Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ

Series: N/A

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Galatians 2:21 - One of the most common problems Paul faced when talking to his fellow Jews about Jesus was that they didn’t think they needed Jesus to die for them!  They said, “What are you talking about Paul?  We can be right with God on our own by keeping the Law He gave us through Moses!  We don’t need a Savior to come die on a cross to make us right with God!”  And truthfully, Jews to this day who don’t follow Jesus say the same thing!  Muslims say they didn’t need Jesus to die for them either, and they claim God removed Jesus from the cross before He died.  Atheists of course don’t believe they needed Him to die for their sins either.  And Paul’s point in Galatians 2:21 is this: “If we could be saved without Him, then His death was completely needless!”

Illustration:  It would be like if a fireman saw a family’s house on fire and he ran through the front door to save them and he dies in the process, but he didn’t realize the family had already escaped out the back door!  So when the news anchor interviews the family they say through tears, “Wow, that fireman was so courageous and we hate so much that he lost his life because this just wasn’t necessary.  If only he had known we already saved ourselves and didn’t need him to save us, he could have lived.”

Now, I suppose there’s a world in which something like that could happen, it’s an honest mistake.  But the analogy needs to be sharpened because most of the time when people say they don’t need Jesus to save them, they’re not saying our house was on fire but we escaped ourselves; they’re saying, “Our house wasn’t on fire at all and there was nothing we needed to be saved FROM.”  So now it would be like a fireman who gets no call at all that there’s a fire in the house, he sees no smoke, zero evidence of a fire, and yet he bursts through the front door and says to the family, “I’m here to save you all!”  And they say, “From what?  There’s not even a fire here.”  And he says, “Oh yes there is I just know it, so let’s get you to safety, and as he’s trying to corral the family out the door, he trips and hits his head on the coffee table and dies.”  Now when the news anchors interview the family they say, “Wow, that fireman was certifiably insane!  He died for absolutely nothing because there was no fire or any evidence that we needed saving at all.”

That’s a FAR less likely scenario than the first one; the chances of a fireman breaking into your house because he invented a fire in his mind that didn’t exist are pretty much zero, and THIS is Paul’s point in Galatians 2:21.  Many people were basically telling him, “Our house isn’t on fire, we aren’t in trouble and we don’t need saving,” and Paul is saying, “Then why in the world would Jesus leave Heaven and come to earth to live a life of suffering, rejection, and ultimately be killed in the most horrific way imaginable?  If we didn’t NEED Him to do that for us, then His death on a cross was pointless!”

Now, maybe someone says, “But Brian, just because we didn’t need Him to die for our sins doesn’t mean His death was pointless.  I mean, He still could have inspired others by His courage to take a stand and be willing to die for one’s convictions.”  Yea but the problem is one of His convictions was that His death was meant to forgive us of our sins.  So if you think that claim was delusional because He didn’t have to die for our sins and there was no fire to save us from, then his death is not courageous, it’s just crazy.  Just like that crazy fireman was not an inspirational figure, Jesus wouldn’t be eithe.  No, we’re left with only one of two options:  A) Jesus died for our sins or B) His death was completely pointless.  There’s no middle ground position, and my hope this morning is to convince you to believe what Jesus claimed about the reason for His death and what all of His early followers claimed about it too.

Matthew 26:28

1 Peter 2:24

1 Corinthians 15:3 - If we are to believe that Jesus’ death wasn’t pointless or needless, but that He really DID die for our sins, the question is why did we need Him to do that?  Why do we need a Savior?  Let me give you 3 reasons:

1. Our Sin Leads to Physical and Spiritual Death

• When God created human beings, He put us in a garden where we could live forever with Him in peace.  He gave Adam and Eve so many blessings to enjoy with beautiful trees and delicious fruit, four rivers (actual rivers, not the BBQ place, though that would have been awesome), the garden was surrounded by rich resources like gold and onyx stone, they could eat from the tree of life and live forever, and Adam and Eve had the joy of each other’s companionship and all the pleasures of their sexual union in marriage and everything was on a perfect trajectory to give them and their children the best life in the presence of God.  And yet God placed one restriction on them.
  • Genesis 2:16-17 - As is so often the case with human beings, even if we have 1000 other options, we hate being forbidden from anything.  It’s like when you’re a kid, you may not have ever thought about a specific room upstairs because you’re too busy enjoying the rest of the house, but the second your parents say, “That room is forbidden,” it’s like now it’s all you can think about!  And that’s in part because Satan tempts us to fixate on the forbidden.  Satan WANTS us to die so if he can get us to violate God’s laws and put us under the curse of death, he’ll dangle that forbidden fruit in front of our faces to try to get us to give in!  And that’s what he did with Eve!  He told her, “God’s lying to you, you can’t trust Him.  If you eat this fruit, you won’t die!”  And instead of trusting God, she trusted Satan, and she and Adam both ate the fruit, and as a result were sentenced to two kinds of death.
    • 1) Physical death.
      • Genesis 3:19, 24 - God created humans from the dust by breathing His breath or spirit into us, yet here we see there’s going to be a reversal of that process and one day our spirit is going to leave our bodies.  Before sin, there was no physical death.  Adam and Eve were meant to live forever with God eating from the tree of life.  But once they sinned, they were cut off from the tree of life and the process of physical death began as their bodies gradually decayed over time until the final day of their life when they would die, their souls would leave their bodies, and they would return to the dust.  And even though Adam and Eve started it, we’ve all perpetuated the curse of death in our own lives by sinning against God like they did, and we’ll talk more about that in a second.
    • 2) Spiritual death.
      • Genesis 3:8 - Instead of living with God in peace, sin makes us ashamed and afraid to face God.  It fractures our relationship so now we’re no longer right with Him and we’re sentenced to something far worse than physical death; we’re sentenced to spend eternity apart from Him in Hell.
        • Sin is any violation of God’s will, whether in thought or in action.  And it’s not just a legal infraction because we’ve broken God’s law, it’s a personal infraction because we’ve broken His heart!  And you might say, “Well why can’t He just let us off the hook?  If He’s supposed to be a loving God, why does He have to sentence us to physical and spiritual death?”  It’s because God cannot violate His nature.  Scripture says God cannot tell a lie because He is truth by nature.  Likewise, He cannot let sin go unpunished and let us off the hook because it would violate His nature as a God of justice.
          • Proverbs 17:15 - If there’s a judge in court who’s condemning innocent people, that’s an abomination to God, but also if a judge is letting guilty people off the hook and justifying criminals by declaring them innocent, that TOO is an abomination.  And it’s an abomination to us too!  If someone committed a crime against you and during the trial the judge said to the one who wronged you, “You know what?  I know you committed a crime, but I’m feeling really loving and generous today so you’re free to go,” you would cry out, “Injustice!”  If God were to just forgive us and let us off the hook, He would be committing injustice and it would violate His nature.  Which means there’s a major tension between His nature as a God of love and His nature as a God of justice.  Even though He loves us, His justice requires our physical and spiritual death.
            • And this is why we needed Jesus to die for our sins, and why it’s the greatest news in the world!  You see, because God loved us SO much and didn’t want us to die physically or spiritually, He allowed His Son Jesus to die in our place.  This way, God’s justice could be maintained because the penalty for sin was paid, yet God’s love for us was maintained too because didn’t have to pay the penalty; Jesus paid it for us.  And notice what Paul said this allowed God to do…
              • • Romans 3:26b - Remember He said a judge who justifies the wicked is an abomination?  Well because of Jesus, God can justify us, the wicked, while still being just.  He can declare the guilty to be innocent, because Jesus took the sentence of death we owed for our guilt.  So now God can be both just and the justifier of evil sinners like us if we’ll put our faith in the death of His Son on our behalf.
                • Now, if you’re in doubt about whether you’ve sinned and are under the condemnation of death in the first place…

2.  Deep Down, We’ve Always Known We’re Sinners

• I think it’s fair to say most people don’t think of themselves as sinners.  We might think, “Hey I’m not a bad person, I pay my taxes, I open doors for people, I treat people with kindness, I’m a hard worker, I’ve never been arrested,” and by most standards and compared to other people, we might seem pretty decent.
  • But according to the Bible, the true standard for goodness is God!  He is morally perfect, sin is completely against His nature, and when we compare ourselves to HIM, our sin becomes immediately apparent!
    • For instance, the  prophet Isaiah was a very righteous man.  And if we were to compare his level of goodness with the nation of Israel, he was head and shoulders above everyone and was a pretty great guy!  But one day he saw a vision of God!
    • Isaiah 6:1-3 - The majesty of God here is overwhelming!  God’s presence fills the cosmos above the temple, and the only part of God that’s in the temple is just the lower hem of His robe.  And He’s surrounded by fiery angels who are covering their faces and feet in humility because even these majestic angelic beings know they don’t belong in God’s presence.  He’s too great for them!  And listen to Isaiah’s response!
      • Isaiah 6:4-5 - As righteous as Isaiah was compared to other people, compared to God he was immediately aware he was unfit to be in God’s presence.  The perfect sinlessness and holiness of God exposed the sinfulness and unholiness of even a man like Isaiah!

Illustration:  We typically can’t see all the junk we breath in all day.  The air is invisible so we don’t even think about it, but have you ever opened a window when the sun was shining through and all the sudden you could see millions of little dust particles floating in the air?  It’s kind of horrifying, and that’s what it was like for Isaiah.  Compared to the rest of the nation, Isaiah’s sins were invisible, but once he stood in the brightness of God’s glory, it exposed the uncleanness of Isaiah’s soul, and he realized he had no business being in the Lord’s presence.

Illustration:  I used to play golf in middle school and high school and got pretty good.  I practiced for 3 hours a day during the week and 6 hours a day on the weekends, I made team captain, and felt like I was a pretty decent player.  Well, one time I got the opportunity to play a round of golf with a former member of the PGA tour.  He wasn’t famous, I think he only made it on TV once, but I kid you not, I spent the entire round with my jaw on the floor in awe and wonder.  As good as I thought I was, I wasn’t even in the same universe of skill.  Because it was just for fun, this guy would use the completely wrong club just to make it harder for himself, and one time he walked around the other side of the ball and swung left handed, but he used a right handed club to do it, so the club face was upside down and he’d still knock the thing 3 feet from the hole.  I didn’t just lose, I lost to him in humiliating fashion and thought, “I don’t even deserve to sit next to you in this golf cart.”

That’s the way it is for us in every area of life; there is always someone better than we are at things, and we might think we’re great compared to others, but compared to the standard of perfection, there’s always some standard we’re falling short of.  Even if you take the best athlete in the world, even they will tell you, “I still haven’t arrived, there may not be any other person better than me, but there’s a better version of me out there and a higher score or higher level consistency I haven’t reached yet.”  And deep down, we know the same thing is true morally!  We might be feeling good about ourselves because we’re a good citizen, but that’s not the standard by which we measure things!  We know there are moral standards we simply do not live up to, and that’s because GOD created us with an innate sense that we’re supposed to live like Him and be reflections of His character in the world because HE is the true standard of goodness!  And compared to God, none of us have lived up to that expectation.

Romans 3:23

Ecclesiastes 7:20 - And this seems to be a universal human experience.  Plato wrestled with one of the primary conundrums of human existence:  we know the good, but we don’t do the good.  The Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “We have all sinned, some more, some less.”  The Roman poet Ovid said, “I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.”  Blaise Pascal wrote that “man is neither angel nor beast, and the misfortune is that he who would prefer to act the angel acts the beast.”  When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, Lady Macbeth arranged a murder and from that moment on she would sleepwalk and rub her hands together at night and say, “Out, cursed spot!  Out, I say!”  Her sin was like a stain she couldn’t get out no matter how hard she tried.  In the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll noticed that in private, he’d commit evil acts that made him feel ashamed, so he invented a potion to separate the evil part of himself from the good, that way he could live during the day as the good man without worrying that the evil man would ruin his career, but then at night he could live as the evil man without feeling shame or guilt for his actions.  The good man was named Dr. Jekyll, the evil man Mr. Hyde (which basically means the hidden and hideous part of himself).  The problem was, he didn’t anticipate just how evil his evil side really was, and his evil side started killing people.  So Dr. Jekyll promised not to drink the potion anymore to keep Mr. Hyde suppressed, but his evil side was too powerful to keep hidden, and he started morphing into Mr. Hyde even without taking the potion, and it got to the point where Mr. Hyde took him over completely.  Obviously that story is fictional, but it’s a great illustration of what we all know to be true; that there’s an evil side to all of us that must be contained or it’ll ruin our lives.

And you might say, “Well Brian I’m not like Mr. Hyde because I don’t kill anyone.”  Okay, but isn’t it true there’s a hidden, hideous part of yourself that you wouldn’t want anyone to see or know about in public?  If there was a machine that could project every thought you had and every deed you did onto a screen for everyone around you to see, would you want them to see those thoughts or deeds or would that cause you terrible shame and embarrassment?  A preacher named Tim Keller gave another great illustration:  he said imagine if you hung a recording device around your neck for a year and it recorded everything you ever said about how you think other people should live, like if you said, “I think people should keep their word, treat each other with kindness, keep themselves under control,” etc.  Question:  If you were to play back the recording at the end of the year, would you have perfectly lived up to those expectations yourself?  The point is if we’re honest, most of us know we don’t even live up to our own standards, so if we fall short of the moral standards we set for ourselves and others, how much more likely is it that we’ve fallen short of God’s moral standards?  And deep down, we all know it.

Romans 2:15 - Paul’s saying even people who have never been taught about God have an innate sense that God is real and that there’s some moral law they’re not living up to because their conscience is accusing them of violating it.  CS Lewis argued that if we didn’t know deep down that there was some moral law from God, or the Law of Nature as he calls it, then we wouldn’t make so many excuses for our sins. “We have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we expect from other people, and we make all kinds of excuses.  That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired.  That slightly shady business about the money came when you were very hard up.  What you promised to do for old so-and-so and have never done, well you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be.  I am just the same.  I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm.  These excuses are proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, that we believe in the Law of Nature.  If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?”

In short, humans who are honest with themselves have always known their house is on fire, which is why…

3.  Humans Have Always Sought a Savior

• In Paul’s day, the Jews knew they were sinners, but they sought salvation in the Law of Moses.  But Paul tried to explain to them the only way to be saved through law-keeping is to keep it perfectly, and none of us have done that, so the Law only condemns us to physical and spiritual death!
  • Sometimes we seek to be our own saviors through law keeping, sometimes we do so by making excuses for our sins to get ourselves off the hook like CS Lewis mentioned.  He continues…
    • “The truth is, we believe in decency so much, we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so much that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.  For you notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we find all these explanations.  It is only our bad temper that we accredit to being tired or worried or hungry; we accredit our good temper to ourselves.”
      • Saving face is an attempt to save ourselves from the embarrassment and shame of our sin, and to make it sound like we don’t really need saving at all!  That’s exactly what happened when Adam and Eve sinned!
        • Genesis 3:12-13
• Deep down we all know we’re naked and ashamed to stand in the presence of God, so we’ll do whatever we can to save ourselves, convince ourselves we don’t need saving, or seek saviors in things like money and success and even though we’ve made a mess of our relationship with God, like Jim Carry in Dumb and Dumber we think we’ve TOTALLY redeemed ourselves because hey at least I’ve got an amazing career and tons of money, or I’ve got a scholarship to play sports, or I’m really handsome or beautiful, or I married the perfect person, or I have TONS of subscribers on my channel or I voted for the right person who’s going to save our nation, or I’ve looked inward and found my authentic self, or I’ve found a religion that tells me God is all love and sin is no big deal, and the list goes on.
  • Humans have always gravitated towards people, possessions, positions, power, prestige, politicians, paganism, passing the buck, and personal traits and accomplishments, but none of it does a thing to solve the problem of spiritual or physical death because of our sin!  Our house is on fire and all of our efforts to find Saviors of our own are like trying to put out the fire with gasoline!  It only makes things worse, and the more we try to save ourselves the more apparent it becomes how desperately we need a Savior!
    • That’s why Jesus left Heaven and came to die on a cross for our sins because He knew there was absolutely no other way to be saved!  In fact, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His death, He begged His Father not to make Him go through with it.  He didn’t want to be scourged and crucified, and of course His Father didn’t want to SEE Him be scourged and crucified either.  But the Father did not grant Jesus’ request.  He still asked Jesus to go through with it, and Jesus submitted to His Father’s will because they both knew there was no other way.  If there were any other way, Jesus would have never come to die for us!  It’s why Jesus said…
      • John 14:6 - It’s why Peter said this…
      • Acts 4:12 - Jesus did NOT die needlessly.  Our house was absolutely on fire and we were sentenced to death for our sin, yet Jesus ran into the house and gave His life to rescue us so we could live.  We couldn’t get ourselves out the back door and save ourselves from the fire, and Jesus wasn’t a crazy fireman who invented the fire in His mind.  He ran into the fire because we needed Him to.
        • • Romans 5:8-9
            • Jesus is not like other religious leaders who came merely to share good teachings and new laws. Remember, laws can’t save us because laws are just moral standards we fail to live up to!  No, He came to change our legal standing with God by dying in our place so that even though we’ve broken God’s laws and put ourselves under the sentence of death, Jesus took that death sentence upon Himself so we’re no longer condemned.
              • Romans 8:1 - If you’re not in Christ, you’re still condemned for breaking God’s law.  You may still be wrapping your head around all this and may not FEEL guilty, but you’re legally guilty in God’s court.  And there’s nothing you can do to change your own legal status and make yourself right with God.  You need a Savior; You need Jesus and the good news is He left Heaven to come save you and He’s inviting you to stop trying to save yourself, to stop denying that you needed Him to die for you, and to come to Him right now.

Series: N/A

Service: Song Service

Type: Song Service

Speaker: Micah Hinely

Series: N/A

Service: Song Service

Type: Invitation

Speaker: Micah Hinely

Series: N/A

Service: Lord’s Supper Service

Type: Lord's Supper Talk

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Galatians 3:26 - In the New Testament, Christians are referred to dozens of times as sons.  Sometimes sons of Abraham, other times sons of God, and there’s only one verse in the entire New Testament that makes reference to daughters.  It’s in 2 Corinthians 6:18 where God says, “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me.”  So if you’re a woman and you’re not reading the New Testament through a first century lens, this might give you the impression that Christianity favors men or is more of a man’s religion than it is for women.  But that’s not the case at all, in fact Christianity values women in a way that was completely shocking and unheard of in the ancient world!

You see, back then only sons were the beneficiaries of their father’s inheritance.  The inheritance didn’t go to daughters because usually daughters would get married and it would be their husband’s job to provide for them.  Even if a daughter didn’t marry, the sons in the family, her brothers, who were heirs to the inheritance, would use the money, home, and land they inherited to take care of her.  So the point in the New Testament of primarily referring to Christians as sons, not daughters, is to emphasize that we are heirs of our Heavenly Father’s inheritance!

Galatians 4:6-7 - As sons, we are full heirs of God’s blessings and of His eternal inheritance in Heaven!  And what would have been SO shocking in the ancient world about Christianity is that in Christ, even women are considered sons.  In the church, women are considered fellow heirs who get an equal share of the Father’s inheritance with the men, even though in society that would have never happened.  That’s why in 1 Peter 3 when Peter tells husbands how to treat their wives, he says to show them honor as fellow heirs of the grace of life.  And it’s why Paul writes this…

Galatians 3:28-29 - In their society, slaves and women were not heirs of any inheritance, and the Jews believed the Gentiles certainly weren’t heirs of God’s inheritance, but Paul’s saying no matter who you are or what inheritance rights you have in society, in Christ, we are all sons, we are all inheritors of the eternal promises of God.

Now, that should make us feel SO good inside, I mean if we found out from our earthly fathers that we’d be inheriting millions of dollars and that everyone in the family would get equal shares, that would be such good news, and here Paul’s not just saying we’re going inherit millions of dollars, but that we’re going to inherit eternal life and blessings from God.  That’s absolutely worth celebrating — and yet there’s something about this whole discussion that puts a dark cloud over our celebration and takes the joy out of it.  It’s the fact that in order to be blessed with an inheritance, someone has to die.  Even if our earthly father told us we’d be inheriting millions, our minds might drift a little about all the things we could do with that money, but then we’d say, “I don’t even want to think about that because that means I’d have to lose him.”

Hebrews 9 [For the rest of our time this morning, I want us to consider 3 things that were required for us to become heirs of the inheritance of God.]

1. It Required the Death of the One who Left it for Us

• Now, before we read these verses, we need to know the word “covenant” can have two meanings.  The more common use is a binding agreement to have a relationship of peace. That’s the way we typically think of our covenant with God, it’s basically a peace agreement.  But the same word “covenant” could also be used as a “last will and testament.”  So before someone dies, they might say, “These are my wishes, this is what I want to happen after I’m gone, and this is how I want my inheritance to be distributed to my sons.”
  • So interestingly, we call the first part of our Bibles the Old Testament and the second part the New Testament.  And depending on the context, it can be a contrast between the old peace agreement and the new peace agreement, or it can be a contrast between the Old will and testament for what kind of inheritance is received and by whom and the new will and testament for what kind of inheritance is received and by whom.  Well, here the writer of Hebrews speaks of the new covenant in Christ in the second sense, as Jesus’ last will and testament.
  • Hebrews 9:15-17 - Now, all throughout this letter he’s been saying how much better things are under the New covenant than the Old, and one of the points he made was that Jesus’ sacrifice was better than animal sacrifices because His sacrifice is the basis for our forgiveness.  Well, think about it in the context of a last will and testament.  When an animal dies, does it include you in its will?  Does an animal have any inheritance to leave you?  Absolutely not!  So the true eternal inheritance from God was NOT provided through the death of those animals under the Old Covenant Law of Moses system.  The eternal inheritance of God is only made available to us through the death of Jesus.   Which means when He died, He not only makes US heirs of the inheritance of God under the new covenant, but even all those faithful men and women under the old covenant too!
    • The Jews had no concept of a dying Messiah, they didn’t understand why He had to die, and there are a lot of ways to explain that, like how He had to take our place and bear God’s wrath as our substitute, but here the Hebrew writer is arguing, if Jesus never died, neither we nor the people under the Old covenant would ever inherit the treasures of Heaven!  Which makes His death bitter sweet, because on the one hand it’s a horrible tragedy that He died, but on the other His death on the cross opened up to us the greatest blessing in the world and now by faith in Him, we’re all sons of God, heirs of the Father’s eternal inheritance.

2.  It Required the Grace of the One who Left it for Us

• God’s inheritance is not something we earned at all; it is a gift.  Now, I understand with earthly inheritances, sometimes parent might say, “Okay, I’ve got one child who’s responsible with money and another child who’s totally irresponsible and who wastes every dollar he gets on drugs and alcohol and other sinful things,” so maybe they cut the irresponsible child out of the will until he gets help and proves himself worthy of the inheritance.
  • Well, when it comes to the inheritance of God, we were all wasteful children.  In fact, do you know another way to say that?  We were all the prodigal son.
  • Luke 15 [In this story, the son demanded the father give him the inheritance even before the father died.  He was basically saying to his father it would be better if he were dead because he would rather have the money than his father.  And then he went out and wasted the entire inheritance on reckless, sinful living, and yet when he came to his senses, he came back home to his father and said…]
  • Luke 15:18-19 - He acknowledged he should completely lose his sonship because he proved himself completely unworthy of the inheritance.  And yet by grace, the Father refused to remove his sonship and said…
    • Luke 15:22-24 - This wasteful, foolish, unworthy child became a son again that day, purely by the grace of His Father.  And so too for us, that we are sons, inheritors of the eternal promises of God, NOT because we deserve it, but because of the grace of our Father and of Jesus Christ our Lord.

3.  It Required the Love of the One who Left it for Us

• Luke 20:13-14 [Jesus tells a parable of a man who rented out his vineyard to vine-growers and the owner sent 3 slaves to collect fruit from the harvest, but every time he sent a slave to them, they would beat him and send him away empty handed.  The vineyard owner is exasperated and so he makes a new plan, but unfortunately it ended even more tragically] - Now this parable had special application to the religious leaders of Israel.  They were the ones put in charge of God’s people, yet they rejected God’s prophets and ultimately His Son.  But I also think this speaks to the universal problem of sin, that we think this life is ours to do what we want with it and want don’t want God telling us what to do.  We don’t want to trust Him to give us an inheritance, we’d much rather take it for ourselves our own way.  Which means we’re not just the prodigal son unworthy of the inheritance, we’ve all been like these evil vine-growers at different points in our lives, doing whatever we want, even though it cost God His Son.
  • Which leaves us with a truly remarkable thought before we partake of the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus left us in His will, even though we were the ones who caused His death.  That is love beyond measure.  He left an eternal inheritance for His enemies, and because of such love He not only changed our hearts to become His friends, but changed our status to become sons of God WITH Him.  You see, since Jesus is God’s ultimate Son, He’s an heir of God’s inheritance too!  And He was raised and is alive forevermore, which means it’s not like when an earthly parent dies so there’s a dark cloud over our enjoyment of the inheritance because we have to enjoy it without them.  No, because Jesus lives, we’ll get to enjoy this eternal inheritance together WITH Him.  As men and women of faith, we get to be sons with an equal share of the inheritance with Jesus the ultimate Son!  Paul said in Romans 8:17, “If we are children, we are heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”  And that was only possible by the death, grace, and love of Jesus our Lord and of our Father in Heaven who planned to adopt us as sons from before the foundation of the world.

Series: N/A

Service: Wed Bible Study

Type: Invitation

Speaker: Jason Bray

Series: Basic Bible Doctrine

Service: Wed Bible Study

Type: Bible Class

Speaker: Brian Messerli

On Sunday, we learned that one of the blessings of baptism is the reception of God’s Holy Spirit.  Peter said in Acts 2:38 to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Well, what in the world does that mean?  First let’s recognize that Peter’s Jewish audience wasn’t confused by that at all.

The Jews Expected the Outpouring of God’s Spirit

• In the Old Testament, part of God’s prophecies about the last days before the heavenly age to come was ushered in was that He would pour out His Holy Spirit to bring about restoration and rejuvenation!
  • Isaiah 44:3-4 - In context, God’s people had become like a barren wasteland, yet God’s Holy Spirit would be like life-giving rain in a dry and thirsty land.
    • I’ll share more prophecies about that later, but because of prophecies like this the Jews during the 400 years of silence period before Christ came wrote about their expectations!  In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there’s a document called The Community Rule from around 100 BC…
  • “God has ordained an end of injustice and at the time of visitation He will destroy it forever.  He will cleanse him (the Jew trying to live faithfully) of all wicked deeds with the Spirit of holiness, like purifying waters He will shed upon Him the Spirit of truth to cleanse him of all abomination and injustice, and he will be plunged into the Spirit of purification that he may instruct the upright in the knowledge of the Most High.”
    • So they saw the Spirit as bringing cleansing from sin, purification and holiness, and instruction from God.  So when Peter mentioned the gift of the Holy Spirit, no one would have scratched their heads wondering what he was talking about.  However, there was one thing Peter said that would have been incredibly confusing and shocking, and it’s why most people were not baptized that day.  And I’ll leave you in suspense about what that was until the end of class…

Until then, I want to talk about what the Holy Spirit is all about in Scripture, and 7 things He represents.

1. The Holy Spirit is a Person

• Remember from our first class of the quarter, we mentioned that the Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead.  There is only one God, but 3 persons who fulfill different roles.  They are all of the same divine nature, they are all God, but each is His own unique person.
  • 2 Corinthians 3:17a - Usually the term Lord is only reserved for the Father and the Son, yet here the Spirit is called the Lord too.  And He’s a person, not just some vague, nebulous, impersonal force like in Star Wars.  Sometimes people refer to the Holy Spirit as an “it,” rather than a He.
  • John 16:13 - Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as a he because he’s his own person with agency and intentionality and a desire for relationship.  In fact, the Holy Spirit has his own emotions and is hurt by our sin just as the Father and Son hurt.
    • Ephesians 4:30 - He is saddened and grieved when we sin against Him and against the Father and Son.  And in the ancient world, instead of licking an envelope, you would melt wax on it, and then press a ring into it with a personal design on it to seal the letter, and it was a special mark of ownership.  It’s like when we write our name on our lunchbox at school.  That box is reserved for a particular use and a sealed letter is only meant for certain eyes to see.  The Holy Spirit put on us the personal seal of God which means “We belong to and are reserved only for Him.”

2.  He Represents God’s Presence

• Psalm 139:7 - Also, do you remember when Moses asked that God’s presence would go with the Israelites through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land?  Well it does say God’s presence went with them in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, but later notice what Isaiah said about it.
  • Isaiah 63:10-11 - As God the Father was traveling with Israel through the wilderness, we learn here that the Holy Spirit was traveling with them too, which is why when they sinned against God, they were also grieving the Holy Spirit.  And remember that the main way God’s presence was manifested among Israel on their journey to the Promised Land was in the tabernacle.  They built this portable tent for the presence of God, and in Exodus it says the cloud covered the tent and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  What Isaiah 63 is telling us is that the Holy Spirit also filled the tabernacle, and by extension later He would have been present at the temple.  So when we get to the New Testament, it makes perfect sense for Paul to say…
    • 1 Corinthians 3:16 - In the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit was generally more external, traveling alongside Israel, but not necessarily within them.  There were special cases where the Spirit would fill people, like some of the judges, kings, and prophets, but the promise of the New Covenant was that ALL of God’s people would have God’s Spirit within them on our journey to the Promised Land of Heaven.  It’s why Jesus called the Holy Spirit a Helper.
      • John 14:16 - One of the comforts of the Spirit’s presence is that He intercedes for us in prayer.
        • Romans 8:26-27 - When we’re in the throes of grief or confusion and don’t know what to pray for or we can’t find the words to express our feelings or thoughts, the Spirit acts like a mediator on our behalf, He knows exactly what we’re thinking and feeling and He expresses those things to the Father.

3.  He Represents God’s Life

• The word for “breath” and “spirit” are the same in the Bible.  And when God first created mankind from the dust, He breathed His Spirit into to us to give us life and to animate us.  And while humans are unique in that we bear God’s image, there’s a sense in which God gave life to all of creation by His Spirit.
  • Psalm 104:29-30 - When God sends His Spirit there is life, when He takes away His Spirit, there is death.  This connects back to the passage we read at the start from Isaiah about how the Holy Spirit will be poured out like rain on a dry and thirsty land.  The land is dead and God’s people are dead because they have nothing to eat, but when the rain comes, there is life and rejuvenation and new creation of vegetation and fruit-bearing trees which then give life to those who eat from it.  What’s interesting is that the Jews believed the Holy Spirit would be poured out around the time of the feast of booths, so at this feast they had a ritual where the priest would pour water out to symbolize the coming outpouring of the Spirit.  Well, listen to what Jesus said when He attended this feast…
    • John 7:37-39 - Everyone’s thinking about that Isaiah passage and the priest pouring out water for the dry thirsty ground, and Jesus says, “I’ll quench your thirst by sending the Spirit, and it’ll be like having an ever flowing river of life within you.”
      • If you’ll recall from the sermon a few weeks ago, Ezekiel had a vision of a valley filled with dead, dry bones which represented the spiritual condition of God’s people.  They were completely dead spiritually, yet God promised…
        • Ezekiel 37:5-6 - This is like CPR.  When someone dies, we check to see if they’re breathing because breath = life and if they have no breath in them, we put our mouth on theirs and breathe new life back into them!  That’s what God promised to do one day through His Spirit!
          • Romans 8:11 - Remember in our class on the Problem of sin, sin kills us both spiritually and physically.  It kills us spiritually by separating us from God, and physically through decay and death.  Well, the Holy Spirit has come to give us life in both areas!  He resurrects us from the dead spiritually and gives us new spiritual life by the power of Jesus’ sacrifice, and then one day the Holy Spirit will raise our physical bodies from the grave, conquering physical death too!  It’s why as Christians we’re referred to as a new creation in Christ.  Because God created us in the Garden from the dust by breathing His Spirit into us, but because we sinned against Him, we were doomed to return to the dust.  But then in Christ, God, in a sense, RE-creates us from the dust by breathing His Holy Spirit into us, giving us new life!

Questions/Comments?

4.  He Represents God’s Power

• In the period of the Judges, sometimes God’s Spirit would give people supernatural strength.  Like with Samson who was bound by his enemies with ropes…
  • Judges 15:14 - Sometimes the power God’s Spirit gives us is courage and an internal strength to stand up to our enemies.
    • • Acts 4:31 -
      • Ephesians 3:16 - So the Holy Spirit gives us the power to be strong, to be courageous, to overcome discouragement, and even to overcome sin!
        • Romans 8:13 - As we grow spiritually and put our old sinful deeds to death, that’s happening by the power of God’s Spirit.  In fact, our spiritual growth is referred to as the fruit of the Spirit.  So it’s not just, “Oh I’m a more loving Christian now because I work really hard at being loving, and I took a class on how to love better.”  No, it’s that I’m relying on the Holy Spirit and asking Him to produce more love in me.  Now, one way the Spirit can do that is by helping me find a class on love, but the point is it’s not the fruit of my own labors, it’s the fruit of the Spirit laboring within me.  We grow by His power, not our own.  And of course like we just covered, in the end when our bodies are raised from the grave, that resurrection will be by the Spirit’s power too!

5.  The Holy Spirit Represents God’s Character

• In the ancient world, people would describe your character by the kind of spirit within you.
  • Hosea 5:4 - For the most part, we don’t really talk like that.  If we see a thief, we don't say, “Wow he has a spirit of robbery in him.”  But there are still remnants of this in our language, like when we call someone mean-spirited.  Well, the problem with God’s people is that they had an evil spirit within them, not in the sense that they were possessed by demons against their will, but that their hearts were corrupted by sin and now the desires of their inner spirit and heart were set on thinking and doing evil things.  But one of the blessings of God’s pouring out His Spirit was that He was going to cleanse us of our sins, purge our evil spirits from within us, and give us HIS Spirit, a HOLY Spirit, instead!
    • Ezekiel 36:25-27 - Do you see why the Jews in Dead Sea Scrolls described the Holy Spirit as a spirit of purification and cleansing?  God was going to use the Holy Spirit to wash His people clean, and then to give them His Spirit so that now they have a totally new heart that wants to do His will.  Now, this doesn’t mean He’s zapping people with the Spirit against their will and forcing them to obey Him; no, it’s a result of hearts changed by the incredible grace of Jesus’ sacrifice, and in response to His love for us, now we’ve asked God to lead us by His Spirit and not our flesh.
      • Titus 3:5 - It’s the Holy Spirit that washes us clean from our sins and recreates, regenerates, and rejuvenates us!  I believe baptism in water is an external enactment of the internal spiritual washing that takes place by God’s Spirit.  And now, our inner character has changed because we have the heart of God in us instead of our old evil hearts that only wanted to live for self.  Now that we have the HOLY spirit in us, it means we can be holy like God is holy.
        • Galatians 5:22-23 - Instead of a spirit of harlotry, now we have a spirit and character like this.

6.  The Holy Spirit Represents God’s Talents

• When the Israelites had to build the tabernacle in the wilderness, they had no idea how to do that.  They had been slaves for the last century and had no skill to design an elaborately detailed tent structure with all the accompanying furniture.  So by the Holy Spirit, God gave supernatural talents to a man named Bezalel.
  • Exodus 31:3-5 - So it makes sense then when we get to the New Testament, we see the Holy Spirit manifested in people through miraculous talents.  The New Testament refers to these as spiritual gifts, and remember the word “spiritual” means those gifts do not originate through any human effort or means.  It’s not like you can just practice a long time and eventually develop these gifts; no they’re spiritual in that they originate from the Holy Spirit.
    • • • 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 - Notice again the personhood of the Holy Spirit in v. 11.  He’s a free agent who has a will and intention to give spiritual gifts to Christians.  Now, in the first century He empowered Christians with miraculous gifts that defied nature, and those gifts were like scaffolding to support and build the early church until it reached a point of maturity and those miraculous gifts were no longer needed.  It’s why those nature-defying miracles were only given by the Holy Spirit through the laying on of the apostles’ hands.
          • However, I do believe our non-miraculous gifts and talents were given to us by God’s Spirit too.  Paul mentions non-nature defying gifts in Romans 12 like the gift of teaching, of mercy, of service, of encouragement, of generosity, of leadership, and while those don’t defy nature, they’re still spiritual gifts in that were given to us by God’s grace through His Spirit, and we should pray to God to embrace and hone those talents through the power of His Spirit.

7.  The Holy Spirit Represents God’s Revelation

• 2 Peter 1:21 - All throughout Scripture, whenever God’s prophets spoke or wrote His word, they did so by the Holy Spirit.
  • John 16:13-15 - The apostles were guided into all the truth of God’s revelation through the Holy Spirit, and this verse is great because it shows us even though the Holy Spirit is his own person with his own will, He only acts or speaks in submission to the will of the Son, who only acts or speaks in submission to the will of His Father.  So in divine nature, they’re all equally God, but in authority, it’s Father, Son, then Holy Spirit.
    • And now because of the Holy Spirit, we have the written revelation of God in Scripture, and I believe the Spirit can also call to our remembrance God’s word in times of testing to either strengthen us or convict us of sin, but also in times of pain He can comfort us through the word.  Sadly, some today claim the Holy Spirit is still audibly communicating with them and giving them new revelation about God’s will for their lives, and I think we should be very careful with that because many who say that end up believing or doing things that are contradictory to what’s written in the Word.  But if we ask God for wisdom and for deeper understanding of His revelation, I do believe the Spirit is involved in that, but not in some direct audible way as if we were a prophet.  We can’t go around telling people, “I know the proper interpretation of this verse because the Holy Spirit told me that’s what it meant.”  That’s what the Mormons do.  They say they know the book of Mormon is true because the Holy Spirit burns within their hearts as they read it.  That’s not the way the Spirit works, He doesn’t just guide us by our feelings, and He’s not still giving us new revelation.  He’s working through and reminding us of the old revelation and using it to guide our hearts and lives, and I believe He can give us wisdom and help shape our thoughts based on principles in the word.

Now, at the start of the class I said the Jews weren’t surprised at all to hear that they could receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but what absolutely DID surprise and shock them, to the point where most people refused to get baptized that day, was to learn that it was Jesus who had the power to send the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:33 - The Jews knew the Spirit was going to be poured out, but they assumed it was by God the Father.  Yet here’s this carpenter from the podunk town of Nazareth who was crucified as a criminal, yet Peter is claiming HE is the one pouring out the Spirit!

Mark 1:7-8 - This was beyond shocking to the Jews, and yet because Jesus is God and because of the power of His death and resurrection, He was given the authority by the Father to send the Holy Spirit to cleanse and rejuvenate, NOT JUST THE JEWS, which is also what the Jews thought about the Spirit, but to cleanse and rejuvenate ANYONE who puts their faith in Jesus’ sacrifice.

Series: Moving From Fear to Faith

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Hebrews 11:8 - One of my biggest fears is the ocean at night.  I love to take night walks on the beach, but wading out into the darkness of the water or being out on a boat at night and jumping in to the black abyss?  Not gonna happen.  I mean, do you realize we’ve discovered creatures like the goblin shark and the dragonfish?  Now, you could try to reassure me that the odds of me coming across them are astronomically low, but 1) you can’t prove that and the water is too dark to see what I’m jumping into.  I could jump right into the mouth of a shark who’s swimming vertically on his way to the surface and 2) do you realize the ocean is so vast there are creatures we haven’t even discovered yet?  I feel pretty confident if I were to jump out of a boat in the middle of the ocean at night I’d be the one to discover it, and I don’t really want to be famous for that.

Honestly, that’s how it can be in life sometimes.  Sometimes tomorrow is like the ocean at night and we have no idea what’s beneath the surface!  If you’ve lived long enough in this world, it seems like anything can happen at anytime, we can get deathly ill, we can face layoffs at work, we may say or do something embarrassing at school that ruins our reputation, we may fail a test or class, we may get in a car accident, a hurricane could blow our house away, and on a global scale there’s the war in Iran and the rise of Ai, and gas prices are insane and what if life becomes unaffordable, and then the midterm elections are coming and what if the other party takes over and destroys the country, and on and on it goes.  The unknown future can be a terrifying thing!  None of us have any idea what kind of goblin sharks and dragonfish tomorrow holds!

And neither did Abraham!  It says when God called him to leave his home, “he did not know where he was going.”  He had no idea he was going to experience hard times and famine, and he’d have to travel down to Egypt where the ruler of Egypt would try to take his wife.  He had no idea his nephew Lot would be kidnapped and he’d have to go to war to get him back.  He didn’t know that Lot would move to Sodom and Gomorrah which was such an evil city God planned to send fire to destroy it, and Abraham had to beg God not to destroy Lot along with it!  He didn’t know his own handmaiden would turn against his wife, and that his own foolish choice would create strife in his household.  He didn’t know he would have to live as a nomad with nowhere on earth to call home, a stranger in a foreign land for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know that after waiting 25 years to finally have a son, and then after spending more years raising his son to be a young man, God would ask him to bring that son up on a mountain to offer him as a sacrifice, though of course God stopped him before he went through with it.

This year, our preaching theme is moving from fear to faith, and the awesome thing about Abraham is that his faith was so strong he didn’t NEED to know where he was going.  He didn’t ask God things like, “Now, what will the journey to Canaan entail and can you tell me what the neighborhood will be like where we’ll be living.  Are there any good schools in the area?  Where’s the nearest Publix bakery?”  No, Abraham did not need to know where he was going, all he needed to know was the God who called Him to go.

We may not know what tomorrow holds for us, but we know Who holds us tomorrow.  And I want to make 4 points this morning about how to overcome our fear of the unknown future, and of the goblin sharks and dragon fish of tomorrow.

1. The Unknown Makes Faith Real

• 2 Corinthians 5:7 - Faith is absolute trust in God, and it’s what we need when we can’t see around the corner.  We need faith when we’re staring into the black sea of an unknown tomorrow, but what if God were to miraculously give us a vision of the future and He showed us by sight ahead of time absolutely everything that’s going to happen to us in the future?  We wouldn’t need faith in Him at all!  I mean I guess we’d need faith at first just to trust that the vision was accurate, but once two or three things happened exactly as God said, there would be no more guessing or suspense, we’d have all the answers, our entire life would be laid out for us, so if we got a scary test result at the doctor’s office, instead of being in prayer to God about it, on our knees seeking His help, asking Him for more trust in Him, we’d say, “Well I already know it’s going to turn out to be nothing.”  Or, “I already know it’s cancer, but God’s going to heal me within a year and He’s going to use this to help change my heart and draw me closer to Him and He’s going to use my struggle to help other people too.”  If we already knew how everything would work out ahead of time, we wouldn’t even need faith because we’d be walking by sight.
  • But in Scripture, God so often calls people into situations where they have no idea where they’re going to teach them to trust in Him!  He called Abraham to leave his home and everything familiar behind to go to land he had never been before and God did not tell him all the things waiting for him in the future!  He called Moses to go confront Pharaoh, but He didn’t give him all the details ahead of time, and certainly didn’t tell him Pharaoh would chase Israel into the Sea.  And by the way, Moses and the Israelites walked through that parted sea at night, maybe with goblin sharks and dragonfish on both sides.  We talked last week about the adventure of Christianity and how when Jesus said to the disciples, “Follow Me,” they had no idea where they were going or what they were getting into!
    • But the unknown future forces us to put our money where our mouth is because anyone can SAY they have faith in God, but it’s not tested and proven real until we walk by faith headlong into an unknown tomorrow!

- “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” - CS Lewis

• • • • When Abraham left home without knowing where he was going, he was hanging by his faith over a precipice.  He was jumping out of the boat into the depths of the ocean with no idea what creatures awaited, and he could do that because his faith was real.  It wasn’t just a claim; he truly trusted God.
        • Galatians 3:9 - Paul calls Abraham THE believer, not just because his faith was proven real by stepping into the unknown, but because he is the model believer for us as Christians.  If we want to know what real faith in Jesus looks like, we look to Abraham who trusted God even when he had no idea what tomorrow was going to look like.
        • Max Lucado wrote in his book “Fearless” about two little girls he saw at the pool with their father.  “He’s in the water; they jump into his arms.  Let me restate that:  one jumps, the other ponders.  The dry one gleefully watches her sister leap.  She dances up and down as the other splashes.  But when her dad invites her to do the same, she shakes her head and backs away.  A living parable!  How many people spend life on the edge of the pool?  Consulting caution.  Ignoring faith.  Never taking the plunge.  Happy to experience life vicariously through others.  Preferring to take no risk rather than any risk…By contrast, their sister jumps.  Not with foolish abandon, but with belief in the goodness of a father’s heart and trust in a father’s arms.”   
          • When God called Abraham to jump off the edge of the pool, he had the faith to jump.  He didn’t need to know the future because He knew the Father!  He didn’t need to know where He was going because He knew who was going with Him.  He didn’t know what tomorrow held for him, but he knew who would hold him tomorrow.

2.  The Unknown Makes Faith an Adventure!

• We talked a couple weeks ago about how Christianity is not just about rule keeping or behavior modification.  It’s a grand adventure and we’re called to join our King’s mission to rescue the world from the power of darkness and expand His kingdom of light!  And part of that adventure is stepping into an unknown tomorrow by faith, and that’s what we see all throughout this chapter in Hebrews.  This whole chapter is about people with REAL, genuine faith who stepped into to unknown tomorrows and accomplished incredible victories against the darkness because of it!
  • Hebrews 11:32-40 - Now, at the end when it says they didn’t receive what was promised, it simply means they’re still waiting on the ultimate consummation of Gods promises when Jesus returns and Heaven is ushered in so they’ll receive the promises together with us!  And I’m sure you noticed that some of these tomorrows were terrible for people of faith.  Faith doesn’t mean tomorrow’s going to go great for us, some of these people were sawn in half and lived lives of abject poverty out in the mountains with the moles and rock badgers.  And what all of us would love to do is custom order a life free from tomorrow’s troubles.  In Lucado’s book, he pictures us treating God like a barista and ordering our lives like people order coffee at Starbucks.
    • “Give me a tall, extra-hot cup of adventure, cut the dangers, with two shots of good health.” “A decaf brew of longevity, please, with a sprinkle of fertility. Go heavy on the agility and cut the disability.” “I’ll have a pleasure mocha with extra stirrings of indulgence. Make sure it’s consequence free.” “I’ll go with a grande happy-latte, with a dollop of love, sprinkled with a Caribbean retirement.”
      • And of course, that’s not how ANY of this works, and while we might think it would be nice if it did work this way, it actually wouldn’t be great at all.  Because if God gave us everything we wanted and removed all danger and gave us completely trouble-free tomorrows, life would be pretty boring and there wouldn't be any sense of adventure or growth.
        • Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.”  The unknown gives us an opportunity to overcome our fears and to grow in our character and faith, but if God gave us a vision and showed us everything that was going to happen tomorrow.  I think there would be one of two outcomes.  1) Like a movie that’s been spoiled for us, life would be boring because we already know how it turns out, so it doesn’t help us grow in faith or character at all.  2) Life would be burdening and we’d be so terrified we wouldn’t want to leave the house and we might give up on the adventure.  I mean if God told you, “Tomorrow you’ll be sawn in half, or tomorrow WW3 starts and you’ll be drafted into the army against your will,” that’d be an incredible burden to know ahead of time, so God leaves the future unknown so we’ll take this adventure of faith one step at a time!
          • Psalm 119:105 - Notice He doesn’t say, “Your word is a floodlight to my path.”  No, they didn’t have those back then.  This was candlelight where you can only see a few feet in front of you to make sure you’re not veering off the path.  When God led the Israelites in a pillar of fire by night through the darkness of the wilderness, that fire may have projected out 30-50 feet, but not much further beyond that because God doesn’t illuminate our entire future, just the next needed footsteps, again so that we’ll trust Him with the parts of the path we cannot see.  And if He were to use a floodlight to show us exactly where we were going, we wouldn’t need faith and life would either be way too boring or way too burdening!  Either way would ruin the adventure!
            • In Lucado’s story about the little girl who refused to jump into the pool, he had a great final warning:  For fear of the worst, some never enjoy life at its best.
              • God designed us to get the greatest enjoyment, excitement and adrenaline from conquering our fears by faith, He designed life at its best not to come from enjoying the best in life, but from overcoming the worst by faith in Him!  It’s what makes the Christian adventure thrilling, but if tomorrow was completely known to us because we ordered it like a coffee at Starbucks, we’d completely miss out on the thrill of conquering the unknown future by faith.

3.   What’s Unknown to us is Never Unknown to God

• Abraham may not have known where he was going, but God absolutely did.
  • Genesis 12:1-3 - When God called Abraham to leave home, He made Him a series of 7 promises about the future, many of which Abraham would never even live to see because God looked far beyond all of Abraham’s tomorrows, into the tomorrows of his children, his children’s children, and his great grandchildren, and God saw all the way to the time of the new covenant where Abraham would have even more children, Christians, who join his family by putting our faith in Jesus!  Abraham couldn’t see thousands of years in the future like that.  All he could see was that his wife Sarah was barren, and he would have wondered how in the world this kind of tomorrow was even possible for him.  How could his descendants be blessed if he can’t have any descendants?  Yet by faith, even though the future was unknown to him, He trusted what God knew about the future, and that God would keep His promises.
    • Hebrews 11:11-12 - Both Abraham and Sarah had faith that nothing was unknown to God, and that God would be faithful to bring about the tomorrow He knew was coming, no matter how impossible it seemed.
      • Isaiah 46:9-10 - God is eternal and has perfect foreknowledge of the future, and we don’t just take comfort that He knows what tomorrow holds for us, but more importantly that He will be there to hold us tomorrow!
        • Isaiah 46:3-4 - God assured His people, “I’ve been carrying you since you were a baby and I’ll carry you into your old age!” We’re comforted not just because God knows the beginning from the end, but that God carries us from the beginning TO the end!  We don’t need to fear the future because God will be there for us tomorrow too, just as much as He’s with us today!  If we handled the troubles of today with God’s help, we can handle the troubles of tomorrow with His help too!  God’s presence is THE ultimate solution to fear in Scripture!
          • Psalm 23:4
          • Psalm 46:1-3a - No matter what happens tomorrow, or how bad things get, we do not face tomorrow alone!  And though there may be many unknown things about tomorrow, what we CAN know for certain is that the same God who is our present help in trouble today will also be a present help tomorrow when tomorrow becomes the new today.
            • In Lucado’s book, he shared a common experience growing up in rural Texas.  “My father let me climb onto his lap…when he drove!  He’d be arrested for doing so today.  But half a century ago no one cared.  Especially in a flat-as-a-skillet West Texas oil field, where rabbits outnumber people…I loved it.  Did it matter that I couldn’t see over the dash?  That my feet stopped two feet shy of the brake and accelerator?  That I didn’t know a radio from a carburetor?  By no means.  I helped my dad drive his truck.  There were occasions when he even let me select the itinerary.  At an intersection he would offer, ‘Right or left, Max?’ I’d lift my freckled face and peer over the steering wheel, consider my options, and make my choice.  And do so with gusto, whipping the wheel like a race car driver at Monte Carlo.  Did I fear driving into the ditch?  Overturning the curve?  Running the tire into a rut?  By no means.  Dad’s hands were next to mine, his eyes keener than mine.  Consequently, I was fearless!  Anyone can drive a car from the lap of a father.”
              • God can see out the window way down the road of tomorrow, He’s the one driving, He knows where we’re going even when we don’t.  And can we move from fear to faith by trusting that He’s holding the wheel and He’s holding us too.

4.   In Christ, God has Made the End of Our Story Known

• Lucado mentions that in Jim Collin’s book “Good to Great,” he interviewed Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner of war for 8 years during the Vietnam War.  He asked him how he survived for so long under such brutal conditions, and he said, “I never lost faith in the end of the story.  I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
  • Collins then asked him, “And who didn’t make it out?” And Stockdale replied, “Oh, that’s easy.  The optimists.  They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’  And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go.  Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’  And Easter would come, and Easter would go.  And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again.  And they died of a broken heart.”
    • This can happen to Christians too who have an overly optimistic certainty of better tomorrows in this sin cursed world, so when we experience more troubles tomorrow, it can crush us and fill us with fear.
    • That’s why the Bible is so candid about not guaranteeing wonderful tomorrows in this sin cursed world.  I mean just listen to what Jesus said about the future!
      • Matthew 24:6-14 - The Bible does NOT promote naive optimism about the future in this sin cursed world, Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey today was hard, but way better things are going to happen tomorrow.”  No, He was preparing us all the time for a difficult future in this world!  And yet notice what He said…
        • v. 6 - See that you are not frightened.  Do not be afraid because all these horrible tomorrows are not how the story ends.
          • John 16:33 - One of the greatest unknowns about tomorrow is, “Will suffering and death be the end of my story?  Will the darkness of this world win?” And Jesus says, “You have no need to live in fear of any tribulations this world throws at you, even death itself, because I’ve conquered it all.”
            • Hebrews 11:9 - While God blessed Abraham along the way, he didn’t have an easy, cushy life living as a nomad in a foreign land where he owned no property and lived in a tent and had no benefits of citizenship there.  So how did he stay faithful through so many difficult tomorrows?
              • Hebrews 11:10 - Abraham knew no matter how many hard tomorrows he faced in this life, none of them were the end of his story.  And he knew no matter how many unknown tomorrows he faced, he knew what the final tomorrow would look like; the reception of a Heavenly city.
                • Hebrews 11:16 - A difficult tomorrow is not the end of our story brethren; it’s just one of many painful bumps along our journey home.  Lucado put it this way: “Everything will work out in the end.  If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”

And I’ll finish with one final quote from Lucado that I thought is just so powerful, especially because he finishes with Scripture:

“Avoid Pollyanna optimism.  We gain nothing by glossing over the brutality of human existence.  This is a toxic world.  But neither do we join the Chicken Little chorus of gloom and doom. ‘The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!’  Somewhere between Pollyanna and Chicken Little, between blind denial and blatant panic, stands the levelheaded, clear-thinking, still-believing follower of Christ.  Wide eyed, but not afraid.  Unterrified by the terrifying.  The calmest kid on the block, not for lack of bullies, but for faith in his older Brother.  The old people of God knew this peace:  ‘Though a host encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.’ (Psalm 27:3)”

By faith, we can conquer the goblin sharks and dragonfish of an unknown future, because we may not know what tomorrow holds for us, but we know who holds us tomorrow.

Remember when I said if God told us all the troubles we might face in the future, it would either be too boring or too burdening and terrifying to leave the house?  Well here’s an amazing thought.  Jesus actually DID know all the troubles He would face here in this sin-cursed world, and it was absolutely terrifying and the greatest burden anyone ever faced!  Yet instead of staying in Heaven shaking in fear, He chose faith and trusted His Father with the most terrifying tomorrows ever faced.  In the Garden the night before His death, Jesus dreaded tomorrow’s crucifixion, but He faced it in faith because He knew it wasn’t the end of His story.  His story would end victoriously in Heaven with all those who put their faith in Him and trust Him with their tomorrows.  You can put your faith in Him and be baptized into Him this morning, and if you do that you’ll know exactly how your story ends and you’ll have God walking with you through all the tomorrows in between.

Series: Basic Bible Doctrine

Service: Sun Bible Study

Type: Bible Class

Speaker: Brian Messerli

This morning, we’ll be talking about the necessity of baptism.  On Wednesday night, we talked about how our salvation is rooted in God’s grace, not in our works.  Paul put it this way:

Ephesians 2:8-9 - God’s grace is unearned, undeserved kindness to the unworthy.  There was nothing we did or ever could do to earn or deserve the gift of salvation given to us on the cross of Jesus Christ, and there was nothing we did or ever could do to be worthy of it.  Based on our own ability to keep God’s laws, what we really deserved, or earned, was death and eternal separation from Him, and yet instead of making salvation based on our works, He made it available by the gift of His grace in Christ.

2 Corinthians 9:15 - It’s indescribable how much love God must have for us to allow His only Son to take our place on the cross so that we too could become His sons and daughters.  It’s indescribable how God could allow His own Son to be considered and treated as a sinner so that He could consider and treat us as righteous.  And that grace is the engine that drives us to want to live for Him now and make Him proud.

And once you understand how we’re saved by grace, not works, it causes a conundrum if we say baptism is necessary for salvation.  Because baptism is a work, it’s something we do, so if we’re saved by faith, not works, how could baptism possibly be necessary for salvation?  Well, we’re going to address that later in the class, but for now I just want us to feel that tension.

And while we’re contemplating how to relieve that tension, I want us to take some time to let the Bible speak for itself on the subject of baptism, and I want to propose to you that there are 7 main blessings of baptism in the New Testament.    

Blessing #1:  Salvation from God’s Wrath

• When the New Testament uses the word “saved,” or “salvation,” it’s about salvation from the condemnation of God’s judgment for our sin.  Because of our sin, we have put ourselves under His judicial wrath and punishment, and we’ve already talked about how Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is what saves us from God’s wrath because He took our punishment for sin upon Himself.  Yet we’re also told baptism is required in order to be saved from God’s wrath.  In fact, Jesus Himself says this…
  • Mark 16:16 - Now notice belief is key to baptism.  Without belief in Jesus and the power of His sacrifice on our behalf, we’re just getting wet.  The water has no power to save us; Jesus is the one with the power to save us and we have to believe that in order for baptism to save us from God’s wrath.
    • Acts 2:40-41 - The way they were saved from the wrath their perverse generation was facing for their evil was to be baptized.
    • 1 Peter 3:20-21 - In Noah’s day, God poured out His wrath on the world by sending a flood to cleanse the earth of evil.  That water washed away the evil in the world, and the ark brought Him safely through that water.  Well, just as the ark brought Noah safely through the waters of the flood, so too Jesus’ resurrection brings us safely through the waters of baptism.  Peter also notes, baptism is not just an external thing like a bath to remove dirt or even an external ceremonial washing ritual like the Jews engaged in under the Law of Moses.  No, it’s an appeal to God for a good conscience.

Blessing #2:  Forgiveness of our Sins

• Remember in our problem of sin class, sin is what separates us from God, and the promise of the new covenant was that our sins would be forgiven and they’d be remembered no more!  Now, of course it’s the blood of Jesus shed in our place on the cross that makes our forgiveness possible, yet we’re also told baptism is required in order to be forgiven.
  • Acts 2:37-38 - Now, notice here that baptism isn’t the only thing required as a demonstration of their faith.  They also need to repent, which means to change their way of thinking, to feel genuine sorrow for how wrong they were about Jesus, and to determine to live completely different lives now and make a 180 degree turn!
    • And just like baptism without belief is useless, so too is baptism useless without repentance.  If someone says, “I’ll get baptized, but I have no interest in changing how I live,” then again they’re just getting wet.  And Peter says the purpose of repentance and baptism is FOR the forgiveness of our sins.
    • Acts 22:16 - Because baptism is linked to forgiveness and to the washing away of sins, there’s an urgency here.  He doesn’t say like some today say, “Hey we’re having a baptism day 3 months from now when a whole bunch of people are getting baptized, so you can do it then.”  No, he needs to do it immediately because if not, he won’t be cleansed of his sins!

Blessing #3:  Sharing in Christ’s Death and Resurrection

• Romans 6:4 - Some have referred to baptism as the watery grave.  It’s where the old self goes to die, and in so doing, we join ourselves to Jesus’ death.  In His death, Jesus was buried in the ground with the weight of punishment for our sin on His shoulders, but when He rose from the dead, He was free from sin’s burden!  Likewise, when we go under the water, we’re burying our old self with all our sins, and then just like Jesus was resurrected, we come up from those waters a new person, spiritually born again with no more punishment for sin to bear!  And do you remember in our class on the resurrection, how we said in the end when our bodies are resurrected, they’ll be spiritual bodies, meaning bodies empowered by the Holy Spirit rather than by any earthly, fleshly power sources?  Well we get a foretaste of what that’s like in baptism because when we join Christ’s resurrection, it’s as if we’re already in our spiritual bodies, bodies now empowered by the Holy Spirit!

Blessing #4:  The Reception of the Holy Spirit

• Acts 2:38 - Now, Lord willing we’ll have a whole class on the Holy Spirit this Wednesday, but basically it means we now have the life, character, and power of God in us.  Now, by the Spirit, God is the one empowering our lives and we’re fully reliant on his power, not any power of our own, and we’re driven in life by God’s Spirit, not by our fleshly impulses.

Questions/Comments?

Blessing #5:  Joining the New Covenant

• Remember, under the Old Covenant the sign that people were in covenant with God was circumcision, at least for the males.  On the 8th day of a baby’s life, they were circumcised and that was a sign of their commitment to this covenant relationship with God.  Some, like foreigners, who joined the Mosaic covenant had to be circumcised later in life.  I’m really glad God doesn’t require us to do that anymore!  However, the New Testament (or Covenant) describes baptism as a spiritual circumcision “made without hands.”
  • Colossians 2:11-12 - When we’re baptized, we’re not just removing a small piece of our flesh like in literal circumcision, we’re cutting off our entire old body of flesh that used to live for self!  And there’s that burial language again just like in Romans 6 where Paul said we’re dying to our old self.  But here he says when we do that, we’re also making a commitment to God that we’re joining the covenant with Him!  Which is what’s so sad sometimes about people who get baptized, and then they come to worship for a few weeks and you never see them again.  It’s almost like they treated baptism as a free ticket to Heaven and now they can to live however they want, but baptism is a serious commitment to God that we’ll serve and honor Him forever!

Blessing #6:  Becoming Sons in God’s Family

• Now, this language is not meant to exclude women who become daughters in God’s family.  But the sonship language is because they were the beneficiaries of the father’s inheritance.  Daughters were usually taken care of by their husbands, or by their male relatives, but it was the sons who were heirs of the inheritance.
• Galatians 3:24–27 - When the Jews were under the Law of Moses, it’s like they were little children under the guidance of a tutor, and in the ancient world you weren’t really considered a son in the full sense until you were older, because now you’ve reached a point of maturity to become an official heir of the Father’s inheritance.  Well here Paul is saying once you realize salvation is not the through the Law of Moses, but through faith in Jesus, you step into a new level of maturity and you become becoming sons who are full heirs of God’s blessings and of His eternal inheritance.  And yes, what’s SO amazing and shocking about this is that even women can become sons in the sense of being heirs of God’s eternal inheritance through faith and baptism.  And not just women, but even slaves who normally had no rights at all, let alone to an inheritance.
  • Galatians 3:28 - Now, it’s interesting to me how all throughout the New Testament, faith and baptism go hand in hand.  In the first part of the verse, Paul says we’re sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, and then in the second part of the verse He explains how that happened!  The word “For” connects it to what he just said.  So it’s like if you asked Paul, “How did the Galatians become sons of God through faith in Jesus?” And then he answered, “By being baptized into Him.”
  • Acts 2:41 - The point is that 3,000 souls, men and women, were added to God’s family and became heirs of their Father’s eternal inheritance!

Blessing #7:  Clothing ourselves with Christ

• Galatians 3:27 - In the ancient world, when a son reached a certain state of maturity and became officially an heir of the inheritance, he would change his clothing style as a sign of that new, more mature stage in life and leave his old clothes behind.  Paul says when we’re baptized, we’re leaving our immature stage of life where we were like little kids in our understanding and behavior, and now we have a whole new identity in Christ.  It’s why we call ourselves Christ-ians, because it’s like we’re wearing Christ now.
  • • And I think it’s fair to ask the question, “If a person has faith, but doesn’t get baptized, how can they have been saved, been forgiven, died and resurrected, received the Holy Spirit, joined the new covenant, become sons in God’s family, or clothed themselves with Christ?”
      • How can baptism NOT be necessary for salvation if it means all these things?  Now I know we still have to deal with the tension that it’s a work and we’re not saved by works, we’ll get to that, but first we need to let the weight of these passages sink in.

Questions/Comments?

Water as a Dividing Line in Scripture

• Remember the Old Testament was a tutor to lead us to Christ, and I find it fascinating that in the Old Testament, water was used as a dividing line to transition things from something bad to something good.
• Question:  Can you think of any examples in the Old Testament of water as a dividing line to transition things from bad to good?
  • 1) In Genesis 1, the whole earth was covered with water, and God brought life out of the waters.  So there water was a dividing line between death and life.  2) In the flood, God used water to cleanse the world of wickedness, so it was a dividing line between evil and good.  3) In Exodus, the Israelites passed through the waters of the Red Sea to escape from Pharaoh, so water was a dividing line between slavery and freedom.  4) In the Levitical priesthood system, God required anyone who was to start their ministry as a priest to be washed in water, so water was a dividing line between a normal life and holy service.  5) Also in the Levitical priesthood system, God required anyone who had become defiled or unclean to be washed in water, so water was a dividing line between clean and unclean.  6) When Israel crossed the Jordan River to finally enter the Promised land, water was the dividing line between the curse of wandering and the blessing of rest.  7) When Naaman had leprosy, he was commanded to dip himself in the Jordan River 7 times, so water became a dividing line between sickness and health.  8) When we get to the time of Jesus’ ministry, which was still under the Old Covenant times, John the baptizer used water as a dividing line between living for self and repenting to prepare for Jesus’ arrival.  9) Jesus Himself was baptized in water and like the priests, it was a dividing line between a normal life and holy service.  And it was the moment God’s Spirit descended upon Him.  10) In John 9 Jesus told the blind man to go wash in the pool of Siloam, so water was used a dividing line between blindness and sight.
    • When you see this pattern all throughout Scripture, is it really that hard to believe that under the new covenant water would also be the dividing line between not being saved and being saved, not being forgiven and being forgiven, and so on with those 5 other blessings we covered?

But How Can a Work Be Necessary for Salvation?

• Ephesians 2:8-9 - If we’re not saved as a result of our works, and baptism is a work, how could it necessary for salvation?
  • It’s important to understand what Paul means when he says, “not as a result of works.”  To explain this, I want to remind us of our class Wednesday night where we pointed out there are only 2 ways or methods to be saved.
    • 1) To keep God’s laws perfectly and never sin.  This is what the New Testament refers to as righteousness by works.
    • 2) To be considered and treated AS IF WE ARE righteous by God even though we’re not.  This is what the New Testament refers to as righteousness by grace through faith.
      • So when Paul says we’re saved by faith, not as a result of works, what he’s saying is that we’re not saved by the first method of keeping God’s law perfectly.  If we actually COULD be saved as a result of our works and keep God’s laws perfectly, then we could boast and say, “God I deserve Heaven because of my perfect obedience!”
        • But because all of us have utterly failed to keep God’s law perfectly, we’re all sinners deserving of God’s wrath, so there’s no room for boasting.  The ONLY way we can be saved is if it’s given to us as a gift by God’s grace, which means we didn’t earn it, we didn’t deserve it, and we were completely unworthy of it.  And as we covered Wednesday, the only way it’s possible for us to be saved by this second method of grace through faith is because of Jesus’ sacrifice.
        • Point:  Whenever Paul says, “We’re not saved as a result of works,” he does NOT mean we don’t have to do ANYTHING at all to access the salvation Christ offers us.  He means our perfect works under law are not the basis, or foundation, of our salvation.
          • So if I know full well I’m only saved by the gift of Christ’s sacrifice by God’s grace, and I get baptized because God tells me that’s how to access the blessings of Christ’s sacrifice, would I ever be able to boast about that to God as if I saved myself?  Is getting baptized the same as thinking I’m saved by that first method of perfect law keeping?  No way!  In fact, notice the way Paul frames baptism in…
            • Colossians 2:12 - When we’re baptized, we’re not relying on our own works to save us, we’re putting our faith in the working of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
            • In the New Testament, baptism has nothing to do with earning our salvation; it’s part of the process of choosing to put our faith in Him, along with repentance and confession of Him as Lord.
              • Acts 2:37 - Notice Peter could have stopped them right there and said, “What do you mean ‘do’?  You don’t have to do anything at all because we’re not saved by works, you just put your faith in Jesus and you’ll be saved instantaneously.”  But he didn’t say that.
                • Acts 2:38 - When Paul wrote in his letters that we’re saved by faith, not works, he was addressing the question, “Do we need to put our faith in Jesus at all?  Or can we be saved by just keeping the works of the Law of Moses?” And Paul was saying, “Yes you need faith in Jesus because His sacrifice is the means of our salvation, and without putting faith in Him, all you’re left with a system of salvation by works, that first method of being declared righteous, and that only leads to condemnation.  He was NOT addressing the question, “Do we need to do anything at all other than have faith to be saved?”  That’s our modern question, that’s our modern debate, but our modern hangup about baptism being a work wasn’t a hangup for anyone in the New Testament.  No one was even talking about this conundrum we’re having because when you understand Paul’s point about faith vs. works, it’s not really a conundrum at all.

We absolutely have to be baptized to be saved, because that’s how we access the blessings of Christ’s sacrifice by grace through faith.

Bonus

• On Mark 16:16 - The way most explain this away is to say, “Well, in the second half of the verse, he doesn’t mention baptism.  He doesn’t say he who does not believe AND is not baptized will be condemned.”  That’s true, but He didn’t need to say that because if you don’t believe, you’re not going to get baptized.  It’d be like if I said, “Whoever gets in their car and drives to the east coast will be saved from the hurricane, but whoever doesn’t get in their car could die.”  I wouldn’t need to say, “But whoever doesn’t get in their car and does NOT drive to the east coast could die.”  That’s redundant and already implied.  I had a recent discussion with someone who said, “Well, Jesus doesn’t connect baptism with condemnation, He only connects disbelief with condemnation.”  That was a new one I hadn’t heard before, but then I realized it just wasn’t true, because what does the word “saved” mean?  It means to not be condemned.  Which means in the first line Jesus says, “He who believes and is baptized will not be condemned,” so He absolutely connects baptism with salvation from condemnation, which implies NOT being baptized DOES lead to condemnation.

Series: N/A

Service: Lord’s Supper Service

Type: Lord's Supper Talk

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Earth Trembles, Heaven Triumphs

On the morning of the resurrection, while most of Jerusalem was still asleep, three groups of people were already moving through the early light — each headed into the city, each carrying something different on their faces and in their hearts.

Picture them converging, if you can. Not as a tidy illustration, but as a real scene from a real morning that changed everything.

The Women: Fear and Joy

The two Marys had watched Jesus die. They had watched where he was buried. And after the longest Sabbath of their lives — quiet, grief-soaked, suspended in disbelief — they were up before dawn to do the only thing left to do for someone they had loved: anoint his body for proper burial.

They had one problem turning over and over in their minds as they walked. The stone. Who is going to move the stone? That was the obstacle between them and what they needed to do, and they had no answer for it. They walked anyway.

Then the earth shook.

By the time they reached the tomb, the stone was already rolled away — not so Jesus could get out, but so they could see in. An angel, whose appearance was like lightning, sat on top of it. The guards who had been posted there were gone, scattered in terror. And the angel spoke the words that changed the morning, and then the world:

"Do not be afraid. He is not here. He is risen."

And then, brilliantly, the angel did something worth noticing. He didn't just announce it. He invited them in — come, see the place where He lay — taking them to the exact spot so there could be no confusion, no doubt about which tomb this was. This was the right place. And it was empty.

They left running, Matthew says, with fear and great joy — both at once, which is the only honest response to something that large. They were headed to find the disciples, to deliver a message they hadn't expected to carry that morning.

The Guards: Fear, No Joy

Now pan to the other group heading into the city.

The soldiers assigned to guard the tomb were professionals. They had one job: keep the body in the grave. The Jewish leaders had been explicit about why — there were rumors that his followers might try to steal the body and claim he had risen. So the stone was sealed, the guard was posted, and they stood watch through the night.

Then came the earthquake. Then the angel. And these trained, armed men fell to the ground like dead men and fled.

They had no framework for what they had just seen. But they knew one thing: the body was gone, the tomb was empty, and they were going to be held responsible. Failure to secure a prisoner in the Roman world carried a severe penalty. They ran not to the disciples, not to their commanding officer — they ran to the chief priests, because the Jewish leaders were the ones who had arranged the guard detail. Maybe they could help.

They were going into the city with pure terror. Fear, and nothing else.

The Risen Saints: Appearing to Everyone

There is a third group that is easy to miss, tucked into the end of Matthew 27. When Jesus died, graves were opened. When he rose, something remarkable happened: those graves emptied. Matthew tells us that many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and after the resurrection, they came out of the graves and went into the holy city and appeared to many.

No agenda we're told about. No specific destination. They were simply going into Jerusalem and showing themselves — appearing to many, to whoever crossed their path.

If the women were rushing to find the disciples, and the guards were rushing to find the priests, the risen saints were simply… present. Walking into the city that was waking up to the most significant morning in history, making themselves seen.

Three groups. Three sets of footsteps on three different paths. All headed into the same city at the same moment, carrying different things into a world that was about to find out what had happened while it slept.

The Heavenly Scene

But something else was happening that morning — something no one in Jerusalem could see.

Genesis 3:15 is one of the oldest promises in the Bible, spoken to the serpent in the garden after the fall of humanity. God said that one day, the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head — though in doing so, his heel would be bruised.

The cross looked like the bruising of the heel. It looked like defeat.

But the moment the stone rolled away and Jesus walked out of that tomb, the head was crushed. The devil's greatest weapon — the fear of death, the finality of death, the power of death to end everything — was taken from him. Permanently. Irrevocably.

The book of Revelation shows us Jesus as he is now, in the fullness of his glory: eyes like flame, voice like many waters, face shining like the sun at full strength. When John saw him, he fell at his feet as though dead. And Jesus placed his hand on him and said words that echo what the angel said to the women on that first morning: "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore — and I have the keys of Hades and of death."

He holds the keys. Not death. Not the enemy. Not whatever frightens us most. He holds them.

When we gather at this table, we are not remembering a tragedy. We are not commemorating a defeat. We are remembering a morning when women walked through the dark toward a tomb and came back running — when guards fled in terror and risen saints walked into a city — when the oldest promise in Scripture was fulfilled and the fear of death lost its grip forever.

We come to remember a Savior who didn't just survive death. He conquered it.

He is not here. He is risen.

Series: N/A

Service: Wednesday Night

Type: Invitation

Speaker: Rory Salimbene