Author: Rich Leino

John 17

Some of you might wonder why we’re jumping to one of the final episodes of Jesus’ walk on this Earth. I hope, by the end, you’ll understand how this prayer of Christ’s fully captures why Christ came into the world, where He came from, and the hope that He left us.

I was talking to James the other night about the movie Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby. If you haven’t seen the movie, I don’t recommend seeing it. It has little redeeming value.

In one of the scenes, Ricky is leading his family in grace and keeps addressing Christ as “Baby Jesus” during his prayer. His good friend, Cal Naughton Jr., interrupts him and reminds him that Jesus was a grown man. Ricky responds by stating that he likes the “Christmas Jesus” the best and likes to picture Jesus as a little baby.

Although the scene is blasphemous in many ways, it places a finger on how many people like to picture Jesus during the Christmas Season and why He is so popular this time of the year. Baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, is cute and cuddly. He’s not the Savior, the King of Kings, the Lion of Judah. He’s safe because He’s a small baby.

Although Presbyterians have not historically celebrated religious seasons, today would actually be the Feast of Epiphany. It was, traditionally, the date that celebrates the Incarnation of Christ, which is another way of saying that the Son of God took on human flesh. At one point in Church history, today would have been the day in the Church calendar that Christ’s birth was celebrated but Christmas was added as a distinct celebration. I bring this up because I want to make sure we understand that what just passed was not a birthday celebration but a celebration of God becoming flesh for us.

I received an email from my brother on December 18th reminding us all that Jesus’ birthday was in one week. I gently reminded him of a few things:

1. It is very unlikely that Jesus was born in December. Shepherds were not out on clear nights in December in Israel any more than you and I were outside under last night’s stars.

2. Nobody knows the calendar day that Christ was born. The date was chosen for celebration but not because it was Christ’s birthday. There is a 1 in 365 chance that it is correct.

3. Christmas is a historical celebration that Christ came into the world to save men who were dead in their sins and trespasses. Jesus doesn’t need a birthday cake every year but we very much needed Him to come and save us.

I believe it is fitting, then, that we consider John 17 to hear Jesus’ prayer for His disciples on the night He was betrayed. It reveals profound truths about the person and work of Christ as well as how much we need the Son of God.

1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

I’m moved to worship at how caring a Shepherd Christ was for His disciples. He had just finished the Lord’s Supper with them, had washed their feet, and told them He was going to depart from them. Christ was going to the place of physical and spiritual torment and understood that His own could not follow Him where He must go alone for their sake. He did not want them to be discouraged and so He not only promised that He would send the Spirit but here, in a most tender way, He prayed for them in their hearing.

We’re promised by God that, when we ask according to His will, our prayers will be answered. Here, does anyone doubt that Jesus’ prayer was answered? We need to treat each of these requests as truths that we can stand within. They are not wishful thinking but requests to a Father by the Son of God.

Jesus begins by noting that the hour had come for the Son of God to be glorified and giving eternal life to all that the Father had given Him. This is not a command to the disciples but a fact. Christ gives eternal life because His obedient life and death on a Cross secured eternal life for His people. Eternal life is knowing this Christ. Eternal life is coming to a knowledge of the Son of God made flesh who died for sinners under the wrath and curse of God for their disobedience. Eternal life is eternal because it is born from above and no one that the Father gives the Son is lost. Christ had not left any work to be done for His own to be accomplished to secure this inheritance. He states, clearly, that He accomplished all the work that He was given to do.

5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

We can spend years meditating on this verse. We’ll be in glory ten thousand years contemplating the wonder of this Truth. In the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. During our responsive reading this morning we read from Philippians 2 where the Apostle exhorts us: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

There is a heresy known as the kenosis theory that states that when the Son of God became flesh that He gave up some of His divine attributes. That which is unchangeable changed. We don’t have time to unpack all the theology around this and much is beyond human comprehension. It is a wonderful Truth testified by the Scripture that the Person of Christ took on a human nature without ceasing to be God. Christ is one Person with two natures. He is fully God and fully Man without mixture or confusion.

But the Person of Christ did give something up.

The year 1991 seems like ancient history to the young people here but I remember, like it was yesterday, sitting in my Bachelor Officer Quarters watching the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. During the first portion of the hearings, chaired by then Senator Joseph Biden, Justice Thomas was reserved and answered every question in a measured manner.

And then accusations by a subordinate, by the name of Anita Hill, surfaced. Whether you believe her allegations were true or not, the hearings took on a tremendous intensity. Justice Thomas, when he returned, was no longer measured and reserved. His opening statement following these allegations was in part:

“I think that this today is a travesty. I think that it is disgusting. I think that this hearing should never occur in America. This is a case in which this sleaze, this dirt, was searched for by staffers of members of this committee, was then leaked to the media, and this committee and this body validated it and displayed it at prime time over our entire nation. How would any member on this committee, any person in this room, or any person in this country, would like sleaze said about him or her in this fashion? Or this dirt dredged up and this gossip and these lies displayed in this manner? How would any person like it?

The Supreme Court is not worth it. No job is worth it. I’m not here for that. I’m here for my name, my family, my life and my integrity. I think something is dreadfully wrong with this country when any person, any person in this free country would be subjected to this.”

Justice Thomas didn’t care about the appointment to the Supreme Court anymore. Take away the job and he did not care but he did care about this: They had taken his name. They had stolen his integrity.

Men work their entire lives making a name for themselves. They guard their reputation and their name to the point that some cultures used to permit gentlemen to duel to the death over an insult to one’s name.

But here’s the thing.

Nobody had to ask the Son of God to lay aside His Name when He came to this Earth. He laid it aside willingly.

Do you realize how many times Christ’s name was sullied while He walked this Earth? Do you realize how many times He could have called down the fire from Heaven that everyone deserved?

He gave up His name. He was despised and rejected of men. There was not even anything of His appearance that would commend Himself to men. He was born in a poor household and a manger was His birthplace.

We’ve been studying the glory of God as a theme in the redemptive plan of God for His people and one of the things that strikes you is what that glory does to men throughout redemptive history. Every time the glory of the Lord came near the Tabernacle or the Temple, everyone had to leave. It was too much. God reminds Moses that nobody can look upon the face of the Lord and live.

And yet, the most amazing thing we have in Christ. We could not approach God’s holiness and so God placed a veil of human flesh around His glory and came very near to sinful men. Such things are too wonderful for me.

When Christ walked into a room nobody could tell that God was right there. An unclean woman with a discharge of blood for 15 years touches Christ and His power heals her. Lepers cried out: “Master, have mercy on us” and He would walk right up to them and make them clean. A sinful woman crawled up to Christ’s feet and wept on them and the Son of God did not recoil but reached out and forgave sin.

You see, beloved, Christ had to give up His glory because we needed Him to. We couldn’t approach God without Him making it safe to do so. God forgive me that I sometimes come into the presence of God and do not realize what an amazing privilege it is that I can enter boldly into the presence of God because Christ came in flesh and through the veil of His flesh I have access into the courts of the most High.

6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

Do you understand what a privilege it is to belong to Christ? Do not listen when the world tells you that there are many paths that lead to the top of the mountain. Have some loyalty to your Savior. Have some respect for what He had to go through to secure redemption for you. The Cross makes no sense if men only needed to be reminded of timeless moral Truths.

Christ’s disciples needed Christ’s prayers. Peter had promised Christ that, even if everyone else should forsake Him, that He would stand with Him to the bitter end. Christ rebuked Peter and told Him that Satan had requested Peter and that, if permitted, could handle Peter as easily as throwing up dust in the wind. Peter would betray but, Jesus reminded Him, that Peter would turn back again. Why? Because Christ had prayed for Him and Christ’s prayers are answered. Christ’s intercession was the reason that His disciples had received the Word when so many others had left Christ. Christ would hang alone between heaven and earth and none would be with Him but His prayers ensured that His disciples would cling to that work and, by believing His Word, have everlasting life.

10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

There is a common misperception by the world about those who claim what Scriptures teach about the preservation of God’s people. It is sometimes called the perseverance of the Saints and some have the wrong notion that believers can somehow be proud that they can never lose their salvation.

But, you need to understand, the reason why the disciples would persevere was not something within their character. If left to themselves, they would have all scattered. If left to themselves, they would have remained enemies of God. They would have hated God just as the Pharisees did.

What made the disciples remarkable was their Savior. He kept them for His sake. He had called and not lost a single one because nobody is strong enough to take from His hand. He had even chosen Judas with the knowledge that He was not His own so that Judas could betray, of his own hateful will, the Son of God.

I don’t know what it is within the sinful human heart that hates the idea that God would glorify Himself by saving His own to the uttermost. Even some that name Christ bristle at the idea that they’re privileged to have Christ intercede for them powerfully. Where they ought to read these Words of Christ with joy that He saves His own to the uttermost, they want Him to simply leave men with the power to come and go as they desire. There is nothing of the sheep tending themselves here but only the Shepherd powerfully interceding to secure His sheep.

Understanding that Christ calls us and keeps us close to His bosom ought to be the source of the greatest humility and comfort. It ought to humble us for we realize that we are no more worthy of redemption than another. It ought to comfort us to know that the Son of God, through Whom the universe was created, keeps us and promises that nothing can separate us from His Love.

Christ, after all, came not to gather seekers around Him. Christ came to pursue men. Christ came to seek and save the lost who were wandering in darkness. Christ is the Seeker, we were the lost. Christ calls us into His Kingdom through the power of His Word and we are comforted by the Truth that we have been made alive to be kept by Him and to glorify Him as He redeems a people to Himself.

Nothing breaks my heart more than witnessing how impoverished many in the Evangelical tradition are today. They do not hear the Truth of the Gospel that ought to minister to them and remind them not only that Christ begins their salvation but is their salvation. Many preachers operate according to something that is illegal in business called the “Bait and Switch”. The bait and switch is where a salesman will lure you into a transaction with the promise of one price only to find out that the terms are switched once you commit to the offer.

Many Christians today have been told that once they believe upon Christ that they will be saved. They embrace that Truth with joy and unload the burden of their sin to come to the Savior. But then they are told that holiness is up to them. They are no longer fed the Gospel but are given Sermons were they are reminded that they need to be sold out for Jesus and that they need to reform their lives. Obedience, they are told, is the mark of a true Christian.

Indeed, obedience follows faith in Christ but that obedience comes from Christ. It’s right here in the passage where Christ asks that the Father would sanctify the disciples. It is not only the one time act of belief that Christ ensures but Christ is the power for the believer’s daily belief and walk.

I’ve known men who believed the Gospel and then thought sanctification was up to them. They are weighed down by their battle with Sin and losing daily and, before long, they’re crying out: “How can a sinner like me be loved by a Holy God?” Ministers of moralism can only point to the Law. Be more serious. Be more sold out. Tell others about Jesus so they can enter your struggle.

Beloved, Christ is the indestructible life. Christ is holiness and the fountainhead of salvation. Be reminded again, Christian, that God saved you when you were His enemy. Christ came to seek you out when you were walking in sin and darkness. He has you in the palm of His hand and reminds you that none can take you out. You will battle sin but Christ does not leave you. He doesn’t simply come around when you’ve run out of the resources to battle sin by yourself. His Gospel is the power every day. His Gospel reminds you that you are His and that Sin has no power over you. You will be sanctified in the Truth because Christ is your Life and He does not cast out His own. Cling to Him.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Did you know that Christ prayed for you? You are mentioned right here in the Scriptures. Christ prayed not only for those present at the time of His prayer but prayed for those that would believe their report. You are the object of Christ’s prayer.

Some of you might have noticed the vanity license plate on our Suburban. It’s Hebrews 9. I love that Chapter as it speaks so powerfully of the High Priesthood of Christ as He lives to make perfect intercession for His own. It’s not as if Christ retreated to a faraway place to discover who might believe upon His name but He continually makes intercession for us. He knows who believes upon Him because He prays for those that will believe.

Every event in your life has been the subject of His intercession. That you heard the Gospel and responded to it: thank Christ for His intercession. That you are becoming sanctified: thank Christ for His intercession. That all things work together for your good: thank Christ for His intercession.

One day, Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. You will walk up to the bar of His judgment and the Judge will ask by what right do you have to be acquitted of your sins, which are many. But then, the Judge of all the Earth will come down from His seat and stand next to you as your Defense Attorney and say: “This is one of my own. I have paid the full penalty for His sin. My righteousness is his possession.”

And as Leonard reminded us last week, a crown will be given to you and your Savior will say: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

And what will be able to do except weep for joy and say: “Lord Jesus, it was all you. You prayed for me. You held me in the palm of your hand. What good did I ever do that was not by Your gracious Hand?” And we will lay our crown at Jesus’ feet because He gets all the glory.

But you also see in this prayer that this is not only about the world to come but about the unity that Christ’s Church will have in history. Christ prays that we would love one another. Christ prays that we would be united in the Truth.

You see, our salvation is personal but it is not to be thought of as merely personal. Christ is saving a people that we are privileged to be around. We not only ought to love one another but we will love one another because Christ has secured it. The Apostle John reminds us that nobody can even say that He loves Christ if He does not love His brother because love of the Brethren has been secured in Christ.

But this Love is not a Love that has no content. It is grounded in the Truth that we have been sanctified unto. God has revealed His Truth in His Word and, as Ephesians 4 testified to us today in our meditation, Christ gave us Pastors and Teachers that we might be united in Truth.

Leonard will be starting a series next week on the Officers of Christ’s Church. We live such individual and compartmented lives in modernity that we tend to think of Church as a gathering of people who share notions of Truth that have been arrived at independently. Each of us, we reason, studied the Scriptures and came to fairly common views, and so we worship at a Church with people who share our view of Truth.

But Truth is not an object that gets shaped by the organ of the human mind. Truth is not something that we arrive at by our own power or by our own sentiment. Truth is what corresponds to reality the way God sees it and it has been revealed by His Word. The Gospel comes to us outside of ourselves and announces our salvation and sanctification and then challenges us that our minds need to be renewed by God’s Word. Leonard and our Session are not merely independent travelers with us on a journey to apprehend that Truth but have been commissioned by God to lead us into the unity of Truth.

In the end, Christ’s prayer is a reminder of the amazing nature of Grace. It’s the kind of Truth that the prophets of old longed to understand. This great Truth that the Messiah would be a man but also God.

If left to ourselves we would have willingly remained enemies of God and justly perished for our Sins. But the Son of God came down to Earth to come near to sinful men and lived a life of perfect righteousness. When men could no longer stand the holiness of God in their midst, they hung the Son of God between heaven and earth and He took the full weight of the wrath of God for Sin for those who believe upon the Son and look up to the place of Curse. Because death could not hold Him, He rose again on the third day and ever lives so that we might have eternal life.

Believe upon Christ Jesus. Know the Son Who Knows you by name. If you hear His voice it is because He has long sought you and loves you with an everlasting love. Believe upon Christ because He knows you by name and your faith is a result of His loving intercession. Live in Him, not because you have the power within you, but because His life secures power over sin. Love the Brethren because they are united with you in mystic sweet communion in the Son of God. We are His body. Be united in the Truth because Christ is Truth.

And because Christ has prayed for His Church, may we all look forward to the day when we are presented spotless and blameless as His Bride and enter the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Tags Christ, glory, hearing, life, love, word

Law Scripture

Genesis 21

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Genesis 21 (ESV)

¹ The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. ² And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. ³ Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. ⁴ And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. ⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. ⁶ And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” ⁷ And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” ⁸ And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. ⁹ But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. ¹⁰ So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.” ¹¹ And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. ¹² But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. ¹³ And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.” ¹⁴ So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. ¹⁷ And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to 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. ¹⁸ Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰ And God was with the boy, and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. ²¹ He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. ²² At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do. ²³ Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned.” ²⁴ And Abraham said, “I will swear.” ²⁵ When Abraham reproved Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech’s servants had seized, ²⁶ Abimelech said, “I do not know who has done this thing; you did not tell me, and I have not heard of it until today.” ²⁷ So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a covenant. ²⁸ Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart. ²⁹ And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you have set apart?” ³⁰ He said, “These seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand, that this may be a witness for me that I dug this well.” ³¹ Therefore that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them swore an oath. ³² So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. ³³ Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. ³⁴ And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines.

Genesis 21:1-2 notes: ¹ The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. ² And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.

Something that we need to do when we’re reading the Scriptures is remember that the text brings forward characters for the purpose of teaching us something. Sometimes we can get lost in the story itself and not keep track of what is said or done. Notice how the story emphasizes that the Lord visited Sarah “just as He said” and did to her “just as He promised”. One of the refrains of the Scriptures is how things come about just as God has promised or just as He said. In your reading of the Scriptures, start taking note how often it is recorded that things happen just as the Lord said or promised they would. I was struck, when we were studying Exodus together in Sunday School, how it seems that everybody had forgotten that God had promised that, after 400 years, He was going to lead the people out of Egypt.

But God didn’t forget. God never forgets. His Promise is going to come to pass. It doesn’t matter much whether His people want it to come to pass. It will happen.

Here, of course, it is a joyous occasion. Abraham, a 99 year old man, and Sarah, his 89 year old wife, were told by God that they would conceive and bear a child. One year later, as the Lord Promised, a child was born. This occurred, as verse 2 states, “…at the time which God had spoken to him.”

God said it.

Doesn’t matter much who believed it, because…

That settles it.

Now, you don’t have to have a medical degree to realize how remarkable that is. That’s why it’s so important to note that God “visited” Sarah. Everybody understood that this couldn’t have happened by just natural means. Of course every birth is by the sustaining power of God because He upholds the universe by His power. It’s only our lack of spiritual discernment and gratitude that we think of the sun rising or the birth of a child as some natural event according to some law outside of God.

But, if the fact that the sun came up this morning and even now utters forth speech about God or that every birth is an occasion to thank God, how much more so was everyone reminded that this birth was very clearly the power of God at work and could never be thought of as being under Abraham and Sarah’s power to bring about in the strength of their flesh? In fact, Romans 4 notes that the birth of Isaac is to be thought of as God bringing the dead to life. It’s a picture of faith and the fact that it is God who saves. It is God who brings life. The Promise was going to come about in such a way that only God could get the glory.

⁴ And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. ⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

Isaac is the first infant to receive the sign of circumcision. This was not only a sign of God’s Covenant with Abraham but a seal that God would most certainly bring that Promise about. Even as his baby boy screamed in pain as Abraham performed a bloody act, Abraham understood that this member of Isaac’s flesh was going to bring forth the Promised Seed in the fullness of time. Abraham was Promised descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens and here it was, in his hands. He only saw one of that great number promised but understood that this was a sign and a seal that, through him, all the nations of the Earth would be blessed.

In fact, the sign being applied to infants was a very visible signification that this Covenant was about grace. Isaac couldn’t promise on that day that he was going to believe. He couldn’t promise that he would bring this great promise about. Rather, a helpless 8-day old child received this Promise in his flesh and, throughout his life, he would have a very visible reminder that it was God that was strong to save and it did not depend upon, begin, or end with him.

Everything about this story just overflows with grace. It overflows with God’s Promise. It overflows with God’s goodness. What other response could there be than joy? What other name is more appropriate for God to give Isaac than “laughter” as God’s grace causes an overflow of joy in His servant Abraham and his wife Sarah? Sarah says it all: “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” ⁷ And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Nobody, except God, that’s who. Who would have thought to walk up to a 90 year old woman and ask her to be a wet nurse? 90 years old and she’s nursing Isaac! Can you imagine the joy for a barren woman to receive a child at the age of 90?! Anyone that loves the things of God wants to walk up to this aged woman and simply laugh with her and share her joy over what a good God has done for her. Indeed, those who love God want to laugh with her over what God has done for them in confirming His promise in such a remarkable way to leave no doubts for our wavering hearts!

But not all the laughter at the downpayment of this Covenant Promise was the laughter of joy: ⁸ And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. ⁹ But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. ¹⁰ So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

The weaning period of a child in the Ancient Near East was about 3-4 years and the culture normally celebrated this occasion. Why? Not because the mother was done nursing but because many children did not make it to the age of 3-4 during this period. So Abraham threw a party to celebrate that the boy was growing in stature and the text simply indicates that Ishmael was laughing at Isaac and, for some reason, Sarah flew off the handle. Even though previously we rejoiced over Isaac’s birth being a cause for laughter, we all know the difference between being laughed with and being laughed at.

Ishmael’s was the laughter of scorn.

But something in our minds wants to say: “Come on Sarah! Get some perspective. Ishmael is only 16 years old. You want to throw them out just for laughing at your son Isaac?”

It’s tempting to soften the blow on this point but I think we need to realize, first of all, that the Scriptures actually paint what Ishmael was doing as very serious. Perhaps we need to be challenged by the Scriptures at this point where we tend to view youthful sin as less serious than adult sin. The Apostle Paul brings this episode to the forefront as an example of unbelief in Galatians 4. He presents it as an allegory of the sons of the flesh – those that trust in the flesh – as persecuting those that are the children of the Promise. To put it bluntly, Ishmael’s sin was one of unbelief.

There’s a part of us, because we are so carnal, that can hardly blame him. Which of you, if you were the firstborn son of the father of a mighty promise, would rejoice at the idea that your kid brother, by another mother, is the heir to that mighty promise?

I’m the firstborn. I’m stronger. I’m smarter. This kid is barely out of diapers and I’m supposed to be excited that he’s God’s choice?!

I’ve witnessed many people mishandle the story of Ishmael as if God, in His choice of Isaac as the Promised line, seemed to almost force Ishmael to unbelief. But Abraham was never told to keep the things of God from Ishmael. Ishmael was circumcised with the rest of the family years earlier. Ishmael could have recognized the sign of circumcision in his own flesh and rejoiced even at the idea that it was his baby brother through which this promise of salvation would come to pass. He could have been willing, like King Saul’s son Jonathan, to give up everything knowing that blessing was to be found by clinging to God’s Promise and not to the claim of the flesh.

It’s never a minor thing when a child does not believe in the things of God. I fear we’re so accustomed to the way we view “religion” in our country that we confuse civil freedom concerning religion with the ultimate judgment of God. We need to remember that all unbelief is sin. Our children are sinners and under the wrath and curse of God unless they are in Christ. This should not evoke terror in believing parents but it should evoke seriousness about the things of God because it’s very clear in Scripture that God takes unbelief very seriously. All sin bears the penalty of the wrath and curse of God.

¹¹ And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. ¹² But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. ¹³ And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.” ¹⁴ So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away.

This broke Abraham’s heart. I think the distance in time removes the pain that is in this story but this is sad. God commanded Abraham to separate Ishmael from Isaac for Isaac’s good. It telescopes the separation that the people of Israel would have from the unbelieving people in the land. These kinds of separations are not meant to make us happy that we’re better than others but to remind us that we live in a fallen world and that the things of God often break up families because of the devastating effects of Sin that were introduced by the Fall. How many here, like me, can relate to the heartbreak that Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother do not share the love of Christ?

And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the child under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. ¹⁷ And God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of God called to 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. ¹⁸ Up! Lift up the boy, and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰ And God was with the boy, and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. ²¹ He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

Don’t feel guilty about having compassion for Hagar and Ishmael here. I don’t want to minimize how sad this story is. Hagar and Ishmael wandered in circles in the desert and ran out of water. Can you imagine the pain in a mother’s heart as she had to put her son under a bush and walk off into the distance so she didn’t have to watch him die?

As she wept, however, God once again visited Hagar. Remember, God had promised Hagar, years before in the desert, that Ishmael would become a mighty nation. For the sake of Abraham, God would make this boy great. In one sense, how could Hagar have thought the boy was going to die because God had promised, years earlier, that he was going to become a mighty nation? Yet, it’s the pattern over and over, that God Promises something and we look to our circumstances, as painful as this was, and measure reality by them instead of what God has said. It was impossible that Ishmael was going to die and notice how the text says that God “opened her eyes” and she saw a well of water directly before her. Right at the very spot that she sunk into depression convinced she was going to perish is the very spot God planned to save them from death.

And the text relates that the boy flourished. Ishmael became an expert with a bow and his descendants long after were known for their ability with that weapon. As God had promised, for the sake of His love for Abraham, he did make Ishmael great as a nation. But don’t make the mistake that this blessing was fundamentally one of salvation. He didn’t become great in terms of his faith, according to the text, but became mighty in strength and number. We need to remember that God gives every intellectual and spiritual gift that men enjoy but, sadly, Ishmael and his descendants didn’t see this as a matter of grace and seek to worship God for their blessing. Instead, his descendants measured their blessedness according to their own strength and, like so many of us, didn’t glorify God and worship Him for their many gifts.

The closing portion of Chapter 21 is another fitting contrast between grace and human strength. This great king Abimelech had been cursed for taking Sarah into his harem when he thought she was Abraham’s sister. He knew enough of the power of God not to mess with Abraham and returned Sarah to him. Now he appeared again to Abraham desiring to make a Covenant with him.

Abimelech sensed that Abraham was going to become a mighty nation and wanted to make a Covenant with him to ensure that, when he did become great, that his descendants wouldn’t be on the short end of the stick. In other words, he measured the worth of what Abraham had according to power. Abraham had been promised to become a mighty nation and a blessing to all nations through peace with God but all Abimelech could see is the “cash value” of making a treaty with a great nation. Beloved, while it is true that Christianity can improve the blessedness of life under the sun, we are not to proclaim the value of a good life now to a lost and dying world. It is peace with God that we proclaim.

Abraham had to add a special addendum to that Covenant by giving sheep so it would be clear to Abimelech that this well that he dug in Beersheba was his. Beersheba became the dwelling place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when he returned before going into Egypt. You’ll even see, throughout the Old Testament, the phrase “from Dan to Beersheba” as shorthand for all of Israel as Beersheba marked the southern extent of the Promised Land.

We have in this Chapter the contrast of God’s Promise of grace compared to the Sons of Men who measure themselves by strength. We see Isaac, a son of such joy that we break into laughter that God’s Promises are so wonderful as to confirm them by bringing life out of death. We see God showing forth His grace in the circumcision of an infant. We see the surety of God’s Promises throughout to confirm, in real history, that He is Who He says He is and that, despite all the waiting, God is trustworthy.

We also see, however, a young man who can’t stomach the idea of his baby brother being the heir to that Promise. We see him becoming strong and skilled in his own strength. We see a local monarch who visits Abraham to make a treaty because all he cares about Abraham’s God is that it “works for Abraham” and makes him someone worth befriending.

A couple of weeks ago I saw one of the books entitle Do Hard Things laying on a chair. I joked to one of the teens: “Is there a shorter version of this book that I can read? This one seems kind of long?”

The irony was lost on him because he helpfully explained there was a workbook that neatly summarized the contents.

Rebellion, sloth, and low expectations may be the cultural good of the teen years these days but the Bible still teaches otherwise. My wife and I enjoy watching American Idol and I’m always dumbfounded that young adults come forward to sing and are genuinely devastated when Simon tells them that they cannot sing. Mom always heaped false praise upon their accomplishments and this is the first time in their life that they haven’t been praised for failure. At least Paula leaves them with the thought that they still look beautiful.

Consider our movie heroes as well. Something I’ve never liked about the Harry Potter movies is that everybody thinks Harry is so cool because magic comes to him so naturally and easily. He’s good at it with virtually no effort compared to the hard work that his friends put in to their schoolwork: the first day at Hogwart’s and he’s on the broom flying polo team. Real life isn’t like that. Wasted genius is practically a proverb in real life.

But, with everything we just learned in this passage, I want to make sure each of you young people understands something that needs to drive you to your knees. I want to ensure all of us parents and older people understand the same thing that we might pray earnestly with concern for the children of our own Covenant community.

Kids listen to me.

Teenagers pay attention.

Adults, if you remember nothing else, remember this:

Ishmael did hard things.

Ishmael started with his Mom and a well in a desert and made a great name for himself as an archer and a warrior. He became a mighty nation. He became great by any human standard. He wasn’t a slacker. He applied himself to everything he did.

But did He know God? Did he ever know the surpassing riches of His grace? Did he ever look down at his own circumcision that was a daily reminder that God saves all those who put their trust in Him? Did he ever learn to laugh at the incredible Promise of God and the amazing birth of his baby brother and rejoice that God was doing something amazing that would bless the nations? Or did he simply think: “I don’t need that, look at what I’ve done by my own hands?”

Parents, do you pray for your kids? Do you ever talk to them and tell them: “Son, I want you to apply yourself because God wants us to glorify Him in our hard work but, more than anything, I want you to believe in Christ.”

Do you ever think to yourself: “More than anything else, I want to see my children’s children call upon the name of the Lord.”

Does the thought of your child forsaking the Covenant of Grace that he or she has been baptized into drive you to your knees?

“Oh heavenly Father, help me teach my children to call upon the name of the Lord. I have no strength within me to convert their heart. Please, Lord, call them to yourselves. Salvation is in Your mighty Hands. Cause them to cling to Christ all the days of their lives!”

You see, that boy Isaac grew and had two sons and one of them ended up just like Isaac’s big brother.

A hunter. A warrior. A mighty nation.

Oh, how Isaac loved his son Esau.

But then one day Esau sold his Promised birthright for a bowl of soup!

The Promise of God on the one hand. Soup on the other.

“What good is the Promise of God to me? I’m famished. Give me the soup!”

But, in spite of all the sin of men, that everlasting Promise unfolded inexorably until 2000 years later, in the fullness of time, God’s grace burst forward in a dazzling array that took away the breath of the entire world.

God became flesh and dwelt among us.

And, oh, how He did hard things.

He did impossible things.

He came down from glory and took upon Himself the form of a servant. Despised and rejected of men who loved their sin, God veiled Himself in human flesh and came near to Sinful man to be obedient in their place. The Promised Seed walked right into the teeth of sin and misery and obeyed with a perfect righteousness that only He could accomplish. Nearly all of those who were heirs to that Promise rejected Him and many saw only in Him an ability to achieve political power.

But, in the end, Christ had come for a totally unexpected purpose. So unexpected was His mission that the entire Nation turned against Him, slapped the Son of God across the face, and yelled “Crucify Him!”

Embracing the place of Curse that His own deserved, He hung between heaven and earth and took upon Himself the sins of all who look to Him, away from themselves, and believe. With His death, He put to death Sin as power and on the third day, because death could not hold Him, He rose again so that all who trust in Him might have eternal life.

Paul reminds us in Romans 5: “6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Beloved, THAT’S the Promise. In God’s perfect time, the Seed of Abraham did everything we could not do so that God could bring us to Himself and make us His children: children not of the flesh but of faith according to that glorious Promise.

Does that stun you?

What does this kind of grace evoke in you?

God has brought you from death to life.

You, who were once an enemy of God, God has died for to make you His friend.

Let us exult together with Sarah: “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me!”

Tags Abraham, death, Isaac, life, Lord, Sarah

Gospels and Acts Scripture

Luke 15

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Luke 15

1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 8 “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 11 And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. 13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. 17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” ’ 20 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. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. 25 “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, 29 but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ 31 And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’ ”

When Sean called me about a week and a half ago asking me if I was interested in teaching this evening I hesitated only for a moment. I’ve been very busy lately yet I love to be able to share the Word of God.

When Sean told me I could teach on any topic I knew, almost immediately, what I desired to teach because this is one of my favorite parables in the Bible. The problem with teaching on this text is that it is so well known by many people who can probably recite the details by the mere mention of the title.

In a 1988 study, a sociologist named Marcia Whitten authored a work entitled All is Forgiven, wherein she analyzed hundreds of sermons on Luke 15 delivered by mainline Presbyterian and Southern Baptist Churches. The mainline Presbyterian Churches saw in the Parable a teaching about the need for social acceptance of the downcast. Southern Baptist preachers, however, emphasized the troubles that the Prodigal Son faced when he left the boundaries of a Godly home and got into “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Many of you probably have received typical treatments but I hope to demonstrate the power of the Gospel herein.

It is vitally important, in understanding the parables in this Chapter that we begin with verses 1 and 2. Once again we encounter the Pharisees’ criticism of Christ. They complain that Christ receives sinners and even eats with them. No righteous man, in their thinking, would sully himself by spending time around sinners much less sharing a meal with them.

Christ, as was His habit in many teaching situations, responded with three Parables. In the first parable He recounted the great lengths that a good Shepherd will go through to seek out one lost sheep and the rejoicing that ensues when that lost sheep is recovered. The second parable noted the great lengths a woman will go through to find a lost coin in her household. She will literally tear the house apart in search of this wayward coin and rejoices with the entire town upon its discovery. Both of the first two parables would easily resonate with the culture of Christ’s day but to understand the impact of the third parable you’re going to need to take off your 21^st Century glasses and journey with me back to the Jewish culture of Christ’s day.

Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons. One day, his younger son came up to him demanding his share in his inheritance.

Right away, jaws should drop. Jewish sons do not demand their inheritance of their father. The inheritance is to be received upon the death of the father with the firstborn son receiving a double portion. The younger son was basically saying: “Father, I wish you were dead. I want my inheritance now and your life is in my way!” The son showed utter disdain for his father. The proper response for a father in this culture would have been to slap his son across the face for disrespect and he had every right to disinherit such a scoundrel. The Pharisees would have been pleased to hear that this was the father’s response.

Incredibly, however, the father granted the son’s request. The inheritance, after all, would have been in the land of the estate. It’s not as if the father had a bank account or stocks he could simply sign over. He would have had to sell a portion of his estate to a buyer at a reduced price with the guarantee that the buyer would receive this land at the father’s death. Do you realize that the penalty for moving a boundary marker in the Law was death? A capital crime. Land was the family’s inheritance and generations had labored to pass the estate from father to son and to build wealth that would bless future generations. This father had, inexplicably, cashed generations of labor in to give cash to this worthless boy.

The boy left home where he squandered this money in reckless living. What had taken centuries to accumulate was blown quickly. What a scum bag. What a wretch! The parables are full of scorn and curses for the foolish who waste their money. Utter ruin will be their end! The Pharisees would have lectured the father that such was to be expected. What was he thinking after all?

And then a famine hit.

And the boy was in a faraway land having squandered his money.

And he began to be in want. His friends left him for such are the friends of folly.

Ah what delight to the heart of a Pharisee. The boy was reaping his just reward. Surely he would die of starvation and the Pharisees would wring their hands with glee about the destruction of the unrighteous.

But the boy managed to find employment feeding pigs.

Excuse me, did you say he was feeding pigs?

By pigs, do you mean the unclean animals that Jews were forbidden to eat or touch?

A Jewish boy feeding pigs?!

But this employment was not feeding him well to the point that the boy envied the pigs for their meal of corn husks.

We don’t know how long this went on but, one day, it dawned upon him: “Even my father’s servants have plenty to eat. I know I can’t go back as a son. I’ve blown any opportunity for that. I understand that, in this culture, I am shamed beyond measure. Perhaps if I return home I can be hired on as a slave and at least I’ll be treated well.”

At this point the Pharisees would have been pleased with the boy. Now we’re talking! That’s right you sinner! That’s right you unrighteous wretch! Return to your home town in shame.

The tradition had a proper process for reconciliation. The boy would be expected to go into his home town and wait at the town center for a few days. During this time the town people would have come and heaped shame upon the boy.

Don’t you realize what a wretch you are?!

Don’t you realize what you have done to your father?!

For shame! For shame you unrighteous one!

Then, after a period, the father would come and the boy would express his utter shame to his father and promise to perform reconciliation by working off what had been squandered. Surely, for such an offense the boy would have had to work his entire life to earn back even a portion of what he had squandered. Only after restitution by work, however, would this boy have truly earned the right to reconciliation. Reconciliation through restitution. Forgiveness and acceptance by works!

But, beloved, this is where the rage in the Pharisees would have begun to boil over. This is where the Gospel is so offensive to so many who see religious duty as a way to buy God’s affection.

‘BUT’, the text reads, ‘while the boy was far off, the father was moved with compassion.’

I used to wonder how parents could single out their childen in a large crowd by the sound of their cry. They all sounded the same. But now that I have four kids, I’ve come to recognize the walk of my children, their smell, the way they walk, their laughs, their cries of pain and sadness and fear – many details a parent who loves his children knows well.

The father had long been looking for his son and he saw a figure in the distance. ‘Yes, that’s the boy! That’s the walk of my son.’ Shoulders hunched over in grief. Gaunt. Weary. Worn out.

The son was heading for the town.

And the father RAN to him.

He ran!

This is not the 21^st century. Old men of Christ’s day did not run. It was undignified. It was shameful. In order to run in the long, flowing robes of that culture a man had to hike up his robe. The expression “gird up your loins” refers to the fact that men, in battle, had to hike up their robes and tuck them into their belt in order to run and move in battle. But, except in war, it was considered shameful to bear one’s legs so much so that Jewish tradition taught it was preferable for a priest to let his robe drag in the blood on the temple floor rather than lift the robe lest their legs be exposed.

But the father, in the most undignified manner, ran to his son.

Why the hurry? Was it simply a desire to hold him again.

He ran because the boy was approaching the town center. He was approaching the place of shame.

Oh yes, sin had occurred and shame was due but, beloved, the father ran to ensure that the shame would be his own. Shame would be borne by him and not the boy he loved with an everlasting love!

The father threw himself upon this boy that reeked of pig manure and kissed him.

Sinclair Ferguson once remarked about a longtime friend who had received great honor from the Crown of England for her ministries of mercy to the poor. She told everyone at this ceremony, however, that when it came to dealing with the poor, it was her husband who had the most amazing ability to deal with the incredible stench of feces and urine that the poor reek of. He could minister up close to such men without flinching. How, one wondered to him one day, was he able to do it? He answered: “It’s easy. I picture the filth of my own sin that Christ had to wade through to save me and all physical filth pales in comparison.”

The son found himself now in this loving embrace and the son spoke to his father what he had rehearsed: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But his words stopped.

What else had he planned to say?

He planned to ask to be made a slave in the household.

But he stopped.

I believe he stopped because the embrace of the father squeezed the very breath out of him. The second part about being made a slave was unacceptable. You see, beloved,

in the Kingdom of God, there are no slaves. There are no servants that earn affection from their father.

There are only sons!

‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet!’

A robe?

A ring?

Shoes for his feet?

Only sons wear these. This boy had squandered his inheritance. He had sinned away every right to be called a son in this house. The father, however, was granting him EVERYTHING based on NOTHING THAT THE SON DESERVED! The boy received every good thing and every privilege of sonship based on NOTHING THAT HE HAD DONE!

‘And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’

It’s not as if meat was easy to come by then and they didn’t have refrigerators to store leftovers. Killing a fatted calf was an extraordinary event, which meant a celebration for the entire community. It was a celebration not of the righteousness of a son earning a father’s love but the lavish love of a father who was granting sonship to a man saved alive!

And so the party ensued and the elder brother returned from the field, laboring into the evening. He wanted to know what was going on.

What?! That unrighteous scum bag has returned? My father is holding a party for him? He’s not only treating him like a son but he’s eating with him?

The elder son was so incensed that he refused to even go into his father.

A celebration was going on in the light while the “righteous” man, the elder brother, was standing outside gnashing his teeth at the redeemed son and the gracious father.

But the father came out to him pleading to come in to the light.

The son responded: ‘He might be your son but he’s not my brother. That scum is beneath me! HOW DARE YOU! Do you realize how much I’ve SLAVED for you all these years. Not once, in all that time, have you given ME so much as a goat so I can have a party with MY friends. Give me MY due for my labor. I’m not going in to celebrate with you and your house. I have MY friends and I want to earn the right for reward so I can celebrate with my own friends.’

And the story ended abruptly with a celebration going on in the light with the self-righteous elder brother in the darkness gnashing his teeth.

It’s been said that there are three kinds of people in this world:

The first kind are those that don’t care a thing about the things of God. The power of God is manifest all around them. Some even hear of the mighty works of God in Scripture to save me from their sin and they meet it with indifference. God is not magnificent. He is a bore.

The second variety are those who are religious slaves so they can put God in debt to them. I will perform acts of contrition. I will deny myself food and pleasure. I will strap a bomb onto my chest and yell “Allah Akbar!” to a glorious death. Quid pro quo. I do for God and He must do for me.

The grace of the father would be too much for the Pharisees and the story did have a conclusion. That elder brother, and all his Pharisee friends, took the Son of God, who is the father in this tale, and beat him and brought him to Pilate to have Him put to death. There is no room for the mercy of God among the elder brother’s friends. The offense of the Cross that all must bow before it to receive forgiveness and have their own shame placed upon the Son is too much to bear.

The third kind of person is he who recognizes he was once dead in sins and trespasses. But God found him and made him alive.

Beloved, open your eyes. Look around you. Do you see the filth of your sin?

God has appointed a day, calling it ‘Today’. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

The yoke of your sin is very great. Oh how you have sinned just this past week. Just today, in fact. How could anybody that belongs to the father sin like you have? Surely, you have told yourself, God could not accept this?!

Plod back to where you began and realize that you have no rights to enter the Father’s house.

But stop, for a moment, and look up.

Look up away from yourself. Look up!

What is that in the distance?

It’s the Son of God and He’s running. He’s flying to you.

Look to Him. See what He has done. He is taking your filthy clothes that reek of your sin and has worn them on the Cross. He died to take away your sins and satisfy the wrath of God that you deserve.

He embraces you and covers you with a clean robe. It is the robe of His perfect righteousness. He has risen from the dead with an indestructible life and lives that we live forever more in Him!

Full inheritance. Full sonship in Christ. God gives every blessing not for anything we have done and until you understand that amazing grace you have not rested in the arms of the Father’s embrace.

‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’

All heaven rejoices. Let those that love the Father because He has given them every inheritance crowd in. Today is the day of Salvation for all who hear the voice of the Father! Slay the fatted calf for tonight WE CELEBRATE!”

Tags Christ, death, gospel, life, love, sin, Southern Baptist

Gospels and Acts Scripture

Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-11)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date June 7, 2009
No Comments on Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath (Luke 6:1-11)

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Luke 6:1-11

On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. 2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?” 3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” 5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, f is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

As we continue our study through the Gospel of Luke, we come to two stories that center around a conflict with the Pharisees over the observance of the Sabbath. It is tempting, perhaps, to simply see the Pharisees being concerned with the Law while Christ is concerned with helping people but that would be to misunderstand the nature of this conflict.

The problem today, by and large, is not that most take a strict view of the Law but that they don’t even stop to consider the Law at all. The Sabbath, especially, has fallen into disfavor and there is collective amnesia that, somehow, God included the observance of the Sabbath in the Ten Words that He delivered upon Mount Sinai. What was God thinking, after all, that He would care that we would set one day out of seven for Him? What about my “Me Time”? I understand I shouldn’t kill a man but observe the Sabbath? Why are they even on the same list?

It is actually quite natural that the Pharisees would be concerned about the Sabbath. The fraternity of the Pharisees was originally founded for the purpose of seeking to take seriously the Law of God after the Babylonian captivity. In the Law of God, God had commanded that the Nation of Israel celebrate a Sabbath Year once every 7 years. Israel was in captivity for 70 years because the Nation had disregarded the command of God to give the land a rest one year in every seven for 490 years. And so God judged the Nation by taking them out of the land and giving the land rest for the 70 years they had neglected to celebrate.

Thus the Pharisees, after the captivity were like a child who had burned his hand on a hot stove. A hot stove is very useful but if you touch the burner it is quite painful. A child, properly disciplined, will return to the stove someday and use it properly. But one way around never getting burned is to never go near the stove again.

That’s the nature of the fleshly approach to Law keeping: set up an entire set of man-made rules that put a fence around the Law. One way to keep away from violating the Sabbath was to put a big fence around it and tell everybody to never go near the Law by keeping all the regulations. Keeping the regulations, then, replaces actually keeping the Law because, if the Law is all about not crossing a certain line, then drawing closer lines is even better. Eventually, the fences erected were the only things the Rabbis meditated upon. Pharisees became experts in the regulations. The rabbis drew up a catalogue of thirty-nine principal works, subsequently subdivided into six minor categories under each of these thirty-nine, all of which were forbidden on the Sabbath. On this list of regulations was a prohibition against picking heads of grain. That was considered to be “reaping”.

Christ was walking through the fields with His disciples on the Sabbath and the disciples were hungy. The Law permitted a hungry man to glean the edges of crops for food. It’s not as if they were eating a gourmet meal but they were famished and were rubbing the heads of the grain and eating raw grain.

Suddenly the Pharisees appeared. It’s almost like Swiper the Fox in Dora the Explorer at the ready to steal. Were they following Christ around simply so they could spy out liberty and judge that a line had been crossed?

They accused Jesus and His disciples of desecrating the Sabbath not because the Law had actually been broken but because their regulations had been broken. The disciples had ignored the fence the Rabbis had put around the Law. They were observing the Law but the Pharisees could only see their fence.

Christ first rebuked them with a question that would cut to the heart of any Pharisee: “Haven’t you read the Word of God?” You sage keepers of the Word, don’t you remember David, when he was fleeing from Saul for his life came to the Tabernacle with famished troops and received the showbread from the altar? The Law very strictly required that this bread was for the Levites alone and neither David nor his men were Levites.

According to the letter of the ceremonial Law, the High Priest had, in fact, violated the Law but Christ commended this decision. Why? Because a more important principle, a weightier matter, was at hand, and that was the sustaining of human life.

The Pharisees, in fact, were so focused upon the ceremonial precision of the Law that they missed the purpose of the Law altogether. We’ve already seen a remarkable episode earlier in the Gospel of Luke where Christ reached out and touched a leper. Every time I read that I shudder with amazement at what that signified under the Law. Lepers were unclean. Touching them made a person unclean. But Christ, the Clean One, touched a leper and made him clean. How long had it been since that leper felt a human touch because, ceremonially, the Law could do nothing but keep men away. It was the same thing for the paralytic healed by Christ – the paralytic was excluded from the Assembly for his plight but Christ restored him.

We all know the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Do you know why the two men passed by on the other side of the road when they saw a man that appeared to be dead? Because they were priests and they would have been defiled had they touched a dead body. The irony of that parable is that the Samaritan, scum of the Earth to a Jew, was the neighbor. He’s the only one who fulfilled the Law to love neighbor.

You see, Galatians 3 reveals an important truth about the Law of God as the Apostle Paul was railing against Judaizers who were corrupting the Gospel just as the Pharisees did here. The Covenant of God begins with God redeeming a People to Himself by the work of Christ. Blessing comes by faith in what God Promises to do. It was that way with Abraham and the Promise has always been God saying: “The Seed of Abraham will be your Righteousness. Believe!” Righteousness comes by faith. It always has because our own righteousness comes up short every time.

Why then the Law? Why create rules for the Sabbath? Can it be so that we prove to God we’re serious about His commands and then find acceptance? No, you are already accepted in Christ but now see the Law of God with new eyes. See in it the nature of the God you love and use it as a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path that you might learn about God and yourself and train yourselves in righteousness. He’s not your Judge, if you’re in Christ, but your Father.

We all understand rules for our children, do we not? We forbid certain things because they harm. We command certain things because they are good. The end of these things is that they grow to see the wisdom behind the rules and the letter of the rule is replaced by a walking in wisdom. Eventually, we don’t have to hold a hand as we cross the street because an adult is wise enough to enjoy the paved road without our help.

But the Pharisees are like adults who never learned the wisdom and all they know is the rules and don’t understand the blessing that the rules were designed to direct to.

The Sabbath was not created so that man would be a slave under its crushing requirements but was intended to bless man. Those of us redeemed by Christ get the tremendous privilege of an entire day devoted to the worship of God. We get to cast off the cares of the world and meditate upon the Word of God all the day and enjoy the fellowship of God and His people.

I understand that, to the flesh, the Sabbath seems like the most boring thing in the world when you have Costco and sleep and NFL football to replace it but are these things really the pinnacle of the enjoyment of a redeemed conscience? I realize that our flesh does not love to enjoy the Sabbath. It doesn’t love the things of God but the Law is intended to serve as a trainer of the conscience to direct us to the things of above and to cast aside the things that serve our flesh. We are foolish if we neglect the Law as a lamp unto our feet to guide us into how we might taste and see that the Lord is good.

Recently, I’ve been convicted of my own sinful sloth. I often don’t prepare myself to enjoy the Sabbath. I treasure my leisure and so I sometimes come to worship sleepy from staying up too late on Saturday night. I forget to buy milk the day before and so I’m tempted to deprive another man of the rest that God has given all men one day in seven. I don’t pray that I might come to the Word hungry and expectant, eager to be filled by the Words of Life.

I’m convicted because I am Christian. I have been created anew by the Gospel to delight in the things of the Lord. The Lord’s Day is my delight. What a privilege it is to be in His presence all the day long: a son in my Father’s house in communion with my fellow heirs.

As Christ continued with the reminder to the Pharisees, He told them something that should have stopped them dead in their tracks: “The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.” Who can be the Lord of the Sabbath but God alone for He, alone, hallowed it by resting from His creation on it. God did not need rest but invited man, on Adam’s first full day on the Earth, to rest with Him. Even as the Pharisees wondered that Christ forgave sins, we have another plain example to these hard-hearted men that the God of the Universe was the subject of their rebuke. The Sabbath is Christ’s and it is in Him that we have any rest, for we would only be in toil and bondage under sin. The Pharisees stole His Law, intended to bless men to enter into God’s rest, and they had twisted a blessing into a yoke of bondage.

As the Gospel continues, on another Sabbath, Christ was teaching in the Synagogue – worshipping with the people of God. The Holiness of God, clothed in human flesh was very near and blessing people with words of life and all the Pharisees had a front row seat. They were not there to be taught but only so they could catch Him violating their petty rules about healing on the Sabbath.

Christ knew their hearts and so He called out a poor man with a withered hand. The Pharisees looked right past a man in need. They could care less about his need. All they could think about is the regulation and that the Son of Man had the gall to violate their rules! Christ asked a simple question: Is is lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm?

Do you see the hypocrisy of the Pharisees? On the day of rest, on the day that God had invited His people to find rest in Christ, these men wanted to destroy the Son of God! Unfortunately, their regulations did nothing for their conscience. Where’s the rule that you can’t plot to kill the Son of God on the Sabbath? They were bent out of shape that Christ is going to do good on the Sabbath but their sin blinded them to the fact they were murdering Christ in their heart.

But Christ’s work would not be stopped by Sin. He looked directly into the face of Sin. He looked directly into the eyes of the hateful Pharisees, agents of the Devil who had twisted His Law to destroy and commanded to the man: Stretch out your hand! Where Pharisaical rules could only enslave, He freed! Where their rules could only leave a hand useless and dead, He brought forth life!

Beloved, God created the world in 6 days and all very good. On the 6^th day, He stooped down and, with special care, created man out of the dust of the Earth. With a tender love, He put His mouth up to the first man and breathed life into Him and, with that breath, His very image. As the man opened his eyes, the first thing He saw was the face of God. Oh, the vision that Adam saw! What a loving Father!

When God rested the next day, the first Sabbath, and invited Adam to rest with Him, do you suppose Adam complained that he got to spend the whole day in communion with His Father?

When Adam fell, and we with him, mankind ran away from God and tried covering himself with leaves to protect himself from the Holiness of God. Gone was face to face communion with the God of the Universe. But God, even then, was gracious to His foolish children and, in their presence, slayed an animal and covered them.

Man fell from communion with God and the enjoyment of rest. All was toil. Pagan societies like France after the Revolution tried to go to 10 week days and it crushed men under the weight of toil because we’ve been designed by our Creator to rest one day in seven. We foolishly think we know better and, in our folly, would work ourselves to the bone headlong into the hell, There, we would deservedly face the wrath of God for our disobedience.

No Sabbath.

No communion with God.

For eternity.

But God is rich in mercy. While we were still His enemies, while our flesh hated the sight of Him, while we groped in the darkness in the futility of our self-worship, God the Son took on our weak flesh. He was hated and despised. He walked alone in obedience that was foreign to us. He preached to men and served the Law of God with a holiness and compassion that our flesh hated and so, in men’s hatred, they put Him to death for it.

But, to our amazement, Christ was there willingly. He was our High Priest offering His sinless flesh as a propitiation for our filthy Sin. Dying on the eve of the Sabbath, our Lord remained in the grave throughout the Jewish Sabbath, working for our benefit and putting to death Sin and death. On the third day, the Lord’s Day, death could not hold Him! He rose from the grave in victory over death and we were raised in newness of life with Him!

Oh, how I love you Son of Man, Savior. You invite me into Your holy presence in sweet communion with the Body You have redeemed to Yourself. I cry out with the Psalmist:

1 How lovely is your dwelling place,

O Lord of hosts!

2 My soul longs, yes, faints

for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and flesh sing for joy

to the living God.

3 Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O Lord of hosts,

my King and my God.

4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house,

ever singing your praise!

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,

in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;

give ear, O God of Jacob!

9 Behold our shield, O God;

look on the face of your anointed!

10 For a day in your courts is better

than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;

the Lord bestows favor and honor.

No good thing does he withhold

from those who walk uprightly.

12 O Lord of hosts,

blessed is the one who trusts in you!

I am your son, in Christ, and thank you that I once again have communion with you. I come boldly, expectantly, into Your very presence through the veil of Christ’s flesh and delight in the rest I had today. Better still, I know that I shall, one day, see You face to face, and rest forever!

Tags Christ, David, death, healing, life, Lord, love

Gospels and Acts Scripture

The Temptation of Christ (Luke 4:1-13)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date January 11, 2009
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Luke 4:1-13

It’s been some time since Pastor Whitenack covered the baptism of Jesus and, before him, Sam taught on John’s baptism. I might normally try to bring you up to date right away but I’ll be getting back to both later on this evening in order to place Christ’s temptation into a proper context for us to understand it.

This passage is pretty well known by many Christians. I suppose it sticks in most minds the same way the Prodigal Son passage does as it is regularly read and taught in Christian pulpits. Yet, I believe, that today, most people don’t really appreciate what it is that is significant about Christ’s temptation. There are many details in Christ’s life, including miracles, that are not recorded. There are even some details only recorded in a single Gospel. Why is the temptation of Christ recorded in three Gospels? What is it that the reader is supposed to take away that makes him wise toward salvation? How you answer that question, I believe, will reveal whether or not you understand the Gospels.

In Luke 3:22, after Christ is baptized, He is filled with the Holy Spirit and the Father announces: “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”

Here in Chapter 4, we see the Devil is now going to tempt Jesus with this very declaration. Not only once but twice Satan introduces his temptations by saying: “If you are the Son of God.” All Satan knows how to do is ape Truth and mock it in the process.

Man fell into sin and death when the first Adam, as mankind’s representative, yielded to the temptation of the devil. Even so, as Jesus was about to begin His public ministry it is fitting that the last Adam, the representative of all who trust in Him, should resist the devil’s temptation and render perfect obedience to God.

I think it’s really important to point out that, though Christ was without sin, He was truly tempted. One of the earliest heresies of the Church that has plagued her history throughout is the error that Christ is either not human at all and just appears to be or that His divinity mixes with His humanity to make Him sort of a hybrid. I think some of us might not be so sophisticated to be rank heretics but we’re prone to thinking of Jesus as perhaps floating through life as if nothing could really hurt Him or tempt Him. We confess with the Scriptures, though, that Christ is fully human even as He is fully divine. He was tempted in every way but did not sin.

Now Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, promises us that we are not tempted beyond what we can bear under. That is to say, that God in His rich mercy is able to restrain the Evil One in how we are tempted in this life so that we are able to escape temptation. Even with the Lord’s restraint, because we are so weak, our temptation often seems unbearable, don’t they? The training wheels are on but we still fall.

If temptation is according to the strength of the person being tempted then who could possibly be tempted any more powerfully than Christ Himself? Do you doubt that Christ understood temptation? Beloved, it’s you that doesn’t know what the full weight of temptation is! It is we who have never felt the weight of temptation without restraint. We have a strong Savior who was able to bear under this temptation in a way that you and I will never appreciate. Indeed, we do have a merciful High Priest who is able to patiently bear with us weak sinners because He knows what it is to be tempted and He knows our frame!

Now, as we continue, it is the height of understatement that Christ was hungry at the end of 40 days of fasting and prayer in the wilderness. This is when the temptation begins.

The Devil approached Him with utter derision as he challenged Christ, if He’s the Son of God, to turn stones into bread.

You’re hungry, Jesus! Why not use some of that majestic power of yours? Dazzle me! You’ve got Holy Spirit power! God wants us to have our best life now! Turn stones into bread and amaze us all with your authority over the created order. After all, you were there at the beginning, were you not, and all things are created through you? Prove it!

Compare this temptation to the temptation of Adam. Adam had not gone without food for any length of time. Even if Adam had been hungry at the time of temptation he could simply walk to any other tree and eat as much as he needed. Finally, Adam was living in paradise when he was tempted while Christ was in the middle of a desert.

Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. Moses told this to the Israelites who, for forty years, had seen the power of God in the wilderness. Even when no bread was to be found, God had provided manna from heaven to care for His saints. Yet, with all that, the Israelites had complained and rebelled against God any time they were deprived of food and water for a short time. They lived by their bellies and distrusted God at the drop of a hat.

Christ responds to Satan by stating, in effect, “Tempter, you are wrong about man. In order to satisfy hunger and stay alive you think that bread is absolutely necessary. You are wrong you liar! I declare to you that it isn’t bread but the creative, lifegiving, and sustaining power of God that is the indispensable source of life and well-being!”

Failing in this temptation, Satan tempts Christ with the dominion of the world and its governments if He will do but one small thing: bow before him. Christ must worship the devil and he will give Him all that he has been given. Now, was Satan really the possessor of all of these? I don’t believe he was. Satan is the father of lies and it’s clear he’s either lying to Christ here or is lying to himself about his own dominion. After all, even during Christ’s humiliation on this earth, Satan was able to do nothing more than Christ allowed him to do. Demon expulsions and other events of the NT see Christ’s power breaks through and He is, indeed, able to overcome the strong man when and where He pleases.

How is this a temptation to Christ then? It is a temptation to obtain the crown without enduring the cross! This was able to form a great struggle within Him for we know that the Cross was the path for Christ to redeem His people. It would be the path of shame that would lead to glory for Christ and His own. It would be His obedience to death and then His raising from the dead that would perfect His work. He knew the agony He would have to suffer when the wrath of God would be poured out on Him and this is a foretaste of the struggle in Gethsemane.

Satan offered Christ the default religion of man: the way of glory. We would build ourselves up, convincing ourselves that our righteousness would please the Father apart from the Cross; for, to admit that Christ had to die on a Cross, is to admit our utter shame and disgusting sin that we bear. We are repulsed by the Cross because we are repulsed by the idea that our sin is so graphic, so hideous, so monstrous, that the Son of God would have to be smitten for us. But Christ endured the shame so that He might redeem those who look to the Cross as their only hope and He overcame this temptation for our sake.

Finally, Satan took Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple and, again mocking His status as the Son of God, challenged Jesus to throw Himself down to the ground. After all, Satan noted that the Scriptures promise in Psalm 91 that God will protect the righteous man in all his righteous ways.

“See what the Scriptures say,” reasoned Satan, “God promises that His angels will not only break your fall, they will do more. Very tenderly they will bear you up lest you, wearing only sandals, should hurt yourself by striking your foot against one of the sharp stones.”

Have you noticed Satan is actually providing a bit of truth here. He’s correctly quoted the Scriptures and is “proof-texting” the Scriptures.

But Satan can only ape Truth. He has no wisdom. He’s a fool. He has no spiritual discernment and so he mishandles Scripture like a clumsy, foolish teenager who just read some Richard Dawkins book. How often, beloved, have you seen Atheists collect verses in a haphazard manner in a facile attempt to demonstrate that God contradicts Himself? I believe this is a grave sin of infantile exegesis. It is not the path of wisdom. It is the way of heretics and unstable men. Every heretic in Church history has claimed that they’re simply teaching what the Scriptures teach and I would caution you to closely examine a man and not simply follow him because he can vainly quote a few Scriptures.

If you look at this temptation, basically what Satan is telling Christ to do is to experiment with God’s promises. He had to distrust God in order to do an experiment and, then, if it works out, God’s promise is true.

Christ responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, which calls to mind the rebellion of the Israelites in Exodus 17:1-7 at a place called Massah and Meribah where they put God on trial and rebelled against Moses because they were thirsty. They accused God before Moses of cruelly bringing out their families and livestock only to die in the desert and provocatively challenged God by saying: “Is Jehovah among us or not?!” The Israelites in the desert are pictured as unbelieving and rebellious throughout the Old Testament and, especially in Book of Hebrews, we are warned not to be distrustful and faithless as they.

Christ knows that Satan’s proposal has nothing to do with humbly trusting in the protecting care promised in Psalm 91 and so He answers that God is not to be tempted.

Life gives us plenty of examples of the kind of false confidence that is similar to what Satan urged on Jesus. People will pray to God for the blessings of health and then be gluttons with food or drink. A man will pray to God to save his soul but will neglect the very means of grace that God has given him: study of the Scripture, church attendance, the Sacraments, and living to the glory of God. Someone will plead with the Lord for the spiritual well-being of his children but will never take the time to pray with them, to catechize them, to discipline them, or to display a repentant spirit before them. A man was once admonished for going into a peep show and defended himself by saying: “I do not deny that I went in there but, all the while, I was constantly praying: “Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity!”

You shall not put the Lord thy God to the test!

And so, having passed these tests, Satan left Christ. Christ resisted the devil. Christ overcame the Strong man and the Strong man was overcome. Jesus used the Word as His weapon in all cases for in the Word is the truth. The Word is truth and the Word became flesh to overcome the darkness that hated the light.

Now, the thing that really concerns me about such a passage is what I said before: how you view this passage determines whether you understand the Gospel. Is Christ merely the ultimate example for Godly living for you? Did you strap on your What Would Jesus Do? bracelet as you were listening to this and vow that you would be “on fire” for God and overcome evil by trusting in God’s Word?

I remember listening to a Sermon on the Gospel once in horror as the Preacher proclaimed that he was going to get back to the basics of the Gospel and this was the Gospel he proclaimed: Jesus came to be an example to us about how to live for God.

Beloved, if you believe that Christ is merely your example for holiness, then I fear you do not know the Gospel at all. If Christ is just someone you aspire to be like then I fear you may be dead in your sins and trespasses. The real question for you in this passage is not “What would Jesus do?” but “What has Jesus done?!”

We need to back up for a moment into Luke Chapter 3 and hear the Prophet John, a prophet of the Old Covenant, as he sees the people coming out to the banks of the Jordan to be baptized.

Listen to him as he prophecies about you: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance!”

Oh how the righteous man will simply turn away and say: “I’m not a viper! I’m a good person. I devote myself to God! I’m sold out for God!”

But the man who knows the Law and its perfect demand hears these words and they lay bear his sin. The Law of God reveals God’s perfect requirements and awakens to sin and the curse of the Law for it. Such a man heard these words of John and beat his chest and said: “You’re right! I am a viper! I have no right to come to these waters on my own merit. I have no right to ask God yet again to forgive my sins. I am hopeless and I don’t know what else to do so I repent of my sin and plead the mercy of God. Cleanse my conscience from sin!”

I imagine the people were so overcome with grief that they didn’t even notice a man from Nazareth walk up. There was nothing in His appearance that would cause them to turn their heads. He was from a poor family in a despised region of Galilee. Pay attention to what this Man is doing because none of the others noticed that their salvation was coming in a Man of no reputation.

He walked up to John and John knew better. Jesus didn’t need to repent but He had to be baptized. Beloved, in His baptism, Christ identified Himself with all those men and women desperate for the burden of their sin to be taken away. He was of them in His baptism. He came to represent all those who came with nothing in their hands as they cried out to the Lord for salvation from their sin.

Water can represent cleansing but it also represents judgement. The New Testament says that Noah’s family was baptized in the ark and that Moses and the Israelites were baptized as they passed through the Red Sea on dry ground. The wrath of God poured out in a flood on God’s enemies but the baptized received a sprinkling and were cleansed.

These people didn’t realize it at the time but they were getting a little wet while the Savior was baptized to identify with them and take on their judgment. Even as God’s wrath was piled up in a heap as the sins of the people collected and offended a Holy God, Christ was baptized to say: “I will take this wrath! I will be the satisfaction. I will be the sacrifice.” Christ began His ministry with a baptism because He would be baptized with the full wrath of God on the Cross for His people. He was clean while His own wer sinful. His people became clean while He received the wrath for Sin that they deserved.

But, beloved, it doesn’t stop with His baptism. You should have been leaning forward in anticipation as you read of His lonely walk into the desert. We are at the waters edge. Are they waters of judgment or of cleansing? We look knowingly as Jesus walks alone into the desert and know we cannot follow Him into that temptation. Will my Savior withstand temptation for me? Will my Savior succeed?! O God He must, I have no other hope for righteousness!

He did obey! He is the righteous one!

Luke tells Theophilus that the purpose of this story was to provide certainty concerning the truths of the Gospel. Do you desire the certainty that God intends good for you in the Gospel? Are you weary and heavy laden by your sin? How can God love someone who has sinned like me?! You have no idea how wicked I am! Nobody can sin like me and be a Christian! Though I desire the good, I sin. Though I tell myself “That’s the last time I sin like that!”, I fail yet again. Who will deliver me from this body of death?!

A Savior, strong to save, walked alone into the desert because He knew we couldn’t follow. He walked into that desert alone and bore the weight of temptation because of a consuming love for His own. Beloved, believe the Gospel not because you have enough love for God to save yourself but because the Son of God had enough love for you to save you to the uttermost!

Tags Christ, death, life, Lord, salvation, sin

Epistles Scripture

The Living and Active Word (Hebrews 4:12-13)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date March 9, 2008
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Hebrews 4:6-13

6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your hearts.”

8For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

11Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We’re going to be focusing on verses 12-13 of Hebrews Chapter 4 this morning, but I wanted to provide context for the passage of Hebrews that this section falls within because context is extremely important when you handle the Word of God. I believe its importance will become more apparent to you as I continue but I simply want to continue to be faithful in how I teach the Word of God to you because many men are not faithful in its presentation any more.

God inspired specific thoughts and attitudes that rest within a “story” inside each Book of the Bible. We are not at liberty to pull words out of their place and create a message that we think might help people and baptize our advice by pulling God’s Words out of their intended meaning. I could very easily quote the Psalms in part that say: “…there is no God…” but that’s hardly the message of the Scriptures is it? In fact, the portion of Psalm 14 that I left out is that “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”

That passage about the fool and his disbelief in God is actually very appropriate for today’s passage. You see this kind of foolishness is not merely demonstrated in people that proclaim themselves to be atheists but, in many cases, it is reflected in the unbelief that is often displayed by people who claim to be religious; worse, yet, by people that claim to be Christian.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author warns Hebrew believers to not neglect the salvation that is found only in Jesus Christ. They are losing family, friends, and jobs because they have turned from Judaism to Christianity. There is a strong temptation to escape this persecution by simply returning to the religion of their youth – to return to being practicing Jews and turning their back on Christ.

The author labors to show that there is nothing to go back to because Christ was the aim of the Jewish religion all along. Even as we learned when studying Galatians, Abraham received a promise of inheritance by faith and even the Law was added to be a preparation for the people of God to receive their long awaited Messiah.

In very stern warnings in Hebrews Chapters 3 and Chapters 4, the author reminds everyone of the Israelites in the desert. He tells them that they heard the Gospel for 40 years and for 40 years they rebelled. At the beginning they rebelled, in the middle they rebelled, and at the very end they rebelled. So God swore by Himself that they would not enter the rest: the promised land of Canaan. This was a picture of what Christ would be – a rest for His people. The author, in the most frightening of terms, points out to the Hebrews that they are actually worse than the Israelites in the desert if they rebel now and forsake the Rock – God the Son who has been revealed in Christ Jesus. He is greater than the angels, than Moses, than Aaron for He is the purpose and the end of all of their work. They all pointed to Him. The Israelites in the desert then become a stark picture of unbelief to the Hebrew believers thinking about forsaking Christ for they would be worse than the Israelites in the desert and if they rebelled against the Son then they would be utterly lost for eternity – never to enter into the rest only found in the Son.

Verse 11: Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Notice the author uses the term us: Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

It’s not enough for you to be concerned about your salvation in the Church of Christ. Christianity is not about you and your personal relationship with Jesus. Of course you must believe upon and lay hold of Christ’s feet by faith but when you believe on Jesus it’s supposed to transform your heart and renew your mind. You’re engrafted into the family of God, the household of faith and you have brothers and sisters who are joint heirs in Christ. We strive together to enter into that rest. This is not some sort of thing where we are casually on a journey just asleep in the back seat as a few people drive the train for us to Happyville.

There are struggles, there are temptations, there is suffering, and there is need. We have brothers and sisters around us who are struggling with sin and we dare not say: “Well, we’re heading on, make sure you keep up.” If they fall behind, God help you if you don’t care in the least that they’re falling behind and you just leave the weak to be devoured by the wolves because you’re keeping up with the pack. Absolutely not! Christ calls Himself the good Shepherd because He won’t lose a single sheep. He’ll leave the 99 because He notices one has wandered off and He’ll leave the 99 to bring that last one back into the fold.

The fool says in his heart: “There is no God.”

Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe He is the Good Shepherd? Do you believe that He loves all of His sheep? Then why do we not care when there are weak sheep among us? Why don’t we have a concern for others among the sheepfold other than ourselves? Why doesn’t our concern reflect the concern of our great Shepherd?

Let us therefore strive. Let none of us be found to be unbelieving and may we all weep when we beg and plead and pray with someone who is falling behind. We do everything in our power to keep him in the fold and even get mauled by the wolves if we have to get in the way of the world who is trying to take one of our own.

But there’s sort of a question here about what we’re believing. What is it that we’re trusting? None of us have seen God so how do we know that this stuff is true. The simple answer is the Word of God. At least that’s the Biblical answer. These days, however, people have very un-Biblical notions about how they know God. In fact our ideas about God are very much affected not by Biblical ideas but Pagan ideas about God.

You see Romans 1 reveals that we are prone to idols. Throughout human history to the present day, the thing that is true of all idols is that they are dumb. They cannot speak. They don’t have mouths.

For this reason, all pagan religions have mystics, they have people in the know. They somehow tap into the sources of knowledge in the universe and information is beamed into their head. They enter into altered states, sometimes with drugs, and they give mystical prophecies of things that nobody else knows about.

But our God is not like the idols. Our God speaks. Our God knows. Our God creates. He creates by the Word of His power and light comes forward simply because He says: “Let there be light.”

How has He spoken though? Hebrews 1: “1Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things….” Christ is even referred to in John Chapter 1 as the Word made flesh. God speaks to us through His Word.

But to many people today, the Word of God seems so old, so ancient. It was inspired thousands of years ago and the people who last wrote down the Books of the Bible are long since dead. Men and women everywhere, and sadly many Christians, think that the Word isn’t useful for today. It’s not practical. The letters are dead on a page. In fact, many Pentecostals today seek constant new revelations because, like the pagans, they fall back into the idea that God is mute that He doesn’t speak so they go to their mystics – to people who enter into altered states and tap into the power of the universe. Flee from such people.

But this is what the Scriptures say of the Word: “12For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Far from being dead, far from lying dormant and being of no use for today, the Word of God is living, it is active. It pulses with life and power.

God’s Word cannot be taken lightly because if anyone doesn’t want to listen to it then that person faces no one less than God Himself. It’s not just a collection of ancient writings but it speaks to people, actively, powerfully today and always. The Bible demands a response because God does not tolerate those who ignore what He says. People who ignore this living and powerful Word do so at their own peril.

Stephen, in Acts 7:38 stated that Moses at Mount Sinai received “living oracles” and Peter in 1 Peter 1:23 states that we are born again through the Word of God that lives and abides forever. What we think of as dead letters on a page has the power to make men alive from their sins because they are the Words of the Everlasting God by whose Powerful Word the heavens and the earth were created.

But the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Just as God’s Word brought forth His creation, His Word recreates men who are dead in sins and transgressions (Eph 2:1-5). The Word is power but even as it brings life to us it is foolishness to the world. 1 Cor 1:18 states: “The message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

And because it is powerful and active, it has the effect that it is sharp and cutting and sees right through us: it is sharper than any two-edged sword – like the blade of a surgeon it uncovers the most delicate nerves not merely of the body but of the soul as well. In Rev 1:16, Christ is pictured as having a “sharp double-edged sword” coming out of his mouth.

The division between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, is all conveying the same idea that it uncovers the very thoughts and intentions of our heart. Human judges cannot see into the heart when they are rendering a judgment on criminals. They can only see the actions. God’s Word, however, judges and sees through the intentions of the heart. Everything is laid out by its cutting and discerning power.

Nothing remains untouched by the Word of God for it addresses every aspect of man’s life. All the recesses of body and soul face the sharp edge of God’s dividing sword. We might smile at our neighbor while we inwardly despise him but God’s Word uncovers them. God addresses man in the completeness of his existence and man is unable to escape the penetrating impact of God’s Word.

But the fool says in his heart: “There is no God.”

Hebrews 4:13: And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

God’s Word uncovers everything so, in the end, everything is laid bare before the almighty God who we owe perfect obedience to. It is impossible for man to hide sin in the dark corners of his heart. God knows. He sees everything; even darkness is as light to him (Psalm 139:12).

The past, the present, and the future are all before God because He is not bound by time or place but He dwells in eternity and is above His Creation. Do you suppose that if His eye is on the sparrow, and He knows the number of hairs on your head, that there is any hidden motive or thought that He does not know about?

The unbeliever seeks to hide from God but has nowhere to go (Jer 23:24). The secret sins of men are literally naked and open before God. Before the Fall, man lived with no shame but, immediately after His sin, he tried to run from God and cover himself with leaves. Man, in his fallen condition, is so foolish to think that leaves can protect him from the wrath of God for sin but leaves are not much protection from a strong wind much less the power of Almighty God.

And because all of our thoughts and deeds and sins are naked and open before God, all men will one day have to give account to their Creator. The books will be audited and all the bills, payments, and receipts will be checked. The consciences of men will literally be put on trial.

On that final day, unbelievers will call to the mountains and rocks in Rev 6:16: “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” Everyone will have to give account of himself.

Yes, the fool has said in his heart: “There is no God” because such a thought can bring no comfort to men apart from God’s grace. This Word simply lays bare the failings of men as God said to him: Obey. Man has failed to obey and so the Word is a frightening thing. It is much easier for the unbeliever to be the fool and say to Himself: “There is no God, this is not His Word, and I will not have to give account to it.”

But, you see, that same Word that lays bare and condemns became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word that condemns for sin, became flesh to bear the sins of all who would believe upon Him. The fool says in his heart that there is no God but the redeemed say in their heart that Christ has died for the sins of men on the Cross and risen from the dead for their eternal life.

Therefore, I urge you that a day has been appointed: Today. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. The Word has searched you out and knows you. It knows all your darkest secrets, hidden sins, and faults. It searches out all those things by which you might be condemned but the Word has also revealed Christ and Him crucified. Do not be the fool that denies the authority of the Word, that acts as if God is dumb, that acts as if God cannot see. Submit to the Word and its authority and hear the Good News announced by it for the salvation of your eternal soul.

Let us pray.

Tags Christ, faith, judgment, life, salvation, sin, word

Epistles Scripture

Bear Each Other’s Burdens (Galatians 6)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date February 17, 2008
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Galatians 6

1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5For each will have to bear his own load.

6 One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. 12 It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. 14But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

17From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

As Paul concludes his Epistle to the Galatians, I want to remind you of the reason for the Epistle one last time and summarize him that we might understand these closing passages. As I noted last time, many want to always jump to the law and the commands. By nature, we love to be told what to do. We want to be told what to do, that is, unless God is the Person telling us what to do. By nature, we like to ignore the perfect holiness of the Law and the need for Christ that is displayed in it and go to men to ask for their lists of do’s and don’ts. That is, of course, until we’re born from above.

In Galatia this had happened. Jewish converts to Christianity, who had begun by trusting in Christ, fell back into the death and curse of the Law by convincing themselves that we start by God saving us through faith and then finish the race by keeping God’s Holy commands so He will bless us. In this case, they told the Galatian believers, who were Gentiles, that they needed to become circumcised and begin performing the deeds of the Law and then God would accept them. Then not only will God accept them but they’ll be in full fellowship with the really holy in the Church: the Jews.

As I promised when we began this series, Paul jumps into the fray ready for battle. The eternal life of his sheep is on the line and these wolves will not have them. He comes in with the sword of the word and devastates the appeal of the Judaizers. He puts to death any notion that a person can find any acceptance before a perfectly Holy God by the keeping of the Law. He demonstrates over and over again that the Law can only bring a curse to men if we are to be judged by our keeping of it. We are surely condemned to hell if we are measured against the Law.

But God, who is rich in mercy, sent His son to live under the demands of the Law. He kept it perfectly and righteously and then, He who knew no sin, became Sin for us. He who did not deserve the curse of God became a Curse for us by hanging on a tree. God turned the hand of His wrath that was ready to strike us and judge us for our sin and He struck and judged the Son on the Cross for our sins.

We are now freed from the condemnation of the Law if we are in Christ. If you trust in the righteousness of Christ then your sin is paid for and the curse is taken away. In its place is the blessing of obedience that Christ accomplished for you. Even more amazing, more unbelievable is the news that we are God’s adopted children. What manner of love is this that we should be called sons of God?

And so, Christian, Paul has reminded you over and over and over again what Christ accomplished on the Cross for you. Stand firm in the freedom that you were set free for. Do not return again to a yoke of slavery. Do not be deceived by those that tell you that God will not accept you or bless you until you prove to him that you are worthy to be blessed. God sent His Son to die for you because you’ll never be worthy on your own. When you start to understand that God set you on your feet to believe in Him when you had nothing to offer Him then you’ll stop looking within and worrying about whether or not you are measuring up. The answer is that you’ll never measure up to what God has done for you in saving you and making you His child. Stop looking within and always look to Christ.

And then, as Paul notes, something glorious occurs. Something changes about the Law. Hebrews 12 expresses this thought beautifully beginning at verse 18: 18For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” 21Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

You see in Exodus, as the people came to Mount Sinai, the presence of the Lord descended upon the top of the mountain. What the people saw was terrifying: smoke, fire, judgment, and certain death if one so much as touched the mountain. They saw Moses walk up into it and thought he had surely died when he didn’t return after 40 days.

They were terrified of the Law – more specifically, they were terrified of God’s Holy character and that is what the Law represents. It judges, it divides, it sees right through sinful men and convicts of sin. It is meant to drive us to Christ.

But sinful men want nothing of this fear and so they protect themselves by ignoring the Law and changing it into something they can do. Gone is the fear of the Law and gone is the character of a Holy God in it. Now it is “taste not, touch not”. Now is it as simple as “…those who drink alcohol are going to hell….” Now it is as achievable as “…don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t chew, or date women who do.” This is why Paul believed he was blameless before the Law before he had his eyes opened to who God really is. That’s because Paul was a Pharisee and the Pharisees had cheapened the Law: it was no longer the perfect righteousness of God but a list of 600+ regulations achievable by men and they arrogantly convinced themselves they were keeping the Law just like every other religion that thinks they can approach God apart from Christ.

The man of the flesh reduces God’s perfection to a list of do’s and don’ts because he can’t stand the idea that really what all those do’s and don’ts are for in the Law is to point a man to the perfect holiness of God. This is why Jesus in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, spends so much time criticizing these low views of the Law and makes the Law holy and perfect and impossible again. A person’s view of the Sermon on the Mount says a lot about what they think the Gospel is. If you think that Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, was giving you a list of do’s and don’ts that you can be saved by then you missed the Gospel because what He does in that Sermon is destroy any notion of keeping the Law which is summed up in love God and love neighbor perfectly or you are going to be separated as a goat and cast aside by Him in the final judgment.

But, you see, again it does not end there with our condemnation by the Sermon on the Mount. As we are confronted by the news of our sin it causes us to look to the Cross of Christ for salvation. Something beautiful happens. We are transported from the fear and trembling of Sinai to the heavenly Jerusalem where acceptance is found because Christ has become our righteousness.

The really mind boggling thing here is that the change that really occurs with the Gospel is us. You see, both at Sinai and at the heavenly Jerusalem is the presence of the same perfect and Holy God who never changes. But the reason why we fear the Holy God at Mount Sinai but rejoice at the heavenly Jerusalem is because we are changed by God in order to no longer be afraid. Where God once stood as a Judge at Sinai because we could not keep the Law in the sinful passions of our flesh, He now stands as our Savior and great Reward in the heavenly Jerusalem.

This is why it’s called the new birth. This is why we’re said to be given eyes to see and ears to hear. This is why we’re said to be given new hearts where we had hearts of stone. We have a completely different view of reality now.

And because we have a new heart and new mind, the Law is no longer a minimum set of standards that we think that we can perform to be saved. Instead, we remember that Christ has saved us because He performed it and, out of joy, we turn back to the Law, where we see God’s Holy character, and we begin to delight in it. We meditate on it, we get inside of it, and it is used by us to reveal the remaining sin within us that we might die to sin and live to Christ.

But that Law then is no longer a list of do’s and don’ts for us. Holy living is not expressed in asking any more “What is the list of things I can’t do and what are the things I must do…” any more. Our motivation toward pleasing God isn’t trying to figure out what our minimum is or folding our arms at our Father and saying: “I’m not going to do anything for you until you prove to me that your Word tells me I have to do that.” If that is your attitude then you have not been born again.

Instead, the new birth is expressed in our attitude toward God to say: “I wish to pursue the things that please you all the days of my life because I have been adopted into your family to be made holy alongside my brothers and sisters in the Church.”

And so Paul states in Galatians 6, beginning in verse 1: “ 1Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5For each will have to bear his own load.”

This really reveals whether or not we understand what God has redeemed us for. You see, it starts out by reminding you and me that we were not redeemed to sit around gazing at our belly button all day long. Many of us approach Church as if it is somewhat useful but that real spirituality is found in personal time and us working on building ourselves up. Yeah, we’ll be at Church if there isn’t something more pressing. “If I’m having a bad Sunday,” some reckon, “I’ll just spend quiet time with God because I need to be strengthened and I’ll get more out of quiet time alone than I will with the Church in corporate worship.”

But the Church isn’t all about me. We have been united to Christ to be in the Church to build each other up. Real growth is found especially in the hearing of the Word as we worship together corporately and enter the presence of God. We are supposed to care not merely about how we’re growing individually but about those around us and especially those who are struggling. When we see someone losing sight of the Gospel or forsaking the assembly of Saints and the Word then we should be gently admonishing them to stay near where God’s people meet and where He feeds His flock.

But be careful here, Paul warns. Some of us are very pretentious and assume we are more spiritual than we really are. We believe ourselves immune to the temptation that our brother or sister is in and so we rush in foolishly and can even be entangled in the same sin. We are supposed to enlist other’s aid and make sure we’re all looking out for each other.

I wish I could say that this Church is a model of this but I know it is not. I’ve often found out about many sad stories and broken hearts not because brethren brought a concern to the Church as a family would but because it was being passed around by sinful gossip. Many unfortunately think: “That’s none of their business how I’m doing. I can handle it myself.”

I’m not angry at this. It makes me sad. It breaks my heart. It makes me weep that we have so far to grow in the Gospel before we can begin to expose ourselves to one another because that’s the kind of risk we’re supposed to be willing to take for one another.

And because this is risky stuff to expose our lives, Paul essentially tells us all: “Don’t you dare for one second become proud!” Don’t think for a moment that just because a brother and sister has stopped coming to Church or is discouraged that you are better than they. Don’t think you stand in any place before God where He looks at you and says: “What a good person you are”. Remember that Pharisee whose only prayer was: “Thank you I’m not like that guy over there….” Don’t you dare ever think you stand and are accepted by God because you are well behaved. As long as we keep in front of our eyes that we are no better or no worse than our other brothers and sisters under the Law and that we’re all saved by Christ and will have to give account to one Judge and not to each other, then we’re set free from the burden of putting on masks. We’re free from having to lie to each other with smiles when our week has been horrible and people ask “…are you OK…” and we tell them we’re fine because we think Church is where only smiles belong. Bear each other’s burdens because our hearts should be transformed by Christ to do so. Rejoice with those who rejoice for sure but take the time to weep with those who weep as well.

So we must pursue righteousness and good for one another because that’s the nature of children that are in the one family of God. Paul continues in verse 9: “ 9And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Don’t grow weary of your brothers and sisters. Don’t grow weary of pursuing the Cross of Christ and His righteousness. Yes, often sowing back into our flesh is easier. It’s the way of the world and those around us. But we have to be diligent to live lives as if the Gospel has had some sort of effect upon us. We have to live lives that reflect our acceptance and salvation by our Savior. Do not grow weary of serving those in the household of faith for God will supply all the strength you need for the task.

Paul concludes this glorious Epistle with these thoughts: “ 12 It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. 14But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

17From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. ”

I just want to urge you personally, one last time, not to think for a minute that you are immune from the temptation to go back into dead works. The Christian Church is surrounded on every side by people who call themselves Christian teachers who would put you into the same slavery that the Judaizers were. Get the message of the true Gospel into your bloodstream. Learn to know what it is. Never be allured by the temptation to think that your works add the least bit to your acceptance before God. The only thing that counts is that God sent His Son to become a Curse for everyone who believes. It begins and ends with faith in His work and that begins in you by the new creation that God has wrought in your lives by the preaching of the Word.

You’ll hear it in altar calls that tell you to consider whether or not you’re really dedicating your life as you ought, you’ll hear it from Pentecostals that will tell you that you’re not really blessed until you’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you’ll hear it in people that tell you that you must add a purpose-driven life to it, and you’re going to hear some new twist a year or two from now – yet another version of the Law dressed up to seem like innocent advice on how to live better lives so God will accept you.

But the story is as old as Scripture: you can’t add to the Gospel. It’s all Christ. It’s all His work and we contribute nothing to His work to save us. Even our being made holy by Him is sealed and assured by His finished work. Stand in it and don’t be enslaved to other principles.

And so, with Paul, it is my heart’s desire that you all know and never forget the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you have never experienced peace with God because you’ve never really heard the Gospel then believe upon Christ and stop trusting in yourselves. But, if you have heard it and believed it, then may His grace continue to overflow into your hearts so that you trust in Him, find your joy in Him, and find your strength in Him both now and forevermore. Amen.

Let us pray.

Tags Christ, circumcision, faith, Galatians, Israel, Lord Jesus Christ, love, word

Epistles Scripture

Free to Obey (Galatians 5)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date February 10, 2008
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Galatians 5

1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

2Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. 11But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!

13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

As we come to the fifth chapter of the book of Galatians, Paul is concluding a defense of the Gospel by faith alone in Jesus Christ. He has poured his heart into this letter to the Churches of Galatia because he is firmly convinced that Christ’s death either purchased salvation for those who have faith or Christ died in vain. The Judaizers are teaching a false Gospel.

If someone were to look in and not understand the Gospel then it would seem that Paul is awfully upset over what seems to be a very small addition to the Gospel. It’s not as if the Judaizers were telling men and women to abandon Christ. In fact, they were telling them that they were the believers who were most serious about following the Christ because they were demonstrating their seriousness by the keeping of the Law and that no man could be saved unless he performed the works that God had laid out in the very law that He gave on stone tablets to Moses.

I know it seems like I’ve been a broken record lately, covering ground and then walking over the same ground again but I have simply been teaching you the Book of Galatians as Paul presented it. Why did he keep repeating himself? Get to the point Paul. Our attitude about things reveals sometimes that we don’t know the deceitfulness of our own hearts. We are too proud to think that we stand and that what happened to the Galatians can’t happen to us. We need to read and re-read and re-read what the Gospel is because the man of flesh that still abides in us, that we should be putting to death, has this strange longing to go back into the Law. In the Law are the basic principles of the world. I can save myself. We don’t want to admit that we’re thinking it but it is a constant pull of our flesh in that direction.

But when the Gospel gets into our bloodstream we can’t get enough of it so I hope some of you have not grown weary of hearing the things that God has done for you in Christ.

You see, what Paul is really telling us is sort of summed up in verse 1 of Chapter 5: 1For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

It’s sort of odd to state that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. It’s sort of like saying: “You’ve been set free to be free.”

Well, yeah. That’s what being free means. If I’m set free then I’m free. Duh.

But the dumb one here is not Paul. The foolish one is not Paul for stating the obvious. The foolish people are the Galatians. It’s all of us who have to be reminded to stand firm in the Gospel. We have not been set free so that we can go back to some elementary principles where we become enslaved again to the notion that we can do things that will earn salvation from God. Our eyes need to remain fixed on Christ as the ground of our salvation. The forces of the world, the philosophies of men, will pull our attention away if we let it but we need to fix our eyes on Him.

Paul asks in verse 7: 7 You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? The idea here is that we’re in the middle of a race. We’re running straight. We have our eyes on the prize and some other guy comes and cuts in on us. He breaks our stride and we lose our focus. Worse, in some cases, we somehow completely forget where the finish line is because somebody cut in on us. Seems crazy but that’s us.

Paul has completely destroyed any notion that man can contribute, even in the least bit, to his salvation. Christ has either become a Curse for us and redeemed us from the threatening and judgment of the Law or the curse still rests upon us if we’re trusting in ourselves. Everything we add to Christ and His sufficiency is worthless. Worse than that, if we aren’t trusting in Christ and Him alone then adding even the least amount of leaven of works, spoils the whole lump and it is another Gospel. It’s not Christ and circumcision, it’s not Christ and a second blessing, it’s not Christ and re-dedicating our lives to Jesus. It’s all Christ – and the benefits of His death and resurrection are laid hold of by faith. Our works add nothing to the perfection of His work.

Paul concludes this section in verse 12: 12I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!

Paul is basically saying that, if you’re going to add a little bit to the Gospel and destroy it then you might as well be serious about it. Why just remove the foreskin of the flesh? If you’re going to destroy the Gospel by going back to Moses then be serious like the pagan priests and castrate yourself. Don’t just remove the tip. Go all the way!

Is that shocking enough for you? Does it make the point? I am quite certain that if Paul was preaching today then there would be people telling him that he needed to learn how to be nice. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar Paul. Telling your opponents to castrate themselves is not nice. Telling people that they’re going to hell if they listen to them is mean. Be nice, be tolerant.

It might shock you but, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul uses this language and other expressions that would be like a preacher using a cuss word in the pulpit. He just sort of said one if I said out loud, in a crude way, what Paul just said about his opponents. Telling a man that he might as well castrate himself hits below the belt.

Beloved, this Gospel thing is serious business. I know that this world is not accustomed to taking things seriously like this. I remember a couple of years ago some people who said that the most important thing is Jesus and that arguing about whether or not people were teaching a true Gospel takes the focus off of Jesus. Remember, though, when you hear people saying this that the Judaizers talked about Jesus. They said they were serious about Jesus. But not everybody who claims Christ is of Him. Not every man who claims to teach the Gospel is teaching the true Gospel. There are Churches on this island that teach a false Gospel. Be on your guard and don’t think, for a moment, that this stuff is something you can take for granted. You’ve been set free for freedom. Don’t ever let yourself be enslaved to another Gospel. Get the correct Gospel inside of you. Let it be your meat and drink. Let it pulse through your bloodstream so you can see when men are corrupting the Gospel and you can tell them that you’ve been set free from such principles.

The end of Chapter 5 beginning with verse 13 now transitions to what the response to the Gospel is in our lives. It points to the fruit that the Gospel produces.

Before we get started on this, I want you to notice something very obvious. Paul just spent four and a half Chapters talking about how God saves us in the Gospel and then spends a mere one and a half talking about how we are to live in light of it. Ask yourself this: “Is this the amount of time I’m usually taught about the Gospel?” In other words, how many men today spend a majority of their time talking about the Gospel or are you usually being told, over and over and over again what it is that you must do if you want to be blessed.

Don’t get me wrong: Paul is going to be teaching us about how Christians ought to behave but he does so first by establishing us in the Gospel. The problem today is that men simply receive sermons on the list of do’s and don’ts. They receive Law. Some of you were probably itching for me to just “get on with it” and move off this “boring” stuff about what God has done for us in the Gospel. I sure hope not because you will never, ever understand the motivation for obedience if you have not first heard and believed the Gospel.

If the Gospel is boring news for you and what excites you are “practical” matters then Christianity is not the religion for you. Christianity is, first, last, and foremost about the Gospel – both how it saves men from sin and how that salvation transforms men to live in newness of life. If the Gospel never transforms you then you cannot live a transformed life. Belief in the Gospel comes before any activity. The Prodigal Son had to be accepted into his Father’s house as a son first and then he was able to live as a son does who loves his Father.

Paul states in verse 13: 13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

I read an interesting observation the other day and it’s this: Christianity is like a narrow bridge that crosses two dangerous rivers that converge. On the one side of the bridge is legalism. Men who fall into legalism leave the Gospel and deceive themselves, as the Judaizers did, that they can earn salvation from God’s hand by being serious about His law. They deceive themselves about how serious the law is and also about how righteous they are.

The other river is the river of license. Men who fall off the truth fall often in the opposite direction in thinking that it doesn’t matter what we do. As long as we sign a decision card and say we believe in Jesus then nothing we do matters. Such men have no concern at all for the things of God and see Christ as some sort of fire insurance.

But the freedom that the Gospel provides is freedom to obey. Again, the fleshly ideas of the man who wants a license to sin asks: “What kind of freedom is that? Real freedom is the ability to do anything I want.”

But that’s not what Gospel freedom is. Gospel freedom is freedom from the curse of sin and death. It’s freedom from the wrath of God. We are made alive for a purpose. We are made alive that we might live unto Christ.

Make no mistake yet again. Don’t fall off the bridge back into legalism and think I just gave you a “save yourself by obeying” program. Remember, first, that you are made alive in Christ out of sheer grace. You cling to His feet in faith. As you feel the touch of a Savior where the Judge once stood, and as you hear the loving words of a Father where slavery once reigned, your heart is transformed to desire the things that please your heavenly Father. Your life, your affections, your wants, and your desires ought to be fixed on pleasing God. You are not pleasing God in order to be accepted by Him. NO. That’s the Law. You strive to please God only after you have been accepted by Him. That’s the Gospel: God’s acceptance comes first and then our gratitude and lives of love come second.

This is why Paul states: 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Do you see what changed? The law earlier was said to bring a curse to us because its perfect righteousness condemned us. After we place our trust in Christ we die to the Law and are raised in newness of life. We die on the one side of the Law that condemns us and rise again with Christ on the other side of the law where we see the things that please our heavenly Father. The law, in our immaturity, could only be viewed as “Thou shall or thou shall not” but the law in our maturity, in our newness of life, is “I love the things that my heavenly Father delights in.”

I love working with computers. It’s my hobby. I can sit for hours at a computer screen. But that’s work for some people. It’s slavery to them. It’s law to them. The Ten Commandments are the words of a slavemaster to those in the flesh but to those of us who have been born again, we don’t just stop at not killing men but we uphold and love life. We don’t stop at not coveting a man’s property, we rejoice in what God has blessed our neighbor with. We don’t stop at not lying or gossiping about men but we go out of our way to uphold our neighbor’s good name.

Verse 15: 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Paul is describing what is happening in the Galatian Church. Isn’t it interesting that a Church that is trying to be serious about the Law is marked by people caring only about themselves. It is marked by people gossiping, talking behind people’s backs, taking sides, and literally trying to destroy one another? When you abandon the Gospel for “moral reform” according to good deeds you always get selfishness and destruction because you’re in the way of the flesh and not in the way of the Spirit.

Paul states: 16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

You have not been redeemed to live according to the flesh. You have been redeemed to put to death those things. This is one of the reasons Paul commands us to stand fast in our freedom because moral programs will provide no power to overcome the immorality, idolatry, backbiting, jealousy, division, and other fruits that flow from our sinful human hearts. Religions of self-improvement put a band-aid over the solution by the appearance of righteousness but the inside are dead man’s bones and the stench of the rotten corpse inside the pretty exterior is smelled by all.

Remember, our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are all fruits of the Spirit that God has given us. We don’t make the fruit. He does. It begins with the Gospel that transforms our lives and, as we abide in Christ and His work, the fruit flourishes.

And so, Christian, what fruit are you bearing in your life? Is your life marked by deeds of the flesh? Do you care about the things of God? Does the idea of pleasing and worshipping God bring you delight or do you desire other things first?

Yes, I know you and I are falling short but please, after all this, don’t turn this into a program of “…maybe if I start to obey the law then God will bless me….”

No. Stand firm. The work on the Cross is completed. Believe the Gospel and stand free from the curse of sin and death. Be converted by the Gospel that you might desire the things of God so that His law becomes sweet to you because it reflects the character of the One who accepts you and adopts you into His kingdom.

Let us pray.

Tags Christ, Christ Jesus, free, Galatians, liberty, love, works

Epistles Scripture

Sons of the Free Woman (Galatians 4)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date February 2, 2008
No Comments on Sons of the Free Woman (Galatians 4)

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Galatians 4

1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. 16Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;

break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!

For the children of the desolate one will be more

than those of the one who has a husband.”

28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

As he continues in the letter to the Churches of Galatia, Paul is defending the purity of the Gospel against Judaizing infiltrators who have convinced many Gentile believers that it is not enough to lay hold of the Cross of Christ and His perfect righteousness but that the deeds of the Law must be added to Christ’s work in order to be found acceptable before God.

He reminded them in Chapter 3 that they began in the Spirit as the Gospel was announced to their hearts and it is foolish of them to think that they will now be perfected in the flesh. He demonstrated to them that the Law announces a curse to all who do not obey it perfectly and that Christ came to become a Curse for us by hanging on a tree for all who have faith. He concluded by reminding that Abraham himself believed the Gospel beforehand and that all of Abraham’s true children and true heirs are those that have faith just like Abraham did.

Paul continues in Galatians 4 by reminding of a human analogy that we all understand. Children, while in a household, are much like slaves. They are under the guardianship and direction of the household and have to obey rules. While they are yet children, they are not in a position to inherit the estate of their parents until their time of maturity comes. This is to remind them of what Paul said the purpose of the Law was in Galatians 3. He builds upon that point in verse 3: 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

We all understand that slavery is not a good thing but what many men and women don’t want to acknowledge is that they are enslaved to anything. Especially modern men take pride in the fact that they are their own person and make their own decisions. Especially the religious, those who are convinced they are living lives worthy of God’s favor, recoil at the idea that they are enslaved to any principle. The Pharisees were ready to stone Jesus because He implied they were enslaved. They pointed out that their father was Abraham. Christ rebuked them in John 8 beginning in verse 39: 39They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

Ephesians 2 states the same truth about man’s bondage to sin: “1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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 in the sons of disobedience— 3among 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.”

Paul points out to the Galatians that, just like the Pharisees, they were in bondage to these “basic principles” and would certainly have perished if God had not taking the initiative in Christ. Even though both Jew and Gentile were zealous, they were zealous for false righteousness for they pursued it in the strength of their flesh, which is precisely what the principles of this world want to keep us in bondage to.

I have to say that probably the most beautiful words in the Scripture are when Paul finishes pointing out our predicament of condemnation before the throne of God’s judgment but then says the word “but”. We read in verse 4: 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

But God…But God. Such a beautiful conjunction the word “but” is when it is attached to what God has done. God interferes with our plan to destroy ourselves. Do you see how it is God’s initiating love? We were lost and enslaved but God sent His Son to be born under the Law, to sacrifice for us, to bear the curse that we deserved, to be perfect righteousness for us by fulfilling the righteousness of the law that we could not perform. What is more remarkable is that we receive adoption as sons. Not merely that God’s wrath is put away by Christ but that, through His work, we place our faith in Him and He gives us the right to be called Sons of God.

Furthermore, Paul adds this: “ 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

Romans 8 expresses this same idea but the setting of Romans 8 unpacks how profound it is that God sends His Spirit into us with this cry. It is noteworthy that Paul here returns to his native language of Aramaic to literally groan with utter amazement at the ability to call God Father. The Apostle John is simply beside himself in 1 John 5 when he asks: “…what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God?”

It really saddens me that this love expressed by God’s decision to adopt us is often greeted with a yawn by many people today when it should be a source of profound joy and adoration. The reason we don’t marvel at it is that modern theology in the 20 th Century taught men, women, boys, and girls that we’re all God’s children. We consider it our divine right because from the time we were in grade school the world has been preaching the message that everybody is a child of God.

But we just read Scriptures where Christ called some of God’s own chosen people, the Jews, sons of the devil and Paul reminded us that we all once walked according to the principles of this world.

Thus, we are incredibly privileged to receive the right by God to call Him Father. The marvel of this is that we don’t deserve it but that, in Christ Jesus, it has been purchased for all who place their faith in Him.

But it is also incredibly important that we understand why the Spirit cries out with our Spirit that we are sons. We need to understand why it is that our heart must redound with the Gospel and cry out “Abba! Father!” in the midst of this lost and dying world.

You see the reason why we are attracted to performance according to the deeds of the flesh is that, even though we begin in the Gospel very simply, we often become guilt-ridden and feel accused by the enemy for our failings in the flesh after we first believed. After all, did God really save a wretch like me? How can that be when sin is still abiding in me? I do the things I don’t want to do and the things I want to do I don’t do. Who will deliver me from this body of death?!

Christ Jesus. That’s who. Just as at the beginning when we believed and were, by nature, enemies of God, the Cross is ever before us and will ever be the only ground on which we can stand before a Holy God. When we look within to give us assurance of our salvation on the basis of the perfection of our obedience to the Law we will always come up short if we’re honest with ourselves. But when we look to the Cross with tears in our eyes and cry out to God “Who will deliver me from this body of death?! God, I am so unworthy of the grace you’ve shown me! I believe Lord, help my unbelief!” Suddenly, the most beautiful thing happens. Suddenly the most unexpected thing happens. His Spirit comes into our hearts and consolation and strength come to us and we cry out “Abba! Father! Yes Father you have redeemed me to be your son and you don’t cast out those you have placed your favor upon.

I must remind you again of the beauty of the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 because it is very appropriate here and illustrates the picture of our redemption beautifully. Every time I recount this story to myself I am overwhelmed by the profound love that we should be called sons of God.

The younger of two sons walks up to his father one day and asks for his share of the estate. In the economy of the ancient Near East, a family would inherit the sweat and toil of generations and centuries of labor as father passed down property to son and each built a bit more on it. Inheritance was so important to the Jew and Jesus uses this illustration to get their attention. The shocking part of the tale is that this young man, in asking for his inheritance now is telling his father that he wishes him dead!

The father, amazingly, divides his estate early and gives centuries of labor and puts it in the hand of this ungrateful young man. You know the story. The boy squanders this money in a short time by partying with drunkards and prostitutes. He squanders his whole inheritance, centuries of the ancestors’ work, in just a few short weeks. He’s left destitute and so poor that he can only get a job feeding pigs, so hungry that he envies the pigs for the slop they eat. Indeed, the boy is walking according to the principles of the world.

But then he comes to his senses and realizes that his father’s slaves are treated really well. He decides that he had better go home and repent to his father. He understands he doesn’t deserve to be a son anymore so he’ll just ask to be a slave in the house. This was the way of the Jews at the time. The son would be expected to earn back everything he had squandered. It was appropriate to the mind of the listening Pharisees that the young man prove his seriousness by working off his reproach for the rest of his life.

Further, when he returned, he would be expected to wait for days at the edge of town so the townspeople could heap contempt on the boy for dishonoring his father. This was the manner of men when an offense was given in families of the Near East where honor is everything.

But then the most unexpected and embarrassing thing happens. The most graphic and disturbing thing happens in the minds of religious men. The father has long since been looking for the boy and sees the walk of his ragged boy from afar off. Moved by compassion, the father does the most undignified thing you could do in that culture, he RUNS to the boy. He tackles him. He begins to bathe him in his tears of joy and kisses his neck.

But the boy is still convinced that he must complete his plan. He is going to repent to the father and then ask his father if he can be a slave. So he begins: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

But the plan ends there. He can’t even finish the thought. He’s about to ask to be made a slave in the Father’s house but the Father squeezes the breath out of the boy and shouts “Bring my best robe! Bring the ring! Bring sandals for his feet! This is MY SON who was dead and is now alive!”

You see the son had squandered his inheritance and brought nothing to his father worthy of acceptance. His plan to please his father with slavery, with showing his father that he was serious about obedience so he could earn acceptance was not the way of salvation. You see, beloved, in God’s Kingdom, there are no slaves, there are only sons!

Can you imagine the son’s reaction to all of this? What? Grace?! What manner of love is this that I should be called your son?! “Abba! Father!” That is what John marveled at. That is what Paul calls the Galatians to remember. He wants believers to remember that they have received the inheritance of sonship from God by earning nothing from His hand. This is what impels a believer to rejoice and then to redound back with love to his Savior for all the wonderful things He has done.

And so Paul asks with renewed wonder in Galatians 4:9 as he asks them: “ 9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” Do you see why Paul keeps expressing amazement that men would forget the life and the inheritance they have in Christ by wanting to go back to the principles that enslaved them? This is what righteousness by the deeds of the law represents – an abandonment of the inheritance given freely in the Gospel.

Paul concludes Galatians 4 with the most insulting thing of all for the Judaizers. He reminds everyone that Abraham had two sons and not one. One was born by natural means. Abraham took Sarah’s maid, Hagar, at her bidding to take matters into his own hands and produce offspring by the strength of the flesh. His name was Ishmael. But God wanted the Promised Seed to come by His power. So He caused a 100 year old man and 99 year old woman to be raised from death into life and gave Sarah the ability to conceive a child – Isaac through whom the promised Seed would come.

Ishmael, remember, was circumcised. But when Isaac was 3 years old, they had a big party to celebrate his weaning and Ishmael mocked the boy. Ishmael was the oldest. Ishmael was the first just like the Judaizers were “older” than the Galatians. Ishmael gloried in being Abraham’s seed just like the Judaizers did.

But the greatest shock is that the child of natural descent has no part in Abraham and is sent away because he has no faith. Those still looking to the Law delivered on Mount Sinai are living again in the Desert of Sin in Arabia outside the land of promised rest. The Judaizers trust in the Law and will not enter the rest. But all of us who trust in Christ are in the New Jerusalem, and have received the promise of rest in Christ. We are Isaac – sons and true heirs by faith.

Friends, God knows your weakness. He knows that men will try to approach Him on their own strength and men with great moral character will become proud in their own status and convince others that trusting in Christ’s righteousness isn’t enough. If you listen to them long enough and look at them long enough, you begin to be convinced of how morally upright they are. You begin to become convinced that they are the free ones – they are the good people – they are the blessed people.

But God reminds you again that those who trust in the deeds done in the flesh for their salvation will come up short on the perfect measure of His righteousness for cursed is every man that does not continue to perform everything written in it. He reminds us that even those that are set apart, like Ishmael, have lost their inheritance when they turn away from the promise inherited by faith and begin looking to performance in the strength of the flesh.

Come to your senses. Remember Christ. He did not die in vain for He knew that only He could accomplish righteousness for His people. You are a child of God saved from the principles of this world. Don’t look back but continue to ever look to the Cross of Christ – the only place where God’s righteousness on our behalf is found – the only place were freedom and the perfect rest in Christ is found.

Let us pray.

Tags Abraham, Christ, free, Galatians, Isaac, love, Sarah, word, works

Epistles Scripture

Abraham Believed the Gospel (Galatians 3)

Post author By Rich Leino
Post date January 27, 2008
2 Comments on Abraham Believed the Gospel (Galatians 3)

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Galatians 3

1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

21Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

23Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

As we continue in our series through the Book of Galatians we come to Chapter 3. Paul is defending the Gospel of God’s Grace against Jews who have infiltrated the Church and are teaching the Gentiles in Galatia that one must not only believe in Jesus Christ to be saved but must also become circumcised and obey the Law of Moses.

I wonder, these days, if many have become so unconcerned about the Gospel that they don’t really understand why Paul is so upset about this. He’s beside himself wondering why someone would ever be attracted to the teaching of these false brothers when they started out being taught the true Gospel. He asks, in verse 1, “…who bewitched you…?” He doesn’t literally think that there is magic that is compelling the Galatians to believe this but it’s meant to shock them to realize that their turning away from the true Gospel is completely out of character for a Christian.

It struck me yesterday at men’s Bible Study that many of us take for granted that sin and hard-heartedness is always happening to the other guy. We let our guard down to false teaching because we never really think that we’re in danger. It’s really important that we hear what Paul tells the Galatians here: “ 2Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? How could they possibly do this? What would attract them into thinking that their salvation would depend upon and be perfected by works of the Law? Paul points out, clearly, that their salvation (and our salvation) began with the Spirit of God announcing the Good News to our hearts. We heard in the Gospel a message that said to us that we deserve nothing out of the hand of God but condemnation but that the benefits of Christ are held out to us if we simply believe upon what Christ has done for sinners. So, very simply, with nothing to offer God, we fell at the feet of Christ and called out for Him to save us.

But we began this way. The Galatians did too. But then they started hearing these Jewish Christians who were really serious about their Christian walk (or so it seemed to them). These Jewish Christians had it together. They were blessed. They had a purpose. They not only believed in Jesus but they were committed to the Law of Moses to show God that they were really serious about honoring Christ.

It’s not as if the Galatians woke up one day and forgot where they began but, over time they lost sight of where they began. We’re just like them. Our hearts are prone to forget the Gospel. We are prone to forget that God offered salvation freely on the basis of our clinging to Christ and His righteousness. How often, after you’ve sinned, do you return to the Cross of Christ and remind yourself that, in the beginning, God justified you because you trusted in the Cross of Christ? Or, instead, do you tell yourself that God is angry with you right now and that you’ll do better next time and show God that you are really serious about obeying Him? Stop it! God didn’t save you because you’re serious about obeying Him. You are not capable of being serious enough. Only Christ is. Remember where you started. Stay there. Don’t leave the hope you had in Christ then. Yes, Christ matures you. Yes, He is conforming you to His image. But this is all because, just like at the beginning, you are clinging to the Cross. You will never be perfected by any deeds and, when we forget that, we are forgetting the Gospel we heard in the first place. We are forgetting our first love.

We might be tempted to tell ourselves this though: “Well, I guess that must be true for me because I’m so weak. But there were people like Abraham who were strong enough to obey God. I’ll have to just be happy that God saved poor old sinful me but I wish I could have been more like Abraham.” In fact, the Galatians not only wanted to be just like Abraham but they were envious of the Judaizers because they were physical descendants and heirs of Abraham. “Poor old me, I’m just a Gentile Christian. Boo hoo!”

Are you ready for a shock. I’m going to read something that some of you might notice for the first time in your Christian lives. Make sure you have your Bibles ready so you don’t think that I’m making this stuff up. Verse 6 completes a thought that began before about the fact that we are perfected by the Spirit just as at the first. Guess what verse 6 says? Abraham was saved the exact same way as we are! “— 6just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? 7Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

Why was Abraham accounted as righteous? Because of his faith and not his works. Who are the real sons of Abraham? Those who have faith just like Abraham did. Hold on to your seats for this next bit. What did Abraham believe in? The Gospel! That’s right the Scripture foresaw that God would justify us by faith and preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham. Abraham believed the Gospel! Christ stated that Abraham saw His day and rejoiced and the Pharisees wanted to stone Him. I wonder, though, if some of you are still doubting that Abraham was saved by Christ. How can that be? Christ hadn’t even been born yet. True, but God had promised Christ and God’s promises are yes and amen. Abraham believed the Gospel because God had promised the work of Christ to Him. Abraham believed afar off but we have the blessing of living on the other side of the Cross and the revelation of the Christ. And, to make it even sweeter, Paul proclaims to the Galatians: “YOU are Abraham’s heir because you believe just like he did. Take THAT you Judaizers! You’re not even an heir. Real heirs believe in Jesus and it doesn’t matter whose father is on their birth certificate!”

Furthermore, Paul adds: “ 10For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Do you remember this? Why do the Galatians and why do we keep going to the Law and telling God that we’re going to perform for Him so that He’ll accept us? The Law tells us that a person is cursed if a man does not keep it completely and perfectly. There is no hope there. There is no good news. This is the good news found in Christ: “ 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” He who knew know sin actually became Sin for us. He took the curse for all of our lawbreaking and sacrificed Himself to take away the curse that separated us from God. The curse was taken away in verse 14: “ 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

This idea of promise is very important here. It keeps being said over and over that we receive the promise or that we inherit the promise or to believe the promise. This is so important because the promise that was made to Abraham was made by God to Him and it was not made by God with any conditions of obedience on Abraham’s part. In other words, God told Abraham He would bless Him and Abraham believed it but no additional conditions were added to that promise. It was a gracious promise of blessing. Paul points out an important truth. Please try to listen very carefully because Paul is going to basically say that God cannot break His word to Abraham: “ 15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.”

What Paul is saying is that if you and I make an agreement together and sign a piece of paper, we’re bound to that agreement. I can’t take that paper later on and add something to it and hold you to that promise. You didn’t sign for that promise. I also can’t take away something I don’t like. You didn’t sign that promise. Paul is saying that God promised to bless Abraham and his seed and the seed was Christ. He was giving Abraham a promise of salvation by Christ and His righteousness. The Law came hundreds of years after this promise was made to Abraham’s descendants. The Law could not be added to the promise or God would be breaking His word. In other words, the Law could not possibly be for salvation the way the Judaizers are teaching the Galatians because that would mean that God broke His word and, beloved, you might break your word and I might break my word but God never, ever, ever breaks His word. He sword to Abraham that He would be torn asunder before He ever broke the promise to bless Abraham and the world with salvation by faith in Christ.

It’s sort of an obvious question then: why would God add all these rules and regulations if they are not meant to save us? It seems to me like God is saying to keep them in order to be saved. If He never intended to save men and women by them then why did He punish them for not obeying them? It almost seems like the Law is against the Gospel itself. Paul anticipates this: “ 21Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”

The Law was actually added for a gracious purpose. It was given to hold forth and demonstrate the perfect righteousness of God. By doing this it was meant to show how Holy God is and how sinful we are. We were supposed to come to the Law and see in it our very real need for Christ. It was a guardian to conduct us to Christ, a sign to point us to Christ, a schoolmaster to teach us of our need for Christ. We were meant to feel imprisoned by it, caught up by it, bogged down by it so that we would cry out: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?!” Paul even notes that if a law could be given that would lead to righteousness then righteousness would be by the Law but the Law itself proves that righteousness by the Law is impossible – except through Christ.

Right before you believed the Gospel, did you not feel the prison of the Law? Did you not sense its judgment? Did you not feel the need to escape the wrath that you knew you needed to escape? Praise God! Do you remember as the Gospel burst forth and said to you that Christ took that curse away, that Christ had fulfilled its righteous demand? Were not our hearts burning within us as we said: “Thank you Jesus! I believe. What Good News! I believe because I have no other hope. You alone have words of eternal life.”

Verse 25: “ 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The time of immaturity is over. The time for our guardian is past. The time of the judgment of the Law is over for those of us in Christ. Why would anyone ever want to go back into the prison of the Law? Why would anyone go back into the curse of the Law? Do you understand why Paul is asking if they’ve been bewitched? What utter foolishness to turn away from Christ and back into the deeds of the Law.

What could ever possess someone to think this is a good idea? So he can be a Jew? So he can be a better Christian because he’s a Jew? There’s no distinction. Jews are saved by Christ just like Gentiles. So are all men. So are all women. So are all slaves and so are all free men. All are saved by the same Lord. All are saved by the same perfect work. All are united to Christ in the same way: by faith, by laying hold of His feet and trusting in His righteousness and not our own.

As Paul stated, so he reminds them again: “ 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

Christian, you have everything you could possibly ever ask for from God’s hand and it has been given to you freely. You’ve been given an inheritance you didn’t deserve. You lay hold of it simply by trusting in Christ and what He has done. You begin that way and you will finish to the end that way. You don’t begin by trusting in Christ and then change to a new stage where you begin to trust in the works and actions that you’re doing to please God so that He’ll bless you.

Stop believing the illusion that your dedication to God is what saves you. You are not saved by the purity of your works or even the perfection of your faith but your salvation rests on your trust in Christ’s work alone. Whoever bewitched you into looking within and convincing yourself that God is saving you on the basis of your behavior lied to you. The Gospel tells you to stop looking within for your salvation and to look to the Cross. That’s where your righteousness is, that’s where the curse of the Law was nailed. That is what will transform your thoughts and renew your minds. That is what will provide the fruit of love toward your neighbor. That, beloved, is the only hope you must have now and forevermore.

Let us pray.

Tags Abraham, Christ, Christ Jesus, faith, Galatians, gospel, hearing, works