Soli Deo Gloria – Page 2 – Dedicated to the Science of living blessedly forever…

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

General

Review of God and Caesar – Selected Essays on Religion, Politics & Society, by Cardinal George Pell

Post author By Tas Stacey
Post date February 6, 2009
No Comments on Review of God and Caesar – Selected Essays on Religion, Politics & Society, by Cardinal George Pell

Review of God and Caesar – Selected Essays on Religion, Politics & Society, by Cardinal George Pell.

Edited by M.A. Casey; published by Connor Court in Australia, the Catholic University of America Press everywhere else.

Less that 190 pages, this is a collection of ten essays by Australia’s foremost Roman Catholic cleric.

The topics covered include: The Law and Morality, Catholicism and Democracy, The Case for God and Human Dignity, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility.

Quite readable generally, most of the essays flow in a very conversational way which reflects their origins as speeches. I’m not overly familiar with Roman Catholic doctrine & semantics, but I was able to understand most of what Pell was trying to say.

In as much as the book has a central theme it is the rejection of the primacy of conscience.

There is a widespread view amongst religious and non-religious Australians that people should follow their conscience in almost all things. Do the best you can, and it will all come out in the wash.

Pell refers to this as the ‘Daffy Duck Heresy’. If someone sincerely tries to do the right thing, well, that’s all that matters.

Pell’s answer is that people should submit their consciences to God (and of course by implication, the Roman Catholic Church).

While I agree with his central premise that we must submit our consciences to God, the rub for the Protestant comes when determining what the will of God is. For the Roman Catholic, it is easy: what does the Church say the will of God is?

Of course, we have a ‘great cloud of witnesses’ in Calvin, Luther, Spurgeon, Hoeksma & etc to turn to, but ultimately, far more responsibility is put on the conscience of the Reformed Christian than the devout Roman Catholic. We are called to test what we read and hear with a Berean spirit, and ultimately, decide for ourselves what the will of God is.

Cardinal Pell is a bit of an institution here in Australia. As he points out in this book, roughly 50% of the Australians found in a church each Sunday are Catholics attending Mass. Along with Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, he is the ‘goto guy’ when the media wants a comment from a prominent religious conservative.

Unlike America, Australia does not have a strong Baptist movement. We have no Jerry Falwells, no Pat Buchanans, no James Dobsons. Whether this is a good thing or not is another discussion, but the fact is that for most Australians, the pro-life movement is represented in Australia by Cardinal Pell.

It will come as no surprise then that this book contains a strong argument for pro-life values. I think it will be Australia’s loss when Cardinal Pell passes from public life, as I am not aware of any other champion of the unborn within the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, certainly not in the caliber of Pell.

My main criticism of the book is the way it ignores the massive & vital role of Protestantism and the Reformation in the development of modern democracy.

Pell puts it euphemistically; “The Catholic Church was slow to give public approval to democracy.” Indeed.

Still, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the intersection of faith and civil government, especially in Australia.

Three stars.

Tags Australia, Cardinal George Pell, Cardinal Pell, life, Politics Society, Roman Catholic

On PTSD and Total Depravity

Post author By Tas Stacey
Post date February 5, 2009
1 Comment on On PTSD and Total Depravity

I was reading Blackfive today (an excellent US milblog) and saw this post linked.

It’s a great piece written by a (AFAIK) non-Christian former soldier (Marine perhaps) about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (emphasis mine)

What you need to know, first and last, is that so-called PTSD is not an illness. It is a normal condition for people who have been through what you have been through. The instinct to kill and war is native to humanity. It is very deeply rooted in me, as it is in you. We have rules and customs to restrain it, so that sometimes we may have peace. What you are experiencing is not an illness, but the awareness of what human nature is like deep down. It is the awareness of what life is like without the walls that protect civilization.

Those who have never been outside those walls don’t know: they can’t see. The walls form their horizon. You know what lays beyond them, and can’t forget it.

It got me thinking on a few things.

Firstly, just how sheltered most of us are from death in this day and age. I’ve been reading about the Black Plague, which saw 1/3rd of people in Europe killed. These days, we can go our whole lives without seeing a person die, and only knowing one or two close people who have died of something other than old age.

It’s hard imagining a whole society suffering from PTSD, but if you think about it, people must have been. Imagine the people of Israel in Joshua’s day. Imagine a Hebrew soldier, returning to his tents and his family after taking part in the slaughter of every man, woman and child in a Caananite city. Despite the justice of their actions, surely it was a hard thing to do.

Secondly and mainly, it got me thinking about Total Depravity. If you operate on the basic assumption that all people are basically and fundamentally evil, even if they superficially or outwardly seem good, the world makes a lot more sense.

We have the notion of the fundamental goodness of people drummed into our heads from a young age. We want to believe that people are good. Yet history, experience and common sense teaches us otherwise.

Of course, the idea that people are fundamentally good means the only thing keeping people from goodness is education. If we could only build a society that taught people how to live properly, people would be good, and we wouldn’t need God! When people come from a society like ours, which has this assumption, and are plunged through combat or some other traumatic experience, it must be twice the shock.

Tags AFAIK, Europe, life, PTSD, Total Depravity, US

First Things

I just wanted to outline my plans for this blog before I jumped in.

I’ve grown up in a small conservative Reformed (well, Presbyterian, but you know) denomination, which I love dearly.

A while back, I started to question some fundamentals of Reformed belief, mainly in the area of Sola Scriptura and Ecclesiology. For a long time, I just kept ‘asking questions’ and waited for the answer to come. As a student of history, I feel quite attracted to the arguments put by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches with regards to the role of the Church in authenticating Scripture, but I am convinced of God’s sovereignty and the doctrine of predestination. A conundrum!

So instead of waiting for the answer to my questions to come to me through osmosis, I’ve taken up my daily devotions and prayer again, and am reading as much Reformed material as I can. Hopefully, this blog will be a part of that process. I want to not only attend a Reformed Church, but to be able to defend (or at least have an educated opinion on) every part of Christian Doctrine. I want to be the spiritual leader in my home, not the-most-educated-but-the-one-with-the-biggest-doubts.

My plan is to review the books I read, post on the devotions I’m reading through (the Psalms privately, Judges as a family), and whatever else comes to mind with regards to the Christian Walk.

I have a background in politics (studying it in Uni, and working for a few years as a staffer to a few politicians), and I used to spending most of my spare time reading about anything to do with it. But to be honest, I’m a little over politics at the moment. I’m going to try and pretend it all doesn’t exist for a while, and focus on more personal spiritual matters for a time.

Anyway, hopefully this exercise is a blessing for all involved. I’ve never blogged or kept a diary seriously before.

Tags Christian Doctrine, Christian Walk, Reformed Church, Sola Scriptura

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

Pastoral Concerns

Why Does A Church Have A Youth Ministry?

Post author By knoxben
Post date June 21, 2008
1 Comment on Why Does A Church Have A Youth Ministry?

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why a church has (or should have) a youth ministry? Youth ministry is never talked about in any of Paul’s epistles and there really isn’t much of a precedent for separating youth in the isolated way most churches do. This questions is one that every person involved with youth ministry should be able to answer. From the senior pastor, to the elders, to parents, to volunteers, to the paid youth worker.

As I began to think about this question one thing that popped into my mind is that fact that most parents in the church don’t live up to their responsibilities. Most parents don’t catechize their children, teach them the scriptures, or do any sort of ‘home church’ activities. Scripture is pretty clear about who’s responsibility children are (Deuteronomy 6). Parents should do these things. However, for the most part parents have abdicated their responsibilities and taken a laissez-faire approach to their children’s spirituality. Many parents then look to the church, to the youth pastor, or even look to their children to find their own way. This isn’t an article about parenting, but because of a lack of spiritual guidance youth ministry becomes necessary.

One one hand a youth worker is simply a member of the congregation that has taken vows to the covenant children of the church to do all possible to the end that the children profess faith in Christ and are faithful to him. In this way, a youth worker is no different than any other member of the church. At the very least most churches in the reformed tradition value and actually have their members take vows when a child is baptized saying that they will pray for, and be a part of spiritual life of this child.

I think the big misconception in youth ministry (it’s a misconception by parents, elders, students, and youth minsters themselves) is that a youth pastor is or should be the primary spiritual cause in a student’s life. As mentioned earlier, scripture clearly states that parents are responsible for their own children. The bible teaches of three spiritual causes in a child’s life. The first is not surprisingly God Himself. 1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us that, “no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” God is the primary cause in a child’s life. In the wisdom of God he ordained that children are brought up by Parents. (Deuteronomy 6, Ephesians 6:1-4) And finally way down the list the church and the fellowship of believers is the third cause in a child’s life. Although this responsibility falls to the congregation as a whole, in the wisdom of the church, it has been appropriate to appoint and set apart certain individuals for youth and children’s ministry.

I don’t want to be a parent to every child in my youth group, I can’t be a child to every parent in my youth group. This is not the youth pastor’s job. The youth pastor is a tertiary cause in a child’s life. But there are two main roles that I see a youth pastor filling.

First, there are numerous students that don’t have parents. Either through divorce, or death, or the unbelief of one or both parents, often times students come to my ministry as spiritual or actual orphans. This is the historic reason for having a youth pastor in a church. After WWII there were many children without a dad. The church filled the need by hiring or getting volunteers to disciple and care for these children. I take this part of my job very seriously. I seek out the students who don’t have a dad, or whose dad left their mom. These students more than anything need a man to step into their life and speak the truth of scripture. An elder could do this, a member of the church could do this, however, as a full time youth pastor, I have the time, the resources, and the gifting to do this as well.

The second main role as I see it is to supplement parents. As I said before a youth pastor can’t and shouldn’t want to take over the parents role. If they do, you have a problem. But as any parent knows, sometimes a little help is great. I equip parents by giving them good books, praying for them, and encouraging them. Often times I will teach something to a student and they will finally understand it, even though the student’s parent has been saying the exact same thing for years. It’s not that I am better at teaching, or anything like that. But sometimes an outside voice can be helpful. As a full time youth minister (and one educated at Seminary) I can spend more time preparing a Sunday School lesson and probably go into more depth than a parent normally could. In this way I can assist the parent in growing and educating their child to maturity as a tertiary spiritual cause.

If the church was perfect and all its members were mature Christians who lived obedient lives to Christ, I wouldn’t have a job. But it’s not. So my job is to shepherd the orphans and to be a tertiary cause in the lives of our covenant youth.

Ben Shear is the Youth Pastor at Knox Presbyterian Church in Michigan. He also runs the website Reformed Youth Pastor.com More articles like this at Reformed Youth Pastor.com

Tags Christ, faith, Holy Spirit, life, Reformed Youth Pastor, Sunday School

Entertainment and Recreation

Mel’s Misplaced Passion (3 of 3)

Post author By Shawn
Post date March 24, 2008
No Comments on Mel’s Misplaced Passion (3 of 3)

They Said That?

* “It changed my perception of what it meant to follow Christ.”
* “”¦[it] is so wonderfully biblically congruent, I would encourage folks to not stumble over parts [that are disagreeable]”¦”
* “[it] showed the depth of Christ’s love.”

Wow. That must have been a powerful sermon for these pastors to respond so strongly! These are the responses that we should have more of when faithful preaching occurs! But there was no preaching there. These are the responses by respected pastors, such as Chuck Smith, Jr. of California, after they reviewed the Passion.

I am sure some of you saw that coming. But is it not true what this article has been arguing for: the dangers of images readily supplanting the Word. In light of the centrality of the Word as found in the Bible consider these alarming quotes:

* “This film is equal to “˜a lifetime of sermons'” (Billy Graham, People, March 8, 2004).
* “The best outreach opportunity in 2000 years” (People).
* “In the church we’ve tried for a long time with words to bring into consciousness the reality of what Jesus went through. We have waxed eloquent in our sermons, but this film brings that reality to us in one sitting.” (Chuck Smith, Jr., “Pastor’s Panel”, www.worshipleader.com).

Yes, I am picking on this film. Why not? If the Reformed faith is to be relevant in today’s society, it needs to interact with fellow Christians and to address modern trends. Again, movies and television shows are not inherently evil as a medium of communication, but they can become sinful through wrong means and goals. Just as we avoid certain movies because of their excessive themes (nudity, language, etc.), so, too, movies that violate the second commandment should be avoided. This can be very controversial, but rather than rehash what was written earlier, hopefully, these quotes from Christianity Today, which recommends the movie even after admitting its clear and pronounced Roman Catholic motif, will be eye-opening:

* He [Gibson] also recounted a series of divine coincidences that led him to read the works of Anne Catherin Emmerich, a late-18th”¦Westphalian nun who had visions of the events of the Passion. Many of the details needed to fill out the Gospel accounts he drew from her book, Dolorous Passion of Our Lord”¦
* One reason for Gibson’s personal sense of salvation is the way this project rescued him from himself”¦
* These [medieval] practices [projecting oneself into the event] became the foundation for such widely practiced traditions as meditating on the Five Sorrowful Mysteries when saying the Rosary. The structure of Gibson’s film conforms exactly to the list of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries: The Agony of Jesus in the Garden, the Scourging of Jesus at the Pillar, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying the Cross, and the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus. And it reveals the way that this film is for Gibson a kind of prayer”¦
* In the foreword to The Passion, he [Gibson] writes that the film “is not meant as a historical documentary. “¦ I think of it as contemplative in the sense that one is compelled to remember “¦ in a spiritual way, which cannot be articulated, only experienced.”
* [Gibson]”I’ve been actually amazed at the way I would say the evangelical audience has””hands down””responded to this film more than any other Christian group.” [What makes it so amazing, he says, is that] “the film is so Marian.”

All quotes from www.christianitytoday.com/movies/special/passionofthechrist.html)

Gibson considers himself an old-fashioned pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic. Gibson calls Mary “a tremendous co-redemptrix and mediatrix [meaning she contributed to redemption through her suffering].” Thus, the movie has more about Mary than the Bible, as shown in an article by Romanus Cessario, a Dominican who teaches at St. John’s Seminary:

We see Mary’s maternal mediation enacted on film. Gibson portrays Mary placing “herself between her Son and mankind [remember the times that Mary looks directly at us!] in the reality of their wants, needs and sufferings [remember Peter at her feet]. She puts herself ‘in the middle,’ that is to say she acts as a mediatrix not as an outsider, but in her position as mother.” The words are from Pope John Paul II. Mel Gibson captures what the Pope writes in “Mother of the Redeemer” in a way that alone merits the film the title “Catholic.”

If we recognize that the Passion is related to the Church, then we also recognize that it is related to the reality of the Eucharistic conversion. There is a sense in which the whole film is about the Eucharist. The Bread of Life. (Bracketed comments also by Cessario; www.catholic.org, “Mel Gibson and Thomas Aquinas: How the Passion Works”)

The Roman Catholic has always depended heavily on images; some of the older living generation can still remember the mass being delivered in Latin! In contrast, the Protestant Church has traditionally relied upon Christ and His Word as the source of spiritual vitality in the Church and in the family. When many Evangelical leaders laud this film to the detriment of the preached Word, we can see clearly the sad state of the Protestant Church. There is no passion for the Word.

What It All Means

Coming full-circle, we as Reformed believers in the twenty-first century need to embrace Christ through the Word. The Second Commandment forbids images of the Godhead and man-made worship; it also demands a proper integration of the Word into our lives. The modern pressures upon the Churches and families are immense: all the books and conferences try to evangelize others and grow spiritually through every means””save one. We need to believe God when He says that preachers are a gift from Christ (Eph. 4:8-12). We need to believe God that His Word is sufficient for our spiritual growth. We need to consume the Bible through reading, listening and memorizing. These truths should not only be taught to our children but also enacted in our lives such that they see the Word impacting our living, reading and watching””our very lifestyle. This does not mean that the TV should be thrown out (or it might for some of us), but it does mean we should seriously pray and consider its impact on our family.

Emphasis on reading and writing, listening and learning through words and especially the Word of God will help guard our eye-gates and strengthen our resolve. For it is by faith in Christ by His Word that we have life (Jn. 6:63).

“For, All flesh is as grass, And all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth: But the word of the Lord abideth for ever. And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you” (1 Peter 1:24). Amen.

Tags Christ, Chuck Smith, His Word, Peter, Protestant Church, word