Balance

Now we have been in 1 Corinthians 14 for the last three weeks which is all about Spiritual Gifts and particularly the miraculous gifts of Tongues and Prophesy. But I want to begin today with an understanding of what represents balance a balanced view of Spiritual gifts. This is very significant even to helping us interpret the passage in front of today.

Let me explain what imbalance is in general. Imbalance is when you take a good thing and you let it have too much weight in the overall equation.

So take for example the good practice of exercising. An imbalanced exercise routine would be where you exercise so much that it pushes out other really important things, like family, your relationship with your wife, church, your relationship with God, etc. Practically what this means is that in decision making points, exercise never looses.

What you've done is taken something good and given it too much weight in the equation. Now the problem with being out of balance is that you can never realize the benefit exercise was designed to give you. Exercise is supposed to give you health SO THAT you can then go OUT and enjoy life and family, but because your imbalanced, you always choose exercise over anything else in life, you never get to experience the benefit.

And this is true in the opposite direction as well. If your out of balance the other direction and you never exercise, you'll have plenty of time for life and family but you'll feel so terrible that you won't be able to enjoy them.

So balance is letting exercise do it's part in the overall equation of health.

Imbalance in the Gifts

Now here's the question. How can we become imbalanced in our view of spiritual gifts? Let me demonstrate this with a few slides here. When it comes to the ministry of the Spirit you have two ditches you can fall into.

Your either "ignoring the Holy Spirit's work" or alternately "missing the point of the Spirit's work".

So maybe on the far right you have an extreme pentecostal group. Here you have people who are missing the point of the Spirit's work. They want the gifts for the gifts sake. They want to be known for having great gifts. They've missed the point. It's good to want the gifts of the Spirit. But why? There's a point. Once you get it, your supposed to go do something with it. The point is to be healthy, to be empowered, so that we can minister to the body. This is kind of like the guy who thinks the chief end of man is to know the Bible. Knowing the Bible is awesome, but there's a point. You use it to care about people or share the gospel of Jesus with those who don't know him. What's the point?

Now on the left you might have an extreme cessationist group where people are not missing the point of the Spirit's work they are ignoring the Spirit's work. The work of the Spirit to them is strange, and they want very little if anything to do with it. So these guys are unhealthy in a different way. The extreme cessationist group is suffering because they are not healthy. They are not filled with the Spirit's power to do ministry and are rendered ineffective.

Neither are experiencing health because of imbalance.

So balance then would be asking for all of the Spirit's power, in whatever form he has given, so that we might use that power to build up the saints and glorify God. That's balance.

Where do we find Corinth?

Now where do you suppose Corinth falls on this spectrum? Probably somewhere in this zone.

Now that is helpful because it gives us insight into the corrective language that Paul is using. It's very important to get this concept. 1 Corinthians 14 is not neutral instruction on tongues. It's correcting a group that's slid off the rails in this direction.

Paul's language is designed to correct an abuse. The Corinthians are interested in the gifts of the Spirit as an end in themselves. They just want the gift. All they want to do is look in the mirror and flex. They want to see their spiritual muscles. They've become vain and proud. And they've lost focus of both the giver of the gift and the point of the gifts. The gifts are to edify. The gifts are to build us up. The gifts are to point us to Christ and but they turn them inward and point to themselves. They stopped caring about what the gift does for God and others and now all they care about is what the gift does for them.

Some in the room may be imbalanced this direction and 1 Corinthians 14 is written with you in mind, but many more of us will be imbalanced here in this zone.

This represents people who are not overly anxious they are underly anxious. under-anxious for what. If you find yourself here, you are very uncomfortable with the ministry of the Spirit in general and specifically you are uncomfortable with the subjective.

Just a review: Objective facts are empirically verified by others. Today is sunny. That's an objective statement. We can all test that statement. Subjective things are things that are inside of you that nobody except you can know. I am feeling introspective. That might be true, but you'd have no way of knowing that. You couldn't test that or observe it for yourself. That is subjective.

Subjective is in the realm of personal feelings, personal impressions, ideas in your head, ways you perceive things. Now don't hear subjective as not true or not valuable. The fact that there is a subjective reality is disputed by nobody. In fact, the subjective is the only reality we know, nobody else's reality is like my reality. It's our perception of the world and nobody else's. But for some, to think of the Holy Spirit working in you, in this way makes you feel uncomfortable.

The fear of the charismatic movement for many might be most articulately described as nothing more than the fear of the Holy Spirit working in me subjectively.

Now all that to make the point, "What would 1 Corinthians 14 look like if he were writing not to a people that had slid of the rails to the right, but to the left?

The Challenge for Us.

You see here's the challenge we need to think through this morning as we read the Scriptures. You see, I do believe that the Spirit of God can come upon us when we ask for it and give us high assurance and an anointing with power and boldness. You see it all through the Book of Acts. I'm not talking here about miraculous spiritual gifts, necessarily. I'm just talking about the subjective ministry of the Spirit in your life. Now if you relegate that stuff to the first century, you won't ask for it.

The problem with the sentence I just said is that it uses language that extreme charismatic groups have hijacked and twisted. Anointing. Fullness of the Spirit. Empowered by the Spirit. And so in a totally understandable attempt to distance ourselves from obvious abuses we unwittingly distance ourselves from central, key, backbone-type concepts of our Christian growth. The Pentecostal church did not invent the word anointed or fullness of the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit. God gave us those terms. It's all through our Bibles.

God wants us to call upon God and ask to be filled with the fullness of the Spirit's power. You see it in Acts 4, and you see it in Acts 13. You call for it, you ask for the Spirit to descend on you, and he does. He can.

Now what happens when you ask for this? Subjective things.

Take for example the Spirit's ability to assure us that we are saved. You can answer that question intellectually. You can ask me today, “Do you know you’re a Christian?” and I might say, “Yes, the Bible tells me, 'If I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that Christ raised him from the dead,then I am saved. I've done that.'" But do you feel saved? Do you feel loved?

The Bible teaches that there is a work of the Spirit whereby you can be assured internally, it's the Spirit's work in conjunction with the facts, it's by nature of the fact that the Spirit lives within you.

Listen to the way this is articulated in Romans 8. It really is amazing and it's all subjective language.

The Spirit comes alongside of me and says, “Yes, you are my son in whom I’m well pleased.” You sense the love of God and you sense a high assurance of who you are in his child, his family, and it brings you a boldness and it brings you a love and it brings you a power. That is an experience we need to ask for in the church, and that’s an experience that godly people receive.

This is one of many, many types of ministries the Holy Spirit has. The ministry of illumination, the ministry of conviction.

I find that because the charismatic church has emphasized that experience, there’s a problem that non-charismatic people become very anti—that kind of talk. They don’t like to talk about the fullness of the Spirit, and they don’t like to talk about the anointing of power. I think that’s a mistake.

So the greatest goal here as we work through 1 Corinthians 14 is to really encourage the ministry of the Spirit in general and balance here. I think if Paul was writing to FCBC this is what he'd be encouraging.

Review of a Concept

Now with that introduction, since we are in 1 Corinthians 14 today we will apply this to the gifts mentioned in this chapter, specifically prophesy, tongues and the interpretation of tongues. So far, we have spent an entire message defining prophesy and then another entire message defining tongues. And in our message from last week we defined two types of tongues.

I want to add a bit of clarification around this concept. The word tongues is used to describe both experiences but I think it's best to understand them as two entirely distinct phenomenas.

You have what we might call 'miraculous tongues of vindication' where people are given the ability to speak known languages as an supernatural evidence to validate a difficult message. The primary purpose seems to be to authenticate a claim. All the examples we find in the book of Acts appear to be of this variety.

Acts 2 - Pentacost,

Acts 10 - the inclusion of the Gentiles,

Acts 19 - this isolated group of people who had not even heard of Jesus.

In all three of these cases there was a difficult message coupled with a miracle to vindicate and validate the claim being made by the apostle. Many of the miracles we see in the Bible have a similar primary purpose.

I think this miraculous tongues of vindication is a point in time supernatural intervention of the Spirit into specific moments of history where miraculous validation is necessary and it is a miraculous manifestation that cannot be called back at will. I'm not sure we have evidence of the people who spoke in tongues at Pentacost have the ability to speak known languages later on. It's not really a spiritual gift as much as it is a work of the Spirit, really a miracle, that God orchestrates. It just crashes upon people in the NT as confirmation of God's presence in a critical early church moment. So that is tongues of vindication.

Now the word tongues is used to describe this phenomena but it's also used to describe the gift of tongues we see in 1 Corinthians 14. And I think this gift is distinct from the gift of tongues described in Acts. And the reason I think this is because it has such a different qualities and a different purpose.

Qualities and Purpose

Let's think for a moment about the qualities of the tongues we read about in 1 Corinthians 14. What we read of in 1 Corinthians 14 seems to be

a gift that people can exercise at will, they can control it,

it is something that occurs frequently,

Paul is addressing a usage in the Sunday morning church context.

it doesn't seem to be associated with validating any sort of message.

it requires a gift of interpretation, unlike the other tongues where it was interpreted by native speakers.

So it seems to be of a different kind because of it's properties but also because of its purpose. The obvious purpose of the tongues of the 1 Corinthians 14 variety seems to be for the purpose of personal edification.

Now as both a further evidence that these are distinct gifts and as a continuation in our passage today we get into another related area, namely, the interpretation of tongues. What is this gift of interpretation?

Understanding Interpretation of Tongues

Paul mentions it twice in chapter 12 and just a couple times in chapter 14. That's the extent of our biblical teaching on it.

Now here's one of the main points I think gets massively overlooked in understanding this issue. And the so often missed point is this: direction of communication. In the gift of Tongues described in 1 Corinthians 14 which direction is the communication flowing?

Tongues is a gift, and it’s a gift that has to do with a person talking to God. It does not say in 1 Corinthians 14 that it’s God speaking to others through men. That is how we defined prophesy. Tongues as understood here is men speaking to God. It's benefiting the man speaking but nobody else understands. To everyone else, it's what? It's meaningless noise. It says quite clearly, nobody understands him.

Now the fact that tongues are not understandable to others illustrates the direction of communication. It is man to God NOT God to man. We already have a gift that goes from God to man? What is that? It's the gift of prophesy that we discussed three weeks ago. And what language is that in? The language of the hearer.

Paul's point is if tongues were supposed to be a gift from God to man then it would have to be in an understandable language. That's the entire point of verses 7-11 gives us three examples of meaningless noise.

He says what is the point of a musical instrument that just plays random notes. If I pick up a guitar that is massively out of tune and strum it. I'm playing the correct chord but because the notes are indistinct, it doesn't produce a recognizable song.

Paul says, What's the point of language if you can't understand the person talking? What's the point of a bugle in war if you can't make out the meaning of the note. Of course back in the day you moved around giant groups of men through distinct notes of a trumpet. You'd have the military commanders watch the battle from a high bluff or overlook. Two quick high notes might mean flank left. One low trumpet blast means retreat. Without those notes being discernible what use is that? It just serves as background noise while you get stabbed to death by the enemy.

Language is a code and without the key it's pointless. It serves no purpose. Let me give you an example. I'm going to be like ultra impressed if anyone can decipher this.

This is a string of morse code. Now if you don't know the key to understanding, this is meaningless. But if you have the key, you can interpret it.

So what is Paul saying? This type of tongue is a language where men speak to God. The direction arrow of communication is to God.

So I personally do not see the proper usage here as someone uttering a tongue and then another person who has the 'gift of interpretation' standing up and giving the interpretation. “O my beloved, I see the toil you are in; continue to love one another.”

No, tongues is not a message from God to us. Paul specifically says in 1 Corinthians 14:2, a person who prays in tongues does not speak to men, but is speaking to God. You have to understand that.

So the obvious next question is, well what about this gift of interpretation? I think the gift of interpretation is given to the person who is speaking in tongues. Isn't that how Paul begins this whole section on interpretation? Here's Paul's introduction to the concept and what does he say?

So in verse 13 who is doing the interpretation? The guy who is doing the speaking. Now that makes sense. If you use verse 12 as the interpretive key for what comes next in this passage, specifically what this passage means when it says interpretation, I think it starts making a lot of sense.

In all the examples of language that we know, never does the word interpretation mean, help me understand what I just said. Interpretation means, let me tell you what I just said in a language you speak. Now that's not saying God couldn't do that. It's just making the point that this is the most natural place to start looking.

So what does this interpretation look like. Well, we need to understand the nature of this prayer tongue. We said last week, these are not known languages. We can verify this easily with computers. They don't match any linguistic pattern. So the best understanding is a sort of free vocalization. It’s a way of praising God and praying to God in a language you don’t know, the overflow of a sort of spirit to spirit conversation.

And again, pay attention to the arrow of communication. God may be giving you words to pray to him. But the direction is from man to God. It's a way of praising God for his greatness, his goodness, his love, etc.

So when a person prays in tongues, they are doing free vocalization. Essentially they are singing in the Spirit. When you’re praying in tongues, you’re singing, just like if you sat down at a piano and began to play without music.

You’re singing to God and here's the point: you can interpret that. You can’t translate it, absolutely not, but you can interpret it. Where does this distinction between interpret and translate come from in the text?

Look at verse 14

What's Paul's GIANT concern in chapter 14? Edification of the body. Paul says, if you pray in the Spirit, that might be enough it was just you. But it's not about you.

What's it mean for the spirit to pray? It means you have an emotional sense of the prayer. If I say to you, "My spirit is heavy today." And you say, "Oh, I'm sorry, how come." I know how I feel but it might take me a while to put words to that.

Praying in the Spirit, praying in tongues, bypasses that process of putting words to what you feel. And that's great if it's just you. But since it's not just you, what's Paul's advice. Let's not JUST pray in the Spirit. Let's pray in the mind also. Go through that work of putting words to what your Spirit is saying.

Interpreting your Spirit can be done but it's a bit of work to do - but it must be done if you are to benefit anyone else. Certainly we have all had the experience of feeling a certain way but having a very hard time putting words to how we feel. Paul says, if you are going to benefit anyone else, you'd better put some words to it. And if you can't put words to it, either stay quiet or pray that God would help you put words to it.

Does that make sense? Paul again says, think of others. The point is edification. So think about those around you. How will they be edified? Paul is so incredibly others oriented in this passage. Paul says, this interpretation of tongues is so important. Why?

Paul says, build up the body. That's the point of all the gifts. Paul's big point here that we always just need to be thinking of others first and foremost. How can I edify them? How can I build others up? How can I encourage? How can I strengthen?

That's the thing that has value. That's the thing that is worth pursuing. But that's NOT what the Corinthians were valuing. You definitely get the sense that the Corinthians were making value judgments upon one another based on how showy their gifts were, how loud they could be, how flamboyant they could be. Look at me! Look how amazing I am! I am the most spiritual because I speak the most eloquently in tongues! Look at me.

And I love verse 18. It's downright humorous.

This demonstrates that Paul's main objection is not the practice of tongues so much as it is the value and estimation that the Corinthians were placing upon it. He's quick to say, "Hey, I love tongues." Verse 18, "I'm glad I speak in tongues more than you all." He says, "I wish you all spoke in tongues." That doesn't sound like a guy whose anti-tongues.

And yet when you think of the Apostle Paul, you don't think of a Charismatic faith healer. He was charismatic and he did have faith and he did heal people. But when you think of him, you think of a guy who just loved Jesus Christ. Jesus was the focus of everything.

To live is Christ to die is gain.

I want to know nothing except for Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Paul is straining to reach Christ. And yet, he spoke in tongues more than all of them.

I've often wondered when Paul throws in that little comment in if the Corinthians even knew that Paul spoke in tongues. Perhaps they thought they were greater than Paul because they could speak in tongues and Paul couldn't.

Paul, we really appreciate your instruction here on tongues.

We love your heart of trying to give us guidance on this gift of tongues.

It's really quiet sincere, I can tell that. So that you, truly.

And man, I don't want to discount your words because after all, you've done so much for us, but let's just level with the facts, of course you can't weigh in on this debate, because you can't relate.

You've never experienced this, Paul.

Paul, let the big dawgs run.

It perhaps was a bit of mic drop moment when he said, "I speak in tongues more than you all."

Paul's comment was not a comment of boasting, but a comment to deflate them and get them to focus on the real issue.

Let me give you a parallel. Imagine a bunch of guys arguing about how important it is to learn Greek.

Man without learning Greek you could never understand your Bible.

Greek is like the most important thing in the world you can do as a Christian.

I can't believe those guys over there call themselves serious Christians when they don't even know Greek.

Man, those pastors out there who don't know Greek, they should be ashamed of putting themselves in positions of leadership.

I pity anyone who doesn't know Greek.

And then in walks Wayne Grudem who is one of the great Greek scholars of our day and says, "Hey guys, I'm glad I know Greek more than all of you." But I'd rather worship Jesus in English for one minute in church on Sunday then sit through a thousand classes of Greek with an attitude like that. That's a straight up smack-down. And only Grudem can say that? Because of his status as a Greek teacher, he could say that.

So Paul is rebuking them that they've lost the point, ENTIRELY.

This is what Paul is doing. The point is that gifts are to be used to love others. So the practical outworking of this for the rest of the chapter is going to be this. Guys, if you have to choose between something that has value for one vs something that has value for many, love DEMANDS that you chose the thing that has value for many. Stop making such a big deal out of something that benefits you only. It's great. It's awesome. It's a gift of God to be enjoyed.

If they were to be avoided, Paul would just say, "Hey, you guys are being idiots. Stop it." But he explicitly says, "I wish you all spoke in tongues." "Don't forbid speaking in tongues."

If they had no value we could just be over. But we can't be over because tongues have value. But it just has very little corporate value. So that's the big idea.

Application

Now we'll get into the rest of this passage here next week but I want to end today with an application from verse 20.

I want to give three applications here. Undoubtedly in this room there are different views on spiritual gifts. Paul knows the power of something like this to divide a church.

In fact, the whole reason this is even in our Bibles is because Corinth was having so many problems surrounding this issue.

So Paul gives out the warning, Do not be childish in your thinking. Be mature. In the context what is mature and immature thinking.

1 Immature Elevates the Minor and Downplays the Major. Mature thinking elevates the major and downplays the minor.

In the church at Corinth, they were elevating the gift of tongues. They thought this was like the landmark, hallmark issue. Paul says, "This whole gift of tongues gets last place among the gifts. Dead last." If your in a stadium that seats 33,000 people, this gift gets the very last seat, clear up in the upper decks where nobody can see it. Why? Because it is a personal gift. They were acting immature because they were elevating the minor and downplaying the major.

And we do that same thing. As humans we are so prone to elevate the minors. An immature Christian what doctrines does he think are really important? He wants to fight over sovereignty vs free will, end times positions, he loves theological rabbit trails. Most beginning preachers want to preach on something really obscure. The first sermon I ever preached was here at this church and I was assigned the text and I remember being disappointed that it was just a simple story about Jesus. There wasn't any difficult theological point to uncover. That's immaturity.

But a mature Christian says, all I care about is that people know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection and that they share in the fellowship of his suffering. That's it.

And the reason it's maturity is not because those other things don't matter. Those other things are very important. It's that the way to fix those other things is by fixing your gaze on Jesus. Those other things are controlled and corrected and straightened out by that one singular focus.

It's like trying to ride your bike on the stripe on the road. If you look down six inches in front of you your going to only be able to go super slow and your constantly overcorrecting. But if you fix your eyes way out in the distance, suddenly without even thinking about it, your riding 20mph and your tracking straight on the line.

That's mature thinking. Fix your eyes on the big picture and the rest falls in place. So the specific application here is that spiritual gifts are a secondary issue. If you find yourself in disagreement with someone else, well first of all, don't be surprised. The passages are difficult to understand and no matter what view you take, there are textual difficulties represented in that view.

But the one thing that has no textual difficulties, is abundantly clear and is the whole point of Spiritual gifts anyway, is fix your eyes on Jesus Christ.

2 Immature focuses on self. Mature focuses on God and others.

The Corithians loved the gifts because of what the gifts did for them. They loved the identity they had in exercising their gift. They liked the way they were set apart or honored in a special way. They were desiring the gifts, like Paul told them to, but they were doing it for self. That is immaturity.

And we can do this too. I remember loving to read my Bible when I was younger for me. I wanted to have knowledge so either I wouldn't look stupid or so that I could impress people. And so I learned all this great stuff, but the reason I did it was for me. I was focused on me, myself, not what I could do for others.

That's like immaturity incarnated. And yet this is how we treat so many of the gifts God has given us. If God gives you the gift of mercy or giving and you give generously, all of the sudden you find yourself giving not because you love God, not because you want to build up the church but because you like being known as a generous person. H

Or maybe it has to do with hospitality. You have people over expecting then to be invited over later.

You like teaching because you like being told you are a good teacher.

You like counseling because you like to fix things and being known as a fixer.

Any of the spiritual gifts can be abused this way.

Maturity focuses on others. God has given me this gift so how can I use it to build up others. There's almost an excitement about it. How awesome is it to really just give and give and give and see others light up in response to how God has gifted you. How awesome is it to see God literally working through you to build his church? It's such a blessing to be used by God in that way.

That is life compared to the dead-end, rotting decay of just trying to get others to think you are awesome.

Immature focuses on conformity. Maturity focuses on diversity.

What is childish, evil thinking. Childish thinking when it comes to spiritual gifts is this, "Everyone needs to be like me." This is what the Corinthians were doing. Better is like me. I have this gift, therefore, I am better.

I am the standard for normal and even excellent. So what makes me who I am? And you begin to look for those markers of identity that shape you into who you are and you demand of others that in order for them to be mature they must have all the same markers you do.

Mature thinking says, we are different and that difference is what makes us strong. God can use him or her over me. Her gifts can be different than my gifts and that's great and I will celebrate that. I will build up that person with my gifts and they will be me up with their gifts.

Tongues is not a gift that everyone has, it isn't a central part of the faith, but it is to be used to build up the body. Those who have the gift are not greater than those who do not posses the gift. I think this represents a balanced position. We aren't inflating this gift into some super extreme form of prophesy. We aren't ignoring the gift. It's a merciful way God has given some to praise him and being built up in that praise they serve the body.

I want to open this morning by showing you a picture.

If you ever took an art class on drawing almost certainly you've had to draw a picture similar to this - a set of parallel train tracks that run away into distance demonstrating perspective. Your brain accepts this easily but the fact that it does is pretty remarkable when you start thinking about what's actually going on. You have 2D piece of paper and somehow you have to represent a 3D world in two dimensions. The 2D medium of paper is quite inferior to 3D, but somehow you're able to do it.

Now without getting boringly technical let me explain the only way this is possible. The only way this is possible for a rich medium to be displayed in a poor medium is to use some of the poor medium's properties to represent more than one thing. You have to double up meanings.

So we can illustrate this by overlaying the x,y and z axis. Where is the x axis?

Where is the y axis?

So far, everything is working out nicely. Now where is the z axis?

It doesn't have a z axis, so you have to have to double-use x and y. A little bit of x combined with a little bit of y gives you the best representation of z you can get.

So do you see how this poor medium has to double up meanings to represent the richer medium?

Now let me give you a human example of this. Men, let's say, you walk into the room and you see your wife crying. Why is she crying? There are many possible answers.

She could be crying because she just got hurt in her spirit from an unkind word spoken.

She could be crying because she just got done laughing so hard that tears are just streaming down her face.

She could be crying because she was so filled with joy that a brother she thought would never come to know Jesus called her on the phone and let her know that he just accepted Christ.

You might ask her, honey why are you crying and she might say, "I have no idea."

Here you have the same problem as the complex 3D world trying to map itself onto a 2D canvas. You have the rich, complex emotional world of the human spirit, this incredibly dense, reality trying to express itself in this super poor medium of facial expressions.

The only possible way to take this complex rich medium we call emotion and let it out in the poor medium of expression is by doubling up meanings. You can cry tears of joy and tears of sorrow. And even though they are wildly different phenomenas the same expression is used to represent it.

Now what in the world does this have to do with our passage today? Well, nothing, I just thought it was interesting. Just kidding.

Think about how difficult this problem becomes when you go from this incredibly rich medium so-to-speak of God in heaven, who he is, the God who exists outside of time, the God who spoke this whole universe into existence by the word of his power and now try and map that reality onto our tiny little human frame. It's a bit of a problem.

The medium is woefully inadequate. This is kind of like trying to communicate how to launch a satellite into orbit via smoke signals. The medium lacks sufficient complexity to really get the job done.

Now, today in our study of 1 Corinthians 14 we come to the phenomena that the Bible calls speaking in tongues and we are going to leverage this concept of a rich medium into a poor medium to try and help understand what is going on. Last week we talked about this Joel 2 / Acts 2 promise of the Spirit to come to dwell in all flesh. Now if ever you have an example of a rich medium trying to manifest itself in a poor medium, this is the grand daddy of them all. I don't think you can find a more inadequate container than that. The frame of man is ultra inadequate to manifest the Holy Spirit's presence.

And yet we read of this happening. The Spirit of God, this third person of the trinity, came at Pentacost and indwelt believers and when it did, the most obvious result was speaking in tongues. We'll get into detail here, but just allow that concept to simmer. Tongues then would be the revealing of the infinitely complex deity manifesting itself in this incredibly finite medium of the human frame. And so the tongue of man is being conscripted for a secondary use. Normally it's used to communicate with man but its being used instead to manifest the presence of God. It's a remarkable concept.

Do Tongues Exist Today.

Now the fact that tongues exist should not be even remotely controversial. If you are Christian and take the Bible seriously in any sort of way, this should not even be a question. Of course tongues exist. The Bible speaks of them repeatedly and plainly.

I could have started the message today saying, "I believe in the miraculous sign gifts not because I myself have experienced them but because one of my absolutely favorite teachers told me about his experience.

Repeatedly, he has taught on this subject very openly and without shame.

As part of this unashamed position he even wished this gift on everyone who was in the room at the time.

Not only that, this favorite Bible teacher of mine claimed to have visions and dreams that guided him and he has worked many, many miracles in his life.

Who am I talking about? The apostle Paul. Now a wave of relief rushes over us. Oh, whew, it's only Paul. I was scared you were talking about someone real. Mmmmmm.

No matter what your view of spiritual gifts, we all have a favorite charismatic teacher. We all believe in miraculous spiritual gifts. We all believe in tongues. The only remaining question of controversy is whether tongues exist today and if they do, what is their nature? That question matters because, Paul speaking in tongues (back then) is interesting and all but has little implication for us today. If tongues are a real phenomena today, well then all of the sudden we have a lot of questions.

Usually those questions come in the form of anecdotes.

Maybe you have a friend who grew up in Africa speaking Swahili so he walks into a pentacostal assembly and starts speaking his native language just to see if gets translated correctly and sure enough, what was translated was not at all what was actually said.

Or maybe you have stories of people who came out of the movement and at one point they claimed to speak in tongues and now they tell you, yeah, I was just kind of tricking myself. Yeah, I'm convinced now that it was never real.

Or you ask people about their experience and they say, "Well, it was something I kind of learned." Ahh, see there it is. It's no gift at all. You are just making up sounds. It's a psychological phenomena.

Or maybe you point to scientific research. Tongues have been analyzed by many linguists and nearly all the studies come back the same that whatever tongues are, they are not human languages.

These are the types of things that cause people to just want to say, "Common. Isn't this all a great big giant hoax?

Now there's two problems here. We all need to say, "Yes, all of that is true. Absolutely. Anecdotes are useful but ultimately prove nothing. From a logic point of view, the abuse of a gift doesn't mean that a gift isn't a reality. If a guy abuses his gift of teaching for his own purposes does that then mean that the gift of teaching isn't a real gift.

But the second problem is of course the fact that this pesky chapter of 1 Corinthians 14 is in our Bibles. Darn it. We have to deal with this. What does it mean? And believe me, I've tried my whole life to make it say something other than what it obviously says here.

So better to just be as balanced as we can and say, "Sure abuses exists; of course abuses exist. We wouldn't have 1 Corinthians 14 in our Bibles without an abuse. However, it also appears that the real thing exists which God says is a gift for the purpose of edification."

What we are here to do today is try and discern the truth. Maybe it's obvious but I think worth saying still. Our position doesn't determine truth. The truth should determine the position. The only thing that matters is what is real! If you take a position that gravity isn't real, well, congratulations on your position, but nobody will care. We are all looking at the same chapter in our Bibles and trying to say, "What does this mean for us God?"

Definitions

Now we will have more time in the weeks to come to continue to look into tongues in chapter 14 so we will try to break this into manageable pieces. So here's our approach. Last week we simply asked the question, "What is prophesy?" This week we look at the question, "What is tongues?"

Let's first just define tongues.

This is a pretty neutral definition. I don't think any group would disagree with this definition. Now disagreement begins to emerge when you start to define some of these terms in the definition and particularly the word 'languages.' What do we mean when we say that tongues are languages? Specifically, are they known languages? So Let's dive into the Scriptures and see if we can find an answer.

All our information about tongues comes from really 4 locations:

Acts 2

Acts 10

Acts 19

1 Cor 12, 13, 14.

Depending on your view their might be some allusions to it elsewhere but these are the explicit locations.

Now that is to make the point that one of the best places to answer any question about tongues is actually 1 Corinthians 12-14. Why do I say that? Well, narrative sections are interesting, but they just tell us things that happened and we often times don't know what to do with it. For example, on one occasion, we read that when Saul prophesied he did so naked. Dude, that is gross. What do you do with that? But there's no explanation. It just tells us that it happened. We are told that tongues happen in Acts, and there is some commentary but our only source of TEACHING on tongues and how it is to be understood in the context of church life is 1 Corinthians 14. So let's put it all together and see if we can answer the question, "Are tongues known human languages?"

One place we can start in answering that question is by looking at the Greek word itself. The Greek word for tongues is the word glossa which simply means languages.

In fact, that's the obvious translation. That's by far the most natural translation. So you might ask the logical question well then why, if it's the natural translation, is it not translated naturally? Why not translate glossa language instead of tongue?

You want to know the honest answer? Because of the King James Bible. Back in the year 1611 when they translated the King James version tongue was the word for language. And it's honestly a hold-over from that. As the word gathered a technical understanding as special gift of the Spirit 'tongues' became a useful placeholder to describe this phenomena but a better translation would be simply languages.

In fact, I read an article by Bill Mounce who is one of the more well-known Greek scholars of our day who was on the translation committee for the NIV and in the article he references being asked about this. Why, when you guys got to 1 Corinthians 14 did you not translate glossa languages? Why did you choose the word tongue. Answer: No good reason. It's just tradition. And he was bemoaning this fact. The plain fact is it should be translated languages, NOT tongues. That would be so much less confusing and sound so much less weird. I feel like running a campaign to try to change that and while I'm at it I'd also like to change the U.S. into the metric system because that also bugs me.

Now what do we do with this observation? Many (almost always cessationists) will then argue, "So because this should be translated languages not tongues, we aren't talking about this strange prayer gibberish. We are talking about people being given the gift speaking known languages."

And in additional defense of this position they will turn to Acts chapter 2, the passage we read last week.

Now what is this - some sort of gibberish prayer language? No the text says very clearly that the phenomena here is perceived as known languages.

Clearly, without a doubt, known languages.

Additionally we can turn to Acts chapter 10. In Acts 10 we have the story of Cornelius and Peter getting a vision that the gospel should go to both Jew and Gentile, an almost scandalous thought. How can these Gentiles be part of the kingdom of God? I such a thing even possibel? The Gentiles believe and the Holy Spirit descends. And what happens?

The Gentiles stood their what? Amazed. Absolutely amazed. They were 100 percent blown away. Are you kidding me? The gospel just came to Gentiles!

Now it doesn't say explicitly, but it seems that those present compared it to the tongues at Pentacost. If I had to guess on this one, I'd guess known languages.

The only other example we have is Acts 19. Here we have this strange situation where some people who apparently knew of John the Baptist and had been present and John's baptism but left and then Jesus came on the scene for 3.5 years and died, and they hadn't heard a word of it.

Now again, no evidence is given as to whether these are known languages or not, but again, if I had to guess, I'd say these guys are speaking in known languages.

Why do I say this? Because it appears to me that all three of the examples we have in the book of Acts are all similar in kind. They share a common purpose and therefore a common classification. They are known languages for a reason. Why? Because they are a SIGN. This will be very important later on in the chapter so keep this in mind. If I speak gibberish to you and say, "Check out this sign from God. It's God speaking to through me!" What are you going to say? Well, how do I know you are not just making that up? But if you are a native speaker of Arabic and you know I don't speak Arabic and I bust out in Arabic praising Jesus Christ with a perfect accent all of the sudden your are like, "Dude, that's freaky. How did you do that? God. Whatever I just said, I'd say it's worth listening to." The tongues are validating a message. The Tongues are SIGN that God is present in that moment.

In all cases here in the book of ACTS we have a message that's hard to believe:

ACTS 2 what's the claim? Joel 2 has arrived upon you. That's a pretty massive claim.

In Acts 10 what's the claim? Gentiles are welcome into the church. Again a massive claim.

In Acts 19 what's the claim? The man John the Baptist predicted came but he got nailed to a cross. What would they naturally think? Well, then clearly he can't be the Messiah. John said, the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Sounds like he got it wrong. Now they just have to listen to this random guys word? How would they ever know if what he said was true? Tongues validate the message.

All these examples in Acts fall as evidence that God is present in the point being made. So tongues in the book of ACTS, I think are all, known languages and they function as a SIGN of God's presence in a claim.

And if the proof ended there, well there would be no other view. But that's not all the evidence. The idea that there is another type of tongue comes from 1 Corinthians 14 where we are today. And keep in mind, normally the narrative sections of our Bible are in submission to the didactic sections of our Bible. Paul is directly teaching us here about tongues so we need to listen carefully.

So in this teaching section do we see any evidence that tongues can be something other than known human languages? I think we do.

Now as we read, I'm going to translate this such that every time the word tongues is used, I'm gong to substitute the word unknown language instead because I think it's a better translation and more helpful in the overall comprehension.

Now remember the big idea here is that Paul is talking about the benefit of tongues vs. prophesy in the corporate gathering. Prophesy is always more beneficial. Why? Because it edifies more people.

But that does not mean that tongues does not have a place. And Paul appears to be saying that one of it's places is in personally speaking to God. "For one who speaks in a language speaks not to men but to God"

Now that sure seems to me to be a much different scenario that what we find in Acts 2

In Acts 2 we have the Spirit descending in a mixed setting and the purpose of Acts 2 was to visibly demonstrate to believers and unbelievers alike that the Spirit of God had descended upon Christians and that Joel 2 was being fulfilled in their midst and that Gentiles were being grafted in. You have known languages being identified by NATIVE speakers of those known languages.

That seems to be a long ways away from what is happening here. In fact, there are evidences you could point to in the text that these are not known languages. The text says that the guy speaking in tongues is speaking directly to God. Can't we speak to God in English? Let's just say for the sake of argument you could speak any language in the world, which would you select as best suited for speaking with God? It may sound like a silly question, but it's not unimportant. Why would we need to switch languages to talk to God? Why would a man who is praying just to God need to switch from English to say German? Does God understand German better than English?

Do you see the strangeness of that? A better understanding would seem to be that speaking in tongues is the overflow of direct spirit to spirit communication with God. Since the Holy Spirit is within you, it's a type of prayer to God where words are bypassed. Some have described this as not irrational but trans-rational. Maybe an analogy would be looking into the eyes of your spouse or really good friend and you know the thoughts of the other person without saying a word. You just connect. The smile lets you know that you are loved even though no words were exchanged. Words weren't necessary. In fact, in some ways, that interchange meant more than words.

And in this case the overflow of that communion is what Paul calls here, 'uttering mysteries of the Spirit.' It's why we began with the concept of the rich medium to the poor medium. Sure it might fit loosely under the heading of languages since it's part of communication, but how does the text describe it? He's uttering mysteries in the Spirit. The Spirit of God in you manifested through the incredibly poor medium of your mouth.

And notice that this particular tongue speaking needs an interpreter. Acts 2 needed no gift of the Spirit to interpret. Here you need a gift of the Spirit to interpret precisely because of the fact that it's difficult to find translators around for languages that no humans speak.

So let's now answer the question directly. When it comes to the gift of tongues are we talking about known languages? Answer: Yes and No. It appears that it can be both.

You have what we might call 'miraculous tongues of vindication' where people are given the ability to speak known languages as an supernatural evidence to validate a difficult message. They authenticate a claim.

You have secondly what we might call 'miraculous tongues of edification' where people are filled with the Spirit and out of the overflow of that experience mouth words of praise to God.

Both seem to be evidenced in the Bible.

Now there are about 4 main answers to this question, broadly speaking:

Some pentecostals will claim that speaking in tongues is necessary in order to be saved. So anyone who is a true Christian, according to this view, should speak in tongues.

A degree less than that would be a view that says, this gift is not necessary for salvation but this view is available to all believers and all believers could speak in tongues if they wanted to and we should seek it.

A degree less than that would be a view that says, this gift is available to some and not available to others and it's up to God to distribute as he sees fit.

A degree less than that says, this gift is available to nobody and all manifestations today are fake.

We could call these views: All Must, All Can, Some Will, None Can

Now what's the evidence in the Bible?

I think we can rule out the none can position by simply appealing to the way Paul ends this chapter.

If the gift of tongues was available to nobody, then nobody could forbid it because nobody could speak it. This would be like saying, "do not forbid people miraculously disappearing." You don't have to forbid something that nobody can do.

Now, let's reverse it. Let's say the phenomena really is from God. Why would a person forbid speaking in tongues? Because they are uncomfortable with it. Either they've had a bad experience where someone abused it (which I know, many in the room here have had that). Or maybe you are just generally uncomfortable with the idea. It's weird. That verse is in the Bible for people like us.

To say that God has ceased giving this gift, the burden of proof lies on the guy who says that tongues are not for today? What verse can you point to that says this? We've literally looked at every verse in the NT that talks about tongues and the overall tone and assumption is that is exists. So I think we can rule out the 'NONE CAN' position.

I think we can actually in a single verse rule out both positions 1 and 2. The all must and all can positions. We've already read it. We read it last week.

Now in English, these rhetorical questions could go either way. Not so in Greek. This particular construction demands a no. Do all have gifts of healing? Paul says no. Do all have gifts of helping? No. Do all speak in tongues. Paul says, NO. And this failure to speak in tongues according to the context is not because you have failed to do something correctly, it's not because you didn't ask in the right way. What's the reason stated. It's because God has chosen not to distribute that gift to you.

In addition to this, we could point to the conversion stories we read of in Acts. Nineteen conversions are recorded in the book of Acts and only 2 of them record speaking in tongues associated with those conversions. Now you can' say with certainty that it didn't happen. It's an argument from silence, but it's a reasonably loud one.

So let's answer this question: Who Is Able to Speak in Tongues? Those who God willed to give the gift to.

Now here's are final point. If tongues do still legitimately exist today then what are the implications of it? And again, the primary point of today was just to answer the question, what are tongues? In the weeks to come we will look at the practical implication of these two gifts but let me just end by grabbing a high level implication.

Let's read the text:

Now obviously, in chapter 14, Paul's main point is that prophesy is better in the corporate gathering because it edifies the entire body.

But since today is about tongues, let's not miss the other point he is also making. This type of tongues, 'miraculous tongues of edification' are given by God to build up individuals. So that is the implication. If God has given you that gift, then use it to be strengthened in him. Just like reading God's Word is given to strengthen you, and fellowship is given, so this gift is given for that same purpose. So use it in that way.

Paul says, I wish you all spoke in tongues. Why? Because Paul himself was benefited and built up through this gift.

This is difficult for me to describe because I've personally never experienced this although I have asked God to give me this gift. So because I have not experienced it, I'm kind of like a man trying to describe how to explain what Thailand is like whose never been there. Thailand is a real place and it's effects on people are real and just because I haven't been there doesn't make it not real.

Now on the flip side of this, don't think you are inferior and you can't be built up because you don't have the gift. God has given you other gifts that if you use, you will be uniquely built up in a way that others will not. We all have been given a pathway for personal edification through the use of both our spiritual gifts and the common gifts like prayer, reading God's Word and fellowship with other believers.

So what is the practical implication? Use the gifts God has given you, whatever they are, to be built up in Christ and be open to any gift God may want to give you.

Now in terms of where we are going, now that we've answered from last week, "What is prophesy?" and this week, "What are Tongues?" we are now able to look at the practical sections addressed in the rest of the chapter. So we'll stay in chapter 14 for the next several weeks.

Communion

Now today is communion Sunday. And I want to focus on the connection between communion and the spiritual gifts. Gifts are designed to edify the body. That word edify is kind of churchy word but in Paul's day this was a blue-collar word that came from the construction industry. It just means to build up.

And what are you building up to? What is the edification that is necessary? What are you currently lacking, that if this gift will help you to receive? Answer? The answer is a clear sight-line to the all-satisfying person of Jesus Christ! We are all wandering around with very poor vision of Jesus.

He is not weighty in our minds.

We forget him.

His presence is distant.

And exercising our spiritual gifts, whatever they may be, is a grace God has given to us to make him more present and more real.

Now, you know another one? Communion. God has given us this precious remembrance meal to draw down the reality of the person and work of Jesus Christ into our midst this morning. Communion means common union.

Let's prepare our hearts:

Introduction

We are now into 1 Corinthians 14 and I invite you to turn there with me where today we arrive at the topic of tongues and prophesy. Here's our approach. This week we ask the question "What is Prophesy?" Next week, "What is Tongues?"

For some, just saying those two words, tongue and prophesy, either you want to strap on your running shoes and sprint out of here or you want to strap on your gloves, and you want to fight.

And that fight/flight response probably comes from a legitimate experience where you've been hurt. Perhaps you've been in a hyper-charismatic group where you were told that the sign of a true Christian was speaking in tongues and you never could and you felt shamed. Or maybe you had people repeatedly tell you, "God told me to tell you such and such" and it just never panned out. You got yanked around by someone flippantly claiming to be God's voice. You found out in the end they were just frauds. You see the danger and the manipulation in it. You see the wild, out of control abuses, the unregulated, lack of discernment, the sentimentality and you want to run a million miles away from that. So for every understandable reason in the world you run to the cessationist corner and you put on your boxing gloves.

Or perhaps you've had the opposite experience. You grew up in cessationist camps that made fun of charismatics and pridefully looked down from their high and mighty perch and poked at charismatics like they were some sort of pitied specimen in a jar. But you saw the lack of love, you saw the arrogance, you saw how little of the Spirit of God was really present in all that critique. You saw how dead the whole scene was and you see people over here who are praying and seeing prayers answered and are experiencing prophesy and healings and what feels to you like fresh air and life. And so you gravitate this direction and put on your boxing gloves.

Now, let me just remind us all, no matter where you've come from, no matter what your experience, that an abuse of a gift or the ignoring of a gift is not warrant for disregard for the Scriptures. We all need to come today in humility and ask, "What does the Bible really say?"

All we are after today is what is true.

Now in order for tongues and prophesy to not be divisive, we first need to talk about why issues in general are divisive. This has nothing to do with the church. This is everywhere and is a byproduct of being human.

In politics divisive ideas are known as wedge issues. They function like a wedge into camps. You rarely find people who say, "Well, I don't really care about abortion. I don't really have an opinion on gay marriage." That's pretty scarce. Abortion, immigration, social justice issues, sexuality issues. These are hot button issues. Want to get someone riled up. All you have to do is mention a name, just whisper a trigger word, and out comes vitriolic language of contempt.

And the reason these create such fierce emotional reactions is because this thing is perceived as an attack on something they love. The hot button issues are where two good values collide and can no longer coexist. For example, Everyone loves choice. Everyone loves life. Abortion is where you have to choose one of the two.

And it is for this exact reason that many people, when they just hear the word charismatic and they put on their boxing gloves. Where's the fight. It's time to fight. I'm not giving up my values. They just see the whole thing as a defense of a value, a right/wrong issue. They want to polarize this giant complex thing and ask the question, "What side are you on? Truth or error?" That's very unfortunate because, polarizing issues and developing camps is one of the worst possible ways to handle complex, thorny issues. You are least likely to land at the truth because the whole thing is setup as an either/or when the truth is a both/and. I feel a similar problem when people say polarize issues like sovereignty of God and free will. What side you on, truth or error? Is God in charge of salvation or is man? It's just not a helpful way to frame the question. It's like saying there are only two ways to handle crime. Kill the criminal or let him wander in the street. When we come to spiritual gifts we must acknowledge that both sides are looking at the Bible and there is legitimate truth being observed that created the two views to begin with.

So let's just try as objectively as we can, to just gather data. What is the Bible really saying about prophesy.

What is Prophesy?

Before we read 1 Corinthians 14, remember where it fits. We've been in chapter 13 this great chapter on love, but really all of chapter 13 is a parenthetical aside to a larger conversation. Here's what I mean by parenthetical aside. Consider the following sentence:

The parenthetical expression can be removed without distorting the meaning. And it may be helpful to do this exact same thing with chapter 12-14. Let me give you a visual here of what we want to do:

So here's the big picture of chapter 12, 13, 14

So we're going to chop out that chapter 13, parenthetical aside. We will start with the last few verses of chapter 12, skip 13, and then read the first verse of chapter 14 and I think you'll see the cohesion.

Now remember, Paul is speaking about the importance of the diversity and variety of gifts. Just as we have many members we are unified in one body. Different rolls with a common purpose, given common direction. So Paul ends chapter 12 acknowledging this variety of gifts.

So chapter 12 ended with the command to "earnestly desire the higher gifts." And of course everyone asks, "What in the world are higher gifts?" Are we somehow supposed to rank the gifts? What is the criteria by which we rank them? Well chapter 13 gave us that criteria. Love for others. So the higher gifts appear to be the ones that are most beneficial to the body. So then Paul summarizes and continues.

It's interesting to note this Greek word translated earnestly desire is a really strong one. Often translated covet or even jealous. So God really, really wants us to desire prophesy.

Now there's an important note here that is really a hinge concept that we will come back to a few times today. In most Bible translations, if you look at chapter 14:1 the word gifts is in italics which means it's not there in the Greek. It's being supplied by the translators. And I think this is pretty significant to point out.

A more neutral way to translate this would be: Eagerly desire 'the stuff that the spirit does' especially prophesy. The reason this is important is because it takes it out of the realm of a technical manifestation of the Spirit. Prophesy then would not be this special gifting that is given to a limited group of people. No, this is a manifestation of the Spirit that is available to all Christians.

The Spirit at work in you will give you special gifts, yes of course, that is clear. But the Spirit's work is not limited to special gifting, heaven forbid! The ministry of the Spirit is giant. The Spirit illuminates the Scriptures, convicts us of sin, assures us of our salvation and many, many other things.

And I think what Paul is saying here is that just like we would desire illumination, conviction, assurance, earnestly desire this prophetic work of insight.

Example of NT prophesy.

So let me give you an example of what I mean. Have you ever had a time where you were praying or reading your Bible and God brought to mind a person and you felt so strongly that at that moment you needed to pray for them and maybe even call them up or text them and encourage them in some way?

That is an example of what the NT calls prophesy. And Paul wants all believers to be connected to the Spirit of God in such a way that this happens regularly. God is there anything you want me to do right now? How do you want to use me today at church or in small group? How can I encourage those around me. Those kinds of simple impressions that God gives you is all under the banner of NT prophesy.

Now if you are like me, you aren't automatically ready to sign up for this definition. Initially, this feels like cheapening the Bible to equate that sort of experience with the word Prophesy. When you think prophesy you think, "Thus sayeth the Lord and the prophet Isaiah."

So What is Prophesy Then?

So let's do a little biblical theology of prophesy? Prophesy is not a new phenomena in 1 Corinthians. We see prophesy happening all through the Scriptures. But even though it's not a new concept, you do see a change in the expression of it from OT to NT.

Prophesy defined in the most simple of terms is: God speaking through men.

Now, normally humans don't speak for God. 99.9 percent of what comes out of the mouth of humans is not from God. So under what conditions do humans become mouthpieces for God? And the answer is quite clearly, when the Spirit of God is upon them. This is so blindly obvious when you look at the examples of prophesy in the Bible and yet it's so easy to miss. So let's just do the exercise and establish this connection. Spirit of God comes upon a person -> Prophesy.

For example,

Now we won't get into the story. All I want you to see here is the connection between the Spirit of God and prophesy. Now, so powerful is this influence of the Spirit that really unexpected things happen.

For example, here's an interesting question. Can an unbeliever prophesy? And the answer is absolutely yes. From the Bible's point of view, the answer here is a clear yes.

Do you remember the man Saul? Was Saul a believer? The only reason anyone argues that Paul was a believer is because the Bible says that the Spirit of God was upon him. But anyone ever tries to make this argument I say, have you read the Bible?

Saul hated being rebuked by God,

he was obsessed by jealousy and tried to murder David multiple times,

he loved himself, his glory, his power, he was willing to murder his own son

He went to a witch to call up the dead,

and ended his life by falling on his own sword.

And yet we read Saul prophesied.

Again it happens in chapter 19. It happened a third time in chapter 20. And if you aren't convinced by Saul, well you should certainly be convinced by Balaam. Jude 1.11 says Balaam was:

a false prophet and

is compared to an unreasoning animal heading headlong into destruction

just like Korah in the OT who was swallowed alive by the earth.

Just saying, that doesn't sound like a Christian. And yet, when we actually read the text of Numbers chapter 24 we read of him prophesying

Here's Balaam, an unbeliever, prophesying (speaking for God). Even Caiphas in the NT is an example of this. Remember after Jesus raised Lazarus the religious leaders said, if he goes on like this everyone will believe in him. And the Bible said in that moment, Caiphas prophesied...he became God's mouthpiece, "Don't you know it's better that one man die, then the entire nation?"

What did Caiaphas mean? Let's crucify him before Rome crucifies us. But God spoke through this unbeliever. I'll crucify him so I don't have to crucify you. Do you see? Prophesy is speaking for God.

Believers, unbelievers alike can speak. A witch at endor can speak. Heck a donkey can speak for God.

But the common denominator in all of it is the Spirit of God.

So here's big picture principle #1: Spirit of God is the force behind prophesy. No matter where you turn, OT or NT, this is the case.

Here's big picture principle #2: All Spirit-given revelation needs interpretation and application.

Here's the easiest way to demonstrate this. We are holding in our hands Spirit-spoken revelation. And just like prophesy, parts of it are crystal clear and easy to interpret and easy to apply. Love your neighbor as yourself. That is stupid easy to understand. Although, leave it to Pharisee to make that complicated. Teacher, and who is my neighbor?

But other portions of your Bible are just as obviously revelation but have much less obvious interpretations and even less obvious still applications. When you turn to Ezekiel chapter one and you have flaming wheels inside of wheels or Revelation with dragons trying to eat children, it's quite a bit less clear what is meant.

And this is just to make the simple, obvious point not all revelation is equally clear. We are totally comfortable with that principle when it comes to reading our Bible, but for many of us, it's a harder concept to grasp when it comes to prophesy.

But we need to get comfortable with it because there is a general principal that seems to be in play when we transition from OT to NT. Prophetic revelation is still given but interpretation and application are much less clear. No longer is it, "Thus sayeth the Lord." The examples we are given come in the form of dreams, impressions, images with not-so-obvious interpretations and even less certain applications.

The general vibe that you get as your read the NT examples is that it is less authoritative. For example, women are encouraged to prophesy but they are not allowed to teach. If prophesy was the same authoritative, thus-sayeth-the-Lord, type of thing why make this authoritative thing allowed by women but not something less authoritative like teaching?

Paul, we are going to see later in the chapter, tell us to exercise discernment in prophetic matters, but unlike the OT doesn't tell us to stone prophets who get it wrong.

Another thing often pointed out which is quite powerful if you think about it. If NT prophets were anything like OT prophets you'd expect that once the apostles fell of the scene, all the attention would turn to the prophets. They would become the new source of authority. But instead Paul encourages, "Keep the Faith once delivered to the saints, Guard the deposit."

We don't have time to get into all the examples, but perhaps the best example of this is in Acts 21.

In Acts, we have the story of the spread of the church and Paul is going from town to town, city to city and he's regularly getting beat up and thrown into prison. Paul is getting ready to go back to Jerusalem.

So right there, that alone is interesting. Women who were prophesying. Are we getting out pens and writing down new pages of Scripture here? Whatever you want to say about this it appears to be of a caliber less than something like Isaiah or Jeremiah.

So we aren't told exactly how Agabus received this revelation, but presumably through an impression or image in his mind. He sees in his minds eye Paul bound by his hands and feet. And he is sure this is from the Lord so he feels stirred in his spirit to tell this to Paul. So let's break this down. The revelation was the image of Paul. Clearly Agabus felt this was from the Lord. But that's where the revelation stops. Now he is left to interpret it. So he adds his interpretation. Well, it must be that the Jews will arrest Paul and turn him over to the Gentiles, just like they did with Jesus, just like they've done in every other city.

But the problem is, that's not what happened. It was the Romans who bound Paul. The Jews didn't turn him over to Rome at all. Agabus had a genuine revelation but he had an imperfect interpretation. And the application was abysmal.

So Luke and the others gathered and tried to apply this interpretation. Clearly that means you shouldn't go Paul. But Paul said, why do you think this vision means I shouldn't go? This is God's gracious warning to me of what to expect. The revelation is true, the interpretation is mostly correct, but your application is dead wrong.

See, this is more the nature of prophesy in the NT. If you put together the composite picture, it's certainly not like OT prophesy. That much is obvious. Clearly prophesy changed. I think you summarize it this way. OT prophesy God gave you the revelation, interpreted it for you, and applied it for you.

In the OT you have dudes, like Balaam riding his donkey, the Spirit descends upon the donkey and starts talking to him. That my friend is revelation. That's God's voice. Obvious revelation. The donkey interprets, "Balaam, your an idiot." Application is pretty obvious. "Go prophesy over Israel."

NT prophesy, God gives you revelation and most of the time it just ends there. The interpretation and application are not as clear.

Agabus gets a picture of Paul bound. Revelation to be sure. But what am I supposed to do with that? Interpretation and application are less clear.

Why the Change

Now why this dramatic change from OT prophesy to NT prophesy? I think we can point to a fundamental shift that happened at Pentacost that gives us good understanding of why this changed happened and hopefully when this is explained it will suddenly makes sense.

All that time we spent establishing the connection between the Spirit of God and prophesy was needed to make this point. If the ministry of the Spirit, the undeniable force behind prophesy, changed at Pentacost, then we would also expect the gift of prophesy to change along with it - and it does.

Now flip back in your Bibles to Joel 2. I wish we had time to get into this in detail, but maybe our limitations are good so we can just get the big idea. Joel is describing this great and terrible day of the Lord when he will come in judgment upon the earth.

And in his prophesy he predicts a Messianic day that is on the horizon where you get a combination of judgment on the wicked and blessing for the righteous. In verse 21 we are in the section where he is looking forward to this blessing for the righteous.

So when Messiah comes there will be this new outpouring of the Spirit that will result in what? In prophesy.

Now if you combine this with Jeremiah 31 that when Messiah comes there will no longer be the need for a law. Why? Because he will write the law upon their heart. He will take the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.

And if you combine those two things, with Jesus' words that when he departs he will send a helper who will teach you all things.

You package all that together and a picture emerges where we have this indewlling Spirit of God who will communicate directly with your Spirit in a way that was not done previously in the OT. A way that is more widely experienced perhaps but less specific. Rather than a descent of the Spirit on a man that violently seizes him for a moment so that he can be the mouthpiece of God, this seems to be a manifestation of the Spirit that is always present in us as believers. Does that make sense? Now in Acts 2 we see this long-awaited, prophetic moment unfold before our eyes in the pages of Scripture.

Now there is lots to say about Joel 2, Acts 2 but the point we are trying to make here today is that Peter is saying, "Guys a new era has dawned in which prophesy becomes a thing we experience because of this new ministry of the Spirit of God." We are in an era of prophesy.

Do you see that? And do you see the length to which he goes to describe just how extensive this phenomena will extend. To the young and old. To the sons and to the daughters (kids both boys and girls) even on your slaves. This is available to all who have the Spirit of God. We are in the age of prophesy that we have awaited.

The idea is that Spirit of God is in you now. And since he is in you of course he has direct access to your brain and should just generally be influencing you at all time. It's not a coming down crashing upon you experience like in the OT. It's the slow, steady influence.

Now again, clearly this is a massive change from thus sayest the Lord, but it is genuine revelation. Now of course the question that arises, is what in the world does this look like? Let's get practical.

Practical Questions

Chapter 14 is all about the practical. And we will get there in the weeks to come. For the purposes of today let's just read the first six verses and draw out a few practical closing points. We will have time next week to get into more of the details.

So notice that the main point of prophesy, unlike the OT version, is for the purpose of encouragement and consolation and upbuilding. Now Paul continues again to demonstrate that the main point is to build up the body of Christ.

What's Paul's point? His point is that prophesy is one of the main ways that God can build up his church.

Don't downplay the gifts.

So even though it is less authoritative then OT prophesy that does not mean it less edifying.

By despising.

So the first thing to say is this. Don't despise prophesy.

There are attitudes among some that this NT version of prophesy is fluff and not real. The prophesies that come out are like fortune cookies. Just general things that could apply to anyone. And for some, they just get cynical. And they despise those who want to obey the Lord. That my friend is quenching the Spirit. And I hope that quenches any despising attitude. We need to be ultra careful not to assume that we are not limiting God through unbelief.

If it's hard for you to use the word prophesy, then use a different word. Lord help me speak to this person. Help me to encourage them. Just pray these types of prayers.

Just because it is less easy to interpret and apply doesn't mean it's not real and beneficial. Isaiah is less easy to interpret and apply than Matthew. Does that mean we chuck it?

Now that was a word for those on the end of the spectrum that struggle with believing this is an activity of the Spirit. For those on the other end of the spectrum who regularly experience this, here's something for you. Continue to exercise this gift but please don't elevate this gift beyond what it was intended. And there are two ways to elevate in an unhealthy way:

Language. Don't ever say, "God told me to tell you." or "God spoke to me last night." That language is super unhelpful. If it's from God then let the truth of it be discovered in the outworking of it. And if it's not from God then let it pass away with the noise of everything else we say.

So much of the problem here comes from bad language or just misunderstanding of language. For example, if I say to you, "I had an out of body experience."

To one person that might mean, "You are into new age mysticism. Through meditation and prayer you were able to attain Nirvana." To another person who really likes In-n-out burgers that might mean you just bit into a double-double. Can I get an amen?

If someone hears you use that word, "Out of body experience" and maps the attainment of Nirvana onto your in-n-out experience that's a pretty gross misunderstanding of what you meant.

And I see this happen all the time when it comes to spiritual gift terminology.

"The Lord speaks to me all the time." "The Lord told me to tell you." "I have a word of knowledge I need to share with you."

"I feel led to tell you.." "I felt prompted to tell him..." "I was praying for you today and just feel like I should..."

Status.

Don't forget that as cool as it is for God to speak through you, it gives you no additional value, it's not a sign of anything significant in you. It's a gift.

What does God value? He values those that point to him. This is the essence of prophesy.

Do you remember john the baptist? Jesus said of John the baptist two things. He was the greatest man ever born of a woman. And you know what else Jesus said? He never did a sign. Why was he the greatest man born of woman? Because he pointed to Jesus. Let all your words point to Jesus not to self.

Running after What is Real

 

INTRO:

Good morning…It’s great to be here and be able to look at a passage from the Bible with you this morning.  If you are new or visiting, we do this because we believe that the God who created the universe, the God who spoke the worlds into existence also spoke to us as humans through his word, and that’s what the Bible is.  He spoke to us because he loves us.  And that is what we are going to look at again today….LOVE.

So, read this familiar verse with me and we’ll talk a little bit today about WHY love is the greatest and WHY we should run after it with everything we have. I’m going to read this verse in several different version so we can really get the point.

1 Cor. 13:13

 

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (ESV)

 

Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love ​— ​but the greatest of these is love. (CSB)

 

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (NIV)

 

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (NLT)

 

 And now there remain: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love. (AMP)

 

 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. (MESSAGE)

We are in the LOVE CHAPTER as it is well known.  Maybe you’ve been to a wedding like I have been recently and heard this read.  And it’s deceptive, because in something being so familiar it can actually be something that we don’t comprehend its beauty at all. Like:

The miracle of the birth of ANOTHER child

The loveliness of the face of a spouse smiling at us

Satisfaction of a delicious meal

The majesty of a sunset

These are all things that we can grow accustomed to and really miss the power of them.  I remember when I lived in Italy and one of my jobs was to take students to the Colosseum and all the other ancient sites on various trips.  I remember getting off the subway the first mite I went to the Colosseum and I was like WOW I cannot believe this.  But by the 100th time I went there, the Colosseum had become actually underwhelming to me.

And the LOVE chapter can be the same way.  Especially for us right now.  If you re just joining us, we have studied this chapter for the past 3 months! So, maybe we are having love fatigue?  I can just see it, some of you are crouched like a lion painting to pounce onto chapter 14 and all the arguments about how the gifts work or how you think they shouldn’t be in operation.  Has love already gotten old?

Personally, this has been one of the most powerful studies I have ever been involved with.  I wish I could just stay here in 1 Corinthians 13 for another year just re-studying LOVE. Don’t worry, we won’t stay here forever, and apparently the other guys don’t want to talk too much since they’ve only given me one verse today!  But I somehow managed to make a long sermon out of it!

But me wanting to stay in this chapter isn’t so much because I don’t want to look at other things, but because I need it.  I hope that as you have looked at LOVE you have realized that you need more.

That’s kind of the point that Paul was making to this church in Corinth, isn’t it?  They were so full of pride, ready to argue about anything. They would argue about:

Who was the best speaker / teacher

Who among them was working the best for God

Legal disputes

Morality

What they would eat and why it was right

Marriage and singleness

The minutia of worship services like head coverings

The practice of communion

AND of COURSE WHO WAS THE most spiritual in their gifts and ministries

They were fostering a culture of competition and division instead of collaboration and loving unity.  And so as Paul started in chapter 12 to address the idea of what being spiritual is really all about what its outworking could look like, He has made it very clear by placing in the middle of this section, the LOVE CHAPTER.  To be truly spiritual is to love.

It’s not like Paul was just putting this chapter in as a buffer so we could have a nice poetic break in between two hard to understand doctrinal passages.  He has put it here, centrally, because it is the central point.  Love is the center of all true spirituality.

Last week Jason helpfully gave us a powerful picture of the preceding verses, verses 8-12 that say:

Paul says that the gifts of the spirit that the Corinthians are focusing so much on are one day going to be out of date and defunct.   Remember?  Jason said it was like a massive computer drive that was bigger than a briefcase and only stored 10 MB of material, and cost 40 something thousand dollars compared to our thumb drives that hold gigabytes and cost 10 bucks!

They are like that old carphone or fist cell phones that looked like a huge brick with a long antenna, when the smart phone has now come!  Why would you use one of those things now except for comedic effect??

When the new heavens and new earth come with the coming of Jesus, and we are fully known, we won’t need spiritual gifts.  Paul says that tongues, knowledge and prophecy are going the way of the dinosaur eventually.  HUGE, especially for a people so narcissistically fixated on their own spirituality and their gifts like the Corinthians.   Seriously the Corinthians were like those people that you talk to and try to vary the subject and they say…anyway, now let’s talk about me again!

Well, today, we’ll cap off the Love chapter with this one verse, verse 13, and let me give you the sense of where it’s headed.  Paul first me nations the Permanence of LOVE

The Permeance of Love

 

“These three remain (abide)”

 

Rom. 8:24 - hope will come to fruition

2 Cor. 5:7 - faith will become sight

It’s debatable and a little harder than you would think to understand this passages.

Some think it means that these three are the most important right now for the Corinthians (which they are)

Some think that it means they are all valuable and love is the eternal one - the only one that will endure

Some think that they all three will endure for eternity.

It’s probably best to see that they are the most important now AND they will be abiding together FOREVER as a triad.

These three are tied together, they are used together all over the New Testament, look at a couple passages with me:

1 Thess. 1:3

Col. 1:4-5 - love seems to spring from hope…

Gal. 5:5-6

Eph. 4:2-5

One commentator said: “His sentence is so constructed that if faith and hope remained only until we enter heaven, love, too, would remain only that long. It is impossible to drop faith and hope at the golden portal and to take only love with us. Such a construction is made impossible in still another way, namely when Paul adds with strong emphasis: “these three.” He ties a band about these three as if, after naming them, he asks us to stop a moment and to contemplate these three which constitute one great unit, the supreme class of spiritual possessions, the class that endures eternally in contrast with the other class which endures only for time.”

 

So, it seems right that they all endure.  WE will always be trusting God to hold us, even in eternity….we will always look forward to all that he will do and unveil in eternity future (whatever that means!) because heaven isn’t static.

Even love will be different in heaven because we won’t just have the desire to love and have love be a burden, but we will have the delight of love as we all are perfect and love each other perfectly!

But what he is really talking about more than the permeance of love in this verse, is the Priority of love and here’s the argument that he book ends bye saying “Love never ends” in verse 8, and “love remains” in verse 13.

The Priority of Love

Tongues, Knowledge & Prophecy will pass away

Tongues, Knowledge & Prophecy are imperfect

Tongues, Knowledge & Prophecy are less mature

Faith, Hope & Love are more of a priority

Faith, Hope & Love will together always be more of a priority

LOVE is always the greatest priority, run after it

Paul tells us that the triad of faith, hope and love totally trump the triad of tongues, prophecies and knowledge.  If this was a 3 on 3 game, we know who is going to win. Every. single. Time.

Faith, Hope and Love are the virtues or graces that overwhelm the gifts.  They are the evidence of real spirituality above the gifts.

So look, ALL the Corinthians can talk about is their gifts.  Paul said this back in chapter 1 and he kind of mocked them for it.  He said oh yeah you are SO Blessed….You are like KINGS.   They go on and on about their gifts of speech and revelation, and so this packs a punch when Paul says, yeah there’s something better….Gifts are kind of fun, its great to get a gift on your birthday….but a gift doesn’t compare with a virtue that enables you to live in a state where you can even have the ability to use the gift.  It’s no good to get a gun or a bow if you don’t have sight to look and aim it where to shoot - you’ll probably just kill someone with the gift! So virtues are essential while gifts are extras. And Paul says, stop playing around….I’m talking about faith, hope and love - those are the real evidences that you are filled with God’s spirit!

And, in order to see just how great love is as a priority, I think we need to reflect again on what he is saying and what faith and hope are.  Do we really understand just how amazing Faith and Hope are?

Look at FAITH  One person defined it this way in interpreting Hebrews 11:1

“A God graced ability to trust in the hoped-for promises of God and live expressing them as realities to show that trust.  In this trust there is a conviction that gives evidence of those realities because as you trust, you see them happening and become more certain of their ultimate truth and reality.”

In other words, God gives the promises, he gives you the ability to believe those promises and as you do, life changes, which becomes the evidence that the promises are real and have effect.

This is very different from blind faith. This is trust which leads to reality and real evidence that helps you trust more.  And this is amazing!   Just take a look at the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 for a some examples.

A guys named Noah who God told him to build a massive cruise ship and told him it would “Rain” even though it had never happened before. Think about that, for years pounding away, people mocking you and you just keep building.  Then one day some animals start showing up, and your thinking ok, looks like this premise was for real…I felt it I staked it all on it, and here’s some evidence…then you get in and the door closes and there’s little more trust, then finally you hear the rain start the fall…

But you are thinking, thats a fairy tale…ok, let’s get real, here’s another one

A guy named Abraham. God told him to up, change his entire worldview on who and how to worship… leave his entire family and go to “a place I will show you” and I will make your descendants “like the stars in the sky.”  So, he gets going lives in tents his whole life, waiting for a city whose builder and maker is God, and currently all his descendants are living in the land and still lobbing bombs and fighting over who should get it.  Because God gave a promise and he trusted it, he lived it, and the world was changed.

Think about how amazing faith is!  One more:

Moses and the people of Israel. They were slaves and lived under the most powerful empire in the world.  Moses gets banished and meets a bush that says it is God speaking to him.  God through the bush tells him to go to the world ruling dictator and tell him to let go of his economical stability and workforce and let the Hebrews go.  Moses speaks each time God tells him to trusting in His promises and God smacks Pharaoh and Egypt down until they are ready to send them away with a huge severance package.  Then as they leave, God parts the water and they actually walk through an ocean, trusting they would make it and it wouldn’t wipe them out!

That’s faith in the Bible….and we could tell stories of faith throughout the 2 millennium since…One of. My favorites is a lady named Gladys Alward…She sort of just got on a train and ended up in China…long story short she adopted one at a time, what would amount to an entire village of children really.  Then when China and Japan were at war, she hiked through the mountains with this tribe of children to get them all to safety….amazing faith!  God said to take care of the orphans and widows and she did despite the cost! She lived as if God’s word was real and He would do what he said and provide for children….

And for us that means faith is a beautiful grace by which we can:

Plug away day by day despite others around us thinking our faith and trust in Christ is foolish

Go wherever and do whatever God wants us to do to walk in obedience to his word.

As a church, obey the great commission and preach the good news of Jesus and reach people with the gospel and make disciples of Jesus…speaking the gospel because we believe it is powerful and will actually change lives.

Let me encourage you in a way that this has already happened through FCBC.   If you remember, a little more than a year ago, some of the leaders and quite a few people were sent out from us to start a new church and reach people in another part of Boise.

Today, Jason is preaching at Table Rock church, and actual real, new church that exists because in Faith, those who were sent, and FCBC stepped out to follow what Jesus said and go out to proclaim the gospel.  No one knew what would happen, no guarantees, just faith that Jesus has told us to go and to send…Well here is an update from Ryan Eaggy, the pastor of Table Rock…he says

FROM RYAN EAGGY:

 

We celebrated our one year anniversary this last week on April 22. In that one year God has grown Table Rock from a  core team of about 30 people (including kids!) to about 130 weekly attenders. We have four Life Groups around the Treasure Valley and are getting ready to multiple a couple more this summer. We have a growing group of youth who meet every-other Wednesday (K-5 and 6-12). This last year we held two community events, Carol’s at the Depot and The Depot Eggstravaganza that were very well attended by the neighborhood and unbelievers (about 300 on Christmas and about 250 on Easter). Praise God for all the opportunities he is giving us to spread the gospel in our part of Boise, at BSU, and with our friends, family and neighbors. 

Praise God!  Loads of new people in an area of Boise hearing about Jesus. The fruit of faith…..

I could go on because the bible says staggering things about faith:

Faith is the gift of God that actually Makes us at peace with him

Faith in Christ gives us all the righteousness of Jesus as a credit to our account with God

Faith is to be how we live every moment…anything done outside of faith is sin…

Faith is what actually overcomes all the evil in the world that fights against God’s glory in our lives….

Faith is amazing. We need more of this faith….

Now, look at HOPE:

Hope is perseverance in faith. We believe God in His promises and we are acting them out in trust in Him, but we need to often endure through realities that don’t seem to match up with what we believe.

A Working Definition of Hope

“Hope is a sure expectation that is based on solid realities looking to its coming consummation, the final possession and enjoyment of all for which we now hope.  With Hope we find motivation in the realities that don’t seem to match up with the trust we are placing in God’s promises as we live them out.”

In other words…Fatih is trust in action, hope is the motivation for that action and belief….

Faith calls the future promises of God into our reality of living and Hope looks to the future to endure while we don’t see our faith come to full fruition.

Fatih is the calling of God’s kingdom into our everyday lives by trust in Him, But Hope is the vision of His coming kingdom that keeps us motivated and going.

So, Hope is an amazing engine to keep us going…Can’t live without it!  Faith and Hope working together are absolutely essential for everyday in life.  What amazing graces!

With all that said, look at LOVE, LOVE IS the PRIORITY

This is really where Paul has wanted tot take us again to finish off the love chapter…

Paul needs to say something more about love…and this is it.  He has spoken at length about it and he says now that little bit more to drive the point home….this is the capstone of what he said was the most excellent way.  The way that is so far beyond any spiritual practice…. “Here Paul’s praise of love reaches its climax or zenith. Not only is love superior to spiritual gifts that are partial and will come to an end, but also it is superior to virtues that are absolutely essential to being a Christian.”

WHY?

Well, for a few reasons

LOVE IS THE FOUNDATION. Paul had made indirect reference to faith and hope in the statement in v. 7 that love “always trusts” and “always hopes,” suggesting that those two virtues are undergirded by, and particular manifestations of, love.

LOVE CAN’T BE FAKED . While faith and hope are amazing virtues, they can also be deceptively swapped out for false faith and misplaced hopes. Jesus said this himself in Matthew 7:21-23.

Let me illustrate that with this story….See this house?  This is the house of William Shakespeare in Stratford Upon Avon in England.

It’s a beautiful house! But one problem….Shakespeare stopped living here shortly after he was married.  Now the information historically is admittedly incomplete.  But, it seems Shakespeare married his wife under some sort of pressure, perhaps because he got her pregnant….then we don’t hear from him for awhile and then all of a sudden he has stepped out to London London, writing great works, fulfilling his hopes of becoming a famous author….The problem?  His wife and children are nowhere to be found.  It seems this writer of great love dramas, left love for his ambitions and hopes. And this illustrates how someone can miss the plot so to speak.  Can make other priorities over the one thing that should be a priority…

And that is more often than not ourselves and our pursuits as the priority.

 

It wasn’t just in Shakespeares age, we now live in an age of that is  “in the midst of a suffocating self-love in our modern and postmodern culture.  The Bible is clear that our real hunger is to know the one true God revealed in its pages. Only in doing so will we satisfy our cravings for security (faith), find the purpose for which we exist (hope), and be able to live free from slavery to self (love).”

“Instead we have substituted other things for the three cardinal virtues such that “instead of dependence on God for our lives (‘faith’), we have substituted a mental assent to historical data that leads to making ‘decisions’ about God. Rather than trusting in God’s promises for our future (‘hope’), we have fallen back on a wishful thinking that is informed by our desires for heath and wealth. Hence, although called to consider the needs of others more important than our own needs (‘love’), we seek money, sex, and emotional gratification at any cost.”  So we can fake the others but not love….

LOVE IMAGES GOD

- IN HIS TRINITY

Our version of love is sad, solitary and unsatisfying as depicted in this pop song:

Gonna love myself, no, I don’t need anybody else

Gonna love myself, no, I don’t need anybody else

(Hey) (I love me)

Gonna love myself, no, I don’t need anybody else

Gonna love myself, no, I don’t need anybody else

(Hey) (I love me)

Yet we have a high and rising rate of suicide in this generation. It is cleat our self love doesn’t work.  And it doesn’t work because it isn’t love.  It is narcissism.

Love actually can only exist in the Christian worldview….You have polytheism and its competing Gods, Monad gods like in certain monotheisms where God cuts a solitary figure all alone and essentially needs humans in order to love.  Only with a triune eternal God can you have a co-equal love out of which he can unselfishly flow and model what his agape love is as expressed in Patience, kindness etc.

IN HIS Nature

Carson reminds us that while Scripture tells us “God is love” (1 John 4:16), “it is difficult to imagine how they could have said that God is faith, or that God is hope.”

IN HIS CROSS

As 1 John 3;16 says: ‘By this we know his love, that he laid down his life for us.”

“Love is therefore the greatest of the three, because by it the human race has been renewed.”

On the cross…God was being patient with you bearing with your sin…kind to you in to judging you directly, joyful for you as he endured the cross to purchase salvation….

LOVE MAKES US LIKE GOD

Love alone makes us like God. “For love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God,” 1 John 4:7. Also v. 12: “If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us.” Especially v. 16: “God is love; and he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.”

When we are patient, etc we participate in the very life and reality of God.

 

The Pursuit of Love

This is the one application point that Paul makes at the culmination of all his eloquence describing the love of God and the love we are to live in as his people….

He literally says RUN, RUN, RUN after love….set your heart on it, purpose you will have it, seek every opportunity to practice it

He uses a word that is used in the Bible that go after or persecute Christians…its with that kind of intensity…

It’s the same kind of picture we see in Luke 15 in the parable of the prodigal sons…The Father runs after both the sons…the cold, dead moralistic church going older son, and the hedonistic rebellious rude and disrespectful younger son…THE FATHER RUNS.  God has run after us in Christ…HE runs after you now no matter where you are at…You need to know and feel that…

This is why this is so important…Love is the only real thing…

Tim Anstine Quote from First Wednesday about the REALLY REAL

 

“We have been invited into a miracle…The first two chapters of Genesis are an invitation into the miracle the Trinity is doing….

The crazy thing…Define the really real.  What is the really real, at the end of the day what is real…You can’t say space…space is something not nothing. IT is an incredible energy well, the fabric of space itself is energy…You can’t say atoms…You look at me and all you see is electrons, that isn’t reality…

What is the really real….?  The interplay of the Trinity. Before there was time before there was space before there was energy, chemistry and physics…you had the perfect interplay between the father son and spirit, in perfect love, in perfect joy, in perfect contentment…and in perfection they said let us make man in our image. In order for you and I to be here today he had to speak in the fabric of mathematics and space and energy and time and atoms and molecules.  I believe what Gen. 1 & 2 are is an invitation to say here is the interplay of the LOGOS.

The universe did as we know it today did not function until the end of day 6.  If you look at the beautiful omnitriun perfectum (there’s perfection in three).  You look at the way the original Genesis…Look at the two triads of that first section of Genesis.

There is a triad of form. form, form, form….There is a second triad of fill, fill, fill…

The language there is so amazing, because I can’t paint unless I speak in the canvas to existence…speak in the brushes, and speak in the paint. First three days, speaking in gravity, speaking in chemistry, speaking in atoms, the he starts to paint…and what he paints is unbelievably beautiful.  And then the ultimate is that he rests on day 6 knowing that you and I would be right here right now and have this relationship with him.  Thats the interplay of the really real, knowing that you and I would be here right now, worshiping him…”

faith and hope are the grace virtue that are conduits for the reality of love…

BUT Love is the relational reality!

 

So we are to run after this relational reality that mirrors and images our God.

Here are some ways to apply this as we close….this is what we run after.

The text tells us to run after it in regards to unity around the gifts of the Spirit. Look we are approaching what could vibe a contentious chapter.  You may think we teach it right, you may disagree.  And while that is not unimportant, it is secondary.  There are godly and good bible interpreters on the spectrum of interpretation about tongues and prophecy, but there is something more important.  We would be just repeating he Corinthians prideful mistakes if in the coming weeks we have strife and disunity over the views of the gifts that are presented or that we are personally convinced of.  The fact is we are going to have divergence of belief in this church on this topic.  There is no way to avoid it…So what do we do?  WE LOVE! Constantly shocked that we can hear a sermon on love and then create further disunity rather than unity - what Paul is attempting to do among the Corinthians.  He is attempting to unify their polarized opinions and fragmentation as a body that is from the root of pride.  That is evident and clear in the entire book…

Listen to this quote from Don Carson as we set our hearts to run after love as we talk about theological views with a lot of emotion and experience and baggage attached to them.

When we get to heaven, we won’t be debating who was right….Our eyes will meet as our common faith and hope in Christ come to fruition and we will remember….MAN I LOVED YOU EVEN WHEN WE DISAGREE AND NOW WE GET TO BE HERE TOGETHER!

And that same view could be said for any conflict.

RUN AFTER LOVE IN EVERY CONFLICT. - Proverbs 10:12 “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers over all wrongs. If that is in church life, or in family life….Run after it….you can disagree, it’s just that you are looking to make that other person look better, to bless them, to help them, not to look for a reason to argue.  There is an issue, there is a problem and you deal with that as a team looking to help one another…with the steadfast commitment to love one another no matter what.

Run after Love in your marriage and family life. Guys our wives are not just a side distraction.  Paul says we ought to love our wives like Christ loved thee church.  Run after making time with her…You are imaging the Trinity, you are experiencing realness as you learn to talk and share together and to commune with God together…Moms and das, kids and teens…Build a fellowship within your family that is really real.  Don’t just look parents at what annoys you in your kids, but celebrate the relationship and time you have…kids don’t fall into the trap of our age that says that being with your family is boring - you need to pursue other more exciting things…learn what is real now and enjoy it ….express together as a family the love and kindness and gentleness that IN eternity you’ll look back on and say we got to experience that together in the midst of a broken world and we just get to continue now…

Run after Love by living and serving together as a body….That’s what Paul has been getting at in this whole section…He’s told them they are gifted to serve…now serve together in love…I loved that we got a chance to do this yesterday at the Spring cleanup! Look at some of these pictures….It’s not so much about what we accomplished, but that we have been together and loved one another…Serving is just a context to run after what is really REAL!!!

In eternity I will forever remember that after this picture was taken GLENN leaned in and gave his wife a big kiss….Or I’ll remember how Robert and Bill laughed as they put me to shame in getting my job done for me so quick!

We need to make more time, not less to be together.  All of our pursuits are great, all of our lives with our families and living out our faith individually are great…but what an amazing joy that we can serve together now as a body and practice doing what is the really real for eternity….

Run after love by continuing to realize that Jesus loved you and died for you while you were an enemy of God….Look for people who don’t like you, who don’t like that your a Christian and run after them. Show How great Your father is…Image Him in his love, show them what is really real.

IF YOU AREN’T A CHRISTIAN….I AM INVITING YOU INTO THE GREATEST THING, THE ONLY REAL THING IN THE UNIVERSE. The Love of God as given in Christ on the cross for you to be guilt free, shame free, to have know you are loved by a patient father who only has kind thoughts towards you and wants your best, who will give you good gifts and more than that spend eternity loving on you as you trust and hope in all his goodness for you….Come to God through Jesus.  Stop trying to get what you need by loving yourself…Receive the Love of God through Christ!

Let me pray for us a prayer that Amy Carmichael the great missionary prayed as we close.

Give me the Love that leads the way The Faith that nothing can dismay The Hope no disappointments tire The Passion that'll burn like fire Let me not sink to be a clod Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God

So we are through our Easter series and returning back into our study of 1 Corinthians with earnest. But if we are going to accomplish this with any sort of effectiveness we need to find a mental on-ramp to get back into the flow of what Paul has said thus far in the book.

Let's do a review. If you remember, the sin of pride is threatening to tear apart the Corinthian church. And it's taken on a lot of different forms.

Pride in celebrity teachers. I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of Cephas.

Pride in being esteemed as progressive both in terms of moral tolerance and philosophical elitism. They were proud of their tolerant views of sexual freedom. They liked the idea of being respected, well educated, esteemed in the world's eyes.

And most recently in chapter 12 we see pride in the use of Spiritual gifts. Certain gifts are structured such that they garner greater attention and recognition.

And Paul tries to address this by saying listen, we are all critical indispensable members of the body of Christ. He compares us to the various parts of the body. Equal value with different rolls. Every human to even survive needs a liver and spleen and lung. But rarely are these ever noticed. It's always the eyes. They hair. The lips. And that is how spiritual gifts work. There is inordinate attention given to certain gifts because of the way we are wired.

And in the case of the Corinthians, the spiritual gifts that were getting inordinate attention was the supernatural revelatory gifts. And you can understand why!

If God is supernaturally giving you the ability to speak in tongues, a language you don't know, well that's pretty impressive.

If God is supernaturally giving you a special message, if he's giving you the gift of prophesy, that is going to garner a bit of attention.

And God was apparently doing that in the Corinthian church. He was giving these Corinthian believers supernatural revelatory gifts. And the problem of course is they were taking credit for those gifts. They were making superiority distinctions between themselves based on gifts given to them. And the insanity of this is beyond words, to have a gift given to you and then somehow think you are better than others because you got the gift. If 1000 people walk in the door, and one person gets the door prize, does that winner now have grounds for boasting because of some great thing he has done? It just fell on him.

Spiritual gifts, according to Bible are not given because of merit! They are

UNDESERVED.

Raw mercy.

Free things sprung upon us that are completely uncaused by anything we do.

But they are special and they do create distinctions. And when anyone is given special, privileged distinction it's human nature to credit self with what makes us special.

For example, imagine if you were given the ability to heal anyone you wanted at will with just a wave of the hand. It required no effort and there was 100 percent healing 100 percent of the time instantly.

You'd feel pretty special.

You'd instantly acquire all sorts of attention.

You'd instantly be sought after and people would be bowing down and worshiping you.

Even though you did nothing to receive the gift. Even though you don't even know how it works. You'd take credit for it. That's the nature of the human heart. It's that sort of thing that was happening as the revelatory gifts were being experienced.

There were division arising as they were comparing gifts and making value distinctions based on the gifts God gave them. Completely absent was the attitude Paul expresses in 1 Corinthians 15:10, "But by the grace of God I am what I am..."

So Paul is trying to fight this evil spirit of making value distinction based on gifts given to us. He's got two lines of thought. He reminds us of two massively important points. The first point we've been studying for the past 6 weeks.

Really all gifts are but he's focusing primarily on the ones that are being used as evidence of superiority. This was Paul's point in verses 1-3

So Paul says, as awesome as these spiritual gifts are, don't forget they are worthless without love. Love is literally everything.

You see this giant Christian operation over there. You see this church here? If we are not loving one another this whole thing is a joke.

All the effort that goes into these services, the effort you guys pour into small groups, the missions efforts. All of that meaningless and noisy gongs. We are just playing a game. Worthless.

Love is what gives this whole thing meaning.

More than anything else I care about as a pastor, this is at the top of the list. We must love one another or everything we are doing is worthless. Here's an analogy to summarize this point and everything we've talked about in the past six weeks.

Imagine that you are hosting a family reunion at your house. And this is a super big deal. You've planned this for years. There might be close to 100 people represented and people are flying in from 12 states and two countries. And so you decide to go all out. You go to a specialty BBQ store and you spend $4000 dollars and the nicest BBQ they have. It can cook 80 hamburgers at a time. It has a rotisserie that can hold the weight of an entire pig. I mean this thing has been engineered by NASA engineers. You purchase one of those giant 20 gallon propane bottles because you don't want to run out. You top it off. You are totally ready for the party. And the first guests start coming and you think to yourself, well I better fire this thing up. And you go to hook up your propane bottle and you realize you forgot to buy the little hose that connects the propane bottle to the BBQ. You can't even turn the thing on. How valuable is your top-of-the-line, $4000 dollar, pig-pirouetting flame thrower? A cigarette lighter is more effective than that.

All that money you spent? Worthless.

All the design work by teams of engineers to develop that BBQ? Worthless.

All the effort of oil companies to find the propane, drill for the propane, transport the propane, refine the propane, sell the propane? Worthless.

All because you forgot the $5 tube. That's what Paul is saying here. Without love I don't care what kind of pimped out gift set you have. You have all these gifts brimming with potential. You literally have been given a spiritual nuclear reactor capable of powering an entire city but you can't find the on switch because you don't have love.

Dad's it's not about providing for your family. It's about loving your family and the church and the world.

Mom's it's not about cleaning the house and getting the chores done. It's about loving your family and the church and the world.

Kids, teachers, coaches. It's not about performance in athletics or music, it's not about GPA, SAT. It's about love.

So that's Paul's first point. Revelatory gifts are worthless without love.

If love is so important, then what is it? What does it look like? Let's savor these words. And I want to read them together.

So revelatory gifts, and of course all gifts, are worthless without love. Now here's his second point. And this one is rather surprising.

Let's read from the text.

The perfect here clearly is the coming of Jesus Christ. The revelatory gifts described here, tongues, prophesy, words of knowledge, these are all imperfect ways of connecting with Jesus Christ. So when the perfect, comes, there is no need for the imperfect.

In other words, these gifts are seasonal. Not only is the gift itself worthless without love, but even with a properly working gift fueled by love, if you are too fixated on it, you've missed the point. The point is not the gift it's what the gift points to. Paul's not saying that the gifts are not good. He's not saying it's not important and really useful. He's just saying it doesn't last and it's not the point. Don't get enamored by a disposable fork. It's a tool for a season. So Paul gives us three reasons why these revelatory gifts are disposable by nature.

So this idea comes from the phrase, "When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away." And the idea here is simple. Why would you have a need for incomplete knowledge when you have complete knowledge. We will get into what these gifts specifically are when we get into chapter 14 but the basic idea is that the gift of prophesy is a gift of knowledge. You are given an insight or a piece of information that is directly from God that you could not have known any other way. But it's very limited in scope.

Remember it was prophesied in Acts that Paul was going to go to Rome and be bound. How could that be known? It was a prophetic insight. But that information is very limited. It's very incomplete. Much of the detail is left out. Now just because it's incomplete doesn't make it bad.

But limited information from God is a whole lot better than no information. So in it's day, it's super useful. But it's day is quickly coming to an end. It's usefulness will instantly dissolve when incomplete information is displaced by the complete. That's Paul's point.

Now to illustrate this point, I have a little object lesson. My dad has worked at HP for 30 years as an engineer and he started out in the Disk Memory Division working on hard drives.

Here's what I think you could call, the first portable thumb drive. This was used to carry information from one computer to another. So this is just the platter. This was inserted into the actual drive which weighed 150 pounds. Now this drive was released in 1975 and it had a capacity of 10 megabytes and in today's dollars would cost $42,406.37.

Amazon.com sells this flash drive for $9.99 and it has a capacity of 128 gigabytes and weighs just ounces. So just to get an idea, you'd have to have 12,800 of these drives to equal one of these. That would cost $547,840,000. Now here's the point. In it's day, it was super valuable. It was the best thing it had going. They sold thousands of them. People needed storage and it was the best storage that existed. It was cutting edge. It was absolutely essential.

But now, this is literally useless now. It has zero value. Why? Because better, cheaper systems have displaced it. Why would you buy a really expensive, super heavy, super limited hard drive, when you could buy this.

The lesser has been displaced by the greater.

So this analogy helps us understand the concept that the greater will always displace the lesser. And Paul is saying to the Corninthians don't get all excited about your 10MB hard drives. I mean they are cool and all, but one day they are going to be displaced and they will be worthless. So don't get fixated on the wrong thing.

You know the Bible fits in this same category doesn't it? It's a revelatory tool.

The Bible functions for us right now like this hard drive. We are in the season where every page of this thing is worth $30,000. It connects us to the living God.

But there is coming a day where, without the slightest bit of irreverence, throw it the trash bin. Why? Because we've acquired the thing we've been after all along.

We don't need Isaiah 6 to tell us God is Holy, Holy, Holy when we are on our faces in front of a flaming cherebim and millions of redeemed humanity roaring at the tops of their lungs, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. In that moment Isaiah 6 is a bit lesser. We can look at the Bible and smile like we do at this hard drive. Remember back when this was the best we had? It's the type of thing that belongs in a museum. Most of them discarded, but a few are kept so we can look back and remember what it used to be like.

And the same goes for the gift of tongues, the gift of prophesy, the gift of healing. What would the point of tongues be in heaven? We can all communicate with God directly. We can communicate with one another perfectly. What would the point of healing be? We are all healed. What would the point of prophesy. Everything is known. We now know God.All these lesser gifts that are partial understandings are displaced by the substance.

So Paul makes the point that these revelatory gifts are inferior conductors of knowledge because when the perfect comes the imperfect falls away.

Now he makes a related point in verse 11. Not only are they inferior conductors of knowledge, they are inferior conductors of maturity.

Now this comes from verse 11.

So inferior knowledge is related to inferior maturity. Maturity is the ability to be nuanced. To have both the big picture and detailed understanding in view simultaneously.

A child has the big view only. He doesn't understand the complexity and the intricate nuances of reality. Everything is simple to a child.

So Paul says, we think of God in very simple terms because we don't have all the information. It's not a criticism necessarily, it's just a reality of being limited. He says when you are a child you think like a child.

For example, ask a child how a car works. You put gas into it and it goes. And that actually is true. That's high level simplicity. That's how a child reasons.

He perceives that he understands.

The question is answered satisfactorily.

There is no more exploring to be done.

As you age, you realize it's a bit more complicated that that. You realize that while that is true and while that thought was necessary to advance, it is instantly displaced by a fuller understanding.

Yes, gas is needed for cars to run but it's incredibly complicated.

Gas is atomoized by the fuel injectors which are really tiny electrical soleoids controlled by a computer sending a PWM signal precisely misting the pressured fuel on the intake stroke just in time for the valves to close and the spark plug to fire igniting the compressed fuel which now exists in a precise stoichiometric combustion ratio. That provides a linear power stroke which is:

converted into a rotary motion via the crankshaft,

reduced by the transmission,

rotated 90 degrees by the differential and then

transmitted into forward motion via the tires friction to the ground.

The more complete information displaces the less complete information.

So Paul is saying, all these spiritual gifts that you have that give you insight into God, don't forget you are operating in child mode. How does God work. You put gas and he goes. And we think we said something profound. All our theological answers are in this category. Ultra simplistic. True - but highly simplified, insultingly elementary.

I always smile when we put on our theological hats and start talking profoundly about what God must mean when he says eternal as if we somehow just understand what that means. What is time?

Aristotle contended that, “time is the most unknown of all unknown things”, and arguably not much has changed since then.

A website that does nothing but explore time begins with this confession. "Physics is the only science that explicitly studies time, but even physicists agree that time is one of the most difficult properties of our universe to understand."

Time changes in proportion to your speed through the universe, and it changes further if you are caught in a high gravitational field. What in the world even is time? Ask any physics website and all of them throw their hands up. We don't know what time is. We are children. We are dabbling around with scraps of knowledge.

Let's not pretend for a moment that we have things figured out. We love the Bible, it's our most precious resource into knowing God. But it's a 10MB hard drive. There are warehouses of petabyte thumdrives coming our way. Reality is so much more complex than our tiny little minds can even begin to comprehend. Any gift of revelation we have been given, whether it is the Bible itself, the gift of tongues, the gift of prophesy, whatever it is - the point is that it is massively limited and cannot lead us into maturity.

Maturity is coming when Jesus comes and all these revelatory gifts will become useless.

But there's even a more significant point at stake here. So revelatory gifts are worthless when Jesus returns because they are inferior conductors of knowledge and maturity. But they are also inferior conductors of affection.

Let's see this in the text itself.

This is my favorite metaphor of the entire passage. The goal is not just to have information about reality. It's not just to grow up into maturity as people who understand the fullness of theology. It's to know God. And of course that word know is talking about a deep friendship, a profound relationship, a trusting familiarity.

You see this is where this all is headed. To know God as you are fully known. That's a pretty staggering comparison. I have really hard time imagining that and honestly even taking that passage very serious. The claim is so preposterous. Are you telling me that someday, I will know God the same way that he knows me? That's crazy. It makes me giddy just thinking about it.

Because right now the knowledge is going primarily one direction. God knows me.

For example, you might watch sermons from some well known preacher. And you feel like you know him but he doesn't know you. Why? Because the knowledge is traveling one direction. And that's how it is with us and God. He knows us perfectly. There is nothing about us that he does not know. But only know him as through a mirror dimly. A lot of commentators make the point that Corinth was a city that was known for it's bronze manufacturing and it could produce great surfaces that were reflective enough for you to see a representative image of yourself.

And so this concept of being able to see an image of yourself, but not a great image would have been understood. I mean compared to reality it's pretty poor, but compared to nothing, it's great.

I mean imagine if you had to look at the world like this. Way better than nothing.

Yes, you are interacting with reality, but your missing a ton of reality. You'd make some pretty poor decisions under certain circumstances, like driving me around town.

Now pay attention what is being referenced here. Seeing through a glass dimly is not talking about, as in our previous points, information. This is primarily talking about our relationship we have with Jesus Christ.

Let's return to our hard drive analogy for a moment because it helps us again here. In that analogy we said that the lesser is displaced by the greater. But we can take it further than that. It's not just an issue of lesser to greater. It also has to do with the ultimate aim and goal.

Sure the smaller hard drive was essential until the greater hard drive appeared. But we aren't ultimately concerned with hard drives. The thing we are really after is storage. And it's not really storage we are after. It's information. Hard drives really connect us to information and ideas. But once those ideas are in our head, the stored information becomes worthless. But it's not ultimately even about information and ideas. It's about the people behind those ideas. That's ultimately the great point. What would you rather have, an article written by a scientist or the scientist himself?

And this is Paul's point. The revelatory gifts connect us to Jesus. It's not the method of connection itself that should interest us. It's Jesus we are after. And once we have Jesus standing in front of us all these revelatory gifts become obsolete because we have what we want.

Face to face with Jesus is the goal but we aren't there yet. Right now, Paul says we see through a glass darkly. Does this not describe the way you feel in your relationship with God? For sure, if you are believer, you relate to God. You pray to him. And you sense his involvement and care for you. These are subjective aspects to the Christian life that are hard to describe. And they are real. But it's nothing like face to face.

Remember Moses?

Is that how you speak with God? Certainly not. I long to speak to God the way I speak with my wife, conversationally, where I can ask questions and answers are given immediately and understandably. Speaking to the face of God can reference two things in Bible and actually both of them are illustrated in this Exodus 33 passage. Here the reference is a communication style. It's not long distance. It's not through codes or translation. It's not through letters. It's face to face.

But face to face can refer also to full understanding. Remember, later on in that same chapter Moses asked God to reveal himself. Moses says, God show me your glory. I don't want to see this mask. I want to see your face. God was conversational with Moses but he was shielding who he really was. Moses says,

See, you are seeing my face, but not my real face. You are only seeing a mask.

So when Paul says, we only see through a class darkly, it means our relationship with God is limited because we aren't speaking to him face to face (in both senses). Imagine how much of God is being hid from us if by merely seeing his face we go into cardiac arrest. I've always wondered, what causes the death?

Is it entering into the presence of holiness? That's a common answer but it doesn't really answer the question. Why would holiness kill me?

Is it the shock? Is it proximity to power? Just too much power and the ripple side effects of being near that power just tears apart our frailty?

You get a sense of this kind of thing as the text proceeds.

It's a frighting, chilling scene. Paul says, one day there will be no need for a cleft. There will be no need for a hand to hide us and for us to have this special life support bubble to protect us by just being in the proximity of God. No, we will know God face to face.

Imagine how the scales will fall from our eyes and we will be able to behold him as he actually is, not through a veil, not through a glass darkly, but as Adam did, just walking with God in the cool of the garden. So hard to conceptualize.

Do you realize that this is the point of the whole Bible. This is where everything is headed. John Piper has a book entitled God is the Gospel. When I first heard the title I had not idea what he meant. I was like, "isn't' the gospel this good news that I'm saved from my sins." What do you mean God is the gospel. The title didn't make any sense to me. But the opening paragraph of the book cleared up the title in an instant. The book opens like this.

You see the point of everything is Jesus Christ. It's our mission statement. The perfect is coming. Jesus is coming. And he is everything. He is the point of it all.

That's it. That's everything. Heaven is the completion of our mission statement.

Conclusion

So don't get fixated on the disposable forks we call spiritual gifts. Don't get prideful about your 10MB hard drives. Sure we need them and they are of great use to us in this age where we look through a glass darkly, but they will be set aside when we see God face to face.

The goal is God. God is the gospel. In our excercising of spiritual gifts, heaven forbid we ever forget the real goal, seeking the FACE of the all-satisfying person of Jesus Christ.

In two weeks we start into 1 Corinthians 14 and there are topics that are difficult. Prophesy is mentioned at length. Tongue is talked about at length. If I was writing a Bible, I'd choose to not include those sections. But this book has been handed to all of us and we deal with it's contents, in submission and confession of limitation knowing we are looking through a glass dimly trying to understand. But let's not loose perspective as we fumble around with our 10MB hard drives. Many churches have been torn apart just like the Corinthian church because they were fixated on the wrong thing. It's good to explore. It's good to study and read. It's all good.

But let's not forget the two big points here. It's all worthless without love. Let's not go to all the effort to host the BBQ and forget the $5 tube. And the secondly: It's all pointing to Jesus. If you really, really, really, really want Jesus Christ all this will work itself out. It's kind of like the principle of time management. No matter how busy we are, we make time for the things that are important to us. If Jesus is the most important thing to you, then the fragrance of that love will come out in everything you do!

7Up Happiness

Now speaking of promises. I don't think we have ever lived in a culture that promises more and delivers less. Words hardly mean anything because of the way they've been used so carelessly. Think about how much fake news there is. It's so hard to listen to claims any longer. We are just tired of being told things that just frankly aren't true. This is nothing new. For example.

Here's an actual add run by Coca Cola in January of 1955.

7-Up is so pure, so wholesome, you can even give it to babies and feel good about it... By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers – if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: Add 7-Up to the milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination – and it works! Make 7-Up your family drink. You like it…it likes you.

We laugh about this today. But here's the sad thing. There were thousands and thousands of moms who believed that 7up was a wholesome drink to give to your baby when the truth was the exact opposite. They had to experience that let down.

They got tricked. In fact, I got tricked looking for this ad. In looking for this ad somebody took this already outrageous ad and made a fake even more outrageous version that looked just like it and I took it for the real thing!

Now it's one thing to get deceived on 7up advertising campaigns but it's another thing altogether to get deceived when it comes to one of the human beings most essential needs: the need for love.

Everyone of us wants true love. That's both obvious and universal. And I'm not talking about Romance although that's included as a subset. I'm talking about unconditional human love. It's the subject of literally millions and songs and stories. We make movies about experiencing it. We dream about finding it. Not a single sociologist would disagree. Our most fundamental, basic, psychological need is to love and be loved.

But the question is, does it really even exist? Or is this just a fairy tale concept fit for Princess Bride?

You start out in life absolutely believing it exists. You are on the hunt. You are on the prowl. But then one experience leads to another and you begin to get disappointed.

Your parents, turns out, are selfish and don't love you very well.

You go on that date and get your heart broken.

Maybe you find someone and marry them, but you discover that sweet Wesley has a bit more captain Red Beard in him than you anticipated.

The longer you live the less likely you are to believe in true love. Maybe all this talk is nothing more than another 7up campaign. You get jaded. You're trained by your disappointments to stop trusting people.

One of the main themes in pop music today is artists singing about a courage they wish they had so that they could love. But they are too scared to even try because they've been hurt over and over again.

This is the opposite of the boy who cried wolf. It's actually the boy who cried love. Again and again and again it's promised and again and again and again it disappoints.

Eventually skepticism and cynicism set in. And these are great tools to keep you from the emotional roller coaster coaster of excitement/disappointment. But there's a nasty side effect. They will also keep you from ever finding it.

Resurrection as a Story of Love

We come today to the story upon which the entirety of Christianity rises and falls, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The story of the resurrection is a story of love. But sadly it's in competition with every empty story of love you've ever experienced.

And because you bring baggage into the equation, when you just hear it stated: Jesus loves you. For most honest people, the reaction is, "Well it sure doesn't feel like it." After all, I've got a lot of hard things going in my life right now. Things sure didn't turn out how I had planned them. Jesus loves me, huh? I think if he loved me, things would look quite a bit different.

Jesus loves you? Is that true?

The only question that matters this morning is this: Is it true? If it's true that Jesus really did love you, really did die and really did raise from the dead then Jesus Christ changes everything and you owe everything to him. If it's not true, then Jesus Christ changes nothing and you should feel totally at liberty to do whatever you want. Those are the only two options. It's the most pivotal question a person can ask. DOES JESUS CHRIST LOVE ME?

Jesus Loves You

So what do we do when our sense of the love of Jesus does not align with the claim.What do we do with the very problem that evil is all over this world. If Jesus was here, wouldn't he do something about that?

Well, you aren't the first one to have been asked to believe that Jesus loved you when it didn't look like it. If you were here last week we talked about this unbelievable miracle of raising of Lazarus from the dead from John chapter 11. When we say unbelievable miracle, that's not a synonym for amazing. It really was not believable - unbelievable.

And the reason it was unbelievable for them is the same reason it would be unbelievable for us. It's just not an every day occurrence that the person's funeral you attended last week calls you a week later and wants to meet up for coffee.

So this raising of Lazarus was unbelievable. NOT-believable. But here's what's crazy. We said that the text says very specifically that the reason Jesus performed this unbelievable miracle was to actually create belief in those who already believed in him.

Jesus was talking to his disciples and he said, "I'm glad Lazarus has died so that you might believe."

Didn't Mary already believe in him? Didn't Martha already believe? Why did Jesus feel the need to teach them a lesson of belief? Don't they already believe? What's the deal?

This has to do with the nature of belief. Belief is not a binary thing. Either you do believe it or you don't. Belief is your current understanding of how the world works. It's your mental model that enables you to sort through everything and make sense of it all. But it can be challenged at any given point. FLYING CARPETS?

Now what did Jesus ultimately want them to believe? Here's the simplest answer: He wanted, quite simply, for them to believe that he loved them. And again, I'm quite sure, that if you were to ask them, "Do you BELIEVE Jesus loves you? What would they say? They would say, of course we BELIEVE he loves us!" But Jesus wanted them to believe that so deeply, so concretely, so viscerally that no matter what happened, no matter what it looked, no matter what it felt like, no matter what was going on around them, no matter if all hell broke loose, they knew, they believed without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus still loved them.

Now how did he teach them this? How did this belief get established? He created a situation in which that belief was brought into question. Essentially he gave them a test. And on that test there was one true/false. You take your little scantron sheet and you fill in the bubble. There's one question and there is only only two options. I'm going to create a situation where it looks like I've completely abandoned you. Here's this situation where everything feels wild and out of control and it looks like you've been deserted and cast-aside and forgotten. And in that moment of apparent complete abandonment I want you to state your belief. Answer the true/false question. Does Jesus love you?

If you were here last week you remember the test. Put yourself back in the situation. Lazarus has contracted a disease that is growing increasingly concerning. Mary and Martha send a runner to Jesus who tracks Jesus down and he says to him, "Lazarus is sick? He's on the brink of death. Come quickly." And Jesus tells the runner. Tell Mary and Martha, I love them and that this is not a sickness that leads to death. Now go."

So the messenger returns and delivers the news. And even though the text does not say this, you could conceive that this initial news would have been quite comforting to Mary and Martha and perhaps they deeply believed it. That is tremendous news.

Jesus loves us.

Yes, how could we ever doubt.

I'm totally going to not worry.

He says this is not a sickness that leads to death.

I'm not going to even have the slightest worry.

But Lazarus continues to weaken. The sicker Lazarus gets the more stationary Jesus becomes. Where are you Jesus? Don't you love us? Lazarus is getting very, very ill. Jesus doesn't budge. The text says very explicitly, because he loved them, he stayed two more days where he was. How's that for affection?

And during those two days, Lazarus dies. Jesus is a no-show. And you can imagine the horrible feeling of betrayal. The horrible feeling of abandonment. You can imagine, beyond the normal human grief, the faith crisis they are in. Houston, we have ourselves a problem. We have ourselves a situation. I'm not sure Jesus cares.

And this deep sense of faith shaking fear grips them. Jesus claims to love us. He has the power to not let Lazarus die. He even promised that Lazarus would not die. But not he's dead. This word I thought so trustworthy has been found to be unstable.

That's the test. Now, look at the test and answer that true/false question. Does Jesus love you? Mary and Martha are staring at the question with pencils shaking in their hand and hesitating.

After Lazarus dies, Jesus sets off and arrives in Bethany after Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Four days. The body has certainly begun to decompose.

We are told that Jesus created this moment on purpose that they might believe. Believe what? That Jesus loves them. Don't they already believe? Well, right now they aren't so sure. Their belief in the love of Jesus had a limit. And that limit was death.

And Jesus says, "Oh really?"

You see this circumstance created a pair of scales. The promise that Jesus loves you and cares for you and never will forsake you on one side and the finality and finality of death on the other. Which is more certain?

I mean death is pretty certain.

I will be home tomorrow before 12:00pm. At 11:59, I call you from Mississipi and say, "Now don't worry, I'll be home." What is more likely? That my words are not true or that the earth will stop rotating so I can be home at 12:00pm.

Jesus made a moment like this possible so he might demonstrate the absolute certainty of his love. Jesus wanted to show them that his promised love was more certain the most certain thing they knew. He created a Mt. Carmel showdown situation. When forced to choose, between the certainty of death and the certainty of my love, which will it be? Which of the two gets the final word.

And I know it looks like he's dead.

And I know it smells like he's dead.

And you want to know why? Because he is dead.

And I can see it in your eyes. I said that this was not a sickness that leads to death. And here he is dead. So have I failed?

I promised you that Lazarus would not die

Lazarus is dead

What's the only possible resolution here? Mary, Martha, my words are always true. You think death is more certain than my promise? You think death has more power than my words? That once death kicks in, there is no hope for my words to come true? Do you think my love fails you once death has closed in?

Jesus says, "I am the resurrection." Those are words that send shivers down your spine. And then Jesus words like a cannon, "Lazarus, come forth."

Death is a pretty impressive force, it has existed without interruption for thousands of years and has hunted down billions of people but even it has to step aside when the promised love of God is at stake.

So Jesus of course comes and raises Lazarus and the text says, "many believed in him." They believed.

The Mercy of the Miracle.

Now that miracle sets us up for today. One of the main reasons Jesus healed Lazarus was to prepare them for what was coming.

Because what was he about to do? Raising Lazarus was like the practice test on the certainty of his promised love. Why? Because he himself was about to die. He himself was about to be hung on a cross as a common criminal and bow his head. And if ever his love could be questioned, it was going to be at that moment.

And he needed to give them something to trust in, to hold onto. He wanted them to believe that though it looked like all was lost, though it looked like the enemy had won, his promised love was still there. I would never end. Even if all hell breaks loose (which it literally would) and it looks like there is no possible way that God could love them, that in that exact moment, their belief would be so strong, they would disregard all apparent evidence, disregard all the conflicting feelings and say, "No, it has been shown to me and I continue to believe that despite what my eyes see, I know, I believe that Jesus loves me. He would never forsake me.

That's what he wanted to teach them. And Jesus was not asking his disciples to do anything more than he himself would not have to do. Jesus himself would have to believe that God loved him in the face of unimaginable abandonment.

Jesus himself would have to experience the full wrath of God. Could you ever imagine a scenario more extreme, more liable to misinterpretation of the love of God, where it would seem more evident that God had stopped loving you, than the cross? God pours out on you his full wrath for all the sins of every man who would ever believe? And you are howling in that abandonment, where are you?

That is horrendous. Jesus could trust, "All hell is in my face. The father has turned his face from me." But I know he still loves me.

This is the essence of belief. To believe the love of God no matter what. Nothing is more powerful than the promised love of God, not even hell itself.

The Disciples

Despite this incredible lesson, their recent bolstered belief in the promised love of God was shaken by the death of Jesus. Imagine staring at the body of Jesus as it was cold and stiffly placed into a tomb. Imagine how the disciples must have felt. Their hearts just absolutely evacuated. We really did think this was it.

You can imagine the soul-crushing sorrow. The bitterest of agonies. The feeling once again of confusion, disorientation, discomforting bewilderment. I thought you loved me? I thought you were the savior of the world. That's what you said. That's what you promised. You abandoned us. You left us.

Now of course the irony was that it was because he was the Savior of the world that he left them. It was because he loved them all the way to the end, the bitter, bitter end, (John 13:1) that he had to leave them but they did not yet believe nor understand.

Let's look at Luke 24. The previous chapter concludes by saying that the women observed where the body was laid and went home to prepare spices.

Just that tells you their frame of mind. You don't prepare spices for someone you hope will rise from the dead. That would be like re-carpeting your house right before you bulldoze it. The order of operations doesn't make any sense. No they prepared spices because they thought him to have taken that one way trip to the grave.

Now I want you to try to get into the head of the disciples. They were absolutely convinced it was over. They weren't questioning. They were hardened against it. They were no longer asking, does Jesus love me? They knew he didn't love them. He left us. After all how could a good God let all this happen? That makes no sense.

He must not be God. We must have got tricked. Just like every other religious trick that has ever been happened. Just like every other stunt that has been played on people. We feel shammed. This is like a religious 7up marketing campaign. We got conned.

They were wounded deeply and over those deep wounds was already forming unfeeling scar tissue in the form of cynicism, doubt, disbelief, and pessimism

What did Mary and Mary the mother of Jesus do to receive this kind of reception? From everything we know of both these two women they were transformed by Jesus. I would imagine they were a very trustworthy source of truth. They were accustomed to truth altering. Were they in the habit of lying and hysterics?

But Peter, probably the disciple with the greatest faith and the least amount of discretion, jumps out of his chair and says, well maybe it's true!

So let's begin to catalog the emotions of the disciples:

- disbelief - marvel

first we have straight up disbelief (they believed it to be an idle tale) and this word marvel. They wondered. Something happened, but what? They wouldn't let their minds go any further than that. They don't want to be yanked around. Something's clearly up. That much we know. Until we can get more evidence let's not get our hopes up.

Now here's something to point out. What was missing here was not evidence. What was missing here was belief in the evidence. Jesus had already given them ample evidence that God loved them. Jesus himself had told them explicitly on many occasions predicted his death and resurrection. We just looked at the story of Lazarus which should have proven that he has power over death.

But they couldn't let their hearts believe it for fear of getting hurt.

You see I think this is how many think of Christianity. There's something to it... but I'm not ready to go all in. They marvel but disbelieve. It's understandable. It's a giant claim with giant implications. Look what happens next.

Let's review our emotional trail.

Disbelief. Perhaps even anger. This is an idle tale, woman. Stop messing with us.

Amazement.

Sadness

Now we add another emotion: Sadness. Sadness is when your heart has been broken. They had been let down. And Jesus interjects for the emotive types a little comic relief. Jesus asks them, "Hey guys, what are you talking about?"

I love that! He's setting them up. Remember Jesus had set them up during the raising of Lazarus to teach them a lesson of belief. Now he's doing it again.

Disbelief

Amazement

Sadness

Despair

Do you see the despair? Do you see the final judgment has been cast. They aren't wondering any more if Jesus loves them. It was over.

They are still not believing. Until we see, it can't possibly be. Even though he said all along, even though on multiple occasions he claimed he would die and rise again. Even though he had raised others from the dead. Death is just too strong. He couldn't have possibly conquered death. They wouldn't let themselves go there. All the evidence points in that direction but they couldn't do it emotionally.

Now we'll skip down to verse 33. In verses 24-32, Jesus reveals himself to the two disciples and then vanishes from their sight; amazed they hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the rest of the disciples this amazing news.

So certain they were that Jesus had died. They conclude actual flesh and blood standing among them was a ghost. That was there best explanation. So certain they were that death was stronger than Jesus, that this deduction was the best they could do. Ghost. That is the depth of unbelief. We come up with the craziest of stories to explain what should be most obvious.

Disbelief

Amazement

Sadness

Dispair

Fear

Fear is the emotion we experience when we are threatened. What are they afraid of? Jesus is standing before them, the fulfillment of promised divine love. How could promised love threaten them? Because they were so scared that it was religious 7up. Just another trick that is going to dash my hopes.

Disbelief

Amazement

Sadness

Dispair

Fear

Troubled and Doubt

Doubt is a way to protect yourself. It's a way to shield yourself from the implications of a truth that is threatening you. Until you can prove it to me, I am safe. That's what the disciples were doing.

Now comes the what to me is the climax of the entire book of Luke. It's a single verse with language that just makes me smile every time I read it.

Disbelieved for joy. So incredible were the implications of the resurrection, so amazing, so incredible, so outlandish, they wouldn't allow themselves to believe. It was too amazing. Joy was splashing out of their hearts ready to erupt. The pressure was going to blow the lid of this thing. Their soul was about to go supernova but disbelief kept it all bottled in.

Why? The same reason that today millions of people won't come to Jesus. Because they are scared. You'd better not be yanking my chain. This whole thing better not be some secret money grab.

I think the reason a lot of people don't actually take the claims of Christianity seriously is because of this 'boy who cried love' phenomena. The Christian claims of happiness, the Christian claims to love, the claims satisfaction are so consequential, so significant, that they are almost too good to be true. And for fear of being disappointed that they aren't true, they never take it very seriously.

So we rely on our past, shallow, cursory inspection.

Oh, yeah, I've read the Bible and it's a good book, but there are lots of good books.

Oh, yeah, I know about Jesus. He was a good teacher.

Oh, yeah, Christianity has it's place to create a moral society

But we are scared to go deeper. The Bible is a good book and Jesus was a moral good teacher. But that has nothing to do with Christianity. The claim of Christianity is that Jesus Christ loves you.

Jesus did not come to earth to give you a good book to read or some advice to follow. That's not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about the love of God for you. It's about a great love that sent him to the cross which has immediate and direct implications.

Listen, if this is true, it changes everything. Absolutely everything. We live in an era of fake news where everything is suspect. I get that. But what if this is true? Let's just say you got a letter in the mail that had an official seal from a lawyer here in Boise and it said that you had been gifted 20 million dollars from a relative you didn't know you had.

Now, of course you should be skeptical, but you'd look into it. This is what the disciples did. They said, perhaps this is true. Could it be? If he's a ghost he won't be able to eat fish. They are poking him with a stick.

See in the end it's not you pursuing God, it's God pursuing you. God opened their eyes. And it's my prayer that he will open all of our eyes the way he did back then.

Conclusion

Now here's the question that you need to wrestle with today. There is a claim made by God that Jesus loves you. It's one of the most startling claims in the universe. That the God who made the universe loves you.

It's encapsulated in the most well-known verse of the Bible. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in Him [in that love] should never perish but have eternal life."

That's the gospel. Do you believe that he loves you? And just like Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Jesus like Jesus himself as he is hanging on the cross experiencing the abandonment of the father, it may not seem like he loves you. Why all this evil? Why all this suffering? It's the greatest, most powerful argument against Christianity. It's the problem of evil. It's a staggering problem.

If God loved us so much, why is allowing these horrible things to happen? And we all have our list. We all stand in judgment saying, "This can't possibly work out for good. God can't possibly love us and have this go down." But here's the point that the Bible makes concerning the resurrection.

If you can see how God turned the greatest evil in all of history into the greatest good we will ever know, do you think he might, perhaps be able to turn a lesser evil into good as well? It's exactly what Romans chapter 8 says.

You see the cross is God's answer to evil. It doesn't tell you what the answer is, but it does tell you that there is an answer. 3 minutes before the resurrection there was no answer. None. Nobody could explain it. Jesus certainly must have abandoned us. How is this good? How is this part of the plan. There is no hope. Jesus clearly does not love us. A final judgment was cast. And three minutes after the resurrection it was a party like you've never seen. It all made sense.

God is asking you first to believe. Believe what? That he loves you. It's the simplest most beautiful most powerful message in the world. All I want you to do is meditate on that. What are the implications if in fact it is true that Jesus loves me unconditionally?

There will be many who look around and mock that such a love could exist. What do you mean, "A love that never ends." That's ridiculous. Speaking of scoffers that will come at the last time.

We are all jaded and I get that I. I expect nobody to just jump headlong nilly willy into something so serious. But what I think reasonable for anything thinking, feeling person to do is to take it seriously? Does Jesus love me? There is nothing that will change your life more than this.

There is coming a day for all of us when it will all be stripped away from us. Your whole life, in a sense, is preparation for death. Will you in that day believe that God loves you? Death is like a heavy curtain and nobody can see the other side. The believer knows what's on the other side. It's the love of God. He wants you to trust him all the way. And then the curtain is pulled aside. It's just a curtain and it all makes sense. You stand on that other side, perhaps much like the disciples, disbelieving for joy.

Listin, if it looked like the greatest tragedy of all time had befallen Jesus but it turned into the greatest story of redemption of all time, would you trust Jesus with your questions knowing that he truly loves you?

Well we are in our Easter series where we are explaining the text of 1 Corinthians 13 through the life of Jesus on his way to the cross. We are looking at Paul's definition of love phrase by phrase and pairing it with a story from the life of Jesus to see love literally walking among us.

Today we are going to continue our study from last week by looking at John chapter 9 and pairing it with a love that BEARS all things.

Review from Last Week

Let's review because we never completely finished the thought from last week. Last week we looked at love's rejoicing with the truth. We noted a specific kind of truth-rejoicing that Paul has in mind. It's the kind of truth-rejoicing that's the opposite of rejoicing in injustice.

Now at first blush that seems obvious. Who rejoices at injustice? Nobody rejoices in criminals getting away with murder, unless what? Unless the criminal is you! Then you rejoice! We rejoice in injustice when it's to our advantage.

And the reason this kind of rejoicing is unloving is because someone is always hurt by injustice. Our unpunished sin, punishes the victim of our sin. There's no free lunch. It's a law of the universe. If I claim the title righteous, when I am not, I've stolen the righteousness of another man and applied it to myself.

That can never be loving.

Now the question that spans both last week and today's message is this:

If love always rejoices with the truth, and

if the truth is that we are unrighteous,

how can we ever truly be loving since it would seem impossible to rejoice in a truth that condemns you?

Our normal response when a truth condemns us is to want to exchange the truth for a lie, suppress the truth, or become angry at the one who tells the truth.

Can you really get excited about a truth that dooms you? Can you really rejoice in that truth? Now we started to answer this question last week by looking at John chapter 8.

John chapter 8

John chapter 8 opens with the Pharisees trying to set a trap for Jesus. They want the truth. They want justice. Here's this woman who was caught in adultery. It would be an absolute travesty to let this woman go, right Jesus. Jesus, we want you to rejoice in the truth of this woman's guilt. After all Jesus, love rejoices in the truth, right?

Now Jesus of course is most certainly pro-truth. But the real truth that needs to be exposed is not the adultery of this woman but the spiritual adultery of the Pharisees. Jesus wants the Pharisees to rejoice in THAT truth.

And Jesus' strategy here in exposing that truth is to establish himself as not just an authority, but the authority. Jesus says, "I am the light of the world." Which is to say, I am the sun who is so bright that a billionth, billionth part of me hits this planet and floods it with light.

And light has this funny way of exposing things that were previously in darkness. Jesus morally exposes the Pharisees. There's no makeup. No masks. No fancy robes. He morally just strips them naked. They can't hide. His judgment upon them is slicing.

The naked truth is this:

He says, you don't actually even know God.

You are actually of the devil even though you think you know God.

Because you are of the devil you are going to die in your sins.

That is the naked truth.

But the Pharisees can't handle the truth. And so they launch an all-out offensive against Jesus. It's the only trick left in the bag. It's the ad hominim attack. Sling some mud.

And so they accuse Jesus of being an illegitimate child.

They accuse him of having a demon

But Jesus won't back down. In fact he ratches it up. By the end of the chapter, he's not just claiming to be the Messiah. He's not just claiming to be the Son of God. He literally claims to be God himself. He takes to himself the greatest title of God we know. Jesus says, you want to know on what basis I make these judgments. Because I AM the great I AM. That's where we ended from last week.

Well John chapter 9 is then both the climax of this drama and the answer to our question. Now you have three characters here.

You have Jesus who has established himself as the ultimate authority in chapter 8. He is the LIGHT of the world. He is the GREAT I AM. And from that perch he is judging the Pharisees.

You have the Pharisees who violently oppose the authority of Jesus and hence his judgment. They establish themselves as the ultimate authority and are from their self-made perch, violently judging Jesus.

And then you have this poor, simple, uneducated blind man who functions as a judge between the judges.

So let's take a look in John chapter 9

So it quite well-known that the common thinking of the day was that physical ailments were directly associated with some sort of sin in your life. It's the same sort of belief that Job's friend were operating under.Job, all these terrible things have happened to you. You must be some sort of sinner. Cough it up, bro. But this particular situation presents them with a a bit of dilemma. The order of operations is all messed up. You'd expect, sin, then disease. He was born with blindness. So how does that work? Was it his fault? Was it his parents fault? Explain to us how this works Jesus?

Now the way the question is structured is actually hilarious and sad at the same time. This is like one of your kids asking you, mom, what do you think is causing me to get bad grades, "Is it my old laptop or my old phone?" Do I have a third option?

The question seems innocent enough, but the disciples are doing here is exactly what the Pharisees had done in the previous chapter. They set themselves up in the seat of authority to make judgments about how the world ought to be. The question is totally revealing. They think they know how the world ought to be and when it's not that way, they think they know the cause.

We do the same thing. look at someone whose a bit off and we say, "Mmmm, I wonder did this guy have a bad childhood experience? I wonder if he was just born that way." We sit from our perch as authorities and judges assuming we know how the world ought to be and we know the causes. We talk about people as cases or projects or people with issues. What if that person we are judging has issues so that God can display his works through him?

We judge, but Jesus bears. That's what love does. It bears. It shoulders the burden of those close to them. Jesus lowers himself to care while the disciples raise themselves to judge. And caring as we all know is dangerous. As soon as you stop to care, to bear the burden of someone else, some of that burden is going to slide onto your shoulders. Some of that burden will jump onto you whether you like it or not.

The pastors were in Indianapolis this week at a conference (which was amazing) and between one of the sessions we stopped to talk to a guy on the street. And we tried to care. And still now, his story is on my heart. I can't not think of him.

Now in this particular case, Jesus cares uniquely. He cares by revealing why the suffering of all those years had been there. Listen bro, your blindness was given to you so that you could reveal the glory of God.

Now this is a remarkable statement. Certainly unexpected. This man's blindness has a purpose. That the works of God might be displayed in him.

Now here's the question that we all have to struggle with. Are you okay with this? Just for the record, it's not easy to be blind. Who wants to be a burden on those around you? What about the parents? This would have drastically altered the parents life. This is a very important question? Doesn't this make God evil to cause someone else suffer so he can do his work in them.

And you have to wrestle with this all through the NT. It's really just a question of why God allows suffering. God says to them in Rev 2, I know your tribulation and your poverty. In other words, what? I know you are suffering. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. Why does God allow this, literally every single day?

Is this a me centered world where things revolve around my pleasure. Or is it actually good that it does not? Do you see what's going on here? Our objection to suffering, is the objection of the Pharisee. What were the Pharisees enraged at in John chapter 8? The fact that Jesus as ultimate authority, set up the world in such a way that doing what I want to do ends in judgment. I don't like your rules. I don't like the way you do things. And they try to cast him off.

Well this is the exact same thing. Who are you Jesus to make a judgment about what is best for me? What kind of authority do you think you possess to make such an audacious claim that suffering is in my best interest? How dare you say such things.

If sin was the cause of suffering we are okay with that. That makes sense. But if the glory of God is the cause of suffering, we throw up the flag. That's a violation.

Look how Jesus is about to pulverize that conception.

So light enters darkness and heals. The Bible is great and under-promising and over-delivering. This is a no-kidding-around miracle. I mean imagine how unbelievable this would have been for this man. He was born blind. He had never in his entire life seen. And bam. Now he can see.

Now this type of site restoration has happened in recent medical history. In fact, I read a story of a 68 year old man who had been blind from birth and he fell down the stairs and hit his head. And in the process of checking him out, the Doctor realized that his vision was correctable. And so he kind of casually asked, would you like me to fix your eyes.

And he was healed. And I just love what he said. 'He felt like a child all over again.' 'I find everything beautiful,' he said. 'Faces, skin - I find it all beautiful.'

Imagine if this happened in the service today. We have a blind man among us. What if God healed him here today? What if a back straightened, a limb lengthened, cancer was healed. Don't undersell the amazement factor here.

Let's say this blind man was 40 years old. What is the only way this comment is possible? The only way this comment is possible is to suffer for 40 years. We could conceive of a situation in which a blind man had his eye damaged the day before and Jesus came along and healed it. From a medical standpoint, it would be just as miraculous as the miracle here in John 9. But from a miracle standpoint it would not be nearly as impressive because nobody could validate his blindness from personal experience.

You have to suffer for 40 years so that the whole neighborhood trips over you on their way to Wallmart day after, week after week, month after month, year after year. This man's suffering for 40 years has the single purpose of creating a situation where the miracle cannot be denied.Nobody, not the neighbors, not the parents, not the Pharisees, and certainly not the blind man himself could ever claim, I just got better by natural means.

You remember in John 11 when Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave? He heard that Lazarus had died. And so he intentionally stayed two days longer so that he arrived on the 4th day after he died. Why did he do that? Because he literally wanted the body to stink. He wanted that horrible oder of rotting death to just arrest the nostrils of those around? Why?

That's exactly what's going on here. This isn't an out of state blind guy. This is Billy the Blind. We all know Billy. We know his parents. We were there when they figured out he wasn't blind. I brought them a cake to console them.

Now this confusion of his identity was not from the fact that he was only vaguely known. It was the confusion over the fact that he could now see. Clearly this can't be him - don't be ridiculous. If you got on a plane and said goodbye to your Aunt and then you fly for four hours and you get off the plane and someone who looks exactly like your aunt is waiting for you on the other side, what do you say? "That can't possibly be my aunt. My aunt is back in Boise." That's what's going on here. This can't possibly be the blind man. It must be someone who just looks like him. You have the logic engineers arguing with the metaphysical philosophers and then you have the formerly blind dude saying, "Guys would you stop talking about me and just listen. I'm the guy."

Now the genius of Jesus' miracle was that he wanted to hide his identity from the man he healed. Jesus has a plan. This has the affect of making everything more dramatic. Now the town doesn't know what to do. There's a bit of a stir. So they bring the man to the Pharisees. And the reason they do this is certain.

Keep in mind that at the end of chapter 8 we learn that the Pharisees pick up stones to kill him for blaspheme. And they go on a public smear campaign.

Their goal is to create fear in the hearts of men for association with Jesus. They know Jesus has power. We are going to learn in a second that they had communicated to the entire region that anyone who confessed Christ would be put out of the synagogue, which by the way is a big deal. The local synagogue was the hub of society not just religiously, but judicially, economically. So these guys are scared. Here's this guy whose clearly been healed by Jesus which would kind of indicate that he's Messiah. But the Pharisees have said that anyone who confesses him as Messiah would be socially ostracized. So the people aware of the tension, let's just let the Pharisees sort this out.

This is evidence of just how undeniable the miracle would have been. They all had ample reason to hate Jesus, but some of the them were on the fence. The more honest of the bunch were saying, "I know he's kind of ruining our life, but let's keep in mind, He did actually heal a blind mind."

But they can't let it rest at that. So, they go to the blind man and ask him some open ended questions. Perhaps something happened in the exchange that would reveal this man's character. I'm sure they were HOPING that the blind man would join them in their condemnation of Jesus.

That wasn't what they were HOPING for. The blind man confirms what Jesus himself established in John chapter 8. This man is from God.

He's just proved it. And that has implications the Pharisees can't handle. If Jesus is who he says he is then all the judgments he made upon us back in chapter 8 are true. I can't rejoice with that truth. It's too scary. It can't be true. If it's true I'm condemned. If it's true, I have no hope.

So they go into investigation mode. Let's just calm down. Obviously there is a lot of hype here over nothing. Let's just verify the facts. Clearly, this isn't the guy everyone thinks.

So you can feel the dynamic, can't you! This is classic fear mongering. They are trying to force an outcome. They want the parents to confess it because if they could just get a confession out of the mouth of the parents, that would seal the deal. If they could just get the parents to admit that this kid is not their son or if they could just get the parents to say, "A doctor healed him." this whole thing would be over. But the parents are smart. They aren't going to play into that hand. Let him talk. He can speak for himself. He's a grown man.

Here's the giant problem of the Pharisees. The problem is it's so undeniable. And so they are just grasping, absolutely grasping for something. Well, maybe if we ask him again, his story won't line up. And then we can jump on him. Let's listen really closely this time and try to find a discrepancy.

Talk about manipulation. Do you love God? Do you want to give God glory? Well then, confess that he didn't heal you. Wait? How are those related?

This is politics. The Pharisees fear that the truth, heaven forbid, will actually drive the outcome so they need to help things along a bit. But this blind man in not about to get yanked around. He's not intimidated at all.

This guy is my hero. He's got nothing to lose. He's already a beggar. What are you going to do, take my money away. And so he's just totally free to speak the truth. He's totally free to just open his mouth. If he were rich, he might fear being pushed out of the marketplace through a smear campaign. But what are you going to do this guy. He's invicible. He's armed with simple truth.

The blind guy sees what's going on. He sees the politics. He says, "Guys, I'm not making any judgment on the character of the guy. That's for you to sort out. I'm just telling you, you know, what actually happened.

And his anger at their stubbornness comes out in sarcasm. So he feigns innocence. Why are they asking me again? Well, clearly it must be because they were so impressed at Jesus they just want to hear more. Ah yes, that it is. They are just blown away and want to know how to become his disciples. Yes, that must be it. They are hungry to follow him.

And then comes one of the most beautiful rebukes in all of Scripture. Out of the mouth of babe comes pouring forth wisdom. The simplest, poorest, most marginalized among men, elevated to the position of esteemed judge.

Now the blind man appears to be referencing what would have been common thought in Jesus' day. Opening the eyes of a the blind was a miracle that was reserved for Messiah. Try to think of a miracle of sight being restored in the OT. You can't do it because it's not there. This was a miracle reserved for Messiah. Isaiah 35 and 42 associate the coming of Messiah with opening the eyes of the blind.

And so this guy says, "Isn't that amazing. Here I am a simple man. I've learned everything I know about the Bible from you. And you have told me that when Messiah comes he will open the eyes of the blind. Remember that sermon you preached a couple weeks ago. That was your exact point. Now, here comes a man who actually did exactly what you said only Messiah could do and he healed me, a man who you know has been blind from birth, and then you say, "You don't know where hes from?"

Somebodies got a blindness issue here and it's not me.

Now here is this man, born blind. What did he do to deserve that? Nothing. He suffers for 40 years as a blind man. And then he's healed. And within 24 hours of him being healed, which should be cause for community-wide celebration he is publicly humiliated, slandered, outlawed, and kicked to the curb. I'm sure after the crowds left, the guy is just standing there saying to himself, "What the heck just happened?"

Now let me ask you, "In that moment of worship, what was this blind man thinking? Do you think he was bitter over the 40 years of suffering? He's worshiping. I'm the blind man the Scriptures anticipated. God created me to be the one upon whom mercy would fall and thus fulfill Is 35 and 42. This man absolutely worshiped. He's not questioning Jesus. He's not angry. He's worshiping. For all who put Jesus in his rightful place of judge and ruler can see the glory of God through our weakness.

It's a perspective that loves weakness, even suffering as a telescope to look and gaze and pull in the glory of god. At the conference this week, David Platt shared a quote from Joni Erickson Tada who spent her entire adult life paralyzed in a wheel chair.

"I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven. Now, I know that’s not theologically correct. But I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I’ll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands.

I’ll say, "Thank you, Jesus," and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me. He’ll recognize me from the fellowship we’re now sharing in his sufferings.

And I will say, "Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair... So thank you for what you did in my life through that wheelchair. And now you can send that wheelchair to hell, if you want."

Do you see what's going on here? On a physical level you can sense just how much she hates her weakness. Her entire life has been carrying around this horrible burden of weakness. But she loves her weakness in that it helps her to know her God. She wouldn't trade it for the world. God, after all, knows what he's doing. Ask Joni, did God know what he was doing? Ask Joni, would you have preferred it another way? Amazingly, her own testimony is no.

Conclusion

Now let's come full circle here and answer our initial question. Jesus established himself as the LIGHT, the ultimate truth. So rejoicing in the truth means both rejoicing in Jesus himself, but also rejoicing every judgment of Jesus both in terms of how the world ought to be and how our sin ought to be sentenced.

If love always rejoices with the truth, and

if the truth is that we are unrighteous,

how can we ever truly be loving since it would seem impossible to rejoice in a truth that condemns you?

Now we finally come to the answer.

Everything we've talked about thus far, hinges on this verse. This whole thing is pointing to something. What does the sight represent here? The sight represents vision (sight) to see truth. Sight is truth. Those who see, are those who interact with the truth.

And at the highest level, what truth is Jesus trying to drive home in John chapter 8? What truth would Jesus love everyone to rejoice in? That he is the Messiah. That he is God.

Now that has terrible implications. Yes, that truth will condemn you. But there's another truth. Love rejoices in the truth but love also bears all things. And the truth is, Jesus is willing to bear the ugliness of what the light reveals. Just like Jesus was willing to enter in and heal the blind man's disease, Jesus is willing to enter in and bear our iniquity as well.

The truth is God sits as judge and sentences us for the sin we've committed. And the truth also is that he takes off his robe as judge and says, now you are free to go as he then is led away in cuffs to serve the sentence.

As Romans 3:26 says, "He is both the just and justifyer of those who believe."

And so blindness is a twofold problem. It's not admitting what the light reveals, but it's also not accepting what the light offers.

It's not the Pharisees sin that is the problem. It's their repudiation of grace, their rejection of grace. That is the true blindness. To receive grace is to admit the need for grace. To reject grace, is to reject the premise that there is a need for the grace being offered.

Now the way this sentence is constructed in the Greek leaves no room for doubt as to the intent. They are coming to Jesus with absolutely incredulity. They can't believe that Jesus is actually suggesting that they, the teachers of Isreal, are blind.

And Jesus is so calm, so patient in bearing that arrogance. And he says, "The blindness is your refusal to admit guilt." If you could just lower the defense, just lower the pride, just admit your need, you would be saved in a second.

Communion

So as we approach communion this morning, let's open our eyes wide. What is the truth about us. How can we rejoice in a truth that condemns us? Answer because the truth is Christ has bore the penalty of all those just judgments against us.

There’s this interesting passage where Edwards says something like, “Why is it that nobody but a true Christian whose heart has been changed by grace loves to look at God’s holiness?” Because God’s holiness doesn’t do a thing for you. His power does. His wisdom does. His love does. His grace does. All those things are benefits for you, but his holiness is of no help to you at all. It is of no benefit to you.

It’s nothing really but, in a sense, a judgment on you, but why is it a Christian can love the holiness of God? Because a Christian no longer fears being judged.

He's been forgiven and he can just rest and marvel. There's no fear in the implications of what that truth reveals. He's so secure and so he just stares and marvels.

It's one of the hallmark evidences of repentance. There's no fear anymore to confess. Do you remember the response of the woman at the well after she conversed with Jesus. Come see a man that made me look like an idiot. Come see a man that told me everything I had done. She was just reveling in him.

A Christian loves the holiness of God because it’s just him. You enjoy him for his own sake. You aren't trying to get anything out of him. You've already got everything you want. And you just stare in amazement.

For Jesus to truly be loving he needs to rejoice in himself. For us to be truly loving we need to rejoice in the fact that

We looked last week at the fact that Jesus was not irritable or resentful. *And his lack of irritability and lack of resentfulness wasn't for lack of opportunity.* **We thought about how irritating it must have been for Jesus to live among people who were so slow of learning, so imperceptive, so obtuse.** It would have been very understandable for Jesus to be irritated and even resentful but he was not. Instead he was kind and patient.

Well today we look at the next section. Jesus did not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoiced with the truth.

# Defining Rejoicing in Wrongdoing vs Rejoicing in the Truth

Of all the descriptors of love, this one to me is the most interesting because it is the most unintuitive to me. Here's what I mean by unintuitive.

If you were to just read, rejoice with the truth. How would you naturally, intuitively, read that? I would think, well, the Bible is true. Rejoice in that. And of course that would be a great thing to rejoice in. But that's not the kind of truth-rejoicing that is being talked about.

We know that because of how the sentence is structured. **When we read love doesn't rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth, clearly these are intended to be opposites.** You don't rejoice in wrongdoing. Instead, here's the opposite, you rejoice with the truth.

So the type of truth-rejoicing that we are talking about is the opposite of rejoicing in wrongdoing.

So what does it mean to rejoice in wrongdoing? **The word wrongdoing could be translated unrighteousness, injustice.** There's a bit of a range of how this word can be used.

Now the way I'm going to be explaining it today, it's going to be helpful to translate it injustice.

So what does it mean to rejoice at injustice? Initially that seems silly to us.

- I don't rejoice when people rob banks and get away with it.

- I don't rejoice at the injustice of political corruption and money exchanges taking place under the table.

- I don't rejoice when a legitimate criminal gets off the hook on a technicalities

Who does that? Who rejoices with injustice?

Well, that's too simplistic. **The reason you don't rejoice in these things is because they don't benefit you.** But what about when unrighteousness or injustice that benefits you? *What about verdicts that are cast upon you that are factually inaccurate but the result of which really benefit you?*

Let me give you a super simple example. You come into work and someone says, "Man, thank you for scrubbing that stain out of the carpet!" But here's the problem. **You didn't scrub the stain out.** Someone else must have. *But you just let it sit there.* You don't correct it. That is legitimate injustice to whoever did do it. But you have no problem rejoicing in that injustice because of its benefit to you.

Or

What happens when you are writing a paper for your teacher and you are running out of time and you decide to blatantly plagiarize someone's words. And you get handed back the paper and on the top of the paper is the words A+. Amazing work! That is an unjust verdict in which you rejoice.

Or

Perhaps you project an image of yourself on Facebook that communicates something that is factually inaccurate. **You are willfully trying to craft your image through carefully selected photos, well-worded posts.** And the verdict that lands on you from other people is exactly what you hoped. Factually not true! But you lap it up.

You rejoice in injustice.

You see we rejoice in injustice when it's in our favor. **A slight spin on the truth and we are totally fine people thinking that we are better than we actually are.** If you view me as a man of higher character that I actually have, more integrity than I actually possess, a better father or husband than I am, I am totally okay with that. That is me rejoicing in injustice.

I am totally okay if people want to broadcast that verdict, essentially broadcast the injustice. I am all about rejoicing in injustice when it is in my favor.

And you might think, isn't the word injustice a little strong. What's the harm of a little over-inflation of virtue? How is that injustice.

Well here's the harm. Some of you guys know I like to hack on computers and electronics. Recently I had a breakthrough and I'm thinking of starting a company. What do you think about this for a logo for my company.

We see the problem here instantly. Apple deserves to be the only company to market with that logo because people associate everything apple has done with that logo. **Any international brand takes billions of dollars to build.** You've got to invest billions in r&d, billions in maketing, billions in customer service, you have to build a world-wide infrastructure. So for me to pretend that I'm everything that logo represents is a massive injustice to the company that built it. I'm stealing the wealth of a company by using the symbol that represents all that.

Now in the exact same way if someone says, you are such a loving woman or you are such a respectable man, but in actual fact you are anything but loving or kind, then what are you doing? **You are stealing the hard work of men and women who are actually loving and respectable and applying that brand, that label to yourself.**

So this is why love rejoices with the truth. Love insists on just verdicts about self as a way of loving those who are better than them. **That's the relationship between love and truth.** A person might ask how is it loving toward other people for me to rejoice in a truth that condemns me? And now we understand.

Because if I am treated as righteous when I am in truth unrighteous, then the only way I can truly be treated that way is by robbing the righteousness of another man and claiming it for myself. **If rob the righteousness brand so to speak that would be extremely untruthful but also extremely unloving.** That is not an earned title I can claim.

Here's the simplest way to say it. By identifying ourselves as a loser allows one person to be a winner.

This is obvious in the world of sports. **We have to be doggedly rigid in our speaking of truth in order for the whole thing to work.** We never say, "Well, he was basically inbounds. Sure his foot was slightly over the line, but it was close enough." I mean in football, they will do the slow motion replay and if the foot was even 1/4 of inch over the line, they will call it back. **I mean what would sports be without absolute rigid, unflinching justice.** This is why I think people love it so much. The lines are hard. Justice is served. No matter how much a team cries, I'm sorry, the actual fact is, you lost. You can't have two winners.

And the fact that there is truth and the administration of truth in justice means there is such a thing as glory. **Massive glory comes on the heels of stern truth and justice.** There can be no such thing as massive glory without strict justice. No matter how close you are there is only one winner. The one winner means that everyone else lost.

Now love says, "You were just better." Love allows the person who actually earned the title to receive it.

#What About When We Can't Handle the Truth?

Now it's one thing to accept the fact that you are an NCAA loser. But it's another thing to accept the fact that you are an actual loser.

LOVE rejoices in the truth - BUT - and here is the massive catch - rejoicing in the truth is especially hard to do when that truth is a truth that

- The truth condemns us.

- The truth exposes the unflattering version of ourselves.

- The truth unmasks us.

- The truth divulges our failures.

- The truth announces our secrets to the world.

- The truth flings open the door and the embarrassing failure is revealed.

How, might I ask, are we going to rejoice in THAT truth. No natural man wants to rejoice in that.

- And so it's understandable that some will want to suppress it as in Romans 1:18.

- And it's understandable that some will want to exchange the truth for a lie as in Romans 1:25.

- And it's understandable that some will get upset when faced with truth as in Galatians 4:16

It's understandable, but it's unrighteous and unloving. How can you sing alongside a truth that condemns you? There's a bit of a conflict of interest, don't you think? How can you really truly do that? This is where it's all driving.

# Rejoicing in the Truth

I want to show you how Jesus addresses this all important question in gospels. This is an amazing text that will bleed over into next week. This will connect to next week's message. Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 8. *We have to grab some context but we only have time for a high level overview so you'll have tolerate me summarizing a few sections here.*

Now John chapter 8 opens with the woman who was caught in adultery. And here we have the Pharisees coming to Jesus. And what do they want? They want the truth. They want justice. Here's this woman who was caught in adultery. It would be an absolute travesty to let this woman go. **Jesus, we want you to rejoice in the truth of this woman's guilt.** *After all Jesus, love rejoices in the truth, right?*

Common, Jesus rejoice in the truth?! The text says explicitly that this was a trap. That is ACTUAL the truth.

Now since Jesus is a lover of justice and a lover of truth, he's never going to let them get away with this. What is the truth? **The truth is, the adultery that needs exposing and brought to justice is not the sin of this woman, it's the sin of the Pharisees.** He's got his crosshairs on the Pharisees. He's not about to let this plot of the Pharisees further the injustice. So you know how the story ends. He who is without sin, cast the first stone. Everyone leaves.

There's a bit of mystery as to what went on but whatever happened there, it ended in the Pharisees being humiliated. That is certain. It didn't go down the way they were hoping.

Somehow Jesus devised a way to evade the Pharisees trap. This text is so often taught as Jesus administering grace to a adulterous woman, which that of course is true, but that's like the ultra-minor point. What he's really concerned about here is exposing the wicked heart of the Pharisee.

Now how does Jesus just accomplish this? What question do you suppose was burning hotly in the Pharisees minds at the close of this humiliation. What RIGHT do you have to treat us that way? **By what AUTHORITY do you forgive this adulterous woman?** The rest of chapter 8 is all about answering that question!

So essentially what Jesus is saying here is I am truth. *Light and truth are nearly synonymous terms in the Bible.* Jesus says, I am like a lamp that shines into a previously dark space and exposes what has always been there but nobody could see. I am truth.

Now that's not quite accurate. Because Jesus does not say, "I am like a light that shines into the world." He says, I am the light of the world. He's literally saying, "I am the sun." I am the blazing standard of ultimate truth. What Jesus wants to do all through John chapter 8 is establish himself as the ULTIMATE authority. *You want to rejoice in truth, rejoice in me!* This is super important to see. You'll see it again and again. Now the Pharisees hear this exactly for what it is. So they object.

Now essentially what the Pharisees are doing here is pointing out Jesus' circular reasoning. You are the ultimate truth huh? **Well how are we supposed to know that you are the ultimate truth?** And what is Jesus answer? Because I said so. That's circular reasoning Jesus.

Jesus doesn't deny that this is circular reasoning. And the fact that he doesn't deny it is very important.

Jesus says, "you are right. I am reasoning circularly which is my actual point." Every ultimate form of ultimate authority has to reason circularly. For example

- How do you know the earth is round? You point to a source of authority.

- Magellan floated around the earth? Magellan was very primitive. He could have been misguided. So we appeal to a higher source.

- Well, we can do mathematical experiments today that can prove the earth is round. But how can you trust the math?

- Well because our reason says that the math must be correct.

- Well how can you trust your reason? Because it's reasonable to trust reason.

Eventually every source of ultimate authority, when questioned, must appeal to itself. **Jesus says I am the light of the world because I say I am the light of the world.** Rejoice in the truth by rejoicing in me. He's appealing to himself, thereby establishing himself as ultimate. He's forcing the Pharisees to grapple with an unprecedented claim.

So it's actually quite good that Jesus' answers circularly. He's being consistent.

Jesus says, I have to bear witness about myself. That's what makes me ultimate. So I can't do anything but argue circularly. **That doesn't make it not true.** In fact, the burden of proof lies on you. I am claiming to be ultimate and I know my origin. I am literally claiming to be God. *You claim I'm not ultimate and you know nothing about me.* Hence your denial of my testimony regarding myself is worthless.

This really baffled me until this morning as I was re-reading it for the 1000th time. Jesus says, "I judge no one." And then for the rest of chapter 8 he goes on judging the Pharisees. How does that work.

Well again, think about what Jesus is claiming. I'm the sun. I'm the ultimate standard. Now what do ultimate forms of authority do? They judge. **They become the standard against which all other lesser things are measured.**

So how is it that Jesus can say, "I judge no one" when clearly he is the ultimate judge. Think of it this way.

If I say, "How long is that board." 12 inches. How do you know? Because my tape measure said so. How do you know if your tape measure is acurate. Well they test it at the factory. How is the factory know they are accurate. Well they took it to the building that houses the international standard and they calibrated it. There's a stick out there somewhere, and you can take your stick to that stick and see if it's the same.

Now let's say for the sake of argument that this tape measure factory took their stick and it was off by a 1/4 of an inch. Would that stick by judging them? *The stick doesn't have a will, so it can't judge in the sense of willfully condemn.* But it's mere existence as the ultimate standard does judge. Merely by saying, "This is the perfect stick, you make all other sticks inferior. All other sticks are judged by that stick."

This is what Jesus is saying. I do not judge you the way you are judging me. **You judge me according to the flesh with an intent to condemn me.** You're using human standards. You bring in your broken crooked stick and you say, "See, he's all messed up because he's not like us. *He's perfectly straight.* Perfect sticks are bent and broken." You judge according to the flesh with the intent of trying to kill me.

Jesus says, I judge nobody. I merely exist. But my existence judges you as inferior. **My perfection illuminates your imperfection.** I create a contrast by merely exist. And that contrast has judgment implications. What are those judgment implications?

Now I am going to have to summarize. But Jesus in the next few verses goes on to really hammer down that judgment. **He goes on to rejoice in the truth.** In verse 19-33 Jesus goes back and forth with the Pharisees,

- He says, you don't actually even know God.

- You are actually of the devil even though you think you know God.

- Because you are of the devil you are going to die in your sins.

These are some pretty harsh criticisms. BUT WHAT JESUS SAYS IS FACTUALLY TRUE. Now lets back out here. What is love? love rejoices with the truth.

Truth in 1 Corinthians 13 is pictured as something that is independent of us. It just exists outside of us. And it's personified as a person you can cooperate with or rebel against.

“Love rejoices with the truth. Love sings along with the truth.**” The truth is right here in this chair and it's literally just singing.** The truth is rejoicing already, and love comes alongside and sings along with it. The truth is a message that has a power of its own, that’s a living thing.

Jesus is speaking the truth. Here truth is singing in this chair. Jesus is singing along with it.

The truth is they are stealing glory from God by claiming to be righteous when they are not. *They are egregious in their brand infringement.* Only Jesus deserves to carry around the title righteous. The Pharisees are stealing what Jesus has earned and claiming for themselves.

**So why can't the Pharisees get along side of truth and rejoice along with it?**

You know the answer. **Because the truth condemns them.** And so they can't admit. They are not free to admit it. What do you call that when you aren't free to be truthful? *What do you call someone who is shackled in fear because if they tell the truth they will be punished?* You call that person a slave.

You see the Pharisees are slaves of sin. Sin says, "Don't you dare rejoice in the truth because it will all come crashing down. **Your whole world will come crashing down when people discover that you are fake.** When the world discovers that you're Apple store is a fake, you'll get thrown in prison. *When all these people who worship you as a spiritual leader discover that you aren't even saved, everything that you care about will crumble.*" That is what sin is whispering. And it enslaves you. You aren't free to rejoice in a truth that condemns you. You are slave controlled by fear.

Now why does fear tactic work? Answer because it's true. If you confess, everything will come crashing down. If you rejoice with the truth, your entire world will crumble. It will. Nobody wants to be conned. People punish the cons of this world. So you will forever be a slave.

That is nearly hopeless. But I say nearly...there is one hope for the slave.

Now this is just absolutely fascinating. This is why Jesus has been driving so hard at authority and absolute truth. He's saying, "Listen Pharisees, you are slaves of sin. Of course you are. You can't possibly rejoice at the truth because of the implications of it. You are slaves. I get that."

You have one hope. Your only hope is if you can admit your worse nightmare. That I am who I say I am.

**Because then if I am who I say I am, two things are true.

1. You are a million times more condemned than you ever thought possible.

2. But if I am the Son, I have the authority to actually set you free.

- **Do you not see that the only way you can rejoice in the truth about yourself is if that truth is already forgiven.**

- Do you not see that in order for you to be free from being judged you have to accept the judgment?

But here's the problem. They can't humble themselves to admit it. **Since they can't bear to admit who they really are, the only thing they can do, the only trick they have left in the bag is to say, "Who are you to make such a judgment on us.** You have no authority to make such claims. *If you're just a guy, then you have no business making any kind of absolute judgment on my life.* So they seek to undermine Jesus, they try to draw a line in the sand. We are of Abraham and you are not. In other words, you are not in the place to make any sort of judgment on us.

This is classic mudslinging. How can you possibly trust this guy? He's a child of a woman that sleeps around. We are children of Abraham. I mean conversation over. This guy has no credibility. But now Jesus cuts straight to the point.

Why can you not rejoice with the truth? Because you can't handle the truth. The truth is unbearable. The truth is too painful. The truth will slice you to pieces. Jesus has no mercy here. He continues to slice.

Those are stinging words. **Everyone pristine in their truth.** Everyone one of them absolute razors to the soul. Jesus is not slinging mud back. We are so used to this in political campaigns that it's easy to hear it that way. *The Pharisees launch an offense.* Jesus defends and then launches his own attack. Not at all. Think about it. *The Pharisees want to murder Jesus.* They want to murder the Son of God. Like... that's not good. That's what Satan wants to do. This is not exaggeration to say that the Pharisees are of their father the devil. This is pristine truth. **But how can the Pharisees possibly rejoice in this truth?** How can they? It's too much. They cannot bear it?

So what is the solution?

The Pharisees can't love Jesus. The standard of righteousness applied to them is too uncomfortable. So their only choice to to besmear him and attack his credibility.

So for the rest of chapter 8 they continue to blast Jesus. They accuse him of being a Samaritan. They accuse him of having a demon. They accuse him of blaspheme.

And Jesus, says, "All these accusations would be absolutely correct if it wasn't for the fact that I am God." And chapter 8 culminates in Jesus not backing down, in fact, ratcheting up his claim and establishing himself absolutely as the son of God.

He said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day because I am greater than Abraham. Abraham rejoiced to see my day. So the end of chapter 8 ends with this diametric opposition.

1. Abraham rejoicing in the truth that Jesus is God

2. The Pharisees grind their teeth against the truth that Jesus was God.

And the Pharisees pick up stones to stone not the adulterous woman, but Jesus CHrist the Son of God.

They are absolutely blind to their own sin and absolutely blind to who Jesus is.

# Conclusion

Now we still haven't answered the question. If love rejoices in the truth. How can you sing alongside a truth that condemns you? How can you really truly do that? **On the one hand, we mock the Pharisees for being so blind, but on the other, is this not exactly where we sit?**

Spiritual blindness can be defined in this passage as simply not wanting to see the truth of your own ugliness.

So how can we be healed from this spiritual blindness? Who would want to be healed? If you believed you were a princess but in reality you were deformed and wart covered, would you want to know? You want the blue pill or the red one?

Spiritual blindness says, I'd rather deceive myself that I am righteous because the path of truth leads only to fatalistic despair. That is spiritual blindness.

Well John chapter 9 is the climax of this drama. And you have three characters.

- You have Jesus who has established himself as the ultimate authority in chapter 8. He is the LIGHT of the world. He is the GREAT I AM.

- You have the Pharisees who violently oppose this truth

- And then you have this simple blind man functions as a judge.

And as that light comes piercing in....as the music of truth begins to sing, you have these absolutely violent opposite responses.

Next week we will see how it's possible for us to sing alongside of a truth that condemns us. How? Because love does not only rejoice in the truth. It bears all things. We will see Jesus bearing the condemnation that truth reveals.

That's for next week and the weeks to come!

Introduction

Try to think back in your life to moments when you were really changed by something.

Maybe the birth of a child?

Maybe it was a really special person you met.

Maybe it was a tragedy

Maybe it was a massive athletic accomplishment, or musical or academic accomplishment.

When asked, "What has really changed you?" Almost everyone will answer by describing some sort of experience.

Much of the most meaningful things in life can't be taught in the classroom. The classroom of course is necessary. It gives you the container into which the experience is poured. But the experience has to teach you.

For example, you can't teach a young person about death in a classroom. It doesn't matter how many words you use. You can say over and over again, "Life is really, really short. Life is really, really, really precious." But it's too distant. It seems so unreal.

You have to live life to appreciate just how precious time is.

You have to live life and watch friends die to realize how mortal you really are.

You have to escape a few near death experiences to realize just how fragile the whole thing really is.

It's the experience that drives truth from this intellectual container in the head deep into our soul.

Now I say that to emphasize the way in which we need to be changed today. Let's first affirm that we need to be changed. Can you think of anything more pointless than coming to church and leaving in the exact same way you came. Why did you come if not to be changed?

Easter Lead up

But how does change happen? We are in 1 Corinthians 13, this great chapter on love. And we need at the very onset here to just understand that we can never just describe love in some clinical sort of way and expect it to change us. 1 Corinthians 13 is the intellectual container. It gives us a category. It gives us a theoretical concept. It defines love. It describes it. But it can't ultimately change you until you experience it. You see love is a thing that gets embodied in a person and when you experience it, it picks you up and changes you.

We need to experience the love of Christ for us. And one of the primary ways you experience that love is by looking to the embodiment of God's love in the person of Jesus Christ. So what we are going to do in the next six weeks leading up to Easter is take one of the descriptions of love from 1 Corinthians 13 (love hopes all things, bears all things, believes all things) and pair it with a story of the life of Christ leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection.

So the goal here is to tell a story of love.

A story where we see Jesus loving us all the way to the point of death, even death on a cross. It is a marvelous story. It is the most marvelous story ever told. It is scandalous in all its parts but at the same time it is in story form the most awesome expression of love the world will ever will know.

Love Does Not Insist on It's Own Way

A couple weeks ago David started us off with Love is patient and kind, it does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude.

This week we want to focus on the description, "Love does not insist on it's own way..." and how that worked itself out in the life of Jesus.

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says, "Do you want to know what love is? It's not insisting on having things your way. It's not doing it your way?" Burger King has the slogan, "Have it your way." What is my way? The way that I like. You dial in the condiments just the way you like them. Turn all the knobs just perfect.

Paul is saying love doesn't insist on that. Imagine if Burger King changed their slogan, "You don't get your way."

I like my way. My way is the the way that's easiest for me, most comfortable for me, most convenient for me. And there's nothing wrong with liking a way. Of course there is a way you like best. But what happens when your way collides with someone else's way? What happens when what's easiest and best for you is not easiest and best for someone else? What does love do in that moment? Love does not insist on it's own way.

This week, I had revelation of this in my own marriage. We do a book club here at church and my wife wanted to read this last months book with me. And in my mind this idea wasn't going to be very practical. How are we going to carve out the time? I'll just read it and you just read it and we can talk about it. That was my way. That was the way that made sense to me, was convenient for me, worked to my schedule. But it wasn't the way that made sense to her, that was convenient for her or worked best in her schedule.

Guess how loved she felt when I insisted on my way?

Love is saying, It's not about the way that's convenient for me. I won't insist on the convenient way.

Love says, it's not about the way that gives me comfort. I won't insist on the comfortable way.

Love says, it's not about the way that protects my rights. I won't insist on the way that protects my rights.

That's a smaller sort of thing. But let's ratchet that concept up.

The Ultimate Surrendering of One's Own Way

There's this ultimate expression of not insisting on one's own way, it's the life of Jesus Christ.

There was a way that was convenient for Jesus Christ and he did not insist on that way.

There was a way that was most comfortable for Jesus and he did not insist on that way.

There was a way that would have been easiest for him and he did not insist on that way.

It's the heart of what Philippians 2 says.

The point of today's message is to make one point and make it clearly. Jesus Christ because of his great love, did not insist on his own way, but chose a way that was full of suffering, he chose a way very terrible for him but unbelievable for us. Jesus was not forced onto the cross. He did not reluctantly get caught up in a string of events that inevitably terminated in him on trial before Pontius Pilate. Jesus chose to die for you and I. Jesus did not insist on his own way because that's what love is and that's who God is.

A False Narrative

Let me just level with you about the narrative here. There is a notion that gets circulated in secular historians that Jesus didn't give up his life. There was no going to the cross for sinners. He was just a guy, like a million other guys who was trying to do a power grab and failed. He was trying to take power but before he could fully hatch his plan the Romans arrested him, tried him and crucified him. And it was his disciples that later came along and created a theological reason for his death.

I think with even the smallest amount of scrutiny this claim falls apart but its absolutely important that we do this scrutiny. The entire gospel rests upon it. The fact that Jesus chose the cross can be shown in many very obvious ways. First of course is the obvious statement of the narrative itself.

If you take the narrative at face value, Jesus knew he was going up to Jerusalem to die. In Mark chapter 8 he tell his disciples that he's going to Jerusalem to die. They don't understand. So in Mark 9 he tells them again. They don't get it. So in Mark 10 he tells them again. They still don't get. They never get it. But clearly, from the narrative Jesus gets it. There's no question that when Jesus heads to Jerusalem for that final passover, he knows it's his last. He's choosing a way that ends in his crucifixion.

It's not a fun way to go. A way better way would be for him to just avoid Jerusalem all together. A way better way would be for him to escape from the Jewish leaders all together. But love does not insist on its own way. He was going to Jerusalem to die.

Jesus chose to die. In fact, if we read the story carefully and pay attention to the cultural forces at work, I think it's possible to show that not only does Jesus know he's going to die, Jesus ensures that he will die by forcing the religious leaders to the point of a choice. Either you follow me or you kill me. Jesus was driving them to make a decision and he knew the decision they would make.

Now how does he do this? How does he force the leaders to make a choice.

To me this is fascinating. According to the gospel record, Jesus cleansed the temple two times in his ministry. Once at the beginning and once at the end. Now if you look at it carefully, you realize this cleansing of the temple, from a human vantage point, has everything to do with how he ended up on the cross. In order to appreciate these two different cleansing incidents we need a little bit of backdrop.

Think about where we are in the sequence of history when Jesus comes on the scene. There is a political, religious, social environment that we need to be aware of in order to appreciate the gospel accounts in general, but especially the temple cleansing.

-When you close the pages of the OT who is in power? Persia. When you open up the pages of the NT who is in power? Rome.

-When you close the pages of the Old Testament where do people worship? At the temple. When you open the pages of the NT where do they worship? In the Synagogues.

-When you close the pages of the OT who are the leading religious figures? Priests and prophets. When you open up the pages of the NT who are they Pharisees and Sadducees.

Try to find a verse in the OT that mentions either a synagogue or a Pharisee or a Sadducee or a zealot or a Hellenist. Something happened in that 400 years between Malachi and Matthew.

That 400 year period is called the innertestamental period and during that period of time these two groups of people emerge that become very predominate in the NT, namely, the Pharisees and the Saducees. And the way these groups arise is not insignificant. We all know Alexander the Great from our history classes as the ruthless Greek general who conquered the entire Mediterranean world. And that is true. But he was more than that. Alexander was the distinguished student of Aristotle. And by reason of Aristotle’s influence, Alexander’s had a mission: to spread Greek culture into all the known world. This spread of Greek culture was known as Hellenism. Hellos is the Greek word for Greeks. So Hellenism is the spread of Greek culture.

By the time you get to the NT the grand issue dividing Jew from Jew is the issue of Hellenization. Greek Culture is colliding with Jewish culture so which one wins? Or to say it another way, “How much of the Mosaic law are we willing to forfeit in order to get along with the Romans?” Burn a little incense to some foreign God? Every Jew had to wrestle with this issue.

How rigidly are you going to continue to insist on your dietary laws. Everything about Greek culture involved food and you as a Jew had to be the party pooper.

How rigidly are you going to adhere to your dress, your remembrance feasts, your, your system of priests and temple worship.

Everything about being a Jew was at odds with Greek culture. The pressure to conform to the culture was intense. Are you going to cave in or are you going to hold strong.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees were on opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue. And they despised one another for it. This is the issue that will define them all through the NT. In order to appreciate the dynamic of the gospels you have to understand the difference between a Pharisee and a Sadducee.

Our modern usage of the words here don't help us at all here. For example, if I call you a Pharisee you will not be complimented. This word Pharisee has become part of the vocabulary of insult. But, the Pharisees were a noble people in their beginnings. They said, we will not bow the knee to Greece. We will comply when possible but if we have to make a choice, we choose God. That is noble.

The Sadducees on the other hand, bought it hook line and sinker. We can't fight 'em so let's join 'em. The religion of the Sadducees was pure expediency. It was not a religion of the heart. It was a religion of the pocketbook. And so if you want to think about these two groups of people, think about it this way. And I’ll put it in chart format.

Now given this background information, we are going to consider the first cleansing of the temple. In the gospel account, there are four Passover’s mentioned. Jesus cleanses the temple two times in his ministry once at the first Passover which has the effect of thrusting him into public ministry and once at the fourth Passover which has the effect of nailing him to a cross. And why those two effects are different is crazy important. “How did he get away with it the first time but ended up on a cross the second time.” You have to understand the dynamic of what is going on between these two groups and their relationship with Rome.

We already said to the common man, the Sadducee was despised. And they were despised for good reason.

The Sadducees did not control the temple by reason of the fact that they were priests and were legitimate descents of Aaron. They had bought the position of high priest from Rome, literally as a money making operation.

So Passover for the Sadducees was like black Friday for them. There was all sorts of money to be made. For example, according to the Mosaic Law you had to offer a one year male lamb.

Now, think about it. That's a bit of a logistical nightmare if you live very far from Jerusalem. If you were traveling from Galilee down to Jerusalem, you would not want to cart your animal all the way down those long dusty roads and so many people would simply bring some money and purchase an animal once you got to Jerusalem. The problem was they wouldn’t allow you to purchase an animal unless it was in the local currency so you had to change your money. And guess who controlled the money changing operation.

The Sadducees. And they gouged people horribly. And to eliminate competition they moved the money changing operation up onto the temple mount in the courtyard area. And of course the common Jew just hated them for this exploitation. But that's not all.

The Mosaic law said not only did you have to offer a one year old male lamb, but you had to offer one that was without blemish.

Well who gets to determine if the lamb has a blemish? The Sadducees of course. They would work out deals with the local shepherds that the priests would only approve lambs from the approved shepherds and in turn the approved shepherds would have to give a kickback to the Sadducees. So even if you had a perfect lamb according to the Mosaic law, the Sadducees would reject it and force you to buy one of their one-eyed scrawny “approved” lambs. And you can imagine how much the people would have resented this. What are you going to do? You can’t go start a new temple. You just had to hold your nose and hope that God could some how smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifice amidst all the stench of corruption all around you.

Now the Pharisees stayed out of all this. The Pharisees were in charge of the religious education at the community level in the Synagogues. The synagogues were like small local churches scattered all through the agricultural cities primarily in the North. They controlled the local religious culture. You'd learn to read and write here. You'd learn the Torah. It would function somewhat as a courthouse to resolve small disputes. How you lived life as a God-honoring Jew was decreed from your local synagogue.

So we have three different groups of people. The Sadducees, the common Jew, and the Pharisees. And here comes Jesus marching onto the temple mount with fire in his eyes. He sees the money changing racketeering. He can hear the bartering and haggling and the clinking of coins and he fashions a whip and drives the money changers out of the temple.

Let's think about how each of these three groups would have responded.

How did the Sadducee respond? Well obviously, with utter contempt, rage and hatred. They instantly want to put him to death for three reasons.

Jesus is ruining their black Friday event

Jesus is gathering attention and popularity, but worst of all,

Jesus is injuring their pride.

In reality, because of their pride, the Sadducees are really envious. Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself. And the Sadducees were socially proud, religiously proud, morally proud. And Jesus injures that pride.

So the Sadducees want him dead yesterday.

So here's a question. If the Sadducees hated Jesus so much why didn’t the Sadducees do something about it? This is important. It's because of the other two groups.

When Jesus went in and cleansed the temple, what do you think the common man thought of that? He was instantly a wild folk hero. Every single person would have went home that evening absolutely electric with the story of how Jesus made a whip and drove out those money changers and made a fool of the Sadducees. We've been waiting for this for 50 years! Jesus is our Savior! Jesus was performing signs. Jesus was taking charge of the temple. This guy must be it! But this enthusiasm was as shallow as water on plate.

Jesus used the protection of the people but did not trust the people.

So Jesus was protected by the common man, but he was also protected by the Pharisee. Think about this, when Jesus cleansed the temple, what do you think the Pharisee thought? You see, they loved it too. They probably wished they would have had the guts to do it themselves. Pharisees were religious conservatives and they along with the common man hated the abuses going on in the temple. They knew it was corrupt but the Sadducees had the protection of Rome so their hands were tied.

So the Pharisees probably look at Jesus and early on in Jesus' ministry while they are on the Sadducees turf, they say, "Hey this Jesus guy is not so bad." He's finally calling those Sadducees to justice. It's about time someone around here did that.

So early on in Jesus ministry the Pharisees and Sadducees were split and here's why that matters. Both the Pharisees and Sadducees were under Roman rule as we all well know. The Romans actually allowed a great amount of self-rule but one of the things they did not allow was capital punishment. They could not even bear arms. Couldn’t have a local police force. The Romans took control of all that. So if you wanted Rome to inflict punishment on some guy you had to bring him before a Roman ruler and request that he be sentenced. That is what is going on when Jesus it taken before Pilate.

But before you could go to Rome with your request, it had to first make it past the great Sanhedrin. The great Sanhedrin was the buffer between the Jewish people and Rome. If something was serious enough to warrant capital punishment or imprisonment it had to first go through the Sanhedrin and if they deemed it worthy they would request that Rome intervene. Well in the providences of God, the Sanhedrin was evenly split 50/50 Pharisees and Sadducees. So anything that gets to Rome has to be agreed upon by both groups.

So of course the Sadducees want Jesus lynched. But the Pharisees are not going to help the Sadducees arrest Jesus and bring him to Rome.

They are loving the fact that Jesus is making a spectacle out of them. And so by pitting the Pharisees against the Sadducees and by endearing himself to the hearts of the people, Jesus is catapulted into public ministry. So cleansing of the temple the first time made Jesus wildly popular. That is how he got away with it the first time.

But what about the second cleansing? After the second cleansing, Jesus is on the cross five days later. Why the massively different reaction. It has to do with what happened in the next three years. Between the first cleansing and the second cleansing you have three years. After that first cleansing of the temple where does Jesus go? He makes his home in Capernaum which is in Galilee to the North which is on Pharisee turf.

And now for the next three years he goes from synagogue to synagogue enraging the Pharisees. And I’m quite sure the Pharisees go back to the Sadducees at some point and say to them, “You know, you were right about this Jesus guy, let’s turn him over to the Romans.” But what do the Sadducees now say?, “Hey you didn’t help us when he was turning over the tables in our temple. Sorry you are out of luck.” But now when Jesus enters into the city of Jerusalem during that passion week and overturns the tables of the moneychangers a second time and humiliates them again and possesses the temple for two days, he signed his own death warrant.

In that second cleansing, he was galvanizing the hatred of the Sadducees and Pharisees and it will only take 5 days before he is on the cross.

And here is the point that we have been driving at. Jesus knew this. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Jesus knew that he was giving the Pharisees and Sadducees a common cause that would unite them. Now you have a unanimous vote among in the Sanhedrin. Now you can bring him before Herod and Pilate. Now you can involved the national forces that have the authority to execute. Now you can get him murdered.

The fact that Jesus knew this is plain in the text. If you put together the synoptic gospels you find something very interesting. Lay the four gospels on top of one another chronologically and immediately after the cleansing of the temple for the second time you have John 12.

In John 12, Jesus almost in almost a Shakespearean soliloquy stands aside and begins speaking to himself (In the text he's speaking to a group of people, but it has the eerie foreboding tone that he's only half engaged. He's mostly speaking to himself). He's letting us know, that he knows the time has come.

It's the point of no return. He's leaped off the cliff. The forces of gravity are in motion. And now it's just a matter of time. Jesus knows that his upturning of the money tables means his death. He says this:

He said, "I know what's coming. It's like the person who eats a pill he knows will poison him to death." The forces are in motion. He knows what's coming. It can't be reversed. And what he says next is an absolutely exquisite expression of love.

Okay, that was all setup to make this point. How have we defined love? Love does not insist on it's own way. Jesus had a way that he would have liked. And it wasn't the cross. The cross terrified him. My soul is troubled and I don't like the way ahead that I see. I DONT like THIS way.

Anywhere along the path Jesus could have chosen a different way. When the soldiers come and try to arrest Jesus, Peter has a way. He gets out his sword and tries to fight. He chops off a dude's ear. That was Peter's way. What does Jesus tell Peter? Peter, I'm choosing this way. He softly rebukes Peter.

Peter, I'm choosing this way. Do you see the deliberate decision Jesus is making here? Jesus was going to the cross on purpose. He was not being led there. He was contriving to go there. He knew he would die. He was playing the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Romans like fiddles and he was embracing where this would lead.

Love Does Not Insist on It's Own Way.

Now why would he do this? Because Love does not insist on it's OWN way. Something is controlling him higher than his own desires for comfort, security. There was a way that was comfortable for Jesus. There was a way that enabled him to live in comfort. And that way certainly was not the way to Calvary. But love does not insist on it's own way.

The Personal Nature.

We are coming here this morning to worship. We are coming here this morning to experience love. And have you not experienced it already in the person of Jesus Christ? This is where this gets personal.

Who nailed Jesus to the cross? Did the Romans? Yes. Did the Pharisees? Yes. Did the Sadducees? Did the common Jew? Yes.

But this is not just something that happened back then. If we were in their place, we would have done the same thing. Indeed, we have done it.

Do we not regularly choose money over Jesus, our comfort over Jesus, our social security over Jesus?

Have we not all played the part of the coward and chosen social comfort rather than sharing Jesus at our workplace?

Have we not sacrificed Jesus to our greed like Judas?

Have we not sacrificed Jesus to our envy like the religious leaders?

Have we not sacrificed Jesus to our social standing like Pilate?

"Where were you when they crucified our Lord?" asks the old Negro spiritual. And we must answer, "Yes we were there." Not merely as spectators but as participants.

We may try to wash our hands like Pilate of our guilt, but the external washing of hands, the self-delusion does nothing to absolve us because that kind of blood does not wash off.

John Stott said, "Before we can beg to see the cross as something done for us (leading us to faith and worship), we have to see it as something done by us (leading to repentance). Only the man who is prepared to own his share in the guilt of the cross may claim a share in its grace.

This is not theoretical. Jesus went to the cross for you and for me. We see ourself as so sophisticated, so insulated from these barbaric practices. But as Horatius Bonar wrote,

'Twas I that shed the Sacred Blood; I nailed him to the tree I crucified the Christ of God I joined the mockery

Of all that shouting multitude I feel that I am one And in that din of voices rude I recognize my own

Around the cross the throng I see Mocking the sufferer's groan Yet still my voice it seems to be As if I mocked alone.

Remember we opened by saying that change comes through experiencing truth. Here's the truth: Jesus died for you. Think through this week, this month, this year. The gospel makes us square with

We are experiencing this love.

The Bread

It wasn't the Romans who humbled him. It wasn't the religious elite that humbled him. Jesus humbled himself. He volunteered for this kind of treatment.

Isaiah 53:10, 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...

Whose will was it that he would be crushed on that cross? Was it the will of Pilate? Was it the will of the Jews? No, it was the will of God.

The Cup

Jesus died but he was not a martyr. In John 10 Jesus says, The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Then he drops the metaphor. I lay down myu life. Nobody takes it from me. , but I lay it down of my own accord."

Acts 2:23, this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Do you see how LOVE does not insist on it's own way. Do you feel it? Have you experienced it today?

Octavius Winslow summed it up this way. Who deliverd up Jesus to die? Not Judas for money; not Pilate for fear; not he Jews, for envy; - but the Father for Love.

The human divine intersect in the beautiful mystery. Why did Christ die? I have to say, he didn't die. My sin took him there. He was killed. But then we also must says, He was not killed. He voluntarily gave up his life because nobody can take the life of God. God's love sent him to the cross.

Acknowledging both of these marvelous truths we rejoice in worship!

Prayer

Come ask for prayer.<

Missions Overview

Well we arrived back in the United States from our India trip Thursday evening and are so excited to share with you what we learned on our trip. It honestly such a wonderful experience.

But before we do that, you should have received one of these missions packets on the way in and I want to take a moment to help you interpret what you're reading here. This is our way of reporting the ways God has allowed us to partner with the larger global church in spreading the good news of Jesus.

Our mission statement reads, "We exist to glorify God by pointing the affections of all peoples to the all-satisfying person of Jesus Christ."

Those two words 'all peoples' give us our marching directions to spread the good new of Jesus Christ, not just to Boise, not just to Idaho, not just to the United States, but to the world.

The gospel is for the nations, all ethnicities, all language groups, all-people groups, all the world.

In our study of 1 Corinthians we have learned about this beautiful imagery of the body of Christ. The hand is needed for what the foot cannot do. And the foot is needed for what the hand cannot do. And both can work together when they are taking direction from the head. The body is an amazing thing when it works together. And of course this is true at a local church level. But the beauty multiplies as we lift our eyes from our local gathering here and look out globally. The body of Christ world-wide is an unbelievable organism. Thousands of languages, thousands of unique cultures, millions of local churches. Think of the power of that kind of diversity unified by the head which is Christ. It's an unstoppable force.

Now of course FCBC is involved in just the tiniest sliver of this massive global missions effort. But we love our sliver. FCBC is currently involved in six main missions efforts.

All six of these represent relationships that have been slowly developed over time.

We have a process where over the course of years we get to know missionaries, observe their character and effectiveness and gradually turn on the support if #1 we have bandwidth to take on another missionary and #2 if it is a fit for us to really engage with them long term.

And each of these six ministries is part of a larger strategy to put forward a balanced missions impact. We think healthy missions means we ought to have representation of missions in many areas. So we try to maintain a balance in the following areas.

So each of our six missions helps provide balance for us in these areas.

Mexico

Our longest term relationship and our deepest relationship is with Mexico. This is ministry to a reached people group, provides both short and long term involvement opportunities, is supporting two indigenous Hispanic pastors and is highly relationally involved.

Because of the proximity to the United States the time and financial barriers are significantly reduced and so this makes for a wonderful short term missions trip opportunity. We have years where we have taken entire families down up to 50 people. It's a wonderful example of a true ministry partnership

India

Our newest relationship and the relationship that has the most potential to reach unreached people groups is India. We'll come back to this in just a moment.

Ukraine

We support Ukrainian couple Vladamir and Yulia Vlashenko in Poltava Ukraine. Vladamir formerly was ministering to Muslim Tatars in Crimea until Russia annexed it. This forced him to move to the North where he continues to minister to refugees who are affected by the ongoing skirmish with Russia. They also have a handicapped son and so much of their ministry is actually ministering to families who are in similar situations. Their culture does not know how to value disabilities so they are able to speak the gospel in to those types of situations.

We have several in our church who speak Russian or Ukrainian and who may be able to help us in the future to translate and develop this ministry further.

East Asia

We support Kevin and DeAn Pettit who are Americans that have spent years in East Asia doing pastor training and counseling. Kevin recently spoke at our church. They are a real asset.

Glocal

If you want to talk about a ministry that is low hanging fruit, this would be it. You don't have to get on a plane. You don't have to get a Visa. You just walk down the street 1/4 of a mile and start talking. Glocal is a ministry that tries to reach out to refugees. Carolyn Langley attends our church here and is on staff for this ministry.

Cru

One of the things we've been told over and over again is that foreign missions will die without local missions. And it's true. We can't ignore the next generation. So we also support Billy and Angie Mogenson who are full time staff members at Cru and work on Campus at BSU.

Other Ministry Supports

Short Term Trips

Senegal

Republic of Georgia

Tom Manning

11 percent of our actual giving goes toward missions. It rolls over and you can see how it's currently being spent now.

India

Well let me give you a brief overview of how our relationship with India has developed and the purpose of the trip from which we just returned. In 2013 FCBC took a trip to Israel which we plan on doing again very soon. On that trip we met a man who was running a seminary in Bangalore, India. And he just seemed like a real humble servant of God.

While we were there we had the chance to specially commission him on this trip as he was baptized in the Jordan River. It was neat to get to know him, but really I thought nothing of it at the time. Well we stayed connected with him over email and slowly over time we began to help with simple projects.

We sent him a few books for their library. We sponsored a few students to attend the seminary. And then we sponsored a few more. We were very impressed at the level of integrity and the way he handled the finances.

And so the timing of this developing relationship was perfect because we were actually looking for some front lines missions work to be more meaningfully involved with. So in 2017 I took a trip by myself to India. And what I saw really shocked me. It was an amazing ministry! Here was a guy who was running a seminary on a shoestring budget and has graduated over 400 graduates who have gone into some of the most unreached places in the world. Mynmar, Tibet, Bhutan. In addition to that the seminary was involved in an outreach to a Hindu village that had almost no gospel influence.

I came back from that trip really encouraged. We continued to support them on a project level. But I wanted to return with more people to confirm what I was seeing and ask more questions. Well here we are. We came back more excited than ever! We want to be invested in this ministry going forward.

So let me tell the story of what we saw and how we can be involved going forward as a church.

So when we arrived the first place we visited was the seminary.

So you can tell, it's a small group of students. They live together. They eat together. They study together. It's a very tight knit, cohort type of environment. There is another professor Murray and his wife Lou. They actually live on campus and act as dorm parents and live with the students. Everything is done in English. The teachers are speaking their second language. Students are speaking their 4-5th language. They are incredibly bright.

Now one thing you might notice is that these guys don't look Indian in ethnicity. Their homeland is north in the state of Nagaland.

I never noticed this but India has this little spur off to the side in the north. There are seven states up here called the seven sisters which is really a collection of tribes that used to be headhunters until a missionary named Dr. Clark came with the gospel in the mid 1800s. Almost the entire region converted. It's one of the most Christian areas of India.

And so 14 years ago when Tia and Murray left, they wanted to take the gospel to the Indian people by heading south into the heart of India. So they've been graduating students to the tune of about 15 a year. And we were able to participate in seminars. We taught about 9 sessions all together which were exhausting but rewarding. We even got to participate in the graduation.

Most of the students are going back to churches, starting churches or heading out on missions efforts. One of the students graduating wants to do missions work in the middle east. He had no connections so we were able to get him hooked up with Tom Manning, one of our contacts who is working in Turkey.

So that's the seminary portion. After graduation we headed off to the mission field. This is cultural whiplash. Nagaland definitely has had western influence so it was a bit more familiar. Not so with the village.

There are two pastors here pastor Sadish and pastor Vassant. They are single handedly minster to 237 small villages. It's staggering for me to even get my head around these guys and their ministry. This area is 99.9% Hindu. We spent one entire day just visiting 6 of these tiny little pockets of believers in house churches.

Many of those we interacted with had never spoken or seen a Westerners in their life. Most were the only believers in their village or were one of just a handful of believers. Most of the believers are women. Many, many of them had really tough stories. After accepting Jesus, their husbands left them. This little girl will grow up without a father for that reason.

She was so sweet and you can imagine she's just trying to figure this all out.

I prayed for this lady who said that after she accepted Jesus the leaders of the village were coming every night and casting demonic curses against her house and so she was so scared and wanted prayer for that. Here's a picture of one of the two pastors. He has been beaten and thrown in jail on at least one occasion.

Despite the difficulty, it was just amazing to listen to their testimonies and to hear their stories of faith. Almost every one of them had experienced what sounded to our ears like first century church style conversions. Their were story after story after story of miraculous healings, casting out of demons, and whole households coming to Christ. It really was amazing.

There is one place where they gather for worship. So they will come by bus, by foot, by bike, by motorcycle from all these surrounding villages and they meet in an old chicken coup. And it's pretty nice as far as chicken coups go.

So we taught a couple of planned messages and a couple of unplanned messages. My wife gave a little word of encouragement. Ben gave a message out of thin air. I filled in a 40 minute gap from John 9 with 30 seconds of preparation. we were all kind of laughing at ourselves. Lisa led the group in a painting craft and they had a wonderful time with lots of smiles.

We then shared a meal.

It was a precious, precious opportunity. So as we ended the trip we have in our minds a way in which we can really strategically be involved.

Tia and Murray want to relocate the seminary in Nagaland. As we said, most of the students come from this region and it would reduce a lot of the obstacle to move back to this area. Their original goal of establishing a mission field has been accomplished and they have a heart return to their own people and minister to a generation that is being raised and rejecting their parents faith. Additionally, the cost of living in Bangalore has tripled since they began. So we can help by helping them purchase land, potentially even send a team over to help them build dorms, seminary building, etc. That's an exciting possibility

Also, we want to help the pastors in the village. They are currently living on next to nothing so they can serve the Lord full time. We can double their monthly income by giving them 50/month. Additionally they are looking to rent a building so they can have another church that's not so far away from some of the villages. For 100-150 a month they could easily to this.

We may also consider supporting Tia, Murray and the seminary on a monthly basis.

They could use supplies. They were quite proud of their library which honestly consisted of two small bookshelves fully of books that are falling apart. Last time I was there I decided to bring a spare projector that we had laying around and I come to find out that they loaned it to the village and he's been driving it around on his motorcycle showing the Jesus film. Another projector would be so useful.

So we've haven't had a chance to sit down as missions team yet to talk through specifics but we are so excited for a chance to be more involved in future years. God really blessed our time and we are thankful.