God to hear him, to help him, by looking at the Messiah, in reference to the Messiah. This is the Old Testament way of praying “in Jesus’s name”!

We don’t generically trust God, and we don’t generically pray to God, but we trust that God is good and we pray that God does good through the Messiah Jesus. Jesus is the one through whom we experience God’s favor and blessing. All the goodness that is mentioned in verse 11, and all the goodness that we could hope for from God, comes to us through Jesus. That is what we are believing when we say in our prayers “in Jesus’s name.” We’re saying,

Hear me, Father! Do good to me!By looking at your Son! Jesus is my shield. He is my security! He is my trust! And all your promises to me are Amen in him!

In Psalm 84, Jesus is the one the temple is pointing to, and Jesus is the object of our trust. Happy is the one who trusts in Jesus.

What Jesus DesiresAnd there’s more.

You know, a lot of times when we think about our faith, we think about it from our perspective. We think about our faith in Jesus from our side of faith. But I think it’s also important to know that Jesus, on his side of our faith, he’s not indifferent to us.

Now, if he was just an idea — if Jesus was just a set of truths and guidelines — then of course that doesn’t have any relational reciprocity. But remember Jesus is real. He’s a person. We have a real relationship. We want to be with him and he wants to be with us.

Can you believe that? … Some of us can’t. … But don’t brush this aside.

Listen, I can show you a conversation that Jesus has had about you. In the Gospel of John again, Jesus was praying to God the Father, and in John 17 he says,

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (v. 24)

Jesus has a desire. He wants something. He tells the Father that he wants us to be with him. You! Jesus wants you to be with him where he is, in his glory, in the fullness of his joy.

And he wants you to know that he wants you to be with him, which is why he put this in the Bible.

And this really is vital to happiness in this world. It’s central to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s love poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5), and when Paul prays for us in Ephesians 3 he prays that we would have the Spirit’s power to know the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:17–19). The power of God in us means we know the love of Jesus.

It’s true, in the most profound way … Jesus loves you.

And trusting him to love you is happiness. Blessed are you if you can sing:

Jesus loves me, this I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Happiness is trusting that Jesus really means it when he says he wants you to be with him.

The Way to HappinessWe all want to be happy, we have that in common. And Psalm 84 shows us the way of happiness:

Blessed are those who dwell in God’s house!

Blessed are those in whose heart are the highways to Zion!

Blessed are those who trust in God!

Which means …

Happiness is getting to be with Jesus.
Happiness is wanting to be with Jesus.
Happiness is trusting that Jesus wants to be with you.

Lord Jesus, everything that you have said is true. We’ve talked a lot about you in Psalm 84, and now I want to talk to you. Because you know every heart in here. You know all the details of everything we’ve got going on. And Jesus, Master, would you create in us a greater happiness in you? By your Spirit, here in this world, make us to comprehend more of your love for us. Deepen our joy, in your name, amen.

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As a kid, my favorite part about school was recess. Don’t get me wrong, I liked school. I liked learning. But I liked playing even more. Now, when it came to recess, my friends and I almost always ended up deciding between one of two games to play together — football or kill the carrier. These two games are very different from one another.

In football, you have an even amount of people on both teams — half who are trying to tackle you, half who are trying to block for and defend you. Now, one team may end up with bigger kids than the other team, or faster kids than the other team, but the numbers themselves are always an even split: Six on six. Seven on seven. And so on.

Kill the carrier is different, because in kill the carrier the moment you pick up the ball, everyone on the field is your enemy. The kids to your right, to your left, in front of you and behind you, each one of them has one object in mind the moment that ball touches your hands — kill the carrier, which is now you. And within a matter of seconds, that object is typically accomplished as you find yourself flatly pressed to the ground, face to the dirt, and anywhere from 10-15 of your closest friends smothered on top of you.

My vote was always for football. Because being surrounded by enemies did not make me feel strong. Did not make me feel at peace. But made me feel vulnerable, and weak, and in need of much help.

Psalm 83 is a Psalm about a people surrounded by enemies. A people in need of much help. A people whose enemies did not mean to merely smother them, but annihilate them and wipe them from the face of the earth. Which is why Psalm 83 begins as it does:

“O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!”

Following that initial cry for help, we’re going to see the Psalmist do three things. First, he’s going to provide the reason he’s asking God for help. Then, he’s going to make his request to God — “God, this is how I’m asking you to help us.” Lastly, he’s going to explain his hoped-for result. “God, this is what I want to have happen as the result of you answering my prayer. Reason for God’s help, request for God’s help, result of receiving God’s help. Let’s pray and ask God to help us.

Alright, so what is the reason for the Psalmist’s cry for help? What’s the reason he prays: “O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!”? We’ll start with verse 2:

Reason for Prayer“For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads.”

Notice the vertical dimension of these words. The problem, first and foremost, is that these people are enemies of God. It’s first a vertical problem. “Yourenemies (O God) make an uproar; those who hate you(O God) have raised their heads.”

And right off the bat, we might wonder, “What could possibly lead to such insanity?” For a people to “raise their heads” against God. We get that imagery, right? “Raise their heads.” Like a rebellious child to his parents, or a defiant soldier to his captain. It’s a posture of opposition. Of insolence. And, in this case, insanity. Like a bunch of toy soldiers lining up against a sixty-ton tank. What could lead to such insanity?

Hate. Hate could cause a people to do something like that. And I fear that we are going to miss the significance of that word here in verse 2. I fear that because of our immersion into a world that daily disregards and defies God, that we’ll simply skip over that word “hate” without even batting an eye. Brothers and sisters, don’t miss the outrage of what’s being communicated here.

This Psalmist is saying these people hateGod. “Those who hate you have raised their heads.” There is no greater evil in all the world than the evil expressed in that short phrase — “hate God.” And if our jaw is not ready to drop upon seeing those words (hate God), then we need to recalibrate to reality. What this verse is saying when it comes to the God who made this world, and upholds this world, and loves this world, and gave up his only Son for this world, these people hate him.

There is nothing more dark and evil than that in all the world. Nothing. I mean, you might be able to find someone who hates your habits, hates your stuff, hates your politics, hates your morals, maybe even hates you — and yet not one of those hates, not one of them, holds a candle to the human hatred of God himself. There is no worse condition in all the world than having a heart that hates its Maker.

Hatred for God’s PeopleNow, it follows, that if a certain people hates God, they’re going to hate the people who worship God as well. So verses 3-8 should come as no surprise — flowing from the fount of hatred for God is a hatred for God’s people. And, as we see, it is a united hatred.

Look with me at verse 3,

“They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones.”

Again in verse 5,

“For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant.”

Their shared hatred for God and his people leads, as it were, to a cooperative effort. One aimed at total annihilation. Verse 4,

“They say, ‘Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!’”

Total annihilation. Entire nations, linking arms, bound for the blood of God’s treasured ones, and as much blood as possible.

Now, to get a sense for the scale of this mounting opposition, the Psalmist lists the names of these enemy nations in verses 5-8 — Ten nations in total. And if we had more time together this morning, we could go through each one of these and note the backstory of the tension between these particular nations and God’s people. As it is, we don’t have time for that, and the backstory is not really the main point here anyway. The main point is this: Israel, God’s people, are surrounded.

See if you were to take a map of the world at this time, position Jerusalem (the Land of God’s people) right in the center, you could plot out these other nations and come to find that they form a ring all round Jerusalem. Enemies on all sides — that’s the point. God’s people, in other words, have nowhere to run. Nowhere to turn. Nowhere to go, except to God who rules over all.

So, that’s what the Psalmist does. He goes to God. Lays out the reason for his alarm, and makes his request to God.

RequestBeginning in verse 9, we can see that the Psalmist’s request is founded upon the pages of history — all the times in which God’s people were in need, and all the times God came to their rescue. Specifically, he cites two scenes from history — both from the book of Judges.

The first one involves Midian. You see it there in verse 9?

“Do to them as you did to Midian.”

To which we might ask, “What did God do to Midian?” Well, he embarrassed them is what he did. He not only defeated them but humiliated, embarrassed them in the process. See God’s people at that time had an army of 22,000 men. That’s a good size army, don’t you think? Well, God didn’t. Instead, he whittled that army down to a tiny remnant of only 300 men. He then equipped that army for battle against mighty Midian with clay jars and trumpets. He directed them to then go and surround Midian in the middle of the night, smash a bunch of the jars, blow a bunch of trumpets, make a really loud noise and hold their torches up in the air. They did it. Guess what happened?

Midian’s mighty soldiers woke up in a panic, and assuming their fellow comrades all round them to be the enemy, grabbed their swords and starting killing each other. Midian was routed that day. Their four leaders — Oreb, Zeeb, Zebah, and Zalmunna (you can see their names listed in verse 11), were killed as well. Midian was not only destroyed that day, but humiliated in the process.

The second story involving Canaan, and its king Jabin and his leading commander Sisera (you can see their names listed in verse 9), is very similar. Not only was their army routed in battle, but their commander Sisera, (valiant warrior as he was) turned tail and ran from the battle in fear. He sought shelter in the home of a woman named Jael. He asked her for water and protection, just as a child would ask his mother. She brought him in, gave him some milk, covered him with a blanket, and then sunk a tent peg into his skull. Canaan, Jabin, and Sisera was not only destroyed that day, but humiliated in the process.

Now, the Psalmist, looking out at the enemy nations all round him, and recalling those two scenes from history, says, “God, do to these enemies what you did to Midian and Canaan and Sisera. Destroy them, and even humiliate them in the process.

Request Rooted in NatureNow, the Psalmist’s request continues for a few more verses, but the background on his request changes a bit. No longer flowing from the pages of history, but from what can be seen in the realm of nature.

Verse 13,

“O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.”

If you’ve ever seen an old western movie, you know the image he has in mind here, right? I used to joke with my brother and sister about this because we watched a lot of old westerns with my grandpa when we were growing up. And always, always, there was a scene, where one guy is staring down another guy, it’s quiet, tension is peaking, and then this lone tumble weed drifts across the plain between them. That’s the picture here, “turn these enemy nations into something akin to lone, worthless, bone-dry tumbleweed blowing aimlessly out of focus.”

Chaff, similarly, as the unused part of a plant after harvest, dries out, breaks up, and is carried away in the wind. “God,” says the Psalmist, make them like that. Take, what feels to us, like an immovable and impenetrable enemy, and, “poof,” blow them away.

Still in the realm of nature, verse 14 takes things up a notch.

“As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!”

Notice: “May youpursue them with your tempest…” God, set your sights, lock in on our enemy, and set a fire blazing upon their heels.

The Psalmist clearly wants God to go after this enemy. He wants him to be the one to take down this enemy, and, as we noted in the pages of history, to even do so with a sort of flair that humiliates them in the process.

But the question we want to ask is, “to what end?” What does the Psalmist actually want as the result of God’s intervention?

At first, it appears he wants two very different, even contradictory, results. And we might wonder, “How is this going to work?” How does one possibly pray for both of these seemingly contradictory results, in the very same Psalm?

Result of the Prayer Look with me first at verse 16. The Psalmist prays, “Fill their faces with shame,” (that’s that bit about defeat leading to embarrassment that we’ve been talking about). “Fill their faces with shame,” like embarrassment, humiliation, dishonor.

But observe the intended result,

“Fill their faces with shame thatthey may seek your name, O Lord.”

In other words, make them to see the foolishness and futility of their actions. Awaken them to their own darkness and depravity. Allow them to become so broken and burdened that it brings them to their knees, casts their eyes down to the ground, leads them to cover their faces with shame — “we’re sinners.” But do so, O God, in such a way that there, on the ground, and in their shame, these wayward souls begin to feel a tug upon their hearts — one like they’ve never experienced before. A pull that cries, “Go to God, you rebel, bring your shame and sin to him.” Fill their faces with shame, thatthey may seekyour name, O Lord.”

Now what does it mean to seek God’s name? Well it means to seek God’s character. Seek God’s nature. Seek God for who he is as, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:5-7).

To seek the Lord is to seek him for mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, and joy. Just as the Psalms have been saying all along:

Psalm 27:8,

“You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”

Psalm 40:16, “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!”

Psalm 69:6, “Let not those who seekyou be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel.”

Psalm 105:3-4, “Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seekthe Lord rejoice! Seek the Lord and his strength; seekhis presence continually!”

The Psalmist’s prayer in verse 16 is rooted in the reality that, as we see in Paul’s speech in Acts 17: God is the one who “Made the world and everything in it, (and who is the) Lord of heaven and earth… (and) who gives to all mankind life and breath… (and who) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth…that they should seek (Him), and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.”

It is rooted in the reality that God the Son says to all mankind, Matthew 11,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

It is rooted in the reality that even now, from heaven, God the Son calls,

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Rev. 3:20).

“Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.”

It is a glorious prayer. A prayer with an intended result that befits the nature of God. And it is not the Psalmist’s only hoped for result. The Psalmist, as we said, seems to pray here in not one but two very different directions toward two very different results.

See how verse 17 reads a bit different:

“Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace.”

Condemnation before GodThe image here, in contrast to verse 16, is one in which the nations do not end up repenting. They do not end up seeking God, but die in their disgrace and sins. That’s what it means to be “Put to shame and dismayed forever.” Forever offers no second chances. Forever offers no hope of a change in the future. “Put to shame and dismayed forever.”

This is a prayer for condemnation. And, we might ask, what gives the Psalmist the right to pray this way?

Well, to begin, the Psalmist knows that some people will in fact die shaking their fist at God. The Psalmist knows that. Some people will never repent, but will instead die shaking their fist at God. What he doesn’tknow is whether that’ll be the case for these particular people from the enemy nations round him, or not. Will they end up seeking God or will they not? The Psalmist does not know.

Yet, this is where we need to lean in. What the Psalmist does know is that if, if, these people for the enemy nations round him do, in fact, never end up repenting and instead die in their sins, die shaking their fist at God, then they must not be allowed to get away with it.

In other words, the Psalmist does not pray, “God, cause these people to seek your name. But if they don’t, would you just ignore that fact? Could you just turn a blind eye to their sin? Would you be willing to just overlook their rebellion against you?”

The Psalmist does not pray that, and he does not want that, and the reason he doesn’t is actually the key to unlocking this whole thing. See, because more than anything, highest in priority in terms of the Psalmist’s request, is not ultimately that these enemies would be saved, nor ultimately that these enemies would be condemned, but ultimately that one way or another, they would know, they would know, verse 18: That God alone, whose name is the Lord, is the Most High over all the earth. Not them. Not some other god. But God alone, whose name is the Lord, is the Most High over all the earth.

See, because here’s the thing: When people live their whole lives hating God and hating his people, they live as walking, talking proclaimers of fake news: “God isn’t all that great.” “God isn’t worthy of our time.” “God is like chopped liver compared to the treasures this world has to offer.” And in doing so, they defy God’s glory and drag it through the mud. And when they die that way, they appear, at least from the perspective of the world, to have gotten away with it. They, not God, appear, in the eyes of the world, to be the ones who are most high over all the earth — after all, they were even able to defy God and get away with it.

Were the Psalmist to pray, “God, call these people to seek your name. If they don’t, just let ‘em be” it would be akin to praying, “God, either get your glory through saving these people, or, simply allow them to go on trampling your glory throughout all eternity. Allow their apparent victory over you to suggest your glory and worth which they’ve defied isn’t all that great after all.” As it is, the Psalmist does not pray that and does not want that, and neither should we.

Now, should we “Desire all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4)? Our God does, so we should as well.

Should we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? Of course. Jesus tells us to in Matthew 5:44.

Should we also seek to share the good news with our enemies in hopes they’ll turn from their sin and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness? Of course — that is our commission from here till the day God takes us home.

But should we ever desire that those who die hating God, get off the hook for their rebellion against him? No.

See, the truth of the matter is that one day, when the lights go out and the curtain falls, Jesus is going to come again to judge the world, and when he does, every knee is coming down.

“Every knee [will] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue [will] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the gloryof God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11).

Every man and every woman will know, they’ll see it for themselves, that God, not man, but God alone, whose name is the Lord, is the Most High over all the earth.

And on that day, God will get the glory he deserves from every single soul.

From those who in their life repented and turned and sought God — God will be glorified in the fulfillment of their salvation. From those who did not, in their life, end up repenting or turning or seeking God — God will be glorified in their just condemnation. Their reception of the only punishmentterrible enough andlong enough to prove the glory and worth of the one whom they have spurned — Hell for all eternity.

Our ultimate prayer as Christians should always be, “God, no matter what, get your glory.”

Our ultimate prayer should always be, as Christians, “God, hallowed be your name!”

The deepest desire within all of our hearts should be that God’s worth and God’s glory and God’s splendor would be held high in our world and throughout all eternity.

We pray for our enemies. We pray, “God, save our enemies.” God humble them so that they seek you while you may still be found. And behind that prayer, undergirding that prayer, is “God, no matter what, get the glory you deserve in this world. Get your glory no matter what.”

The TableNow, what brings us to the table this morning is the reminder that each and every one of us in this room this morning were born enemies of God. We were born, Romans 1:30, “haters of God.” And yet, as Romans 5:8 tells us, “God show[ed] his love for us in that while we were still sinners [still haters of God], Christ died for us.” Christ died for his enemies. You and me. This table represents his broken body and shed blood for the sake of his enemies.

Because that’s what this table represents, if you’re here this morning and you’ve trusted in Jesus, we invite you to take and eat with us. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass, but we pray you would, in this moment, receive Jesus, and his death for you.

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One of the great things about the Psalms (and one of the reasons we do a summer series through the psalms) is because you can drop in on pretty much any psalm and find something immediately helpful.

Y’all ever done that before? You ever “dropped in” on the Psalms? Maybe you need a word from God, you need some encouragement from the Scriptures but you’re not exactly sure where to go to, so you basically close your eyes and pick a random place in the psalms — a “Psalms drop in.”

A lot of us have done that before, and the reason we go to the Psalms is because these are prayers and poems and songs, and they’re about God.Over thousands of years, the people of God have come to this book for help and perspective. Most of the time, reading a Psalm is like running down hill — But that’s “most” of the time, not all the time.

Psalm 82 is different.

I spent most of last week perplexed by this psalm, and I’m tempted in the sermon to spend too much time telling you why. There are all kinds of questions here that send us in different directions — and if we were doing a Bible study, we’d walk through each question, we’d weigh the different interpretations, we’d wrestle for the right meaning, but this is a sermon, and we are in worship, and so I want our main question to be: What do we learn here about God?

Despite some of the interpretive questions, what truths about God and reality can we be sure this psalm is affirming? I have three:

God reigns over everything.
God will judge all moral unrighteousness.
God will get his global glory.

Each of these truths are clear in Psalm 82 and they matter for how we live. So we’re gonna walk through each one, but first let’s pray:

Father in heaven, thank you for the Holy Spirit who illumines your word to our hearts. He gives understanding to the simple, and we confess that we need the power of your Spirit in these moments! Send him, we ask, in Jesus’s name, amen.

God reigns over everything. Look at verse 1:

“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment…”

Right away we’re asking: What is this “divine council” and who are these “gods”?

You don’t see this on every page of Scripture, but the reality is always there, and every now and then we see glimpses of it, that in the presence of God, at least at certain times, there is an assembly of supernatural beings who are involved in the affairs of this world. Sometimes these supernatural beings are called little-g gods; sometimes they’re called sons of God; categorically, they’re angels.

They’re close to God and privy to his will, and they’re active in how his will plays out in the world; but the main thing we should see here is that God is over them. He has a place in their company, and that place is judge. God is judge over all creation, which includes the spiritual realm.

And this is where we might need to stretch our imaginations.

God Over the Material WorldWe believe, and we say all the time, that God is sovereign. God is in control.

“God has decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to a pass” (3.1).

We believe that, and most of the time when we think about the arena of God’s sovereignty — where God’s sovereignty plays out— we think about this world and the stuff that we can see. And we should think that. It is a right and wonderful thing to apply the sovereignty of God to this material world. More of that, please.

Earlier this week I was coming back from some church planting meetings in Atlanta, driving to the airport at night, and I’m pretty dependent on Google Maps. I need my phone to tell me where to go. Well you know when you get close to an airport, they have way-finder signs that make it pretty much dummy proof. So I see these signs, I’ve seen them before, but my phone is telling me to do something different than what the signs are telling me.

And here’s the deal: I’ve not left myself a lot of time. I have a very thin margin for error, and now I’ve got to decide to follow the signs or follow my phone.

Well, I went with my phone.Bad choice! I was headed to the wrong place. I must have made a glitch when I plugged things in. And by the time I fix that and loop around, it adds half an hour, and now I’m sweating. Then I started to think about how missing my flight would torpedo the rest of my week. So I go from sweating to spiraling, but then the Holy Spirit ministered to me and I remembered the sovereignty of God.

Even if I miss this flight because of my human error, God is looking after that. He’s looking after me. He reigns over every detail, even over glitches in our material world. Well I ended up making my flight because it was delayed, because there was another glitch somewhere else. God knew the whole time.

And the examples like this are endless. And sometimes it goes well for us, sometimes it stays difficult, but we should remember that God is active and in control over the world as we see it. We should apply the fact of God’s sovereignty to the material world in its details. But, it doesn’t stop there.

God Over the Spiritual WorldReality is material and spiritual. There is the seen world and the unseen world — and the unseen world, although it’s unseen to us, it’s just as vast and just as active as the seen world, and some of it is set against us. Paul says in Ephesians 6,

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Now most of the time our senses are aloof to this. It’s out of sight, out of mind — and we don’t even think about it. But behind everything we see, there are unseen spiritual influences and forces. There’s no doubt that as I’m driving to the airport, trying to figure out where to go, the enemy has an agenda to harm me. There was a whole spiritual realm that was doing stuff — and it’s like that all the time, and honestly if we could see more of it, I think it’d be too overwhelming for us. We don’t have the capacity in our fallen bodies to process it, but look, here’s the comfort for us: all of these spiritual beings, good or bad, every supernatural force in existence, reports to God.

This is why Yahweh is called the Most High God. He reports to nobody. There is no one above him and no one equal to him. He reigns over everything.

Even in the spiritual realm, among all the unseen commotion, God sits in the highest place. Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — he is the one who ultimately calls all the shots and every created thing answers to him.

Psalm 82 tells us this.

God will judge all moral unrighteousness.We see this in verse 2, and it gets at a major question in the psalm. We know in verse 1 that God is sitting over these spiritual beings and he’s holding judgment. God speaks that judgment starting in verse 2, but who is the judgment against?

I think this judgment is against Israel, but God is speaking that judgment in the presence of this divine council. And there’s a handful of reasons why that’s the case. I won’t get into them all. But go ahead and look at verse 2 and see what God is saying. Verse 2, God says:

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

The Connection to Psalm 80This is all moral behavior that God expects of Israel. We see this in other places in the Bible and we also see that Israel failed here. And the reason these things are brought up in Psalm 82 is because it’s meant to be a response to Psalm 80, verses 18–19. (Remember that oftentimes the psalms are put together on purpose. Each of the psalms are connected to the ones around it, and that connection is part of the message.)

Back in Psalm 80, verse 18, there’s a petition. The psalmist prays, on behalf of Israel: “give us life, and we will call upon your name!” Verse 19, the very last verse of Psalm 80: “Restore us, O Yahweh God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!”

And then Psalm 81 and 82 come after Psalm 80 as a reply. In Psalm 81, which we saw last week, we see that God is eager to save, but the problem is the people’s disobedience. Look back at Psalm 81, verse 10. God says,

“I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.”

Look at verse 13. God says: “Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!”

That’s when God says he would subdue their enemies. That’s when God says he would feed them “with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you” (verse 16). See the problem?

The Jelly Roll DilemmaThe reason Israel has experienced the judgment of exile instead of blessing is because they have disobeyed God (see Deuteronomy 28). They’ve rebelled against God’s will. And they would be absolute fools to ask for God’s blessing and deliverance but continue to disobey him. That’s the point here. It’s what we could call the ‘Jelly Roll dilemma.’

Y’all know that country song, “Need a Favor?” It goes:

I only talk to God when I need a favor

And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer

So, who the heck am I, who the heck am I

To expect a Savior, oh

If I only talk to God when I need a favor?

But God, I need a favor

Israel needed a favor too, but they weren’t living right. They were not listening to God. And that’s actually the main thing God wants. God wants our obedience. He wants our hearts. This is a consistent theme in Scripture, and I want to show you this.

God Desires ObedienceSo heads up: I’m about to read a lot of verses, but try to hang with me. I want us to track a theme here in Scripture:

1 Samuel 15:22,

“To obey is better than sacrifice.”

Psalm 40:6,

“In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear.”

Jeremiah 7:22–23,

For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’

Everybody see that theme?

God isn’t concerned with the stuff that we might ‘give’ him — what we could call our sacrifices, the ways we might go through the motions of devotion. Instead, God wants our hearts: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”

Obedience Is Showing MercyOkay, but now how does that obedience look?

Well get this: there are other places in Scripture that contrast obedience to sacrifice but the word “obedience” is not used, it’s just described. Listen to this:

Proverbs 21:3,

“To do righteousness and justice is more pleasing to Yahweh than sacrifice.”

Isaiah 1:11,

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Yahweh; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

But, verse 16:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”

Do you hear how obedience is being described?

Micah 6, verses 6–8 — we call this the ‘micah-drop’ passage — the prophet Micah says:

With what shall I come before Yahweh, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

7 Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He’s talking about sacrifices. Is it those things that please God?

Verse 8:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

In short, obedience to God means loving your neighbor. Obedience to God means we show kindness, especially to those in need. Our obedience to God is displayed in moral righteousness.

Disobedience DisplayedSo, if that’s obedience, then disobedience is the opposite of that.

And that’s what Psalm 82:2–4 describes.

Israel’s disobedience to God was displayed in the way they harmed others (or in the ways they simply chose not to help!) — unjust decision-making, favoring the wicked, oppressing endangered children, neglecting the rights of the afflicted and destitute, looking the other way from the weak and needy.

Israel had been doing all of this moral unrighteousness in defiance of God’s word, and yet they’re asking God to bless them! Look, I’ll tell you, I would not want to be standing anywhere near Israel in this situation. God does not bless them in response to their unrighteousness, he brings judgment. God’s answer to the petition of Psalm 80:19 is to call them to account for their evil with Psalm 82:2.

God Bless America?And there’s a takeaway here for nation-states. When we read the Old Testament and we connect the dots from ancient Israel to our present day, sometimes the connection is straight to the church, the people of God, to us.

And sometimes the connection is to nation-states, to countries. And one lesson here for our country is that before people start praying “God Bless America,” they should get America clean with righteousness and humility.

What I’m saying is this: we should never expect God to bless this country as the laws of our land promote slaughtering babies and mutilating children and destroying families.

God demands moral righteousness in his created world. And of course God expects this from us as a local church and as Christians — God help us! — but beyond us, God demands moral righteousness from every created thing, from people who together call themselves a nation to every single individual to ever exist. God demands moral righteousness and every morally unrighteous act will be accounted for.

Verse 8 says, “Arise, O God, judge the earth.” That means whole earth and every part. No unrighteousness gets swept under the rug. None is ignored. God’s judgment is coming. God will judge all moral unrighteousness.

Psalm 82 tells us this.

God will get his global glory.This is the last half of verse 8. I’m not going to go into verses 6–7. I wrote an article about that on Friday. But look at verse 8. The psalmist concludes:

“Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!”

Judgment and NationsGod’s judgment and inheriting the nations — we should ponder here how these two things are related. We know judgment has been the theme of Psalm 82, but now the psalmist says that God will inherit all the nations! Where’s that come from?

Well, for one, the nations are a big part of the next psalm, Psalm 83, and in Psalm 83 these nations have set themselves against God and his people. The nations are scheming to destroy God’s people and subvert God’s plans, and here Psalm 82:8 sets us up for that. We’re reminded here that actually all these nations, all people groups everywhere, they belong to God too. God will have them.

Psalm 82 says that, but there’s even more going on. God’s judgment and inheriting the nations is a combo we’ve heard before. This is how the Book of Psalms begins, way back in Psalm 2. I think Psalm 82:8 is meant to send us back to Psalm 2. It’s a reminder.

The Psalm 2 KeyIn Psalm 2, verse 6, God speaks and says:

“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

This King is God’s Messiah, and in verse 7 the Messiah himself speaks and says:

I will tell of the decree: Yahweh said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

So God’s Messiah — the King appointed by God who is also God’s Son — the nations are his heritage. In other words, the Messiah will inherit the nations (just like we read in Psalm 82). All people groups everywhere are his, and he sits over them as judge.

So Psalm 2, verse 10 issues a warning:

Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.

11 Serve Yahweh with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son [or honor the Son], lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Psalm 2 is the key to all the rest of the psalms, and it’s really simple. There are only two outcomes in life: God’s judgment or God’s blessing.

And it all has to do with what you do with God’s Messiah, Jesus.

If you reject Jesus, then you die in your sins and face God’s judgment.

If you take refuge in Jesus, then you will be blessed — forgiveness of sin and life with God forever.

Invitation and EvidenceAnd the invitation is to take refuge. That’s the invitation in the Psalms and in the whole Bible, and it’s an invitation to all peoples.All peoples everywhere, take refuge in Jesus. Trust him!

And get this: they will. In God’s providence, for the glory of his Son, he will be worshiped by those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. God will get his global glory.

And we’re evidence of that.

I felt this in a special way a few weeks ago on vacation. My family was at one of our favorite places in the world — Topsail Island, North Carolina. I grew up going to this beach, and I love it. And one of my favorite things to do is just to look out at the vastness of the ocean. You look out and realize that on the other side of that line is Africa. I’m standing on the edge of the continent, a long ways from Jerusalem. And yet here I am, worshiping Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God says, “The coastlands shall hope for me!” (Isaiah 51:5). And that’s me. And I feel it. I am such a Gentile. I’m a Philistine, and the son of Philistines. And I’m saved … because in the sovereignty of God, by his grace, I trust in Jesus Christ.

God is getting his global glory through us, and he will get his global glory — worshipers from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

Psalm 82 tells us this, and that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableHow is it that by faith in Jesus we are freed from God’s judgment?

It’s because Jesus has taken that judgment for us. That’s what he did when he died on the cross.

When Jesus died, he sacrificed himself for our sin. He took all of our moral unrighteousness and in our place he absorbed the judgment that we deserved — and when we put our faith in him, when we take refuge in him, we’re forgiven and free. We are blessed forever.

You can receive that blessing right now, you can be saved from the judgment of God, if you trust Jesus. Turn from trusting in yourself, put your faith in Jesus Christ.

And for those of you who have trusted in Jesus, we who are part of his global glory, let’s come to this Table and give him thanks.

The bread represents his broken body, the cup represents his shed blood, and when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we’re saying that indeed Jesus is our hope. If Jesus is your hope, we invite you to eat and drink with us.

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Growing up, there was a fairly limited list of shows I was allowed to watch. One of those shows was called “Superbook: Bible Stories.”

If you were to watch a few episodes of it, you’d notice that each one had essentially the same story arc: It opened in the normal life of a boy named Christopher, who at some point (along with his friends) would open a magic Bible and be suddenly transported into whatever Bible story they had opened to. Then, for most of that episode, they would be immersed in the world of that Bible story as they walked through the terrain, and interacted with the events and characters of that story. Then, unexpectedly they would be transported back to their normal world.

Now that’s a pretty common story arc: think the Narnia books, or another classic like the Magic Tree House series. It’s just a great story arc! In part because of the adventure of discovering and exploring a world previously unknown. But also, because these journeys into another world would always have a lasting impact on the kind of boy Christopher was becoming back in his “normal life.”

Similarly, this morning, we get to enter into the world of Psalm 81 which gives a vivid snapshot into times and places distant and foreign to us, and yet God in his wisdom intends for this Psalm to shape who we are becoming here and now. And so let’s ask for His help before we enter Psalm 81.

Father, we come here as your children. Rescued and adopted — and on a journey of ever-increasing satisfaction in you. And you will complete what you began in us. Would you meet us this morning, wherever we’re coming from? Whatever we’re bringing in with us — work in our hearts, by Your Spirit and through Your Word, we pray, in Jesus name, amen.

If you’re looking for a way to orient to Psalm 81, there are three main scenes that we’ll focus on:

A joyful song
A tragic story
A hope-filled invitation

Scene 1: A Joyful SongIf we were transported into the context of Psalm 81, we would likely be greeted with the sights and smells of feasting and festivals. In fact, it might be helpful to imagine something like an ancient version of the state fair. The time of the year would be around early October, and it was a month filled with essentially back to back feasts and festivals. According to God’s instruction in the book of Deuteronomy: At the beginning of that month (known by them as the new moon) they were to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets. This lasted 10 days leading into The Day of Atonement, which was the day at the center of the book of Leviticus — On the day of atonement, Israel would remember God’s mercy in atoning for or covering the sins of his people.

Then, about a week later, they would begin the Feast of Tabernacles — also known as the feast of booths or what we might call tents. This took place in the middle of the month (or their “full moon”) and that feast lasted about a week. Its focus was on remembering God's faithfulness and provision to the Exodus generation in the wilderness (hence the tents).

And Psalm 81 was a song, especially for this season. We see that in verse 3 with the mention of the trumpet, the new moon, the full moon, and the feast day.

So imagine this: we’re making our way through this ancient festival … We’re seeing crowds of people mingling, the smells of good food, the sounds of children playing and laughing … Until it’s all drowned out by the blast of a trumpet — think of the same kinds of trumpets as Joshua used in Jericho, but in this case, the trumpets called God’s people to gather to worship. And as they gather, the instruments play, and God’s people begin gladly singing together.

And the song itself begins with a call to worship. The psalmist is singing, and instructing them how to sing at the same time. It’s kind of like the old song,

“Come now is the time to worship.”

God instructs his people in what their worship should look like. And central to that instruction is joy.

“Sing aloud to God our strength, shout for joy to the God of Jacob! Raise a song: sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp” (Ps. 81:1-2).

This corporate singing was meant to be a time of shared gladness and expressions of joy. Joy in God and in their common identity as God’s people. This was an essential rhythm of their covenant renewal, a regular reminder of the happy reality of their identity as God’s people and of their commitment to Him as their God.

We know that joy isn’t the only tone we see in the psalms. The Lord, in his wisdom, has given his people a wide range of psalms. There are songs of grief and lament, songs of repentance, of reverence and awe — all of which help us faithfully navigate the full range of our human experience, but the common thread, and most dominant tone of God’s singing people is joy. And we see that tone here.

God is the author of joy. He has created our capacity for it. And He created music and singing both for expressing that joy, and for deepening and cultivating it. God spread His joy throughout the world through a joyfully-singing people.

In light of that, it is right and helpful to ask ourselves: Does my singing reflect the reality that God is my greatest joy? Is my heart impacted by the astonishing truths that my mouth is singing? And to whatever extent that isn’t the case, it’s important to ask, what is holding me back from God’s call to joy-filled worship?

Whether it’s a lack of joy … or distractions, or fears and insecurities … whatever the hindrance, singing is an opportunity to search our hearts, surrender our affections to God, and to trust Him to shape our joy.

Spurgeon commenting on these verses says,

“It is to be regretted that the niceties of modern singing frighten our congregations from joining lustily in the hymns. For our part we delight in full bursts of praise, and had rather discover the ruggedness of a want of musical training than miss the heartiness of universal congregational song.”

In other words, our singing doesn’t need to be polished, but it should be full of joy.

God commands not just our actions here, but also our affections. We are not helpless bystanders in our pursuit of joy. God’s gift of singing is not only for the downstream expression of our joy, but also upstream as a habit that grows and deepens our joy in Him. Our singing cultivates our joy in God.

One example that’s helped me see this in a new light was my grandmother. My grandma passed away the week before my daughter, Elsie, was born. She had a deep love for Jesus, and she loved to sing. In her final years, she had a long decline both physically and cognitively. Eventually, her dementia had progressed beyond recognizing her children and grandchildren, and she spent most of her time bedridden. And yet, long after her mind could explain to you the deep joy that she had found in Jesus, she would often sit in her bed, holding a hymnal she could no longer read, and with a peaceful gladness, she would sing the hymns that had been engrained in her over a lifetime of praise with God’s people. Even then, her song continued to testify to her all-satisfying God, and I am convinced, that it continued to deepen her joy in Jesus.

That image has helped shape what “finishing well” looks like to me, and it especially comes to mind when I sing “Jesus Loves Me” with Elsie at bedtime. It also gives a glimpse of the deep significance of our singing together week after week.

And so God calls his people to sing for joy. And as they do, God speaks to them in the song as it transitions to an oracle, or a word from the Lord. And as God speaks he begins to recount the tragedy of Israel’s disobedience. And this leads us into our second scene.

Scene 2: A Tragic StorySo imagine: now we’re transported from the festival into the wilderness to join the Exodus generation.

Verses 6-7a,

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden;

your hands were freed from the basket.

In distress you called, and I delivered you…”

God first recalls his past redemptive work in rescuing Israel from slavery. Notice how vivid these descriptions are. Commentator Derek Kidner says,

“Instead of abstractions such as oppression and redemption, we read of shoulder and hands, burden and basket.”

For 400 years Israel’s day-to-day reality was back-breaking, soul-crushing slavery in Egypt. They had bruised shoulders, blistered hands, and heavy baskets. But then God stepped in to that reality. The Exodus was one of the most epic “But God” moments of the Old Testament: God heard the cries of his people, and he came to their rescue. God showed both his great strength and his commitment to Israel. God rescued his people.

Then God continues to show not only what he rescued them from, but what he continued to do for them afterward — God did not drop them off in the wilderness and say “figure it out.” Hedid not leave them to fend for themselves. He took them under his wing, his care, his provision, and, his instruction.

God’s instruction is especially highlighted here: God himself instructed his people and his commands were a means of grace to them. This took place, most notably, at Mt. Sinai (which God refers to in verse 7 as “the secret place of thunder”). Mt. Sinai was where God gave his law to his people. And verses 9-10 also allude to that event. Verse 9,

“There shall be no strange god among you;

you shall not bow down to a foreign god.”

This echoes the 1st and 2nd commandments in Exodus 20:3-5.

Psalms 81:10,

“I am the Lord your God,

who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

This echoes God’s preface to the 10 commandments in Exodus 20:2.

God makes himself clear to Israel through his commands. In them, Israel is meant to see who God is and what he expects from them. He is their God and so His word is their Law. He holds out his commands and says “Listen to me!”

God’s command to listen is the most repeated exhortation in this psalm. God is not just looking for mouths that sing to him, but also for ears that hear Him and obey. Verse 8,

“Hear, O my people, while I admonish you!

O Israel, if you would but listen to me!

Verse 11,

“But my people did not listen to my voice;

Israel would not submit to me.”

Verse 13,

“Oh, that my people would listen to me,

that Israel would walk in my ways!”

God calls Israel to listen and obey. But instead his people respond with stubborn and obstinate hearts. And we see that clearly displayed with God’s mention of Meribah in verse 7.

The name “Meribah” means “quarreling” or “strife” — and it was a place in the wilderness that Israel passed through in Exodus 17, near the beginning of their journey through the wilderness, and then again in Deuteronomy 20, near the end of their journey. And both instances were complete disasters.

Imagine, God had just miraculously delivered them out of Egypt, with great displays of power in his plagues on Egypt, and in parting the sea, and then swallowing their enemies in that sea. God then leads them through the wilderness in a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. He has already made bitter water sweet for them to drink, and given them manna from the sky for them to eat. And their response, in Exodus 17, when they get to Meribah and can’t find water is to say: “is the Lord among us or not?” And then to turn to Moses (ready to stone him) and ask“did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us with thirst?” But God, in his patience and mercy, still gives them water from the rock.

That was the first encounter with Meribah. Then we fast forward to Numbers 20, near the end of their time in the wilderness. At this point, not only had they received God’s law at Sinai — his teaching, his instruction — but also decades of God patiently leading and training his people. Think 40 years of God’s discipleship for his people, and they come up on Meribah again as if God saying “here’s your chance, show me that you’ve been listening.” And instead, they turn again to Moses and through gritted teeth say: “why have you brought us into this wilderness to die?”

And this time, even Moses fails to listen, ignoring God’s clear instruction to speak to the rock. Instead, he hits the rock twice and as a result he too doesn’t make it to the promised land. The whole scenario at Meribah is like the bookends of a 40 year train-wreck of God speaking, and Israel ignoring every word.

Despite God having proven himself over and over they refused to listen to him and walk in his ways. They did not see God’s instruction as the blessing that it was — and threw it off as an unwelcome constraint. They wanted God’s benefits, but they did not want his rule. They wanted the water from the rock, but rejected the source. And it brings us to God’s judgement in verse 12,

“So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.”

There is a scary, Romans 1, kind of giving them over here. God gives them over to the stubbornness and depravity of their own hearts as if God finally says, “okay, have it your way.” Not just freedom from Egypt, but “freedom” from God’s rule … Unhindered in pursuing their own desires, and following their hearts, but it did not result in any satisfaction, but rather, a downward spiral into ruin.

And that should sound familiar to us because it’s the lie that Satan tries to sell us all the time. Follow your heart, and your desires. Don’t let God’s commands hinder your pursuit of satisfaction. In other words, God has no authority over you: You be God. It is self-idolatry, advertised as progress and human flourishing.

It is the very opposite and perversion of “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me.” God makes it clear that a life of disobedience will result in judgement and it’s reiterated in verse 15,

“Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward him, and their fate would last forever.”

But even in the middle of His judgement …Don’t miss God’s lament for Israel here. There is a sad tone of missed opportunity. Verse 13,

“Oh, that my people would listen to me,

that Israel would walk in my ways!”

God’s heart is to bless his people. And he longs for his wandering people to return to Him.

Now, you might be wondering: wasn’t this supposed to be a joyful song? Why does it have such a tragic ending?It feels like the beginning and the end don't belong in the same song. “Sing Aloud,” “Shout for joy,” and “Sound the tambourine” doesn’t seem to fit with “I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels.” At least, until we zoom out and recognize that this was a song sung by a future generation. And once we are transported back to that festival context the tone of this Psalm shifts from a tragic story to our final scene…

Scene 3: A Hope-filled InvitationAs they sang this Psalm together, they heard not only God’s cautionary tale but also his invitation. The tragic story of their fathers did not have to be their story. Instead of following in their fathers’ steps of stubborn hearts and disobedience, God was inviting them to trust in Him to satisfy them. Verse 10,

“Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”

It’s a beautiful image of our hunger met by His provision, of our longings and His satisfaction. Just like the infant is satisfied by his mothers milk, we were made to be satisfied by God. It’s not ultimately the water from the rock that we long for, but the rock Himself. It’s not just the blessings that we want to be satisfied, but the source. And so behind the mouth that sings and the ear that listens is a heart that loves God above all else, turning to him to be satisfied. And God is both ready and eager to satisfy those who come to Him.

And we’ve already seen in this psalm, two means by which he satisfies his people: Through his word as we listen to it and obey, and through our joy-filled singing. But I would like to briefly mention one more. And that is just to ask Him.

Make it a regular part of your day to ask God to give you more of himself. That by His Spirit and through his word, you would grow in an ever deepening satisfaction in Him. That he would guard your heart from competing loves and disordered desires. And likewise, pray bold and specific prayers that take God at his word, and that deepen our heart’s dependence on Him for satisfaction. God delights in answering those prayers.

Verse 16,

“But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat,

and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

The psalm closes with more imagery of feasting as God invites his people to come and be satisfied by Him. And that brings us to this table.

The TableThe Old Covenant feasts were a shadow pointing forward to a greater reality. God’s Old Covenant rescue of Israel from Egypt was a shadow pointing forward to a greater rescue: God becoming a man to rescue his people from sin and judgment. Jesus, dwelt among us, took on our sins, and died in our place to rescue us from the judgment we deserved. And now the risen Jesus invites us to come to Him and be satisfied. Jesus says,

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Let’s pray.

And so Father, as your children, rescued and redeemed, we come eager for more of you this morning. Help us be a joyfully singing people. Help us be a submissive people that listen to and obey your word. Work in our hearts, by your Spirit and through your word, to grow us in ever-deepening satisfaction in you. We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

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We continue to work through Psalms that are connected with Asaph. This section started in Psalm 73 and goes through 83. There have been themes of lament and remembrance (often connected with the lamenting). This Psalm is also categorized as a corporate lament. But there are a couple unique elements to it, including it’s description of God, and it’s description of Israel.

The basic structure of the psalm is this:

v.1-3 - Appeal for God to Hear and Save
v.4-7 - A lament of God’s current anger toward his people
v.8-13 - A lament of God’s protection being removed from his people
v.14-19 - Appeal for God to See and Save

As we walk through this Psalm we are going to do a couple things. We will be looking at several larger chunks of scriptures to help fill out the context that brings this Psalm together. We are also going to walk through this Psalm mainly through the lens of what we learn about God. So as we walk through the outline just mentioned, we are going to focus on three things. In the first section we will look at the Description of God. In the next two sections that are the main lament, we are going to look at the Love of God. And in the last section, we are going to look at the Answer from God.

Let’s pray.

Father, show us a glimpse of your glory this morning. Give us understanding, encouragement, and confidence in your love for us as we spend time in your Word together.

Appeal for God to Hear and Save (verses 1-3).

He opens by saying “Give ear” to our cries. He wants God to hear them out in their trouble and he addresses God in three different ways.

“Give ear…O Shepherd of Israel.”This is an important theme for Asaph. Psalm 23, which is of David is probably the most famous Psalm regarding the Lord as a shepherd for his people. But in this series of Psalms related to Asaph, this is a theme he returns to again and again.

Psalm 77:20,

“You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

Psalm 78:52,

“He led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.”

Psalm 79:13,

“But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever.”

Psalm 80:1,

“Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.”

This is more than just a good illustration, there is an enduring likeness the Psalmist sees between us and sheep. The illustration might be the most acute as Israel was led in the wilderness, but there are several enduring realities from this analogy.

We like sheep, are dependent on God, on our Shepherd to guide and lead us. We like sheep, are weak and need to be protected and defended. We see that this theme of sheep and a shepherd further carries on into the new testament. Jesus sees the crowds as sheep without a shepherd. Pastors are called to shepherd the the flock of God, under the chief Shepherd.

This illustration wasn’t just for God’s guidance throughout the wilderness, it is relevant to how we approach God even today.

So the Psalmist first appeals to God, the shepherd of his flock, to hear the cry of his sheep. And he carries the metaphor through the whole Psalm as he talks about us being fed by God, and for him to restore them and turn them back. God our Shepherd, Guide us back to you, we need your help.

The Lord God of Hosts Verse 3,

“Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!”

Verses 4, 7, 14, and 19 all describe God as the God of Hosts. God is the commander and leader of the armies of heaven, of the hosts of heaven, God almighty is a similar description. God has power and authority to change the situation, to rescue at any point he pleases to.

And we know his authority is not limited to the heavenly realm. Every week in the commission at the end of our service, we are reminded “that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to [him].”

God of angel armies, restore us and save us, make your face to shine upon us.

“[The one] who is enthroned upon the cherubimVerse 2,

“You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.”

He brings to mind the Ark of the Covenant, specifically the top cover of it, where God dwells and speaks to his people. This is bringing an image of authority and power, but also several other things…

It conveys God’s Holiness and Presence. The ark was guarded very carefully because God’s Holy presence was there, and it needs to be kept separate from a sinful people.

It also is where the cloud and pillar would rest when he would speak with Moses. He is described as enthroned upon and among the cherubim, because that is the place where his voice was heard.

It conveys God’s Glory and Goodness. He asks God to “shine forth.” Show us your glory and power as you come to the aid of your people. He is an enthroned king who rules with power and authority. He is: The Lord of Host who is enthroned upon the Cherubim. These often are seen together in scripture.

And if he is enthroned, there is a seat there that He hears and speaks from, and it is called the mercy seat.

Exodus 25:17–22, God instructs Israel,

“You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth. And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends.

The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”

The Lord God almighty, the Lord of hosts, the Shepherd of Israel — this God hears and speaks to his people from above the mercy seat.

The Psalmist pleads,

“Hear us, let your glory shine forth, stir up your might, come to save us, have mercy on us! Come and answer us from the mercy seat.”

One possibility on why he mentioned Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin is that he may be recounting what it was like when God led Israel through the wilderness. When they were on the move, these were the three tribes that would follow directly behind the ark as the camp moved out. They were also the offspring from Rachel, and were given great blessing from God.

So the Psalmist addresses God as the Lord of Host, who is enthroned upon the Cherubim, who is also the Shepherd of his flock, Israel.

Lament of the current destruction (verses 4-13).He mourns the current treatment and circumstance of God’s people using two illustrations. He continues the description of Israel as a flock, and he also describes Israel as a nurtured vine. And in the midst of this, he address God with two questions.
How long will you be angry with your sheep?

Psalm 80:4–6,

“O LORD God of hosts,

how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?

You have fed them with the bread of tears

and given them tears to drink in full measure.

You make us an object of contention for our neighbors,

and our enemies laugh among themselves.”

Up to this point God’s favor has been removed, he has removed his provision from them, his face is turned away from them.

Their food and drink is their tears. No green pastures, no still waters. Their neighbors and enemies are hostile towards them, and mock and ridicule them. No comfort from the protection of God rod and staff. No meal prepared for them in the presence of their enemies.

This is an especially bitter scenario, that God is described as having turned his face away even from the prayers of his people. This could be a description illustrating how silent God has been to answer them, or could be related to the nature of their prayers.

They pray insincerely. Psalm 78:36–37,

“But they flattered [God] with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant.”

He is poetically describing that God has not answered them, with favor and provision. God’s response has been a lack of sustenance and an object of contention and conflict with our neighbors. “We have asked to be saved, and…” Verses 5-6,

“You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves.”

So that’s question 1, how long will you be angry with your flock?

Why have you removed your protection from your vine? (Only psalm)Psalm 80:8–13,

“You brought a vine out of Egypt;

you drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it;

it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade,

the mighty cedars with its branches.

It sent out its branches to the sea

and its shoots to the River.

Why then have you broken down its walls,

so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

The boar from the forest ravages it,

and all that move in the field feed on it.”

He recounts God’s special care for his vine. And as he moves from one description to the other, he is appealing not to their worthiness, but to God's love.

God’s love is on full display here.

Isaiah gives us another detailed description of God’s extraordinary love for his vine, and also an explanation for why it is being destroyed.

Isaiah 5:1–7,

“Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

and he looked for it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem

and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.

What more was there to do for my vineyard,

that I have not done in it?

When I looked for it to yield grapes,

why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you

what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge,

and it shall be devoured;

I will break down its wall,

and it shall be trampled down.

I will make it a waste;

it shall not be pruned or hoed,

and briers and thorns shall grow up;

I will also command the clouds

that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts

is the house of Israel,

and the men of Judah

are his pleasant planting;

and he looked for justice,

but behold, bloodshed;

for righteousness,

but behold, an outcry!

The rhetorical question lands hard. Against all odds, this vine bore bitter, sour grapes. It had everything going for it and still it bore bad fruit and acted wickedly.

Not only did he provide every possible thing necessary for the vine to bear good fruit, but God went even farther for his flock and for his vine.

The refrain that appears through out the Psalm borrows language from the Aaronic blessing,

“Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved!”

Here is what the Lord commanded Aaron and his sons to do, Numbers 6:22–27,

“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

God commissioned a whole group of men to bless the people of Israel, and remind them of the favor and grace and peace He is ready to give them.

Not only did God lavishly care for and provide for this vine, but he even commission Aaron and his sons to proactively speak a blessing over the people, and ask for His favor so that He would come and bless them. Just in case they are slow to ask for themselves, God sent out a group of people to ask on their behalf, so that He could come and bless you even if you were slow or reluctant to ask yourself.

This is going the extra mile to say the least. This has been fresh for me this week. Each night I pray this blessing over my children swapping in the name of Jesus at points.

What has been fresh is to remember: God gave us these words for us to use on behalf of others so that he may bless them. The vivid image of them being spoken to a God who hears, and answers from the mercy seat. His answers flows from His love and mercy, not from our worthiness. The Lord of Hosts, who is enthroned upon the Cherubim, above the mercy seat, hears me speaking back to Him the words he gave us!

But we see, despite all of this, the vine only bore wild fruit. With everything going for it, it somehow managed to bear only wild, sour fruit. The vine was a delight in God’s eyes, and when he came looking for justice he found bloodshed; when he came looking for righteousness, he found none.

A few years back my wife made a fairy garden in one of our big planters in the back on our deck. We planted a few small plants in there but one day a sunflower seed sprouted. We staked it, weeded around it, it was just starting to bloom, then one morning we woke up and it was gone…a squirrel, proportionally the equivalent of a wild boar, destroyed that flower.

In the end, I felt what the psalmist wants God to feel, don’t let your vine get totaled, destroyed.

What was all the work for?

Appeal to God to See and Save (verses 14-19).Verse 14,

“Turn again, O God of Hosts! Look down and have regard for this vine,”

He appeals to God to not let all his work get ruined, all his care go to waste. Have mercy on us and restore the works of your hands. You love your flock, you love your vine. You have led it in the past, you have planted and cared for the vine. Take notice of the destruction to your vine, bring back your sheep, give us life that we may call upon your name. Let your face shine that we may be saved.

And if God were to look on his people, two things would happen. The turning of His face is both terror, and salvation.

Terror for thosewho take advantage of the vulnerability of the vine.

Verse 16,

“They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your face!”

Back to the squirrel who demolished our sunflower plant… When I see the squirrel, it’s over for him, the games up. The wicked and the wild bore had their moment, but when God’s face turns, it’s over. The enemy can only do what it is granted for a season to do. Terrified, the wicked flee at the turning of His face toward them… Salvation for the vinethat he once again smiles upon. With God’s face come his attention, with God face comes his strength and energy, with his face comes his glory and favor for His people.

As God’s favor goes, so it all goes.When God’s favor is on his people, no circumstance can hinder them. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”.

His favor can rescue us from trial, or make us prosper through trial. His favor can be seen through trial.

Exodus 1:8–12, after Joseph died,

“Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.”

If God is with his people and his face is towards them, then they will be alright.

The prayer for God to hear, to see, to turn his face towards his people has been answered again and again for his people, and has ultimately answered through God sending Jesus.

And God’s ultimate answer is Jesus.Jesus is the man of God’s right hand who came to save his people. The Son of Man that God has strengthened to provide salvation.

The psalmist asks, Psalm 80:17,

“But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!”

Psalm 2:7–9,

“I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

Psalm 110:1,

“The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

They were looking for salvation to come from a king, whether that was David, or Solomon, or the long list of kings after them. And that hope was fulfilled in Jesus who is the king who will reign forever and is the man of God’s right hand.

And isn’t it interesting that so many people do that same thing today? With all of our self-expression, self-discovery, self-sufficiency, self-worship. Yet so many people are still looking for one person to save them. Whether that be a president, or a king, or some other leader.

This testifies to how we are made.

They look (and we can look) to the wrong person to save us from the wrong things. What we really need is Jesus to save us from our sin. The true savior for the true problem. Jesus is the son of man with God’s favor on him to rescue his people.

Jesus is the true vine, that bears good fruit.

Israel failed to be the vine that brought blessing to the nations. Jesus picks up this theme in John 15. The Father all along has been the vinedresser, the owner of the vineyard, but what is new is that Jesus declares is that HE is the vine.

John 15:1–5,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

The true vine is not those who are connected to Israel, the true vine is those that are connected to Jesus. Jesus takes it upon himself to be the vine that bears good fruit for the blessing of Israel and ultimately the blessing of the nations.

We get it wrong, when after Jesus saves us, we then look to ourselves, or the church to be the vine, and not to Jesus. You cannot do it on your own, or you will fail again and again like Israel. The branches must depend on the vine to supply them with sustenance. The sheep must depend on the shepherd to lead them.

Both metaphors have ongoing relevance. Nor, can you look to the church instead of Jesus.

The church is Christ’s body, and is an amazing blessing, and a place where a bunch of branches hang out, but Jesus is still the vine. When we look to the church to be everything Jesus should be for us, we will always find something wrong, or something missing, and we won’t ever be satisfied.

But it’s because we have looked to it to be the vine instead of Jesus.

Jesus is the true vine, and by being connected to Him, He will ensure that we bear good fruit instead of bitter fruit. He saves us and supplies us.

Jesus is the God who sits enthroned on the true mercy seat in heaven. He hears and speaks from there, seated at the right hand of the father in heaven. He has made full, complete atonement for all who take refuge in Him, any who will abide in him, in His love, in His grace, in His forgiveness. We need not be shy to ask him for help for apart from him we can do nothing. We need not fear bringing messes to him, He answers from His throne of mercy.

There has never been a time where He answered you because you deserved it. It’s not: “sometime I earn it, and sometime I don’t.” You NEVER earn it, it’s ALWAYS Grace.

When we ask for him to see us, shine on us, revive us, save us, it is according to his steadfast love and mercy. God answered his people before Christ, He answered his people with Christ, and he continues to answer his people through Christ.

Forgiveness and help is not granted because we deserve it, but because God opens wide his arms and says come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. So come to him, undeserving as your are, believe in the king of heaven, who has all authority in heaven and earth, and sits on the mercy seat. Ask Him to shine on you.

Let’s pray,

Father, if there are any who do not know you this morning, would you let them see your glory and goodness, that you came to rescue us from ourselves, to give us life forever with you. Father, we ask that you would bless us, and keep us, would you make your face to shine upon us and be gracious to us. Would you lift up your countenance towards us, and give us peace. We ask this through the merit of Jesus on our behalf, Amen.

The TableThis table reminds us that we now can have confidence to enter into the true Holy places in heaven, where Jesus sits because of His blood that was shed for us.

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What we have in Psalm 79 this morning is a Psalm of lament. A Psalm written to express sorrow, helplessness, and a longing to be saved. The progression of this Psalm is straightforward: It begins with the problem in verses 1-4. What’s the cause of the sorrow? It moves on into a petition in verses 5-12. What’s asked of God in the midst of such sorrow? Then, closes in one final word of praise in verse 13.

Problem, petition, praise — that’s the shape of lament in Psalm 79.

Let’s pray and ask for the Lord’s help to understand it.

The ProblemSo, what’s the problem in this Psalm?

What’s the cause of the sorrow of Psalm 79?

It’s basically this: The people of Jerusalem are looking around at their city seeing that everything that God had done here, the nations have now undone. Everything that God had built up here, the nations have now brought down. All the order God had put into place here, the nations have now put into disorder. In short: The nations have ruined Jerusalem — the city of God (Ps. 48:8).

How have they ruined it? Well, for one, they’ve defiled God’s holy Temple — the structure built within the city that served as their meeting place between God and man. Verse 1,

“O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy Temple.”

Defiled it. Polluted it. Made it unclean.

If you were here for our Leviticus series a while back, you might remember with what care and precision that holy Temple had been constructed — down to the specific type of materials, color of cloths, and style of engravings. Everything in its proper place, everything to show one main thing: God is Holy. That’s what a clean, kept, well-constructed Temple would signify.

A defiled Temple, on the other hand, would suggest otherwise. And, a defiled Temple would be an insufficient meeting place for God and man. God won’t dwell in a defiled Temple. That’s a problem. And the problem widens…

Verse 1 continues,

“They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.”

Jerusalem, a city that had been bound firmly together. A city to which the tribes of the LORD had gone up to pray, “Peace be within your walls and security within your towers” (Psalm 122). That city now lay in the dust.

“They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.”

Ruin PeopleAnd not only Jerusalem. The destruction encompassed sanctuary, city, andits citizens. Verse 2,

“They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.”

Genesis tells us that God made man in his image and that man was to rule over the birds and over the beasts. And that the creatures in the sky, on the ground, and in the water would become food for man to eat. That was God’s design. Not the other way around.

In the nations giving over “the bodies of [God’s] servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth” they created a grotesque reversal of God’s created order. A distortion of God’s design.

Note that the nations not only killed the majority of the people within Jerusalem, but they didn’t even care to bury the bodies afterward (v. 3). They left them out in the open to be seen, to be eaten, and to rot. With their blood poured out like water all round Jerusalem (v. 3), the death of God’s people would’ve been inescapable to any passerby. The corpses would’ve been there to greet you every time you stepped out your door.

This, in Jerusalem? In the land in which God had previously driven out these nations and apportioned for his people a possession? He drove the nations out to let his people in. But the nations have now come back in, killed many of the people, driven out others, and left only a few to remain and till the soil.

When Asaph says, verse 7, “[They’ve] devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation” it is not a stretch of the imagination. Jerusalem had been devoured. And the nations who did it were laughing about it.

Ruin MockeryVerse 4,

“We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us.”

Have you ever been mocked? Like not merely laughed at as when you drop something or say the wrong thing, but actually mocked? Ever had someone who saw that you were down and then wanted to put you down even further with words? What happens in moments of mockery?

Maybe your cheeks begin to redden in shame and embarrassment. Maybe your anger begins to stew and boil. Maybe you feel like you got some sort of sign hanging above your head reading, “Weak, failure, fool.” With the nations taunting, verse 10, “Where is their God?” perhaps you begin to wonder as well, “Yeah, where is my God?”

It’s a terrible thing to be mocked by an individual. Even more by a group. But what would it feel like to be mocked by an entire army’s worth of enemies as you look over your world that they’ve turned into wasteland?

The PetitionThe truth is, none of us know exactly how that would’ve felt for the people of Israel. Their situation in Jerusalem is not the same as our own. And yet my guess is that nearly all of us here this morning know, at least in degrees, what ruin feels like: Ruin in the form of a break-up you’re not sure you’ll ever recover from; ruin in the form of the loss of a friendship that meant much to you; ruin in the form of a loved one suddenly passing away; ruin in the form of a life-threatening disease, or a life-altering disaster, or a broken home, or a broken car, or a broken body, or a broken mind. We may be somewhat strangers to the world of Psalm 79, but we are no strangers to ruin.

This Psalm teaches us how, in the midst of our ruin, to pray. And not only that. But it teaches us how to pray in the midst of our ruin, even ruin that we have caused. What do I mean by that? Well, look with me at the beginning of the petition, in verse 5,

“How long, O Lord?”

And then see what the petition doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “How long, O Lord? Will the nations be angry forever?” We’d expect it to say that. It was the nations who did all this, right? But the question in verse 5 does not concern the nations. Rather, it says,

“How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?”

And,

“Will yourjealousy burn like fire?”

What is the Psalmist saying here? He’s saying that even though it was their enemies who had swung the axes, and broke the walls, and torched the buildings — it was ultimately nottheiranger, but God’s, pouring out upon them. And it was God’s jealousy burning within the gates. And why was it?

Many years before, prior to God’s driving out of the nations and apportioning for his people a possession Israel, he gave them a warning:

Deuteronomy 4:23-24,

“Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you…For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God”

Deuteronomy 5:9,

“You shall not bow down to [carved images] or serve them; forI the LORD your God am a jealous God.”

Deuteronomy 6:14-15,

“You shall not go after other gods…for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealousGod — lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you.”

You see, the ruin of Psalm 79 was not random. It was response. Response, from God, to decades upon decades of the Israelite’s unfaithfulness to God … decades upon decades of the Israelite’s idolatry. Though God had set up his Law, and warned them with prophets, and prolonged their opportunity for repentance, this people over and again chose not to worship God, but to worship gods made of wood, and stone, and steel instead. Finally, God held back his anger no longer. He poured it out upon them by means of an invading army. This ruin was God’s response to their rebellion.

And so, this Psalm teaches us how to pray to God in the midst of ruin, even the ruin that we brought upon ourselves through our own sin…

How to prayNow, I don’t know about you, but I can think of at least a few moments in my past where I felt like I had ruined my life. Or, the life of another. Or, both. A few moments where, because of my sin, my choosing to sin, ruin seemed all round me. And I can still taste the despair of those moments … still remember the regret, the guilt — so heavy, so thick, so seemingly inescapable. Can you really go to God in a moment like that? Can you really go to God when the reason for your ruin is your rebellion against God?

Yes, you can.

And, in fact, you must. And this Psalm shows us how. Three ways…

1) Pray according to God’s compassion.Verse 8,

“Do not remember against us our former iniquities [our former sins], let your compassioncome speedily to meet us.”

Our God is a God of compassion. A God who does good to those who don’t deserve it. Just as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him (Psalm 103:13). Our Lord waits to be gracious to his people, and exalts himself to show mercy to them (Isaiah 30:18). He introduces himself to the world as a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6-7).

Our God is a God full of compassion. It is his nature. It is his character. He iscompassionate. He is the very thing you, as a sinner, need him to be. So the Psalmist wastes no time making excuses. He doesn’t try to minimize sin, hide sin, or cast blame for sin upon another. The Psalmist simply prays, verse 8,

“Lord, you know our former iniquities. You know our former sins. Lord, remember them no longer. Let your compassioncome speedily to meet us.”

He petitions God according to who God is, not according to what he himself deserves.

Brothers and sisters, we will not go to God in moments of self-made ruin if we do not trust, deep within our bones, that God is full of compassion for sinners. We must believe what he says about himself is true. He is a God merciful and gracious. Say to God, “Let your compassion come speedily to meet me.”

2) Pray assured of God’s covering.So, first, pray according to God’s compassion. And, second, pray assured of God’s covering. The Psalmist prays, in the latter part of verse 9,

“Deliver us, and atone for our sins.”

“Atone” — it means cover over our sins. Do something about our sins. Put something over them so as to deal with the punishment they deserve.

He doesn’t tell God how he should do this, how he should atone for the sin, though the blood covered doorposts of the Passover and the blood covered altar at the Temple were likely in his mind. He doesn’t tell God how to atone for his sins, only that he needs him to be the one to do it because only God can atone for the sins of man.

Many of us agree to that statement, at least in word. But in action, we often find ourselves acting as if we didn’t believe it at all. We experience guilt and mess from a sin we’ve committed. We know we ought to go to God about it. But we instead attempt to clean things up just a bit ourselves. Do a few good deeds, say some good words, check off some good works, think some good thoughts — we attempt to take the edge off our sin and our sin-produced mess before we go to God with it. That, friends, is not Christianity.

Christianity clings to the truth that man cannotatone for his sins, not fully, nor even partially. He cannot even take the edge off of his sins. Only God can atone for our sins. And he does, for those who come to him empty-handed and asking him, “fix this.”

The psalmist looks at the ruin and mess all around him, he considers the mountain of sins behind him, and he says: God, you and you alone can fix this.

“Deliver us, and atone for our sins.”

3) Pray aware of God’s concern for his own glory.Pray according to God’s compassion, and assured of God’s covering, and (third and finally) aware of God’s concern for his own glory.

Now, it is evident from Scripture, that God is, in fact, concerned for his glory. God wants his glory in this world. He cares that his name and his glory resound around the globe.

He says: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth… whom I created for my glory (Isaiah 43:6-7). I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory (Jeremiah 13:11). For my name’s sake (God says) I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise, I restrain it…For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another (Isaiah 48:9-11).

God is concerned for his own glory in this world. God’s aim in his making and upholding of this world is the spread and proclamation of his glory. His glory is his deepest passion, greatest concern, and highest priority. He wants his name held high — higher than all others.

“My glory [he says] I will not give to another.”

What that means, is that though God may, for a time, permit his glory to be drug through the mud, he will not do sofor long. He will not sit back uncaring and unconcerned that his name is being mocked, taunted and scorned. He will have his glory known among the world as the waters cover the sea.

And the reason that matters is because here, in Psalm 79, his name is being mocked by the nations. Why should the nations say, verse 10 asks, “Where is their God?”

“Return sevenfold,” prays the psalmist in verse 12, “into the lap of our neighbors the taunts with which they have taunted you, O Lord!”

See the nations have not just taunted this people, they’ve taunted God. They’ve not only overpowered this people, but interpreted that to mean they’ve overpowered God. Their defeat of this people led them to believe they had defeated their God as well.

The Psalm gets at that even as far back as verses 1-4,

“O God, the nations have come into yourinheritance; they have defiled yourholy Temple…They have given the bodies of yourservants…the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.”

Your, your, your, your … this place, this people — the psalmist is saying — they’re yours. The things that ultimately belong to you are the things the nations have ruined. It’s your name, O God, your glory that’s at stake here. And, as we said, God is concerned for his own glory in this world. His greatest passion is for the spread and proclamation of his glory.

Now, if you are a Christian this morning … if you have been united to Christ by faith … if you have confessed your sins to God and trusted in his forgiveness and grace, then God’s concern for his glory should be your greatest source of comfort amidst ruin. Because, if you are a Christian, then you are the possessor of God’s Spirit, the wearer of Christ’s righteousness, and the bearer of God’s name in this world. God has tied his name, and his glory, to you.

For him to abandon you, would be for him to abandon his glory. For him to forget you, would be for him to forget his glory. For him to turn his ear away from when you cry out to him for help would be for him to let his enemy get the final victory over your life, rather than him.

God’s concern for the glory of his name should bolster within you the deepest confidence that God will not leave you in ruin. For God to show concern for his glory is for him to pour out upon you, Christian: the greatest, most persistent, most-reliable, most-indomitable form of love the world has ever known. He is after his glory in this world, and he has tied his name, and his glory, irrevocably to you. He broadcasts his glory not by getting his people partway to the finish line but getting them all the way home. No matter the ruin you may find yourself in, no matter how deep the hole you seem to have dug yourself, no matter how far you’ve wandered, if you are Christ’s, God aims to get his glory in your life by getting you all the way home.

See, God has so designed his world that: When God welcomes you home in love, despite the fact that you’ve been a rebel; when he responds to your prayers of repentance despite the fact you don’t deserve it; when he atones for, covers over, your many repeated trespasses against him; when he, in his good time and in his wise way, pulls you out of the rubble of self-made ruin …

He does so with such compassion, and such perfection, and such love, and such justice, that far from belittling his glory, he actually broadcasts his glory throughout the world and throughout the heavens as he works for his peoples’ good.

God never rescues reluctantly. God loves, God loves, God loves to get his glory through the rescue of his people out of ruin. He loves it. And that is why one of the most important prayers you could ever learn as a Christian is Psalm 79:9,

“Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!”

We get the help, God gets the glory. We get deliverance, God gets the praise. We rise in joy — our salvation has come. God receives his honor — his salvation is extolled around the world.

How great is it to be a Christian? … To serve a God who has so united himself to you that to defend his glory is to defend your eternal good? How great is it to be a Christian?

God, get your glory. God, raise high your name. God, be the Helper of your people!

Do you need his help this morning? Are you staring out at a life in ruins? Do you feel the guilt of sin upon your shoulders? Are you sitting in the muck and mire of defeat? Are you wondering if God would even hear you if you called to him? Does God even care that you are mourning? Is there any desire in God whatsoever to help?

Cities Church, in the midst of your ruin, take the words of verse 9 upon your lips:

“Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!”

And if you do, you will praise him. If you call to him, you will praise him. His help may not come as speedily as you’d like. His help might not come in the way you would like. But if you call to him, you will praise him.

The PraiseVerse 13,

“But we your people, the sheep of your pasture,will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”

At the time of the psalmist’s prayer, the ruin was still around him. The walls were still broken. The Temple still defiled. Nothing visible had changed. But, he knows his God. His compassionate, cover-making, concerned for his own glory God. So he says, with confidence, I know how this trouble will end… “We your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”

And so will we. Though our enemy bring us into what may appear, at first, to be our ruin … though our enemy break the walls, and tear down the doors and torch the buildings, God will return his taunt upon his own head. Your enemy cannot win because God has already atoned for your sins. He has already come to help. He has already delivered us for his name's sake! And he did so when he sent his son to pour out his blood upon a cross for sinners. This is what brings us to the table.

The TableThis table is meant to remind us of Jesus’ sacrificial body broken and blood spilled to atone, to cover over, the sins of his people. Because that’s what this table represents, if you’re here this morning and you’ve trusted in Jesus, we invite you to take and eat with us. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass, but we pray you would, in this moment, receive Jesus, and his covering over you.

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In the Book of Psalms, Psalm 119 is the longest. It’s an acrostic psalm that walks through the entire Hebrew alphabet, with eight verses for each letter, which ends up being 176 total verses. God willing, we’ll get there in a couple of years!

But today, in Psalm 78, we’re looking at the second longest psalm.

Psalm 78 is 72 total verses, but the plan this morning is just to show you three lessonsthat we find here, and these are lessons especially relevant for when God is leading you through something.

One of my big takeaways from last week’s sermon, in Psalm 77, came in verse 19, that in God’s leading of Israel, his way was “through the sea;” his path was “through the great waters.” And Pastor Mike Polley pointed out that this is not what we would think or want. We’d want to go around the sea. Avoid the hard thing. But God chooses to lead us through it.

I know that for many of us he’s leading us through some stuff right now, and if that resonates with you, Psalm 78 has three lessons for you … if that doesn’t resonate with you, I hope you’ll still listen to the sermon. My dad used to say that we’re all in one of three places: We either just came out of something; we’re going through something; or we’re about to go through something.

That’s all of us, so whichever place you might be, let’s take a minute here and ask God to speak to us through his word:

Father, by your grace, we believe that every word of yours proves true, and that you are a shield to those who take refuge in you. We ask this morning, through your word, that you would comfort us about where we’ve been, provide for us where we are, and prepare us for where we’re going — for your glory, in Jesus’s name, amen.

When you’re going through something, lesson #1 —

1) Remember God’s grace by recounting your story.We see this in verses 1–4, but really, this is what the psalm is doing at a macro level.

Let’s remember what the Book of Psalms are doing overall. The Book of Psalms was compiled later in Israel’s history to be a reflection on God’s promise to King David to send the Messiah (see 2 Samuel 7).

The first readers would have been reading the Psalms in the middle of a mess. They were in exile, a long ways removed from the glory days of Israel as a nation, and the question in their minds was if God had forgotten his promise. Is there still hope for the house of David? That’s what they were desperate to know.

And the answer is absolutely yes! There is still hope for the house of David because the house of David is still the hope, not just for the salvation of Israel but for the salvation of all the nations. That’s the hope of the Messiah, and it’s the consistent hum that runs through all of the psalms.

The 77 and 78 ConnectionNow if we zoom back on Psalm 78, we obviously get here after Psalm 77, and in Psalm 77 is where the psalmist tells us he is in the day of trouble. He’s crying out to God. He’s fighting for faith. Look back at Psalm 77, verse 11.

I want you to see this. Psalm 77, verse 11.

In verse 11, the psalmist resolves:

“I will remember the deeds of the Lord;

yes, I will remember your wonders of old.”

Y’all see what he’s doing? In his fight for faith, he is choosing to remember — there are two keywords here — God’s wonders of old. That’s Psalm 77:11.

Now watch how Psalm 78 starts. Psalm 78, verse 1:

1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

incline your ears to the words of my mouth!

2 I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old,

3 things that we have heard and known,

that our fathers have told us.

4 We will not hide them from their children,

but tell to the coming generation

the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,

and the wonders that he has done.

So see, in Psalm 78 the psalmist is doing what he said he’d do in Psalm 77. He is remembering God’s wonders of old, and he tells us more about how the remembering actually works.

The Work of RememberingThe psalmist remembers God’s wonders of old by recounting them. He expresses them — he opens his mouth; he utters them; he tells them.

So notice the activity in this. The work of remembering is work.

“Remember” is a verb of action. Sometimes I think we can misunderstand “remembering” to be a kind of vague, low-level thing — just something we casually do with our heads.But that’s not what remembering means in the Bible.

In the Bible, remembering is a repeated admonition with real consequences. In the Old Testament, God’s people are commanded to remember what he has done (see Exodus 13:3); and in the New Testament the word is used about 50 times, at some really key places.

And so at the very least, when it comes to the Christian life, when we hear the word “remember” we should not think it means to kick up our feet, but it means to roll up our sleeves. To remember means that we sober up with what is most real, and with our hearts we apply our minds to articulate what God has done in our lives.

Maybe we literally say it, to ourselves or somebody else.

Maybe we journal it.

Maybe we rehearse it quietly in prayer.

Either way, remembering means that we are recounting specific truths about God or things he has done.

The Main Theme of GraceThat’s what is going on in Psalm 78 (and it’s one of the reasons the psalm is so long). The psalmist recounts the wonders of God in Israel’s history. He doesn’t recount everything, and he doesn’t even recount them in chronological order — this is a selective recounting. He starts with Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, and then ends with God choosing David — and do you know what the theme is overall?

What is the main theme of this little survey of Israel’s history?

My guess is that if we were to read all 72 verses together right now, what stands out the most is the shame of Israel. Over and over again, Israel proved themselves to be a wreck. Verse 40 sums it up — 78, verse 40:

40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness

and grieved him in the desert!

41 They tested God again and again

and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

Israel’s sin and shame is clear in this psalm. But see, if we look closer, we can see that Israel’s failures is just the black cloth on which sits the diamond of God’s grace. God’s grace is what shines in Psalm 78. It’s that however terrible Israel was — and it was bad — verse 38 tells us:

38 Yet he, being compassionate,

atoned for their iniquity

and did not destroy them;

he restrained his anger often

and did not stir up all his wrath.

Verse 38 is to Psalm 78 what verse 4 is to Ephesians 2: It’s all a mess. It’s all sin and failure and doom, we’re destined for wrath, “But God … being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us …”

“YET HE … being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity.”

God’s grace is the real theme of this psalm. That is what the psalmist is remembering as he recounts these actual events in the story of Israel.

And that’s what we remember as we recount the actual events in our own stories.

Your Dash Between the DatesNow when I say our own stories, I hope you understand that our own stories are each part of the bigger story of God’s redemption we read about in the Bible. If we think about our stories rightly, we can’t think about them apart from Abraham and David, and Peter and Paul — we have a big spiritual family tree centered on Jesus. And so within that greater context, it’s good for us to focus in and think about our own lives. It’s good for you to think about your dash between two dates.

Yesterday, my boys and I were riding by a cemetery. It’s just rows of hundreds of stones, and I told them: One day that’s all that’s going to be left here of us: a stone with two dates … the date you were born and the date you died, and a dash in the middle. And that dash is your life.

So what’s the theme of your dash? … You can think about that now. We should be thinking about that now, while we’re alive, and brothers and sisters, I can tell you: if you’ve trusted in Jesus Christ,the main theme of your story is God’s grace. Every story is different, but for Christians the main theme is the same …

’Twas grace that brought us safe thus far

And grace will lead us home …

If you want to know what will help you get through what you’re going through right now … remember God’s grace by recounting your story. Think about the actual events in your life when God intervened and gifted you with what you did not deserve. Anybody got any of those moments in your life?

I can’t believe that he saved me. God has been so good to me. God has been so good to you, more times than you can count, but you can still try! Remember God’s grace by recounting your story.

Here’s the second lesson when you’re going through something …

2) See the sad predictability of unbelief.Israel’s sin is obvious in Psalm 78. You can’t miss it. And although it doesn’t have the last say, there are some things we can learn about sin in general. Let me just read to you the way it’s described …

v. 8: Israel was stubborn and rebellious; their heart was not steadfast.
v. 10: they did not keep God’s covenant, but refused to walk according to his law.
v. 11: They forgot his works.
v. 17: They sinned all the more against him, rebelling against him.
v. 22: They did not believe in God and did not trust in his saving power.
v. 32: They still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe;
v. 36: They lied to him with their tongues
v. 37: Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant.
v. 42: They did not remember his power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe.
v. 56: They tested and rebelled against the Most High God and did not keep his testimonies, but turned away and acted treacherously.

Tracing the PathologyAgain, it’s bad. This whole thing is a mess and it’s hard to make sense of a mess, but there is a kind of pathology here that we can trace. The fundamental problem is unbelief. Despite all that God had done, Israel did not believe in him. They did not trust him. That’s repeated in this psalm and in the whole Old Testament. Unbelief is the disease, and then a symptom of the unbelief is idolatry. That’s mentioned in verse 58: “They provoked [God] to anger with their high places; they moved him to jealously with their idols.”

And we can see how this works: Unbelief seeks to scrub the knowledge of God’s reality out of our hearts, and when the scrubbing is done, there’s nothing there, but something’s gotta be there! Because everybody worships something — and if it’s not the true God, then it will be some god, some thing that you make a god. And we know this. The late pastor Tim Keller put it like this:

“Everyone has to live for something, and if that something is not God, then we are driven by that thing we live for — by overwork to achieve it, by inordinate fear if it is threatened, deep anger if it is being blocked, and inconsolable despair if it is lost.” (Center Church, 34)

That’s the effect of idolatry. Idolatry makes us incredibly insecure people. And idolatry is the symptom of unbelief — but where does the unbelief come from? Does Psalm 78 speak to that?

I think it does.

Forgetting GodVerse 11 says that Israel “forgot [God’s] works.”

Verse 42 says: “They did not remember [God’s] power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe.”

Before Israel stopped believing God, they stopped thinking about him. Before they forsook God, they forgot God.

And how? How does a people who experienced firsthand God’s miraculous salvation end up forgetting him?

They saw the plagues in Egypt. They saw the Red Sea split in two. They saw bread rain down from heaven. They saw water come from a rock.

And they forgot all of it — and they kept forgetting.

A little later in Israel’s history, in the time of the judges, when God would rescue Israel over and over again, Judges 8:34 says: “And the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.” How could they do that? How can anyone forget what God has done?

Beware Feast and FamineWell, the text of Psalm 78 doesn’t tell us exactly. The ultimate theological answer comes down to original sin. We are totally depraved and apart from the Holy Spirit’s awakening work, our hearts are darkened and without hope. That’s the theological answer, but to get more practical, wisdom would tell us that there are two conditions in our lives that make us especially vulnerable to forgetting.

We could call these two conditions feast conditions or famine conditions — when things are either really good or really bad. I’m getting this from Proverbs 30, verses 8–9. This is the prayer of a man named Agur. He prays:

8 … give me neither poverty nor riches;

feed me with the food that is needful for me,

9 lest I be full and deny you

and say, “Who is the Lord?”

or lest I be poor and steal

and profane the name of my God.

Wow — do you hear what he’s saying?

When there are riches, feasting, he’s full, and that’s when he’s prone to say “Who is the Lord?” And if he’s asking that, it means he’s done what? … He’s forgotten God. He’s vulnerable to forget God when he’s high on the hog.

But also if he’s in famine conditions, if he’s poor and things are really bad and he doesn’t have any food to eat, he might steal food — that’s when he’s more prone to break God’s commandments and dishonor him.

So in wisdom, we learn to be cautious of both feasting and famine — and we all have these seasons in our lives, in different degrees. There are times when things are really good and there are times when things are really bad — and whatever you do, wherever you are, don’t forget God.

Don’t get out of the vital rhythms of the Christian life — worship with your church, be honest with your community, read your Bible and pray everyday. Remember God.

There is a sad predictability to unbelief. It leads to idolatry but starts with forgetting.That’s a lesson we learn here in Psalm 78.

Here’s the third lesson, when you’re going through something …

3) Jesus is our hope.Look at how Psalm 78 ends. Verse 67:

67 He[God] rejected the tent of Joseph;

he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,

68 but he chose the tribe of Judah,

Mount Zion, which he loves.

69 He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,

like the earth, which he has founded forever.

70 He chose David his servant

and took him from the sheepfolds;

71 from following the nursing ewes he brought him

to shepherd Jacob his people,

Israel his inheritance.

72 With upright heart he shepherded them

and guided them with his skillful hand.

Now the end of this psalm is not the end of the story. There are, of course, a lot more psalms left to go, and there’s a lot of history yet to unfold for Israel, but the point here is that we focus on David, and in particular we focus on the promise that God made to David in 2 Samuel 7.

God had chosen David to be king against all odds. He took him from the sheepfolds, sat him on the throne, and God promised him,

“… I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.”

And in the storyline of the Bible, this promised Son of David is also the promised offspring of Abraham, who is also the promised son of a woman who will crush the head of the serpent. In the Old Testament, the promise of the Messiah narrows down to the house of David — and Psalm 78 leaves us with that promise.

Psalm 78 is telling us that the Messiah is Israel’s hope. And he’s our hope.

The Messiah Jesus is our hope.

A Story UnfinishedAnd that’s the most important lesson of all when you’re going through something, but it’s seldom the thing we think we need the most. Naturally, we want the prayers answered. We want the needs provided. We want the way made. But all of those things ultimately are a means to having more of Jesus.

We know Jesus is the final answer to a story that’s still unfinished. And that can be puzzling sometimes. Why doesn’t everything just conclude here with Psalm 78?

Okay, the house of David is where we’re looking.

The Messiah is our hope.

So send him here and then we all live happily ever after.

The story could have gone that way, right? But, it’s a little more complicated than that in the Old Testament, and also today, in the New Testament era.

The Promised Messiah has come, and he died in our place, and he was raised from the dead. Jesus has defeated sin and the grave, and he reigns over a kingdom that will never end — and we’re part of that kingdom, we’re part of his family, but here we are going through stuff! Our stories are unfinished!

Why doesn’t God just transport us to heaven right when we trust Jesus?

Why is the Promised Land not immediate?

Why are we still here going through stuff?

Here’s why: it’s because of the glory of God. We’re here, and Jesus is leading us through stuff, because he will do what best manifests his glory and maximizes our everlasting joy in him. That’s why.

Our Hope Right NowJesus is our hope, not just ultimately when we see him face to face in the New Jerusalem, but Jesus is our hope in the details now. In his nearness and guidance. In his power and comfort. Remember, church, that Jesus is real, and we have him now.

There’s a quote from Jonathan Edwards that I think captures the now-ness and then-ness of our hope in Jesus, and I read this quote everyday in prayer. I love the truth here. I’ve probably said it to you before. It just puts everything in perspective. Edwards says:

“Every atom of the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian, every particle of the air and every ray of the sun, so that the Christian in the other world, when he comes to see it, shall sit and enjoy all this vast inheritance with surprising, amazing joy. “

Edwards is saying that the future joy that we will have in Jesus is being crafted for us currently by the sovereignty of Jesus in what we’re going through.

Jesus is not just leading you through it, but he is managing every detail along the way so that it results ultimately in your deeper joy in him. Jesus is our hope forever, and Jesus is our hope right now.

And so, I want to invite you: hope in him. If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, if you have not put your faith in Jesus — right now, you can do that. Stop thinking that you can save yourself. You can’t. Turn from your sin, turn from your idols, trust in Jesus the Messiah.

And for those of us who have, let’s trust him more. Let’s hope in him more. Let’s rest in God’s grace to us in Jesus more!

That’s what we do at this Table.

The TableWe come to this Table to remember. We remember that Jesus died for us, that he is our hope. If you trust in him this morning, we invite you: eat and drink with us, and let’s give him thanks.

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The Psalm for today’s sermon, Psalm 77, is a gritty psalm. It dives deep into the distress that we can have from our circumstances in our hearts. Some psalms help our souls find words when they are in the midst of a trial. Other psalms give us guidance to help us out of our trouble. This psalm give us a little of both, but more than that, it gives us a front row seat to how God answers us through his Word.

We can also draw comfort from the fact that God’s Word speaks to our most difficult situations, and gives us guidance through them. Psalm 77 has four sections, each are separated by the word Selah at the end of the section. The first section sets the stage, then the next 3 sections will show us how the psalmist presses through his current circumstances. Psalm 77 has a lesson for us all, and I want to ask the Lord for help as we look at his Word together.

God, we thank you that you have given us psalms like this. That you have given us words and examples for the toughest situations we may face. You haven’t left us to ourselves. You know our frame, you know our days and nights of trouble, and you are there with us. Would you help us to receive your words this morning. Open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things from your word this morning, and meet us in struggles this morning. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Verses 1-3 sets the stage…

The Psalmist’s Current TroubleThere are three pairings here in the first section of the psalm. Here’s two summary words of what is happening here.

In verse 1-2 we see the vigilance of the Psalmist. Vigilance is defined as a state of being watchful or alert. The psalmist is enduring, but more than that, he is watching for help.

Verses 1-2,

“I cry aloud to God,

aloud to God, and he will hear me.

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;

in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;

my soul refuses to be comforted.”

There is confidence here that God will hear him and there is resolve that he will show up in his day of trouble. His hand is stretched out without growing weary or tired, and his soul refuses to be comforted. It is a little unclear what is meant by this last phrase. It is obvious enough that his soul is not comforted, but it is less clear why is that the case?

We see David talk about his soul almost as a third party that is downcast and he is trying to revive it.

Psalm 42:5,

“Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you in turmoil within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my salvation.”

It could be that the psalmist will not let his soul be comforted by anything but God, and so he will wait for an answer from the Lord and continue to stretch out his hand. I think there is an element to this, since theses verses display a zeal and confidence in God. There is some complexity here, and we will see a third component in the next couple verses. This verse could be a stamp of his vigilance, or it could be a transition into the next verses.

In the midst of the psalmist’s vigilance, we see the weariness of the psalmist.

Verse 3,

“When I remember God, I moan;

when I meditate, my spirit faints.” (Selah)

Maybe his hand that is reaching out to God is not weary, but his spirit is. This is an intense description, anguish could be a fitting synonym. His thought of God is not a comforting thought. The thought of God brings him low, makes his audible groan, and his soul is languishing.

Both of these descriptions are active at the same time. He didn’t start with vigilance, and end with weariness, but in the midst of his vigilance his soul is troubled and faints.

If we look one verse farther we learn even more about his trouble.

In verse 4,speaking to God, he says:

“You hold my eyelids open;

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”

Whether the psalmist refuses to take a lesser comfort or not, we also see that God has not granted rest to him either. We need to appreciate the complexity of our make up here as humans.

He says:

“I cry aloud to you God, and I know you will answer me.”
“I seek you day and night in the time of my trouble, I will not give up.”
“But when I think of you, I moan and groan, my spirit faints.”
“I am so weary, yet you keep me up at night.”
“I am so troubled that I can hardly speak.”

He feels God’s heavy hand on him. The weight keeps him from being raised up, and also keeps him from rest. His spirit faints.

It is not in our common vernacular to use the phrase “my spirit faints”. Yet there is a word that I bet we think or use all the time that captures this experience. We say we are overwhelmed. The psalmist is saying he is overwhelmed.

He feels stuck. He doesn’t feel like he has any more strength to press on. This includes a lack of mental, emotional and spiritual energy to keep going.

What should we do when we are overwhelmed?

This is not where we want to be, yet we all will be there at some point, and many of us may be there right now. We don’t have time this morning to dwell on what we have done when we are overwhelmed, but we will look at what we should do, following the example of the psalmist.

He doesn’t push it to the side or seek to be distracted by temporal things. And from the sounds of it the Lord wouldn’t let him do that even if he tried. He knows the Lord will hear him and he looks for an answer from him. The next three sections show us where he goes.

1) He asks God for strength to discern his heart (verses 4-9)Verses 5-6,

“I consider the days of old,

the years long ago.

I said, ‘Let me remember my song in the night;

let me meditate in my heart.’

Then my spirit made a diligent search.”

The first thing he does is he asks God to help him remember and meditate in his heart.

Remember the intensity of the circumstances we just laid out. This does not feel like an easy task. The psalmist already said his spirit faints as he seeks to meditate.

He is asking for strength to ponder and meditate on the trouble in his heart. He asks God to give him the strength to look inside to wrestle with his present trouble. He asks for strength to push through the overwhelmed state of his soul for clarity and understanding.

After making his request, the psalmist moves forward in faith and his “spirit makes a diligent search”. This is not a casual pursuit. Other descriptions of this would be: to examine, to turn over every rock, to open every door. Maybe the best way to capture this is to say: he lays his soul bare.He asks for strength from God and then he deeply searched his heart and lays his soul bare.

This is the turning point in the the whole psalm. The whole psalm starts to pivot with verse 6. It is a long road still ahead, but a critical turn happens right here. If he doesn’t ask God for help and then make the effort to interrogate his heart and lay it bare, the rest of the psalm doesn’t happen. None of the insights that follow are found. But when he does ask for strength to meditate, God graciously answers his request for help which reveals several questions that were deep within his heart.

The Psalmist looks in, and finds the questions in his heart that he either did not know were there, or out of fear did not want to admit were there. He unearths the fears and troubles deep within his heart, and vocalizes them. His questions come out of hiding and are brought to God.

He speaks five questions in verses 7-9.

“Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?
“Has his steadfast love forever ceased?”
“Are his promises at an end for all time?”
“Has God forgotten to be gracious?”
“Has He in anger shut up his compassion?” (Selah)

There may be a chiastic structure to his questions… 1 and 5 are related with an absence of God’s favor and compassion, connected to His anger and spurning of his people. 2 and 4 are related to God’s revealed character as a steadfastly loving God and a gracious God. The middle, number 3, is a question related to God’s word, His promises.

These questions relate to three things about God (that certainly overlap)…

First, questions 1 and 5 relate to what God does. Will you no longer act with favor and be angry forever, cast us off forever?

Second, questions 2 and 4 relate to who God is. Will your steadfast love run out, will you forget to be gracious?

Third, question 3 relates to what God says. Have your promises to us ended, will they no longer be fulfilled?

If there is a chiastic structure here, the tip of the spear is this: Are his promises at an end for all time?

His promises are how his character and his actions come to bear on his people.

And if we are honest, this is most likely where we get hung up as well … God is gracious, but will he be gracious to me? … God is compassionate, forgiving, patient, etc … And that’s why the leading edge of his trouble is a question of God’s promises.

What separates Israel from being one who does not receive grace and one who does receive grace is God’s promise. What separates Israel from being the guilty that God does not clear and those whose transgressions and sin are forgiven is God’s promise.

So the psalmist has some deep questions and fears on his heart. These questions are found out as he lays his soul bear with the help of God. This is where the whole psalm started to pivot, but there is a danger that it could derail at this point.

I think this is the place where the train derails for us most of the time. The second turn is what the psalmist does when he find his questions. Here is the second turn; the psalmist voices his questions and brings them up to God.

This is relevant to all of us. All of us have these types of questions.There is pain or suffering in our lives that we don’t understand, or we don’t know what to do with. There are circumstances that are confusing to us.

We have questions deep down like: God, will you provide for me in this moment? God, do you see and care about what I am going through? God, can you use even this for my good?

It’s not about whether you have questions or not, it’s about whether you will admit them or not. Will you deny them, or will you acknowledge them? Will you hide them, or will you bring them into the light?

Denial seems to be safer. Which is why we can live there, however irrational it might be. We might also hope that our questions or fears will just go away. But then the Lord keeps our eyelids open. Our fears tucked away in the dark won’t be solved. They can’t be buried, the only way to get rid of them is dig them out.

Have you, like the psalmist, laid bare your soul before the Lord? Have you opened every door in your heart to God, or are there some doors you have kept off limits? The doors that hold your fears, the doors that hold your anxieties, the doors that hold your pain, the doors that hold your questions and doubts.

I think there are 2 main reasons we don’t bring these things to God, even though we know they are there, and we know God can already see them…

First, we don’t bring these things to God, because: They reveal where we are, not where we pretend to be.

When we express our questions to God, whether that means we write them down in a journal, or audibly express them in a prayer, we move out of denial. And to move out of denial is uncomfortable. It deals a blow to where we wish to be, or pretend to be; and reveals where we actually are. This is uncomfortable, it takes courage for an overwhelmed heart to unearth its trouble. But to express our honest troubles or questions to God moves us into alignment with reality, with what is currently true about our hearts and souls.

Second, we then become accountable to the answers.

Once our questions or fears or pains or doubts are brought into the light, we can no longer remain where we are. To ask our questions to God is to expose ourselves to answers, and those answers will require something of us. We cannot stay how we are. Once a question is answered, we need to respond to it. And again, that isn’t comfortable for us, but that is the only way out.

God will help us with our questions, if we will bring them to him. We can keep hobbling along and getting by with the wound in our leg, but the only way to move forward healthily is to clean it out. God wants more for us, he wants to meet us in our questions and give us hope and understanding. God will help us with our questions, if we will bring them to him.

As we have seen, the psalmist does not derail where we may be prone to ourselves. The psalmist dove down and found the questions in his heart, but bringing them into the light, he then appeals to God’s past favor for help.

2) He appeals to the years of God’s past favor (verses 10-15)Verse 10,

“I will appeal to this; to the years of the right hand of the Most High”

He looks intently back to the years of past blessing.

Verses 11–12,

“I will remember the deeds of the LORD;

yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

I will ponder all your work,

and meditate on your mighty deeds.”

Let’s not overlook where he goes for help, where he goes for hope, for answers: He goes to what God has already revealed about himself … He goes to his actions and Words, he goes to the Scriptures. We would be different if we believe God would meet us in his Word. He remembers how God has powerfully acted and who God is.

Verses 13-15,

“Your way, O God, is Holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your armredeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph.” (Selah)

What results in this search is that the heart of the psalmist is becoming humble and hopeful. He is wanting to see and remember God faithfulness — that He has and will continue to make good on His promises. He remembers God saving his people with his whole arm. He remembers he made known his power among the peoples. He learns by seeing and pondering the greatness of God.

You can feel the change in the demeanor of the psalmist. He is starting to sound different. The psalmist has gone deep into his soul and deep into the works of God. We could anticipate him coming back to his troubled soul and back to his current distress. But instead of doing this, he keeps going deeper into the wonder of God. It’s almost as if he is so caught up in the majesty of God that his troubles start to shrink and fade in the rear view mirror. They don’t vanish, but his heart is starting to get carried away in the wonder of God.

He marvels at the way of God (verses 16-20)Verses 16-18,

“When the waters saw you, O God,

when the waters saw you, they were afraid;

indeed, the deep trembled.

The clouds poured out water;

the skies gave forth thunder;

your arrows flashed on every side.

The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;

your lightnings lighted up the world;

the earth trembled and shook.”

Then we get the closest thing to an answer from God to his questions. The psalmist through his meditation on the past works of God, gets a glimpse of the glory and mystery of God. He writes, verses19-20,

“Your way was through the sea,

your path through the great waters;

yet your footprints were unseen.

You led your people like a flock

by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

Exodus 14:1–4,

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, “They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.” And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD.’ And they did so.”

Three truths to marvel at…

First — “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters” means, at a minimum, his way is not the path we would choose. He could have led them around it, but he didn’t. God’s way for his people was not around the sea, but it was going to be through it. “His way was through the sea.”

Second — “Yet your footsteps were unseen.” They have just come out of Egypt, after hundreds of years of hard labor and slavery. God brings them out into the wilderness and they seem to be wandering. God’s path for his people wasn’t always clear to them. He led them according to his plan that was mysterious to them, they didn’t know it or understand it.

Third — “You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” They were led by God, using the hand of Moses and Aaron. Imagine the scene using this building as an illustration — these walls, 60 feet up, are huge walls of water on either side and you are just walking along on the bottom of the sea. How safe would you feel in that moment?

How safe would you feel? You may not feel safe, not in the sense we typically use the word… You are not safe in the sense that no danger is around you. We like control. What we think is safe is for a child to be walking on dry sand at a beach, 10 feet from the waters edge… Not a child of Israel walking through the middle of the sea on dry ground, 10 feet from the depths which the Lord had stacked up on either side.

Israel did not have control,but they were safe.

This safety is accompanied by a fear of God, who is not seen as he leads his people through an unlikely path. This Holy God is beyond them, but with his strong hand he is delivering them from all their trouble. That deliverance was “Through the great waters.”

They were not safe because of an absence of a sea or storm, they were safe because of God’s unseen presence and in the midst of a sea or storm. They were safely led by God like a flock of sheep through the great waters that were stacked up right next to them. And because God led them through the sea, they behold more glory and safety than they would have had otherwise.

How different it would have been if he led them around the sea, but he didn’t.The armies of Pharaoh could have followed them around the seas, but they couldn’t go through the sea. God not only led them away from their enemies, but he conquered them and receive glory over them. There are now no horses and chariots left to chase Israel around the sea, because God buried them in the sea.

The psalmist doesn’t directly apply it to his situation, but he is gaining the understanding that he needs. He can see that God’s guidance comes in the midst of the trial. That His way is beyond us and He guides us in an unseen and mysterious way. God led his people to the edge of a sea, and brought them through it. The psalmist finds what his heart needs by looking to what God has already revealed to his people. He meditates on his works, and as he ponders them, it leads him into wonder and to worship.

And the same can be true for us. God will meet us in our questions. He will meet us in His Word. If we ask, he will answer. He will speak to us still today. And we have much more to draw from then the psalmist did. And this leads us to another way of God to marvel at.

The TableHis way was through the sea, and his way was through the cross. He could not go around it, not if he wanted to save us from our sins, not if he wanted to accomplish His Father's will. Jesus’s way was through the cross. That glorious and terrible day of the cross where our sin was defeated and God made good on his promise.

This table reminds us of that day and the sin-paying work of Christ. If you believe this, if you look to Jesus and cling to him for forgiveness and rescue from your sin, then we welcome you to marvel at the cross of Christ with us as we eat and drink together.

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“What do I do now?”

You ever asked that question?
You’re in a situation, big or small, and you’ve taken some step — you’ve done something — but then you’re not sure what to do next, so you have this moment when everything sorta freezes and you think: “What do I do now?” …

I think that we all ask that question way more than we realize. Unless you’re following a super detailed script or you’re only doing one thing for an entire day, you probably ask “What do I do now?” countless times, even if it’s just in your head. This is the question that moves us from one thing to the next, and not just in our lives in general, but also in our spiritual lives.

Christian, think about this with me: In your pursuit of Jesus, as you press on in the journey of the Christian life, as you seek to know God more and you pray that he do things in this world, you’re constantly asking “What do I do now?”

Look, if we’re honest, we’re all asking that question this morning. It’s part of the reason we’re here.

And so I think we should just say it altogether, out loud. We’re gonna try this. It’s just five words — what-do-I-do-now? — and let’s own the question. Let’s hear ourselves say it together. Ready? Say it out loud with me…”What do I do now?”

Well I’m glad you asked, because Psalm 75 gives us the answer.

In today’s sermon, we’re gonna look at this psalm and see three next steps for anytime we’re asking What-do-I-do-now?

Let’s pray:

Father, your word is open and your Spirit is at work. Please open our hearts to receive what you have for us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

What do I do now?

1) Worship God. (verse 1)We see this right away in verse 1, but before we look there, let’s back up for a second and see that Psalm 75 is meant to be a response to Psalm 74.

Something that we’ve seen over and over again in the Book of Psalms is that although each psalm can stand alone in terms of its content, all the psalms stand together in terms of their message. One of the best ways to understand any individual psalm is to look at the psalms before and after it. So let’s look back to Psalm 74 for a minute.

The Prayer of 74In Psalm 74, verse 1, the psalmist says:

O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?

Now this is not good. Psalm 74 is a lament. The psalmist (and the people) are languishing and they feel rejected by God. It feels like God is far away from them and they want to know where he is! Listen to verses 10–11. This is an amazing image. The psalmist says:

“10 How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?

Is the enemy to revile your name forever?

11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?

Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!”

It’s like the psalmist is saying:

Hey, God, we’re getting crushed over here and you’re standing over there with your hands in your pockets! Please do something!

It’s a desperate prayer. I imagine the psalmist felt like I’ve felt a few times coaching youth baseball this summer. There’ve been moments when I’ve looked out in the middle of the game, and I see my third baseman with his glove on the ground and his hands folded behind his back and he’s staring off into space, and I’m like Whoa whoa hey!

That’s what the psalmist is doing here, about God, and it’s much more serious. He needs God to pay attention, but it looks like he’s not. And Psalm 74 ends on that note. The last two verses of Psalm 74 end like this:

“22Arise, O God, defend your cause;

remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day!

23Do not forget the clamor of your foes,

the uproar of those who rise against you, which goes up continually!”

Psalm 74 is pleading with God to do something, and now Psalm 75 is going to show us God’s answer. And the answer really comes in Psalm 75, verse 2, where God speaks directly and he tells us what he’s doing, but first there’s verse 1.

The Answer of 75Look at verse 1 — I want you to see this. Sandwiched between the psalmist praying for God to do something (in Psalm 74), and then God answering that prayer (in 75, verse 2), there’s verse 1, and verse 1 is worship.The psalmist says:

“We give thanks to you, O God;

we give thanks, for your name is near.

We recount your wondrous deeds.”

So after we’ve asked God to help, before God has answered us, in the in-between, in the waiting — what do we do now? First, we worship God.

We don’t wait to thank God until after he gives us what we want, but we thank him now. We thank him today. We thank him in this moment. Even in the hurt, even when there’s pain. That’s what it means to be mainly thankful.

To Be Mainly ThankfulTo be mainly thankful is something we’ve talked about a lot over the years, and I want it so badly in my life and in my home. I want it to be deep in the culture of our church. To be mainly thankful is a way of being — and it doesn’t mean that we ignore hardships; in fact, it requires that we be fully aware of hardships — we have to know where the hurt is — but instead of letting the hurt become our story — instead of letting the hurt define us — we drill down past the hurt and we open our eyes to the goodness of God, and we recognize that when it’s all said and done, at the end of the day, our entire existence is saturated by the grace of God and he loves us more than we could ever deserve … and so we’re thankful, mainly. Mainly thankful.

I think that’s what the psalmist is getting at here. He says, “We recount your wondrous deeds.” So maybe God has not answered my most recent prayer; maybe God hasn’t “come through yet,” but I know what he can do because I can remember what he has done.

I recount.

And maybe that means sometimes we need to seriously count. Sit down, get out a piece of paper, and start writing down the evidence of God’s goodness in your life. And that could just be in your life, but then there’s God’s goodness in the whole world, and then there’s his goodness throughout human history, and then, in particular, there’s God’s ultimate goodness to save sinners through the death of his Son — and there’s a whole book about that!

The goodness of God abounds, and the proof of his goodness is overwhelming, period. We should be clear about this: whatever we have going on in our lives, whatever we’re praying for God to do, God does not have to do a single thing more to be worthy of our worship … He doesn’t have to answer another prayer, or provide another meal, he doesn’t have to speak another sunrise, to be worthy of our eternal worship.

God is enough in himself, and he has shown us enough, for us to spend eternity giving him thanks. So we do that now.

Whenever we’re asking “What do I do now?” — First, worship God.

Here’s the second thing. … “What do I do now?” …

2) Remember God is God, not us. (verses 2–7)We see this starting in verse 2, and this is where God is directly answering the psalmist in Psalm 74.

And there’s a little bit of a debate here about God’s direct speech. Psalm 75 is mainly a conversation between the psalmist and God, but it’s also in front of the reader, and at one point the boastful are being addressed — so imagine for Psalm 75 that there’s a lot of people in the room, and it’s not totally clear who is saying what.

But let’s focus now on God’s direct speech, and you can see the front quotation mark in verse 2.

Okay, well in verse 2 the “I” is God. “At the set time that I appoint.” This is God himself speaking, but where does he stop speaking?Where should we put the ending quotation mark? Is it at the end of verse 5 or does it come after verse 3?

In a lot of English translations, the quotation marks come at the end of verse 5, but I’ve been convinced to see that God’s direct speech most likely ends with verse 3 and that’s why the Selah comes there. The word “Selah” in the Psalms was added by the very first readers to mark off and highlight certain parts.

It’s like a pause in the text, and we’re not 100% sure what it means exactly, but it probably means something like: Ponder this! Note this! And it makes sense in Psalm 75 if the psalmist is doing that with God’s direct speech.

Now regardless of where exactly the quotation marks go, the message of what’s said here stays the same, but we’re gonna look at it in two parts: first, verses 2–3, is God’s direct answer to Psalm 74; and then second, verses 4–7, there’s what that means.

The Direct AnswerRemember the psalmist had asked in Psalm 74, Why do you cast us off? How much longer is it gonna be? What’s with your hands in your pockets?

In verse 2 God speaks:

At the set time that I appoint

I will judge with equity.

When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants,

it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah

So in one swift reply, God assures us that he is bothsovereign and righteous. And this is exactly the answer that we need to hear, because in our waiting, in the in-between where it hurts sometimes, not only can we grow impatient with God, but we can also start to think that God’s delay in answering us is unjust.

We pray; God doesn’t immediately answer; and then we start to think something is wrong with God.

And here, God directly targets that thinking by telling us that at the set time that he appoints, he is going to judge.

God is saying that he will answer us in his timing, not ours. He has made his own appointment. He has a plan that he has determined in himself from all eternity, according to the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably — and whenever that is, whenever the appointment comes, it’s in perfect harmony with his righteousness. His actions and his timing are always right.

And that’s just verse 2. In verse 3, God doubles down on this idea. He says:

“When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars.”

This world as we know it — the earth and moon and sun and stars and gravity, the whole hog of space and time — did you know that it’s God who holds it altogether? God is the one who keeps all of this steady …

This past Friday night at sunset my whole family was driving west on 94, and the sky had this brush of pink and orange, and it looked amazing, and we were all enjoying it, and I said to Melissa: Hey, just a reminder that we live on a giant ball in outer space. … because of God.

The ground beneath our feet is because of God. The reason the sun does not incinerate us is because of God. Our entire existence is owed to God’s control, and to his unswerving commitment to uphold the glory of his name.

And in the in-betweens of our life, to our waiting, God gives us this word. He speaks directly to us and he says: I am sovereign and I am righteous. Or in other words, in verses 2–3, God is saying, I am God.

What It MeansThen in verses 4–7 we see this has an effect. Check out what’s going on here. In response to what God has said about himself, as the psalmist has mulled this over, he says, with an implied “therefore” — verses 4-7:

I say to the boastful, “Do not boast,”

and to the wicked, “Do not lift up your horn;

do not lift up your horn on high,

or speak with haughty neck.”

For not from the east or from the west

and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,

but it is God who executes judgment,

putting down one and lifting up another.

This is the same idea we see in verse 2–3, but this is a human response and one we can sum up with a simple sentence that goes like this: “We are not God.”

That’s what it means that God is sovereign and righteous. It means that we are put in our place— he’s God, not us. Not you. So don’t boast. Don’t lift up your horn.

The “horn” in the Old Testament is a symbol of power and strength, so the psalmist is saying don’t lift up your own power and strength. Don’t lift up your horn. Or we might say, Don’t toot your horn. Same idea.

And man, do we have a problem here as a society! Tooting your horn — Isn’t that basically what social media is?

We all know that Twitter is called “X” now, that’s old news, but if I was Elon I would have changed the name to “Tooter.”

So many people get on there to toot their horn. Because that’s the spirit of our age — and it kind of makes sense when you have a societal mindset that thinks the self is god. If you think “there’s no real god, but that you yourself are god,” then who is there to lift you up but yourself?

If there’s no God then you better speak up, and speak louder, and wave your hands, cause a scene, get attention — at least pretend that you’re a mover and a shaker and that you pull the strings.

See, shameless human boasting — also known as expressive individualism — is a symptom of exclusive humanism. People think that they are god. And even if most people wouldn’t outright say that, a lot of people still try to live this way.

But Psalm 75 does not allow it.

If we’re listening to this psalm, whatever you’re in the middle of, whenever you’re asking “What do I do now?” — Psalm 75 says remember God is God, not us.

Don’t think that you’re in control, or that you have to be. Don’t think that you’re alone. It is God who executes judgment (verse 7) — he lifts up and he puts down — he is sovereign and righteous. God is God, not us. Remember that.

Here’s the final point. “What do I do now?” …

3) Press on to know Jesus more. (verses 8–10)Look at verse 8. Verse 8 supports what’s said in verse 7. In verse 7, the psalmist says that, because God is God, he’s the one who executes judgment. That means he puts down one and lifts up another, which means there are two outcomes here, and verses 8–9 elaborate on this.

Verse 8:

“For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup

with foaming wine, well mixed,

and he pours out from it,

and all the wicked of the earth

shall drain it down to the dregs.”

Now this image is intense. This cup of foaming wine is a symbol of God’s wrath. We see this several times throughout the Bible (in Isaiah and Jeremiah, and in the Book of Revelation). In this cup is the wrath of God, and one day, all the wicked will drink it and they will drink the whole thing, all the foam at the bottom, even the little pieces of sediment. Not a particle of God’s wrath will be held back from the wicked.

That’s one outcome.

But then verse 9, the psalmist says:

“But I will declare it forever;

I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.”

That’s the other outcome.

So there are two possible outcomes that come at the end of two paths. What’s behind verses 8 and 9 are two ways to live: you either live a life of rejecting God or of worshiping God.

A life of rejecting God ends in God’s wrath.

A life of worshiping God ends in God’s joy.

And right now, we’re all on one of those two paths headed to one of those two outcomes.

Fact. I’m speaking facts here.

And verse 10 is another instance of God’s direct speech. It’s like God interjects and concludes the psalm by making this clear. He says:

All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.

And so, what this does is that it puts before the readers a choice. Verse 10 leaves us with the question: Where are you?

Will you be cut off … or lifted up?

Will you be the wicked … or the righteous?

Which really is the question:

Will you reject Jesus or worship him?

In the Book of Psalms, the righteous are those who have faith, and those who have faith are trusting in the promise of the Messiah, so this becomes about Jesusand everyone makes a choice here. And Psalm 75, and all of the psalms, and the whole Bible, tell us, Choose Jesus. And keep choosing Jesus. Press on to choose Jesus again and again. That’s what you do now, wherever you’re at, whatever you have going on — If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, if you don’t trust Jesus, I want to tell you something.

First, just showing up here every week doesn’t necessarily mean that you trust Jesus. The question is: Do you trust him from your heart with your whole life?

And if you don’t, then it means that you reject him. There’s no neutral ground here. You either bow your heart and life before Jesus, or you are turning away from him. And this morning, if you’re here and you’ve been turning away from him, it’s not too late to bow. You can bow before Jesus today. You can put your faith in Jesus right now.

Jesus saves any and all who trust in him. That’s why he came. Jesus came into this world as the Lamb of God to bear our sin. He took all of our wrongs and our guilt upon himself and he suffered in our place — he drank the cup of God’s wrath so that we wouldn’t have to. Jesus conquered sin and death for us, and right now he reigns over his kingdom that is coming. Today is the day of salvation. Right now the invitation is offered. Trust him. Bow your heart to Jesus Christ.

And for so many of us in here who have bowed to him, for those of us who know Jesus, press on to know him more — more clearly and fully.

What do I do now?

First, Worship God.

Remember God is God, not us.

Press on to know Jesus more.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableComing to this Table each week is meant to be a holy recalibration for us. Each of us as Christians come to this table from different places, and yet, when we get here, we’re all the same. We’re all sinners saved by grace and we know that our only hope is Jesus.

If you’ve felt a little stuck lately, if you’ve felt a little confused in the in-between, if you’ve been hurting, let this table be a reminder: God loves you. Jesus Christ has died for you.

So if you trust him this morning, if you’ve bowed your heart to Jesus, eat and drink with us, and let’s give him thanks forever.

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Back in 2019, we started making our way through the psalms each summer, and I’m so glad — for so many reasons. I remember a number of the sermons from over the years, and how those particular psalms met me and needs in me. In the first sermon, Psalm 1, Pastor Jonathan said,

The role of Psalms in the Bible overall is to make it clear that God has a future for the house of David — which is important because the Messiah is to come through the house of David. . . . Even when it doesn’t seem like it, even against all odds, God is going to fulfill his promise to David. David will have a descendant, the Messiah, who reigns as king forever. Let me show you! That’s what the Psalms are doing in the Bible.

So, 150 psalms, all singing the same tune: trust the promise, trust the promise, David’s son is coming, he’s really coming. And now he’s come — King Jesus — and he’s the center of everything we are and believe and do as a church. And yet we, of course, find ourselves waiting for him again, wondering again if God’s going to keep his promise — we want him to come back — so it’s good for us to hear eleven more times this summer: trust the promise, trust the promise, the Son is coming, he’s really coming.

The Psalms Know What You FeelIn addition to that primary purpose, though, the psalms — maybe more than any other book in the Bible — they teach us how to feel. Maybe more than anywhere else in Scripture, we get to see the raw emotions of faith. We get to hear what genuine faith sounds like in the midst of heartache, or uncertainty, or even anger — because genuine faith feels those things sometimes.

Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean we get to avoid all the negative experiences and feelings that come with being human in a world like ours — in fact, following Christ often means more pain and heartache in this life. The psalms, if we slow down to study them, they give authentic, faith-filled voice to so many of the things in life that hurt.

For instance, is some pain in your life making you feel abandoned by God? The psalms know what you feel: “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14).

Is some fear threatening to consume you? The psalms know what you feel: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid” (Psalm 56:3–4).

Do you need wisdom about a hard situation or decision? The psalms know what you feel: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:33–34).

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you love? Psalm 55: “It is not an enemy who taunts me — then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me — then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.”

Even when we think no one else around us understands what we’re feeling, the psalms know what we feel. How merciful of God to write a book like this, a book that sympathizes with us like the psalms do.

The psalms know what we feel, but they also teach us what to feel. They don’t just sympathize with us, but they also challenge and confront us — don’t they? They show us when we feel things that we shouldn’t — andwhen we should feel things that we don’t. They teach us to feel grief, yes, but not without hope. They teach us to feel anger, but not without humility, patience, and compassion. They teach us not to be fearful or anxious in circumstances where we’re tempted to be — but they also teach us to fear in circumstances where we don’t. And that brings us to Psalm 76.

Our Fearful EnemyAs we walk through the psalm, we’re going to look first at our fearful enemy, then at our even more fearful God, and then finally at how fear responds in faith. I wonder what you felt (if you felt anything) as we read through Psalm 76 just now. I doubt many of you listened and thought, My goodness, Asaph took the words right out of my mouth. He knows exactly how I feel right now. No, I imagine this one feels a little further from your normal emotional life.

For one, he’s talking about shields, belts, horses, and swords — and our armies don’t fight like that anymore. We have guns, jets, radars, and bombs. But even then, most of us are pretty far removed from the battlefield. We’re, of course, aware of what’s happening in Gaza and Ukraine, so we’re acquainted with war — but not really. We’re acquainted with war (many of us, not all) a little like my 3rd grader is acquainted with paying bills. He knows that it happens, and that it’s serious (that a lot hangs on Daddy being able to pay for our house and van and food), but he’s never had to make a car payment or replace a boiler. So he doesn’t feel it like Faye and I do. And we don’t feel the tension and drama in a psalm like this because we haven’t known wars like Asaph has — or have we?

The reality is that we have enemies far more terrifying than the invaders of Israel. Yes, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood like God’s people did for hundreds and hundreds of years — but we still wrestle. We still fight. We make war, Ephesians 6:12, “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Do you know that — I mean really know that? Do you live like real powerful rulers and authorities and forces are trying to destroy you? Do you realize that no area of your life — no relationship, no calling or responsibility, no suffering — none of it is untouched by this battle?

If you choose to follow Christ, you’re declaring war on all of that evil — and if you’re not actively engaged in the war, you’re almost certainly losing it. And that means there’s more in this psalm than meets the eye. We may not have to worry about shields and swords and horses, but oh we have enemies — awful, hidden enemies who mean to strike us where it does the most damage.

The psalm reminds us that we have a fearful enemy, and it also teaches us how to overcome our fear of our enemies. How does Asaph overcome his fear of the killers waiting outside his front door? He overcomes fear by cultivating another, greater fear. He overcomes his fear of his enemies by remembering to fear his God.

Our More Fearful GodThree times — this is really the driving point of the psalm — three times the psalmist says, “You are to be feared” (verse 7, verse 11, and again verse 12). The God of Psalm 76 is not a cute or comfy God. He doesn’t fit nicely on that well-decorated shelf in your living room. No, in the face of sin, he’s violent and terrifying. He should make us tremble. Does he still make you tremble?

He broke the flashing arrows,

the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war.

Glorious are you, more majestic

than the mountains full of prey.

The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil;

they sank into sleep;

all the men of war

were unable to use their hands.

At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,

both rider and horse lay stunned.

But you, you are to be feared!

Who can stand before you

when once your anger is roused?

Commentators believe Asaph might have been remembering a specific event in 2 Kings 19, when God slaughtered a couple hundred thousand enemies in one night. This is verse 35:

“That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.”

This God, we see in Psalm 76, he rebukes, he breaks, he disarms, he paralyzes, he even puts to death (sometimes by the tens of thousands). Is that the kind of God you pray to? Is that the God you sing about on Sunday morning? The God we love, let this psalm remind you, is a God of furious and consuming wrath. He’s a nightmare to his enemies.

And to be clear, this isn’t what God used to be like, as if this is what was needed back then in the Old Testament, with Assyrians and Philistines and Babylonians. No, he’s always been a God of both grace and wrath, and he will eventually do this (or worse) to all who reject him — even your really kind, generous neighbor who wants absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, the description in Psalm 76 is pretty tame next to what we know will happen on that last day. What will God do to his enemies?

Revelation 14,

“[Everyone who rejects and opposes God] will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.”

Christ’s coming and dying doesn’t make God any less serious about sin. Jesus actually tells us, in Matthew 10, that it will be even worse on judgment day for those who come after him and still won’t believe. This is not a safe God — at least not for anyone who won’t hide themselves in him. And that brings us to our next two verses.

Overcoming Fear with FearThis God is to be feared, and feared by all, but he’s not only to be feared. To only fear him dishonors him. No, he means to be feared and trusted and enjoyed — that’s the miracle that happens by the Spirit. Let’s start back in verse 7:

You, you are to be feared!

Who can stand before you

when once your anger is roused?

From the heavens you uttered judgment;

the earth feared and was still,

when God arose to establish judgment

to save all the humble of the earth.

This is the point of his awful, devastating, holy war. He strikes his enemies, breaks his enemies, paralyzes his enemies, crushes his enemies, all in order to — what? — to save his people. Do you see that, verse 9? This fearful God dispenses wrath in service of mercy. It’s just for him to punish his enemies — he’s totally right to throw people into hell forever — but all of his wrath and justice is leading to and serving mercy.

This is how Paul says it in Romans 9: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction — people who go to hell — in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:22–23). What does it mean to be a vessel of mercy? It means we don’t deserve anything we receive from God. We didn’t deserve his forgiveness, his love, his devotion, because we were his enemies. At one time, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, separated from Christ, alienated from God, children of wrath. He could have struck us, broke us, crushed us, but he saved us.

But he doesn’t save everyone, Asaph warns us. He saves a particular kind of person: a humble one. In the end, then, there will be two kinds of people, two kinds of enemies: one will be rebuked, broken, crushed — eternal conscious torment — the other will enjoy an uninterrupted, never-ending paradise; one will die and enter a world they’d never want to leave, the other will die and find a world they will beg and plead and weep to escape. The difference, God tells us here, is humility — “God arose to establish judgment to save all the humble of the earth.” Humility — a glad willingness to bow, obey, and worship the fearful one. He opposes the proud, with awful, almighty force, but he saves the humble, and with all of that same power.

The Safest Place to FearThis salvation helps us make sense of the first two verses in the psalm:

In Judah God is known;

his name is great in Israel.

His abode has been established in Salem,

his dwelling place in Zion.

What’s Asaph trying to say about the fearful God here? “Judah, Salem, Zion” — these are all names he’s using for Israel, for God’s chosen people (now, in Christ, this is the church). While he terrifies and conquers his proud and unrepentant enemies, this God makes himself at home with his people. They know him, and they feel safe with him.

They still fear him, and what he would do if they ever walked away from him — but because they also trust him and treasure him, he’s become the safest place in the world for them. This righteous fear reminds me of Isaiah 8:13–14: “The Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary” — a safe place. They don’t fear the Assyrians threatening to murder them because there’s an even more fearful one in heaven who loves them and fights for them.

Do you overcome fear that way? Is the God you worship big enough, strong enough, fierce enough to eclipse all your other fears? In Christ, we run toward the one who can throw both body and soul in hell, because in running to him, and hiding ourselves in his love, all the sovereign power and justice that would have destroyed us now keeps and satisfies us.

How Fear Responds in Faith So, we’ve seen our fearful enemy, and then our even more fearful God, and now the psalm calls for a response from two different groups. The first call is for the church, and the second is for those beyond the church. They both come at the end of the psalm, beginning in verse 11:

Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them;

let all around him bring gifts

to him who is to be feared.

To the church: Make your vows.

So, first, to the people of God: Make your vows to the Lord your God — “the Lord your God,” that’s why I say this response is for us, those who are already God’s people — Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them. Now, we don’t talk about vows like this anymore (unless, of course, we’re at a wedding), so how might we say it? Here’s my effort: If you see how fearful this almighty Savior is, resolve right now to live for his glory — and then follow through on those resolves (perform them).

Seeing this kind of enemy and this kind of God should make us want to live in a way that honors and glorifies him. And if you’re like me, you know how easily that resolve can cool or wither over time. Spiritual resolves need refreshing — and one way to refresh them is to remember how big, jealous, and fearful our God is. He’s frightening, and he’s gracious, and he’s worthy of everything we might attempt for his glory. So what might he be calling you to vow in this season? What relationship needs some more serious attention? What conversation have you been putting off? What habit’s fallen away because you’ve been busy or overwhelmed? What new ministry dreams might God give you for your neighborhood or workplace? Make your vows, and perform them.

And as you make those vows, remember that God doesn’t make us fulfill our vows in our own strength. No, he now pours all the power we just saw in verses 3–7 into helping us be holy and love well. Remember Philippians 2:12-13,

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

When the humble vow to live for him, God goes to work in them. He works in you all the kinds of thoughts, attitudes, impulses, and decisions that please him. So pray over these vows— and encourage others around you to pray for your vows. Pray like Paul does in 2 Thessalonians 1: Pray that “God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.”

To the world: Bring your gifts.

The psalmist doesn’t stop with God’s people, though. He calls for a second response, again verse 11:

Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them;

let all around him bring gifts

to him who is to be feared,

who cuts off the spirit of princes,

who is to be feared by the kings of the earth.

Those who already belong to him, prayerfully renew your vows to glorify him, and to all the rest of you, bring your gifts to the God who is to be feared. Bring whatever you’ve been given — and remember, whoever they are (CEOs, governors, presidential candidates), everything they have and every position they hold is a gift. They have nothing that he hasn’t given to them. And no matter how many people follow them on social media and no matter how many soldiers they assemble beneath themselves, they should fear God — because, verse 12, he is to be feared even by the kings of the earth, even by the richest, most powerful men in the world.

I took great comfort here this week. We’ve entered another season in America of heightened anxiety and division, as we’re all being dragged along to November. Every four years or so, we have a lot more talk of kings in our country. And all the arguing and shouting makes these candidates seem so big and powerful. We fear all they might do with their power. We fear all the destruction a presidency might cause. Fear rises and rises, and it consumes more of our energy and attention, and it starts to creep like a cloud into more and more of our lives — and then we read a psalm like this. We read about a God with this much power and wrath, a God who can do far more than any tiny president might do, a God more fearful than all our kings combined — and that God loves us. He’s on our side and nothing frightens him. I hope this reality shapes us as we think and talk and vote over these next several months.

The Belt and the BrideI want to end with a verse I’ve skipped over until now, verse 10:

“Surely the wrath of man shall praise you; the remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt.”

It’s the most confusing verse in the psalm — and yet it might also be the most powerful. What does he mean? How does “the wrath of man” praise God? And what would it mean for God to wear his enemy’s hostility “like a belt”?

When he says “the wrath of man shall praise you,” I think he means that even his enemies will eventually be forced to bow down before him. Having just been through Philippians together, I can’t help but hear chapter 2: “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” When Jesus comes back to finish his war against sin and death and Satan, even the wrath of man will praise him. His enemies will be forced to bow and confess — not willingly or joyfully or savingly, of course — but they will have to acknowledge his glory, even though they hate it.

But what about the belt? When the psalmist mentions a belt here, he’s not talking about the accessory that’s holding up our pants and skirts. No, this belt was a piece of armor. It shows up again in Ephesians, in the armor of God: the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, the belt of truth. In that day, the soldier wrapped a belt around his waist to hold his breastplate and sword in place — the breastplate to protect his vital organs and the sword so that they could get to it quickly in the heat of battle. So what would it mean for God to make “the wrath of man” his belt of war? It means he not only defeats his enemies, but when he wins, he wins so decisively that he makes his enemies actually fight for him. This God, he wins his wars with enemy weapons.

The TableAnd this brings us to the table, doesn’t it? I mean where else do we see God do this more than at the cross? At the cross, Satan brings all the awful wrath he can muster against the Son of God. He has Jesus betrayed, convicted, humiliated, and tortured. And what does God do? He takes those two massive, murderous beams, and he wraps all that wrath around his waist. He made the cross a belt to hold his sword. He made their wrath serve his love. That’s how he wins the war and saves his people, his bride.

And so the question for us is whether we will be the bride or the belt? Will we be the humble he came to save — and he saves all who humble themselves before him, all who confess our sins, seek forgiveness, and vow to live for his glory? Or will we be the stubborn enemies he wraps around his waist, the enemies who refused to bow and so refused to be saved?

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Well today is the last sermon in our series through the Book of Philippians. We started this series the first Sunday of January, and over the last 23 weeks we’ve been looking closely at this book, verse by verse, line by line, and what we have found here is a vantage into Ultimate Reality. We have encountered God and his truth, which is what we consider to be the penultimate goal of preaching.

The reason that we slow down and look at the words and the phrases, and try so hard to understand what Paul meant, is because we want tosee and think what he saw and thought.

Because Paul has written this letter under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His words have been breathed out by God — God IS revealing himself through these words — and so we look at the words not to get stuck on the words, but to see through the words to God and his truth (Ultimate Reality!). That’s the second-to-last goal of preaching.

That’s what we’ve been doing these past six months, and that’s what we’re gonna do one last time today as part of this series.

Today we are looking at Philippians Chapter 4, verses 19–23, and the main thing I want you to know is this: God will provide for you.

That’s the promise of Philippians 4, verse 19 — God will provide for you — and as you hear me say that, I want you to track what’s going on … How are you responding to this promise internally where nobody else but God can see?

I’m going to say it again and I want us to just sit in it for a minute. Here it is:

God will provide for you.

Father in heaven, you know the hearts of every man and woman and boy and girl. You know where we’re at in this moment as you confront us with your promise to provide for us. You know what our hearts are doing and why, and this morning, we ask, as humbly as we can, whatever is going on in us that is unbelieving, or whatever is not pleasing to you, would you change us today? Would you work in us now, through your word, by the power of your Spirit, to change us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

In this passage I want to show you three details about God’s provision for you, and then close with application. The first detail is this:

1) God will provide every need of yours. Look at verse 19:

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

In the ContextNow it’s important that we see this verse in its context, so let’s back up to the previous verses and remember what we saw last week: Paul is talking to this church about their true partnership. They’ve given money to Paul to support his ministry, and in verse 15 Paul calls what they havea partnership in giving and receiving. That was the criterion for a true friendship — there had to be mutual benefits — and we know that Paul received money from this church (physical money for physical sustenance). But what did this church receive from Paul?

Remember we looked at verse 17, where Paul says that this church, in return for their giving material money, receive a spiritual credit— spiritual benefits. And last week we focused on that fact — that these benefits are spiritual — but here in verse 19 we see more about where these benefits are coming from.

The church gave to Paul; now the church receives from Paul — except they’re not receiving from Paul himself, they’re receiving from God. (Verse 18 is like a parenthetical; it’s a comment to the side.) But we need to look at verse 19 in connection to verse 17. I’m going to try to paraphrase that connection — Paul is saying: We have a true partnership of giving and receiving! … Not that I seek your giving, but I seek your receiving, which has an increasing profit! I’m good. I’m well-supplied. And now my God will supply every need of yours …

It’s significant here that Paul says “my God.” Because he’s not just highlighting his personal relationship with God, but he’s saying that God will provide for this church on his behalf! Remember Paul is in prison. He doesn’t have anything to ‘give’ this church. Paul can’t give this church spiritual blessings — but God can. And Paul says my God will. My God will supply every need of yours.

Every Need?And we have to ask, “Every need, really?” What does Paul mean here?

Again, in light of the context, I think this applies to mainly spiritual needs, but it also includes material needs.

On the material side, I think Paul is saying here what he said to the Corinthians about their generosity. In 2 Corinthians 9:10, Pauls says that God will supply seed to the sower. In other words: if you give, God will give you what to give.

This is where we get the saying, “You can’t out-give God!” — you’ve probably heard that before. I’ve always heard that saying (and used it myself) in terms of experience. People have experienced that reality; they’ve seen it to be the case — but the theological support for that saying comes from places like 2 Corinthians 9 and here in Philippians 4. If you give, God will not let you run out of what to give. That’s material provision.

But Paul says “every need” here and so he means more than material needs — but like, how much more? This is where we have to think. We need to drill into this …

When Paul says “every need” he could simply mean “every” as in both material and spiritual — God provides both categories of needs. Which is true.This could be just an umbrella statement.

Or — Paul could mean, not just that God provides both categories, but that God provides for every single need within each category — every single material need you have and every single spiritual need you have, God provides it all. In an absolute, literal way, God will provide for every single one need of yours. Is Paul saying that?

Well see, it really has to do with how we understand the meaning of needs — and that’s something that Paul has already talked about in this chapter. So we should go back a couple of weeks, back to when we looked at verse 11. In verse 11 Paul says,

“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content”

Whatever my need is, I have enough!

And we saw that the key to that statement is in the fact that needs are relative to goals. If the goal is to stay alive, then the needs would be things like oxygen (and food and water) … and for your head to stay attached to your neck. That’s an important need in order to stay alive (and that need was not provided for Paul about five years after he wrote this letter). So is staying alive the goal?

Well see, if this church’s goal was like Paul’s goal — if they were actually practicing what they had learned and received and heard and seen in Paul (verse 9) — then there goal would not be to stay alive, but their goal would be everlasting joy in Christ that honors Christ for the treasure he is(see 1:20!).

Secret Turned PromiseTwo weeks ago we saw that Paul’s secret to contentment is Christ-sufficiency.

Finish this sentence here: “All that Paul truly needs to be happy in Jesus is … JESUS.”

That’s Paul’s secret, and here in verse 19 he turns that secret into a promise for this church: God will supply every need of yours …

Every need that you have in order to be eternally happy in Jesus, God will provide that for you.

Whatever you need to have joy in Jesus forever, God will provide.

I don’t know how to say that so that it lands for you. I don’t know how to make you be helped by this truth. But I just want to tell you as best as I can:

God sees every single need that you have, big and small, long-standing needs, brand-new needs, pain-inflicting needs, losing-sleep-because-of-them needs, thorn-in-the-flesh needs; God knows more about your needs than you do, and he knows that behind your every need there is your ultimate need to be happy in him, and he will give you what you need for that even if it means withholding from you other things … and even if that withholding hurts.

And we don’t know why exactly. God doesn’t give us all the details here, but he gives us himself and he will always give us whatever we need to have him forever.

That’s the promise of Philippians 4:19, church. That’s the promise in its fullest.

Here’s the second detail about God’s provision.

2) God will provide for you according to his riches in glory.Look at those words closely in verse 19: “according to his riches in glory.” This tells us more about the nature and capacity of God’s provision.

The NatureWhen it comes to the nature of God’s provision, it’s according to his riches — not according to what we deserve, not according to what he owes us (which is nothing).

I want us to get this clear: God’s provision here, in context, is a response to this church’s generosity, but a response and compensation are not the same. God is not paying this church back. God is never in debt to anyone.

But instead, because this church’s generosity in an expression of their faith in God — and God from all eternity has an unchangeable disposition of delight in response to the exercise of faith — God provides for this church in accordance with himself.

“God takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:11). That is true about God, and God provides for us in accordance with that truth of who he is! That’s what his riches mean. His riches is the resource of himself.

And one thing that might help us wrap our heads around this is how we think of tipping. Now, this analogy is gonna break down if you push it too far, okay — I need you to take it easy on me — but in general, at a restaurant, every time you leave a tip you have one of two choices: either you will leave a tip based on the kind of service you received or you will leave a tip based on the kind of person you are.

You will either give in accordance with the server’s performance or you will give in accordance with your own generosity. Now both are a response, but only one of those is to truly give. If it’s according to performance, we call that compensation; but if it’s according to your generosity, that’s truly giving — and see, God only gives.

He only gives in accordance with who he is as the eternal God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, who isall-sufficient — he does not stand in need of anything that he has made but instead all things are dependent upon him!

The nature of God’s giving is in accordance with himself, his riches.

The CapacityAnd, they are his riches in glory, which tells us even more about the capacity of his provision. “In glory” here means that these riches transcend this world; they come from where God is — from where God dwells in his infinite splendor and majesty, in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. These riches are not sitting in a J.P. Morgan account.

This is not “his riches in Miami real-estate.”

It’s not “his riches in Tesla stock.”

It’s his riches in glory — so it doesn’t just cover what you need now on this earth, but it will more than abound for what you need for eternity.

See, his riches in glory confirm for us that God’s provision is not mainly material and current, but it’s spiritual and eternal. Because, in the grand scheme of things, material provision here is peanuts. Easy. “His riches in glory” means that we are moving from more to more to more to more — more and better is always yet to come. God gives in accordance with his capacity in glory, and it’s bigger than what we can fathom.

Practiced in PrayerAnd this is a fact that we bring to God in prayer. This is where we make this truth practical. It’s that when we come to God with our petitions — when we are asking God to provide for us — we are not appealing to how good we’ve been; we’re not asking God to give in accordance with the quality of our service; but we are asking him to give, to supply, to provide for us in accordance with his riches in glory.

This is why we say: “Is anything to hard for the Lord?” In glory means there is nothing he cannot do; there is no deficit he cannot overcome; there is no amount he cannot make happen!

God will provide for every need you have in order to be eternally happy in him according to his riches in glory.

Third detail:

3) God will provide for you according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.And here is where Paul reminds us that every promise from God to us is fulfilled in Jesus. Paul says this plainly in 2 Corinthians 1:20 — “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [in Jesus].”

This means that all that God is for us, and all the good that God wills to do for us, and all that God has ever said to us, comes to us through Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the face of God’s revelation and redemption. We cannot know God apart from Jesus, and we cannot have a relationship with God except through Jesus — and keeping this front and center in everything we do is basic to the Christian life. And there are two very simple and clear ways we live this out: in baptism and again in prayer.

Clear in BaptismWhen we’re baptized as a sign of our faith-union with Jesus, the first question the pastors ask before we bring you under the water is this. We ask:

“Are you now trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and for the fulfillment of all God’s promises to you?”

And the person being baptized will say,

“I am!”

And what they’re saying is that Jesus is not just the way to get their foot in the door — he’s not just giving them a clean record — but they’re saying that every good thing that God will ever give to them comes through Jesus. Jesus is the “Amen!” to all of God’s promises to us!

Clear in PrayerAnd also we express that same hope every time we pray, when we end our prayers with “in Jesus’s name, amen.”

First, we pray “in Jesus’s name” because that’s how Jesus told us to pray — he told us to petition the Father in his name (see John 15:16; 16:23, 26) — but also, when we’re deliberate with our words, from our hearts, to pray in Jesus’s name, we are recognizing that Jesus is only way we have any right at all to be speaking to God.

We don’t receive from God based upon ourselves; and we don’t even come to God based upon ourselves. It’s all because of Jesus. That is his glory. The Father has highly exalted him to that place.

In ChristAnd so we live and move and have our entire being in Christ … And we endure present sufferings in Christ … And we strive side by side for the faith of the gospel in Christ … We follow Christ’s example of humility in Christ … We work out our own salvation in Christ … We do all things without grumbling and complaining in Christ … We shine as lights in the world in Christ … We seek to receive and honor one another in Christ … We rejoice in Christ … We worship God in Christ … We boast in Christ … In Christ, we consider everything else as loss compared to his surpassing worth … In Christ, we press on to know him more clearly and fully … In Christ, we will agree together and help one another agree … In Christ, we will not be anxious but we will pray … In Christ, we will think of whatever is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable … In Christ, whatever the situation, we will be content … In Christ, God will provide everything we need to be eternally happy in him.

In Christ! — That is the Book of Philippians. That is our Christian existence. That’s this promise.

There is no greater security that you could have that God will provide for you than this.

So we wanna just live in this promise. Let the reality of God and his truth surround you. Let us see him! (That’s the second-to-last goal of preaching.)

And then we come to verse 20.

The ApplicationSo far we’ve looked at the details of God’s promise in verse 19, and I told you we’d close with some application, and that’s what we find in the text here in verse 20.

What do we do with everything that we’ve seen about God and his truth in this book?

Eternal WorshipVerse 20 tells us:

“To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

This is worship, and worship is the ultimate goal of preaching. It’s what the seeing is for. We see God and his truth so that we will worship him — and it’s worship that will last forever, because eternal worship is what God is worthy of. Infinite worth deserves infinite praise, and that’s our ultimate calling. So Paul closes this letter by pointing us to what is vastly bigger than ourselves …

And Paul does this not just by calling us to the worship God deserves, but he also does this in final greeting in verse 21. Look at verse 21:

“Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. 22All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household. 23The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

All the SaintsA final greeting like this is a normal way to end a letter. Paul does this in his other letters too, but look at verse 21 together with verse 20. Verse 20 says “to God be the glory” and verse 21 says “greet every saint.”

Both of these verses point us to something bigger than ourselves: Worship is our ultimate calling — that’s why God made us! — but greeting “all the saints” reminds us that we’re not in this alone. “All the saints” are more than us, and “all the saints” are everywhere, even in Caesar’s household!

There’s no place the gospel cannot advance, and it will advance — until the knowledge of God’s glory covers this earth as the waters cover the sea! One day all the saints will worship God together, but even today we are connected to what God is doing through the saints scattered all around the world.

That little comment in verse 22 is meant to remind this church what they’re a part of. The saints are in Caesar’s household in part because of how God has used the church at Philippi. This is bigger than you, don’t you see? God at work through you, church, has made you part of something vastly bigger than yourself— and that’s not only true of this church, but that’s true of our church, like right now …

Right now, as our church gathers in worship here … all the saints at All Peoples Church in Minneapolis gathers for worship, and all the saints at Westview Church in New Hope gathers for worship, and all the saints at Gospel Joy Church in Mankato gathers for worship.

They gather, in part, because our church has sent them out to be a church. We’re connected and they greet you — and the same could be said of Exalting Christ Church in Northeast and Redemption City Church in Rochester and Horizon City Church in Orlando — we’re part of that.

Just like we’re part of gospel advance in Turkey and Oman and Cameroon and Ireland and France and Austria and southeast Asia and the Philippines and the Peruvian Amazon — All the saints everywhere, and the worship of God forever.

That’s what this is all about. And God indeed will provide for you … for you and for our church.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableWe come to this Table to remember Jesus and to rest in God’s love for us. God proved his love for us in that while we were sinners, Jesus died for us. And if God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

All things that we need to be happy in him forever.

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“It’s not about the money!”

You’ve probably heard that sentence before: There’s some situation involving money, but to assure all parties involved that there’s something deeper and more meaningful going on, the party with an interest in money will say, “It’s not about the money.”

And right away, when we hear that, what do we think?

There’s a good chance that our knee-jerk response is to be a little cynical. I did a Google search last week looking for a famous “It’s not about the money” quote and what popped up the most was that “If someone says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

We can be a tough crowd. We know that flattery can be pretext for greed (see 1 Thessalonians 2:5). We don’t like schmoozing. We lean toward suspicion in these things.

So, for example, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (the NCAA) has never allowed college athletes to be paid until just recently, and through the whole saga of coming to that decision, one thing that the NCAA could NOT say was that “It’s not about the money.” And the reason they couldn’t say that isbecause NCAA Division 1 athletics rakes in around $15.3 billion of revenue every year. It’s almost like people dared them to say “it’s not about the money.” Because we’re all pretty sure it’s about the money.

So when it comes to this topic, I think at best, we can be responsibly suspicious; at worst, though, we can be callously cynical.

And I mention this at the start, because I want us to check our default thinking here as we look closer at Philippians 4, verses 14–18. Because the apostle Paul talks about money in this passage — he talks about the partnership that he’s had with this church at Philippi (they’ve been his most cherished financial supporters and he’s writing to them about that support). And the main thing Paul says to them is that it’s not about the money.

When it comes to a Christian’s giving of money, it’s not about the money — and Paul tells us three reasons why that’s true. That’s what I want to show you this morning, but first let’s pray again and ask for God’s help:

Father in heaven, in these next moments with your word open before us, I ask that you would do more in our hearts than we could ask or imagine. This is indeed your word and we are your people. Manifest your glory in, by, unto, and upon us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Three reasons why, when it comes a Christian’s giving of money, it’s not about the money …

1) Giving money expresses true partnership (verses 14–16).And I just wanna say, I went back and forth on the best language to use here. Other ways to say “giving money” would be phrases like “material gifts” … or “financial contribution” … or “practical support” — those terms sound nice.

But I just decided to go with “giving money” because, for some reason, that sounds a little more uncomfortable to us, but it’s most basically what this is. Paul is talking about this church giving him money. That’s the hard reality. I wanna be clear that’s what we’re talking about. But look what Paul says in verse 14. He says:

“Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.”

Remember this goes back to verse 10. (Last week’s sermon focused on verses 11–13, and that was a little tangent in the passage.) But overall, Paul is talking about the money this church had sent him, and in verse 10, he starts by saying:

“I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.”

Then verse 11 explains how he thinks about needs … I can do all things through him who is strengthening me. Remember this is Christ-sufficiency.

Verse 14:

“Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.”

So already here, if we put verses 10 and 14 together, notice how Paul has referred to the act of this church giving him money: in verse 10, he calls it “reviving your concern for me.” In verse 14, he calls it “shar[ing] my trouble.”

Then in verses 15–16, he explains what he means. Look at verse 15:

“And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again.”

History of PartnershipSo Paul and the church at Philippi have a long history of partnership — and it’s one that goes back to “the beginning of the gospel.” The ESV does a literal translation here — Paul says straight up, “beginning of the gospel” — but what does he mean by that?

When we think about the beginning of the gospel — we might think of Genesis 3:15, right? That’s when the gospel was first promised, when God said that a son of woman would come and crush the serpent. Or, is the beginning of the gospel Christmas morning? Or maybe it’s Good Friday? When did the gospel begin?

This is actually a deep question, and the right answer goes back to the heart of God before the foundations of the world — but that’s not what Paul is talking about here. The NIV (which is another English Bible translation), it translates this phrase in verse 15 as: “in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel.” That’s a great way of saying this.

Paul is saying that this church, since it’s very inception, since the very beginning of when they heard the gospel and believed back in Acts 16 — they have partnered with Paul, and no other church has been like that. Therefore, the church at Philippi is special to Paul. They’re unique.

And what Paul says here goes back to how he started the letter in Chapter 1, verse 3. Think back to January for us, when Paul says, 1:3,

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”

Then Paul says, “God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus” (1:8). Paul really loved this church, and they loved him. They had a true partnership, and that’s what this church’s financial support expressed. They were actually friends — that’s what the money was about.

And I think that’s clear to us by what we’ve already seen, but there’s a little phrase in verse 15 that doubles down on this idea. Paul says, verse 15,

“no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.”

Giving and ReceivingGet this: Paul calls this church giving him money to be a partnership of “giving and receiving.” And right away, we might ask what’s the receiving part: This church gave money to Paul; what did they receive?

But before we even get there, just the phrase by itself, “giving and receiving” — that was a loaded phrase for these first readers. Within the Greco-Roman mindset, the two actions of giving and receiving were both considered necessary for true friendship. That was the popular thinking. That was the song on the radio. True friendship required true mutuality. True friendship required a genuine exchange of benefits.

And I won’t get into this now (I chased a rabbit hole last week, you can ask me later), but the most popular treatise on the topic of friendship at this time was by the Stoic philosopher Seneca. And his teaching was that in order to have a true friendship — as opposed to a mere functional arrangement — true friendship meant that there was shared giving and receiving by both parties for the others’ good.

Paul was very aware of the thinking of this day and he knows what he’s doing in verse 15 when he says “giving and receiving.” He’s taking the criterion of true friendship in the Philippian mindset, and he’s saying,

Church, that’s what we have. This is not a utilitarian partnership. Your giving has not been a one-way street. But you’re giving has been part of giving and receiving. We have a true friendship.

And that friendship is the foreground of this passage. Church, really, it’s not about the money.

Here’s the second reason why:

2) Giving money resulted in spiritual receiving (verse 17).So if there was a giving and receiving, what did the Philippians receive? This is in verse 17.

Verse 17 is a clarification to what Paul just said in verses 14–16, and this is exactly what Paul did last week in verse 11. Glance back at verse 11 for a second …

Verse 11 starts,

“Not that I am speaking of being in need…”

Now look at verse 17:

“Not that I seek the gift…”

For the second time here, Paul clarifies something. He’s saying, I’m not seeking the money.

The money was not his aim. Instead, his aim is the fruit that the church receives from their giving the money. That was how Paul did support-raising.

Hey, would you give me money? I’m not asking for it because I want your money, but it’s because I want you to be blessed in the giving.

The word “fruit” there in verse 17 is another literal translation, but in a context like this, another way to translate it is to call it “profit.”

The idea is that as this church is giving money to Paul — from their hearts, because of their friendship, for the advance of the gospel — as this church is doing that very practical, earthly thing of giving money, they are accumulating interest in their spiritual account. They experience an increase of spiritual credit and that’s what Paul wanted!

And he’s using a commercial metaphor here. This is the way business people would have talked when they were making a deal. One commentator says that Paul is talking this way probably with a smile on his face; he’s talking with his friends, and it’s like he’s being playful with this metaphor.

And the main thing I want us to see is that this church is benefiting. They are truly receiving. In fact, in return for their giving, they are rolling in a profit, but the profit is not material; the profit is spiritual.

The Spiritual Is Real and NowAnd immediately, we modern people wanna say, “Ah, C’mon! Giving physical money and receiving ‘spiritual,’ invisible benefit! Are you kidding me!”

And the reason we go there right away is becausewe have a disease. We have worldview disease. We have been influenced by our world to think that the spiritual is not as real as the material. The material is hard, concrete, right here, but the spiritual is invisible and out there and basically fake (we’re taught to think).

And just to be clear, that way of thinking is a historical and cultural phenomenon. Most people throughout human history have understood that the spiritual world is real, and most cultures today (except for the West) still understand that the spiritual world is real.

So check your worldview: we need to view things the way that Paul does here, and the way that the church at Philippi does here — and the way that Jesus does! The way Jesus taught! Jesus taught us, in Matthew 6, that through our giving, now in this world, we can “lay up treasure in heaven” (see Matt. 6:19–24). That’s spiritual profit. Jesus taught that.

And now there’s a question here on this passage about when exactly do we experience the spiritual profit?

So, if giving now means we can accumulate profit in our ‘spiritual account,’ does that mean we have to wait for the Second Coming of Christ before we experience the profit? Or can we experience some of it now? If we’ve got treasure in heaven, do we benefit from that treasure today, or do we have to wait until we get to heaven?

The answer is Yes.

There is nothing in the passage that would make us think that we only receive spiritual benefits in the future. The contrast here is not present/future, but it’s material/spiritual, and what’s implied here is that, in this life, we can experience the spiritual blessings that come as the result of financial giving. We can receive spiritual benefit in the present, but the caveat is this: the benefit is truly spiritual.

Paul’s True AimWe must be careful here. Evil false teachers have twisted the Bible’s teaching on this topic. It is a heresy to say: “Give money today in order to be physically healed.” Or Give money today in order to get more money so that you can buy yourself that new, shiny doohickey. Or Give money today in order to shorten your family member’s time in purgatory (and there’s no such thing as purgatory, but that was said years ago).

Throughout church history there has been “Give money in order to” nonsense that is driven by greed and distorts Scripture.

Paul is not saying that. If we’re learning from Paul, we’d talk more like this: we’d say … Yes, our increased financial generosity will likely mean that we experience an increase of faith. If we give, we will most likely see the provision of God at work. He will supply seed to the sower. We will know the nearness of Jesus in details that maybe we didn’t recognize before. There’s a goodness in the giving. There’s joy here. We have a reward in heaven.

Church, we’re talking real spiritual profit. And that is Paul’s aim. That’s what he wants for this church.

And Paul wants to prove it. Somebody might ask, “Well what if Paul is talking all about this spiritual profit just because he wants the church to keep giving him money?”

Paul settles that question in verse 18, because he says: I don’t need anymore money! He uses three strong verbs to make that clear. In verse 18, he goes:

I’m paid in full!

I abound!

I am well supplied!

The subtext here is,

I really mean it when I say that my aim is your spiritual blessing. I’m not just saying that because I want you to give more money. I’ve got enough money! Consider me “paid in full”! I’m overflowing! I’m well-supplied!

Church, really, it’s not about the money.

And here’s the third reason:

3) Giving money is a pleasing sacrifice to God (verse 18).Until we get to the end of verse 18, the focus has been on the partnership between Paul and this church, but now that changes. Look at verse 18:

I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent [he’s talking about money here, which is], a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”

In other words, the money that this church gave to Paul was a pleasing sacrifice they gave to God. Financial giving is an offering to God.

We saw this in the Book of Hebrews. The Old Testament sacrificial system ended in the sacrifice of Jesus, and now our sacrifice is a life of worship and praise. Hebrews 13:5,

“Through [Jesus] then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

The Wonder of “Offering”Giving money is an offering to God. And that’s actually common knowledge for most Christians. That’s why when we give financially we call it an “offering.” That little box in the back is an offering box. We get that language from the Bible. Christians have been talking this way since the early church. … and we can sorta take it for granted, but this is amazing.

Think about this: material giving can only accomplish material things. When the church at Philippi sent Paul the money, they were not funding conversions. That’s not how it works. The money is not what makes the gospel advance — people do that. Paul is the one speaking the gospel and doing the ministry — all the physical money can do is help Paul get physical provisions so that he can keep speaking the gospel and doing the ministry.

This is the way it has always been. Money does not accomplish gospel advance, it’s a means to sustain the people and resources for gospel advance. The money is so incredibly earthy and material — and yet, we call it an offering to God.

The only way that makes sense is because God is God. God is real.

What Paul does in verse 18, is he takes our eyes and lifts them from looking around at one another — which is a good thing — but now Paul directs our eyes to God. When it comes to giving, I think that’s always the most important part. We need to remember God, again and again.

What It Means to GodThat was my big takeaway from the little book Plastic Donuts — it’s a book I read a fews years ago before we started the Rooted initiative. It’s so good. The convicting part of the book is that, when it comes to giving, so often we get stuck thinking about the difference giving will make for us. That’s our focus — it’s how we’re impacted by the giving and what we or others think about it. But what if instead, when it came to giving we thought first and mainly about what God thinks about it?

Like: we start to see giving not in the terms of what it means to us, but in terms of what it means to God. We think, first and mainly, that God is our heavenly Father and he cares for us, and he will supply every need of ours, and our giving money to Paul — or giving money to the church or to the cause of the gospel — that is an offering to God and it brings delight to his heart. It’s pleasing to him.

That’s where Paul takes us here in verse 18. He takes us to GOD! Remember GOD.

Don’t you know that God loves a cheerful giver?! God is happy with your generosity. Your giving is pleasing to God! Church, really, it’s not about the money.

This church’s giving expressed their true partnership; it resulted in spiritual receiving; it was a sacrifice that pleased God — and these three things are not just the case for the church at Philippi, but they apply to us too.

Over the last decade, God has given us a generous church. It’s one of the things that we recognize as a hallmark of our church culture. You are a generous people — God has always taken care of our church and he has made our church a blessing to these cities and beyond through your giving.

And I wanna say: thank you for that, and there’s more for us here. There’s more opportunity. There is yet more good that God has for us and our ministry together through our giving.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableVerse 19:

“My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Verse 19 is so amazing that it’s gonna be its own sermon next week, but for now, look at those last words: “his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Do we have any idea about the wealth of God?

And church, do you know what he has spent for you?

He gave you — God gave you — the life of his Son.

And that’s what we remember at this Table, as we receive the bread and cup. We say “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” And if you have received that gift this morning, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, we invite you to receive the bread and cup with us.

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Imagine for a minute that you just won the most amazing sweepstakes ever. You saw this thing in a magazine, you submitted your entry online, and now these people are at your front door to tell you that you won and it’s a big deal: You’ve been chosen for a two-week all-expense paid vacation to anywhere in the world you want to go: You get to stay in five-star hotels, eat at the best restaurants, drive extravagant cars; you get to pick out a whole new wardrobe of clothes that are tailored just for you, and you’re given a three-million dollar gift card to spend anywhere you want.

How’s that sound?

But here’s the fine print: On each day of this vacation, every morning, you have to drink a potion that guarantees that you will feel discontent. It guarantees that although you get to do all of these things, with each thing you do you have an increasing, nagging dissatisfaction that makes you wish you were always doing something different. It’s luxury galore for two weeks, but your inner-state is full-on discontentment — that’s the ‘prize.’ Do you still take it?

This morning in Philippians 4 we’re talking about Christian contentment.And when I use the word “contentment” I mean a state of happiness or satisfaction — that’s what the word contentment means. And when I say Christian contentment, I mean that there’s a Christian way to experience a state of everlasting happiness and satisfaction.

That’s the focus of Philippians 4, verses 11–13, and I believe there’s something here in this passage that if we understand it and practice it, it will absolutely change our lives. This is one of those passages that grabs you by the shoulders and says: Hey, you’ve been thinking about this all wrong. There’s another way to live that’s deeper and richer.

And so my prayer for us this morning is that God would give us ears to hear. In this passage, I think we discover three truths about Christian contentmentand I want to show them to you, and before we get started, let’s pray and ask God to help us.

Father in heaven, by your Holy Spirit, would you humble our hearts now to receive what you have for us in your word. In this moment, by your grace, we open our lives to you and ask for you to accomplish your will, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Three truths about Christian contentment … here’s the first …

1) Christian contentment is a secret to be learned.Paul uses the word “secret” in verse 11, but first let me show you how we get there. Verses 11–13, which is our focus today, is really a detour from the main idea that Paul starts in verse 10. Verse 10 has to do with this church’s financial support of Paul. Paul says, verse 10,

“I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me.”

So this church has partnered with Paul for the advance of the gospel. They’ve supported him and his work, and Paul rejoices in the Lord in view of that. He continues this thought in verse 10 in verse 14 — and that’s what we’re gonna look at next week — but before Paul gets to verse 14, he needs to clarify something.

Paul’s Clarification and DetourPaul rejoices in the Lord not because his needs have been met, but it’s because he values the Philippians’ friendship and partnership, and ultimately their partnership with Paul means that they will be blessed. Paul talks about that in verse 17.

But the thing he wants to make clear in verse 11 is how he views this topic of needs. His needs being met is not the cause of his rejoicing. That’s what he means when he says in verse 11:

“Not that I am speaking of being need.”

He wants this church to know that his needs are not his main concern, and the reason his needs are not his main concern is in the second half of verse 11:

“for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

And then he goes on this detour. Now Paul is gonna talk about that.

The second half of verse 11 is the big sentence in this passage. I’m gonna read it again because I wanna make sure everybody sees it. If you’re a highlighter person, make this sentence glow. Everybody look at this, second half of verse 11:

“for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

Then the next verse, verse 12, just explains that sentence. Paul says, This is what I mean —

“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance [which is another way to say “whatever situation”], I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”

In all of these different scenarios, Paul has learned to be content, which he says here is learning a secret. Christian contentment is a secret to be learned.

And I want to start with this idea of a secret because it implies two things … if Christian contentment is a secret to be learned then …

1) Not every Christian has learned it yet. In other words, contentment is not part of the original equipment of conversion. Now there is a ton of amazing things that happen to us immediately when we trust in Jesus. When we put our faith in Jesus, right then and there … all our sins are forgiven; we are declared righteous; we are adopted into God’s family; we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit; we are secured a home in heaven! — it’s glorious what happens when you put your faith in Jesus! … but learning contentment is not part of that immediate package. This is something that comes later as part of Christian growth and maturity. You have to learn it. Which means: not all of us have learned it yet …

Which means … hmm … let’s think about this … how do we know if we’ve learned it or not? What might a Christian look like if they’ve not yet learned this secret of contentment?

My guess is that they would be prone to worry — they would be right on the edge of anxiety with most things; they’re quick to envision how badly things could go; which means they fret. Fretting is natural for them. And complaining is too.

It’s easy for them to find what’s ‘off’ with everything — winter’s too cold and summer’s too hot. The airline could always do better; the meal is always missing something. Nothing is ever exactly right, and nothing is ever quite enough.

Every time they get home and they see an Amazon package at their front door, deep down they’re thinking, “Maybe this is enough” — but it’s not. There will be another package the next day, and then the next day and the next day. (That’s what it means when you see all the delivery trucks on your street. It’s just people looking for enough.) Christians who’ve not yet learned the secret of contentment are always looking for the next thing … the next post to see, the next app to download, the next doo-hickey to get — you gotta stay up on what’s going on … so you’re just always chasing.

And I need to be clear about something here: when I say that not all of us have learned the secret, I’m including myself in that. This is probably true in every sermon, but I definitely feel that in this sermon that I’m preaching over my head. And the more I’ve thought about this, I’m not sure that any of us American Christians know the secret Paul is talking about here. I think most of us are all in the same boat here. This topic of Christian contentment is one we need help in.

There’s a country song you’ve probably not heard before, but I think it resonates. I heard this song years ago and it still haunts me. It goes like this:

“We all want what we ain’t got,

Our favorite doors are always locked.

On a higher hill with a taller top,

We all want what we ain’t got.

We ain’t happy where we are,

There’s greener grass in the neighbor’s yard.

A bigger house and a faster car,

We ain’t happy where we are.”

We don’t have much in common with John D. Rockefeller — he was one of the richest men in modern history and he was the first billionaire in America — but there’s a famous story about him after he earned his first billion. A reporter asked him, “Mr. Rockefeller, how much is enough?” And he replied, “Just a little bit more.”

We have that in common with him. That’s how we tend to think too. Always chasing. We need to learn this secret.

If Christian contentment is a secret to be learned, it implies (1) not every Christian has learned it yet; but also …

2) It is possible to be learned.We’re really on the brink of something here. And this is where I want us all to lean in and say, “Holy Spirit, teach me!” Paul is inviting us in on something, and not just Paul, but the topic of Christian contentment also has a special place within our own theological heritage.

I think Christian contentment is the application of Christian hedonism. And going back 400 years ago, the 17th-century English Puritans cared a lot about contentment and they wrote master-class books on it. And more recently, my old pastor at First Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, Andy Davis, he has written a book called The Power of Christian Contentment. And in this book he just takes the Puritan cookie jar and brings it down to the bottom shelf. (I want to mention Pastor Davis because I got a lot from his book, which is like a commentary on Philippians 4.)

We can learn the secret of contentment by together standing on the shoulders of others who have learned it. It’s possible. Christian contentment is a secret to be learned — we’ve not all learned it yet, but it’s possible!

Here’s the second truth …

2) Christian contentment comes from Christ-sufficiency.Now before we’re finished here, I want to give you a definition for Christian contentment, but we need to get there by focusing on Paul’s language in verse 11. Look again at that big sentence again:

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

A Fascinating WordThat word “content” (autarkēs) is pretty fascinating. It’s not a word from the Old Testament, but it’s actually a word from Greek philosophy. The word means literally “self-sufficiency.” And this self-sufficiency was a main teaching in an old philosophy known as Stoicism(we talked a little about Stoicism a couple of weeks ago in connection to verse 6).Stoicism was super popular in Paul’s day, within the Greco-Roman world, and in verse 11, that exact word that Paul uses for “content” (or self-sufficiency), was used over and over again in the Stoic writings of this time. Apparently the Stoic philosopher Seneca loved this word. And it will make sense to you why.

And in a nutshell, what Seneca and these Stoic writings taught was that “whatever happens to you in life, you accept it with no emotional reaction.” You get what you get and your virtue is your ability to be unaffected by the outside world.

And that’s basically how we use the word “stoic” today as an adjective. If somebody seems indifferent or apathetic or non-emotional, we say they’re being stoic.

Sometimes we wish our younger kids were a little more stoic at the dinner table … At our house, at dinner, we’ve got a little thing we say after we serve the kids their food. We say: You get what you get and don’t have a fit. It’s a no meltdowns rule.

And that might make sense when it comes to kids and dinnertime, but Stoicism as a full-blown philosophy for life is dangerous because it says you don’t have emotions because you don’t have needs. You don’t need anything from anybody because you’ve got all you need right here in yourself. You, in and of yourself, are untouchable by things outside of you. You are self-sufficient.

That’s the word that Paul uses — now, is that what Paul means?

Not at all. Get this: Paul knows he can’t do anything apart from Jesus. So, when Paul is using this word he’s messin’ with them! He’s taking this word from Greek philosophy that means self-sufficiency and he uses it to explain his Christ-sufficiency. Track with me here:

Not Funds, Freedom, or FoodWe know that Paul was not anti-emotion or anti-need. He’s open about both of them and he talks about them in this letter!

When it comes to emotion, remember Paul said in Chapter 2 that if Epaphroditus had died he would have had “sorrow upon sorrow” (2:27). He would be affected.

And as for his needs, that’s part of the whole reason he wrote this letter to begin with. This church is a ministry partner. Epaphroditus had brought him a gift from this church. They met his needs.

But see Paul wants this church to know that his needs being met — which he’s grateful for (he says that) — but his needs being met are not his ultimate aim. Paul has Christ-sufficiency, which means all he truly needs is Jesus … not funds or freedom or food. Those things are not ultimately necessary for him. But wait a minute? Wait a minute!

Without those those things — without funds, freedom, food… air, water, and nutrients — without those things, Paul would die! So let’s be honest here. Really, Paul?! You’re talking about this Christ-sufficiency. You say all you need is Christ — but what about oxygen, Paul? You need oxygen!

Do you?

Well yeah, I guess you need oxygen to stay alive on this earth … but see this is where Paul has learned something …

He’s thought about this before because death has been a real possibility for him. He’s been imprisoned before — he’s had countless beatings, often near death. Five times he received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times he was beaten by rods. Once he was stoned. Three times he was shipwrecked, a night and a day adrift at sea, floating on a piece of wood in the ocean; he had seen danger everywhere, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

So what if he didn’t have oxygen? He would die. But what if he died?

He’s already addressed this — to die is to depart and be with Christ, and that is far better (1:23). See, death meant gain for him (1:21).

Why? This is where we are getting to the key to this book, and to how the apostle Paul saw everything.

All You Truly NeedPaul staying alive on this earth was not his goal. See, if staying alive here was what Paul was all about, then yes, he needs oxygen. And food and water and — yes, he needs other things besides Christ. If staying alive on earth is his objective.

But if Paul’s goal is everlasting joy in Christ, what does he need for that? All you need for everlasting joy in Christ is Christ!

That’s why Paul can say “Rejoice in the Lord always” — it’s because all we need for joy in the Lord is the Lord.

Look, there’s not a creature or condition or situation on earth that Paul absolutely needs in order to be happy in Jesus. All he absolutely needs to be happy in Jesus is Jesus. That’s the secret of Christian contentment. It is Christ-sufficiency!

The secret of Christian contentment is learning that for what really matters — which is not staying alive here, but what really matters, your everlasting joy in Jesus — all you need for that is Jesus.

That’s the ‘rare jewel’ behind everything Paul says in this letter.

That’s what Paul means when he says:

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

Christ-sufficiency. What I really want is joy in Jesus, and what I need for joy in Jesus is Jesus, and I have him. This is the way church! This is the way to Christian contentment.

But how do we apply this in the throes of life?

We get there in the third truth …

3) Christ-sufficiency comes through Christ strengthening me. Paul, it’s amazing what you’re saying here, but I need help, man! How does this work in the details of our everyday existence? What about when things are going crazy? Is it ever okay to be unhappy about something, or to experience negative emotions, or to wish things were different?

Of course it’s okay to feel those things, and this is where a definition comes in handy. Christian contentment is meant to be practiced. Remember verse 9: what we’ve learned and received and heard and seen in Paul, we’re supposed to live that out. So when we think about Christian contentment in our daily lives, this is what it means.

A Definition for EverydayHere’s the definition:

Christian contentment is a presence of heart that delights in Jesus’s plans for us and humbly seeks him to direct us in them.

What we most want is Jesus, but that’s not always on the front of our minds in this world. Because we have all kinds of other stuff going on. One study I’ve seen says that the average person has over 70,000 thoughts a day — and I believe it. And let me just tell you, not all of those 70,000 thoughts are: “Jesus is my greatest treasure.”

Sometimes those thoughts are: I wanna good parking space, I wanna eat lunch, I want to buy a house, I don’t want my basement to flood, I don’t want my child to be sick, I don’t want my wife to die.

70,000 things we think about — some are really important, and all of them connected to things we need, but see, Christian contentment is like an anchor in the midst of those 70,000 things, and when the details are not what we want, we come back to his sufficiency, and we say “Jesus, I have you, help me in this. You have a plan.”

A presence of heart that delights in Jesus’s plans for us and humbly seeks him to direct us in them.

Jesus Who Is Strengthening MeAnd the more we learn the secret, the easier it becomes to get there: “Jesus, I have you, help me in this.” I can do all things through you who strengthens me — who is strengthening me. That’s a present-active verb in verse 13. This is a continual, active strength coming to us from Jesus …

Whether it’s plenty or hunger, abundance or need, my favorite meal with my friends or hunger pains alone in a Roman prison, whether it’s a home-run or a strike-out, I can do all things … I can get through anything … because Jesus is strengthening me. His sufficiency in my life comes from his strength. Everlasting joy in him is what we most want, it’s him we have.

So what if you had another offer. There’s the two-weeks vacation sweepstakes offer, but then there’s an alternative offer …

And for this one, you’re going to walk through a painful trial of suffering. You’re going to be publicly humiliated; you’re going to be thrown into prison; you will be deprived basic needs — you will be hungry and thirsty and extremely uncomfortable, but here’s the catch: in the midst of the hardship you will experience a supernatural contentment through the nearness of Jesus that you can hardly imagine. He will be so real to you, so close to you, so sufficient for you, that you will look back at the hardship as one of the sweetest times in your life.

Would you take this offer?

Church, we’re growing. We’re getting there.

It’s true: we can do all things through him who is strengthening us.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableMy guess is that if you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, this doesn’t make any sense to you. That’s okay. But I’d love to talk to you about it.

The heart of the gospel is to have fellowship with God. That’s why God created us, but our sin has broken that fellowship, and as hard as we might try to get back to God, we can’t. That’s why Jesus came. He came to die for our sins, in our place, so that through faith in him we can be forgiven and restored to fellowship with God. That can happen for you right now if you say to Jesus: I am done trusting in me, I trust in you.

I would love to talk with you more about this. I’ll be right up here after the service. Come up, let’s talk.

For those of us who have trusted in Jesus, we have fellowship with God and we’re on a journey to eternal joy in God, and church, Jesus is enough for us. So let’s come to this Table and worship him.

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So I don’t travel often, but when I do, I almost always pack my running shoes. And that’sbecauseone of my favorite things to do whenever I first arrive somewhere, is throw on some shorts, lace up my running shoes, and then go jogging around for a while to try and get the lay of the land. And as I do, I’m just sorta taking note of things that might be worth checking out more in the days ahead. I’m basically making an itinerary for the trip as I go. And, most of the time, it works well.

This last March, we we’re visiting my grandma in Florida. And, per usual, just as soon as we’d arrived, unpacked, got the kids settled in, I took off for a run. It wasn’t good. See, I’d forgotten, we were in Florida, on a beach, in mid-march — Spring Break was everywhere and in full throttle. And guys, I was just sad about the kinds of things I was seeing as I was making my loop around town. Like nothing, and I mean nothing of what I was seeing, was going down on the itinerary. It just felt like sin, emptiness, depravity everywhere, and ten minutes in, I was more than ready to turn around and escape the moral garbage that I was running through.

When, all of a sudden, I heard it:

“In Christ alone, my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song...”

I’d just come around a corner, and there, sitting on a bench to my right in the middle of this little walkway area, was a man and a woman, sitting together, singing worship songs. They had a, “Free bottles of water” sign and the woman was passing ‘em out to the people who were walking by, starting up conversations with them as she did, while the man just kept on strumming his guitar and signing some of the very same songs we sing here every Sunday.

And guys, everything in that moment changed. Like, it was as if someone had suddenly turned on the light. I began to remember: These people were made by my father. That ocean, right over there — massive as it is — my God measured its depths in his hand, and assigned to its waves their boundaries. That delicious food coming out of that restaurant over there. The God who I worship provided that food for the people of this world to eat. More and more these little glimpses of beauty and goodness just kept popping up the more I began to really look around.

And look, my eyes weren’t closing to the realities around me. I wasn’t playing pretend. The darkness was still very much around me in that moment — thick, even palpable. And yet, so was the light. Because I was being reminded: Yes, this world has been subjected to futility (Rom. 8:20) and cursed is the ground due to human sin (Gen. 3:17), but even still, Psalm 19:1-3 “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”

Yes — ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, people have been born as children of wrath and dead in our sins. As humans, we’re now, by nature, sons of disobedience. Even still, God knits us together in our mother’s wombs, fearfully and wonderfully made are we. In his image, he has made us.

We live in a dark and depraved world — no denying that. Even still, it is our Father’s world. In our text for this morning, we’re being called not to dissociate from the world, not to bury our heads in the sand, but lookout into God’s world, and fasten our minds upon the things we see there that are yet still pleasing to him.

Why should we think about these things?Let’s go to our passage together. Philippians 4:8-9. Look at it with me. You’ll note right away that the layout of our text this morning is fairly simple. Really, it can be summed up in two words — Think and Practice.

Verse 8,

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Verse 9,

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

So think and practice. We’re going to spend the bulk of our time on think, since the quality of our practice is so reliant upon how we think.

Now, here’s the question I want us to ask regarding, “Think about these things” in verse 8: Why is it that we should think about these things?

Look with me at verse 8. We see the list of virtues (whatever is true, honorable, just, and so on). We see we’re told to think about them (“Think about these things”). We don’t see why. It just says do it — “think about these things”.

And that’s okay, because this exhortation comes near the end of this letter. A letter which has already said much about thinking, and why thinking matters. We want the reason for why we should think about these things. All we’ve got to do is to look back in the letter to find it.

Look back with me for a moment at chapter 1, to a verse we preached through back in January — Philippians 1:9,

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.”

See it there? It is my prayer that you Philippians will grow in knowledge (content that accords with truth, I want you to have more of it up here) and all discernment (the ability to evaluate, discern, the things out there) — that’s a lot of thinking right? Knowledge and discernment? Verse 10, “So that, you may approve what is excellent.” So that, you might be able look out in the world and assign proper approval — that, that right there, is excellent! All those things over there are not, but that right here, that is excellent. I approve of that thing as excellent.

Now, stay here in 1:9, while we consider its overlap with 4:8.

1:9 says, I want you to be able to approve what is excellent.

4:8, I want you to think about, among other things, what is excellent.

Approve what is excellent…think about what is excellent.

What we’ve got here are basically bookends to the letter — first few lines, approve what is excellent. Last few lines, think about what is excellent.

So, given the overlap, the similarity, let’s take our question from 4:8 — Why should we think about these things, such as whatever is excellent? — and see if we can’t find our answer here in 1:9-10.

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent [take note of what is excellent, set your mind on what is excellent], and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Do you see it? The practice of approving what is excellent, setting your mind on what is excellent, leads to being pure and blameless. Thinking leads to being. Think this way about this thing, and you’ll become more this way. Think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, excellent, and so on and you’llbecome, more and more truthful, honorable, just, pure, excellent and so on.

Thinking leads to being. Whatever you set your mind upon, there your character will follow.

We live in a world that doesn’t think about these thingsAnd, my brothers and sisters, that cuts both ways. We see this over in Romans — the devasting results of setting ones mind not on what is true, honorable and so on, but on what is foolish. Romans 1:21, reads “although they knew God, [speaking of humanity as a whole] they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking (Hear it? they didn’t set their mind on God and his goodness, but turned away into futile thinking), and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools.”

Therefore, if setting one’s mind on what is true, honorable, just, and so on, leads to being true, honorable, just and so on, what does setting one’s mind on what is foolish and futile lead to? Rom. 1:24,

“God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie.”

Thinking leads to being. Whatever you set your mind upon, there your character will follow. Here in Romans 1 we have the exact inverse of Philippians 4:8 — an exchange of the truth of God for a lie, which results in hearts given over to impurity, not purity. Bodies given over to dishonor, not honor.

Thinking leads to being. Whatever you set your mind upon, there your character will follow.

Now, here’s where things get complicated. Because in reality, what the city of Philippi looked like at the time of Paul’s exhortation to, “Think about these things”, and what our own city looks like currently at our time of reading the exhortation to “Think about these things” is not a bunch of people walking around saying, “Hey, let’s set our minds on what is untrue, dishonorable, unjust. Doesn’t that sound good? Let’s live for dishonor, dishonor, and injustice!” There may be a few of those people out in the world, but the average person out on the street is notsaying that.

But what they are saying is things like: “Hey, justice is giving a woman the legal right to choose whether or not to end her pregnancy. That’s just. It’d be unjust to force her to keep her pregnancy. You don’t want to be unjust, do you?” Or “Hey, living with your girlfriend, living with your boyfriend, so long as you guys are dedicated to one another is honorable. Commendable. You don’t want to discredit what’s honorable, do you?” Or “Hey, what’s true for you is true for you. What’s true for me is true for me. We ought to celebrate each person’s personal truth. Is that true?”

And this is the world you and I live in. That’s the air we breathe. That’s what’s preached in the workplace. That’s what’s proclaimed in the neighborhood. Everywhere we look, labels of virtue are being stamped upon vices. It is a confusing world to live in as a Christian.

Think About These Things In Our WorldSo, wouldn’t it be easier just to avoid it? Or ignore it — Close our eyes and pretend it’s really not all that bad? Yes, it would be easier. But that’s not what God calls us to. Instead, what he calls instead, right here in Phil. 4:8, is to do the prayer-dependent, community-counseled, Holy Spirit led, hard work of looking out into the world with eyes of discernment, and setting our minds upon what we find there that is yet still pleasing to God.

So, minds active and aware, let’s turn over some of the virtues we see in the list from 4:8, and ask what setting our minds upon them might look like in our world. What are these things that we are to think about?

whatever is TrueThe first virtue in the list is truth,

“Whatever is true…”

The person devoid of God, distant from God exchanges the truth for a lie (Romans 1). Don’t go along with that exchange, keep a firm mental grip on what is true.

So, your professor’s moving along in a lecture and talking about how all of life is a result of evolutionary processes. Whether there’s a God or not cannot really be known. Humans, therefore, are the masters of their fate and captains of their souls. And you’re over there thinking, “That’s not true. In fact, I worship the God who spoke this world into being and who is, in this very moment, upholding the world by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3). So you discard what’s being said, and keep moving.

Your professor begins to talk about how all humans have innate worth and value. And how we need to respect everyone as having innate worth and value. You think, “I’ve no idea how you support that claim. But its true. All humans have innate worth and value. What you just said is true!

Your neighbor says Christianity is hateful and judgmental. And anyone who believes the Bible is trustworthy is in error. Not true. Discard. Depending on the situation, maybe respond with why it is that you believe in God and the truthfulness of his word.

Later on in the day, your neighbor, seeing you out in the yard, reflects, “My, isn’t summertime such a gift!” You say, yes, it’s true, summertime is a gift. There’s more to be said about the Giver of the gift. For now, though, yes, what you said is true — summertime is a gift.

Really that’s the kind of thing we’re aiming for: A mind active and aware, looking out into the world with discernment, and choosing to fasten in upon what’s found there that is yet still pleasing to God.

Now, I’ll admit, these two examples of the professor and the neighbor — they’re fairly straightforward. Not all of them are — we can imagine situations that are far less clear — is this good, is it not? Should I set my mind here, should I not?

But the reason I chose examples which are more on the “clear” side of things, is because I actually think most of what we see and hear out in the world — is over there on the clear side of things. Like, the vast majority of the time, it’s fairly clear — this is honoring to God, and therefore good. This is dishonoring to God, and therefore bad.

But where the difficulty comes in is actually being aware of what our mind is doing as we see and hear our world. I mean, isn’t it the case that we often fail to notice the subtle shifts going on in our minds day after day after day?

Monday: this thing is totally false.

Tuesday: this thing is very false.

Wednesday: This thing is fairly false.

Thursday: I think this thing is false.

Friday: they’re all saying it’s not false. But true.

Saturday: The experts out there say its objectively true.

Sunday: on your way to church. Is it true?

The difficulty is being aware of, and vigilant over, what our minds are doing day in, day out, aswe see and hear our world.

Take the second virtue in our list as an example:

whatever is HonorableWhatever is honorable. I think we can add in commendable, and worthy of praise here as well. All three have this component of receiving outward affirmation. Other people honor things, commend things, praise things.

Now, you’re in the grocery store checkout aisle. There is a mom in front of you, you can tell she’s tired, and she’s got kids tugging on her arms, and she’s got a cart full of vegetables, fruits, hearty loaves of bread, meat. I mean, this isn’t all pop tarts and lunchables — like this woman is going to have to prepare this food. It’s going to require her time, energy — selflessness, giving the extra effort to ensure her kids are getting some good, healthy food.

To this woman’s right is a rack of magazines, one of which features on its cover, another woman. She doesn’t look tired, no kids tugging on her arm, she’s just standing there, clothed and posed so as to lure eyes and enflame lusts. Now, which woman in this scene is doing the honorable thing? The praiseworthy thing? It’s not a difficult question! The difficulty is in recognizing where your eyes and your mind has been all this time you’ve been sitting in line in the grocery checkout aisle. Has your mind been set on what, right there in front of you, is honorable? Or, on what to your right, is dishonorable? Brothers and sisters, we need to literally be listening to Paul’s voice ringing in our ears throughout the day: Set your mind on these things.

Whatever is JustThird in our list of virtues is just. Now, I’d like to suggest that this is the virtue we most need God’s word to train and direct us in. This is the virtue we least intuitively understand — justice. My evidence is the fact that as Christians, not talking non-Christians here, as Christians, we often question God’s sense of justice… Hell for eternity? The flood killed everyone but Noah and his family? God led his people in the conquest of Canaan? I mean, who hasn’t been bothered by Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers — he gets paid just as much as me though I worked eight more hours than he did?

If any of these virtues requires the most Bible-saturated training, I’d suggest it is this one. Friends, God determines what is just.

Whatever is pureFourth, whatever is pure. The idea here is untainted. Clean. You might think: something that, were I to have seen it back in the Garden of Eden, this is the way it would’ve looked. Pure.

Children are a good example of this. Now, don’t mishear me: Children sin. They’re born with sin. And yet, their childlikeness, at least in terms of the way Jesus referred to their childlikeness, do have a kind of purity to them.

They’re just fine asking for help, not concerned about their pride. They’re just fine not doing their hair or dressing up a certain way — they’re not ashamed of their appearance. They’re curious about the world. Hopeful about the future.

Not ignoring their sin, which is real, but children do have a purity about them we ought to appreciate and give God thanks for. In fact, kids, thank you for being kids — we give God thanks for you.

Whatever is lovelyLast, whatever is lovely. We already paired commendable with honorable. And “If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,” more or less join hands around this entire list of virtues in a sort of summary form. So, whatever is lovely. The idea is pleasing, or agreeable. The kind of thing that could even catch you off guard and make you think, “ah, isn’t that nice?” A beautiful melody. Smell of fresh-baked bread. A young man helping an old woman cross the street. A sunset. Loveliness. It’s there, we just got to see it, and set our minds upon it.

So those are the things we’re to look for, brothers and sisters. The terms, definitions, Paul’s laid them all out for us to consider. But then in verse 9, he changes course a bit. Still on the lookout for these virtues, but he goes from those virtues in abstract form, and brings them down into the concrete examples.

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.” Not just theoretical anymore, but concrete examples. What you’ve actually seen and experienced in me during our time spent together, put ‘em into practice out there. Here’s where I’ll suggest: If you’re sitting here this morning thinking, “I have no idea how to discern what’s really true, honorable, just out there. Like it’s really hard for me, at times, to know what, as a Christian to enjoy, what, as a Christian, to avoid.” The terms, definitions of truth, justice, purity, loveliness just aren’t landing for you. Get some time with others in this church. Others who’ve perhaps been Christians for longer. Watch as they put theoretical into concrete examples for you, at work, at home, at the coffee shop. Then, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in them” consider putting it into practice. As you do, like our text says, the God of peace will be with you.

Now, this is what’s cool. We’re going to close here. I’ve got just one more item for us to consider. Paul says, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.” Well, what exactly is it that we’ve learned, received, heard, seen in Paul in this letter? Like, we’re nearing the end of the letter, Paul’s saying, “Hey, what you’ve seen in me, put it into practice. What have we seen in him? I’ve got four things that we can see in Paul in this letter. Four things for us, as a church, to practice.

Practice These ThingsFirst, most obvious, Paul is a Jesus worshiper. A Jesus worshiper. Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ” … 1:23 “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” … 3:7-8, “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ”

Paul is a Jesus worshiper.

Second, Paul is a Joyful Servant. A joyful servant. Philippians 1:1, “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus.” That’s the title he ascribed to himself: Servant of Christ. Phil. 1:3, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,” It’s his joy to serve them through prayer. Phil. 2:17, “Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.” Even if he’s got to die in his service to them, he will yet rejoice.

Paul is a Joyful Servant.

Third, Generous Discipler. Generous discipler.

Philippians 1:23-25, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith.” For Paul, more life simply means more giving of his life for the spiritual progress of others.

Paul is a Generous Discipler.

Fourth and finally, Welcoming Witness. A welcoming witness. Philippians 1:12-13, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.” You talk about welcoming witness? How about welcoming the guards who are shackling your hands and feet together, and saying, “Hey, so long as you’re here, let me tell you about Jesus.”

Paul is a Welcoming Witness.

What have we “learned and received and heard and seen” in Paul in this letter that we ought to practice? He is a Jesus worshiper, a joyful servant, a generous discipler, and a welcoming witness.

So, how about it? How about as a church family, we go on that journey together, onward, eyes on what is good, and putting into practice, the identities of being Jesus worshipers, joyful servants, welcoming witnesses, and generous disciplers?

The TableWell, Jesus, the one whom we worship, is also the perfectly joyful servant. And as we come to this table, we’re reminded of his ultimate act of service to us — enduring the cross, in our place, and for the joy set before him. That’s what this bread and this cup are here to remind us of. So, if you’re here today and you’ve trusted in Jesus, we invite you to take and eat with us. If you’ve not put your trust in Jesus, we ask that you’d let the elements pass, but we pray you would, in this moment, receive Jesus, become a worshiper of him.

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Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit, accomplish your will in us now, through your preached word, in Jesus’s name, amen.

This Spring I’ve been helping to coach four different sports teams — three baseball teams and a flag football team — and apart from having to keep up with 46 boys’ names, it’s been doable.

The focus has not been winning. One of the things I’ve told the guys since the start of the season is that the amount of games you win in middle school baseball is probably not going to make a difference in your life, but the things you learn might. The emphasis has been growth and development — not mainly in skills, but in character. What matters most is not winning but it’s who you are becoming — how you are learning to be.

And look, that goal has been put to the test because we’ve not been winning. Come to find out, the character development stuff has not just been for the players, but it’s been for coaches. I feel my own need to keep growing — “God is still working on me!”

And that’s what our passage is about this morning, Philippians 4, verses 4–7. Paul is landing the plane of this letter, and beginning in verse 4 he gives a rapid-fire list of commands connected to three character qualities.

And Paul ending a letter like this is not unusual. He does it in other letters. These are the things he wants to leave with the church. He’s saying: While I’ve still got you, before you go, take this with you — and these verses in Philippians 4 are all about these Christians being a certain kind of people, having a certain kind of character. Three qualities: joy, gentleness, and peace.

We’re going to look at each one of these this morning, but before we get there, we need to answer two preliminary questions?

How are these qualities connected?
Why do these qualities matter?

1) How are these qualities connected?

This is a tricky question because, at one level, we know that joy, gentleness, and peace are connected — they’re all fruit of the Spirit — but we’re not exactly sure how they’re connected in this passage. What is Paul thinking about their relationship to one another? Now, we could meditate on this, and put our sanctified reason to work, and we might say that …

Joy is most foundational. It’s at the heart, down deep in our souls, and then that joy is evidenced outwardly as reasonableness and experienced inwardly as peace.

We could try to make a case like that, and that is all theologically valid. But here’s the thing: the grammar of this passage does not tell us that. The actual wording of these verses doesn’t say anything about how these qualities are connected.

And so I’m reluctant to say a lot about that, at least in a sermon. Maybe in a different setting, or in a different kind of sermon, we could ponder the connectedness more, but my aim today is to give you an exegetical sermon.

That’s the kind of preaching that we do at Cities Church most of the time (not all the time; we’ve done some topical-theological sermons in the past), but most of the time we take a book of the Bible and we walk through it bit by bit, and we try to exegete or interpret meaning from the text.

The Bible says about itself that it’s inspired by God — breathed out by the Holy Spirit — which means that what the Bible says is what God says. Therefore the words really matter! We should never read into the text what we want, but we need to discover what the text says, and then sit under its authority as the word of God.

And when I apply that conviction to these verses, it means I’m going to explain each of the qualities as standing on their own, separate from one another, because that’s the way Paul writes it.

2) Why do these qualities matter?

What’s the point of character anyway? Why is it important to develop character and be a certain kind of person? Well, the truth is, for some people, it’s not important, but for Christians it is, and it’s all got to do with that short sentence in verse 5: “The Lord is at hand.”

When Paul says “the Lord” here he’s talking about Jesus, and the word for “at hand” simply means “near.” Paul is saying the Lord is near. Jesus is close.

Close to who? To doing what? Jesus is close to us right now in his activity and care — he has sent his Spirit here in us and among us — and he’s close to the event of this return. Jesus is always involved and at work in our lives and soon he’s coming back. And that is not a novel idea to Paul — but it’s the dominant theme in the entire New Testament. In fact, in several places when we’re commanded to live in a certain way, it’s connected to the event of Jesus’s return. Our behavior now is connected to the future coming of Jesus. This is like the air we breathe when we read the New Testament. For example, take what Paul says in Titus 2:11.

He says that God’s grace has appeared to us now, and it trains us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Take what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:13,

“… set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be comforted to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.”

Take what James says in James 5:8 — even James (no offense, James),

“You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another…”

In other words, be a certain kind of person right now, church, because Jesus is about to walk through that door! He’s close. He’s right here, all the time.

And to clarify something for us, one of the things that we like to say a lot at Cities Church is that “Jesus is real.” And when we say that, this is what we mean.

When we say “Jesus is real” we’re not talking about his historical reliability or anything to do with apologetics (now we could talk about that, because it’s all solid and it can be helpful), but when we say Jesus is real we mean what Paul means here — the Lord is at hand.

Jesus is the greatest, most all-encompassing reality in the universe. He has already changed everything about the world, and one day he’s going to change it all for good, and out of all the things that we need to remember in life, THAT is the most important.

Jesus is real. The Lord is at hand. He’s close. That’s the biggest assumption of the New Testament, and it should define us as disciples of Jesus. That’s why you live a certain way now. That’s why you should be a certain kind of person.

We’re not really interested in moral improvement for the sake of moral improvement — better ourselves to better our world — okay, fine, but that’s not really the point.

Instead: Be a certain kind of person now, Christian, because your Christ is about to split the sky wide open and you will see him and you will stand before him and so live right now in witness to that wonder.

That’s why character matters. … even more than winning.

Paul exhorts us in three character qualities. Here’s the first…

1) Be a person of spiritual joy.This is verse 4:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”

Paul gives the command to rejoice twice in this verse, and it’s the same command he already gave in 3:1. In 3:1 he says, “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.” He uses the exact same words in 4:4 — and now let’s recall all the other places in Philippians where Paul talks about joy, like in … 1:18, when Paul rejoices that Christ is preached even though some of the preachers have selfish motives. Or 2:2, when Paul exhorts the church to complete his joy by being united. Or 2:17–18, when Paul tells the church to share his joy because they’ve shared in the same ministry. Or 2:29, when he says they should welcome Epaphroditus with great joy because he almost died for the work of Christ. Or in 4:10, which we’ll see later, when Paul says he rejoiced in the Lord greatly because of God’s provision for him through the church.

There’s a lot of joy in this book! It’s no wonder that commentators call Philippians the “epistle of joy.” And Philippians 4:4 is where it’s most emphasized, and some of you already know this …

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice,

Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice.”

Clarifying Spiritual JoyThat’s Philippians 4:4. Not only does Paul say it twice, but he says to do it “always.”

And that is “always” as in every circumstance.

Every circumstance as in your joy is derived from something deeper than your circumstances and it overflows from those depths into whatever you have going on. That’s why Paul says “rejoice in the Lord.” This is not just any kind of joy, but the Puritan Thomas Watson simply calls this “spiritual joy.” Watson says,

“Spiritual joy is higher built than [that which is built] upon creatures, for [spiritual joy] is built on the love of God, on the promises, and on the blood of Christ” (271).

That’s why he says it’s like a spring of water underground. It’s possible for this joy to abound in places the world would never expect it.

Because remember who Paul is talking to here. This is a small church surrounded by the encroaching forces of the world superpower. These Christians were the social underdogs. Life for them was not smooth. Their beloved apostle is writing from prison, awaiting a trial, and they could be next.

Paul is not saying to rejoice in their problems.

He’s not saying that they should be all “Gee golly everything’s okay” when everything is not okay.

Paul is not suggesting head-in-the-clouds escapism.

This is not the irrational denial of hardship.

But to rejoice in the Lord, means that whatever the hardship is, however painful the suffering may be, Jesus is who he is; Jesus has defeated sin and the grave, and Jesus will come again — so we rejoice in him. Always in him. Spiritual joy.

And this kind of character is so vital to our witness.

A friend once told me that the biggest hurdle in our evangelism is that we have a lot of sad Christians trying to convert happy sinners.

In on the SecretBut when we rejoice in the Lord, that’s different. This is at the heart of our faith.

Paul doesn’t talk about joy only in this letter, he talks about joy in almost all of his letters. One New Testament scholar has called Paul the “theologian of joy” and one of the most astounding truths Paul makes clear is that God himself is a joyful God.

We see this all throughout Scripture — but Paul says it plainly in 1 Timothy 1:11 — he says we’ve been changed by “the glorious gospel of the happy God.”

All of creation is the overflow of God’s happiness and our great end as God’s creatures is to share in his happiness. Everything, most ultimately, is from joy in God and for joy in God. God is the source of our joy, and although now we experience this joy dimly, it is real joy from God and one day we will have its full.

And when we know this it’s like being in on the greatest secret of the universe.

If you’ve ever thrown a surprise party for someone or given a surprise gift for someone, I think you’ll know what I’m getting at here …

I recently threw a big surprise moment for my oldest son’s 13th birthday. I had his grandparents surprise him from North Carolina, and in an unusual way. I had my dad meet Micah at a certain place, completely unexpected. I had planned the whole thing so that Micah would show up at this place and my dad would already be there, to Micah’s surprise.

And, in the weeks and days leading up to this moment, I got more excited. Because I knew what was coming. I knew it was gonna be good, and I’ll be honest, there was a kind of lightness to my step. Y’all know what I mean?

I knew something good was coming, and it gave me joy.

And truly that experience can be applied to the Christian life overall.

Because we know the truth about God and ultimate reality … Because we know that when Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord he’s telling us to do what we’re made for … because we know God’s promise …

No matter what, we can look to the future and say, Something good is coming.

We’re in on the secret, except we don’t have to keep it a secret. We are headed to joy and we wanna bring people with us. And I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. A lot times maybe. Days can be long and dark. Terrible things happen in this world. Frustrations happen in this world. But Jesus is close. Joy is coming.

Like the psalmist says, “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy!” (Psalm 43:4). In him we can rejoice.

Be a person of spiritual joy.

2) Be a person of obvious gentleness.Verse 5:

“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.”

The word there for “reasonableness” is also translated “gentleness.” That’s the way it’s translated in the handful of other places this word is used in the New Testament (1 Timothy 3:3; Titus 3:2; James 3:17; 2 Peter 3:18).

The main idea of this word is to be lenient. It’s the opposite of insisting on every single letter of the law — it’s the opposite of strict justice; it’s the opposite of being “stiff and bristly.” You’re not demanding, but it’s to be gracious and patient. Gentle. Lenient. A word we might use is “chill.” Or maybe even a better word to capture the idea is be flexible.

And we have to be careful here because right away, we can start thinking about this as a personality trait — it seems like some people are just wired to be this way more than others — but hold on. Remember: Paul is commanding this. He’s not commanding a personality trait, this is a character quality. This is a matter of the heart. It comes from the inside-out.

And honestly this is one of those unassuming qualities that’s easier to recognize when you see it missing.

For example, you are not being reasonable/gentle/flexible … If you lose your head because Chipotle added the wrong salsa to your burrito bowl. Or if you snap at someone in the kitchen because they’re in your way. Or if you immediately think of retaliation when someone crosses you. Or if you argue balls and strikes with a 14-year-old umpire in a youth baseball game.

You are not reasonable/gentle/flexible when you live in a constant defensive posture, when you are easily disappointed in others, when you are overly critical about everything, and when you are quick to be the victim.

Now I’m so glad that this doesn’t describe us or any Christians we know — but man, don’t you want to be different than that? Don’t you want to be large-hearted! Magnanimous! Reasonable! Flexible!

Well we’re called to be that, and we’re called tomake it obvious to everyone.

We should think of this as foundational to our witness. It’s kind of like pre-evangelism. It’s necessary. Before you share the good news of Jesus with someone, how about you don’t shake your fist at them in traffic?

Look, what I’m about to say might blow your mind, but I think we’re ready for this. Here it is: You cannot treat someone like they’re a moron and then tell them that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life.

We’re talking entry-level Christian living here. “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.” Be flexible.

Be a person of obvious gentleness.

3) Be a person of inner peace.This comes from verses 6 and 7, and this quality is different from the others because we are not commanded to have peace, but peace is the promise if we obey the command to pray. That’s the shorthand way of putting it. Look at the language in verse 6:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

This is a negative-positive command. It’s a put off/put on — don’t do this, but do this. And another way to say that last part is simply: Tell it to God.

Don’t be anxious, but in everything tell it to God — and tell him with thanksgiving,which is a fail proof to being a whiner. The best antidote to have a grumbling heart is to be mainly thankful. There are still things to pray about. There are still things you need and want God to do, but you ask God for those things in recognition of the past grace God has given you. We come to God, not with an attitude that says, “Ugh, he’s never done anything for me. Here goes.”

No, instead, we come to God, saying: I’m alive, right now, because of you. My heart is beating because of you. You’ve kept me all these years. You’ve always provided for me. Jesus Christ died for me. I know you love me, Father! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

And then you let God know what you want. That’s the other side to not being anxious. Don’t be anxious, but in everything, with thanksgiving, tell it to God.

Now both sides of this negative-positive command give some insight to the other.

What does prayer tell us about anxiety?

Why are we anxious?

We’re anxious because we know we don’t have the control to make things go the way we want them to. And without that control, we fear the thing will go badly. I can’t make this certain thing happen, and therefore I’m anxious about it.

At one level, to be anxious is to be merely human. We desire things that we ourselves cannot create. That’s the human condition, and it’s hard, and you can see why throughout history, humans have tried to figure this out.

One alternative is to stop desiring things altogether. If wanting things and not being able to create them produces anxiety, then stop wanting things. That’s Stoicism. It’s indifference to reality.

The thinking is that: If you care, you get hurt and disappointed, so stop caring. Be apathetic. Walk through life shrugging your shoulders.

That’s one pagan way to live in our humanity, but Christian, don’t do that. And beware the Stoic mindset because it’s out there. But the Christian way to wrestle with the human condition is to pray.

Don’t be anxious, but instead pray. Tell it to God. You don’t have control to make things go the way you want them to, but you know the One who does have control — he is your heavenly Father and he loves you, and so ask him. Ask him. Let your requests be made known to God, and, verse 7, God will always give you exactly what you want — is that what it says?

No, the result of not being anxious, but praying is that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

There’s a question here about the peace of God. Is this God’s peace, as in the peace that God has in himself? Or is this peace from God that he gives us? I take this latter view. I think this is the experience of inner peace that God gives us from himself as the God of peace.

And this kind of peace is greater than human thought. That’s what “surpasses all understanding” means there.

And this is important because a lot of times, in our anxiety, in life, we want to figure things out. We put our minds to work and we try to do the math and we think, think, think — but the peace God gives us transcends our ability to think. It means we don’t have to have it all figured out and we can still rest. We may not get the things we’re asking for, but we have peace.

And, as it turns out, this peace is what we’ve needed most all along. It’s a peace that guards our hearts and minds from anxiety. We know we’re gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. Even as we keep knocking, we keep asking, we keep telling it to God. And we do that with everything.

I want us, each of us, to be this kind of person. I want us to be this kind of people. When someone is carrying anxiety, it is always a fair question to ask them if they’d prayed about it. My great-grandfather used to love to sing the song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” And that first stanza just nails it:

“What a Friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit,

O what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer!”

If you’re anxious about something but you have not prayed about it, start there.

And an even better way to go about this as a church, is that when we meet anxiety in one another, rather than just refer people to God, let’s take people to God.

This is why it’s so helpful to pray with one another on the spot. It’s not just so that you don’t forget to pray, but it’s that you’re taking the thing to God right away and you’re bringing you’re brother or sister with you. Because Jesus is close. He’s right there. Tell him about it.

Be a person of abundant joy.

Be a person of obvious gentleness.

Be a person of inner peace.

Church, however many wins we get, character matters more. Let’s be this kind of people in Christ Jesus.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableThe last three words in verse 7, “in Christ Jesus,” puts everything in perspective. The character we’ve been talking about is blood-bought. We don’t become this kind of people in order to earn God’s love, but this is because of God’s love. God has shown his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! And his goal is to make us like Christ. He’s still working on me.

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Father, by the power of your Holy Spirit, accomplish your will in us now, through your preached word, in Jesus’s name, amen.

This Spring I’ve been helping to coach four different sports teams — three baseball teams and a flag football team — and apart from having to keep up with 46 boys’ names, it’s been doable.

We’re going to look at each one of these this morning, but before we get there, we need to answer two preliminary questions?

How are these qualities connected?
Why do these qualities matter?

1) How are these qualities connected?

Joy is most foundational. It’s at the heart, down deep in our souls, and then that joy is evidenced outwardly as reasonableness and experienced inwardly as peace.

And when I apply that conviction to these verses, it means I’m going to explain each of the qualities as standing on their own, separate from one another, because that’s the way Paul writes it.

2) Why do these qualities matter?

When Paul says “the Lord” here he’s talking about Jesus, and the word for “at hand” simply means “near.” Paul is saying the Lord is near. Jesus is close.

Take what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:13,

Take what James says in James 5:8 — even James (no offense, James),

“You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another…”

In other words, be a certain kind of person right now, church, because Jesus is about to walk through that door! He’s close. He’s right here, all the time.

And to clarify something for us, one of the things that we like to say a lot at Cities Church is that “Jesus is real.” And when we say that, this is what we mean.

We’re not really interested in moral improvement for the sake of moral improvement — better ourselves to better our world — okay, fine, but that’s not really the point.

That’s why character matters. … even more than winning.

Paul exhorts us in three character qualities. Here’s the first…

1) Be a person of spiritual joy.This is verse 4:

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice,

Rejoice, rejoice, and again I say rejoice.”

Clarifying Spiritual JoyThat’s Philippians 4:4. Not only does Paul say it twice, but he says to do it “always.”

And that is “always” as in every circumstance.

“Spiritual joy is higher built than [that which is built] upon creatures, for [spiritual joy] is built on the love of God, on the promises, and on the blood of Christ” (271).

That’s why he says it’s like a spring of water underground. It’s possible for this joy to abound in places the world would never expect it.

Paul is not saying to rejoice in their problems.

He’s not saying that they should be all “Gee golly everything’s okay” when everything is not okay.

Paul is not suggesting head-in-the-clouds escapism.

This is not the irrational denial of hardship.

And this kind of character is so vital to our witness.

A friend once told me that the biggest hurdle in our evangelism is that we have a lot of sad Christians trying to convert happy sinners.

In on the SecretBut when we rejoice in the Lord, that’s different. This is at the heart of our faith.

We see this all throughout Scripture — but Paul says it plainly in 1 Timothy 1:11 — he says we’ve been changed by “the glorious gospel of the happy God.”

And when we know this it’s like being in on the greatest secret of the universe.

If you’ve ever thrown a surprise party for someone or given a surprise gift for someone, I think you’ll know what I’m getting at here …

I knew something good was coming, and it gave me joy.

And truly that experience can be applied to the Christian life overall.

No matter what, we can look to the future and say, Something good is coming.

Like the psalmist says, “I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy!” (Psalm 43:4). In him we can rejoice.

Be a person of spiritual joy.

2) Be a person of obvious gentleness.Verse 5:

“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.”

And honestly this is one of those unassuming qualities that’s easier to recognize when you see it missing.

Well we’re called to be that, and we’re called tomake it obvious to everyone.

We’re talking entry-level Christian living here. “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.” Be flexible.

Be a person of obvious gentleness.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

This is a negative-positive command. It’s a put off/put on — don’t do this, but do this. And another way to say that last part is simply: Tell it to God.

And then you let God know what you want. That’s the other side to not being anxious. Don’t be anxious, but in everything, with thanksgiving, tell it to God.

Now both sides of this negative-positive command give some insight to the other.

What does prayer tell us about anxiety?

Why are we anxious?

The thinking is that: If you care, you get hurt and disappointed, so stop caring. Be apathetic. Walk through life shrugging your shoulders.

No, the result of not being anxious, but praying is that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

And this kind of peace is greater than human thought. That’s what “surpasses all understanding” means there.

“What a Friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit,

O what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer!”

If you’re anxious about something but you have not prayed about it, start there.

And an even better way to go about this as a church, is that when we meet anxiety in one another, rather than just refer people to God, let’s take people to God.

Be a person of abundant joy.

Be a person of obvious gentleness.

Be a person of inner peace.

Church, however many wins we get, character matters more. Let’s be this kind of people in Christ Jesus.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

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For those of you who have been Christians for a long time, have you ever heard a sermon before and thought, “Wow! When the pastor said that one part, it was like he was talking straight to me”?

Can you imagine what Euodia and Syntyche must have felt after this letter was read to the church at Philippi?

This letter from Paul was read aloud in one sitting to the gathered church, and in the audience of that church would have been the two women that Paul names here, Euodia and Syntyche. And all we know about these women are three things:

They both were members of the church at Philippi — they’ve got strong Greek names, not Jewish names. So they would have been some of the Gentiles who converted to Christ when the gospel advanced to Philippi in Acts 16.
They both labored with Paul in the gospel as his friends. These two women were not church consumers or ministry bystanders, but they were active with Paul in the mission — and that’s why Paul addresses them by name. He’s not shaming them by doing this, but it’s just the opposite. By saying their names he is highlighting his personal connection to them. We know these women were important to Paul and to the church.
They had a disagreement. We know this because Paul entreats them to “agree in the Lord” and Paul would not say that if they already were agreeing. So they had some kind of disagreement.

And other than these three things, we don’t know much else about what’s going on here, and it kinda drives some people crazy. There’s a lot of mystery in this passage: Who is this “true companion” Paul mentions? Who is Clement? What exactly was this conflict about?

Commentators have spilled a lot of ink with all kinds of speculations here, and I’m not going to get into any of that — I figure that if Paul wanted us to know more details then he would have given us more details. So instead, for this sermon, I just want to highlight three observations in these verses that are relevant for our life together as a local church. Here they are:

Local church unity really matters (verse 2).
Local church unity is owned by everyone (verse 3a).
Local church members’ names are written in the book of life (verse 3bc).

We’re gonna slow down and focus on each one of these, but first let’s pray, and ask the Father to do more in this time than what we have expected:

Father in heaven, we believe that the Bible is your word to us, and that means that anytime we hear your word preached it is always for us. By your Spirit, through your word, you address us as a local church and as individuals who are part of the local church. And so we ask: give us hearts to receive what you have for us this morning, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Local church unity really matters (verse 2)

When Paul tells Euodia and Syntyche to “agree in the Lord” — to have unity — it’s the third major mention of unity in this letter. Unity has been a theme, going back to Chapter 1, verse 27. Pastor David Mathis mentioned this verse again last week. Philippians 1:27,

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel …”

1:27 is extremely connected to our passage today. Notice three ideas back in 1:27: Standing firm; Striving side by side in the gospel; Having unity …

And if you remember, the unity part continues into Chapter 2:

“So if there is any encouragement in Christ,

any comfort from love,

any participation in the Spirit,

any affection and sympathy,

complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

Unity!

So standing, striving, unity — each of these ideas in 1:27 show up again in the first few verses of Chapter 4.

Everybody look at those words “to agree” in Chapter 4, verse 2.

Those two words “to agree” is literally to have “the same mind” — and those are the exact same words that Paul uses in Chapter 2, verse 2. So the idea of unity in Philippians 2:2 and Philippians 4:2 is the exact same, it’s just that now in 4:2 Paul is repeating that idea with practical application. Paul has obviously known about the disagreement with Euodia and Syntyche since the start of the letter, so it’s kind of like the whole letter has been heading toward this moment. Chapter 4, verse 2 is not an afterthought, but Paul saying this has been his plan.

It reminds us that unity in the local church is not theoretical, butunity really matters, because disagreements really happen. This is real-life.

Talking ‘Everyday Conflict’When you put a bunch of people together, each with their own stories and experiences, and personalities and preferences, there will be moments when we relationally bump into each other. The writer Ken Sande calls this “everyday conflict.” And we’ve all been there. We’ve either been involved in these conflicts or we’ve known about conflicts, and as a fact, in the life of our church over the past decade, most of our relational conflicts have been between women.

Now these have not been massive disruptions — most of the time they’re small disagreements —but I think they tend to happen more among women because women care more than men.

I’m going to do some natural theology here, but we have to be okay with speaking in general. In general, men are more externally-oriented. Men think: “let’s go build something.” And of course there are disagreements among men, but with men we either resolve them or we separate. Because we’re looking externally. We’re shoulder-to-shoulder, and the question is about the work: Can we get over this to keep doing the work together? We’re externally-oriented.

But see, men and women are different. Women are integrators. They are internally-oriented. They cultivate and beautify inside. Women have wombs and make wombs. Sisters, hear me, in general, and profoundly so, you are nesters. And it’s glorious and indispensable to the local church, but it also means that when conflict arises, your first instinct is not to resolve or separate, but it’s to go silent. Because you want to integrate. You want it all to go together, and so maybe if you just keep your distance on that issue, maybe it will go away, maybe it won’t be that big a deal, maybe a little tension won’t be so bad. You just want to hold everything together. And that’s precious! That’s motherly. Happy Mother’s Day!

That’s at least how things started in the church at Philippi.

We don’t know the details of why these two women are disagreeing, but we know this: the conflict was not severe enough to split the church, but it was also not minor enough not to be addressed.

Better Than OkayAnd probably tells us something about Paul’s standard of unity. Most likely these women were “okay.” They were tip-toeing around each other, making it all work. They were okay. But Paul wants them to be better than “okay” — he wants them to agree in the Lord.

The way Paul puts this is important. He says the exact same thing to both women and he addresses them in alphabetical order: “I entreat Euodia” and “I entreat Syntyche.” He’s not taking sides here. He speaks to both women individually and he appeals to what they both have in common — they both are in the Lord. This means that whatever the root of the issue was, whatever caused the conflict, because they are both in the Lord — they are both united to Christ — let that be the source of their unity together.

The blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin! — the resurrection power of Jesus at work in our hearts! — the Spirit of Jesus who is completing in us the good work that he began! — That can do better than “okay.” Because of THAT, we can agree.

These sisters are already on the same page when it comes to the most ultimate things in reality, now get on the same page about this conflict. It doesn’t mean they have to become ‘besties,’ and it doesn’t mean that act like the thing never happened, but they can come to resolution in Christ. They can think the same way in Christ, for Christ, because of Christ.

Paul entreats these women to do that, and so I would like to entreat the women in our church. My sisters, I thank God for you. Our church needs you. You shape the heart of this community. You are the warmth of our fellowship. You are like the welcome of God to everyone who comes here, and so, sisters, I entreat you: agree in the Lord.

Unity really matters.

Here’s the second observation …

2) Local church unity is owned by everyone (verse 3a)Look at the first part of verse 3:

“Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women. …”

And like I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of speculation about who Paul is talking about here, and some arguments are better than others, but I’m not going to mention them because the main thing I want us to see here is the high-level fact that there are two women who have a conflict, and there is somebody else who is supposed to help them.

You Can Be a PeacemakerPaul gives a command here. This true companion, another member of this local church, is commanded to help Euodia and Syntyche to agree in the Lord.

This means that we should expect disagreements between two parties to require a third-party helper. When there’s a conflict between some members of the church, it’s other members of the church who should help them resolve the conflict. The name we might give these other members, these helpers, is “peacemaker.”

And I think it’s helpful that Paul doesn’t mention this peacemaker by name, because it’s actually the responsibility of anyone in the church. Any of us could be a peacemaker. If we’re all leaning in and moving in the same direction, and doing what Paul exhorts us to do — if we’re living in a way that witnesses to the all-satisfying value of Jesus (1:27a), if we’re “being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (2:2) — if we’re all doing that and any of you finds out about two members who are disagreeing, you should move toward them to help them. The whole church must take ownership of the church’s unity.

Which means if there’s ever festering conflict in a church, if there’s disunity, it’s not just because two people disagree, but it’s also because others are not helping like Paul says we should. Every single one of us should be ready to become peacemakers. And there’s not really an alternative here, unless you also want to become part of the problem. Conflict in one part of the church is the whole church’s business because unresolved conflict will eventually affect the whole church.

When It FestersAnd you can imagine how this goes:

Euodia has this issue with Syntyche, and she says it’s not a big deal but then she tells another friend about it. And that friend brings it up in a Life Group as a prayer request, and then suddenly there’s three women who think Euodia is right.

At the same time, Syntyche tells one of her friends about it, a little more removed from Euodia, and that friend is all in with Syntyche and she can’t believe Euodia would do that. And then that friend’s husband gets in on it too, but here’s the thing: Euodia and Syntyche are cold toward one another but cordial — maybe they’re okay — but the unresolved conflict means that sides slowly begin to form.

Charitable judgment is pushed aside and suspicions toward one another start to creep in. And the local church, which is the family of God, which is an embassy of heaven on this earth, it starts to become a place of anxiety — and the focus is not on How do we make Jesus known in this world? but the focus is: How do we make all this hold together?

And meanwhile, Satan is throwing a party because the whole thing started with an argument about carpet color.

And we should laugh here because it’s silly, but church, Jesus isn’t laughing. Do we have any idea how disunity in the church must grieve him? He bought us with his blood. He has given us the Spirit of unity! His Spirit is the love of God poured into our hearts! — and what are the things that we let come between us?

Getting in the RoomI’ve tried to be a peacemaker one time, in a formal sense, years ago. I was part of a different church, there was a disagreement between two individuals, and I felt like I had enough rapport with them both to help them agree. And so we got together in a room, and they sat across from one another and I sat here, and honestly, that was the hardest part. It was just getting in the room, in front of one another.

And the only way it happened — the only way it happens — is because both individuals want to be there. Both individuals have to want to, in humility, count the other more significant than themselves. They have to want to look not only to their own interests but also to the interests of the other. They have to want to have the mind of Christ — which means they will suffer the discomfort of that conversation for something greater than comfort. They will risk humiliation because the honor of unity is more precious that the honor of winning.

Church, I’ll tell you, if we can have a Philippians 2-heart like Jesus and just do what the Bible says, everything around here is going to be good. I promise.

So for all of us, each one of you true companions, if there’s disagreement, help. Let’s point one another to Philippians 2. Let’s be peacemakers. Local church unity is owned by everyone.

Local church members’ names are written in the book of life (verse 3c)In verse 3 Paul makes it clear that Euodia and Syntyche are his friends. They are his sisters whom he loves and longs for. They are his joy and crown, his beloved, and they’ve served the Lord together. They’ve “labored side by side with [Paul] in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of [Paul’s] fellow workers” — and here’s the sentence to end on — “whose names are in the book of life.”

What Is the Book of Life?What is that? We probably heard something about a “book of life” before, but it’s not from Paul. This is the only time in all of Paul’s letters that he mentions the “book of life.” So where does this idea come from?

Well, we first see it in the Old Testament, in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 12. Daniel is talking about the very end of time and he says that those who will be saved are “everyone whose name shall be found written in the book” (12:1).

Then later, in the New Testament, John, in the Book of Revelation, picks up that same theme. The Book of Life is mentioned six times in Revelation, and Revelation 21:27 basically says the same thing as Daniel 12:1. On the last day, the day of judgment, the Book of Life will be opened and only those whose names are written in the book will enter the kingdom of heaven.

So we read about this book in Daniel, and then in Revelation, but most notable of all is that Jesus talks about it.

In Luke 10, Jesus sent out 72 missionaries to go into every town and prepare these towns to receive him. So they’re commissioned out, two by two, and then later they return with joy, and they’re blown away by the mission. They said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”

And do y’all know how Jesus replied?

He said, “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (v. 20).

Written in the book of life. That’s what Jesus is talking about. Isn’t it great when Paul says the same things that Jesus said?

Paul is getting this from Jesus. There is a book in heaven and it has names written in it — and it’s everyone who has put their faith in Jesus — and it’s really important. Eternally important! Because, if your name is in this book, you get to be with Jesus forever.

And if we could remember that our names are written in that book, do you think it could change the way we handle our conflict? That’s why Paul goes here, because remembering that book changes things.

How Does This Impact Our Conflicts?So I want to close with this question: How does this fact — that our names are written in the book of life — how does that impact how we handle conflict?

Three ways:

When we remember that our names are written in the book of life …

First, we will see one another as loved by Jesus.

Paul is thinking here like a Baptist, because he assumes that every member of the local church is a born-again believer. If the local church was a mixed community of Christians and non-Christians, then when there’s conflict, the immediate question is whether the other person is really a Christian or not. It’s instant suspicion.

But, because the local church is made up of only those who have been brought from spiritual death to spiritual life, conflict in the local church is always between two people for whom Jesus died. That’s not theoretical. I’m being very literal here. The person you are disagreeing with — if they are a church member in good standing, duly affirmed by an elder-led covenant membership — that person is your brother, your sister, and Jesus loves them. He knows them and he loves them. Jesus wrote their names down in the book in his blood.

And so someone’s response to conflict — someone’s resistance to even try to agree — actually says more about them than it does anything else. Can you really love your Savior if you despise the one he saved? (See 1 John … Chapter 4, verse 20)

Jesus loves the person you got beef with. Their name is written in the book.

When we remember that our names are written in the book of life …

Second, we will come to help one another with hope.

I think one of the biggest barriers to sustained unity in the local church is our cynicism toward conflict. If we’ve been around long enough and we’ve seen enough conflict, we can do the whole ‘Here we go again.’ That’s cynicism. It’s a subtle doomsday mentality that the conflict will go about as badly as it could. And look, I get it, I’ve been there — but that mentality is wrong.

If our names are written in heaven, the expectation should be that we can agree and we will. We should be eager to get together in the same room and work it out. Look, Jesus is pulling for us! The Spirit is gonna help us! We move toward resolution with hope — humbly and prayerfully, God help us. We can have hope!

When we remember that our names are written in the book of life …

Third, we will rethink our disagreements in light of Jesus’s face.

One thing that Paul is doing at the end of Chapter 4, verse 3 is that he’s sending us back to 3:21. This is for perspective. He’s reminding us: Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Because our name is in that book, we will see Jesus face-to-face one day. We will stand right there with him, transformed. That will be a real moment.

And imagine for a second, in that moment, imagine yourself explaining to Jesus your side of the story. Your looking at him, he’s looking at you …

“Well, Jesus they blah, blah, blah; but they blah, blah, blah; then they blah, blah, blah.”

I can’t help but wonder if on that day all our disagreements will be seen as petty, because on that day we will truly know that there is something more glorious than being right. Whatever you’re holding on to, you’re gonna explain it to Jesus. Could we rethink our disagreements now in light of that day?

Our names, brothers and sisters — our names are written in the book.

Kinda feels like the pastor is talking straight to me.

I’m talking to all of us. Let us agree in the Lord.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableEvery week when we come to the Lord’s Table, it is a uniting ordinance. It’s called communion — we remember our union with Christ by faith and our union with one another in Christ.

And today, I’d like to talk to two categories of folks in the room.

First, if you’re here today and you’re not a Christian, you might wonder: How can I get my name written in that book? The answer is faith in Jesus Christ. So I invite you to put your faith in him right now. Right where you are, know that you cannot save yourself. Trust in Jesus. Just tell him, Jesus, I trust you. Save me.

Second, if you’re a member at this church and there’s some conflict between you and another member of this church, as we receive this table, resolve in your heart that, if possible, as far as it depends on you, you will be at peace with this brother or sister.

Church, Jesus loves you and he has freed you from your sins by his blood. To all who trust him, receive his Table and give him thanks.

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At age 43, I can still remember times when I felt like my body was improving. I could tell I was getting stronger, or running faster, or my overall energy was increasing. But now the most recent and prevailing feeling has been: I’m getting older. I notice the incremental declines. I can feel movement slowly but surely becoming more challenging. New aches and pains come and linger. In recent years I’ve felt both the glory and the humiliation of the human body in this age.

C.S. Lewis wrote in 1960,

Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those . . . who called it the prison or the “tomb” of the soul, [those] to whom it was a “sack of dung,” food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are [others], to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass.”

Lewis says, “All three may be . . . defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.” He continues,

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. (Four Loves, 93)

As Lewis saw 60 years ago, so we see them too today. We have those who feel their body to be a prison; they accent the humiliation of the body. The body holds them back; screens and virtual reality and plastic surgery create new possibilities.

On the other hand, those same screens show image after image of meticulously sculpted and enhanced bodies — those for whom the body is glorious, or must be glorious no matter how much dieting and exercise and surgery it takes.

Third, we have perhaps the road least traveled. Saint Francis’s road. Lewis’s road. Our road. The road of the cross: humiliation now, but not humiliation forever. And that mixed with glory now, but not the glory that is to come.

I mention “Brother Ass” because our passage this morning (surprisingly) mentions our bodies — our present bodies created for glory, now in a state of humiliation, with a spectacular glory still to come — and because we live in times in which we are especially prone to consider the earthly things the real things, and the heavenly things to be pretense or speculation or wishful thinking. What’s implicit in the world’s way of thinking is that the earthly is more real, and right now, and better, while the heavenly is distant, and less real, and less desirable. But Philippians 3:20–21 says exactly the opposite.

Stand Firm Like ThisWe saw last week at the end of verse 19 Paul’s warning about “the enemies of the cross” who have “minds set on earthly things.” This morning we turn to verses 20–21 where Paul makes a contrast between these enemies of the cross and those who are friends of the cross and citizens of heaven. Verse 19 speaks of mere citizens of earth: “their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame” — and especially significant is the final phrase “with minds set on earthly things.”

What we’ll see this morning is the contrast in verses 20–21. Last week was the warning: don’t be like this. Now we catch another glimpse of true Christianity, of the friends of the cross, as we’ve seen other glimpses in chapter 3.

But before we linger in verses 20–21, let’s not miss the main point in 4:1: “stand firm thus in the Lord.” This idea of “standing firm” goes all the way back to 1:27:

“Only let your manner of life [literally, your citizening] be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28and not frightened in anything by your opponents.”

The idea of “standing firm” marks off the heart of the letter in 1:27 to 4:1. We have the citizen language and talk of opponents (be they legalistic Judaizers, 3:2, or worldly “believers,” 3:18–19), and the call to stand firm — and do so together (“in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side”) and do so “in the Lord.” At this structural level, we might summarize the main point of Philippians as stand firm together in the Lord.

But critical to this letter is not just that they stand firm but how. See the “therefore” at the beginning of 4:1? It points us back to all of chapter 3, and even to chapter 2, back to 1:27. Also, see that word “thus” in 4:1? “Stand firm thus in the Lord.” That means, Stand firm like I’ve been saying. Stand firm in this way, like I’ve been showing you. As I’ve been writing about Jesus in chapter 2, and Timothy and Epaphroditus, and like Paul’s own testimony in chapter 3, expressed in such a way that he means for us to imitate him. Stand firm in this way in the Lord. Stand firm like Paul stands firm: on the footing of Christ’s work for you, stand firm against legalistic threats and worldly temptations, and press on to know Jesus now, and look forward to seeing and knowing him, Jesus, face to face. And all that is especially captured and summed up in verses 20–21, which lead into 4:1 for a reason.

So let’s linger in this vision. And what’s striking is that Paul casts this vision in terms of citizenship or civic belonging.

Our Commonwealth in ChristThe leading claim in verses 20–21 is that “our citizenship is in heaven.” Our commonwealth, our homeland, exists in heaven. Our place of true belonging is not just elsewhere on earth, but it is alive and well in heaven.

There is a match here between this citizenship theme in Philippians and what we learn about Philippi in Acts 16, when the gospel first came to town. Philippi wasn’t originally Roman, but had become a Roman colony, and with Rome being the great superpower of the day, the citizens of Philippi naturally prided themselves on being Roman citizens.

How does Paul speak into that civic consciousness in Philippi? He says to those in the church: “our citizenship is in heaven.” No balancing word here about dual citizenship. Nothing like, “Ah, yes, you’re privileged to be Romans, of course (what an exceptional nation), and remember you’re Christians too.” He says simply, without qualification or adjustment, “Christians, our citizenship is in heaven.” Our commonwealth is heaven. Our homeland is heaven. Not “we have another homeland also.” But our homeland, our one homeland, in Christ, is heaven. Which is our deepest and most fundamental identity and place of belonging.

Ask yourself: Am I truly more deeply American or Christian? The spoken answer is easy. But what are the instincts of your heart? And if you can say in good conscience, “Oh, yes, Christian over American,” we might also ask, By how much?

Because we ourselves are not Roman, we don’t get nervous if a first-century Christian says, “I’m a Christian ten thousand times more than a Roman.” Amen! That’s right and good. But as Americans today, with all the socialization it involves, and how we’ve been conditioned and songs we’ve sung and putting of our hands over our hearts, and pledging our allegiance, do we hesitate to say, “I’m a Christian ten thousand times more than an American?”

Back to verse 20, where the key contrast is earthly versus heavenly. Our homeland being heaven contrasts with those who have “minds set on earthly things.” What does that mean to “set your mind on earthly things”? There is a difference between dealing with earthly things and setting your mind on earthly things. Christians and non-Christians alike live in this world and deal with earthly things. But enemies of the cross “set their minds on earthly things.” They awake to earthly things, and reset to earthly things, and default to earthly things. They dream about earthly things and meditate on earthly things. They’re animated by earthly things. They have the mindset of the world, of natural man, rather than of the Spirit, and of heaven.

Three Marks of Heaven’s CitizensBut in contrast to those enemies of the cross, with minds set on earthly things, verses 20–21 give us three marks of heaven’s citizens.

Heaven’s citizens marvel at the power of our King.Verse 21 ends with “the power that enables him [Jesus] even to subject all things to himself.” In our homeland of heaven, a King sits on the throne, a divine-human king. We have a king. If you are in Christ, you have a king — the King of kings. He already rules over all the universe by right. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him by the Father. And he exercises that power as he chooses, and works primarily through his poured-out Spirit, indwelling his own people. And one day, when he returns, he will rule over all in conspicuous, indisputable manifest power.

In celebrating Jesus’s power, Paul uses this curious expression “subject all things to himself.” In the background are two famous psalms and a link between them.

Psalm 8 celebrates the majesty of God by marveling at his grace toward us lowly humans. And Psalm 8:6, remembering the creation, says about man, “You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.” The trouble is, as we saw last year in Hebrews 2, “we do not yet see everything in subjection to him,” that is, man. This world, its creatures, its weather, its disasters, and even our own lives do operate under our control. Not yet.

“But,” says Hebrews 2:9, “we see him . . . namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.” We ourselves have not yet fulfilled the commission of Psalm 8, but Jesus is crowned with glory and on heaven’s throne. Already, in principle, he rules over all, and in function, all is being put under his feet.

Which brings in the second psalm: 110. Verse 1: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Psalm 110 is King David talking, and he says that the Lord God says to David’s lord, the promised Messiah, “Sit at my right hand,” on the throne in heaven, “until I make your enemies your footstool.” This is a picture of what’s going on in the world right now: God almighty is putting Christ’s enemies under his feet. And it’s not as if the Father has all the power and the Son sits back passively. But Christ himself, even now, wields “the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

His sovereign power is unstoppable, uncurbable, unthwartable. He will, with utter certainty, accomplish his will in the ways he sees fit and in the perfect timing he sees fit. His power, his ability to accomplish what he wills, is infinite power, which he not only wields over Satan and demons, and over nations and their rulers and their elections, and over technology and algorithms, and over hurricane force winds and tsunami-size waves, but amazingly he uses this very power, his infinite power, to benefit us, and not only in soul but also in body.

So, heaven’s citizens marvel at the power of our King.

Heaven’s citizens anticipate the spectacular upgrade of our bodies.This is the first part of verse 21: Jesus “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.”

The phrase “lowly body” is the “body of humiliation” we mentioned earlier. On the one hand, our bodies are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14); they were created with a glory, and they have glories still. And on the other hand, because of human sin, God subjected all creation to futility (Romans 8:20), which we see not only in natural disasters but in our own bodies. And so we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for . . . the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). God’s glorious design and building of our human bodies has now become a “body of humiliation” for us in various ways. From aging to disability to sickness to disease, to the aches and pains that dog us or devastate us, our bodies are now not what they were — and not what they will be.

Now, this is a young church. Some of you have the most able, strong, healthy bodies that you’ll have in this life. Soon you will age, and your body will never again, in this life, be what it was. More acute bodily humiliation is coming. And many in this room, deal with devastating disability and disease and weakness and sickness in this fallen world. Oh you know well “the body of humiliation,” and how sweetly does this promise fall on your ears? Jesus “will transform your body of humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory.” You will be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, it will all be gone, all the pain gone, all the frustration gone, all the humiliation gone.

The place where Paul lingers longest over this glorious, resurrection body that will be ours is 1 Corinthians 15, especially verses 42–49:

“What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body [that is, a body fit for the fullness of human life in the Spirit]. . . 49Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

Your resurrection body will be spectacular. Not more aches and pains. No more colds and COVID. No more sprains, contusions, and broken bones. No more heart attacks and strokes and cancer. No more devastating physical and mental disabilities.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you will shine like the sun, not as mere spirits floating like ghosts in heaven, but in your perfected, strong, imperishable, glorified human body.

And the best part of it all isn’t what your body will be like, but who our imperishable bodies and souls will help us to know and enjoy and be near and praise: “the man of heaven.” Our focus in the new heavens and new earth won’t be our bodies. Our perfected bodies will get the distractions of our previous humiliations out of the way. They will enhance and support our making much of our King. But the focus in glory will be the one that we as Christians eagerly await right now — the man of heaven.

So, we marvel at the power of our King. And we anticipate the spectacular upgrade of our bodies.

Heaven’s citizens wait eagerly to see Jesus face to face.Back to verse 20:

“our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Heavenly citizenship matters because Jesus is there as heaven’s king. And glorified spiritual bodies matter because they enable us to enjoy Jesus with full focus and without distraction. As Christians, our hope doesn’t terminate on perfect human societies or perfect human bodies. Our prevailing hope, as Paul says in Philippians 3:10 is “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection.” Seeing him face to face. Hearing him. Praising him. Knowing him. Enjoying him.

When he returns, the partial knowing of verse 10 will become the full knowing of verse 11 as we ourselves “attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Do you await him? That is, do you eagerly wait for him? Romans 8:19 says, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” And Romans 8:23 says, “we wait eagerly for adoption as sons.” Galatians 5:5: “we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” And Hebrews 9:28: “Christ . . . will appear a second time . . . to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”

Let me ask you this: What do you want more than Jesus coming back? Ask yourself, query your heart, where are your instincts, how has your heart been conditioned by the conversations you have, the articles you read, the shows you watch, the podcasts you listen to, the allegiances you pledge, the anthems you sing. Have your habits of life produced a heart and mind that really are set on earthly things?

Do you say, from the heart, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus”? What is it that makes you hesitate? What relationship(s)? What comforts and luxuries? What joys seem to you like they will be better if Jesus delays rather than returns this week?

Are you eagerly awaiting his coming? And how does it, or how might it, shape our lives as we await his coming?

Let’s close with the “mindset of heaven’s citizens.” The main contrast in this passage is that there are those whose minds are set on earthly things, and those who eagerly await Jesus’s return. Enemies of the cross set their minds on earthly things, while friends of the cross, citizens of heaven, set their minds — where? Not merely on “the things of heaven” but on “the man of heaven.”

Two ways to set our minds on the man of heaven. Just two among many: one daily, one weekly.

Daily, we wake up and turn our early morning spiritual hunger to God’s good news, not the world’s news. In the words of Colossians 3, we seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. We open God’s word and set our minds on things above, not on things that are on earth. And not just early mornings. But the man of heaven, and his things, animate us, woo us, captivate us, spur us on in life.

Weekly, we gather here each Sunday to worship the man of heaven together. Which brings us back to 4:1, where we started. Isn’t it amazing how Paul talks with such over-the-top affection for his fellow believers in Christ:

“. . . my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.”

We are not lone citizens of heaven. Heaven is a society. Our love for Jesus, and longing for Jesus, and joy in Jesus, becomes a love of and longing for and joy in those who likewise eagerly await his return.

See Him Face to FaceWe do not come alone to this Table week in and week out. And we do not come alone to know and enjoy Jesus. Together we come to him, love him, long for him, seek joy in him, and eagerly wait for him — spiritually now, by faith, in this bread and cup, and fully and finally and physically at his second coming.

Brothers and sisters, we will see him face to face. As surely as you hold and eat this bread, and as surely as you take and drink this cup, you will stand before him face to face. And so at this Table, the friends of the cross eagerly await his return.

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Over the course of the last few weeks, Philippians chapter 3 has been establishing, one layer upon another, a certain kind of mindset. A certain way of thinking that’s for the Christian.

The first layer in this mindset comes in verse 3, where Paul assures these Philippians,

“We [Paul and them alike] arethe circumcision [meaning we are members of God’s true people], who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

Layer two is seen in verse 9, where Paul emphasizes,

“[I long to] be found in him [in Christ], nothaving a righteousness of my own that comes from the law [so not in what he has done], but that which comes through faith in Christ, [in whathe has done].”

So, I’m a member of God’s people. And the only reason I am a member of God’s people is because of what Jesus has done.

The third layer, perhaps the sweetest of all, comes in verse 8, where Paul says,

“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.”

I am a member of God’s people, the only reason I am is because of what Jesus has done. And, as a member of God’s people, Christ is my supreme treasure.

When Paul writes then, in verse 15,

“Let those of us who are mature think this way.”

The “this way” he’s referring to has these three layers as its foundation. But it’s the fourth layer, which we saw last week, that rests on top of the foundation, for us to look at and consider. That fourth layer of, “I’m not there yet, but I am pressing on.”

So, altogether, when Paul entreats the Philippians in verse 15, “Let those of us who are mature think this way.” It is the way that acknowledges: I’m a member of God’s true people, because of Christ, who is my treasure. And I’m not there yet, but I am pressing on.

That’s the way Paul entreats these believers in Philippi to think.

Christian MaturityNow, it is a bit interesting how he qualifies this way of thinking, saying, “Let those of us who are mature think this way.” Why those who are mature?

Well, the text doesn’t tell us explicitly, but it’s likely there’d been a “certain way of thinking” that’d been creeping its way into Philippi, that said, “the ‘Mature Christian,’ isn’t the one who says, ‘I’m not there yet, but I am pressing on.’ But instead, says, ‘No, I am there. I have arrived. I’m mature. Complete. Perfect.’ That’s what Christian maturity looks like.”

It’s not hard for us to imagine how this false sense of Christian maturity could come about, right? The train of thought would simply go, “Well, Paul said I am justified by faith, which means that things between me and God are now good, which means I’ve no longer got anything to fear when I die, which means that from here till then, it is all gravy. I don’t need to press on. I don’t need to strain forward…

Maybe I did a bit of that back in my early twenties…had a season of that during summer camp back in my teens…there was that year or so from a while back when I was waking up early, praying eagerly, reading the Bible intently, serving willingly, sharing the gospel daringly, but now… Now, I’m mature. I’ve read the books. I’ve showed up to the events. I’ve done the things. I’ve got some years under my belt. I’m mature. I’ve arrived. You think we have any of that today in the church? Any of that today in us?

Well, it’s in contrast to that way of thinking then, that mindset, that Paul establishes. It is the mark of the mature Christian, not the immature Christian, but the mature Christian, to say: “I’m not there yet, but I am pressing on.” To say that, and thento continue to say that, season, after season, after season till the day the mature Christian finally makes it home.

In fact, from this text, I believe we can say even more. That not only is it a mark of the mature Christian to continue in thinking, “I’m not there yet, but I’m pressing on,“ but to also increase and deepen in that way of thinking season after season after season.

To get that way of thinking in you more and more pervasively season after season after season.

See it in verse 15,

“And if in anything you think otherwise [like, if, mature Christian, there are remaining areas of your mind not operating under this sense of, “I’m not there yet, but I am pressing on,] God will reveal that also to you.”

God will help you to see your remaining inconsistencies. God will bring to attention where you still have areas of immaturity.

Now, don’t read this as a snide remark, like, “If in anything you think otherwise, well, you just wait till God shows you how wrong you are.” No, no, no, remember with what warmth and gentleness Paul has been writing these Philippians? This is not a jab, it is an encouragement. God loves you, Philippians. God will “bring the good work he’s begun in you to completion.” And, one way he’ll do that is by revealing to you, little by little, season after season, areas in which you can still grow. It’s an encouragement — God reveals to us our remaining immaturities so that he can make us, thoroughly, his own.

So, we take on this mature Christian mindset, and let it work its way into every nook and cranny of our minds. That is mature Christianity. At least part of it. Another part of it is described in verse 16.

The Mature Christian Walk“Only [as in, whether you are already totally aligned with this mature mindset, or you still have areas in which you can grow] Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to, “hold true?”

Perhaps it’ll be helpful to think about it in terms of a golf ball. Anyone here play golf, or watch golf? I don’t, but as of four days ago I now officially own one golf ball — my son found it in our yard. Well, what would it look like for that golf ball to be hit off a tee and then hold true?

It’d mean that the ball, upon impact, would take off soaring out in front of the one who hit it, and unlike so many other shots that end up veering off into ponds, or sand pits, or rows of trees, or other unsuspecting golfers, this one, this one, takes off straight and holds true.

To hold true means to “stay in line with” or, “be in conformity to.” Paul’s saying the mindset he’s just described, charts out a course for a certain way of living from here till glory. It charts out a course for a certain way of talking, and behaving. The living out of, “not quite there yet, but on my way, and progressing forward.” In other words, “Look, I don’t want you to just think like a mature Christian, I want you to live like one. Live, hold true, to the Christian faith, to what we as justified worshippers of Jesus have already attained.”

It is, in fact, much in line with what we also read in 1:27,

“Only [interesting, he again begins with that word “only”] let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Now, 3:16, “Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”

So, take hold of the mature Christian mindset. Let it work its way into every area of your mind. And live accordingly. That’s what we’ve gotten so far.

Now, here’s where things get practical. Here’s one way to go about living accordingly. Verse 17.

What Does it mean to imitate?“Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.”

Now, before we go further, quick survey of the room — Who here is a kid? Raise your hand if you’re a kid. Good, now, for the adults in the room, I want you to know that if you have questions on this next section here, verse 17, the experts in the room are the ones currently raising their hands. Okay. See ‘em? Good, now kids you can go ahead and put your hands down, and I’ll explain why it is that you’re the experts.

It is because we have in verse 17 the call to, “imitate.” For the adults in the room, I think we tend to miss the point when it comes to this word, “imitate.” We hear it, and it does not immediately strike us as a challenging task. We just read right over it and move on. It’s almost as if, to us, the word “imitate” is not even a verb. Like to simply read it, is to accomplish it. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that as we “mature” we tend to lose our wonder and imagination.

But, as for the experts in the room — the kids — when you hear the word imitate, you take it on as a call to action. A mission of the highest order, which you happily accept. You ready your mind, you focus your attention, every muscle in you prepares for action.

He raises his right hand, you raise your right hand.

He lifts his left foot, you lift your left foot.

He says Simon says, you do it, he doesn’t say Simon says, you don’t do it.

You are on, engaged, motivated. And the reason is because you understand what the word imitate means. Imitate means copy, replicate, follow along with. It is a call to action.

Brothers and sisters, the Apostle Paul just charged you to imitate him. And not only him, but others who live according to his example. People like Timothy, Epaphroditus who he described in chapter two. This means he wants us to look back at their example: They count all things as loss for Christ, so we should count all things as loss for Christ. They show genuine concern for others, so we should show genuine concern for others. They seek the interests of Christ, so we should seek the interests of Christ.

Paul entreats, “Brothers join in imitating me,” in hopes they would actually do it.

Last little note here, when Paul says “join in imitating (him)” it implies this call to imitate is a team sport. A group activity. “Brothers,join in imitating me. Come together in imitating me. Link up with the others striving side-by-side in imitating me. Join in on this happy fellowship of imitators of those who are imitators of those who are imitators ultimately of Christ Jesus.” Because it is a lot easier to follow Simon in what he says, if you’re in a room surrounded by others who are also following Simon.

So, take on the mature Christian mindset, let it work its way through you, and live it out by imitating others ahead of you.

Now, here’s why that last part, Paul’s call to imitate, is so crucial. It is because, in the end, you’re going to imitate somebody. You will. Inevitably, without doubt, like it or not, you’re going to imitate somebody. That somebody you imitate could be somebody who walks according to the example we have in the Apostles, or, that somebody could be somebody who walks otherwise. And guess what, there are many who walk otherwise.

Verse 18,

“Many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Description of the EnemiesNow, I don’t know if there is a more terrifying title in all the universe than, “enemy of the cross of Christ.” I mean just let it sink in for a moment. To be an enemy of the cross of Christ is to be one who is against Christ, fails to benefit from the cross of Christ, who refuses to walk in the manner of the cross of Christ, who looks at Christ upon the cross and shakes his fist and picks up stones. I don’t think you can over-estimate the terror of being called an enemy of the cross of Christ. And Paul says, there are many of them.

What are these enemies like? Well, for one, their mind is set on earthly things. You see that at the very end of verse 19? Their “mind is set on earthly things.” It’s a contrast to a mind that, 3:14, “presses on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God.” Upward call of God. Here, instead, is a mind focused on earthly things.

Paul says that the mind set on earthly things turns one’s eyes from the God of the universe tothe god of their own appetites. See, middle of verse 19, “Their god is their belly.” What exactly is meant by “belly” is a bit unclear, but its certainly operating somewhere in the realm of fleshly appetites. Could be sexual. Could be food and drink. Could be ease and comfort. “It’s this earthly stuff. It’s the things I can get here. That’s what I worship. That’s what I adore. That’s what I think about and want more of.” Jesus is not their God. They are their god.

And, “they glory in their shame”, again, middle of verse 19. They glory in their shame. The things of which they will, in the end, be ashamed. Might not necessarily be inherently sinful things or actions. It could also be good things, but practiced for the sake of self-righteousness. See good things become bad things when we say of them, “This is what makes me righteous.”

The point is that these people are heaping things up today, that will, in the end, be forgotten. Count for nothing. They’ll either go up in smoke or be given to another — either way, in the end, they will stand before God, with only ashes around them. Ashes of what they once called glorious. Ashes of what they once looked to and said, “this can save me.” Glory turns to shame.

Which brings us to the last descriptor here in verse 19. Where is their so-called glory bringing them? Where is the mind set on earthly things leading them? What is the final end for all who turn from Jesus and bow down instead to their own fleshly cravings? Destruction. Their end, verse 19, is destruction.

And see here’s what’s crazy. They’re walking as enemies of the cross. Their end is destruction. Paul says, verse 18, he is weeping about the disaster that is their life, the disaster that is their end. And yet, today, we catch ourselves envying them.

We see them on the cover of magazines and envy them. We see ‘em in movies and shows and commercials, and envy them. We hear them in the songs they sing, the podcasts they produce, and we envy them.

Man, I remember in college watching those shows that take a look at the normal day in the life of a famous athlete. You know what I’m talking about? And you know what watching those shows began to do to me? They began to shift in me the location of where I thought life was found. I began to see the really nice houses, super expensive cars, total freedom to focus only on themselves and do whatever it was that they wanted all day every day. And I began to hear a little voice inside me saying, “Hey, maybe this is where life is found. Maybe I ought to set my mind on these things.”

Is there anyone on your social media feed who you look at that way? Anyone in the shows you watch? Anyone at your work place? Your neighborhood? Maybe even your own family? Has it began shifting in you the location of where you think life is found? Have you begun imitating them in any way?

Like, when you see them pursuing only selfish interests, do you begin pursuing only selfish interests? When they begin to justify sexual sin, do you begin to justify sexual sin? When they make excuses for sloth and greed, do you begin to make excuses for sloth and greed? When you see them treat their spouse unkindly, or their children like they don’t matter, or their body like it is their own and they can do with it what they want, what then? When they live as if Jesus is dead, and Hell is fake, and all roads lead to heaven, and god really doesn’t expect much from of us — he’s just happy we acknowledge him every once and a while. What then?

There are those who are, right now, walking as enemies of the cross. Andthere are those who like Timothy, and Epaphroditus and a billion of others from throughout the history of the church who have walked or are walking, right now, according to the example of Paul, and ultimately of Jesus. Which are you going to walk after? Which are you already walking after?

Who Will You Imitate?Paul wanted these Philippians to do the math.

Philippians, you as people, are prone to imitate the people you see, and the people you’re around. Many of the people you see and are around walk as enemies of the cross. You can choose to imitate me and keep your eyes on those who walk accordingly. You could do that. What do you think is most likely going to happen if you don’t?

See how vital it was that these Philippians take up Paul’s call to imitate him? Might it be just as vital for us to do the same today?

Cities Church, we, as people, are prone to imitate the people we see around us. And just as in ancient Philippi, many of whom we see around us today walk as enemies of the cross. We could choose, as a church, to take up Paul’s call to imitate him, and keep our eyes on those who walk accordingly. We could do that. And church, it is essential that we do that.

Here are two ways, and then I’ll close. Two ways to take up Paul’s call to imitate. The first is easier, I think the second, in the long run will be more fruitful.

First: Read Christian biographies. Read people who gave their lives for the cause of God’s glory in the world. Read of Adoniram Judson, Amy Carmichael, William Tyndale, Ellizabeth Elliot, and so many others. Read, and learn how they lived, how they loved, how they sacrificed, how they believed. Get your eyes on them, and imitate.

Second: This takes more effort, but I think it has the bigger payoff in the end. Get time with someone in this room who is further down the road than you in the Christian life. They don’t have to be that much further, just further. Don’t have to be that much older than you, in fact, they may even be younger. Get time with them. Ask them about their habits. Ask them about their relationships. Ask them about fighting sin. Ask them about pursuing true treasure. Get your eyes on them, and imitate.

So much about our lives will, in the end, come down to who we aim to imitate. And by God’s grace, church, we will learn to be a people who imitate well.

Let’s pray.

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Over the course of the last few weeks, Philippians chapter 3 has been establishing, one layer upon another, a certain kind of mindset. A certain way of thinking that’s for the Christian.

The first layer in this mindset comes in verse 3, where Paul assures these Philippians,

“We [Paul and them alike] arethe circumcision [meaning we are members of God’s true people], who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

Layer two is seen in verse 9, where Paul emphasizes,

So, I’m a member of God’s people. And the only reason I am a member of God’s people is because of what Jesus has done.

The third layer, perhaps the sweetest of all, comes in verse 8, where Paul says,

“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.”

I am a member of God’s people, the only reason I am is because of what Jesus has done. And, as a member of God’s people, Christ is my supreme treasure.

When Paul writes then, in verse 15,

“Let those of us who are mature think this way.”

That’s the way Paul entreats these believers in Philippi to think.

Christian MaturityNow, it is a bit interesting how he qualifies this way of thinking, saying, “Let those of us who are mature think this way.” Why those who are mature?

To get that way of thinking in you more and more pervasively season after season after season.

See it in verse 15,

God will help you to see your remaining inconsistencies. God will bring to attention where you still have areas of immaturity.

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to, “hold true?”

It is, in fact, much in line with what we also read in 1:27,

“Only [interesting, he again begins with that word “only”] let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Now, 3:16, “Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”

So, take hold of the mature Christian mindset. Let it work its way into every area of your mind. And live accordingly. That’s what we’ve gotten so far.

Now, here’s where things get practical. Here’s one way to go about living accordingly. Verse 17.

What Does it mean to imitate?“Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.”

He raises his right hand, you raise your right hand.

He lifts his left foot, you lift your left foot.

He says Simon says, you do it, he doesn’t say Simon says, you don’t do it.

You are on, engaged, motivated. And the reason is because you understand what the word imitate means. Imitate means copy, replicate, follow along with. It is a call to action.

Paul entreats, “Brothers join in imitating me,” in hopes they would actually do it.

So, take on the mature Christian mindset, let it work its way through you, and live it out by imitating others ahead of you.

Verse 18,

“Many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.”

We see them on the cover of magazines and envy them. We see ‘em in movies and shows and commercials, and envy them. We hear them in the songs they sing, the podcasts they produce, and we envy them.

Who Will You Imitate?Paul wanted these Philippians to do the math.

See how vital it was that these Philippians take up Paul’s call to imitate him? Might it be just as vital for us to do the same today?

Here are two ways, and then I’ll close. Two ways to take up Paul’s call to imitate. The first is easier, I think the second, in the long run will be more fruitful.

So much about our lives will, in the end, come down to who we aim to imitate. And by God’s grace, church, we will learn to be a people who imitate well.

Let’s pray.

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The Christian life is a journey.

This means that if you’re a Christian, even this morning, you are on the way somewhere. From the moment you first put your faith in Jesus you’ve been on the way to meeting Jesus one day face-to-face. You are on a journey and today’s passage tells us three things we need to remember for this journey.

And Paul really is saying this for us. Now Paul is still giving us some autobiography in this passage — he’s continuing to talk about himself — except that in verse 15 he concludes by saying that we should think like him. Skip to verse 15 for a minute.

He says: “Let those of us who are mature think this way” — and if you don’t — if this does not make sense to you or if you disagree — well, God will clear that up for you. Eventually you’ll get there.

This is for every Christian, but for those who have ears to hear, this is especially for you. We should think the way Paul is thinking in these verses. This is for your journey, called the Christian life, and here’s the first thing to remember.

You’re Not There YetNow that should be intuitive — because to be on a journey means you’ve not yet arrived at your destination — so we should know this, but it’s something that Paul wants to make abundantly clear right away.

We see this first in the first part of verse 12, and then Paul repeats it again in the first part of verse 13. Look at verse 12. Pauls says:

“Not that I’ve already obtained this or am already perfect …”

“Obtained what?” What is Paul talking about?

One Train of ThoughtWell verse 12 is connected back to verse 11. So we need to look backwards for a minute. And in fact, this thing goes all the way back to verse 3. Over the last three weeks we’ve been looking at just one train of thought. Paul set the train in motion in verse 3 when he said that we, Christians, are the real people of God — we who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

And then, beginning in verse 4, he explains more of what that means.

He says that although he has some impressive things in his past (according to one scorecard), all of his past religious achievements are now rubbish/garbage.

“He counts everything as lossbecause of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.”

That is what Paul wants — he wants to gain Christ and be found in Christ that he may know Christ, verse 10, “and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” — Paul has the death-conquering power of Christ at work in him as he walks in the valley of the shadow of death with Christ, like Christ, verse 11, “that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

What a Day It Will Be!Now what does that mean? There are three parts here:

What does Paul mean by “any means possible”?

What’s he mean by “attain”?

What’s he mean by “resurrection from the dead”?

Let’s start with the last first.

When Paul mentions the resurrection here, he’s talking about the end-time resurrection, when everything’s all said and done — the dead in Christ are raised first, and those who are alive and remain are gathered together to meet Christ and to always be with Christ (see 1 Thessalonians 4:14ff). Now Paul is not focused so much on the logistics of the resurrection, but he’s thinking more about the state of resurrection. He’s thinking: What a day that will be!

Y’all know we like to talk about old songs around here, here’s one I heard a lot as a kid. It goes like this:

“What a day that will be

When my Jesus I shall see

And I look upon his face

The one who saved me by his grace

When he takes me by the hand

And leads me through the Promised Land

What a day, glorious day that will be!”

That’s a real day that’s coming, and it will be glorious. But what makes it glorious?

It’s that we will be with Jesus. We will have a deeper experience of knowing Jesus than we do now in this world. That’s what Paul is thinking about. That’s what is on his mind.

One Way or Another Notice that word “attain.” It could also be translated to “arrive” or “to come to.” Paul wants to arrive to that day — and he says: “by any means possible.” Some English translations put this as the word “somehow.”

Here’s what Paul means: he is certain there’s a day coming when he’s going to see Jesus, but he’s not certain about the literal way he’s going to get there. Remember, he’s in prison right now. He’s awaiting a trial. He could be executed! Which means: maybe the route that Paul will take to that day is martyrdom; Or maybe Paul will end up dying another way; Or maybe Paul will stay alive until Jesus comes back and raises those who have fallen asleep!

Paul doesn’t know how. He just knows he wants to get there. Paul is saying:

One way or another, somehow, whether Caesar executes me or I die of cancer or I remain here until Jesus returns, I just wanna get there. I want to arrive at that glorious day. I want to see Jesus and I want to know him more clearly and fully! (see 1 Corinthians 13:12)

Homesickness for HeavenAnd see, all that explains verse 12.

Because in verse 12 Paul says: I’m not there yet. I’ve not already obtained this. I’m not already perfector complete— that’s what Paul means by “perfect” here. He’s saying I’ve not yet reached the end. It’s all the same idea.

And he’s really making sure we get this, because in verse 13 he says it again:

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.”

I do not consider that I have taken hold of it yet. I don’t yet know Jesus as fully now as I will know him then.

Church, do we know that’s also true of us? Did you know that we’venot yet arrived? We’re still on the journey. And some of us really need to hear this: You’re not there yet.

And that means sometimes you’re gonna feel a little frustrated. You’re going to feel disappointed — hey, you might even feel a little weary from the journey in this world. I think a lot of times all that stuff we feel is really just a homesickness for heaven. Because you’re not there yet.

So what do we do? This is the second thing to remember for the journey.

You Keep Pressing On. Look at verse 13 again:

“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.”

Now does that mean we quit? Because we can’t have it all to the fullest right now, do we throw the whole thing away?

Some people think like that. And that’s a sign of immaturity. One of the facts of immaturity is the inability to delay gratification. You must have it all right now or it’s like it doesn’t exist. You know that’s one of the reasons we sin. If you keep falling into the same sin, it’s not just that you’re a sinner, it’s that you’re immature.

What do you do when you want something, but you can’t have it right now? What do you do? You don’t abandon the pursuit, you don’t settle for cheap knock-offs, but you keep going until you get there. That’s what Paul says: I’ve not taken hold of it yet — But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

And you can hear in this Paul’s radical singularity. This is the one thing. One thing. That’s the character of his pursuit.

Another way to say “one thing” is the phrase there in verse 13: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” You can hear in this that Paul is clearing away everything else. He is pushing everything else aside for the one thing of pursuing the prize.

Eternal-Goal OrientedAnd verse 14 is a little bit of a clunky English phrase: there’s toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God …

It can get a little jumbled for us, but it makes more sense if we keep the “the goal” part with verse 13. Paul says, literally,

“forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, toward the goal, I press on for the prize …”

Paul mentions the goal here still as a way to characterize his pursuit. He’s headed in a direction. He’s eternal-goal-oriented. That’s how he pursues this prize. And what is this prize?

It’s the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul once again is talking about knowing Christ more clearly and fully. It’s the same thing he was talking about in verse 8, “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” It’s the same thing he had in mind in verse 11 when he mentioned the resurrection.

That’s the goal he’s looking forward to. That’s what he’s pressing on for, it’s to know Jesus more clearly and fully.

Compelled to Press OnListen: that’s what compels Paul to press on. Does that compel you?

Look, I’m preaching to myself here as much as anybody else. As I was preparing the sermon this past week, I came to this part and I was challenged. Here’s the question:

Does the fact of knowing Christ more fully one day compel my radical pursuit of him now? Have I had a foretaste of the glory of Christ salient enough in this life to make me want more?

And my best answer is sometimes.

I love Jesus, but I don’t love him enough.And there are times when I feel bombarded and busied with the stuff of life, which is mostly good things, but I’m so busied with them that honestly a lot of times it feels like I’m just trying to make it through the day without sinning (and sometimes I can’t even do that!)

How do we radically pursue Jesus in this world when there’s so much other stuff going on?

That’s the question we must answer, and as I’ve tried to figure this out, there are at least three ways we could go about this. There are three ways we might navigate pursuing Jesus along with the existence of everything else. The first way says:

“I want everything else (and Jesus too).”

This is what you might call the typical “American Gospel.” We want all the extras. Whatever the world is selling as the next best thing, we want that — but we don’t realize that all these shiny things are actually the thorns Jesus talks about in his parable of the sower in Mark 4. We want all these things that are actually choking our pursuit of Christ. They are cutting the oxygen off of us having more of Jesus, but we want them and we allow them in because we’ve grown accustomed to a life that doesn’t bear much fruit.

“I want everything else (and Jesus too)” — that’s one way.

Now here’s another way on the other side:

“I want Jesus, therefore nothing else matters.”

This is what you might call the “Monastic Ideal.” It’s that you love Jesus more than anything. You want him more than anything, and you’re pressing on to know him, but what about … people … we still need other people and they need us. Chip Dodd just told us yesterday that God created us for relationship. We can’t live without them. So in your pursuit of Christ, what do you do about the other people around you in normal life?

It’s not an easy question. There is a tension here. Do you ever feel like other people make it harder for you to pursue Jesus? Kinda like this:

A few Sundays ago, on Easter, I was driving down Snelling and I had a load of kids with me — gifts, arrows, a full quiver, I’m a blessed man — and as I’m driving I’m listening to this song about the resurrection that I listen to every Easter. It’s a powerful song. It moves me every time and fuels my imagination. And I am close to Jesuslistening to this song. And then right as the song is about to get to the best part, someone in the back says, “Dad!”

And you know, sometimes as a parent, you think: Maybe they think I didn’t hear them and they’ll stop. So I just turn up the radio. You know I got tears in my eyes. “Dad!” But I’m still in this moment. I turn it up a little bit more. It just gets louder: “Dad! Dad! Dad!” So I’m with the Lord, but finally I’m just like “What?!”

“Can we get Chipotle for lunch?”

And I’m thinking, Yeah, I think I could be a monk.

In case you didn’t know, I have eight children and I live in a modest-sized house — each person gets approximately 218 square feet to themselves. And if I’m honest, I love it, and sometimes I wanna be in a desert.

Is it right to say “I want Jesus, therefore nothing else matters”? No — it might sound good, but it’s an illusion. It’s not real life in this world. It’s less than what God wants for us.

So it’s neither American Gospel nor Monastic Ideal — it’s not “I want everything else (and Jesus too)” and it’s not “I want Jesus therefore nothing else matters.”

Instead, it should be:

“I want Jesus, therefore everything else matters.”

And of course the mattering comes in different degrees. This does not mean that everything else matters equally. It does not. Certain things are more important than others, and we need Christian wisdom to know what they are.

But if we truly want Jesus and we are surrendered to him, everything else in our lives, every other detail, is brought to him and — if it’s a thing, we ask: Will this thing help me get more of Jesus, or will it distract me from him? And if it’s a person, we ask: Can we pursue Jesus together? Can we do the journey together? Can I bring this person along with me so that we can have more of Jesus together?

I want Jesus, therefore everything else matters — and everything else is viewed through the lens of wanting more of him.

That’s how we radically pursue Jesus in this world.

Here’s how I’ve tried to put that into a question that I’ve been praying everyday for the last several weeks. The question is:

How can I have as much of Jesus as is possible for a forgiven sinner this side of heaven and do that with others?

I want us all to ask that question. I want that to be a question that Cities Church figures out. Let’s keep pressing on.

You gotta remember this on the journey. You’re not there yet. You keep pressing on.

You Were Made for This. Okay, so what if you’re hearing all this, you read Philippians 3, and you think: “This is just too much for me”? … what you really want is just some sunshine and Netflix, and this “advanced Christianity” stuff is too much …

First, I’d say, if you call this “advanced Christianity” your wrong. This is just biblical faith. It’s maturity.

And the next thing I’d say is to look back at verse 12. We’ve focused on that the first half of verse 12, but now I want us to focus on the second half. Let’s read the whole thing again:

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, [remember Paul is talking about knowing Christ more clearly and fully, which he will on that glorious day when he meets Jesus face-to-face. So I’ve not already obtained this, I’m not there yet —] but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

The word we translate here “make it my own” is connected to the same verb for “obtain.” Another way to translate it is to say “to lay hold of.” I press on to lay hold of it.

This is important because Paul uses that same verb again in the last line of verse 12, but the verb is in the passive. Y’all look at the end of verse 12. The last line there in the ESV, “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” It’s literally: “I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”

Paul is saying:

Not that I have already taken it or am already at the end, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Paul wants to take hold of knowing Jesus more clearly and fully, and that is actually why Jesus has taken hold of him. I want to take hold of Jesus because I was taken hold of by Jesus.

Christian, do you know that? You have been taken hold of by Jesus. That’s why in verse 14 Paul calls the prize of knowing Christ “the upward call of God.” It’s your calling. Your purpose. You were made for this.

If you are a Christian, you were made to know Christ. Christ has taken hold of you for that.

And there’s an amazing story for how this happened. It starts before the foundations of the world, when God the Father chose you in Christ, and Ephesians 1:4 says that he chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless before him. The Father chose you in Christ, before the world began, to be like Christ. That’s your purpose, from before you were born.

And then, in around 4BC, God the Father sent Jesus into the world, to be truly human in our place, to overcome all temptation, to bear our sins on the cross, to suffer the punishment we deserve.

Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, and then raised from the dead, to save you and bring you back to the purpose you were made.

It’s good news. And in God’s timing, we’ve all heard that news, and what God does, upon us hearing that news, is he takes away our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. He effectually draws us to Jesus by his free and special grace alone. We were dead, but he makes us alive, to begin the journey of knowing Christ, and he keeps us and preserves us — through all the ups and downs, through all the valleys and hard places — he keeps us until that glorious day when the good work he began in us is brought to completion. We will see Jesus and we will know him. Jesus has taken hold of you for that day.

“Never Knew My Mother Could Hug So Tight”April 8, 1974 — we just celebrated that date last week. It’s the golden anniversary of when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home-run record.

Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth were baseball players — and one of the great things about baseball is that it’s a game with a journey element to it.

Think about this, how do you get points in baseball (we call them runs)? You get runs by by going where?

Home.

That’s the point of the game. You’re trying to go home, and you have to journey through these milestones: first base, second base, and third base. And you’ve got nine opponents out there trying to keep you from doing that. They are working together to stop you from going home. What a game!

But see, in the game, there’s this thing called a home-run. It’s when you hit the ball over the fence, and it’s the only hit you can get that guarantees you’re gonna make it home safely. You still have to run through those same milestones, but your opponents can’t touch you. You start the journey knowing you will make it home. That’s a home-run.

And well, anyways, Babe Ruth hit 714 of them, which was a crazy number. Nobody thought that record would be broken. In the 1973 season, Hank Aaron tied the record, season ended. But in 1974, in Hank Aaron’s 20th season, at 40 years old — he keeps playing and everyone knows it’s gonna happen. He’s gonna hit at least one home-run and break the record. And a lot of people did not like it. The racism was intense — they didn’t like that a black man was gonna beat Babe Ruth’s record. Babe Ruth was a legend — people were pulling against Hank Aaron. He received death threats and boxes of hate mail. He was under incredible pressure. Security was increased for every game. It was wearing him down.

And then on April 8, 1974, in Atlanta, against the Dodgers, Al Downing was the pitcher, Hank Aaron is up … I’ve watched the Ken Burns Baseball documentary so many times, I can hear the call…

He’s sittin’ on 714. Here’s the pitch by Downing. Swinging. There’s a drive into left-center field. That ball is gonna be-eee ... Outta here! It’s gone! It’s 715! There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron.

And he runs the bases, the fans are going crazy, some are running on the field. But the most amazing moment is when Hank Aaron touched home. His whole team is crowded around the plate, cameras, and his mom was there waiting for him. And after he touched home, she laid hold him and just hugged him. It’s an iconic photo. Photographers couldn’t get a great photo of Hank Aaron because his mom has got him. You can Google it. She’s just squeezing him. Hank Aaron said after the game, “I never knew my mother could hug so tight.”

Hey, Christian, you’re gonna make it home one day, and I think you might say the same thing about Jesus. You never knew he could hug so tight. And remember, he chose you for that. And in terms of what Jesus can see, there’s no question for him. He’s already got us. We have been laid hold of by Jesus.

1) You’re not there yet.

2) You keep pressing on.

3) You were made for this.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableThis Table is for everyone on the journey. It’s for Christians.

If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian, it means you’re not on the journey … yet … but you can be. You can begin the journey today. Turn from your sin, put your faith in Jesus. Tell Jesus: I’m done with trying to save myself, I trust you to save me.

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Do you remember your first conscious “favorite song” as a child? Maybe it was a single, or an album, or a specific artist. I remember hearing a particular song on the radio as a four or five-year-old and saying out loud to my parents, “That’s my favorite song.”

Now, I realize I’m one of the older people in room. So, I’ll ask, but I don’t expect many to raise a hand: anyone know the name Larnelle Harris?

Gospel singer Larnelle Harris was my first favorite singer. In January of 1985 (exactly thirty years before the planting of Cities Church), Larnelle released an album called “I’ve Just Seen Jesus,” and the first song on the cassette was called “How Excellent Is Thy Name.” I loved that song. Search it up.

The reason I mention Larnelle is that two years later, in 1987, he released another album, and tucked away fifth on the cassette was a song based on Philippians 3 called “I Want to Know Christ.” Still today this song moves me deeply. Something about this song captured my six-year-old heart. I could tell its subject matter was unsurpassed. A song about “knowing Christ” felt so much bigger than your standard-fare Christian music of the 80s, or any decade. It went so clearly to the very heart of what God made us for.

I’ll read you the chorus, and you can hear our text this morning, as well as the “pressing on” we’ll look at next week in verses 12–14:

I want to know Christ
I keep Him before me
I lift up my eyes
I drink in His glory
I press toward the goal
His goodness unfolds
March on, oh my soul
I want to know
I want to know Christ

Deep, Personal KnowingAt the end of the sermon last Sunday, Jonathan set the table so well for us for today. In fact, I hope this message will simply flesh out what he said near the end last week — that Philippians 3 doesn’t just want us to be right with God (which is penultimate) but to know Jesus. Knowing Christ is the final goal, the ultimate goal; it’s what makes heaven to be heaven:

“Jesus is not just the means to get you what you want, but Jesus also becomes what you want. Jesus is means and end. To know Jesus is of surpassing worth. That is what is most valuable — to know “Christ Jesus my Lord.” . . . This is a deep, personal knowing. It’s real experience in real relationship. Intimacy.”

I see three pieces here, that map on with what we might call a (kind of) past aspect in verse 9, and a present aspect in verse 10, and a future aspect in verse 11.

So, here’s how we’ll proceed this morning: we’ll start by rehearsing what we saw last week in verse 9 (the penultimate), then jump to verse 11 and the future. Then come back to verse 10 and linger in what it means to “know Christ,” even now in this life, in the present. I hope to shoot as straight as I can about what it means to know Christ, and what that experience is like, and how we go about seeking to know him, and enjoy him, in our everyday Christian lives.

So, we start with the penultimate in verse 9.

1) We are fully accepted by God in Jesus. (v. 9)I’m not sure we used the word “justification” in the last two weeks, but this is the reality we’ve been talking about. Verse 3 mentions “boasting in Christ Jesus,” and “putting no confidence in the flesh.” This is justification talk. It raises the question, What is the grounds of your right-standing with God, your acceptance before God? How can an unrighteous sinner get right, and stay right, with the righteous holy God?

Justification is God’s declaration over sinners like us, You are righteous in my sight. I declare you to be in the right with me, fully accepted in my presence. How? Not because of anything we’ve done to deserve God’s favor. But rather, because of what Jesus has done to win for us God’s favor and the verdict, Righteous!

Start back in verse 7, and get the flow of thought into verse 9:

“whatever gain I had [and remember his amazing list of Jewish gains in verses 5–6], I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christand [now verse 9] be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith . . .”

Three pieces here to help us get clarity on this justification by faith alone.

First, what is not the grounds of Paul’s justification, and ours, before God: our own merit. He says “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.” The problem is not the law; it is holy, righteous, and good. The problem is us. We are sinners through and through. We are not holy, righteous, and good, and so even our very best efforts at obeying God’s holy, righteous, and good law, cannot win his righteous favor and get us right with him.

Second, then, what is the grounds of our justification? Answer: having the righteousness that “comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Faith in whom? Faith in Christ. Righteousness from whom? Righteousness from God, through our believing in Jesus.

But still one piece is missing, and it’s easy to overlook, at the beginning of verse 9: “found in him.” This is relational language, and it’s part of an interaction or an exchange. Paul has been talking about gaining Christ, getting Christ, and now he talks about Christ getting him, his being found in Christ. It’s almost like, “I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” from the Song of Solomon. I get Christ, because he got me.

Which means the ground of our justification is Christ alone, not our doing. And the instrument that connects us to Jesus is faith alone, again not our doing. And the context or the location of that faith is our being “found in him,” our being united to him, by the Spirit, through faith.

So, justification, in verse 9, is our being fully accepted by God in Christ. United to Jesus by faith, his righteousness is ours, and the Father’s full acceptance of him is ours.

Brothers and sisters, to know, really know, the grace of justification by faith alone will make you want to stand on your head for joy — and remember, verse 9 is penultimate. Justification is not the end. It’s not the final goal or reality. Justification, amazing as it is, is the means — the means to knowing the one in whom we are justified.

So, #1, we are fully accepted by God in Jesus. Now bounce ahead to verse 11, and the ultimate.

2) One day we will fully know Jesus, and be satisfied in him forever. (v. 11)That is, we will live forever, together, in ever increasing bliss, in the unobstructed presence of and ever deepening relationship with Jesus.

We call this “glorification.” One day soon when we see Jesus, the risen, glorified God-man, face to face, we too, like him, will be glorified. In that day, says verse 21, Jesus “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.”

Let’s read through verse 10, to verse 11. As we’ve seen, Paul is celebrating being united to Christ by faith and declared righteous in him, verse 10:

“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [now verse 11] that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

So, verse 11 speaks to a future reality: our attaining, our reaching, our arriving at, our coming to the resurrection from the dead. Just like Jesus rose again bodily, to a new indestructible, risen, glorified body — the same temporal earthly body that went into the grave, then raised and transformed into an eternal heavenly body — so we too, who are in Christ, will one day rise again bodily to glorified, transfigured, resurrection bodies.

And in these perfected, indestructible bodies, we will live eternally with Jesus, experiencing to the full the life God made us to live. We will have eternal life. Which won’t only mean living in the same new world as the risen Christ, but it will mean knowing him. Union with him by faith now leads to communion with him forever. This, at its heart, is what eternal life is, like Jesus said in John 17:3:

“this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Note two stunning moves in this statement: (1) Jesus puts “knowing God” at the heart of eternal life, then (2) he puts himself at the center of knowing God: “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Remember the new-covenant prophecy that we saw in Hebrews 8, from Jeremiah 31, that “they shall all know me”? The coming of Jesus, God himself taking human flesh, dying for us, and rising again as the glorified God-man forever is how God draws near to us that we might know him — “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

So, with Christ’s perfect work finished, justification by faith alone is the ground beneath our feet; and seeing him face to face is ahead of us, when we will be in the same space with the God-man, no distance, no obstructions, no remoteness, no more knowing in part but then knowing in full. But what about in the meantime? What about now, between our justification and glorification?

3) We know Jesus even now, and want to know him more. (v. 10)We’ve seen penultimate and ultimate, and so finally we come to “deep, personal knowing, real experience in real relationship,” even in this life. Verse 10:

“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .”

What does it mean to know Jesus? Not just know about him but know him, right now, know the living Christ on the throne of heaven. Do you know him?

What does it mean to know Jesus, when, unlike his disciples, you’ve never seen him with your own eyes, or touched him with your own hands, or heard his human voice with your own ears? How do you know a person who is at present physically inaccessible? How can you know him?

One thing to make clear about Paul’s expressed desire “to know him” is that Paul is pressing way beyond minimal saving knowledge to maximal satisfying knowing. He’s not asking, What’s the least I need to know to be saved? Rather, he’s talking maximally knowing and enjoying a real, living, breathing person, who has made himself knowable both as God, and as man. This is maximal personal-knowing, not minimal information-knowing.

Struggle as we might to capture in words what it means to “know Jesus,” we all know experientially as persons what it’s like to know another living person. You don’t know a person simply by being in the same room. Two people can sit in silence in the doctor’s office waiting room and not know each other at all. Or, two people thousands of miles away can know each other profoundly through the sequenced exchange of words. Shared space is not the essence of how we come to know each other, but interaction. Communication. Self-revelation. Exchanging words is typically the main channel through which persons know each other.

Our words reveal the unseen inner person, and so words heard, and responded to in kind, enable us to dialogue and interact, and so know each other in and through the exchange. We come to know a person by listening to him, and then in the rhythms of relational interaction, speaking back to him with questions or our own self-revelation.

And, don’t miss this, getting to know a person well also involves other people. You see more, and hear more, and know a person more by enjoying him with others. Other people draw out previously unknown aspects of the person. Also knowing someone deepens as you experience life with them, and especially life’s ups and downs, both triumphs and defeats.

As we get to know a living person, it often happens first in big chunks, and then through endless refinements over time. You never exhaust knowing a living person. Yet over time we can genuinely say that we come to know a person’s heart, their essence, who they really are. So, when someone else talks about a person you know, you might say, Yes, that’s him. Or you might say, No, I know him and that doesn’t sound like him.

And of course, Jesus is no ordinary person, so there’s a special note to strike here: vital to our knowing him, and coming to know him more, is something unique to every mere human person we know. Those whom Jesus knows, he puts in them his own Spirit. If you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and (as we’ve seen in Philippians 2:13 and 3:3) he is “the Spirit of Christ” (1:19). We hear Jesus’s voice in his word by the Spirit, and we pray to him in the Spirit, and we come together as his people through the Spirit. Which leads to Paul’s next phrase in verse 10.

Resurrection PowerWhat does it mean, then, to “know him and the power of his resurrection”? Jesus not only died, in our place, to forgive for our sins; he rose again and he is alive. He is alive to know, right now, as a living person, as the God-man seated on heaven’s throne, because of the power of the resurrection. So, to know the living Christ is to know him in the power of his resurrection.

But it also means to experience his resurrection power in our own person by his Spirit, and be changed by him. To interact with him and so be transformed by him.

In knowing Christ, in being united to him and communing with him, his resurrection power doesn’t leave us unchanged. We are sanctified. We become more like him.

Which means in coming to know Christ better, in his holiness and grace, we also come to know ourselves better in our sin and need. Knowing Jesus has major life entailments. Knowing Jesus will change us. In fact, knowing Jesus is the engine of true Christian change. But — get this straight — we don’t change in order to know him; we know him, and his resurrection power, and so begin to change.

Knowing Christ transforms the fight against sin, and our striving to be like him, by putting it in the right perspective. When you know Christ, and want to know him more, reading the Bible and meditating on Scripture is not a chore to be completed but a means of God’s grace in the pursuit of knowing Jesus more. Prayer is not a box to check, but speaking back to the one we know, in the power of his Spirit, having heard his voice in his word. And fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ becomes a precious corporate context in which to see and hear what fresh glories they bring out about Jesus in their words and prayers and obedience to him.

But we close with one more striking and unexpected means in verse 10 for how we know Jesus and come to know him more.

Fellowship of SufferingsLook at verse 10 one last time:

“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .”

Now, what we’ve said so far about knowing Christ is true, but the accent Paul adds here is suffering. How we come to know most deeply the risen Christ, his nearness, his pattern, his obedience, his holiness, his heart, his grace is not in life’s easiest times and our most comfortable moments but in our sufferings.

What Paul has in mind here relates to what he’s just said about Christ’s example in chapter two: “he humbled himself” (2:8). I don’t think that “becoming like him in his death” means that Paul is anticipating a crucifixion for himself, or for us, but that he wants to know Christ by echoing Christ’s heart and “mind” (2:5):

Being in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. That’s the pattern Paul wants to be conformed to, and know Christ by sharing in his sufferings, walking in the footsteps of his self-humbling, and experiencing Jesus’s help and fellowship and nearness and resurrection power on the path of obedience when it’s hardest.

So, not only do we know Jesus as we walk with him in triumph, but also — and typically all the more — as we cling to him in our suffering, and find that he draws especially nearer to us in our suffering.

So, we might sum it up like this: two big parts to knowing him — sunny days and stormy days. Bright days and dark days. Happy seasons and heavy seasons.

In the bright, sunny, happy seasons, we establish the steps of our lives. We learn to walk with him and get to know him as we walk with him. We cultivate habits for hearing his voice in his word by the Spirit, and speaking to him in prayer, and in the fellowship of others who know him. Oh my how vital are our fellows in Christ for knowing more of Jesus!

But what we’re doing in those bright and sunny days is establishing trust and getting to know Jesus better, so that when the rainy, stormy, dark, difficult days come, then we go especially deep with him. As many in this room know, it is often the times when we know him in our sufferings that we really know him best and come to know him more.

Supper TogetherAnd we know him through eating with him at this Table. Here we know ourselves afresh as sinners, desperate, condemned apart from him. And we know his grace here. Not just about grace, but know grace, experience his grace. And through his grace: Christ himself.

So, while this Table is by no means the only practical avenue of knowing him, it is a vital one as we come here together week after week and eat and drink in faith. Which is why another name for the Lord’s Supper is Communion. We don’t just come here to eat and drink the grace he provides; we come here to encounter him. To know him.

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Let’s start this morning with three questions, and I want to tell you this right away — I’m not over-speaking here and I’m not kidding — these are the most important questions you could ever ask yourself.

What is your heaven?
Who is your savior?
Where are you now?

Over the next 35 minutes I’m asking that each of you think about these questions as we dig into Philippians Chapter 3, and I don’t know what each of you are bringing in here today, but I do know that God works by his Spirit through his word and I invite you to humble your heart to that fact. Let’s pray:

Father in heaven, our great God, you are King from of old and you are working your salvation right now in the midst of the earth. We ask this morning that you work in here, by your Spirit, through your word, for your glory, in Jesus’s name, amen.

1) What Is Your Heaven? (verse 3)Look at verse 3. Now Pastor David Mathis talked a lot about this verse last week and it was so good, so we need to start here again this week, especially with that phrase “For we are the circumcision.” What does that mean again?

What does Paul mean by calling this church and himself (that’s who he has in mind when he says “we”) — what does he mean by “we are the circumcision”?

The False TeachingNotice first that the phrase is meant to be a contrast to verse 2. In verse 2, Paul warns about false teachers and calls them dogs, evildoers, and mutilators of the flesh. And last week we learned two things about this: not all of us are dog people. … (there are some good cat people out there); we learned that these false teachers are Jewish false teachers who had been misleading Gentile Christians by telling them that the men had to be physically circumcised in order to really become part of the people of God.

The false teachers said that if you wanted to be set apart by God, recognized by God as his people, then you have to obey Jewish laws, and the most central, life-adjusting law was for the men to be circumcised — that wasn’t something you just did on a whim; it was a distinctive lifelong marker.

And in the minds of the false teachers, circumcision was the marker that meant you were part of the people of God. They conflated the two: To be God’s people was to be circumcised. To be circumcised was to be God’s people. So, if someone were to say, “we are the circumcision” that’s like saying “We are God’s people.”

Well, in verse 3, that’s what Paul is doing. He says: “For we are the circumcision.” He’s saying we are the real people of God — not these false teachers and those like them who think you have to be Jewish in order to be the people of God, but it’s us, we — Paul who is ethnically Jewish and these Gentile believers — we are the real people of God, not by keeping Jewish laws like circumcision, but by faith in Christ.

What They WantedAnd Paul is going to elaborate on that in the following verses and that’s where we’re gonna focus, but before we do that, I want to step back and ask a broader question … it’s the question: What do they want?

What did these false teachers want? That’s another way of asking: What is their heaven? That’s the way to think about “your heaven.” Your heaven is what you most want.

I think for these false teachers, the answer is that they wanted to be God’s people. That’s the irony in what Paul says in verse 3 — These false teachers wanted to be the people of God (and they were trying to tell others how to be the people of God), but Paul says, No, you’re actually dogs. You’re evildoers and mutilators. We are the real people of God.

The false teachers were wrong, but we should know they were probably sincere in what they were doing. And that’s true for most false teachers: False teachers tend to really believe the lies they spread. Which is why it takes discernment on our part. The false teachers were spreading lies, but if what they wanted, if what they were after was to be the people of God, that’s not a terrible thing. That’s a pretty good thing to want. If your heaven is to be God’s people, that’s a good start to our first question. I mean, there are a lot of worse things to most want in life … Some people most want to be rich and famous. That’s their heaven. Some people most want to be comfortable and cared for. That’s their heaven. Some people most want to advance their cause at all costs. That’s their heaven.

So you have the worldly ambitious … and the comfort-loving don’t-mind-me’s … and the scorch-the-earth zealots — A lot of people fall into those three categories. Everybody has their heaven. What’s yours?

What do you most want? Pretend that this afternoon you meet a genie who gives you one wish, what are you asking? It can’t be for more wishes; every genie shoots that down. What’s the one thing you’re asking? “What is your heaven?” — hold that question.

Now here’s the second question:

2) Who Is Your Savior? (verses 4–7)Now, our first two questions are closely related. We’re not done with the first one, but we need to see something here.

We’re going to focus on verses 4–7, but notice again in verse 3: After Paul says, “For we are the circumcision” (we’re the real people of God) — he explains what that means in three things that we do. Pastor Mathis called these “three marks of what it means to really be a Christian” (verse 3) — We worship by the Spirit of God, we glory (or boast) in Christ Jesus, and we put no confidence in the flesh.

And that last one is especially important because that’s precisely the opposite of what these false teachers were doing and teaching. These false teachers were saying that in order to be part of God’s people, the flesh does matter and you need to make it something you can put confidence in.

So Paul directly shuts that down. To be a real Christian is to put NO confidence in your flesh — no confidence in your own efforts and energies as a way to earn God’s favor. Christians are done with the flesh.

But wait a minute …

Confidence in the Flesh?The false teachers (or someone influenced by the false teachers) might hear Paul say that and think, “Well, he’s just saying that because he feels sorry for these Gentiles who don’t have anything good in their flesh!” “Paul is just stacking the deck in their favor!”

It’s like this: imagine I’m playing basketball with my four boys, and imagine, hypothetically, that a couple of the boys can’t dribble well. They prefer to tuck the basketball like it’s a football and run to the goal, hypothetically.

Now what if we’re about to play a game and I gather the four boys together and said, “Hey, boys, for this game, we put no confidence in dribbling. You don’t have to dribble according to the rules of this game.”

If I were to say that, the other two boys would say, “The only reason you’re saying dribbling doesn’t matter is because they can’t dribble. This is rigged.”

In verse 4 Paul anticipates that being said to him. He anticipates someone saying: The only reason you say flesh-boasting doesn’t matter is because they’ve got nothing to flesh-boast about.

And Paul goes like sanctified ballistic here. Notice he changes from the third person “we” in verse 3, and he starts talking about himself.

He says: “[we, the real people of God] put no confidence in the flesh — THOUGH I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.”

This is what Paul is saying. He’s saying: “You don’t have to dribble in this game, but I can dribble. In fact, if anybody thinks he can dribble, I’m actually better.”

Then in verse 5 Paul’s like, Give me the ball. Let me show you.

And he tells us seven things about himself that make him remarkably Jewish. He is so Jewish, and was once so committed to Judaism, that he beats these false teachers in their own game. He outscores them on their own scorecard. Paul was everything (and more) of what these false teachers could only hope to be.

And it’s fascinating what he says in verse 6 when he says that he was “a persecutor of the church.” This means that Paul has actually been where these false teachers were, except that he was so extreme in his zeal that he didn’t just try to make Christianity more Jewish, he tried to end Christianity. Paul was better at doing what these false teachers are trying to do.

This is a stunning passage. Paul says I could play your game. I once did — and did better than you. But verse 7.

Counted As LossPaul says:

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”

(More literally, he says here: “But whatever was gain to me, this I counted, because of Christ, as loss.”)

He uses an accounting metaphor.

And notice that the verb “counted” in verse 7 is in the perfect tense — it’s something done in the past. That same verb is used two other times in verse 8 and they’re both in the present tense. But first, in verse 7, there was a past action, a past “counting.” There was a time when Paul reconfigured his P&L sheet.

He had been running hard in his Jewishness, excelling, accruing, building an impressive resume — lots of religious gains and profit. More than anyone. But then, he took that entire column, all those things he counted as gains, and he said “LOSS.” Why? Why the change? Because of Christ.

Paul met Jesus Christ — against all odds. We can read the story in Acts Chapter 9. Paul retells the story himself in Acts 22 and 26. The risen Lord Jesus intervened in Paul’s life. Jesus knocked him off his horse and saved him. Paul had been zealous for God, but Jesus told him he had been going about it all the wrong way. Which means, although Paul wanted God, he was trying to get God by trusting in himself. He put his confidence in his own gifts and achievements, which means he looked to these things to be his savior.

Questions ConnectionAnd here’s where I want you to see how the first two questions are connected: What is your heaven? And Who is your Savior?

Your heaven is what you most want. Your savior is who you are trusting in to get you what you most want.

We have to get both of these right, but you can imagine how easily this could go wrong. The gate of wrongness is wide here. There more than one way to mess thing up.

Like, you could get it wrong both ways: false heaven and false savior. And that’s probably none of you in here. All those people are working hard somewhere right now. They’re running hard down dead-end roads.

But what about true heaven, false savior?

That’s like Paul. You want God, but your savior is your own flesh. You’re trusting in your own gifts and your own achievements to be why God accepts you.

I know what that’s like.

My Own StoryMy heaven for the longest time was to always play baseball at the next level, which meant in high school I wanted to play in college. So I was pursuing that. And one weekend I was at this showcase event — and a showcase event is when you go to this place and try to showcase your skills in front of a bunch of college or pro scouts. Well, at this thing, one of the coaches there who had been recruiting me, about halfway through the showcase, he pulled me aside, and he said, “Parnell, hustle is what makes you good.”

It was not a compliment. What he was saying was: “You’re not very good, so you have to play really hard.” I was 17 and I remember it to this day (and there are some deep reasons why) but one reason is because I knew he was right. It cemented something for me: if baseball was my heaven, hustle was my savior. I better bust it. I better get after it.

But then, I got into this car wreck, and God, in his mercy, started to do a new work in my life, and after about a year, baseball was not my heaven anymore. God became my heaven. I wanted to know him. I wanted to be used by him, so I left baseball and started to pursue theological training to be a pastor.

But here’s the thing: I was still hustling. I thought: If I want to know God, if I want God to accept me and use me, I have to really play hard. So I did. I had intense spiritual disciplines. I hit the books like I never had before, and I became religiously competitive. Until one early morning in prayer, when everybody else was sleeping and I was really playing hard, I told God that the reason he loved me more than he loved my roommates was because of my hustle. I told God that.

And in that moment … I can remember exactly where I was — it was almost like Jesus stepped into the room and he said You’ve got this all wrong. It’s called grace.

Grace changed my life.

“I Boast No More”See, Jesus is God’s grace to us and all of him for us is grace.

Which means, you can’t be proud about discovering grace because it’s only by grace that you know it’s by grace.

And then it’s only by grace that you know it’s by grace that you know it’s by grace. It’s just grace, grace, grace, grace until you get to God who “before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen [a people] in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any other thing in the creature as the condition or cause moving him thereunto” (1689, 3.5).

Go back before time! Go as far back as you can! Turn every angle you want! It’s all grace. And when we understand that, our own righteousness just looks stupid. All those gifts and achievements you once boasted in, if you are a Christian there was a time when you counted as loss. We have exposed them as false saviors. And we say:

No more my God, I boast no more

Of all the duties I have done

I quit the hopes I held before

To trust the merits of Thy Son

The best obedience of my hands

Dares not appear before Thy throne

But faith can answer Thy demands

By pleading what my Lord has done

Jesus Christ is the only true Savior.

He’s the only one who gets you God … if God is who you want.

Prosperity Gospel?What about those who look to Jesus to be their Savior, but they want Jesus to get them something other than God? What if Jesus is your Savior but your heaven is comfort and ease? So true Savior, false heaven.

Well that’s what’s called the “prosperity gospel” — people who use Jesus to get themselves temporal pleasures. They use Jesus to get something other than God.

And of course we think “that’s not us!” — right? We would never do that, but this is where we need to stop and think. It’s why the third question matters.

First, What is your heaven? Second, Who is your savior?

3) Where Are You Now? (verses 8–9)In verse 8, Paul is no longer talking about the past, but he’s doubling down on his accounting. In verse 7 he said,

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”

Verse 8:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

So Paul didn’t just get the math right one time, but this is a present counting. A current counting. And then Paul explains more of what this means, verse 8:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christand be found in him [Paul wants Jesus. He wants to be found in Jesus] not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith …

Those things that Paul once trusted in — his own righteousness — that’s all garbage to him now.

“Savior” once he called his flesh. “Sewage” now he counts his best.

His “own righteousness” does not get him God.

The best obedience of his hands does not earn God’s favor, but he needs the righteousness of God through faith in Christ — Paul says it twice in verse 9 — he’s talking about “the righteousness of God that depends on faith.” That’s what he needs.

Paul needs GOD to call him righteous which God only does through his faith in Jesus. That goes for you too, for us.

Listen: the only way God accepts you is by looking at you and seeing something not of you.

I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings. It just means that Jesus, not yourself, Jesus must be your Savior. Jesus is who gets you God.

The Ultimate GoalAnd more than that. Look at the first thing Paul says in verse 8. He presently counts everything as loss because of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” [He’s going to pick this back up in verse 10, which we’re gonna talk about next week (but to preach the same things to you is no trouble to us and is safe for you). So we’ll talk about it now and next week.]

What we see in this knowing Jesus is that Paul doesn’t just want to be right with God — that’s penultimate — but the final goal, the ultimate goal, the real heaven, is a relationship with God through Christ. That is what makes heaven heaven. It’s to know Christ.

And what’s interesting here is that Jesus is not just the means to get you what you want, but Jesus also becomes what you want. Jesus is means and end. To know Jesus is of surpassing worth. That is what is most valuable — to know “Christ Jesus my Lord.”

And this is the only time in the New Testament when Paul says it exactly like that. “Christ Jesus my Lord.” There are several times when he says “Christ Jesus our Lord” but here he says “my Lord.”

What we see here is both “intimacy and devotion.” Devotion in that Paul has surrendered to Jesus as Lord. Jesus is King and in charge. So we do what Jesus says to do and go where Jesus says to go. Devotion.

But it’s also intimacy, closeness, in that Paul says Jesus is my Lord — he knows Jesus as my Lord. This is a deep, personal knowing. It’s real experience in real relationship. Intimacy.

The late commentator Gordon Fee says, “There is something unfortunate about a cerebral Christianity that “knows” but does not know in this way…”

We Are Heart-PeopleAnd church, I don’t want that to be true of us. Y’all know that we really value doctrine around here — what you think about God and his world matters. The head is important. But Cities Church, we are heart people, and we want heart-knowledge.

And what that means at the end of the day, when our thinking is in order, when our doctrine is in line, we just want to know Jesus. Not in an abstract, distant, check-the-box kind of way, but we want to remember his realness in all of life. We want to be alive to the ever-present fact that he is alive. Jesus is near to us. His Spirit dwells within us. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. I know this is crazy, but it’s true — Jesus loves us. Jesus loves me. I want to know him like that. I want us to know him like that.

And so, where are you now?

Here’s a little catechism for you:

What is your heaven?

My heaven is to be closer to Jesus

Who is your savior?

My only savior is Jesus.

Where are you now?

I’m pressing on to know Jesus my Lord.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableWe come to this Table glad and grateful — not to work, but to rest; not to do, but to receive. For those of us who trust in Jesus, that’s what’s going on in this moment.

But if you’re here and you’ve not yet trusted in Jesus, it means you’re still looking to your own efforts to be your savior. But listen: you can be done with that today. You can count all those things as loss right now and you can put your faith in Jesus. I invite you to do that.

For those who don’t trust Jesus yet, trust him now.

For those of us who do trust Jesus, let’s receive his Table and give him thanks.

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The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Whatever the origins of our English word Easter — and they are apparently too ancient and complicated to trace with certainty, even for Encyclopedia Brittanica — Easter has come to function for us today as a two-syllable designation for “Resurrection Sunday.” That’s six syllables down to two.

Easter is the highest day in the church calendar, the one Sunday that we specially celebrate the reality which we seek to live in light of every day of the year: that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who lived on earth in full humanity, and died on the cross on Good Friday, rose again bodily, on Sunday morning.

And this Easter we find ourselves at the halfway point of Philippians. In meditating on these verses, with Easter in view, I’ve paused over this word safe in verse 1. What does Paul mean that his “writ[ing] the same things . . . is safe”?

As I was pondering Easter safety this week, I started seeing the word everywhere. Apparently, we are a people very conscious of safety, and very interested in safety, and perhaps hardly realize how much. In the news just this week was more of the Boeing “safety crisis.” And I saw headlines that read, “Eclipse safety: NYS task force has been working since 2022 to prepare for April 8”, “Senators say Meta’s Zuckerberg is slow-walking child safety inquiries.”

And I found appeals to safety in my own inbox: The city of Minneapolis directed me to get an HVAC “safety check” as part of a home inspection. I saw a message from SportsEngine with the call to action: “Keep your athlete safe.” And I received unwanted marketing emails that offered the option to “Safely Unsubscribe” (in small print at bottom).

Some of our constant pursuit of safety is, of course, shallow and misguided and overly fearful. Our modern lives can be filled with petty and disordered desires for safety. And at the same time, there are wise, holy, reasonable desires for safety. That’s what Paul appeals to in verse 1:

“Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.”

Easter JoyBefore we focus on “Easter safety,” which will be our theme this morning, let me first say something about “Finally” at the beginning of verse 1. I know there’s a preacher joke here. “Just like a preacher! Paul says ‘Finally’ when he’s only halfway done!”

However, this “finally” is actually a loose connecting phrase that can mean “finally” in some contexts, but in others, it can be “so then” or “in addition” or “above all.” The key here is that Paul just mentioned joy and rejoicing in 2:28–29. And before then, he mentioned gladness and rejoicing, twice each, in 2:17–18. And before that, he made a double mention of his own rejoicing in 1:18. Have you noticed how often Paul not only talks about joy in Philippians, but does it in pairs? We’ll see it again in 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” It’s like he just can’t say it enough. To say it just once doesn’t seem to do it. He needs to say it again.

And Paul is aware of how often he’s talking about rejoicing, and doing so in pairs, and so after saying “rejoice in the Lord” in 3:1, he adds a little bit of a defense for it. He wants his readers to know he’s aware he might sound like a broken record, but he means it, in the best of ways. He’s not being lazy, or simple-minded. He doesn’t want to bore them, but to help them, to make them safe. He overcomes whatever dislike or distaste he might have for obvious repetition, and says, “To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.”

It's safe to keep saying, Rejoice in the Lord. It’s for your good. You can’t overdo rejoicing in the Lord. Now, you can underdo all sorts of other things, while rejoicing in the Lord. You can underdo sorrow and grieving. You can underdo seriousness and playfulness. And you can overdo all those. You can overdo all sorts of good things. But joy in Christ, rightly understood, truly experienced, you cannot overdo. You cannot overdo rejoicing in Jesus.

Three SafetiesOur question this morning on Easter is, Safe from what? What does Easter joy, the double joy, repeated joy, the great joy of the resurrection of Jesus, which is the beating heart of the joy of Christianity, what does joy in the risen Christ give safety from and how?

I see three threats in these verses, and so three safeties for us in the Easter joy of rejoicing in the risen Christ.

1) Easter joy gives us safety from foes.To be clear, foes, or opponents (1:28), in and of themselves, are the least concern of these three threats. Still real, but the least troubling on their own. So, Paul says in verse 2:

“Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.”

So, who are these “dogs” nipping at the Philippians’ heels?

My family and good friends will tell you I’m not a dog person. I recognize that many of you are dog people. I can respect that — to a degree. Sometimes when dogs come up, I like to say, with a smile, “Well, you know what the Bible says about dogs, don’t you?”

Let’s just say the picture is very negative — but it does have a twist. Dogs were the scum of ancient cities. They were unclean and nasty, like we think of rats today. Dogs would devour dead flesh and lick up spilled blood. And perhaps related to this, the Jews came to associate “Gentiles” (non-Jews) with dogs. Gentiles were unclean, according to the old covenant; they were outsiders. You may recall Jesus’s interaction with the Canaanite (Gentile) woman in Matthew 15 (and Mark 7), where he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. . . . It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” — the Gentiles.

For Paul, there is an insightful irony in calling these foes “dogs,” because they presume that they are the insiders, and that Gentiles, like the Philippians and us, are the outsiders. We’re the dogs, unclean and unsafe, they think — unless we add old-covenant law-keeping (marked by circumcision) to faith in Jesus.

We call these opponents “Judaizers.” They tried to Judaize Christianity; they tried to put Christ-believing Gentiles back under old-covenant Judaism, rather than letting them just be Gentile Christians in the new covenant without the baggage of the previous era. These Judaizers went around telling Gentile Christians that, essentially, they needed to become Jews physically in order to be truly saved, and safe.

And these Judaizers often dogged Paul’s ministry. They followed him around. After he’d bring the gospel to Gentiles, and move on to the next town, they’d sweep in and try to get new Gentile Christians to think they needed to add Judaism to their faith.

So, when Paul calls them “dogs,” he’s not aiming to insult them but to use instructive irony for the sake of his readers. He’s turning the tables to make the point that believing Gentiles are actually the true Jews (spiritually), and these Judaizers have become the new Gentiles, the outsiders, the dogs. Now Christ has come, and been raised, and inaugurated a new covenant. With Easter Sunday, old is gone; behold, new has come.

And these Judaizing foes might think of themselves as doing good works, according to the old covenant, but in fact they are “evil workers.” In trying to circumcise Gentile flesh in obedience to the old covenant, they are, in fact, mutilators of the flesh. They have missed how Good Friday and Easter have remade the world.

So, how does Easter joy, rejoicing in the risen Christ, make us safe from such foes, these and a thousand others? Specifically, rejoicing in the real Jesus fortifies our souls against trying to add anything to the grounds of our rejoicing. In rejoicing in him — in who he is, in what he accomplished for us at the cross, in his rising back to life, and in that he is alive today and our living Lord on the throne of the universe — we come to know a fullness of joy that will not be flanked or supplemented by anything else. Being satisfied in the risen Christ keeps us from being deceived by other shallow appeals to joy, and keeps us from temptations to try to add to him.

Rejoicing in Jesus is practical. Are you seeking to rejoice in him? Do you aim at this, and pray for this? When you open the Bible? When you pray? When you gather with fellow Christians, and when we come to worship together on Sunday mornings, and when you go to work, and when you live the rest of life, are you seeking to rejoice, to be satisfied, to be happy in the risen Christ?

So, Easter joy gives us safety from foes.

2) Easter joy gives us safety from our own flesh.This is a greater concern — the danger of self-ruin, the threat of our own sinful hearts, various habits and patterns that would lead us to trust in ourselves for salvation. Or, we might say, the way that foes are a real threat to our souls is through our own sin. Foes harm us by deception. Then, being deceived, we move to trust in ourselves. Verse 3:

“For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

Remember from verse 2 these Judaizing foes — who claim to be God’s true people, his Israel, the circumcision — they are actually the dogs, the new Gentile outsiders. Because, Paul says, in verse 3, with emphasis, we are the circumcision. We Christians, both Jews like Paul and Gentiles like the Philippians, who — and this is such an important “who” with the sequence that follows.

Here we get to the heart of the Christian life, which is the human heart. Oh get this clear on Easter Sunday. Get this heart. Get what it means to be God’s new-covenant people. Circumcision of the flesh is not what makes and defines us. Human deeds and efforts and abilities do not make us and define us. Rather, what circumcision of the flesh had been pointing to all along is circumcision of the heart. That is, a new heart, new desires. A born-again soul. New creation in you. God opens the eyes of your soul to the wonder of his risen Son. He changes your heart to marvel at Jesus and rejoice in him. So, here in verse 3 we get three marks of what it means to really be a Christian.

One, we “worship (live, walk, serve) by the Spirit of God.” That is, God has put his own Spirit in us. He dwells in us. We have the Holy Spirit. Can you believe that? If you are in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. God himself, in his Spirit, somehow “dwells in” you. We saw it in 2:13: “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” What power against sin! What power to rejoice in the risen Christ! What power for taking the initiative to love and serve others and gladly do what Christ calls us to do.

The risen Christ has poured out his Spirit, and ushered in a new era of history following Easter. Now, God’s people are no longer under the tutelage of the old-covenant law, but have his own Spirit at work in us. We do not worship and live in the old era but in the new, with God’s own Spirit dwelling in us.

And so, two, we “glory in Christ Jesus.” Which is more joy language, but elevated. “Glory” is literally “boast” — we boast in Christ Jesus. “Boasting” is tricky in English because it has negative connotations. So the ESV translates it “glory” (as in 1:26). What makes boasting, or glorying, good or bad is its object. And so we boast, The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

True Christians are those who glory in Christ Jesus as the sole grounds of our full acceptance with God. So, when someone asks, How do I get right with God? Or, how can I be truly safe — not in the little trivialities of this life but forever? We boast in Christ. “On my own, I’m ruined. But I glory in the risen Christ. I boast in the one who died for me and rose again. He is worthy. I glory in him!”

So, “boasting” or “glorying” is stronger language for the rejoicing of verse 1. This is Easter joy. This is double joy. This is joy intensified, joy magnified, joy heightened, joy expanded, joy enriched, joy elevated, joy resurrected.

Which means, third, by contrast, Christians are people who “put no confidence in the flesh.” We boast in the risen Christ, not self, for ultimate safety. And if you wonder what “flesh” means here, Paul will make it clear in verses 4–6, as we’ll see next week. In sum: putting “no confidence in the flesh” means not trusting in ourselves or any mere human effort or energy to get and keep us right with God. Not any privilege of our birth, nor any natural ability, nor hard work, nor achievement, nor human wisdom — nothing in us or related to us, whether who we are or what we’ve done. Rather, we glory in Jesus.

Which leads then to one last safety that’s implicit beneath the first two. So, Easter joy gives us safety from foes and from our own flesh, and . . .

3) Easter joy gives us safety from God’s righteous fury against our sin.This is the greatest threat of all: omnipotent wrath. The offense of our sin against the holy God is the final danger beneath the other dangers. The reason foes could be a danger is they might deceive us to put confidence in ourselves and our actions. And the reason putting confidence in ourselves is a danger is that this discounts the depth of our sin and leaves us unshielded, unsafe before the righteous justice of God against our rebellion.

When Paul says that rejoicing in the Lord “is safe for you,” what’s at bottom is ultimate safety, final safety, eternal safety, safety of soul, safety from the divine justice that our sin deserves.

But Easter joy keeps us safe from the righteous fury we deserve, because rejoicing in the risen Christ is the way we take cover in the Son of God who came, and died, and was raised, to deal with our sin and usher us safely with him into the very presence of God.

You might put it this way: the safest soul in all the universe is the one that rejoices in the risen Christ.

Rejoicing in the Lord is a place of great safety, shielded from every real threat, even the greatest. God will not destroy those who delight in him. Delight in him is a stronghold (Nehemiah 8:10), a fortress, a safe place, because God always preserves those who delight in him.

So, Cities Church, rejoice in the risen Christ! To say it again is no trouble for me, and safe for you.

The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Seeds of Joy at the TableAs we come to the Table, let’s address a question some of us have on a high feast day like Easter, and in a book like Philippians that accents the importance of rejoicing in the Lord. What if you’re not feeling it? What if you don’t feel happy in the risen Christ? Perhaps you want to rejoice in Jesus, you want to glory in him, but you’re a sinner, your heart’s not where you want it to be. One answer, among others, is this Table.

This Table is not only for those who are boiling over with Easter delight, overflowing with joy in Jesus. It’s also for those who feel their hearts to be sluggish, and know they’re not rejoicing in the Lord like they want to, or like they should. And yet, in the ache of that desire is the seed of joy. In the longing. In the wanting is the seed of Easter joy that we come to nourish and strengthen at this Table.

If you would say with us this morning, “I claim the risen Christ. However high or low my rejoicing, I know myself undeserving. I put no confidence in my flesh. But I do put my confidence, for final safety, in the risen Christ.” Then we would have you eat and drink with us, for joy.

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Something we need to keep in mind as we’re working through the Book of Philippians is that this is a very personal letter. It’s personal in that the apostle Paul tells us a lot about himself over these four chapters — he tells us how he’s doing in his current situation; he tells about how he relates to others and others to him, (good and bad); he tells us about his ministry intentions, he tells us about his past, he tells us about his values and goals — Paul gets personal in this letter, and I don’t think we see that any better than we do in our passage today, Chapter 2, verses 25–30.

At one level, what Paul says in these verses has nothing to do with us — because he’s talking about details for his own day and about what he’s got going on. But then at another level — at the level of “This is Holy Scripture” — Paul is modeling something for us here. Paul is an example for us, and I’ve not been exactly sure on what to call it. I’ve gone back and forth on this …

I think you could call it “Christian realism” — meaning that Paul as a Christian is in touch with reality in this world. He’s constantly aware of Ultimate Reality — he knows Jesus is real — and he knows that as he navigates the hardships and setbacks of life in a broken world. You must have both! Paul is not just a realist, he’s a “Christian realist.” We could call his example that (but apparently that term is already taken and used for something else, so never mind).

Instead, what if we just called Paul’s example here, his honesty?

In these verses in Philippians 2 we see the honesty of the apostle Paul.

Here’s what I mean: there’s no doubt that Paul kept his eyes on heaven. We see that in this letter — we see that in all his letters. The hope of the gospel was right here for Paul. But although Paul kept his eyes on heaven, his head was not stuck in the clouds. He was honest.

And I want to show you that in these verses, because I think what we find here will help us as we navigate our own lives in this broken world. So let’s pray again and we’ll get started.

Father in heaven, by your grace, we trust this morning in your sovereign care for us and we rest in your great love for us in Christ. We remember now, that in this moment, we are here together beneath your smile, and that you are pleased to speak to us through your Word. By your Spirit, would you do that? Help us receive what you have for us, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Three ways we see the honesty of Paul:

1) Paul made practical ministry decisions.We’re going to be talking a lot about Epaphroditus, and if you’ve never encountered Epaphroditus before… Don’t worry, you can’t catch it!

It’s a name. Epaphroditus was the name of man that we read about only in the Book of Philippians. We first read about him here in Chapter 2 and then also in Chapter 4, verse 18. Based upon what Paul says, we can put together a pretty good picture of who he was.

First, with a name like “Epaphroditus” he definitely had a Gentile background. The name Epaphroditus was connected to the Greek goddess Aphrodite — and we know Jewish parents didn’t give out that name! This guy was a pagan from a pagan family. He was ‘straight outta Philippi’ — but at some point this pagan man from a pagan background heard the gospel and believed and he became part of this local church.

And he wasn’t just part of this church, but this church had chosen him to be their messenger and minister to Paul’s need. We see that in verse 25. What exactly does that mean?

Remember that Paul is in prison in Rome, and back then, prisoners relied upon the support of friends outside of prison to make sure their needs were met. Paul needed his friends to send him money. That’s why in Chapter 4, verse 18, Paul confirms for this church that he received the gift they sent him through Epaphroditus.

So Epaphroditus, then, was the one this church had commissioned out to take Paul a gift of money. Which is a big deal. Epaphroditus was the representative of this church, sent from Philippi to Rome, with a stack of cash for Paul.

And by now — if we can put ourselves in the shoes of these first readers — by the time the church is reading this letter, Epaphroditus had been gone for months but now he’s back. Epaphroditus was most likely the one who brought this church the letter from Paul that they’re reading — and Paul wants to tell them why.

Paul wants to tell the church why Epaphroditus came back to Philippi and not someone else.

Notice the difference between what Paul says about Timothy and what he says about Epaphroditus. In verse 19 — y’all look back at verse 19 — Paul said that he hoped to send Timothy. See the word “hoped”?

Now look at verse 25. Paul says there he thought it was necessary to send Epaphroditus. Why did he consider it necessary?

Paul gives us four reasons in the passage, and I want to show them to you right away, and then I’ll tell you the story. Paul says, “I have sent Epaphroditus back…”

1 — verse 26 — for he has been longing for you

2 — verse 26 — he has been distressed because you heard that he was ill

Look at verse 28: “I am more eager to send him, therefore …

3 — that you may rejoice at seeing him again

4 — that I may be less anxious (less sorrow)

These are the four reasons. Here’s the story:

His Mission Situation First, we need a little context for what Epaphroditus has done.

Today, if you were in the City of Philippi (in Greece), and you wanted to travel west, to Rome, you can get there by car within a day. You’d have to ferry across the Ionian Sea, which would slow you down some, but in theory, you could get there in 20 hours. By car. If you made that same trip by foot, you’re looking at 235 hours, according to Google Maps, and it would take you a couple of weeks. That’s today.

But if we were to go back a couple thousand years ago, to the year 60, traveling from Philippi to Rome — from where this church was to where Paul was in prison — it would have taken you a couple of months. So, from the time that Epaphroditus first left for Rome, to when the church could expect to hear anything back from him, it would have been at least four months. But if you add to that the fact that Epaphroditus got sick, verse 26, it would have been even longer.

It was most likely around six months since this church had heard from Epaphroditus. Some commentators suspect six to nine months.

Understandably DistressedTime is relative. That’s not a super long time. But it probably feels like a long time when you’re waiting to hear from somebody and especially when they left with a bunch of cash! There would have been a moment when this church wondered: What happened to Epaphroditus?

And Epaphroditus knew that they wondered that. Because Paul tells us in verse 26 that Epaphroditus was distressed that the church heard he was ill. Now why?

Why would Epaphroditus have been distressed that the church heard he was sick?

I’m sure it’s because they cared for one another and he wanted this church to know he was okay, but also remember, there’s cash involved. Epaphroditus wanted the church to know that he got that money to Paul! He wanted them to know, not just that he survived, but that he did what they sent him to do!That’s at least one reason, in verse 26, that Epaphroditus had been longing to see his church family. This is not just generic homesickness. But he wanted his church to know that: he didn’t flake out; he didn’t take the money and run; and he didn’t die.

But he made it to Rome. He gave Paul the gift. He completed the mission. He wants his church to know that. And he knows they wanna know that. We’re talking about very basic, understandable desires. It makes sense.

Paul’s Common SenseSo when Paul is trying to figure out who is gonna get his letter and update back to the Philippians, do you see how these things factored in? Paul thought: Epaphroditus longs to go home; Epaphroditus is distressed because the church knows he was sick; this church would be really happy to see him; and man, I’d be less anxious if I sent Epaphroditus instead of Timothy (because I need Timothy to stay closer by for the meantime) — there are four reasons here why Paul considered it necessary to send back Epaphroditus, and one thing all the reasons have in common is that they’re practical.

It seems like Paul is just using good old common sense. He’s not over-spiritualizing things here — and this is for a man who had encountered the risen Lord Jesus in blinding light. Remember Paul had heard Jesus’s voice. He once had a prayer experience when he was caught up to the third heaven. There’s no doubt that Paul had his mind set on things above, not on things below — heaven was right here for Paul— and sometimes when it came to decision-making, practical things mattered. Paul made practical ministry decisions.

Now this does not give us license to go bonkers and be super-pragmatic to our spiritual detriment — Paul would never do that — but it does mean that in our Christian lives, and in our ministry together, we should take into account practical things. Paul did that and we should too. It’s being honest.

Here’s a second way we see the honesty of Paul …

2) Paul knew who truly deserved honor.Skip down to verse 29. Paul concludes everything he says about Epaphroditus with two commands. Verse 29, talking about Epaphroditus, he says:

So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men …

Receive him and honor him.

But notice the second command about honor. Paul says to hold in honor such men — meaning, he’s not only talking about Epaphroditus here. He goes beyond Epaphroditus and he wants us to know something about honor in general. Paul wants us teach us something about the kind of person we honor in the church.

And I’ll go ahead and say it: the idea of showing honor to certain individuals in our church, it’s a little uncomfortable for us. That we would make distinctions by showing honor to some people over others — that feels Victorian and un-democratic.So I wanna try to bring some clarity here.

First, when it comes to the topic of honor — of humans showing honor to other humans — that’s a universal human reality.

You could go anywhere in the world you want, look at any human culture under the sun, and you’re gonna find that in every human society, honor exists. One way or another, humans will find a way to distinguish other humans as being more celebrated than others. Showing honor will happen.

And I’m not gonna get too deep into this, but I’ll just say that our society is very confused with this topic.

At one level, we don’t want there to be any distinctions. That’s why everybody gets a trophy; nobody gets their feelings hurt; everybody is the same. You are all equally good basketball players.

But then at another level, our society has created “The Celebrity.” As a society we make valuations and comparisons of other people for the shallowest of reasons. And we esteem our celebrities so highly in America that we actually let these people become a scorecard for how we view others. It’s nuts! Our society shows honorlike crazy! And it’s a mess!

Clarifying the ConfusionAnd it’s such a mess that we might think: “There should be no showing honor in the church.” “In the church, every single person should be treated the exact same.” “There should be NO holding certain individuals in honor.”

We might think that, but remember, it’s not just human to show honor, and it’s biblical. Because Paul clearly says here in verse 28 to “honor such men.” And that word “honor” means it. It means to treat someone with high esteem, to show special attention to them. It means to give someone deep respect.

See, the issue is not that we show honor; it’s why we show honor. This topic all comes down to what we could call the honor-metric. What are the things we’re looking at to be the reason we show honor?

For example, say a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into our assembly, and then a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in. If you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there” — if you do that, the Bible says That is evil — James Chapter 2, 1–4. It’s evil because you’ve made distinctions among yourselves based on worldly reasons. The Bible calls that partiality and it has no place in the church. That’s of the world! Don’t bring that in here.

But showing honor is different, and it’s different because of the reason we show honor. Paul says in verse 30. He says to show honor to Epaphroditus and to those like him because — he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.

Do you see how that honor-metric is so different from the world’s? It’s so counter-cultural.

We honor those in the church, not because of their jewelry and jackets, but because of their sacrifice for the sake of the gospel. In the church, we treat as the highest those whom the world would call the lowest. We have a cross-shaped honor-metric.

The Cross-Shaped Honor-MetricTo bring this home, pretend for a minute that on a Sunday morning, Taylor Swift visited our church. That would be great! And you know we’d say to Taylor? We’d say: Welcome! You might be able to find a seat over there (that’s what our ushers say).

But, if Matthew and Kailie visited our church, whose last names I can’t tell you, and where they live, I can’t tell you — for security reasons — if they come here, we would try to find out days in advance, and we’d get here early and save a place for them to sit, and we’d throw a reception for them after the service so that you can greet them. We want to honor such people! — if we’re listening to Paul.

If we’re listening to Paul, we show the most honor to those who most resemble the example of Jesus in Philippians 2:5–8.

Honor Epaphroditus. Honor those like him — because he did not count comfort in the world a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant and being found as worthless in the eyes of the empire. He humbled himself by risking his life in the work of Christ. He was willing to die for the advance the gospel.

The apostle Paul cares nothing about worldly prestige. He burned that scorecard (we’re gonna see in Chapter 3). But he knew who truly deserved honor. That’s part of his honesty.

Okay, here’s the last point. Third way we see Paul’s honesty:

3) Paul understood that death is still terrible.And I want to end on this point because of what our own church is going through in the loss of Kayla Rigney. I can’t help but see the providence of God here, in that the topic of death is in today’s passage after we just gathered yesterday to grieve in hope because of the death of Kayla.

Look back at verse 25.

Epaphroditus was not just a member of the church at Philippi who they commissioned out, but he had become dear to Paul. Paul calls him in verse 25, “my brother and fellow worker and fellow solider.” And notice that this is different from what Paul said about Timothy in verse 22. Paul said Timothy was like his son, but he calls Epaphroditus his brother.

Now I think this is important, because technically Timothy was Paul’s brother too — because all Christians, young and old, are sons and daughters of God and therefore fellow brothers and sisters.

But Paul doesn’t call Timothy his brother because he’s not being technical, he’s being personal. Personally, Timothy was like a son to Paul. Personally, Epaphroditus was like a brother. He was a colleague. He was Paul’s fellow comrade in arms.

And for Paul to say this about someone is a gushing commendation. The apostle Paul considered Epaphroditus to be a vital partner in his missionary work. And so already then, by verse 25, the church at Philippi would have read this, and it would have gotten their attention. Whatever they had been wondering at Epaphroditus, this would have set the record straight. Paul was vouching for him. Paul is saying Hey, Epaphroditus means a lot to me!

And then he keeps going. Look at verse 26 again:

“for he [Epaphroditus] has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death.”

Paul confirms that Yes, Epaphroditus was sick — and he was so sick that he almost died. Verse 27 — But God had mercy on him.

Does everybody see that in verse 27?

What was this mercy?

The mercy was that he did not die.

Paul says that God had mercy on Epaphroditus by keeping him from death — and that wasn’t just mercy on Epaphroditus, but Paul says it was also mercy on him, verse 27, “lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.” The death of Epaphroditus would have multiplied Paul’s sorrow.

So get this! Verse 27: Paul is saying that it’s a mercy not to die and that death causes sorrow.

But wait a minute Paul! Wait a minute! You just told us in Chapter 1, verse 21 that to die is gain! You said that it is far better to depart and to be with Christ!

In Chapter 1 it sounds to me like the mercy is dying.

But here in Chapter 2 the mercy is not dying!

Which is it, Paul? Which is it?

It’s both.

For the Christian, it is true that death is gain, because of where death takes you. Because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8), and to be in the physical presence of Jesus is better than anything we can imagine.

For the Christian, death is never a tragedy in the technical sense because death is never the final ending, because “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

This means that death has been so overpowered by Jesus that he has actually made death to be our chauffeur into his joy. Because of what Jesus did, death is now the vehicle that carries us into amazing grace bright shining as the sun … Amen!

That is now the ultimate result of death for Christians. That’s why Paul says what he does in Chapter 1. This is why we grieve in hope. There’s hope! Thanks be to God!

And church, there’s still grief.

We can rejoice for where death takes us, but death itself, death as death, it’s our worst enemy. Death is the last enemy to be finally destroyed, and until then, until Revelation 20:14, we should hate death. We should hate it. Nothing in this world hurts more than death. It causes sorrow, Paul says.

And we know this, if we’re being honest like Paul. You know this if you’ve suffered the death of people you love.

Because death is the separation of things that should be united. Death robs us. Death robs us of so much that could be — of so much that should have been — with the people we love in this world.

So yes, Jesus has defeated death —thank you, Jesus! — death is a defeated enemy! But it’s not yet a destroyed enemy, and it’s still an enemy. Paul understood that death is still terrible.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableToday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week — next Sunday is Easter.

Easter would not be Easter unless death were terrible.

That’s what makes the cross of Christ so wonderful, see. The wages of sin is death, and that’s precisely what Jesus set out to conquer. Jesus disarmed the worst that death could do to us by dying himself in our place. That’s why death does not have the final word. Jesus has won victory. And we’re gonna celebrate next Sunday! We have hope!

But it’s fitting to enter Holy Week grieving in hope. Jesus invites us to bring that heaviness to him.

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We are about half way through the book of Philippians, and Paul has already packed a lot in. Over the next two weeks, we are going to look at instructions Paul gives regarding Timothy and Epaphroditus. This isn’t just Paul taking a break, and getting some logistics out of the way. Rather than this being a nice bonus for the the Philippians, Paul's sending of these men is more integral to his care for them. This is actually at the heart of Paul ministry to the Philippians. And in the next few moments, I hope with God's help, to show you that in the text.

The way our text is structured this morning is fairly straight forward. We see Paul say at the beginning and at the end stating what he wants to do, and he explains why in the middle.

Verse 19,

“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you”

In verses 20-22, he commends Timothy to them, and explains why Timothy is the guy to send.

Verses 23-24,

“I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust also in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.”

I want to send Timothy to you, why? Because I have no one else like Timothy who cares for you all. Therefore I am excited to send Him to you, and trust Jesus that I will come soon as well.

What Paul wants to do is clearly laid out, and we are going to spend the majority of our time developing the why in Paul’s mind. Why is Timothy so valuable? And why does Paul see it as important to send him?

We are going to do a lot of foundation work, to understand Paul’s relationship to Timothy, which helps us in turn understand why he is eager to send him. So there are 3 answers to the “why” question we will cover this morning. Why does Paul want to send Timothy?

1) Because Paul was a father to Timothy.

2) Because Timothy, was a son to Paul.

3) Because being physically present matters.

1) Paul was a father to Timothy (v.22).Verse 22,

“But you know Timothy’s proven worth, as how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel”

This is how Paul characterizes his relationship with Timothy.

What do fathers aim to do? Ephesians 6:4,

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

It’s at least that, not exhaustive but a good overall picture of what father’s do.

A father wants to live out a Godly life.A father wants to live out and pass along a Godly life (a Godly mission and vision).

What I mean by mission, is what we are called by God to do or be. What are our lives supposed to be about?

What I mean by vision, is what it looks like to actually live it out. This could be summarized as a way of life or a “manner of life.”

Put together, it is a singular passion to help your sons have a: “manner of life worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (1:27). That is what Paul is trying to teach to the Philippians, and has taught to Timothy.

Paul's goal in life was to live for the glory of God, and to live as an example of Christ, which is to walk worthy of the Gospel of Christ.

So Paul having this Godly passion, lives it out for the good of others. And he does this, with a fatherly disposition. Let’s look at a three basic pieces of what it looks like to pass along a passion in a fatherly way. Let’s look at the fatherlinessof Paul to Timothy.

A father invites his son to join him in the work.A father invites his son into work that he is doing, he instructs his son in how to enter the work and share in it, and he works along side his son. They may not be doing the same exact thing at every point, but they are working together for a singular purpose. They are working together on something, not two different goals. The father is inviting the son to join him in a worthy passion and purpose. Fathers (& mother’s) ought to have meaningful work to invite our children into.

And Paul tells us what is most important, we don’t need to find it on our own.

For example, I was working along side my son, Jude. We were going to do some yard work. So I said to Jude, “I would like you to come outside and work hard to help me clean up the yard. Then if we get everything done and you listen well and are helpful, we can go to the store together and get some ice cream.” I’ll help with toys, then leaves together, cut wood together, stack together, etc… (join me in the work).

An example from Paul in Acts 16:1-5,

“Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.”

Paul is doing worthy work for the Glory of God and the sake of the Gospel, and he invites Timothy to enter into the work with him.

A father is deeply invested in accomplishing his task.Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, contrasts his care for them with that of many others.

1 Corinthians 4:15–16,

“For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me.”

At minimum, there is an investment of care and concern Paul has for the Corinthians. There is a difference between a teacher and a parent. Paul’s affections for the Philippians are poured all over his letter to them.

Philippians 4:9,

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

They are to practice things that have been displayed for them. They haven’t just been taught, they have been modeled certain things.

In my example of cutting wood, I did not give Jude the instruction manual, or buy him a book called “Chainsaw-ing for Dummies”. Dummies should probably stay away from chainsaws.

I had him watch how I stood and what I did. I cautioned him, I told him how to shut it down, I carefully instructed him where to point it, and how to hold it. And if your stressing at this point, I firmly put my hands over his, so that he couldn’t move them even if he tried.

Great care is taken when things are important and have real consequences.

An example from Paul,

1 Timothy 4:15,

“Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.”

2 Timothy 2:2,

“You then my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

Paul is working with Timothy, and is passing something along to Timothy.

He is deeply invested because he is entrusting something to him. Entrusting the gospel and a manner of live = how to live, not just how to think.

He know he won’t always be there for Timothy, and I wont always be there to hold the chainsaw for Jude.

That is the current case in Philippi, Paul just said “obey much more in my absence” (Phil 2:12).

A father desires to reward His Son.

It is a fathers delight to not only work with his son, and invest in his son, but to commend his son. To reward him with words of honor, or encouragement, or blessing, and sometimes also with ice cream. This is part of the whole thing.

Back to the yard work… I told Jude to join me in the work, to work hard, I will help him and teach him, and if he does well, we will get ice cream. The ice cream wasn’t just after the task, but it was part of the task. The father’s job is not done yet just because the task is finished.

To encourage and reward a son is the privilege and joy of the father. He delights in rewarding the son. And the “well done” from dad, is greater than the ice cream cone.

That’s what I did. I was a proud father, he worked really hard, and I told him that and there was joy in being able to reward him, and shared in the reward of ice cream as well.

An example for Paul: Paul commends Timothy in the letter that Timothy helped him with. Philippians 2:20–23a,

“For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon…”

2) Timothy was a son to Paul (v.20-22).Paul was a good spiritual father to Timothy. We have seen the fatherliness of Paul. But, Paul’s focuses in these verses is not mainly on how he was a father to Timothy, but how Timothy was a son to him. We may naturally think, Paul was such a good father to Timothy, but let us not miss what Paul says, that Timothy was such an amazing son to Paul.

There is responsibility and blessing on both sides. This is a two sided relationship. Paul can only benefit Timothy as a father in so much as Timothy responds as a faithful son. Paul described himself as a father to the Corinthian church, in Galatians, in Philemon. He was fatherly by nature to many. But with Timothy he praises his sonliness to Paul: “My beloved and faithful child,” “my true child in the faith,” “as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.”

Timothy was a model son to Paul in the gospel. Lets look at Timothy’s life and how this came to be.

It started at home with a physical lineage of faith.

2 Timothy 1:5,

“[Timothy], I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.”

For all the talk of Paul being a spiritual father, Paul does not overlook his mother, and grandmother from whom he was not only a physical descendant, but a spiritual descendant.

There is such a valuable investment of physical father and mothers, and Paul also wants us to have eyes to think of the spiritual family as well, and to consider a meaningful investment there as well.

There is good reason to believe Timothy was taught and raised well, which was bearing fruit in his life and was a good foundation for him to remember and draw encouragement from.

Timothy had displayed a pattern of faithfulness and was ready to receive instruction.

Acts 16:1–5,

Timothy took advantage of what was in front of him, he wasn’t just sitting around. And when the opportunity came to join Paul in his work he gladly joined him and sacrificed for the work. As a son working with and learning from his father.

A faithful father has a Godly passion that he wants to live out and pass on.

And afaithful son, responds by embracing and participating in the Godly vision a father has laid out for him. The son responds with a heart that says: “If my father wants to instruct, then I want to learn.”

Paul has laid out his heart and life before Timothy, and he is so bold to tell him to imitate him and follow his example. And Timothy does that very thing, He comes under Paul wing to learn the ways of Christ from him.

For us: To be invested in by a spiritual mother or father is an immense blessing, and something good to desire. And Timothy didn’t just sit around idle waiting for older help. He pursued Christ with the brothers around him. Most of our relationship will be brother to brother, sister to sister. We aren’t guaranteed, nor are we entitled to the investment of a spiritual mother or father.May those type of relationships happen more and more, as God sees fit, and may we like Timothy, take whatever God has given us right now and make good use of it.

Timothy having learned from Paul, now stands out uniquely as a partner in the gospel. Now Paul mentions three ways in which Timothy serves Paul so well as a son who is of one mind and spirit in Paul’s passion.

Verse 20,

“For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare.”

Timothy has seen Paul's love and care for the Philippians, and he has the same passion.

There is a sincere care and concern for them. This isn’t just duty for Timothy, It isn’t half-hearted or lip service. Traveling is not an inconvenience for Timothy, it is closer to a no-brainer, of course!

Verse 21,

“For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”

Paul contrasts Timothy with those around him. I don’t think Paul is saying there are no other Christians around him, but that they have not learned, and are not living out the example of Christ, and the example of Paul.

But Timothy is looking to the interests of Christ Jesus, which means he: “not only looks to his own interest, but also the interests of others”, and “in humility counts others more significant than himself.” His care for the Philippians is the interest of Christ.

Timothy has been able to get his own interests and concerns out of the way, so that he can seek the interest of Christ, and genuinely, sincerely, care about the welfare of the Philippians.

He doesn’t need to carve out his own little niche of significance. He is content with serving the interest of Christ, by showing genuine concern for the Philippians and serving them in the gospel.

Timothy is unique here, but what kind of uniqueness is this?

“I have no one like Timothy”

“They all seek their own interests”

Is it a uniqueness like, “there is no one who can shoot a basketball like Steph Curry? Something that we have no chance of accomplishing even if we devoted our whole lives to it?

No, its actually something that any Christian around Paul could be but they are not.

1 Cor. 4:17,

“That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.”

Paul is a model for everyone, and he expects that you can and should imitate him.

This is a commendation for Timothy and a convicting word for others. Would Paul, or would Jesus, find anyone like Timothy here? How are we doing?

Can we get our own interests, and our striving for empty glory out of the way, to serve the interests of Christ by caring for the welfare of one another?

Can we follow the example of Timothy, who was imitating Paul and Christ?

Can we serve others, when it doesn’t align also with our interests, or is inconvenient?

Verse 22,

“But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.”

Last, Paul appeals to the fact that they already know this about Timothy. They should not need any convincing, because they themselves have witnessed Timothy’s proven worth as a son to Paul and as a Godly example to them. Proven: tried and tested as he has spent time with Paul and time in Philippi. Timothy has learned Paul’s ways, so that Paul can say if you imitate him you imitate me.

To summarize where we are, we have covered two reasons why Paul wants to send Timothy to the saints in Philippi. 1) Because Paul has been a father to him and trained him in the gospel, and 2) because Timothy has been a proven son to Paul in the gospel. Both of these focus on why Timothy, and last here we will focus on why send anyone?

3) Being physically present matters (v.19, 23-24).Paul values face to face interaction. It is so much more to him than a luxury, being with them gets at the very heart of his ministry. To see real faces, to shake real hands. Paul not only wants to send Timothy, but he wants to get there soon himself. As I mentioned at the beginning, sending Timothy isn’t just icing on the cake, but is part of the completion of Paul’s care to them.

Paul, with Timothy, in this letter has laid out:

His love and thankfulness for them
His singular mission in life “to live is Christ” (and labor for their good)
That Christ is our substitute, and is also our example
He has commanded them to walk worthy of the gospel of Christ and work out their salvation with fear and trembling
And now he seeks to send a visible, tangible example to them (to put it all together)

Paul sends Timothy to show them again what it is like to be united in mind and spirit, to in humility count others more significant, and to have the mind of Christ and walk worthy of the gospel of Christ

Paul and Timothy want to go to the Philippians because: 1) They love them, he wants to hear good news and he anticipates joy from being with them again. 2) They are confident that the Lord is working in them, he is excited to see what the Lord has done, and he is excited to share about how he was delivered by their prayers. 3) And, because they want to be Christ to them, Paul wants to send more than words, it wasn’t enough for Paul to just tell them about unity, and humility, and walking according to the gospel, he wanted to show them.

Paul seems to think you can’t just mail that, or stream it to one another.

Face to face he wants to remind them that “what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.”

The Philippians are starting to suffer for the gospel (1:29), and Paul wants to encourage them that God is working through it to advance the gospel, his life is a testimony of it and he wants to be there in person to further encourage and help them in the suffering that God is allowing among them.

Sometimes, all a situation might need is a godly, mature example present. An example to help steady the ship, or right the ship. Paul is confident that through the grace of God, and the work of the Spirit, in tandem with Timothy as a living example of Christ, that the Philippian church will be united and strengthened under the gospel and be of one mind and one Spirit.

In all of this, Paul goes to great pains to get there and care for them, because the salvation they have in Christ matters more than anything else.

We have spent a bit of time this morning talking about horizontal relationship. Paul and Timothy’s relationship. There connection and friendship with the Philippian church. But make no mistake, what animated Paul is the advance of the gospel for the glory and pleasure of His heavenly Father.

In the gospel, we have a father that does everything we talked about at the beginning.

“God [the father] so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

“[and] to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,”

And as a son or daughter of God, we have a father who has a mission to save and sanctify us. He works for us, and with us, and in us through His Spirit. And! He loves to reward His children. He works in us, so that he may in turn say to us “well done!” It is the joy of a father to be able to commend his son or daughter.

It is your fathers good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

The TableThis table reminds us that Jesus died for our sins, so that by believing in Him we would become children of God and enjoy the smile of God the Father over us.

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In the winter of 2001, I was a sophomore at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

As a freshman I had become part of a ministry called Campus Outreach. Its theology was called “Reformed,” which I did not grow up with. In my teens, I heard talk about God being “sovereign,” but I had never wrestled with the extent of his sovereignty — that he was sovereign over all, over good and evil, over angels and demons, over sunny days and natural disasters, over my good deeds and my sin, and (most uncomfortably) sovereign over my own will and choices. But once I saw the verses, dozens of them (if not hundreds), I couldn’t deny that the Bible taught that God’s sovereignty was absolute, over all, no exceptions.

But what I also knew from two decades of human life, and from dozens (if not hundreds) of verses, is that I was accountable. I had thoughts and feelings. I had a will and made real decisions that mattered and had consequences. So, how do I reconcile these two — not just my experience versus what the Bible says, but what the Bible says versus what the Bible says?

So, that winter of 2001, a pastor from Minnesota, named John Piper, spoke at our Campus Outreach New Year’s conference in Atlanta, and not long after that event, I got on desiringGod.org to look for more messages.

There I listened to a sermon he had preached that Christmas Eve. And this one message put together for me, so clearly and memorably, how these major theological truths of God’s sovereignty and my human responsibility come together in my everyday Christian life and experience. The sermon was on the end of Romans chapter 6 (verses 22–23), but at a key moment Piper flipped over to Philippians 2:12–13 to explain this real-life dynamic, and as he did so, lights went on for me one after another.

So, 23 years later, it’s personally significant for me to be assigned these verses, and I pray that for some in this room, new lights might go on like they did for me in those days. How the truth of God’s sovereignty and his choices relates to my responsibility and my choices, in fighting against sin and for Christlikeness, doesn’t all come together at once. Much of it is a lifetime journey. Yet, for me, there was a particular sermon, and a particular text — Philippians 2:12–13 — where new categories were created that have deeply affected my everyday life.

Humbled and ExaltedLast Sunday we stood in awe at the foot of the mountain of Christ’s accomplishment for us in verses 5–11. First, he chose to become man. He did not cling to the comforts of heaven, but he emptied himself of that privilege. Precisely because he was God, gracious and merciful, full of steadfast love and faithfulness, he took on our creatureliness and limitations and the pains and frustrations of our fallen world. His emptying himself was not an emptying of his deity, as if that were possible, but it was a taking, as verse 7 says. His emptying came through addition of humanity, not subtraction of deity. He…

“emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Then came that amazing “therefore” in verse 9,

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name . . . .”

In the biblical pattern of self-humbling from Exodus to the Epistles, Jesus stands at the center as our greatest example: he humbled himself, and therefore God exalted him. Jesus went down, down, down: human, death, the cross. And his Father brought him up: up from the grave, up in the ascension, up to the very throne of heaven. So we walked through three truths, in Pastor Jonathan’s sermon last week, about the example of Jesus.

Which leads us right into verses 12–18, and how Paul turns from Jesus’s obedience and his reward to ours. And so this morning we look at three truths about our following his example. Or: how we become like Jesus.

We follow the one who obeyed and was rewarded.There is a second huge “therefore” in Philippians 2. The first one was verse 9. Jesus humbled himself; therefore God exalted him. Now, verse 12: in light of Jesus’s self-humbling and God’s exalting him, therefore . . .

I can see at least two ways this “therefore” works in verse 12. One is the straightforward charge He is Lord, therefore obey. God has highly exalted Jesus, now his name is above every name, and at his name every knee should bow and every tongue confess he is Lord; therefore, Christians, obey. Simple as that. He is Lord; we are servants. He says it; we do it. Children obey their parents; servants obey their masters; and all the more, creatures obey your Creator, and Christians your Lord.

But there’s also another way this “therefore” works, as an appeal to desire, as a pattern and promise of reward. I say that because the word “obedient” just appeared in verse 8 (and “obey” in verse 12). Jesus was “obedient to the point of death,” and because he obeyed, he was rewarded. Therefore, Christians, obey, like Jesus, that you might be rewarded, like Jesus. Humble yourself, like he did, that you too might be exalted.

Which is crazy countercultural for self-exalting sinners! We want to be exalted, so what do we do? Exalt ourselves. In our own minds, in our words and humble brags, in what we post online, in how we angle for opportunities. And God says to us in our folly, “No, sinners, I do the exalting. Exalt yourself, and I’ll humble you. But humble yourself, and I will exalt you.”

So, the therefore in verse 12 is an appeal to desire, and a profound glimpse into what it meant for Jesus to endure the cross “for the joy set before him.” As man, Jesus humbled himself, obeying to the point of death, by looking to the joy of being exalted by his Father. And so too for us as we obey him. Christian obedience is from sheer duty and force of will. We obey for the joy set before us.

And Paul puts his own joy on display in verses 17–18. Jump down there:

“Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering [this is his self-humbling obedience] upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.”

Paul calls the Philippians’ obedience “the sacrificial offering of your faith.” This is like Romans 12:1: the Christian life of faith “as a living sacrifice” — God’s people no longer offer slaughtered animals as sacrifices, as they did under the first covenant, but offer themselves, all they are, their whole lives, in obedience to him. This is what Paul is giving his life to: that Christians like the saints in Philippi, and like us, would be living sacrifices, obedient to Christ.

And Paul, in prison in Rome for his labor, says to them, even if I die in this prison, I rejoice. The pursuit of joy got him into prison, and joy will be his if he never makes it out of prison — because he looks forward to the reward of being with Christ, and having worked for others’ joy in Christ. And in this joy, Paul casts his work in self-humbling terms. The Philippians’ lives of obedience are the main sacrifice, and his labor is just the drink offering, the side offering, the supplement to their healthy, obedient, Christians lives.

So, first, like Paul, and like Jesus, we obey our Lord, in joy, anticipating reward. We follow the one who obeyed and was rewarded.

We work out the salvation he worked for.Now, the rest of verse 12:

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .”

So, the obedience that Christ, through Paul, is calling for here is “work out your own salvation.” I realize that sounds like nails on a chalkboard for some ears. If so, perhaps I could just warn you: this might feel uncomfortable for a few minutes. Remember we’re praying for biblical categories. And to get there, we may need to sit in the challenge of this “work out your own salvation.” It’s in the Bible. And this is a good translation. The Greek doesn’t fix our discomfort, but might only make us cringe a little bit more. What if we said “produce your own salvation,” or “give rise to your own salvation,” or “grind out your own salvation”?

As we sit in this tension, it’s okay to remember Christ’s obedience on the frontend and underneath — and in just a few minutes, we’ll see that we have even more help on the backend. But we need to linger here. Just because there’s help in front and back doesn’t mean our lives in the middle aren’t real. We need to stay here, in the call and dignity of the Christian life to be, to think, to feel, to will, to act. God is sovereign, and we are responsible.

This word for “work out” is a typical word for “work” but with an intensifying prefix. The kind of work we’re getting at here is not just overflow. Some work feels effortless. But this work means expending effort. It’s the kind of work that requires effort to move inward desires into outward acts. In other places, this word is translated “produce” or “accomplish” or “perform.”

So, this is not just overflow. It requires counting, reckoning, considering (as in verses 3, 5, and 6). There is effort to be given; energy to be expended; work to be done. “Work out your salvation,” Paul says. Not “work for” — Jesus uniquely worked for our salvation in verses 5–11 — but now we “work it out.”

An important question to ask at this point is “salvation from what?” Paul implies the Philippians need deliverance, but from what? Well, what’s clearly at stake in chapter 2, going back to 1:27, is their unity (their fellowship, their relationships in the church). Paul says he longs to hear that they “are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” And 2:2: “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” He’s saying that because at present they’re not that. Then verse 3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.” Note the two specific sins from which the Philippians and we need deliverance: selfish ambition and conceit.

And Paul has more specifics to give in verse 14: “Do all things without grumbling or disputing.” Okay, so now we have at least four specific sins from which Paul says to “work out your salvation.” Want it, will it, act it, produce it. Christ died to save you from grumbling, from constant complaining and criticizing and scoffing and wallowing. He died to deliver you from petty disputes. So, trust him and don’t grumble. Trust him and be free from disputing.

The new category this leads to is this: the Christian life is both gift and duty. Fighting sin is both a gift from God and a duty we act. Increasing holiness is both gift and duty. It is a gift of grace we receive from Jesus, and the way we receive a grace that involves our own thoughts and desires and actions is by having the thoughts and desires and doing the actions. That is, living out the gift, or working out your salvation.

Look over to Philippians 3:12. Two of the best texts for getting this dynamic of the Christian life as both gift and duty are right here in Philippians. So, first 2:12–13. Now 3:12:

“Not that I have already obtained this [resurrection to eternal life] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

This is so important in getting the order right between God’s working and ours. Paul says, “I press on to make it my own” — I count, I will, I act, I choose righteousness, I fight sin, I press on — why? “Because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Mark this: I don’t become his by pressing on. Rather, because I am his, because he already took hold of me, I strive and strain and press on. He worked for my salvation. Now I work it out over sin. (Other key texts that show this gift-and-duty dynamic: Hebrews 13:20–21; Romans 15:18; 1 Corinthians 15:10.)

The Christian life is grace from beginning to end. Some graces we receive instead of our effort and action (justification) and some graces we receive as our effort and action.

Which leads us to verse 13, but let me first try to make this more practical. Let me take you back to my time at Furman University. Now it’s the fall of 2002, my senior year, and I’m trying to figure out what to do after graduation. And I am awash in anxiety. I didn’t remember being so anxious in my life before then, and I don’t remember being as anxious since.

So, I needed deliverance from anxiety. So what do I do? Just wait? How do you seek to be free from oppressive anxiety when God is sovereign and you are responsible? As one who is justified by faith in Jesus, how do I work out my salvation? First, I need truth to work with. I need a specific word to believe. So I found three biblical promises about anxiety:

Matthew 6:34,

“Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

1 Peter 5:6–7,

“Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

Philippians 4:67,

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

So I printed them out, posted them next to my bed, and reviewed them every morning when I woke up, and every night when I went to sleep. And (with Christ before me and his Spirit in me), I worked out the grace of my deliverance from anxiety. God gave me the gift of deliverance from the dominance of anxiety in that season. And that doesn’t mean I don’t still fight anxiety as it comes in new ways in new times and seasons of life. But I know how to fight: recognize it, address it with promises of reward, pray for help, and act.

So whether it’s sinful anxiety, selfish ambition and conceit, grumbling and disputing, or sinful anger or lust or greed, work out the deliverance Christ has worked for you. Don’t presume that God will defeat your sins while you’re passive. And don’t presume to fight sin on our own. Look to the sovereign Christ, trust his promises, pray for his help, and act the miracle you seek to have from him.

And just to comment very quickly on verses 15–16: I think Paul has in mind the relationship between unity in the church and witness in the world like he did in 1:27–28. There he said that our “standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” leads to the church “not [being] frightened in anything by your opponents” — and this is “a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation.” In working out our salvation against the relationship-killing sins of selfish ambition, conceit, grumbling, and disputing, we come to stand out “in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.” Unified in Jesus, we “shine as lights in the world.” How? “Holding fast to the word of life,” that is, the message about true life, eternal life — the life and death of Jesus in place of our death to give us life.

So, if ever you find yourself discouraged about the “crooked and twisted generation” in which you find yourself, remember two truths from Philippians 2: (1) this is nothing new for Christianity (this is how it usually is in this age) and (2) grumbling and disputing are not the Christian response. But exactly the opposite. The Christian response is this: hold fast to our word of life, work out our salvation from grumbling and disputing, and shine as lights in the world, not as more of the same darkness.

What about that last phrase in v. 12, “with fear and trembling”? Now our third and final truth.

We have His Spirit at work in us.We finish with the end of verse 12 and with verse 13:

“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

What in the world could Paul mean here by “with fear and trembling.” Perhaps “fear and trembling” only sounds negative in your ears. Fear and trembling, yikes. How about with hope and joy? Why fear and trembling?

Scripture has a broader vision for inward fear and outward trembling than modern people. Throughout the Bible, “fear and trembling” is what wise, in-touch, healthy humans do when they find themselves in the presence of God almighty. Like Moses at Mount Sinai, as we saw in Hebrews 12:21: “I tremble with fear.” And Paul talks how the Corinthians received Titus, as a messenger from Christ, “with fear and trembling” (2 Corinthians 7:15).

Or perhaps most instructive of all is the way the Gospel of Mark ends, with the women who found the tomb empty and heard from the angel, “He has risen; he is not here.” Mark 16:8:

“They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them.”

Or, as Matthew 28:8 reports,

“They departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.”

“Fear and trembling” is not only the response of someone taken aback by great horror, but also of someone struck with great joy. It’s the response of a believing heart in the presence of God himself — and it’s the appropriate response of a Christian who learns that God himself has come to dwell in me.

Verse 13 provides, essentially, threefold confidence for us as we expend energy and effort to obey our Lord and live the Christian life. So, as we close, let me turn verse 13 and address it to you.

First, brothers and sisters in Christ, you have God in you! What an awesome thing to have the Holy Spirit, poured out on us, sent into our hearts, dwelling in us, leading us, working in us. You are not on your own to fight against sin and for Christlikeness. You have God in you! This is no standard joy. This is cause for fear and trembling.

Second, he is in you not only to will but even to work! God works in us to (will and) work our work. He gives us new desires and willing, and even then doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He is in us to prompt, to lead, to empower, to execute our working out those holy desires through the exertion of effort.

Third, all this stands on the rock of God’s own joy, his delight, his good pleasure. He is not reluctant in helping us fight sin and pursue Christlikeness. He is happy to do it, thrilled to do it. He delights to do it. He works in us, in our willing, in our working, for his good pleasure. We work with the grain of God’s own joy when we work out our deliverance from sin.

So, we close with this question: What sin or sins came to mind this morning in our time of silent confession? Or, what do you most often confess week after week? Brothers and sisters, don’t just say it again, move on, continue in sin, and make empty confession again and again. Work out your salvation. Act the miracle. With Jesus before you and beneath you, and his Spirit in you and through you — hemmed in on every side by his grace — work out your salvation. Will it, work it, act it, do it — with prayerful dependence in every step.

Jesus Willed and WorkedWhat makes possible our having the Holy Spirit at work in us to will and work, is that first the Spirit was at work in Christ to will and to work. How he worked, for the joy set before him, is an example we follow. How he worked, by the Spirit, is imitable. But what he accomplished at the cross for us is inimitable.

At this Table, we do not mainly remember Jesus as our example but as the one who worked for us in a way in which we could not work for ourselves.

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What did Jesus do when he died on the cross?

The answer to that question is the heart of the gospel.

It’s the most important thing that we could know about God — and the good news about the heart of the good news is that God has made it clear to us in the Scriptures. At the cross, we know that … “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” — Galatians 3:13. For our sake, “[God] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” — 2 Corinthians 5:21. “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God…” — 1 Peter 3:18.

The theological term for this is “substitutionary atonement.” It means that Jesus died for us, in our place. That is the main fact of the cross that we must understand and cling to, and when we do — when we cling to substitution as the main fact of the cross — then we can begin to see that it wasn’t the only fact of the cross. Jesus was mainly our substitute, but he was also our example.

One way to say it is that … Jesus as our substitute means he went to the cross so that we wouldn’t have to. Jesus as our example means he went to the cross so that we would join him there.

Both are true — and in today’s passage, the call is that we join him there. In Philippians 2, verses 5–11, Paul shows us the example of Jesus, and he tells us to be like him.

And I don’t think we could overstate just how amazing these verses are. Most commentators say that this is the most important passage in Philippians — the first part of the letter flows into it, and the second part of the letter flows out of it. One commentator says that not only is this passage the centerpiece of Philippians, but it’s the centerpiece of the entire New Testament!

So I just wanna say: I’m so glad that God saved me and let’s me do what I get to do right now. I can’t believe I get to show you the things I get to show you today. There are three things I want us to see. They are three truths about the example of Jesus. Let’s pray and we’ll get started:

Father, thank you for all of this, for this morning and this moment. Give us, now, eager hearts to receive what you have for us. By your Spirit and his power, show us the glory of Jesus. Help us to see him more clearly than ever before. In his name, amen.

Three truths about the example of Jesus:

1) The example of Jesus is practical.When I say “practical” I mean that it’s immediately relevant. And this is important to keep in mind because by verse 6, the theological depth of this passage is overwhelming. Paul is mining the mystery of how Jesus thought in his pre-incarnate existence as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. So this is deep! There’s a lot here!

Which means we have to be careful that we don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. Because what Paul says here about Jesus is meant to serve a direct purpose — which is what he’s just been talking about in verses 3 and 4: the topic is humility.

We saw this last week, verse 3:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit…”

That word “conceit” is extra special; it’s the Greek word kenodoxia, which means literally empty glory — some English translations put it as “vain conceit.” Acting like you’ve got something when really it’s a big bag of nothing. Empty glory. You get the idea. Remember that word.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

Then in verse 4, Paul just restates that same idea:

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Paul is describing humility here, and it’s humility for the sake of what? … You remember? Real church unity.

We see the topic of unity in verses 1 and 2 and it goes back to the end of Chapter 1.

Bringing It All TogetherPaul exhorts this church to be united, to have real church unity, which is not unity for its own sake. This is Holy Spirit unity that displays that we’re living as citizens of heaven worthy of the gospel of Christ — Chapter 1, verse 27.

So just for a second here, I want to bring together this passage with the end of Chapter 1. This is bringing together our last four weeks …

First, our primary calling as a local church is to live together in this world as a witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus … And that life together is manifest through real church unity … And though it’s embattled unity from the outside and the inside, real church unity comes through humility — And if we want to know about humility, we look to Jesus.

That’s Paul’s train of thought that leads us to verse 5.

So we need to remember that the example of Jesus in verses 5–11 is meant to be practical. Jesus has modeled for us how to be humble, and being humble is absolutely necessary if people are going to get along.

Good for MarriageThat’s why this passage is my favorite passage to preach at a wedding (getting along is helpful if you’re married). I’ve preached these verses maybe 20 times at weddings (which means some of you have had to hear it a lot).

This is no joke. A few years ago there was one couple, I officiated their wedding at the beginning of the year, preached Philippians 2, and then I did three other weddings later than year where I also preached Philippians 2, and that couple was at all those weddings. By the fourth time, I saw the couple before the wedding started, and I went up to them and said, Look, I think God is trying to tell you something.

Seriously. Young married couples listen up — also old married couples — and everybody in-between … you wanna know a secret to a good marriage? Learn humility.

If I could be personal for just a minute, today is March 3, 2024 which means that as of today, I’ve been married to my wife for 17 years.

And look, 17 years ago, I thought I was riding into our marriage on a white horse, but it wasn’t long before Jesus told me that I was on his horse and I needed to get off. Humility changed my life and my marriage … and I’m not pretending to be the expert on humility [the expert on humility around here is David Mathis — bro wrote a book titled Humbled] — I’ll just say that whatever I know about humility, I learned it from Jesus, and this is the passage.

Philippians 2:5, “Have this mind — the mindset just described in verses 3–4 — have this humble mindset among yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.

So get ready. We’re about to learn humility from Jesus.

2) The example of Jesus shows us true humility.This is gonna be clear in the passage, but I think we could also just use our heads to figure out that if we want to learn about humility, we’re looking at the right place. Just think with me here, theologically. Two questions:

Who is the humblest person to ever live? [Jesus]

When was Jesus his most humblest? [at the cross]

So add this up: we know the humblest person to ever live AND we know when he was his most humblest, so then whatever we think about humility, it should be shaped by that — right?! Of course!

And that’s where Paul takes us, starting in verse 6. This is the humility of “Christ Jesus” …

“… who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The cross of Christ is the paragon of humility — and I hope we never think about humility again without thinking about the cross. (That’s one of my little goals for this sermon.)

The cross was the ultimate, definitive display of humility by the humblest person to ever live — and so let’s see how Jesus got there. We’re gonna work our way backwards from verse 8.

The end of verse 8: “even death on a cross.” That’s the lowest. But before Jesus got there, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. And before Jesus got to that obedience, he became human — but not just a human, he became a slave — And what led him to do that? Verse 6:

“he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself.”

The Headwaters And right there in verse 6, in that counting (that calculating) — that is the headwaters of Jesus’s humility. Verses 7 and 8 flows from that counting in verse 6. So what does it mean? What does it mean to “not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

A lot of it has to do with that word “a thing to be grasped.” Let’s focus in on that in verse 6, those words “to be grasped.”

Now we know that Jesus is equal with God. He is God. The Bible teaches us that Jesus, God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, is eternally begotten of God the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and these three real persons are of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence is undivided.

Jesus is God! That’s who he is. That’s his identity — so then what’s it mean that he did not count that as something “to be grasped”?

This word here is only used this one time in the entire Bible, and so we have to look around in classical Greek to see how it was used there to try to figure out what Paul is saying.

Well the word could also be translated as “seize” or “take advantage of.” It means to seize or to take or to lay claim to something that’s rightfully yours. Jesus didn’t do that with his ‘God-ness’ — his glory. He knew who he was, but he didn’t take advantage of his identity, instead, he emptied himself.

And that word “emptied himself” should send us back to verse 3, “vain conceit” (kenodoxia, empty glory). Part of the same Greek word in verse 3 that means “empty”is used here, but see here Jesus didn’t have vain conceit, he didn’t have “empty glory” — he emptied himself of the rights of his true glory. … There’s a little play on words going on — Jesus didn’t act like he had something but it was a big bag of nothing; Jesus had everything and he made himself nothing.

He emptied himself of the truest glory of all.

Jesus, being eternally God, his glory is immense and incomprehensible. He is almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute. He has always worked all things according to the counsel of his most righteous will, and he said: I don’t have to seize that.

I don’t have to take advantage of the rights of my true glory, so … I’ll become a man, I’ll become a slave, I’ll become obedient to the very end, suffering to the point of death, I’ll even die on a cross.

A cross — There could be no more extreme opposite to his glory. Nobody — not a single Jew and not a single Philippian shaped by the values of the Roman Empire — nobody would have ever thought that the man on the cross could be God. There was no category for that. Not for that kind of shame.

When Jesus emptied himself to the point of death on a cross, he subjected himself to not only people not recognizing him as God, but he also subjected himself to everyone thinking the absolute worst of him, and he never tried to set the record straight. And that was actually the thing that they went for, if we can remember his cross.

And we have to join him there, okay … the humblest man to ever live in his most humblest moment.

It was three hours, from noon to 3pm on Good Friday. That was the humblest man’s humblest moment, but was there a most humblest moment within that humblest moment? — I don’t know — but, I can’t help but think about what the onlookers said to him.

That Is Who I Am!First I should tell you a story (and forgive me if you’ve heard this story before) …

When I was in 5th grade I won an art contest, which was pretty cool because I won like $100 bucks and my art (it was a drawing) was gonna be displayed at this big county-wide event. There was gonna be a big exhibit, art everywhere, and my first place art was gonna be there front and center.

So my mom and dad took me to this thing so they could see the picture I drew — they had not seen it yet. So we got there, and you could see the ‘first place area’ at a distance, so we began to walk up toward my picture, and as we were walking up, the director of the exhibit was standing beside my picture talking to another kid my age — and as we got closer I realized that this kid was telling the director that my picture was his.

The director guy was super interested and he was asking this kid all about certain details in the picture, and this kid was answering all his questions! But then I was standing there with my parents and it was my name under the picture. And so what do you think I did?

With ever fiber of my being, I seized every possible fact I could to prove that the picture was mine. That’s my picture! That’s my name! That’s my school! These are my parents — Dad, show ‘em your license! That is who I am! That’s me!Don’t deny me my glory! And I grasped for it.

Do you remember what they said to Jesus at the cross?

Radical Security in GodWe have to join him there.

Behold the man upon a cross,

My sin upon his shoulders;

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

What did we say? … “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (see Matthew 27:40). Which was not a request. It was a statement. The scoffers didn’t just not recognize Jesus as God, they called him a fake. A liar.

Prove to us, they said — Right now, prove to us who you are!

And do you know what he could have done?

We’ve read the Book of Exodus around here.

We know what he could have done, but what did he do?

He still did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but he emptied himself. He did not take advantage of his glory. He did not vindicate his identity, but … he yielded the vindication of his identity to God.

And that’s it. That’s true humility.

According to Jesus — the humblest person to ever live in his most humblest moment — he shows us that true humility is the faith-fueled refusal of self-vindication.

Or to say it positively, Jesus shows us that true humility is radical security in God.

Jesus was so confident that the Father would take care of him that he didn’t need to “get his.” He didn’t have to prove who he was, becausehe knew who he was and he knew the Father would make it plain at the right time.

So Jesus yielded … and yielded … and yielded … until he was dead on a cross … a cross.

Given the Name“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”

From the lowest possible low, death on a cross, to the highest possible high, God the Father says I’ll tell you who he is.

See, Jesus did not vindicate himself, but the Father vindicated him by raising him from the dead anddeclaring his name. THE NAME! The name above every name — and that name could only be one! It’s the name Yahweh. Jesus is Yahweh.

And then in verse 10 Paul quotes from the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, Chapter 45. It’s a high point in Isaiah when God is declaring his unrivaled supremacy over all nations. Listen to Isaiah 45:21. This is God speaking:

“21 And there is no other god besides me,

a righteous God and a Savior;

there is none besides me.

22 “Turn to me and be saved,

all the ends of the earth!

For I am God, and there is no other.

23 By myself I have sworn;

from my mouth has gone out in righteousness

a word that shall not return:

‘To me every knee shall bow,

every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

God says that about himself in Isaiah 45 and now here, in Philippians 2, Paul says that’s about Jesus —

“… at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

And any Jewish person hearing this would get the message, but Paul is also doing something else here.

And this brings us to the third truth to see …

3) The example of Jesus changes the way we see life in this world.Everybody focus on that sentence in verse 11, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” I want to make sure you see that word “Lord” in verse 11.

Now the word “Lord” is a word that we use today, but I want us to think about it from the standpoint of this original audience in the First Century. Track with me:

Anybody with a Jewish background would have heard the sentence “Jesus is Lord” to mean that Jesus is Yahweh.

That’s because the word “Lord” was the word substituted for the divine name “Yahweh” in the Old Testament.

Out of reverence, Jewish people would not speak the name “Yahweh” but instead, whenever “Yahweh” shows up in the Scriptures, they would say the Hebrew word Adonai (“Adonai” it a title that means “Lord”).

And so when the Greeks translated the Hebrew Old Testament, they put in their word for Adonai (Lord) which was Kyrios. So at this time, kyrios was the word Jewish people used for Yahweh. For Jews, Jesus is kyrios meant Jesus is Yahweh.

But for everybody else, for all the Gentiles, the word kyrios (lord) meant something else — because “Lord” was the title used for the Roman Emperor, the Caesar.

It is a well-documented fact by historians that people at this time called the Emperor Nero Lord. There’s evidence from things written at this time and from things found, that in a Roman colony like Philippi, there would have been what was basically propaganda all throughout the city that said “Caesar is Lord.” Historians call this the “imperial religion.” Political loyalty to Rome meant you worshiped the Roman Emperor — you called him Lord.

So for this little church at Philippi, as the Roman world around them was saying “Caesar is lord” — Paul says, No, Jesus is Lord. And you know what else?

One day, everybody will know that. One day every knee will bow in all creation — every knee including Caesar’s knee — will bow before Jesus, and every tongue — including Caesar’s tongue — will confess, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

The one who died on a cross, the one who was mocked and despised, who was called a fake — he is actually the One to whom every creature must answer. Every single creature to ever live will bow to Jesus — Jesus who is Lord … Jesus who was the slave crucified … because he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. And we’re supposed to be like him.

We Don’t Have to “Get Mine”And this changes everything. How could we ever look at this world the same?

Especially if you’re surrounded by a world, by a culture, that is antagonistic to your faith. What if it’s a world that rejects you or even persecutes you, like the conflict that Paul and these Christians faced with the Romans. The Roman Empire had no idea who these Christians were and what that meant. And that’s actually something we have in common with them. The surrounding world has never really understood who we are.

I just was talking about this a couple of weeks ago with Pastor Mike Schumann. We were having lunch, and this place we were at was packed, and I was looking around and I said:

Nobody in here knows that we are children of God, that one day we’re gonna judge angels, that one day we’re going to inherit the whole world, one day this restaurant is gonna be ours … and nobody in here knows.

And what that means, at a very practical level, is that we don’t have to go through this life always grasping to “get ours.” There might not be a more backwards way for a Christian to think than to have a kind of anxiety-driven, self-vindicating hustlementality.

A lot of times though we can see life this way. We can think about life the way Marshawn Lynch thought about football.

Marshawn Lynch used to be the running back for the Seattle Seahawks, and once he was asked about his mentality on the football field, and he said:

“I feel like on that field, there’s no reason I can’t run through you … I know I’m gonna get got, but I’m gon’ get minemore than I get got, though.”

I’m gon’ get mine more than I get got. That might work for an NFL running back, but not for life, not for Christians.

The example of Jesus means: I don’t have to “get mine” — Because God is going to take care of me. We don’t have to be afraid of going low, of being thought low. We don’t have to fear the cross because we know Who we are — and we know where all of this is headed. That’s what it means to be Easter people in a Good Friday World.

And that was the witness of Kayla Rigney. Kayla walked through the valley of the shadow of death and she feared no evil because she was humble like Jesus, because she knew God would take care of her. See, Kayla is good Easter people. That’s who we’re called to be. That’s the example of Jesus.

Our radical security in God is our humility. And because of Jesus, like Jesus, we can be truly humble, to the glory of God the Father.

And that’s what brings us to this Table.

The TableIf you’re here today and you’re not a Christian, I doubt any of this makes sense to you. You have to know Jesus first, and we get to know him by trusting him. And so I want to invite you to do that. If you’ve never put your faith in Jesus, would you put your faith in Jesus right now?

For those of us who have trusted in Jesus, for those of us who hope in him, let’s receive the bread and cup this morning and give him thanks. Jesus Christ is Lord! What a Savior!

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Well, the war was finally over. At least that’s how it appeared. Following ten long years of battle, the Greeks had finally given up hope of taking the city, they’d gotten back on their ships, and set sail for home. The Trojans were overjoyed. Their opposition was gone. That night, they slept well. Really well. Surprisingly well, in fact, for a people who’d hung up their swords, set down their shields, taken off their armor, left all their doors unlocked despite the fact that members of the enemy army were, at that moment, inside their very gates, still armed, still dangerous, eager to shed blood, and standing no more than 5, 10, feet away from some of them as they laid down for bed.

But the Trojans didn’t see them. Had no idea they were there. They thought the war was over. They didn’t realize the war was being waged from within. That night they laid down and slept well, really well, surprisingly well, and many never woke up, because that same night, several members of the Greek army crawled out from a trap door of a wooden statue of a horse that’d been parked in the center of the city, and within a blink of an eye, captured all of Troy.

Our unity as God’s people, our Holy Spirit unity, our unity centered on Jesus as our shared, surpassing treasure, is, as Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, an embattled unity. A unity amidst opposition.

The opposition comes from without – opponents out there who do not love Jesus and do not love his people. We saw them last week in chapter 1 verse 28. And, opposition also comes from within through the sin that still dwells in each one of us.

This sin is a danger to our unity together as God’s people. God, through the Apostle Paul, is calling us today to flee from it with everything we’ve got, in pursuit of something far better.

Let’s pray, and ask God, together, for his help.

So, our focus is on unity amidst opposition from within. And we’re going to work our way through it in three steps: Unity directed, Unity developed, Unity Defended.

Unity Directed (Verse 2)First, unity directed, and this is going to have us beginning with verse 2, where Paul says,

“complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

One of the first things to note here is that Paul is taking a layered approach to directing the Philippians toward unity. He’s not, in other words, directing them toward it by way of four distinct, independent requests. Do this, this, this, and this, and if you do, then the combined result will be unity. Rather, he’s directing them to pursue unity itself, four times over, in more or less the same way.

We can see that with the first and the fourth phrase in this list. “(Complete my joy by) being of the same mind, (and) being of one mind.” Tremendous overlap between the two, wouldn’t you say? I mean to be of one mind is to have the same mind — one that holds to the same truths, calls out the same lies, gives priority to the same things. Both directives point to the same main idea of unity.

And the third one, “being in full accord.” Well, to be in accord with someone is to be in agreement with them. They say that’s true, you agree that’s true. You say that’s false, they agree that’s false. They say that’s sin, you agree that’s sin. You’re in accord, you’re in agreement, you are of the same mind. You are of one mind. You’re experiencing unity.

“Having the same love,” is basically right there as well — if you’re in accord with someone, of one mind with them, it’d be awfully strange if you were to find that your loves differed from one another. In fact, if you did happen to find your loves differed from one another, the most obvious explanation would be that you really aren’t of the same mind after all.

Paul, in other words, is directing these Philippians four-times over, though in slightly different ways, be unified, be unified, be unified, be unified. Paul is a brilliant communicator. He’s no slouch when it comes to writing. Repetition, by him, is never accidental. Why, then, is he repeating the same idea four times over?

Same reason any of us might repeat the same thing four times over. Emphasis. A hammering home the importance of one main idea. This thing really matters! Christian unity, Paul is saying, really matters. Like you really need to have it. So be unified. Be a people who, though likely very different in a whole host of other ways, nevertheless are of the same mind, have the same love, are in full accord and of one mind when it comes to who and what is most important in all the world — Jesus, and the glory of God.

How do these people get such unity? How do they develop it? This will bring us back to verse one, Unity developed.

Unity Developed (Verse 1)Once again, we have a fourfold pattern here. “So (1) if there is any encouragement in Christ, (2) any comfort from love, (3) any participation in the Spirit, (4) any affection and sympathy.” And this fourfold pattern makes up the first part of what is one big “if/then” statement. We know how an if/then statement works, right? “If its sunny, then the game will start at 6 pm. If it’s storming, then the game will be postponed till tomorrow.” This entire section of Philippians is one big “if/then” statement. Here, in verse one, are all the “ifs”. If encouragement, if comfort, if participation, if affection.” Followed by all the “thens” in verse two, which we just saw. So, if something, something, something, something, then be unified, then be unified, then be unified, then be unified.

And, just as all the “thens” in verse two, though slightly different from one another, were hammering home the same main idea (be unified), so all the “ifs” here, though slightly different from one another, are too hammering home one main idea. Which, I believe, is this: “If you are experiencing the grace of being a Christian…”

Let me show you how I got that. Look at “Any participation in the Spirit” It’s the third phrase you see there in verse one. We’re going there because some of these other phrases are a bit vague, this one’s most clear. “Any participation in the Spirit.” Okay, so we’ve already seen “standing firm in one Spirit” (1:27). Here we have “participation, (also translated fellowship) in the Spirit.” And the thing we know right away, without doubt concerning participation/fellowship with the Spirit, is that there’s no way to have it, apart from being a Christian. If you’re not a Christian, you have no participation in the Spirit.

Jesus says it this way, speaking of the Holy Spirit in John 14,

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper…even the Spirit of truth (The Holy Spirit), whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.”

The world, non-Christians, cannot receive the Spirit. They have no participation, no fellowship, in the Spirit. Jesus says they don’t see him, or know him, and cannot receive him.

But, Jesus continues, saying of believers,

“You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Christians, followers of Jesus, know the Spirit. Have a participation in the Spirit. He dwells with them. In fact, he dwells in them.

So Paul, in saying, “If you have any participation in the Spirit…” is saying, “If you are experiencing the grace of being a Christian…”

Set that main idea next to the other phrases in this verse.

First one, “If there is any encouragement in Christ.” Well, who are those who’ve received encouragement in Christ? Those who are, in fact, in Christ. God’s promises are yes for those who are in Christ.

“Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” Do you have encouragement in Christ? Let me ask another way, are you experiencing the grace of being a Christian?

Keep going down the list, “Any comfort from love.” This from the same man who wrote, “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1:5). Comfort is experienced through Christ. Who are those who experience comfort from love? Those who are in the love of Christ. People who are Christians.

Lastly, “Affection and sympathy.” What affection? Look back at 1:8, “For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Who are those who have the affection of Christ? Those who are in Christ. Those who are Christians.

Paul’s main idea is, “Ifyou are experiencing the grace of being a Christian.” In other words, unity is developed within God’s people who, together, experience the grace of being Christians. Paul says, verse one, “If you Philippians are experiencing the grace of being Christians, then live it out through unity with one another. If you’re all Christians, dwell in unity with one another. And, one way to do that is by defending the unity we have from the sin we have in ourselves. From our sin that threatens our unity from within. So, verses 3-4, Unity defended.

Unity Defended (Verses 3-4)“Do nothing from selfish ambition and conceit.”

This, my brothers and sisters, is the two-headed monster lurking within all of us — selfish ambition and conceit. And it is a threat to our unity as God’s people. A real, live, dressed to kill threat, that must not be coddled, must not be kept, but crushed beneath the feet of every single one of us. That’s why Paul says, “Do nothing, nothing, nothing from selfish ambition and conceit.”

What is selfish ambition? It is, simply, the thing inside of all of us that says, “I gotta get mine.” And, we’ve seen it once already in this very book in Chapter 1. Talking about the people who are preaching Christ not sincerely, but thinking to afflict Paul in his imprisonment – it says they’re doing so motivated by “Selfish ambition.” That’s chapter 1:17.

Now, we’re seeing it again, this time alongside one of its strongest allies, conceit. And if selfish-ambition says, “I gotta get mine,” then conceit says, “mine is the most important, for I am the most important.” Together these two, selfish-ambition and conceit, take aim against our being of the same mind, and same love. They’d like our being in full accord to get twisted up into discord. Selfish ambition and conceit join hands with quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, disorder (2 Cor. 12:20). In fact James says of selfish-ambition specifically that wherever you happen to find it, there also will you find “disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16).

For that reason, again, Paul warns, my brothers and sisters,

“Do nothing from selfish-ambition or conceit but, in humility, count others more significant than yourselves.”

Note, Paul could have just said, “Count others more significant than yourself.” He didn’t. He specified the action — “count others more significant than yourselves” and he specified the manner in which you are to do that action, “in humility.”

The manner matters, so much so that if you get the manner wrong, the action is pointless. Selfish-ambition, after all, is not an action. It, too, is a manner. In fact, I think there’s even a way you could, in selfish ambition, “count others more significant than yourself.” You’re doing it, thinking, now what can I get from them now that they’re in my debt? The manner, doing it “in humility,” matters. So what is it? What is humility?

Merriam-Webster offers a definition, saying humility is “freedom from pride or arrogance.” I believe that’s true as far as it takes us. Humility is freeing. Frees us from pride, frees us from arrogance, frees us from the terrors of selfish-ambition.

Another definition, along similar lines, CS Lewis describes humility as:

“not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

That’s good. Humility is not thinking you’re worthless. Not thinking you’re a worm. I mean, after all, both ways of thinking have the focus still on you. No, says Lewis, humility is a turning of the lens away from self.

“Not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

Okay, so humility features a freedom from pride. Humility involves a focus away from self. But if not pride, and if not self, then what does humility focus upon? Others? I’ll have you know what’d happen to me if I turned from self to others and that’s all I did. It’d go something like this, “Wow, they’re kind of intimidating. They look impressive. I wonder what I need to do to be liked by them? To earn their approval? Make sure I don’t embarrass myself before them?” Does that sound like humility? Sounds more like selfish ambition to me.

Humility includes a freedom from pride, and a focus away from self, but it must be so much more than that to be truehumility. So let me suggest a definition given by Pastor John Piper, during a BCS Chapel about two years ago. I was at this chapel, on accident. Truth be told I didn’t know BCS even had chapel, of course, now that I think of it, it makes a lot of sense. But I’d just gone there on that Wednesday two years ago to check out their bookstore. Said to one guy in the bookstore, “Man, there’s a lot of cars in the lot today, what do you think is going on?” Quickly found out Piper was giving the chapel message so I headed on over. That message was on the topic of humility. Piper’s definition for humility went like this:

“Humility is the disposition of the heart to be pleased with the infinite superiority of Christ over ourselves in every way.”

I really like this definition for at least two reasons. First, it puts our focus on Christ, the only being beautiful and great enough to render our pride and self-ambition complete foolishness. Both our pride and our selfish ambition just burn up in the atmosphere of his presence.

Second, because this definition says we see this superiority of Christ and take pleasure in it. We don’t just see it. We don’t just acknowledge it. The world will one day see it, acknowledge it, and it will not bring them pleasure. But we see it, and oh, it just makes us happy! It pleases us.

It pleases us because he’s not just some Christ … He is our Christ. Not just some Savior. He is our Savior. Not just some King. He is our King.

We see him and say, “I know him, I love him, he’s the one that died for me, called me to himself, says I belong to him.”

We can say, “Jesus, be great! Be glorious! Keep shine bright like a billion blazing suns as we look upon you overjoyed and overwhelmed by the magnitude of your glory.

Now tell me a person could turn from such a moment and soon say, “Now how can I get mine?”

You don’t have to tell me. Truth be told I already know a person could do such a thing, because I’ve done it. Perhaps you have as well. See because we still got this part of us, the old self, which never truly stops whispering “Hey, seriously, you gotta start looking out for number one. You gotta make sure you’re getting yours. You got other people over there passing you by. Other people who don’t get how significant you really are. Get going. Get your hands up. Start grabbing for what you can before anyone else gets it instead of you.”

But if we could just keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, even when that whisper starts up — keep our satisfaction in him unhindered, though the voice of selfish ambition tries to steer us away — then we will begin to hear that voice differently than we used to. We’ll stop hearing it and thinking, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” We’ll start hearing it and thinking, “Man I think there’s been some sort of mistake, voice. I think you must be confusing me with somebody else, or perhaps the somebody else that I used to be.

See, I’m a Christian now. On the day I became one, God’s word tells me all of heaven and its angels rejoiced in joy over me. My Father is the King of Heaven, he calls me his son, because that indeed is what I now am. God tells me he knew my name before I was even born because he wrote it out for me in his book of life. He formed my being, he’s counted the hairs upon my head, he knows just how many days I have left to live here before I get to go home to him.

And when I do get home, oh, I will see Jesus then, face-to-face. He will wipe away every tear from my eye, death shall cling to me no more, Jesus will bring me to my room, the one he’s made just for me, but he’ll say, “don’t settle in just yet, because I’ve set out a feast upon my table, and you must go and eat with me there. You, and all the others I’ve called to myself.

From now till then, my treasure in heaven will be kept imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. My faith in Jesus will remain secured, for the Lord intercedes for me before the Father, as does the Spirit. God himself has promised that nothing shall be able to separate me from this love, for neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor even my own whispering voice of selfish ambition, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Oh, and there is much more we could say to our selfish ambition, but I believe what has already been said has well rendered all sense of “us getting ours here” quite ridiculous — scraps compared to what God has in store for you and me. No, no we don’t need to get ours in this world. But what we do get is one remarkable opportunity to look to the interests of others, with a peculiar form of intrigue, that asks, “Now how might that man, or that woman: be brought to enjoy Jesus more fully, see heaven more clearly, praise God more gladly, believe God more steadfastly, pray to God more fervently, serve God more joyfully, be even more compelled to live even more in accord to the reality of God. And how, how, might God use me, even me, to help them get there?

What a thrilling way to live. A way that both defends the unity we have together as a people and gives us a front row seat to what God is doing in the world through those all around us.

So, I want to close with four points of application. First two will go along with verse 3. Final two with verse 4.

1) In humility, count others more significant, by remembering whose blood was spilled for them. We’re talking about you and other Christians, remember this is about unity within the family of faith — Christian to Christian unity. And you’re endeavoring to look at other Christians less through the lens of what they do for a living, their outward appearance, their personality, their quirks or areas of immaturity, and more through the lens of — wow, Jesus, my Jesus, spilled his blood for them. Has washed them clean in the sacrifice of his blood. Precious ointment was broken and poured out upon Jesus, Jesus has his very own body broken and poured out for them. My goodness, how significant, in the eyes of God, is this individual!

In humility, count others more significant, by remembering whose blood was spilled for them.

2) In humility, consider how much God desires to bring that person all the way home. God is, right now, working all things for the good of that Christian in front of you. God, right now, has predestined them, called them, justified them, and will glorify them. This is one of God’s sheep, and God loses none of his sheep, no one tears them out of his hand. They are the apple of his eye. They might not look all that awesome to you. They may have some areas to grow in. God will get them home. How might you, play a role, in getting them home?

In humility, consider how much God desires to bring that person all the way home.

3) In humility, look not only to your interest but also to theirs by praying for them.Paul prayed for these Philippians. He used his energy, that he could have used for other things. His mental focus, which he could have used for other things, to pray for others, prayers that no one else would ever see, other than God. It’s good for you to pray to God. It’s in your own interest to spend time in prayer before God. How do you look not only to your own interest but also the interest of others? By spending time in prayer to God on behalf of others.

4) In humility, look not only to your interest but also to theirs by showing up for others even when you don’t feel like it. Brothers and sisters, be there for your church family. Don’t underestimate how your presence might encourage your church family. You’re tired during the week, bless your Community Group by showing up all the same as a reminder to them, fellowship matters. You’re exhausted by the time Sunday comes around, bless your church by showing up all the same as a reminder, corporate worship, hearing God’s word, being with God’s people, matters. You get a phone call from a friend late at night. You still got a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow. Pick the phone up, answer it, remind them, they matter to God, they matter also to you.

In humility, look not only to your interest but also to theirs by showing up for others even when you don’t feel like it.

The TableAnd all of these words to us are what bring us to the table, for it is at this table we’re reminded of how Jesus spilled his blood for us. It’s symbolized for us every Sunday when we drink the cup. At this table, we’re reminded Jesus left heaven, took on human flesh, so that he might dwell among us, and that he might have it broken for us. It’s symbolized for us every Sunday when we eat the bread. It’s at this table we remember, and we celebrate, that Jesus has come and has given himself, sacrificially, for the good of his people.

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So growing up in North Carolina, not too far from the coast, I’ve always had an interest in pirate history. For vacation over the last few years, I’ve been taking my family to a place called Topsail Island, which has all kinds of history related to the pirate Edward Teach, who was known as Blackbeard.

And I gotta be careful because I can really nerd out about this, so I’ll go ahead and tell you that the best pirate ship name I’ve ever heard of was a ship named The Fancy.

That was the name of the ship led by the pirate Henry Avery back in the year 1695. Henry Avery started as a member of the British navy, and then he became a merchant sailor, and eventually he was promoted to be the first mate of a Spanish trading ship … but then he convinced the entire crew to commit mutiny and become pirates. They took over their trading ship and he renamed it The Fancy —and by July 1695 he was attempting the single greatest pirate heist in history.

As the story goes, Avery had learned about a huge convoy of Indian ships sailing toward Mecca on the Arabian Sea. There were 25 ships total, owned by the emperor of India, and it’s most prized ship was carrying what would have been around $300 million dollars worth of cargo.

And Avery decided he’d capture it … but he was insanely outnumbered. His solution was to recruit other pirate ships to help him. Basically, Avery organized a coalition of pirates, and together, with their own ‘pirate armada’ they pursued this convoy over several months, and by September 1695, they had destroyed or hijacked the entire fleet, they stole all the treasure, and Avery escaped and was never seen again. True story.

Henry Avery became a nightmarish legend within his own century — he and his crew were notorious for being cruel and vicious; they had a reputation for torturing their prisoners; Avery himself did barbaric things —

He and his crew were known for these things …

But do you know one fact about them they were not known for?

Their unity.

These were united pirates. They started by uniting together to commit mutiny. For months they united together to pursue this Indian fleet. Somehow, Avery convinced other pirates to unite together with his crew for the attack.

There was a lot of pirate unity going on, so then why are they not known for their unity?

Because they were pirates.

They were the terrorists of the 17th century, and nobody admires the unity of terrorists.

Unity for What?I wanna start here by getting clear about something. Over the next couple of weeks in the Book of Philippians we’re gonna be looking at the topic of unity, and right away I want us to know that unity itself is worthless.

Unity for the sake of unity — like everybody just agreeing together and being on the same page — that does not count for anything. In fact, it could be a terrible thing! It could be destructive.

The question is always what is the unity for?

What matters is not agreeing together, but it’s what you’re agreeing together about. Being on the same page together is good only if what’s on that page is good!

This makes sense to us, but it’s important for us to nail down because in our day “unity” or “being united” is a little bit of a cultural buzzword. And if we’re just listening to the world around us, we can make the mistake of thinking that unity by itself is a virtue, but it’s not — not even within churches.

The apostle Paul in the Book of Philippians is concerned about a certain kind of unity — we’re gonna see that next week in Chapter 2, but here at the end of Chapter 1 is where we see why this unity is so important for the local church.

In today’s passage, Paul gives us at least three defining marks of what real church unity is — and this is relevant for us because if our church will experience real, biblical unity, it’s gonna be marked by these three things. So I’m eager to to show them to you, but first, let’s pray again:

Father in heaven, thank you for the Holy Scriptures and for your Holy Spirit who speaks and works through your Scriptures according to your will. In this moment, by your grace, please accomplish in us what magnifies your glory. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Three marks of real church unity. Here’s the first:

1) Real church unity is Holy Spirit unity.This first mark is more like a foundation.

Look again at verse 27 (we focused on the first part of verse 27 last week). Paul says,

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit …”

And let’s just stop right there for a minute and look at those three words “in one Spirit.” Y’all see those three words in verse 27? — “in one spirit” — if you see it say ‘got it.’

Those three words, “in one spirit,” is another way to talk about unity. And the “Spirit” here in verse 27 is the Holy Spirit — the NIV makes that a capital “s” in Spirit, and I think that’s right. In other places when Paul uses that phrase “in one Spirit” it’s pretty clear that he’s talking about the Holy Spirit. For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul says,

“For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”

Paul’s talking about the Holy Spirit, and he’s making the case for unity in the Holy Spirit.

In Ephesians 2:18, after Paul has been explaining how Jesus has broken down the wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, he says,

“For through him [Jesus] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

Again that’s the Holy Spirit. Paul is saying that whatever our differences are, as Christians we have unity in the Holy Spirit.

See, Paul couldn’t care less about generic, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along unity. Paul’s concern is that local churches are united in the Holy Spirit. This is supernatural, divinely-created unity.

The foundational mark of real church unity is that it’s Holy Spirit unity.

And Holy Spirit unity is doing something.

2) Real church unity shows our common treasure.Here again, for this second mark, we’re still at a high level. I just want you to see the connection between “your manner of life being worthy of the gospel” and “you standing firm in one Spirit.”

If you like to draw lines and circles in your Bible, you can underline or bracket “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ” and then circle “standing firm in one Spirit” — and then draw a line connecting the two.

Paul is saying that if this church is living worthy of the gospel, it will be displayed in their Holy Spirit unity. If A is true, then B will be evident.

Holy Spirit unity within a local church is the manifestation of that church living worthy of the gospel.

And again, like we saw last week, if we zoom in more on what it means for us to live “worthy of the gospel” it does not mean that we deserve the gospel, but it means that our life together fits with the gospel. The way we live lines up with who Jesus is.

So for our church to be worthy of the gospel it means that our church’s life together in this world witnesses to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.

And one way that is seen is through how we endure suffering (we saw that last week in verses 29–30); but another way that’s seen is through the church’s Holy Spirit unity that Paul describes here.

Paul knows that if this church is treasuring Jesus above everything else, they will have Holy Spirit unity — they will have real church unity — which we can see is not unity for its own sake. It’s unity that points to something else. It shows our common treasure — and Paul is either gonna see that for himself or he’s gonna hear about it.

But now here’s a big question: how does this real church unity look?

What exactly does Paul want to see or hear in verse 27?

This is where Paul is gonna give us some more details about what characterizes real church Holy Spirit unity. So we’re gonna focus in here and spend some time on this third mark.

3) Real church unity is ready for battle. We’re still in verse 27 (verse 27 is a long verse)!

In the second half of verse 27 Paul describes for us how he hopes to find this church (or hear about this church), and he tells us three things. We’ve already seen the first. He hopes to find this church …

First, standing firm in the Holy Spirit.

Second, with one mind be striving (or contending) side by side for the faith of the gospel.

Third, to not be frightened in anything by their opponents.

Now, notice that each of these three descriptions are all in the same metaphor. This is a battle metaphor, which makes sense in light of the context.

Remember that the background to this entire letter is that Paul is in prison. He’s in prison in Rome, writing to a local church that’s in the Roman colony of Philippi. So this whole thing is surrounded by opposition! That’s the reason for their shared suffering. When Paul mentions in verse 30 that the Philippians are engaged in the “same conflict” he’s had, he’s talking about them facing the same opposition, most likely from the Romans.

Paul first mentions “opponents” in verse 28, but they’ve been there the whole time, and what’s why he uses this battle metaphor. And this tells us right away that real church unity is not idealistic. This is not rosy, posh unity, but it’s embattled unity. It’s unity not only for when things might be going their best, but it’s for when things are at their worst — this is unity that’s ready for battle. And that means three practical things I want you to see. Real church unity ready for battle means:

First, we hold our ground.That’s in the idea of “standing firm” in verse 27. “Standing firm” is actually the main verb in the second half of verse 27 — it’s the main thing, you could say, that Paul wants to see or hear about in this church’s unity. And it’s a defensive image. It means you’re digging in your heels and maintaining. You’re holding your ground. And to do that means we avoid two things: we neither change our message nor retreat our witness.

These are two mistakes that have been made in church history, and we can see examples in America over the last 250 years.

Consider theological liberalism. Going back to the early 1800s, Liberal theology started to be a thing, and a big driver behind it was the fear that Christianity would become irrelevant to modern minds. The thinking was that the way to make Christianity appealing to more people is to make it fit with all the new theories of science and Enlightenment philosophy. So they watered down biblical authority, they played ‘cut and paste’ with certain parts of Scripture, and eventually what they ended up with was an entirely different religion.

Theological liberalism basically invented,

“A God without wrath who brought a people without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a Cross.” (Richard Niebuhr).

They changed the message, see — but remember that Christianity is, fundamentally, a message — it’s good news — and so when you change the message, you don’t actually have Christianity anymore. Don’t do that.

But the other mistake is to retreat our witness.

In this mistake, Christians might still hold on to the truths of Christian doctrine, but they withdrawal from society and barricade themselves in isolated communities. And you might immediately think of examples like Amish communities, and that’s one example, but this is broader than that. This retreat way of thinking can be in any church and community, and maybe more common is how we think this way as individuals. Anytime we as individuals “hide our light under a basket,” we’re doing this. This mentality is the flee mentality; it’s the “get away” mentality. It’s retreating our witness. Don’t do that.

Real church unity means we hold our ground — we neither change our message nor retreat our witness.

Second, we fight for gospel advance. We see this at the end of verse 27, where Paul is explaining more of what it means to stand firm in the Holy Spirit. We are, “with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”

So this is an active unity. It’s not bunkered down, but it’s striving. That word “striving side by side” means literally that we’re fighting with — we’re fighting side by side, together, on the same team.

We’re gonna see this word again in Chapter 4, and I’ll save some comments for when we get there, but I want you to see mainly, for today, that this side-by-side fighting is for a common goal more than it’s against a common enemy.

It’s important here that Paul doesn’t define this side-by-side fighting by its opposition — the opposition will take different forms over the next 2,000 years — instead, Paul defines this side-by-side fighting by what it’s fighting for, it’s common goal — and he calls it “the faith of the gospel.” We’re contending side by side for that.

And this phrase here, “the faith of the gospel,” is unique. This is the only time Paul uses this exact phrase, so there’s some questions about what exactly he means.

But I think in context we can see that “the faith of the gospel” is a more comprehensive idea than just saying the “gospel.”

“The faith of the gospel” is not only talking about the gospel message itself, but it also includes all the truths and implications of the gospel. One commentator says that Paul is stressing both the communication and the conduct of the gospel.

Another way to put it is that Paul wants maximum gospel advance. He’s doesn’t just want people to hear the gospel, but he wants everyone to be mature in Christ (that’s what he tells us in Colossians 1:28). He wants as many people as possible to hear the gospel, believe the gospel, and then become like Jesus from the heart.

The way we’ve talked about that around here is that our goal in gospel advance includes both distance and depth. In other words, we want the gospel message to advance geographically. We want people who’ve never heard the gospel to hear it! We want neighbors to hear it! We want the good news of Jesus to spread everywhere! And so we give and go and labor for that.

And, at the same time, we want the gospel of Jesus to have its fullest effect in our lives.

We want the gospel to advance to all peoples and in all of us. And that’s something we fight for, together, for one another. That’s what discipleship is.

It means that as a local church, we are committed to helping one another follow Jesus, and that’s not easy. We’re gonna have to wrestle through some things together. There may even be times when we don’t all agree on every single detail; there may be times when we have to say or hear an uncomfortable word, but the goal is gospel advance. We want more of Jesus out there and more of Jesus in here!

That’s what we’re fighting for. What I want for you, and what you want for me, and what we want for each other, is that Jesus be our all-consuming passion and all-satisfying treasure. An that doesn’t just happen, you’ve gotta fight for it. Real church unity means we’re fighting for it together.

Here’s the third detail within this battle metaphor.

Third, we are courageous when it costs.Paul says in verse 27 that he hopes this church holds their ground, fights side by side for gospel advance, and that, verse 28, you are “not frightened in anything by your opponents.”

A positive way to say “not be frightened” is to say be courageous. It means we’re not hindered by those who would stand against us with their threats. We press on in our witness. We keep going. We’re not surprised by the opposition, and we’re not stopped by it — and all this is much easier said than done until we start thinking about the cost involved.

Courage is only courage if it comes with a cost threat.

Well, what do you think it is? When we’re determined to hold our ground on what the Bible says, when we’re wrestling for gospel advance in this world, what’s at stake for us?

For Paul, it was literally his life. For the church at Philippi it could have been their lives too — but what about when it comes to our opposition? What cost is threatened by our opponents?

This is different for churches in different parts of the world, but for us, I think the cost is our comfort.

Those who oppose us threaten to make things difficult for us. It means most basically that people will think badly of you — your neighbors think you’re stupid; you’re co-workers think you’re a bigot. That’s really hard for some of us. The fact that we could be ridiculed or mocked or unfairly criticized — that bothers us.

But the truth is: being a Christian in a 21st-century progressive metro like ours is going against the grain — and that won’t be smooth. It won’t be easy. It’s not comfortable. It requires our courage.

We Choose JesusAnd the courage we need is the same courage Paul had; it’s the same courage he wants to see in the church at Philippi. It’s a courage that has considered its gain far better than every good thing it could lose on earth, even including life itself.

See, this is where Paul’s thinking in verses 20–21 is still showing up. To live is Christ, to die is gain.

Whatever the opponents might take from us, Jesus is better and we choose him. The church, together, chooses Jesus no matter the cost.

And so yeah, verse 28 tells us, it’s a clear sign to our opponents about how all of this is gonna go down.

Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church; his gospel is advancing and it will keep advancing, and one day every knee will bow — we know the end of the story, and so we can have courage now.

Real church unity will have this kind of courage.

Real church unity is ready for battle: we hold our ground, we fight for gospel advance, we are courageous when it costs.

Paul wants that for the church in Philippi and he wants that for our church today. And that’s what brings us the Table.

The TableLook, you don’t get unity by aiming for unity — it’s just what happens when you all want the same thing. And in a word, for us, his name is Jesus.

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So how should we as a local church live together in this world?

That’s an important question and the answer to that question is found in our passage today, still in Philippians Chapter 1 — which means we’ve been in the same chapter now for a total of six weeks. It’s been good to slow down in God’s word.

Paul has been saying amazing things in Philippians 1 and he’s not done! Verse 27 actually marks the start of a new section. Up to this point, Paul has been giving a personal update. He’s been telling the church how he’s doing and what he’s been thinking, but now he turns to the church, and rather than ask them how they’re doing, he tells them how they should be doing.

Verse 27 starts a section of exhortation. Paul tells this church how they’re supposed to be — and in terms of relevance for our church, this is exactly what we need to hear right now.

What I’m about to say might sound like an overstatement, but I really believe it.

I believe “God has decreed in himself from all eternity” that we would be in Philippians at this time because there are things in this book that we especially need to hear the first part of the year of our Lord, 2024 — the tenth year of our church’s life together.

And among those things that we need to hear is the main exhortation from today’s passage.

So here’s the plan for the sermon: I’m going to start, in just a minute, by giving you a summary of Paul’s main exhortation, and then we’re gonna break down that summary and look at it in three parts.

But before we get there, let’s take a minute and pray together.

And the reason I want us to pray again is that I don’t know exactly what each of you anticipate over the next half-hour, but I’ve been praying that God would give us watershed clarity about our church’s primary calling, and I’d like to invite you to pray for that with me. So as I lead us in a prayer, if you can, from your heart, would you pray it with me?

Father in heaven, in your great mercy, in this moment, we come to you and we ask that you would give us a special enabling by your Spirit to receive your word and to embrace your calling on our church, We ask this for your glory, in Jesus’s name, amen.

The Main ExhortationOkay, we’re looking at verses 27–30, and we’re gonna focus mainly on the first part of verse 27. Here’s the summary of Paul’s main exhortation for us:

It is absolutely necessary that our church’s life together in this world witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.

That’s what Paul wants us to know. Here it is again:

It is absolutely necessary that our church’s life together in this world witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.

Now let’s break it down in three parts. We’re gonna answer three questions:

1) Why is this absolutely necessary?Notice that the first word in verse 27 is the word “only.” That’s how the sentence starts, and for that to make sense, we need to back up and see it in context. So remember what we saw last week:

Paul is in prison in Rome, awaiting a trial, and his life is in jeopardy. He’s not sure exactly what will happen to him, but he just knows that Christ is going to be honored in his body one of two ways: Either he’s gonna live or he’s gonna die.

And so he’s been thinking about that … and he concludes: it’s far better for him to depart from life in this world and to be with Christ — that is “far better” — But it’s more necessary for the church — or we might say, it’s “more strategic” for the church at Philippi — that he stays alive and remains here in the flesh.

In fact, it’s so important that he stay alive that he becomes convinced that’s what he’ll do. He says his life will be spared and he’s gonna continue serving this church, verse 25, “for your progress and joy in the faith.” That means, verse 26, that he’s gonna come see this church again in order to make them abound in their glory in Christ Jesus.

Never Apart From JesusEverybody look at verse 26 for a minute. Now I appreciate the way the NIV translates verse 26. Verse 26 in the NIV says, “so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.”

The key phrase there is “your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound.” Now I want you to see that verse 26 is a restatement of verse 25.

Verse 26 is explaining more of what verse 25 means. Your progress and joy in the faith (verse 25) means that your boasting in Christ abounds (verse 26). In other words, if you’re growing in faith, if you’re joy in the faith is increasing, it means your confidence in Christ is increasing.

I don’t want us to miss this. Another way to say it is that: there’s no such thing as growth in the Christian life apart from abounding confidence in Jesus. Do you wanna grow as a Christian? It means you must trust Jesus more …

You must seek Jesus more.

You must know Jesus more.

You must love Jesus more.

That’s the only way. There is no progress, there is no growth, apart from more of Jesus. And Paul says “That’s worth living for!” He wants that so badly for this church that he says, That’s why I’m alive! If I live, I live for that!

And so Paul is gonna come visit this church and he’s going to find them increasing in faith and abounding in joy and boasting in Christ, but wait a minute!

Paul is going to find this church like that on one condition.

THE ALL-ENCOMPASSING ONLYAnd this is where the “only” of verse 27 comes in. This is a big word.

Paul is about to tell us the one thing that the local church must remember — if their faith and joy are gonna increase, if they will have an abounding confidence in Christ, this is the one thing they gotta do.

Now of course there’s all kinds of things that matter. There are lots of commands and instructions for churches in the New Testament, but what Paul is about to say is an all-encompassing non-negotiable!

As in: if they just do this one thing, everything else will take care of itself. But without this one thing, even if everything else goes perfectly, they will fail in their calling.

This is a big deal, and I love this kind of simplicity. I have a “one thing” kind of brain, and over the years I’ve learned this the hard way … like last Saturday when I installed a new garbage disposal in our kitchen sink.

THE GARBAGE DISPOSALI don’t know if any of you in here love garbage disposals, but if you do, I might hurt your feelings here. Last Saturday, I installed our third garbage disposal in about a five-year span. Garbage Disposal #2 stopped working and so I bought a new one, Garbage Disposal #3, and thought: “I’ve done this before; I’ve got YouTube; this should take about an hour.”

By Saturday afternoon, about four hours later, I had to take apart the entire thing. I had to move the electric cord from the old one to put it in the new one; I had to make a couple of trips to the hardware store; I redid the kitchen sink thing, I let the plumber’s puddy dry on that one thing — and after all that time, I was finally ready to debut this brand-new Insinkerator Badger 500.

So the family is all standing around, I called all the neighbors over, Mom and Dad flew in … I plugged it in, flipped the switch. Nothing happened. So I run around, check everything, check the breaker, try it again, still nothing.

And eventually I figured out that it was the outlet that was broken the whole time. Only the outlet. The old disposal was fine. I just needed electricity. That was the one thing. That was the most essential thing, and I overlooked it. I spent all that time and I had missed the one thing that was absolutely necessary.

And Paul does not want the church to do that! So he tells us the one thing.

Verse 27:

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

Or in other words: Only let our church’s life together in this world witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.

Now why am I saying it like that? Well let’s focus on that phrase there “your manner of life” in verse 27. This is our second question:

2) Why does verse 27 apply to our church’s life together in this world?Paul says “your manner of life.” So who is he talking to? And what does that phrase mean?

First, Paul is talking to the church corporately. “Your manner of life” doesn’t mean the individual lives of the members of this church, but he means the church’s life together. That’s gonna be more obvious as we keep reading because there’s nothing that Paul says here that could be done in isolation from one another. All that he says envisions and depends upon a corporate body. So this is about the local church together — our church’s manner of life.

Now what does that mean? This is fascinating. The Greek behind that phrase “let your manner of life be” is actually one word (πολιτεύομαι). It’s a verb that’s only used one other time in the New Testament, and a more exact translation of the verb is to say “live as a citizen.” Paul is saying, literally, “Only live as a citizen worthy of the gospel of Christ!”

A CITIZEN OF WHAT?But now a citizen of what?

When we think of the word “citizen” we immediately think of our local, earthly context. We are citizens of America, of Minnesota — we’re Twin Citizens. But I want you to see something here. Turn over one page to Philippians 3, verse 20. In Philippians 3:20, Paul says there are those who set their minds on earthly things, 3:20, “But our citizenship is in heaven” — and from heaven “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Get this: the noun there for “citizenship” in 3:20 is the same word used as a verb in Chapter 1, verse 27.

So when Paul says, “Only live as a citizen worthy of the gospel” — he’s not talking about being a citizen of Rome or America or wherever, he’s talking about being a citizen of heaven.

That’s what he wants us to know! We are citizens of heaven. That’s who we are! But where do we live right now? Not heaven! We’re citizens of heaven, but we’re not in heaven yet! For now we live in this world, and we’re supposed to feel the tension here. It’s not supposed to be easy! We are called to live as citizens of heaven in this world.

And I don’t think we could emphasize this enough. According to Paul, this is the way to think about our lives in this world. We are citizens of heaven, and sometimes we know that we are so far from home, and so we pray everyday how Jesus taught us to pray:

“Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth just as it is in heaven!”

We pray for that, and we become agents, ambassadors, for how that happens. That’s who the church is. That’s what we’re doing here! Our church is an embassy of heaven in this world — that steeple is our flag! — and we are here to point to another kingdom, a better country — from which our Savior is gonna come. And so whatever else we do, we do that. That’s what Paul is saying. That’s what he lives for! He says to this whole church:

Hey, I’m living for your progress and joy in the faith. I want your boasting in Christ to abound, so here’s the main thing:

Above all, live together in this world as citizens of heaven … worthy of the gospel of Christ.

And I’m summarizing that to mean: “witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.” So how do I get that?

3) What does it mean to be worthy of the gospel of Christ?That word “worthy” in verse 27 is the idea of being congruent or fitting. “Worthy of the gospel” does not mean deserving of the gospel. We could never deserve the gospel — and this is important because I think there’s a common mistake we can make on this point.

We might all agree that we’re saved by grace, at least at the start, but sometimes it’s easy to think that after we received the grace then we gotta work hard to make sure we deserved the grace. Sometimes, by accident, we can think that living the Christian life is a kind of payback for the grace God showed us in the past. And I know about this because I used to think that way.

Y’all’ve heard the story before that when I was 17, I got into a terrible car wreck, and God spared my life. It was a clear miracle. And in the weeks and months after that, I really got my act together. I was gonna make the grace count, so I became very religious, very driven — and do you know what happened? I became spiritually proud, because I was doing so good!

And then one day, in Ephesians Chapter 2, I discovered the true meaning of grace. The gospel of God is his grace and grace can never be earned — that’s what it means for it to be grace. Grace is forever a gift we don’t deserve, which means the dumbest thing you can do is be proud. Grace humbles us … which means we don’t try to pay God back, we never could, we just keep getting more thankful. Because it’s just grace upon grace upon grace.

So Paul is not saying to live as a citizen in a way that deserves the gospel of Christ. He means live as a citizen of heaven in a way that fits with the gospel of Christ.

So what is that? What is congruent to, what fits with, the gospel of Christ?

JESUS ABOVE ALL ELSEJesus actually teaches us this … in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10. You don’t have to turn there, I’m gonna read it for you. Maybe you’ve heard this verse before, but listen to what Jesus is saying, Matthew 10, verse 27:

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

So you have father, mother, son, and daughter right here and you got Jesus over here on the other side. And Jesus says that if you love them more than you love me, you’re not worthy of me.

Which means, loving them more than me doesn’t add up to “who I am.” It doesn’t fit with who I am.

See, Jesus understands that he’s the most lovable person in the universe, so if we love anything more than the most lovable person in the universe, it doesn’t work!

And so the only way our lives can fit with who Jesus is, is if we love him above everything else.

To live worthy of Jesus, to live in a way that’s congruent to him, to live in a way that fits with who Jesus is, it means we live in way that shows that Jesus is more valuable to me than anything else.

What fits with Jesus is when Jesus is your all-satisfying treasure.

That’s what Paul is getting at. He wants this church corporately to follow his personal example.

AN EXTRA GRACE?And I think that becomes clear in verses 29–30. So skip there for a minute. We’re going to end here (next week we’ll look at the rest of verse 27 and verse 28), but for today, verses 29-30:

“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”

That word for “granted” in verse 29 is literally the word “graced.” It has been graced to you, or graciously given to you — and when Paul starts a sentence like that, we’re about to open a present, right? Paul is about to tell us something really good!

He says “It has been graciously given to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also … suffer for his sake.”

What? I thought this was supposed to be a bonus. I thought this was supposed to be good? Does this mean that Paul thinks it’s a grace to suffer for Jesus?

Yeah.

And church, we’re in deep waters here. This does not mean that suffering or pain itself is good — it’s not. We weep over suffering. We don’t want it. But the grace, the gift, is in how the suffering relates to our faith.

See, if it has been graced to you to believe in Jesus, that’s enough, right?! We believe in Jesus — we’re happy! We’re good!

But if you are also graced to suffer for Jesus then it means your believing, your faith, is experienced and expressed in the highest degree.

Now this is gonna be a little rough, but we need to go here. Hang with me.

A CHRISTIAN NAMED JOBUse your imagination for a minute and think of a hypothetical Christian. Imagine a hypothetical Christian man, and let’s call his name Job.

Job is a Christian. He believes in Jesus. He’s been forgiven, overcome by grace, Jesus is his greatest treasure. And also, Job has a lot of kids. This guy is blessed. Jesus has given him a big family and they all get along, they’re all friends. Jesus has also given him like 7,000 sheep and camels and oxen and donkeys. His garbage disposal never breaks. Job loves Jesus and Jesus has given Job some pretty amazing gifts. He’s comfortable.

Which, could make us wonder … is it really Jesus that he loves or is it the comfortable things that Jesus gives him? Which does he love the most?

I don’t know. We don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t even know? How could we know?

Well, what if some of those comfortable things are taken away …

See, if we’re honest, and this is the part that’s rough, it’s hard for us to say that we love Jesus more than our comfort until we lose our comfort.

See, there’s loving Jesus — and every Christian has been graced to do that! — we love Jesus …but then there is loving Jesus when Jesus is all you have. When you know that the main gift Jesus has given you is himself.

That’s deeper. The experience and expression of our faith in Jesus through suffering is deeper. That’s what Paul is talking about here.

Not just believing for the sake of Christ, but also suffering for the sake of Christ…

MAXIMIZED WITNESS…which maximizes our witness. People will see that and say:

Wow! This person really believes! They believe so much in Jesus — Jesus is so valuable to them — they’re gonna keep loving him even when that happens! They’re willing to give that up!

You mean, Jesus is more valuable to them than life itself?

You mean, for them, that being with Jesus is greater than anything?

Like they believe so much that when they die they will be with Jesus, that they consider death to be gain?!

Wow! See, it has been graced to you, Paul says, graced to you that “for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.”

Then in verse 30, Paul says:

That means, church, we’re the same. Because you’ve been graced to suffer for the sake of Christ, it means that what you’re going through is what you saw me go through, and what I’m still going through.

IN THE SAME BOATVerse 30 is what brings all of Chapter 1 together. The reason Paul spent so much time giving a personal update in Chapter 1 is because he knew that the church in Philippi was in the same boat he was. And this confirms that Paul intended his example to be followed.

Everything that he said about his passion in Chapter 1 applies to the church corporately. He expects the church, as a whole body, to embrace Jesus as their all-consuming passion and all-satisfying treasure. So this is for us.

It is absolutely necessary that our church’s life together in this world witness to the all-satisfying value of Jesus.

That’s what we’re doing here.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableI want you to know that it’s not just that Jesus is more valuable than anything else, but it’s that he will truly satisfy your soul above anything else.

See, it’s one thing to know about a treasure that’s worth more than every other treasure in the world; but it’s another thing to know that the all-surpassing treasure is actually what you need. It’s what you’ve been looking for. It’s why you were made. Jesus is that treasure, and he’s the only one who can satisfy the deepest longings of your soul.

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A few weeks ago, my 7-year-old informed me that he wanted to be 8 — but not any older than that. “Buddy, why don’t you want to be any older than that?” I asked. “Well, because when you get old, you die.” Fair enough.

8 seemed safe and exciting enough, I guess (he has some 8-year-olds in his class), but 9 . . . now 9 was a different story. Who knows what might happen then? Better stick with 8.

It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it, to watch your children begin to wrestle with a reality like death and then to force you, as a dad or mom, to try and explain something like death. I think our verses this morning are a great help to dads and moms and teenagers and twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings in answering the biggest questions we ever ask. What’s going to happen when we die? What does it mean to really live?

A couple years ago, on June 28, 2021, my then 64-year-old dad had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the moments I spent beside his hospital bed that week, waiting for quadruple bypass surgery. I felt my own mortality, watching the strongest man I’d ever known now fighting for his life. I know some of you have experienced this. When you’re growing up, Dad is the embodiment of strength, almost immortal. I mean what can’t Dad do? A toy breaks? Oh Dad’ll fix it. Want to know what makes an airplane fly? Dad will know that.

My 3-year-old’s been worried that skunks are going to get into her room at night (longer story there), but I’ve said to her, “Honey, I promise Daddy won’t let any skunks in your room.” And she believes me! Because I’m Daddy.

And then dads grow older and their arteries fail — or they get really sick, or their minds begin to go. Slowly, they’re a little less superhero, and a little more human. And in the process, we realize just how human we are.

By God’s grace, my dad’s doing really well, but I thought of him leading up to this message because our conversations over these last couple years (one in particular) remind me of these verses. He told me that’s he more aware than ever that every day he has is a day he’s been given for Christ, that however many days he has left — whether hundreds or thousands or just one — he wants them to honor Jesus. My dad came close enough to death to be able to remind his son how to live.

And that’s what we have in Philippians 1:19–26: We have a man, a spiritual father, who has come close enough to death that he’s able to tell us (whether we’re 8 or 38 or 68) how to live and die well.

The Happy, Driving PassionAs we’ve learned over the last several weeks, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. The situation’s serious enough that his friends in Philippi are worried if they’ll ever see him again. And on top of the dangers and hardships of his imprisonment, he had enemies (even in the church) trying to make things even worse for him.

I don’t want it to be lost on us over these next few months in Philippians that the most joy-filled letter in the New Testament was written in horrible circumstances. That tells us something, doesn’t it, about how much joy we can expect to experience even on our hardest days. Look how joyful he is even now, even in prison! And they tell us about how much we can still help others enjoy Jesus — even on our hardest days.

As Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, Paul responds to all of this — imprisonment, mistreatment, betrayal — in an otherworldly way, because he had a different passion than the world. And what was that passion?

The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel.

That passion is why he can rejoice while his enemies preach Christ (verses 15–18). That’s why he can rejoice even while he sits in prison (verses 12–14). That’s why he prays like he does, verses 9–11. That passion is why his love for these people runs deeper and richer than many of our relationships (verses 3–8). And now, in our verses this morning, he’s going to tell us about that passion. He leans in, after all of that, as if to say, Do you want the secret? “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

What Kind of Deliverance?Our passage begins in verse 19:

“Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance…”

Now, right away, what kind of deliverance do you think he’s talking about? What’s he going to be delivered from? Is he talking about deliverance from prison (which is what we probably assume) or is he talking about some other kind of deliverance?

Let’s keep reading:

“[I know that this will turn out for my deliverance,] as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

Why do I expect that all of this will turn out for my deliverance? He doesn’t go on to talk about judges changing their minds, or him developing some good will with the jailers, or about a large group of Christians putting together a petition. No, he says, I’m confident this will turn out for my deliverance because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will be honored in me. That phrase — “whether by life or by death” — that’s the biggest reason I don’t think he’s talking mainly about being delivered from prison. He can’t die in prison and be delivered from prison. I might die here in prison, he’s saying, but I’ll still be delivered. Even if I’m never released from these chains, I’ll still be set free. How could that be? How could he be delivered without being delivered?

I think that question’s massively relevant for us, because some of you are praying for deliverance right now. Not from prison (because you’re here) — but what you’re suffering might feel worse than prison some days. Intense, prolonged conflict with someone you love. Hostility where you work. Cancer. A child who’s walked away from the faith — and maybe from you. . . . By the end of this sermon, I’m praying that you’ll be able to say, to anyone who cares about you: “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this pain, this conflict, this cancer will turn out for my deliverance” — not mainly because the pain might finally let up in this life, or because the relationship will necessarily get better, or because the cancer will go into remission, but because I believe my life, and my suffering, and even my death will say something true and beautiful and loud about how much Jesus means to me. About how much he’s done for me. About how much I’m dying to go and spend the rest of my life with him.

What kind of deliverance is Paul expecting? Not mainly deliverance from prison (although, as we’ll see, he clearly expects that too). No, deliverance from spiritual ruin, from the intense temptations that come with suffering, from walking away from Christ. I’m confident I will be delivered, he says, because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will look great — and that’s all I really want.

“I count everything as loss,” he’ll say in chapter 3, “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

That’s what deliverance looks like, the most important kind of deliverance, the kind we all need, especially when suffering comes.

These next verses, then, are a mural of the delivered life — the life freed from self and sin and death, and filled with Jesus. Again, they teach us how to live and die well:

“I know that Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death…”

Verse 21:

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

We know that verse, and we think we get it — but do we really get it? Could you explain it to a 7-year-old? These next verses help us see both sides of this precious, life-altering (and death-altering) verse.

To Die Is GainLet’s start with death, though, with the second half of the verse:

“[I know] that Christ will be honored in my body . . . by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

How is Christ honored in a dying person’s body? Our death honors Christ, he says, when we begin to see our death not as loss — not as the end, not as defeat, not ultimately as a tragedy — but as gain.

So how could Paul look at death, even a death alone in horrible circumstances, and see victory, see reward? The next verses take us deeper. Beginning now in verse 22:

“If I am to live in the flesh, [to live is Christ] that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

Now, of course, Paul doesn’t really get to choose. “Which of you by being anxious,” Jesus asks, “can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Luke 12:25). Paul’s not actually choosing life or death here; he’s just letting us see what he wants.

“I am hard pressed between the two,” he says. A big part of me wants to stay and live a little longer here with you (and we’ll see why in a minute), but if I’m honest, I’d rather go home. I’m so ready to feel my last aches and pains, to have my last hard conversations, to wipe away my last tears — more than anything, though, I’m so ready to finally, at last, tosee him, to set aside this old, foggy mirror and look at him face to face: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace in the flesh — the seeable, huggable, high-five-able God. To get to know him, to know Jesus, as well as he’s known me all these years, 1 Corinthians 13:12. Oh how badly I want to stay, Paul’s saying, and help you see more clearly, and understand more deeply, and love more fully, and obey more joyfully, but it will be so much better for me if this apostle left you (for now) and went on to be a kindergartner, a beginner, in glory.

Notice, he doesn’t diminish the goodness of this earthly life. From an earthly perspective, Paul’s life wasn’t all that great (it was horrible) when he wrote these verses — and he still wanted to stay. God has filled this broken, sinful world with people and pleasures and experiences — with really good gifts — that hint at heaven and help us long for heaven.

I have three small kids — there are moments every week where I stop and think, I just want this to last forever. (There are plenty of other moments when I think, When will this ever end? But there are so many moments I want to hold onto.)When we tickle them and they giggle until they cry. When they say certain words really wrong. When they learn how to do something for the first time, and then do that same thing a thousand times every day for a week. When they come, snuggle up next to you, and tell you they love you for no reason at all.

Having a Philippians 1:21 heart doesn’t mean you despise the God-given joys and giggles of life on earth — it means you realize that another life’s coming, another world, one that’s better than this one, even at its best. And not better by a little, but better by far. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ,” verse 23, “for that is far better.”

And what’s the better? It’s not weeks without work, or years without taxes. It’s not endless tee times on the golf course or more girls nights with your best friends. It’s not your favorite foods at your favorite restaurants and you never have to wait or pay. . . (I for one, by the way, believe all of that will happen in heaven, and that it’s all going to be better than we can even begin to think or imagine. Believe me, nothing you enjoy here is going to get worse in heaven.) He tells us what the best better will be, though, in the same verse:

“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

He puts a face to the gain. Death, for believers, is better than life because it’s death that finally gives us Christ — all of Christ, with all our senses, meeting all our needs and satisfying all our lingering, gnawing desires. He is our gain.

In college, I read a paragraph that I’ll never forget. It still haunts me, in the very best way. It goes like this:

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (God Is the Gospel, 47)

I still remember where I was on campus when I read that chapter. It felt like I had stumbled into a land I had never seen before, an ocean I’d never sailed before, a favorite meal I’d never tasted before. I really believe those were the moments when God became heaven for me. When he was no longer the God who makes heaven, or who lets sinners like me into heaven, but that he himself is what makes heaven heaven — that he would always be (even after thousands and thousands of years) the best part of living there. This Jesus is not just the only way to heaven; he really is what makes heaven worth wanting. He is the great meal. He’s the ocean. He is the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price.

And if that’s true — if we really think that way — how awesome will he look when we die?

While everyone around us in the hospital clings to the last days they have here — while they scramble to try and make it to a couple more things on their “bucket lists” — we’re going to be the really strange people who have this deep and abiding peace, who talk about how much better life’s about to get, who feel free to spend the last days and hours we have on other people and their needs, who still smile even through horrible pain. We’re going to be the strange and beautiful people who use our last breaths — on the hospital bed, in hospice care, covered in wires and monitors — to sing. When we die like that, what will that say about Jesus? You know if you’ve ever seen a saint die well. In those moments, Jesus looks more valuable than anything life could ever give — or that death could ever take. Don’t you want to die like that?

As we turn to the first half of verse 21, then, I want us to see the relationship between these two phrases: “To live is Christ” and “to die is gain.” We’re about to see what “to live is Christ” means as a way of life — what a strange person like this does with the weeks and months and years they have. But before we even get to that, to the kinds of things they do, we’re already seeing who they are — we’re seeing their heart, their passion. You see, the kind of person who honors Christ with their life will always be the kind of person who sees death as better than this life. They glorify God with their life because they want Jesus more than life. I first learned this, like many of you, from John Piper:

“God is most glorified in us — in life and death, in joys and sorrows, in marriage and parenting and singleness — when we are most satisfied in him.”

God will be most glorified in our lives when death is gain, when we know that the day we die will be the greatest day we’ve ever lived — yet.

To Live Is ChristNow, in the next couple verses, he turns to explain “to live is Christ.” How does he explain that? He’s already said, verse 22, “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.” Fruitful labor, that’s the first part of our answer. But what does “fruitful labor” actually mean?

He goes on to tell us in verses 24–26:

“[My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.] But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. It would be better, far better, to go and be with Jesus, but I’m convinced it’s more necessary, for now, that I stay and keep laboring among you.”

And what is the labor? What does he need to stay and do for them?

“Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith. . . .”

The fruitful labor Paul stays to do is to work for others’ progress and joy in the faith. He stays to help them grow in their faith in Jesus (progress), and to help them find greater joy in that faith. If we live for another day or month or year, it’s because someone needs help believing in and enjoying Jesus. That’s how Paul thinks about his life — and yours. This is why you’re alive: to help someone else keep believing in Jesus. Do you think about your life that way? Do you look at your days, or weeks, or decades of life as a gift God has given you to give other people God? To live is Christ — to hold up Christ for one another.

But what does it really mean, practically, to live for someone else’s “progress and joy in the faith”? Does Paul give us any hints about we’re supposed to actually do? He gives us lots of hints. His letters are filled with this kind of life. But we’ll limit ourselves to just Philippians for now. What does it look like to live for one another’s “progress and joy in the faith”?

It looks like praying for one another, and especially for each other’s souls (Philippians 1:9–11).

It looks like calling one another to obey Christ, to live a life worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27).

It looks like meeting practical needs for one another, like this church did for Paul (Philippians 4:14).

It looks like honoring one another, like Paul honors Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:29).

Sometimes it looks like warning one another: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh” (Philippians 3:2).

It looks like reconciling believers with one another when there’s conflict or division, like Paul does in Philippians 4:2: “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.”

It looks like reminding one another of heaven: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–21).

It looks like, get this, just having more conversations about Jesus.

Any of you can do all those things. These aren’t things apostles do, or even things pastors do; these are things Christians get to do for one another. We live, for however long we live, for one another’s progress and joy in the faith — to live is Christ.

Paul strikes one more note here, in verse 26:

“I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”

If I live, he’s saying, I want to give more reasons to worship Jesus — and not just a few reasons, but plenty of reasons (“so that in me you may ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus”). Paul’s not living for a bare-minimum Christianity, a bare-minimum spiritual influence on others. No, day by day, he wants to pile on the reasons, as many as he possibly can, for those he knows and loves to trust and enjoy Jesus.

So, when God brings someone into your life, are they better off spiritually for being there? Are they a lot better off spiritually for being there? What if you started looking at your relationships — family, community group and life group, neighbors, co-workers, friends — and tried to give them ample cause to love and glorify Jesus? How much more spiritual good could you do? How might the good you do then multiply through them into all of their relationships?

Again, notice he says, “I am hard pressed between the two.” So even though to depart and Christ is far better, Paul really does want both. It’s gain to die, no question, but it’s not loss to stay and live for Christ. To live for Jesus, despite how much it cost him, despite how little fruit he saw at times, despite the fact that he might live the rest of his life in prison — to live for Jesus was its own reward. Therefore he could gladly say, To die is gain for me, and to live is Christ for you, my joy and my crown.

Because You Pray for MeBefore we close, then, I want to go back briefly to the beginning of our passage and look at how this kind of Christ-honoring life and this kind of Christ-honoring death happens. If God delivers us from walking away from Christ, from giving into temptation, from slowly drifting into worldliness, if he helps us honor Christ until the very end, how does that happen? Where do we get the strength and focus we need to keep going? Paul gives us two quick glimpses (so quick we might completely miss them), but I think they’re too good to pass over as a church. You’ve already heard these verses, but we need to hear them one more time:

“Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. . .”

Why is Paul so confident that he’s going to make it to the end, that he’ll keep honoring Christ, even in prison, even under persecution, even if it costs him his life? What does he say? Because you’re praying for me.

Do you ever pray like this church prayed for Paul? Does anyone pray like this for you? If we commit to praying like this for one another, Cities Church, we’ll be able to say things like we heard Paul say in verse 6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” — because we’ve prayed for you. I know you’ll honor Christ, whatever happens to you, because we’ve prayed for you. Or, verse 19, “I know this horrible circumstance will turn out for my deliverance” — because you prayed for me. Prison can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. Cancer can’t overcome these kinds of prayers. All the armies in the world couldn’t overcome prayers like these.

Why? Because God answers prayers like these. . . . And he doesn’t answer from afar. No, he comes and helps us from inside of us, by his Spirit (“through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”). His Spirit lives within us. And as he does, his strength becomes our strength, his peace becomes our peace, his love becomes our love.

By the Spirit, right now, in whatever callings each of you have been given, you have everything you could possibly need to honor Christ — whether by life or by death — because that Christ lives in you. He’s going to help you.

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So let’s start this morning with a pop quiz. I’ve got just a two-question theology quiz … I’m going to say two sentences and I want you to fill in the blanks. You ready?

God saves us by grace through faith in _______.

Answer: Jesus 2. Once we put our faith in Jesus, God, by his Spirit, begins the work of conforming us into the image of _______.

Answer: Jesus

The Bible teaches us that in our our lives as Christians God is continuing the good work that he began in us (Philippians 1:6). That means that he is conforming us into the image of Jesus. He is progressively, slowly but surely, making us more and more like Jesus, and we are called to be like Jesus. Every Christian in here agree with that? We’re called to be like Jesus.

Jesus or Paul?Okay, so what about verses like this:

1 Corinthians 4:16 — this is Paul speaking and he says:

“… I urge you … be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.”

2 Timothy 1:3 — Paul tells Timothy:

“Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me …”

And later in that letter, as an encouragement to Timothy, Paul says:

“You have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions…” (3:10)

Paul says later in this letter to the Philippians, 3:17,

“Brothers, join in imitating me …”

He says in Chapter 4, verse 9:

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things …”

So, fair question: Are we supposed to be like Jesus or are we supposed to be like Paul?

Well, the key here is Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:1 when he says:

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Which means we are called to be like Jesus, and to be like Paul when Paul is like Jesus … and in all the ‘ways of Paul’ that we find in the New Testament, he is being like Jesus. Paul models for us Christlikeness. Paul is an example of Christ that we should follow, including what he says here in this introduction, in this personal update.

And so what is that? What is Paul’s example here — what is Paul’s example overall?

What Is Paul’s Example?We should have clarity on that, right? If we’re supposed to imitate Paul as he imitates Christ, we need to know what Paul was like.

Several years ago I was at a conference leading a workshop on leadership development, and I was making the case that, before churches can develop leaders, we need to know the kind of leaders we want to develop. Standard precedes system. And I appealed to what Paul says here in Philippians, that Paul’s example is one we should follow, he sets a good standard, and so I asked the room: What was the apostle Paul like?

It was a workshop, so I had asked the folks to get in small groups and read through the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters, and try to summarize, from the Bible: Who was Paul and what was his passion?

And I had a big post-it note, and after a few minutes, I was ready to write down some observations from the groups, so I asked everyone, about 50 people, What made Paul tick?

And a dear sister raised her hand, and I had my marker ready to go, and I said, “Okay, tell us, what drove Paul?”

She said: “Paul fought for women’s equality!”

And I said, “Okay … yeah, Paul believed that.”

Another guy, spoke up: “Paul wanted to make America great again!”

Answers were all over the place. This story really happened (most of it) … I think about it twice a week, because it reminds me that although we can make biblical and theological arguments for all kinds of important things, there’s a difference between things that are true and a passion that drives you. There’s a lot of good, true things, and we thank God for them, but only one thing can be an all-consuming passion — and we will never understand Paul until we know what that passion is.

We see it in Philippians 1. It will be most clear in our passage next week, but it comes through in our verses today, 12–18. We need to know how can Paul say what he says here. And so if I had to summarize it, if I had to put Paul’s example in one sentence, it’s this:

Paul cared most about the glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel.

The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel.

That was Paul’s all-consuming passion. More than anything else, Paul was a theologian-pastor-missionary who wanted the glory of God displayed through people hearing and learning and embracing the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s what drove him. That’s what led him to see the world the way he does here in verses 12–18, and that’s what I want to show you.

I want to show you three ways that this passion for Paul shaped the way we saw the world, and then I wanna give us some ideas for how we could follow his example.

Father in heaven, thank you for your Word and for our brother, the apostle Paul. We ask now that by your Holy Spirit, give us a clear sightline into his example, and more than anything, overcome our hearts with the glory of your grace in the gospel. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Three Ways Paul’s Passion Shaped His OutlookSo three ways that Paul’s passion shaped his outlook. We’re going to see these in the text, starting with verse 12.

Paul’s passion for the glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel shaped …

1) The way he interpreted how he’s doing. (verse 12)Look at verse 12. Pauls starts, “I want you to know, brothers, ….”

And we can just stop right there for a minute. Remember that this is the introduction of a letter between good friends, and as good friends tend to do in communication, they start with an update on how they’re doing.

Paul wanted to know how this church was doing (which was the job of Timothy and Epaphroditus — they were supposed to bring news of this church back to Paul); and this church wanted to know how Paul was doing (which is what he’s telling them here in this letter).

Now the church at Philippi already knew what had happened to Paul. They knew that he was in Roman custody, in prison, in Rome.

And we know from the New Testament that Paul faced different types of imprisonment with different conditions, including once an imprisonment in Philippi.

The beginning of this church can be traced back to Paul and Silas being thrown into prison in Philippi in Acts 16. And in that imprisonment, the conditions were rough: Paul’s feet was locked into iron stocks. The best-case scenario of imprisonment was house arrest (which was the condition of Paul’s imprisonment in Acts 28), but we’re not sure exactly about the condition of his imprisonment when he writes this letter — and in this way, we’re like the Philippian church.

They knew Paul was in Roman custody, but they didn’t know the details — now they did know more than we do, that Roman custody in the first century was never a five-star hotel.

Historically (this would have been around the year 60) it’s a fact that Roman prisons were absolutely inhumane. They would have been underground with little to no ventilation. It would have been almost completely dark, with a terrible stench, crawling with disease. These prisons were not built to hold prisoners for a long time, but only until they were tried or executed. Maybe Paul is on house arrest right now shackled to a Roman solider — but either way, he’s imprisoned in Rome, good grief, how’s he doing?That’s what this church wanted to know.

Paul, how are you?

Paul says: “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.”

We would expect that he wants us to know how bad it smells or how hungry he is or how terribly he’s been sleeping.

Paul is in prison. Man, how are you?

— I gotta tell you about how the gospel’s advancing.

TheOverfilled AmericanoUnderstand that his answer here does not change his circumstances. The conditions were still terrible, and if he had the choice, he wanted to get out (in verse 19 he says that he hopes for that). So although his circumstances were bad and he did not like them, get this: he interpreted how he’s doing not through the lens of his comfort but through the lens of his passion.

And I’m convinced that we do the same thing, which is why we complain as much as we do. We also interpret our circumstances through the lens of our passion, it’s just that for us our passion is our comfort.

So if the church at Philippi were to ask us how we’re doing, the lens through which we answer that question is: “Have I gotten what I wanted when and how I wanted it?”

We tend to look at the world this way. Let’s be honest. We live in the land of whiners, and it is so much the air we breathe that a lot of times we don’t even know we’re doing it.

For example, a long time ago, like last year, I would go to a coffee shop at the same time two days a week and order a 16oz Americano with light water — which means I wanted “this much room.” And I would show them “how much room” with my fingers. But consistently the coffee people, who are great people, they would fill my cup to the very top with water (even when I did the fingers) … and I’d try to let it go because I don’t wanna be that guy, but then when Melissa would call me to check in and ask me how my day was going, you know what I’d say?

“Overfilled my Americano again.”

Now part of that was tongue and cheek, but another part of me was really bothered by it, and in reality, subtly, when asked how I was doing, I assessed the question through the lens of my comfort, of me getting what I want when and how I want it. Without meaning to, my passion is my comfort. Because that’s our default. And we know it.

But what if God has something better for us? What if we followed Paul’s example and our passion was the glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel?

Clarifying Our HumanityIt would not mean that hard circumstances are less real, and it also would not mean that we never talk about them. Don’t misunderstand me here:

We are humans and we have needs and we should be honest about that.

Later when Paul was in prison, he did ask Timothy to send him a coat and some books (see 2 Timothy 4:13). Paul told the Corinthians that he despaired of life itself when he was in Asia (see 2 Corinthians 1:8). Later in this letter, Paul talks about his anxiety and his potential sorrow (see Philippians 2:27–28).

So look, we’re not ignoring our emotions. We’re not burying our heads in the sand. We are not talking about being super-humans, we’re talking about being consumed by a passion greater than our comfort so much so that the question of how we’re doing is interpreted, ultimately, through that passion. It’s not about knowing the right words to say. We should have no interest in shallow jargon. What I’m talking about here is seeing the world from a heart that is truly consumed with God.

Ultimate Non-FoolishnessThe missionary Jim Elliot, who gave his life for the gospel, said,

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

And we could also say: He is no fool who interprets how he’s doing by what is destined for triumph rather than what is certain to wane.

“How we doing?” — there’s a lot of details we could get into, and I hope we can — we should — but what if we could be more like Paul and the question of how we’re doing takes us to:

Is God being glorified?

Is his gospel being advanced?

Are people hearing about Jesus?

Okay, here’s the second thing to see about Paul’s passion for the glory of God through the advance of the gospel.

2) Paul’s passion shaped how he understood the impact of his witness. (verses 13–14)So Paul said that his imprisonment, as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it was, really served to advance the gospel, and now we want to know in what way. How did the gospel advance?

And that’s what Paul explains for us in verses 13 and 14. He says that there are two different ways — there’s one way in how his witness impacted unbelievers (verse 13) and there’s another way his witness impacted fellow believers (verse 14).

Manifest ChainsLook at verse 13 first. Paul explains that his imprisonment advanced the gospel, verse 13,

“so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.”

What is the “imperial guard”? Those were the Roman soldiers closest to the seat of imperial power. They would have guarded the palace and kept watch over prisoners. “All the rest” in verse 13 most likely refers to other Roman officials who worked in and around the capitol. It had been made known to these Roman unbelievers that Paul was in prison for Jesus.

Does that make sense? Everybody see this in verse 13?

Well, I think Paul is actually saying something deeper here than it first appears. It helps, I think, to know that the word translated “imprisonment” in verse 13 could also be translated bonds or chains. (If you read the New International Version you’ll see the word “chains.”)

And if we follow the original word order, a more literal way to translate verse 13 is to say:

“so that my chains in Christ have become manifest to the whole imperial guard and to all the rest.”

Now what does this matter? Well it means that what’s new for Paul is not “his chains in Christ” — that was how Paul understood his whole life. He was a bondservant of Christ. That’s how he introduces himself in this letter: “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Christ Jesus.” But what’s new here, is that because Paul is imprisoned in Rome, his chains in Christ have become manifest in Rome. I think there’s a double-meaning here.

Ever since Jesus saved Paul, he’s been a new person who is bound to Christ. That’s who he is. And now that he’s in Rome, literally in bonds, in chains, then what has been true about him is now visible … the literal chains are a symbol of his heart allegiance to Jesus … and this serves the advance of the gospel because Paul understands that his witness to Jesus is not a lamp hidden under a basket, but instead, his witness to Jesus, his testimony to the worthiness of Jesus, is made visible in the epicenter of the world’s superpower.

The knowledge of Paul’s chains, the sound waves of his witness, are bouncing off the walls of the imperial palace. The Roman Empire has been infiltrated … not by a lobbyist, not by a protester, but by the talk of a man willing to give his life so that more and more people can hear about Jesus.

Boosted ConfidenceBut not only did Paul’s witness impact the unbelieving influencers of Rome, but it also impacted fellow believers, verse 14:

“And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”

Paul’s imprisonment, his witness, boosted these Christians’ confidence in Jesus and that resulted in them being more bold to share the gospel without fear.

How did Paul’s imprisonment boost their confidence? It was not that Paul made these brothers think: “Oh, prison is not that bad.” It’s that they said, “Jesus is that good. Jesus is worth it.”

Jesus is worth the risk of what Paul is going through because the worst thing that could happen to me is that I get killed, but then I get to be with Jesus and the gospel keeps advancing … so I don’t think there’s any way we can lose here.

At Your WorkPaul understood that what he was going through, his witness, was having that kind of effect — and one thing this means for us is: Don’t underestimate the impact of your witness when Jesus is more important to you than anything else. Think about your work right now. Your jobs.

Sometimes there are opportunities at work to tell people straight up who Jesus is and what he did, but a lot more times there’s just you in how you react and in how you inhabit your situations, and I want us to learn from Paul’s example: Wherever you are, be where you are and love Jesus more than anything else … and see what happens. Your witness will have an impact.

3) Paul’s passion shaped the way he viewed other ministries. (verses 15–18)This is the final thing to see, in verse 15–18: Paul’s all-consuming passion for the glory of God manifested through the advance of the gospel shaped the way he viewed other ministries.

Look at verse 15. So Paul says that his imprisonment has emboldened fellow believers to preach the gospel and now he explains the fine print:

“15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.”

So there are two different kinds of Christ preachers here with different motives.

Verse 16:

“16 The latter [those who have a good will motive, they preach Christ] out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.”

Early Tribalism and TodayNow who is he talking about there? First, we need to be clear that he is not talking about false teachers. We know what Paul has to say about false teachers. Let them be accursed (Galatians 1:8).But these are people who are proclaiming Christ. They’re talking about Jesus in truth, it’s just that their motive, what drives them, is selfish and competitive. They were trying to one-up Paul and while he was preoccupied with being in prison, while his ministry was “stalled,” they saw it as a chance for their ministry to take off.

Isn’t it crazy that by the year 60 — we’re talking early days of the church — this kind of tribalism is already going on? I don’t need to tell you that tribalism is a problem in our day, right?

A lot has changed in 2,000 years, and a lot hasn’t. Sinful human nature is still the same, and there were gospel preachers in Paul’s day too who were driven by having a bigger social media platform than the next guy. They preached Jesus — they spoke the gospel — but they were driven by the clicks and likes and shares … they sought “their own interests” (see 2:21).

And right away you could be thinking about different applications in our day, but let me caution you first to never be quick to think that you know somebody else’s motive. When it comes to other gospel-preaching churches or ministries or people, our first thought should be what Paul says in Romans 14:4,

“Who am I to judge the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.”

It’s not our job to discern the hearts of every other ministry. But even if, like Paul here, we have a pretty good read that the motive is bad, even if there is personal enmity, is our passion for the gospel bigger than our egos such that we can cut through everything to the main issue of Is Jesus being preached?

Is the gospel being told?

And if so, verse 18:

“18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice.”

What Drives Us?Do you see what’s happening here? It’s not that Paul is being soft — it’s not even that Paul is being charitable to those who don’t like him — it’s that he is so consumed with the glory of God through the advance of the gospel, that’s what he cares about. That’s what drives him. That’s the lens through which he sees the world.

Is Christ proclaimed?

And we just need more of that. See, I wonder if a lot of the divisions in our day are less about real differences and more about passion. What really drives us?

Paul’s passion shaped his outlook … and ours will too — the question is: What is our passion?

If we follow Paul’s example, our passion would be the glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel — and we say, Okay, we want that? But how do we get it?

We don’t have an “all-consuming passion for Jesus” switch that we can just flip on, right? So how we do get this kind of passion? The question I’m asking is: How might God answer this prayer that I pray for our church daily? I pray that Jesus would be our all-consuming passion.

I can tell you that it will not happen apart from us being completely overcome by the grace of God. That’s the game-changer. It’s when our own hearts encounter and remember what Jesus has done to save us. Do you know how much he loves you? Do you know how committed he is to your everlasting joy? And he’s never going to leave you. He’s never going to forsake you. Even if everything else disappears, Jesus will stand by you like he did for Paul.

And the more we get that, the more we know Jesus, the greater our passion will be, and that passion will shape our outlook.

And that brings us to the Table.

The TableWe come to this Table each week, not on the merits of our passion. This is not a table for the zealous. It’s a table for the hungry who know that Jesus alone is our hope. In the Father’s great love, Jesus has died for us and made us his own.

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There once was a crew of Narnian’s who set sail for the east. Further east than any map of theirs had ever chartered, further east than any of their people had ever gone. Eastward all the way to the division between their world and Aslan’s country.

They took off, aboard the Dawn Treader, past the lone islands, past dragon island, past burnt island, and deathwater, and dark island. By the time they arrived upon Ramandu’s island, many of them were beginning to feel ready to turn round and go back home. Although they hadn’t reached Aslan’s country, they had gone a fairly good distance, further than any other ship and its crew had ever gone before. And they were feeling content about that, satisfied with that. That is, most of them.

There was still one member of the crew who had yet to speak up, which was surprising, since that member of the crew was usually the one always speaking up. That member of the crew was a mouse, named Reepicheep.

His friend Lucy, wondering why he had yet to say anything, finally asked him, “Aren't you going to say anything, Reep?“ She’s thinking, “All these guys are ready to turn round, ready to say, “Good enough,” and go back home to “Life as usual” — Reepicheep, are you cool with that? Is that what you’re going to do? Reepicheep chose to answer her at a level of volume loud enough for all to hear, saying:

“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I shall paddle east in my own boat. When it sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

Reepicheep was not one for, moderation. Not one for “life as usual.” Certainly not one to give up on adventure. Neither was the apostle Paul. Writing to his beloved Philippians, he gladly affirmed that they had already come so far in terms of their faith and conduct. Nevertheless, Paul sought to urge them onward, with a prayer to the tune of, “Philippians, grow deeper as Christians. Grow further as Christians. There is still more to be had before you.” Sail east, then paddle east, then swim east, until you hit the shore.

His words this morning, I pray, will have a stirring effect upon us. That God, through his word, would create in us an eager fervency to go on further, and further, and further as followers of Jesus. Let’s pray, and ask once more, for the Lord’s help toward that end.

Verse 9: Abounds more and more…So, Paul’s prayer is for the Philippians to grow, all the more, as Christians. We see it right away in the words of verse 9,

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.”

That phrase has such a delightful cadence to it, doesn’t it? Abound, more, and more. It rolls along so smoothly, in fact, that it can slip right past us, tiptoe into the sentence nearly unnoticed. But make no mistake, my brothers and sisters, this is no moderate, inconspicuous, tiptoeing concept.

Abound, more, and more is immense. Far-reaching. Excessive. At a size or in a quantity that not only fills the space around it but then flows over, and spills out, and rushes onward, and then keeps right on going.

Abound more and more comes with no off switch, no handle with which to close the valves and stop the supply. It progresses onward, wholly unencumbered by the drag of “moderation” and the weight of being far too easily satisfied.

For love to abound more and more, is to have a love that increases on and on and on in glorious surplus.

Paul’s prayer regarding love is on a scale and to a degree we rarely fathom, let alone pray for.

If that’s the quantity of love he’s wanting to see within these Philippians, then what is its kind? What kind of love is Paul praying for? The immediate context would suggest we’re at least talking about love for other people — and especially so people within the church.

The verses before resound with Paul’s great love for these Philippians, describing how he held these brothers and sisters in his heart, and yearned for them all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Some verses later will reveal what can come about as a result of a lack of love for others. Philippians 1:15,

“Some preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love.”

The former, thinking not to love Paul, but afflict him.

So Paul’s prayer for the Philippians to abound in love is very much sandwiched between an example of love for others, on one side, and lack of love for others, on the other.

That said, I don’t believe Paul is praying only for the Philippians love for others. One reason simply being that he doesn’t define it as a love for others. He just says love.

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.”

Love, in the most comprehensive sense. Love with a capital L.

The kind of love that, as one writer puts it, “pervades ones entire being…and marks every attitude and action” (Motyer).

Paul is praying that the Philippian church would become a people who are entirely marked by love. Love in their everything.

As an aside, I believe he’d pray much of the same for us — Cities Church.

That we, in an age of skepticism (Is love even real?), shallowness (I love with one foot in and one foot out), and apathy (Love is lame, love is optional, love is whatever).

That we, in a world like that, in a world rife with dulled and shrunken hearts, would be a people bright, blazing, and alive with love! A people with love coursing through every fiber of our beings. A people secured in God’s love, and thereby set free to love. A people eager to grow and abound in love, more, and more, and more, and more — never letting up, and ever wanting increase.

Would we want him to pray such things for us? Are we, in our minds, already loving enough? Brothers and sisters, moderation in some things, sure, but love?

“With knowledge and discernment…”Now, Paul isn’t praying for love to abound, period. But for love to abound — look with me, verse nine — “with knowledge and all discernment.”

Some of us in the room maybe just breathed a huge sigh of relief: “phew, knowledge and discernment.” Some of us felt a sense of reassurance now that knowledge and discernment have walked in the room. I get it. I do.

But, why do you think you feel that way?

Is it, perhaps, because you’re imagining that knowledge and discernment has a subduing effect upon love? That knowledge and discernment comes in and reduces loves down to a more manageable, less lifestyle-interfering size? Offers a sort of shield, safeguard, from ever really needing to feel love, ever really needing to act upon it, and mainly only ever needing to give it a nod here and there?

Is that, my brothers and sisters, how we think Paul understood the relationship between knowledge and discernment and love? Is that what we think Paul really desired for his beloved Philippians — that they would abound in a sort of semi-muted and tempered love? A convenient, only when comfortable love?

No … It is a lie that love and knowledge clash with one another. It is a lie that love and knowledge hinder one another. It is a lie, hear me, that to grow in knowledge is to lessen in love, and vice-versa. In other words, if you are holding on to the claim that, “Hey, I’m kind of a knowledge guy. Other people do that love stuff — I’m exempt from that.” Or, if you are holding on to the claim that, “I’m just a lover, I leave that knowledge stuff to others, I just love people, I don’t need to do the knowledge thing.”

Consider that God abounds in both. He, the most knowledgeable and discerning being in all the universe is also, at one and the same time the most loving being in all the universe, and he sees no contradiction in that. In fact, he calls us to become more like him. We, every single one of us, no exceptions, are called to abound in both. You got a certain personality, certain inclinations, yes, of course, nevertheless, God calls you to abound, and even want to abound, in both.

And note, if you do abound in both, what you’ll then be enabled to do: verse 9 into 10…

“Approve what is excellent”

“9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent.”

Love that abounds with knowledge and discernment, enables a person to approve what is excellent. And how helpful, for not all that’s in our world is excellent. There are some things in our world that are — certain behaviors, certain ideas, certain actions, certain words, certain possessions. There are many things in our world that are not.

Without knowledge, our love, at best, would get evenly distributed between the two. We’d love some things that are truly worth loving, and we’d love some things that aren’t — without knowledge that’d be the best we could do. What we’d be far more likely do however, without knowledge — because we’re not morally neutral, but sinful — is devote the majority of our love toward what the world calls lovely, but is, in fact, a distortion of true loveliness. I’ve been there, perhaps you have as well. It is misguided love. Detrimental love. Love in vain.

Enter knowledge, like a beam of light into the dark. When our love begins to abound with knowledge, we find ourselves suddenly able to discern “what is good and acceptable and perfect” versus what isn’t. Suddenly able, as one writer notes, “to put our highest affections on the highest virtues and not get distracted by lesser, peripheral matters” (ESV Expository).

In other words: not less love, not muted love, not love spread thin, but love perfectly aimed and sent fully into motion — Sign me up, right?

And it just keeps getting better. Just think … What happens when you begin eating better? You get healthier, right?

What happens when you start moving better, like better posture, better form? You reduce injury, avoid sore muscles, grow in physical ability.

What happens when you begin sleeping better? You have more energy, feel more alert and focused… At least that’s what I’ve read.

What happens when you start loving better? When you start regularly loving and approving what is excellent?

Again, Paul tells us. See it in the second half of verse 10. Look with me there.

“Be Pure and Blameless, filled with fruit”

“10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”

Be conformed to the image of His Son, who is, in himself, pure and blameless. Be transformed into that same image (of the Son) from one degree of glory to another. Be, in your character and conduct, pure and blameless.

Now, I want to be absolutely clear, this does not earn us a righteous standing before God — that’s not what inward purity and blamelessness is for. That’s what Jesus’ death and resurrection is for, that’s what our faith in him is for.

We receive the gift of righteous standing before God, by faith. We don’t work for it. We don’t earn it. But we do, after we’ve received it, begin to reflect it. And this to comes not from us, but from God.

See in verses 10-11,

“so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.”

See, it’s all from him. It all comes through Jesus Christ. Our state of righteousness before God, our fruit of righteousness that reflects God — God is the source of both.

Consider for a moment that: any love you have, any joy you possess, any peace you maintain, whatever patience you exhibit, whatever kindness you extend, every ounce of goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness within you, every last ounce of self-control, any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy … It all, every bit of it, has been given to you through Jesus Christ. You have only ever received the fruit of righteousness that comes through Christ.

And why? Paul’s logic is still progressing here. There’s still more. What’s the aim of it all? What’s the purpose? What’s the motivation? It is, quite simply, the glory of God.

See it at the end of verse 11?

“To the glory and praise of God.”

That is the ultimate end, the goal. But there’s one last phrase for us to look at in this text. And this will be our last point. One final phrase that notes the specific context of our ultimate end of glorifying God. What’s the context?

Verse 10:

“So that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”

For the great and holy day when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.

So, our love abounds with knowledge and discernment. We’re enabled to approve what is excellent — And so we do. We approve what is excellent, and it begins to change us. Grows us in the sense of subtraction: Purity and blamelessness drive out our love for sin. Grows us in the sense of addition: Fruits of righteousness take root and grow. And all for the day of Christ! For the day our Master returns. For the day that the bridegroom comes to receive his bride.

See we want to be a kind of people who live our entire lives in anticipation of that day … constantly, unrelentingly fastened upon that day … straining, longing to grow in purity and blamelessness, to grow in fruits of righteousness, for that day because when he comes we want to offer him our very selves and say:

“For the day of Christ”“Look! See what has happened in my heart, see the changes that’ve taken place in my mind, remember the trails of sin that were built there? The highways of sin that were paved there? Look now, how they’ve all eroded.

Those stains caused by all my “yesses” to lust, all my nursing of envy, all my obedience to greed, all my contentment with pride, look now at how they’ve, through time spent with you, all faded away. Not even noticeable anymore.

Those fields that used to be covered in weeds, thorns, and briers which so choked out my love for you. See how you’ve taught me, you’ve caused me to pull them each up, by the roots, and set them in the sun to whither and die.

You had made me yours before any of this improvement in me.

You had loved me at a time when I was still yet a sinner.

You had called me child and given me with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, when I had yet to do anything to deserve it.

And for love, for love, for love, I wanted my heart and mind on this day to be pure for you, blameless for you, filled with fruits of righteousness for you, beautiful for you.

That you might be glorified in this, my spiritual worship — the transformation by the renewal of my mind, the testing and discerning what is your will, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

How worth it would it be to say such a thing to your Savior? How excellent?

To the glory and praise of God: My brothers and sisters, abound in love. Abound in knowledge. Refuse to treat either of the two as optional. And put them to work.

To root out every single thing from your mind and heart and habits that is not excellent, that is not growing you in purity, that is not cultivating in you blamelessness, that is not producing in your fruits of righteousness.

If it is the way you use your phone, the way you relate to others, the way you talk, the places you let your mind wander, if it’s not excellent, not preparing you for the day of Christ — why, why, why keep them in your hand, keep them in your conduct, keep them in your heart, keep them in your mind?

A great day is coming, aim to present your very best to Jesus on that day. Sail east, paddle east, swim east, and sink your nose to the sunrise. It will be worth it, it will be excellent.

Now, in just a few moments, we’re going to have a few individuals coming forward to be baptized as a display before you, their church family, of the faith that they have in Jesus. Their being baptized is also a fruit of their faith in Jesus, a desire to obey him in all things, including the call to be baptized. Their being baptized is also a proclamation that their life from here on out is not their own, for they now belong to God, and aim to live their lives for the glory of God.

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There is no such thing as a perfect church. We don’t find one in the New Testament, and we can’t find one today. A perfect church, this side of heaven, is impossible. But what is possible is a church that you can love.

We know this because the apostle Paul loved the church at Philippi — and I don’t mean he loved this church in a general or principled way, but this is particular and genuine love. That’s clear in these verses right from the start.

Now at one level, Paul’s introduction in Chapter 1 is pretty standard. Ancient letters always started with some personal reflections and thanksgiving — so that’s something we’d expect — but Paul goes above and beyond the normal and he gets deeply personal and openly affectionate. Just listen to his language here. He says:

Verse 3: “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.”

Verse 7: “I hold you in my heart”

Verse 8: “I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus”

Paul really loved this church. That’s obvious in what he says, but okay, we might ask: So what? Why does this matter? So the apostle Paul loved a local church in the first century and that’s great, but what does that have to do with us?

Well, if it’s possible for Paul to love a local church, then it’s possible for us to love a local church, and we can learn from his example.

So here’s the question I’m bringing to this passage:

Are there lessons we could glean from Saint Paul’s love for the church in Philippi that might shape our love for our church in St. Paul?

What are some observations of Paul’s love for this church that could help us in our love for our church?

That’s the question I’m asking, and I’ve got three observations I want to show you but even before we get there, I need to step back for a minute and question the premise: Is it desirable to love the church that you’re part of? Is loving your church a good and worthy ambition?

Or, I’ll put it this way:Should we love our church the way Paul loved this church? And again, we’re not talking about general or principled love, but particular, genuine love. Should we love our church like that?

I think the answer is Yes. We should aspire to love our church the way Paul loved the church at Philippi. That is a good and worthy ambition, but I could imagine that this is a debatable topic.

Why Love the Church?Some might think that the main thing is just being part of a church no matter how you feel about it. “You’re part of a church and you put up with it. It’s all about commitment!”

Others might have a looser idea and think that you don’t need to love your church, and you don’t even really need to be committed to it, just as long as you’re a Christian and you stay out of trouble and you show up every now and then, you’re fine.

So when I say that it is good and right to love the church that you’re part of, am I being too idealistic or too extreme?

I’d say neither. Not at all.

I think that you should love the church that you’re part of — if you’re part of this church (our church) you should love our church, for three reasons:

Jesus commanded it
Jesus empowers it
The church is precious

1) Jesus commanded it. John 13:34,

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

That applies to our church.

2) Jesus empowers it. 1 John 4:7–9, 19

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”

As John says a few verses later …

“We love because he first loved us.”

The truth is, we’re not ever going to be able to love anybody truly until we understand God’s love for us. And that’s the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts. Do you know yourself to be loved by God? And that his love is a Never-Stopping, Never-Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. God’s love for us in Christ is the power of our love for one another.

3) the church is precious.This is just being practical: we should love our church because the local church is essential to following Jesus in this world, and one day your life in this world is going to be over, and on that day, all that will matter is Jesus, and so who you are following Jesus with now really matters. Track with me here: who you are following Jesus with in this life, one day will be who you followed Jesus with. And that’s super important. Our lives together as a church is more precious that we realize, and I believe it’s too precious not to love. We should love our church.

And Paul can help us with this in Philippians 1, verses 3–8. I want to show you three observations of Paul’s love for this church, and then we’re gonna turn them into lessons for how we love our church.

Here’s the first observation.

1) Paul thanked God for this church when he prayed for them. (verses 3–4)We see this in verses 3 and 4.

Paul says,

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy.”

This is pretty straightforward, but notice two things:

First, Paul prayed for this church. Second, Paul thanked God for this church.

“Every Prayer of Mine”First, we know that Paul is praying for this church because he says,

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all…”

The mention of “prayer” in verse 4 explains what he means by “remembrance” in verse 3.

This means that Paul is not just randomly remembering this church and then giving thanks for them. It’s not that the church of Philippi just pops in his head and that makes him thankful, but Paul connects the remembering to praying. He remembers the church and he prays for the church.

Now, is it the remembering the church that leads to the praying or is it the praying that leads to the remembering?

We don’t know and that’s fine — we just need to see that Paul prayed for this church as a habit: he says “every prayer of mine for you all.” And every time Paul prayed, he thanked God for them.

“I Thank My God”This is important. And really, it gets into a larger topic on thanksgiving, and I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but I just want to remind you that thanksgiving is a choice. It’s not only an involuntary reaction, but thanksgiving is a heart-attitude and its expression is something we choose to do. Thanksgiving is a discipline.

That’s why, in the Bible Reading Guide, that first little box each day says “Gratitude.” I can’t commend to you enough the habit of starting everyday by thanking God — knowing that some days will be harder than others.

Somedays all we can come up with is, “Thank you, Father, that I’m here. Thank you for waking me up.” This is a discipline and it’s one that shapes us. The more we give thanks, the more thankful we become. We can choose to give thanks.

That’s what Paul is doing here for this church. Because there are other things that came into his mind when we thought about this church! They had some unity issues. There were some members of this church who were not getting along. This was not a perfect church, but Paul loved this church, and he prayed for this church, and every time he did, he thanked God for them! Of all the things he could have prayed, and a lot of things he probably did pray about as he kept praying, he made a point to thank God.

ApplicationSo what’s the lesson for us? It’s that we do what Paul did. Would you make it a habit to pray for our church and thank God for her?

And yeah, there are other things to pray about, and we’ll get there, but first, from hearts that are mainly thankful, let’s choose to give thanks to God in prayer. Just count the blessings of God to us! Let’s be amazed that God has saved us and that he’s brought us together to follow Jesus in this life.

Let’s pray for our church and thank God for her. That’s the first observation/lesson.

Here’s the second.

2) Paul knew this church well enough to be confident of God’s work in them. (verses 6–7)This is in verses 6 and 7, and verse 6 is a verse you’ve probably heard before. I love this verse and this is a favorite verse for a lot of Christians because it highlights God’s faithfulness in our perseverance.

That’s the theology behind this verse. God will lead us all the way home. He will complete what he started. Pretty much every time Philippians 1:6 is quoted, it’s to support that truth, and amen, but notice the context of verse 6.

Paul loves this church, he prays for this church, he thanks God for this church; they’ve got a long history of partnership in the gospel, and then he starts verse 6 with, “I’m sure of this” or more literally, “I have been convinced of this… that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

This is an amazing statement. Paul is saying, I have become personally convinced that one day you are going to stand before Jesus in a glorified body.

This kind of statement cannot be said about everyone. Paul does not say this about everyone, so then how can he say it about the church in Philippi?

Well, it’s because he knows this church well enough to know that their faith is real. That’s what he says in verse 7.

“Because I Hold You in My Heart”Verse 7 is meant to explain verse 6. It’s like Paul knows that what he says in verse 6 is bold. It’s a radical statement. This would have turned some heads. So in verse 7 he explains,

“It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart.”

That’s Paul’s argument?!

He has just said that he’s sure that this church, the individuals of this church, are going to persevere. God will save them completely. They are going to see Jesus one day — and his rationale for that confidence is: I've got you right here in the heart!

That’s not exactly an airtight theological argument. I don’t know if that would pass in my kids’ logic class.

See, Paul isn’t making an argument here, he’s being personal. He is appealing to his relationship. He has this church in his heart, which means, he has a close-up, knows-them-by-name relationship, and in that relationship, through their partnership in the gospel, he has gotten to know them well enough to see that they’re the real deal. He’s seen their lives. He’s seen where they came from. He’s seen what they’ve been through. Paul knows this church well enough to be confident of God’s work in them, and he tells them.

So what’s the lesson for us?

ApplicationAs an aspiration, we want to be a church that is known well enough by one another such that we can say to one another with confidence, You’re gonna make it. That’s like the point of covenant membership! We want to be that kind of church.

So here’s the application: get to know one another for this purpose. Cities Church, get to know other members of this church well enough that you can say to them, You’re going to see Jesus one day.

Know others well enough so that you can say that, and then say it.

And I realize that no one of us is going to know well every single member of this church — that’s not expected — but we all can know and be known by some, and if each one of us is doing that for some, then everyone will know and be known. That make sense? That’s why we have groups.

Paul knew the church at Philippi well enough to be confident of God’s work in them and he told them. Let’s do the same at our church.

Third observation:

3) Paul partnered with this church for the sake of the gospel. (verses 5, 7–8)Now, the thing that’s behind Paul’s love for this church (and his joy in them, and how he knows them, and why he’s confident of God’s work in them) all comes back to their partnership in the gospel. Paul mentions this first in verse 3 (it’s the ground for why he prays for them with joy). He mentions it again in verse 7 to explain how he knows them so well.

And the word he uses for “partnership” is the New Testament word that most times is translated as “fellowship.” He says in verse 7 “you are all partakers with me of grace.” This is an edifying participation, a fellowship. So when we see the phrase in verse 3, “partnership in the gospel,” we should think: fellowship in the gospel. That’s what he’s saying.

And I think it’s important to keep “fellowship” in mind because it guards us against two mistaken mindsets in gospel partnerships, a functional mindset and an idle mindset. We don’t want either of those.

The functional mindset is one that is utilitarian. The main concern is not the quality or the nature of the partnership, but it’s all about the bottom line. Are we seeing results? Is it effective? Are you hitting your numbers? That’s your work environment, right?

Sometimes at work you get stuck with co-workers who maybe are not your favorite, but you just gotta soldier through and get it done. We see this sometimes in professional sports. There’s a team that has an inter-conflict, they don’t really get along, but they have to lay the conflict aside and do their job, because they’re paid to perform and to win. It’s all about the bottom line.

Well, that’s not what is going on here between Paul and the church at Philippi. This is not a mechanical, utilitarian partnership, but it’s a true fellowship. There’s mutual love. This is a friendship in the gospel.

And the “in the gospel” part is what guards us against the other mistaken mindset, which is an idle mindset. See, Paul doesn’t just say: Hey, we have fellowship. It’s good to have fellowship. I’m glad we have fellowship. Isn’t fellowship great? No, that’s not what this is. This is fellowship on mission.

They love each other, and that’s great. They probably love to be together, and that’s great. But they’re not just hanging out, they’re trying to change the world.

They are pulling together their resources and their energies for the sake of the gospel, and it cost them. This was not an easy, picturesque partnership where everything they touch turned to gold. No!

Paul is in prison when he writes this letter! Epaphroditus almost died going back and forth for Paul and this church! This fellowship that they had was in the trenches of gospel witness and gospel advance that all Hell tried to stop. They were friends who remained friends through the ups and downs of costly action.

See, fellowship in the gospel is active enough fellowship to see real gospel advanceand it’s sincere enough fellowship to stick together when things go badly … even when it’s inconvenient, when it hurts, when there’s imprisonment. This is an incredible partnership. I want this for us!

ApplicationFellowship in the gospel means we’re giving ourselves to something bigger than ourselves and we’re giving ourselves together as friends.

There’s an old D. L. Moody quote when he said something like “The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to him.”

And I just want to borrow that quote and basically change everything about it, but I want to say:

Oh, that the Twin Cities would see God at work in a church that has true fellowship in the gospel! — a church that loves one another and a church that is serious about Jesus getting all the glory whatever it takes.

It’s not idealistic to want that for our church, or to believe that we could have it. We can. God can do it.

We’re never going to be a perfect church — that’s impossible this side of heaven — but we can be a church that loves one another for the sake of the gospel, and Paul can help us.

Three lessons to take with us:

Pray for our church and give thanks to God for her.
Know others in this church well enough to be confident of God’s work in them.
Let’s have true fellowship in the gospel.

Let’s go wide-open in spending our lives and in being spent for the sake of the gospel overcoming these Twin Cities and beyond. We want Jesus in all of his glory and love and joy to be impossible to ignore.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableMost of this sermon has been all observation and application (Paul did this, we can too) — but where’s the gospel?

It comes back to the truth that we love because God first loved us. And he has proven his love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us. Far be it from us to boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord! His death for us is everything. And that’s what we remember at this Table.

To this we hold, our hope is only Jesus
For our lives are wholly bound to His

If that’s your confession, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, we invite you to eat and drink with us this morning.

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When the apostle Paul first came to town, the city of Philippi was famous for its connections to two of the greatest emperors of the ancient world: Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus.

Paul came to Philippi in the winter 49/50 AD, to a population of about ten thousand (sizable but smaller than Thessalonica and Corinth), and when he wrote this letter ten years later, I don’t think it was lost on Paul how significant it was to be writing to “saints in Philippi.” That is, to Christians alive and well in no obscure city. The planting and growth and endurance of the church in the city of Philippi represented gospel advance deep into the Roman empire.

The city, founded about 350 years before Christ, was about 8 miles northwest of port city Neapolis, in the region called Macedonia. The city was named for Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Greece in 338 BC and spread its language around the known world. So, when this city, named after Alexander’s father received a letter from Paul, almost four centuries later, in the Greek language, it was, in part, because of Alexander.

But long past were the days of Alexander. The Romans took Philippi in 168 BC, and the city’s real claim to fame came in 42 BC, at the Battle of Philippi, when armies of Brutus and Cassius, who had assassinated Julius Caesar, were defeated by the coalition of Marc Antony and Octavian (who would become Augustus). After that, Philippi became a Roman colony, and located along the queen of long roads in the Roman empire, the city became the gateway between Asia and Europe. Far more important than history, it was a strategic city in terms of travel. Then enter Christianity in the first century.

Today the reason the world knows and remembers Philippi is not because of Alexander the Great, and not because of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and Augustus. The world remembers Philippi because of Jesus. His apostle Paul showed up there and planted his first church in Europe, and then years later wrote them this letter which we have in the New Testament.

Let me just say, I love Philippians. I have a history with this book, and that in my most formative season of life. And I know I’m not alone. Many of us love this book, for a handful of reasons, and what I’d like to do in this sermon is celebrate several of those reasons why so many of us love Philippians — and why the pastors think this book in particular meets us in our life as a church here in the first half of 2024.

So let’s take this twofold approach this morning, to introduce this Philippians series, which will take us up to Memorial Day, God willing. First, I’d like to answer three questions from verses 1 and 2, and then finish with four reasons why so many of us love Philippians.

So, here’s three questions from verses 1–2:

(1) What do we know about the recipients of this letter?

(2) Why is this letter from Paul “and Timothy,” and not just Paul?

(3) What do they hope this letter will accomplish?

1) Saints in Philippi?First, what do we know about the recipients of this letter?

Verse 1 says the letter is “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons.”

As for Philippi, Acts 16 tells the story of Paul first coming to the city, and the unusual circumstances of his coming there, and the conversion of Lydia and a jailer. But that was ten years before this letter, and I don’t think that amazing story actually plays much into this letter a decade later.

But it is significant that Paul writes “to all the saints,” that is, to the whole church. He could have written only or mainly to the leaders, but he writes to the whole church, “to all the saints,” as he usually does in his letters. So, we might say this letter is congregational, not presbyterian.

Yet, even though the whole letter is to the whole church, Paul does hat-tip the leaders, and mentions two offices, and note both terms are in the plural: “with the overseers and the deacons.”

These two offices are the same two specified in 1 Timothy 3, where we find qualifications for both, with “able to teach” being the main difference in the requirements. Overseers = pastors = elders comprise the lead or teaching office in the church, while the deacons are the assisting office.

2) And Timothy?Question #2: Why is this letter from Paul “and Timothy,” and not just Paul?

The first part of verse 1 says the letter is from “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus . . .”

Paul is the apostle. He met the risen Jesus on the Damascus Road. Timothy is a younger associate that Paul picked up in Derbe not long before he first showed up in Philippi. So, why would Paul, the apostle, the one who really matters, it seems, have the letter come from both him and Timothy, his junior partner?

First, consider Paul’s magnanimous spirit. Rather than highlight his special authority, and exclude his collaborator, Paul is secure enough, and generous enough, to include Timothy with him. Now, Timothy (along with Silas and Luke) had been with him at that first trip to Philippi. So the Philippians knew Timothy. And as we’ll see in chapter 2, Paul hopes to send Timothy back to Philippi soon to check in on them (2:19).

Timothy also likely served as Paul’s assistant in composing this letter. He may have been the secretary as Paul dictated the letter. Ancient letter writing was not anything like writing emails, where you dash something off in a few minutes. Writing an epistle in the ancient world was like publishing a book — it was a long, involved, expensive process. Paul, together with Timothy, would have drafted the letter; then re-read and edited; then re-read again; then carefully written out a final copy. So, Timothy likely was involved significantly in producing the letter, like an editor and publisher would be for an author of a book.

But again, Paul is the apostle. And generous as he is to include Timothy in the process, and name him, at the end of the day the letter comes under Paul’s apostolic authority. He signs off on everything in it. It represents him, and the risen Christ, from beginning to end. He speaks in the first person in verse 3, and speaks of Timothy in the third person in chapter 2.

So, with Timothy listed here with Paul, “apostles” doesn’t fit them together. But together they are “servants of Christ Jesus.” Servants here is the same word for slaves (douloi), which pairs with Lord or Master (kurios). For Paul and Timothy to call themselves slaves is to say something about their Lord. Jesus is Lord, he is kurios; therefore they are douloi, slaves.

Jesus is said to be Lord at the end of verse 2 — grace and peace come from “God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The one who was so clearly fully human, just two decades before walking the roads of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, teaching with wisdom and authority, performing signs and wonders, suffering and dying, and purportedly rising again — this man is exalted alongside “God the Father” as the divine source of the grace and peace Paul extends to the saints in Philippi. Which leads to our third and final question.

Grace and Peace?Third: What do Paul and Timothy want this letter to accomplish?

Verse 2: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As we’ll see in the coming months, Paul has some specific manifestations of Christ’s grace and peace in mind when he thinks of the present needs in Philippi. We might summarize it as fresh joy in Christ, leading to humility and unity (following internal conflicts), leading to joyful, effective witness in this Roman colony.

This “grace and peace” Paul means to come to them through words, through this letter. So, the letter doesn’t just begin with a prayer for grace and peace; the letter itself is designed by Paul to be grace and peace to them.

Epaphroditus will carry this letter back to his home church (2:25–30). He had brought a gift to Paul from the Philippians (4:10, 14, 18), which was not their first gift to Paul. From the very beginning, the saints in Philippi had supported Paul (1:5; 4:15–16). These are clearly some of his best partners, which explains why this letter gushes with affection and joy. Paul deeply loves this church, and they make him happy. They are his “joy and crown” (4:1). If only all the churches could be like Philippi’s!

This most recent gift (of perhaps food and supplies) they sent with Epaphroditus while Paul’s in prison in Rome, and apparently somewhere along the way Epaphroditus got sick, and almost died. Now, he’s recovered, and can go back, so this becomes an opportunity to write to the Philippians, and extend grace and peace to them in several ways: Paul thanks them for their gift, he updates them on his status in Rome, he commends Epaphroditus for his service, he prepares the way for Timothy to come soon, and he addresses the internal tension that has emerged in the church.

From the beginning there had been external opposition to the gospel in Philippi. Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned at the get-go. Now, the church in Philippi is about ten years old (about the age of Cities Church!), and conflict is threatening from within. As we’ll see in chapter 4, two prominent women in the church are at odds, and likely others as well.

So, Paul hopes that this letter, with its exhortations to pursue humility and seek unity will be a means God uses to bring about fresh and greater peace in Philippi, and that Paul’s words, his teaching, his letter, will be a means of God’s grace to this church, a church with so much to appreciate, and a few things to grow in.

So, Paul loved the Philippians. And it’s a contagious love. I think that’s part of why so many of us love Philippians — how can you not when the apostle Paul loves this church so much and has so much grace to celebrate?

Why We Love ItSo, let’s close, then, with four brief reasons why we love Philippians, which relates to what we need as a church right now, and why the pastors are so excited for this focus in the weeks ahead.

Joy!First, this is an epistle of joy. As we will see, this letter overflows with joy, with brightness, with warmth (in contrast with, say, Galatians!). In Philippians we have more explicit mentions of joy, gladness, and rejoicing in such short space than anywhere else in the Bible. From the beginning, the whole epistle is warm and bright. Even with the trouble that comes to the surface in chapters 1, 3, and 4.

And yet, in all this brightness and warmth and joy, this letter is written from prison in Rome. What an amazing person Jesus has made the apostle Paul. Singing at midnight in prison, after being beaten by rods. And now, ten years later, singing, in the form of this letter, while sitting in prison in Rome.

So, don’t mistake the joy of Philippians for the thin pleasures of a carefree life. Rather, the joy of Philippians, Christian joy, the joy of the gospel, is joy deep enough to survive, and thrive, in prison, in conflict, in struggle, in pain, in sickness, in death.

Which really should put our lives, and our little problems and big ones, and our complaints and pains into perspective. The pastors’ prayer for us as we steep our souls in Philippians in these next five months is that Jesus would make us more like Paul. Beaten with rods, he sings. Imprisoned, he overflows with joy. Why? Not just because he had a buoyant personality, but because Jesus is Lord. The gospel is true. The Spirit is alive and poured out generously on those who love Jesus. God is sovereign. Christ is on the throne. He gives grace and peace, even in the worst of earthly circumstances.

And I know it’s January, the coldest month. Winter is here, and we’re now entering into the thick of seasonal affective time, which is real, and especially in Minnesota. And one of the reasons the pastors chose Philippians, bright, warm, deeply joyful, for such a time as this is to help us through Winter 2024. So, we love Philippians because it’s an epistle of such deep joy.

BriefSecond, we love Philippians because it’s relatively brief (in contrast to, say, Hebrews!). Philippians is brief enough for a short, focused but still deep study. Philippians is just 104 verses, which, I promise you, is brief enough for anyone in this room to memorize, if you put the work in over time. In fact, Pastor Jonathan and I plan to memorize Philippians in 2024. Want to join us?

Get this, 104 verses. There are 52 weeks in a year. That’s just two verses a week. You can do this. What better way to take on the sheer madness of a presidential election year than to memorize this brief epistle of deep, enduring joy?

AccessibleThird, we love Philippians because it’s so accessible. It’s relatively easy to understand (in contrast to, say, Galatians, or Leviticus, or Hebrews — our last three!).

Here’s our hope as pastors in this season in the life of our church. We’ve been through a lot. God’s grace has sustained us, in finishing the Rooted campaign in 2023, and building out the education space, and losing three pastors last summer. The reason we chose Philippians for the first half of 2024 is that we hope this might be a time to refresh our souls. Listen, y’all have been amazing. The last three books of the Bible have not been easy ones! Galatians, then Leviticus, then Hebrews! Cities Church, you have done well, and it’s time for something more accessible. It’s time for Philippians, and to take it slow.

MemorableFinally, we love Philippians because of the memorable passages. From 1:6 to 2:12–13 to 3:12–14 to 4:19, how many remarkable verses and passage there are in Philippians. So I made a list of my top-10 favorite verses in Philippians. It includes the four I just mentioned. It also includes 3:20–21 (on our citizenship being in heaven) and 4:4–8 (on not being anxious and setting our minds on the true, honorable, and just) and 4:11–13 (on all things through Christ who strengthens me), but let me end on my top three.

The first two reveal the heart of Paul for Jesus. As Christians, in our best moments, we want to be like this:

1:21,

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

3:7–8,

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

In our best moments, when we are thinking our clearest, and our hearts are their purest, this too is what we want: for Christ to be our life, and to see death as gain because to depart and be with Christ is far better than being distant from him. And, with Paul, to count as loss anything else of gain we have in view of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

And how do we know him? The last memorable passage reveals the heart of Jesus, and leads us to the Table. Chapter 2, verses 6–11. This is our salvation. Hear this for you, for your sin:

[being] in the form of God, [Jesus] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The death he died was not for his sin; he had none. The death he died was for ours. And he went to the cross, as we saw in Hebrews, for the joy set before him. He humbled himself, knowing his Father would exalt him. He was obedient to death, knowing his Father would raise him, and reward him, and honor him, and honor himself in and through him, and that he would win for himself a people who trust in him.

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Well, today, as you know, is the last day of 2023, and I want to begin his morning by telling you that the most important thing that you’ve done with your life in 2023 is to magnify the glory of God. And, the most important thing you can do with your life in 2024 is to magnify the glory God.

That’s why we exist. That’s what we’re here for, church! Our purpose is to magnify the glory of God, or we could say the worth of God. Another word for this is “worship.” We exist to be worshipers of God, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today in Hebrews 13, verses 20–21.

I just want to show you two things in these verses:

Worship is the goal.
Worship applies to all of life.

Let’s pray:

Father in heaven, we ask now, by your grace, that you would do more in our hearts over the next minutes than we could have expected. Accomplish your will, in Jesus’s name, amen.

1) Worship is the goal. Look again at verse 20. Verses 20–21 are the concluding benediction and doxology of the Book of Hebrews. The writer tells us his concluding prayer for us as Christian readers, and he directs all glory to God.

Now in most English translations there are about 61 total words here in these two verses, and they all matter, but if we had to distill these two verses down to the main point of what the writer is saying, I think we can do it in seven words:

May God equip you to worship him!

The subject is God; the object is us; and the main verb is that God is equipping us for a purpose — and that purpose, or goal, is to worship him — but how am I getting worship from verse 21?

If you look at verse 21, we don’t see the word “worship.” So how can I say that the goal here is worship?

Pleasing in His SightWell, I’m glad you asked! It has to do with that word “pleasing.” If you can, try to find that word “pleasing” in verse 21. It’s in the second line:

May God equip you with everything good that you may go his will“working in us that which is pleasing in his sight.”

A lot of times there are words in the New Testament that get their meaning from the Old Testament, and that’s especially the case for the word “pleasing” in Hebrews.

The word “pleasing” is a levitical word that has to do with worship. We see the word over and over again in the Book of Leviticus in reference to the offerings and sacrifices that people made to God. If the offering or sacrifice was according to what God had instructed, it was said to be pleasing to God, or acceptable to God (the original word could be translated either way). The idea is that God is pleased with the worship.

This topic is actually a theme we see throughout the Old Testament. There are two kinds of worship: there is pleasing worship and there is vain, empty worship. We see this distinction right away in the Bible, starting with Cain and Abel.

Both brothers brought an offering to God, but God was only pleased with Abel’s offerings. Genesis 4:4, “And Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.” So there are two ways to go here. There’s true worship that pleases God or false worship (so-called worship) that God rejects — and of course we want to be true worshipers. We want our worship to be pleasing to God.

In the Writer’s MindAnd we know that this is in the writer’s mind in Hebrews Chapter 13 because of the immediate context here. We’re in verses 20–21, but just look back a little to verse 15. Hebrews 13:15. Follow with me here, verse 15:

Through him [Jesus] then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

The writer is talking about worship here. The word “pleasing” is in reference to sacrifices — but these are New Covenant sacrifices. In the New Covenant, our ‘sacrifices’ — or our acts of worship — don’t involve animals anymore; it’s not tied to a certain time and place, but now our sacrifices, according to Hebrews 13:15–16, include things like praise — verbal acknowledgment of God — and love and generosity to others. That is worship pleasing to God. That’s what the writer has been talking about in Chapter 13.

But not only that, but turn back to Chapter 12, verse 28 for a second. This is just one page back. In Chapter 12, the writer has been describing the greater glory of the New Covenant, and then he says, Chapter 12, verse 28,

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship …

And that word “acceptable” is the exact same word for “pleasing.” Pleasing worship.

The Big TakeawaySo then, when we see the word “pleasing” in Chapter 13, verse 21, that God is “working in us that which is pleasing in his sight,” we should think about worship. That’s what the writer has been talking about. Therefore, I think a short summary of what the writer is saying in verses 20–21 is: May God equip you to worship him!

That’s the last thing this writer wants to leave us with in this book, in this word of exhortation. I think we should call this the big takeaway from the Book of Hebrews.

What else do we do with everything we’ve seen this year in this book?

What is the ultimate difference it should make in our lives that we have seen that Jesus is better, that he is our great high priest, that the new covenant is superior to the old, that we need (and we can!) endure in faith? What’s the point of all that? Worship. We want to magnify the glory and worth of God. Worship is the goal.

Here’s the second and last thing to see.

2) Worship applies to all of life. There’s a parallel in verse 21 that I want you to see. God’s “working in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (which has to do with worship), that parallels and explains what it means that it’s God equipping us “to do his will.”

One way to paraphrase the first part of verse 21 is to say:

God equips you to do his will, which means God does in us what is pleasing to him.

Our doing the will of God is the worship of God.

The Will of GodNow I know that sometimes we can have a lot of questions when it comes to the will of God — ‘what is God’s will and how do we know it?!’ And we can get stressed out about this— but the Bible is pretty straightforward here. In verse 21, the will of God is restated as that which is pleasing to God, and as we’ve seen, what the writer has in mind is worship. We worship God when we do his will.

And here is where we need to be really clear about what worship means. If worship is doing God’s will — if worship is the goal, if it’s why we exist — then we need to know what worship is.

Well, worship, now — because of Jesus, because of the first Christmas — is no longer restricted to a certain act in a certain place done in a very stipulated way.

We already saw that the writer of Hebrews calls praising God and doing good to others sacrifices — and we can do those anywhere.

Now what we’re doing together here is worship — we gather here every Sunday for corporate worship, but I’d actually argue that the most unique thing going on here is not the worship, but it’s the mutual edification. It’s that we’re worshiping God together, which builds one another up. That’s the one thing happening right now that won’t be happening tomorrow when we’re not gathered. But the worship continues. You come into this place as a worshiper of God, and you are commissioned out of this place as a worshiper of God. We are worshipers of God wherever we can do the will of God — that’s everywhere and anytime. Worship applies to all of life.

But now, practically, what does that mean? How does worship in all of life look?

It looks like Jesus. It means that we are radically centered on Jesus and we are Christlike from the heart.

Centered on JesusJesus is the one who changed the meaning of worship forever.

Remember the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well. This is in John 4. She brings us the topic of worship, because there was a dispute about true worship, so she asked Jesus, Where is the place of true worship?

And Jesus basically said, It’s not a place anymore, it’s me.

Now that Jesus has come, all true worship is focused on Jesus himself. He is both the way to God, and the ‘place’ where God’s presence dwells. And we certainly see this in Hebrews!

Just think of the ways that Jesus transformed Old Covenant worship. All the pieces of Old Covenant worship are now fulfilled in him: Jesus is the temple; Jesus is the high priest; Jesus is the sacrifice. It’s like Jesus became the entire worship service.

True worship now is radically centered on Jesus … but it’s not just centered on him, it means that we actually become like him.

Becoming Like JesusTurn back to Hebrews 10 for a minute, and we’re going to end on this. I think this passage in Hebrews 10 brings it all together. If you can, follow along with me in Hebrews 10, starting in verse 4:

4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world [which is what we celebrate at Christmastime!]
when Christ came into the world, he said, [to God]
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.

Now that word for “prepared” there — “a body you have prepared for me” — that’s the same word that’s translated “equip” in Chapter 13, verse 21. God equips us to do his will. God ‘equipped’ Jesus with a body.

And being equipped with a body, verse 7:

7 Then [Jesus] said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’

Now listen to how the writer explains this, verse 8,

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second.

In other words, the old way of worship is over. The new way of worship is do the will of God.

Verse 10,

10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

So worship is centered on Jesus — you can’t worship God apart from Jesus — but also worship now means that we become like Jesus. We do what he did.

A Living SacrificeJesus completely surrendered himself to the will of God — “I’m here to do your will.” “Not my will, but yours be done,” he said, even with loud cries and tears. Jesus completely surrendered himself to God, which means that his whole life was a sacrifice that was pleasing to God.

And now for us, through Jesus, we do the same. Through Jesus, like Jesus, we also surrender our lives to the will of God. There’s no wonder the apostle Paul says what he says in Romans 12:1,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship.

To be a living sacrifice is New Covenant worship. That is our calling. That’s what it means to worship God. Jesus was the ultimate living sacrifice, and we, in him, become living sacrifices, completely surrendered to the will of God.

Absolute SurrenderThere’s a South African pastor from the 1800s named Andrew Murray, and he wrote a classic book, some of you may have heard of, called Absolute Surrender. My pastor growing up gave me his copy of the book years ago when I was trying to discern God’s will for my life, and there’s a key section in the book when Murray is talking about exactly what we’re talking about here. Listen to this.

Murray writes,

Jesus gave up his life to God, and he thereby taught us that the only thing that life is worth living for is to give it back to God even unto death. If you take your life and spend it on yourself, even partly, you are abusing it. You are taking it away from its noblest use. O Christian, learn from Christ that the beauty of having life and will and body is that you can give it to God, and that then God will fill it with His glory … Christian, do you want a life of fellowship with God, and of glory and power and joy, even here upon earth? Remember, then, that there is but one way to secure it. Give your life up to God. That is the one way. That is what Christ did. (Absolute Surrender, 25).

Many of you, as we have prayed for our church in this new season, we have prayed for increased surrender — and this is what we mean. Increased surrender is a life of all-consuming worship. Increased surrender is to be a living sacrifice.

This is not just for an hour and a half on Sunday morning, but you’re a living sacrifice over lunch this afternoon, and when you’re putting your kids to bed tonight, and when you step into the office tomorrow, and when you think hard about challenges in front of you …

You’re a living sacrifice when you do good work, not half-hearted work, but excellent work as unto God, not man.

You’re a living sacrifice when you show kindness to the people around you, and when you speak words of grace, and when you wake up early to read God’s word and to pray.

You’re a living sacrifice when you do the uncomfortable thing for a purpose bigger than comfort, and when you steward your body well, and when you are generous with your time and resources, and when you endure in faith even as you’re surrounded by the whirlwind of suffering.

You’re a living sacrifice when you testify of a joy down deep in your soul, even though the fig tree may not blossom … even though the cancer may not go away.

When you are a living sacrifice, when you are surrendered to God like Jesus, through Jesus, it means simply that you belong to God. Every part of us and all that we have is his, and we want to magnify his glory and worth in everything. That’s why we exist. It’s the most important thing that we’ve done in 2023, and the most important thing we can do in 2024.

Father, would you make us to be, as individuals and as an entire church, make us to be a living sacrifice. Overcome with the joy of being yours, and through us, would you magnify your glory in these Twin Cities? Be pleased with our lives of worship, through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

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This passage is not what you might have expected for the Sunday morning of Christmas Eve. The way the calendar falls this year, today is the 4th Sunday of Advent and tonight we will have a Christmas Eve Service, and we hope you come back for that service at 4:00pm today.

If you are a guest or starting coming more recently, this past year we preached through the whole book of Hebrews, and then for these 4 weeks of advent, we have gone back to 4 passages in Hebrews that highlight the person and work of Jesus during his ministry on earth.

Week one: we looked at Jesus being “for a little while lower than the angels.”

Week two: we looked at Jesus being “made like his brothers in every respect.”

Week three: we looked at how Jesus “in the days of his flesh” related to us in his praying, and waiting and suffering.

Week four: we are going to look at Jesus who “suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people.”

This passage highlights the purpose for which Jesus came. He came to save his people. His ability to save is the main purpose for all he did while he walked this earth. This morning the three things we will work through are:

1) Jesus came into the world to save the world

2) Jesus went outside the camp to save the world

3) We must go to Jesus to be saved.

1) Jesus came into the world to save the worldGod Created the worldIn the beginning, before anything was created, there was God. A god from all eternity that existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A God that is the very definition of love, and was perfectly and eternally happy. He lacked nothing, was in need of nothing.

And from his love and joy and freedom he created the world. He created the world as an overflow of all that he is. God created the universe and all the beauty and joy and life that is in it.

He did not create because He was lonely, or bored or sad. God could have never created the world and would still be eternally joyful and happy but because he was full of love and joy, in his overflowing goodness he created a world and he created people. People that could know Him and delight in Him and have a relationship with Him.

Mankind rejected GodBut, it didn’t take long for mankind to leave the good design of God and look for another way.

In the Garden in Genesis 3, a doubt is planted in Adam and Eve’s mind by satan: That maybe God isn’t as good as they thought, maybe God shouldn’t be trusted, maybe they know what is better. And in rebellion to God, they sought to do what they thought was best, disobeyed God and sin entered the world.

And sin has wreaked havoc on the world. The world God created had been broken and the people God created had been broken. The world became a dark place that needed redemption, that needed saving.

And the greatest problem wasn’t external it was internal. The sin in the hearts of human beings was the greatest problem then, and is the greatest problem now. Sin in the hearts of mankind is the cause of it all.

God still loved the world, and planned to save the worldYet, God still loved the world and the people he created. And He had a plan from the very beginning to save His people from there sins. It wasn’t as if He was thrown for a loop and started to scramble; he always had a plan set in motion. And a few verses later after the rebellion of Adam and Eve, we see the first promise of hope for a world that was lost.

Genesis 3:15, God says to Satan who had deceived Eve,

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

From the very beginning of scripture, there was a declaration that evil would be defeated through a son that would be born of a woman. Then after that, Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden to the east, sent away from the presence of God, and the way back was blocked by an angel. And from the very day that Adam and Eve fell, God declared that he had a plan to save them and from that day forward, the people of God in faith began to wait for a son to come.

We sing “come thou long expected Jesus” and thats right, all that way back to the garden!

After that the world spirals out of control, sin toward God goes from bad to worse, and God judges the world through a flood in which only Noah and those with him are saved. Then a few chapters later God again speaks of a child to come.

In Genesis 12 God comes to Abram, who is later renamed Abraham, and says:

“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God promised Abraham an offspring that will bless the whole world.

And God through his prophets continued to speak about this son who is to come. Here are just a couple examples from the book of Isaiah:

Isaiah 9:6–7 shows us that this son will conquer and reign,

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

This is a son who will be a king forever. But also, much less seen and much less understood, this son will suffer and die for us.

From Isaiah 53,

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter…

And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied

Much more could be said of the one who was to come. He was an example for us, and a teacher for us, but what we need is a savior. He came to save the world and the world desperately needed saving. We see God’s front and center purpose in one of the most popular verses of all time. Maybe you haven’t seen it as a Christmas verse before but it is…

John 3:16,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

He came so that the world might be saved through Him.

Jesus came into the world to save the world.

And how would Jesus save the world? By dying for their sins. But the more specific answer in Hebrews is by suffering outside the camp.

2) Jesus went outside the camp to save the world (verses 10-12)As we get to the passage read a few moments ago about altars, and sin offerings, and suffering, it is contrasting what the people of Israel were commanded to do under the law that God had given them. We have seen from the beginning that God was going to send a savior to his people, but for the family of Israel (that became the nation of Israel), the way to forgiveness and relationship with God was seen through the sacrificial system.

That might be a little foreign to us, since we did not live in the time prior to Christ coming. But by looking back, we can enter into the waiting of Israel. As the people of God waited for the Son to come, they did it while living under the sacrificial system.

Let’s read it here again and answer the question of Why Jesus suffered outside of the camp. Why is that the way Jesus died to save the world?

Hebrews 13:10–12,

“We [followers of Jesus] have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”

Two reason he suffered outside the gateFirst, Jesus suffered and died outside the camp to show that He was the main point of the Day of Atonement.

There were many different types of sacrifices, and occasions for them to be done, but this passage is talking specifically about the sin sacrifices on the day of Atonement.

This was the sacrifice where the blood was brought into the Most Holy Place. The sin sacrifice on the day of atonement was the one time a year that the High Priest would go behind the inner most curtain, into the presence of God, before the Mercy Seat. The High Priest would need to follow meticulous instructions:

Wash and put on Holy garments. Take fire and incense, so that smoke covered the mercy seat, so that he doesn’t die. First sacrifice a bull for his own sin and bring the blood in and sprinkle it. Then sacrifice a goat for the people, and bring its blood in for all the sins of the people. The fat of the animals would be burned on the bronze altar. But all the rest would be carried outside the camp and burned.

The greatest and holiest sacrifice was taken outside the camp, so Jesus suffered outside the camp. Jesus death for sin had similarities with the day of atonement, we are supposed to see the connection, that Jesus is atoning for sin. He is like the Holiest sacrifice done under the law.

Second, Jesus suffered outside the camp to show that true forgiveness of sin was never to be found in the sacrificial system. Jesus died outside of the camp in contrast to the sacrificial system, which had not been able to cleanse people from their sins.

As we have worked through the book of Hebrews, the main theme has been that Jesus is Better. Jesus is the better thing that was needed, because He accomplished what the Old Testament sacrificial system could not do, and was not meant to do. The sacrificial system was never meant to be the final way to relate to God. From it’s creation it was temporary and insufficient. Jesus died outside the camp to show something new had come.

Have you ever heard of the term Planned Obsolescence?

The idea is making something artificially obsolete, whether perceived or in reality.

In business and marketing it could be making you think, or perceive, that your phone is so old if it isn’t the latest version. Or, in reality, making a part intentionally cheap, or a phones memory too small. Both strategies have the goal of making you buy more stuff more often.

A good example of planned obsolescence could be: A bag of ice versus a refrigerator. It accomplishes its task, but is not a final and lasting solution.

The planned obsolescence of the Old CovenantThe Old Covenant served as a temporary guardian and instructor so that we would be ready to receive the fulfillment of the promise of salvation. It was instructive for Israel and us to understand the seriousness of sin. Its incompleteness was to signal to us to look for something more. It helps us to understand Jesus and the way in which He came and died.

I want to walk through the examples that show the “planned obsolescence” of the Old Covenant, and then explain why it matters.

Ways we see the planned obsolescence of the Old Covenant:

Jesus became a High Priest after the order of the Melchizedek, not the lineage of Aaron.

This priesthood came before the priesthood of Aaron, Melchizedek is mentioned soon after the promises to Abraham, hundreds of years prior to the giving of the law.

This priesthood is seen as superior, in that Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek, and in a sense Aaron gave tithes as well because he was not yet born. 2. The priesthood established the law, covenant, and the government of it, so a change in priesthood means a change in law, covenant, and government (including the sacrificial system). 3. The tent of meeting was a copy of the real thing: Hebrews 8:5, “[The tent serves as] a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” 4. The way into the Holy of Holies was closed, the High Priest could only enter once a year, and needed to sacrifice an animal for his own sins first.

They could not freely go into the presence of the Lord, and the manner they went in almost says “you shouldn’t be in here!”

Hebrews states, that “by this the Holy Spirit indicated that the way into the Holy Place is not yet opened.” Even after the sin offering. 5. We get one more indication of the insufficiency of the sacrificial system in our text today. He mentioned that we have an altar in which the priest in the OT have no right to eat from. The specific comparison here is Jesus’s death for sin and the sin sacrifices on the day of atonement.

There were some sacrifices the people of Israel were able to eat. There were some sacrifices that only the levites could eat. And there was a sacrifice that no one was able to eat… The sacrifice for sin in which its blood was brought inside the tent of meeting, it was to be burned outside the camp and no one could eat of it.

Leviticus 6:30,

“But no sin offering shall be eaten from which any blood is brought into the tent of meeting to make atonement in the Holy Place; it shall be burned up with fire.”

The day of atonement sacrifice also shows its insufficiency in the fact that the priests could not eat of it. Eating signifies sharing in. Eating signifies fellowship. Eating signifies peace.

The day of atonement continued every year because it didn’t truly forgive sin, becausethe blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, which made the day of atonement a reminder of sin every year.

The best sacrifice the OT system had to offer, done according to God instructions, was insufficient to take away the sins of the people. It was more an emblem of God’s forbearance of sin than His forgiveness of sin.

The Priest could not enter freely because their sins still remained. And the people could not eat of the sacrifice, because there sin still remained.

It was not the answer for our sins, but it was a tutor and guide to prepare us to see and receive the real thing. We see that we need a different altar, and that is exactly what he have through Christ.

Jesus never entered into the tent of meeting on earth, he was not sacrificed on the bronze altar. The best that the bronze altar could offer wasn’t enough. But Jesus, the promised son, was the new and compete sacrifice that did take away sin.

And the sacrificial system has made us ready to see the sufficiency of Jesus’s deathJesus died once for sin and was raised, never to die again. This shows us that the forgiveness and atonement for sin was finally accomplished.

“…he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption”

Jesus ascended to heaven, to the true tent where he, through his death, has opened up access for us all in Christ.

“For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”

“We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us”

We have an altar that we have the right to eat from, we have a sacrifice from which we can spiritually eat and be nourished. That we share in, that we have fellowship through, that gives us peace with God.

We need to know the shadow so that we can see and understand when the real thing came. Jesus has reconciled us and now we have peace with God, and are no longer under the debt of our sin.

The redeeming work of Jesus is written all over the Bible, he does not leave us out in the dark, he gives us all kinds of pointers so that we will “know it when we see it”.

And not just see it, but be able to confidently lean on Him when it comes to our doubts or fears. When we are staring right at something that we do not want in the face, we need to know that Jesus is who he said he was. That Jesus has forgiven us and has freed us from the fear of death. That Jesus is rock solid when we need Him the most and don’t have anything else to stand on.

Knowing what Jesus has done for us, verse 13 says,

“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.”

3) We must go to Jesus to be saved (verse 13)We must go out of the camp to receive Jesus and be saved by Him. To leave the camp is spiritual not spatial. The camp for the Hebrews, was the Old Covenant law and system as a way to be righteous before God. For us there is no exact equivalent. The old covenant was a good, temporary covenant, given by God to the Hebrews that we were called to be done with because Christ, the substance had arrived.

Even though there is no exact equivalent, the closest things for us would be the world. The camp and the city gates for the Jews was where their security was found, there status and identity, their citizenship, their hope and their salvation.

And that is what the world can be for us. Is our hope in this world and in this life? Is our trust, our security, our hope and identity in our money, or our job, or our planned future?

The camp for us is anything that we trust in contrary to Jesus. Do we put our trust in our money, or do we trust our good works, or our relative kindness above the person next to us?

If the sacrificial system taught us anything, it is that sin is costly. It cost grain, and wine, and animals from the herd. And ultimately, the only sacrifice that could pay the cost of sin, was the death of Jesus, the son of God. That is the cost of sin.

When go to him we will in some sense bear His reproach, but He is a treasure!

We must remember, to go to him outside the camp, is not towards slavery but away from it. Remember that he says:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Our sin is the heavy burden. It is our sin that enslaves us. It is our sin that brings forth death.

And the fear of death is what causes us to keep such a tight grip on the world, to live for and to trust in only what we can see and acquire. But Jesus frees us from the fear of death by giving us eternal life through His Son.

But we must leave the camp to be saved by Jesus. And we do this by faith. To go to Him is to believe that He alone can save you from your sins.

We remember the manger, but Jesus is no longer in the manger.

We remember the cross, but Jesus is no longer on the cross.

We remember the grave, but Jesus is no longer in the grave.

Jesus came into the world, then went outside the camp, so that we could be saved.

We go to Jesus, our great shepherd, our high priest and mediator, our savior and king, to adore him, to worship him, to praise Him and celebrate what he has done.

This bring us to the table.

The TableThe amazing part of the table is that Jesus is saying, “take, eat, this is my body given for you.” Through Jesus we have the right to eat! We remember that Jesus is the bread of life. That we have been united to Jesus by faith and are reconciled to God.

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Well today’s the third Sunday of Advent — just 8 days to go before Christmas — and the reason we’re looking at this passage today is because of a little phrase at the beginning of verse 7 — and if it’s possible, I want you to see this. So if you can, either with your own Bible or on your phone or you might have to look with a neighbor, everybody get a look at verse 7. It starts with the words:

“in the days of his flesh.”

That phrase is important. “In the days of his flesh” is a good literal translation. If you read the NIV translation, it says at the start of verse 7:

“During the days of Jesus’s life on earth.”

That’s a good interpretation of what the writer of Hebrews is talking about. He starts verse 7 by pointing us back to the time in history when Jesus lived on this earth as a man. He wants us to think about Jesus living here in flesh and blood like ours.

But now why does the writer do this? Why does he bring up Jesus’s life on earth?

It has to do with the context and I’ll explain this super briefly …

It starts in Chapter 2, verse 17 (which we saw last week) when the writer tells us that Jesus is our merciful and faithful high priest because in every respect he was made like us. Then at the end of Chapter 4, verse 15 the writer repeats this same idea and says that Jesus is our high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because in every respect he has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

So Chapter 2, verse 17 and Chapter 4, verse 15 repeat the same idea. It’s not just that Jesus is our high priest, but it’s that Jesus is our high priest because Jesus became a man like us and actually walked in our shoes. That’s what qualifies Jesus to be our high priest. It’s because Jesus gets us.

That’s the point the writer has been making — that’s the context — and so now in Chapter 5 he’s about to drive that point home. That’s why he starts in verse 7, “in the days of his flesh” … or “During the days of Jesus’s life on earth.”

The writer is about to prove to us, with an example from Jesus’s life on earth, that Jesus gets us. And we’re on the edge of our seats! This is going to be fascinating. I’m interested in this.

And so here’s a question for us: What example from Jesus’s life might we use to make this point? … If you had to name one scene from Jesus’s life that proves that he gets us, what would it be? …

In the Days of His FleshWhat about the humble conditions of Jesus’s birth? Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, was born in a stable. He had very simple beginnings. The days of his flesh started as something people can relate to.

Or what about the time at the wedding in Cana when Jesus turned the water to wine? This was Jesus’s first recorded miracle, which is something only Jesus can do, but it was such an earthy miracle. The party host had run out of wine. They had this big wedding celebration, with tons of people, and they ran out of wine, which was probably embarrassing, and Mary, Jesus’s mom, was there, and she said: “Jesus, help them out.” And he did. He gave the people wine. In the days of his flesh Jesus met a super practical need. (See John 2:1–12)

Or what about that time Jesus came to the home of Lazarus, his friend, after Lazarus had died. Jesus stepped into a place surrounded by the family members and friends of Lazarus and they were all grieving, and Jesus himself was grieved. He was moved and troubled, and the Bible tells us that Jesus wept. In the days of his flesh Jesus was sad. (See John 11:1–44)

There’s also the time when crowds were following Jesus and parents started bringing their kids to him, in hopes Jesus might touch them and maybe bless them, and the disciples didn’t like this. People didn’t think kids were that cute in the first-century world, so the disciples were telling these parents to beat it, but Jesus said No, let them come, and then he scooped up the children in his arms, and said, And if you wanna come to me, you need to be like these kids. We either will have Jesus as those who are helpless, or we won’t have him. In the days of his flesh Jesus demolished pretense. (See Luke 18:15–17).

Or what about the time Jesus spoke to Zacchaeus up in the tree? What a moment! Jesus was on his way into Jericho, and there was another big crowd swarming him, and Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but the crowd was too big and Zacchaeus was too short (the literal Greek there is “wee little man”). Remember what Zacchaeus did? He climbed up in a sycamore tree hoping to get a good view of Jesus as he walked by but rather than pass by him, Jesus came right to him, in the tree, and Jesus looked up and said, Hey, come down, I’m about to go to your house. It was a wonderful surprise for Zacchaeus and amazing irony. In the days of his flesh Jesus had a sense of humor. (See Luke 19:1–10)

Then there’s the time when Jesus turned the tables on the way James and John thought about greatness. Or there’s when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. Or in John 4, when Jesus was walking from Judea to Galilee, just before he talked to the woman at the well, the text says,

“Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, sat by the well…”

Jesus never sinned, but he confronted sin and human weakness head-on, things like selfish ambition or greed or fear or hunger or disappointment or weariness. Jesus knows about all that, and they’re all examples of how he gets us, but the writer of Hebrews doesn’t talk about any of these examples.

Instead, the writer of Hebrews takes us back to one scene in the Gospels when Jesus was alone.

If you want to see how Jesus really gets us, if you wanna know how much he knows what it’s like to be us, go to the Garden of Gethsemane. …

Jesus’s Excruciating PrayerNow the writer doesn’t mention “Gethsemane” by name, and at one level, Jesus’s whole life involved the kind of humiliation we see there, but verse 7 seems to be talking more about a specific event. Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death.”

This sends us back to the Thursday night before Jesus was crucified. We know that he got alone to pray, in Gethsemane, and the Gospel writers tell us that Jesus agonized in prayer. His soul was sorrowful and troubled, and he pleaded with God the Father, not only shedding tears but even sweating blood, and he cried,

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Now the Gospels tell us that Jesus prayed often. He was constantly getting away to a place of solitude for prayer. But Gethsemane was the place where Jesus experienced excruciating prayer … “loud cries and tears” … this was a painful kind of praying … and because Jesus experienced prayer like that, I can be assured that he knows what it’s like to be me, and he knows what it’s like to be you. According to the argument of Hebrews, because Jesus prayed like this in the days of his life on earth, it verifies that he knows what it’s like to be us.

And that’s what I want us to linger on today. We’re going to focus in with one question:

How does Jesus’s excruciating prayer in Gethsemane make him get us?

We’re just going to focus on one answer. It’s that Jesus had to wait.

Jesus Had to WaitWe hate to wait, don’t we? If you think about it, pretty much all of popular technology is created to conquer waiting. We’ve been shaped to think that waiting is a problem, when really, waiting is basic to being human. It’s basic to our creaturely existence. And as much as we try to overcome that with our technology, waiting will always be what God expects of us in our relationship with him — and Jesus knows what it’s like.

Notice in verse 7 that the writer of Hebrews doesn’t spell out the exact content of what Jesus prayed, but he does give us the category and manner of prayer. The category is “prayers and supplications” (or “petitions”). This means that Jesus was asking God the Father for something. He requested something. And the manner — how he requested something — was with “loud cries and tears.”

So if we put these together, it means that Jesus was earnestly wanting something. This was a please, please, please kind of request.

And now add to this that God is described in verse 7 as “him who was able to save him from death.” So get this: Jesus earnestly requested something from him who was able to save him from death.

What then do you think Jesus requested? … To be saved from death.

This is another reason why I think Gethsemane is in the writer’s mind. Jesus earnestly wanted to be saved from death. Jesus asked the Father, If it’s possible, remove this cup from me.

Nowwe know that Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him, but he did not relish the cross itself. He despised the shame of the cross. Jesus dreaded his suffering.

The Dread of SufferingAnd sometimes I wonder if we really appreciate this fact about Jesus. I think we can tend to think that Jesus was able to endure his suffering because he had special powers as the Son of God. This is complex, and I’m suspicious that somewhere in here in how we think about this, we imagine that Jesus’s deity was the underwriter of his endurance. We think: Yeah, he endured unspeakable suffering … but he was God.

And it’s true that Jesus was never less than God — he was in every respect like his Father, and in every respect like us — so we would be misguided to think that his deity is what got him through his suffering. Gethsemane certainly corrects that.

Jesus looked forward to having nails driven through his hands about as much as you would. Just imagine that you knew today that tomorrow, by noon, you were going to have spikes nailed through your hands and feet, and giant thorns crammed in your head, and then before that, you were going to get scourged, beaten 39 times, so that the skin of your bare back is just shredded. And the physical pain wasn’t even the worst part. If you knew that was going to happen to you tomorrow, how would you sleep tonight? I get nervous about the dentist!

What if you knew in 12 hours you were going to experience the worst pain ever inflicted upon a man? What would you sound like when you prayed?

Jesus is like us here … and he prayed hard … it was excruciating prayer … and did God answer him?

The WhirlwindThis is not an easy question, because Hebrews says God did. Look at the end of verse 7: Jesus prayed …

“to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.”

But wait a minute, we know what happened. The Father did not remove the cup. The crucifixion was every bit as horrible as Jesus dreaded, and probably worse. So how was Jesus heard? … it’s that Jesus was saved out of death, but he was not saved from dying.

The resurrection was God’s answer to Jesus’s prayer — which means Jesus was not saved from experiencing the horrible thing, he was saved from the horrible thing having the final say.

And this means that there was a time, in the suffering of Jesus, when it seemed like his prayer would not be answered. Sunday morning did not happen like that! Jesus had to endure the waiting … which became in Gethsemane a whirlwind of suffering. And we tiptoe into mystery here. Jesus knew and believed that this Father would never abandon him, but then also: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It’s a whirlwind, see …

I know you won’t, but it seems like you are.

You’ve said this. I know this. But then … look around.

The big realities and truths of God are less clear in the whirlwind of suffering — and what could be more human than that?

We know what God can do. We ask him to do it. But we’re stuck in this whirlwind where we’re not sure if he’s doing anything, and we have to wait. Have you ever been there?

No Eagle LandingAnswered prayers are a wonderful thing. I’ve got a list in my mind of several different prayers I’ve prayed over the years and the ways God has answered them. And it’s amazing. God is good, and we should be so encouraged and rejoice together when God answers our prayers.

I saw last week, in a little video, there was a guy who was out fishing, and he happened to see this Bald Eagle a long ways off across this lake, and when he saw the eagle, he prayed, “God, would you let me get close to that eagle today and get a good look at him?”

That’s what the guy says to the camera, and he’s doing a selfie video, telling this story. He asked God to get him get close to the eagle, and then he pans out with his camera and the eagle is standing on this guy’s shoulder! No joke!

This Bald Eagle came and landed on his shoulder. And I don’t even know this guy, I don’t know his theology, but I’m like, “Yes! That’s awesome!” Can God make an eagle land on somebody’s shoulder? Absolutely!

But no eagle landed in Gethsemane … and although God does answer our prayers and we’re thankful for that, there’s a lot of times we don’t have Bald Eagles on our shoulders …and Jesus gets that.

Jesus prayed an excruciating prayer and he had to wait. Just like you and me.

And in the waiting, his obedience was not easy.

His Obedience Was Not EasyHebrews 5:8,

“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

The way the writer says this means it’s not what we would assume. Similar to what we talked about earlier, it’s natural for us to assume that Jesus as the Son of God somehow came pre-programmed to always obey.

Or if we pretend the whole world was a big carnival full of carnival games, we might think that all the games were somehow rigged for Jesus to always win. Like instead of the basketball goal rim being bent in (so that the ball barely fits), we might imagine that when Jesus shot, the rim was stretched out extra wide.

We might say: “Because he was a son, obedience was easy.”

But Hebrews 5:8 says:

“Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

And we know that was the case for all of Jesus’s life, but that was especially the case in Gethsemane. Gethsemane assures us that Jesus’s obedience was authentic obedience. It was not laboratory obedience in a controlled environment. This was obedience in the waiting, in the whirlwind … which means although his heart always desired obedience, the practice of that obedience was tested. It was pressured. It was challenged. All of Jesus’s obedience was predicated on “not my will, but yours be done” but how Jesus had to live out that obedience was in varied and unpredictable circumstances. It was as varied and unpredictable as the world we step into every day. That was Gethsemane. And Gethsemane became a school. He learned obedience in that waiting, and it was not easy.

We Can Go to HimI’ve heard it said before, by older and wiser Christians, that the deeper you grow in your faith, the more aware you are of your sinfulness. The idea is that as you mature in faith you sin fewer times, but you also become more aware of how pervasive and subtle your sinfulness is. C. S. Lewis said,

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

This gives me some comfort when I feel like an idiot. Which I’d say has increased in the last few years, I hope that’s a good sign.

Just the other day I was riding in the car with one my children who was driving, and this kid is a good driver. But we were in traffic and there was a moment when they had to hit the breaks, and it was one of those times when you gasp — you can’t help it. You just react, and I did …

And I’ve thought long and hard about this … I think Jesus would have gasped too. Jesus had reactions. It was a scary split second. But the problem wasn’t the reaction … it was the comment I made right after it.

And I knew right away I was wrong. You know there’s usually a moment like that, in our sin, where we come to a kind of crossroads and we either go this way and double-down and try to justify our sin and act like it’s not a big deal, or we go the other way, admit we’re wrong and confess it right away … which, if this way were more comfortable we’d do it more, but it’s not. Because you feel the shame and regret. That’s not the kind of dad I want to be. That’s not the kind of person I want to be.

So what do I do with that? … I go to Jesus who learned obedience through what he suffered.

He Knows Where We’re Coming FromVerse 10: “And being made perfect…” — the idea here is completeness; this is referring to Jesus’s resurrection and exaltation after ‘the days of his flesh was mission accomplished,’ after he suffered in our place and died on the cross — God raised Jesus and enthroned him, and “he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.”

Which means he is not just the Son who reigns, but he’s the High Priest who has made atonement for us, and who intercedes for us. Jesus is seated on the throne of his rule, but it’s also a throne of grace, and I can go to him. We can go to him! Because he knows where we’re coming from.

He’s been here, in the days of his flesh, full scary split seconds and temptations, and he’s been to Gethsemane … to the waiting and the whirlwind. Jesus has been here and he learned obedience. And he is so kind to us.

This is where we have to remember Chapter 2 verse 11, that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. He really gets us, and one thing that means is that his love for us is a love for us where we are. I want you to know that. Jesus loves you where you are, not where you pretend to be, or even where you aspire to be. Jesus loves us in the days of our flesh, during the days and moments of our lives on this earth in all our weakness and failure.

And so the invitation this morning is to come to him.

That’s the invitation of this Table.

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I was watching the Super Bowl this past February, expecting to see the newest commercials from Doritos and Budweiser and Coca-Cola, when this unusual music began to play. On the screen were still shots of kids doing adorable things — helping each other, hugging, arm around the family dog. At the end the words came up,

Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults. . . . He gets us.

It was a heart-warming riff on Jesus’s teaching about being childlike. I liked it. This is the Super Bowl, with hundreds of millions of people watching, and a 30-second spot comes up commending Jesus. I love Jesus. I worship Jesus. Yeah, let’s commend Jesus.

Then another spot came up in the second half. Harsher music. Pictures of adults demonstrating manifest outrage and hatred, in each other’s faces. Sometimes it’s a physical altercation — and all from the last three years. Then the message:

Jesus loved the people we hate. . . . He gets us.

And my response was, Ouch and yes.

The ads are from a non-profit looking to “put Jesus in the middle of culture.” They paid $20 million for the Super Bowl ads and plan to spend $3 billion in the coming years.

So, I’ve seen more of these “He gets us” ads in recent months. Sometimes, I like them. Other times I cringe a little, concerned it will give a skewed impression about Jesus.

Jesus was judged wrongly.
Jesus had strained relationships, too.
Jesus welcomes the weird.
Jesus was fed up with politics, too.
Jesus invited everyone to sit at his table.
Jesus chose forgiveness.

Then last week I took my twin sons to their first Minnesota Wild hockey game at the X, and now there’s a hockey “He gets us” on the thin digital screens around the side of the arena:

Jesus had great lettuce, too.

Lettuce means hockey hair. I had to ask my boys for help on that. I don’t want to be too picky, but I wonder if “great lettuce” might represent some mission drift for the “He gets us” campaign. Admittedly, it doesn’t speak to me personally like it would if it said, “Jesus was losing his hair, too.”

Our Pioneer and ChampionHebrews 2 is a “he gets us” passage. But it’s also clear that he not only gets us, but he helps us. He rescues us. Saves us. Getting us is good; as we’ll see, that can lead to real, genuine help for us in our need. But getting us, on its own, doesn’t do a whole lot for us. Yes, he gets us. He really does. And this is a slice of what we celebrate in Advent. But there’s no real joy in Advent if he only gets us and doesn’t also help us, save us, change us, lift us up. In Advent, we celebrate that he became man, fully human like us, not just to be one of us but to save us.

Verse 10 has a name for Jesus that I’ve come to love, and it’s hard to find an equivalent word for it in English. The ESV has founder: God “make[s] the founder of [our] salvation perfect through suffering.” Founder is a good translation. But I want to fill out the meaning for us a little bit.

The Greek word is archegos. It’s built on the word archē, which means beginning. So archegos, we might say, is “the originator” or “the beginner.” The problem is we mean something else by “beginner” in English: “a person just starting to learn a skill or take part in an activity.” Jesus is not a “beginner” in that sense. Rather, he’s a “beginner” in the sense that he’s the leader who goes first and others follow him. Like a pioneer. But he doesn’t just go first into uncharted territory, but into battle. So “champion” or “hero” could be a good translation of archegos as well.

And he’s a champion who we don’t just watch from afar. We’re connected to him and come with him. He doesn’t just fight for us; he leads the charge; we follow in his wake.

So, Jesus as our archegos, is both our hero and example. He is “the beginner” in that he births the people, and he leads into the battle, and he rescues us through faith in him, and then also he inspires us as our model who we follow. We benefit from what he does for us, and couldn’t do for ourselves, and yet in his work for us, he opens up a path that we might follow in his steps.

And Advent is where our “beginner” begins, so to speak. That is, Advent is the beginning of his humanity, and his getting us, and saving us, and helping us; but Advent is not the beginning of his person.

So, let’s walk with Hebrews chapter 2 through the Advent drama of our “beginner,” our “champion,” from the very beginning until now. There are four distinct stages here in the drama of Hebrews 2 — four movements in the story of Advent.

1) Jesus did not start like us.That is, our champion, our “beginner,” did not begin like we did. His person was not created like ours. He is a divine person, the second person of the eternal Threeness. His humanity was created, conceived in Mary’s womb and born in Bethlehem, but not his person.

The book of Hebrews begins with glimpses of his godhood. Before any world, any creation existed, he existed and was “appointed the heir of all things.” Then through him God (the Father) made the world. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” — he is distinct from the Father in his person and same as his Father in divine nature. “And,” verse 3 adds, “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” — as only God can do.

So, the story of Advent begins before time, before creation, before “the beginning.” Jesus himself is God, and if you have eyes to see, it’s all over the New Testament.

Greg Lanier, in his recent book Is Jesus Truly God?, shows how the deity of Christ shines through, on just about every page in the New Testament, in five ways other than the simple declaration that he is God (theos) and other exalted terms:

He is preexistent before Advent, and before creation.
He is the unique “Son” of the heavenly Father, eternally begotten.
He is called “Lord” which refers to God’s Old Testament covenant name (Yahweh).
He receives worship.
He relates to the Father and Spirit in ways that reveal his person as one of the divine Threeness.

So, let’s get this clear before we move on to talk about his humanity and his getting us. In Jesus, a man did not become God. Rather, God became man. We say that Jesus is fully God and fully man in one person, but we do not mean that he became God and man at the same time. There is a profound asymmetry in the story of the God-man: he has been God for all eternity, and he became man at the first Christmas.

2) Jesus was made like us.Now we come to his first Advent and the first Christmas, when God made God in the image of God. Without ceasing to be God, God the Son took on humanity. He added humanity to his divine person.

Humanity, as a created nature, is “compatible” with the uncreated divine nature. Deity and humanity are not a zero-sum game. The divine Son did not have to jettison any eternal deity (as if that’s even possible) to take on humanity. Uncreated deity and created humanity operate at different levels of reality, so to speak. Without ceasing, in any way, to be fully God, the Son took on our full created nature and became fully human. As verse 17 says, he was “made like his brothers in every respect.” Look at verses 11–14:

For he who sanctifies [Jesus] and those who are sanctified [us] all have one source [one nature]. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, 12 saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” 13 And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.” 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things . . .

We’ll come back to finish verse 14. But let me just say about these Old Testament quotations in verses 13–14 that Pastor Jonathan explained them so well in the sermon on February 12 as pointing to Jesus’s solidarity with us in our suffering.

“Flesh and blood” in verse 14 refers to our humanity. We are flesh and blood, and so Jesus became one of us — to which Hebrews 4:15 adds, “without sin.” Sin is not an essential part of what it means to be human. Jesus was fully human, made like us in every respect, and “without sin.”

So, then, what’s included in this “every respect” of our humanity? What does it mean for Jesus to be fully human, like us?

One of the biggest moments in the collective formation of early Christians in saying what the Scriptures teach about the humanity of Christ is a church council called Chalcedon in 451 AD. The Chalcedonian creed says Jesus is “perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body.”

Jesus has a fully human body. He “became flesh,” which means at least a human body. He was born and grew and grew tired. He became thirsty and hungry. He suffered, and he died. And his human body was raised and glorified, and he sits right now, on heaven’s throne, in a risen, glorified human body.

But becoming fully human also involved taking “a rational soul,” or “the inner man,” including human emotions. He marveled. He expressed sorrow. He was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” and wept (John 11:33–35). And he rejoiced and was happy. John Calvin memorably summed it up, “Christ has put on our feelings along with our flesh.”

A “rational soul” also includes a human mind, in addition to his divine mind. So, Jesus “increased in wisdom” as well as in stature (Luke 2:52), and most strikingly, he says about the timing of his second coming, “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). With respect to his humanity, and his human mind, there are things he does not know. His human knowledge is limited, like all human minds. Yet, at the same time, for this unique two-natured person of Christ, he also knows all things with respect to his divine mind. As one-natured humans, this is beyond our experience and ability to understand, but divine and human minds are compatible, and this is no contradiction for the unique person of Christ but a unique glory.

So too with his human will, in addition to the divine will. Jesus says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Jesus, speaking with respect to his human will, says that he came “not of [his] own will” but his Father’s. And that divine will, while not proper to his humanity, is proper to his person as God. So, when he prays in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, as you will,” he aligns his human will with the divine will, which also is his as God.

So, Jesus has a fully human body and emotions and mind and will. And verse 11 says, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” He is not ashamed to call you brother, or sister.

Jesus could have been a brother in our nature, and yet ashamed to call us his brothers. But mark this, he is not the kind of brother. He is not ashamed of his siblings. He’s not worried that our weaknesses and immaturities, or even our follies, will mar his reputation. He’s not stuck with us and embarrassed by it.

That’s not how Jesus is with me, and with us. I want to be like Jesus is with me. I want to be like this as a dad, and be like this as a friend, and be like this as a pastor: not mainly concerned about how others’ behavior reflects on me, but mainly concerned about my brother or sister in Christ, so that I can be loving, rather than self-focused, and especially in the very moment when love is needed most.

3) Jesus suffered like us.That is, being fully human, he suffered both with us and for us.

Suffering is an important aspect as his being fully human, and saving us in his full humanity. As God only, he could not suffer. God is “impassible,” unable to be afflicted or be moved from outside. But not humanity. So, Jesus becoming fully human involved not only a human body and reasoning human soul, and emotions, and mind, and will, but also he entered as man into our fallen world, which is under the curse of sin, and even though he himself was not a sinner, he was, as a creature, susceptible to the afflictions and assaults and sufferings and pains of our world. He entered into our suffering, and did so in two senses.

One, he suffered with us. He knows what it’s like to suffer in created flesh and blood. And verse 10 says that he was made “perfect through suffering.” This language of “perfect” or “complete” is important in Hebrews. Verse 10 doesn’t mean that Jesus was imperfect, or sinful, but that he was made ready, or made complete, for his calling, as our champion and high priest, through his suffering. Having become man, he was not yet complete, not yet ready, but needed to be made ready, complete, perfected through suffering. Hebrews 5:8 says,

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.

Which leads, then, to a second sense in which he suffered: for us. Not only does he, as man, suffer with us, but he, as the God-man, suffers for us, in our place, in our stead. Which leads to the connection here between suffering and death.

Verse 9 introduced “the suffering of death,” of Jesus suffering and dying for us, in our place: “by the grace of God he tasted death for everyone.” Jesus not only experienced suffering with us but for us. He not only gets us, but saves us, and that “through death.”

Now look at the rest of verse 14 and verse 15, and two achievements of Jesus for us through his human “suffering of death” at the cross. Pick it up in the middle of verse 14: Jesus shared in our humanity,

that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

The first achievement through his human death is that he defeated Satan. His suffering unto death conquers the one who had the power of death. We should not forget this as a Christmas theme:

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8)

How?

“he appeared in order to take away sins.” (1 John 3:5)

They go together. Jesus destroys the devil by taking away sins. The weapon Satan had against us was unforgiven sin, “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” But through the suffering of death, Jesus “set [this] aside, nailing it to the cross” and in so doing, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [Jesus]” (Colossians 2:14–15).

So, the first achievement is destroying Satan, and second in Hebrews 2:15 is delivering us. How? We might expect what follows in verse 17, but not expect verse 18.

Verse 17 gives us one reason that he had to be made like us in every respect:

so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

We had sinned and needed covering before the holy God. We had a “record of debt that stood against us” because we were humans with sin. So, to rescue us, God needed not only to become fully man, and suffer with us, but suffer for us, unto death, that his death might be for us, his brothers, the death we deserved for our sins. That’s what it means when the high priest “makes propitiation for the sins of the people.” The people’s sin against the holy and infinitely worthy God deserves his righteous, omnipotent wrath. And in becoming human, and suffering with us, and unto death, for us, Jesus absorbs the just penalty due us that we might be delivered from hell and the justice due our sin.

And verse 18 gives us one more reason, embedded in the first, for why Jesus was made like us, in every respect, including suffering, and suffering unto death in our place.

4) Jesus helps us right now.Verse 17 is amazing in that he deals with our sin, and gets us right with God, and verse 18 is amazing in that he’s ready and eager to help us right now. He both makes atonement for us in his death, and he rises again, and sends his Spirit, that he might help us in our struggles right now. Look at verse 18:

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Because Jesus suffered, he can help us in our suffering. That is, because he suffered unto death to atone for our sins, he is able to indwell us by his Spirit, draw near to us in our time of need, and help us in whatever tests and challenges and trials and temptations we face in the ongoing struggle of the Christian life.

Jesus not only saves us out of sin’s curse, but also through sin’s temptations. He atones for our sins, and stands ready to come to our aid in temptation and in our own suffering. Having saved us from sin’s guilt, he is poised to save us from sin’s power.

So, as Hebrews 12:2 says, Jesus is not only the founder, the archegos, the beginner, the champion of our faith, but also the finisher.

He’s not only the beginner but finisher. Our champion not only leads the way and goes ahead of us to face the foe, but he also doubles back to check on us, to help us, to keep us.

So, let’s close with this question: What help do you need this Advent? How are you suffering? What’s your present trial, or trials? What’s testing your faith most right now? What’s tempting you to sin or give up? What’s your biggest need this Advent?

In Advent, we don’t just remember what he did in the past; we remember who he is in the present. Christmas is not only a was; it’s an is. Get his help. He not only gets us; he helps us.

What Child Is This?So, as we come to the Table here in Advent, let’s ask for his help afresh. What need do you bring to the Table this morning? How do you need his help to persevere?

The one who meets us here at the Table is fully divine, the second person of the eternal Godhead, who in his happy, expansive, overflowing, gracious nature, took our full humanity to come rescue us. And he suffered with us, and for us unto death. He destroyed Satan, and he delivers from our sins. And he rose from the dead, and ascended, and he is now enthroned in heaven, and he stands ready, by his Spirit, to help us in the fight of faith.

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Welcome to Advent.

What is Advent?
Advent is the season before Christmas.

What kind season is Advent?
Advent is a season of waiting.

Where are we waiting?
In a land of deep darkness.

Over the last week I’ve been praying, for my own soul and for our church, that this Advent would be the greatest Advent ever. And I’m not exactly sure how that happens, but I think it has to start with us knowing that we’re waiting in a land of deep darkness.

And this land of deep darkness is also a land of ashes.

Darkness and ashes go together in the Bible. Isaiah and Job both use the language of darkness and ashes to talk about lowliness and a sense of despair. Isaiah tells us that a sign of humiliation is when one spreads ashes beneath them. Job, in his suffering, sat in ashes. He said he had become like ashes — which meant that he was undone. He felt like he was over. He felt doomedand out of luck, and he was just stuck with a sense of dread (see Isaiah 9:6; Job 10:21–22; Job 2:8, 30:19).

That’s what darkness and ashes can do to you. You can’t see beyond where you are. Everything kind of closes in around you. What once was is no longer, but you’ve still got the memory. What might have been did not come to be, but you’ve still got this unfulfilled dream. And this shouldn’t make you cynical — we should never be cynical — but there is a kind of heavy dose of realism that recognizes this world is broken, and superficial solutions do not work.

That’s the world we live in. John Bunyan called this world the City of Destruction. It’s the land of darkness and ashes.

And I need to say all this to you this morning because I know that on your radio and in the places you shop, you’re hearing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” and “holly jolly rockin’ around the Christmas tree” — and look, that’s great, I love it, we’re gonna get there — but first, we’re in a season of waiting, and we need to know that we’re waiting in a land of darkness and ashes. That’s vital to the real meaning of this whole thing.

And this morning I want to show you that in Hebrews Chapter 2. We find three truths here that we need to remember this Advent:

Current Reality
Obvious Predicament
Active Hope

Father in heaven, we ask that now you would do what only you can do, by the power of your Spirit. Speak to our hearts and accomplish your will, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

1) Current RealityLet’s start in verse 5. Everybody take a look at verse 5:

“For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.”

There’s a couple of things to quickly note here …

Over AngelsFirst is the angels … The writer mentions angels because that’s been a big part of Chapter 1. Remember the writer starts the Book of Hebrews by showing us the supremacy of Jesus. He gives us ten glorious facts about Jesus, and the last one is that Jesus is superior to the angels, and from Chapter 1, verse 4 all the way through the end of the chapter, he backs up that claim with seven different passages from the Old Testament.

He uses the Old Testament to emphasize the point that Jesus is greater than the angels, and so in Chapter 2, verse 5, when he says, “It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come” what’s implied here is that God subjected the world to come to Jesus.

Basically the writer is resuming his exposition from Chapter 1. He took a little break in Chapter 2, verses 1–4 to warn us not to neglect our great salvation, but now he is back to stressing the superiority of Jesus, and what he says here in verse 5 is right in line with Chapter 1, verse 13. Look at that for a second. Chapter 1, verse 13.

“And to which of the angels has he [God] ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?

The point here is that God didn’t say that to angels, he said that to Jesus. God the Father told Jesus to “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” — and enemies being your footstool is another way to say they’re subjected to you — right? See how that fits together? If they’re your footstool it means you are higher than them.

So in Chapter 2, verse 5, the writer is repeating that same idea in the same construction we’ve seen in Chapter 1: “Not angels, but Jesus.” Jesus is greater than the angels, and the reason he’s greater is because he sits at the top. Jesus reigns over everything. The writer is still showing us the supremacy of Jesus.

The World to ComeNow the second thing to notice in verse 5 is that phrase “the world to come.” Y’all see that in verse 5? Literally, it’s “the world that is coming.” The future world.

So God did not subject the future world to angels, he subjected the future world to Jesus, and when it comes to this future world, look what the writer says: It’s the end of verse 5. He says,

“… the world to come, of which we are speaking.”

Now did y’all know that in Chapter 1 the writer has been speaking about the future world? Did we pick that up? What has the writer said in Chapter 1 that sounds like the world to come?

It’s the fact that Jesus reigns. Jesus has been raised from the dead and exalted, and that’s the hallmark of the world to come. It’s that Jesus is the Davidic King and he is seated on his heavenly throne, and the future world is subjected to him.

Because the writer has been talking about the reign of Jesus, that’s why he can say he’s been talking about the world to come.

Psalm 8 ExcursionAnd on that point, the writer says verse 6: “It has been testified somewhere…” and then he quotes from Psalm 8,

“What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?”

And there’s a long debate on exactly what the writer of Hebrews is doing with this quote. So I want to take a little excursion here for a minute and talk about this, and it’s gonna get a little complex, so look at your neighbor and say Get ready.

When we looked at this passage earlier this year, Pastor Kenny (I miss that guy) he said that the question is on whether the writer of Hebrews is thinking about humans in general or is he thinking about the Messiah in particular … and Kenny said the answer is Yes. And I think that’s right.

In other words, I think both humanity in general and Jesus in particular are in view here, but I wanna say that humanity is in the background, and Jesus is in the foreground. This has to do with a biblical-theological theme in Scripture that Jesus is the Last Adam.

Just like the first Adam represented all humanity in old creation, Jesus is the Last Adam and he represents all of redeemed humanity in the new creation. And as our representative, it means there are several things said of Jesus that are also said of his redeemed humanity.

One amazing place we see this is in the Book of Daniel Chapter 7, verses 13–14. Daniel has a vision, “And behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man…” And the son of man came to the Ancient of Days and to him, to this son of man, is given dominion and glory and a kingdom — all supremacy. Daniel is clearly talking about the Messiah, the Son of man, but then a few verses later he says that the saints of the Most High will have dominion and glory and kingdom (see 7:18). So which is it? Who has dominion? The Son of man or the saints? The answer is Yes, because the Son of man, the Last Adam, is the representative of the saints, and we inherit his dominion with him.

And this same theology shows up in the very last chapter of the Bible. In the Book of Revelation, which is all about the glory of Jesus, listen to John’s vision in Revelation 22, verse 3.

“3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

So the servants of the Lamb, the saints of the Most High, redeemed humanity — they will reign forever. That’s us. Did you know that? The point is that as Jesus reigns, Jesus our representative, the Last Adam, as he reigns, we reign with him.

That’s a biblical-theological theme, and that’s what’s going on here with Psalm 8. There’s the Son of Man and redeemed humanity, there’s Christ and Christians — and both are in view, but I see Jesus as still in the foreground here like he’s been in Chapter 1.

And the big reason is because I think the writer of Hebrews understands Psalm 8 in its context to be about the Messiah (and that’s for about five amazing reasons I can’t get into now), but why it matters is because I think the writer is applying Psalm 8 to Jesus right away in verse 6 … now I’m not 100% sure that’s what the writer is trying to do, but I’m like 93% sure, so I need you to work with me.

Okay, look at your neighbor and say We made it.

Now look at verse 6.

In verse 6, see those little quote marks? There’s where he’s quoting Psalm 8, which is addressed to God, and he says:

“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

Now from this point onward, the writer is just gonna break this down for us. First he highlights what is meant by “subjection.” He explains:

“Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.”

Total control. That’s what he’s saying. And the foreground here is that God the Father has given Jesus total control. That’s what it means to be the King who reigns over the future world. Jesus himself said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” We repeat that every Sunday at our commission and we believe it. It’s true. Right now, really and truly, Jesus reigns.

Why We ExistThat’s why this church exists. Some of y’all know this story. I tell it in the Foyer, that in the early years, anytime I’d meet with someone to talk about church planting, I tried to start every conversation by saying: “First off, Jesus reigns. Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth, and he doesn’t need us.”

And that’s still true. We should never forget that. Our church — with our mission to go deep as disciples and to send out droves of disciples — that’s not a “have to,” that’s a “get to.” Because Jesus doesn’t need us. We only get to be part of what he’s doing because he chooses to work with us. All of our ministry is a “get to” when we understand that Jesus is the one who reigns.

And he reigns because that’s what it means to be King. That’s what it means to be Lord and to have all authority. And Jesus has that authority right now. This is current reality. Jesus reigns.

Now here’s the next thing to see, in the last sentence of verse 8. This is our second point. Obvious Predicament.

2) Obvious PredicamentLook at the last sentence of verse 8:

“At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.”

That means there’s a problem here. There’s an obvious predicament —

The writer has just told us that Jesus reigns over everything. God the Father has put the future world in subjection to him. Jesus has total control — but just look around for a minute … At present, if we open our eyes to what’s going on, it sure doesn’t look like everything is in subjection to Jesus.

And that’s been the case for a long time … like a couple thousand years. And I love how the old poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow captures this. (Who lives in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis? All right, this is your guy.) His poem “Christmas Bells” has been put to music and it’s a great song, but Longfellow wrote the poem in 1863, during the Civil War, which was a horrible time, his family suffered greatly. He starts the poem,

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

But then later he says,

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

We get that tension: there’s the current reality that Jesus reigns and the obvious predicament that a lot of people over whom Jesus reigns hate him and they live in rebellion against him.

One commentator says that there are two underlying issues in this passage:

If Jesus is the Son, as expounded in Chapter 1, why is his rule not complete and obvious to all?
How does Jesus’s humiliation as the man who suffers and dies not make him inferior to angels?

Both of these issues have to do with glory and suffering. If Jesus reigns, why is there still suffering and evil in this world? If Jesus is the one who reigns, why did he experience suffering and evil himself?

The question is: if Jesus truly reigns, why are we still dealing with darkness and ashes?

This has to be one of the most important questions for Christians to figure out.

Hi, Meet Inaugurated EschatologyAnd the key here is understanding that we, right now, are living in between two worlds. There is this present world (old creation under Adam), and there is the future world (new creation under Christ).

And although right now we’re living in the present world (old creation), the future world — through the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus — the future world (new creation) has been inaugurated here. Jesus has initiated, or introduced, the future world into this old world. The theological word for that is inaugurated eschatology.

Any of y’all like the show The Office? There’s this one episode, Season 8, when Dwight throws a garden party (Season 8, Episode 4). In preparing for this garden party at Schrute Farms, he reads a book about garden party etiquette and he works really hard to make this a proper party. And so he stands at the entrance of the party, dressed in a tuxedo and a top hat, and when each guest arrives, he announces their names to introduce them.

He had read that it’s a way to honor your guests. The louder and more formal you shout their names, the more you honor them.

And so when Jim and Pam arrive with their daughter, Cece, Dwight shouts: “James, Pamela, and Peepee Halpert!” (and the joke is that he shouts the wrong name).

But what’s the connection to the resurrection of Jesus?

It’s that when Jesus was raised from the dead, that was like God the Father shouting Jesus’s name. He formally introduced Jesus to this present world, saying “Here is the Son of God! Here is the Lord of all! Here is the King of Kings who reigns over everything!” … except that Jesus, rather than staying here and reigning in this present world, he ascended to his heavenly throne where he reigns over the future world that is coming.

Still WaitingSo this present world is not the same because the future world has been introduced, and the future world is not fully here, because it’s only been introduced — so see, we live in between two worlds.

Jesus reigns over the future world that is coming, but right now, in this world, his future-world reign is manifest spiritually. So remember in the Gospels all the parables Jesus told about the kingdom of God. There’s a hiddenness to it. Like a mustard seed, it’s small for now, but it won’t always be.

For now, the reign of Jesus means he sends his Spirit and the good news of his reign, which is being announced and believed all over the world … as Christians we are a people who have been changed by Jesus spiritually (we’re not perfect yet, he’s still working on us, these bodies are mortal) but happy surrender to the reign of Jesus is active in us. We’ve been born again spiritually as part of that future world, but the full consummation of that future world is still waiting for Jesus’s physical return.

We’re still waiting for his final physical entrance, his Second and Last Advent … which we should remember at Advent. We’re still waiting …

And this waiting is in a land of darkness and ashes. That’s obvious.

And that brings us to our third and final truth to see here.

1 is current reality (Jesus reigns); #2 is obvious predicament (we’re still waiting for the consummation of his reign) … and now finally, #3 … active hope.

3) Active HopeVerse 9,

“But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

The writer here affirms again what he’s been saying this whole time, that Jesus reigns. Jesus is the Son of Man who has been crowned with glory and honor. Although we see a land of darkness and ashes, we know what’s true about Jesus. We know that by his resurrection God has crowned him, enthroned him, as King over all. That’s no new information to what the writer has been saying in Chapter 1, but what is new here is the application from Psalm 8: Jesus is “him who for a little while was made lower than the angels” and then that “because of the suffering of death” Jesus was crowned with glory and honor.

This means that now the writer is not just stating the fact that Jesus reigns, but he’s telling us how Jesus came to reign.

And it’s that his reign came through suffering.

It’s that Jesus reigns as him “who for a little while was made lower than the angels.”

That’s referring to Jesus’s first Advent. It means that Jesus, who is superior to angels, for a little while, for a time within redemptive history, Jesus humbled himself and stepped into this present world to be lower than angels. “Mild he lays his glory by.” He became human like us, here in this world, and he subjected himself to human suffering. Jesus experienced the darkness and ashes of this land.

Y’all know that we as humans love stories, and we especially love a good underdog story, what’s called the ‘Rags to Riches’ plot. It’s ancient storyline. And it can at least be traced back to an old Norwegian fairytale called “Askeladden.” You’ve probably heard this story before. It’s about a son who is the runt of his family, he’s always overlooked, he gets the worst chores, but then later, against great odds, he becomes a glorious hero-king. His name “Askeladden” means “Ash Boy” because he was given the job of working in the kitchen, down at the bottom of the castle, where there were no windows. It was dark and he had to scrub dishes and clean the ashes of the hearth. It was dirty, lowly work.

We know this story as Cinder-ella (“Cinder” as in a fire-cinder, like ashes). If you can remember, Cinderella’s job was down in the kitchen where it was dark, she scrubbed pots and pans, and swept ashes. It was dirty work. That’s the setting of this great fairytale, darkness and ashes. But of course we know what comes. There’s a transformation, there’s an ascension, and the rest is happily ever after.

And the reason we love that story is because it echoes a truer and greater story. When Jesus, for a little while was made lower than the angels, he came here to experience darkness and ashes to the fullest extent. He took the lowest of lowly jobs, suffering to the point of death, even death on a cross. And that wasn’t accident. That was not a wrench thrown into God’s plan. But it was actually through his suffering, because of his suffering, that God has highly exalted him. God has raised him and enthroned him as the reigning king — He is not dead nor doth he sleep! — And he understands the darkness and ashes, because he’s been here. That’s our active hope.

It means we wait in a land of darkness and ashes, but we don’t have to fret over it. We don’t like it, that’s okay, but we don’t fret over it, because we know darkness and ashes is not the end of the story. Jesus is reigning over the world to come, and now we wait for the consummation of that world … when we, as his brothers and sisters, as ourselves Ash-boys and Cinderellas, will reign with him. More on that next week.

But for today, we come now to this Table.

The TableAnd we come to this Table with a simple prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus.”

What would make this the greatest Advent ever is if Jesus returned. We should pray for that and hope in that, even at this Table this morning.

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Well, the day has come — our very last sermon in the book of Hebrews. Our text this morning is this incredible book’s conclusion. But don’t let that word fool you — it’s not a conclusion like the kind we may be accustomed to — one that simply restates all the main points we’ve already covered. No, but here at the letter’s end our author is yet pushing us onward — further into the margins of our care for one another, and deeper into the realities of the God whom we worship.

Of the three main points of this sermon, the first will correspond to the former, our care for one another, points two and three with the latter, the deep realities of our God. Here’s the three points: Our Prayer, God’s Power, Jesus’ Unique Glory. Before we go any further, let’s pray and ask God for his help.

1) Pray For UsFirst point, prayer. Our text opens with the entreaty, v. 18 “Pray for us.” And I think one litmus test for us, this morning, of how deep the realities of Hebrews have permeated our souls, is how we react to those three words – “pray for us.”

As One Near GodFor example, when you hear “Pray for us,” you may think, “Why pray, I mean, would the God of the universe even hear me? I’m no writer to the Hebrews. I’m no apostle Paul. I’m just a standard issue, run-of-the-mill Christian.” Hebrews would reply, “Brother, sister, if you’re a Christian, then how could God not hear you when you pray?”

Recall how Hebrews has labored to show that to be a Christian is to be one who is intensely near to God.

One who recognizes that there’s “a better hope (that’s been) introduced, through which we draw near to God.” (7:19)

As one who believes that “(Jesus) is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him.” (7:25)

One who has, “confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,” (10:19-20)

One who, because you have a “great priest over the house of God, should “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (10:21-22).

One who “with confidence (can) draw near to the throne of grace, (to) receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

Do you pray as one dialing up a long-distance phone call? Do you pray as one wishfully-thinking – perhaps God will hear me, eventually. If you’re a Christian, you live all your days – morning, noon, night, at work, at home, good times, bad times, before the face of God. So when we hear the writer’s request to, “Pray for us,” we should think, “Of course he’s asking us to pray for him, we’re Christians — when we pray, we pray with God in the room. How could he not hear us?”

As one dedicated to othersYou may read, “Pray for us” and think, “Why pray, it’s not like it’s my responsibility.” Hebrews would say, “Actually, brothers and sisters, one another’s spiritual good is our responsibility.” No, not responsibility in the sense of control – we can’t manage or manufacture another’s spiritual good. But it is our responsibility to work toward, put effort toward, our brothers and sisters spiritual good. Hence the exhortations,

“Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” (3:13) and “Stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together,” (10:24) and “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God” (12:15) and now, “pray for us.” This is no mere preface to the paragraph for us to gloss over, but a real, live call to action to work and labor for the good of your brothers and sisters in the faith through prayer.

There’s two more possibilities.

As ChristlikeYou may read, “Pray for us” and think, “Why pray, isn’t that a bit too menial of a task? Too simple? Like, ‘Give me something that takes a bit more skill and knowledge, not this little stuff like prayer.’” Hebrews would say, “Have you missed my description of what Jesus, your Great High Priest, has been doing for the sake of his people, for the past 2,000 years?”

“(Jesus) is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25)

Jesus prays for his people. In fact, that is what he is doing for you and me, before his Father, right in this very moment. The author to the Hebrews — and this should shock us — in saying, “pray for us” invites us to join Jesus in his prayer ministry — praying with the same names on our lips that are also on his.

As those who believe it does somethingLastly, You may think, “Why pray, it’s not like it’s actually going to change anything.” Hebrews would say, verse 19 of today’s text, “I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner.”

Hear the urgency in those words, “I urge you the more earnestly to do this?” Like, “I’m really asking you to do this, it’s really important, I’m expecting it of you.

He’s so after their prayer, in fact, that he even gives them personal testimony, v. 18, “For we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things” lest any doubt about their motives arise and cause them not to pray.

That’d be quite the ridiculous ask if prayer changed nothing.

He goes further, “I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you sooner.” See that. Sooner. Like, “Listen, my current location will change, and the time of my arrival will change, and things will move into motion, events will fall like dominoes — I’ll be restored to you, sooner, if you pray.”

Implication: if you don’t pray, well then, I might not.

Interestingly, it seems he is, after all, confident that these Hebrews will respond in prayer. Look at the hint in verse 23,

“You should know that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon.”

In other words, “Since I know that through their prayers I will be restored to them sooner, then Timothy better hurry up, because I’m taking off here, shortly.” He’ll come with me, but only if he gets here soon.

First point, Pray. Now, second, God’s power.

2) God’s PowerHebrews follows his exhortation to his readers to pray for him more earnestly with his own prayer, in the form of a benediction, for them (verses 20-21). And very prominent in his benediction — certainly anchoring and supporting his prayer — is the unparalleled power of God.

Now, God’s power has already been implied. In verse 19, note the passive language — not “I’ll go to you sooner” but “I will be restored to you sooner.” It’s not him that’s going to do the restoring, but God.

God’s power will be called upon in v. 21, It is God who “will equip them with everything good, and work in them that which is pleasing.”

But nowhere is God’s power more plainly evident than in verse 20, God’s raising of Jesus from the dead.

Interestingly, the wording here doesn’t seem to emphasize the new life to which Jesus was raised to, but rather on the death he was taken out from. “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus.” Death, and the fact that the same Jesus who went into it, God brought out from it, that’s what’s in view. In order to grasp just how that bringing out of death shows us about God’s power, we need to begin by asking, “What is death in the first place?”

Well, Death is the pitiless wall between man and every one of God’s promises. Death is the dividing line between man and everlasting joy, peace, and life. Death is the chasm of darkness that swallows sinners whole. Death is the final ticking of the clock, the “game over” moment, the snuffing out of ones hope, happiness, and wholeness. Death is the thing that all of us naturally fear. Because Death is the thing that we are all born into. And Death is the thing that we all deserve.

Even more, Death, if it were to be the end for Christians, would render our preaching vain, and our faith vain, and prove we are still hopelessly lost in our sins, and of all people most to be pitied.

As it is, we’re not hopelessly lost in our sin, and death doesn’t render our faith in vain, because Jesus, has been:

“crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” (Heb. 2:9)

Jesus, through death, destroyed the one who had the power of death, that is, the devil, (Heb. 2:14). And Jesus “has delivered all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:15).

For the Christian, that death is dead and buried. That Death has breathed its last. That “Death has swallowed up in victory, and been robbed of it’s sting” because it was in Jesus’ death, (Col. 2:14), that God canceled our record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, nailing them to the cross.

And it was in Jesus’ death that God disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Col. 2:15).

And the proof of all this – our own freedom and victory over the death which had us so enslaved and shackled in its grasp – is in a Messiah who breathes – 3 days following his own death.

Hebrews, aiming throughout this letter to instill in his brothers and sisters a confidence in God – confidence that God can keep his promises, keep his people, equip them with all they need, work in them that which he pleases, and both hear and answer their prayers – says, “Allow me to remind you who bound the hands of the greatest enemy the world has ever known!”

How powerful is God? Powerful enough to conquer the grave. More than that, conquer the grave for the good of his people.

It think it’s fair to say we don’t often associate power with peace, do we? We associate power with destruction. Power with violence. Power, when we hear about it on the news or see it in the papers, is not usually, to us, a good thing.

But our God, verse 20, is the “God of peace” because he puts his power to work for the good of his people — to bring them peace with him, and downstream from that peace, a growing peace with self, with others, with the world, leading on into the final peace, final rest, heaven.

Col. 1:20,

“God, through Jesus, reconciled to himself all things making peace by the blood of his cross.”

For that reason we call it, Eph. 6:15, “the gospel of peace.”

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that God puts his power to work for you? That you’re not running on your own strength in this Christian life? It’s not all up to you? But that it is instead the God who conquered the grave who equips you with everything good that you may do his will (verse 21)?

Just look at that verse: It’s his power that is without limit (equipping you), and it is his will – the very thing he wants, the very thing he desires – that he’s equipping you for (verse 21). It’s what he finds pleasing that he’s moving you toward. And if the grave could not stop him, why would something as simple as equipping you for the very things that he desires for you to be and do this side of glory?

Brother, will he require a vacation in a season where you most need him near?

Sister, will he suffer exhaustion and need rest when you most need his strength?

Church, will there ever come a day when you go to him and say, “Lord, I need more faith, I need more hope, I need more strength, I need more love,” and him say, “Look, you asked me for these things last week, and I gave them to you, but I’m off today, you’ll need to wait a bit till I revive?”

We might feel that way when others ask things of us. God does not. His power never waivers, just ask the grave.

So pray. Pray in light of God’s power, and run the Christian life in light of God’s power. Final point, marvel at the unique glory of Jesus.

3) Jesus’ Unique GloryTurn to the description of Jesus we get here, starting halfway through verse 20, “Our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep.” It’s a description not many of us would expect to come at the tail end of this letter. “Our Lord Jesus, The Great High Priest” – that’s what we’d expect, not “Our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep.”

It’s imagery that shifts the focus a bit in a surprising way. I mean for so much of this book we’ve been dialed in on the Temple – the priests and sacrifices there – but “shepherd of the sheep” bumps the lens. Zooms it out past the Temple to the rolling hills and pastureland beyond it – focusing in there, as it were, on a group of sheep, traveling together: not wandering about and changing direction, but moving forward; not headed toward arid ground but luscious field; not walking in crippling fear, but contented peace.

They’re sheep, not known for consensus, nor intelligence, nor bravery, – yet, they seem to have all. Why? Because, as we see most clearly though this lens, they have a great shepherd. Beautiful, but what’s the connection to Hebrews?

Why the transition from Jesus as Great High Priest to Jesus as Great Shepherd, especially here at the very tale end of the letter? Well, consider two of the major themes of this book. Jesus as the Great High Priest, who’s offered the better sacrifice, and has now sat down on the throne beside his father. And, Jesus’ people bound for the better country, the city with foundations, and their need to keep moving onward, toward it.

The first, Jesus as Priest, happens at a very fixed-point on the map, so to speak – the true Temple in heaven. The second, the journey of Jesus’ people, does not happen at a fixed point on the map. It moves as the people progress toward glory.

I think Hebrews leaves us with the image of Jesus as the Great Shepherd, so as to say, “Jesus is the Great High Priest, who’s finished his work on behalf of his people and sat down on the throne, he is. And he is also, the Great Shepherd who now continues to lead his people onward, as they travel toward that very throne.” He’s not in other words, the kind of priest that says from his throne, “My work is finished, I’ll see you when you get here,” but a priest who completes his Temple work, and also grabs his shepherds crook, saying, “now, follow me through the wilderness as I lead you there.” The book ends with God’s people bound for glory.

As God’s people travel on, they look to their shepherd – eyes fixed on Jesus. As they look to him, what do they see?

In the BloodOne final point here: See there’s that little phrase at the very end of verse 20,

“By the blood of the eternal covenant.”

Where does that connect to? Are we to read, “by the blood” as referring to how the God of peace brought back Jesus from the dead? Like, “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant?” — The blood being the means by which God brought back Jesus from the dead? That’s what many suggest, but to be honest, that seems a bit strange to me.

After all, throughout this book, the point of Jesus’ blood – overwhelmingly – has been that it is for his people. He bleeds for his people. That’s who the blood is for. In fact, Hebrews notes this as an area of contrast between Jesus, and the high priests in Jerusalem, saying, “the high priest goes into the Most Holy Place but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people” (Heb. 9:7). It’s a point of contrast – Jesus’ blood not being for himself, but purely for the sins of his people.

A second suggestion is to read it as, “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by virtue of the blood of the eternal covenant.” So Jesus became the Great Shepherd by virtue of the fact that he shed his blood. Makes more sense— after all he is the shepherd who lays down his life, bleeds, for the sheep.

But could there be more? Could Hebrews, at the end of this letter which has been so riveted upon the glories of Jesus, be doing something other than noting the mechanics either of Jesus’ resurrection, or of how Jesus became the Great Shepherd?

Here’s what I want to suggest to you is the final image of Jesus that we get at the close of this book. I was greatly helped by Pastor David Mathis in working through this. He noted that the literal rendering of this passage in Greek would read, “May the God of peace who brought up from the dead the shepherd of the sheep, the great one in the blood of the eternal covenant, the Lord of us, Jesus.” Hear that? The “great one in the blood of the eternal covenant.”

I don’t think the focus here is on the mechanics of Jesus’ resurrection or his becoming shepherd — But is instead on the glory of Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep, who as his sheep (scared, tired, discouraged as they can be at times) lift their eyes up to him, see him adorned in the blood of the eternal covenant — venerated by it, celebrated by it, glorified by it.

They see adorned in the blood of victory, not of defeat. Cloaked in the symbol of battle won, not lost. Arrayed in the proof of power possessed, authority shown, and glory made clear. His blood adorning him in awesome splendor. The great one in the blood which dismantled death, defeated Satan, and paid for our sins in full – that is who they see.

What an encouraging reminder for the sheep to look up and see the blood by which their very souls were bought. What a cause for them to bow once more before their Great Shepherd. And what an image, what a picture, to leave us with at the close of such a glorious letter.

As the hymn goes,

“crown him the Lord of love! Behold his hands and side - Rich wounds, yet visible above, In beauty glorified.”

To the TableJesus’ blood is what now brings us to the table. Here, we bask in the presence of our great shepherd and receive from his hand — a meal which anticipates a better meal, which he is bringing us to. It’s a meal that celebrates Jesus – his blood spilled in death, the death that dismantled the grave. And so if you recognize this blood as a symbol of Jesus’ victory and the means by which you have been reconciled to God, we invite you to eat and drink with us.

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In the summer of 1962, a famous Swiss theologian named Karl Barth (1886–1968) made a celebrated seven-week trip to the United States. While here, he came in contact at a Chicago Q&A session with another Carl — Carl Henry (1913–2003), who was editor of Christianity Today.

Henry stood up, introduced himself, and asked Barth about “the historical factuality of the resurrection of Jesus.” Barth didn’t seem to appreciate the question. He became angry, remembers Henry, and pointed at the editor and said, “Did you say Christianity Today or Christianity Yesterday?” “The audience — largely nonevangelical professors and clergy — roared with delight.” Then, once the room was quiet, Henry answered, in the words of Hebrews 13:8, “Yesterday, today, and forever.”

Verse 8 on the sameness of Jesus — his constancy, his immutability — is such a precious truth, and right at the heart of this final chapter of Hebrews.

Last week we saw that chapter 12 culminated with verse 28:

”let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.”

Chapter 13 then follows under this banner of “acceptable worship.” And that word “acceptable” appears again in 13:15–16 as “pleasing” (same root in the Greek, euarest-).

“let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

This section, from the end of chapter 12, through 13:16, is knit together as a vision for practical life that is pleasing to God. We might think of this sketch in chapter 13 as glimpses of how to please him. (We’ll see this “pleasing” language again next week in 13:21; as we did in 11:5–6.)

Divine PleasantnessBut before we spend the rest of the message under this banner of pleasing God, let’s first put chapter 13 in the context of chapters 1–12. What has been our repeated refrain from the beginning of Hebrews, back in January?

Jesus is better. Better than the angels. Better than Moses. Better than Joshua. Better than Aaron. And better than the first covenant and its place and priests and sacrifices. Jesus makes better promises and gives us a better hope, and a better country, and he is the better possession over all worldly possessions.

So, in saying, again and again, that Jesus is better, the message of the first 12 chapters has been: Jesus is pleasing, he is gain, he is better, he makes our souls happy with the very joy of the eternal God.

Jesus, as the second person of the Triune God, shares in the infinite happiness and unshakable bliss of the Godhead. As we say in our leadership affirmation,

“God is supremely joyful in the fellowship of the Trinity, each Person beholding and expressing His eternal and unsurpassed delight in the all-satisfying perfections of the triune God.”

This God is so blessed, so infinitely happy, so satisfied in himself, so full in his joy that he overflows in pleasure to create the world, and then, even more wondrously, to redeem his people from sin and death, by coming himself in the person of Christ as the true high priest (chapters 5–7) and as the true sacrifice (chapters 8–10).

So, to this point, for 12 chapters, the refrain, in one sense, has been the pleasantness of Jesus — the very joy and blessedness of God himself, in himself, shared with us in and through Jesus and by his Spirit. And when our souls come to taste and enjoy the pleasantness and joy of God, and that Jesus is better than any standard of comparison, what do we want to do?

Well, for one, we want our lives to be pleasing to God. It pleases us to please him. Which does not mean that he’s a sad God who we make happy. There is no sad God. To be God is to be infinitely happy, infinitely pleased, quite apart from us or anything else outside of him. But amazingly, he gives us the dignity of pleasing him, in some modest measures, as echoes of his own pleasantness. As C.S. Lewis says at the end of his sermon “The Weight of Glory,”

“To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

Hebrews 13 gives us a vision for this pleasing life — the Christian life, a life that is first pleased with God and then, in a real way, pleases God. So then, what does it look like to live such a life, pleased in God, believing that and enjoying that Jesus is better?

It’s captured here in six glimpses.

1-We express our joy out loud. (v. 15)That is, we praise him. Lips of praise are an aspect of lives of worship. God is pleased by heartfelt words of praise. Verse 15:

“Through him [that is, through Jesus] let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”

So, the God-pleasing life includes praise. We “acknowledge his name” with our mouths. We say out loud, I’m a Christian. I love Jesus. I worship him. He is my Lord. He saved me. He is my Treasure. Jesus is better. And we gather here weekly to “acknowledge his name” together.

We express our joy in Jesus both in professing our faith and in corporate praise. We clearly, publicly, unashamedly identify with and commend Jesus, and we make a habit of corporate worship, beginning each new week together, setting the tone, and re-consecrating ourselves to him with joyful praise. And lips that praise him lead to lives that please him.

2-We fight to free our hearts from money. (vv. 5–6)Now, even twenty centuries ago, Christians could not free their hands from money. Even Jesus was asked about the temple tax, and miraculously produced a coin for himself and Peter.

We live in a physical world, with physical needs, served by coins and bills and credit cards that represent and transact value for the betterment of our lives and society. In this age, there’s no going without money. But what Hebrews warns about here is not money itself but “love of money.” Verses 5–6:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

How do we use money without loving money? Through being content with what you have. Do you have modest food and clothing? Then, in an important sense, you can be content, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:8, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content . . . .” That’s enough; it’s sufficient.

But then Hebrews gives us this remarkable, personal reason to be content in the last part of verse 5: “for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” In other words, don’t just be content with what you have, but with whom you have! Have another Love — a bigger one, a deeper one, a love that relativizes the pull of money on your heart. In Jesus Christ, we have God. If you have Jesus, you have God himself as your great possession. And he says he will never leave or forsake you. If you have God, what more could you need? To have God is to have everything you ultimately need. The clock is ticking on every material possession and dollar.

Verse 5 gets right to the bottom of this chapter, to the joy and pleasantness and blessedness that upholds and energies this whole practical vision: In Jesus, God will never leave us or forsake us. As long as you don’t abandon Jesus, God will not abandon you (and he works in us, 13:21, so that we won’t abandon Jesus). So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Which relates not only to verse 5 but also to verses 1–3.

3-We love and serve others. (vv. 1–3, 16)We could say so much under this heading and about these verses. And I’ll plan to do that this week in the article that comes out Friday. For now, let me just say this in sum, and read the verses.

Joy in Jesus does not lead to turning in on ourselves, to isolating ourselves, and neglecting the needs of others, or just sitting around endlessly by ourselves enjoying the glory of Christ. Rather, being pleased with his pleasantness leads to our wanting to please others with his pleasantness. Or, we might say, from our fullness of joy in Jesus, we do good for others, we share, we love. Verses 1–3 and 16:

“Let brotherly love continue. 2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3 Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. . . . Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

4-We prize marriage. (v. 4)So, there are four kinds of love in verses 1–4: brother-love, stranger-love, sympathy (or compassion), and marital love. And let me just say, verse 4 is for all of us. It says “among all.” This is relevant for all, married and single, old and young. And so, ask yourself in these next few moments, what does this mean for me? How do I hold marriage in honor? Are there ways in which I’m tempted to not hold marriage in honor? What’s your heart’s default perspective on marriage? Salvation? Fear of commitment? Pain? Annoyance? Verse 4:

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

First, let’s be clear about the second half of verse 4 — in case what was once obvious for all Christians may no longer be so among some. Earlier this year, a congresswoman from South Carolina, who professes to be a Christian, made a few comments from the podium, at a Christian prayer breakfast, about her live-in fiancé that made it clear they were sexually immoral. She was joking about it, totally clueless about verse 4. So, Cities Church, let there be no confusion here about verse 4. If there was any confusion about it in this room, be confused no more. We have come to verse 4. And it’s not the first time we’ve seen this Hebrews.

Remember last Sunday Jonathan talked about the “see to its” in Hebrews 12:15–16. The third one was “that no one is sexually immoral” (same word, pornos).

But I want to linger over the first part of verse 4, which is an even higher bar for application for each of us: The first part includes the second part, and more: “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” So, ask yourself, What would it mean for me to hold marriage in honor?

And to get even more specific, the word translated honor here is typically understood in a more affectionate way: highly valued, or prized, or precious. Like 1 Peter 1:19: “the precious blood of Christ.” Or 2 Peter 1:4: “he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.”

So, hear verse 4 like this: “Let marriage be precious among all.” Let it be highly valued. Let it be prized. Among husbands and to wives. Among unmarried and widows. Among children and teens. And this doesn’t entail any devaluing of singles or widows or children. So, consider how you talk about marriage. Is it the butt of jokes? The old ball and chain? Most comedy routines have a section on marriage and men and women. I get it. Some of it can be funny, and a way of enjoying God’s plainly different design in men and women. And some of it reveals a heart that does not highly value marriage, and does not shape us, as we laugh, to highly value marriage.

We honor marriage, and God’s idea and design, by prizing it in our minds and hearts and words and obedience.

5-We seek the better city. (v. 14) This may be the most countercultural of all, especially in a day when our world is so focused on “the immanent frame,” that is, what we can see and hear and touch and smell and taste.

Verse 14 is not the first mention of city in chapters 11 and 12. We have already heard about looking to the city to come:

11:10: Abraham “was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

11:14–16: “people who speak thus [acknowledging they are strangers and exiles] make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. . . . [T]hey desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”

Then last Sunday we rehearsed the seven glories of Mount Zion that are not only to come but also already ours, in some sense, by faith — 12:22: “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Then verse 14:

“here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

There is, in Christianity, a principled liberation from the immanent frame, from this world. Clearly that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other and love strangers and show sympathy to the mistreated and prize marriage. We don’t neglect to do good or share what we have — such sacrifices are pleasing to God — but in it all, above it all, beneath it all, we are not finally at home here — which frees us to love and serve our earthly city and neighbors. We seek the city that is to come. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul says in Philippians 3:20.

Which is such an important reminder as 2023 draws to a close. Because next year is 2024. And 2024 is an election year in this country. And in an election year, some otherwise seemingly soberminded people lose their heads. But as we orient on our here-and-now city (the polis, and its politics), Christians, in principle, are those who say, “Here we have no lasting city. We seek the better city, the heavenly city that is to come” — which frees us to love and serve here, and not “get ours” here and now.

Which leaves verses 7 and 17.

6-We thank God, and pray, for our leaders. (vv. 7, 17)Again we find a very different approach than what’s on offer and assumed in the world regarding leaders. First, verse 17:

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

So, we might say, the pursuit of joy is critical in a healthy dynamic between church leaders and their people.

Here’s how it works: First, Christian leaders aspire to the office and desire good work (1 Timothy 3:1). They want to do it. From joy, they set out in joy, to work for the people’s joy in Jesus. So, they seek to persuade the people, convince them, win their hearts with the word of God. They do not demand raw obedience.

“Obey” here comes from a word (Greek pethō) which typically means to convince, or persuade, or make confident, or win trust. This is essentially what is means in its three other uses in Hebrews, including the next verse: “Pray for us, for we are sure (convinced, confident, persuaded) that we have a clear conscience” (also 2:13 and 6:9).

Second, then, the people, if they are spiritually healthy, want to be led by worthy leaders. They’re eager to be taught, eager to be persuaded from the word, eager to be convinced. They have a disposition to yield to and receive worthy leadership, and being so won, they gladly submit — that is, congregants to the leaders (plural, together; we are not here talking about the gathered congregation to elders, or congregants to individual elders in informal contexts). And in this disposition, wise Christians know that it will be to their own advantage and gain if their leaders labor with joy and not with groaning. This doesn’t mean that it’s the church’s job to make the pastors happy. And it also means it’s not the church’s job to make the pastors miserable.

The healthiest dynamic in the church is leaders that don’t presume submission, but seek to persuade and win the congregation from the heart, and a congregation that isn’t just willing, but eager, to be led and persuaded by the leadership.

Yesterday and TodayVerse 17 relates to present leaders; verse 7 to past leaders. We finish with verse 7:

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”

He says “your leaders” spoke to you God’s word. In Christianity, good leaders teach, and good teachers, in time, come to lead. The authority for Christian leadership comes from the Word — from Jesus, his gospel, the Scriptures — not ourselves or elsewhere. We are people of the Book; our leaders are to be men of the Book, who teach, and lead from, the Book.

And their words and their way of life go together: they not only speak the word but model a way of life, and a way of finishing their course, that validates their words. Words and way belong together. Words give meaning to way of life. And way of life models and confirms words.

But Hebrews doesn’t say to imitate their “way of life.” Rather, “imitate their faith.” Remember these are past leaders, not present. A new generation has come, with its own challenges. The new generation encounters (slightly) different circumstances and contexts than those before them (times do change, though it’s easy to over-anticipate this and overstate it). Situations change, and the particular expressions of love required may vary, but imitate their faith. Why? Because faith focuses on its object — who is the same yesterday and today.

So above all, imitate this about your leaders: they followed Jesus. They leaned on him, trusted him, looked to him, and staked everything on him. And Jesus proved himself reliable and steady and trustworthy to them. And so he will be to us. From one generation to the next to the next. He is the same yesterday (for those who came before us) and today (for us).

On its own, sameness is not glorious. Satan is the father of lies, and has always been the father of lies. That sameness is a disgrace, not glorious. But if someone tells the truth, and is the Truth, then their enduring “sameness” accentuates and sweetens the glory of truth-telling.

And when someone, namely Jesus, is better than any standard comparison, the question remains, Will that change? He may proven himself to be enough for the generation before us. Will he be enough for us? To that, Hebrews says he is the same yesterday and today — gloriously the same, constant, steady, immutable, unchangeable. And then he adds, and forever. To the ages. In every generation to come.

What’s underneath this whole chapter is that Jesus is better (as Hebrews has argued) and that will not change. He is not only better right now. He will always be better. He will not lose his better-ness, and so we will not lose our grounds for joy, for being pleased in God, and living to please him.

And so we come to the Table.

Feed at the AltarVerse 10 mentions an altar: “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent [the priests of the old covenant] have no right to eat.” This altar is not first and foremost the Lord’s Table, as if Hebrews is saying, the Jews have their food, and we have ours.

When verse 10 says, “We have an altar,” it means the sacrifice and blood of Jesus. He is our altar. He died to make us holy, and happy. We are not strengthened by ritual foods, but our hearts are strengthened by grace. And this Table is an expression and application of the true altar that is the cross of Christ and his body and blood.

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A few weeks ago the pastoral team, along with our wives, had our annual fall retreat. This is something that we’ve been able to do every year since we were first planted, and it’s usually a time of team soul care. We pray for one another, and invest in our unity and health — which is all good and important — but this most recent retreat was more like a recalibration of purpose. We wanted to come back to the questions:

Why do we exist? What are we mainly all about?

So we discussed that and prayed about that, and it’s all pretty simple. This shouldn’t be a surprise to you. It’s not new — The purpose of this church is to delight in and display the glory of God in Jesus Christ.

That’s why we exist. Our mission and vision as a church … and everything we do as pastors in service and accountability to you; everything about our staff; everything about our band and all those who serve in children’s ministry and Sunday Welcome; and space set-up and A/V support; everything about our Community Groups and Life Groups — everything about our work and ministry to these cities in the places where you live, work, and recreate — everything ultimately terminates on this purpose: we delight in and display the glory of God. We enjoy and exalt God in all his glory.

This means that as a church we worship him and we want others to worship him because we want his glory to magnified above all things … because he’s God. He is more important than anything else there is. And we love him for that. We love God for being God. That’s the thing we can’t get over.

And I need to take some lessons from my son, Nate, on this. He always brings things back to God. The other day he and his brothers and me were talking, and I think the question was about their favorite holiday — but I’ve heard Nate say this before whether he’s talking about his favorite food, his favorite sport, his favorite movie — he might tell you about his favorite whatever, but then he’ll say, “But God is better, right Dad?” He says it all the time. And I say: Yeah, that’s right.

God is better … and bigger and more important than anything else you can imagine. And we exist for him — we as individuals, we exist for him, and this church exists for him. That’s what our passage is about today.

We’re looking at Hebrews 12:12–29, and this is a long passage; there’s a ton of Old Testament allusions and quotations; there’s a mixture of practical exhortation and doctrinal explanation — I spent a long time on this text this past week, but I’m gonna try to summarize the overall meaning of this passage in one sentence. This is one sentence, divided up into three points:

Keep running again,
Because we have what is better,
Therefore, worship God.

Keep running again because we have what is better, therefore, worship God.

Let’s pray:

Father in heaven, please help us now as we set our attention on your Holy Scriptures. Give us open and receptive hearts to receive what you have for us, in Jesus’s name, amen!

1) Keep running again (verses 12-17, 25–27)Now the reason I’m saying “again” is because we’ve already heard this. We’ve been hearing this for the past two Sundays:

Verses 1–2 — run with endurance the race set before us

Verse 3 — don’t get weary or fainthearted (which implies: keep running)

Verse 12 this morning — “Therefore” [because we now understand why the running is hard, because of God’s fatherly discipline in verses 5–11], “therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”

There’s two things going on here in verses 12–13:

The first thing to see is that the writer continues the running metaphor he started in verse 1. Now I don’t pretend to know much about proper form when it comes to running, but I did verify this with some real runners, so allow me to demonstrate.

When you’re running, you want your hands up here, by your chest, moving. If you see somebody running, and their hands are drooping down here, what would you think is going on? They’re tired — if you’re running and your hands are down here, that’s like the universal sign that you’re struggling.

Now add to that “weak knees” — drooping hands and weak knees — and you’ve got a runner who is about to drop. So the writer of Hebrews is still working in the running metaphor.

Now notice in verse 12 that verb “lift” or “strengthen.” In the original, it’s actually only one verb that applies to both the drooping hands and weak knees. The word means, basically, to restore, or to re-strengthen — which is something you gotta do if you’re gonna keep running.

Also, verse 13, “make straight paths for your feet.” If you’re gonna keep running, you have to stick to the path, run straight — so that whatever is lame, won’t be.

It’s easy to see here that the writer is saying what he’s been saying: again, keep running.

Old Testament Allusions (verses 12–13)But there’s something else the writer is doing. Verses 12–13 allude to at least two Old Testament verses. First, listen to Isaiah 35, verse 3 — and the context of Isaiah 35 is full of joy and hope. Isaiah has been talking about God’s future salvation. He says, Isaiah 35:3,

“Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
4 Say to those who have an anxious heart,
‘Be strong; fear not!…’”

Now listen to Proverbs 4:26,

“Ponder [or make straight] the path of your feet;
then all your ways will be sure.”

So that’s Isaiah 35:3 and Proverbs 4:26 — and it sure seems like the writer of Hebrews is echoing these verses in 12 and 13 — the early Christians who first heard this book would have absolutely made the Old Testament connection — and what’s brilliant about this by the writer (I just want to point out!) is that he is simultaneously quoting Old Testament verses and keeping it within the running metaphor. He’s saying: Again, keep running (like I’ve been saying) and here’s support from the Hebrew Scriptures. This is amazing.

Peace and Holiness (verse 14)Then he gives us another command in verse 14:

“Strive [or pursue] for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

Pursue peace and holiness. This is part of the running. And one important thing to know about peace and holiness is that peace and holiness are the fruit of the gospel for all things horizontal and vertical. Peace, horizontal. Holiness, vertical.

In the death of Jesus, he demolished the walls of hostility that stood between us and others, which means, at a personal level, the world has become our neighbor. Our default orientation to everyone is peaceableness.

And, holiness means that we are maturing as God’s sons and daughters. We should be increasingly living in congruence to who God has made us to be, is making us to be. There is a “holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” That’s what verse 14 says. It means the only way we’re going to see Jesus face-to-face one day is if we are made like him. We must be holy like him.

That’s something to remember as you imagine the day you’re going to see Jesus. I try to think about that moment a lot, especially in worship. I look up there at that window and remember that Jesus is a real person, and I’ve said this before … he probably doesn’t look exactly like that, but he looks something like that! Because he has a face. He’s got hands. He has eyes. And one day I’m going to see him. And I wonder what I’m gonna do. I can get kinda nervous thinking about it.

But what helps me is that fact that in that moment when I see Jesus I’m going to be completely holy — that’s how I know I won’t say anything dumb. I’ll see him and I’ll be like him.

And the holiness that I will have in that moment, and the peace that I have horizontally with others, are both realities that I have received in the gospel. I don’t earn any of these things. They are gifts given to me through my union with Jesus. That’s true for all Christians.

And therefore, we pursue peace and holiness — we pursue them not to earn them, but to fulfill them. That’s basically the Christian life. That’s what the running is — we are increasingly becoming who we are in Christ — and there are some warnings here. … in verse 15 and verse 25.

A Word on Warnings (vv. 15ff, 25ff)These warnings are part of the running, so I’m going to combine them together — we’re not going to spend a ton of time on this — I wrote to you about this in the email on Friday, called it two mistakes to avoid in discipleship — but notice that verse 15 and verse 25 both begin with the word “see”.

Verse 15, “See to it that no one fails to obtain [or falls short of] the grace of God…”

Verse 25, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking …”

And in both cases the writer refers to a negative example from the Old Testament. There’s Esau as the negative example in the first warning, and then Israel at Mount Sinai as the negative example in the second warning. Don’t be like them.

Don’t be short-sighted like Esau who failed to think about the future; and don’t be fearful like Israel who failed to obey God speaking in the present.

When it comes to running with endurance, we need to have the long view and we need to know that every step matters. These warnings are part of the running; running is still the major theme of the chapter; it’s our first point: “Keep running again.”

Now here’s the second point, the second part of our summary sermon sentence. Keep running again…

2) Because we have what is better (verses 18–24)This is verses 18–24, and this section is just incredible. I’m going to read the whole section again, but let me tell you what’s going on. The writer is going to do another contrast here, basically between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And he’s done this contrast before, but what makes it different in Chapter 12 is that this is a contrast of our experience.

It’s riveting. The writer starts by describing the experience of Israel at Mount Sinai (in Exodus 19), and he describes this like a play-by-play commentator. TV and video have basically ruined us, but imagine for the first hearers what it would have been like to hear this play-by-play! It’s all sensory language. Listen to this, and see if you can track with the senses evoked. Verse 18:

18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” 21 Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”

It’s all touchable, smellable, hearable, seeable. Old Covenant Israel came to that at Mount Sinai and it terrified them. But we have not come to that. Instead, we’ve come to something different — something better.

Now we’ve talked before about the “Jesus is better” theme in the Book of Hebrews overall, and well, here is that theme again, and it’s an absolute fireworks show. Verses 22–24 remind me of the grand finale of a fireworks show when a bunch of fireworks get shot out together … That’s what this is.

There were seven descriptions of Mount Sinai in verses 18–21, and now in verses 22–24 there are seven descriptions of the glory of Mount Zion. This is what we have come to. So listen to this, and Christian, know that this is yours. You have not come to Mount Sinai …

22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,
23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God, the judge of all,
and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,
24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,
and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel!

This is stunning. We have come to this. It’s like the writer is saying: Do you know where you are? Yeah, you can’t see all of this right now, but you have it. You can have the assurance of things hoped for. You can have the conviction of things not seen. They are yours.

And I’d love to go into detail about each one of these descriptions, but that would take all day, so I’m just going to comment briefly on each one …

Mount Zion, the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem

This is home. In Chapter 11 it’s called the homeland, the better country, the city that God has prepared for us. It’s the unshakable kingdom there in verse 28. It’s the city that is to come in Chapter 13:14. The New Jerusalem is our future in that one day we will stand in that city come down from heaven (Revelation 21:2), but we are its citizens now. It’s our home now, although we’re not there yet. And we should say about New Jerusalem what Psalm 137 says about Old Jerusalem:

“5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set New Jerusalem
above my highest joy!”

We should think more about Heaven, y’all. And we should live as a witness to it. Jesus is coming back and he’s bringing a city.

2. innumerable angels in festal gathering,Another way to say this sentence is “party with the angels.” In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells us about the joy of the angels over one sinner who repents (see Luke 15:10). So imagine here thousands and thousands of angels — too many to count — and they are all gathered together to celebrate. We are part of that celebration.

3. the assembly [or church] of the firstborn who are enrolled in heavenThe word there for “assembly” is the word for “church”, and this is a way to talk about the universal church. It’s the whole communion of saints — every Christian who has ever lived across all time and place. It includes those who have died in faith, like the cloud of witnesses in verse 1, and it includes all true believers across all denominations today. It’s whoever has their name written in heaven. We are part of that membership.

4. We have come to God, the judge of allThis means what it says. God. We have come to God. Jesus died to bring us to God. We have him, and he is “the judge of all,” which speaks to his supreme authority. There’s nobody above him. There’s nobody to get to after him.

And so you might wonder, like me: Why put God at #4 here in the list? If God is most ultimate, shouldn’t he come last?

Well, remember these Christians know that it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (that’s from Chapter 10:31). They’ve just been reminded about Mount Sinai and how frightening is was when Israel encountered God. So how can the writer ensure us that our coming to God the judge will be different?

He starts by telling us about those who have already faced the judgment of God. …

5. to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,This refers to all those who have died in faith — those who have finished their race and faced the judgment of God. Hebrews 9:27,

“it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

Saints who have died have experienced that, and they were not incinerated. Why?

Because of …

6. Jesus, the mediator of a new covenantWe’ve come to Jesus. This new covenant that is better than the old is mediated by a Savior who is better than all — he is a better priest, a better prophet, a better king — and we have come to him.

There’s a great story here from the life of John Bunyan. After he became a Christian against all human odds, after he was mentored by his pastor John Gilford, after he started preaching, after he wrote his first book — Bunyan was being used by God — but then he got really sick. A grave illness.

And through this sickness, he said that Satan continually assaulted his soul with doubts and fears. Eventually he recovered from the physical sickness but then came under “a great cloud of darkness.” He struggled with debilitating depression and what he called spiritual apathy. He wrote, “I could not feel my soul to move or stir after grace and life by Christ.”

And this continued on until one night, he was sitting by the fireplace with his wife, Mary, in their small 17th-century English home, and suddenly a verse flashed into his mind. He thought “I must go to Jesus.” And he said to Mary: “Wife, is there ever such a Scripture as ‘I must go to Jesus’?”

And Mary, of course, didn’t grab her phone and google it, but she thought about it and she searched through their Bible, and finally she said, “I can’t tell. Can’t find it.” And then, Boom!, Bunyan said I got it! Hebrews 12:24, “But ye are come unto … Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.”

He said that joy flooded his soul and he wanted so badly to tell people about it. He wrote, “Christ was a precious Christ to my soul that night … I could scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ.”

How bout that?!

Church, we have come to this Jesus. And he’s just better. His new covenant is better. We keep running, again — we keep running — because what we have in Christ is better …

3) Therefore, worship God (verses 28–29)Skip to verse 28. What do we do, then, with all this? In light of all that we’ve come to. In light of this unshakeable kingdom that is ours in Christ, verse 28:

28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

Because what we have in Christ is better, we run with endurance the race set before us, and we keep running, and ultimately it’s all about worship. We exist to worship God.

That’s the purpose. To enjoy and exalt God in all his glory.

And that worship, the writer says, is to be acceptable (or pleasing) worship, “with reverence and awe … for our God is a consuming fire.”

And isn’t it interesting that the writer ends this whole section with those words? That image? God, a consuming fire. That’s a quote from Deuteronomy 4:24,

“For Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

Why does the writer end the chapter with this? In the passage just before this (we saw last week) the writer tells us that God is our father who loves us, who treats us as his children. Why end here with “consuming fire”?

Well, we don’t know precisely why, but we know it’s connected to the Mount Sinai reference in verse 18, and I think it’s because the writer wants to remind us that our God, the God we worship, our Father, is the same God we read about at Mount Sinai. … the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the God who revealed his terrifying glory to a fearful Moses and faithless Israel. That God is our God … same God, but better covenant. Same God, but better promises. Same God, but better hope in Jesus …

We have a better everything in Jesus — so we should give God thanks.

And God is the same God he has always been so we know that he is not to be trifled with.

And we worship him in light of that … we remember that God is full of stunning grace, and the grace is stunning because it’s the grace of a consuming fire.

And when we understand this, we’re overcome with gratitude. Reverence and awe is just what happens. It’s what can’t not happen.

It’s not teddy bear grace. It’s consuming fire grace …

That’s only possible because the sprinkled blood of Jesus speaks a better word than Abel.

This is what brings us to the Table.

The TableWe see in verse 24 that we have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and that last description in verse 24 emphasizes the how.

We have come to Jesus who by his blood — by his high priestly sacrifice of himself — has made the way for us. Through his death, Jesus has given us blessings world without end. His blood is our boast. His empty tomb is our hope. Jesus is our everything. And give him thanks for that at this Table. We worship God because of him at this Table.

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So I don’t think I’ve ever started a sermon before by telling you its title … most of the time if my sermon has a title it’s an afterthought — but today’s different. I’d like to call this sermon on Hebrews 12, verses 3–11, “How to Run When Running Is Hard.”

And the reason I want you to know the title is because I want you to keep in mind that everything said in these verses is connected back to verses 1–2 (which we looked at last week) on running with endurance. And it’s all meant to be practical. The writer of Hebrews is going to take us deep into the meaning of suffering in verses 5–11, but the whole thing is still about our endurance in faith. And to that end, the writer wants us to do three things:

Get perspective to keep running (v. 3)
Get perspective by remembering what Jesus suffered (v. 4)
Get perspective by remembering God’s fatherly discipline (vv. 5–11)

Those are the three points. Let’s pray again:

Father in heaven, thank you for your Holy Scriptures. Thank you that you address us through your Holy Scriptures. And thank you for your discipline. In Jesus’s name, amen.

1) Get perspective to keep running (verse 3)Now why am I saying this? Where do I get this idea of perspective? Well this all has to do with verse 3.

Action: Think Carefully About JesusLook at verse 3 again:

“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself…”

This is the action; it’s what we do. We consider Jesus.

And right away I want you to draw a connection between verse 3 here and verse 2. Two of the same ideas are repeated. In verse 2 the writer told us that in our running, as we run with endurance, we look to Jesus, the founder and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross…

Note two concepts in verse 2: looking to Jesus and enduring the cross.

Now they show up again in verse 3:

“Looking” to Jesus (or fixing our eyes on Jesus), is not just repeated, but it’s intensified. Verse 3 tells us to consider him. This is the only time this particular word is used in the New Testament. It means to think very carefully about something. It’s to examine. So we’re running, fixing our eyes on Jesus (verse 2). And now we’re thinking very carefully about Jesus (verse 3). And it’s about his endurance …

In verse 2 the writer tells us that Jesus endured the cross.

In verse 3 he uses the same word and tells us that Jesus endured “from sinners such hostility against himself.”

So let’s put this together: verse 3 is the same way of thinking we saw in verse 2, but now it’s just that the writer focuses in more. He zooms in. We think carefully about Jesus, and in particular, we think carefully about his endurance in the face of hostility.

Now, look at the second part.

Purpose: To Keep RunningWe do that for a purpose — second part of verse 3 — Consider Jesus … so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

To “not grow weary or fainthearted” is still working in that running metaphor from verses 1–2. These words mean exactly what they say in English — weary means to be weary, it’s to be tired and worn-out; faint-hearted means your heart is gonna faint — and both of these are what could happen to anybody who does endurance running. Runners get exhausted … and sometimes they don’t make it.

In fact, fascinatingly, one commentator says that in ancient Greek these words were used to describe the condition of runners who collapse from fatigue after running. We have evidence of these words being used to describe runners who drop — and the writer of Hebrews does not want that for these Christians … or for us.

He doesn’t want us to drop. We wants us to keep running, to endure, to make it — that’s why he tells us to think carefully about Jesus — Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the one who has run before us, who is our example — Think carefully about Jesus and the suffering he endured.

That’s verse 3, and now the writer is going to elaborate on this in verse 4, but first, I want you to see that, in general, the writer is saying that what we need to keep running is perspective. We need to do something with our eyes. We need to see things a certain way. Perspective really does makes a difference.

Perspective MattersI remember when I was a kid I used to love this one picture book about a bug — and I cannot find the title of this book; I looked for it online this week and had no luck (apparently there’s a trillion children’s books about bugs) — but this one picture book I loved, it tells the story of a bug that goes on this long, epic journey. And each page of the book features a different part of the journey, and this bug is going over stuff and under stuff and through stuff, and there were challenges at every turn. I remember it was full of adventure and trial and courage, and finally, by the end of the book, the bug makes it to his destination. He’s arrived and safe and it’s amazing! But then the last page of the picture book zooms out and it shows a little garden in someone’s backyard, maybe 30 feet wide.

This bug’s epic journey was just from one end of the garden to another. And man, this made an impression on me as a kid, because I remember thinking that the bug really didn’t go that far, at least not from my perspective, but from his perspective — he almost didn’t make it!

Objective reality is that he went 30 feet, but 30 feet is a long ways for a bug. Just like 15 years is a long life for a dog. And 2000 years is a long span of time for us.

Perspective makes a difference. And when it comes to our running with endurance, for us to endure, to not grow weary or fainthearted, to not drop, we need the perspective that comes from thinking carefully about Jesus.

In particular, we need to get that perspective by remembering what Jesus suffered (verse 4).

2) Get perspective by remembering what Jesus suffered (verse 4)Verse 4,

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

Now why does the writer say this? It seems kind of jolting, doesn’t it? He’s telling us to consider Jesus and all of a sudden he says: and you’ve not suffered as badly as Jesus did!

When I read this, I think: Okay, man. Easy. Where did that come from? And then he starts talking about how God disciplines us — if I’m honest, the intensity of verse 4 does not appear to be overtly natural to the flow of the text, at least not in a first reading. Because we go from this 1st-person plural encouragement in verses 1–2, to a sudden 2nd-person semi-rebuke in verse 4 — so what is going on here?

Here’s what I think it is…

Remember that the writer is speaking to real Christians in the early church who were being tempted to forsake Jesus. There were some who were dropping from the race, or on the verge of dropping, and do you know what they were saying?

They were saying:

All this running makes my side hurt!

It’s taking too long and I’ve got blisters on my feet!

I’m exhausted from laying aside all these weights!

I’m so tired of this struggle against sin!

In other words, they were gonna stop running because the race felt too hard — Why’s it gotta be so difficult? — that’s the question they were asking.

And we know that question, because there are times we’ve asked it too:

Why does the Christian life have to be so difficult?

Why is God’s call on my life so uncomfortable?

How do I run with endurance when the running is so hard?

Well, the writer of Hebrews is anticipating that kind of question, and so that’s what he starts to answer in verse 4. And basically, the way to categorize verses 4–11 is that it’s a defense of why the Christian life is so difficult.

The Antagonizomai Is RealRight away in verse 4, the writer acknowledges that the running is hard. He says, “in your struggle against sin.” That word for “struggle” is another word that’s only used once in the New Testament. It’s the Greek word antagōnizomai. And it means exactly what our English word “antagonism” means. It’s active hostility. We’re not friends with sin, we’re fighting against it. We’re resisting it (which is another word in verse 4). That word means we’re actively opposing something. These are heavy verbs. The antagōnizomai is real.

And sometimes it’s overwhelming, and we get fed up with it. And the writer of Hebrews is saying to us in verse 4:

Yeah, I get that the running is hard. Enduring in faith is hard. But don’t get too far down that road of thinking. Get perspective here. Remember what Jesus went through, because Jesus suffered worse than you.

He is saying that in verse 4,

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

You have not suffered the way Jesus did: He sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he agonized about the suffering of the cross; he was scourged repeatedly by Roman soldiers with a whip that shredded his skin and left him unrecognizable; large thorns were beaten into his head; nails were driven into his hands and feet.

There was a lot of blood.

Any of y’all ever seen the movie The Passion of the Christ? There’s the scene of Jesus’s crucifixion — and I know it’s a movie, but it’s supposed to be pretty historically accurate to what a crucifixion looked like. They really nailed him on the cross, and then they hoisted him up on this thing. And it was Jesus with just blood everywhere.

And the writer of Hebrews would say, “Look, I know the running is hard. But you haven’t done that.”

Get perspective by remembering what Jesus suffered. Compare your suffering to his and know that he had it worse.

Comparing Suffering?And this gets a little uncomfortable, doesn’t it? I didn’t think we were supposed to compare suffering. Is it okay to think that someone’s suffering is worse than another’s? Shouldn’t we think it’s just equal suffering for everyone? Well of course that’s not true.

In general, we should be very cautious to compare suffering, but that is what the writer tells us to do here. So how should we think about this?

What is the right position when it comes to comparing suffering?

Here it goes. Track with me:

We should not compare suffering if the result is to suggest that our suffering is worse than someone else’s. But, we may compare suffering if it reminds us that someone elses’s suffering is worse than ours — because that’s perspective.

A negative example of this reminds me of an experience I had in college. My baby cousin passed away at 5 months old, and she spent most of her life at Duke Children’s Hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit. My uncle and aunt were by her side everyday, and other family members would visit all the time. I went there several times, and spent a lot of time in the waiting room area, and as you can imagine, when you’re in a waiting room of a hospital, you’re surrounded by other families who have a sick child. Toward the end of my cousin’s life, there was an 18-year-old who was brought in because he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and it was later communicated to the parents of the child that he would not survive. Which is just horrible. And in this room of heaviness, one of the grieving parents of this 18-year-old said to my family, who were in their own grief, that “my cousin was only a few months old but they had invested 18 years in their son. …”

Now, no doubt that person spoke from pain, and we should be gracious when people speak from pain, and, at the same time, that was a very foolish and sick thing to say. Never keep a scorecard on how your suffering is worse than others. Never dismiss or minimize the pain of others because you think yours is worse. Can we all agree that’s wrong to do? Don’t do comparisons like that.

But, there are other times when it may serve you to remember that your suffering is not as bad as others.

We still need to be careful here, but this kind of comparison, a kind of remembering, it can give perspective … which we need, because sometimes we get all messed up over relatively small things: I can’t find my favorite sweatshirt … someone took my device and didn’t put it back … it’s rainy and cold and I feel low today … my car gotten broken into last night … my trashcan cabinet-thing in the kitchen is broken … I’m running late for my appointment … “Today is going to be the worst day of my life!” … Well, a few weeks ago Israeli babies were beheaded. … Just stop.

It doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating when people take your stuff. Doesn’t mean you can’t be irritated when you lose something. Doesn’t mean you ignore your sickness or stress or crisis or loss — no, you must pray and grieve and weep, all that — and also get perspective. There are other saints who have suffered unimaginably and God brought them through it, and that is always true in the case of Jesus. He experienced the worse, most ultimate suffering, and he endured. Verse 4 wants us to get perspective by remembering that.

Here’s the third point. We also need to …

3) Get perspective by remembering God’s fatherly discipline (verses 5–11)Look at verse 5. Remember, the writer is giving a defense for why the Christian life is so difficult. He’s speaking to those who are running and about to drop because the running is hard, and he says, verse 5:

“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?”

That’s the ESV — it’s translated as a rhetorical question. In some other English translations (KJV and NAS), this is put as a statement, like an indictment: YOU HAVE forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons!

Again, what’s needed is perspective. They’ve forgotten something, so they need to remember, and so the writer quotes Proverbs 3:11–12,

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.”

The word “weary” here is the same word in verse 3. Don’t be weary when the running is hard.

Verse 6,

“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”

He’s saying that one way to make sense for why things can feel so difficult is because of the fatherly discipline of God. This is a reason for the difficulty: God disciplines those he loves; he chastises everyone he accepts as his child.

That’s Proverbs 3:12 in verses 5–6, and now in verse 7 the writer starts to expound what this means. He tells us that God’s discipline does three things — and this is the rest of the sermon — A-B-C …

A. God’s discipline affirms we are his children. (vv. 7–8)Verse 7 is the great summary statement on how to apply Proverbs 3 to our suffering:

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.”

Notice that word “endure” again:

Run with endurance, verse 1.

Jesus endured the cross, verse 2.

Jesus endured hostility from sinners, verse 3.

Verse 7: We are to endure ‘whatever it is we have to endure’ as God’s discipline.

This is really important because it gets to the question: What exactly is God’s discipline?

How do I know when something is God’s discipline or not?

Is God’s discipline a response to my sin?

How do we think about this?

Well this passage doesn’t specify that God’s discipline is one thing and not another; and this passage does not say God’s discipline is because of our sin — now discipline could be corrective discipline in that way; sometimes God disciplines us because of our sin, but it’s not always like that, and here’s a danger to beware: If you think discipline is only God’s response to your sin, then you’re gonna think that things are only hard for you because you’ve done something wrong. That’s not what this is. The word for “discipline” here is much more expansive than that. It means cultivation and guidance. It’s about how you’re being shaped.

Verse 7 says,

“It is for discipline that you have to endure.”

Endure what? Endure whatever requires endurance. Whatever is hard. God’s discipline is behind whatever we have to endure.

Verse 7 then leads us to understand that everything that is difficult in our lives, if we are God’s children, it is God’s discipline of us.

Whatever makes the running hard for you. Whether from the outside or the inside — natural disaster and emotional depression, calamity and cancer, hurricanes and headaches, persecution and sickness … broken relationships, disappointments, torn Achilles heels … whether it’s circumstantial and indirect, or someone has premeditated an attack on you for your harm — “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God — God — is treating you as sons.”

Look at the second part of verse 7:

“For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”

I like the way the New Living Translation captures this:

“Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?”

Verse 8,

“If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all.”

How bout that for perspective?! We’re over here scratching our heads about why it’s so hard, and the writer of Hebrews says that if it’s never hard it’s because you’re not really God’s children. Do you see how this perspective is so important? The people who should be scratching their heads are not the people suffering, but the people who are not suffering!

Brothers and sisters, this hard thing that you’re going through as God’s discipline of you means that is God saying to you: I am your Abba; you are my child.

God’s discipline affirms we are his children.

That was A. Here’s B …

B. God’s discipline earns our respect. (v. 9)Verse 9,

“Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?”

Here the writer makes a comparison between our earthly fathers and God as our heavenly Father, and he’s working from the general assumption that children respect their fathers. Now, of course, the Bible commands this: in the Ten Commandments, “Honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12); in the New Testament, Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord [which includes fathers], for this is right.”

So the Bible commands that children should respect their fathers, but notice that the writer doesn’t cite any commands in verse 9; he just talks about this like it’s a natural expectation. Children respect their fathers — of course! That is normal and right.

And apparently it was enough of an expectation in the ancient world that the writer of Hebrews just draws from that expectation — and, get this: there are still vestiges of that expectation in our world today. Because this is just part of reality. We all know, deep down, that children should respect their fathers.

Proverbs 17:6 gives us a universal truth. It says: “the glory of children is their fathers” — which is why no matter how much your earthly father may have failed you, you still hold onto the things about him that you can be proud of. We are wired to respect, and want to respect, our earthly fathers — and if that’s true of our earthly fathers with all of their imperfections, how should we think of our heavenly Father? … who is always faithful, always patient, always kind, always generous, always present, always good — obviously he deserves our total respect. Complete trust.

That’s B. Here’s C … It’s the final thing to see about God’s discipline here in verses 10 and 11.

C. God’s discipline accomplishes a purpose. (vv. 10–11)In verse 10 the writer continues the comparison to our earthly fathers. Earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time “as it seemed best to them” — earthly fathers are not infallible. Even the best of dads, who do the best they can, are doing what seems right to them. They (or we as dads — I feel this as a dad) — we do what we suppose to be best. We’re doing what we think is best, but we don’t have the perfect knowledge of all things with infinite, unsearchable wisdom that is joined together with absolute, irresistible power and sovereignty over all that happens. Earthly fathers can’t do that, but church, you have a Father who can.

Verse 10: you have a heavenly Father who disciplines us for our good — not a cross-your-fingers, hope-this-will-work kind of good, not a best-of-intentions kind of good, but a guaranteed, effectual good. That is, the purpose of God’s discipline is that we share in his holiness. God disciplines us for the purpose of our being conformed into the image of Jesus.

And notice that this purpose is part of the discipline itself. It’s not an afterthought. We don’t live in a world of chance and random hardship. It’s not that we are at the mercy of fate or Satan, and only after things go horrible, that’s when God gets to come in and do the best he can to repair stuff. No!

God is treating you as children. He disciplines us. Whether it is a circumstance that he orchestrates or sin that he allows, God is sovereign over the worst of it, and he will accomplish his purpose. And yes, in the moment, it seems painful rather than pleasant — God, it hurts! Let the cup pass! — it’s painful, “but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

It is for our everlasting good. Oh, to have that perspective! And to remember that one day we will — maybe not in this life, but certainly in the new creation we will sit back and be able to look at all of it and see how God was at work for our good, and we will worship him for it.

There’s an old quote from Jonathan Edwards about this. I ran across it a few years ago, and it just captured me. I wrote it down in my prayer notebook and I read it everyday. It is all about this: sovereignty, suffering, our eternal good. Edwards says:

“Every atom of the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian, every particle of the air and every ray of the sun, so that he in the other world [us, we in the new creation] when [we] come to see it [when we look back over everything], shall sit and enjoy all this vast inheritance with surprising, amazing joy.”

How do you run when the running is hard? Remember that. Get that perspective.

Church, keep running. We will make it. And it will all be worth it, and more.

And that’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableIf you’re here and you’ve never put your faith in Jesus, what are you doing?

Trust him right now. Give your life to Jesus Christ.

And for those of you who do belong to him, let’s give him thanks. The bread represents his body; the cup represents his blood, and when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are remembering his death for us. We remember that we are united to him by faith. If you are, would you join us this morning at this table. The pastors will come, let us serve you.

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I’d like to start this morning by announcing that I’ve retired my dream of ever playing Major League Baseball. Now I’m not saying that I ever really had a chance, but I did have a dream, and the older I got, the dream morphed into what you’d call a fantasy. I’ve kept thinking that it was still possible for me to break my arm, and through some type of medical mystery, after it healed I’d be able to throw 120 MPH.You might think that’s crazy, but I’ve seen it happen before… I thought it could happen to me … But not anymore.

From now on, anytime my mind starts wandering in that direction, I’m going to stop and be content that I’m a spectator. I’m a sports onlooker. I’m a witness — along with some 40–60,000 other witnesses who might pack into Target Field or US Bank Stadium.

Those of you who are sports fans, you know what that’s like. You’ve been there. If you’ve never been to a game, that’s fine too — I think anybody can get the image of a crowded stadium. Imagine lots of people, together, watching something.

That image is where the writer of Hebrews takes us in Hebrews 12. And it’s all meant to set up one main action that we are called to do in two different ways.

And for today’s sermon, I simply want to show you this. I just want to give you three points of exhortation from the three verbs we find here in verses 1 and 2:

Let us run with endurance.
Lay aside what gets in the way.
Look to Jesus.

Let us run, lay aside, look to Jesus.

That’s where we’re going, but first we need to understand more about this context.

Context: The Stadium FullLook with me at Hebrews 12, verse 1:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … [then this is what we do]”

Something you’ve probably been able to notice about the Book of Hebrews is that it’s back and forth between doctrinal explanation and exhortation. The writer will explain the realities of the gospel, of what Jesus has accomplished, and then based upon that, he exhorts us.

Think back to the middle of Chapter 10. You may remember we talked about how the writer focuses on what we have as Christians. (He states what we have, and then says, based upon what we have, we do X, Y, and Z.) He actually does this twice, in Chapter 4 and Chapter 10:

We have a great high priest. (4:14; 10:21)

We have authorization to enter the Most Holy Place. (10:19)

Well here, in Chapter 12, he tells us one more thing we have. Just add it to the list:

“We have a great cloud of witnesses.”

This is straightforward in verse 1 and we can see that this great cloud of witnesses is what the exhortation is built upon: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by…” — or literally, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us” … then this is what we do.

We can see that this is supposed to encourage us, but what does it mean?

Imagine: Champion SpectatorsIn ancient Greek, that word for “cloud” was a common word to describe a big crowd of people. We know that the writer uses a sports metaphor in verse 1 when he tells us to “run with endurance,” but I want you to see that the writer starts this whole thing with a sports metaphor because he starts here with the image of a packed out sports stadium.

And, side-note here: I think one of the reasons God invented sports — or put it in humans to invent sports — was for the sake of our ability to understand these verses.

Imagine a packed-out stadium. Everybody is together watching something. I was at the last couple of Twins games in the playoffs a few weeks ago. Sold-out crowd. Everyone standing. Incredible hype. So if you’ve been in a stadium before or a big arena, think back to that. Everybody is standing shoulder to shoulder, and together they’re all watching what’s happening down on the field.

The writer wants us to think of a full stadium like that, and he wants us to know that this stadium is full of the saints he just told us about in Chapter 11. He calls them “witnesses” — which could mean a couple different things:

On one hand, these people are witnesses because they testified to the faithfulness of God with their lives. They endured in faith. They didn’t have all the things promised, but they believed in God and in what he said and they have become examples to us. They’re witnesses of, they testify to, the fact that God is pleased with those who trust him.

But then on the other hand, they are witnesses because they are witnessing something take place. They’re onlookers, spectators. They are watching something in action.

Which is it? Which kind of witness are they?

Well, remember the purpose here is to encourage us. This is something we have, and it’s presented to us as a reason to obey the exhortation. So … I think they’re both kinds of witnesses.

The great cloud of witnesses, the stadium full, is a crowd of on onlookers. They are spectators. But they’re not just any spectators — they’re watching a game they’ve played before, as it were, and won.

This kind of bends the image a little, but imagine that the sold-out stadium watching the World Series this week is a stadium full of past World Series Champions. The 40,000 watching have all played in a World Series before and won it, and now they’re in the stands watching the World Series with a ring on their finger.

That’s what this is in verse 1. The stadium full, the cloud of witnesses that surround us, are the past saints we read about in Chapter 11 — Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the 18+ others mentioned at the end of the chapter.

The Church VictoriousAnd two things we know about this list is first, it’s not exhaustive (there are others saints he could have mentioned but didn’t). And two, the writer cites examples outside the Old Testament canon — which I think means we have license to add saints to the list.

In our imaginations, we can include in this cloud of witnesses all the saints throughout church history who have died in faith. So think everyone from Peter and Paul and John to Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Wycliffe and Luther and Calvin, Owen and Edwards and Jim Elliot … and J.I. Packer and R. C. Sproul … and now Tim Keller.

Think of your Christian family members who have passed away — Wednesday is All Saints Day, so this is a great time to think about all the saints — Think about every Christian who has ever come before us … millions of faithful Christians whose names you do not know but who all died in faith — this is the church victorious. All of them now make up this cloud of witnesses, this great stadium full of witnesses.

And they have been where we are. They’ve finished their race, as champions. And now they’re watching us. This is meant to encourage us.

Therefore, since that is the case — since this is the context, here’s what we do:

1) We run with endurance.Last line of verse 1:

“Let us run with endurance the race set before us.”

Can everyone see that last part there in verse 1? “Let us run” is the main verb of the passage. It’s the main action we’re called to. And it’s really just another way to say the same exhortation repeated throughout this book. Don’t stop believing. Keep going in the life of faith. Endure in faith!

The writer has been saying that all along, but now he drops it in a sports metaphor: marathon running, or endurance running.

Not only are we surrounded by a packed-out stadium of witnesses, but because of that, since that’s the case, the writer exhorts us to lead the life of faith like an endurance runner.

This is the main point and I’m going to end on it, but in order to understand his running, we need to see the two other verbs in passage. These two verbs give us more details on the running. We run, laying aside and looking to.

Here is the second point of the sermon.

2) We lay aside what gets in the way.Check out the second part of verse 1. Verse 1 again:

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us be laying aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely…”

The writer is still working this endurance running metaphor. I know we have some runners in our church. We’ve even got some extreme runners, like 100-mile runners, and so they understand this better than the rest of us, but it’s pretty intuitive, I think. If you’re running a long distance, you only bring with you what’s necessary to complete the run. The mission is to finish the run, finish the race. That’s the singular focus.

And so before you run — or even as you run — you do an audit of your entire person, head to feet, and everything is scrutinized by the question: Will this help me finish this race in front of me?

Whatever does not help me run is a deterrent, a distraction — it’s considered weight — and so, without question, I lay it aside. Now it may not be a bad thing. It could be my briefcase … with my computer and my notebooks and my Pilot G2 0.38 black ink pens … along with my GTL Zebrite yellow highlighter with the fluorescent pigment ink that won’t bleed through — all great things — but if the main action is running, and these things don’t help me run, then I get them out of the way. Of course we do. We lay weights aside. … We also lay sin aside.

Those Closely-Clinging SinsNow there’s a question on this verse. Notice that the “every weight” and “sin that clings closely” come side by side. The question is whether sin is defining “every weight” or if it’s something separate. I’m inclined to think that there’s an overlap between the two, but sin here is a separate thing.

Now, objectively, when it comes to all of us, sin does damage, it ensnares; but there’s a fascinating adjective here describing sin. The writer calls it: “closely-clinging sin.” Or “easily-ensnaring sin.”

The image is that you’re encircled by something. Imagine that you’re outside and it’s muddy — imagine that there’s mud all around you, encircling you, and whichever direction you move, you have to watch out not to step in the mud. That’s the way sin is described here. All sin is objective in that it’s all moral rebellion against God, but implied here is that we each might have our own mud circle. Some sins might ensnare me more easily than they do you, or vice-versa.

Years ago the word I learned for this concept was “besetting sin.”

I remember the first time I ever heard the phrase “besetting sin.” It was my first year of college, and I did not know what the phrase meant. I had transferred from one school to this other school, and it was a strong Christian school with some solid guys, and they were serious about discipleship, and we were talking in a group and one guy mentioned “besetting sin.”

I didn’t know what he meant, so of course, what do you do if you’re talking with a group of people and you don’t know what a word means? … You say nothing and Google it later.

So that’s what I did, and I read that the definition of besetting was something like “persistently threatening.” And I thought persistently threatening sin — oh, I got some of those.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this discovery changed my life.

This concept led me to dig down to the root-sins of my life, not just the outward behaviors and appearances, but to the deep, mostly unseen parts. I’m wired with particular weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and I began to understand that my besetting sins, at root, come from pride and unbelief. My pride is thinking that I can do something apart from God. My unbelief is thinking that I must do something apart from God.

And together, they’re vicious. And they can look different ways at different times, but because they’re besetting — clingy, entangling — they’ve followed me around for 20 years.

You ever seen a cartoon where there’s a character and a single rain cloud follows him everywhere. Besetting sins are like that, but instead of a cloud over you, it’s mud that encircles you. I’ve got my own mud, and you’ve got yours. And we have to be careful not to step in the mud, because everywhere we go it’s never too far away.

A couple weeks ago I went to my girls’ volleyball game, and I walked in, and our team’s fans were on the far side of the gym. So I walked all the way around, past a stand full of other fans, and I found a seat, and as I was watching the game, I noticed mud and dirt all the way around the gym, and I thought (true story), “Some idiot tracked mud in here.”

Well I kept watching the game and then a little bit later I looked down … mud all over my boots. You are the idiot!

I don’t even remember seeing mud. I don’t know where I could have stepped in it. But I also wasn’t watching out for mud. And in a spiritual sense, that’s true for some of us in here right now. …

Check Your ShoesSome of us, right now, if we were to metaphorically look down at our shoes, we’ve got mud all over them.

Now this is the reason we have our time of confession earlier in the service, but there’s never a wrong time to confess, and so can we all just take a look at our ‘shoes’ again? Let’s take moment to reflect. Check your shoes. Check your hearts.

That mud that you’ve stepped in, or that you’re persistently threatened to step in, that will keep you from running the race. It’s hard to run with mud caked on your shoes, and in fact, you just can’t. It doesn’t work. You won’t make it. You must lay aside that sin. So I’m asking you to do that, right now. In your hearts, throw off your sin.

And now go back to that idea of weight. We’re going next-level here. Stop the sin, yes, and now ask: What in my life is getting in the way of my running with endurance?

Take inventory of your life — and I especially mean this for you young people and older people, and all you people in between. Think: Are each of these various things in my life encouraging my faith or distracting my faith?

And if it’s distracting your faith, if it’s deterring you, if it’s weighing you down while you’re trying to run, why are you still holding onto it? Lay it aside.

Because you want to run, right?! We’re trying to run. We want to endure in faith. It means we lay aside what gets in the way.

But there’s more. Running with endurance means … third point …

3) We look to Jesus. This is verse 2.

“We run with endurance the race set before us …looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith …”

And right away, that verb for “looking” means an intense kind of looking. It’s the same word used to talk about Moses in 11:26 when the writer tells us that Moses

“considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth that the treasure of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”

This is not a casual looking, but it means to “fix your eyes” on something. That’s the way some English translations put this. We run “fixing our eyes on Jesus.” This is resolute, singular focus on Jesus.

And the writer says “Jesus” on purpose. There’s all kinds of titles for Jesus he could have used, but like he’s done 11 other times in this book, he just says “Jesus” … because he wants us to imagine the real person, Jesus — the man who lived here in our shoes, who was and is God in the flesh … true God in actual flesh … “the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Everybody look at the phrase in verse 2.

And this is a super important description that ties in all of Chapter 11. Other ways to translate that phrase is “founder and finisher,” or “pioneer and perfecter” — and the idea is that Jesus is the one who starts it and ends it. Starts and ends what? … “Our faith.”

And when he says “our faith” the writer is talking about the faith that we share with the Old Testament saints of Chapter 11, and the whole cloud of witnesses who are packing out this stadium in verse 1. And if Jesus is the one who founded and finishes our faith, then it means that Jesus is the ultimate example we follow. All the examples of Chapter 11 now culminate in his example. We recall the examples of those who have come before us in order to fix our eyes on the example of Jesus. Like Paul says, we imitate others as they imitate Christ (see 1 Corinthians 11:1).

And we can read all about the life and example of Jesus in the Gospels, but here the writer of Hebrews spells out what he means in particular. Look to Jesus, the founder and finisher of our faith, who, because of one great reality, he did three actions.

Joy Set Before HimHere it is, verse 2:

“For the joy set before him … he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The humiliation and exaltation of Jesus are explained as being actions compelled by one thing … joy.

We talk a lot about joy around here, and I’m not sure what you all think about that, but if there were ever a verse in the Bible that should raise the stakes on the meaning of joy, it’s this one right here.

Jesus had joy set before him.

And again, we’ve already seen something like this in the examples of faith in Chapter 11. Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses — they all endured suffering in faith because they embraced something better in their future. Moses fixed his eyes on the reward. And when we talked about Moses a couple of weeks ago, I explained that the reward, ultimately, is being with Jesus himself. But if that’s our reward — if the joy set before us is being with Jesus — what was the joy set before Jesus?

Now, I encourage each of you to talk to Pastor David Mathis about this. He wrote about this for the email this week. He says that the joy of Jesus is multifaceted. It’s not just one thing, but the Bible tells us at least a few things about the joy of Jesus: Jesus’s joy is the glory of his Father; it’s his victory over the devil; it’s the saving of his people. And, Jesus has joy in his being “seated at the Father’s right hand.” That’s what the last description in verse 2 is about, and I think it brings it all together.

We look to Jesus, who, for joy … is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

And David explained that this being seated is both about Jesus’s personal honor and his nearness to the Father. Jesus is glorified, radiant, and he’s with his Father — and there is joy in that. And at the same time, I want to add that this joy of being seated, of honor and nearness, is the joy of consummation. It’s the joy of his work finished.

Remember this is how this book begins. Chapter 1, verse 3:

“after making purification for sins, [Jesus] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…”

Jesus is doing that now. He is seated there now, and his being seated there, on this side of his cross, is together with the joy set before him. It’s like this:

And Jesus, from where he is seated, looks over all that he has done, and he’s happy with it. And in fact, everything that is happening now by the work of his Spirit, which he superintends, it is the application of his joy. It’s all from joy, for joy. This is so important. It means that when we look to Jesus, we don’t look to a nervous Jesus. Jesus is not wringing his hands in worry, crossing his fingers for the best outcome. No. Jesus is seated with joy.

That’s what we’re running toward. We’re running to him in his joy, even when we have to do this:

Run — TodayAnd that running is what we’re doing now.

Jesus is seated there now.

The cloud of witnesses watch now.

And we — we’re running now.

When it comes to the life of faith, we’re not spectators yet. We’re not onlookers in the stands. We’re in the game. We are on the field. So run.

We have great examples in the past; we have the joy of Jesus as our future — and what does God want us to do here? What is God calling us to today?

Run. Laying aside every sin and weight, looking to Jesus, let us run with endurance the race of faith set before us.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableAs we run with endurance, every week, together, we remember the sacrifice of Jesus for us. Jesus died for us to save us. To make us new, to bring us home. And here at this Table, we give him thanks. If you trust in Jesus, if you have put your faith in him, we invite you to eat and drink with us. Let us serve you.

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Over the last few weeks, as a church we have covered Chapter 11 in Hebrews, spending four weeks really focused on the centrality of faith in the life of a Christian. Chapter 11 gives us a brief tour through the old testament with story after story of how God’s people, by faith, have pleased him and accomplished His plan.

The cumulative effect ought to strengthen our faith and confidence that God will show up for his people, and that he is pleased when we trust him to do so. The final verses we will cover today will only add to that confidence. Chapter 11 is a well organized exposition regarding the faith of past saints. This chapter plays out like a firework display of faith. You can count the first couple sections of the flashes of faith, but at the end it picks up speed and is too much to count, too much to keep up with.

And as we observe this firework display through binoculars. We are going to adjust the zoom and focus of our lens a few times. To help, here is the main outline for you:

First, we are going to look at the circumstances of faith in verses 32-38.

Second, we are going to zoom out and look at three Characteristics of faith that we see threaded through the whole chapter (verse. 1-38).

And third, we will zoom all the way in to look at verses 39-40, and what it means for us.

Circumstances of Faith (verses 32-38)We have walked through 3 previous weeks that are organized chronologically by sections of history. The first section starts from creation and goes through Noah. Then, in the second section we see examples from Abraham through Joseph when Israel ends up in Egypt. In the third section, we see examples of Moses through the Exodus, and up to the conquering of Jericho. If we are reading along with all these examples it only brings us to the second chapter of Joshua.

We have now reached the grand finale of the authors discourse.

The author essentially says, I could go on and on, there is not enough time to scratch the surface of all the actions done by faith. And as his argument goes on it continues to pick up speed and covers more ground. He moves from specific people, doing specific actions (Noah) to specific people doing all kinds of things (Gideon, David) to all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things. (Some suffered, some mistreated). In part, the author wants us to have many people and many circumstances come to mind.

Despite this being the grand finale, with too much to see and take in all at once, there are two main groups that the actions listed fall into.

First, Those who’s faith ended with success in this life.This group continues seamlessly with the previous section. It starts simple with Abel offering a sacrifice, then Noah and his family being saved, followed by Abraham receiving a promised child, and then the nation of Israel being preserved from the plagues and led out of Egypt.

Hebrews 11:33–35,

“[There are those] who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.”

Through faith God blesses and defends and prospers his people. We say yes and amen to that! We are probably eager to have faith that can do all those things. I’ll sign up for that! None of this came easy, but to have faith like that seems desirable. We want to have faith that puts in the work, of trusting and waiting, to then see the fruit of our labor. An example, relevant to our church, is to work on a project like this building, but then to see and use it! And if we are honest, we probably wish that this chapter would have ended right their. God can do all these things, including resurrection from the dead in this life! What more is there to say? And yet, the author does not stop, but shows us that our faith can, and may need to dig deeper. The list here takes a turn in the middle of verse 35.

those who’s faith ended with suffering in this life. While some conquered, were saved, and had loved ones restored back to them, “Some were tortured.”

Hebrews 11:36-38,

“Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy — wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

While some were saved, others were not, some saw victory, others might have looked like defeat. Some were rescued from the sword, others were killed by the sword.

And saints of old (who modeled faith for us) stepped into various situations where they didn’t know what might happen. Let’s look at one specific model of faith mentioned in the verses above, those who “quenched the power of fire.”

Three men should come to mind when we hear this. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

From the book of DanielTo setup the story, let’s remember: These 3 men were appointed positions in the kings service. King Nebuchadnezzar created an image of himself for all to worship. A group of men targeted the Jews because they did not bow down and worship the image. The king brings them in and says to them, Daniel 3:15–18,

“Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.’”

They trusted God but didn’t know the outcome. They did know that if God did not save them, he had something better for them. They knew that if God chose not to save them they would rise to a better life that he had promised.

They knew God to be a deliverer, but he hadn’t explicitly promised to save them. But by faith, they obeyed by worshipping God alone, no matter what.

In most of our lives there have already been things that we never imagined facing, that we have or are in the midst of walking through. There are 2 groups here with quite different outcomes, but this list does fit together. The difference isn’t that one list had faith, and the other did not. The author is clear that the success and the suffering were done in faith.

Those God chooses not to save are no less loved, nor is their faith less strong.

The author says,

“All these were commended through their faith.”

This is why the list fits together, it is a list of faith, not earthly victory or success.

God makes it clear, “I am pleased with you, and the world that has rejected you is not worthy of you (verse 38).

Living by faith is not living by sight. It should be obvious to us but we have no idea what we are going to face. God does not show us our earthly future nor tell us what tomorrow will bring. We do not know what tomorrow will bring, we don’t even know what this afternoon might bring. We might have an idea, if the Lord allows it to happen, but we don’t know.

Psalm 116:15,

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”

Because his saints are accompanied by promises.

Luke 21:16–19,

“You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.”

He insures every hair is kept.

We do not not know why God allows all that he does, but we do know that we do not suffer because of a lack of love or attentiveness on God’s part. We are precious in his sight and we will rise with Christ to a better and lasting life. By faith we agree with Paul who says, Philippians 1:23: “…to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

Here we see the depth of faith, to endure suffering even unto death.

Characteristics of Faith (verses 1-38)I want to zoom out at this point and make sure we are seeing the whole picture, the whole display of faith in this chapter. To see some overarching elements of faith that are threaded through this chapter that I don’t want us to miss.

Faith was the way to please God from the very first breadth of life.

“By faith we believe that the universe was created by the word of God” (verse 3)

Even Adam who walked and talked with God initially in the garden, was called to live by faith. He was not there when the universe was created, and he was to receive God’s word in faith that God was the creator of it all, and that His words in the garden were to be trusted and obeyed.

Prior to Abraham being born, who is described as the man of faith, Abel, and Enoch and Noah, among others, pleased God through their faith and became heirs of the righteousness that come by faith.

Faith is not a new thing for the audience of this book.

We worship and follow a God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. They pleased God the same way you please God, by faith.

Faith believes what God has saidWe should not look at faith like a super power to be wielded as we wish. It is not faith itself that has the power, but the person in which the faith rests.

And this faith believes and acts based on what God has commanded and promised.

For example, Why did Sara believe she would bear a child in her old age? It doesn’t say she really wanted it and believed hard enough. Nor does it say she thought God was powerful, and she really wanted it so believed hard enough. It says:

“She considered him faithful who had promised”

We don’t name and claim whatever we want. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not go beyond what God had said. They believe what God had revealed to them, no more and no less. They were not surprised by deliverance, but stepped in faith.

Faith is accessible to allIt is as simple as accepting and receiving what God has said. Those who pleased God through faith came from all over the map.

These are highpoint stories of the Old Testament, but lets not miss who God used:

Abel, the younger of the 2 brothers mentioned. Joseph, the youngest brother, sold away by his brother in jealousy/anger. Rehab, who was not an Israelite, but was a prostitute in Jericho. Jephthah, who was the son of a prostitute, and was was excluded from the family inheritance and was driven out by his step brothers. David, who didn’t seem worth being presented by his father as an option to be King. Samuel, was just a boy, maybe 12? But God used a child in a time where the Word of the Lord was rare. Yet he was ready to hear the voice of the Lord and receive his instruction.

This is a rag tag crew. These aren’t your natural picks.This is the kind of people God uses, people in the same category as us.

Those who pleased God still struggled in many ways. It’s not just humble beginnings, but a path with many bumps as well.

Let’s just list a few more examples:

Abraham and Sara, tried to fulfill the promise on their own. Moses, was scared to speak on God’s behalf, even at the age of 80. “I’m slow of speech and of tongue”, yet quick to make excuses. Barak, who seemed passive and was slow to pursue what God had commanded. Samson, who failed many times to follow God’s commands, and at times lived recklessly. David, who took another mans wife and had him killed.

This is the company on which God pours out his grace!

Paul’s description of the believers in Corinth would hold true for the believers in Hebrews as well.

1 Corinthians 1:26–29,

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

As Pastor David said 2 weeks ago, we shouldn’t see this list of people and think they are way beyond us. This “Hall of Faith” so to speak, can just as easily be called a Hall of Mercy.

Pleasing God does not rest on worldly standard, it does not rest on noble births, or strength or wisdom. It rests on faith in the Son of God. A faith that receives and accepts his Word. And that we can depend on when we act.

We have seen the depth and nearness of faith.

What this means for us (verses 39-40)First, I want to take a few minutes to recognize the moment, today as we seek to dedicate this space to God and be reminded of all that he has done, adding to the encouragement here in Hebrews. God has written a story for Cities Church as well.

Cities Church timelineIn 2010, by faith, Pastor Jonathan purchased the website domain “citieschurch” four years before he would help plant this church.

By faith on October 14, 2014, four men and their families signed Articles of Incorporation to start Cities Church.

By faith on Sunday, January 18th, 2015, they gathered with several other people and families to meet for the first time as a new church. By faith they sang, and prayed, and listen to the Bible preached, and took communion together.

By faith, the church grew despite being displaced by a gas explosion, meeting in a movie theater, then 2 different college campuses.

By faith this congregation searched for a place to meet, and in February of 2018 signed a 4-year lease at this property.

In faith we signed a 4-year contract, which was a longer time period than the church had existed, and by faith we had our first service in this building on April 1st, 2018 on Easter.

Less than 2 years later, there became a possibility of purchasing this building. And by faith, we put together a team to engage in this process and investigate other options.

By faith on Jan. 15, 2020, we purchased this building. A property that is tucked right between Minneapolis and St. Paul, with a building that can seat close to 500 people.

By faith we made the purchase, knowing that we would inherit a tenant with 8 years left on their lease.

By faith we started the designs for a renovation, and started raising money to improve this property. By faith we worked along side the tenant to find a new location for them.

By faith we continued to trust God and act in integrity as the tenant changed it’s posture towards us.

By faith we pleaded with God and we did not know what to do! But, we trusted that he had led us thus far, and that he would make a way. And through faith, the tenant’s last day in this building was September 31, 2022, 6 years prior to the end of their lease.

By faith we then started renovations the next month and by faith we will see all the construction wrap up this year.

And also during this time: By faith Cities Church met week after week to worship together. By faith weak pastors preached God’s words through the strength that he supplies. By faith Community Groups grew and spread, welcoming others and sharing the gospel. By faith we dedicated children, baptized believers, and planted churches. By faith we meet here again today to worship God, and hear His Word.

Let us look & remember what God has done! And what more might He add to this summary?

May it also be said that by faith we planted churches all over the Twin Cities.

By faith we sent out missionaries all over the globe.

By faith we gave our time and money and talents to God, looking forward to the reward of eternal joy in the presence of Jesus.

What do we have that’s better?The only thing that matters is what is done by faith in Jesus!!! Extraordinary things done without faith don’t please God, and extremely ordinary things done with faith do please God, and do matter. Our aim is to please God, and Hebrews tell us that if we didn’t do all these things in faith, then they didn’t please God. “[So let us] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [us] and gave himself for [us].”

We ought to be encourage by the faithfulness of God to the saints of old, and the faithfulness of God to us right now in the present. Especially since God has provided something better for us as Hebrews tells us.

So last, lets zoom all the way in on the last 2 verses.

Hebrews 11:39–40,

“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

Verse 2 and verse 39 bookend this whole thing, but the author adds just a bit more, and gloriously shows the connection we have with the saints of old. Here we see the breadth of faith. Here is a whole new layer added to the encouragement to the audience and us. So let’s answer answer 2 questions here:

What do we have that’s better? And how are the saints of old connected to us?

1 Peter 1:10–12, speaking of Christ having come to save us,

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.”

What do we have then that is better? What do we have that they did not receive?

Jesus, and all that comes with Him. All the promises of God find their fulfillment in Jesus. And now that Jesus has come we have him here on earth in a way they did not. Christ has come, and what they greeted from afar we have received front and center!

We have the Messiah, we have the eternal king who was to come and with the king we have a kingdom, one that cannot be shaken and a city prepared for us

We have a High Priest that lives forever, who serves at the heavenly alter, and with the Great High Priest we have a New and better covenant. And through his blood or that covenant, we have forgiveness of sins, we have new hearts, we have consciousness that are now clean.

So how are OT saints dependent on those who received Jesus? Because if the promised Messiah was not sent to this generation, they would still be in their sins.

Remember Hebrews 10:4–10,

“For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

Through Jesus, there are 2 ways they won’t be perfected apart from us, or to flip, 2 ways they will be perfected along side of us.

What we find is that as we are looking back at the saints of Old they were actually looking forward to us and the time when Jesus had come, and now that he has come they have been brought forward and now stand as a cloud of witnesses waiting to receive us as we finish our journeys on this earth.

Remember, there was a temptation for them to go back to Judaism. Maybe they thought, I’m going to stick with our forefathers and go back. But the irony is, if they were to go back to Judaism, they wouldn’t be moving towards, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they would be moving away from them!

Now that the Christ has come, they are united to Jesus just like us, their sins are forgiven in Jesus just like us, they have been perfected in Jesus just like us.

And now that Christ has created one new people. He is the vine that by faith both Jew and Gentile are grafted into, that both old testament saints and new testament saints are grafted into.

Hebrews 10:14,

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

There is no fulfillment for them that is apart from us. And there is no fulfillment for us that is apart from them.There will be one great day when the dead shall rise, we will be glorified and fully embody the perfection that Christ has purchased for us, and our sanctification will be complete. And we together with the saints of old look forward to that consummation that is yet to come. Where we will receive it in its fullness together.

Not only did they make it in faith, but we have something better. And now we are united to them, and play a part in God’s story of redemption that will not be complete until every tribe and tongue, people and language are represented around the throne of the lamb of God.

The TableFaith that can endure any trial. Faith that is accessible to all of us, not based on personal merit or achievement. A faith that unites us to God’s people for all time, in our salvation and our glorification.

And this bring us to this table. This table is a demonstration of our faith. And we eat and drink together to remember and to wait for the day when we will eat it together with Jesus. There is still a future rest to come for God’s people. And we look forward, along with the cloud of witnesses that surrounds us, to the day when Jesus comes again.

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“Talk is cheap.”

“Actions speak louder than words.”

“Easier said than done.”

We’ve all heard these phrases before — and nobody questions their point. We all tend to agree that in most cases, according to conventional wisdom, it is easier to say stuff than to do stuff.

And I think the writer of Hebrews would also agree with that, which is why in Hebrews 11, when he wants to show us what real faith looks like, in the example of Old Testament saints he does not give us a list of quotes they said, but he describes things they did. He tells us about actions they carried out.

And beginning in verse 4, he is just working his way through the Old Testament storyline. If you remember, he starts with Abel, then Enoch, then Noah, and then he gives extended attention to Abraham, which we saw last week — and the writer doesn’t mention everybody he could, and he doesn’t say everything about those he does mention — but he hits the highlights and his main message is the same. He’s saying: This is how faith looks. Faith has consequences.

And we understand this. We get this. I think it’s intuitive. A couple weeks ago after our service, I was talking with someone about Hebrews 11 and he said:

“The examples of faith in Hebrews 11 make me wanna do something.”

I think that’s the bull’s-eye sentiment we should have. The writer of Hebrews would hear that and say “Exactly!” And I think that’s especially the case when it comes to our passage today, Chapter 11, verses 23–31, which focuses in on Moses.

Structure + OutlineNow in terms of the structure of this text, in today’s passage there are seven total examples from the ‘Moses generation’ — just like there were seven total examples from the ‘Abraham generation’ in the previous passage: there were four examples connected to Abraham directly, and three examples from people who came after him – Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (see vv. 20, 21 22).

In today’s passages the writer is running that same 4:3 — there are four examples connected to Moses directly, and then three from those who came after: the people who crossed the Red Sea (v. 29), the people who march around Jericho (v. 30), and Rahab hiding the Hebrews spies (v. 31).

There is a lot here that we could talk about, but what I’d like to do for today is to take this focus on Moses and focus in even more on one example from his life, in verses 24–26.

Let me read these verses to you again. Look at these verses with me if you can. Hebrews 11, verse 24:

“24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”

Now within this focus on Moses, I want to tell you three observations of his faith that I think are especially relevant for our church right now. Moses displays his faith by:

A deliberate decision
A costly association
A peculiar valuation

That’s our outline. And now before we dig in, let’s pray again and ask God to help us.

Father in heaven, by your grace alone, in your providence, we are here in this moment with your Holy Scriptures opened before us. We ask, by the power of your Spirit, open our hearts to hear from you. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Moses displays his faith, #1, by …

1) A Deliberate DecisionWe see this right at the start verse 24: “By faith Moses, when he was grown up…”

Now that might seem like an odd thing to say, but it makes more sense when you contrast it with verse 23 which starts, “By faith Moses, when he was born…”

So these are different times in Moses’s life. There’s Baby Moses in verse 23 and Grown-up Moses in verse 24. And the writer of Hebrews points out examples of faith in both times, but it’s important to notice in verse 23 that it’s not really the faith of Moses on display, but it’s the faith of his parents.

“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents…”

See, Moses was entirely passive there. The being hidden was not his idea.

Some of you have seen the animated movie, The Boss Baby. It’s a funny movie, has some meaningful moments, and central to the whole plot is that this family has a newborn baby that acts like a normal baby around adults, but then acts like an adult when the adults are not around. The baby was sent by a higher unknown organization, and as a newborn he knows right away that he has a certain mission to accomplish.

It’s a funny movie, and what makes it funny is that the idea of a baby thinking like an adult is silly. It’s all pretend. In real life, babies are cute, but they’re not that smart — which is why you have to ‘baby proof’ your house and tell them to not eat dirt (and things like that). Babies can only do baby things … including Baby Moses. Baby Moses did not hide himself. Baby Moses did not have the faith to not fear Pharaoh. That was his parents.

But when Moses was grown up — that’s different. Grown-up Moses has agency. He’s able to do things on his own, including to have his own faith that he himself displays. That’s what we see in verse 24. Verse 24 is the faith of Moses himself, not his parents.

Now why is this relevant for our church?

For the KidsWell it’s because we have a lot of kids in our church — like hundreds — and there’s a range of ages, from newborns all the way up through high school. And in this service there’s a lot of the younger kids in childcare, but there’s a lot of kids in here too — and I want to speak for a minute to you kids. Kids in the room, listen up. This is for you.

One thing that I’m pretty sure you all have in common is that your parents have faith. In fact, the faith of your parents is a big reason you’re here right now. Now that doesn’t mean that you don’t have faith yourself. Many of you do. Many of you have been baptized based upon the profession of your faith. But still as kids, as tweens and teens, you live at home under the authority of your parents, a lot of your faith is rightly influenced by them. But see here’s what happens: As you get older, and as you become more independent, eventually you’re gonna come to a time when you make all your own decisions about life and all this.

You will no longer be passive in faith, but by your faith you will make deliberate decisions … like Moses did. Grown-up Moses in verse 24 is refusing one thing and choosing another — and you’re gonna have to do the same.

So kids, I wanna tell you something and I hope you never forget this:

The two most powerful words you have are Yes and No.

And your life, in large part, is going to be the outcome of how you use those words. What you say Yes to and what you say No to will form you into the person you become — and as Christians we say Yes and No by faith. As grown ups, starting where you are now, as you get into adulthood, by faith make deliberate decisions that display your faith in Jesus.

Remember Jesus loves you, and make deliberate decisions by faith.

We see the faith of Moses do that here, which meant for him, #2 …

2) A Costly Association Verse 24:

“By faith, when Moses was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin.”

Now in order for this to make sense to us we need to know a little more about the story of Moses. It’s been a while since we’ve been in the Book of Exodus together, so this is a refresher:

When the Book of Exodus opens, the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, but their number continued to multiply and spread. There were so many Hebrews that the Pharaoh felt threatened, so he put a death warrant on all the Hebrew male children. He commanded all his people to throw the Hebrew sons into the Nile River.

Well, Moses’s parents defied Pharaoh. They hid him for three months, and then they built him a raft, and so rather than he be thrown into the river, they floated him down the river in the raft and he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took pity on him and drew him out of the water.

Now this was an amazing story in Exodus but to keep it short, Pharaoh’s daughter ended up adopting Moses as her son. And we could imagine that being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter — being the grandson of Pharaoh — had some perks.

Notice the parallel in verse 24 between being “called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” and “enjoying the feeling pleasures of sin.” Those go together.

Moses would have grown up in a palace. He most likely, literally, had a silver spoon in his mouth. He had the best education possible, and became mighty in his words and deeds, the Bible says (see Acts 7:22). And we can imagine that the older he got, grown up Moses, he would have been afforded pretty much whatever he wanted. He would have had easy access to the “fleeting pleasures of sin.”

But look what the writer of Hebrews says: instead of all that, Moses “chos[e] rather to be mistreated with the people of God.”

Moses’s Fork in the RoadAnd if you have the Book of Exodus in mind, you might be thinking: When exactly did that happen?

Well, I am 99% sure it happened in Exodus Chapter 2 when Moses defended one of the Hebrew slaves who was being beaten by an Egyptian. Y’all remember this? Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating up the Hebrew guy. This is a big part of Moses’s story. It’s why he had to flee Egypt.

Well, if we go back to Exodus Chapter 2 to read this story, it comes right after the birth story of Moses, and the story starts, Chapter 2, verse 11:

“One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens…”

And in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word there for “grown up” in Exodus 2:11 is the same word used here in Hebrews 11:24.

And what’s going on in Exodus 2 is that when Moses “went out to his people” he presumably went out from the palace. He left the Egyptian palace and went down to the streets where his people were burdened. So see, there’s already an association happening in Exodus 2. But when he saw the Egyptian beating the Hebrew, that was a fork in the road for Moses. Who is he? Is he an Egyptian — Pharaoh’s grandson? Or, is he one of the Hebrews?

Is he with the powerful, the opulent, the movers and shakers of the day, or is he with the slaves, the-carry-your-lunch-pale-to-work, mistreated Hebrews?

Is Moses with the Egyptians and all their drip or is he with the insulted people of God?

Moses chose the people of God. He avenged his fellow Hebrew, and in fact, in Acts Chapter 7, in the famous speech of Deacon Stephen, he says that when Moses avenged the Hebrew he thought that the Hebrews would know that he was there to save them (see Acts 7:25). That was a watershed moment for Moses. He associated himself with the people of God, not with the Egyptians, and it cost him. He had to flee the palace and live in exile for forty years until he saw the burning bush.

Moses chose to associate with the people of God, and he paid a high price. What kind of price do you think you’d be willing to pay?

Let’s just think about this for minute. Do you think you would still associate with Christians — or to get more practical — do you think you’d still associate with this local church if it cost you more than it does right now? How much of a cost is too much?

Mr. By-Ends and the Negative WorldThere’s an incredible character in the book Pilgrim’s Progress I need to tell you about. His name is Mr. By-ends. Christian and Hopeful meet him as soon as they become friends and right away they’re put off by some of the things he says, so they ask him more questions to try to get to know him. And he admits that he’s not as “strict” as other pilgrims, and he says that he basically operates by two principles. He says he’s speaking for himself and his relatives — Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Any-thing, and Mr. Two-Tongues — and he says our two principles are:

First, we never strive against wind and tide; secondly, we are always most zealous when Religion goes in his Silver Slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines, and the people applaud him.

In other words, Mr. By-Ends is the epitome of a “fair-weather Christian.” He only acts like a Christian when it’s easy. He wants to be a Christian when it’s very low cost, very high direct benefit.

And I think his character is super relevant for us today because we live in a unique time of our nation’s history. We live in what’s been called a “negative world.” It’s the idea that since around 2014, American society, at large, has come to have a negative view of Christianity.

In other words, especially in the higher ranks of society, among the educated, in a lot of the places where y’all work, associating with Christians is a social negative. Christian morality is despised and mocked and called bigotry (no matter how nicely we try to explain it).

Now there are certainly other places in the world where it’s harder to be a Christian, but within our own nation’s history, for the first time, claiming to be a Christian is not a social benefit — but it comes with a cost (source).

And there’s a correlation here to what’s been called “The Great De-churching.” There’s been a study, recently published, that reports that fewer Americans go to church today than at any other point in our nation’s history. The study claims that about 40 million American adults used to be part of a church, but they stopped involvement (source). And there are several different theories why, and one of them is that it cost more. Active faith, regular Christian rhythms and life, being involved with a local church, cost more than it used to … and for Mr. By-ends and those like him, the cost is too much.

Well, Moses knew it was going to cost him, and still, by faith, he chose to associate with God’s people. Talk is cheap, the cost is in the action. He chose the cost of that association.

And the writer of Hebrews understands what these early Christians are dealing with. A few weeks ago, back in Chapter 10, we saw that the writer encourages these early Christians in their faith by telling them to recall what they’ve already endured. Already, Chapter 10, verse 33, they’ve been “publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, sometimes being partners with those so treated.” And now in Chapter 11 he wants them to make the connection: They have shown the same kind of faith that Moses did.

Can you imagine anything more encouraging for these early Hebrew Christians? The writer wants them to know that they have faith like Moses. They would have heard verse 24 about Moses and thought: “That’s us.”

And I want y’all to know the same applies to us today. What we read here about Moses, and what our Christian ancestors understood and displayed, is in the ‘spiritual genetics’ of our faith. Church, I want you to know that true faith will endure whatever the cost. Turn up the heat, come what may, true faith will be displayed.

Moses displayed his faith by (1) a deliberate decision that meant (2) a costly association because of, #3 …

3) A Peculiar ValuationThis is verse 26:

“He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”

Now the first question here is: How is verse 26 connected to verse 25? We know there’s some kind of connection — this the same train of thought. Verse 25 says that Moses chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin — and now the first verb in verse 26 is going to tell us the reason he made that choice.

Verse 26 says that Moses chose to be mistreated with God’s people because he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. Moses considered the reproach of Christ more valuable. That’s why he made the choice he did.

We can see this in the text, but What is the reproach of Christ? Is the writer of Hebrews saying that in Exodus 2 Moses actually knew about the future suffering of the Messiah and he made a conscious decision to align himself with that suffering?

The answer is Yeah, sorta. Hang with me here. …

Same Package of SufferingThe first thing I want you to see is the connection between the mistreatment of the people of God (in verse 25) and the reproach of Christ (in verse 26). Do you see how they’re parallel? If we look at these verses together, it seems like the mistreatment of God’s people and the reproach of Christ are talking about the same thing. They’re the same package. Y’all see that? Now where’s that come from?

Well, a lot of times in the Bible, God’s people and God’s Messiah are described as having solidarity. God’s Messiah takes on the identity of God’s people. Now we know Jesus did that ultimately on the cross as our substitute, and he also did that at clear points throughout his earthly ministry. We actually see this hinted at in the Old Testament.

For example, let’s go to Psalm 89, verse 50. Turn there if you can. Psalm 89. I want you to see this. Read with me or listen closely to Psalm 89:50–51,

“Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked,
and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations,
51 with which your enemies mock, O Lord,
with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.”

There’s a parallel between the servants of God and God’s anointed. God’s people and God’s Messiah. What is said of God’s people is said of God’s Messiah. They’re both mocked.

Now listen to these verses in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the writer of Hebrews would have read). In Psalm 89 he would have read:

Remember, O Lord, the reproach (oneidismou) of your servants, which I have borne in my bosom, [even the reproach] of many nations; with which your enemies have reproached (ōneidisan), O Lord, with which they have reproached (ōneidisan) your Christ …

Again, there’s the same parallel between God’s people and God’s Messiah, and the Hebrew word for “mock” is translated into Greek as “reproach.” God’s people and God’s Messiah are both reproached. And that Greek word for “reproach” in Psalm 89 is the same word the writer of Hebrews uses in Hebrews 11:26, “the reproach of Christ.”

The writer of Hebrews has Psalm 89 in mind in Hebrews 11, so, is he saying that Moses was thinking about the reproach of God’s people or the reproach of Christ himself? The answer is Yes.

When Moses chose solidarity with God’s people in their reproach, he also chose solidarity with Christ in his reproach — because it’s the same reproach. The reproach and insults and ridicule of Christ on behalf of his people is reproach, insults, and ridicule that we choose when we bear his name.

And this reproach still exists today. Joe Rogan is one of the most influential men in the world — because millions of men listen to his podcast — and he routinely insults Christianity. He says Christianity is the easiest of all religions to mock. He says it’s reproachable. The reproach of Christ is still a thing. Now does that make us move toward Jesus or shy away from him?

The Greater WealthWell see, Moses didn’t just move toward this reproach, but he said that this reproach of Christ is better than the treasures of Egypt. The reproach of Christ is more valuable than the treasures of Egypt. And that’s the peculiar valuation — it’s odd.

Reproach, insults, suffering, culminating in a shameful execution on a Roman cross — how is that better than anything? That sounds horrible. Get me outta that! I’d rather do anything than to go through that!

And yet Moses looked at it: that reproach and the treasures of Egypt … and he said, I’ll take the reproach.

Far be it from me to boast unless in the reproach of Christ, by which the world and all its treasure has been crucified to me and I to the world. The reproach of Christ is a stumbling block for Jews and folly to Gentiles, but for me — for Moses and those who have faith like Moses — the reproach of Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (see 1 Corinthians 1:22–25; Galatians 2:20).

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold
I’d rather be His than have riches untold
I’d rather have Jesus than houses or land
I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand
Than to be the king of a vast domain
And be held in sin’s dread sway
I’d rather have Jesus than anything
This world affords today

And that only makes sense when we, like Moses, by faith, look to the reward (end of verse 26). This reward is future and eternal, not immediate and temporal. This is when we have the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Unlike the fleeting pleasures of Egypt, we must see him who for now is invisible to us but who one day we will see face to face. One day, church, we will be looking at Jesus and everything will have been worth it.

That’s what brings us to this Table.

The TableWe display our faith in Jesus not only with words, but with action — and the same could be said for how God displays his love for us.

The Bible says that God shows/demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When we were most unloveable, God acted to show us his love. And that’s what we remember at this Table.

The bread here represents the body of Jesus; the cup represents the blood of Jesus — together this reminds us of the death of Jesus, the ultimate action of God’s love. This morning if you’ve received that love, if you have put your faith in Jesus, you can display that faith by sharing in this meal. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us eat and drink together, and give him thanks.

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At the end of July, our family visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, with our sons’ 12U baseball team. After hearing so often about Cooperstown as a lifelong baseball fan, it was surreal to finally be there onsite, and especially to walk through the famous Plaque Gallery and see the faces of the Hall of Fame inductees.

One thing I didn’t realize about Cooperstown until this year is how far it is off the beaten trail. It’s not in New York City or LA or Orlando or Vegas, where tourists would already be gathered. It’s four hours north of Manhattan. You don’t just happen to go by the Hall of Fame. You go out of the way, to upstate New York, away from the big city and other distractions, to this small town with a population less than my wife’s hometown of Aitkin, Minnesota. So, you get away from normal life, and stand in awe of these larger-than-life figures who did what very few humans can do.

Sometimes we hear Hebrews 11 talked about as the “hall of faith” or “faith hall of fame,” but that might give the wrong impression. Hebrews 11 is actually not like the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is not a remote gallery to visit while you forget normal life and gawk at inimitable greats. Rather, Hebrews 11 takes normal humans, who had faith in the true God, and presses their stories into the service of our real lives and struggles. This is no mere record of Israel’s history, but Israel’s history pressed into the service of helping us persevere in faith.

And we live in times where this is particularly needed. We need examples and encouragements to help us endure in faith and keep believing.

Amen TimeChapter 11 is the rhetorical climax of Hebrews, the best part of the sermon, the big amen part, leading up the highest point in 12:1–3, where Jesus is the climactic man of faith, and author and perfecter of ours.

Along the way, while narrating this “by faith” history of Israel, Hebrews makes four editorial comments (in verses 6, 13–16, 32a, and 38a). By far, the “editorial comment” in verses 13–16 is the longest, and most significant. Verses 13–16 are the heart of our passage this morning and in some ways the heart of the whole chapter. And verses 13–16 deal with three distinct but connected realities: faith, obedience, and being strangers because of it.

This chapter leads us not only to ask what these realities are and what they mean, but what they are like. In other words, what’s the experience of faith like? What’s it like to obey from faith? And what’s it like to live as strangers and exiles in this world, seeking another, rather than being at home in this one?

So, with this risky, experiential focus, let’s ask three “what’s it like” questions this morning: (1) What’s it like to have saving faith? (2) What’s it like to obey from faith? (3) What’s it like to live in this world as strangers and exiles, seeking a homeland?

1) What’s It Like to Have Saving Faith?We start with the first half of verse 13:

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar . . .”

Last week we looked at verse 1, which may be the closest thing to a definition of faith in the New Testament. However, the chapter keeps going. Instead of just a definition, and then move on, Hebrews keeps going and shows us faith from one angle after another.

In fact, if you were to say, Okay, what does this chapter say about the nature of faith, and what it’s like to have it? You will find various angles on this many-splendored reality:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (v. 1)

Faith pleases God, walks with him. (v. 5)

Faith sees God as a rewarder of those who seek him. (v. 6)

Faith looks to his city, not man’s. (v. 10)

Faith considers him faithful who promised. (v. 11)

Faith seeks another homeland, and desires a better country. (v. 14)

Faith considers that God is able to raise the dead. (v. 19)

But the first part of verse 13 has a particularly important contribution to make: Faith (1) sees God’s promises from afar and (2) greets them.

Last Sunday we saw this emphasis on faith as “seeing” what is not yet visible. Faith hears the promises of God, and sees them with the soul, or the eyes of the heart. Faith sees spiritually what cannot yet be fully seen, or seen at all, with the physical eyes. There is a kind of distance, for now, bridged by faith.

And because this “seeing” is a response to hearing God’s promises, faith is tied repeatedly in this chapter to “receiving” (verses 8, 11, 13, 17, and 19). Faith receives. It’s a “peculiarly receiving grace” (as Andrew Fuller said). It is not a doing grace or performing grace. It does not merit God’s favor. Rather, faith receives God’s favor and “sees” his promises that are still, for now, invisible and distant.

But faith not only sees from afar. It greets. That is, it welcomes, embraces, even kisses. Faith receives with delight, not with disgust or disinterest. It is not mere assent, but warm embrace. In the language of verse 6, faith looks to the reward. Verse 10, it looks forward to the heavenly city. Verse 16, it desires a better country, the heavenly one. And the whole point of the chapter is that saving faith perseveres. It keeps seeing, keeps greeting, keeps looking forward, keeps desiring, and tasting of the fullness of joy to come.

So, then, what’s it like to have saving faith? What might we say about the experience of faith?

On the one hand, to live according to faith is not to have all the promises yet. Once you have all the promises, you no longer live by faith, but sight. Faith is not yet content with the here and now, as we’ll see.

But faith also has a foretaste of the goodness of God’s promises. Faith hears God’s word and sees him as true with the eyes of the soul, and embraces him as desirable. Saving faith is not indifferent to what it sees, or apathetic toward who God is and what he has said and done. Rather, there is in faith an eagerness, a desire, a thirst to drink, a hunger to eat, and a foretaste of satisfaction. As Jonathan said last Sunday, faith says to God, “I want you.” And saving faith perseveres. It keeps wanting. (Which might lead us to ask, practically, How am I conditioning my soul — for indifference to God or delight in him?)

So, faith, in verse 13, sees God’s promises from afar and greets them, and continues to want them. Which leads to our second “what’s it like” question.

2) What’s It Like to Obey from Faith?We ask this because verses 8–12 and 17–22 tell us about external, observable actions undertaken in faith: Abraham obeyed and went out and lived in a foreign land. Sarah received power to conceive and gave birth. Abraham reached for the knife to sacrifice his beloved son of promise. Isaac and Jacob and Joseph invoked future blessings on their heirs and gave them future directions.

So, having some working sense of the experience of faith, what’s it like to obey, to act, to live by faith?

First, verses 8–9, Abraham’s obedience:

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.”

So, God said to him in Genesis 12:1,

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you . . . .”

And Abraham obeyed. But (this is very important) God didn’t only command obedience; he made promises:

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This wasn’t just command and obey, but command and promise, leading to trust and obey. So, verse 10 tells us how faith led to obedience. What was it like?

Abraham obeyed because (“for”), verse 10, “he was looking forward [that’s faith] to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” In other words, God didn’t just command it and Abraham obeyed it. God made commands and gave promises, and Abraham looked forward to, that is, believed, God’s promises, as the better future, which led him to obey. Still today, when we talk about looking forward to something, we mean something we want, desire, anticipate enjoying.

Then, Sarah. Verse 11 – the first part she obeyed, the second part how it happened:

“By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”

Now, this obedience seems very different than her husband’s. He goes out and moves and stays. Sarah obeys by welcoming God’s work in her womb, and preparing at age 90 to finally have a child, to nurture the child in pregnancy and give birth and nurse and raise the child — all sorts of big and little obediences to bring a child into the world, and do so at age 90.

And how did her obedience come from faith? See that word considered in verse 11? We’ll see it again in verse 19 (and again next week talking about Moses in verse 26). That idea of “considering” is so important to obeying from faith, and how faith gives rise to obedience.

There is a natural course of action — 90-year-old women don’t prepare to have babies. But faith considers. It does not simply move, like natural humans, with the patterns of the world. God’s promises come, faith receives them, and looks forward to them, and it changes how we live. We move to another place and live in a different way, with our eyes opened to something better. We open our arms to receive a child, or later we open our hands to release our grasp on that child (that’s next).

So, Sarah heard promises from God, like Abraham, and she too considered God faithful. She believed God would do what he said, and she desired that he do it, that it would be better, and so she acted differently. Faith changed how she lived. Her faith led her to obey.

Now, back to Abraham. Verses 17–18 tell us about Abraham’s further obedience by faith, and verse 19, how it happened:

“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, 18 of whom it was said, ’Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.‘ 19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”

So, like Sarah, he considered. Naturally speaking, it made no sense to offer up Isaac. How could offspring come through Isaac if he was dead?

Answer: God could raise him.

God had promised offspring, and God had said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and . . . offer him . . . as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). So Abraham tells the two young men he brought with them, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you” (Genesis 22:5). Abraham would obey God, and he believed that God would provide a rescue, or resurrection, for Isaac.

So, again, faith leads to obedience. Faith takes God at his word. Faith considers the truthfulness and faithfulness of God, and his goodness, and that his plan is better, and faith leads us to act differently than we would without it.

So, what’s it like today to obey from faith? In short, we see something better than the world sees, and we act accordingly. Hearing God’s promises, we consider differently than unbelievers. Our minds and hearts do different calculus. We don’t float through life, with its givens, like unbelievers do. We don’t just see and do. We see, we stop, see with the eyes of faith, and then act. For Christians, the line “everyone else is doing it” is not a good reason to do it, or (don’t miss this) not do it, but for us to pause and ask, given my true home and my new desires, what is obedience here?

So, faith gives us a foretaste of God’s promises, our souls consider the world and life differently, and we obey from the heart.

3) What’s It Like to Live as Strangers?Now we finish with the rest of verses 13–16. We already saw in verses 9–10 that Abraham “went to live . . . in a foreign land . . . . For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” Now we learn more:

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

So, men and women of faith not only see God’s promises from afar and welcome them, but they acknowledge, or confess, themselves to be strangers and exiles on earth. Make no mistake, faith makes them strangers. To hear God’s promises and embrace them is to be stranger. You are no longer “of the world.” Now, you are different, strange. But Hebrews says these examples of faith also acknowledged it. They confess it. They recognize it and say it.

And verse 14 says that people like that, call them Christians, make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. They are not “at home” in this world, and don’t expect to be, and don’t pretend to be. This age, its patterns, its assumptions are no longer theirs. They are Christians, and by definition, they seek a homeland other than where they were born on earth or where they live for now.

In verse 15, Hebrews looks his first audience right in eye, if you can do that in a letter. He puts his finger on the connection between Abraham’s story and theirs. Because of social pressure, they are tempted to “go back” to Judaism apart from Jesus. So Hebrews says about these examples of faith, “If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.” But they didn’t. They didn’t reminisce about the past. They didn’t dwell on the comforts of their former life before God spoke and they believed. They didn’t constantly consider the old or pine for the other.

For them the “return” would have been Judaism. For us, what might it be? Normal modern American life?

And to them, and to us, Hebrews says, Don’t go back. Don’t settle for an earthly homeland when God has prepared a better city. In Christ, the best is ahead, not behind. Don’t let nostalgia play tricks on you. God has prepared a better place for you — a New Jerusalem, the better city and country that is come, the heavenly one, “that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (verse 10). We seek a homeland that is not immaterial, but is not of this age and not of this earth (but “of heaven”). We seek the better city, built and inhabited by God himself, that soon will come “down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).

So, what’s it like to live today as strangers and exiles? Simply, our hearts are not at home in this world. God has lit the flame of faith in our souls, and now we no longer want all our world wants and do all it does. We’re not at home with its movies, its shows, what it affirms and denies, its values and priorities and proportions, its distractions and investments of attention, its ways of talking, its dreams, its topics, its ways of using technology. We do not think and feel and live like everyone else, or do we?

Being strangers and exiles doesn’t only mean that we give Christian takes on all the worlds topics and trends while we just swallow its feeds and add our spin. We find different feeds. We order our lives around God’s word and his people, rather than the world’s authorities and algorithms. We set the patterns and pace of our souls through meditating on Scripture and rhythms of prayer and meeting together in the habits of church life. Or do we?

Now, all the answers and subtle ethical challenges are not easy. We overlap as humans: we eat, we sleep, we love, we nurture, we exercise, we work, we rest. But now it’s all different, even while some of it’s still very similar.

If you ask, How do I live as a stranger and exile in this luxurious, twenty-first-century American life? Wisdom requires walking in tensions, not reaching for easy fixes or simplistic compromise or separation. The answers are often not in the absolutes but the proportions, and in the rhythms of our lives, and how we condition our souls.

But what Hebrews 11 makes unmistakable is that the Christian faith is not a layer you add to the old life of unbelief, but it is new life, from the inside out — joy enough to obey and own that we are strangers.

Not Ashamed to Be Our GodLet’s end with the amazing statement in verse 16. So those who are of saving, persevering faith are not those who return to where they came from, but desire a better country, the heavenly one, verse 16:

“Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

I can’t think of anywhere else in Scripture that talks about God being ashamed or not ashamed. What could Hebrews even mean that God would be ashamed? God never does anything shameful. God could never be put to shame. So what is Hebrews communicating by saying that God is not ashamed to be called our God, if we have such faith?

What is the opposite of shame? Honor. So, put it like this: for those who desire the heavenly city, God is honored to be their God. Don’t you want that? None of us want to bring shame to one we call our God. And in the end we won’t, because if we abandon faith, we show that he was not our God. God will not be shamed.

But he will be honored. He will be honored by those who take him at his word, and welcome his promises, embrace his Son, and confess themselves to be strangers on the earth — and desire a better country, a better land, a better city than human hands and constitutions can build. Not only is that desire an aspect of faith, but that desire honors God. He is not honored by indifference or apathy to him and promises. He is honored by souls that seek him, embrace him, welcome him, desire him. He says, in effect,

I am honored to be their God because they desire me, not their world and its empty promises. They seek a fatherland, a home, with me, not on earth. They see me and my city from afar, and they are not uninterested or unimpressed, but they greet it, welcome it, embrace it, kiss it. They want me, and that honors me. They enjoy me and that glorifies me. No, I am not ashamed to be their God; I am honored by such hearts of faith. And they will not be disappointed — because I have prepared for them that better city that they desire.

And a better Table.

To the TableWe come here with such faith. We do not come with indifference or apathy or disinterest. We come here seeking satisfaction. We come desiring God and his city. We come embracing his Son, and cherishing his Isaac-like and Isaac-surpassing sacrifice.

In faith, we see the crucified and risen Jesus from afar and greet him. We receive his good news as true, and we receive it as good. We come to eat and drink according to faith and satisfy our souls in him.

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The death and resurrection of Jesus secures for us amazing realities. These are realities that we are said to have. We possess them. What are they?

What comes to your mind when you think about what Jesus has done for you?

Forgiveness of sins.
The giving of his righteousness.
New heart.
Eternal life.
The right to be called the children of God.
The fulfillment of all God’s promises.

There’s a long list of things that we could say. The New Testament is chocked full of these gospel realities, and Hebrews Chapter 10 tells us about two of them:

First, in chapter 10, verse 19, the writer tells us that we have confidence/authorization to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus. We saw that two weeks ago. We have that authorization.

Second, in chapter 10, verse 34, the writer says that we have a better possession and an abiding one. We saw that last week. Pastor Max showed us that what we possess in Jesus is better than every valuable thing of this world, and it abides. It can’t be taken away.

We have authorization. We have what is better.

But who is the “we”? Who possesses these gospel realities?

Faith Is Absolutely NecessaryI’m about to say something pretty basic but I really want you to hear it.

Get this: All the gospel realities talked about in the New Testament — everything from the forgiveness of sins to having authorization to God’s presence here in Hebrews — all of these gospel realities only belong to those who have put their faith in Jesus in his death and resurrection.

For example, I’ll say it like this:

God will not forgive your sins if you do not trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

That’s in the negative. Here’s the positive:

God will forgive your sins if you trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

All of these gospel realities belong to us on the condition of our faith. We must believe in Jesus — and having this faith and enduring in this faith — is a big deal in the Book of Hebrews. It is a major concern for the writer.

And on the one hand, this should be sobering to us — we have need of endurance (see 10:36). We gotta have real faith. But then on the other hand, this should be encouraging to us, because the writer, like a good coach, assures us that we are those who have enduring faith.

He does something at the end of Chapter 10 that he did in Chapter 6. In Chapter 6 after warning the church about the real threat of walking away from Jesus, he ends that part by saying, “but … in your case, beloved, I’m convinced of better things!” (6:9). He’s encouraging.

Well here in Chapter 10 he does that same thing. After warning the church again about the real threat of walking away from Jesus, he concludes the section by saying, “But you’re not like those who shrink back [or fall away], you are of faith!” (10:39).

So faith is absolutely necessary. We must have faith. The writer says we do. But wait a second … what is faith?

We have to have it. This book talks all about it. We should probably have an idea for what faith is, right?!

Talkin’ FaithWell, the writer of Hebrews thinks so, and so now beginning in Chapter 11, verse 1, we find the longest treatment on the topic of faith in the Bible. In 40 verses, the word “faith” is repeated 24 times. And what’s really amazing about Hebrews 11 is that faith isn’t just talked about, but it’s illustrated.

I think what’s implied here is that we can understand faith better by seeing it demonstrated, more than by only seeing it analyzed. That doesn’t mean we don’t analyze it. We do — the writer does in verse 1 — but that part is brief. Most of Chapter 11 is “Let me show you how it looks!”

And that’s the sermon outline. The writer is saying:

Part One: What is faith?

Part Two: Hold my beer. … he’s saying “Watch this! I’m about to show you what faith is!”

Part One is Faith Analyzed. Part Two is Faith Demonstrated.

Let’s start with Part One. It’s just one verse.

Part One: Faith Analyzed This is Hebrews 11, verse 1. And some commentators make a point to say that the writer of Hebrews is not trying to define faith here. I just wanna clarify that the writer is not giving a comprehensive definition here, but he is telling us what faith is. This may not be a full definition, but he’s not not defining it. The first three words are “Now faith is.” He’s gonna tell us what it is. He gives us a general analysis of faith. Which means, we’re leaning forward here. We wanna know what he’s about to say. Look at verse 1:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

I remember this verse in the King James Version:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Most English translations use different words for “assurance” and “conviction” (and there are different reasons why) but the main thing to understand here is that faith is not a feeling. It’s not a slippery, emotional state that waxes and wanes. In general terms, faith is the present embrace of a concrete, substantial reality that is yet unseen. Faith accesses and anticipates the reality of unseen things just as we do seen things. And I think something that might help us here is the way memory works.

How does memory work?

Memory allows us to mentally and emotionally access the past even when we can’t physically see the thing we have in mind.

For example, growing up, between my house and my grandparents’ house, there was a long dirt path that went all the way back into the woods. It was a sandy dirt, the kind of dirt we have in the Coastal Plain region of North Carolina, and the path went way back out of sight, into the woods, past my great-grandparents’ house, all the way down to a pond surrounded by trees.

Now there is no question in my mind that this path exists, even though I cannot physically see it right now. I have seen it. In my memory, I embrace the substantial reality of what is currently unseen to me but seen before. I remember it.

Faith works in a similar way — not in the same way, but in a similar way — in that faith embraces the substantial reality of what, up to this point, has never been seen by me. With faith I can’t remember the substantial reality because I’ve not seen it, but I imagine the substantial reality because I’m convinced it’s real. I believe. I have faith.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction [or evidence] of things not seen.”

And this applies to unseen things of the future and the past.

And verse 2 says that by it — by faith — the people of old received their commendation.

The idea behind “the people of old” is to say “the ancients of redemptive history.” These are Old Testament believers. These ancient, Old Testament believers, by their faith, were commended by God. And now this sets up the famous “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11.

So in verse 1 the writer gives us a brief, general analysis of faith, and then right away, verse 2, he gets to showing us faith demonstrated. This is how faith looks — Part Two already: Faith Demonstrated.

Part Two: Faith DemonstratedNow something you notice here is that when the writer wants to show us faith demonstrated, he’s going to repeat over and over “By faith, this” “By faith, that.” Those two words “by faith” are all throughout Chapter 11, and beginning in verse 4 each time he says “by faith —” he’s referring to these ancient figures of redemptive history. He illustrates faith by the examples of Old Testament saints, but notice what he does first in verse 3.

This was new for me this week. I’ve read this chapter countless times before and I’ve never really paid attention to verse 3. It’s not what the chapter is famous for. But the first thing the writer says to show us faith demonstrated is not the faith of Old Testament saints, but it’s our own faith. Look at this, verse 3:

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen [the universe] was not made out of things that are visible [it was made by the invisible word of God].”

Now my guess is that for most of us, if we’re familiar with Hebrews 11, when we think about this chapter, we don’t think about verse 3, but we think the “Hall of Faith” — “By faith Noah” and “By faith Abraham” and “By faith Moses” … but first the writer says “By faith we…”

And this is strategic, I think, for two reasons.

First, the writer wants us to make a direct connection between his analysis of faith in verse 1 and our own experience. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. For example, just take the way we consider the universe. Nobody doubts that the universe is real. We’re standing on it. We’re breathing in the air. It’s pretty reliable to say that the universe, this world, it’s a thing. This is substantial reality we see. And it was created by the word of God, which we do not see.

The unseen word of God created the seen world. And we understand that by faith.

Now the writer obviously assumes that Christians embrace the word of God as the origin of the universe. There were other ideas at this time from the pagan world. The Big Bang Theory would come later (in the 1930s). But either way, what he says here remains true and still applies.

For example, the Big Bang Theory says that everything started with a primeval atom, that before anything there was a single particle that exploded into the universe and everything there is. Well guess what? Did anybody see that happen?

Of course not. So either way you look at it, the only option for the origin of the universe is that it was caused by something unseen. So whatever your position is, it’s a position of faith. The question is whether you have faith in a theory invented by man about a hypothetical particle or if you have faith in the word of God.

Christians, us, we have faith in the invisible word of God, and we live in the visible, substantial reality that word created. So verse 1 is not distant, empty analysis. This is our experience. We have faith.

The second thing the writer is doing when he starts with “by faith we …” is that he wants us to know that we are in the same company as these Old Testament saints. We are like them, in that, we share the same faith as they do.

And it’s hard to imagine anything more encouraging than this. It means that the writer is not about to give us examples of heroes in the Old Testament who are out of our reach. We should not be like, “Oh, I could never be like them!” There’s not a single place in the New Testament that speaks of Old Testament believers that way.

In fact, let me tell you what James says in James 5! He wants to encourage us to pray and he uses the prophet Elijah as an example. He doesn’t say: Elijah is so much greater than us. Good luck at being able to pray like he did.

He doesn’t say that. He says: Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Elijah! Elijah was like us! We can pray like he did!

That’s the same heart here in Hebrews 11. These are examples to be imitated. The saints described in Hebrews 11 — these are our people. We are with them.

Let me tell you about three: Abel, Enoch, Noah — Genesis 4, 5 and 6.

Verse 4 — Abel (Genesis 4:3–10) Verse 4,

“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”

We can read about Abel in Genesis 4. Adam and Eve had their first son, Cain, and then Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, Cain was a worker of the ground. And in the course of time, they both brought an offering to God — Cain brought produce (because he was a farmer); Abel brought an animal (because he was a shepherd). And Genesis 4:4 says that “the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”

And we don’t know exactly why this is the case. The text of Genesis doesn’t tell us. We just know that God accepted (was pleased with) Abel and his offering, and here the writer of Hebrews says that was God commending him. Which is an interesting word. It’s used in Hebrews 11 in verse 2, twice in verse 4, in verse 5, and then again in verse 39.

The word means to “bear witness” or “to give testimony.” The writer of Hebrews says that God commended, testified, that Abel was righteous. How did God do that? By accepting his gift. The word for accepting means to be pleased with. God was pleased with Abel and his gift.

So let’s hold onto that for a minute: God testified that Abel is righteous by being pleased with Abel and his gift.

Verse 5 — Enoch (Genesis 5:21–24) Verse 5,

“By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”

We can read about Enoch in Genesis 5, and he is an extremely unique person in human history because he never died. He is listed in the genealogy from Adam to Noah, and over and over again in Genesis 5, in that genealogy, after the text mentions a person’s name and how long they lived, then the text says: “And he died.” It’s “They lived this long, and died. They lived this long, and died” over and over. But when it gets to Enoch in Genesis 5, verse 21, it’s different. Let me read it to you. Genesis 5:21,

“When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”

See, he didn’t die. The writer of Hebrews says the same thing. Hebrews 11:5,

“Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.”

But then the writer says that before Enoch was taken, “he was commended as having pleased God.” Now where is the writer of Hebrews getting that?

Okay, track with me here: If you have a hard copy Bible and you can turn to Genesis 4, I want to encourage you to do that. For everybody else, hang with me: if you are reading Genesis 4 in your English translation, most English versions have a footnote beside the phrase “Enoch walked with God.” And if you look at that footnote, down at the bottom of your page (if you have an English Standard Version like me) the footnote says: “Septuagint pleased God.”

Now the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew. It dates back to the 3rd century BC. And it’s important because the Septuagint was the Bible that the New Testament authors would have read. And in the Septuagint, in Genesis 5:21, the Septuagint translated “Enoch walked with God” as “Enoch pleased God.” Because it’s the same idea.

The idea is that Enoch had fellowship with God — he walked with God. The Hebrew text says that. The Septuagint just interpreted more of what that means. It means that Enoch’s life was pleasing to God. The writer of Hebrews read that in Genesis 5.

So get this: God testified that Enoch pleased him.

High-Water MarkAnd this is something that Abel and Enoch both have in common. God commended them both. God testified that he was pleased with them both.

But wait a minute, Hebrews 11 is about faith!

The writer of Hebrews says Abel and Enoch had faith, but the Old Testament text doesn’t say that. The Old Testament only says they pleased God.

We have to wonder then: What is the connection between having faith and pleasing God?

That’s a great question. Look at verse 6:

“And without faith it is impossible to please him.”

This is the high-water mark of this passage. Verse 6 is the explanation for why Abel and Enoch can be said to have faith. Track with what he’s saying here. We can put it in a basic syllogism:

Major premise: Abel and Enoch both pleased God.

Minor premise: Without faith it is impossible to please God.

Conclusion: Therefore, Abel and Enoch had faith.

See what he’s doing there?

These first three examples in Hebrews 11 — Abel, Enoch, Noah — they only work as examples of faith because of this logic. Genesis never says explicitly that they have faith. Genesis only says they pleased God, and then we see what they did. Like in Noah’s case:

Verse 7 — Noah (Genesis 6:8–9ff) Verse 7:

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

You can see how this is demonstrating what the writer says in verse 1. Noah built the ark because he embraced the substantial reality of something he had not seen. And his embrace of this unseen substantial reality led him to do something. He lived differently because of it. He built a boat. And an action like that looks like faith according to verse 1, but again in Genesis, the text never says that Noah had faith. But listen to Genesis 6, verse 9:

“These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.”

And if you read that verse in Septuagint, like the writer of Hebrews did, guess what it says: “Noah pleased God.”

And according to the logic of verse 6, if Noah pleased God, then Noah had faith, and by his faith he became an “heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

That is a real thing. The righteousness that comes by faith. Noah became part of that, and what’s implied here is that we can too. By faith, we can be heirs of that righteousness that comes by faith.

For without faith it is impossible to please God.

God Is Our RewardVerse 6 really is the high-water mark of the passage, and I want us to end here. Look at the second part of verse 6. First, he says, “For without faith it is impossible to please God” and then in the second part of verse 6 he explains more of what this means. He says:

“…for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

So the writer is taking the logic of Abel, Enoch, and Noah’s faith and he’s stating it as a general principle. This now goes for everybody. If you want to draw near to God — which has been a big theme in Hebrews — if you want to walk with God, be with God, you must believe that God is real and consequential. It matters that he is God. The reality of God is not something that we acknowledge and then put to the side and move on with our lives.

Y’all know I love John Piper. I’m so thankful for his influence. One sentence from Pastor John that I remember as much as any (and he’s got a lot of good sentences), but one time he said, with genuine bafflement:

“I don’t understand how someone can believe God exists and then only give him 2% of their lives.”

If you believe God exists, don’t you believe he’s God? … If God exists, God exists. He’s God. GOD! He’s God, you’re not. He’s God, they’re not.

If you want to have a relationship with God, you gotta believe that he’s real and that his realness makes a difference, in other words, you have to believe that he “rewards those who seek him.”

If you seek God, he will reward you. With what? What is the reward?

God will reward you with that for which you seek, which is him.

If you seek God, he will reward you with himself. You get God. You have him.

That’s what faith is all about. That’s why faith is pleasing to God. It magnifies his glory.

Faith is not a coping mechanism to get through the hardships of life. Faith, biblical faith, says I want him. I want him whom I have never seen. And I want all the gospel realities that are in him.

That’s what brings us to this Table.

The TableSo far in Hebrews 11, the writer has talked about faith in general terms. He gives us the basic of what faith is and how it looks, but here at the Table is where we get laser-focused. Nothing is generic here. Our faith in God is faith in Jesus Christ; our faith in Jesus Christ is faith in his death and resurrection for us.

That’s what the bread and cup symbolize. The bread represents the body of Jesus broken for us. The cup represents the blood of Jesus shed for us. And when we eat and drink, we are saying This is my faith. I trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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If you’re one of the rare people who thinks that a marathon isn’t challenging enough, I’d like to introduce you to the “arctic-ice ultra-marathon.” It’s a race, about 5.5 marathons long in the arctic circle. Their description says,

“Experiencing day time temperatures as low as -40 degrees, you will battle across snowfields, Arctic tundra and frozen lakes. This Arctic ultra marathon is both challenging and exposed, putting physical and mental endurance to a painful test. Be ready to take on the conditions that the Arctic Circle can throw at you. As darkness descends, you will feel like the only person on the planet.”

Does that sound appealing to anyone?

Ok, so what does an ultra-marathon have to do with Hebrews 10? Well, our text, Hebrews 10:32-39 is about endurance. And specifically, an encouragement for Christian endurance. And it has endurance-athlete like undertones, that, once we look at who these Christians are and what they had endured, make a lot of sense. The picture that comes to mind is of being about 4 marathons into something like an ultra-marathon, looking at the cost, and getting discouraged… starting to wonder: is following Jesus worth it?

This encouragement also comes on the heels of a dreadful warning against abandoning Jesus. This week Pastor David Mathis has written to our church, reflecting on the sober warning in the verses before our passage on the result of apostasy. No matter who you are, you need to hear the warning: Walking away from Jesus (abandoning the Christian faith) will result in you facing the full judgment and wrath of God.

“It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

You do not want to end up there. It’s a dreadful warning we all need to hear.

But here, in verses 32-39 the author follows up his warning with an encouragement to these particular Christians for their endurance. And as we look at his encouragement today, my prayer is that we too would be encouraged in our faith, and would grow in encouraging one another through his example.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for revealing yourself to us through it. And this morning, wherever we’re coming from, I pray that you would prepare our hearts to receive your word and that by your Spirit you would deepen our faith, and our joy, and that we would run with endurance; looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We ask this in Christ’s precious name, Amen.

The sermon outline this morning is a three-part encouragement that fuels enduring faith: a past confidence, a better possession, and a promised return.

Verses 32-34,

“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach & affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison And you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.”

The author’s encouragement to these christians begins with

1) Reminding them of their past confidence. If you remember, in the parable of the sower… A farmer sowed a bunch of seeds, some fell on the road and were immediately snatched away, some fell on rocky soil and didn’t have the roots to survive the heat of persecution, and some fell in thorns and were choked out by the worries of life and deceitfulness of riches.

Well the author of Hebrews, in recalling the background of these Christians, reminds them that none of those describe them. He says, when I look back on your early days of walking with Jesus, and what you endured for the sake of Christ, I see real, enduring faith. And here, we get our best glimpse at the background of these Christians; and it’s pretty incredible: These were not baby Christians. They were veterans, who had lived faithfully through severe persecutions, and the author makes a point of that for their encouragement. He reminds them that when they were first “enlightened” (when they first saw the light of the Gospel and trusted in Jesus) their faith was evident through their transformed life. And that transformation was especially clear in their suffering.

For one, becoming a Christian made them unpopular – and that’s an understatement. The text says they were “publicly exposed to reproach.” They were openly ridiculed. Whether it was their friends or family or coworkers, the people around them were not happy about their new faith, but mocked them for being Christians. Later we see that things escalated, and pretty severely, because some of these Christians were even arrested and sent to prison for their faith. And because prisons back then were not like our prisons, where you get food and blankets, these prisoners were now dependent on their loved ones to bring them food just to survive… which must have led to a challenge for their community group: who’s signing up for that meal train?

If you go and bring aid to your fellow Christians in prison, you’ve now got a target on your back. And that means you risk getting thrown in prison yourself, or as we see later, in verse 34, you risk losing your possessions. It’s not clear if this was official confiscation or angry mobs, but either way, the outcome is the same, imagine your stuff, gone. Your house, your car, your savings, wiped out.

And here the author teases out a distinction. There was direct suffering that individual Christians experienced as a result of their faith, and, there was the voluntary stepping into the suffering of other Christians, by the rest of the Christian community. The church acted: with compassion and by taking risks (often at great cost to themselves) fueled by love towards their fellow Christians. These Christians suffered together. Think less Gladiator, and more like “Band of Brothers” - a community of Christians enduring together, with love and compassion.

And how did these Christians fare? Well it says they endured. And endured here means they persisted in faith, as evidenced by their life of faith despite their suffering. And they didn’t just survive, they flourished! When it came to their own suffering and loss: it says they joyfully accepted the plundering of their property. They counted the cost and gladly said Jesus is worth it. And when it came to indirect suffering, the whole Christian community stood boldly and publicly united. The church did not splinter or fall apart. Their unity was evident through their practical and tangible support.

It’s important not to dismiss these Christians as just being of a different, unrelatable sort. They weren’t superheroes that could tap into something unavailable to us, and they weren’t stoics, unaffected by suffering. These are real people, like you and I. They had families to support, children to look out for, bills to pay, and they worked just as hard to earn their living as you and I. They felt the sting of rejection and ridicule like you and I do. Yet, they didn’t waver. They did not back out or hide. They also didn’t become bitter, cynical or angry at God.

A note on testimonies The author, in writing to this particular group of Christians, encourages them through positive examples from their own past, testimonies from their own church – to draw strength and encouragement for their present endurance.

And if we just stop and reflect on what we have in this room, right now, it’s incredible! You are surrounded by hundreds of Christians who have experienced the same transforming power of the gospel that’s described here. I would encourage us all to make opportunities to hear and share one another’s stories of the power of the gospel in our lives. Our testimonies, of God’s faithfulness and our endurance, especially through suffering. Maybe it’s a conversation over dinner with friends and family, life groups, or community groups. We need to hear of the transforming power of the gospel and of the legacies of past faithfulness not just in biographies, but especially from one another. The church needs to be reminded of past faithfulness to draw strength and encouragement for our present endurance.

And I’d love to share a glimpse... a day from my own story back in college. I had grown up in a Christian home, I had heard the gospel often, and made early professions of faith, but in college I remember just feeling stuck. A cloud of doubt and skepticism surrounded me that I could not break out of, for years. I doubted everything about God, including his very existence, and then one day, sitting in the college hallway, I was reading Foxe's Book of Martyrs, a collection of true stories from the early church. And I got to the story of Denisa, who the author says was “a young woman of only 16 years old.” Denisa was standing in a crowd, and witnessed a man renouncing his faith under torture. And instead of hiding or blending in, she spoke up and publicly rebuked the man saying:

“O unhappy wretch, why would you buy a moment’s ease at the expense of a miserable eternity!"

And 16 year old Denisa, avowing herself to be a Christian, was beheaded soon after. Both her rebuke and the realness of her faith stirred my heart deeply; and I remember pleading with God, saying “God, I want that kind of faith. Why can’t I have what she has? Why is my heart so hard? Would you please remove this doubt and give me faith like hers? And he did.

In that moment, Jesus was more real to me than any of the students walking past me in the hallway. I will never forget the peace, the joy and love that filled my heart and transformed my life going forward. And looking back on my past confidence has been a deep source of encouragement in my faith.

You are surrounded by hundreds of unique stories of the transforming power of the gospel, and examples of enduring faithfulness. Let’s hear and share evidence of God’s work in our lives for one another’s encouragement and endurance. That’s what the author is doing here by reminding them of their past confidence.

A note on ConfidenceFaith and Confidence are often used synonymously, as they are here, and it’s important to recognize that the foundation of our faith is not how confident we are. Christian faith is always personal, but it’s not subjective. It’s like running across a frozen lake. You don’t step onto a frozen lake because you feel confident in yourself. You step onto the lake because the ice is solid enough to hold you. If it can’t hold you, then you will fall through regardless of how confident you are. That’s why Paul says, if Christ isn’t raised from the dead, our faith is useless and we’re still in our sins. Our faith stands or falls on the object it rests on: the perfect person and work of Jesus on our behalf. That’s why we sing: On Christ the solid rock I stand. He is our confidence. At the same time, that objective confidence has to become your own. Faith is personal. You’ve got to believe! That’s why the author speaks of “your” confidence. Real Christian faith is taken to heart and lived. It’s not standing on the shore thinking about how solid the ice is. It’s putting your weight on it and running.

The secret to their enduring faith was not how confident they were, but the substance, the foundation, that their confidence rested on. And that’s what the author focuses in on in the second part of his encouragement:

2) He reminds them that their confidence was rooted in a better possession.Verses 34-36,

“For you had compassion on those in prison. And you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.”

After reminding them of their past faith, he then reflects on the substance of that faith. The way he does this is by intentionally lingering on the theme of possessions. He reminds them that the reason they joyfully accepted the plundering of their possessions is because they had a better possession. What they had in Christ was infinitely more valuable than what they were giving up. And the revealing word here is joyfully. Their own joy testified to the reality that Jesus was more valuable than their stuff, their possessions, or their money.

And our money matters. Jesus talked about money a lot, because our money habits both reveal and shape what we value most. Matthew 6:19,

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, … 21 For where your treasure is [where your money is], there your heart will be also.”

There’s a reinforcing cycle: The more we value something, the more we invest our money in it. And the more invested we get, the more valuable it becomes to us. Jesus says: store up for yourself treasures in heaven, and your heart will follow. Invest your money where you want your heart to go.

For example: Do you want your heart to be more excited about God’s work in global missions? Invest in global missions. Do you want your heart to more fully embrace God’s work through the mission of your local church? Invest in your local church.

There’s a book that I’ve found really helpful on this called The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn, I’d highly recommend reading it.

Don’t wait until your possessions are threatened to discover what your heart values most. For these Christians, what their hearts valued most was Jesus. He was their better possession.

These Christians remind me of the parable of the man who found a treasure in a field, who then, in order to get that field, gladly sold everything he had. No one reads that parable and thinks, man, what a poor guy having to give up all his stuff… No, he discovered a better treasure! He found a deeper joy! And the whole book of Hebrews has been arguing that Jesus is better. Piling up the arguments: Better than angels, better than Moses, better than the old covenant sacrifices, and here, definitely the most relatable comparison for modern readers: He’s better than all of our possessions.

People often ask: What would you do if you won the lottery? We talk about it like it’s the best thing that could happen to someone. Would you quit your job? Buy a nice house on the beach? Travel the world with your family? No more worries about paying your bills? Whatever your answer is to that question, Jesus is better than that.

God made you to be satisfied in Him, for eternity. Nothing else will satisfy. Everything else either disappoints, or it doesn’t last. Jesus is the deepest and most lasting treasure in the universe, and when we trust in Him he becomes our greatest possession. When we believe in Jesus, we receive… Him! Not only the complete forgiveness of your sins, but an eternity of life with him: living face to face in the presence and enjoyment of Jesus. In your presence there is fullness of Joy! At your right hand are pleasures forevermore! There is no greater joy than the joy promised to those who trust in Jesus. And there’s a link here, between present and future. There is a better possession, that they already possess, linked to the promise of a future reward. A fulfillment. And that future fulfillment takes the author into the third and final part of his encouragement:

3) He invites them to look to the Returning Jesus. And he does this by quoting Habakkuk chapter 2,

37 For,“Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; 38 but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”

For some context, Habakkuk was an old testament prophet who, looking around at the injustice and the suffering in Israel, brings a complaint to God: Why is there so much wickedness that seems to go unchallenged? Does God see? Does God care? How long will God let this go on?

And God answers him by saying, I do see, and I am doing something about it: For one, I’m preparing the Chaldeans to invade, as a judgment on Israel for their wickedness.

And Habakkuk is not satisfied with that answer: How is that any better? What kind of resolution is that? They’re more wicked than we are! What’s the big picture? What’s God’s game plan? Where’s the definitive judgment and the resolution? God I’m watching and I’m waiting.

And God says, the things I promised will come to pass. Write them down. Their fulfillment is coming. It won’t be according to our timeline, but in God’s perfect timing. But as for you, Habakkuk, (and this is the famous line) the righteous shall live by faith.

Paul, quotes that line in Romans 1 to show us the foundational link between our justification and faith. We are justified, (counted righteous) not by our works, not by anything we do or deserve, but only by trusting in Jesus: The substance of our confidence is the perfect and complete work of Jesus on the cross, in our place.

“Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.”

And the author of Hebrews has been clear on that foundation throughout the whole book. Our confidence is not in ourselves, but in Jesus: our perfect high priest, and his perfect sacrifice for the complete forgiveness of all our sins and unrestricted access to God for eternity. We are saved by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.

But here, looking at Habakkuk 2, the author highlights an application for those who, like Habakkuk, are living between God’s promise and it’s final fulfillment. As we look to the returning Jesus:

It’s by highlighting the link between faith and live. How do the righteous endure as they wait for the final fulfillment of God’s promises? They Live by Faith. Faith is not only a moment in the past of trusting in Jesus, it’s a life of leaning in and drawing near. We don’t shrink back. We continue to look to him by faith, until he returns. The application here, drawn out from Habbakuk 2 is “Let us live, by faith! With our eyes fixed on Jesus as we wait for the final fulfillment of God’s promises at Christ’s return.

Jesus is coming back, God gave us his word. And with Christ’s return, will come the eternal reward, the final fulfillment of all God’s Promises. Our text says “the coming one, is coming, and will not delay. That’s about as emphatic as he can be. Jesus is coming. God’s plan was in action in the days of Habakkuk, and its fulfillment is that much closer today. Jesus was coming when you first became a Christian, and He’s that much closer today. So don’t give up! Jesus is so close! So don’t walk away! This is the main exhortation here: Do not throw away your confidence!

The author concludes confidently in Verse 39:

“We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”

As another translation says: we’re of those who have faith, for the safekeeping of the soul. Our endurance, our safekeeping, is tied to the reality that our faith rests on Jesus. It’s who we are; our very identity. There are no alternatives to go back to.

The TableWalking away from Jesus is a dead end road that leads to destruction. That’s not us. And I love that the author speaks in the present tense, and includes himself here. We are those who have faith. Right now. The most important question for everyone in this room is: are you believing in Jesus? Right now. If you are, keep believing. Do not look away. Keep your eyes fixed on him, as you live by faith, waiting for His return.

And this brings us to the table. Every Sunday, at the table we look to Jesus together. 1 Corinthians 11 says that when we eat the bread and drink the cup we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Every Sunday when we reach out to take the bread and the wine we remind ourselves and one another – He is sufficient (He is our greatest possession) and he is coming back, like he promised.

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Today’s passage, Hebrews 10, verses 19–25, tell us three things that we as Christians should do: let us draw near – verse 22, let us hold fast – verse 23, andlet us consider others – verse 24.

We just heard those verses. We can see ‘em plainly here in the text: verses 22, 23, & 24 give us a pretty straightforward 1-2-3 of what we as Christians should do. Which means this passage is an easy passage to preach.

In fact, true story: I have preached this passage before: when I was 20-years-old, in a small church service, in the country of Slovenia, with a translator, and I don’t think I knew a thing about preaching — I just figured that this passage was clear enough that as long as I said what the text says, I’d be okay.

And I’ll be honest with you, that’s all I’m trying to do today — I wanna say what the text says — but because the passage is so straightforward, I’m gonna try to explain what’s going on here by reversing the order of the argument. I think this will help us to let the passage sink in for us.

The writer of Hebrews is making a logical argument, and as readers, our goal is to understand his argument. We want to know what he means:

He starts in verses 19–21 and says, clearly, therefore, since, let us do 1-2-3 (in verses 22–25). That’s the order of the text. But what I’d like to do is to start with what we should do (the 1-2-3), and then end on: we do these things because of verses 19–21.

So it’s the same logic, just restated (and I think this will help it sink in).

And right away, notice that each of these verses — 22, 23, and 24 — start the same way: let us, let us, let us. These verbs are for the whole church, including the writer, and they’re aspirational. (This is in the original grammar.) We want to do these things. That’s the mood here. There’s a team, community spirit of “C’mon y’all! Let’s go! This is how we wanna live!”

1) Verse 22: C’mon y’all, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.“Draw near” is the main verb and it means what it says: Come close. Approach. Move towards. And it’s been a few months since we’ve been in Hebrews, so you may not remember this, but we’ve heard this language before:

Hebrews 4:16,

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace…”

Hebrews 7:19,

“(for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.”

Hebrews 7:25,

“Consequently, he [Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

This same idea of drawing near is repeated here in Chapter 10. It’s a major theme in Hebrews. We are called to draw near to God, and that’s something we always do. Once we are in Christ, we are forever, increasingly moving further up and further in.

And the Book of Leviticus is our blue-print for this. As the people of God, remember, we live in an Edenic movement! We are moving life-ward. And we move in this direction, closer to God, “with [verse 22] a true heart in full assurance of faith.”

Does anybody in here have one of those hearts? How do we know if we have a “true heart in full assurance of faith”?

Our New Covenant RealityWell, the question is: have you experienced God’s promise of the new covenant? Because that’s what this is referring to, Ezekiel 36:26, God promises:

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.”

This is what the writer is thinking about. And he’s thinking the same thing when he says in verse 22:

“with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

The writer of Hebrews has the new covenant in mind, which he just explained to us in Chapter 8, and most likely he’s thinking about Ezekiel 36 in particular. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, right before God promises to give members of the new covenant a new heart, God says, Ezekiel 36:25, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean.” So the repeated rituals of man cleansing himself are over. God has done that now. He has washed us with pure water.

Basically, the call in verse 22, is: C’mon, y’all, let us draw near to God with the promises of the new covenant as our reality, which means our hearts are made new and true and clean.

That’s the first thing Christians should do. Here’s the second:

2) Verse 23: C’mon, y’all, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.The verb “to hold fast” is another theme in the Book of Hebrews. We’ve also heard this one before, back in Chapter 4, verse 14, “Let us hold fast our confession.” Here in Chapter 10 it’s the “confession of our hope,” but it’s the same idea. Confession or hope or confession of our hope — the writer is talking about what we look forward to as Christians. This is our future. It’s what God has promised to do, which is what we embrace now.

One good example of this is the way the apostle Paul talks about hope in Romans Chapter 8. In the Romans 8 — the Great Eight — Paul describes the future glory of all creation. He says that all creation, this entire world, will be set free from its bondage to decay, and that we ourselves, in Christ, will receive the final and complete redemption of our bodies. He is talking about the final resurrection when our mortal bodies will put on immortality — no more disease or cancer or headaches or men’s retreat basketball aches and pains. Our bodies will be fully redeemed — and Paul says, Romans 8:24, “For in this hope we were saved.”

Listen: our hope is not in what Jesus gets us now. Paul says in another place, “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). So we don’t hope in Jesus for present-day perks. This is the problem of Mr. By-Ends in Pilgrim’s Progress. Jesus never meant to be your ticket to win friends and influence people. Jesus died to save all of you for all time. He died to save your life and your afterlife and that’s our hope. C’mon y’all, let’s hold fast to our hope without wavering.

Why We Can Hold FastAnd here’s the reason why: “for he who promised is faithful.”

We can hold fast to the hope of our future because the promiser of our future is faithful — which means he always does what he says. And in fact, all the blessings of our life in Christ now started as promises in the past. Get this: Our present blessings were once the future of past promises, and if God was faithful to fulfill those promises, he will be faithful to fulfill promises still here today. He’s not done yet.

This is really important. Because sometimes we can doubt this. Let’s be honest.

Is Jesus really coming back? — because from our perspective, in how we think about time —which is different than how God thinks — but to us it’s been a while. We think 1,993 years is forever.

And what happens is we think: it is taking God so long to fulfill his promise I don’t think he will.

And the writer of Hebrews would say: “Of course he will. ‘See Old Testament’.”

The apostle Paul actually tells us that one of the purposes of the Old Testament is to give us instruction and examples and encouragement for our hope — Hebrews 11 (see Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11). We just have to look at the Book. He who promised is faithful. If he’s done it before, he’ll do it again. C’mon y’all, let’s hold fast the confession of our hope.

3) Verse 24: C’mon, y’all, let us consider one another, to spur us on.Now most English translations say this a few different ways: The English Standard Version says “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” The New American Standard says stimulate. Other translations use words like motivate or provoke or to spur on. They’re all getting at the same idea, but the word that we need to really consider is the word “consider.” That’s the main verb here. In the original, it’s “Let us consider one another, to spur on, stir up, etc. …”

And this idea of “consider” doesn’t mean to put it off and get to it later. “Dad, can I have your credit card and go to the mall all day Saturday with some friends of a friend you don’t know?” … “I’ll consider it.”

That’s not what it means here. This word means “to think about something carefully.” It means to direct the mind towards something with concern. Really mull this over. The word is actually used one other time in Hebrews, in Hebrews 3:1, which goes:

“Holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.”

So first, in Chapter 3, the writer tells us to consider, to think carefully about Jesus; and now here in Chapter 10 he tells us to think carefully about one another. Focus on this. Focus on one another to spur on one another to love and good works.

Our Words for One AnotherAnd now this has all kinds of relevance for what it means to be a church community. Notice in verse 25 that in order for these Christians to consider one another to spur on one another they have to get together. Imagine that! The writer spells this out: he says don’t neglect to meet together as is the habit of some, but meet together, “encouraging one another.”

Now this is interesting, because that word for “encouraging” could also be translated “exhorting.” In fact, it’s the same word the writer uses in Chapter 13, verse 33, when he says that he’s written to them a “word of exhortation.” In that verse, he’s talking about a sermon. (We mentioned this at the start this year. Most scholars agree that the Book of Hebrews is most likely an actual sermon from the early church. You could read the whole thing in 45-minutes).

So there is “exhorting one another,” which we’re all called to do everyday, but especially when we meet together (see Hebrews 3:13). And there’s a “word of exhortation” that refers to a sermon. And both of these happen when the church gathers — which means: one of the most important actions that take place on Sunday mornings is the words that we speak to one another. There is this formal word of exhortation/encouragement, but then there are the hundreds of words we say before and after this time, and those words are a big reason why we do this. It’s mutual encouragement.

Foreshadowing a Greater GatheringAnd the writer says, we should gather and encourage one another all the more as, verse 25, “you see the Day drawing near.”

He’s talking about the Day when Jesus returns, and we might think: How’d he get there? How’d he go from talking about Sunday church services to talking about Jesus’s return?

Well, there’s a connection: It’s that when the church gathers for worship and mutual encouragement — what we’re doing now — this gathering is actually anticipating the final gathering of God’s people in the New Jerusalem.

The writer of Hebrews is saying,

Church, keep gathering together, encouraging one another, especially as we get closer to heaven every day when there we gather with the universal church across all time and place. Our gathering here is a little foreshadowing of that gathering then.

I think he’s also saying: If you don’t like getting together with other Christians now … we need more practice. C’mon y’all, let us consider one another, to spur us on to love and good works.

Faith, Hope, and LoveAnd there you go, those are the three things these verses tell us to do. As Christians, we are called to: draw near, hold fast, consider one another. And you might be wondering, is there any design to these callings? Are these three callings related at all?

This is fascinating to me. (I didn’t know this when I was 20, among other things) Listen to these callings again:

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope.

Let us consider one another, to spur us on to love.

Did you hear it? These three verses echo the “cardinal graces” of the Christian life: faith, hope, and love.

Remember Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Well, guess what? From verse 25 and onward, the rest of this book is the application of considering one another to spur us on to love.

Hebrews 10:19–25 is a hinge passage in the Book of Hebrews. It marks the ending of one section and sets up the beginning of a new one, and this new section is all about exhortation. It’s the church’s application of love for one another.

The Theological Heart of the BookThe reason we had heard some of this language before in Hebrews — the draw near and hold fast and Jesus as our high priest — we’ve heard it before because Chapter 10:19–21 is basically repeating Chapter 4:14–16, because those two passages, 4 and 10, are two bookends to one major section. And that major section, from 5 through 10:18, is the central theological argument of this entire book. And what is that? What is the main point that the central theological argument of Hebrews is making?

Well, that’s actually what Hebrews 10:19–21 summarizes for us.

Remember we reversed the order. We started with verses 22–25, with what we should do, but it’s verses 19–21 that tells us why we should do these things. Verses 19–21 give us the because — and “the because” is a three-verse summary of the theological heart of the Book of Hebrews. These verses pull together all the main themes from Chapter 5 through Chapter 10. Listen to these three verses, and see if you can pick them up. Hebrews 10, verse 19:

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God… [now here’s the 1-2-3 of what we do — let us, let us, let us.]”

It all comes back to the central theme here that Jesus Christ, by his high priestly sacrifice and current ministry, gives us access into the presence of God.

Notice there are two things that we have in verses 19 and 21:

Verse 19: We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus.

Verse 21: We have a great priest.

These are the two things that have been explained to us more than anything else in Chapters 5–10: the sacrificial death of Jesus and the high priestly ministry of Jesus.

And these are not separate things, but they’re two aspects of the same thing. And I hope that if there’s only one lasting change in us from the Book of Hebrews — I hope it’s that we always think about the death of Jesus with him as our high priest. That’s verse 21 here.

Jesus, Our Great Priest“We have a great priest over the house of God.”

This is not something that Jesus “can do.” It’s not a side-gig. This is his office.

Jesus is our great high priest. And so everything he does, he does as our high priest. And that means, as Chapters 5 and 7 tell us, Jesus knows what it’s like to be you. He can sympathize with you and your weakness and all the things that make life in this world hard. He knows it and he’s going to save you anyway, all the way.

Jesus plays for keeps, and his promise to save you, to bring you home, to finish what he started — that promise is as indestructible as his life.

Because Jesus is our high priest, as long as Jesus is alive, we will be saved completely. Everything that has to do with our salvation is now bound up in the realness and aliveness of Jesus. He is who he is right now, and he will be that tomorrow and the next day and the next and forever. He’s not going anywhere; he’s not changing; he doesn’t quit. And that is why we will see him one day. We have a great priest.

By the Blood of JesusAnd he made a great sacrifice. That’s what the writer is talking about in verses 19 and 20. You can see that he mentions blood in verse 19. Y’all see that in verse 19?

He says in verse 19, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus…” He’s talking about the sacrifice of Jesus, and he expands what he means in the next sentence in verse 20. He says, “by the blood of Jesus” and he implies: When I say by blood of Jesus, I mean “by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.”

Here he’s telling us what the blood of Jesus accomplished. And it’s levitical. We can’t really understand any of this without the Old Testament Book of Leviticus. So let’s think back to Leviticus and temple (or think back to Hebrews Chapter 9 because the writer explains the temple to us there).

The temple was the center of Jewish life, and in the temple, there were two sections, the Holy Place and then the Most Holy Place. That was the place where the direct, terrifying, awesome presence of God dwelled. And what separated that Most Holy Place from the rest was a curtain. It was so holy behind the curtain, in the Most Holy Place, that nobody could go there.

Nobody could be that close to God — except for only the high priest, who went there only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. He was the only one who could go behind the curtain.

But now, by his blood, by his death, Jesus has opened that curtain. When Jesus died, the curtain died. That’s the point here. The curtain has been done away with. It’s no more.

And that’s what is loaded into this phrase, verse 19, in the very first verse: “we have confidence to enter the holy places.” (Now the ESV translates that as “holy places” but the Greek word is just “the holies.” The NIV translates this “the Most Holy Place” and that’s right. That’s what the writer of Hebrews is talking about.)

By the blood of Jesus, by his sacrificial death that got rid of the curtain, “we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place.”

And that’s a simple sentence … but this is actually one of the most radical truths in the whole Bible. This truth would have absolutely shocked a Jewish believer.

And a lot of it has to do with that word “confidence.” This is a great word in the New Testament. It has a range of meanings. It’s already been used in Hebrews 4:16, but we need to be sure we get the meaning here in 10:19.

I asked the kids at dinner this past week, “What does the word ‘confidence’ mean?” And right away, one of the boys said, “It means to believe in yourself.” And I said, Yeah, that’s what we typically think, but that is not what the meaning is in Hebrew 10:19.

In Hebrews 10:19, when the writer says “we have confidence” another way to translate that is to say “we have access.” Confidence here is objective, not subjective. It’s fact, not feeling. The writer doesn’t say “We feel confident.” He says, “We have confidence.” We possess this. So scholars have said we could translate this as “we have freedom” or access or freedom of access or authorization. I like the word authorization. Because that nails the idea. The writer says we have authorization to the Most Holy Place.

He means we have authorization to be in the direct and awesome presence of God. Which is not in an earthly physical temple anymore. That was only a shadow. The real temple is the heavenly temple. Heaven is where God is, and we have access there, to him.

We Have AuthorizationSo I’ve got this friend (who I won’t name), and one of things I love about hanging out with him is that he knows all the best spots. He always knows the coolest restaurants and the places to go. And this one time we were hanging out in a city (which I also won’t name), and sure enough, he says, “I know a place.”

There was a new rooftop restaurant that just opened and it was supposed to have the best views of the city, all that — but the only thing was that it was connected to a hotel and the only people who have access to this rooftop are hotel guests.

But he’s like: It’s fine, follow me. So I do, and somehow, we wind up on an elevator crowded with hotel guests, and we’re just riding this thing crossing our fingers that somebody with a hotel key is going to the rooftop. Sure enough we get there. Doors open. And it’s amazing. Incredible spot. Best views. And we spend a couple hours hanging out, but I can’t say I was having a great time because I kept thinking “I’m not supposed to be here.” My conscience is about as tender as ketchup. I felt like an imposter. I was there, but I didn’t belong there.

Christian, you should never feel that way about the presence of God. You can go there — we can enter God’s presence, and one day, physically, we will enter God’s presence, direct and awesome, we will be with him, because we have authorization. We have access. We belong behind the curtain.

But why? How? How do we have that right? How do we have the authorization to be close to God in his direct and awesome presence that nobody like us could ever experience before? How is that so?

The blood.

Our high priest who lives forever and even right now, he has applied the blood for us, and the blood he has applied is his own. He has gone before us. And everywhere Jesus can go, we can go. And he waves the key of his sacrificial death: They belong here. They’re with me.

We have … we have … we have authorization to be with God. …

That’s the theological heart of this book.

Therefore, let us, let us, let us … faith, hope, and love.

That’s what brings us to the Table.

The TableWhen we eat this bread and drink this cup, we remember the death of Jesus for us.

That Nothing can for sin atone: nothing but the blood of Jesus.
That Naught of good that I have done: nothing but the blood of Jesus.
This is all my hope and peace! This is all my righteousness!
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

If the blood of Jesus is your hope and peace and righteousness this morning, if you trust in Jesus, we invite you to eat and drink with us.

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It should make sense to us that if Jesus is preeminent over the old creation of this world and the new creation of the church, he must also be preeminent over the details in our lives.

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What Jesus did changes who we are, and therefore changes how we orient our minds, which therefore changes how we live.

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2 — to be a servant like Jesus means …

1 — verse 26 — for he has been longing for you

2 — verse 26 — he has been distressed because you heard that he was ill

3 — that you may rejoice at seeing him again

4 — that I may be less anxious (less sorrow)

1 is current reality (Jesus reigns); #2 is obvious predicament (we’re still waiting for the consummation of his reign) … and now finally, #3 … active hope.