The following sermon was preached at an Evening service on Sunday, 8th July 2007.
When I started university, at the beginning of term, I received a list of books for each class that I would be expected to read by the end of the year. And like any new and enthusiastic young law student I headed off to the university bookshop with my list and picked up copies of all the books I would need to read. I could hardly carry them homeThe . When I got into the house I stacked the books up on a table and felt a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. The stack of books was about three feet high. I thought to myself “There’s no way you’re going to be able to read, never mind learn and remember all this by the end of the year.” The task seemed to big, so overwhelming that for a few days I couldn’t face reading them at all.
But then classes started and I had to start reading them. And bit by bit over the course of the year I did read them – or at least large parts of them – and I ended up remembering enough to pass my exams at the end of the year and progress through my course.
I learned that the key to tackling a big reading task is to do it a bit at a time and break it down into smaller, achievable targets.
In the Bible, a book as big and intimidating as the Prophecy of Isaiah can affect us the same way. Sixty-six chapters of prophecy sounds like tough going, doesn’t it? The prophet Isaiah ministered for about 50 years from the death of King Uzziah in 739 BC till the death of King Hezekiah in 686 BC and his book reflects the length and depth of his rich prophetic ministry to the people of Israel.
How will we get through it, never mind understand it. I think the same solution applies: we need to tackle it a little bit at a time.
In the three weeks we’ve got together we’re going to look at just one chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, Isaiah chapter 44, which is a very typical Isaiah chapter many ways, in that it deals with some of the themes that Isaiah touches on time and again in his prophecy, including the sin of idolatry and the redemption that God would send to his people. But this week, in the first section from verses 1 to 8, we see some important things about the relationship between God and his people, so I’ve called tonight’s service “The God of Israel.”
It has some great things to teach us about God’s love and grace and mercy towards his people, how he cares for them, and it shows us how God expects his people to treat him in return.
Isaiah chapter 44 comes in the middle of the great fourth section of Isaiah’s prophecy which runs from Isaiah chapter 40 through to chapter 55. These chapters, though I believe written several hundred years before the events, address that dark period of Israel’s history when the people of God were taken in captivity in Babylon.
We need to remember that the captivity or exile came about as God’s punishment on his people’s sin. And in that exile, the people thought that their God had abandoned them. They thought that since they had broken their covenant with God, he was no longer their God and had left them to be exiled or destroyed at the whim of the heathen rulers of the world.
The message of Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 is very much a message of hope and comfort. They proclaim that God will not abandon his people. They assure Israel, broken-hearted in exile, that God’s covenant stands forever and will never be cast aside. His great covenant promise, “I will be your God and you will be my people” which is repeated dozens of times through both the Old and New Testaments, is a promise that God will never break. Even when his people disobey and desert him, the promise stands and God acts to purify his people, destroying the wicked and blessing and prospering the faithful remnant of true Israelites. Because of His covenant, He will deliver them from captivity, free them and save them.
In these prophecies, following generations of Jews and later Christians have seen a deeper significance in these prophecies than the delivery of the Jewish nation from exile in Babylon, for beyond those events, the prophecies point towards the coming of the Messiah and God’s deliverance and salvation of his people from sin, death and punishment in hell.
I should probably just say in passing that my way of interpreting the Old Testament is very much in the tradition of what’s known as “covenant theology.” In other words, I believe that God only has one covenant people throughout history, and in the Old Testament that was the Jewish nation of Israel, and in this New Testament age God’s covenant people is the Church. I believe that the blessings and privileged position of Israel under the Old Testament have been transferred to the new Israel, God's Church composed of Jews and Gentiles together, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In prophecy this means that I would tend to see prophecies directed towards Israel as now applying to the Church rather than to the Jewish nation, or “ethnic Israel”. It’s a big subject and I don’t want to get bogged down in the arguments surrounding this. Just be aware that when I talk about Israel, I’m not meaning that Israel as a nation is now the people of God nor am I saying the prophecies apply to the Jewish nation today; they apply to God’s covenant people, the Church. They apply to us!
Okay, I think that’s enough background, so let’s have a look at this passage in Isaiah chapter 44.
You’ll notice that in verse 1, the first words are “But now...” This immediately signals a change in emphasis from what has gone before. The verses at the end of Isaiah chapter 43 are in effect a terrible curse on the people of Israel for their persistent disobedience.
The chapter ends with the Lord saying to his people in Isaiah 43:27-28:
“Your first father sinned and your mediators transgressed against me. Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling.”
This comes after God lists a catalogue of the people’s sins including their failure to worship God, neglecting the sacrifices they should have made to him, and living lives marked by iniquity rather than righteousness. For these sins, God curses his own people and gives them up to a period of shame and reviling.
It is in this light that chapter 44 begins with the words, “But now...” which signals that God is not finished with his people. Despite allowing a period of punishment to fall on them, this is not the end of his dealing with his covenant people.
These words, “But now...” come as a ray of hope into what is otherwise a very bleak picture for God’s people.
It’s just the same for us today. By nature we are in a very bleak place regarding our standing before God. By nature we are “children of wrath” as Ephesians 2:1 says. We fail to obey God as we should and instead we disobey God’s laws. Everything we do by nature is tainted by sin, for none of what we do by nature is motivated by love for God, which Christ taught of course is the greatest commandment. We completely fail by nature at keeping the greatest commandment. So this “But now...” at the beginning of our passage is just as apt for us today as it was for the people in Isaiah’s day. Paul summed up human nature like this in Romans 3:10-12:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
And in Romans 3:23 he says:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
That’s where we stand before God unless we have God’s grace and salvation in Jesus Christ. That’s our “but now...”
Isaiah’s “but now...” is just as amazing – he’s making the same point in Old Testament language. Israel, you are a nation of sinners, he’s saying. You are in a hopeless situation before God if human merit or goodness is the standard of righteousness. Yet God reveals to his people in this passage the greatness of his grace and mercy that will overcome even the hopelessness of human sinfulness!
In effect the message of this passage could be summed up like this: Don’t despair Israel, despite everything, God has chosen you and God will save you. The focus shifts from the wickedness of the people to the greatness, the glory and the grace of God, and it’s as if the sun rises over the horizon and dispels the darkness in the brilliance of its light.
You might wonder, how could God in one verse say that he was going to punish Israel and destroy them for their sins and in the next breath say he is going to bless and save Israel. That’s a very important question, and until you understand the answer to it, a lot of the Old Testament will be quite confusing. The answer is that there are really two Israels. There is Israel the nation, Israel in outward covenant with God, which included every Jew, even those who were wicked in action and faithless in God. This is the Israel that God threatens with judgment. But there is also the true Israel – the spiritual Israel composed of those who have real faith in the God of Israel. This is the Israel God promises to bless and save.
Paul describes the difference between the two Israel’s in Romans 9:6 (NIV):
“It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.”
And in Romans 9:8:
“In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”
Even in Old Testament times this Israel included a few Gentiles. In the New Testament this true Israel includes many many Gentiles as well as those Jews who accepted God’s Messiah.
Paul makes it very clear who are members of the true Israel in Galatians 3:26-29:
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
In Ephesians 2:12-13, Paul says to Gentile Christians:
“Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
And then in verse 19 he concludes: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow-citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.”
In other words, we Gentile believers are members of Israel, the true or spiritual Israel, as far as God is concerned. So what this passage says about the covenant relationship between God and Israel is absolutely true for us here today as well.
Let’s look at the different things these verses teach about God and his people.
Verse 1: “But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen!”
Notice that as so often in the Bible, the foundation, the bedrock that everything else flows from is God’s sovereign election of his people. Israel was God’s people because he chose them to be so. It is God’s sovereign choice that is the ultimate cause of our salvation. Further back than that we cannot go. God chose his people before they were born, before the world existed, and he chose them not for any reason in them, but only because of his own sovereign choice. This is the doctrine of predestination that is so unpopular among so many people today that you rarely hear it mentioned in the church, but it is the very foundation of our salvation.
All the other blessings that God goes on to list in this passage, and absolute promise that despite their disobedience and sin, God will work to save his people from their sins, stems in history from the unbreakable covenant that God formed with his people through Abraham. But behind even that, it stems from God’s sovereign decree to save his elect in Christ, which is an eternal decree made before the world was made. In eternity God decided for his own glory, to choose for himself a multitude for salvation, because he loves them.
Back in Deuteronomy chapter 7 God comes closest to explaining why he chose Israel to be his people, and the same thing could be said of why he chose those individuals who make up his new covenant people, the church of Christ. This is Deuteronomy 7:6-8 (with Moses addressing the people of Israel):
“For you are a people holy [or set apart] to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the people who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all the peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and has redeemed you...”
You know there’s times when logical thought has to give way to theological thought! And this is one of them. In effect Moses is saying the reason the Lord saved you was because he loves you, and the reason the Lord set his love upon you is...because he loves you. He loves you “just because he does.”
To look further back that God’s eternal love for his people is absurd – he loved us from the first of time, he loves us to the last. And it is from that eternal, unbreakable, constant, stedfast love that God’s choice of his people comes and every other blessing to us flows. As Paul said in Romans 8, “nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
So verse 1 emphasises that God covenant people are a chosen people.
Verse 2 then goes on to explain that they are a specially created people: “Thus says the LORD who made you, who formed you form the womb...”
Of course God is the creator of the whole world and the creator of every person in the world. But I don’t think that’s really what God’s saying here. He’s not referring here to our creation as human beings, but our creation as a distinct people of God, a holy nation, created to serve and worship God. How amazing is it to think that God made us, designed us to be the people are, formed us from when we were embryos in the womb to be the people we are and to fit into his covenant community to play a part that only we were designed to play! We really are formed by God to be people who will glorify and enjoy him forever.
The picture here is of God’s great skill in creating his people and his great care from the womb onwards to bring them to maturity to be his and to serve him. Now although we might think we’re all grown up, in God’s eyes we’re not. In this life, we’re rather like little toddlers to God – absolutely dependent on him for everything, learning all the time and getting plenty of things wrong, occasionally cute, but mostly causing a stink and a mess. He knows what we are. But he also knows that by the time we reach heaven, we will become the people he always intended us to be, and there we can really start living life to the full.
The fact that God has chosen and specially created his people with the utmost care leads to great words of comfort from God: “Fear not,” he says. “Don’t be afraid of me. You have nothing to fear,” God assures his people. After all you are my chosen ones, my special creation, my treasures.
In verses 3 and 4 God goes on to point out that not only is Israel chosen and formed by God, but his people are also specially cared for and blessed by God.
God’s really saying to them, “Look, despite what has gone wrong in the past, the future is bright for you, Israel. You’re my chosen ones, and I’m not going to go on cursing you, I’m going to bless you abundantly. I’m going to save you.”
The image of life giving water being poured out on dry ground would have been especially poignant to the people of Israel living in the dry, hot climate of the Middle East. Notice that again it is God’s unilateral action that is stressed: he will bless the people, he will pour out his spirit on them and on their descendants. He will pour refreshing, life giving water on the dry ground, which I’m sure should be taken both literally and metaphorically – that God will look after the material needs of his people, but also their spiritual needs. The symbol of water, of course, often has a spiritual symbolism to do with giving life, the Spirit of God and cleansing from sin.
In effect God is promising that his people will always survive and indeed thrive from the overflow of blessings he will pour out on them. His people “shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams.” They will be strong with deep roots drawing on God’s gracious blessings.
This verse is reminiscent of Psalm 1:
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked...his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”
And people like that, God’s faithful people who respond to all he offers them with trust and faithful, thankful obedience will thrive. Verse 5 describes what they are like. In one word it could be described as “loyal” or “faithful” or “true” or “committed.” God.
“This one will say, I am the LORD’s, another will call on the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, “THE LORD’S” and name himself by the name of Israel.”
These outward signs of loyalty and commitment symbolise a strong inner faith and trust in the LORD.
That’s the kind of people God wants and that’s the kind of people God is gradually turning us into if we are on the path of faith with him. So we will trust him more, rely on him more, love him more and obey him more as we grow and mature as Christians.
In verses 6 and 7, God again reveals so much about himself to us. First of all, he is the LORD, and we need to remember that when we see that name printed in our English Bibles, it’s really a translation of God’s special, personal, covenant name, Yahweh, or Jehovah as it used to be known. And in that name is summed up so much of God greatness and character, and most of all that stedfast, constant love for his covenant people. That’s the God we worship, the God who speaks to us in Scripture, the God who sent his Son to be our Saviour. Not some impersonal spirit or cosmic force, but a personal God with a personal name. And this God, Yahweh, is according to verse six, the true King of Israel and Israel’s Redeemer. He is the leader, the potentate, the sovereign king, the shepherd of his people. And he is the one who saves them by redemption, by paying the price to set them free. That price was nothing less than his own blood, because the Lord Jesus Christ is Yahweh, Israel’s King and Redeemer incarnate, made flesh for our salvation.
Then in verse 7, we see our God described as the LORD of hosts, which is a title meaning that he is the Lord of the heavenly hosts – the supreme commander of all the angelic armies and cosmic powers. The poet Milton described God commanding the angels in these memorable words:
“Thousands at his bidding speed, and post o’er land and ocean without rest. They also serve, who only stand and wait.”
The forces that can assemble at his command make all the armies and navies and air forces that ever existed in this world seem like a drop in a bucket. Limitless power, directly by limitless love – that describes in a nutshell the LORD of hosts that we worship and serve.
He is also the eternal one according to verse 7: “I am the first and the last...” Outside the realm of time, he is the ever living God. His very name proclaims it: Yahweh means “I AM THAT I AM” – he is always in the present tense – I AM – “forever I existed, forever I will existed, forever I will be me” He is always “I AM.”
And after all these wonderful and unique attributes of God, the Lord concludes by saying, and “besides me there is no god” as if to hammer the point home. Only God is god and only God deserves to be recognised as God. Whenever we get that wrong, we are guilty of idolatry – but we’ll be looking at idolatry in more detail next week so I won’t say more about that now.
Finally in verse 8, God repeats his words of comfort, “Fear not, nor be afraid!” And the reason he gives this time is because he is the sovereign God in control of everything that happens in this, his world and his universe. The fact that he knows the future and can foretell what is going to happen before it takes place is the proof he brings forward to show that he is in sovereign control: “Have I not told you from of old and declared it?” he asks. Of course the reason God can foretell the future is because God has already ordained what will happen throughout time.
“Is there a God besides me?” he asks.
That’s a question for each of us to ponder. For you, for me, “Is there a God for us besides this glorious God who reveals himself in the pages of Scripture?” Is this your God? Or does your god not fit into this picture. Is your god remote, or powerless? Or maybe you struggle to believe there even is a god? Or do you believe in God, but can’t accept he chooses who is saved and who isn’t? Or maybe can’t you accept that he really is in control of the universe and not us or blind fate?
Well there’s good news. This God that Isaiah presents to us, is a God of grace, slow to anger and quick to forgive, a God who will show mercy even to the chief of sinners, when they come to him in repentance and faith. This God is calling you to turn from your sins, to turn from your past and come to him and embrace the future he wants you to have – a future of blessing and salvation.
Our passage ends with the words: “There is no Rock; I know not any.” And very much implied in those words is a silent “except the LORD”. The kind of rock that is meant here is huge – like Ayer’s Rock in Australia, or Castle Rock in Edinburgh – a high place where enemies cannot reach and where those taking refuge can live in safety.
That’s the kind of Rock our God is. Not a pebble, nor a boulder, but a mountain. For he is the Rock, the Rock his people can trust and rely on, the one they can cling to when all else fails, the Rock that no enemy can conquer, a Rock that can never be broken or defeated, the one who never moves or changes, the one fixed landmark in an ever changing world, from which all other bearings are marked.
David wrote in Psalm 18:
“I love you, O Yahweh, my strength. Yahweh is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from all my enemies.”
May each of us know God like that in our lives, this night and for evermore. Amen.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
The Importance of Evangelism
The following is an editorial from our Church's parish magazine.
The richness of our Christian heritage is second to none. We have the history of Christianity in Scotland, the wealth of Reformed theology, the triumph of Presbyterianism over its enemies in spiritual and physical battles of centuries long past. For more than fifteen hundred years Christianity has been at the heart of European civilisation. In these circumstances, it’s so easy to think that the church is just something that will always be around, something that’s just so much part of the British way of life, that it’s impossible to imagine the world without it. We take the presence of churches in every parish in the land for granted. And in saying this I don’t judge anyone else – I’m confessing my own thoughts. Our land is soaked in Christian history and influence. "How could it ever be otherwise?" I say to myself.
The trouble is that it’s not the case that the church will just always be around. It’s a very dangerous assumption to just think the Church will always be there. The truth is that living Christianity in our parish, in our city, or even in our country, is not a fortress with all the impenetrable defences of faith and truth to defend it for all time. No, the truth is that real Christianity hangs by a thread, and it must be carefully passed down from generation to generation, otherwise the thread can break and the church can die out. Think about it. The church only exists now because at some point in our lives we started going to it. Just as surely, it can only survive us if by the time we leave this life we have passed on the torch to those who are now young people, or children or even those not yet born, so they can come to know God through our Jesus Christ for themselves. Otherwise, at some point in the future, there will simply be no Christian presence in our land anymore.
Let’s be clear what I’m saying here and what I’m not saying. Of course in one sense the Church will always exist. In one sense it is a fortress of truth and faith that can never been destroyed. We have God’s Word for that. Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
But that promise doesn’t necessarily mean the church will always exist in our parish, in Glasgow or even in Scotland. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the church as we know it or anything remotely like it will continue to exist.
It’s nothing new. Look at the churches mentioned in the New Testament – the churches Christ himself addresses in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 for example. None of them survives today. Christ warned them to change their ways or else he said he would “come and remove your lampstand from its place” (Rev. 2:5). In other words, Christ threatened that he could take away the life of a church that departs from his way. We need only look around our church on a Sunday to see that there are far fewer people there than there were even a decade ago. In another decade, how many faces will there be? Can the decline go on forever?
It is really only by God’s grace that the church has survived, its living faith being passed on in an unbroken thread from the apostles down to the those new Christians who only came to faith somewhere in the world in the last few seconds. It’s only because those we look up to in our Christian heritage – the early church fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Victorian missionaries and many other faithful saints – believed the gospel and loved God so much that they were willing to do whatever it takes to confess the gospel, live the gospel and spread the gospel in their time, that there are any Christians in Scotland and many other countries around the world today.
If we are going to really be Protestants, and claim people like Knox, Rutherford, Boston, McCheyne or Livingstone as our Christian forefathers, we need to be confessing the gospel, living the gospel and spreading the gospel in our day and age. We need to be faithful to the truth, zealous for God’s glory and filled with compassion for those who are living and dying without Christ.
Can we make anyone become a Christian? No, we certainly cannot. God is in sovereign control of who is saved and who isn’t saved. Acts 13:48 says of the New Testament Church that only “as many as were ordained [by God] to eternal life believed.”
The Bible teaches us that by nature the whole human race is so bad that no one can be persuaded to become a Christian purely by human means, no matter how beautiful the preaching, no matter how slick the campaign, no matter how loving the fellowship: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God,” Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-11. The prophet Jeremiah said that man’s heart by nature is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9)
It takes a divine act to give new birth to a dead sinner before a person can even have faith in Christ. This was why Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” (John 3:7). And why Paul said that saving faith was a gift from God, not something generated naturally within the heart of men and women (see Ephesians 2:8-9).
But at the same time, God commands us to preach the gospel to everyone, precisely because he can bring even spiritually dead, God-hating sinners to salvation by the power of his Word. He commands everyone who hears the gospel to come to him, to accept his offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, promising that everyone who believes in Christ shall be saved. The Lord gave the Word, but it is our duty to take that word out to the world around us, to let them hear it, for “faith comes from hearing...the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17).
Will we do it? Will generations to come look back at us and say: “What great Christians those people at the turn of the millennium were! Look what God did for Scotland through them!”
Or by then will people in Scotland not even know what a Christian was?
The richness of our Christian heritage is second to none. We have the history of Christianity in Scotland, the wealth of Reformed theology, the triumph of Presbyterianism over its enemies in spiritual and physical battles of centuries long past. For more than fifteen hundred years Christianity has been at the heart of European civilisation. In these circumstances, it’s so easy to think that the church is just something that will always be around, something that’s just so much part of the British way of life, that it’s impossible to imagine the world without it. We take the presence of churches in every parish in the land for granted. And in saying this I don’t judge anyone else – I’m confessing my own thoughts. Our land is soaked in Christian history and influence. "How could it ever be otherwise?" I say to myself.
The trouble is that it’s not the case that the church will just always be around. It’s a very dangerous assumption to just think the Church will always be there. The truth is that living Christianity in our parish, in our city, or even in our country, is not a fortress with all the impenetrable defences of faith and truth to defend it for all time. No, the truth is that real Christianity hangs by a thread, and it must be carefully passed down from generation to generation, otherwise the thread can break and the church can die out. Think about it. The church only exists now because at some point in our lives we started going to it. Just as surely, it can only survive us if by the time we leave this life we have passed on the torch to those who are now young people, or children or even those not yet born, so they can come to know God through our Jesus Christ for themselves. Otherwise, at some point in the future, there will simply be no Christian presence in our land anymore.
Let’s be clear what I’m saying here and what I’m not saying. Of course in one sense the Church will always exist. In one sense it is a fortress of truth and faith that can never been destroyed. We have God’s Word for that. Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
But that promise doesn’t necessarily mean the church will always exist in our parish, in Glasgow or even in Scotland. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the church as we know it or anything remotely like it will continue to exist.
It’s nothing new. Look at the churches mentioned in the New Testament – the churches Christ himself addresses in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 for example. None of them survives today. Christ warned them to change their ways or else he said he would “come and remove your lampstand from its place” (Rev. 2:5). In other words, Christ threatened that he could take away the life of a church that departs from his way. We need only look around our church on a Sunday to see that there are far fewer people there than there were even a decade ago. In another decade, how many faces will there be? Can the decline go on forever?
It is really only by God’s grace that the church has survived, its living faith being passed on in an unbroken thread from the apostles down to the those new Christians who only came to faith somewhere in the world in the last few seconds. It’s only because those we look up to in our Christian heritage – the early church fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Victorian missionaries and many other faithful saints – believed the gospel and loved God so much that they were willing to do whatever it takes to confess the gospel, live the gospel and spread the gospel in their time, that there are any Christians in Scotland and many other countries around the world today.
If we are going to really be Protestants, and claim people like Knox, Rutherford, Boston, McCheyne or Livingstone as our Christian forefathers, we need to be confessing the gospel, living the gospel and spreading the gospel in our day and age. We need to be faithful to the truth, zealous for God’s glory and filled with compassion for those who are living and dying without Christ.
Can we make anyone become a Christian? No, we certainly cannot. God is in sovereign control of who is saved and who isn’t saved. Acts 13:48 says of the New Testament Church that only “as many as were ordained [by God] to eternal life believed.”
The Bible teaches us that by nature the whole human race is so bad that no one can be persuaded to become a Christian purely by human means, no matter how beautiful the preaching, no matter how slick the campaign, no matter how loving the fellowship: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God,” Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-11. The prophet Jeremiah said that man’s heart by nature is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9)
It takes a divine act to give new birth to a dead sinner before a person can even have faith in Christ. This was why Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” (John 3:7). And why Paul said that saving faith was a gift from God, not something generated naturally within the heart of men and women (see Ephesians 2:8-9).
But at the same time, God commands us to preach the gospel to everyone, precisely because he can bring even spiritually dead, God-hating sinners to salvation by the power of his Word. He commands everyone who hears the gospel to come to him, to accept his offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, promising that everyone who believes in Christ shall be saved. The Lord gave the Word, but it is our duty to take that word out to the world around us, to let them hear it, for “faith comes from hearing...the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17).
Will we do it? Will generations to come look back at us and say: “What great Christians those people at the turn of the millennium were! Look what God did for Scotland through them!”
Or by then will people in Scotland not even know what a Christian was?
Thursday, 12 April 2007
He is with us
The following is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007.
The Scripture reading was Luke 24:13-35.
One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by the American poet, Robert Frost. It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Our reading in Luke 24 is about another journey on a road that made all the difference. Certainly it made all the difference to the two disciples who met Jesus on that road, and I believe it can make all the difference to us in our lives too.
It would be good if you have your bibles open at our passage to follow what I’m saying.
The title of our service tonight is “He is with us.” Now that might seem a rather strange title to some of us. “He is with us? Where is he then?” someone might be thinking. Tonight, we’ll see four ways in which Christ is with us here today.
At the beginning of the reading, in verse 13, two of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas and one who is un-named – are walking from Jerusalem on seven mile journey to a village called Emmaus. This happened on the first Easter Sunday, the same day as the disciples discovered the empty tomb and heard that Jesus was risen, early on in the morning. From the passage we get a few clues that this journey may be taking place in the late afternoon, but we don’t know the exact time. We can’t be sure why they are making this journey either, though the most likely explanation is that they are probably on their way home to the village where they live. And this is the scene for a truly amazing meeting with Jesus after his resurrection. This is the first time in Luke’s gospel that the risen Jesus actually appears in person to any of his followers.
Like most people when they’re out walking, the two mean are chatting to each other. And then a stranger approaches them, presumably from behind, walking in the same direction as the two men are heading, and he joins them on the journey.
Much has been made of the fact that the two disciples don’t recognise who Jesus is when he starts walking and talking with them. All kinds of explanations have been offered for this: Jesus had the hood of his cloak up and they couldn’t see his face; the low afternoon sun was in the disciples’ eyes and they couldn’t see Jesus’ face in shadow properly. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. It is a mystery. But it would seem that after the resurrection, Christ’s physical appearance could alter, so that his features were not recognised at times, even by those who knew him very well. Before the resurrection Christ just looked outwardly like an ordinary man; indeed, he was an ordinary man. After the resurrection he is revealed as the majestic Son of God, risen and triumphant, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in all his glory. And it seems to me that his outward appearance after the resurrection was capable of displaying his glory.
Something similar happened at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, where Christ’s glory as God the Son is briefly revealed. Luke 9:29 says of Christ at the transfiguration, “While he was praying his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white.”
Once Jesus meets with the disciples on the road, a wonderful transformation takes place in these men’s lives, as in turn the disciples talk with Jesus about what's been happening, then Jesus talks with the disciples about what the Scriptures say about himself as God’s Messiah, and finally the disciples and the risen Jesus share in the fellowship of a meal, during which they finally recognise who he is when he breaks bread with them. Jesus then leaves them as suddenly as he came, but with their lives forever changed.
When Jesus first came to them, these men were filled with sadness. Verse 17 says, “They stood still, with sad faces.” The word translated “sad faces” is found only here in the whole New Testament. It means “looking sad”, “gloomy faced”. These men had been devastated by what’s happened. They’ve seen not only their teacher and friend murdered in the most barbaric way possible, but they’ve also seen their hopes and dreams dashed as the one they thought was going to “redeem Israel” or “set Israel free” (verse 21) from the Romans, apparently fail in his mission and leave his followers disorganised, disappointed and despondent.
By the end of this passage the two men are energised with the fire of God’s Word burning inside them, with the joy of knowing that “The Lord is risen indeed!” and with a new-found zeal that took them out of their village in the middle of the night, back on the road to Jerusalem, so they can tell the others the truth about the resurrection without any delay.
How come? What changed these men? Well, it was meeting the risen Lord Jesus Christ and spending time with him that day that made the difference. But what about us?
Well there’s one way we don’t have Jesus with us in the same way as the two disciples had him with them. On the Emmaus road they had the risen Jesus with them in body. He was right there with them physically. Never forget that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the rising to life of his physical body, not just his spirit. The tomb was empty – the body was gone – and the risen Christ is not a spirit, he is flesh and blood. He still bears the marks of the nails on his hands. He ate meals with many of those he met after he rose from the dead. Spirits can’t eat food.
Forty days after the resurrection, the Bible tells us that Christ ascended into heaven. So his body is no longer on the earth. We no longer see him. We no longer have Christ with us in that sense – with us physically I mean.
Perhaps that’s something we regret about living in this period in history: we don’t get to be with Christ physically, to see him face-to-face. Perhaps it’s one of the many things we look forward to heaven for – that then we will finally get to stand face-to-face with our Saviour and look into his eyes? Probably with tears of thankfulness in our eyes. But there’s two things we should remember if we think we’re in a more impoverished position now compared with the people who we read about in Scripture who actually saw Jesus and spent time with him. First, remember that it was quite possible to have Jesus with you physically and yet not see who he was. Not only was this true of the two disciples for most of the time Jesus was actually with them in the passage, it was true of many if not most of the people Jesus spent time with during his life. The Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, the chief priests, whole towns and villages failed to recognise who he was even though he was with them physically. So just being with him face-to-face doesn’t guarantee that anyone would believe in him or accept him as Lord. The second reason we shouldn’t feel automatically impoverished because we don’t have Jesus with us in body is because of what Jesus himself said. When the risen Jesus met with Thomas in John chapter 20, he says to him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
There is a blessing from Christ himself on all those who believe in him without having seen him in the flesh, a special blessing for people like us.
Now, even though there is this difference between us and the circumstances of the two disciples, there are three ways in which Christ is with us in ways that are like the ways he was with the disciples in our passage. Let’s look at these three ways because they are each vital to our lives as Christians. Based on this passage I would say that Christ is with us as we speak with him in prayer, he is with us as we read the Bible, and he is with us as we have communion with him and fellowship with each other as his people, the church.
In the first section of the passage from verse 13 to verse 24 we have a conversation between the disciples and Christ, with the disciples doing most of the talking, telling him about what had been happening in Jerusalem. In the passage Jesus shows that he’s interested in what his disciples think and in hearing what they have to say; he’s interested in what makes them sad, or worries them, and what makes them tick; he’s interested in knowing the things that they don’t yet understand about him or the Christian faith. The disciples on the Emmaus road talked to Jesus about all these things and Jesus took the time to listen to everything they had to say, even though he already knew the whole story they were telling him. He took the time to listen to them – he didn’t jump in right away and reveal who he was.
I think Jesus is still the same today. We don’t speak with him face-to-face, but we do speak to him when we pray. For us, when we pray, we can address any of the three persons in the Trinity – probably mostly the Father, but sometimes the Son, Jesus, and sometimes the Holy Spirit – but all three hear our prayers.
And I believe Jesus is with us when we pray. He’s still interested in what’s on our minds, how we’re feeling, what’s happening in our lives, what’s worrying us, what’s bugging us, what we’re happy about, what we understand about him and what we don’t understand yet. So often we tend to think of prayer as being about asking God for things. And of course that is an important part of prayer, as is praising God, confessing our sins, and giving God thanks for what he’s done for us. But I believe prayer is even more than this. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, a relationship of communication between us and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in this sense that we can and should “pray without ceasing” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. As we pray, sharing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, sharing our lives with God as we would with our closest friends, completely openly and honestly, not only does God delight to hear us as his children, but I think it is very good for us to get things off our chests, not keeping anything bottled up inside us. Even things we can say to no-one else, we can always say to him.
And when we do that, Christ is certainly with us, just as surely as he listened carefully and patiently to Cleopas on the Emmaus road.
The second way Christ is with us is in the words of Scripture. In the passage, once Jesus hears everything Cleopas has to say, he then leads both disciples to consider what the Scriptures say about the Messiah: not only that he would suffer but also that he would then enter into his glory. In other words, he’s starting to prepare them for the fact that not only was the Messiah to die, but he was also to rise again. Verse 27 says:
“Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.”
So Jesus went through the Old Testament (remember this was before the New Testament was written) and explained to the disciples what the Bible is all about: it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the theme of the Bible, the hero of the Bible, and he is in every part of the Bible. Indirectly or directly, it’s all about him. We don’t know exactly what passages Christ focused on as he explained the Bible to the two disciples. Maybe he went right back to the first chapter of Genesis and explained how it was by the Word – by Christ himself who is the Word of God – that the heavens and earth were made. Maybe he took them to Genesis 3:15 to show how even from the time Adam and Eve sinned, God had promised to send the Messiah, the Seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s head. Maybe he explained to them how the system of sacrifices laid down in Leviticus were symbols and types of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Maybe he explained to them how King David stands as a type of the Messiah’s kingship over his people. Maybe he explained to them the prophets who foretold where Jesus would be born, what his kingship would be like, and even how he would suffer and die for his people (as described in Isaiah chapter 53 for example). It doesn’t matter what passages Christ focused on, or whether he spoke more generally, not even looking at specific passages, because Christ is in all the Scriptures. They are all about him, in one way or another.
He is the great theme of Scripture and he is the key for correctly understanding Scripture. It’s probably not going too far to say that you won’t go too far wrong in interpreting the Bible if you remember this simple fact: Christ is in all the Scriptures.
This has tremendous implications for us and for what we believe. To give just one example – you sometimes hear people painting a false picture of Jesus as this lovey-dovey, rather effeminate, do-gooder, who is so easy going that you can treat him any way you like, and live any way you like because he approves of everything and can’t do anything but love everyone. But Christ is in all the Scriptures. In the Old Testament he often appeared as the angel of the Lord – the same Lord who went through Egypt on the night of the Passover killing the firstborn of the Egyptians, the same Lord who stood shoulder to shoulder with the three men in the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, the same Lord who went into battle for Israel and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night in 2 Kings chapter 19.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (John 8:58). And so if our view of Jesus is radically different from the God of the Old Testament, we know we’ve got it wrong, because Christ is in all the Scriptures.
The Scriptures are all about Jesus, so it follows that whenever we read the Scriptures, whether at our services, or at our Bible study, or at home on our own, so long as we read them with a genuine desire to learn about God and learn from God, He is with us as we read.
Of course it is possible to read the Scriptures in the wrong way. It is possible to read them while sitting in judgment on them, accepting or rejecting them as we go. If we read the Bible that way, we will still read about Jesus but he will not be with us as we read.
But if we read the Scriptures in faith, looking for Christ, and accepting that what we read is not the word of man but God’s Word, then Christ will be with us and, like the disciples on the Emmaus road, reading them will be like a fire that burns within us, refining us and purifying us, energising us to live for him, and warming our hearts as we think on God’s love and grace shown towards us.
The third way in which the passage shows Christ is with us, is when we are in fellowship with other believers. In the passage Christ is with the two disciples when he goes into the house and eats a meal with them. And it’s interesting that it was when he broke the bread that the disciples then recognised him for who he really was. We don’t exactly know why this was the case. Various commentators speculate on this. Was it because as he broke the bread they could see the nail marks in his hands for the first time? Was it the way he broke the bread that reminded them of the way he did it before? Was it his tone of voice as he said the blessing or the words he used? We can’t be sure if it was any of these or something else, or if it was because the supernatural change in Christ’s appearance was lifted and they could now recognise him. Yet the fact is that it wasn’t as they spoke to him, or as he explained to them about the Scriptures, but in the simple act of sharing in the fellowship of a meal that the disciples recognised him.
What does that mean for us today? It’s tempting to see this breaking of the bread in terms of the Lord’s Supper, holy communion. Certainly I think that’s partly what we can draw from this passage. Christ is with us as we share in the Lord’ Supper. Of course this doesn’t mean the bread and wine at communion turn into Christ’s body and blood, the blasphemy that Roman Catholicism teaches. But in a spiritual sense, Christ is with us as we eat and drink the bread and wine at communion. In a special way, at the same time as we physically eat the bread and drink the wine, looking to Christ in faith, we feed on him spiritually, nourishing our souls as we consider the new covenant sealed with his blood, as his body was broken for us on the cross.
But I don’t think that’s all this passage means. I don’t think we should restrict Christ’s presence being with us when we gather to celebrate communion. After all, there’s nothing in the passage that says the meal the disciples shared with Jesus was the sacrament of communion. It was just an ordinary meal two hungry travellers might have at the end of any day.
No, I think this passage teaches us that Christ is with us every time we come together for fellowship. This is of course what Jesus himself said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.” And here we see that happening. When we come together in his name – as his people gathering together – he is with us. It doesn’t matter whether that’s for a service of worship like this, or in our Bible and prayer meeting, or for the Kirk Session or Congregational Board, or for a social event. When we gather for Christian fellowship, Christ is with us in the midst.
What a great privilege and responsibility that is! But what about when we’re not gathered together. What about when we all go our different ways? What about when we aren’t reading our Bibles, or spending time with God in prayer? Are we on our own then? Is Christ not with us then?
Well there’s a way that Christ is with us that’s not mentioned in our passage. There’s a way in which we are in a better position than the disciples in the passage. Although they spent time in the physical presence of Christ and although he stayed with them for a while that day, at the end of the day they were left by themselves. Just after they recognised who he was, verse 31 says, “He disappeared from their sight.” He left them at the end of his time with them.
We’re in a better position than this. Christ is with us all the time through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, living inside us. This is what Paul says in Romans 8:9-11, writing to Christians:
“But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to – if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.”
We must remember that the events in our passage took place before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, which was fifty days after Easter day. The disciples on the Emmaus road met the risen Jesus, but we who live not only after that first Easter but after Pentecost actually have the spirit of the risen Jesus living inside us, not for a few hours, or a day, but with us forever. That’s what Jesus promised just before he ascended into heaven, in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said.
This is what Jesus also promised us in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
He was with the disciples during that wonderful day; he is with us all the time during all our days. This is the truth for every Christian believer. He is with us.
He is with his people as they pray, as they read the Bible, as they have communion with him and with each other. But the question everyone has to think about sooner or later in their lives is this: Am I with him? In other words, have I really met with the risen Jesus and decided to follow him?
Yes, he’s with his people in all these wonderful ways, but are you one of his people? We need to ask ourselves, “Have I believed in him? Have I trusted in him and committed my life to him, accepting him as my Saviour and Lord?”
If you have, then he is with you in everything you do. If you haven’t yet trusted in him and accepted him, then he is calling you to himself tonight, with the promise that he will never turn away anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved,” as Romans 10:13 says.
John 3:18 says: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
There is a choice before each one of us tonight. It is to travel on life’s road with Christ as our companion, our guide, our Saviour and our Lord, or to travel on life’s road without him. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.”
The Scripture reading was Luke 24:13-35.
One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by the American poet, Robert Frost. It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Our reading in Luke 24 is about another journey on a road that made all the difference. Certainly it made all the difference to the two disciples who met Jesus on that road, and I believe it can make all the difference to us in our lives too.
It would be good if you have your bibles open at our passage to follow what I’m saying.
The title of our service tonight is “He is with us.” Now that might seem a rather strange title to some of us. “He is with us? Where is he then?” someone might be thinking. Tonight, we’ll see four ways in which Christ is with us here today.
At the beginning of the reading, in verse 13, two of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas and one who is un-named – are walking from Jerusalem on seven mile journey to a village called Emmaus. This happened on the first Easter Sunday, the same day as the disciples discovered the empty tomb and heard that Jesus was risen, early on in the morning. From the passage we get a few clues that this journey may be taking place in the late afternoon, but we don’t know the exact time. We can’t be sure why they are making this journey either, though the most likely explanation is that they are probably on their way home to the village where they live. And this is the scene for a truly amazing meeting with Jesus after his resurrection. This is the first time in Luke’s gospel that the risen Jesus actually appears in person to any of his followers.
Like most people when they’re out walking, the two mean are chatting to each other. And then a stranger approaches them, presumably from behind, walking in the same direction as the two men are heading, and he joins them on the journey.
Much has been made of the fact that the two disciples don’t recognise who Jesus is when he starts walking and talking with them. All kinds of explanations have been offered for this: Jesus had the hood of his cloak up and they couldn’t see his face; the low afternoon sun was in the disciples’ eyes and they couldn’t see Jesus’ face in shadow properly. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. It is a mystery. But it would seem that after the resurrection, Christ’s physical appearance could alter, so that his features were not recognised at times, even by those who knew him very well. Before the resurrection Christ just looked outwardly like an ordinary man; indeed, he was an ordinary man. After the resurrection he is revealed as the majestic Son of God, risen and triumphant, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in all his glory. And it seems to me that his outward appearance after the resurrection was capable of displaying his glory.
Something similar happened at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, where Christ’s glory as God the Son is briefly revealed. Luke 9:29 says of Christ at the transfiguration, “While he was praying his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white.”
Once Jesus meets with the disciples on the road, a wonderful transformation takes place in these men’s lives, as in turn the disciples talk with Jesus about what's been happening, then Jesus talks with the disciples about what the Scriptures say about himself as God’s Messiah, and finally the disciples and the risen Jesus share in the fellowship of a meal, during which they finally recognise who he is when he breaks bread with them. Jesus then leaves them as suddenly as he came, but with their lives forever changed.
When Jesus first came to them, these men were filled with sadness. Verse 17 says, “They stood still, with sad faces.” The word translated “sad faces” is found only here in the whole New Testament. It means “looking sad”, “gloomy faced”. These men had been devastated by what’s happened. They’ve seen not only their teacher and friend murdered in the most barbaric way possible, but they’ve also seen their hopes and dreams dashed as the one they thought was going to “redeem Israel” or “set Israel free” (verse 21) from the Romans, apparently fail in his mission and leave his followers disorganised, disappointed and despondent.
By the end of this passage the two men are energised with the fire of God’s Word burning inside them, with the joy of knowing that “The Lord is risen indeed!” and with a new-found zeal that took them out of their village in the middle of the night, back on the road to Jerusalem, so they can tell the others the truth about the resurrection without any delay.
How come? What changed these men? Well, it was meeting the risen Lord Jesus Christ and spending time with him that day that made the difference. But what about us?
Well there’s one way we don’t have Jesus with us in the same way as the two disciples had him with them. On the Emmaus road they had the risen Jesus with them in body. He was right there with them physically. Never forget that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the rising to life of his physical body, not just his spirit. The tomb was empty – the body was gone – and the risen Christ is not a spirit, he is flesh and blood. He still bears the marks of the nails on his hands. He ate meals with many of those he met after he rose from the dead. Spirits can’t eat food.
Forty days after the resurrection, the Bible tells us that Christ ascended into heaven. So his body is no longer on the earth. We no longer see him. We no longer have Christ with us in that sense – with us physically I mean.
Perhaps that’s something we regret about living in this period in history: we don’t get to be with Christ physically, to see him face-to-face. Perhaps it’s one of the many things we look forward to heaven for – that then we will finally get to stand face-to-face with our Saviour and look into his eyes? Probably with tears of thankfulness in our eyes. But there’s two things we should remember if we think we’re in a more impoverished position now compared with the people who we read about in Scripture who actually saw Jesus and spent time with him. First, remember that it was quite possible to have Jesus with you physically and yet not see who he was. Not only was this true of the two disciples for most of the time Jesus was actually with them in the passage, it was true of many if not most of the people Jesus spent time with during his life. The Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, the chief priests, whole towns and villages failed to recognise who he was even though he was with them physically. So just being with him face-to-face doesn’t guarantee that anyone would believe in him or accept him as Lord. The second reason we shouldn’t feel automatically impoverished because we don’t have Jesus with us in body is because of what Jesus himself said. When the risen Jesus met with Thomas in John chapter 20, he says to him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
There is a blessing from Christ himself on all those who believe in him without having seen him in the flesh, a special blessing for people like us.
Now, even though there is this difference between us and the circumstances of the two disciples, there are three ways in which Christ is with us in ways that are like the ways he was with the disciples in our passage. Let’s look at these three ways because they are each vital to our lives as Christians. Based on this passage I would say that Christ is with us as we speak with him in prayer, he is with us as we read the Bible, and he is with us as we have communion with him and fellowship with each other as his people, the church.
In the first section of the passage from verse 13 to verse 24 we have a conversation between the disciples and Christ, with the disciples doing most of the talking, telling him about what had been happening in Jerusalem. In the passage Jesus shows that he’s interested in what his disciples think and in hearing what they have to say; he’s interested in what makes them sad, or worries them, and what makes them tick; he’s interested in knowing the things that they don’t yet understand about him or the Christian faith. The disciples on the Emmaus road talked to Jesus about all these things and Jesus took the time to listen to everything they had to say, even though he already knew the whole story they were telling him. He took the time to listen to them – he didn’t jump in right away and reveal who he was.
I think Jesus is still the same today. We don’t speak with him face-to-face, but we do speak to him when we pray. For us, when we pray, we can address any of the three persons in the Trinity – probably mostly the Father, but sometimes the Son, Jesus, and sometimes the Holy Spirit – but all three hear our prayers.
And I believe Jesus is with us when we pray. He’s still interested in what’s on our minds, how we’re feeling, what’s happening in our lives, what’s worrying us, what’s bugging us, what we’re happy about, what we understand about him and what we don’t understand yet. So often we tend to think of prayer as being about asking God for things. And of course that is an important part of prayer, as is praising God, confessing our sins, and giving God thanks for what he’s done for us. But I believe prayer is even more than this. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, a relationship of communication between us and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in this sense that we can and should “pray without ceasing” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. As we pray, sharing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, sharing our lives with God as we would with our closest friends, completely openly and honestly, not only does God delight to hear us as his children, but I think it is very good for us to get things off our chests, not keeping anything bottled up inside us. Even things we can say to no-one else, we can always say to him.
And when we do that, Christ is certainly with us, just as surely as he listened carefully and patiently to Cleopas on the Emmaus road.
The second way Christ is with us is in the words of Scripture. In the passage, once Jesus hears everything Cleopas has to say, he then leads both disciples to consider what the Scriptures say about the Messiah: not only that he would suffer but also that he would then enter into his glory. In other words, he’s starting to prepare them for the fact that not only was the Messiah to die, but he was also to rise again. Verse 27 says:
“Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.”
So Jesus went through the Old Testament (remember this was before the New Testament was written) and explained to the disciples what the Bible is all about: it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the theme of the Bible, the hero of the Bible, and he is in every part of the Bible. Indirectly or directly, it’s all about him. We don’t know exactly what passages Christ focused on as he explained the Bible to the two disciples. Maybe he went right back to the first chapter of Genesis and explained how it was by the Word – by Christ himself who is the Word of God – that the heavens and earth were made. Maybe he took them to Genesis 3:15 to show how even from the time Adam and Eve sinned, God had promised to send the Messiah, the Seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s head. Maybe he explained to them how the system of sacrifices laid down in Leviticus were symbols and types of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Maybe he explained to them how King David stands as a type of the Messiah’s kingship over his people. Maybe he explained to them the prophets who foretold where Jesus would be born, what his kingship would be like, and even how he would suffer and die for his people (as described in Isaiah chapter 53 for example). It doesn’t matter what passages Christ focused on, or whether he spoke more generally, not even looking at specific passages, because Christ is in all the Scriptures. They are all about him, in one way or another.
He is the great theme of Scripture and he is the key for correctly understanding Scripture. It’s probably not going too far to say that you won’t go too far wrong in interpreting the Bible if you remember this simple fact: Christ is in all the Scriptures.
This has tremendous implications for us and for what we believe. To give just one example – you sometimes hear people painting a false picture of Jesus as this lovey-dovey, rather effeminate, do-gooder, who is so easy going that you can treat him any way you like, and live any way you like because he approves of everything and can’t do anything but love everyone. But Christ is in all the Scriptures. In the Old Testament he often appeared as the angel of the Lord – the same Lord who went through Egypt on the night of the Passover killing the firstborn of the Egyptians, the same Lord who stood shoulder to shoulder with the three men in the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, the same Lord who went into battle for Israel and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night in 2 Kings chapter 19.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (John 8:58). And so if our view of Jesus is radically different from the God of the Old Testament, we know we’ve got it wrong, because Christ is in all the Scriptures.
The Scriptures are all about Jesus, so it follows that whenever we read the Scriptures, whether at our services, or at our Bible study, or at home on our own, so long as we read them with a genuine desire to learn about God and learn from God, He is with us as we read.
Of course it is possible to read the Scriptures in the wrong way. It is possible to read them while sitting in judgment on them, accepting or rejecting them as we go. If we read the Bible that way, we will still read about Jesus but he will not be with us as we read.
But if we read the Scriptures in faith, looking for Christ, and accepting that what we read is not the word of man but God’s Word, then Christ will be with us and, like the disciples on the Emmaus road, reading them will be like a fire that burns within us, refining us and purifying us, energising us to live for him, and warming our hearts as we think on God’s love and grace shown towards us.
The third way in which the passage shows Christ is with us, is when we are in fellowship with other believers. In the passage Christ is with the two disciples when he goes into the house and eats a meal with them. And it’s interesting that it was when he broke the bread that the disciples then recognised him for who he really was. We don’t exactly know why this was the case. Various commentators speculate on this. Was it because as he broke the bread they could see the nail marks in his hands for the first time? Was it the way he broke the bread that reminded them of the way he did it before? Was it his tone of voice as he said the blessing or the words he used? We can’t be sure if it was any of these or something else, or if it was because the supernatural change in Christ’s appearance was lifted and they could now recognise him. Yet the fact is that it wasn’t as they spoke to him, or as he explained to them about the Scriptures, but in the simple act of sharing in the fellowship of a meal that the disciples recognised him.
What does that mean for us today? It’s tempting to see this breaking of the bread in terms of the Lord’s Supper, holy communion. Certainly I think that’s partly what we can draw from this passage. Christ is with us as we share in the Lord’ Supper. Of course this doesn’t mean the bread and wine at communion turn into Christ’s body and blood, the blasphemy that Roman Catholicism teaches. But in a spiritual sense, Christ is with us as we eat and drink the bread and wine at communion. In a special way, at the same time as we physically eat the bread and drink the wine, looking to Christ in faith, we feed on him spiritually, nourishing our souls as we consider the new covenant sealed with his blood, as his body was broken for us on the cross.
But I don’t think that’s all this passage means. I don’t think we should restrict Christ’s presence being with us when we gather to celebrate communion. After all, there’s nothing in the passage that says the meal the disciples shared with Jesus was the sacrament of communion. It was just an ordinary meal two hungry travellers might have at the end of any day.
No, I think this passage teaches us that Christ is with us every time we come together for fellowship. This is of course what Jesus himself said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.” And here we see that happening. When we come together in his name – as his people gathering together – he is with us. It doesn’t matter whether that’s for a service of worship like this, or in our Bible and prayer meeting, or for the Kirk Session or Congregational Board, or for a social event. When we gather for Christian fellowship, Christ is with us in the midst.
What a great privilege and responsibility that is! But what about when we’re not gathered together. What about when we all go our different ways? What about when we aren’t reading our Bibles, or spending time with God in prayer? Are we on our own then? Is Christ not with us then?
Well there’s a way that Christ is with us that’s not mentioned in our passage. There’s a way in which we are in a better position than the disciples in the passage. Although they spent time in the physical presence of Christ and although he stayed with them for a while that day, at the end of the day they were left by themselves. Just after they recognised who he was, verse 31 says, “He disappeared from their sight.” He left them at the end of his time with them.
We’re in a better position than this. Christ is with us all the time through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, living inside us. This is what Paul says in Romans 8:9-11, writing to Christians:
“But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to – if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.”
We must remember that the events in our passage took place before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, which was fifty days after Easter day. The disciples on the Emmaus road met the risen Jesus, but we who live not only after that first Easter but after Pentecost actually have the spirit of the risen Jesus living inside us, not for a few hours, or a day, but with us forever. That’s what Jesus promised just before he ascended into heaven, in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said.
This is what Jesus also promised us in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
He was with the disciples during that wonderful day; he is with us all the time during all our days. This is the truth for every Christian believer. He is with us.
He is with his people as they pray, as they read the Bible, as they have communion with him and with each other. But the question everyone has to think about sooner or later in their lives is this: Am I with him? In other words, have I really met with the risen Jesus and decided to follow him?
Yes, he’s with his people in all these wonderful ways, but are you one of his people? We need to ask ourselves, “Have I believed in him? Have I trusted in him and committed my life to him, accepting him as my Saviour and Lord?”
If you have, then he is with you in everything you do. If you haven’t yet trusted in him and accepted him, then he is calling you to himself tonight, with the promise that he will never turn away anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved,” as Romans 10:13 says.
John 3:18 says: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
There is a choice before each one of us tonight. It is to travel on life’s road with Christ as our companion, our guide, our Saviour and our Lord, or to travel on life’s road without him. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.”
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Loyalty to Christ
This is an edited version of a sermon preached at a Guild meeting on 13th March 2007.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
God's Holy People
This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 13th February 2007
It’s funny how we can fail to realise things about ourselves because we don’t perceive it to be the case. There’s probably no subject in our Christian lives that demonstrates this better than our holiness. Ask almost any Christian "Are you a holy person?" and they’ll say "No, I’m just an ordinary Christian." They know that they still sin every day, and imagine that holy people never sin, or only sin once in a blue moon. The same thing is true with the word "saint." I’ve heard loads of people use the expression, "I’m no saint – I’m just an ordinary Christian."
Well, just because we don’t feel we match up to our stained glass image of what a "saint" is or what a "holy person" is, doesn’t mean we aren’t saints or holy people.
I want to cover quite a lot of ground tonight, so we won’t be going into a lot of detail on some of the areas we’re going to touch on. And although I’ll be referring to this passage we’ve read in 1 Peter chapter 1, I’ll also be jumping about to quite a few passages in Scripture that have a bearing on our theme tonight. Basically, there are four things I want to look at.
First, we are saints, God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
And fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
So let’s look at each of these four truths in turn.
First, we are saints, we are God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
If you look at the page opposite the page where our reading is, see what 1 Peter 2:9-10 says, addressing ordinary folks in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia?
"But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy."
You see? We are the holy nation, God’s own people. Then look at how almost every New Testament letter begins. They are addressed to different churches. But how are the people in those churches referred to? Let’s just look at three examples – there are plenty of others.
Romans 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 1:2 "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours."
Ephesians 1:1 "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus."
We are God’s holy people. We are God’s saints. In the Bible "saint" is the word used to describe every Christian believer – not a title like a knighthood bestowed by the Pope on some kind of breed of "superhero believers." Unless we get away from the Catholic idea of "being a saint" we will never come to true understanding of holiness according to the New Testament.
The true meaning of "saint" is a "holy one" and its primary reference is NOT to the character of the person, but to the relationship of being set apart for and dedicated to God. In other words, being a saint, in the biblical sense, is not really about how much good we do, how devout we are, how much time we spend serving God, it is about how good God is choosing us to be his. It is because of our relationship with God – as his chosen ones, as the ones he has set apart – that our worship and service flows. Holiness is about setting apart our minds to see things God’s way and not how the world sees things; holiness is setting apart our hearts to love God and our neighbour and not loving only ourselves selfishly; holiness is setting apart our actions on loving God and our neighbours, and setting apart our actions to do good and refrain from doing evil. But – and this is the important bit – we can only think holy thoughts, feel holy love and do holy works if we are first holy people. In other words, if we are set apart by God as his saved ones – people saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other way to be holy than to be a Christian believer.
If we don’t begin at the correct starting place, our understanding of being God’s holy people, will always be compromised. This leads us on to our second point.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
It is Christ who makes us holy. We cannot make ourselves holy. If we ever forget this truth, and start to think that there is something in us that makes us better than other people – or that our being holy is something we can be proud of, there is no end to the problems we will have. The biggest problem will be that we start to think we contribute in some way to our salvation.
Instead of acknowledging that we are saved by grace and not because of our own efforts, we’ll start to think that our holiness is somehow increased by the more good works we do. This is totally wrong. We will also become puffed up with pride. We will start to look down on other people who don’t appear to be "as holy" as us. We will turn into Pharisees.
How do we avoid this? By remembering that we are holy because of what Christ does and not because of we do and by remembering that our good works don’t make us any more holy, they only mean that we are living out our holiness better, that we are being true to our holy status. Let me give you an analogy to help explain what I’m saying here. Take this candle that’s burning on the table here. It has the status of being a candle whether it’s not lit at all, or whether it’s wick is glowing and there’s smoke, or whether it’s burning brightly with a flame like it is now. It’s not by the size of the flame or even the existence of the flame at all that it becomes a candle. It already is a candle. But it’s doing what it was created for when it’s burning brightly. It’s fulfilling it’s potential, it’s at it’s most pleasing to us, when it’s burning brightly. Well, we as God’s holy people – as individuals and as a group – are a bit like a candle. Our good works as God’s holy people are like the flame on a candle. It’s not by our good works that we become God’s holy people. But when our holiness is expressed in good works, we are fulfilling our potential, we are at our most pleasing to God. But we don’t stop being God’s holy people, even when we go through dark periods in our lives, when we commit sins, when we fail to love God as we should, when our hearts are cold towards others. We don’t stop being saints on our dark days any more than this stops being a candle if I snuff out its flame.
The reason for this is because our being holy is a result of what Christ has done for us, not what we do for ourselves. It is a status that God gives us, rather than a title we win for ourselves. It is God who makes us holy, and not we ourselves. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit does it, not us. The Bible is very clear on this point.
Consider the verses we read as our call to worship (Ephesians 1:4):
"Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him."
Hebrews 10:10
"Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all purified from sin by the offering that he made of his own body once and for all."
Hebrews 13:12:
"Jesus...died outside the city, in order to purify the people [in other words "make the people holy"] from sin with his own blood."
It’s part of the meaning of the passage we read in 1 Peter 1 in verses 18 to 19:
"For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life handed down by your ancestors. It was not something that can be destroyed, such as silver or gold; it was the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or flaw."
So, to sum up so far, we’ve seen that we are God’s holy people because the Bible tells us that’s what we are. And we’ve seen that the reason we are holy even though far from perfect, is because we have the status of "holy ones" or "saints" before God because of what Christ has done for us, and not because of anything we have done or can do to win God’s favour.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
If I can deal with negative point first: it is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people. I’m sure we’ve all heard it enough times that we know this already in our hearts. We cannot save ourselves. The whole New Testament teaches us that it is impossible for sinful human beings to earn their salvation by their works. It is futile to even try.
Look at Ephesians 2:8-9:
"For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it."
This key doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is probably best laid out in a passage from Romans 3 that I want to read to you. I’m reading Romans 3:21-28 from the New Living Translation:
"But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight, not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law."
So, we are saved by grace, through faith alone – not through our works. But does this then mean we can live any way we like? As the question Paul had to deal with in Romans 6 puts it: Shall we sin that grace may abound?
Well the answer of the New Testament is an emphatic "No." We are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone and through faith alone, but our salvation is not to be without good works. Good works are the fruit that begin to be produced in a life united to Christ, the vine. We must remember that at the same time as we are given a new status before God – a status forgiven for our sins, with Christ’s righteousness reckoned to our account so that we are holy saints – we are also given a new nature, a new heart, and a new Spirit within us. Our attitude to sin changes, so that where before it didn’t bother us, now it does bother us. And rather than live lives contended to be sinners, the sinful things we do – and we do sin after we are Christians – annoy us, make us feel guilty and ashamed, make us feel sad. Paul calls this being "dead to sin". John describes the process of getting this new nature from God as being "born again". One of the clearest explanation of what happens when we get this new nature is described by the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36:25-27:
"I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and I will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you."
So hopefully we’ve cleared up one thing: we are what we are because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, and not what we have done, are doing, or will do in the future, for ourselves. But at the same time, the Bible teaches that because God has set us apart as his holy ones, we should live out our lives as his holy ones.
Look at verses 14 and 15 in our passage in 1 Peter:
"Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all you do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, ‘Be holy because I am holy’."
Here Peter is quoting from a command that God issues to his Old Testament people Israel several times in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Back in Leviticus 11:44-45, we find these words:
"I am the LORD your God, and you must keep yourselves holy, because I am holy. I am the LORD who brought you out of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy, because I am holy."
Notice, in passing, that even here in the Old Testament the same principle stands – God first saves his people – in this case by delivering them from captivity in Egypt – and then he calls those who are already his chosen ones to live out their lives in a way that matches their new status and calling as the covenant people of the LORD. They are not to be holy in order to become his people – they are his people delivered from slavery in Egypt and now they are to live holy lives as a result of their deliverance, not to achieve it.
The message of our passage is essentially this: live out your lives in the way that matches what you are. You are saints: live as saints. You are God’s people: live as God’s people. God is holy – you should be holy too, to show you are his.
At its most general, living a holy life means living every part of your life with reference to God. It means there are no sacred parts of life – like going to church, praying, reading the Bible – which are in contrast to secular parts of life – like going to work, socialising with friends and family, or watching the telly. Every part of our lives is to be holy. And please note this doesn’t mean all of our lives need to be spent in church or in church-related activities. That’s not what I mean. No, all of our lives are to be holy – and that means that the way we do our job is to be holy – set apart for God’s glory and in accordance with his will. It means the way we socialise is to be holy – we’re to socialise with our friends to the glory of God. What we watch on telly is to be sanctified – so we watch programmes we enjoy while giving thanks to God for them. God is to be such an integral part of life that he’s almost like a friend or family member who goes through all of life with you like a constant companion. Someone you share things with, who you talk about your problems with, who you have a laugh with, who you ask for advice about things, whose opinion you value and act upon. And yes who you spend special time with, but also someone who you are conscious of being with you in everything you do. That is a holy life.
And that leads us nicely on to our fourth point.
Fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
With everything we’ve already looked at, its been the theory of holy living. Now we come to the nitty gritty. The practice of holy living. And here our passage in 1 Peter gives us some very useful principles to follow in our lives.
Verse 13 tells us that if we are to live holy lives – lives that keep God at the centre of things – we need to concentrate and focus to make sure it happens. If we live carelessly, thoughtlessly, it’s hard to live a holy life. It says:
"So then, have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."
It’s like we’re in an army at war. Carelessness has no place in the Christian life. We have to keep on the ball, with our minds ready for action. We need to stay alert – to be aware of what’s happening around us – to take opportunities to do good as God leads us, and to see danger coming before we get caught up in it.
Verses 14 and 15 we’ve already looked at. We are to make a conscious effort not to be let our lives be shaped by those desires we had before we were Christians. We need to be aware when we are being tempted by pride, or greed for riches, or jealousy, or revenge, or whatever desires play a part in our particular character – and refuse to let them dominate us or shape our thinking. With God’s help, we need to say to ourselves "no" at times. "No" I won’t do that, even though I want to, because it’s not right. Now that’s not easy. No one is pretending it’s easy. But it is what we are called to do. And let’s be honest, how many of us fall into things simply because we hadn’t been keeping our minds ready and alert. How many of us sin thoughtlessly more often than deliberately having considered it’s wrong and still chose to do it. I think most of us sin before we’ve thought much about it. That’s why this advice from Peter is so practical. Think about it and you’re less likely to do it if it’s wrong.
Then in verse 17 we see that the holy life cannot be lived without what we usually think of as the "holy bits". They are not the only bits that are to be holy, but they are to be things we include in our lives as well as all the ordinary bits. Verse 17 mentions prayer, and having reverence for God. Our lives are to be lives of prayer. How can we keep God close and part of everything we do, unless we talk to him about things? Paul says somewhere we are to "pray without ceasing". And by that he didn’t mean we are to spend all our time praying as such, but that in all we do, we are to have communication channels open to God. Throughout the day we are to have little chats with God. It might only be a few words at a time. The mini prayers might be for help, for guidance, for forgiveness, for strength, for others we meet or think about – all sorts of things. Just take a second. A silent word of prayer to God is sent, and on we go with whatever we’re doing. It makes God much closer to us, and makes us really feel he is part of our everyday lives. Why don’t you try it tomorrow and see how it goes?
The reverence for God should express itself in our desire to worship him. Again that might be something we take some time to do every day, and especially on Sundays when we come to church to worship together as God’s people.
And that leads us to another piece of guidance – a holy life is one with "sincere love for your fellow-believers" as verse 22 says. We care for each other, help each other, show concern for each other. We are sad when our fellow-believers grieve or go through hard times. We rejoice with them when good things happen to them or they celebrate an achievement or milestone in their lives.
And lastly, one of the keys to living a holy life is to make it a life shaped and guided by Scripture. The Scripture is the Christian’s food – it is our spiritual milk as Peter says in chapter 2, verse 2. It is the living and eternal word of God – it is what the God who we are to keep as our close companion through life wants to say to us. How can we be holy as he is holy and not be interested in what he has to say to us? It is the only thing that endures – men and women fade and die – they cannot accompany us through our whole life. The things this earth afford wither and wear out. But the word of the Lord remains for ever. It never changes. It never leaves us. It never goes out of date, because it is God’s truth, God’s holy Word.
And as we try to live our lives in ways that match up with the holy status God has given us, it is the supreme rule of faith and life for us. By it we know true doctrine from false. By it we know good from evil. By it we know God’s promises to encourage us forward, and God’s warnings to save us from harming ourselves in sin.
During the Coronation service for a British monarch, the Moderator of the General Assembly hands the monarch a bible and says these words: "This book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."
And so let us grasp the truths that the Bible has taught us tonight. We are God’s holy people because he says we are, not because of how we feel about it. And we are God’s holy people because of what Christ has done for us, not because of what we can do for ourselves. But as Christ has made us God’s holy people, so we are to live as God’s holy people should live. And the way we find out how we should live, is through the Bible.
May we truly see this book – the holy Word of the living God – as the most valuable thing this world affords, believing its teachings and following its commandments throughout our lives.
It’s funny how we can fail to realise things about ourselves because we don’t perceive it to be the case. There’s probably no subject in our Christian lives that demonstrates this better than our holiness. Ask almost any Christian "Are you a holy person?" and they’ll say "No, I’m just an ordinary Christian." They know that they still sin every day, and imagine that holy people never sin, or only sin once in a blue moon. The same thing is true with the word "saint." I’ve heard loads of people use the expression, "I’m no saint – I’m just an ordinary Christian."
Well, just because we don’t feel we match up to our stained glass image of what a "saint" is or what a "holy person" is, doesn’t mean we aren’t saints or holy people.
I want to cover quite a lot of ground tonight, so we won’t be going into a lot of detail on some of the areas we’re going to touch on. And although I’ll be referring to this passage we’ve read in 1 Peter chapter 1, I’ll also be jumping about to quite a few passages in Scripture that have a bearing on our theme tonight. Basically, there are four things I want to look at.
First, we are saints, God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
And fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
So let’s look at each of these four truths in turn.
First, we are saints, we are God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
If you look at the page opposite the page where our reading is, see what 1 Peter 2:9-10 says, addressing ordinary folks in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia?
"But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy."
You see? We are the holy nation, God’s own people. Then look at how almost every New Testament letter begins. They are addressed to different churches. But how are the people in those churches referred to? Let’s just look at three examples – there are plenty of others.
Romans 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 1:2 "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours."
Ephesians 1:1 "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus."
We are God’s holy people. We are God’s saints. In the Bible "saint" is the word used to describe every Christian believer – not a title like a knighthood bestowed by the Pope on some kind of breed of "superhero believers." Unless we get away from the Catholic idea of "being a saint" we will never come to true understanding of holiness according to the New Testament.
The true meaning of "saint" is a "holy one" and its primary reference is NOT to the character of the person, but to the relationship of being set apart for and dedicated to God. In other words, being a saint, in the biblical sense, is not really about how much good we do, how devout we are, how much time we spend serving God, it is about how good God is choosing us to be his. It is because of our relationship with God – as his chosen ones, as the ones he has set apart – that our worship and service flows. Holiness is about setting apart our minds to see things God’s way and not how the world sees things; holiness is setting apart our hearts to love God and our neighbour and not loving only ourselves selfishly; holiness is setting apart our actions on loving God and our neighbours, and setting apart our actions to do good and refrain from doing evil. But – and this is the important bit – we can only think holy thoughts, feel holy love and do holy works if we are first holy people. In other words, if we are set apart by God as his saved ones – people saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other way to be holy than to be a Christian believer.
If we don’t begin at the correct starting place, our understanding of being God’s holy people, will always be compromised. This leads us on to our second point.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
It is Christ who makes us holy. We cannot make ourselves holy. If we ever forget this truth, and start to think that there is something in us that makes us better than other people – or that our being holy is something we can be proud of, there is no end to the problems we will have. The biggest problem will be that we start to think we contribute in some way to our salvation.
Instead of acknowledging that we are saved by grace and not because of our own efforts, we’ll start to think that our holiness is somehow increased by the more good works we do. This is totally wrong. We will also become puffed up with pride. We will start to look down on other people who don’t appear to be "as holy" as us. We will turn into Pharisees.
How do we avoid this? By remembering that we are holy because of what Christ does and not because of we do and by remembering that our good works don’t make us any more holy, they only mean that we are living out our holiness better, that we are being true to our holy status. Let me give you an analogy to help explain what I’m saying here. Take this candle that’s burning on the table here. It has the status of being a candle whether it’s not lit at all, or whether it’s wick is glowing and there’s smoke, or whether it’s burning brightly with a flame like it is now. It’s not by the size of the flame or even the existence of the flame at all that it becomes a candle. It already is a candle. But it’s doing what it was created for when it’s burning brightly. It’s fulfilling it’s potential, it’s at it’s most pleasing to us, when it’s burning brightly. Well, we as God’s holy people – as individuals and as a group – are a bit like a candle. Our good works as God’s holy people are like the flame on a candle. It’s not by our good works that we become God’s holy people. But when our holiness is expressed in good works, we are fulfilling our potential, we are at our most pleasing to God. But we don’t stop being God’s holy people, even when we go through dark periods in our lives, when we commit sins, when we fail to love God as we should, when our hearts are cold towards others. We don’t stop being saints on our dark days any more than this stops being a candle if I snuff out its flame.
The reason for this is because our being holy is a result of what Christ has done for us, not what we do for ourselves. It is a status that God gives us, rather than a title we win for ourselves. It is God who makes us holy, and not we ourselves. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit does it, not us. The Bible is very clear on this point.
Consider the verses we read as our call to worship (Ephesians 1:4):
"Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him."
Hebrews 10:10
"Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all purified from sin by the offering that he made of his own body once and for all."
Hebrews 13:12:
"Jesus...died outside the city, in order to purify the people [in other words "make the people holy"] from sin with his own blood."
It’s part of the meaning of the passage we read in 1 Peter 1 in verses 18 to 19:
"For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life handed down by your ancestors. It was not something that can be destroyed, such as silver or gold; it was the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or flaw."
So, to sum up so far, we’ve seen that we are God’s holy people because the Bible tells us that’s what we are. And we’ve seen that the reason we are holy even though far from perfect, is because we have the status of "holy ones" or "saints" before God because of what Christ has done for us, and not because of anything we have done or can do to win God’s favour.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
If I can deal with negative point first: it is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people. I’m sure we’ve all heard it enough times that we know this already in our hearts. We cannot save ourselves. The whole New Testament teaches us that it is impossible for sinful human beings to earn their salvation by their works. It is futile to even try.
Look at Ephesians 2:8-9:
"For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it."
This key doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is probably best laid out in a passage from Romans 3 that I want to read to you. I’m reading Romans 3:21-28 from the New Living Translation:
"But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight, not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law."
So, we are saved by grace, through faith alone – not through our works. But does this then mean we can live any way we like? As the question Paul had to deal with in Romans 6 puts it: Shall we sin that grace may abound?
Well the answer of the New Testament is an emphatic "No." We are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone and through faith alone, but our salvation is not to be without good works. Good works are the fruit that begin to be produced in a life united to Christ, the vine. We must remember that at the same time as we are given a new status before God – a status forgiven for our sins, with Christ’s righteousness reckoned to our account so that we are holy saints – we are also given a new nature, a new heart, and a new Spirit within us. Our attitude to sin changes, so that where before it didn’t bother us, now it does bother us. And rather than live lives contended to be sinners, the sinful things we do – and we do sin after we are Christians – annoy us, make us feel guilty and ashamed, make us feel sad. Paul calls this being "dead to sin". John describes the process of getting this new nature from God as being "born again". One of the clearest explanation of what happens when we get this new nature is described by the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36:25-27:
"I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and I will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you."
So hopefully we’ve cleared up one thing: we are what we are because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, and not what we have done, are doing, or will do in the future, for ourselves. But at the same time, the Bible teaches that because God has set us apart as his holy ones, we should live out our lives as his holy ones.
Look at verses 14 and 15 in our passage in 1 Peter:
"Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all you do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, ‘Be holy because I am holy’."
Here Peter is quoting from a command that God issues to his Old Testament people Israel several times in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Back in Leviticus 11:44-45, we find these words:
"I am the LORD your God, and you must keep yourselves holy, because I am holy. I am the LORD who brought you out of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy, because I am holy."
Notice, in passing, that even here in the Old Testament the same principle stands – God first saves his people – in this case by delivering them from captivity in Egypt – and then he calls those who are already his chosen ones to live out their lives in a way that matches their new status and calling as the covenant people of the LORD. They are not to be holy in order to become his people – they are his people delivered from slavery in Egypt and now they are to live holy lives as a result of their deliverance, not to achieve it.
The message of our passage is essentially this: live out your lives in the way that matches what you are. You are saints: live as saints. You are God’s people: live as God’s people. God is holy – you should be holy too, to show you are his.
At its most general, living a holy life means living every part of your life with reference to God. It means there are no sacred parts of life – like going to church, praying, reading the Bible – which are in contrast to secular parts of life – like going to work, socialising with friends and family, or watching the telly. Every part of our lives is to be holy. And please note this doesn’t mean all of our lives need to be spent in church or in church-related activities. That’s not what I mean. No, all of our lives are to be holy – and that means that the way we do our job is to be holy – set apart for God’s glory and in accordance with his will. It means the way we socialise is to be holy – we’re to socialise with our friends to the glory of God. What we watch on telly is to be sanctified – so we watch programmes we enjoy while giving thanks to God for them. God is to be such an integral part of life that he’s almost like a friend or family member who goes through all of life with you like a constant companion. Someone you share things with, who you talk about your problems with, who you have a laugh with, who you ask for advice about things, whose opinion you value and act upon. And yes who you spend special time with, but also someone who you are conscious of being with you in everything you do. That is a holy life.
And that leads us nicely on to our fourth point.
Fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
With everything we’ve already looked at, its been the theory of holy living. Now we come to the nitty gritty. The practice of holy living. And here our passage in 1 Peter gives us some very useful principles to follow in our lives.
Verse 13 tells us that if we are to live holy lives – lives that keep God at the centre of things – we need to concentrate and focus to make sure it happens. If we live carelessly, thoughtlessly, it’s hard to live a holy life. It says:
"So then, have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."
It’s like we’re in an army at war. Carelessness has no place in the Christian life. We have to keep on the ball, with our minds ready for action. We need to stay alert – to be aware of what’s happening around us – to take opportunities to do good as God leads us, and to see danger coming before we get caught up in it.
Verses 14 and 15 we’ve already looked at. We are to make a conscious effort not to be let our lives be shaped by those desires we had before we were Christians. We need to be aware when we are being tempted by pride, or greed for riches, or jealousy, or revenge, or whatever desires play a part in our particular character – and refuse to let them dominate us or shape our thinking. With God’s help, we need to say to ourselves "no" at times. "No" I won’t do that, even though I want to, because it’s not right. Now that’s not easy. No one is pretending it’s easy. But it is what we are called to do. And let’s be honest, how many of us fall into things simply because we hadn’t been keeping our minds ready and alert. How many of us sin thoughtlessly more often than deliberately having considered it’s wrong and still chose to do it. I think most of us sin before we’ve thought much about it. That’s why this advice from Peter is so practical. Think about it and you’re less likely to do it if it’s wrong.
Then in verse 17 we see that the holy life cannot be lived without what we usually think of as the "holy bits". They are not the only bits that are to be holy, but they are to be things we include in our lives as well as all the ordinary bits. Verse 17 mentions prayer, and having reverence for God. Our lives are to be lives of prayer. How can we keep God close and part of everything we do, unless we talk to him about things? Paul says somewhere we are to "pray without ceasing". And by that he didn’t mean we are to spend all our time praying as such, but that in all we do, we are to have communication channels open to God. Throughout the day we are to have little chats with God. It might only be a few words at a time. The mini prayers might be for help, for guidance, for forgiveness, for strength, for others we meet or think about – all sorts of things. Just take a second. A silent word of prayer to God is sent, and on we go with whatever we’re doing. It makes God much closer to us, and makes us really feel he is part of our everyday lives. Why don’t you try it tomorrow and see how it goes?
The reverence for God should express itself in our desire to worship him. Again that might be something we take some time to do every day, and especially on Sundays when we come to church to worship together as God’s people.
And that leads us to another piece of guidance – a holy life is one with "sincere love for your fellow-believers" as verse 22 says. We care for each other, help each other, show concern for each other. We are sad when our fellow-believers grieve or go through hard times. We rejoice with them when good things happen to them or they celebrate an achievement or milestone in their lives.
And lastly, one of the keys to living a holy life is to make it a life shaped and guided by Scripture. The Scripture is the Christian’s food – it is our spiritual milk as Peter says in chapter 2, verse 2. It is the living and eternal word of God – it is what the God who we are to keep as our close companion through life wants to say to us. How can we be holy as he is holy and not be interested in what he has to say to us? It is the only thing that endures – men and women fade and die – they cannot accompany us through our whole life. The things this earth afford wither and wear out. But the word of the Lord remains for ever. It never changes. It never leaves us. It never goes out of date, because it is God’s truth, God’s holy Word.
And as we try to live our lives in ways that match up with the holy status God has given us, it is the supreme rule of faith and life for us. By it we know true doctrine from false. By it we know good from evil. By it we know God’s promises to encourage us forward, and God’s warnings to save us from harming ourselves in sin.
During the Coronation service for a British monarch, the Moderator of the General Assembly hands the monarch a bible and says these words: "This book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."
And so let us grasp the truths that the Bible has taught us tonight. We are God’s holy people because he says we are, not because of how we feel about it. And we are God’s holy people because of what Christ has done for us, not because of what we can do for ourselves. But as Christ has made us God’s holy people, so we are to live as God’s holy people should live. And the way we find out how we should live, is through the Bible.
May we truly see this book – the holy Word of the living God – as the most valuable thing this world affords, believing its teachings and following its commandments throughout our lives.
Monday, 22 January 2007
The Centrality of the Cross
This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 16th January 2007.
The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.
The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.
That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.
The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.
Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.
The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.
The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.
I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.
We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.
If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."
Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.
In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."
Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.
Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.
And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."
You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.
And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.
In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.
It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.
Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.
Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.
But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.
It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.
And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.
In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."
But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.
But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.
And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."
In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.
So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.
Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.
Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."
We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.
I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.
The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."
And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"
So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.
Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.
And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.
That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.
If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."
And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.
In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."
And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.
The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.
The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.
That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.
The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.
Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.
The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.
The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.
I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.
We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.
If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."
Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.
In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."
Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.
Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.
And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."
You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.
And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.
In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.
It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.
Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.
Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.
But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.
It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.
And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.
In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."
But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.
But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.
And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."
In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.
So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.
Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.
Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."
We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.
I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.
The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."
And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"
So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.
Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.
And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.
That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.
If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."
And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.
In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."
And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)