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Minister's Musings
Monday, April 15, 2024
Monday, April 8, 2024
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!
Monday, April 1, 2024
Saturday, March 30, 2024
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 3rd 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 4th
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….
Sunday, March 24, 2024
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?