The Good Shepherd & the Gatekeeper; John 10:1-20, John 21:15-24

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Times of Refreshing; Acts 3:11-26

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The Benefits of Christ's Sacrifice; Hebrews 9:11-22, Titus 3:4-7

 

On this second Sunday of Easter, we celebrate that Christ, though His death and resurrection has secured our redemption.  Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the new covenant, a covenant not of dead works, but of love and grace, a covenant which the Holy Spirit applies to us.

            If you remember, a covenant was a binding agreement that if broken, required the death of the party who broke the covenant.  The “signing” of the covenant was done by the sacrifice of animals cut in half.  The parties agreeing to the covenant would walk through the carcasses to say, “May it be done to me if I break this covenant.”  When God made the covenant with Abraham, only God walked through the animal carcasses, showing that God alone would take on the death penalty for the broken covenant, a covenant which we broke time and time again.  In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses and Aaron to set up a sacrificial system.  This system was the way that the death penalty for the breaking of God’s commands was met.  Animal substitutes were used in place of people.  As animals were sacrificed, the people were made aware that it should be them who were killed, but even this was poor, since God already promised Abraham that God alone would take the death penalty for our sins.  We know that Christ instituted the new or renewed God’s covenant at the Last Supper.  He explicitly said that covenant would be sealed in His blood.  The concept of covenants cut in blood are gross to us, but how often do we consider that before God, we really deserve the death penalty?  For all the times it had been broken and would be broken again, Jesus paid the price.  He fulfilled the requirement of the covenant that God must die.  And because Jesus is also fully human, His blood covers us. We have taken a lot of the “blood hymns” out of modern hymnals, but sometimes we need to remember how precious it was that Jesus shed His blood for us and how powerful that blood is to wash us clean and secure our redemption.  Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of the covenant by His death and resurrection. 

            Our Hebrews passage tells that Jesus acted as both High Priest and Sacrifice.  And not only is He High Priest, He is the perfect sinless High Priest.  Sacrifices already had to be without blemish or spot, but the High Priest first had to sacrifice for his own sins before he could offer sacrifices for the people.  Jesus is the once for all sacrifice.  Sacrifices no longer need to be repeated.  Hebrews 9:13 mentions “the ashes of a red heifer” that was used to sprinkle those who were defiled.  There are people who want to restart the sacrificial system.  Many of you are aware that there are plans to sacrifice a red heifer during Passover in a few weeks in Israel so that it can be burned and the ashes used to purify people and instruments to rebuild a temple.  God’s people are the last temple.  We are living stones.  Any Christian participating in this is doing the devil’s work, not the Lord’s work.  Jesus doesn’t need us to help Jewish zealots set up a sacrificial system.  Jesus needs us to help proclaim that He is the true and only Messiah and that the time to believe in Him is now!  If you haven’t picked up any of the information on the back table that the Jews for Jesus missionaries left, I would encourage you to do so.  They need our prayers as they witness to the truth of who Jesus is.  Jesus’s blood paid for our redemption.  That is, the debt we owed to God that we could not pay, Jesus paid it all and did so for everyone!  Jesus died to redeem the world, not just one people group, but all people.  His sacrifice is complete.  No others are ever needed again.  The Jews cannot be saved by reinstating temple sacrifices.  They can only be saved by the blood of Jesus, just as we are.  The people living in the most isolated places in the world can only be saved by the blood of Jesus.  Jesus fulfilled the Law so we don’t have to. 

With redemption comes forgiveness.  All of our sins are forgiven.  Both of our passages today tell us we are washed clean by the blood of Christ.  Our consciences have been made clear.  We don’t have to continually beat ourselves up for the wrong things we have done.  We simply need to confess what Jesus has already forgiven. When we lay our burdens at the feet of Jesus, we don’t need to pick them back up again.  We might be called to make amends to someone we have hurt, but that is living into the forgiveness which we have been given, which brings us to the next benefit that Jesus by His sacrifice has given us.

Not only did Jesus redeem us, He cleanses us from dead works.  We don’t have to try to earn salvation by merit.  We don’t have to worry that we have or haven’t done enough to gain eternal life and entrance into heaven.  Our Titus passage tells us that our works of righteousness don’t save us, but it is the mercy of God our Savior who saved us out of love for us.    However, it doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. The rest of Hebrews 11:14 says that Christ freed us from dead works “to serve the living God.”  We can serve God freely.  I think back to the story of the Prodigal Son.  The older brother kept working for his father, but he resented it.  He was trying to prove something to his father, his worthiness, not understanding that as a son, he didn’t need to prove anything.  He had access to all that the father wanted to give.  In fact, when the younger son asked for his share of the inheritance, the father divvied up the inheritance to both sons, of which the older brother would have gotten double.  Yet, he never accessed what was his.  He kept trying to earn it, and kept building more and more resentment.  God wants us to serve freely.  God did create good works for us to do.  God wants us to participate with God in God’s work.  In fact, we were saved for service; our salvation is not simply acquiring “fire insurance” so that we don’t go to hell.  At the same time we don’t have to do works to pay off debt.   We serve out of gratitude.  This also frees us from worrying about outcome.  When we serve God freely, the results are up to God.  Faithfulness is the measure of our success.  Do you know that the word “serve” and “worship” are the same word?  To worship God is to serve God and to serve God is to worship God. 

Eternal life of course is another benefit of Christ’s sacrifice.  This means that there will never be a time when we are separated from the presence of God.  It means that physical death is not the end for us.  We will live with God in a new heaven and earth where time does not exist.  We will live where there is no more death, pain, grief, fear, worry, or evil.  We will live where everyone not only gets along, but really and truly loves one another. 

Another benefit of Christ’s sacrifice is sanctification.  That is, we are made holy; we are made saints.  We have the capability to become more and more like Jesus, and when God looks at us, God already sees Jesus in us.  Sanctification means transformation.  We are being remade into the people that God always intended us to be.  It takes our cooperation.  As people of the Reformed tradition, we call this the “perseverance of the faith.”  We cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we have all the blessings that God has promised God’s people.  We joint-heirs with Jesus of all God’s good gifts.  We are made siblings of Christ, children of God by believing in Jesus.  We are Christ’s brothers and sisters as well as His bride. 

            Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the greatest blessing we have been given as a result of Christ’s sacrifice.  God gave us Himself through Jesus Christ, and then God gave us Himself again in the person of the Holy Spirit, who was sent to us by Christ.  Jesus is God with us—Immanuel.  The Holy Spirit is God in us.  The Holy Spirit gives us full access to all the benefits secured by Christ’s sacrifice.  Without the Holy Spirit, we would have no faith.  We would not be able to confess Christ.  It is the Holy Spirit who illumines our consciences, who convicts us of sin and opens us to our need of a Savior.  The Holy Spirit teaches us by helping us to understand God’s Word and applying it to our lives.  It is the Spirit who gives us the power to resist temptation, who enables us to keep God’s commands, who empowers us to do good works for the glory of God.  The Holy Spirit reveals the will of God to us.  The Holy Spirit is eternal life—the Fountian of Living Water welling up within us. 

            The sacrifice of Jesus is everything.  In Him we have redemption--we have no debt to God.  We have forgiveness. We don't have to earn salvation through good works, rather we are free to worship and serve God by doing good works for God's glory, leaving the results to God.  We are made saints.  We have eternal life.  We have the Holy Spirit.  We are never alone.  Jesus has bought our salvation through His precious blood!  Amen!  

Our Living Hope; John 20:1-18, I Corinthians 15:1-20, II Corinthians 4:6-10

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The Second Adam; Genesis 3:14-19, I Corinthians 15:21-26, 45-49. John 19:1-16, Galatians 3:13-16

 One of the sufferings of Jesus on this Holy night is the crown of thorns being placed on His head.  Obviously, the Roman soldiers doing this are continuing the mockery started by the Temple soldiers and at Herod’s palace of Jesus being the King of the Jews.  Jesus didn’t say He was the King of the Jews.  He said He was a King and that His kingdom is not of this world.  But this crown holds much more significance than mocking Jesus’s kingship.  It’s no accident that thorns were used.  The soldiers meant it as another way to inflict pain and humiliation, but for Jesus and for us, it means much more.  Jesus’s crown of thorns was a physical symbol of an incredible spiritual reality—His taking on the curse of man for us.  And yes, I’m using “man” specifically.  Jesus becomes the second Adam. 

            Only Jesus, as a man, could take away the curse that was pronounced on the first man, Adam.  It is a curse that affects us women too, but it was a curse pronounced on the man.  We read from Genesis 3 this evening.  God confronts Adam, Eve, and the serpent in the Garden of Eden after they have broken God’s one command not to eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The first curse is pronounced on the serpent, who would now slither in the dust and have enmity with the woman “and with your seed and her seed.”  But part of the serpent’s curse is the first great promise of a Redeemer.  “He shall bruise or crush your head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”  There has only been one “seed of a woman.”  That is Jesus Christ, Son of Mary.”  Satan bruised the heel of Jesus in His sufferings, trying to prevent Jesus from going to the cross.  Because the death of Jesus, instead of being a victory for the devil, was the sign of Satan’s sure defeat; for in His death, Jesus paid the atonement price for all humanity.  And by rising from the dead, the serpent’s head was crushed.  We know the end of the story that one day, the devil and his angels will be cast into the lake of fire.  The first part of the curse was being broken, just as God promised to Eve’s consolation and the serpent’s chagrin.

            But it is the 3^rd curse being broken symbolized by the crown of thorns.  It is the ground that is cursed because of Adam.  Instead of growing everything needed easily, the ground would now produce “thorns and thistles” and have to be cultivated with effort.  Jesus allows the thorns to be placed on His head, showing that He is taking all of the curse, for the ground as well as the ultimate curse of death!  We sing about this in the hymn, “Joy to the World!” –“No more let sin and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground.  He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.”  Christ’s reign undoes the curse wherever it is found.  Most women still experience pain in childbirth, farmers work hard even with modern technology, and it’s becoming even more of a challenge these days.  We still have to deal with thorns and thistles!  The thistles especially are growing rapidly right now, and we still die.  Romans 8 tells us all creation is groaning for the Day of Redemption, but our hope is sure!  As sure as Christ rose from the dead, He is returning to complete the reversal of the curse. 

            But even now, we see the curse being undone.  Our I Corinthians passage tells us what it means for Christ to be the last Adam.  Because of Adam’s disobedience, we all die, but in Christ, all will be made alive.  We will all be resurrected.  Verse 23 tells us Christ was the firstfruits—He rose on that Feast, and after that, those who are Christ’s will be raised at His coming.  And if we read Revelation, those who are not in Christ will be raised after that.  Then those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life will get to live with Him forever in the new heaven and new earth, and those who are not will go into eternal destruction.  And then there will be no more death!  Jesus, the second Adam, the last Adam is a “life-giving spirit.”  Paul exhorts us in I Corinthians 12:49, that even now, we, as new creations in Him, are called to bear the image of the heavenly even while still bearing the earthly image. 

            When I was at Antioch Presbyterian Church, I was doing a lot of elder training in preparation for their departure to the EPC, which uses the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms as its sole confessions, along with the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds.  And those confessions hold more authority than our Book of Confessions.  We vow to be guided by our Confessions, but they vow to accept and abide by the Confessions, and any scruple must be defended, so it’s crucial to know this confession inside and out!  When we were going over the lesson on anthropology, the doctrine of humans in relationship to God, the concept of Jesus as the second Adam came up.  We of course, looked at this I Corinthians passage.  One of my elders said, “I have never heard Jesus called the Second Adam or Last Adam before.”  I replied, “Really?  We sing it every year at Christmas in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” and proceeded to quote the verse you have printed at the end of tonight’s service.  They all looked at me strangely.  Sure enough, even though I had been pastoring that church for almost 4 years, their hymnal did not have that verse, so most of them had not grown up singing it.  Our hymnal doesn’t have it either.  And even though I’ve had this verse memorized since childhood, it’s not in a lot of newer hymnals, even 30-year-old hymnals!  And yet the theology is so rich!  Jesus is the woman’s Conquering Seed, whom we implore to crush the serpent’s head in us.  Yes, we still fall prey to the devil’s wiles and temptations, and we need to ask Jesus to break the power of the curse in us, to free us from patterns of sin.  Erase in us the “old man” as Paul exhorts us in Ephesians 4:and instead, mark us with Yourself, Jesus, so that we look like you.  Second Adam from above, in Your love, put us back into your good graces!  Make us Your children. 

            The crown of thorns points to the day when all things will be rightly ordered once again.  We will dwell in a new heavens and new earth without plants that will cause us harm.  Tending the earth will be a joy.  Jesus will have many crowns, diadems we give Him, and none of them will be made out of thorns.  Jesus wore the crown of our curse, taking the curse of Adam upon Himself.  Jesus broke the generational curse of death to give us life.  He wore the thorny crown for us!

The following was added at the very end of the service just before reading the Galatians 3 text and was followed by the singing of verse 4 of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing".

Friends, it is Good Friday.  Jesus has been crucified, and He rests in the tomb.  But it is Good Friday.  His death and suffering were not in vain.  Everything He went through, every injustice, every type of suffering, has deep meaning and significance.  Nothing was by chance or is incidental to the story.  Jesus had to fulfill all things, all Scripture, to take all of God’s wrath for us.  The work He accomplished was Good!  And It is Finished!  We have one more Scripture telling us what it means that Christ took the curse of Adam on our behalf.  And then we will sing that 4^th verse of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  As we contemplate Christ’s death tomorrow on Holy Saturday, may we do so with reverence and thanksgiving, so that we can fully celebrate with great joy on Resurrection Sunday.  Here these words from Galatians….

A House of Prayer for All People; Isaiah 56:1-8, Luke 19:29-48, Colossians 3:11-16

 

Several years ago, Ned gave a good Palm Sunday Sermon about Jesus’s casting out the money changers and His critique of making God’s house a robber’s den.  Ned rightly pointed out that all this money changing and selling of animals took place in the Court of the Gentiles, and this was the reason that Jesus was so angry.  I want to elaborate on this truth this morning, and for this, we have to start in the Old Testament.

            When the Israelites came out of Egypt, God gave Moses very specific, detailed plans for setting up a worship space.  It was the Tabernacle.  It was to be set up in the very center of the camp, and all the tents of the people were to be set up around it in a very specific order.  We see these instructions in Exodus 25-31.  The Tabernacle had 3 main parts:  an outer court, the Tent of Meeting, and the Holy of Holies within the Tent of Meeting.  No one could enter the Tent of Meeting except for the priests.  No one could enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest once a year, but the outer court was open to all worshippers of Yahweh with certain conditions.  You had to be repentant and ritually pure.  If you were a male, you had to be circumcised. Women were allowed in the outer court.  Even foreigners were allowed in the outer court to worship if they had been baptized and circumcised.  Everyone worshipped together.  The outer court was where you brought your sacrifices and offerings.  There were a few exceptions of people who were permanently excluded from worship in the outer court, however, even if they were sincerely repentant and wanted to worship.  They had to have others offer their gifts for them.  We find this list of people in Deuteronomy 23:1-8.  And yet, there are exceptions to this.  Ruth was a Moabite.  She lived among the Israelites and married an Israelite man.  She probably worshipped in the tabernacle with him.  By the time Solomon was born, David and Bathsheba were legitimately married.  Their firstborn died just a few days after his birth, but even so, Solomon might still be considered illegitimate by some.  But he not only worshipped in the temple, he oversaw the building of the temple!  This shows that God sometimes changes the rules. 

            Our Isaiah passage shows us that it was God’s plan to open up worship.  In this oracle, Yahweh says, “Let not the foreigner who has joined Himself to the Lord say, ‘Yahweh will surely separate me from His people.’”  Here God shows breaks down the barrier of nationality and ethnicity altogether.  It doesn’t matter which nation you are from, what your ethnicity is as long as you have placed your trust in Yahweh. Yahweh goes on to say, “To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, to them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, and a name better than that of sons and daughter.  I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.”  Oh, what wonderful promises!  God welcomes them into God’s eternal family.  We see this with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.  No follower of Yahweh is to be excluded from fellowship and worship.  God ends this oracle promising that God will continue to gather together not just the dispersed of Israel, but others with them. 

            Yet, by the time we get to Herod’s temple, instead of being one people worshipping together, there was far more separation than during the time of the Tabernacle.  Now there is a court of Gentiles surrounded by walls, and they could go no further.  Then there was the court of women, but only Jewish women.  It was also surrounded by walls, and they could go no further.  Then there was the court of Jewish men—no Gentile converts allowed!  And then there was the priests’ court, the temple itself and the Holy of Holies.  The outer was the closest Gentiles could get.  They couldn’t see their sacrifices being offered.  They couldn’t even give their own tithes as the money boxes were located in the court of women.  They couldn’t fully participate in worship.  With all the ruckus taking place in the court of Gentiles, there was no quiet, reverent place to pray. Jesus rides into Jerusalem, takes a look around in the temple on Sunday evening.  While others are impressed with the size, scope, architecture and beauty of the Temple, Jesus isn’t impressed, and has some plans for the next day.

On what we call Holy Monday, Jesus returns to the temple, tosses the tables and drives out the animals and traders from the court of the Gentiles.  Then Jesus spends most of HIs week preaching and teaching in the court of the Gentiles near the entrance to the court of women.  Here anyone could stop and listen to Him if they wanted.  His message was and is for everyone.  By His presence, Jesus shows that He is not a fan of walls that divide people who love God and want to serve God.  Holiness and purity still matter; there is still “worship” that is unacceptable to God.  But how one is born does not in any way exclude any one from worship or from being able to be part of God’s family. 

God’s dream that all the Lord’s people would be united together in prayer as one people was not being realized, but Jesus came to make that happen.  When He died, the veil of the Temple was torn in two.  Not only did that expose the sham worship the high priests had been offering for centuries, because there was no Ark of the Covenant present, but now, not only were the priests no longer separated from the presence of God, but God was showing that no one need be separated from His presence any longer.  It took awhile for the early church to realize this.  The leaders in Jerusalem had to hear from Peter about his experience with Cornelius and Paul and Barnabas about their travels before they determined that, yes, the Gentiles are welcomed into the family of God with few restrictions—those being don’t eat meat which has been sacrificed to idols, don’t eat blood or animals that have been strangled, and from sexual immorality.  Even Paul will talk about whether or not it’s okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols later on.  His comments have to do with company and with intent as to whether or not it’s right or wrong.  When James, leader of the Church in Jerusalem, makes his pronouncement that the Gentiles should be welcomed into the family of faith, he quotes another Old Testament prophet, Amos 9:11-12, another oracle of Yahweh, who said, “In that day, I will raise up the fallen tabernacle of David, and wall up its breaches.  I will also raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old; that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the Gentiles who are called by My name.”  God isn’t talking about a literal rebuilding of the temple, and the Jerusalem council knew this.  In his first letter, Peter writes, “You also, as living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 

Jesus came so that God’s plan for all of God’s people to worship together as equals, as one family, as one holy temple could come to pass.  Paul tells us in our Colossians passage what that should look like.  We need to be compassionate and kind to one another.  We need to be humble and gentle and patient with one another.  We need to bear with one another and to forgive one another, and let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.  Our worship should include sharing God’s Word with one another, letting it live in and through us.  We should use God’s word to encourage one another in songs and glorify God in all ways.  God wants His temple to be a house of prayer for all people.  Sadly, like the people in the past, we continue to be divided.  Denominations keep multiplying by the day.  Most churches remain largely segregated.  How do we live in unity?  I’m not convinced that we all have to become Catholic or Orthodox and get rid of our distinctive Christian traditions and practices.  We serve a big God.  I think the different ways we worship add to the richness of what it means to be Christian.  I don’t think any of us have perfect theology.  I think we need to learn from one another, appreciate one another, and acknowledge that despite these differences, we are still one in Christ.  I think we need to rejoice with other congregations and mourn with them.  I think we need to work together in shared ministry to reach our community and world for the Kingdom of God.  I don’t think every congregation is for every person, but I believe that there is a place in the capital C Church for every person.  I believe as the Creed says, in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”  But all this doesn’t let individual congregations off the hook.  It doesn’t let us off the hook.  We need to examine ourselves and ask--Whom are we excluding?  Is it intentional or unintentional?  Are there ways we can be more welcoming to those whom God might want to join us?  Are we harboring racism, sexism, classicism?  Are there walls keeping people out that need to be torn down?  How is our relationship with our sister congregations?  Is there more we could do to partner with one another?  Are we jealous of the congregations that are growing?  Do we notice and mourn the congregations that have closed? 

Don't Cry for Me; Luke 23:26-31, Revelation 6:12-17

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Injustice System; Luke 22:66-23:25

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Betrayal and Denial--Luke 22:47-62

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The Toughest Decision; Luke 22:39-46

 *Recommended Reading--Hebews 11-12:7

For the remainder of the season of Lent we will be looking at the passion narrative of Jesus.  We will not cover it all in these next few weeks, and we will not pick it up again until next winter, though we will look at the Last Supper text on World Communion Sunday.  Last week, we saw Jesus tempted in the desert wilderness.  Today He faces His toughest decision.  This is truly the “more opportune time” for which Satan had been waiting.  We know this because we will hear Jesus say next week to the chief priests and temple officers that came to arrest Him that this was the “hour and the power of darkness” that belonged to them. 

But I don’t think that was the only way Satan was at work.  Though the devil isn’t visible in today’s text like he was in last week’s text, the power of temptation is great with Jesus.  Most of us don’t have conversations with the devil.  We don’t have little angels and devils on our shoulders like they used to show in the old cartoons, but we wrestle with temptation.  We wrestle in our minds, with our flesh, with our wills, and yes, even with our emotions.  Just like last week, Jesus is tempted whether or not He will love God with all of His heart, soul, strength and mind.  This temptation doesn’t come in three different incidences like His time in the desert.  This is one big temptation.  He is tested in every way—with His all of His soul/life—Will He sacrifice His life to save humanity?  With all of His strength—all the pain He is about to endure, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the scourging, and crucifixion.  Even this time in the Garden left Him physically exhausted so that once again, just like in the wilderness, angels come to minister to Him.  He was tested with all of His heart—Will He still align His will with the Father’s?  We know from the other gospels that it was 3 times that He asked the Father to “remove this cup from” Him and said, yet ‘not My will, but Yours be done.” 

Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus had been praying an hour before He went to wake the disciples the first time!  This is laboring in prayer.  Like the disciples, I struggle to pray for an hour, especially about a single, yet significant subject.  I find it easier to spend time praying through a litany of requests, and if I am part of a prayer group, I can pray for an hour.  The disciples could have been praying with each other.  Jesus had given them a topic, “that you might not enter into temptation.”  This was Jesus’s request for Himself as well. He was praying that He might not fall to temptation.  He needed strength to pass the test!  We can say that it was easier for Jesus than for us, but I don’t think so.  We don’t have a test where literally the fate and weight of the whole world is resting on us!  We might sympathize with the disciples because, as we will learn in the Christ in the Passover program on March 19, that the disciples had 2 more cups of wine than Jesus did, but Luke’s gospel tells us that the disciples didn’t fall asleep the second time from the very late hour or from being tipsy, but because they “were sleeping from sorrow.”  Despite the joy of celebrating the Passover feast, it ended with a very heavy tone.  Having observed Jesus from a distance, having heard Him speak of His death multiple times, they are depressed.  I think all of us can identify with times when we have gotten heavy news or have been depressed to the point that you are exhausted and need a nap.  It is natural for the body to want to do this.  We just need to be sure we aren’t sleeping too much when then happens.  Just as Jesus again wakes the disciples and tells them to pray, prayer can be part of our healing and getting strength in times of depression and temptation.  But now the time of praying has come to end.  Jesus’s enemies come to the garden to arrest Him.  From here on out, it will be a long, hard night.  Don’t wait until it’s too late to pray.  Pray first! 

Prayer is work.  Prayer is doing something.  Jesus strove in prayer for Himself and for us.  Blood was mingled with His sweat.  This is a real medical phenomenon called hematidrosis that happens under conditions of extreme exertion involving distress or fear, thought to be related to our “fight or flight response”.  When we think of Jesus shedding His blood for our sins, we think immediately of the cross, of Him getting pierced in the side.  We think about the nail prints in His hands and feet, we think of the blood from the crown of thorns.  Some of us think of the brutal scouring, but how many of us think about the fact that Jesus shed His blood for us beginning in the garden?  This story is not new to us, but I hope we pause to think about its significance.  Jesus wasn’t just praying for Himself.  The world was on His mind. He thought of His disciples.  He wanted there to be another way, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me.”  If there’s any other way…This was the Father’s will.

In Hebrews 12, the writer encourages the Hebrew church facing persecution to remember the saints that have gone before them who are cheering them on to persevere and to keep their eyes on Jesus, their example and Savior.  The author tells the readers in verse 4, “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.”  The author is warning them that persecution is going to get a whole lot worse and that some of them are likely to face the things as did the saints of old, but the author also talks about the discipline that comes from the hand of the Lord, as consequences for sin.  I hear the writer saying in Hebrews 12, “Look, I know it is hard, but what you are going through, others have gone through, even Jesus, and He did it for you.  You can keep the faith.  The saints are cheering you on.  Besides, you haven’t even shed blood in trying to resist temptation. You aren’t even working that hard to stay out of sin.”  Persecution is hard, but have you even prayed about it?  Have you prayed for endurance?  Have you prayed so that you will not enter into temptation when it comes?  The writer of Hebrews is not saying, “Bad things won’t happen to you if you just pray enough and have enough faith.”  He’s saying, “Prayer will help increase your faith so that you will be able to endure when harder things come.”  You don’t even pray enough about the temptations you face now!  Jesus sweat blood to resist temptation!  One of my former missionary colleagues still serving with A3, the agency I served with in Japan, recently participated in leading a training called, “Resilience in Persecution” in a Southeast Asian country where it is difficult to be a Christian.  She writes, “This week I got some feedback from a participant and leader at the recent module we did for the Persecuted church. Some of the feedback that they gave was the surprise that, in our approach to resilience and endurance in persecution, one big piece of that was their love relationship with God and their spiritual habits and how they are continually restoring themselves in that spiritual vibrancy and life... and how that habit and that formational kind of experience, it strengthens them to endure in persecution—prepares them.  Just as Jesus was preparing for the great persecution that was facing Him, these believers are prepared because they know the Father.  They spend time with Him.  If we are to be prepared for persecution and trials, we need to know the Father.  We need to spend time in prayer and in the Word. 

My favorite scene in the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is the 3rd scene.  There’s so much I love about how Mel Gibson has done this scene.  This scene depicts that third time that Jesus went away today.  He has already gone to wake up and rebuke the disciples.  In fact, that’s how this movie opens.  It shows Jesus praying and then going to the disciples.   In Scene 4, all of Jesus's prayers come straight from Scripture, specifically from the psalms.  Other than, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me, yet not My will, but Yours be done,” we don’t know what all Jesus prayed.  However, it is extremely likely that His prayers did indeed come from the Psalms.  The psalms were the Book of Common Prayer of the time.  We know that He had them memorized.  More than one scholar has described the psalms as the prayers of Christ.  At least one has said they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in you.  Many of the psalms were prophecies of Jesus’s life, particularly about His passion.  We know from His time of temptation in the wilderness that He would use Scripture to resist temptation.  The psalms cover every human emotion and situation.  Because they are the prayers of Christ for Christ in us, we can pray them too.  Even if you don’t have whole psalms memorized, familiarize yourself enough with them, so you know where to go when you face temptations.  You can make notes in your Bible.  Note whether the psalm is a prayer of praise, of thanksgiving, of confession, a plea for help, a warning, etc.  Pick some that speak to you and keep them at hand for reference.  Make praying the psalms a practice.  Pray through them regularly.  You can make it part of your Lenten discipline to pray at least one Psalm a day. 

Just like in the desert, Jesus is prayed up before the hard things happen.  The ending of the scene 4 in The Passion is my favorite part.  Jesus stomps the head of the serpent, hearkening back to the promise of Genesis 3:15 that the serpent will bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, and indeed, Jesus will be more than just a little bruised, by the serpent, but the serpent is crushed, defeated!  Jesus wins; Satan does not.  That look that Jim Caviezel gives Satan right as he stomps the serpent is a look of triumphal contempt.  His face is a flint.  He shows Jesus has fully given in to the Father’s will, and whatever comes, this look of fierce determination remains, even as his face is twisted with pain and agony, there is a resoluteness to follow through to the end without wavering, without giving up.  It’s such a great depiction of what we see in Scripture.  Jesus is strong through all these trials even as His body grows weaker.  This time of prayer in the garden with angels ministering to Him has given Him the strength and the resolve to carry on.  If we are truly committed to doing the Father’s will, we too should not hesitate to follow through on what God has clearly shown us.  The time of questioning is over.  If we don’t know the next step, we go back to God in prayer, but once we know, we are called to follow through no matter the cost, no matter how crazy it seems to us.  Like Jesus, like Mary His mother, may we be committed to doing the will of God, even when faced with the toughest decision.

Passing the Test with Flying Colors; Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 4:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-5:10

 

There are many different kinds of tests.  We test in school.  We test to get a license or a job.  Tests are used to evaluate different skills or knowledge.  Some tests to a good job with it.  Some just demonstrate that you do or don’t know how to take a test.  Tests these days are ones where we want the answers to benign, negative, insignificant, or normal.  But we also get tested by God to see if we will be obedient.  The first test was in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve failed that test.  In today’s gospel, Jesus is tested as well.  Like Adam and Eve, His love for God the Father is tested.  We read that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tested.  Marks’s gospel says the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tested. Like Adam and Eve, the devil is the agent of testing.  The Bible study group is studying Jesus’s temptation.  I am thankful to our study author, Ray Vanderlaan, for pointing out that the temptation order in Matthew’s gospel shows Jesus’s demonstration of fulfilling the Shema, our Deuteronomy passage. Jesus’s love of the Father was tested—to love God with all of his heart, soul, and strength (might).  Jesus passed this test with flying colors.

When asked, “What is the greatest commandment,” Jesus went right to the shema—to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength (and Jesus also adds mind), and to love your neighbor as yourself as the second greatest commandment.  In the Old Testament, the heart was the seat of the will, not the seat of the emotions.  The seat of emotions was the bowels.  Notice this commandment does not mention loving God with all of our bowels.  We often think of love as a feeling, but the love God desires of us is more than feelings.  In fact, feeling love isn’t even necessary.  Love is demonstrated by actions and ones life.  Love takes will—commitment.  Loving God means doing what God wants, not necessarily what you want. 

Next is to love the Lord your God with all of your soul.  Soul is often translated as life.  For sure this includes our physical life.  But it is far more than that.  Physical life is described as “spirit”--wind or breath.  Without spirit, one is not alive. When you stop breathing, you are dead, unless you start breathing again in a very short period of time.  So soul is more than physical life.  It includes identity, and all that makes you, you.  To love the Lord our God with all of our soul is to love God with our whole being.  It means that the way God sees us and defines us not only supersedes any way we would choose to identify ourselves, but replaces those ways.  We have an identity crisis in our society today.  Everyone wants the ability to self-identify, and in a free society, they should be able to.  However, it is also demanded that others accept that identity, no questions asked, even if that person chooses to change his or her identity from day to day week to week.  “Who am I” is one of the most important questions we ask as human beings.  Most humans start exploring that question on a deep level as teens or pre-teens.  We ask it when we face major life changes.  God wants to answer that question for us.  After all, God made us.  God wants us to find our identity in Christ as children of God.  It is the kind of identity that is permanent.  It doesn’t change with our life circumstances.  To love God with all of our strength or might is to love God with our actions.  We are called to do everything, even down to eating and drinking for the glory of God.  What we do with our bodies shows our love or lack of love for God.  Jesus adds “mind.”  In Greek and Roman times, the mind took on more significance.  Intellect was emphasized.  Jesus separates out mind to adjust to the culture of His day and to emphasize that we are also to love God with our thinking.  We are to love God with our thought by aligning our thinking with His thinking, to meditate on God, God’s ways, and God’s commands, to remember God and God’s word.  To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind is to love God with all that we are and with all that we’ve got. 

            How did Jesus’s tests show His complete love of God?  We see it in Jesus’s answers to the devil.  When tempted to turn stones into bread, Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3.  In the verse prior, Moses tells the people that all that testing of 40 years in the wilderness was from God, “that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”  The first part of verse 3 that Jesus didn’t quote specifically mentions the test of hunger and God giving manna to the people.

In the second test, to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus shows He loves God with all of His soul by not putting God to the test.  Jesus isn’t going to test God with preserving His physical life.   There is a difference between asking God to do things contrary to God’s nature versus asking God to confirm His word.  Though the devil also uses Scripture to tempt Jesus, he leaves out the part where God promises to preserve the lives of those who love God and call upon His name, not those who foolishly take their lives into their own hands just to make a point.  The rest of the verse that Jesus quotes back to the devil refers to the people tempting God at Massah, when they were complaining about a lack of water.  After God provides water from the rock, Moses names the place Massah and Meribah, because the people “tested the Lord saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not.”  God is not obligated to prove Himself, though God reveals Himself to us all the time.  I think about Jesus Himself after the resurrection.  He didn’t go around showing Himself to those who had criticized Him, proving to them that He was who He said He was and that they were wrong.  He went to those who were already following Him, confirming their faith and strengthening them in their discipleship. This was an identity challenge for Jesus.  Is He going to test who God says He is, the beloved Son, or not.  Jesus did not need God to prove His identity.  He knows He is the Son of God. 

The last test of getting all the kingdoms of the world tested Jesus as to whether He loved God with all of His strength.  The devil offered Jesus the easy way to get what was rightfully His, a way that required little effort from Jesus and none of the pain of His passion and crucifixion.  Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.”  This verse comes from Moses warning the people that when they get into the Promised Land and start building homes and living the good life from the all that the land easily produces, not to forget the Yahweh their God.  Moses knew the temptation would be both to claim their success as self-made and to worship the gods of the nations that surrounded them, traps into which they did eventually fall. Loving the Lord our God with all of our strength means it takes some effort.  Worship is service, that is doing things.  Jesus knew that loving the Lord with all of His might took effort.  It would take all he could humanly handle and reliance on God to uphold Him.  Philippians 2 says that because Jesus humbled Himself and was obedient even to death on the cross that He has been given the name above all names at which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, and this will also bring glory to God the Father.  As Jesus is worshipped the Father too is worshipped.   

            Notice the tools that Jesus used to overcome temptation.  He was prayed up and studied up.  These temptations come at the END of Jesus 40 days of praying and fasting in the wilderness.  So He was hungry, but He was spiritually mighty.  He has spent 40 days in communion with the Father.  He was studied up.  The fact these passages could roll so quickly and easily off Jesus’s tongue showed that He had spent time studying and memorizing God’s Word.  It was customary especially for Jewish young men to memorize the Torah.  I’m sure Jesus had the writings and prophets memorized as well.  Jesus’s own practice of spiritual disciplines serves as a model for us. 

            Jesus loved God fully and perfectly.  This was just the first testing we hear about prior to His public ministry, but all through His life, He lived in perfect love.  Next week we will look at Jesus’s biggest time of testing—His time in the Garden of Gethsemane.  This was the moment when Jesus most struggled with His will versus the Father’s will.  He knew what was coming, and He knew that this is why He had been born, and yet, He didn’t want to do it, but He remained fully committed to loving God with all of His heart, soul, strength, and mind, and what He went through, certainly took everything out of Him.  Yet He did it!  Ray Vanderlaan writes in regard to the Shema that through Israel had not been able to keep the Shema fully, “they believed that when Messiah came, He would show everyone, Israel and the nations, how to live by that creed.  And they were right!”  He couldn’t command it of us if He hadn’t done it Himself.  In loving God perfectly, Jesus also loved us perfectly.  In our epistle reading, we hear that Jesus is the superior High Priest.  He is because He can identity with us.  His temptations were part of Him learning what it is to be fully human.  He knows what it is to be weak.  Yet Jesus passed all His tests with flying colors.  Because of this, not only is He the perfect High Priest, He is the perfect sacrifice.  He doesn’t have to offer sacrifices for Himself before offering them for the people, because He was sinless. He doesn’t have to offer repeated sacrifices, because He is the perfect once for all sacrifice.  He intercedes for us still.  We can come boldly to Him expecting grace and mercy in our times of trial.  He is, as Hebrews 5:9 says, “the source of eternal salvation” for those who obey Him.  Jesus not only perfectly loved the Father, He perfectly loved us and loves us too. 

Enough Violence!; Luke 22:35-38

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Getting Set Up; Luke 22:1-13

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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Luke 3:15-22, Acts 8:4-17

Jesus commanded part of the disciple making process is to baptize in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as recorded by Matthew in what we know as the Great Commission.  Today we have two stories of baptisms that don’t use this formula—one in Acts, and Jesus’ own baptism.  Is the Trinitarian formula all that important?  We consider baptisms that don’t use the Trinitarian formula invalid, so why wasn’t it used in these two cases? 

We see in our Acts passage that in fleeing persecution, Philip went to Samaria, taking the gospel with him.  Just as Jesus said, the gospel was proclaimed in Jerusalem first, then Judea, and then in Samaria.  Philip’s evangelistic work wasn’t wrong.  Many people were coming to Christ and were being baptized.  When Peter and John are sent to check out what was going on, what they saw in the believers was a testimony to the work of Philip.  The gospel was preached and received.  But Philip’s work wasn’t complete,; he only baptized in the name of Jesus, and baptism into the name of Jesus wasn’t enough.  Did Philip not know about the Trinitarian formula?  Perhaps, if this is Philip the deacon and evangelist and not Philip the apostle, which is most likely.  And yet even Philip the evangelist was well acquainted with the baptism of the Holy Spirit for he had received it himself.  Did he think that it was only the apostles who could baptize in the Holy Spirit?  Perhaps.  But I think Philip baptized in the name of Jesus to show the people that Jesus was God, and most likely it is because the apostles needed to know that in Christ, there was no difference between Samaritan believers and Jewish background believers.  The apostles complete the work of Philip and recognize the Samaritan believers as equal brothers and sisters in Christ, breaking down hundreds of years of hostility. 

In our Luke passage, Jesus wasn’t baptized in the Trinitarian formula, and yet Jesus was baptized with Holy Spirit.  We know from historical Jewish records that John would have said something very close to the following.  He would have prayed, “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us in tevilah (immersion or dipping for ritual purification).”  And as Jesus was baptized, John might have said, ”May God, whom we call Mikveh Yisrael (the Purifier of Israel), be a source of hope and sustenance to you, now and always.”  John might have added, “As you enter the waters in peace, may you emerge as a source of peace to your family and to the Jewish people.”  And truly Jesus is the source of peace, not only to the Jewish people, but for all people. 

What John wouldn’t have said is “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  This is the way Jesus commanded us to baptize, and yet we still see that all members of the Trinity were present in Jesus’s baptism.  Jesus is obviously present.  The Holy Spirit appeared as a dove, and the Father’s voice was heard from heaven.  Note that the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus.  Jesus was empowered with the Holy Spirit to begin His public ministry.  Jesus received the power of the Holy Spirit at Baptism.  Jesus wasn’t baptized using the words of the Trinitarian formula, but this was a Trinitarian baptism.  Jesus lived continuously in the power of the Holy Spirit. He could say, “I do nothing of My own.  I only do what I see the Father doing.”  He could say, “I and My Father are One.” 

            In looking at the Greek text, the Acts passage doesn’t say, “The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive THE Holy Spirit” but just “that they might receive Holy Spirit,” implying not the person of the Holy Spirit, but the work of the Holy Spirit.  The evidence of the supernatural gifts of the Spirit were missing even though the presence of the Spirit is obvious by the faith of the believers.  What the apostle’s did in the laying on of hands was for their benefit and the benefit of the Samaritan believers to recognize who had the gifts of the Spirit needed for leadership in the church and to do the work of ministry.  It is God who gifts and equips.  It is God who ordains.  The laying on of hands makes manifest those things, just as it does today.  The presence of the apostles also demonstrated that there was no distinction in the Spirit between Samaritan and Jewish background believers.  It represented the unity in Christ. 

The Trinitarian formula is important for us today.  Baptism is directly linked to the coming of the Holy Spirit, but the order is not always the same.  In the case of Cornelius and his friends, they received the power of the HS first and were baptized with water afterwards.  True baptism is an invitation for the Holy Spirit to work in your life to the good of the church.  The Holy Spirit can work without baptism.  You do receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion.  Conversion and baptism were closely linked in the NT and still are often today.  Baptism invites the work of the spirit, not the person of the Spirit who works independently, and indeed the Holy Spirit is active in our lives well before we are aware.  For it is the Spirit Himself who enlightens our hearts to recognize Jesus Christ.  This is why we can baptize infants. 

Baptism is a seal of the Holy Spirit.  Think of a passport.  It has a seal that shows that one is a citizen of a particular country.  Baptism shows that we belong to God and God’s kingdom.  We are citizens of the kingdom of God.  We have a new nationality, if you will.  The role of the Father in baptism is to say as He did to Jesus, “This is My beloved child.  This one is mine!”

Jesus was baptized for us.  John’s baptism was the baptism to show repentance, but Jesus has nothing from which to repent.  This is why John said to Jesus, “You should be baptizing me!”    Reverend Edward Markquart points out that “Jesus was baptized not to get rid of his sins, but in order to carry our sins on the cross.  So it is with our baptism: when we are baptized, it is guaranteed that Christ carries all of our sins on the cross.”  He reminds that when the Father spoke from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased,” that God is specifically identifying Jesus for the people that Jesus is the Servant spoken of in the book of Isaiah.  For example, Isaiah 42:1—“Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold, My Chosen One in whom My soul delights.”  And from the great Servant Song of Isaiah 53:10-12:

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes[a] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life[b] and be satisfied[c];
by his knowledge[d] my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[e]
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[f]
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors. 

 

The Servant is the Sin-bearer. 

 

John the Baptist said Jesus was the One who would baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  Jesus is the One who baptizes.  The Holy Spirit is with every believer and desires to work through every believer.  Because the Holy Spirit is with us, we have immediate access to the power of the Spirit, to the comfort of the Spirit, to the wisdom of the Spirit.  But the Spirit must be invited to work in and through our lives.  As long as we want to be the ones in control, the Holy Spirit takes a back seat.  That’s why we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  It is why these believers in Acts were taught about and filled with the Spirit. 

You’ve heard how we have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts.  Blaise Pascal originated this phrase except his original word was abyss.  We have an abyss, an infinite void in our finite bodies that cannot be filled with finite things.  It can only be filled by an infinite God.  The Holy Spirit fills our void. 

We can ask the Holy Spirit, “Do what you want to do with me just as you did with Jesus and with these believers in Acts.  Empower me.  Guide me as You did Jesus.”  We can live in the same Spirit power as Jesus did and as these believers in Acts did.