“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Php 1:3–6).

And so begins Paul as he addresses the saints at Philippi in this most joyous of letters. I realize this verse is often cited in the expression of godly thanksgiving for persons who have been a blessing to someone. And while I will admit that my consistency in prayer does not match that of Paul (although my spirit desires it to be so), my feelings of thankfulness for gospel partnership at least comes closer. I refer to the men who led community groups here at The Town, and to their labor in ministry. Truly, the brothers who stood with me to lead our small groups during the formative days of what would become The Town, and all the men who would follow in their footsteps, were true partners in seeing the gospel advance in Middletown and throughout this region.

These men submitted themselves to the training, assessment, approval, and oversight of the church and were committed to providing spiritual leadership to so many of the church’s people throughout the years. Although unordained, these leaders served in almost every way as elders do, teaching and shepherding God’s flock (in fact, all of our elders are former community group leaders). They bore the burden of setting the tables of discussion week in and week out. They spoke words of healing to those who needed it and words of rebuke when that was called for. They walked with families who welcomed in new life and walked with families who lost new life, as the most joyous of moments turned to valleys of deep darkness. These men, in the early days, would interview those seeking to join the church, and had the challenging task of pursuing those who wandered away from the flock. These poor men had the distinct displeasure of sometimes having to rally their groups to do really mundane service efforts like filling those tortuous Easter eggs with cheap candy. They were responsible for keeping a vision of growth ever before their people and laying hands on other guys to consider leading their own groups. They gave up weeknights and Saturdays to attend leader meetings. They attended weddings, funerals, and various trips and events to support those under their care. They had to endure the disappointment of cancelling meetings at the last minute and seeing their labors of preparation wasted because those who had the luxury of simply not showing up failed to let them know in advance. And there was never a break (at least officially). Our community group leaders had the long-game in view and were willing to work until there wasn’t much left.

To these men…all the ones currently serving and to all those who took up the mantle at some point in the past…to my brothers: THANK YOU. The Town would not be the church it is today without you. Me, Pastor Dan, and  our ruling elders would not have been able to bear the burden of so many by ourselves. Especially during those years of being portable and being a really simple church. Thank you for the countless hours, the skill, the determination, the compassion for others, the commitment to the mission of The Town, the dependence on the Spirit, and the love for God Almighty himself. You guys did real good work. For over 12 years you were the frontlines of spiritual formation here. Thank you. And I appreciate your patience with me over the years, for your trust, and for your encouragement as well. I hope you know that I and the elders recognize that transition is always difficult, but please know that I will always treasure this model and the fruit that came from it. It worked. It really, really worked. And perhaps it will work again in the future.

To all those reading this who benefited from the ministry of community groups, please join me in thanking these men as the Lord leads. And give God the glory! And please join me and the elders in prayer, asking for God to direct our steps in the days ahead as it concerns discipleship at The Town.

Gratefully,
Pastor Scott

The past two years have been unprecedented in our lifetime. We have spent much of it apart from people we normally spend much of our lives with on a regular basis. Is it possible to make up for lost time? Maybe not. But it is possible to use the time God has given us this day to glorify Him and love others well.

Easter tells us that Jesus called his church out of darkness and into his glorious light. He called us out of our separate lives in order to join us together with him and with one another. Let us come together this Easter.

At The Town, we started something last year during Holy Week that we want to build on this year. Every night of the week leading up to Easter we come together for worship and a message based on the last days of Jesus' earthly ministry before the cross and Easter Sunday.

This year, we will build on that tradition with worship, music, fasting, prayer, and the Lord's Supper as we prepare for Easter Sunday. We want to do this together. Each night of the week will focus on one of these aspects. We want to invite each of you to participate.

This is a guide to Holy Week: Together at The Town Church.

Kick off Holy Week: Together on Sunday morning at 10 am at The Town during our regular Sunday worship gathering. Pastor Dan will continue the sermon series, "The Red Letter Words" as we explore what Jesus meant when he said that he is both the way, the truth, and the life as well as the vine. 

Monday will be a night of extended worship. The Town Band will lead us in songs about Jesus in order to help us tune our heart and open our minds to what work God might do in us throughout the week.

Bible Passages: Matthew 21:12-22, Psalm 100, Ephesians 5:19

Tuesday will be an evening of prayer, worship, and a message from the actions of Jesus during his last Tuesday before Easter. We will spend an extended amount of time praying together, praying for each other, and engaging with God.

Prayer Together: Prayer is an offering up of our desires for things that are agreeable to God's will. Prayer is a means of grace that God has given us to talk with Him and hear from Him. He always answers our prayer - whether by protecting us or providing for us. We want to invite everyone to come on Tuesday with your prayer needs and a willingness to pray for others. Might we pray that God would do something in our midst that only He can do?

Scripture Reading: Luke 11:1-13

On Wednesday, Jesus' public ministry came to end as he prepared to face the weight of the Cross. We will take some together to listen in on Jesus' conversations and remember his actions as he prepared to carry the weight of the sin of the world on his shoulders.

Fast Together: At the close of Wednesday night's time together, we will invite anyone who is able to fast together until we observe the Lord's Supper. Fasting is a spiritual means of grace that reminds us of spiritual realities and battles through the physical means of hunger.  If you decide to partake in the fast we would encourage you to spend time in the Scriptures and in prayer whenever you face the pangs of your physical appetite.

We would also encourage you to consider inviting friends to join you for dinner after we observe the Lord's Supper the following evening. 

Scripture Reading: Matthew 26:1-16

Thursday night we will observe the Lord's Supper and break our fast together. We will enter into the Upper Room and hear the words of Jesus that have echoed through time and into our hearts and minds, "My body broken for you. My blood spilled out for the remission of sin."

Commune Together:   We would encourage you to spend time in prayer and meditating on God's word if you are fasting. Spend time in confession of sin and knowing that Jesus has forgiven you of every last one of your sins. During the Lord's Supper we will look back to the cross and remember how Jesus sacrificially, brutally, willingly, and triumphantly went to the Cross to crush our greatest enemy - death itself. But we will also look forward to when our King will return to make all things new and remember his promises to sustain us until that day.

Scripture Reading: John 13-17

Good Friday will conclude our observance of Holy Week before Easter Sunday morning. The night is one of reflection and remembrance. Our time together will be rich with music and a message from the last moments of Jesus' life. Good Friday has always been an intimate time of worship and fellowship together.

Remember Together:  As you prepare to remember the last moments of Jesus' life on earth, reflect on the reason why Jesus went to the Cross. He did so because of the love He has for the Father. He did so because of the Father's love for us. He did so because he loves us as the Father loves us. Jesus paid it all so we could be given what we do no deserve - the grace of God.

Scripture Reading: Matthew 27. Mark 13. Luke 23. John 19. 

Juneteenth: How Would You Celebrate Your Freedom?
Guest Blog By B.J. Janney

What is “Juneteenth”?

Simply put, Juneteenth is the longest standing tradition commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. It’s a holiday many within the black community have celebrated for decades, but, for many of us, a holiday we’re hearing about for the first time. Its origins date back to June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas, honoring this date as the African American Emancipation Day.

Historical Context

On the heels of the Civil War, roughly 70 days after the war had officially ended, and 2.5 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), slavery was still being practiced in Texas. In fact, many slave owners migrated to Texas as sort of a safe-haven with limited Union Army control. Oftentimes when looking back in history, or when we’re taught in school, we survey the major events: the ending of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, etc., and we sometimes assume the following: proclamation is made, things change, all is well. 

However, for anyone who has studied history--- or when you simply take the time to dig a little deeper below the surface--- you know this is almost never the case. This is the context we find our African American brothers and sisters in during the aftermath of the Civil War, perhaps experiencing what we’ve come to term “the already and the not yet”.  Slavery was declared to have ended, but two and a half years passed, the war was now over, but the aftermath of hundreds of years of chattel slavery still have many wondering, “Will anything change?”  

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger, along with 2,000 troops of the Union Army arrived in Galveston bearing the news under General Order No. 3 that all (250,000+) slaves in Texas were free. Despite the liberating news that finally arrived, many slave owners withheld the news until harvest, or continued the status quo until receiving formal visits from authorities. Or worse, freed slaves became “hired workers,” resulting in little to no change in master/slave relationship. Despite the ensuing violence, confusion, and terror, a glimmer of hope burned brightly. The declaration itself for many was enough reason to celebrate with rejoicing and jubilee. Celebrating what was finally accomplished while facing the many challenges that lay ahead for a nation still divided.

It is in this context, combining June and Nineteenth, that Juneteenth was born. Celebrations, much like the 4th of July, were enjoyed beginning as early as 1866. Many sought to reconnect with families, start fresh, and begin living with a renewed sense of hope and dignity.   Grassroots gatherings, barbecues, and the like gave way to parades and community festivals. Distressingly however, in the years that followed, the period of Reconstruction (1863-1877) and progress for African Americans gave way to an era of terror and violence. 

By 1877, following the presidential election of Rutherford B. Hayes, the power in many southern states returned to the hands of former slaveholders, giving birth to the “Black Codes” and the Jim Crow south. And yet, this is what makes the celebration of Juneteenth quite remarkable. Despite the deterioration of momentum and change obtained during Reconstruction, the declaration of all men being free was reason enough to hope, a reason to celebrate, even if the reflections of this promise had all but faded.

Impact

In many ways, Juneteenth offers America perhaps a truer, or minimally, a second Independence Day, one that all Americans, black or white, can come together to celebrate and remember as a day in which all men were declared free. Free from tyrannical reign, free from that which strips humanity and dignity away from another made in the Image of God.  

As one of our brothers puts it, “As a Black American, your interaction with American culture, holidays and traditions can sometimes be different than other Americans. The traditional '4th of July' Independence Day can be troubling for some Black Americans to celebrate knowing the reality of Black Americans in 1776. So, this time of year can bring forth a mix of emotions. There is pain in remembering that nearly 100 years after the Nation proclaimed its own freedom, some Americans were not free. However, there is also hope, hope that America is moving closer to a future where the idea that all men were created equal will be experienced as a reality” (Reggie Smith, R.E.R. Committee, The Town Church).

So what does this mean for the church? 

At the Town Church, something we’re promised to receive every week is the Gospel. No matter what book of the Bible is being preached, Jesus will always be at the center. If such is the case with the preached Word, then such should be the case with our lives. Looking for every opportunity to see Christ in all that we see and do. 

For the Christian, we have an opportunity to look at past events with clarity and apply the Gospel. We have the freedom in humility to acknowledge the “house” (our country) we’ve inherited for all its good things AND all its bad things, to paraphrase Isabel Wilkerson’s analogy. As with an old house, we weren’t there when the foundation was laid, when the walls went up, when the weather began to crack and rot materials, etc. But, they are our problems to deal with now.  

We have the opportunity to take what’s been given to us and, through a Gospel lense, make the necessary “repairs”. Repairs not for America’s sake alone, but because there is a greater kingdom in which we live: The Kingdom of God. 

Oftentimes the church can be lulled to sleep knowing there is a greater kingdom coming, and while that is true, we minimize the reality that Jesus continually preached the kingdom is here. For anyone who has been a slave to sin and is now alive in Christ, we can look into social justice issues with clarity, because they are not only social issues, but Gospel issues.

What you can do to recognize/honor/celebrate Juneteenth:

I want to offer a few ways to begin by using Jemar Tisby’s model of the ARC of Racial Justice found in his book How to Fight Racism (Tisby, 2021) . Similar to the head-hands-heart model, ARC stands for Awareness, Relationships, and Commitment (Tisby, p.5). The beginning portion of this blog starts with awareness; of history, of the Imago Dei principle, even thinking about your own personal narrative. 

Second, Tisby writes, “all racial justice is relational”. He writes that change often comes through relationships, which allow us to develop a burden for people most affected by unjust systems or ideas. Commitment then, is the action. While awareness and relationships involve actions, commitment is the “hands” aspect. This is not an exhaustive list by any means but a way for us to consider how we can fulfill the Biblical call to love one another through a day like Juneteenth:

• Celebrate! What would it look like for us to celebrate Juneteenth on the scale of 4th of July?
• Worship and Lamentation: The Gospel invites us into the story of redemption as God weaves our stories into His marvelous tapestry of salvation. Juneteenth offers another opportunity to worship God for his amazing work. To celebrate what progress has been made and to thank Him for His steadfast love. Along with praising God, we can in the same breath lament. We can cry out to God for injustice and sin still taking place in a fallen world. To cry out in longing for the “not yet” to come. Oftentimes we try to separate these two aspects, but we find in the Psalms that they are closely knit together. (Psalm 42). Celebrating with our brothers and sisters of color, while also lamenting what is undone and longing for the change that better reflects the kingdom of God, is an opportunity to build relationships through worship and prayer. 
• Consider and think deeply on the wounds of slavery and racism. Study true African American History. Tell the Juneteenth story to your families.
• Become an advocate. As Tisby writes, we carry one another's burdens when we enter into relationship. Have a courageous conversation with a brother or sister of another skin color.  You don’t know what it’s like to be Black in America? Ask someone who is! 
• Go somewhere you wouldn’t normally go. Build relationships. Go to a different barber shop, play pickup games in another neighborhood, plan to spend time in place with folks who are not like you.

1 Timothy – Jesus is the Savior of the Worst Sinners
Reading: I Timothy 1:12-17

By nature, we are a defensive species. When our character, testimony, actions, or talents are called into question, we often become very defensive. Our current culture is one of offence. How many times have you heard someone say, tweet, or post, “I’m offended!.” All we have to do is open our mouths and we will most certainly disagree with someone, somewhere. We are bound to offend and to be offended. Frankly, it’s tiresome.

When someone offends us, we cancel them. We block them. We ignore them. We dismiss any truth that may come from them. But this is not the way of those who might follow Jesus.

Did you know that the Gospel does away with the culture of offence? The Gospel also handles the sins of the past in a much more consistent way than our reactionary cancel culture. This means that the Gospel is good news for people that would otherwise be cancelled. The caveat for cancelled people is that they must follow Jesus as Lord and King. Many do not. But those who do will experience a type of forgiveness and cancellation of debt that is not found in anyone else.

Paul was a man who should have been cancelled by today’s standards. The Christian Church had every reason to dismiss everything Paul had to say and write to them. He was a man who in the not-too-distant-past spent his waking hours attempting to crush the Gospel by any means necessary. While on the road to Damascus in another effort to squash the name of Jesus, Paul was met by the very one he set out to persecute. Jesus rocked Paul’s world that day and the trajectory of his life changed forever. A man who should have been cancelled was called.

When Paul was taken in by the church after his encounter with the risen Christ, he was sent away for three years in an effort to help him understand what God had in store for him through the Gospel. It is no mystery that Paul changed the world as he spent the entirety of his life preaching the Gospel, planting churches, and following the very one who met him on the road to Damascus that day.

But what of his past? Should it be forgotten? What of the people he persecuted? What about all of those poor decisions that everyone knew about? How could anyone listen to a man who was so wretched in the past? Wasn’t he completely disqualified from having anything of any importance to say or offer to the world?

Without the Gospel, Paul would and should be cancelled. Without grace, without forgiveness, without Christ, Paul should be cancelled. But cancelling is not what God has in store for his people. God graciously saves not by cancelling those who deserve to be called but by calling those who deserve to be cancelled.

Paul wrote about this very concept when he wrote to a young pastor he had trained up named, Timothy. Paul wrote his letters to Timothy near the end of his long ministry and life. At this point, Paul had an opportunity to allow his theology and understanding of the Scriptures to meld with his experience of the world, persecution, the church, and everyday life.

In his opening remarks to Timothy, Paul says this,

“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.”

Whenever Paul says that a statement is trustworthy and true, he means to emphasize his words so that they will not be forgotten. In this case, Paul says that Jesus came into the world to save the worst possible kinds of people.  Then Paul does something amazing. He labels himself as the worst of the worst. He doesn’t try to defend his actions. He doesn’t get offended. Instead, a man who should have been cancelled, admits that he should have been cancelled, and then praises God for not cancelling him.

Jesus proved over and over again that people cancelled by society are made worthy because he has cancelled their debts to God. The world hated Jesus for this radical grace. They hated that Jesus ministered to cancelled people. He ministered to people who were thought of us hopeless sinners because of their disabilities and diseases. He forgave sexually deviant people and transformed their lives. He ate with people of differing political persuasions. Paul was no different than any of the other people that Jesus saved. Paul was a man who deserved to be cancelled but wasn’t cancelled because Jesus had cancelled the debt Paul owed to God.

This is the good news of the Gospel, that Jesus came into this world to renew the cancelled for another season. If Jesus came into this world to save the worst of sinners, then we can all consider ourselves as those who can be saved, regardless of our past sins. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have consequences for past sins in this life, but it does mean that those past sins have been covered and forgiven by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We don’t need to succumb to the guilt of sensitive areas. We don’t need to be so easily offended and hurt when sin is called out. We mustn’t cancel those who might be able to bring the Gospel to bear on us even if it means we may get roughed up a bit.

What are the soft spots and sensitive areas that you don’t allow people to address? If you are in Christ, what fear do you have when sin is being uprooted? According to Paul…none! We need not fear when God takes us to the hard places of our lives and the sensitive areas. There is always room to change and always room to improve and always areas that need to be cancelled. We have this freedom in Christ who came to save the worst of sinners.

Second Thessalonians – Jesus Is the King We’re Waiting For
Reading – 2 Thessalonians 2

When I was much younger, my parents took a trip to California for 10 days to get some time alone during a hard time in ministry. I had never been away from my parents for that amount of time. They had put me and my brothers and sister in the care of our Aunt Jane and Uncle Dave. My Aunt and Uncle had no idea what they were in for when they agreed to watch over us. They probably did not account for how inconsolably homesick I would be even while staying in my own home. I missed my parents more than I could have ever imagined.

A few nights into the ordeal, I had returned home from soccer practice in the evening. I ran into the house as I normally did and was immediately uneasy because of how quiet the house appeared to be. I ran into each room, calling out for my brothers and sister. There were no answers. I ran outside and everything was quiet. There were no neighbors outside as far as I could see. I ran back into the house and began shouting louder and louder. “Is any home?!” “Where are you?”

And then it dawned on me. Jesus must have returned, and I had been left behind. I ran outside and began to wail and cry, asking God for a second chance. I had seen the 1980’s Christian movies about what the Devil was going to do to those who had been left behind. I thought I had asked Jesus into my heart but now, faced with the terrible reality that I was left alone, I thought, “Is it possible that it didn’t take?” I was terrified. I wailed some more.

Then I heard the phone ring. I ran inside and answered it as quickly as I could. It was our next-door neighbor. Had they been left behind too? “Daniel?” she said. “They are all gone!” I cried. “Who?” she replied. “My family. My Aunt and Uncle. No one is here. I am all alone!” I wept through the phone.

She must have been smiling when she said, “Daniel, you’re fine. You’re not alone. I want you to calm down. Your family is probably just stuck in traffic.” I did feel better, but I didn’t feel like I was out of the woods yet. And just then, my Aunt Jane pulled into the driveway with my brother who brushed right past me and into the house for some food. She had been caught behind a train and had no way of contacting me to let me know she’d be a few minutes late.

I don’t think I was truly going to believe that Jesus had not yet come back until I talked to my parents that evening. If they were still on Earth, then I could know for sure that I had not yet been left behind.

This is how the Thessalonians felt when Paul wrote to them. They were worried that they too had been left behind. Their persecutors continued to be a menace to the church. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to return and bring justice with him? Maybe they had missed his great return?

The Thessalonian church had a deep and abiding communion with one another and with Jesus. They loved each other and their Savior in a way that only the Gospel can explain. They had undergone severe and brutal persecution, but they continued to wait for Jesus to return. They had believed Paul when he said that Jesus was coming back to make all things new. But they began to wonder if they had missed the return of the King. Should they keep on waiting?

Paul had much to brag about concerning his brothers and sisters in Thessalonica. They had endured great persecution and kept the faith no matter what they were facing. We can imagine how Paul’s face may have lit up when he was asked about the churches in Thessalonica.  He took those opportunities to speak of the power of the Gospel that was so evident in their life and community.

This church was one that was growing in love for one another. They protected one another. They cared and prayed for one another. They were a shining example of what true and authentic body life looks like for a group of Christians. Have you ever been a part of a church during a time such as this?

Most churches get to experience this kind of community when they first begin. I remember when we planted Stone’s Throw Church in 2010. The excitement was palpable whenever we gathered together to pray and plan. We all had a common purpose and were willing to take risks and to go places we might not have felt comfortable going to on our own. We had a common bond in Jesus and in the planting work.

Today, many of us are still together as our family has grown. We have enjoyed receiving new brothers and sisters into our congregation and watched as God fashioned new relationships that seem like they were never not a part of our body life. Both new and original members of our local church body have a common goal to make Jesus known to our community.

But just as easily as a church can experience deep community, many churches have risen up only to close their doors a few years later. They lose focus. They lose the narrative. They miss the point of why they began a church in the first place. The Thessalonians had been able to persevere because Jesus was the one they wanted in the beginning and he was the one they waited for when Paul wrote to them some years later after starting the church.  

Paul had many different reasons for writing his letters to the various churches. In Corinth, he needed to put some kind of church order in place and was compelled to address rampant immorality. In Galatia, Paul had to correct those who were teaching a false Gospel. The Romans needed the greatest treatise ever written concerning the redemptive work of God. The Thessalonians needed to be assured that the One they treasured the most had not left them behind. They longed for Jesus so greatly that they feared that Jesus had already returned and that they had missed it!

Paul wrote to reassure them that Jesus had not yet returned and that when he did, they would know it. Until that day, they must continue to work and wait patiently.

I wonder if the modern church is longing for Jesus’ personal and glorious return? I wonder if we are losing the narrative. When someone asks you to explain the story behind what you believe in the Gospel do you tell them the whole story? Many Christians today will say that they are followers of Jesus because “Jesus died for my sins. Now my sins are forgiven. Now I try to live a good life.”

Of course, all of these things are true, but they don’t tell the whole story of the Gospel! The Gospel is Jesus saving us from our sins and so much more! We are not the center of the story. God is the center of the story. The story begins with God creating a perfect world and being in perfect fellowship with humanity and all of creation. But this relationship did not last when humanity was left to its own devices. Adam and Eve failed to keep the covenant God had made with them and so sin entered into the world. Everything went dark. The creation went dark. Death entered the world. Our relationship with God had been broken.

But God did not leave humanity to suffer the consequences of sin without any hope at all. Even in those pre-historic moments, God revealed to humanity that He had a plan for redemption. God did not leave us in sin and despair, but instead promised a Redeemer in the curse. The story was not over!

The entire Old Testament is in place to remind us of how God would save us from our slavery to sin and our consequences of misery. God gave us prophets, priests, and kings to point us to the One perfect Prophet, Priest, and King who would make redemption and salvation possible. None of the prophets, priests, or kings could keep God’s covenant. They were all imperfect people who needed a Savior King. Each of them is recorded in the pages of the Bible for this purpose – to point us to the One.

The One is Jesus. Jesus was the One that Israel and all of the world had been waiting for since those dire moments in the Garden of Eden when sin entered into the world. And Jesus is the One we have been waiting for. Jesus lived a life in perfect obedience in a way that no other prophet, priest, or king could manage to do. Jesus died on a cross that we deserved in order to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus proved himself, King, when he beat death and rose from the grave.

Our faith in Jesus unites us to his work as the One Prophet, the One Priest, and the One King. Yes, indeed, Jesus has saved us from our sins. But this is not the end of the story. No, not yet. Jesus is coming back to make all things new. He has promised to return, and he will return. Jesus is the One we have been waiting for.

So the Gospel is, “Jesus has saved me from my sins.” But it is also so much more. Jesus is coming back to make all things new and good. We are waiting for that day. But are we? I think this is the great takeaway from 2 Thessalonians. Are we living our lives in anticipation that the story is still unfolding? Or have we become distracted from the grandeur of the Great Finale?

The Thessalonians were able to persevere through great trials because their eyes were fixed on a return that they never experienced during their short time on earth. But I imagine now that they wait in eager expectation while experiencing a glory no eye has seen. Every one of them has died and now awaits the return of Jesus in His presence. They have beheld the glory that we will experience when Jesus does return.

How were the Thessalonians able to live through the great persecution of the Church? They knew that they were living in the story. They knew that Jesus would get the last word. We too can live as the Thessalonians lived. We can live in the hope and that glory and with that same urgency. But we must long for One who is greater than any trial, any hardship, any joy, or any victory. We must long for the King who comforts and who is coming back to bring a final end to the greatest story ever told.

1 Thessalonians – Our Savior is Our Comfort in the Last Days
Reading: I Thessalonians 5:1-11

The early church lived with an expectancy that Jesus Christ would return at any moment. Many of them believed that they would be alive to see his return. His physical and glorious return gave them hope when they faced insurmountable earthly challenges. Paul says in his first letter to the Thessalonians, “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Paul writes these words to reinforce what the Thessalonians already believed – Jesus was coming back at any moment.

Just a few words earlier, Paul says Christians do not grieve in a hopeless way because the resurrection of Jesus secured our resurrection and the resurrection of those who had already died. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians was written to remind the church that Jesus our Savior is our only true comfort as we wait for the last day and our true hope as we experience every day in between.

First Thessalonians is full of what we call eschatological statements and proof texts. Eschatology is just a big fancy word to label the study of the end times, the coming Kingdom of God, and how we interpret Scriptures that inform us about the last days. In the modern church and all throughout its 2000-year history, eschatology has been something of a weird science. There have been many pages written, podcasts recorded, movies produced, and sermons preached that either under-realize eschatological events or over-realized eschatological events as foretold in the Scriptures.

Over-realized eschatology is those positions that believe the promises of the Kingdom of God are here and now. We might say that they are underselling the return of Christ by overstating the importance of the here and now. These proponents might believe that their nation or government is God’s chosen nation or government. They might preach a health and wealth Gospel that says God wants to give you your best life now. Proponents of over-realized eschatology preach present prosperity, present rule, and present benefits of the Kingdom of God without explaining the hardship, failures, and sin of the present age. They focus on the “not yet” as if it has happened “already”.

Under-realized eschatology fails to recognize that the Kingdom of God has come in part with the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Proponents of this side of the coin often live in fear of the powers of the world, political opponents, or the very temporary troubles we face. They over-realize the powers of darkness without considering the ultimate power of the risen Christ. They underemphasize the “already” – that Jesus has conquered sin and death.

Paul wanted the church, and us, to understand that Jesus has already inaugurated His Kingdom and we as believers experience many of the benefits of being a part of the Kingdom in part. One day, we will experience all of the benefits of the Kingdom of God in full when Jesus returns to consummate his Kingdom.

The letters of Paul and the theology of the Bible teach us to live in the “already and the not yet.” The Kingdom has already been established but we have not yet seen all that the Kingdom will restore. We have experienced D-Day but there is still clean-up and reconstruction work to be done. When Jesus returns the reconstruction work of a New Heaven and New Earth will be finished. Until that time we live in the already of redemption past and present but look forward to the future of recreation.

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is important because it teaches us how to live in the present while resting on the promises of the future that have been secured by the past. For Paul, Jesus is our present hope until he returns. These days are the last days. Our eschatology, how we understand the last days, informs us in how we go about living our lives in the present. A deep understanding of the already and the not yet helps us to interpret current events while giving us hope that when things go poorly, we have hope in a Savior who is going to make all things new.

The already and the not yet of the Kingdom of God is why we don’t have to fear when an evil government is ruling, when godless kings persecute the church, when we battle with personal struggles, or when things don’t go the right way. We realize in these moments that Jesus has already won and look forward to the day when all the benefits of his reign over sin and death will be realized in full at his return.

When Paul opens his eschatological section in his letter to the Thessalonians he starts with these words, “We don’t want you to be ignorant…” It is not by mistake that Paul weaves practical and moral instructions into the words that follow concerning the last days and the return of Jesus. Paul knew that as we grapple with the fact that Jesus is coming again at any moment, that our lives can’t help but be changed in the present.

There are so many things that the Thessalonians could have turned to in their times of trouble and grief. They could have been distracted from the return of Christ and his current power over the forces of evil with the same pleasures, powers, hobbies, and opportunities that we wrestle with today. Paul desired that the Thessalonians would learn to live among those distractions while never being distracted from the glory of Christ. Jesus was their true comfort in the last days.

We too face many distractions from the glory of Christ and his return. The church has misplaced earthly things in place of Christ as their only true hope. We find hope in well-run churches with weekend shows. We find hope in tight-knit small groups and friendships. We put our hope in bettering ourselves, our health, our education our bank accounts, or our relationships. We put copious amounts of hope in elections and politics. We put all of our hopes and dreams into scientific discovery. We are in a constant state of over-realizing and under-realizing what it means that Jesus has won, and Jesus is coming again.

We are facing many troubles today. The world is constantly changing at a rapid pace. Some of these changes are good developments and some of them are harmful. But Jesus is still Lord. Jesus has still risen. Jesus has still defeated death. Jesus is still coming again. We must not be ignorant to His return for His return is our true comfort in our time of need. Let his life, death, resurrection, and intercession keep us until he comes again.

Colossians - Jesus is Supreme Over All Creation
Reading: Colossians 2:15-23

Religious people love rules. Rules put us in control and into the driver’s seat of our destiny. Rules make us feel comfortable about our eternal destiny. Religion boasts that if we can manage to follow rules, we will please the gods and walk in their good graces. Eventually, we will be rewarded for our obedience and good character. Some religions teach that we will have multiple chances to get things right until we are accepted by the gods or the universe. Other religions teach that we only have one shot to appease the gods. But they all have this in common – we are the masters of our destiny. Whether by karma or some other spiritual mystery we get to choose if we will obey the rules or if we will break the rules.

The Church has had many rules throughout its storied and sometimes troubled history. There were times that common people were not allowed to read the Bible for themselves. At other points in history, the church required payments from the living to help their dead relatives out of purgatory. The Puritans were known for their rules about worship, clothing, and character. Many of you grew up with rules if you were raised in the church. No smoking. No drinking. No rock and roll. No dancing. Wear your Sunday-best. Attend programs. Go to Bible study. Sing the songs. Pray the prayer. I am sure you could add your own rules to the list. Many of the rules are well-intentioned and even biblical but they do not save us. Many other rules were born from opinions and personal legalisms rather than truly Scriptural convictions. All of them, if believed to offer salvation, are religious and religion does not save us.

Religion is not new. The church in Colossae had to wrestle with the implications of religion. There were those in the ancient church that taught that truly religious people would not only trust in Jesus for salvation, but that they would continue to follow the customs of Israel whether it be circumcision or observing certain days of the week, eating certain foods, wearing certain clothes, or observing festivals. Paul had no patience for such teachings and spent no little time dismantling these religious groups. He said,

“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.  Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—  “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”  (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings?  These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”

Why was Paul so adamant in teaching against religious rules? Paul taught that Jesus is supreme over all of Creation. When religious people try to add rules to the person of Jesus, they are placing the created thing over the Creator. Religious rules are not usually intended for evil purposes. That is why Paul says that the rules have an “appearance of wisdom”. But in the end, rules cannot stop us from sinning. They can only remind us that we need someone greater than ourselves to save us from ourselves.

Paul had taught the church that Jesus was not just another religious leader. Jesus broke all of the rules of human-invented religions. He taught that salvation was only available by the grace of God through His Son, Jesus. Our standing before God had never depended on whether or not we could keep an ancient set of rules. Instead, our relationship to Jesus, the Son of God determined our eternal destiny. The work of Jesus, not our own work, is the basis of whether or not we will have eternal life or suffer eternal death.  

How can we have a relationship with Jesus? By faith. Faith in what? Faith that Jesus is who the Bible says that he is and that his life and death have something to do with us. What do his life and death have to do with us? The life he lived was perfect as He kept all of God’s law perfectly. He fulfilled all of God’s requirements for eternal life. We are incapable of living a perfect life. By faith, the work of Jesus’ obedience is credited to our account. We are also united to Jesus in his death by faith. His death was what we deserved. And so, his cross becomes our cross by faith. When we come to faith in Jesus, we are united to him in his life and death. The resurrection proved that God accepted the life and death of Jesus as sufficient on our behalf. If God has accepted the life and death of Jesus as sufficient work, and we are united to Jesus then God also accepts us as righteous in his sight – apart from any of our works and solely on the basis of Jesus’ work.

There is no need to add any created thing to the work of the one who is supreme over all creation. That is why Paul begins his letter to the church in Colossae with these words and this basis for everything that is to follow,

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven…”

Now, some of us may take this whole idea of bad religion and run with it in a direction that Paul does not intend. If we are not saved by rules, and only by grace, then why not just live life however we want?

Paul says to the church to fix their eyes on the supremacy of Christ and not only earthly things. We must be careful not to fall into the trap of sinning so that grace may increase. It is just as deadly a trap as depending on our own ability to follow rules to please God. We must not put our trust in created things, but rather Jesus who is Supreme above all creation.

Paul argues that if we are finding our fulfillment in Jesus then rules won’t be a problem either way. We will not depend on them for salvation, and we will not break them as an excuse to live life according to our sinful desires. Instead, we will pursue Jesus who is of greater worth than any earthly pleasure and we will live in obedience out of gratitude. Our duty will no longer be a burden but an act of worship.

Philippians – Jesus is the Joy of Our Life
Reading: Philippians 2
 
A few years ago, I preached a sermon series from the book of Philippians called, “Impossible Joy.” The idea for the title and theme was born from the context in which Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. Paul had been faithful to Jesus ever since he was met with the beauty and grandeur of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Since that life-changing day, the Apostle set his mind on running a race motivated by the depth of grace he had been shown that day no matter what it might cost him. As Paul ran the race he suffered through many trials and losses. He lost friends. He lost respect. He lost his career. And now, as he wrote to the Philippians, he had lost his freedom.

From the very opening words of his letter until the very last punctuation, one cannot miss the underlying joy that Paul possesses in Philippians. What makes this joy so impossible is that Paul was writing from prison. Once again, Paul was suffering for the sake of Jesus. Paul wrote to the church that everything that had happened to him had served to advance the Gospel. Because of his imprisonment, the church had become emboldened to preach louder. Because of his position in prison, many in the Imperial Guard had been introduced to and now followed Jesus. In the middle of great pain, suffering, loss, and injustice, Paul possessed an impossible joy.

What is the source of impossible joy? Paul says with great confidence and deep-seated peace, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” The secret of Paul’s joy is that no matter what the day might bring, so long as he is serving Jesus, even a loss is gain.

This means that if the day is a good day and everything seems to fall his way Paul can remain joyful because he is serving Jesus in those gains. If he were to be set free, he would rejoice because he would continue to serve Jesus throughout the region and into unknown lands. In this way, to live is to Christ.

But impossible joy also means that even if he should suffer the ultimate punishment on this earth for his faithfulness to Jesus and lose his life as a martyr, that he still considers the day full of joy. Even the loss of his life is to be considered a gain for he would be with Jesus and like Jesus. In this way, to die is gain.

Jesus is the joy of Paul’s life. Jesus is the ultimate prize. Jesus is the only explanation for the impossible joy Paul exudes throughout his letter from jail to the people he loves in Philippi. In the same way, we see that from Paul’s letter to the Philippians that Jesus is the joy of our life.  

At the time of this writing, our country and the world are suffering through a once-in-a-generation pandemic. As of the day before today, 400,000 Americans had died of a raging virus. Just two weeks ago an angry mob flooded into the doors of the Capitol building where Congress was set to verify the results of a free and fair election of the next President in an effort to stop the work of democracy. Tomorrow, a new president will be inaugurated while the last President refuses to attend the peaceful transfer of power (only the second president in our history not to be present at the successor’s inauguration). These are only a few of the problems that our world is facing today. Additionally, each of us has our own personal issues and struggles that we must battle in the context of these generational challenges.

I am getting older. My body is breaking down. I will have my first visit with a cardiologist in a few weeks in order to figure out what kind of damage the pandemic has done to my heart and lungs. My kids are getting older and I feel like time is slipping through my fingers. Have I done enough to teach them the love of Christ? Will they choose to follow Jesus or some other gods or no gods at all? Am I loving my wife the way Christ loved His church and gave himself up for her? Am I pastoring well and doing what God has called me to do with faithfulness? Why can’t I stay in shape? Why are my eyes failing me? I have bills to pay. I’ve got things to do. I’ve got stress!

And yet, I possess the same Spirit of Christ that Paul possessed as he faced the possibility of death as he wrote from a prison cell. If I possess that same Spirit, then I also have the capability of experiencing the joy that seems out of reach given the circumstances of today’s troubles.

Joy was a choice for Paul, and it is a choice for us. Paul tells the church how to make the choice of joy no matter what victories or losses lay ahead for them. Paul urged the church to choose joy by focusing their attention on Jesus Christ who is the ultimate prize. He writes,

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us… our citizenship is in heaven, and from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

Now there is so much in these words to examine but maybe we just need to read them again and meditate on them.

The secret to Paul’s joy in great misery is that the goal is Christ. Paul decided to press on toward Jesus no matter how the world may have fallen apart around him. Paul never considered that God was done with him so long as there was breath in his lungs. He knew that he had not obtained the glory of Christ in full until his last breath. He told the church that if they wanted the same kind of impossible joy that he possessed then they must imitate him as much as he imitates Christ.  Further, they must remember the promises that lie ahead.

Jesus is coming back to make all things new where there are no pandemics, corrupt politicians, riots, broken relationships, debts, prisons, injustice, or bodies that break down. Jesus is coming back to transform our broken bodies to be like his unbroken body. Jesus is subjecting all the broken things to himself and he is making them new again. These promises and the accomplished work of Jesus are the sources of Paul’s and our impossible joy.

Paul made joy a choice by returning to his faith in Jesus day in and day out.  He believed that Jesus not only did what the Gospels said he did but that Jesus would do what he promised to do. If we want to experience that same impossible joy no matter what trouble is set before us, then we must consider Christ who is our ultimate prize, and the root of our impossible joy.

Ephesians: King Jesus is Head of His Church
Reading: Ephesians 4

I have been a Senior Pastor of a church for more than 10 years. I have been serving in full-time ministry for close to 23 years. Over the past two decades, I hear well-meaning Christians refer to local churches as the Senior Pastor’s church. They may say something like this, “I go to Pastor Dan Betters’ church,” or “I go to Pastor Jim’s church on the other side of town.”

I understand why churchgoers refer to churches this way. It’s hard to think of any other event in our culture where people willingly sit and listen to a person speak for 30 to 60 minutes other than pastors and comedians. The difference between comedians and pastors is that people willingly sit and listen to a pastor on a consistent basis and for many years whereas they may only pay to see a comedian once. The church pays the Senior Pastor, he is put behind a sacred pulpit, usually on a stage, and featured every week. He is given the responsibility to open up a sacred text and is called to apply God’s infallible word to the hearts and lives of the people in the church. This happens week in and week out and it is a high calling and sacred duty.

In addition to being heard, uninterrupted, every Sunday, the Senior Pastor has to oversee the direction, vision, and business of the church. He must answer the phone when people are in need. He must learn to counsel on the spot and on-demand in order to help mend broken hearts or broken relationships. Depending on the wealth of the church and the size of the staff, the Senior Pastor may have many responsibilities or just a few. At the end of the day, the Senior Pastor is seen by many as the leader and head of the particular local church.

Church members may reason that if the church does well it must be because the Senior Pastor has made it so. If the church does poorly it must be because the Senior Pastor isn’t very good at his job. After all, that is the way business is done. History has proven that organizations rise and fall with the talent and faults of the leader.

But that isn’t the way of the church. How many large churches with incredible success are helmed by a charlatan? How many very successful churches are led by corrupt people? There are many churches that do not preach the Gospel and are doing very well for themselves. Conversely, there are many untold thousands of churches that are so insignificant to the world that the world doesn’t even know they exist. In many of those churches, there are pastors who faithfully fulfill the duties of their calling day in and day out. There are preachers in small churches who will never be heard by large energetic crowds. These faithful pastors could preach circles around the hip and elevated preachers-in-sneakers who mastermind big productions. There are men who have a Texas-sized knowledge and mastery of the Bible that will never preach in an arena where men with Rhode Island-sized skills draw masses from around the world.

The point is that God’s work in His church has never depended on the skill of the person who has been charged with leading that work in service to Him. The church where I am Senior Pastor is not “my church”. The church down the road is not another man’s church. Every church that preaches Christ faithfully is led by the one Senior Pastor, who is Christ Jesus.

This is the central theme of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Jesus is the Senior Pastor and Head of his Church. Paul writes, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” Earlier in the same line of thought, Paul says about those who lead the church that they have this purpose, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Did you see that? The church belongs to Jesus Christ. Any leader has this one purpose – to build up the body that belongs to Christ. The church never belongs to the Senior Pastor. The church belongs to Jesus. Jesus is the lead shepherd. He is the only one to be revered. He is the only one that is to be worshipped.

This means that everything the church does and everything that the church believes itself to be must revolve around Jesus rather than a personality or the talents of a given leader. This is good news for pastors and congregants alike.

For the pastor, this means that you are not in control of how God uses your set of talents and gifts to further his kingdom. You may preach to thousands or you may preach a thousand sermons to just a few. If you are being faithful to the calling which God has given you, then you can be assured that God is using you. You will still face pressure that no one else can see. You will still feel very alone at times. You will still envy how God has used the church down the street or on the TV that you feel isn’t as faithful as you. When you do feel those things, remember your identity in Christ. Remember that you are a servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember that this church is not your church, and this work is not about you.

For congregants, Jesus being the head of the church means you mustn’t put undue pressure on your local Senior Pastor and your hope in his talents and abilities. Instead, appreciate that person for the gifts that God has given him to teach, preach, counsel, and walk with you in whatever way God has seen fit. So long as he imitates Christ, imitate him. So long as he preaches Christ, listen to him. He is going to fail you. Trust me, I know this personally. He is going to preach sermons that stink. He is going to lead initiatives that fail. Give grace and remember the grace by which we have all been saved. Your preacher didn’t die for you on a cross and if he had, it wouldn’t have accomplished much of anything. Jesus is the only one worthy of our worship. Everyone else needs grace.

There is another way in which both pastors and congregants need to return to Christ as the head of the church. We must strip away any teaching or practice that has diluted our worship of Jesus. There are many things that we could list here: politics, programs, worship styles, meaningless messages, unbiblical teaching, Christless preaching, and so on. The church exists to make Jesus the head of the church known in the world. Paul says in Ephesians that the Gospel was given to him and to the church in order to “…bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Did you catch that? The church exists to bring about the eternal purpose of Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus’ eternal purpose is to bring salvation through the Gospel to the world. Our purpose as a church is to follow our true Senior Pastor’s eternal purpose – to reveal how God has brought salvation through Jesus. In short, preach Christ and make him known.

All of the ways in which we fulfill this purpose as local churches are negotiable. The church needs to be creative and needs creative leaders to reach the people in their given context. We should celebrate those differences and rejoice in the victories of other churches and pastors. But our purpose must remain singular – to make King Jesus known.

Paul was writing from prison when he wrote his letter to the churches in Ephesus. He could have written a letter that touted his accomplishments, required their loyalty, or pressed the church to put political pressure on the government for his release. Instead, he made Christ pre-eminent and of first importance in his letter. Why? Because the church was never about the most successful missionary of all time or the greatest theologian of all time. If the church wasn’t about a man like Paul, then it most certainly isn’t about a man like me. The church was always about and will always be about its true Senior Pastor. King Jesus is the Head of His Church.

Galatians - Jesus is the Source of Every Aspect of Life
Reading: Galatians 2, Galatians 5

There are many things to admire and cherish about the modern church. We are on the scene when there are natural disasters and people need help. We have been at the frontline of many good causes throughout our storied history whether it be the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (admittedly, many churches were not helpful and even opposed Civil Rights). We help transform communities. We have started schools, orphanages, and organizations to meet the needs of those without the means to help themselves. Many preachers have remained faithful to not only preaching sound theology but applying that theology to mission and life.

There are also many things to despise about the modern church. I might argue that the things we should despise always begin with an addition or subtraction from the Gospel. They seem like small transactions but end up as deadly and festering wounds. Recently, while petting my dog Frodo, I noticed a small lump in his throat. It didn’t’ seem to bother him so I left it alone. Within days, the lump grew from a small marble size to a baseball-sized mass. I took him to the vet to find out what options were available to us. They determined that this potentially deadly infection was started by a small, and barely visible, puncture wound. They weren’t sure how he was injured in the first place. He may not have even felt the original wound. But he was surely feeling the effects of the quickly spreading disease in his neck. We had to have surgery, a drain placed in his throat, and antibiotics coursing through his blood in order to save his life.

Bad theology infects the church. When bad theology infects the church it usually happens in small doses. Bad theology most certainly leads to sinful living in every aspect of the Christian life. The teachings of the church affect the lives of the congregation in very profound ways.

Today, there are many instances of additions and subtractions to the Gospel that have infected the church. I believe this is why the church in the West is struggling with its identity. We started off well but soon departed from the Gospel. We added traditions, politics, causes, and other well-meaning variables to an otherwise straight-forward Gospel of grace, and what we ended up with is no gospel at all.

The church in Galatia had started off so well. Paul had preached the Gospel in the churches and they had received the Gospel, believed the Gospel, and lived by the Gospel. But something happened. As time went on a group in the church began to add some teachings to what Paul had preached. This new group taught that those who truly followed Jesus would also follow the old practice of circumcision. In order to truly be saved, they taught one must put their faith in Jesus as Messiah and follow the ceremonial laws of Israel concerning circumcision.

For Paul, this new Gospel was no Gospel at all. In effect, these teachers had added a means of salvation to the work of Jesus. The teaching spread quickly throughout the churches which prompted Paul to write his letter. Those who are saved are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone.

It is interesting to note the anger with which Paul writes throughout his letter to the Galatians. These new teachers had struck violence at the very heart of the Gospel. Their Gospel introduced the idea of salvation through personal works and achievements rather than grace. Regardless of their intentions, their new Gospel added something to Jesus and by doing so they cheapened grace, cheapened the cross, and led the church astray.

He wrote in no uncertain terms when he said, “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified…For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.  I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

For Paul, this issue wasn’t as if the Galatians were a little of course, but rather that they had made a U-turn.  He tells them that they had been running the race well as they had started with the Spirit. But now they were following the law and traditions as a means of salvation. Paul did not only set out to correct a few lofty theological nuances. The Galatians were in danger of a religion that was no Gospel at all. He had to set their theology straight in order to help them see that the grace by which they were saved affected every aspect of their life. Their theology informed how they lived and interacted with the world around them.

If they continued in a theology of works, they would never experience grace working in their lives.  The very central principle of grace that sets the Christian faith apart from all other world religions would be lost on them. Paul showed the Galatians that by our being crucified in Jesus, and our dying to sin in Jesus, that we now have a new life in Christ that is characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. Those who live by the fruit of the Spirit do so because they are living in freedom from religious requirements and instead of living lives of gratitude. In this way, Jesus is the source of every aspect of life. It was absolutely vital for the Galatians to understand that they must not add anything to Jesus’ work and they must not take anything away from his accomplishments on our behalf. Instead, we must completely depend on Jesus for every aspect of our life. We must never think that we can add something or contribute anything to our salvation.

Paul tells the Galatians why he is so fierce in opposing any addition or subtraction to the Gospel he had been given by Jesus himself, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.” Paul takes corrective action because Paul’s desire for the Galatians is that they would live in freedom and by the Spirit.

Freedom from what? Freedom from the shame and guilt of trying to prove ourselves to God when Jesus had already proven himself to God on our behalf. When we add requirements to the Gospel, we end up living lives that can never measure up to God’s requirements. We will always fall short.

When we fall short, we live in misery and the guilt and shame of our sin. Free people don’t live in shame and guilt. Those who have been justified by faith in Christ live free lives. Every aspect of their life changes.

Paul gives these examples of this freedom in Christ when he says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Those who have trusted in Jesus alone for salvation do not need to add any additional work to the work of Christ. Instead, they live freely by the Spirit. They have been freed to live lives that are full of joy, peace, patience, kindness, and the like. Paul continues in his letter by giving specific examples of how faith in Christ alone changes every aspect of our lives.

If we want to live according to the freedom that we have, if we want to live life by the Spirit, we must keep in step with the Spirit and believe the Gospel that has been handed down to us by the Scriptures. The Apostles spent their lives, and many gave their lives so that we could experience this true life in the Spirit. For them, Jesus was enough.

We must look for the small puncture wounds in our theology. We must be wary of the ways in which our modern churches have added traditions, politics, ideologies, and causes to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These added teachings might not seem like such a big deal to us. These teachings might even be good things or things that we can agree on, but they are not the Gospel. We must allow the work of Christ found in the Gospel to inform every area of our lives and everything that we believe rather than the other way around. This is the way to live in freedom and by the Spirit because of the gracious work of God through Jesus Christ.

A preface to my words: I am friends with many of you on social networks. Delaware is a small place. The church in Delaware even smaller. Inevitably, I am going to say something today that is going to be very personal to you. I cannot state in strong enough terms that the words that follow are not in direct response to anyone’s posts, comments, or conversations in particular.  I have not been stalking social media. But there will certainly be guilt in this room – I know this because it starts right here. I am writing from a position of a shepherd over a congregation of brothers and sisters where I see problems. Just as a father would want to address his kids if he saw problems brewing.

Second, you may have objections to me talking about a current event and “getting political”. As you might expect if you have been listening to me for any length of time, that is not my intent. My plan is to follow in Jesus’ footsteps found in Luke 13. Jesus heard of a tower that had fallen and killed 18 people. Obviously, this was on everyone’s mind. He took it as an opportunity to call the crowd to repentance and the new Kingdom. I plan to do the same with events of this past week.

Dear Christian Brothers and Sisters,

How many of you are old enough to remember the days, weeks, months and year following September 11, 2001? This was a world before social media and widely accessible HDTV. We were still playing the game "Snake" on our phones. Large flats Screen televisions on the wall were not a thing, and any TV over 35 inches would cost you around 2000.00. Netflix was a DVD rental service that helped us to avoid late fees from a thriving Blockbuster store chain. Streaming wasn’t a thing. It was a time when you had to wait about an hour for a movie trailer to download on your dial up modem and that would be a few days after it had already premiered in the movie theaters.

On September 10, 2001 our country was politically divided but relatively stable. George W. Bush had become president even after losing the popular vote. He won the electoral college by a margin of 537 votes out of 6 million cast in Florida and this only after the Supreme Court stopped the recount of votes. Then- Vice President Al Gore conceded to President-Elect George W. Bush and Bush became the next president of our country in 2000.

Then everything changed on September 11, 2001. Terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in D.C., and ultimately one other fell to the ground in Pennsylvania as patriot passengers on board heard news of the ultimate plan of the terrorists and overran the pilot. They paid with their lives. 2974 people died in the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

That evening, a President who did not win the popular vote spoke to the nation and united us. As a result, in the following days, weeks, month and year, President Bush held an approval rating that no other President has ever held before or after. His approval rating pushed toward 90% with all people, while almost reaching 100% among Republicans. Nearly 80% of Democrats approved of President George W. Bush. The country was united in grief, and united in the desire for justice.

That got me thinking as I watched the events unfold at the Capitol this past week while I was preparing a message from Romans for this Sunday's worship gathering. As I watched the events of this past week at the Capitol unfold I thought, “What would happen if 9/11 took place now?” How different things might be. Unlike then, each of us now hold a device in our hands that would have cost more than a luxury car in 2001. Everything we see is in high definition and instantaneous. We can watch Cobra Kai on Netflix while simultaneously tearing our friends heart out on social media with the latest political facts – and there is no need to wait. We have to be first to respond. The news cycle is endless and opinions even more so.

Today, if 9/11 took place in 2021, within 24 hours, we would be told what to think, why the other side was wrong and culpable, and how our vote for one or the other party can only be death to our country. We have no time to decide what unites us. We have no time to put our differences aside. The cycle on social media turns faster and faster as time goes on and with each passing news cycle.

The cycle goes something like this - We see the disaster. Most of the people agree that it is tragic. Then in a matter of hours we take up our positions and we paint our faces for war.

Here we are again. Pick a side. Get on the train. Hypocritical comparisons. Social media war games. Intellectual dishonesty. Talking heads preaching a flawed gospel. And then we get personal with one another. Our relationships are devolving like the boys on the desert island in the Lord of the Flies.

In Lord of the Flies a group of British boys wash up on the shore of a deserted island after their plane crashes. They set up a society with three rules, “have fun, survive, keep the smoke signal burning” so that they can keep the hope of rescue alive.  After one of the boys discovers a conch shell, they decide that anyone who holds the conch holds the floor. They elect a chief, Ralph, that not everyone is happy with and so the boys split into two camps.  A legend of a beast begins to grow among the boys. As tensions begin to build some of the boys discover the body of a pilot hanging in the trees. They believe this pilot is the beast that could kill the boys. The anti-Ralph leader of the beast party offers protection from the beast and things get worse. The boys begin  working off of unproven theories and misinformation. Tensions heat up between the Ralph Party and the Beast Party which lead to the murder of Ralph's friend, Piggy, as another boy pushes a bolder on his head while Piggy is making a speech with the conch.

By the end of the story, people are dead, relationships are fractured, they have devolved into animalistic and tribal behavior. As the story crescendos into a finale the beast party chases down Ralph, the original elected chief and one of their own, in order to kill and behead him – for they have become so blinded by their fear and lust for power that they now believe Ralph is the beast. The story ends as the forest is burning behind them and an adult British sailor is standing dumbfounded on the beach.  At the sight of the soldier all of the boys snap out of their lust for blood and begin to sob. They can’t believe what they have become when they are confronted with rescue and reality. The tragedy began with small disagreements, was fanned into flame through fear, and ultimately ended in violence because of the demonization of the other side.

The beast party in Lord of the Flies had reasoned themselves into violence. And when finally confronted with rescue and reality, it was too late. In the same way, we often reason ourselves into unscriptural means of retaliation and when we get there, we have no idea how we arrived. When we are confronted with the reality and rescue of the Gospel we are wakened from a bad dream. What does this have to do with how we interpret the siege on the Capitol?

What happened this past week and the events leading up to it were absolutely wrong in the eyes of God. For those that want to respond to this position by alluding to the violence of the rioting and looting of this past summer - the violence, looting, and destruction were also absolutely wrong in the eyes of God.  Peaceful and lawful protest is never unlawful in this land – even if the cause is questionable. But violence and sedition are always unlawful.

There are numerous Scriptures that give us clear instruction on how to handle people that disagree with us, people that have persecuted us, people that have struck us on the face, people that would steal from us, people that would lie to us, and people that lead us. Often times the people that lead us are the very people who lie to us, strike us and steal from us. Nowhere in the teachings of Jesus will you find an ethic of hatred, war, violence, sedition, and insurrection. Nowhere.

Instead, we are called to turn the other cheek to those who strike us, to give more to those who would steal from us, to pray for leaders even if they persecute us, to live peaceable and quiet lives, and to encourage each other all the more as we meet together with the fact that we are foreigners here, citizens of heaven, and that our true King is preparing a place for us and is coming back with justice and wrath in one hand, and salvation in the other.

When I hear many of our leaders speak today, when I hear the propagation of lies or conspiracy theories, whether red or blue, I want to reach through the screen and physically silence them. It is the same feeling I had as a child when I felt a great injustice had been done. Why did my brother get to eat more of the Lucky Charms than I did when we were only allowed one bowl? Why did my younger brother get to do things I wasn’t allowed to do at his age? Why did the jerk in my class get the girl? Why did the guys cheating on the Algebra test with their Texas Instrument TI-84 graphing calculators get the better grade when I spent time at the Tutor’s house and still barely passed? And why is the crowd so enthralled with the cheaters and the liars?

When there is injustice no matter how big or how small we get so angry and fed up because we want to see justice done on the one hand, and because on the other hand we are all hypocrites. Let me explain.

On the one hand, I want to see justice done. We have an innate desire to see justice done because we bear the image of God. God is perfectly just. He is perfectly righteous. We bear that image. So, when we see injustice, whether it be civilians dying on 9/11, a man choked until dead by a police officer, a police officer assassinated in their car for doing their job, innocent men and women losing their lives and businesses during a riot, or conspiracy theorists unlawfully and violently storming the Capitol, or something of far less worth, not getting as many Lucky Charms as we wanted while others eat like it’s the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, we get angry. Injustice, lies, hypocrisy should anger us because it angers God.

On the other hand, I get angry because I am a hypocrite. I ate more Lucky Charms than I was supposed to. I did things my older brother wasn’t allowed to do. I was the jerk who got the girl from time to time. I cheated on a test before – I just didn’t use the TI-84 calculator….first. But still, I wanted those who seemed to get away with their sin (never-mind my sin) to pay. In this way my own hypocrisy was the source of my desire for justice. When I become so focused on another’s sin, that their sin affects my growth in  Jesus and living life by the Spirit, I have become a hypocrite with no real grasp of how my reality without Jesus needed the rescue Jesus offers in the Gospel. In other words, the Gospel ceases to have a real personal impact for me. I begin to live my life pointing fingers at others and screaming, “what about!”

When I watch what is going on in our world, I want the liars, the looters, the conspiracy theory propagators, the racists, the narcissists, the cult members, and anyone else who can’t live peaceably with others to pay. I want the various leaders to answer for their lies and their culpability and I want their followers to admit where they are wrong. But my motives are mixed and never fully innocent.

This dichotomy of wanting justice because I bear God’s image and the stain of sin got me thinking. It got me thinking about the Gospel. It got me thinking about priorities. Because here is the truth of the matter concerning our priorities as followers of Jesus.

The Gospel informs every other philosophy, ideology, politic, relationship, and cause in our lives. For the follower of Jesus, The Gospel isn’t just an item on a list of priorities, but rather it encompasses all of those priorities. We’re not thinking with Jesus’ Kingdom ethic when we view the Gospel as just another item on a list of priorities. For example we often list our priorities this way: 1. The Gospel. 2. Family. 3. Friends. 4. Job. 5. Hobbies…etc. or 1. God. 2. Family. 3. Country.

Rather than a priority item, the Gospel is the lens which we see all other priorities through and the filter that reminds us of our first need of rescue. The Gospel encompasses and oversees every aspect of our life. We develop priorities because of the Gospel. We Love our family more than our success, money, or career because the Gospel compels us to do so. We love our brothers and sisters in the church who disagree with us because the Gospel compels us to do so. We cherish our friendships over the almighty dollar or our political party because the Gospel compels us to do so. We pray for those who persecute us because the Gospel compels us to do so. We have a list of priorities in the first place because we worship and follow Jesus. The Gospel informs the way we live life, the decisions that we make, and the way we interact with the people in this world.

My desire for justice also got me thinking about Jesus himself. I want the people who have caused harm and injustice to pay. But I am not Jesus. How did Jesus deal with injustice?

Jesus, the only perfect man ever, stood trial and was accused of being a conspirator against Rome. His accusers developed conspiracy theories that were motivated by their own fears that he would cause problems with Rome and consequently that he was going to cause problems for them. This is why they were able to wrongly assume, “Better that one man die than a nation perish.” During his trial they laid these accusations against him. They said he was seditious. They said he was a heretic. They presented false witnesses who couldn’t even agree with one another or get their story straight. When Jesus refused to speak, they beat him, pulled his beard out, cursed at him, and delivered him over to those that had the power to kill him.

Jesus had every right to put all of them in their place and he had the power to do it in a way none of us could imagine. And he didn’t.

Like a lamb, he was led to the slaughter. He could have called down angels and he could have brought Armageddon right then and there without any hope of salvation for his accusers in those moments. But he didn’t. Instead, he died for the ones who gave him no reason to do so. He forgave them. He had compassion on them as they pierced him, beat him, crushed him, and ultimately killed him. He could have reigned down true justice in those moments and condemned all of them. Here is the real kicker, he is the only person in the world who would ever be righteous enough to do it. For where I (and you) only bear the stained image of God, Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact representation of his being and image.

Even on that dark day on Golgotha there were several who looked at the beaten body of Christ and had a Lord of the Flies moment of rescue and reality. The thief who was cursing at Christ just moments before now confessed Christ as Savior as he was overcome with the rescue and reality of the Gospel. The Centurion who had overseen the crucifixion and proceedings in Pilate’s court, and perhaps driven some of the nails himself was overcome with the rescue and reality of the Gospel as he beheld Christ. These two men knew in that moment that they were the ones who had burnt down the forest. They were the ones who had murdered the innocent. They were the ones who had believed a lie about the beast and gave into their depravity. They woke up!

This same Gospel apprehension of the rescue and reality that we have in Jesus is the only hope that we have. It is not just a hope that is future, it is a hope of reconciliation, rescue and new reality – right now. In other words, if we have apprehended the rescue we need from the reality of who we are outside of Christ, we become merciful servants with an earthly purpose. We keep our mouths shut even when we have the right to open them if no good will come from it. We seek the betterment of those that would oppose us. We wake up to the reality of our sin and the perfection of Christ! We wake up to the justice due to us for sin and grace that has been given to us in Christ! We live as those no longer condemned but those who have been set free to live life!

I have been hearing in the news and on talk stations, “This is not us. This is not how the citizens of this country behave. We are better than this.” I understand the sentiment. But this is us. This is who we are, and it has always been who we are. We are not fundamentally good people. That is not our starting point. We are fundamentally flawed, and if given over to our true desires, we are the boy on the island who is throwing boulders on Piggy’s head, we’re chasing former friends through burning forests until they admit their wrong, we’re putting Jesus on a cross because he’s too confrontational. This is us. This is the message of Romans when Paul says, “there is no one righteous, no not one.” But it’s not the only message of Romans.

For if you have come to Jesus it is because God had revealed to you by His Word and Spirit the reality of your place without him because of sin. It is because God has revealed to you his perfect righteousness and holiness. It is because God had confronted you with the reality of the rescue we have in Christ by faith in Christ and our union with Christ. This too, is the message of Romans. God did not leave us in sin, misery, and despair, but instead, at just the right time, while we were enemies allowed His son Jesus to die for us.

This is the reality in which we are to live. For central to the message of Romans is, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the power of the Spirit of life has set us free from the power of sin and death." This is our new reality. Free from the penalty of sin and free from the bondage and power of sin - this is life in the Spirit.

The next time we want someone to pay, we must first look to the debt that has been paid for us by Jesus, because God loved us. We must continue to condemn what is wrong, but we must do it as those who were once condemned, but now by grace, are living free. Let our love and gratitude for what God has done for us be the impetus for how we engage with the world.

Your Pastor, Friend, and Brother in Christ,

Pastor Dan Betters

2 Corinthians – King Jesus is the Triumphant Suffering King
Reading – 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, Isaiah 53

Every election cycle in America presents candidates from opposing sides that promise the same thing – salvation. The salvation they offer promises to deliver their base from various problems and issues that keep them up at night. Each candidate presents themselves as a person with power who can get things done. But there is another quality that often helps an official get elected – relatability. The candidates that are able to present themselves as both powerful and relatable usually come out on top.

Ancient Israel was a nation that had its ups and downs. The greatest point in Israel’s history was during the reign of King David. David was not only very powerful, but he was a man from the people. He was a shepherd who understood the struggle of making a living. David expanded the Kingdom through military conquest, built the city of Jerusalem up, and helped to fortify the worship of Yahweh throughout the nation.

After David died there was no other king like him. Each king had good qualities and bad qualities but ultimately fell short of the success of King David. The prophets spoke of a future king who would establish David’s throne forever. He would surpass David in every way. And so, Israel waited. They waited for the return of David’s throne. This king became known as the Messiah. The Messiah would be powerful, defeat the enemies of Israel, restore the autonomy of Israel, and fulfill the promises of God to Israel that they would be an eternal kingdom. Israel was looking for a powerful king.

But they weren’t looking close enough at what the prophets were saying. Isaiah spoke of the power of the king that was promised but he also said this king would be pierced, tortured, and ultimately die. The Messiah was going to suffer in a way that would not only relate to the people but would surpass the suffering of all people for all time. This Messiah would carry all of the sins of the world on his shoulders and would absorb all of the wrath of God.

Jesus confused everyone who waited for the Messiah. He had moments of great power and others of great weakness. He did not look like the powerful Messiah that was promised when he was born to poor people in Bethlehem, or when he had no place to sleep that he could call home, or when he called the least of society to be his followers, or when he was beaten and tortured until he died on a criminal’s cross.

But in Jesus, God brought together the powerful king that was promised and the suffering king who would die for His people. Jesus is the only king who has been able to deliver on every promise and ultimately, salvation.

This is the theme that strikes a chord for Paul throughout his second letter to the Corinthians. Since Paul’s first letter, things weren’t turning out so well for Paul. Some were questioning whether or not Paul was actually a true teacher of the Gospel and called by Christ. He had suffered for the Gospel and he had accomplished much for the Gospel. In his failures and victories, he was suffering in a way that God would not relieve. He writes, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about [this thorn in my flesh]. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

This is the crux of the second letter to the Corinthians. The power of God is made perfect in us through weakness.  This was the model of Jesus’ ministry. God’s power only came through the weakness of the Messiah. The power of the resurrection traveled first through the suffering of the Cross. This is why Paul would conclude, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

Salvation from the promised Messiah came from strength and weakness. Jesus triumphed over our enemies because he made himself weak.  In this way, Jesus is the suffering triumphant king that was promised. When we are following in the footsteps of Christ, we will find strength in weakness.

Like Israel, we believe that we should find strength in ourselves, in heroes, in accomplishments, education, nationalism, causes, or even numbers. Paul had more than anyone else to brag about and to consider strengths and reason to lord his authority over the church. But he does not do that. He tells the church that he doesn’t need to defend himself with his accomplishments and personal strength but rather that he would be victorious through his weakness – just as Christ had done for the church.

Jesus didn’t seem like he was a successful Messiah when he hung on the Cross. Paul didn’t seem like a successful ministry when the churches he planted questioned his legitimacy as he rotted in prison. The world looks at men like these and calls them losers and failures. Perhaps, that is where you are. You see the world standards of success and you don’t measure up.

Remember that Jesus didn’t stay dead. Remember that the churches that Paul planted started a movement that still exists 2000 years later. They suffered and, in their suffering, there was a great strength. We too are called to be like Jesus in this way. Our weakness is an asset because in our weaknesses we must depend more and more on the power of Christ.

1 Corinthians – Jesus is the Powerful Love of God
Reading: I Corinthians 13

Some 50 years ago the Beatles ever-enduring words rang out over the AM radio bandwidth and onto black and white TV’s everywhere, “All you need is love.” What a message the world needed to hear at the moment! Love could solve all of the world’s problems and all of our personal problems. If we would just put down our weapons and our thoughts of vengeance we could live in harmony.

Their message is both true and not true. It is true in this sense; true love is the greatest hope we have for rescue. It is the greatest of faith, hope, and love. The truest love the world has ever known manifested itself in Christ who laid down his life for those who hated him so that those who hated him could be saved from the things that were killing them. This kind of true love casts out all doubts and fear that might overcome us in the darkest moments of our lives. This love lasts where all other love ends. It is true that all we need is love when that love is the powerful love of God manifests in Christ.

The Beatles were not singing about this perfect love. They were singing about the imperfect love that we all share with one another as human beings. The way in which we love is stained with sin, selfishness, and records of wrong. We do our best, but we always fall short. In this sense, we need more than love. We need redemption.

The church in Corinth was planted right in the middle of hedonistic madness. Paul never seemed to plant churches where the work was easy. He planted strategically. He was always looking for a way to plant a church that would allow the Gospel to spread quickly. Corinth was one of those places. It was a hip city with loose sexual mores and a “be-anything-you-want-to-be” attitude. To be a Corinthian was to worship what or who you wanted. Eat what you want. Drink what you want. Believe what you want.

The church in Corinth was full of people who were taught to live like a Corinthian their entire life. So the entire letter to the Corinthians is full of instruction on how the powerful love of God changes us in our attitudes toward life, relationships, money, sex, food, the church, and to God Himself. The only love we were capable of before the powerful love of God in Christ was a defective love that ultimately hurt ourselves and others. Now, through Christ, we have experienced a new patient and selfless love that keeps no record of wrong rejoices in truth and bears the burdens of others.

The love God has for us in Christ is the reason why we love others and is the impetus for how we love others. The kind of love that it took to save us from our sin and misery is the same kind of love that we show others who would otherwise make us sinful and miserable.

In Corinth, everyone was looking out for themselves. This selfish me-first attitude reared its ugly head during worship. No one listened to anyone as they talked over one another. The Lord’s Supper was a complete mess as the rich people drank all of the wine and ate all of the bread so that the poor people at the back of the line missed out entirely on the Sacrament. People were getting drunk, sleeping with other church members that they weren’t married to, and continuing in the sin they had learned since birth.

In response, Paul tells the church in Corinth that they are acting like children who have not experienced the powerful love of God in Christ. He says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

In the previous verses, Paul wrote his famous passage on love, “Love is patient and kind…love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” In a sense, Paul was saying, "All we need is love." The love we need is the truest love there ever was. And when we have this love we start to mature, we grow up and we look toward the prize that God has given us in Christ. The love we have now is only a dim reflection of what is to come.

We need the truest and purest love. This true love is what compelled our God to offer His Son as a sin offering so that we could offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Jesus is this powerful love of Christ that will never end. Jesus is this love that bears all things. Jesus is this love that is patient until the end and kind to those who were otherwise unkind.

This love transformed selfish hedonists into self-sacrificing and joyful people who pursued Jesus.

When Paul described the true definition of love he was fixing the eyes of the Corinthians on Jesus. Jesus’ powerful love is our only true hope for true change in our lives and in this world.

Romans – Jesus is Our Justification, Our Sanctification, Our Glorification
Reading: Romans 8

Have you ever heard a quote that goes something like this, “Life is a journey, not a destination”? The intent being the quote is to “enjoy the ride” and don’t only concern yourself with the ends you are trying to attain. The sentiment is that the means by which we arrive at our goals is just as or more important than the goal itself. We say things like this to ourselves that we might spur ourselves on when things get tough. When things don’t go our way, we desire a meaningful explanation for the hardship. For the follower of Jesus, life is indeed a journey. But the journey is all about the prize. Our sustenance during the ups and downs of the journey comes from our hearts being fixed on the prize and the prize is Christ.

2020 has been some show. It has been like an unending tragic middle act of a three-part epic. I have wondered when will the Empire stop striking back? How long is Gandalf going to stay dead? When will Romeo and Juliet run off into the sunset? Will this laborious tragedy end with the arrival of a hero? And yet, no hero has come.

The Christians in the Roman church were living through their own version of 2020. The rulers of Rome persecuted the church for political gain. They lived through their own pandemics and the spread of disease. There was a threat of violence every day for keeping their faith in Christ.  What does one write to a group of people that are in a battle for their lives? Life is a journey? Don’t worry about the destination? That sounds cruel. Paul wrote to the Romans with the destination and the journey in mind as he laid out God’s perfect plan of salvation. In Paul’s explanation of the Gospel, he assured the Roman Christians that God’s plan has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Jesus is the story, and he is the prize of the story.

Romans begins by laying out the reason for all of our problems in this world. The short of it is that we are the problem. We have a propensity to sin because we have all been born into sin. If we want someone to blame for the world’s problems, we need not look any further than ourselves. Every single human being apart from Jesus Christ has sinned and fallen short of God’s will and desire for their life. The result of that sin is death and all of the misery that comes with death. We are all contributors to the problems we face and that our children will face.

Our contribution to the problems of this world deserves the righteous wrath of God. Paul says that God’s wrath has been revealed against all unrighteousness. No sin will go unpunished. Otherwise, God would not be just. But He is just, and we have reason to find comfort in His justice. The problem is that without the grace of God, every one of us is deserving of God’s wrath. There is nothing we can do to fix this problem on our own.  As highly as we might think of ourselves, we would never try to fix this problem on our own. Instead of trying to please God, when left to our own devices we rebel. We find new ways to rebel. Eventually, our sin leads us to label righteousness as evil and evil as righteousness. We are a backward creation.

But God did not leave this backward and broken creation to fend for itself in the consequences of sin and despair. Paul says that just as God’s wrath has been revealed, so too has His righteousness. This righteousness has been revealed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Gospel is nothing to be ashamed of for it is the power of God to save all who would put their faith in Jesus from their sins and ultimately from the wrath of God. But how? How does God make unrighteous people righteous? He can’t just overlook our sins. Otherwise, He would not be just.

The answer is found in Jesus. Throughout Romans, we find out that Jesus is our justification. When Paul talks about justification, he is explaining that we who are sinners are somehow found righteous in the sight of God. How is this possible when we who are sinners are, well, sinners? The answer is found in Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection. Let me explain.

Jesus satisfied God’s requirement of the Law by obeying God’s law perfectly in word, thought, and deed. This is something we are incapable of doing. But Jesus, being fully God and fully man, did live in perfect obedience. Every human being is born under the Law of God whether they like it or not, or believe it or not. No human being has been able to keep the Law except for Jesus Christ. In this way, Jesus is our justification in that he satisfied God’s demand for perfect obedience.

Jesus also died our death on the cross in place of those of us, which is all of us, who deserved to be there.  In other letters to the churches, Paul would say that Jesus became our sin when he was nailed to the cross. What he means by this is that Jesus bore the punishment that was due to us for our sin. The reason for Jesus taking on our sin and taking all of our sins to the cross was so that we could become the righteousness of God. Jesus satisfied the wrath of God by becoming a perfect sacrifice on behalf of all of God’s people. In his death, Jesus paid the wage of sin that was due to us for our sin.

God accepted this sacrifice of Jesus which is proven in the fact that Jesus did not stay dead. Paul says in Romans 4 that Jesus was raised to life for our justification. What he means is that our justification was signed, sealed, and delivered, when Jesus walked out of the tomb that was meant to keep him dead.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection makes our justification possible. But how? How do the perfect life, the sacrificial death, and the resurrection of Jesus have anything to do with us? How does Jesus become our justification? Paul says in Romans 5 that our justification is made possible through faith in Christ alone by grace alone. When we come to faith in Jesus we are united to Jesus and his accomplishments are credited to our account. Just as our sin was credited to Jesus on the cross, so now, through faith, Jesus' accomplishments in his life, death, and resurrection are now credited to us. In this way, and only in this way, we have been made righteous before God.

Jesus is our justification. He is the start of our journey to be the people of God and to live with God in His Kingdom for eternity. Jesus is the reason we have peace with God and can stand before God. Justification is the start of the journey to our destination. Jesus is also our sanctification. Jesus is the journey and with us on the journey.

Our justification by faith in Jesus alone is reason enough to live a life of gratitude. In Romans 6 and 7, Paul opens up about his own journey toward the prize of Christ. In short, it is a battle. The war is not over when we put our faith in Jesus. The war has just begun. Before Jesus, we enjoyed living a life in ignorance and self-gratification. We didn’t mind our own rebellion. But when the Spirit of Christ is dwelling in us, we see just how deep our depravity goes. We find out quickly that our old way of doing things doesn’t have much in common with God’s way of doing things. So, Paul says that we battle. Our old sinful nature has been dealt a mortal wound, but we have been raised with Christ and are alive in Christ. This means we have the power to overcome sinful patterns and sinful desires in this life. This is all part of the journey toward the destination. We call this sanctification. What we mean is that the Holy Spirit is at work in us and transforming us to grow in grace. As we grow in grace we grow in patience, love, faith, self-control, and many other areas as we become more like Jesus. Jesus is our sanctification because Jesus is our journey.

Jesus is also our destination because Jesus is our glorification. Romans 8 is one of my favorite chapters in all of the Bible. At this point in Romans, Paul has finished laying out our problem of sin and God’s remedy for our problem of sin. So in Romans 8, we find out the goal of the Gospel. The goal is life in Christ and with Christ for eternity. Jesus is not just making us a new creation. Jesus is renewing and recreating all of creation. The goal of the Christian is to be like Christ and with Christ in the New Heaven and Earth that God has promised. Paul says in Romans 8 that because of God’s gracious work in the Gospel through Christ, and because of our union with Christ through faith, that we will be joint-heirs with Jesus in the New Heaven and Earth. We are no longer cut out of the will or cast out of the Garden! We are no longer slaves to our sin or under the wrath of God. Instead, we are the children of God. We have been adopted into the family of God and our inheritance is secure. Jesus is our inheritance because Jesus is our glorification.

Jesus is our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification. In this way, Jesus is the start of our journey, the journey itself, and the journey’s destination. So, yes. Life is a journey, but it is also a destination.

We might feel like we are caught in the tragic middle act with no hero in sight. But the hero has come, and the hero is coming. The hero has already won the war though there may be mop-up battles to be fought, victory is secure. Don’t lose sight of the destination when the journey is wrecking you. How? See Jesus in the journey. When you face the fiery trial, remember that you are walking in the same footsteps of Jesus and hold fast to the fact that Jesus has overcome those same trials. If you are in Christ, you too will overcome those trials. When all you see is the journey and it is hard to keep your head above water, fix your eyes on the destination. Fix our eyes on Jesus. He is the prize that is worth the wait, worth the fight, and worth the living.

Acts – Jesus Expands His Church

Acts is the recorded history of the early church. Luke recorded the acts of the Apostles which is how the book earned the name by which the church identifies the book. But the main actor in the history of the early church was never the disciples but rather the Spirit of Christ working in and through the Apostles to build the church. As Jesus ascended into heaven, he told the disciples that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth. The story of Acts is how Jesus accomplished His work of reaching the ends of the earth through the faithful obedience and ministry of the Apostles. God used ordinary men and women to accomplish extraordinary things as He led and expanded His church.

The church began its ministry as an offshoot of the Jewish synagogue. But the Christian faith was never meant to stay within the bounds of the Jewish faith. The covenant that God made with Abraham was always meant to be a blessing to all nations. Jesus is the culmination of the covenant God made with his people. Jesus is the blessing and brought the blessing of salvation to all people. This blessing of Christ was brought to the entire world through the simplest of means – through the work and preaching of the Apostles as they remained faithful to the Gospel.

The story of Acts takes the reader through the ups and downs of the early church. There were moments of great growth and conversion and other more desperate moments when all seemed loss. The Apostles and the early church members faced great loss and persecution but Jesus was enough for them.

We learn from Acts that the church has always faced great opposition and danger. And yet, the gates of hell have never and will never prevail against the church so long as the church remains true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today, the church continues to face many obstacles. In the Far East, many Christians face Roman-type persecution as they lay their lives down on the line for Jesus. In many Muslim-dominated nations, Christians face great threats against their lives and livelihood. In America, the church faces a more subtle threat in the watering down and loss of good theology and Christ-centeredness.

But Luke teaches us in Acts that the church will always endure as Jesus Christ will always endure. In America, there has been a constant warning and threat of slipping religious liberty as the culture attempts to put a stranglehold on pulpits that remain true to the Gospel. This threat is often used to mobilize voting blocs during election cycles and the motivation is fear. It is imperative for Christians to use all of the means afforded to them in any given context to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But we must not fear opposition as if there is any force in this world that can thwart the work of Christ in his church.

When we read the story of Acts, we can take great comfort in the fact that the church is going to endure for this one reason – Jesus Christ himself leads and expands his church. Jesus has overcome our ultimate enemy by defeating sin and death on the cross and rising from the grave.  His resurrection assures what no law or government can assure – the Gospel will endure.

Our task is to remain faithful to the Gospel no matter what dangers lie ahead. We must remain faithful to the clear and obvious teachings found in the Scriptures. We are the continuation of the book of Acts. The early church history may have come to a close in the last chapter of Acts, but that same work continues today wherever men and women remain faithful to the Gospel.

As a follower of Jesus, your legacy is the legacy of Acts. Jesus continues to lead and expand his church today through each of you who remain faithful to the Gospel. You may not be a preacher or miracle worker, but you are an ambassador of Christ and essential to the work of the Kingdom.

Throughout Luke’s account of the early church in Acts, we find that God used men and women in very different ways to reach very different groups of people. Peter was able to reach the Jews. Paul had a gift for reaching the Gentiles. There were many different types of people in the church from many different backgrounds, creeds, races, and religions that all worked under the one banner of Jesus Christ.

God has gifted each of us in the same way that he gifted the early church. We are meant to discover what resources and talents God has given us in order to use them to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the legacy of Acts. The Spirit of Christ continues to lead and expand His church through ordinary people for extraordinary purposes.

John – He is the Messiah Who is a God in the Flesh
Reading:  John 8

When I was a Freshman at the University of Delaware, my World Religions professor, Dr. Alan Fox made a startling claim. In front of the large impressionable class of Freshman, he said, “Jesus never claimed to be God.” He made his case. After listening to Dr. Fox, I raised my hand and asked him to turn to John 8. In this passage, Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” John writes that the crowd pushed forward to kill him for Jesus was claiming to be God. Dr. Fox had no answer. After offering a short reply, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion” he quickly moved on to the next point. Checkmate.

We can certainly disagree with the claims of Jesus and the conclusions of the Gospel accounts, but we cannot deny what they say with a certain clarity.

The opening verses of the Gospel of John give us the clear purpose of the author, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” After spending the better part of 3 years with Jesus, John concluded Jesus was and is God in the flesh. Throughout the Gospel of John, the Apostle records teaching after teaching and instance after instance that proves the opening salvo. The call of this Gospel is for all people to put their faith in Jesus by believing his words, his claims, and his victory over sin and death on their behalf.

There is no other religion that claims what Christianity claims. Only the Christian faith claims that Jesus was indeed fully God and fully man. What does this mean for us?

First, Jesus left what was rightfully his and humbled himself to submit himself to what was rightfully ours. Jesus left the glory and majesty of heaven and took on the temptations and dreariness of a world stained by sin. We don’t deserve heaven and Jesus did not deserve the brokenness of this world. But because of God’s great love for us, he became one of us, so that we could have all that is rightfully his.

Second, Jesus was subjected to every trial and temptation that we face. God did not just save us from on high. He left his throne to experience our human existence and experience it fully. The difference between Jesus and every other human being is that Jesus did not sin, and we do sin. Jesus obeyed God’s Law perfectly in word, thought, and deed. Being fully man, Jesus didn’t cheat his way through the brokenness and hurt of this world. He felt and experienced everything that we feel and experience. Jesus grieved when his friends died. Jesus had to overcome temptation as we have to overcome temptation.

Third, since Jesus was fully man, he became our substitute to bear the penalty that was due to us for sin. This is the significance of the cross. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the entire wrath of God. In John, the Apostle says that this sacrifice was motivated by love while also telling us how the work of Jesus Christ can become something meaningful to us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life.” The work of Jesus, who was fully God and man, can only mean something to us when we are united to him by faith.

As God, Jesus makes a few claims in the Gospel of John about himself that rocked his audience’s world. He said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst…I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life…am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture…I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep…I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live…I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me…I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.”  Each of these statements has this in common – in order for them to be true and meaningful, Jesus must be fully God.

Jesus summed up all of these statements when he said to the shocked crowds, “Before Abraham was, I am.” It was at this point that the crowds surged toward Jesus and their awe turned into anger. Jesus had equated himself to God. Only God could exist before Abraham. Only God could call himself, “I am.” This is the name God had used to introduce himself to Israel through Moses, and now it was the name that God had used to introduce Jesus to the world.

Each of us has to reckon with the claims of Jesus. No matter what we believe or what religious background we come from, we must wrestle with how Jesus changed the world. I have been a follower of Jesus since I was very young. And yet, all my life, I have been confronted with the claims of many religious leaders. I cannot ignore the influence that the prophet Mohammad, the Buddha, or even a Joseph Smith have had upon the world. I must test and listen to their claims, examine their claims, and reckon with those claims.

Jesus makes the most outrageous claims of all of the prophets and world religious leaders. He did not come to lead a new cult or start a new religion. He came to redeem the world from sin and to inaugurate a new Kingdom. He claimed to be God himself. As God, Jesus invited us into a relationship with God. The reason we have to reckon with those claims is that Jesus proved his claims by his resurrection from the dead. As a result of his resurrection, the world changed.

Jesus can change each of us in the same transformative way that he changed the world. But we have to first reckon with his claims that He is equal with God because He is God.  

When we realize that Jesus is who he said he was we also come to this revelation – God loved us so much that he was willing to die for us in order to call us his family. There is no greater love than the love of God manifest in Jesus Christ.

Luke – He is the Messiah that Delivers
Reading: Luke 4:16-30, Luke 7:1-10

Have you ever heard the saying, “The devil is in the details?” It is a strange saying, especially since Satan is usually loose with details as he tempts God’s people to sin. If anything, God is in the details as He oversees every aspect of the entire cosmos. Even our lives are ordered after God’s detailed planning. It is not the devil, but instead God who cares about the details that we face every day.

Luke was a historian who authored both a Gospel account and the book that contains the Acts of the Apostles. The Gospel of Luke and Acts are meant to be two parts of the same story of God’s detailed redemptive plan that has been realized through Jesus Christ. Each of the Gospels is written with a particular audience in mind. Luke was written to a Gentile audience in order to help them understand that their part was always meant to be a part of God’s detailed redemptive plan.

The central theme of Luke is that Jesus is the Messiah who delivers all people from the sin and brokenness of this world. He has come to set captive people free. His letter is addressed to a Gentile man named Theophilus. Theophilus, like many other Gentiles, may have found himself wondering at times, what part he played in the story of redemption. After all, the Christian faith started as another sect of the Jewish culture. Luke wrote to remind Theophilus that God had always planned to deliver all people through His Son Jesus Christ.

The Christian faith can be a hard nut to crack for many people. You may be one of those people that think there is no place for you in a church. The people seem odd, their beliefs outdated and their cliques too close to break into. Maybe you think that the church is only for a certain type of person. But it was not always so. Before Constantine made Christianity a state religion in the fourth century, the church experienced exponential growth across all cultures. As the church associated itself more and more with powerful entities, governments, kings, and rulers, it began to close doors to other cultures and countries as boundaries were drawn. Something similar has happened to American Christianity, also called “evangelicalism” over the past 100 years, or more (depending on who you talk to). Some may get the feeling from the church that Jesus has only come to deliver a certain type of person.

But Jesus did not come to save one kind of person. Jesus came to bring salvation to all peoples from all nations. This theme is given prominence in Luke 7 when Jesus healed the servant of a Roman Centurion. The Romans subjugated Israel to their laws and government and so were the sworn enemies of the Jewish people. The Jews of Jesus’ day believed that the Messiah would deliver Israel from the unacceptable oppression of Rome. Against this backdrop, Jesus scandalously healed the servant of a Roman Centurion. If Jesus’ healing of the Centurion’s servant added fuel to the religious leaders’ growing fire against him, then what came next was a nuclear explosion. After hearing the plea of the Roman Centurion Jesus told the crowd that this Roman’s faith was greater than anyone’s in Israel.

If it wasn’t clear before, it was with certain clarity now that Jesus had not come to deliver the Jews from Rome, but rather to deliver both Jews and Gentiles from their sin. According to Luke, the Messiah God had promised was not a national Messiah and he was not an earthly king. The Messiah Israel had waited for had come to bring all people under one nation into the Kingdom of God.

Many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles did not see their need for deliverance. They didn’t see their need for forgiveness. They certainly did not see God’s desire to bring very different people together into one holy priesthood of all believers. Each had their own religion and their own way of seeking God that in their eyes was sufficient without Jesus messing with the order of things.  But according to Jesus, both Jew and Gentile were slaves to their sin and their freedom was the exact reason that Jesus came to this earth.

Early on in his ministry while in a synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah where the prophet wrote,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

You can imagine what the congregation thought when Jesus rolled the scroll up, looked into the eyes of everyone sitting there, and said, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled as you sit there and listen to me.” Jesus set the tone early on his ministry as he declared his purpose – to deliver sinners from the effect, power, and troubles of their sin.

Sometimes, we find ourselves siding with the religious leaders that fought with Jesus. We think that we are holy enough or good enough to please God. We are satisfied with our religion and our efforts. We think that we are our own deliverance. But our goodness is not good enough. Jesus said that the religious leaders were incredibly pious – but he also called them a brood of vipers and sons of Satan. Their piety was not enough.

Other times, we find ourselves living as the Gentiles did. They largely ignored Jesus and went about their lives without much thought of deliverance. They figured that everything would work out in the end if there was any god at all.

And still other times, we may find ourselves like Theophilus. We wonder how we could have any place in this story. Is God really working out the details of redemption in my life? Is God aware of me, loving me, caring for me, and coming to my rescue?

We must follow in the steps of the Roman Centurion who fell at Jesus’ feet and worshipped him. He took Jesus the Deliverer at his word. He knew that his servant was enslaved to the brokenness of this world and that apart from Jesus he had no hope. In a way, the Roman Centurion demonstrated that he trusted Jesus with the details when he told Jesus that he only needed him to say the word and his servant would be healed. He knew that God was mightily concerned with every aspect of his life.
God is concerned with our deliverance and every detail of our life. Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Paul is saying that when every detail was in place, God sent Jesus to deliver slaves and transform them into His kids.

Jesus did not come to save the world by way of moral reform. Jesus did not come as a President who promises to fix everything or as an earthly king with an earthly kingdom. Jesus came as a servant to all in order to deliver us all from the things that harm us, hurt us, and break us.  

What is required of us? The same thing that was required of the Roman Centurion – faith in Jesus Christ alone. When we put our faith in Jesus we trust that God has every detail under his control and within his purview and that he desires our story to intersect with his plan of Redemption.

Mark – He is the Messiah Who is a Servant
Reading – Mark 10:45

It’s always weird to watch popular Christian artists, celebrities, and even pastors arrive at special events or conferences with a security detail and entourage. I have had the opportunity to invite some bands for concerts or arrange for special speakers at Christian events. Inevitably, while working with the celebrity’s agent, the host of the event will receive a rider with all of the demands and bullet points that must be met upon the arrival of the celebrity.

I understand why these kinds of contracts originated. People want to have their needs met with the least amount of trouble. With that in mind, it is hard to reconcile the treatment many of us expect when we serve, with the treatment Jesus endured when he left the glory of heaven to serve us, even unto death.

The Gospel of Mark was most likely written by a man named John Mark. Most scholars believe that John Mark wrote down the verbal transmission of the Gospel as he heard it from the Apostle Peter. Mark’s Gospel is the earliest of all of the Gospel writings. In his Gospel, he focuses on how Jesus is the Servant King. Jesus is the Messiah who deserved a Crown but received a Cross. Through that Cross Jesus has received the ultimate Crown as the King of Kings.

At one point in Mark’s story, two of the disciples approach Jesus and ask of him a noble request. They ask that when Jesus becomes king that he allows them to sit at his right and left. I think it is interesting that the disciples ask for a place to sit and not a place to serve. It is also curious that the disciples were asking more of Christ and not less. These disciples wanted to take part in Jesus’ rule as co-rulers and co-recipients of the glory Christ deserved.

Jesus responded to them with words that turned their idea of the Kingdom upside down. Jesus told the disciples that the Kingdom where he was King would not be like the kingdoms of this earth. On Earth, kings and rulers dominate and order people around. But the greatest in the Greatest Kingdom are those who serve others. In fact, those that would consider themselves a “slave to all” would be the greatest. What came out of Jesus’ mouth next must have been disappointing as he told the disciples, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.”

What was Jesus saying? Not only had he come to serve all people, including the people that the Jews wanted off their backs, but he had come to die for those same people. This is the way of the Kingdom of God.

Throughout the story that Mark tells, there are three main groups that follow Jesus. The first group is the disciples. These were the 12 men that Jesus invited to follow him throughout his earthly ministry. As the story progresses, we find that these men do not fully understand Jesus and his call to serve humanity. They wanted a king that would deliver them from the oppression of Rome. But this Messiah introduced a new Kingdom. In this Kingdom, the king served the people, and the people served one another.

A second group of people that Mark focuses on are the religious leaders. This group was considered the holy rollers of their time. They were fervent in their prayers and in their religious adherence to strict laws that governed every aspect of their lives. They were the ones who knew God best. Yet Jesus proved that they were the furthest from God. They were judgmental, bigots, arrogant, and self-righteous. This group led the way in destroying the ministry of Jesus and having him nailed to a cross.

The third group that Mark includes is the crowds of people that followed Jesus. These crowds gathered as word spread of the great miracles and super-natural teaching that came from Jesus in ever-widening circles. Many in these crowds wanted to experience healing and desired a word of encouragement. They too were looking for a Messiah that would conquer Rome and set them free.

Each of these groups had something in common with one another. They all abandoned Jesus. The disciples left Jesus during his greatest time of need and just as he was serving them with the ultimate act of love on the Cross. The religious leaders condemned him and were the reason Jesus was put to death. The crowds motivated and reinforced the religious leaders in the execution of Jesus as they stood by and jeered. Jesus was not the King they wanted.

And yet, Jesus the Messiah served the disciples, the religious leaders, and the crowds. At the lowest point in the story, as Jesus took his last breath, there is only one person who is faithful to Jesus – the Roman Centurion guard who had just nailed Jesus to the cross. “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.” For those that remained at the Cross and for those that heard the story of the Roman guard’s confession, these words of Jesus must have haunted them as they realized just what kind of king Jesus had come to be. Jesus’ servanthood was so extreme that he would die for those who had every intention of killing him.

Those who would follow Jesus must follow the Servant-King.  If I were to only leave you with these words, then your spirit ought to be crushed. If we only follow Jesus as an example, then we have no hope. We cannot live up to the example of Christ on our own. We must follow him by confessing him as our Servant King and trusting that his cross means something to our salvation.

We have to follow Jesus to Calvary, down into the depths of his grave, and out of his grave if we are to have any hope of being servants ourselves. When we come to the realization that his service on the cross and in the grave was for our benefit we will be motivated to serve as he served. When we fail to serve others as Christ did so perfectly, we will rely on the sacrifice that he made on our behalf.

Jesus served people who weren’t good to him. He served people who talked behind his back. Jesus served those who called themselves friends, promised Jesus undying loyalty, and then left him and denied him when he needed them most. Jesus served without limousines, contract stipulations, and with the worst security detail, any King has ever had. After all, his disciples couldn’t even stay awake as the mob approached.

Matthew – He is the Messiah King
Reading: Matthew 16

There are four Gospel accounts in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first three of those Gospels are called the synoptic Gospels because each writer tells similar stories from their point of view about the work and person of Jesus Christ. From each of these perspectives, the readers learn different aspects of Jesus from the same story.

Matthew was written with the Jewish people in mind. Israel had not heard any new revelation from God for 400 years. In that time period, their kingdom had exchanged hands several times and the throne had never reached the height of David’s reign. At the time of Christ, they had become a subjugated people. They waited for the King that would set them free.

Messianic figures had come and gone while failing to deliver Israel from their earthly oppressors. The hope of the Kingdom God had promised to David was fading.  Even so, a remnant continued to wait faithfully for the King that would set them free.

In Matthew, Jesus is the Messiah King. Matthew used very specific language to convince the Jewish people that Jesus was indeed the King they had longed for during the years of silence. Jesus was the King who had inaugurated the Kingdom that had always been promised. We know Matthew’s intent was to encourage the Jewish people to consider Christ for several reasons. Matthew quoted or alluded to the Old Testament over 130 times, including details in his Gospel that held great to the Jews who had remained faithful to the Scriptures. This is why Matthew often ended a narrative sequence with, “That which was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled.”

Matthew intended to prove that every single book in the Old Testament, which the Jews called “the Law and the prophets”, was concerned with the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. All the promises, all the prophet's words, all the priestly sacrifices, and all of the kings were just a shadow of the great Messiah King who would establish the Kingdom of God on this Earth.

Jesus was not what Israel had expected. They wanted a military king to lead them out from under the Romans and into an earthly kingdom that was more glorious than any kingdom that had come before. But they had been short-sighted. God’s promise was to reconcile all of His people, from every nation, unto himself. The Messiah would be the perfect prophet, the only truly worth priest, and the King deserving of all glory.

In the middle of the narrative, Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do the people think that I am?" His disciples thought about if for a moment and then reported to Jesus that the crowds thought Jesus might be someone important, a great teacher, or a reborn prophet. Then Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them point-blank, "What about you? Who do you think I am?"

Peter, always being the first to respond said, "You are the Christ." This was a turning point in Matthew's account of the Gospel. According to Peter, and through Jesus' acceptance of Peter's answer, we learn that Jesus was the King Israel had been waiting for.

Matthew is valuable to us because we see that God had always been weaving His story of Redemption with a scarlet thread from the very beginning. Jesus the Messiah King was always the goal from eternity past and into eternity future as well as everything in between.

The question Jesus asked Peter and the disciples continues to echo through time as it reaches us in our current day. Who do you say Jesus is? No matter what faith or background you hold, every human being must reckon with a man who changed the world. We must wrestle with his claims and we must decide how his claims and actions impact our lives. Jesus cannot simply be ignored.

We are now waiting in a period that seems very similar to the 400 years of silence. The last perfect Word given by God was through his disciple John in the prophecies of Revelation. We hear the words of the King and we cling to a certain hope, “I am coming soon.” But we still wait.

Many in Israel had lost hope. Some had abandoned the faith altogether. Others filled in the gaps with false Messiahs and politics. But still, some had remained faithful as they clung to a true and certain hope. God had promised a king.

As our King, Jesus rules over us with a Kingdom ethic of love and mercy. He is not a weak king for he is Lord even over sin, death, and the grave. Jesus has defeated our greatest enemy and continues to crush our current enemies.

It is easy for us to lose faith as we wait for Jesus to return. It is easy for us to turn to lesser kings and to lose hope when our world is falling apart around us. But Jesus has proven to be a faithful king. His resurrection and defeat of death are proof enough that he will do what he says and fulfill what God has promised.

Jesus promised that he would come back in the same way that he ascended. The entire New Testament is full of God’s future promises that when Jesus returns, he will not come back born into a humble nature, but rather riding on a white horse, with a sword in his hand, and victory assured.

When the King returns, he is bringing with him a complete restoration of heaven and earth. Everything that is bad will be wiped away. Everything that is good will remain. As we walk through the various trials that our current day presents, remember, there is a King who is coming again.

Malachi – Jesus is the Refiner
Reading: Malachi 3

My family loves to tell stories. You will never laugh more than when you are in a room full of Lebanese cousins, uncles, aunts, parents, and grandparents when they start to stroll down memory lane. The volume is loud, the stories are certainly embellished for laughs and you never want it to end. A story could be told a million times and it always feels fresh as you wait for the familiar punchlines and the laughter that will certainly follow.

I imagine that the households in Judah were very similar. I can imagine large family gatherings where the aunts and uncles would tell the stories of the past. I imagine that there would be a respectful silence as the great grandfather reminded the family of all that their people had been through. Children grew up hearing how their people had escaped Egypt by the mighty hand of God. They heard the stories from different perspectives of those who were never named in the Scriptures but had observed these things as part of the hundreds of thousands of people that traversed the wilderness. Those family gatherings must have been magical.

But those stories were eventually part of the distant past. They may have felt just as ancient to the people of Malachi’s time as they do to us in our time. Judah had not experienced God in the same way that Moses had. As they heard the stories for the thousandth time they may have thought, “That was then. This was now.”

During the time of Malachi, Israel had returned from Babylon and had listened to the prophets that urged them to rebuild the temple and to return to the Covenant God had made with them all those years ago. Judah had been obedient. They rebuilt the walls. They rebuilt the Temple. They returned to worship. And yet, something was missing. God seemed silent. Slowly, life went back to the normal grind.

Religion was still a part of everyday life and living for the people of Israel, but there was no real power and no real heart. Malachi saw what was happening and so he pleaded with Israel as the curtain between God and His people began to close.

The priests felt this silence from God and subsequently allowed corruption to enter into their midst. Worship was routine and disconnected from the lives of the people. They observed all of the religious rites and rituals but without any perceived worth. Marriages broke part and families disintegrated. The social fabric of God’s people had been deteriorating for some time. Israel ignored the inequality and inequity that they had been facing since their return. Widows went without help and orphans begged for sustenance in the streets. To make matters worse, there was cultural and racial tension between those that thought of themselves as the pure-breed Israelite and those that were considered half-breed such as the Samaritans.

All the while, God’s voice grew silent as fewer and fewer prophets stood before the nation of Israel. Perhaps, all of the stories of the past were just that – stories. Perhaps, their best days were behind them and God had done all that He was going to do. Maybe, God had never done any great work before and all of the stories were just myths. Or maybe, there was no God at all, and the people of Israel were just another nation that would rise and fall.

Malachi was the last prophet before John the Baptist followed him 400 years later. During those 400 years, God remained silent. Malachi must have felt this coming silence as he watched life return to normal after the return from exile. But even in the growing silence, the prophet knew that God was not yet done with His people. There were still stories to be told. The laughter around the family dinner table would return as God’s people would remember how He worked. Malachi wrote these hopeful words 400 years before Jesus Christ was born,

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.  But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD.  Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.”

Malachi was certain that God had not left His people and that He would keep His covenant with them. In this passage, Malachi predicts the coming of John the Baptist who would be the last Old Testament era prophet before Jesus Christ. Jesus was the one who would fulfill the New Covenant by his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus was the Refiner of which Malachi spoke.

The people of Israel had to hang on to these words of Malachi during those 400 years as God promised that He Himself was coming. He would be the refiner and would restore righteousness to his people. Through Jesus, God Himself would bring back the days of glory that the children of Israel had heard so much about.
During the life of Jesus and in the days after His ascension the stories around the table returned. The story of God’s redemption was no longer an ancient and disconnected story but rather one that everyone was personally involved in.

As Jesus preached and ministered, word spread quickly from town to town and from table to table and family to family. The words of Malachi echoed in the hearts and minds of those who followed Jesus. With every account of God’s glory being displayed through the words and actions of Christ the people felt and experienced to a greater degree what the people who followed Moses out of Egypt felt only in part. Jesus was a greater prophet than Moses, a greater king than David, and a greater priest than Aaron.

But then, he was crucified and killed. For many, Jesus was no longer the refiner who would restore the righteousness of God to his people. He was no longer the one who would bring back the true glory of God to the Temple. He was just another dead messianic figure.

The voices around the tables must have been hushed for those few days that Jesus’ body lay in the tomb. But then, something happened. Jesus had not been defeated but rather he had defeated their ultimate enemy of sin and death. Can you imagine what the stories must have been like as word spread? Some of those who heard about the resurrection were most likely hearing about his death at the same time! They heard the Gospel in its entirety just like we hear it today! This Jesus who had been prophesied about from the words of Malachi 400 years earlier had indeed refined God’s people. He had indeed brought the righteousness and glory of God back to the people of Israel.Through his death and resurrection, this Jesus had led God’s people out of Egypt and into true freedom and eternal life.

The stories spread from town to town and table to table. The laughter of heaven had returned. The work of Christ was just beginning with His resurrection. God was doing new work and expanding His Kingdom into the four corners of the Earth! The stories continued throughout the days of the New Testament church. Jesus had ascended but his Apostles and disciples were continuing to spread the good news and perform miracles to authenticate the Gospel message.

Our days are similar to the days of Malachi. Religion is often routine. We tell the stories of the past and they seem disconnected to us. Our cultural fabric has been torn into shreds. We keep doing the church thing, but God seems silent to us. But what we learn from the 400 years of silence is that God was not disengaged. Heaven was preparing for the next chapter in the story of Redemption. God was keeping a remnant for Himself. He had promised His people redemption and God always does what He says He is going to do. God is not silent today. He is still speaking to us through His Word, through the preaching of His Word, through the means of grace, and through His church.

There was always a remnant during those 400 years that remained faithful to the promises of God and trusted in His faithfulness. During these days of trouble, it is imperative that the church continues to trust that Jesus was not only the Refiner that was promised, but that he continues to be the Refiner that is coming again. There is a day coming that we will rejoice as in the days of old.

The world needs the church to hold on to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. If the world has proven anything in these troubled times, it’s that there is no certainty of hope outside of God’s promises to us that have been fulfilled in Christ. Just as Malachi promised that God was going to dwell with His people, so Jesus has promised that he is with us, even until the end of all things.

Zechariah –King Jesus is a Messiah Pierced For Us
Reading – Zechariah 12, Matthew 27

In 2015 I was turning 40 and was excited for the rekindling of my favorite movie franchise of all time. Star Wars was returning to the big screen and had been bought by Disney from George Lucas for a cool 4.4 billion dollars. The hype was real. The whole world was excited. The first movie dropped in December of 2015 and returned us to a galaxy far, far away. Most of the world enjoyed the film as our old favorite characters returned with some new fresh faces and a fresh new story.

Then, in 2017 the highly anticipated middle chapter, “The Last Jedi” dropped and the Star Wars world was torn asunder. Many of the expectations that had been set up by the first film were thrown out and discarded. Old characters did not respond in ways that had been set up in previous films and didn't remain true to their character. The fanbase felt like they were being jerked around as the storyline became more and more disjointed.

Finally, in 2019, the final film in the new trilogy was released. This film had the unenviable duty of tying up all the loose ends of both the new trilogy and the entire saga that had spanned 40 years. The creators of the film did everything they could to both please the fans, remain true to the original story, and bring a glorious end to the current trilogy. Some loved it. Some did not.

The problems with the new Star Wars effort started before the first movie was ever released. The powers-that-be did not have a story plan. They allowed the story to develop as they went along. By the end of the story, it was very clear that not every detail had been thought through. Because there was no plan, there were plot holes, missteps, and what has now in recent years come to be known as “retconning”. Retconning is the act of imposing new information into a storyline in order to “fix” or “change” our understanding of a previous storyline. Retconning tears at the fabric of a good story and feels cheap.

Good stories are based on good plans and solid plots. The story of Redemption has a perfect plan that has been unfolding since the beginning of time. God has never been surprised by any of the plot developments. Even when sin entered into the world God did not have to retcon his plan. God had always planned to choose for Himself a people. God had always planned to save His chosen people through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. Every detail in this story plays out throughout every page of Scripture. Zechariah is a book that shows us just how detailed God’s plan was for redemption.

Zechariah was written during the rebuilding of the Temple. Zechariah was concerned with how the heart would motivate action among the people of God. Would they be just and care for those in need? Would they keep the covenant and pursue the God of their fathers?

Zechariah is an interesting book concerning Jesus because there are many verses that were either directly or indirectly quoted to substantiate Jesus’ ministry on earth. The verses are so specific that some scholars have wondered if they were either a later addition to Zechariah or if they were deliberately followed by Jesus in order to bring about the end times.

To be sure, Jesus knew the words of Zechariah well. He also knew and taught that the Old Testament prophecies referred to himself. There is no doubt that in many instances Jesus fulfilled these prophecies purposefully as he attended to the Father’s will.

In Zechariah 9:9 the prophet wrote, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
As we read these words our minds are immediately drawn to the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem at the start of what we now call “Holy Week”. When we re-read the events prior to Jesus’ entry in the New Testament we can see how deliberate Jesus was in his instructions to the disciples to prepare for this momentous entrance. Jesus was following the plotline of Zechariah.

In Zechariah 12:10 the prophet writes, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” Here we are reminded of Jesus' distinct death on the Cross. Jesus’s hands, feet, and side were all pierced and his followers mourned until the resurrection. In the days after Jesus’ ascension, many in Jerusalem, when confronted with what they had done, repented and mourned over their sin even as they found their hope in the resurrected Jesus.

Zechariah 11:12–13 reminds us of a very specific event when the passage reveals, “Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.” The reader is reminded of how Judas betrayed Jesus and ultimately out of anguish returned the blood money. The money that was returned was used by the religious leaders to purchase a ‘potter’s field’ which became known as a “field of blood” and was used to bury non-Jews.

Each of these passages leads us to Jesus in very specific ways and show us how God had always been planning the story of Redemption. Central to the story is that Jesus is the Messiah who was pierced for God’s people. Jesus rode into the last week of his life as the promised Messiah on a donkey. His ride into Jerusalem on a donkey meant he came to bring peace. But peace would come at the cost of Jesus’ life as he was pierced for our sin on a cross that we deserved.

The details prophesied about in Zechariah should lead us to the worship of Jesus Christ. We should be moved by who Jesus is and what he has done for us. But we should also be moved by the effort to which God was willing to go and the level of detail to which he planned for our salvation. God’s hand has been involved with our redemption every step of the way. He did not make the story up as he went along, but instead, in his perfect love for us, planned every part of the redemptive plan.

God has also planned out the story in our lives. We each have a purpose and that purpose is to glorify the one who was pierced for our transgressions. Each of our stories consists of details that God sovereignly planned. Each of those details will ultimately bring us to a point where we are confronted with the main character of Jesus Christ.

I know that some take great offense in hearing that God is not surprised by their personal suffering. But let me encourage you with this and being one who has suffered - I take great comfort in knowing that God was not surprised at my suffering and in fact has a plan for the suffering I have endured. What I see in a mirror dimly now will be seen with complete clarity when I behold the face of Jesus Christ.

Just as every detail and every move of the life and ministry of Jesus had been foreordained, so every detail and every move in my life is known to God. Each of those details is leading me to a certain hope – to behold the glory of God and to be with Jesus and like Jesus.

Our lives are not a series of meaningless events and encounters. Each moment of every day is known to God. Each moment of every day is an opportunity to know this God more and to glorify Him. We know God because of the one who was pierced and spoken of in Zechariah.

When Jesus was hanging dead on the cross his disciples and followers wondered how the story had ended on Golgotha. They felt betrayed and grieved by God. This was not how they imagined their story to close. But God was not finished. There was another plot twist coming that had been revealed through the prophets and all throughout the Old Testament.

Zechariah foreshadowed the resurrection of Christ when he wrote, “And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” Jesus did not stay dead. He rose and defeated sin and death. This was no retcon. This was the story. This was always the story. And this is the story that God invites every last one of us to be cast in. This is a story worth living.

Haggai – Jesus Brings Us Back To The Heart of Worship
Reading: Haggai 1, John 4:1-26

On a cold and sleepy New Year’s Day evening my family and I were eating leftovers around the TV. The holidays were over, and the grind of a mid-Atlantic state winter was ahead of us. My mom was in the kitchen talking with some of my siblings. I was sitting across from my dad in the Family Room enjoying yet another meal when we all began to smell something in the air. Was something burning in the stove? No. The smell was an acrid one and unnatural. It smelled like a chemical on fire.

At just the moment that I placed the smell like a chemical smell I had a sinking feeling. I thought to myself, “If my room were on fire, this is what it would smell like.” Throughout college, I had amassed a huge Star Wars collection. Much of it was made of plastic. This smell must be burning plastic.

As everyone else around the house began to look for the source of the smell and lead with their noses, I ran toward the stairs leading to my room. I flicked on the upstairs hall light only for it to barely offer any more clarity. Thick, black smoke had already begun to filter out from my room and was blocking any light from the fixture. Without thinking I ran up the stairs and opened the door to my room. There were giant flames engulfing my bed and furniture and shooting up the wall closest to me and across the ceiling reaching toward the opposite wall.

At that moment I threw my mug of hot chocolate on the fire and screamed, “Fire! My room is on fire! The house is one fire!” I wondered why it was taking everyone so long to race up the stairs with water, but it was probably only a matter of seconds before my brother-in-law was right behind me and my dad was pushing past us and into the flames.

My brother-in-law and I rushed in after my dad to try and pull him out, but we could not breathe. The smoke was so thick that is was impossible to enter the room without crawling. We screamed for my dad to come out, but he wouldn’t. He was fighting the fire with a giant pillow as we continued throwing water from the bathroom onto the flames.

Somehow, my dad put the fire out. It was absolutely terrifying for all of us as he was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. When he came out of the room he was covered in black soot. He said, “There was no way I was letting this house burn down.” I think that in those moments leading up to the pillow fight with the fire that he thought we had already suffered enough as a family. My 16-year-old brother had been killed in a car accident just a few years earlier.  If our house burnt to the ground it would have been another devastating blow to an already grieving family.

After the fire, we endured the long process of cleaning everything up and restoring what had been lost.  My collection was replaced, and I received full compensation for everything that had been destroyed. The room was rebuilt and improved upon. By the end, my room, my collection, and even my bank account were in much better shape than before the fire. We received new clothes, new walls, and new floors. We received something better than what we had before.

My dad fought the fire and we endured through the rebuild process because our home meant something to us. It held memories and possessions. It provided a level of comfort during difficult days. We fight for the things that mean something to us. We rebuild and reclaim those things that have been destroyed when they have meaning for us. Our efforts follow our hearts.

Haggai was a prophet that ministered during Judah’s return to Jerusalem. The people had begun the hard work of restoring their homes and their land after they had been destroyed by the Babylonian invasion.  By the time of Haggai, things were looking up but the people had not yet rebuilt the Temple of Solomon. The temple had been burnt to the ground when Babylon exiled Judah and yet it still remained a pile of rubble. Haggai chastised the people for ignoring the House of the Lord while enriching their own homes. Their efforts were following their hearts and their hearts were captured by lesser gods.

The Temple was the center of religious life for the people of Israel and yet, they had ignored the rebuilding efforts because they were more invested in their own personal possessions. Haggai exhorted the people that their first efforts must be with the Lord and His house for it was in His house that His Presence resided and dwelled among His people.

The Jews listened to Haggai and rebuilt the Temple into a glorious sight to see.  Some historians remarked how when approaching Jerusalem that the city seemed to glow with the beauty of the Temple. God promised the people through Haggai, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.” As great as a physical structure that the Second Temple became, it still paled in comparison to what God’s promises meant.

The promises of the Lord to his people were fulfilled in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, brought God’s people back to the true heart of worship. God’s promise was only partially seen in the physical glory of the rebuilt temple. The fulfillment of this promise in Haggai was fulfilled in Christ because Jesus is God with us. Jesus brought peace between God and His people. Jesus is the greater Temple because Jesus is the very presence of God.

Over the centuries between Haggai and Jesus, Jerusalem began to worship the Temple itself. They had lost sight of the reason why the Temple existed in the first place – for the glory of God. It became their glory and their pride.

God’s original exhortation to the returning exiles was to examine their hearts. Why had they rebuilt their own homes and ignored the rebuilding of God’s Temple? And why did they not see Jesus for who he was and instead worshipped the Temple years later? They, and we, tend to put our efforts into the things that we worship. We worship the things that have captured our hearts. We are willing to risk everything for those things and people that have become our objects of worship.

My dad was willing to get into a pillow fight with a fire in order to protect his family from added grief to our already crippling grief. The Israelites once exhorted were willing to give all they had to rebuild the Temple so that the presence of the Lord might dwell with them. Our efforts follow our hearts. We put effort into what we worship. This was the message of Haggai and it was the message of Christ to the woman at the well when he said that the Father is looking for those who would worship Him in spirit and in truth, rather than those who would put on a show in a gorgeous building. God’s promise was always about His Son Jesus.

Is it wrong to rush into a dangerous fire with a pillow in order to save a house and a family from grief? Of course not. Perhaps, it’s not advisable. But it is okay to protect and fight for good things. Is it wrong to build church buildings and to invest money in these buildings or our homes? Of course not. But when they become ultimate things, they become god things. This is why we must continue to pursue Jesus who is the true object of true worship.

Where are we putting our efforts today and tomorrow? Most likely, they will be put into whatever or whomever it is that we worship.

Zephaniah – Jesus is the Mighty Warrior Who Saves
Reading: Zephaniah 1:7-16

We have never had a better time to stop and think about our loyalties and purpose than we do right now at this point in history. Our lives have been slowed down to a grinding halt. Through this pandemic, I have had plenty of time to wrestle with my objects of worship and where those objects might take me. Many people that I know both inside and outside of the church are not concerned with their final destiny. They just sort of approach life believing that somehow it will all work out in the end. They jump from one experience to the next as a distraction to either convince themselves that this is all there is or try to ignore the nagging feeling that this life is not all there is.

What if the judgment is coming? What if Jesus was right when he told the crowds that one day there would be great joy and great judgment? What if we are the like the crowds that left Jesus for other pursuits when he spoke of such things? Where are we headed? And if there is judgment, what will happen to me on that day?

Zephaniah was a prophet who struggled through these kinds of questions 600 years or so before Jesus. His words to Judah are full of judgment and wrath and are especially interesting when we consider the time period in which he ministered. By his tone, we would expect that Judah was in open rebellion against God. Yet, Zephaniah wrote during a period of spiritual revival during the reign of King Josiah. Those who were in rebellion and under God’s judgment were undercover.

Josiah was the son of Manasseh. Manasseh was the son of the good King Hezekiah. Hezekiah had reformed the Southern Kingdom of Judah and protected Judah from the Assyrians while destroying the shrines to false gods and bringing God’s people back into the worship of Yahweh. His son, Manasseh, had other plans as the longest-reigning king in Israel’s storied history. He reversed all that his father had done and not only allowed the worship of false gods but encouraged it by rebuilding and bringing back the shrines and holy places of foreign religions.

During his rule, his relativistic “freedom of religion” was very among the people of Judah and drew the ire of the prophets. Isaiah, Habakkuk, Nahum, and now Zephaniah spoke out against the covenant-breaking king and as a result, were wildly unpopular with the king and with the people. The king persecuted any prophet that spoke against his relativistic reforms.

But then Manasseh had a change of heart when he was imprisoned by the Assyrian king for his disloyalty. Sometime during his imprisonment, Manasseh broke and turned to the Lord. He realized his sin and he repented. When he was set free, he ordered all of the shrines and temples to foreign gods be destroyed and that only Yahweh was to be worshipped in Judah.

After his death, his son King Josiah became king and there was a revival throughout Judah as they returned to the Covenant they had made with Yahweh. It was during this time that Zephaniah prophesied. One would think that his words would be uplifting and optimistic. Instead, Zephaniah prophesied that the Day of the Lord was coming, and, on that day, there would be a great and just judgment of God’s people.

Zephaniah wrote,

A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish,
a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry
against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.

According to Zephaniah, on The Day of the Lord, God would come as a warrior and no one would be able to stand against His wrath and judgment. I wonder if there were many in Judah who thought Zephaniah had actually been hearing from God. Hadn’t he witnessed the great spiritual revival? Manasseh had repented. His son, Josiah, was doing things right. The people returned to Yahweh. Surely, Zephaniah had been mistaken. But everything that Zephaniah said came to pass when Babylon was used by God to exercise his judgment in 586 B.C. It was a great and terrible day of holy and just judgment.

Even in the midst of the judgment, there was hope. In the verses leading up to the description of God’s wrath, Zephaniah wrote,

Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near;
the LORD has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests.

In these words, we see a glimpse of Jesus Christ as not only a mighty warrior who brings the judgment of God, but as a mighty warrior who saves God’s people from the judgment that their sins deserve. In the midst of judgment, God has prepared a sacrifice and through that sacrifice, he has set his people apart for salvation. Just as God would save a remnant of Judah from the judgment of exile, so too Jesus was the sacrifice that would save God’s repentant people from his righteous and holy wrath.

It is not difficult to see the modern church in the people of Judah during the time of Zephaniah. There were good things happening. There were spiritual awakenings and reforms. But there were also those who were still under the influence of the sin of Manasseh and worshipping false gods. There were many who saw some worth in following Yahweh and keeping his covenant, but they were also following after false gods and practicing false religions. This group of people must have been shocked at the words of Zephaniah. They were fractured in their fealty to God.

The American church is fractured in its fealty to Jesus. We have choices to make. Will we follow Jesus even if that leads us into a place of powerlessness on this earth, or will we use worldly means, arguments, and tactics to hold onto our power? Will we live fearfully and succumb to the demands of our relativistic culture or will we remain loyal to Jesus’ call of the Gospel to love our enemies, to bless those who persecute us, to clothe the naked, to fight injustice, and to care for our neighbors?

Judah learned that they could not live in both the fractured world of relativistic worship and fealty to Yahweh. They could either live as the world around them demanded or they could live and walk in the fear of the Lord. Judah would have been encouraged by the words of Zephaniah in that God had promised a remnant would be saved. This remnant would be saved through the sacrifice that God provided. On this side of the cross, we know that this sacrifice is God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

In the Bible, “The Day of the Lord” has different meanings depending on the context. Sometimes it means a day of judgment. Other times it means a day of joy for the righteous. Sometimes this day is an event that was close at hand, and other times it is referring to the last day in history.

Jesus brought all of these ideas together when he spoke of the Day of the Lord. According to Jesus, this day will be both a day of judgment and of joy. This day, according to Jesus, is a day that is both close at hand for us, and also a day that we will experience together with the rest of humankind on the last day of history. Each of us is headed toward the day of the Lord whether by death or the coming of Christ.

Why is it that we choose to live our lives with fractured fealty to God? There are many reasons, but the root of the reason is that we pretend that this life is all there is. We act as if God’s judgment will pass over us because we will be judged by our own definitions of morality. We are playing the part of God.

Of course, those outside of the church and those who deny Christ as Savior would have reason to believe in their own minds that they will not be judged by a God that they do not believe in. But what about the inside of the church? For it is the people inside the faith to which Zephaniah was writing. The Day of the Lord is coming for us as well as the rest of the world. It will not matter that we have spent all of our days inside of the church if we have not lived authentic lives in worship of Jesus Christ. Zephaniah was calling out those who looked like followers of God and believed they were followers of God but had been unwilling to truly submit themselves to his rule and covenant.

Where will the Day of the Lord find us when it does come?

Habakkuk – Jesus Crushes Injustice
Reading: Habakkuk 1

There is a verse in Habakkuk that many Christians have found to be very hopeful in desperate situations. I have heard pastors use this verse to launch a new ministry or a new building campaign. I have heard this verse used in counseling books to encourage people to press on. It was probably crocheted in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and put onto coffee mugs in the ‘90’s and punched in as a status in the 2010’s. It says,

“Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.”

What hope-filled words! These may have been especially promising words to the first hearers in Judah as they had witnessed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians. And now, those same Assyrians had threatened their kingdom on several occasions. The hearts of the people of Judah must have leaped out of their chests when they heard Habakkuk speak for the Lord. God was going to do a great work that would astound everyone. It’s no wonder that preachers have used these words to inspire congregations to give more time, talent, and treasure toward ministry objectives. It is no wonder that counselors have sought to bring hurting people out of the depths of grief with these hopeful words.

The problem is that God didn’t stop with these words. In the very next stanza, God describes that unbelievable work when he says,

“For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.”

Yikes. That wasn’t the message the people of Judah were hoping for. The astounding work of God caused great grief for His people. The prophecies of Habakkuk went on to describe exactly what God was going to do with these Chaldeans. In short, it wasn’t good for Judah’s immediate future. God was not launching a new ministry campaign or trying to convince hurting people that a brighter day was in their future. God was promising to keep his covenant and to discipline his people for their sin. God was acting against Judah because God is a God of justice. The God of justice would crush injustice.

The reason this news was so shocking was that Babylon, the Chaldeans, weren’t exactly a righteous people. In our mythos, the good guys are supposed to take out the bad guys. The problem with this Chaldean scenario is that the Chaldeans weren’t good guys. God was going to use some pretty bad people to get good things done. How is that just?

One of the first questions on the minds of the Judeans must have been, “What about punishing the evil of Babylon?”

As Habakkuk continued to prophesy, he asked the same question. He argued with God about his methods of discipline. Each time Habakkuk complained against God, God answered righteously. Habakkuk asked God how he could use evil traitors to discipline his people. God graciously answered that the Chaldeans would not escape judgment. They would be the tools of God to discipline his own people, but in the end, his people would be restored, and the Chaldeans would be wiped from the face of the earth. And this is exactly what happened. Judah was captured and exiled by Babylon in 576. B.C. Some 70 years later they returned to Judah and reestablished their people in their land and under a renewed covenant with God.

In Habakkuk God is a just God that crushes injustice and unrighteousness. Those who would be God’s people according to Habakkuk are those who are just and live by faith.

The words of Habakkuk show us that Jesus would be the one who would crush injustice. God used an even more shocking event to bring about justice. God allowed his own son to be unjustly condemned and executed on a cross that he did not deserve. God the Son allowed himself to become the sin of all of God’s chosen people so that all of God’s chosen people could become the righteousness of God. Shockingly, Jesus agreed to and allowed these unjust things so that we might by faith be made just before God. God used the shocking news and judgment of the Cross to reconcile his people just as he had used the Chaldeans to restore his people so many centuries before Jesus.

In Reformed theology, we love the concept of justification by faith. What this simply means is that because Jesus became our sin, and because we have been given the gift of faith by grace, that we are united to the work of Jesus Christ and as a result, we are made righteous in the sight of God. Our sinful self was nailed with Jesus to the Cross and buried with Christ in the grave. We are now able to please God only through the awesome work of Christ. This doctrine frees us from shame and guilt as we know there is nothing more that we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing that we can do to make God love us less. God loves us first and he loves us unconditionally because of what Jesus has done for us and in us.

But there is more to understanding how Jesus plans to crush injustice. God is not only concerned with our salvation. He desires for us to be just people. In fact, because we, a once formerly unjust person, have been made just by God’s gracious love for us, should desire justice in this world even more than the next person who doesn’t know Jesus.

Jesus came to establish a Kingdom that would eradicate injustice. His people are ambassadors of that kingdom. Those people that have been made just by faith through the work of Christ should be the same people on the front line of the fight against injustice wherever it may be. Our salvation must not be disconnected from our actions. Our salvation is of earthly good. We are to fight for the things God loves until Jesus returns to end all of the fights.

There are so many instances of injustice in this world. It is unjust when human life is snuffed out whether in the womb or in the streets. It is unjust when crimes are tried, and sentences carried out on a street corner without any due process. It is unjust when a public servant is killed while doing their job properly and justly to serve and protect. It is unjust for peaceful protestors to be abused when their rights are protected by law. It is unjust when the property of bystanders is destroyed for the sake of a cause. It is unjust to be oppressed because of the color of your skin.

We are unjust when we do not join in the fight against injustice wherever it might exist. We are unjust when we need others to agree with us or say things exactly as we want them to be said. We are unjust when we are caught up in a tribe rather than The Kingdom. We are unjust when we misrepresent another person made in the image of God.

There is no cause and no side that is completely just. Only Jesus is perfectly just which is why Jesus and the pursuit of his glory and his Kingdom is our only hope for this world.

Those who have been justified by faith will look for ways to seek justice in the world in which they live. Those who have been justified by faith know what it is like to be truly free before God. This is the greatest freedom of all. This great freedom must trickle down into our fight for justice in this world.

Our faith in Christ has made us just before God. We must allow this standing before God to become the impetus for each of us to look for ways to fight against injustice in this world. Our faith in Jesus is not just for the hereafter. Our faith in Jesus must also be for the here and now as we are the representation of what God intends to bring to this earth when Jesus comes again.

Nahum – King Jesus Inaugurates a Peaceful Kingdom
Reading: Nahum 1, Romans 5:1

You know it’s going to happen. You sit there in your seat as the movie screen glows in front of you. You just tortured your psyche for the past 2 hours as the killer has terrorized everyone on screen and in the movie theater. You wonder why you actually paid to scare yourself half to death. But finally, it seems, the hero has vanquished the monster. They have dealt the death blow and now our hero lays there panting next to the bloody body of the killer.

But you know what is coming next. We all know what is coming next. We start to yell at the screen, “It’s not dead! Get out of there! Stab it again! Finish it off.” You know that the monster has one last move to make. It’s coming back to life and it’s going to finish someone off. There is always a final battle.

How is it possible that horror movies still scare us when the monster comes back to life for one last gasp? We know it’s coming and yet we still jump out of our seats when it happens. It seems like evil is never dead and there is always another enemy to vanquish.

The Kingdom of Judah must have felt this same horror as they heard of the prophet Nahum speak about their next-door enemies living in Nineveh. The Assyrians were a brutal people with a brutal military. They showed no mercy and took pleasure in not just killing their enemies but in the way in which they would kill them. The Assyrians had been visited by Jonah about 100 years before Nahum preached. At that time, they repented of their sins. But that was then, and this was now. Evil was coming for them and there would be no peace.

Assyria attacked, defeated, and decimated the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They so thoroughly destroyed the ten northern tribes that the pages of history would never write about them again in any significant way. Now, Assyria had set their sights on Judah. The monster was coming for them and Judah had every reason to be afraid.

But God had made promises through his covenant. He had promised to set up an eternal kingdom through the tribes of Judah and the throne of David. He had promised to dwell with his people in this kingdom of peace and that his people would dwell with him. Assyria would not be allowed to destroy Judah. God was determined to preserve a remnant so that he could fulfill his promises.

Nahum wrote words of comfort to Judah as he relayed God’s plans for Assyria. God would do to Assyria what Assyria had done to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And that is exactly what happened. Babylon burnt Nineveh and Assyrian Empire to the ground.

The Kingdom of Judah was preserved for a time. They must have found confidence in the words of Nahum. As Nahum described the wrath of God and what plans he had in store for Assyria he writes, “trouble will not rise up a second time.”

These words are important because they sum up the thoroughness of God’s judgment and action against the evil forces of this world. These words are an echo from Eden as God promised that the seed of the woman, who would be revealed as Jesus Christ from the line of David and the tribes of Judah, would crush the head of Satan. Satan would not rise up a second time just as Assyria would not rise up a second time.

The only chance that peace has is for the enemy of peace to be utterly destroyed. There can be no remnant of evil if we are to ever experience the kind of peace that God has in store for a New Heaven and Earth. The monster does not come back to life in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus has inaugurated a peaceful kingdom. Much of his teaching is centered on the concept of the Kingdom of God and how we enter into that Kingdom. A central concept to the Kingdom of God is peace with God and peace with others. When the angels announced the birth of Jesus which was in itself an announcement that the Kingdom of God was coming to Earth, they said, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those on whom His favor rests.” The Kingdom of God announced peace and Jesus secured that peace when he vanquished the monster of sin and death when he died on the Cross and rose again.

The peace that we have with God through Jesus Christ was secured as Jesus soaked up all of the wrath of God on a Cross of judgment. The Assyrians experienced in part what Jesus took on in full. The words of Nahum point forward to Jesus in this way; because of what Jesus has done because he has defeated sin and death, trouble will not defeat us a second time.

The idea of peace in the Bible can mean several different things. Peace is the absence of war and destruction. It can mean a right relationship between God and His people. It can speak of peace as a quality between people. Sometimes it is used as a term of serenity. None of these aspects of peace are possible without the annihilation of the monster of Satan, sin, and death.

In just the same way that we hold our breath in the movie theater as the monster begins to show signs of life, we would have to hold our collective breath if there were any way for Satan to spring back from the mortal wound he was dealt as Jesus came up out of the grave.

We often do find ourselves holding our breath when evil is done to us or when we see it being done to others. Let’s face it, this world is broken. It seems like the Assyrians are still coming at us even though we have been promised that when God is through with them that there won’t be a second victory. This is because we live in between the inauguration of the Kingdom that will bring peace and the consummation of that Kingdom. When Jesus died, rose, and ascended he inaugurated the Kingdom of God.

Right now, Jesus as our King is putting all of his and our enemies under his feet. When he has finished, he will come again for a final judgment of the world and complete restoration and recreation of the heavens and the earth. This promise is as sure as the promise God made to Nahum and the people of Judah that evil will not have a second chance.

2020 is one of those years were the monster keeps waking back up. Just as soon as we think we’ve seen the last of the monster another video pops up online, or a new story breaks of unspeakable horror, or we end up in a political discussion with a friend. The monster just won’t die, or so we think.

But the monster is bleeding out and Jesus made sure of it. He has crushed the head of Satan and has dealt the monster with a mortal wound. Yes, there are last gasps and attacks, but be assured of this, evil will not win a second time. There is no victory for death and the grave cannot sting those united to Christ.

We are guaranteed peace. Jesus has made possible the idea of biblical peace. We can have peace between brothers and sisters. We are headed toward a kingdom where all wars will cease whether national or personal. We will experience a true serenity in the presence of the risen King. And all of this is possible because we can have peace with God right now through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I have a certain peace come what may. My peace is not connected to the results of an election or whether or not I have convinced my friend of my position. My peace is not found in the money I have I my bank account or the security of my job. All of these things have the possibility of failure. My peace is in the fact that Jesus has conquered the greatest enemy of all and that he has inaugurated and will establish a Kingdom of peace through his death, resurrection, intercession and his coming again. May it be soon. For evil, there will not be a second coming.