Christianity
When Should a Christian Leave their Church or Denomination? (Post-CLRA Meeting Report with Q&A)
Update on CLRA Meeting
I thought it important to start with a quick update on the meeting Jason and I went to this week. I don’t want to take up the whole sermon time with it, but it’s important, and you are all invested in what is happening so I want to make sure you’re informed.
There were actually four meetings in a row. We began with worship and a quick orientation by the leaders of CLRA outlining why we were there and a quick discussion to make sure we were all on the same page. Pastor Paul Carter, the point leader of CLRA, explained that the whole point of the day was to be a one-stop-shop where we could pray together, hear from the CBOQ leadership about how they are dealing with the LGBTQ issues, talk amongst ourselves as church leaders, and then get a presentation from another denomination that has already dealt with the issue properly.
To be honest, this has gone on far longer than I even knew. I told you last week that this all came about because of Danforth a few years ago but it was actually 7 years ago that this came up in the Norfolk association. One of the pastors there tried to go through the process of confronting another pastor who was giving some false teaching but ended up getting in trouble himself at the CBOQ head office. That event is actually what spawned the creation of CLRA and Danforth is only the most recent example of the same issue they’ve been trying to deal with for a long time.
I could get into more detail about what’s been going on for the past years, but suffice to say that there hasn’t been a lot done. People have talked, committees have been struck, paperwork has been shuffled, emails sent, plans made — but ultimately nothing has been done to confront the actual issue of what to do with pastors and churches who are teaching and doing unbiblical things. And that’s where the frustration comes from. Lots of talk, not enough action.
To give an example of what’s been happening, let me tell you about one e-mail. The CBOQ struck a committee to discuss how they could deal with these kinds of issues. This committee took a long while to come up with six phases they would go through to “deal with challenging issues”. We are currently on phase 3 where they encourage churches to talk to about the issue before moving on to phase 4 where they get feedback from the churches.
They decided to send out an e-mail telling people that they were planning to launch phase four soon, but apparently, the first draft of the e-mail wasn’t to the liking of the CBOQ staff, so they took it to another group so they could edit the e-mail. That tweaking on one email took over a month. I got it a couple weeks ago and it absolutely reads like it was written by a committee more interested in not offending anyone than actually saying anything. This caused confusion among the churches and head office was inundated with calls by confused church leaders. And the churches who want to see decisive action taken on what they see as an obvious issue are very frustrated.
When the president and former president of CBOQ came into the meeting, it felt tense. The two men were obviously nervous and defensive. When they sat down their tone was immediately aggressive and accusatory towards the pastors and leaders of CLRA. They talked for a long time and were given a chance to answer questions from the crowd, and it was a very frustrating thing to listen to. We kept asking pointed, specific, questions like, “Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin?” or “Will the CBOQ be decisive and deal with this issue?” or “We already agreed on this in 1988 and 2003 and have systems in place to deal with it at an association level, will you support those systems?” – and they just refused to give clear answers. If you’ve ever watched a politician bob and weave around reporters questions and dodge issues they don’t want to talk about, you’ll know how it felt. It was very disappointing.
When the two of them eventually left, the gathered leaders only had a short time to talk but I think they all felt the same way as I did. Pastor Paul voiced his frustration, as did some others, said it was generally agreed that the CBOQ was badly broken, hopelessly divided, the head office woefully inadequate to the task, and that the conference is probably unfixable outside a mighty work of God. Pastor Paul then made the suggestion that there was really only one, last ethically right thing left to do: Present one final, clear, decisive, formal motion at the next CBOQ Annual Assembly Meeting in June that essentially presents them an ultimatum. Stand by the word of God, stick to the principles the CBOQ has historically agreed on, and create a discipline and policing mechanism to deal with the churches who refuse — or don’t.
And that’s the current plan. Pastor Mark Bertrand, who has been part of this process from day one and has even been sitting on various CBOQ committees, will get a few smart folks together to draft that motion, send it out to the CLRA churches, and then we’ll probably meet one more time before the meeting to nail down the exact wording.
The general consensus is that a motion like that will be thunderously defeated at the floor, but at least then everyone will know where they stand. And that’s where we’re at as a church too. Jason and I are waiting for CLRA to get back to us with a draft of that motion, and we’re waiting and praying for the next Annual Meeting.
(There was a brief Q&A at this point. To hear it, listen to the Audio Podcast version.)
Why This is Important
I know I said that I wanted to get back into the Gospel of John this week, but I really feel like we need to cover why this topic is important enough that many churches would consider leaving the CBOQ over. I can absolutely see people saying, “Why can’t we just all get along? Why do we have to argue at all? Why not just let them do their thing and we’ll do ours and then we don’t have to divide? Hasn’t there been enough division in church history? Doesn’t God talk about the importance of unity? Won’t it affect our church’s reputation if we are the ones to leave? Can’t we just all stay together for the sake of the things we actually agree on?”
And those are very good questions. No church, and no Christian, should take division, divorce, or disfellowship lightly. Whether it’s us talking about the churches of our denomination, the individual congregation we attend, or our ministries, work, contracts, friendship, families, or marriages, our hearts should be oriented toward unity, working things out, being gracious, open-minded, forgiving, putting up with one another’s issues.
Consider the words of Romans 12:9-21:
“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honour. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
That’s an extremely clear passage of scripture dealing with human relationships. It covers inside the church and outside. It covers friends and family, troubled people, and enemies. It keeps telling us to be kind, gracious, humble, loving, and extremely patient with everyone who we come in contact with — just as Christ has been with us.
And so, you’d think that it would go doubly when dealing with other churches, right? The Bible is super clear about Christians seeking unity. Paul pleads with churches to remain united under the banner of Christ. So why would we be talking about division and disunity with the CBOQ? After all, shouldn’t we be doing what Romans 12 says?
Leaving a Church
Yes, and no. Yes, we need to be loving and patient, but no, we should not remain in partnership with everyone who calls themselves Christian. And the nuance is important.
Right now, there’s a huge problem in the Christian church with division and what is sometimes called “church hopping”. A lot of Christians tend to treat churches like restaurants. They go, try the food, if they like it they stay, but if they get bored, the chef changes the specials, or one of the waiters has a bad day, they take off and go try a different restaurant. The consumerism of the culture has seeped into people’s brains so much that they believe that they can treat the local church like a store and their ministries like a product. And they sometimes leave a church with as much thought and prayer as they would give switching from Freshco to Independent, or from Petro-Canada to Pioneer. They only think as far as their own feelings.
I would argue that most Christians who leave churches leave for non-biblical reasons. They don’t follow through on Romans 12, they don’t go through Jesus’ teaching on how to deal with offences from Matthew 18, they don’t get council or humble themselves like Paul wanted Euodia and Syntyche to. They just leave. And that’s bad for the church they leave because the church can’t grow past whatever issue they left because of, it’s bad for the church they go to because these people are bringing baggage with them, and it’s bad for the people themselves because they are missing the blessing of what God promises to those who humble themselves toward their fellow believers.
We don’t want to be like that. But, does a person have to stay in one church forever? Are there good, biblical reasons to leave a church? And, as to our own issue, are there good reasons for a church to leave a denomination? Yes, there are. There are actually 4 I found in my study.
Four Reasons to Leave a Church/Denomination
The first reason to leave a church is if heresy is being taught from the pulpit about foundational, scriptural truths. Listen to Galatians 1:6-9:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
There is a lot of wiggle room for different opinions about secondary teachings in the Bible. A person’s view of the end times, their view of creationism, or what version of the bible is the best one are all good discussions, but they are not primary and they’re not reasons to leave a church. What we’re talking about are things that are in the Apostles Creed. If the church has a dozen amazing ministries, a great kids program, and an awesome band, but doesn’t preach the Gospel, God wants you out of that church. They are accursed.
The second reason to leave is “If the leaders of the church tolerate seriously errant doctrine from any who are given teaching authority in the fellowship.” (I got a lot of help from this blogpost by John MacArthur on these four reasons.) In other words, if there is no system in place to discipline and remove false teachers. If the first reason to leave is that they’re teaching heresy, the second would be that the church simply isn’t interested in correcting heresy. Listen to Romans 16:17-18,
“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.”
This is the church that has a good preacher and lots of good foundational documents on their website — a good statement of faith, membership covenant, etc. — but if anyone teaches anything different from what is in scripture, they have no system, no way, even no desire to confront that teacher. You go on Sunday and hear a decent sermon, but the Sunday School teachers are unskilled and full of wrong ideas, or the Small Groups are studying dubious books or false teachers, the music leader speaks with biblical falsehoods or sings unbiblical songs, or the library is full of contradicting and heretical materials. This is also a red flag — and is, in fact, the main reason why the conservative wing of the CBOQ is considering leaving. There are churches who are in clear violation of scripture — on the LGBTQ issues and others — but the CBOQ has not demonstrated a will or desire to discipline them or allow the associations to deal with it. Letting wolves roam around the sheep is a huge problem and a reason to leave.
The third reason to leave is similar to the second one, but it is if the church refuses to confront sin or discipline members who are sinning blatantly. I won’t get you to read it, but you’ll hopefully remember from 1 Corinthians 5 that Paul gives the church a lot of trouble for letting people in the church get away with some pretty disgusting stuff. And not only refusing to discipline them but actually bragging about how open-minded and non-judgmental their church is. This is another red flag — that they don’t take sin seriously.
Not that they are all spying on one another, breathing down each other’s necks with everyone afraid to move lest they get hammered by the pastor — we’re talking about people who are in obvious sins. I’ve heard of churches who have caught men molesting the kids in the church but refused to call the police or tell the church. That person just leaves and goes on to do it at a different church. That’s terrible. We’ve talked about the dangers of not confronting sin many times and that the most loving thing we can do is to drag sin into the light and deal with it. If a church doesn’t take discipline and sin seriously, then they don’t take God, salvation, scripture, or love seriously. We would all agree that a parent who doesn’t discipline their child, or who doesn’t pull them back from danger, does not truly love them.
We, as a church, cannot say we love the people of Danforth or Norfolk or any other church in the CBOQ who is teaching and practicing error if we are not willing to step up and say so. It is cruel of us to allow a group of people we are in association with to go on listening to and believing wrong things about God because we are too afraid to tell them the truth and bring their pastor or leadership to account.
The fourth reason to leave a church is if the church is marked by hypocrisy, giving lip service to biblical Christianity but refusing to actually live it out. We read 2 Timothy 3 last week, but turn there anyway. Hopefully, you’ll remember this list describing people in the church who want to be called Christians, who even want to be pastors and leaders in the church, who want everyone to see a “form of godliness” but are in fact hypocrites who will not submit to Jesus.
How can you tell if you are attending or in fellowship with this kind of church? Paul describes it this way, “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be…” now look at this list:
“Lovers of self”. This church promotes itself, not Jesus or the Gospel. They talk about how great their pastor is, how cool their ministries are, how good their band sounds — but not about the work God is doing there. The fruits of repentance, obedience, and humility are nowhere because the church doesn’t love Jesus, they love themselves, so that’s what they talk about.
Next, this church is full of “lovers of money”. Having a big building and a gym and fancy tech isn’t bad — and having a small church full of old stuff doesn’t make you better than them. How can you tell if the church is a lover of money? All the conversations seem to revolve around money. Maintenance issues, how to spend the money, how to save the money, they argue about budget items, they talk a lot about how much tithing there is, the rich people are in places of authority even though they’re not godly, and things like that. Whether a church is rich or poor, if they spend more time talking about money than they do praying, studying the word, and presenting the gospel, it’s a bad church.
Next, this church is “proud, arrogant”. How can you tell? Because they constantly compare themselves to other churches. They think they’re better than them. When other churches or preaches or ministries come up in conversation it’s always comparative — who is better, who has bigger numbers, who has bigger building, who raised more money. The preacher slams other churches in his sermons, and the culture of the church shows that they think they’re better than others.
I’ll stop there, but consider the rest of the list for yourselves. Have you ever heard of or been to an “abusive” church or seen an abusive pastor? They absolutely exist. And they’ll abuse under the guise of being “fundamentalist” or even “tolerant”. There are churches and pastors and ministries who teach their youth to be “disobedient to their parents” under the guise of being radically sold out to Jesus. Some churches are “ungrateful”, others “unholy”. There are “heartless” churches who don’t care about the marginalized or oppressed. There are “unappeasable” churches who are always complaining and arguing about something. There are “slanderous” churches who promote gossip and talk about people behind their back – even from the pulpit.
And there’s more for you to consider. These are churches and church leaders, as verse 5 says, who have “the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.” What does the Apostle say we should do when we come across churches and ministries like this? “Avoid such people.”
Conclusion
Why? Because a little yeast works its way through the whole dough (1 Cor 5:6). Because bad company ruins good character (1 Cor 15:33). Because if you partner with willfully sinful, unrepentant, heretical people, you are guilty by association and they will invariably drag you into their sin.
Now, let me be clear. That doesn’t mean you’ll ever find a perfect church. We’re not a perfect church. What we’re trying to be is a church that is actively working towards godliness through the power of God. That’s all that can be expected. A good church, a good Christian, a good association, a good friend, a good partner, is not one that never sins – it’s one that recognizes their sin and is working on it. They see the hypocrisy in themselves and want to deal with it. They see greed and they want it to stop. Not because they are trying to earn God’s love or show off, but because they trust God’s way, trust God’s Word, fear and respect God as Lord, and know that sin is dangerous, sin is corrupting, sin is a trap, and sin cost Jesus His life, so they want to be free of it. And they preach a message that tells people how to be free of it by the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The CBOQ, if they keep going the way they are going, doesn’t seem to want to do that. They have tolerated sin and error for years, and have had ample opportunity to deal with it. That’s why we’re on the fence waiting to see what they’ll do with this final ultimatum.
So my encouragement to you is to pray for the CBOQ that the leadership would repent. For the churches that are in sin, that they would repent. For the leadership of CLRA, and for us to make wise and careful steps over the coming months.
My further encouragement to you is to consider your own history with churches. Have you ever left a church for wrong reasons and need to repent and ask forgiveness? Are you here for the right reasons? Are you considering leaving, and are those reasons godly? Do you know people who have left their church, this one or another, and need to be confronted about why they did it? Perhaps God is calling you to do that.
And finally, I would ask you to consider our own church’s issues. Are there any weeds in our garden? Are there sins that we, as a church family, need to repent of? Are there things we’ve let slide that God has convicted you of, but you’ve been afraid to bring up? Let’s deal with them so that we can all stand clean before God and not be mired in sin. How can we ask for the Holy Spirit to bless our gatherings and grow our church if we have sins God has been telling us about, but we refuse to confront? God will not bless disobedience.
Let’s take the speck out of our own eye, before we go and try to deal with the log in the CBOQ’s.
As One Beggar to Another (Introduction to the Gospel of John Series)
An Introduction to the Gospel of John
Please open up to John 20:30-21, but before we jump in and read it, we need a little context. We are starting a series on the Gospel of John today, but I don’t’ want to jump straight into verse one. In fact, we’re going to start near the end. But first, some background.
The Gospel of John is just that, John’s presentation of the Gospel, the good news, about Jesus Christ. John’s is the last of the gospels written and tells the story of Jesus differently than Matthew, Mark and Luke. Those three are called the Synoptic Gospels because they are a “synopsis” or “summary” of the story of Jesus. They were all written within a couple decades of each other, from 50 to around 70AD, and each to a different audience. Mark wrote to convince the Gentiles of why they should follow Jesus as God, Matthew wrote to the Jews to show them that Jesus was their Messiah, and then Doctor Luke wrote his gospel and Acts together as an eye-witness account of Jesus’ life and ministry, and the birth of the church, for everyone.
These Synoptic Gospels were copied and circulated all over the place for about 20 years. At that time, most of, if not all of the Apostles died, except John. In 90AD, 50 years after he witnessed Jesus earthly ministry, John was still alive and ministering in Ephesus, a central hub and ministry training centre for many of the churches around the world. It wouldn’t be too long, maybe only 5 years, until even greater persecution against the church would cause John to be arrested, boiled in oil, and then exiled to the penal island of Patmos where he would write the Book of Revelation.
As he grew older in his ministry in Ephesus, God placed upon his heart to write his own Gospel, his own explanation of why people should believe in Jesus. But he would do it from his own perspective. Matthew, Mark and Luke had already written their defences of the Gospel so he didn’t need to re-write those again. He wrote something different. He wrote a “spiritual gospel”, a sort of supplement and complement to the other three. (Macarthur Study Bible – Pg 1569-1570) That’s why many of the stories in John’s book are different than Matthew, Mark and Luke’s – and why, when they overlap, John gives some more information and explanation.
So, for example, John’s gospel doesn’t start with the birth narrative. That’s already covered really well in Matthew and Luke. Instead, John starts with a greater understanding of where Jesus came from. Matthew starts with Jesus’ lineage and then tells the birth narrative because he was convincing his Jewish audience that Jesus was the Messiah and rightful King in the line of David. Luke begins with the story of John the Baptist because he’s picking up right where the Old Testament left off, and then gets into the birth narrative from an eye-witness account, likely after talking to Mary herself.
John didn’t’ need to do that. How does John start?
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1–3)
John goes all the way back before the beginning of the Bible, before the beginning of time, to explain to His readers who Jesus really is. They’ve probably already read the other Gospels, and we all know that the first 50 years of the church was full of non-stop false-teaching about Jesus. By the time of John’s writing, the Apostle Paul had already written all his letters to the churches and been dead for over 20 years. As John writes his gospel, he does so with one eye on combatting the false-teachings about Jesus and the other on making an apologetic, a defence, for who Jesus really is. So, when the Apostle John starts his gospel, he expands his readers’ minds helping them understand something about Jesus that people weren’t grasping – so no one would ever have a doubt about who He is ever again. This Jesus, whom he is about to present, is fully God and fully man.
John is writing as an evangelist. He’s trying to convince people of who Jesus really is. Throughout the Gospel, John arranges the stories thematically to as “signs” that point to who Jesus not only said He is but showed He is. Like in John 6 when Jesus miraculously feeds thousands of people and then says, “I am the bread of life.” (6:35). John tells the story of Jesus do something miraculous, shows people misunderstanding that miracle, demonstrates how the current religious leaders are wrong, and then connects that story to Jesus explaining in no uncertain terms who He is and what the miracle meant. John does this over and over, using seven different miracles as the outline to explain seven different perspectives, so no one reading would have any doubts about who Jesus really is.
In John’s own words, near the end of the Gospel, John gives his mission statement: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30–31)
One Beggar to Another
John’s mission wasn’t merely to present facts about Jesus, to correct people who got the story wrong, or to show us how Jesus lived so we could do the same. That wasn’t his main motivation. He wrote this Gospel, as did the other gospel writers, as did Paul and Peter and everyone else who wrote a book of the New Testament – to tell the truth about, and convince people to follow the one, true, Jesus. Not a version of Jesus that fit with their worldview, not a pick-and-choose, buffet-style Jesus assembled from a bunch of different sources, not the Jewish version of Jesus, the Greek version of Jesus, or any other version of Jesus – and not because they just wanted everyone to think they were right or special or unique.
The Gospel writers wrote, as someone else put it,
“as one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.” (D.T. Niles)
That’s what evangelism, the sharing of the gospel, is all about. I’m subscribed to a bunch of different Christian YouTube channels and one thing that keeps popping up in my feed are videos of street evangelists with megaphones arguing with other people with megaphones. That’s not really the kind of evangelism we see in scriptures, but it’s the sort that gets clicks and attention. As they say though, it seems to be all heat and no light.
I remember being out in downtown Ottawa one night and there was a man standing on a street corner holding a sign that I think simply just had Matthew 3:2 on it,
“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
As I walked past him I read the sign and tried to catch his eye to wave at him. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he had good motives and I wanted to give him a sort of a, “Hey man, I don’t know you, but good for you for standing out here holding a bible verse.” But he wouldn’t acknowledge me. He just stood there with a gloomy look on his face, staring into nothingness. I kept waving though and I watched as he looked at me, and then looked away. So I started waving more. He didn’t move. So I stopped walking, stared right at him, and started waving and waving. Eventually, about a minute later, he begrudgingly gave me a little hand-twist and I smiled and went on my way.
From what I’ve read and experienced, that dude is basically what the world thinks we are when we say we’re Christians. A bunch of grumpy, judgemental, joyless people who generally dislike the world around them, and are carrying a message that no one really seems to understand. It’s not true – well, it’s not true for most of the Christians that I know – but it’s the stereotype, right?
And honestly, no one reading that guy’s sign is going to understand what it says anymore. What percentage of people in the Byward Market on a Friday night, do you think, know what any of those words mean? What does “repent” mean? What is the “kingdom of heaven”? What does “at hand” mean? It’s basically gibberish to 95% of Canada.
But the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t gibberish. It’s not religion or opinion or a methodology or a good, old story to tell to make us feel better, or a hammer to beat down our enemies. It’s the difference between life and death. “…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” That, at the very least, implies that those who do not believe in his name do not have “life”. It means they are “dead”. People who share, and teach, and defend, the gospel of Jesus – whether we’re talking about Matthew, Luke, John, or Paul – or Billy Graham or Dwight L Moody – or Pastors and Small Group Leaders and Sunday School Teachers – or just you sitting in a coffee shop or at your kitchen table telling your story to someone else – are not coming from a “high-horse” down to the ignorant masses to explain how we know the right way of doing religion.
No, we are just “one beggar telling another beggar where we found the bread.” The Apostles don’t elevate themselves in their books, but instead, debase themselves, showing how they were lost, blind, and afraid. The hero of the gospels, or Acts, or the letters, is never the author, nor any the apostles. The followers of Jesus don’t come off in a very good light. Matthew was a despised tax collector, Mark was a coward who took off on both Jesus and Paul, Peter stuck his foot in his mouth over and over and then denied Jesus at His most desperate hour. All of the men who would become the apostles repeatedly showed their ignorance, sin, selfishness, and cowardice. When they told the story of Jesus, they didn’t shine – Jesus did.
When Paul tells the story of His conversion he pulls no punches either. He loved himself above all, hated Jesus, and got great pleasure from abusing Christians as much as he could. Over and over Paul marvels at how much grace Jesus showed him. When Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy near the end of his life, after serving God for many years and suffering much for the faith, he said,
“I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Timothy 1:12–17)
The closer Paul got to Jesus, the smaller Paul got and the larger Jesus got. I love that line in verse 16, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” Paul often wondered why Jesus would save him, one who hated Him so much and did so much damage to His people. And after a long while, this is what he had figured out. Jesus gave him mercy because if he could be saved – if Jesus could save Saul of Tarsus, the most fearsome opponent to the church alive, a man even the apostles were nervous around – anyone could be saved.
The Heart of Evangelism
That’s the heart of evangelism, that’s the heart of the New Testament, the heart with which John writes his gospel with, and the heart of every good preacher, teacher, and Christian who is sharing their faith. We don’t speak about how great we are because we found Jesus – we tell people how great Jesus is because He found us.
When we weren’t looking for Him, Jesus showed Himself to us. When we were up to our eyeballs in sin and self, spiritually dead, unable to even recognize good from evil, Jesus broke through and showed us the consequences of that sin, died for those sins, killed those sins inside of us, and then raise us to new life. When we were desperately seeking a way to rid ourselves of guilt and shame and fear through our own willpower, through religion, through lifestyle, through spiritualism, Jesus broke our wills and told us the truth about where salvation, freedom, and life really comes from. When we were hurting, afraid, lonely, and lost, using all sorts of means to distract and numb ourselves from pain – Jesus broke through the fog, shared His love with us, offered us a new life, a new path, with Him as the Lord of our lives instead of us, and made it possible for us to conquer those sins and feel what life is really like.
When we share the gospel, I mean really share our story, our testimony, the good news of Jesus Christ, it comes from the same heart that Paul wrote with. Someone asks us, “Why do you live and talk and think like you do? Why do you have hope when everything is so hopeless? Why can you say you feel forgiven when I know the terrible things you’ve done? How can you possibly forgive the person who hurt you so badly? Where does your strength of character, your peace, your patience, your kindness, your love, your joy, your generosity, your gentleness, your courage, come from?”
Our answer is the same as every other Christian’s. “Listen, man. Any good you see in me doesn’t come from me. I’m a sinner. I still sin a lot. I still love myself far more than I should. If you were inside my head sometimes, you wouldn’t be asking that question. But here’s what happened. Even though I was steeped in my own ignorance, even though I thought I was better and smarter than God, even though I kept doing things my way, Jesus changed my life. He showed me grace. Something happened one day that I can’t explain. At that moment, Jesus met me. It was like seeing light or hearing sound for the first time. And when I saw that bit of light, I wanted more and asked Him to help me. So He pointed me at His word, His people, and His way. He told me to step off the throne of my life and give it all to Him. And I did. He showed me my ignorance and sin, and how my life was no life at all but was steeped in death – and then He offered to save me from it. He was gentle, kind, and patient, but firm. Whereat one time I hated authority, I despised anyone telling me what to do, now I craved it. I want life the way He offers it, the way He lives it. That change wasn’t me. He did it all.
He helped me see what was wrong and still is. He helped me get clean from it and still is. But it wasn’t just that He gave me people to help me – which He did – He worked a miracle inside me. It like He took out my old heart and replaced it with a new one. I’m not the same person I was. He didn’t just change a couple things – He changed all of me. My priorities are different, my outlook is different, my interests are different, the way I see the world, and people, and politics, and work, and life, and death, and eternity are all very, very different than before. And that’s because of Him. It’s because, in His mercy, He changed me.
And so, here’s the secret. Every day, I go to Him. When I wake up, I talk to Him and He talks to me through His word and in my spirit – in my heart. As I go through my day, no matter what’s happening, I know He’s with me. I’m never alone. When I need wisdom, I ask and he gives it to me. When I sin and mess up – which is a lot – He always, always forgives me and then tells me what I need to do to fix it. When I’m frustrated and angry, or tempted, or afraid, I talk to Him, I read His Word, and He always, always, shows up. I can’t explain it. All I can say is that Jesus is real and alive, and I know Him personally – but more important… He knows me. That’s what’s different about me.”
Conclusion
That’s the heart and message I want to start this series out with. Yes, we may get into some more academic, systematic theology, jargony bits, because explaining the truth accurately is important – but I want it to always be at the front of our minds that John’s Gospel, and by extension this church, the ministries we have here, my ministry, and everything we do is motivated by the knowledge that true life, the meaning of life, abundant life, is only found by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as He is found in the Bible.
My encouragement to you is to read and study and pray along with me so that we can grow together in faith, hope, and love for Jesus, His Gospel, His people, and His Word.
The Resurrection is EVERYTHING. (HC:LD17a)
A lot of us are like those two followers walking down the road to Emmaus. They start out, perplexed, anxious, disappointed in how things have turned out, confused about God’s plan, talking to one another about things they don’t understand, and hoping that if they keep walking away, that somehow they will leave their problems behind them. They wanted God to solve their problems and make them happy, but somehow that wasn’t God’s plan. So they’re disappointed with God, with Jesus, and are walking away.
Some are like those two when they’re a little farther down the road when, even though Jesus is walking alongside them, even talking to them, they don’t recognize Him or His presence. They are believers, but because of their sin, doubt, fear, or pride – because their focus is on themselves and their troubles – are blind to the presence of Jesus, unable to see, hear, or understand what He’s saying. Even though Jesus offers His word and an explanation of the entire story from beginning to end, they don’t get it because their hearts are darkened to Him.
And then there are those who have had that “aha” moment with Jesus, where they’ve finally figured out who Jesus is, recognize His person and His power, realize He is the one that the whole Bible is talking about, and whose hearts burn within them to know more. In the story in Luke, once Jesus leaves them, they jump up and run back to the city of Jerusalem so they can find others to share their story of hope with.
Everyone is somewhere on this path.
Paul and Corinth
Please open up to 1 Corinthians 15:1-21. This passage is written by the Apostle Paul, a man who walked every part of that path with more intensity than any of us will ever experience. Paul is mostly known as a dedicated missionary of the gospel of Jesus who travelled all around the ancient world preaching, teaching, and planting churches in the name of Jesus. Paul was not always a missionary though. Paul wasn’t even his birth name. When he was born he was Saul, the son of a strict Jewish family who were also Roman citizens. When he was young he likely not only studied under a rabbi but also attended Greek school at the same time. Then, in his teens, moved to Jerusalem where he was given the chance to study under one of the most famous Jewish teachers of all time, Gamaliel. Paul eventually becomes a Pharisee – the strictest and most hard-core followers of the Law of Moses. And Saul was the top of his class. He was the most hard-core of the hard-core. It was the Pharisees that spent the most time antagonizing and attacking Jesus and Saul was most likely in Jerusalem when Jesus was there. It’s very likely that the two of them crossed paths, with Paul on the side of the Pharisees, not Jesus.
We are first introduced to Saul as a young man of around 20 or 30 years old, holding the clothes for an angry mob that were stoning the first Christian martyr, a man named Stephen. Saul hated Jesus and he hated Christians. He hated Jesus and his followers so much that he made it his personal mission to destroy them. He saw Jesus as a condemned and crucified blasphemer and anyone who believed in Him as worthy of the same punishment.
Acts 8:3 says that “Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.” He likely had his hand in the suffering and death of many Christians. Saul was a powerful, intelligent, influential, man on a mission and nothing was going to stop him. Until Jesus did.
Jesus didn’t come walking beside him though. There was no gentle invitation. Instead, as Saul was headed into another town to rout out the Christians, Jesus blasted a light from heaven, knocked Saul to the ground, and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”. Not “my followers”, but “me”. Saul spent three days, blind and trembling. He couldn’t eat or drink. His whole life was turned upside down. Everything he thought he knew was wrong.
A few days later Jesus sends one of his followers, Ananias to cure Saul’s blindness and baptize him as a new believer. Over the next days and years, Saul would reorient everything he had ever been taught and realize it all pointed to Jesus. He had memorized the whole Old Testament and suddenly everything he thought he knew was wrong – but those scriptures and prophecies started to make a lot more sense. Jesus walked with Him and explained the scriptures, just as He did to those followers on the road to Emmaus. Paul meditated, prayed, and spent time talking and listening to Jesus until He had that “aha” moment about God’s upside-down kingdom. The crucified Lord made sense. The gospel made sense. The life of Jesus made sense. God as a suffering servant made sense. The only thing that didn’t make sense was why Jesus, the one who he hated so much, would save him. Why would Jesus show love to the one associated with the people who got Him crucified, and who had tried to destroy His people! Saul never forgot that amazing grace. So he changed his name to Paul and took that message to as many people as he possibly could – suffering every injustice and pain imaginable so more people could hear.
So that’s the author of our passage today. Now, consider the audience. Paul was writing to the Corinthians, a church in the Greek city of Corinth. Corinth was a town full of pagan idols, temples, and activities. It was a cosmopolitan, port town with lots of money and people. Paul came into this town a bit of a wreck. He had some bad experiences on the road and when he got to Corinth he was almost ready to quit being a missionary altogether. But Corinth accepted him, listened to his simple messages, and a church was formed. And they were so excited too! Imagine living your whole life on the Las Vegas strip, surrounded by sin and lies and temptation, but add to that believing that the gods you worship are fickle, angry, at war with each other, even easily bribed. It is a life out of control. But then you hear the Gospel of Jesus. That there is One God above all and He loves you, accepts you, and wants to save you. That this God didn’t just love a certain group of people, but even loved messed up pagans like you, and was willing to not only save you from hell, but change your life here and now, to give you a hope and a purpose, and affect your life so utterly that you could put away all the garbage in your life and live with Him as your one God, through whom you would find true peace and joy.
Corinth was a city of darkness and Jesus came to them like a beam of light. Corinth was a land of spiritual thirst and Jesus came to them as the one who quenched that thirst.
But Paul had to move on to plant other churches, and it wasn’t long until the darkness crept into the church and started to corrupt it. They started letting pagan worship practices come in. They started arguing with one another. They fought and even sued one another. Then came the sexual temptations and drunkenness where people were using the freedom of the gospel to excuse all kinds of depravity, even worse than the pagan temples – and they were bad. Then the other side of the church overcorrected and started banning everyone from doing almost anything – no marriage, no meat, no holidays, no nothing. It wasn’t long until they started letting false teachers take the pulpit, men who would deny the resurrection of Jesus and draw people away. The church, in quite short order, became a mess of compromise, division, and corruption. Paul heard about this and though he couldn’t leave the church where he was, he wrote a letter to them. We call this letter 1st Corinthians.
The passage I’m about to read is in chapter 15. Paul has already been writing about how their sin was destroying the joy and peace they once had in Jesus, but he was building to something. In Chapter 12 he tells them that under Jesus they shouldn’t be divided but united – and not in a boring, cookie-cutter, sameness, but in appreciation of their differences. In Chapter 13 he tells them that the only way to do this is by letting the entire motive for everything they do be love. In Chapter 14 he gives more examples, but then in Chapter 15, right before he closes his letter, he tells them how, and why, they should take all this so seriously.
Why should they fight temptation? Why should they humble themselves and seek unity? Why should they study the Bible and get their theology and practice right? Why choose a life of humility, sacrifice, and temperance when all around them were opportunities for self-aggrandizement, power, and pleasure? And even if they wanted to, how could this wreck of a church actually come back to Jesus? Surely He was done with them. Surely they were too far gone.
But Paul remembers his own story, and how much it mirrored theirs. If anyone was “too far gone” it was him. And he knows that the amazing grace of Jesus, the gospel of Jesus Christ, has the power to utterly and completely change lives. The same power that rose Jesus from the dead, that turned him from Saul to Paul, was available to them. The hope and power they knew at first wasn’t gone, it was still there.
How could they access it? By remembering what happened on day one when Paul first arrived and preached that first message. By going back to what they first believed. By dumping all the garbage that had come up in their lives, their homes, their relationships, their church, their city, and their nation – and by getting back to the foundation of their faith. By seeing their sin for what it was, the ploy of the enemy to draw them away from Jesus toward their previous, hopeless, shame-filled life. To turn away from the mess that Jesus had saved them from and back toward Jesus. They had already been saved by Jesus, empowered by God, and had the presence of the Holy Spirit – but they had forgotten. All they had to do was remember.
And so Paul says in Chapter 15:
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.”
The Resurrection Is EVERYTHING
I saw an article online this week where BBC radio called 2000 people to ask them about their beliefs about Christianity for a program they were putting on Palm Sunday in 2017. They discovered that only 35% of the people that called themselves Christians believe the biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus, and only 61% even believed in life after death.[1] Then what do they believe? Why are they even calling themselves Christians? And Canada isn’t so different in their statistics. Western Christianity is not so different from the Corinthian church 2000 years ago. We are just as affected by our culture, just as forgetful.
In our world today we sometimes forget why the Christian church exists. Some people think it’s here as a place to get together as a community once a week for some fun and support. Others see it as a place where morality is taught so kids can know right and wrong. Others see it as a political organization, a motivated group gathered to promote either conservative or liberal values, depending on whether you prefer talking about the economy or social justice. Some people see the church as a way to network so they can make friends and business partnerships. Others see the church as the keepers of culture and tradition, a place to be married and buried, maybe visited on important holidays, but not really something that affects daily life. Others see it as a place for idiots and rubes to get another injection of blind-hope and be duped out of their money by corrupt leaders.
Why do we exist? Why are we here today? Why are we making a big deal of this thing we call Easter, the day of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Is it tradition? Is it just part of our culture? Is it to make some kind of allegorical point about sacrifice? Is it just an excuse to get together, sing some songs, think big thoughts, and eat some treats?
No, the Christian church exists to proclaim the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s why we’re here. Everything else – our community work, good deeds, hospitals, orphanages, music, art, education, traditions, everything, is meaningless without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We do good works so people will see the risen Jesus. We open hospitals and orphanages and schools to give mercy and sacrificial care to needy people because Jesus has shown mercy to us when we had need, and so we can share the gospel with them, telling them that they don’t just need medicine and a home, but the healing of their souls. We create masterpieces of music and art not merely to celebrate the death of Jesus, but because of His resurrection. His death is only worth painting in the light of His resurrection. Otherwise, the story isn’t one of victory, but tragedy.
As Paul said, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…. if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If the resurrection isn’t real, if we’re just here for pancakes and some nice music, to read from a book full of lies and prophecies that never came true, to sing songs about a made up fiction, and to go home in the same condition in which we came – no closer to God, no more holy, no more meaning, no more hope – because the resurrection didn’t happen, then we are above all most to be pitied.
If Jesus isn’t alive, then there is no answer to sin, no meaning to our suffering, and we’re all doomed to either oblivion or hell. If Jesus isn’t alive, then sin and death have won. If Jesus isn’t alive, then everyone who has ever died is either gone forever into a meaningless void or has been doomed to hell because they died still condemned, because their faith was in the wrong person. If Jesus isn’t alive, and all this church has to offer is some false “hope in this life only”, and a few moral nuggets that you can take or leave, then what’s the point? Why live like a Christian if Jesus is dead?
Jay Adams defined Christian Preaching as “preaching that will get you thrown out of a synagogue or mosque.” Because for a message to be a Christian message, it must say something about Jesus that no one else says. A message that is not only distinct but radical and offensive to those who don’t believe it. A Christian life, a life lived in the light of the resurrection cannot look like a pagan life, a Buddhist life, a secular life. Our beliefs are not interchangeable. For a Christian life, and Christian message to be Christian, it must show that Jesus is unlike anyone else. The Gospel of Jesus is more than telling people to be good and moral and honest. It’s more than showing people how to do life. It’s more than learning bible verses that look good on mugs and pillows and tattoos. It is about finding our sufficiency in Jesus because Jesus is the only one who lived a perfect life, died an innocent death, and then rose again after being buried in a tomb, conquering sin and death, showing Himself to hundreds of witnesses, and creating a movement where so many people have met Him – have personally met the risen Lord – that they are willing to give everything, even to die, to share the message of salvation with others .[2]
The Resurrection is E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
This is why it is so utterly heartbreaking and aggravating to see Christians and churches that miss the point, who forget about living in the light of the resurrection so they can concentrate on other things. It’s like watching someone brag about how great their house looks, while it’s on fire. It’s like hearing someone brag about getting a new stereo in a car that doesn’t have an engine or wheels. It’s like someone saying how attractive their girlfriend is, even though it’s a corpse they covered in make-up and propped up against a wall. Christianity without the resurrection isn’t just pointless, it’s bizarre, even disgusting. It brings no glory to God and offers no hope to anyone. It’s an exercise is religious futility.
This is also why it’s so painful for us to see a life lived without Jesus, good or bad. Christians, you know this feeling. You know what it’s like to see someone that is either utterly wasting away because of their slavery to sin, or who have such wonderful gifts but are only using them for their own glory. Or, perhaps worse, you know what it’s like to watch a person grow up in church, learn all the lingo, go through the motions of attending Sunday School, saying the prayer of salvation and getting baptized – but then to realize their faith had no roots, and they never did know Jesus. They head into high school or college and before long you realize that it was all pretending.
Why does that hurt so much? If the point of Christianity was about giving some moral lessons and traditions, then what more can you ask? But if Christianity means having a living, dynamic relationship with the risen Lord Jesus Christ – then seeing people enslaved to sin, living an empty, secularly successful life, or knowing people who only pretended to be believers – is soul-crushing. Why? Because everything they do is still soaked in sin.
We see a life full of good things – but know that since they didn’t know the resurrected Jesus, they died under the curse and went to Hell. What a heartbreaking waste. We look at their impact, the followers they gather, the children they have, the work they do, how beautiful and successful people say they are – but then realize they spent their whole lives under the influence of Satan and that everyone who followed them was pointed toward death, and they stand in judgment before God for the people they corrupted.
The resurrection is everything because it is the foundation of reality, hope, purpose, meaning, and life itself. A life not lived in the light of the resurrection is a wasted life – a dangerous life – a meaningless life.
Why? Because if you don’t know the resurrected Jesus, then you are like those disciples on the road to Emmaus – walking away from Jerusalem – before Jesus came to them. You are lost, though you think you know where you are going. You are believing lies, even though you think you know the truth. You are trying to find meaning and security where there is none. You are trying to discern what to do with your life while living in the dark. You are trying to find purpose among utter chaos, direction with no compass. Without knowing Jesus, all of your efforts to find peace, hope, and meaning, is like using your own strength to pull light out of a black hole.
Conclusion
So, my question to you today is this: Where are you on the Emmaus Road?
If you are a Christian, are you living in the light of the resurrection? Do you live each day in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus Christ? Living each day like He is real, available, present, and willing to walk with you every step of the way? Does your relationship with the living, Lord Jesus make a difference in your daily life? Do you talk to Him about your hopes, fears, worries, plans, needs, and desires, knowing that He is near and willing to protect and guide? Or do you live as though you believe a story that happened 2000 years ago? I challenge you to examine yourself. Are you walking with the risen Lord Jesus each day?
If you are not a Christian, have you looked into the most important event in human history? Have you spent time thinking about it, reading about it, and talking about it – even if it’s uncomfortable, even if you know that believing it is a terrible risk? Have you felt the Holy Spirit tugging at your conscience, placing people in your life to tell you about Jesus, pointing you away from sin and death, and inviting you towards life – but you’ve been pushing them aside because you are afraid, or because your pride keeps telling you that your way is better? My challenge to you is to study the resurrection, talk about it with people, and seek the truth – and then, when you have done that and realize that it’s true – to submit yourself to what God has been trying to do in you, accept that amazing grace, turn away from your sins, ask God’s forgiveness, believe that Jesus died for those sins and rose again to destroy them forever, and follow Him from now on as your Risen Lord.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39153121
[2] https://www.rightnowmedia.org/Content/VideoElement/151084
Why is Jesus Called “Christ”? (HC:LD12)
Turn with me to Mark 8:27-33. This scripture occurs in the final year of Jesus’ earthly ministry as His focus has grown more steadily towards His journey to Jerusalem and the cross. He has already gathered His disciples and they have been with Him for a couple years. He has already done much travelling and teaching and has had a lot of run-ins with a lot of different people. At one point in his travels, it says,
“And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they told him, ‘John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.’ And he asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’”
You gotta love, Peter. He goes from telling Jesus who He is to arguing with Jesus about the very same thing. “Who am I?” asked Jesus. Peter says, “You are the Christ.”, meaning the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Son of the living God and divinely anointed leader who will liberate God’s people from their great oppressor. In Peter’s mind that meant military victory over Rome and the establishing of the Jewish people as the rulers of the earth. Then Jesus starts to clarify what it meant for Him to be the Christ. He told them what would happen soon – rejection from the leaders of Jerusalem, a false trial before the chief priests, cursed to be crucified on a Roman cross, but then to rise again in victory. That’s not what Peter wanted to hear. Peter had an identity crisis on behalf of Jesus. The Christ can’t die! That sounds like defeat! So Peter starts to argue with Jesus, rebuking the One he had just called Christ. “No way! That’ll never happen! You have the power to stop that. You could use your power to overthrow Rome! You don’t need to die on a cross. Surely the angels will protect you.” Sound familiar?
Now turn to John 6. You will see at the beginning of this chapter the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Everyone was really excited about that. Look at verse 14.
“When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’ Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
Another identity crisis. Jesus, in His compassion, feeds the hungry masses. They are impressed, call him “The Prophet”, meaning a man like Moses who God used to miraculously feed Israel manna in the desert, and immediately want to force Him to become King. And Jesus takes off. Now why did the people want to make Jesus King, and why would Jesus take off on them? After all, being the Christ makes Him king, right? Why run away?
Turn to verse 25-26,
“When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.’”
Same problem as Peter. Jesus Christ had come to save the people, not from the oppression of Rome, but from a much greater oppressor – death. And that plan required Him to go to Jerusalem, be falsely accused, have the sins of the world placed on His shoulders, and for Him to die under the curse. His coronation would come later, but that’s not what the people wanted. They wanted a king now. They wanted a new Moses. Jesus wanted to give them more. And if Jesus would have become King then, everyone in His Kingdom would still be under the curse of sin and death because He wouldn’t have gone to the cross. Jesus had a bigger picture.
Over and over in Jesus’ life, people kept misunderstanding who He was, why He had come, and what He was supposed to do. His family, friends, followers, and enemies all argued with Jesus about who He was and what He was doing. He was called crazy, demonic, and a blasphemer. Eventually, by the end of John 6, a huge amount of His disciples would leave, angry and confused about who Jesus claimed to be.
The Christ
As we go through a study of the Apostles Creed in this section of the Heidelberg Catechism we are answering a few fairly straightforward questions that people have been asking about Jesus for literally two thousand years: Who is Jesus?
Last week it was the question, “Why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, Saviour?” In other words, what makes the name of Jesus so significant, and what does it mean to us? And the answer was, “Because he saves us from all our sins, and because salvation is not to be sought or found in anyone else.” The name “Jesus” means “God Saves” and throughout His life Jesus claimed – and the Christian church has claimed ever since – that faith in Jesus is the only way anyone can be saved from the judgement of God against their sin.
Today we move from the significance of the name of Jesus to His title, “The Christ”. When Peter answered the question, “Who do you say I am?” that was His answer, and it was packed with significance.
Question 31 of the Heidelberg asks the question,
“Why is he called Christ, that is, Anointed?”
In other words, “What is the significance of calling Jesus ‘Christ’? What does it mean that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One?
During the trial before His crucifixion, Jesus stood silently as He was accused of a lot of things, but none of them held up, even in that false, kangaroo court they had come up with. But the High Priest, who didn’t care who Jesus really was and just wanted Him dead, had one more card up his sleeve. It says in Matthew 26:63-66,
“And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his robes and said, ‘He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?’ They answered, ‘He deserves death.’”
Jesus was crucified because of the claim that He is “the Christ”. Why was that such a big deal? The Heidelberg summarizes it this way:
“Because he has been ordained by God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Spirit, to be our chief Prophet and Teacher, who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption; our only High Priest, who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us, and who continually intercedes for us before the Father; and our eternal King, who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who defends and preserves us in the redemption obtained for us.”
Why was Jesus’ and His followers’ claim that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, such a big deal? Because He it said, and the Christian church says today, that Jesus is God’s perfect prophet, priest, and king. Those are the only people that get anointed by God – prophets, priests and kings. What does that mean?
Prophet, Priest, King
It means that Jesus claims, and we believe, to be the greatest of all the prophets or teachers. Over and over Jesus claimed to not only be talking about God but to be speaking the very words of God (John 8:28, 12:49-50, 14:24). In that way, He is greater than Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist or Peter. Jesus is our chief teacher because He is the One who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God because He is God. He is the best interpreter of the Law because He is the lawgiver. He is the best preacher of the gospel because He Himself is the good news. He is the best proclaimer of the kingdom of God because it’s His kingdom. Everyone other than Jesus knows a part of God’s plan. Jesus knows everything and was willing to teach us a lot of it when He came, and then even more through His Spirit within.
He is also the greatest priest, greater than all priests that came before. A prophet’s job is to tell us God’s word. A priest’s job is to bring the people before God by doing what is necessary to make us worthy and then interceding on our behalf. Jesus does this better than any other. Every other priest is sinful, Jesus is sinless. Every other priest offered animals, Jesus offered Himself. Other priests have to repeat sacrifices, Jesus was once and for all. Other priests offer sacrifices for a certain group of people, Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. Only one priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and then only once per year, Jesus lives in Heaven and stands before God Himself. Other priests die, Jesus lives forever.
And Jesus is the greater King. Other kings are appointed by military might or birth Jesus was appointed by God. Other kings have boundaries to their kingdoms, Jesus’ kingdom has no borders. Other kings have thrones on earth, Jesus has a throne in heaven. Jesus’ kingdom has the greatest armies, the greatest victories, the highest power, the best laws, and will last for eternity because no one can overthrow Him. His word is not only law, but can actually bend reality to His will.
Who is Better than Jesus?
In the book of Hebrews in the New Testament the Christians there are being faced with persecution because of their faith and are considering giving up and either turning back to Judaism or their pagan roots. The whole argument of Hebrews stands on this question, “To where will you turn that is better than Jesus?” Back to Caesar, back to Moses?
That’s an echo of our question today. What makes Jesus special? Why should we put our whole faith in Him and no other, especially when it’s difficult, inconvenient, and causes us frustration or pain? Isn’t Jesus just a prophet like some other religions say? Isn’t He just a great moral teacher, as some secularists say? Isn’t He just a good model to live by, but not to take so seriously? Do we really have to give our whole allegiance to Him and Him alone, even when the world comes against us? Why does He deserve that kind of allegiance?
That’s what the audience to the letter of the Hebrews were considering. They were like the crowd in John 6 we talked about, standing before Jesus, asking for more loaves and fishes, as He said, “I’m not here to fill your bellies with bread. I am the Bread of Life. I was sent by God, spoken of by the prophets, and anyone who believes in me alone for salvation, that my flesh and my blood are the only way, will have eternal life. Everyone else who tells you any other way is a liar.”
Listen to what happened after Jesus said that.
“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6:66)
That claim – Jesus’ claim to be the Christ, the greatest prophet, priest and king, the only way of salvation, the one to whom you must swear sole allegiance to on His terms – was too much to ask for many. They didn’t want Jesus they wanted bread, so they left. It continues,
“So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’” (John 6:67–69)
Gotta love Peter.
This was the same choice that was being given to the believers that the letter to the Hebrews was sent to, and is the same choice we are given now. Sure, we don’t live in a land where we face direct persecution or imprisonment for our faith, but our allegiance is tested in other ways every day.
I want to show another one of those videos that I showed you last week so you can see how this argument is shown in Hebrews, and hopefully inspire you to do your own study.
Conclusion
The Application for today is a simple one, and it comes from Question 32 of the Heidelberg.
“Why are you called a Christian?”
That title is an important one. If Jesus is the Christ and we are Christians, then there must be a connection. And the answer is this,
“Because I am a member of Christ by faith and thus share in his anointing, so that I may as prophet confess his name, as priest present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to him, and as king fight with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter reign with him eternally over all creatures.”
There’s a lot going on here that I’m not going to get into about the priesthood of believers and our eternal destination and place in God’s Kingdom, but I want to make this simpler. Do you trust Jesus as your Christ? Is He your perfect prophet, the One to whom you turn for ultimate truth? Do you trust Jesus as your perfect priest, the One who through His atoning sacrifice has made a way for you to stand before God cleansed from all your sins? Do you trust in Jesus as your perfect king, the Lord of your life who you obey with your whole heart? Where will you turn that is greater than He?
And then further, do you, as a follower of Christ, a Christian, in the Greek meaning “little Christ” – act as a “little Christ”? Do you publically profess and confess to being one of His, spreading the truth as one of his little-prophets, spreading the gospel, the message of reconciliation as what the Bible calls, one of Christ’s “Ambassadors” (2 Cor 5:18-20)? Do you, as a little-priest under Jesus, present your life to Him as a continual sacrifice (Rom 12:1), thanking him every day for what He has done for you? And, do you, as a little-king under Jesus, put on the armour of God (Eph 6:11) and do battle against your sin (1 Tim 1:18-19) so your life glorifies your Lord and King, Jesus?
This is not a threat from Jesus to “do a better job”, but an invitation to walk with Him. He offers you forgiveness and strength, defence and protection, a hope and a future, a mission and a reward if you are willing to accept Him as your one and only saviour. Will you do that today, and then live out that relationship every day?
Believe in Jesus (HC:LD7a)
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Turn with me to John 3:16-21 and we’ll read it together. We talked about this passage a little bit last week when I highlighted the exclusivity of the claims that Jesus was making as being the only one to have faith in, the one and only way path to forgiveness and restoration to God. I also read John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And then the teachings of the Apostles in Acts 4:12 where Peter says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Jesus didn’t say there were many ways to heaven, that God accepts the worship of other religions, or that anyone’s individual efforts – no matter how good – could win favour with God. No, over and over, Jesus taught and proved that He was the one and only Son of God, sent from the Father to give the message of life.
The first words of Jesus in Mark, the first Gospel ever written, were His declaration:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
He was saying in no uncertain terms because this was a command: “Here I am! The King of the Kingdom, the One to whom you owe your allegiance, the One that was foretold in all the prophecies, in all the ceremonies, and by all the signs. Now, ‘repent and believe’ in me.”
“Repent” was a word they had already heard lots of times from John the Baptist and it meant to “stop doing what you’re doing, stop sinning, and turn around”, but Jesus added to that message, “and believe”, meaning that anyone who turned around was supposed to follow Him. In other words, have faith in Him.
Faith in Jesus is a mega-theme in the gospel of Mark. When Jesus was asked to heal Jairus’ sick daughter, he was interrupted and then the girl died. And it says in Mark 5:35–36,
“While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’”
In other words, have faith in me. And then Jesus went and raised the child from the dead.
In Mark 4:35-41 we read the story of when the disciples were in a boat and a great storm arose, and everyone was scared they’d capsize, except Jesus who was sleeping in the front of the boat. It says,
“And they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?’”
In other words, “Guys, I’m in the boat. Do you really think that God’s going to let me drown before I finish my work? Do you really think I’m going to let you all drown? Do you trust me or not?”
And now, let’s read John 3:16-21,
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 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. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
It says, quite simply, that God sent Jesus into the world so that the curse of sin that leads to death would be broken and we might have eternal life. It said that when Jesus came it wasn’t to condemn the world, though He certainly could have, but instead He came to bring salvation to us.
We’ve already established, over the past weeks, I hope, that we are sinners in need of a saviour and that Jesus is the only way of salvation, right? So, what is the single qualification for someone to be saved by Jesus? What must a person do in order to be saved by Jesus?
Too Easily Pleased
Turn over to John 6:22–40. This story comes after Jesus feeds the 5000:
“On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.’”
Hold on there for a second. Jesus’ problem here was that the people were so worldly-minded they cared more about a full stomach than a saved soul. They didn’t care that Jesus Christ Himself stood before them, offering access to God – they were more interested in whether or not He would make more sandwiches.
They were, like many of us today, so concerned about their own comfort and wellbeing that they look right past what Jesus really offers and only ask for what ends up being trite, silly, and temporary things.
For example, we just sent our teens off to El Salvador this week, right? What did you pray for them? The prayer I heard most often basically amounted to asking God to make sure they would “be safe” and “have a good time”. And I don’t mean to come across as callous or critical, but those are kind of “loaf” prayers, aren’t they? Are we more concerned that our kids have full bellies and don’t get hurt than what God really wants to do in them? What if God really wants to change them, challenge them, increase their faith, force them to confront what they really believe, drive sin from their souls, and cause them to cry out to Him alone? That can’t happen when they are “safe”, can it? That happens when they get desperate and learn how much they need God. What a terrible waste to send a group off on a mission trip and have them only come home with the biggest report being: “nothing bad happened and we had a good time.” We may as well have sent them to Canada’s Wonderland.
CS Lewis said it this way:
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[1]
That’s what Jesus was criticizing there. That they were too easily pleased with loaves of bread and didn’t even desire the Son of God standing right before them.
The Work of God
Let’s keep reading though in verse 28:
“Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”
Take a look at verse 27 again. What did Jesus say?
“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you”
They completely missed that part. They say, “Ok, Jesus. We want that bread that lasts forever, so that our bellies will be full and we won’t have to worry about that anymore. What does God want us to do? What kind of ceremony? Some kind of sacrifice or worship song or prayer or good deed?” And Jesus says, “Guys, first, the best thing for you isn’t actually bread… I’m not talking about actual bread… and second, you don’t have to work for it. I’ll give it to you…”
Look at what Jesus says in verse 29,
“Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”
I told you a while back that every Worldview has 4 Questions they must answer: “Why is there something rather than nothing?, What’s broken with the world?, Can it be fixed?, Where is the future headed?”
Every religion, every worldview answers that question. They all know that something’s wrong with the world, but each one comes up with different ways to fix it. Some believe in humanism, and that through our own ingenuity and technology we will be able to save ourselves. Some believe in environmentalism, that if we just leave the world alone, it will fix itself. Hindu and Buddhism believe that if humans get good karma that they will eventually reincarnate as higher and higher forms of being. Islam believes that unbelievers are the problem and if you everyone would obey the five pillars then they might earn enough points to get to heaven. And New Age groups mush everything together, call everything, including themselves god and say that if anything bad happens it’s because you didn’t control your godhood properly because you are in charge of creating your own reality.
All of these worldviews have the same thing in common: They answer the question, “What must I do to be saved?” with the answer, “I can save myself if I try work enough.”
Jesus says, No. There is no amount of work you can do to conquer sin, reverse the curse of death, make everyone get along, stop war, plague, pestilence, and famine, and achieve your way into the presence of the Creator. It’s impossible.
Humans are always trying to figure out what work God wants them to do so they can get their prize, so they can get the loaves and fishes, the comfort, the way out of pain. They want to be able to say they did it themselves, that they worked hard enough, tried hard enough, were good enough, smart enough, and clever enough to save themselves, but the problem of sin isn’t one that we can fix. There’s no amount of work we can do to save ourselves. So when we ask what kind of work we can do to fix everything, Jesus says, “‘This is the work… that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”
There is no work required: Only faith. Believe in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. That’s it. He does the work.
Bread of Life
Keep reading in verse 30,
“So they said to him, ‘Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
This is astonishing. They weren’t listening at all! They look at Jesus and say, “Ok, whatever. Yesterday you gave us actual bread. That was good! Can we have more bread? Moses gave us bread every day! How can we be sure that you aren’t going to flake out on us and forget to bring the bread? Prove that you can do it again. Make you a deal: If you keep filling our bellies and making us fat and happy, then we’ll believe whatever you want… ”
And Jesus’ answer is perfect:
“Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’”
It’s like he’s saying: “No. C’mon you guys! Moses didn’t give you bread. God did! Sure, for a short period in history, while you were wandering in the desert, God sent manna and quail to you so you wouldn’t starve on your way to the Promised Land. But now, standing before you is the “true bread from heaven”, the One who won’t just feed your bellies for a day, but has the power to grant life itself!
Verse 34,
“They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’”
Still not getting it. They look around to one another and say, “Oooohhh… I get it! He’s talking about bottomless breadsticks! Yes! Give us that!” Still worried about food. Still stuck on temporal blessings and comfort. Still thinking about their momentary physical need for a bit of bread and not their deeper spiritual need for forgiveness of their sins and restoration to God.
So Jesus spells it out:
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”
Now pay attention to this next sentence, because this is what we’ve been building towards:
“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’”
What is the one, singular qualification for salvation? What must we do? Believe in Jesus.
HC LD7a – Belief
Turn your page over to the Heidelberg Catechism Questions for today. Remember last week we learned that Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and man, the only one who can take the punishment for the sins of the world? Look at question 20:
“Are all men, then, saved by Christ just as they perished through Adam?”
This is a good question. In our study of sin we learned that because of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, all of their offspring would fall under the curse of sin. Romans 5:12 says, “…sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” All humanity was infected with that curse, and therefore we are all sinners and stand condemned. And so the natural question then is, “Ok, then if all humanity is automatically infected with Adam’s curse, does it follow that all humanity is automatically cured by what Jesus did?
And the answer is,
“No. Only those are saved who by a true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all his benefits.”
Just as Jesus makes an exclusive claim to be the one and only savior, so in the same way, He says that the only people who are saved are the ones who make the choice to accept his free gift of salvation. Just as Adam and Eve chose to sin, so everyone must make the choice to believe in Jesus. Remember John 3:18,
“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.”
Now, I know, there are a lot of theological debates about what comes first: Does God change the heart before a man can believe? Or does a man have to believe before God changes his heart? If faith is a gift from God than how can man make a choice? I don’t want to spend a bunch of time talking about that today.
I think the moment of salvation works like this: It’s like we are sitting alone in a dark room eating something. We can’t see anything – what we look like, what we’re eating, or any way out. The room is all we’ve ever known, all we’ve ever experienced. But then, all at once, Jesus opens a door and sheds light into the room. We look around and realize we are sitting in filth, surrounded by garbage. We look at the food in our hands, and it’s disgusting, mouldy, maggot ridden…. We feel sick to our stomachs, regretful of where we are, what we’ve been putting in our bodies, disgusted by what we’ve been doing. And then Jesus says, “Hey, I’ve got a place for you and better food. Food that satisfies and makes you well. Will you come and eat what I’ve prepared for you?”
To me, that’s how salvation works. We can talk about the nuances of Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace and Conditional or Unconditional Election, but that’s a debate for theologians. I want to keep it simple.
Question 20: Is everyone saved? The answer: No. Only those who have true faith are saved.
Which leads to question 21,
“What is true faith?”
and the answer is beautiful,
“True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word. At the same time it is a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me, God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits. This faith the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the gospel.”
That boils down to some very simple beliefs. How do you know if you have “true faith” or if someone you know has “true faith” in Jesus Christ as their Saviour? Are you sure and confident of what God says in the Bible? And do you believe you are forgiven of your sins, not by anything you have done, but because of what Jesus did on the cross for your sake?
It is not enough to say that you believe in God. James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” Jesus says in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
If the answer to those questions are “Yes, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. I don’t get to make things up about Him or what He wants because He has revealed it to me in scripture. And yes, I believe that Jesus alone has saved me and I don’t need to do nothing else to add to that salvation.” then you are saved! You are a Christian!
But if you are not willing to say those things, and instead doubt God’s Word, make things up about Him, subscribe to other religions or superstitions – or that you think that you can earn your way to heaven through good works or religious ceremonies – then your soul is in danger and there is a very good chance that you are not saved.
Conclusion
We are going to cover a lot more of what the Bible says in the coming weeks, but let me conclude today’s message with this. Romans 10:10 says,
“For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Do you believe in Jesus as your saviour? And if so, will you confess that faith to Jesus and others? Don’t keep your belief in your heart because you are told not to. You must first confess your faith to Jesus. You must, in prayer, confess yourself a sinner in need of the salvation that comes from Jesus alone. Have you confessed your sins to Jesus and asked Him to save you? You must do that.
And secondly, have you confessed your faith to those around you? Let me read the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:32-39,
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Have you confessed your faith to your family and friends? Or are you afraid or ashamed? Are you still trying to gain worldly bread, worldly comfort, trying to gain this life – and missing out on the greater blessing by being completely sold out to the one who is the Bread of Life.
Let me encourage you today: Stop working for things that perish. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mk 8:36) Give your life up to Jesus. Repent and believe. Confess to Jesus, and then confess your faith to those around you, and so be once and forever saved.”
[1] CS Lewis: The Weight of Glory
The GoodFaith Blog
You know me as one of the hosts of Carnivore Theology. Al has invited me to share my new project with you. I have recently begun writing The GoodFaith Blog, where I share my thoughts on faith, family, books, and culture. After a decade of pastoral experience, I returned to school. I did this, in part, to help myself and the church better understand and engage with our culture. What’s in a name? For me, the name of the blog communicates a desire to engage honestly with significant issues. I hope to do so with integrity, or a just regard for the viewpoints of others (those whose ideas I engage with, my readers, and the church). It is my hope that people will join me in thinking deeply about things that matter without ever compromising the good faith.
Good faith is a term used to summarize an organizing principle of contract and commercial law. A duty of good faith is a duty to act honestly and with just regard for the commits made to another party. I see a parallel in the Christian faith. Read the rest of this entry »
The Most Important Day
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If you were to ask people what their favourite day of the year is, you’ll get a lot of answers. For some, it’s a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving or Halloween. For some, it’s tied to a cultural festival like New Years or Hanukkah or Cinco De Mayo. Others are more personal and will tell you it’s their Birthday or a special Anniversary that is meaningful to them. Usually, these days are chosen because of the events surrounding them, the pomp and circumstance, or the special memories that come to mind on that day.
But what if you change the question slightly? What if instead of asking people what their “favourite” day is you ask them what the “most important” day of the year is. That takes it out of the personal realm and makes people think more about how that day impacts others.
I googled “What is the most important day of the year?” and came up with some interesting answers. My favourite of which was from one dude on the internet. And he super likes this day. Can you guess which day it is?
And apparently, he really likes “Earth, Wind and Fire” too – but then again, who doesn’t?. When asked “What does September 21st mean to you?” His answer was: “Absolutely nothing. And hopefully it means even less in the coming years.” If that’s not commentary on modern life, I don’t know what is.
Good Friday or Easter?
If you ask a group of Christians what the most important day of the year is, you’d think you’d get a consistent answer, but you won’t. There are some pretty important days in the Christian calendar and it’s easy to make an argument for why they would all take the lead. Christmas was when the God of the Universe was incarnated as a human baby – that’s a pretty big deal. If there was no Christmas then there would be no Jesus, no New Testament, no Christianity, right?
Other believers will tell you that Good Friday is the most important day of the year. That was the day when Jesus died on the cross, having the wrath of God poured on Him instead of us, dying so anyone who would believe in Him would live. That’s a pretty huge day. If there was no Good Friday, there would be no cross, no salvation, no restoration of lost sinners to God, no freedom from sin.
We’re here today celebrating Easter as another super important day in history – the day that Jesus rose from the dead, proving everything He said to be true, showing Himself to be God and Messiah and Saviour. No one else has ever done that.
So you can see why Christians are torn on which day is most important and why we make such a big deal of this season – why our whole Christian year, our worship services, our songs, our sermons, our prayers, so many of our conversations and meetings, revolve around what happened over these three days.
If you were to ask the Apostle Paul what the most important day was, he would say it this way: from 1 Corinthians 15:3, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day…” What is of “first importance” to Christians? What’s the most important thing that all believers need to remember at all times? The death of Jesus on Good Friday and His resurrection on Easter Sunday. They are inseparable.
Of First Importance
Please open up in your Bibles (or the ones in the pew in front of you) to 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 and let’s look at that passage together. Verses 1-11 have already been read today and I want to spend some time going through this section to see why the events of Good Friday and Easter are so important – not only to Christians but to everyone.
Right off the start, from verse 1 we read,
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”
This is the final section of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. He’s gone through a lot of topics so far. He’s spoken about everything from theology to culture, worship to family issues, and more, and now he’s come to the end of the letter and wants to make sure that above everything else he’s written they remember one thing: “the gospel”.
What is the gospel? It’s explained in the verses we just read. The gospel is the good news, the message about Jesus and which they received and believed – but had gotten off track from. They had messed up a lot of things in their life and church, and he had told them a lot of ways to fix it, but above all, if there was one thing that was going to bring them back from the brink it would be this: Remember the Gospel.
What does that mean? It means that even though that when Paul was with them he had taught them a lot about God, the Bible, life, and morality, there was one message that was over, under and around all of these things: the Gospel. One foundational message that everything else stood on: that God became a man, died, was buried and rose again.
The Foundation of Everything
If you’ve ever been on a sports team or been a coach or done anything at a competitive level, there’s one thing that you keep being told. Whether you are playing intermural floor hockey or competing for the Stanley Cup in the NHL there is one thing that stays consistent: “The Fundamentals”. When things go wrong at the highest level, what do they say: “We weren’t sticking to our game. We got too fancy. We forgot the fundamentals.” When they’re asked how they’re going to win, they never say, “Trick plays and fancy footwork”, right? No, that’s why the interviews and “keys to the game” are so repetitive and boring: “Stay focused, solid goaltending, get pucks on the net, execute the plays, do the fundamentals.”
That’s kind of what Paul is doing here. He just wrote them a huge, complicated letter addressing a lot of subjects, but then at the end he says, “Guys, none of this matters if you forget the fundamentals, the basics, the foundation of everything: that God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to take your punishment, to die on the cross, to be dead and buried for three days, and then rise again on the third day. Everything else starts to make sense once you get that into your heart.”
And it does! Pick an issue. Pick a problem. Pick a crisis. Maybe you have a broken heart. Bad self-image issues. Maybe you live with anxiety, fear, depression, or anger problems. Maybe you are a child of divorce or were abused. Maybe you were the abuser, you did the bad stuff, you hurt people. Maybe you are lonely, or overwhelmed, or exhausted. Maybe you are childless, or your body is sick, you have needs, or you are going through a confusing situation.
It’s in these moments that our souls want to cry out to God for help, but then we stop ourselves because we aren’t sure if God listens to one person’s problems, if God cares about us, if God is real, if God is kind. Does God care about my feelings, how I look, whether I have friends? Does God know what it’s like to be anxious, afraid, sad, or angry? Does God know what it means to be abandoned and abused? What does God think of people who have done terrible, selfish things? What does God think of abusers? Are they beyond hope? Does God know what it’s like to be lonely and exhausted and overwhelmed? Has God ever been bent over with emotion, so exhausted that He couldn’t stand, “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” to the point of sweating blood? Has he faced political problems, religious problems, relationship problems, sickness, tragedy, fear, pain, and death? The answer is yes. Jesus knows what that’s like.
Isaiah 53:3 describes him as, “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Jesus, the Son of God to whom all glory is due, gave it up. Why?
Why go through that? Why leave heaven, leave the Father, leave the perfection of beauty and the worship of angels to face a life of pain, rejection, shame, betrayal, and crucifixion?
Isaiah 53:4 continues with the answer:
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Jesus, the Great Shepherd, saw us as sheep that had gone astray, lost in the dark woods, torn to pieces by the wolves of temptation and sin, dead by our own choices – and then, the Great Shepherd became a sheep. He came into the dark, faced the wolves, and traded places with us. He died so we could live. In heaven he God has no grief, no sorrow, but Jesus came to earth to bear our griefs, to carry our sorrows. All the wrath God had against sinners – all his hatred for those who had insulted Him, blasphemed Him, broke His laws, spread hate, destroyed others with their lust, stole from Him and each other, lied and murdered – would be placed on Jesus. Why?
For the love of sinners. He did it so it there would be no one who would not have grace available to them – no matter how bad they are, no matter what they’ve done – no one would be lost forever if they would admit they are a sinner, turn away from their sin, turn toward Jesus, and ask forgiveness in His name.
When we start at the gospel, building everything we know about God and this world on the foundation of the story of Jesus – when we start to “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Eph 3:18), then everything else starts to come clear.
Are you loved and valuable? Is there someone who sees you as beautiful and worthy of kindness? Yes, so much God traded His one and only Son for you. Is there someone that knows what is going on in the depths of your heart, has faced the same issue perfectly and is willing to help you? Yes, Jesus stands ready at every moment to hear your prayer and help you. Is there someone who has seen the bad you have done, the sin you’ve committed, the hurt you’ve caused, and will still forgive you, clean you up, welcome you into His arms, and give you a new mission in life? Yes. Jesus died for your sins so you could have a new life in him.
And this understanding, this truth that we call the Gospel, fills us up and then spills onto others. How can we forgive someone who hurt us? By realizing how much we have been forgiven by God. How can we know our lives have meaning and purpose? Because God’s word says as long as we have breath, God has something for us to do. How can we know that our sufferings, the worst years of our lives, weren’t wasted? How can we find meaning in such deep pain? Because of the cross and the empty tomb. The worst day in human history, the day sinners tortured and killed the most perfect, most valuable person to ever live – the most unjust, cruel, terrible day ever, led to the greatest miracle, the most important day in history, as God attributed Jesus death to us. When Good Friday becomes Easter Sunday we see that the most terrible day become the most glorious day as man’s greatest enemies were utterly destroyed.
Look back at 1 Corinthians 15 all the way down to verse 54 and see the power of the empty tomb:
“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
Without Jesus we are perishable, swallowed up by sin, stung by death, overpowered by temptation, disloyal, changeable, fruitless and labouring in vain. But when we turn our lives to Jesus, everything changes: The fear of death becomes powerless. We are no longer slaves to temptation. We become stable, abounding in the knowledge that so long as we are following Jesus, no matter what happens, the labor is not in vain. Or in the words of John Newton from Amazing Grace,
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
But How Can We Know For Sure?
This all sounds well and good, but how can we know for sure this is true? Is it all based in our feelings? Are we simply to take it on faith? Is it all about that tingle in the spine, that twist in the gut? How do we know this isn’t just a comforting thought that someone came up to give weak, stupid people comfort?
Turn back to 1 Corinthians 15 and let’s read in verse 3 again,
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”
We can know this is true for two reasons: First, because this was all “in accordance with the scripture” and second, because there were so many witnesses to the empty tomb.
In Accordance with Scripture
The passages I read to you from Isaiah 53, which accurately describe the events of Good Friday, were written almost 700 years before Jesus was born. God’s plan of salvation, Jesus dying on the cross and rising again, wasn’t an afterthought, wasn’t a way of making a bad situation into a good one – it was the plan since the beginning. We read about the coming of Jesus in prefigures and prophecies in every book of the Old Testament – from Genesis to Malachi. This shows the power and accuracy of the Bible.
Nothing is ever out of control for God. Even the worst day in history was planned out ahead of time and told about in scriptures. God gave His people hope by telling them how they would one day be saved. One way we can know that all of this is true is because of the Bible. It holds up to scrutiny and shows us that God is trustworthy and has a plan.
The Empty Tomb
The second evidence that everything I’m saying about Jesus is true is how many witnesses there were to crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. This is why the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter Sunday are both of “first importance”.
When this was written Cephas, also known as Peter, was still alive. So were the other apostles. You could literally ask them what they saw. But not only them, hundreds of other people saw Jesus alive after being dead and buried, and most of them were alive too. Jesus’ own family including James, his brother whom he grew up with, worshipped Jesus as the Risen Lord. (Consider what it would take for you to worship a member of your family as Creator of the Universe.) And Paul, who was an enemy to Christians, who hunted them down, tortured and even killed Christians, met the living Jesus and then gave His life to preaching the gospel.
This is no small thing. People don’t die for a lie. The apostles didn’t make this up so they would get fame, fortune, comfort, and power. No, instead they were despised, rejected, impoverished, faced many dangers, chased down, and then tortured and killed for sharing the story of Jesus. People don’t do for a story they made up.
And since that day, many, many more, have met the living Jesus. They have experienced the love of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the friendship of Jesus – not merely as feeling, but as fact. People have lived and died for Jesus – not because it was their “religion” or their “culture” – but because they knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Jesus is alive, that Jesus is God, and that Jesus is the only way of salvation.
Conclusion
My invitation to you this morning is to simply give your life to Jesus. Admit that you are a sinner, that you have broken God’s law, that you stand guilty before a righteous God, and that there is no amount of good you can do to cancel it all out. Once you admit that, ask for forgiveness from God for all you have done. Accept that Jesus died on the cross for that sin, that He traded Himself for you, that He did all the work necessary to save you, and accept His forgiveness. Agree that Jesus really did rise from the dead, conquering sin and death once and for all and that because of your faith in Him, death and sin have no more power over you.
And then, once you have done that – you need your make Him your Lord. Christians, this is a message to you too. Step off the throne of your life and put Jesus on it. Take your plans, your designs, your work, your family, your whole life, and give it to Jesus. Bow to Him as your Lord, your Boss, your King. The Bible says He already is your King anyway. There will come a day when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10–11) Today is the day you are invited to do it by your own choice. Will you accept Jesus as your Saviour and your Lord?
