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Often hymns both old and new speak of going to heaven when you die as though heaven is our final home. Scripture speaks of something else though. It speaks of our life being a seed that, when planted in the ground, waits patiently for the day when it will rise again.

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #16 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

The James Jordan article I reference: http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/open-book/no-28-concerning-halloween/

It has been over 5 months since our last episode of the Anno Domini podcast. During those 5 months, we have been observing the period of the Church calendar known as Ordinary time. We are approaching the end of this period with the coming celebration of Reformation Day and All Saints Day. On these days, we celebrate the life of the church as it has grown in maturity through its reformation as well as the lives of those saints that have gone on to glory from Abel to Zachariah and from Stephan to the present.

Historical

The calendar can be divided roughly into two halves. The first half, beginning at Advent, marks the life of Christ and includes celebrations such as Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, etc. During the first half of the church year we celebrate the life of Christ. This is a season of special days and feasts: a festal or festive time. The second half of the church year is marked by the Ordinal numbers of weeks going back to Pentecost. Ordinal numbers signify a position relative to something else. Therefore, Last Sunday, October 25th, was the 21st Sunday after Pentecost. This ordinary time is certainly not mundane or boring, or forgettable, but simply isn’t marked by any feasts. Instead, each Lord’s Day is marked with it’s ordinal position relative to Pentecost. This is important because while the first half of the Church year marks the life of Christ, the second half marks the work of the Spirit, given at Pentecost. This is the work of the Spirit as He brings about transformation through the ministry of the Church during Ordinary time. Extraordinary things can happen during Ordinary time which we will soon see.

This leads us into the two holidays which mark the beginning of the end of Ordinary time; Reformation Day on October 31st and All Saints Day on November 1st.

Let’s start with Reformation Day, this actually was liturgically observed last Sunday October 25th. If you attend a reformed church, it is likely they referred to it as Reformation Sunday. Often, reformed churches take the entire month of October to mark the reformation but the actual day on the calendar is this Saturday the 31st. On Reformation Day, we celebrate the glorious Protestant Reformation that is officially marked as starting on October 31st, 1517. This is the day in history, in the midst of Ordinary time, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door in (vit-en-berg) Wittenberg Germany. Within this document, Luther took an extraordinary step of faith by calling out the massive corruption within the catholic church at the time. Luther specifically took issue with the church selling indulgences. Believers were promised that buy indulgences would get their loved ones out of purgatory and into heaven. This of course is high-handed, oppressive, and shameless wickedness and Luther’s extraordinary act of courage began in earnest a protest that had been forming in the catholic church for over a century.

The reformation brought to the world the biblical truth that our own merit plays no role in our salvation. The idea of meritorious work being essential to salvation was and unfortunately is still common within the Roman Catholic church. Alternatively, clear biblical teaching places grace as the primary means by which salvation is applied. Good works are seen as a result of salvation; not a prerequisite for salvation. However clear biblical teaching was not available at the time as most were not allowed to have access to scripture. Often the mass or church service was performed in Latin so the people were not allowed to either read or understand the Word of God. This all changed when the Reformation spread and the people were given back the Word of God to read, and hear, and understand in their own language.

Many of us are familiar with this story but it is important to note it didn’t come about overnight. Martin Luther is certainly the most famous name associated with the Reformation but their were many that came before him who built much of the foundation upon which Luther eventually understood as salvation by grace alone through faith alone by Christ alone. More on that in a moment.

The second holiday we mark this weekend is All Saints Day. This is a day dedicated to giving thanks for the life and death and most importantly the coming resurrection of all those Saint’s who are claimed by and with Jesus in glory. It is a time known as Hallowtide which includes Hallows Eve or Evening and Hallows Day or All Saint’s Day. Hallow means to set apart as holy. But that is when it is used as a verb. When we use the word Hallow as a noun, it means Saint. This is pretty cool. When we are baptized into Christ, we are sacramentally being set apart and made holy or hallowed as a visible sign of the covenant is poured out upon us. Our baptism signifies us as members of the body of Christ. This makes us both hallowed (set apart) and Hallows or Saints. This is a critical distinction as connected with the Protestant reformation as we believe that all those who are baptized into Christ and have put on Christ in faith are already saints. While the catholic church taught (and still teaches) that one must rise to an exceptional level of piety to be considered for sainthood and bypass purgatory WE believe that Sainthood begins in this life at the moment we are justified by faith through the gracious work of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Therefore Hallowtide means Saints Time or a time to recognize and be thankful for the Saints who have come before us. We rejoice with them but we do not worship or pray to them. Those with Christ do not need our prayers nor do they want us to pray to them. This holiday originally began to be celebrated in May of the 4th century to honor the many Christians who had been martyred for their faith in Christ. The biblical day began on the preceding evening. Just as our observance of the Lord’s Day would begin at sundown the night before. So a holiday such as Christmas Eve or Hallows Eve actually begin on the Eve or evening before the actual Day. This would have been useful knowledge to know as a kid when I was excited for Christmas morning, Christmas had already begun! We of course are familiar with Hollows Eve or as the Scots dialect pronounces it ‘een. Halloween didn’t use to be a holiday glorifying violence and satanism but instead was the beginning of the All Saint’s Day celebration. In fact, in the Anglosphere, it has been said that All Saints Day began to be celebrated on November 1st in the 8th century. This time was chosen as an answer to the common pagan fears that would spring up every year amongst the unconverted tribes of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Fall and winter were seen as wicked times when evil forces would rule the cold dark nights. All Saints Day was an answer of hope to a fearful community. This is Christianity taking dominion over a fallen world. We actually have the answers to the fears of life. As the body of Christ moves through this world, we can have the greatest impact by having courage, trusting in Jesus, and not being afraid when others are. This distinction has been lost on most of us but Halloween used to be a day filled with laughing at the darkness, smiling at the future, and joyful anticipation of the coming glorious resurrection of the Church Triumphant. Those of us still living are the Church Militant. We have been tasked with battering down the gates of hell. Those who have died in Christ are the Church Triumphant and we are told in Hebrews that they are a great cloud of witnesses that are encouraging the Church Militant to run with perseverance and throw away anything that slows us down from bringing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

One of these Saint’s who faithfully worked to bring God’s kingdom on earth came over 100 years before Martin Luther. He was a Saint. He was a Reformer. His name was John Huss. Huss, which means Goose in Bohemian, was a catholic priest in the area that is now the Czech Republic. Huss preached fiercely against indulgences, taught that the Church was founded upon Christ and not the pope, and that Christians were to obey God and not men. Theses are ideas that seem common to us Protestants now but at that time, when the word of God was locked away by the Church, they were revolutionary. Huss wrote out 6 glaring errors that he saw the Catholic Church committing and nailed them to the church doors of Bethlehem Chapel. The church was furious and excommunicated Huss immediately. This excommunication was not enforced though and Huss continued to preach openly. Then the church “invited” Huss to defend his ideas promising him safe passage to and from Constance Germany where the council was being held. When Huss arrived at the meeting, he was immediately arrested and sentenced to death. While tied to a stake and surrounded with kindling, he was given a chance to recant his teaching and instead, it is said that he replied "I would not for a chapel of gold retreat from the truth! Today you burn a goose, but in one hundred years a swan will arise which you will prove unable to boil or roast.”

Whether or not Huss actually prophesied this isn’t really important. The swan that came was of course Martin Luther who, following in Huss’ footsteps, nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. In this way celebrating the Reformation and All Saint’s Day back to back is an exercise in thankfulness to the graciousness of God. God preserved His Word and His people through one of the darkest periods of Church History and He advanced His kingdom during this dark time through the blood of the martyrs.

Biblical

During our biblical section of the Anno Domini podcast, we generally look at scripture from the lectionary. The lectionary has an Old Testament reading, a psalm, an epistle, and a gospel reading. Both Reformation Day and All Saints Day carry an interesting oddity thrat no other holiday carries. Instead of Old Testament readings, both days carry passages from Revelation. On the 52 week calendar this is the only time it happens. The passage we will look at today is from Revelation chapter 7 verses 9-17 with the context of verse 2-8 emphasized in the lectionary. Here is the passage from 9 to 17

The context that came before this was the remnant of Israel that had just been numbered. Israel had, for the most part, apostatized and yet from each tribe there had been preserved a remnant. 12,000 in each tribe that had remained faithful. This 144,000, were sealed in Christ but we’re a small minority of God’s chosen people as they could be counted. Then we hear about the new Israel. A multitude which no one could number from every nation in whom all the promises of God have found their yes and amen. This church is the whole world perfected. It is the final goal of the mission of Christ “that the world should be saved through Him.”

I believe this passage is chosen against an Old Testament passage because this passage is describing all of the eschatological promises of the Old Testament up to this point. The Saints, both the faithful remnant of Israel and the new Israel have been grafted together into one tree to share in the new heaven and new earth.

Practical

Reformation Day and All Saints Day can be intensely practical. For Christians, Christ is Supreme and not popular culture. This is why merely providing “alternatives” to the degeneracy surround Halloween is not enough. Christ isn’t a plan B or an alternative to sin. He is the King and Captain. We should be careful not to merely create cheap imitations of what the world offers. Remember first that the world is offering the counterfeit and Christians have the real everlasting answer. When we imitate the world, we are imitating an imitation. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. We must first understand that Christ is King and then we will know not to engage in the world’s twisted sense of pleasure. Screwtape, the demon or master tempter in CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, knew this. He writes speaking of God:

When He moves in history as He most certainly did during the Reformation, we ought to respond with a hearty and jolly amen. We should have nothing to do with aping foolish and twisted imitations of pleasure. That being said, there is nothing wicked about dressing up and going door to door to ask for candy. Carving pumpkins, brewing spiced ciders, and bobbing for apples are all good pleasures that God has given us to enjoy. And we should enjoy them knowing Christ is seated firmly on the throne. James Jordan has a wonderful article on this that is edifying each time I read it which I will link to in the show notes. One tradition my family has done the past 2 years is to read through (or at least read some) of the 95 theses. You should too it a hoot! No one can write quite like Martin Luther.

From the practical side of All Saints Day I think it is helpful to think about our own mortality. Cemeteries are great places to do this. If you know of Saints who are buried in your local cemetery, go and visit their graves. Burial is a gift that Christians gave the world. While the pagan world has always burned their dead in funeral pyres, Christians, filled with the hope of resurrection have built gardens filled with the planted seed of those who have gone before us who are patiently awaiting the resurrection. When Jesus comes again it is said He will come from the east. This is why old cemeteries used to have all of their headstones facing east. So that when He comes again, the dead will rise and immediately be facing His return. Its symbolic of course but that symbolism gives us hope whether our bodies are planted in the ground or we are lost at sea or die in a fire we still will rest in peace awaiting the day of resurrection.

Music

For our music portion of this episode, I chose a classic hymn, written in 1864 by William Walsham How titled ”For All the Saints.” Often hymns both old and new speak of going to heaven when you die as though heaven is our final home. Scripture speaks of something else though. It speaks of our life being a seed that, when planted in the ground, waits patiently for the day when it will rise again. What springs forth isn’t the same thing that went in the ground and yet it really does spring forth. It goes into the ground a kernel and rises a beautiful plant. What rises is totally unlike the seed and yet totally connected with the kernel that came before it. One cannot have the beautiful plant without the death and burial of the seed. In this analogy those who have gone to be with Jesus are the kernel in the ground. Their spirits are in the presence of Christ and to them just as Paul promise it is gain. But they too are looking forward to the day when their own natural body will, just like that kernel, rise out of the ground and be resurrected and glorified. This coincides with the Return of Christ and with His return heaven and earth will be united and the gospel will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. This hymn beautifully encapsulates this eschatological glory.

Let’s hear the words.

Verse 1 speaks of the saint’s of the Church Triumphant and the rest they now enjoy because they confessed and trusted Christ. Because of this may the name of Christ be blessed forever.

Verse 2 Jesus is the focus. He was and is the rock (foundation) of the church. He is the fortress (a hiding place) He is our might (because we are weak He is strong). He is the Captain of the fight of the Church Militant. And in the dreary darkness of the shadow of death He is our one true light.

Verse 3 The Church Militant prays for faithfulness, truth, and courage as we seek to fight as those now in the Church Triumphant. While we are breathing and for as long as we are breathing we are fighting for a crown of salvation. We pray for endurance in this fight.

Verse 4. While we aren’t able to see, hear, or feel those in the Church Triumphant, we still fellowship with them. We are feeble and we struggle. They are in glory and are shining with Jesus. And yet even though there is such a stark contrast, we are all one in Christ because we all belong to Christ.

Verse 5. The Church Militant should expect struggle, strife, and warfare up until the day we die. When that day approaches and we hear the “distant triumph song.” We know that we are moving into eschatological hope. A time when hearts will be again brave (because now we struggle with fear) and time when arms will again be strong (while now we are weak but Christ is strong) soon we will be like in when we see him face to face.

Verse 6. This is the point, the golden evening brightening in the west, when a Saint is called from this earthly life and enters into the rest of paradise. Saints are promised this will be a time of sweet calm and repose. We will be with Jesus and for those who have battled long and hard in this world, this will be a blessing bigger than we can possibly imagine now. But there is so much more to come. Unfortunately, this hope is the hope that many if not most hymns stop at. They see going to heaven when you die as the final place for believers.

Verse 7 changes all that. But Lo! or But Look! it says. There is a much more glorious day breaking. The Saints are triumphantly rising in bright glory. Why are they? BEcause the King of Glory has returned is is passing on His way to defeat the last enemy of all, death itself. Alleluia!

Verse 8 is the final eschatological hope of this earth. Rather than the world perishing in an ash heap, we believe that Jesus came to save the world. We are told that from all over the earth from the farthest oceans to the farthest coasts will come a countless host through gates of pearl. What will these hosts be doing? Praising Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Alleluia.

Before we play an original setting of this hymn, I would like to say that I am concluding the Anno Domini Podcast in its current format with this episode. This doesn’t mean the podcast will go away but rather that the format will shift. The beauty of the Church Calendar is that within just a few short days we will begin again where we started; With the Advent of Christ. Instead of continuing in this format I am shifting my emphasis onto a related but different topic; church planting. The Anno Domini podcast is not the only podcast I am working on. In January of this year, I and several other families began meeting with the desire to plant a distinctly reformed church in Lewis County WA. We have met over 20 times since January and all of them have been recorded. The podcast is called Reformation Roundtable and you can find it on iTunes. The point of the podcast if very provincial. I would like those in my province or parish to listen to the discussion on reformed theology and join us in our vision to plant such a church. This will be my main focus over the next year and I won’t be able to give this podcast in its current format the same level of attention I have up to this point. Stay subscribed though because I will likely continue to put out episodes emphasizing the psalter and hymnody. I already have one planned for the last Sunday of the Church year: November 22nd. Stay tuned.

With that I will bid you adieu and play for you this original setting of For All the Saints which will also have an accompanying video in the show notes which will go live on November 1st 2020. Thank you to everyone who has stayed with me during this last liturgical year and I really can’t wait to start again.

The bottom line is that our allegiance is to our God and Creator and to His people. When we sin it is against Him. When we are forgiven it is because of His mercy. When we walk in freedom it is because of His grace. A double portion. This gospel is independent of any nation, tribe, or tongue. We are Christians first. Period. Nothing should come before our unity as Christians.

Song: We All Believe in One True God

Passage: Genesis 1-2:4, Acts 2 14a, 22-36, Matthew 28:16-20

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #15 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

Last week I said that Pentecost might be the most important day we mark on the Church Calendar. My reasoning is that only with the coming of the Holy Spirit, are those of us who belong to Christ are actually given new hearts. Jesus said that we would be born again by the Spirit. The Father sends the Son. The Son atones for the sins of His people, and the Spirit gives them new hearts so that they can approach the holiness of the Father. It is this beautiful trinitarian reality that we celebrate on Holy Trinity Sunday. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, living in perfect harmony, three in one and one in three. The triune God head.

Practical

Trinity Sunday is here. We are now beginning a new time within the Church Calendar; Ordinary Time. While the first half of the Church year focuses on the Life of Jesus, the second half focuses on the life of the Church now that the Spirit has come and filled our hearts with love of God and love of His people. This is where we get our idea of things being ordinary and special. The first half is special because it is all about the life of Christ, the second half is ordinary, or numbered, because we, the saints that comprised His bride, the Church, are being transformed into a better representation of Him. Ordinary isn’t boring, in fact, without ordinary you don’t have special. Things are only special if they are set against ordinary things. We are now living in the time of Pentecost and therefore we number our weeks as they correspond to the Pentecost Sunday when the Spirit was given to us. In this way we balance our focus on the life of Christ and the life of Christ’s people as they try and become more like Him.

Biblical

Each episode of the Anno Domini podcast, we try and look at some or all of the readings found in the church lectionary. For those of you who are new, the lectionary is simply a prepared set of readings that are connected in a germane way to the day or week of the Church Calendar. This is a set group of readings that ALL the church is reading together regardless personal devotions. Usually there is an Old Testament Reading, A Psalm, a Gospel passage, and an Epistle reading. These passages usually share commonalities although sometimes you have to work to spot them. For Trinity Sunday the passages are from Genesis 1-2:4, Matthew 28:16-20 and Acts 2:14a, 22-36. I will actually be reading snippets of each of these passages to highlight why they were chosen for Trinity Sunday. Let’s start with the passage from Genesis.

As God is creating the world, His creation culminates with the creation of man, the image of God. When God prepares to create man, He refers to Himself using a first person plural pronouns “Us” and “Our.” He does not use the singular “I” or “My” but “Us” and “Our.” This means that God is one God with at least more than one person within the God head. We will see in the next passages that there are in fact three.

Christians have been given the task of calling to repentance and discipline, all the nations of the earth. We are to baptize them in a veryspecific way, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Once they’ve been baptized, we are teach them how to obey God in the ways He has commanded us. When we obey Christ in this way, He promises to be with us always.

In this passage, Peter is giving His first sermon and He declares that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father where He was given the promised Holy Spirit which He then poured out upon us. There again we see the three members of the Triune Godhead on display. We also see the love of our One God. The Father sends the Son to rescue His people from their sins so He can pour out His Spirit upon them. This in One God in Three Persons.

Practical

This week we are going to be examining a hymn from one of my favorite fathers of the faith; Martin Luther. Before we get to the hymn I would like to talk for a moment about this man God used to advance the kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Luther of course started his life out as a Roman Catholic but was disturbed by many things he saw taking place within the Roman Catholic church. Martin Luther observed rampant greed, oppression, corruption, and blasphemy, which is the act of speaking falsehoods about God that make Him out to be liar. Martin Luther is one of Christendom’s greatest heroes because he stood against the zeitgeist of the day. Martin Luther was German and so is the word zeitgeist which, to my knowledge, does not have an english equivalent. Zeitgeist is a word that is used to describe the “Spirit of the Age.” Every age, or period has a defining spirit or characteristic. For Luther, that Zeitgeist was a Roman Catholic church steeped in corruption as priests taught the manipulative and unbiblical doctrine of indulgences. Parishioners were deceived into giving extra money to the church outside the normal tithe to “buy their relatives out of purgatory.” The lay people were not allowed to read the bible and had to rely entirely on the clergy to teach them God’s Word. Since it was in the best financial interest of the Roman Catholic church to require indulgences the church grew fat with wealth while the people suffered. This was real oppression with actual victims. This was true institutional oppression. Martin Luther stood up against the prevailing thought of his day and one day courageously nailed his 95 Theses to the church doors at Wittenberg. By going against the zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, Martin Luther brought true freedom to a people who were really being oppressed. Martin Luther chose to not follow the crowd and instead took his stand courageously on Scripture. Paul warns us in Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”The zeitgeist had its truth, its gospel if you will, hollow as it was. The zeitgeist promised true deliverance but only delivered a false deception dreamt up by the father of lies. The zeitgeist is fickle and is no substitute for true salvation. See the zeitgeist and if it doesn’t submit to Christ and His Word then reject this false gospel.

As we seek practical ways of living a life that is shaped by Trinitarian thought let’s put 3 things at the forefront of our mind:

Our sin is primarily against God the Father. We are guilty but not because we feel guilty. David didn’t feel guilty until Nathan called out his sin. David, while confessing his sin of adultery and murder confesses to God in Psalm 51 “against You and You only have I sinned.” This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t confess our sins to others, we absolutely should and must if there is actual sin involved but never forgetting that sin is ultimately against our Holy Father.

Our sin against God the Father was atoned for by Jesus Christ, God the Son, through His work on the cross. He lived a perfect life, fulfilled the Law of God, and imputes that righteousness to His children setting us free from the power and guilt of sin. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Therefore regardless of the sin of your father, or their fathers, if you are in Christ, you are a new creation, the old is gone and you have been set free from that sin. Walk no longer in guilt or shame.

Our sin having been atoned for, we are given God the Holy Spirit to indwell us. Since God the Son has set us free from the power of sin against the God the Father, God the Holy Spirit gives us power to walk in that newness of life. Those of us in Christ should walk by the Spirit by living lives that reflect this freedom by our willingness to love God and to love those around us who have been made in the image of God. We exhibit this love for others by standing up for truth, goodness, and beauty. We exhibit this love for other by confess our own sin and not the sin of others. We exhibit this love for others by believing and speaking biblical truth in love and not by spreading sweet little easy lies.

The bottom line is that our allegiance is to our God and Creator and to His people. When we sin it is against Him. When we are forgiven it is because of His mercy. When we walk in freedom it is because of His grace. A double portion. This gospel is independent of any nation, tribe, or tongue. We are Christians first. Period. Nothing should come before our unity as Christians. The only solidarity Christians should make primary is their union with the body of believers that comprise the Bride of Christ, the Church. The Father is providing His Son, the bridegroom, with a beautiful and spotless bride. That bride is us and we must not make our allegiance to anyone or anything before our true Husband. As believers in the One True God, We will be spending eternity together in harmony, so let’s start practicing that harmony now. The gospel is grace and freedom for all who come. Let’s treat our brothers and sisters in Christ as if they have actually been set free.

Musical

As I said earlier, this weeks hymn comes from Martin Luther in 1524. This hymn was originally set to a chant that is hauntingly beautiful. I have put the song to a new a tune. This is an explicitly Trinitarian song and each stanza is dedicated to a different member of the Trinity. This song is a sung creed. Just as we say the Apostles Creed or the Nicean Creed, we sing this creed. All Christians believe what is within those creeds as they are the foundations for Christianity. Creedal songs such as this are wonderful because even if Christians disagree on many theological topics, we all believe these things to be true and we can gather around our true unity within songs and creeds like these. I will read each stanza and comment briefly on each.

As I said in the previous segment, Christians have solidarity first with one another. We are Christians first always. The blood of Christ is takes precedent over the blood in our own veins. What do we believe? We believe in the maker of heaven and earth. The one true God. The God is a Father and He calls us His children. He feeds our souls and our bodies and provides us with everything we truly need. He leads us through the many snares and perils that abound in this life and He does this all while watching that no harm happens to us. He is always taking care of us and He is sovereignly in control of everything that happens in this world. He is a good Father.

Christians believe in Jesus Christ who is the Son of God the Father. Jesus possess an equal Godhead. That is to say while Christ submits to the Father, He is fully God in His position and his power. Christ is the source of our joy and happiness. By the Spirit Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and while fully God was also fully man or a true man. As He is one of us, He is our elder brother. Think about that, all those claimed by Christ have them same Big Brother; Jesus. That means we’re all siblings. He was made fully man so that we, His lost sheep, might inherit eternal life. He was crucified for our sins while we were still sinful and unlovely but He was then raised by God the Father to life again on the 3rd day.

We all believe in or confess the Holy Ghost who gives us grace and comfort. Jesus calls Him the Comforter. He lives with the Father and the Son in eternity which means He had no beginning and will have no end. The Church is held together in unity by the power of the Holy Spirit’s work in us. We choose one another because we are all a part of the same body. Within the Church is forgiveness and salvation because of the merit or work or Christ. One day all men, women, boys, and girls, literally ALL flesh shall rise for the final judgement. For those found in Christ we will have bliss with God forever.

I will be going on an extended break as we are entering ordinary time on the Church Calendar. Ordinary time refers the time that is marked by ordinal numbers following Pentecost. Trinity Sunday is actually the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. We will have 19 more Sunday’s after Pentecost before we get to our next Church Holiday which is Reformation Day and then the week after will be All Saints Day. I will for sure produce an episode for All Saints Day and probably will for Reformation Day as well. I have some time to think about it though as either of those days won’t be here until the end of October. If I might make a suggestion it would be to download the Lectionary in the show notes so you can continue to read the biblical passages during this beautifully ordinary time.

Anyways, that wraps up our episode on the Trinity. I hope you all have a wonderful Trinity Sunday and I hope you enjoy a new setting of Martin Luther’s Trinitarian masterpiece, We All Believe in One True God and we’ll see you in October.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjiN2_TR14U

On Pentecost we celebrate an unraveling of the curse of Babel, tongue’s in Christ are now united in love and truth instead of divided and confused. On this day we celebrate that when the Spirit comes, people are changed, lives are renewed, and the Gospel marches on in victory.

Song: Come Down O Love Divine

Passage: Numbers 11:24-30, Acts 2 1-21, John 7:37-39

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #14 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

Pentecost has come! Christ is Risen, is Ascended and is Reigning, and now in the kindness of God the Spirit has been poured out onto all believers. Just as at the beginning of the world the Spirit hovered over the waters of the deep and from the formless and void was brought forth a new creation, on Pentecost, the Spirit hovers over His lost children and recreates them into living sacrifices fitted with tongues of fire from heaven. On Pentecost we celebrate an unraveling of the curse of Babel, tongue’s in Christ are now united in love and truth instead of divided and confused. On this day we celebrate that when the Spirit comes, people are changed, lives are renewed, and the Gospel marches on in victory. On the Day of Pentecost, that great vision of hope that came to Moses in the wilderness became not just a hope only but a reality. What was his vision and hope and how was it fulfilled? That is what we will find out together as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on this glorious Day of Pentecost.

Biblical

There are three major readings for Pentecost. One is from of course Acts 2 where we learn about the story. However there is an Old Testament reading as well from Numbers 11 as well as a 3 verse section from the Gospel of John. All together it is Numbers 11, Acts 2, and John 7. In Acts chapter 2 we read the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The believers are together with one accord in Jerusalem during the most holy week of the Jewish calendar. Jerusalem is filled with people from all over the known world. All of a sudden there is a mighty wind. This wind however isn’t whistling through the eaves of the house, oh no this wind is INSIDE the house and what’s more coming with the tremendous wind comes FIRE! This fire descends and rests on each of the heads of the believers and they are filled with the Holy Ghost. They then began to speak in a variety of real languages which, not by accident, were spoken by the multitudes that had come from all over the region to Jerusalem. We are given an extensive list of the many nations present each of which is hearing the gospel preached in his or her own language for the very first time. Some marvel that plain Galileans could speak fluently the many languages present. Some mock, and explain it away by saying they were drunk. And then Peter rises and gives his first real sermon preaching the good news that God has come to dwell among us and made His Son Jesus both Lord and Christ. The multitudes are convicted and 3000 souls were converted.

This is familiar ground to many of us. There is a temptation though to fall into the modern day trap of thinking atomistically instead of holistically. To the modern man, everything can be reduced to atoms or at least to the simplest of its parts. We say you’re sick because a tiny virus has infected you. We say you’re healthy because tiny building blocks called vitamins and minerals are in sufficient quantities to keep you healthy. Anything worth understanding the thinking goes is worth understanding in its parts. But the bible isn’t like this. The bible is one story. It is one arching narrative of God choosing a people for Himself and then setting out to bless them, feed them, correct them, and ultimately save them. So when we read this account of the Holy Spirit, we might be tempted to think that this is the beginning of the Spirits work. But it’s not. The Spirit has been at work throughout all of history and seems to always show up during periods of creation, recreation, and change. In the beginning the Spirit was hovering over the waters and then God speaks and the world is formed. The Spirit comes upon men their fearful hearts are strengthened, and they no longer walk in disobedience but in obedience. Ezekiel 36:26 promises the fulfillment found in Pentecost when Ezekiel prophecies that “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” This same Spirit that descended on believers in Acts 2 was present at the crossing of the Red Sea, came over Samson on multiple occasions often with catastrophic results for the enemies of God. David begged God NOT to take His Holy Spirit from him in Psalm 51, and it was the same Spirit in the book of Numbers that rested upon Moses until one day when an extraordinary thing happened. In Numbers chapter 11, we read yet again about the unfaithfulness of Israel. They are moaning and complaining about the food even though they have been struck down by God in His anger multiple times for this sin. God is angry with the people. Moses is fed up and shows us the proper way to bring your complaints or your petition to the Lord, he pours out His heart before Him and says “ Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give them birth, that you should say to me, Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child,’ to the land that you swore to give their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.”

To this God replies

He also promises Moses that because the people are feeling so sorry for themselves that they wish they were still slaves in Egypt He would give them what they asked for in abundance until it became loathsome to them. Moses asks the next question which seems reasonable “where are we going to get all of this meat?” This is almost the exact question the disciples ask Jesus when they are in the wilderness with the multitudes. To this very “reasonable” question Yahweh responds in what I assume to be incredulity “Is the Lord's hand shortened? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.” We are reminded that nothing is too much for the Lord and we should never question How He will do something but instead Trust Him to accomplish His work.

So Moses gathers all the 70 men out side of the camp just as the Lord commanded and then the text continues “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied. But they did not continue doing it.” The Spirit has now been shared amongst the elders of Israel and they are prophesying but there are two in particular that were still in the camp when this was going on and they received the Spirit as well and began prophesying while they were IN the camp! This news gets back to Joshua who is jealous for Moses because to prophesy IN the camp is an honor that Joshua feels should be reserved for Moses. To this display of team loyalty, Moses makes an astonishing reply. “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” This is an amazing display of humility. It is not surprising that we are told in the following chapter “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” This truly is the kind of humility that seeks the good of others over one’s own exaltation. Moses desired to see the day when all the people of God would be prophets speaking God’s truth in love. With the coming of the Spirit, what was once the dream of the most humble man in all the earth, is now a reality. As the people of Christ, we are now prophets. Not in the predicting-the-future, wearing-camel-hair prophets; But faithful followers of Christ ready to give truth to a waiting world; a reason for the hope that is in us.

Historical

Pentecost is a big deal. It is the 7th day of the 7th Week from the Resurrection. This may seem hard to believe. We live in an age that has been completely secularized and the few remaining holidays we do celebrate are understood mainly within the confines of their commercial and pop culture influence. Pentecost is a holiday that once held immense sway in our culture and political structure. Up until the 70s it was still a national holiday for the United Kingdom. It wasn’t always historically referred to as Pentecost but more commonly as Whitsun which is a contraction of the words White and Sunday, a reference to the color white being prominent during liturgical usage during Pentecost Sunday… From this came a national holiday Whit Monday, and entire of week of celebration Whitide, parades by different churches called Whit Walks accompanied by brass bands and girls in white dresses. Whit fairs and different weeklong celebrations were common when our people had a common culture that wasn’t steeped in a secularized worldview. In other countries such as Italy, it is common to throw red rose petals from the church steeples to symbolizes the fiery tongues that fell on the heads of believers. In France, often during the worship service there will be tremendous blasts on trumpets to remind people of the “sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind which actually filled the house!” Also common within the historical view of this holiday is that some have used the time between Ascension Day and Pentecost (the 9 days in between) for fasting and prayer much in what could be speculated was the actions of the apostles during those 9 days before the Holy Spirit was given.

Here is a key historical takeaway as you think about the Day of Pentecost and the entire liturgical calendar as a whole. We as a people used to have these days as a blessing in structuring our lives. When I say we as a people, I mean everyone, not just our Christian brothers and sisters but everyone that comprised our county, state, or nation. Whether you were a Christian or not didn’t matter, the holidays came and the people as a whole observed them. Holidays are didactic by nature. They are meant to teach the observer something. Christmas teaches us that we were lost in the darkness of sin until the Light of the World descended. Epiphany teaches us that Christ has come to save ALL the world, not just the Jews. Easter teaches us that while we are dead in our sins, Jesus has conquered death and offers us Life abundantly. I could go on but you get the point. Holidays are meant to teach, impress, and shape cultures. This is no different today. What a nation feels is worth celebrating and emphasizing describes well the priorities of that nation. As an American, we have fallen far from the blessing of the church calendar. The holidays we celebrate are either completely secular (think Presidents Day, the 4th of July, Veterans Day), or celebrate secular ideals and morals devoid of Christ as King. (Memorial Day, MLK, Labor Day). As I said before, the few remaining holidays we have that ARE on the church calendar have been sanitized and stripped of their potency. Think easter bunny, santa claus, etc. When our culture was shaped by the liturgical calendar, common grace allowed that non Christians could benefit from the celebrations and observances that were meant to teach, spread, and live out the gospel. Non believers could ignore them, could join them, and could even blessed by them but they were teaching and calling the celebrant to an explicit Christ-centered righteousness. There was no worry about making the message “relevant” to heathens. The heathens were expected to make themselves relevant to God by responding in repentance to the call of the Gospel poured forth from the church every day including the church calendar holidays. As a nation and often within the church as well now preach a Christless righteousness through our holiday observances. We endlessly moralize the holidays and make them entirely humanistic and man centered. This is profoundly wrong as our celebrations should prioritize getting the focus off ourselves. C.S. Lewis noted a phenomenon in his day as it regarded preaching the gospel to heathens. His observations have become so common that I believe we are amazed to see anything to the contrary.

“The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin... The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, or Pagans, a sense of guilt…Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

The modern man makes holidays for himself that are self serving and full of the pride of life. Part of the role of the church is to continue to preach the reality that God is the judge and man is “in the dock.” Without this knowledge, man will perish in his blindness and vainglory. He will continue to reject days of celebration that honor anyone but himself and replace those holidays with celebrations more relevant to his own designs.

Musical

https://youtu.be/y7muJWXCFDQ

Each episode of the Anno Domini podcast I highlight a hymn or psalm of some sort. Often these are ancient hymns and other times they are fairly new. This episode for Pentecost has a hymn that was written 586 years ago by Bianco da Siena. The hymn is called Come Down O Love Divine. I’ve set it to new music but my favorite arrangement is still the tune DOWN AMPNEY written by Ralph Vaughan Willians in 1906. I will have both versions linked up in the show notes so you can here the far superior Williams tune as it is sung by Kings College.

This hymn is a Pentecost Hymn and basks entirely in the reality of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I will read the stanzas and then briefly comment on them.

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,

And visit it with thine own ardor glowing.

O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,

And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, til worldly passions turn

To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,

And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity mine outward vesture be,

And lowliness become mine inner clothing;

True lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,

And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,

Shall far outpass the power of human telling;

No soul can guess the grace, till he become the place

Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.

The first stanza asks the Holy Spirit, here called “Love Divine” to come and find our souls and to visit it with the “ardor” which is a great word and seems to mean passions and warmth. We ask that the ardor of the Spirit would come. We then sing, asking the Comforter, another name for the Spirit to draw near to us, to fill our heart, and kindle a fire of holy flame. All this is very challenging for me. Jesus is a physical King in a physical place. He had to go away and told us that only in His leaving would we receive the Spirit and a new heart. He then sent His Spiritual presence (The Holy Spirit of Christ) which is meant to stir our hearts in our zeal for the Lord just as Christ was filled with zeal for the House of God.

Having asked the Spirit at the end of the first stanza to kindle a fire in our hearts we then ask that the flame would freely burn and that the ardor of this presence would consume our worldly passions turning them to dust and ash. We ask that the Spirit’s glorious light would fill our eyes and surround us while still being a light to our path. To put it succinctly, stanza 2 expresses a desire for the Spirit to cleanse us and guide us in the paths of life.

While stanzas 1 and 2 are somewhat ethereal and open to various practical interpretations, stanza 3 is crystal clear with imperatives. We ask the Holy Spirit to clothe us in love with the hymn using the more ancient word charity. If love is what we put on we are also asking that lowliness or humility would be the clothes that we wear on our insides. In other words, we are asking the Spirit to give us hearts that are dressed in humility. That is convicting but just you wait. The hymn continues that if you truly want to be lowly in heart, you ought to be weeping over your OWN shortcomings. In other words be tough on yourself and be gracious to others. Give your own heart no quarter and believe the best in the intentions of others. The hymn even uses the phrase to “loath” our shortcomings. That is some cleansing stuff to hate the sin you sin in your own heart. That can ONLY come when the Spirit is at work in your heart.

Stanza 4 ends in hope. For those that belong to Christ, our hearts long to be the dwelling place of the Spirit. While we don’t have the words to describe the yearning and longing of our hearts for the Spirit to fill us even if we did, we couldn’t even guess the blessings that will be received when we become the willing temple to the Holy Ghost.

With that I will play the song and I hope you enjoy it. We will be back next week for Trinity Sunday and then there will be a long break as we enter into ordinary time.

Have a blessed Pentecost Sunday everyone and enjoy this new setting of the ancient hymn Come Down O Love Divine.

We’ll see you next week!

https://youtu.be/6HPKL1wOVXk

"...the 40 days following that glorious Easter morning are filled with joy unspeakable, countless alleluias, and hope that does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts as a result of the Resurrection of Christ. However His resurrection was a part of His over all mission to save the world. The next step following Resurrection is Ascension and glory!"

Listen to the hymn!

Read the podcast transcript!

Welcome to episode #13 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

Happy Ascension Day to you! It has been over 6 weeks since the last episode of Anno Domini and in that time we continue to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. During family worship I often will begin with the words “Christ is Risen, Alleluia!” to which my wife and children reply “He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” While Lent, the 40 days preceding Easter are marked with repentance, and a sort of bittersweet dread knowing that the cross awaits, the 40 days following that glorious Easter morning are filled with joy unspeakable, countless alleluias, and hope that does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts as a result of the Resurrection of Christ. However His resurrection was a part of His over all mission to save the world. The next step following Resurrection is Ascension and glory!

Historical / Practical

When we look through the list of commonly celebrated Church Calendar days, Ascension Day and the following Ascension Sunday are two days that are often altogether ignored by Christians. It’s very rare for a church to have an Ascension Day service and most churches won’t even give it any mention on the proceeding Sunday. The significance is often not understood as celebrating this day has fallen out of practice and because of this, one of the most important days of the Christian calendar is missed and often without a second thought. I hope to change that perspective in some small way today. So let me begin with this, just as Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness alone, fasting, and being tempted by the devil, so now having been raised to life and having been given a glorified body, He will spend His last 40 days on earth fellowshipping with His people, eating and drinking, and enjoying His victory over death. At the conclusion of these 40 days we are told in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus was taken up in and received into a cloud of glory and the disciples were unable to see Him. He was received into the glory cloud and the two cherubim flanking the entrance into this glory cloud, came and promised the disciples that He would one day come again in this same way. For Jesus, after He ascended into glory, we are told throughout the New Testament that He was seated at the right hand of God to reign over everything until He has put the last enemy under His feet, death itself.

For most Christians, this is a fairly familiar story although hardly celebrated. While the coming of Christ into the world gets a LOT of attention, Here at the Anno Domini podcast, we did 8 episodes during Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany and yet here we’re only doing 1 episode for Christ’s victorious ascension and His enthronement over all creation. Why do we ignore what could be argued is the most important part of Christ’s life, His coronation as King? Good Friday and Easter Sunday play out for us the epic struggle of Good triumphing over evil but it is in Christ’s Ascension that the King is crowned.

I’m sure there are many reasons the primary one being that our culture no longer emphasizes the holiday but it also could be that the conclusion of a journey or story, no matter how victorious somehow can leave us with a feeling of emptiness. As if you want the story to keep going and it has ended before you’re ready. Christ’s Advent is full of potential and anticipation. Therefore the thinking might go, His ascension signals the end of greatest story ever told and how do you get excited to celebrate that? I’ll probably always enjoy the beginning of the Lord of the Rings to the end of the story for the rest of my life. At the beginning I’m eagerly anticipating everything that is to come. At the end, I realize the journey is over and there is a sense that we now are left behind and the story has gone on without use. Now I don’t imagine people consciously think these thoughts when they read or think about the Ascension and the reign of Christ but could be that we’ve disconnected the Ascension of Christ into the heavenly realms and our own covenantal Ascension with Christ that we’ve been promised in Scripture? Certainly the story has none of the bittersweet ending if we have risen with Christ in a covenantal sense. To put it another way, if we are raised with Christ, it changes everything. Let me share a couple of texts that I think support this idea.

Ephesians 2

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Revelation: 1:5-6

Grace to you and peace from… Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Did you catch that? We have been raised up with Jesus in His Ascension and just as Christ is High Priest and King of Kings so we, who are called to be like Christ, have been made kings and priest to God the Father with Him. In other words, when Jesus ascended into heaven, He was taking us with Him in a covenantal sense.

What do I mean by a covenantal sense? Well, Christians believe that we are covenantally sinful as a result of the sin of Adam in the Garden. When Adam disobeyed God, all of humanity was cast into sin. We are born into sin and before we even have a chance to actually do something wrong we are already guilty. This covenantal responsibility was passed from our first father, Adam. However, the covenantal responsibility however can cut both ways. Just as we were covenantally guilty through the sin of the 1st Adam, we have been made covenantally innocent by the work of the 2nd Adam. There are many ways in which this works itself out in the Christian life but as far as the Ascension is concerned it means that just as Christ was raised up in glory to His status of High Priest and King, so we are raised up with Him.

Peter Liethart observes, that…“(The Ascension) connects the work of Jesus to the destiny of the human race…the Ascension is the climax which comes with Jesus, the last Adam, as the priest King fulfilling the mandate that Adam was given to rule the earth and to raise us up to thrones with Him so that we can rule the earth along with Him.” - Peter Liethart

Now if this is true, and I believe it is, there must be some practical ways in which this changes us. We don’t want to face the realities brought about by Christ and walk away from them unchanged.

The first thing to remember is that glory is always preceded with death. Christ was raised to glory on His day of Ascension. That is true but to get to this point in the journey He took up His cross and set the example for us to follow. He was tempted by Satan to be glorified before His death. He know the glory, the kingdom, and reign would ultimately come but that first He would have to give up everything to gain it. Therefore we can remember that to reign with Christ means to first die. This certainly is true for Christians in the literal sense but it is more immediately true in the metaphoric sense. Each day we must die to those desires that are antithetical to the Kingdom of Heaven. Die to desires that no King or Queen have any business in pursuing. As Paul tells us in Colossians 3:1If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. To do this we must cultivate a hatred of worldliness and a love of Godliness. As the Kings and Priests of God, we must stop our love affair with the hollow and empty promises of the world.

Second we must actually believe that it matters. Christ is reigning right now Not someday. Not after the tribulation. Not later. Not tomorrow, Now. The Ascension of Christ and the many New Testament verses that speak of Him being seated and reigning at the right hand of God are not future things that will come. They are realities that are present now. This is especially helpful as Christians find themselves living in a world gone mad. Psalm 2 says that the Heathen nations rage and the people imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed,Now listen to what the Anointed one does when feeble man plots against Him…He laughs. “He that site in the heaves shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” I would encourage you to read the entirety of Psalm 2 but suffice it to say that in a world gone mad, a world when leaders try and take counsel together instead of submit to the Rule of the Christ, they will only find themselves mocked, terrified, and broken like a potter’s vessel. Christ is King right now. We are lifted up with Him and have been commissioned to bring the conquering good news to all the world are we’ve been promised that even the gates of Hell will fall before us. Now let’s go live like that was true.

Musical

I have a hymn for you today that is of epic proportions. I mean that literally as it actually has 10 verses and for hymn that is about as long as they get. This particular hymn was written in 1862 by Christopher Wordsworth and I believe that after you have listened to and hopefully learn to sing this song, you will be encouraged to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. That would would walk as Kings and Queens and as Priests to God.

Because this is such a long hymn I will read each stanza and comment VERY briefly on each verse.

See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph;

See the King in royal state,

Riding on the clouds, His chariot,

To His heavenly palace gate!

Hark! the choirs of angel voices

Joyful alleluias sing,

And the portals high are lifted

To receive their heavenly King.

Christ is the heavenly King being received into glory as His reward for faithfulness. He rides on chariots because He is a Warrior King returning victorious from battle.

Who is this that comes in glory,

With the trump of jubilee?

Lord of battles, God of armies,

He hath gained the victory.

He Who on the cross did suffer,

He Who from the grave arose,

He has vanquished sin and Satan,

He by death hath spoiled His foes.

Christ’s victory came about by suffering and laying down His life as a ransom for many. He gained the victory through suffering and in doing so cast down sin and bound the strong Man, Satan. He has thus destroyed all of His foes. Again go and read Psalm 2.

While He lifts His hands in blessing,

He is parted from His friends

While their eager eyes behold Him,

He upon the clouds ascends.

He Who walked with God and pleased Him,

Preaching truth and doom to come,

He, our Enoch, is translated

To His everlasting home.

Because we live in a society that is currently dominated by doom and gloom, we often forget that when Christ preached the doom to come, He was preaching about something that was coming within just a few short years. The doom to come was the tribulation He describes in Matthew 24 and elsewhere. The truth was that there was doom approaching for the Jews and Christ, a Jew, was preaching truth to warn “those who have ears to hear.” Also, this hymn is going to give us a LOT of typology. Typology is the miraculous way in which the stories and characters throughout the Old Testament are “types” of Christ, acting out their small part in the stories they were given and foreshadowing the who the Savior of the World would be. In this case Enoch was with God and was no more because God took Him directly up into Heaven.

Now our heavenly Aaron enters,

With His blood, within the veil;

Joshua now is come to Canaan,

And the kings before Him quail.

Now He plants the tribes of Israel

In their promised resting-place;

Now our great Elijah offers

Double portion of His grace.

Three types of Christ, Aaron, High Priest, Joshua, Conquering King, Elijah Prophet of God. Prophet, Priest, and King.

Thou hast raised our human nature

On the clouds to God's right hand;

There we sit in heavenly places,

There with Thee in glory stand:

Jesus reigns, adored by angels,

Man with God is on the throne.

Mighty Lord, in Thine ascension

We by faith behold our own.

Here we see a development of the covenantal nature of Christ’s Ascension, We sit with Him, We stand with Him, We see Christ’s ascension and as such behold or see our own ascension.

Holy Ghost, Illuminator,

Shed Thy beams upon our eyes,

Help us to look up with Stephen

And to see beyond the skies,

Where the Son of Man in glory

Standing is at God's right hand,

Beckoning on His martyr army,

Succoring His faithful band.

Just a few days after the Ascension, Pentecost descended and with the coming of the Holy Ghost came courage to face the wickedness and danger of man just as Stephan did and see beyond the skies. Christ is in glory and He is beckoning on, encouraging on, and giving succor or aid to His faithful band of witnesses.

See Him who is gone before us

Heavenly mansions to prepare;

See Him who is ever pleading

For us with prevailing prayer;

See Him who with sound of trumpet

And with His angelic train,

Summoning the world to Judgment,

On the clouds will come again.

Christ has gone before us and will return again. When He comes He shall judge the quick and the dead.

Raise us up from earth to heaven,

Give us wings of faith and love,

Gales of holy aspirations

Wafting us to realms above,

That, with hearts and minds uplifted,

We with Christ, our Lord, may dwell

Where He sits enthroned in glory

In His heavenly citadel.

More theology of the ascension believers unto heaven. We are asking for faith and love in the here and now to accomplish the work Christ has given us.

So at last, when He appeareth,

We from our own graves may spring,

With our youth renewed like eagles',

Flocking round our heavenly King,

Caught up on the clouds of heaven,

And may meet Him in the air,

Rise to realms where He is reigning

And will reign forever there.

The blessed hope of every believer lies in the ground of every man garden or cemetery you drive by. When Christ returns all flesh will rise unto judgement. For those found in Christ, we will be given new bodies renewed like eagles. We will then go and meet our Returning Lord in the air as we welcome Him to the New Heavens and New Earth.

Glory be to God the Father;

Glory be to God the Son,

Dying, risen, ascending for us,

Who the heavenly realm hath won;

Glory to the Holy Spirit!

To One God in Persons Three

Glory both in earth and heaven,

Glory, endless glory, be.

An epic Hymn like this should certainly end with a trinitarian doxology and Wordsworth does not disappoint. Glory endless glory be for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Amen.

With that I will play a new version of this Hymn. I didn’t leave out any verses so this song will take over 9 minutes to get through. However if you can add this hymn to your collection, you will find yourself being reminded constantly of the deep significance of the Ascension of our Lord.

Enjoy the song and may you have a blessed Ascension Day and Ascension Sunday as well and we will see you in a few days when Pentecost arrives.

See you then.

"The resurrection is the axis on which the entirety of Christianity hangs. As Paul tells us, if Christ has not risen then we, Christians, ought to be more pitied than anyone else. We are delusional beings following nothing but a mirage. Throw out the resurrection and you are left with an empty shell that is no more unique, redemptive, or salvific than every other religion the deceived of this world have to offer."

Easter Sunday

Song: Christ Jesus Lay in Deaths Strong Bands

Passage: Exodus 14 + Psalm 16

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #12 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

Well folks this is the day we’ve all been waiting for. The day when Christ, who came in the very flesh of man yet was also also fully God conquered death and the grave and rose from the tomb. Death could not hold Him. Christ is risen!

Practical

Easter Sunday. Resurrection Sunday. The day in which Christians everywhere can offer one another the following greeting “Christ is risen” and they can be certain to receive back the glorious reply “He is risen indeed.” Our faith rests upon the very real, historical, and literal resurrection of the body of Christ. As the Apostles Creed so aptly puts it

“I believe in God, the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;

who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven,

and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.”

The resurrection is the axis on which the entirety of Christianity hangs. As Paul tells us, if Christ has not risen then we, Christians, ought to be more pitied than anyone else. We are delusional beings following nothing but a mirage. Throw out the resurrection and you are left with an empty shell that is no more unique, redemptive, or salvific than every other religion the deceived of this world have to offer.

We need creed’s like the Apostles Creed because we are constantly being tempted to water down the potency of the gospel. The Apostles Creed is a line in the sand stating, here is where the faith lives and dies. To compromise on anything in this creed is to compromise the gospel itself. But more than creeds, we need a Savior to whom the creed really belongs. Having faith is nothing special…many people have incredible faith. No it is not the amount of faith we have that matters, it is in whom we place our faith that makes the difference between right and wrong, life and death, heaven and hell. If we have but the tiniest scrap of faith, say faith the size of a mustard seed, faith that is nothing to brag about but that faith is placed directly in the loving care of Christ, we are promised there is nothing that cannot be done. Entire mountain ranges can be torn from their roots and drowned in the sea should God so desire. Christians have the best creeds because they are true they are not only beautiful and awe inspiring but they barely begin to scratch the glory of the one to whom they are written about.

Biblical

There are 10 passages to be read on Easter. 5 on Easter morning and 5 for Easter day. We have readings from Exodus and Jeremiah, Psalms, Acts, 1 Corinthians, Colossians, as well as Gospel readings of Matthew and John. Rather than read one entire passage out loud.

Exodus - 14:10-15:1

Our first passage comes from Exodus 14:10 - 15:1. This details the story of the Israelites being chased down by a mad man. Pharaoh and his armies are determined to bring the Israelites back to Egypt. When the people of God saw the doom of the Egyptians coming down upon them they bravely trusted in God’s Providence to provide for them a way of salvation…I’m just kidding they started accusing Moses of trying to kill them and complaining about how they wished they were still slaves back in Egypt. Moses has some choice words for them. He tells them “Don’t be afraid, wait for the salvation of the LORD. The LORD will fight for you. “…when I have gained honor for myself over my enemies”

15:1 “He has triumphed gloriously!” “He has become my salvation.” “In the greatness of Your excellence, You have overthrown those who rose against you.”

“You in your mercy have led for the the people whom You have redeemed.” (Speaking of the His chosen people, “You will bring them in and plant them In the mountain of Your inheritance.”

There is little talk of personal choice here in the description of their salvation. Although willing hearts are expected. God does not ask each Israelite if they would like to be saved or not. He doesn’t give them “options.” He gives them the path to salvation, a long and scary walk through a dark ravine of water and expects them to follow Him because they simply have no other choice. Also, it should be noted that He does not secure salvation for everyone. Just as Christ shed His blood for His people, in this passage, only those whom He has chosen will be saved. This theme is repeated throughout scripture not as a way of describing a limit to the scope of His salvation but instead rather to enforce the efficacy of His salvation. Christ did not shed His blood needlessly for a single sinner. Every sin that the death of Christ paid for results in salvation. Christ, like Yahweh in the Old Testament always saves His people.

Psalm 16

Vs. 1 “Preserve me O God for in You I put my trust.” “my goodness is nothing apart from You.”

Sorrow is associated with pursuing other gods. We often think that to follow Christ is to merely choose a life of saying NO to the fun things in life but this is profoundly wrong headed. While Christ does promise us suffering in this life when we follow Him, He also promises us here in this Psalm, written to us, that in following Him, our hearts are glad and we can rest in hope. In fact we are promised that in His presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.”

Acts 10

Closing benediction” “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Musical

1 Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands,

for our offenses given;

but now at God's right hand he stands

and brings us life from heaven;

therefore let us joyful be

and sing to God right thankfully

loud songs of hallelujah. Hallelujah!

2 It was a strange and dreadful strife

when life and death contended;

the victory remained with life,

the reign of death was ended;

Holy Scripture plainly saith

that death is swallowed up by death,

his sting is lost forever. Hallelujah!

3 Here the true Paschal Lamb we see,

whom God so freely gave us;

he died on the accursed tree--

so strong his love!-—to save us.

See, his blood doth mark our door;

faith points to it, death passes o'er,

and Satan cannot harm us. Hallelujah!

4 So let us keep the festival

whereto the Lord invites us;

Christ is himself the Joy of all,

the Sun that warms and lights us.

By his grace he doth impart

eternal sunshine to the heart;

the night of sin is ended. Hallelujah!

5 Then let us feast this joyful day

on Christ, the bread of heaven;

the Word of grace hath purged away

the old and evil leaven.

Christ alone our souls will feed,

he is our meat and drink indeed;

faith lives upon no other. Hallelujah!

This is one of those hymns that is so rich with theological depth that one can sing it over and over and continually get new insights and encouragement.

Verse 1, Jesus was dead in the strong bands of the grave. He was dead because our sins were laid on Him. He is now at God’s right hand and is bringing us life from heaven. Our response to this is joy and song.

Verse 2 When Christ (Life) was fighting the Satan and Death (the result of sin) it was strange in that it had never happened like this before. In fact, as GK Chesterton noticed, the Gospel is the only truly “new” thing to happen which is why it makes it such Good “news” Of course the victory remains with Christ and Satan is cast down like lighting and the reign of death is finished. Scripture promise that Death will be swallowed up by death (or victory). Christ will come to put to death, death itself and therefore death no longer has the sting it once had.

Verse 3 The Paschal Lamb means the Passover Lamb. A spotless, without blemish lamb that God gave to His people. The blood of this perfect Lamb, whose love for us was so strong that He was willing to die on the cursed tree, His blood now covers the doorposts of our heart and “faith” points to the blood so that just as in the first passover, Death will passover and not have victory over us in the end. Because of this shed blood, Satan cannot harm us. Christian, you are forever protected from the evil one by the work of Christ. Hallelujah

Verse 4 The festival that Luther is describing is the Lord’s Supper. The Lord invites us to eat with Him since we are His sons and daughters. Christ who, just as Psalm 16 promised, is the Joy of all is also the Sun which warms us and lights our way. By the vastness of His kindness to us, we are promised “eternal sunshine to the heart.” Living in the Pacific Northwest, this is a promise I can get behind. Seriously though Luther ends verse 4 by stating that because He has given us this salvation, achieved by His resurrection, the “night of sin is ended.”

Verse 5 Again, I believe Luther is describing the Lord’s Supper. He describes Christ as the Bread of Heaven purged of the leaven of false teaching and wickedness. We are then told that only Christ can truly feed our souls and that He is our meat and drink. In other words He is our entire portion and faith lives, not on bread alone but by the every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

The path toward salvation involves our King suffering execution for crimes He didn’t commit, sins He was not guilty of, and punishment He did not deserve. This is the Good News that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And He died for us, on Good Friday.

Good Friday

Song: Stricken Smitten and Afflicted

Passage: Isaiah 53

Hello everyone and welcome to episode #11 of the Anno Domini Podcast. Today’s episode is all about Good Friday. It is common to wonder why the Church would celebrate the sorrows of the cross. the The beautiful polyphonic choir you are enjoying is singing a rendition of Psalm 51 written in 1630 by Gregorio Allegri  titled: Miserere mei, Deus which is my clumsy pronunciation of the Latin phrase: “Have mercy on me, O God”

This song was originally written to be exclusively sung in the Sistine Chapel Holy Week. Transcribing the song was forbidden and so only those who happened to be present in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week would ever hear this song. That is until a 14 year old boy, visiting Rome from Austria attended a Wednesday night service during Holy Week and heard the song sung. He then transcribed the song on paper later that night entirely from memory. The forbidden song was now available for the world to hear and enjoy. Oh and the 14 year old genius who accomplished this? His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Practical

Good Friday is the time on the Church Calendar year when Christians remember their Lord in His sorrow. Christ was deserted after giving His disciples the “new” commandment to love one another. Instead of loving Him their King with their actions, they all fled and even Peter denied knowing Him. This was a bitter time in the history of the world. As Jesus said speaking to the Jews “But this is your hour--when darkness reigns." The perfect and spotless lamb of God would be

Good Friday usually involves gathering together for an evening service. Parishioners enter quietly and leave quietly. There is a atmosphere of sobriety and somberness. This isn’t the service for glad handing and swapping fishing stories with your social groups. It is a time of mourning and pondering upon the wickedness of mankind and the truly heroic nature of God’s work here on earth. This day is called Good Friday for that very reason. Although mankind, left to our own devices and desires is very bad, God sent His Son into the world to save the world. The path toward salvation involves our King suffering execution for crimes He didn’t commit, sins He was not guilty of, and punishment He did not deserve. This is the Good News that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And He died for us, on Good Friday.

Biblical

Our biblical portion from the lectionary is found at the end of Isaiah 52 and all of chapter 53. Let’s hear the word of God and discuss it.

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;

he shall be high and lifted up,

and shall be exalted.

As many were astonished at you—

his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,

and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—

so shall he sprinkle many nations.

Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,

for that which has not been told them they see,

and that which they have not heard they understand.

Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.

This is an extensive passage and I will only attempt to highlight certain parts. We are told that this servant of Lord shall be exalted and highly lifted up. But something has to happen first. He must first be despised and rejected by men. While He will one day be exalted, that day is coming, He is, right now, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. In fact in verse 4 of chapter 53 we are promised that He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. This is a promise dear Christian. God has carried every grief and sorrow you’ve ever experienced. We were there when He was crucified. We were there covenantally in Adam watching Him, Smitten by His Father. When as Christians, we worry about the wrath of God, what we are really doing is exhibiting unbelief that Christ has already experienced the smiting Hand of God on our behalf. He was already smitten by God so that we, as His chosen people, will never have to experience that wrath. In fact we are told in verse 6 that the Lord laid on Christ the iniquity of us all. It actually pleased God to punish Him. Not because of some sick abusive personality but because Christ covenantally became our sin and it pleased God’s Justice to pour out punishment fit for our sin which He had become. This Man of Sorrows experienced the sorrow of abandonment, the pain of torture, and the terror of God’s wrath unleashed in all its Holy fury. Verse 12 says He bore the sins of many, this is true because we are also promised that one day the world will be entirely converted to Christ, and that the earth shall be as full as the knowledge of the Lord as the water’s cover the sea. This victorious end could only be accomplished by first going through monumental loss and sorrow and that’s exactly what Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, experienced on Good Friday.

Musical

Our hymn this episode is titled “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” It was written in 1804 by Thomas Kelly. Ive changed the tune only. Let’s take a look at the words.

1 Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,

see him dying on the tree!

'Tis the Christ by man rejected;

yes, my soul, 'tis he, 'tis he!

'Tis the long-expected Prophet,

David's Son, yet David's Lord;

by his Son God now has spoken:

'tis the true and faithful Word.

2 Tell me, ye who hear him groaning,

was there ever grief like his?

Friends thro' fear his cause disowning,

foes insulting his distress;

many hands were raised to wound him,

none would interpose to save;

but the deepest stroke that pierced him

was the stroke that Justice gave.

3 Ye who think of sin but lightly

nor suppose the evil great

here may view its nature rightly,

here its guilt may estimate.

Mark the sacrifice appointed,

see who bears the awful load;

'tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed,

Son of Man and Son of God.

4 Here we have a firm foundation,

here the refuge of the lost;

Christ's the Rock of our salvation,

his the name of which we boast.

Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,

sacrifice to cancel guilt!

None shall ever be confounded

who on him their hope have built.

Verse 1 describes Christ’s crucifixion and rejection as well as correctly identifies Him as the long awaited Prophet, from the line of David but also Lord of David. We then sing that God is now speaking to us through the true and faithful Word who is Christ.

Verse 2 Asks the questions if there was ever grief like the groaning grief that Christ experienced. His friends leave him and His cause. His foes insult him, raise their hands to wound him and not a single person would put a stop to this. Through all of this though, the greatest pain He experienced was that of the stroke of Justice that came from His Father.

Verse 3 puts a serious question to our hearts. All of us who don’t think that our sin is a big deal can see Christ suffering the wrath of God and realize that it was our sin that He is dying for. He is the one, the Word, who is the sacrifice and bears the weight of our sin.

Verse 4 speaks to our hope in Christ. He is our firm foundation and for those lost, our refuge. He is the Rock or our salvation and if we boast in anything we boast in Him the Lamb of God who was wounded for sinners and took away our guilt and shame. The song ends with the following promise: “None shall ever be confounded who on Him their hope have built.” We can build our lives on the Rock of Christ and we shall never be let down.

As I leave you on the Good Friday, remember that Easter is coming. God’s mercies are new every morning because they were new on that Easter morning and the world has never been the same since.

We’ll see you on Sunday, the day the new creation was born.

"We should be eating good bread, hearty chunks that satisfy and not puffed rounds of styrofoam. We should be drinking the potent cup of blessing which in Scripture is always wine and it should be good wine. We should be feasting because we were at one time at war with God. But now by the broken body and shed blood of Christ we can come in peace to the Lord's Table."

Maundy Thursday

Song: How Sweet and Awful is the Place

Passage: 1 Corinthians 23-32

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #10 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

We are well into Holy Week and with the Kingly and Joy Filled entrance of the previous Palm Sunday comes the sinking realization that our King of Glory, received with the praise and adulation fit for the King of Kings, will soon be Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted, stripped of His glory and will be nailed to the cross at the hands of wicked men. As awful as this, Christ knew this was coming. He told His disciples in Luke chapter 18 verse 31-34 “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.” This means Jesus knew exactly what was coming. He knew the agonizing death that awaited Him. He knew that He was about to become the vilest of sin for His people. The spotless Lamb of God, would take on and bear every sin, every single sin of His people. Even those sins that seem to our dulled senses “small”, He would bear for our sake. He knew also His own Father in Heaven would turn His back on Him in Justice leaving Him utterly forsaken. Jesus knew all of these things but instead of turning inward, instead of turning the focus on Him and the monument task that awaited Him in just a few short hours. Well instead of having a pity party, being in a bad mood, ranting, letting off some steam, having a few drinks to relax….instead of doing any of those things, Christ sat down with His disciples and washed them, and taught them, and fed them. He gave His church one of our most treasured gifts on that most Holy Thursday…Maundy Thursday.

Practical

Maundy Thursday which is also called Holy Thursday is celebrated the day before Good Friday. The word Maundy is an ancient word that comes from Middle English and Old French words that and is based on the Latin root that means “commandment.” It refers to the teaching of Christ during the Last Supper when Jesus tells His disciples “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Christ was emphatic during His earthly ministry that He did not come to set aside or change the law of God. He fully submitted Himself to His Father’s Law. Except for those parts that found their completion in His death, burial, and resurrection, things like dietary restrictions, ceremonial laws of uncleanness, sacrificial ordinances, etc., we are promised that Heaven and Earth will pass away before the smallest part of God’s Law passes away. Therefore when Christ tells us He is giving us a “new” commandment we should try and understand this as not “new” as in novel but new as in the way Christ comes to make ”all things new.” In other words, He has come to fulfill perfectly the Law which man could never keep perfectly. Since we can’t He does and since He did, His children can. Loving one another means humbling yourself to those that you’d likely rather not. Just as Christ washed His disciples feet He was saying that Christians ought to be known by their uncanny ability to love each other. The world should see our interactions with one another and even though the cross of Christ will be foolishness to those who are perishing, the world should still see Christians as those who love each other. When Christians exhibit genuine, humble, gentle, and kind love for their fellow Christians, it is one of the greatest evangelism tools we have. Just the fact that we are known for loving our own carries with it an winsome fragrance of newness or “renewedness” that will draw an unbelieving and crooked generation away from their love of themselves and into a God honoring, God obeying love of the Creator and His children. And all we have to do is love one another.

Biblical

Our biblical segment comes from the epistle written by Paul to the Corinthians believers regarding the Lord’s supper. The Lord’s Supper or the Lord’s Table which we also call communion is one of 2 sacraments the Protestant church holds. These two sacraments are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We believe that all Christians should be baptized and given the name Christian. When we are baptized, we are not making a public statement about our own faith, but we are rather making a public statement about who we belong too. In baptism we take on a new name and a new identity. Our baptisms are a physical display of the covenantal reality that we are now a new person because Jesus has given us a new name. Instead of viewing baptism as us declaring to the world how committed we are to Jesus, we should think of our baptisms as God telling the world how committed He is to us. With our baptisms, as with every covenant in Scripture come great blessings for obedience and great curses for disobedience. Those who are baptized have full access to the second sacrament, that of the Lord’s table. The Lord’s Table is not an intellectual act wherein we remember something while engaging in an arbitrary act. In other words, we don’t eat the bread and drink the wine so we can think about something. The Lord’s Table is the place where everyone claimed by Christ should gather. This includes men, women, boys, girls, the aged, the infirm, those with low IQs, those unable to talk, those unable to remember. When we associate the Lord’s Supper with intellectual thoughts, that of merely thinking about and remember the death of Jesus and how the bread represents His body and the wine represents His blood, if that is all that Communion means than we begin traveling down a path in which we begin to exclusion from the Lord’s Table becomes the driving force. Instead we ought to think of the Lord’s Table as a family table. My last name is Stout and all of my children have the last name Stout. Therefore everyone of my children belong at my table. They belong there not because of anything they’ve done. They belong there not because they’ve been good kids. They belong there because they bear the name Stout. How much more than should those baptized sons and daughters of Christ who bear the name of Christ be brought to the table. All that is an introduction of sorts to the text we will read for Maundy Thursday which comes from the Lectionary.

Jesus instituted His new commandment hours before He was betrayed, deserted, and crucified.He commanded His follows to love one another and He gave them a culturally relevant way to go about doing this ie washing one another’s feet. He then dropped a bombshell on them, He told them that they were a part of the New Covenant now and as often as we eat the bread and drink the wine we proclaim the Lord’s death. Now the question has been asked, who gets to comes to the Lord’s table? I said earlier that it belongs to those who are baptized and claim Christ as King. Many faithful Christians have interpreted the previous passage describing “examining ourselves” and “discerning the body” to indicate there is some kind of mental exercise going on. That there is a certain theological level you must attain in order for God to feed you. The thinking goes that if you don’t think the right thoughts or discerning the theology of what you’re doing correctly while partaking of communion then God’s gonna get you for that. What I have found to be persuasive though is that to discern the body is to understand that you are the body of Christ. In other words, since you are part of the body of Christ you should be fed the body of Christ. The bread and the wine are for the strength and encouragement of the believer in the faith. God makes it so simple. He doesn’t require theological insight or intellectual horsepower. Simply eating the bread and drinking the cup you are proclaiming the fact that the Lord’s died and rose again. You are preaching the gospel. That is so simple even a baby can do it.

I asserted during the last episode on Palm Sunday that communion really can’t be done at home. Even during this time of quarantine when the gathering together of God’s people is outlawed, we need to understand that communion means the body of Christ together partaking of the body of Christ together. If we don’t have Communion together than the ecclesiastical structure of the Church falls apart. The table is protect by the shepards of the faith. This would be your pastor and elders. These men have been placed in positions of authority over the people of God as having to give an account one day. This is why you should be so appreciative of your pastor and elders. They must take care of you and shepherd you. Because of this the Church has historically and is commanded biblically to exercise church discipline for those who are rebelling against the law of God. The final culmination of Church discipline is that of excommunication which was once regarded as the most awful of punishments. It is literally excluding those who once professed Christ from the Table. This is always a last resort but once excommunicated, the rebelling individual would find themselves cut off from the Supper and handed over to Satan. However if communion can just be simply celebrated at home with one’s family or by oneself than the God given authority of the local church to govern her parishioners is destroyed.

I also said during the last episode that coming to the Lord’s Table is a gift God gives His children who are no longer at war with Him. If it merely is an intellectual assent to theological statements with a bit of styrofoam cracker and grape juice than we might be hard pressed to see the value. But that is not what communion is. Communion is a meal with God. We should be eating good bread, hearty chunks that satisfy not puffed rounds of styrofoam. We should be drinking the potent cup of blessing which in Scripture is always wine and it should be good wine. We should be feasting because we were at one time at war with God. But now by the broken body and shed blood of Christ we are no longer at war with Him. We now eat a meal of Peace with the conquering King. He conquered our hearts of stone and gave us hearts of flesh and we offer Him our love and obedience. He promises us that we are showing our faith in Him by eating at peace at the Kings table and will one day eat with Him in glory at the Supper of the Lamb.

Musical

As is our tradition on the Anno Domini we pick a hymn or psalm to finish off the show. Today’s hymn is from none other than the Issac Watts renowned hymn writer of the 17th century. Mr. Watts is one of the most well know hymn writers and although he wrote prolifically, his hymns were never “a mile wide and an inch deep.” In other words he was not only prolific but deeply profound and thoughtful. He wrote many hymns we still sing today such as Joy to the World, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and Jesus Shall Reign. The hymn will be examining today is called “How Sweet and Awful is the Place”

Now this song is traditionally sung to an Irish hymn melody. I changed the melody and slightly altered the verse order, repeating verse 1 and 5 a second time at the end. Let’s take a deeper look at the words.

Verse 1. We are told that the time of the Last Supper was a sweet and awful. Not awful meaning terrible but awful as in full of awe. Christ is offering Himself, the choicest thing in the world to His people. The body and blood of Christ is incredibly precious and belongs to those who belong to Christ.

Verse 2. We are at the Lord’s table and our hearts and our minds are admiring the feast set before us. But we also aren’t so brazen and bold to understand there was nothing we did to deserve our spot at the table. In fact we ask, Lord why was I a guest?

Verse 3. We extend this line of questioning by asking why was I made to hear the voice of God and enter into His presence while there is still room or time or in other words while I am still alive and breathing. We look around and see thousands of others making wretched choices and starving instead of coming to the King for bread. This is critical as much of modern church music is Armenian at best and Humanist at worst. We want to focus on our love for Jesus and our choice to follow Him and how committed we are. IN this song though we simply ask, why have I been blessed with this? We knowits not because of our devotion to God.

Verse 4. The answer comes in verse 4 as we are told that it was the same love that gave His body broken for us and His blood spilled out for us, the same love that spread the feast, that also drew us in through the winsome song of the gospel. If the Spirit of Christ hadn’t done this, than we would have perished.

Verse 5 extends the view out from the Church Militant to all of Christ’s elect throughout the earth. We ask God to take pity on the nations and to constrain or compel the inhabitants of the earth to come to Christ. We ask that the victorious gospel of Christ would be sent out into the world abroad and convert the nations and bring the stranger (who we once were as well) home.

Verse 6. This verse is particularly poignant in our time of quarantine. We long to see the churches of Christ filled with people. Not just numbers for numbers for numbers sake but churches full of the chosen race of God and that we would with one voice, heart, and soul sing of the redeeming grace of Christ.

I hope your Holy Thursday is filled with culturally relevant ways of loving your brother’s and sisters in Christ. This new commandment really will bring the strangers home. I will see you tomorrow for our Good Friday podcast. Enjoy this new setting of How Sweet and Awful is the Place.

"As Jesus comes into Jerusalem, riding on the tops of the trees just as He had done against the Philistines, we are told He curses the fig tree symbolizing the nation of Israel, weeps over the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and then goes on to do battle with those who would turn his Father's house into a den of thieves. This is a King going forth to war. "

Palm Sunday

Song: The Son of God goes Forth to War

Passage: Psalm 118:19-29

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #9 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

Welcome back friends. My name is Joe Stout and my wife Elizabeth and I and our 8 children live in the wet and occasionally sunny Pacific Northwest. For those of you who may be new, this podcast, Anno Domini which literally means “In the Year of our Lord”, this podcast explores the year of the Lord as it has been traditionally marked on the Church Calendar. Our first episode started at the beginning of the Church New Year which this year fell on December 1st. Unlike our modern tradition of marking January 1st as the new beginning, the Church calendar marks the first Sunday of Advent, or the coming of Christ unto a dark world, as the perpetual new beginning. We begin by celebrating the coming of Christ in His various ways. Since the dates are different each year, this cycle was from December 1st through December 23rd. After Advent of course we celebrate Christmastide or Christmastime with Christmas Eve, and then all 12 days of Christmas. We then move into the period of Epiphany, the revealing of Christ unto a broken world which falls from January 6th through February 25th this season. Ash Wednesday, which this year fell on February 26th marks the beginning of the Season of Lent, the season in which we find ourselves now. As I remarked in the last episode, “the time of lent precedes the victory of Christ on the cross…Jesus was tempted for 40 days … was humbled to the point of death on a cross and during all of this faithfully obeyed His Father in Heaven. Because He was faithful in this, God raised Him up to glory and Christ calls us to follow the same path.”

As we enter Holy Week, the culmination of Lent, let us remember the promise of God found James 4:10, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”

Practical

As I pointed out in the last episode, The period from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday is 40 days not including the Lord’s Day each week. This means that Palm Sunday is a unique holy day in that it falls within the Lenten Season but being that it is on a Sunday, any fasting would be abstained from since the Lord’s Day is meant to be celebrated with feasting and rest. Palm Sunday kicks off Holy Week which is the big finale of the Lenten season and concludes on Easter morning.

Since part of the Anno Domini podcast centers around how we are to practically celebrate these holy days, I ought to give an account of the current events surrounding Palm Sunday 2020. As of the recording of this episode we are watching a local, national, and global historical event unfold. I’m of course speaking of the Chinese Virus that began in Wuhan China in December of 2019 and has spread around the globe. This virus is causing governments, gripped by fear, to self immolate entire economies, isolate people to their homes and hospital beds, and most egregious of all, forbid the gathering of people anywhere and everywhere for any reason at all. This means that for the last several weeks, showing up for the Lord’s Day service has been impossible for nearly everyone. Because technology often is a blessing when used rightly, many churches, ours included, have offered a live-stream of a Sunday morning sermon. This is nice and helps stave off feelings of isolation but a sermon is certainly not church. The gathering of a family to hear a sermon falls far short of our needed weekly gatherings. On Ash Wednesday, nearly a month before the madness began, I shared a hymn written by G.K. Chesterton that included the phrase, ”take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride.” Never in my life have I seen a prayer answered on such a large scale in such a short time. As I said on Ash Wednesday, “…our rulers here on earth are faltering failures and we as a people are drifting and dying because our walls, made of gold in our prosperity, are actually entombing us. Scorn is a weapon to divide brother against brother. We are asking God not to spare His wrath or His thunder against us but instead to take away the one thing that is causing all of this mess…our pride.”

One of the many things the global pandemic fear has exposed is the frailty of our reality. We think the things we know, the things that are familiar to us will last. The good times will never end is an easy lie to believe. Our walls of gold, as enduring as a the morning mist were entombing us into the false sense of security. Now as we shelter in place at the beginning of what is likely to be an unnecessary but very large economic depression we can take joy. God has heard our prayers, instead of allowing the walls of gold to entomb us forever, He is stripping away the pride of life that has caused such rebellion in our hearts. What an exciting time to be alive. I cannot stress enough what a blessing this chastisement has the potential to accomplish. If we humble ourselves before God during this time of suffering He promises to lift us up and strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees. With the unknown comes a temptation to great fear. In fact this is the natural response. Those without the blessing of Christ’s covering will respond with fear because that is the only way the natural man knows. But we are Christians and we believe that the providence of God can be waited on expectantly to provide for us our daily bread. We also can now trust God to provide for us a life stripped of those things which prevent us from trusting Him. We also can trust God during this time to send His Spirit to awaken in us a devotion to Him that often proves impossible during times of plenty. As someone amusingly said in reference to the paralyzing fear surrounding this virus, “I wasn’t quite ready to give up this much for Lent.” Of course we know that lent is not about “giving things up” it’s about begging God to do whatever it takes, to take whatever it takes, to trust, follow, and obey Him in all that He commands. So let us receive this discipline from the Lord joyfully knowing that he scourges every son He receives. So practically speaking, what can we do this Palm Sunday since we won’t be allowed to actually worship as the Body of Christ? Well the things that have been helpful for the Stout family has been to treat Sunday morning as much like a Lord’s Day morning as possible. We get up, we get dressed, we eat breakfast, and then we gather together to worship together the King of Glory. We try not to treat our Sunday morning worship too casually. This is already a temptation for modern Christians and it only gets worse when you can’t leave your home. Therefore there is no watching the sermon in pajamas just as you shouldn’t go to church in your pajamas. Our church actually provides some songs to sing “together” and we sing along heartily. We hold our kiddos to the same standards of sitting still and not talking during the sermon. This is really quite inadequate for the long haul but is better than nothing. If one had to describe the essential reason for weekly Lord’s Day worship I would argue that the sermon and praise and worship are really pointing to the pinnacle of the service which is the Lord’s Supper. We’re going to talk about this in depth for our next episode on Holy Thursday and so I will develop my argument far more there but suffice it to say that I am persuaded, and am certainly not alone, that the sermon, the singing, the confession of sin, it is all leading us toward one major event, and that event is to eat a meal of Peace with our King. We were alienated from God and were His enemies but by the death and resurrection of Christ, we have been brought near to Him. This weekly meal represents this. It represents the fact that we are no longer at war with God but that through Christ we now have peace. It tells us that we belong to the King and that we belong at the King’s table. This unfortunately cannot truly be done at home, at least not in the way it has been instituted as overseen by the elders of your local church. Because of this, let us pray that the quarantine lockdown fears end and that we can go back to the Lord’s Table where those who have been baptized and claim Christ as King, we can go back to the table where we belong.

Biblical

There are several texts to chose from on Palm Sunday. We have readings from Isaiah, Psalms, Philippians, and the Gospel of John. If you are listening to this, it is likely you have heard the account of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a the colt of donkey. In three of the gospel accounts, we are told that as Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on the colt, the people welcomed Him with praise and received Him as a King. In fact they were spreading their clothes on the ground as well as laying down branch of trees and in John’s gospel, those branches are referred to as Palms. This is Christ coming as King unto Jerusalem and for a large number of the cities inhabitants, He was rightly received as King. However, as we know, there were other forces at work in the city and the leaders of the Jews were consumed with envy and hatred of Jesus. While the Lord’s faithful were celebrating the coming of the King, others we’re biding their time and waiting for their opportunity to strike down the King of Glory. Our lectionary reading from Psalm 118:19-29 speaks of this. Let’s read the very word of God.

Psalm 118:19-29

Open to me the gates of righteousness;

I will go through them,

And I will praise the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord,

Through which the righteous shall enter.

I will praise You,

For You have answered me,

And have become my salvation.

The stone which the builders rejected

Has become the chief cornerstone.

This was the Lord’s doing;

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day the Lord has made;

We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Save now, I pray, O Lord;

O Lord, I pray, send now prosperity.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.

God is the Lord,

And He has given us light;

Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.

You are my God, and I will praise You;

You are my God, I will exalt You.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!

For His mercy endures forever.

In this Psalm we are told that the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This verse is one of the most quoted in the New Testament. It is referenced in each of the synoptic gospels as part of the culminating meaning of the Parable of the Tenants. It was told by Jesus after He had entered Jerusalem in triumph but before He was betrayed into the hands of the Jews. If you remember, Jesus tells the story of vineyard that had been planted and the care of which was entrusted to a specific group of people. In the story these tenants are the Jews. When harvest time came, the Master sent servants to collect some of the fruit. The tenants, beat and treated shamefully all of the servants the Master of the Vineyard sends. These servants represent the way in which the Jews treated God’s chosen prophets…shamefully. At his trial prior to his death Stephan speaks these divesting words to the Jewish leaders…”Which of the prophets have not your father’s persecuted?” The answer is of course none. The Jews rejected them all. Finally, in the parable, the Master of the Vineyard decides to send His only Son thinking perhaps they will respect Him. Quite the opposite in fact happens and the tenets reach the pinnacle of their wickedness and throw the son out of the vineyard and kill Him, thinking they were securing the inheritance for themselves. But instead they planted the seed of their own ruin as the Master eventually comes and destroys those tenants and gives the vineyard to others. This speaks of the way God removed the Jews from the special status as His chosen people and grafted in the Gentiles in their place. Finally Jesus finishes by quoting Psalm 118:22 applying its meaning to the nation of Israel at that time. It was at this time that we are told the “ The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them.” The reason why this matters is that Jesus is not a safe person to be around. He is the kind of Friend that is absolutely going to get you in trouble with the people in charge. The Lion of Judah is dangerous and although He is good following Him means a choosing life of exchanging your own desires for those he gives you. Desires that will mean suffering. Jesus is a conquering King and when we follow Him we are actually following Him into battle. This battle is against the desires of the flesh, the lusts of the world, the pride of life, and against Satan himself. It is a battle that we can gladly and joyfully follow our King Jesus into knowing that it will cost us our lives.

Historical

Palm Sunday as I said earlier is the beginning of Holy Week. It is the finale of Lent and during times where gathering for worship is not outlawed there can often be services every day of the week. In Protestant Christianity there usually is at the very least a Good Friday service although even those unfortunately are becoming less frequent. During Palm Sunday often the church will be decorated with branches, sometime palm branches if they are available. In those denominations that celebrate Ash Wednesday, the branches used in worship on Palm Sunday are usually kept until the following Ash Wednesday and burned and the ashes from the Palm fronds are used to mark those penitent for the beginning of Lent. This is used to help Christians understand and realized the cyclical life of the Church and that God gives us patterns to follow faithfully.

Musical

During our section on the biblical text for Palm Sunday, the theme of warfare came up frequently. The fact that Christ comes riding on the branches of trees is not a coincidental occurrence. In fact in two places the Old Testament records an event that bears certain similarities.

In both 1 Chronicles 14 and 2 Samuel 5 we read this story.

As Jesus comes into Jerusalem riding on the tops of the trees just as He had done against the Philistines, we are told in the various gospel accounts of His actions. He curses the fig tree symbolizing the nation of Israel the curse being that they would be cut off for their unbelief and bear fruit no longer. He then weeps over Jerusalem because He knows of its coming destruction in just a few short decades. He then goes and makes war on those who would turn His Father’s house into a den of thieves. These are the actions of a King going forth to war. The only gospel that doesn’t mention this fact is the Gospel of John who chooses instead to focus on the imagery of a seed dying to bring forth a harvest. During His triumphal entry Jesus had one thing on His mind. Going to war. He was going to wage war against the domain of darkness in a way that not even Satan could have seen coming. He was going to die for the sins of His people. All of that is an entrance of sorts into the hymn we will be exploring today which was written in 1812 by Reginald Heber called the Son of God goes Forth to War. This song is a wonderful encouragement for the Church Militant, those of us in the body of Christ who are still here on earth doing battle for the King. Let’s take a look at the words.

We have in this hymn Christ setting the example by being the first to go to war and gain His crown of glory. He of course accomplished this upon the cross which is why Paul tells us that He is seated in power, reigning right now at the right hand of God. He will continue to reign Paul assures us until all enemies have been vanquished, the world has been converted to Christ and only the last enemy remains, death itself. Then Christ will return vanquish the final enemy, unite heaven and earth in glorious renewal and the dead will be raised again to glory for the final judgement. The hymn writer continually asks “Who will follow in His train?” or this is another way of asking who will follow after the King? In verse one, those who are able to follow in His train are those who are ready drink His cup of woe and to be patient and bear the cross of Christ in this temporal life.

Verse 2 tells the story of the first hero of the faith. Stephan who could see “beyond the grave” or through the temporal things that so often distract us to what really matter. Christ beckoned to Stephan as he was being stoned and Stephan like his Master asked God to forgive those who did the wrong even while he was in the pain of death. Who will follow his example?

Verse 3 tells the story of the 12 apostles who were valiant men upon whom was the Spirit of Christ. These 12 men, unlike any men before or after, were chosen by Christ and we’re given immense suffering to endure for the cross. Some were fed to lions, some slain with the sword. We are told they bowed their necks their death to feel. In other word’s they were not afraid to die nor were they going to run away from the Great Commission. They remembered that Christ had charged them with that of going into all the world and baptizing the nations. As Peter famously said with his life on the line…”We must obey God rather than men.”

Verse 4 speaks of the multitudes that have given their lives for Christ in humble and faithful obedience to Him. We are told men, boys, women, girls, anyone claimed by Christ through baptism that has gone before us and is with Him in paradise are now rejoicing around the throne of Christ in glorious garments. We are also told how they got there, through a steep climb toward eternity during their earthly life experiencing peril, toil, and pain during the journey. The hymn concludes by asking God to give us, the Church Militant, the grace to follow in their train.

With that I will play this hymn and look forward to seeing you for our next episode exploring Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday. I hope that Christ fills you with encouragement as you worship Him this Lord’s Day in your homes and that we will soon find ourselves worshipping together once more in the beauty of holiness.

"With Christ entering the desert for 40 days of temptation we will transition from our celebration of His epiphany into the celebration of Lent. As the days lengthen and spring approaches we will daily be reminded that Easter is on the move and the days of the power of sin over God’s people has ended."

Song: O God of Earth and Altar (Prayer for the Nation)

Passage: Joel 2:12-19

A Simple Church Year Catechism - Lent & Easter 

Hello everyone and Welcome to episode #8 of the Anno Domini Podcast. A podcast dedicated to the supremacy of Christ over all things including our days, weeks, and months.

Join me as we explore how Christ is revealed through the cyclical life of the church calendar year. We’ll discover how this calendar once structured culture and how it can again. We’ll also discuss practical ways to observe and celebrate these holy days in our quest to glorify God and live the good life in the midst of all good He has given us.

 

Welcome back! My name for those just joining us is Joe Stout and the last few weeks have been extremely eventful in the Stout household. We welcomed with joy the birth of our 5th daughter, Ruthie Jane. Both Elizabeth and baby Ruthie are doing wonderfully well, God be praised. It’s been a little over 7 weeks since our last podcast. So In that episode I introduced the season of Epiphany in which we celebrate the manifestation or revealing of Christ to the world. He is revealed on Epiphany to the Magi, revealed to the world through His public baptism, revealed at the temple to Simeon, revealed to His inner circle on the mountain through His transfiguration and finally, His manifestation culminates as Christ goes into the desert and reveals Himself to Satan where he does battle for 40 days. With Christ entering the desert for 40 days of temptation we will transition from our celebration of His epiphany into the celebration of Lent. As the days lengthen and spring approaches we will daily be reminded that Easter is on the move and the days of the power of sin over God’s people has ended.

 

As a quick reminder we will look at for different segments, we generally start with the practical ways of celebrating a holiday or season of time, we then examine the biblical rationale for the holiday, then we look at how the holiday has been celebrated in history and finish with a hymn or psalm of music that we examine and listen to together. So let’s get started

 

Practical

Starting with the practical side, In the Stout house, we have never observed Lent or Ash Wednesday for that matter. This is due really to a combination of reasons the biggest one being that observing this time wasn’t a part of our families upbringing. We tend to emulate the way we were raised and that is a design feature not a bug. Kids turning out like their parents is how God made the world. It shouldn’t surprise us. Personally, this is an area of huge blessing for both Elizabeth and I as we had and still have righteous parents who raised us in the fear and admonition of the Lord. In fact in many cases we also had righteous grandparents going back several generations. We ought to go in the ways of our Father when our father’s go in the ways of the Lord. As GK Chesterton once observed, “these are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.” Christians shouldn’t fall into that temptation. We ought to feel a deep comfort in following the paths our father’s have laid for us provided those paths were honoring to God law. I say this because I have no paths to follow on this one; no prior experience to hearken back to. On the plus side, Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent have no sentimental or nostalgic value for me or my wife that could cloud God’s voice. On the negative side, it has none of the familiarities that for many Christians they have come to expect and naturally are held accountable too.

With that in mind what should Christians do during Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent? Let’s take a look at the historical practice of the church and then answer that question.

 

Historical

Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent precedes Easter by 40 days. As we stated earlier, In the gospel, Jesus fasts and does battle with Satan for 40 days in the desert. 40 days is a common number in Scripture and indicates a period of fullness or a complete cycle of time. Because the time of lent precedes the victory of Christ on the cross, we know that the suffering Christ experienced led ultimately to His glorification. Just as God’s promise to us is that if we humble ourselves, He will lift us up, so Jesus was tempted for 40 days and and beyond, was humbled to the point of death on a cross (a cursed tree) and during all of this faithfully obeyed His Father in Heaven. Because He was faithful in this, God raised Him up to glory and Christ calls us to follow the same path.

Now if you check the math you will see that Wednesday February 26th 2020 is actually 46 days before Easter on April 12th. This apparent inconsistency is actually proof of a point I’ve tried to make every episode thus far on the Anno Domini podcast. And that point is this: The church calendar is not a binding requirement for Christians. However, the Lord’s Day each week is the one day that Christians are bound to observe. It is literally one of the 10 commandments so ignoring it is not an option. Therefore 40 days of Lent don’t include Sundays since those Sundays are the Lord’s Days and are ALWAYS and I do mean always, a day of Feasting, Celebrating, and Joyfully giving God glory by setting the day aside for Him. If we are in a season of penance, and I will define that in a moment, than we set that discipline aside on the Lord’s Day to give Him the glory due Him by feasting. Bottom line: The Lord’s Day is not a day for fasting.

So what is Lent and what is Ash Wednesday?

Lent comes from the Middle English word Lente (with an e on the end) which simply means “spring.” It also comes from an Old English word Lengten which means to lengthen, referring of course to the lengthening of days leading up to Spring and Easter morning.

Lent is similar to Advent in that during lent, we are anticipating something coming that is well worth the wait. Just like in Advent, we patiently and eagerly anticipate the coming of the Messiah. During Lent we are anticipating and waiting on the victory of Christ over sin, the devil, and death itself.

Ash Wednesday has historically been the day that Christian get an ashen cross drawn on their foreheads to remind them of that primeval curse pronounced at the fall that “dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” We are mortal and the dust or ashes signify this. Abraham seems to understand this truth while speaking to God in Genesis 18:27 when he remarks. “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,” and God certainly knows this seeing that he formed man from the dust of the ground and Psalm 103:14 promises us that He hasn’t forgot this either “for He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.” So the point of Ash Wednesday is to remind us that we are as frail as dust. Not that man is as lowly as dirt…nothing more than a worm. No we are not being reminded of this but rather the question which James 4:14 asks and answers “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

This is the point of Ash Wednesday, to set the tone for the weeks to follow which is that of penance. Now what do I mean by penance? This is important to define because in the Catholic church penance is an actual sacrament and I believe one of the chief ways in which Catholics wrongly follow a path toward what amounts to self justification. If I do enough penance I will be worthy. This is totally anti-gospel. We are not penitent so that we can become worthy, we are penitent because we’ve been made worthy by the blood of Christ and our only logical response to this kindness of God is a spirit of penance as defined in 1828 by Noah Webster as simply repentance. Lent ought to be a season, and certainly not the only time, in which we take careful notice of the gargantuan gulf separating sinful man from the Holy God. Christians often minimize the distance between the holiness of God and the lowliness of our own spiritual state. But our natural spiritual state is antithetical to the station of God in heaven. Without the blood of Christ making us worthy, no amount of penance could ever be “enough” to bridge the gulf. We are helpless and dead in our sin and only the empowering work of the Holy Spirit through gospel can change this. Therefore during the time of Lent we should use it as an opportunity to pay careful attention this empowering work of the Spirit. In Ezekiel 37, the Lord tells the prophet to preach the gospel to the valley of dry bones and both flesh and breath enters the bones and they are seen as a great army. This is a picture of the gospel. The breath of life entering and bringing life to a corpse so dead all that is left are a heap dry bones.

During Lent we are reminded of our need to examine ourselves in the light of the gospel. What patterns in our life are inconsistent with a life of victory over sin?

Practical Things to do during Lent:

Devote your time to others. Give to those who cannot repay. Visit nursing homes, the sick, or shut-ins.

Pray for the Spirit to reveal hidden sins and then confess them to God remembering that He is faithful to forgive them. Also remember that repentance and self hatred are at odds with one another. We are made in God’s image and only Satan hates that we never should. We can face our sin and repent of it without self loathing.

Fasting from food, not just one or two things but actually experiencing times of fasting. Fasting works like a spiritual alarm clock, protecting you from the complacency found with a full belly.

Devote yourself with other to times of prayer for specific requests and mark these times by fasting from food. But never on the Lord’s Day

Seek community and unity during this time. While personal times of devotion to God are important we are the ONE bride of Christ. There won’t be any empty seats that table of supper of the lamb. We will be one body for eternity so we should act like we are now.

A quick word on fasting which at this point is the main thing that Lent is associated with. In the law there is only one prescribed day of fasting which is called the Day of Atonement. However there are literally weeks and weeks of prescribed feast days. This seems to indicate that feasting is either more important or at least AS important as fasting. However Peter Leithart notices that as the scriptures progresses fasting becomes more common. He speculates that this could indicate that with maturity comes patience in waiting for the good things to come. You don’t expect nursing infants and little kids to fast but as they grow in maturity you expect them to grow in the discipline of waiting for good things. Fasting provides an opportunity for this. However don’t give things up simply for the sake of giving something up. Give something up in order that you can be a more useful servant for the Cross of Christ.

Will we be celebrating Ash Wednesday by receiving an ashen cross on our heads? No. While I know that Catholics and Lutherans know about the teaching of Christ and His express prohibition on outward signs of fasting, I feel, at least at this point, that going and getting smudged with ashes so that the world knows I am now fasting is in direct opposition to the teaching of Christ when He said “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This “anointing your head and washing your face” seems to indicate the greater feast that is to come and so the outward sign of an unwashed face seems to miss that point. While I won’t be getting a visible outward sign on Ash Wednesday I will be attempting to follow, in secret, the practical ideas listed above. Also, I will include a link to a wonderful little catechism that is excellent to use during Lent for yourself or your little ones too.

 

Biblical Joel 2:12-19

Our biblical passage today is from the Old Testament lectionary reading in Joel. I’m not going to give any commentary on it but just read it and you will see what an apropos passage it is for Ash Wednesday and the days of Lent to come. The Gospel as throughout this passage. God is full of lovingkindness toward those who humble themselves before Him.

“Now, therefore,” says the Lord,

“Turn to Me with all your heart,

With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”

So rend your heart, and not your garments;

Return to the Lord your God,

For He is gracious and merciful,

Slow to anger, and of great kindness;

And He relents from doing harm.

Who knows if He will turn and relent,

And leave a blessing behind Him—

A grain offering and a drink offering

For the Lord your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion,

Consecrate a fast,

Call a sacred assembly;

Gather the people,

Sanctify the congregation,

Assemble the elders,

Gather the children and nursing babes;

Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber,

And the bride from her dressing room.

Let the priests, who minister to the Lord,

Weep between the porch and the altar;

Let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord,

And do not give Your heritage to reproach,

That the nations should rule over them.

Why should they say among the peoples,

‘Where is their God?’ ”

Then the Lord will be zealous for His land,

And pity His people.

The Lord will answer and say to His people,

“Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil,

And you will be satisfied by them;

I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.

The promise of God is that to those who humble themselves He will lift up but the proud He actively opposes. During this season of Lent may our attitude toward God be one of repentance and humility so that we might be lifted up by Him. May we choose the seat at the foot of the table so that we might be called up to the place of honor.

 

Musical

In 1906 there was a young energetic English Anglican by the name of Gilbert who penned a rousing hymn full of vitality and courage. It was a call to National Repentance. The song is called O God of Earth and Alter and in parenthesis were the words, (Prayer for the Nation). It was written by GK Chesterton in his early thirties before he converted to the Church of Rome. In the Spirit of the Lenten Season may this hymn, written 114 years ago be just as appropriate for us 21st century Americans as when it was written. Let’s listen to the words.

O God of earth and altar,

Bow down and hear our cry,

Our earthly rulers falter,

Our people drift and die;

The walls of gold entomb us,

The swords of scorn divide,

Take not thy thunder from us,

But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,

From lies of tongue and pen,

From all the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men,

From sale and profanation

Of honour and the sword,

From sleep and from damnation,

Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether

The prince and priest and thrall,

Bind all our lives together,

Smite us and save us all;

In ire and exultation

Aflame with faith, and free,

Lift up a living nation,

A single sword to thee.

Verse one is striking to say the least and sets the tone for what is a VERY striking and convicting hymn. There are no platitudes here. God is high in heaven and we are low on earth and we are asking God to bow down and stoop to our level and hear our cry. Why are we crying to Him? Because our rulers here on earth are faltering failures and we as a people are drifting and dying. We are drifting and dying because our walls, made of gold in our prosperity, are actually entombing us. Scorn has become so common place that it is merely used as a weapon to divide brother against brother. We are asking God not to spare His wrath or His thunder against us but instead to take away the one thing that is causing all of this mess…our pride.

Verse 2 is even more visually intense. We confess that fear is teacher and not the fear of God either. Buttressing fear as our teacher are lies both written and spoken. Speeches that are nothing more than pandering platitudes to achieve political gain are the order of the day and they ease the conscience and comfort men and women who have cruelty bound in their hearts. We ask in verse two for deliverance from many things, greed, a love of the profane, violence, the fear of man disguised as honor, laziness, and ultimately the fires of hell. We ask the Father, our good Father in Heaven to deliver us from these evils.

Verse 3 shows somewhat the peculiarity of the writers connection to the Monarch and Church of England. The prince is the monarchy, the priest is the Church of England, and the thrall are those bound under the rule of the King. I’d like to quote Peter Leithart again from an article he wrote last December on the website First Things “Few hymns offer so stark a portrait of the human condition—lies, terror, cruelty disguised as niceness, tombs of gold, lazy indifference, pride. It’s stark, and very contemporary. “Swords of scorn divide”: Chesterton could have been watching CNN or Fox News, or following Twitter. Chesterton doesn’t permit a jot of sentimentality. No “Sweet Hour of Prayer” for him; his prayer is an anguished cry. He’s not looking for a gently wafting Spirit; Chesterton invokes divine thunder. He doesn’t want God to hold back, because he knows salvation lies on the far side of judgment: “Smite us and save us all.”

Yes Chesterton knows a secret that the mare Hwin discovered in the book “The Horse and His Boy” In the book Hwin, who is terrified of lions, is shaking all over while Aslan, the ruler of Narnia approaches her and goes to him saying “You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.” The best place to be is a willing participant under Providence of God even if that means, like Job, the life as you know it will be consumed.

 

Okay that concludes the episode for this week. As usual I have the preceding hymn set to music I’ve recorded. In this recording, I set the hymn a new tune and one of the things I am most excited about is that I was able to record this song with my oldest daughter Eva singing the vocals with me. She is a dear girl and I hope you enjoy it. I will be back on April 5th with four simultaneous episodes for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday itself. Until then, I hope you have a blessed Lent and may these next 40 days grow you in maturity in ways only the Holy Spirit can accomplish.