Well tonight we’re doing something a little different from the usual sermon that we have. It is going to be a message, a sermon from God’s Word, but rather than the regular exposition of a single text, we invited you over the last several weeks to submit questions about theology or the Christian life or about the Bible or about the present crisis. 

Luke 12:35-48 really is not just one parable; it’s three mini-parables. And there’s one unifying theme. Each one of these mini-parables points to the certainty of the return of Christ. And that should give us pause because scholars, as they talk about these three parables, say that these are among the weightiest parables in the New Testament. They deal with the dominant New Testament doctrine repeated more often than any other doctrine in the New Testament. You understand that, right? The doctrine of the return of Christ is the most often repeated doctrine of any other of our doctrines in the New Testament.

Luke 12:35-48 really is not just one parable; it’s three mini-parables. And there’s one unifying theme. Each one of these mini-parables points to the certainty of the return of Christ. And that should give us pause because scholars, as they talk about these three parables, say that these are among the weightiest parables in the New Testament. They deal with the dominant New Testament doctrine repeated more often than any other doctrine in the New Testament. You understand that, right? The doctrine of the return of Christ is the most often repeated doctrine of any other of our doctrines in the New Testament.

What does Jesus give us here that might actually change us, that might wake us up and motivate us to pray? Well He gives us in verses 5 to 13 these two brief parables and they focus on the identity and the character of the One hearing our prayers. First in verses 5 to 10, to motivate you to pray you have to see that God is your friend and you are a beggar. God is your friend and you are a beggar. And then second in verses 11 to 13, to motivate you to pray, you have to see that God is your Father and you are His beloved child. And so God is your friend and God is your Father and you are a beggar and you are His child and He is the best friend and He is the best Father that you could imagine. 

Through verse 12 of chapter 2, we’ve seen Peter give us, you might say, general theological and practical principles. And now, beginning in our passage this morning, he’s going to press some of those principles into the particular areas and contexts of our Christian lives. He will speak, for example, as we’ll see in a few weeks’ time, about slaves and masters, husbands and wives. Here, in verses 13 through 17, he’s going to speak to us about how Christians should relate to the civil magistrate, to civil government. And that of course makes 1 Peter 2:13-17 immediately relevant and full of some urgent contemporary significance. 

And we’re looking at another one of Jesus’ parables tonight. This is not a dramatic parable. There’s no joyful embrace at the reunion of a father and his wayward son. There’s no beaten and bloody traveler left for dead on the side of the road waiting to be rescued by a stranger, an enemy even. No, it’s just a man, a master of a house, and he brings out of his treasure what is new and old. It’s very simple. There’s not a lot of detail there, and yet the teaching of this parable is foundational for how we live the Christian life. 

We have a really great story from the Old Testament this morning and 2 Kings chapter 5. It’s one of the great stories of the whole Old Testament, I think, and it’s happened around 850 BC and it’s about a Syrian general named Naaman who goes to look for the prophet of Israel, Elisha, in order to be healed. And at the center of it really is what it means to be clean, to be made clean; that the only way to become truly clean is from the inside, out. That’s the message of the story that we’re going to read. So this is 2 Kings chapter 5.

We began considering these two verses last week and we saw there are four themes. The first two we looked at last time were the divine priority - that is to say, for Paul, God is first. He wants God to be first in the lives of the Ephesian Christians and he wants God to be first in our lives. So he's writing, "to Him, to Him be glory in the church." And we connected that with stewardship because we understood that if God were first in our lives then everything that we are, everything that we have will serve Him; will be for Him and for His glory. If God is the hub of the wheel around which everything in our life rotates, including our finances, it will serve His glory. So the divine priority. That was first last time. Then secondly last time, we considered the divine presence. In the twenty-first verse, Paul speaks about "glory in the church and in Christ Jesus." And we saw that likely in the background to that expression is the image that Paul develops at the end of chapter 2 where he says that the church is the "temple of God." You remember that in the old covenant era the temple in Jerusalem was the place where the glory presence of the Lord shone out, signifying His presence by His Spirit in the midst of His people. And Paul teaches us that now there is no longer a temple - this is not a temple - where God dwells physically, as it were. Rather, the temple is the church; it is the people of God, and the Spirit of God, the glory presence of God, dwells upon and among the people of God, the church.

Os Guinness, wonderful Christian author, told a story I heard once about a Japanese haiku poet. And I have to admit that’s the first time I’ve probably ever read one of those things! But this guy’s name was Issa; I can’t pronounce his first name. But this poet had a tragic life. His mother died when he was young and he lived in the 17th  century or so. He got married and had a child that immediately died and then another daughter who died when she was very young as well. So his life was one of basically tragedy from beginning to end. And distressed by all that tragedy he went to visit a Zen Buddhist master. He himself was a practicing Buddhist. And as he talked to this Zen master, the master concluded with these words. “The world is an illusion. Like the morning dew, our lives will evaporate with the rising sun." That's pretty standard Buddhist theology. The world is an illusion. Issa then wrote his most famous haiku after visiting with the Zen Buddhist master. A haiku is a very short poem. Here's what he wrote. "The world is dew. The world is dew. And yet, and yet." From the moment that all of us here first understand just what death is, we all know instinctively that death requires an “and yet.” We spend our lives searching for that “and yet.” In other words, we long for something more beyond this life. And here in 1 Corinthians 15 tonight, Paul gives us hope for the “and yet” that we all face when our lives are over.

We’ll be focusing on verses 15 through 18. You can find they’re on page 957 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. You will remember, if you’ve been with us, the story so far. Paul is responding to a letter that has reached him from Corinth raising a number of practical and theological questions that were troubling the believers there. And beginning last week, we saw Paul defending his ministry against those at Corinth who were dismissing and belittling it because, unlike the orators popular in Greek culture at the time, Paul refused to accept payment for his preaching. And so they’d begun to suggest that maybe he wasn’t a real apostle after all. They were trying to undermine his ministry and they did it, of course, because if he wouldn’t take their cash, he couldn’t really be controlled by his benefactors. They couldn’t pull the strings. Paul refused remuneration and so they had no favors to call in on him.