Sunday Sermons: Recent Episodes
Fellowship Community Church
Listen to the preaching from Fellowship Community Church in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. We preach Salvation through Christ alone, becoming more like Jesus in all aspect of our lives, and the incredible gift and power of Grace. Come as you are, there is a place for you.
This service details a significant moment at Fellowship Community Church. J.R. Briggs, addressing the congregation, marks a pastoral installation service, highlighting God's faithfulness to the church over the years. The service honors the dedication of those involved in the leadership transition and culminates in an official charge to the newly appointed lead pastor, Mike Candy. J.R. emphasizes the importance of remembering God's faithfulness and extends special challenges to Mike and the congregation. Mike is encouraged to stay faithful to his initial call to ministry, remember the day of his salvation, and understand the significant responsibility he carries. The congregation is likewise charged with supporting Mike and the new pastoral leadership through grace, prayer, and active participation in the church's mission. The service ends with a reading from the congregation, pledging their support, followed by a communal prayer, blessing Mike and his family.
The service includes a reflection on Colossians 1 and 2, emphasizing the centrality of Jesus Christ. The church community is encouraged to uphold the faith and remain devoted to Christ's teachings. It concludes with a prayer and a video celebrating Jesus' attributes and significance.
The video explores pastor Mark's personal and spiritual journey, emphasizing the transformative power of God's guidance and the importance of inner self-awareness. He shares various personal anecdotes, including struggles with public speaking, faith, and self-doubt, and a mission trip to Paraguay that shaped his outlook. Mark highlights a period of depression and reflection brought on by workaholic tendencies, and subsequent growth through embracing failures and understanding idolatry. Key themes include the importance of expository preaching, finding identity in Christ, and recognizing God's sovereignty. Finally, Mark underscores living a Christ-centered life, teaching the comprehensive view of God, and expressing gratitude for His guidance and presence.
This sermon focuses on the biblical concept of spiritual warfare as outlined in Ephesians chapter 6. Pastor Mark emphasizes the importance of understanding and wearing the 'armor of God', particularly focusing on the 'shield of faith' as a protection against the devil's flaming arrows, representing trials and spiritual attacks. Using allegories from movies and biblical stories, Mark highlights the significance of faith in overcoming fear and chaos, encouraging the audience to trust in God as their ultimate protector. The sermon also discusses the emotional and spiritual effects of such trials and reinforces the idea that faith, community, and love are essential in standing firm against evil. He concludes with a prayer for strength and protection for those facing spiritual challenges.
This sermon explores the concept of peace in the context of spiritual warfare, as described in Ephesians 6. Pastor Ben discusses the metaphor of the 'armor of God,' specifically focusing on the 'gospel of peace' as the foundation for spiritual readiness. He emphasizes that the battle is not against people but against spiritual forces, and the role of peace in withstanding these challenges. The sermon draws parallels with historical and literary references, such as Leo Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and quotes from biblical scripture, discussing the internal nature of the spiritual battle and how the gospel provides a firm foundation to stand upon. The speaker concludes with practical advice on maintaining peace, encouraging the congregation to practice daily devotion, recognize attacks, and stay close to God for spiritual support.
This sermon is focused on Ephesians 6:10-14, specifically on the 'breastplate of righteousness.' Pastor Mark discusses the spiritual armor that Christians must wear to protect against Satan's accusations and condemnations. Using illustrations from Albert Camus' 'The Fall' and historical figures like General Patton, the Mark emphasizes the inherent human struggles with feelings of inadequacy and the need for God's righteousness. He argues that true protection and acceptance come from Christ's righteousness rather than personal achievements or religious zeal. Practical applications include recognizing the insufficiency of secular and spiritual breastplates, relying on Christ's righteousness, and embracing grace amidst personal failings and hardships.
The service begins with several of the youth from the churching sharing testimonies of how God worked in and through them during the summer ministries. Jared, the youth pastor, addresses the congregation after the youth segment, emphasizing the challenges faced by young participants. He introduces a sermon focused on John 20, the story of Thomas, the disciple who doubted Jesus' resurrection until he saw Jesus' wounds himself. Jared conveys key themes: God’s sovereignty, His welcoming of our doubts, His invitation to experience Him, and the blessing of believing without seeing. He encourages honesty in faith struggles, reassuring that God’s rebuke is loving and that He invites us to deepen our belief and reliance on Him.
This sermon is focused on a deep dive into Ephesians chapter 6, specifically examining the Armor of God. Pastor Mike begins with a reading of Ephesians 6:10-18 and a prayer, emphasizing the strength and love of God. The speaker then elaborates on the challenges of discerning truth in a world filled with misinformation and half-truths, illustrating this with humorous lies parents tell their children. The main focus is on understanding the belt of truth, which represents preparedness and standing firm in God’s truth. Historical and philosophical evidence is presented to demonstrate the reliability and coherence of the Bible as God’s true word. The message stresses the importance of community in standing against spiritual deception and encourages believers to live in truth both individually and collectively. In a reflective moment, Mike shares various lies that people may believe about themselves and urges the audience to counter these lies with the truth found in God's word.
This sermon is on Ephesians 6:10-13, which emphasizes the theme of spiritual warfare and the necessity for believers to 'put on the whole armor of God' to stand against the forces of evil. Pastor Mark explains Paul's perspective on battling not just against physical adversaries but against spiritual rulers and forces of darkness. He draws parallels with popular cultural references like the movie 'Hook' and 'The Silence of the Lambs' to illustrate the nature of evil and deception. It addresses common objections to discussing spiritual warfare, clarifies the hierarchical structure of demonic forces, and underscores Satan's strategies of lying and murdering. The teaching concludes with a call for believers to rely on God's strength and the metaphorical armor provided by Christ for protection and victory in spiritual battles.
Pastor Mike's sermon is an in-depth discussion about Revelation, specifically chapter 7, describing John's vision of a great multitude from every nation worshipping before God's throne. The vision includes a detailed description of heavenly worship and emphasizes the diverse representation of people who were saved during the Great Tribulation. The pastor explains the symbolic language of Revelation and encourages the congregation to understand its message of hope and ultimate victory in Christ. A quote from Lewis Talbot highlightsthe importance of studying Revelation despite its complexities and potential fear. The sermon concludes with a call to participate in communion, symbolizing the body's unity through the sacrifice of Jesus, and a reflective prayer asking for God's guidance and forgiveness.
Pastor Ben's sermon in on Ephesians 6:5-9. The sermon links these biblical instructions to contemporary workplace relationships, urging Christians to integrate their faith at work. Key themes include working with sincerity, respect, and love while employers are called to treat employees with fairness and compassion, reflecting Christ’s teachings. The pastor emphasizes a theology of work, highlighting it as a designed good where joy and worship should be present.
Pastor Mark continues his series on the book of Ephesians by discussing Ephesians 5:22-33 on the theme of marriage. He explains the biblical concept of marriage as a divinely designed institution aimed at companionship and personal growth. He emphasizes four key characteristics of a fulfilling marriage: meeting the gender-specific need for companionship, committing to a future together, sharing a common vision, and making the relationship a priority. The sermon encourages married couples to grow together, support each other, and reaffirm their commitments, while also providing insights for those outside of marriage. Pastor Mark integrates biblical references, personal anecdotes, and practical advice, concluding with a prayer for varied congregational needs related to marriage and personal burdens.
Pastor Joe's sermon revolves around a passage from Isaiah 8:11-15, addressing the theme of fear and conspiracy theories. He shares his personal experience of encountering this passage during his vacation and how it brought him both conviction and comfort. He reflects on how conspiracies are compelling, consuming, and controlling, drawing parallels with modern times characterized by overwhelming information and anxiety. He emphasizes that conspiracies have been a human problem for centuries and advises the congregation to redirect their fear to the Lord of hosts who promises to be a sanctuary. Pastor Josiah concludes by leading the congregation into prayer and communion, encouraging them to examine their hearts and place their trust in God for peace and security.
This message emphasizes walking wisely according to God's perspective, contrasting with worldly folly. Mark includes practical advice on eliminating negative behaviors like bitterness, lying, and lust, replacing them with forgiveness, truth, and love. He underscores prioritizing time wisely and seeking God's will actively. To live wisely, believers should be filled with the Holy Spirit, leading to self-control, clarity, and contentment. Finally, the sermon calls for intentional living aligned with Scripture, regularly asking, 'Lord, what do you want me to do?'
Michael Chance preaches a study of the Book of Philemon, emphasizing its brevity and depth, especially regarding relationships. He provides historical context around Philemon, highlighting his role as a successful businessman and church leader in Colossae. The main focus of the sermon is on the broken relationship between Philemon and his runaway slave, Onesimus, who meets Paul and converts to Christianity. Paul appeals to Philemon for reconciliation, stressing the importance of restoring relationships for the health and growth of the church. Michael draws modern parallels, underscoring that strong relationships are crucial for spreading the Gospel and maintaining a supportive Christian community. He concludes with a personal anecdote from a mission trip to China, illustrating the power of prayer and relationships in overcoming challenges.
Pastor Mark emphasizes living out the love of Christ as described in Ephesians 5:1-7. It highlights the importance of embracing God's love, avoiding sexual immorality, and reflecting God's communicable attributes like mercy and faithfulness. Mark showcases the teachings of Dr. Francis Schaeffer, emphasizing love as the essence of Christian life. It also underscores the need for Christians to live as beloved children of God, accepting His love and letting it transform their relationships and actions. Practical applications include making active choices to love others and avoiding behaviors like sexual immorality and harmful speech.
Ephesians 4:31-32Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Pastor Mark preaches on the importance of forgiveness, kindness, and tenderheartedness in Christian life, countering negative responses like anger, clamor, and slander. A historical narrative is shared about a community torn by conflict and how Ephesians 4:31-32 helped mend relationships.He emphasizes that although Christians face wrongs and hurts, reflecting Jesus' responses—by subtracting anger and bitterness and adding kindness and forgiveness—can lead to personal and communal healing.
Baptism is an outward sign of an inner reality. Watch the stories of these 10 people who's hearts were forever changed through the power of Jesus, and who are declaring their love for Him through Baptism.
Ephesians 4:29-30Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up
This sermon is discussing the importance of controlling one's speech, as guided by Ephesians 4:29-30. Emphasizing that words have the power to uplift or harm, it draws parallels with the Old Testament book of Proverbs, addressing deceptive and destructive speech while promoting encouraging and truthful words. Pastor Mark uses examples from history, personal anecdotes, and scriptural insights to underscore how speech can grieve the Holy Spirit and affect both the speaker and the listener. The message concludes with practical advice on living out a life of integrity and transparency through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 4:28
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Pastor Ben emphasizes the shift from the theological concepts in Ephesians chapters 1-3 to practical living in chapters 4-6. The core message includes a call to stop stealing, work productively, and share with those in need, while also exploring the broader concept of living as apprentices to Jesus Christ. Ben introduces the historical context of Christianity referred to as 'The Way,' and suggests a 'Rule of Life' as a structured approach to integrating spiritual practices into all aspects of daily life. The sermon concludes with reflections on the holistic commitment to living out one's faith intentionally and joyfully.
Ephesians 4:26-27“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.
Pastor Mark explores how the Apostle Paul distinguishes between godly and ungodly anger, emphasizing the need for Christians to practice righteous anger while avoiding sinful anger. The sermon includes a prayer, an illustrative story about a gas station's stress relief method, and insights from the book of Ephesians on putting off old behaviors and adopting new ones in Christ. The speaker also shares the story of a missionary's struggle with anger over stolen pineapples and how surrendering his rights to God brought peace. The sermon highlights the importance of remembering one's identity in Christ, facing personal anger honestly, and responding with humility to overcome godless anger.
Ephesians 4:25Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Pastor Jared delves into Ephesians 4:25, encouraging us to embrace a life of truthfulness as part of our Christian walk. He provides an overview of Ephesians, emphasizing the importance of walking in holiness. Jared articulates why lying is harmful, rooted in fear and selfishness, and contrasts this with the Godly characteristic of truthfulness. He discusses how truth should be spoken in love, reflecting maturity in Christ. Through practical examples and candid reflections, Jared calls for an honest Christian community that confesses sins openly and experiences God's grace and healing.
Ephesians 4:17-24Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Pastor Mark discusses the concept of transformation in the Christian life, emphasizing the need for both subtraction (putting away former ways of futile thinking and actions) and addition (embracing new thinking and living in righteousness and holiness). His personal anecdote about renovating his kitchen illustrates the comprehensive nature of this transformation. The sermon further delves into the challenges of changing old patterns and the importance of a renewed identity in Christ, explaining how true change starts with a change in thinking and relies on Christ for both the subtraction of old ways and the addition of new, righteous living.
Ephesians 4:7-16And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Pastor Jerry emphasizes the importance of unity, maturity, and growth within the church. He highlights the dangers of deceitful teachings and the need to rely on each other in addition to Christ. The church is presented as God's answer and a powerful force in the world, growing in love to make a significant impact.
Ephesians 4:1-6Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Pastor Mike discusses the importance of unity, humility, and patience in the context of the church community.He emphasizes the need to walk in a manner worthy of God's calling, focusing on maintaining unity, humility, and patience while anchored in the teachings of the Bible. It encourages reflection on one's own walk with Christ and the significance of being part of a unified body of believers.
Ephesians 3:14-21And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Sermon Synopsis:
Pastor Jared’s sermon discusses the importance of having spiritual strength to understand God's love and how Christ dwells in our hearts. It emphasizes the need for deep comprehension and personalization of God's love, encouraging prayer for oneself and others to have this spiritual strength. He concludes with a call to dive deep into the never-ending pool of God's love, urging believers to experience the fullness of His love and presence.
Ephesians 3:1-13This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Sermon Transcript:All right. Thank you. I would have stepped on it. All right. Ephesians chapter three, going to read verse one through 13. Really interesting passage. For this reason, and this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly.When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. Which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus, our Lord. in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart. over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Lord, we come to you. We love the scriptures. We love even in this portion of scripture, which is sort of a rambling digression of Paul, that it speaks so extraordinarily practically into our lives.Lord, teach us as we, we seek to understand what the gospel says to discu, discouraged and confused Christians. In Jesus name. Amen. Last week, Pastor Ben highlighted the astounding relational healing that the cross can do in his message walls of hostility versus unity in the rubble on verses 11 to 22 of Ephesians two.In that passage, there are three metaphors of the church that are presented. That we are a kingdom, that we're subjects together, that we are a family, we are siblings together, that we are a temple, we are stones fitted together. Now in verse 13, excuse me, in chapter 3 verse 1, a very interesting thing happens.in this section we just read. Paul starts a conversation and then almost immediately stops it. He seems to get distracted, almost to start rambling. He leaves verse 1 after saying, For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, And then he, then he goes off script. He doesn't pick up the script again until verse 14, where he again says, For this reason, I, Paul, and then he says, I'm praying for you.This is what I'm praying. I bow the knee to you. But in verses 1 through 13, what he actually does is he gives this explanation because he is concerned about how what he has said He's just said, I, Paul, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. And it's like Paul says, shoot, I know I just said something that caused them pain.It has potential of discouraging them. Before I go any farther, I need to emphasize some things to you guys. And in verses 1b through 13, he says those things. to help them be encouraged. Now we do this all the time. You'll start an email or you'll be writing an email or you'll be writing a text to somebody.And all of a sudden you go, I can't see their face. I don't know how they're hearing this. So we have a way of resolving this to try to take the sting out of the words or to make sure it's not coming across too heavy or too serious. We will do something like this. We'll pop that baby in and if we're really worried about it, we'll do something like this.And then if we're really concerned, we come up with a big time emoji, something like this, to really make sure, yeah, it's all good, man. It's all good, dude. Verses 1 through 13 are his long emoji. He's saying, guys, he bookends it. He says, I'm a prisoner of, Here in Rome, for you Gentiles, ah, I got to explain something.And so he explains this stuff, and then he comes in verse 13, and look at what he says, how he concludes the whole thing, the other bookends. He says, So I ask you not to lose heart. Over what I'm suffering for you, which is your glory. He doesn't want them to lose heart. The word is translated in the New Testament, often be discouraged.He says, I don't want you to be discouraged. I want to tell you what the gospel says to Christians. What it says, particularly to you Christians there in Ephesus, he says. Now, we think of the gospel as for nonbelievers, right? I mean, a person has to embrace the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord in order to enter the family of God.Absolutely. We proclaim the gospel, but the gospel also speaks to those that are a part of the family of God. And this passage is a reminder that the gospel has a message for believers, particularly So I'd like to look at three things here, more time we'll spend on the first two. Three things he reminds them of about the gospel that speak to their lives.Number one, he reminds them that they are recipients of God's plan of grace. He says this in verses one through nine, and he tells them it's a plan that only God could see coming. In verses one through six, he keeps using this word. It is a mystery. Matter of fact, in these first few verses, in this section, he mentions the word mystery four times.There's no other passage in the New Testament that is even close to the density of emphasis on mystery. Now, when we think of a mystery. We think of something that it is our job to discover. You know, we spend our time trying to figure out whodunit. We expect at the other end to say, yes, I should have been able to put that together if we didn't put it together.My wife and I love mysteries, and we do that like you do. We try to figure out who did the crime. We're disappointed if we don't get it right, or we get mad at the story writer if the clues were misleading. And well, nobody could have figured that out. But we've also learned with some of our mystery writers that we know we've begun to to to get a read on them.And we know that they're going to deliberately choose the most obscure, unexpected person to be the perpetrator of the crime, the murder, or whatever it is. So we are on to them. So now we guess who? It must be that person because that's the last person we would think of. So even that we expect to be able to figure out the mystery.We just got to get a read on the writer's style. That's how we think of the word mystery. That is not what the biblical writers meant by the term mystery. A divine mystery is different. It is something so extraordinary no one could figure it out. A mystery is something you could never figure out. Only God could even know it.Utterly, unexpected, counterintuitive, never guessed it in a thousand years. The great mystery that the New Testament talks about is the gospel of grace, the good news of God to humanity. In this passage, verse four, he says, it is the mystery of Christ. It's all centered in Christ, in what he came to do and who he is.In verse nine, it's been hidden for ages. in God. He's the only one that knew it. In verse, in chapter six, in verse 19, he's going to call it the mystery of the gospel. It is God's plan to draw people together, to rescue them from sin and its penalty, to make them a people one in unity and oneness. And here in verse six, then, he highlights one element of that gospel when he says this, This mystery, this particular part of the ministry, is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.A mystery is utterly unexpected, counterintuitive, nobody could see it coming. Do you know the Ten Commandments are never called a mystery? We get it. Don't lie. Don't commit adultery. Don't murder. They all make sense. Nobody says, Wow, I didn't see those coming as commandments. We do see it coming. Nobody says about the golden rule.Wow, that is, I never would have imagined that. Well, yeah, it makes sense. Nobody says about the judgment of God. Wow, that's a, that's a, wow, that was, didn't see that one coming. No, we understand it's a holy God that's a creator. We understand there is judgment. But the gospel out of nowhere, no philosopher, poet, theologian comes up with the story of God the judge, the creator becoming the victim to pay the penalty for rebels.No one saw that the son of God would triumph by death, that God wins by losing. No one could have designed a religion this way. Paul said it's a mystery. Secondly, he says something about the gospel. He says, secondly, it is a plan that only God could pull off again. Remember, he's saying all this for a reason to speak to discouraged Christians, which will will highlight in a moment in verse seven through nine of this gospel.He says, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. He's given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.He said, I, me, Paul, I was given the mystery, more than anyone else, Paul says, I was the one that was given the mystery of the gospel, particularly as it pertains to the Gentiles being grafted into the tree of grace. He says those first three years after I became a Christian, when I was all alone in the wilderness to study in the Old Testament, listening to the Spirit of God, who is newly entered my life.He said this whole mystery. was revealed to me and then to the other apostles and prophets. He said, I'm the one God gave it to me, the guy who pushed my way into the homes of Christian families and dragged away parents who were beaten and tortured. And some died. I'm the guy who even the apostles dreaded to be around and didn't believe that I actually could have become a Christian.As he says in these verses, guys, I'm the very least of all the saints. To me, Saul of Tarsus, the pitbull of the religious leaders, the hitman of the people that crucified Jesus against the Christians, Verse 8, This grace was given. He said the whole thing of the gospel is about God and His grace. Every part of it, even, even the receipt, even, even the, the proclaimers of it.He says, look at me, I'm the guy. He says, guys, I'm in prison, but I'm representing a big, glorious God, proclaiming a breathtakingly glorious gospel. And I was sent to you. with this message because you are part of God's cosmic plan. He says the mystery is that God's son, God himself, would come and be the Messiah the Jews waited for.But he would not come to overturn an empire and establish the throne of David in Jerusalem. He would bring a gospel of deliverance and forgiveness and reconciliation with God. And the gospel, the gospel had your names on it. It isn't just spoken of people who have Jewish sounding names, like Simon and Saul and Joseph and Andrew and Mary and Martha, but Greek sounding names like Tychicus and Theophilus and Apollos and Lydia and Jodeas.The Lamb's Book of Life includes those names. And he says, you're part of this thing. You're part of this reality. And, and my imprisonment is part of the plan of a God that is, that is superintending His gospel going forth for people just like you. Whose names are written in the Book of Life. But he tells them something more.He reminds them secondly that they are players in God's plan of grace. Verse 10, So that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.He says, you guys are part of the cast. There is a great theatrical production that God is putting on in the arena of the cosmos. And on the stage are cast members. He says, My job as a preacher of grace is to make plain to everyone God's plan. In verse 11, he talks about it being according to God's plan.Eternal purpose. Well, what was God's eternal purpose? Well, he tells us in chapter one, verse 10, he says this, God's purpose was to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in the world. Everything is falling apart. Everyone falls apart. There's sickness. Your body falls apart. I remember reading an extract from a, a book that was speaking, I actually got to know him because Marian's dad was a, biologist, and they had a big, consortium, and they invited in this guy, Jeremy Ripken, and he spoke, and it was, the title of his book was Entropy, and it was fascinating, reading the extract, basically he was talking about, that entropy, which literally is saying, and, and this is a scientific, endorsement by everyone because it is basically according to the second law of thermodynamics, which is saying all of the universe is moving naturally toward disorder and chaos.But one day that will change. The purpose of God is that bodies will stay together. That relationships will stay together, that everything will be brought together. And what that word is called in the scripture is shalom. God's glorious cosmic extending shalom, oneness, connectedness, the beauty of all of that, the ultimate harmony to which all things are leading through Christ.C. S. Lewis depicts The antithesis of this in his book, one of my favorite books, his fabulous allegory called The Great Divorce. In this, he depicts both heaven and hell. Hell, he doesn't give as much time to, but his picture of it is fascinating to me. He doesn't depict hell, as a place of fire, as a place of physical suffering.I, I personally don't believe that's the focus of hell either. I mean, it's primarily designed for the devil and his angels and their spirit beings. So what does he depict there? He depicts hell as a place. of apartness. It's a place where people keep moving away from each other because they can't get along.They're moving their habitations, and it's just more and more sad to look at because people are filled with conflict and tension. Shalom is the opposite. God is directing through Christ a universe of shalom, of oneness and wholeness. God's purpose is to bring together all things through Jesus. In verse 10 he says that In this world now, God is displaying his intended future by reflecting it in the church.He takes people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, social status, and personalities, people with deep hurts, deep mistrust, deep wounds, multiple emotional triggers, and somehow blends them together in some level of oneness in Christ. So he does this in Ephesus. He says slaves who hate their position in the world and masters who saw themselves as the haves and believes it was their right and natural superiority are brought together.As F. F. Bruce says about this passage, he says, chapter three, verse 10, which is the one that pictures believers as the cast before it. audience. He makes his statement. The church here in verse 10 is God's pilot plan for the reconciled universe of the future. The diverse community will be cast on stage before those watching.So who is the audience? Well, he tells us in verse 10, the audience that watches is described hereas those that are the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This is truly one of the most remarkable verses in the New Testament. He says God is displaying his wisdom. He is displaying his himself by putting the church. I don't mean a church, the church, those that have embraced Christ, been, been embraced by Christ,that they are living life together and depicting life in such a way that angels are looking on and saying, you got to be kidding me. How did God ever come up with this? God took that guy, that girl, that situation, those people groups, and that people group. I mean, these are Israelis and Hamas people. These are Jews and Gentiles, and they're thrown them together because of one reality centered in Christ.And he says the, the ability to begin to have oneness, to work through stuff together, to forgive one another. is absolutely stunning to the audience. This audience is depicted here as the authorities and rulers in heavenly places, elect and holy angels, probably millions of angels. If you include the fallen evil angels, which the scripture calls demons.For the elect angels of God, it is a source of joy. It says in Luke 15 10, they, they, they rejoice when one sinner repents. In first Peter, it says they, they desire, they're looking, they desire to comprehend and understand this, this message of grace. To the others that are looking on in this theater environment, of the church stumbling along, broken people somehow learning to grace each other and, and, and screwing up, but then having to come back and making it right and, and realize there's only one reason we're together.It's Christ. It's who He is in our lives. It's what we share, different backgrounds, different social structure, everything.And it is the declaration to the powers of darkness that they will be saved. That Satan's primary weapon against God is to throw chaos and brokenness, discord and conflict into the face of God's beloved Shalom. The church, the people of God, are a trophy that Satan's aim will fail. It's Shalom will come in places.It comes in its infant portrayal. The gospel of grace, liberating broken, wounded, scarred sinners, to forgive enemies, to embrace aliens, to live at peace with each other, broken, marred people whose backgrounds, personalities, animosities, seemingly guaranteed it could not be so. But the gospel will win, Christ, grace will conquer, and even today, elect Israel.And evil angels marvel at its power and beauty. It is why the New Testament highlights so much the power of oneness, the power of working through stuff and, and that relationships in the body are so powerful. Why? Because it isn't just your neighbor will say, Oh, that's a neat church. They, they get along.It's a loving environment. No, there are millions of, of audience That are watching and saying, how in the world can that work? We know that guy. We know where he stands. We know this girl. We know. How does it happen? The gospel of grace somehow unites people. Now Paul gives us the so what of all this in verse 13.He reminds them then to be practitioners of God's plan of grace. Here's what he said. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you, which is your glory. Let me just try to present what I think he's saying. He says, be practitioners in confusion. Why, why did they need this? Why do they care that much that Paul is in jail?Here's why I think the imprisonment of Paul for five years has really been a struggle for them. Paul had been with them for three years. And those that were in the Ephesian church when he was there know that they know of Paul. But just a few weeks after he left Ephesus, he's arrested in Jerusalem because he has taken in, among others, a member, two members of their congregation and people in Jerusalem have assumed that those Gentile believers have gone into the temple with him.We've talked to you about this and they've arrested Paul and they thought he was desecrating the Jewish temple. He wasn't, but they assumed that. Well, it's all because he had their people with him and he got arrested and then he got held in Jerusalem. Then he got taken to Caesarea. Then he got sent on a ship to Rome and he's sitting in Rome.He's been five years in jail since he left Ephesus. But Paul's their champion. And during those five years, there were Jewish Judaizers that keep coming to their churches and they keep saying, you gotta, you know, maybe, maybe you've embraced our Messiah, but you now have got to embrace the other parts of our faith.You've got to be circumcised. You've got to follow all the religious practices. And they're confused. The perception that they're continually getting is you guys are second class. And they're looking and saying the one guy that's our champion sits in jail. And honestly, what does that say about our faith?I mean, can't God get him out of jail? I mean, we're, we need some wins. And the guy that can perp that can most portray our wins is sitting in a Roman prison, as far as we know, awaiting execution. So Paul says, guys,remember a couple of things. Remember, first of all, that God is the one that has designed this cosmic plan that you are a part of this eternal plan of salvation. I want to talk to you about God, that God has not abandoned you, that God needed you. He needed people like you to be participants in this plan.It isn't just grace that he chose you and brought you into the family. He needed people like you. You show the diversity. You show the glory of the gospel. It's because of people like you, Gentiles, totally different ethnicities and backgrounds than the Jews of Jerusalem, that God declares his wisdom and the glory of his gospel.God needs you. God chose you. God rescued you. God pursued you.God takes us into seasons of discouragement and confusion. These people had real questions. These people were struggling with being second class. They were less than even in their faith. They didn't know what it meant. They didn't know how to get answers. They couldn't just check into the website and get some of Paul's old sermons.They can't write them. They have no contact. There's nothing. This is the second letter we know that he wrote to the Ephesians in five years. What he says is, guys, remember what's true about you in the plan of God, in the gospel of grace. That, yeah, there are some of you this morning watching here in Collingswood, watching here in Mount Laurel, watching online.Where things have not turned out as you expected in your faith, personal situation wise, family wise, relationship wise, finance wise, career wise, marriage wise, confused, discouraged. Paul says, remember the cosmic eternal plan you're on. Remember the grace of God that God that what is going on in your life is God's working in your life.He's doing stuff you never would have thought. I mean, all these mysteries are happening. Nobody could have seen it coming, but he says, I'm looking back and I see all of this is part of what God had purposed to glorify himself through my life, which leads us to the second thing. Paul says in times of affliction, Remember these truths.Johnny Erickson Tata. Many of you know, she'll actually be speaking at the Global Leadership Summit, which we're hosting again this, summer. She'll be on video. I don't want you. I don't want to over promise. but Johnny Erickson Tata as a 17 year old, had a swimming accident that left her, a paraplegic in a wheelchair from the neck down.And soon after she had had the accident, she attended a group of young people that had had life altering accidents. And one of the girls that was there was a 17 year old high school cheerleader, named Denise Walt, Denise Walters. Denise Walters was a Christian, as Johnny was, and she had been at her high school, and one day going up the steps, running up the steps at her school, her legs just gave out, and she fell, and she went home, and by the next day, she woke up, and she was paralyzed from the waist down.A week later, she was paralyzed from the neck down. A few weeks later she was blind and they found out that she had a, progressive, rapid progressive multiple sclerosis. She died five years later. She was a gentle, God loving, Christ centered believer. Very quiet, very content in her faith. And Johnny did life with her.The more she did life with her friend, the more she admired her, but the more she struggled with God. And she said, how did this make any sense? And she said, you know, I'm, I'm an outgoing personality. I, I, you know, I, but this girl, how did this help anything? How did this benefit anything? And Johnny tells the story of being in a Bible study and she was expressing her own anguish after Denise's death.And a friend of hers read to her Ephesians 3 10. that Denise was living her life with an audience all the time. She then read to her Luke 15 10, where angels are rejoicing over one sinner that repents. She read her the story of Job, Job 1, where angels are so actively involved in the process of Job's situation and are actually talking about Job before God.And Johnny looked at that and reflected on those passages and realized that all that was happening in her life, Denise's life, and everyone's life, happens in front of a council of angels and devils, maybe millions. And if you were to tell somebody today that, man, if I could just before I die, if I could just go on, you know, get before a camera and declare my faith and my love for Christ and what Jesus means to me and impact, well,brother or sister, you're on camera today, and the camera isn't just before your neighbors or friends or even all Americans. It's angelic beings, myriads, millions, pros and cons towards God and His grace. And our response is this. reflectinghow great a God we really have. How I respond. I've thought about this many times. How I respond to temptation, which no one will ever know when I'm sitting in front of a computer. How I respond to worries, which nobody would know are actually eating my lunch. And there have been those seasons where I didn't win the victory.But how precious are those moments when I've been able to say, Lord, Right now, I want to honor you before the audience and say, he's better. He's better than this thing. He's better than my giving way to my worry. He's trustworthy. I can give it to him. John Erickson, after reflecting on this passage, went to the mother of Denise Walters, and she wrote this statement.She said, I am sure that the angels and demons looked on with amazement and awe as they watched your daughter honor her savior by praise, trust, and contentment.You're never too alone. You're never too abandoned. You're never in too lone, too much lonely darkness to not be bringing glory to the one who rescued you, who wanted you. Paul says to these believers, guys, I know I probably sort of, I hit a trigger here when I mentioned that I'm in prison for you Gentiles.But it was true. It was because of his identifying with them that he had been hated by the Jews and was ultimately in jail. But he said, I love this. It's for your glory. And my theater stage is a little nine by nine or whatever it is. That's the cell that in Rome, they actually associated with where Paul was.My little place. is where I am declaring your grace. You're there in Ephesus. You're part of a cosmic plan. You're not only a part. You're not only recipients of grace. You are participants in grace declaring the wonder and the greatness of God. He said the gospel made all this happen. The gospel speaks to discouraged people.It speaks to people that feel alone, that feel confused, that feel second class, that feel less than. And he said, Man, it's not how God looks at this at all. Remember who he is. Remember who you are. And he says, I hope that you will then not lose heart. Because of heavy things that you're hearing about my situation, Lordis going to come stuff today, certainly tomorrow, where we're going to have an opportunity to remind ourselves that we're living before a celestial audience. Lord, help us by your grace to remember the joy. of trusting you, of glorifying you. An audience infinitely bigger and wider and more prominent than we'll ever have in a human arena.Lord, thank you for the tapestry of grace you've created in the body of Christ, that the very people whose triggers are so different from ours and make it hard to do life together are also there to declare this thing only works because of God. All glory, is only God's. Lord, may we find encouragement in that gospel today.In Jesus name. Amen.
Ephesians 2:11-21But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility
Sermon Transcript:We're going to be in chapter two,and as you get there, just want to make an observation that ants make tunnels, birds make nests, humans make walls. This is a poor image of the Great Wall of China. Joke's on you, the Great Wall of China actually is pixelated. Um, no, I just gave the wrong image. But, uh, the Great Wall of China took over 2, 000 years to complete, dating back to the 7th century B.C. It is arguably the greatest man made feat in the history of the world. stretches over 5, 500 miles on its northern border. The Berlin Wall separated East and West Germany. Although the wall covered just over a hundred miles, it became a worldwide symbol of the struggle and fight between communism and democracy for the whole world.One of the most famous statements in the last hundred years came from Ronald Reagan when he said about this wall,Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Exactly. In the ancient and powerful city of Troy, there was this seemingly impenetrable wall. The Greeks tried for 10 years to take this Turkish city, but could not get through the wall. And history debates whether the Trojan horse was true or not, as far as them finally getting past the walls.Walls are for one reason. They're for protection. People groups will spend hundreds of years, tremendous amount of effort and capital to protect our people from those people. Walls are made to keep the invaders out. We come to this passage in the book of Ephesians and it's An incredibly personal one to Paul.He's writing this letter to the Ephesians, and, uh, he is talking about an actual, historical, well known wall that was in the ancient Near East. A wall that had with it life and death, protection and consequence. It's one of several walls that Jesus tears down. Humans make walls often for good reasons.Jesus tears down walls. We need to learn to live and love one another in the rubble. Will you pray with me?Lord, there are so many things that, uh, divide us. So many points of, uh, frustration we can have with one another. So many things and bits of dissension that the enemy of our souls wants to rise up and well up within us. Dearest God as Paul pleaded for the Ephesian church. So do we plead for hours and the churches around us?May we be atmospheres of grace. May our children grow up in places where they know. The people of the church love each other, root for each other, have hope for each other, and care about other people around the world who claim the same name of Jesus. We give our time to you this morning, in Jesus name, Amen.Okay. We're going to go through the text. It is, uh, chapter two, starting in verse 11, starting very simply with the word, therefore, now you've probably heard this. Whenever you see the word, therefore you ask, what is it? Therefore, I actually can hear your boredom when you say that. Okay. Therefore. Right. So why is the word there for what's the argument?What's the hinge? My shoelace is untied and that's going to bother me. What's the hinge on which this, therefore, is pulling on, like, is, is transitioning? Last week, Pastor Mark talked about this incredible passage in the beginning of Ephesians 2, For it is by grace you've been saved, it's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.In this gift of grace that we have in the vertical dimension, that we don't, no longer have to live before Christ, but can live after Christ. After Christ transitioning from B. C. to A. D. and we have reconciled back to God. That is a big argument to hinge. That is a big argument to leverage. He says, because of this great grace you are given, therefore, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by which is called the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands.This passage is specifically talking to Gentiles. Now the Ephesian church. Is made up of both jew and gentile the ephesian letter that paul sends is written to both jewish And gentile christian it would be distributed to churches around the asian community of churches that would include churches that are jewish and gentile some more majority jewish some more more majority gentile, but in this specific passage That we have in 2, starting in 11, Paul takes in a target specifically to the Gentile believers.Verse 12, he says, Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ. Okay, here's what I want to do. In Collingswood, you have to do this too, all right? So you over here, you're going to be separated. Let me hear separated. Separated, good. Okay, that you can make that the Ralph section in Collingswood, okay?You right here, you're going to be alienated. Let me hear alienated. Alienated. I'll show you where that is. Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and you guys right here, you're strangers. Yeah, that fits. Okay. All right. I want to hear strangers. Strangers. Okay. And then goes on having no hope without God.You guys are going to be without God. Let's hear it. Without God. Yeah, you're not awake yet. Okay, you need God. Um, but now in Christ Jesus you were once far off and have been brought near by the blood of Jesus. Okay, by the blood of Christ. Alright, so where are we again? You guys remember yours? Separated, you're alienated, strangers and, Without God.Good. Alright. So this is the diagnosis. This is the situation that the Gentile people found themselves in. And he goes on to verse 13, but says, Now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, who made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh, for The dividing wall of hostility dividing wall of hostility.Do we have that image to put back here? Okay, so dividing wall of hostility now, this is a this is an image of the temple This is a second temple built. This is the temple that was around in the time of jesus It was built by herod and it is a giant temple. See this right here That's a football field.This is 450 acres. This is a tremendously large temple. Now in the temple, you ever hear Solomon's portico, it's talked about an axe, that's like these things, the hallway things, you can get out of the rain, out of the sun, it's like Go underneath there. Then there's the courtyard. This is where a lot of the sacrifices would take place both Jew and Gentile could offer sacrifices in the Courtyard there was however an inner place that was not allowed for the Gentiles There was a wall built about a five foot wall Stone wall the called the sore egg or the Gentile wall that would keep out You Anyone, any of the Jewish people trying to, or any of the Gentile people trying to get in, there was 13 different openings, but you could not enter past that place unless you were an Israelite.And there's other walls that you see within the walls. And some of them are for priests. Some of them are for high priests. Some of them are for different people groups. But all of the people within that section would have to be Jewish people. The walls were dividing who could do what. Who could enter and who could not.Where verse 15 says this, by abolishing the law of the commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two. So making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing, here's our word again, the hostility, this wall of hostility.At the entrance of each of the 13 spots going into that where Israel only was allowed to enter, there was an inscription. In 1871, we found one of these, and since we found another one of these, Josephus talks about these as well. Here is the inscription. If you would read that aloud with me. It says this, No foreigner is allowed to enter within the balustrade surrounding the sanctuary and the court.Whoever is caught will be personally responsible for his ensuing death. If a Gentile walked in to this area, that Gentile was to be put to death. Now here's the interesting thing. This letter was written by who? Paul. Do you know where Paul was when he wrote the letter? He's in jail. Exactly. In Ephesians 4, 1 says, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.You know what he says? For the sake of you Gentiles. So what does that mean? He's in prison when writing the letter to Ephesus because in Acts 21 while in Jerusalem this happens fellow Israelites This is the man who teaches talking about Paul who teaches everyone against our people in our law and place and besides He has brought Greeks who are Gentiles into the temple and defiled this holy place They had previously seen trophimus the Ephesian Okay, lots of points of connection.In the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple. So in Acts 21, what happens is Paul brought some Greeks, how dare he, some Gentiles to Jerusalem and was explained to them about Jesus and because they were simply with Paul and they knew Paul was buddies with them, they figured not only did he bring them, but he brought specifically Trophimus.All the way in to where only Israel, so not only should Trophimus be put to death, but Paul himself is imprisoned, falsely, because there's no evidence that he actually did that. But Paul is being accused of taking an Ephesian Gentile. Into this place and he's writing to the Ephesian church Wally's in jail looking back who knows how many days distance that was Writing this letter and saying listen, i'm here because I believe this I'm here because I brought Greeks to the city, and then they even accused me of more than what I did.17 says, And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, talking about Jesus, and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father. Okay, this is cool. Access to the Father. Um, so, we know that there are more walls that Jesus broke down. Right? Access to the Father. What does that mean?Where does that go? Right? The sense of we have access to the Holy of Holies. So this right here. Can you see when I point there, or am I just like, yeah, okay. One person in blue shirt, Ken, that was awesome. Okay. In the Holy of Holies, that's where only the high priest could enter how often? Once a year. Okay.So he gets once a year. Then the high priest can hang out out here with also in the court. This is the court of the priest. Now if you're not a priest or Levite, you can't hang out in the court. If you're not a high priest, you can't hang out in there. And even if you're a high priest, you can only get there one time.And what's separated in here was called the most holy of holies. It's separated by an 18 inch thick curtain, which when Christ died was rent in two. It was the wall that Jesus broke down. He broke down the holy of holies to the high, to the priests. But then there's another wall, because we see in 1st Peter, where Jesus, where, where, um, Peter says to the church, he says, you are now a royal what?Priesthood. He's breaking down that wall. So not only could, is the wall to the priest eliminated, the wall to the holy, holy is eliminated. Now Paul is also saying the wall from Gentile to Jew was eliminated. That's two things, super awesome and super hard to digest. You're telling me Trophimus, that Greek from Ephesus, the one who was lucky to hang out here, gets to waltz right in, right past every wall.That's a lot for a Jewish believer to swallow. So Paul doubles down. He says this. You guys were, uh, you. Which one? Were you separated? Yeah. Okay. Alright, so he says you are no longer, wait, which one were you? See, I'm just testing you. You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens and saints, no longer separated but members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.In Him, you are being built together, okay, those of you, the tired people over here, without God people. Being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Jesus takes down the walls. Five questions that I want to take from the text this morning. The first question is, in order to apply this, we don't have some of the, uh, we, we live in a different culture than when this letter was written.Our walls of hostility look a little bit different, as they would in different times in history. So, so important where Paul is directly writing to, to these Gentile believers, with these Jewish people reading, He's identifying that which creates hostility and speaking of Christ, bridging the gap. But to look at this text in our own life, in our own church context, we have to ask this question.Who was on the other side of my wall? And what I'd like you to do, if you got a pen and you're writing notes, please take out your pen. I'll give you a second to do this because I, I don't believe in preaching if it's not going to, we're not going to apply it, right? So if you got, if you're like, I don't have a pen, well get a note on your phone.That's fine. But we'd like you to get out, take a second to get something you can write down and like you'd identify who might be on the other side of your wall. Maybe it's someone from your experience that you were hurt by a type of Christianity. And so you want to celebrate how you found freedom. And maybe throw shade on those people that, from which you felt bondage.Maybe the people on the other side of their wall have to do with how they live out their faith. Faith, maybe you feel their faith is dry and stuck in their head, elite and ivory, towerish, arrogant maybe. Or maybe you feel like it's the type of people who, who think experience, are all about experience and you feel they cheapen the depth of riches with their, uh, simple K love and bumper stickers.Or Facebook posts that say, share if you love Jesus seven times and He'll bless you. Like, you're like, I can't stand how cheap that is. Maybe the people on the other side of your wall are political. You just can't seem to understand how a person who follows Jesus could possibly think that way. Could lean that far right.Could lean that far left. Could lean that far not caring. Maybe it's a secondary theological issues. You You agree with them about Jesus, that he is the way to God, but you have such a hard time with some of the other ways that they interpret the scriptures. Maybe you have people on the other side of your wall might be personal, might be part of your family you just don't like, might be a person that you, you can't stand them, and you really hate that they have Jesus too.Because the association of that with me with Christ is painful for you. And maybe you are here and you're like, I don't know much about this Christian thing and I didn't even know y'all fought ever. We do. We have a lot of judgements towards each other. Um, we have a lot of thoughts against each other at times.We usually gather in groups that think similarly. And then often take the worst arguments from the other group to prove how smart that we are. We do do that. We often make really big things out of things that aren't that big. We do. We're sorry for that. If, if you're from the, on the outside looking in, It is because we care a lot, and we really want to live well, but in the midst of that we can, uh, lose sight of the blood bought importance of unity.It's why a lot of Ephesians was written, actually, because since the history of forever, the church is getting a bunch of difference. To come together in the same Christ, but the closer that they get, the more they bump into each other. In chapter 3, which we'll get to, which is the transition of practicality in this book, simply Paul will say this, transition into practicality, we're still in theology, we'll move to practicality.In 3, he says this, for this reason, I Paul, prisoner, oh I'm sorry, chapter 4, I already read that one. Chapter 4, in the transition after the first three chapters of theology in Ephesians says, I therefore, prisoner of the Lord. Urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling i've been you have been called with all humility And gentleness with patience bearing with one another in love eager to maintain The unity of the spirit and the bond of peace yearning eager Looking to maintain that well in this hostility So first questions who is on the other side of the wall really would like you to write that down You Whether that's a person, a group, a type of Christian.Secondly, who brings the hostility, right? Where does the hostility come from? Okay, there's a wall, but the wall is named Sarag. It wasn't named hostile, right? Why is a wall, an inanimate object, hostile? Walls don't have weapons, right? Where does the hostility come from? Well, first, it comes from the circumstance.It comes from the circumstance that some are allowed in and some are not allowed in. Some are, some are allowed to walk right through without even thinking about it and some have to stop and say I never can go there. Immediately that creates an us and them, right? The circumstances of being different well up hostility.Circumstances do. But secondly, we do. As soon as someone I know is different than me, my next question is, well, who's better? Who's more right? Oh, you think this, and this, I think this. How can I convince myself that I think better? Or join you, right? But it's always, we, we have these valuations and ways of, of, uh, elevation.And when we're different, we don't, we have a hard time just saying, okay, we're different on that. We want to be able to say we're better on that. We do. And the other answer is they do. Whoever they are, right? The, the nature of division is both groups on a different, on different size and issue are doing the same thing.It both, both the we and the they. Um, remember the show Lost? This is probably Dating Me. Wow, that's what old people say. That's Dating Me. Okay, I'm in the Dating Me category. But, there's a show called Lost and they like, somehow weirdly, mystically found themselves on an island and they're like learning to survive.These people didn't know each other at all. But they were all on the same plane. That's what they had in common. And then, There was another group of people that were on the island, and they didn't know who they were, or what they were like. Immediately, because these strangers were on a plane, they found out that these people existed, and you know what they called them?The Others, right? They're not us! What'd you have in common? I don't know, that guy was in 46B. Like, the, the com, thing in common was just that we were on a plane, but then there was this little bond, so, so that we could create an us. And then we found out that they existed, and we weren't in us. That was enough difference to make them of them.And much of the show is the rival between these groups. Why? Because one of them's us, and one of them is them. Hostility comes from us, and it comes from them. My guess is whoever you wrote on that sheet, whatever group you write on that sheet, You know how they can make hostility. It's a little tougher sometimes to know how we make it, but you can tell hostility comes.Okay, who breaks down the walls? In the text, where the walls come down? The circumstances don't break down the walls. There's no circumstance that we see break down the walls of, um, this wall hostility that Paul's talking about. Also, it's not the Christians that would, would, um, or the Jewish Christians that would say, you know what, we welcome you in.It's not the Gentile Christians say, you know what, we're going to waltz right in. And that's going to somehow figure this out. Paul says this in his argument for unity for he himself is our peace. He who has made us both one and has broken down in the flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances That he might create himself one new man in place of two so making peace and might reconcile us Stay with me here both to God in one body through the cross there by killing hostility So what happens?It's Jesus that walks through the wall. It's Jesus that lays down and says, You want to kill somebody? Kill me. And it says, through one body, He put to death hostility. And I love this, I love this, what Paul says. It doesn't say he gives us peace. He makes peace. He supplies peace. It says he himself, not was our peace, is our peace.Peace is animate. Peace is alive. It's a gift of a living being. That's what bridges the hostility. Christians and Christian groups will only find peace together if he's around, among us, around us. And, and, because you know what? Walls have a good reason. I'm not sitting here in judgment of China, like, how could you build that wall?You were scared of those people because they wanted to kill you. Right? Troy, don't build a wall. Let the Greeks take over your city. Well, no. Right? The reason we build walls is because there's threat. The reason why Christians can love one another without fear is because we have a king who's bigger than the threat.And he can fight his own battles. In the Ephesian church, where this will be read, we'll go on to talk about husbands, wives, kids, um, masters, servants. You know who it's being read to? That master who's sitting next to that servant, that servant, who's really hoping it says overthrow that master. That's hope really open saying, get in line.That husband that's really hoping to say, do this, that woman who wants this, this, this, this child who wants to hear this. They're all together in one room trying to figure it out. They got all kinds of different opinions, all kinds of different perspectives. The only way forward is if He Himself is there and is our peace.Fourth question, I think it's four, somewhere like that. Um, why do we build back up? Why do we build back up walls? And we could say we don't, but come on, this is human. We do this. And it's not, this, Christians don't have the corner on this, right? You like doctors and you'll be like, the other doctors are so dumb because of this, this, and this.I don't know why I'm typing. But like, like, whatever group of people, they're often throwing shade on the people like them. And you're like, well, they've always thought this, but the real thing is this, right? People disagree when they care so much about stuff and we build up walls between each other.Humans do that. Yeah. But why do we do that? That's one of the things I was thinking this week. It's like what, what, what mobilizes us? What, why do we, why do we like to fight so much? Someone, a neighbor, a non christian neighbor talked about, um, in our, in our colleagues with campus, they talked about if they were an alien species.And I'm like, well, I don't know if I believe in you, but no, I didn't go there, but you're the aliens, right? Wasn't that right? Um, but talking about if they were an alien species and they come look at the earth, said, you take this really, really big picture. uh, intelligent species, this human species. And again, this is not they're in the image of God.It's just an argument of like, wow, how smart people are. But then you say, but they fight all the time. Yeah. This, this, this part hates this part. This part loves this part, this part. And they, why, why, if we're so smart, do we fight so much? What do we get out of it? Now, I do want to say that when we're talking about the church throughout our history, We've had to take stands to define what is orthodox and what is not.We have a doctrinal statement for our church to say, hey, if you want to be a part of our church, this is what we believe. In constructing that doctrinal statement, we're, we're saying there are load bearing walls. There are walls that help define what is true, what is orthodox. This has happened throughout the history of the church.This is why the creeds and the councils has happened. There are, there are edges to what we believe and that are taught in this church. There are times in history, there'll be times for this church, when those walls have been threatened and they need to be upheld. But after being in church leadership for 23 years, I can tell you that the vast amount of hostility that Christians have with other Christians are not about load bearing walls.The problem is that we erect walls between ourselves and the house of God that are about smaller things. Convenient things. Cosmetic things. Partition walls. But why? I think first is it's help us. It helps us to be less messy. When we are similar and agree with everybody in the room. I think the early church would have been less messy too.If it's like, okay, wow, Jewish Gentiles, your whole framework, your whole habits, your whole, like, viewpoints on a million things are different. Let's create a Jewish church. Christian Church and a Gentile Christian Church. That's not what happened. Or, you know what? There are some people who are higher on the socioeconomic, some people are on the lower socioeconomic, some people are a lot more intelligent, a lot of people can't read.Let's just divide them up to like, have this group here and that group there, so that there's not that messy. See, when Jesus breaks down walls, there's rubble. It's tough. All of a sudden, we're seeing people who are different than us, or representing Jesus in a way that's like, Oh, I don't know. And it's uncomfortable.I remember when I moved back from, um, Chicago, and I was there for ten years, and I told my wife, Babe, I'm gonna take you to Wawa. And you know what she said? What is Wawa? And I'm like, It's not Wawa. I'm gonna take you to Wawa. It's my people, right? And I take her in, and don't judge her too much, judge her a little.She went in and said, Oh, it's like a 7 Eleven. A 7 Eleven? That's beef jerky to filet mignon, like you don't say 7 Eleven, it's like wah wah. It's my people. It's easier when people have similar backgrounds to you. People different than us. The first thing is they feel like threat. They scare us. And I think this is something true for me.I really wanna seem smart. It's important to me, and it feels good when I can really figure out in my mind that other people are wrong.It feels good to be able to take maybe their worst argument and poke holes in it.And then lastly, I think we react stronger to what we disagree with than what we agree with. Um, I didn't experiment this. Last week, where I wrote, like, 20 incendiary extreme statements. And I had different staff members walk in and read the statements. I, I mean, I was talking about guns, social media, child raising, 2020 election, racism, COVID, vaccine, social media, like, anything that people fight over, I was, like, just putting it, it, lots of statements.And I had people read it. Jared literally just like laughed through the list, like, Oh, ho, ho, ho, are you gonna read these? Ryan, like, had a little breakdown, like, Oh, why? No, no fighting. But different people, different reactions. But I asked the question to the staff, Do you react more to the statements you more agree with?Or to the statements you more disagree with? Whatever side of whatever issue that I could think of that you were on. Not one person said, why I reacted more than what I agreed with. We react more strongly to what we disagree with, and that's definitely true for me. Things that I disagree with bother me more than the things I agree with make me happy.There's just something in us, and some of that, right, is our natural wiring to look for safety. And that's natural, and that's what, I don't think, I think that's just part of being a human. But, but see, part of being a Christian is to say the threat of hostility was taken out on that body, leading to our last question of why should we leave these walls that are torn down.Ephesians 4 that we just read, make every effort, make every effort.You know what, look at the group on your phone or your page, over that I read, make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. Why should we leave the walls torn down? Because broken walls demonstrate the power of a Savior who can break them. Broken walls keep us needing the Savior to stay around because He Himself remains our peace and the only way we can do community well.And lastly, broken walls testify to a unity, not a uniformity that we agree on everything, but that unity is possible. Because his love is greater than our fear and tribalism. We live in a pretty divided time and, and that's historically in our country we're pretty divided. And we've been divided through many, many points of history throughout the world.But I wrote this statement and I want one to read it specifically. Our testimony to the world is not bringing them, the world, into narrow closets of theology. explaining why our particular version of Christianity is better than the other versions. It's bringing them into seeing a Savior who loves and helps us live out unity in the rubble of broken down walls.This world does not need more arguments and othering. This world needs to see people who are different from each other, disagree on some things, and still live together in love. Our unity, dear church. Is our testimony living in unity will always take Tremendous courage peacemaking is always bloody. You know, why because it's walking into conflict all the timeLast question for you on your notes this morning. What is my plan for dismantling? This wall of hostility with jesus's help again. We can't just leave it in theory We're about to go through an election season. Man, was that rough last time. Boy, does it look just as rough this time. No matter where you line up.What is your plan for dismantling the walls of hostility that you will face? And I just, one thing as you think of a plan, I would like you to write it if you would. It should include relationship. Get to know someone who can give the best arguments for why they think the other thing is right. Put a face on it and things change.The Amazon River has no bridges. It's over 4, 000 miles long. They just recently built a bridge over one of the tributaries as it comes into the Amazon River. But in the Amazon River, um, which produces more water than any river in the world, there are zero bridges. The factors of the Amazon River make bridge building really hard.During dry seasons, it's just, there's very narrow waterways comparatively. And during rain, rainy seasons, there can be miles and miles wide. Also, there's something about the sediment that flows in the Amazon river that moves the ground around quite a bit. The ground is always shifting. So it's difficult, um, environment to build bridges on.Whoever builds the first bridge over a significant portion of the Amazon, it will be a remarkable testament to their engineering.We live in a time where there is quite a bit of division. There's a lot of division even within the church. It's not an easy time to build bridges. There's some factors that work against that. We can bemoan that. And we can also say, wow, what an incredible time for the Christian testimony of the unity of the church.Our opinions are not our testimony. Our unity is. Lord, we thank you. Guys, thank you for Paul, sitting there in jail. And not grumpy, railing against the people who stuck him there for falsely accusing him. Not, not frustrated at what's wrong with those Jews that they didn't let people in. Not yelling at the Gentiles of how come you don't do this.Not even starting a free Trophimus campaign. Just saying, please, recognize the gift of Jesus, because in Him, peace and unity, though found in rubble, though often bloody, is possible, because our peace is alive. In that living peace, we pray. Amen.
Ephesians 2:1-10But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Sermon Transcript:Invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, which the young people were just directing us to. I know many of you are using this journal. If you're not, we just got a whole new order this week and you want to pick one up, you're welcome to there in the, at the, Nook this morning, and in it, you will find an outline right to the right, which is what they just followed in depicting the book as we're trying to help everybody think their way through the book of Ephesians as we're going through this study together.I'm going to read Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10, which is what we'll be reflecting on this morning.And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Let's pray together.Lord, we come with the thoughts of the psal we've just sang. There's nothing better than you reminded of the psalmist who said, Lord, apart from you, I have no good thing that you're the one that makes all the things in our lives able to be good. And Lord, this passage just reminds us of the incredible grace that you express to enable our lives to be changed and transformed.Lord, I pray you teach us this morning. I pray that all of us here in Mount Laurel, all of us here in Collingswood, all that are watching online this morning. Lord, You would dissipate the distractions and enable us to just hear Your Word. In Jesus name, Amen. Modern world history divides itself into two periods.Historically, it's known as B. C. and A. D. Recently, non religious folks have tended to call this the, what we call B. C. would be B. C. E., before the Common Era, and then C. E. would be the Common Era. But, Whatever you call the letters, it's still centering on the entrance of Jesus Christ into the world. And all history is divided before and after.We are looking at a passage this morning in which Paul is talking to people about their before Christ time, B. C., and their after Christ time, the anti domini, the year of our Lord, the coming of our Lord. That it is after that and, and he's talking about the distinction between those two seasons of life.The context of this is Paul, of course, is the guy that had started the church in Ephesus. He had stayed there three years, longer than he stayed anywhere else. And during his time that was there, God used him and others to do an amazing work. They birthed new congregations. They saw the power of Christ not only in Ephesus.impact this metropolis of Ephesus, but also the whole area surrounding them. So it was not only a city that was influenced, but it was entire region, the whole area was known as Asia. He wants what was started to flourish and grow now in his absence. And he sends him this, this very significant letter in the New Testament, the book of Ephesians.And as he does so, he is writing about the life that Jesus gives people. In chapter one, we saw how God views the whole plan of deliverance, of salvation from an eternal perspective. And in the verses before this, leading up to the prayer at the end of chapter one, what he's talked about is the work of each member of the triunity of God involved.God the Father is the one that has designed the whole plan of rescue for humankind. It is God the Son that accomplished that plan. He's the one that took on flesh, that became human, that came to earth, that suffered and died as the A Savior for sinners on the cross and rose from the dead. And God, the Spirit, is the one that applies that in the lives of people.He does so, verse 13 and 14 remind us in chapter 1, by entering their lives, taking up resident within them and changing them from the inside out. In chapter 2, Paul starts to explain what this new life looks like from the human side. He tells the story of one's pre Christ, B. C. life situation and then contrast it with the change that Christ makes in the A.D. season of life in verse 4 through 10. I'd like to look at those two seasons of life that he presents here. First, verses 1 through 3. Our B. C. life. And as you look at that, you find that he uses a number of phrases and he gives four characteristics of this life. First of all, he says it is a season in which you were disconnected from God.You were dead in trespasses and sins. I've done this before, but I think it's important to understand when Paul talks about death, what, what he means by, by death, because death here is a significant theological concept. All kinds of death actually could be translated by the term separation. If I died on the platform this morning, what has happened is my material part has stayed, but my immaterial has separated.My soul spirit is gone. I'd give up the ghost, as they used to say, or the spirit has left him, whatever. His soul's departed. It's all true. The immaterial physical death is the separation of one's material from immaterial part. Now, in our, our lives, We have this material part. It's called the soul and the spirit.It's actually there's two actually elements, two orientations, if you will. Both terms are used throughout the scripture. The soul is talking about the horizontal orientation of life. It's why the word psuche is used. Psuche is actually the word we get psychology from. It is the study of the soul. It is our soulish life.It is our soulish orientation, how we relate to others. How we relate to ourselves, how we work through things within ourselves. It is the soul ish life, the horizontal dimension of our life. But humans are not only created horizontally, we are given a spirit. This is the vertical dimension. And in this vertical dimension, it is our relationship with God, our creator to the creatures.That God has created us with the capacity of relating to him, of knowing him, of doing life with him. And Paul is saying here, he's now speaking about this secondary sense of death, not physical death. But what is known in the Bible constantly as spiritual death. He says, there is a separation in your relationship to God.There is a, there is a disconnect in the, in the vertical relationship between your spirit and God as spirit. It is a, it has happened, he says, for the whole human race. It happened when forefathers representing us turned away from God originally, and in that sense, we participated in it. Romans chapter 5 verse 12, it says this, Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin.In this way, death came to all men because all sinned. In Genesis 3, talking specifically about Adam, it says the day you ate of the free, you will surely die. Well, actually, he didn't die physically. He continued to live. So he was talking about there's going to be a change in the vertical dimension of life.There is going to be separation, and it is a separation that manifests itself in the life of all people. And Paul is referencing that here. He says there's Disconnection with God as you live in your sins and trespasses. Now, historically, there's been different views of human, even among theologians, of what it means that we're, you know, how are we relating to God?Why are there problems in our relationship with God? And back in the fourth century, there are a couple of famous theologians. One is the most famous in the church, a guy named St. Augustine. But There was a guy named Pelagius who came along and he had the definition and explanation of what was going on with humans.And he says, basically, people are fine. They're fine. There's no real issues, particularly when a child is born, we don't get a bad nature. We just get bad models. And if we get the right models in our lives, because we're born neutral, sin will only be a problem to us if we choose it from our models and, and what we see.We can, will to do good lives in ourselves. Augustine was horrified by this view for him. It made no sense. It in no way explained the horrific problems among humans he saw in the world, but also completely negated the need of Jesus work on the cross. Pelagius was eventually barred from and branded a hurricane.But his view of human nature was people are fine. There came along a few people after them and they were sort of wanting to balance, well we hear what Pelagius is trying to say and we certainly hear what Augustine's trying to say. And they took what is known as a semi Pelagian view or a quasi Pelagian view.And their view was this, that they acknowledged, and they, my terms would be that people are sick. people will, are spiritually ill, they're sick. They definitely believe that. The idea that people were inclined to sin. They saw it in people's lives. Their natures were obviously impacted by sin. But though they're sick, there's a spark of spiritual life in them that enables them to embrace Christ and find his salvation.This actually is the perspective of a significant portion of evangelical Christians today. The perspective, it is not what Augustine believed, and I would suggest to you it is not what Ephesians 2 is saying. Ephesians 2 is taking this Augustinian perspective that says this. People are not fine spiritually.People are not just sick. spiritually. And if you just, you know, just throw them, you know, they're sort of, or they're drowning in the water, throw them a life preserver. What they are is dead. That they are incapable of saving themselves or even grasping. That Augustine was saying, we're not just drowning and need a life preserver, we're dead.The vertical dimension in our lives is disconnected, and there is no relationship with God. And the result is, what he's going to show us in verse 2 and 3, that we're in a state of separation and disconnection with God, proven every day by the choices we tend to make, or in our talking, our acting, what we pursue.There is a disconnection with God, and Paul says you're spiritually dead, you're separated. The second thing he highlights in this is that we are unresponsive then to God. There's a disease that I heard about a number of years ago, I actually did some studying, I was really fascinated by it, I'm sure some of you here are Myasthenia Gravis.It basically is from three words. Moose, which is the word for muscle. Thinia, which means weakness. And Gravis, we mean serious. It's a serious muscle weakness. That's the disease. Basically, the signals come from the brain. It says, pick up that pen or lift that, that weight and the signal goes through the nervous system.It goes all the way down to the muscle group, but the muscle group has a disconnection and it is not able to be a receptor for the nerve impulse. So the muscle does not operate and the, the danger of myasthenia gravis is muscles will atrophy because they're not appropriately getting the impulse. This is exactly what happens.Paul is saying in Ephesians two, he says, when we're dead, when we're separated from God, we don't get the impulses. He may be sending the messages. Maybe you've done life with people and they keep talking about this relationship with God, that God speaks to them, that that they have this vital walk with God and they go to the Bible and God just talks and you say, It doesn't happen to me.I, I don't understand this. I, I, I hear the same thing. I mean, I'll listen to a sermon and think, Oh, that was cool. Great illustration. whatever. I don't really sense. That there is the, the, the messaging, the reality, God, I believe in God, but do I know him? Well, no, he's God. And I mean, I'm just me, but God says, I am imminently knowable.There's a disconnect that results. There is an unresponsiveness that results from this. God tends to feel distant, impersonal, maybe not even real. We make all of our choices without any sense of what God is really saying to us. Personally, again, I'm just presenting here the bad news in verses one through three of what Paul is saying this is the state of all of us ultimately in our lives before what happens in verse four.Disconnection, unresponsiveness. Number three, under the sinful and under the influence of evil. He lists three spheres of evil in our lives in verse two and three. Number one, he says, you're, you're under the influence of an evil world. You're following the ways of this world. And we might respond, I mean, is that so bad that I'm following the ways of the world?I mean, I'm not E. T. I'm not a space alien. I'm I'm a world ling. This is my place. These are my people. Why is it wrong to follow the ways of the world? Well, the world that he's talking about here is the sense of the perspective of life that is natural to people that are disconnected from God, which is our initial way of entering life and living life apart from what he's going to talk about.Paul is saying that you live your life with an orientation that is normal and universal for people in that spiritual condition. The general inhabitant of the world is in this spiritually dead condition. What happens in that state is you seek to find your fulfillment in something other than God. Makes sense, right?Because, you know. There's a disconnection with God. You may know about him. You may believe he exists. You may have been taught. You may have been taught. for years. Truth about him. But actually, your life orientation is not influenced by God because there's disconnection there. The world elevates then other things to God like status and offers them to us.It appeals to us with very off various offerings to bring fulfillment and meaning to your life. It could be thousands of things, a new car, a new nicer home, a new relationship through eHarmony, a new baby, a new body through the local fitness center, a future for your child, a new church, a new job. One or many of these are pursued, hoping they will bring real fulfillment and meaning.But ultimately, Paul's saying to us here, it's a false promise. Because what it is offering is a substitute for the real article. And the real article is God himself. That when disconnected from God, when we're basically dead men walking, these are the best we can come up with to try to provide what God has designed to be offering through himself.In this dead state, we are not only influenced by the world around us, and its offerings to us, and its pursuits, but there is an unseen power at work. Number, verse two, it says there's an evil master. that influences. There's a ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient.He says there's an organizing. Now this is, you know, you may be out there here in Mount Laurel or Collingswood, you may be online and you say, wait a minute, you're not going to go there. I mean, you're not going to be saying, There's a real devil, and he's doing real stuff. I mean, come on, Mark. I mean, sometimes you seem to have a degree of intellectual, competency.I do believe in a literal devil. I believe there is the only, it is the only explanation for the astonishing evil that is in the world. There is a power behind the power. There is an influencer behind the evil that we see. There is an organizing force. And the Bible says this force is actually a person.And when we are still spiritually dead, we do not intentionally serve Satan. Most of us are not sacrificing animals on Halloween, or Wicca, or witchcraft participants, which would be more, at least to some degree, for many involved in that, intentionally, pursuing that supernatural world. But we participate in a world system that is energized and influenced by Him, aiming to keep us from connection with God.It's described, I think, in a, in an interesting way in one of the Sherlock Holmes book. It's called The Final Problem, if you've ever read Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes is talking to his sidekick, Dr. Watson, and he's describing this thing that was going on in the world of crime. And here's how he describes it.As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the higher criminal world of London as well as I do. For years past, I have continually been conscious of some power behind the malfactor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law and throws its shields over the wrongdoer.Again and again, in cases of the most varying sorts, forgery cases, robberies, murders, I have felt the presence of this force. And I have deduced its actions in many of those undiscovered crimes in which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have endeavored to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.Watson, he is the Napoleon of crime. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly of all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He is a brain of the first order. He sits motionless like a spider in the center of its web. But that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows very well every quiver.of each of them. He does little himself, he only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done? A paper to be abstracted? We will say a house to be rifled? A man to be removed? The word is passed to the professor. The matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught.In that case, money is found for his bail or his defense. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught. Never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced Watson and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing. That is a perspective in a history, different situation, but basically context of this is what is going on.behind evil in our world. But then he tells, and he says, man, you were living in, that was influencing ways you didn't even know. Just by imbibing the cultural perspective and outlook. And then third, it also, you were influenced by your own evil nature. He says this in verse three, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature.It's our very nature to pursue the false offerings of happiness the world offers in which Satan promotes. These God's substitutes appeal to us. I mean, why would they not? They do not satisfy, but they are seemingly satisfying. They certainly satisfy for a time, some of them a lengthy period of time, but ultimately they are not that which brings ultimate meaning and satisfaction to our lives.They don't satisfy because we were all created with a God shaped vacuum. As Augustine said it, God, our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. We sense there should be more to life. We sense life without God, it's not how it ought to be. And the consequences of spiritual death are even more reaching, far reaching.And I was just going to touch the last one. The fourth thing that is said in these verses about our B. C. state is this. We are under the sentence of God. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. Wrath here is talking about God's eternal judgment and eternal separation from him. So here's the scenario.He says, B. C. Here's what we've got three primary things. You're disconnected from God. You're trying to milk the world for a contentment that only God can give and you're facing an ominous future eternity because of your choices. That's where we're left at the end of verses one through three. And he's saying, this is where you all are.This is where everybody lives in their lives and would live forever, except for two words that may be the most precious words in the entire Bible. They start verse four, but God, God saw that state. And he who is rich in mercy, it goes on to say the things that he does as he offers now this A. D. Life. And he talks about things that he provides.First of all, he provides connection to himself in verse five. He makes you alive with Christ. Spiritual death. is our disconnection. There is no relationship. We know about God, but we don't know God intimately, personally, as a father, as a friend. We're told in first Peter 3 18, it says, For Christ died for sins, one for all the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.He says it this way in John chapter 14 verse six, Jesus talking, I am the way. I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me. I'm the one that has come to bring connection, reconnection to God that's been lost because of sin. Secondly, he says, we have a whole new orientation on earth.He says in verse 6, You've been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places. When we are spiritually made new, we find ourselves responsive to God, we can get the signals. We go to the Bible and in our own spirits we sense God speaking to us. Sometimes in life experiences we just sense God is leading, directing, speaking.God makes himself known and the beauty is we're no longer on the, on the other side of the glass looking in. I get it. I get it now. It's nothing I did, nothing I deserve, nothing I merited. It's that God brought me into a relationship with him. He's connecting me again. He's bringing in the place of death and separation.He's bringing life and connection and did it all through Christ. Becoming a Christian does not mean that something is added to your life like a supplement. Becoming a Christianis a complete change. It's not a new file you download into your computer. It's an entire new operating system for the hard drive. There is utter transformation inside when God himself comes into your life. So last part of my sermon, I want to talk about what are the marks of being spiritually alive. And I'd like to share four.I'm going to try them quick. Number one, there are some practical things, and now I'm going broader than this passage just to speak. Okay, what does it mean that we're alive? Okay, we get that, that sense that now we're, we're connected with God, there's a relationship with God. But what are some practical evidences of that?Well, number one, there is a different view of the scripture. The moral person, a person that's read the Bible, is familiar with the Bible, May admire the Bible, may applaud the Bible. And I say this quite honestly, this may be many of us that are in church all the time. But the person that is genuinely alive in Christ doesn't just laud the Bible, appreciate it, maybe even believe it.He or she feeds on it. There's a hunger for that all of a sudden you're realizing God It's speaking to me that I hear him get it. This this is this is not just Paul writing to a bunch of Ephesians 2000 years ago. As I read this text, I sense God is saying, Mark, this is this is about tomorrow. This is about how you're going to live with your, your, your family today.I'm speaking into you. This is my answer to you as you're struggling with these questions. There's just a hunger to hear the scriptures. You want to be, you want to be fed. You know, when you're hungry and your wife says, Hey, Saturday morning, let's go out to breakfast. You don't say, Hey, I did breakfast Tuesday.I'm good. You're hungry again. There's a, there's a, there's a desire. You're hungry to hear the truth of the Bible. Why? Because there's connection. It's, it's not just words. It's, as God describes in New Testament, it's living words. Secondly, when you're spiritually alive, there's a different view of failure.I love this one. All other religions and philosophies say pull yourself together, get a grip. That is what salvation is to a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, and I'm not disparaging them, I'm just trying to draw the distinction. Christians know we are failures. We embrace failure. Every other religion says you can't reach perfection as a means of reaching God, but you must be very high up in the class rank to make it.Good must certainly significantly, overwhelmingly away the bad to earn this relationship with God. It's all about you. Biblical Christianity pushes the standards, quite frankly, even higher. It says a perfect God has said only those that have achieved sinlessness, perfection, can enter into relationship with him forever and can do life with him in the world to come.The difference in biblical Christianity is this, you get accepted on someone else's perfection. Jesus did that for you. Because you utterly fail. We utterly fall short. This compelling reality in the spiritually alive, in the compelling reality, in the spiritually alive individual is this, the mercy of God.It is the but God, in verse 4, that God provided a way that, that a dead, separated, Judgment deserving person like me could enter relationship with him, could share his life, his glory, his heaven eternally. It's all mercy. He doesn't say, okay, you've been a failure now. If you want to get in straight now, get it right.I mean, go to church, read the Bible, do this. No, he says, No, my standard has only been met by one who came in your place, lived righteously. He bore the punishment for your failures. Paul has already shown what's true of our lives, dead, disconnected, controlled by desires and cravings which don't satisfy souls in a feeding frenzy for worth, fulfillment and rest.operating in a world system that is ultimately empowered against God. But believers know that our misery prompted God's mercy. And it is our only hope. A number of years ago, there was a guy named Lee Outwater. Lee Outwater was the, he was called the Happy Hatchet Man, the Darth Vader of the Republican Party.He perfected the art of reputation destroying rumors. This is by his own acknowledgement. He did, Reputation Destroying Things of Michael Dukakis. And when Lee Atwater got cancer and he was forced to look at his own life, his life was transformed by the gospel, the message of Christ. And he began to try to make things right.From his deathbed, he wrote letters. He had been writing them prior to that time. He wrote to Michael Dukakis and asked his forgiveness. Ted Bundy was a man who apologized at his deathbed in prison after murdering at least 30 women. In both cases, the world says this, who does this guy think he is trying to get forgiveness?The world has nothing to say to sleazeballs, to ax murderers, to degenerates, to failures. It cannot believe there's mercy for failures. But when you come alive, when you embrace Christ for your sins. You realize this, that God looks at your sins and does not see that yours needs salvation any less than those guys do.You see yourself as failure. I didn't measure up. I'll never measure up. I see the sins of every known sin in my own heart if I'm honest about it. And I realize I embrace failure. I embrace the fact that I stand as a recipient of mercy. Spiritual live person lives in the glory and the freedom of that reality of God.The third thing, and I'm just gonna touch here for time. There's different views of God. Spiritually renewed person is drawn to God. They sense His presence, His guidance in their lives. They see real answers to their prayers. They trace His hand in the circumstances of their lives. They hear Him speak through His word.They're, they're, they're, they're finding answers to life by a God that is living within them and speaking into them. And it's all of grace. It's all of mercy. But there's this whole new sense that God is not a heavenly policeman. I got to measure up to. God is my father. God is my friend. Christ is my brother, as he describes himself in the book of Hebrews.And then there's a different view of living with God. The spiritually alive person finds their motivation to live with God is one of joy, not ultimately of obligation. I'd just like to read an excerpt from a book that I deeply enjoy. It's called Hope Has Its Reasons by Becky Pippert. And then I'm going to wrap up.Here's what she said. I was living in Israel. I took the bus to go home from downtown Jerusalem, but I inadvertently got off at the wrong stop and was promptly lost, lost. Not an unusual state of affairs for me. I began peering around at street signs to discover where I was. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me saying, slightly halting English, Can I help you?I turned around and, to my astonishment, saw an Orthodox, Hasidic Jew. He was a vision in black, dressed in the attire of typical of the Orthodox community of his 18th century Polish predecessors, a long black cloak, over black trousers, a long white fringe hanging from his belt, bearded with ear locks that came down to his chest, pale skin reflecting the Hasidic male's devotion to the intense daily indoor study of Torah.It is hard to convey to Western Gentiles how extraordinary it is for a Hasidic man from the ultra Orthodox neighborhood to speak to a woman, particularly a Western woman. I probably could not conceal the amazement on my face and he said, sometimes we are permitted to help people in distress. Where do you need to go?To my further astonishment, he accompanied me on the street and told me his name and that he lived in ultra orthodox community in Jerusalem, although he was raised in Chicago. His accent indicated that he spoke more Yiddish and Hebrew than English. I tried to establish some common ground, but found that our worlds were so dramatically different that small talk was impossible.I decided to try a different tact. We do share something in common, I said. What is that, he asked. We're both religious. That's wonderful, he shouted in reply and immediately began a discourse on one of the tractates from the Mishnah, Jewish writing. Then he noticed that I had paused and he said, Are you Jewish?No, I'm a follower of Jesus, I answered. He said, Are you serious about your faith? I assured him I was. This is fascinating, he said. I have never talked with a religious Christian before. There is much that I would like to ask you, but it is so difficult. If anyone in my community saw me holding a long conversation with you, it could be very awkward.I have to be so careful. Yet, when will I have this opportunity again? Well, I don't expect you to understand. You, Goyim, that's named for Gentiles, wouldn't understand our ways. But would it interest you to have a religious dialogue? He asked nervously. I would love to talk to you, I answered, sensing how sincere he was.But I could also see his discomfort as he constantly peered over his shoulder to see if we were being watched I took a deep breath and I said I would be honored to have you as a guest in my home He hesitated glanced around and said in a cloak and dagger manner. Let us go quickly So off we went to my apartment, my ultra Orthodox friend, with his earlocks flying in the breeze, and me.Once we were seated in my living room, he began to pepper me with questions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. His questions were theologically astute and probing. There were two things that interest him the most. First, he wanted to know what happened to human nature as a result of being in relationship with God through Christ.I explained that when we come to put our faith in God, he gives us his spirit, who transforms us day by day and enables us to live as new people with a new power. What is the essence of this new nature, he asked. So I quickly went over the list of the fruit of the spirit from Paul's letter to the Galatians.And I started to go on. And he said, wait! Say those words again. So I recited them again. Say them again, he asked. I did. What beautiful, beautiful words, he said. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Imagine it. All of these qualities come into your heart as a result of being in relationship with God.Just think to receive the very nature of God as a gift. No more beating down the evil inclinations with negatives, but rather fighting evil with positives with the very attributes of God himself. Ah, what a precious gift you have inherited, Becky. Do not take it lightly. He was doubly right. They are a precious gift and we do often take them lightly.I went on. Please don't think I'm suggesting that all of these qualities are mastered by us overnight. Living the resurrection isn't magic. We don't turn to God in faith and suddenly plug into all these qualities. They're cultivated over time through obedience and through God's grace. Of course, I know it can't happen quickly, he mused.We're still human beings who by nature are self centered and self absorbed. But what hope it must give to have God's power working in you, to enable you to forgo the old ways and live the new way. Becky said, I could not remember when I have heard a simpler or more eloquent explanation. of the meaning of Christian conversion than from this orthodox Jewish friend sitting in my living room.What also interested him was how I sensed the presence of God in my life. Then I told him a story of how God had helped me through a recent time of crisis and fear by giving me just the right word from scripture. I had awakened one morning feeling overwhelmed in a time of crisis, sorry, overwhelmed by fear, but then I had, I read the appointed Bible verses for that day in my devotional.Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1, 9. Suddenly he clapped his hands together, stood up, and to my amazement shouted, That's it! That's it! That is what it is all about! My daughter, you have it! Only God could have given you those words at just that time.It was an indescribably joyful moment. The only sad note in our conversation was the ending, Becky said, because he told me that we could never meet again. He instructed me that if I should see him on the street, I was not to acknowledge him, for it would endanger his stance in the community. But he said this to me, imparting, We have begun a friendship of faith, Becky.I will not forget what we have talked about. Not ever. And he left, leaving me far richer for the experience. To be spiritually alive is to live with God in a personal, vital relationship. It's what A. D. world is in Christ.
Ephesians 1:15-23I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
Sermon Transcript:Morning, everybody. I invite you to take your Bibles. You're looking at the book of Ephesians, and if you wondered what was going on up there, um, We are going through a series in the book of Ephesians, um, in your journal, if you've got a black journal, which you can get at the hub this morning. Um, basically it is of the book of Ephesians, and in the cover of that is an outline of the sermon series, or of the topics in the book of Ephesians, which we're following in our sermon series.And the young people are basically doing symbols to remind us as we go through the book of Ephesians. That outline. So you're gonna be looking this morning at Ephesians chapter 1 verse 15 to 23. A really Practical passage a passage that really talks about if you ever wonder what what really should I be praying for other people?Especially for people that are that are followers of Jesus Christ. Well, Paul is going to tell us here in Ephesians chapter 1 Here's what we read Verse 15. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and knowledge of him.Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance and the saints. And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness. of him who fills all in all. Lord, we ask you to be our teacher. We thank you that all the things Paul prays for these Christians in Ephesus are also the things that you would have us embrace in our own lives and to pray for ourselves and for others to know.Lord, thank you for how these very truths have been the foundation for many of our lives, my life. Um, the confidence, the contentment, the capacity to live that are all founded through the work of God of you in our lives. And Lord, I pray that you would teach us about that today in Jesus name. Amen. We've just left off, as we looked at verses 3 through 14, a few of us have taught through that the last handful of weeks.In verses 3 through 14 of chapter 1, basically it is the work of the three members of the Godhead in the work of the story of grace. God the Father is mentioned in the first verses, in verses 3 through 6, as being the architect of the whole thing. He designed the whole rescue plan of grace. God the Son is the agent of it.He accomplished that rescue plan of grace through coming and being born and taking flesh and living his life but ultimately going to the cross and being raised from the dead. God the Spirit. is the applier of it. He is the one that applies the rescue plan of grace into people's lives, even taking resident of their, in their lives, and is therefore giving us the down payment in this life of all the riches of glory that will be ours in a day to come.But all members of the Godhead are involved in this, this amazing rescue plan the story of grace. We now come, Paul is now prompted as an outgrowth of that, of hearing about God's investment in the lives of Christians. He prays for these Christians in Ephesus. We notice an interesting thing as we look at this passage.We prayer we just read, and we'd also notice is we've looked at all the prayers of Paul. Paul doesn't pray anything about circumstances. He don't see him praying for protection from financial setbacks or for surgeries or for the emperor to leave them alone. And then we might wonder, does this mean that we don't pray that way?Do we not pray specifics? Do we not pray circumstantially? Well, of course we do. The Lord says in the Lord's Prayer, um, to pray, uh, God your will be done in our lives. Give us guidance. Uh, we pray for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer. We're praying for practical necessities. But what we are finding in this prayer, and in other prayers of the Apostle Paul, and in John 17, Jesus prayer for his followers, we are seeing those things of ultimate importance.What we find here are what every believer needs, regardless of circumstances. It is the stuff that flows out of the work of the three members of the Godhead involved in our lives. This is going for the jugular praying. This is three great prayer requests that he is going to pray for every believer. And the degree to which these three things are developed in your life is the degree to which your spiritual life prospers and flourishes.The circumstances actually won't really matter. They will enable you to thrive regardless of those circumstances. And quite honestly, if you don't have those three things involved in your life, you will process things in such a way that you will be spiritually and psychologically shallow and weak. Even if you are in a time of relative ease and prosperity.These three things supersede circumstances. They are the things that change our lives. They are the things that he wants us to pray for one another, whether wealthy or impoverished, whether healthy or infirmed, whether surrounding by loving relationships or struggling with loneliness. These are things that are the source of spiritual health and joy.Now, the interesting thing about this prayer is that Paul didn't know many of the people he's praying for. He says this in verse 15, he says, I have heard of your faith. And if you mentioned before this, this letter, the book of Ephesians is actually a circular letter. It wasn't only sent to the church at Ephesus, that was a hub for Christianity in that part of the world, modern day Turkey.And as the church, uh, had, had grown and started other churches, This letter would be read and Paul says, there's lots of you guys I don't know by name. I don't know personally. I can't put a face to it, but I've heard about you. And even though he did not know them, he knew how to pray for them because he knew the three things.That he wanted them as any Christian to be able to rise above whatever circumstances they're in are these three realities. And all of them are things he wants us to know. That they would be grounded into our psyche. Vital realities. And he says this in these verses in 16, 17. He says, I'm praying you'll have a spirit of wisdom and revelation.I'm praying you'll know. I'm praying that your eyes will be in line. To what? To these three prayer requests, number one, he wants them to know and hold with a rock solid grasp and to continually grasp that the hope to which God has called them, secondly, the riches of God's inheritance in them, and third, the greatness of God's power for them.I want to look at these three things that he prays for Christians. But first, I want to just clarify what he means, or what I mean, by the term Christian. Because he's saying, I'm praying these things on the basis of this reality. I know, even though I don't know you personally, I have heard that you are in Christ because of two evidences in your life.So what are those two evidences? Well, that's what verse 15 is about, and I'm just going to try to touch on this. First of all, they have faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith comes first. Faith is foundational. It is what you believe primarily that makes you a Christian. It is not the group you're a part of.It's not the church you attend. It is not even if, if you, uh, uh, participate with it, with the right movements in any way. Now, this speaks immediately to the concept that it, well, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you live a good life. That's not what Paul's saying. He's saying, being a Christian is not a Christian in name.It's a person that has placed their faith in Jesus. Faith is primary. It's not faith in a church, in a dogma. It's not even faith in the Bible. It's faith in a person, faith in Jesus Christ, and it's different from intellectual faith. You know, if I had a chair up here, and I brought this up here, and I said, this chair absolutely can hold my weight.Um, uh, I have confidence you can hold a matter of fact, probably hold two of us, but I'll just say it'll hold me, but I don't really exercise faith in the chair until I do something. I sit in the chair. This faith that is being presented here is not faith that. Yeah, I believe Jesus did this. I believe I believe this.I believe I have believed into Christ. I have entrusted the weight of my spiritual destiny into the chair of Jesus Christ. It's really likely that there are a number of people here this morning, or here, here in Mount Laurel, or here in Collingswood, or here watching online. that would affirm all the faiths, all of the dogmas of Christian faith that have not entrusted themselves into Jesus Christ, that have not said, in this moment, I realize that Jesus Christ died for me.He died for my sins, that he rose from the dead as a demonstration that, that that, that offering had been satisfied, that it had satisfied the payment for my sins, and that I am personally, it's not just I think it, it's not just I intellectually embrace it, it's not just a cognitive reality to me. In this moment, I am believing into Jesus Christ.I am receiving him as my Savior. That's why in Romans 10, it says, those who call on the name of the Lord are saved. They entrusted themselves into the chair of his grace. Have you done that? Have you personally embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior? It doesn't matter what church you're a part of. It doesn't matter how many services you come here.It doesn't matter anything. It doesn't matter. Other than, have you sat in the chair of grace? Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ? And Paul is saying here, uh, you guys have done this. And, and, and that's foundationally why I'm praying for you the way I am. Because I'm praying for you. as a member of the, of, of God's family, as one who is in Christ in relationship to Christ.But he says something else here. He says, you have faith in the Lord Jesus. He doesn't say you have faith in Jesus. Why add Lord in verse 15? Because when a person puts their faith in Jesus, they are entrusting him to be their Savior and their Lord. to be the Lord of their lives. Romans 10 says this. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.This was a key reality in Ephesus. Number of years ago, Marian and I had the chance, um, church sent us on the 25th anniversary of us are being here on a, on a, Wherever we wanted to go in the world. We went to the Mediterranean, we actually went with a few other people, but we, uh, went on this cruise in the Mediterranean, and probably, certainly my favorite site, and we went to some great sites.Rome, and, and Istanbul, I mean it was awesome. Athens, but my favorite was actually the, the city of ruins. It was Ephesus. It was awesome because there's so much still you could see the grandeur of the city of Ephesus and you could walk through the streets and there's so much that has been restored. As you go into the city of Ephesus, you find in, it was a harbor city and, and there was a long quarter mile harbor road that I've told you before, had lit up lanterns.It's just gorgeous. It ended at the end of the, you're coming from the harbor and as you go down this road, you get at the end and there is the hill that, that the whole city was built around. The side of that hill is this giant stadium and you can see the stadium and, and the, and the theater seats. But as you made a right right after the Harbor Road, and now you started to go down into the main district of the whole city.There's this giant mall called the Agora. 2, 000 shops. It's where everybody shopped in the entire city of Ephesus and the surrounding areas. And to get into it, it was actually surrounded by wall. You had to go through these two gates. And as you went through these gates, on the left side there, Up above is this statement, Caesar is Lord.It was striking. Caesar is Lord. This is our belief. This is what unifies us as a people here in Ephesus. And Jesus said, I know you guys have declared Jesus is Lord. Faith in Jesus is not just a question of addition. You don't just add Jesus to your life when you embrace him as your Savior. There's subtraction.There's, there's changes that take place. They had to separate themselves from the cultural mentality. No, for us, it's the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany when Hitler was moving. And it was Heil Hitler, which meant, basically, Hitler is Lord. And the true Christians said, We can't. No, we don't do it.We don't. We can't say he is our Lord. So for the Ephesian believers, for them, there was a decision made. They were subtracting cultural idols. They were saying we have chosen to live differently as we have embraced Jesus Christ as our savior. The second reality in their lives, how that was manifested was that they showed love to all the saints.They showed faith in Jesus and love to all the saints. Faith is primary, but practice is essential.A guy believes, all women are out to get me. All women are out to get me. And finally, this has become such a, a, a controlling reality in his life. He finally goes to a therapist. And of course, the therapist helps him to see all women aren't out to get him. And he goes through the whole process, talks about his background, his situation, what's going on in his life.And basically the guy comes out and says, I realize not all women are out to get me. Just one woman's out to get me. But it's affected his life, right? His whole life is dominated by thinking, Oh, all women are, no, you just, I mean, but now he has to live it out. It's going to change his behavior. It's going to, it's going to make him, Able to date.It's going to make him able to not be mad at his co workers, or be guarded, or be worse, be antagonistic. Because it isn't just faith, it is practice. And the practice that is focused on here is this. That you can have love for all the saints.Why do artists struggle with engineers? Why does one ethnicity struggle with another or one political party struggle with another? Because all of us tend to group. All of us tends to try and, uh, try to find our identity in other people. The beauty of the body of Christ is Jesus came along and completely broke down every barrier.In chapter 2, he's going to talk about he broke down the wall of hostility between people.That the greatest calling of Christians is to love people that are utterly different than you, except they are united in a foundational love for Jesus Christ. We love across political parties. We love across races. We love across ethnicities. We love across denominations, reconciliation of cultures and races and different perspectives is at heart of Christian experience.And Paul says, I see this in you guys. I mean, Jews, former practicing Jews, actually Jews now who have become Christians who are still practicing many of the Jewish practices. Which we Gentiles believe we have been freed from are not responsible to do. But he says, I see you guys coming together and loving each other and doing church together and even allowing your your your kids to get married and all these things that would have been so hard.And he says, I just see this change. And he says, You know, these are the ways I know you guys are Christians. And so what he prays now is he's praying for people that are doing that. So what does he pray we should they would know here are the three things he prays first of all and this is verse 16 23 that we he prays they would know the confidence God's calling can give them I pray that you will know the hope to which he has called you.In the New Testament, there are three particular things that Paul is talking about when he says the hope that is theirs because of their calling. Number one, and I want to say that I, I want, I wish I could be more skilled at helping you to see the practicalness of this. He says, Find your confidence in these three things that God has called you to himself, made you a part of his family.He's given you hope. And there are three things that's hope focus in. One, number one, you have hope because you know God. Ephesians 2 verse 12, you were without hope. And without God. He's talking to the same people. You didn't have the hope. I'm talking about because that hope is in a relationship with God that God filled that God shaped hole in your life as he called you into salvation.You have been given a personal relationship with God that you have come to know God, the one who is the safest person in your life. What do I mean by that?People feel dangerous. When they're on the line, when they're discontent. It's why we tend to condemn other people. We tend to be judging of other people when we're most beating ourselves up. We tend to share the wealth. God is never on the line. God never is struggling with feeling inadequate. Or feeling like a less than.Or feeling afraid. Or feeling angry. Or feeling worried. God is utterly content. Because he is utterly content in himself, he is utterly free to love. When we're given to fear, we can't love, because fear is controlling, it's absorbing, it takes everything. But God is able to love. He is then the safest person.Well, if you get with an individual, you go to the gym and you're working out with a guy next to you, And, uh, he's so, you know, he's just everything, you know, he's talking about this and talking about this and he looks great and it's working and, and, and, but he's obviously on the line that man, I got to be here every day, every day.I got to put in a couple of hours, you know, I come, I do this. You don't want to be next to that guy when you work out. He's not safe. What he does is make you think. Man, I don't, come on, buddy. You know, you're just saying, he's not safe to me. I want, I want somebody else that's relaxed. You know, they're just here, you know, and it's okay.We'll work out together. It's the comparison. God never is. He's not having to prove himself. He's not saying, Oh man, I gotta get here today. You know, he's not in the line. He's safe and he's in. He's willing to life with us. He's willing to come alongside. And Paul says, Find your your Hope in this. You know, God, this God, the safest person you will ever know.Secondly, you know your reason for living. Romans chapter five verse two. We boast in the hope of the glory of God. It goes on to say it was therefore we can glory and suffering because we know it has a purpose. There's a purpose in what is allowed into our lives. God is determined to use it all for good that God is purposing in our lives that he's he's at work in our lives.The Purpose Driven Life was written by Rick Warren a number of years ago.It has sold 50 million copies. It has been translated into 137 languages. Now, a very large percentage of those people were not Christians. Why'd they buy this book? Because there is this hunger in the heart of humans to have meaning to my life. I was talking with a girl who was an avowed atheist once a young adult, and she was going through some hard times.We had talked about her atheism, and she made the statement to me. She said, I just I just want to know that all these hard things going on in my life have purpose, have a meaning. There is no purpose or meaning. If there isn't a purposer, if there isn't a designer, But we can live with our lives saying, I'm trying to live my life to the glory of God.That God is arranging circumstances of my life to help me grow in Christ. There's purpose. And I can even embrace the, the, the hard things, the confusing things, the, the, the major issues in my life, because I know there's a, there's a purpose that God is, is intending in my life. The third thing he says, you can have confidence, you can have hope because you know your future.Throughout the New Testament, our hope is talking about the future to come. That this is not your ultimate home. And Paul says, I'm praying that you guys will remember these realities. That you know God. That you, you know you have a reason for living. That you know there's life beyond this. That you will embrace these realities and drink at the well of these truths over and over again.I'm at the age of my life where I'm thinking of the next one more than I used to when I was 30 years old. I now watch movies and, uh, and it's a movie that a guy loses his spouse and I cry every time. I can't imagine it. And it's caused me to think about heaven in a way I never thought about it before.And I've said probably on I don't know, six or seven times probably feels like a thousand to Marianne, but because I tend to do With things I'm thinking about I've said this to her babe. I can't wait to do heaven with you I believe that I can't imagine doing life without my bride,but what gives me hope in it is the It's a temporary separation. It's not over. And I can't wait to be in a place where I leave all the stuff behind that I'm leaving behind when I go to heaven. The me. The, the, the self part. The self centeredness. The self absorption. The selfishness. The self promotion.The self ambition. This, uh, all that stuff that I have to deal with continually with the Lord and only He gives the grace to overcome because it's so prominent. Leave it all up behind. She's leaving all that behind. He says you can be confident because of what you have been Called to you've been called to hope, you know your future, you know your reason for living, you know your God Okay, I got a step up to pace Second thing here is he's praying for the contentment God's appraisal can give them I love this one.That you will know in verse 18 what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. Imagine trying a Christmas shop for Bill Gates or Taylor Swift. They both have yachts, they have jets, they have innumerable homes, most of them mansions, and recently they both own a car. Islands. What do you buy for a person that buys islands?And you get with him at Christmas and you give him your, your present, which you for, and, and, and of course it's going to go like this. Oh my goodness, this is just what I've been waiting. No, you didn't. This is what I've been looking for. No, they didn't. They would have bought it.In this passage, In this phrase, God is saying something incredible. You see, it could be rendered that the inheritance that's being talked about here, the glorious inheritance in the saints, is an inheritance that we receive from God. But that's not what it's about. That's not the way the wording is, and it's not what has been historically understood.That's not what it's about. It's talking about the inheritance that God receives in us. And he says, this is your riches, your riches. Are God's inheritance in you? Saints, the word saints here means Christian set apart ones. God needs nothing, right? I mean, he's got more than islands, but he finds his great inheritance in those he called and justified and made a part of his family.Now, Jesus was convinced of this in John 17. He says, Father, I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me for their yours. They belong to you. They matter to you. Pursued them. You drew them. Now, what is an inheritance? An inheritance is what is passed on as a legacy, a gift, a gift to others.God's gift to himselfis believers. People he chose, rescued, forgave, gave his spirit to, he says, This is my inheritance. This is what the whole work, the whole story of grace and redemption was about. That what I will inherit as a result are these who have been embraced by Christ, who have entrusted themselves to my son. The ones that I have drawn, the ones that I have sent my son for, He finds his pleasure in you.Your riches are in the fact that you are God's inheritance. Martin Lloyd Jones, great preacher of Scotland days past, said this, about this phrase. The degree to which you understand this passage, is the degree to which you will find strength not to sin. The degree that we imbibe this reality that God looks at us as his gift to himself,his legacy, his inherited gift. is the degree that you will find self control, is the degree to which you will find that that sin is not as powerful an enticement. J. I. Packer, in his classic book, Knowing God, says that those who know God have four characteristics. Number one, great energy for God, great thoughts of God, great boldness for God, and great contentment in God.If you haven't read that book, you really need to. And our great contentment ultimately comes in knowing that God delights in his children.I was listening to a song this, uh, this week or last week. It's by the sidewalk prophets. It's called Chosen. The cadence of it is not going to do really well being read, but I'm going to do the best I can. Here's what, how it goes. What do you see when you look in the mirror? A loser? A failure? Does every scar determine who you are?Maybe don't look, just turn away. If every day is like yesterday. Winds are gonna change. What do you hear when you're all alone? Stranded at sea on a stepping stone. There's a cloud inside you, it's welling up. You're not worthless, you're precious. You're not left out, you're wanted. You're not invisible with your shining soul.Lord has spoken. You are chosen. You sat on the side and you tried to hide it, but deep in your heart there's a burning fire. Whoever told you that you're not strong, today's the day you're gonna prove them wrong. You're not worthless. You're precious. You're not left out. You're wanted. You're not invisible with your shining soul.Love has spoken. You are chosen. Your fear is courageous and your weakness is strong. Hold on to faith and you'll more than overcome. This is your identity. Your call to be your royalty. You're chosen. You are chosen. Your fear is courageous and your weakness is strong. Hold on to faith and you'll more than overcome.This is who you're made to be. Come and see your destiny. You're chosen. You are chosen. You're not worthless. You're precious. You're not left out. You're wanted. You're irreplaceable with your shining soul. Love has spoken. You are chosen. You didn't make yourself that way. God did. God says, this is my prize.This is my glory. This is my inheritance. This is my legacy to myself. That I've reached out and taken a sin for broken people and I've drawn them to my son and they've embraced his work and for all eternity. They're going to be my joy. They are my glory. And Paul says, guys, I want you to see yourselves this way.I want, I'm praying that you will see yourself because the more you see that is your identity, the freer you are from all the other things that are trying to identify, trying to determine your identity. The last thing, the capability God's power can give them. He's prayed three things here. Hope to which he's called you, the inheritance they are to God, and now the capability God's power can give them.He says this in verses, um, 18 and following, about his power, verse 19 and following, about his power that is manifested. I'm not going to take time to go through all that. I just want to highlight the practicality of it. In Ephesus, there was tremendous demonic opposition. This is the book where he's going to talk about spiritual warfare and lay out the whole reality of it.This is the book where he's going to talk more about principalities and powers and authorities of dark places than any other book in the New Testament. This is a city that was filled with opposition. If there's one thing I've learned in doing my life with God for a number of years, The enemy is utterly, incomparably more powerful than I am.In a moment of time, he could snuff me out. He could snuff you out. He could shut down this service in a second. There's only one reason he doesn't. We are protected by the shielding, circling power of God. That's the reality. That is the reality. And Paul is reminding these people who felt the hot breath of the enemy every day living in Ephesus.He says, I want you to be, I want you to, I'm praying that you will, you will be consumed with the fact that God is on your side, the power of God. Reading recently, uh, writing by Tim Keller, and I was just struck by a little story he was telling. And he was talking about God at work. in circumstances and how we tend to not be aware of just the big things that God is doing all around us every day.He told the story when, when he was, um, in seminary. During that time, hap the Watergate break in happened with Richard Nixon, the president, wiretapping into Democratic headquarters. And as a result of that, Richard Nick Nixon was removed from office in disgrace, and Gerald Ford took over. And at that same time, uh, uh, Tim Keller was at, at seminary and there was a speaker that was supposed to come to the school.And he said, and he was not able to get here from Britain because of some political issues. And it was a guy they, they had wanted to hear speak. And so a guy was on the board of the school and his, his, I can't remember his first name, but he was the son of Gerald Ford. He was on the board of Gordon Conwell.And so he pulled some strings because his father was after in a pretty important position in the world at this moment as the president. And he got some strings pulled and this guy was able to come to speak at Gordon Conwell. And he spoke at Gordon Conwell and, and Tim Keller tells the story of how sitting out there, this guy absolutely changed my life.As a matter of fact, he's the reason I became a Presbyterian, talking with him and, and, and, and realizing I, I embrace what he's saying and, and where he's coming from. Tim Keller then left Gordon Conwell and he went down to a small rural church in Virginia. Amazing church, diversity, amazing things he did there.But he's in a little country church there, nobody knows him. But some Presbyterian leadership, because he was a part of their movement, reached out to him and they said to Tim, would you be willing to consider starting a church in downtown Manhattan? And so Tim Keller was called to go to this church in, in, in Manhattan, and, and in the story, Tim Keller's talking to the people of the congregation in, in Manhattan at Redeemer Church, and he said, if you today can look back and there's any way that God has, has brought good out of your life through Redeemer Church.You owe it all to the Watergate break in. And he traced it. He did it. Basically saying, why? Because God is at work all the time. That's happening in your life right now. God isn't wasting stuff. God isn't, oh, how did that happen? No, He's moving. Because He's big. And He's powerful. And He's constantly thwarting, The enemy, you know, we're looking right now to move on to our next lead pastor, right?We've only had one I'm, sorry for that, but that We've only had one in all these years 43 years brown hair mustache Turn into thisBut I am absolutely certain that god cares more about this church than any of us And as godly leaders are crying out with a prayer of jehoshaphat. Oh god, our eyes are on you You I am absolutely positive God is going to, to orchestrate this thing to his own glory and grace. I've prayed for the last 20 years.That the years after me would be the time when God did his greatest work in this church. I believe he's gonna do that. I, I'm absolutely positive he's gonna do it. Why? Because he's a God of power. And we can pray and embrace the power of God. Okay, so here we come. And, and in Sixers terminology, in regards to succession, they may trust the process.We're trusting the processor. Okay, conclusion. Let's put some shoes on the bottom shelf. Here we go. Okay. Number one, pray this prayer for yourself. Ephesians chapter one, pray through it and pray it for yourself. Secondly, really meditate on these truthsthat your confidence is in you know God and you know there's a purpose for your life and you know your future. There's a contentment that you have in that you are God's inheritance that he has deeded to himself and there's a capability that is found in God is working for you. And as you reflect on those things, I encourage you, and I'd encourage you to write this down.Ask this question, how would my life be different if I really knew this in my life? If I really knew this, how would my life be different in the way I do life with my wife or husband, with my kids in my job, with my coworker, with my finances? How would my life be different in my school if I really knew this?Number three, remember that Jesus Christ prayed these truths for you. He prayed that they would know the Father. He prayed that they would experience the Father's love for them. He prayed that they would be protected and empowered, all three parallel Paul's prayer here. And last, pray this for others. The next time you feel prompted to pray for somebody and you don't know what to pray, well, pray this way.God, help them to know the hope to which He's called. Help them to remember who they are in your sight. Help them to embrace and experience and remember your power. Amen. Your creative power to work in their lives. Lord, we come to you now.We glory in the work of grace that was done by you, Father, Son, and Spirit. Lord, now we pray that we might have our eyes open to these truths, that we might embrace them, sit in them.Lord, we glory in Christ, praise you for who he is and what he's done for us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Mark 16:1-8“You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Invite you to take your Bibles to Mark chapter 16. This morning, Mark chapter 16. We're gonna be looking at verses one through eight. Words from the empty tomb. Here's what we read as we come to Mark chapter 16, verses one through eight. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices so that they might go and anoint him.And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.And he said to them, do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who is crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized him.And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Let's pray.Lord, we gather on this beautiful Easter morning. And God, we come to celebrate your Son. Lord Jesus, we come to you. And we desire to see you fresh. The beauty of what you have done the glory of what this day is commemorating That the grave is empty that you are not there that you are the living christ The son of the living god that you are our lord and living savior Lord teach us today from your word in these moments.We spend together in jesus name. Amen It was march Harold Davis, a missionary of our church who had been a part of our ministry for a whole summer together as he'd been involved in ministries, wilderness camps, hiking camps, various, soccer programs, had returned to Bogota, Colombia and emails had alerted us here in the church office.That harold was missing he had been on a pastoral visit in downtown bogota columbia He had gone on a thursday evening and he had not returned home It was well into the early morning hours That the missionaries had gone to all the places that they could think of where he might have gone Eventually, Friday morning, the police were pulled in and began a search for him.By Friday afternoon, the missionaries and people from the church were looking at hospitals, even morgues, trying to find out where he might be. Eventually, late Friday afternoon, and we received an email that explained what happened. Bob Trout, a missionary. on the missions team there had gone into the very, inner city, the, the, the, some of the most difficult areas of Bogota and had gone to a morgue there and had immediately phoned to his wife who passed the word through the missionaries and they then on to people like us here in the States.And here was his response. I'm at the morgue in downtown Bogota, Colombia. He is here. The word came forth as we had ensuing emails that he had met a tragic, brutal death, that he would not be coming home to his family and friends. He is here. Surely the more, most tragic words possible at the moment. Your loved one has been found in the place of death.Two thousand years ago, some women gathered at the place of death, a tomb. They had come to visit a grave. When they arrived, they too were greeted with a message, almost an identical message, a three word message. But with one tiny, tiny change, three letters, he is not here. Those three letters changed the entire messaging.Those three letters changed the entire environment from despair to hope. Those three letters changed the entire lives of these three women. Those three letters not here. Change the entire course course of human history in the place of death. Jesus is not here. Mark records the angels words to these women in Mark 16 and as he does so and as we participate in the words of their message, there are three things we find.First of all, we find a word of challenge. To our minds their statement in verse six to the women was this he is not here This statement, of course Is pregnant with significance? And also it is something that takes deep intellectual Gymnastics, what do you mean? He's not here. What do you mean? He's alive Mark twain famously described faith As believing what you know ain't so Is that what it is?Is it true that we look at the data and said, this is not intellectually credible, that one has to turn their mind off to embrace the reality of what these, in these mess, these individual angelic messengers are saying, many would argue that the angels message is not found on data that is credible. It's a challenge to our minds.So there's the attempt to dismiss it. Some claim it is popular legend. This word is a challenge to our mind. But interestingly, in the time of Jesus, during the first century and into the second century, there were, there were a number, some would say dozens, of messianic movements. Invariably, every one of them collapsed quickly after the death of the leader.This one, after 200 years, it had spread through the entire Roman Empire. It is now, by far, the largest religious faith on the earth. It is preeminently because it is founded on what that message was of the angel. He is not here. There is a living Messiah, a living Christ. That is the foundation now if you look at these verses we're looking at this morning It talks about mary magdalene mary the mother of james and salome brought spices Bought spices so that they might go and anoint his body three times in eight verses In chapter 15 verse 40 in chapter 15 verse 47 in chapter 16 verse 1 These women are mentioned and you want to say okay.I mean Mark we get it The women were there. Why keep highlighting these witnesses were there? It's an interesting practice of ancient history that the primary way of verifying A historical event as opposed to something that moved its way simply into popular legend was eyewitness account. Richard Balcombe, ancient historian, highlights this fact in highlighting that this was how ancient histories were written.There was more trust in personal testimony than even documentation. If you had witnesses, they could be interviewed and their testimony could be corroborated. When you see these women's names being written down repeatedly, you have the earmarks not of legend, but of history. They are basically the citations, the footnotes, of saying these women were there, these women would testify to it.But more than this, there is something unique in the fact that the New Testament and these gospel writers are taking these particular witnesses. Celsus, a Greek pagan, wrote about 80 years after Jesus death. He was one of the most powerful and vociferous voices against the Christian faith. His preeminent argument against the veracity, the credibility of the gospel account of Jesus resurrection was this.It was women that testified for them. The whole concept was that women would not have the, the, the social standing, the cultural, creds to have their voice heard. This could not be history, but the very fact that the gospel writers emphasized and the very fact that the witnesses to Jesus resurrection were women is argument that this was not falsified.If you wanted to have credible witness in that day, you would always have men. But they were saying in this time, no, these were women. These were, these were followers of Jesus. The gospel God obviously verified, authenticates and approves of them as his ultimate messengers. But basically this was not popular legend.It was historical reality. If Christians were making this up, this is not the eyewitnesses they would have chosen. Also, some would argue this is intellectual naivety. Some say, oh, they were ignorant people back then. They were superstitious people. Jesus says, I'll rise on the third day. Well, okay, fine. But that's not how it played.People didn't say, oh, just fine. Constantly, Jesus said that he would rise from the dead. Not one of his followers Is there and wakes up sunday morning and says huh? By jewish reckoning friday would be the first day saturday would be the second day sunday would be the and nobody woke up and said Huh?Today's the third day I wonder if this is gonna if this you know, jesus kept talking about this is the day this the day is going to rise Nobody did that the women are astounded. The guys are astounded. Everybody's astounded. No one expects this to happen You The angel even says to the women here, he basically says, it happened just like he told you it was going to.No one anticipated it. No one was expecting this. No one tended to look at this superstitiously. C. S. Lewis says we tend today to have chronological snobbery. What he means by that is we tend to look back and think everybody back then didn't have the brain power, or the intellectual orientation that we have.But these individuals let the evidence challenge what they would have expect was possible. It's interesting, there is historical data for the New Testament in a way that no other ancient writings have, including the resurrection of Jesus Christ. On March 15th, 44 BC, the Ides of March, dozens of Roman senators gathered together and put to death.Julius Caesar, nearly 77 laters, on or about Sunday, April 5th, A. D., Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. That was authenticated in the New Testament. The death of Julius Caesar was recorded by Plutarch, a Greek writer, in what he called, Plutarch's lives. It's come down. It's even where, when Shakespeare wrote his great play about Caesar's death, he was actually building it on the ancient records of Plutarch's lives.In Plutarch's lives, we have today fewer than 10 manuscripts. of parts of Plutarch's lives. And yet no one questions the veracity of it. The New Testament has 23, 986 ancient manuscripts from the first centuries, the same time period. As a matter of fact, if you took all existing manuscripts from antiquity of all classical Greek works, Plutarch, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and you took all the ones that we have from, from antiquity, back in those first couple of centuries, and piled them up, you would have a pile about four feet high.If you took, The record of manuscripts that we have in that same amount of time of the New Testament, you would have a stack taller than the Empire State Building. There is so much historic data. There is no record. So we can say, well, I don't, I don't believe that this happened. Well, that may be, that's certainly your choice to believe that Jesus is not there.But to say, well, it's just because it was just a bunch of superstitious people who, who would have believed anything. It's just a bunch of, of, of, of hearsay that we don't really have any historical data is utterly intellectually ignorant. Of the of the reality and of course when plutoc wrote his lives about Julius ceasar He wrote nothing controversial or politically dangerous that would harm his reputation or social standing as a matter of fact He had little to lose and much to gain by putting his historical claims in writing Gaining the ancient equivalent of a sweet book deal,but the author of the new testament had no such benefit You The earliest disciples of Jesus inciting the resurrection of Christ and recording it in their writings and in their teachings were making audacious claims that were controversial and politically dangerous and for their eyewitness account, many of them lost status, wealth, freedom, and for some their lives, they didn't testify to the resurrection because it was profitable.They testified to the resurrection. Because they were utterly convinced it was true. There is a a challenge to our minds when we reflect upon the resurrection of christThere is secondly it challenges it speaks a word of grace to our hearts.I'm, sorry I just okay Sorry, I put my paper in upside down And that's why i'm sounding like i'm standing upside down up here Okay, it's a word of grace to your heart. The angel said to these women, don't be alarmed. Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. It's a word of grace to people with fears.These women in these verses in Mark 16, 1 through 8 are recorded in a variety of ways. It says they're anxious. In verse one and two, who will roll in the stone away? They're alarmed. When they got there, they found that the stone was rolled away, and they encounter the angel. And the result is, in verse five, they were alarmed.They're afraid. The angel tells them, don't be afraid, for I know that you're looking for Jesus who is crucified. He's not here. He's risen, just as he said. Verse eight, trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. And verse eight adds, So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to his disciples.There are strong emotions going on here. And it is on the emotional level of life, Jesus continually makes himself known. In this passage, it is speaking to people with fear. Jesus conquers death. He leaves the tomb. And he never goes back.And it is because of the living Christ that these women Will find peace in the midst of their anxiety and fear that he brings word of grace These angels bring a word of grace in the context of resurrection But they also bring a word of grace to people Who have failed tell his disciples and peter that jesus is going into galilee ahead of you It would have been so easy For the angels to pass on this messaging from jesus to these guys You Look, you tell these faithless backstabbing cowards that if they can adequately grovel in penance and mourning for leaving me high and dry with the Sanhedrin and the Romans, I might be willing to meet with them at some point to consider allowing them to be back in the movement.But the whole tenor is a tenor of grace. He's forgiving them before they even repent. He's forgiving them so they can repent. And then he makes the statement, go tell his disciples and Peter, if you know the story, you know, that Peter was the primary screw up in this whole thing. He's the one that denied him three times after with great braggadocio saying that, you know, he defend him to the death.He's the one that had the sword, tried to swipe the Malchus, the, high priest servants head off missed and just got his ear. And yet in every way, he was the ultimate denier. If a general invitation was given to the disciples to join Jesus in Galilee, there's every reason to believe that at this moment that Peter would have said something like this.You guys go, I'm, I'm good. I got no place. I I'm out. I'm a failure. I'm a denier. I'm unworthy, but Jesus makes sure the angels pass on this messaging to the women. through the women to Peter. Tell the disciples and highlight Peter by name to meet me in Galilee. If you've embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior, you saw yourself the way Peter came to see himself.We failed in our own attempts to measure up to God's righteousness. We've seen ourselves as screw ups. The amazing thing in the Christian life as we journey with Jesus is the more you go on in the Christian life, the more you see how much a screw up you really are. The more you see the self centeredness of your own heart, the more it becomes about grace.The more you really do embrace, with Samuel Rutherford who said, I see the seed of every known sin in my own heart. It's grace. It's the sense that this is all of God. The more you come to realize the astounding work that Jesus did in dying for us and suffering for us, and then ultimately affirming the freedom that has been purchased by rising for us.This past Monday night, we were, we had a board meeting and Doug Linda, our chairman. showed, as he often does to start our meeting, a worship video. And, and this was, he taken a video clip of the passion Mel Gibson's movie and the brutality of the depiction of Jesus being beaten and lashed and scourged by the Roman soldiers.And the song was being played in the background, the Via Dolorosa. And the voiceover was just Down the via dolorosa the the way of suffering and you're just watching and most of us in the room Had tears down our face Doug had us then get into groups of two or three and we're praying and as we're praying this this This guy's crying with cry.Why? Because when you know christ And you journey with him the more you see your own heart and the more you realize He did that For a guy like me, he rescued me. He brought me into relationship with God. And the more we go grow in our, our understanding of our own hearts, the beauty is that God only shows you your heart.So you will understand his. The more you see yours, the more you see his for you.The message of grace at the tomb isHe's risen. Go tell the disciples and name Peter by name. He names your name. He makes you an object of grace. He says, I did this for you. The work of Friday, the cross, the scourging, all of it. I rose. I left the grave and I'm never going back because I am the risen Christ who's declared by my resurrection.That the work that I did on the cross and dying in the place of sinners that they could be forgivenWill never fail they are eternally forgiven and accepted And so peter the biggest screw up the biggest mess up jesus could say this to him On you i'll build my church and i'm giving you a new name Your name's been simon now. It's peter petra. You're my rock You That I'm going to build my church on.Peter, you will have the biggest resurrection of all. It's a word of grace to our hearts. It's a word of mission to your life. The angels say to these women, this don't be alarmed. Go, go to the end of the earth. Go. I am with you to the end of your rope. I'm with you to the end of the age, because I am risen when it looks like it's over.It is only the beginning. Circumstances seem like a death, but they are the way to life. There's purpose in all that comes. There are no dead ends. I want you to think with me about that for a moment. Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his presence now in your life, there are no dead ends going on.Whatever's going on in your life right now feels like a total dead end. I don't see where I am. God says, No, I am superintending your life. I am working in your life. There are no dead ends. You may say, Well, this one is. It's a total rock face. He says, Not for me. There are no dead ends. Death could not hold me.There's no places that can hold my work in your life. God will not necessarily protect you from the things that will perfect you. There are things that would say, well, how can this be? Well, God's using it. How can this hard God will use it. God is changing us. All of it's being done because he is continually bring being bringing life out of death.It is so hard for us to face limitations and loss and cost.First of all, because we don't believe that there are no dead ends. But second of all, we don't remember that we are not living with this place as all that we have. Johnny Erickson Tata was a young woman who had a tragic diving accident in her late teens. She became a believer in Jesus Christ. She, afterwards, she was completely paraplegic, has remained that way her entire life, and she tells the story of, of how the hardest part of dealing with her limitation, which was acute from her neck down, that she could, she would go to church and she went to an Episcopalian church where they would kneel down every week.And she couldn't kneel down and she said, I am in the place of hope and safety and even here I am confronted with my limitation. And then she said this, then I suddenly realized that when I get to heaven, I'll get there on glorified legs. And the first thing I'll get to do is to drop down on them on my knees and kneel quietly before the feet of Jesus.And then I'm going to get on my feet and I'm going to dance. Can you imagine the hope that the resurrection gives to someone whose spinal cord was injured like me? Can you imagine someone who is manic depressive? No religion, no other philosophy promises us new bodies along with new minds and new hearts.Only in the gospel of Jesus Christ do people hurting like me find such enormous hope to live. It enables us to go. It enables us to go forward in difficult and overwhelming circumstances. Because there are no dead ends. There is nothing that contains the work of God and the purposes of God, not a grave, not a dead end.Jesus left the graveyard on Easter Sunday. He left it 2, 000 years ago and he isn't going back. It's a word of challenge to your mind. It's a word of grace to your heart. It's a word of mission to your life. Lord, I pray you take these simple words. Speak them into our hearts as you see the need. Apply them to us, I pray in Jesus name.Amen.
Ephesians 1:13-14In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
Sermon Transcript:Good morning, everyone. I made sure to turn that off right before I came on. I want to say good morning to those of you here in Mount Laurel, those of you online, those of you here in Collingswood. It's great to be with you as we continue in our series. There's a show on Netflix called Brain Games. Anyone ever see Brain Games?It's a little docu series about what I believe is the most complex, created thing in all the universe, the human mind. It's fascinating the way the mind operates and in this, this docu series they do little anecdotal experiments on what, on what they're doing. On how the mind operates and what ways it's, you know, can have distortions if it looks, you know, they show those kind of pictures and you figure out what you think the picture is and then you find out, oh, it's not that.But, one of the shows that they did, we just watched this last Wednesday, they came to people and they, they studied the, the effect of religion on the mind, was their desire. And what they did as a little experiment is they would go to people in a cafe with a bunch of money. And they would first ask them questions on, First they'd say something simple like, What's your favorite color?Purple. Okay, purple's your favorite color. If I give you five dollars, Will you say that purple's not your favorite color? No, I'm not going to lie for 5. If I give you 10, ah, my morals are higher than that. I'm not going to lie. If I give you 20, I hate purple. Give me the money. Right? So this happened over and over with a whole bunch of different questions, and, and at each time, as the money went up, so did the willingness to be like, all right, okay, on this issue, I'm willing to bend.Then they asked a final question. They said, what do you believe about God? They say, I believe in God, say with you 5 to say you don't. How many of you think took the money? None. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars. The money went up and up until they're literally in the show waving this cash in front of people's faces.Not one of the people they interviewed that believed in God was willing to take the money to say they didn't. They did it also with people who did not believe in God. How many people do you think took the money? To say actually I do believe in God for the sake of the money. None. None. Because what we believe about God is very personal to us.It's very core. For people who do believe in God, for people who don't believe in God, it's not a decision or thought people take lightly. When we come to this Ephesians letter that we're looking at, And we're coming to, to realize that these are people, both Jew and Gentile, that would be in Ephesus, but then the letter distributed to people scattered throughout Asia.These are people who have changed their opinion about God. Nobody grew up from when they were two and now that they're 70 in the church. These are people who are relatively new believers, people who have gone a different way than what they have learned. People who have been willing to change because they encountered something worth a lot more than cash waved in front of the face.They've encountered God. And so when we read the New Testament, when we read from people like this church in Ephesus, We're reading of hungry people, people who, who have said, yes, I believe, yes, I'm willing to change because of this encounter I've had with this Christ. Tell me more. And in this letter that we have in Ephesians.Paul tells them more. This letter that we've been looking at, we've been looking the last three weeks at verses 3 through 14. This, this 3 through 14 in English, if you look at your English Bible, has a lot of different sentences. It does not in the Greek. It is one sentence, the longest theological sentence in the New Testament.When you do work with Greek, the Greek language and do this in seminary and stuff, you start with English, we'll do this, but this is kind of how you start graphing sentences. She swims. How does she swim? Well. What type of well? Very well. Okay? Then you're going to add verb, you're going now, verb, no object in this sentence.But this is how you begin graphing. Here is a picture of Ephesians 3, 3, or Ephesians 1, 3 through 14. I know you have that in your notes. You had already figured it out. This sentence is the most complex and theologically dense sentence in the entire New Testament. Paul is writing to hungry people and is giving them food.What we have looked at as we've looked at this sentence is the three persons of God that have a role in this incredible story of grace that Paul is describing. Pastor Mark talked about God, the father as the architect, the one with the plan. Talk to Pastor Jared talked about set Christ, the second person of the Trinity as the agent, both the agent in creation that spoke the universe into existence, the agent in the gospel, whose very life and body were the ones who created the gospel story.And today, in verses 13 and 14, we're gonna look at the Holy Spirit. The one who applies this message to his people and and truth be told throughout this long sentence in Ephesians 1 3 through 14, you have the Holy Spirit dancing all over it as you do the father and the son. In this incredibly, I'm going to use the word mysterious idea of the Trinity.One author I appreciate says, the mystery of God is not something you can't know. The mystery of God is something you endlessly know. It's something that you never solve, but it's something you're always finding more about. This sentence, As much perhaps as anywhere in the new testament gives us a view into the dance of the trinity I'm going to read verses 13 and 14 of ephesians 1 then we'll pray together in him You also and that's speaking of christ in christ you also When you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation Believed in him again speaking of christ We're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.To the praise of his gloryfather son, holy spirit We we come to submit ourselves to you this morning. We come here in mount laurel Here in collingswood to hear your voice We believe if we are to take your scripture seriously That you are here right nowWe pray you would speak and we would hear and we would enjoy The reality of what it means to know this spirit and his role In the greatest story ever told in jesus name. Amen four things. I want to mention about the spirit from the text this morning The first is our relationship with the spirit is not extractable From our relationship with the father And the sun we're only looking at two of the verses of the very long sentence But if you look at the the first first person that we're looking at in here, you can pop that on the screen The image on the screen is there's a couple pronouns.Okay. There's actually eight pronouns in this or personal pronouns in this sentence in this part of the sentence I should say the first is in him You also, when you heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel, your salvation, believed in Him. The in Him is used often from 3 to 14. It's used to describe Christ.This story happens. This story is taking place. This story only happens. The party is only thrown. Of the gospel because it is in christ the one who died and resurrected, but that's not the only person Mentioned in the text go ahead to the next slide We also have the holy spirit and then refer back to as who we're talking about this morning Okay, so we have in him meaning christ and then we have the holy spirit in the next slide It finishes the praise of his glory.If you look back to the context of this long passage with 3 to 14, it is speaking about the blessings and praise of the glory of the father, the father, son and Holy Spirit. Jared, maybe he's not. He's probably a later service guy, but Jared and I were complaining last week of like, Hey, we're supposed to only talk about one member of the Godhead, but you know, he's here, he's here, he's here.How do we get this here? And as we're talking about today, the Holy Spirit. We can't talk about him, not in light of the father and the son. You cannot have one without the other. In Galatians 4, 6, Christ speaks of, it's of his spirit, and because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.But Christ himself in John 14 writes this, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you many all things and bring your in remembrance. That I have said these things to you. The, the spirit is from the Father, the spirit primarily. That's what we see in your testament, but it also says the spirit is of the son from the son.There is in this a parsing out of who does what to some degree, and there is some that we see in this text, but there is not one without another. We cannot uphold one without upholding the other. In fact, we cannot speak of one correctly. Without, as it says in our passage, the glory of one another.Secondly, we have, we do have a unique relationship with the Holy Spirit. While it's not extractable from the Father and Son, we have a unique, unique relationship with the Spirit. First things, the text says we are sealed in Him. We are sealed in Him. Eric Raymond notes this when he writes, we read in Revelation 7 verse 3 that God places a seal on his people to identify them and protect them from wrath.There is a seal placed on it and in the text, it's past tense. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit, a finished work. We belong to him also about being sealed. We're under a binding contract. The text goes on to say a guarantee. Of our inheritance a part of this seal. We have partial blessings The word is said that we have a down payment Or an earnest basically a partial part of the inheritance and the text will go on to say until we acquire Full possession of it.We have part of this inheritance What I believe that means is we have part of the blessings of god primarily Through the holy spirit now the future inheritance of god's people will also be in in full physical Relationship with God, the father, God, the spirit and God, the son. But we right now have a partial possession of that in our full communion, primarily with the spirit.The spirit is sealed. Secondly, another past tense verb. The spirit has been promised. Who promised the spirit? Well, the father and the son did there's Old Testament prophecy that has promised this and then Jesus himself Said that this is blend the plan the whole time I will go and I will give you something better a better situation when the Spirit comes After I am gone few Holy Spirit Implications our relationship our unique relationship with the Spirit I believe will change the least eternally.When we look at the relationship with the father and the son, actually being physically present with them, our communion with them will change more than our uninhibited communion right now. with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the primary agent of God on Earth. Christ went up and sent Holy Spirit down.Secondly, our communion with the Spirit is not inhibited by time and space in the same way as we are with the son and father. This in no way means what we can't know the son. We can't know the father. When Christ was here, what did he say? He said, Oh, you already know the father. Because you know, the son, the spirit was, he speaks as not speaking words on his own, but only that has been told to him to say.So to know the spirit is to know Christ is to know the father. But our relationship with the spirit is unique. Our communion with the spirit is unique. Lastly, our communion with the son and the father is through the spirit, unlike it will be in heaven.Third, the Christian life happens by the Spirit's work in us. We've talked about in this giant sentence, Ephesians 1, 3 14, God as the architect, God the Father as the architect, God the Son as the agent, and God the Spirit as the applier of this gospel work. We cannot live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit.I, let me say that simpler. There is no Christian life without the Holy Spirit. Our relationship with the Spirit is crucial for our relationship With god our church tradition falls in line. There's lots of different church traditions in church history Our church tradition we have Would be called the word centered tradition as in we're really really big on the bible.It's on our sign out there We spend At least half of our worship services talking about the bible Most of the programs that we do as a church Include teaching the bible. We are big bible people. We are from the word centered tradition. We want to take seriously That God wrote a book and he gave it to us to understand that is a beautiful thing about our faith tradition in following What the bible teaches?We must take the real tangible And beautiful relationship with the holy spirit Seriously in james. It says oh you believe in god. That's cool. So do demons Belief and cognitive understanding of God is, is not what the Bible itself is after. The Bible itself is pointing towards communion.A. W. Tozer writes this, sound Bible exposition, there's no way you can read that. Can you read that? You can? You're all lying. You're like, Oh yeah, I can read that. But my wife couldn't read that, but I could read that. I'll read it to you just in case. Sound Bible exposition. is an imperative must in the church of the living God.Amen. Without it, no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term, but exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any spiritual nourishment, whatever, for it is not mere words that nourish the soul. Hear this church, but God himself and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth.You cannot say. What I wanna do is honor the Bible. What I wanna do is learn the Bible. What I want to do is be all about the Bible and have that be the end of the sentence. Why? What we want to do is is to honor God, and in that process, we realize he speaks to us through his word in the process. We are.Our main focus is to understand. This miraculous dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and how we have in His grace and power in the architect of the Father, the agency of the Son and the application of the Spirit are included in that the scripture points us to a reality. It is not the reality itself. If you want to look at a point to what we're talking about today, the point to the passage as we looked at the father and son.Today we look at the spirit simply. Get to know the Holy Spirit in your life because he is real. He really does talk. He really is personal and availableand a little bit wild. He doesn't always conform to what we think he would do or doesn't always speak the way we think he should or when we should but to follow the spirit of to to follow the Christian message. There is no other way but through the Spirit of God. Amen.Lastly, don't worry, you're not leaving yet. I know you're like, lastly, oh yes. I see you, Matt. I'm just kidding, I saw you walk in earlier.The trinity includes his people in the dance. There are more pronouns in the text. If you flash up the image that we had of Parsing out some of these personal pronouns. We've got Christ, Holy Spirit, and the Father, but there's more pronouns. Go ahead to the next slide. Thank you. There's more arrows, lots of arrows.Aren't you glad we didn't do all three through 14 at one time? All these other arrows in him, you, Ospel, the gospel of your salvation, our inheritance, we acquire possession of it. There's more going on than the Trinity. There's the involvement of God's people in the Trinity, Father, Son, Spirit. Our role in the story of grace is also included in this passage.The reason we are given the scripture, the reason why we are sent the Holy Spirit, Is there something bigger than just salvation? There's something bigger than just understanding and being brought, into a clean relationship with God. There is deep communion, the very purpose for which the scripture, the spirit, and salvation have happened.I'm going to do something a little weird. I'm going to read something like an allegory. I'm going to do this. The reason I'm doing this is because like we're talking about the dance of the trinity. It's a, it's a word Pastor Mark used three weeks, three or four weeks ago when he spoke. And it's a word we use fairly often about it.And, and, and some of you had dancers and some of you, that word means a lot. Some of you are less so. but I wondered if I could, if we're talking about this in both, it's intellectual Understanding of parsing out and drawing circles and and things but also How that connects with the soul. I wonder if I could just ask you to close your eyes if that helps And I'm just gonna read something over you and ask you to be part of a little exercise So we talk about what this looks like.Imagine that you are at a dance. Go into your mind, into your high school gym, or wedding reception hall, or wherever a dance was gathered in your history. Yes, I'm serious. Pick a place. Put your soundtrack to the moment. Whether your era was Sinatra, Carpenters, Bee Gees, Cha Cha Slide, Black Eyed Peas, or Taylor Swift.Whatever your era was, YMCA probably sneaks its way into the list. It's true. But put yourself there, in that place, hearing the music, hearing your music. Somehow every song is hitting you perfectly. The songs are each an invitation to the dance floor, like a pull to nostalgia, an uncomplicated joy. But there's a problem.You don't really know how to dance. You don't dance. There's another problem, too. This one feels like a bigger one. It's a giant punch stain you just acquired on your carefully selected yellow sweater. Punch mixed with some gloppy pieces of raspberry sherbet that you were made sure you got into your cup that didn't stay in your cup long.This stain can only be partially covered by your folded arms in this dark corner of the reception hall. You thought about going to the bathroom and cleaning it up, but how would you get it clean anyway? It's a chance others would see you. You knew you came to the dance already with a hole in the armpit of this sweater and you're convinced that you could keep it cleverly hidden.Punch gate, however, too much. Yet the music, it pulls on you. The joy on the faces of the dance floor, they kind of make you frustrated, but you know you want to be smiling like that. Resentment and frustration get mixed in too. Some good old fashioned cynicism. Look silly to be out there and you convince yourself that you wouldn't want that even if you could Even with a clean sweater and some dance experience You send some sarcastic friend the text to your friends about those idiots on the dance floor All of which you have carefully typed and sent with your arms folded in sweater disguise But all around that you couldn't shake what was most true You wish you could dance at the center of the floor covered in smiles laughter and joy is the dance circle You Three people are equally running it.They're weaving and waving and pulling others in. They're having so much fun. They're so alive, so fully here. They take a break and come over to the punch bowl to drink the now sherbert less punch. They come over and smile. The younger one starts serving the other's punch. He asks if you need a refill. No, I'm good.You say how do you like the music? The older one looking one asks It's okay. I guess you say they wait a bit clearly. They're letting you fill the empty space. I actually Love it. You stammer out You should dance the wild the wilder looking one says while his feet were already going to the next song that one embodied dance But you stare him down with one of your classics.Are you kidding me looks and say You I don't dance. The younger one asked one more time, and you were just irritated enough to wag a finger back at him to keep him quiet. No, you say. But when the finger came out, so did the viewing angle. All three had seen the stain. None of them looked surprised. Fine, you say, pulling out your arms.See? No way I could go out there. I've ruined this sweater this night, and I'd like to hold on to the final threads of my dignity. The older father looking one asks with a sense of expectation, if we could help you dance, would you be willing? All right, this is a little weird. You know, the popular crowd, the dance circle people.There's no way they would want you out there, no matter what you were wearing, but you do you want to go? How many more dances are you going to sit back and watch anyway? I need your help you say with a small but still courageous voice They look at each other. They somehow defer to each other And yet act as one at the same time.Who are you? I asked the older one. He said, Oh, I came up with the party and picked the music. He gets more serious and he says to you, You may not have known but I designed this whole thing with you in mind But even more than that he says if you can believe it, I actually designed you for this party Somehow you do believe it the look on the wild one's face somehow confirms.It's true They are more than the ones who just shut set up this shindig It's just so them and somehow it's so you too the wild one was beaming now You He loved to smile. He had a clever look on his face that said, huh, now you're getting it. You realize you're starting to move with them. You're not a good dancer yet, but starting to matter a little less.Now the dance is somehow more important than your skill at it. Being with them, being there, being together, you're out of your own head and you're into your right mind all at the same time. Soon your hands are up and you remember the armpit hole. Moment is immediately gone. How could you let yourself get swept away in this?We do need to do something about this outfit, says the younger one. Him saying we need to do something somehow made this a team effort. He didn't cause the stain, but was willing to help. That one loved to heal. He was the one who threw the whole party and yet had time to help. In a moment, he grabbed his hoodie and hands it to you.He wanted you to put it on, but he stops you. I don't want to just hide that nasty stain. I want to replace it, he said. He holds out his hands and says, Can I have the sweater? Moments later, you are in the most comfortable hoodie you have ever worn, a perfect fit. The act was a simple transaction, but it was filled with such deep compassion, such knowing.You look at the older one, well, you designed the party and that the younger one, you're the one who made the party happen and made it possible for me to be part of it. And with a little bit of smile, you look at the wild one who's still moving and laugh and say, well, what do you do around here? He laughs back and says, people ask me that all the time.What do I do? He says with grand gesture. I am the one who's going to teach you how to dance. With that, he grabs your hand and you are swept away to the floor in the middle of the circle. You never thought you could enter. You're still a bit of a lousy dancer. But it just doesn't matter. He's teaching you and you are both laughing at the process it takes.Some of the steps are weird and awkward and even painful. But soon the music starts to take over more than just trying, you trying to get the steps right. You look up, the father, he's dancing now too. And then the craziest part of all this happens. You look up and see the younger one. You cannot believe what he is wearing.He has on your sweater, his arms in the air, and the torn armpit hole is in full glory. Sherbert and Punch are still dripping off the outfit. He laughed and said, I do this all the time. You should see some of the wardrobe things I've worn at these parties. You can't believe what happened to you. What is happening to you.What you are seeing and a part of at the same time. How could you describe? Such an experience of of design of joy Of healing of hope of community with these three you are whole you are home You are part of something so much bigger than yourself You are part of the dance a dance that has everything to do with them A dance you have been made for the younger one looks at you and says And winks and he says explaining something like this Would take a very long complicated sentence at that you smile You You heard him, you knew it was true.But somehow, more importantly, you were just simply caught up in the dance. You look at the father one, you look at the younger one, you look at the wild one. You see them as separate, but as one at the same time. And as you lock in that gaze of love, you know all of you are thinking the exact same thing. Oh man, you just can't wait for the next song.Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We don't pretend to understandthe whole of who you are. We want to understand all that you've told us, but we want to understand, yes, theologically, but also understanding this is relational. I pray particularly for people sitting here saying I'm comfortable with Jesus dying for my sins. I'm comfortable with trying to understand God's, the Father's design for my life.But I just, if I'm honest, I'm uncomfortable with what feels like the wild one, the Holy Spirit. I don't know what to do. Spirit of the living God, our prayer fall fresh on us.
Ephesians 1:7-12In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us...
Sermon Transcript:Here's a quick summary for Ephesians. Salutations, a unique Christian greeting for both Jews and Gentiles. Adoration, praising God for our spiritual blessings in Christ. Intercession, prayer to understand the blessings we have received. Salvation, by grace through faith, not by our own doing. Reconciliation, to God and between Jews and Gentiles.Proclamation, of the mystery revealed that Jews and Gentiles are co heirs in Christ. Intercession, for love and power through Christ. Walking in unity. Walking in holiness. Walking in love. Walking in light. Walking in wisdom. Walking in family. Walking in the workplace. Standing in the victory. Final greetings of grace and peace.Good morning, how we doing? Here's a quick summary for, oh, run it back, okay, one more time. Good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Jared. I want to say a special good morning to those watching in Collingswood. I'm the youth pastor here at Fellowship. My name is Jared and I just wanted to say a warm, happy St.Patrick's Day. we're going to be talking about the Trinity a little bit today. And if you don't know why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day, or maybe you're like, I don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, it's not to wear green. And to go on a bar crawl, even though that happens sometimes. St. Patrick is actually known to be the first person to bring the gospel to Ireland.So, he did a pretty cool thing, and he's, he's worthy to be celebrated as well. And, and actually, He described the Trinity using a three leaf clover, which isn't a perfect illustration, but he used what he had to, convey truth, which is pretty cool. So a couple of fun facts about St. Patrick. We're actually, we'll be starting a prayer with him, of his, and we'll be ending, our time here with a prayer of his as well.But So, before we jump in, if you have no idea what that video was, we are going through a series, for the past couple weeks in Ephesians and we came, well, we didn't come up with these motions, actually Dave Merck did, but we've been doing these motions and we've been doing it in youth group and it's a really awesome way to kind of remember, the book of Ephesians.It's sliced up really neatly and cleanly. So. So, if you would, we're going to learn some of the motions today, okay? Leave it up to the youth pastor to get everyone up and moving. So you can stand. Go ahead. We're going to stand. Go ahead. I know you just got your Bibles out and your notebooks. So we're going to learn a couple of the motions.And if you look at, in your, if you have an Ephesians journal as well, afterwards, you can see that these are section by section, the journals. So the first opening, couple of verses here in Ephesians Can you do that? Salutations. Come on, get involved people. Wake up. Here we are. Salutations, right? It's a unique Christian greeting to both Jew and Gentile, right?He says grace and peace to be you. That would be a unique Christian, greeting to both Jew and Gentile Christians. So I have salutations and then we have adoration. So we're going to praise. Praise, hands up. Adoration, right? We're praising God for our spiritual blessings in Christ. And then we're going to intercession, right?We, we, we've just praised, so we're gonna go to prayer to understand these blessings we have received. Then salvation, right? By grace you have been saved through faith, this is not your own doing. And salvation brings reconciliation, right? So we go from salvation, reconciliation, that is between God and us, and also between Jew and Gentile.And then after reconciliation, you're gonna proclamation, Yeah, thank, thank you. Proclamation. Man, we are, whoo, loosen up a little bit guys. We're having fun today. It's okay. and you're proclaiming of the mystery revealed that Jews and Gentiles now are co heirs in Christ, and then we're going back to intercession, right, for love and power in Christ Jesus.Okay, we're going to do it one more time through the top. Okay, so salutations, adoration, intercession, salvation, reconciliation, proclamation, that was way better, intercession. And then after that, you get into the walking, all the different parts. So we'll just, we'll just start there this morning. Give yourself a round of applause.Good job. Good job. You didn't know you're participating. You can take a seat. Thank you for humoring me with that. Notice how Pastor Mark put me up to that. He didn't want to do the motions, you know, so. I just want to read our passage this morning. If you have your Bibles, you can flip to Ephesians. if you have your journals, you can flip there as well.looking in chapter 1, and we're gonna be reading in verses 7 through 12. If you don't have your Bibles or you can't find it, it's gonna be on the screen too, don't panic. It says this in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 7 through 12. It says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.Which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will According to his purpose which he set forth in christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things In him things in heaven and things on earth in him. We have obtained an inheritance Having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will So that we who were the first to hope in christ might be to the praise Of his glory let's pray together this morning.I just want to start off my prayer with a prayer of saint patrick May the strength of god pilot us May the wisdom of god instruct us May the hand of god protect us may the word of god direct us Be always are be always ours this day and forever more lord. We look to you This morning on this day god, and we're trying to come and understand Just what your son has accomplished for usGod, and I know firsthand this knowledge cannot be revealed by me, Lord, but only an outpouring of your Spirit and your Father calling us to him, God. This is a supernatural thing. Lord, we can hear words and hear knowledge, Lord, but you're the one who impacts the heart. You're the one who prepares the soil God and I just pray I just pray that you'd open up our hearts lord even if there's people here who've heard this message a hundred times that you would just they would You'd bring them to a greater knowledge and understanding of who your son jesus is and what he has accomplished for them Lord, if there's anyone here this morning That just doesn't know you As a personal friend and savior god that they'd come to know you as their rescuer As their accomplisher this morning god we pray That you'd shut my mouth and speak through me, Lord, and bless our time here.In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Well, this morning we're going to be talking about Jesus's role in the story of grace, and I just want to give a disclaimer up front. Pastor Mark talked about the Father's role in the story of grace, right? The Trinity is hard to understand. The idea that God can be Father, Son, and Spirit is, is difficult to understand, and And you know what?It's even harder to explain, and be the guy up here explaining it. So, but I think we don't have to fully understand the Trinity. I don't think God ever has required that of us, but it is important to know and believe what each member of the Godhead does and has accomplished for us. And, I took a class in, in Bible college by Professor Dozle.I love Professor Dozle, but the name doesn't give him a lot of justice, you know, a little dozing, you know, like sounds sleepy. And he taught a class called Triune God. And Dr. Dozle is like one of the leading speakers on the Trinity. And I sat in the back of that class and he talked for about an hour and a half.And every single word he said went like this. He was one of those professors that you're like, dude, you are too smart. to be teaching us. Like you need to write a book and then you, we need to find someone a little dumber than you that can translate that book, but say it to us plainly. So I just sat in the back of the class and I just wrote poetry.That's what I did in this class to try and go, I'm telling you. And then, and then I'd start like looking up the words. I'm like, he used 37 different words that I didn't even know existed before today. So the Trinity is hard to understand, but we're going to, we're going to do it together, this morning.So we're, we're going to give it a go. So I believe the God, the son's role in the story of grace is he's the accomplisher, right? He's the accomplisher. The father we saw last week. He is the willer, right? He has willed all things forward from the beginning of time. He set these things in motion. It was his plan.It was the father's purpose. But it was through Jesus Christ that His plan is revealed and actualized. Jesus is the accomplisher of the story of grace. You might be asking, well, what did He accomplish? What did Jesus the accomplisher, actually accomplish? We're going to look at three different ways that Jesus has accomplished the story of grace and we're, these three different ways will go in order of what He's done, what He's doing.and what he will do. And firstly, we're going to look at what he has done. Jesus redeemed us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, right? What he has done, Jesus has redeemed us. Verse 7 says this, In him we have redemption through his blood. This word redemption literally means to ransom someone, to purchase, to make a purchase, to set someone free.Oftentimes it was, used in, A slave trade that you'd actually buy someone's ransom to take them from an ownership to another ownership, right? Well, why did we need to be ransomed? Why did we need to be bought? Because we were enslaved by sin and under the law of the covenant. Since the beginning, right?Sin has separated us from God. If you remember the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, they lived in harmony with God. Perfect union. It says the scripture actually says that they walked around the garden with God. But they chose the sin and what happened when they sinned was they were separated from the presence of God, right?And you might say that's not fair. That's not nice. Well, God is a holy God, right? Holy literally without sin. He's righteous. God cannot be in the presence of sin. So when Adam and Eve chose sin, they were separated from God. They left the garden and started to live life on their own, separated from God.Right? It's because of His holy and blameless and righteousness. And, and God introduced the law of the commandments, right? Through Moses. And this law, summed up in the Ten Commandments, you've probably heard some of them before. Thou shalt not steal, kill, murder, commit adultery, all these different things, right?They were to expose that we weren't righteous, right? If we could live a righteous life and follow all these commandments perfectly, then we wouldn't need to be redeemed. Amen. Right? The price to get into heaven is righteousness, right? That's why God is in heaven, but we are separated from him because none of us is righteous.Galatians 4, 4 through 5 says this, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption, as sons, right? At the fullness of time, Jesus lived a perfect righteous life on earth. He came and he fulfilled the law.He did everything. They couldn't, the Pharisees and Sadducees tried to get him. They tried to say, Oh, are you breaking the law here and all here? And he says, no, I haven't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, right? He lived a perfectly righteous life. And he came to redeem those who were still under this law of commandments, that we would receive adoption as sons.And I love this idea of adoption comes from the Roman understanding of adoption, which actually attributes full rights. It's really cool that we got to see, the rentals up here today and see a beautiful picture of that. Right? When you adopt someone into your family, especially in this context, you, they had full rights as a heir.You actually would take on their debts, their former debts as they're adopting. You take on them as you adopted this child. This is exactly what Jesus did for us. He redeemed us. He paid the price for us. Scripture says the wages of sin is death. That's the price of our sin. And how did he pay it? How did he pay for this price of sin?Verse seven of our passage says, with his blood. He paid our price for redemption with his blood. Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life, fulfilling the law completely. And when he died on the cross, he took our sin on him. As if it was his second Corinthians 521 says this for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.This is good news. The price was high and Jesus took it because that's how much he loved you. That's how much he loved you and I. See the idea that Jesus lived a perfect life, a perfectly righteous life and went on that cross, a substitution happened, right? That we were supposed to be there. The penalty for our sin was supposed to be paid out on the cross by us and Jesus took our place.The price had to be paid, and instead of God pouring that price and that, his wrath out on that, he poured it on his son, Jesus. Colossians 2, 13 through 14 says this, And you who were dead in your trespasses of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. The debt has been cancelled. Your sins have been forgiven, past, present, and future. The price has been paid, and paid in full. If you ask a bunch of people, you know, what, what, how do you get into heaven? And they'll probably say, well, you know, you, you live a righteous life, you do good things and as long as you, your good things outweigh the bad things, then God says, all right, you beat the cosmic scales, come on in.That's not what happens, right? God says the wages of sin is death. The price to heaven is perfect, complete righteousness. I can't achieve that. You can't achieve that. So God made a way through His Son, Jesus, to redeem us, to pay that price, and actually take on our sin on Him. And the exchange was, He took on our sin, and He gave us His righteousness.So when we go, those of us who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, when we go before heaven, God the Father is going to go in there, and He's going to look, Okay, Jared Hacking, here He is, and He's going to go, and He's going to try to find my track record, and my, and my, and my report card, and He's going to pull it out, And it's going to be covered in the blood of Jesus, and it's going to say paid for in full.Right? It's not anything I could do. The Son, Jesus, He's accomplished it. He's already done the work. He's not asking me to pay for any of my sins. He's done it. He's redeemed me. The price has been paid. There's no change to be said. It's done. It's full. He has redeemed us. And I wanted to put this first and foremost, and in the past tense.Because it's done already. This is what Jesus accomplished for us in the story of grace. But what is he doing now? What is he accomplishing now for us? What he is doing is Jesus is interceding for us. It's a really cool thing. Jesus is literally going to the Father and interceding on your behalf. Jesus did not just die on the cross.He was resurrected from the grave. Three days later, he literally was resurrected and went into heaven. And when he went into heaven. Right? Sometimes we have a picture of this, like, Jesus, like, did all his things. He died on the cross, lived the perfect life. And then he's like, man, I just want a break. Kick the feet up, get a glass of water, something like that.No! He didn't retire into heaven. He went right back to work. And he's interceding for us to the Father. He's not in heaven with his feet kicked up enjoying retirement. He's working overtime, 24 7, reminding God the Father of what has already been accomplished for us. See, the idea that God is perfect and holy and righteous, right, created a separation.Jesus fixed that separation because of his righteousness. So his inter, him interceding for us, I see the picture of him in front of the Father as the Father looks at us as we're just trying to get by and we're broken and we're trying to do things right or whatever. Jesus is jumping in front of him saying, Hey, remember, remember what I did for these people?Remember? Remember? And when God sees us now, He doesn't say, man, look at that broken, sinful Christian just trying to get it right. When God the Father sees us, He sees the completed work of His Son, Jesus. He sees the completed work of Jesus, the Accomplisher. There's no more charges to bring against us.There's no more accusations. Romans 8, 33 through 34 says this, Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. I love this truth that Jesus is interceding and mediating for us.Makes you think of a time we used to go to this place, whenever it snowed, to go, to go sledding, right? Who, who, who loves to go sledding? It's an awesome time. Adults can go sledding too now. You know, you don't have to give it up. Don't do anything crazy because you do have to work in the morning. You have to think that through now.But we used to go to this place as kids. And we'd sled and there was like, people would build ramps and do all kinds of crazy stuff. And there was a group of kids there that were kind of just like punks and they kept picking on me. And for some reason, I was, I was just like in my own world trying to sled.I was sledding down one time and these kids like literally laid me out. Like, like as I'm sledding, like ran right into me. And I kind of fall and my lip was bloodied and I'm like looking up and there's, I see these couple kids approaching me and I'm like, dude, this is it. This is it for me. Right? This is how I die.These kids are approaching me and I'm like, I'm like looking down and then I look up again and all four of my older brothers have stepped in between and are standing in front of me. And I'm like, they're taller and bigger than those guys. I think I'm going to be good, right? I think I'm going to be good.This is the picture of Christ interceding for us. He stepped in front of us and saying, I got you. Stay behind me. Stay behind what I've already accomplished for you. What I've already done. I am the go between. I am the mediator. I will work for you. I will talk to the father. I will intercede for him. This is what Christ is doing for us.And he's the only one who does this. 1 Timothy 5, 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 5 through 6, it says, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. No one else, no one else but Jesus is our mediator.No former saint, or loved one, or angel, or Mary, or anybody else. God the Son alone is doing this for us, and He's actively doing it. He's actively doing this. Jesus has redeemed us. Jesus is interceding for us. And third, what he will do, Jesus will restore us. Verse 11 says, We have obtained an inheritance in Jesus.The restoration is partial now, but one day will be fully complete. 1 Corinthians 13, 12 says, For now we see only as a reflection, as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. We live right now in a state of already, not yet. We have been redeemed, purchased by Jesus, has made it so we no longer have to be slaves to sin, but we can actually resist sin, yet we are still wrestling with our flesh, right?The price has been paid. Jesus, by His power of resurrection, has actually given us the ability to resist sin. He's given us the ability to say no to sin. Before Christ, before, in Ephesians, it actually talks about, In chapter two, it says, you were dead in your trespasses. You were dead in the trespasses of your sin.You were dead, separated from God, enslaved to sin. Now that we are in Christ Jesus, we've been redeemed by Christ Jesus through his resurrection. He has given us resurrection power over our sin to actually say, No, to actually say no to our sin. And some of you know this in your life, through your process of sanctification and getting closer to God over years, sin that you used to have an issue with or whatever.You're like, you know, that used to be an issue and God's just taking that from me and as real as that is, You know, it's just as real that this is a partial restoration right now that we are still wrestling. I am still wrestling with my flesh, right? I'm still wrestling with, do I really need the second and third donut?Right? I'm not like, oh, yeah, that's an easy answer for me. No, it's a still wrestling that if I'm going to choose myself, my selfishness, my flesh, or am I going to choose God's way for me in my life? But this is future sense that He will restore us fully. We'll be, one day we'll be fully dead to sin and fully alive in Christ.When we are fully raised with Christ in the fullness of His glory in His presence. Not only will Jesus fully restore us, but he will actually fully restore all of creation. Romans 8 21 says that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.Creation is groaning as we groan with it to be fully glorified in Jesus. The accomplisher, Jesus Christ, will one day make all things Right again, right? This is a already not yet. We're dead to sin, but one day we're gonna be fully dead to sin. We're alive in Christ, but one day we're gonna stand in the fullness of his presence.This is something that should give us hope. This is something that we should long for, that Jesus the Accomplisher will one day fully restore us. This may have been new to you this morning. This may have been, reviewed for you this morning. But I just want to talk about how we respond to the Son's role in the story of grace, right?Because it's, it's great to know things, but how do we respond to the Son's role? And first I want to talk about how we shouldn't respond, but often how we do respond. I think in one way we respond to the Son's story of grace is legalism. I think in one way we respond to the Son's story of grace is legalism.Right. My definition of legalism, you've never heard that term. Term is, is, is trying to pay for something that's already been paid for. The Pharisees were guilty of this, right? They would see God's law as this circle, these are God's commandments. And then they draw a smaller circle and say, you know, if you, if you do these things, you're even a, a better Christian.You're even holier, you're even more righteous, right? But legalism is trying to pay for something that's already been paid for. Like we just went over earlier, it was the perfect work of Jesus Christ that redeems us. Nothing we can do ourselves. But what happens is, we try to self righteously earn God's favor or forgiveness ourselves.I remember Many, many times in college, and I was just, I was wrestling, and I had a period of, of, of wandering, and I was just, I was messing up a lot, and whenever I'd mess up a lot, and just do something that I knew I shouldn't have done, and, and, and I was regretting, I'd get so guilty, and I'd get, I'd start feeling condemnation, and I knew that what I did was a sin against God, I knew He wanted me to repent of these things, I knew all these things, But I wouldn't go to him.I wouldn't pray. I want to open up my Bible and read it because in my mind I believe I got to clean myself up a little bit before I can appear before God Almighty, right? I got to clean myself up. I got I got a button my shirt I got to do all these things just so I can get into his presence again. So I would literally I would literally try to live out, like, two, three, four days of righteousness.Like, this is a real thing. And I wouldn't read my Bible because that was going into the presence of God. I couldn't do that. So I'd try to live out. I'd try to be kind. I'd try to be loving. I'd try to do my homework on time. I'd try to do all these things. And then I would come at the end of that day, three or four, and I'd beg God for His forgiveness.I'd beg God, please take me back. Please, please help me repent of these things. I was believing a false gospel. I was believing a false gospel. God the Father was waiting. Jesus Christ was waiting with arms open saying, Son, please return to me. He wanted me to turn from my sin. He wanted me to repent of my sin.But he was saying, Please come into my presence again now. Don't wait. The price has been paid. It's accomplished already. Legalism is like trying to earn your dinner when someone just paid for your dinner. Right? You're at a restaurant. Someone says, yo, I got this. You're arguing over the bill. And they say, no, I got it.Don't worry. I got it. You're like, okay. And then you get up from the table and you go back to the kitchen staff. You're like, hey guys, you mind if I just wash a couple dishes? They're like, why? They're like, I just want to pay for my meal. I just want to, I just want to earn a couple of wages so I can pay for the meal.And they said, sir, your, your bill's been covered. Yeah, well, maybe I can just mop the floors or sweep the floors. Or you have any toilets I could clean? Is there, is there something I could do that would pay for my bill? And they said, sir, your bill's already been paid for. You're free to go. Legalism is trying to earn your dinner when someone's already been paid for.Legalism focuses on what we can do for God and loses sight of what God has already done for us. Legalism is arguing with Jesus and telling him his sacrifice wasn't enough.Hebrews 9 24 through 26 says this, As 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. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own.For then he would had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Jesus sacrifice is the perfect one and done sacrifice. There's no need for any more atonement. There's no need for any more payment.The work is finished. This is different than any other form of religion. Any other religion says, what can you do to appease that God? Christianity says, Jesus has done the work, just receive it. You see the difference in that? The work has been paid for. Don't cheapen his sacrifice. The opposite side of this spectrum of legalism is a fancy word I learned in college.I did retain some things from college. It's called antinomianism. It's a fancy word that literally means no laws, right? This is the belief that since God covers us and the price has been paid and grace covers us, let's do whatever we want, whenever we want. This is no better than legalism. This is cheapening the sacrifice of Christ as an excuse to do what we want.You may have heard some of your friends talk like this before. Well, the Bible says we just need to have faith. You know, yeah, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but so what if I get drunk? So what if I watch porn? So what if I scream at my wife? So what if I flip people off in traffic? So what? It's all covered by the grace of God.In the book of James, he says, Faith without works is dead. It's not real. Jesus didn't die so that you could have an excuse to sin. He died and rose again so we could have power to resist sin and turn to him. Good works don't save you. But real faith bears fruit. I think this is perfectly summed up in Ephesians two, eight through 10.It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship. Create it in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Good works don't save us, but we, who were created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we should walk in them.And we can't even take credit or boast for these good works, because it says God prepared them beforehand. He already prepared and went ahead of us and prepared them for us, right? This is no better than legalism. It's cheapening the sacrifice of Jesus. I don't know where you are this morning, but my prayer for this sermon was that all who heard it would come to a deeper understanding, a deeper knowledge of what Jesus did for you.My hope is that we wouldn't sway to either side of the spectrum, but we would stop trying to do things for God. And embrace what he's already done for us. Jesus accomplished us. Jesus accomplished it for us so that we could live it out with him. My hope is that we would do all things to the praise of his glory.That we'd embrace the perfect work of Jesus Christ and live it out. I want to end, this morning with a prayer of St. Patrick. And if you guys just want to read it with me, this is prayer of St. Patrick. It says this, Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me. Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me, salvation is of the Lord, salvation of the Christ.May our salvation, Lord, be ever with us. Lord, thank you so much for the story of your grace. Thank you, God, for your Son who accomplished all things for us, that we might walk in them. God, please help us to respond to this, Lord, that you would convict hearts and turn us away from sin. And to you, Lord, we pray in Jesus name.Amen. Amen. You guys can stand.
Matthew 4:1-8Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Sermon Transcript:good morning guys. My name is Pastor Josiah, and I promise that video is going to be relevant, to what we talked about. this morning we're going to be opening up to the Gospel of Matthew chapters one through eight. You didn't mishear me. We're taking a break from our study in the book of Ephesians, and we're just going to take a one week pit stop here in the Gospel of Matthew.Pastor Mark gave me free reign to choose any passage as long as it was in the Bible. So I chose this passage here in Matthew 4. It has been, a whirlwind of a week and a half in this passage. really excited for what I believe God has for us, certainly what he had for me. Excited to share it with you all this morning.But let's begin our time, or continue our time of worship with, with God's Word and the reading of God's Word. Again, Matthew four chapters one through eight. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.But he answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written he will command his angels concerning you.And on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall put the Lord your God not to the test. And again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, All these I will give to you, if you will but fall down and worship me.And then Jesus said, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. And then the devil left him, and behold, the angels came and were ministering to him. This is God's word, church. Let's pray.Lord, the words of that last song are just coursing through my mind. Holy forever. Lord, this is your word. This is your truth. This is your beloved son. Lord, I don't have the ability to bring the truth to hearts. Only you have that ability. And no amount of knowledge, or study,or time spent practicing a sermon can change. That fact only you Lord have the power to open up your word to us Lord, I pray in Jesus name that you would take the sword of the Spirit that you would cut us deep That you would open up and expose the hidden parts of us that we have yet to bring to you Lord that you would work in us and that through that working new fruit would grow and That all the growth would be out of the love You That comes from the true and one gospel of grace.We thank you lord And we dedicate this time to you this morning In your name we pray amen So I began our time with a silly video, i was trying to think of a way to kind of illustrate our topic this morning and maybe for some of you the light bulb's going off a little bit. Maybe all of you are like, yeah, joe, we get it but I think this week when I first watched this video, I found it entertaining for all the obvious reasons.I mean, watching these poor kids locked in a room, they're staring down the barrel of a marshmallow. They're just, you can see them, their whole gaze, one kid tries looking away, but he's like holding it. And, you can see the silent battle. This, they're locked in this sort of fierce and silent battle against this irresistible draw of the marshmallow.And that's hilarious, but I think Beyond being hilarious, I think there's a deeper thing that resonates, at least with me when I watched it. And I think if you're honest this morning, there's a part of you as well that resonated with it. Because if I'm honest, I relate to the child in that room. No, I don't have an obsession with marshmallows.my kids do, but, and maybe, I'm not insinuating that you, haven't grown out of your, or that you have grown out of this passion for marshmallows or sugar, but there is something that I think you and I have not grown out of, and that's the battle that raged on in that small room. We have not outgrown it, that being the battle with temptation.For many of us, as we walk with Jesus, maybe for many years, maybe just for a few short weeks or months, the realization slowly dawns on us that the battle with sin doesn't end after we become believers, but rather it begins in earnest. For many of you, this may have led to some discouragement, frustration, even doubt, am I even a Christian if I struggle with this sin?C. S. Lewis, addressed this point beautifully in his famous work, Mere Christianity. He put it like this, No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that people who do not know what temptation means, Good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie.Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. And you find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by laying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it means, what it would have been like an hour later.Temptation is not the battle of unbelievers, church. It is the battle of the church. And the more that we resist, the more we learn the full strength and scope of the battle which we are fighting. That's the bad news. The comfort and the conviction that I am so excited to bring this morning, and what the Lord brought me this week is that, while you and I are no strangers to this battle that we call temptation, our passage this morning in Acts, sorry, not Acts, we're not in Acts anymore, Matthew chapter 4.We're not strangers to this battle, but neither was Jesus. And what I believe from the passage this morning that's going to bring so much hope and conviction is that Jesus, though he was tempted on a scope that you and I can't even imagine, being tempted by the devil himself, being offered the world in all its glory, he was yet victorious on every single battle.occasion. Hebrews 4. 15 says that Jesus was attempted in every way as we have been, and yet was without sin.My hope this morning is to stir up in us a desire to fight this battle well.Undoubtedly, there are many of us of which I have been one feeling like we are surrounded on every side and we are losing the battle.But using C. S. Lewis's line of logic, far from being oblivious to the true nature of the battle, Jesus, in him, we have an expert. And in our passage this morning, what we're going to see, church, is that Jesus is offering us a battle strategy. One that we can take, that we can use practically to fight this battle.And even as Jesus did to find victory, not in our own strength or in our own knowledge, but in the knowledge and power of Jesus. I'm not, I'm not suggesting that we're gonna bat a thousand like Jesus did. But I am telling you that, that it works. And many of you are living testimonies to this. We can't fight this battle alone.We will lose over and over again. But the good news of the Gospel of Jesus is that we don't have to. We have an advocate who understands this battle better than any of us could even imagine. But we don't just have somebody who understands, we have somebody who has overcome. And so what I'd like to do is just spend the next 25 minutes We don't have a ton of time to go through this, but just quickly go through, the truth of this passage, and hopefully some practical applications for us as we do our best to walk, not only to come to Jesus, but also to follow after Jesus.I'm going to give you a quick roadmap to our study this morning. In journalism, now I'm sure there's any journalists here, because I'm probably going to butcher this, but in journalism there's an old adage, I believe, Every good journalist asks the same six questions. Anybody know what they are? Yep. Who, what, when, where, why, and how.Did I miss one? I always miss one when I was practicing this. There's six of them. And those six questions really do a good job of getting you started and asking the right questions. Don't worry, we're not doing all six, I promise. But what we are doing is three. We're going to do what? We're gonna do why, and we're gonna do how.What I want to do this morning is start with the simplest of the questions. What is temptation? Once again, many of you, we watched that video and, and we, we saw it, right? We, we saw it in that room. But I think, if I'm honest church, I really do believe that there's a bit of a confusion in the church about what temptation is and what it is not.So before we go into the passage and what, what it shows us about both how the enemy attacks and how we resist, first we need to know what are we resisting, what are we being attacked with. What is this religious word, what is this word, temptation? All of us have our own ideas, but I'd like to go to the best possible source for the definition, that being the Word of God.First, I want to tell you a little bit of what it isn't though. Temptation is not the same thing as sin. And here's why I'm gonna walk through this really quickly. Because I think in our minds, unfortunately church, we're so used to losing this battle, that we start associating sin and temptation as one and the same thing.At least that's happened in my life. And where this can sometimes cause problems, and certainly has caused problems in my life, is it gives me an out. Now, what I start to do is I start to make excuses for the sin in my life by calling it simply temptation.Let me give you a quick example, and we're going to move quickly here.Maybe there's somebody here who's battling with the battle of lust. And on one particular day, you've had these images in your mind running through your mind all day long. And you let them in. and you think about them, and you let them fill your mind, and then you get to the end of the day, and you succumb to those thoughts.And what you might be tempted to think is that, I, I sinned in the evening, and I was tempted during the day. That's not what happened. You were letting sin in here, and you called it temptation. I think this is because there's a simple Explanation for this it's because we have this sort of misunderstanding that Temptation is the mental struggle and sin is the bodily action Jesus is really clear in his word.That's not the case. You don't believe me Just keep reading in this for one chapter later in the written Jesus's revolutionary sermon on the mount chapter 5 He says, You've heard it said you shouldn't commit adultery, but I tell you, if any of you look with, look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've already committed the sin of adultery.To Jesus, sin could happen in your mind or in your body. It was a matter of the heart. Sin and temptation are not the same thing. Now, I'm not telling you this to shame you. I'm telling you this from personal experience. But I am telling you this because I want to give us all an awareness of the true scope of the battle that we are fighting.If you're not desperate, then you're not really fighting enough. The Lord wants us humble and desperate. He wants us crying out to Him for help and humility and desperation.All right, so I told you what it isn't. What is temptation? And we're going to move quick, I promise. Temptation is this, and I believe this definition comes out of the scriptures, it's, it's my own definition, based off of my understanding, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. I believe it's, it's best defined in two ways.It's first, temptation is the test of trust between me and God. And it's the battle of choice between my way and God's way. The test of trust between me and God and the battle of choice between my way and God's way.Some of you are here and you're like, Joe, I really don't need a whole definition of what temptation is, brother. I know what it is. Like we don't need to spend this much time on a definition. What I want to know is, Look, I'm a believer. I'm surrounded on every side. I'm fighting this battle all over the place, and I'm not looking for a definition.It's all around me. What I'm looking for is, is a why.Why do we experience this battle with temptation? Why does God allow this battle of temptation in our lives? What possible reason could he have? Well, now we're going to start looking more at the passage itself. for some of our answers. I think the first and simplest reason why God is allowing temptation in the battle of temptation in your lifeis there are two, actually, there's actually two reasons. The simplest is, I just said it, is that God is allowing it. We see here in verse one that Jesus isn't driven into the wilderness by Satan. What does it say there in verse one? The Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness. And the enemy could not have gotten near Jesus without the will of God allowing it.That's not very comforting. Some of you are like, I don't want to hear that. Tell me why God allows it. And this is where the comfort starts to come into play here. I believe that God is allowing temptation in our lives first to test our trust in Him.Let me explain. If we go back to the very, verse one of that passage in Matthew chapter 4, and actually verse 2 and 3, we see some interesting words used. When it says, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, that word that's used there, in the original Greek, the first manuscripts that were found for this, the word is paratso.The Greek word, paratso. And that word, most scholars believe and recognize, that word actually really means to be put to the test.And you could be saying, well, that's a one off, Joe. That's just talking about Jesus. Well, if you go to the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is masah, which also means to be tested or put to a trial.The question then becomes, what is being tested?Is it Jesus strength of endurance? His ability to go without food? No, it's pretty clear from our passage that it's to trust the will of God over his own will, to trust God.And the second part is, God allows a temptation in your life, first, to test your trust in him, and secondly, to prepare your heart for his plans, purposes, and promises. To prepare your heart for his plans, purposes, and promises. And I get this from a little detail in the beginning of the passage. Do you notice the number given?Anybody? How many days was he in the wilderness? Now, anybody, is that ringing a bell for anybody? Yeah? Yeah? Noah? Come on, call another one out. Say it out loud, come on.Yep, 40 years in the wilderness. Noah. Moses on the mountain. Fasting before receiving the Ten Commandments. Noah floating over the chaos waters of the flood for 40 days and nights before resting on Mount Ararat and receiving the covenant that I will never again flood the land.Moses receiving the Ten Commandments after fasting. The people of Israel wandering for 40 years before coming into the land of promise. You starting to see a theme here? Now we see Jesus Wandering driven by God into the wilderness to wander for 40 days You know what happens right after that wandering churchHis public ministry He was being prepared his heart was being tested. I don't know what battle you're facing this morning, but I know you're facing one and if you think the only reason that you're facing it is because You're a bad Christian. Or because God is unfair. Or because life is just hard. That's not going to cut it.But you know what will? Recognizing that a sovereign and good God has ordained that you would walk through this battle to test your heart of faith in Him Amen. And to prepare you for His plans, for His purposes for you, and for His promises for you.He wants children who trust Him.And suffering and temptation are the ways that He does it. Learning to trust God's way over my way. Learning to submit to His will over my will. Not my will, but Thy will be done.It was the same with Noah, with Moses, and with the people of Israel. God was preparing them. Their hearts weren't ready. They needed to be tested and prepared. There's a second reason, though, aside from God allowing it in your life for those reasons. The second reason why this suffering is in the life of a believer is that, simply to put it, there is an adversary.Now, many of you, the moment I said the word adversary, immediately thought of the devil. And I'm glad, because that is who we're going to focus on this morning. But I don't want you to rush past this fact. There's actually a triumvirate. There's a, a set of three allies that work together to draw you and me away from God.Away from his plans, away from his purposes, and away from his promises. And they were present even all the way back in Genesis 3 At the first moment of sin, you know what they were the world the flesh and the devil Let me explain just really quick track with me here church, please. This is so important If the devil came down in the form of a serpent to even to Adam And he, he gave all of his wise schemes to try to draw her away.If her flesh didn't desire what he was offering, would it have worked? No. If he didn't have the fruit of the tree to offer her, would it have worked? He needed her flesh to desire it and he needed the testing fruit to offer.The temptation is to blame all of our temptation battle on the enemy and not to take culpability in our flesh. And say, no, there's a part of me that wanted that. You And I took it. I took the fruit. If it's always the devil's fault, we don't take action in ourself, take steps in ourself to let the Lord in to that area and to make it new, to the transforming of our mind.But I do want to focus on the devil this morning because he's the main character in our passage. One of the reasons why that is is because he's the intelligence behind the operation. He's the one orchestrating it. He's the general of the other side of the battle. It's a cosmic battle that's been raging since Genesis 3.And though this enemy has had many names, the serpent, the satan, Beelzebul,his purposes and goals have never changed, church. He wants to sever that relationship of trust between you and God. He wants to stop the plans and purposes and promises of God in your life. That's his goal. It's never changed. You Don't believe me look at look at the goal. What did he want to do in the garden?He wanted to separate adam and eve from one another. He wanted to separate adam and eve from god He wanted to separate adam and eve from creationHe wanted to put a stop to what God was doing there,the beautiful relationship of trust between Adam and Eve and God.Guess what? Even as his goals have never changed, church, his strategies haven't changed either. If it ain't broke, why fix it? They work.And we see the self same strategies used by Jesus in, used by the enemy against Jesus in our passage as he uses in Genesis 3. Hear me when I say this. I want you to really hear me. You know what my main goal this morning is to do? It's to, it's to expose his works. I don't want you to be left in doubt. Is this the enemy or is this God?Is this just me or is this the enemy? No, I want to expose his works and bring them to light so that you know the enemy that you're fighting and that you cry out to the Lord Jesus and you use what he has given, his battle strategies to fight this battle. So here's what we're going to do. This is the meat and potatoes of our passage.the how section. This is where we really dig into what the scripture says in this passage about temptation. We're going to look at two things. How does the enemy attack, and how do we resist? You guys ready? It's a lot really quick, but I think it's really worth it. Let's start with the enemy's strategies to attack you and to attack Jesus.The enemy attacks when and where we are weak. Notice in our passage, Jesus has been wandering in the wilderness for 40 days, without food. He's at the absolute limit of his human capacity. I don't know how many doctors are in the room, but you probably know better than me, the state of somebody after 40 days without food.I, it's at the absolute limit. You're pretty much at starvation at that point. And to be wandering in the wilderness, it's a pretty much a miracle that he's even upright. And the enemy chooses this time to sweep in with temptation. There's a, there's a helpful point in this church. The enemy is a predator.He doesn't attack you where you're strongest. He attacks you where you're weakest. Now, some of you might be like, Well, pride's my problem, because I'm so good at everything. Well, there's your weakness.Where you are weak is where he will go. You ever watch those, those nature specials where the wolves, they're my favorite animal? They, they, they chase for, just for hours and hours until the, the whole herd is exhausted and then the, the youngest or the weakest is slowly Starts to straggle and then the wolves pounce.That's the enemy. Is your marriage struggling right now?Are you really struggling with the battle of lust? Are you tired and exhausted because you're overworked? Watch out. He's coming for that. And if you're not on your knees, and if you're not using the things that I'm going to talk about at the end of our sermon this morning, watch out. He's coming for where you're weakest.I'm not saying this out of fear. We don't need to fear him. But we need to be ready when he attacks. I wish I could explain more about what that looks like, but I believe the Holy Spirit's gonna interpret that into your heart. Ask him, where am I weak and where is, where, where is, is there a weakness in my defenses?Because I know he's coming after me.He might offer you any number of things. What he's gonna do though, when he attacks, in that weak point, is he's going to offer you a way out. Look what he does to Jesus. Jesus has been wandering for 40 days without food. What does he do? What does he offer him? He says, take, take what you need. Take the bread.Turn the stones into bread. Use your power to take what you need. Sound familiar? You hungry? Eat. You want sex? Take it.The bottle? Take it. That piece of cake? Take it. Whatever it is. That marshmallow? You want it? Take it. You need it. Take it for yourself. Don't wait for God to give it. Don't, don't take it in God's timing. Take it your way. Take it now. Eat the fruit.You're stressed out from work? Take the edge off. Take it now. You deserve it. When and where we are weak. Okay, the second way the enemy attacks, he attacks by twisting the Word of God. This is really important. We see multiple times the enemy is quoting from the Scriptures. He's quoting from the Word of God.Here is the problem, church. We so often are shocked when we open up our Bible and we're reading a little bit And all of a sudden we might feel condemned. All of a sudden we read one passage and our heart begins to coil within us. And we think this must be God.Genesis 3, what does he do? Did God really say? that you shouldn't eat of a tree. He goes right to God's words and starts to twist them. Because he knows, as a believer, you follow the Word of God. So if he can take it, twist it, maim it, and still get you to follow it, well, it's no longer the Word of God, but it might be drawing you astray.The enemy does use it. He uses it multiple times here in our passage to Jesus, and he will use it against you as well, if you're not on guard. We're going to keep moving. Thirdly, the enemy attacks with doubt as a weapon. This goes hand in hand, hand in hand, with the twisting of God's word. Did you notice the language almost in every time that the enemy addresses Jesus here?If you really are the Son of God. You hear that language? That is the language of doubt. The language of doubt. You know what he said in the garden? Did God really say?Are you struggling under a haze of confusion and doubt this morning? The enemy is not far off. He's attacking. And he's using doubt as a weapon.This has an interesting impact on us. Remember, the whole goal of the enemy is to sever your trust with the Lord. To start doubting his goodness. To start doubting his love for you. To start doubting his gospel. To start doubting who he is. Start doubting him as a good and loving father. If he can sever that relationship of trust, he can get you to run the other way.From the thing that you really need. God's presence.And rather than being an obedient son, you're a terrified slave.We have to choose the trust instead of listening to his lies, instead of listening to the doubt. Notice what he does in one of his temptations with Jesus. He says, using doubt, if you really are the son of God, prove it, right? Throw yourself off this high pinnacle. Throw yourself down and the angels will raise you up.Prove that God loves you. Make God prove that he loves you. That sound familiar to you?Friend, it's the language and weapon of the enemy. Amen.We do not work in a gospel of striving, but of overflow. A security and identity in who we are as His children. And the enemy hates that trust. He's coming after it. He's coming after that relationship of trust. He attacks when and where you are weak. He attacks by twisting the Word of God. He attacks with doubt as a weapon.And lastly, he attacks with offers of wealth, power, and glory in exchange for worshiping Him. Now, some of you are like, Joe, I was tracking with the intel now. Now you lost me. I have never in my life had the devil come up to me and offer me the world and all its power, wealth, and glory. Never happened to me.I don't know about you, but it's never happened to me. Let me ask you a different question. Has there been a time in your life where you could seek a promotion at work, but all you needed to do was throw somebody else under the bus? Maybe there was an opportunity to make some easy money, but it was. done by breaking the law.Maybe popularity at your school, but you needed to gossip and put down others. Maybe it's social media followers, but you needed to dress a certain way and act a certain way in order to get that.Now, do I think that the devil specifically is assigned to your case? Probably not. He's not omnipresent, he can't be everywhere. He's concerned with maybe some bigger fish to fry than me or you. But one of his little underlings is probably assigned to you. You And you know what? They're offering their own little mini version of what the devil offered Jesus.They're off they're offering you Wealth, power, glory in exchange for worship. You're like, I've never been offered worship in in the enemy. Maybe some of you have, but most of you probably haven't. Guess what? You worship yourself? You worship the world? The same thing. The flesh and the world, they're allies of the enemy.And if you worship them, you're worshiping him.We cannot be drawn in to the devil. Okay, those are the four ways the enemy attacks, and we've got about four minutes here to close this up. He attacks when and where we are weak by offering us a way out to gratify our flesh. He attacks by twisting the word of God. He attacks with doubt as a weapon. And he attacks with offers of wealth, power, and glory in exchange for worshiping him.Now, I hope most of you now are sufficiently desperate to hear this last part. How do we resist? Joe, how on earth do we fight this guy? This cosmic battle that's been going on for thousands of years, how can I possibly fight? The beautiful reality is that Jesus lays out for us in this passage a battle strategy that is not inaccessible to you and me.Jesus could have, right off the bat, the moment the enemy came up to him, be like, Be gone, Satan. Guess what would have happened? Satan would have been gone. But instead, He trusted God's will, and the Spirit's leading, and instead He showed us, you and I, the way. The beauty of Jesus earthly ministry is He didn't just tell you what to do.No, of course not. He showed you how to do it. And this passage is perhaps one of the best examples of this. Alright, quickly, but if you, if you haven't been taking notes the whole time, that's okay. Take them now. And I'm not saying because my words, this is, this is from His Word. But I want you to hear this and hear this well.How do we resist? How do we take victory in this battle? Here is how. First, by being filled with the knowledge of the Bible. Now some of you are rolling your eyes. You're like, oh, the Bible again. Yes, I know, I need to read the Bible because of what good Christians do. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the Word of God is your weapon.And if you don't take it up, you cannot win. You, you cannot win. Not that you might not, you will not. You will not win. Jesus was overflowing with the Word of God. You know how he answered back every time? Not with his own words. With quotes, it is written, it is written, it is written, over and over again.Jesus didn't need to reinvent the wheel. He was filled and overflowing with the living Word of God. And it's so important for us. I have, I have a quick just, I want to speak directly to you. I wrote this down. I knew, because I knew I needed to say it just how it was written. Men and women of God, this is your call.This is your battle strategy. Listen to this. Be filled with the word meditate on it with your minds speak it with your lips sing it out with your voice Live it out with your life cover yourself with a blanket of his truth. Is it any wonder you're losing the battle your sword is dull Sharpen it every day until it can cut through even the toughest of lie and most twisted deception Does it not stir you that the enemy is taking your sword and stabbing you with it?Does it not goad your spirit that he's taking the word of god and twisting it and you don't even You Have yours out. You've got to be filled with this word Morning devotionals. It's not a it's not a checklist people But in the same way that a warrior has to sharpen his sword each morning to be ready for battle So you need to sharpen your knowledge of the word of god not as a works thing But as a battle that we must fight but now here's the warning and the second thing we need to do First in our battle.We need to be filled with the knowledge of the scriptures Second we need to be led by the spirit now. Listen to me here You All the sharpening the world will do you no good if you don't know where to stick and to swing.You could have the sharpest sword in the battle, but if you don't know how to use it, what good does it do you? Here is the truth in Ephesians, we're later gonna come to a section that says the The Armor of God. And in that section it's gonna talk about the sword of what, which is, what the word of God is it the sword of Joe.No, is it the sword of you? It's the sword of the Holy Spirit. It's not my sword. I don't know how to use it, only he does. Why was Jesus in the wilderness in the first place? Who led him there? The Holy Spirit. Church, you could be filled with the knowledge of the word. The enemy's filled with the knowledge of the word, believe it or not.He's a theologian, not a very good one, but he has all the knowledge in the world and it puffed him up.The Pharisees were filled with the knowledge of the word, but without the knowledge that comes from the Holy Spirit, or rather the understanding. What good is a sharp sword? Sharpen it, learn how to use it by being led by the Holy Spirit. You have Him. If you are a Christian, it's a guarantee. You are filled with the Holy Spirit, now be led by Him.Be filled with the knowledge of the Word, be led by the Holy Spirit. And lastly, be filled with faith. Remember, church, the enemy's goal is to sever your trust in God the Father. Hold on to it, though. He can't take it unless you give it to Him.The final thing I want to point out to you is that if In all his strategies with Jesus, in everything he offered. Did you notice, that every single thing he offered, Jesus would one day have? In God's timing. Did you notice that? I'll give you, I'll just real quick play it out for you. The stones turned to bread, he would eat again, just in the Father's timing, not in his own.Jesus did not eat for the rest of his life, he ate again. He broke his fast, but in God's timing. Secondly, and this might be the one where you guys have a hard time tracking, the whole pinnacle of the tower thing, it's like, well, Joe, he never did that. Yes, he did. He would go to Jerusalem. He would go to the hilltop.He would cast himself upon the cross and down into the pit of hell and be raised up again and shown to be the Son of God in truth. But he didn't prove it to put God to the test. God put Jesus to the test. And he was raised up and shown to be the Son. In God's timing. Amen. Amen. And lastly, the glory, the authority, and the power.What does it tell us at the end of the Gospel of Matthew? What does Jesus say as a comfort to the believers? All authority in the heavens and on earth has been given to me, go therefore. He received it, everything that the enemy pretended to have, God really had, and offered it to him in his timing. We watched, we began our time this morning, as we close, we began our time this morning with a video, a silly video of kids looking at a marshmallow.But you know the key of that video? What was the, what was the whole premise? Why would, why would the kid wait? To get a double portion, right? It's no different here, Church. What God has for you is so much better than what the enemy has for you. It's so much better. It's not just being obedient and, and, you know, you never really see the results.It's God's way is better. This isn't a prosperity gospel. It's the truth. I'm not talking about money or possessions. I'm talking about Him.All right, we've got to close. Amen. I just want to end with just a simple word to you as we close. If temptation is a test of trust, trust in God the Father and His Son. You can't win this battle alone, but you can with Jesus, by being filled with the knowledge of His scriptures, by being led by the Holy Spirit, and by being filled with faith.And when you are, you respond to the enemy, not in an argument, but in a final statement, a finality of faith. Jesus didn't argue with the devil. He just rebuked the lie with truth, and then moved on.
Ephesians 1:3-6even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
Sermon Transcript:We're going to be looking at Ephesians chapter one verses three through six. I'd like to read them for you this morning. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. Father, we come to you this morning, we're overwhelmed with this portion of scripture and the perspective that is presented there of a God that pursued us.Lord, I pray as we reflect on this passage that we might fall more in love with you. More awed with what grace really extends to in our lives. In Jesus name I pray, Amen. In his classic book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, author C. S. Lewis presents a world, a magical, mysterious, animal world held in the grip.Of an individual called the White Witch of Narnia. She has cast a spell over the whole land, which means it is, the result has been that it is in permanent winter time. And Aslan, the lion, the savior king, appears. And ultimately, as he appears, he is brought to a place called the, the, the stone table and offers himself at that place and is brutally slain by his enemies and then rises victorious.The stone table is broken. he rises victorious over death. And he explains later that his resurrection fulfilled a magic that the white witch was unaware of. He says this, there was, there is a deeper magic from before the dawn of time. It is not only in Narnia that there is operating a deeper magic from before the dawn of time.In the Bible we learn that before creation, before the dawn of time, God's wisdom and love was designing a plan that would be ultimately for his glory. But also the gathering of a people to himself forever. Chapter 1 verses 3 through 14 are presenting that picture that was designed before the dawn of time.It's one sentence in the original Greek. It is a building upon building upon building presentation in which all three Godhead are featured players in the drama. Father, Son, Spirit, the Triune God, three persons in one being. As I've regularly mentioned, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, God existing as a community for all eternity is the picture of eternity past.God was not lonely, God was not struggling, God was not missing something, but God as a three person being determined that they wanted to share the relationship that they shared as a community with others. So he created humans. He wanted then to make a way for humans to share in that community, that dance, as they had rejected him as the Lord and sovereign in their life.In this passage, in verses 3 through 14, all three participants in that drama are talked about. In verses 3 through 6, we will see the first of those, God the Father. And in two great Earth shattering scenes of recorded history, God is presented in his three person being involved. One is creation. Creation, when God created the cosmos, he created the Milky Way, he created, and all of the, the billions of galaxies that are similar to our Milky Way, he created the Earth as the center of that.enterprise as he placed those that were made in his own image, humans. In the creation account, father, son, and spirit throughout scripture are recorded as playing a part. The second great endeavor in human history, in world history, in cosmic history, is the work of salvation of human beings. In which all three members of the Godhead are involved.This passage in Ephesians 1 tells the story of that salvation experience from God's perspective. And what it does in verses 3 through 6 is talk about God the Father. In verses 4 through 7, in verses 7 through 12, it talks about God the Son. In verses 13 and 14, it talks about God the Spirit. But I want to just, by way of introduction to this passage, which is going to take us three sermons to get through, give a snapshot at the different roles of each member of the Godhead.It is true in creation, and it is true in salvation history. First of all, God the Father is the one who authors the story. Both, He is the one that designs creation, He is also the one that designs the plan of salvation. He is the architect. He is the designer, the one who initiates it all. It's God who so loved the world.And they're talking about the Father. God so loved the world that He sent Secondly, the son accomplishes the story of grace, even has he accomplishes and, and, and is the, agent. of creation. He pulled it off. Jesus spoke creation into existence. Jesus created the cosmos. There were New Testament passages that make it clear it was God the Son that did that.It was the Father that designed, the architect. But Jesus is the agent in both the work of creation and in the recreation of salvation. Third, there is God the Spirit. He applies the work. He applies the story of grace. He utilizes the grace that has been provided. He utilizes. The creation that is there in the creation work.He is the one that that, is the one that is described in Genesis one as moving on the waters. It says the world was without form and void. Jesus had created the spirit came and brought order to it. And he's the one that utilizes that. He does this in salvation, bringing shape to people's lives where the work that God, the father ordained of the cross, the work that God, the son did.And being incarnated and coming and being one of us and dying and rising. The Spirit then applies it, utilizes the work of the cross and the resurrection and applies it in people's lives. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. Involved in these great eternity shaping experiences of creation and salvation.This morning we're looking at God the Father's role in the story of grace, in that salvation experience. And I'd like to look at three things we find in this passage related to that. First of all, God the Father designed the plan of grace. It began with his desire to extend grace. He says this in verse 1, in verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.He says, It's God that started it all and these are some phrases as we bring up this visual There are some phrases here that talk about what God the Father did throughout these verses He blessed us with all spiritual blessing in Christ He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world in love.He predestined us. He lavished grace upon us It was all according to his purpose. It was all according to his plan for the fullness of time It was according to the purpose of him The father who works all things according to the counsel of his own will. Sometimes when we talk about salvation, which is simply the term that refers in the scriptures to a person being rescued, delivered from the bondage of sin and the ultimate penalty of sin, of separation from God, and being brought into a relationship with God through what Jesus did on the cross for us.It, it, we talk about, it, it's almost as if God the Father is, is on one side, he's the judge, and Jesus is the one that's placating and that is, that, that is, trying to remonstrate with him and trying to, to overcome what the Father's will is. It's not that picture at all. Years ago, when Pastor Ralph and I were younger, and we're the only guys on staff, I guess we had a couple other guys, Jim had joined us by then, but, but Ralph and I would play one on one basketball.We had the gym. And we were both, and are, very competitive. We had both played basketball in high school and college, and we, we, we, it, it was pretty, intense. And I came up with the idea, it happened after, I had won one day, that I got, we had just had a, a Red Cross blood drive where we got a trophy.And I took the, if you're a Red Cross person, I apologize for this, but, I took the, the, you know, the, The plate that celebrated our church off and I put my own plate on it and it said FCC one on one champion. And I put it in a very prominent place on my bookshelves just waiting for the time that Ralph came in my office.It was a great moment, until he stole it, but, which he literally did. But, so we had this relationship that, that was going on, and went on for years, and, and various things competing, and it sometimes moved into the realm of pranks. And one of mine, that I look at very fondly, although my wife still says it wasn't, anyway, it was a great idea.well we did. Back in the gym, we used to have a stage, temporary stage, and when we had baptism services, we wheeled out a, portable baptismal tank, which, which sat there and actually was above the platform. Here would be the platform. It was about this high. And so, one Sunday morning, Ralph was doing the announcements.Now, Ralph didn't do the announcements the way Mike does, or Jared do, where they sort of are wandering all around, you know, just, and ad libbing effectively. Ralph wrote out every announcement, and read his announcements, and he had done a couple of pranks, and so I, we were pretty big into puppet ministry at that time.And so, I got two people to go into the baptismal tank, which was void of water. And one was a 65 year old woman named, Gail Davis, the nicest, godliest woman. I don't know how I got her to do it, but, but she did. So they're down in the baptismal tank, waiting for Ralph to come up to do the announcements.And Ralph starts doing the announcements and the puppets. are going on in back of him. And he'd say something, and they'd both nod their head no. And, and, and of course, everybody is out there laughing. And poor Ralph, which I didn't really feel poor Ralph at the moment, but. So there's this, this, this.euphoric moment for me. Everybody's in hysterics. Finally, he discovers somebody just can't take it anymore, and they're gone. So he finally turns around, and there are the puppets. Now, of course, he retaliated later, but, but, Ralph, afterwards, came to me and said, I'm after you and I responded, I said, Ralph, I was not involved.I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't in the, I didn't, I didn't do the puppets. I, you know, I just, and he said, I know you masterminded this whole thing. And of course he was, he was right and he, he, he knew I knew. I was culpable. I was responsible. Here's the reality of the work of Jesus Christ. The father is culpable.He masterminded the whole thing. It was his idea. That he is not in conflict. That it was the father's motivation to have this. He was the architect of everything. And the God who sits on the throne of heaven. The God who sees every sin. Knows every thought of whom he's described in Hebrews. The book of Hebrews, it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.This God, it says, is a consuming fire. It's His idea. This whole plan of God rescuing people through the cross of Jesus Christ. It's the Father's design. Secondly, it not only began with His desire to extend grace. It brings glory to Him for His grace. You notice what it says in this little box that comes up in verse 6.It's to the praise of His glorious grace. To the praise of His glory. To the praise of His glory. It's all His glory. Until Copernicus came along in 1543, we earthlings held center stage in the universe, at least in our minds. For centuries, fathers had been able to put their son, their arms around their sons and look out at the starry sky at night and say, Here on Earth, we're the center of everything.Everything goes around us. And then Copernicus shows up. And Copernicus, later in his life, actually he wrote it in the middle of his life, but he never published until he was almost dead. He published a book, and the book was entitled On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. In it, he argued that the sun Not the Earth, was actually the center of our solar system.He delayed, having the book published, and actually, there is a story of, he was on his deathbed, that they finally had the manuscript, and they brought it to him. Of course, everything was handwritten in those days, because they didn't have the printing press yet. But they brought him this, his copy, and he held it in his hand, and, and there's this thing, it's the first time that he's seen it.And then he died. And, it, it's to me, it's the perfect example of the old maximum. Speak the truth, and leave immediately afterwards. Because he, he knew if he, if, if, if it was known, a matter of fact, Galileo, 50 years later would be thrown into prison when he would echo the same sentiments. The earth is not the center of the universe.We still have a hard time not being the center of the universe. It's natural for us to want it to be all about us. God in the dock is a book that was written by CS Lewis. And in the book, CS Lewis is saying this is what has shifted in modern history. In this series of articles, he says we have changed from the historic position that we are on trial before God and now he is on trial before us.We expect our wants and desires to be fulfilled. We expect God to answer for it. If he allows suffering and hardship. If he does not do as we assume he should. If he acts in a way that does not fit with what I think is good or fair or appropriate. We even want God to explain elements of grace to us and perhaps Nowhere is that more true than in the next role of God the Father in the story of grace.The second role of God the Father in the story of grace is that God the Father chose the recipients of grace. Here's what it says in verse 4. He blessed us in Christ, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. In the scriptures, there are three groups of people that God is highlight as choosing.One is the nation of Israel. He chose them to be His people. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, it says this,For you are the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you. He chose you. There's nothing meritorious in you. There was nothing unique about you. There was nothing special except that God chose to set his love upon you. The second thing that God chose, a group of people that God chose, are individuals for specific acts of service.There are many of these, the Levites were the, of the twelve sons of Jacob. The sons of Levi were called to be the priests, nothing special about them at all. It wasn't because Levi was the most godly man on earth, as a matter of fact he was far from it. But, but, God chose them to be the priests. God chose 12 disciples.They were certainly not the greatest, the sharpest tax in the box, but God chose them. And there are many other individuals that God chose to specific acts of service in the scripture. And then the third group is the one that's mentioned here, people to be a part of Jesus kingdom in salvation. Now this of course, is dicey for us, right?It's challenging, I mean, where are you going with this? Can we jump to number, can we jump to point three? We can't. Because it's right here, in verse four. In the book of Acts, it says this in chapter 13, verse 48. When the Gentiles heard this, the gospel being shared, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.The word appointed means that they were specifically chosen out for that. In John chapter 6 verse 37 and 44, Jesus is talking and says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I'll never cast out. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. The word draws here is the same word that's used in the Gospel of John of a fisherman with his net.And he sends his net out in the water and he pulls it back. And he's pulling this, this, this group of fish, the catch of fish into the boat. Now none of those fish are in that net saying, Oh good, oh good, oh good, oh good. Pick me, pick me, pick me. No, they're being dragged into the boat and the picture of, he says, my father drags people to me.My father draws them and nobody comes except my father draws them to them. They're trying to get away, but the fishermen relentlessly draws them to the boat. In John 17, Jesus talks about all those that are believers are those whom the Father has given me. This is, of course, a challenging concept for us.It doesn't seem fair. One of the hardest concepts to embrace and trust God with. So, what is God saying with this? Well, you'll notice that it says in verse 3, All spiritual blessings to those who are in Christ. And if I asked you today, if you're, if you have believed in Jesus Christ as Savior, and I asked you,why do you think you are in Christ? Why are you in relation with Christ? And I think we would appropriately give the answer, well, because I put my trust in Jesus Christ as my only hope and received him as my Savior. I chose Jesus. And that's true. That's absolutely true. But what Ephesians 1, 4 and other passages in the New Testament is saying, you chose Christ.Because the Father chose you. Now, here is why that makes sense. Although it is difficult for us to embrace. And I understand the journey, the questions, the, the, the arguments. Years ago, I was wrestling with this concept of God choosing people to choose Him. And my thinking, ultimately, went something like this.And this was over time.I thought, Mark, why are you a Christian today? Because I received Christ as my Savior. Okay? Why did you receive Christ and other people don't? Because I saw the sin in my heart. I saw my need of Jesus forgiveness. Why did you do so and other people don't? Because I was just broken with my need and the emptiness of my life without Him.Why were you broken and not other people? I don't know. I guess they, I guess there's something in them, they were hardened, they're proud just like I had been. They chose not to face themselves, but for me, I couldn't avoid the reality of it. Mark, why did you come to the place of humility and desperation and others didn't?Were you more humble? Was there a spark of goodness in you that others didn't have that made them harder, prouder, less desperate? Was there a sliver of inclination in you that others didn't have? Were you a tiny bit less dead in your sins? Maybe mostly dead, maybe terminally so, but sick, seriously sick.The more I went through that question, the deeper I got. Ultimately, I had to indicate that either God totally enabled me to believe, or there was something in me that was a little more God oriented, a little more righteous seeking than the guy that rejects Christ his whole life. But there was no difference in me.I wasn't clamoring on my own to get in the boat. I wasn't thinking, well, yeah, you know, God dragged. And look back over the circumstances of my life, I realized I was headlong trying to do life without Him. And God just dragged and brought circumstances, and I came to the conviction that is rock solid in my soul today.That I chose Jesus because the Father chose me to do so. And my father in law, who is a college professor in biology, but actually his lifelong gift is storytelling and humor. He is, my father in law was dying and seemingly totally incoherent. And the last day or two of his life he would come out of it a little bit.And would catch snippets of a conversation and somehow would immediately come back with a story that was perfect in its humor. It's just, it was, it was, he was brilliant at this. But he always had lines, he always had one liners or something. And he had, to me, the best description of this whole concept.Theologically of talking about God's part and our part and salvation and he did it by a story that he met up in the north woods of Michigan and a guy had lived there for many years. But this guy was explaining how he came to Michigan. And here's what he said. He said to my father in law, God brought me here, but I wouldn't be here if I hadn't come.Who's going to argue with that one? And my father in law would say, That's how I view salvation. I had to come, but God brought me. That's what Paul's saying. Do you have to believe on Jesus Christ? Yes. Is there any other way to experience salvation? No. But as Spurgeon once reminded us, It's all of God. It's all of grace.And he said it this way, If God didn't choose me before creation, He certainly would not have done so afterwards. It's about God. The third thing is God the Father determines the destiny of grace. Verse 5 he says this, verse, the end of verse 4 of the phrase, In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purposeHe destined us to full rights of adult heirs. He said, you were predestined for adoption. The word predestined is just how it sounds to us, but from the original, it's a little, a little richer. It's, it's the word pre, which means before. And the word destined or destiny is actually the word portion. It was used of boundary lines in property.And he says, Your portion was pre assigned. That portion of anyone who embraces Christ as Savior is that they are destined to the full rights of an adult heir through adoption. Paul talks about this throughout the book of Galatians, which he's trying to say to believers, Man, embrace who you are. Embrace what your destiny is.What your portion is as adopted children. He says this in Galatians to 7, God sent his son to redeem us. To redeem us that we might receive the full rights of sons. So you're no longer a slave, but a son. And since you're a son, God has also made you an heir. He says the new heavens and new earth which are coming, the, the entire Garden of Eden being, the entire cosmos.He says that's your inheritance. That's just your, your physical inheritance.You're God's kids, he said. And all he has is and will be yours to enjoy. This is a rock solid reality. It is your predetermined portion. And so Paul's saying, count on this. Hold on to this. Live with the security of this in your lives. And yet, we all as Christians struggle, how does God really view me? God seems distant.He's scary. And Paul is constantly saying in the book of of Galatians, man, you're living, sweating the small stuff. You think I got to get it right. I got to get it right. And he says it's not about getting it right. It's enjoying God. It's enjoying the God that says my portion for you is that you're Inheritors!You are my children! I remember reading this story many years ago. I was reading, it was back in the late 1800s. It was out in the far part of the Midwest, where a farmer was there and his wife was sick. And the only way he could get the medicine that she needed here in the heart of winter was he had to cross a river.And to get to the closest town, he had a long walk, then he had to cross this wide river. And he got to the wide river, and he was very nervous as he got to the river, because he wasn't sure if the river could hold his weight. At times it was a pretty fast moving river, strong current. And so he got the largest board he could find.And he got on the board to distribute his weight as far and wide as he could. And he started slowly sliding, laid down on it, and started sliding this thing along. Step by step, or it wasn't step, slide by slide to get across. And all of a sudden he's in the middle of the, the, the, the river. And he hears this, this roaring sound.Well, this is the ice. It's gonna break open. I mean, this is it. He's done. And he's, he's there just frozen in fear. A wagon drawn by two horses goes zooming past him. And that was the roaring noise. That's how I live my Christian life a lot. I'm acting like, man, I, I gotta get it right. I gotta do this. I, I, I, God's waiting to just say, Mark, you're not And I could be racing across the river, enjoying life that We are God's kids.If we've been brought to Jesus Christ, we stand in a standing that He is saying My inheritance for you ultimately is in a life to come. He's going to talk in the latter part of what it means that the spirit is the down payment of that. But he says, enjoy this reality because I've destined you to the full rights of adulterers.Secondly, he says, he has destined them to be conformed to the image of Jesus. When the term predestination is used And a lot of people think that's the problem issue. It's not. I would say none of you have a problem with predestination if you understand it. It's just saying, this is what we are destined to as God's children.We are destined to be conformed to the image of Jesus. If you look down at verse 11 in this passage that we're looking at this morning. In Him, we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His own will. Here's what He's saying.We've been predestined to the one that's working in all things in our lives. This is what he says. And many of you that are believers and have been for a number of years, I'm going to quote one of the most well known verses in your life. Romans 8 28 to 30. Listen to what it says. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.For those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknow, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. He says this is the purpose. That everything that God is allowing in your life has the purpose of conforming you to the image of Jesus. To change you into the likeness of Jesus.That God is not wasting experiences. That he's got, using all those life experiences, which means that everything that is going on in your life is what you would pray for if you knew everything that God knows. That he's conforming us to the image of Jesus. He says, God's not wasting stuff in your life.The stuff that you would say, please, erase this part. It's all part of this process of designing you. Your portion is to be like Christ and to be Jesus life within you. So why does all this matter? These truths we're looking at this morning, why do they matter? I want to say three quick things as I close.Number one, these truths matter because they give us incentive to know all three members of the Godhead. Father, Son, Spirit. To speak to them in the awareness of this is the role, this is the role, this is the role. Well, Mark, you talk like they're completely three different guys. Well, they are, but they're all one.I know! Figure it out! I haven't! But to know all the remembers of the Godhead and do life with them. Secondly, it matters because it is encouragement to you in your lowest times.God the Father is crazy about his kids. He wanted you. A number of years ago, we didn't have this building. we did have the gym. It was probably the lowest point of my life to that point. I was very aware of myself. I had received, I've talked about this before, the letter from my wife at our 10 year anniversary.It was calling me out appropriately for my own self centeredness and pursuit of She said, if you were a, if you were a businessman, you'd just be called a workaholic. But because you're a pastor, you get a pass. And I was just overwhelmed with the failure of my life as a pastor. Pastor as a husband, as a man of God.And I remember wandering this property and just going back there. And one reality was what I cling to. I said, God, I feel failure in every part of my life.But you wanted me. You chose me. I wouldn't choose me. I'm not sure my wife would choose me. I'm not sure anybody should choose me. But you wanted me. Verse 4, to me, is a precious doctrine. And I understand the issues and the tension and struggles with how does this But there is also an incredibly precious side of knowing that God wanted you.The third thing, it is motivation to turning to Christ. Harvey Kahn, a missionary to Korea, tells of sharing the gospel with young prostitutes in Korea. And he could not get them to accept Jesus because they were overwhelmed with their lives had become, what they'd done. And finally, he told them about God choosing people.And he said this, Do you know that the Christian God has chosen people from out of the world to be His very own before the creation of the world? And they said, you must be kidding. How can a person know if they are one of those he chose? And he said this to them, Well, do you want that gift of forgiveness?And they said, more than anything. And he said, then you must be chosen, because only a person who is chosen by God has that desire, and draws to God in his salvation your desire. is evidence of the fact that God has chosen you. They gratefully received the gift of God's grace. Maybe you're here in the same place and you say, Ah, this, this whole thing is kind of confusing to me.I'm a sinner. Yeah, need forgiveness. But he could never want a person like me. I've done too much, too far down. Then I would ask you this question. Do you want His forgiveness? Would you long for the life and inheritance that Jesus came to provide? If your response is yes, it's because God is at work in your life.It's because God is drawing you. The beautiful reality is, we do that. We respond because God is at work in us. It is a supernatural work of grace in our lives. God the Father is the architect of salvation. He got this whole thing running in eternity past. He's the one that designed it. He's the one sovereign even in the Godhead by their choice of, of, the structure, the chain of command, if you will.But he is also a beautifully, preciously, approachable being. He's our Father. He's your Father if you belong to Him. And if there's a hunger this morning to want to belong to Him, understand that you don't have that of yourself. It is the Lord speaking into your life this morning. Lord, we come to you today.We sit back and we say, Lord, man, there's things in this message that are hard to figure out. I don't understand how you're a three person, one being God,but I want to worship you as you are.And there's parts of us that really are confused by this concept of verse four and a God that chooses. But Lord, I want to wrestle through and say, I want to worship you and I want to love you and I want to bow the knee to you to how you say you are and to worship what you say you do. For me, Lord, you know how these truths have been in some ways a bulwark in my own journey with you in life.I pray that your spirit would draw us to a deeper awe, a deeper love, a deeper longing for the God that pursues us in your grace. In Jesus name, Amen.
Titus 2:11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training 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, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Sermon Transcript:All right. You can continue worshiping because, um, you're going to get like a six and a half minute sermon here this morning. Okay. Nobody's celebrating that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, the preaching of God's word is very important. And we've talked about this, um, as a staff, it is a joy that there are 16 people this morning getting baptized.Um, you're only going to hear.You're only going to hear eight of those stories in this service, and if you want to stay for the next one, you can get the other eight, uh, but we'll encourage you, you can also watch their testimonies online, but I'm going to just share with you a little bit, kind of set the stage for where we, are going this morning.baptism as many of you may know, some of you may not know is really a symbol. It's a symbol of what God has done in the lives of those that know him. Baptism does not make you a Christian. It declares that you already are. That's why you'll see each person that comes into the tank this morning, wearing one of these shirts that says forgiven.they're wearing it before they enter the tank because it's a declaration that God has already done something in their lives. And so when each person goes under the water, you'll hear us say, in the likeness of his death. And as we bring them back up out of the water, we'll say, in the likeness of the resurrection of Jesus.In the same way that he died and rose again, baptism displays this union that we have with him, this connection to him. We too have died to an old way of life and have been raised to a new way of life. And now, reborn, we get to live out that faith. Joe mentioned each person is going to testify and share in their own unique way of ways that God has drawn, them to himself.However, there's one specific thread that runs common throughout, and that's what I wanted to share with you this morning. We're really all telling small parts. Of the big story of what God has been doing all along, God's story. and I want to read to you just a, a passage this morning that is really a summary, of the whole gospel in one short section.So, if you want to turn with me, we're going to be in the book of Titus. Now, I realize Titus might take you all of my entire sermon to find. It's one of those difficult books. as the Spirit of God would have it, if you go Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, we get to the T books in the New Testament.First and second, Thessalonians, then first and second, Timothy, and then on to Titus. They're in alphabetical order in the T's, okay? The T's are in alphabetical order, so check them out. it is page 938. If you got one of the Bibles in the pew, you're like, why didn't you just say that at the beginning?That's all I needed to know. But I'd like you to look at the, at the passage, click it on your phone, find it. We're going to be in Titus chapter 2 just for a minute here this morning. I want you to see these words because there are no slides, but I want you to also hear them this morning too. We're in Titus chapter 2 verse 11.For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Training 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, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.Father, this is a dense portion of scripture. And I pray, Lord, with, the power of your spirit, might you allow us to comprehend how, how incredible your love is, how intentional your plan is. And Lord, as we hear stories this morning of, of ways that you have delivered people out of sin and, and their own darkness and brought them into a new relationship with you.Lord, convince us that this saving power is still available today for those that do not know you. God, I pray, you would teach us this morning in many ways this morning. We pray in your name, amen. So I just want to walk verse by verse really quickly through this here. I only have like two minutes left, right?So you're, you're going to, it's going to be quick for the grace of God has appeared. Bringing salvation for all people. That means Jesus, the grace of God, has appeared. Jesus sent to earth, that is, God with skin on. He came down and lived among us. Full of grace, bringing salvation for all people. And though it is available for all people, we know from the scriptures that not all will be saved.That it's for only those who surrender in their faith to Jesus. And what does this surrendered life look like? How does it practically work out? Well, we walk in this grace. Look at verse 12, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.This is the work of Jesus. This is the work of grace in our lives. He gives grace, not just for a new identity, but for a new way to live. We're not just saved from the penalty of sin. We are reprogrammed to, to want and desire his way of life. We're delivered from the power of sin now, not just eternally, but now here living godly lives in this present age.That is the training ground of grace. And you might notice in some of the stories this morning and in your own life, you and I have not graduated from this Institute of Grace yet. We are all in process. And so as you hear stories this morning, you might still pick up that they don't have all of the finer points of theology figured out and everything.You and I probably are still growing in that as well. And so as we follow Christ. We're living to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, living new lives because of grace. Here's what it says though. We're, we're training and living in this world, but we're also waiting, verse 13, for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ.Our eyes are fixed, not just here, but also on a time to come, a return of Christ to dwell among us. A recreation of this world, fully glorified beings we will be for those that have a relationship with him. And for this we wait, for this we wait. But in this waiting process, we don't just gather here, hide and, and live as, we, we might call it the holy huddle.We're sent out to live on display waiting for this return. How is this all possible? Verse 14. Remember this, Jesus gave himself for us in his death on the cross to redeem us, to buy us back from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works by his death in our place.Through faith, we are redeemed, bought back from the power of sin. Made new in his image, purified and given to do good works in his name. Not as a way to earn, but as a way of worship. We live this out. Man, if, if you ever want to just present the gospel in, in, in full, go to Titus 2, use this passage. It's got it all.Jesus, the rescuer, came to buy us back. So, as you come this morning and as we hear stories of people and their testimony of what God has done in their life, we say this each time, I want you to look, to listen, and respond. Look, there, there's something visible happening this morning. This is not just testimony, but it's actually displaying, again, that buried with him and raised to new life, this is baptism.I want you to listen carefully to the words spoken and also to respond, knowing that as people share their stories, there will be things that potentially you hear that connect to your story. Possibly, it's through adoption, maybe a connection that you've made. Maybe it's through, struggles with parents, or things that you've, wrestled with through your lives.Maybe there's, someone that, sensed the stage of a midst of confusion, that they were just unsure about where to go, or they were pursuing darkness, and God rescued them. Might I suggest that you're here this morning because God wants to encourage the body of Christ. That God wants to do something specific in these baptisms, that might speak to you.So if you're here and maybe you feel triggered by someone's story or, or things that they have gone through, we want to walk through this with you. God is drawing you in and he'd love to, build a relationship with you. But can I ask you, uh, take out a pen. There's a, there's a pen in the back of, uh, the seats there.Maybe you have one already. And if you grab a bulletin this morning. There's some blank space because I didn't give you any notes this morning. But I'd like for you to maybe write down names of people and things that people have walked through in their testimonies that you're going to hear. Maybe you just pray for them in their journey.Maybe there's a connection that you make and you want to encourage them after the service and just say, Hey, I'm praying for you by name. This is a way that we can take baptism and be encouraged, but also be an encouragement to those being baptized. Lastly, um, this is a celebration. Uh, there are no good testimonies and like sort of good testimonies and bad testimonies.Everyone, everyone, everyone is only saved because of God's light shining onto their hearts. Not because of anything good that they have done. Each time is a miracle. Each time is a sinner turning from death to life, and that's the work of God. So we're gonna cheer. We're gonna have some fun this morning.We're gonna clap. We're gonna support, okay? So, don't be quiet golf clappers this morning. Uh, be excited, because God's done an incredible work. Um, we're gonna, uh, start our time this morning. Pastor Ben is going to lead us in our first baptisms. And I should say, I'm sorry. Collingswood, you are watching online.Hi, welcome. And I'm so glad that you get to join us this morning, uh, in baptisms as well. So, Ben.Number one question you all have, is it cold in there? It's very nice in here. I'm going to invite Beth Burr to come out here. Excited to celebrate with Beth and her giving of testimony this morning.Beth, is it your desire this morning to testify of your relationship with Christ? Yes. We're going to have a video that shows a little bit about Beth's faith journey. Hi, my name is Beth Burr. I was raised in a Christian household, but when I was young, my family left the church due to hurts. When I was a teenager, I asked to go back.I immersed myself in the church, attending youth group and youth choir. I learned that being a Christian meant you did things. At some point, I accepted Christ, but I don't remember exactly when. I thought being a good girl was being what it was meant to be Christian. I never realized that you needed a relationship with Christ.When my husband and I joined Celebrate Recovery a few years ago, we were surrounded by Christians in that relationship. At one point, I decided to recommit my life and my heart to Jesus. I was a good girl, but I was still a sinner. I had to confess my sins of codependency. food issues, and allowing myself to be led astray in an effort to people please.I thought God was my, like my earthly parents. That if I didn't toe the line, I would be out of the family. Jesus loves us warts and all. He doesn't love our sin, but understands that we are not strong enough to resist it on our own. During CR, I made the decision to turn my life back over to Jesus. I confess that I had hurts, habits, and hang ups that only Jesus could help me with.I am making better choices about food and am less codependent. I am becoming my own person with Jesus help and what He has called me to do. I am a leader in Celebrate Recovery, even though it's out of my comfort zone, but I believe that's what Jesus is calling me to do. I share my struggles with depression and anxiety, which He has not taken away from me since I was a teenager.Both to be a beacon to those who have the disease and to break the stigma. God has shown me how faithful he can be. The more I believe in him, the more I see it. And the more easier it is to believe it. My life first is Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 12. Two are better than one because they have a more satisfying return for their labor.Where if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and does not have another to lift him up. Again, if two lie down together, then they keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? And though one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.I believe this is important during recovery and our Christian faith. We need to have people come alongside us. To help us on this journey. Are you ready for that? Yes.Beth, is it your desire to in front of these people in Mt. Laurel and these people in Collingswood this morning testify of this faith in Christ through baptism? Yes. It is my great delight to baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son And of the Holy Spirit, and the likeness of Christ's death, and the likeness of his resurrection.Good. I'dlike to invite Megan Heaney down. This is Megan. Megan, have you personally accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? I have, yes. We have a video to tell a little bit more about Megan's faith journey. My name is Megan Heaney and I've declared, and I've decided to get baptized as an adult because I'm going to declare myself to the Lord.My life before Jesus was a life of sin and unhappiness, and the moment I gave myself to Jesus, I felt immense happiness and I can't be mad at God and not believe in him at the same time. I've dealt with Self harm since I was 13 and my depression has kicked me my whole life and my life has been terrified by suicidal thoughts.Before Celibate Recovery, I had nothing to live for. I've, God has called me to write poetry and this is one I've been really, really proud of. I tremble not because I'm afraid, but because I'm fiercely made. You are with me when I stand tall and I feel like I may fall at any minute. I have continuously pushed you away, but you are always here to stay, defying you at all costs.I'm finally safe in the faith that I thought I lost. This world is as fast paced, stuck in a shoe that is laced the wrong way. My smile is a facade. I feel like a fraud. I run from the pain inside. I run from the happiness I cannot explain. I run to my God, cause he has never left my side. I had to lose you before I was allowed to choose you.You have always been with me. Especially every minute I run from you. I want to yell surprise at every sunrise. Cry secret tears while I face fears. You will be ahead of me by 28 feet and behind me to capture each feet ahead of every thought of self harm and use these things to disarm the broken suffer faith through anger, anger through laughter, smile through pain and pain through grace.John 3 16 has brought me joy through times of suffering for God to love the world. He gave his only begotten son to believe in him shall not perish, but have, have ever after life.Megan, is it your desire to testify to these people this morning of your faith in Christ through baptism? It is. Yes. It is my joy to baptize you in the name and the delight. of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of Christ's death, and in the likeness of his resurrection.Morning, everybody. I'm going to have Malia McGinley join me.Malia, I've had a chance to do this with a number of McGinleys, and I'm really excited to have you up here. Malia, have you received Jesus Christ as your Savior? Yes. All right, we're going to hear about that. Hi, my name is Malia McGinley. I was born in semi Kazakhstan. I was told I was the youngest of eight siblings.When I was seven months old, I was taken from my family due to severe neglect, starvation, and abuse. I was placed in an orphanage and lived there until I was three and a half years old, until I was finally adopted by a woman from New Jersey. And after living with her and her partner for several months, they decided I wasn't a good fit for their family.I was then placed in a several private foster care system until I was brought to my true and forever home, one with six older siblings. My biological mom drank a lot of alcohol while I was growing up inside her. And because of that and the traumatic experience during my early years, I learned differently from the other kids my age.I struggle in school and in social situations and in other areas of my life. I have a difficult time trusting people and I often withdraw, hide. Hide behind books, embellish the truth, and sometimes I say silly things at the wrong time. I know I have said and done so many things to hurt people, but especially my parents, and they still love me.And I am so thankful for that. My family introduced me to Jesus. They showed me a love that I could never have imagined. I accepted Christ a few years ago when I was at a class at church in the summer, but I didn't fully understand it. My father meets with me every morning and For Bible reading and devotions.Something I did not like at first, but I've grown to love. Because of me and my father's time together, I have learned so much about God and his love for me. My mom prays for me constantly, and when she drops me off at school, she says to me, Remember, Malia, you are never alone. Jesus will never leave you or forsake you, and you are a princess warrior of Christ.As time has gone by, I've been able to look backwards and see that there's no coincidence that I was brought 7, 000 miles from Kazakhstan to New Jersey. It was all God and His kindness to me. I know I will never be happy or at peace trying to live for myself. I only want to, but I need Jesus to be my best friend.I am being baptized today to be obedient to the Lord and to publicly declare my faith to God and to show Him how thankful I am for rescuing me. I know my story is not over, but what I do know is what Psalm 139. 13, John and Joshua 29. 11 say. I am created by God, He designed me. So I am not a mistake. The Lord picked me to be His own, so I am wanted.And He has a future for me because He loves me. Flaws and all. Thank you. Malia, it's myjoy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and in the likeness of his resurrection.Okay, up next we have Nicole Curtis, who's going to join me.Nicole, have you received Christ as your Savior? Yes. Alright, we're gonna hear a little about that. My name is Nicole, and this is my baptism testimony. I have always believed in Jesus Christ, but I have never truly lived for Him. I've lived a very sinful life the past ten years, in search of love and happiness in all the wrong places, and that just resulted in more pain and more suffering.I've been through a lot of things, some things that were a matter of life or death. And in those times, I had strength that I had. I knew that it was God in those times. And two years ago, I turned my life around. And during that time, I had a bond that became undoubtedly real with God. So today, I am giving myself and my life to the Lord and claiming Him as my I want to repent my sins and live for, for God.Nicole, is it your desire to be baptized today to testify about this relationship with Christ? Yes. Alright.Alright, Nicole, it is my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of His death, in the likeness of His resurrection. You're welcome.John Pepitone is gonna join us, uh, here this morning.All right, John, have you received Christ as your Savior? Yes. All right, we're gonna hear about that. Hi, my name's John. I'm 23. I'm, uh, kind of new to the Christ thing, kind of not. Um, I was raised in the church, but I walked away for a long time. I had found myself in a place where I didn't know what to turn to, who to look after, and couldn't take care of myself, let alone anybody else.Uh, I was engaged. I was making a lot more money than I A lot of 23 year olds my age, and it led me down a really dark road. Uh, when my, my fiance had left me, I, uh, I broke. The, the world brought me to my knees. And, I didn't know what to do, other than turn to God. Because that's what I was raised with. I had started, uh, reading the Bible.praying as much as I could possibly. Um, the only way that I could put it is that I felt like I had been starving for my entire life and And when I finally started indulging in God and reading, looking after his word, searching for him, it was the only thing in my life that I found that satiated my hunger.That's that's the best way I can put it.John, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and the likeness of his resurrection.Up next we have Courtney Hutchins that's going to join me. Alright, Courtney, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes. Alright, let's hear about that. Hi, I'm Courtney Hutchins. Uh, I grew up in a house where Jesus was present. Um, my mom was the youth director and so my brothers and I were church rats, basically. Um, from vacation Bible school to church potlucks, um, to late night finger rockets in the sanctuary.You name the church activity and we were there. It was really in middle school where I started to understand the love that Jesus has for me. I was at a camp called The Great Escape for middle schoolers, and that's just where the gospel was really shared in a more tangible way. Um, the theme of that week was Matthew 7 7, um, so it's kind of ask, seek, knock.Um, and I'll I'll be really honest, um, my mom remembers this better than I do, but I said to her, I think I get it, meaning I really just started to understand what Jesus did by dying on the cross for me. So from there, I just, I started to just scrape the surface of what walking with Jesus looked like. Um.He was kind of a part of all of our routines, um, our day to day, our summer trips. Um, Jesus was just kind of a priority and, um, through the ordinary and the opportunities, I just grew to become more and more a follower of Christ. But what I think was valuable, kind of looking back on just that season, um, was the community of people surrounding me, um, and that wasn't just my immediate family.Uh, I just didn't really realize how meaningful or impactful that was on my walk with the Lord, but it's something I grew to know and, um, something that I just really wanted more of. And so that kind of led me into, um, just my college years. And so I'm just really grateful that going to church, um, growing up was initially my parent's choice, but then it grew to be more and more of my choice.And so during those years, I, um, my faith really grew to became my own. I sought out friendships that were rooted in Christ and a Bible study that was challenging and encouraging and just really strengthening of my walk with the Lord and my understanding of who His character is. Um, I was able to spend two summers during college with Sun Servants as part of their summer staff.Um, And so I would say both of those summers were just really incredibly influential and enriching and, um, my trust and hope in Jesus. Really, the fear of unknown was a pretty crippling during that season of life and, um, a lot of big decisions happening during those years and, um, but just because of the people the Lord put in my life and my knowledge of And, um, I gained in just the Lord's favor and faithfulness.I just learned those different things and really learned how to surrender my plans and my wants and my desires to Jesus. Allow myself to let him work in and through me. And so I just, I feel like there's just a lot of seasons and themes of, um, a faithful trust in surrounding. myself with rich community.Um, those were really just gifts, honestly. Um, after marrying my husband, we both desired and longed for being part of community again. Um, we yearned for the communities we both had prior to marriage and, um, wanted that together. Um, and since I was a part of the FCC family, um, prior to meeting him, um, When we decided to move back to New Jersey, we knew that this is where we wanted to root ourselves, um, and just dive in together, dive in serving together.Uh, we really wanted to come under the authority of this church as members and serve alongside the community of, Believers and walk through life together. Um, and that really, that meant choosing to be baptized. So I, I kind of wrestled with this concept for a little bit. Um, Got to talk to Mike a lot, but, and my husband, but, so I was baptized as an infant, and I was a member prior, or a member of a church prior to all of this.My wrestling was really with my own fear of, I'm doing this because I want to be a member of a church. It felt kind of selfish. Um, I was afraid that my motive wasn't honoring of the Lord. Um, but I really came to realize that it's, it's not selfishness, but an act of obedience and a proclamation of what God has done and continues to do in my life.Uh, I've been faithfully serving the Lord now for much of my life and what a beautiful thing that is, but my faithfulness to the Lord now looks like confessing that I'm a sinner and in need of a savior. Um, and just taking a step and coming under the authority of this church and being baptized. Funniest question I'm going to ask you, but.Courtney, is it your desire totestify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes. Alright. Courtney, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the likeness of his death. In the likeness of his resurrection.And Sam Hutchins now is going to join us in the tank this morning.Sam, have you received Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes. Alright, we're going to hear about that. Good morning, uh, my name is Sam Hutchins, and I want to tell you just a little bit about, uh, my story. Uh, growing up in our family, God was not really the central animating, um, You know, part of our family life growing up, there was definitely love in our family, but there was also, uh, strife.And so, uh, for me, what that meant was, um, kind of looking for different avenues of escape. Uh, and if you kind of asked me growing up, it, um You know, I was trying to maybe find my own way. Well, what practically what that looked like was just kind of following what a lot of everybody else was doing.Growing up I had a lot of doubts about God and You know, that was just kind of a difficult part of my life. I had, you know, some peripheral interest and involvement in different church related things, but was really kind of on the outside, um, and me being on the outside and not kind of diving and not learning more about God, you know, I kind of.I would probably say it was a lot of doubts, but it was a lot of just, you know, selfishness as well. And, um, and kind of wrestling through some of the dynamics with my family growing up. I had familiarity with a missions organization, and so, um, In, in kind of the early part of my college years, I decided to apply for, um, to work with sun servants, uh, for a summer, and, and I really didn't know what I was getting into, and, uh, you know, on their part, they didn't know what they were getting into with, uh, me, and thankfully they were really gracious and, and loving towards me in a, in a season of, you know, of doubting, of, um, Selfishness and different things like that.And so, um, I spent the summer with them and it was really uh, beautiful of being involved with the Christian community and um, you know, God before that was really impersonal to me. Uh, which when God is impersonal He's also Um, and throughout the summer, God just became much more personal. We read through the book of John.Um, and it's really fitting that we kind of ended the summer culminating when Jesus is talking to Thomas. And Jesus says to Thomas, Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. And so, really throughout the summer that was kind of That really just struck me. It was life giving and convicting of the sense of, you know, I'm, I, yes, I, there's things maybe I haven't seen.I do have doubts and yet it is. ultimately good to see Jesus and to believe in him. And so, um, I, I have, you know, of thinking of that time of really kind of coming to faith. Uh, there's a quote from Tom Skinner, the late evangelist, that really just puts into words better than I can. This is what he says about his own testimony.I spent a long time trying to come to grips with my doubts. When suddenly I realized I had better come to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the agony of questions that I cannot answer, to the reality of answers that I cannot escape. I love that line. The agony of questions that I cannot answer, to the reality of answers that I cannot escape.And it's a wonderful relief. And ultimately For, for me, for us as Christians, our ultimate answer is the person and work of, of Jesus. Um, our relief ultimately is the person and work of Jesus. And not that there aren't, you know, uh, good answers to different kinds of questions, but ultimately it is Him. And over that summer, that's really what I discovered was Jesus.The, the personal God who loves and cares for me and knows me. And so Um, that was kind of, you know, that process really began in the first part of college. And, uh, there's been, you know, a lot of life that has happened since that point. Um, you know, I've gone through moving a lot, uh, you know, in soon after I became a believer, my parents divorced and that was really unsettling for our family.And so, um. Ultimately, in all of those things, uh, you know, there's a quote from Spurgeon that says, you know, um, I have a great need for Christ, and I have a great Christ for my need. And so, in all of those things, really kind of finding that, uh, finding that to be the case. You know, all of this kind of leads to baptism today.And so, you know, there's been a couple points in, you know, the past couple years where I've been more and more convicted. Um, In the sense of, of the need for baptism as my response to what, uh, God has done and so, um, you know, in, in being a part of this church of, you know, moving here, um, in the past year and a half and, and being more and more involved, I've just seen more and more, um, my response to be baptized, um, as something that I need Need to do and joyfully, uh, get to do in front of the congregation and a group of believers.And, and so, uh, yeah, excited to, to be here and to ultimately to know, uh, to know Jesus.Sam, is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes. Sam, I baptize you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and in the likeness of his resurrection.And our final one this morning is Maria Nolan.All right, Maria, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? I have. All right, we're going to hear about that. My name is Maria Nolan, and the time that I realized that I was lost and needed saving was two years ago in the fall of 2021. I was 16 years old, and I was going through one of the darkest times in my life at the time.Um, my parents had just recently gotten divorced, and the back and forth of going from home to home brought back a lot of past trauma from when I was in foster care as a child. Um, I was in foster care from about one month old to three and a half, and then I was adopted at four and a half. And so that resulted in me unfortunately being exposed to a lot of abuse and trauma.So as I got older, I just, I struggled a lot in school and just, I had a lot of family issues going on as well. So when I was 14, I actually had a therapist that introduced me to witchcraft and she promised me that it would bring all these things to my life that I was looking for, including security and peace and love.And so. Between the ages of 14 and 16, I acquired hundreds of dollars worth of sorcery things. And throughout it all, everything she told me was a lie, and the only thing that I was doing to myself was being myself, digging myself a deeper grave. Um, literally inviting Satan right into my life, and just getting more depressed, more anxious.So when my parents were getting divorced, Um, it just, it made things so much harder. I also was like setting myself up for a future of just solely gratifying myself, solely gratifying the world. And so, um, at the time I had just gotten Tik Tok and I lot, my for you page was very dark, it had a lot of dark videos, but throughout every video I would see videos about Jesus.Um, I just thought they were silly. I thought I was taken too seriously, but gradually I started listening to them and I started realizing that all the things that people were saying about Jesus was what I needed. And so eventually in the fall, the early December of 2021, I decided that I wanted to learn more about Jesus and I wanted to learn what it meant to be a Christian.So around that time, my mom also decided that she wanted. to have a better relationship with Christ as well. So that's how we came to FCC. And around that time, I started studying my Bible, I started reading my Bible. I started realizing and starting learning about all the things that I was doing, how dangerous that was to myself, to my spirit.And so I took all things I had, sorcery, I threw it into a fire pit and I burned it all. So since then, everything that Jesus has done in my life, he's done a 100. A complete 180 on my life. I mean, all of my goals for the future have completely transformed. There's so much more fulfilling and they mean so much more.My life has purpose and being able to look back on times where I didn't see him in my life at the moment, like being able to see him now is just so wonderful. Um, and he's placed me on the, the West Virginia mission trip that the youth group does two times in a row, which has led me to meet so many great Christian mentors.And, um. From the sun servants group that runs them, which has led me to the opportunity to serve with them this entire summer on all their trips, which I'm very excited about. And so I would like to be baptized because I want. I was baptized when I was five, but obviously I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what it meant.So now that I truly understand, like, what it means for Jesus to have died on that cross, and what it, you know, what it means to be a Christian, I just want to have that public declaration of, you know, my love for Him and my gratitude towards, you know, declaring my new life in Him because of His grace only.And, yeah.Maria, thank you for sharing your story. This is the joy of baptism is that we hear of God's rescue in ways that, uh, encourage the church and I pray that it does even more this morning. Maria, is it your desire to be baptized this morning to testify to this relationship with Christ? It is. Yes. All right.Maria, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the likeness of his resurrection. Death. In the likeness of his resurrection. Great.This is Joe Osharu. Uh, friend and a guy that I'm very excited to be in the baptismal tank this morning. Joe, have you received Jesus Christ as your Savior? I absolutely have, Mark. We're going to hear about that on your testimony this morning. Hi, I'm Joe Oshiro, and I want to share my testimony with each and every person in the congregation.Last July, uh, my wife and I had another fight, but this one was even worse than most. I got very ugly with my words, and by the time we had stopped, I have felt very down. I was contemplating things that I did and should have, should have done and the words that I said that were just so ugly and I thought I was really, really low until shortly thereafter when my boys confronted me.Now I have four boys who I absolutely cherish and when they told me how Our fights had affected their lives so negatively. I thought I was low. I now hit rock bottom. Shortly thereafter, I called a dear friend of ours, Karen Jones, who goes to this church, and talking with her, and very emotionally talking with her, I asked her if I could go to church with her that Sunday.Um, not only did she say yes, but she was very happy. She had been praying for my wife and I for ever since we met about 25 years ago to find God. So I went to church that Sunday and she introduced me to Pastor Mark and I felt so comfortable with him and he seemed so nice and so kind. Um, we got together the following Friday and we got into families and he told me about his family, his beautiful family.And then he told me he had a A toddler that had drowned in his own pool, and I realized at that time that I couldn't have handled that, I wouldn't know how to get through that, and I needed something to lean on and to fall back on for strength, and I didn't have that in my life. Immediately when I got in my car, a dear friend, George, gave me a call, and when George heard the desperation in my voice, he immediately said that we gotta get together tonight.We had a late lunch. Um, before our lunch, I had seen the movie, Sound of Freedom, and the movie is religious based in some way, but more importantly, the trailers that I saw before the movie, three straight, were all fraught with religious overtures, and When I met with George, I told him about that, and as I was breaking up, I told him what had happened with my wife and how I was feeling.And I realized, shortly thereafter, when I sat back and thought, I said, This isn't a coincidence. From calling Karen, to meeting Pastor Mark that following Sunday, to seeing him the following Friday, to George calling me the second I got in my car. And then seeing the movie just a day later with, with the three trailers, I realized that, that Christ was calling me.And that he was there to help me. Well, since then I've been blessed so much. The weight of the world has come off my shoulders. I'm feeling like I can handle anything. Whatever problem comes up, I'm comfortable with. I pray for it and I find an answer. Um, I've prayed for being able to not fight with my wife.And with the Lord's blessing, we've gone seven months and not even an argument. With his strength, I know that I can avoid a fight with her ever, ever again. Um, another one of the blessing, uh, Pastor Mark introduced me to Bill McKinley. Who has not only become my mentor in Christ, but also a dear friend.Everything that's happened since the time I went to church has shown me that Christ is in my life and that I love Christ. Um, my testimony is very simple. I, I don't know exactly when faith hit me. But I know exactly when I turned to Christ, like Nathaniel and John 1 and 21. I was under my fig tree at my very bottom and Christ came to me.So hopefully with this story, if I can help anybody find Christ in their, in their lives, I would be just thrilled. And I'm here to say that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and I love him.Joe, is it your desire to publicly testify of that relationship to Christ by being baptized? Absolutely is, Mark. Okay.Joe, it's my privilege to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of His death, in the likeness of His resurrection. so much.All right, up next we have Lexi Holba, who's going to join me in the tank this morning.Lexi's a little bit shorter, so we're going to move over this, like, little stool thing we have in here. Okay, now you can see Lexi. Okay, great.Lexi, have you received Christ as your Savior? Yes, I have. All right, we're going to hear about that. Um, hi, I'm Lexi. And, um, in 2022 is when I was saved and, um, it was a particularly bad year. I felt pretty worthless and, um, unloved a lot. And, uh, in the late summer, I, um, chose to follow Christ. I started getting involved in the church.Um, And joining Bible studies, I started to read the Bible, which I had never done. And, um, I had completed it. And, um, joining in the church and fellowship with other Christians. Uh, I had decided to change certain things that I was doing, um, that was dishonoring the Lord. And chose to change the way that I live and he has brought me so much joy and peace and Even though I still struggle with anxiety sometimes I do still I know that I have him With me in that time.So it makes the struggle a little bit easier One verse that has always stuck with me, once I, once I had read it, I couldn't get it out of my mind, and, um, that's Romans 14, 8. And, uh, it says, for if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's.And, in reading that, I, um, I know who I belonged to, and I know that He, He loved me beyond measure. And I didn't need. Um, the love of people and the acceptance of people necessarily, because I knew that, um, that I was the Lord's. I have seen the way that he has changed my life and how he's changed other people's lives too, in learning their stories and their testimonies.And, um, just the people that I, I speak to daily and just watching him work in their life and in mine has just, um, Completely changed, changed my life and I want to continue to know him. I had such a hunger to, to just know his heart and know who he is and who he is in my life. And, um, you know why I wanted to follow him was to be like him and I want to be more and more like him every single day.Um, that's what I strive for. And, uh, I just Such a want to be a, a daughter that pleases him. And, um, that is why I want to be baptized.Lexi, is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes.Lexi, it is my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the likeness of his death. In the likeness of his resurrection.Alright, we're going to have Steve Caporelli join us next.Steve said, uh, I'll just take my glasses off, and I won't see anybody out there. And I said, nobody's here, Steve. No, it's just me and you. Steve, is it? Um, have you received Christ as your Savior? I have. All right, we're going to hear about that. Hey everybody, my name is Steven Capparelli, and I would say my testimonies start when I was young.I attended church, I went to CCD, and I learned who Jesus was and what he did for us through my aunt. I would say that I always had faith, um, but I think that The church that I attended was not very welcoming and it wasn't until my aunt was diagnosed with cancer that I really started to question my faith.My aunt was the most kindest, sweetest person and Christ like person that I knew and I just couldn't understand why something like that would have happened to someone like her. In high school, I met my now wife who always used to pray that one day I would find my way back to God. And she would periodically ask me if I wanted to go to church, but I would always come up with the excuse not to go.In college, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I felt like I was falling behind compared to the people around me, and I started to develop some intrusive thoughts and depression. I then turned to heavily drinking and partying to kind of cope with that and never really knew what I wanted to do in life.It wasn't until I got married when my wife Periodically continued to ask me if I wanted to attend church, but I always came up, still came up with excuses to not go. And it wasn't until Christmas of 2022 that I finally decided to say yes. I was doing that service. I was filled with so many years of emotion that I've started to break down and cry and felt like this is where I belong.The few weeks after I started to study my Bible and pray that one day I would die to my old self and be born again. About six months later, I went to a Flyers game with my friends with no intention on slowing down or quitting drinking. And something in me that day decided that this was my last drink, and by the grace of God, I haven't drank since.I continued to read my Bible and pray, and slowly my intrusive thoughts and depression kind of diminished. I decided to be baptized today as a public display and commitment to fully give my life to Jesus and finally give it all to Him.Steve, is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes, it is. Alright. Steve, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and the likeness of his resurrection.And Steve's wife, Rebecca, is going to join us now. Allright, Rebecca, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes. Okay. We're going to hear about that. Hi, my name is Rebecca. I started attending fellowship a little over a year ago, but my journey with my faith started when I was really young. I grew up a believer and I did go to a Catholic school and church growing up.I did feel like however, I had a lot of questions growing up and I felt like they weren't always the most welcome. So that kind of started my journey when I was. I saw a lot of other people have a really deep relationship with God, and that was something I really longed for. So as I got older, I wanted to start that on my own, and also, um, find a church that I felt was welcoming and would help foster that.When I was young, I really struggled a lot with anxiety and, um, struggled with intrusive thoughts, and that was something I kind of fouled throughout my life. As I got older, once I was in middle school, I started having, um, Body disorder issues. Um, so, that kind of manifested and I felt like at the time it was helping me with not feeling like I could, um, control my, like, thoughts and my anxiety.So I felt like by controlling my body it was something I did have control over. I now know that it was just me finding something else to put it into and it didn't actually help. Started controlling my eating habits and just excessively working out. And it really ended up doing more bad than it did good.When I was a freshman in college, I experienced the unexpected loss of my brother. And at the time that was really difficult. Um, I went through a lot of grieving and ended up suffering from really bad depression. I didn't turn from God, but I definitely didn't lean into Him. And I really used school as a distraction at that time in my life.I remember, um, talking to my then boyfriend but now husband when I graduated school. And because I put so much of myself into school and used it as such a distraction for myself, once I graduated I felt really lost. Um, and just like really did not know what my purpose was. And then fast forward to once I was in my career, I had the first withdrawal of one of my patients, and that really affected me more than I ever thought it would.I later, the things I was going through, when I talked to a fellow medical professional, she explained what I was feeling. I was going through PTSD from what I had felt, like what I've done at work. And that really set me into, I struggled from the PTSD, and then I had, struggled from really bad depression after that.I remember talking to my mom, and I would like, look at a photo of myself, or look at myself in the mirror, and I really felt like I did not know who I was looking at, because I was just in such a dark place. I felt so disconnected from myself. That last, that was like my longest season, I felt like, and I went through times where I felt like I would think about self harm a lot, my anxieties were really high, um, I feel like my intrusive thoughts were like at an all time high, and I just did not know how to escape it.Eventually, I found an anxiety study, actually it was a Bible study, and I started doing that slowly every day. And then I started listening to worship music a lot and just really starting to get into my bible. And every day, slowly, I felt like things were starting to feel a little bit better. And then it was probably a year and a half.After that, I was faced with the same thing at work. Um, and I knew going into a shift that that's what my shift was going to be. So that was extremely difficult. I felt like I was just coming out of a period that was so, so dark and really, really difficult for me. And I didn't know if my heart could go back to that place and how I would handle it.So that was honestly the night that I feel like I was saved. I was driving into work, listening to my worship music, and I was just crying out and praying to God the entire time. Um, in that moment, I really just asked Him to be with me, and I, throughout my life, Before that, a lot of it I feel like I tried to do on my own and I knew I couldn't do it on my own anymore.I needed him. I just needed his own strength, not mine. I needed him to be with me no matter what I was going to go through because I didn't know how it was going to go. And I, I just asked him to be with me the whole time in the car and it's so unexplainable, but the feeling that I had in the car, I can't describe it as anything else, but feeling the Holy Spirit.I just felt, I was like nervous to go into the shift, but just felt so reassured. It was just a really amazing feeling. It's something I always tell my husband, that I just want everyone to experience it because I just did not feel alone. It just felt so reassuring to me. That was a really big turning point in my life.Um, I really just owe everything to God and to Christ. I feel like I have a renewed life after that. Um, of course still face struggles, but I'm not alone with them. And I just turned to my Bible and look for the truth because anything that I try to tell myself that my mind tells me, it's usually just.From the enemy and lies and I just look to truth and it's so reassuring. Um, I just, I want to be baptized because I just want to display what I feel internally. I just feel new from before and I have a new life and I'm so grateful for it. Um, so that's why I want to be baptized. Well,Becca, is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes.Alright, Rebecca, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and the likeness of his resurrection.We're going to have Dash Musig come and share this morning.Right, Dash, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes. All right. We're going to hear about that. Hi, my name is Dash and I am 16 years old. I have been regularly attending church for as long as I can remember. So, sin is also a term. Like, I've learned, I've known about sin for as long as I can remember.And, though I don't know the exact date as to when I realized I was a sinner or, or learning about sin, I know it happened when I was very young. And, as soon as I pretty much learned about repenting for your sins and going to heaven, I am pretty much, I knew, alright, I have to do this. And pretty much right then and there, I did it.I still remember the moment I just looked up after it was like, wow, this is done. It was a big moment for me in my life. Jesus has also made some differences in my life. And one, one example of this is when I was around five years old, I was diagnosed with a really mild form of autism. But God has managed to help me through that and actually turn that, that difficulty, that challenge into a gift.Actually helped me to pull through with it. And I know that I am saved through Jesus, which means that I know that when I die, I will go to heaven. Because I was at such a young age when I learned about being saved, I believe that God may have saved me from some really bad situations. And I sometimes think that my relationship with Christ may have guided me to the right place.And I hope that that continues to happen. God can continue to take me to the right place. I want to be baptized because I remember I learned about baptism when I watched my Aunt Stephanie get baptized when I was like 6 something like that. It was an idea that it was something that we should do more recently, but it's something we've been considering for a while since I It's something that God calls for all of us to do.So it's just something I decided to do todayDash is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Jesus through baptism? Yes, it is All right, Dash, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the likeness of his death, and in the likeness of his resurrection.All right, joining me up next is Sophia Keitlinger.All right, Sophia, it looks like you have a fan club in the front row. Sophia, have you received Jesus Christ as your Savior? Okay, we're gonna hear about that Hello, my name is Sophia and this is my story for the past 13 years. My life hasn't been perfect We struggled to get by with little food and money and I grew up without a father in my life That's been really challenging Especially because I haven't had two parents to be able to like turn to and I'm not gonna be able to learn anything from my dad I also had a lot of troubles in school Because I'm autistic.Kids used to make fun of me every day, and they used to call me names, and even physical violence, which has made my life so much more difficult than it had to be. But I had Jesus in my life, and that was what was the most important thing. I think with Jesus, it really made my life a lot more easier, because without him, I don't think I would have made it.To where I am today when Jesus first came into my heart. I really felt Good. It made me realize that there's good things in the life, especially today. He's made a lot of things happen that I never thought were going to happen. I'm at a new school and have made amazing friends. And, um, even though I did do, I had a lot of bad things that went in my life, I still made it because of Jesus.And today I'm being baptized because. I want to show everyone that this is who I am and that nobody can change me. And that you can also do this and become a follower of Jesus as well. Thank you. Alright. Down from there. And I'll move this over. Okay.Sophia, is it your desire to testify to this relationship you do have with Jesus through baptism this morning? Absolutely. Alright. Alright, Sophia, it's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father. The Son and the Holy Spirit in the likeness of his death, the likeness of his resurrection. Allright, up next is Kayleen Negron.All right, Kayleen, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes. All right, we're going to hear about that. Hi, my name is Kayleen. Um, I'm going to be sharing my testimony with you all today. I was raised Catholic, um, had my baptism, my communion, my confirmation growing up. Um, I kind of looked at church and prayer more so out of like an obligation or of like a chore.I didn't really have a personal relationship with God. I didn't really seek him. I kind of. rejected him and turned away from him for the majority of my life. As a child, I had a lot of chaos in my head. I was a very highly sensitive child. Um, I struggled with intrusive thoughts growing up and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at a really young age.Later, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, which is a major part of my story. My emotional suffering really came to a head when I was in high school. Um, and I started struggling with suicidal ideations. I had my first suicide attempt in high school. And I remember as a teenager, um, I was very impulsive.I was very angry, very rebellious. Um, constantly searching for answers everywhere, but, but in God. Throughout all of my efforts to solve things on my own and throughout my limits here, I kept hitting constant brick walls. It was like I kept searching for answers, but I was coming up empty. Um. And I was never able to really find the peace and the comfort that I was looking for and all the books that I read and everyone that I spoke to and therapists and And, you know, and everything here, um, I, I wasn't finding what I was looking for.Um, I never thought that I was going to make it to 30 years old. My outlook on life was very grim and very, um, miserable. And that kind of bled out to every aspect of my life. Throughout most of my early 20s, my identity was rooted in earthly things, um, rooted in what kind of job I had or in my mental illness, in my diagnoses.I never really stopped to consider that I was a child of God and that I am a child of God. Um, never stopped to consider that I was living a sinful, sinful life, that I didn't have to carry this burden, these burdens by myself. Um, that I couldn't carry them by, by myself, I underestimated God's faithfulness, um, in my life and his presence in my life.Um, and looking back even throughout all my struggles, I realized how he was there, how he pulled me out of the darkest times in my life. And, um, saved me. Things balanced out for me emotionally as I approached my mid twenties. Um, and then in 2020 I received one of my biggest blessings and I had my son Leo.Um, motherhood presented a new set of challenges for me, some foreign and some familiar. Um, it was completely unknown territory. I Wanted to do the best job that I could do, but realized that I was very limited in my own strength. Um, I moved away from family and friends. COVID was alive and well. And my OCD Um, skyrocketed.A lot of my intrusive thoughts got really bad postpartum, and I struggled with really bad postpartum anxiety. I was also experiencing a resurfacing of my childhood traumas. And I just wanted to be the best mother that I could possibly be, um, for this little boy. But this is where I found Christ. In the season of isolation, um, that I was in.And all of the challenges and victories. of motherhood, um, and all of the pain and emotional suffering. That is when I found God. That is when I turned to Christ. Um, I came to a point in 2023 where I was just so desperate that I cried out to God. I started praying relentlessly every day, um, and decided to fully surrender all of my.All of my problems, all of my struggles, little and small, to Christ. I felt this really deep pull to start reading scripture, to start reading the Bible, and I started in the New Testament, I started in the Gospel, and there, there it was. All of the, the peace and the comfort and the consolation that I was looking for, um, was there, um, through Him and in Him.So through coming to know him and through a total surrender and through accepting him as my lord and as my savior, I felt this burden kind of be lifted off of my chest and that is why it's my deep desire to get baptized today. Um, to proclaim my love and devotion to him, to accept the Lord as my Lord and Savior, Christ as my Lord and Savior, and just to start this new chapter of full dedication to Christ.Amen.Kaleen, is it your desire to testify to this relationship with Christ through baptism? Yes. Alright Kayleen, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of his death, and in the likeness of his resurrection.Jared Rapka is gonna come next.We're not short, it's just deep in here. Jared, have you received Jesus as Lord and Savior? Yes. I'd love to hear about that. Hello, my name is Jared Robka and I'm here to get baptized. I grew up in a Christian household. I, um, grew up here at this church for lifer, you know. Um, always went to youth group and, you know, went for the games, stayed for the friends, you know.Um, it wasn't until I want to say my freshman year of high school when my mom, uh, forced me to go to a FCA soccer camp is that when I really understood who Jesus was and what a relationship meant with him, um, I really, uh, there, I, I really like prayed about it and I realized that, you know, my counselor, their struggle with some things that I struggle with.And, um, you know, we're all not perfect, and I think that's really a big thing to understand. And, so, at that soccer camp, I gave myself to the Lord, you know. And it was all great, I want to say. Fantastic. A lot of emotions. Um, but I think from there, um, From freshman year to junior year, you know, I was all in.It was good. It was great. I, I was on that spiritual high, you know? That spiritual high, you know? It was a great, fantastic feeling. But, um, you know, I really didn't understand, you know, What it really meant to be in a relationship with God. So I want to say, senior year is really when I like started questioning my relationship with Him.And questioning, you know, is this like, is this for me, is this um, Is this really what I want, you know? But, um, going to Liberty University, um, it was a good thing. It was, going to a Christian university was great, but I think, in the back of my mind, I really struggled with, you know, my thoughts of my relationship with God and where I was.I really questioned Him, and I was like, Well, God, where are you in my life? You know, where Where are you at this moment, you know, and I, I really had to step back and, you know, thankfully COVID happened and I had, I came home and really, you know, really thought about it and, you know, and I, I, I realized that I never, I didn't have a great community there.I mean, I had great friends, but I didn't have, I wasn't all in, you know, I wasn't, I learned that it was a, I guess I treated God as a one way street. You know, always taking, taking. I was never giving, you know, in the sense of, you know, I never put effort into my relationship. I, uh, at first I was like, alright, I just gotta get through school and everything, and, you know, Mark and Tracy, um, every time I saw them they were like, Come to, come to Young Adults.You'll like Young Adults. And I was like, alright, you know, I'll come to Young Adults and, you know. Well, you know, I end up liking young adults, you know, love Joe, love the people there. Um, I really, uh, started to grow in my relationship with him because I, I felt like I was doing something, you know, I felt like I was, uh, you know, putting in effort.I, I just want to dive right in and that's why I'm getting baptized. You know, I just want to show to the entire church that, you know, I'm on fire, you know, I want to, I want to be in this and I want to be with God.Jared, is it your desire to publicly testify to that relationship, that two way street relationship with Jesus now? Yes. Alright. It's my joy to baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of His death. In the likeness of His resurrection.There's nothing like that. Throughout, um, this morning and the rest of the, just the, The service before this just hearing how Jesus shows up in pain and in brokenness over and over again. It's such a privilege. We're going to close the service now with a final song, an opportunity for us all to respond in worship.Um, and also for any of you who might be fully feeling the pull on your heart, uh, to respond to some of these things. Maybe you don't know, um, if this two way street relationship between you. And Jesus exists, maybe you, maybe you do know, um, but you want to publicly declare that before an assembly, um, that you are following Christ.Um, so whatever your reason this morning, we are going to have people up front who are offering prayer to you. If you'd like to receive prayer, um, during the music or afterwards, um, either are fine. Um, but now we're just going to pray, um, thank the Lord for this time and close in worship. Lord, we, we give you praise for your great glory, um, for your persistent and continual pursuit of our hearts, Lord, for the unbelievable humility that you showed by sending your only son who did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but rather took on the nature of a servant.Living the life we could never live and dying the death that we could and should have died. Instead, rescuing us from the pit. All for the sake of your great love. Lord, thank you for this time. May we respond and worship our God.
Ephesians 1:1-2To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus
Sermon Transcript:I invite you to take your Bibles this morning to the book of Ephesians, or if you're using your Ephesians journal, which is what I brought up this morning, you can turn. It'll be easier to turn than that, baby. we're going to show a video that we showed last week. It was put together by Pastor Jared and the young people.it basically it is taking you through. the outline of the book of Ephesians by using, hand motions. If you have a journal, and if you don't have one, you can, you can get one this morning out in the lobby. But inside the cover, there is the outline of the book of Ephesians, and you can sort of follow along as they are going through the various parts of the book of Ephesians, trying to help us remember our way through the book.By these, hand motionsSalutations a unique christian greeting for both jews and gentiles Adoration praising god for our spiritual blessings in christ Intercession prayer to understand the blessings we have received salvation by grace through faith not by our own doing reconciliation To god in between jews and gentiles proclamation of the mystery revealed that jews and gentiles are co heirs in christ Intercession Love and power through Christ Jesus walking in unity, walking in holiness, walking in love, walking in the light, walking in wisdom, walking in family, walking in the workplace, standing in the victory, final greetings of grace and peace.They did a great job. I'm going to have you turn in your Bible this morning to the book of Ephesians, and I'm going to read the first two verses. I'm going to do something a little different this morning. I'm going to actually do a two parter this morning. Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to first try to present what I think are ten facts you need to know.in your reading in the book of Ephesians. As we launch into this series, what are 10 facts you should know that are in your sermon outline, in the back of the journal, or somewhere else. If you want to write them down, these would be things to refer to because they are things that are always going to be true as you read the book of Ephesians.And then I'm going to look at verses 1 and 2 of Ephesians, chapter 1, but I'd like to read those verses this morning. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.Let's pray.Lord, we've gathered today. Because we want to know you. We want to worship you. We want to do what some of the songs talked about that we've already sung. Lord, we want to surrender to you. And Lord, there's people here in Collingswood and Mount Laurel at each of our campuses. Some watching online. There's all different life circumstances.There's all different relationships with you represented in those individuals. Lord, it's my prayer that you, who know the heart of every person, that your spirit would draw each person to a deeper knowledge and awareness of God in Christ. So Lord, teach us today, in Jesus name, Amen. Alright, ten facts you need to know in reading the book of Ephesians.Number one, you need to know it's a major city. This was a major metropolitan center. One of the major cities of the Roman Empire, and it was located strategically as a port city in the province of Asia. And it is right there to the right. You can see it. It was actually At the end of what was known as the Silk Road, which was the trade route that went all the way to the, to China.all of the trade that came from Eastern part of the empire came through Ephesus and then was sent on to Rome or other parts of the city. This was a major metropolitan area. Marin and I, a number of years ago, had the chance to go to the ruins of Ephesus. If, if you ever get the chance, I mean, I, I was just telling Marianne this week, I would love to go back.I was reading it again, they've done some new things, it, it's just a phenomenal, ruin, but they've, they've uncovered so much of the city, you really can understand the city layout. It was a city of 250, 000 people, and When a visitor arrived at Ephesus via ship, he walked, as we can pull up that slide, he walked on a half mile, a quarter mile road.As he came in, the water is in the distance, that's where the port was, and as you came in, if we could go to the next slide please,or not, nope, that's not, nevermind, can you go back to that one? Where? Oh, there's the water. I couldn't find the water. Here's the water right here. That's the water. That's the harbor This is a beautiful harbor that came four miles in from the Mediterranean Sea. And as you came, you, you entered in, and even today you see all these columns as you walk this quarter mile in.So here's the picture as you enter the city, you come to this, this gigantic city, you've come down the river, you're looking at it, and here's this, this majestic city that's all built. At the base and on the sides of a mountain, a significant mountain, the city went all around. Actually, the temple of Artemis was in the back side of the mountain.But as you came in, you're looking and you walk down this quarter mile, what was called the Harbor Road. And on every side of you are columns. And statutes and it was one of the only Only streets in the entire empire that was lit up every night. It had a beautiful. hundreds of beautiful ornate lanterns It was just and what you saw at the end of the road as you looked at the road You saw there was the mountain but carved into it was a, a, a theater with 25, 000 seats that was carved in and you're walking in and it just, it was a, a, a humbling scene as you came into this majestic city of a quarter million.People there. It was a city that had five universities, which were basically graduate schools. There was a medical school, a school of theater, a school of philosophy, a school of rhetoric and a school of architecture. The city had an outdoor forum like Ben Hur. You know, the horseshoe, the racist. They had those chariot races here in emphasis.There was an outdoor mall called an Agora. As you went into the city from the harbor immediately to your right was this giant many, many acre A marketplace of 2, 000 stores, 2, 000 shops. Houses that were downtown were three stories tall. They all had running water. They had, of course, then a, a, an effective septic system.And they also had in their walls heated water because the, the, climate would get below 40 degrees in winter season. Sometimes below freezing. And they had a heated system in their walls. It was a cosmopolitan, commercial center, a thriving, affluent, urban center. Second characteristic is the word Artemis.Artemis was the goddess of the city. She was called, Diana by the Romans. The temple, Fort Artemis, actually was built four centuries before this, but it had been burned by fire. Just tell you a quick story about it, because I, if you like history, you'll like this one. If you don't like history, you might even like this one.Alexander the Great came to the city around 340, 350 BC, and he was mocking the people in the town, because their, their goddess's temple had been burned down. And he said, and it actually was an arson that came. It was a wooden structure at the time and burned the city. And he, and he said, what kind of a goddess is this that she can't even protect her own temple?And they said to him, actually, she was away on the day that it happened, attending to a, a special birth in another part of the empire, the day that the, that the temple was burned in. And in in in Ephesus, Alexander himself had been born. So these guys sucked up Alexander brilliantly said, well, the goddess left just for one day because this this heroic figure, he was so taken by it.And in typical egotistical dictator status and response, he provided the funds to rebuild the temple. And from 386, well, about 340 on, they built this majestic temple. This temple, that is artist's rendering of what it looked like. Those columns, of which there were 120. 66 feet tall to put that in perspective if you've ever been in our gym look up into the highest peak It's 32 feet high double that and throw on a few extra spare feet.That's how high all those columns. It was a Humbling structure. It was a structure. That was the the centerpiece of worship throughout that entire Part of the world, it was considered, it was one of the seven ancient wonders of the ancient world. It was located on a plain on the back side of the mountain.And every April, when they had the annual feast festival to Artemis, over a million people came to Ephesus to be a part of the celebration. It was also a city whose religion, this is still on number two, practiced magic and sorcery. There's a passage in Acts chapter 19, verse 19. Were people that had responded to the message of the apostle paul brought brought there It says their magic books and their incantation their books of spells And when they when they turned away from paganism and demonic worship and to christianity They actually burned their books and in contemporary currency Acts 19.19 says that they burned six million dollars worth of magic spell books. And this was a prominent thing in this city. Number three, it was filled with idolatry. Idols always take the form of something that brings people something they want. In this particular city, their idolatry was centered on On Artemis or Diana to the Romans, but basically their idols were power and sex and money.Power was a big part of the letter to the Ephesians. Paul will continually talk about the power that God has. This is something that was highly esteemed and admired by the Ephesians. We'll talk about why and what that meant. Possessions, the city's commerce was directly influenced by the trade and business that the temple of Artemis erected.It wasn't just that she's our girl, if you will, she's our God. It was all that it brought to the city. As a matter of fact, in Acts chapter 20, when Paul, excuse me, Acts chapter 19, when Paul again is seeing all these people turn to Christ, they're turning away from the worship of Artemis. It's the, it's the guys that run the business that come after him, the idol makers, of which they made 50, they sold 50, 000 a year, by reports of the, of those days.And they were the ones that brought them into that large 25, 000 stadium to bring accusations against. It was, it was. It was focused on the loss of income and the the serving of money Pleasure in sex when you go through the city There's a fascinating thing as you're going again around this giant mountain you come around the side on the marble stones, which are huge pieces of stone which form the the roads There's one that has carving in it and the carving actually is the picture of a foot And it's pointing a certain direction And at the top of the foot is a picture of a woman.It's all carved, actually, into the marble. And it was in, in, in ancient Near East, it's known as the first, example of public advertising that anyone has ever found in archaeological studies. And basically, it was advertising. The brothel, a brothel that was seated that was seated at the corner of the two main streets.It was directly across the street from the mall of 2, 000 stores. And this multi story brothel was the place that was, publicly affirmed without the availability of internet driven porn, sexual promiscuity in Ephesus. Was richly available in the large brothels publicly accepted and promoted number four This was a church with deeply taught believers as yousorry As you I think I messed you guys up because I think I brought one of your papers It was a city that Paul arrived here and he had come here originally in 1853 and when he had come he had begun to preach he actually stayed there over three years Over twice as long as any city he had ever gone to.In this book, in the book of Ephesians, there are lofty theological concepts, but they're never really developed in this book like they are in the book of Romans. Concepts, he uses the word justification, election, predestination, redemption, God's mysteries. And there's no explanation. It's obvious that he felt people knew what he was talking about in this church.It's a church where he has deeply trained them. Ephesians is not really a theological treatise. It is a practical application of that theological truth. And we'll talk about that truth, because we don't all understand those things the way that they did. But this was a deeply taught group of people in Ephesus.Number five, the biggest who's who of Christian heroes is found in Ephesus. Along with Paul, who spent more time there than any other cities he ministered in. Apollos, who is a great, they call him Golden Tongue, a great teacher was there. Timothy, the, the, the associate of the Apostle Paul, came there, and as a matter of fact, when Paul wrote to Timothy, his two letters on how to structure a church and how to have the leadership and oversight of the church, 1st and 2nd Timothy, both of them are sent to Timothy while he's serving in Ephesus.Later on, the Apostle John will settle in Ephesus, and tradition has it when you visit Ephesus, there's actually a lot of church history, support. that actually John, who we know was given the care of Mary, the mother of Jesus, they went and lived in Ephesus. And they actually have a stone house there that's a sacred space so you can go and see.John from, at Ephesus wrote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. He's addressing, churches around them. But John was there, Paul was there, Apollos was there, Timothy was there, Mary the mother of Jesus was there. There's a who's who history of this city. Number six, it was the center for Christian mission. It is the center of Paul's ministry.He spent more time there than any other church by far, but he also kept swinging back to it, doing visits. He wrote other letters, at least one we're certain of. Most people believe there were two others by things Paul infers, but the one that made it to the scriptures is the one that we have known as the letter to the Ephesians.But Paul here had, on his, on his missionary journeys, on both the second missionary journey and the third had come here. This particular map is talking about when Paul, when, when John was on the island of Patmos, which is to the left of that red up there, it's a little island, that red area, Is the area where the seven churches that are addressed in Revelation 2 and 3 happen.They were churches that had been started out of the church in Ephesus. And now John is writing to them. This was the center of the spiritual growth and the spiritual sending forth of mission in the early church. Ephesus became the epicenter of church mission in the latter part of the first century.Number seven, Ephesus is the reason Paul is in jail, as he writes. If you remember in Acts chapter 20, Paul visited the Ephesian elders on his way when he was going to Jerusalem. And he's going to Jerusalem, he's taking, he had this group, this entourage of eight buddies. And they were actually individuals from all of the churches, the main churches that Paul had started throughout the empire.And as he had, he's got one from Corinth, he's got a couple from Thessalonica, he's got one from Philippi, he's got one from Ephesus, he's got, he's got a group, and they're all gathered together because they're bringing a financial gift to the believers in Jerusalem. And as they go there, As they're on their way, Paul stops at Ephesus, or a city called Miletus, near Ephesus.The ship harbors there for a day, he's able to meet with these elders, pray with them, cry with them. And then he goes to Jerusalem. And he gets to Jerusalem, and he's got this entourage of eight people. One of whom is from Ephesus, a guy named Trophimus, who's a Gentile. And Paul is with them in the city.And they are observed by Jews from Jerusalem that know Trophimus and had seen Paul. And when they see Paul go into the, the, the holy place in the temple in Jerusalem, which only Jews can go to, they assume that he has taken Trophimus there. And they may, if you remember when we went through the book of Acts, there's a tremendous riot that takes place.They're trying to kill Paul, literally, the Roman soldiers rescue him. From that moment on, Paul is imprisoned. For the next five years, Paul is imprisoned in Jerusalem, then he's sent up to Caesarea, then he's finally sent all the way to Rome. He's now in Roman jail. He's not gotten out. It was just a couple of weeks.Before he had started his imprisonment, he was with the Ephesian elders. And it's actually because of their guy, and it's actually because of their people, the Ephesian Jews in Jerusalem, Paul is in prison. And so you'll notice as we go through the book, he keeps referring to the fact that I'm a prisoner of God, but it's, it's by purpose, God's got a plan for this.Don't feel bad. God's at work, even in the midst of this. The sixth, seventh thing is that one. And the eighth is a circular letter. This is addressed to the church at Ephesus. But it is clearly a letter that is broader than the church of Ephesus. There's an interesting thing. he does not address any specific people in Ephesus.Very unusual. He doesn't, most of his letters he talks to people. Say hello to so and so, you know. Remember me to so and so. In the Philippian church he says tell these two ladies, Jodis and Syntyche. Which some people, because they had a conflict, I heard one preacher call them odious and soon touchy.But the idea is, he's writing to people in those churches, not in Ephesus. He doesn't, it's clear, he doesn't have any specific situations in this church that he addresses. No doctrinal concerns, no concern, you know, do this, a little more of this. He is clearly writing a letter that is not just specific to the Ephesian believers.He is writing a letter that is more of a Circular letter to be read in the other churches. Colossi even talks about read the letter that's from the church of Laodicea, which a lot of people think was this, this letter as well. Number nine template for the Christian life. This letter. This letter is not just written to the people in Ephesus and their particular situation.It is more than any other of Paul's letter, a template for the Christian life for people. In chapters 1 through 3, he talks about what you need to know about who you are in Christ and what you have in Christ. In chapters 4 through 6, he talks about how to live the life, how to, how to, how to live out the practical realities of the Christian experience.It is a template for the Christian life. And the last thing I'll mention, it is the fullest teaching in the New Testament on a host of subjects. Marriage, spiritual warfare, our personal identity in Christ, unity, personal relationships, purity are just some of the doctrines that are most fully, and issues that are most fully discussed here.Okay, those are just some things. Now, I want to come to the, the first couple of verses because here he's, he's introducing us to the people that he's addressing in Ephesus and it's striking the way he addresses them. He actually says to them this statement, to the saints who are in Ephesus. And are faithful in Christ Jesus in verses one and two.Paul sets the table for the next six chapters in the way he identifies these Christians. First of all, he identifies them as saints, and I would argue he is alluding to the reality of what he's going to talk about in chapters one through three, the wealth, the riches that they have as believers in Christ and like just highlight a few of the things he's going to say.But first of all, what is a saint? Well, in New Testament, all believers in Jesus Christ are identified as saints. It technically means holy ones. It is those that are, the same word holy is put in a noun form here, and they are the holy ones. The word holy means to set something apart for a specific purpose.These are the ones that have been set apart to God. They are the ones that are set apart from the world. They are special. They are set to God and from. The world's influence. It is talking about all believers and in Ephesians 4 12. Actually, the word Saints is used a number of times in Ephesus. It says this statement, pastors are responsible to quote, equip the Saints to do the work of the ministry.All the Saints. This is not just a special class that this is all believers that he's talking about. So what is true of Saints? Well, this is what I'm going to talk about in Chapter one through three. And again, I'm just trying to get a I want to give you a snapshot here. What is true of saints? What is the wealth that these called out ones, these holy ones, if you will, set apart to God?What is it that they have been given? What's true of them? And there are three things I'd like to highlight. First of all, they are people who were pursued by the commu commu community of God. In chapters 1, chapter 1, verse 3 to 14, one of the most powerful passages in the New Testament is presented about the unique role of Father, Son, and Spirit.It is a passage that talks about God's pursuit, His pursuit of those that are the called out ones, that are the set apart ones, that all three members of the Godhead are involved and are being connected with God. We'll see that in the next couple of studies as we look in chapters chapter 1 verse 3 through 14 the role of the Father, the role of the Son, the role of the Spirit in calling out his people to be his own.There is an incredible picture in the scriptures that God is one being but is manifested in three persons. Now, we don't know how three persons can be one essence, but we're not God either, so we don't have to figure it all out, but we do have to bow the knee before the truth and the reality. But there are some incredibly practical.Things to learn because in the creation, there is a different role that the father plays that the son plays that the spirit plays in salvation. There's a different role that the father plays and the son plays and the spirit plays in the Christian life. There are different roles that the father plays and the son plays and the spirit place.And one of the beauties of Christian growth is to come to know God in his triune nature. And one of the beauties of Christian growth is to come to know God in his triune nature. My mother in law lives in an apartment with us. She's 95 years old. I didn't ask her permission to share that part, but I did ask permission to share the rest.My mother in law is a believer of many years in Christ, and she regularly spent, and I'm not exaggerating in this, hours, reading her Bible, studying it. She's got books open, and, I went in recently, and I was talking with her. And mom was emotional, just talking about her time with the Lord. And she said, you know, I'm trying so hard to understand the Father and the Son and the Spirit.And she said, she said, and I'm finding as I pray, that I actually get kind of mixed up. Because I'm talking to, to each one. And, and I'm, I'm not sure what I should say to the one. But, but, but, and she's describing, it's so emotional. What she was describing was extremely meaningful to me. I said, Mom, you're describing the fact that you have not only been brought into a relationship with God you have been brought into a Community that the community of the Godhead.It's what theologians and I've said this before to you have have often described as the dance of God, this sense that the father and the son and the spirit have lived eternally together, completely joyful in each other's presence, but that he desired to expand the community and include humans that he made that you are invited in the gospel to join the dance.I remember the story, well I saw this, I was at a wedding a number of years ago, and it was, people were dancing, and it was, I remember one scene, there was a, a man and his wife, that were dancing together, they were older, and it was a relaxed dance, and their adult daughter came over, and, She kind of moved your way in.And all of a sudden, the three of them are dancing together. And it wasn't real vibrant, but it was beautiful. This beautiful acceptance. They're laughing and you can just see the love. They have, they're vibrating together in this dance together. This is God eternally. And he, and, and, and the Godhead says.Let's make man, humans, in our image. Let's let them join in the communion that is ours. The book of Ephesians portrays this picture, in chapter 1 in particular, of the triune God, all of them, coming after you, to say, we're going to call out some to be ours, to join the dance. This is the picture of the called out ones.The first characteristic of the called out ones will be this. They are people who were pursued by the community of God. I was praying a while back. And something really heavy was on my heart. I was really, I really needed God's leading in it. And I found myself just praying to each member of the Godhead.In light of what I theologically know is their role. Asking for their help in particular ways and again, I know God is one but I got done It was a very meaningful prayer time for me And I talked to Marianne and I said I just I just came away from the presence of God and just talking to him intimately father son, would you spirit would you and and her response was Yeah, well, I understand.You're looking for all the help you can get. Well, that's sort of how I felt. You know, I'll take everybody! Guys! Not guys. That's probably disrespectful, but anyway. You get the feel. This is it. You've been invited to the dance. If you're a called out one, if you're a set apart one, if you're a saint, a believer in Jesus.You've been invited to the dance that will last eternally because God wanted you the second thing That's true is there are people who have passed from separation to connection With God in chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. He's going to talk about you were dead dead dead not sick Not sort of sore throat spiritually.You're dead. It's lifelessI've used this illustration. Death in the scripture is always the picture of separation. We actually use it the same way. Physical death is your immaterial part is separate from your material part. If I drop dead right now, what it means is my material part would still be here, but the me, the immaterial, the soul spirit would be separated.We talk about giving up the ghost that the spirit has left his soul has departed That's all pictures of this of what spiritual death is Spiritual death which is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2 is the vertical dimension We have two parts to our immaterial. We have a soul sukkahs. We get psychology from it.It's how we relate On the horizontal level with others and also how we relate to ourselves. The study of psychology is to try to figure that stuff out. You know, what's going on? Why are you agitated? Why can't you get along? But there is also a dimension that is vitally significant. There is the vertical relationship.Animals are said in the scripture to have a soul. They are never said to have a spirit. They do not have the vertical dimension. Spiritual death is that our vertical dimension has been separated. We have been, it's been disconnected. It's what the fall of sin into sin did to humanity. We have been severed and we now have to have reconnection.In Ephesians two, he's going to talk about how these individuals that that have been set apart to God have been reconnected through what Jesus Christ did on the cross through salvation is basically reconnecting you with God, which was lost because of sin. The third thing, they are people who form a new community in the world.There's a mystery in chapter 2, 11, all the way to the end of chapter three, he's going to talk about it. He said, and he says twice, he says, there's a mystery. Nobody saw this baby coming. Nobody saw this one. The Jews and Gentiles would be brought together on the same footing as a way of approaching God.And it would be done through the Jewish Messiah, Christ. Nobody saw it, but he says, Here's what's happening. He's going to use these visuals like there's a wall of partition. It's just fabulous pictures that are there that are going to be taken away. And there's this oneness that takes place so that You can go anywhere in the world, and you can immediately sense a relationship with people as you get to know them and find out that they, too, are a believer in Jesus Christ.It doesn't matter their gender, their ethnicity, their background, their social class, anything. Because you have been brought into this communityabout a year after the, maybe six months after the Eagles won the Super Bowl. I was over in Western PA at a hotel, and I, I got on the elevator. It was a pretty good sized elevator, and the room probably had, the elevator probably had eight, fairly exuberant, enthusiastic African American women that were there on a, on a, some outing.I don't know what it was. And I noticed that they were talking a little bit. About the Eagles. Now, I have two jackets. I have an Eagles jacket, which I wear all the time. I just, we were in Florida this past week. I wore it there. I also have a jacket that was given to me when the Phillies won the World Series, and it's a fabulous jacket.It's the most comfortable jacket I own, but I honestly don't feel worthy to wear it. I'm just not a giant baseball fan. And I feel awkward when people come up and say, Oh, Philly, you know what, I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go, Phil, you know, but I don't root for anybody else. But, but I love the Eagles, and so I wear my jacket is comfortable, too.But, well, so, of course, what? You know what happened in this elevator? So. So, I immediately feel this bond with these women and I did something that's quite honestly outside of my comfort zone. This is more of a Pastor Jared type of thing. But I was so excited with these ladies that all of a sudden I started doing the Eagles fight song.Fly Eagles. And the whole elevator is singing. I mean by the time we hit the floor, you know, You know, what happened there? There's a community. These are my people. There's something. I don't know him and I oh, what we even got better was at the end They're saying they're saying Oh bless you bless number.Oh and Christians, too This is awesome.If you're a saint if you're set apart to God You're also set apart to a community of people all over the worldAnd it's all because of the work of the Godhead in your life But he says something else here. He says this. He says to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. He says you'll know them because they're the faithful ones. And this is really what he's going to talk about in the last three chapters of the book.Their walk. I there, this is how chapter 4 begins, verse 1. I therefore, prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Their walk, we will find in the book of Ephesians, is a whole life thing. There's no option given to compartmentalize your life.He's going to talk about, these are just topics that he's going to talk about when he says, Live worthily. He's just basically saying, man, be who you are. Be what you've been made to be in Christ. He's going to talk about our money. He's going to talk about our eating. This is all in here. He's going to talk about our marriages, our jobs, our way of talking with people, our way of treating people, our calling to forgive people.He's going to talk about our emotional lives. He's going to talk about our sexual purity. Matter of fact, he's going to make this statement. Among you, there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality. Well, I've told you about the brothels that were at every major street corner. Hundreds of people available to you.They had their own form ofpromiscuity, just like our culture does. Our culture maybe is scarier, because it can be done in total anonymity behind a screen. But he says, if you're one of these that has been set apart to God, Here's what he says again in chapter four and five. Among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality.The followers of Jesus must have an entirely different standard of sexual purity than the culture in which we live. Their walk, our walk, is not compartmentalized. The walk is a whole life thing. The old theologians had an expression, it's a Latin term, It's Coram Deo. Deo means God. Coram means in the presence of.Coram Deo was what they called believers to live. And it literally meant to be continually conscious of God's presence. To see God's involvement and live for God's glory in all parts of our lives. This is Coram Deo. That our lives are not compartmentalized. Yeah, this is, this is God's part. But, I'm not ready to have him over here.Sylvia Fraser, well known novelist, wrote a book, My Father's House. It tells of the tributes paid at her father's funeral. He was a man of proper and regular habits. A Christian man, who didn't smoke or drink, who helped people with their grocery shopping, who never took the Lord's name in vain. A polite and neighborly man, Mr.Frazier, and these are quotes, kept his snow shoveled, his leaves raked, and his bills paid. He also sexually molested his daughter Sylvia from age 4 to 12, threatening her first with the loss of her toys, he'd throw them in the furnace. Then with killing her cat, then with sending her away to an orphanage if she were to disclose their secret.Mr. Fraser was able to live by compartmentalizing his life. He could seal off one part of his personhood from another just like an ocean liner can sometimes keep afloat, even when damaged, if the crew seals off the flooded compartments. Mr. Fraser is an extreme case of our ability to compartmentalize. But the Bible's repeated admonition to be wholehearted and to be undivided in our pursuit of God reminds us of the challenge to Coram Deo through compartmentalize in each one of our lives.When Paul wrote Ephesians, he's saying, guys, It's a whole life thing I'm talking about. It speaks to every part. The second thing is, their walk is foundationally an internal thing, ultimately. The focus of chapter 4 through 6 is practical Christianity, but it isn't just behavioral. It's heart driven.Motives, underlying pride, envy, selfish ambition, bitterness, is actually influencing our best actions. As we grow in Christ, and I do believe we need to change habits when we come to Jesus, we need to be continually letting the Lord, redirect us and change our behavior, our responses, whether it's emotional, whether it's our relationship, of course He's changing us all the time.But what you find out, and those of you that have walked with the Lord for a number of years know exactly what I'm going to say. When I say it, you will. You begin to understand That your own capacity to grow in Christ is limited by your own self deception. That we want to hide what is ugly, and shameful, and embarrassing to us, even to ourselves.But God is determined to free us from that part of ourselves. He is determined to turn us into transparent, vulnerable people that say, I'm really struggling with fear. I'm really struggling with lust. I'm real. I need I need brothers and sisters to come alongside of me. I've got issues, some of which I'm deceiving myself to the reality of it.I'm reading a book that I just love the book. It's by Rebecca Pippard. It's called Hope has his reasons with the subtitle. Our search to satisfy our deepest longings. She tells the story of being in a Bible study that she had really enjoyed and I'll read it to you. There was a delightful woman in the group, someone who taught me a great deal about living for God.However, she was of the school, though she may not have realized it, that it is a sin to admit one is a sinner. She would, of course, say she believed in the doctrine of sin, but she never spoke of anything but victory. One day, the leader of the study asked us, What do you think controls you that shouldn't?Insightful question, actually. We knew one another well by then, so there was enough trust to really be able to speak openly. But the victorious woman spoke up at once. The besetting sin of my life, she said, is that I just don't write as many letters as I should. There was a long silence. Not surprisingly, no one shared after that.The lid on the discussion had been clamped shut. Mind you, I did say and believe she was a delightful woman. Yet I wanted to ask her though. I didn't is that why Christ died because we didn't write enough letters That seems like a stiff price to pay just because we lacked enough stamps What happens as you grow in Jesus?You're able to say I see the seed of every known sin in my own heart I see how much fear has influenced my life. I see how how What I thought was was just strong getting it doing it the right way has so much pride in it I see so many areas that I just deceive myself and God just keeps taking back another layer of the onion and So you grow in the Christian life?And if you're really growing the Christian life sometimes you say, you know I think I'm a worse person than when I started this thing You're not. I mean, I don't think you are. No, you're not. You're just being allowed to see more that Jesus died for, and more that Jesus wants to say, Let me in there. Let me in there!And watch what I'll do through my spirit. Paul is saying their work is an internal thing, and last, their war is a real thing. In Ephesians, Paul knew of shopkeepers, town officials, tradesmen, and slaves who had experienced this new life in Christ. In his mind's eye, he saw them throughout the city and the countryside, the saints in Ephesus.In the X Men series, X Men series, Charles Francis Xavier, also known as Professor X, is the one that has this, this thing called Cerebro. It's a database, but it's connected when you put this, like, helmet like thing for X Men fans. I apologize right now. but This thing enables him to see in the whole world, and it shows up on like a planetarium ceiling all over the world where there are mutants, people that have these special powers that are a little different from humans, and, but it'd be very dangerous if people, if, if people from the evil side, evil mutants, evil humans, were able to see where these people were.He's able to see them because he wants to help them, invest in them, some of them get into his school.We're like that as believers. We're scattered. We're those lights that are all over the world.The frightening thing is our enemy does know where we are. He can identify all the lightsand his hatred of God is tangible and it's real and there's not a lot he can do against God. So he goes to his next option, which is the people that God has set apart for himself. In the book of Ephesians, Paul isn't going to mince words on the fact that there's a war going on. There's an enemy that in this life that Jesus gives us, which is the whole theme of this series, there is opposition.There is adversary. There will be suffering. You will suffer in ways you would not suffer if you didn't know Christ.Paul writes this letter to help us live out the life Jesus gives us. Those doing so live as faithful saints. As those who see the uniqueness of their position in Christ separated to God and from the world as those who are seeking to align their lives under Christ, to glorify him in every part of their lives.They're, they're, they're trying to live out as faithful, set apart ones. This is the life that Jesus gives us. Lord,thank you for setting the table in these first couple of verses. They give us a, an intro to all the richness that's ahead in this book.Father, I worship you for authoring it all.I worship you, Lord Jesus, that you accomplished it all. You're the Redeemer, you're the Rescuer, you're the one who took on flesh to become one of us,and God the Spirit, I worship you as the Applier of it all. That you're the one that enables us to live out the Gospel today, to face our sin, to be vulnerably telling other people, I don't have it together. I'm more screwed up than any of you really know. And our prayers become different for each other because we pray with what's real.Father, Son, and Spirit, thanks for inviting us to be a part of the community of the Godhead. To be a part of the dance.Lord, we love you. We love to do life with you. We love living in this life that Jesus gives us. We praise you for it, in Jesus name. Amen.
Ephesians 1:1-3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing gin the heavenly places,
Sermon Transcript:Morning everybody invite you to take your bibles to the book of Ephesians if you have one of these little babies Uh, you can use that i'm going to be using that this morning. It is as as Roland already mentioned the scripture journal of the book of Ephesians And as many of you did during our series through the book of acts Hope you'll get a hold of one of these And be reading through Ephesians writing down your notes in the margin um Really looking forward to this series.Um, it is a new series and today we're going to look at the theme of the letter uh next week, uh, we're going to be going back and Giving us some historical context of what's going on what's happening Um why that matters but today I just would like to introduce the book's theme and the book's theme is the life Jesus gives you Um in the scripture journal There is a an outline here.I think we can bring up that slide that is in each of these that we put together It basically leads you through the three sections of the book of Ephesians Which talk about the life that Jesus gives us first of all the wealth It talks about the riches that we are given as believers. It talks about our wealth in chapters 1 through 3 Who you are and what you have Because of Jesus Christ, of being in Jesus.Then we're going to look at the walk. And that is chapter 4, down to the middle of chapter 6. How we should live in Jesus. It actually begins in chapter 4, verse 1. It says, now in light of who you are, live like it. Now, uh, live these realities out in your life. And gets into the very practical part of the book and day to day experience.And then the last part of the book of Ephesians talks about the war. The opposition that we face. In Jesus. And we're going to be following that through. Dave Merck, uh, who did a family life seminar here about a month ago, Um, is a missionary to Brazil. He's also a Bible teacher there. And, excuse me, when he was here, he taught us some hand motions that, uh, he has used in teaching through the book of Ephesians.And they were, they were really good. And Pastor Jared has been teaching the book of Ephesians in youth groups. and has taught the youth these motions. In a moment, we're going to have Jared and the students present those to us. We're going to be trying to teach you those as we go through the series.Today, we're just using the video to introduce them to you, but if you look also at the logo, logo, logo, logo, I wanted to say logos, uh, the logo that is associated with this series. All of those hand motions are there. But I'd like to have you watch this little video put together by our young people, most of whom are on the winter retreat this weekend, so we can't rave on them, but they did a super job presenting an overview in 60 seconds of the book of Ephesians using hand motions to help us remember it.Here it is. Here's a quick summary for Ephesians. Salutations, a unique Christian greeting for both Jews and Gentiles. Adoration, praising God for our spiritual blessings in Christ. Intercession, prayer to understand the blessings we have received. Salvation, by grace through faith, not by our own doing.Reconciliation, to God and between Jews and Gentiles. Proclamation, with the mystery revealed that Jews and Gentiles are co heirs in Christ. Intercession, for love and power through faith. Christ Jesus, walking in unity, walking in holiness, walking in love, walking in life, walking in wisdom, walking in family, walking in the workplace, standing in the victory.Final greetings of grace and peace. They did good, didn't they? And I forgot to mention. If you had been, if you had had this outline, they led us right through the outline, all the scripture text is there. We'll see that again as we go through the series, I'm sure. The theme of the letter is Paul is writing to this church and actually local churches around them.It is a general letter, which means, though it is addressed to the church at Ephesus, it clearly was designed to be a letter that is used in other churches. As well. And in this letter he talks about the life that Jesus gives us, and I'd like to read verses one through three of chapter one by way of introduction this morning, and look at what he introduces us right out of the gate about this life that is found in Jesus.Ephesians chapter one verses one through three. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.We're gonna stop there, and that's what we're gonna talk about this morning, but first I'd like to, to pray.Lord, we do come to you, the Holy One. Even as we sang about earlier. We come to you, the one that is unique, spectacular, set apart, and God we come delighting to hear you speak into our lives the truths of what we have in this life that Jesus has given to us. So, Lord, as we embark on this series, I commit this series to you, of all the pastors that will be preaching, of all the studies and sermons that we present, Lord, may ultimately they cause us to fall more in love with Jesus Christ.We might adore you more. That we might worship you more, Lord Jesus, for the life that you came to provide for us, in which now we are allowed and enabled to live out through you. Guide us to that truth this morning, I pray in Jesus name. Amen.Paul starts his letter after introducing himself in verse 3 with this statement, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It's an interesting way to start a letter, right? I mean, it's an interesting way to say, uh, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, more than you could ever imagine.And so it begs the question, what is a blessing? What does that mean? Because, founded in this, is going to be these three chapters, talking about this life that we have been given. And he says, these are blessings that I'm going to be talking about. And these are going to be the blessings that you are empowered then, to live out your life on the horizontal level in chapters four through six.So what is a blessing? Well, we use the word blessing in a variety of ways. We use it to wish somebody, in the sense of wishing somebody well. Somebody sneezes and somebody says, bless you. You know where that comes from? It actually comes, most people believe, from the, um, Seasoned in the Roman era with the bubonic plague as it swept through when people would sneeze it was a sign that they probably had caught the disease and someone would would say Bless you and the sense of it was may God help you may God protect you that it was a well wishing statement We use the word, this is more, um, probably in the South.A term of empathy. Well, bless your heart. Why you really tried out there, bless your heart. It's like someone giving a big hug. You know, here it would be God looking down on people and saying, Why, they're just a mess. Bless their heart. Uh, poor pitiful things. There's a third way we use it. You hear athletes say this all the time.After having a good game, how are you able to play? Well, I'm just blessed, man. Just blessed. You know, God's blessed me. That's actually the closest of the three, but it actually means much more than that. The word bless, and it's used three times in verse three, is a combination of two words in the original.The word well, And the word, to speak. It is speaking well. To, when it says, first of all, Blessed be God. It means, praise be God. Speak well of God. I see God's glory is all in this. But then it says, God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. God gives us things that are well spoken of, that are good things, that are profitable things.As a matter of fact, what he says is We are blessed with all things that are good, and that are profitable. It is an absolute statement. Everything your soul could need and long for, every single blessing imaginable is given to you in this life that I am going to remind you of in this letter, Paul says. I want you to know right at the beginning, this God that we bless, that we speak well of, has given you every spiritual blessing that you need.These blessings are a description of the life that Jesus gives to us. And there are three things about this life that I'd like to just highlight here in this intro sermon. Where this life is found, what this life is, and how you know if you have this life. Where this life is found, well in verse 3 it makes it clear, these blessings are found in Jesus.It says in That phrase is used 35 times in the book of Ephesians. It's used in verse 3, in Christ. In verse 4, it says, in him, talking of Christ. In verse 6, in the beloveds, talking of Christ. In verse 7, in him, and 31 other times. Our connection in Jesus is the focus. It is not just when you receive Jesus, you get Jesus as your King, that you get Him as a King to obey, as a Lord to follow, as a Savior to love.He says, you are actually put into Him. You are in Jesus. That means two things. Number one, it means that you are in Jesus legally. In Romans, excuse me, in 1st Corinthians chapter 15, verse 22, it says this, For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. There are two spiritual families on planet Earth.It's always been that way, ever since the Garden of Eden. The family of Adam and the family of Christ. Whatever is true of your ancestor, Adam, or your ancestor, Christ, is true of you. In Romans chapter 5, it says if you are united with Adam, you are united with him in his spiritual death. You also are separated from God.That all the realities that were true of Adam in his, his, his post, uh, rebellion state. That's where we are, but then he says in Romans chapter 6, but there's another identity you can be in Christ your lineage your ancestry spiritually now is taken from Adam to Jesus and Romans chapter 6 says you now share and are united with Jesus in his resurrection.That he experienced spiritual eternal death for you, and you are now in him as you have been raised from judgment and condemnation. Here's what it means to be in Christ. God treats you as just as free from condemnation as if you died on the cross. As if you experienced eternal punishment for your sins.And now stand in complete acceptance with God, just as Jesus does. He says, in Jesus, all Jesus medals are pinned to your chest. That you stand in Him. And what is true of Jesus is true of you in your standing with God. If you haven't embraced Jesus as your Savior, you are in, where all humanity begins, you are in Adam.In a state of separation from God, under condemnation of sin. We are in Jesus legally, he says. And so you have all the blessings that come because of this life that you now have experienced in Christ. But you are also in Jesus vitally. Every spiritual benefit is in you by His Spirit dwelling in you. The Holy Spirit is living within you.The very life of Jesus is within you through His Spirit. You'll spend your whole life, your eternal life, living out these benefits that He's talking about here. As He says, every spiritual blessing is yours because you are in Christ.This transpired, not as a process, but as a moment of time. Many people today, if you ask them, are they a Christian? Or, uh, uh, uh, do you know God? Well, I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm trying to get there. I'm doing my best. Doing these things. But the issue is, you are either in Jesus, or not. You're either in Jesus, Or you are in Adam, in that state of separation.You are in Jesus, you are either adopted into God's family through Jesus, or not. You are either forgiven, or not. You are either justified, or not. You are either born again, or not. It is not a, a process. It is a moment of time in which this takes place. Now, of course, this doesn't mean it's necessarily a spectacular moment.It doesn't, it actually doesn't mean that there isn't, for some people, a, a, a seeming journey. But there is still that moment of time. I remember reading the story of C. Everett Koop, the, the Surgeon General of the United States. And at the time he was a doctor at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. And when he was there, his wife would drag him on Sunday nights, that was his word, to church, um, at the 10th Presbyterian Church, where a great preacher was named Donald Gray Barnhouse.And Everett Koop tells the story of going week after week, and he said, I found myself disagreeing with virtually everything the man had to say. But then he recounts that after a year, a year and a half, he said, I found myself saying, I agree with everything he's saying. He said, intellectually, I became convinced and began to acknowledge that my own life reflected the condition of humanity that was being portrayed.Eventually, he says, at some point, and he says, I can't remember when. I don't remember which sermon series I was listening to. I don't remember the circum, but I, there was this moment when it all became clear to me and I knew that I had embraced, and he says this, I stopped trusting in myself to be able to earn my way to God at some point.I trusted in what Jesus did for me, and I accepted Jesus as my Savior and my Lord. The point is, that there was a point, there was a moment when, when it came clear to him. He wasn't sure when that was. He just knew that he had passed from being, if you will, in Adam, to being in Christ. That he now belonged to Christ, that God's forgiveness was his, and he had experienced that reality in his life.There is a point. You are either in or out. At some point, that may change. But becoming in Christ is a moment in your life, and at that moment, Life is received by grace and what he's saying here all these spiritual blessings I'm going to talk about are for the individual that has changed their standing some of them may have been very religious very dogmatic in their going to church and zealous But they still have never embraced Christ as Savior and Lord.They still are in Adam. But there's that point when they cross over and it is then that these spiritual blessings become available in Christ. The second thing is, the second question is, what this life is. And here, verse 3, looks ahead. Now, remember who's writing this letter, right? This is a guy named Paul.Here's his heritage. Paul was an individual who had, in his religious fanaticism, killed people. He would later, after embracing Jesus into his life as Savior, he would spend lots of times, and a lot of time with relatives and friends, of people. Whose relatives and friends he had seen executed and had been part of making that happen or had seen them financially socially Devastated he spent time with those people the self loathing and guilt must have been deep and excruciating for Paul He did not exaggerate when in one of his letters he said I am the, literally, number one, it's actually the word protost, I am the foremost of sinners.Some versions say I am the chief of sinners. It actually means, literally, I am number one sinner. Nobody could be worse than me. So how is Paul able to, to live with and deal with that reality in his life? It is the blessings, it is the identity, it is the sense of what it means to stand in Christ and to imbibe the, the, the drink of, of this standing that I have in Christ.illustrate to you a couple because what Paul is going to do in verse 3 through 14 He's going to do in a few other passages in this book and he does many times in the New Testament But here is one of the lengthiest ones He is going to talk about some of those every blessing that are available to the child of God.And I just want to sort of whet your appetite. I'm just going to mention two of them that he talks about here. Just to try to say, this is just two of the blessings. There are blessings that he describes in this passage. There are other blessings he will describe in the remainder of the book. There are other blessings he will talk about in the New Testament.There are other blessings, undoubtedly, that are not in the Scripture, that God knows are ours, that Maybe we couldn't comprehend them right now. But he says, every blessing has been given to you that your soul could possibly desire or need. Here's just a couple. He says in verse 4, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons.Through Jesus, being in Jesus, God adopted us into His family as His kids. Well, that means some amazing things. It means, first of all, we have access to God that we didn't have before. Jesus makes God your father. You're his child, not just a servant or a worker or a citizen of his kingdom, but his child.With the intimacy of the access that you have, a claim on him as your father that you never had before, he becomes your dad, your Abba, if you will, as scripture describes it. We have access to God. There is investment from God as his adopted child. He talks about how He disciplines his kids how he shows his love.He says in a variety of passages by bringing things into their lives to change us, to train us, to shape us. He does that because we've been adopted into his family, and then he gives us an inheritance. You'll notice in verse 4, he makes an interesting statement. He says, God the Father adopted us to himself as sons.Now, why did Paul say this? As sons? I mean, is it a sexist statement? Why not use a neutral general gender statement? Neutral gender statement. Why emphasize it as sons? He does it intentionally. In the Roman Empire at this time, women had almost no capacity to inherit. There were some exceptions, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is why many, uh, fathers, if they didn't have a son, they would adopt one.So they had one, they could be sure they could pass on their, their inheritance to And Paul is emphasizing, God adopted us as ones who are guaranteed his inheritance. He even go, he talks about the fact that, that those who enter his family, enter as full heirs. The new heavens and the new earth that are one day coming, they're yours.If you stand in Christ, you'll be able to walk on a cosmos that is the Garden of Eden, extended throughout the entire cosmos. He says that's part of your inheritance, but you've already got a down payment. It's described in verse 14. That down payment is the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. He says the Holy Spirit, what is He?He's the down payment of the inheritance you're going to get. Just a picture of what God is willing to give to us. That's just, we're adopted. He also says in verse 7, as just a second example of these blessings, we're redeemed. In Him we have redemption through Jesus blood. I read recently of a guy that was in New York City, and he was telling the story of how he didn't know the city too well, and he left his car, In a place that he thought was okay to park, and it turned out it wasn't okay to park.And he went back to get his car, and his car had been, uh, towed and was now impounded. And I was reading the story, and the guy was, right, sharing it in a humorous way, but the thing that caught my attention was he talked about where he went to. And he went to a place that was called the Redemption Center.You actually had to pay your fine. To get your car out of the enslavement, captivity. It's held there, it's impounded. He couldn't get his car back without paying the price. Jesus Christ provided a way that people could be free from the enslavement. Of sin in its penalty and its power now the interesting thing is almost every religion of the world perceives humans as in Enslavement, I remember reading of gandhi talking about this and he was actually commending.christianity Even though he, he, he was a practicing Hindu. But he, he talked about how Christianity really helped with the enslavement of people. And by that he was saying, you know, he said both Eastern and Western religions agree at this point. That there is this enslavement. We're slaves to selfishness.We're slaves to our ego. And Gandhi felt that Christianity provided a way for us to overcome our enslavement through Christ. But it was in this way. It was by way of example. That Jesus Christ came, and he said he was the great example of living a selfless life, an egoless life. That Jesus showed us how to be freed by forgiving others, by loving others, by serving others, even dying for others.And Gandhi basically said, if you follow Jesus You'll be free. The problem is it doesn't work. Matter of fact, the more you come alongside of Jesus Christ And look at his life and say the man was not ruled by selflessness of selfishness The man wasn't ruled by self absorption and pride and unkindness and ego It doesn't make you say therefore.I'll be that guy. It makes you feel I can't be that guy it actually reveals How enslaved we are. We don't find liberation from our enslavement. By looking at the life of Jesus, we see it by embracing the death of Jesus. What liberates us is what He did for us in His death. That He paid the penalty for us.He redeems. He adopts. And countless other blessings are provided to help the child of God see God has been about this process, even from eternity past, to place you in this new standing in Jesus Christ. See who you are. See what you have. See the life, the blessings. So how do you know if you have received this life?It's an interesting phrase that's mentioned in verses 3 through 14. As the person is looking at these blessings that have been provided for us, Paul keeps saying this at the end of each section, to the praise of God's glory, to the praise of God's glory. You see all of this with The lens that Paul did, if you have embraced Christ as your life.You don't just believe in grace, you're stunned by it. You are enthralled by grace. You know you are getting what you don't deserve in grace. You know that you are enslaved, separated. Set apart from God, you know it's your own fault and your own sins. But the story of someone sacrificing themself for you is mesmerizing.Because it's not earned or deserved, it's to the praise of His glory. Within us there is the awareness that such action is the greatest expression of love and grace. There's no more powerful moral messaging, no more impactful story than to hear of someone loving others enough to die for them. Someone like Harry Potter's mom, Lily, who gave her life to protect her boy and then later when Harry is talking to Dumbledore and saying, why can't the enemy Voldemort, why can't he destroy me?And he says, your mother's love rescued you. You're reading through the book as a 60 year old and say, yeah, that's right. That's right. Desmond Doss was a conscientious objector in World War II. They made a movie about him called Hacksaw Ridge. Great movie, actually. And it's the story of a guy that was a conscientious objector, but he felt compelled to go to World War II.And he ended up getting in a company, which is a company of 130 to 150 soldiers. Captain is over it, and as a conscientious objector, he was unwilling to carry a rifle, certainly would not use a rifle. And so he went in the medical corps, but they still wanted them to carry rifles, and he would not. And so, everybody in his company were angry with him, were frustrated with him.Even his captain, the one that was over the company, was constantly belittling him, because he thought, this is not the guy that's going to have our back. He's a wimp, he's not strong, he's fearful, and all these things. And Desmond Doss stood his ground, and they actually went to the island of Okinawa, and it's a true story, the movie depicts it.There was a cliff called Hacksaw Ridge. It was almost straight up and down, and on top of it was a plateau where the enemy were encamped, and they had to take the plateau because it gave them, elevated ground for all of the areas on the island, so they had to take this ridge. So the company was taken up, they were, they were on the ridge, and they were decimated by the enemy.They were just overwhelmed. And so the ones that could escape back down the ridge got ropes, but many of them had been riddled to pieces. And one of those that was still there that could have escaped but did not escape was a guy named Desmond Doss. And Desmond Doss, Corporal Doss. began to go after soldiers that were wounded and incapable of getting to the edge, getting some of them hundreds of yards in.there was enemy fire all the time. There was mortar fire. And he went back and would drag people, as some he carried on his back. He would take them to the edge, he was the only one ambulatory at the moment, and he got 75 soldiers over the course of 12 hours, that he got to the edge of this large precipice, tied him with a rope, dropped him down, and then they would bring, he would bring the rope back up and do it with another one.At the end of the 12 hours, he, he finally went down. He couldn't find anybody else. His body was riddled with wounds, shrapnel from mortar fire. And one of the guys that he saved was his captain. We look at a story like that of a man that is willing to rescue others at the cost to themselves. We say this is the ultimate picture of, of, of, of human beauty.sacrifices oneself for others. What Paul is saying to us is this, Jesus Christ did that for you to secure for you eternal glory and love. He does not ask you to renovate your life or earn his grace. The life he offers is to those who say, I see my sin, my guilt, my rebellion, my pride. I see my brokenness. I see my connection to Father Adam.I'm no different from him. A rebel living apart. I see myself lying on the battle torn plateau and I see my rescuer come. I don't know where you are this morning, but I really felt prompted this morning as we start this series that is going to present in such beautiful, a beautiful portrayal of the Christian life as it is designed.The life we're given in Jesus to say to you these realities, this life that Jesus offers to people. Is found for in those that have turned from being in Adam separated from God and have embraced Jesus Christ and seen I'm a broken soldier on the field, helpless to earn my way out to get away from everlasting destruction.My rescuer came for me. Embracing Jesus Christ moves one in a moment of time from in Adam separated. To in Christ, eternally blessed by His grace. When I received Jesus Christ as my Savior in college, was the easiest thing I ever did, and it was the hardest thing I ever did. Easy because it's a gift, right?I don't have to do anything. It was offered to me, but Jesus Christ did it all for me. But I had to say, God, I come to you with, with empty hands. I come with brokenness. I come with desperation. I come as a sinner, separate. I come as one who needs a rescuer. One who would adopt me into his family. One who would, Pay the price for me to be delivered from my captivity in my lifestyle and brokenness I don't know where you are today We're launching into a really cool series in a really cool bookBut the messaging here is ultimately for those that are in jesus. Let's pray together lord You look in every person's heart here in mount laurel here in collingswood Others watching online. Lord, this life that Jesus offers us is staggering in its beauty, in its grace. God, I ask as you look into the heart of each person here that your spirit would even now be prompting people saying, I had you in this room.I had you listening to this sermon because I want to be your rescuer. I sent Jesus for you. Lord, those that you look at and see their hearts in that state, my cry is that you would draw them into surrender this morning to Jesus Christ. To say, Lord, yes, today I want to embrace Jesus Christ as my Savior.To stand forgiven, to stand redeemed, adopted, to embrace the life that Jesus died, that I could live. With every head bowed, every eye closed this morning, maybe you hear and God is speaking into your life right now. You say, God, I want that life that Jesus Christ came to provide. I don't deserve it? I'll never earn it, but I humbly embrace the gift that Jesus came to die and to offer me through his death and resurrection.If you're like that this morning with nobody looking around but me and God, I'm just going to say, Pastor Mark, I'm lifting my hand just to say, would you pray for me that I will embrace, I want to embrace Jesus Christ as my Savior. If you're like that this morning, would you just lift up your hand? Say yes, would you pray for me?Lord, I pray for these hands that are raised for the souls and the lives they're connected to. Lord, how I pray that your spirit might bring the truth of embracing Jesus Christ as Savior into their lives. That this life that Jesus gives would be theirs. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Every Sunday we close our service with a song and every Sunday we have people standing up from our prayer team that are here To just pray with you, anything you want to come and share, as simple or as profound a request as it might be, they would love to pray with you.It may be that some of you that raised your hands this morning said, I'd like to have somebody pray with me about my receiving Christ as your Savior. If He prompts you to come, won't you come as we close our service together? Thank you. Let's stand.
Romans 8:31-34What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Sermon Transcript:Morning, everybody. I invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 8. God willing, as Mike mentioned, next Sunday we're going to begin a brand new series on the book of Ephesians. Really very much excited about it. You'll be hearing more about it and we've got some things we're going to be doing to introduce it, next week.But this morning I wanted to, as we have a chance to celebrate the Lord's Supper, Go to Romans chapter eight, and we're going to read together verses 31 to 39. I'd like to read that for you. One of the great passages of the New Testament. Romans 8 verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?He who 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? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Father, we come to you this morning.Lord, we gather in this room with so many different Needs represented here in mount laurel here in collingswood to those that are watching online lord We come to this mountain peak Passage and think of the things that are told to us because of the gospel of jesus christ lord Speak into our lives this morning.There are those that feel condemned others that feel isolated others that feel overwhelmed with opposition. Lord, you know each heart. God speak truth into our lives today as only you can. In Jesus name, Amen. Pastor Ben just finished a fantastic series of three messages on the subject of Christian suffering.And while I considered the series deeply impactful and a powerful presentation of both the rawness of suffering and the beauty of its place in our lives as we seek to know God. I did regret one unfortunate. Ben shared his belief that John 17 was the most important portion of Scripture. Even going so far as to denigrate my belief that Romans 8 is the mountaintop passage for the believer.Well, the gauntlet, the gauntlet has been thrown down, or the compete tab on the Apple Watch has been engaged. This morning I'd like to share with you the final section of Romans 8, Romans 8, 31 to 39. And find Paul in his joyous conclusion. To his teaching of chapters 1 through 8 of Romans chapters 1 through 8 have talked about begun with our our State because of sin and our separation from God and the brokenness of our lives and of our world because of it He's gone on to depict the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit engaged in the process of rescuing us, of entering our lives in this grand rescue mission of deliverance.It is arranged by God the Father. It is accomplished by God the Son in His work on the cross. And it is applied by God, the Holy Spirit, as we have seen, even in chapter six through eight. And now we come to verse 31 to 39, and he's summarizing the confidence that we can have because of the gospel. I've called this sermon, The Greatest News.Of the good news. It's the application that he's giving to us in these verses and I want to have these thoughts of reverberating through our minds and souls as we come to the Lord's table this morning. It is a passage where he depicts four great truths that are results of the work that God has done in this rescue mission and that speak to four basic fears in our lives.The fear of opposition, the fear of limitation, the fear of condemnation, and the fear of isolation. I'd like to look at those quickly, briefly this morning. The first thing we find is in verse 31, God is for you. It speaks to the issue of opposition in our lives. He says, if God is for you. And literally in the original.The, the, class condition actually that is used here is assumed reality. It better is translated since. God is for you. God is for you. To have God for you means a couple of things. First of all, it means God has a special interest in you. He's speaking here to people that have imbibed the truths that he's presented in the book of Romans and have embraced personally Jesus Christ as their Savior for their sins.That they have been declared righteous through his work because of what he's done on the cross. And he says God is for you. God has a special interest in you because of that relationship to Jesus Christ. To have a special interest means that he wants them to succeed, to do well. It doesn't mean he's, he's against other people.It just means there is a special identification that you have in God's sight. God is for some people in a unique way. This is a reality that we can cling to when times are tough and disappointing. The, the, the reason that Romans 8, 28 says what it does, that all things are working together for good, for those people.Because God is uniquely and specifically for them, for you. If you've embraced Christ into your life. Years ago, Marianne was at a baseball game, I was there too, and she was in a conversation with the lady next to her. And they were engaged in this conversation, and Marianne, both, both, both Marianne and the woman had a boy that was playing on the team.And as Marianne looked past her shoulder, as the lady is animatedly talking to Marianne, she said, Your, your son's coming up to bat. And so, of course, the mother turned. She's watching her boy. Now, later on, the mother was, was talking to somebody else. And our son came to bat. Now, Marian did not turn to the mother and say, My son's coming up to bat.Because she did not assume that this woman would have the same degree of identification with our boy. We certainly did. As her boy we get this and God is saying For my kids I am for them in a unique sense I have a special interest in their lives. Secondly, if God is for you, it means He's on your side.He said if God is for you who can stand against you the obvious implication implication is that Some people are but they don't matter he's saying if God is for you The other side doesn't have anything that can really stand against him Paul reminds them Look, there are going to be times when you feel overwhelmed.You're going to be overwhelmed by darkness You're going to be overwhelmed by pain. You're gonna be overwhelmed by by people's treatment of you You're gonna feel alone in your faith You're gonna need some wins and you're gonna cry with the psalmist. Lord, I just need to show me a sign of your favor. I need you to stand with me.And the Lord says, I want to remind you in this verse. I am for you. I stand with you. All that I am is available to you. Psalm 124 says it this way, If the Lord hadn't been on our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us. The flood would have engulfed us.The torrent would have swept over us. The raging waters would have swept us away. But God was for us. The psalmist is sayingwe for a number of years had a Pastors area pastors meeting of lead pastors in the area that would gather here on Wednesday mornings and one of the guys that was there Terrell person over here from Jacob's Chapel a great friend and brother and Terrell one time and Terrell had what we called Terrellisms There were things he would say that he would, he just had a way with the words.And he could say, I remember, I wrote it down. here's what he said. He was praying. And he says, Lord, we're in a battle. We're in a fight. But we know it's a fixed fight. You're gonna win. And I remember all the, yeah. Paul's saying yeah, you need some of the yeah, but God's for you God's with you and there's times when you just feel I don't know if anybody is for me the people I I just I feel opposed.I feel broken. I feel misunderstood I the opposition seems big it seems hurtful. It seems confusing And God comes along and He says, I'm for you. There is a special interest I take in my children. There is a special sense in which I line up on their team, on their side. The first thing we find speaks to the fear of opposition, the reality that God is for us.The second thing He says, and this is all related to the, the first eight chapters of stuff. The second thing He says is God will Supply. He said he that did not in verse 32, he did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How will he not with him freely give us all things? He says. God is the one that did not spare his own son now We use the word spare in a couple of different ways.One of the ways is you know Somebody might be on a street corner and say hey, mister Can you spare a dollar and the idea is do you have enough to share out of your abundance? You know, you can can you spare me one out out of what you have? That's one sense of we can use the word spare but another one and I think it's the one that is used here Is the way we would talk if you've seen like a horrible accident and bodies are mangled and you just say I'm gonna spare you the details.I'm just sparing you a description of the scene. Meaning is I'll withhold something horrible from you.God didn't do that with Jesus. God did not spare his own son. As a matter of fact, it says he let the full weight. Of the penalty for sin be poured out on his own son He did not keep jesus from the torment of the garden where he's crying out and has that you know, all of us Look back at things in our lives and we just say god.Thank you so much. You didn't tell me about that in advance Well, jesus knew in advance The horror of the cross and that's why the garden was what it was He knew it was coming. God did not. God, the Father did not spare him, though he cried out in anguish on the cross. My God, why have you forsaken me?Literally, at that moment, Jesus, God, the Son, is bearing hell for sinners, where he has experienced the separation in a moment as an eternal being. What it would take us, as temporal beings, eternity to experience. He bore hell. He bore separation from the Father. And the Father did not spare him from doing that.He allowed the worst to happen to Jesus, to secure you, to rescue you. And it says, but he didn't spare him, but he gave him up. Other versions have, he delivered him over. The idea is an active verb. And the question, who put Jesus on the cross, has lots of answers. Well, Judas, out of greed Well, Jewish leaders, out of envy.Well, Jewish people, out of anger. He didn't do what they expected him to do quick enough. Pilate, out of fear. Washed his hands of the whole thing. But the ultimate answer is God the Father put Jesus on the cross out of love. He did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us. It was the Father's choice.And he says, if he didn't spare his own son from that, How will he not freely give you everything you could possibly need? God gave up the most treasured possession he had for you. Why would he withhold anything of less importance? Now, we've got to think about this for a minute. Paul says, how will he not freely give you all things?You want to say, Paul, what are you talking about? What do you mean? All things will be given. I mean, look at you! You've lost almost everything. You've lost money. You've lost reputation. You've lost standing and popularity. What all things have you gotten along with Jesus Christ? He's talking about all the spiritual realities that God promises all the things that we're hoping money and standing and population popularity and reputation will bring to us.He's talking about peace, he's talking about forgiveness, he's talking about hope, he's talking about encouragement, he's talking about protection, he's talking about life mattering and meaning something, and he says God will not abandon you in spite of the difficulties on the outside, he will give you all things that you need.Three passages in the Old Testament, just gonna read them quickly, where the word every where the word every is used. In Lamentations 3 verse 22 and 23, His, meaning God, His mercies are new every morning. First Peter chapter 1 verse 3, this is the New Testament, His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.Philippians 4, 19, And my God will supply Every need of yours, according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, every morning, everything, for every need, is what God is saying. He is making available to us in Christ. He gave up His most treasured possession for you.How can we think He would withhold something of lesser value that He considers will bless and help our lives? The second thing we find is that God helps us in those seasons, which some of you are in right now, where you are overwhelmed with your limitations. I'm not enough. I don't have enough. I feel lack.I see lack. And God says, I will take care of you. May not be exactly how you would design it. But I gave you my own son. I didn't spare him. I will not be stingy with my blessings, with what you need in your life. There will be, as Ben pointed out, there will be suffering. There will be hardship. But there will be a reality of God's provision and presence with us in those seasons that is richer than the very things that we feel the loss or the limitations from.He that spared his own son, how will he not freely give us all things? Third,God accepts you. Verse 33 and 34. This speaks to our fear of condemnation. Who will bring, verse 33, who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.You hear verdicts every day. Sometimes you hear dozens of them. They're verdicts that condemn you're not enough. When you see your sales report and compare it with some of the others in the office. When you compare your body shape. When you compare the attention you get from others. When you compare your people skills, your intellectual capacity, your athleticism, your beauty, your car, your house, your job, your kids athleticism, intelligence.Your social skills, etc. You hear the verdict. I'm on the less than side not the greater than side We feel the condemnations Where does that come from? Why are we so constantly? Evaluating ourselves and and and seeking the verdict to be okay It came through the fall the fall into sin the rejection of god the fall in sin was the fall from the position of acceptability and worthiness to feeling shame and unworthiness.All of our fear of condemnation is ultimately the longing for the verdict of God that we are acceptable. And so we look forward in a thousand other lesser places. But the one place that can ultimately quiet our soul is when we rest in the verdict of the one whose opinion matters more than anyone else, the one who knows us best, the one who designed us and created us, the verdict of acceptability, the verdict of acceptance.Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It's God who justifies, the word justifies means to declare acceptable, righteous, standing in God's sight. Psalm 110 verse 1, it says this. that Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father. It doesn't say He was there before, but that He has this particular position now, through His cross, His resurrection, His return to Heaven, where He is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.Psalm 110, verse 1. 110 verse 1 is quoted 20 times in the New Testament. It is the most often repeated Old Testament passage in the New Testament. Why? They're constantly having this thought Jesus has gone into the presence of the father. He is my Assurance that I have a place there that I am accepted there and he says he is ever living.He is constantly Interceding the idea is that Jesus who is victorious over his enemies because in psalm 110 verse 1 It says two things on the one hand. It says that he is there And he has made his victories, his footstool, he has defeated his enemies. But the other thing it says is he has made, he is making intercession for us.Jesus death, resurrection, victory showed that he is victorious over his enemies. And shows that he was victorious for his friends. The verdict is in. You are declared eternally acceptable to God. You don't have to prove one thing. You don't have to measure up in one way. People's opinion, he says, ultimately, if you can allow the opinion of God to permeate your soul, the opinion of people are going to be quiet.You can silence To the degree that your mind is saturated with how God views you, how He has made you in Christ, you can silence the voices that are so loud in your head, saying, You're not enough. You're not this. You're not that. You're just a less than. You'll never measure up. You're godless. You're, you're, you're this.You're that. You're that. The fear of condemnation is overcome by verse 33 and 34. God accepts you through Christ. And fourth, God sticks with you. It speaks to the fear of isolation. What shall separate us, in verse 35, from the love of Christ? And he basically goes down and says, There's, there's not a thing.There's nothing. He goes through this unbreakable chain of God's love for us. And he says, in verse 28, All things work together for good, for those who have been brought into the purpose of God in Christ Jesus. Now, in verse 37, he says again, Where did I put my glasses? All these, there it is. This is a black lectern, and these are black glasses, I'm not as crazy as you think I am.Alright, 37. No, in all, verse 37, no, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. What are the all things? What are the all things of verse 28? In everything that's coming into our lives, we can be conquerors because we are loved by God. It is the motivation. You see, I was in a Bible study, and, and we were reading how in Proverbs, it says, God is talking about how do you live the, the, the path of wisdom.And it says what you do is you take the reality of God's love and faithfulness. Those are the two words. It's actually how God revealed himself originally to Moses. He said, I am the, the loving and faithful God. It's, it's in, it's in the book of Psalms over and over. It is the characteristic. God is a God of love and faithfulness.And he says, he says, write this on your heart. That God is faithful that God is crazy about you the degree to which we live that out The security of that, the safety of that, is the degree to which we are not in captivity to the opinions of others, the affections of others. If you want to be a better husband, find your security, not that my wife's got to love me perfectly.No, I'm loved by God. If you want to be a better husband, a better wife, live your life in the reality of God's acceptance of you, God's love for you, God is for you. And the basis of this love is, it says, that God God chose us, God pursued us, God wanted us, and nothing can separate you from Him. Eugene Pat Peterson has written, it's a paraphrase of, of the, the scriptures, but it's a beautiful one.And I would like to just read how he Expresses Romans 8 verse 31 to 39. I think it is a beautiful depiction and, and I want to just read it now. Verse 31. So what do you think? With God on your side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The one who died for us, who was raised to life for us, is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us?There's no way, not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in scripture. They kill us in cold blood because they hate you, it says. We're sitting ducks. They pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.I'm absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable, absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love. Because of the way that Jesus, our master, has embraced us. The glory of the gospel message reached its crescendo moment in Romans 8.You're free then to see your own failures, your own ugliness, your own self centeredness. To hear criticism, to be rejected, to feel alone. To face the holes and the lacks in your life Because if you belong to jesus christ god is for you and it doesn't matter who's against you God supplies you with all the things that you need god accepts you And ultimately no other verdict matters god loves you with an unconditional No expiration date love this morning.We're going to come to the lord's table And I hope these truths are ringing in our ears At this point, I'm going to ask the section host and ushers to come, and I'd like to pray for us as we prepare for the Lord's Supper.Lord, it is amazing to me. How often I need to be reminded of these truths voices are loud in my headand father I pray this morning for the people that are listening to my voice to whom the verses are just a siren It just seems to be a megaphone that's louder than anything else. God may these truths begin to drown out The lies, the false verdicts, the sense of isolation that comes, condemnation that comes, the sense of our own limitations that, Lord, we might find in you and through you.These truths reminding us of what it really means to be called the son or the daughter of the living God, purchased. Through the life's blood of Jesus Christ, your beloved son. Lord Jesus, we come to this table this morning, which you've asked us to do. To do it so we remember you. Sorry how easy it is to forget.Lord Jesus, we do remember now that you wanted us enough to come, to rescue us, to bring us into a place ofThe verdict being acceptable because we stand not in the life that we lived, but in the righteousness life that Jesus lived. That we stand not facing eternal death, but you lived the life we should have lived, and you died the death that we should have had to die. Lord Jesus, we just love you for it. In your name, amen.
Genesis 16-21She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
Sermon Transcript:Good morning, it's great to be here with you. This is the last installment on, the series we're in about Christian suffering. As Pastor Mark mentioned, I realized that doing a three week series means I'm the suffering guy. So, as I see people in the lobby, like Matt Howard, he's like, Oh, again. More suffering.I won't preach on suffering the other times I'm preaching upcoming, but, we are going through this series, and we're trying to end this series, even here, with final thoughts on Christian suffering, and we have some notes for you to follow along, but as a part of the series, we first talked about the weight of Christian suffering, and the purpose of Christian suffering, and last week we talked about the stewardship of Christian suffering.And if you're keeping along, there's three left, all of which are called today. So we're going to move quick today. The treasures of Christian suffering, the partnership in Christian suffering, and lastly, the end of Christian suffering. When I was about eight years old in Marlton, New Jersey, I was bored.And I went outside of Cam in the Cambridge Park House, 21 Concord Drive. And, I went out with a shovel that was just like this one. Probably having to do weeding because my parents just love making their children weed and so And not wanting to weed because their children hated to weed but I was out there with this shovel and thinking I'm bored.I have a shovel And so being the ever creative type, I thought, I'm going to try to shove this shovel as far into this Marlton soil as I possibly can. And I didn't really, couldn't really get it in because this is not a spade, which cuts in deeper when you like step on it. So this particular shovel, I thought I could get the furthest in.By lifting up the shovel and smashing it down and I did it but this particular shovel wasn't as sharp as I wanted it to be and I was rather discouraged my eight year old self that I couldn't put the shovel as far into the dirt as I wanted and I remember thinking I am going to do it one more time.And I'm going to do it as hard as I can. I literally had this thought and so I lifted up the shovel. One detail I haven't mentioned is I was barefoot at the time. Yep, it's exactly going there. And I lifted up shovel came right down, bam, right on the nail of my big toe. And I didn't know what happened and I'm like, I thought nothing happened and then I grabbed my foot And then the blood started leaking through a new crack in my big toenail And then I started, you know handling like a man Or screaming like a small child.However, you want to interpret that my fear. With what we're doing and suffering as I enter come to the pulpit each week Is that I'm the shovel and you're the big toe and I realize that this is asking you to go through a lot And I'm very thankful for the chance to go through the text that we've gone through and to finish up this week We're gonna be in Genesis 16 in Genesis 21 Two different stories of a woman named Hagar, a single mom named Hagar.What we're going to do is go through the stories and then we're going to rocket through the remaining principles as we look at this story. Hagar is, is was a servant of Sarah and Abram. They were going to be called Abraham and Sarah. Sarah, and we'll just call them that for now. Even as we go through the stories, even though in Genesis 16 they didn't technically get that name yet, but what happened was Abraham and Sarah, Abraham was given a promise.And the promise was through you, all nations will be blessed. And we know that from the seed of Abraham ultimately came this, the coming of Christ, all nations, all these promises were given for major promises given through the era of Abraham. But Abraham and Sarah realized we, this is not happening.And it didn't happen after a few months after getting the promise, they weren't able to have a child then, then wasn't able to happen after a few years. And then decades went by and God did not come through. On the promise that he made and those days and months and years and decades began to add up And eventually Sarah and Abraham got to talking that if God is not going to come through on his word Perhaps we will have to find another way and Sarah said well I do have a servant her name is Hagar as you know Abraham Why don't you take her, have a child with her, and so at least through your line, then we can have a child.An incredibly painful decision for Sarah, which would ultimately become an incredibly abusive decision for Hagar. The trust muscles that we see Abraham and Sarah wrestle with throughout Genesis, we're, we're developing. But they weren't quite there yet to believe that Sarah could have a child. So what happens is, Abraham and Hagar have a child.And Hagar now is with child and is becoming a major part of the story. Becoming the one through which the line will continue. And the other people, because they travel with a lot of people. Abraham and Sarah had a lot of people with them. They were looking and seeing towards, how is she feeling? What's going on today?Did the new line kick in your stomach? Did this new line of descendants that is going to start with this child and Hagar, who was a, a servant girl is now thrust to center stage, but Sarah was having trouble backing up from the mic. It was difficult for her to realize that her part was becoming less in the story.And eventually Sarah deals so harshly with Hagar. That Hagar runs away, and runs away not to someone, runs away not to somewhere, but just runs away. And ends up in the wilderness. Says this in Genesis 16. Saradette harshly with Hagar, and she fled from her. The angel of the Lord, and we talked about this like a month and a half ago, so I'm sure you all remember.The angel of the Lord, the angel of Yahweh, is actually a Christophany. It is actually a coming of Christ in the Old Testament. And there's a lot of theological reasons that we looked into of why this phrase, the angel of the Lord, was a particular manifestation of Jesus himself coming in the Old Testament.So Jesus comes to her. By a spring of water in the wilderness the spring on the way to sure and then this happens the The angel of the lord said to her behold you are pregnant shall bear a son You shall call his name ishmael because the lord has listened to you in your affliction. She's like, okay, I got that So she called him the name of the lord and god spoke that he would fulfill and look after Her and eventually says she responds with this statement So she called the name of the Lord again Christ himself who spoke to her.You are a God of seeing Anybody know the Hebrew word for that El Roy you are the God of seeing Because you have seen me What's interesting is this is now not the God of Abraham and Sarah Right even further descendants would say you are the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob be by identification point But not for Hagar.Hagar was running from all of that God thing out into the wilderness. She did not run to God. God ran to her. And now this God did not just become an idea put on her by Abraham. And Sarah, this was the God who saw her. The story continues. And after Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, who is now the heir to the new nation, the child begins to grow.And now, what happens with Abraham and Sarah. Is that now Sarah gets pregnant because God was going to fulfill his promise all along because God doesn't promise something that he doesn't fulfill. And so now Sarah is pregnant with the rightful heir to the nation as promised by God. Well that does not mean good things for Hagar and Ishmael.And this single mom who has this child who everyone thought would be the center of the story. Now Sarah goes to Abraham again and eventually has her removed and Abraham gives her a donkey, a skin of water, and a piece of bread. For her and the child says this, When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes.Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off about the distance of a bow shot. For she said, let me not look on the death of the child. And she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice, and in a sound only a mother could know, she wept. Not even able to see her child die of starvation. But God does not quit on Hagar, like his people did.He shows himself again and the text continues. Sorry. I have the clicker So like I get happy with the clicker, but I don't think I put the text in there says and God heard the voice of the boy and the angel of God called the Hagar from heaven and said to her What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.And the story goes on of how God provides and gives provision and looks after Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar and God is the God, if you hear in the text, He is the God who sees the El Roy. And He is the God who hears the child crying. The God who sees and the God who hears in the midst of suffering. Pray with me this morning.The worship team led us this morning. There will be a day when the burdens of this life will be no more.It's a lot of burdens represented in this room.We thank you that there's an end. We give you ourself this morning and pray for wisdom. We thank you that the story of suffering isn't just bad news. And what we can relax a little bit into today is some of the joy and treasures That are found in the dark in jesus name. Amen Okay, so some treasures found in Christian suffering.We're going to go through nine points this morning, okay? So we're going to be rifling through what I intended to do shorter, but based upon like some, some of the responses and conversations had just wanted to add a few in there about how to partner with people who suffer because so many of you. are doing that right now.So, first thing about the treasures of Christian suffering is, is, is, is this statement, is found in this statement in Isaiah 45, 3, I will give you the treasures. Of darkness the hordes and secret places that you may know that it is I the lord the god of israel who calls you by name Number 12 because we're doing this in a full list of 20 What you're starting with today is number 12 is he is the primary Treasure of christian suffering that there's suffering is not unique to christianity Suffering is not is something that's not during this time or just bible times suffering is a universal human experience the difference between christian suffering and just Normal suffering is not the suffering.It's the Christian part and the part that's unique and the part That's the primary treasure of Christian suffering is Christ himself. I love what God did with with Hagar, right? So Hagar is there and and it doesn't just you she's not just given a well although she would be given a well where she could get water she wasn't just given more bread or traveler a passing by companion to relieve her who comes who comes to this single mom who's now so little a part of the story of the rest of the Bible you Jesus himself.Jesus himself comes to this woman. She needs more than just provision. She needed more than just a bailout of an impossibly difficult situation. Hagar needed a God who sees. She needed a God who hears. And for the rest of Hagar's life, for whatever she faced, she knew she faced it with one who saw. And heard her needs, J.I. Packer says this communion between God and man is the end To which both creation and redemption are the means it is the goal to which both theology and preaching must ever point It is the essence of true religion. It is indeed the definition Of christianity union with god is literally the definition of what it means to be a christian So seasons of blessing and seasons of suffering Are all serving the same purpose serving to unite us to companion us with this god He is the primary treasure of christian suffering Second second treasure another treasure of christian suffering is the freedom from the illusion of control Hagar is whipped around in this story between chapters.She is promoted, she is greatly demoted, and she is eventually abandoned. She has all of these things happening to her where she feels powerless and is in a powerless position. That's a dreadful spot to be. There's no formula to predict the future. God's never done this with a nation. All the things being told to her can't be like, Oh, I remember, that's This is totally unheard of.Her life is whipped around and now she and her child are in an impossible situation. So, so what does she gain from that? Not control. But she gains an incredible gift. The gift that she is free from the illusion of control that the rest of us pretend like we have. All of us, no matter what your profession or what you're doing, whether you're a parent, a teacher, a preacher, a plumber, an engineer.A nutritionist, we're used to setting up systems. One of the remarkable things about being a person, we can set up systems and rhythms. And within that, there is some sense of imago Dei, God's image control, right? If you do A, you get B. If you do B, then you do C, and you do C and D, and then eventually you'll get through.But suffering has this way of blowing up that alphabet. Suffering has this way of saying, hey, you know what? I'm trying to do the right things at the right time, but i'm not always getting the thing. I thought I would get C. s lewis says this god has been trying to experiment God has not been trying to experiment on My faith or love in order to find out their quality.He knew it already. It was I who didn't In this trial, he makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact Was to knock it down and as he talked about in the problem of pain He also says this the creature's illusion of sufficiency Must for the creature's sake be shattered No one feels good when their house comes crushing down when their image of what life should or could be Gets destroyed Or damaged but those who sit in some of the rubble No, they need a foundation that is someone bigger than themselves.Being freed from the illusion of control is terrifying and it's a gift. Third thing I just want to mention in Treasures, an aversion to depersonalized religion. That might be the most big words I've ever tried to put in a sentence right there. Hagar is run over by the machine, right? This whole idea and this whole movement that we have in Genesis 12 That will take us right to the manger this whole promise that's been made and this is a beautiful promise full of incredible fulfillment And and full of incredible stories of redemption But thanks to abraham and sarah it Did not start out that way for Hagar.That beautiful movement of God through the nation of Israel begins by running over this woman. It begins by one of the most textbook examples of spiritual abuse that we have in all of history. of Christianity and when Christ himself comes to her, the language that she uses is different than many people will use in the story.It's not depersonalized language. It's actually a unique name that she gives. She is titling and seeing senses of God, the sight and the sound. That she will be the first to chronicle. Christ, for her, was not a banner to be raised, a story to be told, a cause to be won. He wasn't a brand. And since forever, we have been trying to make Jesus about a cause we think should be won.And what we, what people did with Jesus, what we still do with Jesus, is say, you know what? Jesus must be on this side of the argument. Because I actually heard someone, they were having a political argument, and they said, You know what? If Jesus were here, he would do this. They're like, well that's a Trump card right there, you know what I mean?Like, that's, can't argue with that one, if you have Jesus on your side. But that's what we do, right? We get in an argument, you know what? If he were here, he would do this. But what are we really about? We're probably much more about our argument than we are about the living. Person of Jesus, Jesus must be on this side of this movement.Why? Because what I really care about is this movement Jesus must be cornered into to blessing my church or my nation Why? Because I really care about my church and my nation. We can Depersonalize Christ and it marked so much of Jesus's ministry People were like, hey, it's cool you did that miracle for that one guy over there.What are you gonna do with Rome? Hey, it's really cool you let the little kids come to you and you bless them. That's a nice story. Let's get some important things done for the whole nation here. We're about to enter into election cycle. It's gonna be super fun. We're all looking forward to it. You know, it's gonna be easy.It's just like, you know, Jesus is on this political party side. And, and, and, and if the wrong person gets into office and does the wrong thing, boom! Everything's destroyed. All down at, well, we've all said since for like, I've heard this for every election in a million years, well, I'm just going to go to Canada.You know, like that's what everyone says, and then they're not in Canada. Why? But we have this thing of like, oh, if the wrong things happen, it all falls apart. And we can talk more about America than what Jesus is doing in our own lives. Right? We're going through different seasons as a church. We want to know what it, okay, well, Jesus wants this, or Jesus wants that, and we can get all wrapped in, but now we're more talking about church than we are about Him.We can be so preoccupied with what the church in America, with the church universal, what the church in South Jersey should do and be, and focus less about what Jesus Himself Is doing and being in me a general cause movement or organization is not enough for the one who suffers. We need more than an army general or a celebrity.We need direct contacts with contact with Christ himself. We need him to be personally involved in our lives. A depersonalized religion says that Jesus is heading up this thing and I'm going to line up underneath him. The one who suffer knows, My God, I need you now. Be whoever you actually are. Suffering teaches us eternal life.Is about knowing him and letting him be himself 15 resiliency suffering brings us resiliency produces resiliency that comes one revolution At a time, the next chapter is Genesis 22 and in the story of Abraham and Sarah, you see Sarah's particularly loud and Abraham goes along with it, but you could see before that in stories where Abraham was more the coward and he would be loud and Sarah went along with him.And then you can see other stories in Abraham and Sarah's life where they showed tremendous trust and tremendous faith. But through their faith development for Abraham and Sarah, eventually Abraham comes to a place where God says, Okay, now Isaac is full grown. Take your boy and sacrifice him a bigger request than he has ever made in all the times Leading up to it, but God had taught Abraham through some of the failings Some of the times of trust that eventually Abraham gets to this place where it says in Hebrews 11 looking back on this story Abraham's like I'll do it because I believe that God can even raise the dead which is amazing because God Never had until that point But eventually, Abraham's faith grew to that point.One of the things I believe about spiritual formation, God's life being formed inside of us, is that it's slow and it's downward. My favorite image of it is the, screw going into a piece of wood. We are the screw, the piece of wood is God himself. And we eventually, more and more, rotate and go deeper in.Now in my life and yours we face the same seasons the same man I've been in these insecurities before I hit some of these sufferings before and we face some of the similar Things of our life some of the things I journaled about when I was 16 I still face those but by God's grace a little bit deeper in a little bit closer When I do pre marriage counseling and what we're able to identify.Okay, this is an issue We say you know what? This will probably be an issue if you're both 80 together Because this is identifying an issue, but the goal is to face this issue, this, this crosses you carry, these things that you're facing, a little bit deeper in, into the love of God. Resiliency comes through suffering, it does.Resiliency, if you have suffered, and you have suffered with Christ, the next time it doesn't free you from suffering, and the suffering looks a lot the same as it did before, but the treasure of, of Christian suffering, is that each time we go through it, We know a little bit more. He is love. This will end In him all is well, those are some of the treasures and many of you Are are going through different times of suffering and have shared your journey such Such an honor for me.In fact I I said this to someone last week like hey, we're supposed to talk about the treasures of christian suffering all I want to do is put an open mic in that sanctuary and say Where has anyone seen God in suffering? Because that's, a lot of those responses have come to me. And, and, and then just sit down afterwards and say, That, that is the treasure.Because, in such a real way, you. You are the treasure of christian suffering and you live it out better than we can quickly in a sermon But many of you are are walking alongside of people who are suffering trying to make sense From the outside of someone going through a difficult time. And so I just wanted to share a few points on that as we go.So the partnership of christian suffering number six or sixteen And for those of you dealing with people in pain, don't belittle pain. This is exactly what Abraham and Sarah did. You know why? Because Abraham and Sarah, they knew pain. They knew barrenness. They knew what it was like to leave, like, like, their whole nation, their family.And to tell everyone at every party they ever went to, Well, God's gonna give us, there's a blessing, you just need to believe it. And then people will watch Sarah turn 30, and 40, and 50, and 60. And, and they knew that the pain of those days, and never having a child, they knew pain. But what can happen when we know our version of pain?is we become hurt people who hurt other people. And we don't see that Hagar can be hurt too. It's very easy when people share our type of pain to be like, hey, I get that. Right? It is for me. But when they have a different type, for me, sometimes I'm jealous. I was talking to somebody, one of the pastors this week, he's like, oh man, I just wish I had a different cross.And I'm like, dude, I've wished I've had your cross. Guess what? They're both pretty rough. But, what we can do is belittle pain if we're not careful. This is something that Jesus did not do. Christ's pain identifies him with us, not preoccupies him with himself. Dane Ortlund said this, The cumulative testimony of the four gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the falseness in the world about him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct, Is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it.Spurgeon said it this way. Especially judge not the sons and daughters of sorrow. Also no ungenerous suspicions of the one afflicted, the poor and the despondent. Do not hastily say they ought to be more brave and exhibit a greater faith. Ask not why are they so nervous and so absurdly fearful. No, I beseech you, remember you understand not your fellow man.Seventeen. Because suffering is unique, loving someone, is always a journey into complexity. This is the problem with suffering is we want it to be simple and it's just not. It's like, hey, tell me, tell me about your suffering. How long do you have? Because it's complicated and it, and it ties into relational and it ties into, to physical and it ties into emotional.And when we go through suffering, it inevitably is something that's so confusing and complex. And if we think we have all the right answers, we're probably at the most dangerous we could be. 14 says this, We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.Okay, here's, here's the deal. Where'd it go? It's not on that one. Okay, over here. I can't reach that. We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle. That's right. That's what we do with those who are idle, encourage the faint hearted when we're talking about spiritual abuse and where we can cause great harm is when we mix these up.We admonish the faint hearted or instead of helping the weak, we're admonishing them. And I, and I know sometimes when we're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And we're like, well, there's a problem and the God doesn't like problems. Let's just, you know, you should confess or whatever you need to do.And we, we jump into suffering with simple answers. When we realize, you know what? This might not be a sin issue. You know what? God hasn't answered this question yet. Maybe you shouldn't try either. To embrace complexity, Proverbs 18, 13 says, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.And lastly, just, I'll just say this. Curiosity and compassion make far better friends than lessons to those who suffer. This word curiosity, I've shared, I've struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder, and most of my friends don't. So if you struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, I need friends, so.But most of my friends do not. But curiosity means the most to me. There are some people like, hey, I read this article, and I saw this here, and you know, if the obsessive compulsive disorder, and this is actually this. Or they see a therapist for two weeks, and they're like, my therapist one time said this about obsessive compulsive, have you applied this to your life?And I'm like, thank you so much. Let's not talk for a while, you know. But my friends who've come and said, hey, I have no idea what that's like. Honestly, it sounds a little weird to me. What's that like? And I get to tell them. That means the world to me. People don't have to identify with my type of suffering.But they probably shouldn't act like they're an expert in it. We're not experts in each other's type of pain. We need to listen, ask honest questions. Curiosity and compassion are far better friends than lessons to the sufferer. Eighteen. We're almost there. What changes someone's life during suffering is love.And if you love someone who suffers, and I mean this phrasing intentionally, You become, and you are, the power of God. 1 Corinthians 13 collects all kinds of virtues, all kinds of things of the faith, and says, but let me tell you what matters the most. It's love. Love for someone who suffers. My wife is a therapist, and we were talking, and she said, You know what, Ben?Like, psychology has helped us so much to identify problems. To categorize problems, to help explain complexity of pain. But she said, you look even at modern psychology theories. What changes a person's life is love. It's relational. That's what creates change in a life. It can be a love from others. It can be learning to, in a godly way, love yourself.And she said this to me and she said, But there's no love like the love of God. If you can become and love someone and become a part of God's love fitting into the life of a sufferer, you are. The power of God in a life and you think if I only had the right things to say as soon as you think that Say this probably shouldn't say it, right?I don't know how many times I've heard people say like I I don't know what to say and I just want to say Thank you. Just don't say it. Just be present be a non anxious presence in Suffering you won't solve the suffering but guess what if God hasn't solved it. You're probably not going to either Just be there, and your non anxious presence, Jane Davison Hunter, wrote a book on how to change the world.How do you change the world? How do you actually create change? And this whole premise is this, by faithful presence.When you love someone who suffers, you are the power of God. Lastly, oh wait, this is a great quote. Eugene Peterson said this, spiritual formation not only should not be, but also cannot be professionalized. It takes place essentially in the company of friends and peers. And if Jesus had his whole story go into the hands of the church through the Holy Spirit, which is his miracle, he didn't just say, hey, pastors, counselors, you guys have to figure it all out.He gives the power, all of us, to be the very agents of his formation of love into a sufferer's life. The end of Christian suffering. Oh man, I've looked forward to seeing those words. Couple of things as we close. Christian suffering normally has relief this side of heaven. Nowhere in scripture do I believe that is fully promised.It is often spoken of, and it is the normative thing that happens to sufferers in scripture. I don't think we can say, hey, we know that this suffering will always be lifted, but suffering normally finds relief. It normally has at least somewhat of an exp exp expiration date that is not just eternal. It is normally here.Suffering is often, as we mentioned, the screw going into wood. Something we go through cyclically. But I do not believe that misery is the normative state of a Christian. God will bring you through. Almost always on this side of heaven. But lastly Number 20, even if it is in heaven or not till heaven, suffering is a very brief part of the Christian experience.Of following Christ, being with Christ, even if the suffering lasts far longer, even if it's not as it normally is, relieved on this side of heaven, healing is promised, ultimate healing, in paradise forever, in union with Him forever. And in those days, and in those years, and in those decades, and in those centuries, and in those millennium, we'll be able to look back and say, you know what, that suffering was so painful.But it was brief compared to what we get to have.I'm gonna do something that literally could not be more narcissistic. I'm gonna read a part of my book to you. I just want to tell you what happened as I, as I wrote. And I'm just gonna conclude with a couple of paragraphs. I started writing about, Spurgeon, Nowin, Mother Teresa, C. S. Lewis, and I dove somewhat deep into their stories and understanding a lot of their pain, and it is dark.It is really intense. It was more intense than I was ready for. I thought, hey, this is going to be an easier chapter when I did this. And then it became my longest and most difficult chapter because of the amount of sorrow that they had in their own lives, these heroes of the faith. And, and when I did this, we were in Columbia, we were seeing a lot of poverty.There was, there was a lot of. Things that we were facing that just felt really painful and and as I was writing this book on Christian suffering I just became Overtaken is the way it felt on three levels. The first I felt this personal sense of fear. I Don't want to suffer. I Use the words of C. S. Lewis.I'm a coward when it comes to suffering I don't want to suffer the extent of some of the worst times that I have had in my past I never want that again. I also felt as I was reading of these saints, the sense of like, injustice, of like, how come they had to suffer? Like, these people led us to the foot of, feet of God, told us about His love.Why did they have to go to hell to find it? And then third, as I got like, universal and pretty dark, I like, just felt the sufferings of other people. Part of that was being in Columbia and seeing some real poverty and hearing about some dark, dark things. Part of that is just being a pastor of you all and, and having walked through some different stories.Don't want anymore. I don't have the stomach for it. It's too much. And in that moment, like, I almost didn't want hope. As I was writing this chapter, like, you know what? Hope is too painful. Let's just turn off all the lights and call it a day. But what held me through was this image of heaven. And I'm just going to read you this little bit as we conclude.I felt close to Spurgeon, Lewis, Mother Teresa, and now, and I felt close to those who know the suffering that they knew. I felt close to you, the Fellowship of the Tormented. I do mean this. You are heroes of mine. We make up a hobbled army. At times we feel like we're just like every other person. At times we feel like we are blessed to know our way of Christ, even in the dark.At other times, we are begging that Christ would take this cross from us. We know lots of times, but we keep going. With plenty of limping, second guessing, laughing at ourselves and crying when it is just too much. I want to end this chapter with a view of heaven. In that place, Spurgeon knows no more physical or mental torture.He no longer gazes into the abyss of the English Channel, clinging to his last bits of weathered hope. He now stares into the glory of Christ, eyes lit with joy and mirth. I think of Louis who's no longer reduced to the feelings of a coward in the face of his grief and anxiety. He doesn't have to wrestle with pain, theologically or philosophically, for himself or for us anymore.He's reunited with his wife. Mother Teresa knows unbroken fellowship with the Christ she married on earth. There are no more lessons to be taught or learned by the teacher of silence. She's fully with him and he with her. Think about you and me who are not yet there yet our questions are not resolved.Our uncertainties remain uncertain. Our timeline of the seasons of pain do not have an end date that we can see. We travel this world of faith and suffering on its precarious path, and don't always know how much more we can take. I cannot wait for heaven with you. I can't wait to see what we will gain there and what we shall leave behind.I long to speak to you there of how he got us through the very times we thought were too deep, too wide, too long, and too high for us to endure. I long to hear how he showed us then, and for forever, that his love was deeper, wider, longer, and higher still. Dear weary traveler, You won't be weary long.
Luke 9:22-24And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning everybody. Great to be here with you this morning. We are on week two of a series on suffering. I'm calling the series Even Here and just want to take a moment to to review what we talked about last week and we'll jump into what we're talking about this week.If you have your handout right here, I put extra words on there to make it harder for you to see. All you baby boomers, just go ahead. I love this thing you do. You know, I like, it's like trying to get it into the right focus, so let us know when you got the right distance. Here what we talked about last week.The first is, God is intimately aware of our suffering and still allows it to happen. Second, the suffering that God allows to happen is often agonizing. Third, there are endless types and levels to suffering. Fourth, there is rarely a timetable given to the sufferer. Fifth, suffering feels barely spiritual.And then on the purpose of Christian suffering, sixth, the purpose of all Christian suffering is union. If you were not here last week and wonder why the people that were here last week ever came back, I'm sort of with you on that question. we want what is most true. Suffering, unfortunately, is true.Something that truly happens. I'm thankful to be a part of a community that acknowledges the existence of suffering and wants to understand Christ in the midst of it. Today we're going to be talking about the stewardship of Christian suffering, wanting to, last week talk about just what is the weight of it, what does it mean, and then also why do we undergo suffering in our lives, and then last, and then here we go through the treasures of Christian suffering.So the weight of Christian suffering last week, the purpose of Christian suffering. And today we're talking about the stewardship of Christian suffering. Next week we'll get to the treasures of Christian suffering. That sounds better, right? And then by God's grace and mercy, the end of Christian suffering.But today we sit in the stewardship of Christian suffering. anxiety and depression, as I've talked to you about, and I've told you about some of my own story, they run deep in the veins of, my, the extended family on my mom's side. My grandpop, who was an instrumental person in my life, was the chairperson of the science department at Taylor University, and went through Decades of a long fight with, severe anxiety himself.And when I was going through, as I talked about some last week, some of the throes of the darkest parts of my story, I went and visited he and my grandmom. Up in Northern Michigan, and I went to go see my grandpop's therapist, my grandpop's psychiatrist. He's a person who's been working with our family for a little while.I had never met him, but he had met many people who shared my bloodline and genetics. When I talked to this guy, it did not take me long to have him feel pretty confident in what I was going through. And as I spoke with you last week, I've suffered for most of my life with obsessive compulsive disorder.Didn't really know what that meant at that time, but he, was a pretty textbook case when I came in and he basically said, Ben, this is what you have. This is what you're dealing with. And I can still remember just sitting there looking at him, just kind of like, Are there other options that we could have here?There's a, a show, Parks and Recreation. Anyone ever see Parks and Recreation? There's this scene in Parks and Recreation where Leslie and Ben, who are the two of the main characters, are finding, they found out they're pregnant, so they go get the ultrasound. And the, the guy, the, who's the Happy Days Fonzie, Fozzie, whatever his name is?That guy? He's, that actor? I know some of you are like, Oh, he was so handsome, but that just shows you're like 90. Okay. So this, so he's, the doctor, that fozzy guy, whatever doctor is with them doing the ultra ultrasound. And he's going through and he's like, Oh, there's the baby keeps going, goes, there's another baby.And then there's a third baby. Then he goes, Oh, and there's a fourth. He says, Oh, no, wait. That was a cream cheese smudge on the screen. Just three. That's how I felt very much when I got my diagnosis for the first time. I was really hoping for a cream cheese smudge on the screen, wondering if it could be anything else.I at that point had become used to using the term depression or anxiety with my friends. Did not enjoy using it. did not enjoy experiencing it, but a diagnosis sounded much more like a life sentence to me. In that moment, I looked across at this psychiatrist who I don't even remember his name, and he knew that my faith was important to me.I have no idea if this person is a Christian or just a good psychiatrist. But he looked at me and as I was saying like well, maybe it could be this this that he goes back And he just says Ben This is the cross that Jesus is asking you to carry It is your choice to carry it or not But as loud I can hear it now as I could that day.He said but this is your cross That statement Literally set up the rest of my Christian formation of understanding suffering. But that cross as well as other crosses that I carry is not something to just be endured. It is not something to just be escaped. It is something to be stewarded. You see, suffering does not bring about growth.on its own. Suffering is not special, noble, or interesting, and it does not produce growth by itself. Because suffering does not bring growth on its own, we must ask, how do I steward my suffering? One of the most important questions we will, we will deal with in our lives is how do we use our gifting? How do we use our resources?Such incredible questions. But there's another question, of how will we use our suffering? In Luke 9, Jesus says words that go down in the category of things that we sometimes wish He didn't say. But He says this to His disciples, The Son of Man must suffer many things. He said He must be rejected by the elders, chief priests, scribes, and He must be killed on the third day and be raised to life.Then Jesus said to all of them, If anyone wants to come after Me, He must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Pray with me this morning.Father, thank you for the stories in this room. It's not lost on us that while we sit together for these minutes. These minutes are not the whole of our life. We're coming from different places, and there's some dark places we're coming from today. I ask you, Lord, please, for those who are specifically looking for help in the storm, I pray you'll speak to them this morning.If my words be an agitation, To anyone suffering, please remove those words from the ears of those who listen. We ask you teach us, help us, in a place we don't want to learn. In Jesus name, amen. The goal today, the goal last week was to describe the weight and what suffering is, talk about the purpose a little bit.The goal today is to be very practical. And so, So, if you got your notes as you came in, this sheet of paper, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk down through you with your, I'd encourage you to have a pen if you don't have the sheet of paper and want to grab it, that's great too, you can do that. If you want to just take a note on your phone, but I would ask if you'd be willing, to write some things down.You don't have to fill in all the blanks or write it down, any of my words, but I have some. questions to ask you because when we are talking about suffering, Christian suffering is not just for those poor people who suffer, it is for the Christian who Jesus said will suffer. so a few things to help us as how do we carry, how do we walk this road of suffering and steward it according to the way our Christ designed it.First, our, our, our seventh, because I want to do all these in number, seventh, our cross of suffering is unique and assigned and must be identified. Look 23 in Luke 9. He says, not take up a cross. Not even take up the cross. But if someone would come and follow me, must take up his. It's a possessive pronoun.His unique cross. Our cross of suffering for each of us is unique. The cross of suffering for us is in a mysterious and painful way designed by our King to bring about something good. And because it is unique, and we can't just say we all carry the same cross, and because it is assigned specifically to us, We must then have the skills and the relationship with God such and relationship with others such that we can understand and identify what is my cross.And if you follow God, you don't have just one, right? This is the nature of this Aspergian speaks of this in the morning and evening that we are given these crosses that ultimately will do something good, but we must identify what they are. The first step to how we steward our cross of suffering is to identify it.One of the greatest allegorical works ever penned is, Hinds Feet in High Places by Hannah Hernard. A missionary who is both to Palestine and Israel for over 50 years. And this allegory is a beautiful and a tough read. The main character is called Much Afraid, and it's the story of how much afraid goes from the valley of fear to the kingdom of God.of love. And, and the chief shepherd, who's, who's Jesus in the story, comes to much afraid right about when she's about to start her journey. She's decided to start her journey up to the mountain, up to go from the valley of fear to the kingdom of love. And, and the chief shepherd comes to her and says this, he's going to give her companions.And she is gleeful at the thought of not traveling alone. The chief shepherd presents her companions and says this. They're good teachers. Indeed. I have few better. This said he motioning to the first of the silent figures is sorrow and the other is her sister suffering. These are tough words from Jesus.This is before the disciples knew that Jesus would hang on a cross, but whether is before or after the cross. The cross meant the same thing to those people. The cross wasn't just a symbol of good things. The cross was a, was two sticks put together constructed for intentional painful death. Jesus turned to his disciples and said, If you follow me, you must take up your electric chair.Your electric, your, your, your, your very agency of death. And follow me. How do we identify a cross of suffering? Just again, trying to be p practical here. a cross of suffering is not sin or needless suffering. we don't say, Hey, you know what? I just keep screaming at my wife and I feel guilty about that, and that's my cross.Right. A cross could be you have such a smoldering inside of you and you don't know what to do with this sense of this temptation to lash out in anger. But sin is not a cross. Sin can be handled and dealt with and often can be overcome quicker than your cross is actually. There's also needless suffering, for me when I talk about my OCD, if I am not willing to submit myself to, to different therapists and a psychiatrist, psychologist, as I've had to do in my life and not, and learn about what I struggle with, it's needless suffering.That's part of my stewardship is to say, okay, what, what out of this do I, is, is part of the experience that I am going to have and what out of this. Can I work through and not have needless suffering? Second, a cross of suffering comes in different sizes. Jesse Hacken and I were talking at soccer yesterday, and he's like, I know, it's not about suffering Olympics.And I'm like, that is a good phrase. When we're talking about suffering, it's not the suffering Olympics. It's not, well, how big is this, or how does it compare to that? The reality is, is each one of us has, and we mentioned last, last week or two weeks ago if you're in Collingswood this morning, the the cross of suffering, the, the lies that we are told to by hell about suffering are two lies that come so often.One, our suffering is too big for God to handle, or two, it is too small for Him to be trifled with. A cross comes in different sizes, and third, as we try to identify our individual cross of suffering, a cross is something that causes death. This is the only way to understand what a cross meant in ancient Near Eastern culture.Suffering causes death. Death to a dream, death to fulfilling a temptation that we want. Death to a way of life that we thought that life should be or would be, death to reputation, death to how you thought your marriage, family, or church should behave towards you, death to ability to function in the way we thought we should be able to.Suffering is an intended, difficult design for death in our life. And here's what I want you to do to write down. Simply, under point seven. Just the word, what, what is your cross of suffering? So that when we are talking about suffering, we're not just talking about Ben's issues. That's kind of what I'm a little afraid of, right?We're talking about something that we carry each one of us. For some of you, that comes real easy and it is singular. It is, this is my cross. For some of you, it's like, well, I don't, I guess maybe this, I guess maybe that. Pick a cross, something that you can tell is doing death to some part of, of you.Something you can identify. It does not need to be a certain size. But as we are talking about how do we carry our cross, it needs to be identified. This happened to me yesterday. I was talking through with my wife, we were sitting by the fire and I was going through something that had nothing related to like some of the bigger things I'm talking about in suffering.It was just something I was processing through and I felt dumb about and, and like felt insecure and was worried how people would view me and I just was like, it just came to me like, dude, what, you know what to do with this. Identify it. Recognize what this is. Take it to your Christ and, and walk through this in the way you're meant to.Number eight. It will get better after eight, I promise. Our cross of suffering must be experienced.Jesus says in verse 23, don't observe your cross. Don't just recognize that it's there. Don't just stop at identifying it. But pick it up every day and carry it. We're in a part of the world that, we don't want to do this. It's a quote by Henry Nouwen. How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich?Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves, what is my poverty? Is it a lack of money? Lack of emotional stability? Lack of a loving partner? Lack of security? Lack of safety? Lack of self confidence? Each human being has a place of suffering. That's the place where God wants to dwell. How blessed are the poor Jesus says this means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity To discover God who dwells in it Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden I understand Deeply, the desire to, to be positive and like, to be like, it's going to be okay.I understand and still to this day speak in terms of, whoa, this is really hard, but then want to hook really right onto it, but, but this, this is why it's good. And I need to get to this is why it's good. Why? Because it gets me out of why it's so hard. But we can try to at times be so upbeat about our pain, so positive about, about no, it'll be okay.Try to hold our breath for so long and to act like things are okay, even to ourselves. This positivity culture though can truly be dismissive and tell people to miss the chance to experience God who dwells not after the pain. But in the pain, we paint silver linings on storm clouds and call it brave. It is not brave.Entering the storm is brave.God called me to do a lament during a really difficult season of ministry a while ago. It was horrible. Oh my goodness And I don't know if you've ever had a chance to write a lament a lament is basically a cry out to God About what is going on and without latching on the bottom of it, and this is why it's good Laments are found all throughout the Psalms much if not most of David's Psalms include lament And I remember writing down, just going through this lament and wanting to find, well, but this is why it's good.This is why it's good. And just going through the discipline of just saying, God, this is not what I thought would happen. And here's what happened. God, this hurts more than I thought it would. And here's why it hurts. The strain of people in relationships, they feel like it's tearing me apart. Here's exactly how it feels.And God, I can't fix this. And you don't seem to be fixing it either. Lament over. God does not need us to button up or tie up or fix what is in the process of pain. My fear for us and my fear for particularly like our place in time, culturally speaking. I know that a lot of us, we can, we, we can probably wallow in pain, but actually think more culturally, like where we are at our place and time in the world, that we're more quick to dismiss it and miss God who lives within it.Here's what I want you to write down on our suffering must be experienced. Just the word when. It should have written down what, the cross you carry, and then this one is under when. And I want you to write down, if you would, a time within the next seven days when you can do a lament. Say, you know what, Tuesday morning I've got a little while, or Thursday night, or whenever you think that you have some space to not just recognize your cross, but to feel the weight of it.During a lament, we don't need to write about what feels spiritual, we simply ask where does it hurt, where am I afraid, and what pain makes no sense to me.Points one through eight are thick. I'm thankful to be done them. And thank you for your presence in them. we talked about in point six that our cross of suffering directs us to union. Here is a way that we really can experience that with God. How we experience union with God with suffering, I want to go to John 17.John 17, I believe is the, is the most important, chapter in the Bible. Actually, Pastor Mark and I go back and forth on this. I've told you before that Pastor Mark and I, we agree on most things, and occasionally he is wrong, and he believes that, that Romans 8, and I believe John 17, even though they both are really, really good, are the greatest chapters in all of scripture.The reason I love John 17, since he's not here to defend Romans 8, is because John 17 gives the why. the why of the whole gospel. It's Jesus going before he receives the cross. He goes and he prays to the Father and he prays and and he says, Declaring that that what the true gospel is what eternal life is This is eternal life.He says that they may know you the one true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent He concludes the prayer by saying righteous father though. The world does not know you I know you And they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them and will continue to make you known. In order that the love you have for me may be in them, and I myself may be in them.It is this story, this dance of union, the very purpose for which Christ came. And when we talk about suffering and union, suffering is not unique. any season in the Christian life, seasons of blessing and flourishing and suffering are all intended for the same purpose. To bring us into deeper union, how, what's a way that suffering does that?One of the beautiful ways we're directed in scripture is to understand our story and connect with Christ's story on life on earth. What do I mean by that? Those of you who are, Are in physical pain and I do with physical pain you have this precious painful Example of Christ experiencing pain on the cross and there is there's a way that you can in ways that other of us can't identify with what it took and what it was like to experience pain on the cross Those of you who have estranged parents or, or siblings or, or children, you can identify with Jesus as, as he, with tears coming down his eyes right into, everyone's praising him right into Jerusalem.He's got tears in his eyes, turns around and he says, Oh, Jerusalem and Jerusalem, how I long to gather you. As a hen gathers her chicks in that moment, those of you who have painful, estranged relationships that you long to be reunited. You can connect with Christ and say, Jesus, I know what that feels like.And you know what I feel like. Those dealing with loneliness. I was reading a passage not that long ago, my wife and I were reading, and Jesus in Gospel Matthew over and over tells His disciples, I'm going to die on the third day, rise again. Over and over. And like one of the last times, He spells out like everything that's going to happen about how I'm going to be crucified.And all of a sudden, they just kind of ignore Him in the text and start fighting over who's the best among them. How lonely is that? For Jesus among His best friends to say, guys, this is going to happen to me. This is going to happen to me, it's just days away, just to be ignored or neglected. Those of you who know relational pain, know what it's like to feel as Christ felt being betrayed by Peter, or being praised by many of the same people that crucified Christ.How can the exact suffering that you're experiencing, the exact thing that you wrote under point number seven, how can that connect you with Christ? And this is why I ask you to write just the word where, colon. Where in scripture do you see that Christ experienced a similar type of pain as you are? And I would say, that passage, that story, you have the ability to know Christ in that story in a way that people who have a different cross can't.But, but to, to understand, to read that story, re read that story, go into it, go into like what it must have felt like because you've identified somewhere. And as you, as you are experiencing what Christ experienced and realizing, Oh my goodness, He gets what I experiencing, there, there's a, there's a knitting of soul that's done in the classroom of sorrow that is, it's other, it's union.That's why I'd ask you to write down where, specifically where in scripture do you see Christ carrying the same type of cross you are carrying. And I know I'm being probably over practical, but suffering can get so fuzzy, wanting to be as specific as possible. Number ten, there's not many things that I believe about suffering more than this.Our cross of suffering provides an opportunity to unite or separate us from each other. Every single person who suffers knows that it's not smart to isolate when you're suffering. There's no one in here that needs to be talked into the fact that it's not the best idea to isolate. But the thing is, it's attractive.Because it's really hard to be misunderstood. It's really hard to, to, when you tell somebody of what you're going through, and they make light of it, or they act like it's not that big of a deal. And anyone who has suffered, and who has shared with another person, has probably experienced that in your life.There's not much worse than feeling awful and having someone say, you probably shouldn't feel that bad. It's really hard to trust after that. In the passage of John 17, and we're talking about Christian union, Christian union does not stop with the individual and their God. Jesus says that the oneness experienced by the Father and the Son, that that kind of oneness would be experienced amongst His disciples.That the same oneness that exists in the Godhead. Is what should exist in relationships with other people. And, and our suffering has to be with the right people. I, I remember as, as, At, my seminary, I was doing my master's, and we had to do this assignment where you, you write out some of your story, and like, go through some of your story, and, and you write it out, and you get, got in groups of four people.I share this, I know I shared it with you guys in Collingswood, but I, I got in a group of like four people, and, I, they read their story, and, and then all of a sudden, like, I was reading my story, and, and I had, in my group of people, the four people, I had two, what I would call, bless your heart guys, Just like, wow, Ben, that sounds tough and weird, what you went through, kind of thing.Like, trying to lean in and nod and still be like, what are you talking about? And then I had a sleeper in a group of four. I started reading my testimony, telling my story, diving into the throes of my mental health. Tears are coming down my face as we sit in this sterile classroom, and I read, page by page, my story.I look up. The man in front of me is dead, knocked out of sleep. And I wanted to make sure he never woke up. Not a good feeling. We have to find the right people to carry suffering with. And here's the deal. I know there are people in here that have done, I remember hearing someone say, like, We were asked by someone, like a, a question.They said, I just can't go there. I just can't go there. I can't, I can't go there with other people. I can't even go there with myself. To which I would say if you don't, Christ will never get in there. A lot of the ways that Christ will get in is through his people and, and there is not a one of you that's gone through suffering and shared, and that hasn't been hurt.But guess what? It did not change your very construction as a human. You were designed by God to be in community with one another. If you have been hurt, if you have been hurt 10 times, I don't know anything kinder to say, try 11. And you might have to get to 16 or 19 too, but it is the way you have been made.You are not made to suffer alone. for the care ministries here at fellowship. The Lord gave me a vision of what the care ministries would be, and it was simply this. Our care ministries exist so that no one would suffer alone. We are not here to end suffering. It is not going to happen. It's not even something God designs to happen here on this place.But we are here by God's grace so that we may not suffer alone. I'm going to have you put down the word who. On your sheet of paper or in your phoneAnd for some of you that's a painful word to write because you're not sure what to write after I Want to just mention three things here if they can be a service to you at all in your story first Stephen ministry Is a one on one care ministry. It's some of the most incredible people. I know because they are people who are trained to and desire to run towards needs.And this is a one on one ministry. If you are interested in getting a Stephen Minister, a person to meet with you, once a week for an hour, it's a person just come alongside. It's not a therapist. It's someone just to be there with you who has gone through suffering themselves and has by God's grace made room for yours to in their life.You can find out more information at the hub about that or online. Secondly, when I mention Celebrate Recovery, Celebrate Recovery, what we always say is for hurts, habits, and hang ups, so many people who come to Celebrate Recovery come for hurts. And I know that, there's an idea out there, it's like, Celebrate Recovery, isn't that about alcohol?Well, sure. That's there. But so much of what Celebrate Recovery also is, is dealing with hurts. Our, our biggest groups in Celebrate Recovery we call life issues. And they're dealing with people with, mental health. Dealing with people with, difficulty and going on in marriages. And issues in their life.And that can be a place of, joined cross bearing. If that might be a place that serves you. Lastly, is anchored in hope. It's a women's group that meets for those physically suffering and some other ways of suffering. Holly McIntyre. Again, more information you can find out about it. And those might not make your who list.But I really hope someone does. Because you're not made to be an island. And some of you are just sitting there saying, you know what? I'm tough enough, and I would say if you believe you're tough enough to not be in community,you're being a coward. True strength is reflected in Paul's prayer, I therefore as a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you have been called with all humility and gentleness with patience bearing. with one another. That bearing sounds a whole lot like cross carrying, doesn't it?Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. One of the most amazing things about the journey of Christ, when He bore a cross, when He carried a cross, He Himself needed help. He did not carry it alone. Of course. The story could have been written that he carried the cross up to Golgotha.But the story was intended to show that crosses were made to be carried together.Number 11 and lastly,our cross of suffering can only be carried one day at a time. For a lot of us that can feel like one moment at a time. Cause a day is too big of a timestamp to worry about. One of the chief things of, of, of being able to walk through daily suffering is to not carry tomorrow's cross. Tomorrow's cross is unnecessary suffering.And honestly, tomorrow's cross is too heavy. It's too much. All we can do is get through today. Only today's crosses are allowed. What did Jesus say in the passage? Take up your cross daily and come after me. There are days that are not made for strategy or deep process. There are days when the greatest thing you can do is simply keep going.Simply make your next meeting, eat your next meal, parent the next need of your child, return in the next assignment. There are days that cannot contain the weight of all the processing of your feelings and thoughts about those, what you're going through. Those days we need to simply take just the next step.We know life is beautiful and it's a gift, but it does not always feel that way. And sometimes the way we interpret what we're going through can be extremely dark. And all that we can do is just keep going. There are times that God seems to be absent, lost in the gray of pain and confusion. Your prayers barely make it out of your mouth and you feel like you don't even make it to the top of your bedroom ceiling.On those days, all we can do is just today keep going. There are days when you wonder if you're making up the fact that God could use this type of suffering. You don't need to prove to yourself that he will, or convince all of your emotions that he's coming soon to make sense of it all. All you can do is for this day, keep going.And for those here, or for those who are loving someone close to them that are in the deepest throes of suffering, honestly the best thing a suffering series can do is maybe just let you know you're not alone. But if you're in the agony of the worst part of suffering, you're not here to write down all the points and get all the finer details.I just, we just want to tell you, we love you. We, we, we don't understand what you're going through. But we will not run from you.I'm going to conclude by, anybody ever heard of Warren Wiersbe? He's one of those guys that I've heard about for a long time, and then one day realized, Wiersbe is a weird last name. Warren Wiersbe was a pastor and an author, and he wrote a book, called Why Us? Why Do Bad Things Happen to God's People?I think it's the title, and he reflected a story of, coming up to a lady, I think it was after a church service, and this lady's, her husband had gone blind recently, and she had, and then he came down with a really difficult disease, and so she had basically become like a seeing eye wife, needing, she needed to leave her job, they did not have any children, and it was an incredibly difficult circumstance, and he walked up to this woman, and he just said, I just want you to know, I'm praying for you.And I love this lady, spicy lady, and she comes up and she says, she says, what are you praying for? And like, Warren Rearsby got all his pastoral back on and said like, well, I'm praying God help me. You know, all that stuff, right? That you hear when pastors talk. and, she said, waved him off, said, this is what I want you to pray.Pray that I won't waste this time of suffering.It sounds terrible to be up here and telling you all to do any work at all while you're suffering unless there's real treasure to be found in it. And I know sometimes when we think of like Surrendering ourselves to God. We usually mean that in terms of sin because we often have a lot of it. I want to surrender our sin And sometimes it's surrendering our will both of those deeply biblical and meaningful But there's also a sense of sometimes we need to surrender our suffering Say god i've spent all my energy trying to escape this I am dog tired of trying to endure it Teach me a new and living way.The messy process of stewarding it, which takes identifying what am I carrying? What is left? What is not been worked through? To experience it, to join with God and Christ specifically in his story with it, to join with other people and to simply do it one step at a time. I'm going to close by praying what we pray, every week in Celebrate Recovery.God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship. as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting you will make all things right.If I surrender to your will, then I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next. Amen.
Why Talk about Suffering?The Weight of Christian SufferingThe Purpose of Christian Suffering
Sermon Transcript:Good morning. It's, beautiful to be with you this morning. It's, I'm going to do a three week. Series mini series before we head into our next series and be this week next week in the week after on Christian suffering and I'm sitting there Watching this beautiful morning. Tim you notice was up here with a shirt tucked in Jesse Andrew and Doug were up front.Of course, two of them are gone by nowBut it's a good morning a beautiful time and now I'm coming up and starting a series on suffering. Dude, read the room, right? When we talk about suffering, we're gonna look at some different people within scripture, and then also, oh, there's Jesse. Say hi to Jesse, he came back. Different people in scripture and also through church history, but when I thought about how do we talk about suffering, I went to my go to, Michael Scott, who's the boss in the office.Michael Scott went through, he's, he lost his old boss and at first he didn't care much until he realized the amount of sympathy he could get from caring that, this person had died. And so he went through and, had his own grief and then wanted everyone else to experience their grief. And so what he did is went online and looked through the, the pop psychology stages of grief, which he read were denial, anger, bar bargaining.Depression and acceptance and then he said this he said and right now They are all denying the fact that they are sad and that's hard and it's making them all angry And it's my job to get them all the way through to acceptance And if not acceptance then just depression if I can get them depressed then I have done my job So my job over these next three weeks is to get you nice and depressed a couple things I do want to say before we enter I'm going to do a longer introduction today And then we'll get to two of our topics of suffering but we'll get there in a minute, but I deeply want this place to be a place where You are seen it's very important to me.And the second is we're When we talk about suffering, we're not going to talk about it in cheerful terms because if you've been through suffering, it is just not cheerful. And so, I genuinely mean this. This is the Surgeon General's trigger warning, if this is too dark for you. If this is too much for you, I, I understand and feel free, to, to go now or to go later.we're, I'm not willing to talk about suffering in a way that's light because it's dark. And so in that, I understand if, if people need to get some space or distance from this topic. Three things of why we do a series on suffering. Why? Why talk about suffering? There's a lot of good things in the Bible.There's a lot of good things in life to talk about. God is a good thing. Why talk about a bad thing? First, suffering describes much of our human experience. A lot of us thought of new ways to enter this next year. And we thought of a lot of different ways we could advance towards flourishing. Flourishing of body, flourishing of mind, flourishing of relationships.But the reality is, is even though that is our goal and our good goal for this upcoming year, there is also going to be a tremendous amount of suffering that we don't even know that will come our way. It's a book by Alan Noble who writes extremely honestly. about the suffering condition from a Christian perspective.He writes, Despite the comforts of contemporary life and its promises of even greater peace and self mastery, life is terribly hard. A comfortable, pleasant life is not normal. And while we may hesitate to call getting out of bed courageous, it is undeniably true that day to day life demands a great deal of courage.Suffering describes much of our human experience. And we don't, so we need to talk about it. Secondly, suffering will develop much of our Christian faith. Charles Spurgeon who will be in and out of this series, experienced depression most of his adult life for most of his time in ministry. He wrote this, says, I'm afraid that all the grace I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours might almost lie on a penny, but griefs is altogether incalculable.Affliction is the best book in the minister's library. C. S. Lewis, another person we'll sit with, says this. Pain insists on being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. If we don't understand and have a theology of suffering, we're simply dishonest about what it means to live life as a Christian.Suffering is involved in the Christian faith. The people who populated scripture The people who wrote scripture experienced suffering, predicted suffering, and found Jesus through the messy process of suffering. Third, why talk about suffering? If our faith cannot handle suffering, it does not deserve to exist.There's a profound book by Elie Wiesel. who lived, through, in a prison camp through the holocaust. He, he wrote that, if someone in the prison camp was having a nightmare, don't wake them up, because what they'll wake up to is worse than the nightmare itself. Our faith must make eye contact with holocausts, with traumas, with mental disorders, with poverty and estrangement.Disease and death because they are a part of what Christians experience. They are a part of experiencing the Christian life. And if our faith cannot handle that, the gospel isn't for everyone. I'dlike to share just a little bit of my story, snapshots that I've shared with you. At different times. I've spoken here about, use words like depression and anxiety, which have described different moments of my experience. And if you're in Celebrate Recovery ministry I work with, or if I know I've had a chance to talk to you personally, I might have shared with you that for the majority of my life, I've struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder.And I know for many of you that means like he must wash his hands and love vacuuming his car Not as much my experience Ocd is something that has racked my body Tortured my mind and taken me at different times past where I knew pain and despair could travel. If you look, if you're neurologically normal, and you look at your brain under a CT scan, a brain scan, You'll see the beauty of the human mind that the human mind is the most complex and beautiful organ in creation And the human mind is so tremendously powerful And and you can see how the mind creates how it finds order and you can see different parts of it light up under a CT Scan and that's a normal neurological process of different parts figuring out different things different areas of the mind communicating to different areas of the mind If you look at somebody's mind who has obsessive compulsive disorder, it looks a little more like Mario's Rainbow Road, or a laser light show.It's very lit up. A lot of things happening. According to the World Health Organization, OCD is one of the top ten reasons people go on disability. Forty percent who have it are not able to work, and people who have it are ten times more likely to commit suicide. Anxiety, is often described as gnats or mosquitoes flying around the head, you know, that might, that, that distract and, and confuse and sometimes can, zap or zing you, making it difficult to sleep or experience, and anxiety is definitely something I experience.But with OCD, when it gets real bad, those gnats and mosquitoes turn to angry, fire breathing dragonsthreatening to destroy my family. My home, my children, our church. And OCD also has this, crazy theme of guilt. So, it feels like I'm responsible to slay every one of those dragons or answer the questions they are putting, screaming in my ear. Or all the harm that they do will be my fault. It can be utterly, utterly exhausting.and torturous to live with. I've spent thousands of hours of my life feeling guilty for things I have not done. Tens of thousands of my hours confronted with thoughts of financial ruin or something bad happening to my family and it being my fault. I've created, these are not exaggerated numbers, thousands of ways in my mind that I could let the church down.My family down, God down. I go through spikes, is what we call them, or episodes in the obsessive compulsive disorder world where things get much worse. And then there are times in between. During the spikes, life can be utter misery. And then there can be often times in between which aren't, I'm not as affected by it at all.This has been the greatest curse and the greatest grace of my life. It has remained, and I want you to hear this, unhealed. I am not here to talk about suffering in a past tense way. It may remain that way to the grave if he desires, and if I don't come out of dealing with this. But through this unhealed mental disorder, God has taught me the meaning of Of living in his presence of needing his presence some of these, so this what happened this last summer I had pretty significant spike and or episode And during that time I reached out to actually many of you and I wrote an email to I don't know 20 different people and I said hey I know you know god and i'm going to tell you a little bit what's going on with me Can you talk to him about it?And I ask for simply the word power. Can you pray for power for me not to experience this anymore? God less gave me the grace of deliverance this summer, but he more gave me the grace to write and to study about Christian suffering. And some of the deliverance would come later, but these thoughts that I'm going to share, I, I've recently written a book which is coming out soon.And, these are some thoughts from the book. I went to Pastor Mark and I said, I, I can do a series. I did all this work already. so if you ever need a series, so I got popped in here in January. But some of these thoughts are from the book that I've written, although in a different format.If I get them depressed, I have done my job. How we doing? This is heavy. This is going to be a heavy week. Forgive me if this topic or my own story burdens you. This is what has been on my heart right here. The last thing I want to do is to burden you. But the first thing that we must do is to not pretend that suffering is not a real part of our human experience and Christian faith.In John 16, Jesus, eyeball to eyeball with his disciples, said, In this world, you will have suffering. Pray with me.Lord, suffering sounds so much better when we explain it after it's over. When the sun comes out and is shining, it's so much easier to talk about storms. God of goodness, you have let, and you will let, us suffer. And we are not here to pretend that it does not hurt like fire. It is built on zings and zaps of anxiety.It is filled with deep sense of loss that is not easy to shake or to slake. It has overwhelming memories of the past confusion, which is so close to suffering about the present and often despair about the future. It is not something that clothes our body. When we suffer, it is wrapped into our very bones.For these three weeks, with my friends here, for myself, we don't want to suffer anymore. If and when we do, help us to know what it means to be close to you. Teach us the treasures that are only found in the dark. In Jesus name, the suffering servant, amen. Okay, we're gonna do five things as we go through this series on suffering today We're going to talk about the weight of Christian suffering and the purpose of Christian suffering and then next week We'll look at the stewardship of Christian suffering and then January 28th If any of you come back at that point We will talk about the treasure of Christian suffering and by God's grace the end of Christian suffering Psalm 139 is where we're gonna launch out of today.Psalm 139 It is a precious psalm of David. Many of David's psalms were, were written in lament. They are psalms of grief. They are psalms where we look and saying, How in the world did this one make its way into the Bible? Psalm 139 is a loud declaration, I believe, a biographical declaration of David.Finding God's presence even here in suffering. Psalm 139 says, Oh Lord, you've searched me and you've known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You searched out my path and my lying down. You're acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, you know it all together.You hem me in behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? O where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you're there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell on the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me. And the light about me be night Even the darkness Is not dark to you the night as bright as the day for darkness is as light with you Five things I want to share about the weight of christian suffering first God is intimately aware Of our suffering and still allows it to take place There is this declaration of David is beautiful, you know, my thoughts from afar before word is on my tongue, you know it completely.Oh, Lord, you know, my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It's too much. What God knows what God is aware of in our life is overwhelming. And we say if God is aware of everything that has such a comfort with it, but it also comes with a back end question if you know how much it hurts sometimes.Why do you still allow it to take place? We cannot be just nice, put together church people that put on the right clothes to come in a climate controlled room with beautiful music and sound and they'll crack open the scripture and say it's all good when honestly, a lot of times, it's not.Christian suffering is real. And if we're going to look into the face of scripture, We look into the eyeballs of a God who is sovereign. Who knows it all, and still allows, and even at times assigns, suffering to happen. There's a prosperity gospel which, um, what we put it up as at least, is often like, if you follow God, follow all his wills, then God will financially bless you.And that's just not really In the new testament story a whole lot and and many of you would say yes, I don't believe that if you follow god He's an automatic blessing, you know, it's not like well if you tithe 15 Then he will give no it's not we understand. It's not that transactional But there are times where we can make an inner prosperity gospel Of of if we do all the right following things Then we're guaranteed to have peace and happiness and I don't think it always works that way Anyway, second the suffering that god allows is often Agonizing and beyond what we thought he would second corinthians.Jared spoke about this a couple weeks ago It's one of the main passages of of someone in the new testament passages of someone in the throes of suffering Paul in second corinthians 11 goes through a list that I don't think Anyone in history that I know of have read of can match this list. He goes through I've been shipwrecked this so many times.I've been beaten this many times left for dead I've gone through and basically he's like I almost died almost died almost died almost died It's like a hardy boys episode, you know, like I almost died a million different times But God carried me through the language Paul used to describe that is almost objective like here It was boom.Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. You get the second Corinthians 12 when it's not just hey this happened and God rescued me He uses language of torture. He said I was given I was assigned the thorn in the flesh to Torment me three times. I cried out to God deliver me But God said my grace was sufficient. This person who had a very high threshold for pain, the thorn in the flesh overtook him.C. S. Lewis, this quote means the world to me. C. S. Lewis is someone who I've always appreciated his mind. This, he speaks more biographically in this book, The Problem of Pain. He writes this, You would like to know how I behave when I'm experiencing pain. He's saying, alright, I'll talk about myself. Not just writing books about it.You need not guess, he writes, for I will tell you, I'm a great coward. But what is that purpose? When I think of pain, of anxiety that gnaws like fire, and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery. Or again, of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape.Or sudden nauseating pains that knock a man's heart out at one blow. Of pains that seemed already intolerable and then are suddenly increased. Of infuriating, scorpion stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement. A man who seemed half dead with his previous tortures. It quite or crows my spirit.Then he writes this. If I knew a way of escape, I would crawl through the sewers to find it. But what is the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already. They are the same as yours. I'm not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I'm only trying to show the old Christian doctrine of being made perfect through suffering is not incredible.To prove it palatable is beyond my design. C. S. Lewis is the godfather of explaining everything, but does not have words to make pain itself palatable. There are journal entries, I'm a journal guy. When you have a lot going on in your brain, writing things down is helpful. A lot of journals where I've talked to God about a lot of different things.But going through my journals, there's a word that's often repeated. And it's simply the word, please. And there's often times where, over and over on the page, Please. Please. Please. Please no further down. Please no further hard. I know you are aware. I know you can heal. Dear God, please.Some of the most powerful lessons and graces, and I mean that graces of my life, is when I cried out, please, and he said, not yet. third, There are many way types and levels to suffering. I, I, I know I'm just knocking you one at a time, but I'm not willing to talk about the weight of Christian suffering and to do in a cheap way.There are many light types and levels to pain. There are different things people experience. Beth Moore, who is a more of a cheerful person, and, she's just written a memoir. It's phenomenal. And she came out recently. and with her husband, they, they talk about how he experienced some PTSD, some major PTSD from an event that happened in his childhood and it has, it continued to impact them and their marriage into adulthood.And her husband said this to her, he told me once, Elizabeth, life is harder for some people than others. I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to say how everyone had the same opportunity to be happy in Jesus. I want to ask him why the blessings of the present couldn't make up for the curses of the past.Life is harder for some people than others. Shadows follow me. Again, this is Beth talking. Often enough, but not incessantly. Not everywhere I go, I deal with bouts of anxiety and depression, but they don't chase me down, like, constantly, like ravenous wolves after a bleeding sheep. Two wounds can cause the same amount of stitches and yet cause varied levels of pain.There's various levels of pain. I know when people read that there are some of you that are like Interacting with my own story and digesting that and then you do what we all do. We say well, where does the pain? I'm thinking of match up against Beth Moore's husband or The pain I feel where does it match up against what Ben is describing?I want you to hear this, please. Each person's pain matters, and not one of us truly knows where our story ranks on the human misery scale. Please know that wherever you are, you and your story matter. When we're talking about pain, it does not fit into clean categories, causes, or amounts of pain that can be put on a linear scale.Two of the greatest lies of hell to those who suffer are these. Your suffering is too big for God to handle. Your suffering is too small for him to be bothered Number fourthere is rarely a timetable given to the sufferer. There's no aspects of time mentioned in this David is going through lots of different dimensions here. He's talking about space. He's talking about location. He's talking about experience He's talking about up and down and darkness light. He's talking about all kinds of things, but he doesn't speak of How fast how long?And if you look at other psalms, you will hear him not speak of how long suffering is but beg God because it's longer than he wanted. There's a story in John 6 that I treasure, and it's a story of a blind beggar who's waiting beside the side of the road who's a man. And the disciples come with Jesus, and they're walking by, and the disciples see a blind beggar.And they want to give Jesus a little theological shakedown, and they said, Is this because of his sin or his parents sin that he suffers in this way? It's such an arrogant question. Sometimes you're like, why did you ask that, you know? Like, it's like calling into Dave Ramsey and saying, I'm thinking about going into 500, 000 in debt, what do you think?So, is this his sin or his, that he suffers in this way? And Jesus says it's not because of his sin or his parents sin. He's blind because on this day, The glory of God can be revealed. And I read that two ways. I'll be honest. The first I read that is like, dude, that guy's been blind for decades, having spiritual people walk by thinking it's his fault for decades just for this moment.And then you read and say, but it is the unique glory of God that he would meet him on that day. One of the things that I talk about this with my wife like in our own versions of suffering We say what every one of us says I want to suffer in a different way. I'll take a different cross, please Something this summer.I said to my wife was like You know what? If I have this OCD cross and various other ones that I accumulate in my life, tell, tell the grave. And my only testimony is that God is still real to people with a mental disorder. If that is to His glory, then that is the best way that I can live. Hebrews 11 speaks of incredible promises of God to incredible people of God.And it also says But it didn't come when they thought.Mother Teresa spent time with a bunch of different Christian saints. Mother Teresa and Charles Spurgeon were by far the darkest to me as I wrote the book. Mother Teresa, who had a deep desire and love for Christ. Faith built on Jesus Christ. Salvation on Christ alone. I really believed that about Mother Teresa.But she went through decades of her life in ministry where she found it incredibly difficult to experience, the presence of God. And for her, there were long seasons of what saints have called the dark night of the soul or the cloud of unknowing. These works that she wrote didn't come out till after she died because she didn't want to discourage other people by how hard her faith was.She wrote this to Father Joseph Neuner. It's an undated letter, but believes to be written in April of 1961. She says this, The place of God in my soul is blank. There is no God in me. In the darkness, Lord my God, who am I that you should forsake me? The one you have thrown away is unwanted, unloved, I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer.No one on whom I can cling, no, no one, alone. The darkness is so dark, and I am alone. She also wrote this, after experiencing a long season. Of blank for the first time in this 11 years. I have come to love the darkness for I believe That is a part a very small part of jesus's darkness and pain on earth You have taught me to accept it as a spiritual side to your work Five.Suffering, and this is the most irritating of all suffering things, Suffering doesn't feel very spiritual. Like you look at what David's talking about. He's not like, in the temple you are there! He does say on the good parts on the wings of the dawn. Yep can see God there He goes in describes these places the uttermost parts of the sea in Sheol You're like, I'm not really sure what Sheol is But it sounds like a really bad thing what God wouldn't want to be at right but in the most guttural Places that feel like God has no business there.That part has nothing to do with God And suffering when it happens, it's not If you're walking through and you're like, oh this is so hard, but I am so blessed What I would say is you're not really suffering if like the blessing is so happy. It's probably It gets worse than that. I promise It's when we can't make sense And there's this marriage of of of confusion and suffering that often sit together for seasons of time my my friend, came up to me once and he and he said He had, he talked to me, talked to somebody else who's experienced a bunch of depression in their life and he said you know I've never been I've never really been depressed, but he said I think I'd like to have a season of depression Just to like understand it and get all the spiritual insight that comes from it I wanted to punch him in the throat like are you kidding me?I've shared that with a few people who know depression they always answer with one word Why? Why would anyone want to experience depression? It doesn't feel noble, or interesting, or spiritual. We don't need to glorify various levels of suffering as if there's something so good about them. God does good with them, but they themselves are incredibly painful, and we can allow it to sit just like that.The difficult parts of suffering as a Christian is it doesn't feel very Christian. It just feels like a senseless death of a loved one. It just feels like a terrible sickness or diagnosis. It just feels like psychological torment or mental fatigue. It just feels like insecurity that cannot be satisfied with enough love.It feels like an estranged son. It feels like an unresolvable relationship. It feels like joblessness and bankruptcy. Suffering is human. It is guttural. It is mental, physical, relational. When we talk about Christian suffering and those who have suffered, it doesn't even feel very spiritual at all. And at times, with all that pain and seeming no spiritual reason, it takes a great deal of courage to get out of bed.I'm going to move on to, very simply, the purpose of Christian suffering. And I want to be honest with what we've just done. We've talked about how bad it is. A lot. And I only have one point to say how God can use all of that bad and do something good. And I don't have much time to do it.Very simply, and we'll touch on this each week. The purpose of Christian suffering is this, it's union, it's union with God. David says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? David wrote Psalms that were in deep suffering and confusion. How does he know that even here your presence is?It's because he had to go there. He had to go to Sheol. He had to go to various levels of Christian suffering and high points to find out that he can experience God even there too. In my own journey with darkness, here's what I simply want to say. I fell past places I couldn't see the light anymore. He brings something, at times, that's different than light.He brings companionship in the dark. He is God of the dark, too. When we find ourselves in the darkness of suffering, there is still the same God there. There's not a new Lord that reigns. Even here in that place, He is present. He holds us fast.I wrote about an experience in, in the book, and it's one I, I never intended to talk about publicly, but then I'm like, yeah, but you're writing it in a book, and I'm like, yeah, that feels like you're just writing it to one person, I don't know. But it's an experience I had, last October, and I was processing a lot, and I like, was worried about it quite a bit.It's pretty normal for me. and went and spent time with God for a couple of days down in Spring Lake, New Jersey, which is a place where he often meets me. And I went down there for a couple of days just to pray and process and hear. And I just walked. And I walked and waited to hear from God. As I walked, clear as day, louder than audible, God said to me, Ben, what do you want?I don't remember God asking me a question ever. Like, he knows the answers, why would he ask, you know? Like, but he And I was sort of like, well, that sounds like you're asking a genie question. I know you're not a genie. Let's go on. This is probably not God. But again, Ben, what do you want? What do you want?And then I realized he was serious, and I'm like, whoa, this is, you know. Could I pray for the end of my OCD? Salvation of my children? The stability of my church that's about to go through succession? All of these things came to me. But they weren't the ultimate, young want of my soul.And I'm sure he did this exercise just for me. But I told him, I said, I just want to be with you.I'm willing to go to Sheol again. And I hate it there. I'm willing to experience whatever I need to experience. I'm just not willing to not be with you. If there's anything Christian suffering has taught me is that he's better than the rest. And it's only when the cheap answers really stop working and all the ways we thought he would behave really, he doesn't,takes me to that guttural place of what do you want? Well, I really don't want to suffer. But even deeper than that I want youPaul says this I want to know christ Yes, even to know the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings Becoming like him in his death and my goodness It feels like death and so somehow to attain the resurrection from the deadGodThere's people in this room who have spent much time praying for me And seasons of sufferingI pray lord For those that are in suffering right now Who have tried to put good answers And apply goodness and stick thumbs ups But honestly, no, it is not that way right now My prayer Meet them Even here in Jesus name. Amen.We're going to close.
Jeremiah 2:1-13, 19And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.
Sermon Transcript:Morning everybody. I invite you to take your Bibles. We're going to be looking at the book of Jeremiah this morning. I've got a one off sermon this morning, which i'm excited about, which means we're not in the middle of a series right now. And as we take our first Sunday in January, I have a message which probably isn't going to feel particularly edifying when you hear the title.A dissection of sin, but the second part of the title, and what it says about God. It's actually a sermon I'm very excited about. We're gonna look at Jeremiah chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, and then down to verse 19.And this is actually a sermon, the first of a series of sermons that Jeremiah the prophet is presenting to people who are trying to figure out what's wrong. Everything was going wrong with the country, they're in danger of enemies coming, there's famine, there's a variety of things. And Jeremiah is presenting an opening sermon to them.Which is kind of what I'm doing here in 2024. Jeremiah chapter 1, excuse me, chapter 2, verse 1. The word of the Lord came to me saying, Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord. I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown.Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest. All who ate of it incurred guilt. Disaster came upon them, declares the Lord. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went from me and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?They did not say, Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that none passes through, where no man dwells. And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things.But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination. The priests did not say, Where is the Lord? Those who handle the law did not know me. The shepherds transgressed against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. Therefore I still contend with you, declares the Lord.And with your children's children I will contend. For cross to the coast of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care. See if there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this.Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. And then this key verse. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. And hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. And I'm going to dump down to verse 19, so to the conclusion.Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God. The fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts. Lord, we come to you this morning. And first off, Lord, I just, I want to agree with the songwriter. You are worthy.You are worthy of all blessing and honor and glory and power. Lord, it's such a privilege to gather this morning among people the vast majority of whom would say, yeah, he's worthy of praise and honor and adoration. He is worthy of my devotion. He is worthy of my love. He is worthy of my yielding all that I am.And Lord, I pray that this morning We might more fully see your worthiness. Speak into us through this passage, I pray, in Jesus name. Amen. 1973, Carl Menninger, at the time one of the leading premier psychiatrists in America, wrote a book, which was entitled, Whatever Happened to Sin? It's an interesting book, of course, with the very question.And it wasn't written by, a Bible thumping preacher from the South. This guy was a prominent secular, psychiatrist. And, he was unhappy about an environment he saw in Western culture, which he described as everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault. He lamented the fact that American society seemed to be rejecting the concept of personal accountability.The word sin, Menninger argued, was disappointing from the American vocabulary. For him, even if the concept was ignored, he believed that individuals as well as society would still suffer the negative consequences of ignoring some absolute direction of life, the will of God, if you will, for people's lives.In the years since Menninger wrote his book, this has of course continued in our culture. The idea that turning away from God is the root. Of the problems in my life can seem out of touch Archaic, it's hard to imagine tomorrow that we are going to turn to Social media and find in instagram posts that that will be the way that There is a self description of LeBron James, or Johnny Depp, or Lady Gaga, or the Kardashians.Yeah, my sin is the root of all the struggles that I'm facing in my life. Yet the entire teaching of the Bible and church history is founded on this reality. Sin is the root of our problem. It plays a part in all of our problems. But what is sin, actually? Is it breaking a rule? Is it falling short of a standard?Is it rebellion against divine authority? In a broad sense, all of those things are involved. But it is not the ultimate perspective of sin. And this morning, in this passage, I want to join Jeremiah and try to dissect what sin actually is. And then I want to show what that shows about God. Frankly, I hope, and I think, what we're going to find is going to surprise you.Jeremiah chapter 2, as I mentioned earlier, is the first of a series of sermons. That jeremiah is giving to the people and it's really an answer to the question Why is everything falling apart? Our culture is crumbling our family structures are Are collapsing and in this passage he is presenting to them A sermon a series on sin what it is and what its effects arehere. The lord gives the answer Through his prophet to his people notably in verse 13 and 19 He tells them a dissection of sin, and in it, he shows us about our sin, and he shows us about our God. I want to turn here and now look at a couple of things he says. First of all, the dissection of sin. And in chapter 2, and I'm going to focus here on verse 13, he presents the nature, first of all, of sin.He says, For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters and hued out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. The nature of sin is betrayal. Here's what he says. They have forsaken me. They have turned from me. They forsake forsook God. In verse eight, verse 13, they left God for other things, other gods small Gs.Sin is more like the act of a traitor. than of a criminal A criminal breaks the law of his country. A traitor betrays his country. A criminal violates the law. A traitor violates a trust, a relationship. What they betrayed was God had been their source of living water. And it says, My people have turned to cheap substitutes.There were three ways you could get water at this time. One was you could get it from the ultimate source, would be a spring of continually life giving, healthy water that was clean, that came from the depths, and it was a pure water. source of water. The second was you could dig a shallow well and actually you would fill it with water.Sometimes it would be some that would steep in, but it usually was a well that was basically a holding tank. And then there was this thing called a cistern, which were basically things that were constructed usually above the ground to hold the water. And they, they tended to, the water in there tended to get hot.It tended to be a, a, a place where mosquitoes swarmed. It tended to get cracks. It was the worst place to get your water. The best place was this stream of bubbling life giving water that was, that was from the depths and would bring healthy water, cool water, refreshing water. God says, I'm that water and I want to be that water.But my people have turned to these broken cisterns and they're trying to drink. This faulty,perverted water that's warm and rancid. They went to other places, other things, to quench their thirst, to meet their need. They replaced God. They not only forsook Him, but it says they have turned to these other systems. In verse 19 it says, They no longer fear Me, but they fear these other things. Now, awe in the scriptures is a term that is used to translate fear.There are two types of fear in the Bible. One is the fear of you're in danger. You feel fear of potential harm. You're in a room. You're talking to a friend and, spiders are not your thing. And a spider crawls the floor across the floor. I'm sorry, right now you're all weirded. Some of you're weirded out already, but this spider goes across and you, you, you miss this thing and it's gone.And, and so you and I are sitting there and, and, and, and the spider's going somewhere. I don't know where it is. You can't get your mind off this spider. You know, just where did it go? Where is it? And I try to help out. I said, don't worry, it won't eat much. I mean, it'll be fine. But you've got to find out where that spider is.Because who knows where it's going to show up and what it's going to do. Who knows what kind it is. The spider has become central. To everything that's going on in that individual's life at that moment. There is fear of danger and harm There's another sense of fear in the old testament and the new testament And that is the sense of a fear not of something that we dread but of something that is Dominant to us It is something powerful But that is the sense that we could translate by the word all it is big To us, it is powerful, perhaps even dangerous, but there is delight in the object that we are drawn to the object.We are not trying to get away. We are drawn to, to the object of our awe. And God is talking about I I was that to you? I was the one that, yes. Am I dangerous? Yes, but you know, I'm not dangerous to you. Am I for you? Yes. Do you know I'm big and powerful? Yes. There is a sense of awe, but the common denominator of these two fears is that this thing becomes a preoccupation.Can become almost an obsession. That the thing we fear or the thing that we're in awe of becomes central to us. It's the dominating reality in our life. And God says, I want to be this to you. I want to be the one that you look to for your water. I want to be the one that, that, that is control center of your life.But you've turned to this bro, these broken cisterns, to these other small g gods, these other things to provide that satisfaction in your life. And in that sense, you have sinned. You have betrayed me. You have turned from me a while back. I was really trying to, trying to think of a handle for the. What an idol is and I'd studied for Few years ago.I did a study of Idolatry and did a whole series a 12 week series on American idols And I was trying I did two sermons on an anatomy of an idol. What is an idol? I was fascinated to find that there were three words that were constantly used in the scriptures to describe an idol and I realized recently that That those three words are the exact words that can fit into, a formula.And here's the formula. Idle is simply this. I D I O N I L An idle is something I depend on, or it is something I obey. Or it is something I love, and in that context, all of them are more than God. And in the scripture, the word depend on is sometimes called, trust in. But, The sense of depending on, obeying, and loving is throughout the scripture, the description of something that I have idolized in my life and have displaced God from that position of central in my life.And here's what he says, he says, you don't fear me. You're not looking to me. You're not depending on me. You're not ultimately. And ultimately, you've made these other things your love gods. And he says, this is the sense of what sin is. It is turning to something else. Something is more awesome, more captivating, more dynamic to God.And at that moment, you will tend to live out sins. But the reality of sin is betrayal. And I'm going to come back to that because that says some very compelling things about God. The second thing that's true in this, this, dissection of sin, we not only see its nature, but he also tells us the life support of sin.And that is denial. It's found in verse 19. God pulls the people together and he says this to them. Know and see that it's evil and bitter for you. He says, look at what you're doing. Look at know it. See it. See the result of the choice you're making in turning from me. That it's bitter for you. This is bad water.This is not gonna satisfy you. It'll give momentary thirst quenching, but ultimately, this is crummy water to build your life in and on. It's a, it's the language of intervention, right? It's the wife who pulls in her husband's friend and says, look, I can't get through to him. Would you join us in this little gathering in our living room, where we're just gonna speak into him and say, Hey, Fred.Look at what you're doing. Look at what these choices are accomplishing in your life. We're here because we love you. Well, that's what God's doing here. In verse 19, it's an intervention meeting. And why do you need an intervention? Because we deny reality. The problem is people deny that sin is really the issue.That it's wandering from God. That they have betrayed God and turned someone else, somewhere else for their sinner. It is not fatal. It is fatal to deny the significance of it. There is something about alcohol that puts out a force field of denial. It's fatal to deny you're an alcoholic. Lucy, he wasn't an alcoholic, but he, she called him out in this cartoon.I think we have it. You know what your problem is, Charlie Brown? The problem with you is Charlie Brown. No, I don't want to know. Leave me alone. If you know Lucy, you understand that response. The whole trouble with you, Charlie Brown, is you won't listen to what the whole trouble with you is. She's speaking the language of intervention to a guy that's denying.I don't want to, I don't want to hear it. I don't need to face it. I, I don't need to hear from you. I don't want to know. Denying that sin is the problem keeps us from finding a solution. The answer to Meninger's question, whatever became a sin? Of sin is that we are choosing to think it's not that consequential People don't want to hear it's a betrayal of god.Yeah, I don't do everything right but You know, it's not really I I there's people that live a lot worse than I do There's people that have a lot bigger stuff going on in their life than I do. I mean that that that'sAnd god wants to break through And show us the pervasiveness of sin In the context that we have turned away from God's centrality and at the control center of our lives. I'm gonna jump, past this next illustration just for time. Ernest Becker, an author that I really have appreciated. I've read most of his stuff.He's a, again, a psychiatrist of days past, but he wrote, he won the Pulitzer Prize. one of his books was a book that was entitled The Structure of Evil, and in that he said the structure of evil, the real problem in the world, war, poverty, violence, et cetera, are a result of social structures. That they correct the social structures in a society, the educational system, the family structure, and how it's designed.Institutional structures, you will be able to correct the problems that people are having. It was a very contemporary perspective post World War II and the decades that followed. Later in his life, he wrote another book, and this was his Pulitzer Prize entree. It was called, Escape from Evil. And in the preface of the book, he had changed completely.Here's what he says in the preface. I'm now looking at humanity full in the face for the first time. In my previous works, I had failed to see how truly vicious human behavior is. This is a dilemma that I have been caught with along with many others who have been trying to keep alive the enlightenment tradition.This enormous problem to see that humanity is so evil causing now requires some third alternative beyond bureaucratic science changing the social structure or just despair. We believe that third option is the option that is declaring himself the source of living waters. Our problem comes as a result of denying the role of sin in our life.Let me just try to play this out practically. Worry is a result of some danger being more central in your life than God. It's bigger to you than God. You're more in awe of a danger than you are of God's power and presence. When you engage in self pity, you're more in awe of some benefit you have lost than you are of God.When you yield to lust, you are more in awe of some visual stimulation than you are of God. When you are angry, you are more in awe of some offense done against you than you are in awe of God's forgiveness of your offenses. When you are filled with guilt, you are more in awe of your failure than you are of God's grace and his plans for bringing good from your failure.Sin is our problem. It's the root of all the struggles in our life. But sin is not so much looked at by God. As your acts, or your words, your failures, or your screw ups, but as betrayal. You're turning away from Him as the true life giving fountain for your life. We're looking to other broken cisterns, cheap substitutes, to give us what God wants to give to us.So what does this tell us about God? What does it tell us about God that God's primary metaphor of sin is adultery? That it is Going to other things, to other mistresses of, if you will, of, of a deity style. It tells me two things. It tells us that God takes sin seriously. He is holy. He's set apart from sin.He's completely different. He's never motivated by greed or maliciousness or vindictiveness. So what does that mean about how He views your sin? Well, it means He takes it seriously. But why? It is not ultimately because it's an affront to Him.But it is ultimately Because it is poison to you.You may react, well, no, God cares most about his glory. I agree with that. God created us for his glory, to bring him glory.But until you understand this reality of living with God, you won't understand what I'm trying to say this morning. And this statement is this, God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. When that begins to, I remember when God, and John Piper is one, made that statement probably clearest to me, began to permeate my soul, and I began to think, wait, you mean God's ultimate.Pleasure is that and his design is that he would be glorified in my life, finding joy and satisfaction and contentment and my life purpose in him that that brings him more glory. And all the things I think, well, I'll do this for God, or I'll be this way for God. He says, no, Mark. The more you live, as Jared talked about last week, and embracing your brokenness, your need of me, your need of drinking at my cistern, the more you're able to live.to my glory. His glory and your joy somehow follow parallel tracks. And the more that we understand that reality of God, that yes, He is holy. He is the holy other, W H O L L Y. But He is also holy, H O L Y, different, set apart.But in his holiness, the visual is not of God's responding to your sin as a strict schoolmarm waiting to smack your hand with a ruler, but of a loving mother grieving over the destructive choices of her child. That's one metaphor of a heavy hearted mother. Another one is this passage. It tells us that God loves sinners tenderly.A grief stricken husband here whose wife betrays him in an adulterous affair. And he says, that's what's happened when you've turned from drinking at my spring and you turn to another cistern. He said, you've spurned my love. You've spurned what I want to give you. I have the real water.And sin is betrayal. It's spurning it. And he said, no, no. I'll find it here. I'll find it here. I'll find it here. I'll find it here. I'll be the great one and find out the emptiness of living that way.This statement is by Brennan Manning. It's called A Glimpse of Jesus. Here's what he says. God's compassion enables us to be compassionate toward ourselves. It's the divine compassion that Jesus embodies in human history and in his own compassionate life and death. Before I am asked to show compassion to my brothers and sisters in their suffering, I'm asked to accept the Father's compassion in my own life.To be transformed by it, to become caring and compassionate toward myself and my own suffering and hurt in my own failure and need. The Father's loving graciousness is not in any way conditioned by or dependent upon what we are or do. He will be gracious and compassionate toward us no matter what we are or do.He will be gracious and compassionate toward us because that's the kind of father he is. He's Abba, the intimate form, term, for Father in the Scriptures. We should never speak of losing the state of grace in this sense, for God never stops being gracious and faithful to us. His being gracious does not depend on us.He will be unfailingly loving. In another book of his, he says this. It's called Abba's Child. It's a short one. One of the most shocking contradictions in the American church is the intense dislike many disciples of Jesus have for themselves. They're more displeased with their own shortcomings than they would ever dream of being with someone else's.They're sick of their own mediocrity and disgusted by their own inconsistencies. I read a while back Karl Barth, a German theologian during World War II, brilliant theologian. He was analyzing Adolf Hitler's view of God. I don't know if you know this, I've said this before in a seminar I taught, but, Adolf Hitler, in his writings, talked about God a lot.It was what caused the, the, the churches of Germany actually to be among some of his main supporters originally. He would have book burnings of pornographic books. He was a hero to the church. It was, it was people like Barnhofer and others, Karl Barth, that saw, you gotta look beyond the verbiage. But he always talked about God.But interestingly, he always called God the same title. He called him the Almighty. Now, God is Almighty. But as Karl Barth said, Perhaps you recall how when Hitler used to speak about God, he called him the Almighty. But it is not the Almighty who is God. We cannot understand from the standpoint of a supreme concept of power who God is.And he certainly was denying that God was that power. And the man who calls the Almighty God, misses God in the most terrible way. For the Almighty can be bad, as power in itself is bad. The Almighty can mean chaos and evil. The Almighty could be associated as the devil. We could not better describe and define the devil than by trying to think this idea of a self based free sovereign ability.The reformer Martin Luther knew well how the, the, the fatherhood of God changes His concept of God he talked about how he said and he was a devout practicing quote Christian He was a monk. He was giving his life to the service of God, but he made this statement. He said I did not love, yes, frankly, I hated the righteous God who punished sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly, murmuring greatly, I was angry with God.Luther goes on to talk about, it wasn't until I understood. A God of compassion, a God of forgiveness, a God who says in Romans 1, in verse 17, where he talks about the just shall live by faith, not by their works. But then later in that passage, he talks about this God being for us. And he says many of us turn to transferring our affections to Mary and the saints, because it was them that we could love and to them that we would find ourselves praying.So how can we be healed because here we are in the desert and he's saying to people, you know you got lots of stuff going on lots of struggles lots of emptiness lots of conflict in your life and Most of all you've got conflict in you and he says you're never gonna really be okay When you're drinking at the wrong water source You're never really going to fill up the the drought that you feel inside the thirst that My life is not how it ought to be.It doesn't mean you won't have overt struggles and conflicts. I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm saying is, that internal anger, that internal turmoil, that internal stuff. He says, you gotta drink at the right cistern. He says, I've got to be central. And he says, sin is not so much, you did this, and you didn't do this.No, it's that you turn and so you turn to all different as all kinds of things you live out because of that But he says ultimately you're just not drinking at the right place You're not allowing me to be the center of your life How did Jesus Christ make you and how does he make you what you have been trying to make yourself all these years?First of all, he gave his life for you He accepts you who is rejected that you could be accepted. There is not another religion like this on earth. All religions say, do this, fail, and you're out. Jesus Christ says, fail, and I will die for you. I will be here for you, and I will never leave you.Today, as we start January 24th,I think what God says to us is, turn away from these lover gods. Turn away from these other things you're depending on, you're obeying, you're loving, and he says come to me Sin is not, you, you, you messed up, you did this, you, come on, come on You don't really hear God speaking to your sin until you hear it in the voice of lament.Until you hear it in the broken hearted mother who with, Augustine. His mother Monica would follow him around. At the time he was probably the most renowned philosopher in the world. He was just a brilliant, brilliant man. And he, and he probably slept with more women than anyone in his generation.Every city, every place, he was into everything. And his mother would, would, would use her life savings and would follow him. and pray for him, plead with God for him. And eventually, when Augustine, Augustine was dramatically changed by the gospel of grace, he always pointed to his mother's prayers. You don't really see God until you see him in the mother's heart of Monica, until you see the father looking at his prodigal and running out of his house.Not a word of a rebuke rain, just. This is God. He is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him. He sees sin not ultimately as you didn't get it right. He sees it as you turned from me. You spurned what I want to give to you. I mean, could there be any more powerful visual of God's love than that the way He describes sin is adultery.Adultery is pain. Adultery is loss. Adultery is rejection.And all of that is sourced out of a partner who loves the person that has turned, turned from them. My greatest prayer for the people that are most close in my life, my greatest prayer for you as, as the church family that I am a part of,is that you will find God the safest person in your life. You see that? The person you feel most comfortable with. The person you delight being with the most, because you know, I don't know everything about God, hardly, but I know this. He's crazy about me. When we begin to grasp that, we begin to say, Why in the world?Would I choose this? Why in the world would I choose pornography? Why in the world would I choose these other addictive behaviors? I have this. I have him.To me, that's a bit of a dissection of sin, and I love what it shows me about God. Lord, we come to you this morning.Lord, you're the pursuing God because you're a God of grace. God, how I pray.That you would bring into our lives the things that are necessary to show us the emptiness of the things that we're Holding on to so dearly that are keeping us from really drinking at your well God I trust you to do that and I ask you to do that only because I know that the alternative is to love in the the subhuman lives that we so often live in That our false idols offer to us, Lord, may we, we come to the, to the wellin Jesus name. Amen.You guys can stand, we're going to sing one more song.
2 Corinthians 12:1-10he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that lthe power of Christ may rest upon me.
Sermon Transcript:I'll tell you what, I would not suggest preaching on boasting in your weakness because the Lord just might allow you to be sick the whole week leading up to preaching. It's like, okay, Lord, I get it. I will boast in my weakness in this as well. good morning. It's really good to be with you guys. this morning.It feels really strange to be in this room. Actually, last time I preached, I was on a very small stage in the gym and now the light's beaming on me and yeah, it's a little strange, but I'm, I'm, I'm glad to be here. if you don't know who I am, my name is Jared and I'm the youth pastor. And I got an email this week, this past week, and I literally started like actually laughing out loud, not like LOLing, like actually laughing out loud.And it's from this, this youth ministry resource I use a lot for like a bunch of games. It's called Download Youth Ministry. They send like weekly emails out and I get this email this past week and I just I had to start off with it It says this The week between Christmas and New Year's the office is eerily quiet Emails vanish into a black hole of delayed responses and you find yourself doing odd weird jobs that you put off all year and eating a questionable amount of assorted fine cheeses and If you're one of the chosen ones You've been tapped on the shoulder to participate in the Sacred Holiday National Youth Pastor Preaches and Main Service Weekend.We salute all of you who celebrate. So, I'm one of the chosen ones this morning that gets tapped on the shoulder. No, I only share that as a joke. I'm very excited to share what the Lord's put on my heart. honestly, this message has put on my heart for probably the past year or so. So, I'm very excited to say that, so.I want to say Happy New Year's to everyone and I wanted to start off and bring some fireworks on stage But I figured the sanctuary is still reeling from the wax from the Christmas Eve service. So sorry Tim if we messed it up But when I say New Year's What comes to your mind? You can say it like New Year's.New Year's resolutions. Who said that? Oh, hey, David. That's my cousin. yes, New Year's resolutions. I didn't even place him there. He just knew the answer. See, I knew that. when I, New Year's resolutions is always what comes to mind, right? And I love like all New Year's resolutions. I love thinking about it and looking at them.And I just did a quick. Google search. Maybe you're one of those people that wants to start an annual Bible plan for your New Year's resolutions And you'll quit once you get to Leviticus, but you tried and like so good on you. It's a tough book to get through I'll be honest. Maybe you're trying to do something some fitness goals or whatever But I kind of noticed thinking about New Year's resolutions is The more I thought about them, the more I realized that most of them are really self centered.They're all about us. And I just did a quick Google search about New Year's resolutions, and can you read that? Because I can't read. Okay. You know, improve fitness, improve finances, improve mental health, lose weight, improve diet. I don't know how those things are different. make more time for loved ones, stop smoking, learn a new skill, make more time for hobbies, improve work life balance, travel more, meditate regularly.Drink less alcohol. Perform better at work. See how those three, those bottom three percent, that's what they least care about? If you kind of just glance at the scale here, you kind of realize, like, all of these are about me, right? These aren't my New Year's resolutions, just to let you know. These are the most popular ones of 2024.But they're all about us, right? Improving me, improving how I might Perceived to someone else, how someone can see me. Wow, did you, have you been going to the gym? Wow, have you, have you lost weight? Wow, are you doing better at work? Have you improved your finances? I saw you got a new car or a new house.It's all about me and looking good. And I know some of these things aren't necessarily bad, right? Like wanting to get healthy and lose some extra pounds. That's not a bad thing, but if what, where are, where our heart is for it. Where, where's our heart in that? Is it about us and, and wanting to get healthier?Or is it about wanting to look a certain way because the world says it? And I know I'm guilty of this, right? I'm guilty of setting these own standards for myself. Well, this morning we're going to be looking at someone that doesn't boast or brag about the impressive things he does, but he actually does the opposite.He boasts about the embarrassing weaknesses he has, even though the culture he was in was hyper focused on appearance and status. Would you turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and me reading, in this passage. And I've just kind of been going through Corinthians in my own quiet time, the past couple months, and I just love these books.They're really fun.2 Corinthians chapter 12, starting in verse 1, says this. I must go on boasting, though there is nothing to be gained by it. I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know.God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth, but a refraining from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses. insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I'm strong. Would you pray with me this morning?Lord, I thank you for who you are. God, I thank you that you're a God who specializes in weakness.Lord, and I just pray that you'd give me the strength and energy to get through this sermon. Lord, I pray that you'd open up our hearts. To your word, Lord, that you'd open up our hearts and minds, Lord, to your spirit to work through me, Lord. God, I pray that, uh, at the end of this, Lord, that you'd be glorified, Lord, and even in the midst of my own weakness that I feel, God, with my body right now, being sick, Lord, I just pray that you would, overcome that.God, there's nothing, special or catchy I could say that could change anyone's hearts, Lord. It's only by your spirit. And only by your word that these things are done, Lord. And I know if I was up here alone, Lord, it would just be noise. Lord, so I just ask that you'd come down, Lord. That you'd be with us and just reveal yourself this morning, God, and that your word would cut through our hearts.Thank you for what this scripture has done in my own life, God. Thank you what it's taught me and continues to teach me, Lord. We pray that you'd bless our time this morning. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.Thank you. Yeah, when I preach, I forgot to, you guys can always talk like it's like you want to shout something out. Don't, don't, don't do anything crazy, Gene. Okay, I'm watching you. I also forgot to mention, I wanted to shout out Collinswood. So thank you, Collinswood for tuning in. We love you. We're thinking about you.but I love 1st and 2nd Corinthians. they're great books. They're one of my favorite epistles. There's a couple of epistles that Paul writes that are like. are more, like, generalized, like they're more, like, like I love Ephesians, that's a great book, but it's, it's more, like, he's not specifically, like, coming at the Ephesians for, like, specific things.In Corinthians, like, it seems like he's almost got, he's got some beef with these people, like, and if you're over 40, beef just means, like, he's got conflict with them, you know what I mean? That's all I mean, sorry. I did say I was a youth pastor, right? So he's got like some like specific conflicts. He's calling out like specific people's sins.Like I would love to like been in the house that they're reading this letter in and Paul's like yeah And such and such is doing what? Wait, with who and what? Like he's calling out specific things, right? He had a he had a deep relationship with the Corinthian people. He mentioned specific problems in their church.Sexual immorality, marriage, food sacrifice to idols, unity, generosity. boasting and weaknesses is what we'll be looking at. but Paul was in Corinth. You go back to Acts chapter 18. He was there for a year and a half. He spent a long time there. he had a lasting relationship with the church in Corinth.And he actually wrote more than the two letters that we have in our scripture. some of the letters were lost, so the letter we're studying today most likely wasn't actually the second letter. but it's just categorized that way in our Bibles. But like in many of the places Paul went, there was a lot of growth, but also a lot of resistance.In 1st Corinthians, Paul calls out the Corinthians for a myriad of sins that they are willfully committing. This letter was not received well by the church and many rejected the letter so Paul decided to go and visit him and actually in his letters he calls this the painful visit with much tears. And then we get to 2 Corinthians where he'll be mainly looking, Paul writes this letter to assure the Corinthians of his love for them because most, most of them had repented of their sins, they've turned away.And he's kind of just, he's affirming them of his love and commitment to them, but also kind of sharing up some of these people that still have not repented of their sins. And that's where we kind of land. this morning, the last three chapters, Paul's addressing this small group of individuals that still reject him.They don't respect him and his leadership or his right as an apostle. And this is kind of, when it gets messy. Paul's addr addressing these self titled super apostles. It's a pretty good name, you know, like it'd be pretty cool to be a super pastor. I don't know what that looks like. I don't, I don't think I fit the bill, but you know, who knows.But these were Jewish leaders that had come in and were preaching a false gospel. Paul makes that clear and to fully understand The city of Corinth. We kind of have to, understand what these apostles were doing and what they were like. Well, Corinth was a prominent city. it actually had two harbors.So it had open waters on either side, which kind of made it a prominent trade and destination route. Corinth, Corinth was known for its educated speakers and philosophers. There were men known as sophists. which literally means wise ones. They were obsessed with rhetoric and would host events where speakers would debate one another.They would actually charge people to come and listen to them and their speeches. They'd argue against one another and talk about different topics. And they had this whole, pride to them where they looked down on people who actually did, like, manual physical labor because they thought they weren't educated enough to do what they could do.And this is the culture Paul is entering in. Alright, people obsessed with education, status, appearance, intelligence, and wealth. So in the early stages of the church's growth, they were lured away to these super apostles that were impressive in speech, and in conduct, and in their appearance. And they were preaching a false gospel that was attractive to these listeners.We don't know exactly the specifics of what that looked like, but we know it's false because of what Paul says. And this is what Paul is up against in Corinth. And you wonder like, how does he handle this, right? Like he's going into a city where these people are obsessed with intelligence and appearance and education and these people that are really wise and can speak really well.Well, you'd think he'd go in and he's like, Alright, I'm going to present my degrees. I'm going to let these people know, you know, I studied under Gamaliel. He's the rabbi of rabbis. He's the teacher of teachers. He's that guy. He's him. If you're over 40 again, that means, like, he's the top guy. You know, he's really good.Right? He might, so, he might say, well, I was a Pharisee. I have most of the Old Testament memorized. You know, says all these things. I'm a citizen of Rome. I have Jewish heritage. No, he doesn't do any of these things. This is how Paul initially comes to the Corinthians. In 1st Corinthians 2, 1 through 5, he says this.And when I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.I mean, think about this with me for a second. This is completely backwards to what me or you would have done. We would have shown our best hand, made ourselves look the best we could. Right? If I was going in and I knew these people were, were, were focused on speech and dialect, I would have came up with something crafty and, and, and so I could have a argument to all their arguments and, and win this debate.No, Paul came in his weakness and fear and much trembling. This is how he came. This is how he wanted to come that I would know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For the very purpose that they would not put their faith in man. But in God alone, and even when he does list some of his credentials to compare himself to these super apostles He states that those things are actually meaningless 2nd Corinthians 11 21 B through 30 says this right before our passage here.It says but whatever anyone else dares to boast of I am speaking as a fool. I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one. I am talking like a madman. With far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.Five times I received at the hands of the Jews, the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers.In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from other things, there is the daily pressure I feel from my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of all the things that show my weakness.I mean, man, that just says it all right there. Paul says he would, he's a fool to even compare the things that he does to these super apostles because it's all meaningless. Then he goes on to boast about the sufferings he has endured for Christ that really show not him to be strong or impressive or influential, but it shows him to be weak, vulnerable, and fragile.And verse 30 sums up the whole thing. If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. He even admits in verse, 6 of chapter 11 that he's not even a good speaker. He talks about, I'm, I'm, if I was gifted in speech, which I'm not, right? That is why this passage in chapter 12 is so powerful and so important for us to understand.Paul's character is attacked. His leadership skills, his appearance, his profession, his calling from God is all attacked. They basically say to Paul, you're ugly, poor, unimpressive, a terrible leader, a terrible preacher, and you suck at your job. And the craziest part, Paul doesn't defend himself. He says, yeah, you're right about most of those things, but I have a God who told me that His grace is enough for me.That His power is made perfect in my weakness. He doesn't defend himself. He says, yeah, I'm gonna boast of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest on me. So give me your best shot, hurl the insults, and bring the persecution. My God works best when I'm at my lowest. Amen. I hope you guys are getting this.This is really good news for you and me. This is really good news. I was just up here with the worship team, and I'm like, man, aren't you guys glad that God decides to use broken, messed up people like us? They're like, yeah, dude, we're so glad, especially for you. No, they didn't say that.This is really good news for us, and I just can't help but think that this is so countercultural of what I would have done in Paul's situation. I mean, it is like the, the last thing you would ever think to do as a leader. To go into a situation like this and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna make myself look weak, and vulnerable, and fragile, and helpless.That'll, that'll win hearts for people. Right? Like, who, who would even think to do that? Paul does. See, because he knew that God is willing to meet us in our weaknesses, in our brokenness. God is not requiring us to be impressive. He is requiring us to be reliant on Him. This is the way of Christ. It's the way down.It's the path of humility. God uses common, ordinary people to do extraordinary things because He's an extraordinary God. In chapter 4 of Acts, Peter and John are put on trial for healing a man. And if you remember from our study in Acts, they're put on trial. They, they heal this man. And they're, they're kind of interrogating him.And Peter's just filled with the Holy Spirit. And he's just like, just spitting like straight truth facts. And like, these, these guys are just like blown away. They're like, what the heck is going on? Like, who are these? Like, we remember these guys. They weren't nearly this impressive. And Acts 4, 13 says this.When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. Canyou imagine your, your Luke, like, your penance, and your, and Peter and John are like, You sure you want to keep the part about the common, uneducated? Like, I don't, it may sound a little better if you just, you just scratch that part out, right? But the special part about Peter and John had nothing to do with them.But everything to do with whom they had been with. All right. This is what our God does. He specializes in common, uneducated, weak, broken, fragile, trauma ridden. This is what he decides to make his specialty in.I just want to ask us this question this morning. When people look at you, do they think of how talented you are? Or how intelligent you are? Or how attractive you are? How effective you are? Or do they look at you and see a broken person with a big God?I don't know if you can tell, but I, I know I'm not, I'm not being as excited as I normally am. I'm trying to conserve my strength, but I love this passage. I've, I think one of the first times I read this passage, I was 14 years old. I remember, like, it felt like scales were falling off my eyes, like, I was like, cause I was just getting, like, I had the gospel all wrong, like, I thought I had to do something for God.Like, I had, I thought I had to, like, bring something for Him to use, you know, like give Him some investment and He'd give me, like, a return. And when I read this, I just remember, I mean, like, whoa, He actually works best in my weakness? That doesn't, I don't even know how to comprehend that, but I like it because I feel really weak right now.This, this passage is so powerful and I think for so long I focus so much about the whole, weakness part and I think I left out the boasting in the weakness part because no one really does that, right? Like you don't do that. People don't actually do that. but I think in the past year or two, God has really drilled home what it looks like to boast in my weakness, um, and just really through that has really exposed some idols that I had in my life.And I just want to share a couple. If you don't mind, it's kind of hard to talk about boasting your weaknesses and, and, and not boasting your weakness while you're preaching on it. You know what I mean? That's a joke, guys. It's off crowd, I'll tell you what. These lights are so bright. I'm so tired. Okay. I want to tell you guys a story.So my senior, after my senior year of high school, after my, yeah, after my senior year of high school, I interned for the first time at FCC. And for some reason I let Pastor Mike shave my head. And I, I thought it would be like one less thing to worry about. I knew I was going to be like going to camps, like week after week.So I was like, alright, if I, if I don't have to worry about like washing my hair, like that's one less thing I have to worry about. So I let Pastor Mike, shave my head. And I don't know if he did something, like I'm not sure to this point, but my hair never grew back the same. Okay? I knew this was gonna happen.I told JC this, I was like, I'm gonna tell this story, I'm gonna tell it as a joke. But it's not a joke, it's really embarrassing. can I sit down? Can the camera still see me if I sit down? I'm serious, I'm just a little tired. but, so, I shaved my head. And, my hair never grew back the same. So, I don't know if you know anything about genetics and hair loss, but it goes from your mom's dad.And my mom's dad started losing his hair at 17, so I was screwed from, like, the beginning of time. so, my hair never grew back the same, and kind of from that point on. It just started getting like less and less. They're trying to figure out what to do with the lights. Sorry Randy I'm just gonna I'll stand up eventually I will But yeah, where was I?So yeah, so never grew back the same and over the next couple like many years It just kind of started getting thinner and thinner and you know that sayings like you don't know like what you got until it's gone That's how I felt with my hair. I didn't realize like that How much, like, I cared what my hair looked like until I started losing it.And, oh, it's, it sucked so bad. And, I thought it's not funny, I'm being for real here. yeah, just, it really sucked. And, I, and, you know, the past year or two specifically. You know, working with teenagers is a nightmare sometimes because they, they will find your weaknesses and insecurities and exploit them.And they could, they could care less and they don't have the perspective to feel bad for you, even if you tell them. Anyway, Um, but so my, my high schoolers were absolutely ruthless with me. They're like, call me Baldy and all this stuff. And I'm like, you know what happened to, you know, those kids who called Elijah Baldy, right?The bears came out. I'm like,If you know what I'm talking about, it's funny. If you don't, you're like, what is going on? But basically a bunch of bears ate a bunch of kids. I love the Bible. but, yeah. So, and, but the worst, you know, the most embarrassing part about it was it's like it genuinely like. Like I, like, killed me. Like it, like, I genuinely was insecure about it, and it hurt so bad.But you can't act like it hurts you, you like, then you're like this weak dude, you know, that cares so much about his hair, and that's like girly and feminine or whatever. I don't know what it is, but it just sucked. And I remember, like, anytime I would like play soccer or do something like that, it would always get worse because my hair would get sweaty.And I was coming home one night from playing soccer, and this kid, though he's not here, he doesn't go to our church or anything, I love, I love the kid, he's a really good kid, he doesn't mean anything, but he was, it's really me bro, he was going in on me, and just, I was like, man, you better be careful, like, you know, like, you might lose your hair one day, like, I'm trying to be like, super calm, and act like it's not bothering me, And he's like, he's like, nah, my genes are good, man.My, my, my, my mom's dad's got a full head of hair. I'm like, okay, cool, good, good. And I remember driving home that day. I was like, so sad. And I was like, I was like, man, like, I was like, why does this bother me so much? Like, why does this affect me so much? And, and I remember God just like really putting a microscope on my heart.It's so hard when he does that. And he just, and I, I realized there's, there's idols in my life. And I, I realized that. I cared so much about my appearance. I cared so much about what people, like, thought of me. I wanted to be attractive, and I wanted to be young, actually. Like, I think I was idolizing my appearance and my youth.You know, like, when you're the youth pastor, and you're young, and you're on a staff that's, like, triple your age, mostly, like, you kind of identify. Like, with your youth. Like, you, because you're played into the youth guy already. Like, I'm the youth pastor. I'm young. My, my, my pants are tighter than theirs.Like, I, like, I, it's like, you get played into the role. So it's like, I might as well play into the role. And I was just, like, I was struck with that. Like, I'm idolizing these things in my life. Like, it, it hurts so bad to realize this. And that God just really exposed my heart to That I was, I cared so much and I was just processing it with my wife and I just realized like this was something I needed to let go and to give to God and I was like soon after, I decided to like shave my head and just be like screw it, whatever, like I'm done paying for haircuts, you know, if it's not gonna look good.And then I started getting compared to my oldest brother Josh who's eight years older than me, you know what I mean? So it's just like doubled down on me. That was a joke actually, you can That one's both. That's a sad and a joke. all right, I'm gonna stand up now. but I wanted to share that this morning, um, because in the strangest way, I'm really thankful for my hair loss because without it, I don't think I would have ever realized how vain I was.It really was a hidden idol in my life and, um, I didn't realize like how much it had a hold on me And I didn't even want to share it this morning because It genuinely feels like pathetic and I want to like to I don't want you guys to come up to me afterwards Please don't do this because every time I share this to something they're like Jared you look so handsome Like what you don't need your hair.I'm literally not looking for that. Like that's not healthy Like I don't want that I like so just tell my mom that if you want her to tell my wife that they'll take it I don't want to hear thatBut I didn't realize How much it had a hold on my heart until the Lord took that from me And I'm really grateful for that and because of God's grace in my life verse 10 says this I never I never saw this before This point because there's something about this is like a grown up thing when you when you have like size You're like taller and bigger than most people.Most people don't say bad things about you. It just kind of works that way out. Like, I kind of was like blessed in that way. It's like you're taller than most. Most people aren't going to insult you because there's a, there's a taller, shorter thing going on. But I never realized in verse 10, it says this, you know, I'll be content.Hold on, I'm gonna read it again. You know, it says for the sake of Christ and I'm content with weaknesses. Right after it says, it says insults, and I never picked that up until this, this period of my life. But because of God's grace in my life, I actually can be content in insults. Like, I actually, like, like, they don't have to hurt me.Like, I don't have to feel insecure about it. I don't, like, because I know what God has done for me. I know who Jesus is in my life, and I have this crazy idea. That like, the uglier I get, like, the more I look like Jesus, right? And I might almost sound like blasphemous, but like, stay with me. Like, like, my desire to be young and attractive or care about my appearance was not from Jesus at all.You know, actually in Isaiah 53, 2, it says, for he grew up before him like a young plant. And like a root out of dry ground, He had no form of majesty that we should look at Him. And no beauty that we should desire Him. I love the Chosen, but that guy is way too attractive to be Jesus. Like, I'm sorry, the luscious locks and everything, I don't think that's what Jesus looked like.I think He looked like an ordinary dude. You wouldn't have been able to choose Him from a crowd. And I just realized that the less attractive I am, the more people will see Christ in me. The less they'll want to be around me because I'm funny, or good looking, or charming, or whatever like that. Not that I had any of those things before.But, the more they'll see Christ in me. And I think Paul really understood this. And, and what I hope, and I'm getting to understand this, and I hope I continue to understand this, that the weaker and more pathetic I look, the more Christ can shine through me. Because people aren't going to look at me and say, Wow, Jared has this gift, or wow, Jared's impressive in this way.They're going to say, Wow, God had a lot of mercy on Jared's life. And that's what Paul wanted these Corinthians to understand. That it's not me who's impressive. It's not me who's talented. Or even the gifts I have come from the gift giver. It's Him. It's Him. It's all about Him. Christ be magnified, not me.And one of the most beautiful things about boasting your weakness is that you are constantly reminded of God's grace in your life. And how much you need it. Christian, Christian communities should be known for being open and honest about our weaknesses. About our sins and about our idols. We've been reading a book together as a staff called Lead by Paul Tripp.And I can honestly say like, I love this book. Like, this book is one of the best books I've ever read. It's literally changed my life. And it talks about leaders in the church and how a lot of them have fallen and different things. And, just the epidemic of that, of spiritual falls for pastors and leaders in the church.And it talks about how we can stop this, and it's about how it's not just the leader, it's the leadership community that surrounds them, right? Like, what if these leaders had people around them that cared for them, and that they were willing to be honest and open with, and, and, and complied in? What, what would the difference be?And it's an incredible book. You don't even have to be in leadership to read it. I think you should just read it. But, um, one of the quotes here I love. It says this, I write convinced that we, the community of believers, can be the most honest community on earth. Because there's nothing that could be known, revealed, or exposed about us that hasn't atoning work.That's pretty powerful, right? Like, what if we lived our lives like that? Like, we're the worst at doing this, Christians. Like, we love putting on masks. We love pretending like we're, we're okay. That we're not struggling with sin. That we're not struggling in our families. Like, what if we actually realized that the atoning work of Christ covered anything and everything in our lives?What if our conversations were guided by this principle? What if our community groups Instead of saying, yeah, I need accountability for reading the Bible more. What if it was like, something real?What if it was like, man, yeah, I actually need accountability when I go on my phone at night. What if it was like, yeah, I actually need accountability of how I'm speaking to my co workers. Yeah, what if it was like, man, I just yelled at my wife last week. And I just wanted to confess that to you. What if our conversations looked like that?And this is why we can be comfortable in our weaknesses and be willing to boast in it because of what Jesus has accomplished for us. His perfect atoning work. It's got the five minute warning. Look, not from people, it's just like a timer back there if you want to look. I like bringing you guys in, you know.Alright, I think on the notes page you guys have a spot for like warnings and takeaways. Yes? Okay. Yeah, okay, cool. We're entering into that phase now. I want to start with the warnings. There's one warning, but it has like two, like an A and B, if you're taking notes. First warning is just don't be like the Corinthians, and it has A and B.A is Don't be like the Corinthians in the way that they desired the things of this world. Fame, appearance, talents, intelligence, money, sex. Have you ever read the book of Ecclesiastes? It's one of my favorite books in the Bible. Has this repeated phrase, chasing after the wind, vanity of vanity, meaningless, meaningless.It's pretty depressing. Maybe that's why I like it. I don't know. But it talks about the idea of, you know, this guy in Ecclesiastes. He's chasing after everything the world could offer him. All these things, hard work, money. He has like a thousand different wives, you know, all these things. And he just comes up short every single time, meaningless, meaningless, vapored.The word is actually used, hevel. It just means smoke, vapor. It's like, here, here, there, and gone. And that's what the Corinthians are after, and this is honestly what we prioritize a lot. That's the culture Paul was going to, and this is our culture. We want to elevate these things, and we think that if we somehow attain them, right, if we just get that raised, if we just get this car, if we just get that, if we just have that person to marry, or that person, or whatever, that somehow we'd feel rest.But Paul really plays into this hand when he starts boasting about the things that he's done. But he says it's utter foolishness. The things that he's accomplished that the world would think is impressive is foolishness, actually. So don't be like the Corinthians in the way that they desire the things of this world.Secondly, don't be like the Corinthians in how they wanted a leader. They wanted the best and brightest and the most talent and the most attractive and the most famous. Sound familiar? This is the same sin of the Israelites in 1 Samuel chapter 8. They asked God, they said, God we want a king to be like the nations.So God gave him a king like the nations. They got Saul. He was taller than everyone else. He was more attractive than anyone else. He was a great war leader. You know what sucked about Saul? His heart. His heart was far from the Lord. They wanted a king like the nations and they got one. It wasn't until David, a man after God's own heart, where they got a king like God intended.But we do this exact same thing with our leaders. We want our celebrity pastors on the, on the bright stages, and they look good, and they dress cool, and they're whatever. But we could care less of their heart. We could care less about their relationships. As long as they just give a good sermon, I'll listen, and I'll walk out happy.Now for thetakeaways. Two takeaways. First, God's grace is enough for you. No matter where you're at, no matter what your weaknesses are, or what the thorn in your flesh is, God's grace is sufficient for you. And that word sufficient is actually, the Greek is archeo. Sounds sufficient like it's just enough, like it's just like barely enough.That word literally means to be possessed of unfailing strength. It's not just barely enough, it's overabundant of all that you need enough. So no matter what you're dealing with, whatever hardships or difficulties or sin you have in your life, God's grace truly is enough for you, I believe that. And I, I believe there's a reason why Paul doesn't name the thorn in his flesh.Because we'd probably be like, I don't have that! So, God's grace is not sufficient in me. Right? But he leaves it open, I think, because so we can identify what the Lord has placed in our lives to remind us of our, Dependability on him and our weaknesses secondly because of Christ you can be content in weaknesses insults hardships Persecutions and calamities see preaching is not that hard.I'm just I'm just rewriting the verse It's just and this is the verse that we've studied the whole time. That's my point. It's pretty easy because of Christ You can be content in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. This is the promise this passage gives us, that we can be content people.I'm running out of time, but I have this quick story. We're on, my work site on Sun Servants Missions Trip, and we have all of these different students from different churches and stuff like that, and I had a student I won't name her, but I, I, you have like, the Holy Spirit gives you this sense as a youth pastor, like when you see like a troubled kid, you're like, okay, what's going on?And I knew she was on my worksite, and I just, like, she had loads, like buckets of attitude, like buckets of them she just had, like stored up. And I was like, yo, I was, I just straight up asked her, I'm like, are we gonna get along this week? I just, like, are we gonna get along this week? And she, like, started, like, going at me and, like, insulting me, and I just straight up was like, I want to let you know, you can't hurt my feelings.She's like looking at me like, what do you mean I can't? I'm like, I'm like, I know who I am. I know what Christ has called me to be, who He is and who He says I am. She's like, what are you talking about? Like that doesn't even make any sense. But this is the reality of God's promise to us that we can be content people and insults and hardships and persecutions.There's nothing people can say about us if we really know who Jesus is, if we know who he's called us to be, and we know that he's interceding with us, we can be content people. We can. One of my favorite declarations of Jesus is when he's talking to Peter at the Last Supper, and Peter's trying to convince him that he's not gonna betray him, and Jesus knows he's gonna betray him, and Jesus stops him and says this in Luke 22, says, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demandeth to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. What an incredible idea that Jesus is fighting for us because of what we can be content. And because of that, we can be content in weaknesses, and insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.Jesus is our go before. He goes before us to the Father, is interceding for us, fighting for us. I just want to give us the last minute or so here. It goes back to thinking about our New Year's resolutions. And I just, you have some space on your notes, and I just want you to jot down maybe like one. Maybe you have a couple of New Year's resolutions that are really good.But maybe just jot down one or two. And just, instead of thinking about something that can make you look really good, think about something that could practice boosting your weakness. Alright, so maybe it's, you know, go out of the way to boast of your weaknesses to your coworkers this year. Or maybe it's, you know, give ample time to confess to your family and friends of sin.Or maybe it's, uh, directly exposing idols in your life and laying them at the feet of Jesus. Or maybe it's intentionally looking for spaces in your life that are outside of your comfort zone, or, or outside of your strengths, so that you can rely on the Lord. take some time to jot it down, and we're gonna pray.Lord, I thank you so much for who you are, and your goodness. And I thank you for giving me the strength to, preach that sermon, Lord. I just pray that your word would seep deep into our hearts. I pray that you would minister to us, and that you'd give us strength. And, Lord, that you'd speak to us even now, Lord, as we go before you in worship and song and praise.God, I thank you for your specialty in working in people of weakness, Lord. Namely me. And I thank you for your love. That covers a multitude of sins, Lord, we pray. In Jesus name, amen.
I invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Matthew, chapter one. Matthew, chapter one. We're going to be reading verses one through 17. We're in the last of a series on Advent. Advent means the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. And in each of those Sundays, we have focused on One particular benefit of Jesus coming into the world, four words that are, regularly associated with Advent historically.the first week we looked at hope, Pastor Mike, couple of weeks ago looked at, peace. Last Sunday, Pastor Ben talked about joy. This morning, I'm focusing on love. When Pastor Ben spoke last week, he talked about Jesus and what Jesus was doing before his birth in Bethlehem. The statement he made, his question, was before the manger, what was pre baby Jesus like?today we're going to look at the human ancestry of Jesus. We're going to look back at his biological family tree, and we're looking at what really is the forgotten chapter. of the Christmas story. there's a reason it's forgotten. We choose to forget it because it doesn't really seem that exciting.We tend to zip through this thing. We skip it in order to get to the good stuff. But the Jews of the first century would be quite surprised by that reaction to the ancestral genealogy that is presented of Jesus. Because to them, it was absolutely essential. To the story of an individual, for instance, whenever land was bought or sold, you had to prove your ancestral background through your genealogy because in Israel, land had to be sold at this time in history.Land had to be sold within the tribal ancestry that one had. So you had to be able to go back to show all the way back to a guy named Jacob, who was one of the patriarchs. It was Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And Jacob then had 12 sons. And those 12 sons with the 12 tribes of Israel. You had to go back hundreds and hundreds of years to demonstrate that you were, had legitimate claim to own your property.If you were going to be a part of the priesthood, you had to be able to prove your family tree, that you were of the tribe of Levi. If you were going to make a claim to the throne of David, to be the king of Israel, you had to be able to trace your lineage all the way back through the tribe of Judah.through David and other specifics in that. The emphasis on one's genealogy is front and center in the Christmas story itself. It's interesting that in Luke chapter 2 it says, In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to his own town to register.This meant that even in the Roman Empire, what they were doing was they say, you got to go back to your ancestral home. Now, I know that I was born in Mineola, New York. I know that because my parents told me, and it was verified by my birth certificate. But I have no idea where my father was born. I know I don't know where my grandfather was born.And to be able to establish one's ancestral, Lineage is just fathomless for us today. The ancestry of Jesus that is presented in Matthew chapter one goes back over 2, 000 years. It is taking it all the way back to Abraham and such was necessary to prove one's heritage and in his case, particularly his claim to the throne of Israel.I'm going to read this passage in a moment, but genealogy was not just a genealogy in Jesus day. It was a resume. It was how you presented yourself to the world. And Jesus genealogy will declare two giant things about him. First, he is the center of God's love story for humanity. And secondly, he is the revealer of God's love for all people.I'd like to look at this now. I'm going to read through the genealogy, in chapter 1 of Matthew chapter 1, down through verse 17. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.And Judah the father of Perez, and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. And Ram, the Father of Ammenadab and Ammenadab, the father of Nation and Nation, the father of Salmon and Salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed, The father of Jesse and Jesse, the father of David, the King.And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam and Rehoboam, the father of Abijah and Abijah, the father of Aesop, and Asaph the father of Jahashophat. There's a lot of names here you might want to consider if you're pregnant. And Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah.And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiad, and Abiad the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliad, and Eliad the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Mathan.And Matham, the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David. were 14 generations. This is how the passage is divided up. And from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations.Let's pray.Lord, I thank you for this passage. I thank you for this genealogy. I thank you for the theology in it, the theology of God. It points to your character, it points to your love, and Lord, I pray as we gather on this Christmas Eve morning and speak to a group of people in this room and those watching online.And God, I pray that the truth of the love that was Manifested in Christ might seep into the pores of our lives this morning, or there are people to whom Christmas is is confusing, is lonely, is painful. There's all kinds of stories that we bring to this little sermon today. And Lord, you know them all.And I ask you to speak into our lives this morning truth. In Jesus name. Amen.Jesus is the center of God's love story for humanity. All biblical history is pointing the way toward Jesus. Luke is here tracing the line of Christ all the way back from Abraham. Somewhere 2, 000, maybe 2, 200 years before. He is doing so to show that Jesus is the legitimate Air to the throne of Israel in verse one, he sort of summarizes the whole thing.He says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and actually laying out that he is the seed of Abraham. He is a true Jewish claimant. He goes all the way back, but also that his ancestry flowed through David, the line of the chosen Kings. There are three central moments in this.In the first section, it talks about from Abraham to David. And then the second section talks about David to the exile in Babylon, where Babylon, conquered Israel and, and took, deported many of the people to Babylon for 70 years. And then from the exile in Babylon to Jesus birth, from 600 B. C. down to literally 0 A.D. There are 14 generations that are listed in each period, but there were many other generations. If you look, there's over a thousand years. There's way more than 14 generations of people. But these 14 are highlighted. So we immediately are tipped off that this is a select genealogy. But this genealogy fulfills something was that was said to Abraham back in Genesis chapter 12.And Paul talks about it. And I'd like you to look at this verse in Galatians chapter 3 verses 8 and following. Scripture announced, sorry, still learning my screens, announced the gospel in advance to Abraham and Paul says this, All nations will be blessed through you. Christ redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus.The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person. Who is Christ, Paul says the promise to Abraham that all peoples of the earth will be blessed. was talking about one guy, one person, and who would be that blessing?He says, Jesus Christ, Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah. We see that in the promise of the statement that was made to Mary, Jesus mother. It says this in Luke chapter 1, verse 33, and the first part of how he would bless all peoples. Was told to her and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus he will be great and will be called the son of the Most High and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Dave of Jacob forever and of his kingdom There will be no end first of all he is promised to be the king it says His kingdom will have no end.That was a specific promise that was made to David's heir in 2 Samuel 7. And Jesus is the promised king to her husband, the adoptive father of Jesus, a man named Joseph. The angel said this in Matthew 1 verse 20 and 21. Joseph, son of David, don't fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. He will be a savior to Mary. He will be a king. And then listen to what the angel says to the shepherds out on the hillside. After he has been born or he had just been born Luke chapter 2 verse 10 and 11 I bring you good news of great joy That will be for all the people for unto you is born this day in the city of David A savior who is Christ, the Lord.Christ was the messianic name, the title, it means Messiah, the anointed one, the king. He will be the savior king. This is how he will bless all peoples. Was promised to Abraham thousands of years before, two full thousand years before. And now has been fulfilled, Paul says. As Jesus ancestry leads down through those years to a little hovel in Bethlehem, to a babe lying in a manger, his genealogy has given him the credentials to be this Savior King.A king who would deliver his people from their sins, from their enslavement and bondage, a king as well as a savior. All human stories of heroic rescue and love are shadows of this story. God gives a story which is the story. I could go through, I was just thinking of some this morning, I mean this week, of, of talk about the myths and fables, even the storylines that are being written today, of great Great stories, great fable, great myths regularly portray people in bondage.They've been tyrannized by the Empire and Star Wars. I mean, we could go on and on under the Dark Lord and Lord of the Rings and all of the contemporary Marvel characters in some way or another come in to be rescuers. They're superhuman out of our cultural experience. They come to help individuals trapped and enslaved under tyranny or slavery.They're supernatural beings that are beyond our finiteness. The expectation is of a deliverer who will make things right. And Christmas is a story about this. Someone from out of space who can defeat death, who wields supernatural power, who promises to make all things right one day. I mean, it looks like the gospel is just one more myth, right?One more story pointing to an underlying reality. But Matthew says that is not so. This story has been written over these millennia of time. It is THE story. Which all other human myths are stories are finding their underlying reality. Those stories are just reflected shadows of THE story. He does defeat death.He does rescue. He does come to make all our hopes true and real. He is the heroic prince, the conqueror of injustice. The king is our savior. And Jesus Christ is the one who brings that message. that gospel of grace and love. And he is the revealer that God's love is for all people. There are two shocking things about this genealogy.One is very simply that God chose these ancestors for Jesus. He designed it, he orchestrated it, the whole thing was done, and his choices are surprising. He has an unusual cast of characters. One thing that's surprising about it in the way it is delineated is that it includes women. Because in the ancient Near East, genealogies of this day never included women.And it is a focus on these women. Now people argue, and I'm just going to digress for a second. People argue the Bible is culturally repressive because of its views on women. The Bible in its day was shockingly progressive. The Bible's principles will never line up culturally as relevant with any culture in any day.All cultures are made up of fallen humans. Some are much more conservative and repressive than the Bible. Some are more progressive and liberal. The Bible presents a supracultural view. It transcends human cultures. Offering a way of life that is real humanity. Humanity as it is designed to be. We'll see that as we go into in February, a study in the book of Ephesians, which is a fascinating discourse on the way of life that God is advocating for people.And interestingly, he is addressing two groups of people. One are the Jewish Christians who come from a culture that had become overly repressive and conservative. Gentiles who were liberal and progressive and he says to them I'm outlining for you a way of life That's going to sound really new really alien to you It is however utterly human as God Intended humanity to build it is to be it is built on timeless principles of what is true, virtuous, joyous, holistic human experience.Now, in putting women in this genealogy, Jesus, Luke is already going counter cultural with this, but it is the story of these women and what they are associated with that makes it remarkable because they represent some of the most not necessarily their behavior, but they were associated with the most sordid, nasty incidents in the whole Old Testament scriptures.And they're a part of it. The other thing that's shocking here is God chose to highlight these ancestors. Remember, I mentioned to you that they skipped over countless generations in Matthew chapter one. These individual stories were included for a reason. They were highlighted. for a messaging. And God shows individuals that were not the ones you would usually highlight in your ancestry.Because everybody has ancestors who would embarrass us. I remember watching, the TV show, Who Do You Think You Are? a couple of times, and I know they've had Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee, Brooke Shields, Emmett Smith, and countless others. Joseph, those are just ones I was aware of. And basically they trace their, their, their genealogy.Their ancestry and they find out they find out they're related to royalty and all kinds of cool things a lot of times But they also find out there was some pretty Sorted characters scoundrels and criminals in their background of most of them Everybody has stuff somewhere and sometimes your family tree can be very unsettling I remember reading this story.It was actually an account. I read it in a periodical about a guy named Craig Cobb, 62 year old man, white supremacist who was trying to form a new neo, uh, a neo Nazi town in North Dakota. Very outspoken, obviously anti any other race, and had the surprise of his life. when he received the results of his DNA test on the Tricia Goddard show.He'd agreed to let them research his bloodlines through DNA testing, and he was being interviewed by Tricia Goddard, who is African American. And she presented his genetic makeup as having approximately 15 percent of his bloodline was black African American, black African. And she, she then proceeded to refer to him throughout the remainder of the interview as bro.It's striking that when God had Jesus genealogy mentioned, He does deliberately leave out stages. He is intentionally underline, underlining certain people. Now people, of course, today, we play with our resumes. Today, if you left your first college, you just leave it out, and just write the college, you know, it's, it's a, it's a mulligan, it's a false start, you know, a do over.But God leaves out the heroes, the glory makers, and includes the shocking stories in the lineage of Jesus. There are four of them. There are four surprising people. And I'm going to highlight, there are others, I'm going to highlight just the women this morning. And the stories associated, I'm going to summarize them very quickly and say why I think it matters.First of all, is in verse 3, a woman named Tamar. Tamar was married to a guy named Judah, one of the sons of Jacob, goes all the way back 2, 000 years. And it's interesting that both Judah and Tamar are listed to make sure you, you get the story straight of who this Tamar is. Judah was Tamar's father in law.Tamar's first husband died, and in Jewish law, the idea was that she would then be given his brother to carry on the family line within her family. She went to her father in law Judah and asked for the younger brother. He postponed it, held off, and eventually it was obvious he was not going to give her the older son.He was not going to encourage this. So she set a trap for him. she actually posed with a veil as a, as a prostitute. He went into her, didn't know it was his daughter in law, conceived, they had a child, and basically it's this sordid, awful story. The child from that immorality is a part of Jesus lineage.The story of Tamar. There's a story in verse five of Rahab. She was a prostitute in Jericho, and Rahab ran a brothel in the red light district of Jericho. And a phrase that most of us that know Old Testament history is this phrase, Rahab the harlot. That's her designation. That's how she is known. But that's not all.Rahab was also a Canaanite, and a Canaanite were the people that were trying to wipe out the Israelites at this time. Her background is one that this is her story. And when you say the name Rahab in the scriptures, this is your association, but it is also That she was the great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus Christ.And for some reason, God wanted her name highlighted in the story. There's a woman named Ruth in verse 5. She was a godly woman, but she was a Moabitess, came from a tribe of people that were continually trying to harass and restrict. The Israelites wouldn't allow them to go through their land where most of the others would.If nothing else, Ruth was an outsider.And fourth, there's a woman named Bathsheba, verse six. She's associated with probably the worst moment in Old Testament history. Uriah, her husband, was a One of the mighty men of David, associated with David, one of his closest associates, and David's army is out fighting. And David, while the guys are out fighting, David's staying back at the palace, looks down, sees this beautiful babe, takes her, sleeps with her.She gets pregnant. Her name's Bathsheba. And in order to hide the fact that it's his child, He brings Uriah home from the battlefield, hoping he'll sleep with his wife, and then she'll apparently be pregnant by him. But he's too committed. He won't sleep with his wife. How can he do that when all his troops are in the field?So he sleeps on the front steps of the palace. Doesn't work. He tries to get him drunk. He still doesn't go home and sleep with his wife, Bathsheba. And then David actually has Uriah, one of his own guys, one of his buds, killed in battle. To hide the whole thing and try to make people think, well, obviously it was Uriah's son because Uriah, excuse me, yeah, Uriah isn't there to, to renounce such an accusation because he wasn't there.Bathsheba's there and it's through her line that Jesus is born. Bathsheba's the reminder of adultery and betrayal of one of the most godly men that ever lived named David. Now David had other wives. Why this one for the line of the throne? Why include the story? Well, the genealogy does establish Jesus as the rightful heir, the promised Savior King.But the people chosen to highlight it are at least unexpected, right? So why does it matter? Why are they listed? What's this about? What's God saying to us? Two things. This genealogy is a message to self righteous people. Matthew was written especially to the Jews. These were the people that had the heritage, they had the lineage, they had the background, the ancestry themselves.Many of them put their confidence in the fact of their heritage as Jews, that they did the right things, that they deserved life and grace. And what a shock it would be to read this giant genealogy which is associated with liars. murderers and thieves and adulterers and prostitutes. I think it's the reminder that Jesus came to for people that recognized they were unworthy of grace.The story of Christ coming to the world is God's love message that my gospel, my grace, It's for everyone that is willing to see their own brokenness, their own need, that is willing to see themselves as not deserving,but as undeserving, and yet graced. This genealogy is a message to highlight that grace and love. Jesus identified with people who didn't appear righteous and moral. He came for such people. That's why Paul summarizes as he's talking to the church in first Corinthians, and he says this in verses nine through 11.Guys, don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, and you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.What he's saying is, we could put in there the self righteous, the liars. He does that in many other passages. He's got the greedy. Well, that covers most Americans. Most of us find ourselves in this list. There are certainly others that include us there. But what he's saying is Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, prostitutes and pastors, religious insiders and outsiders, moral and immoral, all sit down together, utterly broken in their sin, utterly deserving of a Christless separation from God's Heaven, eternity, and it doesn't matter what you've done or where you've been or how you failed.Jesus says, in my church, those things don't matter. Sin cannot halt God's grace. There is more grace in Jesus Christ than there is sin in your life. There is more grace in Jesus Christ than there is sin in your life. It's why Paul said this in the book of Romans. Where sin abounds, grace super abounds.Maybe you're a Ruth today, an outsider. Christmas can remind you of that canon. I look at all those commercials, all the hallmark, that's not my life. It's not my family. Maybe you're a Tamar, a person who's been deeply wronged, mistreated, took things into her own hands, tries to fix it because her father in law is not doing what he should do by obligation.Your life is one of trying to work things, trying to make it okay. There's pain, there's stuff you're trying to work off. God says to you, I've got people like you in my son's story because I wanted you to be reminded that he came for you.Or you're a Rahab or Bathsheba, a Rahab particularly, and you say, Ha, you don't know what I've done. You don't know where I've come from. You don't know what I bring to this room or to this TV set as I watch this morning. You don't know. I don't know. And I don't care. I know the one who does know. And where sin abounds, grace super abounds.There is more grace in Jesus Christ than sin in your life.And God threw on Rahab's in order to say, My Jesus came for you. And then there's Bathsheba's. Well, really, the story of Bathsheba is really the story of David.The horror of that story is a man after God's own heart, God described him that way, could do such horrible sin. And God includes this story for the Davids in the Bathsheba stories of life that have said, Mark, I know Christ, but what I've done and where I've been and how I've wandered, God says, you know, my son gave grace not only at the cross.When you believe me, my grace continues to super abound. for my Children that have turned from me. This whole genealogy not only affirms the claimant to the throne, it affirms the love that Advent is all about to broken people, to needy people, to wronged people, the people that are manipulating the people that are struggling, the people who feel like outsiders.It's a beautiful genealogy. It's actually a shocking one. But God seems to never grow tired of shocking us with his grace, right? That's what this story is about. Lord, we come to you this morning.There's not a person in this room or a person that's watching on their phone or their computer or wherever they are. You are not sitting with them, seeing them, knowing them,and loving them. Lord, whether it's Ruth we identify with, or David in Bathsheba's story, or Tamar, or Rahab,we glory in grace. We glory in the love that is your very character. God is love. Lord, let us lean into that this morning, I pray, on this Christmas season. In Jesus name, Amen.
Sermon Transcript:Thank you to so many of you. I think Pastor Mike said there was over 500 volunteers for the Mount Laurel Living Nativity this year. It's just incredible.And I don't even know if that counts the true hero. The true hero of the Living Nativity this year is whoever made the lemon cookies that are in the lobby right now. That might be the single greatest cookie I have ever had in my life. There is a lemon cookie that's still in the lobby. Yes, you can.You're excused if you want to grab one. That is absolutely phenomenal. We do this. You give your time 500 over 500 people. Many others of you have brought friends or come through yourself. We do this. We gather on Sunday mornings. All because of an answer to a question. That simple question is, who was this baby who came in a manger over 2, 000 years ago?Who was this person? There's some kids that have asked deep theological questions about this God, this Christ who came. Lucy asked this question, are you invisible? Or is that just a trick? Nan asked this existential question. Says, I bet it's hard to love everyone in the whole world. There are only four people in my family and I can never do it.It's a practical question from a kid. If Jesus doesn't have to, if Jesus doesn't have a sister. Why do I need to have one? And a parent wrote this. When my oldest was about three, we found a baby bird in the yard. It had fallen from its nest. When I went to check on it in the morning, it had died. When I took the kids out to play, I discreetly, every parent knows what this is like, discreetly scooped him up, put him in a bag, and in the trash.When we came in, my son said, Mama, what happened to that baby bird? Trying to skirt the issue, I said, Oh, you don't have to worry about the baby bird. He lives with Jesus now. He looked at me thoughtfully and for a few moments and said, Jesus lives in the trash? The majority of the questions about the Christian faith, the reason why so many of the creeds are written Is over this question of who is this Jesus?We've been going and lighting advent camp candles and talking about Jesus as the hope as the peace and this morning as this Jesus who brings joy. And what I'd like to do this morning is to tell the origin story to tell the prequel to the manger that we have. Who was Jesus? Before the manger. What was pre baby Jesus like?Was that his name? Was he in human body form before coming to earth? What was the second person of the Trinity doing? What was his role in the Godhead? Was he waiting his turn like God the Father had the Old Testament? Tagged, Jesus, he had the Gospels and Jesus tagged the Spirit and he had the rest of the New Testament.Where do we see the unique role in the Godhead? Before he became a human on earth, before he taught and ministered, before he died for the sins of the world and rose to defeat death. Who was this Christ for the majority of the scriptures you have in front of you this morning? So we're going to look simply at the first 39 books of the Bible.We're going to start with Genesis 1. I'd like a volunteer to read. No, just kidding. We're going to go through a survey of looking at this Jesus, this, this Christ of joy that came all the way and we're going to trace him to the manger. Pray with me this morning.Lord, there's countless ways where our life has been impacted by the incarnation of you coming to earth.Jesus, you are our King. You are our hope and our peace and our joy. And, and as the song we sang, as we open your scriptures, we pray they would unfold. But even more than that, I pray for myself, I pray for my, my friends here, that our hearts might unfold like flowers before Thee. Opening up to the sun above in Jesus name.Amen. Four things we're going to look at of Christ's role that we see in the Old Testament. The first was his role in creation. Where was the second person of the Godhead? The second person of the Trinity in creation? What was Christ's job in the time of creation? Colossians 1, 15 through 17 says this, The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.For in Him, All things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authority, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. John begins his gospel talking this way, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning through him. All things were made. Without Him, nothing was made that has been made. The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The, the role of Christ in creation is a significant one.He was not a bystander while the Father or the Spirit were the agents of creations alone. It, says in Colossians 1, 16 we said, For in him all things created, John 1, 3, Through him all things were made. Now there's agency in the whole Godhead, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in the creation of the world. Genesis 1, 26 said, Then God, singular said, Let us, plural, make man in our own image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over.Who is making says let us make. In Genesis 1 2 it says the spirit hovers over the waters of the deep, over the surface of the waters. So we see that multiple, that all of the God has, it is involved in creation. However, there is a unique role. That this manger dwelling second person of God had in all of creation.He is listed as the primary agent in the Godhead. He made, Christ made, all the stuff. Atoms, molecules, cells, nuclei. 118 that we know about, chemical elements. Place and spacing of the planets, the exact dimensions in which existence itself takes place, time and space. And he didn't just make the stuff, he also organized how the stuff interacted.Macro and micro ecosystems. He made the stuff between the stuff. Emotion, reason, morality, consciousness. And made the rules of how the stuff itself behaves. Gravity, heat, vacuum, laws of motion. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead, is Creator. Not only is, is He a Creator, He is a Sustainer. In, in the text we just looked at, it says, All things were created in Him, and all things, in Him, all things, You catch it what it said?Are held together. Creation itself is not a clock that was wound up and set. It is a creation that is held. It is a creation that is held together by Christ himself. There was a belief in the 17 hundreds called deism. This was after the scientific res revolution, and we realized as we look around and saw all of this stuff.Mankind had an ability to do things with this stuff, to be like their creator in creating new things with this basic stuff he had given them, right? We have learned to facilitate, manipulate, operate this stuff, this created stuff, so we can make cars and pizzas, telescopes, frisbees. And what people looked around, and obviously they didn't make cars by then, I know the person's looking, But looked around and we're like, Hey, we can make a lot of stuff.Maybe God just started this thing and let it go. And John Locke was a big influencer in this belief of deism. I think it's a belief system that we can Think pretty often maybe not explicitly but at least in our day to day that God made all the stuff and that okay I mean even understanding Christ himself second person of the Trinity was involved in the making of all things But he didn't just make it didn't just send it forward in Christ all things hold together atoms and molecules cells and nuclei Macro micro ecosystems.All things were made by him and are sustained by him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. Hebrews 1 3 says this. Jesus upholds the universe by the word. Of his power now when we think of jesus in and we under and in christmas there's So much beautifully appropriately understanding of the humanity When Jesus was a baby, he did not know language.He did not control his own bowels. He did not have a sense of, Oh, I'm not gonna cry because I am filled with the joy of the Spirit. Right? Like this was a normal baby who had to learn to walk and talk like a normal baby. That means the very maker of language, the very holder together all things, had to learn a first word.Had to move a first step. This is the mystery that we hold at Christmas. But more, when we talk about Christ, the second person of the Godhead, we're not just talking about the most influential man in history. Not just talking about the person around which we shape our calendars. Those things are small news.On the resume of Christ himself, we are talking about the one who's created and holds together all that we know. Second thing, in the Old Testament, the coming of this Christ, and we see what's called Christophanies. Now, can you guys say, say Christophanies? That's okay. you guys say Christophanies. Yeah, that's good.You guys get more lemon cookies. Christophanies. Okay, so a Christophany is the appearing of Christ in the Old Testament. There are several moments in the Old Testament where the person of Christ came and appeared to people. Not someone like Christ, not an angel sent by Christ, but actually Christ himself.Jonathan Edwards wrote this, when we read in sacred history what God did from time to time toward his church and people, how he revealed himself to them, we are to understand it especially in the second person of the Trinity. Now you're not going to open up your Old Testament and see a whole lot of, and then Jesus came because in the second person of the Trinity, that was not the title that was given to him.What we see. In the Old Testament is the angel of Yahweh or the angel of Jehovah. Now there's many different angels talked about in the Bible, including the Old Testament. Jacob saw angels, Balaam had an angel, Isaiah had visions of an angel, angels, Zechariah, Ezekiel talk about angels. They are angels from the Lord.But there is this special title given to this Yahweh, and he's talked to as it would talk to with the title of God or Lord. This angel of the Lord is, angel of the Lord, a divine entity, and this was his name, primarily where you see the name. of Christ in the Old Testament. It is this title, the angel of the Lord.I'm just going to mention, there's a number of passages where we see this character. I'm going to just mention three. One is the story of Hagar. Hagar, is one of the most prominent, uh, painful examples of spiritual abuse we have. And what happens is Abraham, Abram and Sarai were promised they were going to have a child.Nothing's happening. And so, Sarai says, Sarai says to Abram, go, go, have a baby with Hagar. So he does that. Then all of a sudden Hagar has a baby. And who would guess, Sarai is now jealous and wanting to, and casts her out. And she eventually goes and she's out, in the, in the wilderness and God comes to her.The angel of Yahweh comes to her and they have this back and forth and this angel of Yahweh, this Christ himself was given a new name by Hagar, says now I will call you the God of Israel. Who sees that then eventually Hagar goes back to Abraham and Sarai they become Abraham and Sarah Then they have their own child Isaac at this time There's Isaac here and then there's Hager's Hagar's kid Ishmael and then Sarah and Abraham were like, okay We're gonna do the Isaac thing.They kick out Hagar and she becomes a single mom. She's sent with a piece of bread And a little bit of water into the desert to die all because of this plot of Abraham and Sarah. And then she goes in Genesis 21. She says that she's cast out dying in the desert. She puts the baby down because she cannot bear the sound of him dying, says God.God heard the angel of the Lord, Christ himself, heard the boy crying. The angel of God called Hagar from heaven and said to her, what is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there, lift up the boy, take him by hand, I will make him into a great nation. God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, so she went and filled the skim with water and gave the boy a drink.This Christ is the one who sees and the one who hears the little boy crying. Another example of Christ himself Got Christophany in the Old Testament is in the burning bush or the not burning bush Moses who's finally gotten out of the drama of Egypt and all this going on he goes and he's in the wilderness He's on Mount Sinai and he's walking around and he sees a bush that's on fire.Not that unusual incredibly arid climate, and he goes and sees this bush. It's on fire, but it's not burning. That is unusual. What is on fire? What is on fire is the angel of the Lord. There the angel of the Lord, the angel of Jehovah, appeared to him in flames with fire from a bush. And Moses thought the bush was on fire.It did not burn up, so he thought, I will go over and see this strange sight. When the Lord Saw that he had gone over to, look, God called to him from the bush, who's in the bush? God's in the bush. Angel of the Lord's in the bush. It's the same person, the same person of Christ. And then there's this interchange between Moses and Christ at the bush.And basically Christ says, I want you to go and rescue my people. And Moses says. I don't want to and then God says you need to go rescue my people and he basically goes back and forth Is there anyone else and then he says well, who am I even gonna say who am I even gonna say is sending me? Do you know what he says?He says I am who I am tell him I am has sent me that is the word Yahweh the angel of Yahweh is Yahweh So, if we can say things like, you know what, God seemed a certain way in the Old Testament. I don't really love all that stuff, and so I like the Jesus parts in the New Testament. It's the same Christ.Christ as a part of the Godhead is Yahweh, and we see him in the Old Testament. The Old Testament. One more story. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego won't bow before Nebuchadnezzar. And so they get thrown into a fire. It's lit extra hot. And the people even throwing them into the fire get burned and die.And, and they go and look to see these burned up guys that wouldn't bow before the idols. And they look in and what do they say? They say there's people walking around. And how many people did they say? There's four people walking around. There's an extra person in there. Somebody gave birth, right? There's four people in the furnace.It is the angel of Yahweh, Christ himself, being with his people. One of the questions I ask myself is, well, when did he show up? Looking at these and other Christophanies, when did he show up? Jesus showed up then just as he came at Christmas, just as he comes today. He came to be with his people and to save them from their distress.Third thing we see, and it does say two, but it really means three, prophecies, right? Over 300 prophecies about Christ or prophecies in the Old Testament. And, just want to. I'm going to say a few that pertain directly to his life. First his conception prophesied Isaiah 714. His birth, Isaiah 9 6. His birthplace, Isaiah 714.His mission on earth, this is a real cool one, because Isaiah 61 1. In Luke 4, Jesus goes and he reads the Isaiah scroll and undoes a very long scroll of 66 chapters and comes to chapter 61 of the Isaiah scroll. And he says this in Luke 4. He reads this. He has sent me to heal those who are broken hearted to announce the captives will be set free and prisoners will be released.Reading from Isaiah. And then he said, rolled up the scroll and said, Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. His physical appearance is prophesied in Isaiah 53, 3. We have an idea of what Jesus looked like. Jesus did not have glowing blue eyes that just pierced your soul, right? Or the long hair and the thing of like, Whoa, he didn't stand out.He wasn't a king that was a head taller like Saul. It says in Isaiah 53, that he had no beauty. Or majesty to attract us to him nothing in his appearance that we should desire him Jesus was not a particularly good looking man He was not an unusually, attractive man in the way he was, or came across, or looked.Isaiah 11. 2 includes his, the inclusion of the Gentiles. Isaiah 53, his manner of death. Isaiah 53. 9, his burial. Isaiah 55. 3, his resurrection. Isaiah 11. 11, the second coming. These are just some of the prophecies about Jesus. Does anyone notice? for an extra lemon cookie. I'm telling you, they're so good. Okay, Anybody notice anything about these prophecies we just went through?They're all from the book of Isaiah. And not all the prophecies about Christ are from Isaiah. But the reason I chose Isaiah is In 1947, there was what I believe the most important discovery, archaeological discovery that we have in terms of Biblical history. In 1947, a nomadic Arab shepherd It was wandering around and came across some scrolls.It was on the west side of the Dead Sea. And then through about 14 more years of excavation, they have all these different scrolls. Now the reason why this is important is that our Old Testament that we have is prim was primarily based on texts that were copied and copied and copied and copied and copied.And the, the most original texts, or most significant original texts that we were dealing with was 1000 A. D. Now there's something you can say about the prophecies if you only have texts from a thousand AD you can say well maybe they saw what Jesus did and then Prophesied it in a thousand AD and made it sound like it was before him in 1947.These were found they're dated between 100 AD but most of them before Christ came as early as 300 BC they contain parts of of all of the new, all the books of the New Testament, except for Nehemiah and, and Esther. And the most significant discovery was the Isaiah scroll. All 66 chapters dated back to 125 before BC, before Christ.If you think, well, 125 years may not seem that long. 125 years ago, Utah became the 45th state in the union. We were in the Spanish American War with William McKinley as president and Henry Ford had just built a quadricycle That was the forerunner to his Model T that didn't come for nine more years 125 years before This Isaiah scroll speaks of the coming of this Christ.Luke 24, 14 says this, or 24, 44. This is Jesus speaking. Then he said to them, These are my words I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written to me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, Must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Fourth, we see Christ in the Old Testament in what's called types of Christ.Types of Christ, types of Christ where it wasn't necessarily Christ himself, but it was an example of what Christ would do. Adam is one. If you look at, you take the book, the first three chapters of the book of Genesis, and then the 16 chapters of the book of Romans, you see this connection of how Jesus is the second Adam.Jesus came to do, Jesus came to represent. The way that Adam failed to represent a people or just as the way that Adam took a people to death. Jesus takes a people to life. There's a serpent in the desert where, in the old Testament, they're wandering around the desert and there's a time when they raise up the serpent.If you looked upon the serpent, you were saved and, and Jesus is in, in right before he gets to the famous John three, 16, he's talking to Nicodemus and John three, four. 14. And he says, just as the snake was lifted up in the desert, so the son of man is lifted up. And he's using that as an example, saying that was a type that wasn't, that wasn't me, but it was just like me, just, I'm just like Adam.If you take a Moses, and this is so often when we went through the book of acts, right? So many of the sermons in the book of acts that Paul and Peter gave went back. to Moses, right? And they went and explained this has been a story of Jesus all along. Moses himself was a type of Christ. 400 years silence.Israel was in the bondage of Pharaoh in Egypt. After 400 years, God finally raises up a deliverer. There's 400 years right before the coming of Christ. And after 400 years, God raises up the second Moses to fulfill the sacrificial system is a type of Christ, a forerunner to Christ. You take the book of liticus and marry it to the book of Hebrews and understanding that this were a type, these were a type of Christ.As I went through, the Old Testament, I really, Testament and really enjoyed this exercise of just saying, Okay, Christ, what were you like then? Right? not just in the Gospels, not just in revelations that coming again. We see images of Jesus. What were you like before the manger? What were you like?There are five things that as I looked at this that stood out to me. In these four, uh, ways of the coming of Christ. How, or the way he was, I'm sorry, the coming of Christ in the Old Testament. His creation, Christophanies, prophecies, and types of Christ. What was Jesus like in the Old Testament? Here are the macro themes that I, I found myself.You can, it's these five things. One, power and capacity. When, when Jesus in the Old Testament came, he wasn't just a buddy that, that joined in the, in the fight or helped out. There was power and capacity to who he was. There was personal connection. Not a removed Christ, but an involved Christ. Personal sacrifice.Delivered his people. He delivered his people when Christ came in the Old Testament. Delivered his people from their distress. And lastly, brought his people joy. The presence of Christ in the Old Testament was not an encumbered thing. It was a joyful thing. It wasn't a thing of burden. It was a reality.The deliverance had come and just want to run through them real quick. Where do we see these? First off, what was he like in creation? In particular, we see one, two, and five of those. The authority. Christ had the authority to, out of nothing, ex nihilo, speak and create all that we know. That's power and capacity.But when he created, he didn't just stand back and watch like a clock. No, he sustained. He was involved. At Christophany in the Old Testament, we didn't have time to get to is Jesus. Walking in the garden when it says he was walking in the cool of the day, believe that is Christ himself. what we see, what is he like?He also came to bring his people's joy, but what was he like in the Christophanies? Well, Christophanies and the way he behaved in the Christophanies when he came on earth, we see his power and capacity being able to do everything that he said he would do when he came. It was personal connection. It was almost always to a small group of.people or to one person. When Christ came in the Old Testament, it was deeply intimate and personal. Third or fourth, he delivered his people from their distress. When Christ came as a Christophany, it was almost always with a direct activity in mind saying this person of mine is in trouble and I'm coming to pull them out.And when he came, his people were left with statements like that. God sees me at God. Here's me. That God walks in the fire with me. The presence of Christ brought people joy in the prophecies, who Christ would be. We see all five of these seams. He is. He is to come with a He is to come to rule and be a king.He was, he's coming to capably do what no one else can do. He's coming to be personally connected to the plight of his people. Isaiah 53 is just this intimate prophecy of this, this, this God who would be with who not this God who would be around, not this God who would just lead, but the God who would be with and walk with his people.And the God who would have ultimate personal sacrifice that prophecy started as early as Genesis three and is punctuated throughout your entire Old Testament that this God would come to have victory, but would do so at his own sacrifice. He would also successfully deliver his people from distress.This is the promise of the coming Messiah. And when, remember when Christ eventually came, actually got in the manger and it says there's an angel on the hillside, he appeared with a great light and said this, behold, do not be afraid. I bring you, this is the type of news I'm bringing you. I bring you good news of what of great joy.It's prophesied joy and the joy had finally arrived. Lastly, the, the type of what were the type of Christ's like these hit on four of those themes authority, capacity, personal connection, extra probably five. The personal sacrifice also is seen in the different types of Christ delivering his people from distress and giving joy.So asking the question, Jesus, who were you before you came in the manger? Who were you in the old Testament? And I felt this week, you ever see the movie hook? That's a great movie, alright? Hook is like, Robin Williams. He's Peter Pan. Only he's older and chubbier. And he comes back to Never, Neverland?Did I get that right? Okay, alright. So he goes back there and he's, there, he's She's trying to convince the people that he's Peter Pan and he's not quite sure either But finally he's convinced that Peter Pan and they're like that's not Peter Pan couldn't be Peter Pan Until this kid who's literally cutest human being of all time walks up to Peter Pan's face and he starts Moving away the wrinkles, peering it back and looking in his eyes.Anybody remember what he said? He said, There you are, Peter. There you are, Peter. That's what it felt like when I was going through the Old Testament. I'm used to talking about Jesus from a New Testament perspective. But just looking at who he was in the Old Testament felt like uncrinkling some of those Old Testament pages and saying, There you are, Christ.It felt like what it says in Hebrews, that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That this Christ is who he always has been. And this Christ who came in a manger, came to be who he already was. And this dead and resurrected Christ. Best thing about Easter is Jesus Christ is not dead right now. Is the same on this day and will be the same tomorrow and forever to come.This is news of joy. And I thought just by way of application, a lot of times applying passages. It's like, okay, here's what we need to go do. Here's what we're called to do, commanded to do. Here's what we're called to think. I think this, this question, to apply who Christ was, who Christ really was, is to ask the question that is personal.To say, what do I need from Christ? Peter had a big problem with that question, right? Jesus, eventually, after he goes and, and he's, he goes and washes his disciples feet at the end of his ministry before the cross. And he comes to Peter, and Peter's like, dude, do not wash my feet. And Jesus said, unless I wash your feet, you will have no part of me.Because Christ came to seek and to save and to serve. So a question just this morning for us, and we're gonna sing a final song. Is what do you need from Christ right now? Because this, how is the pre incarnate Christ different than the one that came at resurrection? The answer is he's not. What is different is his availability.What's different is the clarity of which he comes, and that he doesn't just come and again in Christophenes. Is that his presence, his personal connection with people, has, doesn't have the veil that it had before then. He is available today, and I just want to again say, Ask the question, what do you need from this Christ?Number one is authority, power. Number two, his personal connection. This Christmas finds a lot of people lonely. Number three, to understand his sacrifice. Because to understand his sacrifice is to understand the very definition of love. Number four, do you need to be saved from your distress? Whether that is your sin, that is your fear.In this season, number five, you need help because you're fighting for joy. And you need the coming of this Christ who was the same before, came as the same again, rose as the same again, and remains the same today. Dear people of God, this is the foundation of why we exist. Jesus, we come before you, we acknowledge our need of you, we thank you for your power.Your closeness, your unimaginable sacrifice, your deliverance from our distress, and we walk this moment and this day into joy in Jesus name. Amen.
Scripture: Isaiah 9:6For 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 calledWonderful Counselor, Mighty God,Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Sermon Transcript:Well, good morning to you again, everybody. if you want to take your Bibles with me to Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6. We actually sang some of these words just a few minutes ago. page 537. If you have one of these Bibles that you find in the seat in front of you there, you can turn to 537. God speaks in many different ways throughout the Bible.One of those ways is through prophets. God choosing specific men and women to communicate to mankind. And Isaiah specifically prophesied 700 years before the birth of Christ. Messages that he shared full of terrifying warnings and judgment. of destruction, uplifting promises of future hope and prosperity.If only God's people would return to him, humble themselves, and allow God to be the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah is one of the most quoted prophets in the New Testament of the 260 chapters we find in the New Testament. Isaiah is either alluded to or quoted in, 235 of them. And so it is a significant prophecy that we find happening here in Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6.Let's read that together. For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. And the government shall be on its way. His shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.Jesus, we thank you for coming, coming to earth to dwell among us. God, we pray this morning, you know, I've gathered some thoughts here from your word, but Lord, it is only you as, as Paul prays, who can allow us to comprehend the things in the scriptures. How wide and how high and how deep is the love of Christ.God, we're. We're just only able to scratch the surface on our own. You alone are the one that can open our minds and our hearts this morning. And so I pray Lord, as we gather around this passage and the hope that you are peace among us. that you would speak this morning, we pray these things in your name.Amen. Okay, you just opened your eyes, but I'd like you to close your eyes again for a minute. I'm going to ask you to, just visualize for a minute here. What do you think of when you hear the word peace? When the, the idea of peace is talked about, what comes to your mind? Okay. So with your eyes closed, see if you can think of something that comes to mind, peace.Okay, you can open your eyes. Let's see if any of these match with, what your idea of peace looks like. Possibly, you visualize, or maybe you thought about, or maybe you've experienced before a serene lake reflecting the beauty of surrounding nature, maybe in such a way that the, the reflection of the bottom and the top, you can almost not tell the difference between the two.Possibly for you, a piece is a certain kind of music, maybe an orchestra music or, or a symphony, all the pieces playing together in, in perfect harmony, each instrument contributing one to another. This is not my version of peace, this next one, but maybe it is for you. If you're a puzzle person and you like putting puzzles together, this is absolute chaos to me.I cannot stand puzzles. I don't know why, they're just not ever been a thing for me. But putting that last piece in Where everything as it was designed comes together. Possibly peace is the warm embrace among family, or friends together coming, one to another. Possibly for you, peace is the, the sense of cultures joining.Where there is harmony among people of different backgrounds joining together in unity. I don't know about for you, but gardening again, not typically my favorite thing, but after you've weeded the garden and things look really well and you're, you're able to put it all together. There's a sense of peace.If you've ever been to Longwood Gardens, that is like the Garden of Eden. It's crazy there. it's just incredible. Maybe for you, it's the stage of life that you're in, but peace is just your child sleeping at night, just to have a little bit of peace. Or for you, maybe the stage of life that you're in, the, the idea of peace takes you back a few years and you remember peace, what it looked like on this, the second week of advent, we come in focusing on Jesus, the prince of peace.And rather than looking to a dictionary definition, or maybe what we just did, developing concepts in our mind of what we thought peace looked like, we're going to go to the scriptures this morning and have that kind of unpack some of the definitions of peace that we find in the scriptures. So how does the Bible define peace?We're gonna look at these different illustrations all the way from beginning to end. So from the beginning, we're gonna start there in Genesis one. In the beginning, God created. The heavens and the earth, it was good. And in Genesis 1, 27, God created Adam and Eve, planted them in the Garden of Eden in a state of shalom.This is the Hebrew word for peace, shalom. Comes with the idea of wholeness or completion, things functioning as they were designed to be. Genesis 1. 28, God gave plants and animals to Adam and to Eve, all created to enjoy those things. There was harmony among creation. Again, things functioning as they were designed.There was total satisfaction. Genesis 2. 25, man and his wife were naked and had no shame. They were vulnerable and without fear. God walked among his precious creation. There was peace, shalom, at the beginning. I want to go to the end because that was just the very first page of our scriptures. And if you go all the way to the very last page in the last few chapters of Revelation, here is kind of the vision that John describes as we have recorded in the book of Revelation 21.John is describing a vision from God of a, a new heavens and a new earth. The dwelling place of God is again with men. There's no more tears, no more suffering, no more pain or mourning death. The old order of life has passed away. Revelation 22, Eden will be restored. The, this whole idea in the new Testament, the Greek word for peace is Irenaeus.There is no more curse. We will see God's face. The Lord will be our light. This is recorded the last page of the Bible that we have this morning. He will reign forever and ever and there will be rest, restoration, well being, peace. But if you're like me, there's a couple of pages between the beginning and the end and where is the peace in between?Well, let's look at what illustrations are some peace in, in between. The first and the last page of our scriptures in the middle in Deuteronomy chapter 20 verses 10 through 12 It says this when you draw near to a city to fight against it offer terms of shalom That's the Hebrew word peace And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you then all the people who are found in it shall do Labor and you shall and shall serve you but if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you Then you shall besiege it.We're building out this definition of peace. It is the opposite of war, as we have here in the scriptures. 1 Kings 5, we'll look here in verse 12. And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom. As he promised him and there was Shalom again, peace between Hiram and Solomon and the two of them made a treaty, not just again the absence of war, but also there is a sense that we're coming together to agree among two people this treaty of peace.Maybe you're familiar with the passage in Ecclesiastes 3, as Solomon is writing. There's a time for this, a time for that, a time to love, and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace. So what is peace? All relationships at rest. Relationships at rest among people, civilizations, cultures.Relationships at rest. Maybe you have, have seen or walked through the nativity or maybe you've been in the scene where, you know, the words spoken by Jesus in the New Testament when he is there with his disciples and Mark 4 39, there's a great storm that is happening and Jesus stands up and rebukes the wind and the waves and says, peace, peace, hey, peace.Be still and the wind ceased and there was a great calm, peace, calm Leviticus 26 6 I will give shalom, God says, peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. This idea of Shalom, peace, the creation is come.Isaiah 55, 12, For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. Again, this is the prophet Isaiah. The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress. Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.And it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not. Be cut off peace. Instead of these thorns and thistles, things are growing and flourishing designed and operating as intended creation at rest in john chapter 14. We continue this idea of peace all throughout the scriptures. 14 27.Jesus is teaching his disciples right before he is about to go and be crucified Betrayed. Well, actually first arrested and then crucified and among people, among the people that are there, the gathering of the brothers there, he wants to give them an anchor, an anchor for their souls. And he says this, my peace.I leave with you my peace. I give to you not as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your hearts.So that the sense of fear and the sense of our hearts being troubled, Jesus brings a peace to even our inner sense of our, our turmoil and conflict in our world. Philippians 4, 6 through 7. Paul's writing here, 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, the peace of God. That's that Greek word again, which surpasses all of our understanding. We'll guard your hearts and your minds in Christ. Jesus again. What is this sense of peace? Our internal world again at rest God in the midst of our chaos.So this is a really robust sense of peace. Maybe we flip back through those pictures. Some of those things might be peace in one area or a sense of peace, but not in total like we're seeing here. Shalom. Everything working as it was designed. Creation at rest. Relationships at rest. Our internal conflict.No more. If we could bottle this up and sell it, I bet we'd be rich. If we could give out this kind of peace, wouldn't we want to offer it to others? But where's all the peace, right? Because we live in the tension that this is not always how life operates, at least for me. Maybe you're here and you've, you've heard this argument before.It's why people can't stand Christianity, right? They bury their heads in the sand and they talk about peace as if it's something that we can even achieve. I mean, if God defines peace, if God created humanity in peace, And seeks to bring a peaceful end. That's the last page of the scriptures. Why all the chaos right now?Why is God allowing an incredibly broken world? To exist in the middle. It must mean he is either not real in questions of his existence or that he doesn't care. Possibly he's just indifferent to humanity, or he's really not able to keep the peace. Maybe he exists, but Sovereignty, not so much. Colonialism and imperialism displacing indigenous people, wiping out empires.World wars claiming the lives of millions over time. Hate fueled genocide wiping out entire people groups. Terroristic organizations sweeping our world with agendas to conquer people. That they don't agree with families living at odds struggles among coworkers and violence among neighbors, tremendous upheaval in human relationships on every front.This is far from Shalom. This is far from peace that we are described here in the scriptures. Natural disasters happening all the time, creation in turmoil. We are contributing in the way that we treat creation. Thorns and thistles and weeds in droves choking out things that are healthy and growing.Animals fighting for their lives in, in less than perfect environments all the time. Creation longs, cries out. For peace and what incredible counsel Paul right from the scriptures. Don't be anxious about anything easy for you to say, yeah, right, don't be anxious about anything. How many of us lie awake late into the evening or in the middle of the night with anxious thoughts that just keep spinning around and around and around?We can't allow this inner world to come. Sometimes those fears are irrational. Sometimes it's just a fear that we know. An endless battle of the mind. Don't feel trouble. Don't feel chaos. I wish. Maybe you're a person who hasn't ever really known any sense of the word peace. Life has been chaotic from beginning even now.You see, there's this thing that's happened. Between the first page and the last page, a cosmic interruption to peace back in the garden, Adam and Eve were there, and in the first two chapters, things are going okay. And by Chapter three, there's a problem. Satan, the enemy of God, slithers into the garden, tempting God's precious creation.And sin entered the world through Adam and Eve's disobedience. And what did they do? They first covered themselves in shame and hid from God. Listen to the account in Genesis chapter three, verse 14 and following the Lord. God said to the serpent, because you have done this cursed. Are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field on your belly?You shall go all. The days of your life, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring, he will crush your head and you shall bruise his heel to the woman. He said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing in pain. You shall bring forth Children, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.It's conflict and to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded to you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground before you because of you, sorry, in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face.You shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken. For you are dust and to dust you shall return. There's this rift between God and mankind and the fig leaves. All the fig leaves in the world could not cover the brokenness and shame and sin that they felt disconnected from the source of life.Destined to die and everything is off. Conflict among husband and wife. Creation in turmoil. Pain in childbirth. The ground is cursed. Thorns and thistles. Shame, secrecy, failure, plague their internal lives. Romans 5. 12 illustrates this dismal picture here even more. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, so death spread to all mankind.Where's all the peace? It's gone. There's no hope. There's no life. There's only conflict. Conflict existing between us and God today, filled with sin. Mankind is without hope. We cannot save ourselves. So we zero in on Jesus. The prince of peace to answer the question, how in the world are we to have peace?The answer is why we celebrate Christmas, the banner outside that we have hung for many years. Hope has come. This is Jesus. This is the glory of Emmanuel, God with us. Isaiah prophesied, and we read this earlier, 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. This is who we celebrate at Christmas time. Jesus, the Prince of Peace. I want to look to another part of Isaiah's prophecy this morning. As we think about how we have this peace. Because Isaiah 53 is a passage, that we'll look to here in a second. That is really Fulfilled in the life of Jesus in the book of Acts and even beyond in many of Isaiah's prophecies.We see Jesus coming out here. Look at Isaiah chapter 53 verse four. 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 everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yeah, he opened not his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent.So he opened not his mouth. Verse 9. 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. Yet, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. When a soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.Because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. This, this passage, tells the whole gospel story. Tells the picture of who we have fulfilled in Jesus. The first part here, we have all gone astray.Verse six. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, full of sin, iniquity, transgression, unrighteous. We, like Adam and Eve, have missed this mark. God's holy standard, our mess, laid upon Him. We also find here in Isaiah 53 that this separates us from God. God loves us. But must punish sin. He is a just God. After all, the punishment is death.And that was laid upon Jesus. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. Innocent Him. Guilty us. By His death, we are saved. He's made intercession between us and God. The, the peace that we once had that was interrupted by sin. Jesus cancelling our debt of sin, healing us totally, giving us the righteous record that he had.And we find something else that maybe, if this interrupts your theology, I'll say this. It's because your theology is wrong, not God's theology. This was God's plan. Jesus coming to die in our place is on purpose. There wasn't some accident that happened. It was the Lord's will, it says in Isaiah 53, to crush the Son.It pleased Him to pour out all of the sin onto Jesus. Remember, in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve, sin entered the world, but there would be a promise that one day a rescuer would come and through Satan, I'm sorry, and though Satan would strike in the death of Jesus, Satan's plan would ultimately be crushed in the death and the resurrection of Jesus.Jesus came willingly. Humbly, knowing that he would not just preach about the need for a sacrifice for sins. He would come to be. himself, that sacrifice, a substitute, justifying, forgiving, reconciling, setting everything right again, restoring, renewing. That is the sacrifice of Jesus. In Romans chapter five, we, we find that therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God.We have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, by grace, through faith is the way. How do we have ultimate peace? What does peace look like? By grace, through faith, we trust in Jesus. Our vertical relationship with God can be restored, making peace between us and our maker, our creator. By faith in Jesus, our horizontal relationships with others can be restored peace with others.By faith in Jesus, the turmoil within us that is carried can be made whole. We are filled with the peace that surpasses all understanding. C. S. Lewis, says a quote that, I love. We put first things first, and we get second things thrown in. But should we put second things first, we lose both the first and second things.You see, we cannot go on a search for peace, chasing after things, to embrace in this world that maybe only offer peace for a moment. We can't do that without embracing the maker of peace. We cannot find lasting peace in this world without the one who is eternal peace. We cannot muster up peace filled lives in our internal world without knowing the rescuer who is the prince.I want to take us on a journey this morning as we close our time because oftentimes we hear good thoughts. We read God's word, but we don't actively go and do anything with it. And so this morning in a few areas, I want to guide us through a time to just offer your heart before the Lord. And so I'll ask you to pray with me as we embrace Jesus.As our peace this morning,Jesus, we come to you, we come to you as the one who is the prince of peace. And this morning, maybe Jesus, you know, gathered here today are, are those who first and foremost don't have peace between you and God. We don't have peace because our sin has separated us from the father. So we ask this morning, Jesus, would you make yourself known to those here this morning who do not know you as Savior rescuer?And if that's you, take the space just for a few minutes to talk and reach out to the one who came to be your substitute. If you do know Christ, take this moment to celebrate. The way that Jesus stood in your place and thank him for that. Now,Lord, we confess our inability to live as peacemakers. Apart from you, you ask us to live as people of peace, build one another up, forgive, show grace. We can't do this apart from you, Jesus, the prince of peace. And so now, Lord, we take this moment to offer the relationships in our lives. Where there is no peace, but conflict,Lord, our vision of what you will do is clouded our ability to, to mend so weak, but Jesus, you, the prince of peace and your spirit among us, you alone can rescue pray this morning. Lord, for those relationships just came to mind for us. God, the people who we need to reach out to, might your peace allow us to have peace in our relationships?Finally, Lord, we offer you our internal world, often the thoughts that plague our minds in the middle of the day or at the middle of the night. Lord, we know this world is in turmoil and one day for those that love you, the story culminates in a new heavens and a new earth, all things restored. And God, we long for that peace, not just a sense of it, but that you would be our anchor amidst the anxieties and fears that you ask us to cast upon you.So, Lord, the things coming in our week, the things even in our world that cause internal strife and struggle, Lord, we offer them to you now in this time,Lord, I thank you that you came to make peace between us and God, that you would be the prince of peace, that it was on purpose, your plan, your way. To deliver us from our world, God, this morning, as we gather to worship you, we want to surrender our hearts, knowing that you come to bring peace, make in us a home where you might live and be a peacemaker, that we could God represent you in our world as ambassadors of that peace, ministers of reconciliation in our relationships.With our neighbors, our friends, our family. God, we ask these things in your name. Amen.
Isaiah 9:2-7The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
Sermon Transcript:Morning, everybody. Invite you to take your Bibles. We're going to be looking at the book of Isaiah. The Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 9 verses 2 through 7. I encourage you to join me there. Grab a Bible in front of you. and there's a table of contents. I didn't get the page number this morning, but it's Isaiah chapter 9 verses 2 through 7.I'm going to go ahead and read that passage while you're turning there.The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.For every boot of the trampling fire warrior is in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. 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 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. Let's pray.Lord, we gather this morning and we come to this season we call Advent. Lord, even as we've celebrated the Advent. Candle this morning as we have joined near to remember this first of gifts of the coming of Jesus to our world, the gift of hope, Lord, I'm conscious that in this room, in the homes of people that are watching online, there are certainly people to whom life does not feel filled with hope.And Lord, I pray that you would be our teacher, that you would instruct us into truth this morning in Jesus name, Amen.If we have no hope, if we are hopeless, basically life is not worth living. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, did some of the most profound work in this topic. As a result of his time in the Nazi prison camp, he was there taken with many other prisoners, many of them Jewish, prisoners. And it was his study that actually entitled Man's Search for Meaning that brought the issue of hope in prominence.And the subtitle of his book actually is the classic tribute to hope. It was his belief that when people lost hope, they had lost any sense of purpose for living. And those were the individuals that tended to die in the prison camps, even if they hadn't faced the horrific death of the ovens, that they just expired over time.Hope in his book he was presenting gave meaning to life. That you are able to exist and keep going. Shows you are finding hope in something. You may feel it is a flickering hope, but you are entrusting your hope in something. It might be your abilities. It might be your relationships. It might be your resources.It could be hope in your accomplishments. It could be hope that things are, in fact, going to get better, or something's going to, in fact, end. Christmas is the reminder of God's hope, his way of people to find hope. God had promised to his people in the Old Testament that there would be a hope. As a matter of fact, Paul refers to it a few times in his letters.He calls it the hope. of Israel. This is the promised hope, the hope that, that ultimately gave people a sense that yes, there's a future, there's something that God has promised to us, this is what we cling to, will one day happen for us. Paul identified where that hope was fulfilled when he said this.Again, in his New Testament letters, we have hope. In our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ came to earth to bring hope, hope in life, hope in death. It is the first gift of Advent. And this morning from this passage in Isaiah chapter nine, which actually is one of the prophetic statements that they called the hope of Israel, we find four, five characteristics about this hope.The first of those is the hope is for people. Living in darkness. Verse two describes it that way. It makes the statement, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The concept of darkness in scriptures takes on a variety of nuances, but some of those are summarized in these statements.In the book of Job, it talks about, it says this, those who walked in darkness constantly were shrouded. In darkness. Those that lived in darkness, it says they grope in darkness with no light. Darkness is, is portrayed as a state of hopelessness, a state of confusion and or fear. Jesus' favorite book of the Bible was the book of Isaiah, and he and verses there said statements like this.Isaiah 42 7, as he prophesied about himself. To open the eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. In Isaiah 43, 9, to say to the captives, come out, and to those in darkness be free. Darkness is portrayed in the scripture as a prison. It's a, it's a state in which one is in captivity.It's a life that is not as God designed human life to be. As a matter of fact, when mankind, humankind, rejected God as the centralizing, influencer in their lives and wanted to live their own lives, as all of us have, it is described as the fall. That what took place was we descended from the state that God had designed for us.And, and the result is this, this portrayal of this new way of life. This life without God central to us as, as darkness, as subhuman. It debases, distorts, disfigures the beauty of humanity. It's aberrant. All of the things we look at as maladies in our world today, racism, terrorism, religious radicalism, discrimination, genocide, self absorption, self centeredness, hatred, pride, cruelty are all distortions of God designed human experience.It is the result of, of darkness that has entered our world as the world has, of mankind has fallen. Christmas is the most. unsentimental, realistic way of looking at life. This is what Christmas declares. It acknowledges that humans are in darkness. It acknowledges that it is not saying that what we need to do to remedy the problem, cheer up, we'll all pull together and we can fix this.The message of Christmas is this. Things are really this bad. They're dark. And we can't do anything to resolve that in ourselves. Nevertheless, there is hope for those in darkness. Which leads to the second point. This hope is from outside of themselves. If you look at verse 2, it says this here. In this prophetic statement, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.It's interesting that the hope that is offered is portrayed as light. And the idea is that in the darkness, light is coming. As a matter of fact, at the end of chapter eight, it says this, the problem is the people will look to the earth in verse 22, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish End 1 And they will be thrust into deep darkness.Now we come to verse two of chapter nine. The people walking in that darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness. A light has dawned. The emphasis of light into darkness comes from the Christian belief that the world's hope comes from outside. That's why in John chapter one, the Apostle John talking about Jesus coming to the world says this, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. One of the most thoughtful world leaders of the last handful of generations was actually the first elected president. of the Czech Republic. When communism was broken, this individual, Václav Havel, Havel, if you're his relative, I apologize, he's the first elected president, and he's a remarkably, insightful man, good president, and he came with a unique perspective.His perspective offered, first of all, an individual that had lived much of his adult life in socialism, communism. And now he was the first democratic president of the Czech Republic. He had seen socialism. He now saw capitalism. He had seen, a total, tyrannous environment. He saw a democratic environment.He brought the perspective of an individual that knew that science, unguided by moral principles had given us the Holocaust. He had been alive during those times. He concluded that neither technology, nor the state, nor the financial markets could save us from what he saw as the greatest dangers to humanity, nuclear conflict.Ethnic violence, just overall destruction. And he made this interesting statement, pursuit of the good life will not help humanity save itself, nor is democracy alone enough. A turning to and a seeking of God is needed. The human race constantly forgets. That it is not God. He's saying there's something outside of ourselves that needs to deliver us from this darkness, this sub human state, if you will, that is a result of the fall.That life is not as God designed it to be, as it ought to be. So where does the remedy come? It does not come from within ourselves. It comes from outside. It is light coming into the darkness. I saw this in a more personal experience many years ago in a unique way when I had the chance to befriend an older man named Richard.Richard actually, I had met him because he, he had known my dad and my dad actually introduced me to him. And they had been associates many years before in business, and Richard had gone on. Richard actually was the vice president of a company called Remington Rand, later merged with Sperry Rand, but it was a very large, corporate entity.And Richard had become the executive vice president and was in line for the CEO position. At that time of his life, literally had his own private jet, a lovely wife, obviously all the wealth one could envision. He had everything. In the midst of the time, waiting to see if he was going to be the heir to the throne of Remington Rand and become the CEO, he just bagged everything.He was tired of the corporate life, he was tired of the world, and he bought a giant plantation in Virginia. He described it to me once, just this massive, with massive, multiple buildings, houses, and literally an old plantation. And Richard, for three years, I guess it was two and a half years, bought a big, beautiful tractor, and he Green Acre did, if you ever heard of it, El Abreu, Jaja Gavur, he just got off the carpet thing and he drove tractors, done his own property.He thought, I just, I got to be out of the rat race, I just got to be a human again, and so he did this for two and a half years and was completely bored to death.So they returned and came back up to this area. Actually got a job, as a, what was for him, a low level executive position for many people, a very high executive, but for him, much lower. And he thought, I, I, I miss the corporate world, I miss the, the energy, I miss the strategy, I miss the game. But I don't want to be the top dog.I don't, I don't want to be there. I don't want that kind of pressure. My family doesn't want that kind of, that kind of pressure. So he thought I'm going to come in and I'm going to take a moderating position. And so he did and it didn't work. He began to turn to alcohol. And when I met Richard, Richard had just been, doing a DUI.Richard, had been in a car accident in which he should have been killed, but God spared him. He was in a hospital room and was there trying to think through the direction of his entire life. God in his mercy enabled Richard to face two things. Number one, he discovered something about himself. He discovered that In terminology of this sermon that he had placed his hope in himself and that his life was lived therefore in the pride that we all have, that I'll be enough.I can do it. I can be self sufficient. And he found out it didn't work. He literally had tried everything he knew to find satisfaction, light. To get out of the darkness and just the emptiness of it all. The meaninglessness of it all. Just one thing after another didn't satisfy. He learned something about himself.Secondly, he learned something very special about God. He learned that God, even though he had had some degree of religious background and had learned about God. It turned from God, tried in His words a dozen different things to find satisfaction in His life. And now in the first time in His life when He was really wholeheartedly wanting to turn to God, when He cried out to God, God in His grace showed up.He was struck as I shared with him the statement that C. S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis calls this the humility of God. And we'll try everything else until finally there's just no curtains left except God. And we turn to him and in his astonishing humility as his, as our creator, he says, I delight to show mercy.That's the book of Micah said. Richard received God's forgiveness through Christ. He experienced light that had come into his life. That he had discovered that going to the plantation, the problem was he took himself with him wherever he went. You know, that happens. Wherever you go, whatever you got.Whatever you are, whatever darkness has seeped in and is influencing the way it's manifesting itself, it goes with us. We need light to penetrate our lives. And so Richard, like Paul did in 1st Timothy 4 when it says, we have put in 1st Timothy 4 verse 10, Paul said, we have put our hope. In the living God,we all tend to have faulty gods we put our hope in. Our health, our accomplishments, our abilities, our perfectionist ways, our intelligence, our religiosity, our skills, our ability to make friends, our drive, our tenacity. But they're all false hopes. They can work for a while, but eventually that sense of emptiness, of tediousness, of being trapped, begins to settle in.And that's when we often learn the mercy of suffering. Suffering is one of God's greatest gifts. You may say, I'd be happy to have him try something else. Suffering shows you the poverty of your gods. Suffering causes us to see we need something outside of ourselves, not something we can design or we can choose.It makes us see our insufficiency. Our desperation, our hopelessness, it's designed to point us to the living hope that is found only in the living God, that we need light from outside to come into our darkness. This is what is being portrayed in Isaiah chapter 9 when it says, this is what Christmas is all about.Light comes into darkness. The hope came from outside of ourselves. And we learn radical faith in the living, merciful God, usually in times of desperate situations of darkness. The hope came from outside. The hope brings light. Light of course reveals the incarnation. The entrance of Jesus in karnas means in flesh.Jesus coming. In bodily form as a human is the message that brings light. It's a light that dispels darkness. It's a light that brings hope that the light reveals. It gives a picture of a mega narrative to large words, mega, which means big. And, or great, even, a narrative, the story. It gives a picture, Jesus coming as, as light, is giving us light to the big story that's going on.That, that there is meaning in life. That there is a, a, a story above all other stories. Of every human story is just a part of this giant story that's going on. The story that begins with creation. And then goes into what is called the fall. And then ultimately comes to what is known as redemption. Jesus coming and leads to future glory.That this is the mega narrative that is going on throughout world history. And Jesus coming is the light. Sheds light on that story. It enables us to see there is something going on. Where God is drawing people to himself. And it's accomplished through Jesus. Just coming into the world, there is a united big story that makes sense of my little life in the middle of it.That I, that I'm not just a random being that climbed out of the, climbed out of the primeval swamp and I just sort of happened and I evolved my way up and, and really, it's just random, random, random. I mean, there's no purpose, no meaning. No. The light coming to the darkness, what it reveals is, there's meaning to your life.There's purpose to your life. God created you. The problems you experience in your life is, is a result of the fall in our experience, where we have turned from God. But there is, the story continues that light has come in, in the midst of that darkness, in the person of Jesus Christ. There's a united, big story of human history that makes sense of life.Remember reading the article a number of years ago in Christianity Today? Was it, it was in, the story was in, the article was entitled, I Was a Witch. Was a story of a woman, Kimberly Shoemade, and her long conversion to Christ. She tells the story of, of how. she had had a couple of friends that were talking to her about the Bible and, and had actually gone to, a Bible study.And she was very much 30 years into witchcraft. The incantation, the whole world were hers. She had seen astonishing demonstrations of power of the dark, influence in her life. But she tells her story as she was listening to Verses, over a few weeks in this Bible study of Old Testament verses and New Testament verses and, and, and here's what she wrote.She said, I was struck with how the Old Testament and the New Testament had a oddly familiar voice, one tone, one heart. And she said, I wondered, here's her words. How could a book? Written by so many different people, over the course of hundreds of years, fit together perfectly, as if one amazing storyteller has written the whole thing.The Holy Spirit began melting my vanity and arrogance with a power stronger than any hex or incantation or spell I'd ever used. Suddenly, the blindfold I'd worn for almost 30 years was stripped away, and instantly I knew what I'd been searching for. It was a person, Jesus Christ. C. S. Lewis, in his book Miracles, says it this way, I believe in the incarnation of Jesus in the same way I believe in the Son.Not that I can see it all. Because by it, I see everything else. What's he saying? He's saying the entrance of Jesus Christ into the world, it's light. It declares in the midst of our darkness, everything else makes sense. There's a God that has purpose for my life and meaning. There's a God that's designed me, but I rejected Him.I've fallen from Him. But Jesus Christ has come and by his entrance he's saying, here's the thing, the reason you feel darkness and you feel purposelessness and you feel lostness is not that your desire for that is hopeless. You were created with that longing for purpose and meaning for life. Your dog doesn't have that, but you do.You were designed that way. But sin has darkened the whole thing. You've fallen from the state of being able to live out those purposes in your life and fulfill them.But Jesus Christ has come to shed light and say, there is an eternal value to your life. And I have come to restore you to a relationship, a personal relationship with God. I've brought light to it. And Paul and, and C. S. Lewis says, Man, when I realized that, it was the sun to me. Not that I could look into the sun and under every, understand everything about the sun.But that I could look around and see the sun shows me light for everything else that I need to understand. Jesus came as the light he reveals. Secondly, Jesus comes as the light who satisfies. In this passage, it talks about the light brings joy. When we're out in the sunlight, there is an invigorating energy you feel.There's, there's joy in light. Where there is limited light, only a few hours of daylight, for instance, Alaska, northern Canada. People struggle. We're not designed to live in darkness. It's interesting when the angel appeared to Mary and tells her she's going to bear the promised one. It says, I bring you tidings of great joy.A savior is born this day. Actually, that was to the shepherds. The hope is fulfilled in a purpose. A person is the fourth one. Verse 6 and 7, I'm just jumping down here to this famous passage, which Handel memorialized in his great, oratory of the, the Messiah. But we read this in verse 6 and 7, For unto 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.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 and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. And the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. The hope is fulfilled in a person. We celebrate Christmas when we remember that hope has come.It has come in a person, in the Creator, coming among us to deliver us from ourselves, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, to begin shaping us for life here and for a world to come. In his great book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says this, The second person in God. The son became human himself, was born into the world as an actual man, a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular color, speaking a particular language, weighing so many pounds.The eternal being who knows everything and who created the whole universe became not only a man, but before that a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman's body. And if you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab. He's portraying that, what it's like that this Creator God became human, one of us.I've said this before on a number of occasions, but it always helps me and I'm going to just throw it out there for you. I want you again to think of the one who came to the world and I want you to think of our galaxy for just a moment, actually the entire cosmos. If we were trying to measure out things in our universe and we were to say the distance from planet earth to our sun would be portrayed by the thickness of this piece of paper.And if I were to place this paper here and say, all right, from the, from earth to the sun is the thickness of that piece of paper, that minuscule amount. If we were then to track on that basis of measurement, the distance to the next closest star in our galaxy, we would have to have a pile of papers 70 feet high.If we were then to use that measurement and to discern the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way, we would need a pile of paper 360 miles high. and we are told by recent astro astronomical reckoning that they believe there are billions of such galaxies in the cosmos. And the book of Isaiah says, God stretches out the heavens and measures them with the span of his hand. That God became that baby in Bethlehem. He deigned to come to this world for one reason.To rescue people in darkness.He's described in these words. He's the mighty God, the everlasting Father. If that's true, if Jesus Christ is that, you can't just like him. Well, I, I, I like Jesus. I mean, he's cool. I got nothing against him. Who is he? He's this individual. When you listen to who he is, when, when people began to understand the claims that Jesus was making about himself being God, they were furious at him.Or they fell at his feet and worshiped him. Second, if Jesus is the wonderful counselor and prince of peace, we should want to know him and serve him. He's called the counselor. When you're going through something difficult, it's good to talk to someone who has walked the same path, who knows personally what you've been going through.This creator of the cosmos God knows what it's like in the person of the sun to suffer. He knows what it's like to be slandered by friends. He knows what it's like to be crushed by injustice. He knows what it's like to be tortured and to die. Dorothy Sayers, a British ethicist and novelist, said this years ago.It means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall, to suffer, to be subjects to sorrow and death, he has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He himself has gone through the whole of human experience from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.He was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain all for us. And thought it well worth his while. And he says, I can be your mighty, wonderful counselor not only because I'm God and I know everything, but I know it by experience. I've walked your walk. The last thing about this hope is this, the hope humbles.For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. It's a gift. It can be yours only if you are willing to receive it as a gift given by grace. Verse 5 hints at that too. It says here in the passage, it speaks of a great battle, but it says every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.The imagery that's used here is basically saying that the great victory over evil. Will not require our strength. We won't need a A warrior's boot. We won't need armor or a sword. Just melt them down. Burn 'em up. It says someone else will do your fighting for you. This is the great gift, but it's a challenging one.Christmas is about receiving gifts, right? But consider how challenging it is to receive certain kinds of gifts. Imagine opening a present on Christmas morning from a friend and it's a diet book. Really helped him, but, I remember years ago, Marianne, sharing with me her suggestion that I read the book by Norman Vincent Peale, How to Win Friends and Influence People.She had the best of motives. I actually did read the book, and, which probably isn't a good argument for it, but, But I really would have preferred if the book's title was something like this, Why Everybody Wants to Be Your Friend. To accept the true Christian gift, you have to admit your need, that you're in darkness, and that the emptiness you feel At the longing for meaning, the, the, the wholeness, the sense that life just isn't how it ought to be.You have to say this is because of my fault, because of my rejection of God as the central reality in my life because of my sin. That I too need light to come into my darkness. That I'm not going to just climb my way out and find the right light through my job or my family or my, my, my workouts in the gym that, that there's no other curtain that works except the one that opens to the one that brought light to our world.And it's a humble thing to say, God, I don't ultimately need a friend, an encourager. A defender. I need a savior. I need one who died for me. I need one who rose for me. I need one who gives forgiveness to me. I need the hope that comes of realizing this is all part of the giant story that You created me in a certain way, and I threw it aside going my own way.But Jesus came to, and the light is, He's saying, Embrace me, and allow me to begin to restore all that God wanted to have in your life. And we'll one day completely restore it in a place that is prepared for you called heaven. But we must admit we're sinners, that we've displaced God at the center of our lives.That it really was, as Isaiah 53 said, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to our own way. But the Lord laid on Him the sin of us all. That Jesus Christ came to be that for us. I don't know where you are this morning. But my guess is there's a number of people in this room are watching online this morning.Who have never embraced the light of Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord and living in darkness. You say, well, I, I never thought of myself living in darkness. But every part of your life that is discordant ultimately from the way life is designed to be lived is ultimately traced back to where God is not the center of your life.That Jesus Christ came to rescue you, to deliver you from that state, and bring you into a relationship with God, both in this world and eternally. My invitation to you this morning is just to embrace Jesus Christ. To lay hold of the hope of the world. It was the hope of Israel. But it is the hope of the world that there is a living hope found in Jesus Christ who came to bring light to people in darkness.Gonna ask you to pray with me this morning and ask every head bowed and every eye closed.Lord, we come to you through this simple study, yet with such profound truth. That our lives are all part of a giant story that's being written. It's a story that will never end.And Lord, in this story, you have brought light to us in our darkness in the person of Jesus Christ. Father, you look into the life and soul of every person in this room and in their rooms who are watching online. And I ask you, Father, that you would take away all distractions that they might now personally be able to process where are they in their relationship to Jesus Christ.With every head bowed and every eye closed, I want to address you this morning, still in a state of prayer. Maybe you're here today and God, the Holy Spirit is prompting you and saying, Hey, this was for you. This message. This didn't come from, from Mark. This is something I wanted you to hear because I want you to know that I have created you and that you have turned away from me through your own fall into sin.But that I sent my own son. To deliver you from the penalty from your sin, both in your life now and the way life is lived and also in the, in the day to come. Won't you embrace my son as your Savior? And if you're here this morning and again, no one is looking around but me and God. And you'd say, Pastor Mark, I need the hope of Christ.I need a saviorright now. I want to receive Jesus Christ as my savior. I'm gonna ask you right where you are to pray this prayer with me quietly speaking in your own heart to God.Lord, I realize today that I am a sinner,that I'm separated from you because of my sin. And I realize that Jesus Christ came to be my Savior.Right now, I'm asking you, Jesus Christ, to enter my life and heart, to be my Savior, to be my Lord.Jesus, thank you.If God prompted you to pray that prayer this morning, and again, nobody is looking around, please, but me and God. I'm gonna just ask you right where you are, that I could be praying for you, to just raise your hand. I can ask you to do anything else, but I'd like you to just raise your hand and say, Mark, I've received Christ right now.Yes. Are there others? Yes.Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you.Yes. Thank you.Thank you.Thank you. I see those. Thank you. Okay, you can put your hands down. Lord.The Bible tells us that the angels in heaven rejoice when one person embraces Christ as Savior. We hear this morning, the joy in heaven for all these individuals that have raised their hand and said yes to Christ, Lord, make this the beginning of a life journey now where they grow to know you and to love you and to understand now the fledgling and then maturing steps of walking in the light.Lord, thanks for being among us. Thanks for wanting us. Thanks for pursuing us. For bringing light into our darkness. That Advent is about hope. And we love you for it. In Jesus name, Amen.
Acts 28:30-31He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.
Sermon Transcript:Hey everybody. I'm going to have you turn to Acts chapter 28, please.Acts chapter 28. As we come to the final two verses of the book of Acts, as we complete this series together, I'm And I did want to highlight that the title of this sermon has nothing to do with my eminent demise or retirement. Um, it was pointed out to me, the final episode by Pastor Mark. Um, we are anticipating my retirement late this year, not late next year.Whew, whew. a year from now or so. Okay. Acts chapter twenty eight. I'd like to read verse thirty and thirty one. It's talking about the apostle Paul who has now come to, to Rome as a prisoner and we read these words. He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.Father, we come to you this morning. Lord, thank you for the way you have taught us from this fantastic portion of scripture. Lord, we've learned so much about walking with you and trusting you as we've journeyed through the book of Acts these 22 months. And Lord, I pray as we reflect today back As we enter this passage and see its visual of the lessons that the entire book are about, Lord speak into us, direct us, grow us, encourage us in our walk with Jesus, I pray in Jesus name, Amen.Long running TV series are famous for their final episodes. Writers labor long and hard to come up with a final episode that accomplishes at least one of the following things. And I've read some articles on this and these are typical things that they try to emphasize in those. Uh, final episodes. Number one, they hopefully tie up loose ends and unanswered questions.Another thing they try to do is to, in some ways, summarize the message of the whole series. In other final episodes, they give a sense of what the future holds for the main characters. There have been some famous final episodes. watched final episode in history. 77 percent of people that had TVs watched the final of M.A. S. H. Which basically, the story of the 4077 hospital unit serving in Korea during the Korean War. Their final episode basically focused on the future of the members of the team at the cast. Lost was a series, a group of people from a plane crash. Crashed into some fictitious, mysterious, bizarre island in the South Pacific.Um, there, variety of events, if you saw the series as, as I did. Um, you came to the final episode and for many of us, certainly not all, but for many of us were kind of left, Ah, this didn't work, this final episode. A lot of questions were still unanswered. You really weren't sure what was going on with the characters in the future.A series I did not watch, but certainly was one that was prominently known and famous was The Sopranos. And this was the story of the Mafia, a fictitious... Mob boss, Tony Soprano. He was the mob boss of a fictional North Jersey crime family. And the series was largely about him and his own processing. It actually began in the first episode with him going into a therapy appointment.And the idea that this series is largely going to be seen through the thinking of, of Tony Soprano. Tony Soprano in the final episode is found in a diner. where he is waiting for his family to come. And it's interesting. I have watched that episode of watching as, um, he's sitting in the seat in the diner and every time the door opens in the diner.Um, which he intentionally has a view of to see who's coming in. When he first comes into the diner, he cases everybody that's there, notices the ones he would thinks are a little bit suspicious, potentially threatening to him. He sits down and there's a bell that rings every time somebody comes in the door.Every time the bell rings, he immediately looks up, cases the person, and watches, again, just evaluating, looking, evaluating life. The series ends in this final episode in, in somewhat of a shocking way. And if you have, you are watching this series, this is gonna be a, an alert. Don't listen to me. Um, I don't know how you do that, but this is gonna be one of those apologize later, I guess.But, but basically what happened is he's looking down at his onion rings and his wife and his son have joined him there. He's got the music going on the jukebox and All of a sudden, he looks up and everything goes dark. And then the credits come on, implying the show is older. And apparently there were, there were people all over the country that thought their TV broke or something happened.But it actually was the end of the show for a lot of people. It was, uh, for some people at least, it was frustrating because they never really understood what happened to him. But for many critics and eventually many fans, it was the perfect ending. Because it depicted the mind of Tony Soprano, always having to check everywhere out for enemies, danger, threats.He lived with the unknown. At any moment, his life and the lives of those he cared about faced an uncertain and potentially violent ending. The sudden darkness left the audience debating if he was murdered. They entered into the thoughts and trepidations, the unknown unresolved dangers that Tony lived with through the whole series.This morning we come to the final episode in the book of Acts. And again, it is intended, I think, to be a, a, a focused ending for us. Paul has arrived in Rome, a prisoner of the empire. In this final episode, these two verses we just read. Paul is in house arrest, but it does not end as we might expect the book to end.We've traveled with Paul for years. We've traveled with him, uh, through these many chapters, the majority of the book of Acts. And what we would expect does not happen. It does not tell us what Paul's future will be. As a matter of fact, we hear that he's in Roman incarceration for a couple of years, but Paul will live eight years beyond that incarceration.He will go out, he will do some degree of missionary work, um, he will do some writing, and then he will be incarcerated again in Rome. And that Roman imprisonment, which will again last probably a couple of years, will be when he writes some of the most famous of his letters. But it will also end in his execution under Emperor Nero.None of that's told to us here. Luke doesn't even tell us ultimately what's going on and continuing in the future of the church at this moment. What Luke does do is recap in these two verses the whole story of the book of Acts. He focused us on what the story will continue to be because the story of the book of Acts, and we've entitled it.This is the spirit at work to the ends of the earth. That it is, Luke is telling us, this is continuing, it's continuing with Paul, and the picture is that this is going to be the ongoing story. In our first sermon on the book of Acts, 63 sermons ago, I took us to Rome to introduce the series, and now we're back in Rome for the last sermon of our series.I'd like to just read to you a statement, or a paragraph, that I shared as we began this series. Just a few years before Christ's birth, Rome constructed their first heated pool, erected on grounds on Equiline Hill just outside the ancient walls of Rome. The hill had been left undeveloped because of its history.It was the hill where rebellious slaves were crucified. And buried in a massive common grave. The hill was reclaimed by developers in order to build some of the most opulent estates and villas in the empire. But as they dug up the ground on, on the vulture infested location, they unearthed thousands of skeletons of nameless, executed slaves.No place in the empire depicted such a contrast. The hill portrayed the disparity of the most disdained of the Roman Empire and the most privileged. Crucifixion was reserved for slave revolts and societal psychopaths. People who were a harm not only to others, but to the whole order of goodness. When a slave revolt happened, the condemned malfactors were hung dying on crosses along the roads into Rome, writhing on the cross in unspeakable pain.For hours into days, they served as a warning to the many slaves in the empire. Those that were crucified within the empire were considered the least...Very few public records of crucifixions list the names of the victims. Their insignificance was declared by being buried in common, unmarked graves. To be crucified was far worse, a far worse stigma than receiving the electric chair today. It was a symbol of shame, revulsion, and utter contempt. We begin our series this morning with a question.How could a religion whose central belief was in the work and teachings of a crucified man become the dominant belief system of the Roman Empire? Luke's historical record of the book of Acts answers the question. This book shows the spirit at work to the end of the earth. It is the Holy Spirit, the spirit Jesus sent to the world that made it happen.And Luke highlights four things the Spirit did to make faith in a crucified man, the dominant belief system in the Roman Empire. At that time I mentioned those four things in our first sermon in Acts, and I'm going to reiterate them today, because all four are found in the final episode here. In Acts 28, the spirit at work to the ends of the earth in our message this morning would conclude with this word Continues the spirit at work to the ends of the earth Continues we find four things that the book of Acts portrays to us as we look back this morning About what the spirit does That caused such astonishing results in the Roman Empire and ultimately to the cosmos, to the earth itself, to our whole world.Number one, he spreads the message of Jesus kingdom throughout the world. It says in verse 31 that Paul was, while under house arrest, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. In Paul's actions here and what is taking place, all four of these elements are presented in himself in what he's doing.First of all, the Spirit spread the message of Jesus kingdom throughout the world. Paul continued to do this with the Spirit empowerment that the early Christians also continued to do. To tell people about Jesus, Acts is actually the second book of a series that Luke had written. Luke had written the book of Luke, he had written the book of Acts, and both formed a two volume set, the book of Luke.Was the story of Jesus at work through his life his death and his resurrection in volume 2 It is the spirit at work through Jesus followers declaring the influence of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. And in Acts chapter 1, Jesus had prophesied just before he went to heaven, You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you.You will be witness to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The entire book of Acts is the unfolding of that story, of the Spirit's power to take the message of Christ. And his kingdom throughout the world, the Spirit gave power to preach Jesus gospel. We've seen this as we looked, and we see it here, as Paul is still, even incarcerated man, proclaiming the gospel of Christ.In Acts chapter 4, verse 13, it says, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, They were astonished, and they recognized they had been with Jesus as Peter and, as these, as Peter and John were drawn in before the religious leaders of the day in Jerusalem.They recognized, these guys are nobodies! They're not trained, they're not educated, and yet they are boldly, with authority, proclaiming the message of, of the one that they proclaim. As a Roman, uh, uh, appointed leader would say later in the book of Acts, They talked about, quote, a dead man named Jesus, who they said was alive.Uneducated guys, common guys, but empowered by the Spirit of God. They were powered to preach Jesus gospel, the good news. They were powered to do Jesus works. We see them authenticated by signs and wonders and miracles that Jesus had manifested in his ministry. As he empowered them to cast out demons, to, to heal the sick.He authenticated the messengers as they proclaimed their message as it went forth. A ministry that I believe happens in parts of the world today when the scriptures have not been provided. It's amazing what is happening in the Muslim world when the gospel goes into it. People are receiving dreams.People are seeing manifestations of the spirit that we don't typically anticipate. Or C, in our culture where we have Scripture and so much involvement of the Word of God in our lives already. But God authenticates the new messaging of the Gospel to peoples. And the result was in Acts chapter 6 verse 7, the disciples in Jerusalem multiplied greatly.And this amazing statement. A great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. In pagan cities, in Ephesus, in Colossae, in, in Corinth, in, in Philippi, multitudes believed. There was power to preach Jesus gospel. There was power to do Jesus works. But neither of those were the practical tool that the Spirit of God used most prominently to take the gospel forward in the first century.It was the third reality. It was the power to make Jesus known to their own worlds.Last week, J. R. Briggs spoke a, a, to me, a stirring challenge from the scripture. As he talked to us about, from the book of Luke, God's challenge to the Gadarene demoniac, the man who had been, had demons cast out of him, and rather than taking him along with him, he says, go back to your people and bear witness to me.The guy wanted to leave, but he says, no, I want you to tell people what I have done for you. And J. R. talked about how he was sent back to his own oikos. And I thought he very effectively presented that an oikos in the scripture is a household. It referred to not just one's immediate family, although it referred to that, but it also referred to co workers and friends and one's social group.It is, it is the network in which you did life. Many times, a number of those people living even with their own dwelling. And he said this is where we're called to present Jesus. He made the statement, which I, I thought was a great statement, he says, We are missionaries disguised as good neighbors, friends, and family members.And the book of Acts reminds us that the early believers knew that.Some of the most well known converts to Christ in the book of Acts. Teach us about this. Lydia, a businesswoman, was an owner, a business owner in Macedonia. She was the one who, it says, brought her whole household to here. Paul and Barnabas share the truth. Crispus, the synagogue ruler in Corinth. Brought his whole household, and it says all of them came to Christ.Cornelius, a Roman centurion in Caesarea, gathered his whole household of friends and family to meet with Peter. And an unnamed jailer in Philippi brought his whole household to hear Paul and Silas as he was saved, as were the members of his household.The way the Gospel ultimately goes forth and the power of the Spirit. It's not by a preacher. It's not ultimately by miraculous works. It's the day to day lives of people living out the gospel and speaking the gospel to people they know and love. I thought JR nailed it perfectly, and it was just a great segue to what I wanted to say this morning, although he said it in a way that I had not planned to say it.But the perspective that we are called as missionaries Disguised as family members, as good neighbors, as sports buddies. It's vitally important to talk to people about Jesus, but it's probably more important to talk to Jesus about people. I would guess that none of us are really actively involved in sharing Jesus with others for whom we are not talking to Jesus about first.If you say, well, I don't, I wouldn't know how to begin to talk to people about Christ or what, well, start talking to Christ about those people. And watch how your heart will be drawn to them and how it will be natural sometime in work or in some association to just say, Hey man, can I pray with you about that?Can I, can I just, uh, tell you what Jesus, how he's helped me with that. Just naturally, your heart will be drawn and one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other is to pray for each other's oikos. This is how the early church took the message of Christ. Fourth, in the Spirit's power. Secondly, the Spirit sustains Jesus people against all opposition.You'll notice here, it says that Paul proclaimed Jesus kingdom with all boldness. And again, I, I really believe Luke intentionally ends his book With these realities and all four of the focuses of the book of Acts He says it's still being done by Paul. And as we finish the book, this isn't so much a story about Paul It's about the Spirit's work and Paul's doing it at the very end It's a way of saying, you know, the Spirit's work just keeps rolling to people that are available.He sustains Jesus people against all opposition. Paul's in jail, and many times in his letters, we've highlighted this as we've gone through this series, Paul acknowledges his own fears, his anxieties, his weaknesses. In 1 Corinthians 11, he summarizes some of the reasons, 2 Corinthians 11, he summarizes why he says, With 39 lashes on five different occasions.I was beaten with rods, which meant like, uh, not quite baseball sized, but rods that were thick. These were not coat hangers he was being hit with, these were, these were clubs. He says that happened three different times. I was stoned and left for dead once. I was shipwrecked three times. And then he says these statements.I faced dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers from false brothers. I faced toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, often hungry and thirsty, cold and exposed and I carried the daily pressure of anxiety, he said, over my concerns for the churches and how they were doing.When Paul went out and, and, and shared the gospel with people, and then he came back and established them in the faith, it says, this is what they did in Acts chapter 14, verse 22. They said this. They were strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.There are no exceptions. If you are living wholeheartedly with Christ, you will face struggles. You will face opposition. You have an enemy. He's not really your enemy. He's the enemy of the one who has rescued you, who has embraced you, who has loved you to himself. But the best way he has to attack his enemy is through his enemy's people.You will face struggles. You do have a target on your back, and you may be thinking, oh well, sign me up.Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, we're afflicted in every way. But we're not crushed. We're perplexed, but we are not driven to despair. We're persecuted, but not forsaken. We're struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.Paul spoke with a boldness that was not his own, he was able to sustain. I mean, if there's anybody that you just wanna say, Paul, be quiet. Okay. You're here in Rome. You're under the, you're under the shadow of the emperor. You're just waiting for your appearance before him. He's already threatened by Christianity and you're the prime spokesman.Be quiet. Can't, there's a boldness, there's a call. There's a sense that I belong to someone else. It's a boldness given by the Spirit of God. And if you walk with Jesus, you will face hardship in following him at times. But you will find joy in sharing in his sufferings, and you will find peace and contentment in him that will more than compensate for any loss you experience.Paul believed that. I remember reading the story of an old time preacher. And his friends were with him, and they knew he had been slandered, he had been wronged, he had been misrepresented. It was just, it was... And they knew the weight and the sorrow of it for him. And they said, how can you handle this? Why aren't you retaliating?Why aren't you embittered? Why aren't you going after them? How do you endure the pain? And here's what he said, Ah, but I have Christ. Paul would say, Why do I keep talking? I have Christ. I have Him. He's sweeter than anything I've lost. He enables me to, to, when I feel crushed, to not be destroyed by it. When I'm perplexed, to not be completely lost in despair.He sustains us against all opposition. Third, He fulfills God's sovereign purposes. It says here that Paul, and the last words in the original actually is this word. Without hindrance. It actually is two words in the original. Um, it actually is one word in the original, two in the English. No hindrance. Most commentators believe this is chosen by Luke to say God was enabling Paul at this season of his life to just have some liberty.There was, in God's sovereign purposes, a season of no hindrance. One of the things we've tried to highlight as we've gone through the book of Acts is how much we see God's sovereign purposes lived out. We saw it in Acts chapter 2, the first sermon that's ever preached, where Peter stood up and, and Peter said, This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.Peter is saying God's purpose prevailed. Jesus was crucified. By false accusations out of envy and pride and fear and bitterness of lawless men. But ultimately, it happened by God's defined, sovereign plan. The cross was ordained. God used all those elements, but ultimately, in what seemed the deepest, darkest, most terrifying moment in the lives of the followers, was actually the greatest.In Acts chapter 8 we see the persecution that began in the church largely at the hands of a young man named Saul. And it caused the church to be scattered and people actually had to take their families out of Jerusalem and they spread to Judea and Samaria. And all of a sudden, we find out that the very thing that we're told in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, that the, that the, the church will take the message forth, that it will go not only in Jerusalem, but to Judea and Samaria, and ultimately the ends of the earth will, it began to spread by God's sovereign purposes, by persecution into those very areas that he said the Spirit would take it.In Acts chapter 16, Paul is traveling through what is modern day Turkey, and he says, I wanted to go towards Ephesus to the west, and the Spirit restrained me. And then I wanted to go up by the Black Sea in Bithynia, where I knew there were, there were lots of transplanted Jews, and, and there was a, a, a, a, a, capital, uh, port cities, that I wanted to take the guy, and the Spirit said no, and he says, finally we just sort of ended up at the end of Turkey, nowhere else to go in the ancient city of, Of Troy, which was then called Troas.And there God said, okay, you're right where I want you to be. And he gave me the, what's called the Macedonian vision. The vision of a guy over in Macedonia in Greece. And he says, in, in the vision the guy is saying, come over. So Paul went, and again, God's giving him nose. And yet it's all part of God's purposing for Paul.When Paul returned to Jerusalem and all his friends told him, don't go. Because things are too hot. Paul says, no, I'm supposed to go to Jerusalem, then I'm going on to Rome, then I'm going on to Spain. I'm gonna do my big fourth missionary journey, which never happened. But he went to Jerusalem and was arrested, and ultimately God sovereignly used.The Roman authorities to send him as a prisoner to Rome, the very place that God had told him he would ultimately go. Pastor Ben, two weeks ago, in looking back in the book of Acts, called this the unknown knowns. I liked it. I like the phrase. You know what you're supposed to do, but there's a lot of pieces of it you don't know.And a lot that you don't expect along the way. We don't know what the future holds. We really do lean into the one who holds the future.The fourth thing we find that the book of Acts has reminded us of, that again is portrayed here in this closing episode, he makes one people out of all backgrounds. He welcomed all who came to him. Here in Rome, he's welcoming Jew and Gentile, that's taken place just in the verses right before this, making of multiple religious backgrounds, cultural heritage, and ethnicities one people by giving them the same experience.In Acts chapter 10, Peter went to the household of Cornelius, a Roman soldier. It's a Gentile home, it's a home of the Goyims, and he says to them, Guys, you know I'm not supposed to be here. I mean, by my tradition, by my religious law, I'm not even allowed to be in your house. God told me to come here, and he saw that they had the same experience with the Holy Spirit.That they stood on equal footing in Christ, broken, self centered, humbled sinners, gathering at the cross. And they also were compelled to have the same response. In Acts 2. 41 it says, So those who received, and it's actually the word welcomed, same word where it says Paul welcomed these people. The word were baptized and there were added that day about 3, 000 souls.He welcomed everyone in the hope that they would welcome his word about Jesus here, Paul, in Rome. The final episode of Acts is given as a recap of the Spirit. in his work as he has been throughout the 30 years of the Book of Acts. It's Dr. Luke's way of saying, and Paul's life reminds us, the Spirit is still doing this.Still spreading the message of Jesus kingdom. Still sustaining God's people against all opposition. Still fulfilling God's sovereign purposes. Still making one people out of all backgrounds. And the spirit is still looking today, this morning, for Peters and Pauls, for Barnabas and Aristarchus, for tax collectors and businesswomen, for young people and seniors, for soldiers and slaves, for demon dominated, or people of religious aristocracy, for people raised in the palace of the emperor, or people serving as temple prostitutes.The gospel is for all and the call to live your life wholeheartedly for Jesus is extended to everyone because the Spirit continues to be at work to the ends of the earth. Lord we look to you this morning and if we just take in these few moments tosummarize in the final episode we see here as Paul personifies it.Lord, may there be a renewed passion in our lives to be available to Christ,to go to our oikos, to pray for our oikos, to lean into the Spirit of God, to believe you to do among us and through us that which has been your plan in all these centuries begun in the early church. In Jesus name, Amen.
Mark 5:1-20And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs.
Sermon Transcript:We have a guest speaker with us today. J. R. Briggs is a, father of two. He has two teenage boys, along with his wife, and they, he has spent 15, he spent 15 years pastoring, pastoring on a staff of a mega church. He also, started a church, developed it, and the church is still thriving today. As a result of his, pastoral ministries, he has Eventually, well also, also he's a prolific writer.He's contributed over 50 articles to Christianity Today and other periodicals and has authored or contributed to 13 books, most on scriptural studies and church life and leadership. His most recent book he's contributed to, which I just bought yesterday, cause I was doing the research on all this, was five practices to help you engage with God through scripture.It looks fantastic. In 2012, J. R. Started Kairos Partnerships, a consulting organization for both church leaders and organizations. He's worked with many churches in pastoral succession processes, including smaller churches. Mid to large churches and mega churches. he is our consultant, in this process as well.We looked at organizations. We evaluated a number of those of us on the succession team and brought a recommendation to our board. And basically, what we found was there's some great organizations out there, but what sometimes happens with organizations, they basically bring a template. They have a template they want you to work through in a process.The thing that I think, one of the things that really made us appreciate working with J. R. is, it's his priority, clearly, to work with the church to not bring a template of how to do this or what it's to look like to, to to walk in step with the spirit and the ins and outs, that that always involves to understand our church culture and history and really to enable us to preserve the legacy of the past and to chart a broad vision for the future.I mean, we're not trying to blow this place up and start a new model of church. God has built some beautiful things here, but We felt the need and have really appreciated having a consultant that's assisting in that process with us. In the process of, engaging JR as our consultant, he offer, also offered and the team and the board agreed to this to my great appreciation.To provide monthly sessions for myself and or Marian to just process with us as we are in a time of transition in our lives as well. JR has a definition of leadership that I would say is the one that I have liked more than any I've ever heard. Here is the definition of leadership. A leader is one who builds trust.J. R. has been that for our succession team and for me personally, and I'm excited to have him build into you this morning as well.Well, good morning. It's good to be with you all. It has been such a joy to work with your pastor and, the succession team. And, I have worked with lots of different groups and I will say one of the things that I value about Pastor Mark is that his identity is not wrapped up in being a pastor. It's what he does, he serves, he loves you all, but his identity is that he's a child of God.And that has made this opportunity, this transition, this succession, a very healthy one from the perspective of your senior pastor. So in a spirit of love and appreciation, can we just put our hands together and express our love to Mark?Well, I know that you all have been in a series, on the book of Acts. I know you've only spent just a couple of weeks together on the book. You're racing through it very quickly. and I understand you'll be finishing next week. Pastor Mark encouraged me to in whatever direction I wanted to take, whatever I felt the Lord, had given to me that we will be looking at.So we're going to be taking a break. From the book of Acts for one week, and then you'll finish up next week. Well, in acts, I know that you've explored God's mission, which is the whole point of the book of Acts of following the spirit and the mission in the early church of what God was up to. But sadly, as we know in our culture, it's no secret that we have a mission problem here in the United States.I'm not talking a missions problem, but a mission problem. Here's what I mean. A most recent poll was taken to residents of San Francisco and they asked this simple question, what do Christians do? And the response that came back, there were two main themes. And the first one is that Christians, they go to a lot of meetings and number two, they're against stuff.Friends, this is not the mission that God has given his people to fulfill. So this morning, I want us to get a glimpse of the heart of God and in the process of doing that, we're want to look at the mission of God and how that relates. But be warned, the closer that you get to Jesus, the more responsibility he often gives to us and the more uncertainty we often experience.But I can assure you that that's where the adventure lies. Well, this morning I want to explore a Greek word with you. It's the word oikos. Let me hear you say oikos. One more time. Oikos. Now, some of you are like, Oh, isn't that the yogurt I had for breakfast this morning? Yes, that is the yogurt brand, but that is not what we're going to be looking at here this morning.The root of ikas is actually where we get our, the root behind that is the word house or home. In fact, if you think about it a little bit deeper, it's kind of intended for household, but we could even. Have it include things like your, your circle of influence, your friends, your family, your trusted network of relationships.So that's your oikos. And by the way, everybody has an oikos. You have an oikos. Could be big or small, could be strong or weak, but you have an oikos. Your sphere of influence, the relationships that you have and that, that exist. In fact, in that oikos, sociologists actually say everybody lives in five different neighborhoods.Five different neighborhoods. The first one is you live in a geographic neighborhood. That may be the most literal, the one we understand the most, right? The people that live on Columbia Avenue, where I'm from on the north side of Philadelphia, that's my literal geographic oikos. There are others. You have a familial oikos.These are aunts and uncles and cousins and, and, and, and all sorts of people that you would see at a family reunion. You also have a relational oikos. These are your friends that you enjoy spending time with. But you also have a psychographic neighborhood. That's kind of a fancy word that, that sociologists use.But it's any, any people that live and think the way you do. Psyche, psyche, the way we think. So if you're a Mac user, you know, you, you kind of clump together with other people that have a Mac, right? Or you go to the gym, you know, you're, you're in CrossFit, right? Those are kind of your tribe or your people.I love swimming. I swim three days a week. Not very fast, but I enjoy it a great deal. And as I swim early in the morning, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm swimming next to Carl and Carrie. And Bill and Sam, they're all with me. Sometimes they share a lane and we talk and catch up. I would not have known them if I did not swim.They are in my psychographic neighborhood. Then of course we all live in a digital neighborhood. Those of you who are on social media, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, these are the people that you learn from and they learn from you in that. And one of the most strategic things that you can do as a follower of Jesus is to just take five or ten minutes of your time sometime this afternoon or the next few days and to actually list out everybody that you know in your five neighborhoods.To really be aware of the oikos that you have. Now, I want to press pause right now on the word oikos, and I want to give you a little bit of background of the passage we're going to look at, and then we're going to read the passage and unpack it together. So just stick a pin in the corkboard of our minds right here with oikos, we'll come back to that.I want to give you some background. I had the privilege in the fall of 1999 as a college student to spend a semester abroad living on Mount Zion at a place called Jerusalem University College. I now have the privilege of serving on the board for JUC. And by the way, it's very difficult to run a college in the middle of a war.We would really appreciate, as you pray for the Israel Hamas conflict, that you'd also pray for Jerusalem University College. But as a student, as a student, I had the opportunity and the privilege of exploring all around Israel. Now Israel is about the size of the state of New Jersey. Not very big, but very important in terms of world history and news and even today, of course.When I lived and studied in Israel in college, one weekend we biked from the Mediterranean Sea in the west, all the way across to the Sea of Galilee. You can see that there in the north, that body of water on the north. And it only took us a weekend. It's not a very big country. Not a very big country. Now you see the Sea of Galilee there in the north.Sea of Galilee is shaped like a harp. Often in scripture it's referred to as Lake Kinneret. Kinneret in Hebrew means harp. Harp lake. Kind of looks like a harp. Kind of cool. It's 13 miles north to south. 8 miles east to west. This is where Jesus spent the majority of his time in his life. This is where the disciples grew up.They saw the majority of Jesus's miracles in his life. It's a beautiful place to be even today. Significant fishing industry still exists on the Sea of Galilee. Many of you have maybe have been there before. Now the topography of the area is very interesting. The Sea of Galilee actually sits in a bowl.You see, there's lots of mountains, sometimes there's, steep banks that just run right into the water. And oftentimes, meteorologists say that when a storm comes, when the hot air is trying to rise and the cold air is trying to come down in the midst of that bowl, what that's called an inversion. And inversion happens in tense storms on this lake.Now, there's something you also need to know about the Sea of Galilee, that there are two sides to the lake, two cultural differences to the Sea of Galilee. On one side, the western side, is very Jewish. They were monotheistic. In other words, they, this is where they worshiped the one true God, Yahweh. They spoke Hebrew.They kept kosher laws. Towns that maybe you've heard of as you've read the scriptures of Capernaum and Bethsaida and Magdala. But on the eastern side, separated by just a little body of water on this lake, on the eastern side was the Greek side. They were polytheistic. They worshipped lots of different gods, many different gods in pagan temples.They spoke Greek. They did not keep kosher laws. And over there they had what's called the Decapolis, the ten cities of culture, rich culture in Greek, in the Greek culture. And these were massive cultural differences separated by only a few miles of water. It would be like us saying, we're going to cross the Rio Grande River.We aren't just crossing a body of water, we're crossing from one culture to another. Different language and food and fashion and entertainment, customs, currency. So the posture often was, you stay on your side of the lake, Jewish people, we'll stay on our side of the lake as Greek people. We didn't want to have like a west side story, east side story kind of thing.Like you just do your thing, we'll stay here. So we explore this passage here in just a moment. I want you to take the background of Oikos and the background around the Sea of Galilee because it's going to matter. You may be thinking, why are you telling me all this information? Hold on. The lights are going to light up on your dashboard in just a couple minutes.We're going to connect some dots here. But as we begin to read this story in just a moment, I want to encourage you. To be thinking through these questions. If you were there and you saw this story we're about to read unfold, what might you be thinking? What might you be feeling if you watched it? Why do you think this story is in our Bibles?Why do you think Mark, the author, included it? What does he want us to understand about who Jesus is? And what might the Spirit want us, as followers of Jesus, Or even those of us considering Jesus to do with this story. So with that being said, I want to encourage you to turn to Mark chapter 5. Mark chapter 5.If you're new, in terms of the Bible, it's in the New Testament. Second, book of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, and Mark chapter 5. And I want to encourage you, if you are physically able, would you stand as I read this passage of Scripture? Please stand with me. Mark chapter 5 verses 1 to 20.They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot. But he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his feet in front of him. And he shouted at the top of his voice, What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?Swear to God that you won't torture me. For Jesus had said to him, come out of this man, you evil spirit. And Jesus asked him, what is your name? My name is Legion, he replied, for we are many. And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside.The demons begged Jesus, send us among the pigs. Allow us to go into them. And he gave them permission. And the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about 2, 000 in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon possessed man, and told about the pigs as well. And when the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region, as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him.Jesus did not let him, but said, go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. So the man went away and began to tell him the Decapolis, how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed. These are the words of God. You may be seated.Now, if you are a first time guest, you might be thinking, Wow, I picked a unique Sunday to come to Fellowship Church. But I want us to unpack this story because it's a bit jolting. It's unique. But let's look at this together. How about that first verse there? And they went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.In other words, they're moving from the western side, the Jewish side, to the eastern side, to the Greek side. Now, hopefully some light bulbs are going off on your dashboard right now of going, Oh, this is a culture clash. This is a new territory of which Jesus and the disciples were going. We don't know how often the disciples actually went to the other side, but it certainly would be foreign territory and very unique for them.There's so many cultural levels to this that when I was in college, in one of my Bible courses, I actually wrote a 20 page paper on just this verse alone. Now don't worry, I'm not going to unpack all of that here. But I want us to understand the cultural difference that was happening here. It says when Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him.Now, right away, Mark wants us to understand the connection between tombs and death and this man.He's a crazed man, incredible strength, no one can resist him, self destructive. Think of the fear that would strike your community if you knew this man was on the loose. In fact, verse 5, it says, Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. Parents, clearly this is not the type of guy you want your daughter bringing home from college for Thanksgiving meal.But can you imagine being a parent there of young children, trying to put your kid to bed and you hear echoing off the hillsides around the Sea of Galilee, these screams from this crazed man. The nightmares this might have induced in small children. And it says that he sees Jesus. And he runs to him from the tombs.He runs down to him and he falls on at his feet and he at the top of his, what do you want from me? Jesus, son of the most high God, what do you want? And he says, don't torture me. Now, if you were a disciple and you saw this crazed man sprinting toward Jesus, what would you and your buddies be thinking?Can you imagine the sight of that? Can you imagine what that might look like?And think of the admission that he makes. Jesus, Son of the Most High God. And one of the things I love about the book of Mark is the incredible irony that Mark highlights again and again and again throughout the whole book. It seems here that the only one That understands Jesus for who he really is in the entire book right away are not the religious people.If you read the book of Mark, you'll notice the people, the groups that actually understand who Jesus is most quickly and most accurately are the demons. And the people that struggle slowly to understand exactly who Jesus is, are the disciples, the ones who spend the most time with them.And then Jesus in verse nine does something that very few of us would do in this situation. He asked him a question. He says, what's your name? He didn't shun him. He didn't run away from him. He didn't curse him. He wasn't afraid of him. Jesus just asked the man a question, a relational connection question.What's your name? And he says, my name is legion where he probably says, my name is legion, you know, or something like that, which seems fitting of course, because legion is a military term, which means lots and lots of armed men. This is one powerful, dangerous dude. He doesn't have one dangerous demon in him.He has many, many demons inside of him. And yet in verse 10. It says, and he begged Jesus again and again, not to send them out of the area. Think about that. You've got dangerous, tons, a legion of demons inside this man. He goes, Oh, please, please, please, please don't send me out. Now, if you think about begging, begging is only done by someone where someone else has authority.Someone who's in a higher role of control or power or authority for something to happen. Begging, begging is about permission and permission is about the authority of someone else in power. The demons understand the authority of who Jesus is. Are you tracking here? This is significant stuff that Mark wants us to notice.And we hear about in verses 11 and 12, this large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside. One of the largest industries in our area, about five minutes away on the north side of Philadelphia is Hatfield Quality Meats. If you're a Phillies fan and you watch highlights, you'll notice right behind home plate the sign that says Hatfield Meats.If you've been to a ball, the ballpark, you know, you probably had a Hatfield dog. So that's five minutes from my house. So anytime I'm going to the bank, which is right next to Hatfield, I'm going to Lowe's, which is right next to Hatfield Quality Meats. Oftentimes we're at a stoplight and we see huge trucks with hundreds of pigs on them.When my kids were little they would say, Hello piggy, goodbye piggy.So we're used to seeing pigs frequently around our house. But pigs, why were they nearby? With this crazed man because on the Greek side there are no kosher laws as a Jew You would never eat or touch a cheeseburger. You would never have a hot dog You would never be around pigs, but on the eastern side the Greek side That's there are pigs everywhereand the legion of demons inside this crazed man say don't send us away Just send us into the pigs Just send us into the pigs and Jesus gives them permission another indication of authority Jesus wants us to see again that Jesus was the one who had authority and the demons knew this So they go into the pigs and then the pigs run.I would imagine squeal and go crazy off the steep cliffs And right into the water. Can you imagine the sight of 2000 crazed pigs running down the mountain and right into the water? Jesus caused a pig farmer to lose a ton of money that day.Can you imagine seeing the sight of those hooves bobbing up and down out in the sea of Galilee?And it says in verse 15, sitting there dressed and in his right mind, the people were afraid. They're going, what in the world just happened? What a turn of events, they must have been asking, Who is this stranger from the other side of the lake?And it says, and they begged him. There's begging again. They begged him to leave the area. Please get out of here, you've caused such a ruckus. There's been so much chaos. Farmers have lost some, some money here today. Go to the other side of the lake. And Jesus, in verse 18, in all of his humility, does something astonishing.He actually obliges their request.He didn't have to, he could have been angry and struck them dead, done something even crazier than what he did with the pigs, but instead he gets in the boat and he complies with their request. But this is the focus of the passage I want us to look at, the last few verses of this story.Verse 18, it says, As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him, and Jesus did not let him. What? Why not? I think if I were in that position, I would say, Man, I've changed this guy's life. This would be a perfect person to have on my PR team. This man's life has been changed.I want to say, don't take my word for it. Let this guy share. Let this person give you an understanding of my power. But he did not let him. Was Jesus being mean? No. Verse 19. He says, Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. Do you know what word Jesus uses there for your own people?Oikos.Go home to your Oikos. Go home to your sphere of influence. Go home to the people that know you, that saw you grow up when you were a kid, that work with you, that live down the street from you. Go home to your oikos and tell them all the things the Lord has done for you and the mercy that he's had on you.In verse 20, it says, And so the man went away, and he began to tell the Decapolis, the ten cities, the ten Greek cultural cities, how much Jesus had done for him, and all the people were amazed.There are two elements of this story that I absolutely love. The first one is this, is that discipleship is always on Jesus's terms, not ours. This is really important in our American consumeristic culture. That every time someone asked Jesus if they could follow him, Jesus said no.Or Jesus made the stakes so high that person couldn't do it. But Jesus was always asking others to follow him. What I take from that is, Jesus, he wants to know will you submit and surrender to me and my purposes for your life? Or am I just a convenient add on? Jesus says, you come to me on my terms, not on yours.Jesus calls people to follow him, not the other way around. And sometimes we forget that discipleship is not about what we want and how we follow Jesus. But it's about what Jesus desires for our lives no matter what the cost might be. Discipleship is radical, it is purposeful, and it is a lifelong decision to become like Jesus by embodying His message and His mission.But the second thing I take away from this is the power of our Oikos. You have a powerful Oikos. Go home to your Oikos, your five neighborhoods, Jesus says, and tell them all the things that I've done for you and the mercy that I've had on you. Jesus isn't being mean to the guy. He's being strategic. He understands the power of the man's oikos.This Greek man on the eastern shore goes over to the Jewish side, the western shore, and he would have been lost. He would have started over. Here's one of the most significant parts of this story that I love. It's what happens after the story. A few pages later in your Bible, to the right, the next time Jesus actually returns to the eastern side, the Greek side of the lake, He is mobbed.Like a rock star. Why? Because the man did what Jesus asked him to do.I love the amazing impact that fellowship has had on global missions. This is such a wonderful vision. And I love that. And God is so honored by the significant work that we do overseas in supporting missionaries and organizations that are advancing the gospel. But in the midst of that, I want to encourage us to not lose sight of the opportunity for mission that we have right under our own noses.Across the ocean is great, but so is across the street, to the ends of the world, but also to the ends of your road or your cul de sac, your oikos, your sphere of influence. The already existing relationships in your life is the most fertile ground for impact that you have for the gospel. What's already there and you might be tempted to say I'm not a pastor.I can't do that I've never been to seminary But it doesn't matter because you have the person of the Holy Spirit living inside of you and the example of Jesus And we can read about in the scriptures to guide us and we can trust him in that the Spirit is our friend He is our guide. Do you realize that you have more influence in your sphere of influence?Than even your pastors hereDo you know why? Because your pastors don't live in the oikos that you live in. You have an oikos that no one else does. The neighborhoods that you live in are very powerful and there's trust that already exists there. That is the most powerful opportunity you have to live out the gospel with your already existing oikos.I mentioned I, I studied in Israel, following my junior year. Changed my life. And one of the things we got to do was go on a field trip. It was one of our last field trips before coming home for the semester. We actually went to the location, which is a little town called Kersey, where they believe this story happened.My professor taught from there and we could see the steep banks and we could just envision those pigs jumping off and into the water. And our professor said, I'm going to give you 10 or 15 minutes to do whatever you want. You can walk around, you can pray, you can read the story again in your Bible, whatever will meet you back at the bus.And I read that story again, and it was a powerful, powerful experience with God. I almost felt like that was my commissioning service because I really wanted to stay in Israel. I didn't want to go home. It was so life changing. I was kicking and screaming to have to get back on a plane and go home because I wanted to stay there.But I really sensed God and His Spirit in that moment, commissioning me to say, Jer, go home to your oikos, go home to your sphere of influence and tell everybody how, how much God has done in your life and the mercy that He's shown you throughout this semester. It was a powerful time for me, and I went home and did that.Well, shortly after coming home during January term, I had put together, some, some photo albums. And for those of you under 30, a photo album is where you print out photos, you put them in a book, you turn pages. And I developed this photo, these, these three photo albums of my experience. My grandfather lived three hours south of where I went to college.And, and I called my grandfather and he invited me to come and, and spend a weekend with him. My grandmother had passed away a handful of years prior. my grandfather is a good man, but he, he lived a very, very hard life. And we saw my grandfather's anger come out oftentimes when we would visit, but no greater than when politics or religion was brought up.My mother came to faith basically on her own without the influence of her parents. And she prayed for 30 years that her father would come to faith in Jesus. But anytime religion came up, he always, I got angry, pushed away from the table and said, I'm not going to participate. And he'd storm out of the room.Once I was packing to take my things and throw them in the backseat and my duffel bag, to head down to spend the weekend with my grandfather, I thought, you know what? I'm just going to throw my albums in just in case. In case Grandpa might be interested. So, we head down and Sunday morning, he's not going to church, so Sunday morning we sat around and talked around the breakfast table and I said, Grandpa, I, I brought my albums.Would you be interested in seeing the last semester when I was in Israel? He said, I'd love to. So I'm flipping through the pages and explaining where we went and what we did. And he flips to the last page and shuts it and my heart starts beating hard. And I said, Grandpa, do you know why my trip to Israel was so impactful?He said, no, I, I, I've wondered my heart starts beating more. And I said, as great as these experiences were of hiking and climbing and going to these places, I really encountered God in such a unique and real way. Like never before. And my heart, I can feel it just pounding on my chest. I'm waiting for him to get angry and push away from the table.And I said, grandpa, can I tell you how Jesus has impacted me? In this past semester and he said, yeah, and I shared instead of getting angry, my, my grandfather actually leaned in and he was asking questions and wanting to know more and I could almost feel my heart pounding at this point audibly. And I said, grandpa, is that something you want to enter into to this God who doesn't just love me?He loves you as well. And he wants to invite you into a life of forgiveness and joy and peace and love like you've never experienced. I'm just waiting for him to stand up and push away from the table. But instead, crocodile tears start rolling down his cheeks. And one of the greatest moments of my life.Had the privilege of leading my grandfather to know Jesus for the first time.And on my way home, I stopped to a payphone. For those of you under 30, a payphone is where you walk in, you have to put a quarter in, you call someone. And I called my mom. And I said, Mom, I couldn't even get it out. I said, Mom, you know that 30 year prayer? God answered your prayer today. Grandpa decided to follow Jesus for the first time.My mom starts weeping. I start weeping. And I'm driving back, just in silence, amazed at what God had done that morning. And then it hit me. It hit me so hard. The tears started flowing so hard I had to pull over on the side of the road. I thought back to that day, that commissioning service at Kersey, where that story took place we just read.Go home to your family and tell them all the things the Lord has done for you and the mercy that he's had on you.I was thinking it was going to be family as in metaphorical, you know, my sphere of influence. Little did I know it would actually be my literal family. One of the most significant ways that we can live out the truth is by seeing our oikos as our mission field. You have an oikos. It could be in the boardroom, the classroom, the playroom, the living room.That's your oikos. We like to say at our church that every Christian is a missionary, cleverly disguised as a good neighbor. You are a missionary cleverly disguised as a plumber, a teacher, an attorney, a contractor, a salesman, a stay at home mom. Which means that if we think like a missionary, we have to ask some pressing questions.Three P's. People, place, or problem. People, to whom are we being sent? Your oikos. Place, where are you being sent? And problem. Is there an issue or a problem or a need that God has burdened you to bring about hope and healing people place problem. And maybe the most strategic thing you can do is to draw a diagram of your street, your apartment complex, your road, your development, the cubicles at your job, the office layout, and to commit to pray for everyone on it for the next few weeks.Ironically, do you know who, what group of people does this better in terms of thinking about their oikos, their neighborhood? Ironically, ironically, it's the Mormons. You know what they do? They equip their young adults, their teenagers. And they send them out with a backpack, a Bible, and a map of their neighborhood.And they say, go. Christians, we can do better. We can do better. One of the things, I want you to imagine if Jesus had said to his disciples, you know, it's not wise to go over to that side of the lake. They're disgusting. They eat pigs. They have temples. They serve many gods. We don't want to be polluted by their unspiritual ways.They have different customs and cultures and rituals than we do. We're good Jews. And we don't want to be near that stuff. That's unacceptable. But I am glad that Jesus's love for others isn't about respectability. I'm glad Jesus's love is so outlandish that it involves getting dirt under your fingernails.Imagine if we took seriously our oikos. And imagine if a poll was recently done in this region. And people were asked, what do Christians do? What if they answered, they tell me openly and excitedly about what God has done. And about the mercy that he's had on them. And they told me that mercy is available to me as well.Well, what would it look like if you took your oikos seriously? Trusting this power that Jesus has to overcome even the craziest of circumstances, like legion. If he can help legion, he can help you. If he can change legion's life, he can help the people in your oikos as well. May you and I be the kinds of people that take Jesus seriously, that take our oikos seriously and trust him in the mission field that's right under our noses.Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this story, the story that jolts us, but is an important story that helps us understand our oikos and the power of it, and helps us understand that you truly are merciful, that you love us, and that you want us to share with others around us how good you are and the mercy that you've shown to us.If you can rescue a man that has multiple, numerous demons, then nobody's out of the reach of God's love. Amen. Help us to be those kinds of people that are willing to take our Oikaw seriously. And it's the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.
Acts 28:11-28After three months we set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods as a figurehead. Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days. And from there we made a circuit and arrived at Rhegium. And after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who guarded him.After three days he called together the local leaders of the Jews, and when they had gathered, he said to them, “Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. When they had examined me, they wished to set me at liberty, because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case. But because the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar—though I had no charge to bring against my nation. For this reason, therefore, I have asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain.” And they said to him, “We have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you. But we desire to hear from you what your views are, for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.”When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:“‘Go to this people, and say,“You will indeed hear but never understand,and you will indeed see but never perceive.”For this people's heart has grown dull,and with their ears they can barely hear,and their eyes they have closed;lest they should see with their eyesand hear with their earsand understand with their heartand turn, and I would heal them.’Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.”
Joshua 5:1-12Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.
Sermon Transcript:Welcome back to the book of Joshua, Joshua chapter five, it's in the Old Testament. If you find the book of Genesis, just keep going four more books and you'll, five more books and you'll find her. Joshua chapter five, we're going to look at verses one through 12 this morning.I'd like to read it out loud, and here's what we find. As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel.At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time. So, Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeal Harloth. And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them, all the males of the people who came out of Egypt, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt.Though all the people who had come out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not yet been circumcised. For the people of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who had come out of Egypt, perished, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord.The Lord swore to them that he would not let them see the land that the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey. So was their children, whom he raised up in their place, that Joshua circumcised. For they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way.When the circumcising of the whole nation was finished, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. And the Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the people of Israel were camped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho.And the day after the Passover on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land on leavened cakes and parched grain.Now I realize that some of you are wondering, Mark, why the heck are you preaching about circumcision on a day when we're celebrating a renovated building? Reasonable question. But this passage represents to the people of Israel something that speaks directly to our situation today. A similar moment happened in American history in 1836.About a hundred and eighty volunteers were gathered in a mission in San Antonio, Texas and San Antonio, Austin. San Antonio, okay. At the Alamo, a mission. And these 180 men were preparing for an onslaught of the Mexican army of a little over 4, 000 to come under the General Santa Anna. And as they were gathered, the army was coming and they were gathered there, these 180 volunteers.And as they gathered, Colonel William Travis, who was the commander of the fort, gathered them together. And in his gathering, the, the Mexican soldiers were coming and he told them about the situation. He told them the numbers, 4, 180. They were able to do the math. These are volunteers, right? I mean, these guys can leave at any time.They're only there because they want to be. He has no company. He has no authority over them. But he presents to them the situation and he says, look, if we can hold out. for a while and they actually did hold out for 13 days. We will buy time for all the rest of the Texans to gather together and to then bring a much larger army against the invading force.So, our defense has value. But it likely has the ultimate cost. And so, he actually took out his sword and famously He drew a long line in the sand and he said, look, this is utterly volunteer. It is up to you. But if you want to stay and fight, I'm going to ask you to cross the line. And if you want to leave, you are free to go.Probably after tomorrow, you won't have the chance to go. And every soldier crossed the line except for one who was the one that lived to tell the story of those that perished and they all perished in the Alamo. was Jim Bowie, whom the Bowie knife is named after, and one of many of our all time favorite American pioneers, Davy Crockett.They crossed the line. That particular phrase, the line in the sand, has entered American language from the big, potentially costly choice. The Israelites are at a similar place in their lives here in Joshua chapter 5. To this point in the book of Joshua, they have come now, they are about to enter the land and And God has been at work among them because now, after 40 years in the wilderness, this new generation of Israelites are preparing to go in to try to conquer the land of promise that God has given to them.And as they gather there... God has done a couple of things already in chapter one of Joshua, God has promised to be with them and fight for them in Joshua chapter two. He has told them the story through some of their spies that have gone out and have interviewed a woman in a city called Jericho. She's actually a prostitute there, and she has told them that everybody in the land is scared to death of you guys.And he has encouraged the people. And in Joshua chapter 3 and 4, we have the record of God actually taking them over the surging waters of the Jordan River, five times at normal, depth at this point. It was floodwaters. And God has opened that and they have gone in and now we come to chapter 5 and now God addresses them for their role.And he tells them what they must do before they enter the land. They must offer themselves to Jehovah. In our passage, God calls for commitment at a little spot called Gilgal. And this map portrays that place. That is actually the Jordan River Valley. If you are familiar at all with the land of, of, of Israel.And I forgot my pointer. Um. To the left of Gilgal and the Jordan River Valley is really all of Israel. And that's where they're going to go. But they come through, they cross the Jordan River, they hit Gilgal, and the next thing they're going to face is the fortress city of Jericho. Gilgal is, it actually means the rolling.God gave it this name. There was no town there before. It was a, it was a town of tents that the Israels made. It will become very prominent in the history of Israel. After every day, while circling the walls of Jericho, they will return to Gilgal. After every military campaign, which will occur over the next 20 years, When they go out, they will constantly come back to this tent city that is put in the Jordan River called Gilgal, the place of rolling.Later, 400 years later, when the people of Israel insist on a king, he will be enthroned at Gilgal. It is a place of significance to the people of Israel. It is a place where a unique and wholehearted commitment of the people to the Lord of heaven is first pronounced and continually in their history. It is a place where they return to reaffirm their covenant to God.And this is a cool day for us here at FCC. God's enabled us to upgrade our facilities, to expand our seating capacity. To have a worship space whose technology and acoustics help us to do ministries and serve our community for years to come. He gave us the money to do it all in cash through the generous giving of our people.And that is all awesome. But it's just a space. It's what God's people do that matters. The Holy Spirit of God works through. The people of God when their hearts are committed to him. So this morning we stand at our own Gilgal where God draws a line in the sand. He calls us to offer ourselves to him for his purposes and pleasure.For His glory as we seek to be His people to our generation and in generations to come in this little small corner of His work that He's doing all over the world. Join me as we take a few minutes to reflect on what commitment looks like to the people of God when they are brought to a Gilgal moment.We're going to see six things. Number one, we see commitment as a response to what God has done. In verse one, we have the account of the, people of the land, actually, who have heard about God parting the Jordan River and that they have traveled across at the Jordan at flood stage. Was a seemingly impregnable barrier for the Israelites, but God did a mini Red Sea deal all over again for this new generation of Israelites.And as He does so, the people of the land are filled with awe and fear of this God who they have brought with them. For thirty eight years, the Israelites have been wandering in the wilderness. They've come to the Promised Land thirty eight years. They had come 38 years back, and at that point had come in a different entrance to the land of promise, but they had scouted it out, and of course the story of the 10 of the 12 spies was, we are grasshoppers in their sight and in ours.We have no chance of taking this place. And they refused to follow God, they refused to trust Him, and for 38 years God has had them wandering in the wilderness. Now God is giving the next generation their chance at the plate. Their opportunity to believe God and see His mighty hand at work through them.And He starts it off by reminding them of who He is and that He is for them. He has worked in giving them their own Red Sea moment. It's just at a river this time. He chose them, He rescued them, He taught them, He guided them, He reminded them they belong to Him. All things that He says to you if you have embraced Christ as your Savior and been embraced in His saving grace.I want to speak just for a moment to young adults. Young adults, to me, this is arbitrary. But under 35 years old, the 1. 5 million dollars that was given was probably not primarily given by your demographic. Certainly there are exceptions. Many of you gave. But a lot of it was older money. But it was given to this church body to minister for years to come.It was given so this facility Can still be serving your time. When you are the leaders, when you are the influences of this church family, God did it, and you now stand at Gilgal. You stand as the new generation to embrace God's work and serve Christ passionately. Not only in this building. But in your lives, this is a Gilgal moment.This was a whole new generation of God's people. And I challenge you guys, that stand in the next generations to come. God did not primarily renovate this building for guys who look like me. For my generation of people. This is for you. This calling to come to Gilgal is particularly to you. As a new generation, to be used by God because your lives are sold out for Him.Commitment is a response to what God has done. The second thing we find, commitment involves risk. In verse 2 and 3, we're told that Joshua says, Get the flint knives, basically. Now, if I were there and I heard Joshua say something like that, I'd say, Yes! Get the flint knives! Get the swords! Get the spearheads!Get the arrowheads! Get them together! Get the grappling hooks! Put them all in a pile! Load them up! And let's go take the land! And Joshua would say, It's not what the flint knives is about.And then I'd find out this dicey description of what he is planning with those flint knives. Nobody under 40 is circumcised, and circumcised was the symbol that identified you as a follower of Jehovah. And beyond the weirdness of this moment is a very nerve wracking reality. When God, through Moses, through Joshua, Joshua says, Gather all these guys.I want everybody. Now these were, these were the warrior age, right? 20 years old, you could be a warrior in Israel. You were conscripted into the, the military service. And the 20 to 40 year olds were the ones that had the most prowess in military service. And he says, I want all these guys and everyone below them to be circumcised.Now that may say, okay, well, you know, whatever, and I'm not going to get, get into a visual presentation. But, but in Genesis 34, 25, we're told about an event in the Old Testament where the son, where the brothers, Joseph and his brothers, the sons of Isaac, Sons of Jacob actually got together and they convinced the people of the land, the city, the guys, to say well, our daughter, you know, our sister can't marry in if you guys aren't circumcised.So the whole city was circumcised. Well, here's what happened. Three days later, while the men were still in pain, still recovering from a serious... medical procedure. They were unable to fight back, and actually the whole city was destroyed. It was actually a horrible moment. But the picture is, it knocks you out as a fighter.And he says, okay, right here under the shadow of Jericho, and right on the border, beyond those cliffs of this Jordan Valley, where all of our enemies are waiting for us. By the way, we're going to stay here right down in the valley and we're going to incapacitate all of our soldiers. You say, well, could we do this in shifts?You know, like maybe the 15 to 20, the 20 to 25. And I said, no, this is a moment. God required them to do something that made themselves totally vulnerable. They had no reserves.That's what commitment looks like in the hands of God. God calls to commitment, nothing in reserve. He says, I own your finances. I want you to give your first fruits to God, though it seems to leave you financially strapped. Your career, Gilgal, is a place where you lay your career plans before God. Your relationships, you can't hold on to a God dishonoring relationship and move forward from Gilgal.And commitments always involve risks. I love the statement, I've never forgotten it. Dawson Trotman, a number of years ago, wrote it. He was the founder of the Navigators. And he asked this question, and I remember hearing a tape. Where he is presenting this message and how it impacted me as a young man that wanted to live for God.And he said this, What are you trusting God for? Where if God doesn't come through you will fall flat on your face. Commitment involves risk. Second, third, commitment is encouraged by the example of others. Verses 4 through 6, we have negative examples. The fact that they had been uncircumcised for all those 40 years.Not one baby born in those years was circumcised on the eighth day after birth, which they had been done and doing for centuries. Apparently, most believe that the rejection of God's will In taking the land, had replaced the entire generation under the discipline of God. So he stopped the practice of circumcision until a new generation came forth to identify as his people here at Gilgal.They were fully aware of that. They would be reminded of that, that, hey, we're reinstituting this circumcision thing after. Almost 40 years. It would remind them of the reason that it had been put on hold. It would remind them of the disobedience and the... And the fear that had dominated the unreadiness to do the will of God when they came to the land the first time.Learning of others failures always has the potential of serving as a warning. It can be abused, of course. It can be a source of pride for us. It can be a source of thinking, I'm, I'm different and better somehow. It can be a way of, of demeaning others, but failure of others in its best use. Is to warn us number of years ago as many years ago, we were still meeting in the gym, not this time, the real time, we only had two of us on staff.It was Pastor Ralph and myself. We had Dr. Paul Dixon come and speak with us. Dr. Dixon was the president of Cityville College. He had been a very God anointed evangelist, great speaker, great leader, And we had him come and he preached to our little fledgling community. And he asked Ralph and I, after the service, he said, Can I get with you guys for lunch?And so we went out with him. It was, and didn't even invite our wives, even though his wife was there. He took the two of us out. And I have never forgotten that event. Because he said, Guys, you are two young guys. that God wants to use. And I want to tell you a story. He said, in the last handful of weeks, my college roommate, my best friend, who God has used to build, and I knew the church, a influential church in the Midwest, was caught in a relationship with a woman that was not his wife.It completely decimated his ministry. It has the potential of destroying his family. And he, he spoke directly into us, looking us right in the eyes. He said, I challenge you guys to build the guardrails in your life. To learn from my, and he was emotional, my friend. It, it, it had great impact on us. We did build some guardrails into the way we met with women in counseling, the way that we carried ourselves, the accountability we had with each other, and then pulled in others.Commitment is encouraged by the warning of others. One of the reasons we do these things, we say, God, I'm committed to living a life of holiness, because I realize others have not, and their story could be mine. You know, there are also positive examples here in verse seven and eight. The people are seemingly As a mass agreeing to what God is asking them to do in this line of the sand moment at this moment, this tremendous corporate encouragement to seek God and to be sold out to him and to cross over that line in the sand.Who you spend time with is shaping you. It is. Who you are doing life with is shaping you. It's shaping your thinking. Commitment to follow God and his lead into battle was directly tied to having the right voices in their lives, supporting them. Commitment is encouraged by the example of others. Fourth, commitment is essential to seeing God at work in our lives.In verse nine, God says, now I'm removing the reproach of Egypt. The word here, removing is actually the word rolling it off. It's why he called the place Gilgal. Again, this was, this, this wasn't even a truck stop. This was nothing. This is just an open plain. And he made their tent city here. And he called it Gilgal because he said at this moment.In this day, I'm rolling off the reproach of Egypt. So what's he talking about? Well, remember the story. Here's the story, of course. Over a generation ago, God had raised up a guy named Moses, and Moses had been led to come to Pharaoh, and he said, I want you to let the people of Israel go, even though they've been here for 400 years, even though they are your entire blue collar workforce.They're basically all slaves. You're paying them nothing. I want you to let them all go. I want you to emancipate the entire workforce of slaves. Well, Pharaoh wasn't fired up about the idea, and so God had to use plagues. It came upon, and finally, Pharaoh said, Just go go wasn't long after that that Pharaoh realized this wasn't such a good idea It didn't take long for things to dawn on how this is going to affect their economy So he took off after them and as he chased them down with a large portion of his army 600 chariots Which would be the Sherman tanks of the day?They follow them and and has them cornered at the Red Sea and then God opens the sea they go through The tanks come in and and they're buried under the sea and God utterly The power of Egypt, the most powerful nation on earth at the time.The name of God was exalted and lifted up, but over the last 40 years, a whole different story has played. Over the last 40 years, the people of Egypt have watched as the hundreds of thousands, and I say that advisedly. of Israelites wandered in a land mass that is smaller than one half of the state of Pennsylvania.I mean, can you imagine following the story for 40 years of hundreds of thousands of people with their tents and everything else traveling? Oh, They're up to Allentown now. I hear they're at Scranton. Now they're down to Harrisburg. They made it all the way to State College. Where are they going? They're just wandering around.Hundreds of thousands of people. What do you think their response was? Mockery. Disdain. Slander. These people. Who do they think they are? They're going to tell us. I don't know what their Red Sea actually was. Probably that was all made up anyway. But look at them! Moses, remember Moses? He thought he was so cool, got out of the land.He, he thought he could face down Pharaoh. Now look at them! For 40 years there's been reproach. And God says this. Here at Gilgal, the reproach stops here. This day is the day in which I am going to change the story of my people.But, there's a line in the sand. My people have to be willing. To commit, to see my work in their lives in the way that I want to work through them and in them.They also saw God fight for them. In verse 11 and 12, it talks about how they're going to go into the land. And what he's going to do, up until now, for 40 years, they've been fed how? The manna. This bread like stuff that comes six days a week. It doesn't come on Saturday because it's a Sabbath. But for 40 years, that's what they're eating.Making breads and so forth. At certain times, God gives meat, miraculously to them. But this is their food. And all of a sudden, this stops today. Why? Because He says, We're now going into the land. You're gonna take the spoils. You're gonna eat the crops. You're going to get the, the foodstuffs. Everything is going to be there.Every one of us brings in our lives, habits, holes in our lives, missing pieces or pieces that we wish weren't there. Some of you have giant debts, you have things to make right, you've got battles. And God says this, I'm drawing a line in the sand, asking you by faith to cross over, to trust me, to allow me to be the Lord of my life.But, I will fight for you. There are some of you that say, I, I don't know. I have messed up so bad. There is so much in my life. I look at the past and, yeah, wilderness, that's me.Honestly, that's me. And God says, This is what I do at Gilgal's. I won't take away all your problems. But I will bring to you the ultimate problem solver that will sustain you and carry you and care for you and enable you to survive in circumstances you would say it's not possible. Commitment is essential to seeing God at work in our lives.God wants to make himself known in your life. God wants to be the strength of your life. God wants to carry you. But there are voices in your head that are saying, I, I, I, wow, I can't do it. My life is one of... Shame. Reproach. My life is full of stuff that I can't handle. God says, cross the line. Give yourself to me and watch what I will do.The fourth, fifth thing. Commitment is on, off, repeated experience. Throughout the next twenty years, the people kept returning to Gilgal. It's interesting, God didn't have them move around. All that time, they're fighting for the land. It actually was a bad place to be, humanly speaking. From a defensive standpoint, you don't want to be on the low ground.In a, in a valley surrounded by the enemy up on the hilltops. It also is not a centrally located, basically all of their battles are going to be out. There was actually three different campaign campaigns, a Southern campaign, a central campaign and a Northern campaign. But they weren't centralized in any of that.But it was a place which God constantly called them to renew their commitment to them, to him. Later, every seventh year, they went through a whole commitment ceremony. And read aloud the book of Deuteronomy. It's recorded in the book, I think it's Numbers. I can't tell you how many times I've recommitted my life to the Lord.I hope you are. I hope, maybe today, the Lord's just gonna stir and say, Hey, it's Gilgal. Again, it's a place to just say, Lord, ultimately this isn't about a cool new change in our building. It's about me. It's how I want you to work through my life. I want you to move through me by your grace. The last thing is commitment is life shaping.What they make their priorities will change. Circumcision's restored. There's a new vision to identify as God's people. Some of our lives today are out of control. Some of us would honestly have to say. As I look back at my Christian journey, could I say this is the time when, when my heart belongs to Christ in the way I'm living my life as it was in other days?No, I couldn't say that. Well, Gilgal is here. Maybe you hear and you say, you know, I've heard about this Jesus thing and and I know Jesus, I've read about Him, I've heard but people talk about having a personal relationship with Him. No, maybe Gilgal for you is saying I, I'm asking someone, I'm going to talk to a pastor, I'm going to find someone that will joyfully explain to me, as we would joyfully do, how I can personally make Jesus Christ the Savior and center of my life.Their time will change. Verse 13 and 14 says they're reinstituting the annual calendar. They're going to, they're going to start re celebrating the feast days. Their rhythm of life now is going to be built around the things that support godliness. We stand at Gilgal today. It's a place of commitment, and I challenge you to just take these moments together to ask, is there a line in the sand that God has for you this morning?It's just something he's saying, yeah, I brought you here today. You came because you're excited to see the building, which is awesome. But I had something bigger in mind for you. I wanted to use this as a Gilgal moment in your life. Let's pray together.Lord, we come to you who are the God who offers to us life and hope and change. Lord, I believe that there is no one here. That is too old or too young to be on your I can do it through you list. So Lord, let us be a people that come with all our stuff. Our brokenness, our neediness. Thank you for all the things in the life of every person that is under my voice right now.Online and in this room. Who has things in their lives that make them feel it's too much for me. It's beyond me. Lord, is in those moments that you say, I'm here. In your brokenness, in your struggles, in your sorrow, in your confusion. These are moments that I use. You tell us to draw us to you in desperation.So Lord, do that as we stand at Gilgal today. May we be a people renewed in a commitment to yield to you. In whose name I pray.
Acts 28:1-10And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.
Sermon Transcript:I invite you to take your Bibles. We're going to be looking at Acts chapter 28 as we continue in our series, The Spirit at Work, To the Ends of the Earth. We're almost to the ends of the book of Acts in Acts chapter 28. And I invite you to join me there. We're going to be reading Acts chapter 28 verses 1 through 10.It's great to be with you. Great to be with you guys here in the gym. Also, you guys that are in the lobby and also those of you that are in Collingswood this morning. One of the great roles of preaching is to encourage people to be excited to get into the scriptures themselves. The Bible is not a secret code book.Am I rattling a little bit? It gives me a little more presence.It's not a secret code book. It is designed to be a living message of God to our lives to help us grow and learn. One of the best ways to learn its truth, both for preaching, and for just practical living is to ask questions. The most important question every time you read the scripture is, what do I learn about God here?That's the goal. We'll go into the scripture most of all. But there are other questions that we ask. What do I learn here about living with God, about trusting God, about obeying God, about enjoying God, depending on God. It's all God. But we look to things to learn and to understand. When we come to narrative sections, which the whole book of Acts is narrative, one of the most important questions that we ask, because really what's happening is selective history.Acts is a record of over 30 years of events taking place over literally the entire Roman Empire in the Mediterranean world. And Luke in this 28 chapters is presenting to us specific sermons, specific events of thousands that he could have presented to us. So each one that is there is recorded for a reason.And so one of our great questions as we come to the book of acts or any narrative is to say, why would God have chosen this particular story, this particular event, this particular place at this particular time? And there are always clues and cues that God gives to us. Last Sunday, Pastor Jared preached a sermon on Acts chapter 27.I thought he did a tremendous job. in answering this question. He explained what it taught us about God. He also explained why God included this record, which was just a story of a shipwreck. And it took a whole chapter of all the things that have been going on for 30 years to spend 1 27th about a shipwreck.Why? And I thought Jared did a tremendous portrayal of how it fits in the whole purpose of the book of Acts. for our lives. That's what we want to do. We want to be questioners as we come to the scriptures in order that we can be learners in the scriptures. This morning we come to a follow up historical event.They did get shipwrecked. Actually, they were shipwrecked off the shores of an island called Malta, which is a small island just south of Sicily. , off the coast just west of Italy. And as we come to this particular scene again, I'd like to begin, after we read it, at just saying what I think is at least one of the prominent reasons God may have recorded this for us.But let's read it together. Acts chapter 28, verses 1 through 10.After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Malta. The native people showed us unusual kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all, because it had begun to rain and was cold. When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand.When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead, but when they waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery, and Paul visited him and prayed. And putting his hands on him healed him.And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island, when they had, had disease, who also had diseases, also came and were cured. They also honored us greatly. And when we were about to sail, they put us, they put on board whatever we needed.Lord, we come, we love the scriptures. We're grateful, God, that You designed to give us the Bible, the living word that could speak into our lives. And Lord, I'm asking you to do that today in a particular way. In this room, in the lobby, in Collingswood, with folks that are watching online this morning, Lord, you know every single life situation that they're bringing to their listening.And I ask, Lord, that you who know us, you who superintend our lives, that you might specifically, intentionally, particularly speak into their lives this morning truth. In Jesus name, Amen.As I've reflected on this story and why God recorded it for us, I'm convinced that at least one of the reasons is that God could teach us that He is a God that is at work all the time, in all places. That's important to be reminded of, isn't it? Some of you are in situations that don't feel that way.Some of you are in circstances where darkness seems to be winning, where hearts that you long to see changed seem impenetrable. And God encourages us to be reminded of the things that are true about God as revealed in this passage. The first we find is that God perceives the worldview of everyone. In verses one through seven, we have this interesting event that takes place and it says the native people, these were the people on the island there, And the word is literally the word barbarians in the Greek.It actually is recording them, these people were barbarians. Now it wasn't used in quite the way we might use it today because it meant a specific thing. Barbarians are a new group of people introduced to us here in the book of Acts. They're not mentioned anywhere else. And these individuals, and they're mentioned twice here in this passage, are individuals that did not know Latin or Greek.They didn't know the, the, the language of the Romans, which was Latin. They didn't know the Greeks, which was Greek. They didn't know either one. And for them, they were viewed by the populace at large as uneducated and unrefined. They were individuals that did not have learning, didn't really know the languages.They had their own language, and there were derisive things said about this. Now, of course, this tells us something we may not have known about bodybuilder and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and apparently he does not speak Greek or Latin. But when Greeks or Romans heard these barbarians speak, they heard their language just like, Bar, bar, bar, bar.They didn't know what it was saying. So they actually took what they heard and gave them that name. Now you may say, well that's, that's ridiculous to, to make repeated sounds into a word. But you do the same thing. I'll show you how. You're listening to somebody chattering on and on, and you go, you know, she's just going on and on, just blah, blah, blah, blah.What are you saying? She's a blah, blah being. You get it? Barbarian blah, blah, blah. We won't try that one in the 1030 service. Okay.And as we read about these people, these barbarians, we find that they represent another form of paganism or polytheistic belief. They actually identify one of their gods who is the god who is called Justice. The onethat one that guarantees that Somebody gets theirs when they do wrong and somebody is rewarded when they do right It's a it's a belief system that is replete that there is something outside of han experience that is dominating things. Interestingly, the visual of Lady Justice has continued. It is actually, she is inscribed into the wall of our Supreme Court, Lady Justice.She's there with scales which are saying she's, she's weighing things. She's also given a sword. She's the one to mete out justice. This concept is something that has been built in as a foundational belief among these islanders, and that has been true since the beginning of han history. It is the idea that there is accountability to a system of justice that is outside of ourselves.Now, we don't agree that Paul is bit by a poisonous viper because He's a murderer. They actually just asse, look, there are 276 of you that floated ashore and only one of you got bit by a poisonous snake. He must be the worst. He's the, he's the, he's obviously a murderer. The worst crime they could come up with.And we also don't believe because he doesn't die that that proves that he's godlike because Lady Justice is affirming him in such a way. But there is a worldview that has dominated hanity since the beginning of han existence. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, an awareness that hans are accountable to something beyond themselves.Of course, the Garden of Eden portrays it as a monotheistic view of life. And monotheism, the word mono is one, one God, one Theos is the concept. It was the faith of Abraham and his descendants, all the Jews. It became the faith of the, of the Christian faith. It is foundationally believing that there is a sense in which we are accountable to this one God beyond ourselves.Now hang with me on this because the reason I'm saying all this. What happened then, as hankind invariably tries to throw off authority and accountability to God? There began to be a distortion of that. Romans 1 describes it. That inevitably a heart of sin, a desire for autonomy, attempts to distort one's responsibility and accountability to God.And so one of the things we do is what Romans 1 said. Although they knew God, in verse 21 and 22. Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. But became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And here's what they did, and here's what hanity does.And exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. Resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things. In other words, they developed a multiplicity of gods. This is the practice of polytheism. The idea that the development of multiple gods, only in this case, small g, there's not one ruling brella god, one being over all.But there is still the sense that hans do not set their own rules. That they are accountable to laws, rules outside of themselves. It may be lady justice. It may be a thousand other beings that they are accountable to in one way or another. But there is the sense, there is a worldview that we are accountable to something beyond ourselves.Now, the reason I'm saying all this is because in the last 500 years that has changed. There is a book that has been put together. It is, it is, I'm in the middle of the thing. It is called, , just lost the word, Charles Taylor A Secular Age. It's a classic book. It's 900 pages long. It is not fun reading.It is slow go, but it is fantastic. And basically he is a Harvard professor. It is produced by Harvard Press. And Charles Taylor has developed the whole concept of our secular age. And basically what he's done is saying, where did the concept of secularism come into han experience? He goes back to the 1500s to present time.The fascinating thing, and I've read a ton of reviews on this book, because I was just interested. I, I have not found anyone, whether it is a, a Christian person, whether it is an absolute atheistic person, whether it is a A professor in a Christian university, whether it is the chairman of a philosophy department and the most liberal university that has not said, this is a brilliant portrayal of what is transpiring in our culture or how we have got to where we are.Basically, what is presented in the book is to highlight why Western civilization is facing the crisis it is. Because deeply within ourselves is the deep determination to find purpose in one's life and to uphold culture with moral standards that all must subscribe to, yet having no basis for either of these realities without a higher power actively ruling in our lives.Basically, the concept of atheism, and you're welcome to Google me on this baby. Was not out there until 500 years ago. You say, well, that's ridiculous. It's not. No, I mean, there's never been atheists. I'm not going to say I don't know everybody. But but as far as a movement, as far as a belief system, it has come.It is just another world view. And what has happened in the last few centuries? And now we are bearing the the sense of this in the way people perceive life. And why so many people Even that would name the name of God. So, well, yeah, I believe, you believe in God? Absolutely. But they are utterly functional atheists.By the way, we Christians can live that way as well, right? We believe in God, but we don't really act like it. , but basically, what is, is portrayed in this book and others that are now, I mean, this is amazing how many people quote this. I, I read one, but I didn't read the whole thing. I read part of a book.Was called the greatest development of the history of atheism. This guy basically quotes from, from Charles Taylor's book over and over and over just historically. But atheism is simply the attempt to take Romans 1, a little farther and say it is not only to reduce God, you know, by saying, well, there's not really one sovereign God, there's multiple gods, thousands of them, put them in shapes of animals and, and people and everything else.It is to eradicate God. To act like he is not existent. C. S. Lewis talks about in his classic treatise, God in the Dock. What has resulted in our day and our culture, and that is the fact that we, the dock in English courtrooms is where the person on trial is stands as the trial goes on and the questions come.And he says that's where God is. People now put God on trial. Tim Keller says it in his in his really good book making sense of God and invitation to the skeptical. He says this ancient people did not asse that the han mind had enough wisdom to sit in judgment on how an infinite God was disposing of things.Of course, we do it all the time. So here we come to this little island of Malta. And we find a people that believe there was a standard of righteousness outside of themselves. They believe it was under Lady Justice. who would implement it, whether it was in the form of one supreme God or various deities.We find as we look through the book of Acts that Paul has been continually introducing us to all different people groups with all different world views started Paul interacting with people that were Jews that believed in a monotheistic view of creation and And that all were accountable to this sovereign God.We see him in Mars Hill in the book of Acts, where he says I see you've got a lot of gods here. Well, but I see one that's to the unknown God. Well, I want to tell you about him. He's the one that's the maker of heaven and earth. He's actually the God. We see him as he comes in, in the, the, the church, the city of Ephesus, where the temple of Diana is.And all the perspective that she was the supreme being. And now we come to Malta and we find another view of polytheism. But what we find is all different world views and perspectives. But the one common reality we find in every situation is God knows exactly how to make himself known. I'll tell you, I find such encouragement in that.Because this time I do what you do and I look at our world and I look at our culture and I say, How in the world is anything gonna get through in this chaos and this anger and this confusion and this, this throwing out of even the most basic historic definitions of anthropological or, or the, the whole doctrine of man, which I've said many times to you is, is the assai doctrine in our, in our day, every major issue.that is raised in our culture, anti christian, is an anthropological. And you say, how in the world are we going to? God, God knows worldviews. God knows people. He knows the people in your office. He knows your relatives. He knows your neighbors. He knows you. He knows how to speak into us, whatever our worldview is.And he does it here, on Malta. To people that believed in lady justice. And somehow God is able to take their view of things and to speak into it. And first, in their interpretation, they think, well, well, the God is, the God's, in this case, Lady Justice in particular, is punishing him because he's a very wicked man.Nope! He's not a very wicked man. He's an amazing man. The gods are honoring him and even making him one of their own. God is then able to speak into them. I've mentioned this story in the past. It was such an encouragement to me. I was sitting in a doctor's office and as I was sitting in the doctor's office, I was reading a magazine that was sitting there and I almost didn't pick it up because I just felt I've, I've done enough thinking lately about, various philosophies that were out there and I just, it felt sort of weighty from it.And this guy was quoting from the existentialist, which was a major thing in the 1900s, which basically said there is no purpose to life. There is no meaning. There is no God. It was a giant thing. John Paul Sartre. Just lost it. Actually, my favorite one. Anyway, so they're, they're, , he's, he's, and he's telling his story.He says, yeah, I was raised in a religious background, Christian background, and I went to university and I love philosophy and I started to move towards philosophy and he became a philosophy major. And he was a philosophy professor now as he was telling his story, but what he did was he told, he said, as I studied the existentialist and, and that's the whole, if you've ever heard of the theater of the absurd, it's just life is absurd, things are absurd makes no sense because there's no purpose and meaning and get over yourselves if you think there are, because there's no God, there can't be, And this guy was telling the story of how, in the midst of this, a card carrying existentialist that he had become, he was all of a sudden thinking about, But, wait a minute, I want to have purpose to my life.Where did that desire come from? Why do I long for that? My dog doesn't want to have a purpose. He wants lunch. But, but where do I get this from? Where do I get this desire for meaning? And he began to think, and he's a philosopher type, so he's probably, where, where does that come from? And it was actually the existentialist that caused him to say, you're a purposeless, random, basically meaningless being.You just got to sort of create your own purpose and meaning that actually drove him to the cross. And to my delight, as I read through the story, he was actually now teaching philosophy as a born again Christian, speaking into the existential world of saying, there is a God. He is real and he has come among, it was just, it was so, it was so encouraging to me.Because it reminded me what this, this, this whole thing is about. God knows worldviews. God speaks into... And you may say, well, the people that I'm dealing with wouldn't even know how to spell existentialist. As a matter of fact... I don't either and I wouldn't care. It doesn't matter the life view. They're living out of the things in their life that they're holding on for meaning.God knows them. God understands them. God speaks into the language of every worldview. I think part of this that that Luke has been reminding us in all these different situations. Now he's got a whole new people group for us. I mean, we're on the way to Rome. That's the crown jewel of everything, right? We stop off at a little island called Malta in order that We can be reminded that God also speaks into the barbarian.The second thing we find, God puts to you small steps of hble servanthood. Paul and the other 275 passengers make their way to the island. Some encouraged to swim, initially, and then the others that can't swim, they're put on boards and barrels and whatever they can hold on to. And astonishingly, just as Paul predicted, because God had told him, all 276 make it And on the island of Malta, apparently where they came, , there were shoals way out deep.So there was a long journey in, but none of these people were lost. And they had come to see Paul now as having some answers they needed to listen to. I mean, he's told them, don't anybody, they were trying to leave the ship. And he goes to the guys, he says, no, God has told me that nobody should leave the ship.Don't put them out in the lifeboats. And so they cut the lifeboat free. If you remember with Jared's Text last week and basically everybody stayed on the boat. They listened to Paul and now Paul has rescued every single guy. It's astonishing. The boat had actually broken in half. It said the stern broke off, but they all survived.Just like Paul said. Now, Paul comes to the island and Paul is the man, right? I mean, he's the man. He's the guy and they've come on shore. It's, it's, it's raining. It's cool, which probably about that time of year in that place would have been about 50 degrees. So it's like a wet, cool rain. And what does Paul do?He just does what everybody else does. I love the way we see him. He's portrayed as a simple laborer gathering brush for the fire, it's cold, and doing the task of putting the brush on the fire. God is at work. God has a snake there, and that snake bites Paul.And we're reminded that so much of the Christian influence is really found in just the small mundane stuff of life. The entire thing that happens on Malta, and it's a cool thing that happens here. Came about because Paul is just doing with everybody else, probably one of many fires for 276 people that didn't all get around one little campfire.He's just doing his stuff. He's cutting the brush, and as he's doing the brush, he gets bitten by a snake. He's not preaching. In effect, we don't even read of things that he was preaching here on Malta. He's not confronting religious leaders. He's just doing what he feels God is prompting him to do. I mentioned this week I was at a pastor's conference speaking up in northern New York State.And Marianne and I were there over one of the meals. We were talking with a couple. And that's always some of the best part of some of this kind of time. Just getting to know people's stories. We were talking with a guy who was a farmer. And he was now a pastor. Actually, both. He was still doing a little bit of farming.He he he milked his cows in the morning and he did church other parts of the day. And he was telling the story. He went to this little church. He'd been there four years. God had done some remarkable things in this very small church. But he was telling the story when he was candidating at the church that a 95 year old lady Was in the congregation and it was very, very small, but she was there and she sincere but direct pointed her finger at him and she said, Young man, if you become our pastor, how are you going to reach this community?It was an old church. Most of the people were very older. He was younger. And he just, he said, I just honestly said, I don't know. But he said, I know the one that knows how to do it. And he said, I'm confident That he'll show me what to do and us what to do. And then he said that his 95 year old lady, will you help me?Well, he got the call. And here he is trying to faithfully serve, do his thing, doesn't know how God's going to reach this community. And only a few months after he's there, this 95 year old lady passed and she died. And he got a call from the lawyer. He said, I just want you to know she left your church 300, 000.And this guy being this guy, he said, we really felt that a lot of that shouldn't be looked at as ours to use just here. So they started looking for enterprises around the world where they could give 30, 000 here and some there. And he's telling these stories of movements of God that they jped in. And it was so exciting.Anyway, just think. This guy had no plan, but he had a big God and he believed God. And he said, I don't know how, but I know the one that knows. Little knowing that God was going to use this lady that he challenges to be a part of the vision.You may be in a situation in your life right now and you just say, All I see is giant obstacles. I don't see anything. I don't see any progress. There's not a Christian in here that has not felt that way sometimes or will feel that way. Where you just feel, I just, I, God, I need some wins. I need to see this moving forward some way.Just remember that Paul didn't just make a difference by preaching and teaching. Paul spent eight of the last ten years of his life in jail. In the years when he thought he was going to be on his fourth missionary journey, changing the world in Rome and into Spain. But God used him to write all the letters we've got.Again, Jared did a great job talking about that last week. Basically, God is at work. God is at work in your office. God is at work in your family. You may not know it. You may not see it. You may not experience the fruit of it tangibly, visibly. At least not yet, but God is at work all the time, at all places.He asks you to be the one that's willing to work with, you know, Okay, I'll carry the brush. I'll do this. Maybe a snake will jp out and you think, Yeah, sure, that's exactly what I thought would happen. Paul didn't do that. He said, Okay. Snakes? Jail? I don't know how all this works, but he's big. I'm not. God puts to use the small steps of hble servanthood in the last thing.And by the way, just remind you of some of the greatest stories in the Bible were people that just offered something really small. David offered a slingshot. Moses offered a staff. Paul had a brush pile. It was some little kid at a preaching venue of Jesus that offered five biscuits and two sardines. And there was a widow that gave her last penny.It's God. It's only God. The third thing, God plans circstances to change people's hearts and build his kingdom. And verses 8 through 10 is the story that That Paul is, , given access, actually, he and others are cared for by the local chieftain of the island, Publius. And he finds out on the third day that Publius dad has a very severe fever., And Paul prays over him. He's healed. Eventually, the result is Paul has this major healing ministry on the island. Incredible impact. And we're told in verse 11 that he was on the island for three months. And when they left, the people of the island came and outfitted the ship and blessed them. I mean, I just, I love to think about what it was like for the Roman soldiers that were supposed to be the guards of this guy.They didn't usually have the islanders outfit them. I mean, people hated the Romans. But somehow God has been at work and they have received this amazing favor. The whole story of the island, frankly, is a disaster when you think about it. I mean, it starts with Paul arriving there with, as a prisoner on his way to Rome.He didn't design that, didn't expect it. It begins here with a shipwreck. It morphs into a cold rain on the beach. It develops by a poisonous snake biting Paul. He's viewed as a murderer, a deeply evil man. It changes to a misunderstanding that he's a pagan god. It's a mess! It might be how you're interpreting your world right now.Shipwrecked. Great metaphor. Vipers coming at me. It's gray and miserable, surrounded by misunderstandings. But,but, God. He is there with you in the gray and misery. He is with you in the shipwreck. He is there with the vipers that are coming at you. He's with the misunderstandings that are swirling around. He is present and he is at work and he says, lean into me, trust me, believe me, do the small acts of obedience I still ask you to do, even though there's part of you that wants to just curl up in your bed and not face one more morning.Or maybe that you want to, you can't wait to face the next morning because you want to give them theirs. Lean into God. He's big. He's at work. He understands the worldviews of the people that matter most to you. He knows how to reach them. He's the only one that can reach them. You, you, you can be the greatest Christian that ever lived.That isn't going to lead them to Jesus. Only God brings. It says salvation is of the Lord. He has to do it. He has to work in their lives in such a way.God is a work. He's a work all the time. Lord,there are times when I struggle to grab hold of that. There are times right now that some folks that are listening are in that it's hard to grab hold of that. So, Lord, do what you seem to delight to do. Do what the psalmist prayed. Lord, show us signs of your favor. Give enough favor, Father, enough encouragement to justinflame their belief, their trust in you. Lord, as we gather here on this, Lord willing, last Sunday in the gym, as we look back on how you financially provided to enable us to go back to a room that is changed, we believe can more effectively accommodate ministry into lives of people. God, we think of all the ways, even over this last few years, of how many twists and turns.And some ways it just felt like all we got is confusion. We don't know what's going on, where this is going. And now it just seems like, oh yeah, it all makes sense. Lord, for those of us today that are in that twist and turn confusion time. Give them faith to trust and hold on that they might look back and not only say, Oh, yeah, now it all makes sense.But they also might look back and say, God, thank you that you helped me to hold on that. I didn't give way to anger, godlessness, vindictiveness, overwhelming fear.Lord, you who delight to show mercy, mercy us today, we pray. In Jesus name. Amen.
Acts 27“For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.”
Sermon Transcript:Good morning. How's everyone doing? Okay. We're going to be reading Acts chapter 27. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there with me. And I will warn you. It is. A long passage. It's a total of 44 verses. Um, and there's some names and places in there that are really hard to pronounce. Okay? But, if there's one thing I learned from Bible school, it's that no one really knows how to pronounce these.You just say them with confidence and you move on and no one really cares. But, first person to, to laugh at how I pronounce something, you have to come up and finish the passage. So, just be warned. Acts chapter, um, 27. It's also on the screen as well. And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan cohort named Julius.Embarking in a ship of Adramidium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica. The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be gareful. And putting out the sea from there, we sailed under the lee of Cyprus because the winds were against us.And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra and Lycia. There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days. And arrived with difficulty off of Nidus. And as the wind did not allow us to go further, we sailed under the lee of Crete off of Salmone.Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of La Silla. Since much time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous, because even the fast was already over, Paul advised them, saying, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also our lives.But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot, to the owner of the ship, than to what Paul said. And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there.Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore. But soon, a tempestuous wind called the northeaster struck down from the land, When the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.Running under the, running under the lee of a small island called Calda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat. After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship, then fearing that they would run around on the surtis, they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along. Since we were violently storm tossed, we began the next day to jettison the cargo, and on the third day they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands.When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss.Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of God, to whom I belong and whom I worship. And he said, Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar. Behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.So take heart, men, who sail, for I have faith in God, that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island. When the fourteenth night had come, and as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. So they took a sounding, and found twenty fathoms.A little farther on they took a sounding again, and found fifteen fathoms. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern, and prayed for days to come. And as the sailors were seeking escape from the ship, And had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow.Paul said to them, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship's boat and let it go. As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing.Therefore, I urge you, To take the food, for it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you. When he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, broke it and began to eat. Then they were all encouraged, and ate some food themselves.We were in all two hundred and seventy six persons in the ship. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. Now it was, now when it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach on which they planned, if possible, to run the ship ashore.So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea, and at the same time, loosening the ropes, they tied the rudders, then hoisting the force out to the wind, they made for the beach. But striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow struck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf.The soldiers plan was to kill the prisoners. Lest they swim away and escape, but the centurion wishing to save Paul kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make it for the land and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.Let's pray.Lord, we come before you this morning, God, and we're, we're desperate for you to speak to us. God, we spend time each Sunday and daily, Lord. In your scriptures because we breathe, we believe it's the very words of God and that this word has the power to transform us, God. So we pray that your word would speak truth, God, that your spirit would move amongst us, Lord, that you would just take the blinders off our eyes, Lord.That you'd give us ears to hear and hearts to receive a word that you have for us today, God. Not anything I could bring, Lord, or clever idea, Lord, but your spirit. Speaking through me, Lord, I pray desperately. God, I pray for each and every one of us in this room. God, we're all coming from different weeks and different places and different ideas.Lord, I pray that you'd put off all distractions in the name of Jesus, God. That we would be able to hear you clearly this morning. And that by the end of our time here, we'd know just a little bit more about who you are. And how much you care for us and love us, God. Lord, we pray all this in Jesus name.Amen. I wasn't kidding. It was quite the mouthful. 44 verses. I did pretty good on the names in case you noticed. That's all I was worried about the whole time. So we're good now. Thank you. Oh, that's good. Now, before we get into this story, um, I just kind of wanted to back up and like, how did we get here?We've been going through the book of Acts for like a year and a half now. So I just want to give us a little bit reminders of, of where we're at. If you remember a couple of chapters ago and a couple of sermons ago, Paul made his journey Back to Jerusalem. He was going to deliver a gift there. And multiple people warned him.People prophesied over him that if you go to Jerusalem, you're gonna be bound. You're gonna get arrested. You're gonna be beaten. And he continued on his way to Jerusalem instead. And almost immediately, when he got there, he was arrested. The Jews got so angry, they attempted to kill him. So the Romans actually took him into captivity to protect him and put him on trial to see if he was guilty.of what the Jews falsely accused him of. He had three different trials. He appeared before Felix, and Festus, and King Agrippa. And this was not including even his appearance before the council of the Jewish leaders. And then he finally appealed to Caesar. And because he appealed to Caesar, he was sent to Rome.King Agrippa actually said, if you didn't appeal to Caesar, we actually may have set you free. But now that you've appealed to Caesar, you must go to Caesar. So now we get to our passage as Paul begins his journey. To go to Rome, to go before Caesar. And the journey does not go as they planned. I, I label this journey the miserable trip to Rome.If you just want to bring up the map, we can kind of see, um, where he traveled. Um, you can kind of see he starts over here in Jerusalem. They go off and immediately they hit wind. So they kind of go, try to go around Cyprus to find some land coverage from that wind. They're sailing along. They go through Antioch, and Myra, um, and Nidus.And they come to this place called Fair Havens, which sounds like a pretty nice place to stay in. But apparently it wasn't for the winter. And it says at this point, actually, it was past the feast, which would have been the Day of Atonement. So it would have been the end of September, leading into October.So winter was approaching where it was deadly, um, and terrible for sea travel. So although Fair Havens sounded like a good spot, the soldiers wanted to continue on a phoenix, because who the heck doesn't want a winter in Phoenix? Different Phoenix, just in case you didn't know, right? But Paul, he's a seasoned traveler at this point.He's traveled this sea many of times, he's gone to different places in his missionary journeys. And he actually, at this point of his life, because of 2 Corinthians 11, um, 25, we know, Paul's been shipwrecked three times at this point. So he's telling these guys, hey guys, listen, I've been on the sea, I've tried to travel at this point, let's just stay in fair havens.This is a good spot. You're going to want to trust me. And the centurion says, you know what, Paul? You're just some prisoner. I'm going to listen to the captain. I'm going to listen to the owner of the ship. We're going to press on. Phoenix is only a couple miles farther away. We'll make their fine. We'll winter there.Way more amenities there. We'll be fine. But Paul knew what he was talking about. Right? He's been here. He has experience. And not only that, right? He's led by the Spirit of God. Here's a man who's spent a lot. of time with God. So they push on, and immediately, they hit a wind, the northeaster, the storm, and it drags them all the way back.And you see it just kind of goes straight west. And they literally end up in Malta, which is just God's provision, because it's 400 some miles they traveled. If they missed that small island, it would have been a thousand more miles to the next place, and they probably wouldn't have survived, and they probably would have starved or been shipwrecked in the middle of the sea.So they're forced out to the wind. For days, they could not see stars or sun. They had no navigation at this point. No Apple Maps or GPS to help them. And verse 20 actually says that they had lost all of being saved. They were ready to throw in the towel, to give up. And Paul stands up among them, and in my words, he says, I told you so, right?I told you this was gonna happen. But he doesn't sit there and beat him up, right? He moves on quickly, and he says, An angel has come to me. Man, do not fear. Take heart. That word, to take heart, literally means to make cheerful. Which is kind of hard when you look around. There's storms, you can't see anything, you've been lost at sea for days.Seasick, you're hungry. He said, an angel has appeared before me. And he said, I'm going to make it and appear before Caesar. Not only that, all of you men, all 267 of us, are going to make it to safety. But the ship we're going to lose. From the centurions, to the sailors, to the merchants, to the prisoners, all on that boat.Would be saved the mood had shifted and even by their measures they were approaching land Some sailors tried to jump the gun They they went into the rescue boat and said oh We're just gonna lay down some anchors and they try to ditch out of there and Paul quickly Sniffs it out finds the Centurion says if these men leave this boat, they will not make it out of here alive So Paul went from being his advice Centurion saying oh, no way.Let's get these prisoners We're listening to Paul now. They even cut the lifeboat away And Paul finally has some credibility as they saw his steadiness in times of trouble. He became a leader among all, even the centurion, even though he was just a prisoner on the ship. What he does with his newfound leadership is he doesn't lord it over anyone.He actually breaks bread with these men, giving thanks, sharing it with them, saying, let's eat, let's strengthen ourselves so that we can appear, um, be ready to swim to safety. When day finally appears, which must have been an incredible feeling, they see land and a beach they could sail up on. On their last effort to be rescued from the clutches of the sea, they hit a reef and the boat was getting torn to shreds by the waves.The soldiers panic and they decide, we're gonna kill all the prisoners so they don't escape. And this sounds... Harsh, and yes it is, but it kind of makes sense because Roman soldiers, if they lost their prisoners, if their prisoners escaped, they were guilty of the same thing their prisoners were going to be accused of.So whether that was lifetime in prison or even worse, execution, those soldiers were now accountable to their crimes. So they said, instead of letting them escape, we're going to kill them. And the centurion, who wanted to spare Paul, puts a stop to this right away. And make sure each and every one of the prisoners, and the merchants, and the sailors, and the soldiers, get to land safely.This is the miserable journey to Rome. There's a lot going on here, I wasn't kidding. 44 verses, a lot to unpack here, but I just want to take the time this morning, and I want to take three takeaways this morning as we look at this passage. Three things we learn about who God is, who we are. Firstly, God's promises never fail.What God says He will do, He will do. Isaiah 55 11 says this, So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I propose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Not only does God confirm to Paul on the boat, you will make it to Caesar, you will appear before him.He also ensures him the safety of all the men. But God actually confirmed this. To Paul, before he even got on the boat. Acts 23 11 says this, the following night the Lord stood by him and said, Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.This was right after Paul was getting arrested and he gave his testimony to the Jews. Jesus says this, take courage, you will appear before Caesar, you will give this testimony to Rome. Paul knew. He was getting to Rome and God in his kindness confirmed the message again on the boat and blessed the rest of the 275 passengers with the same protection and promise time and time again in the book of Acts We see the will of God prevail against persecution against spiritual attack adverse weather Imprisonment beatings it seems like nothing can stand against the will of God his promises never fail And maybe you're sitting here this morning, and you're just feeling like, Yeah, well, I just don't feel close to God, or I feel like I'm not in His will, or I feel like I'm not doing the things He wants me to do that.Well, even if we feel like we're not close with God, or are running away from Him, He's still there. His promises still remain true for you. If you think about another story in the Bible about a boat, and a storm, and a big fish.You guys are allowed to talk in church, it's okay. Jonah, yes! Jonah, right? Jonah was not faithful to God. God said, go to Nineveh, preach this message. He went the opposite way. But God's promise remained true. The word came to Nineveh. God sent a storm. He sent a fish. And God met Jonah in his wandering in the belly of a fish.His promises rang true. God's promises are not contingent on your behavior, or how you feel, or your circumstances. He is a promise keeper. That's who He is. 2 Timothy 2. 13 says this, If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. It's who He is. It's His character. He is a promise keeper.His word will not return void. God is who He says He is. Paul knew this. He said, the God who I belong to and who I worship, what He says will happen. I've seen it done. God's promises never fail. Secondly, a steady God creates steady followers. A steady God creates steady followers. This is clearly seen through Paul's calmness in the midst of panic all around him.He advises the crew. He encourages the crew not twice, uh, not once but twice. And he keeps his cool. He's breaking bread. He's giving thanks. He's leading these men. When all else of them have lost hope, they're ready to die. They're literally preparing themselves for death. He's encouraging them. He's saying be cheerful.That's a hard ask to these men surrounded by a storm approaching death. He knew who his God was. He knew he served a steady God and because of that, he was steady in times of trouble. And I know what you're probably thinking, right? You're kind of sitting there, you're like, Yeah, that's really cool for Paul.Like, you know, Paul was a go getter, type A personality, he's a leader among men. Of course he was steady, Jared. Of course he was steady among, you know, times of trouble. That's, that's a trait of a leader. That's not me. I'm a background person. I like to sit in the back and support things. I'm a worrier. I'm emotional.I, you know, that's not who I am. This was not a personality trait. His steadiness did not become because he's a type A person. His steadiness came from spending time with a steady God. So yes, God wants you to be steady because He is steady in times of trouble. Paul had been in these situations before.He'd seen his God come through. He's been beaten. He's been in prison. He's been accused of things. He's been run out of town. And yet in every and all situations, he's seen his God be steady. And it's made him steady. Philippians 4, 12 through 13 says this, I know, this is Paul speaking, I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound.In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger and abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Paul found the secret in being content and steady in any circumstance. And the secret was where his strength came from. It wasn't Paul. It wasn't that he had a strong personality or a strong character.It's the God he served. It's the God he served. The God he trusted in, the God he had seen in his personal life bring him through situation after situation, after circumstance, after trial, to where he was today. So yeah, a shipwreck? He's already had three of these! He's like, alright, fourth, we can do this.God's been with me here before. The more you go through with God, the steadier you'll become. The more you'll know Him, the more you'll know His goodness and gentleness. And his sovereignty, even in the midst of chaos. I want to share a story of Harold Ebersole. Many of you know Sean and Harold Ebersole.We've supported them for many, many, uh, years now. In Bangladesh in their ministry. Uh, many of you know Harold, um, has been diagnosed with cancer for many years now. And I remember he came in a staff meeting when his, um, diagnosis was pretty early on. And it was really dismal. He had actually just gotten some news that he basically was going to die soon.And he comes into, um, you know, our staff meeting, and I'm thinking, you know, he's, he's coming in, you know, we're gonna pray for him, we're gonna pray over him for healing, and, and all this stuff, you know, I'm ready to support him and care for him. And he comes with a devotional about how good God is in times of trouble.And I remember him outlining what the doctors and the nurses and the x rays and the scans have said. And I'm sitting in my chair, and I'm getting nervous, like I'm getting shaken, like oh my gosh, this is not good news. And he's sitting there, talking about the goodness of God, and he's smiling. And he literally said, he's like, yeah I went on a couple mile run this morning, and I'm like, what's wrong with this dude, like what's going on?And I walked out of that meeting thinking, wow, this is a man, this is a man who spent a lot of time with God. This is a man who spent a lot of time in uncertain situations, and he knows his God was steady. He knew exactly where he was going, and he knew exactly who held his future in his hands. It was God.It wasn't that he was strong, or powerful, or super positive. It was a God he learned to love and trust, and knew a God who loved him and was faithful to him in his ministry. This is what God wants of us. He wants us to be steady. In times of trouble. He wants us to bring us through things that are difficult, that are scary, and yet he's a steady God.And he doesn't want shaken, scared followers. He wants steady followers, because that's who he is. A steady God creates steady followers. Third, there are no setbacks with God. When we are following God, there really are no setbacks. And I, I hope you hear me. I don't want you hear me say that You know, your life's gonna be easy, easy, breezy, beautiful, cover girl.It's not. I'm not saying that at all. I'm actually saying the opposite of what I'm saying is, it's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be hard. You're gonna face conflict, and loss, and disease, and sickness. You're gonna face all these things. And from a worldly perspective, they all look like setbacks and roadblocks.And if you look at Paul's life, it looks like this guy just hit roadblock. After setback, after setback, after setback. I mean, look at this guy. He traveled around preaching God's Word. Every city, every town he went into, he either got arrested, beaten, ran out, rejected, mocked. That looks like setbacks, but they're not.And Paul didn't see them as setbacks. He saw them as opportunities, right? This is why I titled this, this sermon, A Miserable Trip of Rome, because it looks Miserable! Everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. But Paul doesn't see it like that. A couple chapters before, Paul had to appear before Agrippa, which probably felt like his hundredth trial.He probably could have been really frustrated and annoyed and been like, I've told my story, I've told my testimony. No! He doesn't see it like that. What does he do before King Agrippa? He gives his testimony. He shares the gospel with this king. And King Agrippa literally, Calls him out on it. He says, are you trying to convert me, Paul?And he said, yes, I am. I'm trying to convert all who here today, who are listening to me. I pray that you'd be like me besides these chains.Paul didn't see it as a setback. He saw, God's put me in a room with an influential man who has a lot of influence. This guy's gonna know Jesus. Same thing on this boat. He didn't see it as a miserable journey. He saw, man, he probably got on that boat and he said, started counting up people. Luke didn't even need to count, count the people.He's like, Luke, there's 276 people in this boat. All of them are going to be saved by the time we get to Rome. And God gave him a little extra days and a storm to help him out. He didn't see it as a setback. Paul was, all these men, when they were ready to die and hopeless, Paul makes a bold statement of faith.Says that, that God who I belong to and believe in, He's going to rescue us. He's going to deliver us. There is no setbacks with my God. When I was in high school, you know, you get your quarterly, uh, report cards. And, you know, you're like always scared they're getting sent to your parents. And, like, I wasn't scared about my grades because my parents knew my grades weren't going to be good.What I was scared about was, like, what the teachers were going to write in a little note section. And I, I'm telling you they had a meeting because it was all the same exact thing. Every single one of them. Jared's a pleasure to have in class. He's a joy to have in class. But he talks way too much. Very disruptive.Very hard to teach with him in the class. Right? I'm like, my mom's like, Did they have a meeting? What, what happened Jared? Like, what's going on? I'm like, Yeah, sorry. So the teachers, what they would do to try to solve this problem, that was me, they moved me around class. They'd like put me next to different people.And, in my, one of my uh, we had advanced writing class and it was like, all semester, all what is, semester, quarter, whatever it's called in high school. You had to prepare for like one long paper, you had the whole thing, I'm like, dude, the whole, the whole semester, like, I'm gonna do this the night before, they know this, right?So I'm like, oh, it's a great talking period, and we'd sit at the computers and work. They thought it was a good idea to put me next to Eric Galloway, I don't know where Eric Galloway is today, I hope he hears this, he's probably running some part of our country. The man was brilliant, he was super smart, he was motivated, he was like valedictorian of our class, super quiet, super quiet, they're like, we've solved it.Put him next to, Jared, put Jared right next to him. It was like, me, the corner, Eric. What they didn't know was, I don't need someone to talk back to me! I'll just talk to him! He's the perfect person, he just listens! This is amazing! I turn my chair, I'm not even looking at my computer, I'm just talking to Eric, I'm like, Eric, how are you, man?And he's like, Jared, Jared, Jared, we really need to focus right now. I'm like, Eric, I've been trying to get to know you, you've been dodging me in the hallway! This is perfect! The teachers are scratching their heads. They're like, no matter who we put this guy next to, he won't shut up. They'd put me next to the teacher's desk.Now the teacher can't get anything done. They're like, no matter where we put this guy, he won't shut up. This was Paul with the gospel. No matter where he was, no matter who he was with, whether he was in prison or free or on a boat in a storm. He was talking about Jesus. He was sharing the gospel. He was building the kingdom of God.That's who he was. That's what he did. There was no setback. There was no change of seats, right? You put me next to whoever. That's not a setback for me. I've been trying to get to know Eric. I got one thing out of him. He likes Neo, all right? I was like, okay, respect. I thought you only listened to gospel music.My bad, Eric. Paul didn't see these things as setbacks. He saw them as opportunities. I mean, put yourself in Paul's shoes. I mean, sandals. How would you react? You're on a boat for weeks at a time. It stormed the entire time. Everybody's seasick. They haven't eaten, whether they're seasick or they can't even eat because they're like so busy trying to keep this ship together.I would be miserable. You would probably be miserable. And yet Paul says, Hey guys, take heart. Let's be joyful. And they listen to him. And they're encouraged by him. He had spent too much time with God and hardship to know that this was not a setback, but an opportunity to trust God and build his kingdom.Philippians 1, 12 through 14 says this, I want you to know, brothers, this is Paul talking to the Philippians. 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.And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. And the context of his verse, like, unlocks it. So Paul's talking to the Philippians. They're worried about him. They're worried about him because this is where our passage is leading up.Paul's going to Rome, and he's gonna get imprisoned there, right? He's gonna be on house arrest. He's gonna be down, and he's not gonna be able to go out and preach the gospel. They're worried about him. And what Paul says here, what has happened to me, as in this imprisonment, this being locked in here, what's happened to me, it's not a setback.Right? It's not that I can't go out, and I'm stuck in one place, and I can't share the gospel, and I can't go around town and plant new churches. No, no. It's an advancement for the gospel. That the whole Imperial Guard, and everybody else here, knows that my imprisonment is for Christ. And not only that, the brothers back home, they've become more confident and bolder to present the Word of Truth.He didn't see it as a setback. He didn't believe in setbacks. He believed in advances for the kingdom of God.There is no setbacks with God. And what the world sees as setbacks, we see as advances for the gospel. This is who God is. This is how big He is. He's a Redeemer. He redeems all things to bring Him glory.While Paul was in prison in Romans, suppose that he wrote the book of Ephesians. Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. When else would he have had the time to do these things, these books that are so crucial to the Christian faith. God carved out time to say, I'm gonna put you in house arrest. You're not gonna be able to go anywhere else, but write letters and talk to the people around you.God knew. He orchestrated the whole thing. It hasn't been a setback. He said it's been an advancement. There's no need to worry.I just want to close this morning. And I know like this, you know, you're like, yeah, I get it, Jared. There's setbacks, you know, they're not setbacks, they're advances, whatever. You've said it a lot. But you're like, you just don't get what I'm going through. Or you don't understand the difficulty I'm facing or the uncertainty of my future.And you're right, some of you I don't even know your name. But I do know, in my life, some of the most difficult times that I saw as setbacks, that I wanted to get out of. Quickly, as possible. God didn't see them as that. He wasn't surprised by them He wasn't shaken by them I want to spur you on to be cheerful and to take heart, just as Paul did with the 275 hopeless men on that boat.That the God who I know and I believe in He's fighting for you this very moment. He doesn't see your situation as a setback. But he sees it as fertile ground to transform your heart and the hearts of those around you. It's who he is. He's faithful. He's a redeemer. He doesn't see it as we see it. Whether it's a diagnosis, or bad news, or conflict, it's not a setback.This is when God's ready to put his foot on the gas and propel you forward. This is who he is. James 1, 2 through 4 says this, 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 lets steadfastness have its full effect.That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. We're going to close with a song and the prayer team is going to come up. I really encourage you to come up and receive some prayer. What, what other parts of your week or work week can you come up and actually receive prayer in your life? Whether it's something difficult that feels like a setback or a storm or, or, or a difficulty.Come forward. Whether it's big or, or small or, or gigantic. Whatever it is. Come forward. Receive some prayer. And know that the Lord, just ask Him to just change your heart. And your perspective on the difficult things you're going through. Let's pray.Lord, I don't, I don't know everybody in this room, but God, you know them. God, and not only do you know them, you knew their name before you laid out the foundations of the world. You knew their story. You knew the difficulty they'd face. The sickness, the disease, the addiction, the loss of life. God, you knew it.And you don't see them as setbacks. You don't see them as dead ends. God, you see them as fertile ground to transform us. To bring us humbly before you to say, Lord, I got nothing without you.Lord, don't let us waste these moments. Change our perspective. Soften our hearts that we might see your kindness in this. God, your word says that all discipline seems painful at times. But it leads to a harvest of righteousness. So, God, we welcome your discipline. We accept it, God, and we ask that you lead us in a path of righteousness for your name's sake.God, open up our hearts, Lord. You are our firm foundation. You're our solid ground. When everything else seems to fall apart, Lord, you are our steady, constant God. Allow us to trust in your promises and to be steady like you are. And we pray all this in Jesus name, amen.
John 10:10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
We just want to welcome you. Um, Pastor Tim, as, uh, Randy had announced. Um, if you don't know me, I'm in charge of Living Nativity, building facilities, children, kind of do a lot of different things. Um, but it's my privilege to come and preach to you today.So if you want to open up your Bibles, we're going to be jumping into John, chapter 10, looking at verse 10. One verse. But we're going to hit a lot of different scriptures today. So I'll try to write, just write the references down. Don't try to write every part of it down. Um, it's not going to come up here.So I'll just say the references. You can hit those. You can look at them later on, um, dive in. But we're going to hit a lot of references today. But this is what it says in John 10, 10. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came. that they may have life and have it abundantly. Let's pray.Father, weare humbled by who you are. We're grateful for who you are, Lord, and we're excited to know you more deeply every day, Lord. So, pray that this time is glorifying and uplifting to you, that you prepare our hearts for the Word of God, that you prepare our lives for what we're gonna hear, Lord. It's from you.And so we're grateful to, to stand listening, Lord, and to, to be here to apply it and to, to move forward with what you have for us, Lord, in your heavenly name. Amen. All right. So a couple of thoughts with this. Don't preach often. Um, so when I do, it's usually if I'm not given a passage, I usually have to wait a little bit to the Lord shows me something to share on.And so when I got this one, I was like, all right, I got it. It's one verse. I can't mess that up too much. Um, also what he said was I wanted you to preach about abundant living. And I'm like, All right, that sounds prosperity a little bit, Lord, so I'm going to need you to show me what this looks like, right?I'm going to need you to lead me through it. Because when I first hit it, it was like, all right, abundant living, that sounds... Like, uh, you want us to have a lot of different things and live in that and, and gain those things. And, but what God shows us in scripture is, is the opposite. And that's what we're going to look at today of, of how we're going to not live abundantly, how he calls us to not live abundantly, to then.call us to living an abundant life. So we define life because there's all kinds of different things about life. There's all kinds of different qualities of life and, and the term gets tossed around a lot. But we're jumping into Webster's Dictionary to define it. And it's a simple one. The quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body.It's simple. It's basic. in its form, abundantly existing or occurring in large amounts. And so, we want to look at what that means and what God talks about and how we can live that way out in our gospel centered lives and how we can live that way out on the daily in our own areas of where He's called us to be.The first I want to share a little thing is because living life is challenging. I don't know if you're familiar with, with challenges or trials or difficulties, um, but I'm sure you're like me and you've hit some of yours this past year. Um, whether it's loss, whether it's, um, difficulties and struggles and trials, we've all go through them.This year we've had blessings in my own life and, and difficulties and loss and struggles and, and things going on in our family. We had a, If we do foster care, and so we had a little girl with us for eight months of pouring and loving in, and, and then she was not with us anymore. They moved her to a home, and so the difficulty and the struggle that hit our family was tough because you pour so much in to no end.We know leading into that, that that has the potential of happening, but we want to give all of our lives to it. Um, we've now have a little two month old right now, and so there's a lot of life happening there. A lot of ups and downs. We've had loss. My grandmother passed away after battling dementia for five to six years.But as I look around, I'm sure you have similar losses. You have similar things going on, similar trials, right? They might not look exactly like mine did, but you have a lot of life lived, right? But there's also blessings in that where you get to see life and miracles and healings, right? And protection and God's at work.And so we balance these things in. what we call life. And that's the challenge, is that God calls us to live abundantly. How do I live abundantly in a world that gets tossed upside down, that has losses, and has struggles, and has trials? And I think we really have to look at what God calls us to live first, before we can really kind of overwhelm ourselves with what that looks like.And so we want to look at what abundant living is not first, right? It's not an easyThat can shock us here. Those that have lived in the United States for a long time, that kind of is what we have. A state of ease at times, a state of comfort, even though we've gone through trials and difficulties and we've suffered, we really haven't faced what other countries have faced. So we live in comfort and ease.Comfort's a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. The pleasant and satisfying feeling of being physically or mentally free from pain and suffering. Or something that provides this feeling. It's what we want to do. We, I mean, raise your hand if you want to be trapped in pain and live in a daily feeling of pain.Right? None of us do. Right? Just think about it for a minute and be in it. Right? You don't. You can suffer and deal for a little bit if you know the end. But to constantly wake up that way or constantly in those moments. It's a struggle. And we try everything to get out of them. We have an idea of how our lives and how our lives should go.At times we see how the world is living and, and we want those things, we see how others or neighbors or people around us are living and, and we want it. Big house, nice house, a house, good job, a job, consistent work, a great big paycheck, not living paycheck to paycheck, family health, right? The list goes on and on and on in your own lives.You can put your own things in there that you want to be comfortable with, that you want to have so that you can feel comfortable. in your lives. These aren't bad things. We don't want to condemn these things or throw these things out. In and of themselves, they're not bad. And sure, at times, I've desired some of those things myself.Right? I want to be more comfortable. I want to have a life that's easier at times.But we as believers, we're called, are we called to a life of comfort? Are we called to a life of ease? Is that what the gospel, is that what God tells us this life that we live for Him is going to be like? Or this life that we're living and how we share the gospel is always going to be easy, always going to be comfortable, it's never going to be awkward, it's never going to be challenging, it's never going to be difficult.I don't see any of that in my Bible. I don't see any of that in Scripture as I look and dive in and, and look to see what He calls us to do. We're not called to have a life just sitting around on a big comfy couch waiting for Him to return. Sitting on my sectional, finding out, is it comfortable enough till the Lord comes back, or do I need a new one?Is my TV big enough, or do I need a new one? Right? The ease of these things, the comfort that we want to live in, that we want to seek. And these aren't bad things. I believe the idea of being a Christian in the United States has taken on the meaning of having a comfortable life. It's a majority Western thinking, or even a Western ideation.We have the freedom of speech, we have the freedom to practice our religious beliefs no matter what they are here in the U. S. No one's outside the building writing down your name, writing down your license plate, taking the model of your car as you pulled into the parking lot today. No one's watching to see where you go afterwards to arrest you, to persecute you, to kill you.I can stand up here and say the name of Jesus as many times as I want and not have to be afraid of who's coming in the door. I have the freedoms and the ease. And the comfort to do these things. Majority of us listening to this sermon right now have more than one Bible at home or even with us. We have our phones that can access over 70 different English versions at the touch of a button.We have comfort. We have ease. When was the last time that you feared going to church? That you feared reading your Bible? Comfort's not bad, right? I don't want us to walk away and say I can't have anything comforting and sell everything I have and get rid of every... thing I have. If the Lord leads you to that, great.But if he doesn't, that's not what I'm telling you to do. But if it stops us from attending church, if it stops us from stepping out on our faith, for sharing our beliefs, if it stops us from preaching the gospel, then it is not a healthy place to be. In that comfort. I believe we as believers living in the US are seeking to have all the comforts of the world while trying to serve God.That doesn't work. It's not what the early church looked like. We're in acts now and if we jump back to Acts the beginning, acts seven and chapter seven, we see Stephen is martyred by Saul. He's stoned to death for pre, stoned to death for preaching the Word of God, for sharing. It wasn't a comfort stoning, right?That's, I don't, I don't know if that exists, right? But big giant rocks thrown at you to kill you isn't a easy life or comfortable thing. It tells us that Saul starts to ravage the church. And this word ravage means to cause severe and extensive damage. He was on a rampage. He was out for blood. He was out to seek whoever he could to drag him to prison or to kill them.for the gospel, because they were preaching the gospel, because they believed in Jesus. And there arose that day, Acts 8 1 tells us, a great persecution against the church. Believers scattered, they fled in fear. Doesn't sound like they were just getting a little slap on the wrist, don't preach again here, maybe go over there, but not here, right?Persecution was taking a deep root. This wasn't comfort. This wasn't an easy life for them. They're now scattered around, separated from each other, fleeing in fear.This is what God is telling us the early believers, the church, looked like. In Acts 12, James is killed by Herod and then he arrests Peter. Peter's imprisoned three times. Paul wrote four of his letters while in prison. He was in prison for two years, and then house arrest for another two years, right? This doesn't sound like how we are here.It sounds a little different. I'm not asking us to invite persecution into our lives, but I want us to think about what they went through and what we're going through.Almost all of the apostles and disciples were martyred for their beliefs in Jesus. For preaching, and speaking, and witnessing. Jesus himself was crucified.James 1, 2 tells us to count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. It doesn't say if you meet trials, right? The possibility of coming into trials. Right? There might be trials. He says when there are trials, right? We're all gonna have trials. We're all gonna have tribulations. We're all gonna have these things in our lives.It's not a matter of if they hit us. It's just a matter of when they come and present themselves to us. James tells us they're gonna happen. So what do you do when you face them? I'm gonna count it all joy, but that comes later on afterwards. These trials will be all kinds of different things.Unpredictable, unknowing.I know many times we want that life that has no trials, has no difficulties, has no challenges. But I know my life, I know your lives, we greatly deepen when we go through those if we cling to the Lord. John 16 33 says, I've said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.But take heart, I've overcome the world, and the world, if you live outside of my realm, if you live for a desire of comfort, if you'd live for the desire of ease, we're living what the world desires, and there will be tribulation. Matthew 8, 19 through 20 and Luke 9, 57 through 58, Jesus says the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.Functionally homeless, the disciples in Jesus, as they're wandering around trying to figure out where their next place will be where they stay. Where are we sleeping tonight? Oh, it's whoever opens the door to us. Maybe we're camping outside, maybe we're not. They're functionally homeless, traveling to share the gospel.And they're not driving around in a big caravan or a camper, right? To have that comfort and that ease, that glamping style, right? It's roughing it for the gospel. Many of us in the room have no idea probably what it means to be homeless. There are believers around the world, there are believers here that do.This is how they did ministry. Believers around the world are experiencing what the early believers went through. Right, outside of the U. S., to be a Christian has a totally different take on it than it does here for us. Right, it means that you're going to be persecuted, that you're gonna have a lot more difficulties on a different level that match up more with the early church.They're being persecuted for gathering together, having a Bible in their possession, sharing the gospel message, and believing the Lord. The Voice of the Martyrs website lists 41 countries as restricted on their website. 41 countries that believers are in are restricted. And what that means, it means that the government has sanctioned circumstances or anti Christian laws that lead Christians to being harassed, imprisoned, killed, deprived of their possessions, their liberties because of their witness and because they want to live for Christ.I'm not saying we want to have that. But I want to challenge us on how we live our lives for the Lord. If I'm just desiring comfort and ease, I don't know if we're following the same Lord. I don't know if it's the same Jesus that they believe in that I'm believing in, if I just want an easy way of life.What are we willing to give up? What cost is it going to be for us? To dive deeper, to know Him more.It's also not a long life. All of the apostles were martyred except for one who lived a long life. They tried to, right? But then he got kicked to the island of Patmos and lived a longer life than most. Still died in the end. But it wasn't a long life. Jesus lived till 33 years old. not a long life.I'm going to have a quote here from a great movie of one of my favorites, and if you've seen it, you'll maybe relate to it, but Braveheart. Yes, I'm going to go William Wallace quote here, alright? I didn't paint my face, so that's a good thing. And I won't try a Scottish accent, I promise. But just before a large battle at Stirling, he addresses the Scottish army that shows up.They're less of an army and more of just tribes and clans trying to come together to be unified. The Scots are outnumbered against the English and they're afraid, right? So he tries to rile them up to get them ready to fight. And if you know this scene, he's on horseback, riding back and forth, challenging them, trying to psych them up, getting them to fight.And he asks, are they going to fight? And they all respond with shouts of no. One man states, fight against that? No, we'll run and we will live, he says. Sounds like a good idea. Sounds comfortable and easy to run away. Wallace replies, a fight and you may die. Run and you'll live, at least a little while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance?Just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives. But they'll never take our freedom. He's challenging their comfort. It would be easier to run away. It would be easier not to step up to an army that outnumbers you, that has more weapons than you, and is probably tactically better than you are.And it's more comfortable to run away. If we go, we're gonna most likely die.He's challenging them to choose a longer, comfortable life, or a shorter, a potentially shorter life. But standing up for what you believe in. Choose comfort now, but it's not going to last long. You could choose a longer life, but in the end we all die. It's what's in between those times of now and then that matters.If you've ever looked at the Fox's Book of Martyrs, or Jesus Freaks Put Out One, Volume 1 and 2, or the Voice of the Martyrs website, if you look in those things, you see all kinds of stories about believers and Christians from little kids all the way up to older people standing up for their faith, no matter what the cost, no matter what the circumstances are.We see this, that they, it doesn't matter to them if they're not promised tomorrow. It's where they find themselves rooted. Accounts. They're willing to give up a long life for the gospel. Are we? James 4 13 through 14 says, Come now you who say today and tomorrow we'll go into such and such a town, spend a year there, we'll trade, make profit.Yet you don't know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James gets the idea. We don't know how long we're around. We're not promised tomorrow. We don't know what tomorrow looks like. We don't know what two hours from now, three hours from now, tomorrow morning, next week.I'm not saying don't plan, but I'm saying we have to hold them open. We have to plan knowing that we don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. Our lives are a mist. They're a vapor. They're here one day and gone the next. How are we living those days out? What are we doing in those times of the mist? Our vapors that we have, what are we doing with this?Psalm 139 talks about how you numbered my days. You formed me, you knew me before I was born, and you numbered how many days I have. The Lord knows how long we'll be around. The Lord knows how many days we have, how many years, how many months, how many hours, how many seconds. Each one of us in this room has from here on out.He's already got them numbered, already got them written down.The challenge is, are we waiting to do what He's called us to do today? Are we waiting for tomorrow to do what we're called to do today? To share what we're called to share? Are we waiting for another time, another opportunity, something that's better for our lives, something that feels more comfortable?Time to share.We don't know what the future holds for us. We don't know how many days. The Lord knows. We're not promised a long life here on earth. We know that our salvation grants us and blesses us with an eternity in heaven, but we don't know when we'll enter into that eternity. Maybe tomorrow, might be today, might be a hundred years from now, but what are we doing with that time that we have left?What is the Lord calling you to do? Someone once explained it to me like this, if you knew the cure for a certain disease, would you keep it to yourself? Would you hide it and keep it sacred and hold on to that? Or would you share it with the world? Would you share it with those that are affected with that same disease so that they can be healed?The gospel is that cure that we have for our sinful lives. Are we sharing that cure with the world? Are we sharing that with our neighbors, with our family, with our friends, with those that we can't even stand? Our coworkers maybe, and. Whoever else the Lord is bringing in, are we sharing the cure that we have so that we can have everlasting life?Or are we hiding it, holding it, keeping that treasure to ourselves? What do you do with it?It's also not a self focused life. If you're like me, you're selfish probably, right? I've been there. Self centered at times, think about myself, um, especially sleep. Raise your hand if you love sleep. Like I, so we, we've had a baby, back to baby again, and so we've had a baby for about a month and a half now, a little.Two year old, two month old, and in the beginning, he started to wake up a lot. It's like every hour, I feed him like, Alright, this is, this is tiring, and I get it, and, But, I get selfish, right? I get woken up in my sleep, and my wife and I are trying to split time so that she's not totally drained, and, so that I'm not totally drained, and so, I, I struggled a little bit in the beginning, where I'm like, Alright, Lord, I gotta remember, you created him, you created him, you created him, right?You died for him, you died for him, you died for him, right? It's got to remember that because if you're like me and you get woken up out of sleep and you got trouble going back, you're just miserable and grumpy and I hate to admit it. But yes, I get miserable and grumpy when I'm woken up. Um, it's the way it is for me.I'm selfish. I try to die to that, but it's a challenge, right? And so abundant living is not a self focused life. If we look at the Good Samaritan, we can see that in Luke 10 25 to 37, we see the Good Samaritan steps in. Right? Completely unselfish of himself, goes above and beyond the same person's own, uh, culture.This Jewish man was beaten up by robbers and everything taken and so what happens is Jewish Pharisees and Jewish leaders and people of the law come by and they walk by and they either step over him or go to the other side of the street or even turn around because they don't want to walk by him and go the opposite way.The Samaritan, someone who is disliked and probably hated by the Jews, steps in and goes above and beyond. Anything that we can imagine. Doesn't just care for him and help him, but pays for his inn. Pays for the person to take care of him, watch him. Comes back and says, Whatever the tab is, I'll come back and pay.Does that reflect us at all? Is that who we are?James 1. 27 tells us, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Is that how we're living? Are we sitting with those that are in affliction? Are we visiting with those that are sick?Are we visiting with those that are hurting? Are we just sitting there listening and feeling with them and being present? I know sometimes that means that we gotta give up stuff to do this, right? Maybe it's giving up watching the Phillies and the Eagles, which they're both on winning streaks right now, right?I mean, 5 0, and the Phillies again are finally, it's red October again for them, right? If someone comes to your house during the game, right? You lock in the door, lowering the blinds and hiding so that you don't have to help, right? Are we gonna open that up, turn the TV off, and invite them in? Is it about me?Or is it about what the Lord is leading me to do? I'm not a Phillies or Eagles fan, but if it's the World Cup, that's a challenge, right? So if you wanna learn how selfish you are, get married. You'll learn real quick. And if you're still struggling with that, have some kids, cause then you'll find out you're really selfish.Alright, this is how the Lord keeps showing me. what I need to die to in my own life. He shows me, he graces me with those gifts. And our example of a non selfish life is one, the Good Samaritan, but two, Jesus tells us in Mark 10, 42 through 45, that he came to serve. The King of Heaven came down to us to serve, not to be served and to ransom his life, to die for us.So we can have that relationship, so that we can have that life with Him. That's a servant, that's what our lives should be modeled after. That is the ultimate unselfish act. To die for all of us.I don't know if I'm willing to do that. Don't be offended. Right, there's a few people in my family, right? It's probably you, same thing. Die for your family. But outside of that, who's there? So we know what it's not. It's not an easy or comfortable life that we're called to. It's not a long life necessarily that we're called to.You may live long. But we're not guaranteed it. And it's not a self centered, self focused life. Abundant living is not these things. So let's focus and shift to what it is. Abundant living is focused upward. It turns our eyes to the Lord. It turns our eyes to heaven. It turns our eyes to what He is doing.Right? Because we want to be what the Lord is about. We want to be what God is about. We want to be what He desires in this world. Not what we desire. Allow me to ask this question of you today. Where are you focused in your life?Is it upward or is it downward? Is it up there or is it on earthly things here? Is it internally or is it outwardly? What are you focused on? If we took a deeper look into our personal life, what is at the center? Is Jesus on the throne? Are there more than one thrones? And so, yeah, I got Jesus on one, but I got all these other little ones that I'm serving.What directs and guides our paths, our everyday decisions? Does it matter that the decisions are big so I bring them to the Lord and all the other little ones I just handle on my own? Where'd I bring everything to him?James 4. 15 says this, instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we'll do this or that. We'll go to this place or that place. How often do we ask that in our lives? How often do we challenge ourselves to come to this place and say, if the Lord wills me to do this, I'll do it. If it's His will for me to go there, to do this, to do that, do I ask that daily?Do I go before Him daily and say, Lord, I'm holding my hands open with what my plans are. You can do what you want with them, or do I grist them tightly and hold onto them so that He can't take them and He has to pry them from my hands? How tightly do I hold onto my own plans, my own leading, my own stuff?Abundant living is focusing on Him. With open hands, laying my plans at his feet and saying, change them as you want to. Change them and align them with you. Change them. I want to follow your desires, your leading, your calling. I want my life to align with your life, and I want my hands to be open to what you're doing.Do I reflect that in my prayers, in my walk? Do you? It's easy to stand up here and say these things, but am I living them out? I want God to challenge each one of us with these things and ask us these questions. Are we living this way?Paul, Peter, Jesus, their mission focus was upward so that then they could move to the outward. They had their eyes on what God desired, they had their eyes on what they were doing, and they let him lead. Paul, so many times, as we see in the book of Acts, he wanted to go here on a mission strip, he wanted to go there on a mission strip, he wanted to go there on a mission strip.The Lord says, no, we're going to go here. Right, but he didn't fight the Lord. He moved with God. When God moved and when God called, he answered and went. He didn't dig his heels in and say, No, Lord, I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to go. But he went and he followed. He held his plans loosely unto the Lord and laid them at his feet and saying, Lord, lead me, guide me, direct me.Am I doing that every day? Are you?It might mean going across the street to that neighbor who needs to hear the gospel. That you've lived there for 15 years as a neighbor, but you haven't gone there yet. Or the co worker you see every day, and they know something's different about you, but you haven't told them yet. Maybe your family members, who they know you go to church, they don't know what it's about.Are we willing to be led to those moments for the Lord? Are we willing to hold those open to Him and say, Lord, direct and guide me? As you see fit, that's an upward focus because it's him first. It's what he desires, he seeks, he wants first. I'm submitting to God's will in my life.Colossians 3, 2 says, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. A lot of us, we need to shift our thinking on the daily to be upward focused. We need to shift how we see what the Lord is doing to be focused more on him. Matthew 6 33 says, But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.Seek Him first. Seek Him first. When we abide in Him, when we focus on Him, we have this joy that comes and a peace. Galatians says that, right? We have the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. When we abide in Him, we have joy and peace. No matter what our circumstances are, no matter what we're going through, when we have our eyes focused upward, we don't get distracted on the downward focus.And we can see what the Lord is calling us to do. And we can see what He's going to do through our trials, and through our sufferings, and through our pain. But first, we have to shift our eyes, outside of ourselves, to Him.And then from there, we get outward focused. Abundant living, abundant life is focusing outward. After I focus upward, then I can shift and focus outward to see who the Lord is bringing into my life for this impact. Who the Lord is going to bring to me that I need to share this with? Right, like I said, is it the neighbor?Is it a family member? Coworker? It's putting others before ourselves again. Right, it's that idea that selfless acts and putting others first. What does it look like every day? How can we continue to live this way? Right? Every day we have to have that gospel centered focus of going out, going up and going out.Do I start every day with a focus on Him? I don't mean this long. Maybe you can't dive in so deep in the morning and spend an hour with the Lord, but maybe it's five minutes on your car ride, ten minutes on your car ride. Maybe it's praying continually throughout the day. Maybe it's listening to the Bible app and just over and over hearing Scripture, hearing what the Lord is doing, hearing what He has for your lives.That's how we focus. That's how we align. So the question is, is after I focus upward, and I'm working to focus outward, what's my witness look like? Where am I shining the light of the gospel? Do I have an urgency where I may just complacent in the comfort? Do I view the people around me and have a desire for them to know the Lord, that I have an urgency to go to them?To tell them, to share with them,or am I just waiting?Romans 12, 9 through 13 says, Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. Don't be sinful, don't be slothful and zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality.Are these the characteristics that reflect my life? Can I look at this passage and say, Yes, I'm living that every day. Or does this passage hit me and say, You know what? That's not what I look like. That's not what I look like. That's not what I look like. Am I living in the urgency to live this way? To love others, to pray constantly, to be focused on the Lord throughout my day.Good or bad, is this the characteristics of my life? Galatians 5,13 says, For you are called to freedom, brothers, not only, but only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. We need to be outwardly focused. We need to share this with others and tell people about this. If we see an acts, it is what the disciples are all about.Few more verses. Proverbs 1917. Galatians six two, John 15, 12 through 17 shares all about how we are to reach out, bear one another's burden, share with one another, serve one another. Commit to being there to one another. Are we doing this? As we look at what abundant living is, we need to focus upwards so that we can then have a better outward focus.Align our lives right with the Lord and what He's doing so that we can share with others that need to hear about Him. As we approach the table this morning and we get ready to take communion, this is what it is about. Jesus came and died and gave His life for us so that we may know Him, so that we can have an eternity with Him.And we tie this in as we are talking about what it looks like to have an abundant life. It's found in this, in His sacrifice for us, in what He did in laying down His life for ours. Ipray that we remember that daily as we look to serve Him. As we look to have an abundant life in what He says is an abundant life. Not what we view, or not what the world views, but aligning our lives with His. So we come to this table remembering what Jesus came to earth to do. The symbol of our relationship, the symbol of our upward focus.The baskets are going to be passed in a minute. So please take this time as we do it to focus your lives, focus your hearts. Have some quiet time and go before the Lord if there are things there that you need to give over, to turn over. Or if this has stirred your heart to ask Him to lead you in a certain way.Take this time now and do that. Ask the Lord to direct you and guide you. to be a part of what He is doing. And we want to make sure as we approach this that our hearts are aligned with His. 1 Corinthians 11, 23 29 says, For I have received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord.Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. As the ushers come down and get ready, we're going to get ready as our welcome team comes forward to get ready to pass this out.We're going to go before the Lord. And as the song is playing, as it's being passed out, take this time to quiet yourselves before the Lord. Father, we humbly die to ourselves, Lord, as you have died for us. We ask that we remember you in this. That every day we'll have our lives focused and aligned with you.Praise you and thank you for your... Sacrifice so that we can have an abundant life rooted in the gospel, in your death and in your resurrection, in your heavenly name, amen.The night he was betrayed. The Lord took the bread. Open it up. Don't open up the...bottom. You'll leak all over. Just take that little guy out. Took the bread. You broke it, saying, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.He then took the cup. Now we can open that up. Lord took the cup and he said, this is my blood, which is poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. Do this in remembrance of me.The worship team is going to come back up on stage, and while they're coming back on up, we have our prayer team is going to join us on the sides up front. If you feel the Lord leading you to come up, if you need prayer, if you need to talk to somebody, they'll be up here. You can come up during the music, come up after the music, but please, they're going to be here for you to pray with you.So if you need to cast your cares and be prayed for, come join us.
Acts 26:1-32‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 26:14.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning, church. It's so good to be with you all. Uh, my name's Pastor Joe.And, uh, I'm really excited to be able to preach the word this morning. Um, you know, one of the things that I'm really, always look forward to about getting a chance to teach or to preach the word is... That it's always, um, a rule that I get all, I make all these plans as to how I want the passage to be heard.Uh, how I want it to, to reach people. You know, the applications that I want people to pull away from the Word. And every time, it never quite goes that way. But God's Word is living and active. And it reaches into the hearts of the people. In ways that I could never have come up with. And it takes root, and it meets people where they are, and it speaks into the brokenness of their stories, and it uplifts them.It's a bright, shining light. And I'm always left in awe. The more that I have the opportunity to interact with this, to study this book, to teach and to preach this book, the more that I am left in no doubt of who wrote it, of the mind which is the author of this.I'm not in any doubt about its accuracy, about its profound and limitless reach, about its enduring relevance to every age. This book is not just some collection of good morals or interesting ancient histories. It's God's word, God's word, church. Have you thought about that recently? I know when I, uh, came to prepare this message, for whatever reason, God had me stop and just think about that for a minute.We don't gather here, um, primarily just to hear the band play or to hear some pastor talk. We gather here because here in this book. Are the very words of life, which give life. God's word to us, his people.If you listen this morning, if we quiet our minds and limit the buzzing in our thoughts and in our pockets, your God will speak and he will speak through his word. Not through anything that I do, but through his enduring word, which remains the same and yet is always new.So, I want us to do something before we start and dive into our passage. I want us all to stand up. Don't worry, I'm not going to make you do like jumping jacks or anything like that. That's something Pastor Jared would do, but I won't make you do that. What I'm going to do is, I want us together to read Psalm 119.Don't worry, not the whole thing. We'd still be here till the Eagles game if that was the case. But we're going to read just a few extracts from Psalm 119 all as one. You know, the Psalms were written. Primarily to be enjoyed in the congregation. Not to be enjoyed only in solitude, but together as a church.So, let's read this together as a church and let this be our prayer for this morning. Your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Give us life, O Lord, according to your word, we pray. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you guys can seat, have a seat too. Heavenly Father, Lord, I, I don't need to ask you to uphold your end of the bargain.You always do. But, Lord, I ask that we would be able, just for the next 30 or so minutes, to quiet our minds. Lord, I pray against the distractions that crop up in our minds, the shame, the judgment, the confusion. And I ask that its place would be your perfect peace. To receive nothing more or less than what you have for us from your word, Lord.Lord, it's your word and you're the only one who can open it to us through your Holy Spirit. So I pray. Through your spirit, work in our hearts, speak into the different places in our stories and lead us this morning. Lord, I thank you that it's not my word. And I thank you that I have no pressure to bring my word, but only to bring your word.I pray all this in your name. Amen. Alright, so, 26.Which is actually going to take us now very close to the end of the Book of Acts. As we continue our journey through this amazing book. There's only two more chapters that are going to follow this chapter. And, uh, we've been following along in the Book of Acts with, uh, what feels a little bit like a broken record at this point.Paul before one official or another being tried. And if you would, real quick, what we're going to do before we open up the passage itself. I'd like to real quick. Um, set the scene for you all. To remind us where we are and why it matters to us in the overall story. So, if you'll go down memory lane with me, way back in Acts chapter 21, we read of how Paul had just finished his third missionary journey, and decided, you know what, I'm going to go back to Jerusalem for a little bit, uh, and kind of regroup, uh, be able to come back to a place dear to me, worship in the temple, uh, and then maybe plan out my fourth missionary journey.But what we read is that the Holy Spirit, through different prophets, kept warning Paul not to go, or at least if he did go to Jerusalem, that he would be set in chains. But Paul was a pretty stubborn guy, and he said, no, I'm going to Jerusalem. So Paul gets there, and sure enough, very shortly after arriving, Paul is arrested in the temple and set in chains.And what we've been reading over the last number of weeks is actually, Paul, as he follows, at least to my eyes, a very similar path to Jesus in that he's arrested, set in custody, set before the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, and then set before Roman authorities in the form of Governor Felix of Judea.And in each case, Paul acquits himself as innocent. There's not a single charge that's been levied against him by the Jews that can be substantiated. Paul's clearly not guilty. And yet something unfortunate happens, Paul becomes a pawn in the ever growing, uh, confusion and fury of the political battles between the Jews and Rome.And Mark did a really good job last week of giving a larger sort of back story behind sort of the geopolitical context of the time, about the tensions between Rome and the Jews. And he talked even a little bit about Governor Felix and how he wasn't very good at his job. Governor Felix was desperately trying to cling to his position and to keep the peace between the Jews and the Rome, in which he actually was partly responsible for stoking them up.And one of the ways he did that was by taking this Paul guy, who he could see was the carrot for the Jews, that they really wanted. And he held him. Sort of in ransom, uh, to placate them. And he kept him in prison for two whole years as an innocent man. It says in the past, in, uh, earlier in Acts chapter 24 that he did it as a favor to the Jews.But guess what? It didn't really work and he got fired. And in his place was set a new governor. And his name was Governor Festus. They really like the F names for their governors. I'm probably going to make a mistake and call Felix Festus, in fact, I can't, I'm going to mess up already. So, anyways, Portius Festus becomes the new governor.And this is why all this matters, church, to our passage this morning. Because this guy, Portius Festus, steps into a, a whole mess of situation. You know, any time, uh, new management takes over old management, especially when the old management isn't very good at their job, what tends to happen? Yeah, you inherit all their problems, and you have to fix them.And so Festus steps into a very complicated situation between the Jews and Rome. And not only that, he's got this big problem and his name is Paul. And as he steps in, he hears there's a, there's a prisoner who's been under guard for two years in Felix's prison. And Festus is imagining some madman or some murderer or some insurrectionist.And then he shows up and he sees a, a middle aged, mild Jewish scholar. And I'm sure he was a bit confused. And I think his confusion only grew when he had Paul come to him and explain and, and under trial and explaining why he was, and what he was accused of. And Festus was more confused than when he started.The problem was that Paul appealed to Caesar. And so now, as was Paul's right as a Roman citizen, he must be sent to Rome and to Caesar. But here's the thing. Governor Festus really wanted to keep his job. And he just got that job, you know, he was really, he was enjoying his shiny new office. But if he sent Paul to Rome, without any clear idea what accusations he was sending him on, uh, with, well, I'm not sure how, how nice Nero would think of that.And we know Nero was a very benevolent ruler, right? So he did not want to send Paul until he had a clearer idea of what Paul had done. And, uh, at the end of last week, we heard of the emergence of a new character by the name of Agrippa. King Agrippa. And Mark did a good job of explaining who he was, but just for the sake of...Uh, context, he was the last in the line of the Herodian dynasty. We know they have a very interesting history with Christians, right? His father murdered James. His grandfather murdered, uh, put to death John the Baptist. His great grandfather was the one that chased Jesus and his family into Egypt and put to death all the two year olds in Bethlehem and under.So not exactly a, uh, a savior for Paul. But nevertheless, this Festus guy thinks, I have an idea. I'm going to get a second opinion. And he'll tell me, he knows the things about the Jews, he knows how their customs and controversies work. He'll give me some in, uh, uh, important backstory and maybe even help me understand what exactly this guy is supposed to have done.Because to me, he seems innocent of everything. So that's the backstory that we're stepping into here in Acts chapter 26. And, um, where we left off last week with Mark was How Paul was set in the center of the audience hall and all around him was the many people, the influential, the wealthy, uh, the Jews who were assembled against him, uh, and then these very important Roman officials, Governor Festus and King Agrippa and Bernice, the sister of Agrippa.And last week, Mark mentioned they came in to the hall with great pomp. That means they came in with a great show of force and power. You know, wearing long, beautiful clothes, uh, military backing behind them, walking into the hall to show their, that they were in control, that they had power. And here you have little Paul.Paul, the only physical descriptions we have of Paul, there's not a lot of them, but they're not flattering. Paul was probably pretty short, uh, balding with a crooked nose. That's the only account that we have of what he looked like. And here you have little Paul who's been in prison for two years, probably not eating well.Sitting there, chained at the center of the audience hall, surrounded by this great crowd of witnesses. And, and the, the, the text is careful to point out that there's, there's a lot of influential people and wealthy people there. And there's also, obviously, very influential and wealthy people in Agrippa and Festus.Okay, now I've set the scene for you. Enough with the history lesson, I promise. Now we're gonna get to the passage itself. I've learned a really valuable lesson as a dad, with my oldest daughter in particular. She's about to turn four, and, um, I used to just set the whole dinner portion in front of Elena, uh, and say, uh, bon appétit, go ahead.Uh, some of you who've had little kids might know where I'm going with this, but Elena, almost every time, would push the plate away and say, too big, and she wouldn't eat it. And so, first I was just like, you're gonna eat it, if you don't eat it, you're gonna, and that didn't work. And then I tried, you know, like, afterwards we'll give you a cookie if you eat it, and that didn't work, then she just wanted a cookie.I learned a trick. And some of you are like, yeah, dummy, why didn't you do that from the start? But I learned a trick. And it's that, that bigger portion, I would cut it up into tiny pieces, and I would give her one at a time. And then she wouldn't be overwhelmed. And she would actually usually be able to get all the food in her little belly.And so my hope, this morning, is to apply a similar, uh, concept. Cause we got 32 verses to get to this morning. And if I just start right now and read all 32 verses for you, you're gonna glaze over even more than you have already. And I don't want that. I want to keep our attention. As I mentioned, this is God's Word, and it deserves our attention.So, what I want to do is do what I did do with Elena, and I'm going to cut this into pieces. And we're going to take it in three bites, okay? Uh, and the bites are going to go as follows. It's going to be up on the screen here, so you can kind of see where we're headed as a road map. Our first bite's going to be the first eleven verses.Okay? And, uh, I just titled these for my own, uh, order, organization in my mind, but the first 11 verses we're gonna hear of an unadvisable defense. Then in the next 12 verses, 12 through 24, we're gonna hear an undeniable testimony. And then lastly, in our final bite of the morning, we're gonna take the last 7 verses of our chapter and hear an unexpected reversal.So let's dive in, shall we? Verses 1 through 11. And so, Agrippa Said to Paul, we're in the great audience hall. And now the ceremony begins, the trial begins, and Agrippa says these words. You have permission to speak for yourself. Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense. I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, that I am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews.Especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews. Therefore, I beg that you listen to me patiently. My manner of life for my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion, I have lived as a Pharisee.Now I stand here on trial because of my hope and the promise made by God to our fathers,to which our tr to our 12 tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope, I am accused by the Jews O King. Why is it thought incredible by any of you? That God raises the dead. Okay, I wanna stop there. This isn't the whole chunk, but I wanna stop there for a minute and say Bravo to Paul.I mean, he's just shot out of a cannon. He's been in that jail cell. He's been writing down his defense. He's ready to go, and he just does a great job. I mean, he starts off, he's appealing, he's respectful, uh, he's bold, he's well spoken. I mean, what, what else do we expect from Paul? And he does first, I want to real quick talk about the, the first bit of this, where he does some pretty cool things.He, he's share, he's sharing, or sorry, rather appealing to the shared understanding that he has with Agrippa. It's very clear in the first two verses. Paul's relieved. to be talking to somebody that will understand what he's talking about. It's pretty hard to make a defense to someone who doesn't even know or understand what you're defending.And Paul, over the past two years, has been talking to these Roman guys who have no idea what he's talking about. You know, Mark did a good job last week of talking about the, the background that these guys would have come from, uh, Felix and Festus. They were Romans. They had a Roman conception of religion.Which means... Many gods, many temples, many different ways of worshiping, very worldly, uh, and then you have the Jews. Could you imagine a more different religion from the Roman religion? And now you have Festus trying to understand all of those subtle differences to him. And now he's seeing the only difference that he can see is that Paul is saying one guy is alive and they're saying he's dead.And so Paul is just relieved to be talking to somebody that at least knows what he's talking about. And then he uses that shared understanding to establish a very important point right off the bat. And that is, Paul is not anti Jewish. Paul is not trying to appear as anti Jewish. Paul is trying very hard to show, listen, this way that we've found, this, this following after Jesus thing, is not a departure from the hope of the Jewish people, but rather a continuation of it.I haven't rejected the teachings of our fathers. I'm the only one following it. He's trying to show right off the bat. I'm not against you. I'm for you I'm one of you or rather one of them. So by all accounts, he's doing a good job And then we come to verses 9 through 11 Did you just read with me verses 9 through 11?I Myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth and I did so in Jerusalem And not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving the authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And when I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme and enraging fury against them, I persecuted them even unto foreign cities.Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop, Paul. Stop. You're doing so good. Why is he suddenly airing all his dirty laundry? This is... In my mind, where I'm thinking, if Paul was my lawyer, I would be going, Yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no! Why does Paul shift gears? He started so well, he was making a good defense, saying, I'm no, I, I'm just as Jewish as you are, and this thing that I'm proposing is, you know, he was doing a really good job, and then suddenly Paul starts to tell of his past.What's going on here? Why is Paul determined to share the worst parts of his past? It seems like that would ruin the credibility of this movement, that he himself was an enemy. I think the answer actually lies in our next bite, verses 12 through 24. Let's read it together. In this connection, I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and the commission of the chief priests.And at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me, in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, or Shaul, Shaul is what it would be in Hebrew. Why are you persecuting me?It is hard for you to kick against the goads. And I said, Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose. To appoint you as a servant. And a witness to the things in which you have seen me, and to those in which I will appear to you.Delivering you for, from your people, and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you. To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God. And that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Therefore, O King, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but I declared, first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, and then all throughout the regions of Judea and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.For this reason, the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me, and to this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying. Both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass, that the Christ must suffer, and that by being first, the first to rise from the dead, he would be proclaimed light both to our people and to the Gentiles.And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, you're out of your mind. Your great learning has driven you out.Okay, so why did I say that these 12 verses answer the question why Paul suddenly gives an unadvisable defense and starts airing his dirty laundry? I think the answer is that Paul isn't defending himself.You would think after two long years, and finally standing before the one man who might actually sort of understand him, that he would be ready to give his own defense. The answer is, I don't think Paul is primarily concerned with defending himself here. Well, what is he defending then? He's defending the gospel.He's doing it in a very interesting way. We've seen Paul defend the gospel in a lot of different ways. We've seen him do it through reasoned arguments at the Athenian philosophers. We've seen him do it, uh, by showing his mastery over the Hebrew scriptures. And we've seen him do it the way he's doing it here, by telling his story.But the only way that Paul can tell his story about how he met Jesus on the road to Damascus is to tell them why he was on that road.To be open and honest with the brokenness of his past. You see, I think at every turn so far in our passage this morning, Paul is attempting not to drive himself further apart from his opponents, but to draw them in.To show themthis Jesus that he met on the road to Damascus. There's so much that we could look at in this, this chunk, and I, and trust me when I say I want to, but we don't have time. But there is one thing that I want to stop on, and it's a line that Paul includes here in his testimony that he didn't include in chapter 22 when he told his testimony the other time in Acts.Does anybody know what that little detail is? Shout it out if you know it. Yeah, goads, you're mouthing it back there. Kicking against the goats. What's that all about? Does anybody know what a goat is? Yeah, a cattle prod. It's a, it's a sharp stick. And it was used usually for the young, stubborn cows. And those young, stubborn cows, well they had a job to do.To plow the field. But they didn't like that yoke. And they kept trying to kick it off. And so, what farmers would do is they would either attach the goat to some part on the yoke, I mean, on the, uh, the, the plow, or they would hold it in their hand and they would basically poke the cow every time he started going against his job.And, uh, what's interesting is that what they would find is that with, uh, younger cows, you'd find the dumb, dumb younger cows would be the ones that would kick. Here's the thing though, uh, a goat doesn't feel any pain, a cow does. So that, that cow is kicking out against that goat and what's happening is that thing is poking him every time.And eventually, that dumb, stubborn cow learns to be a smart, submissive cow. And the field gets plowed. And here, Paul includes this detail, kicking against the goats. And for a minute, just go back with me on memory lane to Acts chapter 9. That was actually a message that I preached on Paul's conversion.And when Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, We knew something that we may have forgotten now, and that is that shortly before this, we were first introduced to Paul in this book, at the stoning of Stephen. And Stephen was, uh, a believer, uh, who was causing many Jews to come to saving faith in Jesus.He was on fire, full of the Holy Spirit. Um, but because of his work in bringing people out of the power of Satan and into the power of God, the Jews decided to stone him. And, uh, he was thrown to the ground, and a whole assembly was set before him, ready to, uh, cast stones until he was dead. And it says in Acts chapter 7 that Paul was there, and that Paul stood there and approved of the stoning of Stephen.But something happened in Acts chapter 7. Right before the first stone made contact with Stephen, Stephen had a prayer to the Lord. At the end of that prayer, he said these words, Lord, forgive them. And count not their sin against them, for they know not what they do.And then he died. And then we're told shortly after that, that Paul is on this rampage. That he's driving himself hard after every believer. And then, in Acts chapter 9, we see Paul riding hard on the road to Damascus at noonday. In, in 22 and here in 26 we're told that he was riding at midday. He's out on the road at midday.Why is that significant? Yeah, well the bright light. And there's something that you don't do in that part of the world. And that's be out in the sun at midday. If you're riding on the road, especially out near Damascus, at midday, you're cooking. And the only reason you would do that is if you are pretty desperate, or you're driving yourself hard.See, I think Paul was driving himself hard for a reason. I think he was being goaded in spirit. I think when he watched that man stand before all the accusations of the Jews against him, casting stone after stone until he was dead, and his final words were, Forgive them, for they know not what they do.Echoing the words of his Savior. I don't think that settled in Paul very well. And what do we do when we want to drive off and keep thinking far away? We drive ourselves hard. But Paul was kicking against the goats.And Paul, I think, includes this little detail in his testimony, includes these intimate words between him and Jesus for a purpose.And that'll take us, well actually let me, let me talk about a couple other observations. I think one of the reasons why Paul is, feels free here in his two years, after two years of imprisonment, to not defend himself first, but defend the gospel, is I think he had a realization in prison. I can't prove this.This is just my opinion. But I mentioned in the beginning. That Paul had just finished his third missionary journey. Most of Paul's life after being a believer had been spent on the road. Thousands and thousands of miles on foot. Going from city to city, sharing this gospel message. He'd been beaten. He'd been thrown out.He'd been opposed at every turn. But Paul had spread the gospel in an amazing way. God had used him. To be a servant for this new gospel. As we read here in the passage. But something happened, and most scholars agree that Paul was really getting ready and geared up for another fourth missionary journey.Maybe, who knows, the biggest and the best yet. But he decided to first go back to Jerusalem, as I mentioned. And we never saw that fourth missionary journey. Or so we thought. You see, I think Paul had a realization in that prison. I think he realized, this is my fourth missionary journey. Because this is exactly the plan and always has been.Way back in Acts chapter 9, like we've talked about, Jesus says in a vision to Ananias, he's my chosen instrument to go to the Gentiles, to go to the Jews, to share the gospel, and then it says, and to their kings.It's always been the plan for Paul to be a witness, uh, before the great and the small. And now he finds himself before kings, not in the way that he expected, I'm sure. But he realized, this is my next missionary journey. At least, that's how I read it.Bless you. I want to say one last thing about this section, and that is this. Paul had learned, on his missionary journeys, as he spread the gospel, that opposition was an opportunity. And that trials were a chance for testimony. He had been through a lot. And he had watched Stephen as he stood surrounded by enemies with stones in their hands,give the greatest testimony. And now, Paul, as he stood surrounded by enemies, the center of the audience hall, a small man with a crooked nose and balding, he was not afraid to give testimony, to see the opposition as an opportunity, and to give. testimony amidst his trial.He did so with boldness. What an example. Let's go to now to our final section. That's verses 25 through 32. We're gonna see a pretty unexpected reversal here. But Paul said, I am not out of my mind, O excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. For the king knows And to him now I speak boldly, for I am persuaded that none of these things have escaped his notice.For this has not been done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe. And Agrippa said to Paul, Whoa, in a short time you'd persuade me to be a Christian. And Paul said. Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for these chains.Then the king rose, and the governor, and Bernice, and all those who were sitting with them. And when they had withdrawn, they said to one another, this man is doing nothing to deserve death. And Agrippa said to Festus, this man could have been freed if he had not appealed to Caesar. I don't know about you guys, but Who has the power in this passage?It feels like it should be Agrippa, Festus, Bernice, all the wealthy people assembled. And yet, as we read, that short, crooked nosed, balding preacher,he had all the power. Because it wasn't his power.And when he turns it around and starts asking questions, Questioning the questioner.Well, the questioner has to deflect. And if you notice, the trial ends pretty abruptly after that, doesn't it? Oh, whoa, you're trying to persuade me to be a Christian pretty fast here, Paul, huh? You haven't given me time. And obviously, just a little bit before, we saw Felix. Whoa, you're crazy, you're crazy, whoa, you're so smart, you're crazy.Because that makes sense. They're both deflecting. And if you read earlier in, uh, this account when we heard, uh, Paul giving his testimony to Felix, speaking with him, the same thing happens. It says that Felix grew afraid and dismissed Paul.The questioner has become the questioned. There's been a reversal in the room.That's because when the testimony of a believer is preached and when the gospel is preached like that,all the power is in the testimony. All the power lies with Paul here.I want to put shoes to this passage. That's what Mark would say, at least. Or, I'll put the cookies on the bottom shelf. He's got a lot of those. I need to learn some more of those. Application. I certainly don't want to steer you in a direction that the Spirit's not steering you. So, if there's stuff that is coming out of this that's speaking directly into your heart, I'm not, I'm not dismissing that.But the thing that I heard in this passage was Loudly, 1 Peter 3, 15 through 16, and we're going to have that on the screen. I think I only had 15, oh no, good, they fixed it because they're always on it like, like that. Um, 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 15 through 16. I think Paul's modeling for us an amazing example of what Peter is telling us about here in this passage.But in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord is holy. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that you have. Yet do it with gentleness and respect having a good conscience so that when you are slandered Those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame Here's the thing church if you've met Jesus on your Damascus Road If your story is I was once in darkness and now I am in light I was once in the power of Satan and now I am in the power of God if that's your story Then you, like Paul, are called to be a witness to the things which you have seen.Every one of you stands in an audience hall, whether you know it or not, and all around you is gathered, the great and the small,and they're questioning you and they're asking you a reason for the hope that you have, even if they haven't asked it out loud.You have a high call on your life. You've been bought with a price. You've been knocked off your horse.And so that call means not only that you get to enjoy the new life that is in Jesus, but that you get to bring others with you. And that comes only when you do as Paul does. And when you recognize that I don't have to defend myself,I'm called to defend the gospel. Because the gospel is what defends me.Paul wasn't there. Because Paul had done all these things. Paul wasn't there because Paul had a change of heart. Paul was there because Jesus conquered him. And Jesus was using him as his instrument to the Jews and the Gentiles and to their kings. And now Paul says, I wish to God that all of you, great and small, short in a short time or in a long time would become as I am from darkness to light.I think Paul's example shows us three ways that we can approach walking as Christians, recognizing that our life is an audience hall.First, Paul gave his answer with gentleness and respect. It's so easy for us to, maybe we find ourselves in a position where we, we, we want to evangelize, or we want to share the gospel, or someone's come to us and they're sharing all these things, and we jump so fast, we're like, whoa, I got a story for you, you're a sinner and you need to jump into grace because that's the only way, and you just go straight into that.But you haven't gone in with gentleness and respect. You see. Because Paul went in with gentleness and respect, he also took the shared understanding that he had with King Agrippa and used it.I think you need to know people a little bit. Or at least, know their, their type, know their, their heart a little bit. Ask God to give you that and to go and to begin with gentleness and respect. If Paul could do that to a man who is from a line of kings and rulers, who had murdered, tortured, and killed many influential and important Christians.And if Paul could give that man respect,then we can give others gentleness and respect, even as we give them an answer for the hope that we have. Second, Paul gives us an example by being unafraid to share the darkness of his past, even when on trial for his life.In order to share, You need to share your testimony. You need to share where Jesus has brought you from. To show the darkness so that you can show the light of Jesus. From the power of Satan to the power of God. But if you're unwillingto boldly declare your own weakness, your own past, your own brokenness, how can you expect them to? Paul was showing them in his testimony, I was no different than you. Your angry Jewish Pharisees enraged at me for following Jesus. I was just like you. I was worse than you. I chased them down to foreign cities.I persecuted them in every place I found them and I approved of their death. Even as you are seeking to murder me, I sought to murder and persecute many. But Jesus,we have to be willing to share the darkness of our past to demonstrate the light of Jesus in our present and future. Lastly, this Paul never grew tired of sharing his testimony. I don't exactly know how old Paul was here, but he wasn't a young man. And it has certainly been many, many years since that moment on the Damascus Road.But in just eight chapters, an eight chapter span, we're given twice where Paul gives his testimony. I'm sure he gave it many more times. What's your story with Jesus? Remember it. Share it often. Proclaim it to those who are without hope and share the hope that you have in Jesus. Your testimony is a powerful weapon to bring people out of darkness and into light.From the power of Satan to the power of God.One important caveat that this, this, uh, this passage shows us about sharing our testimony, about giving a reason for the hope that we have is this. You could do everything right and it could still be rejected. It could still be ridiculed. Because, People kick against the goads.To accept this testimony as true is to give up control. Did you see all these men in this story? All these governors who are clinging to control? Who are desperate to keep their power? The Jews who are jealous of the power that Paul is showing. They're desperate to keep their influence over the people.They're clinging to their own power and control. Is it any wonder that they couldn't accept this Jesus? Who says, Give up control. Take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest from your souls. But first you've got to let go.People reject that all the time. Doesn't mean we should stop sharing our testimony.The last thing is this, a simple question. Are you kicking against the goats?Have you been prodded in your spirit? Maybe just about something. Maybe you're a believer and the Lord's prodding you in your spirit and you're, you're pushing him off. It's only hurting you, friend.It's not hurting the goat. But at a deeper level, maybe you're here and you're not yet saved. Or maybe you don't even know what that means. Maybe all this stuff about Jesus and you're kind of trying it out but you don't understand. But you're feeling a call to accept this Jesus.You feel caught in darkness. Like you're in a power of... you don't understand and you just want to be free. You just want to see. If that's you, don't kick against the goats. Turn your life over to Jesus. It'll be the best thing you've ever done.And for those of us who have turned our lives over to Jesus, let's repentance.Let's not grow weary in well doing. Let's not grow tired of telling our stories. Let's spend time with Jesus. Would you pray with me? Lord, thank you for your word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Lord, thank you that totally independent of My own intentions, your word will speak to people where they are.Thank you that your word when preached rises above ours and is heard. God, I pray that you would help us to become more like Paul. To become more like Jesus. Like Stephen. And as we look out at a world that has put us on trial. And that puts us through trials that we would not be tempted, Lord, to seek our own defense, but instead bring the gospel in defense.And watch as you reverse our circumstances, Lord, not in the exterior, but in the heart. Lord, I just pray, give us people in mind now. If we are. Believers, Lord, give us people in our hearts that we can think of that are maybe our audience. People that we can speak life into, that we can share our testimony to.Not discluding the dark parts of our past so that we can proclaim the righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus and that we are sanctified by nothing else but faith in him. Lord, we thank you and we pray your will in our lives. Amen.
Acts 25:13-27When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about aa certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive.
Sermon Transcript:Morning everybody. Invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Acts as we return to our series, The Spirit at Work to the Ends of the Earth, in Acts chapter 25 this morning. We're going to be picking up a passage, Pastor Mike, um, began for us, uh, the first half of the chapter, but Acts chapter 25, and I'm going to read the first phrase of it, um, And then I'm going to talk a little bit about it, and then I'm going to read the rest of it by way of introduction this morning.Okay, Acts chapter 25. I'm going to verse 13. And we're going to end up reading verse 26 all the way through. But verse 13 now. Here's what it reads in Acts 25 verse 13. Now when some days had passed. All right, we're going to stop right there. Because I want to talk about those days. And I want to, I want to set the table of where we are.First we're going to pray, and then we're going to dive into this passage. I'm going to acknowledge at the beginning, there's some history here. So you guys that hate history, hang with us. There's a reason we're talking history. Those of you that like history, this is a good one. A lot in here. Okay. Let's pray.Lord, we praise you for a beautiful morning. We're reminded as we drove over today in our cars, we look around us and it's easy to say, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. God, thank you for the privilege of corporate praise, worship, and now Father, the joy of coming under the scriptures and being instructed from your word.God, lead us to the things that you have for us to learn today. In Jesus name, Amen. When we come to this passage, it's been an active two years for Paul ever since he hit the shores of Judea. Remember he had been on the missionary journey, it's been a number of years away from the, what we call the Holy Land.He is now returning for the first time, and for the first time he's coming to Jerusalem in over eight years. As he comes, there are a variety of things that have happened. One is, beginning in chapter 21, the middle of it, bringing us up to where we are in chapter 25. Paul was arrested. It was a giant riot.They were literally trying to tear him apart. The Roman soldiers rescued him. They then put him in prison in Jerusalem. And then they found out that there were 40 assassins that had promised they would never eat again until they had killed Paul. So a troop of hundreds of Roman soldiers escorted him to 75 miles north, still a prisoner, to Caesarea, which was the center of Roman influence and authority.The governor's place was up in Caesarea. And that's where they took him. As they did so, they put him in Caesarean prison. And while there, the Jewish council, the leadership of Israel, Sanhedrin, the 70 leaders, came the 75 miles to bring railing accusations against Paul. They wanted him dead. They wanted the Romans to execute him.The first governor that talks to him is a guy named Governor Felix. And he can't find anything to condemn him with. And so he keeps him in jail. He sends the Sanhedrin, this Jewish council, back to Jerusalem. And Paul is there for two years in prison. We don't know anything else except he's there for two years.At the end of the two years, Felix is replaced as a governor. And a new governor is put in. This guy is Governor Festus. And he also, as soon as the Sanhedrin hear there's a new governor, they get his ear, they come up 75 miles again, they present their case. And they ask, can you send him to Jerusalem? And we'll, we'll form the council.You can still preside over it. But we'll be your, your, your jury that will join with you. And so he brings Paul out. They confront him again. And Festus can't find anything with him. And so he says to Paul in the chapter of chapter 25, the beginning of our, our text this morning. He basically says, uh, Paul, would you like to go back?to Jerusalem with these guys. And Paul knows what that means. Paul knows there's no justice for him in Jerusalem. He knows it will be a death sentence. So he appeals to the higher court. And he said, I appeal to Caesar. Well, this totally throws Festus. He wasn't expecting this. Here's the spot he's in.Number one, he has no accusations. He, he has to accede to this Roman citizen's request to go to Rome because he is saying, I, I don't think I'm going to get just treatment here. So this is a tough spot for Festus. Number one, because if he sends Paul to Rome without charges, The governor looks like a dope.Well, why'd you send him to the court of Caesar? On the other hand, if he says the real reason he's doing this because the Rome, the Jewish leaders are, are determined to see sentence executed on this guy, so I gotta do something with him. The second dilemma he's got. Is now the, the, the messaging to Rome is yeah, these Jewish leaders, I can't, I can't control them.Well, that's the very reason historically we're told that his predecessor was removed from office. So the result is he does nothing. He sends the, the Sanhedrin back to Jerusalem. We come to our passage this morning, and when we get here, we find a fascinating discussion that takes place. Paul's not involved.It's a conversation between two Roman governors, leaders. One is called Agrippa, who shows up, and it's a great moment for Governor Festus because Agrippa actually is Jewish. He's also been raised in the household of Caesar in Rome. So he gets roman law. He also gets these jews, which festus does not. He doesn't understand their law.He doesn't understand. He doesn't even know who the christos is Uh the messiah and so he shows up and we have in this passage this conversation between two roman authorities About paul. We don't hear him speaking We hear him being talked about and what I want to do this morning is to give you the backstory Of these Roman governors and particularly the unique political cultural moment that's going on right now as we read this passage and then show in the midst of all that was transpiring how Paul handled it, how he responded to it because it is in the moment of confusion for all the players involved here.In the first century Judea, the Romans and their leaders, the Jews and their leaders, the people of the way, the Christians who have embraced the way, for all of them, their world is in chaos. And Paul sits in a Roman jail in the middle of it all. He's a bastion of con confidence and certainty. He is anchored to the right things.Paul serves as a mentor to us in 2023. We are in a season of confusion. Culturally, our day has been called the most divisive time in America over the last 100 years. Political tension, cultural divide, mistrust of authority structures, riots in major cities, innumerable public shootings, the most extreme edges of both political parties speaking with loud and disruptive voices, increasing the divide and ratcheting up the hostility.Paul can teach us where to anchor ourselves in such unsettling seasons of life. But we need to understand the sea of confusion he lived in and how relevant and how powerful his anchoring is for our own experience today. We learned some of that as we get to know these guys in Acts chapter 25. And I'd like to now read a little more of the passage that I started.Acts 25 verse 13 and again now Festus has just heard Paul say I appeal to Rome and he says well to Rome you'll go and here's what happens now when some days had passed Agrippa the king and Bernice that's his sister arrived at Caesarea and greeted Festus and as they stayed there many days Festus laid Paul's case before the king saying there is a man left prisoner by Felix and when I was at Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the Jews laid out their case against it Asking for a sentence of condemnation against him, I answered that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met with the accusers face to face, and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him.So when they came together here, I made no delay, but on the next day took my seat on the tribunal and ordered the man to be brought. When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus who was dead But whom Paul asserted to be alive.Being at a loss how to investigate these questions I asked whether he wanted to go to Jerusalem and be tried their concern regarding them But when Paul had appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of the emperor, I ordered him to be held until I could send him to Caesar. Then Agrippa said to Festus, I'd like to hear this man myself.Tomorrow, said he, you will hear him. So on the next day, Agrippa and Bernas came with great pomp, and they entered the audience hall with the military tribunes and the prominent men of the city. Then at the command of Festus, Paul was brought in. And Festus said, King Agrippa, and all who are present with us, You see this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me, both in Jerusalem and here, shouting that he ought not to live any longer.But I found that he had done nothing deserving death, and as he himself appealed to the Emperor, I decided to go ahead and send him. But I have nothing definite to write to my Lord about him. Therefore, I have brought him before you all, and especially before you, King Agrippa, so that after we have examined him, I may have something to write.For it seems to me unreasonable in sending a prisoner not to indicate the charges against him. Okay, let's pray.Lord, I'm grateful for this passage and this whole context in Acts. To me, it's exciting to hear the connection between the broader world and what's taking place among the people of God. And to be struck, God, how we who also live in a bigger world with bigger stuff going on, which affects our daily lives too, that Lord, we can learn from Paul just where our anchors need to be in our lives as people who ultimately live as citizens of your kingdom.So teach us to that end, Lord, please, in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, I want to talk about the season of confusion and then at the end, briefly, a couple of some thoughts, takeaways, regarding Paul's anchors. First of all, it is a season of confusion here in the first century Judea. Paul's mission seems to be in confusion.Acts 1 8 was the statement that was made where the spirit was promised to come on the church and Acts 1 8 says but you will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. We see the picture of this taking place in Acts chapter 1 through 21.And here's the sequence that has taken place. In AD 29 to 35, they have taken the gospel, as recorded in Acts 1 through 7, to Jerusalem. And then over the next 9, 10 years, to Judea and Samaria, recorded in Acts 8 through 12. And then in AD 50, Paul has taken it with his associates to the ends of the earth.Three missionary journeys have taken place in Acts 13 through 21, first half. So it makes sense, right? This is the way it should play. This is, this is what God said. The gospel's gonna go forth to the ends of the earth. And Paul is the human agent that is the primary focus, but Peter's doing it. Uh, others are joining with him.And then we come to Acts chapter 21, the middle of the chapter. And it's a bewildering change. In A. D. 58 and 59, when Paul arrives in Jerusalem, he's arrested. He's put in prison. Then he's put in a Caesarean prison for over, for two years. As he is then, um, sent to Rome as a prisoner. He's in jail for Rome, to Rome for two to three years.He is a prisoner of Rome for the last seven and a half chapters of the book of Acts. And we say, what? What's going on? I mean, what about the power of the Spirit? Coming upon you. What about the gospel going to the ends of the earth and this strategic, you know, plan that Paul had, you know, how he was going to take the gospel and start churches in Rome and then he said, I want to go on to Spain.Remember all this? I, I, he had a strategy. The fourth missionary journey was going to be the biggest and the best. It never happens. And we are looking at a scene that it gives us some degree of confusion. What's going on in the plan and purposes of God? And the mission of fall and the mission of the church the second area we find confusion is the culture of the day Rome is now in judea a little bit of background.It's 59 ad. Okay a little over a hundred years before Rome had entered this part of the world and extended their empire far enough to the farthest eastern border of the Mediterranean Sea. There, guys like Juliet Caesar was fighting there, uh, others, but they had, they had encroached. Pompey had actually come a general and, and beat down Jerusalem, burned the temple.And, as they have come in, the Romans have replaced the Greeks, the Babylonians, others that have been over the, The Jews for centuries, but the Romans are different. They're much more controlling. They allow them to have their religion. They allow them to have a pseudo leadership in the Sanhedrin, but they also appoint their own guys.But for the most part, the Jews are able to handle it primarily because a Jewish governor named Herod is appointed by the Romans. He sides with the right Roman general. And this guy, Herod the Great, serves for 45 years over the entire area of Judea. Way up above the Sea of Galilee and all the way down, way below Jerusalem.The whole area is under his, his governorship. He dies just after Jesus is born. Alright, so now we're into the A. D. 's. And this guy now has started the Herodian line.We used to have a baptismal tank in days gone by and it would sit right here when there was baptism and One time I went back and I felt straight back to the back Mercifully and to the great disappointment of every teenager in the room There was plywood on the top so I didn't go all the way in and my feet sticking up out of the water But so this that's child's play.Okay, so so so the Herodian line starts Okay with Herod and now he has sons and he divides up his kingdom and it's divided into three different areas And and they've continued now we come down and it's 44 AD And in 40, excuse me, yeah, 44 AD, the father of this guy Agrippa that shows up and is going to question Paul dies.He was an interesting guy. He was the guy that put to death James, the brother of John, and arrested Peter in Jerusalem to put him to death. But God took his life soon after that. This Agrippa, who was the only male... Uh, descendant of the line was only 17 years old, so they didn't make him the governor of the whole area.It just gave him a little parcel up above the of the Sea of Galilee. So, for the first time, the Romans don't have a Jewish member of the household of Herod to put over the governorship of Judea. And so from 44 A. D. to now, 15 years later, they've been sending these guys from Rome who don't know anything about Judaism.I mean, their religions, uh, Roman religion, you have hundreds of gods. You have dozens of temples all over the world. I mean, every time you want to worship one of your gods, you can find a temple somewhere. But these Jews are different. They have one god. They have one temple, they don't get them, they don't get their laws, they don't get their practices, they don't get how they're structured.They have this scripture. The Romans didn't have a Bible. They don't understand this, that the Jews say is inspired of God and it's relevant, even though it was written hundreds of years before. It was an entirely different way of doing life. As a matter of fact, religion was so foundational to the Jews, that the civil leaders, political leaders, are all looked at as religious authorities to some degree.So it's a very bewildering situation. And unfortunately, they don't send their best to Judea. And one after another, these Roman guys come in and utterly offend the Jews. This guy, Felix, who served from 52 to 59. Is one example. I, I, hold on, I'm gonna wait on that. I, I'll come back to that. Okay. So what they're doing, and one Jewish scholar, one of the, one of the preeminent histories of the Jews is put together by a man named Emil Schur.And I put his quote up. He said, it might be thought from the record of the Roman pure Procurators that he's appointed governors, that they all as if by secret arrangement, systematically and deliberately set out to drive the people.Now they didn't, but it seemed that way. It was just, they did everything wrong. Again, now, it's 59 AD, right? That's where, when Paul is in Caesarea, which is the center of Roman influence. in the entire region. It's where the governor resides. It's where more of the soldiers and legionaries are. Paul's in prison there and he's meeting with these Roman governors.Six years later, the Roman leaders have made one too many mistakes. And the Zealots, a guerrilla organization of Jews utterly opposed to Rome, begin burning Roman homes. Begin, uh, slaying, killing. assassinating Roman soldiers and Roman leaders. Everything has ratcheted up. The zealots in 66 AD actually become strong enough, six and a half years later, that they take over the city of Jerusalem and they drive out the entire Antonia fortress.of legionnaires. They flee to Caesarea. They have now declared themselves in absolute revolt against Rome. Nero, the emperor of Rome, begins to load his ships, legionnaires. They make their way from 66 A. D. and on they begin to Come to the countryside of Judea arriving in Caesarea and then coming south conquering cities villages and eventually come after crushing all opposition until they arrive for a terrible siege of The city of Jerusalem and I just have a couple of paintings here This particular one is just depicting the Romans.They're beginning their siege on the city of Jerusalem It resulted in starvation in the city and eventually the breaching of the walls. In this next painting, there is the visual, and if you can see in the left hand corner, there's uh, the menorah, the golden lamp stand is being taken out. The Romans breached the city, they went in, they took all the articles, the Ark of the Covenant, the menorah, the table of showbreadth, took all of the holy vessels and actually transported it back to Rome as far as we know.Even though Raiders of the Lost Ark is sure where it went, um, not sure about it.There was a terrible slaughter of thousands of inhabitants. It has been deemed by many historians The greatest massacre of a city in the entire history of the ancient world was a city that was, there are stories that come out by writers of, of parents actually eating babies. It was, they would, they would die.It was desperate circumstances. This horrific moment and the result of it was the city, including the temple, was utterly destroyed by fire. Everyone was left homeless, refugees. The nation of Israel is destroyed at this moment. And it all took place 6. 5 years from Paul's interview with these Roman governors.I want to put this in context. If the USA was about to enter a civil war that resulted in the complete destruction of our country, Six and a half years would mean that if you were watching the Super Bowl victory in 2017 of the Eagles, this morning, the USA would be in a nation destroying civil war. This is how close Paul's account in Acts 25 is to the utter destruction of the nation.And all of the seeds of that are felt by everybody. Felix, let me just show you the other Roman governors. I'm going to try to bring all this together. Why am I saying all this? In A. D. 59, the world of Judea was in chaos. Felix, this governor I mentioned, was appointed in 52 to 59. He was a terrible leader.He was always overplaying his hand with harshness. One of the things he did in A. D. 57 was there was an Egyptian Jew that came, said he had a dream that, and he, and he got a, he got a following of hundreds of soldiers or, or people that joined his band, marauding rebels. And they were planning on attacking the Antonio Fortress, the Jerusalem Fortress of Legionnaires.Um, word got out about it. And Felix responded so violently, uh, in, in torturing and killing all these people. Some people he pulled in that were just suspected. They were wiped out. And it was so vitriolic in his response, that it was one of two major events that he did that actually caused the Roman emperor to say, you've got to get you out of there.You're just stoking the fire so hard. It's interesting, if you remember when Paul went into the temple area and the Roman, uh, tribune there arrested Paul. And he said, who are you? And he said, and Paul told him who he was. He says, that's not who I thought you. I thought you were the Egyptian guy. He actually identifies in a beautiful merging of history and Bible history.He said, I thought you were that guy because that guy escaped. It was so much on people's minds. This is a hotbed of turmoil. Festus then comes in in AD 59 when Felix is taken out. But he only, and he's the procreators historically, and we have a lot of record of this in Jewish and Roman writings. He's sent to Ancestry again.He's a better ruler, but he dies in office in his second year. He knew nothing of Judaism or Christianity as we see from this account. Who is Agrippa? This is the other thing to mention. He's the Roman governor of a smaller province. He's a favorite of the emperor. At this point, he's only 32 years old. He comes with his sister, and, um, he's been raised in Caesar's household.And not only has he been given the province in the north that eventually included most of Galilee, the northern part, But he also because he's jewish they gave him the responsibility. He was actually given the roman responsibility To appoint the jewish high priest every year, which was offensive to the jews And secondly, he was also in charge of all their vestments He kept the clothes that they wore on the day of atonement Their infiltration is everywhere.He actually was a pretty good man. Probably the best of the of the But you have Roman leaders that don't know anything about Judaism. Nationalism in Israel is at an absolute fevered pitch. National terrorist movement is increasing in influence among the zealots. There's chaos, confusion that everyone can sense.And it's only getting more rancorous and volatile by the volatile by the moment. The church felt. Confusion. They felt it with the Jews and their Gentile issue. We've seen that already. And again, I'm just trying to summarize these chapters. The Jews, you remember when Paul arrived in Judea after his missionary journeys?You remember what they did? James, the head of the church, who is Jesus half physical brother, he came with all the elders from the church and they met Paul right at the port city. Before he even, it's like he got off the boat and, Ha! Paul, we've been waiting for you. They met with him, and they said, Paul, you got to keep a low profile.And you know you're not good at this, but you need to keep a lid on it. Things are so volatile for us.Because you're out there taking the gospel to the Gentiles, to the goyim, to the heathen. The very people that our nation is feeling are, are, are disdaining us and dishonoring us. In these Roman leaders and these Roman soldiers in our cities. The zealots are active. The religious leaders are hostile. And you're the one now that is champing what we believe in.Embracing gentiles into, into, into our faith. Into allowing them to enjoy Jesus as their messiah too. Man, you gotta, you gotta keep it cool. And Paul to his credit did. It still didn't help. They still rioted. And they still tried to kill him. The Jew and gentile thing is big for the church. Their own struggle with the godless government as Christians was big.The Romans did not understand the difference between Jews and Jews of the way. Those that embrace Jesus as their Messiah. They were all lunged together and undoubtedly Christian Jews were politically charged as well. They hated the Romans. They hated, they wanted their homeland back. So Paul wrote to the churches in his two letters, his two major big general letters, the book of Ephesians and the book of Romans that were designed to be passed along to other churches And in those letters, in both of them, he talks about the political issue.In Ephesus, he says, I want to remind you guys, your citizenship is not of this world, you're members of Jesus kingdom. The other thing he does, in Romans, is said, this is how you respond to, to governing leaders. Basically, the church is in the center of the storm. Paul is in the very eye of the storm. They're in Caesarea.Where the main Roman troops were where the governor of Judah had his headquarters and in the midst of the storm of national cultural confusion and chaos Where did Paul? Anchor his thinking and living and I want to highlight. I'm just gonna hit two of them two quick things Number one where Paul placed his anchor was in the power of God it's striking if you look at our our passage this morning that we read in Acts chapter 25 as festus He says, and we don't hear his interview of Paul, all that he said, but he summarizes it.And this was his takeaway. Basically, um, the Jews had certain points of dispute. This is Acts 25, 19 with Paul about their own religion. And about a certain Jesus, who is dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. This was his takeaway. He said, I don't know much about this guy at all. I, I certainly, I don't even know who this Jesus is.But Paul's whole thing is about this man Jesus, who everybody testifies, nobody disagrees. He was dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. He's dead and Paul he just he said he's alive. So that's the whole thing I mean, how do I write the Caesar about this? I got this guy that thinks a guy came back from the dead So I'm sending him to you because I couldn't resolve the issue.So he said what do I do with this thing? What we see again is the the centrality to Paul about the resurrection of Christ to Paul two things Were true about the resurrection of Jesus Number one, the resurrection was the center of everything he believed. The second thing is, the resurrection is always the evidence of God's power in the believer's life.He writes this all the time, but in Acts 24, 21, when he's talking to Felix, the first governor, here's what he said. Basically, I was purified when I went into the temple. I didn't take Gentiles in. I didn't speak against the laws of the practices. There were none of those things. Basically, what, what, what is the issue here is, and he says the one thing was that I said that Jesus Christ is rise, risen from the dead.He said that is my message. That is what I believe. That's what I have built my entire life on. In Acts 26 verse 23, he's going to be speaking to Festus and to Agrippa. And he's going to make this statement, Jesus Christ being the first to rise from the dead. And Festus interrupts him and he says, Paul, you're insane.He says, much learning has made you insane. And he just keeps going on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. In Ephesians 19, Paul says this, I'm praying that you Christians will know this. Excuse me, Ephesians 1. 19. He has two prayers. It's the first one. I want you. I'm praying that you will know this. What is the immeasurable greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead.Paul says, I want you to have a big God. I want you to have a vision of the God that raised Christ in the dead. Now we 20 century centuries later, we'll say, well, You know? Yeah, I, I get it. I mean, of course I believe Jesus rose in the dead. That's why, I mean, I believe I'm serving a living Christ, but these guys are actually living among a generation of people that saw and knew of the death of Christ.And he says there is nothing more astounding than the fact that. Jesus Christ rose from the dead victorious over death and the same power that was expressed in him rising from the dead is now lived out in our lives. He said, I'm leaning into this God. I'm leaning into a God that is big. Whose power was exemplified in such a way is what fills my heart is what fills my mind The biggest things christians need today in a day of confusion and and media Terror and bad news bad news.You need a bigger god You need a god that's big enough to trust a god. That's sovereign a god. That's mighty a god. That's omnipotent It has all power. Paul had that God. And in the midst of utter confusion and chaos on every side, he stood in the midst of, here's the, here's the Jews on one side, and in six years they are going to be leading, they are going to be part of a rebellion that is going to stand against Rome, that is going to actually destroy their nation.And on the other side, he's standing with people. that represent that very power of Rome at the highest levels in this part of the world. And he said, You know what? I don't see how any of this is gonna work out. I don't see how we're gonna work this through. I don't see how this, it just seems totally chaotic, totally terrifying.But he said, I got, I got a big God. I got a God I can lean into, I can trust in. It's a season for Him, for us, to embrace the bigness of God. The second thing, Paul put his trust in God's promises. In Acts 23 verse 11, while Paul was in the Jerusalem jail, and is just about to find out from his nephew, that there are 40 assassins out there that are are vowed they'll never eat again until this guy has been killed.In Acts 23 11, God comes to Paul and says this. The following night, the Lord stood by Paul and said, Take courage for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome. Paul said, I don't I don't know how it's gonna work out. Little did he know it would come to a place where he realized I don't I don't have any.There's no safety. among, in Jerusalem for me. I can't trust the authorities. I can't trust the leadership. I can't trust judicious decisions. So I'm appealing to Rome. Little did he know that his own desperation would be the very means that God would be of fulfilling his promise to him to send him to Rome.He didn't expect he'd be going as a prisoner. He thought he'd be going as a, as a church planning champion. But he had the promise that God had plans for him and purposes for him. The promises of God are given to us to be our hope in the beautiful story. Pilgrim's progress. Pilgrim and hopeful are in prison.His name is Christa. Actually, he was the pilgrim. They were in doubting Castle. This giant despair has brought him in. He beats him. He's continually beat him, and he's made it clear that the next morning he's gonna kill them and they're lying. They're bloody bruised. And, uh, they're pretty down. It's called Doubting Castle, and he's called Giant Despair for a reason, in the allegory of Pilgrim's Progress.And as he's there, all of a sudden, Christian remembers that in his pocket, he has this key that had been given to him, and it's called the key of promise. And he said, I forgot. I have the promise. I have the key that opens the doors. And so he began, he says, I'll bet this will open the door. So one door after another, a prison of the castle is open until they get to the creaky main gate.And again, they're able to get out. And the picture that Bunyan is drawing is, It is always the promises of God that is our way out of despondency and despair. It is leaning into what God has promised to be true. Filling our minds with scripture. Filling our minds with the promises that He has given to us.And is willing to give to you today, if you take the time to listen. Paul leaned into those promises. He trusted in that power. And he was a center, in the center of the storm. He was anchored. We can be too. It is not any more volatile in your life than it was for Paul's. Right now, at this moment in history.Volatile season. But Christians stand tall and strong to the power of God and the promises of God. Lord, thank you for being that and doing that in our lives. Thank you even for the glimpse of history, to just put ourselves in a situation that, no matter what's going on in our lives, there are historic visuals in scripture, that you have been the God who regularly, consistently, beautiful, delivers your people to your own glory.Lord, let us lean into that reality today, I pray, in Jesus name.
Luke 22:7-20And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
Sermon Transcript:Well, good morning. My name is Justin and I was one of the youth interns here this summer at fellowship.And, um, we had an incredible summer. Uh, God worked in a ton of incredible ways. And, um, we want to give you guys the chance to hear from some of them through our announcement team and our worship team. Um, and in just a few moments, there are going to be a couple of students who came on a couple of our trips, either our Danville missions trip, our Congressman week, or our Panther missions trip.And they're just going to tell you. Just a little bit about, um, what they've done and how God works. So would you join me in welcoming Ben up here?Good morning. My name is Ben Schell, and I'm in the ninth grade at the King's Christian school. Over this past summer I was part of the 2023 missions trip to Danville, Virginia. This trip was for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Partnering with an organization called Sun Servants, we worked at God's Pit Crew, a non profit disaster relief organization.Here we swept him off the warehouse so that the volunteers could pack blessing buckets for disasters to come. We also tore up old flooring and repainted the warehouse walls. Along with working at God's Pit Crew, we also ran a vacation Bible school at the local Salvation Army. We sang songs, performed skits, and made crafts to teach the kids about Jesus.Then on the last day, we split into two groups. One going to a Salvation Army thrift store to help sort items, and the other group went to a local homeless shelter, where we put together a room and cleaned up debris. At night, every day, we would have what we call family time, where we'd all gather around and Ryan or Jared would ask us discussion questions.The first family time, we were asked why we came on the mission's trip. After a little while, someone would answer the question, and then we'd kind of just wait until someone else was brave enough to answer. After all, we didn't really know most of each other, so why would we just answer the question in front of people we hardly knew?But by the end of the week, you could see how much God had changed our friendships. He had united a couple of middle schoolers into an amazing family. During this week, God had created new friendships that are sure to last. Now back to that first family type of question. Some of the answers varied from, it sounded fun, or I went last time, and I was invited by a friend.But I can guarantee you that next year, our answers would definitely sound a little different. I think they would sound like, I made great friends last time, or I really saw God working when I went last year. Alright, as I said before, we worked with a group called Sun Servants, and their theme verse is John 12, 26.Whoever serves me will follow me, and where I am, my servant will be. The Father will honor the one who serves me, which they shortened into, to love is to serve. Just like how they, how it says in Mark 10, 45, Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.During the mission trip, I was able to see God and people who serve with so much love and joy, sacrificing their time and money to serve God with others with no intention of serving themselves. As to, as love, to love is to put someone else's joy before your own, serving is a way that we can show our love to one another.One thing I realized is that we don't need to paint walls and tear up floors in order to serve. But we can serve in other ways, from holding the door to picking up trash. During this trip, I was really able to see God work in many amazing and magnificent ways. He made friends and memories that will remain in our hearts for as long as we live.Thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day.Hello everyone.My name is Genevieve Ankar. I'm a sophomore at Haddon Heights High School. I go to the Collingswood Campus and the youth group here in Mount Laurel. I went on most of the summer ministries they offered this summer. One of the summer ministries I went on was Collingswood Week VBS with Leader Up. Leader Up is a Christian ministry supported by our church.They are committed to developing leaders from the area near our Collingswood campus. Each camp day started with breakfast with the campers, a four class rotation including Bible class taught by our high school team, lunch, and a closing program. Kongswood Week was such an amazing experience for me. It grew me so much closer with the Lord, and how much his presence changed my life.If I'm being honest, I was very nervous going into the week, because I was going to be doing things that got me really out of my comfort zone. But with the love of the teens and leaders and God, I was able to have a great time teaching the kids Bible stories, memory verses, and great songs. Even having to practice over and over again in front of the leaders until we got it right was so worth it.The kids were awesome and so fun to teach. Their energy to learn every day about the Bible and Jesus just made it so much more enjoyable. One of my favorite parts of the week was having the nightly sermons where we all got together and worshipped the Lord and just connected. The friendships I made that week will always be so special to me, as well as the memories.I will remember Collinswood Week forever, and I'm definitely going back next year. Thank you.Hey everyone. My name is Tyler Stewart. I am in 11th grade, so junior year, and I go to the King's Christian School. The trip that I went on that I'm going to give my testimony about is the Panther trip to West Virginia. The place where we stayed at was like an old school, and I thought it was like the coolest thing ever.It was like an abandoned school, except it wasn't abandoned anymore because we were staying in it, and I think the church there owns it now. I remember walking in and instantly thought of, like, the boxcar children. I felt like this childlike sense of wonder. I kind of felt like this was going to be a really cool adventure.And while I was walking in, I heard multiple people saying things like, I'm home, I'm back, finally back. I loved every second of the trip. When we arrived, we were split into different work groups, mixing with the other churches. That also came. I think it was two other churches, but the FCC group was, uh, the largest.The groups we were split into, we were given tied wristbands corresponding to the color group we were. I was blue, and our blue, and our blue group, we ended up calling ourselves Blue Tacoma. So we'd go to our work sites and build anything from decks to house foundations to carports. And many of us were able to interact and build relationships with the owners of whoever's house or property we were working on.It's a lot slower out there compared to life, uh, we live here in New Jersey, and I really liked it. And God was there with us. I felt like I was with Jesus, like I was eating with Jesus, serving with Jesus, playing games with Jesus, and sleeping with Jesus. But it wasn't like a big spiritual high, like I was actually having a spiritual low that week which had started the week before.It felt like even though I was feeling kind of down and anti social, like Jesus was still there with me. And Jesus didn't let me in my weakness get in the way of forming bonds with new people. He used it so I would have to rely on him through his people. When we were eating dinner and laughing and joking around at the table felt like he was right there eating and joking around with us.When me and the FCC dudes were upstairs rolling dice felt like he was right there with us.It kind of felt like church.Being there really showed me how much I love being with and being one of God's people. I love serving and living with my brothers and sisters. And the servant aspect made such a big difference, I think, because we were there to serve with intentions of something bigger than ourselves. The Kingdom of God.We were there to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus by serving others. The main theme verse of Panther was John 12, 26. Um, Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. And we sang a song of that every night. The song reminded me that to love is to serve.It was, uh, the chorus part of it. I made a lot of memories at Panther. Too many to keep in my head all at once. When I was writing this, they all started coming back to me. I don't think I can think of one memory that doesn't have Jesus in it in some way, shape, or form. I really got to see Jesus demonstrate himself in his people.And that was amazing. Thank you.All right. Give it up for the youth, man.I don't know about you, but it is, uh, it's hard to get up here and talk. Just imagine doing that as a teenager. So really proud of everyone from the Announcements crew to everyone, um, able to help out. Does anyone hear that cricket? Yeah. Okay. He's worshiping too. Don't worry. All Oh my gosh, there's a spider on the stage.Did you guys not see that? Oh my gosh. Okay. Oh, good morning. Uh, my name is Jared Hacking. I happen to be the youth pastor here at SEC, and I love being a part of this Sunday and be able to give you guys kind of just a window of what the youth experience this summer and how they're able to serve him. So thank you so much for sticking with us and, uh, listening attentively as well.We're going to be reading from Luke chapter 22, uh, this morning. We'll be starting in verse 7, looking at, um, one of the recordings of the Last Supper. The disciples, um, celebrating the Passover meal with Jesus.Luke chapter 22, um, starting in verse 7, it says this, Then came the day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go, and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it. They said to him, Where will you have us prepare it? He said to them, Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.Follow him into the house that he enters, and tell the master of the house, the teacher says to you, Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And He will show you a large upper room, furnished, prepare it there. And they went out and found it, just as He had told them, and they prepared the Passover.And when the hour came, He reclined at table, and the apostles with Him, and He said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves.For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup, after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.Let's pray this morning.Lord, thank you so much for who you are. Thank you so much, God, that you have invited us to a meal with you. God, as you invited your disciples into having a meal. God, thank you so much for the, um, many youth, um, who made this summer possible and, and are participating, um, this Sunday, and, and even the ones that, um, participate in are, aren't here.Lord, thank you so much for their hearts of service, God. I pray that you would use these moments, these trips, God, as a seed that would grow, um, into, um, many, uh, much fruit, Lord, for your kingdom, that they would learn to trust you more, depend on you more, and have a greater faith in you, God. And I pray, God, that even, um, us, uh, sitting here in these seats today, God, would be impacted by these youth, Lord.Um, your word clearly says, don't let anyone look down on you. Because you're young God there is your spirit does not look at age God, but he looks at willingness Submission and humility God and and even your word says that we might be like little children for you All right. So I just thank you so much.I pray that your spirit work in and around us This morning and that you let your words speak volumes God. We pray all this in Jesus name Amen. I'm going to be, uh, looking at this passage today and, um, I want to first look back and I just realized that I literally did not print off a passage of mine.Nope, here it is. Okay, we're good. We're good. I thought I was going to have this freestyle. I want to look at this passage this morning and before we really enter into the passage, I just want to look at, because I think we run to the communion table so often and we just want to celebrate communion. And these disciples, um, we understand that they weren't celebrating communion.They were celebrating Passover, right? They were celebrating the Passover meal. And I just want a flashback of what that Passover meal, uh, represented and what it symbolized. And we have to understand that, um, this celebration was different than what we were celebrating today. Um, but it was a time of remembrance for the people of Israel.It was a time to look back and see where they had come from. Um, many of you might already know this story. Some of you might need to be reminded. But I think it's so important that we'd look back and see what actually these disciples and, um, the Jewish people of that day were really looking back. Um, and still to this day what Jewish people are looking back for.Um, Israel is not even a nation, right? If you flash back to the book of Exodus, they were not a nation. They were just a group of people enslaved by the Egyptians, right? They were under this harsh rule of Pharaoh. They were mistreated, um, beaten under this, um, terrible yoke of slavery. If you remember, um, God sent plagues on the Egyptian, multiple plagues, terrible plagues, like locusts and frogs and turning the water into blood and all these things.But one of the worst possible plagues. The last plague was the plague of the firstborn son, right? And Moses did what he continued to do. He marched up and he told Pharaoh, you know, if you don't do this, if you don't let the people go, the Lord is going to take each and every firstborn son from this place here.And you'll hear, um, a cry come out of Egypt for this, but he said, but he told his people, the Israelites, he said, to be saved from this. You're going to take a, uh, unblemished lamb and you're going to sacrifice this lamb for me. And you're going to take the blood of that lamb and you're going to wipe it all over the doorpost, right?All over the doorpost. And when God comes through and he, um, as he comes through, the angel of death comes through, he will pass over these houses that have had the blood smeared all over the posts because Jesus saw and God saw. the sacrifice that was made, um, the sacrifice. And that's where they get the name of Passover, because God's spirit passed.over them. And every part of this Passover meal was symbolic. So the bread that they ate reminded them of the bread that the Israelites ate back in Egypt and the hardship that they endured. There were bitter herbs that they served that reminded them the bitterness of the yoke of slavery. There was salt water actually on the table that reminded them.them of their people's tears and hardship they endured. The main course of the meal was symbolic. It was the lamb. They would eat this sacrificed lamb. Each family would do it. They gave instructions and if you had too small of a family that a lamb was going to be too big, you'd actually go to your neighbor's house and come together in the Passover meal, sharing this together.Each and everything, a part of this Passover meal, was symbolic. It was a, it was a, uh, a moment to remember where the Israelites had come from. Where they, where God had taken them out of Egypt, out of slavery, turning them into a nation. And it was commanded, each and every year, you'll practice this. Each and every year, you'll sit down with your families and have this Passover meal.So this is where we pick up in this passage with the disciples, that this is what they're preparing. This is, everybody was here. A lot of people made the journey into Jerusalem to make this happen. And we get to this portion of scripture and, um, Jesus is telling his disciples to go make preparations.He's kind of gives them this random, uh, command, go find this man. He's going to be carrying water. He, say, go find the room that was prepared for him. And the disciples are like, the disciples have been with Jesus for so long that they're like, yeah, we're, we're going to find the man. There's no doubts now.We'll just find him and I'm sure there will be a room prepared for us. So they go out and they go like they're going to have an ordinary Passover meal, right? They go in and they sit down and Jesus reclines and he just says this beautiful statement. He says, I've been so desirous to have this meal with you today.I've been looking forward to this before I suffer that I might sit down. Now, Jesus flips the script here. He doesn't follow any of the rituals. He literally takes the bread and he's supposed to say something completely different. And he says, this is my body that was broken for you. And then he takes the cup and he's supposed to say something completely different.It's recognized, recognizing and representing something completely different. He says, this is my blood of the new covenant. I mean, these disciples. Just must be so confused. Like, they're like, no, Jesus, I thought you were a Jew. Like, I thought you knew, like, the rituals. Like, what's going on here? They must have been so confused, um, and just kind of discombobulated of what was going on.Imagine they felt, um, how I felt yesterday. I went to my first Phillies game. I know that's surprising. Go Phils, right? Woo. Red October or something like that. Um, I'm not a baseball fan. Um, I like live and breathe soccer. That's what I played growing up. I never played baseball. I tried it one time. I had a neighbor that was really into baseball and we had a catch.We were throwing it back and forth, and like, long story short, the baseball hit me in the face. I'm like, this isn't fun. This ball is really hard, and it's hard to catch. The soccer ball is way big, easier to dodge. I can see it coming, and it's softer. It's not hard. What do they make these things out of? So I went to my first Phillies game with a couple of my buddies to celebrate a birthday, and I had no idea what I was doing.I thought, like, since I understand soccer and some sports, like, I thought I could just, like, jump in and, like, just understand it. They're, it's super confusing. I couldn't even find the score at first. I'm like, what are all these numbers? What's our, like, all the guys next to me that you can ask, I'm like, I'm like, oh, what's our pitcher's name again?What's this guy? What color are we wearing? And I'm just shouting generic phrases out like, catch the ball! Yeah, hit it! Smack it! Hit a dinger. I've heard that someone say that before like I'm just throwing things out because I have no idea what I'm doing I expected that it was gonna be pretty easy to pick up and I didn't even understand how innings work I'm like they switch do they switch every other inning like this We're taking a break now and we're singing a song.This is so strange. Like, soccer is so much simpler. There's 45 minutes. If the ball goes out a lot, they add some minutes to that. Then there's a commercial break. And then there's another 45 minutes. That's it. Alright, you clearly see when people score. There's people hitting it. There's a whole, like, foul ball thing.And, like, it's very confusing. Right? And I just, like, imagine that these disciples Thought they were going into something they could understand, thought they were like, going into a thing that was familiar to them. And they're, they're waiting for the phrases, right? And the liturgy to start happening, and, and, and the correct phrases.And Jesus is saying something completely different, and they must have been confused, right? You have to get in the minds of the disciples here. They didn't believe Jesus was actually gonna die.They thought their Messiah was going to come and conquer, right? They're just waiting. They're like, this is, this is going to be the moment right after Passover. And he's saying, I'm so glad to have this meal with you before I suffer. They're like, suffer? I didn't know that was part of the plan. Jesus, when I signed up, when I, when I joined, you just gave us a lot of fish.And it was like, cool. It was like free candy. Hop on the boat. Like, we're good. This wasn't a part of the plan for them. And now he's breaking bread with them. And he's saying, this is my body that's broken for you. And this is the blood of the new covenant. I mean, what's happening at this meal? They thought they were coming to an ordinary Passover meal.And what's happening in this meal is monumental. Jesus has flipped the script on Passover. He's saying, this bread, this is a symbol of what's going to happen to me. I'm going to be broken. I'm going to be beaten. And I'm going to do it for you. And this glass of wine, this red glass of wine, this represents my blood for you.It's going to be poured out for you. And this blood is the sign of the new covenant. I don't think the disciples were ready to hear that. Although the Jews knew that there was going to be a new covenant to come. It was prophesied all throughout all the Old Testament that there was going to be a new covenant.But here, in this Passover meal, Jesus says, There's a new covenant, and it's in my blood. It'll be sealed in my blood. This was a monumental moment for the disciples and Jesus. They're celebrating the Passover land. The passage said this was the day that the Passover land would be sacrificed. And you know what Jesus is saying here?I, I'm the lamb. I'm the sacrificial lamb that's going to be sacrificed. I'm going to go suffer. I'm, my body's going to be broken. My blood is going to be poured out. I'm sealing the new covenant. I am the Passover lamb. I'm the perfect sacrifice. The one and done. All. All for one complete eternal sacrifice covering over all of our sins.Right before this, the Israelites would continually make sacrifices as part of their daily rituals. As part of their cleansing rituals. To cleanse themselves and ask for forgiveness. What Jesus is saying here is no, there's a new covenant coming. And it's going to be in my blood. And it's going to be poured out for the forgiveness of all people.The Father's wrath has passed over you, and it's being poured out on me, on our Savior. Jesus is telling His disciples that He's going to suffer, and He's going to die, and He's willing to do it for them. And He's willing, and He was willing to do it for you. Like I said, this was prophesied long ago and was highly...Anticipate it by the Jews. There's a passage in Jeremiah 31, um, that I want to read to you. Jeremiah 31, um, starting in verse 31, says this, Behold, the days are coming. This is hundreds of years before, right? The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers. On the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That's what they were celebrating. That's what they were remembering when they, when, when God brought them out of the land of Egypt. He said, That covenant they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor, and each his brother say, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me.From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more. This is the covenant Jesus was talking about. I bet you that the disciples had no idea that they were going to sit down in this meal, and Jesus was going to say, This is the new covenant.It's in me. It's in my blood, and it's for everyone, from the least of you to the greatest, and it will cover all sins. My forgiveness will be on, and not only will I have a law, right, but I'm going to write that law on your hearts and on your minds, right? A couple of chapters later, he's going to promise that he's going to pour out his spirit on his disciples, that we would know without a doubt the Spirit's work in our life, the law written on our hearts and mind.He said that old covenant, your father's broke. Time and time and time again, but this new covenant, it's for you, and there will be forgiveness for your sins. I will remember your sins no more. I will pass over your sins. And what Jesus is saying is, someone's got to take the punishment. Someone has to make the sacrifice for this new covenant, and although the responsibility is on us, although the sin issue is within us, Jesus said, No, my body will be broken.My blood will be poured out. I'm doing this for you. This, this is the new covenant Jesus is talking about. This is the covenant in his blood. This is what it meant to the disciples. They're sitting in this Passover meal thinking, Did he just say, did he just say new covenant? What? Did you hear that? This is what he was doing.Then we come to us today, right? We know what it meant to the Israelites back and what they were remembering that Passover meal. We now understand what the disciples were feeling and what it meant to them, how monumental it was. And then we come today about the Lord's Supper and Communion. And what does it mean to us?Because we know Jesus has died and resurrected, right? We are living in that new covenant today. I don't know if you knew that or not. Spoiler alert. We're in the new covenant, right? So why should we do this? Why should we practice the Lord's Supper? Why should we come here every couple months or so and take communion?Well, one, Jesus said to do it. He said, do this. Do this in remembrance of me. Do this. And Paul actually follows up with a command in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23. He says this, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. In the same way, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then. And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.Paul's literally saying, I've, I've heard this delivered from the Lord. Now I'm giving it to you. He said, do this in remembrance of me and Paul gives it a little and he says, proclaim the Lord's death until he comes, right? So we are to do this until the Lord comes again. We are to practice this. We are to remember his death, remember his sacrifice.It's our opportunity to remember what Jesus did for us, what he sacrificed. His body broken, his blood spilled. I don't know about you, but how often do you take out of your work day or your school day or your home life and say, you know what? I'm going to be intentional and I'm going to think about Jesus death and sacrifice for me.Maybe you do that often and like hats off to you. That's awesome. But I know that. Jesus knew that we were going to need to remember this, to sit in this, to think about it often. It's also our opportunity to examine ourselves, not to flippantly practice communion. All right, Paul makes this clear, um, with a warning, uh, the Corinthians he was writing to were casually approaching communion.If you flash back a couple verses before, like people were showing up to communion drunk, people were showing up to communion like two fools, so they didn't want to participate in communion. People were doing it like by themselves and Paul's like, guys, what are you doing? Right? He was correcting them. He said, don't do this casually.Right? Jesus commanded us, don't do this in an unworthy manner. But do it in a worthy manner, right? And sometimes when we hear that, Oh, don't do it in an unworthy manner, it makes us not want to participate, makes us not want to partake. But Paul's saying, Don't do it in an unworthy manner. Examine yourselves, so then you can practice this, so that you can examine this, so that you can remember the Lord's death.It presents us, communion presents us with an opportunity for confession. And repentance, and gives us the chance to embrace forgiveness and grace. This, that is why Jesus died. He said, my blood will be spilled for the forgiveness of your sin. So we're not asking you, and Paul's not asking you to come to the communion table and perfection.What he's saying is don't come casually and flippantly. What he's saying is examine yourself. Ask God, Lord is there anything I need to repent of? If there's anything, is there a way? I spoke to my wife this past week. Is there a way I spoke to my parents, or my brother, or sister, or how I acted in school this week that I need to think on and bring before the Lord and say, Lord, that wasn't of you, and I'll confess that to you.I want to examine myself so that I might come before you. This process is a process of embracing forgiveness and grace that is freely offered. So what he's saying is, unworthy man, just, just don't come flippant. Don't come casually to the altar of God. God doesn't, um, require perfection of us. What He requires is an open heart before Him.To lay it before Him. Lord, this is where I'm at. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus, and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, it's okay. Don't feel any pressure to partake in this. This really isn't for you. It's kind of hard to remember and think on something you don't believe in.Right? But I do ask that you maybe just start that stirring. And say, man, I may have gotten dragged here this morning by a co worker or a family member, but is this real? Is this really happening? So we're going to practice this together and I'm just going to give us some time, um, of just silent prayer.Because I think like when we start handing out the communion, I try to start praying and exam myself. And then I'm like, is the basket coming? Is the basket coming? And I'm ADD, so I like legit cannot focus if the basket is moving. So we're not going to pass the basket yet. We're just gonna have a time of prayer.Go before the Lord, right? Confess if you need to confess and just think and examine and think on his sacrifice. Think of his body broken for you. Think of his blood poured out for you. And then we're gonna pray and then after we pray I'm gonna ask some of the youth to come out and hand out things, but let's just go before the Lord.Lord,we come before you this morning. God, we ask that you'd examine us, Lord. The psalmist said, Lord, see if there's any hidden way in my heart. God, I just thank you so much for your perfect sacrifice. Lord, the new covenant in your blood that gives us the forgiveness of our sins. Lord, there's nothing we can work or do or accomplish.God, it's really what your son's already accomplished for us. Lord, I'm so grateful. God, that you're willing to send your son to allow his body to be broken, to allow his blood to be spilled, God, thank you for loving us that much, God, and I pray that this, this idea and this, this remembrance of your sacrifice, God, would be in the forefront of our minds, God, as we go to our work weeks or school, that we would remember your sacrifice and that it would actually stir us up that we'd live sacrificially.That we'd receive the love you freely give, God, and that we'd love the rest, all the people around us with that perfect love. Our family, our friends, our neighbors, God, even our co workers,God, I pray that you just stir up whatever you need to stir up this morning, God, through your spirit that you'd convict, Lord, and that there'd, uh, be confession after this service, God, and that there'd be, um, people running up to one another apologizing for past sins, Lord, God, and that you'd open up our hearts that we'd receive.Your love, your grace, and your forgiveness for us, God. Thank you so much for your perfect sacrifice, Lord. We thank you for the blood that was spilled that we are covered in now, Lord. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. I ask the youth to come forward and distribute the elements.Jesus said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me andtook the cup and same when he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
Acts 25:1-12And the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul,
Sermon Transcript:Well good morning to you all here and in Collingswood. And I'm not sure if anybody ventured outside, it's kind of cold out this morning, into the prayer garden. Maybe they're out there. We'll see, uh, later this morning. But we just sang some words and, you know, it's so easy to get comfortable with a melody of a song and just mow on through them, close your eyes and do it, without knowing what we're singing.So here in Mount Laurel, no fate I dread. No fate I dread. I know I'm forgiven. The future is sure. The price, it has been paid. For Jesus bled and suffered for our pardon. And he was raised to overthrow the grave. And in Collingswood, uh, they just finished singing. Well, they will finish singing when they see this.This is weird. In you, I rest. In you, I find my hope. In you I trust, you never let me go. I place my whole life within your hands alone. Be still my soul in your presence. It's a gift to be here together this morning with you to study God's Word, but also to worship and be centered with some of these songs that just bring us back to what is true.I'll ask you to turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Acts chapter 25. We're going to be making our way through here. Maybe you've been away for part of the summer, kind of traveling in and out, catching a sermon, then you skip a few weeks and then you come back. We know, A. And B, if you do do that, you probably don't know what's happening in the book of Acts.I'm just kidding. We don't know, sort of. Um, It can be tricky, though, to stay connected to the overall narrative. And so I want to walk through a little bit of that with you this morning, offer you kind of a brief catch up and and rather than be deeply theological in this narrative explanation this morning.I kind of got a little creative this week and I wanted to do it for myself. I just drew some pictures and I thought, maybe I'll put them up there on the screen. And now at this point, I'm thinking to myself, I have the artistic abilities of a two year old and you're all about to witness my art project this week.So follow along as we work through the book of. Luke wrote the book of acts. It is a compiled book of church history, the earliest church history following the early days of the followers of Jesus. You know, we just quoted acts chapter one verse eight. It is kind of the theme. I know the book is opening the wrong direction.You're already judging me about this book. Now you can't unsee it. But if you've been if you've been memorizing along the It's just there, like the thing is coming out the wrong, oh forget it. Uh, if you've been memorizing along, Acts chapter 1 verse 8 is really the summary statement. That's why we picked it to memorize first.It is helpful in knowing where we're going. So you can say it again with me. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Judea, all Judea.and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And that's exactly what happened. Those were the words Jesus spoke. To his followers as they were waiting upon the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. Acts chapters one through seven happens over six year time span and Pentecost happened, which is when the believers were in the upper room waiting.Okay, it's gonna happen a lot of times. You're gonna laugh my pictures. That's fire. I think we're a beautiful flower, um, descended upon those early believers in tongues of fire. Many were added to their number. They lived together and had all things in common. Persecution picked up quickly though, and the local Jewish ruling authorities came and, uh, oppressed those early believers.One of the brothers, full of faith, Stephen, was martyred. They're all gonna be stick figures, I promise you. Was martyred. He was stoned as he was sharing the testimony of Christ. It's good, right? No, it's not good. I'm not even sure. They were rocks in my head. There's an angry crowd there. I just, I don't know.Okay, according to God's plan and because of the Spirit's allowance, the believers were scattered. Now, where were they scattered? Exactly where Jesus in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 said. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so here we are in Judea and Samaria. Acts chapters 8 through 12 happens over the next nine years.And a mostly messianic Jewish people came from Judaism and moved into following Jesus movement, expanded now into a multi ethnic movement. Saul, who we now know as Paul, was, uh, encountered Jesus and became a sold out evangelist. Can't you tell? That's Jesus. That is Jesus with all of the red on his hands and his feet.It's, come on guys, like, okay. Where the followers of Jesus were growing was in a place called Antioch. Peter and Cornelius, uh, gathered there, and they began to grow in their leadership in the church. The followers of Jesus then were first called Christians, and finally the message of Jesus spread even further, as promised in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, the words of Jesus to the ends of the earth.We've been studying through the last 16 chapters of Acts, which happens over 17 years. So we're working through a lot of years covered in the book of Acts. Paul's missionary journeys, uh, through Asia Minor, through Greece, and kind of back again. I didn't even bother with a map. Um, it's just, it's a walking journey he did there.And some sailing, um, but he would routinely go to the synagogues, a place where he, uh, would go and share about the good news of Christ to these religious leaders and hopefully bring them to a knowledge of Jesus. Paul was faced with opposition in sharing this message. And this message was really a message of hope.And it was important that he walked in and shared that with the people in the synagogue. But what was the message? The message was simply that the membership in the kingdom of Jesus, membership in the kingdom of Jesus, is not based on your ethnicity or your religious heritage. It has no bearing on that.It is not based on observing the laws of Torah, but it is based on trusting and obeying King Jesus. There is this reality though that was happening here. This movement as it was going, a multi ethnic movement of a whole bunch of people, it was a bit of a paradox. People weren't exactly sure what was happening.There was a merging of many cultures. There was men and women involved in this. There were slaves and free people. There were rich and poor invited to the table, treated as equals in a nonviolent allegiance to Jesus movement. And so as we go from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and then to the ends of the earth, we're coming in on the final chapters here in this is not the best time for Paul in his life.Chapter 21, he is arrested. We were there just a few weeks ago, accused of blasphemy and terrorism and being an absolute menace, they said, in society. Chapter 23, he appears before the Jewish Sanhedrin, and he's put on religious trial. Chapter 24, last week he appeared before Governor Festus, I'm sorry, Felix, who's a Roman ruler.And this week, chapter 25, we are in the next trial appearing before So if you'll turn with me again, flip back just a page, if you have it, uh, 24, chapter 24, the very end is where we're going to kind of pick up this story leading into chapter 25. After some days, Felix came with his wife, Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.As Paul reasoned about righteousness and self control and the coming judgment, Governor Felix was alarmed and said, Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity, I will summon you. At the same time, he hoped that money would be given him by Paul. So he sent for him often and had conversation with him.See what's happening here. Paul is repeatedly going back and forth, getting brought in. The, the Roman ruler's hoping that Paul gives him money to be released from prison. And Paul is preaching the explicit gospel, not only to him, but his family. Paul would later write in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to the ones who are being saved, it's the power.of God. Maybe he was thinking about these interactions with Governor Felix. Verse 27. When two years had elapsed, Felix was succeeded by Porteous Festus, the new governor. And desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison. Now, three days after Festus had arrived in the province, he went up to Jerusalem from Caesarea.And the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul, and they urged him, asking as a favor against Paul, that he summon him to Jerusalem, because they were planning an ambush to kill him along the way. Festus replied that Paul was being kept at Caesarea and that he himself intended to go there shortly.So, said he, let the men of authority among you come down with me, and if there is anything wrong about the man, let them bring charges against him. After he stayed among them, not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesarea. And the next day took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought.When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. Paul argued in his defense, Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense. But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?But Paul said, I'm standing here, before Caesar's tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you yourself know very well. If then I am a wrongdoer, and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them.I appeal to Caesar. Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, To Caesar you have appealed, to Caesar you shall go. Pray with me this morning. Lord, we know it is a work of your spirit to bring us to the knowledge of Christ as our Savior. Lord, we know even now it's a, it's a work of your spirit to take words on a page.Written so many years ago to illuminate them, God, that we might see and be changed people leave us not where we are, God, but lead us into a saving relationship with you ones that that change us, that produce fruit and God, as we continue through this narrative of Paul's life, might we see and trust you leaning not on the things that we can understand in our world, but leaning on you, God, we pray these things In your name.Amen. So you'll notice between chapters 24 and 25, there's a period of two years Paul was in prison. There is also a transition of leadership. One governor. Felix is out and Festus is now in, but Paul has not moved. He is still in prison. We're going to walk through the text this morning with a few different headings.The first one here is the assassination plotted. We notice in verse 1 here, three days after Festus arrived in the province, where does he go? He went Caesarea. Now, why would a new governor, as soon as he is elected, leave the place where he's sitting and move on to a place in Jerusalem? Well, we know that Jerusalem is the religious center of the province.It's the place where the Jewish high priest and the Sanhedrin were located. And as we read, the previous governor, Felix, left Paul in prison as kind of a favor to the Jews. However, not so much a favor to the next guy in charge, because the problem of Paul. Paul still very well much existed. So seeking to keep this peace, Hephaestus goes to Jerusalem to kind of meet with these leaders and say, okay, what's going on here?I came into power here and now I have the exact same problem that we faced two years ago. So verse two, the chief priest and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul and they urged him asking as a favor. Against Paul that he summoned him to Jerusalem because they were planning an ambush to kill him along the way two years.It passed. Remember that. But these religious leaders hadn't missed a beat. They were still on this thing against Paul. The religious leaders held onto their argument. And not only that, it grew. They were looking here for another favor from the next governor Festus. Can we just move this trial to Jerusalem?Let's bring Paul here out of where he is in Caesarea and we're gonna bring him to Jerusalem and we'll try him there. Can you do that for us? Well, why are they asking for a favor? Well, they, did they really intend to have any sort of a good trial here with justice being served? No, they still had a two year old carried over murderous plot to kill Paul before trial even happens.Their spirit of bitterness grew. They weren't looking for justice. They were out for murder. The Bible is no stranger to murderous plots and villainous people of ambush. But this time, it's the chief. And it's the principal Jewish men, religious leaders. And here we are faced with the fruit of their religiosity on full display.Jesus called these religious leaders at times whitewashed tombs. Looks good on the outside, but there's death on the inside. A brood of vipers, blind guides. And he even quotes the prophet Isaiah saying, you hypocrites. Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. And here again, these religious professionals, the ones who should know all of these things enforced a bunch of rules and allowed murder and lies to be the things that festered in their hearts. And so near to God's truth. And yet so far. If you're like me and you hear this, the text is really crying out, even still today.Jesus came to die for our sins, that we might not have this spirit of bitterness. That actually the religion that Jesus preaches is one of heart deep change. If you've trusted him as saver, you've been redeemed. And God's spirit lives within you. You've been given a new heart. The old has gone, the new has come.The converted person is not merely just a new and improved version of themselves. They're totally made new. So there will be fruit. There will be evident fruit of God's spirit. He says that in Luke chapter 6. For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit.For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. There's a kid's song that maybe you have ever heard of.If not, you'll hear it now. Rain for Roots. It's kind of like a coalition of people that write music for kids. There is a kid's song that's really infectious and if it gets into your head, you're going to be singing it forever, but it's called Apples Don't Grow on Pear Trees. And it's a little kid's song, but it's simply true.Apples cannot grow on pear trees. And the chorus goes, Jesus, change our lives so we can bear good fruit. Sadly, these religious leaders have rejected Christ. They have been slaves to their own religiosity and rules. Rejected the good news of the resurrection. And they've even rejected Paul as he shared about the testimony of who he once was, the chief of religious scholars.And now changed by Christ. So back to the story, Festus, the newly appointed governor, hears their requests to try Paul in Jerusalem. And he says, Paul was being kept at Caesarea, and he himself intended to go there shortly. So Festus said this, Let the men of authority among you, why don't you come down with me?And if there really is anything wrong with this guy, Paul, Let them bring charges against him. No favors. We're not transporting this guy, Paul. Come with me and let's go. I'll hear the case. We'll uphold justice. Not the answer. These religious leaders we're looking for. Okay, second accusation is now presented as we walk through here.Verse six. After Governor Festus stayed among them, the Jewish leaders, not more than eight or 10 days, he went down to Caesarea. And the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought. If you picture this tribunal, it's really a place of, uh, a courtroom. Typically, it was a raised platform.It was in a court of law and commonly called the judgment seat. The Greek word is the bima seat. The same words... Judgment seat. The Bema seat we find in other places. Matthew chapter 27. Governor Pilate this time sat on the same Bema seat and offered up the innocent Jesus instead of the guilty Barabbas.It's really interesting that Pilate's wife counseled him to get rid of the righteous man, Jesus, because she was plagued by dreams about him, similar to Felix's wife in chapter 24. She didn't want Paul to be there. Get rid of him. The spirit of God was not only speaking to these governors, but to their very families, and they rejected Christ Festus, the Roman Gentile ruler, hearing a group of angry religious men in an official capacity sat on the judgment seat.Verse seven. When he Paul had arrived, the Jews had come down from Jerusalem, stood around him, and they brought serious, many serious charges against him. So what were the charges over the things that were being brought up? Mark shared about this last week in chapter 24 verse five. It says this for we found this man was a plague, one who stirs up riots among the Jews throughout the world.And he's a ringleader among the sect of the Nazarenes. He even tried to profane the temple, but we we seized him. So they're essentially re upping the exact same charges from two years ago new governor brought in and here they come to present proof of this, but there is an absence of proof. Verse seven.So Roman law, if you think about the Roman governors here, Roman law is actually one of the greatest gifts, contributions that Rome has made to mankind. The Romans borrowed a lot of their concepts from the Greeks. Essentially, it was then codified by the Romans. They established laws as a means of protection.Not only from each other, but from the system, the power of the state. They desired, as a society then, to really trust in this system, this rule of law. In order that they might, uh, be guided in the way that they lived. Emperor Justinian, later on, finished the daunting task of, of compiling all of these laws together.And he organized them into three separate volumes. The Institutes, the Digest, and the Revised Code. It's a, a really a momentous legal work that served as the foundation for much of where we get most of the Western law code that we have today. This comes right out of the code. Listen to this, uh, phrase here.This, this quote. Accusers should not bring criminal charges unless they can be proven by proper witnesses, by conclusive documents, or by circumstantial evidence which amounts to indubitable proof and is clearer than day. Nothing better than putting my own artwork up there and getting to say indubitable in a sermon like that was just the coolest.I wish I could just read it again. Indubitable. Um, yeah, basically you can't convict anybody on just suspicion alone. There has to be some proof brought. The Roman Emperor Trajan would say it this way. It's actually better to permit the crime of a guilty person to go unpunished than to condemn one who is innocent.And so, verse seven, as these religious leaders are gathered, they brought many and serious charges against Paul that they could not prove. Still, after two years, no credible witness, there's no verifiable documents of this happening, and there's no hard evidence of his crime. Verse eight, Paul argued in his defense, Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar, have I committed any of these offenses.A point by point denial of the charges being brought against him. And so, Governor Festus faces a dilemma. Paul is innocent, he postulates in his brain. So, if I can't convict him, um, what am I going to do here? I have to uphold justice. But if I don't convict him of this crime, the religious leaders will get mad, which creates chaos among the new place that I have been made governor over.Uphold justice, upend the peace. So what am I going to do? Look at verse 9. This is what he does. Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, a lot of favors given to these people and asked for, said to Paul, Hey Paul, do you wish to follow me to go to Jerusalem and there will be tried on these charges before me?Location change. There's nothing different, nothing new. It's that we're just going to walk 55 miles from Caesarea to Jerusalem and we'll be tried there. What's happening in his brain, in his heart? He's essentially dodging the thing that he's needing to do. Let's see if we can compromise. We'll keep the Jews happy and we'll go to Jerusalem.Don't worry, I will still be the judge. I'll sit on the judgment seat. I will be governor in Roman rule. It's a win win, right Paul? Verse 10, but Paul said, I'm standing before Caesar's tribunal where I ought to be tried to the Jews. I've done no wrong as you, Festus, very well know yourself. If then I've really done anything wrong, committed for which I deserve to die.I don't seek to escape death, but if there is nothing to their charges against me. No one can give me up to them. Paul's right. There's no evidence being brought, and you fastest know it. We know the religious leaders had no intention of a fair trial. The location of the trial, totally irrelevant. But listen to Paul's integrity along the way.If there really is anything that I've done, I am not seeking to escape death. I'm willing to face it. If there is wrong found, bring on the death penalty. But if not, you can't hand me Over. Finally, here, the appeal is proposed. Verse 11. Look with me. I appeal to Caesar, Paul says. Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, To Caesar you have appealed.To Caesar you shall go. Paul invokes this right he has as a Roman citizen to escalate his case, similar to the Supreme Court of our day. Appealing to the highest official, and at this time it was Caesar Nero, and if Nero kind of rings a bell, not the biggest fan of Christians. In fact, he would burn them and light his gardens with them on stakes later in his life.However, at this time, Nero was actually an okay guy. In the first five years of his reign, he was surrounded by influential people in a good sense, and he was regarded as a wise and just man. Ruler and so Governor Festus confer with this group and he agreed, and so we'll see in the days ahead as Paul is making his way to the next governing official, and eventually he makes his way to Rome.Paul was before the Sanhedrin. In chapter 23, you remember he was getting punched in the face by some of those officials. Things got dicey, and the guards took him back into the barracks when the crowds were just moving in to want to kill Paul. And, and they brought him in, and they locked him in the barracks as a measure of safety for his life to have a fair trial.What happened in chapter 23, verse 11? It says this, The following night, the Lord stood near Paul.And here we are, years later, years later, it's exactly as the Lord said, standing by Paul in those barracks. He's on his way to Rome. Was Paul elated or excited? Maybe just plain exhausted from this whole journey? It's possible that amidst all of the emotional highs and lows of these trials, there's a moment that happened where Paul remembered those words, that the Lord met with him and said a confirmation from the Holy Spirit, treasuring the audible words spoken to him.I Judea, Samaria, and that all happened, but I also told you to take courage. I'm sending you to Rome. Nobody else heard those words in the barracks, but Paul knew the Lord was near and spoke encouragement to him. I don't know where this text lands for you as you think about this narrative of Paul trusting in this timetable in a way of God that he can't understand.But as we come to any place of application, kind of bringing things out of the text that can really matter to my life, I want to share with you a few principles that maybe you already use, and if so, wonderful, it's a review. If you don't, I'd encourage you, join with me in learning to apply a text like we just worked through.We use these as pastors as we comb through the text and really seek to do it honestly, faithfully for what the text is saying. Pastor Mark shared some of these ideas kind of in his opening thoughts last week. You kind of, you come to God's Word and the question you ask is, why does this matter to me? I mean, I'm not a prisoner.How can I relate to Paul? The times have changed. It's a great story, but this book seems to be not helpful in in this passage. Chapter 25. It's just a passage of time. Well, in an effort to be faithful, ask a few questions. Maybe you can write these down if you want to. What does the author say? Why does he say it in this way?Why does he say it here? Is there something surprising about the way he says it? Is there a way that he presents it that is surprising? What does it reveal about who God is? This unchanging, omnipotent, omniscient God. If it's true of God, it's true of God. And so as we come to the text, ancient or not, it's ever true of who God is.There's a relationship between the original context of the scriptures And where we are today. I want you to look at a visual this morning. Maybe you've seen this. But God's Word is there at the top. It was written in and to a specific original context. It's, it's there. It is not written first to us today.Paul wrote letters. This one we know was written to, uh, by a man named Luke to Theophilus. That's not my name and it's not your name. But it is who was written to it was meant to encourage him in his journey as a young believer. And so can we be encouraged as we read this text today? Absolutely. All the more as we apply it faithfully, the overall theme.Remember again here is not that we would just take God's word and pull it to us today, but that as we go through this process of the original context, we really can get a meaning out of it that might make sense that might. Change the, some of the frameworks and things that we think about. Remember, there's some overall themes in the book of Acts that we've been talking about since the beginning of this series, like 10 years ago when we started.The first one, you probably can quote them right from 10 years ago, to carry God's gospel to all nations. Man, is that happening in spades all over. To sustain God's people amidst every opposition to fulfill God's sovereign purposes and to unite God's church. There's a summary verse that kind of is, uh, in part appears at the top of your sermon outline today, but it's Proverbs 3, It, for me, is the summary.If I were to take this text and I'd hear something out of it. Trust in the Lord. With all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. What's happening as Paul is lodged in prison for two years, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding the interruption to, uh, justice and failure of the Roman leadership to get this right.It actually allowed the gospel of Jesus to enter the officials homes, make its way into their families. Paul was able to recuperate from the previous many years of traveling around those three laps of a missionary journey, given some time to recuperate. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.What's happening as religious leaders continue to lie and, and hurl these murderous threats against Paul. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And do not lean on your own understanding. Is it possible that our own understanding might lead us to think there's a, been a delay in Paul's trial? But if we trust in the Lord, maybe we would see that the delay in trial is actually God's generous mercy and grace to these Jewish leaders.Paul was able to defend and share with them multiple times as they were hurling these threats back and forth. He's bringing the hope of Christ to them. We're so quick to define God's mission and God's intent as get to Rome, make its way there, get through all these trials. They're just kind of in the way.But God's mission doesn't work around the religious leaders and kind of get them out. God's mission is after them just as it is you and I. It includes them. Trust in the Lord. And do not lean on our own understanding what's happening through the years of Paul receiving abuse for sharing Jesus and doing it with gentleness and respect, only to be beaten and flogged and and imprisoned at the end of this season, accusations are made.They're delivered here, and the text says they are without proof. God used the record of an obedient man, suffering, innocent man to escape death, trust in the Lord. With all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. God's spirit may be prompting you and I this morning to apply this passage in a variety of ways.Maybe you've been wrongly accused of something or you've been faithfully serving Jesus, representing him and walking. With downtrodden ways because you're just tired of getting abused from all of the different voices. You want to give up and lash back in anger as Paul probably had that desire to as well.Can I encourage you, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean. On your own understanding, maybe there's an existing framework or worldview that you hold on to that Paul's trial narrative is redefining for you at the Christian life following Jesus. Certainly Paul, right? Guarantees and worldly success and happiness and safety and comfort and mental stability and obedient kids and a supportive family and friends.That's redefined now in Paul's narrative. Or maybe that persecution is the great enemy and interferes with God's mission. It's not so it's not so trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Maybe like Paul, the timetable of events happening in your life. They're just dragging on.It's laborious. It seems unnecessarily delayed. If we learn anything from Paul's life, God is trustworthy and our understanding. of time and how and why is so limited. And so again, we come, we trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. Father, we come to this text this morning.We want to rush past it. Chapter 25, even this first part here just feels like an interruption to the, the end goal. But God, what you're doing is something far deeper, more rich than we can even imagine. God, I know that through this crushing and pressing and squeezing of Paul, books like Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Philippians and Colossians all come out of this, this momentary suffering and produce the text for our very faith.And so God, as we stand here, we don't want to be people that rush past a season or a moment or a time that you're asking us to sit in. We trust in you with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. I thank you for this passage this morning. Might you teach us to trust you, Lord. We pray these things in your name.Amen.
Acts 24 I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have… Sermon Transcript: Morning, everybody. Welcome Collingswood. I don’t know if anybody’s braving it outside, those that are in the lobby. Mike described it as […]
Acts 23:11-35The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”
Sermon Transcript:Good morning. Good morning. It is great to be here with you and to be with those of you in the prayer garden and those with you in Collingswood this morning. Uh, as many of you know, um, my name is Pastor Ben and I got back on sabbatical a month ago, and it is a real treat to be back with you all. And again, a couple things I just felt extremely grateful for this morning.One is to be a part of a church that would give that privilege of sending my family and I on sabbatical, as you did with Mike last year. And the rhythm of that and the gift, undeserved gift of that, uh, was for our family. We thank you for that. I also, just this morning, am struck here in Mount Laurel as I often end in collinswood of the place of prayer.That is in the worship. And that when we come together, we don't come together to just learn, to just read, to just speak to one another. We come together to interact with God. And the amount of prayer that is in the worship service in both places brings me great joy. This morning we went to Columbia over our sabbatical, um, for seven weeks over there.We went there with a two month year old and, uh, a a lot of trusting God is just like saying, okay, and we went over there with a two month year old trying to say, okay, God, we don't know what this is gonna be like. My wife told me before we left, she's like, I'm not worried about anybody medically in our family except for you.'cause something always seems to happen to you. To which I. Treasured in my heart, all kinds of resentful thoughts like, nah, it's gonna happen. Well, we had a wonderful time down there. We had an incredible time with a Adriana's family, meeting them, her birth family, and, uh, have stacked in a lot of incredible stories, have seen a lot of miracles, um, that happened there at the end of the trip.It got a little exciting. Uh, some of you may know that I had a. Uh, emergency surgery, uh, two days before leaving. And it, what happened was I started with the, the stomach pain, right? And some of you know where the surgery goes already here, it's appendicitis, not bury the lead. But what happened is, like, I had this stomach pain, and, and the day before we had some friends who were from Chicago, they flew out and they have a nine-year-old who the day before had some stomach pain.And so she was like laying down in the, the little house where we were and just kind of took a day off. So when I started having stomach pain the next day, all of us thought I had what Clover had. Clover is the nine year old. And as we went out to dinner and, and they said, you know, how are you feeling?And all that kind of thing. And, and I love, I love being asked about how I'm feeling about, as much as my dad loves being asked about his back. Not much, right? So I come from a, a medically dismissive roots and I carry those on as well. So I am feeling worse and worse and everyone's like, wow. Yeah, man, you and clover.You and clover. And as things began to like get even more emergency ish, I'm just thinking how tough is clover, right? I am. I'm dying here. Right? I'm, and I can't complain so much because 24 hours earlier the nine year old had it. And guess what? She seemed fine. Turns out what I had was worse than what Clover had.But we actually went during, this is true during this time. 'cause I'm like, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. We go to the city and when we're in the city, uh, my wife and Clover as so happens are getting their nails done. And then I am outside wandering around the car. Absolutely dying and I'm kneeling on the ground, laying on the ground, little fetal position mixed in.All kinds of things are going on. The security guy comes up, he speaks as much English as I speak. Spanish, not much. He's asking me, are you okay? In various ways, and I'm like, you know, various things. He uses the word, you wanna go to the infirmary. I don't know what an infirmary is, but the answer to that question for me is always no.So, Don't go to the infirmary. Eventually we go back. At this point, I am in more pain than I can pretend to dismiss. And by two in the morning I ended up driving back down the mountain from where we were staying and getting the surgery. It was, this was Saturday and then we eventually, our plane tickets were Monday and that was my big concern, are you gonna let me on the plane?Are you gonna let me fly? And so I'm looking up online, it says five to seven days after having an appendectomy. And I'm like, oh, I hope they have different rules in Columbia. They have different rules in Columbia. So I got outta the hospital on Sunday, we flew back on Monday and we're in the security line and all of a sudden I feel something like I pulled a stitch.And you're thinking, oh man, is something bad gonna happen to him? That's not what I'm thinking at all. All I'm thinking is, are we not gonna get on this plane? Right? I've got plane tickets for six of us that I don't want to repurchase, so I'm just thinking if I bleed out, I just have to disguise it somehow because I'm the secure line.So I'm literally thinking what I can kind of put in front of me. 'cause I don't know if I'm gonna bleed. I don't care if I die on that plane. We are getting on that airplane. So we didn't bleed out. We made it home. Uh, but we had an amazing time and very grateful for God's protection and very disappointed that my wife, again, was right.It was me who needed the surgery. We're gonna pick up today in the Book of Acts. Um, we are in Acts 23. Paul has gone on three missionary journeys and now he finds himself back in Jerusalem and he's having a heck of a time because people are angry with him. We've got different factions of people who are fighting over him.Interestingly enough, almost all of them don't like each other, but they also don't like him. So they have a con common enemy in Paul and in one another, and it's this whole tumultuous scene as a collision of worldviews are hitting in Jerusalem. I'm gonna start in verse 11, and then go from there. This is after Paul has already faced, uh, tremendous persecution and almost death.The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, take courage for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem. So you must testify also in Rome. When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath to neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. There was more than 40 who made this conspiracy.They went to chief priests and elders. Instead, we have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. Now, therefore, you, along with the council, give notice to the Tribune to bring him down to you as though you are going to determine his case more. Exactly. And we are ready to kill him before he comes near.Now the son of Paul's sister, that's a nephew, for those you keep wrecking record heard of this ambush. So he went and entered the barracks and told Paul. Paul called one of the centurions and said, take this young man to the Tribune. He has something to tell him. So he took him and brought him to the Tribune and said, Paul, the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you.And he has something to say. The Tribune took him by the hand and going inside, asked him privately, what is it that you have to tell me? And he said the Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him, but do not be persuaded by them for they've bound themselves by an oath to neither eat or drink till they have killed him and now they are ready waiting for your consent.So the Tribune dismissed the young man charging him. Tell no one. You have informed me of these things. Then he called two centurions. Get ready, 200 soldiers with 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen, and go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night. Which is 9:00 PM. Also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix, the governor.And he wrote a letter to this effects Claudius Lisia, which is an amazing name by the way. Claudius Liss to his excellency, the Governor, Felix. Greetings. This man was seized by Jews and was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman citizen and desiring to know the charge for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their counsel.I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. And when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent 'em to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him. So the soldiers, according to their instructions, Took Paul and brought him by night to Antipas, and on the next day they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go on with them.When they had come to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul also before him. On reading the letter, he asked what province was he from, and when he had learned that he was from cea, he said, I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrived, and he commanded him to be guarded in Herod's pre auditorium.Pray with me this morning.Lord, we ask you for your help as we enter this text and this story. I know it feels like a lot to read, all those verses. We pray that you might guide us and direct us. We remember the scripture of Proverbs three. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.My prayer simply this morning is through the life and story of Paul, that you might show us how to do that. You might let trust not be a vague concept out there somewhere, but you might help us better understand how to do that for our lives, how to approach the fall that way. How to live the daily difficult and good things with the daily practical trust.We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. I wanna start the sermon, the start that the conversation about Acts 23, uh, with a proverb. Proverb nine. Proverbs 1921 says this, many are the plans of the person's heart, but it is the Lord's purposes that prevail. If there was a thesis statement to put on Acts 23, it is Proverbs 1921.Proverbs 1921 gives us language of what happens in Acts 23. There are the plans or plots of the humans, of the person's heart, and then there are the Lord's purposes which ultimately prevail. We're gonna look at differences and if you have your little, uh, sermon note thing, you'll see a grid, and we're gonna look at what's the difference between the plots of the human heart and what's the difference between trusting in the plans and the plans of God plots and plans plots we're gonna define as this, which we see in our text, well intended every day or long-term plans that are made and carried out without the help of God.Now we see that we did it well intended every day, long-term plans made without the help, um, and carried out without the help of God. And we say, we, we don't wanna live that way. We, we don't wanna live a guy a, a life that Pastor Mark calls as functionally atheistic of, yes, I might trust him. Yes, I might even know him in a theoretical sense, but, but to live my life with everyday plans that are without him.We don't want to live that way. If you're anything like me when it comes to planning your life, you don't want to live without the help of God. But it is often how we end up living. It is often how we end up setting our goals. It is often how we determine what we do in each step of the way. We can tend to live as functionally atheistic and just operating on our own plans as opposed to knowing how to trust in the promises of God promises.We're gonna call this biblical and personal promises that God gives to his people. That always require walking in difficult and delightful trust. If you have spent time walking in trust with God, you know that it is not partially difficult and partially delightful. It is most of the time deeply both of those things, not slightly but deeply.Both of those things. How do we live in the promises of God and and how do we know? How do we know? Is this my idea or God's idea? This seems like a good one. I'm, I'm planning this for this fall, or I'm planning this for the future, or I'm, I'm thinking this for possible marriage. I'm thinking this for, for possible, um, setting up education or job thing.How do we know, is this my own plot or is this God's plan? So this morning we're looking at Acts 23 asking the question, how do we practically lead a life that is based not on our own plots and plans, but according to the promises and direction of God? First thing, you'll see this in your chart if you wanna put this in the one a spot, the, when you look at the plots of man, what we see here in this text is the product is what matters.Right. We have in verse 14 that these, this group of people, this 40 plus group of people went to the chief priests and elders. They went to the people in charge. They were not hiding this from, from the people who were in charge of the law. They were going and saying, this is what we are doing according to what we think we should do.So they go to the chief priests and to the elders, the very ones that would hold them to the oath that they were making. We have strictly bound ourselves by an oath not to taste any food or drink any drink until we have killed this man. They are passionately zealous about wanting spiritual things. They, they are passionate in their approach to this.They are dedicated, willing to risk their life for the sake of killing Paul, and, and they can't accomplish what they think they should accomplish by the ordinary means. In verses six through nine that we looked at last week, we see the legal, some of the legal proceedings by which the people were trying to convict.Paul, the very thing that Claudius Lisia. Again, awesome name. Writes the letter to Felix and he's writing this letter saying, Hey, I looked at what was going on. It didn't seem enough to put him to death or to keep him in jail. And so that's in his letter that's found out in the six through nine passage.So they can't get him in prison to, to keep him quiet by the normal means of conviction. So, so then there's almost a public riot. Verse 10 says that the dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them. It's this violent, this charged of an event that's happening.So he actually puts Paul in prison to keep him safe because the plot of, um, or the, the legal proceedings were not enough to convict him. The public riot was not enough to kill him. So now they plan to murder him themselves. What is interesting is what they're going to do is violate their own law.They're gonna violate their own virtues. That deep inside the law is not only do not murder, it is not the right process of someone being imprisoned or put to death to then go and just murder them, them yourself. This is not the right process according to the law that they are passionate about defending.If you would bring them one by one, one the 40 plus people in, or you brought in the chief priest or the elders who all got behind this plot and said, Hey, what do you think about just taking the law into our own hands and, uh, violating the commandment? Do not murder and violating the commandment. Uh, do not lie because in the text they go, and the part of it is deception.Elders and chief priests are gonna go say, Hey, we need to question him some more, and on the way he's going to be killed. They're using the classic, the ends justify the means in their mind, in their passionate minds. They see that Paul must die. This threat must be gone. And towards that end, everything else doesn't matter.We just have to get to the ends. Justify the means. There's a podcast that many of you have. Uh, Heard, uh, about the rise and fall of Mars Hill by Mike Cosper. And, uh, and Mike Cosper looks and evaluates, uh, the danger of living as a church community or as a person of faith in a way that the ends justify the means.And one of the episodes of the podcast, he talks about Bobby Knight. Anybody know Bobby Knight? Right? Bobby Knight is the the chair guy, the punch, the one of his players guy. He's an Indiana basketball coach who was incredibly effective at winning games and incredibly destructive in the way that he would do that.But there was all of this controversy because Indiana University wanted to win a lot of basketball games. But the way that Bobby Knight did it was he would put chains on the doors during practices, chains and locks. No one was allowed in. He would, uh, be screaming, berating his players, uh, eventually would punch one of his players.Kick a chair. He's angry. Angry man. But he won a lot of basketball games, and so it left the University of what to do. Um, and, uh, in the podcast, Mike Cosper talks about a book by fete. He says, this, fete Remi recalls the moment that encapsulate the calculus, the one that knight made. It's what justified the culture of fear, the bullying, the unhinged brashness.After the Indiana, Illinois game, during which Bob kicked and slammed a chair, kicked a cheerleader's megaphone. Dave Kindred, a superb columnist for the Atlantic Constitution, wrote that he was disappointed to see Knight acting in this way. Kindred, a longtime friend of Knight's, ended the column by writing.Once again, I find myself wondering when it comes to Bob Knight, if the ends justify the means. A few days later, Knight called Kindred. You need one more line for that column, Knight said, you should have finished by saying, and one more time, I realized that it does. When our good goals become our idols, we will justify just about anything to serve them.The plots of the human heart, the product is what matters. But what we see in Paul is trusting and relying in the promises of God. It is the process that matters. In verse 11, sets up this whole text. Actually, verse 11 sets up the rest of the Book of Acts. The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, take courage for as you testify to the facts about me and Jerusalem.So must you testify in Rome. This, this little nugget, this little passage right here. This transition is, is given in transition between different stories in the text, but what God is saying is, Hey, as you have done it here in Jerusalem, you're gonna do it again in Rome. And, and the primary command of the, the imperative of the text is not Paul, go to Rome by any means possible.It's not. Paul, I want you to get outta here, escape by night. Here's where we're gonna do the, the, the, the exact, uh, here are the exact details of the plan to get you to Rome. He's saying, Paul, your job, take courage and be willing to testify about the facts that you know about me and I will get you to Rome.What's the promise in the text? The promise is that God is going to deliver him to Rome. This is, I think we have a map. That we can show. Rome is very, very far from Jerusalem. It is further than Bismarck. North Dakota is from right here. Okay? If we think about traveling to Bismarck, north, North Dakota, by means of the way Paul did, he did a lot by sea.Can't do that to Bismarck. Um, sorry, disappoint, but this is where Paul would have to go from Jerusalem. In this text, he ends up in Caesarea, and then in the following chapters we have this promise fulfilled where he will go. He gets shipwrecked in there somewhere over here by Malta. I think there's some snake action that happens there.Then eventually he's gonna get back all the way to Rome. Why? Because God promised that Paul was going to Rome. Well, while, while, while the. The p pragmatic approach to saying, oh, we, we see a goal and we wanna get it there. And we see, we see what we want to have, and we're gonna go after it. He's deeply human.I love what God does with Paul. He doesn't clarify the timeline. He doesn't tell him this is the, this is the step-by-step process. He says, you take courage. You trust in me and I'll get you to Rome. Living a life of trust doesn't include a clarified timeline. It's not a linear plan that's laid out. We're often not given the script before the beginning of the show.A life of trust involves keeping our hands open. One thing that, uh, on sabbatical that God let me do, um, I I'm gonna just say is I, A lot of things God doesn't let me do. I don't, A lot of times I'm an idea guy and I'll come to the Lord and be like, Lord, I just think this could be so awesome. What do you think most often the Lord's like, no.Or Wait. And then I'll have another great idea. And then somehow he doesn't always fall for my great ideas, but I said, I'm working on him. I'm working on him. But, and when, when I hear no from the Lord, I don't take it like you are so wise. You know what's best for me, right? I take it like a toddler, like, but I really want to, this last year I turned 40 and I, I, um, I'm one of those nerds that like really wants to, I'm a, I'm a goal setter.Like, okay, by 40, these are my four words I'm gonna go by in the next 10 years of my life and all that kind of stuff. Trying to figure out what was the Lord. And one of the things that I wanted to be a part of my life was to begin writing. And I turned 40 waiting for the beautiful Shakespearean inspiration to come where all of a sudden I would just start beautiful writing and I, throughout the next months I wrestled with it and the Lord asked me and he told me no.And actually he told me no enough times that I got, I have a note on my phone where I'm like, things the Lord asked me to lose this year. There was nine and I wanted all of them. And he asked me to live a life of accepting, loss, accepting no. And by his grace, I had to say, okay, because when I am just product oriented, I'm gonna blow through things and hurt people and, and miss and neglect.But I have to trust the God of process. And I, and I say that because finally, finally, and that's exactly how I felt. Um, while we were on sabbatical, uh, in Columbia, the Lord said, Hey, why don't you start writing? And I was like, okay. So there's still eight things that I felt like the Lord caused me to lose.Um, but I was able to finish a book while I was on sabbatical. And that's, uh, been an incredible faith building process for me to remember that following God is not just about setting goals. It's or about forcing our way to them. It is the process of living a life of trust. Secondly, plots, plots are self-sufficient.What we see in this, in these 40 individuals that they were, are going to try to kill Paul, that go to the chiefs. And elders who buy into this plan is not based upon deep prayer. They did not pull open the Torah and try to look through, is this, is this something that'd be a wise decision or not? It is an impulsive decision, not based upon prayer or thoughtful reflection.And what's interesting is there is zero faith required to pull this off. Their success or failure is based upon the quality of the details and the execution of the leaders. So often that's how we evaluate our thinking about our lives, right? Going into the fall, okay, let's get the details right and let's make sure the person in charge of getting it done gets it done the right way.Is the goal realistic? Is the goal, uh, possible? Can we achieve this? It's easy to set those goals. And it's easy to hold ourselves accountable to, to finding and filling, fulfilling those goals. But I would argue that a life built upon trust is not built upon self-sufficiency. There's a haunting thing I heard as a pastor, but a guy who planted a couple churches and after he planted a couple churches, he went on to really meet Christ in a powerful way.And he looked back and he said, I planted both of those churches without the help of Jesus. The churches were pretty successful. That's scary to me. Why? Because we, humans are, we're pretty interesting and neat people. We, we have the image of God and we, we are, we have that creativity. We've got the ability to write and accomplish goals, but it is easy for people who believe deeply in God.To set up their life in a way that's based upon their own talent and capacity. It's easy in this information age, right? We've got so much information to, to trust in that next article that we read to get out our, our cell phones and say, what's the, the, the latest piece of data that will unlock the cheat code of parenting or wealth or relationships or happiness.How do we get, what do we do? How do we shape and, and our scripture stays dusty. Our prayer is bland. 'cause we really think that next bit of information will lead us to our own sufficiency, to conquering as opposed to a life of trust. Plots say that I know what needs to be done and I've come up with the resources to get us there.Plots in the end are all based on me. And while this has the good feeling, the happy feeling of the illusion of control, this way of living has so much pressure because it is all up to me to create and execute the plans on my own. Living a life according to the promises of God always is the second to be always requires the help of God.I This text, the way God did this was on a string and a prayer. Paul is going to be murdered by these men. This plot is a good one. It makes sense and this plot very likely would have gone through except for Paul's sister's son. We didn't even know Paul had a sister. There's zero mention New Testament like who Paul's sister's son finds out about this plot.Then all of the, the, the promise of God, of, of God, preserving Paul and getting him to Jerusalem is in the hands of, of, of his nephew and his nephew is allowed into the barracks. We don't know if that was a hard thing or not to be allowed into the barracks and eventually tells Paul, then Paul, now the information is in Paul's hand.Paul's own life is in his hand. And he turns to a centurion, he turns to a soldier and says, Hey, please take this boy and take him to the commander with the awesome name. Um, take him to the commander. And, and now the whole story is in this soldier's hands. Right? This soldier has the opportunity to say, you're a prisoner.You know, I, I don't need to listen to you. Lifeguards don't usually like listening to the person who causes all the horseplay, right? Like he, this is the soldier is most likely to bulb blow 'em off. But he is like, alright, I'll do it. It's in the soldier's hands, then it takes from the soldier's hand, then it goes to the commander's hands.Another person who could eliminate it. Eventually, this would go to Felix's hands. We're gonna see in chapters ahead that this before he gets to Paul. Paul's gonna go through fests hands and a grip's Hands and the hands of the Angry Sea, but see the promises of God. That means for Paul that, oh, he's in his nephew's hands.Centurion's plans Commander's Hands, Festus, Felix Agrippa. God's promises never leave God's hands, that God is the one who sustains and keeps his promises. Paul's life was always in the hands of God. Living by the promises of God means we are always needing his help. Perhaps the greatest question to ask ourselves of, are we truly living a life trusting in the plans and promises of God, is to ask this simply, do I really need his help?Is how he is asked, or how I've set up my life, have room for his help? We are more than servants of the King. We depend on the help of the king, major E. And Thomas says, God will never lead us to independence. But I'm just gonna be honest with you. I want independence in everything. I wanna be financially independent.I want to be like, have everything set up in my life with my kids, with my relationships in my world, so that it is kind of a fortress. So it's independent of anything else that can happen. God will not lead us into a place where we have enough control and strength on our own to carry out our lives. Well, this is what is delightful and difficult about trusting him.Third plots of men, the plots rely on the on passion and force of the will. Imagine being one of these 40 dudes, right? These 40 guys. What are they risking their lives? What are they risking imprisonment? What they're doing is a Roman crime. What they're going to do to Paul could, if they are caught, put them in prison or put them be put to death because of what they are going to do.They are passionate about this. They believe in this. They believe this is the right thing to do before God. I really believe that they have a, they are fully passionate and fully wrong. Proverbs 19, two says, it is not good to have zeal without knowledge or to be hasty and miss the way passion, and I, I think we, we rightly say, right, we wanna be passionate for God.And passion has a place in the person's life. It has a place to, to, to motivate us, to, to seek him. But I think that what can happen is we can become dependent on those feelings of passion in a way that, um, doesn't last a life based on passion. Must be the icing, not the cupcake. A life base on passion is two great weaknesses.Number one, it's flashy. And by what I mean by that one is that it's exciting. Anyone who has been on fire for God, you know, it is an exciting feeling to, to be, to be really sold out to one thing, to be giving your life to God alone. There's, there's a simplicity, there's an excitement, there's a beauty that comes with, with living passionately.The hard thing also is it's often temporary. People who, whose goal is to live on fire for God, don't know what to do when it rains, because the part of walking towards Jesus is just putting the next brick on the wall. It is just the daily obedience. A life based on passion can be flashy, it can be fully passionate, but still lose its strength.Secondly, it's powerful. Uh, power is not a evil thing, but whenever we are around power, we must be very careful. What else is powerful? Anger. Anger makes me feel powerful, right? Who wants to take a nap when they're angry? Nobody. Why? 'cause they're strong. Strong. It's a strong feeling. Passion is a strong feeling.No one can stop us. And passion can rely and feed even in Christian circles. It can feed the ego and it can lead to a mob mentality. Passion, while being a great thing, cannot be the source of our faith. It is not how we make disciples. Um, three B, how we require how we live and trust is simply. We require p promises of God require daily pro trust.It can feel as we're in the book of acts like this is a nonstop Paul passion ministry ride. Paul's derailed all the time in this book. He's two years in Corinth. He's, he's a, he's a year here. He's stuck there right now. What's gonna happen, he's gonna go to Caesarea and he's basically gonna sit in a jail cell or inherit pre auditorium for two years.No bible books are written in those two years, and then eventually he's gonna go, it's gonna be five years before he even gets to Rome to fulfill the promise that we have here. There's long periods of emptiness in Paul's life where he doesn't just have the highlight reel and the Hillsong track in the background, but what he has is the daily faithfulness.A life of the Christian includes dark seasons, confusing times, and passionless obedience. We need more than a passion for God. We need faithfulness that outlives when the good feelings of passion go away. Eugene Peterson writes a book, long Obedience in the Right Direction. He says this, there's a great market for religious experience in our world.There is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue. Little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what early generations of Christians called holiness. Fourth, living according to the plans of God or the plots of men. Plots are often foiled plots often go awry in the text.This, this well intended but evil plot. It does not go through. It does not go. So what happens to these people? Do they starve to death, die of thirst? And some people have looked at that and said, yes, they made this oath. They took it to the elders and chief priests who would bind them by this oath, and so they would have died not being able to fulfill it.There are four different oaths that they could be released from. This appears to be within one of the four oaths that the chief priest could release these people from their carrying out. So I don't think they died. I think they were ultimately released. But their plans, no matter what, were foiled and man, do we hate it when things go bad, when things go different than we imagined them.It's not a fun thing to look back on the New Year's resolution list and say, oh wow, those 20 pounds are still here. You know, like it's, it's hard to have plans go the wrong direction. But the promises of God, and I love this in the text, the promises with God. Come with backup, right? Look what it says in the text.This promise of God that's on a wing and a prayer that's like held by a thread through the centurion and through all of the different leaders that, that Paul will go through before he gets to Rome for this promise to be fulfilled. This is how he, this is how he carried it out. Then he called two centurions and said, get ready.200 soldiers with 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to go as far as Caesarea in the third hour of the night also provide mounts. This would be more than one, multiple horses for Saul to ride, to bring him safely to Felix, the governor. The guy's like, all right, you wanna play with 40? I'm sending 470 to guard this man.This is a battalion, a a, a giant amount of argument. There would even be less security in Jerusalem because of all of the people that are being commissioned to go with Paul. But God made, I promise to Paul. Oh, and God's promises come with God's backup. When God's promise is something God delivers. It's, it's a pretty bold thing to, to have things in scripture, like to say that God always keeps his promises because it only takes one broken promise to one person for that not to be true.Scripture teaches your life, teaches God keeps his promises. It is so easy to see the angry mob. It is so easy to see the overwhelming odds. And something that's interesting, I, we sang this earlier. We don't face Goliath, but we face our own giants. I love that because like, I'm not a giant and I can't defeat a giant.A giant's bigger than me, right? Gene told me this morning, I know Gene is, gene told me this morning, he says, you're shorter than I thought. And I thought, you know, like I, I, I can't defeat a giant. That's a good thing. But God's promises come with backup. It is okay if we live a life that is bigger than ourselves, as long as we live it according to his promises.Because when God promises he comes through Proverbs 1921. Again, many are the plans in the person's heart, but is the Lord's purposes that prevail. Just some quick practical things for practical things of, of living out this trust, living out this trust in a daily sense. One, use broken plans as a divine diving board into the goodness of God.When your plans are foiled, because guess what? We're gonna make human plans. We're gonna do it again. Of like, oh, I set up my life again with without needing the help of God. But when those plans are foiled, let that be a moment to say, I have a chance to transition from plots to promises. Use it as a diving board into the goodness of God.Secondly, always be mindful and increasing your prayer to worry ratio. The amount of time that our minds are worried about the future, the next thing for me, it's significant. It's just, I'm just good at it. I'm good at worry, right? So to increase, wow, I'm worrying again about myself, about things for myself, about how I could accomplish it, my own strength to use those times.Say, okay, I'm gonna increase the prayer time. Now what am I gonna pray about? I'm gonna pray about what I was worrying about. Increase your prayer to worry ratio. Third, when you're tempted to collapse in despair, stand on the promises of God. When you feel like, I just can't do it. I just can't face it. All is lost.The mob is too big. Stand on the promises of God. There's a moment where Joshua comes before God and he's on his face flat before God, which is like, yeah, that's exactly where I'd be before God. And, and God in this, in really powerful moment in the book of Joshua, you know what he says to Joshua? Joshua, stand up.Because yes, you need to kneel in, in fidelity, and yes, you need to to to be dependent upon me, but when you're in my presence covered by me, you can stand in strength on the promises of God. Lastly, Spend time listening so that God can promise you something. Specifically, I believe if we truly believe in what the Bible teaches, that we have a God who truly speaks to his people.I don't believe I do. I believe that, that we're still writing books to the Bible. I don't do I believe that the Holy Spirit specifically speaks promises to his people. I do. I don't. I don't see how you cannot, when you look at the pages of scripture, God speaks and, and I know for some in here, it's like, what is Hes?What is that like? Well, it does take time to know him. It takes time to recognize his voice. But if you spend time listening and seeking him, seek the Lord with it. Say in the book, Jeremiah, you'll seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart. God does speak, but that does mean we need to listen.Pray with me. Father, we thank you for your guiding hand, your continual promises, the way that you have, uh, looked out for us. Lord, this is a sea of people in collingswood, in prayer garden and in this gym that has, has seen the promises of God come through time and time again. We worship you for that. We even take this time to sing to you.In light of that, we give you ourselves, we ask you that you would gently dismantle a lot of the plots that we have going, and you might help us to know how to daily walk in trust and courage to follow you. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. We have here in Mount Laurel, uh, people up here that you could come and pray with as we sing.Maybe as you're heading into this fall, you've analyzed and reanalyzed your goals of how to get to where you're going. Might be optimistic, but you realize you're running on your own strength towards your own goals and have not laid them down before the king. Or maybe you're here and you've worried, you've logged your time in the worry machine, you're ringing your hands at all the things that could go wrong, and you look and you see an angry mob in front of you, and you're here this morning saying, I don't wanna leave this building 'cause I know what I have to drive to.I know what I have to face Monday and what you're facing seems bigger than you are. Maybe you spent your time in the house of despair and collapse. Counting all that is potentially ahead of you for each of us. And these prayer partners are here to just help you cry out. Lord, help me. These things are too big for me.I have no idea how I'm gonna face this relationship. Financial burden, spiritual confusion, fusion, mental health difficulty. I don't know any more than Paul knew about how in the world he gets to Rome. I need you and I need your promises. Why don't you stand with us and sing? And you're welcome to make use of the prayer team up here as well.
Acts 22:22- 23:11 Then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Good morning. Okay. If you’ve ever tweaked your back, you’ll know why I am looking like I’m looking, and I’m hoping that’s not gonna be […]
Acts 21:27-22:22 the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people Sermon Transcript: Alright, acts chapter 21. Acts chapter 21. I’m gonna read a number of verses. […]
John 13:1-17, 33-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you… Sermon Transcript: Good morning, church. Good morning. It is good to be with you, whether here in person in Mount Laurel or in spirit with all the faithful brothers over in Collingswood are attending […]
Guest Speaker Harold Ebersole Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Good morning. It’s wonderful to be back with, y’all can tell where we’ve been lately. Yep. We’ve been down living in Tennessee for the last three years, but it’s wonderful to be back here and it’s kind of like really old homecoming to be back in this […]
Sermon Transcript: Morning everybody. Morning, invite you to take your Bibles. We’re gonna be looking at Acts chapter 21 this morning, uh, as we return to our series in the book of Acts, the Spirit at Work to the ends of the Earth while you’re turning there to the Book of Acts. Um, I wanna […]
Sermon Transcript: Acts chapter 20, like to read verses 17 and following to you. Now from my elitist, he, Paul sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time. […]
Acts 20:7-16 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. Sermon Transcript: Good morning everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Nice and humid out. Uh, I wanna start off this morning […]
1 Corinthians 1:26-2:5 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. 27 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; Sermon […]
Acts 20:1-6 When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. Sermon Transcript: Invite you to take your Bibles to Acts chapter 20. Uh, acts chapter 20. We’re gonna be looking at verses one through six. So we return to our series in the book of Acts, […]
Acts 19:21-41 About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. Sermon Transcript: I invite you to take your Bibles this morning. We’re gonna be looking at the book of Acts chapter 19, continuing in our series, the Spirit at Work, to the Ends of the Earth. We’re gonna be looking at Acts […]
Acts 19:11-20 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Sermon Transcript: […]
Acts 19:1-10 they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. Sermon Transcript: Good morning everybody. Good morning. We’re gonna turn to Acts chapter 19. Uh, great to have you here, […]
Acts 18:24-28He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things...
Sermon Transcript:Good morning guys. Good morning. Good morning Fellowship. I'm reminded, as I say, good morning. That fellowship is spread out in many places this morning, both here in front of me and Mount Laurel and all the Faithful Saints in Collingswood. And as we heard them just moments before gathered out in the prayer Garden, it's just a beautiful reminder of what makes God's church his church.You know, this week as I was preparing, I got to kind of wiggle out of a lot of the, the physical and manual labor that was going on around the building, uh, but witnessing it and watching many of you and at our staff and volunteers coming together to make this morning possible, it felt like the church, it really, really did.And the opportunity is before us to not waste this season here in the gym. And even as we have the chance to obviously be flexible, as we've mentioned before. Uh, to kind of be ready to serve one another in love. Those things are very true, but I would hate for you to hear as we talk about the need to be flexible, that we just need to get through this season, that we need to just put our heads down, screw up our resolve, and get through it.Because I think if we hear that, then we miss the opportunity that is before us. Remember, for the Christian seasons of discomfort or of trials, or of even, even the unexpected, are never wasted. They're an opportunity to grow an understanding of God's character. And I know many of you have experienced this.I certainly in my own life, the season that I don't know what's coming next, the seasons when I am uncomfortable, when I am fearful or even excited, but not knowing what's coming next. Those are the moments in the times which God has revealed himself to me the most. And so I would hate for any of us to miss the opportunity for the here and now.While I am certainly excited for what is to come in this new building for all of the changes, for the new updates and the renovations and what those things can offer us, I am not deceiving you when I tell you that I am most excited for the here and now, for this morning, and for what goes forward in this time in the gymnasium.This is where we were many years before that building was ever built. We met out here in the gym. I stood right, or I sat rather right there and not nearly as aesthetically pleasing chairs. I remember they weighed about a hundred pounds each. But the vision of God's faithfulness over the years for us all to be back here where it all began.My prayer, and I think I speak for all of the staff and pastors, is that this season. God would use it, but he would use it to remind us all before any of us even take one step into that new space that God would remind us what his church truly is. His church is not any collection of four walls, no matter how beautiful His church is not a newly renovated worship space.His church is not a aesthetically pleasing lobby. His church is his people. Wherever they might be gathered, whether they be here or in Collingswood or out in the prayer garden or watching online, his church is his church. As they come together in the Union of the Holy Spirit to worship God, our creator, and to unite with Christ our Savior, that is the church, and that church can meet anywhere, a palace or a prison, a sanctuary, or a gymnasium.I go so far as to say it is not only my hope, but my expectation that God will do a new thing this summer. I can feel it in the room, but let us not waste it by clenching ourselves up, by closing our eyes, by putting our head down and just getting through. Let's bear with one another in love. Let's open our eyes and our ears to what God will do in this season of the unexpected.Since the days of the church, the formation of the church in the Book of Acts, which we will be reading once again. It has never changed. God's church is not a building. It's his people. Let's prayand as I pray I want to say this, would we just stand? I wanna dedicate this time, this whole summer. I want to as one body, as, as God's church. I wanna stand and dedicate this time. To the Lord this full season in the gym. Father in heaven, Lord, we lift up your name above every other name and as Mike so beautifully put it, this is the same story of which we will read in the book of Acts, the same story, which we are now a part of, the story of you growing and sustaining your church through the many years until you return.And Lord, as we're gathered here in the unexpected and the new, whether we are here outside in the prayer garden, out in Collingswood or online, Lord, there are seasons of discomfort and of the unexpected. I pray, Lord, that we would not waste those seasons, but that our eyes and our ears would be open to you and what you will do.Lord, we pray. That you use us this summer, that you remind us of your full and complete gospel, which tells us it is nothing that I have done, but what you have done in me lead us. Lord, guide us. Teach us that we need to rely on your faithfulness, not on manmade plans. Lord, teach us to walk by the Spirit, not by our own abilities.Lord, teach us to be here with you in the present moment and not to dwell in an uncertain future with our worries, Lord, teach us to clinging to your enduring word, which remains the same in every season, and whether we open it in a palace or a prison, your word remains the same. We now submit ourselves under your word, oh God, in whose name we pray.Amen. You guys can have a seat.So I have a question for you guys. I might be the only one, but I tend to join. Group chats a little late. So if, if you are one of those people that tends to join group chats a little late, you can relate to me because when I join group chats, I'm always lost. I go in there and it's just a whole storm of memes and emojis and inside jokes, and I'm like, what planet am I on?And what I always have to do is scroll all the way back up to the top and work my way slowly back down, and then I can start sending emojis and sending memes and contributing to the conversation. Or another example I have is what if you, uh, are starting a new show or maybe at better yet, a show that you love, but it's a new season?I think what I always do, and invariably what we do is we watch the recap, right? We need to know the characters, we need to know the problems that they're facing. We need to know why we care. The reason I'm bringing that up is because before we go to the passage itself this morning in Acts chapter 18, What I wanna do is take some time to give us an opportunity to find our footing within the overall story of the Book of Acts.As I was thinking about this with biblical story or narrative in particular, it's really important to do this because what I've founded, if you just jump right into the passage that you're reading, without understanding anything that's going on around you, you're kind of like a painter who doesn't have any un understanding of depth of field, trying to paint a landscape.It's gonna look pretty rough. So our hope, or my hope as we enter into this study this morning is to take a minute, bear with me. Let's just remind ourselves where we are within the overall story. Remember, this series has been going on for the last, uh, several months as we have worked our way through the book of Acts.And in the Book of Acts, we've learned that this is not just a story written down for the entertainment of the readers, but it's telling a deliberate story and that the author, Luke is compiling all of these different eyewitness accounts of all the events that were taking place after Jesus returned to the right hand of the Father.And we've, we've read in this incredible story of how, what began as a gospel message of hope given by God, the Father to God, the Son, shared through Christ to the disciples. It began as just 120 when Jesus returned to the Father. But on Pentecost, as the spirit came as promised by Jesus for the comfort and the enabling of the disciples, we saw that that number grew from 120 to 3000 in a single day.And how that number did not stop there. But day by day and moment by moment, this gospel, good news, hope story began to spread. Story by story, testimony by testimony. And it did not stay content with just the Jewish people, but instead it spread to the Gentiles. And we saw how moment by moment, an hour by hour, this great flame of the gospel, did not stay in Jerusalem, but began to spread.You know, yesterday I was, uh, fishing to try to clear my head before the sermon. I like to do that. And uh, I was out at a lake in Medford, but as I got there, maybe you live in Medford. There was a huge fire going on and I couldn't get to the lake the way I normally drive because there was a whole line of firetrucks driving.To contain this fire. And the smoke was so thick that like you almost coughed when you breathed while I was fishing. I felt like I was just inhaling smoke the whole time. And it reminded me leading into this week how powerful flame is. And at Pentecost, the flame lit upon the heads of the disciples, but it did not stay there as flame never does.But it consumed story after story and person after person. And we read in this same story how the great persecutor and great enemy who was introduced to us in the beginning of the Book of Acts, even he was not safe from this flame. And now even he was consumed and restored and purified by it. And how he was written down by the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus and how Saul became Paul becoming the greatest evangelist and missionary of the world had yet seen, or in my opinion, whatever.See.An incredible story. We've seen how disease is healed in the name of Jesus. We've seen darkness in demons. On full retreat, we've seen stories transformed. We've seen the blind eyes opened and the deaf ears unstop. This story is a remarkable story, A story of hope, A story in which we are shown time and time again that God's word cannot be stopped, not by martyrdom, not by persecution, not by idols, not by oceans, not by false gospels.God's word, armed in the power of the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped. Not by angels or demons, not by any power. Not even the persecution and the oppression could stop it, but rather it served it. We have been reminded time and time again in this incredible story of acts, how God through Jesus and by the power of the Spirit.Ooh, I'm gonna do that a couple times. The power of the spirit is brick by brick or rather testimony by testimony, soul by soul, building up his church.This is not only the story of which our passage is contained in, but rather this is our story church. And so as we read our passage this morning, be reminded, this is not only the story of Acts, but our story as well. We are that church gathered here and in Collingswood and online and in the prayer garden.We are his church. Let's open our ears and be ready to see and to hear that what he has for us this morning. Okay, let's get to it. We have our depth of field now. Last week, mark ended his sermon in Acts chapter 18, verse 23, and in that chapter we read of how Paul had finished his second missionary journey and didn't waste much time.State, spent a little bit of time in Antioch and Jerusalem, but began his third missionary journey going into the regions of Galatia and Fri, doing what he always does tirelessly proclaiming the gospel, which had transformed his own life. But now something unexpected happens in verse 24. For the first time in a very long time, we're going to leave Paul.And even though Paul is beginning his third missionary journey, we're going to be introduced now to a new character. If this was a Netflix show, this would be an interesting shift from following the main character to being introduced to a new character. But this character is an important character and we'll play a vital role in building up the early church.This character is actually goes on to have a ministry so influential that he will later be mentioned in the same breath as Paul and Peter himself, though he himself is not or ever would be an apostle. He's a man of great learning. A man of seeming contradictions, a fascinating character. One pastor went so far this week in my study to call him an interesting cat.So let's meet this interesting cat this morning. You guys can turn to Acts chapter 18 to the very end of eight Acts, chapter 18 verses 24 through. 28. I'm gonna read it now. This is God's word. Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man with a thorough knowledge of the scriptures, and he had been instructed in the way of the Lord.And he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately. Though he knew only the baptism of John, he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. And when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. And when Apollos wanted to go into Akea, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him there.And when he arrived, he was a great help To those who had by grace believed. For, he vigorously refuted the Jewish opponents in public debate, proving that from the scriptures Jesus was the Messiah. So we've got a small little passage this morning, only four verses, and yet it's packed full of interesting questions and of one very interesting guy we have here.Something interesting going on. Remember, while Paul left to return to Jerusalem last week, he left two people in Ephesus for a purpose. A purpose that was yet to be revealed, but now is revealed. Priscilla and Aquila were people who Paul had discipled as we know, people who were brought up in this new gospel way and who were evangelizing and evangelizing in the model of Paul.And they had decided to stay in Ephesus even though Paul returned to Jerusalem anti Antioch before going out to new places in his missionary journeys. And here we see the role that they have to play in this young upstart preacher's life in ministry. Let's meet this guy. So you know now this character that we've been introduced to is a character by the name of Paul, I mean, sorry, Apollos, not Paul, a character by the name of Apollos.The interesting thing is, as I was studying this guy, Apollos, he's a pretty fascinating guy for a lot of reasons, and they may not be immediately obvious to you. First, let's look at verse one. Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, do you understand how weird that phrase is? A Jew named Apollos, that name is a very interesting Greek pagan name, which means one who follows after Apollo, the Greek, God, his full name's actually Op Apollos, but I think they only called him that when he was in trouble.So here a Apollos one who follows after the Greek God. Apollo is shown not to follow the Greek God Apollo, but to be a follower of the way of the Lord. And though he is ethnically Greek, we see that he is from a very sorry ethnically Jewish. He's from a very Greek city, Alexandria, Greek, Greco Roman rather.And actually, we know that this city, Alexandria, was at one time the capital of the whole Roman Empire. It was founded by Alexander the Great. That's where it got its name. About 332 years before this. And if you guys know your history, you'll know that this place was the very center for secular learning in the whole ancient world.This place was the place that gave birth to men like Euclid, the father of geometry, to follow the great Hebrew, uh, the great Jewish, uh, secular philosopher. The man by Whit, by whom actually we think Apollos may have been studied under. It was home to much learning. In fact, the library in Alexandria was home to about 700,000 volumes before it was lost to a fire.This is a place of great Greek, uh, hellistic and Roman cultural values, a place which teaches orry and philosophy and mathematics. And there was a, a, a quite large Jewish population, but it was a very secular place. And this is where this guy is from, this guy Apollos. Beyond that, the other contradiction that I see in the passage here is that Apollos is learned.He's eloquent, he's even well instructed in the scriptures and in the way of the Lord. And yet, We see him being taught and pulled aside by two tent makers. I love this passage because it does what the gospel has been doing the whole time in the Book of Acts. It turns the world on its head. This is not what you'd expect.This guy is an un, a very, uh, interesting character to be sure. But let's look at the passage itself now, now that we kind of have an idea of a little bit of the strangeness of this guy. There's a couple questions that I at least had as I was reading this passage. As we're reading through, we see again in verse one.Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. Remember, Paul has just left Ephesus. Priscilla and Aquila are remaining in Ephesus. And now we have this upstart street preacher coming into Ephesus to preach. But there's in verse 25, something very interesting is to told, told to us by the author Luke, he had been instructed in the way of the Lord.My question is, what does that mean, right? Because at first glance, what will we think of? Well, the way of the Lord must mean the Gospel, the same way of the Lord that Priscilla and Aquila were brought to believe in, and that Paul taught and that Peter taught, and that Jesus taught. But then we see that there needs to be, the gaps in his learning need to be filled in.So I don't think we can assume this way of the Lord is the same as Priscilla and quill's. Understanding the question then becomes, what is it? Well, bear with me here, but if we look at that phrase way of the Lord, believe it or not, that phrase only appears a few times in the New Testament gospels, and it's always in the beginning of the New Testament Gospels, the way of the Lord.And it refers not to the ministry of Jesus, but of who. Come on, shout it out. Anyone? John? John the Baptist. And so as we look at the beginning of the gospels, we see the introduction of a, another interesting character, John the Baptist. And this guy, this was the guy that was the cousin of Jesus who was, uh, kind of a crazy homeless guy that lived out in the wilderness.He dressed in animal skin and ate locusts and honey. And he had a very deliberate message to preach. Anybody remember what it was? Repent for the kingdom of God has come nearthe John the Baptist message or way of the Lord, which he was teaching. And in being instructed in was a prophetic word that was given to John the Baptist. And actually, if we look at Isaiah chapter 40, we know that the way of the Lord comes straight out of a prophecy about John the Baptist. In Isaiah chapter 40, verse three, it says, A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord and make straight in the desert a highway for our God.And here we have Apollos being instructed in not exactly the teachings of Christ, but rather the teachings of the one who came to prepare the way for Christ. And my suspicion is that Apollos came to Jerusalem and into the surrounding areas, uh, probably cuz he was a, a good Jew that wanted to come and to learn more.And that somehow he, like so many others did, met John the Baptist, another street preacher, another powerful man with a dynamic personality who had a powerful message from God to preach. And I'm guessing Apollos learned a lot under him. Was instructed and brought up in the scriptures, and that his great learning was then matched with a great understanding, which was revealed to him from John.And while that is really good, we know, and as we go on, we're gonna see what the problem was with this. Okay? So the way of the Lord is not the way that Paul and Priscilla and Peter and these guys have been brought up in Christ's teachings, but rather the teachings of John the Baptist, then we see something else that kind of gives us an interesting, I don't know, hint if you keep reading through.Verse 25 says, and he had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. Okay, what's the, there's another question for us. What's the baptism of John? Well, we gotta go back to this character, John, and ask the question again.If you'd remember in the beginning of the gospels, We have this guy that I've just told you about and what he was doing beyond just saying Repent through the kingdom of God has come near. He was also taking people down into the river and baptizing them, symbolizing their repentance, and they're turning away from their sin and toward God.And he did this with hundreds and with thousands of Jewish people. One of the people he baptized was Christ himself. If you remember that great moment when Jesus receives the spirit and God speaks the words, this is my son and whom I am well pleased. That was John who baptized him. And yet what we learn is that baptism of John is not the same as the baptism of Jesusfrom John's own mouth. He confirms this in Matthew chapter three, verse 11, John speaks these words. People were confusing the two. And John said this, I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one who was more powerful than I, who sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.The baptism of Christ is not the baptism of John, but the baptism of John is all that Apollos knew. And so that is what he preached. And so that brings us to the final question that I think this passage raises, which is this, how can John, this gospel of John, this, this incomplete, uh, baptism of John be taught by Apollos and yet he's also teaching the things that concern Jesus with accuracy.Cuz to me, if someone is, isn't teaching the baptism of Jesus, how could they be teaching the things of Jesus accurately?I think something very deliberate is going on here with the author, Luke. Do you guys remember a number of weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago actually, when we talked about the false gospels that were spreading in Acts chapter 15, and the need for the apostles and the church to come together, to rally together and to defend themselves against these false gospels, these gospels, which proclaim that, no, the way that you're saved is by being circumcised, becoming Jewish, and following the law of Moses and what Peter and what Paul said and rebuked was, no, what are you talking about?That's the old way you're trying to put a yoke on the Gentiles, which we ourselves were never able to bear. Well, what we have here in Acts chapter 18 is not a false gospel, but an incomplete gospel. And Luke is very deliberate to speak and to show and to demonstrate that this gospel, which is being preached, is not a false gospel.It's accurate because after all, what did we see just a number of weeks ago in these incredible testimonies, people giving their lives over to Christ? What is the first thing that they talked about out repentance? Repentance is the first step in the journey towards true baptism that not only uses water, but the fire of the Holy Spirit that comes from Christ.And so what we have here is a man earnestly. It says he's fervent in spirit preaching part one of the gospel, preaching with all his heart, soul, and mind. With eloquence, with understanding, preaching part one of the gospel. The gospel, which he is preaching, is not a gospel to be rebuked, but to be filled in.You know what I imagine when I read this passage, what kept coming to mind this week is what that conversation would've been like between a Priscilla and Aquila and Apollo Apollos. It's so fun to imagine. Real quick look at, look with me real quick. And the very towards the end of that, this passage, when we see that what happens with Priscilla and Aquila and he being Apollos began to speak boldly in the synagogue.When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to, to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. That's such a matter of fact, way of putting all the things that they must have filled in this guy. My guess is his full understanding of the gospel went up to when. John said to his followers, behold the Lamb of God and pointed to Jesus.And so Apollos knew all the teachings was led up, all the prophecies pointed to this man Jesus. And yet he probably had to return to his home in Alexandria. And so he did not know that what transpired afterwards of all the incredible things which Jesus did, of his death, of his resurrection, and of his great commission of his disciples, and his returning to the right hand of the Father, that's a pretty big gap.So imagine them. I love this. In the NIV v translation, it says that they, they took him into their home and explained to him the God way of God more accurately or more adequately. Imagine this for a minute, guys. They're, they're eating, they've broken bread together and they're like, Apollos, have we got a story for you?So I you're, you're doing a great job preaching. We love all the, the prophecies that you're weaving and your understanding of the scriptures is amazing, but you don't know the whole story. After you left the Messiah, Jesus, he started casting out demons. He started healing the sick. He started moving in miraculous ways.He showed himself in truth to be the one that we had been waiting for. And the Apollo is probably like, yeah, awesome. The, oh, no, no, we're not done yet. They killed him. And Apollos, I could see his face falling. What? Oh no, we're not done yet. He was nailed to the cross and he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?But you know as well as we do, he was quoting from Psalm 22, in which at the end of that passage it says, declare to a generation yet unborn. He has done it, it is finished. And then he died. He died of Apollos. And then after he died three days later, he rose. Death, could not keep him.He conquered death. And when he rose, he started opening the scriptures to us in new ways. He started showing us from the scriptures that he had to die. And not only that, that he had to return to his father, but the work was not done. And he spoke to us a great commandment before he left. A commandment was said, go into all the world teaching them and instructing them in what I have taught you, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spiritand wait in Jerusalem to be clothed in power for my spirit is coming to be your comfort, to be your witness, to be your guide. I can just see Apollo sitting there in the chair like, whoa,Apollo's gospel was not false. It was just woefully incomplete.This story must have floored him. And again, Luke's gotta tell a, a, a, a story that's deliberate and, and he's moving along. But there's so much contained there just in that little verse in verse 26. And we see the power of that word, of that encouragement of that discipleship from Priscilla and Aquila in the verses that follow in verse 27, in verse 28, when Apollos wanted to go into ak, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him.And when he had arrived, he was a great help to those who had by grace, believed for, he vigorously refuted the Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. Now he's armed with the full gospel of God. And what does he do? When the full gospel fills you, what happens?You're not content with leaving it inside. You've gotta spread it. You've gotta encourage, You've gotta rebuke evil and you've gotta encourage the church, and that is exactly what he did. I want to close with three quick applications,things that I think are a great help to us or will be a great help to us this summer. I kept coming back and the only way I can think of it is think of these as tools for your spiritual tool belt, things that you can pull out and apply as we enter a season of unexpected enough discomfort. And to those of you who are gathered in Collingswood and in your own seasons of discomfort and of the unexpected, these truths hold still for you.Okay, the first application that I wanna look at from this passage is that this passage reminds us that eloquence. That education, that intelligence, they are not a prerequisite of spiritual maturity or a guarantee of spiritual maturity. We see here demonstrated clearly by this story that though Apollo's learning far outstripped, Priscilla and Acquis lowly tent makers, though his education and his intelligence undoubtedly was unrivaled by any believer at that time, except possibly Paul.We have here a beautiful example of how this gospel turns everything on its head. Apollos receiving discipleship by two tent makers, bringing him along in the way of God more adequately. It reminds me of First Corinthians chapter two, verse one, when Paul gives these words to the church in Corinth, and when I came to you brothers, Did not.I did not come proclaiming to you a testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling in my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit of power so that your faith may not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.And Paul later in Corinthians or earlier in Corinthians, says these words, not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you were influential. Not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.He chose the lowly things of the world and the despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him. We have here a young man who is capable, who is dynamic, who is full of learning and intelligence, and yet God chooses to bring him along in the way of God with two tent makers.What a beautiful example of the gospel. I wanna speak to you, church. Now, there are probably some of you, or maybe a lot of you who have fallen into the same era that I have fallen into, and that is to make the very easy error to think my own ability to pray well or to speak publicly well, or to articulate myself well, or to show how intelligent I am in the Bible.That's my spiritual maturity. That's a sign of my maturity. It is not those things. Learning intelligence, eloquence, they're gifts, and they can be used for God's kingdom as we see here at the end of this passage. They are not spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity comes only from God, and it comes from His gospel, which tells us it is nothing that we have done, but what he has done in us.All right, moving on. The second application I think that we can apply to us as we go forward in this season is an even more important one in this season. I think this passage, demonst demonstrates to us beautifully the manner in which believers are to both give and receive instruction and teaching.Because it could be very easy for Priscilla and Aquila when they see Apollos speaking an incomplete gospel in the synagogue with boldness. For them to call him on the carpet, be like, yo, hey young man, knock it off. They could make him look like a fool. They could show the gaps in his learning. They could embarrass him publicly and tear him down.Is that what they did? No, it is not. And Apollos himself, being a man of great learning and of in, of influence and of a world traveler, could have easily not accepted their instruction, but instead in pride rejected it, but he did not. What is demonstrated to us in this passage is that for Christians giving instruction or teaching or disciple is should be something of humility, of gentleness, of love and hospitality.Because we see here demonstrated clearly in the passages that Priscilla and Aquila, your, your book might say your, your translation might say, drew him aside privately. Mine says, That he took, they took him into his home. The word that's used there in Greek is the Greek word pro bono, which it's got, the reason why it's different in different translations is it's kind of, it means a lot of different things.It means to take one as a companion. It means to draw one a, a aside privately, so as to become a companion of theirs. It means to take one into one's home, but one thing is for sure, it is a hospitable word. Priscilla and Aquila did not use the truth that they had as a weapon, but rather they used it as a tool to build up Apollos in the Lord.They built him up in the Lord. They did not tear him down, and Apollos in humility accepted their teaching. So for us, as we go and we find the need of. Filling one another's, the gaps in one another's knowledge, or the gaps in one another's understanding of each other and of love of God, of all these things.Let us do it with gentleness, with love and hospitality. Lastly, and most importantly, the final application that I think is clearly given to us by this passage is this, after the events that took place at Calvary upon the cross, any gospel that preaches only repentance is a gospel that is incomplete.I bring this up to us church, because while we would say that we have the full understanding, we have the full picture. We know what happened. We so easily get enmeshed in a half gospel. We find ourselves caught up in this constant, endless repentance. And repentance, by the way, is a beautiful thing. The Bible tells us to confess to God and to one another.But the endless shame cycle of repenting and nothing changing, the hamster wheel of shame, that is not the new gospel.The Bible is full of stories of people repenting and repenting and repenting, and repenting, and sacrificing, and sacrificing and sacrificing and nothing changing. A gospel that teaches only repentance is not false, but incomplete. A couple of weeks ago, we saw demonstrated so beautifully that the full gospel of God is a gospel of repentance and a faith in Jesus and the finished work of the cross in saying He is mine and I am his, and he is producing a new thing in me.Not of water only, but of the Holy Spirit and fire.I want to end with just a reading from Romans three, verse 11 and a few closing thoughts. Paul writes these words when describing the gospel. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Christ Jesus we're baptized into his death? That we were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life for if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin for who has been, who has died, has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, We believe that we will also live with himThis morning. We sang a song Who The Son Sets Free is free indeed. If you are here and you feel stuck in an endless procession of repentance without any hope, maybe you are operating on a incomplete gospel except the full, incomplete, finished work of Jesus turn and have faith that he has overcome. The gospel does not call you because you are equipped.It calls you because you are not. You are called not for the great things that you can do for God, but rather for the great things that God will do in you and through you. Let the gospel be what changes you. Don't change for the gospel. No longer does this gospel speak only of repentance, but now it adds to that it is finished.Let's pray.Lord, we thank you for your holy scriptures. Thank you that they are so good for instruction, Lord, for teaching for repu, for for rep proof, for learning and encouragement, and for building up one another in love. Lord, as we enter into this new season of unexpected and discomfort, I pray that you turn it into a season of new life, of regrowth and of reminding that your church is your people gathered together in the union of the Holy Spirit, to worship the God our creator, and to unite with Christ our savior.Lord, remind us day by day to put on the full gospel of God, not part of it. But all of it being reminded that it is not us, but you who overcomes. We pray all of this in your great name, oh God, and whose name we pray. Amen. Thank you guys.
Invite you to take your Bibles this morning to Acts chapter 18 Uh, we've got a short text this morning. Thanks Justin. We return again today to our series in the book of Acts and looking at actually two verses and we're actually only focusing on one of them, but we are going to be taking a journey this morning, actually three journeys.And, uh, that's gonna be how we're gonna start. A little bit of a geography lesson, little bit of an overview of what's been going on in the book of Acts and going to be going on. But Acts chapter 18 is a transitional moment and particularly verse 23. And I'd like to read just verse 22 and 23, pick up from where Pastor Ben left off a couple of weeks ago.Acts chapter 18, verse 22, when he had landed at Caesarea. And this is talking about Paul. He went up and greeted the church and then went down to Antioch. After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next, to the region of Galatia and frig, strengthening all the disciples.Lord, we look to you this morning. Glory in a morning that is beautiful. It reminds us again of a creator God, a God who loves beauty and has created beauty for us to enjoy. And Lord, as we gather in this room this morning, I really pray that as we open this word, that you would speak into our lives, that you would call us, compel us to long to go deeper in our experience with Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior.In whose name I pray. Amen. Amen. What I'm gonna do for the next probably four or five minutes is to present where we are, because actually what is happening here is a transitional moment in the Book of Acts. It is the ending of the second missionary journey, which was a big deal, and the beginning of the third missionary journey, which is a bigger deal.But there's a statement made in that transitional moment, which is where I'm gonna focus my message this morning. But just to give context, um, we're looking at the fir the first missionary journey, and there are three missionary journeys that Paul was a part of. And they spanned about 10 years of ministry from 80 47 to 57.And as we come to the first map, um, basically we see. That, um, Paul is starting at Antioch, right there. Jerusalem is down in this area, down actually farther, but this is, this is, uh, Antioch up here. He is going to take, um, his partner who is Barnabas at the time, and they are going to follow this blue line.The blue line goes to Cyprus, it then comes up north, it comes over to here, it ends at Derby, and then he retraces his steps and goes back to Antioch. That is the first missionary journey. It is a journey that, uh, focuses on this arena and if we can put that blue mark right, this is basically the hub of the first missionary journey where that blue square is.The Jerusalem Council occurred in, in chapter 15 of the Book of Acts back in Jerusalem where Paul and Barnabas have been out. They've been reaching Gentiles. And now's the whole question, what do we do with these gentiles? Do they have to become Jews? I mean, don't they have to be, uh, converted to Judaism before they can become followers of Christ?And, and the conclusion is no. And now Paul is going on a second missionary journey, beginning in chapter 16, and this section Mi missionary journey.I don't know where he went. All right, well, the second missionary journey is now beginning here and is going up through this area, and basically it again starts in Antioch. This time he goes this way and he tries to go to Ephesus in that red. Um, designation there. The stop sign is he was stopped by the spirit.So then he went north and he said, okay, we're gonna go up into this area, Bethia. Um, because that is along the Black Sea, the coastal area. There, there were a number, number of cities that apparently he wanted to preach in and God stopped him again. So then he continued along and he went Toro ass, sort of the end of the line.And he, he sort of had this sense that on the second missionary journey, Paul is somewhat wandering at this point and God then calls him over in a dream to Macedonia, to, he starts in Philippi and works down and spends the majority of his time here in, in Corinth. Al over 18 months in Corinth. And while he is there, that area, um, over here, the, the big rectangle becomes the hub of the second missionary journey.First missionary journey was here. Second missionary journey is basically Greece. Paul is concluding, uh, his trip as he, he travels and he and he now comes over here, just finally gets to Ephesus and is just there for a moment. He has wanted to go to Ephesus. It is the center of the, it is basically the, the crown jewel of the eastern part of the entire Roman empire, the second most prominent city in the Roman Empire.And Paul is, um, leaving there, if we can bring that up again. He leaves there and now he's come back and we pick up in the verses we read. It says that he lands, he comes to Caesarea and then he travels back up to Antioch and now he's at Antioch. And verse 23 picks up with the statement that he started out again, this is the start of the third missionary journey.As Paul now begins that journey, it says, when he landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and then he went down to Antioch. It says down, even though it's going north because Jerusalem and was much higher elevation than Antioch. And that's how they talked back then, elevations. And so he was going down.After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia. Basically, he's going back and this is going to be his third missionary journey. And on the third missionary journey, Paul is going to minister in this area originally, um, primarily again in Galatia and these surrounding areas.Frige is right here. But where Paul is gonna spend almost all his time on this missionary journey is in one place, the city of sis, he's gonna be there over two years. He's gonna do some more travels and he's gonna come back and he's gonna be there again. Ministering, uh, in nearby city of Melitus where he meets the elders of the city of, of the church in Ephesus.So he's got three missionary journeys with three different emphasis in terms of location, geographical focus, first in Southern Turkey, which is Galatia, uh, then in Greece. And now in the third missionary journey that he's embarking on, he is going to go primarily to Ephesus in that ministry. Paul, priorities for ministry.Are, are presented to us in verse 23, and they are the priority that he had. It is the priority that the church collectively had. It is the priorities that we as a church collectively and as believers, individually should embrace. And those priorities in verse 23 are going to be that Paul was determined to make disciples by God's grace and then to build disciples.I'm gonna look at that simple outline, uh, this morning in sort of a big picture way, because this phrase, strengthening Disciples, is foundational to the ministry of the GOs, the Book of Acts as the focus of the church's ministry throughout the world. So we're gonna look at that together. The first thing we find is that Paul.Is always seeking to make disciples. Verse 23 says, Paul set out. From there the picture is that Paul, he's come back, he's settled in Antioch. It's an established church. He loves the people there. He is spent a lot of time there. He is been an elder in the church, but he's itching to get back out on the road.He's longing to again, get out and, and communicate the gospel to areas Ephesus Preeminently as a place to present the gospel. It's striking how significant that was in the Roman world. The Roman world basically tolerated all religions. Everybody can believe whatever they want. Of course, just the Romans themselves had hundreds of, of deities, but they had placed, they, they, they had embraced, uh, Judaism.They had, they embraced everything. They embraced all of the various religious faiths. The only thing the Roman authorities asked was that you give some token allegiance to the concept that the emperor is, is a deity. But it wasn't really a, a, an act of theological spiritual devotion. It was more of a political allegiance.The second preeminent principle that the Roman, uh, authorities had in terms of religion is not only must you pay lip service to Caesar, but secondly, you must not try to proselytize other people to your faith. We tolerate everybody. Don't try to make somebody else become what you are. Implying that what they are and what they believe is not appropriate.Well, the essence of Christian faith put the early believers in the crosshairs on both accounts. So the gospel we are reminded was never intended to be kept to oneself. It is not a religious dogma entrusted to its followers for their own consumption. The gospel literally means good news. The gospel is something that is news.It is news to be shared. It is news to be proclaimed. It is news to be declared. It is a messaging that is presented to others, and it immediately put them in the crosshairs of the authorities because, They were intentionally then foundationally viewing their faith as something to try to share to others.In Acts chapter one, Jesus said The whole mission of this new enterprise called the church would be you will be, once you've received power that comes from the spirit, you will be witnesses to me throughout the entire world. The early church grasped that and their champions like Paul led the way. And so we look at then what Paul is doing as he is embarking on his trip, but he's representative of the whole feel of the early church that we have been given.Not a dogma, not a religious faith that is entrusted as a a private treasure. We have been entrusted with. News, good news. It's our gospel and the word evangelism is from Evangeline, that good news gospel. We see a couple of things. The people they sought to reach Paul followed the same pattern in all of the cities.He will do this on the third missionary journey in the same way that he did on the first journey and the second journey, he will go to ultimately two groups of people. He will start with those with a worldview more similar to the one that he embraced. He would go to the Jews they believed in one God, one, uh, one Theas God, who was overall a creator God.But he would also take his message, and we see him most prominently visualizing that in his messaging to the, to the Athenians as he's talking to the philosophers and the city mucking bucks there in Act 17. And he, and he's, he's defining this God to a people that have a very different worldview than he does as he talks about a God of transcendence, a transcendent God who is a creator to whom all people will be accountable.Now, Paul was the prominent spokesman for this movement, but the overwhelming majority of converts in the Roman Empire would never hear Paul preach. They would come to faith through the lives and the influence and the, the, the testimony of those who had embraced the concept as Christians of being witnesses.To Christ with his good news. Now, there's a big question here. How is it that going to a, a culturewith individuals that had no concept of transcendence, no concept of a God that is, uh, a God that is both creator, sustainer of life, a God that is desiring to be personally involved in their lives, which was so contrary to the Roman perspective, a God that. Believed in a, a, a, a culture believed in imminence.Everything's gotta be right here, right with me. Touch, feel. It's, it's a man. I've got a God for this. I've got a God for this. I carry him around. That's my view of God. But the idea, one God transcendent creator, was totally contrary to their belief system. How was it that the church was able to move people towards the gospel?Well, it's a question that's really relevant for us, and I've mentioned this lately. I, this is where I'm spending a lot of time just processing, trying to really execute culture and, and, and thinking where we are and what does it mean and how does this, that, that we are secularized and, and far more secularized than we have ever been before.And how did we get here? And how was it, uh, that, that just a handful of centuries ago, a couple of centuries ago, Virtually everybody believed in some type of a deity. The concept of of atheism was almost non-existent in the western world. And now we have moved dramatically to a culture that is moving to more nons.What is your religious faith non in the result than ever before? How do we then speak in the concepts of a transcendent God? Well, it's important to just realize the thinking of people today. You might say, well, I don't know. Most of the people I know believe in God, and most of the people I know would, uh, you know, would, would, would, would, um, believe that you know that, that God is big and maybe even that his creator?Well, here's an analogy od it's like believing that there are power plants that produce our electricity. I don't know if you know this, um, but pse and G doesn't actually make your electricity. That's produced by gas plants and nuclear power plants here in new, in, in southern New Jersey. That's where virtually all of the power that you find, the electric power that comes into your home, uh, and your office and this building come from natural gas plants, nuclear power plants.Now, I might ask you, do you believe that? And you'd say, well, I think so. You usually don't lie, but well then I would say, Google it, you'll find out. Cuz then you'll, but it's true. So we might say, okay, yeah, yeah, I believe that. And then I might ask, does that affect your life? And, well, no, I mean, I, I never even thought about it.Maybe I, I knew power came from, you know, Niagara Falls for most of New York state. I never really thought about where my power comes from, but yeah, I, I believe it. But does it affect my life? No, I don't. I, I, I, I don't ever think about it. And, and this is, Probably gonna be the last time I'm gonna think about it because you're making me think about it.And no, it's not really affecting my day-to-day experience and I don't expect it to. That is how many people live their lives culturally with God. You say, do you believe exist? Yeah. Uh, is he bit, yeah. Uh, does it, does it affect the way tomorrow when you're planning your week? Will that be something that you are, you are, you're bringing in?I would quite frankly say I'm not only talking to people outside the church. I'm people inside the church. But basically there's a, there's a concept that yes, people believe in God, but as far as touching their day-to-day lives, their day-to-day experience where God said, I'm transcendent. I'm the creator, and I'm the one that hold people accountable for their behavior, and I have moral absolutes that I have laid out for, for all of humankind to whom I will ultimately hold all people accountable.I'm sustaining life. I'm overseeing life. I am ruling in the world in which you live. So how do we, IM people, pack people that don't really think about God, that aren't really reckoning on God when they get up and plan their day, their week, their future, and aren't really thinking about the need of a relationship with God in particular.Well, here's how it happened in the early church. In the book of Acts, and I'm just gonna highlight a few things. The reason they made an impact on those people, and I'm summarizing now, studies overall in the Book of Acts and also some of the epistles people saw individuals that are, had a relationship with the living God that impacted their lives.They saw and heard evidence for God in people's lives. The Book of Acts is a story of lives that were experiencing the power of God. That's the very impetus to go out with the good news was people were experienced power from the spirit of God. They were living the old theological term, korum Dale in the presence of God, as the Latin word talks about, that God was real to them.That it wasn't just you got up tomorrow morning or tonight as you plan your week that you don't, or, or the next month that's coming up in June and, and you don't make all those plan and without. Thinking of where does God fit in this? And am I listening to God? Am I, am I hearing from God as I process life, as I think of doing life,the gospel impacting a culture that does not have a sense and is not living with the reality of a, of, of a transcendent active God that is actually making it available to do life with him, needs to see the living power of God. That's why we were all excited last Sunday with 13 people getting baptized in both services, hearing the stories, and I was struck with Pastor Jared's words as he baptized the 13th of them.This one in the 10 30 service. Here was his statement as he closed the service and it was great. He said, if you showed up today, maybe you came to support someone who was baptized. Maybe you just walked in. But one thing you found from these testimonies, our God is alive as we heard. It doesn't matter if you have traumas or if you have addictions.If you're chasing other spiritual practices, God is life and he's pursuing you. This is the reality that the early church throbbed with as they went forth with people living in the presence of God, that culturally people are going to have to sense that God is alive, God is moving. The second thing we find about the early church is they had a reason for hope in suffering.The Christians did not see life as random. They knew a God that was orchestrating the circumstances of their lives. It's why Peter says in one Peter three, verse 15, as he's talking to a church that is under intense suffering, he says this,always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. He says, People don't expect you to have hope when you don't have God as the central reality of life, orchestrating life, having purpose in, in circumstances that are allowed to come into our lives and are purposed by God.He says, all you look at suffering as is something to get over. It's only looked at as if I can just live through this. If it can just be eradicated, if I can just get out of it. But the Christian says, I embrace these moments. I embrace what God is desiring to do in my life and he is intending through these circumstances that I don't live with wasted moments where now I can't be productive and I, it's just getting through this thing till I get to where I really live my life.The Christ says, no, there is a God that is involved. I quoted this book a while, a few weeks ago by Alan Noble called Disruptive Witness, and in the book he is arguing that there are two. Preeminent barriers that we share that we face in our culture in the Western culture today, uh, to the gospel. First is the lack of transcendence, the lack of sense that there is a God to whom are accountable, that there's a God.That's superintendent, but he has a second one as well. The second one he said is people are distracted. That people are, are, are constantly, their minds are full. They're, they're, they're struggling with so many different things. Smartphones, tablets, computers, social media platforms, distract people from really thinking and processing.A recent study by Reed Health Centers in the Midwest did a study of people on their phones. They actually had a system where they were able to measure on their phones how many touches people had. And it could be, uh, just a time when you, you were typing, it could have been a time when you were tapping the phone, when you're swiping the phone screen all counted as a touch.They found that an average user touches their smartphone 2,617 times every day with heavy users clocking in at 5,427. That's a distracted group of people. We are a distracted culture, and he is arguing in the book, Alan Noble, is that people are, their minds are so, they're, they're thinking, they're looking at the neck thing.You know, if, if, if they got quiet for a moment, the first thing you do we do is look at the phone, check it out, and he says it's, it's hard to get people to process and think, so how do we speak in truth in such a day, in such a culture? His suggestion is this, recognize that modern people, Are invariably more open to considering Christianity during times of stress, difficulty, disappointment, or suffering.When I read that the first time, I immediately went to the book of Ecclesiastes in my mind because in Ecclesiastes there's a statement. Here's a statement. Wisdom is found more in the house of mourning than the house of feasting. Could I paraphrase it? Here's a Willie paraphrase. You do a lot more thinking about life at a funeral than you do at a tailgate party.Our culture is keeping us moving at tailgate parties. But when you come to a funeral, what do you think about? You think about what would people say about me? You think about, oh my goodness, this guy's only two years older than I am. Oh my goodness. You, you, you, you embrace it. You're processing. You're thinking about life.You're thinking about mortality. You're thinking about where you're investing your life. Times of loss, times of pain, times of suffering. Our megaphones in our lives, but also the lives of people that we do life with. Every crisis of a coworker is an opportunity to offer, to pray for them or with them. We need to believe that, that people you would never think would pray will respond many times.Not everybody, and you don't know which ones. So there'll be rebuffs. But to recognize these are moments when people are feeling something are struggling, lost. These are God appointed moments. The gospel speaks into it because Christians have a, a comfort and, and, and Peter says, people are gonna look at you guys and you're suffering right now.And he says, be ready to talk to them about the reason for your hope. Third Christians were willing to do that and ready to do that. They engaged with the, the, the needs of people around them. It's a statement made by a guy named anwith apologies to him, but since he was from the early second century. He'll, I'll get by. He made this statement as he wrote to Roman authorities about Christians, but among us, you'll find uneducated persons and artisans and old women who, if they're unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds, exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth.They don't ha, they don't rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works when struck. They do not strike again when robbed. They don't go to law. They give it to those they give. They give to those that ask of them and love their neighbors as themselves. They're not Christian in name only one's. Readiness to forgive.Others to serve. Others. To deny others is the most powerful polemic for the truth of the gospel. That we have embraced ourselves with a Lord that is a servant.Great read by Langdon Gilkey, and if we can just bring up that book. It's called The Shong Compound. It's a story of a guy Langdon Gilkey, who was a liberal professor that was teaching in China at the time. He was caught up in the Japanese sweep and got thrown in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. While he was there, he was with a bunch of missionaries and a bunch of other, uh, western, um, ex expatriates and ba basically, they were all there and he was studying it.And he actually wrote a, a, a really interesting study about, it's, it's basically about how do people live under stress and what he found. Was that many of those that were religious were just as exploitive, as irreligious people. There are many missionaries, some of the missionaries anyway, began to form cliques and, and look out for themselves, protect their food, sort of, sort of be a community within the community and to care for each other.Only yet he saw something strikingly different and impactful in some of the others. He saw people and he cites one guy in particular who spent tireless hours in caring for elderly prisoners in teaching the Bible and science to anybody that wanted to hear it. Organizing games and dances for the kids, and sharing his food, his time, his energy.You've heard of the guy, at least some of you have. The man's name was Eric Little, the star of the Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalists who gave his life to serving the gospel in China. Eric Little died in that camp in 1945, but Langdon Gilkey, his whole life was impacted by Eric Little because he saw the influence of a man and others with him that lived out a gospel.And it was compelling in its reality, making disciples, helping people be brought into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ drove the Apostle Paul as he went on the third Missionary journey. It drove the early church, but the second thing we find, and this one I'll be shorter, he did something else and it's found in our text again this morning, the end of verse 23.It said he went into that area of Southern Turkey, Galatia frig. And it says he was strengthening all the disciples. This is a fascinating thing because this phrase is used at really pregnant moments in the Book of Acts. It's used in Acts chapter 14 after, after Paul went, you know, he went on the journey and he, and he went, first of all from Antioch and he started to move up in from Cyprus up into Galatia.And he shared the gospel and he won converts. And then it says, as he was on his way back on the journey, it says he was strengthening the disciples. When he returned and went out on the second missionary journey, the first thing he did, which was was a year later, the first thing that he did was he went through that area again of Galatia Southern Turkey today.And it says he went there strengthening the disciples. When he set out on the third missionary journey here in our text, it says, as he went through that same area, he went there strengthening all of the types he wanna say. How much did strengthen these people need?Paul was consumed with not just having decisions but living active disciples in Christ. He poured his life into helping them grow and mature. So what does that look like? Just some quick thoughts. Seeking for disciples to stand on their own is what is implied? The word strengthen is actually the word in the original to stand, Paul was determined for these believers to stand on their own in the faith.Now again, The overall majority of these people are people that had no concept of a transcendent God. No concept of God has created. I mean, they knew nothing. They knew no Bible, and Paul was determined that these individuals would be able to stand on their own, feed themselves from the scriptures. I love what it says here.He was strengthening all the disciples. I mean, some of these people were Jewish with a great heritage of, of monotheism, A one God creator of all others have absolutely no con. All different places, all different ages, all different backgrounds, all different intellects reminds me of when I first started in ministry.My mentor in ministry was a guy named Dr. Floyd Davis, and Dr. Davis made a statement to me. He said, mark, I'm gonna tell you what your job is as a pastor, and it relates to everybody that God brings to your ministry. Your calling is to help people. Go from where they are to where God wants 'em to be. And he said they're gonna start at all different places.And this is Paul. He says, I'm not just targeting, targeting these guys cuz they've got a theological background, or I'm not just gonna target these guys because you know, they're kind of cool. I mean, they'll be the great newsletter. When I explain about these people where they've come from, Paul says, I'm passionate about helping all the disciples be strengthened.Secondly, he appointed disciples to depend on God, the Holy Spirit. 56 times in the Book of Acts, the Spirit is mentioned. This is the very foundation of Jesus teaching. You'll receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. As you look at the messages of Paul, if you look at the focus people, were always pushing believers into the spirit of God saying, lean on him, learn from him.Allow him to empower your lives. The third thing that was true of building disciples was encouraging believers to embrace suffering in spiritual warfare. And Acts Chapter 14 is one of those passages where it talks about strengthened disciples. Lemme just read it to you. I think we have it up there. They returned to Lystra and to I Iconium and to Antioch.That was areas in Southern Turkey strengthening the souls of the disciples. There's that word, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. One of the great beauties of Christian experience is we have hope in hardship. We have a way of looking at it differently.Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Press passed away late last week. To everyone, I think is incredible Loss to those that really were influenced by his ministry is a deep loss. While Marin and I were away last week, and Scott and Faith were away, Scott and Faith sent to us a link to a, and this is before we knew anything about what was going on with Tim Keller.It was a message by Tim Keller, and we listened to, in the cars we were traveling just as Scott and Faith had done. And in the, in the letter in, in the message, Keller was saying, this is how suffering is. He said, think of it as an email. You relieve, you receive a a, a a, an email that is the hardship or the suffering.And he says, with that hardship email comes two attachments. A document, you know, that's included with it. And he said, the one attachment comes from the devil. And he said, it is a message, it is a messaging of, uh, discouragement. It is a message of hopelessness. It is a message sometimes of condemnation. It, it is a message.It just beats you down and, and calls you to interpret your hardships in a way that is destructive and hopeless. He said, but there's always a second attachment with the email of hardship. And he says it's a, it's, it's an attachment from God. A God that says there's hope in this. There's purpose in this, that I am present with you, that, that I'm using all these things in your life.Spiritual growth is to listen and to read the right attachment. It's to say, I know there's gonna be those two messaging that come. I've gotta read the right attachment. I've gotta believe that. I've gotta hear this. It was a really helpful visual to me. I just thought it was perfect. Last Sunday in the baptism, one of the young men that talked said something.He was giving his journey. His name's Dylan. He's, well, I was gonna say he's the one, but I think it was a 10 30 service. He towered over Josiah by about that much, but as Josiah baptized him. But, but in the, in the, uh, his testimony and he was talking about how God had been at work in his life and it was a beautiful testimony.And he just said, uh, I, I realized that in God troubles don't come to me. They come for me. That is profound. That's right. That God orchestrates and allows circumstances for us that those are the moments. Spiritual growth, deepening as disciples is believing that God is at work. That we can say with confidence that a sovereign good God, that if I could see everything that God sees, what is going on in my life is exactly what I would pray for.Challenging believers to stand in the unity that comes through prayer. The church went forward on its knees.We're going through a transition here, right? This is our last Sunday in here. I know we've talked about that earlier. Gonna be over in the My prayer. Many of our prayers is not that. This is gonna be a time when we sort of put life and ministry on hold, but that God will use this summer to bring people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.That God will be building disciples this summer, that we will see him work in unusual and powerful ways.We must be people that pray. I sense a tremendous stirring more than I think any time I remember in the ministry here for people to be praying. There is a deep swelling of hunger to pray individually, but also to pray together. Last Monday night, our, our board chairman, Doug Lindo, and I love this. He had brought the names of all the 13 people that were baptized and a little bit about their testimony, and we took time as a board.Which is pastors and deacons together, praying over each person as they've shared publicly. Certainly what the devil wants to do is undermine, discourage. We go forward by praying. We grow by praying. We deepen, by praying Paul and barks on a new journey. Making disciples was his passion, but building and strengthened disciples was always there and so it should be for us.Lord, thank you for the good news, the gospel, something to be declared. Something to be lived. Lord, help us to be a people that even this summer are consumed with the desire to be seeing lives change by the gospel with the desire to see people deepen in their walk. Embracing suffering, looking this week in our office, in our neighborhood, for people that maybe would be open for us just praying with them or praying for them.Lord, may we be people that are living and speaking the gospel. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Now go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.
Acts 18:1-22When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.
Sermon Transcript:We're in the book of Acts chapter 18 this morning. And, and, and what I want to say is we find ourselves in two places. We find ourselves in in 49 AD in the winter as Paul travels to the city of Corinth, but we also find ourselves on May 14th, 2023 on Mother's Day this morning. And so here's what I would like to do.We're gonna go through this story, this beautiful story of what happens in Corinth. And I think this story has such a beautiful demonstration through the life of Paul, what living life with God looks like in the day to day. And then we'll go through at the end and we'll preach a five minute Mother's Day sermon based upon the text as well.We'll seek to do both of those through the compassion and with the presence of Christ. This morning, I'm gonna read Acts 18, one through 22. After Paul. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. He found a June Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontis, recently come from Italy with his wife, Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome, and he went to see them and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked.They were temp makers by trade, and he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy joined from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word testifying to the Jews that Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed him, reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to him, your blood to them, your blood beyond your own heads, I'm innocent.From now on, I'll go to the Gentiles. And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justice, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord together with the entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized.And the Lord said to Paul in one night, in a vision, do not be afraid, but go un speaking and do not be silent for I am with you and no one will attack you or harm you for I have many in the city who are my people? And he stayed a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. But when Gallo was procol of ake, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal saying, this man is per persuading people the worship God contrary to the law.But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, if it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. But since it is a matter of question about words and names of your own law, see to it to yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.And he drove them from the tribunal and they all seize the ruler of the synagogue and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Galio paid no attention to any of this. After this. Paul stayed many days longer, then took leave of the brothers and set sale for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila at at. I honestly do not know how to pronounce that word at Serea.How's that sound? Good. Anybody have anything better? Serea, he had cut his hair and was under a vow, and they came to Ephesus and he left them, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined, but on taking leave with them, he said, I will return to you if God wills, and he set sail for Ephesus.When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church and then went down to Antioch. After spending some time there, he departed and went from one place to the next, through the region of Galatia and Fria, strengthening all the disciples. That's a lot of names. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of stuff going on.We are right in the throes of the missionary journeys of Paul. Anybody know what missionary journey we're on right now? Second missionary journey. Yes. So we're on the second missionary journey of Paul towards the end of the second missionary journey here in, uh, chapter 18. And this second missionary journey in particular is a beautiful mess.It will go for over 3000 miles. Just for reference from Mount Laurel to LA is over 2,700 miles from Collinswood. If you're listening Collinswood, tell LA it's like 12 miles less. Congratulations. But for anyone who grew up playing the Oregon Trail, that amount of miles is a lot right. Lot of danger, lot of dysentery possibilities.This is a long journey with a lot of different possible things that go wrong, and honestly, many of those possibilities do happen if you, if you throw up the map for us here. Here's what's going on, uh, in the text and in Acts chapter 15, this is how the missionary journey starts. After some time, Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back to each city where we previously preached the word of the Lord to see how the new believers are doing.The first missionary journey was going to look exactly like the second missionary journey. The second missionary journey's intent was an encore of the first to see how it would go. The first missionary journey is happening all in this area. This is the first missionary journeys. This is the intention of Paul and Barnabas to head into this area and to check on the believers after the Jerusalem council.What happens in this process is they end up getting to Antioch. As you remember, Paul and Barnabas have conflict, and so then they can't decide should John Mark come with us? Should John Mark not come with us? And they split. Paul takes Silas and he goes up north, and then Barnabas and John Mark will go to Cyprus.Cyprus. And in the process then when Paul and Silas start going north, they hit Lira. That's where they pick up Timothy. So now Timothy is an addition, an unplanned addition to the, to the crowd, and they're actually intending to go to up to Gala Glacier. But it says, the spirit of the Lord said, no. So they're like, okay, we're not gonna go on our normal encore tour.We're not gonna go up to Glacier. So we're supposed to go towards Fria. Okay. So that's where they're said. Then again, they start heading into Asia, and the what the, the, the Lord gives what's called the Macedonian vision, where it comes to Paul, and the night it says you're actually supposed to go all the way.To Greece, which is really, really, really far from the intention of the original journey on the way to Greece, stopping by little places eventually heading to Thessalonica Theca. The Thessalonian books are really cool books, but it wasn't a really cool experience in the town. While Paul was there, people rallied against Paul.Paul had to run out of Thessalonica and go to Bura. And then eventually he gets going and they start chasing him. The people from Thesal, Laga chase him to the point where he had to escape without Paul or without Silas. And so he is now by himself, run out of town, escaped with some people and has landed in Athens last week and in Corinth.And you see in this passage, eventually Silas and Timothy will join up with him, but this whole journey has been running from one place to the next. Not at all, according to its original plan. And by the time that finally Paul lands in Corinth, he is a broken, shook. And wounded man. This is what when he would write a letter back to the Corinthians, this is what Paul would say of himself.When I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, he is at the end of a long journey that did not go as planned, and he finds himself in this place of Corinth.If you're following along in your notes, the first thing we see from the text as we're gleaning from what life with God is actually like life with God is not. Predictable here with God. He is there. He is now, um, beginning to work. Most of Paul's journeys have been funded. Most of this journey has already been funded, but he is presumably out of money, and so now he is making cole tents and trying to make ends Meek with Aquila and Priscilla.He's alone broke, unsupported and at a place he wasn't planning on being. But God in this time gives him dear friends in Aquila and Priscilla and gives him also time to heal. But life with God. As we see here, and as we've seen already through the Book of Acts, it is not a straight line. It is not a clear what's the 1, 3, 5, 10 year plan, and we're gonna go and we're gonna check off those boxes following the spirit.And living life in the spirit often doesn't look like what we'd imagine it to look like. I remember one time, I don't know why I did this. Probably kind of a sick exercise. Uh, I'm a journaler and like, uh, and so I was writing in the journal, my journal, and I was just thinking, Lord, a lot has happened and I don't remember if it was last year or a few years or something where I'm like, or I'm gonna write, particularly in the life of the church, things that surprised me that I couldn't have guessed would happen, major twists or turns that happened that I just did not anticipate.I remember getting to 45 and I stopped writing, cuz that's a long time to journal, come on. But realizing that when we're making our plans, and I, I'm, I'm a planner, I'm a futuristic thinker. That's part of like the way God has made me. The unique thing with God is that God does not give all of the answers way ahead of time.Say thy word is a lamp unto my feet. You've heard this before. And the lamp that is used is just enough room for the next step. Part of our DNA here is Galatians 5 25, to keep in step with the spirit, not lagging behind, not forging ahead. But it has been my experience and I believe deep with the experience in Acts.It is not a linear line in following God. It is simply taking the next step. I love Thomas. Thomas goes to Jesus. And uh, Thomas says, Jesus is talking all about this, like this way and, and, and all the way of, of following him. And Thomas is like, this is awesome. He says, Jesus, show me the way. And that's in John 14:6 And that's where Jesus responds, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me. What is the way of the Christian life? It's not predictable, it's following him one step at a time. The longer I have journeyed with God, the more unsure I am of where he is going to take me, and the more certain I am that he will be with me wherever I go.By verse five, it says, uh, Silas and Timothy came to Macedonia. So Paul again went ahead from Thessalonika. He comes down through Athens, which we talked about last week, and eventually in Corinth, which is right down here. And Paul and S or Timothy and Silas who were just a little slower after Paul had been there a little while.They come and accompany him and at that time he's able to leave presumably the tent making business and give his time to preaching and teaching. And what he is doing in his preaching and teaching is testifying to the Jews as it says in the text that Jesus was the Messiah. Uh, point number two, following along.Living a life with God means there's a preoccupation with the person of Jesus Christ. When we look at the Book of Acts, we can say acts is about a lot of things. It's about the infancy of the church. It's about the, the missionary explosion of the church. It's about, uh, the disciples going and spreading forth the word.You could say it's about Luke who's writing the letter. You could say it's about Peter and Paul who are primary characters, but foundationally what the Book of Acts is about, is about the story of Jesus Christ. There are 10 primary sermons in Acts three by Peter, one by Stephen and six by Paul, all 10 of them.Are about the person of Jesus Christ. We can talk about spirituality, we can talk about, uh, principles of, of the inward life. We can talk about what does it mean to to, to, to know God and is there a God, but what fundamental in the Christian faith, and, and when we say Christian, this is from the Book of Acts, that these, that these people would be Christians.It is a Christ one. The life with God is not some loose spirituality. It is a preoccupation with the person of Jesus. We see the text go on in verse six, all of a sudden as, as, uh, Paul is teaching, they become abusive or they become, um, harassing against him. And Paul sh shook his clothes and protests and said, your blood beyond your own heads.I mean, can you imagine saying that? Paul's go, Paul's got moxie, your b your, your blood beyond your own heads. From now on I'm outta here, I'm going to the Gentiles. And he goes right from there. Then Paul left the synagogue and then he meets up with tedious justice and then all of a sudden Crispus and now all of a sudden people are believing and getting baptized.But you have a back and forth in two different verses. Something that happens all throughout Paul's ministry. You have sometimes when, when all of a sudden the word of God that he's teaching is electric. It's on fire, literally like tongues of fire where it's spreading and there's miracles happening. And then there's got other times where a guy falls asleep cuz he was so bored and the other people are running him out of town and want to throw rocks at his face.Like it is not the same reaction. Life with God includes every different type of season. It is not just if you do the Christian life and if you get that balance beam just so correct, everything is gonna be prosperity and happy and cheerful life with God. Point three includes every season. This also means that in life with God there are unspeakable joys that it talks about.In Peter, Paul would say there's peace beyond understanding. David would say at your right hand, there are pleasures. Forevermore life with God includes seasons of deep joy, peace, and genuine happiness, but it's not all that life with God includes. And if you have lived life with God very long, I don't need to tell you that sometimes life with God is really, really hard.There are disappointments that we experience in our life with God that are more painful than we thought a life with him would ever include. This Tuesday, uh, um, heard about my friend. My friend's name is Jesse. Jesse was like the first person I co-labor with in, in ministry in Chicago area, and we did ministry closely together for years.Jesse was one of the happiest human beings I would ever I've ever known, and one of the funniest, bravest, he was all tattooed up. He had like the gauges in his ears, the big holes in his ears. Actually one time his professor said, Hey, Jesse, when you run, do your ears whistle. You know, like, but Jesse was just the, he was, he was the person you always wanted to have in the room.He was an incredibly cheerful, secure person. Just heard this Tuesday that he recently diagnosed with Huntington's disease. If you don't know Huntington's disease, it's a degenerative disease that potentially will probably take his life eventually and it will do so painfully And, and Jesse right now is a church, he's, he's a pastor to church.He's informed his elders and said, Hey, if my mind starts to go, you have to keep a watch on me. Jesse has five kids, he's in his thirties, and there are ti days where he can't even come out of his room because of the anxiety is so high. It doesn't fit with what we might think life with God would include.It is so important that we remember that life with God is not always prosperous in how we think it would be. What an incredibly cruel disservice we do to one another to act like if you know God, everything should be going well. It was the time when I talked to Pastor Ralph. I wondered if I could stay in the ministry because of the amount of darkness I was experiencing.And I said, Ralph, I really want to be a pastor, but it's so dark inside and I can't, I'm having trouble even seeing straight. And he gave me words that have been fuel for much of my ministry. He said, Ben, when the Lord calls someone, it seems like more than not the experiences through the darkness, not around it.Alan Noble, who writes a book about mental torment and the difficulty that people face, even as Christians, has a simple line. He says this, there's an unco. There's a kind of unspoken conspiracy to ignore how difficult life is, and I know there's people in this room who have begged with Jesus, please take this cup from me.And the Lord has says, I love you. I'm doing something. And not yet.Verse nine says, one night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision. Do not be afraid. Keep on speaking. Do not be silent. For I am with you and no one is going to attack you or harm you cuz I have many people in this city. I love this. This kind of throws us off a little all how God moves in in New Testament.You wanna do an interesting study? New Testament, look up dreams. God uses dreams and New Testament all over the place. The Christmas story, Joseph, twice Mary. I think, um, Elizabeth dreams become an incredible part of how God speaks to people. Life with God includes God's speaking in strange and specific ways.I don't know how many times they've met with people and they've said, you know what I, the Lord really spoke to me, but this is gonna sound weird. Right. And think about a time when the Lord spoke to you, you're like, this is gonna sound weird, but he actually did speak to me. And yes, I believe we must stay anchored in the word of God.We must stay true to the word of God, but in staying true to the Word of God, we follow the Word of God to see a God who speaks personal words to his people Here in Corinth, he shapes how Paul will do ministry. Paul is in Corinth because of a vision he got from Macedonia. God speaks in incredibly interesting, fascinating, and different ways.Verse 11 says, then so, so Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half teaching and preaching to them the word of God. This is interesting because that's much, much longer than what's he's spending in most cities. His second missionary journey took three years, but he's in Corinth for 18 months. When you add up all that Oregon trail travel and all those different places that he stayed, Corinth, by far and away is the longest stay that he had.And in anticipating how long he would be on this journey, it's much longer than what he anticipated. Point five, life with God includes an amount of time that is much longer than we often anticipate. Uh, Dr. Bill Borghart at the Collingswood campus. He told me when we were doing some work on the campus, he says, Ben, let me tell you, he's done a million projects.He says, let me tell you the three rules of projects. I know some of you might have heard this. It's gonna cost more than you think. It's gonna take longer than you think, and you can't polish a turd.All three of those, I guess, are true, but in the process of God. Right. And you sat with yourself and other people who have tried to follow you like that, Dennis, didn't you? Yeah. Got Gotcha. Um, in the process of following God, I, I don't know how many times I've said, or I've heard people say I know the Lord's gonna come through, but how long, how long is this gonna take?I, I, I think the Lord might provide in, in, in, in an amazing way. But, but how, how long are we looking here?Author, I appreciate talks about spiritual growth and he says, we, we wanna talk about spiritual growth as arrival We go through something hard, it's confusing, can't see the Lord. Then all of a sudden he comes through, we look back and we can tell everyone, yes, God is so great. It's so cool up here. Keep going.And that's what spiritual growth is. His argument is actually spiritual growth takes place the most in the in between. In what he calls liminal time in the space before. We understand how God comes through that, that, that, that the, our greatest times when we grow spiritually is when we trust but can't see when we obey.But we don't know what's upcoming in this, in between this liminal time. Lastly, and the text goes on from here and, uh, includes a lot of, a lot of names and a lot of things going on. But what I, I really want to point out again, is the return. Um, and, uh, later in the passage we've got see this in versus eight, and then down in 20 and 21 that this connection that Paul has with Aquila and Priscilla, that this couple that he meets in Corinth, he ends up forming a deep bond with them.He'll write about them in the book of Romans. He'll write about them in the book of Timothy and will find out later that as Paul left Corinth with them, they ended up in Ephesus. Well, they ended up having a church in their house with in Ephesus, and these people become lifelong dear friends and anchors of the early church.And lastly, simply life with God. Point six. Includes roots with his people, because the intention is never to do this alone. Isn't it interesting how the missionary journeys were designed? Paul went out with two in the first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas decided, Hey, we're gonna go out together and do an encore tour of the missionary journey.And, and, and then that doesn't work. So Paul went with Silas and Timothy. Well then Silas and Timothy, they got separated because the threat of Paul's life. God gave Paul Aquila and Priscilla, this Christian life is meant to do it alone. And we're gonna close with this. Here's my five minute Mother's Day sermon.I simply wanna walk through simply these six points and just mention. How they may reach out to you on whom this day might bring unique joy or sorrow. First, I'm just going through the same six points we looked at in the text. Mothering with God is not predictable and we are not promised automated results from effort.Second. Mothering with God means that you need to orbit Jesus Christ. The greatest parenting advice I have ever received, I was a, a youth pastor, and then I had my first kid, and I had seen a whole lot of families, good families that lived their life, orbiting their kids, looking at their kids. And I, and I did not.I, I realized once I have this child, I'm gonna be so focused on this child feel like everything I want to do is for this child. And someone gave me the advice early on, said, put Jesus as the center. He's the only one big enough to hold all of those things in orbit. If you put your children at the center, you're gonna helicopter or squash or create a lot of damage to you and to them.They're not big enough to hold the family in orbit. Only Christ is big enough to hold the family in orbit. Put him in the center. You need Jesus to mother. Third, mothering with God means enjoying more beautiful moments and more crushing disappointment than you knew a life with God could include. Number four, mothering with God means listening.Because there are times you desperately will need God to speak to you about what you are going through. Elroy, one of my F favorite names for God comes from the story in Genesis where he, Hagar has a baby with Abram, is trying to follow God, trying to obey her. Spiritual leaders has this baby, and then Sarah and Abram are like, just kidding.We weren't following God. Get out. And she's left in the desert with the child and she's there as a single mom Kicked out in the desert, has every reason to hate this God of these people who just sent her out. And God comes to her and speaks to her and she says, in that place, I give you the name, Elroy, you are the God who sees.Mothers need to hear specific words from the God who sees. Number five, mothering with God includes seasons of parenting or waiting for children, longing for children or seasons of missing your mom who's gone and to death already that are so much longer than you anticipated.And lastly, mothering with God is meant to be done with other people, that you are not alone.Won't you stand with me as we conclude our service this morning? We take these words from Paul and this journey from Paul in in Corinth, understanding what it means to live life daily with God, and also looking especially at the end of what it means. To try to do that as a mom, I can just say this is a prayer over us.Lord, the best part of life with you is that it is with you. When we are most with you, we are most ourselves. In that place, we can rest lacking nothing there with you. We will sometimes lie down in sweet green pastures and enjoy the sound of quiet waters and experience restoration of soul with you. Also, we will travel through valleys filled with death, evil and enemy, but the goodness and the love that follow us all the days of our lives are simply living each one with you.Your rod, your staff, the comfort that we bring, and we rest this day in your promise that we will dwell in your house forever more. Amen. We are dismissed.
Acts 17:22-34So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious..."
Sermon Transcript:Um, I'd like you to take your Bibles this morning. We're continuing in our series to the book, A book of acts.We're looking at Acts chapter 17 this morning. A fantastic of scripture. Acts chapter 17, we're gonna be looking at verses 22 to 34.And as we're turning there, I don't, and I'm honestly, I don't know cause I couldn't hear, I didn't hear the announcements. Did Mike say anything about the in gathering offering? Oh, okay. Well, thank you. Um, okay. I wanted to just mention it. I, I was supposed to, but I didn't know if he would do what I would tend to do.I couldn't enthusiastically wait. As you know, uh, many of you know we have been, um, aiming towards a project over the next few months, basically through the summer months, to completely renovate this b this room, the lobby is major changes that were our goal to accomplish. Part of that process was to, uh, believe God to bring in an offering or commitments to that offering over the next few months that would total a half million dollars last week.Um, we are still finalizing some of the counting of that, but I can say with complete certainty at this point that as we have the remaining commitments come in, we reached our goal of $500,000 last week.Really excited about it. Just praising God, praising God for your generosity, and I believe. You're gonna be really excited. Uh, you may not be quite as excited during the summer months as we're readjusting a lot of things of how we're meeting in the gym, in the prayer garden. Um, but come September, we're we're, we're gonna have a good time around here.Alright, acts chapter 17, verse 22 to 34. So, Paul, standing in the midst to the Aus said, men of Athens. I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown.This I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it. Being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor as he served by human hands as though he needed anything. Since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.It is actually not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own prophet poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring, being then God's offspring. We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone. An image formed by the art and imagination of man, the times of ignorance got overlooked.But now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance all by raising him from the dead. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear you again on this.So Paul went out from the midst, but some men joined him and believed among whom also was Dionysius the gate, and a woman named Damaris and others with them. Lord, we looked to you this morning,God, we've sung praises to you. We do praise you for who you are and how you've made yourself known in our lives. And now, Lord, I praise you for the scriptures that you have given us. This way that you have chosen to make yourself known, to teach us. And God, I ask that you would teach us from this passage.We live in a day that is very different even in the history of the church, the day of challenge and confusion. A day in which we surely need insights to know how to live and to speak, and to conduct our lives to the glory of Jesus Christ in a culture which is post-Christian in every way. Lord, I pray that you would be our guide into truth today.In Jesus' name, amen. Your mic real quick,I gotta tell you. That was very creepy.Thank you. So do we need to go back to the dedication and start there? I mean, have you not heard anything? You've been very polite. I will say Thank you, Mike, by the way. All right. We're living in a unique time as followers of Jesus Christ. Today, churches in Western society, particularly Europe and North America, have to deal with something they have never faced before.A culture increasingly hostile to their faith that is not just a non-Christian culture. That would be true if we were ministering in India or China or um, middle Eastern countries. We now faced a culture that is post-Christian. For centuries, Christians have been able to assume that everyone around them believed in what many have called a sacred order.That simply means that, uh, God is the ground of moral absolutes of right and wrong. He is the superintendent, transcendent being whether a person particularly identified their life under that authority or or embraced him into their lives. People recognized there was such a being. There was such a being that had a moral absolute for all human beings and was the source of values of rights and wrong.The Western world has largely rejected the sense of a sacred order and the sense of moral accountability to God for our choices and values. People expect. To choose their own values and have their own moral code. There is no sacred order with which all people must align in many focuses, in many pockets, and in an increasing majority of culture of Western world.If there is a moral absolute in today's culture, it is this, you must not say that there are moral absolutes. That is the moral absolute to say otherwise is views as oppressing people and limiting their freedom to define themselves and choose what is right for them. Paul, in Act 17 arrives in Athens, which is the the undisputed, unrivaled, center of intellectual thought in the empire.There. Paul comes, and I'm sure as a guy that grew up in a gentile town, deeply influenced by the Greek thinking and philosophy, which we see in a number of his writings. Athens would be the place that he dreamed of being in, and now he has come, and as he has arrived here in verses 16 to 21, he found a city submerged in idolatry As Pastor Mike took us th Am I ringing by the way?Okay. Can I not ring?All right. As Pastor Mike took us through these verses last time, He mentioned how Paul studied the culture, the words in the text, in the verses he cited, identify that Mike gave examples from missionaries and he had contact and I thought it was very compelling of, of how they were explaining. They were trying to exegete and understand their culture.And he recognized for us as Paul is doing in Athens, that one needs to understand their cultural thinking if you are going to present the gospel to them. And in that context, this is what Paul is doing in Athens and as Paul does, does it here. So we need to do in our own cultural context. What Paul concluded about the Athenians is a guidebook for us.He addresses first the Jewish community there, which would have had a very similar worldview to the one that he was embracing. As a, as a believer in Jesus Christ, there were certain bullet points that would certainly be there. And in verse 17 it says, after he saw the idolatry of the city, he first went to the Sy synagogue and there he talked to people that believed there was one.God believed that this God was the transcendent creator and Lord of all believe that there is one moral truth and, and there were absolutes, morally for people to follow that people were accountable to that God and rejecting his authority was called sin in their lives. That was a foundational worldview into which when Paul went into the synagogue, he knew he was speaking to here in America.In the past, evangelistic strategies would have focused on an assumption that people shared similar bullet points. What Paul saw in Athens was there was a group of people that shared his bullet points. They weren't believers yet in Christ, but in the synagogue, he went to people that shared his worldview in a large degree.There was also the marketplace of the Athenians highlighted in the group that he's now speaking to in verse 22 to 34. The Aus were the leaders, the cultural elite, the intelligentsia, the political power brokers all gathered. That's who Paul's speaking to, and they had an entirely different worldview, and Paul's way of addressing them is different.Same gospel, but different methodologies. In America, we are seeing these two vying worldviews as well. DA Carson has written a book called The Cross in Christian Ministry. He illustrates the diversity of America using the experience of two recent, uh, graduates from seminary that had gone into church planning.One of those had gone out into Tulsa, Oklahoma, and as he went, he said, the guy reported it took him an entire year to find a, a resident of Tulsa who would confess to not being a Christian. Now, of course, that's a broad term, but nobody wasn't Christian, at least in their own thinking by verbiage. On the other hand, there was another student that went to church plant in Washington, DC and what he did was he, he took, as many of us did when we were first church planning, he took surveys around just to try to, uh, find out where people were.And as he took the surveys around, it was, uh, an association, uh, word process that he would use. And in the association process, uh, uh, activity, the majority of respondents there in DC associated the word Christian with the word bigot. Two completely different worldviews. Cultures background. One shares the bullet points, one doesn't share hardly any of the bullet points, and yet living in the same land.And what Carson was arguing is like Paul,We have to be willing to address both the synagogue, if you will, the people that share some of those bullet points with us, but also recognizing that an enclos increasing way, particularly here in the Northeast, we have far more, more in common, not with the synagogue people of Paul's day, but with those in the Areopagus.So as we look at this passage, how did Paul declare the gospel in the AOP areopagus to people who did not share his worldview at all? And I find three things we can learn for our own living and declaring the gospel today. Number one, we learned things about our manner in declaring the gospel. In verse 16, going back to the section Mike covered, but it's actually the foundation where we, we, we see the stirring of Paul's heart as he's looking at the Athenian culture.It says that he was provoked, we get the word parm from it, uh, to be overcome with emotion, rage, coughing, laughing, or examples. You just, you just overcome. Certainly there was a sense in which there was a righteous indignation as he saw the city just, just submerged in idolatry, every house, every building.Uh, Mike talked about that in his sermon when he presented it, what it was like in Athens. And there's a sense of, of, of grief out of his love for the, the living God that the, that the people have rejected and turned to such adulthood. But there is also a stirring in his heart of love for those peoples who are missing out on what he wanted to give them.There is a, a passion within Paul for these people that, that, that challenges him to boldly speak out for Christ in this arena. But his manner of doing so is compelling. One, he is driven by and compassion post-Christian world has a unique challenge for the believer and by the believer. Just to define that, I mean, a person who believes in Jesus Christ has embraced him as Lord and Savior of their life, who really believes that God has authority over every part of our life, through the Lordship of Christ.We are prevent presented with a unique challenge. And it is a unique challenge because living in a post-Christian world means that people's view of morality is that people. Are the ones that should determine their own beliefs. This is certainly true in the doctrine of anthropology. There is no area of life in a post-Christian world as we are seeing it today.I've said this in our thinking like a Christian seminar. I've said it other times. Anthropology, the doctrine of humans, the doctrine of man. Anthropo in the generic sense is basically the greatest assailed, uh, belief system of, of biblical theology. Virtually every hot button. That is being addressed towards those that name, the name of Christ, whether it is abortion, euthanasia, sexual identity questions, gender identity questions, the definition of marriage, sexual purity, definitions, all those things.There is a perspective that we should be free. There is a worldview that says, I have to determine I'm the master of my own destiny. I have to make my own choices. And I, I don't believe there is a moral absolute for everybody that is a, a post-Christian concept says, it doesn't matter what has been the teaching of the Bible or, or, or the, the church for all of these centuries on these subjects.I am a free agent to determine those things and no one has the right to speak into my life. We get it with a worldview that that is saying. There is no divine authority over those arenas. Of course, nobody has the right to speak into yours. But God is saying he's already spoken on those arenas. So we're in a post-Christian world on those things.But at the same time, in a post-Christian world, there is also a deep intrinsic embracement of many of the moral values of Christ. These are, these have been in our culture, whether everybody, I don't mean everybody was Christians at all, but there were things that were valued, and people still have these values.Values in a way many utterly non-Christian cultures don't have. But even in a post-Christian time where Christianity is not the dominant worldview, there are still vestiges of that in the way people view how you should treat other people. And they come from Christ, whether knowing or knowingly or unknowing.People should be faithful to their spouse. You should look out for the disenfranchised and the weaker. You should forgive and not seek revenge. You should be generous, kind, self-controlled, that love, not power serving, not being served, doing for others what you would want them to do for you. All those things are associated with Jesus and are associated in people's minds that yes, this is just, this is proper human behavior.It doesn't mean we all do it at all, but we we see those things. Where did that come from? Well, it doesn't come from secularism, which basically says there's no God secularism basically is traced back to it's a survival of the fittest that doesn't describe the survival of the fittest that describes a Christian ethos that is still largely embraced.In our culture today, even by post-Christian individuals, that puts a tremendous pressure on Jesus followers. Here's why.No, knowing that that is the Christian ethos, that those are moral absolutes, that that just, people would just say, people that would absolutely say there's no right or wrong. There's no it's, but will inherently say, well, that's wrong. Of course that's wrong. It's wrong for you to lie to me. It's wrong.Where does it come from?They are doubly turned off by professing Christians that act differently when Christians are arrogant. Pushy, fighting for their own turf speaking, scornfully of others. A post-Christian world reacts with great indignation. I remember watching a show, it was a daytime talk show. It just happened. I don't even remember why I was home, but I was, and I saw this thing and it was, um, the, the couple that had the most abortion clinics in the metropolitan New York area, and they were being interviewed and they were then allowing people and across the whole idea was conflict.But, uh, they were allowing people to ask questions. And there were apparently a number of Christians that were there, evangelical Christians, and, and very pro-life. And I, I remember watching it and it was really an uncomfortable. Uh, show for me because what happened? This couple that was quite winsome and compelling and, and very oriented.Uh, so they we're doing this out of compassion, and of course they're making millions of dollars, but, but what they're doing this out of compassion for women that are in trouble. And then they allowed questions to come and we didn't do well. And, and people would come up and they, they got into terrible name calling of the couple.One, one person was actually, so you should burn in hell for you to, you know, and they go and, and finally there was one older lady that just totally popped her cork and she didn't, as, as they say, she didn't cuss. But when she spit, the grass wouldn't grow. And su she's up there just laying into these people with such rage and, and next vein sticking out, you know?And, and the lady finally said, that's not a very Christian way to talk. Now we might say, who are you to say what Christian is? But the fact is there is a foundation in our Western world that there are understood. You don't speak that way to people. You don't, that Jesus didn't respond with vitriolic rage and destructive talk.Our post-Christian world knows that, and we are being. We have to recognize that our manner of doing life with our world is being held with a standard. And they would say, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in, in, in a, a moral absolute. But what they do believe are many of the things that Jesus values.And they expect anybody that identifies with him to, to inherently. And if we don't, if we're, if we come across as we're just vindictive, we're mocking that we win by derisive and, and derision. We're not doing what Paul did here. What Paul did here in this passage is he shows compassion. I'll show you more of that in a moment.It has never been more true. You've heard this before. If people don't know how much you care, they don't care how much you know. We need to have that going through our mind all the time. We don't win any arguments when we just win the argument in our mind.Compassion. The second thing that was true of his, his manner is a little surprising. He was complimentary. He complimented and affirmed their conduct in verse 22. I perceived that in every way you are religious. Now he might say, well, he was just sort of, you know, he was just baiting them cuz he saw all these idols that that irritated him or made him indi.No. Well, but the word is really quite complimentary. It means you're devoted people. I see in you something and, and even your, your recognition that there is, um, a, a, an unknown God, which is what he taps into. He says, I, I see you're a devoted people. There, there is a, the longing in you. I see something good in you.For a lot of my Christian journey, certainly the early years, I viewed my way of influencing people to Jesus. This way,I need to be more patient than anybody else. I need to be more kind. I need to be more happy. I need to be more at peace, because that's the only way anybody can really see the difference Jesus makes. And I was one. And maybe, uh, you are and say, you know, I gotta keep my testimony, I gotta be a good witness.I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta it it that, that somehow we have to communicate. We got it together, which shows that Jesus has it together. You don't have it together.He does. But he's involved in your life because you don't have it together. And so much of, I've gotta be a good witness, I think we should say. To who? To you that you gotta look on top of your game. Those kind of people that always have their lives, everything, purpose. Are you drawn to those kind of people?I'm not, those people scare me. They make me feel like a less 10. It's people that are broken people. I had a conversation.With a young woman that had grown up in our church and now well into her adulthood. She has, she's not involved in Christianity. And we had a really honest conversation and, and I was talking to her, she was asking, we were processing, and I was talking to her. I said, you know, when I was younger, if you'd asked me do I struggle with fear, it wouldn't have even made my top 10 list of struggles.I have a lot of other sins I could have identified, but, and I said, you know, I just, I don't even know how we got on the subject of fear. And I just said, you know, but I've realized fear is one of the most influential issues in my life. I fear I'm not enough. I feel I'm not, uh, capable. I feel like I'm not this, I'm not this.I feel what people are gonna say. I, I say, I'm realized so much of my life has been influenced by fear. And her statement, it was a little shaking, she said to me, well,isn't that a problem for you? Because you have been preaching about God helping you and, and, and, and yet you still struggle with fear. Now I can tell you, there's a time of my Christian journey that would've just blown my mind, and I would've gone home and I would've gotten in my car and said, God, God, I've completely lost the chance with this young woman because I am.What a terrible witness. I didn't, here's what I said. I said, you know, I am gonna deal with fear until the day I die.But what I found about God, he's the safest person in my life. He's the only person that doesn't say Get better, be more, do better. I say, I hear that voice lots of places, but with God, I hear, mark, I hate the sin that you're choosing the air because there's so much more. But I see beauty in you. I'm crazy about you.And I just talked about, um, yeah, fearful guy and I'm well into the journey,but he's the safest person that I've ever known.Here's what she said to me. She said she grew up in our church and she's gone totally different lifestyle, but she said if that was the view of, sorry, is, if that was the view of God that I understood, I'm not sure I would've walked away.We can look at people around us that don't name the name of Christ and we can seem like Jesus does. They're beautiful people. They're smart. I had a neighbor that named Bob. That I spent years processing the gospel, trying to live the gospel, trying to, but I'll be totally honest and tell you that he, in his humanness, is what is one of the nicest, most compelling, enjoyable, fun, friendly, I mean, on my best Christian spirit filled day.I'm more grumpy than Bob is. I'm more cranky than he is. So what do I do? I try to up my game so I can get a little, you know, because Bob can't ever come to Jesus. As long as he seems nicer than me. I gotta get up here. So, so I can say, see. What the Lord is, no, we just take what we are and say he's safe.He's for us. We love him. And man, I'm sorry I was a jerk out on the golf course or as angry. I mean, we can be broken. He deals with broken people and Paul says, the Lord says, you know what? I'm really glorified in youwhen you're showing your weakness. And then I come alongside and show my strength. Paul embraced and saw the beauty in these people. He compliments them. He doesn't have to say, he doesn't come into the areopagus and say, I gotta be on my game and I gotta show these people. I'm smarter. I'm more peaceful.I'm, I'm more loving. I'm no, just says, you guys are really devoted people. Say third and I, I gotta scramble. He was conscious of common grace. He identified truth in their thinking. He quotes secular poets. These were godless poets, but he found in them truth. And in verse 29, 1 of them said in him, we live and move and have our being.And another one said, for we indeed our God, our his offspring. And, and he says, I, I see you identify this unknown God. I want to just talk to you about, I want to talk about your own experience and show how God is present there, that you intuitively sense him. There are two, there's a big conversation today.There's two methodologies. Apologetics. Apologetics is basically, uh, not apologizing for our faith. It is defending or explaining our faith. That's what the apologetics is. And one method of apologetics is this, to show non-believers that theism and Christianity are built on rational arguments. This is probably the, the apologetics we have been more familiar with.Evidence that demands a verdict. Josh McDowell, uh, Tim Keller, wrote a bestseller, the Reason for God in 2008, compelling arguments that answer the big questions and give clarity, uh, uh, about them. How do we know the Bible is the word of God? How, how all these, you know, these various things and. Tim Keller talks about the fact that it was a bestseller, his book, A Reason For God, but you know who bought it?Christians. And it was very encouraging and it is a wonderful book. It bolsters your faith. It gives you confidence that, that you have answers to some of the questions. But Unbelievers didn't buy it. It wasn't a primary bestseller Among the audience that he wrote, he wanted, he wrote a second book. And it's built on the concept of the second method of apologetics, which is to show non-believers how Christianity explains what they know in their hearts already to be true.And Keller wrote this book, making Sense of God. He wrote it just a couple of years ago. It is not as big a bestseller, but there's a much more majority of non. Christian people buying it because he is approaching it, saying like, Paul is, I, I I want to talk to you about you. You know, this, this is what I, to me, great preaching, great teaching is able to go into secular life and bring illustrations and say, you know, all truth is God's truth, right?All truth is God's truth. And so if somebody is saying something that's true, we can embrace it just like Paul is, these poets were utterly godless. If, if one of the poems it is is actually commending Zeus and doing all other things, and Paul is able to take this, but this part is true and he says even they, your own poets say this, that he is able to go in and to be conscious that God has given common grace.Common grace is just God graces everyone with these things that you can look at in, in. The stars at night and recognize, wow, there is, there is something majestic here that can be tapped into this. Just a recognition. I gotta move faster. All right. Courageous. You must be willing to engage with people to listen.To. Listen. What is their struggle with Christianity? How many non-Christians have you really asked that of?I've had a haircut last out of my last four haircuts. I had four different people cut my hair. Two of them we got in a conversation and over in the conversation they explained to me why they would would never go to a church, and both of them were related to anthropological issues where they saw the church.If we're going to reach people where we are, we have got to learn how to enter into those conversations with people. People may not like what you say when you talk about, there were things Paul is gonna say here when he talks about the resurrection of Jesus. Some of them are gonna laugh at him, some may be have been irritated.That will happen. But you need to engage with people in the marketplace. You need to listen, you need to learn, you need to love.And then maybe we'll have a chance to really talk about the one who has changed our lives. I'm gonna combine 0.2 and three, basically our message in declaring the gospel. He has four points here. God is creator and transcendent Lord.All right. I'm gonna summarize at the end here. Is it, is it 10 14? Is that true?Yeah, I, I I was just trying to talk myself into, wait, we don't end till 10 30. No, that's not true. Okay. Alright. I'm, I'm gonna have to stop. I just want to say this, here's what I love about this passage. All of the truths that Paul presents are truths that speak into issues that people around you have.Whether it is God as creator, it is speaking. I, I, I'm gonna use one example and I really am gonna close it, is this one where he highlights that God is so actively involved in our lives. It's found there in verse 26.This means there's a purpose to their lives. This means there's a purpose to suffering. There is no time in people's lives when they're more open to the gospel and to things of God than when they're suffering, because a secular view has no place of suffering, suffering, pain, hardship, loss is just something to be avoided because it limits us from doing life the way we wanna live.For the Christian, we can embrace him and say, no, there's a God does it work? He's not wasting experiences to understand that he's actively involved in our lives and he's sovereign over our lives mean He is a God of purpose. That's suffering. Those are the moments,as Alan Noble says in his book, disruptive Witness, which is a fabulous read. He said, modern people are more open to considering Christianity during times of stress, difficulty, disappointment or suffering. Why? Because worldviews without God in his analogy is like a, is like clothes too small for you. It's a worldview that doesn't fit our humanness, and you're constantly feeling constrained by it.No time more than when you're suffering and you sometimes just feel like you rip out of the clothes. It doesn't help me, this view that everything's random. I need to know there's a purpose. I need to know that there's something behind the, there's some good that is designed in this. Paul presents the whole view of that here in this passage.I'm sorry to have to close. Let's pray. Lord,thank you for men like Paul and like Tim Keller, CS Lewis, and many others who have been able to engage truth with people with totally different worldviews. We're living there. It starts with love. It starts with humility. It starts with transparency. It starts with us embracing our brokenness. Not that we've got it together because we have Jesus, but that we have a Lord that is safe in the midst of our weaknesses.Lord, teach us to live like this. The love like this, the people might really see the surpassing glory is not us. It's Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you.
Exodus 23:14-17You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.
Sermon Transcript:This morning at both of our campuses.I want to preach a sermon on a special event that occurred once a year for the people of Ancient Israel, the people of God. It's found here. It's one of the items that is listed in Exodus 23, and I'd like to read this passage for you. Exodus 23, 14 through 17, three times in the year, you shall keep a feast to me.You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread as I commanded you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of a aib. For in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the feast of harvest of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field.You shall keep the feast of in gathering at the end of the year when you gather in from the field, the fruit of your labor three times in the year. Shall all males appear before the Lord your God. Let's pray together. Lord, we come to you this morning. God, we do celebrate the ladies seminar yesterday, the incredible response and the incredible movement of your spirit and individual's lives.We also celebrate this morning, Lord, we celebrate the way that you have led in our ministry and even the. The direction you've given at our two campuses to better equip ourselves for ministry for the future. Lord, we celebrate the truth that this passage reminds us of, that ultimately our joy as we sang just a moment ago about finding our joy in the Lord, that ultimately our joy is in you and God, this passage, this.Reminds us of that in such a beautiful way. So direct us, guide us as we look to these words together. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. The exodus passages, we just, we just read, refers to three different annual pilgrimages to go to a festival or feast. Um, Three times a year, two of them were eight day festivals required.Were all males, men to be at the festivals. But for the two eight day feast, typically the entire family would go along. The first was the unleavened bread and Passover, which lasted eight days. That was at the beginning of planting time. It was a time to focus on God and to seek his face. There was the festival of first fruits, also called Pentecost, where they would, at the first harvest, would bring the, at the initial harvest, they would bring the first fruits of their crop, and then at the end of the harvest, at the main harvest time, they had this thing called in gathering.And also it was associated with Tabernacles. The in gathering celebration. A part of the Feast of Tabernacles was a time to celebrate the overall harvest that God had brought. Now, this is an agrarian culture, so farmers were, were prominent, but it wasn't only farmers that would come to this festival. It was everybody, shopkeepers, fishermen, uh, merchants, priests, homemakers, carpenters.They would all come to this celebration to celebrate. What God had done and was doing in their midst. I'd like to look at this in gathering, celebration, this annual event, to just see some parallels to our own experience. Today in our own lives, and I want to ask three questions and I'm gonna try to answer them.The first question is, what did God's people celebrate at the festival of in gathering and Tabernacles? Well, first they celebrated God's past provision was the time to look back. This is the end of the harvest, right? I mean, this is a time when they're looking back and seeing how God has miraculously beautifully cared for his people.In Leviticus 23, verse 42 to 43, it says this, Live in temporary shelters for seven days. All native born Israels are to live in such shelters. So your descendants will know that I had the, the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. The first thing they did was they were reminding themselves of God's heritage of provision to them.So they actually built these homemade. Uh, Tabernacles or, or structures, and they would live in them as they traveled to Jerusalem as families together for the seven days. And it was actually a total eight day feast. It was a time to remember the time in the wilderness where they lived in temporary structures.It was a time to remember how God. Provided protection for them, the miraculous provision of water that he provided for them in the desert, the miraculous provision of food, the manna and, and, and the birds that were provided, that God gave them sustenance, the miraculous provision of guidance where God gave them theskin of glory.All of that was revealed and actually practiced in a unique way, which I'll highlight later on in this sermon in, in the city of Jerusalem through the Taber Temple structure. They celebrated their heritage as God's blessed people. They also celebrated God's present and future provisions. It was done at the end of the main harvest after they brought their crops was looking back, but it was also a time of looking around and seeing God's present provision.Listen to this passages in Exodus 34 23, 3 times a year, all your men are to appear before the sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. I'll drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God. There's special provision.No one will covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord. I mean, a typical dad, you can just picture him. Look, we're gonna be gone for eight days. I gotta, I gotta hire some guards to watch the house. I'm gonna get some, some guard dogs and we're gonna shame him here. The Lord says, no, I'm your guard.I'm your watchdog. I will watch over your provision now. Now what's happened? Basically, all the other parts of Israel have emptied out and God says, if you follow my way, if you go to do the festival, I will protect what you have responsibility for your household, your crops, your possessions. It's a remarkable thing.You see, every generation needs to see the fresh hand of God working among them to see that God is at work and God says, I want you to go and I want you to live in fest in in Tabernacles. I want you to celebrate. And while you're there, you can say to your kids, while we are here, God is protecting all that we have.God is caring for our current investments, if you will, our crops, our house, even as we're here. God was providing present care. Every generation needs their own stories of God's bigness, of God's miraculous moments where God is moving in the present and we're trusting him to be providing for the future.Just in terms of these projects at both campuses, we are not borrowing money on this project at either campus. I don't believe it's wrong to do that. I don't think it's unbiblical to do that, but we have felt God clearly leading us to leave it in his hands to provide what he wanted to give us. It is to prepare us for future ministry, for future investment in people's lives, more seating, more care for people with with disabilities and hearing issues.And we've talked all about this over the last number of weeks and all the other things that is gonna go on with this project today. We are trusting God's provision for future ministry, even as we trust him to meet our own, present personal. Financial needs. As we sacrificially give, we're trusting God to watch over our lands as we generously contribute to the in gathering celebration of extending hope to others.I see a, a perfect parallel in this. The second thing we, the second question is this. How did they celebrate the Feast of In Gathering and Tabernacles? They did it with joyful praise. Leviticus 23 verse 40 says this on the first day. You're to take branches from luxurious trees, from palms, willows, and other leafy trees, and rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.Even modern Jews in our own country as this picture portrays, um, do this many ki many times in, in modern Israel, in downtown city areas. You see this picture, uh, reveals that they are, are practicing the feast of, of Tabernacles who bring that slide up, the one of downtown Israel. Years ago, it was 2008 when the Phillies won the World Series and hadn't, hadn't won for 25 years.Um, baseball isn't my number one, uh, sports love, although I'm interested in it. But when the Phillies won the World Series, I just didn't want to miss the cultural experience. So I took my youngest son and John and I went down. We caught the train, we went into Philadelphia for the parade. We, we got downtown and we were right on Broad Street, and I mean, if you were there, you know what I'm talking about.It was a mass of humanity, insane. And so the streets, which are usually that wide, were now this wide, just wide enough to let the, the parade of, of floats go by. You know, with the players on it. There were, there were people all the way out, way into the street just protected by, or, or restrained by barricades.But from the barricades to the, to the high-rise buildings, There was a sea of people, tens of thousands, just where we were. It was just massive. And while we were there, just drinking in the vibe, excited, waiting for the floats to come. We happened to be in front of a hotel. And about the third or fourth story up this, a guy leans out somehow he got through the screen, leans out the window with his trumpet.And he starts playing the rocky song. We lost our minds. It was so much fun. This is our song. This is our people. And there we were, that sense of joy, abandoned joy. This was this festival for, for eight days. They are in party mode, rejoicing and glorying in, in God's provision to them as a people. You know, these are, you know, we read while they made these tents, what, you know, what happened with these tabernacles?All the personalities came out. The artistic people had this magnificent structure. You know, the, the functional person thought, well, you know, in case it rains, we ought to have, you know, designed this way and this way. You have all these different things. You know, people, I'm sure there were little contests.Just, it was fun, it was joyful, it was community, uh, celebration of God together. It was also a time of proportionate, generous giving. Deuteronomy 16 describes it this way in verse 16 and 17. No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed. Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the Lord your God has blessed him.They shared their joy in celebrating God, and part of that was in the joy of mutually giving. They shared their joy in being able to participate in the ongoing work of God in their midst and in what God was going to do to them. We look back to the festival of In Gathering and can mimic the experience of the Israelites, but there is actually a very personal connection in this event to us in our day as followers of Christ.Because the third statement, actually I have it as a statement. How does Jesus fulfill the festival of in gathering in tabernacle? Well, here's how, in John chapter seven and eight, those two chapters, Jesus actually was in Jerusalem for the celebration of the Festival of Tabernacles, and in gathering and on the final day.Of the Feast of Tabernacles, this, this whole in-gathering celebration, they would do two particular things. One was they would celebrate God's provision among them in providing water to them as people. And what it would happen, and we ha we know this from all the existing writings of the day. It was a practice that had gone on ever since the temple had been rebuilt.Uh uh, a few decades before they would gather outside of the city at the pool, and there the priest would have in his hand two pictures. And one, he would dip in the pool and it would be filled with water. The other would be filled with wine and the priest would travel. The trumpet would be playing apparently, and he would lead this massive procession of Israelites back through the Watergate into the city.That's what it's called, the Watergate. They would go in through the Watergate and he would go all the way into the temple and he would come before the altar. And again, there's thousands of people that are gathering with him and watching. And as he would take these two pictures, he would come to two large basin basins in front of the altar, and as he came there, he would pour the water into one and he would pour the wine into the other as if it were an offering to God right before the altar.And the water was their way of saying, God, thank you for your bounty for us for the last year, for the way you have provided water for us. Excuse me, I got that backward. The wine was to say thank you. The water was to say God, because that was the produce that came from the water, if you will. That was their crops, the wine, the grapes, the water was poured as a way of saying, God, we depend on you for water.We're trusting you to provide water for our lives because without water, our crops will die and without crops. We will lose our subsistence, our means of livelihood, our means of life.Apparently, when that water was being poured out, there was a voice that proclaimed this on that last afternoon of the festival. Here was the voice.If anyone thirsts. Let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, riving rivers of living water will flow from within them. Jesus was there at this festival saying, I in the water, I am the one that provides life giving water to you. I speak to the, I provide for the, I. Embraced the thirst, the spiritual thirst, the, the soul thirst of people.I am the ultimate water that you need, that you cry for in your lives. The living water had come to fulfill the picture of in gathering that night as the festival was closing. There in Jerusalem. And if we can bing up that visual of the templeright here along there, there are four there. There's a candle lab that is 75 feet high. There's another there. There's one there and there's one there for you guys. It's there, there, there, and there. There are 16. Bowls that were on these four canolas 75 feet high towering over the, the court of the temple area.Because the temple was on a hill, it would be seen by the entire community at that time. And as those candles were lit, it was the reflection that God, Had been their light through the wilderness. Remember again, this, the Feast of Tabernacles is remembering going through the the wilderness and God had led them by his light.He had been the Shekinah glory, he had been. The light that lighted their way was a glorious celebration, and it reminded them how God had directed them and led them. And apparently in John chapter eight at this Feast of Tabernacles, again, the voice, Christ and the voice said this, I am the light of the world.Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. We are here today celebrating God's provision to us. Our joy in seeing him provide for future ministry opportunities, but also in just being himself. It is a reminder of what our true source of joy is. Christ, the one who satisfies our thirst, Christ, the one who provides light for our way.As we gather on this, what we're calling our in gathering, Sunday towards the extending hope. Remodeling project, this first part of that overall project, but the remodeling of the lobby and the the worship center here and the projects there for you guys in Collingswood we're celebrating ultimately Christ the capacity to be able to lean into him, to rejoice in him, but also to trust him.I'd like to pray together, Lord.I worship you this morning that you are the water that quenches our souls. Lord. We identify with the psalmist that said, as the dear pants, for streams of water, soul, my soul, thirst for you. Oh God, you have brought life. You have brought satisfaction. You quenched the, the inner turmoil in our lives and Lord, As you look into the heart of everybody that's here or listening online, everybody here in callings with God, you see the thirst.You see the other places that we've turned to to try to find satisfaction, which can only ultimately found in He who is the life giver, the thirst quench of our souls. We worship you Christ as our life. And our light. We worship you and praise you for press provisions, but also for what you're going to do in our lives, in our midst, as we believe you to guide our steps through your provision in these projects.Lord, we want it to be not just about money, about building about. Structural changes. We want it to be about faith and seeing God and honoring God, and most of all knowing you more so, Lord, glorify yourself in our lives. Be to us what you have offered to be. The water, the light in Jesus' name. Amen.
Acts 17:16-21Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning. I know the week after spring break it's just tough to get back on the horse again and get your kids up in the morning and yourself in the morning. Uh, but here we are. Um, wanted to just highlight one thing that, uh, happened.Uh, welcome to you here, and those of you that are in Collingswood, I wanna talk to you guys in Collingswood as well. Um, our church yesterday hosted a, uh, a unique event. This was the, I'm gonna get this right, the South Jersey Speed Solvers, Rubik's Cube competition. How many of you knew we had that yesterday?More than a hundred competitors. Uh, Sean Mack, uh, down at the Collingswood campus, who is an incredible cuber as they call them, or solver. I don't, what would we call you, Sean? I'm not really sure. Uh, and then also Matt Pugh here and their families really, uh, did an incredible job inviting their friends, people in this community, uh, and as far up as New York and down to.Uh, that came, there was a world record holder that was here yesterday that, uh, was just insane. I have some videos if you wanna see them. Our very own pastor Jared, entered the competition. He is, you can go find his times on the cubing website. I'll leave it at that. Uh, it was a really fun time, uh, and for all that were part of that incredible way of opening the church doors.Uh, so well we've come through a number of weeks, uh, of Easter leading up to Resurrection Sunday. And we are back officially in the Book of Acts, but only for this week. Next week's a little bit of a change, and then we're back again, hopefully for a, a longer stint. But leading up to Resurrection Sunday, I wanna just show you this, uh, visual we had.Um, that was kind of something we talked about at the very beginning, but it's even more appropriate now. Coming right out of, uh, Easter. So we have these, these few things that happened. Uh, Mary and the women at the tomb, they saw Jesus after the resurrection, Simon Peter, the disciples. Then 500 followers, 40 days Post Resurrection is the beginning of the Book of Acts where we have Jesus ascending to heaven and the decension of the Holy Spirit on God's people.So what we have as we come back to the Book of Acts, I know it's been more than a month, we really have a selected history of the early church. Remember Luke is the author here, and he's collected this data. It's not eyewitness, although he goes to eyewitness people to collect all this data together. And he's writing this two-part letter to a man named Theophilus, who we know was a man of great means and influence.The first volume of this story was the Book of Luke, which really is the, the work of Jesus through the life, death, the resurrection leading us to this point. And now volume two of Luke's work is the book of Acts, the Spirit alive, the spirit of Jesus at work through his followers. And we talked, uh, a while back about ways you can come and approach any book of the Bible, but particularly the Book of Acts.It is history, it is church history. And so when you hear the word history, you either turn into a scholar and you want to get dates, you want to get times, places, people, new insights, all good things. Or you turn into a casual admirer who was dragged to the museum and you didn't want to be. We are honest people, right?It's okay to raise your hand, uh, or potentially you come this morning. And then I'm encouraging all of us to come in those first few ways, but also as a disciple of Jesus, we study because it's the unfolding mission of Christ in his church, witnessing his spirit, keeping in step with him. Now, what is the Holy Spirit doing?Uh, those are ways we can approach this book, but what is he doing? One of the things we talked about at the very beginning of the Act sermon series is there really, uh, a number of intentions, a number of things. The Holy Spirit is doing objectives of his work. See if you can remember any of these. We'll put 'em on the screen here for you.The first one is to carry God's gospel, which is the good news to all the nation. To carry God's gospel to all the nations. We got those postures. There we go. The second one is to sustain God's people amidst every opposition. The third is to fulfill God's sovereign purposes and the fourth to unite God's church, to gather us all together.And, um, maybe you're familiar with this picture too. This is the, uh, if we think about the way the spirit works and he talked about, uh, that he would send these people out, the disciples out to Jerusalem, to Judea. There it is, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. If you look at the left there on the, the bottom, uh, you see Acts one through seven is really focused in this intersection, and then it kind of builds out from there.We are in Acts chapter 17, which makes us to the ends of the Earth section right now. We're getting there, but we're not to chapter 28 just yet. Um, and if you, again, were following along for me, this was a really helpful study to just refresh. Where in the world are we in the book of Acts, chapter 17 finds us on the second lap of Paul's missionary journeys.The first one here you'll see is kind of a, a more local area. He starts in Antioch and then begins out on the blue root and comes back on the red, um, making some stops along the way. And we are on the second lap of this journey, which is a larger journey. And, uh, starting in Antioch and coming up through Timothy joins Paul and Silas here in Lira and I iconium, they move through Asia and actually we're prevented from speaking in Asia.And so they moved on through Asia, up through Macedonia and our might cut off, I'm sorry. It's probably better on that one over there, but they're making their way through. The last sermon that we heard in Acts chapter, uh, 1617, was about Berea. The people who received God's word. With all joy. They were eager to hear God's word.And after that there was some, uh, things that happened because as they passed, passed through, uh, leaving Macedonia, passing through Thessalonia, Fasika, uh, there were some Jews that came to stir up and make some, uh, difficulty for Paul and his traveling friends. And so what happened was they moved on quickly and as they were in Berea, these Thessalonians came and tried to stir up more, uh, dissension among them.And so as that happened, Silas and Timothy thought it was best if Paul would go ahead onto the next stop. They would kind of tie things up and um, we'll move the troublemaker as we call him Paul, uh, into Athens. And so Paul is sent on a ship to Athens and he arrives there. And that's where we are in chapter 17.If you want to grab your Bibles, there is a pew Bible there. If you don't have one, you can tap. You can find a Bible. Look on your neighbors. It's on the screen. Let's read the word of God together. Uh, here's what it says in Acts chapter 17, 16 through 21. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens again, that is Silas and Timothy.He's waiting for them. His spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was filled with idols. So he reasoned in the synagogues with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this Babbler wish to say?Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting for. You bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore, what these things mean.Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Lord, we thank you for this book and as we come to your word this morning, we ask, Lord, we plead that we would not just be casual admirers to a, uh, a history book, but that we would be your disciples, your children who are wowed.By the way, the Holy Spirit is at work, Lord, the unfolding narrative of your church. We here in this room are recipients of our participants in. And we live in oneness with the author of this story, Christ, we thank you Lord for inviting us to hear and to learn this morning. We pray these things in your name.Amen. Amen. Well, you'll see the, the title of today's sermon is Waiting in Athens Zinger, right? So far in the book of Acts, we've witnessed some exciting things and in two weeks there will be a really exciting thing, but today is just a waiting day. So if you wanna read ahead and get excited, do that today.Is the waiting day kind of a, like, maybe a bit of a dud on paper? If you were to look at this at first pass? Actually, I had a pastor in our church, I'm not gonna name names Jerry, uh, but said, man, you got a great passage. It kind of looks like nothing's happening, so I'm excited to see where you're gonna go with this.And I already knew that. It's kind of like the flight gets canceled, the game is postponed, the appointment rescheduled. You watched all the available episodes. Now you just gotta wait. Right? These are the boring moments. Why in the world would Luke choose to have this recorded in scripture, these mundane events?Better yet, why would the pastor choose to preach about this? Well, this pastor was assigned this date and this passage, and so that's why we chose to preach about this. No, we really believe, and this is a core belief that we have here at Fellowship, is that every part of scripture teaches we're not just gonna hunt and pack for good passages and rip things out, but the entire narrative of scripture teaches and has something to.Dallas Willard says this, we must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in. I'll call them these mundane or waiting events. As the place of God's kingdom and blessing, God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are. I'll read that part again. God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are.And if we faithless, discard situation after situation moment after moment as not being the right time, we will simply have no place to receive His kingdom into our life for those situations. And moments are our lives. And so as we come to this waiting passage this morning, this is how God is at work.And so we will read and jump in. I'm gonna split it into three sections this morning. And, uh, as you know, you probably have an attached thing on the back of your bulletin. Don't look there too late. You already did. Uh, we'll get to that at the very end. Uh, but we will, uh, I know it's there. Okay. The first part here, waiting and exegeting is really the first part.Big words for you. Verse 16. We already read. Paul was waiting for them at Athens expectant waiting, not taking the day off. His eyes and his heart have been guided by the Holy Spirit through a number of laps around here, the mission of God as the theme of Paul's life. And so there's really no on and off moment.It says if sometimes we can think waiting is this evil that we have to just kind of get through to the real main event. But have you considered waiting in the scriptures? Have you thought about the idea of waiting, the concept of waiting? It appears very early on. In just the second chapter of Genesis in the Bible, Adam was created, placed in the garden.Genesis two 18. God said, it is not good. That man should be alone, so I'm going to make him a helper fit for him. And what happens next in Genesis two 19, God makes a zoo. The animal starts showing up, and Adam is going to name all of these animals. And so there's this expectation of there's no helper and millions of animals come through.God populates the earth with these animals. Genesis two 20, we keep going. But among all of the animals, there was not a helper fit for him. Waiting, longing, expectation, and eventually Eve was created. They hadn't even sinned yet. That's in chapter three. Waiting is pre fall of mankind. Now, some of you were like at the stoplight waiting.Now that's sin right there. Like that is the worst, right? But no, it's actually part of the Bible even before the fall of man. I wonder if, as we think about the idea of waiting this tension, the length between the need that we might have, or a perceived idea of our need and the answer of God is not intentional, an invitation for us to trust, to have faith in the middle of where we're going back to verse 16 as he's waiting for them in Athens, Paul's spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.Paul arrived in Athens. It was the most educated city in the world. He was moved by the amount of idolatry he saw. The pagan writer Petronius said it was easier to find a God in Athens. Then it was a man. It was said that more than 30,000 public statues and and idols lined the streets protecting every archway and doorway, and aside from all the personal idols that you might have in your house, seems impossible to really overstate that idolatry was a thing in Athens and Paul's spirit was provoked by that.Now, why would this be? Well, we remember Paul was a Jew, right? He wasn't a classic scholar like some of these Greek philosophers, but he knew the 10 Commandments and the first one. No other gods but me don't create or serve any other god's but me, for I am a jealous God. He remembers, he knows those words and his spirit is provoked inside of him as he sees these carved images all over the city of Athens.This provoking, this idea is, is the Greek word prism, a sudden outburst of emotion. It just kind of, he violently like reacts to seeing all that he sees around him. And I wanna say that Paul was at this point probably engaging in something, whether he had the word for it then or not. Cultural exegesis.He's studying the culture, he's looking around and he's beginning to see what these uh, things are happening in this. Simply put cultural exegesis as being a student of the location that you are in. So you can culturally exegete the town of Mount Laurel and Collingswood. In fact, actually, when the Collingswood campus was, uh, in Haddenfield before it was intentionally chosen and they studied around that area.And similar looking for a building in Collingswood, the very same way. What is the makeup of this town? What do people love? What do they fear? What do they value? And it might look different here in Mount Laurel than it does in Collingswood. It's a principle that's used often in cross-cultural mission work.You know, you go to another country and you enter their culture. You don't bring your culture and impress it upon this other people group. You join, you enter, you learn, and you come alongside of them to share. Jesus. Uh, rather than give you an example of, of this, I thought it would be best to, to highlight some of the people who've done this work, um, in incredible ways.We have a, uh, a long list of missionaries here at Fellowship, and I wrote to them throughout this week and asked them, could you give me a story of either a cultural exegesis, blunder, or a way that God really used you as you were studying the culture that you were entering into? So, here are a couple of gathered stories.Cultural exegesis is fun, it's exciting and it's humiliating. Here we go. Jacob Berlin and his family, he was here last summer, they are, uh, working with victims of sex trafficking in Bangladesh. He says, I once preached a sermon and concluded with, with this theological truth. Jesus is the potato of the world.The word for potato is a lie, and the word for light is a hello. He got it wrong. Cultural exegesis. Jesus is not a potato. Similarly in the country of Bangladesh, it's a great place to make some wonders. Sean and Harold Ebersol. Uh, when Sean was studying in language school, um, she was in a Rick Shaw, which is like a low budget taxi.And, um, they were heading to the store and suddenly the Rick Shaw driver decided he was gonna take a turn, uh, off on a side road, and she meant to shout, go straight. Instead, she shouted, go cucumber. The man paused and gave her a strange look. Another time. She was excited to be given the opportunity to teach a, a bible study in Bangla.She was learning the language and it was her first time to really open the scriptures in another language and begin to teach. After her very first Bible study, a a sweet lady approached her and said, you know what? I didn't understand a word you said, but you have an incredible smile, the joy of the Lord.And if you know Sean, the the joy of the Lord radiates through her. And so I bet she laughed and talked about the Lord. Even in ongoing there, I heard from a number of missionaries this week and each of them shared something about their funny stories, but also something of significance because cultural exegesis, as you, as you think about it, it's allowing us to know God's people better, which allows us to know God better.That at times we learn the ways that he does and, and maybe works differently in other cultures. We listen for ways that he might speak uniquely here or there or or in that person's location. And most importantly, we allow space for God to meet us in new ways. Deb and James Knight. You may know Deb as Deb Beru.Uh, she got married and they, uh, Deb and James were missionaries in Nija, west Africa. She was an occupational therapist. And, uh, one of the things that she wrote here, I'm gonna read because Deb's an incredible writer. I went through a period when I lost several pediatric patients and I was in a really dark place.We had a kiddo come from the Boo Zoo people group, who was a slave tribe of the tox. She had a severe burn and came down with cerebral malaria. While she was going through the process of reconstructive surgeries. After this little girl died, her father a devout Muslim, thanked me a grieving father. In his words to me were, thank you.In this place we see Jesus. His words angered me. Jesus could have protected her from malaria. Jesus could have provided them with the means to buy a mosquito net. Jesus could have, but he didn't. I began having this recurring dream. She writes, this same little girl would come in my dream, standing there on her one leg and the other severely burned, tucked underneath of her, and then everything would go white, and she would suddenly be standing on two legs next to Jesus holding his hand, and he would speak to me, but I couldn't hear him.This went on every night for over a month. I was leaving the country of Nija for a week of rest, and on the plane somewhere over the Mediterranean, I had the dream again. Only this time I could hear Jesus speaking and he said, I didn't do this. I allowed it, but I didn't do it, and it breaks my heart more than yours.I woke up with tears running down my cheeks in the words of her Muslim father in my ears. In this place, we see Jesus. It was at that moment that my theology of suffering changed, and I came to realize that the Holy Spirit was wandering the halls of our hospital. He was ministering to the hearts of the dying and revealing the truth of Jesus.Without my words, it will only be in heaven that I may know how many people came to our hospital, not for the healing from disease, but to meet Jesus as they passed on from this life to the next. I am sure Paul was unsettled as he left his ministry. Buddies in Athens sent ahead. I'm sure the waiting felt pointless at times.He's human after all, and now to be dropped into a place saturated with idolatry. But God's spirit is intentional, leading us to deeper understandings of our surroundings and himself. What's happening in your waiting right now? What are you facing in this season that if you were in charge, you wouldn't be facing?Is there something you're required to deal with that you'd rather not have to put your time to right now? Where have your plans dripped like, like sand through your fingertips? Where do you feel troubled or inadequate or weak or defeated? Alienated. Is your BLA brain flooded with events of the past or the regrets is the future causing anxiety?We wait for the Lord. Why? Because he's sovereign. He's trustworthy. Psalm one 30 says, I wait for the Lord my whole being waits and in his word, I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than the watchmen. Wait for the morning more than the watchmen. Wait for the morning. Paul demonstrated this expectant waiting.This, uh, not wasted time to study the culture that he was newly invested in. God's spirit speaks now today in our waiting. Okay, number two, listening and engaging. Verse 17 in the book of Acts, chapter 17, guided by the spirit. Here's what happens. Paul reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there as was the custom of Jesus.Paul entered into the synagogue. It's the religious center. It's where all the people that he would've connections with. He, after all, was a Jew as well, and so he went right to the people who he might have the best chance at sharing this gospel with. He reasoned with them, spoke their language. The Greek word for this is Dimi, which is where we get the idea of dialogue.It's this back and forth conversation hoping to come to a resolution of the truth. He also engaged not just with people in the synagogues, but with people along the way in the marketplace, whoever happened to be there. The common folk. I love this way of ministry. We're available. The walls are down. We're just looking for a chat.You think of ministry moments, even here at Fellowship, and maybe this is just an American thing, but we got a lot of great plans. Ministry starts at seven o'clock and it ends at nine o'clock here. Sometimes we reserve rooms here at the church to make sure that our meetings can be planned. We schedule things and we're intentional.These are all good things, but Brother Paul is out at the food store at the A Agora, which is less like Wegmans, probably more like the Collingswood Flea market, where there's just people who are selling things all around and he's looking for conversations. He's talking to the, the shop owners and the sellers.He's the person that comes up to you in the, in the spice aisle, and he sees you with that ground mustard and he sneaks in a conversation about the kingdom of God somehow, some way. It just seems like that's who he is. Some of you are just naturally gifted that way, and others of you have a different gifting where you're like, the hat goes on, the ears come in and you're like, Wegmans is solitude for me.I don't wanna talk to anybody. I don't wanna see anybody. Just don't talk to me. Different strokes for different folks. Paul was available to the spirits leading, even as he was just wandering around finding ground beef for a recipe and probably didn't have ground beef. Okay, verse 18. Not only did he go to the synagogue intentionally to his people, and he was available as he was walking through the marketplace, but some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him.And some said, what does this Babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. He made space for these philosophers, the epicurean people that thought everything happened by chance. Death was the end of it all. There's no afterlife.They believe Gods were removed from the world and they didn't really care. Pleasure was the chief end of man and the stoics. Everything is a God. The Spirit turned God, uh, spirit turned back to God upon death, and everything that happens is the will of God and we're to accept it without resentment. These are the two groups that labeled Paul a Babbler.Baler is, uh, comes from the Greek word sperma logos, which literally means seed picker. If you think of a bird kind of bouncing around on the ground, picking up seeds and just gathering little pieces from other things, the message that Paul is preaching is almost like he was a bird that jumped around and then picked up some stoicism and picked up some of this and they couldn't figure out how to peg him.He's just a babbler making this stuff up, but he's not an epicurean. He's not a stoic. He's preaching something handpicked, maybe a far out god, a conglomerations of things or, or a divinity somewhere that we don't understand, and he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They didn't have a framework for the resurrection.In fact, all life ended at there was no afterlife for the epicures. The resurrection was confusing. New life in Christ was confusing to them. And so Paul preaches this truth and is misunderstood, and I wonder if we've ever been in a place before where as you're sharing with people, they get this blank look on their face.Like, what are you talking about? Jesus makes no sense to me and apart from the spirit's work, they're absolutely right. It makes no sense, but Paul is engaging and talking and speaking, and they push back on the truth. One. Peter three, he says it this way, always be prepared to have conversation to dialogue with gentleness and respect.He's not entering the synagogue's truth, shaming them for getting it wrong. He's not going to the marketplace with a bullhorn. He enters into conversations with known opponents, listening and engaging them. And he was misunderstood because freedom in Christ is terribly confusing. God's grace and forgiveness seems impossible to grasp without the spirit.It seems too good to be true. It doesn't make sense. It's scandalous that somebody would come and die in the place of undeserving sinners. And as Paul shared with these Greek philosophers and the Jews of his day, he shared boldly and would later record this in Romans one 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God and salvation for everyone who believes first to the Jew, into the synagogue, and then to the Gentile, the marketplace and beyond.This is the power that he preaches.Okay, let's move on to the last section here. The trusting and responding of Paul. Verse 19. And they took him and brought him to the areopagus saying, may we know what this teaching is that you are presenting for. You bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.Now all the Athenians and foreigners who live there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So because of these things Paul has brought into the Areopagus, remember Paul took the early boat from Berea. He's in Athens now, and because of the Jews stirring up trouble from Fess Lanica, he moved on and he was dragged now into another section.And I bet when his friends get there, they're like, Paul, we sent you to not cause trouble. And here you are in the Areopagus. So much for passive waiting, Paul, right? And so where do they take him to this place? Uh, that comes from two Greek words. Areopagus Peus means big rock and Aries, the God, the Greek mythology war God.And so it's the, the God, the Rock of Aries, a place where people gathered. It was just below the Parthenon. It was a large pagan temple that kind of overlooked the, uh, the Areopagus. So it later be called Mars Hill under Roman rule. But as a place where many intellectuals came and debated and discussed theological issues, things of, of intellect, philosophy, religion, and all the various things that you could, uh, make about a God.They talked about it there. And so Paul was brought into the council to give an account for this new teaching, which they didn't have a framework for. This was a huge moment. So the quick retracing of it here, Paul left his friends because of opposition. Paul was dumped in Athens with more statues than.Of Gods than humans. He waited and was poked and prodded for his teaching and eventually dragged into the cultural religious conversation. If you have ears to hear this here, can you bring back up the four goals of the Holy Spirit on the slides? The first one, to carry God's gospel, the good news to all nations.Check ongoing to sustain God's people amidst every opposition. He's doing more than sustaining Paul to fulfill God's sovereign purposes. He's invited to share at the gospel, at the very top of the top in this Greek culture. While he's waiting for the moment. To unite God's church, you better believe that what's coming in a few weeks is he preaches through this sermon before the Areopagus, people would turn their hearts and know the living Christ.If we keep in mind the incredible purposes of the Holy Spirit, incredible purposes of God, our theology of waiting begins to shift. That what God accomplishes on these rainy days or in this moment of, uh, seemingly mundane, is actually God speaking and moving with a guiding light. He's not abandoned or sidelined us in these moments.He's not doing anything like that. He's working on deep, many, many levels steeper than we can even imagine. In fact, if we knew all that, God knows, we wouldn't be calling it a rainy day or mundane or waiting. We'd be calling it God's sovereign plan. We'd fall in worship. Because we believe that God's revelation includes more than just us.It's going deeper than simply just external actions that we might want to jump towards. He's working beyond this very moment, and in spite of my blindness, if we only would just trust him, if we could only worship him. Now, in this moment of waiting, if we could proclaim his faithfulness in the middle, give us faith.Lord, help us to have faith before we see. I want to close this morning with a final story from the mission field. Um, this one is, uh, one of how, one of our missionaries, again, Deb got onto the mission field in, uh, west Africa. Nier. This is her journey to Gamy Hospital. Um, again, she's an occupational therapist and so was kind of looking for some opportunities.She writes this, Well, I was preparing to go with Mercy ship to a prosthetics clinic in Liberia. I felt the Holy Spirit say, I have something else in mind. An old friend had been working with S I M Ni Nigeria and had asked me to consider coming to work in their hospital. So went to the website and the first position I found was for an occupational therapist at Gmy Hospital in Niger.The spirit said, that's the one I questioned. Where do you want me to go? I googled it. I saw that it was at the edge of the Sahara desert north of the middle of nowhere, and said, Nope. The next available spot was at a leprosy hospital also in Niger. Still a no from me. Nigeria fell through and s Im reached out to every field looking for a placement.For me, the only bite was the leprosy hospital. So I begrudgingly agreed to go. I got rid of all my furniture, gave up the lease on my apartment, and the night before I was leaving to go to my training, I sat on my empty living room floor and read an email from the Mission. The leprosy hospital doesn't need you.After all, I looked up at the ceiling and shouted, Lord, what do you have up your sleeve? I reread the email. Nigeria doesn't need an ot, but Gmy Hospital in Niger needs an ot and we would love for you to come here. Gmy Hospital, the Sahara Desert, right back at the beginning where the spirit had tried to send me months prior.Fast forward a few years, occupational therapy in the desert. You can just imagine what that's like. And a colleague was emptying out an old shipping container. Inside a, a crumbling box was a little spiral bound notebook labeled Gamy Hospital Physical Therapy. The first page read to the next physical therapist at Gamy Hospital.That was me, the date at the top. April, 1981. I was born in April of 1981. When I finally opened my hands, I allowed him to move forward with what he'd been planning long since before I was born. Isn't that the way the spirit works? That if in our waiting, if our pushing back on the way that he would lead us, would only be turned to faith in things that we don't yet see?We would see God work in incredible ways. Pray with me this morning,Lord, you are working so far deeper. So far beyond what we can even understand or comprehend. And, and Lord, quite honestly, I'm thankful that you don't tell us what's ahead. Sometimes I'm thankful that we don't know the end plans. We know that it's your glory, but how we get there and the way your spirit leads, we just wanna walk with open hands.And as we see Paul engaging even in the midst of what seems like a, a detour or a, a holding moment, you are at work Spirit. Lord, open our hearts to see, uh, as you see in these moments, to, to witness the way your spirit wants to meet. Philosophers at the Areopagus wants to meet people at the grocery store, Lord, and wants us to connect with brothers and sisters here in our own church building.God, we ask that you would give us your vision. We pray these things in your name. Amen.
Nehemiah 5:14-19The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I did not do so, because of the fear of God.
Sermon Transcript:I'd like you to turn with me to Nehemiah chapter five. We're gonna just send a few moments here, Nehemiah chapter five, verse 14 through 19. If you don't know where Nehemiah is, open your Bible right to the middle. You'll probably hit the book of Psalms.Looks like pals. Um, and keep going to the left, and you'll hear a book called Nehemiah Nehemiah, chapter five. We're gonna look at verse 14 through 19. In a moment. Our FCC mission statement says this, FCC exists to be a community of hope through Jesus Christ, our vision statement. FCC seeks to build communities that experience and share the hope in Jesus Christ here and around the world.It's a unique Sunday today for two reasons. One, certain certainly is to have Brennan and Kathleen here and to be reminded that this vision statement says that we want to experience and share hope in Jesus Christ around the world, not just here in our immediate community, but to Trenton and then beyond, to our Judea, our Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth.We have heard had the exciting privilege to partner in their ministry for these years, and I love the, the, the analogy, the, the metaphor of our fingerprints being on that ministry in so many ways. It's also a time when we are seriously reflecting as a church in how we can be. Experiencing and sharing the hope in Jesus Christ here in both of our campuses this summer.God willing, we are going to be doing a significant remodel, uh, down at Collingwood. We've talked about this with you. Uh, they're talking about it a lot there. Here we're talking about the specific things we'll be doing here. We've had these videos that Pastor Mike has put together every week that have been presenting different aspects of it.If you haven't seen the ones related to this room, uh, we are going to be changing to theater seating and, uh, lessening the size of our platform. We're going to get over 25% greater seating capacity. Through that. We're going to be putting in a new lighting video system, changing floor coverings, the whole thing, as well as what was discussed out in the lobby.Two weeks from today. Uh, on April 30th, we are going to be taking an in gathering offering. Our prayer is for $500,000 to come in. Uh, we're asking you to really be thinking and praying about that as we think about being a community that is seeking to extend hope to others. That's why we're doing more seats.That's why we're trying to remodel to more effectively minister to people. I wanna just take a few moments to think about what kind of individuals extend God's hope toward others, what's true of their lives. Nehemiah was such a guy, Nehemiah, and the passages we're gonna read in just a second was a servant in the household and the palace of the Persian king.Many hundreds of miles from Israel, the homeland of Israel, to the, to the. He was there serving, he was called the cup bearer. He was a trusted servant because he was the guy that would actually serve the king. And if you knew how much assassins took, uh, assassinations took place, you wanted the right guy testing your food and drink.This was a trusted employee of the King, and he was a Jew. And he had grown passionate to want to go back to Israel because at that point, Israel had lived for 150 years under foreign, uh, dominions and, and foreign, uh, um, can't think of the word. Anyway, they were there, um, and they were overseeing their area.And so the, the concern that he had was even the walls of the city were broken down. There was no way to protect themselves. Especially against the local governors that were continually trying to make inroads and take over o over the authority of their leaders in Israel. So Nehemiah got permission to go back.He was being appointed to build the walls. He has been appointed to be the governor of Jerusalem and the surrounding area of Judah at the time. And as he is going through his ministry, here's a quick rundown of what the book is about. Chapter one, he makes the trip, chapter two and three. He begins the work on the walls, which is against the opposition of the local governors who didn't know he'd come to rebuild the walls.When they find out chapter four, chapter three and four in particular, demonstrate their hostility to the point that some of them are actually talking about invading. So they have to actually post guards every day. And so they're sitting there building during the day and they're guarding at night. And chapter five, We see that the opposition that he is facing to build a godly community in Judah is not only coming from the outside, but some of his own nobles are acting in such a way they're looking for their own, uh, career advancement.They're looking for the building of their own portfolios, that they are abusing the Jews of whom they are apart, and he has to, to come to them, rebuke them. And in chapter 14 through 19, he gives a picture of his own passion, his own heartbeat. And here's what we read in verses 14 through 19 of Nehemiah chapter five.Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah from the 20th year to the 32nd year of Artis Xi's the King, 12 years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily RA rations, 40 shackles of silver.Even their servants lorded it over the people, but I did not do so because of the fear of God. I also persevered in the work on the wall, and we acquired no land and all the servants were gathered there for the work. Moreover, they were at my table, 150 men, Jews and officials besides who came to us from the nations that were around us now that was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox and six choice sheep and birds, and every 10 days, all kinds of wine and abundance.Yet for all this, I did not demand the food allowed of the governor because the service was too heavy for the PE on this. People remember for my good, oh my God, all that I have done for this people. Lord, we look to you in these moments together, and God, as we consider these four qualities of this, Godly man, this Godly leader.Uh, may you speak into our own hearts of just our own heart orientation toward you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. For quick things we see about Nehemiah. Number one, we see a man who is, who had submitted his personal rights. In verse 14, he says, I've been in this role for 12 years, and in these 12 years, I have not taken what was my right to take what the other governors had done before him.He had not taken the daily allowance. He talks about the, the, um, the provisions that has made, been made for him. He had rather out of his own pocket, had provided for the care of what was at times a thousand people per week that he was taken care of. Financially. He didn't take advantage of all the perks that were available to him in the job.His spirit was not, this is what I can get out of this role, or his primary question was not what's, what's in it for me? What do I need for me? What do I need to protect my future and be secure for myself? The ultimate question was, what has God called me to do? Because he was a man that surrendered his rights.It was his right to take some of this. All the men before him had done it As governors, all the surrounding governors did this, but there was a heart that was ruled by him. It reminds us of the New Testament principle of one Corinthians six in verse 19 and 20, where Paul is describing how we ought to live our lives.Here's what he says. Don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. For you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. He says every part of your life has been purchased. You are not your own. You belong to Christ. One of the foundational realities of life with God is that you don't have your own personal rights to claim.He saved you. He freed you from the penalty of power, uh, and the power of sins. He called you. He adopted you. He redeemed you. He forgave you, but he bought you. He gave his own son's life. For you to belong to him, to say, God, my time is your time. My talents are your talents. My treasure is your treasure. All of my life belongs to you.You bought me. Now you've been bought by the kindest, most compassionate, most compellingly kind individual in all of the universe, but you didn't enter a democracy when you joined the Kingdom of Christ. You entered a theocracy where Christ is the king and the Lord, and Nehemiah got it, and he says, all these are my right.I can claim 'em all. But if my goal here is to be a servant of God and to serve his people, and he's brought me back from a cushy job in Persia, that I am here by the, the decree of God to serve his purposes among his peoplethat he calls the shots. I don't have the right to say in light of how my wife treats me. I have a wife to, I have a right to give her the silent treatment. With the economy being so volatile, I have a right to not tie or give faithfully. My boss is such a jerk. I have a right to gossip about him. The fundamental flaw in our thinking is to forget we belong to Christ.He bought us.And we have given our rights to him. The second thing we find in Nehemiah is a strength of character. In verse 15 and 16, he has an integrity that replaced accepted practices. I've mentioned the former governors. He highlights these in verse 15. And following that, they took their daily ration. That, that he said, I, I didn't take it.I didn't acquire land. He said this was a great opportunity. One of the benefits, uh, of, of being a leader. It's like in the, in the colonial days, you know, a lot of the English lords were happy to come over here and serve in the military because they tend to get tracks of land as a benefit. It was a perk of the job, uh, in the new land.And this was similar. And he says, I, I didn't take any land. As a matter of fact, he's gonna say what I'm actually doing during the day is I'm on the walls working. He did not take that, which was his to necessarily take, he went against accepted practices. Now, here's the thing. When you don't go along with accepted practices, you make people mad.Now, the other governor that was before him was gone. Right? But some of his people are there, some of his aides are there, some of his cabinets still involved. We're gonna, if, if you study the book of Nehemiah, you'll find out a number of those people had had infiltrated the whole leadership structure in Jerusalem, and he walks into this.So every time he says, no, we're not taking the perks, he's ticking people off. It's hard to go against. I mean, he is the new guy in town. It's hard to have people mad at you. None of us are saying, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning, and I'm just looking for opportunities to have conflict with the people in my life.If you are, please don't work with me.And you wanna say about Nehemiah, he's got all these enemies out there. He's got so much coming at him. Doesn't he have enough people mad at him? And then he goes out and works on the wall and you can just imagine the voices, you know, you can just imagine be What kind of a ruler does that? I mean, who does he think he is anyway?Is he trying to show us up? What's he trying to prove? Oh, thesomehow he's willing to go against accepted practices. He's able to be a man of integrity, which the word integrity is from the word I means straight. He's able to follow a straight line when everything else is so twisted around him. How was he able to do that? Well, we're told here in the verse, We're told here down in verse 15, even their servants lorded over the people.But I didn't do so. Why? Because of the fear of God. The fear of God replaces other fears, all replaces fear. Many of you know, over the last number of years, I just spent hundreds and hundreds of hours, uh, some of it on my own time unrelated to work, some of it in preps for various series, studying the fear of God.It has become probably the most precious principle of scripture to me, to understand what it means to be awed by God. I signed my newsletters now living in awe. I, I, I want a God that stunts me. I want a God. And the longer I live my life in ministry and life and the more I face disappointments and confusions and hurdles and and things where we need the power of God, as we were singing about this morning, the more I find I'm drawn more and more for a God that is big and transcended a God that doesn't just love me.He owes me. He stuns me with his power and his grace and his love and his holiness. Nehemiah new God like that, the bigger God gets, the smaller people's voices get. The bigger God becomes the less frightening becomes deprivations and limitations. And insufficiencies in our lives all replaces fear, and it was true with this man.One of the studies I'm doing right now, again, this is just for my own soul, is just to go through the Bible and say, who were fearless people? What was true of fearless people that weren't constrained to, to, to, they weren't afraid to confront others because of fear. They didn't have to manipulate or gossip or lie to protect themselves from being embarrassed or to avoid conflict.They didn't withdraw from people because of the fear of tension. They were willing to obey God. They wanted God because they weren't afraid of the loss of anything else, because God awed them. God becomes bigger and better than anything else.When we enter into the path of Nehemiah, which is just to be bought by God. The third characteristic of Nehemiah was he was willing to sacrifice. Verse 17 says this, moreover, they're at my table, 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations around us. Now, what was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox and six sheep, six choice sheep and birds, and every 10 days, all kinds of wine and abundances.Yet for all this, I did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on this. People, over a thousand guests a week, he paid for out of his own pocket. And you might respond, well, wait a minute. This guy's filthy rich. Well, yeah, he, he obviously had some resources. It's been my experience that the more you accumulate.The harder it is to start giving with the spirit of generosity later in life. You go with with financial gain, the more difficult it is to let it go, that you may go up some with the amount, but certainly not much with the percentage. I would had lunch with a guy not too long ago, successful business person for sure, and I knew his walk with God in the area of finance and I was asking questions, I was just curious and what his own practice was with the Lord.And he said, my wife and I covenanted years ago that as God, if God chose to expand our financial situation, we would never evaluate our giving as growing in amount. We would always continue to give growing in percentage. That's not easy to do.Nehemiah had a heart of generosity and he said, this belongs to God. God has promised to take care of me. I have so many opposites, so much around me, but I am going to live joyfully sacrificially by faith as an influence and be an influence of God. The last thing, verse 19, he was a God that was surrendered to God.Remember for my good, oh my God, all that I've done for this people, he had a God who was personal. You're my God, a God who is faithful. Remember for my good, all that I have done for this people. Now that sounds kind of arrogant. But on, you know, he's saying, remember me for my good, because of all I've done.I, I, I think if you really pray, you don't feel very arrogant with God. You start with worship, which we see in the book. He, he's a, he's a worshiper. He's a prayer. He is a thanker. You begin by worshiping God, and then you're thanking God, and then you're confessing your syngo. You don't tend to come to God with an arrogant spirit.He's listing this because he's confident that God delights to take care of those that delight, to honor the Lord in their lives. He said, Lord, I've done what you've told me to do. Remember me. I'm trusting you to take care of me. Watch out for me. God delights to sustain and carry his children to do his will, but it begins with surrendering to God.I had another conversation recently with another individual. And he, he also was a guy and he made an interesting analogy. He has gone through a number of very difficult things in the last two years, heartaches. Um, and he said, I was asking about his response, how he responded to it. And we, and I, I know him pretty well now, but he said, you know, I've learned there's only two curtains.There's a curtain of my will and I can choose that and sometimes I do, and a lot of times I want to. But he said, I always find what's on the other side of the curtain stinks. He said, there's another curtain. He called it the curtain of surrender. I can say, Lord, you're asking me when I go through that curtain to choose your will to say yes to you.And I don't know what's on the other side, but he said, every time I choose that curtain, I love what's on the other side. Amen. But he said there's no third curtain. There's no third curtain. There is no third curtain. There is your will. There's God's will. Nehemiah says, Lord, remember me because I'm choosing your curtain.I'm going through and I'm trusting you to carry me and care for me. To me, this is an exciting day in our church. It's exciting to hear what God has done. I can't remember the name of your church. What is it called now? Fellowship Crosspoint. Fellowship Crosspoint, yeah. I'm still back at Capital City, um, here about what God's doing at at Fellowship Crosspoint.It's exciting to see what God is doing and stirring of us to do. It's most of all exciting to just think we are invited to be a part of the purposes of God, to choose his curtains. To trust him, to walk through, and then to be able to say, Lord, you're my God. I trust you. To honor yourself in caring for your servant as I say yes to what you ask me to do, Lord, we close this time,we go away full with gratitude. The story we've heard with Brennan and Kathleen, those of us that have watched the choices of faith that they have made just delighting you or proud of you, Lord, for the way you've cared for them and used them. God, we delight in the joy and the privilege of being able to walk with you as your children.We want to choose your curtain. Say yes, whatever you call us to do. In Jesus' name, amen. Now go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.
Romans 4:25who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Sermon Transcript:We've been doing a series here over the last seven weeks on the passion week of Christ, taking a day each time, each Sunday from the triumphant entry, and coming to this morning, actually this morning, out at the. Prayer garden. We had a robust, awesome, um, sunrise service this morning.We talked about the events that happened on Easter morning with Mary Magdalene and others that saw Jesus resurrected this morning. I'd like to continue the theme but look a little differently, um, on the events to, to now talk about the significance of the resurrection. Throughout history, there have been signals that announced important events.In March of 2013, Roman Catholics all over the world watched media events, watched the media as its centered on the rooftop of the v. As they were awaiting each day, the smoke that would come up, different colored spoke, uh, distinguished different results waiting for the white smoke to come, which would announce that a new pope had been chosen.Finally, on March 13th, 2013, the smoke appeared in indicating that Pope Francis had been chosen by the College of Cardinals many years ago. You history, people know this story. Our Star Spangled Banner was put together. It was written by Francis Scott Key, and it was actually, he was sitting in a, in a ship, a prisoner.He had been a representative from the United States government to plead for a, a man that had been wrongly imprisoned by the British. And as he pled for this guy, he heard their, their plans to attack Baltimore. So he kept Im prisoner. And so he was on a British ship imprisoned, watching Fort McEnery, hoping that as the dawn broke, After a whole night of bombardment, actually 24 hours of bombardment, hoping that the American flag would still be flying over Fort McHenry, he awakened to see the 15 stars and stripes waving, and he wrote the Star Spangled Banner.To him, the flag was a banner. It was a signal that the battle had not been, the battle had been victorious. Actually, it ended up being the turning point of the war of 1812. Some events signal important news, so it was and is with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This event is not honored by millions of people around the world simply because of what happened.Though it is pretty cool to have the founder of your faith rise from the dead, but it also is a picture. Of an announcement. An announcement that something has been successful. The verse that I'd like to read is found in Romans chapter four, and I'm only gonna read one verse this morning and spend a few moments on it.Romans chapter four, verse 25. This is what we read. It's talking about Jesus Christ, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. He was raised for our justification. Literally the term means the resurrection is a signal. Something has worked. It went according to plan. He says here, justification has worked.It has reached its appropriate end and goal, which raises of course, a very obvious question. What in the world is justification, this big mouthful, theological term? What does it refer to? And I'll just give a quick definition here, and then we're gonna look at a couple of things related to this. This morning.To be justified means to be declared righteous or maybe more easy for us to wrap our hands around to be declared acceptable. We look at that, the term in the same way today, we talk about justification or justify. In this term we, we, we might say, I, I can still remember my mother, uh, and also my grandmother saying things to me like, mark, how can you justify that behavior?And what they meant was, how can you argue that that is acceptable? How can you believe that that meets the standard of decent human behavior for an eight year old boy? Well, this is the idea. Justification is the declaration that something has been declared acceptable. In this case, someone has been declared acceptable.To be justified means that an individual has been declared acceptable in the sight of God. The verdict is passed past, you have passed the test, you have qualified, and it is all tied to the cross of Jesus Christ. All the events of Easter weekend are related. The resurrection is hardwired to the crucifixion.Jesus died Jesus rose. They are utterly, completely compellingly united. And Paul is telling us here in Romans chapter four, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that banner. It is that signal that declares that a means by which we can be accepted by God. Presently eternally has worked. The resurrection declares it.So the resurrection actually signals two things about our acceptability to God. Number one. This is my whole outline this morning. Our normal way doesn't work. It declares that. The second thing it declares is that Jesus offers a new way that does work. Our normal way of acceptance with God does not work.Why do we even need a way? I mean, what are you talking about, mark? What do you mean? We need a way to God? Isn't God always there? Isn't God always available to us? Well, the Bible presents to us consistently that there is a breach in humankind's relationship with God. As a matter of fact, it describes it by the term theologically, that we are dead to dead.Death in the scripture is always referencing separation. If I expired this morning on this stage, it would simply mean my immaterial part has separated from my material part. We're physical. We are also immaterial. We are material and immaterial. Our immaterial part has two orientations. We have an orientation that is horizontal with one another.It's called the suko. That's the word for the Greek word for soul. We have this horizontal relationship. We, it's how we relate to ourselves. It's how we relate to others. The study of psychology. Psychology is the study of the suko. We have this, this horizontal dimension where we can relate to other people and we also process ourselves.But in contrast to the animals which are described of having a soul, we also have a vertical dimension. The NUAs or the spirit. We have a spiritual dimension, and the scriptures say that because of sin, that relationship has disconnected. That there is what the Bible calls spiritual death. We are spiritually separated to God.Every religion in the world is trying to help people be restored into a relationship with God that has been lost because of sin. And so how do we get this, this reparation? How do we get this reconnection with God? Well, the typical way we do that is to try to earn our way. And as we look at through throughout the scriptures, we would say, I, I think most of us would be willing to say, I, I rarely meet a person that would say, well, I've, I've never sinned.And we, we get it. I don't think I've ever met anybody. It says, well, I'm not flawed. You know, I've got, I've got things. Yeah. There's things I shouldn't have done. There were, there were inappropriate things I've done. So if God asked the question, why should I let you Mark or Bob or Brenda or Tim or Terry, why should I let you into my heaven?Many of us would say, well, I've tried to live a good life. I've tried to do the best I can. I I I'm certainly not perfect. Um, but I'm better than some people that I know. And, uh, I'm no Alf Hitler. I'm no Hannibal Lecter. Um, so, you know, I I, I, somewhere in, I, I'm hoping I'm, you know, my good are gonna outweigh my bad.And, you know, the, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm I, I'm hoping, but how well it works is indicated in number of passages of scriptures. And the very fact that there is Easter weekend where Jesus died and rose from the dead, argues that our natural way of trying to earn heaven or do to merit heaven may not have worked real well since God, the son had to come and die and go through all that he did for us.Romans chapter three talks about it this way. If we can bring that verse up now, we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law, rather through the law, we become conscious of sin.Here he's talking about when he says the law. He's talking about the 10 Commandments and such, the law of God, and he says, nobody is going to make it there. No one will be declared righteous by doing. Now of course, this, this begins to be a little bit confusing and, and let me try to illustrate it this way, because what this passage is arguing is that no one can measure up to the standard.No one can be acceptable. No one can be justified, declared righteous, declared right, acceptable to God in their own, uh, um, deeds, that there is still a gap that we don't reach the standard. Years ago when I was in college, I was playing little basketball, but I also was involved when it wasn't basketball season, uh, intramurals and I played, um, Our, our floor, actually our dorm participated against other dorms.And this big intramural tracked me and I was happy that I qualified in the long jump. Now, I'm not a great long jumper. I'm probably not even a good long jumper. And today I wouldn't even try long jumping. But the, at the time, I, I, I was excited about being able to compete in the long jump thing. And so let's fast forward now, come back to New Jersey, leave Indiana.I'm back here in New Jersey, and, and somebody says, Hey Mark, we heard you, we heard you did okay in this intramural, uh, long jump contest and we'd like you to compete down at the shore Atlantic City. We're, we're, we're actually having this kind of cool long jump. We're, you know, it's a, we're we're, we're doing a ramp out, right?And we're gonna have you jump into the water and we're gonna measure it there. It'll be kind of fun. I say, wow. Nah, that sounds fun. I'm not sure why he asked me, but who else gonna be there? Oh, Carl Lewis is gonna be there if you don't know who Carl Lewis is. Carl Lewis jumped 28 feet about more than seven feet farther than I did on my job.Okay? So here I am. So I said, well, I said, I have enough ways to be publicly humiliated. I don't need to go and compete against Carl Lewis. And I say, well say, no, no, no, no. You are not competing against Carl. He'll be there. But actually alls you have to do is compete against the standard. It's pass fail. You get one jump, and if you go foreign enough, you reach the standard, you win.And there can be multiple winners. Alls you have to do is do I say, oh, well, okay. So I'm not really going up against Carl. I mean there be the other people there too. I can make sure I don't go when, when he goes, yeah, yeah, there's gonna be lots of people. Carl will be there, but, but. So I say, okay, I just have one question.How far do I have to jump to pass? And the answer is simply given, you have to jump to England.So here's this thing. Carl Lewis gonna jump 28 feet. I'm gonna do my little thing. Gonna be people probably in between, but none of us are gonna begin to reach England in our jump. It's just immeasurably beyond our capacity. The scripture is presenting, it says in Romans chapter three, there is none righteous.No, not one. There is none that meet the standard for spiritual long jumping or righteous living. God gave everyone the capacity to live holy lives. We all have chosen not to. You may say, well, yeah, but it's, that doesn't make sense. I mean, why would God have this standard nobody can reach? I mean, it just, and, and, and, and I think, I think you need to understand God does God's fair.God's good. He does, like any good teacher would do, they grade on a curve. Right. And so, so maybe I didn't get a hundred percent, but if I got 90, come on. I mean, well the book of James, I dunno if you know this, but the guy that wrote the book of James was the phy physical brother of Jesus. They were both the son, they had the same mom in Mary.And James talks about this, actually, it's, it's one of the first two books of the New Testament that was written. And James is writing this letter and he's talking about the conclusion of how to evaluate how we are measuring up to God's standard. And here's what James said in James chapter two, verse nine through 11.But if you show personalities talking to people that were in, in the church that were sort of welcoming people, that were filthy rich and giving 'em a better place than, than people were that were dirt poor. And here's what he says. He said, if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors, for whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point, has become guilty of all of it.For he who said, do not commit adultery also said, do not commit murder. If you don't commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. Now we look at that and they say, wait a minute. You're talking about, I give a rich guy a nicer seat than a, a poor person. And you're comparing that with murder and adultery.I mean, this is, this is insane. This is comparing firecrackers to hydrogen bombs. I mean, how can you say, these are what, what James is arguing, saying that any sin breaks the chain of God's commandments. Now we have a lot more than any sin. We have many sins, but the laws of God are a chain break one, and you break the chain.You're guilty then of being a sinner. And so he says there is none righteous. No, not one. Okay. So the, we have this ridiculously overwhelming scenario that basically says, well Mark, you just emptied heaven of everybody.And that's exactly why Jesus Christ came to this world.Jesus Christ offers a new way of acceptance with God. If you look at our passage here in Romans chapter three, verse 25, he said he was delivered up for our trespasses. On the one side, Jesus takes our sin. The consequences of Jesus behavior, of our behavior falls upon Jesus Christ. Now, now track with me here, even if this is familiar to to you, track with me here.What it's saying is that Jesus Christ, when he died on Friday, on the cross, he became liable for your sin. It's why in Galatians chapter three, it has this interesting statement. It says, our sins. Were nailed to the cross of Jesus. What's that talking about? Well, when a man was crucified, they would take a little placard, a little board, and on the board would be listed the crimes that he had committed and on the cross as God the father looks upon the cross of his son.What he sees on the placardare our sins. He sees our sins nailed there. The sinless one who had a blank slate of guilt as first second Corinthians five says, he who knew no sin became sin for us, that our sin was put upon Christ. He became liable as if he had done all of those sins. And by bearing the eternal punishment for sin, which he did in a moment of time as he cried out as an eternal son, fried out to an eternal father.Why have you forsaken me? Experience separation from the father, which we would have had to experience eternally in hell. Jesus bore hell for us. He took the punishment for our sin, but that's not all he did. That's the one side of the cross. Our sins were laid upon Jesus Christ. But not only does he take our sins, he gives us his righteousness.Look at what he says here in verse 25 again of our text. It says, he's raised for our justification. There's that word again. Our being declared acceptable. We are told in the book of Romans chapter three, this statement, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known. This righteousness, this measuring up to the standard is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe and all are justified freely by his grace.What are all those words saying? This is what they're saying. Jesus Christ came and not only did he die, the death we should have died. He lived the life we should have lived. He lived sinlessly. He lived obediently every part of his life, even in the most excruciating, horrific hofi moments of his life in the garden, as he knew and saw, was coming the next 24 hours at the cross.And he says, father, if there's any way, if there's any way this can pass him, but what does he end up with now? I will, but you'll be done. Jesus lived righteously. Here's what we're told in the scriptures in second Corinthians 5 21. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.Years ago, when I was a kid up on Long Island, lived in Hicksville, long Island and we used to ride our bikes or jog over to the Mid Island Plaza that was there and there was a pizza place there. And, uh, my buddies and I would, from the neighborhood, we would often go to the pizza place or from school, I'd meet guys there.We love the pizza. It's great pizza. Every time I go to Long Island, last time I won, it was gone. It was just devastating. But, um, we would go there and, and you know, imagine one day. That the pizza place, as we called it, I don't even know what the name was, but it was our pizza place. They put a sign in the in the wall and it said, anybody that gets straight A's on their report card gets a free pizza.Well, I'd be momentarily ecstatic until I remembered my report card and saw a dog. Ah man. So no pizza for Mark. And then I go by and I notice it says Anybody who gets straight A's on the report card or has a member of their household, that gets straight As gets a pizza. So I go to my sister, Priscilla.Priscilla, come on, we get, I'll give you half my pizza. I can get pizza on the basis of her actions, right? It's her. She'd earned it. So I take in her report card, I say, see the last name's the same as mine, Willie, you know, and, and this is my sister. Maybe I have to take her along. But either way, I get pizza on the basis of her greats.What happens in the transaction of salvation through Christ is this, Jesus Christ takes your sin. He's liable for your sin, and Jesus Christ offers you his righteousness, his report card. You become liable for his righteousness. It's as if we obeyed the law that we lived righteously, and to the person that looks to Jesus Christ and receives his salvation by faith and says Jesus.I could never jump across the ocean spiritually. I can't jump that far. I can't measure up, but you died and there's forgiveness to me. But not only that, you don't just, God doesn't just look at me as a person of innocence. He looks at me as a person that has utterly acc accept, fulfilled the law, that I'm utterly accepted in Christ, that I'm declared righteous on the basis of Jesus report card.All that took place potentially through what Jesus stood on Friday, when he died on the cross and bore your sin and offered you his righteousness. But if Jesus Christ remained dead, He would simply be another victim to the penalty of sin. Death. Jesus resurrection is the declaration that all of it has worked, that he is the one who can offer forgiveness, that he is the one that can offer eternal life, that he is the one that can offer acceptance because he has conquered all of sin and all of the penalty of sin.He died to death. You should have died. He lived the life you should have lived. And Easter Sunday is the declaration that he rose from the dead, declaring it all worked. It's all available that we stand. The reason if, if you're a guest with us today, the reason we're passionate about singing these songs about what Jesus did on the cross and why the resurrection matters.It is because you've entered into a community of people that are broken sinners, that are people that have recognized we don't deserve forgiveness. We don't deserve eternal life. That apart from Jesus Christ, we could not possibly do the spiritual long jump to be acceptable to God, but Jesus Christ did it all.That's why Christianity is different from any other religion in the world. Every other religion of the world, basically well intended, is basically saying This is what you must do to measure up, to earn life, to earn acceptance. Christianity, biblical Christianity is declaring. It is not a religion of do.It is a religion of done that Jesus Christ has done it. And our sins have been laid on him and his righteousness has been laid on us. Easter Sunday is the declaration of the one who rose from the dead and its signals, there is acceptance for sinners. I don't know where you are this morning. Maybe you're here this morning and say, I, I don't usually do this church thing and just kind of wandered in today, or I came along because my mom will only do lunch if, take me out to lunch if I go.But I want you to know that if you hear about Christianity or faith and maybe you know people that talk about knowing Jesus and doing life with Jesus and you say, I, it's never been personal to me. It's never been this intimate thing where God is real. I always feel like I'm sort of looking through the glass.Jesus Christ came to die for sinners like all of us. And maybe what he is saying to you this morning and bringing you here is that, won't you receive the gift that I came to provide, that I died on the cross, that you could have life, that you could be reconnected with God, that your life is spiritually dead and, and, and, and the sense of distancing and, and looking through the glass is simply a reflection of where you are.But Jesus has got you here to say, Hey, I did this for you. I bore your name was on that placard. Your sins were there, but my righteousness and my forgiveness is available to you. Maybe today God is calling you to embrace Christ. I hope he is. Let's pray.Lordbelieve that the Bible says, and our own experience has affirmed. This is amazing grace. This is grace that reaches out to us. This is grace that takes broken people, ungodly, self-centered, broken people, and says they can be forgiven, they can be transformed, they can be raised to life, and one day rise to eternal life through Christ.Lord, we look to the resurrection and after the soberness of our Good Friday service where we just felt the weight of loss for all of those that knew and loved Jesus. And then this morning out in the prayer garden, and here in this room, we feel the joy of celebration because Jesus rising declares it's all therefore our taking forgiveness, life change hope.God of heaven. You'll look into the heart of every person that's in this room. You'll look into the heart of every person that's watching this broadcast. God, may they experience.Turning to you and saying, God, I didn't know. I didn't see it. Maybe I saw and I, and I refused to embrace it, but I see now Jesus Christ died from my sins. Jesus Christ Ro Rose to give me life. Lord, in this very moment. May your spirit draw them to say yes to Jesus to invite you in.You who died, the death we should die eternally you who lived the life we should have lived. Your resurrection says it's so and it works. God, I pray you draw people to experience this witch is surely amazing Grace, in Jesus' name, amen.
Matthew 27:62-66; SelectedTherefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.”
Sermon Transcript:Morning everybody. Good morning. Invite you to take your Bibles to Matthew chapter 27. This morning we're continuing our series in the Passion Week of Christ. Today we are looking at Saturday today immediately preceding the resurrection of Christ On Easter Sunday, we're gonna be looking at Matthew chapter 27, um, verses 62 to 66.And the end of the, the verses just preceding this are about Joseph of Aramathea, one of the members of the San Hadron. The group of 70 leaders of Israel has come to pilot, has gotten permission to bury Jesus in his own grave. That has all happened, uh, horridly at the end of Friday to get it done before the Sabbath begins, which actually begins at dusk on Friday night.Their days went from dusk to dusk, as Jared, Jared said last week. And so now we pick up what is happening on Saturday in verse 62. The next day, that is after the day of preparation, the chief priest and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, sir, we remember how this imposter said while he was still alive.After three days, I will rise, therefore order the term to be made secure until the third day, lest is disciples go and steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead and the last fraud will be worse than the first pilot said to them, you have a guard of soldiers, go and make it as secure as you can.So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone. And setting a guard. Let's pray.Lord, we've already gathered here in this room and expressed worship already. Heart our thoughts lifted to you. Now God, we come to this unique day, the day on, on Earth's surface, which is utterly silent. A day of confusion, a day of pain, a day of bewilderment for his Jesus followers. Lord, as I hope we can glean from this sermon and study this morning, also a day in which astonishing things are going on, Lord, I pray you'd be our teacher.Guide us as we look at some interesting truths this morning. Seek to understand some interesting passages. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Last Sunday, pastor Jared presented a great sermon on the costs that Jesus Christ experienced on Friday, emotionally, physically, spiritually. It all climaxed at the moment of the cross where in late afternoon he gave up his spirit.He died, um, and then hurriedly, they took him down from the cross. They took his body, put it in the tomb of this leader of the Sanhedrin Joseph of Aramathea, in order to beat the hours before the Sabbath day would begin on late Friday evening. They have taken him, they've put him in a tomb. They've rolled the stone in front of it.And so begin the events of Saturday of Passion Week. A reporter on the ground would not see a lot going on. On this day. Jesus followers have dispersed. Peter is somewhere completely licking his wounds in disgrace, overwhelming remorse for publicly denying Jesus Christ in such an overt way. On Thursday evening, Judas, after seeing Jesus marked for the cross Friday morning, has gone out and hung himself.All of the others followers of Jesus have dispersed some gathering together, some separate to. Rest during the Sabbath day. During the end of that day. Actually Saturday night it will be after the Sabbath is over, the women will begin to prepare their spices for the coming morning when they intend to go to the tomb and try to anoint the body of Jesus.Don't think about until they're almost there, how they're gonna get the stone out of the way. But they've gone and, and the only on the ground record we have of what happened on Saturday is the verses I just read. It is basically telling us what is happening outside the tomb, but what is happening to the one in the tomb.This is going to be the second aspect of our sermon this morning, and I'll give you a preview. It will be one of the most unique sermon subjects we have ever tackled together. But first, let's look at Jesus in the grave as we're going to look at them in this sermon from two perspectives. First of all, the ground view, and we see the enemy's designed to captivate.Then we're going to look at the below ground view. Jesus dissent to liberate the ground view here in Matthew 27 is talking about the enemy's design to captivate him. It's made up of two groups of people. It says the chief priest and the Pharisees, and that's who we've read about in Matthew 27 62 to 66.Basically those were members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling 70 of Israel, the chief priest. Were usually, as they were in this day, members of what is called the Sadi Group. The Sadi Group was the more liberal group. They tended to be affluent. They tended to be, um, prominent families. Um, and the chief priests were individuals who did not believe in an afterlife astonishingly.These were the priests. The chief priest did not believe. Certainly there was a future resurrection. They did not tend to take Bible stories, literally. Then you had the other group that were also a part of the Sanhedrin, and these were the individuals called the Pharisees. These were the more conservative biblical scholars.These individuals absolutely did believe in the afterlife, and they did believe that there was a future resurrection to come. Yet we find that these two groups have joined forces as they go to pilot, and they have one belief where they can agree on the afterlife, and that is this. Jesus is not the guy that is going to lead us there.Jesus does not have the power to raise himself from the dead. Jesus does not have the the ability to bring about resurrection on his own volition at his own time. Even though we, as Pharisees would believe there is a future resurrectionas they come together, their concern is not really about Jesus, it's about his followers. They're worried that they're gonna come and steal the body, and then they're gonna announce that he is resurrected from the dead because as the tomb is open, low and behold there's no body there. And there are three things I just wanna highlight that I think stand out for from this passage we're struck with these three things.First of all, they really heard Jesus words about the resurrection. This is a really clear summation of what Jesus predicted. In three days, I will rise from the dead. They knew he said that. They heard, he said that far more clearly and expressed far more cogently than we ever hear the disciples. I, I think it was just a truth.They just couldn't put their arms around and, and actually the disciples, you never read an account of the disciples saying, you know, he's gonna ra He said he was gonna raise three days. I wonder if you don't hear that. As a matter of fact, with the disciples, there's no sense of of processing that we have any record of, of what this could mean.You know, he died. We didn't expect him to die, but he did say he was gonna die. Maybe this means this. They're all astounded at the resurrection. The religious leaders are giving these guys far too much credit. That they would be able to strategize at this moment in time, to, uh, to, to, to take the body of Jesus and then fabricate his, his resurrection.But these guys hurt him. They really hurt him. They didn't believe him, but scared him. The second thing that strikes you about this is their fear. I mean, this is the Sabbath day. These guys were really fearful of what Jesus could do through his followers. This, the Sabbath. They were of course, under all kinds of restraints and regulations.Even those that were liberal would, would still have said there are ways the Sabbath has to be practiced and one way is not gathering together for a special meeting, which they did. Secondly, to ask for a special audience with the Roman governor, which they did to marshal their own guards and take them out to defend the hill where Jesus was buried, which they did.These guys were willing to cut a lot of corners. As a matter of fact, they were willing to cross big lines in their frenzy to make sure this tomb is secure and to stop What might happen. Also, and I love this part of the story, this is Joseph's tomb. Joseph o Mathia is part of their group. I mean, you would think they would say, Joseph, we don't know why.You felt the need, maybe compassion or something to, to take this guy's body who quite frankly we're the reason he's dead and put him in your own tomb, but would you at least get some guards out there? They're not trusting Joseph. It's highly unlikely that Joseph of Aramathea is a part of the group that's speaking a pilot.It's very unlikely that Nicodemus, who is one of the members of the San Union and a leading Pharisee, that he's a part of the group. These guys have been left out. They're now questionable. They're suspectthey have guards. We know there are guards that the religious leaders have and the and and what P says to, he says, take your guards, take your police. Go ahead and secure the tomb. So why do they need to go to pilot? I mean, they got their own guards, right? They got their own mini army. They arrested Jesus with those guys.Why did they need to go to pilot? They went to a pilot because they wanted the power of Rome behind this protective ploy. They really received strong empowerment for their goals here. You know, Jesus had, has already shown he can do some weird things at tombs. Just a few weeks before this, he stood at the tomb of Lazarus, not far from Jerusalem, just a couple of miles east of it, and he said, what has he said to him?Move the stone away and then, and I'm sure the religious leaders is, we are not sure what actually happened there, but man, what a mess it was for us. They still were told in the gospels we're trying to discredit Lazarus ease until this time they don't want another scene, certainly in the tomb of one of their own members.So they go to pilot and basically this is what they're requesting. Look, we know we can put our soldiers where we want. We can put our guards where we want, but we want Rome stamp on this. That's why it says in verse 65 and 66 that they sealed the tomb. What that means is they put a Roman steel on it, seal on it, and the seal said this, anybody that moves this stone has just put their fist in the face of the Roman Empire.This is Caesar's tomb. Now you don't move this stone. They brought now the, the authority of Rome. It's striking to me the pilot is willing to do this. PIL also is unnerved by this whole experience with Jesus. Pilate doesn't blow him off. He allows them to put a Roman seal on it. And I, I'm saying all this to say this.The view on the ground, the only one recorded of the only one recorded event is of Jesus enemies trying to limit his influence. Don't let anything happen. Don't let these guys now, now get a message out there that Jesus is somehow still alive and this whole thing will just keep going. Let's stop it. The whole picture, the only messaging we have of on the ground in activity is of Jesus enemies trying to limit him, trying to captivate him, which is astonishing and very exciting as we come to the second part of our sermon because the second part of the sermon is the below ground view.Jesus dissent. To liberate. We're gonna look at a number of different passages regarding this, but first, I want you to join with me and I want you to process with me. Jesus died on Friday afternoon, right? He was put in the tomb around dinnertime. His body was there, now sealed into this tomb of Joseph,but has Jesus ceased to exist? I, I think we would all say no. Jesus, in spirit, soul, the immaterial part has left his body to go where life. I think if I asked that question, our, our immediate response would be, well, heaven, doesn't he say to the, you know, the thief on the cross today, you'll be with me in paradise.We're gonna circle back to that. Where did he go? What happened? Where was Jesus on Saturday? The Apostles Creed is the original doctrinal statement put together by the early church. It's called the Apostles Creed because the church fathers that were discipled by the disciples, by the apostles actually credited them with providing this body of truth.The Apostles Creed has basically been endorsed by every Christian group in worldwide throughout history. It's a simple statement. Later statements will simply elaborate on it, but the Apostles Creed will always be the foundational teaching of the church. I'd like to quickly read to you. The Apostles Creed.And I want to point out two things about this. One in particular. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended to hell. The third day, rose from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there, he will come to judge the living in the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.Amen. Two quick points. You'll notice down in the latter part, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic church, Catholic, here is the word. Uh, it's actually from two words. Um, which means according to, or or in, in, in relation to. And then the word, um, all basically it's saying this is the universal church.This is, this is the, the church in relation to all believers is what it means. But I want you to go back a few lines to the lines that may have jumped out to you. He was crucified. He died and was buried. He descended to hell. This particular statementhas caused a lot of controversy questions, just, uh, in, in interpretation throughout the history of the church. Actually only the last few centuries, the early centuries all agreed exactly what it was referring to. But there are three different interpretations. I'm just gonna highlight these very quickly.Number one, some people saw it as a reference to Jesus experiencing death. I, I just, I don't know how this even got traction. It's not what it says. It says he descended to hell or literally Hades. Um, nor does it explain a number of New Testament passages. And it even says before this, he died. He died, was buried and descended to hell.The second was actually by John Calvin. It was a view that no one had promoted that anybody knows before his period. But also it's got some traction today. And that was that it is a reference to Jesus experiencing the fury and judgment of hell. I understand that, that makes more sense to me, uh, because he did bear hell for us.But again, it, it, it, it is not, the question is why would this happen after he was buried? Um, and no one has postulated before John Calvin. The third view is that Jesus literally went to Hades. To release believers who had died. Virtually every church father in the first eight centuries or more embraced this view, St.Augustine in the fourth century, one of the truly great church fathers most prominent writer, made this statement, how could anyone think otherwise than that? Jesus did descend to hell during the time of his burial, not bodily, but in his spirit, in who he was, his body still in the grave. The word translated hell in the statement is the word Hades.It is the same place referred to as the Hebrew word shield. It's not talking about the eternal state of hell. As a matter of fact, in Revelation 20, it says this, those that are still contained in Hades will be. Placed into the lake of fire, whatever that means, literal or non-literal fire. It is a place of eternal separation from God.But, and that's what we think of as, as the, the place of eternal judgment. Hades is a holding place now, bear with me, hang with me because the longer we go into this subject, the more excited I'm gonna get right now. There's just stuff we gotta get through. Okay. Okay. So what is Hades? Well, Hades is the place of the departed dead in history before Jesus resurrection.It's an intermediate state. It is a, uh, between physical death and future, the future eternal state. There are two sides to it, two different, uh, places in it. Somehow. I don't know how to localize this, but there is a state which is called Abraham's side. Which is where righteous believers prior to Jesus, that's where Abraham was.It's where David was. It's where Ruth was. It's where all, all the, the saints of God, all and believers of any fame or, or, or notoriety. And secondly, there's another side, which is where those who rejected belief and salvation. Jesus tells us about this in a parable in Luke 16. He talks about, in Luke 16, he's talking about a, a poor man, poor godly man whose name is Lazarus.And then there's this rich guy who is, uh, uh, uh, proud, arrogant, uh, unresponsive to things of faith. Listen to the passage in Luke 16. Here's what it says. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried and in Hades. Being in torment. He lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.Both of these individuals are in Hades or Old Testament term Shield. They're both there. One's in one part, the righteous Abraham, the righteous Lazarus, and the other guy is this rich guy. And his position is totally different from the others. For the Godly in the time before Christ, they were in a state of comfort, wholeness, joy, Abraham's side, if you will.It is even called in writings. Paradise.You got that? We'll come back, but they are separated from their bodies until a day to come. So my second question, my se my, my next question is this, did Jesus go there? Ephesians chapter four, verse eight through 10, and again, I'm talking about after Jesus Christ has physically died. Now we're into Saturday.Did Jesus go to Hades? Ephesians four, eight through 10, when Jesus ascended on high, he let a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean? But the ha that he had also descended into the lower regions the earth, he who descended is the one who also ascended for above all the heavens that he might fill all things.Peter talks about this very thing in the first sermon ever preached after Jesus died and rose from the dead. Here's what he says in Acts chapter two. He's quoting from Psalm 16, and it's a prophetic statement about Jesus. And ge. This is Jesus. Putting words to Jesus is speaking for, you'll not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption.And then Peter gives his interpretation in verse 31, he David for Sue and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. Here's what he's saying. Jesus was not held in Hades. He was delivered from it by his resurrection. Mr. First sermon of the early church.And Peter is saying, I wanna tell you the whole story of the passion from crucifixion to resurrection. Jesus Christ died on the cross fulfilling all the scriptures of the one that would be the lamb slain that would provide a way through the veil into the presence of God as Gerald presented to us last week.He said, then he descended to Hades, but then he was not abandoned there. Justice the psalmist said he didn't stay there as those saints had stamped, stayed there for some of the millennia of time, though it was a, a rich place at times called Paradise, though it was a place that of joy and, and, and, and blessing.It also was not the final place. And he says, how could he not be kept there if he's a person that diedbecause Jesus Christ had the power to rise from the dead. This is the, this is the first sermon of the early church. Okay, let's keep going. Revelation one, verse 1718 for great declarations about Jesus Christ. And he says to the believers, don't be afraid because as fear not, I am the first and the last.And the living one. I died. And behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Some people try to argue that death and Hades are the same place here and many passages. Their deline has two different things. Death is the state. Hades is is a locale. He says, I'm the one that had the keys.The picture of Christ in his crucifixion is that I went to Hades, to all those saints that were in Abraham's side. I have the keys, I'm opening the door, I'm releasing them.So why would Jesus go there?Why was this going on on Saturday? Number one? It's where humans went at death, you know? It's just we sort of get in this state of I I I, I certainly get it. I've been there. I am there wondering, okay, Jesus died and I know what death's like death is. Preached it my whole life. Believed it. My whole life since it became a believer.Death is separation. My body is left and my spirit now goes on. Jesus experienced death just like any human. His spirit went on to wear to the same place they all did, to Hades, to shield to, to the underworld. Whether it is literally under the earth, I don't know. I dunno where it's localized or how it's localized for spirit beings.But Jesus experienced death in the same way humans experienced death and where he went. Was not focused on back to the presence of God. That's emphasized as a result of the resurrection. Jesus went to Hades. He went there, first of all, because it's where humans go when they died to this point. Secondly, and that's where I, I, to me, Luke 4 23 43, where he says to the, to the guy on the cross today, because you believe you'll be with me in paradise.He means we're going together. We're just gonna be there a little while, but we're going together. You'll be on Abraham's side with me. The second thing why Jesus would go there is he went to liberate those who had awaited the salvation. He died to. Why are Abraham and David and Ruth and all the godly women and all the godly men that have embraced salvation through the, the, the provision of God, the temporary provision of the sacrifices covering their sin.People that, that in humility saw their, their sin and, and their need of, of forgiveness from a, a, a holy God, but also a God of grace, that it provided a temporary way. Why are they still in Abraham's side? Because there has not been made an eternal sacrifice for sin that has been declared acceptable through the resurrection yet.I love this thought. I love the thought of Christ. Who here they up on the ground, right? They're sealing the tomb. We're gonna hold this guy. We're gonna put your guards there. And he's down there liberating. Yeah. Every saint that has ever lived. Amen. Yes. He's the conqueror. Why would he go there? He went there to say, you see these, see these halls?They were for you, you Abraham, you rayhab, you Ruth, you Adam, you eve sins scarred, broken, have waited in place of blessing and goodness. But you knew this is a temporary thing. I'm the one, I'm the guy. This was for youand I have the keys to open that door to eternity. Okay? Does it matter if he went there? It matters. I think for four reasons. I'm gonna try to r run through these pretty rapidly. Number one, it declares that Jesus is the focus of all human history. Since Adam and Eve, this has been the moment humanity has waited for every believer in God.Every person who has experienced acceptance by faith and the sacrifices and the grace of God has looked for this moment, and Jesus has come to say it's completed. The second reason it matters. Jesus resurrection is a literal picture of our resurrection.Jesus resurrection is just like yours will be one day if you died today. You would go to be with the presence of the Lord, your, your spiritual, your immaterial part wood. But Paul talks about this is somewhat aberrant, that we are unclothed is the idea. He says in second Corinthians five, four, he says that it's, it's wonderful.We are in a place without pain and sorrow. We are in the presence of God now through what Christ. But he says, it's still not the resurrectionJesus is emphasizing. There is a body, bodily, physical resurrection that is yet to come. One of the, the things that I've struggled with, my whole ministry is at gravesides of how to explain what's going on because we're there and I'm saying, Your loved one, if they've embraced Christ, your, your believing loved one is in the presence of God.Now, the hope is there's a future resurrection. Eh? What? And what I'm saying, I'm trying to explain, and I, and I don't highlight a lot, cuz it, it can be confusing to everybody, is that their body will be raced. This is real. This is actual, Jesus was alive on Saturday, right? He was resurrected on Sunday. What was resurrected?He was resurrected to physical life. His human body was brought to life again. Now you may be thinking, wait, wait a minute. So the hope is that in the future, if maybe I'll die and I'll be in heaven in the presence of God, but. I'm gonna come back and get this body again. Well, maybe some questions you have.Well, well, I, I just cremated my grandmother, or, or worse, my loved one was eaten by a shark. Or worse, worse. I hate my body. I don't want this body. This is all I can say to you. Whatever your body's like, it's gonna be fantastic. You're not gonna have any, oh, I just, I just gonna do wave words. Ah, it's never gonna end.No, you're gonna never be happier than you. This, this gonna be the perfect body.You see? There is going to be a new heaven and new earth. Th this is where I, ah, this is just grit. This we die. And now, because Jesus has emptied out the Abraham's side of Hades, were in the presence of God, with God, with Christ, but he's going to prepare a new heavens and new earth. The whole cosmos, the whole universe, as we know it, is at least part of this cosmic garden of Eden.Every part of it, we're going to be given bodies to enjoy it. This is not earthy. You know, the NAICS used to, this is a big argument they had against the early church. They said, no, no, the body is bad, bad, bad, bad. And, and the early church father say, no, the body is good. It's, it's marred by sin, but we are part human body.This is, this is real. This is special. We're gonna be given a body just like Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ experienced everything you experience at death. He died, his body still lay in. The tomb was buried. He went to the place at this time, Hades in his spirit. Now that is, those believers are in the presence of God, wherever that is.Third heaven, wherever it would be. But on the third day, on Sunday, his body was resurrected. His body was now changed. But you know, he still ate. He still walked around. He still talked. His body is exactly how your body will be. It also implies that he walked through a wall. I mean, that would be, that'd be all right, but Jesus experienced everything.We're going to experienceJesus. Then third, Knows every part of human experience because Christ's dissent pushes us to recognize that he doesn't simply know what it's like to die. He knows what it's like to be dead. He said, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, that's what's going on. From the moment he expired on the cross till the moment he was resurrected, he was in the state of death.He was living in that happy but unnatural state of unclothed that Paul talks about in Second Corinthians five, four, and to dwell among the departed saints, the resurrection forms the foundation of our. And it didn't just happen the moment Jesus died on the cross. He didn't rise till Sunday. And in that interim state, he pictures the state that we are in, in that unclosed state, yes, in God's presence, but not as.We will one day be reunited with a body that is glorified, prepared for a cosmos that is paradoxical. And the last thing it declares that Jesus is the cornerstone is the conqueror of every square inch of creation in Philippians two tend through 11. It says this, as a result of what Jesus Christ did in coming among us and dying and rising, here's what Paul concludes so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth.And every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father. He has descended. He has conquered at every level existence in heaven, on earth, under the earth. He is the conquering king, the risen, glorified savior. He's the one that descended and liberated. You know, we love this visual actually, it's, it fills our myths.It fills our movies. We want Maui to enter the realm of monsters in defeat Tama in the Disney film. Moana. We feel joy while reading the Silver Chair as part of the Chronicles of Narnia as Jill and used to rescue Prince Rian from the underworld in the Lord of the Rings, we see Gandolph descend into the depths of Mariah.And gives up his own life to defeat the ball rock, and then rises again to save middle earth. There is something fascinating about a sh, a shared yearning that we have for a hero who can enter the underworld, defeat our enemies, and bring the dad back to life. This dissent motif, so popular in ancient and modern mythology are the echoes.They're just the echoes of the great work of the sovereign son who leaves heaven, who walks this earth, who voluntarily embraces his own death and then descends to the place of the dead to lift them to life and to announce to them his work of redemption and liberation. So what do we see on this Saturday of Passion Week?Well, on the ground, we see Jesus followers. Sorrowing and confused. They see death. They see defeat for his enemies. They see a discerned strategy, a determined strategy to captivate and control his power and his influence on the ground to a reporter reporting it's a dark and silent day, a day of defeat and sorrow.But below the ground there is an utterly different story being written. He is existing in the state of physical death. He is using the moment to announce liberation to all the righteous of all human history. He is descended to announce his victory even when on the ground His defeat seems assured. He is our conqueror.He is our king. He is our Lord. Every dimension of life, he is one for us. Look to your future saints. Look to a new heaven and new earth that is real, where you will be embodied. Look to the life of Christ in his days after the resurrection. And see, that's how I'll be. I'll still be eating. I'll still be enjoying life, but there will also be a sense that there is no other restraint upon my life, but the joy of living and enjoying God.Saturday for the disciples was a dark day, but man, it's not a dark day to me. I love the thought that he is the descending, conquering one. I got close. Let's pray. Lord,the deeper we go into the scriptures, the more we spend time with truth, the more we fall in love with Christ.We see once again, Lord, that in the stories of mythology, the stories of fantasy, the stories of heroes, there is again just the echoes that emanate from the true hero, our hero who died, descended and rose. And Lord Jesus, we love you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Matthew 27:45-51Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Sermon Transcript:but I'm very excited to be, um, with you guys this morning and we're gonna be reading here first in, uh, Matthew chapter 27 verse 45, um, through 51.It says this now, from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, That is my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a read and gave it to him to drink.But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split. Would you pray with me this morning?Father, we come before you. Today, God. Andafter hearing that song, God, I just, that's, that's who we want to be. That's what we want to do, Lord. We want to be people that lift your name up, Lord. It's one of the greatest callings you've ever given us, is to bring glory back to you, God. And that's exactly what we're trying to do this morning. God, I just really hope that you'd make this not about the worship team, um, not about me or anybody else, Lord, but only that your name would be exalted.That your word would be exalted Lord, in that, through that Lord, your spirit would move in us. God, pray that you, uh, would pour out your spirit this morning, Lord, that you would work in our hearts. God, I do pray against all distractions. God, I pray against all distractions in Jesus' name. That your, your word, your spirit would be the loudest things in this room.God, be with us. Um, come close this morning. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week, pastor Mark talked about, um, Thursday, the, the week, uh, the Holy Thursday coming up leading to, um, the celebration of Easter. Today we'll be talking about, um, Friday, good Friday. Uh, it's historically called. And uh, last week it was talking about, um, Jesus celebrates the Passover, um, with US disciples.He institutes the Lord's Supper with his disciples. He, he gives them some final thoughts and commands and, um, has this long discourse, um, with his disciples. And that was all happening on, um, Thursday of Holy Week. And actually a fun fact that I had learned not too long ago, pastor Mark actually told me this and I Googled it to make sure you're right and you were, the Jewish day actually starts.At nightfall. So th Friday is actually what we would consider like Thursday at nightfall. So Friday actually starts, the events that happen on Thursday, later in that night is actually what happens Friday. So we're gonna be looking through that. And there's a lot, there is about six or more chapters all going on on Friday.So I hope you guys are ready to just buckle in. We'll be here for a couple hours, I mean, uh, 40 minutes. Um, but I do want to just, uh, there's, there's a lot going on here and I just want to direct if you're keeping along with the Common Life book, Um, there is a map in there. I just kind of wanna direct our attention to it of kind of just what happens where, this is Jesus's travel.So we'll start in the garden of sse, right where Jesus is arrested. He goes and he appears before, uh, Caiaphas in the high priest. Then he goes to the, uh, he's brought before the Sanon, and from the Sanhedrin, he goes to pilot, pilot sends him to Herod, he goes back to pilot, is condemned to the cross. He takes the journey to the cross, um, to, uh, go Gotha.He's crucified and buried, right? Um, around there as well. So there's a, there's a lot going on and I, and if you're not keeping up with the Common Life book or if you haven't gone through it, I really would encourage you to just take it through. There's actually four accounts, believe it or not, the gospel's all, uh, you know, that's a pretty important event.So I would encourage you to go through it because there's a lot that we probably won't be able to cover. Um, this morning, but this morning I do want to focus on one thing and that's the cost of the cross. What did it cost? Jesus? How did it affect him? How can we even begin to understand what he endured?For our sake, we'll be looking at this great cost of the cross in three different categories. And first, um, I wanna talk about what it cost emotionally. What was the emotional cost? What did Jesus experience emotionally on this day in history? Uh, we're gonna do a really fun exercise. I want everyone to close your eyes.Okay? Close your eyes. It's not weird, , I told you it'd be fun. I want you to take a second and close your eyes. I want you to think about the most heart-wrenching experience you've ever experienced. I want you to think about one of the most painful emotional times you've ever been through. Maybe it was a breakup or a divorce.Maybe it was the breaking apart of your family, the loss of a loved one, the betrayal of your spouse, the pain of watching your parents become sicker and sicker or, or a child. I want us to think about that this morning. You can open your eyes. I want us to think just what we've experienced emotionally, the worst that we've ever experienced, because what Christ is going through on Friday is heart-wrenching.It is absolutely agonizing what he's going through on this Friday, and I really want us to do this, to think deeply, not just, I just want us to sit in this for a little bit to think, what did this cost our savior Jesus on the day he was gonna be crucified. Was in complete agony and heartbreak. Matthew 26, 36 through 39 says this.Then Jesus went with them to a place called GSE and he said to his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray, and taking with him, Peter and the two sons of Zeti. He began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to him, my soul is very Sol sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch with me.And going a little far farther, he fell on his face and prayed saying, father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. I want us to put ourselves in the shoes of Jesus here. You know exactly what weights you. You know the death prepared for you, the horrific pain you're going to endure.You know it's gonna come and there's nothing you can do to escape it. It and all you want, right? All you want in this painful experience. Maybe this was in your life, when you're going through your painful experience, what do you want? You want friends to come alongside you, to put your arm around you, to pat you on your back, pick you up when you're down.And this is exactly what Jesus wants. He brings some of his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, and he says, just come with me and pray. He says, I'm sorrowful unto death. Just come. Just pray with me. Just be with me. And he goes out and he prays and he comes back and his disciples are praying fervently for him right now.They fall asleep and he wakes 'em up and he says, would you just please just pray? Just pray with me now. And he comes back, not once, not twice, but three times. They fall asleep on him. He's in complete agony. They see him and Luke, it actually describes that he's sweating blood. This is how much emotional pain that he's going through, and he's desperate for his friends to be there for him, and they're falling asleep.And not only that, but at this very moment, one of his best friends is exchanging money to betray him over to the religious leaders. They come, they rest him, and the disciples scatter. They run away. They're scared. He sees one of the, this guy who he spent three years with, come over and kiss him, call him rabbi, and betray him to the religious leaders.Jesus goes, and he, he goes before the many councils and, and, uh, um, uh, judgments that he goes to see. And Peter actually follows along and says, Peter and John actually follow along with him and we're like, oh, this is perfect. Look, Peter's supporting him. No, that's not actually what happens. Peter actually has the time that Jesus predicted before at the Lord Supper.He says he denied him not once, not twice, but again three times. This was his brother. This was the guy. Jesus said, I'm going to build my church on you, Peter. You're gonna be my rock Peter. And he's denying that he even knows his friend Jesus when he needed him the most. All of his brothers for three years Now, in an instance, turn betray him, the deny him, run from him.What was this pain of betrayal like? How did this feel to Jesus? How did he endure this? And we know from the map that we looked at earlier, he appeared before the high priest, the San Heeder and the ha herd and pilot. And at each trial, they falsely accused him, mocked him, mocked his kingship and majesty.Here he is Jesus king of the universe, and they're mocking him and accusing him of things he's never done. He's innocent before them,and no one there is to defend him. No one. And he stays silent and he takes on the abuse, the, the verbal, the physical abuse, the shame, the embarrassment that he felt being stripped naked and put on a cross is a spectacle for all to see on the cross. His mother was in the crowd along with many other women who supported his ministry, the pain of watching his mother watch her son die right in front of her.What was this like? The pain of watching the people you've loved and served over your whole ministry be the same exact people that have put you on this cross. God's chosen people, the Jews have accused him, asked for his crucifix. Crucifixion. These people he's only loved and served and looked out for are now the ones putting him to death.This, this was the emotional cost. This was his cost. This was the heart wrenching, sorrowful unto death cost that he endured for us, and he did it for us. That's the emotional cost. Now, I want to talk through the physical cost. What did he endure physically, right? Some of us jump right here. We only think about the physical things and, and we don't think, or some of us might be a little bit more emotional when we think about the emotional right, but what did he endure physically for us?At each of his trials, he was beaten, spit on, beaten with a rod, had a crown of thorns push into his head, and possibly the worst of all, he was scourged. This was a common practice that they would do to people that were going to be crucified. They would take a whip that had many leather straps on it that would break open their back.It actually had metal or bone pieces attached to it. So over and over again, you're getting contusions and your back is lacerating open, getting split open on the back. Why did they do this? Was it painful? Yes. Did it exhaust them? Yes, because what happened on crucifixion, the Bible kind of saves us the details.Right. Just says, and he was crucified. Well, partly because everyone knew what that was, but the actual act of crucifixion, they would nail him to the cross. . And what you actually would end up dying from most of the time was suffocation, because your arms were pulled out, you couldn't get a breath. So you could either die from suffocation or exhaustion or a heart attack induced by stress or dehydration.And what would happen is in order to get a breath, you'd have to push against these nails, driven through your feet to try to push up and get a breath, which would cause all the wounds in your back to scrape against this wooden, splinter filled cross. We can't even imagine what this was like. And Jesus actually was offered a painkiller.Someone tries to give them, um, gall, which would've numbed the pain, and he refused it. He refused to have any painkiller. He wanted to endure the full weight and pain of the punishment. Crucifixion was the most horrifying way to die, and he did it for us. You had to carry the cross. And actually we know by scripture that he actually was not even strong enough to carry the cross, so they make some guy named Simon do it, and it was right outside the city so that everyone could see, everyone could come and witness the crucifixion of Jesus.The pain, the physical pain that he endured, we can't even imagine. This was the physical cost of Jesus. This is what he endured. This is what he endured for us. And the last cost, but the worst of all was the spiritual cost Jesus endured for us. Yes. The emotional, almost pain, the betrayal of his friends was painful.Yes, the, the, the physical pain that he endured was terrible and agonizing, but the weight of the spiritual cost was worse of all. Jesus sinless, righteous, completely filled out the law, had the full weight of our sin and the wrath of God, of from God the father poured out on him. Jesus took on the punishment, the guilt, and the shame of the whole world, sin on the cross.Jesus, for the first time in history, was separated from the Father. The greatest turmoil anyone could ever experience is separation from. Matthew 27 46. We read it earlier, but it says about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli Lama Saba. That is my God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?This wasn't just a word that he said. It wasn't just saying, God, why are you doing this to me? Right? He was saying, why have you forsaken me? Why have you left me? He was separated from his father for the first time in history. He was in pure agony. Apart from the Father. This, this, this was the cost of the cross to be separated from God, the Father, the God had separated.Right? We can't even wrap our heads around it. What was that like for him? Isaiah 53, um, verses four through 10 says that it was the will of God to do this. I just want to read it. It says, surely he took up our pain. and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and inflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions.He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. Next slide, and as a sheep before cheers his silence. So he did not open his mouth by oppression and judgment, he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested where he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgressions of my people, he was punished.He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich. In his death, though he had done no violence, no words, any deceit in his mouth, yet it was the Lord's will to crush him.In other versions, it says it delighted the Lord to crush him. This is what he endured for us. This was the cost of the cross. I just want to sit. Yeah. I told you this was not gonna be a fun sermon, right? I just want us to sit in this. What did it cost him? What was it like being separated by the father?This was the true cost of the cross. But why did he endure this for us? Well, it was because of his great love for us. And well, maybe you're asking, okay, it Well, why? Why did it have, why? Why was the cross necessary? Why was the cross necessary for this to happen? Why did Jesus have to go through all this pain to get to us?All right. Well, I want to take us all the way back into the Garden of Eden. God's plan was always to be with his people. God's plan was always to be in the presence of his people. It actually says in in Genesis that Adam Eve walked with God. This was his plan from the very beginning of time that God would be with his.But we know how this story ends, right? Um, Adam and Eve choose sin. They choose disobedience, and we know God is a holy God. He can, he's separated from sin, right? So when, when Adam and Eve chose this disobedience, they created a separation. They were kicked out of the garden. Two chair bi are now guarding this garden.Now they're saying you are separated from God. Now there's a separation that happened. You used to walk with him, and now because of your sin, there's a separation. . And from that point there was a separation. But even back then, God had a plan of redemption for his people. He had a plan to be back in the presence of his people.The first, um, actualized version of this we see is in the wilderness. Um, God commands them to set up a tabernacle, right? That his spirit, that his presence would reside in, and they actually put up their camp all around this tabernacle. And the, the fire, the, uh, act, the symbol of God's presence would hover over is, and they put their whole camp around the tabernacle.Not only this, God set up a sacrificial system, okay? And if you're familiar with this, right, there's a separation that has happened because of sin. So God sets up a sacrificial system with animals, right? That there needed to be atonement, that there needs to be a. That we could enter now into the presence of God because of his holiness, because of his separation from sin, because of his almightiness, there needed to be atonement before we, uh, stepped into his presence.So he established a priest line right through Aaron, and he establish a sacrificial system that there would be blood shed, right? And these priests would go through all these rituals so that they could be ceremonially clean, that they could go in the presence of God and not be separated with him, but actually go in because of the tone of these sacrifices.But these were temporary sacrifices. This was a temporary plan. This was a temporary place for God. It was a tent for goodness sake. But when Israel gets into the chosen, uh, land, Israel, Solomon builds a, a somewhat what we see a permanent home for God. It's the temple, right? And it was the same thing. God's presence resided in that temple.And the priest would go before, um, the people as well, um, into this temple, and they'd still do the sacrifices, and they still do all these ceremonial washings so that they could go and be with God and be with God for the people of Israel. But the question is how, um, how could God be with his people? If people were in sin and he was holy?The only way that God would really open up the doors to this was through the cross. This was the only way. This is why the cross needed to happen. There was still separation. Even with this system, even with the sacrificial system, there was still a separation that happened and at some point, While Jesus was on the cross, an exchange happened.Jesus took our place. Right? When we know that, the scripture says the wages of sin is death. Jesus took our place that was rightly ours, that we rightly deserved. And instead of us, that God's wrath was poured out on God's wrath, was poured out on his son Jesus. And in John 1930, Jesus with his last breath, cries out.It is finished. And in Greek, this is one word, tole, which means to close, to finish, to come to end some. Sometimes it even means to make a payment. There was an exchange that happened. The work was done. The punishment of sin, the separation was complete. The punishment, the wrath that was necessary because of our sin was poured out, not on us, not on the people.But on Jesus, the righteous one, the debt was paid in full. The work of Christ was finished on that cross. So with his last breath, he says, it is finished. The results of what Jesus did on that cross is the reason we can be in relationship with the Father Today. There was a separation that only the cross could fix, that only the cross commend.Matthew 27 50 through 51 says this. It says, and when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit and that. And at that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn into, from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rock split. Matthew in is one of the gospels that really emphasizes that this veil of the temple was split.And I just want to camp out here for a little bit and just talk about the significance of this temple, uh, veil being torn because it's incredible. It was so significant. And I just wanna pull up, um, the picture of the temple. So just so we can see it. This is actually the tabernacle, but it is set up very similar as in the temple, if you guys can see this.So there was multiple veils, there's multiple parts of the temple and the tabernacle. This part of the temple would've been called the holy place. This is where priests would come into, they'd come into this first section here behind the curtain the most. No one else other than the priest could enter into that place.But past the second curtain here, this is called the Holy of Holies. Okay? The most holy place. And once a year. The high priests would be able to enter into the Holy of Holies once a year, just once, and they'd go through their ceremonial watchings and they'd, and they'd offer multiple sacrifices, and they'd go in with the blood of a bull and they'd sacrifice one for their sins, but they'd do a sacrifice for the whole of Israel as a nation.They were going into a tone for Israel's sins for one year, right? It was a sacrifice that lasted one year, and they'd go into this holy place and they had to be completely ceremonial and clean because what happened? We know this. God is a holy God. He cannot be in the presence of sin. And what could actually happen is that, If he wasn't ceremonial clean, if there wasn't sin confessed and in not out in the open, he actually would drop dead in the presence of God.And there's a myth, um, we don't actually know if it's true or not, but it sounds really cool, so I'm gonna share it right, that there was a rope that they would tie around the high priest. Why? Because if this high priest drops dead, there's not another guy that can go in there for a whole nother year to get this man out.This was the holiness of God. This was God's presence. It's dangerous for sin. There was a literal separation. The veil shows us a separation between God and man. And this wasn't like, like you think about a veil, I think about like a shower curtain or like my, uh, curtains for my window and my living room.Right. This thing was up to 20 to 30 feet wide. It was up to 60 feet high, and it was anywhere, um, from three to six inches thick. This was, I don't even know what to call. It was a, the veil of the veils, right. This thing was huge, and it says the Temple veil was torn from top to bottom. This is not something that a human could weave.This is not something that a human could tear. This was the work of God. And there's a lot of symbolism here in, um, the, the temple, there was actually it, the veil was worn out of the most royal, um, fabrics of purples and reds and blues. And it actually had cherubim angels weaved in to the veil. And in the temple there was actually two Cher statues over 12 feet tall that were in front of the arc of the covenant, the mercy seat where God's presence was supposed to be.Two Cher bi guarding. It sounds super familiar, right? That the two Cher him were guarding the place of Eden, the presence of God. There was a separation in his angels were ma making sure that there was one. So when this veil is torn, right, this is a monumental symbol for those who are in Christ Jesus.This is a big deal. No longer, once a year, a high priest will enter no. What is Jesus doing? What Jesus accomplished on the cross is saying, we now those in Christ Jesus are in the full presence of the Father. Amen. Amen. This is a big deal. This is what Christ accomplished on Good Friday. Dr. Daniel, uh, Gertner writes this about the veil.He says, the veil was a physical visible barrier indicating that access to God was strictly prohibited because of his holiness. It is imperative to remember that the holiness of God remains unchanged from all eternity, even after the veil is torn. What has changed then is that the toning death of Jesus on the cross has provided the appropriate wrath bearing sacrifice, one, which the bulls and the goats of the old covenant could not provide.That system, the sacrificial system, the sacrificial of bulls and lambs and goats was a temporary sacrifice. What Jesus did on the cross was eternal. The high priests would go in before to sacrifice atonement for all of Israel. Once a year in that sacrifice would end, and one year later, what Jesus has done is eternal.The work is done. He said, it is finished. You're welcome now into my presence.His holiness didn't change. What changed was the work of Jesus Christ. That now covers. I want to share a couple verses from the book of Hebrews, um, that just absolutely, um, explained this way better than human word could ever, um, explain it. First is Hebrews four, 14 through 16. It says this, therefore, since we have a great high priest, that's Jesus, our great high priest now is Jesus who is a send it into heaven.Jesus, the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we pres profess for. We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but he, we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are. Yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of.What does this mean? This is a huge deal for God's people. This is a huge deal for those who are on Christ Jesus. Some of us have still wrapped ourselves in the veil. We're like, we don't want to go before the Presidents of God. We're scared. I'm covered in sin. I'm dirty. No, our high priest is not a human priest anymore.It's king Jesus. And he was tempted and he was tried and he endured pain and he endured pain on the cross and, but he was perfect in every way without sin. So verse 16 says, let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. Why? So that we may receive mercy so that we might find grace to help in time of need.Hebrews 10, 19 through 23 says this, therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, opened up for us through the curtain. That is his body. And soon we have a great priest over the house of God. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with full assurance that faith brings, having our heart sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water led us hold Unser inly to, to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful.The veil being torn is a monumental thing.Just as his body was broken, the veil was broken. We will never fully understand just how great the cost of the cross was. But we can understand is that because of the cross, the debt of our sin has been paid. We've been sprinkled, we've been washed clean by his sacrifice. Through the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus.This is a one and done sacrifice. Some of you right now are still trying to atone for your sin. Some of you are not a sacrifice in bulls and goats, but some of you are trying to get your good works and you're like, wait, if I just stack these up enough, I can atone for all these sins. Stop. Embrace God's sacrifice and don't hear me this.Don't say, oh, embrace God's sacrifice. I can live however I want. No, no, no, where he's saying boldly approach the throne cuz we've been sprinkled and clean with a clear conscience, hearts filled with faith. Now that we can boldly approach the throne of God so that we can now boldly live for him. Jesus is now our great high priest that intercedes for us.We are covered by the purifying perfect blood of Jesus. We may now boldly approach the throne of God. So yeah, when we call this Good Friday, this was a good Friday, this was a really good Friday. There was a separation between man and God, and it was always God's desire. Read through the scriptures, you can see it.It's always his desire to be in the presence with his people. And when this veil was torn, it blew the doors open to his presence. Now, full access to the father.This is a really, really good Friday. This is worthy of a celebration and we know the celebration will only get better with Sunday's resurrection. But with Good Friday, I just don't want to miss the cost of the cross. What it accomplished when he said it is finished. What did that mean? His work was complete.The Messiah came. It didn't conquer the Romans like they thought he was going to. He conquered sin and the debt that was weighing over us, he purchased it with the son of his blood. This is certainly a good Friday. Celebrate. Look, would you pray with me,Lord, man, how special are we, God, that we can come just right now. Lord, we're just boldly approaching your throne. We're boldly approaching your presence, God. And now we can actually pray with confidence, say, God, let your presence be known to us. And that used to be a scary thing. or yet because of the work of your son, those who are in Christ Jesus can boldly approach a throne in God.And Lord, I pray and I wanna pray specifically right now. Lord, I just feel like you're putting this on my heart, Lord, for those out there right now, God that aren't in Christ Jesus, that are still trying to make these sacrifices for their sin, that are still trying to make these atonements that might last for a day or might last for a year, Lord, and the sacrifice that you've done for us is eternal God.Your holiness didn't change. What changed is that your son, the wrath was poured out on him, not us Lord. So I pray that you would call Lord, those who are still trying to make these sacrifices for the sins and just make it so clear to them the work is done, it's finished for them, the work was completed for them.God, enter your great love for us. That covers our sin. Nothing that we could do. And that's why I, I have assurance, God, me, myself, Lord, knowing my sin, my misgivings Lord, I know that I'll sin probably later today and tomorrow, Lord, but the work is complete. I've been covered by her blood. And Lord, I praise you.This is a good Friday. God, let us sit in the cost of the cross and what it cost you, Lord, and let us share in your sufferings today. Lord, pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
John 13
Sermon Transcript:Morning, everybody. Morning. I'd like you to take your Bibles to John chapter 13. We're gonna be looking at John 13 this morning. We're continuing a series that we're in the middle of as we've uh, left the book of Acts. We're gonna return to the book of Acts after Easter, but in the seven Sundays leading up to Easter.We are doing a series on the passion of Christ. The Passion Week, 40% of the New Testament, at least of the gospels, is related to the last week of Jesus life. And we are looking at that, taking it day by day. Um, as we have gone through that particular series, uh, we've covered a number of days, and today we are up to Thursday of Passion Week.There is not, um, uh, I don't have slides for you this morning. Uh, well you have that one. That's nice. Look at that. Um, and, uh, so you, you might have to listen today. Uh, we're gonna be celebrating the Lord's Supper at the end of our time and I didn't put together. It gets worse though. Um, I actually, I'm gonna apologize right now to the engineers.The, I was trying to think who I'm apologizing to. I'm trying, definitely engineers, probably English teachers, likely it people, people that live with order in their lives. I'm gonna mess up the sermon summary completely this morning. Uh, actually it's a little bit off from what you have in front of you. Um, uh, actually it is completely blown up.Um, there're, I do have two points, , but that's about all I love Notetakers. I don't wanna discourage you if you're a note taker, keep note taking, but this morning you're gonna have to cross out and add some new stuff. I just, I was trying to focus on two verses in this passage because that is the thrust of this passage and actually the events of Thursday.But I realized I needed to do a little wider, and so I've changed it a little bit. All right, we're looking at John 13 verses 31 to 38, and I wanna read that for you and then we're gonna dive into what's going on here on Thursday and why we're only looking at this short passage. To summarize the day, acts 13, verse 31 to 38, when he, and that's Judas had gone out, Jesus said, now is the son of man glorified and God is glorified in him.If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Little children. Yet a little while I'm with you, you'll seek me and just as I said to the Jews. So now I also say to you where I am. You cannot come 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. By this, all people will know. That you are my disciples. If you have love one for another. Let's pray.Lord, I praise you this morning that we can gather in this room and as we gather here in Mount Laurel, as we gather here in Collingswood as some are gathering with us online. Lord, I ask that you might be our teacher and our guide in the truth in this little section. There is so much that our own hearts need to embrace and here about you and about ourselves in God.I pray that you would teach us and lead us into truth this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. We are going through the chronology of Passion Week. I just wanted to remind you of a few things. Sunday. The previous Sunday was the triumphant entry, the entrance of Jesus offering self as king to the people of Israel.He had come in and a donkey had not come in as they had expected, as a a warrior king. He came in as a servant king. On Monday we saw him coming into the temple and he, he had actually visited the temple there on Sunday. On Monday he comes back. He has, he has seen what is going on there. And Monday he shakes, uh, the cages of the disciples in a big way because he starts turning over tables, taking on the religious establishment saying, you have made my father's house of prayer into Aden of Roberts.It become a place of commerce. And that even bilking people out of. he had left, and Tuesday they'd come back. And again, the disciples undoubtedly hoping things will now calm down. And, and we'll get back to the adoring crowds which we had on Sunday. And Jesus actually enters into a full day of confrontation.He has confrontation with the religious leaders. He has conversations with the Pharisees, the sades, take him on the Herodians, take him on the, the, uh, scribes, take him on all these different groups, the liberal Jews, the conservative Jews, the Romanized Jews, the the theological Jews. They all take him on.And it's a day of, of conflict and confrontation. And it's undoubtedly exhausting not only for Christ, but for those that have embraced him. They go back over the hill, out of Jerusalem, traveling east, arrive down to, and the city of Bethany on the other side of that, of that mount. . And Wednesday, as we saw last week, is a day of silence.There's almost nothing recorded. It was obviously a day where Jesus just, and, and, and the boys. They cooled their jets. They had a day of quiet. The only things we really know from that day were the behavior of a woman named Mary of Bethany who washed his feet and sec and, and worshiped him in such a beautiful way.And we contrasted these two responses last Sunday, the the worship of Mary, of Bethany. And at the same time, Judas was out selling Jesus out to the religious leaders. Now we come to Thursday, historically in the church, it's called Mondi Thursday. The word mondi is actually, uh, the word manum. In the original, we get the word mandate from it.It actually means commandment. It is commandment Thursday. And if we really understand what transpires on this day, because basically what happens, uh, the beginning of the day, Thursday, we see Jesus sending John and Peter to go into Jerusalem, find him a, a place to meet where they can celebrate the, the Passover.It's a place that he had already sovereignly, prearranged. They have gone, they have lined up this place. We now know it as the upper room because it was a second floor place. All the preparations have been made for Passover. The food has been gathered, the things have been brought together. And now we are at the Passover Supper.And at the Passover supper, the most prominent thing Jesus does, theologically and historically is to give a commandment for his to his disciples. And so the historic celebration of Thursday, Mondi Thursday is to celebrate this commandment. And this commandment is found in verse 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. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. What we're gonna do is focus, and on this commandment this morning, as we look at it, we are gonna look at the basis for the commandment. And then we are going to actually see the, the definition, the, the reality, uh, of this commandment.But I want you to look at the context. Verse 31 says an interesting opening phrase. Here's what it says. It says, when he had gone out, Jesus started speaking the he is Judas. Jesus has given one last, uh, invitation to Judas to, to repent of what he's about to do. Warning him saying, I know what you're gonna do, but go now.If you're going to go, now's the time Judas has gone. And it says, then Jesus began to speak. Judas has gone to the authorities, Jesus has gone to, to the prearranged moment where he is now going to bring the Roman, uh, the Jewish authorities with their soldiers to arrest Jesus. Jesus at this moment, recognizes they are nearing the end.This he has moments left. The clock is ticking for Christ. When Judas went, Jesus began to speak. He, he begins to say things that you say. When you know your time is very, very short. When you think, what is it that I most want to tell the most important people in my life right now as I near the end of my life?What Jesus says here is filled with significance. It's his dying words, if you will, to his disciples. It is his final messaging to them, and we read two things here. First of all, the basis of the commandment that he is giving to them in verse 31 and 33 is the cross He talks about in verse 31 and 32, glory.Glory, by the way. That's the first point. The first point is the basis for the commandment is the cross, and five times he uses the word glory in two verses. Now, glory is one of those theological terms. It's something about the glory of God, and, and, and we get it. When somebody peop when somebody says the power of God, well, you conceptualize power, the love of God.You conceptualize love, faithfulness of God. These things we, we can sort of wrap our arms around, but the glory of God. What, what is the glory of God? What does it mean that Jesus is going to be glorified? Well, the glory of God, actually, glory is the word that means weight or value. It's used in the, in the parables where it says, A man discovered a treasure buried in a field.And then it says this, and when he found out its great value is how it's translated. It's the word glory. When he found out its great value, it says he went and, and, and took everything he had in his own estate, sold it to have the money to buy this field. Why? Because he knew in the field was something that was more valuable than anything else in his life, and he is willing to get rid of everything in order to get this prized treasure that was in the field.So great was its glory. When we talk about glory, we're talking about value and worse.God's glory, the worth and value of God is basically the revelation of all God's attributes. , it reveals all that he is. It is is saying his weightiness, his splendor, his glory is in all that he is. So here's a striking thing. Jesus says, now you're going to see my glory more than any other moment in recorded history.The glory of God. The glory of God, the Son is going to be revealed in the cross. But not only that, look at verse 31. It says this Now, when he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the son of man glorified. In other words, now it's happening. Now it's beginning. But then he says this and God is glorified in him.God is the way Jesus always refers to God the Father. It doesn't mean that Jesus is is lost his deity, but it's his way of referencing God the Father. He said, the cross is not only where I am glorified, it is where my Father is shown in the weightiness and the splendor and the glory of who he is. This is the moment.It is the moment of the cross. It is the anticipation of the cross. The son of man will now be glorified, he says, and so will the Father. It is the supreme moment in recorded history, not the creation of the world, not any other event that we can cite, not the Red Sea parting and all a mirror. This is the moment.When the triune God is most seen in his weightiness, in his glory, in the wonder of who he is, it is shocking to realize that the moment when God is most seen in His gloryis when God, the Son goes to the electric chair of his day. When he faces the execution as a perceived heinous criminal, God's glory is most revealed. How is this? So well track with me here. His holiness is seen. That God did not reduce the standard of holiness or the, or the, the criteria of the purity of his presence.His law was upheld even in this moment when he was providing life and forgiveness for others. God held the glory that he is a holy God. His wisdom was shown. He was able to still be just the righteous judge, but at the same time, the justifi fire who declared acceptable, broken, flawed, rebellious sinners like us, the love and the patience, and the mercy are all seen in the event of the divine Son paying the penalty for the sins of rebels and betrayals.Who had already spurned his love. The cross shows the glory of God. I've told this story before. It's one of the greatest examples I've ever heard of what the cross is all about. It's told by Billy Graham, the evangelist, he was driving through the south one time in one of the back roads, areas. He was speeding.He got stopped by a patrolman and he got taken in. And if you ever watch Andy of Mayberry, you know, in those small towns back in the day, what they would do is they would immediately bring you, before the sheriff or whoever was the acting judge, and you would then have your penalty written out. And this guy was brought in and he was b brought before the judge.Uh, this guy Billy Graham, was brought before the judge, and the judge said to him, do you contest the charge? He said, no, I, I was speeding. And he said, okay, this is the penalty, X amount of dollars. And then the judge left his seat and came around and stood next to Billy Graham and took out his checkbook and he said, thank you for what you do for our country.And he paid the fine. The judge paid the penalty to his own court. He ma, he maintained the law right. He upheld justice right, but he himself paid the fine. This is the glory of the cross. God retained holiness. God retained justice, but God also revealed the glory of his mercy and his grace. He paid the fine at the cost of the electric chair of his day.Jesus says to us here, the judge didn't diminish his holiness. The God of beauty and goodness was not wa was most seen in his glory when he was being beaten to death. To the point that Isaiah says he was unrecognizable. This God's glory, this God most His glory is most reveal when he allows himself to be immoral and to be killed when he allows himself to take on humanity and to experience fear and dread in the garden of what was to come when he chooses to endure all of it for the sake of, of those that have rejected him.And as I've said many times, Who have sinned, which in the ultimate sense biblically, the greatest biblical vi visual of sin is what God constantly says about the people of Israel. He said they are spiritual adulterers. That's the picture of sin, that we turn from the one who loved us most, who is for us, but we win our own way.And yet the God who had to preserve holiness and holy standards came and paid the fathomless large fine, that it would've taken eternity for us to pay, but he paid it in our behalf. He says, you want to see the glory of God? Look to the cross. Now I will be glorified. It is with that backdrop that Jesus makes this commandment his manum.The nature of the command. The second point, simply the nature of the command is love for one another in verse 34 and 35 at first swing. It's kind of hard, you know, when you just glances what is verse 34 and 35? You know what it says about, you know, this is the commandment, you're to do this. How does that tie back to verse 31 to 33, which culminates in verse 33 with this statement, little children, yet a little while I'm with you, you'll seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I say to you where I'm going, you cannot come a new commandment.I give to you the loved one another. How does all that tie together? I would suggest this way, and this is why I had to extend my sermon. You can't understand. Verse 34 and 35 without verse 31 to 33, verse 31 and 32. He says, I'm gonna reveal, be revealed in my glory on the cross. You're gonna see the glory of God in a way you've never been able to see it before.But he said, now I'm leaving, but I still want my glory to be manifested. I still want the nature of a great God who is also a good God, a mighty God who is also replete with mercy.You're going to now be the visual for me. So what does that look like? And that's why he says in verse 34 and 35, he says, this love one another. As I have loved you by this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love one for another, they're gonna know you're associated with me because you're gonna reflect what I reflect.So what is he saying? Well,he's saying that people will see people while I was here, saw my love in the way I lived and in the way I died. I want them now to see that in you. He says, as I've loved you, I want you to love one another. And there are three giant ramifications of this commandment. Here's what they are, at least to me.Number one, if the world is turning away from Christianity, we need to look at ourselves.Frances Schaffer wrote a book years ago called The Mark of a Christian. It was a commentary, short book. It's a great book. It's still a. Timely, timely read. It was a discourse on John 1334 and 35. He mentioned that if you're a Christian, basically what he says in the book, if you're a Christian, you are able to determine who other Christians are true followers of Christ by conversation.You know, you can have, we do it all the time. You know, you get with someone and you're, you're sort of wondering, you know, where they stand spiritually and, and so you're having a conversation where you're free to talk about the gospel and, and, and you begin to, you know, talk about sin and how do they understand sin?Do they understand the, the culpability, the, the, the culpability of their sin? That we are all sinners. And we need to repent and have our minds changed and turn toward Christ. That, that he's the way to cri to God that we can't get there by any other way, but by embracing him as our savior and Lord and, and, and, and turning towards him, even as we turn away from trusting in ourselves, that we really understand that the gospel is about not what we do, but what is what was done by Christ.And we, we, can we talk about that? And you, and, and in conversation Francis Schaffer saying, I think rightly we can discern if someone else is a believer, but he says the world can't do that. They don't have that understanding of how a person is a fi in God's family through Christ. They can't do it by conversation.They do it by observation. They do it by verse 35. They look and they watch and they wonder, and by the quality of the life of those followers of Christ, they ask questions, perhaps at least are processing and, and, and what Jesus is saying, this is what's gonna happen. They're gonna look at you and they're gonna say, do they live differently than other groups of people?Not that they're sinless, not that they never screw up. Matter of fact, they're very free to own. They're flaws and they're brokenness. That they're broken people. They're flawed people because there's a humility of comes that when you realize, I'm free to embrace the ugliness in me because I am loved by one that is for me and says he'll never let me go.But do they look differently? Do they have a reputation for being forgiving of their enemies? Are they gentle in their treatment of others? Are they encouraging and welcoming to the outcast? Are they tolerant of those who are different? Jesus saying, you know, I was all those things. That's how I lived.What the cross is that, that I, I reached out to the broken. I was willing to, to sacrifice myself for them. He says, is the world seeing that in my people?Our nation is not turning towards Christianity. It is turning away for Christianity. Every year, the number of people identifying themselves as followers of Christ is going down. Many of them turning to the nons, which means what is your belief? What is your faith? Non,I don't know where to put that. Except that when the world is not drawn toward Christianity, the problem is not with Christ.In 2015 in South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, a young man named Dylan Roof went into the Emmanuel African Methodist, epi Episcopal Church, evangelical Church, uh, African American church went into a Bible study led by the pastor, actually a state senator, was there, number of other people, and he murdered nine people.The pastor was killed, the state senator was killed, and seven other individuals.Soon after the event, the pastor's family, The church leadership and members publicly reached out to Dylan Roof and publicly acknowledged they forgave him. Fast forward two years ago, my wife and I were in Charleston Car, South Carolina on a trip just to get away. We got a tour of the Great City and Arturo Guide was a group of us in a little.Van Arturo Guide was an interesting character. Um, pretty outspoken, pretty opinionated, uh, lot of facts, but interesting perspectives. Um, his in, it was interesting when he talked about the Civil War. He's a lifer of South Carolinian and uh, he was really wanted us to understand that the Civil War for the South was not about slavery.It was about state's rights. And it was clear from the way he delineated life and circumstances that uh, he would not have been a civil rights activist, let's just say it that way. He would come down on the other side, still frustrated with the change that had taken, still almost wanting a pre-civil war environment.It just felt, and don't mean he's a bad man, but he was, uh, that's where he is coming from. So we're, uh, we're driving around and seeing different fights in the city and we went by the African American, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the a m E Church, and we stopped there just for a moment and he said, this is a church.You told a little bit about Dylan Ruff and Roof and what had happened. And he said, I gotta tell you, everybody here in Charleston. Has a lot of respect for the people in that church, for the way they responded to that shooting. I didn't hear him speak with that kind of respect in the entire tour. Why?What was different? Those people represented something bigger than race. They represented Christ. There was something about their response in forgiving and in doing what is supernatural, that pointed the way to Christ. And Christ says, how are people gonna know that you're my people? You're going to live differently.You're going to respond differently. You're going to respond supernaturally. When the world is not drawn to Christianity. It may be because we don't look much different. That Christians are angry. Christians are pushy. Christians are sectarian. Christians are partisan. Christians are rude. Christians are arrogant just like everybody else.We talk the same way in the media. We, we respond the same way. We think the same way we're us and then there's them. And Jesus says, I don't have those terms. I don't live that terminology. I want you to love as I love. I want you to live as I lived. The second thing, love is the way to know if the gospel is transforming me.Love for one another. Other Christians he's talking about here specifically, there is a bond he says that supersedes everything else. I dunno if you've thought too much about the group of people that Jesus chose to be as disciples. Quite frankly, he was crazy . This is the worst group of individuals you have.Matthew, a tax collector, who is the most hated group of people in Israel at the time. As a Jew. Not only is he making his money by taking taxes that the Jews feel is wrong for them to take, and he's taking it for Rome, but part of his commission was in Bilking, the people they were hated. And then you throw in Simon Zel.Who was a guy that was a part of the zealot group whose life calling was to destroy Romans, who actually were known. If you've seen the chosen film, you know Simon Zelt is shown there, and the little short knife he had the curve that was true. They had a knife. That was what they were known for. They had it under their gowns and they would kill Roman officials at every opportunity.They were the most feared group of people by the Romans in the holy land. These two guys are doing life together, representing Christ. You say that's not possible. There's only one person that can pull it off, and Christ said, when people look at my group, they say, how do tax collectors and zealots coexist?How do Gentiles and Jews and Samaritans coexist? How do they love each other? It's supernatural. It's crazy. It makes no sense. And Jesus says That's the point. That's the point. So he says to us today, there is a bond that supersedes everything else. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones was a, in the 1920s, early 1920s, was a, uh, a young man, brilliant medical student who had been so proficient in his early practice that he had joined the practice and was now in the practice that served the royal family of England.I mean, this guy was on the fast track to started him, started him in the, uh, I don't know if that's a word, started to being famous in the medical world. And God won his heart and he gave his life to Jesus. And after a while, staying in the medical practice, he felt called to the ministry. And his first pastorate was a tiny fishing village in Wales.No real education, nothing. And he went there and Martin Lloyd Jones tells the story of one day he was just being assailed by the devil. Just saying, you're not what you say you are. You're a phony. You say you're a Christian, you say you are a pastor. And and I just really hammering the accuser was accusing.And Martin Lloyd Jones said, in the midst of this torment he had, you know, like this momentary epiphany, this, this, this sense of, of what's real. And he said, I actually said out loud to the devil, why is it that I find more joy? Hanging with the lowies, uneducated fisher woman's fisherman's wife here than I do in the most intelligently founded conversations in a wood paneled office with my medical colleagues.I have nothing in common with this woman except the one thing that matters most to me. We share Christ. And he said, that was what reminded me, that that's what being a Christian is that you so love Christ. You can't help but love his people regardless of intellectual background or social culture or ethnicity or, or race.There is a bond that is more real, more compelling. Before you're a Christian, your status, your salary, your exploits, something else defines you. But when you embrace Christ as your savior, those things become less in their hold. When Christ becomes your center and you embrace then people of different economic strata or ethnicity or race or political affiliation, because the compelling reality of unity for you is Jesus Christ and those who love him.The third thing here, and we gotta examine our own hearts on this, right? If Christ is my sin, I delight in diversity. I delight in, in not defining. There's us, there's them. I, I'm more comfortable here, not there. Third, loving all God's people spills out to loving everyone. Now this passage highlights loving one another, right?In the household of faith, it can sound a little bit like this is, you know, this is the insider thing, you know, I mean, we don't love other people. I mean, it's, it almost sounds somewhat partisan against what you even say, mark, do we only, those love those who believe as we do value as we do. This is what I would say actually, because Jesus kingdom includes people of such a vast cultural, political, racial, ethnic diversity.If we love one another, we will love everyone else. Jesus commands us in his teaching. Not only to love one another, but the expression outgrowth of that is he says, love your neighbor, which he defines in Luke Tennis, who is my neighbor? Somebody says, who is my neighbor? That's a question that was asked, that was the basis for the Good Samaritan sermon.That guy says, who is my neighbor? And he says, well, let me tell you a story about a good Samaritan. And he blows their minds because he tells this story about this Jewish guy that was beat up and left for dead by robbers. And the the Jewish priest go, comes and goes. The other side of the road goes by another Jewish nobleman goes by, and a Samaritan who the Jews called the dogs came by and, and is nuts.He actually cares for the guy, takes him to a, a lodging, pays for his lodging, cares for him. And Jesus says, that's Samaritan the one you called the dogs. He knew who his neighbor was. Was anybody in his world in need? And then he says, love one another, love your neighbor. And then he really gets in our grid and he says, love your enemies.This is why what Charleston Church did is supernatural. They forgave, they loved, we're calledto allow a world to see the glor of Christ. He did his part. He did it in his life. He did it in his death. He's still doing it through the lives of those that are willing to say, God, teach me to love as Christ loved. Let's pray. Lord, we celebrate you.God, I believe the church in America, and I don't exclude this church in this indictment,is to some degree the impediment to people being drawn to Christ. So God, humble us, change us, Stu us. What it means that your great glory was shown when you went to the electric chair to serve others to the ultimate expre expression of it. Lord, may we be embracing of particularly the people that are different from us.May we look this week at people who think differently and value differently. in our offices is people not to be irritated by, but people for us to begin to put at the very top of our prayer list, praying, Lord, let them know how much you love them because we found, Lord, that when we pray that way, we start loving them.So, Lord, change us in Jesus' name, amen. We're gonna close our service this morning, celebrating the Lord's supper. Uh, I've gone long, longer than I expected to, but this table, which Jesus is celebrating in the Passover, was a time where they remembered what Jesus had done in them and for them. It says that he took bread and the first element that the guys are going to come and distribute among us.And if some of you have to go, I understand. Um, this is my body. He said this picture's what I'm giving up for. You. Do this in remembrance of me. I'm gonna ask the men to come and distribute the elements for me. First of all, we're gonna distribute the bread. Oh no, we're gonna distribute it all cuz they're all together.forgot. We got, we got a new system with Covid. The bread is on the bottom. The, the drink is on the top up.One of my more smooth Lord supper, uh, leadership moments. Okay. I'm gonna let you guys go ahead, let's just distribute them at this time. Thank you.The bottom of your cup, there is a small tab that you can take out, a small wafer there, which is the bread, and Jesus said this and we're told the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.It says in the same way he took the cup saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me,Lord, we worship your glory, the of all that you are shown most prominently in your cross. We delight in it.We who are the recipients of the love of it, repent of our lovelessness and cry out that we might be more and more stunned with the love in your life and in your death, that somehow you might be seen in us. God, if there are brothers or sisters that we know are believers and we've just had conflict with, because we don't agree on certain things, God help us to not be so concerned with being right and being more concerned about being righteous in the way we treat each other.In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Mark 14:1-11There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone.
Sermon Transcript:I'm Pastor Mark. Uh, if you're a guest with, it's great to have you here. Wonderful to have you here for our nine o'clock service, which feels like eight o'clock, but I'd like you to turn to Mark chapter 14 this morning. We've been doing an interesting thing in this series together.We've been walking with Jesus on a week's trip and what a week it is. It's passion Week, the last week that leads up to the crucifixion and then resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Mike mentioned last week, it's called Passion Week because the Latin word for passion, pathos means suffering. It is a season of suffering for Jesus.And as we look at this week, we're taking a a day each Sunday as we go through. And if you haven't, you've been using, I really encourage you to pick up, uh, one of the books out in the lobby that our team put together. It's a 60 page book the Common Life Team put together of daily readings all related to the particular day that we're talking about on Sunday.Today we're talking about Wednesday of Passion Week, the Day of Silence. Recently, pastor Ben talked about the first day Sunday, Jesus entry into Jerusalem, and as he came, came in this offering of himself as the king to the nation, and came in a startlingly different way than any. Would've envisioned he didn't come as the mighty conquering war Lord, that they expected.He rather came literally as a humble servant riding on a donkey into the city on Monday and Tuesday. As Pastor Mike mentioned last time, it was too tumultuous days, undoubtedly shocking to the poor disciples as they watch Jesus go into the the temple. And soon into the day, somewhere around midday, Jesus enters into the temple, uh, courts and starts turning over tables and, and saying, you've made my father's house, which was a house of prayer into Aden of robbers.They've had some conversations that day. I'm sure the disciples were sort of what just happened. They returned back over the mount into the little town of Beth, Bethany, and now Tuesdays come, and I'm sure those guys are wondering. Man, I, I hope today is a little calmer, where Monday had been a day of Jesus turning up over overturning tables and literally overturning the practice of the religion and worship of Israel.Now he comes in and he utterly overturns the entire teaching ministry of Israel. He takes on the groups, he takes on the Pharisees, the conservative Jewish leaders. He takes on the sades, the liberal Jewish leaders. He takes on the Herodians, the Romanized Jewish leaders. He takes on the scribes, the theologically driven Jewish leaders.And in the midst of these conversations, in this day of a lot of conversations, He calls them, among other things, blind guides, whitewash tombs, which means you look good on the outside, but you're dead inside hypocrites and a brood of snakes. It's been a good day for the disciples. And now they go back to Bethany, and I'm sure as they're there, these guys have conversations offline with each other.I don't know what's happening. It's a day in which almost nothing is recorded on this day of what transpired. It's a day of silence. It's a day of quiet. Apparently it was a day in which Jesus and the disciples settled in, recouped, renewed Jesus certainly knowing what was coming, saw the need of that. It is a day that presents to us no public teaching or actions.He does not appear to leave Bethany on this day. The day does not show us so much Jesus in his action and his teaching. We see Jesus here more in how people are presented in their response to him. Two particular people. We see Jesus through the eyes of others. Our passage this morning in Mark chapter 14 focuses on different responses to Christ by two people that knew him well, Jesus, excuse me, Judas, one of his disciples, and Mary, the sister of Martha and Naza.Both Mary and Judas hung with Jesus. They knew his teaching, his works, his values both were looked at at by others as being deeply identified with him, but the fruit of their heart choices could not have been more distinct. Mark in this passage is clearly trying to contrast them as we see their responses to Christ.Both of these people present an astonishing legacy that of Mary is presented in verse nine, which I'll read in a moment where Jesus says What she has done will always be remembered. It goes without saying that nobody forgot Judas as well. What this passage is about is basically to challenge us to make some personal evaluations.It's the d t r talk. The define the relationship talk. It's the talk where you're trying to find out exactly where are we in this relationship. It's really given to us to look at it ourselves. Jesus says, you've been hanging around me for a while. You know a bunch about me. Other people look at us and it seems like you and I are a thing, but let's take stock of where we are.And the question is, are we living more like Judas or are we living more like Mary? It's a little like asking I, I realize, okay, come on, mark. Who is gonna say, well, I really identify with Judas. I mean, it's like saying, do you identify more with Mother Teresa or Alex Murdoch, the South Carolina lawyer that just is convicted of killing his wife and son?well maybe you'd say, well, um, maybe somewhere in between. But we're confronted with two contrasts. And the striking thing is that Judas is actually a sobering visual of how the trajectory of one's life can take them to places that they themselves would never have imagined. The DTR question defined the relationship as raised because there's ambiguity in the relationship.Where do you stand? Where are we heading? We're gonna look at this together, but first, let's read the passage. Mark, chapter 14. We read this, I'm gonna read verses one down through verse 11. It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of unloved bread. And the chief priest and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him for, they said, not during the feast, unless there be an up opera from the people.And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon, the lepers, he was reclining a table. A woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure Bernard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. By the way, this woman is identified in John 12 as being married, the sister of Lazarus and Martha.There were some who said to themselves, indigently, why was this ointment wasted? Like that for this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 Daria and given to the poor, and they scolded her. But Jesus said, leave her alone. Why do you trouble? She has done a beautiful thing to me for you always have the poor with you and whenever you want, you can do good for them, but you will not always have me.She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial and truly, I say to you, whatever the goss, wherever the gospel has proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12, went to the chief priest in order to betray him to them, and when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money and he sought an opportunity to betray him.Father, I ask that you would be our teacher this morning that your spirit would allow our minds to be free from all the other stuff. And allow us to be focused on truth. This morning, God used this nod as a sermon to beat us up, but to prompt us to want to live more vitally in relationship with you, the living God.Lord, give us eyes and ears and heart to see and listen this morning, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I wanna look at four contrasts this morning between Mary, the woman that his washing the feet of Jesus in such a remarkable way, and Judas Iscariot, first of all, their familiarity with Jesus. They both shared familiarity with Jesus.Judas. Has an inoculated familiarity. He has had some of it just enough to give him a vaccination and immunization against the real disease. He knows Christ. He's traveled with him for almost the whole three and a half years of his ministry. No one sensed he was different even in the group. It's astonishing to think about.They never had much money, but what they did have, they entrusted to Judas 12 business guys, 11 of them entrusting their money to ju Judas. You can be sure they didn't have any doubts about him if they're gonna give him the money. He's an individual who looks and seems like everyone else. Years ago, there was a 60 minute special.And in the special, it was actually, uh, a presentation about Adolf Eichman. Adolf Eichman was the, uh, progenitor, basically the one that ran the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. He was responsible for the, the, the final solution, the extermination of the Jewish race. He was responsible for millions of Jews, others as well, um, but particularly Jewish people that were killed in NAIA regime.He designed the system, he ran the system, uh, and he was brought to the Nuremberg Trials in the post years after World War ii. And in those trials he was speaking. And if we can just bring up the slide. This is him actually, as he has being. Do we have that slide? Oh, it's not up there. I'm still getting used to the screams,Okay. Alright. That's him in the middle. And a eichman is testifying. And here's the question that is raised by Mike Wallace. How is it possible for Amanda act as Eichman acted? Was he a monster, a madman, or was he perhaps something even more terrifying? Was he somewhat normal? The most startling answer to Wallace's shocking question came in an interview with a Jewish man named Yeha de Denu, a concentration camp survivor who testified against Eichman at the trials.A film clip from Eichmann's 1961 trial showed Denu turning and seeing eichman for the first time since the Nazi. Had been, had sent him to Auswitch 18 years earlier, deur began to solve uncontrollably and then fainted. Collapsing in a heap on the floor. Was Deur overcome by hatred, fear, the horrific scarring, memory, memories?Did he see all the faces of people he loved and lost? It was none of those things. Rather as Dura explained to Mike Wallace all at once, he realized Eichman was not the God-like Army officer who had sent so many to their deaths that he had envisioned this eichman was an ordinary man. Here's what he said.I was afraid about myself. I saw that I am capable to do this. I am exactly. Like he, this is the reality. Judas looked the same. Judas was sent on the missionary trips. He did the stuff two by two. They're sent out. He was a two. He went out with a twosome. You can imagine whoever his partner was thinking back and imagining later, as we hear of what Judas did, it's easy to lump him into a category which is utterly outside of our own experience, but we're reminded of the words by the great preacher of days past Samuel w Rutherford.I see the seed of every sin in my own heartuntil his actions here in Mark 14, the disciples never had. A clue. How was he able to do this? How was he able to hide it from others and certainly to a degree from himself really where his heart was. Because familiarity with Jesus does not bring about love and devotion to Jesus. Quite honestly, some of the coldest hearts towards Christ who are, are those who are around the gospel.The church have a taste of it, but it only inoculates them to the real disease. We see the contrast. A woman that's got the true infection, Mary Mary had the real disease. She also knew Jesus. Apparently when Jesus came to Jerusalem, he stayed with her and her brother and her sister on in Bethany. On multiple occasions, we see her and we will see her.Familiar with Jesus, and the more she knew him, the more she loved him, and the more she was devoted to him and the more she obeyed him and desired to live her life with him at the center of her very life. The second thing we find is their focus on Jesus. Judas focus was to use him. Judas never called Jesus Lord as most of the other disciples are identified at one time or another.I don't know that he never did, but I do know that the gospel writers intentionally don't indicate that he did, that we see in Judas that he never IDE as identified as asking spiritual questions. The order of the disciples always seems to sort of indicate their closeness to Jesus. Peter and James and John, who are the, the three inner circle, not more valued, but given greater responsibility and intimacy with Jesus.A teaching ministry to them that others didn't have are always listed first, but then others come after them. But Judas is always last by the gospel records. Honestly, the only thing we know about Judas relates to money. He was the one who carried the money. He's here irritated at the extravagant expenditures by Mary.It says some of them were irritated. The other gospels us it. It was Judas that led the way. He was regularly stealing from the till. John 12 says that when they look back, they realize that the shortfall they sometimes had actually were because he was pocketing the purse. He sold Jesus outta money. It says, when Satan filled his heart, he went for the money.He did not ever seem to be drawn to Jesus, just for Jesus. He was seeking what he could do for him and his visions in the realm of wealth or influence or comfort or power. To him, Jesus was a way to get to something. It was not to get to Jesus. Mary was the opposite. Mary worshiped him. Her focus was one of devotion.This amazing act of worship that is recorded here was reflective of a pattern of personal worship that we see in her life. Just like to share a passage quickly, you're familiar with this one in Luke 10 where it says that Jesus came and she had a sister called Mary who, who sat at the Lord's feed and listen.To his teaching, that's her. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. But the Lord answered her. Martha. Martha, you're anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.Mary's chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her. Mary had a heart of devotion. Christ was central to her. Kyle Alderman has a book in entitled, not a Fan, actually says, not a fan becoming a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ. He tells a story of a, uh, of a missionary who had, uh, was traveling alone for some reason.He was in Las Vegas. It was the first time he'd ever been in the city. He got there in the evening, checked into his hotel, was sort of wound up, couldn't sleep, and eventually, uh, just middle of the night or late at night. Anyway. He decided to take a walk down the strip. He'd never been in Las Vegas before.He's alone in the city. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody knows what he's doing, where he is going. And he tells the story as Idleman re uh, um, records it. That as he took the walk down, he heard the loud energizing music and he felt the buzz of excitement and energy. He talks about how he went into one large lobby of a hotel, and they had there, uh, displayed the most luxurious exotic cars.He went to another, and, and as he traveled, he sees the, the limos pull up, and he stood and watched them for a while as the most beautiful people with the most beautiful clothes, uh, uh, adorned with, with wealth got out and, and, and just all of this going on. He talks about going in a couple of hotels and, and, and seeing the waiters come and seeing food.That was just unbelievable. And he watched as the people would walk away with their winnings from the gaming tables, of course, many others not. He saw signs of wealth and power and pleasure everywhere. And he said every direction, every direction. Held offerings of sensual opportunities, both in the shows and in individuals that were privately making themselves available to him.The missionary went back to his room after a long excursion down the strip and it struck him again. I'm completely alone. No one knows where I am or what I'm doing or where I'm going. And he didn't turn the lights on in his room, he just kept it in darkness. He went over to the window, which looked down on the strip, and he opened the curtain and he looked down at the lights and the glitz, and then he looked up at the brilliant lights in the night sky and he said this.He said, God, I thank you that tonight. I haven't seen anything. I want more than you. That was Mary. Is it you? Is it me? Is he really the passion of our heart? Is he really what we'd say? I, I put everything on the altar, Lord,you are my greatest treasure. Third, there's a faith in Jesus. How is that manifested? Well, Judas was centered on circumstances. Apparently, Judas really did buy in that Jesus was who he said he was. He signed in. He got involved. He followed, he did the missions, he did the stuff. But somewhere along the way, there's disenchantment that's set in, in the worst case scenario.He found out that Jesus was just not a meal ticket to power and wealth in the best case scenario. What he does here is that he was frustrated that Jesus was not going about the acquisition of the throne in the right way. So Judas wanted to sort of push it along and make Jesus declare himself. Either way, he was a man that was determined to have it his way, his timetable, and he was frustrated at the pace of Christ.He was frustrated at the choices of Christ. He was frustrated at the will of Christ,and his faith in Jesus was dependent on what Jesus would do as long as it fit what he felt was needed. Mary, on the other hand, was centered not on circumstances. , but on Jesus' character, she accepted the timetable and purposes of Jesus. She had been doing that for a while. She showed that in John chapter 11, when Jesus came and her brother died, and they all knew that Jesus had gotten word, but for three days he didn't come.He even told the disciples, were not going yet. They delayed. And her brother was in the grave and he was dead. And she makes this statement to him in John 11. She said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.I don't think Mary was rebuking him. I think she was saying this, Lord, I know you could have. I don't know why you didn't. I'm disappointed. I'm confused. God has a lot of room for that, right? He has a lot of room for our confusion and our disappointment. He doesn't have any problem with the psalmist coming to him and saying, God, I don't get it.It's, I'm confused. This is hard. But there is still the acquiescence that says, I don't understand, but just like you one day did in the garden, I will raise my arm and say, not my will, but yours be done. Your time, your purpose, your design. But Lord, I do have questions.Mary had learned that in God's seeming delays, he is acting right on time with his program. That's a step of faith for every child to God. To be willing to say that and believe that it is a trust not only in God's working, it is a trust in God's character that he really is two wise to make a mistake. He really is too good to be unkind.It is also the belief that what God is allowing in your life is exactly what you would pray for if you knew everything that God knows. That is a statement that has been liberating in my own life journeyMary bought, and it is the posture and voice of faith. Number four, fruit toward Jesus restrained association with Judas. He was always in the background. There's no overt declarations of faith by Judas. No clear testimonials to Christ. Just polite association with him again. Does this mean he never said anything?We don't know. We do know that the gospels intentionally have none of those declared to us. His real God was money. It captivated his heart. He trusted in it. He served it. There's no such thing as a committed follower of Jesus Christ who does not give faithfully to the Lord. I, I don't know how to say that any differently.I really don't. I'm not saying it because I want you to support this or this, or I'm saying it because it's part of the journey. It's part of saying, Lord, everything I have is yours. All that I own is owned by you. I'm just a manager. But I also know that part of the management says that I give the first part to you.It's just how the way you set up this management program. Judas talked a really good game. He wore, he went on the mission trips. He apparently did everything the other guys did, but his heart was ruled by something else. And so here's my forthright, simple question to all of us this morning. If people who do life with you as Christians new your giving habits, would you feel ashamed or embarrassed?You say, well, that's not my focus. Of course it isn't. And, and, and, well, should I be looking at what people think of me to give money? No. However,are you a phony for them? Are you allowing others to have a different impression? That's my question. If people knew what you gave, would you be embarrassed? Well, the one who matters, knows, and he simply says, I don't want you to have heart where you say I'm in. I'll do the work. I'll serve, I'll be involved, but I'm going to be in charge.It's why he spoke so forthrightly in the last book of the Old Testament, when he says this in Malachi three, return to me and I'll return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, how shall we return? Will a man rob God, you are robbing me. You say, how have we robbed you in your ties and your contributions?You're robbing me. You say, well, I'm, you know, I, I, I, I don't really tie, I mean, I, that's an Old Testament thing, right? Fine, no problem. Okay. The question is, In the way we give. How does it reflect our heart relationship to Jesus Christ? Judas had a life that was not real. It was manifested by a heart that was ruled by, I'm gonna have it my way.I'm gonna hold onto this and I'm going to really be served, be serving a different God in his case money than the living Christ. Then we look at Mary reckless allegiance. What she did, reclining in the room, brought out a flask of nard, which means spike nard. It's, it's this aromatic oil that was from the Himalayas of India and China.It was really value. Extravagantly valuable a year's salary, 300, an area that was a year's salary, one year's salary of value is what she is pouring out on Jesus. I mean, , I can only imagine Martha being there. You know, this is her practical sister. Wow, that was mom's special spanner that she gave you. That was major part of your inheritance.Mary, you're always so impractical. And Jesus says, nobody will ever forget what she did. She recklessly was devoted to Christ. Actually, the word reckless is from the word to reckon it's a financial term. Reckon means to consider the cost. She disregarded the cost. She disregarded other people's opinion. I mean, it was a little awkward.You can imagine. All of a sudden she's curling and she's, you know, wiping his feet with her hair. She's got this stuff, and, and it's like, this is, duh, it's too much. It's, it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. Somehow she didn't care. All she saw was Christ.When we come into the Silence of Passion week's Wednesday, we're reminded of how different our heart's response to Jesus can be here in the simplicity of this day's events, we are encouraged to give, to do the dtr, to define the relationship with the Lord Jesus. He's looking for reckless allegiance. It just disregard the cost, the opinions of others.The thought, I just want Christ and His will and purpose for my life.The beautiful reality, and I wanna say this, is that the Lord supper, Jesus eyeballed Judas, he said to him, In a Willie paraphrase, if I will, what you're gonna do, get out there and do it. I believe he was saying to him, Judaism giving you one last chance. I know what this about. I know what happened Wednesday.I know where your heart is. I know what's going on. There is still the look of grace. There is still the, the, the call, the invitation to turn to Christ. You may say, mark, you have no idea how much of my life has been lived and twisted and turned and what's going on in the secret recesses of my life. You have no idea how far afield I have gone,but he does. And this morning he had you here. He brought you to this place or brought you to watch this in online here in Collinswood, in order to say to you, this is still a moment of repenting and turning. Getting off the path of folly is not that hard in its initial path to give back on the path of wisdom.It is a turning of mind and saying, Lord, I repent, I turn, I confess, I yield it. Then you begin on the path of wisdom and step by step, God begins to rebuild all those things, but all he has is for the humility to come and say, Lord, I want to have a heart that you own a life, that you lead a worship, that you're the object of.Lord, we come to you this morning.It's an amazing thing to us to know that right now you are looking into every one of our hearts. God, it's my prayer that your spirit, even now would draw us to know you in the way Mary did, to be wholehearted in our allegiance, in our love, in Jesus' name, amen. Before we
Mark 11, Matthew 21
Sermon Transcript:Welcome here and in Collingswood, uh, I know, uh, we just enjoyed a, a song here about Jerusalem, uh, and in Collingswood, you're coming back from a break and I hope you had some bagels for me. They are really good. I'm not sure where you get 'em from, but they're good.Uh, and if you've never been to Collingswood, you should go sometime. It's a great, great time to be there worshiping the Lord together at our other campus. All right, couple of things, just wanted to share at the very beginning here if you have, uh, not had the chance to pick up one of the books that we've been talking about, the Common Life books.Um, we're gonna be studying through the whole week, uh, of, of. If you look, there's a schedule here and kind of, it breaks it down. It, it allows us to walk through Easter, not just in the week of Easter, but over the next seven weeks. Well, now we're closer to more like five weeks walking through each of, uh, the days of Easter week leading up to that.Uh, we're gonna be bumping around in Matthew and Mark, and so encourage you to pull out a Bible this morning. Uh, if you got one there in the pew, you can, uh, turn there. It's in the New Testament. I'll give you a page number here in just a minute. Passion Week is called Passion Week because in Greek that means suffering, suffering.And so as we walk through toward, uh, Easter, we want to remember that Passion Week. Though it might feel like an exciting thing, it's a week of suffering for our Lord for Christ. And so this morning, uh, we look to him. Wanna spend our beginning time here, looking back over, uh, what we had just come from kind of a spirit guided reflection, if you will.Um, how we do putting into practice the things that happened last week. Um, hopefully you walked out with a few challenges last week. Uh, pastor Ben did an amazing job kicking off the sermon series. Um, anybody remember the elephant ear example last week? Were you here for that? Okay. That one got me so good.I sent it a, a text in the middle of the service. Um, it just right to my core, uh, as the Lord was working. Just, I needed to reach out to somebody, but it just got me the unprotected Jesus marching into Jerusalem, not trying to make ourselves big and important and cover up, but choosing the way of humility and selfless servanthood our Jesus invites us to follow him.If you were following along in the books this week, there were a few zingers in there too. Uh, again, it is, we preach the sermon and then the next five days there are, uh, some devotionals you can work through. Here's one that, uh, really kicked my butt. If all you have is Christ, it is enough for everything you need.If all you have is Christ, it is enough for everything you need. I think that was like a Wednesday afternoon or something that was like, whew, okay, here we are. Uh, we also received some war cry language. If you're reading through, there was like a battle cry in there called the Lord's Prayer. Our father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come here and now your will be done there in forever. Got the chance, even, uh, as you're walking through those books to reflect on kind of this odd juxtaposition of two things, right? We have Jesus followers shouting, Hosanna, walking into the holy city of Jerusalem, palm branches and all, and the weeping Jesus.It's a weird moment to think about one celebrating, one is crying and they're walking in together, riding on a donkey. As we look ahead, we're gonna consider a few things that happened on Monday and Tuesday, and so we'll join our hearts together in prayer. Now, before we do that, I'm gonna ask you to participate in prayer this morning.Is that okay? Thank you for that. Yes, less emphatic than good morning, but yes. So let's join in prayer and I'll ask you as we begin our time of prayer, just to consider and maybe talk to the Lord. Where did God this week surprise you with his love?Then consider this question and talk to the Lord about this. How did God's grace meet your sin this week?Well, Lord, we pray along with David, blessed are you, Lord the God of our fathers. Your name is praiseworthy and glorious for all the ages. It's a vastly different day and age, though at the same time, we have the same issues. God, the the answer, the, the hope is Christ. And so this morning, as we come and as we get the chance to see God, what you are doing, we want a journey with you towards the holy city of Jerusalem.Give us an understanding of the things that maybe we don't understand. Open our eyes to things we have not yet seen in you, in us. God, I pray for those who maybe are coming in a little bit this morning, bruised and beat up from the events or the the thoughts of this week as they consider those things.Would you meet them with your grace? Would you meet them with your love? Lord, you know the truth being shared this morning. You know the truth that we need this morning, and I pray your spirit would open our eyes to see them. Clearly, we pray these things in your name. Amen. All right. Again, if you're with me in Mark, chapter 11 is where we're gonna be, page 796.If you got one of those pew bibles, um, you can turn there this morning. Just gonna pick up with the final words from last week's sermon and so we can understand and see where we are going. Um, with this morning, verse 11 of Mark chapter 11. And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the 12th.So he enters Jerusalem riding in on Palm Sunday, and then he dips into the temple and walks back out. After Jesus and his followers went there, they left and went to Bethany. There's a, a little map here to show you kinda where that is in relation to the temple. It's kind of confusing. Maybe you can see it a little bit better up on the screen than me, but, uh, as you're going, they, Bethany is this town outside of, they would pass over the Mount of Olives in order to get to the temple.Can see it there on the east. And so as they walk in and walk out, this is kind of the journey from Bethany through Bethphage over the Mount of Olives into the temple. There is a small town there where uh, Jesus was lodging with some friends. Mary Martha, the newly risen Lazarus was there as well. With them, it's about a two mile walk back and forth.And so this journey is kind of, uh, them going back and forth. There's a couple different sections we're gonna talk about. The first is the journey as they're going to the temple back again on Monday. So again Sunday, they kind of go in, come out, They're going back in on Monday and the first scene kind of really happens on the Mount of Olives and we're gonna just connect, uh, that together this morning.So we'll continue with verse 12. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he that's Jesus was hungry. Dramatic pause because yes, the son of God got hungry and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for it was not the season for figs.And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. The first section, as we talk through, just to kind of give you a shorthand as you think back, the first section here, all fr all show, no fruit, all show, no fruit. Fig trees were used all throughout scripture in lots of different ways.The first example that I can think of is actually right in the beginning. Adam and Eve, when they covered themselves with fig leaves as after they sinned, James would use, uh, fig trees as an illustration about good and pure speech. Coming from a pure heart, Zakia actually climbed a fig tree, and you're like, no, no, no, no.It's sycamore tree. Well, for all of you plant people, it's called a faus sycamores. That's kind of like a hybrid plant, but Zakia climbed this fig tree as well. Haba prophesied over a disobedient Israel. Though there are no figs, God is faithful. Each situation, there's kind of this using of this fig tree as an example to talk about the spiritual condition of either an individual or to draw an illusion to the nation of Israel to make a connection there.The collective people, fig trees, were, uh, plentiful in this region. They grew wild. They were all around. And so as you think about walking from Bethany through the Mount of Olives, there would also be on the mount of Olives, fig trees as they were walking through. And surprisingly, there was this one fig tree that as they came up to, was sprouting some leaves.This time in particular, it was not the season for figs to be growing, but this tree was indicating by the leaves. It was growing some fruit. Kind of like an advertisement. The store is open. I am selling figs. And so they walk up to it. Jesus was noticing he was hungry. Okay, I'm gonna go grab a fig. But upon getting to the tree, Jesus found no fruit full of leaves and no figs to show.And so he cursed the tree and eventually that tree would wither up and kind of just shrivel and die. And it says, these words were heard by the disciples. Jesus would later explain in depth this encounter after coming out of the city. Um, but the fig tree really represents, you can picture him standing on the hill, looking down over off the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem.He's looking over the city and he sees this fig tree with no fruit. And he's thinking about Jerusalem. They proclaim to know God, but there's no fruit of his transforming work. God's chosen nation full of leaves, no figs on the tree. Spiritually, this is just a, a facade. It's an advertisement with nothing to show for it.It's a shroud to cover the decay of the inner hearts. It would be the lights on and nobody's home. It's a brand new sports car, and they forgot to load the engine into the sports car. It's a Chick-fil-A sandwich with no chicken and devoid of two crucial pickles, , nothing there. Many of us, uh, are on social media and some of us have come over the Mount of Olives to the other side of social media.Um, but there are some positives and negatives. And let me just pause because we could be here for a while talking about social media. Uh, but there's one thing I know for sure. It is without a doubt, the easiest target for a sermon illustration. Um, we do do the dumbest stuff. We record it, we post it, and then we shared for the world to see.This is the easiest. Seemingly, uh, a million examples could come out of social media that we think about. But as we think about it, one thing jumped out in my mind, this idea of filters that, at least that I can think of. This was one of the first times this really came about. We can begin to edit our pictures.We can do them with removing things or if there's a wrinkle here, nah, that's gone. If my cheekbones don't sit correctly, well, they can be, uh, manipulated in such a way in order that people can see a different version than our reality. This all show and no fruit reality is confronted elsewhere in scripture revealing not just a nation of Israel, not just as zakk heart, and not just your heart, but my heart to cover, to protect and appear put together.Paul would write in Romans 10. The Israelites have a zeal for God, but it's not based on him at all. In his letter to Timothy, Paul would write this as well. They have a form of godliness, but they're lacking any power. And Jesus would call out the Pharisees in Luke chapter 18, uh, for standing on the street corners and praying for all to hear, but they've really lost the connection with the one they're praying to God.So as Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem, he sees the fig tree and it grieves him. My people are proclaiming my name and praising me, but the religious elite, so studied, so connected, yet have missed this childlike faith. What's the answer? How do we not be a tree that just has leaves and no figs? There's no blank for this, but it's the blank you're all thinking of.Jesus is the answer they need and he's the answer that we need as well. Think about John 15. This is the answer spelled out in scripture through the mouth of Christ. Jesus invites us, remain in me and I will remain in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine. Neither can you bear any fruit unless you remain in me.I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit apart from me. You can do nothing. I'd offer you just these simple words as we think about the condition of our hearts. The words full access. Full access. There's this thing that happens when we live in kind of this sin pattern.Over time, we, we begin to protect certain areas or, or wall them off, or our struggles, we, we protect or we're good at, uh, uh, just keeping people out, but we at a heart deep level grow accustomed to in that way. , not just saying no, but actually we're saying yes to ourselves quite a lot. We are really good at meeting our own needs over and over again.But the way of Jesus journeying with him listening and responding as he prompts, invites us to give full access. And you might be saying, that's tremendously threatening. Uh, I don't wanna go there. I've got skeletons in the closet. There's no way I'm doing this. It'd be terrifying to admit our sin. Well, newsflash, he already knows what's in your heart.And so it's not really that you have to do much of anything, it's just that you're joining with what the God of the universe can already see and sense inside your heart. So my encouragement as we do this is just start with saying yes as the spirit would prompt you and reveal certain things, or kind of gently tap on the doorway of a, a closet or, or something like that.Okay, Lord, I hear you're leading me in this way. Or maybe as you're hearing something, as you're reading through the scriptures and it really pokes at something and you do this thing and I've done it before myself, you start to think, well, I could really apply that. And the, oh, that's too much. I'm not gonna go there.We begin to wall things off, but following him, giving him full access to our lives, there's a, a, a short little book that, um, I've just read a synopsis of. It's, it's, uh, kind of funny that I read a synopsis of it in this training that I went through, cuz the book is I think like 30 pages. But, um, it's a small book.It's called My Heart, Christ's Home. It's written years ago and there's millions of copies in many different languages. But it's this, uh, kind of an interesting journey as you talk through, uh, as you read through this. Or the synopsis of the book that really walks you through this journey of what it would be like if Christ visited your home and kind of giving him access to things.There'd be a, a knock at the door and maybe you'd invite him in and he would walk into the study and potentially there'd be a, a, a like, Hey, I'm gonna add a couple books to your shelf here. Maybe we'll remove this book. I want you to consume this truth. And as you begin, you move into the dining room where Jesus begins to serve this meal that is better than anything you've consumed before.It's this lasting, truly satisfying meal. You move from there into the, the living room, and he just wants to sit and have fellowship with you, and the conversation is fruitful and, and things are going well. And you pass by this hall closet. It's the one you stuffed everything into before he entered the house.The. No one's ever done that before, and you're like, please don't open it. I'm not sure what's gonna fall out. But Jesus doesn't meet it with shame. He meets it with his love and his forgiveness. And eventually as this story goes on, you turn over the title to the house. He's the owner. He's the one you want in charge, the master, the keeper.My heart, Christ's home. So we walk towards Easter, giving full access to him in all things, embracing at times this humbling, humiliating admission of our own brokenness and sin. The humble Jesus would take on himself upon the cross in just a few days. Okay, so Jesus and the disciples continued beyond the fig tree down into the city of Jerusalem.They're gonna be entering here into the temple. We pick back up in Mark, uh, 11 verse 15. . And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, is it not written? My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it, and were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.And when evening came, they went out of the city. Jesus hope of the nations is our next section here, entering into the temple. Jesus hope of the nations. Well, tis the season. It is Passover season and everybody is descending upon the city of Jerusalem. The Jewish people would be making their annual pilgrimage in and celebrating Passover in the Holy City.Jerusalem would've swelled probably four to five times its amount in size during Passover. And though Passover was traditionally only allowed to be celebrated within the confines of Jerusalem during Passover time, the priests would allow people to move outside and begin to celebrate it because there just wasn't physical room.So you can picture people camped among the countryside and, and even lodging in different towns nearby in order to be close. For this moment, people would be coming, heading to the temple to make appropriate sacrifices to God for sins they've committed, or to perform various customs and rituals according to God's commands, to pursue cleansing and, and purification as they remembered God's faithfulness.Many years ago during Passover. And so what you would do is bring your animal of, of choice, of sacrifice. Depending upon your tax bracket, you would either be bringing a lamb, a dove, a, a pigeon, a goat, a dove already said dove. Great. Well, typically you'd bring your own at this time, and in this day, Passover priests would really demand that you would buy The sacrifices from the temple can see where this is going.This is a classic case of supply and demand Jerusalem four to five times the size. During Passover, it wasn't uncommon to pay 10 times as much for your sacrifice. It was downright profitable during this time to be a seller of sacrificial animals. Additionally, a yearly temple tax had been, uh, something that people would pay and they would come and the payment was to be made in shackles, which wasn't the norm of the currency at the time.Most people had had this, uh, in this Roman culture here, a denaris currency that they had, and so they couldn't pay in the common currency. They would need to then exchange their money. Anybody ever exchanged money before and you're like, no way I'm paying that percentage. Well, in this way, the 25% markup was all they had the money changers raked in their hefty prophet during Passover.At this time, one of the two high priests, Anis was his name, the high priest was corrupt and a violent man, a temple courts that were typically called the Court of the Gentiles, where people would come and be able to, uh, be together. And the gentiles that non-Jews could come in and be there was then called the Bazaar of Anis.People would come in selling all sorts of things, set up your table, sell whatever you got. And oh, by the way, um, the percentage of what you sell comes back to me. The shop owners making good. Were also paying a profit. And so when Jesus walks in with his disciples, one of the words that are said, he drove out those who sold and those who bought game over guys enough ripping people off in my name.he overturned the tables of the money changers in the seats of those, those who sold doves. I mean, picture money flying. It's not like a tip over. It's, it's a chaotic scene. Money is flying. Uh, doves are scattering, potentially goats and animals just wandering around in chaos. He would not allow anything to be carried or anyone to carry anything through the temple.If you can pull that map back up, uh, the, the holy temple was made kind of a, a thoroughfare. If you look at it, if you're coming down, it just, it'd be kind of easier to just run right through the temple rather than having to go out and around the, the directions that the path would go. And so what was supposed to be other had become this commonplace.A just a, a passing through, a profaning of God's name. and he taught the people, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. Yes. People that are listening, you heard me write, my house shall be called a house of prayer. There's an incredible significance in Jesus saying, my house shall be called a house of prayer.Because someone else used those very words. God used those words. The religious elite would've studied and known this because I, Isaiah and Jeremiah recorded the words of God declaring that his house would be a house of prayer. And so let's hear the words that Jesus says as the followers or as the people, as the high priest would have heard.This man is coming into the temple. He's claiming authority over us. Jesus of Nazareth is claiming himself to be God. . And while it could have transformed a lot of their agendas and really flipped things upside down, they dug their heels in because the religious elite had suffered a terrible case of mission drift.It's more than that, but mission drift rather than the worship of God, rather than people gathering in prayer rather than all the nations coming together as one, the chief priest and the elders began to make it near impossible for the poor and the needy, the unclean or down trodden other surrounding cultures.The temple was sterilized and the worst sense of the word of religion. That's of of hierarchy, an exclusion. They had profaned again, the house of God. Well, right after this, jump over to Matthew Chapter 21, because Matthew records what happens next in this scene. There's the tables are flipped and Matthew picks up and says this in Matthew chapter 21, verse 14.As the temple was restored to God's design, even momentarily, something beautiful and pure began to happen. The mission of God at its very core, the kingdom of God here on Earth, verse 14, and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests in the scribe saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant and said to him, do you hear what these people are saying?And Jesus said to them, yes. Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise and leaving them. He went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. The outcast brought near and healed all nations gathered, even children crying out with childlike faith. God be praised.This is actually a quote that Jesus uses from Psalm chapter eight. It it's a Psalm declaring God's power and majesty above everything else. As David writes there, but listen to the words that David writes as to why God would put the praise in the mouth of children. Have them sing out and try to imagine that in the context of what's happening here.Jesus flips the tables. These people are doing things wrong and he quotes Psalm eight. You have ordained praise on account of your adversaries. To silence the enemy and the avenger. When you hear Psalm eight, don't just hear it as, oh, that's cute. The mouths of infants and nursing babies. God's prepared praise.Why did he do that? As a rebuke, a, as a confrontation against those who were profaning, God's name to silence, the enemy and the avenger, Pharisees, rulers, chief priests and elders. The kids are singing out because you have profaned the name of God. It's one of those, uh, scriptural mic drop moments. If you're reading that in context, and I wanna come back to the word mission drift here, because you see what the people expected.The Messiah would come and, and clear out the Roman rule and, and take back the Holy City, uh, a political platform lead the charge. It's not what Jesus did. He marched not into the Roman center of the town, but right into the center where his people were gathered. Why would he do that? The gathering of God's people.And he launched his mission to not just clean out the enemy, but to clean out the enemy on the inside of their heart's heart. Change an agenda that aligns with God, Jesus hope of the nations. And the, the mission drift happened subtly, but I wonder if that's still the case with us today. This subtle movement away from what is core to things that are fringe.Pastor Mark mentioned, uh, just a, a few weeks back about this term, and maybe it's the first time you've heard the term. It's something that I've been pondering for a number of years now. Christian nationalism. Just a couple of words to maybe, uh, help you understand what that terminology is. Christian nationalism, the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, that the government should take steps to keep it that way.One scholar put it this way, America is defined by its Anglo Protestant paths and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural inheritance. This is not an honoring of history. This is a program for what America must be. The mission of Jesus was and is not after political or national gain.The mission of Jesus was and is not seeking a geographically located kingdom. The mission of Jesus was and is a kingdom of people with surrendered hearts to Christ alone. And if Christian nationalism potentially had a proverbial table that would've been flipped to, and for some of us, to our surprise, and so we pray again, this same battle, cry, your kingdom come, your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.A kingdom of people who care for the poor and refugees, and they're put right next to each other for just that reason that we might see the turning over of tables, the mission drift that happened. And right after it. The follow up, the care for those in need. There's a book that I've, uh, read in seminary, um, and I wanna share it with you, but I wanna preface it because read a lot of books in seminary and, um, lots of different views and perspectives.And some of them you're like, yes, I could have written this book. I love this. Others, you're like, mm, not so much, which we probably do with all books and things that we read, quotes alike. But here's a quote from a book. I will let this, uh, in your mind, you can decide what to do with the book, but it's good to read wide and to have a perspective.And this quote really challenged me. It's uh, by a man named Brian Zand, and he's writing to the church, it's called Postcards from Babylon, the Church in American Exile. Trust the Holy Instincts within You, the instincts of compassion aroused by the Holy Spirit. Yes. Politics are always complicated. But what does Jesus want your attitude to be toward?Syrian refugees, Honduran asylum seekers, undocumented laborers. You already know. You've always known. Some will say power trump's everything, but you've always known that mercy triumphs over judgment. There's a lot of things that could be said there, but I'll leave you with that quote and we'll keep marching on Jesus hope of the nation's.He cleared the temple and immediately welcomes in the marginalized. I don't think it's an accident. They're next to each other in the scriptures. Okay. Jesus and his disciples spend Monday night after they've gone in, flip the tables back out across the Mount of Olives to Bethany. They spend the night there and, uh, we've already talked about that.They, uh, pass by the fig tree. Um, as they passed by on the next morning, back in Tuesday, the disciples witnessed that, uh, that it is, uh, completely withered. And so Tuesday, here's what happens. Matthew 21, and when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, by what authority are you doing these things?And who gave you this authority? Jesus answered them. I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things, the baptism of John from, where did it come from? From heaven or from man. And they discussed it among themselves, saying, if we say from heaven, he will say to us, why then did you not believe him?But if we say from man, we are afraid of the, we are afraid of the crowd for they all hold that John was a prophet. So they answer Jesus. We do not know. And he said to them, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. The last one quickly here, allegiance to Christ. They enter back into the temple with a lot of happy campers.All of the religious elite tables are flipped over. Things are in chaos. And he goes right back into it the next morning. People are loving Jesus. By this point. Their whole Passover is scattered. The system upended. And so they ask him, not wasting any time, what authority do you do this? And who's giving you that authority?Essentially, Hey man, uh, who do you think you are? Who's your rabbi? Who taught you these things? Do you even, have you even gone to school before? Who are you? And Jesus counters them with a confrontation question. And if you know this, uh, it kind of makes sense why he does this. If they affirm that John was a prophet and say yes.They would actually be confirming that Jesus has the authority of God because John as a prophet came and said, behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. So they can't do that. We're not gonna confirm that John was a prophet. But if we just say that John was a man and we don't say that he was a prophet, the crowds are gonna come after us as the religious leaders.You see, the people loved John, that he amassed a following and revered him as a prophet, so they were trapped and didn't know what to do. There would continue to be more and more debate throughout the day. On Tuesday, a, a pasturing of Jesus, a peppering him with questions and he would teach them back and forth using parables to expose the hard truth.No words could change their mind. . They had their system upended. They had their framework confronted. Their power was being challenged, and it was a question of authority. But remember this, we just read that the day before in the temple, he flips over things and then begins to heal people with the power of God.And so by them asking the question, by what authority do you do this? It wasn't about proof. He had given them plenty of it the day before. It was about authority. You see, they could not humble themselves to recognize Christ. The allegiance was to a system rather than the king. The allegiance was to their religious status rather than bowing to what seemed like an unknown Rabbi from Nazareth.Jesus would call them out in a number of different ways, calling them blind guides, teaching, but not seeing the truth in front of you. , whoa to you. Experts in the law on new Pharisees, new hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean.A brood of vipers, he would call them. And he even said, tax collectors and prostitutes, the worst of the worst would enter the kingdom of God before them to the religious elite. So as we come today, we must remember there were two parades walking in on uh, Palm Sunday and as we just followed it up with Monday and Tuesday, one parade was from the west and Cesar was riding in and he was on a warhorse.The other came in from the East with Jesus on a donkey. One is a military parade of the Roman Empire, the other. , a prophetic parade ushering in a completely different kind of kingdom. One crucifies, its enemies for political gain. The other would see the leader crucified to forgive his enemies the following days of Monday and Tuesday involved confrontation and the upending of kingdoms.But there's this hope, John chapter 12, as you continue on, here's what it says in verse 42. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear that the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue for they love the glory that comes from man, more than the glory that comes from God.There were some Greeks that came that, that followed up this whole scene and came to Philip, which is kind of the the quote that we use for this common life book. And they asked him, sir, we wish to see Jesus in Matthew chapter 23. Later on, Jesus would pray this over Jerusalem. Oh Jerusalem. Oh Jerusalem.The city that kills the prophets and stones, those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen, gathers her brood under her wings that you were not willing? See, your house is left to you desolate. This kind of love creates unwavering allegiance to Christ. I'm gonna ask you to stand together as we, um, finish our time together.As you leave, as we spend the coming week reflecting on Monday and Tuesday going into Easter Passion Week, may you bear much fruit as you remain in the love of Jesus. May you welcome neighbor and stranger as you too are welcomed by Jesus, and may our allegiance speak to him alone. Peace to you this morning.Thanks for being here. You are dismissed.
Luke 19:28-44“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Sermon Transcript:Today we are beginning our Easter season. We're beginning it by looking at the beginning of passion week for those who are pilgrims, who are followers of Jesus Christ.Easter is the red circle in your faith calendar. Paul says the Easter. Is the reason that we follow him all of the other days too. And the greatest thing about Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the best thing about Easter is that Jesus is not dead right now. And so we take seriously this moment in our faith s our, our faith life, and we are gonna do that by focusing these six weeks upcoming to Easter, not letting it sneak up on us, but taking seriously our ride to this Easter.40% of the gospels are written, uh, in, in the Passion week, in the final week, 40% of the gospels. That's how important this final week of the coming of Christ at this moment in time is leading up to him receiving the cross and eventually rising from the dead. As mentioned, these, uh, Easter readings go alongside that we have in the Common Life Book and these Easter readings go alongside of that, uh, Collingswood campus and Mount Laurel campus.We're doing this together. So welcome here, Mount Laurel. Welcome here in Collingswood. As we begin this time together, we're gonna do so, do so by reading in Luke 19. If you'll join me in Luke 19, and we'll start in verse 28, and here we see the triumphal entry. Of Christ into Jerusalem. And this triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem gives us beautiful ways of understanding how Christ himself approached this passion week, how Christ himself approached Easter.So Luke 19, and we're gonna start with verse 28. And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Beth Phage and Bethany at the Mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples saying, watch the intentionality here. Go into the village that is in front of you.Where on entering you will find a cult tide on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks, why are you untying it, you shall say this. The Lord has need of it. So those who were sent away found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the cult, its owners said to them, why are you untying the cult?And they said, the Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus and throwing their cloaks on the cult. They set Jesus on it. And as he wrote along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And as he was drawing near already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. In some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if they were silent, the very stones would cry out. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it saying what? That you even you had known on this day, the things that make you make for your peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes for the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hand mute in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.And they will not leave one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation. Pray with me this morning.Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest God. We walk in from so many different circumstances on the way here. Most of us this morning as we have tried to gather ourselves and get ourselves here, ha have entered what feels like lots of unspiritual territory, but there's not a one of us that doesn't long for this peace.We thank you for Easter for what we know that it means and all that. We're still finding out what it means for our every day in the name of Jesus who rode to die. Amen. So this passage is the passage probably in your Bible. It says something about the triumphal entry. This is the passage where Jesus took himself and rode to Easter.This moment begins passion week. He has come to Jerusalem to die. As we begin our journey to Easter, I just wanna point out three things. Of which we can learn from Christ of how he approached Easter so that we can take these six weeks approaching our Easter alongside of him as he took this time very seriously.The first thing we see is here is that Jesus is king. He is the first office I want to mention. He is the warrior King. Jesus has been away from a Jerusalem for 18 months. He, most of what he has been doing is in small towns in the Galilee region up north. He's going from small town to small town to, to then the wilderness and everyone comes to meet him, and then he goes here, and then he goes over on the Sea of Galilee, over the Sea of Galilee, then back teaching healing.But mostly in the outskirts, 18 months since he has been to Jerusalem, there is not a person in that region, whether you're near Jerusalem or you're up in the hills of Galilee, that you are not aware of the significance of Jesus, where he is, and the significance that Jesus is not in Jerusalem. He is this teacher.He is this figure who people are trying to figure out. And eventually as he takes on the mantle and as he takes on the titles of being the Messiah, his gather his followers or gathering, there would not be many campfires that would exist around of people who are following this Jesus, who don't say, when is Jerusalem?When does the king take on his crown? This is the moment where Jesus rides. To Jerusalem, and this ride entering in the Eastern gate is a declaration of war. This Messiah who comes is what people would have been looking for his whole life. We know that yes, that Christ came as a child and people's hopes were for him.People's hopes were not for four year old Jesus. They were not for nine year old Jesus. They were not for 13 year old Jesus people's hopes for when the Messiah would finally come and when they can see him, they, they start to see their hopes begin to be lived out. But the real hope, the real moment that the, their looking for Messiah is when he would enter into these exact gates to become king.The king had. To declare war. The priest is what has been prophesied. Isaiah 96 talks about this, his, his title that one, one of the titles that is given to Jesus is mighty God In this long list, pens of peace, everlasting father, mighty God is given. Uh, al cancer says this about this, this term, mighty God is used only for God himself, but now is being applied to the coming king.The phrase has overtones of battle. Some translations call this warrior God. God is spoken of as Israel's warrior, the one who fights on their behalf, behalf. This king will come do the same. Ezekiel 44. Talks about where the Messiah would come. There's 11 gates around Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a heavy fortified city, but there are 11 gates that you can enter.The gate, the Messiah would come through. Ezekiel 44 is the East Gate. The gate closest to the temple mount the gate gate closest to the Holy of Holies. It is the gate through which Christ himself. Comes and enters to take his throne. Zechariah nine nine, with the direct prophecy of this moment says this, rejoice greatly.Daughter Zion. Shout daughter Jerusalem. See, your king comes to you. This is the moment. This is a verse that they pull out through the Torah to show their kids your king. He'll come. He comes to you. Righteous and victorious. Humble, and riding on a donkey, a cult, the full of a donkey. Now I love this prophecy, right?Righteous and victorious. You can't be victorious without defeating. So, To have victory over something. Christ was coming to claim victory. He didn't come ultimately, which is what many would want from him, but he did not come to bring a new human empire where what that many of the worshipers were planning on him to come do that.These empires are what they're cycl. They're endlessly fragile and they turn over from one to the next. Christ came to bring a lasting empire. He came to bring a whole new world. This is the whole nature of what we see over and over in the New Testament, the kingdom of God. He came to bring heaven, the realities of heaven to earth and taught us to pray.Our Father, who is in heaven, hollow be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He is coming and bringing the spiritual kingdom of God to change. History forever. In this next Passion week, what we will see in these upcoming weeks is there is a number of things that Jesus will rival against.He will rival against spiritual abuse, religion without the Father. In Mark 11, as he drives people out of the temple saying, my house is a house of prayer, not a den of thieves. He will rival against pride as we see him take the towel and serve his disciples as a servant. He will rival against self-sufficiency as he will talk with Peter, and Peter will be so confident that he will be strong until the crows come.Jesus' teaching and message are rivaling. They are seeking to be victorious. They are at war. And lastly, what Jesus came to war against is the separation caused by sin. . We see this spelled out in literally just about every single chapter in the rest of the New Testament that Jesus came to make to take on battle.To say, I am coming straight in to that gate and I'm gonna go to what I see separates God and man, the sin of humanity. I'm gonna tear the curtain, the veil that is between God and man and the way he wages this war is he takes the knife to his own breast. It is his own blood that will be spilled, as he says, hate didn't win, fear doesn't win.Prejudice, addiction, family trauma, and years of. Generational strongholds that the, the, the mentality of everyone clawing on top of each other, fighting for their own comforts or power that ultimately does not win the love of Jesus Christ as given through the Father by the blood of the Son, ultimately is victorious.Easter is a declaration that God wins As we enter into Easter, head into this season and, and learning from this warrior, God, a, a couple things. I would say very simply, let's, let's approach Easter by being present. by, by being aware, right? Being, being somewhat conscious and we'll lose sight of it, right?It uh, we won't be thinking, oh my goodness, it's 27 days to Easter. But as much as possible, let's enter with an awareness. An awareness that, that we are heading towards Easter. One of the things I love about the followers in this story is they were aware they were there. Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem on his own.They were aware of what was going on. And secondly, to rejoice, we don't just have a feel good Jesus. We have a Jesus that does have power who declares with blood on his. His own blood on his hands that I have the power to claim victory over darkness. And so we rejoice. One of my favorite things about where Easter falls in our calendar is if you watch and be, be mindful this next six weeks, you'll be able to see things in nature around you.That new life will be springing up. And let that remind you. Just recently I found a tiny little weed flower in my lawn that probably is not supposed to be there, but man, it was just this little flower and I was like, wow. Just that little thing. I don't know how it came up, why it came up here, but we had some warm days and it popped up.So I probably didn't do the right thing. I just picked it, you know, it took it right to my wife, you know, look, I got this for you, but, but there's gonna be new life popping up all around. And don't let that just be a reminder of the nice, warm season of finally, the winter is starting to break. Let that be a reminder of the warrior God who didn't let things, didn't leave, things just cold, dark, and gray.He came and he won. We celebrate his victory of the warrior. God, this Easter. , we see him ride in as the warrior God. We also, or Warrior King. We see him ride in as a foolish king. And I realize that that doesn't sound good. Um, when you read that on the PowerPoint, this is, this is coming from Paul. He talks in Corinthians that the message of Christ, how he came and the message of Christ lived out, has a foolishness to our natural instincts.We look at it and it, there is some seeming folly from a human perspective. This is pretty much how he entered into Jerusalem. Now Jerusalem, he does come in through the Eastern gate. See these doors back here, right here that you probably entered through the sanctuary, the Eastern gate, the, the collective width of those doors is more than the Eastern gate that he would've ridden through for Jerusalem.leading up to the Eastern gate, it is a uphill climb with some windy streets. I had the chance to be in Jerusalem. One of the things that was so remarkable to me is like, wow, this city was not built for some American SUVs. Everything is narrow and tight and built, um, very close by. This, this scene of Jesus going is, is not the, the, we just had the largest military parade in 2019.It was in China and Tieman Square. Gman Square, and they had a hundred thousand different people as a part of this military parade. Right? That is the a grand scene. If you think like, how many people is that? Macy's Day Parade has a staff of 6,500, right? So you think, wow, all the intercontinental ballistic missiles and, and the, the jets and drones, and they had all these kinds of floats and things that they did.That is a grand parade, a grand entrance. What's happening with Jesus who's coming to change the shape of the entire cosmos is pretty pathetic. I, I want to talk a moment about just the mechanics of this. Who is Jesus? How is Jesus entering? Jesus is entering on a cult, which that kind of sounds cool, right?You could kind of see a knight on a cult. It's a cult of a donkey. Most donkeys could not handle the weight of a grown man. This is not a full grown donkey. So like I best, let's say we don't get the exact age teenage donkey, right? And I realize, you know, I don't know anything about teenage donkeys. I realize you don't know anything about teenage donkeys.Okay? So let me tell you the tiny bit that I found out about teenage donkeys. One, yeah, they could not be ridden on two. If you get on top of the teenage donkey the first time and you're more weight than it's supposed to hold, the donkey's not gonna be like, I am filled with the Holy Spirit. I will have the energy to carry the son of.The teenage donkey is like, what is going on? Right? Is going to be a messy scene. On top of that, people aren't throwing saddles on there and cinching, whatever you cinch on a saddle and putting the bit in there. They're throwing their coats on top of this donkey who has never been ridden, who has no concept of what is going on and is going up rocky, tight terrain with a whole bunch of people yelling at him.That's the context of the donkey, right? This is who Jesus, his feet may have been dragging on the ground to get on the donkey. The text says people had to lift Jesus on the donkey. Imagine the mechanic. Some people are trying to hold this donkey. Some people are trying to throw coats on. Some people are trying to throw Jesus on.The mechanics of this is not at all what the genie had for Aladdin, right? Coming into the city. The mechanics of this are a Zechariah prophesied, humble, intensely humble. There's no evidence that there was a permit bought that, that the Roman soldiers would line the place of so that they, he could get in through the Eastern gate.Presumably, there's merchants all around. There's people traveling, coming and going. Annoyed by this scene. This may not even have been the largest SPECT spectacle on that day in Jerusalem. This moment, which for his followers carried this much weight, did not carry that much weight for everyone else. It is a scene that is not filled with gold red carpets and fanfare.It's filled with palm branches, people's jackets on a winding road leading to a not that big of a gate. , it is a humble entry. What's interesting to me is as you look in the New Testament and you see so many of the miracles or the, the gospels and 40% of the gospels are about passion week, almost every single miracle that you will see outside of the resurrection will not happen in Passion Week.Jesus does not come to to Jerusalem with his own show of power. He does not part the Yates and like the Red Sea, and has this moment. This moment is intentionally foolish in the eyes of the world. And the word I want to, words I just want to use is what Jesus came to do when he would take the towel on Thursday, when he would receive the cross on Friday, when he would not defend himself in this week.And even as he enters into Jerusalem, Jesus rode to Easter, intentionally unprotected. You will see over and over. The gospel of John is so beautiful in this. What Jesus says he needs is the love of the Father. And he intentionally does not add a whole lot to that list. He intentionally lays down so many of the things that he could have brought to this moment.He approaches Easter, intentionally unprotected. Something that I, I want us to think about as we approach Easter. And this is gonna be, gimme five minutes here cuz some of you, this is gonna be like, I'm trying to understand what you're saying, but to follow our foolish king in the eyes of the world to intentionally unprotect from the ways that we try to feel big, to choose to release the ways you've defended yourself or tried to satisfy your neurotic need for security and significance on your own.And I, I put a lot of those big words in there on purpose. I'm one of the ones you're like neurotic. I do not have a neurotic need to feel safe or define significance on my own. Well I do. Um, and I think probably many of us do very simply to be intentional as we come to Easter that we're aware of how we try to make ourselves big.You know, like on every nature show there's like, I don't know, some predator and some prey and like they both have this mechanism that these animals use to make themselves look big, right? Birds fluff up their feathers and like people do weird dances, like, or not, people, animals do these weird dances to try to intimidate each other and cats like somehow like do this weird thing which cats need no helping.Intimidating, in my mind, I hate those things, but, um, except for your cat, your cat is perfect, but like the all animals have this way to make themselves look big. Well, I'm, I'm reading this book, my four-year-old just loves this book. About 10 things you need to know about elephants, and I'm reading about this elephants and, and the elephants are kind of fascinating.You know, one of the reasons how elephants use their ears, yes, it's to flap themselves, you know what I mean? Like, uh, keep themselves cool. One of the primary functions that an elephant uses his ears is to make itself look big and intimidating. I'm like an elephant needs help looking big. Like even an elephant is trying to look bigger than itself.Right, but that's in it's instinctual. No Mama elephant is training baby elephant by like flap. Look flap here. No, no. A little bit more on the left ear, you know, like, like do this. Right? No, it's instinctual. Even in elephants to try to make themselves look bigger, to try to elevate them themselves in the way they are to have a defense.It is so instinctual in the human heart to try to look big. To try to look like we matter. As we think of a question, what do I think of when I answer the question? Am I impressive? What do we use to rank other people as be ahead or behind? , but these things in, in spiritual formation language, these are attachments, right?Like, I feel like I am important because I have this, or I rank here, or I feel like I'm unor important and I self reject because I'm not, I don't have enough of this, or I don't rank high enough here. But these attachments that we have to define our very identity are core to us. And I know this is a, a little bit murky ground and some of you are like, I know exactly what I do inside of my heart and what I say to other people to try to appear impressive.And some of you that, that might not come as clear, but I just wrote down some practical ways I think we can intentionally unprotect or unfriend ourselves towards Easter. If one of the ways you want to feel impressive or you're desiring to feel big is in your career or, or popularity or success in school, success in some way, and you can tend to see people as ways that you can get there.How about far Easter? Take out three people who won't advance you in any possible way and get to know their story if, if your body or beauty is just a real point for you and you find yourself thinking and analyzing yourself how you look a lot and you really want to look better so that you can be impressive.How about take half the time, think about how long do I take to get ready? Intentionally take half the time to get ready and use that time to pray for contentment in how God made. . If your thing is money and that, and you are always thinking, where's the four ohk? Where's the savings account and how does this rank among other people or my peers?Or you meet with your friends and you think, okay, I'm a little higher, a little lower. If it's money that you use yourself to feel big, you need to find ways to give it away. If it's the image of your peers at church, right? A lot of us that like, okay, in your church environments or, or various, maybe it's your other environments and your image of how they look.Find someone you love in that environment and tell 'em how you need help. My gosh, share your secrets. If it's, if it's how intelligent you are and, and you're holding, you hold this role perhaps in the family or, or in your workplace of you just had these really smart things to say and that that's a big way that you, you feel at the end of the day, you know what I'm, I'm.I'm smarter than these people, or at least I'm on the smarter side of the ledger. Take six weeks intentionally. Don't offer advice or share your knowledge unless asked one time. What you're gonna find is you're gonna do it six times in the first day and then you're gonna be like, wow, how much do I rely on that to feel impressive?And then you'll go to five and then four and realize, this is my elephant ears of trying to feel impressive. If it's how many people you help and how many ministries that you do say no once a week. And it's not easy. It's so in sync. And I know you're, you're saying like these are really weird specific applications.And I realize that, and, and for some of you it's gonna be something different, but my encouragement as we follow Christ to Easter, it is to lay down some of the things we tried to impress of, because why it's so instinctual, right? Your parents did not teach you, your mom, your grandmom, your, your, your environment did not sit down and teach you.Here's how you try to be impressive any more than Mama Elephant taught Baby elephant, how to put out the ears. It's instinctual. We all want to feel impressive and big to ourselves first and to others as well. But because it's so instinctual, we need to be so intentional. And so my encouragement leading up to Easter as we ride with Christ towards Easter, find a specific way.Of saying, I'm going to unde defend, I'm going to unimpress. I'm going to take this specific step back in my life to try in my own devices, to find peace and be impressive. Oh, we, we understand that a little bit. Does that make sense? And some of you're like, dude, I'm not proud or trying to be impressive at all.Well, thank you for that cathartic moment because I really am right. This takes, and it takes intentionality to rival our own sense of trying to be impressive on our own. Lastly, and third, the weeping king at a Professor Crawford Lures great pastor. He asked the question, he, he said, what makes you pound the table and weep?And that was his sense. Well, that's where your calling is, right? Or you've heard the quote when your, your great longing in the world's great hunger. Where they meet is what you're calling is. We see here a weeping Christ. Christ wept three times that we know about in in the scripture. In this one, he is weeping aloud.These are not cute tears, cute man cry that's happening. The Christ, after the scene turns around, presumably before he goes through the gates and the worshipers are still there on that crowded street and openly weeps, and he says, if you even you had known on this day what would bring you peace, what is Christ?Pound the table and weep about as he goes to Easter. It, it's not just, oh, my people won't behave, or, oh, that guy won't share Christ with his coworker. He weeps. When we don't realize how much peace he really offers, how much peace he really gives, he will punctuate this exact message. All week on Thursday.He says, peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. Don't let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid. The first times he sees his friends after, after, uh, after he's been resurrected, right? And they all gathered, it's his big resurrection moment with his disciples. First thing he says, peace to you. How do we ride to Christ with this weeping king who wants to offer peace to his people?I don't know, a more creative, more effective, or whatever way to find peace with God than to simply be with him And, and why we're doing language of, of saying, okay, these are ways we find false peace by trying to be impressive. And why? How do we lay aside some of these impressive things? What we, what we try to find our impressives is to make room.To say, Hey, if I starve this, my attachment to how I look, my attachment to how important I am in the company, my attachment to these things, if I starve that a little bit, cuz I know that's fake and doesn't last anyway, it leaves some opening to spend that time, spend that energy to find Christ. And there there is peace.How do we ride with Christ to Easter? We follow his tears. And what does tears say if is this? If you verse 42, even you had only known what would bring you peace. We ride with Christ desperately seeking true peace in him and warring against false security that will crumble soon anywayas we spend time with him. This is what his presence is like. And I realize some of you're like, I pray and it hits the ceiling, and sometimes I wonder if he even gets that far right. I, as you seek and spend time with Christ real quick is what I would suggest. How has he made you? How has he uniquely formed you?Some of you're like, well, I don't, I have trouble sitting on my knees and praying, but man, do I love being in nature. Be in nature, go be with God there. Some of you say like I have, you know, I, I have the hardest time with attention. I try to do the 30 minute Devotional every single day. I would say, ah, you know what, there's one guy, dear friend of mine, he said he had the hardest time praying.He just couldn't pray. He has, he has adhd, and it was just a big struggle for him. He couldn't pray because he couldn't stay still that long in prioritized stillness. He would walk and pray. He turned into, to this day, perhaps the greatest prayer warrior I have ever known, and he said, what changed my life is I just had to.Walk like everything else in my life. If you're a writer, writer, pray to God. Start with dear father. If you're a person who's like, I am so spiritually confused, I can't stand up from now. Find a trusted friend, pursue spiritual direction. I don't know what it means for us to prioritize our time with Christ, but I would ask starve a little and feast a little, and in that we find a pure, beautiful way to a little more understand what deaths and what resurrection are all about because they exist without the other in the Christian life.Won't you stand with us? I'm, I'm gonna conclude. I know we've, we're in time.Dear friends, Mount Laurel, dear friends online and in Collingswood this morning, very simply, as we head towards Easter, may we ride to Easter together with Christ. May we, may we war for true peace. May we intentionally unprotect from our own devices that we falsely use to find our homes in our identity, image, comfort, or pride.May we journey to Easter with the living resurrected no longer dead? Jesus, may we speak with the deep assurance of Paul, that he is our peace and with the open-hearted pilgrims who approach Peter, sir, we would see Jesus. We are dismissed.
Acts 17:10-15They received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Sermon Transcript:I invite you to take your Bibles to the Book of Acts. As we return to our series acts, the spirit at work to the ends of the Earth.We're gonna look at Acts chapter 17 this morning, beginning at verse 10, down through verse 15. While you're turning, I want to highlight what Jared mentioned earlier. This is, uh, the book that he was talking about. It is, uh, 58 59 pages long. It is called Following Jesus Through Passion Week. It is a guide to lead you over the next seven Sundays.And during those seven weeks in preparation for the celebration of Easter, it has in it, um, we have a team of people that have written a number of articles. There are daily readings, five days a week, all related to the particular day of passion Week, for instance. The first week is all about the events of the, of Sunday Palm Sunday.The second one is about Monday and so forth, all the way up till Easter Sunday. And so each of the weeks have different readings. There are, for those of you that are like me, that like maps, there's maps of Jerusalem when it talks about Jesus did this on Monday. Well, where is that and how does that fit in the, in the, uh, the whole Jerusalem scene?Where did these things take place? That happened on Monday and so forth each day of the week. Um, there are, there are pictures. There are, there is activities in here that you can do with your kids now. To be honest with you, we are not going to die if you don't contribute the $3. Uh, our church won't go under.That is the cost that it was to produce these. But it's been my experience that if we put a little money out, it matters to us. And that's why I always charge when we do those Friday night, Saturday night seminars, uh, that I've done a number of over the years, I charge $5. Uh, we don't make anything on those things, but I just think it's a way of saying, yeah, I okay this, this is worth it.I hope you'll feel that way. They're at the counter, what are they called? The hub this morning. Uh, I think you'll find this a guide that will lead you effectively if you are someone that follow. Uh, uh, the readings of Lent, uh, that begins this Wednesday historically. And again, this is a perfect week to begin this se This study will take you right up through Easter Sunday.I hope you'll at least take a look at it. Love to have you, uh, following along in it. Uh, you might want to get one for if you're married, for both of you. I would suggest that I know Marian and I are not gonna fight over one copy. Um, and just hope it'll really be a tool. A lot of work has gone into it.Some of the people probably gonna forget some of the people that have wrote, written in this. I wrote in it also, um, pastor Ben, um, uh, uh, faith Parker, my wife Marion, um, uh, dogs. I knew I shouldn't have done this off the Sly . Uh, I know Randy Pittman, Mike Candy have had a part in this. Um, there are other, uh, Lisa Myers has written an art.Some of these, uh, anyway. There's, uh, they're, they're good. I mean, I, I, at least I'll say this, the ones I didn't write I think are fantastic. Um, alright, let's go to Acts chapter 17. I'm gonna read verse 10 through 15. Here's what we read.The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to be, and when they arrived, they went into the Jew Jewish synagogue. Now, there were Jew. These Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonika. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so many of them, therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.But when the Jews from Thessalonika learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at be also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted, Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.Let's pray together. Lord, we come to the Word of God. We come to be taught Lord and God, I pray as we consider this passage and these people in this little city of Berea, that Lord, we might embrace the reason for which I believe this passage is put there to, and it would be used to speak into our lives as well and our response to the scriptures.So, Lord, be our teacher today, I pray. I also pray for the men's retreat as they're finishing up at 10 o'clock. Their. Their final session of four. Lord, do continue your work in guys' lives up there, even as we ask that you would be moving among us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. I wanna bring up a map this morning.Just give context to where we are. Uh, basically what we're doing here is we are following the Apostle Paul and some of his friends. Uh, I'm gonna take, choose this map and this one, or I'm gonna go, actually he didn't travel from here to here, but if you look up there, actually right up there is the city of Philippi.Um, Then they have the city of Thessalonica. Then we're coming to this more of a town really, of bere. And Paul has been traveling, uh, through, this is modern day Turkey, way over to the right here, this stuff. Um, and that is, uh, called Asia in that time. And Paul has come up through there. Up there is a location called, uh, Cho as, or we know it as Troy historically.And basically they have embarked, gone across the agency and have come to Philippi, then Thea, then now to Berea. It's an interesting thing that as we follow Paul, uh, and, and particularly the record of Luke who wrote the book of Acts, he gives us the story. Uh, what happened in Philippi and the founding of the church, which is really cool because Paul then writes a letter to the Philippians in order that we can get a snapshot of, okay, we read in the book of Acts how this church started, now what's going on in the church.And Paul addresses a lot of the people by name. He gives experiences. So we see not only the founding the church, but you also see the life and practice of the church. We do the same thing with Thessalonica. You come to the city of Thessalonica, as Joe, pastor Joe mentioned last Sunday, a city of 200,000 people, uh, the capital city of, uh, part of northern Greece.And. Again, we have two letters to the Thessalonians as we again see Paul, which he wrote very soon, not, not long after, uh, he visited Thessalonika. And we see again the starting of the church. And then we see the development of church. It all makes sense. We're gonna see that in other cities as well.Ephesus, Colossi, um, uh, uh, Corinth. And now we come to this town called Bea. And so we excitedly look in the New Testament to the letter of the be to the Bri. An of course there is no letter to the Bri. So we said, why did Luke include this little story about this little town, which probably was among a number that Paul went in, but he's giving us a record here of this town.And the question very simply is why? , why? Tell us about the brands. You're not even gonna write a letter to them later on. You're not gonna have lots of contact. Um, although certainly there's probably some, but he's traveled 50 miles from Thessalonica, so 50 miles walking is a, is a big separating thing. So it's a, it's a little town in itself.And I think the clear answer is found in the first couple of verses. It is the be's response to the scripture and to the preaching of Paul and the other men with him that is both unique and compelling. Last week, pastor Joe preached about the many ways Paul and his team had proclaimed the scriptures in Thessalonica.That's the first nine verses of first, uh, of chapter 17. We saw words like he used reasoning and explaining and dialoguing and, and, and proving all different ways. As Joe, really, I felt. Effectively pointed out of communicating the truth and the gospel. Now we come to the bres and we see the other side of the story.Here we see people who responded to the scriptures in a particular way. Now, it's interesting that the ones he's talking about in verse 11 and and and 12, it says, of the Jews that were in Thessalonica, they were there in Bea. And it's a direct contrast to the Jews in Thessalonica. And he says, he makes a statement.He says, the Jews in Berea responded differently. To the Jews and Thesal and Iah to the, to the scriptures. Both of them knew the Old Testament. Paul is gonna be preaching from the Old Testament. That's all you had. You didn't have any New Testament yet. He is preaching from the Old Testament and he is telling them about how the Old Testament pointed the way to Christ.And he, and what we read about the Thessalonian Jews, their response was one of, uh, close-mindedness. Basically, as you look at that passage, you see that they are individuals that are debating Paul every step of the way. They are protecting their own religious church, ch their own religious turf. They're not really interested to hear.But here in Bria, Luke describes them by the term they are more noble. The word noble or honorable actually here is the exact Greek word eugenics. They have the right eugenics. If you don't, the study eugenics is you means good. And gen is genes. They had the right genes. No, it's not talking. A study of eugenics, of course, is trying to, to inbreed in such a way that you, you know, you keep the right genes, you, it's a way of doing it with animals.It certainly is a way some people have talked, um, can be done with humans, that you're trying to get people with the best genes to have the best race. The, the Nazis were known for trying to, uh, do experiments to that. But here we're talking about spiritual genes. They're saying these are, these are noble people.The way they responded has the, the endorsement of heaven upon them, that God looks favorably the way these bes responded to the scriptures. So our simple focus this morning is, What are the characteristics of people that have God's endorsement for the way they approach and read the Bible? And that's what I'd like to share this morning.Four characteristics of people that have God's endorsement for their Bible reading. Number one, they approach the scriptures with a teachable spirit. They're open to being taught. If you'll notice here in verse 11, it says, well, I'll start at verse 10. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue.Now, these Jews were more noble than those. In Thea. They received the word with all eagerness. They received the word. This word is, is they were open to be taught. It's interesting. This is a particular phrase that is used in the Book of Acts. As a matter of fact, in Acts chapter eight, it says The, the believers in Jerusalem were shocked to hear.That the Samaritans received the word they were buying in, they were embracing it. In chapter 11, it says again, the J, the Judean believers were amazed to hear that the Gentiles were receiving the word, that they were embracing it. Later, Paul will write to some of the believers in Thessalonika. In First Thessalonians tur through two 13, he'll use this phrase again and he'll say, when you receive the word of God, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but as what it really is.The word of God, which is at work and you believers. Now, maybe this is an interesting concept to you. That's so important about how people receive the word of God. Maybe you hear and, and you're thinking, well, you know, I, this is a question I have about Christianity, especially you Born again or you, you guys that, that are all carrying your Bible and talking.I mean, do you know that most religious groups, or at least a lot of them have their own book too? I mean, it's great to have a holy book, you know, a book that gives you the rules and the regulations and principles and the concepts of, of how to do your religion. I mean, the Mormons have the Book of Mormon.The Muslims have the Korean, the Hindus have the gida. But you Christians act like it is not just a record of directives and worship and religious lifestyle, but like God routed or something.We really do. We really look at this. As not the words of men. Yes, men were led by the spirit. Matter of fact, it says in first Peter that that that holy men of God spoke by the, the breathing of God. And the word there actually talks about how they were it. It says, and they were moved by the spirit. The word moved is used of a sail that has its wind.The wind comes and fills the sail and moves it forward. We really believe that God move. These individuals use their personalities, how they're wired, their background, their vocabulary, all that stuff, but that the spirit of God move them to right the very words of God. We really believe that the living God, the creator of the universe, the one who controls tsunamis and meteor showers, the one who is aware of every bird that falls from a telephone wire and that counts the hairs of your head, has chosen to talk.To humans, and there's lots of ways he could have done it. I mean, he could have done it with this thunderous V voice that was loud enough to be heard all over the planet. He could have done it with a thousand mile billboard in the sky and written what he wanted to have said. He could have done it by some cosmic mind power that spoke his information into our brains.He could have done all those things and a million dollar that you could come up with,but he chose to give scripture to speak it into a book, a book that he describes as living as something that that speaks even to millennia later into our lives. and those who know him as their father have found it to be the guiding source of light and life to our daily experience. We embrace it. We receive the word, but it says something else that says, those who really come with the endorsement of heaven on the way they approach the scripture, they don't come just with a heart to be taught.They are eager to be taught. He says they come with all eagerness. Uh, there is an eagerness. There is an anticipation. They receive the word of God with this eagerness, we do it because we have found the scripture. are fathomless. They are bottomless in what they offer. I've told this story before about my father-in-law.He led a guy named Zeke up in northern Michigan. And this guy, it was the beginning of winter or it was actually into winter, and winter's up there, a serious stuff, 200 inches of snow is not uncommon. And so Zeke had a small house, almost a, like a cabin. Uh, and, and so my dad led Zeke to the Lord and Ze, and he gave him a Bible, and Zeke disappeared into the cabin had, and Dad didn't see him for seven weeks.And they came across each other and he said to Zeke, he said, Zeke, hey, you've been reading that Bible I gave you? He says, oh, yeah, yeah, I finished. He said, he says, you finished the Bible. I mean, I mean the Bible, the whole Bible, the whole book, you know? And he said, oh yeah, I read the whole thing. He said, he said, so my father didn't even know what to say.So he said, well, yeah, I finished the whole book, but I'm gonna read it again. I think I missed a few points.if you're a Christian, you laugh because you know the Bible is there. There's no way to plumb the depths of this truth that even the scriptures, you know, you come to it again and, and you see in your Bible how God spoke to you on this date and this way with this verse. But you find out, here it is again, I'm here and there's a new application of this, this, this verse of among tens of thousands of verses.Why? Because it's alive. Because it is God still speaking through his word. And so God's people come to the scriptures with an eagerness. That noble approaches to truth means that you come knowing there is a bottomless cache of truth to draw from. You know that here today, I might find a promise to claim or an example to follow, or ASC sin to confess, or a lesson to learn or a truth about God to delight and worship him for.And we come to the scriptures eager for God to speak. This cosmic ruling transcendent God to speak personally into our lives. These bes Jews that had been waiting for the Messiah were hungry to hear the scriptures spoken to them, and I'm gonna come back to that because this was not a small thing for them.The first thing we find, we come with a teachable spirit. Secondly, We come with questions. You'll notice it says in the next phrase, they came examining the scriptures. I love this. The word examining is used in Luke 23 verse thir 14. You brought me this man as one who was misleading the people, and after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him.What's he saying? He says, you brought me Jesus. And I've questioned him, man, I've, I've worked him over, I've, I've drilled him with my questions and I, I've heard what you said. And this guy is not what you say. His goals are not the way you're talking. I, I just don't see it. I don't see, after my examination journaling with all my questions, I, I don't see it.God endorsed Noble Bible reading is to come with a questioning spirit to the scripture all the time. My favorite preacher of actually the last 40 years is Tim Keller in Manhattan, Redeemer Church. I'm very excited that Tim Keller, uh, grudgingly has allowed a biography to be written about him. It's now out and I've been reading it, and the biography is, I, I love it.Uh, I hope you'll love it if you get it. Um, but basically one of the chapters was fascinating to me because in one of the chapters it's talking about the individual that helped him. Know how to, to get into the scriptures. It's called, uh, the woman who taught Tim to study the Bible. It's a woman named Barbara Boyd.And Barbara Boyd was on the inner varsity staff. Um, he, uh, Tim was a student at Bucknell University in college and Boyd in a, a particular group. When she gathered a bunch of the students together in the inner varsity group, which of which he was a leader of on the campus as just a college kid. She was teaching them how to get into the scriptures.And so she brought them together one time, and what she did was she gave them a verse, and the verse was, mark one 17, where it says, and Jesus said to them, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. And she said, I want you to find 50 things from that passage in the next 30 minutes. Well, that's not a long verse.But she, and so after 10 minutes, most of the kids would be like, most of us, you know, they just thought, ah, I'm done. I'm, I'm a fast learner. I, I move quick. And I, I didn't come up with 50 of course, but I've, I've, I, I have reached the, the bottom of this baby. And she said, no, stay at it. And they stayed at it, and then 10 minutes more.And they stayed all the way to 30 minutes. And finally they got done. And Tim Keller records the story. And at the end of it, Barbara Boyd asked this question. She said, did any of you record your most powerful takeaway during the opening few minutes of the exercise? And Tim said, I didn't, but I looked around the room and he said, I was stunned.Nobody raised their hand. He said, every one of us had looked at it and we read it and we processed it and we thought we had it. But he used this analogy. He said, no one finds the deepest veins of gold at the mouth of the cave. You find the greatest treasures. After thorough exploration, Boyd challenged them to read through the passage at least twice.In the second reading, she said, slow down and observe what's there. Start asking questions. Where is this happening? When? Who are these people? How would they feel with what's going on? What's the big focus of the passage? What is God saying here? What is he saying to you right now through it? What do you learn about God, about yourself?She question, question, question, question, question, question, question, question.You can come to your Bible reading and you can zip through and you can check the chart off, and you can read through the Bible two times a year. You can be Zeke and read through in seven weeks, but you're gonna miss a lot of points. You're gonna miss a lot of points out of the passage. We come with questions.We, we get involved in it, we process it. We think about what's going on. This past week in our community group, we started a study in the book of Mark and I just, uh, started it by giving an overview of the, the purpose of the book of Mark in comparison with the other gospels. And I just quickly said, you know, here are the four gospels and I did different characteristics.I said the bo gospel of Matthew was written, um, and basically it was written to the juice. In contrast to the other gospels, it has 60 different Old Testament prophecies that point to Christ. What he's trying to say is, this is the guy, this is the guy to you Jews who have been waiting all your life. This is the king in the, in the genealogy of Matthew.It's pointing about the, the, the royal heritage of Jesus to take the, be the claimant for the throne. I talked about how it was, was written for the Jew. Uh, Jesus is the king, is the focus. I talked about the Gospel of Luke, how the Gospel of Luke focuses particularly on the humanity of Christ and his approachableness.And, and Luke is writing primarily for a grand ti a, a Greek and Gentile audience. He's trying to say salvation is for everybody, but he's talking about the approachableness of Christ. It's interesting, most of the films, the, the chosen, the, uh, The Jesus film are built on the gospel of Luke because it presents Christ in his humanity as a reflection of the Godhead in human form the most.I talked about the Gospel of John written 30 years after the other gospels, and how it really isn't a history book like the others are. It is more presenting a theology. It's presenting not Jesus the man so much as Jesus got. It's where those seven great I am chapters are. I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd.I am the light of the world. All those realities he's talking about, he's showing the greatness of God and it is a gospel track. He says there these things are written that you might believe that Jesus of Christ and and that believing you might have life through His name. John says the purpose of this book, and he was writing there for all peoples at that time.So we come to the gospel of Mark, and here's this gospel that is, is written by John Mark, but it's written with the, the testimony and the stories of Peter speaking into him. And he's writing about a Jesus that a Roman world most identifies with the book is active very immediately. Romans were not people that tended to be readers or thinkers, certainly philosophizer or processors like the Greeks.And so he is writing an action book. There's not many teachings of Jesus in the gospel of Mark compared to some of the others. It's an action book. But what is the focus of the gospel of Mark is Jesus as the servant that he is not. Again, who's he speaking to? The Romans. What do they worship? Power, strength.And he said he didn't come to be served. He came to served to me. Gospel Mark is, is. What every American should memorize. It's just every Christian should memorize. In America where we are, we are, we are looking at power and we have embraced the cultural value of power and, and lust and greed. And it's why we wonder why the church isn't making a difference in the world.Well, gospel Mark is saying no. The, the theme of the gospel of Mark is he's the servant. So we said all this and, and uh, so we're in the group and I've presented all this and one of the guys in our group says he's a strategic thinker. And he says, so, so did these guys talk with each other? Like, you got the Jews, I got the Romans.You speak to the Greeks. It was a great question. So we spent some time thinking about, we're processing, we were looking at the timeframes when they wrote, where they ministered. Just trying to think about a little bit. And in my mind we didn't really come to a conclusion. We just had some. Then somebody else asked, one of our girls asked, um, a question, when was Mark written exactly in light of what's taking place in the book of Acts?You know, where does it fit with what Paul's doing in taking the gospel? And so we talked about that historically, where that was and what was going on in the churches when he's writing this gospel. So we're asking questions and I'm, I'm excited cause I'm thinking this is what it is. This is what Bible reading and Bible reflection is about.The best part of the story was, we're about 10 minutes after the original question. You know, how do these guys relate to each other? We've long since left that and all of a sudden we, this guy comes back and he says, I'm sure they did talk to each other, how to know. I mean, somewhere he'd taken an exit out, the whole conversation.He was over here still with Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. This is what Bible reading is. We climb in, we say, I wanna think with these guys, I wanna feel with these people. I wanna understand, I wanna embrace, as Paul is writing these theological concepts, what are they thinking? What is he saying? Why is he saying that to them?At this point, these bes examined stuff, they said, oh, thanks Paul. You say Jesus is Messiah. We're in, by the way, who's Jesus? What Old Testament passage you talking about? No, they wanted to see. They wanted to process. They asked their questions. If you're not a question asker, you're not a Bible reader.You're not really, I don't mean to be this caustically, but. You're not approaching it. Noble, noble, honorably with, with the right genes is to ask our questions and, and get in there and process in here. Okay? The third one with consistency, notice what it says. They examine these, the things daily. You know the reason, there's a reason the scriptures are called the Food of the Christian.In one Peter two, Peter talks about it when you're a new Christian. He says, you need the milk of the word. In Hebrews five, the author is rebuking Christians, and he says, when for the amount of time you've been Christians, you ought to be eating the meat of the word. You're still having to drink milk because you're not exercising yourself with the truth and growing by it.Jesus said it this way in Matthew chapter four. Men shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Every parent knows that when their child isn't eating and they're losing weight, that it's serious. There's something wrong. They're malnourished. They may end up back in the hospital having to be stuck on an IV to, to build their strength.We will be malnourished Christians if we don't come regularly to the scriptures regularly allowing the Bible to speak into. I love the story of the Billy Graham crusade team, where they had a principle, again, taking this idea that the scriptures were the bread of God and they had a practice and they all agreed on it together.These were the prime leaders, the George Beverly Sha, the Latent Ford, and uh, well Billy, and basically they had no bread before bread. That was just their covenant with each other before we eat breakfast. We're gonna be in the word. We're just gonna let God speak into our lives. The psalmist says it this way, the very first verse of the very first Psalm, and it's laying the groundwork for the whole book of Psalms.Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. Without regular time in the scriptures, we won't even be able to distinguish what in the Bible, what is in the Bible and what's not will do things like this.My mother always quoted it, quoted the verse, cleanliness is next to godliness, and I know it's in the Bible. The book of, uh, well, I'll tell you the book. It's the book of Ben Franklin. Or there may be the phrase, God helps those who help themselves. Well, that's right. Out of second cute quotes, nine one that's not in the Bible.How do we know we're in it? We're imbibing it. We're drinking it. We're living in it. Just like the brilliant, the last thing with a passion to see and apply. They did this to see if these things were so, these guys were excited to hear what Paul had to say. He was expounding the Old Testament scriptures to them pointing to Jesus as the fulfillment of those scriptures.If Paul is right, It changes the whole trajectory of their lives, which change how they viewed their system of religious practice, the sacrifices, the feast, dayss, the Sabbath, their view of Gentiles. Everything would be topsy turvy, just like it became for the Jewish believers in Christ in Judea, thess were not game.They felt threatened. They were contentious. They got jealous. Noble Bible reading is courageous. It says this,I'm coming to this Bible and I want to hear God today. I want him to speak into my life. I'm willing to be ruffled. I'm willing to be challenged. I'm willing to be scared with what I'm being asked. If God wants me to start tithing my money as I read the scripture, of course I will. I don't know how I will, but I will.If God shows me to break up with my boyfriend, of course I will. Whatever God shows me, whatever God wants of me, whatever he calls me to do, when I see it, I'll do it. And I am determined to be connected to God's voice, so he is leading me, directing me so he can then use me. It's reading a story recently.It's from World War ii. It's a story of the battleship, the big Bismarck. It was the most powerful naval vessel in the world, the German vessel. The Nazis now control. And in 1939, the Bismarck was off the coast of, of England. It was in North Sea and basically was a new ship. And it was a ship, uh, uh, uh, totally dominating in, in the world, in the naval world.It had 15 inch guns. Its top speed was 30 knots, which as I researched it means this ship, this giant ship goes 35 miles an hour. I mean, that's fast. Going to 35 miles an hour on the water and on no, on May 24th, 1941. After continually defeating numerous, uh, particularly British ships cuz they had had the naval power in the world.A British reconnaissance plane identified the, the Bismarck and. Contacted Naval Headquarters and they got a ship, a battleship for the British, the hood to go after it. And in a one-on-one conflict, the hood was completely obliterated, sunk, and it sunk so quickly. Out of the 2000 sailors, three survived.Bismarck was a scary ship, but as the Bismarck continued and now they again tried to send, uh, more British ships after it, they noticed from the aerial reconnaissance that it was, it was following, uh, a illogical course. It just seemed to sort of go one way and then another way. And an actu. So, as a matter of fact, as the British ships now came upon them, uh, what the Bismarck always had been able to do before, it was not only the biggest baddest of the ships, it was the fastest.So when it was completely outnumbered, it just got away. , but it had speed and it started to go, but then it actually turned and came back towards the British squadron of ships. What no one knew was that after the hood had been defeated by the Bismarck, a recon complain that also was a torpedo plane, had a couple of torpedoes and just shot 'em at the Bismarck.It, it was so big, nobody knew that would never sink it. But what nobody knew was that one of the torpedoes hit the rudder and the rudder was disconnected from the ship. And so the Bismarck was now a rudderless monster ship surrounded by others. Too many ships to take on all at once, but it could not escape because they could not control themselves.They were a sitting duck. And actually the Bismarck was sunk because of it all because it's rudder. Was disconnected.There's a lot of us Christians that are living rudderless. We are not connected to the thing that can turn our lives and change our lives and direct our lives and bring control to our lives. We're more like a fat party boat, just sort of going along, living life, moving forward. But we're not in a party.We're in a war and we have an enemy that is again, and we are called to be the Church of Christ called to make a difference in our generation. And if you know Christ is your savior and you're not in heaven yet, which if you're here is likely. You are in war. You are still in the fatigues and, and, and, and are Arsenal.And God is saying to you, you know what? I still can do it through you. You're still on my list. But we have to be connected to the rudder of the scriptures in what direct our lives, in what controls our lives.There has to be a passion, a renewed passion at God. I'll come to the scriptures and I'm willing to do whatever you're telling me to do. I wanna orient my life. I wanna live my life under the scriptures, and I'm gonna make it the primary voice into my life. And I'm gonna stop the priority of having time for sports radio or the market reports, or the political hot takes, or the pop culture of gossip.We're not wanting to miss the next episode of which flicks series I'm on, say, God, I want to be a noble Christian. I wanna be a Christian. That's like theses that just says, God, I hunger to hear you. I hunger to be connected to the rudder of truth, that you can direct me in this generation to make a difference for your kingdom to your glory.These people were all in. We have no sense that they were anything special. and some of the other places, they talk all about this and that these individuals were just people, these Jewish people in these synagogues that just said, I want the scriptures to speak into my life. I'm gonna embrace it every day.I'm gonna come with my questions and eagerly say, God, I make time to brush my teeth every day. Everybody's glad I make time to, to catch the reports. I make time to get there on work, at work every day so I don't lose my job. I make time to catch the bus so I don't get in trouble with my parents that I missed the bus for the ninth day again, uh, this semester, and they're gonna drive me.I will place you and your voice as a priority in my life. I'll be eager, I'll be responsive. These people wanted to hear God, obey God, be connected to God, so they sought the voice of God every day. He was a rudder. He led them and he used them. God help us to want to be that way. Lord, we come to you this morning.I think for me, Lord, often when I hear the word bes, I think of every adult Sunday school class that's named themselves after them. And I forget that this was just a group of people that love to hear you speak into their lives. I want to be like that, Lord. It's not a person in this room that knows Christ is their savior, that you do not still plan to use their lives for your glory.God, connect us to the rudder of the scriptures. Let us be listeners. Let us be o bears.Lord, to thank you. You want us? Thank you for the scriptures. In Jesus' name, amen. Now go on. Peace to love and serve. Enjoy the.
Acts 17:1-9And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,
Sermon Transcript:Good morning, church. Good morning. So good to be with you on this Super Bowl Sunday. It's funny, I see a lot of people blending into the pews this morning. For some reason, , uh, we're all excited. Um, but just for a few minutes here, I would pray that we would focus our hearts in on God's word and that we would just be expecting.It's, uh, it's amazing. As I was preparing even last night, uh, I prepare and hear because I like to look over, uh, the place where I'm gonna be preaching from. And the word that God kept giving me as I was praying and thinking through, uh, the sermon was that we would be expectant people. That we would be eager ready.Anticipating that God has a word for each one of us this morning. Remembering that this scripture is living and active. It's ready to penetrate deep down into us and take root and produce fruit. It'll teach us if we let it, how we can love the God who first loved us. So it's my hope and my prayer that this morning we would be ready expectant for him to do just that.The story that we're stepping back into is the story of the Book of Acts. We're continuing our journey following God's newly formed church as it spreads out from Jerusalem like wildfire into Judea and Samaria until the ends of the earth, and it carries with it a message of the greatest hope. The hope of a gospel of Jesus Christ.And as we have been following this story, we've been seeing the power of this message to turn hearts and minds and worlds broken and off kilter by sin upside down. The passage in particular that we're gonna be looking at this morning is found in Acts chapter 17 verses one through nine, and in this passage we see demonstrated to the obedience of Paul that this gospel message does in fact have the power to turn the world upside down, taking this fallen and broken sinful world and transforming it.All right, let's read the passage this morning, and you could follow along with me. As I read now, when they had passed through Amph Polis and a Apollo, they came to Thessalonika and there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in and as was his custom on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures explaining and proving that it was necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, saying this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of devout Greeks and not a few leading women, but the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble. They formed a mob and set the city in uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out to the crowd.And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities shouting these men who have turned the world upside down. Have come here also, and Jason has received them and they are all acting in the, against the decree of Caesar saying there there is another king.Jesus. And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things and when they had taken money as a security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. Would you pray with me this morning?Lord? Would you remind us that this word is your written word to us, your children, to guide us, to lead us, to challenge us, to shape us as we walk in obedience and joy in this gospel, which has turned our lives upside down from death into life. I pray, Lord, that we take seriously, but not with, uh, a solemn seriousness, A joyful seriousness.Lord, as we come to this passage, we would receive it with all gladness and joy, pressing it down deep into who we are and letting it bear fruit in us. Lord b, pray that your living an active word would be living and active in us. We pray all this in your name. Amen. Amen. It said that when you separate text from context, all that's left is a con.I heard that thought it was great. Uh, guy named Stuart Stafford said that, and if we're reminded that a con is when you persuade somebody typically by the use of perception, uh, deception, rather into believing something that is not most likely true, that's the last thing that we wanna do when we approach God's word.We don't wanna enter in, jump right into the story without first remembering where this little story takes place in the larger series of stories that we find in the Book of Acts. So as I mentioned in the beginning, the Book of Acts is a larger collection, right? Written by, uh, of stories, rather written by the author Luke, who was a physician, uh, a man who was very careful to record specific details and not only to record them, but to hear them from the eyewitnesses, the apostles.And not that this is not a history cuz it is, but we remember that this is a hand selected history to tell particular spirit led story, which Luke has been entrusted with. We see that this overall story has begun at the scene of the crime in Jerusalem. After the apostles have obediently waited on the promise of the spirit, they've received the spirit.In the, the spirit's enabling power, they've gone out and shared this powerful gospel of Jesus Christ and one by one, and really an, an unbelievable revival takes place among the Jews, and thousands are joined to the number of the apostles. And from there we see that this gospel is not only to be given to the Jews, but to even the surprise of Peter, it is to go to the world bigger than he ever dared dream.And it begins first with the household of Cornelius as he first receives the gospel and a little mini gentile Pentecost takes place. And from there we see what first begins as a trickle becomes a waterfall, and the great number of uncounted, number of gentiles start entering into the family of God the way has been opened.And Jesus is transforming and turning the world upside down. We remember this is the context of the larger context, but now the smaller context here is that Paul and Silas are now on what people call Paul's second missionary journey. And where we last left off last week was Paul was in Philippi. And we saw in this story that, uh, mark shared last week that through a, a series of unfortunate events, Paul and Silas find themselves in prison.But most remarkably, we see that not even the Roman prison can hold back God's gospel and its messengers. And we see in just a really topsy-turvy moment this Roman jailer who should have had all the power on his knees begging Paul and Silas for freedom and rescue. We see this gospel everywhere it goes, transforming and turning things on their head, this broken sins scarred world.So that's the context, that's what's taken place just before this. Now, as we take, uh, a shift our eyes towards the passage in Acts 17, it's important that we remember that. I wanna, I wanna break this down into three parts because it's helpful for me at least as we go through to take each section as it comes.And the way that I'm sort of laying out the roadmap, if you will, is, uh, I'm breaking it into three parts. The first that we're gonna look at this morning is I'm calling the practice, which is verse one through three, the practice. Next, we're gonna go and look at verses just the end of verse three, which I'm calling the purpose, and then lastly the verse four to the end of the passage, verse nine, the power.Let's first look at the practice. Now, when they had passed through Anthropol and that Bologna, they came to Thessalonika where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in and as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures explaining to them and proving to them that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.What we see from these first preliminary verses is that Paul had a system. This is Paul's second missionary journey. He's, he's developed a missionary, uh, a system in his, uh, mission work ev, an evangelical practice. And the first thing that's demonstrated to us is that Paul is selective and strategic in his choice of where he goes to share the gospel.I don't mean stingy, I mean strategic. We see that Paul passes through em for Paulis, Alonna and comes to Fessa. Paul's eyes were set on Fessa. The question then becomes, why this city? Why not stop and, uh, and have a similar address in Anthropol or app Apollo? Why come to Sica? Uh, number of pretty, um, basic reasons I think are that Fessa was the second largest city in Greece.It's the capital of Macedonia. It's home to 200,000 people. Gentiles and Jews alike call it home. It's a great, uh, military and political powerhouse. It's a great import export Port City. . And if Paul, for a moment, remember, Paul's mission is to spread the news of this gospel to take it into places where it will catch fire and there go out.Paul sets his sight on the nikah and what we wanna remember is that this journey, and there's a, I think there's a picture of a map somewhere, maybe, uh, this journey is no small journey, even though on this map it looks tiny. Phillipi to Fessa is about a hundred mile walk,and Paul did it on foot. Paul had his sight set on Fess Leica. But even within Fess Leica, Paul's selectiveness doesn't stop. We see here in verse two that Paul doesn't stop in the busy marketplace. He doesn't stop in the Pagan temple. He chooses rather to go to the synagogue of the Jews and we see that this was not merely a one time thing, but rather was a custom of his as was his custom.There's a number of reasons that I think even just as I read, I could see for him choosing this place. I think firstly that for whatever reason he had gotten permission and that he knew he would there have a willing ears, but also Paul had a great burden for his own Jewish people, that they might hear the news of their Messiah, that they might accept the news of this king Jesus who was their Messiah, but don't get it twisted.This synagogue was home to many Gentile believing Greek. There were actually great number of Greeks. You don't always talk about this, but a great number of Greeks and Gentiles who had accepted the Jewish faith as their own and followed in the traditions of the Jewish people. And as we see in the passage, a great number of them were there at the synagogue.We have to remember that Paul was led by the spirit. We remember in chapters B, a few chapters back when Paul desired to go into Asia, what happens? The spirit stops him turning him rather, on this path,we see that Paul was not stingy, but strategic and selective in choosing the spot the location mattered to Paul.The next element to Paul's practice, which I think we can learn a ton from, is in his transmission of the gospel in the way that he gives the gospel.I wanna look at a few verbs that are used here in these first three verses and I found, I got really excited about this. I love words. I love kind of looking at the, the root of them and understanding them a little better. So let's just look at three words here. The first word I wanna look at is that word reasoned.That word reasoned. In Greek. This word is the, the, the Greek word delego, where we get the word dialogue from. I found this so fascinating cuz I think what we tend to think of is that Paul comes into the synagogue, opens up his Bible, or his TA scroll, or whatever it was, or even just his notes and starts to monologue to those who were assembled there.At least here. That is not his practice. Here he begins with dialogue, a back and forth, a question and an answer he chooses as he enters into the synagogue. To rather than monologue at them, to dialogue with them over these scriptures. I think as believers we can learn a lot from Paul's example here, it's pretty easy to memorize a, a list of gospel tens, the Romans road, which are all great things.It's a little harder to dialogue with people over the scriptures. It's a little harder to have a give and take a conversation over the scriptures. I think we'd, we'd find many people willing and able and excited to do that with us. But it takes really knowing that what we are teaching from Isaiah chapter one, verse 18, the Lord himself says this, come now.Let us reason together. Say if the Lord though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they're red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Let's follow in Paul and our own Lord's example and reason the gospel with those we come into contact with. The next word I wanna look at is the word explaining he explained to them.And that word, again, looking at the Greek hears, is fascinating. This word is the, the Greek word dego, which means I love this definition to open by dividing a under prying back to, to crack open.This word is used a lot in the gospels. There's a, a spot in, in Mark, chapter seven, verse 34, where Jesus heals a blind man. He, he touches his eyes and he speaks a prayer to his father. He says, and it's in a, he says, opened. Dego is the Greek equivalent of that very word we see later in Luke's other gospel, or I guess it would be earlier in Luke's other gospel in Luke chapter 24, when the risen Jesus, the resurrected Jesus is walking on the robe with a number of his disciples who do not recognize him, and he's walking with them and they're, they're lamenting the fact that this Jesus, who was their hope had died.And they're even telling this apparent stranger about how this Jesus apparently rose from the dead, but they didn't see it. And Jesus patiently explains opening the scriptures to them, showing them the very same thing that Paul is attempting to, to demonstrate to these assembled people in the synagogue that the, the Messiah must suffer and die opening that same word, opening the scriptures.Remember, Luke doesn't do anything by accident. I think he's calling our mind back to this passage. And what do we know later in, in verse 32 of that Luke 24 chapter, Jesus, after he leaves them, the disciples recognized him right at the moment, as right before he left. And their words are, did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the scriptures to us.Here, Paul is following, in that same example, opening up the scriptures Ou openedthe last word I wanna look at here. Is the word proved or proving a number of other translations? Maybe your translation says giving evidence. I think that's a pretty good translation. But the word is actually this word. It's permi. And what I found so interesting about this word is wow, it certainly has a connotation.Giving evidence. That's certainly one of the ways of looking at this word, setting before evidence, before someone. It also is used quite often, even in the gospels to refer to food. When Jesus feeds the 5,000, the word is there to set before,and maybe I'm reading into it a bit, but when I read this and I, and I see giving evidence, but I also picture this idea of setting a feast at the feet of hungry people. Oh, is that not what Paul is doing here as he reasons with them and not, doesn't monologue at them, but dialogues with them as he opens the scriptures to them, revealing to them the truth that has been hidden for thousands of years.Is he not setting before them a feast? And it seems as if he's saying to them, will you not?Taking a deeper look at these three words helped me in my understanding of Paul's methodology behind sharing the gospel. Paul was not afraid to shake up or mix up how he gave the gospel. He didn't just come at it one way. He was ready, willing, and able to come at it from different angles to vary his transmission of this gospel message.There's one last element to Paul's practice that I think is not actually very overt in the text, not very obvious but's in the subtext. The only spot that I could see where I could sort of point to this is when it says on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them three Sabbath days. When we see that, we remember that that does not mean three days.That actually means three weeks. . Think of it as on three different Sundays. And my question as I'm reading that is, well, what does he do with the rest of his time there? What did he do? Did he get up there? Did he preach at them and then hide away? Well, fortunately for us, we have insight into this in the letters, which he wrote later to the church that would be formed from these addresses.Yes, A church was formed out of just three weeks.We see from Paul's own words that Paul did not only talk the gospel talk, he walked the gospel walk. We wanna read these two passages to you. It's found in First Thessalonians chapter two, six through eight and 10 through 12. This is Paul speaking to the newly formed Thessalonian church. Now, nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others.Though we could have made demands as apostles. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel, but also ourselves because you had become very dear to us. And then in verse 10, you are witnesses, you and God also how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers, for you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.They walked the walk. They did not only talk the talk and in a generation where the cry against the church is not that we don't preach at people, but that we are hypocritical of the message which we preach. We can learn from this.Church. When we bring tobe together, both the gospel message and the gospel life, then our witness is effective.I hope you hear that and feel a little bit intimidated like I did the gospel. Life is impossible to live out. It should daunt you. You can't do it apart from Christ, you see church. Unless we are willing to preach and receive the gospel that we are preaching to others each day, we will not be effective in giving it.How can we expect others to receive that which we are ignoring in our own lives? The message of the gospel being filled up on Jesus so that we can give the gospel to others. Walking the walk as well as talking the talk. Okay, we're gonna move on. That was the longest section, I promise. But we see here that Paul does have a very set practice in the way that he would transmit this gospel message.We see that location mattered to Paul. He was selective. He had a plan. We see that Paul is willing and able and effective at varying his transmission of that gospel, that he would reason with them, that he would explain to them, that he would prove to them. And lastly, we see that Paul not only talks the gospel talk, but he walks it.He walks the gospel walk. And that takes me now to our next section, the shortest section, but not the least important, the purpose. Okay, and that comes only at the end of verse three. Some of you might say, how can that be a section? That is the shortest section I've ever seen. It's the cornerstone of the passage on which the entire passage turns.The words that Paul speaks, which Mike spoke earlier, this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you is the Christ You see, Paul, up until this point, has ex been explaining to them from the scriptures why this Messiah had to suffer and die and be raised. He had not yet given the Messiah a name, but here Paul reveals in a great moment of revelation that this message was not merely a thing.But a person that this hope, which they were proclaiming, was not merely an idea, but Jesus himself, Jesus of Nazareth, this gospel is not merely about Jesus. It is Jesus. This word was made flesh and it dwelled among them. It lived the life that they could not live. That we could not live. It died the death that we deserve to die.And Jesus was raised to life, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and now works to give that same life to his church and to all those who call on his name, this passage, this little tiny. end section on verse three is so important because it shows us demonstrating to us by Paul's godly example that Paul is not, does not have his allegiance given to a cause, but to a king, Paul has not dedicated his life, given his allegiance to an ideal.It's to a king. It's the one who arrested him on the road to Damascus, who turned his life from a terrorist to an evangelist that's about as upside down as you can possibly imagine.His whole life's mission was to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. The Jews knew a thing or two about mess. They didn't know Jesus of Nazareth, or at least these didn't. They would've heard of him wasn't long ago before when he had walked the Earth, his 33 years of life on Earth. They would've heard of Nazareth.They would've said, like Nathan said, they think Good come from NazarethChurch. We need to be people about Jesus. That we would reason about Jesus. That we would open the Bible reveal and reveal Jesus. That we would set Jesus before people. Not some dogmatic teaching, not some trope of memorized verses, although those could be powerful. Set the person Jesus before people.A king, not a.That takes me to the final section. I told you that was shorter to the final section, the largest section versus four through nine. And I'm just calling this the power, and some of them were persuaded and joined Paul in Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women, but the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble.They formed a mob and set the city an uproar attacking the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out of the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities shouting. These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And Jason Recce and Jason has received them and they're all acting against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another king Jesus.The people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. When they had taken a money as a security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. We see now Paul has done it. It's all come to a head. The cornerstone, the centerpiece moment has happened. This Messiah, he had a name. I met him on the road to Damascus, and his name was Jesus.I think this is where he lost a lot of his listeners. They probably would've track with him. So far. He was a smart man who knew the Torah. He probably would've demonstrated very effectively that this Messiah had to come and suffer and die. But the moment they gave, the moment he gave a name to this Messiah, I think he would've lost a great number of people.And that's for this reason. When the power of the gospel is set before you, it leaves no room for middle ground.Paul presents the gospel without any possibility of a neutral response. Accept it or reject it. Those are the options.We see that very response yield out. We see those accept and those who do not. Those who are persuaded and those who are not, and there is no middle ground demonstrated here. It's was just so in Jesus's earthly ministry. He did not come to elicit a neutral response. And yet our culture, our world, loves to react to Jesus with the greatest neutrality.He was a great moral teacher. He was a good man, somebody to be admired and perhaps when it's not too inconvenient to be imitated, but Lord King, slow your role, buddy. I can't tell you in my own generation how many people I know who I interacted with at a secular college, who the Jesus, they didn't hate Jesus.They liked himabout as neutral response as you could imagine. CS Lewis, who was a, a, a really well-known author, uh, of the Narnia series, he, uh, wrote an uncounted amount of books, a lot of which I'm very indebted to in my life and walk as a believer, and probably one of the most popular, and one of the ones I've read the most times is the book Mere Chris.And in that book, we see that this problem of a neutral response to Christ is common and has been for a while because CS Lewis generates a rebuttal that he calls the trilemma.See, Lewis Jesus gave options for how to respond. He said, listen, if you honestly read the claims that are made by Jesus and the Gospels, there are three possible ways you can respond. First, you could say, honestly, he's a liar. The claim that he made about being able to forgive sin, about being the son of God, about being the only way to obtain eternal life, he was just lying.Or secondly, you could also respond by calling Jesus a lun. A megalomaniac, a man who says, I am God. We've seen people on the streets say that we don't call them Lord. We call them a lunatic.And lastly,perhaps just perhaps the claims that Jesus made the claims about being the way the truth and the life were true, in which case he is nothing other than Lord, liar, lunatic, or Lord. Do not call him a great moral teacher. Please. When the gospel is presented, when Jesus is presented, it leaves no room for a neutral response.All right, let's look at these two responses real quick. First, we see happily that the gospel is, And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul in Silas, as did a great, many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. We see a great variety here, come to the saving knowledge, accepting that this Christ was Jesus.It's a pretty big deal. Sounds like a lot of people accepted the gospel as a result of Paul's ministry, even as we see here, a few leading women. Really interesting. I really wanted to know who these leading women were. I tried to find out. It's very ambiguous. There's some, there's some thoughts, but the, the best I could find is that these women were probably wives to, uh, powerful political or military leaders in the city of Esla Naka.Most likely they were Gentile Greeks and not. And most likely, they had a great deal to do with forming the early Thessalonian Church with their money, power, and influence. Remember, Paul had a strategic outlook on giving the gospel. He knew that this place was the center of a lot of goings on. He knew those women would be there, but also the great many of the devout Greeks continuing the trend, which we've seen all throughout the story.Up until this point, the Gentiles are eager and ready for this gospel. There are no stumbling blocks to it. They're, they're excited to receive Jesuseager and ready without any rejection in their hearts. We see the devout Greeks, eager, and these were not Greeks who had never heard of the Jewish customs. These were Greeks who had walked in the ways of the Jewish tradition, so they knew their Bibles, and yet they still received. Exciting stuff.Next we get probably to the most tragic section in the whole passage, verses five through seven. The gospel is rejected,but the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob and set the city in uproar.This, uh, response as we see as it goes on, that they unite with wicked men of the rabble. They set the city in uproar. They drag Jason out, and they make accusations against him saying they've turned the world upside down. These men who have turned the world upside down have come here. And Jason has received them.They're all acting against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another king. Jesus. Do you know what came to my mind when I read this passage? I was reminded of when Jesus was set before the Jewish people, before he was crucified, and the option was given them at that moment to free him or to choose another from the prisons to be freed.And in that moment, John 18, verse 40 says, they cried out again. Not this man but Barabbas choosing to reject the one they should have accepted as Messiah and choosing rather, an evil man, an insurrectionist, a robber, most likely a murderer. They would choose him over the perfect lamb. And once again, they make the same mistake.Here we see it again. They reject Jesus. And it's so fascinating that right away, what do they do? Unite with wicked men. Choose rather wicked men.And we see a fascinating, and again, intention, uh, intended, ratherset a phrase here that Luke gives, forming a mob and setting the city in uproar. And then right after we see those words, what is the accusation made by these men? These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, who, let me ask you a question. Who's turning the world upside down here?Where is the wrongness? Is it in Paul and Silas preaching a message of hope or is it in these wicked men turning the marketplace upside down, doing violence, screaming accusations, stealing money?We see a, a last little important detail in the dialogue or in, in the words given to us by this assembled mob. He said they're speaking against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another king. Jesus. They've chosen a, they've chosen, they've made their choice. They've chosen a king. His name's not Jesus.His name's Caesar. They are choosing the one who has them in bondage. They're choosing Caesar, the one who has their people, ens, slave.Who is ruling over them with an iron fist, the one that they hope the Messiah will free them from. And here as they wait, they've rejected him and chosen rather Caesar as their king.This last bit begs the question, when wicked men accuse you of turning the world upside down, can you not be sure of setting it to right.I read this part of the story and I was reminded of a pastime, a favorite pastime of mine. As a child when I was young, I didn't have a lot of forms of, uh, digital entertainment, so I had to find creative ways to entertain myself. And being the really smart, educated, scholarly young boy that I was, I decided to get on the couch and hang my head off.And I would do this thing where I would get on the couch, hang my head off the back of the couch, and I would try to imagine that my living room was upside down. I would picture that the ceiling was the roof and the roof was the ceiling. And something really cool happens when the blood rushes to your head , is that after a while you start to actually really be able to see it.You're like, wow, my living room looks cool. The ceiling is on the floor. The carpet is the ceiling, the fan on the ceiling is now something I could step on. And everything starts to seem upside down. And if you did it long enough, it became very convincing. And I remember when I was young, I used to try to like walk off the edge of the couch and then bam.I'm like, dang it, it didn't work. I thought I was Peter Pan for a minute. You see what happened is I spent long enough in that upside down position that it started to feel normal.That's what's happening to these poor men. They've lived and benefited and walked in a world upside down for so long. They haven't any idea anymore. The blood is rushed to their head and they're so lost and confused that when they come and a message of hope is proclaimed in Christ, and he takes the lives of these devout Greeks, leading women and a few of the Jews, and flips it back to rights, they say upside down.But I ask you the question, is this, this rabble, this mob, this violence, the world that God intended to build, that he desired us to live in? Or is this the world produced by sin and. The very things which God sent his son Jesus to defeat.You see, this passage demonstrates so clearly that this gospel, despite the title of the sermon, is not turning the world upside down. It's turning it back on its proper axis, this broken, destroyed sins. Scarred world is being healed, story by story, person by person, moment by moment.And yet these poor men are elite. Their allegiance is given to a king who is enslaving them. That's our world.And like Paul, our hearts shouldn't be disgusted, but it should break that they're so lost.That they've been upside down for so long, they no longer know it to be true.I'm gonna close now with a question.How have you responded to Jesus and to his gospel?Because as we heard this morning, there's really only two responses.Maybe you're here and you feel that you have rejected Jesus. You've written him off. You've started looking for other options. He doesn't work. You don't really like the things that you've come to realize about him from his word. You've started looking elsewhere where my words to you are this. It's never too late to change your.Romans five 10 reminds us that while you were still an enemy, Christ made you alive. It says Romans five 10, for while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. How much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life? Even now, even as you have stand in rejection of God, he wants you, desires you, seeks you, is after you.Even now, if you let him, he'll turn your world, which has been upside down your whole life, right side up.He desires your heart, even as I'm sure he desired, the men who were crying accusations against him. In choosing Cesar, don't choose Cesar. Don't give allegiance to that which enslaves youturn and be healed. Find in Christ a hope that is greater than any you will know anywhere else. Trust me, I know maybe you're here and you are neutral. Maybe your whole life you've kind of been sitting on the fence with Jesus. Maybe there's a lot that you like about Jesus. Maybe you've sung the songs.Maybe you've gone to Sunday school even. Maybe you have friends who are Christians and maybe you really don't mind it that much. Maybe you kind of like the positive vibes you get.I have a word I feel like the Lord gave me for you, friend. The fence is no safe place for you.You're not safe on the fence. And I hate, I don't want to have to preach this message, but it's the truth. In Matthew 12, verse 30, Jesus says, he who is not with me is against me in Revelation, Jesus says, since you are neither hot nor cold, I spat you out of my mouth.Maybe it's time you stop liking Jesus and start loving him.I'm not speaking a message here, uh, of legalism. I'm not telling you, maybe it's time you start getting your life in order before you go to Jesus. That's not at all what I'm saying. That's the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying go to Jesus, cry out for him. Recognize you can't do a single thing good in yourself.Don't just be, don't just give allegiance to a cause or an idea given allegiance to a king and watch him change your. Through the gospel of grace. Okay, my last group that I want to address this morning, maybe you're here. Hopefully you're here and you have accepted Jesus as Lord over your life. Maybe you've accepted him and now he's taken your upside down life and day by day moment by moment, he's slowly taking the upside down parts of your life and writing them back on their proper axis, and your family at your work and your relationships and your marriage doesn't happen overnight with all parts of you.He does it eternally and everlastingly. But then our life is the walk of slowly, moment by moment, letting Jesus work in us and turn our lives back in their proper orientation. For those of us who have acce have have received Christ. Maybe the next step is to follow in Paul's footsteps, to get a game plan, to ask the Lord, Lord, where is my synagogue?Who are the ears open to me? Who might be leaning in and ready to receive the message of hope?Is it in your home with your children and your husband or wife? Maybe it's in your work with your employees or your coworkers. Maybe it's the soccer field, your ki, the parents of the kids who are playing. Maybe it's your youth group. Maybe it's a homeless shelter. I don't know where your synagogue is, but ask God to reveal it so that you can live out the gospel and don't hoard it, but give it out freely.Be ready, church to reason with them, to dialogue, not monologue. Be ready to explain. Divide a under and reveal what lies beneath. Know your scriptures so that you can reveal Jesus, present to them nothing more or less than Jesus. Set him before those in your life as the only way to life.Set Jesus before them as the one true and rightful king who takes this broken, fallen, and upside down world and turns it right side up. Let's close in prayer now. Church.Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you that it fills us. It challenges us. It reveals Lord to us so much about who you are and your.Lord, I pray that we don't turn a deaf ear to your word, but we let it penetrate down deep inside us and take root in our lives and produce fruit. Lord, it's my prayerthat no distractions would come, Lord, that the enemy would be far from our minds now as we mull over your word and that guilt and shame would have no place, Lord, but that joy, peace, anticipation, conviction that these, the things would be what fill our minds now. Father, we thank you for all that you are and all that you are doing.We thank you for your gospel and for your son Jesus, who is that gospel who is taking this upside down world and turning it right side up. Father, we pray all of this in your name. Amen. Go now in the fear of the Lord in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Thank you.
Acts 16:19-40And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning everybody. Invite you to take your Bibles to the Book of Acts, chapter 16. Gonna be continuing our series here, the Spirit at Work to the Ends of the Earth, acts 16. We're gonna look at verse 19 down through verse 40, the end of the chapter as we look at another individual in this three person story that we find in Acts chapter 16.Acts chapter 16. I'm gonna read verse 19 and following. And we're talking now about the slave girl we heard about last week, but when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul in Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they are disturbing our city.They advocate customs that are not lawful us as Romans to accept or practice. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them and suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.And immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bonds were unfed. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, did not harm yourself, but we're all here. The jailer called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fury fell down before Paul and Silas.Then he brought them out and said, SIRS, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once.He and all his family. . Then he brought them up into the house and set before the food before them, and rejoiced along with his entire household that had, he had believed in God. But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police saying, let those men go. And the jailer reported these words to Paul saying, the magistrates have sent to let you go, therefore come out now and go in peace.But Paul said to them, they've beaten us publicly, uncon condemned men who are Roman citizens and have thrown us into prison, and do they now throw us out secretly? No. Let them come themselves and take us out. The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens.So they came and apologized to them, and they took them out and asked them to leave the city. So they went outta the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed. Let's pray.Lord, I thank you for this story. I thank you for this entire set of stories and the lessons that we can learn there about the gospel. Lord, I pray that you would speak into us. We come with such a variety of needs and struggles and weights that are being carried into this room and by those online, God, we ask Your word would be our teacher through your spirit today.In Jesus' name, amen. We were flying to South America a number of years ago, and it was the first time I had ever seen one of these location guide. On, on the flight. It's an 18 hour flight where we were going to Durban, South Africa actually we're flying into Johannesburg and they had on the wall a couple of big monitors and there you could, you know, you could track the flight as it goes across the ocean.And then you come down the coast of Africa and, and we were following our way along. It showed where we were on the journey. We're giving a location guide of the Apostle Paul. That's why we keep throwing maps at you. Now. I hope it does not have the impact on you that it had on me. When I was watching the location guide.My real reason to watch the location guide was to see how much father I had till this interminable trip was over. I hope that's not how you view in this series, but as you look at it, where we've come is Paul, on the second missionary journey, has traveled all through. Area called Asia, which actually is modern day Turkey.They're crossing over the agency and they've now gone into that area, which is called Trace, which is up at the top, and basically that is a part of the whole land block called Greece. Today, they had gone to a city called Minneapolis and then had traveled by foot about 10 miles into the city of Philippi as they, as they have arrived there.We were introduced last Sunday to two females that are actually being used by Luke to tell us the story of the founding of the church. This whole chapter, actually, as commentators are quick to point out, is basically not only the start of the church at Philippi, a church that Paul deeply loved as is reflected in the letter he wrote to them and the things he says about them.But it is a, it is a. Accounting of the starting of a church that is told by telling the stories of three individuals coming to Christ Lydia, a wealthy cosmopolitan owner of a high-end boutique, providing expensive garments to the monied crowd of her city. She represents those who are empowered. She had wealth, business success, the right connections We see a second individual, the unnamed girl, the 10 to 14 year old slave girl who is the powerless, a slave used for what her masters wanted, what she could provide for them.She has no voice of her own in her culture. And third, we come to a guy the jailer. A blue collar ex-military guy will see why I say that in a moment. The jailer, the warden, he represents those who are power wielding. Three different people. We looked at the first two last time, and what I planned to do this morning is to talk about the third one, this jailer, and then at the end to draw three, uh, lessons that we learned from the lives of all three of these people.But we look today at this, this jailer, this charter member of the church at Philippi, and we find we're gonna follow the same outline we did last time with the, the, the females, who they were, how they came to Christ. And what happened to them. First of all, who he was. He's a jailer. Now, again, I've mentioned to you that city of Philippi was a, a, uh, was designed to be and was formed by the Romans in 42 BC in particular, to be a place where military veterans from the Roman armies would come.They were given citizenship, there was where they were taken care of. This town is a military town. It is full of military folks, retired military, retired military. People in Philippi tended to if they were young enough to still work to get a civil service job. There's every reason to believe this. Jailer is a former military guy also.It's hard to imagine a city like Philippi that is filled with so many tough military types and most of the mis Koreans that you're gonna have thrown into the local jail didn't have a military guy that was the jailer. He's a tough guy, Paul and Silas. Are beaten to a pulp. In the earlier verses we read this morning, we read phrases like this.The garments were tore off them. Literally, it means they were ripped off. They were the, there were orders to beat them with rods. They were inflicted with many blows upon them, and then they threw them bodily into prison. These guys went to prison into this jailer's prison with lacerated backs, with bruised bodies, and they're thrown in here.And this guy shows no compassion. He doesn't wash their wounds. He doesn't try to say, man, you guys have just nothing. He just throws 'em in. As a matter of fact, what we see he does is the, they say, watch these guys in particular. So what he does is he puts them into the maximum security cell. It says he put them into the center cell, the cell with no windows, the cell utterly surrounded by everything else.And on top of that, he throws them into stocks. Now, when we think of stocks, we think of Williamsburg, Virginia or Plymouth Mass, where you know, you get in and you get the family photos and the family picks. But the stocks that were used here and a prison were known for the fact that they had multiple holes for you to put your hands and your feet in order that they could stretch you in.Uh, difficult circumstance, difficult positions. It was designed to be uncomfortable. Imagine your back lacerated, your body bruised. You're twisted and contorted, and this is the place that they are put this guy is, is is basically, uh, heaping it on them as he puts them into the jail. He's not looking for spiritual input.He's not asking questions. He's not, there's no conversation. The only relationship that Paul and Silas have with this guy at the start is the silent one, where they are utterly beat up by the town. And now our military jailer friend, how the gospel came to him. Well, we see what he saw. What he saw, first of all was two men who in the face of suffering had peace and.The term, the, the, the term used in verse 25 is they were praying and singing hymns. They weren't gonna sleep. You can imagined the physical discomfort. This is not, this is not a jail where you took a, a, a good night's rest. They're in potential agony, certainly discomfort. But they used the opportunity not to do what was so common in this part of the world, which is people were very outspoken with their emotions.They, they, they lament, they lent loudly. They, they complain. Sure. There were lots of voices in the prison like that. And these guys are singing, they are worshiping, they are praying. He says they were praying and singing. It's utterly contrary. And it says all the prison are listening in as these guys are, are, are, are praying to the Lord as they are, as they are worshiping God.They did what? Some of you have learned to do in the night seasons when you're awake and it's discomforting, you can't sleep. You have two options. You can worry, I'm not getting any sleep, I'm just, I'm getting more worked up. I'm just gonna be tired tomorrow. I got all this on my mind. There's so much you can worry or you can worship.They chose worship and it impacted this jailer. He's listening to these guys. He hasn't had prisoners that are praising God in prison after what they have just experienced and what he is doing to them now. Secondly, what he saw was that in the face of cruelty, these guys manifested kindness and forgiveness.What happens is there, there's an earthquake. And it's such a tumultuous earthquake that literally the jail jail's, doors are thrown off, they're hinges and are opened that it says somehow even the, the, uh, bonds, the, the metal changed bracelets and, and, uh, ankle pieces are broken loose and the jailer wakes up.And whether he has a house next door or he actually is staying in the prison, he comes in and he sees the doors are open. Maybe he runs into some prisoners and sees they're running around, they're manacle free. And he realizes this is all on his watch. Whether or not he's going to lose his life for such a, a, uh, failure of duty because people escape under his watch or he's just gonna face the humiliation.This is a shame honor culture. And he decides he'd be furs to take his life. So he gets out the sword. He's about to kill himself. And Paul and Barn, Paul and Silas Paul in particular, hollers out. Do not harm yourself. We're all here. Apparently they could have been gone, whether Paul and Silas talked the rest of the people in disdain, but certainly they chose to wait.They're freed. They're out of the they're, they're out of there in bondage. The doors are open. Says, don't harm yourself. I'm sure this guy's thinking, why are you looking out for me, ? I mean, you're in those stocks. You're in this inner cell because of me and Paul responds, don't harm yourself. We're here.It's gonna be okay. Nobody's left and nobody's going. The response he's watching, he's seeing something he doesn't understand. They've responded to his cruelty with kindness. They're responding with a forgiveness he does not understand. 2006, many of you know the story of the Amish schoolhouse over in Lancaster County where a young man who had lost a daughter and was him bittered, that his, his child had been born.He actually had three other kids, but his daughter had died in childbirth and he couldn't get over it, and he just wanted to take it out on somebody. So he went to an Amish school among, with Amish families that he actually did deliveries to. And he came in and his plan was to molest and abuse the girls and then killed him.He wasn't able to get to that, the molesting part because the police were called quick enough, but not before he had shot 10 of them, five of them died. But the real shocking outgrowth of the story. Beyond even the horror of the tragedy was the response of the Amish community. There was a almost instantaneous spirit of forgiveness.As a matter of fact, the next day, leaders of that particular Amish community, including family members of the children that had been killed, went to the home of the parents of the young man, had had killed their daughters and said, we are here for you. We are both grieving the loss of our children. It made no sense.It may not make sense to you listening. It's hard for us to wrap our arms around this in 2010. Three people with PhDs from three different universities who were, uh, many years, scholars of the Amish people did a, did research in this particular event and the aftermath of it, and they actually wrote a book, and this is the book, Amish Grace, I commend it to you for reading.It is a book that basically they were presenting the, the foundation of Amish belief that prompted them to forgive. The astonishing thing you'll find in the book, which I didn't expect, is that there's a whole section of the book that is presenting many different examples of this similar type of expression, but the mo of the, of the Amish people, forgiving people that have done.That have perpetrated evils that have been drunk, drivers that have killed him. And the, the, it's a practice. And the striking thing is that they did multi-year studies where they would say to people, you know, you, your, your instantaneous emotional response was to go to these people. Like they went to the, the wife of the young man that killed the girls,and they asked permission to come to her funeral for her husband. And she's there with her three small children. And they said that over half of the people that attended the funeral were Amish. Most of them, the parents of the children. And so they, they, they read of these things and these guys thought, okay, is this real or is this just an emotional?So they, they actually, in these studies, take them years later and say, now as you look back, now as you've dealt with the loss, how do you feel? And it's astonishing to hear them telling a story. No, we forgive. So basically the book is an analysis of where does this come from, that you could forgive this way as as a normal practice of your experience.And they came up. I'm summarizing now three particular things that they believe as a people group that are the foundation. For forgiving others, I'd like to tell you them real quick, and these are gonna, some of it's just gonna be in my own words, my own summaries. Number one, the Amish believed that Jesus Christ died on the cross and died forgiving as murderers, as a result.To be a Christian is to have that at the very center of your life. There's no other religion in the world that has a man dying for his enemies as the central principle of faith. They summarize that because of that. This is the, the, the, the authors summarize that the, that is the first reason why these people that they embrace and they go all the way back to the Anna Baptist and the 15 hundreds and talk about where the Amish came from, which I didn't know was actually a guy.I think his name was Jacob, a Amer, and, and the whole story, the second thing they found was that the Amish believe in the sovereignty of God. That they really hold the fact that God is the giver of life and, and that God has individuals. He, he controls both life and death ultimately, and that ultimately nobody chooses the times of the seasons.Then this in their sense, there is a sense of which their children lived a full life. I'm just gonna say a sidebar here. This particular belief for me when my young boy drowned was central to doing life, to live with the fact that he had not lived his full life, but that we had robbed him by not protecting him was, was overwhelmingly fathomless.But God brought us back to Mark Seth. He has lived his full life. I declare the end from the beginning, they were able to say, you know, they didn't do what we all do when something's done. When a child is killed or an individual's killed, our immediate thought is, you robbed him. Of all those years, you robbed us of what we would've had.The Amish have built into the theology apparently, that God was super intending. They believe in the sovereignty of God. And the third thing, they believe that forgiveness is an act of self renunciation. You renounce your right for payback. You're saying for the sake of God and for the sake of other people, I am not going to pay back.I forgive. The author said that this is alien to our culture, which does not value self renunciation, but rather. Values self-assertion. It's about my freedom. It's about my rights. But they said they embrace the concept of Jesus, that we don't have rights. We have yielded them to him. That there is beauty in self renunciation and self denial.In the place of asserting myself, I'm gonna read a statement they made. The author said this, the Christian believes that the meaning of life is to deny yourself, renounce your claims to your rights, give up your claims for yourself, and seek to serve God and others. I deny myself for other people, they said our culture of self aser assertion is if you are wronged, the response is to seek revenge.But in the counterculture of self renunciation, when you are harmed. The response in the power of Christ is to forgive. Now, you may be out there thinking that is impossible, and I'm gonna say this to you. You are 100% correct. You can live that way. But Jesus did, and Jesus is willing to live that way through you.And the the stunning picture that went worldwide of the aftermath of this violent, horrible death of those children was of a community that had embraced centrally forgiveness. This is what is happening in this jail cell and this prison in Philippi. This guy is looking and. Why are they responding to cruelty with kindness?Why are they forgiving me for what I did to them and others have done to them? And there was no explanation apart from something he had never experienced before. With we find what he realized. The jailer knows they have something he doesn't have. They have a resource that he has never tapped into. He humbles himself and asks, verse 30, what must I do to be saved?Now I want you to address this for a second. There's two wrong ways of looking at this. I don't think this means that this guy was ready at an evangelistic meeting. And he says, I get it. I get all, and he's tried to all the theology, you know, he doesn't know the gospel. He hasn't heard the gospel. But what he does know, I'll come back to that.So I don't think this is that he's coming with a full understanding of salvation. I don't think he even knows what the word salvation means. But I also don't go the other side, which I've read a couple of people, right? Which is to say there is no spiritual aspect to this. In other words, he's saying, well, when he says, um, what I do this be saved, he means rescued and basically saying, what do I need to do to get out of this mess I'm in?To which I would reply, what mess? Nobody's gone. I mean, this guy in the midst of an earthquake has been able to keep all his prisoners. This is magnificently successful. There's no mess. He's saying, how do I get rescued from this? No, he's in great shape. He's gonna be commended. Nobody's gone, even though their bonds are off and the doors are open, somehow this jailer has kept all these guys in tow, he's up for a promotion.So he's not saying, how do I get out of this mess? Oh, he's saying this. I'm powerless to act. With the power I'm seeing in this jail, I'm powerless to, to live with the reality that with a, in the face of a power that I am seeing, here's the power. It's a power that causes these prisoners in the face of suffering to be singing and praising their God.There's an earthquake that all of a sudden just has to happen, happen to happen when these guys show up. And third, I have prisoners that I've mistreated, disdain, cared nothing for. And they're looking out for me with the compassion and forgiveness and kindness. I don't understand. He realizes, guys, I need what you have.In this sense, I need rescuing. I need embrace, embracing something what you are representing. And the third thing we find is what he did. Paul says in verse six, verse 31, man, you need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ that will bring you the real deliverance. Basically, he's saying, you don't need to do anything.You hear what he's saying? I mean, this is a tough guy, former military. What do we need to do? He says, nothing about doing, it's about looking. It's about turning to, it's about embracing and accepting. I've told this story before, but it's a great one from church history. Young man named Charles Spurgeon, late in his teenage years, couldn't get to church one Sunday, and he actually was not a believer at the time.He'd sort of been dabbling, trying to figure out what was true, what was not true in the midst of a violent snowstorm in London, he couldn't get through. And so for shelter, actually, he went into what he, what it was known as a primitive Methodist church that was, uh, uh, a speaker that was speaking. It was not pastor couldn't get in.And this guy who was not a trained speaker, stands up and, and begins to talk to the about a dozen people. Peron Spurgeon said, were there. And this guy gets up there in the pulpit and, and he talk, and Spurgeon talks about his accent. And you know, it, it obviously, uh, uh, a blue collar guy that wasn't used to public speaking.And he, and he chose his text. Isaiah 45 verse 22. In which the text says this, look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there's none else. In Spurgeon's autobiography, he records his reaction. Here's what he said. He had not much to say, thank God for that. Compelled him to keep on repeating his text, and there was nothing needed by me at any rate, except his text.Then stopping, he pointed to where I was sitting under the gallery and he said, that young man there looks very miserable. And he shouted as I think only a primitive Methodist can look. Look young man, look Now. Then I had this vision, not a vision to my eyes, but to my heart. I saw what a savior Christ was.Now, I never can tell you how it was, but I know I, I no sooner saw whom I was to believe than I also understood what it was to believe. and I did believe in one moment I looked and looked until I had almost looked my eyes away. Then he says, and as the snow fell on my road home from the little house of prayer, I thought every snowflake talked with me and told of the pardon I had found for I was white as the driven throw snow through the grace of God, this jailer looked, he turned to Christ and he said, I realize Jesus came to die for people like me that the power that these men represent is not their power.There is a power that has been brought into their lives as they have leaned into it and the power of Jesus Christ. So what did the Gospel do in this guy's life? Well, as we continue in our text, I would suggest there are three marks that were true here, that are true of anyone who is converted by the real gospel.Number one. It made him a compassionate man. Verse 33, he does start this tough guy. All of a sudden now is cleaning the wounds of Paul and Silas. Secondly, it made him committed to ministry and community. He was baptized and he shared it with others. See, Christianity is personal, but it's not private. It's intimate, but it's not individualistic.People you love about, you want to know, and you also find that you are drawn to do life in Christian community when you really have embraced the living Christ. And the third thing, it makes you have joy, verse 34. And he rejoiced along with his whole household that he believed. Three lessons I want to give from this chapter as we take the stories of these three individuals and just wanna summarize with this, act 16 tells us about three people, an empowered businesswoman, a powerless slave girl, a power wielding jailer.We learned three things. Number one, we learned the gospel is for everyone. Well, we might say everyone needs the gospel. There's no Christian type. Look at the variety of people we have racially here, if we can, I think, do we have a slide here on this? Thank you. Racially, there's an Asian, there's a Greek, there's a Roman.Secondly, economically, there's a person from the upper class, the lower class, the middle class. Socially, there's an insider. There's a person absolutely rejected, and there's a person from the mainstream spiritually. There's a woman that's open. There's a girl that's demonically hostile and the guy that seems utterly indifferent.I think God chose these stories to say the gospel isn't for certain types of people, it's for everyone. It's, it's for people that have done all kinds of different things. It is grace from first to last, and this grace is deep enough to plumb any depths of sins that we have done. Those find forgiveness in the power of Christ.Secondly, the gospel is the single mus most unifying power in the universe. The very last verse here in verse 40, let me just read it to you. The end of this is a sequel to the story. Paul's leaving the town with Silas soon after this. But first they went out of the prison and visited Lydia, and when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.You notice the church now has included some guys. Certainly. One is the jailer. There are men now that are a part of this. There are brothers in the community. Tim Keller points out something, and I actually did some research on it and was fascinated to find that even today, this is true in Orthodox Judaism, there is a prayer that Jewish men are encouraged to pray every morning, oh Lord, I thank you that you did not make me a woman, a slave, or a gentile.Now their perspective, And I want to, I want to be fair on this is their perspective is it is supposed to add to men the sense of responsibility that, God, you have called me to this, but this doesn't ring real well as we listen to it. I thank God that you did not make me a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. I have the better social class I have, the better gender, I have the better religion and race.Who do we have here in Act 16? A woman, a slave, and a gentile. The gospels for everybody unequal footing. Everybody is embraced in grace. The third thing we find the gospel is true freedom.I'm sure you picked up on this Roman citizen thing here, and with this I'm gonna wrap. Paul would have had a certificate that he carried with him. It was common for Roman citizens to have, just for misunderstandings like this, or to get into spas and baths that you could only do as a Roman citizen places to stay.And it recognized that he was an actual Roman citizen and honored that he had been born into, because of a, a fairly affluent and influential background. The question is, why didn't Paul get that baby out when they arrested him? Oh, when they were talking about, you know, it talks about they were beaten with rod's.This was actually a, a wrapped, uh, thing, a, a packet of some type that they carried around. They were pretty heavy rods about an InStick or, or actually bigger than that. And they would, they would use them to just beach on the back. I mean, this was, it was like the, you know, the, the cops that would carry a, a mallet, I don't remember what it's called, some kind of a club.What is it? Night? A Night. Ick. I should have known that. Thank you, . That's what they had. Only they had a bunch of 'em, and they, and, and this is what he is getting beaten with. And when they started to pull those babies out, Paul could have said, Hey, let me wait just a minute here. My wallet, I got this. But he didn't do that.Why didn't he do that? And then he does do it later. Well, why he do it later? I mean, it's kind of too late. You've been beat to a pulp. You've been in the stocks. You, you could have done it to the jailer at least. Hey, you know, while I'm sitting here, I can't really do much, but could you just give my back pocket here, pull out the wallet and take a look at, you know that little thing there with my picture, Roman citizen Whyy.Wait. Fred, a lot of explanations for this. The one i I embraced the most, that makes the most sense to me. I don't think it was just too confusing and he didn't get a chance to tell him. I think it was a strategy of Paul. Paul saw the hostility of Philippi and it was intense. You could see how they, they cited not compassionately with the slave girl that he has helped they side with the owners.They, they, they, they are hostile to Paul and hostile to his Jewish heritage and to this whole thing. He's representing. I think Paul was using strategic planning here. He knew that there would be prejudice and persecution. He did not use his card as a, as a get outta jail free. Most of the people there that would be a part of the fledgling church aren't gonna have such a card.He is willing to take on this. Difficult hardship and embrace it as a follow of Christ. First of all, to say, uh, uh, our way of dealing with this as believers is different, but I also think he was choosing his moment. He's trying to rattle the magistrates by saying it later. Maybe he's trying to buy space for his disciples and days to come.Don't be hasty in going after these people. Remember what happened the last time and how you were in danger before. If this guy has put the case, you're in trouble. If you've done the, it was illegal to, to treat, it was illegal to, um, hit with rod's, Roman citizens. There were certain things you just couldn't do.What we do know is to Paul, being a free Roman citizen was not his identity, his identity.As a Roman citizen was only to use it to serve others. His real identity was who he was in Christ. It enabled him when he was in chains and stocks to be singing when he'd lost wealth and position and liberty, he was free. If the greatest hope you have in your life is your relationships or your career, or your health, or your success, or even your capacity to be independent, you serve it.Ultimately, you are a prisoner to that reality, to something. You can losePaul's identity. Was to embrace something and build his life around something and make the hope of his life something and someone he could never lose. The Christ of the gospel in prison, Paul was free and he reminds us that the ultimate freedom is found in Christ. Let's pray together. Lord,we love stories, love these stories, and all of us can identify a little more with one or another of these people, but we most of all wanna em identify with the one who brought freedom and life and hope to each one. Lord, thank you for the gospel. Thank you for coming after us with the gospel. Thank you for the power of the gospel in our lives that enables us to sing in the midst of suffering, to worship as a replacement for worry that enables us to forgive when we've been wronged.Lord, thank you for these stories and the one to whom they point us in whose name I pray? Amen. Now go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.
Acts 16:11-18One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God
Sermon Transcript:I invite you to take your Bibles this morning to the Book of Acts once again as we continue in our series, the Spirit at Work, to the Ends of the Earth, as we focus on the book of Acts, this second volume of Luke's history manual, the book of Luke being the first. This is the second. And as he presents to us here, uh, an account of the early church, I'd like to read verse, uh, 11 through 18 of Acts chapter 16.And here's what we, what we read. So setting sail from Trus, we made a direct voyage to Samas in the following day to Minneapolis. And from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia in a Roman colony. Remained in this city some days and on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer.And we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard, one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thara, a seller of purple goods, who is a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after that, after she was baptized in her household as well, she urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.And she prevailed upon us. As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gained by fortune telling. She followed Paul and us crying out, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaimed to you the way of salvation, and this she kept doing for many days.Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and it came out of her that very hour.I've learned throughout the years that not everyone loves history. I put this in the area of in incredulity and disbelief in the same way. I look at people that don't like Lead. Zeppelin's Stairway to heaven. J r r Tokin and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies,But I've come to get it a little bit that some people are just completely turned off to the idea of dates, wars, ruler dynasties, international power struggles. But to me, history is stories. It's the stories of people, dates and places, particular wars and conflicts. Changing of dynasties gives you some bones to hanging on.But the life of history is the stories, the stories of people. I had a history teacher in, in college that got this, his name was Dr. Ring Inberg and Dr. Ring Inberg was a straight laced, quiet spoken, hardly a theatrical or a thespian type of personality. Very dry speaking. And the second day of class we came in, he had first day introduced himself.You know, we had, we had gotten to know a little bit of the syllabi where the, where things were going. The second day, he comes in without a word and just starts telling us his story. He's recounting his life, but as you're listening to his story, you, you, you feel like this man has a personality disorder.There's something completely wrong, and he's describing, you know, his feelings. He's describing his family. And then finally you get a little context when he says, yes, the year was 1746 and he's describing his life and you realize he's doing a first person narrative and he's saying things like this, I did this and my family was this way.And, and I wondered at the time about this, and, and these were the struggles we were facing. The guy just hooked me. He just drew me in. He did this often in our classes. He made history stories. He told it from the standpoint of certainly historic, well-known figures. He'd do their first person narrative, but he also did it just the average Joe, the average Mary, and, and he'd be that person and, and he's presenting history as the stories of people.That's how Luke tells his story. This is the second volume in his history book, and as he does so, as he presents this history to us, he presents people. We are now entering into Europe in Acts chapter 16. We're gonna see in a moment the map that takes us there, but as we look at this, matter of fact, we can go ahead and bring up the map.What's happening here? As Paul is going to, uh, as Luke is going to present to us the story of two people whose lives are an utter contrast. The only unifying reality is both of them were radically transformed by Jesus Christ. But at this point in Paul's life, we come to the place,I have my weapon. Oh man, there's options everywhere. . Okay, so, alright, I'm gonna pick one and make half of you mad. Um, but the idea, what, what we're looking at is where are we, where are we In the book of Acts, we are beginning what's called the second. We are on the, what's called the second missionary journey.If you remember the story, Luke has actual, uh, Luke has told us the story of Paul and Silas going this way. They got to about this area right in the middle here. This, this area of Antioch. And there at that moment, Paul wants to go west to Ephesus. He wants to hit the cities here, which are the heart of the urban center of Asia.And God says no. So he says, all right, we're not gonna go. We're not gonna go west, we're gonna go north. So we're gonna go up into here. And there's an area called Bethia. It says he was heading towards up here. As he's heading towards Bethia, God says no. So almost by default, apparently Paul continues towards the city of tr ass.Here he comes to the city of tr ass. And again, they have no strategy, no plan. And while he sl asleep one night, he has this Macedonian vision. It's described in the first verse of Act 16 Act, and, and. He says, come over and it says the next day, Paul and the boys, this is Silas and Timothy. Now at this point, they discuss it, they process it, and they come to the conclusion just like we do.We look at the eva, the material, we look at how God seems to be leading and they made the judgment. God wants us to go over Toro as now. At that point, they're joined by a fourth member who becomes the we in these verses. Luke joins them there, and most people believe Luke is probably from the area of Philippi and he's traveling back to his home territory because he's gonna stay there after Paul and the guys leave there, uh, on this journey.But they've now come over and as they have come over, they've come to this area up here, they're now in Greece. They land here, they go from Minneapolis and they walk 10 miles to Philippi. And as they go up into Philippi, we have this account of them meeting two ladies. Two individuals, two female characters lead the cast.And as they come there, we see in the simple stories of these two women, a reminder of the beautiful reality of the gospel and most of all of the God of the gospel. So I'd like to look at these two gals story this morning and then draw some specific applications for us at the end. The first person we see here is Lydia an Empowered Businesswoman.If you read her passage, you'll notice it says, one who hurt us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thara, a seller of purple goods. Basically what Paul and, and the guys have done, they come to the city and they find out in this Roman city, which I've mentioned to you before, is actually a city that was formed.Uh uh, uh, By a general named Philip, who later became a prominent member of the entire, uh, empire. And this city named after him, was actually a place where retired veterans of Roman wars were given, uh, citizenship to live. It was a heavy military town, and Paul and, and the guys get there and there is no synagogue.And so they went to the, uh, a place where sometimes Jews would gather in the empire. They would gather outside. It was along the riverbank and they hoped there would be some Jewish people there because Paul and the guys always went to the Jews first when they went to a city. And they came there and there is actually a gathering, but there are no men, it's all women.And they come and, and, and they meet this woman named Lydia and Lydia. Is described as a, a seller of purple goods from Thra. Now, Thra is my last map, I promise. Thra is over in this area again. Now we're over here in Greece. Right? Thra was part of the Western side. It's actually one of the seven cities of Revelation churches that he writes to.Thara is there. She's apparently a business woman, apparently single, that is entrepreneurial enough that she's come over from Thara and has set up shop in Philippi. She has apparently has become a permanent residence. She owns a house there and she started a business and her business is the most famous manufacturing work in th Tyra.It was known throughout the empire for its, its die making. Particularly purple. Purple was the, uh, color of, of, uh, regal, uh, where it was royalty. It was extremely expensive. I mean, people that wore purple were, were, were dressing in high end goods. And she is a, an individual that sells high-end stuff to high-end customers, beautiful products to beautiful people.Basically. She's running a high-end boutique in Philippi, but she's not only a prominent businesswoman, she's a worshiper of God. We read that here in these verses, and this word worshiper is an interesting one. It's not the normal word for worshiper. It's actually only used 10 times in the New Testament.Eight of them are in the book of Acts. They are, it is a term that regularly refers to an individual that is a gentile. That has embraced Judaism at least partially. And I'll give you an example. In Acts 13, it says this, it says, after the meeting of the synagogue broke up many Jews and devout, that's the word worship, worshiping, converts to Judaism.It's talking about Gentiles who had started aligning their lives with the Old Testament scriptures and, and, and, and started to want to be a follower of Jehovah God. This is a moral person. This is a person who is, is trying to live an I integrist life. According to the Old Testament scriptures, she is a devout worshiper of God.As best she knows him. She's a successful business person. She's moral, she's independent. This lady is a winner. In the eyes of the world. She has it together. She's influential, she's prestigious, she's affluent, and she's even got character that's Lydia.But the gospel does something beautiful in Lydia's life, we find the first question, who she was, is followed by how the gospel came to her. What happens on this Sabbath day. As they come there, they come and there's a Bible study, and it's not a preaching thing. If you'll notice, it says in verse 13 that they came and sat down.You know, it's not like Paul is walking like I am. Ran, ran, you know, wandering all around, preaching at these three ladies or whatever's there. It's a small Bible state. It's give and take, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a little gathering that's there, but as they are there, They're sharing the truth about Christ.She has already sought truth. She sought to know God, but there is a work that had to happen in her life to bring her to truly be a follower of Jesus Christ. It's described here in these verses, it says, is the Lord opened her heart to respond. The same word is used of Luke 24 when Jesus is walking on the ESUs road.After his resurrection, he's going with two guys that are, that have been a part of his, his his band. Not the 12, but the broader group of followers around. and they don't recognize him, and they're going along and he's talking to him on the way, and he's, he, he's explaining truth. And they initially said, you know, he says, what, what's going on?And they said, wh what are you, you know, where have you, what hole have you been in? Don't you know about Jesus? Our, our savior, our our master. And he was crucified. And, and, and so he starts telling the old Testa Christ, but it isn't until they actually are sitting down together and Jesus takes bread and breaks it and gives it to 'em.It says this statement in Luke 24 verse 31. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And at that point, he vanished from their site. Later in that chapter, he, he comes to the disciples and it says, he opened their minds. Same word. What happened with Lydia is exactly what happened with you. If you have embraced Jesus Christ is your savior.you didn't embrace Jesus Christ because you're more spiritual than your brother. You didn't embrace Jesus Christ because you have more, somehow, a more sensitive and, and more accrediting, uh, godliness that made you do what your sorority sisters didn't do. You came to Jesus Christ because God pursued you.God opened your eyes. And if you are here today and you've never embraced Jesus Christ and you sense, I feel like I'm on the outside in looking in and all these people, the, you know, the relationship with Jesus, I don't really understand the relation part and, and, and I don't really understand this personal walking with God.If there's a stirring within you, if there's a longing within you say, I'd like to know this. I'd like to have relationship. I'd like to have this, the sense that my sins are forgive. God is pursuing you. And what is happening with Lydia is God pursued her. God opened her heart God drew Lydia to himself.But Lydia responded, and we see here her response. It says that she responded to the prompting of God's spirit in her life. The word respond, again, this is a fascinating word. It actually means to be devoted to it's used in the New Testament of being addicted to. It means she was all in, her heart was, was moved by God and the resulting reality was how it always is.When a heart is really changed by the gospel,nothing held back utterly all in. The next thing we find is this woman is being baptized. The very first person baptized in Europe, it was actually a bit of a wild move. I mean, she's being baptized in the name of a crucified savior. It's like being baptized in the name and an association with a guy that's recently gotten the electric chair.This is probably not going to help her business. It's probably not going to help her if she is looking for a husband. This could ostracize her. I mean, it's bad enough. She's Jewish and, and, and, or she's drawn to Judaism. She's, she's gentile. But, and there, you know, just with this little gathering of women in this city of, of, of warriors, and now she's embracing a savior that the Romans crucified,but she's in, there's nothing hold her back wholeheartedly. She's embracing the Christ that Paul and the others are telling her about. As reminded us, I was reflecting on Lydia's story of a story I once heard of a guy named Tom Williams. He was an old time evangelist, came to our area and, uh, I met him and, uh, I, I knew the director of my church planning ministry, Dr.Davis was very good friends with him. That's more of my connection. But Tom Williams was telling the story. Uh, I, it was a tape I heard. I was listening to him tell the story of a meeting he had, and Tom Williams was an old time evangelist. I mean, he was, he was straight talker, but he was telling of a meeting he had where he was sharing the gospel and allowing people to come forward and receive Christ to Savior.And a woman came forward who was absolutely dressed to the nines. I mean, she had diamonds all over, extremely well groomed, extremely put together the eyes of the world. She was a winner. I mean, she had it, she came very properly, but she came to embrace Christ. And she got down to the front and he could tell that she was awkward, and she was sort of looking over her shoulder a little bit and, and there aren't as many people maybe as she expected to be down there.And she sort of feels like she stands out and she said, uh, she's talking to him in private. As people are singing and, and, and, and she says, what do, what do I need to do to be saved? And he said to her, you need to bow down here and receive Jesus Christ as your savior. And she sort of glances over her shoulder, he said, looking back and she's looking down at the floor and she said, does everybody have to kneel to do that?And he said, no, but you do. And she dropped to her knees and embraced Christ. She was all in. And though the opinions of people certainly impacted her life. And Drew, who, Lydia is a prominent person in this town. I mean, she's made it and she's a woman in a, in a, in a, in a war veterans town. She must have been a presence of a personality.But she had to be willing to say, I want this Christ. I may never get a husband. It may affect my business. I don't care. I'm responding, which means I am devoted. I am all in. I'm, if you will, addicted to Christ. I want him. So she's embraced as she embraces Christ. What did it do in her life? Well, she becomes the host for the church in Philippi.In this city of retired Roman warriors, a single businesswoman becomes the cornerstone of the fledgling church. When Paul writes to the church in Philippi, which was clearly one of his favorite congregations, as a matter of fact, he says in the book of Phil Philippians. Chapter one. He says, whenever I think of you all, I'm filled with joy.He's talking to a group of people that are meeting in this woman's home.God reached into this person's life. God drew this worldly winner to himself, but there's another person we meet here. Her stories described in verses 16 through 18, just like to read it again quickly as we were going to the place of prayer, and they did this on the Sabbath regularly, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much green by fortune telling.She followed Paul and us crying out These men are servants of the most high God who proclaimed to you the way of salvation. and this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out that very hour.W who is she? She's described as a slave girl. The word girl here indicates a younger woman, uh, adolescent, pre-adolescent, somewhere between 11 to 14 years old. She has a spirit of divination. Now, this is where this gets a little weird. All right, so stay with me. This word for divination is the word python, like the snake.It is a direct reference to one of the most prominent, uh, religious experiences and activities in all of Greece on Mount. In the, in the, uh, mountainous area outside of Athens, there is a place called Delphi. Delphi is the most prominent, uh, religious site shrine in all of Greek mythology. As a matter of fact, they described it as the center of the earth.It is where the gods made themselves known to humanity. You've heard of the oracle of Del Kai Delphi? Well, Delphi is the location. There's the picture of it today, and at that mountain, and in the background is all mountains. It's a beautiful location. The oracle was a woman and the woman was the spokesman.The word oracle means revelation or, or prophetic messages that basically she was the mouthpiece. Now, here's how the word Python got involved. Greek mythology has it that on this mount where the gods were trying to communicate with humans, that there was a, there was a giant snake python. Some portray it as sort of a dragon like character, but it's the word python, this word deviation.An Apollo is historically supposed to have come and slayed the dragon, but the voice of the dragon still speaks at Delphi for the gods. I told you this was a little weird, right? Okay. But here's what, here's the reality at Delphi, there is a woman in every generation who is called the Oracle. She is the head of the Priestly clan of Priestesses, but there are also a number of other priestesses.This young girl, Was one of those priestesses. She has the spirit of Python. She is a spokesman. Now, here's the striking reality, and if you Google it, which undoubtedly some of you will probably right now, but you will find that what they say, the primary emphasis of the spirit of Python is that they are four tellers.They give prophetic messages.This woman, somehow, this young girl somehow had been purchased by probably per fairly powerful people, men in Philippi, and she was giving message. Now, you can't earn money for your owners if you're not hitting it right with some of your prophecies. She has a spirit that is enabling her to some degree, to tell things that are coming and things are going well for these owners.things are not going well for this young girl. She is twice in bondage. She is in bondage to the spirits that are ruling her life. Secondly, she is in bondage. She's described as a slave and now she's coming and, and, and, and, and it's striking that the Greek word that is used to talk about the, the voices that came of the voice, the, of the priestesses, of the prophets of python is the word ventriloquist.It meant they spoke with multiple voices. These were demon possessed, demonn controlled individuals. And I realize you may be out there and you may say, wait a minute, I know you said this is gonna be weird, but now you are weird . Do you really believe, I mean, I was a little with you. You like history mark, but, and, and.Are you saying you honestly believe that there are demons that in dwell how I do? Absolutely. From cover to cover in the scripture, I think the presence of, of demonic forces is the only explanation for the unbridled in irrational evil in the world. Sin is certainly foundational in all of our lives, but the absolutely astonishing evil only has an explanation with the power of darkness involved.So here's this woman, we would look at her, many would look at her and say, well, she has, she has a mental illness. I mean, these voices are weird. I mean, she's, you know what's going on, but she has supernatural power. How the gospel came to her. We read. Somewhere early on in their ministry here with this fledgling group of people, she sees Paul and it says, she started to shout, it's actually word shriek.This was scary sounding stuff. As she's announcing that these, these guys are servants of the, of the most high God demons know a lot about God. As a matter of fact, they know more than you know. They've had a long time to get to know who the sovereign God is. It says in the book of James James, who was the physical brother of Jesus.James says, the devils believe in God and they tremble. They don't embrace him. They don't embrace salvation, which is for people, but they know. and here we find that she is presenting some things that are true. Now here's the question. Of course, as she's saying these things, is she crediting the, these guys or is she trying to discredit them?I mean, is she announcing for them to get people to believe with him or is she denouncing them? I would argue for both. I think this is the tension that is going on in this young woman. I think there is a part of her that is utterly opposed and trying to discredit them. Maybe by associating the demons are trying to say, you know, if, if, if, if this seems weird enough, people are gonna get scared off from listening to Paul and his friends.But there's every reason to believe in this passage. There is also a little girl's heart that is longing for this most high God that they're talking about. Just a side note here, and then I'm gonna try to pull this together As we look at this girl who needed something that would break through her slavery and bondage, we see an interesting statement here in verse 18.It says this, Paul became so annoyed. What this word actually means is that Paul became annoyed.there's no other word. He was ticked off. He, he was a dark. So dude, day after day, he turns and reacts. You know? Now we would, wouldn't you love it if it's said, but we would expect it to say, Paul moved with compassion for this young woman, . No, that doesn't. It says Paul ticked off, annoyed. This is, and this is my sidebar.This is just another way. God reminds us of the validity of the scriptural account. You know what's been said? History is written by the victors. You know what that means? That when you're, when you have two powers that are fighting against each other and one banquets the other, you know what you do. First of all, you write the history of it.They're not allowed to write the history. They're not even allowed to keep their own history. You sponge the history. You write your own why? Cuz you want to be known how you want to be known, and you now have the power to do that. The scriptures do not present everybody in a pure light. Paul doesn't look particularly good here.CS Lewis, the professor of medieval history in classical literature, Oxford University of Days, gone by. Basically says this, he says, anybody that reads the New Testament and thinks it is, it is talking about legends has never read. Legends. Legends are, are these, these exaggerated picture? You never present your heroes in negative lights.He says, the weirdness and awkwardness as the author talks about the star characters with such blatant floss would never have happened in legend. That was a sidebar. Okay, what did it do in her life?The girl is freed she's met, the power of the living Christ. We know that because the Python spirit doesn't work anymore and her owners are gonna respond fairly directly in the next passage. Next week, God intervenes in the life. Of a powerful businesswoman, God intervenes in the life of a powerless young woman, young girl.So what do we learn here? Let's put some shoes to it. Number one, God uses the gospel, but only he can change your heart. Certainly he does use our sure in the gospel. He does use radio speakers. He, he uses all of things, but it is God that will change hearts. This is a reminder, every parent here that is crying out to God for their adult children to know Jesus.This is a message to every young person that is, that is living alone. As some of you are and some of you young adults are the only believer in your family. Just longing to see those you have done life with the longest. Come to embrace Christ. It is ultimately not about you. You are not going to win anybody into the Kingdom of Christ.God has to change the heart. My wife, Marian, has recently watched a video and she, she told me all about it and it, and she has been passing it on selectively as God prompts. And it's the story of a young man who, who utterly leaves his, his Christian heritage and gets involved in a, a, a very non-Christian lifestyle as an adult.And this mom becomes absolutely convinced it's him actually telling the story. But he tells the story of his mother that, um, apparently she becomes convinced that her role, while never condoning his lifestyle, which he knows her calling, is to utterly embrace her son. Her, her calling is not to try to convince him or I, you know, she's willing to talk, but only as he is requesting that she wants him to feel welcome.She wants him to feel embraced and shortly before she dies, just unbelievable transformation takes place in his life. And he does give his life to grace and all. But his video is actually about him telling the story after his mom was gone, of going through her journals and her records and finding the page that she had, a crumpled page that she used as her, of all the specific things.She was constantly crying out to Christ for her boy. And as you read the list, he realized God did every one of these things. And he said, my mother didn't even tell me I did all this. She just prayed. She just cried out to God. She cried out to the one person in the universe that has the ability to change a heart.God is the one that has to work, and our reminder is that it will be God that is going to make the changes. You may be separated from people you love. You can pray. You may not be allowed to speak into their li. You can pray. We can cry out to God to the one alone. I remember hearing one time a guy that was very active in evangelism, but he said, I learned a long time ago that it was infinitely more important for me to talk to God about people than to talk to people about.I'm not giving a pass to not share the gospel, but he said, I just learned God. He's the one. It's God. It's God. It's got to move. Secondly, God seeks all types to be in his family. Two women in the midst of a Roman warriors community. I mean, it's almost, it, it, it's, it's so creative a story. It's just a visual that God reaches all kinds of people, liberals, conservatives, powerful people, outsiders, according to the world's evaluation, winners or losers, doesn't matter.Wherever you are today and wherever you'd place yourself today, doesn't matter. No matter what you've done, doesn't matter. This God comes among us to say, I am coming to free you. I am coming to transform you. I came that you could be forgiven. That you could enter My father's family and I came to, to, to find new family members, and he says to you this morning, wouldn't you want to join this family of grace?He comes for all kinds. Third, God is extraordinarily creative. He shows his beauty to the seller of beauty. He shows his power to the powerless. God makes himself known exactly where and how we need to know him. I shared that series a while back, which basically the, the series on awe of God replacing fear with awe, and in that series,Uh, the thing that struck me in studying the scripture where God says, do not fear every time he presents something about himself and he says, you, you don't have to be dominated by anything else. Just be awed by me. These are the seventh day. I'm just gonna throw them again just to remind us that God creatively shows different aspects of himself in different moments in our lives, and certainly in the lives of those that need to embrace Christ.He shows that God is stronger than anything you might face, that God is sweeter than anything you might lose, that God is sovereign over any situation you might be in, that God is standing with you any place you might go, that God is surrounding you against any danger you might encounter, that God is sufficient for any insufficiency.You might feel that God is safer. Than anyone or anything else you might turn to. What God does is God shows himself it's what we need. We need to be ought. These women in their own ways, in the creative working of God needed to know God, to see that God, this, this young woman, God is more powerful than even the power of Python to talk to this woman that has seemingly at all, but he says God is sweeter than anything you might lose.Maybe you will never get a husband, Lydia. Maybe your business won't be what you think. God is sweeter than anything you could lose. I don't know where you are today, but maybe God's got a message very personally to you, and he'd just say, I'm better. I'm better than anything that's that's involved in your, I want you to know me.God shows himself and God is extraordinarily creative. You don't know how that person you're pleading for is gonna come to Christ. My guess is it's gonna happen in a way you never saw coming. You know why? And this is it. This is it. They're going to the Christian concert with me. It's gonna happen . And five minutes before, of course the call comes and say, Hey, our whole family's got covid.And you're just like, God, it's over the chance. The one shot we had, he's creative. Fourth God employs his people in the process of changing lives. I mean, Paul and the boys walked 10 miles to vilify, and I'm guessing they weren't expecting to find a handful of women that was gonna be their men. I mean, they're coming to the Warriors town.Yeah, let's go to Philippi. It's right on the main pathway. It is, I can't remember the name of the road, but then actually a Roman Road that traveled across Europe and they're gonna hit this prominent city of Philippi and they walked to their first ministry opportunity. You know, this is after Paul saying, we're gonna go to offices over, you know, over there in Asia.We're gonna go to af, the Urban Center. God says, no. Okay, we're gonna go up to Bethia. That's on the Black Sea. You know, there's a lot of people up there. Prominent people we're gonna go, nah, I got something else. . And he comes over to Philippi. Oh my goodness, this is not why. What do he do? Paul goes charging and sits down and says, God, here I am.Use me in Colossians, chapter four. Paul makes this interesting prayer. He says, I'm praying for you. In verse one, and then chapter two, he said in verse two of chapter four, he says this, at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the world to the, for the word to declare the mystery of Christ.Okay, so we think, okay, Paul's saying, I'm, I'm about to enter on a new enterprise for the gospel. Maybe he's anticipating, I'm going to Rome now. May, this is gonna be it. You know, my dream is fulfilled. Pray that God will open the door for me. Let me read it to you again and I'll add the next phrase. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, UNAC account of which I am in prison.Say, Paul, what are you talking about? Open a door. You're in a cell. Paul says, yeah, but this is where God has me. I don't know where you are. But I know that God says, I wanna work through you here. I wanna have you just be saying, Lord, I want to have a door of utterance. I don't have to figure it out. I don't have to strategize.I don't have to memorize the book of Romans. So I'm ready to recite. Its, I just need to say God, have my heart be pliable and ready, that I might be available for the opportunities that come. God employs his people in the process of changing lives. And my last one, very simply as this, never give up. If you have a God like this, if you of a God that is creative, that shows power for the powerless that shows his beauty to, to those that adore beauty.If he is this creative and he is this majestic, keep praying, keep leaning into him, keep going to work and say, I never get a chance to share Jesus. Maybe tomorrow. Keeping your heart open, sensitive to the Lord, because these two women's stories remind us of what the, the, the book of the book of Acts is always trying to tell us.The one commonality in every one of these stories is this. He wants to awes with our God. He wants to stu us with our Christ. Your Christ. Lord, we come to you this morning,grateful to hear a little of these women's stories. It's interesting to know them.It's glorious to be reminded of the one who became their God. Lord, we want to know you more. We want to live with you more fully. We want to be like Lydia to be all in. Lord, I pray this morning for those individuals in this room or watching online right now that have never embraced this Christ as th Savior Lord.Even now, I ask that the Spirit would be at work in speaking into their lives, that Jesus came to invite us to an eternal family. That he came for people like us, broken, sinful, self-absorbed people.So Lord, I pray this morning, you would simply show them yourself. As we close this earth, every head bow, every eye closed. I just feel prompted to do this. Maybe you're here and you say, pastor Mark, I feel like God is speaking to me. If you feel it way he is. Just say, pastor Mark, just with God looking and you looking right now, I, I really feel God is calling me to embrace Christ as my Savior.Would you pray for me, pastor Mark, that I might receive Christ, that I might, that I might pass over and get on the other side of the glass and embrace Jesus Christ is Savior. If you're like that here and nobody's looking around but me and God just slip over your hand and say, mark, would you pray for me this morning?Just slip your hand up and take it down. Thank you. There are others today.Lord, we come to you today.We love the reminder that you're the pursuing God, that you're the one that changes hearts. Lord, I pray and I bring now in this moment as we close, the vast hope, the vast host of people that are represented by people here today, for whom our hearts are crying out, would come to Christ. Lord in your bigness, we plead with you, for to draw them, for those that have raised their hand, for those that are sensing the calling of the Spirit, Lord, bring their hearts toward Christ today, I pray, in Jesus' name.Amen. Amen. Now go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord. Thank.
Acts 16:1-9So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning everybody. Good morning. Invite you to take your Bibles to the Book of Acts chapter 16. Give be looking verses six through 12 as we return to the our series in the book of Acts. The Spirit at work to the end. Of the earth this morning. I'm gonna be giving sort of an overview message, um, but this is the text where we left off.And I want to pick up here and try to give us a context of where we are. We're gonna look at chapter 16. I think we'll start at verse one. I'm gonna read down verse to verse 12, and that's page 870. If you're using a Bible there in front of you. Paul came also to Derby and 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 Lira 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 all they knew for. They all knew that his father was. 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. And they went through the region of frig, GIA and Galatia having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Macia, they attempted to go into Bethia, but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them.So passing by Macia, they went down Toros and a vision appeared DePaul in the night. A man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought it to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.Let me just mention this and I'm gonna read the next two verses. This is where we left off a number of weeks ago before the Christmas season. And all this time we have been operating in Asia. They are now crossing over, um, going into the, uh, area of northern Greece. They will be beginning for the first time on European soil, and we read these words in verse 11 and 12.So setting sail from Troy, we made a direct voyage to some oath race and the following day to Minneapolis and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. Let's pray.Lord, we're so grateful for the invitation to worship God. Thank you that we can come into this place or we can be watching online and participate. Lord, we're here devoting this time this morning because. We desire to hear from you. We desire to be in the presence of people that know you and love you and God, I pray as we reflect on this study this morning, Lord, as we consider, what is the book of Acts supposed to be saying to us?God, I pray that you would stretch us, challenge us, encourage us in our journey with you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I've read, um, many books. I don't have a number, many books on World War ii. Um, and I was going through some of them that I've read in the last couple of years. One of them I reread and I was struck with the fact that these books were written all about the same period, the same events, the same locale of the world in Europe.But with very different purpose. I read the book, many, many have you read called Band of Brothers, the story, actually, Steven Ambrose came up with the idea World War II Scholar attending in 19 98, 19 88, a reunion of Easy Company. Um, and as he was with these guys, he had been invited to go. He was astonished with the bond that had been formed with these group of men where they got together at least once a year or all the years since 1945 when the war had ended.And he wrote the Band of Brothers to portray the relationships that can be forged. in Combat Together. I read a book called Ordinary Men the last year. It's the story of reserves in a police force in Germany that were, uh, conscripted. Uh, they were to be, uh, they thought local policemen in 1942, and they were actually sent into Poland and they were given the responsibility of finding Jews and of exterminating them.And the story is by the author, uh, uh, uh, to bring out how ordinary people became murderers and to talk about the psychology of evil. I read another book recently called A Higher Call. It's the story, a true story of a German fighter pilot flying a Messer Schmidt. And he had in his sights as a, leaving Germany from now over the Mediterranean, uh, excuse me, the North Sea.And he was, as he was following this, uh, B 17 bomber, he realizes he was coming to get it in his gun sites, that it was completely crippled. It had been utterly decimated by, by armament that had come and hit the plane. He could even see in part of the plane and could see almost all of the crew was killed.And this man was a Christian. And he actually, um, recognized this plane would never be in battle again. But he actually, they had, and their controls were out. They, they were lost in the Mediterranean, uh, in the North Sea. He actually led them all the way back to Britain so that they could land safely. And the author wrote the book to talk about how the pilot's faith had led him to do what he did.The titles give you a sense of the different purpose of these authors, even though they're writing about the same era of history, the same locale of history, the same events that were going on. Band of Brothers, ordinary men, a higher calling, different purposes in recording history titles give you the sense of that we're returning today to our study in the book of Acts moments.Where they are launching the European part of the missionary journey now really moving into Roman influenced territory as they do this, we are reminded of the title of this book, the Acts of the Apostles. Well, we know from that it's a history book. Matter of fact, we're, we're, it's clear as, as Luke delineates this to us, that he is actually, it is actually part of a two volume work.The first is called the Gospel of Luke, where he presents the most thorough historical, um, summary of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, of all the gospels. And then he follows up with volume two, which is the study of the, the, the followers of Christ, his apostles, his sent ones that are now taking his messaging and his ministry and taking it to the world.but is telling history his ultimate purpose. I Is he just recording? Uh uh, uh uh, the history there. If you remember back when you took literature classes or some of you may be there now, you know that they encourage you to always look for the author's intent or purpose. And you may remember this, there's a thing called pi, p i e and they said, look for the A.Typically authors have one of three purposes in writing. One, it is to persuade. Two, it is to inform. Three. It is to entertain. Is Luke's intention just the eye? Is it to inform? I would suggest it's not. I suggest that this book is not just a history manual giving us the second volume. Of this history anymore than the first volume was just to inform.It's striking that it is selected history. Sometimes he summarized the work of two or three years of ministry in one phrase, in one verse. Sometimes he takes an entire chapter just to sum, to write the summary of a sermon. He's selecting the history. Every event, every sermon, every conversation that is included means hundreds of others were left out.What is here is to fulfill the author's purpose in writing. To inform certainly, but to persuade. To say this is the story of the foundation of the church of Jesus Christ, of his kingdom in the lives of people. He founded it through his death and resurrection. But now I'm telling you the story of its going forward.But it is not just to give you some history facts because it is a very sketchy history. It is selected with certain events, but those certain events are designed to persuade us that the same priorities, the same realities of that kingdom, that serve as guiding principles of how they operated, are designed for the church today to embrace and to live out as well.So I'd like to this morning summarize those five guiding principles or realities of Jesus Kingdom We see portrayed in an overview of the Book of Acts. And I'd like to, to highlight them. First of all, we are told, if we are to really understand what this book is trying to persuade us is that we are part of a kingdom formed by a resurrected king.That the idea here is, and, and this message, I'm specifically speaking to those that have personally embraced Jesus Christ as savior that are part of Jesus kingdom. But he says, you're part of a kingdom formed by a resurrecting. The central theme in all of the sermons and acts is that Jesus is the crucified savior that rose from the dead.There are 10 thorough sermons in the Book of Acts where most, uh, a large part of them are recorded for us. There are nine other sermons alluded to in the book. All of them highlight Jesus is the crucified savior. That rose from the dead. He's the foundation of this kingdom. The shocking portrayal of a perceived criminal who got the electric chair of his day, but literally physically came back to life and walked on earth again.Let me just illustrate that by the first and last sermons, acts chapter two, verse 30, where Peter is speaking on the day of Pentecost. He says, God had sworn with an oath that he would set one of his descendants on his throne. He spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.That's the first sermon in the book of Acts. Here's the last one, acts chapter 28, verse 22. People came to him and said, we desire to hear from you what your views are for with regard to this sect. We know that everywhere it is spoken against, he's now in Rome. Paul is speaking from morning to leave.Evening. He expounded to them testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets. Basically what he's saying is this book is about this kingdom that Jesus founded, and it is founded on a king that was both crucified and rose from the dead.He is the foundation of the life of all of those that are citizens of the kingdom. Secondly, you are part of a kingdom found in changed hearts. It is not a kingdom of the world. This is a challenge. That I think was deeply needed in their day as they had a misunderstanding of the kingdom that Jesus was actually developed.I also believe it is tremendously needed today. Christians are not trying to take over the empire in the Book of Acts. They're not trying to make everyone embrace their faith. They invite people to do so regularly, consistently, passionately, because they know that they will enjoy Jesus Christ and they will have a relationship with him that enables them to go to heaven eternally.It is a movement away from an earthly kingdom to a spiritual kingdom where Jesus rules as king in the hearts of his people. He sends their His Spirit into their lives and marks them as members of his kingdom, Roman authorities. We're always trying to sniff out among new religions, new sex if they were a threat to the political foundations of Rome.Luke goes out of his way in the Book of Acts to emphasize that this is not what they were about. As Jesus kingdom followers, they're not trying to establish a new country, a new empire. A new nation. His goal is to reign in the hearts of his people, not to reign over a national state. Luke goes to elaborate links to show that the authorities did not ever sense that Jesus followers were trying to influence their political order.This is particularly evident in the chapters ahead of us, in the Book of Acts. Let me illustrate this quickly, chapter 16. Next, where, where we're moving into is a is a colony called Philippi. And there the, the common. Thing comes against Paul, Paul and Silas and the boys, where they're constantly using the argument.It goes all the way back to the early part of the church where the, where the religious leaders would say, these are insurrectionists. These are individuals that are trying to, to overturn the political order and take political control. They're constantly dealing with. Romans in Philippians 16, the magistrates end up apologizing to Paul when they realized they had, um, arrested him and there was no grounds whatsoever in Corinth.In chapter 18, the Pro council Galileo refused to even take the case on. It was brought against them in, in chapter 19 in the city of Ephesus, the, the second largest city in the empire, the second Rome, the Eastern Rome, if you will. The town clerk declared Paul and his friends to be innocent, even though it's this giant uprising in the stadium in Ephesus.And, and he says, no, I don't. There's nothing about these guys. That is threatening and, and that is indicating that they are about the political order In chapter 21 to 23, when Paul is back in Jerusalem, he's arrested, they bring the Sanhedrin in, the Romans do. Now people are all stirred up and they're ready.All these accusations are going all around. And this guy, Claudius, uh, Lys, who's the commander of the Roman military in Jerusalem, here's what he says about Paul. There's no charge against him that deserves imprisonment. We don't have anything. In chapter 24 to 26, Paul has brought between Fe before Felix and Festus and a gripper who are all Roman, uh, mucky mucks of one degree or another in the, in the political arena, and all fail to convict him of any offense.Matter of fact, they say, . He didn't need to go to Rome. He had appealed to Rome to go before Caesar, uh, and, and they said, we, we don't, we don't really need to send him to Rome because there's nothing that can be brought against this guy, but because he's appealed to Caesar, we gotta send him. And that's how Paul ended up testifying in Rome.Why did Luke spend all his time so much time talking about the results of these Roman author? He is saying this, Jesus kingdom is not political. It is a kingdom of the heart. It is personal. The way the Christians tried to influence people toward Jesus kingdom was to share the message of forgiveness and grace that his kingdom offered.It's striking. We're gonna see this in chapter 16. The first place they're gonna go on European soil is this, this town called Fi Philippi. Philippi was a place that, uh, years before a a Roman, uh, general had gotten the emperor to declare as a colony for retired soldiers. This place was packed with military types.Citizenship was so essential to them. There was no higher thing than being a citizen of Rome for them. They, many of them, had gotten their citizenship by a lifetime of military service in the empire. And Paul writes this in chapter one when he is writing to the Philippians. Guys, remember, our citizenship is in heaven.This is where we belong. This is our kingdom.They had great pride in their country, but he says, our citizenship is not of this world. Now I'm gonna make a statement that for some of you, is gonna be a tough pill to swallow. The Holy Spirit was not trying to set up a Christian nation in Rome. The Holy Spirit is never trying to set up a Christian nation.The distinction has been important historically, when the Roman Empire fell in the early fifth century. Was a big deal for Christians because in the early three hundreds, B a d A Roman Emperor had declared the Empire Christian because he had come to faith. Whether he actually came to faith or not, but, but he had at least embraced Christianity in some form when the empire was vanquished by the Visigoths, and they all talk about the sacking of Rome because they just decimated the place.Augustine wrote the City of God, a famous work. Basically, his thesis in the book is this, the city of God is heavenly based on God's eternal drawing of people from every nation, and the city of man is earthly. He's arguing the book among other things. The Jesus attention is on the city of God among his, uh, uh, people.He's not trying to build a nation, but a spiritual kingdom. A perfect commonwealth cannot be found in this age, is his argument part of it. But that does not mean that Christians can't contribute to the, to, uh, genuine, uh, expressions of common good and the benefit of, of their nation. And so when the Roman Empire fell, Augustine saw this, this is not tragedy, ultimate loss.This is not the, the crushing of the church and the kingdom of Jesus. There was another church father named Jerome who. Was decimated by the loss, and in his writings he kept lamenting what will become of the church now that Rome has fallen. Augustine saw more clearly that the city of God is not the Roman empire or any temporal kingdom in Augustine's view.God had brought the mission field to the missionaries. There was an amazing turning of many of the Visigoths to Christ, the these, uh, from German, uh, extraction. They had come down. He even pointed out that many of the Visigoths have been far more just and Christlike in their treatment of enemies than the Roman armies had been.Basically what, what he was trying to argue isthat for him,In contrast to Jerome who had a hard time separating the Roman Empire from us, Augustine defined us as believers in Christ. I think this is important in our day. I think this is important,The United States, to me, is the greatest country on planet Earth. I have never felt differently. I don't believe I ever will, but I do not believe the United States is a Christian nation, and I do not believe it ever has been. I do not believe, and I'm probably gonna have to defend this with some, and I'm, I'm fine with that.I do not believe that was the intention of the founding fathers. No nation in history has been a Christian nation. A lot of the conflict intention that has actually weakened the, the witness and influence of the American church today has come in thinking we need to get back to something that is our right as Christians.Was America more moral in the past? Certainly. Were there more standards of righteous behavior in the public arena? Yes,but I don't think that means we were a Christian nation, nor did I believe our founding fathers intended it that way. There is a philosophy called Christian nationalism. If you are not familiar with it, you will be. It is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a Christian nation. I'm gonna read some because I, I, I want my words to be what I really want to say. Christian nationalism is most evident not in its political agenda, but in an attitude, an unstated presumption that Christians are entitled to promising of place in the public square because they are heirs of the true or essential heritage of American culture.That Christians have a right to define the meaning of the American experiment because they see themselves as America's architects, the first real guardians of the country, because others are not true representatives of its vision. I would argue that the ultimate vision of the founding fathers was two things in particular, to have the rule of law that we would live under the rule of law.Secondly, to utterly distrust the heart of any person with power. This to me, and this goes all the way back to John, Calvin, and others that said, true government should be assuming that no one can be trusted with power. There must be checks and balances. The beauty of American Judi judicial system to me and the glory of the founding fathers is this part of Christian belief.They did embrace enough of them to say, we don't trust anyone with power. We will then have a system of checks and balances where there will be different. Branches of government, executive, judicial, legislative, they will work together. Distrusting that anyone can be given absolute power, a belief in the corrupt nature of mankind, and a determination to control.And on the principle, which I'm sure you've heard, power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. American Christians in the past were exemplary in helping establish the American experiment, and many American Christians worked to end slavery and many other evils. They did so because they believed Christianity required them to work for justice, but they worked to advance Christian principles, not Christian power or Christian culture, which is a key distinction between.Political engagement as Christians and Christian nationalism. Normal Christian political engagement is humble, loving, and sacrificial. It rejects the idea that Christians are entitled to primacy of place in the public square, or that Christians have a presumptive right to continue their historical dominance in American culture today.Christians should seek to love their neighbors by pursuing justice in the public square, by working against things like abortion, promoting religious liberty, fostering racial justice, but also by protecting the rule of law and honoring constitutional processes. The early church did not seek to create a political kingdom, Christian Kingdom in Rome, but to live as members of an existing spiritual kingdom, whether it was in the Roman Empire.The German Empire, or if I can use the term, the American Empire. We are the church and I recognize I want to be liked. Uh, and I, I, I don't love going against what everybody's thinking or some are thinking, I'm just being as honest as I can. Christian nationalism is not Christian. It is a concept of the Kingdom of Christ.That is not Jesus concept. It's not what the Book of Acts is about. They were not trying. They went, Luke is constantly saying, we're not doing that. We're not trying to change the political order. We're not saying you have to do it our way. We're not trying to argue except for the fact that we are trying to say there is a risen Christ that is.King and Lord of our individual life, we invite you to join our kingdom. And if our earthly kingdom falls, as it did in the Roman empire, Augustine says, okay, the king is still ruling, the king is still king. Let's now embrace what he has in this contact text. And in that case, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the Holy Christian, Roman Empire, purportedly, it became an opportunity to bring the, the, the, the sikas, many of them to faith.Okay? As Augustine understood, and Jerome did not in the fifth century, our US is never ultimately our fellow citizens or our nation, but believers. All right, gonna move fast cuz we're almost done. Number three, you are part of a kingdom uniting people of great diversity. Peter says in Acts chapter 10, you guys know as a Jew, I am not even permitted to be in your house, but somehow I'm here.The more you read the book of Acts, the more you understand it in the context of what Paul is writing a about the difference of Jews and Gentiles and other cultural ethnicities getting together, the more you are struck that this thing worked at all, it's just fathomless to see, but it is the fulfillment of Jesus prayer in John 17 that there could be unity among his people, that they could be one.The spirit of Jesus broke down barriers that are almost unimaginable, the Jews had a lifetime separation code. They didn't go in the homes of Gentiles, they didn't, uh, eat with them in public. They didn't intermarry with them. Certainly they didn't even travel in their areas. They avoided them. They found new roots.So they didn't get, they were utterly set apart from the goam, which would be most of you and me, uh, the non-Jew. And all of a sudden, Pentecost, happenss and the spirit begins then to embrace all ethnicities, all cultures, including the goias, and, and they're now doing church together. And the difference is, Are so astonishing.I mean, imagine you've now got these former pagans who don't understand or particularly appreciate any of the foundations of the Jewish faith like circumcision or the weekly Sabbath or the festivals or, or your blood connection to the Old Testament heroes. And you're supposed to be in the same worship service as doing church together.You're supposed to now be ready to have their boy marry your girl and you're supposed to do life and, and, and you have this amazing conflict of culture. And Jesus says, this is where the glory of the gospel makes itself known that you're a part of a kingdom. That is a kingdom uniting. People not striving to.People. The fourth thing we find is you're part of a kingdom led by a sovereign king. We see so much of this in this book where God is constantly demonstrating that his purposes will not be thwarted. His sovereign plans for redemption will go forward. In Acts chapter 16, we just, the verses just, we read where Paul wants to go as he's traveling through, uh, contemporary Turkey, uh, it was called Asia.Then he was, he wanted to go north to preach to those guys couldn't go the, he wanted to go west to go towards Ephesus and where the cos the, the urban centers were. And the spirit stopped him from there. And then to his surprise, he ends up in SRO ass and he gets this Macedonian vision. He says, I want you to come over here to to Europe, contemporary Europe.There is no methodology except follow the spirit. It's all God. He. He brings people to himself constantly talks about how it is the spirit of God that is reaching people in the most astounding of ways. He, he is intending things for good, that seem intended for evil. In Acts chapter eight, we saw how the church, uh, actually moves out from Judea.And the reason is there's a terrible persecution and the believers are forced to scatter, and the gospel begins to spread all through the outlying regions. God again, was at work.It reminds us when we see that our kingdom is led by a sovereign king, that the ruling principle in the Christian life is that there are no initiators, there are only responders. Doesn't matter how great a leader you are, it doesn't matter how gifted you are in being able to manage and lead if you are a child of God, if you are in Jesus kingdom, you are never ultimately the initiator of your plants.You are the responder to the spirit of God's leading in your life. Every pastor has to bow the knee under that reality. Every church leader has to, every, every parent in their home has to have the concept. I'm not the king. I'm not on the throne of, of this church, or this family, or this business. He's the ruler.He's the king, and his sovereign purposes will be fulfilled. And my goal is to align myself with the purposes of God to always see myself that I am ultimately a responder, not an initiator. Fifth, you are part of a kingdom resourced by divine.Externally, they are facing incredible opposition in this book that will continue throughout the next number of chapters. In the past, we've seen religious leaders of Israel working against the church. We're now going to see political powers work against the church more prominently, we're going to see, uh, continuance of the demonic opposition that has come to the church.There's going to be internal opposition. We've seen some of this. Christians have major conflicts theologically, strategically, personality-wise. We've seen breakups even of the missionary band. We've, we've seen councils that have to be drawn together to try to figure out how are we gonna do this? Letting the goam into the Kingdom of God thing.How do we do. , the Judaizer are gonna be out there that are constantly preaching that you really have to be, no one can become a Christian, uh, can, can become a Christ follower since he's the Jewish Messiah. You have to first become a Jew, embrace Judaism, and then you can embrace the Messiah. You can't j it's not cheap grace.You can't just say, well, I've be lived like a pagan with multiple gods my whole life and I've done all this and, and, and now I've decided, yeah, I, I like Jesus too. I'm gonna be a Jesus follow. And the Jew said, that can't be. No. You've gotta first embrace historic Judaism. And the church battled to say, no, no, it, it, the wall's gone.There's no partition. There's no first step in. And then you can have the vertical step. You freely come the church. As we look at what acts is saying to us, the church goes forward humbly. Independently crying out to God as one author said, I remember when I was in college reading this statement, he said, the church goes forward on its knee when you read the Book of Acts and you realize this is a supernatural enterprise.We don't now back into our own power and our own resources. It is utterly lived independence upon the spirit of God. It is a kingdom of our hearts. It is where Christ rules. Let's pray.Lord, I pray that you would apply this message in the way that you see the need. I thank you, Lord, that you have called us. into your kingdom.We love living in the kingdom of light where there's hope and there's joy and there's peace. But we also acknowledge we come as citizens under a king. So Lord, help us to live as responders. Help us to live as gentle people who are also people of conviction and boldly telling people of the glory of Christ that can be theirs.I thank you for the chance to meditate on your word and talk about it today, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. Now go in peace to love and serve and enjoy the Lord.
2 Timothy 1:3-18I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.
Sermon Transcript:This morning, I have a friend that I'm introducing to you again. Uh, he reminded me today that the last time we had him preach was the Sunday right before Covid Clo Covid closed everything down. We're hoping that is not a prophetic, um, message I just shared. Um, Michael Chance is a pastor with many years of pastoral experience in the last few years, and I mentioned this in my Musings Mail newsletter this week.In the last few years, Michael has been asked to serve, uh, with a group of churches up in the New York City area. And his calling, his role was to be the pastor of encouragement to the churches. If you have gotten to know him, you understand why they asked him to do that role. By God's grace, he and Linda have been led to our church family, and uh, he is now spilling over on We Pastors and many of you in our church family, that ministry of Encouragement.I asked him to speak to us today and open the word to us.Thank you, mark. God bless you. Well, the first thing you will, uh, recognize is that I have a Southern accent. I am from Louisiana originally, and, uh, we raised our family up in Middlesex County, in East Brunswick. I worked in New York City for 17 years and then, uh, uh, pastored in Edison. For how many of you from Middlesex County or have you had any experience up in Middle City?Yay. That's home. That's home. And, uh, for all those years, when we moved to New York City in 1986, people would say, uh, you sound like you're from the south. I said, yeah, I'm from. South Jersey, but I never realizing that one day. I actually live in South Jersey, right here in Burlington County and I retired from full-time, uh, ministry, uh, a few years ago in 2017.And, and, uh, have since, uh, been finding myself, uh, as a minister of encouragement for a, uh, network of graffiti community ministry churches in New York City. And then I also do pulpit supply for a couple of, uh, Chinese churches, one up in East Brunswick and one in, in, uh, uh, Chinatown in New York City. So, uh, we are here about one Sunday a month when I have, uh, time and Pastor Mark and the staff and, and the church has been so gracious.We love Fellowship Church. And like Pastor Mark mentioned, I remember that week that, uh, uh, he had asked me to preach, uh, for that third Sunday in March. And on Tuesday of that week, he called me, he sent me an email and says, Mike, do you think you could come Saturday morning? Looks like we may be shutting down.And, and so on that Saturday morning, the only people that were in this sanctuary as we taped the service to be broadcast the next day was the sound people, the worship team. Pastor Mark and myself, this is the first time I'm actually preaching to people here at Fellowship. This is great. It's, uh, awesome and, uh, you, I tell you, we have been, the last three years has been a challenging time for every one of us.I mean, we've lived through a global pandemic. We've, we've come through political unrest and demonstrations, stock market turbulence, a war. Cataclysmic weather events. Just in those last few weeks, we've seen 40 people killed in a massive blizzard in Buffalo. We've seen people killed in California with rivers of, of, of, there's old cyclones, uh, coming ashore, tornadoes down south.Uh, and, and to go along with all that stuff. In the last several years, we've seen even the evangelical church here in America has taken a real hit. Young people have left the church by droves. Relationships have broken. Pastors and staff have left their churches. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pastors leave their churches just step away from the pulpit because of emotional stress.Churches closing. It has been just a challenging time for all of us. Why? Let me tell you I have good m this morning. Over the last year, I've been pouring my own energies into, uh, Paul's final letter that he wrote The Little Book of Second Timothy. In fact, if you have your Bibles or your phones with your Bibles on it, we're gonna be looking at the first chapter of second Timothy today.So go ahead and open, uh, your Bibles to that, uh, the message here in this little New Testament book of only four chapters. Friends has brought great personal refreshment to my soul. The, the two Chinese, uh, churches I've worked with in, in 2022, we've, we've looked at second Timothy verse by verse, and every week as we shared, or is actually about once a month with each church, I've noticed God just showing me something that was just like being out in a desert and seeing an oasis and, and finding the water in that oasis.It's been wonderful. Now, to remind you of where we're at here in Second Timothy, this is Paul's final letter, and he's writing to his young protege in ministry, his son in the ministry, young Timothy over in Ephesus, who. Leading of the church himself, uh, through this perilous, tumultuous time in the first century.Now, Paul and Timothy had a precious, precious relationship. Uh, we, we know that, uh, Paul, that Paul had, uh, uh, spent a great deal of time with Timothy's family, his grandmother Lois, his mother, Eunice. And uh, there's no mention of Timothy's dad. He may have died. We don't know. The relationship that Paul had with Timothy was more like a father and son.And, and today I just want to ask you, I, I, if, if there's any anxiety in your life, if you're a bit afraid of, of how to do life in this tumultuous 21st century is particularly coming out of the last three years that we've all experienced. I want to tell you that there's some great words of hope in this, uh, little book we call Second Timothy.And I pray that in this message today, you'll be introduced to some real compassionate counsel from the Apostle Paul himself. But first, I want to remind you of the predicament that Paul found himself in as he was writing this little. You know, as we leave, uh, the Book of Acts, uh, Paul is in under house arrest.That was nothing compared to where he is now. After he, uh, uh, once he finished up that house arrest in Rome, he managed to make one more missionary trip, probably up into Spain somewhere, and then decided to come back to Rome to, because he knew that the church in Rome was struggling. He wanted to spend time with him.So he comes back to Rome. We don't know how long he's back there before he's arrested and thrown into the Mamertine prison. Cesar Nero has got the City of Rome during this time, about 66 AD just in a state of complete upheaval. Now, let me tell you about Caesar Nero. He was a megalomaniac in every sense of the word, a narcissistic narcissist from, from every perspective.Um, he decided to rebuild Rome to, uh, match his own glory. So he decided to try to burn it down and he blamed the believers, he blamed Christians, something that even Paul had an opportunity to talk to him at one point and, and maybe because of that conversation and Nero being confronted with the claims of the gospel and because of his nature refusing that, he went.Insane. We don't know. But Rome was in bad shape. The city was burning and he was blaming it on Christians. He disliked Christians so much that he said about these believers, these followers of Christ, that they are cannibals. They delight in eating the body and blood of their Lord. And, and he became so, uh, sadistic by, by arresting Christians and dipping them in some kind of oil and burning them alive.And then you all know the stories of him throwing Christians into, uh, to feed the lions and, and, and such. He was mono. He was a, in Pastor Mark's words, he was real muckety muck, if ever there was one. And yet, uh, Paul finds himself under arrest and he's thrown into this, uh, prison now. Our scripture comes to declare today, I think, and I want you to see with me three admonitions, three, uh, compassionate counsel or admonitions, uh, from Nepal for tumultuous times, for chaotic times for uncertain times, just like we have here in, uh, 2023.And the first thing I'd like to show you, this is take you in first chapter of Second Timothy, verse seven. In fact, um, uh, let me just read, uh, starting with verse three, these words and that'll bring us down to, uh, verse seven. He says to young Timothy, I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors with a clear conscience.As I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day, as I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois and your mother Eunice. And now I'm sure it dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you.Through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us not a spirit, a fear. But of power, love, and sound mind. The first admonition that I would challenge you with today, Paul is saying to you and me, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. In fact, be unafraid. He's, you know, this whole idea of fear in our lives, fear does massive damage to every one of us, including we who are Christ followers.It's a tool of the devil himself. Fear is, it can be debilitating. It robs us of joy. It causes us to make bad decisions. Listen, no one likes to be afraid. Uh, you know, I don't know if you've ever wondered how many times it says in scripture to. Uh, do not fear or fear not. I saw a meme recently in social media where it says the term, uh, fear not is, uh, given 365 times, uh, in the Bible.Uh, you know, one for each day. I, I don't know that that's true. Uh, you know, I've counted 70 to 80, 90 times, you know, as I've studied and, and looked at it, the bottom line, the number is not so as important as the fact that God tr just challenges us not to be afraid and not let fear rule in our heart for it will destroy your life.It will destroy your marriage, it will destroy careers. Fear does damage to the first hearing in second Timothy one 17. Paul uses an interesting word for fear. He says, For, for God gave us a spirit, not a fear. That word fear is the Greek word, Dalia, which has the connotation of timidity. Uh, uh. It, it, it, it's fearfulness.It's it's cowardice In the first century world, um, in secular literature, it refers to a person who has fled from battle due to cowardice. It's, it's like the polar opposite of boldness. You know, the human condition is such that, that we are just kind of prone to be set by even all kinds of little.Nagging fears and they will rob us of joy. Uh, you know, you've heard the term phobia. Uh, all of us you would think probably have some kind of phobia. I know one of the reasons I moved from Louisiana up to New Jersey is because there are no poisonous snakes here in, uh, New Jersey. Not that I've been able now.Last summer I saw my first black snake in our, he, that little guy, even though he was non venomous, still freaked me out. But, uh, I grew up in South Louisiana and I've seen all men are of water moccasins, copperheads rattlesnakes, and, uh, the, the worst kind or the other kind of reptiles called alligators, which I've, I've seen enough of.So I moved to New Jersey and I'm good. But, uh, uh, you know, let me just take a quick survey. Uh, how many of you, uh, deal with, uh, claustrophobia? Anybody deal with claustrophobia? Okay. Now how about, uh, what about Bronte phobia, which is the fear of, of thunderstorms and, and such? Anybody deal with bronto phobia?What about acrophobia? The fear of heights. All right, there we go. Now we're getting some hands. Okay. How about arao phobia? You about ara? Okay. The, yeah, there's some guys that, yeah. The spiders. Ooh, yeah. Okay. Here's a, here's a phobia. That is, is, uh, I don't know if you, uh, heard of, uh, it's called nomophobia.Nomophobia. You know what nomophobia is? It is the fear of misplacing or losing your cell phone. Okay? Anybody with nomophobia. Honey, where's my phone? Nomophobia. Yeah. These fears will do a number on us. Now, uh, let me tell you, uh, Paul here is writing from this prison cell. It was a horrible prison cell. And he is writing to this young man, his son in the ministry and says, Timmy, don't be afraid.Don't be afraid. Now you're saying to yourself, how can Paul, as he's writing these words here, How can he write these words and himself not be afraid? I believe there's some things that we can see up, uh, top, uh, beginning of the, uh, uh, verse three that we can see that, uh, why Paul was not afraid. He was not afraid and fear had no place in his life because his life was filled with Thanksgiving.Verse three, where it says, I thank my God whom I serve, as did my ancestors. Hey, his life was filled with Thanksgiving also. His life was filled with forgiveness. He had a clear conscience. He understood the power of living life without the burden of unconfessed sin. He had a clear conscience. His life was also prayerful.He says, uh, as I remember your, uh, uh, I remember you constantly in my prayers. Uh, I want you to see also that he, his life was filled with hope. He says, uh, I remember your tears. I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. By the way, hope is so important for the believer. If we don't have hope, what else is there?And one of my favorite acrostics for hope is this, uh, hope is simply heavenly optimism, perpetually entertained hope. His life was also filled with encouragement. Look here in verse five, where he says, I am reminded of your sincere faith, Timmy, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois and your mother, Eunice, and I'm sure dwells in you.And, and, and, uh, also godly advice. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God. He says, Tim, fan inflamed that gift of God, which he has given you. Uh, you know, Paul was apparently at Timothy's appointment as a pastor in the church at, at Ephesus, and he challenged him by saying, keep serving by the grace and power of God.Be a good steward of God's gift to you, Timmy. He says, God has gifted you and even while he's sitting there in, in this meine prison with all cold, damp, whatever. He was constantly focused on someone else. He was not focused on his own problems. His life was filled with Thanksgiving, encouragement, prayer, hope.And when we begin to fill our lives with those kinds of things, we won't have time to be afraid. Paul was also not fearful. For one more reason, he understood the power of love. He understood and probably was fully cognizant of John's encouragement. Uh, you know, as John the beloved wrote these words in his own letter by this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we also in the world.There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Paul understood that what he was needed to be about was loving God and loving people. It's all about love, love, cast out fear. That's the first admonition today for us. Don't be afraid. Secondly, we are not to be ashamed. Look here at verse eight.Let me read, read some verses here in verse eight through 12. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested to the appearing of our savior, Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life into mortality to life of the gospel for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why it is why I suffer as I do, but I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he's able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.Don't be ashamed, folks. Be unashamed to fully understand. You need to know that the, that this word shame or, uh, goes along with another word. Honor. Honor and shame were considered together. Often in the first century, they were linked together as two pivotal values in the ancient world, they are polar extremes of each other.As nouns, honor approximates our ideas of esteem, respect, high regard, good, uh, uh, good reputation. While the word for shame means just the opposite, it connotes humiliation. Our loss of standing. The word here was also a euphemism for nakedness, as if one is brought to total embarrassment due to being unclothed.It's also so very interesting. That's a Hebrew word. It, it's this Hebrew word used in First Chronicles as a personal name, which means destroyed or in ruin. To be shamed was to be made in full view, to bring total embarrassment to someone. It's, it's like the emperor with no clothes. He's been had, he's been exposed.And Paul is saying to Timothy, Tim, I am not ashamed. So you don't need to be ashamed. In fact, we are invited, uh, to even share in the suffering, uh, of, for the gospel by God's power. Uh, you know, last week I was preaching at a church, uh, one of our graffiti churches in New York. and, uh, this whole idea of suffering.By the way, I'm moving quickly because I, uh, either I have to move, preach quickly, or you're gonna have to listen a little bit faster cuz I'm running out of time. I got so much to share in this. The, uh, uh, he says here invites Timothy to share in the suffering. Last week I met Dimitri, a man, almost 80 years of age, who was from Romania.And he sat there and told me about his, his prison experience. He got saved as a young man during the communist regime there in, in Romania. And he began preaching. He felt God calling him to preach and he would preach freely until he was arrested and thrown into jail. You sit there and look at Dimitri and he speaks broken English, but he has become a good friend and his nose is all bent outta shape and he said I was beaten severely, almost died several times in Romania.He said in 1992, I made a return trip back to Romania to visit, and I sat down at a park bench, hadn't been in Romania in my home very long, bought a bunch of newspapers, and the guy sat down next to me and he said, he said, uh, you are, you are Ian, Ian Colcci. And, and Dimitri said, yes, that's my name. And Dimitri said, who are you?He said, don't you remember me? And then Dimitri said, it dawned on him here he was a prison guard who had beaten him, just ferociously. And this now man, over a little over 80 years of age, looked at Dimitri and said, when I beat you, I saw a radiance in your face. In your body. You did not fight back. You did not cry.You just looked up at me with eyes of love. and, and Mr. Ian, I want to tell you that because of that, I recently became a Christian and I'm looking for a Bible to read. And right there on that park bench in 1992, Dimitri gave him a Bible. But Dimitri could have been shamed when he was beaten so ferociously when he was beaten up in the prison and, and just, uh, uh, treated like trash.He said, I could have been very shameful, uh, be shamed of myself in my condition, but I chose not to be. I knew God was standing with me. You know, there is, uh, probably the greatest experimental scientist of all time was a guy by the name of Sir Michael Faraday. Uh, he was a British scientist who studied the electromagnetic field and if.If the Nobel Prize had been, uh, available in the 19th century, he probably would've won about eight different Nobel Prizes. But, uh, near his death, his, uh, coworker and colleague, who was somewhat of a cynic, uh, especially about faith, came to see Sir Michael. And, uh, sir Michael was known to be able to, you know, when he would have an idea or a speculation, he would want to run into the lab and prove it.And so his friend, uh, trying to introduce some levity into the situation, uh, came into, uh, sir Michael's room and said, sir Michael, now what do you think? Do you have any speculations about death? What are your speculations now? And, and, and, and Sir Michael Faraday was, was near death. It wasn't long before he was going to, to pass on.But he shared something pretty remarkable with this cynic. He looked up at him, his former coworker, and he says, this speculations man, I have none. I have certainties. I thank God that I don't rest my dying head upon speculations for I know whom I've believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him, against that day.Don't be ashamed, be unashamed. Third and final thing I wanna share with you today, and I want to encourage you with this, is this, that we are not to be distracted or are distracted by the world, but be totally unhindered. I want you to see with me starting in verse 15. Some, some names of some folks and introduce you to one particular person.Verse 15. It says, you're aware that all who Reja turned away from me, among whom are Figi and Hermogenes, made the Lord Grant mercy to the household of a, uh, ferous, ferous, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me.May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day, and you well know all the service he rendered. In Ephesus, I wanted to do some research to find out who this guy on his cphs was. He was a man who had come to visit and, and minister and serve, uh, the Apostle Paul. And, and in, in all my research, I, I could not find a great deal until I stumbled upon a message by Dr.W Christal from the First Baptist Church of Dallas that was priest in the late fifties. And, uh, Dr. Christal sermon helped me to draw together some facts about this man on a cph. Uh, we know that he is, uh, his name, uh, meant benefit bringing or profit sharing or profit bearing. In all likelihood, he was a successful businessman who traveled a great deal.And he was an encourager. Uh, and as I began to study about who this guy on CPH was, Dr. Crystal shared some in a story form, something of, of how he spent his last few, um, weeks of life. So let me just share this and, uh, let you be challenged. Anci was the successful businessman and he decided to take a boat from his home in Ephesus to Rome where he frequently did business.And upon arriving in Rome, he gets off the boat and begins immediately to ask, where is Paul the prisoner? Have you seen Paul, the prisoner? And folks as he's talking to, they reply, uh, we don't know who you're talking about. He goes to the p pretorian guard. Where is Paul the prisoner? And they say we don't know his business associates.He goes to, uh, his contacts in Rome. Have you heard of Paul? The preacher of Christ? We don't know. We don't know where, who you're talking about. But one time a person calls him over and says, Ancira, shh. Don't ask so openly about this guy, Paul, the preacher of Christ. Don't you know whoever is found to be. A Christian is an enemy of the gods and an enemy of the state and is subject to immediate death.Be quiet, sir. Don't talk about this guy, Paul. So Anus makes a determination if Paul, the preacher of Christ is in the city of Rome, I shall find him death or life. He searches, he asks, he goes from one prison to the other. He meets somebody. Oh, Paul, sure I remember him. A Roman citizen, a Jew, a Christian. I heard he was condemned to death and is in the EEN prison.So Anci makes his way over to the Meereen prison. And you see this prison is unlike any others. It's cut out of the solid rock on the Capitoline Hill. The only entrance to that awful dungeon. It, it's made like a cistern up at the top, a g grading of iron through which the prisoner is let down into that awful hole through which, what little food and water is offered.And he's let down, down inside that hole is, its a stench, it's, it's a horror. The only light that which can, can struggle through the iron grading comes in by precious small rays. And here he is. I found him, uh, on his. SY says, there he is. There's my pastor, there's Paul. On Cph before he let me back up and say that, that, uh, he goes to the guard who's guarding the, the, the great who's guarding the entrance.And he says, sir, in the dungeon, a prisoner named Paul. And the guard says Yes. So on Asph draws from a secret pocket in his robe, a little pouch of gold and places it in the guard's hand. Ancira says, may I see him? And the guard says, huh, gold. Okay, well, yes, this time you may, he goes in the iron Grady, he lifts it away.Lets anus down on the dungeon. He looks around and there chained to the solid rock is Paul the aged, the preacher of the gospel of the son of God. And Paul lifts up his face and there is his old friend on Ephs. Can you just imagine the sheer joy which overcomes Paul as he sees for the first time in a long time?His good friend and Anci falls into the arms of his dear friend, that wonderful embrace of long separated brothers, and we are reminded of, of Paul's words. In his, his letter where he writes on a cph, he sought me out diligently, very diligently, and he found me and he often refreshed me for he was not ashamed of my chains.On a cphs comes back another day and out of his pocket, a little bag of gold into the hand of the guard to see Paul. Okay. Yes. One more time. You can see him. And he removes the iron grading and ancira is let down into the stinking dungeon. Again, look here. Paul Ancira says, I brought you some bread. I've got you some water so you can wash with, and I brought you a cloak and, and, and look, I brought you a pen and some parchment.And the old and weirded apostle would then write. He often refreshed me. He helped me, he brought me something. Then one day, Annacis was found out a friend of Caesar Niro saw this businessman making his way to the Maton prison and, and seeing the transaction which took place between. And the guard. So he goes to his friend, a guy who's in charge of the prisons and says, you wanna make some money?There's a guy visiting Paul, the preacher, and he's rich. He's a businessman. Let's arrest him. And then you can ta we can split his wealth. And so seeing opportunity, they guard, they position themselves and wait. Until Anci comes and sure enough, Ancira shows up, makes the transaction with the guard, and Anci is arrested.Now we have to guess, but probably he was executed the way that that Christians are at that time. There was, uh, there before the Roman court, one of Nero's corrupt judges arraigned him. He's declared a Christian and the Roman judge, uh, asked him if he's a Christian. Ancira says, I am. Are you a friend of Paul?The preacher of Christ, sir? I am. And that ended the life of Anci and his wealth and property may have been confiscated. . And one day Anci did not come to see Paul, and the next day Anci did not come. And the next day he didn't come. And Paul wondered and wondered, and somebody told him, was it Luke, the physician?Maybe. Was it the guard who heard? But somebody said, anus has lost his life. And Paul as though he didn't have trouble in sorrow enough. Paul picks up his pen and he writes these words, the Lord give mercy to the household of anus back in Ephesus. The Lord granted to him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day.And when he closed the letter, the last salutation that he ever wrote was this salute. The household of Annacis for, he was not ashamed of my chain, but when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently and found me the Lord granted unto him that he may find mercy from the Lord in that day. Folks, I'd like to meet him one day and plan to meet onus one.I'd like to shake his hand. I'd like to bow my head in his presence for he was un totally undeterred, totally undistracted like others had been. That's what it is to be a follower. Follower of Christ totally undistracted by the things of the world. There were some, uh, like in verse 15 of chapter one, a very sad verse.You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are FYIs and her manganese. Over in chapter four, verse nine, do your best to come to me soon for demus in love with the present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Alexander the Coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will pay him according to his deves.There were many that got distracted who had once had been a part of the, the, the fellowship, but they got distracted by the, the tumult of the world, the chaos of the world, and the distractions of the world, but not unci. He was totally undeterred. Today, I think we can learn from his example to be totally unafraid.To be totally unashamed and undistracted as we carry on the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the good news of the kingdom. Would you join me in prayer? God, I thank you so much for the challenge today that in this crazy world we live in, in the 21st century, in this, uh, the wackiness of it, the tal, the chaos, the uncertainty that as followers of Christ, you give us the grace to be totally unafraid and unashamed and undistracted.Lord, today may we go from here as, as one as people who are determined to live by your grace and mercy. Lord, we love you and we thank you for your presence among us this day. And now to the church, I say, go from here to love the Lord. Enjoy him, and serve and be on mission as people totally unafraid, unashamed and undistracted.Amen. Amen.
Exodus 3:1-12“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Sermon Transcript:Good morning. Good morning. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, 2023. Wow. Wow. Uh, happy New Year. So I, uh, I was under the impression that they canceled the 10 30 service so I could preach longer, but I was informed that is not the case. So , we'll, we'll keep it short in compact. I know there's probably some of you that made it to midnight last night.I was not one . I haven't, I can't remember the last time I made it to midnight and I can't say I miss it too much. So we're gonna dive right in. Exodus three, one through 12 is our text this morning. If, uh, you don't have a Bible with you or on your phone, uh, there's a Bible in the pew in front of you. It's page 43.Uh, if you can follow along as I read,Exodus three, one to 12. Now, Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horrib the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold the bush was burning.It was not consumed. Moses said, I'll turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Moses. Moses, and he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet for the place on which you are standing as holy ground.And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hit his face where he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their task masters. I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land.A land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the parasites, the Hivites and the Jees. And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come. I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt.Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He said, but I will be with you. , and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain man. As we get ready to embark on a new year, 2023, and maybe some of you are looking at this and you're excited, you're ready to go.You're, you've got some things on the calendar. Maybe you got a, a new role at work, a new promotion, some new responsibilities, something's happening. You're excited. Ready, ready for 2023. Maybe some of you are not in that space. Maybe some of you are like, man, I'm still trying to process 2020. You know, , it's like, I'm with you there.It's like there's been so much change and upheaval, and maybe you're in a space where there's been some loss. Maybe there's been some tough things in your life and you're trying to figure some things out. Maybe, maybe there's some things in your past. that you can't seem to get by, you can't seem to get over, can't seem to get past.Maybe there's some things that people have said to you, ways people have treated you. Maybe there's some things you've done that you or, or said yourself that you can't get by. We're gonna look today and see from this text exactly what it means for God to be present with us. Even in, you know, no matter where you are, you're ready to go or you're, you're a little bit drawn back from, from where your life has led you to this point.We're gonna see from this text, the power of God's presence in our lives, and we're gonna look at this through the lens of Moses who we just read about. We got a couple questions to look at first. First, how does Moses view himself? And I want you to think as we dive into this passage and really consider this for, from how Moses is, uh, viewing this, how do you view yourself?How do you view yourself in relation to other people in relation to God? And we'll take a look first at how Moses views himself. Just have that question in mind. So first to consider this how Moses views himself. We gotta do a real quick recap and maybe some of you are familiar with the story of Moses, but I just wanna refresh our memories very quickly.So Moses is born a Hebrew, he's in Israelite. He's born a Hebrew in Egypt. During a time when the Hebrews are ens, In Egypt, and we just sang a lot about that. But the, the Hebrews are oppressed by the Egyptians, and Moses is born into a Hebrew family, and then through a series of events, he ends up being adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.And so he's part of Pharaoh's household. He's raised actually as an Egyptian prince. And then when he's about 40 years old, after coming up in this Egyptian house, this, uh, this fair, like, he's, he's, he's got a, a good life as good a life as anybody can have in Egypt, when he is about 40 years old. The Bible says in Acts seven Stephen's speech that it came into his heart to go see his people, his, his Hebrew brothers and sisters.And he goes out and he sees an Egyptian beating, an Israelite, and that enrages him. And he takes matters into his own hands. He takes vengeance into his own hands and he ends up killing this Egyptian. I don't know if that's, that was on purpose or I don't know if that's something that maybe Moses just didn't know his own strength and he had a good right cross.You know, who knows? But regardless, this Egyptian is dead because of Moses. And Moses didn't watch csi. Like he didn't, he didn't know how to cover up all the evidence. Like he left some evidence and people found out. So the next day he goes out to see the Hebrews again, and he sees a Hebrew beating up another Hebrew, and he is like, yo, what are you guys doing?And this Hebrew that's beating up the other Hebrews says, who made you ruler and judge over us? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna kill me? Like you killed that Egyptian? And Moses is like, oh no, people know. And that freaks him out. And then he finds out, Pharaoh knows about it, and Pharaoh's like, Hey, Moses is a dead man.You're dead. So Pharaoh wants to kill Moses. This thing's out. Moses gets out of there, he gets out of Egypt, he hightails it out of there, and he finds himself in a place called Midian. And he meets this family. He ends up marrying one of their daughters, having a couple sons. He settles down in this land of Midian, and that's where we meet him.In our text, we started off saying Moses was keeping the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro. So how does Moses view himself? Is he a Hebrew? Is he an Egyptian? Is he Midianite? Is he a slave? Is he a prince? Is he a shepherd? Who or what is he? And maybe, maybe you have some of these same feelings in your own life.Like, maybe there's a sense of, you know, like, uh, where do I fit in? Where do I belong? And we get a, a quick glit window or insight into how Moses views himself in Exodus 2 22. I'll just read this quickly.Uh, it says here, she's zPo, who's wife gave birth to a son, and he, Moses called his name germ. Germ. Sounds like the Hebrew word for Sojourner. He called his name germ before he said, I've been a sojourner in a foreign land. So Moses views himself. This is your first couple blanks here. Moses views himself as a sojourner in a foreign land, and at this point, like he's 40 when he leaves.He's 80 at the burning bush, and he had germ somewhere in between there. But regardless, like he's a grown man. He's a grown man, and he has this sense of I don't fit in and I don't belong. I don't know who my people are. And I'm sure like the last thing in his mind, like what's ringing in his ears. The last thing that we have recorded that a Hebrew said to him is, you're not one of us.Like who made you ruler and judge over us. You don't belong to us. And then if he's looking at his Egyptian family, like Pharaoh, like the house that he grew up in, he wants to kill him. Like where does he belong? Who is he? And if you can relate to that, pay attention to this. This next thing. How does God view Moses?That's our next, next thing to consider here. And if you're hearing these voices and there's things that you can't get, get by because maybe somebody has said something to you and there's pain there, and a lot of times people are speaking out of their own pain and that just rests with us and we can't get by it.Or maybe there's something that you've done in your past, like think about Moses's life. I'm sure there was these senses of, I've just lost it all. I've thrown it all away. I I don't fit in, I don't belong. I'm just a stranger in a stranger land. And at it's at that point that God, God comes to Moses, God comes to Moses, and we have this burning bush.Moses meets God here. Let's take a look at Exodus three, six. How does God introduce himself to Moses? He says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, man. I think Moses needed to hear that and that I, I, I'm pretty confident of this. I did a little bit of study. I could probably do some more, but I, I think the only times that God introduces himself as I'm the God of your father, and it's God speaking and he's saying, I'm, I'm your God, is to Abraham, or sorry, to Isaac, to Jacob and to Moses.I am the God of your father. And there's this sense of intimacy and inclusion. and belonging. And if you are sitting here having questions about who am I? Where do I belong, where do I fit in, understand that God says to his children, you belong to me. You're mine. And that's what he says to Moses, here, you're my child.You belong to me. I am your father. I'm the God of your father. An another thing here, as Moses learns more about who God is, he learns more about himself. And it's in , it's in who God says Moses is. That's where his true identity is. So there's other voices that we can listen to and focus on or things in our past, things that people have said to us.Shortcomings, failures, all of those types of things. We can listen to those voices. But God says, you're my child. If you are God's child, you are his. And that's where your identity is rooted. That's where you're grounded. You're grounded and rooted in God's love for you as his child. Hear that this morning.One last thing to notice here, as Moses encounters God, he first is scared and he looks away. You, you pick up that, pick that up in, uh, Exodus three, six. Moses hides his face. He's, he meets God, looks at God. God introduces himself. And then Moses hides his face. He's scared. He stops looking at God, but he doesn't stop listening to God.He stays there. If you're in this space of wondering what it is, sometimes it can be a little scary and intimidating to think, all right, I'm going to lean into a relationship with God and I, I don't feel worthy. I don't feel like I'm, I'm there. Don't, don't stop listening to God regardless of even feelings of fear or inadequacy.Don't stop listening to God because you have a God who wants a relationship with you. Says you're if, if you're His child who wants this relationship with you, and look at Exodus 33 11, or you don't have to look at it. I'll just read it. Throughout Moses' life, he's introduced here, he meets God and God takes him on this incredible journey, and we get one glimpse in Exodus 33 11, it says that God and Moses used to speak to each other face to face.As a man speaks to his friend. So Moses didn't stay in this space of being afraid of, you know, it's like he's brought along this relationship where he learns that God is his father, he is God's child, and God is the safest person for him to be in relationship with. He learns that about God. It didn't happen in the snap of a fingers He had, he was, he learned to trust God more and more and more.And if you're a child of God, I, I can say that in my life that's been true. There's been times that I have been afraid of God and I've learned that God is the safest person in my life.We learned some other things about who God is in this passage. That we'll keep, keep moving along here. So what do we learn about God and who he is here? Well, verses seven and nine, if you've ever wondered if God sees, hears or knows he, he does. Look at this, it says he sees, he hears and he knows his people.And sometimes there's these questions of like, is God paying attention? Does God see? Does God hear? Does God know? And like I don't, I can't sense that at different times we learned something else about God here, Exodus three eight, the next verse, God rescues, but it's in his time. And a lot of times that doesn't line up exactly.with how we want things to go or how we want things to pan out or immediately like, Hey, this is my timeline. And we don't know exactly why or when as we're in these moments, but we can lean into a God and trust a God and know that God does see God does hear. God does know, and he rescues. He delivers in his time.He's a God who isn't blind, isn't deaf, and isn't aloof, or he doesn't, it's not like he doesn't know what's going on. You can trust that God who sees ears and knows and rescues. Last thing here in Exodus three 10, God partners with humans. He partners with broken lowly. Unqualified humans to accomplish his will.He works to transform humans into people who accomplish his good work on this earth and bring his kingdom to earth. So he works. He wants to work through his children. He wants to work through you and me to bring his kingdom here on earth to do good worksand he wants good for his children. And that's really the power as we finish up here this morning. That is the power of God's presence in our lives. And sometimes, like if we look here, Moses initially reacts to. With an objection, God's, it's like God's saying all of these different things, like, I'm gonna have you rescue my people.I'm going to do all of these different things, and, and you're gonna be the person that I do this through. Moses immediately says, we can go to the next slide. Um, Moses immediately has an objection and he says, who am I? Who am I that I should do all of these different things? And if you keep reading in chapter three, Moses has objection, after objection, after objection.And it's like he's completely focused on himself. And it's like you want to take him and shake him, you know, and say, Moses, stop focusing on yourself so much. But man, do I do that , like, if you're like me, you do that too. And it's like you, we, I, I focus on my insufficiencies my inadequacies and think like, but how, you know, I can't.And if you have those thoughts right now of like, well, how can God through me, like, how could God want a relationship with me? I can't do this. I can't do that. Pay attention to how God answers Moses'. Objection. He doesn't say, but Moses, you just don't understand. You have so much undeveloped ability in and of yourself.You just gotta tap into that. And he doesn't say, you know, Hey Moses, what, whatever you put your mind to, you can do. You know, as we step into these New Year's resolutions, like if you, if you're making any kind of New Year's resolutions and you're like, you are wondering, you know, can I, can I think about how God answers Moses?Moses says, who am I? And God says, but I'll be with you, but I'll be with you. I am present. It's my presence. That is your power. So as , as we step into a new year, hear that, if you're wondering about your insufficiencies, you're inadequately and you're like, how's this gonna happen? I don't know what God is calling you to or what he's calling to change in your life.I, I know he's calling for change in my life cuz I know I haven't arrived there yet. And I know that the power for me to be able to do that is because of his presence in my life. And that's what he says to his children. I am present with you. I will be with you. God's not staying there on that mountain and saying, Moses, you gotta get back to me.He's going with Moses saying, I'll be with you and I will bring you back. His last thing here is he's not going to fail. God won't fail, and he says to Moses, the sign that you'll know that I sent you and did all this is that you'll be back here with my people worshiping me. , like what I say is going to happen doesn't mean it's an easy road.I don't think Moses thought he was gonna go in there and do the whole 10 plagues. Like if you read the rest of the story, it's not an easy journey at all. But Moses, like the last 20 chapters of Exodus, are all about Moses and the Israelites worshiping God there at that mountain. God will do. What he says he will.He will accomplish his will, and he wants to partner with you and me. He wants to partner with humans who are available, not qualified, maybe not sufficient, in and of ourselves. All of those things are true, but are you available? Am I available for God to partner with us? He wants to partner to do his will in this world.So as we look forward to another year with a mix of excitement and exhaustion, you can lean into the God who sees the God, guy who hears, the guy who knows you, the God who rescues in his time, the God who wants to partner with. To accomplish his will in this world. The God who is present with you, as you consider your own shortcomings and inadequacies, hear God say, but, but I'm with you.And I don't know if that means you need to, you know what? What is God saying to you? You need to leave your job. You need to stay in your job. Do you need to maybe just like we were saying, like Randy was talking about, do we need to make room some way for God to work? Maybe that means you, you change the way you drive.I don't know. We're Jersey drivers. There's a lot of , right? Maybe that means you change your spending habits. Yeah. I, I don't know what it means. I just know. That God wants to work and change us into people that do His will, that do his good in this world. So let's resolve to make room for God to understand that there's power in his presence.If you can stand up, we'll receive this benediction and be dismissed. Um, but just in the stillness of this moment, if you can close your eyes, close your eyes, maybe bow your heads. I've said some things a few times this morning, if you're a child of God, if you're a child of God, if you're a child of God, and if you're wondering right now, am I a child of God?It's as simple as this,do you believe. Do you want to be a child of God? And do you believe that Jesus came to earth, died for your sins, rose again? Do you believe that? And do you say, Jesus, you are my king. I submit to you. I'm not my king. You are my king. If you've done that in the past, if you've just done that right now, if you do that later, you're a child of God.You are his. You belong to him.I couldn't think of a, I couldn't write a better benediction than what Paul said to the Ephesian. So as we're dismissed, just listen to this and receive this. I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, including Moses, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.Now go in peace, being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. You're dismissed.
Revelation 1:4John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
Sermon Transcript:We're gonna be looking a again this morning at our last of, of the series, we're looking at the glory of Jesus from the Book of Revelation, some of the titles that are there.And we've looked at a number that were actually in that song. Uh, we've looked at Jesus that he came as a king, that he was the lion of Judah, that he. The root of David. We've looked at him that he came as a lamb, he was a savior, a deliverer. We've looked at some other titles that are there, but today we're looking at the very first one that is mentioned in the book of Revelation.He came as a faithful witness. He, here's what we read in Revelation chapter one, verse four and five, John to the seven churches that are in. Grace to you and peace from him. Who is and who was, and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on Earth.Lord,we've just declared your worthiness.And it is in your name. It is because of your work. It is because you came as the faithful witness to what you had seen and known that we gathered this morning on this Christmas day. Lord Jesus, even in these few moments together, exalt yourself in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. It is Christmas, and of course it is the focus of Christmas that Jesus come into the world, but Jesus himself is the one that actually takes the sense of this title and puts it into the Christmas account.We're told in John chapter 18, verse 37, when he was standing before Pilate, he said this to Pilate. I came into the world to testify. To the truth. The word testify is the word to bear witness. It means that someone is brought into a courtroom and they there are brought as a primary witness. Jesus says, I came into the world to be a witness, and that concept is what we're talking about this morning.To celebrate Christmas this morning is to celebrate the faithful witness. Coming to our world. Two simple questions this morning. In a simple study, what is a faithful witness? What does it mean? And secondly, what does he bear witness to as this witness? What is a faithful witness? What does that term mean?Well, a couple of things. It means he is an eye witness in courtrooms. There are various levels of witness that is accepted. There are at least. one. The most prominent is the eyewitness account, the person that actually saw it and experienced the, the, the crime that was done or the, the professed crime. A second one is what's called a secondary witness, that you heard this person say, uh, that, that, that they did this or this was going on, and so they can bring, bring, brought in as a secondary witness.Of course, it's a, it's a lesser weighty witness. , you can bring in an expert witness and the person, maybe they came in, maybe they're a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and they can testify, well, here's the things that were going on, and based on what's going on in their lives, their, their behavior is understandable in this situation and be all kinds of of expert witnesses.And then the last one can be a character witness where someone, you gather people and they just come and say, this is so out of character to the way that they have ever behaved in all the life we've done. All of those can be acceptable witness that are brought into a court case and a and a trial. But the most powerful, of course, is the eyewitness.The person that says, I saw it, I experienced it. I was there. Jesus was an eyewitness of what he's going to be talking about in John chapter three, verse 32. Jesus says this talking of himself, he who comes from heaven is above all he bears witness to what he has seen and he has heard. The infant in the manger has come as an eyewitness from heaven.Now, of course, at first thing swing, this doesn't seem that. If you're in a court of law and all of a sudden this 14 year old girl comes in and she's carrying an infant, and they announce the, the, the, the defense announced, well, this is th this is our witness. Our witnesses arrived. And the prosecuting attorney says, I, you know, I object.I mean, this is a 14 year old girl. We, uh, and what is she? And they say, oh, no, no, no problem. No problem. It's not the 14 year old girl. It's the infant that's going to be the witness. Well say, well, okay, that's not a very compelling witness, but in this case it is because during the years of Jesus sojourn on Earth, it will become clear that he has a growing self-awareness and a recall of events.Places and individuals that extend into a measureless past. By the time he began his public ministry, he is fully aware that he has existed beyond creation itself. He came to bear witness to what he had seen and heard in the far recesses of eternity. He's an eyewitness to those things. He is a trustworthy witness.You know, it's one thing to be able to have observed something, and to me, an eyewitness to it. It's another thing to tell what you accu tell accurately what you experienced and what you saw. Jesus is a trustworthy witness because he always tells the truth. A faithful witness can be counted on to give a reliable t.One of the most distressing things that is going on in our culture, to me anyway is, is, is the perspective that it seems so many public figures have that they don't really have to tell the truth unless they're under oath in a court as if any other time. It's not a, it's not required to, to be a verifiable, reliable witness.Well, Jesus actually, uh, spoke to. In his sermon on the Mount, and here's what he said, he said, again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, and that's his way of saying that's not the standard. The the standard isn't that when you, when you're in a court of law, you have to tell the truth.Here's what he. But I say don't, do not take an oath at all either by heaven, for it is the throne of God or by the earth for is his foot in his stool or by Jerusalem For it's the city of the Great King. And do not take an oath on your head for you cannot make one hair white or black. Here's what he says.Let what you say, be simply yes or no. Be a reliable witness, not just under oath, because now you are legally bound to your. Always tell the truth. Always be a person that is a truth teller. Jesus tells the truth always. He's a reliable witness, a trustworthy witness also because he always says the most appropriate things.This statement is made by John Watts Watson, whose pen name was Ian McLaren. No one has yet discovered the word Jesus ought to have. None suggested the better word he might have said. No action of his shocks, our moral sense, none has fallen short of the ideal. He is full of surprises, but they are all surprises of perfection.He always says the most appropriate things. Now, of course, we don't do that. We've all had enumerable conversations where we say, ah, this is what I should have said, or This is what I wish I had said, or, or I spoke emotionally out of, out of anger, or I lied, I exaggerated. I framed it. So it wasn't as bad as it really was, but Jesus is the faithful, trustworthy witness.He always says the appropriate thing. He always gives a trustworthy. Every word is true. Every word is essential and nothing needed is missing. All that's involved when it says Jesus is the faithful witness. But what does Jesus bear witness to when he says, I came into the world to be a witness? A witness of what Well we're.He bear was witness, first of all, to the nature of God. In John chapter one, it says this, as John records, the same one that is calling them him repeatedly in the book of Revelation, the faithful witness. This is how he describes Jesus in John chapter one. Truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God.The only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known. Nobody's ever seen God. He says, but God, God the Son who's at the side of God the Father, he has made him known own. Jesus declares to us God. He bears witness to God in his teaching. But he also does it in his actions and behavior. He is called the low goss of God.In this chapter of John chapter one, the word He is the Word for God. Now, I chose that statement intentionally. I didn't say the word of God. He is the word for God. If I said the word, What just jumped into your mind is something that looks sort of like that. You may have an elaborate pen. You may have a quill pen, but basically it was a pen.It's a writing utensil. The word that expresses that object is pen. I could say fork. And immediately it's come into your mind. This metal thing with four prongs that you eat lunch. I could say hot air balloon, and you have a whole different visual. There's a word that expresses all that. This thing is Jesus is that word.He is the expression of God. And and, and he says he's the very low Gus visualizing God. If you want to know God. Spend time meditating on Jesus, his teaching, his conversation, his interactions, his responses, all witness to who God is. He's the very word that expresses who God is, the visual of who he is.Jesus declares to us God, but he also bears witness. To the will of God. Jesus declared the will of the Father in his teaching. He tells us what that will is. Again, I'm reading from the Gospel of John, John six, verse 40. He says this, for this is the will of my father. That everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and I'll raise him up on the last day.Jesus came to provide a way for people to have eternal life. He says here in John six 40, he continually bears witness that the Father wills people to have that life. It was the will of the Father that consumed Jesus as he entered the world this morning. Consider what Jesus said to his father. As he came into the world, one of my favorite Christmas texts is Hebrews chapter 10, because it actually pulls back the curtain of heaven and tells us when Jesus came as an infant to Beth in that Bethlehem manger, what he was expressing to the father as he came.It's an amazing passage. Here's what he said. When Christ came into the world, Emmy ring, Hebrews chapter 10, verses five through seven. He said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me in burn offerings and sin offerings. You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will.Oh. That's your Christmas text as you sit there this morning, maybe in your pajamas, and celebrate together as a family. As we do so here in this room, what Christmas is, is Jesus saying, I'm coming to bear witness to who God is. I'm coming also to bear witness to the plan of God. I'm that plan. I'm coming.And what has been prepared for you? Me is a. To take the place of the bodies, of, of animals that have been the sacrificial offerings to cover the sins of people. And he goes on in that passage, says, once you have to do it every year, in some case you have to repeat it multiple times. He says, but I'm coming to provide one sacrifice forever.He said, I'm coming to declare this is the father's will. This is, this is my, my message as the low of God. Is that my father is sending me because he wills people to know him, to walk with him, to enjoy him, to do eternity with him, and he prepared a body for me that that body could grow and live and fulfill all righteousness for 30 something years.And then that, that. Could be slain as I became the lamb, the sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world. All that embraced me as their savior. And he says, this is my declaration. I've come to bear witness. This is who my father is like, and this is what my father wills, that people would know him through me.Jesus came to be the faithful witness. To testify to what God is like and what God wants to offer. Sinners, broken people who need forgiveness and healing. But don't take it from me. Why not use going into this new year in January to take a book of the Bible, like the Book of Luke, and just for a month read chapter every day and reflect upon.The testimony regarding Christ to look at it, to, to, to, to watch the fantastic series, the passion that is basically walking us through the Book of Luke and just look and listen to what Jesus is saying. I'm bearing witness to the one I've known from eternity past. This is who he is. This is what he's like.I'm declaring his character as I walk among you, but also I'm declaring his plan, his will, that he wants people to know him and to have life with him. And I've come on this Christmas morning saying to my father, as, as I'm coming to this planet, I'm coming to do your will and it's done in a body that you've prepared for me.Jesus great Christmas present to us is himself. He came to be the faithful witness to bear testimony to what he knows of the father, and to reveal and fulfill the father's will for our salvation and to us. He then says, Merry Christmas. I am the gift. He is given himself. Lord,I thank you that you came the reliable, trustworthy witness, that you're bearing witness to what you have known into the very recesses of eternity.You showed it in your life, in your responses. in your words, you showed us the father, you showed us God, and then to realize that you've come to show us the father's heart in his plan, that we would know him, that we would do eternity with him, do life with him forever.We worship you this morning on this Christmas. as the faithful witness. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Merry Christmas everybody. Merry.
Revelation 22“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”
Sermon Transcript:Revelation 22. And I'd like to read verses 12 through 16.Behold, I'm coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for, excuse me. Yeah, for each one what he has done. I am the Alpha nu Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.outside of the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolators, and everyone who loves and practices his falsehood, I Jesus have sent my angel to testify to you about these things. For the churches, I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright Morning Star. Let's pray together.Lord, our desire today in gathering is that you would receive glory in the highest places, the places that you inhabit. Lord, we pray that even as we open your word now and as reflect upon the scriptures, that God, you would guide us, that you would speak truth into us regarding what this title of Jesus means, the root of David, the descendant of David.Lord glorify yourself today. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. What I'm gonna do this morning is I'm going to talk about this particular, uh, title, um, and then I'm going at the end add three particular ramifications I think for our lives as a result of that. We've been highlighting in this series that the book of Revelation was actually written at the end of the first century in 95 AD approximately at a time when the church was facing great opposition and persecution.It was written as a message of encouragement to people that were struggling to not despair in the face of hard times. It enabled these Christian disciples to lift their eyes from their circumstances, disappointments, confusion. To a person and the person is Jesus Christ. And in this book there are a about 30 different ways Jesus is described.We have been looking at some of those titles of Jesus Christ that were designed to give encouragement, support, strength in the midst of the stuff of life. They show the glory of Jesus as depicted in these titles. And some of those we've looked at was initially Alpha and Omega, that he is both the creator and the culmination.It just doesn't mean that Jesus is first and he's also last. It is because in eternity there are all humans will be in an eternal state. It's saying the uniqueness of Christ is that he was creator God. He was first, but that everything, he is the beginning of the Greek alphabet, but he is also what every part of, of life and history is pointing.He is the omega. He is the culmination of it all. He's the lion of Judah. And Pastor Jared talked about this, that he is the defender and he is our sovereign. He is both the king of our lives, but is also the lion that is directing our lives upon, uh, before whom we subject our wills. He is the lamb. And Pastor Mike talked.He was the sacrifice and savior worthy, the only unworthy to open the seals revealing the plans and purposes of God the father, because he is the one who did the father's work in purchasing by his own blood. People who now know and serve God. This morning we're looking at. The root of David, that he is both the ancestor of David and he is the offspring of David.We'll look at what that's about. Our focus today is actually verse 16. I Jesus have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring or descendant of David and the bright and mourning star. Our sermon this morning is gonna try to explain these titles and then to bring those three ramifications to our lives.First of all, he is the root of David. Jesus is the ancestor of David and the source of his kingdom. He's the root. Jesus preceded David. My father-in-law was a, uh, science professor in a college and, uh, had his doctorate in biology. Mainly his field of study was botany, the study of plants. Um, when I first started out in my preaching ministry, um, I would often bring in history illustrations, illustrations from books I was reading, and I would dabble a little bit in science illustrations.My wife was regularly mortified because somehow I always got the science illustrations just a little bit off. This was her background with her dad, but I'm waiting in again today to the field of botany. David Jesus is the root of David. If you take an acorn, and you know how an acorn can make this towering oak, it can take over a hundred years.But basically when the acorn goes into the ground, the first thing that comes out of the acorn one, it is, it has germinated, is the roots. The roots go down. They begin to provide the, the nutrients, the, the, the, the life, the water that is necessary. And out of that, then will come the stem, which will burst through the, the, the surface of the ground.And you will have an oak tree. The root is first, you can't have this, this towering tree. Without the roots being the, the initial part of that germinating process, the roots precede the tree. Jesus is saying, I proceed, David. I am the root of David. I am the root of the kingdom. He is here declaring clearly his role as God, that I'm the one that chose David.I'm the one that appointed him. I'm the one that was before him, this entire tree of the family of David. And, and the promised, uh, monarchy that would come out of him way back in 1000 bc He said I was the one that chose him, designed him, called him. I preceded David. I'm his route. Secondly, as the root, he also as the one that preserved David's kingdom roots live on even after a tree is felled.If you, if you saw off a tree and it, it, there's, there's no, there's no, uh, foliage anymore. There's no fruit. There's no branches. But still there will be a root system that continues for a period of time. Jesus maintained. The Davidic line. Even in those seasons when the Davidic, uh, descendants were godless, which happened for generations, Jesus was sovereignly overseeing it, per, uh, preserving it, protecting heirs, even when they had rejected God themselves.Jesus actually oversaw the preservation of the line of David until he himself was born from that line. It's a, it's a startling thing, but this is what he's saying. I'm the root of David, but I'm also the descendant, the offspring of David. The second title we see here in verse 16 of Revelation 22 is, I am the descendant or offspring of David.Jesus is the son of David, an heir of his kingdom. and by that scripture presents a number of qualities that were true of Jesus Christ in that role. First of all, Jesus rescued the kingdom is a very fascinating verse in Isaiah 11, one, it says this, out of the stump of Jesse's family, and Jesse was the father of David.It's a reference to David. Out of the stump of Jesse's family will grow a chute, a new branch that will flourish and bear fruit. This prophecy of the David Kingdom is built on a common phenomenon of seeming dead stumps. It's pictured in this, this visual, if we can bring that up. You see there, the little plant.It's right. Uh, that plant is growing out, that shoot, that sprout. All of you have had this. Have you taken a tree out and a stump? Many times you'll have those shoots and they drive you crazy. Why do these things? I mean, I took this tree out. These shoots keep coming up. Eventually they'll die out if you keep cutting 'em off.But the, the concept is Jesus Christ was the shoot. Now what's that talking about? Here's what it's talking about.Many years ago, I, this is way illustrated to this. Many years ago I had heard a speech, it was actually when I was beginning to go into my ministry, um, I was looking towards church planning and I had been pastoring, uh, a small church in Indiana before I joined A B W E and went into church planning and I heard a guy speak and he was talking to people, pastors that were going into churches, particularly churches that were older and dying or, and just, uh, struggling.And his talk was entitled, how to Grow a Living Tree Out of a Dead Stump. It was, it was a great talk. It's a talk I, I, I've tried to think back in the last couple of weeks. I would say I've, I've shared the story of that video, of that presentation that he, he gave probably 15 to 20 times in talking to pastors that are going into a church.Uh, younger pastors that are starting out are intimidated because an existing church and they're not sure how to get it off the dime. It's sort of been struggling for a while. And basically this was his concept. He say the way you build a living tree out of a dead stump is you look for the chutes, that there's life that will come up from the root system around the side.And he said, don't think you're gonna take that whole stump and immediately change the whole thing and get it following you and moving forward. He said, look for the living sprouts, the, the shoots. And what he meant was, look for people. That are, that you can invest your life in and start off by spending time with them and support them and build into them and have them become partners with you with such good counsel.And basically he's saying they will then help you create an entire new tree. And part of those that are part of the stump will will join with you. Part of them will just sort of stay around. There'll probably be some that won't stay, but he said, invest your lives in the shoots where the life of the tree is manifesting itself Here, Jesse, they're talking about the stump of Jesse's family, which basically is talking about the Davidic line.And Isaiah is using this to point towards what Jesus Christ would become. So how does that have to do with him as the son of David? Well, in this way, Jesse was the father of King David, whose descendants God promised, would have a throne forever. He told them that in about 1000 BC that was part of David Rain a few years after a thousand and a few years before a thousand bc as the centuries went by, the line got weaker and weaker until at last it was cut off basically from the throne altogether.What happened is their last king, the last member of the Davidic line, was a guy named Zakiah. He was Godless as many of his, uh, the people before him. His predecessors had been, and he was, uh, taken into captivity. It was a horrible scene. They, the, uh, the Babylonians actually took him. They, they watched him.They, they made him watch his two sons be slain and then they blinded him. And they kept him in captivity for the remainder of his life. This was the end of the Davidic throne as far as all of history knew. That was in about 585 BC for over 580 years. This line of David has been a, a dead stump. It has been a stump that has been fell.The tree has been filled. And even those that were the most ardent believers in God is somehow going to bring a, a, a king, uh, uh, uh, the Messiah, the promised heir of David. They had no clue how this could possibly happen. Nobody knew where the descendants of David were. They didn't know that they had become a peasant family living up in an obscure town in, in Northern Israel.Nobody had the books. Nobody was tracing for centuries. Where is. The line of David. The tree's been cut down. It's just a stump. And Isaiah says, ah, but there will be a shoot. There will be life that will come out. The very root of the tree will actually become the shoot himself, the the ancestor, the originator of the line of David, the root of David.Jesus will become that very shoot that will fulfill the promises that were made about the king that would one day come the heir of David,the truth king would come and rescue the Davidic line. Secondly, Jesus fulfills the promises of the kingdom in one Samuel seven, verse 12, and following it says this. At talking to David, when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I'll raise up your offspring to succeed. You who will come from your own body, and I'll establish his kingdom.He's the one who will build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I'll be his father and he will be my son. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever. This promise beginning, it sounds like he's talking about Solomon, who's gonna build the temple.But then he goes, father, and he says no. The the one I'm talking about, the ultimate fulfillment of this promise will be the king forever. His throne will be established forever. Jesus will never stop being the king. The third thing that is true as Jesus, the descendant of David, is Jesus will expand the kingdom.In Ro. In Romans chapter 15, verse 12, we read this word, it says this in Romans 1512, the root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations in him. The Gentiles will hope. This was a shocking statement. Nobody really knew what it meant, but the idea is that his reign is going to be building a kingdom before whom the nations will bow and in whom they will find hope.All peoples, all tribes, all nationalities, will be able to find hope and grace under the king whose kingdom is ultimately a kingdom of the heart. This is what is referenced in, in this verse here in Revelation 22 when it says, I am the root and the offspring of David. And then it says, and the bright morning star, I mean, what's, what's that about?What's the bright Morning star? I mean, I, I get how you say he was the root and, and then out of the root came the shoot. That is the offspring. But, but what does it mean he's the Bright Morning star? Well, this is actually a phrase that was used by a guy named Baum. And Baum was a Alam, and Bayam was a guy that was a pagan prophet.And when the Israelites under Moses were coming to, to enter the land of Israel, they were down in a land called Eden. And they were coming up under, they had come from Egypt, they'd gone through the wilderness, and now they're coming up underneath Egypt and they're on the, the eastern side of Eden. And they were about to enter the, what became the land of Israel.The pagan kings hired Bayam to come and curse these people. And so Bayam came and instead of cursing them, he, he, he found what got put in his mouth was a blessing. And what he promised in his blessing was this, A star will come outta Jacob a scepter. This is numbers 24 17. A scepter will rise out of Israel.He will crush the foreheads of Moab. The skulls of the people of she Eden will be conquered. Sarah, his enemy will be conquered, but Israel will grow strong. A ruler will come outta Jacob and destroy the survivors of the city. Basically, he's saying this morning, star, this star will, will have supremacy again.He will be a king over all the earth and out of him. Nations will put their hope. And out of every people and tribe and tongue and nationality, individuals will embrace this king, the Morning Star. When I had the chance to speak recently at Before the the UN Delegates at by the Crew Ministries. Um, . It was a, it was a, uh, reception, so you had two hours.Um, and, and I spoke in the middle of that, but we were with people the whole time. A standing reception. You were walking around getting to know people. And I had, I kept having crew members that would introduce me to people that were a part of, of the UN that were believers. Some of them, it was just a spouse.And, and they would introduce this is, this is the wife of so-and-so, or this is the husband of so-and-so. They were believers. Uh, some were were senior staff. But it was striking me. I was thinking about us. I thought about this passage about he is going to be the one that is gonna expand the kingdom beyond Israel, beyond the David Kingdom as the Israelites thought of it, but to be a kingdom that permeates the entire world and conversations I had with delegates from a country in Eastern Asia.A Middle Eastern nation, a delegate conversation with, with the delegate from a European nation, a West African nation, a Caribbean nation delegates, or their spouses or senior staff who had embraced Christ as their savior. And it was just such a striking visual to me. This is the king who was the root of it all, and who has now become the shoot that is the descendant of David, who is bringing a kingdom that really has permeated the globe and who are now providing as.As the passage says here in Romans 15, the root of his of Jesse will spring up, one who will rise to rule over the nations in him. The Gentiles will hope. Jesus delivers. The third thing, the fourth thing is this. Jesus delivers the kingdom of God, the kingdom to God the Father. This, this is a striking passage and I'd like to read these verses in Fi, first Corinthians 15, where it talks about what Jesus does with the kingdom that he has developed, the kingdom that is represented all over the world, all over the globe.What does Jesus ultimately do with that kingdom? Here's what it says in one Corinthians 15, verse 23 and following, he's talking about the resurrection. Be each in his own order. Christ the first fruits, then it is coming. Those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority in power, for he must reign until he is put all his enemies under his feet, the last enemy to destroy, be destroyed, his death.Says this, then in verse 28, when all things are subjected to Christ, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him. That God may be all in all two phrases here. It says, ultimately Jesus will deliver the kingdom to the Father. It says at that moment, then when everything's subjected to Christ, then the son himself will be subjected to him who put th all things in subjection under him, that God may be all.In all, this is remarkable scene that all that Jesus has done, being the land that was slain, being the one who has been the root of David, who is now the descendant of David, who is the king, uh, providing hope to peoples all over the world, will bring those peoples from every ti tribe and tongue and nation.And we'll bring them to his father, subjecting himself to the father, and saying, this ultimately is the kingdom for you. So what are the ramifications of this? If Jesus is the root of David, if he is also the descendant of David? Three simple ramifications this morning. The primary role of J among Jesus of Jesus among his people is the role of King.We look at him, scripture says, he's our brother. He's our savior. He's our deliverer. He's our shepherd. There are countless titles, but the primary role from cover to cover of scripture is that he is designated among his people as their king. It's striking that the primary designation of the one who would come in the Old Testament was the Son of David.It is the picture of the Messiah. Who would come? Jesus himself, the primary name he took for himself when they, when he talked about himself, he constantly said The Son of man. The Son of man, I am the son of man. It again, was a Messianic title. It was a title he took. Even the word Christ, when you use the word Jesus Christ, it literally is Jesus.The Christ wasn't his last name. It was his title, the Christ. Is the word that that we get the word Messiah from. It's the same thing. The Christ literally means the anointed one, anointed to what He was anointed as king. He is Jesus the king. And as Jared pointed out when he said this, foundationally reminds us that as Jesus willingly subjected himself to the Father, he's our king.We are to live our lives recognizing the primary role of Jesus as much as he is our friend and our shepherd and and our savior, and deliver. He is our king and we have the privilege to being a part of his kingdom. The second ramification is that even in the darkness and silence, God is still writing his storyafters, King's, Atia. Was arrested and conquered by the Babylonians and thrown into prison until he died in Babylon. The people of Israel participated in what is known as the 70 years of captivity. The entire nation, or, or all of the prominent people of the nation were forced to go to Babylon. They lived there for generations for, for 70 years before some of them were allowed to come back.When the Persians basically conquered the Babylonians, even in their return, they were always under a foreign power. First the Israelites returning to their land were under the Persians. Then they were under the Greeks. Then they became under the Romans. There was no King of Israel. There was no fulfillment of the Davidic line.There was no hint of an individual that could appropriately be called the King of Israel at this time. The son of David, in all that time called historically, particularly for the 400 years just before Christ, the silent years, it seemed like nothing was going on. It seemed like everything had been broken.All you've been left with is a feld tree and just a stump. Long since cut off and irrelevant was the tree. Even those most fervent that God would fulfill. This promises about a king saw nothing but a stump, but God was at work. God's purposes and sovereign plan were still at work. No one would've understood at that time that the root of David, that the originator of David.Would also become the shoot that would actually be the descendant and the fulfillment as the son of David, the King of Kings in Lord of Lords. It's a reminder in the silence and darkness of our lives in those seasons, which some of you are really in right now, when it seems my whole life just seems like, I mean the, the tree's been felled, things have not gone like they thought.It just looks like a dead stump is here, and I'm just trying to hold on. Where's God, what's going on? Why isn't he answering and, and doing what I I long for him to do? Why isn't he moving in the people that matter the most? To me, it's a reminder that even in the silence and the darkness, God is still working.And the third thing, . Jesus teaches us the godliness of honoring authority. Jesus, the kingdom was delivered to the Father. It says there in one Corinthians 15, Jesus subjected himself, submitted himself to the Father Marin and I read every night in bed we've been reading, we just finished the book of First Peter.Um, and we just read a little section and pray about it. And it struck me as we've gone through that book, how often Peter is saying to believers, follow the pathway of Christ in honoring authority. And he actually talks in chapter two and three and he says, just like Jesus was subjected to those that wronged him and in suffering, it is the opportunity to hon to, to manifest a godly spirit by honoring authority.And he says, what, what? What praise it is if, if you honor those that that treat you well. But he says, do like Christ, honor those under whom he was subjected to the harshest treatment and still live, uh, honoring them, accepting suffering. I think Jesus himself honor, uh, pictures the, the willingness to honor authority as he joyfully brings to his father the kingdom.
Revelation 5:1-14“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"
Well, good morning. Oh, yep. Close. I'm on. Okay. It's a mic thing. Nobody got that? Okay. . Thank you. Worship team. Uh, hey, we intentionally picked that last song. Um, we're gonna be in Revelation chapter five this morning, and if you feel like you just sung a song and you're not sure what you just sang, uh, we're gonna be reading those words this morning actually.Oh, holy Night. Also, a beautiful picture. Uh, I don't know if they wrote it with Revelation five in mind, but it fits perfectly with our series on the glory of Jesus. Um, this advent season leading up to Christmas, we have been studying the names of Jesus, kind of revealing a, a fuller picture of who he is leading up to Christmas.And so again, the series, the Glory of Jesus is really all about him. The book of Revelation, uh, was written by the Apostle John in 95, 96 AD 60 years after the Death and Resurrection of Christ, which would put John in his eighties or nineties, somewhere around there. And as you've been looking through the Book of Acts in our previous series before we picked up in, uh, this advent series, we know John was an evangelist, someone who was part of the early church, leading people to Christ, preaching Christ.And at this time, John and the church was under great persecution. Mark mentioned this a few weeks back under the Emperor Dian, and he was sent away to the island of Patmos, which was a, an island for criminals in Roman culture. He was removed from fellowship all alone. And as we know from the Book of Acts, God routinely uses and allows.Wicked men to persecute the church. And I say uses intentionally. This is not a lapse in God's goodness. We have seen, we have studied, we have read the book of Acts, the church grows, expands, is blessed and is strengthened. And so when we approach Revelation this morning in our Bibles, I want us to read slow and to read carefully.Uh, so many people can be afraid of what this book means or what it says, or I don't really understand it at all. But I assure you it really could be worse. You could be on a stage preaching from the Book of Revelation this morning, . So I want to read just the first three verses of the book of Revelation.If you're there, chapter one, turn right to it's all the way at the end of your Bible. Uh, page 9 67 is where chapter five starts, but go back a few. This is the opening of the book, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him. To show his servants the things that must soon take place, things in the future.He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads, allowed the words of this prophecy. And blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near.Pray with me this morning. God, I thank you for your incredible self revelation in John's uh, book here. We do feel blessed to know you as Savior, blessed to read these words this morning. We wanna be people that also as we read them, hear them, understand them, and put them into practice knowing what is to come.God, I pray you'd lift our eyes even this morning from specific situations that may either confuse us or, or hang us up. Lift us from the present circumstances that we are in to see something beautiful this morning. The glory of your son Jesus. Help us to worship him. And in turn that we might be people who live changed because of a eternal perspective that we see in this, the last book of your word.God, we thank you and pray these things in your name. Amen. Well, if, uh, you've been watching, it's been a politically charged world cup thus far, it's also been one of incredible upsets, um, exciting shootouts and some of the usual stars rising to the top. Uh, there's been this interesting, uh, thing that has kind of risen up talking about bench players, people that have come off the bench as a substitute.Uh, some of you know that actually, uh, what is happening right now is that bench players are currently outscoring the starting players. It, it's a thing that's been happening and so there's kind of been some press about it and they're on paces. Set the record for the most goals scored by substitutes in a World Cup.There's even been some controversy over which players stars and not stars are sitting on the bench. If you've watched yesterday's game, Christiana Ronaldo sat the bench in the first half of his game. I'm gonna leave that right there for anyone that wants to talk about it later. Okay? . But a substitute is a person who enters the game as a replacement of another substitute is, uh, a Latin word that literally means put in place of.You may understand the concept of substitute, uh, from a sports game or something like that, but let me tell you another story that talks about the word substitute, which may give you more depth and meaning. Boarding the Ss Dorchester. On a dreary winter day in 1943, there were 904 troops, four of whom were chaplains.World War II was in full swing, and the ship was headed across the icy North Atlantic water where German U-boats lurked. At midnight the morning of February the third, a German torpedo ripped into the side of the ship and the men aboard knew immediately that the hit was fatal. They frantically scrambled to deploy lifeboats and a, a younger soldier crept up to one of the chaplains and said, I've lost my life jacket.Handing over his jacket to the man. He said, take mine. Before the ship sank, each chaplain of the four gave away his life jacket to another man. The heroic chaplains then linked arms, lifted their voices in prayer As the Dorchester went down, survivors tell of the comforting sound of hymns being sung by those four men.675 of the 904 died as that ship go down as the single worst loss of American lives in World War ii. These clergy men were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart Medals after they passed, and Congress would later declare February 3rd as four Chaplains Day, giving them a special medal of Honor the Chaplain's Medal of Honor.It's an incredible act of heroism and an incredible picture of substitute. , the four men said, we will trade places with you. We will give you safety and face our death. And so our name of Jesus as we come today comes out of that same sense, this substitute revelation, chapter five. We find Jesus the Lamb of God, the substitute for a sins.So I'm gonna read Revelation chapter five this morning. Uh, again, it's page 9 67, I think I said. And if you want to turn there, um, if you don't, that's okay. But I'm gonna ask you to close your eyes and potentially visualize what is happening here in Revelation chapter five. This would be an easy one to just read through and be like, I didn't get any of that.Listen to it this morning and see what you. Then I saw, this is John writing. Then I saw the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. A scroll written within and on the back sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals.And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I, John began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, 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.And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes. Which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures, and 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp, a golden bowl full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song saying, worthy, are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you? Were slain and by your blood, you ransom people for God from every tribe, every language, every people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on the earth.Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voices of many angels, numbering, myriads upon myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice. Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them saying to him, who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor, glory, and might forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped.Revelation chapter five this morning. What an incredible picture of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all together. And as we walk through the text this morning, I want to just paint a picture of what the Lamb of God looks like. First, we have this search happening and if you remember, some of these, uh, words read that is because they were last week.Pastor Jared talked through this same specific passage and did a great job teasing out the, the search, uh, last week. So we're gonna move quickly through this first part here. But John looks and sees that God is there on the throne holding a scroll with seven seals, and the angel is calling out loudly searching, looking who is able to carry out the will of God, who is able to take this scroll and carry it out.And no one is found. You think about all the people throughout the, uh, history of our world who have tried to take over or rule or conquer. Uh, there are many people who have tried, and I wanna keep this verse number three here in mind. And no one on heaven or earth or under the Earth was able to open it.King Nere, you remember him from the Old Testament. He was a king who sought to, uh, expand his kingdom. God reduces him down to grazing in a field of grass because of his pride, humbled by the living God. Alexander the Great tried conquering, uh, until nothing was left to conquer. He just wanted to go until there was nothing left to take over.And at the age of 34 came to his own death. Julius Caesar would lead a sweeping expanse of the Roman Empire, and yet his days expired as well. Joseph Stalin led the, uh, bloody uh, growth of the Soviet Union. Killing millions in his path was brought to nothing. Hitler brainwashed. Many people desiring to expand some sort of a superior race, and yet he was unworthy.And you may even fill in the blanks of many in modern cultures, dictators, countries, whatever it might be, attempting to expand and go beyond their own abilities. But no one is worthy to continue and there may be more prideful ones yet to come. And we're actually told there will be one who will rise more powerful, deceiving many the anti-Christ, and yet all fail to pass the test.No one is found worthy. to carry out God's will in the scroll. No one audacious enough to approach the throne of God and take his will and say, I'm the one to carry this out. And so why is this important? Why is this search here in scripture? Uh, I really think it's here to just remind us, just to caution us potentially as we think about the people and the places and the, the things we put our hope and our trust in.Who in what do you place your allegiance in? Remember this Daniel 2 21. God changes times and seasons deposing some kings and establishing others. He's the one that gives wisdom. He's the one that gives knowledge and understanding. Psalm one 15, our God is in heaven. He does all that he pleases. Proverbs 1921.Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 21, 1. The king's heart is, but a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He will. In who or what do we do? You place your allegiance, your security, your hope. No one is strong enough. No one powerful enough to open the scroll and carry out the will of God.And this unsuccessful sherp search causes John to weep, which brings us to number two, the selection. One of the elders said to John, weep, no more behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can come and open the scroll and it's seven seals. And so this elder is calling out and he's saying, weep no more.There is someone who can. The lion of the tribe of Judah. We find this prophesy about in Genesis, Jose and Amos talk about the lion of the tribe of Judah, that God would one day raise up to come and, and so John, uh, of course he would be a lion. That's how God's gonna appear, conquer evil, destroy Satan once for all.He's come to fight for his people and the root of David. I remember this Isaiah and Jeremiah and Zacharia all prophesied, pointing to this moment. And then we have the form of how the savior shows up. Verse six, and between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders. John says, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.John hears lion of Judah. John hears the root of David. All make sense. John sees. and something's up here. Uh, I'm hearing one thing. I'm seeing something totally different, but I assure you this is not a mistake. There was no, uh, mix up in the heavenly wardrobe. The costumes were not like misplaced. This is how it was supposed to be.The chosen way that Jesus reveals himself in the heavenly thrown room of God is a lamb. A lamb as though it had been slain. A slain lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. Now I wanna pause for a minute. If, if you're newer to the Bible, this might seem incredibly weird, right? Let's, let's picture this. I actually went and tried to search for the picture of the slain lamb with seven horns and seven.It's not a pretty one. Um, the Greek word actually is little lamb. So, So, yes, I'm telling you that, um, Jesus showed up as a little lamb with eyes and horns. And you might say, this is why I dodged the Book of Revelation because of all the bad imagery. , my wife told me that I shouldn't, but I just could not help.It's just too perfect. Um, but this is exactly how Jesus shows up. This is exactly how he shows up. And there's a reason why I wanna look back with you back to the beginning and trace the idea, the theme of substitute, the, the, the theme of sacrifice throughout scripture, and you may not know this, but that began in the garden.Adam and Eve were there, and, uh, as they were walking through the garden naked and unafraid, God gave them explicit instructions not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil. The serpent cane, the enemy tempted them. They were, uh, tempted, chose to give in and go their own way apart from God, and they did eat from that tree.The option to walk away in our own sin is there for each one of us. We are not simply robots. So Adam and Eve, now naked and ashamed of their sin, hide and cover themselves up with leaves. And the gracious God steps in with the first sacrifice in scripture in Genesis chapter three. Listen to this. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife, garments of skins and them.They had this, uh, quick covering of leaves and God says, there's been some brokenness here. There's some punishment for the sin. Things are going to be different, but I'm gonna close you and I'm gonna take the life of an animal in your place. Sin brings death. The lamb was the substitute. God in His grace provides the sacrifice.Genesis chapter four, not really far after just one chapter later, Adam and Eve's children, Cain and Abel, you see them bringing sacrifices to the Lord. It's becoming a part of the rhythm of life at this point. Just four chapters into human history that we know human brokenness and sin separates us from God.The wages of our sin. That's it's death. Genesis 22, God is testing Abraham and walking along and and says, Abraham, I want you to go and make a sacrifice on top of the mountain, and I will be the one to. I want you to go and sacrifice your only son, Isaac. And so they climb this mountain and uh, they are carrying firewood typical to probably carry the sacrifice with you.So if you're the son, Isaac, wondering, okay dad, uh, where's the lamb? What's going on here? I don't see our sacrifice. And you maybe have heard the story Abraham repeats. God will provide, they set up the altar. Abraham ties his child and raises the knife to sacrifice him, and God steps in and provides a ram caught in the thicket to sacrifice in Isaac's place.The lamb was the substitute. Genesis continues on this cycle of sin and, and people sacrificing was something that had to happen to cover over the sins that were of the people. Usually it was a spotless lamb as a substitute. Exodus chapter 12, we jump ahead and what's happening here, the Israelites are in captivity and the Egyptians will not let them go.10 plagues are there, right? Remember this? And what is happening is Pharaoh is saying, no, I'm not gonna let you go. And God says, okay, one final plague will I do. And this is the death of the firstborn son of everyone in Egypt. While God provided a way for his people to be preserved, they were to take a spotless lamb, and as they killed it spread the blood of the lamb over their doorposts.And so as the angel of death would come and, and take the firstborn of each son in Egypt as the final plague, God would see the death of this lamb as payment, the lamb, as substitute. Exodus and Leviticus, God would continue to give, uh, all these instructions for many sacrifices, burnt offerings and guilt offerings, sin offerings, peace offerings.These priests in the temples would facilitate this, this sacrificial system. They would bring these offerings before God. Only they could go and allow these sacrifices to be made. The blood of lambs and bulls their substitute over and over. So as an ancient near Eastern person, an Israelite, what do you know from this?You really know that sin is separated you from God, that you gotta make a sacrifice for the wrongdoing that's happened in your life. Sin equals death, and you saw that all the time. How would it make you feel if you were part of this system? potentially bad over and over again. Constant death also a, a real hit to your family's livelihood as you are.Killing The lambs was real, and yet it was redemptive. God wasn't slaughtering you. He was allowing your sin to be punished, allowing for a sacrifice, making a way for a substitute. And it would be easy to read these stories as you read through the scriptures and just little chunks here or there, isolated meanings of what was happening.Maybe to draw confusing points from them. But I wanna caution you don't miss the forest for the trees. Zoom out. The Bible is a collection of individual stories. Yes, but the Bible is ultimately telling one true story, the true story of Christ. From Genesis to Revelation, beginning to end, finding its message and its hope coming to a pinnacle in Christ.The whole story begins to make sense when it's read as a whole story. We often talk about, uh, in the nativity, many of you are actors in some of the scenes are helping in, in different roles in various ways. And one of the things I encourage you, and I've heard this encouraged by many people for a long time, um, if you've never gone through the entire thing, do so.Um, maybe not tonight cuz we have a cast shortage. But, uh, if you could, uh, at some point go through the whole thing, see it from beginning to end, you could play a part in the Lazarus scene and, and really dial into that story, but it begins to make sense. When you see the whole story, actually, if you go right onto the next scene, the cross in our nativity, you find that is what is happening.We are tying together all these pieces. The whole story is about him. So Revelation five comes in, and when Jesus reveals himself and John's vision, he's the lamb. He's the lamb who was slain. He is though not a dead lamb. He is standing and alive with the marks of his death at the right hand of the Father.There's this aha moment I wanna read to you. Hebrews chapter 10, uh, portion of the scripture. It's up here on the screen. I believe this is one of the most incredible tie it all together, uh, parts in all of scripture. For, since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near wait.So I was never designed to work correctly sort of otherwise. Would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers having been once cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices, there's a reminder of sins every year for its impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.But Jesus came and he says, I have come to do your will. Oh God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the. His death on the cross. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And so in that old system, every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Revelation five, Jesus, God's only son became our substitute. He died in our place. This is grace. Hallelujah. It's not me. The end of this system. Everything Jesus did, he did as a substitute.Everything he did, he did for you. The life we couldn't live, he lived for us. The death we should have died. He died in our place. The new life we need. he gives to us. Jesus paid it all. So what's his function? We just read that he was sitting at the right hand of his father, God, revelation five, seven. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.And man, what a beautiful picture of everything coming to fulfillment in Christ. The scroll, the will of God, what was to be carried out in the future. One worthy, the sacrificial lamb. And he gets up and he takes the scroll from God. And this is really no small thing, like think about this. He's approaching the glorious creator God, and he's gonna take something out of God's hand.I mean, that is just a crazy picture to think about. This is not a violent usurping, it's not lording it over God like, yeah, it's my turn. He's conquered. He's defeated sin and death and he is worthy to take that scroll. He's not taking over God's plan. He is God's plan. Perfect harmony between the father and the son.The lamb delighting to do the will of the Father. So what's in the scroll? What is the will of the Father? I'm not gonna tell you that cuz I actually don't know. Neither do you. We sort of do in some ways as we continue to read the book of Revelation. We read on here in verse eight, and when he had taken the scroll of four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp, jumping on to verse nine and they sang a new song, sang Worthy Are you to take the scroll and open its seals for you or slain and you are by your blood.Here we go. You ransom people for God from every tribe and every language and people and nation and. You've made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. The death and resurrection of Christ comes to ransom, to buy back from sin, to buy back, from the curse of death, people from every tribe, language and nation, from all different descents, racists cultures.If you think about this picture in Revelation five, talking about every tribe, tongue, and nation, this is unity in Christ, but not uniformity. I've talked about this before. God's people intentionally looking completely different and diverse, yet saying the same thing, totally unified in one kingdom. Uh, we must not be careful to just flatten the scriptures to say, um, This is what the kingdom of God's gonna look like.Here's what it is saying, that cultures and people that look different than us, spend different than us, talk different than me. And you eat like you. It's the way it should be. They celebrate holidays differently than maybe we do. They don't dress like you, and we all say together. That's how it's supposed to be under the headship of Christ.That is a good thing. Now, I want to say something too, because remember, jump back to who is writing this book out. A man in his eighties and nineties sitting in a Roman prison on the island looking for hope, and he hears this, that God's plan is that he will ransom for himself a people from every tribe, tongue, language, and nation.John's been in prison for doing this, but he knows the future is coming where the church does expand, where there is hope. Me locked in a prison cell. That's not it. That's not the end. Jesus is doing something far greater. Nothing is going to stop God's plan. Imagine the confidence of John sitting there.Imagine the joy of knowing what is to come and what is he doing? He's going to build a kingdom of priests. Kind of a strange thing, we talked about how the priest was the only one who could go in and make, uh, the sacrifice, make the access to God. They have free access. He is building a kingdom of priests.That one day in relationship with Christ, you and I will have full free total access to our father to Christ. Nothing dividing us from our worship and our service to him, nothing holding us back. A kingdom of priests with free access to him. Then this song breaks out in verse 11. Then I looked and I heard around the throne, the living creatures and the elders in the voice of many angels, thousands and myriads worthy of the lamb, who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might honor and glory.And I heard in heaven and earth again, listen to these words in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. And all that is in them saying to him, who sits on the throne? End the lamb. Be blessing and honor, glory, and might forever and ever. And the four living creatures saying. Amen. I mean, there's thousands million, billions.You can't even count them myriads upon myriads. This is the highest number they could have counted to at that point. That's what they're saying. There's just so many beyond everything, bowing down and worthiness to the king. I mean, picture this, every creature in heaven, earth, under the earth, in the sea, singing out, praise to God.I mean, what does that look like? What does that sound like? All of creation, crying out erupting in praise and these four living creatures around the throne, and they're just constantly saying, amen, amen. Amen. So let it be. He's worthy. The whole creation is erupting, and they're like, yes, amen. Just let it happen.Jesus is the one stage is now set. Jesus holding the scroll. And the Book of Revelation continues on carrying out God's future plan to bring redemption to the world, a, a total defeat of evil, a new heavens, a new Earth. And we say, worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Do you know him? Have you trusted him? Are you walking with him full allegiance to Christ, the one who is our substitute.This morning, we have the joy of coming together and celebrating communion. There's no better way to celebrate the sacrifice of the Lamb of God through the supper of the lamb. , we're gonna, um, continue on here and, uh, bear with us because for the first time in like three years or so, we're actually gonna pass the communion around, have the deacons come part of this.There's actually some deacons that are coming this morning who have never done this because they were elected during the Covid era and they're gonna figure this out. So if it doesn't work out, okay, great. We're gonna make it work. Um, so the deacons, if you guys wanna come and join me, uh, up front as we, um, Doon this morning,you guys can have a seat in those chairs there for you to sit in. There you go. Okay. We're doing great. So we'll do so, uh, with passing around, uh, the cups and baskets this morning for you to just take, if you have a relationship with Christ, I encourage you, join in. This is a remembrance of what God has done, the sacrificial lamb of Jesus.And if you're maybe still trying to figure out what this whole relationship with Christ looks like, I'm gonna encourage you not to take, uh, them this morning and to listen in to what God has done and the lamb that has been slain for you. We'd love the chance to talk with you about that relationship. Um, so we're gonna do that now.Uh, we're gonna pass these around and, um, as we do that, I'm gonna ask, uh, with this microphone. Matt, would you pray for us for the bread, please, father,Lord, we come to you this morning, grateful God, Lord, that your. Body served as a substitute for ours, Lord, that you would love us and pursue us while we didn't pursue you. God, that your grace, your grace, is just a wonderful gift that we don't have to perform to earn. Lord God. Lord God, I pray for those that are here that may be trying to earn their way to heaven.Lord, that the way of trying to get it all right, lead them to their knees and accepting of your grace, Lord. Father, for those who have accepted, I join them in celebrating God that. Your free gift is available to all that. You say that for none who will call upon the name of the Lord in no way shall be turned away.I thank you for that Lord this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.So as we, uh, pass things around, just uh, take a small time of just reflection to just consider as Matt just prayed, the weight of ARS sin and the hope that is the lamb in our place. Sogo for.The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Okay.I'm gonna ask Mark if you pray for the cup.Lord Jesus, we read about this passage in this wonderful study this morning that you are the lamb that was slain. Lord, we worship you for being willing to be slain to burying a criminal's death to bear the penalty separation from the Father. For our sin, we worship you for your shed. Blood as the lamb, uh, fulfilling all their pictures.Mike talked about this morning of all those centuries, culminating it in the one who once and forever took away sin that we could know the Father and find freedom with him. We worship you this morning, Lord, the Lamb who is slain in Jesus' name. Amen.In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper saying This cup is the new covenant, the new promise in my blood as often as you drink it in remembrance of megonna ask you to stand. As we, uh, dismiss this morning,we say now and look forward to one day when every creature will join, saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor. Glory and might forever and
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.”
Sermon Transcript:My name is Pastor Jared and I, uh, have the privilege of speaking this morning. We're gonna be reading in Revelations chapter five, verse five. If you want to turn with me there,you don't have your Bibles. It will be on the screen as well.Revelations Chapter five, verse five says this, and one of the elders said to me, 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 it's seven seals. Would you join me in, in prayer again? God, thank you so much for who you are and thank you so much, um, that you have invited us into your worship this morning.Lord. , um, that you're a God that loves to hear our worship Lord, um, and that you're our God so worthy of all the praise we could ever give you. Okay? I just want to echo the, the lyrics of that song, Lord, that we would make room for you this morning, Lord, that your spirit, um, would move this morning in our hearts and our minds, Lord, that you would make room in this message for your spirit to work God, that it would not be any words I say or anything like that, Lord, but that it would be your voice speaking and your scripture speaking Lord, and that you would put off any and all distractions coming into this Sunday, Lord, that we would hear your truth, and that it'll cut through all the lies.We love you Lord, and we give you praise this morning in Jesus' name. Um, many of you know, I'm, I'm one of five brothers, so my house is, was always rowdy growing up, and, and I, I got a lot of stories from that, but I also have a pretty big, large, um, extended family. Um, one of my aunts has seven kids as well, so, and they live down in Virginia and one day they, uh, were visiting for the holidays and we decided it was a good idea to go, um, to the zoo.So it's seven of them and five of us. And God bless our parents for thinking they could handle all of that. And we go to, I think it was the Philadelphia Zoo or the K May Zoo and, and we're going through and everyone's having a good time. And my brother Josh had this hat that, like, he loved, he had this weird thing when he was younger where he would like find one piece of clothing that he would get obsessed with and like never take it off.So this was like his new hat and he wore it every single day and he loved it. Um, and he was wearing it on that day. And my cousin, um, We'll, we'll say his name. His name is David. And hopefully he doesn't watch this . He took my brother's hat, my brother Josh's hat, he took his hat and he's like messing around with him like, oh, come get your habit.Come get your hat. My brother Josh is like the oldest brother. He's like The brother you don't mess with. Right? Like everyone knows like you can pick on everyone else, but you don't mess with Joshua. David didn't really have that sense, you know? He didn't have that sense of fear and he thought it'd be super funny to take Josh's hat and throw it over one of the fences.Right. Cuz that's hilarious. You know, obviously we've all done that and the fence that he threw it over happened to be the lion enclosure. So that hat was gone, right? I mean, Josh was absolutely devastated. I don't know how my cousin David is still alive to this day. From that moment between his dad and my brother.I thought someone was gonna die. Right? But I mean, that hat was gone. Uh, no one dared to go into that lines then. No worker dared to, you know, sorry, the hat is gone. I don't know why you threw it over in the first place. This kind of seems like your fault, right? But this morning we're gonna be talking about a lion and the, we're gonna be talking about the lion of Judah, right?Someone that is so fierce and powerful that no one would dare approach, right? That we know of all who is capable. And I wanna look at just the exact, um, just context of this verse and revelation and kind of what's going on. Pastor Mark did a really good job last week of just kind of explaining the immediate context, because when we read the book of Revelation, I don't know why I separate it in my mind, but I forget that it's written to churches, right?This was a letter written to encourage churches. Many of these churches were going through difficult times. They were facing persecution from Roman leaders and, and I mean severe persecution. And John is writing this letter to them to encourage them, to give them hope, and not just a fleeting hope or fleeting joy, but a eternal hope and joy.And he, he's talking about this, this lying of the tribe of Judah, the root of David. Right. And he's saying to open this scroll. And maybe you're wondering why, why is this scroll important or why are we talking about this scroll and why is John weeping here? If you back up a couple verses, it's talking about an angel actually says, who is worthy on heaven and on earth to open this scroll?And no one answers. So John is weeping and one of the elder says to him, don't weep. There is one who is worthy to open the scroll. It is the lion of the tribe of Judah. And and there's a lot of debate, um, about what this scroll might be. Some people think it was the, the scroll that was actually revelations written down.Some people think it was the Old Testament. Some people think it was the Old Testament of the New Testament, its entirety for the first time. Um, but kind of after my studying and, and looking really diving deeper into this passage, I saw that it was really, I think it was the will of God, the final will of God, that only Jesus was able to open.The only Jesus is able to know and see. And, and Noah was in there and, and if you disagree with me, that's okay. We can fight after the service. Right. So now we know the, the stage is set. This is what was going on. That this, there's only one worthy to open this scroll. It's, it's a line of Judah, the, the root of David.But I mean, the line of Judah sounds cool. We just sang about it. But if we don't look at the significance of what that means and what is going on, we kind of miss the meaning. So I want to go through of what that actually means to be from the tribe of Judah and what the significance of the lion really is.So I wanna look at, uh, we're gonna go all the way back to Genesis chapter 49, and I just wanna explain what is happening in this passage. So if you remember Jacob or Israel, he went by both names at this point is talking to his 12 sons and he's actually prophesying over them. And this is actually the first prophecy recorded, um, in scripture from a man directly to someone else.And he's talking to his 12 sons and he's talking about what is gonna happen. To his 12 sons, the blessings or the curses, though it received. But prophetically speaking, he's speaking to the future. He's speaking that these 12 sons of him, of his would become the 12 tribes of Jerusalem. So not only is he talking to his sons, but he's talking to what is going to happen to these tribes of Jerusalem, or excuse me, Israel.So he is talking to them and we pick up in verse eight when he is talking to his son, Judah. And he says this, Judah, your brother shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. Your father's son shall bow down before you. Judah is a lions cub from the prey. My son, you have gone up. He stooped down.He crouch, says a lion. And as a lion as who dares Ros him, the setter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from between his feet. Until tribute comes to him and to him shall be the obedience of the people. Man, there's so much in these couple verses here. I mean, if you read the other blessings and, and, and what Jacob was saying and some, this is a really good one.Some of them were not great. Some of them did not get a good blessing like this. But Judah is receiving this blessing that actually would be the first son's blessing. Judah's not the first son. The first son was Ruben. Um, he did not receive the first son's blessing. Judah did. Judah would now be responsible to be the head of the family.He now was responsible to take up the leadership that his father Jacob was taking, that he was in charge of his family, that he was leading his family, that he'd get a double portion of the inherit. and we see this in, in verse eight. It says, your brothers will praise you. We know that when Judah's born, he was named Judah because it literally means praise to praise, right?This was a prophetically speaking that he would be praised, that his brothers would praise you. God put in charge not only Judah of his brothers, but he put the tribe of Judah in charge of the other tribes. This was gonna be the leader of Israel. Whoever was gonna come from the tribe of Judah was gonna be responsible for the kingship for it says the scepter would never leave this tribe, right?God chose specifically the tribe of Judah for this. And although God used this to, to prophesize about the Tri Judah, this actually would not come to fruition for 640 years. . So God is telling Judah this, and, and he's speaking prophetically through Jacob to his son Judah, saying that, that Israel's gonna, your brothers are gonna praise you.The rest of the tribes are gonna praise you. And he's probably like, man, this is awesome. This can be a, the great rest of my life, my, my sons and my ancestors will, will have the best lives ever. This would not come for 640 years until David took up the mantle of King. Right? How wild is that, that the Lord was working in and through Jacob and through Judah, but it wouldn't come to fruition until 640 years, until we know King David was so that he would become king.Right? We know that, that David was in the line of Judah and we know that God established a covenant with David. God said, I'm going to make a kingship out of your family, that your ancestors, that you'll, this kingship will never depart from your family. , and this was true all throughout. Judah was in the line of the kingship.And, and David's line continued on and on. But if you look at to the time of Jesus, many of the Jews were very distraught. They didn't realize what was going on because in this promise here it says the scepter would not depart. It says in verse 10, the scep shall not depart from Judah. The Scep symbolizes this kingship over Israel.Um, David's line, like I said, continued on through Israel, but when Jesus came to earth, there was no Jews in power anymore. Herod had some power over them. The Romans had the power over, and the Jews actually thought the CEP has the part from the line of Judah. We no longer have this kingship. We no longer have this prop that God spoke over our tribe.Where is our kingship? And it wasn't until Jesus was born. 1600 years later from this prophecy that this was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. That he was from the line of, uh, Judah, that his mother, Jesus, or sorry, sorry, his mother, Mary and his father, who wasn't actually his biological father, Joseph was even in the line of Judah.They were in this kingship line. Jesus had the right to the throne. He was in the right family. He had the right ancestors. The king, the scepter belonged to him. He was deserving to be king, and people knew that when he came on earth that he was going to be king. Now, if you look in verse 10, in the esv, it says, nor the ruler staff from between his feet until tribute comes to.And then this might sound like confusing, like who we're talking about this, him what? His tribute, what does this mean? Um, if you look at the original Hebrew as I was playing around with different translations, the actual Hebrew there for him it says Shiloh, right? Shiloh was a place in Israel and it's referred to as such all throughout the Old Testament, except for one specific time.And it's in this passage it's talking about until Shiloh comes. Well, if you look at the Hebrew of what that means, it actually means for it is to he who belongs, right? He who's it is that which belongs to him. , that's what this word means for Shiloh is, is commonly used from the Jews for to refer to the Messiah here.And we now our eyes are open to see. Wow. This is not talking about just Judah. This is not talking about just his tribe. This is speaking of something greater and bigger to come. And that is the line of Judah. That is Jesus. I love the way, um, the NLT puts verse 10. It says, the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from his descendants until the coming of the one to Himm whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor.The scepter belonged to Jesus. The scepter belonged to the line of Judah. It was rightfully his, although this was prophesied 1600 years prior to Christ coming on earth. This is important because Jesus had the right to the throne. that not only is he in the line of Judah, he is the Messiah, the one for told of the true fulfillment and ultimate fulfillment, the one who would come and conquer and bring obedience to all people, all tribes, nations, tongues.We can't even understand who the line of Judah is until we understand the significance of being in the line of Judah. The, the Bible is a beautiful thing like this. We can sometimes gloss over things, and when we look into the true significance into the true meaning, it brings out deeper meaning, right?That if we say, oh, he is the line of the tribe. Judah, okay, Judah is a cool name. No. This had significance of where and what line and what family Jesus came through, that the scepter was no longer gonna pass from Judah, that it was gonna be prophesized and ultimately fulfilled through Jesus. . Now that we understand that significance of what that line of Judah means, we kind of have to understand the significance of why a lion, right?We know why he is from the tribe of Judah, but why a lion? I mean, why couldn't it be the pigeon of Judah, you know, like the, the grasshopper of Judah or like maybe the spider monkey of Judah. That kind of sounds cool. Like I could get behind a spider monkey, God, you know, like, but it wasn't any of those.And I'm kind of glad that I don't serve a pigeon God. You know, I, I, I'm really happy that my God fighting for me is a lion. Amen. Not a pigeon, you know, not a grasshopper. That he is a lion that goes before me. That he is someone to be feared, glorified, praised, and that that lion is on my side. A lion symbolizes unstoppable power, fierceness, beauty majesty.The line is the top of the food chain. He's the head honcho. It's the reason why you don't get your hat when you throw it into the line enclosure. If it was in the beaver enclosure, like, ah, yeah, we'll get it. You know, I don't think the pigeons have enclosure in the zoo. I'm not sure. Think they just hang out in Philly most often.Right? But they're the kings of the jungle. They're not to be messed with a lion's roar can be heard from five miles away. They know that animals know when a lion is around, where their territory is. I think one of the most beautiful pictures of, of Jesus as the lion of Judah, and, and what even that could possibly look like for us is in, in the, the books and, uh, the, the, the, A movie of Narnia who, who has read the book or seen the movie of Narnia?Okay, cool, cool. So I, I, I recently just watched it over again cause I just wanted to see and just remember the story. But I mean, Aslan, right? Aslan is this great line, the true king of Narnia. And if you remember the story, it's following these four siblings and they're going out and they've lost their friend Edmond.And, and now they're gonna soon lose their, their brother or sorry, not their friend. What's it? Thomas? Thomas. They lose their brother Edmond. And everyone's saying, you gotta find Aslan. You gotta find Aslan. Linn's the true king of Narnia. And all they know at this point is this wicked witch of the North and, and how she's gonna come up and how scary she is and how she let our brother away.And they're saying you have to find as. The true king. And there's just these whispers about him and these legends about him. And, and one of the quotes that just really stood out to me is when they're talking these two beavers that are helping them, and they're, they're talking about Aslan and they're asking questions, oh, is he good?Is he, is he safe? Is is, is he true? Is he real? And the beaver says, don't you hear what Mr. Mrs. Beaver tells you who said anything about safe Course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. Right. This was the legend of Aslan. Of course he's not safe. He's a lion. He's dangerous, he's powerful, but it's good.And he's our king and he's on our side. And the story continues and they're, they're leading into the journey of Aslan, and they find where he is in camp, and there's this whole army assembled against the, the witch, right? There's this whole army and they go to meet Aslan. And Aslan comes out of the tent.And what does everyone do? They drop down immediately in the presence of just seeing Aslan and the, the siblings who don't really know what's going on, they, they're looking around, they see, and they drop right away, kneeling before they're king, kneeling before the great might of Aslan. This is our God, right?This is Jesus. This is Jesus, the great lion of Judah, who deserves all our praise, all our, our reverence and respect, all our fear. And yet we don't have to fear because he's on our side. And as the story goes on, you kind of see the, the kids as they're a little scared and anxious to approach Aslan. As the movie goes on, you see them walking with him, hugging him, petting his mane.Going out before him talking face to face with him. This is our God. Of course he's not safe, but he's good and he's on our side. All these legendary stories were true. Our lion of Judah, so majestic and powerful that every knee should bow before him. This is why titles and names are so important cuz when we dive into the meaning and discover what this is, we realize just the beauty and the power of our God, of our king Jesus.This is who the lion of Judah is. He ha his, the scepter belonged to him. The one who to whom it belongs has come. He is the line of Judah. He is fierce. He is beautiful, he is majestic, and he's our lion. So what does this mean, right? If Jesus is the line of Judah, what does this mean for me? How does this affect my life?It's cool. It's fun to watch Narnia. It's a good movie, but what does it mean to me? Most importantly, it means Jesus is king of my life, right? Jesus is king of my life, and I need to surrender to the mighty lion. It means if Jesus is king over my life, then he has authority over my life. If someone is a king, you, you pay your allegiance to them.The people of Narnia knew who the real king was. They knew it was Aslan, and they bowed before him. They served him. They went out to battle for him. If Jesus is our king, he has authority over every aspect of our life. For those of us who have confessed Jesus as Lord, then we've confessed him as king. And I think it's so hard to understand why we say Jesus is Lord.Right? We don't use that terminology very often, Lord. Um, but this idea of Lord, it's, it's a king. It means Jesus is king, right? When you're saying Jesus is Lord of my life, it's saying, Jesus is king of my life. It's saying Jesus has every authority over every aspect of my life. That every part of my life, not just on Sundays, is surrendered to Jesus, our king.That means my pride is surrendered to him. That means my finances are surrendered, and that means my skills and my abilities are surrendered over the King Jesus, the line of Judah. God is not just king over our life on Sunday mornings. He's not just king over our life at Bible study or when we're with our Christian friends.He wants all of us. . He wants every aspect of life. He wants you and he's king over you, and he has the authority over you. When you're home alone scrolling on your phone, he's, he's king over what you post on social media. I know I said it. Social media. Sorry. Right. He's king over how you talk at work, how you treat your coworkers.He's king over how you talk to your wife and your husband, and your kids and your neighbors. When you go to work, when you're in school, and how you talk to teachers or people and authority to you and how you respond to them. He has authority over every aspect of your life. And if he really is the lion of Judah, if he really is our king, then he deserves it.He deserves our respect. He deserves our praise. He deserves our service to him. He deserves full surrender. God has often described in the Old Testament as a jealous God. He wants our full hearts. He doesn't want you half of the week. He doesn't want you one day of the week. He wants every single day. He wants every thought to be captive to him.He wants every action to be captive to him. We're so good at compartmentalizing things and saying, God, you know, you can have this aspect of my life. You know, I'm gonna do this, you know, I'm gonna give you this and this. Now I'll give you my family, but my finances, I, I just kind of like to control those. I kind of just feel a little better when I'm in control of those, you know, when my relationship and my, my pursuit of marriage or, or whatever it may be.And I, I, I got that. God, don't worry. I don't think, you know, my type right, or whatever it may be. God wants all of it. He is the lion of Judah. He demands it. And even in the midst of that, while we're, we were still his enemies, he went after us, he pursued us, and he conquered our sin and shame. If Jesus is the line of Judah, what does it mean to me?It means he's king of my life. It means he's king of my family, and I should live in that surrender and I should live under his authority in my life. If Jesus is the line of Judah in my life, how does this affect my fears, worries, doubts, anxieties. Well, the good news is the lion is on our side. When the beaver was talking about, um, Aslan, he said, of course he's not safe, but he's good.Right? Of course, our God is powerful, but he's on our side. There's no longer any room to be afraid. Isaiah 31 4 says this. It says, for thus, the Lord said to me as a lion or a young lion growls over his prey. And when a band of shepherds is called against him, he's not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise.So the Lord of hosts will come down to fight on Mount Zion and on its hill. God is not scared of what you're scared of. God does not have doubts like we have doubts. He does not have any insecurities. God is fighting for you. He's going to battle for you. So when we're scared and we have doubts and we're overcome with the stress or the anxieties of life, or our mental health seems too big to handle, know that the lion of Judah is fighting for you.He has you. He's going before. And when we're fixated on him, right? And when we see him in all his beauty and power and love, our fears, our insecurities, our worries, our anxieties start to get smaller and smaller because we know who's on our side. It's not just Jared going out the battle, swinging fist, and trying to fight.It's the lion of Judah. This is why we have confidence. This is why the Bible says do not fear because we have someone who is gone out before us. And when he roars, let our enemies know who's on our side. Let the lies in our head know who's on our side, that the lion of Judah is fighting for you. He's fighting for me.He's going out. He's not scared. Whoever goes against him, he does not have fear. We need to keep our gaze and our eyes fixate on him and who he is. This is our line. This is the line of Judah. This is why we have confidence and I'll know this is all immediate things, right? I want to get back to the book of Revelation and, and what John is doing here.He's giving hope. He's giving joy to these people. And no, it's not just a momentary thing and no, it's not just in the moment. Quick confidence. Okay, I'm good. He's giving them something eternal to hold onto and although we can look now and we can see the line of Judah and how he conquered our sin and how he pulled us out of darkness, he is coming again.The lion of Judah. Jesus is coming and he's gonna take up his throne and the earth is gonna be his foot. So this is the hope that we hold onto not just some momentary thing to get us through tomorrow, but that one day the lion of Judah is going to come again and he's gonna conquer all things. And the book of Revelation says that every nation, every tongue, and every tribe will worship him.That will come and says Judah And, and, and Genesis foretold of this, that he would bring obedience to the people that every knee will bow before him. We live in this already, not yet state, right? We're dead. This sin, the God has conquered our lives and. When Christ comes again, we will be fully redeemed and glorified in him.We have hope and we have joy, but when Christ comes again, we will have that in its entirety. This is hope. This is real joy that Christ is bringing something that this world does not offer us, that this world could never offer us. This is the hope that we have. This is the joy that we can hold onto. The scepter has not departed from him.He's coming back. He's bringing joy. He's bringing peace. He's bringing his power that every knee will bow before him. I wanna close with one more quote from Narnia about Aslan. It says this, it's the Golden Age prophecy about Aslan. Wrong will be right. When Aslan comes in sight at the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again. Laura, we come before you God. And I know for me, Lord, I'm absolutely humbled that you as the line of Judah came after me, Lord, that you're on my side and you're fighting Lord. And that feels me with abundance of confidence when I go against my problems, Lord.And I pray as I approach this week and as we go out and approach this week, Lord, and and fears start to pile up and lies start to pile up. Lord, remember, just remind us of who's fighting for us. Remind us that you have sent someone out your son before us. to fight our battles that you have not left us alone.That you, you've sent someone the lion of Judah Lord. And we know, and we live in this already, not yet state of, of the frustration that can become the battle between our flesh and sin and the spirit and and what you've done already, Lord. But we look forward to what you will do when you come, Lord, there will be no more tears.You'll wipe all away sorrow. We'll be filled completely with your love and your joy and your peace God. And we long for that day. We worship you this morning, Lord. I'm gonna give you praise and Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Revelation 1:4-11 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Sermon Transcript: Good Morning everybody. While I’m fiddling, how about you all direct your attention, opening your Bibles to Revelation one, so you don’t see me up here. Revelation chapter […]
Acts 16:1-9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Sermon Transcript: Invite you to take your Bibles this morning. We’re gonna be returning again to the Book of Acts. Um, want to just give a […]
Ephesians 2:1-10 “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” Sermon Transcript: We just sang some words this morning. Jesus Christ is our reward. There’s nothing in this world that could ever satisfy that comes right out of Isaiah 55. He alone satisfies eternally […]
Acts 15:36-41; 16:1-5 Now Barnabas wanted to take with them rJohn called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them. Sermon Transcript: I invite you today to turn in your Bibles to Book of Acts once again, as we return there. Again, we’re gonna be looking at […]
Acts 15:22-35 “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements…” Sermon Transcript: Good morning everybody. Invite you to take your Bibles. We’re gonna be looking at Acts chapter 15. Uh, if you have a, if you want to use the Bible […]
Acts 15:1-21 “why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Well, what I was saying, I don’t know if you could hear me, but I don’t even know how to […]
Acts 14:19- 28 “But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.” Sermon Transcript: Morning, everybody. Morning. Please take in your bi, Take your Bibles to Acts. Chapter 14. Gonna be looking at Acts chapter 14 versus […]
Acts 14:1-18 Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Thank you worship team. Thank you all as we worship with one another, reminding each other the reality of our God. We’re gonna […]
Acts 13:13-52 So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said:“Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.” Sermon Transcript: I invite you to take your Bibles as we return again to the Book of Acts. We’re gonna be looking at Acts chapter 13 this morning. Acts chapter 13. We have a sermon. […]
Acts 13:4-12 “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?” Sermon Transcript: We’re gonna be looking at acts chapter 13 this morning. Continuing our series in the book of acts acts chapter 13 versus four […]
Matthew 4:18-22 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Sermon Transcript: You may be seated. Thank you for worshiping with us this morning. Um, the youth ministry has had a very, very busy summer, um, but most importantly, a very fruitful summer. Um, and so coming up, […]
Acts 13:1-3 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Sermon Transcript: Invite you to take your Bibles. We’re gonna be looking at acts chapter 13 this morning. I did not get the page number […]
John 20:19-31 “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Sermon Transcript: I wanna start off our time this morning, just by asking a simple question. Why do people do the things they do this question? Probably some of […]
Acts 12 He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. Sermon Transcript: You know, we just sang about the power of your name. And sometimes I think the power of your name, we think, well, that means we’re […]
Acts 11:19-30 “For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” Sermon Transcript: Thank you, pastor mark. That was, uh, certainly very kind. And you said it exactly the way I had written it down. So now, you know, you […]
Acts 11:1-18 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Good morning. All right. You’re awake. That’s good. That helps. That definitely helps. All right. If you wanna open up the Bibles, uh, we’re gonna be focusing on acts 11 today. […]
Sermon Transcript: Returning this morning again, to the book of acts. If you have your acts journal, if you don’t have your acts journal, either way, you can turn to the book of acts. Uh, the acts journal is something, uh, many of us use it’s place take notes, but it also has the acts […]
Sermon Transcript: Morning, invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Acts chapter nine, verse 32 to 43, as we’re gonna be looking at this morning, acts chapter nine, verse 32 to 43. Uh, great to be back. I am pastor mark. Um, if you’ve forgotten, um, and we were, we spent the […]
Sermon Transcript: We’re gonna talk about something this morning, something that Joe talked about last week with the conversion of Saul in acts chapter nine, and it’s something where Paul or Saul, and I know I’m gonna say Paul Saul, cuz he’s right in the midst of changing his name soon. There’s something that happens […]
Acts 9:1-19 Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Sermon Transcript: Oh my goodness. That’s last song. Just Jesus paid it all. Jesus paid […]
Acts 8:26-40 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. Sermon Transcript: Thank you team. Invite you to take your Bibles to acts chapter eight. If we continue in our series in the book of acts today with a story about a guy that got […]
Acts 8:4-25 “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.” Sermon Transcript: I invite you to take your Bibles. We’re gonna be looking at the book of acts again, as we return there acts chapter eight. We’re gonna be […]
Acts 8:1-3 “And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Sermon Transcript: We’re gonna be looking at good morning, everybody. We’re gonna be looking at the book of acts chapter eight this morning. Uh, […]
Luke 15: 11-31 “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” Sermon Transcript: We have made it this far in the service without one dad joke that stops right now. when […]
Acts 7:54-60 “Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. 55 But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Sermon Transcript: Let’s take a minute here. Let’s just pray together […]
Acts 7:1-50 Stephen said: “Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham… Sermon Transcript: and, uh, by, should I take your Bibles? We’re going to be looking at acts chapter seven, as we return to our series, as Jared said, at the beginning of the service to, uh, the […]
Acts 6:1-7 “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the […]
Acts 5:17-42 “But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him (that is, the party of the Sadducees), and filled with jealousy they arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.” Sermon Transcript: Like I said, I am, my name is Jared. I am one of the pastors here. I’m […]
Acts 5:1-16 “But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” Sermon Transcript: I know Mike has already wished you happy mother’s […]
Acts 4:32-37 “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” Sermon Transcript: Good morning. Just so, you know, it happens at some of the front row pews up here as we had the video with Holly sharing […]
Acts 4:23-31 When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. Sermon Transcript: Well, good morning to you, uh, here and in Collingswood, uh, if you were here a few weeks back, what a gift it was to, uh, share with the […]
I Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Sermon Transcript: Welcome everybody, if you’re fast, you can get there. We only have one verse. We’re going to be looking at this morning. If you’re […]
Acts 4:1-22 And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Sermon Transcript: But you have to take your Bibles to the book of acts. […]
Romans 6:3-5 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Service Transcript: Good morning. All my high schoolers are assigned there like every Friday night. And now Sunday, are you serious? And if you’re wondering how we’re going to fit a sermon in […]
Acts 3:11-26 “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the […]
Acts 3:1-10 “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Sermon Transcript: Invite you to take your Bibles this morning. I’m gonna be looking once again at the book of acts, we’re gonna be in acts chapter three. This […]
Acts 2:42-47 “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Sermon Transcript: Morning guys, and good morning to you guys online as well. I didn’t forget about. Um, no, I’m, I’m not up here to lead us in an impromptu worship song for those […]
Acts 2:12-37 “But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them…” Sermon Transcript We’re going to be an acts chapter two, as we continue our series in the book of acts, as we continue to look at what it means to see the spirit at work, to the ends of the […]
Acts 2:1-13 “When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” Sermon Transcript Good to have you here and getting them, I invite you to go to the […]
Acts 1:12-26 And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Sermon Transcript: Third thing I wanted to mention is this book. I know many of you have it. It is called the scripture journal of the book of acts. It has the scripture on one side and […]
Mark 9:33-37; 10:32-45 “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Good morning everyone. As Mike said, my name is Brennan Coughlin. Just give me one second. And in 2014, my family and I were sent out from fellowship community to plant a daughter church called fellowship capital city in Trenton, New Jersey. Um, and it was such a joy and a […]
Acts 1:6-11 But 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.” Good morning everybody. Few year here in you are watching online when a welcome you. If you’re in Collingswood […]
Acts 1:1-5 “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” It’s a good thing. He’s the leader because none of the rest of us are, um, invite you to take your Bibles to acts chapter one. We’re going to look […]
Acts 1:1-11 “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Take your Bibles this morning. We’re going to be looking at the book of acts chapter one, verses one through 11. How many of you have with you a scripture journal of the book of […]
Psalm 8 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Good morning. I just wanted to hear someone say that to me so much. That was great. Thank you. Um, we just sang our last song that we sang, I believe in God, the father, I believe in the three and […]
John 14: 12-17 “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. John chapter 14, verses 12 through 17. And we’re going to be looking at this passage in preparation for the Lord’s supper this […]
Lamentations 3:21-26 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” Um, Hey, it’s good […]
Luke 2:22-35 “And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord” Good morning, everyone. And Merry Christmas. I hope you’re enjoying a meaningful holiday season, celebrating the arrival of Christ. And it’s great to. With you today. Thanks […]
Matthew 2:1-12 “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose2 and have come to worship him.” Thanks guys. Invite you to take your Bibles to Matthew chapter two this morning, Matthew chapter two. Um, There were, um, a number of Afghan refugees that were […]
Luke 2:8-21 “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.” We’re going to be in Luke chapter two, Luke […]
Matthew 1:1-17 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Want to invite you to take your Bibles this morning and we’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter one. As we continue in our Christmas series of messages. And while you’re turning there, I want to, […]
Luke 1: 26-38 “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.” Uh, we are celebrating the first Sunday of advent and we’re going […]
Matthew 7:28-29 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. Matthew chapter seven now through chapter seven, I’m going to look at the verses that Mike mentioned earlier, verse 28 and 29. As you turn […]
2 Timothy 3:14-17 “All Scripture 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.” Good morning everyone. I’m gonna move that to the middle. The chair is here just in case I get. It’s good to be […]
Ephesians 2:4-10 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” But you take your Bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter two, as Randy mentioned, and did Jared, we are going to be looking […]
Matthew 7:24-27 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Thank you, pastor Mike. Um, my name is pastor Jay. Uh, I was going to dress up as pastor mark this morning because it is October 31st, but they […]
1 Corinthians 10:16-17 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. […]
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. We’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter seven before we do. I’d like to pray together this morning. Father, we gather in this room, […]
Matthew 7:15-20 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” I want to everybody, if I, you to take your Bibles today, we’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter seven. Again, Matthew chapter seven. We’re going to look at verses 15 to 20, um, as we […]
Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” I encourage you to take […]
Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.” You’re not going to believe this Chip guy. He has gotta be the worst guy ever. He came to work. I thought he was a good guy, but then he was stealing my work. He even […]
Matthew 7:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” We’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter seven, verse 12 this morning, as we continue in our series, the sermon on the Mount, uh, which we’ve entitled the upside down […]
Matthew 7:7-12 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” And good morning. It is great to be with you this […]
Matthew 7:1-6 “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Matthew chapter seven verse one, judge, not that you be not judged for, with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with […]
Ephesians 2:1-10 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”
Matthew 6:25-34 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.” Morning everybody, invite you to take your Bibles. So we’re going to be looking at Matthew chapter six, verse 25 to 34 this morning, […]
Matthew 6:19-24 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will […]
Matthew 6:16-18 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by […]
Matthew 6:5-15 5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your […]
Matthew 6:1-4 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to […]
Matthew 5:43-48 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and […]
1 Peter 2:4-8 4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen […]
Matthew 5:38-42 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[a] 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as […]
Matthew 5:33-37 33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or […]
1Peter 5:5-9 In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”[a] 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because […]
Psalm 143:5-6 “I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.” Psalm 95:6-7 “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, […]
1Peter 1:13-21 “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, 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 conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it […]
Matthew 5:27-30 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Okay. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter five this morning. Great to be here with […]
Matthew 5:21-26 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ Good morning. We are in Matthew chapter five, as we have been, uh, last. Three months or so as we’re in this series, the upside down life this morning, we’re […]
Matthew 5:17-20 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” We’re rejoining Jesus. And the story of Jesus on the mountain. Matthew chapter five. Through seven is the story of the sermon on the Mount. It’s an actual […]
Matthew 5:13-16 Kingdom Life is Detailed in Matthew 5-7 Good morning. Great to be here with you this morning, setting up some arts and crafts in honor of mother’s day, we’re going to be continuing in our series in Matthew chapter five. You’ve got the pupil Bible with you. This morning is going to be […]
2 Samuel 9:7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” Good morning. I don’t think this is going to […]
Matthew 5:12 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We’re on everybody. Invite you to take your Bibles again to Matthew chapter five. Um, we’re going to be looking at the last of the beatitudes this morning, but I’m going to read down through the list […]
Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Man, you know, it’s a good worship time when you’re like eating your mask as you’re singing. Do you get that? Like, ah, so good. Um, it doesn’t taste so good, but it is so good, man. It’s good to be […]
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart for, they will see God Matthew chapter five, I’m going to read verses three through eight, which are the beatitudes, and we’re going to be focusing this morning in verse eight. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those […]
I Corinthians 15:12-19 “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Good morning everybody. If you were, you can turn with me to your Bibles to first Corinthians chapter 15, which is where we’re going to be going this morning. If you were not here at […]
Matthew 5:7 And we will be continuing again in Matthew chapter five, reading the beatitudes. If you would join with me, I’m going to be reading the beatitudes, starting in the beginning, and then going through our beatitude this morning, which is blessed are the merciful this in Matthew chapter five. Now, when Jesus saw […]
Thank you, Mike, to everybody here and all those watching online. Just wanted to explain why I’m standing, with half of my body under water and why others will be doing that with me. This is, um, we believe in what is called believers. Baptism in the new Testament, talks about a sequence that was […]
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Well everybody, I invite you to take your Bibles to Matthew chapter five, going to be looking at Matthew chapter five, verse six this morning as we continue this series. , on the sermon on the Mount, the upside […]
1 Corinthians 11:17-29 The Lord’s Supper: a repeated ordinance tied to the community of believers’ continuance in the faith Morning everybody. Thank you, Mike, for leading us to this point today, did you get one of these on the way in. So I have one of these nearby, we’ll get to that in a little […]
Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are those who are meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Good morning everbody, invite you to take your Bibles this morning. Once again, to Matthew chapter five, verses one through five. And, uh, that video Ben painter put together wrote it. And, uh, he and Melissa lead a number of different […]
Matthew 4:23, Matthew 9:35, Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Good morning. It’s an honor to be here with you this morning. Uh, we’re going to be again in Matthew chapter five through seven. Um, this is the sermon on the Mount, the sermon we’ve called it the most […]
Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We’re in the sermon on the Mount and this, I was even getting ready a few minutes ago, thinking about this. I don’t know any other passage that I just love to talk about more than this passage deeply. Um, […]
Matthew 5-7 Series kickoff on the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount Okay. We’re going to be starting a new series today. One I’m very, very excited about. It is a series called the upside down life. It is a series that is focusing on Matthew five through seven, the sermon on the Mount. […]
Each Pastor shares a verse that has greatly impacted their lives and ministries. Doesn’t seem too different so far, does it? We are, um, starting next Sunday, a series called the upside down life. It’s a series on the greatest sermon that was ever written by the greatest preacher that ever lived. It’s Jesus sermon […]
James 1:22-27 The believers in the early churches were in danger of “deceiving themselves” and not keepin’ it real! How do we keep it real as Christ followers? We’re going to be looking at James chapter one again this morning, James chapter one, verse 22 to 27. Uh, we started this last week. We’re going […]
James 1:19-21 “take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” I’m going to start this sermon with an apology, which is simply that we had announced I’d announced last week that we’re going to beginning a series this morning on the sermon on the Mount. […]
2 Corinthians 4:7-10 “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Corinthians chapter four, verses seven through 10. Uh, we read this biographical statement of Paul. Here’s what he says. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show […]
Matthew 1:18-25 God counted the cost of Christmas and said, “Yes, I will do it!” It’s good to be here. Uh, got to focus yet. Cause it’s Christmas time. Yeah, really? I mean, we still celebrated a couple of days ago, but I still want to focus on who Jesus says, so let’s do that […]
Luke 2:39-52 What did God look like as a 12 year old boy? Hey, everybody. Welcome to my office this morning. Sorry. I can’t be with you, but glad you can be with me here in my office. I’d like you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter two. I know the […]
Isaiah 9:1-2 Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. All right. We’re going to be looking this morning at Isaiah chapter nine. If you want to look there in your Bibles, uh, Isaiah chapter nine, we’re going to look at verse one and two, and then jump down to verse […]
Mark 5:1-20 “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” It great to be with you this morning as we head towards Christmas. Um, think I’m going to be doing the last sermon in the series we’ve been […]
1 Thess. 5:18 “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God.” Good morning by the way. Good morning. Um, we’re going to be looking at one verse of scripture. It’s in first Thessalonians chapter five, verse 18. What I want to talk to you this morning about is the assets, the […]
2 Chronicles 26 “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? What do you have that you did not receive.” We’re going to be looking at second Chronicles, 26, and we’re going to look at one verse this […]
The Holes in David’s Armor: How David’s struggles and sins, failures and foibles, could never exhaust or overwhelm the mercy and grace of God…and neither will yours.
Psalm 46 We need to unite ourselves around the empowering truth of Psalm 46. It is addressed to people who are in fear that life is out of control When everybody, man, it’s good to have everybody out there. Um, like you to turn to Psalm 46 this morning, I’m leaving our series still speaking, […]
John 7:11-17 “And when the Lord saw her, His heart was filled with pity for her” Good morning. It’s great to be with you. All my question for you as we begin is who is tired of talking about politics? Anybody who loves having a break to come to church and worship Christ and not […]
2 Chronicles 33 Manasseh’s story is clearly saying he finished well by the grace of God. He didn’t deserve it. Neither did Saul. But you can also put your name there. You didn’t deserve it. My sixth grade teacher was a man named mr. Thompson. I remember him well. Um, honestly he might have been […]
2 Chronicles: 32 Disaster was eminent for them. They could have said the sky is falling. Everything seems dark and hopeless. When everybody invite you to take your Bibles this morning to second Chronicles, chapter 32 second Chronicles in the old Testament. If you open your mouth right to the middle, you’ll hit the book […]
The journey of faith is one marked by continual deepening of understanding. 2 Chronicles 34 We’re looking at a series a that we call still speaking. It’s actually taken from one of the first verses in Hebrews chapter 11, where it talks about Abel. And it says though, dead, he still speaks. And the picture […]
The book of Isaiah How to avoid just going through the motions. I was thinking getting here, and this is probably a good day to think about it. Um, I’ve been to Belize a few times on some missions trip, and I don’t know if you’ve been to Belize or not, uh, or know anything […]
Jonah 1-4 The book of Jonah paints a picture of God’s mercy and grace declaring his mission to redeem the world; to bring people to himself. Well, I’m not only doing announcements, but you’re stuck with me through the service as well. So if you would be so kind, I would love for you to […]
Acts 9:1-30 Paul had an encounter with Jesus and it changed him entirely. Good morning, everybody. I, uh, it’s great to see you and it’s great to be back, right? The carpet is still green. I know you missed it. Uh, it is great to see you, those who are here and I thank you […]
Matthew 6:9-13 Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
Lament is not just a solitary exercise. It is something we, as the body of Christ, can come together and do.
After the Belt of Truth we have the piece of armor that protects our core, our emotional center.
This Mother's Day Pastor Ben looks at Mary, the mother of Jesus, for what lessons we can learn from her life.
In this introductory sermon, Pastor Mark explains the broad reality and focus of spiritual warfare.
What did the words "It is finished" mean then, and what do they still mean for us today?
Pastor Mike preaches on the fulfillment of prophecy, the reality of physical suffering, and the beauty of our Living Water being thirsty, so we don't have to be.
Pastor Mark examines this phrase that exemplifies how we have a Savior that can understand and identify with our sufferings.
A criminal on either side of Jesus on the Cross. Two different responses to his crucifixion and his statement of forgiveness.
Pastor Ben introduces the new series on the 7 Last Statements of Jesus on the cross. The first phrase was "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".
Was there something about fishermen that made them particularly suited to follow Jesus?
Throughout the Psalms we get a sense of what kind of things we should bring before God.
Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. -- Proverbs 30:5 NIV
Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.
Harold Ebersole teaches from Psalm 23 and reflects how he has never lacked in his own life, even through overseas mission and cancer, thanks to the provision of God.
One title Jesus was the Mighty Counselor. But what does having Christ as our counselor really promise us?
Pastor Ben delivers a Christmas message about where the hearts of the earliest Christian Ministers were focused.
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
On this International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, Pastor Jim shares how we are able to stand strong in our faith and come alongside those experiencing great persecution.
"Do not fear" is one of the most common commands in the Bible. But what promise does God give us in the face of fear?
“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 1 Peter 2:6
This morning we take a look at the stories of people who have come through Celebrate Recovery and have found hope and new life in the power of Christ.
Pastor Ben contrasts the inner lives and motivations of Haman and Mordecai from the book of Esther, focusing especially on the downfall of pride.
As we launch into Fall, Pastor Mike takes a look at this "Kingdom Life" we are called to live.
Pastor Jerry shares the story of Job and how it moves us away from an equation view of God.
Pastor Jim takes a closer look at the thief on the cross as a part of the "Every Story His Name" series.
Pastor Don asks some big questions about one of the Bible's most enigmatic characters and reveals how he fits into the grand narrative of redemption.
Pastor Ben shares a first-person narrative of Gomer's Story from the perspective of Hosea.
- You will never outgrow your need for Jesus. 2. Faith is not a moment, it's a way of life. 3. Pray without ceasing.
Pastor Ben introduces a new sermon series where we look past the "heros of the faith" and focus in on stories where it is clear that God is the hero.
The Unfathomable Depths of God's Knowledge and Wisdom 33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.To him be the glory forever! Amen.
In Romans 11, Paul talks about God's future plan for his chosen people, Israel. Despite their lack of accepting Jesus, God mercifully preserves a remnant as the foundation for a coming awakening.
Pastor Don puts shoes to the question of why we baptize by immersion during this baptism service.
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
In our culture that focuses on performance, accomplishment and inner strength, we are reminded that grace comes in the midst of our weaknesses.
Mark wrestles with some of the questions asked in Romans 9 by the apostle Paul. In the end, we find that what we perceive as an issue of justice is actually a question of mercy.
Pastor Jim's devotional thoughts after the Children's Musical about Moses and the Exodus.
Pastor Mark speaks on our willingness to be used by God, and as "jars of clay", remembering that what is within us that is valuable, not the jar on its own.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Pastor Ben focuses on Saturday of Holy Week, the time between Jesus' death and resurrection.
Thursday of Passion Week takes us through the last supper and into the garden of Gethsemane.
In this sermon we focus on the scene where Mary anoints Jesus' head and feet with expensive perfume and Judas rebukes her for wasting money. The contrast of reaction between these two people in light of Monday and Tuesday's events reveals the kind of follower they really were.
On these two days Jesus shows through his words and actions that he is bringing a new kind of kingdom. Those who thought they were people of faith actually didn't get him at all. He forced people to look at their own lives, not just their professions of faith.
We're kicking off this our journey to Easter through a sermon series and new Common Life book titled "We Would See Jesus". In this sermon, Pastor Ben asks the question, as we prepare for Easter, "How did Jesus approach Easter?"
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:28 is one of the top 20 most searched for verses online. It speaks to our innermost desire for there to be meaning and purpose in our lives. But since we live in a broken and sinful world, how can there be a real promise of good?
Celebrate with 7 members of Fellowship as they share their stories of faith and proclaim their love and devotion to Christ in this baptism service.
In Romans 8 it describes the Holy Spirit interceding for our inarticulate groans. But if God knows what we need, and the Spirit intercedes, what is our role in prayer?
Romans 8:18-25 point us towards a future hope. This hope is something that all creation groans with as it longs for restoration at the time when all Christians are glorified in the eternal future. Having that future hope in us now, through the Holy Spirit, changes how we live life today and how we interact with a world that is broken, and eagerly awaiting that day.
One of the benefits of becoming a Christ-follower and receiving the Holy Spirit is that we have been made heirs of God's family. But while that ensures we have access to an eternal inheritance, that also means we will share in the sufferings of Christ.
There are many things in this world that we can take as our identity; things that we feel make us who we are and matter deeply to us. But as Pastor Mark Willey preaches through Romans 8, he shows how the Apostle Paul contends there are really only 2 core identities in the world.
In this introductory sermon for the Living In The Spirit series, pastor Mark lays out the foundation of Romans 8, Freedom is Found in Christ!
We often think of Strength as something that comes from within, whether its physical strength or a mental drive to succeed. But what if our strength should be based in something else entirely?
Psalm 126 - Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
Bethlehem was just an insignificant suburb of Jerusalem, yet God delivered his greatest gift there. Which begs the question, "Does God waste his love?"
Have you ever heard someone say "God never gives us more than we can handle" in an effort to encourage someone during a tough time? It turns out that Paul doesn't promise that.
"I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”"
Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?
"What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!"
Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Our justification through faith in Christ comes with 3 key benefits: Peace with God, Access to God and Joy, both in the present and future hope.
Some people grew up with Creeds, and love what they stand for. But for others, they represent a dead and disconnected Faith. What is the purpose of a creed and how can it be practical for everyday life?
1 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? 2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. 3 What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
"But, now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe."