Two Journeys

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Isaiah 2:1-22. The main subject of the sermon is God's determination to carry out His will despite mankind's obstinate ways.

Since the beginning of the church, Christians have speculated about the end times, about the end of the world. Right after the resurrection of Christ, Jesus' apostles thought it was going to happen then. And so in Acts 1:6 they said, "Lord, are You at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" That's the Jewish version of, “Is the end of the world at hand?” They wanted that kingdom to come. Jesus, as you remember, said, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority" (Acts 1:7). Is this the end of the world? That's the question generation after generation have asked. And frequently, the question has been linked to current events, to things that have been happening on the world scene. Perhaps that was no more true than in the year 410, on August 24th, when the walls, the defenses of Rome were breached and Rome fell to a pagan power. It was an earth-shaking moment in history when the Visigoths under Alaric swept through the streets of Rome. They actually treated the city relatively gently, but it was just a shocking moment. Rome, the eternal city had fallen. And in a cave where he was fasting and praying and writing near Bethlehem, Saint Jerome, when he heard about it, began to weep.

And he said, "The world is rushing to ruin. The glorious city, the capital of the Roman empire, has been swallowed up in one conflagration." He thought the end of the world was imminent. But across the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa, in a place called Hippo, there was a different man, Augustine. We know him as Saint Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo in North Africa. He took an entirely different view of the fall of Rome. After Rome fell, he finished his masterpiece called The City of God. It was a defense for Christianity against paganism. The pagan Romans thought that Rome had fallen because of the influence of Christianity, that their military strength had abated, had weakened because of Christianity. So he defends Christianity against paganism. But even more than that, he defends the view of history that comes from the Bible, that we are not stuck to current events. We are not linked to any human city. There are in effect in history two cities. There is the city of God and there is the city of man. And the two of them are competing on infinitely unequal terms. We are not dualists. We don't believe that good and evil battle on equal terms.  But they are battling it out for the central place in human hearts and affections. 

At the core of the city of man is one driving spirit, and that is love of self, extending to contempt of God. That is the nature of the city of man, love of self that quenches any concern for the glory of God. The city of God has exactly the opposite spirit, love of God that extends to contempt of self. And those two are battling it out all the time on the stage of human history. So the story of human history is this, what some have said is a tale of two cities. It is the city of God and the city of man. And here in Isaiah 2 we have it in this kind of language, in competing high places. We have the high place of the Lord's temple established in the first five verses, and then we have all these other human high places, these lofty towers and these high walls. And the two are in direct competition. You have the city of God and you have the city of man and they are competing for your affection and for mine. It is God versus the world, and that is what is going on in Isaiah 2. And it begins with the vision of peace in verses one through five, “The mountain of the Lord's temple” exalted. It starts in verse two with this expression, "In the last days." "In the last days," it says, "these glorious things are going to come." So this is a constant fascination we have, as I mentioned, with the end of the world.

I will not ask how many of you have read any of the Left Behind series. I don't want to know, okay? But I know this, that 65 million copies have been printed in that series. I know they have a website, leftbehind.com. I'm not mentioning it that you should go there. I am just saying that they have one. I’m just saying that their books and movies and even a computer game, the Left Behind computer game if you can believe that, are sold at Walmart and you can get them. Behind the intense interest in and success of that series is this question: “Are we living in the last days? Are these the end times?” Well the Bible's answer to that question is absolutely clear and unequivocal. Yes, we are most certainly living in the last times. We are even living in the last hour. 1 John 2:18 says this, "Dear children, this is the last hour." Of course, that was written in the first century AD. It has been the last hour all of this time.

 Hebrews 1:2 says "In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son." We are in the last days. Are we the final generation? Now, that's a different question. And Jesus already told us that it is not for us to know the times or dates. He has given us instead a way by which, by what we call the signs of the times, by which we can measure progress toward the end of the world. One of the greatest is in Matthew 24:14. "This gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." So we are watching the progress of the gospel and linking it to the end of the world. Now Isaiah gives us a different sign, and that is the exaltation of the mountain of the Lord and the streaming of the nations. Look what it says in verse two, "In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it." So it begins this vision with the exaltation of the mountain of the Lord's temple.

 The Exaltation of the Mountain of the Lord

 Now mountains are frequently associated with religions and paganism. You have Mount Olympus and Zeus and all the pantheon of gods up there in Greece. There is Mount Meru in Hinduism, the spiritual origin, so they believe, of all the Hindu deities and their ultimate destination. You have Chomolungma (that's Mount Everest), the goddess mother of the world. In that tribal religion they believe that all the deities came from there. Who could say until 1953? No one got to the top. And so there it is. There are these incredible mountains. And people imagine the deities are up at the top of them.

But this is not any of that. This is no pagan mountain. This is “the mountain of the Lord's temple.” That is what it says. And this is not Mount Sinai where Moses received from God the ten commandments, the old covenant. Actually, you have to go further back in Jewish history, to Genesis 22 when the Lord tested Abraham and said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." And he goes to Mount Moriah and is just about to offer Isaac up when the angel of the Lord stops him. But do you remember what Abraham says in Genesis 22? Remember how Isaac had said, "The fire and wood are here… but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?". And Abraham replies, "God himself will provide the lamb." And so there was this saying, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided" (verse 14).

If you advance in redemptive history, you have David, of course, taking the Jebusite city, Jerusalem. It was up on a mountain. It was called Mount Zion, the elevated place. It was difficult to get to and easy to defend, but David conquered it. So it became the city of David, the fortress of Zion, and there David wanted to build a temple. Nathan the prophet revealed it would not be David who would build the temple but it would be his son who would build the temple. Now I tell you the Scripture is infinitely deep. What son was Nathan referring to? Was it Solomon or was it Christ? My answer is both. Solomon built the physical temple, and he built it right there on Mount Moriah, the very same mountain, as it says in Chronicles.

So on the mountain of the Lord it was provided, for that's where Jesus died. That is where He shed His blood - in space and time on that very mountain. It really happened. It was physical. It was a place. But we learn from Scripture that the tabernacle and the temple were just dim reflections, just shadows of a reality that is up in heaven. A heavenly reality, a place where God will dwell with man, where man will be forgiven of his sins, and where we will dwell in close fellowship, close partnership. And anything earthly, anything physical, is just a dim reflection of it. So when Jesus shed His blood on the cross, on that physical mountain, on a physical cross, shedding physical blood, the physical curtain in the physical temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  And we learn from the Book of Hebrews that a new and living way has been opened up for us spiritually into the very presence of God. As of that moment, there is no longer any need again for animal sacrifice. Animal blood is not needed. In fact, it is not welcome and never will be again. That has been fulfilled in Jesus. And so also the physical temple has been fulfilled. It was just a pattern of the heavenly one anyway.

So what do I believe then? Well, I believe as it says in Hebrews 12:18, "You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire." We have not come to a physical mountain here in Isaiah 2, but rather we have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. The mountain of the Lord's temple then is the spiritual temple established by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember how Jesus said, "Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days" (John 2:19). He was speaking of His own body, speaking of the place where sinners would be reconciled to an Almighty God. That is the temple I think Isaiah 2 is mentioning here, and on this mountain God provided a sacrifice for sins through Christ's blood. On this mountain the Lord heard the prayer of the Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. And on this mountain God swallowed up death forever. This is the mountain that is established as chief.

 Now Jerusalem was the physical starting place for the spread of the gospel. It started in Jerusalem as Luke 24:47 says, "Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem." So it started at that physical mountain, Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. But from that physical place, the word of the Lord would spread to the ends of the earth. Look at Verse 3. "The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." And in this way the mountain of the Lord's temple is established as chief among all the spiritual high places of the earth. It is the place of Jesus. It is the place where He shed His blood. It is the place of the cross. It is the place of free access to almighty God where we can see Him face to face, where we can be in His very presence. That is what is established as chief among all mountains in the world.

The Amazing Streaming of the Nations… Uphill!

So what do we have as a result of the establishment of this place, this high place of the Lord's glory, of Jesus' finished work on the cross? We have the streaming of the nations in a manner entirely contrary to nature. Look what it says, "In the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It will be raised above the hills and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.'" So here is this river streaming up hill. It is running contrary to nature. Do you know what the Continental Divide is? The Continental Divide is a mountain ridge where the water on one side flows to the Atlantic and on the other side flows to the Gulf of Mexico, or to the Pacific if it is the Pacific Divide. Water just doesn't flow uphill friends. Water has never flowed from the Pacific up to the Continental Divide. It just doesn't work that way. So this is a streaming of the nations contrary to nature.

It is surprising. It's shocking. It is something only God can do. Why in the world would the nations all be looking to Jerusalem? It really isn't that impressive a city. Why would all nations all over the world be caring about what happened in that small place at that time, 2000 years ago? It is because of the greatness of Christ, the greatness of the gospel. Contrary to nature, the nations are streaming to Jerusalem. Not physically. We are not on a pilgrimage like the Muslims go to Mecca. We don't need to get up and go. You can go there if you like. Some of our number have gone. We love seeing the pictures, and I'd love to go myself. But if I die never having seen physical Jerusalem I'm alright. But I want to see the heavenly Jerusalem!

I want to be there because that is the true place, and that is where I'm streaming to in my heart. That's where I'm on route to. Jesus said, “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2,3).That's the streaming that's going on. I want to be with God. That's the streaming that's happening here. And so, the mountain of the Lord's temple is established. Now I know there is a millennial view that says Jesus will reign for a thousand years physically on Earth from Jerusalem. He will establish His throne there. He will settle disputes. People will go and see Him physically. I think that may be. Personally, I am millennial in my theology. I understand that some people focus on this passage as a view of the millennial kingdom. But I think it is so much more glorious to think of a kingdom that will never end. Not one that lasts only a thousand years, but one that lasts for ever and ever. And forever we will be looking for the law coming from Christ's mouth. Amen. And so I think even the millennialists will say, "We look forward to aspects of that going on throughout eternity."

Missions: Come, and Say, “Come!”

And notice what it says here in verse three, "Many peoples will come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.'" This in my mind speaks of the exponential spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The very ones who are coming are saying come to those who aren't yet coming. They are on route, they are traveling, they're on a journey, they're moving on. And they are finding those who aren't moving or who are going in the wrong direction. They are dead in their transgressions and sins, and they invite them to come. And so this is the spread of the gospel. We begin life, therefore, as targets for evangelism and, God willing, we end life as evangelists ourselves, reaching out with the gospel. And so it says at the very end of the Bible, in Revelations 22:17, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!’'" So we are in cooperation with the spirit of God inviting people who aren't coming yet to come. “The Spirit and the bride say ‘come!’ And let him who hears say ‘come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” And as we're coming, we are hearing the law coming from the mouth of the lawgiver, Christ Himself. Again, verse three says, "He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."

The Law of the Lord: He Will Teach Us His Ways

The Gospel is meant to have a transforming effect on every area of your life. How you think, how you move in this world, what you do with your money. Everything. And the law is coming from Christ. He is speaking the law to us. His laws are written in our minds and on our hearts, not external to us like laws engraved on tablets of stone. Christ's law of love comes and drives out strife between former enemies. Christ's law of holiness comes and causes us to put sin to death. Christ's law of obedience causes us to come and walk in obedience to the spiritual laws written now in our hearts. And the Gospel ministry is at the center of it, as Matthew 28:19 says, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The law streams forth from this spiritual temple, from the mouth of our lawgiver, Jesus Christ. And what is the result? Well, lasting peace, friends. Not man made, but God made. Look at verse four, a very famous verse. "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."

Lasting Peace: Not Man-Made, God-Made!

The result of the Gospel, the result of the establishment of the glory of God through Christ, is lasting peace between people. Peace between nations - something that has not been achievable. In 5000 plus years of human history we have not been able to establish lasting peace between the nations. And we will not. Only the Lord can do this. We learned this in the 20th century, didn't we? There was World War I, the war to end all wars. 37.5 million casualties, a very high price to pay to end all wars, but worth it if you are going to do it, if you are actually going to end all wars. And at the end of that war they set up the League of Nations under Present Wilson to make sure we didn't have war anymore. Well, we know how successful that was because just a few decades later, in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and began World War II. And the price tag for that war was 72 million killed. The greatest carnage of any war that has ever been. Right after that, of course, they established the United Nations so that we wouldn't go to war with each other anymore. We would think 72 million would be a small price to pay if we never went to war with each other again. And so the top priority of the United Nations, established on October 24, 1945, was to keep peace throughout the world.

I don't know how you count a war. What distinguishes a war from just a skirmish or a border issue?  But some analysts have counted over 150 armed conflicts between nations since that time. I believe that lasting peace is impossible in this world because of the wickedness of human hearts. If you don't change the heart, you're not going to change politics, you're not going to change history. The heart must change. And what does it say about the human heart in Isaiah 57:20-21? it says, "The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’" Here’s the bottom line. Wicked people don't naturally beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. They don't. They make more swords and they get ready because they want to win. They want to dominate. I think about the image of the sword being beaten into a plowshare. I get the picture of the hammer and sickle, I don't know why. Actually, there isn't necessarily a Biblical background to this. I tried to establish that, but I do know this. In 1959 the Soviet Union donated to the United Nations a big brawn statue called, “We shall beat our swords into plowshares,” patterned after this Biblical verse that they didn't believe in. Bbut they did believe in the theme of world peace and they thought it could be established by their means.

The statue is still there in the north garden of the United Nations, some big muscular guy beating his sword into a plowshare. Of course, at that point the United States and Soviet Union were in negotiations with each other, trying to establish a lasting peace between their countries in the midst of the cold war. And so they came up with the McCloy-Zorin Accords, a joint statement of agreed principles for disarmament negotiations.  Their first goal - get this! - was that disarmament should be general and complete and war is no longer an instrument for settling international problems. Sounds good, especially in the middle of a cold war. Of course, within a year or two there was the Cuban missile crisis and the accords went right out the window.

Actually, as I look at these principles, I think about the letter that was signed between Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler after the Munich accord, which sold Czechoslovakia up the river and just about guaranteed World War II would come. Appeasement had run it's course. But Neville Chamberlain thought they had purchased “peace in our time.” Recall Chamberlain waving that letter and announcing, “We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.” Doesn't that sound wonderful? Don't you just cheer in Trafalgar Square that we're not going to fight the Germans after all? Of course, within a year they declared war on Nazi Germany. The reason is the human heart hasn't changed. Hitler was a wolf. He wanted the whole world. That was the whole issue. True lasting peace comes only in one way, the saving work of Jesus Christ on the wicked, selfish, angry, prideful, murderous, covetous, power hungry human heart. Only if the heart changes will war be obsolete and He is the only one that can do it. It is His unique glory. You know the hymn, 'Crown Him With Many Crowns'? Listen to this: “Crown Him the Lord of peace, whose power a scepter sways, from pole to pole, that wars may cease and all be prayer and praise. His reign shall know no end, and round His pierced feet, fair flowers of paradise extend, their fragrance ever sweet.” Isaiah 2:1-4 is a clear prediction that someday war will be obsolete. Amen?

It's going to be gone. To the glory of Christ though, not to the glory of negotiating. Not to anybody who's going to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Nobody's going to take credit for it. It's going to be Christ's work and His work alone. But it's going to come. Now it ends with an exhortation. Isaiah gives an exhortation to his own people concerning these things. Look at verse five. "Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord." But then tragically, he spends the rest of the chapter saying how much they do not walk in the light of the Lord. And not just Israel. Israel is just a kind of test nation for all of us. We wouldn't have done any better. It doesn't matter what your tribal ancestry is. You can't imagine you would have done better, or your ancestors would have done better than the Jews. They represent us all. But he starts with the Jews and he shows very plainly that they refuse to walk in the light of the Lord.

He begins with Jacob's shame in verses six through nine. We see Jacob abandoned to idols. Look at verse eight, "Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made." He begins by lamenting the fact that Israel is abandoned by God. This abandoning, he readily admits, is justified because of Jacob's great sin.

Israel has committed two great sins according to the prophet Jeremiah. He says, in Jeremiah 2:13, "My people have committed two sins. Number one, they have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and number two, they have dug for themselves their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." Here are two great sins. Turning away from God, the all satisfying stream of living water and deciding to dig out your own cisterns. And drinking from your own water source. Those are two related sins. John Piper identifies this is as the shocking two-fold root of all sin, the forsaking of God and the desire to find ultimate satisfaction and pleasure from some created thing. This is what Piper writes. "Tell me then, what is evil? The definition of evil, that which appalls the universe, that causes the angels of God to say, ‘No it can't be!’ What is it? What is evil? It is looking at God, the fountain of all-satisfying, living water, and saying, ‘No thank you,’ and turning instead to the television, to sex, parties, booze, money, prestige, a house in the suburbs, a vacation, a new computer program, and saying ‘yes!’ to those things. That’s insane! And it causes all heaven to be appalled, according to Jeremiah 2:12”. That is what they were doing. They were turning away from God and turning to idols - anything made to satisfy apart from God. And so three times in the section, Isaiah says that Israel is full of something, but not of God. Full of something, but not what God provided. We were created dependent. We come into the world, our lungs are empty. They need air. Our stomachs get cyclically empty. They need food. We are dependent on God, and that physical dependency is meant to teach us something spiritually. We need to be filled with God. We need to be filled with Him.

Full of Superstitions, Not of True Religion

But look at what they are filled with. They are filled, first of all, with superstitions. Look at verse six. “They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines and clasp hands with pagans.” They were created to have minds full of true religion, based on the revelation of God. Instead, what do they do? They turn to pagan religions, mystery religions, with their secret rituals at night and their orgies and their lustful things. They turn to the secret pagan religions, superstitions, from the east.

Full of Silver and Gold, Not of True Wealth

Secondly, they're full of silver and gold, not of true wealth. Look at verse seven. “Their land is full of silver and gold; there is no end to their treasures.” Now God had specifically forbidden the kings of Israel to accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. In Deuteronomy 17:17 and following, it says, speaking of the king, “He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.” Rather, the king was to take and write for himself a copy of the book of Deuteronomy and read it every day and fill his mind with God as his treasure. That is what he was supposed to do. Well, then you get Solomon. I can sum up Solomon's life in these words: Solomon accumulated. It is in there a number of times. Solomon accumulated wives. He had lots of them. Solomon accumulated silver and gold. The trading ships came in every year, bringing 666 talents of gold. He was swimming in gold. There was so much silver, it meant nothing in those days. Well, all the kings after him, though not achieving that level of glory and wealth, yearned for it. They wanted silver and gold. This is idolatry. It's greed, materialism, a lust for wealth and the pleasure of possession, of ownership.

Full of Horses and Chariots, Not of True Power

Also, they are full of horses and chariots, not of true power. Look at verse seven. “Their land is full of horses; there is no end to their chariots.” Just as bad was the Jewish accumulation of military power. Again, from Deuteronomy 17:16, “The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them.” But in 1 Kings 10:26, it says, “Solomon accumulated” [there's that word again]. “Solomon accumulated chariots and horses. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses.” What is the problem here? Well, God did not want the Jews relying on their military strength for their protection and their defense. He wanted Gideon to strip his army down to 300 so that God would get the glory for the deliverance. Later, in Isaiah, we'll see King Ahaz turning to Assyria instead of to God for protection. He was angry with David for numbering the fighting men in Israel. He did not want their hearts trusting in their own military prowess for their security.

This is a great temptation in our day as well. A terrible temptation. In 2006, 1.1 trillion dollars were spent by the nations of the world on military things. By world governments, 1.1 trillion dollars. The United States spent 48% of that. As a matter of fact, if you add up the military spending by nations number two through eleven, we exceed that. Nation number two plus three plus four plus five. We exceed the next ten nations in military spending. We spend close to $650 billion a year on the military. It is easy, then, for our nation to be tempted into thinking that therein lies our national security. It does not. Every military system has a chink in its armor, something that God can find. An arrow can be shot at random and fly through the air and find that chink in the armor. That is not our security, friends. It does not come from those things. National security is hearing and obeying the word of God. That's it.

And you Christians, you know it, don't you? It comes in following Christ, in knowing Him, and in the prayers of the people, not in how much money we spend. We would not be a little more secure if we spent another $100 billion. It just doesn't work that way. The most powerful force in the universe is God. Isaiah 40:15 says, "Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales. He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." The most powerful thing in the universe is God. If we are in a right relationship with Him, we need fear nothing. But if He is against us, then who could be for us? Israel had abandoned the true power and settled for military power. Psalm 33:16-21 says, "No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him, on those whose hope is in His unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait and hope for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His holy name." Now that's what a secure people can say and should say in prayer.

Full of Idols, Not of the Lord

 Finally, the land was full of idols, not of the Lord. See verses eight and nine. "Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. So man will be brought low and mankind humbled - do not forgive them." Now as I've said, anything you look to for ultimate peace, ultimate significance, ultimate security or ultimate happiness other than the Lord is an idol. That's what it is. But the Jews went beyond that. They actually made physical representations. They actually made figurines. They made physical idols out of material stuff. It is amazing arrogance. It is one thing to trade God for some heart idol. It is another thing to think of God in your mind and make up a physical manifestation of your god and then bow down and worship it. And that is what the Jews were doing. I believe in the end all idolatry is really a form of self-worship. The artisan makes his image of God out of his own skill, out of his own ability, and then he honors and worships it.

Listen to Isaiah 44:13. "The carpenter measures with the line and makes an outline with a marker. He roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in the form of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine." What is he then worshipping when he bows down? He's worshipping himself! It's human arrogance, idolatry. And notice, by the way, the land is full of idols. One isn't enough. You are not going to have just one idol. Once you have one, you're going to have many. The more the better. I've been to India. I've seen idols everywhere. I've been to other countries. In Japan on every street corner there was an idol. They were everywhere. You are not going to just have one. But the Jews were like this, Jeremiah 2:28 says, "You have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah."

The Day of the Lord Proclaimed

For all of these reasons God had abandoned His people to judgment. That judgment Isaiah now seeks to describe in verses 12-21. Terror. The loftiness of created things humbled. The day of the Lord is proclaimed in verse 12. Look at it: "The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted, and they will be humbled." Simply put, the Lord has a day. It is coming. It's called The Day of the Lord. It's coming. There have been a lot of little days of the Lord that have given a picture of it, like Noah's flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. There have been pictures, but they are not the final thing. The Day of the Lord is coming. The Lord has a day in store. Now is the day of rebellion. Now is the day of sin. Now is the day of arrogance. Now is the day of man. Then is the Day of the Lord.

The Day of the Lord Described: Lofty Things Humbled

And the Day of the Lord is described basically like this: lofty things will be humbled and brought down. That's it. The purpose of the Day of the Lord is justice. For anything in God's universe to compete with Him is abhorrent. It is the greatest injustice. So He is going to bring justice. He is going to level the idols. Now pride is the root of all of this. It is the root of Satan's sin. There is a sense of lofty elevation. Satan, not satisfied with his position, wanted upward mobility. He wanted to go up in the universe. So it says in Isaiah 14, "You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.'" “I'm going up to where God is.” Well that sense of elevation and loftiness is of majesty where God dwells.

Isaiah 6:1, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted. And the train of His robe filled the temple." It's the greatness, the elevation of God. Satan wants to compete, so he goes up. We joined him in that rebellion. We actually decided to go upward. We decided to elevate ourselves, to become prideful and to go up, to follow Satan. We joined Satan in that upwardly mobile pride. And so here in Isaiah 2, he says "All of that is coming down." Look what it says in verses 12-17: "The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled), for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty, and all the oaks of Bashan, for all the towering mountains and all the high hills, for every lofty tower and every fortified wall, for every trading ship and every stately vessel. The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled."

He uses natural lofty things like cedars of Lebanon and oaks of Bashan and towering mountains and high hills. He uses man-made lofty things like lofty towers and fortified walls representing military pride, trading ships that represents commerce, stately pleasure vehicles representing pleasure. All of these are human idols. They are all lofty in their own estimation. They are coming down on the Day of the Lord. All lofty things set up against the knowledge of God, all of His rivals are coming down in the Day of the Lord. Now post 9/11, we as Christians should not be shocked at how quickly something lofty and high can come down. How quickly it can happen. I will never forget it as long as I live. The Twin Towers, how quickly they came down. It was a shock to me. The whole thing was a shock to me. Not because my theology was shaken by it as though somehow my theology were tied to the Twin Towers in New York. It wasn't. But just that it could come down that quickly. Were you not shocked by that? But we read about the future fall of all of the city of man. Babylon has fallen. “O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!" (Revelation 18:10).

The Lord Alone Exalted

It's all coming down. And why? So that the Lord alone can be exalted in that day. Isaiah 2:11 says, "The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled and the pride of men brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day." Isaiah 2:17 and 18 say, "The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day, and the idols will totally disappear." 

The Result: Fleeing in Sheer Terror 

What is the result of the Lord's humbling? What is the result of the Day of the Lord? Sheer terror, fleeing in sheer terror. Look at verse 10. "Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from dread of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty!" And again, verses 19-21, "Men will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground, from dread of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to shake the earth. In that day, men will throw away to the rodents and bats their idols of silver and idols of gold, which they made to worship. They will flee to caverns in the rocks and to the overhanging crags from dread of the Lord in the splendor of His majesty, when He rises to shake the earth."

Note the dual effect, an abandoning of the idols and the fleeing for terror away from God's presence. The idols are revealed to be worthless. They are nothing, so they are thrown away to the rodents and bats. People then try to hide from the Lord and from the splendor of His coming and His majesty. This is picked up in the Book of Revelation. After the sixth seal is open, the sky turns black and the stars fall from the sky and every mountain and island is moved from its place. And this is what is says then in Revelation 6:15-17, "Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'" That is the day that's coming, friends. It is coming, as sure as any of these words here are true. The Day of the Lord is coming and everything exalted against Him will be leveled and brought down. And hiding? There is no sense in hiding. There is no way to hide. Jeremiah 23:23,24, "'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.” The Lord alone will be exalted in that day and all human arrogance will be brought low.

Stop Trusting in Man

So what is the application? What is the invitation? Well, two words: stop and come. Those are the two words in the text. Look at the very last verse, verse 22. "Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?" Stop trusting in man. Stop trusting first and foremost in your own righteousness. Stop trusting in yourself, your own religious works, your own good things, that you're basically a good person. Stop looking to yourself to save yourself. You cannot. You cannot survive that day. So stop trusting in man who has but a breath in his nostrils, and don't look to other people. Don't build your life on them, a spouse, or children. Don't rely on the military to keep you safe from terrorism. Stop trusting in man who has but a breath in his nostrils. I believe military strength and power is needed, but behind it, as scripture clearly indicates, is the power of God.  And if God's power is against you, you lose. So stop trusting in man. Don't trust in yourself. Not you, not I, none of us can survive Judgment Day without Christ. So stop trusting in man.

Come, Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord

There is a hiding place. There is a place to hide and that refuge is Christ. Flee to Christ. That's the “come” part. Come to Christ. Come and trust in Him. Look to Him, to His shed blood on the cross. Look to Him and continue to look to Him. "Come, oh, house of Jacob," verse five, "Let us walk in the light of the Lord.." There is no greater, more beautiful light than the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Come to Christ and trust in Him. Now, I know I'm preaching to people who, for the most part, have come to Christ. So you are already coming. You're not there yet. You've come to Christ. You've been justified, you've trusted in Him, and that's all happened. Your sins are forgiven. You've been adopted into the family of God. But are you done with your journey? Are you there yet? No! So keep on coming. Sanctification is that internal journey. Keep on making progress. Keep following the law of the Lord by the spirit of God.

Come and Say “Come!”

And as you're coming, you know what you ought to do? You ought to say, "Come" to some people. You ought to invite some people. I don't mean just to church. Do that, and you can pray for me that I will be faithful to preach the gospel. But I think you don't need to have them come to church.

I had the privilege of sharing the gospel this week with a young man, a Brazilian hand surgeon. I was in awe of what he could do. And we were talking and it was a tremendous connection to the gospel. He came from Brazil, from a Roman Catholic background. He knew very little of the gospel, just some basic rudimentary facts. Forty-five minutes, he couldn't escape, what could you do? I mean, sitting next to me, there's nowhere to go, all right? So forty-five minutes of listening to me. But I try not to force anything. We had a fantastic conversation. It brought him to the point where he realized his righteousness could not survive Judgment Day, where he needed Christ. He wasn't ready to make that commitment yet. His name is John. I pray for him. George Whitefield said, "God forbid that I should travel with anybody a quarter of an hour without speaking of Christ to them." Do you travel a quarter of an hour with people without ever saying anything? Do you ever say, "Come, come to Christ!"? That's our job. It's our privilege! Our two infinite journeys, that we would be journeying, be in route, and then get people started on their journey as well. Invite them to come.

One final thing. One of the great dangers of Isaiah as we read it is this. Because it was so long ago, and a different culture, we are inclined to think it's sin out there. And I hate that. It isn't sin out there, friends. Pride is what this chapter's all about. I have come to realize it is my greatest sin struggle in life. There is no greater. It hurts my marriage. It hurts my relationship with people. It hurts me as a pastor. It makes it hard for people to give me helpful criticism. It makes it hard for me to let others go first, to deny myself and serve. Pride, pride, pride, pride, pride. It's my problem And it's yours too. I don't say this because I know specific things about you. It's just because I know the human race and I've seen it. Pride is your biggest problem. So don't read through Isaiah 2 and say "those lofty towers out there." Humble yourself. Find pockets of pride in your own life. Tear down those towers yourself, so the Lord doesn't have to tear them down. Because if you are a child of God, He will delight to keep you humble and simple. And if you're building up a tower like the tower of Babel, He wil tear it down. So you ought to humble yourself. And if you do, if you humble yourself and give Jesus the credit for all things, then He will raise you up. Close with me in prayer.

Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Isaiah 1:1-31. The main subject of the sermon is the grace and mercy of God, and His wrath for those who reject His mercy and grace.

It is with a great deal of excitement that I begin this series of studies on Isaiah, the prophet. I love history. My favorite time in history is the Age of Discovery, when Columbus discovered that tiny island that he thought was near the Indies, and called it San Salvador. I would love to have stood there on the deck October 12th, 1492, and just peered there, knowing what I know today, and say, "You know what that is? That's not India, that's the New World. It's a world to be discovered." Or to be with Lewis and Clark when they were discovering North America and all that it held. It was just a vast emptiness in the minds of most people who lived in the United States at that point. Just to be with them when they saw the snow-capped Rockies for the first time, as they drank it in and realized what a jewel the North American continent was and is. Just to be able to feed from it.

So for me, I feel that same sense of excitement and discovery, to get to preach and to proclaim the truths that flow from this most visionary of books. Look how it begins in Verse 1: “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw.” It is a visionary book. Images pop in your mind when you hear any text of Isaiah read. There are images that pop in your mind. But look at the very next verse, that verse that's been in front you, I think, much of the morning. Verse 2: "Hear, O heavens, listen O earth, for the Lord has spoken." Therefore, it is a vision that fills your soul when you listen to the Word that God has spoken. And I think it is vital in this case that it is past tense. We are listening to a Word that God has already spoken. Therefore it brings us to the written testimony of the prophets, it brings us to the Scripture. We are hearing a word He has already spoken.

Now I believe, from Hebrews 3, He is going to speak it again, now, by the Spirit. I am praying for it. But it is a Word He has already spoken, and it is written down for us, the Word of God written. And in this way we will have visions of God, visions of His glory, visions of the new heaven and the new earth declared plainly in Isaiah 65. Most of all, visions of Christ, the Redeemer, dead on the cross, raised from the dead on the third day. Visions of Christ, our salvation. That is what is going to fill your mind by faith. But it all starts with you listening. So listen! Calm your hearts now. Put aside all of the concerns. Don't be like Martha, running around, getting ready, making it the best day ever for Jesus, when what she needed to do was to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him speak. You have plenty of time through the week to bustle around and do all that busyness. Now what you need to do is just calm your hearts and listen to the Word of God. And so it begins with a God who speaks.

A River of Words but a Seemingly Silent God 

We live in a culture that is just a river of words. They estimate that the average person speaks between 10,000 and 16,000 words a day. That is a lot of words. And there are six billion people on this planet speaking those words. We are looking at sixty trillion human words pouring forth every day. With the miracles of modern science, you can listen to a good percentage of them through podcasts and through CNN, and through the internet. You can just fill your mind with a river of human words. That is not the kind of listening I want you to do today. I want you to hear God speak. I want you to hear Him speak. And the reason is because He seems to be silent through all of that. It seems like He is not there at all. In 1972, Francis Schaeffer wrote a book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Amen to that. He is here and He is not silent. He wants to speak and so He is speaking. Schaeffer, in that book, argued that the primary philosophical question facing the human race is this: "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Schaeffer argued the only possible final answer to this question is in a triune God who speaks, who communicates, who reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ. We live in a vast, terrifyingly huge, and mostly empty universe. It is mostly empty. As a matter of fact, if you had a scale model of the solar system in which the entire solar system fit roughly within the span of your arms, the nearest star would be four miles away.  Imagine just laying on your back, halfway between this speck of dust that would be the scale model of the sun and another speck of dust, the scale model of the nearest star. You would be two miles from each one. You wouldn't be able to see them. It is a vast, terrifyingly empty universe. And yet for all that emptiness, that sense of nothingness, there is a God whose glory fills it all. Heaven, even the highest heavens, cannot contain Him. And so the whole universe testifies to His glory.

 Even more terrifying is this: people look at history and see a vast empty nothingness. They look at the events of human history and say, "There is nothing here of any worth or value. It is just the rise and fall of one nation after another. There is nothing here worthy of our attention. It is really empty. And yet in the midst of all that, God, in Isaiah 1:2 says, "Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken."

God’s Apparent Silence Misleading

God's apparent silence is greatly misleading to unbelievers. They assume, because He does not immediately speak when they sin, that He is altogether like them. In Psalm 50:21 God says, "These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you." Well, that is greatly misleading. God's apparent silence when wicked people sin so grievously makes them believe there actually is no God at all, or that He likes the wicked things they do.

In Isaiah 57:11, He says, "Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear Me?" The silence of God, then, is misleading to unbelievers. Others, seeing God's silence in the face of great evils like the Holocaust, change their theology accordingly. They start saying different things about God. Rabbi Harold Kushner, when he looked at the atrocities of Auschwitz, said this, "I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters. I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die for whatever exalted reason." So he adjusts his theology because it is easier for him to worship one kind of god than another. God is not presenting Himself as an easy god to worship. Instead, He is presenting himself as the King of the universe, declaring things that are, saying in Isaiah 45:7, "I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things.” And, in fact, He is sitting up on His throne and saying, "Here I am. You must deal with Me." “Hear O heavens!  Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.”

God's silence is misleading also to believers sometimes. In Psalm 73, when the psalmist is fretting over the prosperity of the wicked, he wonders why God doesn’t deal with them immediately. Why does He let them go on and be so prosperous? When Job was going through personal afflictions, the fact that God didn't speak to him bothered him greatly. "I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm” (Job 30:20-22). “God, why are you doing all this, and You're not telling what You're doing?" Distressed by it, many psalmists basically say the same thing. "Why Lord, are You silent? Why don't You speak to me?"

By His Word the Universe Exists

King David, in Psalm 13 says, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.”  He is troubled by the apparent silence of God. But yet Isaiah says, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.”

We learn from Scripture that it is by the Word of the Lord that He creates the universe. That is why there is something rather than nothing, because God spoke it into existence. Psalm 33:6: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth." That is the power I want here today, the power that spoke forth the universe, the one that speaks constellations and pulsars and quasars into existence, the one that speaks great power. That is what I want to hear today. I want it to reach into my soul and yours, the power of God's Word to create where there was nothing before. That is the kind of power that is in the Word of God, the power of God's first act - creation.

In the middle of that creation, God says, "Let there be light.” And there is light. God speaks and there is. And thus, the universe itself speaks of the existence and power of God. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” If you were floating halfway between the sun and the nearest star, you wouldn't be in total darkness because God's heavens would still be testifying of a universe full of His glory. You would see the stars more vividly than you had ever seen them before. You might worry about how you would get back home, but you would see something because God has filled the universe with His glory. “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

He Has Spoken Through the Prophets

 But most clearly, God has spoken through the prophets. God spoke through the prophets when He descended on Mount Sinai in a dreadful cloud and the earth was shaking under the people’s feet, and God spoke and they heard the voice of God Almighty speaking the Ten Commandments.  And the people trembled and begged Moses, "Oh, please, go up in the mountain and hear God's words, and you come and tell us the words. How can we listen to this great voice of God any longer? If we keep listening we will die!" And God said, "What these people have said is good. Oh, that their hearts would always be moved to fear Me." Thus, God established the office of the prophet. Moses would speak God's words for the people. And they would listen to Moses and they would hear. And the Lord said through Moses that He would raise up other prophets who would speak like Moses did. And so Isaiah was one of those prophets who spoke for God. God's Word accomplishes everything that God intends. We will learn that later in the book of Isaiah. 

God’s Word Accomplishes What God Intends

He doesn't send forth His word in vain. It accomplishes, it achieves the purpose for which He sent it. All I need to do today is preach it. I just need to proclaim the Word of God and it will achieve, in this huge crowd, varying things that I could never orchestrate or manipulate. But God is going to do something different in each of your hearts because that is the power of the Word of God. All you need to do is listen. Just listen and God will work. And ultimately the Word He is speaking is Christ. He is speaking Christ. That is what Isaiah's vision is all about. He is speaking of Christ, the Great Savior, whose blood atones for our sins.

A Heavenly Court Trial

 Now, as we begin here, it is not just a general statement that God speaks. No, not at all. There is a context here. It is a dreadful context. He is summoning his people to court. He is calling them to trial. When He gives the old covenant through Moses, when it is re-summarized and restated in the Book of Deuteronomy, three times He says that Heaven and earth will be witnesses concerning their keeping of the covenant. Three times He says it. Deuteronomy 30:19, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." He is calling heaven and earth as witnesses against His own people, the Jews. In Deuteronomy 31:28 He says, "Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to testify against them.”

And so there is the magnificent song of Moses, in which He tells the people ahead of time what they are going to do and then what He is going to do. He tells them ahead of time that they are going to violate the Covenant. He tells them ahead of time that He is going to bring a pagan nation in to conquer and to destroy them as a result. He tells them ahead of time all their history. And he teaches it to them in a song. You know how songs are memorable, how you can remember the lyrics and the music. The song of Moses is a sad song, a scary song. It begins like this in Deuteronomy 32:1, "Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth." Do you think Isaiah has that in mind in Isaiah 1:2? Does God have that song in mind? He is saying in essence, "I told you so. I told you you would do this, and now you are doing it. Hear, O heavens, I am calling my witnesses to come and view the sin of my people, for they have violated my Covenant."

The Heartbreak of Rebellion

So He is a God who judges His people. Israel has completely broken the Covenant. The Northern Kingdom, the ten tribes, they are gone. Assyria is going to take them away during the lifetime of Isaiah the prophet. As for the Southern Kingdom, they are not much better. Only by a miracle is God going to protect just the City of Jerusalem and godly King Hezekiah. The Assyrians get everything else until God sends the angel of the Lord and turns them away. The fact is, things are bad with the people of God, and so therefore He is summoning them to court. He is summoning them to judgment. We see in verses 2 through 9 that He is a God who judges His people. You see the heartbreak of rebellion, "I reared children," verse 2, "and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me." Like an anguished father, concerned over his wayward children, so He speaks.

There are many imperfect fathers in the Bible. I contend every father is imperfect. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). We see it again and again and again. There is Noah, he has Ham for a son. There is Abraham. He has Ishmael, the mocker, for a son. Godly Isaac had godless Esau for a son. Samuel's sons rebelled and did not follow the Lord. David's son, Absalom, rebelled and wanted to kill his father and take his place on the throne. All of these godly men, however, were sinners. And knowing what I know more and more about being a father, it is not hard to see your own sinfulness in your kids. It's not hard, it's heartbreaking.

Every parent dreads the possibility that their children will be rebels. There are Christian parenting curricula that promise "full success, no teen rebellion." All this kind of thing, as though it were something you dialed in. You drop in all of these things and you will get freedom from all rebellion. Well, how can that be, when the only perfect father that has ever been had rebels for children? And that is Almighty God. What did God do wrong? He is going to say in Isaiah 5, concerning Jerusalem, "What more could I have done for my people than I did for them? Why then have they rebelled against me?" It is an anguished cry from a father, a perfect father who had rebels for children. And so He calls out the sinful people. There is nothing concealed that will not be exposed. The prophetic task therefore is to expose the sin, to speak about it in detailed language. So Isaiah does it.

A Sinful People Called Out

We have rebellion against God in verse 2. We have ignorance of God in Verse 3. Look at this. "The ox knows its master, the donkey his owner's manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand." The manger is a place where the food is. I know we as Christians tend to think it is where Jesus was laid. Well, that's where the beast came and fed. And what He is saying is, "The animal knows who feeds him, you don't seem to know who feeds you. The universe is intensely God-centered, and you don't know Me. You don't know how much you depend on Me. You don't know. Even the ox and the donkey know better than you." They don't know God. And there are active patterns of sin. Look at Verse 4. "Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption!" In Verse 16, he says, "Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong." There is violence. Look at Verse 15. "Your hands are full of blood." In verse 21, he mentions murderers. These are God's people, the Jews. And they are characterized by this? There is sexual immorality. In verse 21 He says, "See how the faithful city has become a harlot!" And it is not just a spiritual issue. It is also a physical, sexual issue as well. They are sexually sinning.

There is injustice. Verse 23 reads, "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts." There is oppression of the poor and needy. Verse 23, "They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them." There is theft. Verse 23, "Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves." And there is idolatry at the very end. Verse 29 says, "You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted; you will be disgraced because of gardens that you have chosen." There is no doubt in my mind that these represent secret pagan places where they worshipped the Baals and the Ashtoreths through immorality. They would go there and they would love them and worship them in idolatrous orgies. It's wicked. And cloaking all of this, if you can believe it, was religious hypocrisy, the machinery of religion. We will get to that in a moment. But they continue to have the outward trappings of a religious people through all of that.

 God’s Active Judgment Against his People

And so God goes into active judgment against His people. Look at Verses 5 through 7. "Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness - only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers." He begins with an analogy of their body. The nation is like a physical body that is totally beaten up and bloody from head to toe. 

Recently, Charlton Heston died. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Ben-Hur. You've probably seen the movie. There is an evil guy who used to be his childhood friend, a Roman guy named Messala. He is the protagonist in the movie, the bad guy. And the climax of the relationship between the two is the chariot race, one of the greatest scenes ever in movie history. So there is this chariot race, they are racing against each other, and at the climax of the chariot race Messala gets thrown from his chariot and run over by his own chariot wheels, and then run over by two more chariots to boot. He is just trampled. They pick him up take him off, and bring him down to the bowels of the stadium. He is covered in blood. He is a totally broken individual about to die, and he does die.

I get that picture of the nations of Israel and Judah, totally destroyed, ravaged by invading armies. The Assyrians come in. They burn everything. They destroy everything. They kill almost everybody. The very thing that God had promised to them, that their enemies would do to them if they violated the covenant of Moses. The crops would fail, the pregnant women would miscarry, the livestock would die from plagues, and even worse, a foreign nation would come and invade and destroy them and deport them and kill them. And that is exactly what is happening. Only Jerusalem is left unconquered. Verse 8, "The Daughter of Zion [Jerusalem] is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege." I was thinking about these verses. I was in Romania one time, and I looked out and saw a cucumber field or something like that.  And there were low vines everywhere, and there was this hut all alone. You can see the vision. I told you, Isaiah is the most visionary of all, and you can picture it. He says, "Low-lying fields everywhere, all the vines low, and then there is this hut all alone." And that is what Jerusalem is going to look like when the Assyrians get done with the country. There will be nothing left, just the one city.

The judgment from God was a clear fulfillment of the curses He threatened against Israel in Deuteronomy. Listen to this. In Deuteronomy 28:49-52, this is what He said He would do. "The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand… They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you." “And they will take them.” Read Isaiah 36.  Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came in, besieged them and took them. They're all gone, all of them. And so the whole country is destroyed.  That is what He is saying. It's desolate.

Yet in Wrath, God Remembers Mercy

And yet, in wrath God remembered mercy. Look at verse 9.  "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” No survivors. These survivors are the remnants. They are the ones that God has chosen by grace. And the implications of the text is that they, the remnant, are really no better. It is only because of the grace of God that they are not also swept away. If God hadn't done it, they would have been gone too. In wrath, Habakkuk 3:2, God remembered mercy. The people deserved to be wiped out.

In many ways they were no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. I think in some ways they were worse because they had more of God's word that they were violating. They were worse than the pagan cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, actually, Isaiah just goes ahead and calls them that. Look at Verse 10. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!" These are the Jews. These are God's own people. Can I just pause this for a moment? Can I just urge you, when we are talking about the Jews and Jerusalem and the sins of those people, don't think those people out there, don't think those people back then. If God is at work in your heart, you are going to say, "Oh, God, what a wretched sinner I am that I'm like this!" Don't make it out there. I don't do it as a preacher. Don't you do it. Listen and say, "God, what are you saying to me about my sin?" Listen. Consider Sodom and Gomorrah. That is what He is saying. You are no different, we are no different, except by the grace of God. And the grace of God means we praise Him for it. We don't take any credit. We say of ourselves, “We're no different than them.” But, boy, this must have rankled with the Jews, they must have found it so offensive. "Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!" That's what he calls them in Verse 10. 

Now, if God hadn't left them a remnant, Assyria would have conquered them all. Was Assyria strong enough to take Jerusalem? Are you kidding? No problem. How then did Hezekiah and the remnant inside the walls survive? Because God ordained it. And Paul references this in Romans 9 in order to say, "This is the Godly remnant, the remnant chosen by grace, sustained by grace, protected by grace. They will be saved by grace. And to God be the glory for it." It is the only way any of us will be saved, to be part of that remnant saved by grace, because we are no different either. We are all the same.

In Verses 10 through 15, we see a God who despises religious hypocrisy. This is where it hits home. We are religious people. You are here. This is a religious event, so you are religious. You are here today, in church. So am I. It's good to be religious. James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." So there is nothing wrong with religion as long as it is good religion. So we are religious.

Formalism, Religiosity, and Hypocrisy on Display

What does God say about their religion? In verses 10 through 15 we see formalism, we see religiosity, and we see hypocrisy on display. The machinery of the sacrificial system just kept on running, running, running.   Religious festivals, new moon feast, Sabbath, it's like a mindless machine, running, running, and running the machinery of religion. Week after week after week, the machinery of it. It was an endless parade of Jews bringing a countless number of bulls and sheep and goats. A river of blood to be offered on God's altar. A river of blood. Josephus said there were a quarter of a million Passover lambs sacrificed in one year during his day. That is a river of blood. God calls it "a trampling of My courts." "Who has asked this of you, this trampling of My courts?" (verse 12). 

Day after day, they did all of this evil. And then they tried to cover it up with animal sacrifice and religion, thinking that God would accept it. Even worse, they sniffed at it as did the Jews of Malachi 1:13.  They said, "What a burden we have to do this. I wish we could just sin and not have to cover it with animal blood." They didn't even want to do that. And when they did, they tried to cheat God. Choose the worst animals, the ones that are lame and the blind and that nobody wants. The ones that are a bit diseased.  Nobody wants to eat them anyway.  Like roadkill or something. Just give God something. Just give Him something. He will be happy. Malachi says, "Try offering them to your governor! Would He be pleased with you?" (Malachi 1:8). And “I see everything you do, the traffic and wickedness."

 A Traffic in Wickedness

The basic mentality here is, “How much does this sin cost? I'll pay it.” That's the idea. What's it going to cost to sleep with my neighbor's wife? A bull? Sheep? What's it cost? I'll pay the price. It's a machinery. It is mindless mercantilism in sin. They didn't get it. They didn't understand. The blood was to show they deserved to die for the sin. That's the point. That's the lesson, that sin deserves death. That's what they should have learned. But no, it was like, "How much does it cost?"

The same thing happened in the Middle Ages with the Medieval Roman Catholic system and indulgences. If you paid money to the Pope, you could have all your sins forgiven. You could even pay for a sin ahead of time. I wonder if you could pay for ten years of sinning, free of charge. It's just evil. And yet this attitude is in our hearts, too. Throw God some religion. He'll cover it. Even born-again people in America think they can do that. Just throw God some Sunday morning religion and He'll cover it.

God’s Utter Revulsion at Formalism and Hypocrisy

God hates that. Look at the words, "The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to Me?" says the Lord in verse 11. "They mean nothing to Me.” “I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.”  “Your religious feasts and festivals are detestable to me. I hate them." He says, "I can't bear your evil assemblies. I detest it when you get together." He says, "My soul hates your religious gatherings. They are like some kind of crushing burden.” “I am weary of bearing them." Here is the infinitely powerful God saying, "I am getting tired of carrying this mess." Even their prayer life is detestable to God. Look at Verse 15. "When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood." Isaiah later will say, "All our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6).

 Listen to John Bunyan. I heard this quote this past week and said, "Wow." So I actually wrote it right down. John Bunyan said, "The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin in it to damn the whole world for eternity." "The best prayer I ever prayed." Well, God has utter disdain for their religion. And we need to apply this to ourselves. How tragic is this lie that Satan foists on us in every generation, that God should be honored for anything we do for Him? He should be happy with any bone we throw His way, that the mere outward show of religion will be enough to cover us. Even in Baptist churches, some people think that just by being a member of the church, serving on some committee, coming most weeks, even coming on Wednesday nights, that that is going to do it, the religiosity.

In Greece and in Russia, they think that because you are born in the Orthodox church and baptized in the Orthodox church, you are saved. God hates heartless, machine-like, formal religion that is a hypocritical mask covering up all those sins. Hear Isaiah 29:13. "The Lord says: 'These people come near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men.'" I believe the hardest category of people on the face of the earth to evangelize are people who have been attending church all their life but are not converted. I don't know what to tell them. They have learned somehow to hear the Word of God and change it in their minds so that they don't repent. They don't take sin seriously. They don't grieve over sin. They're not broken by it. They don't take a text like this seriously. They think it is about somebody else, not them. I don't know what to do for them. I hope I am not talking to any of you today.

It would be better if you openly did not claim to be a Christian and then could come to Christ, than to have you in that state. It is a very serious condition.

And so we have a God who pleads with sinners. In verses 16 through 20 we see God’s call to come. Look at Verse 18. "Come now," He says. "Come, cross the distance between us. There is a gap between us. Come to Me. Come. Draw near to God. Come close to Me." Their sins have made a distant gap between them. Their idolatry has put an infinite gap between them. But now God beckons them to come near to him. And he calls on them to reason. “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord” (verse 18). The Hebrew word is rich, as though God were welcoming some kind of discussion, some rational exchange over their sin. "Let's talk about this. How is the sin working out for you? Is it going well, your life in sin? Let's talk about it. Let's reason together."

Sin is unreasonable. It's insane, it's irrational. It produces corruption and misery. It results in estrangement from God, enslavement to an ever-increasing cycle of wickedness. It stores up an ever-increasing sense of doom and wrath on Judgment Day. Sin is the ultimate tyrant. It has its boot on the necks of all of its slaves and wants to crush them to death and send them to hell. Sin is the ultimate tyrant. And yet we welcome it. We choose new patterns of sin. Why would we do that? It's insane. So God says, "Come now, let's talk about this. Let's reason together. What has sin ever done for you except destroy your life? Let's converse about this."

It is like the prodigal son.  Remember the story? He goes away from his father.  He is bored at home. I don't know, - maybe there’s not enough to do. So he says, "Give me some money," and he goes out and has a life of partying and all that kind of thing untill the money runs out. Then there is a famine in the land. He has a hard time getting a job and ends up slopping pigs. As a Jewish young man, that is pretty tough. He longs to fill his stomach with the pods they give the pigs, but that would be stealing. And they wouldn't even give him anything. Nothing. And then in Luke 15:17, Jesus said this, "When he came to his senses, he said, 'What am I doing here? What am I doing here? How many of my father's servants are well fed and well dressed? Look, I can just go back and be a servant. He'll treat me well. I don't deserve to be his son, but I can go back."

When he comes to himself, he comes to his senses. I am telling you that sin is insane, it is irrational. It is the insanity of sin. So the Lord says, "Come now, let us reason together." And then He calls on them to repent. "Wash and make yourselves clean" (verse 16). "Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right! Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow." It's a call to repent.

Now think with me about this. The more I've learned about Scripture, the more I have realized these things are impossible apart from Christ. Look at each one. "Wash and make yourselves clean." How are you going to do that? How? How are you going to wash and make yourself clean? You are sitting in a mud puddle, covered in mud top to bottom, surrounded by muddy water. You go to wash yourself up. "There, how do I look?" Still muddy. "Well, how about this now?" More muddy. Muddier. How are you going to wash and make yourselves clean?

How about the next one? "Take your evil deeds out of my sight." How are you going to do that? Does He not fill heaven and earth? Is there anything hidden that He cannot see? Is there anywhere you can go where He is not already there? Where are you going to go to take your evil deeds out of His sight? And what about this one: "Stop doing wrong"? That's the whole problem! Apart from Christ, we can't stop doing wrong. We are slaves to sin. "Start doing right." Well, that is the flipside of "stop doing wrong." I can't do either one. And what about caring about other needy people, seeking justice, encouraging the oppressed, defending the cause of the fatherless, pleading the case of the widow? I don't care naturally. I don't care about them. You cannot do any of these things if God's grace doesn't change you first. You could not do any of these things if Jesus hadn't died on the cross for sinners like you and me. You can't. None of them. But in Christ you can do all of them. In Christ, there is forgiveness. These are not empty words from God. This is what God will do in anyone who turns to Christ.

 “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.’” He has the power to cleanse from all sin. It doesn't matter how heinous. “Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.” How do we get a willing and obedient heart if God doesn't take out that heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, willing and obedient? But if He does that, you know what? You are going to eat the best from the land. You will live forever, in the new heaven and the new earth, and you will eat the best of the land. But there is the flipside, the warning of total destruction. “If you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (verse 20). "Zion will be redeemed with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the Lord will perish" (verses 27 and 28). 

How can we do this? How can we be redeemed with justice? How can Zion be a place where God would want to live, a holy place? It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53, He said, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Christ is the perfect sacrifice. His blood cleanses us from sin. It is a cleansing, redeeming fountain. Our filth, and our sinful wickedness can be cleansed. In Christ alone we can wash and make ourselves clean. In Christ alone, through the indwelling spirit, we can stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Why? Because He cares about those things. Christ alone. This whole chapter just aches and yearns for an answer, and the answer is Jesus. He is the best of the land. He us what you are going to feast on when you come to God in repentance. You get Jesus and everything in Him.

Come to Christ, come to Him. Come to Him for the first time, repent and turn away from sin. He is pleading with you through me. Stop sinning. Turn away from it. Let's reason together. It is leading you to hell. Look at Verse 31. "The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together with no one to quench the fire." The unquenchable fire is hell. The best of the land is heaven. It's what He is offering you in Christ. Flee the wrath to come, and trust in Him. And if you're already a Christian, then come to Him again and again and again. Don't think, "This isn't me." Think, "This is me, apart from the grace of God. If God removed His grace from me, even now, I would sink immediately back into this. Immediately, I would. I know it. By the grace of God, I can be righteous. By the grace of God, I can be redeemed with justice and be made pure and holy." 

And if I were you, I would just, as a Christian, simply delight in the perfect righteousness of Christ. That is the gift of Isaiah. It is the gift of the Gospel. He will see you perfectly righteous, perfectly righteous. So draw near to God and reason with Him. If you are trapped in a cycle of sin, let Him talk to you today. Let Him say, "What is it doing for you? This unlawful pleasure - what is it doing for you? Is it not corrupting you? Be free from it. Let us reason together." Repent of religious formalism, don't just come here week after week and do the Baptist thing. Don't. Don't. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. He says, "Don't just bring Me empty sacrifices.” God is not impressed. Develop a deep concern for the poor and needy. We will hear of this again and again in Isaiah. Reach out to the urban poor, reach out to Northeast Central Durham, reach out. But even more, reach out to those who are lost, dead in transgressions and sins. I don't care how much money they have in their wallet. Reach out with the gospel.

Finally, I want to speak a message of encouragement to parents of rebellious children. I think there could be few things more heartbreaking than to see your own children drifting away from God, to see them rebelling. Maybe they are not growing in their faith, not going to church. Just understand, the God that you bring them to in prayer every day - and you better be praying for them every day - the God that you bring them to, He understands what it is like to have rebellious children. Unlike Him, you cannot say, "I never did anything wrong. I was the perfect father, perfect mother." You can never say that. Actually, it's very distressing to see your own sin patterns replicated in the next generation. We must take responsibility for that. But understand this, God knows what it is like to have rebellious children. And He specializes in turning them away from their rebellion and back toward him. This is what He does. He has this kind of power, trust in Him for it. Close with me in prayer.

Oh, what a joy it is to stand before you and be able to break open the bread of life, and to look at Luke 24 together, the words of scripture. And I was thinking about the role of scripture in our faith, and thinking about so many literary classics over and over in the literary world, there's a technique by which the reader is transported from their ordinary everyday life and moved through some kind of portal or tunnel or something into a whole new world, a world they couldn't reach any other way.

I think about one of my favorites of the Arabian Nights, a thousand and one nights, and there was a man sitting in a garden and he was forbidden to go through a certain door in that garden, and finally the temptation overcame him and he traveled through that forbidden door and down through a tunnel, it took him days and days, and ended up on a beach somewhere. And a huge eagle came and picked him up and brought him to a distant island where he became a sultan and was married to a beautiful woman and had all kinds of power. He was also commanded not to go through another door in the garden there, and he blew it, and that's a whole different story for another time, but he was transported into another world.

Or you think about the fantasy literature of Lewis Carol. You think about Alice in Wonderland and how she follows a white rabbit down into a hole into wonderland. Or Alice Through The Looking Glass, she goes through a mirror into another kind of alternate reality and has some adventures there. Or then there is C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, it all begins in a wardrobe in a country mansion where Lucy is trying to hide, and she goes further and further back into that stand-alone closet, and there's more than clothes back there. She's amazed at how deep it goes, and pretty soon she feels branches rubbing across her face and she hears the crunch of snow under her feet. And she has come into Narnia, a fantasy world that will be the focus of all of their adventures from that point forward. Or even the Christian allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, where there's John Bunyan in prison, and he lies down and he falls asleep and he has a dream. And the whole story is a dream, it's an allegory of the Christian life in which different fantastic figures come and teach us something about the Christian life.

But for us as Christians, whenever we come to the Bible, we have a different mode of transport, a different way to move from the world that we live in now, this everyday life of cell phones and text messaging and microsurgery and genetic research and all of the things we're used to in our everyday life, we are transported back in time, moving across centuries of time, into a different culture that we're not familiar with, understanding a language we don't speak, dealing with people we've never met, and it is all intensely real for us by one vehicle. And that is faith in the written word of God. Faith in the text, that it is true.

There were eyewitnesses that saw the physical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Peter and John were there. John 20, they could see the linen strips, they could see the head covering folded up and put off by itself, they could see all of those things, that physical evidence. They had the freedom to touch it, they could smell the air in that tomb, they were there. They were the eyewitnesses. For us, we cannot do it. We are not permitted to do that. It's not been given to us. It was given to the apostles, those eyewitnesses, who saw the physical evidence and they wrote about what they saw. And if we believe what they wrote, we have eternal life. And if we do not believe what they wrote, we do not have eternal life. We're still in our sins. It's really that simple.

We must be transported from this 21st century world that we live in, back in time, and we're gonna go back today this morning to a large upper room where it all began. We're going to be there with the apostles when they first saw the resurrected Christ. When Jesus appeared to his apostles. Now, the apostles were chosen by Jesus after a night of fasting and prayer. And Mark 3 tells the story, and it says very plainly why he chose them. “He appointed twelve,” it says, “designating them to be apostles - that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” So that they might be with him, that they might have a physical relationship with Jesus Christ. And so for those three-plus years, they actually ate with him, walked with him, talked with him. They were friends with him, they had a physical relationship with him, that's what the apostles were there to do. And to be sent out to preach. That they would have a mission, and they were being prepared and shaped and trained for that mission. The mission of the preaching of the forgiveness of sins through faith in his name. And that they might have the authority to drive out demons, to perform miraculous signs and wonders in Jesus's name, to dislodge Satan from his position of kingly power over the bodies and souls of men.

By the time we come to our text today, the number has been reduced by one, it's no longer the twelve at this point, but the eleven, Judas has already betrayed his master, he's traded him in for 30 pieces of silver. He has now thrown the silver into the temple, and he has gone out and hanged himself. He's dead. So we have instead the 11.

And in Luke 24:1-8, the beginning of our chapter, speaks of women going to the tomb to complete the burial process, they're there to finish the burial process, and when they get there, they find that the stone has been rolled back from the entrance to the tomb, and there are some angels telling them that Jesus has risen. The body is gone. He's no longer here, he has risen just as he said. And so in verse nine of Luke 24, the women come back and they report these things to the eleven, that's the apostles, to the eleven, and to all the others. Peter and John, on hearing this report, they must go investigate, and so they run, and the account is picked up in John 20, of their run up to the tomb to look and see the physical evidence of the resurrection, and that's what they see, they do.

Now, Luke 24:13-32 speak of two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus, and wouldn't you have loved to be one of those two? I've often said that before, if I could just be one place, in space and time and history, and if I could understand Aramaic, that goes with the wish, okay, I would go back in time and I would be with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and just walk with the resurrected Christ. And it's an incredible encounter, as you remember, they don't know who he is. And they are discouraged, they're downcast as they're walking with the resurrected Lord, and he opens the scripture to them, and they start to realize the truth of all that was there in the scriptures, and they'd never had such a casual walk with somebody ever in their lives. It was just an incredible experience, and they didn't know who he was until he sat down and broke bread with them and they ate together and their eyes were opened. And they realized immediately it was Jesus and he was gone. Well, what do they do? But they're gonna run to that same upper room where we're gonna begin our journey today, and they had to tell the eleven what they saw.

And so it's right at this moment that the text begins, and this is the first appearance of Jesus Christ to his apostles, to begin in them, their work of world redemption, the preaching of the gospel on the basis of the resurrection of Christ. And we're gonna see in this account today, the significance of the physical resurrection. First of all, we're gonna see the physical certainty of Christ's resurrection through these eye witnesses. We're gonna see also the psychological effects of the resurrection on them; what effect it had on their souls, on themselves. We're gonna see also the fulfillment of centuries of prophecy and the beginning, the launching pad of the gospel to the ends of the earth. All of these things from the text.

Let's begin with the physical certainty of Christ's resurrection. Look at verses 36-43. “While they were still talking about this,” that this being the report from the two disciples who had been on the road to Emmaus, “while they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled? And why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” There was an undeniable physical presence in that upper room.

There was the evidence of their sight; they saw him. Jesus himself stood among them. John tells us, though the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came through and stood in their midst. Just in my opinion, the very same way that he came through the walls of the tomb after his resurrection. He comes right through these walls and here is Jesus. And unlike the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, they recognize him right away. There's no question in their minds who it is. He looks like he looked beforehand, there must have been some differences too, because some doubts were in their minds, but there he is, the evidence of sight. 

There's also the evidence of sound. He speaks to them. It's that same voice they've been listening to for three years. They knew his voice, they recognized. And so Jesus's greeting rang out clear and strong, but gentle and loving. “Peace be with you.” Now, this is not merely a throwaway line, like they say in Middle Eastern countries, “Salaam Alaikum,” peace be with you, this kind of thing, it's just how you greeted people. Jesus never throws away words. Never. Everything he said was of intense theological significance, so the first words he says to the assembled church is, “Peace be with you.” Oh, this is why he came. This is why he came. The night that he was born, the angel celebrated, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Peace by grace, that's the message, from the moment that Jesus was born.

And so it says in Ephesians 2:17, “He came and preached peace to you who are far away, and peace to those who were near.” And Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Do you know that today? Do you feel it? Do you experience in your heart peace with God? Is your conscience clear? Have you been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ? Do you have a sense of peace with God? It's possible through faith in Jesus Christ, you can have the peace of God that transcends all understanding based on an objective peace with God, won by the blood of Jesus. Oh, trust in him. All you have to do is look to the cross of Christ, ask Jesus to be your Savior. Trust in him, He is the prince of peace, and he will save you. Your sins can be forgiven. Do you know him today? Do you know the peace that he alone can give? Is he speaking that to you today? Peace be with you.

And so those apostles, they had the evidence of sound. They heard him say, “Peace be with you.” And then there's the evidence of touch. Look at verses 39 and 40. Jesus said, “‘Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see, I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.” Christ gives them everything they need for proof. Physical touch was the conclusive evidence that that was a body in their presence.

Now, I was on the internet last night, and believe it or not, there are still people advocating that this was a mass hallucination. Can you believe that? There are actually people writing this in books that are getting published that the Resurrection was actually a mass hallucination. My friends, a hallucination does not have flesh and bones as Jesus had. And so he's there and he says, “Touch me and see.” Because they were thinking about the same thing. This is a mass hallucination, they're thinking the same thing, this is a ghost. And they had already thought that before, remember when Jesus was walking on the water and they thought that it was a ghost. And Jesus is reading their minds, friends, that's a bit eerie, isn't it? I know what you're thinking, you're thinking I'm a ghost. Well, I'm not a ghost. Oh, he knows everything that we're thinking, and it's only eerie if you don't know the goodness of God, the one who reads your thoughts. And the complete provision of your sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. But he knew what they were thinking.

And so they were struggling with doubts, more about that in a moment, especially with the thought that perhaps Jesus was a ghost. And so physical touch would lay this to rest, it's the very same test that Thomas gave on his own. Remember, Thomas wasn't there at that point, the first time. And he says, you know, unless I put my finger in the nail marks and my hands in on the side, I'm not gonna believe. A week later Jesus appears again to the apostles, goes right to Thomas and says, “Alright, Thomas, put your finger here, see my hands. Reach out your hand, put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” And Thomas said, “My Lord and My God. My Lord and my God.”

So God had chosen, God the Father, had chosen to leave these physical reminders of Jesus's crucifixion right on his body. He didn't need to do that, there's no evidence that you could see the marks on his head where the crown of thorns was beaten down into his brow, no evidence of that. Or that his back was still flayed open from the scourging, no evidence of that. There could have been 100 percent healing if God the Father had desired, but instead he wanted to give a sense of continuity, what was sown was raised. And so there was a continuity, the same one who was crucified has been raised, and so you can see the wounds.

And so the incredible significance of all of this, this is a bodily resurrection, Jesus Christ has a body. Not “had” a body. I'm always perplexed by how Christians stumble on this. He didn't take it up for a little while, I hope you realize that, he still got it. He's still in his resurrection body, the same body that ascended is coming back down from heaven. He's still in his resurrection body, and it still has flesh and bones. You know what that means? We're going to too. We're gonna have resurrection bodies. And the resurrection, I tell you, is the only true cure there is for the diseases of the world, whether cancer or AIDS or diabetes, all of them find their true and final perfect cure in the resurrection of the body. Amen and hallelujah.

You're going to have through faith in Christ a resurrection body, and it's gonna have flesh and bones. And that body needs a place, and so you're going to go to a place prepared for you, it's called the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem. It is gonna be a city. It's gonna be glorious, and those resurrected feet of yours are gonna walk on a resurrected earth. And your resurrected eyes are going to see the resurrected Lord. And you're gonna walk hand-in-hand with him and you'll be able to touch his hand and hear his voice. And you'll be able to eat the food that he serves at his table. Oh, how sweet will it be, to be in resurrection bodies then. That's what we believe.

Away then with all of those wispy, mystical, out-of-body views of heaven, sitting on a cloud forever and strumming on the harps. How long can you do that? I bet you're thinking, okay, God's gonna give you some kind of a spiritual lobotomy, so that you'll actually like doing that for eternity, nothing of this sort. We are going into a majestic and beautiful physical resurrected world, and we will be in resurrected bodies, all of us. Made like him, like him we rise. Hallelujah. Our's the cross, the grave, the skies, isn't that awesome?

And then we have the evidence of taste. Now, don't misunderstand me. They didn't taste Jesus. I know it says, taste and see that the Lord is good, I don't see any of that. But Jesus tasted the broiled fish. He actually took some food and ate it while they still did not believe, because of joy and amazement. He asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” And they gave him a piece of broiled fish.

And he took it and ate it in their presence. As they still struggled with doubt, more about that, in a moment, Christ gives them more evidence. He actually eats in their presence, a piece of broiled fish. And another manuscript adds that he ate a piece of honeycomb as well, but in any case, he eats physical food. Physical food. What could be more physical than this?

Now, there's a great deal of mystery involved in this, but I do think it's significant that many of Jesus's post-resurrection encounters with his apostles has to do with food. There's this encounter where he's eating broiled fish and then in John 21, he actually makes them a breakfast of broiled fish. He sits down with those two disciples on the road to Emmaus and breaks bread, there's no evidence in the text that he ate but he could have. And then in Acts 1:4, in that section where it talks about his training of them for the 40 days before his ascension, it said once while he was eating with them, he gave them this command, et cetera. So Jesus is eating with the disciples. How physical is this? The evidence of their senses was this: Jesus has been physically raised from the dead. They saw it with their eyes, they heard it with their ears, their bodies, their senses told them Christ is alive.

Secondly, Jesus comes back for the psychological effect on these great leaders. These would be the leaders, these would be the apostles, and he needed to rally them together. Now it's a mark of great generals that they know what their troops need, they know how to rally the troops in key moments in a battle. I was reading some time ago about George Washington and at the Battle of Princeton, January 3rd, 1777, the British had put the Continentals to route, which actually happened a lot. At that particular moment though, he sensed that the entire revolution was hanging by a thread, so he gallops out onto the field and rallies the troops, turns them around and they stand and face their enemies and they fight at that particular moment.

Well, I will tell you, all of the heroic actions of generals throughout history added together and multiplied by a billion are nothing compared to what Jesus is doing for his apostles here. Jesus knew full well what would happen to them was when he would be arrested and crucified. He said ahead of time what would happen. Jesus told them, “This very night, you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written, ‘Strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” So there is Jesus, and he's here to rally these demoralized leaders, future leaders of the church. He's there to change their hearts, from fear to courage, from doubt to faith, from sadness to joy, and from dullness to amazement, he's here to minister to their souls, and that's what he does.

First, from fear to courage, the disciples, I believe, were enslaved to fear. They were afraid of everything. It says in John that they were afraid of the Jews. The doors were locked for fear of the Jews. I'm certain they must have been afraid of the Romans, Peter was, because they had the power of crucifixion. Pilate said, “I have the power to crucify you,” and he did. So I'm sure they were afraid of the Romans. They were even afraid of Jesus. Look at verse 37, they were startled and frightened, thinking he was a ghost. They're very skittish, very afraid, slaves of fear.

And ultimately, you know what they're afraid of? They're afraid of death. They're afraid to die. They're afraid of the process, they're afraid of what will happen after they die, they are afraid to die. And it says in Hebrews 2:15, that by his resurrection, Jesus has freed “those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Jesus is there to set them free, and he did free them, didn't he? He freed them. I mean, 40 days later, after the coming of the power from on high by the Holy Spirit, they're in downtown Jerusalem preaching boldly that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. They're not afraid. And Peter and John, they go up to the temple at the time of prayer, and they heal that lame man, and then they're arrested and brought before the very Jewish authorities that they were afraid of that night. They have lost all fear. They have no fear. “He is the stone you builders rejected,” they said, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

And the reactions recorded for us there in Acts 4, “when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were ordinary unschooled men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus.” Oh yeah, they'd been with Jesus, they've been with him for three years, but that wasn't it. They'd been with the resurrected Jesus. They had lost all fear of death.

Jesus also moves them from doubt to faith, and this is huge. He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts rise in your minds?” They've got different thoughts, they're just fleeting up, conflicting thoughts about what you're seeing. You don't believe the evidence of your eyes or of your ears. You've got doubts, and oh, how they struggled with doubts, but faith had to be established. It had to be established. They had to be moved from doubt to faith. None of the disciples expected the resurrection, none of them. This was to their shame, as Jesus said to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” They should have expected a resurrection.

Jesus alludes to his own words, “This is what I told you when I was with you. How could you not hear me? I was going to die, and then on the third day be raised again.” As they're coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, they're talking about, “What does it mean, raised again?” They didn't know what was going on. They couldn't understand it. None of them expected the resurrection. The women are going there to finish the burial. Mary says to the gardener, she thinks, “They've taken him away and put him somewhere.” Well, you don't put the resurrected Christ anywhere, friends. Jesus is risen, but she's not expecting that. She wants to go finish burying him. Peter and John, they didn't believe in a resurrection. They ran to look, the woman's words seemed like foolishness to them. And they ran to the tomb, and Peter doesn't say he believed, he went away wondering. He doesn't know what to think. None of the disciples, none of these apostles, expected a resurrection.

Even right before the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:16 and following, it says, “They went to the mountain where Jesus told them to go, and when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.” Even to the very end, they're struggling with doubts. By the way, this is of great use to us and our apologetic to the world. These folks weren't credulous people who could believe anything at ready, they actually had to be convinced. It was hard to convince them that Jesus was risen, but they were convinced in fact.

It's amazing that even their joy hindered their faith. Those are two that are usually not enemies. Usually joy and faith go together. But look what it says right in the account in verse 41, “While they still did not believe it for joy,” the joy got in the way of their faith, joy and amazement, “he asked, ‘Do you have anything to eat?’” So I meditated on this and I started thinking about it. How can joy be a hindrance to faith? Well, I think it just comes from living in this world and becoming cynical through older age. You just go through life and you start having expressions like, “Something's too good to be true.” Have you ever said that before? “It's too good to be true.” Well, there's a basic pessimism to that statement.

Anything really good can't be true. Right? Older and wiser, sadder and wiser, all the good things you want have been evacuated of their pleasure, all the good things you want in the future, you either won't get them, or when you get them, they won't satisfy. This one will satisfy. Oh, it will satisfy for eternity. They're actually gonna get everything they ever hope for. They're gonna get the Messiah. He's gonna sit on his throne. He's gonna reign forever and ever. They're gonna reign with him in resurrection bodies. There'll be no more death or mourning, or crying or pain. God is gonna do for them immeasurably more than all they can ask or imagine. We Christians, after the Resurrection, we should change the whole thing around. It's too good not to be true! Anything of eternal value to the glory of God, he's gonna weave it into that future universe. And so resurrection is part of our future. 

Well, joy hindered their faith, so they just don't believe. They're struggling. And so Jesus is constantly working on this, their faith. He talks about it constantly, and eventually he must root it in one place, and that is the scriptures. More on that in a moment.

He also wants to move them from sadness to joy. I tell you that few people in history have experienced, had experienced, the sorrow and sadness that these apostles had. It's really incredible. You look at Luke 22:45, this is in Gethsemane, “When Jesus rose from prayer, he went back to the disciples and he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.” You hear that? Exhausted, they're just rung out with sadness. They had nothing left. They're just on the ground, almost dead from exhaustion because of the sadness. It's overwhelming.

And Jesus talks about it in John 16. He said, “I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So it is with you. Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one will take away your joy.” Isn't that sweet? He's moving them from sorrow to joy.

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus, I did a sermon once, downcast, walking with the resurrected Lord. How can you do that? But they were. Their faces were downcast, so sad. “We had hoped... We had hoped he would be the one who would restore Israel. We had hoped that he was the Messiah. We had hoped…” “Well, still hope, I'm here!” Hope until you receive all of your salvation and all of its gifts, hope because it's coming. We had hoped. He wants to move them from sadness to great joy.

Think about Psalm 126:1-3, it says, “When the Lord brought back captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy.” It's like if I'm dreaming, please don't wake me. Don't pinch me, I might be dreaming. Well, Jesus said, “Go ahead and pinch, it's not a dream. It's reality. I'm here.” It’s all your dreams come true.

Look how the account ends at the very end of Luke 24, the end of Luke's gospel, “When he led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands, and blessed them, and while he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. And then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they stayed there continually at the temple praising God.”

Finally, he wants to move them from dullness to amazement. Dullness. You know what that means? “I don't get it. I don't understand.” There's just a mental fog. Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. “How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” There's just a dullness. Jesus wants to remove that dullness. He wants to transport them, he wants to open their minds so that they can understand the scripture. So he takes away that dullness.

And so he's there to root their faith in the scriptural predictions of Jesus's resurrection, the Old Testament predictions. And that's his literary technique, if we can use that. Through the Bible, through this book, through this literature, true literature, he transports them to a strong, solid faith in the resurrection. Not even they would be able to touch the linen grave clothes decades later. Not even John and Peter, they're gone. They can't go back to the tomb. It's done. Their time for that is over. That was just a moment in their lives, 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road, how are they still gonna believe? Right here, because it's in the Bible, and the word of God will never end. Heaven and earth will pass away, this book is still gonna be here. Every jot and tittle will still be testifying to the resurrection of Christ.

You must have a solid faith in the resurrection based on the Bible or you'll have none at all. All of the words I've been speaking since I got up would just be foolishness to you. You must believe this, this is the literary technique of transport from everyday life of sadness and sorrow and grief and death to a life of eternal joy and happiness in heaven. It's this literary technique. You must believe in the words of these eyewitnesses. And so we have all of these prophecies in the Old Testament, and Jesus focused on it. In verse 44, “This is what I told you while I was still with you, everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms.” This is the will of God, that faith comes by hearing, Romans 10:17, “by the word of Christ.” And so Christ opens their minds to understand the Scripture.

And it's interesting how the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, you know what they're really excited about afterwards? The Bible study. “Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened the scriptures to us?” Oh, how sweet is that. Well, I pray, I pray this morning that God would open your eyes and mind to understand the scriptures, that your hearts would burn within you when you read Luke 24. You don't need to have been there, it doesn't matter. It happened. You believe. You believe. And so it says in verse 45, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. This is what was written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets and Psalms.”

What is he talking about? The law of Moses, Passover, the blood applied, the blood of the substitute applied, and the Angel of Death passes over, and the slaves are freed. Law of Moses. Or the account in Genesis 22 of the near sacrifice of Isaac and how it was a picture of the sacrifice of Jesus. All of the blood of bulls and goats and animal sacrifice, substitution, all of it, picturing Christ.

The prediction in Daniel 7 of the incarnation, the Son of Man vision, human and yet God, he showed them, Daniel 7, the Son of Man. Psalm 22, “They have pierced my hands and my feet. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Right there in Psalm 22, a prediction of the crucifixion. Physical resurrection predicted in Psalm 16, “You will not let your holy one see decay,” it's right there in Psalm 16, 1,000 years old, all of it predicted. He opened their minds so that they could understand the scriptures.

And so therefore, on on what basis do we stand under the blessing that Jesus spoke to Thomas? He said to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.” You haven't seen him, neither have I. I've never seen Jesus. I've never seen the empty tomb. I've never seen the grave clothes. I've never seen the nail marks in his hand and his side, I've never seen any of that, but I believe. I believe.

On what basis do I believe? On the basis of the scripture, on the basis of the Bible, because it's true, because it was predicted 1,000 years before it happened, because it makes complete sense, it speaks right to my heart. I know it's true. And because of this, I no longer fear death anymore. Because I have not seen yet I have believed, I stand under a blessing of eternal life. What about you? Have you trusted in him? Can you make Thomas's confession? “My Lord and my God.”

Well, we see the effects of Christ's resurrection. Here we sit centuries later, 20 centuries later, thousands of miles away from that upper room, how is it that we here in Durham, North Carolina, believe in Jesus? Well, the apostles did their job. He said that they would receive power from on high, the power of the Holy Spirit, and they would preach in his name the forgiveness of sins beginning in Jerusalem and right to the ends of the earth. And so here we are, fulfillment of Jesus's word, the gospel has advanced to the ends of the earth.

Now, what application can we take from this? Well, first and foremost, come to Christ. Maybe you haven't been to church in years. Maybe somebody, a neighbor, a friend invited you. Maybe you're here to hear this message, that you can have forgiveness of sins by simply believing in Jesus.

If God is speaking to you today, we've set up a new ministry today and we would love to see you take part of it. I'd just like you to go through the door at the end of the service, after the service is over, there's gonna be some brothers and sisters that are gonna be in the parlor through that door, and they would love to talk to you more about what God is doing in your heart, pray with you. And if you're a believer, but you're struggling with some aspects in your life, struggling with sin, struggling with doubts, struggling with sadness, loneliness, they'll be there for you too. Just talk to them and they'll pray with you.

And just know that from the text, and from the truths in the text, you have all of the psychological remedy you could ever desire to move yourself from doubt to faith and from sadness to great joy. You have great evidence for joy here. Trust in him.

And finally, if I can urge you, every day, if you believe in Christ, I would urge you to get up and pray a prayer based on what Jesus did here. Say, “Lord, open my mind so that I can understand the scriptures. Speak to me again, strengthen my faith, so that I can know that you have been physically raised from the dead.” And in the basis of that strength, go and witness for him. The work's not finished yet, there's still people who have not trusted in Jesus, tell them about this resurrected Christ. Close with me in prayer.

Every time that Charles Spurgeon ascended the pulpit, as he went up the stairs, he said, “I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost,” again and again, as he went up the stairs. This man may have been the most talented, naturally talented, public speaker that the church has ever seen. Incredible genius. It was said that he was able to carry seven different thoughts going on in his mind at the same time while preaching. I cannot do that. I'll start to make grammatical errors if I try to do anything like that. But he came up, despite all of his talents, his incredible linguistic ability, his knowledge of the Word of God, despite all of that, he said again and again, “I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost,” because he wanted to focus on the power of God the Spirit in him and not in his own abilities because he knew that apart from Christ, he could do nothing of lasting consequence.

I would say there's not a Sunday that goes by that I don't look up at the wooden cross over my head there in the latticework up there and ask the Lord to overcome my own weaknesses and my sin, and enable me to preach to you. I've been here almost 10 years, I'm still not used to it. I don't think I'll ever get used to it. I'm not used to speaking to 400 people, 400 of my closest friends, about the things of God. And the devil is active, and he just hurls fiery darts at me while I sit in the pew and say, “What right do you have?” What's the answer to that question? I have no right. I have no right to get up week after week and unfold the scripture to you. My sufficiency comes from Christ, or it comes from no one at all. I have no right to preach the Word of God apart from the work of Christ on the cross, and I remember that, some weeks much more acutely and emotionally than others.

I look to the cross of Jesus Christ again and again, and that's my message to you this morning, is that the moment that you are saved, that you look to the cross, Jesus Christ and him crucified, that was just the first time you did so. For the rest of your life, you need to look to the cross again and again and again. And the cross of Christ will never lose its power to continue that saving work it began in you from the start. But you and I both need to be conscious of it. We need to be aware of our dependence on Jesus Christ. We need to know that we need the cross. And we're not just repentant believers the first moment we walk the aisle, or at a crusade, or when someone led us to Christ, that that was it, and from then on, we were done. We need to come back again and again, and we will find the inexhaustible power of God for the salvation of people like you and me in the cross of Christ.

So we're looking at 1 Corinthians 1:18 this morning just as a starting point. I'm not going to give a thorough verse-by-verse exposition of it, though I'd love to do that. But what I wanna do is I wanna take us on themes of the cross, and what the cross does for us as believers, and how we continue to be dependent on the cross of Jesus Christ in some certain specific ways for the rest of our Christian lives.

It says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Our salvation, as we have emphasized here in this church, is a journey. It's an infinite journey. And I think this verse strengthens that. The Greek participle here is best translated in this way: “To us who are being saved, the cross of Christ is the power of God, to us who are in the process of salvation.” Parallel construction in the same verse: “To those who are perishing, to those who are in the process of perishing for their sins.”

And so therefore, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Reminds me of those two roads that Jesus spoke of in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 7, he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” That's journey language. Those are two different roads, they lead to two different destinations, and they come down to us here in this verse.

To those who are on the road to hell, those who are in the process of perishing, the message of the cross is just foolishness. It makes no sense. Why would some dead Jewish carpenter 2,000 years ago have any relevance to my life today? It's foolishness. To the urbane philosopher back in Paul's day, those that lived in Athens and debated all the latest ideas in human philosophy. The message of the cross was just foolishness. It made no sense why the only God, the Creator God, would save the world in this way. It made no sense. But for us who are being saved now, for we who are in the process of salvation, it is the power of God. It continues to be the power of God for your salvation, and you must come to it again and again.

Now, we've seen the constituent parts, the component parts of salvation: Justification, sanctification, glorification. We've learned these. Justification, the beginning of the Christian life, when by faith, you see yourself to be a sinner, you know that you have no hope, that you're most certainly going to go to hell when you die. If it weren't for the saving work of Christ on the cross, you would. And you look to Christ, to his death on the cross, to his bloodshed on the cross for your forgiveness. And you believe it's ample forgiveness, it's more than enough grace for all of your sins. And you trust in him, and you call on him and say, “Lord, save me,” in whatever way you did. And at that moment, you were justified, you were forgiven of all of your sins. You're given a gift of perfect righteousness that will stand up on Judgment Day. You were adopted into the family of God. You were given the indwelling Holy Spirit. You were given an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, and no one can take it from you. All of these things were once for all, and nothing can change it. So when I say that salvation is a process, a journey, I haven't forgotten all of that. But that's not all there is.

The Lord left us here on earth that we might be progressively gradually sanctified, that we might grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, becoming more and more like Jesus in our thoughts and our actions, to act like him in the world, to be the light of the world. And that's sanctification.

And my central message to you today is you need to go back to the cross again and again for sanctification. That's where the power for this journey comes from, this infinite journey, the cross of Jesus Christ. The fact that God has determined to save you in Jesus. Philippians 1:6, “That he who began this good work in you will most certainly carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” But he does it through the cross, not apart from it. That is the power of God for our salvation. And you need that power. Don't you ever feel yourself weak in your salvation journey? Don't you ever feel like you can't take another step? Like sin is gonna master you the rest of your life? It's a lie. You're not a slave to sin, but that's the kind of lie, and only the cross of Christ can give you the power to keep going in the Christian life. And so it is for you the power of God for salvation right to the end.

Now, I wanna look at seven aspects of the cross of Christ and how we need to go back to the cross for each of these. My feeling is the more you think about these seven that I give you, you're gonna find others as well, that's fine. Whatever reason caused you to go back again and again to the cross, may it be. But start with these. Let's begin with ongoing cleansing from sin and guilt. For a long time, I struggled with the book of 1 John, especially in chapter 3, there's a specific verse that says, “In him, there is no sin. Anyone in him does not sin,” this kind of thing. I'm thinking, “Oh, no! I'm in trouble.”  Because I continue to sin. And it's so perfect. But then as I noticed that there were no sinless Christians around me, I thought either I have to have a new way of understanding that verse, or there's this secret enclave of Christians hidden in some hills somewhere, and those 179 people are the only ones Jesus is saving because none of the Christians I've met have ever been perfect. So there must be a different way of understanding, but I still struggled with that verse. 

1 John 3 seems so perfectionistic. “In him, there is no sin. No one in him sins,” and all this kind of absolute language. Until I understood 1 John 1:7. 1 John 1:7 was a release, a gate opened, and I understood better the whole message of 1 John. And 1 John 1:7 says this, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus purifies us from every sin.” Wow! The blood of Jesus, in an ongoing sense, purifies you from every sin as you walk in the light.

So that means it's possible to walk in the light as he is in the light and need an ongoing work of purification in your life. And you know you need it. I've likened it before to standing in a hot cleansing shower of grace. And the water of grace just running over your body as sin comes out of its pores, and you are immediately cleansed from all sin. Walking in the light as he is in the light.It seems to me that sanctification is somewhat a guided tour through my own heart of darkness, as the Holy Spirit shows me just how much I needed a savior, how much sin there is still in me. And I believe that the most godly men and women have an acute sense of their own sinfulness, an increasing sense of it, and how much they hated and how much they wanted out. But it's not like they have this sense of perfectionism coming over them as they grow in their Christian life. 

Look in the Bible, the godliest people in the Bible always had an acute sense of sinfulness. Like Job, after his encounter with God, he said, “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” Job 42:6. David said, “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me,” Psalm 51:3. Daniel said, “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and laws,” Daniel 9:5. Ezra said, “Oh, my God! I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens,” Ezra 9:6. And then the Apostle Paul at the end of Romans 7, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” See, these folks, they were all godly, and they had an acute sense of their own sinfulness.

Now, what Satan the accuser seeks to do is to use that sense of guilt to disqualify you from doing the very good works that God has ordained that you should walk in them. That you should not share the Gospel with a coworker, that you should not grow in your prayer life, that you should not disciple your family, or that you should not do various good works that God has ordained because you're not worthy. No, you're not worthy. Never have been, and you never will be. That's exactly what Moses said. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” And God's answer? A beautiful non sequitur, “I will be with you.” “Who am I that I should go?” “I will be with you.” The question is irrelevant. “I will be with you. I will overcome your inadequacy. I'll overcome your weakness. I will overcome your guilt and your sin.” Where are we gonna get that cleansing? We're gonna get it from the cross of Christ. Do you feel guilty today of sin? Is Satan the accuser accusing you today of sin? And notice his wickedness in this, the very one who enticed you to it, suddenly becomes righteous and accuses you of it.

The cross of Jesus Christ is the only answer. Hebrews 9:14 says, “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” Do you need a conscience cleansed from acts that lead death and come again to the cross of Christ? Confess your sin. And if you confess your sin, he is faithful and just, and will forgive you your sin, and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

Just a few moments ago, we sang that beautiful hymn by William Cowper, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” William Cowper is a fascinating man, 18th century believer, lived in the same time as John Newton and Wesley and the others. Struggled all his life with deep feelings of guilt and unworthiness and with mental instability as a result, even insanity. He struggled with the temptation of suicide. Some time, he resolved to do it, but God providentially kept him from it. And he struggled so much with feelings of guilt, a guilty conscience, that it was only when he came to Romans 3, and he understood the death of Jesus Christ, propitiation, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, Romans 3:25 and 26, that he realized that he, a sinner, could be clean before God.

And so he wrote this incredible hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” Second verse, “The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, Thy flowing wounds will never lose its power, 'til all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.” Do you not see how these verses are written for Christians as they continue in their own journey, feeling guilty for their sins? “'Til all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more,” that's heaven. There, at last, we will be perfect. Until then, come to the flowing wounds and to the grace that the cross of Jesus Christ supplies.

We also find at the cross an ongoing welcome in prayer. One of the corollaries of feeling guilty is that we stop praying. The very thing that Satan wants us to do is to stop praying. John Bunyan put it very plainly. He said, “Prayer drives out sin, or sin drives out prayer.” Well, if sin has been driving out prayer in your life, come back to the cross. Come back to the blood of Christ. Realize this: If you feel fit for prayer when you've done well in your Christian life, been obedient, done a bunch of good works, now you can pray. But you feel unworthy to pray when you haven't done good works, when you've sinned, etcetera, you don't understand your standing before God. You don't know that it was never based on your good works, never based on your righteousness, but only on the cross of Christ.

Psalm 24 says, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” These things we do not naturally have. We don't naturally have clean hands and a pure heart. These are the ones that may stand before God in prayer. And therefore, if you want an ongoing welcome in the presence of almighty God in prayer, you're gonna get it only through the cross of Christ.

It says in Hebrews 10, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God.” “Let us draw near,” it says in Hebrews 4, “To the throne of grace.” Let us draw near on the basis of the cross of Christ, draw near to find mercy and obtain grace to help us in our time of need. The welcome, the ongoing welcome in prayer comes from the cross of Christ.

We also get ongoing protection from pride and worldliness. In Galatians 6:14, it says, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” You see, the cross isn't just available to cleanse us of existing sin patterns. It's to keep us safe from sin itself, to give us the power to stand in the day of temptation and to say no. But the cross is especially fitted to fight specific sins like pride and worldliness. That's why it says, “May I never boast except in the cross of Christ.” Oh, how we struggle with pride! Isn't it a bit ironic? When you look at yourself, really, in the mirror of God's perfect Word and in the light of his perfect holiness, that we should ever boast about anything at all. We are sinners; God is holy. Why would we ever boast about anything? But yet, we're proud.

And Paul renounces all human boasting in Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I think the Apostle Paul struggled with boasting. He was one of those Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees, one of these ladder-climbing Jews who was seeking to ascend into the heavenlies by his own good works, by his Judaism, by his law-keeping. And so I think he always struggled with boasting. He mentions the theme of boasting again and again in his letters. I think it was an ongoing issue in his life, but he's come down to this: The cross of Jesus Christ destroys any ground for boasting in our lives.

I sometimes hear the boasting of people in our age, drunk with the mindset of our present age, and I shudder. We're in the midst of a political campaign. Isn't it nauseating, from a spiritual perspective, to see any candidate get up and trumpet their achievements and their qualities and their character traits? Now you say it's intrinsic to the election, if you don't do it, you won't get elected. Well, the scripture says, “Let another mouth praise you, not your own.” Wouldn't that be something? The candidates never open their mouth, but they just get somebody to come and advocate on their behalf. Well, we get plenty of that. I wouldn't mind some of the candidates never opening their mouths again, but we have a lot of boasting, all of our achievements, the great works that we've achieved.

You see it, especially I think in the athletic realm. Athletes will get up and say things like this, “I'm the greatest of all time.” I'm thinking, “My goodness.” And then the announcers, the sports announcer’s gonna do the same thing. I was watching one compilation of an athlete's achievements and the announcer in one important, so to speak, playoff game, said, “You're watching what true greatness is all about.” I'm thinking, “No. True greatness is about the cross of Jesus Christ.” So this athlete scores 20 points in the fourth quarter, who cares? Centuries later, no one will remember his name if the Lord tarries. You wanna know what true greatness is all about? The cross of Jesus Christ.

“May I never boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ,” but it says more than that, “Through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Now, that's a battle against worldliness. The world seems empty, it seems meaningless compared to the achievements of Christ on the cross. In one afternoon, in three hours, he atoned for all of my sins, and not just mine, but a countless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation. That's greatness. And May I never boast except in that. So what does the world have to offer to me? Satan is always trying to sell the world, just like he did to Jesus when he was being tempted. He took him up on a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All of this I will give you,” he said, “If you'll just bow down and worship me.” And Jesus said, “Away from me, Satan, for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” But there's no allure, there was no allure to the world as Jesus looked out on it, but to us, we struggle with it, with its power and with its possessions, and with its prestige and all of the things that it entices us with.

John Wesley in his journal, on December 23rd, 1755, he was in the dressing room with the king as he prepared to address parliament. He was in the robe chamber as aged King George II was getting ready to go address parliament. And this is what he wrote in his journal. “I was in the robe-chamber, adjoining the House of Lords when the King put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed with age and quite clouded with care. And is this all the world can give even to a king? All the grandeur it can afford? A blanket of ermine around his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarcely move under it. A huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head. Alas, what a bauble is human greatness! And even this will not endure.”

Now, last week, I said that the cross of Christ is like a prism. It takes the white light of the character of God and breaks it out into a rainbow of attributes. Well, in a similar way, the cross of Christ is like a magnifying lens. Though, if you look through it one way, it magnifies the greatness of Christ, but if you get on the other side and look the other way, it minimizes the greatness, so to speak, of every human being. It makes us small. May I never boast about myself or anything in this world, except the achievements of Jesus Christ.

We also see in the cross of Christ when we come again and again to the cross for an ongoing pattern of daily service. How are we to serve him? God has left us in this world, how are we to serve him in this world? Come to the cross of Christ again and again to learn. 1 John 3:16-18, it says this, “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” Christ's sacrifice of himself on the cross is a pattern for how we should be toward God and toward each other in our service.

One of the most influential missionary leaders in Protestant history was Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. He was born in 1700 in an influential German family of nobility, his father died, his mother remarried, so he was raised by a grandmother and an aunt in a godly pietistic home. And he learned German Pietism from them and was enticed and interested in the gospel, but still struggling as a young man with what his path would be in life. Struggled with his future calling. He went to Wittenberg to study law in preparation for a successful life as a government leader, but there was a pull, an attraction on him, in reference to the gospel.

Well, he went on a tour of Europe in 1719 and he was arrested, just stopped dead in his tracks by a painting of Christ in his sufferings. The painting was by the Italian artist, Domenico Feti, was entitled “Ecce Homo,” that's Pilate's statement, “Behold the man.” Look at him in his sufferings. And at the bottom of the painting was an inscription. “All this I have done for you. What are you doing for me?” Now, I think there's a bit of a danger in considering that. John Piper pointed out, “Grace doesn't create debt, it pays it.” But let's look more faithfully, I think a little more closely at 1 John 3. “This is how we know what love is,” verse 16, “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” That word “ought” is obligation. There's a sense of responsibility in the Christian life. “All of this I have done for you. You ought to live a certain kind of life.” We are debtors, brothers, and sisters, but not to the flesh, to live according to it.

We ought to lay down our lives for Jesus and for one another. This is the pattern of service, and this has been a powerful pull again and again in the Christian life. C.T. Studd, who was a successful athlete in his day, he was a cricketer, one of the most popular sports in his time and very, very powerful and successful at cricket, but he gave all of that up, all of his wealth, his influence to go overseas as a missionary in China, in India, and Africa. And this is what he said, “If Jesus Christ is God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.” There's a sacrificial aspect of our daily life, the cross of Jesus Christ is the pattern of it.

As we mentioned last time, the cross of Jesus Christ is also the ongoing focus of our worship. I don't need to belabor this, but I'm just urging you. Did you do it last week? Did you go back to the cross and look at the attributes? Did you find some others too? Did you see his holiness at the cross? Did you see his power? Did you see his righteousness and his justice there? Did you see his wrath? Did you see all of the attributes of God beautifully balanced and mixed and poured out at the cross of Jesus Christ?

Now, Heaven, if you were to go there, if you were to have that opportunity that Apostle John did, of a door standing open in Heaven, and you could go up in the spirit, and at once he was in the Spirit, he went through that door, and there immediately he saw a throne and someone seated on it. The throne is the center of heavenly worship, and around that throne are 24 elders and four living creatures. There’s a very concentric field to heavenly worship. They're all around the throne all the time. The throne of God, of Almighty God, is the center of true spiritual worship.

But in Revelation chapter 5, at the center of the throne is the crucified lamb. John saw a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, and they're all encircling him and giving him praise. So it says in Revelation 5, verse 11-12, “Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: ‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.’” Worthy is the lamb who was slain. The cross of Jesus Christ is the focus of true spiritual worship, and it will be to the rest of our lives.

It is also ongoing training for hope-filled suffering. Jesus made many promises to us. In the Christian life, there are many promises. The promise book God, that's the scripture. How is this for a promise? “In this world, you will have trouble.” I don't see people embroidering that one and putting it up on the wall, you know? “Ah, the precious promises of God.” “In this world, you will have trouble.” Well, you will. How will you handle it? How will you carry yourself through your difficulties? The early church, it was said by Tertullian, “The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” You know why it was seed? It's because of how the martyrs died. Justin Martyr, 2nd-century believer, became a Christian by watching Christian martyrs die. This is what he wrote, “I watched them stand fearless in the face of death and of every other thing that was considered dreadful.” Where did that courage come from? I think it came from the exact example of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Suffering is inevitable in this life. It's inevitable for Christians, it's inevitable for non-Christians. Nobody can escape. You can't escape physical suffering, you can't escape disease, you can't escape little bumps and bruises and scratch and nicks, you can't escape the flu and similar other minor illnesses, neither can you escape dying. The question I wanna ask is this, are you ready to die? Are you ready not just to die, but I mean to die well, to the glory of God, to die well? I've seen people die well. I've also seen people not die well. I've seen people who were church members for decades, die, it seems, with no assurance whatsoever of salvation.

I saw one woman in particular who was sedated and thrashing around in great anguish, and I talked to the nurse and they said, “This is non-physical pain. It's impossible, the amount of sedative given.” There's some kind of psychological thing going on. Well, right before she had gone into a coma, she basically told me that she had no assurance of her salvation. I had shared the gospel with her, I talked to her very plainly from John's gospel, she had no assurance. And it was a scary thing for me to watch her thrashing around there in that coma, and I thought, “Lord, give me the grace to die well. Give me the grace to put my faith on display. This is too much for me. It's too hard for me to do it.”

But I know this, and I believe this with all my heart, that little trials we go through throughout life prepare us for that dying day. And how you face economic adversity, how you face difficulties relationally in your family or with others, how you face these things, the courage you show, the ability you have to go back to the cross again and again to get from Jesus what you need, enables you, prepares you for the day when you will leave this world to the glory of God. Jesus showed us how to do it. It says in Hebrews chapter 12 that “Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.” Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Fix your thoughts on Jesus. Do you realize how other-centered he was on the cross? “Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing,” he says. He sets up a relationship between John and his mother so that his mother is well cared for after he departs. He says to the thief, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” He's very others-centered on the cross. How are you when you suffer? Are you others-centered when you suffer? When you get sick, when you're hurt, who do you think of? Fix your eyes on Jesus and learn how to be others-centered, learn how to be glory-of-God-centered from the cross of Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote this, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”

Light, momentary troubles, just like a mist, and they're gone. For the joy set before you, endure them well. Go like Jesus did at the cross to beyond what God has in store for you. For the day when you will see him face-to-face and know that your trials are achieving for you a glory that far outweighs them all.

And finally, I want you to go to the cross again and again when you share the gospel. It troubles me when I look at modern evangelism and how non-cross-centered it is. We have all kinds of new theories on evangelism, all kinds of new approaches. And some of them, I think are helpful for getting us into relationships with people like servant evangelism and things like that, where you go into certain areas that are needy and do physical things to help people, but I think it's just old liberalism to do that and not share the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified. We need to put the cross at the center of any good work we do for anybody. The cross should be at the center of evangelism.

Now, our internal journey of sanctification, I have argued, and I still believe is indivisibly linked with the external journey of missions and evangelism. You will make no progress in your Christian life if you're not witnessing, if you're not sharing the gospel. So just a simple step, that little card that you have on the pew, grab it, take it and give it to somebody. Give it to a non-Christian this week, invite them to church. And as you do, you know you're gonna find yourself having to overcome yourself. You're gonna have to overcome, you're gonna have to kind of crucify yourself, but for the joy set before you, you're gonna do it. You're gonna overcome and you're actually gonna give that card to somebody, and you may get into a conversation with somebody about Easter. “So do you ever think about Easter, about the resurrection?” I think something. “What do you think about the empty tomb? Isn't it exciting that Jesus destroyed death? That we don't need to fear death anymore.”

When you say these things, put a smile on your face and say, “The cross of Jesus Christ has made me free from sin and guilt. I'm not a guilty man anymore. I'm not a guilty woman anymore. I'm free.” And they'll catch something in the way of your disposition and they'll say, “I want some of that.” And the center of it's gonna be the cross of Jesus Christ. You can't save yourself, come to the cross. Trust in Jesus who shed his blood on the cross. And you'll be forgiven. The cross should be the center of all of your efforts at evangelism.

Now listen, we've just looked at a handful of reasons why we as Christians need to come back to the cross again and again. Think of 30 more this week. Or don't, just come to the cross. We don't need an icon, we don't need the physical cross up there, we don't have to have a physical thing in front of us. Just know that Jesus Christ and him crucified is the power of God for your salvation and mine. And rely on it day by day, until the day he takes you out of this world and you are saved to sin no more. Close with me in prayer.

We begin our journey today in a darkened room in a country farmhouse in Lincolnshire, England, and the year is 1671. And the plague had been threatening London and caused many people to flee from that city for their lives. One of those fleeing from the deadly pestilence was a man as yet up to that point, relatively unknown, a somewhat obscure mathematician at Trinity College named Isaac Newton, who would later be known as the greatest, maybe the greatest, scientist that ever lived. He fled to his parents' farmhouse in the country to rest and to study.

Now, he'd been interested in many aspects of science, but there's one in particular that caught his attention. He wanted to study the nature of white light. Now, I won't go into why he was interested in this, that's just the way his mind worked. But he had in mind a certain experiment, he went into a room in his parents' farmhouse there, and he set up two prisms. Now, a prism is just a little triangle of glass, and he set up two of them in a certain arrangement with each other, and then he completely darkened the room, he shuttered it completely, it was totally dark in there, except for a little pinhole coming through a board, and through that pinhole streamed white light, and it went into the first prism and into the second, and it spread out in a glorious rainbow on the wall.

Now, that rainbow, that spectrum, had seven distinct colors in a certain specific order: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, these seven colors there they were gloriously, and he learned some things about white light. He noticed that once the light went through the first prism, it didn't change again. The red lights stayed red, the orange light stayed orange, it might bend a little more than the other colors, but they were done being changed, but the white light was radically changed by the prism. And from this, he learned that white light is actually a mixture of all of these different colors. That is the nature of white light.

Now, I say today that the cross of Jesus Christ is a prism for the glory of God, and as we look at the cross of Christ, we can see the various attributes, the nature, the glory of God. Now, the Scripture reveals that God is light. 1 John 1:5, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” God's light reveals his essential nature, what he is like.

God said at the very beginning, “Let there be light,” and there was light. “It is light that makes everything visible,” it says in Ephesians. And so God's light, the purpose of God's light is to reveal, to expose the true nature of things. God's own light reveals his nature, his attributes, what he is really like. But I say it cannot be seen clearly without the perfect prism of the cross of Jesus Christ. The main idea of this sermon is that in the cross of Christ, we can see the perfections of God more clearly than anywhere else in the universe. Any other place in history, any other place in Scripture. It's in the cross of Christ, that we learn who God really is, more clearly than anywhere else.

Now, this light is only visible to the healthy eye of faith. You must have faith to see this light. Now, if you had been in that darkened farmhouse room with Isaac Newton, but a blind man or a blind woman, you would not see the glorious rainbow, you wouldn't see it. He could describe it to you, but it would mean nothing to you. Especially if you've been born blind, had never seen light, you could not understand color. And so it is also with the cross of Christ. Without faith, you cannot see its glory. Frankly, it's a bit grotesque. Why would Christians have as their symbol something which was used for execution? Like an electric chair or something like that. Why would we focus on something that was used and not just for any execution, but a grotesque kind of execution? The blindness of natural man to the things of God is never more acute than when it comes to the cross of Jesus Christ.

And so it says in Isaiah 53, “Lord, who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” You have to believe, it has to be revealed to you or you can't see it. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. So if you'd been standing there at the cross and looking up, especially with somebody on the left and the right, he's just another guy getting killed by the Romans. Happened all the time. You would not see his glory if you didn't have faith to believe. Actually, Isaiah 53 says, “Like one from whom men hide their faces.” It would be a grotesque thing to observe, a man shedding his blood, pouring out his blood on the cross, dying in a hideous way. Therefore, I say the cross of Christ is not naturally glorious, it is supernaturally glorious. And if you don't have faith, you won't see it.

Oh, I pray that if you're in that condition today, you will not leave this room in that condition, that God might reveal to your heart the glory of God in the cross of Christ, and that revelation happening, you'll be forgiven of all of your sins and headed for heaven, or you'll see it even more clearly. That's my prayer. But without a touch of God, without the vision of faith, you will not see the glory of God in the cross. It says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And again, 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So Satan has worked somehow a blindness in the minds and the hearts of people specifically on this point, they can't see the glory of God in Christ, dead on the cross, they can't see it. O may God open your eyes to see it more and more clearly, and seeing, you might have forgiveness and life in his name.

Now, when we talk about God's attributes, you understand the different colors. You’ve perhaps done the science experiment, you've seen the spectrum, you may even have memorized the order of the colors, you know what they are. You can see that, but when we come to the attributes of God, his perfections, his glory, what are we talking about? What are God's attributes? Well, there can be no portrait of God, you can't draw or sketch a picture of God. I know Michaelangelo tried to do it in the Sistine Chapel, an old man, you remember reaching out with a finger to touch Adam. Okay, but you really can't draw a painting of God. God is spirit.

Instead, what God has given us is a series of Bible verses that give us descriptions of what he's like, and those descriptor words put together a portrait of the character of God. For example, this one, Leviticus 21:8, “I, the LORD, am holy.” So God is holy. We learn from the whole Bible what holy means, but God is holy. Or Psalm 11:7, “For the Lord is righteous. He loves justice.” Again, righteous, justice, these words come in and give us a sense of the portrait of God. Or this one, Psalm 34:8, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have the goodness of God there, an attribute of God. Or this one, Psalm 103:8. You get a lot of them out of this verse, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.” There's a bunch more words coming in describing what God is like.

And so theologians go across all of the verses of the Bible and they call out, they bring out various attributes of God, some of these are taught through many, many different Scriptures, but there's not an infinite number of attributes. God himself is an infinite being, but there's not an infinite number of attributes, maybe somewhere between 20 and 40 depending on the theologian, and these together give us a portrait of God, God is self-existent. God is omniscient. He's omnipotent, omnipresent. These are descriptions of God, and together they give us a sense of the portrait of God.

Now, as we look at that, it's somewhat like white light. All of these attributes come together perfectly in the character of God, and there's no controversy within the person of God. God isn't conflicted within himself struggling over these seemingly contradictory attributes. He's not struggling, he's not schizophrenic or multipersonality disorder or anything like that. All of it fits together beautifully, just like white light, all of the colors coming together beautifully in perfectly white light. And so I think it'll be wrong for us to say, as we're preaching the gospel, and sometimes people say it, and if you said this, don't be hard on yourself, but just try to understand what I'm saying here. We should never say something like this, “God is loving, but he's also just,” as though somehow God's love and his justice were enemies battling within himself. No, God is loving and he is just, and he is wrathful, and he is righteous, and he is compassionate. All of these things all at once, perfectly blended in his character. There are no controversies within the character of God, all of these things are resolved.

Now, I say that we can take that white light of the character of God and bring it through the cross, and it just becomes so glorious, we can see different aspects, attributes of the nature of God, that's what I'm gonna do today.

Now we're gonna start, this is not a standard expositional sermon that I'm preaching today, I'm not gonna take John 13 and work through it, that would be of great benefit, but I'm not doing that today, but I do wanna start there. And that is the night before Jesus was crucified, and he's there in the upper room with his disciples, they're eating the last supper, and Jesus becomes troubled in spirit, and he says, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” And they're all troubled to try to figure out who it is. Nobody knows. Judas has done his deceiving work very well. Nobody can tell that he is the traitor; Jesus knew, he knew all along, but nobody else knew.

And so there's John laying close to Jesus, laying on his side on his breast, just really close to him, and Peter motion, says, “Ask him who he means.” He says “Who is it, Lord?” He says, “The one to whom I give this piece of bread after I've dipped it in the dish.” And so he dips a piece of bread and hands it to Judas. Now, I had a friend once that told me “I'd be running a million miles from that piece of bread, I don't want anything to do with that piece of bread.” But arrogantly Judas reaches forward and takes the role, he takes it, and the moment that he takes that bread Satan entered into him. The prince of the power of the air, the prince of darkness, enters into this man. It's a unique moment in history. And so there he's filled with Satan himself. And then notice that Jesus gives him a command, “What you're about to do, do quickly.” Satan is not equal to Jesus, Jesus is still the King. So what you're going to do, do it quickly and out he goes.

And it's amazing what John says at that moment, in verse 30, it says, “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” Now, I believe it was literally night. I think that's actually true. It was literally night at that time, no doubt about it, but I think that there's also clearly a spiritual metaphor as well.

This is the hour of darkness, this is a time when Satan rules, but I also think it's like Isaac Newton's darkened room, it's where everything gets dark and there's gonna be a streaming white light that's gonna be broken out through the prism of the cross of Christ, and God is gonna appear glorious through it. And so, Judas's betrayal is darkness, Satan's activity is sheer darkness. But Jesus glorifies God in the midst of all of it. How wonderful is that? And so he makes this incredible statement, when he was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified. And God is glorified in him.” Now, this word, “glorified,” I don't think it means that we add glory to God, that God becomes something that he isn't. It's rather that God's nature is beautifully revealed, his perfections are put on display, we're all gonna get to see who God really is now. And what does he mean by “now,” now that I'm gonna die? Now that I go to the cross, God will be revealed, he will be glorified. That's what he means. And so that is the glory of God.

Now, what I wanna do is take a number of attributes. I put out a sheet once that had 26 attributes of God. That would be a long sermon, friends, to go through all 26. But I really believe that you could do it. You could take each of the 26 attributes on that sheet and find how the cross reveals that nature, that aspect of God, but I've just chosen these 10, and let's begin with grace. How does the cross of Christ show the grace of God? Well, in Romans 3:23-24, it says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Simply put, all of us are rebels against Almighty God, we have rebelled against his kingly throne, against his rule, we have broken his laws, and we deserve to be condemned by him, by his justice. But instead of condemning us, God sends his only begotten Son to die in our place. Amazing grace! And to pour out the punishment that we deserve on him. Incredible that he would do that to his only begotten Son on our behalf.

Now, what is grace? Well, some say that grace is “unmerited favor.” I'm not too partial to that; it's easy to remember, but it's just too pale a reflection, too weak. Unmerited favor will be if one of you went out in the street and found somebody you didn't know and gave him a $20 bill. Now that is unmerited favor. Unmerited. What did they do to deserve the $20 bill? Favor. It's a $20 bill. Do you see now why unmerited favor is way too weak for the cross of Christ? Unmerited? We merited wrath. We merited the just wrath of God, we deserved hell. What do we get instead? We get heaven, we get glory, we deserve death, we get life. We deserve rejection, we get eternal acceptance by Almighty God. We deserved infinite negative, we got infinite positive. That is the grace of God, and it flows to us through the cross of Christ.

The cross of Christ is the clearest display of grace there will ever be in the universe, and I believe that anything good that God has done for the human race in all of history has been done channeled through the grace of God shown at the cross. It's because he was thinking of Jesus dying on the cross, that he sends his Son and his reign on the righteous and the unrighteous. It's because of that, whether they acknowledge him or not, but it's because of what Christ did at the cross, that the sun rises in the morning and that the rain comes that we need, and thank God for it. I hope you took the time to thank God for the rain this week, because we've been in a drought condition and many have prayed. Did you remember like the one man to go back and thank God, thank Jesus for what he did? But realize this, that rain came to both the just and the unjust here in the Triangle region because of the cross of Christ. In this way, he has loved his enemies. It is by the grace of God that sinners are not killed instantly the moment they break the first, the least commandment of God, it is by the grace of God that he refrains and holds back because of the cross of Christ.

It is by the grace of God that Christians and non-Christians alike can enjoy the natural splendors and the physical beauty of the world. Just take a tour of the national parks, go to Yellowstone and see Old Faithful, the Geyser. Go to Denali in Alaska, if you can get there, it's an incredibly huge majestic display of the glory of God. Go to Acadia National Park, the rocky coastlines, and just how beautiful it is there, and how winsome and attractive and sweet. Or the Grand Canyon, and how powerful God must have been to make something like that so glorious and beautiful. And millions of people go to see all these natural beauties, they come to us by grace, but I say to you all of these displays of grace are as nothing compared to the cross of Jesus Christ. I believe all of them have come to us indeed through the cross of Christ. We deserved hell, we get heaven and why? Because Jesus died in our place.

Secondly, look at the love of God. It says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This verse, Romans 5:8 is speaking of a display, a demonstration of love. The Greek word means that it was put on display so that all could see it, God was proving his love, showing its nature, putting it on display. Now, “God is love,” it says in 1 John 4:16. But I ask, What is love? We're confused on this issue. If you put on a popular radio station, you're gonna listen within a few minutes to a song about love probably, but it isn't love usually that's being sung about, it's probably more likely lust. It's a self-serving thing, you make me feel good, you do these good things for me, I am dependent on that from you, that kind of thing. That's not love.

What is love? The more I've studied the Bible, the more I'm convinced that love has to do with a connection of the heart that an individual has toward another, desiring and delighting in good for that person and willing to sacrifice to bring that good about, that is love. It's a heart connection to another person, that they'd be blessed and have good things, and that I'm willing to sacrifice in order to bring it about.

Oh, we see the love of God most clearly at the cross of Jesus Christ. It says in 1 John 4:10, “This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And notice both in that verse and in Romans 5:8 the unconditional nature of God's love. We tend to think of love in this way: there must be something really good about me that you love me this much. But Romans 5:8 removes that forever. While we were still sinners, rebels against God, that's when he displayed his love most clearly. No, no, no, the love of God flows from the nature and character and commitments of God, and therefore it's unshakable. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” It's not like the stock market going up and down. It's not like that at all. It's not based on your performance, it's not based on anything in you at all. It's based on his commitment to love you, and he's done that through the cross of Christ. While we were still sinners, he loved us. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us. That's what these verses teach.

And this love is so infinite, it is so great, it is so immeasurable, that it really takes a special power from God to believe it. We still don't really feel loved by God, we still struggle with that, many do. I mean, I spend time in counseling with people and you just see how people struggle to feel accepted and loved by God. And that's why Paul prays in Ephesians 3 for the Ephesian Christians and really all of us, for all Christians, he says, “I pray that they may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and that they may know this love that surpasses knowledge so that they may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Wow! That's expansive language, just so that you learn how much God loves you. But it's an infinite love, and the clearest display of it is at the cross of Jesus Christ.

We see thirdly, the kindness of God. Now, I tell you this, when you come to attributes, I have a difficulty distinguishing between grace, and mercy, and kindness, and love, and goodness. These things are also closely related together, that it's really hard to see, like the difference between, let's say, indigo and violet in the spectrum, they're very close. And as one goes from the other, they're very, very similar to one another, but there are specific verses that talk about the kindness of God to us in Christ. For example, Titus 3:4-5, it says, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”

So it is slightly different than love because it says “When the kindness and love of God our Savior…” When you think of a kind person, what do you think of? I think of somebody that's - I hate to put it this way, but user-friendly. You know what I'm saying? Easy to access. There's a gentleness in the approach, they're easy to be with, there's a meekness there. It has to do with a gentle, peaceful, welcoming spirit and a desire to do good things for the person. Acts of kindness as well. So it's both, it's both. A willingness to be generous, in a welcoming demeanor and to give blessings with open friendliness.

There's a good display of it, I think in Genesis 50. Remember the story about Joseph and his brothers? His brothers hated him, jealous of him, sold him as a slave, wanted to kill him, chose in the end to get some money out of him and sold him as a slave to Egypt. Years later, it turns out he's second in command of all of Egypt. His brothers come, they're rather shocked that he's still alive, never mind that he now has power over them, life and death and all that. And once Jacob has died, they come and grovel in front of him and say, “We're your slaves. Please be nice to us. Oh, our father Jacob said before he died, ‘Please be nice to your brothers.’”

And Joseph with that maturity that suffering had given him, just is moved, he's like he wants to weep. He says, “Don't you understand what God has done here? You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to save many lives as he's doing right here.” And then it says this, “‘So then don't be afraid, I will provide for you and for your children.’ And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” Do you see it? The kindness of Joseph, the tenderness. He sets their fears at ease. When you get to heaven, you get in the presence of Almighty God, he will set you at ease. You're not gonna be terrified to be in his presence because of his kindness expressed to us in Christ.

And I tell you this, it is so infinite, this kindness, that it's going to take eternity for God to show you how kind he has been to us in Christ and how kind he still will be to us in Christ. Ephesians 2:7 says “That in the coming ages, he might express incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” He's got eternity to show you how kind he is to you in Christ. Oh, how sweet is that. The kindness of God.

Fourthly, we see the holiness of God at the cross, the holiness of God. And what do we mean by the holiness of God? It's that he is entirely separate. Holy and pure, separate from all evil. Holiness is the only attribute of God stated three times in succession. Isaiah 6:3, They were calling to one another as they covered their faces, the seraphim, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.” The holiness of God. Holiness is absolutely required of us if we're to be in his presence.

It says in Habakkuk 1:13, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” Well, how then do we see the holiness of God in the cross of Christ? Well, at the height of his suffering, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the only begotten son of God, and in some mysterious way, his Father had forsaken him. Why? Because of the transfer of guilt that had happened. God made him, Christ, who knew no sin to be sin for us. He took our sin on himself, and then God turned his face away in some mysterious way. Christ separated because of sin from the Father in a way we can't really fathom, it's very deep.

But that is a display of the holiness of God, and also that it took that to make sinners like us holy in his presence, and such we must be if we're gonna spend eternity in heaven. We must be made holy. And so it says in Hebrews 13, in verse 12, “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his blood. And through the suffering of Jesus, we are made holy, we are made pure in his sight.” So also Ephesians 5 links our personal holiness to Christ's sacrifice. It says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy.”

Friends, can I say quite plainly, if you're not holy you're not going to heaven? Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. And the holiness, the fountain of holiness comes from just one place: The cross of Jesus Christ. It comes from no other. Justification, holiness comes from the cross of Christ. So also sanctification, holiness flows from that same source. Therefore, the cross is the greatest display of holiness there has ever been.

Fifthly, we also see the justice of God at the cross, and here we see it quite plainly in Romans 3:25-26, “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did this to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just, and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” God's justice is his righteousness to uphold his standards, his law. That's what justice is all about, to uphold what is right in a case, in a matter.

God's commitment to justice is infinite. It cannot be measured, and the cross is the greatest display of it there has ever been in the universe. It says in Psalm 36, verse 6, “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice is like the great deep.” So if you went to the Himalayas and you saw Mount Everest, there is Mount Everest, 29,000 feet towering up into the sky. God's righteousness, his justice is like that.

He hates any form of injustice. He hates the merchant that uses tricky weights, you know, that are hollowed out with a little cork in the center or something like that? Uses it to cheat or swindle his customers. He hates that, or the modern version, a multinational conglomerate that uses fancy bookkeeping techniques to swindle the stockholders out of millions of dollars that are rightfully theirs or the government out of taxes. He hates that. He hates any form of injustice. Or a schoolyard bully who uses his physical strength, throws his weight around so that all of his playmates will make sure that he wins the game or else they're in trouble. He hates any form of injustice, any at all. Or a judge that takes a bribe so that his eye gets blinded to what the reality of the case is, and he acquits the guilty and condemns the innocent.

He hates any form of injustice, but here's the thing, let's get more personal. You could say, “Well, I'm actually a very fair person, I don't do any of those things.” Well, any injustice that there is, is a breaking or violation of God's law. Any sin therefore is injustice. Any time you sin, you have been unjust, you have broken the law, and the wages of sin, quite frankly, is death. Ezekiel 18:20 says, “The soul who sins shall die.” And so God has an infinite commitment to justice.

Now, there's a bit of a problem there, isn't there? But let's take the case of King David. You all know what happened with David. What happened to David? Well, he walks out on the roof of his palace and he notices a beautiful woman bathing there, and he lusts after her and he lays with her, is another man's wife. She becomes pregnant. He tries to cover it over and when he can't, he ends up killing the husband to cover his sin. Wickedness, great sin. And God sends the prophet Nathan, and Nathan confronts him with a parable, exposes his sin and his guilt. David acknowledges that he has sinned. He says, “I have sinned.” Then Nathan says a shocking thing. “The Lord has taken away your sin, you are not going to die.”

Now, just stop for a moment and ponder that. Now for us, what’s shocking is that he would die. I mean, come on. It's just natural, isn't it? Just a kind of a natural thing. No, it is not natural, it is contrary to God's nature, it is great wickedness and sin. So to us, it's shocking that death is even discussed for adultery. But not to God, the real shocker is that David, this great sinner is just like that, acquitted. Imagine if you are at the great tribunal, the great courtroom, where David is brought before the judge, and let's say to make it even more intense, you are Uriah's parents. He's the man that was killed. You're Uriah's parents and you're looking for... What are you looking for? Justice. And what does the judge say? At a certain moment, he stands up and he acquits David. He says, “You're not guilty, you're free to go.” What are you wondering at that moment? Where is the justice? What? I guess, you gotta be a friend with the judge. If you're a friend of the judge, then you can get into heaven. How can God justify wicked people like you and me and get us into heaven? How can it be?

The cross of Jesus Christ is the answer to that question. God establishes the cross over history to say, “I am just and every violation, every transgression of my law will be justly dealt with in one of two places, at the cross of Christ or eternity in hell.” Those are the two places, we have no other choice, and therefore the cross of Christ stands towering over the wrecks of time to display the justice of God so that he can be just and also the justifier of us, we sinners who have faith in Jesus. Hallelujah! A display of the justice of God, there's never been greater. 

Very closely coupled with this is wrath. God displays his wrath at the cross. Now, what is wrath? Wrath is God's passionate emotional response to evil. It causes him to get up out of his throne and do something. He's not a passive kind of laid-back person going with the flow, not at all. He has an emotional reaction to evil. It moves him. Now, there have been many displays of God's wrath throughout history. Certainly the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden is a display of the wrath of God. They're not getting back there, there's an angel with the flames sword going back and forth, you are gone.

That's a display of wrath and even more in Genesis 5, when Adam dies centuries later. Display of the wrath of God. Or even greater, in Genesis 6-8, the flood of Noah, when every living thing that had the breath of life in its nostrils: Men, women, children, infants, kitties, dogs, elephants, anything that wasn't on the ark died because of the sins of man. A great display of the wrath of God. Or, Sodom and Gomorrah, when fire and brimstone falls from heaven on that wicked place and burns it up, a display of the wrath of God. But I say to you, there is no display of the wrath of God as clear and as powerful as the cross of Christ. Even hell doesn't compare. Hell is the place where any who have not trusted in Christ will spend eternity. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night. A display of the wrath of God, no doubt.

But the cross of Christ is greater. And why do I say that? Because the wrath of God at the cross was poured out on his only begotten Son. Now, how do I get wrath from the cross? Well, it has to do with one particular Greek word, which is translated propitiation in some verses. Romans 3:24-25, “Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Now, people tell you in preaching school, don't use big words people don't know. Nobody knows what propitiation means; we all had to learn it. So let's learn what this word propitiation means. What it is, is that God has an active wrath against sin; propitiation is the turning away of that wrath by the giving of a sacrifice. Pagan religions had it all the time. There would be a deity like Jupiter or the god of the sea, Neptune, and you had to offer a sacrifice and then he wouldn't be angry at you anymore. And you think, “Oh, what a pagan concept,” but it's at the heart of what happens at the cross, how God propitiated himself, he turned his own wrath away by pouring it out on Jesus. Pouring it out in Jesus.

Now, why did he pour it out on Jesus? Remember I said the justice of God is displayed at the cross? It's because God transferred our sin off of us on to Christ, and then struck his only begotten Son in our place. He became therefore our lightning rod, he absorbed the wrath of God completely. He became our propitiation and suffered, and because of that, we need never fear the wrath of God again, we will not experience the wrath of God. There will be no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It says in Romans 5:9, “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him.” We're not waiting for the wrath to come, we have been delivered from it, and praise God for it. The clearest display is the wrath poured out on the Son of God at the cross.

We see also the wisdom of God in the cross. God's wisdom consists in his ability to discern the best destination for our journey, and the best way to get there. The best destination and the best road there. Now, I have one of those GPS things stuck to my windshield with a suction cup, ever seen those things before? They got a little map, all the time they tell you where to go, the purple thing, you follow the purple. There's all kinds of interesting stories about those GPS things, people drive into storefronts because the machine told them to turn left in 100 yards, alright? You still need to use your common sense. I had the thing up there for one day and I checked it, I checked it to see if I could change a lane. Okay? No, that's a rearview mirror, that's up here, okay? The GPS doesn't tell you if the coast is clear to change a lane. So I had to learn how to use it. One thing the GPS won't do though, is tell me where to go. You may try it sometime, go and sit down and say, “I don't know, I'm wide open, GPS. Where should I go today?” It's sitting there like a servant passively saying, “You tell me what you want, and I'll tell you. You want a restaurant? I've got some options, okay? Wanna get to New York City? I can do that, but I cannot tell you where to go. That's up to you.”

God's wisdom knows the final destination of human history and the best way to get there, both. That's the wisdom of God. The destination is the glory of God. We're going to a place where God is gonna be central and constantly revealed and glorified, that's where we're heading. And everything that happens toward it builds toward the wisdom of God, toward the glory of God, and the cross is at the center of his wise plan for the human race. He chose to save us in such a way that we will be humbled, that we would need faith that he alone could give. This is the wisdom of God. And why is that? We wouldn't have chosen salvation this way, we have chosen to do some great thing, and if you did that great thing, then you could be saved and forgiven of your sins. That's human religion. Uh-huh. He says, I'll do the great thing. You believe in me and I'll save you. That's how it works. God's wisdom is different than ours. For his thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his thoughts higher than our thoughts and his ways than our ways. That's the wisdom of God.

And so therefore, it says in 1 Corinthians 1, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom and the weakness of God, stronger than man's strength.”

Of course, that brings me naturally to power, that same verse teaches that the cross of Christ is the power of God. And what do I mean by the power of God? Well, it's a strange kind of power that is so plainly displayed in weakness. Jesus dying, saying things like, “Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit,” a passivity it seems, a weakness it seems, and yet the power of God flowing through the cross, transforming the world, changing all of history, reaching into small little hamlets, even into people's living rooms, and changing the way husbands relate to their wives, the way that parents relate to their children, the way that people relate to sin issues, the way they spend their money, all of that flowing to the ends of the earth, power from the cross of Jesus Christ. An incredible power. An awesome display.

To me, that's an incredible thing. My life has been changed by the cross of Christ. I'm a new creation, the old is gone, everything's become new. And I've been walking in that newness now for 25 years, and it's still new, and it keeps getting newer, and I keep discovering new sources of power. Next week, I'm gonna talk about how believers en route to heaven need to come back to the cross all the time. I'm gonna talk about that next week, but I come back and I find power there. But there's a power there for the salvation of sinners in every tribe and language, and people and nation, all to the ends of the earth, the power of God for salvation flowing through the cross of Christ.

And here we also see the infinity of God. How do you see the infinity of God? Well, that one man on one afternoon, three hours on the cross can do all that. It says in Zechariah 3:9, “I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.” Wow, that's the power. The power and the infinity of God.

Now, how can he do that? How can Jesus's suffering kind of like the other two did, they suffered worse, they had their bones broken, you could argue. No, they didn't suffer worse, because there was a spiritual dimension, and Jesus was our sin bearer, and he was suffering in our place the wrath of God, which they were not. And in three hours, he can atone for all of my lifetime of sins, every bad thought, every harsh word, every wickedness in my life, but not just mine, a countless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation, multiplied across all the ages of time, from the beginning, from Abel, all the way through to the final person that will be saved, all of their sins atoned for in three hours. How? How? Because he was infinity stepped into time. He was an infinite person, he was God the Son, dying on the cross, and therefore he could do an infinite amount of work in just three hours.

The infinity of God, and finally we see the patience of God. How do you see the patience of God in the cross? Well, salvation by the cross is a very patient thing that God did. Before the foundation of the world, the Bible says, “Jesus was slain. Slain from the foundation of the world.” How slain from the foundation of the world? Because he knew he would do it. And through all of the twists and turns of history, Jesus knew when he saw any of those who would believe in him sinning, he's saying, “I'll pay for that, I'll be paying for that. That's me, I'm gonna cover that.” He's waiting, he's waiting. And at the right moment, the right moment of history, he steps into time, in the fullness of time, Galatians 4, “He's born of a virgin.” But even then, he's gotta wait. He's waiting for just the right time. They tried to kill him, but his hour had not yet come. It wasn't the time yet, but then at last, John 17:1, he says, “Father, the time has come.” Waited all that time. And now at last, the time has come, and so he dies. He dies on the cross, and he shows patience while he's up on the cross because they're taunting him, saying, “Come on down! Come off the cross. If you're the Son of God, you could have done it,” but he's bearing patiently our sin, standing under the wrath of God until it's exhausted, until the work is finished.

But even then, the patience isn't done yet. That is redemption accomplished, but now it needs to be applied to individual people to the ends of the earth, that's been going on for 2,000 years, and he's bearing patiently, sinners like Saul of Tarsus are breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. And he's waiting and he's waiting and at just the right time, he moves with power and saves Saul and converts him. Or he waits for Augustine who's trying out all the urbane philosophies, the pagan philosophy. He's just dabbling a bit, breaking his godly mother's heart as she's weeping for him in prayer, but he's still dabbling, he's trying the sensual pleasures, he's trying sexual immorality, he's trying all this sort of stuff and breaking his mother's heart, but God waiting patiently for just the right time. And at just the right time, God moves and he saves that sinner.

The patience of God displayed. And so it says in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God is waiting and waiting still, and to the end of time, when the last person who will believe in him, finally trusts, finally repents, then the work of the cross, the patient work of the cross will at last be over.

Now, how do we apply all of this? Well, maybe God's been waiting for you. Maybe God brought you here and you have waited all this time, all the days of your life for this moment now, that you would repent and trust in Christ. Perhaps something moved inside of you as you listened to this preaching of the gospel, that my sin, you could say, my sin can be taken off of me and given to Jesus as an act of power and authority. He can do that, he has that power, he's the King, and that his righteousness can be given as a gift to you. He has that power to do that, and then no one can accuse you, you'll be free, come to Christ, trust in him.

And for you as Christians, full application will be next week, we're gonna talk about all the ways we come back to the cross, but start here. Come back to the cross for worship. Look at these attributes, look at them this afternoon, and just take him and spread out before God and say, thanks be to God for the cross of Christ. I worship you, Lord Jesus, for what you have done.

And then finally, it says in our vision statement, “We exist to delight in, display and declare the glory of God.” We begin in that darkened farmhouse there in England, 1671. There's Isaac Newton, he's got that prism, and all that. Well, you know that of course is a natural prism all the time after many storms, you see it. Noah's rainbow, right? The bow out there in the sky, and you can see that spectrum, it's so majestic and beautiful. Where'd that come from? Where is the prism? Well, it's these little droplets of water, all these droplets of water up there in the atmosphere, and the sunlight goes through and the refraction is glorious, the spectrum is spectacular. Even unbelievers can look up and see it and just be moved by it. That's what we're called to do, we're called to glorify God, to take these attributes and display them in the world. All of these things, but most especially by declaring what Jesus did at the cross, sharing the gospel, so that people can see the glory of God there. Close with me in prayer.

So we come now to my final sermon in Colossians. And we are looking at Paul's list of his friends, his fellow workers. And as I was thinking about this, I was just thinking about the partnership we're all in, in the Gospel. As you enter the World Showcase section of Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. The centermost pavilion is dedicated to the American experience. And if you walk in there, you're going to see 12 statues dedicated to what they call the 12 spirits of America. Makes you a little eerie actually. But as you walk through you wonder, “What are the spirits of America?” And they list them and they'd be familiar words like innovation, compassion, discovery, freedom, etcetera. But there are going to be a couple of them that you may look at with a different kind of eye. Trained by the Gospel. A statue known as independence. Another statue known as self-reliance. And another statue entitled individualism. That brings me to one of those great myths of American history, the myth of rugged individualism. You know it well, America was built on the back of the rugged individualist who left behind his family and his friends in continental Europe or wherever he came from and sailed across an ocean and made his own way in this life. 

We have these icons in front of us like the trail blazer and hunter, Daniel Boone, who spent most of his adult life alone, exploring the western frontier, leaves his wife and his children, and goes out to find new ways, the Cumberland Pass or something like that and going hunting and trapping. Interesting guy. He said, "I've never been lost, but I will admit to having been confused for several weeks." So I can relate to that. But he never admitted to being lost. He always knew where he was, but he was a rugged individualist. He was alone out there in that frontier. Or later on, like “Mountain Man,” Jim Bridger, who was the first white man to see the Great Salt Lake. He was a trapper, a trader, a guide, a merchant, Indian interpreter. All of these things, did most of it alone. You picture him with two horses, his pack mule and just going through the Rockies or the High Sierra all by himself, the rugged individualist.

Or even the homesteaders who were in families but they were separated by a couple of days ride from the next homesteader. And they really made it alone. They were alone, a small family in the Nebraska prairie facing wild beasts, and Indian attacks, and prairie fires, and drought, and all kinds of things alone, making it alone. Or the cattle rancher of Texas. And that's what the statue of the 12 spirits at Epcot Center was. It was the rugged cattleman like John Wayne. He's got some equipment in one hand that says individualism and there he is. The guy who rides the fences for days on end by himself.

Rugged individualism. It's just part of the way we think of ourselves, our natural culture. Personal freedom, wide open spaces. Solitary trial faced alone and conquered alone and celebrated alone. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the original champion of individualism in America. Spent considerable time alone in Walden, Massachusetts. In a famous Phi Beta Kappa addressed in 1837 he shared what he'd learned about life. This is what he said, "I learned that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man. Help comes from our own bosom alone." Emerson later wrote a famous essay called "Self-Reliance" celebrating this theme. He carried it to its logical extreme, rejecting any effort to help or be helped by other people. This is what he said, "Then again, do not tell me as a good man did today of my obligation to put all poor men in a good situation. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar or the dime, even the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong."

That is self-reliance. Well, I tell you, nothing could be further from New Testament Christianity than this. Nothing could be further from it than this. And as I come to this list of greetings that Paul gives at the end of the letter. You wonder, "How is a pastor going to get a sermon out of these?" But what I look at is I look at a man who knew how dependent he was on other people, cheerfully dependent, gladly dependent. Glad to be in fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ, knowing full well that his co-laborers in the Gospel are indispensable, to the Gospel progress in his own life and the advance of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Now let's get some context and I'd like to give a brief overview of what we've learned in Colossians, since this is the last time we'll be looking at this book. Paul wrote this letter to a church that he'd never visited before, a church he did not plant, but a church he was greatly concerned about. Colossae was a city in Asia Minor, currently Turkey, with nearby Laodicea and Hierapolis who was part of a triad of cities in the Lycus Valley, about 100 miles east of Ephesus built on the Lycus River. The population was predominantly Gentile, but there was a sizeable Jewish population there as well. And thus the church at Colossae had to face challenges from both ends, both from the pagan culture from which many of them had come and also from the Jewish culture that had not, for the most part, accepted Christ or the Gospel at that point. Now the church itself was planted by Epaphras. And in Colossians 2:1, he makes it plain that he'd never been there or seen them before. Now by the time he was writing, the church was already in a battle for its theological soul. Already facing doctrinal challenges from a heresy that was brewing up and that Paul felt he had to write and challenge.

Of course, there was the allurement to these pagans of going back to the old Gentile way of life with all of its Gentile way of thinking. But then there was the threat coming from the Jewish side as well of asceticism and legalism. So, you've got human philosophies, on the one hand from the Greeks. And you've got Jewish asceticism and legalism. And then through it all was this Spiritism, a worship of angels, a kind of a mishmash, a hodgepodge put together. And at the core of it were some toxic concepts to the Christian faith. For example, that the physical world was inherently evil. That God hadn't really made it. And that all of our sins come from an allurement of the physical side. And that Christ Himself wasn't truly human, wasn't truly physical. And that His work on the cross wasn't enough to save you. These are toxic concepts and Paul writes to refute every one of them. Now, as he's writing, the way he does it, he's got a two-fold strategy for the health of the Colossian church. And it's well for me as a pastor in this church, and for all of us as Christians to keep in mind how Paul is battling for the souls of the Colossians. How he's struggling for the future of the Colossian church. He does it by right doctrine, by good teaching. And by faith-filled prayer, prayer in the ministry of the Word. That sounds familiar to me anyway. And the need to keep these things in front of us, as we struggle for each other's souls as well.

Colossians 1: The Supremacy of Christ and the Mystery of the Gospel of Christ

So, let's give a summary of the book. In Colossians 1 then, Paul immediately goes to the supremacy of Christ. The greatness of Jesus Christ. This is the centerpiece of our faith, and it's the centerpiece of Colossians as well. Look at Colossians 1:15-17, just go back a few pages. And there it says, "He is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn over all creation. For by Him, all things were created, things in Heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers, or rulers, or authorities, all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." So, there is the material physical world, and it's not evil, it's something Christ created. And there is Christ, not a mere emanation from God, but He Himself, the creator of all things, the greatness of the person of Christ. The image of the invisible God. And at the center of our faith is this mystery.

Colossians 1:27, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Oh, how sweet is that phrase, and how great should our hope be. Our hope is not a mere pale optimism that the future will be brighter. Oh, the future will be infinitely brighter, but hope is much stronger than that. It's an absolute certainty based on the promises of God, based on the very character of God, that we are going to spend eternity with God in face-to-face fellowship. And Christ within us, by the Spirit, is the deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance. Christ in us, hope of glory.

Colossians 2: Fullness in Christ vs. The Inadequacy of Man-Made Religion

Then in Colossians 2, he gets into the fullness that we have in Christ. We are full in Christ, complete in Christ. We don't need anything more than Christ, and the Gospel that He sought to bring. Christ gives us fullness. And so, we have in Colossians 2, fullness in Christ versus the inadequacy of that false religion that the heretics there in Colossae were teaching. So first, the fullness of Christ, it says in Colossians 2:9-10, "For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, the mystery of the incarnation." The fullness of deity, fully God in bodily form, fully man, the incarnation.

In Verse 10, "And you have been given fullness in Christ." We are full and complete in Christ. You don't need anything more. The world has nothing it can add to you. You have everything in Christ. We are fully circumcised spiritually, that's addressing the Jewish side, Jewish legalism. We can't be any more pleasing to God, having been circumcised physically, than we are circumcised spiritually in our hearts by the Spirit. We are fully alive, at one point, “we were dead in our transgressions and sins, but God made us alive with Christ,” and now we are fully alive, and we shall never die. Forever, we are alive in Christ. And we are fully forgiven. Remember how we pondered the benefit to us if we were only partially forgiven. If God forgave 99% of your sins, you're still lost. That 1% would be sufficient to sink you for eternity. But we are fully forgiven. He forgave us all our sins.

Colossians 2:13, "And we are fully free from the law." By this I do not mean we don't need to love our neighbor as ourselves, and we don't need to love God with all of our “heart, soul, mind and strength.” We are empowered by the Spirit to do those things, that's not it. But we are free from the law and its power to condemn us to Hell. It has no power to do that, for Christ has fully met all of its precepts, all of its laws and regulations. They're met in Christ and in the perfect righteousness that God gave us through faith in Christ. We are fully, therefore, free from the law. And we are fully triumphant over Satan. Just as Christ was triumphant over the powers and the principalities, and triumphed over them by the cross. So, we also are triumphant over Satan. There is nothing that Satan can do to destroy our souls, to bring us down to hell. We are secure in Christ, and fully free therefore from Satan's power.

Well, we have all of that, what do we need with this mishmash, this false religion that the heretics were seeking to put over on us? Therefore, beware about man-made philosophies. Take care about them and watch out for them. Watch out for human legalism. The idea that through your efforts, you can improve your standing with God. Watch out for legalism. And mysticism. The worship of angels is what it said there in Colossians 2. But any kind of mystical experience is cut off from the Gospel of Christ. We're not talking about a deepening in your walk with God, where you have a greater sense of His presence, you should seek that through the Spirit. That's not it, this is the worship of angels, this is a false mysticism. False religion. And then there is asceticism, the harsh treatment of the body.

 Again, the basic underpinnings there, the basic concept, is that the physical body is evil. And that salvation is away from the physical body. Friends, it is not. God intends to save the physical body. We're going to be resurrected in a physical body. We're going to spend eternity in physical bodies. We're going to a place. Jesus said, "I go and prepare a place for you." And we're going to dwell there forever and ever. This is false religion. It's a heretical mishmash, and it's attacking the fullness we have in Christ. And so Paul refutes it by right doctrine.

 Elements of a Truly Happy, Fruitful New Life

But then he gives a picture in Colossians 3, of the true Christian life. Of how sweet is that life, how fruitful, and how wonderful. I think Colossians 3:1-17, I think you ought to memorize it. I've said before, because it would enrich your life. If you would just know these things and put them into practice, you will be happy forever. You will be fruitful forever. You will be strong against temptation. In the first section is a heavenly mindset based on the truth of the Gospel. "Since then you have been raised with Christ," Colossians 3:1, "set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory." Think about this. Think about the greatness of it. We talk in our culture about guilty pleasures. This is an innocent pleasure, pure. Think much about your future happiness in heaven. Live there as much as you can in your minds, and you'll be empowered to serve Him with great energy and joy in this life. “Set your heart on things above not on earthly things.”

And then secondly, you've got to be at war. You've got to “put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed,” put them to death. The Holy Spirit gets you dressed for battle every day and sends you off to mortify the deeds of the flesh, so you must do. And you must put these things to death, or you cannot be happy, you cannot be fruitful in the Christian life.

And thirdly, understand that God has saved you up. As I was praying in my pastoral prayer, God has saved us into a community. We're in a family. When someone loses a loved one, that should matter to us. We should put an arm around them. Weep with them. Pray with them. It should make a difference. And this community has come from people all over the world. People that are very different from us. And here there's "no circumcised, uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, slave or free. But Christ is all and is in all." That's who we are. We're put together. And we don't get to choose who the brothers and sisters are, God did that from “before the foundation of the world.” What we're told to do then, is to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, and welcome brothers and sisters in Christ. And know that we are in a rich community together. And we need to walk together with other Christians in that new self.

 And then personally, individually, we should saturate our hearts with Christ. We should, “let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.” And we should, “let the word of Christ, dwell richly in our hearts.” And whatever we do, we should do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Giving thanks to God the Father through Him. So Christ saturating even the simplest thing you do, washing the dishes, or praying, or interacting with your family members, or your time at work. Whatever you do, you're doing it to the glory of God through Jesus Christ. “And be thankful.” Be thankful that you've been delivered from Hell, and you're going to Heaven. Is that not enough for you? Be thankful forever for these riches that God's given. So this is the rich full new life in Christ, Colossians 3:1-17. 

But then the Lord wants to see us live it out in certain arenas. You think about the arena like the Colosseum, the sands of the Colosseum, where the courage of first generation Christians, were put on display as their blood was spilled. As lions killed them. And the audience was watching. The Roman audience, the pagan audience, watching how they lived, and watching how they died. So also we are to live out the new Christian life in various arenas. First marriage, the most key human relationship there is. And so he urges that this new life be lived out in a marriage. “Wives submitting to the husbands.” “Husbands loving their wives and cherishing them.” And then in the parent child relationship, second most important. Second most significant human relationship there is. The children will be trained in the Lord, and that parents would love their children, and not be harsh with them, but train them well, and bring them up. And then the arena of labor.

As we understand it now in the 21st century, the master-slave relationship is labor. It's got to do with work. And the laborer should work as unto the Lord, knowing that in effect, he's taking his work as an offering and giving it up to Jesus. And the master, the one in charge, should treat his slave, his servant, his employee, the way he has been treated by Christ, and the way he wants to be treated as well. So in that arena as well, the new life, saturating. And in our daily life conversation, in the way we carry on just what we talk about, and our prayer lives, and all of these things saturated with the Gospel. This is the full life that Paul has given us. Much better than the life that the heretics were trying to give. A life of trying to escape from the body. And thinking that Jesus isn't enough, and that you've got to have some specialized knowledge and all that, that seems like nothing compared to the true Gospel.

So now we come to Paul's final greetings, and I guess as I look over Paul's attitude here, as he writes to each of his friends, I come to this one concept, and that is not one of us cannot do it alone. We cannot do it alone. Rugged individualism is impossible in the kingdom. Moses couldn't do it alone. God gave him 70 elders to help him in the leadership of Israel. Jesus chose 12 apostles as part of his strategic way of advancing the gospel. And together they built the church. Even the great apostle Paul couldn't plant churches alone, but frequently at the end of his letters he writes speaking of his co-laborers, both men and women. And how God used them, this dear brother or this dear sister, a co-laborer in the gospel and they worked together. By the way, I had co-laborer, Microsoft kicked it out. It's not a word according to Microsoft. Well, fellow workers, is that better? But you know what I mean, don't you? By co-laborers. So we got that little red squiggle underneath, and I can either add it to the dictionary or I can use something else. So in the translation, they gave us fellow workers for the kingdom. And that's what we are. But you know what I mean by co-laborers and he's writing to each one of them.

And basically, the bottom line lesson here is that none of us can do any of it alone. Away with self-salvation. Satan is trying to sell it all the time. You can save yourself by your own efforts, by being a good person, by philosophy or mysticism or legalism or any of these things. You can save yourself, away with it, you can't. God has testified to this by sending his Son Jesus Christ to shed his blood on the cross as a testimony to the fact that we could none of us save ourselves. Galatians 2:21 says, in effect, "If salvation could be worked out by obedience, then Christ died for nothing." Well, Christ didn't die for nothing because it can't be worked that way. And therefore I say to you, if you've never come to faith in Christ and you care about the salvation of your soul, you have a choice. You can either try to save yourself, through your own individual effort and you will fail. Or you can turn to Christ and you can look to the cross of Christ and see him having shed his blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. And you can turn away from self and turn to Jesus and he will save you.

And so I urge you to do that. That is the Gospel. But it doesn't end there. It's not like now that I have been justified I can now be sanctified by my own efforts. I can finish my race alone, no way. Jesus said in John 15, a very famous image, "I am the vine, and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing." And so having begun dependent on Christ we will proceed dependent on Christ to the very end. Completely dependent on Christ. But secondly, we also need to feel our need for each other. We can't do it alone. We are not independent of one another. 1 Corinthians 12:21 and 22, Paul uses the analogy of the human body and we are the Body of Christ and we're all together in Christ and he the head. And so he says, "The eye cannot say to the hand I don't need you. And the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." Every part of the body is indispensable. We need each other. We really do. And you have to convince yourself of that. Because we got that American independence. That American self-reliance, build a statue to them one after the other. That American individualism. It doesn't work in the Christian life. It's impossible. We need each other. And so Paul goes person by person. Another thing happens to me as I read these things. I think "If Paul knew me, what would he write in a few lines about me? If you could sum it all up in a couple of lines what would it be?" And far more important than that, what would Jesus say? If He gave me a nickname kind of summing up my life, what would it be? If He summed it all up in a few lines, what would my life and my ministry be? That's what it makes me think about. So let's look at them one at a time.

The Faithful Servant: Tychicus

First, we have the faithful servant. Tychicus, look at verses 7-8. “Tychicus will tell you all the news about me. He's a dear brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant in the Lord. I'm sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts.” There's a lot of nuts and bolts in these greetings. I'm sending him as a messenger. He's going to tell you what's going on with us. But there are a few extra things that he says. This man is a faithful servant. Faithful means what has been entrusted to him before, he sticks with it, he perseveres and he brings forth the harvest. He's faithful. He's an overcomer. So as I look at this as I think about myself, am I faithful to what's been entrusted to me? Am I faithful? Are you a faithful servant in the Lord?

The Forgiven Sinner: Onesimus

Secondly, we have the forgiven sinner, Onesimus. Now, I believe that Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon are written around the same time and sent together, all of them together. I think it's the letter that he refers to concerning the church at Laodicea, more about that in a moment. But Philemon of course is the story of an escaped slave who ran away and went to Rome. And there he meets up with the apostle Paul and Paul converts him. And now he's sending Onesimus back to Colossae, turns out that he's from this church. He says he's one of you. And so with him is also the letter to Philemon and which Philemon was one of that church as well and he was being urged to welcome this runaway slave back not only as a slave but as a brother, and forgive him. It's a beautiful letter and it's very, very artfully written, Philemon. And where Paul says, "If he owes you anything, then write it down to my account, not to mention you owe me your very life." So he twists his arm a bit there and says, "Please forgive him richly, accept him back richly." All of that within this Colossian church. It's a very sweet letter but there is Onesimus, he the forgiven sinner. And that's what all of us are, isn't it? Aren't we all runaway slaves who ran away from our true master, God? We don't want to serve Him anymore. We want to be on our own like the prodigal son, doing our own thing. And now we're being sent back to the true master of our souls and He will welcome us back. He will welcome us back richly and so Onesimus.

The Fellow Sufferer: Aristarchus

And then we have the fellow sufferer, Aristarchus verse 10, "My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings." We don't know anything about this man other than he was Jewish, he comes before verse 11 so he's one of the Jews. And therefore I think he probably suffered greatly from the other members of his Jewish community. We know in the life of Jesus, that the hierarchy had already decided that anyone who claimed that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out off the synagogue. And so it could be that was the nature of his suffering.

The Future Surprise: Mark

But then we have this future surprise and that's Mark. Now by this time there's already been some, I think, water over the dam. Mark has already been turned back to fruitful service in the Lord. But look at verse 10, “Mark the cousin of Barnabas, he is also sending you, received instructions about him, if he comes to you, welcome him.” Mark has a long and fascinating history. Mark, John Mark, cousin of Barnabas accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, gets halfway through and doesn't want to do it anymore. And it's not blameless, it's not like he had urgent business, he had to go away. It was a sin. He turned away, he was not faithful, and he turned away from his work. So much so, that when it was time for Paul and Barnabas to go back, and visit some of those churches they planted, Barnabas wanted to take John Mark, give him a second chance. Paul said "No way." There's no way. And we can see both of their points of view. You know, this was an important work, and that he had already proven unsteady, unfaithful. "You don't want somebody like that in the firing line right next to you, and so I'm not taking him." Well, Barnabas, son of encouragement, his name was Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, son of encouragement. He's the kind that would put an arm around somebody who is down and out, like Saul of Tarsus who've been recently converted and nobody wanted to get within a mile of him, the persecutor of the church.

It was Barnabas that brought him into the church in Jerusalem and said, "You know, he's done well. He's preached the gospel faithfully in Damascus." Paul should have known Barnabas better than that. Barnabas was urging that we give John Mark another try. But they had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company and went separate ways. And God ended up using it. Then you have Paul and Silas going through Philippi and bringing the gospel there, and so they go. And Barnabas and John Mark continue their way, but by this time John Mark has been clearly reclaimed for the Gospel and he is useful in the ministry of Christ. And later, Paul says that, final epistle, final word from Paul is that "Mark is useful to me and my ministry." Well, he's been useful to all of us and if you ever read the Gospel of Mark and from that perspective we get an insight into the life of Jesus that God wanted us to have, and He used this man, this reclaimed failure in ministry, to write it, Mark.

The Fearless Stalwart: Justus

And then we have the fearless stalwart, somebody courageous, Jesus, who is called Justus, sends greetings. Another Jew, who is willing to stand firm against his countrymen for the Gospel. "These are the only Jews", he says, "among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have proved a comfort to me." And you can imagine why, you know why, because everywhere Paul went, the first place he goes is to the synagogue, and he preaches the gospel in the synagogue until in effect they throw him out. He's always got a handful of converts, the remnant, that he writes about in Romans 9-11, but it's not many. And so therefore, any Jews who had turned to Christ and believe in him were a great encouragement to the Apostle Paul.

The Fierce Struggler: Epaphras

But now we get the fierce struggler and, Epaphras, I want to spend some time on. Epaphras convicts me, and why? Because he is an incredible prayer warrior, a man of prayer. Look at verse 12 and 13, "Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis." This is one of the best brief descriptions of a prayer warrior you're going to find anywhere in the Bible. Epaphras, who's wrestling in prayer, and the Greek word 'agon' from which we get this idea of agonizing prayer, means a wrestling contest, that's what he is doing, and he is doing spiritually, like Daniel who fasted and prayed for 21 days until the heavenly messenger at last fought his way through the Prince of Persia, I think Satan or one of Satan's henchman and gets the message though after 21 days of wrestling prayer, it's hard work, spiritually, and Epaphras gave that kind of effort. May his tribe increase, may his spirit increase in my heart. Prayers work, he says, I tell you that he is working hard for all of you. It's hard work to be praying for people.

Church History Example: David Brainerd

Now, I love to get examples from church history and I can think of no better example, and I mentioned last week, in wrestling prayer, than David Brainerd. David Brainerd lived in the 18th century, the first half of the 18th century. He was a missionary to the American Indians on the frontier there, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards. He died of consumption tuberculosis at age 29. Very brief life. He had been a missionary to the Indians only four years. Very, very short time of missionary service. Why then has his life had such an incredible impact on the spread of the Gospel and specifically on missions as it had? Out of all proportions to its brevity and this short length of his service with the American Indians. Why?

Well I think it's because he was a man of prayer who wrestled so faithful in prayer and wrote about those wrestlings in his diary. And then Jonathan Edwards took that diary and published it and it's never gone out of print since. Still in print today. And when you read it, you can just feel the fire of the Holy Spirit coming through the words, you're with him as he wrestles, you can feel the urgency, you can feel the passion, the fire. There's a heat there. There's sweat pouring from his body. And he teaches us how to do this kind of wrestling prayer.

Great men of God have found his work to be of tremendous example for each one of them. John Wesley said, "Let every preacher read carefully over the life of Brainerd." It was said of Henry Martin the great missionary, "Perusing the life of David Brainerd, his soul was filled with such a holy emulation of that extraordinary man, and after deep consideration and fervent prayer he was at last fixed in a resolution to imitate his example and become a missionary." So it was Brainerd that led him into the missionary life. William Carey regarded Edwards' Life of Brainerd as a sacred text. So also Robert Morrison, Robert Murray McCain of Scotland, John Mills of America, and even Jim Elliot of the modern era, read these diaries and it inflamed them with a drive a desire to be poured out for Christ. And why? Well, listen to these words. This is David Brainerd from his diary.

He said, "Oh, that I might be a flaming fire in the service of the Lord. Here I am Lord, send me. Send me to the ends of the earth, send me from all that is called earthly comfort. Send me to death itself if it be but in thy service to promote thy kingdom." Well, you don't need to read many pages like that before you're really at a fork in the road in your Christian life. Am I going to be mediocre and cold and lukewarm? Or am I going to be passionate on fire for Jesus? Because I can't read this kind of stuff and stay where I am. Brainerd overcame incredible obstacles through prayer, he overcame almost constant sickness, coughing up blood. He overcame relentlessly recurring, cyclically recurring depression, moodiness, black moods, depression. He overcame loneliness out in the wilderness. He overcame immense external hardships, poor food, exposure to the elements, extreme cold, inadequate shelter. He overcame a personal lack of love for the Indians.

It wasn't a romantic thing with him in terms of the mission life. Now he knew what it was like and it was a struggle for him. Struggle, and how, by wrestling, wrestling, wrestling in prayer like a Epaphras, wrestling over himself. And he wrestled for the internal journey, he wrestled for personal holiness. This is what he said, "When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of Him the more insatiable, my thirstings after holiness, the more unquenchable, oh for holiness, oh for more of God in my soul, oh for this pleasing pain. It makes my soul press after God, oh that I might not loiter on my heavenly journey." I have done some loitering brothers and sisters on my heavenly journey. Taken a break in my sanctification. He's saying "Oh that I may never do that." My guess is he had too as well but he didn't want to. "Oh that I may not loiter on my internal, my heavenly journey." He wrestled also for that external journey, he wrestled for the conversion of Indians. Could it be we see so few people baptized in this church because so few people wrestle for specific souls in prayer? Could it be? Once when visiting in a home with friends he got alone to pray, he said this, I continued wrestling with God in prayer for my dear little flock here, and more especially for the Indians elsewhere, as well as for dear friends in one place or another until it was bedtime and I feared I should hinder the family. So they have the guy over for dinner and he's upstairs praying in a room and they're wondering if they should go ahead and eat without him. "But oh with what reluctancy did I find myself obliged to consume time and sleep. I didn't want to sleep, I wanted to keep praying." We read of him spending whole days in prayer, sometimes setting aside six times in the day to pray. Sometimes seeking out a family or friend to pray with.

He prayed for his own sanctification, he prayed for the conversion of Indians, he prayed for the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ in America and to the ends of the Earth, this is how he prayed. His journal is filled with entries like this. Wednesday, April 21st, "And God again enabled me to wrestle for numbers of souls and had much fervency in the sweet duty of intercession." Four days later, Lord's Day April, 25th. "This morning I spent about two hours in secret duties and was enabled more than ordinarily to agonize for immortal souls. Though it was early in the morning and the sun scarcely shined at all yet my body was quite wet with sweat." Saturday, December 15th, "Spent much time in prayer in the woods and seemed raised above the things of this world." Oh boy, see there's the payoff right. Setting your heart on things above and God just lifts you up a bit and gives you a sense of His presence. One biographer talked about one occasion in his life July 21st, 1744, on hearing that the Indians were planning on holding an idolatrous feast and dance the next day, he spent that whole day and that whole night fasting and praying for them.

And he writes "This morning, about nine, I withdrew to the woods for prayer I was in such anguish that when I rose from my knees I felt extremely weak and overcome and the sweat ran down my face and body. I cared not where or how I lived or what hardships I went through so that I could but gain souls for Christ, I continued in this frame of mine all evening and all night." Thus empowered, he went forth and met the Indians as they were beginning their feast, their pagan feast. Convinced that God was with him in his contest just like Elijah on Mount Carmel, he knew he was going to be able to confront them. And instead of promptly scalping him, they listened to him preach all that day and on into the evening and many were converted. Oh that's power, do you see? Power for souls and it comes the root of it, the furnace of it, is prayer. "Oh that God would work in our hearts," this kind of wrestling in prayer. That He would work it in my heart and in yours.

Make us like Brainerd. Make us like Epaphras. Make us like the apostle Paul. Make us like Jesus. Whoever lives, it says, to intercede for us at the right hand of God, never stops praying for you and me.

The Foreign Specialist: Luke

Then we have the foreign specialist, Luke verse 14, “our dear friend, Luke the doctor greets you.” He was not a Jew. We know that because the line of demarcations in verse 11 and everyone after was not a Jew. So he was a Gentile, a doctor, therefore a specialist. First of many missionary doctors, let's say, who went and plied their trade for the glory of God on the mission field. But that was Luke, and from him of course we get the Gospel of Luke and also the Book of Acts.

And then we have the heart breaker, the future scandal, Demas. Demas, right alongside Luke just listed there. But we know more about Demas sadly from 2 Timothy, Chapter 4. In verse 9 and 10, it says "Do your best to come to me quickly for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica." Can you not feel the pain in those words? "Demas, having loved this present world," where it says in 1 John 2, "Do not love the world or anything in the world." What could have been in Thessalonica worth his eternal soul? What was so attractive about Thessalonica to Demas that he turned his back on Paul? He abandoned him. "He has deserted me." That's what Paul says of Demas. No hint of it here, though. Many a pastor, many a disciple maker, many a parent has been heartbroken by the defection of someone from an apparent walk with Christ to turn their back on Jesus and stop walking with Him any longer.

“Read My Letters”

Final application verses 15-18. I'm going to just get our own applications right from Paul's text here. First of all, read my letters. Okay?  Read my letters. He says "Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in our house and after this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter for Laodicea." So read each other's letters. It's not reading each other's mail. It's not wrong for you to read the Letter to Philemon. God meant for you to read it.

Ordinarily, it's bad to read somebody else's mail, ought not to be done. But here, we ought to read the Letter to Philemon. We ought to read all of Paul's letters. They're right here for us to read. And so read the Scripture. Saturate your minds. Now let's talk about that letter from Laodicea. We think it's probably the cyclical letter of Ephesians. It wasn't just written to one church, but it was written to a whole area and I think that was the letter from Laodicea. There's a tremendous similarity between Ephesians and Colossians. I think they're written about the same time. So read Ephesians, read that letter from Laodicea.

Now a word to the Laodicean church, you ought to read it too. Because their future is pretty black. It's pretty bleak. Remember what Jesus said about the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3? They were the lukewarm church that He wanted to spew out of His mouth. They were neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other. But because you're “neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spew you out of my mouth.” You say, "I am rich. I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked." That's advice given by Jesus earlier as the Apostle Paul who wrote them a letter. They ought to heed it, don't you think? Lest God remove that lampstand.

Complete Your Ministry

Second application is complete your ministry. First of all, you need to have one in order to complete it. He says to Archippus, "See to it that you complete the work you've been given by the Lord." What is that? I mean in your case? Are you able to identify a ministry? I don't mean a Christian lifestyle in the midst of an ordinary, you know American lifestyle. I mean a ministry. Has He entrusted you with a ministry? Has He set before you race for you to run? Like Paul says, "I count my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me." The task of testifying the gospel of God's grace. Alright. If that is not your task, what is? Has Christ entrusted anything to you. If so, like Archippus, see to it that you complete it. It's not how you start friends. It's how you finish.

And if you're sitting there in the pew today and you say, "I really don't have a ministry. I really don't know how I'm using my gifts. I'm really not involved in this church. I'm not really doing anything really for Christ." Then I would urge you, quickly, repent. It's not how you start friends, it's how you finish. And Paul says at the end, he says, "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. I've completed the task God gave me to do." So like Archippus, see to it that you complete your ministry.

Suffering: Remember My Chains

And then thirdly, suffering. He says "remember my chains." Lots of Christians in chains today. In the 10/40 window, in China, there are house churches, with their pastors under arrest for simply preaching the Gospel. In the Muslim worlds, there are martyrs every day. In Darfur, in other places, remember the suffering church. Remember them in prayer. Lift them up as though you yourself are suffering with them. And then finally, grace be with you. Grace be with you. Without this, we can do nothing. Close with me if you would in prayer.

Picture in your mind two businessmen sitting in an airport coffee shop, briefcases open, papers out spilling all over the table, earnestly in conversation about something important. Or two women sitting in a charming English tea room over a pot of Earl Grey. Or a young couple walking hand-in-hand down a beach as the sun is setting. So romantic. Or two older men sitting in a boat with fishing poles in their hands. Or two little children playing in a sandbox, making sounds like engines and front end loaders and bulldozers and doing some other things too. Or two older women sitting in rocking chairs on a front porch looking out over a mountain valley, reminiscing. Or two fans sitting together at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park conversing over a Triple-A baseball game. Or two teens with cell phones that just can't seem to stop talking, just something to discuss at every moment.

All kinds of exciting things going on. All of these things, reflections of the great gift of conversation that God has given us, and I can't imagine going through a day without it. And it is a deep and theological principle that our desire to converse, to communicate, to have relationships, comes because we are created in the image of God. And as hard as it is for us to imagine, there was a time that there was only God and nothing else. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eternally existing in three persons and able to have conversations among themselves. Inter-trinitarian conversation predates the creation of the world. And that gift of conversation, of relationship, of communication, one person to the next, was conferred on us at creation and it was discussed first before it was given. In Genesis 1:26 God says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule." And so there's an inter-trinitarian conversation about how we, male and female, are going to be created in the image of God, and part of that would be the ability to carry on conversations, the ability to have relationships with other persons. And I believe the gift of conversation in all of its richness unifies the verses we're looking at today. 

We're going to talk about heavenly conversation. We're going to talk about conversation between us and God in prayer. Praying about all things. We're going to talk about a different use of the word "conversation," just having to do with daily lifestyle, the way we carry ourselves in the physical world and the fact that we have an audience watching that all the time. And how important it is that we carry ourselves then with integrity. And then we're going to talk about the incredibly vital conversation of the Gospel. Sharing the words of life with those who need to hear it the most, that's what unifies our passage. Now, let's begin with the issue of prayer, conversation with God. Daily devotion and prayer. Look at verses 2-4. It says, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, and pray for us too that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should." We come immediately to the strategic importance of prayer.

The Strategic Importance of Prayer

Now, for many years as we have received prayer cards from the church and people fill them out, one mystery brother or sister in Christ has written a single word on the card again and again, and that word is "revival." That brother or sister knows very well, we'll know what to do when we get that card, and we do. And we yearn to pray for revival. Now, you may ask, "What is Revival?" Revival is a moving of the sovereign Spirit on an individual, on people, on a church, usually with two great fruits, personal holiness, and evangelistic fruit, conversions. Lost people brought to faith in Christ, personal holiness and conversions, and that in obvious, open, magnificent ways that only God can get the credit for. Now, those that have studied revival again and again have seen a unifying theme, and that is concerted, extraordinary prayer. Dr. AT Pierson, who was the biographer of George Müller, one of the great prayer warriors in history, once said, "There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer."

 Edwin Orr, a historian who made his focus the history of revivals, he agrees with this and he documents the prayer movements that are connected with great periods of revival again and again. The First Great Awakening, certainly, the Second Great Awakening. In 1857 there was the Businessmen's Prayer Meeting Revival that happened in Manhattan, New York, if you can imagine that. But there they were, it was 1857 and this Christian businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier sent out some advertisements throughout the city that there was going to be a businessmen's prayer meeting at noon, at a certain time, at the Dutch Reformed Church building in downtown Manhattan. This was advertised widely throughout the city, but the first time only six people showed up. Well, they prayed, they prayed fervently. And the next week 14 people showed up. And the next week after that 23 people showed up and then they decided they were going to meet every day for prayer. Not once a week, but every day at noon. By February of 1858, every church and public hall in Manhattan was filled up at noon with people praying. Imagine that, picture that in your mind. Incredible. Horace Greeley, the great editor of the New York newspaper that urged people, "Go west, young man," that one, published, he wanted to find out what was going on, so he sent a reporter around with horse and buggy, not having telephones or anything like that, they had to physically be there. And so this poor reporter flogged his poor horse and got to as many meetings as he could during the noon hour of prayer. He managed to get to 12. That's really quite remarkable, maybe a record of reporting, at least in New York City. And he found over 6,000 people meeting in those 12 meetings, actually, 6,100. It was a landslide of prayer, a revival, and it moved up the Mohawk River and groups all over in upstate New York, and then it spread throughout New England, and eventually, all over the country. Baptists, in upstate New York along the Mohawk River that winter had to cut holes in the ice to baptize people. Praise God for this baptistery here. I can just say that as one who's had to stand in it, but praise God. But they were so on fire for the Lord, they didn't care what the temperature of the water was, they just wanted to give public testimony to their faith in Christ. And DL Moody, the great evangelist, was converted during that prayer revival. That's what led him eventually to faith in Christ, and to his ministry. Again and again, prayer has been the undergirding and the beginning of revival.

1904, there was a great revival in Wales, the Welsh Revival. It started with a Welsh miner named Evan Roberts, who felt the call to preach, to get out of the coal mines and to preach. And he began training in seminary. And another man came and started preaching along the theme, "O God, bend me." And he began to pray this prayer, "O God, bend me." In other words, bend me to your will, transform me, make my will your own. Let me live only for your glory. "O God, bend me." So Evan Roberts started going around and preaching. And he preached in one Wednesday evening prayer meeting, it was the only slot he could get in that local church, not a well-known preacher at all. But he preached a simple message, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then some simple steps to personal revival, four of them. Step number one, you must confess any known sin to God, and you must put any wrong done to others right, make it right. Anything you know that you've done wrong, make it right. Secondly, you must put away any questionable habit. Anything about what your conscience is smiting you, put it away. Thirdly, you must obey the Spirit promptly. Whatever the Spirit prompts you to do, you must obey Him promptly. And finally, you must confess your faith in Christ publicly. These four things.

Well, it wasn't long before God was pouring out His blessing on these prayer meetings. And just like happened in Manhattan, New York, now it was in Wales. And it was a tidal wave of revival. Within five months, there were 100,000 people converted throughout the country of Wales. It was interesting, a number of years later, five years later, a skeptic named Dr. JV Morgan wrote a book to debunk the revival, on the grounds that of the 100,000 people that had claimed a faith in Christ, only 75,000 were continuing to attend church regularly. Now, you tell me, is that not a revival, when the skeptic is saying 75,000 five years later are still walking with the Lord, God has worked in a mighty way. Now, it started there in Wales, but it spread all over Great Britain, Scandinavia, Continental Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and in every location it was the same pattern, again and again. It always began with people praying, seeking the face of God.

Now, what do we mean by extraordinary prayer? Well, we pray here, worship service every week. I pray, others pray, we had an opportunity to pray. You pray before meals, I would hope, and give thanks to God for the food. You have your daily prayer times, but that's not extraordinary prayer, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about when people get together at 6:00 in the morning, in large numbers and pray for hours. When people meet together at lunch every day, for months on end, and give themselves to praying for the things of God, or when they spend half a night pouring out their hearts in prayer. Now, that's extraordinary revival. Now, I would contend, that when that kind of prayer is going on, the revival is already happening. It is the revival to move people out of their selfish holes and up into a great concern for the the things of God and the things of other people, the revival's already occurred, but we know it's not going to stay put there.

Prayer is strategic. God has ordained prayer as a primary means for advancing His glory and His name to the ends of the earth. Why is it strategic? Well, first of all, it's strategic because it humbles us. It humbles us, and it also empowers us. Isn't that amazing how we can be both humbled and empowered? But so it is. It humbles us in the asking, and it also glorifies God in the giving. And prayer is strategic because through prayer, without moving, we can touch the distant parts of the Earth, to the ends of the Earth, we can reach out with prayer. Now, Paul here in Colossians is calling Christians to a commitment of prayer. Constant devotion in prayer. He says, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." Now, the word "devote" has a simple meaning of, "Just continue. To keep doing something, to have a commitment to it."

The Commitment of Prayer: Constant Devotion

Many hear sermons on prayer, they get moved, they get motivated, something changes for a day or so, and then it fades away like the morning mist, like the dew on the grass in the morning. That's not what Paul is calling us to here. He's calling us to a movement of prayer, of commitment to prayer. The Greek word here means, to stand fast in prayer, to be fully devoted to the prayer, to hold firmly onto prayer despite all obstacles. To be immersed in it, to cling to it. David Brainerd, a missionary in the 18th century, a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, was a missionary to the American Indians, an incredibly godly man, and his diaries have had a revolutionary effect on the worldwide missionary movement. Tremendous devotion poured out in those diaries. And you'd read these entries, April 12th, "Spent the entire day in prayer." January 27th, "Though the day was cold, my body was covered with sweat, simply because of my excursions in prayer." Again and again you get these readings. "Spent two thirds of the day in prayer. Wrestled much in prayer for the Indians." This kind of thing. It's a devotion and a commitment to prayer, and that's I think what Paul's calling us to. Now, it's not easy to do, because faith-filled prayer has tremendous obstacles. Let's take the same old three we always wrestle with, the world, the flesh and the devil. First the devil, he opposes prayer, in individual Christians, and in churches, because he knows that it moves the hand of God, for His own glory. And so therefore, he's going to try to squelch prayer movements as best he can.

The world opposes prayer because of its fast-paced achievement orientation, the fact that it's so distracting, so alluring, so enticing, and therefore there are things we'd rather do than spend a bunch of time praying. The world has already captured our affections, and we don't want to give time to prayer. And then there's our own nature. Our own nature. We are very prideful. We want things done in our own way and in our own time. And we tried prayer back then, and God didn't do what I wanted. I was reading, as I was preparing for this sermon, reading about a pastor who came across his school-aged son, a young boy. He heard him praying, he kept praying. "Tokyo. Oh, God, make it Tokyo. Make it Tokyo, oh, God." And he thought, "My son's being called to mission work in Japan." Well, it wasn't the case. He had taken a geography exam, and he had put that Tokyo is the capital of China, and he was saying, "Make it Tokyo, God. Make it Tokyo." 

Have you ever prayed like that? Not your will, but mine be done, oh Lord. Move that will, that you established before the foundation of the world, that pillar, that unshakable... Move it to suit my needs. That's the way we tend to pray. "Make it Tokyo, oh, God." We're prideful, and so therefore, when we don't get our way we give up in prayer. We are self-centered, we don't really care very much about the needs of others. We are weak, we're easily swayed, we make commitments, and then we give up on them. And we are unbelieving as well and prayer is such faith-filled work. Think about, for example, the battle between Joshua and the Amalekites, when Moses is up on the hill, and he's lifting up his hands in prayer. Joshua's down there on the battlefield and he is fighting with a sword in his hand. Do you think that Joshua took a break in the middle of the battle? His arm is getting tired. He's like, "Amalekites, if we could just have a break for a few minutes?" Absolutely not. He kept fighting, and he knew that he needed to keep fighting, because it was physical, obvious, sensory work. But Moses, many times his hands go down that day. Godly man. But many times his hands go down.

Finally he starts to get the cause and effect. Okay. My hands go down, we start to lose. And so, they prop his hands up with stones, and they hold him up so that he can keep his hands extended in prayer. But that's the way it is with us. We don't see the cause and effect, and therefore we don't know why we should keep praying. God's going to do what He's going to do anyway, so we think. These are all obstacles to prayer. But Paul is calling on us to overcome those obstacles and to devote ourselves to prayer. He's calling on us to make it a lifestyle, to weave prayer throughout our day. He says in another place, in 1 Thessalonians 5, that we should “pray without ceasing.” Now, this means, obviously, daily time spent in prayer, your morning devotions. You wake up in the morning, you have your time of prayer. Or concerted times when you get together, you can schedule a time and be with Christians. But, I think it also means weaving prayer throughout the day.

Charles Spurgeon was somebody who did this. He just seemed to live and move and have his being in an atmosphere of prayer. He just moved through the day in prayer. I was reading a biography recently of Spurgeon, and Steve Miller was talking about C.H. Spurgeon on spiritual leadership. And he mentioned an occasion in which one of his friends, Spurgeon's friends, came from Brooklyn, a Dr. Theodore Cuyler, to visit him. And Spurgeon went with Dr. Cuyler for a walk through the woods, something they loved to do, just to be refreshed out in nature. And Spurgeon had a tremendous sense of humor, and something struck him as funny, and he shared that with his friend, Dr. Cuyler, and they both just began to laugh. And their hearts were just knit together as they were laughing. And then suddenly Spurgeon stopped him, and he said, "Come, Theodore. Let's thank God for laughter."

And Theodore Cuyler reflected on this years later, said, "This is the way it was with Spurgeon. He moved from a jest to a prayer and back again at the breadth of a hair." And so it should be, I think, with us. We are just constantly living, and moving, and having our being in the presence of God. Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. We can walk with God, and we immerse our days in prayer. And so, he says "Devote yourself to prayer." But I think we also need to step back and be strategic in our prayers as well. What are the big themes of life? What is the purpose of history? What is God doing in the world? We need to be devoted to that in prayer. Jesus said in Matthew 9, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out laborers into His harvest fields." So we need to devote ourselves to the big strategic picture as well. Not just thanking God for laughter. We should do that. But also praying that God would thrust out laborers into His harvest fields. So devote yourself.

The Manner of Prayer: Watchful, Thankful

Now, he gives us here the manner of prayer. He speaks of being watchful and thankful. Later in this, he talks about wrestling, we'll get to that, God willing, next week. Wrestling in prayer, it's labor. But here he talks about being watchful. Paul commands us to pray in a state of watchfulness. Now, what does that mean? Well, I think it means at least, can we just agree that it means at least you should be awake at that time? You should be awake while praying? Now, I will confess to you, I've had some very quiet, quiet times. They're like time warps, you know what I'm saying? You know what happened, you know I'm a little too comfortable. You know, it's a little too early. And so I had an incredible time of 75 minutes of prayer with the Lord, don't remember any of it. Just whoosh, right through. And there are times that I literally just need to pace back and forth, just pace, and walk, and talk out loud, because I'm going to fall asleep. So we need to be watchful in prayer and not fall asleep.

Imagine setting up a time with the president or some other dignitary, and falling asleep in their presence. This is not a good thing. And so, therefore, we ought to be watchful in our prayers. But I think it involves more than that. I think it means giving diligent attention to our prayer lives. Preparation, I think, is part of it. How do you prepare yourself to pray? Do you have a prayer sheet? Do you have a prayer notebook where you keep records of specific requests, and when they were answered by God? Do you have some sheets to help you in worship, or in confession of sin? Do you have some things to help you? There's nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, I would urge it, because our minds can become blank, and then we'll see a brother or sister, and we had told them we were going to pray for something, and we didn't do it. So I think you take the church's prayer list, you take your own, make your own prayer list. Get the directory of the church and just go through names and things will pop into your mind as you see their names, that's what I do. And so you're watchful in prayer, you're alert and you're preparing for it.

Another way to look at it, not just that you're awake, and not just that you have been diligent in preparing the prayer time, but that you're expecting God to answer. You're expecting Him to do something. Prayer is going to move the mighty hand of God, the Sovereign King of the universe. And just one movement from His hand is worth more than any of the other efforts we could put toward something.

Recently I was watching a movie, it was done by an outreach, as an outreach by a church in Georgia, the movie's called Facing the Giants, maybe some of you have seen it. It's about an embattled football coach struggling in his life with various issues, very discouraged, and thinks that he's going to lose his job. A lot of things going on for him at home, struggling. And at a key moment in the film, a godly janitor who's spent much of the time just going from locker to locker putting his hands on the lockers and praying for these students. God bless those kind of people, the heroes that you never see, and the prayer warriors that do all these kind of things behind the scenes. But he felt God was leading him not to be behind the scenes anymore in this one area. And he came to the coach and he read some Scripture to the coach that was appropriate for the situation. That God had set before him an open door that no one could close, and that he needed to make the most of his opportunity as coach there. To bloom where it is planted. Well, he said, "God led me say that to you," and then he went off. Well, the coach is just sitting there a little bit stunned. Then he got up and he followed this man, and he said, "Did God tell you to come say that to me?" He said, "Yeah, I think He did, I believe He did." And he said, "Well, I want you to know I have been struggling with depression. I've been discouraged. But I've also been praying." Then the janitor said, "You know, I heard a story once about two farmers, both desperate for rain, it was a drought. Both of them prayed for rain, but only one one went out and prepared his fields. Now, which of those two are you?" That's very convicting. I guess God wasn't done using the janitor that day.

Now, which of the two are you? Are you acting like God actually will answer your prayers? Take a step back, are you praying any such prayers that'd be worth answering? Anything specific for His kingdom and His glory. And second step, are you expecting Him to do it? Jesus said in Mark 11:24, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours." You're like, "Oh, Jesus, you need to be more careful, you know I was going to leave this to name it and claim it." Jesus just says it. We know in the analogy of Scripture, we are going to be bound in by the will of God, and frankly, we don't want anything but the will of God, that's what believe means. Faith is stepping into God's world as it really is, not creating an alternate universe. But He says, "If you believe you have it, you have it."

As I was going over this sermon this morning, I said, "Do I pray like this?" And at that moment, I felt the Spirit just leading me to pray that someone would come here today who needed to hear the Gospel. I mean an outsider, as is mentioned here in Colossians, who's never come to faith in Christ. And I felt that the Lord was leading me to stop right at this point in my sermon and pray for that individual to come to faith in Christ. That they would look to Christ whose blood was shed on the cross for them, that they would receive forgiveness of their sins by simple faith in Christ. Will you all pray with me for that individual?

Father, I prayed this morning that someone would come here who needed to hear the Gospel. And that today would be, for them, the day of salvation. And I trust you right now and ask that you would move in that person's heart, and that they would fear Judgement Day, and find in the Savior all of the love, and compassion, and mercy that they need to free them from a life of sin and from fear of death, and that they would come to trust in the Savior. I pray this in your name, Lord Jesus, amen.

And I've been convicted by this. Do I pray like this? Do I trust God for actual things for His kingdom? Being watchful in prayer. And what about being thankful? When God answers that prayer, should we not go back and say, "Thank you, God, for doing it"? And when He answers many prayers, should we not in the relationship go back and say, "You did it, Lord. To God be the glory, thank you"? We should. It's part of the relationship. And so we need to go back with thankfulness.

The Focus of Prayer: Gospel Success

Now, the focus of prayer, verses 3 and 4, is Gospel success. "And pray for us, too," he says, "That God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should." This should be the center of our prayer life: What is God doing in the world? Why are we here? What are His purposes? And His purposes are to call out “from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation,” a multitude greater than anyone can count, and save them from their sins, and sanctify them by His Word, and glorify them, and make them just like Christ. And they will dwell with him forever and ever. That's what He's doing, that's big. We ought to pray big like that, then. “Our Father in Heaven, may your name be hallowed, and may your kingdom come, and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” I want to pray big things like that.

And notice how the mighty Apostle Paul asks for prayer for help in this area. Look what he prays for, he says, "Pray for us, too. I need prayer. Pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message." He's asking for prayer. He feels his weakness. "When I'm weak then I'm strong," he's not too strong to ask for prayer, he wants prayer. And look what he asked for, he asked for an open door for the message. A fair hearing of the Gospel. Specifically, it's a prayer that God would exert His sovereign power over the wills of unbelievers to get them to be open to the Gospel ministry. Does God have that kind of power? Can He actually turn the heart of a king or an emperor so that there is an opportunity for the Gospel? I tell you He can, He's done it again and again.

Proverbs 21:1 says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, He directs it like a watercourse whichever way He chooses." It's happened again and again. The Lord granted Joseph favor in the eyes of his jailer. Genesis 39:21. The Lord granted Daniel favor in the eyes of the Babylonian officials so he didn't have to eat the food that would defile him. The Lord granted Nehemiah favor in the eyes of King Artaxerxes so he could go back and rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah 1:11. The Lord granted Esther favor in the eyes of her husband, though he had not invited her, and the penalty for coming in uninvited is death. Still, Esther 5:3, God granted her favor. Does God have the power to change the heart of a potentate? He does. It's happened again and again. I was reading in the church history the story of Columba, who was a sixth century Irish monk whose heart burned with missionary zeal, who established Iona as a training place for missionaries, Irish missionaries going out all over continental Europe. But one place that God had laid on his heart was Northern Scotland, where the fierce Picts were. These people were so tough, the Highlanders, Scots, that the Roman Empire didn't want to mess with them, and built Hadrian's Wall as a result. Did not want to take on the Picts. Well, Columba took them on, and he went into their country, and he went right to the main fortress at Inverness, and wants to see King Brude, and he wants to tell him the Gospel. Well, the king is stunned, and doesn't want to have anything to do with this man, and sends him away. Well, he doesn't go away. He sets up shop right outside the walls of the fortress, and just begins to fast and pray. Well, it isn't long before the king invites him back in, and listens to what he has to say. The door is opened for the Gospel, the king eventually came to faith in Christ, and many of those Picts did as well. Columba brought the Gospel to northern Scotland by fasting and prayer.

Notice that Paul also asks for clarity in presenting the Gospel. The Gospel is infinitely deep. Paul was amazingly learned. At one point, someone had said, "You're out of your mind, Paul, your great learning is driving you insane." Some people have gone insane trying to read Romans 9 through 11, and trying to figure out what that means. So there are depths of the Gospel, there are deep concepts and thoughts, there's meat. But Paul is here praying for simplicity and clarity: "Pray that I might make it clear as I should." A similar prayer he requests in Ephesians for boldness. In Ephesians 6:19 and 20 he says, "Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it fearlessly as I should." Again, he's putting his weakness out on the line: “If you don't pray for me, I might wimp out. I might be a coward at a key moment. I might turn away from a great Gospel opportunity. Pray for me that I might be bold.” Well, I think we ought to just apply this to each other. Let's pray for each other that so-and-so would have an open door for the Gospel, and that they would make it clear as they should, and that they would be bold and courageous.

We pray this three-part prayer at our staff meetings: God, give me an opportunity to witness today, and give me the clarity to see it, and the boldness to take maximum opportunity of it. Pray that for yourself, that could change your life. God, give me a chance to witness today, and give me the eyes to see it, and the boldness and the heart, to take advantage of it. So that's what Paul prays for. 

A Watching World

The second aspect of conversation is just our daily lifestyle. Conversation in action, a daily observed walk. Look at verse 5. He says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity." We are living our lives before a watching world. We're on a stage, and the world is watching us. And it's not by accident God has ordained it so. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither does anyone light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it up on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven." God has lit a light inside you, the light of the Gospel. You are the light of the world, He's going to put you up on a stand and let your light shine all around. You are on a stage, you are being watched. And what he's talking about here is, be very careful how you live in front of the unbelievers who are watching.

Now, I believe, from this point forward in the section we're looking at today, everything that Paul says is geared toward producing, living in such a way that lost people will come to you and ask you about Jesus. That you live in such a way that they will come and say, "Please tell me what's going on in your life, I want to know." And there's a verse behind this. This is 1 Peter 3:15, it says, "Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, and always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience." So in other words, be ready for business, open for business. Live in such a way that people are going to be attracted to you, and want to ask you about Jesus, or at least ask what's different about you, what is going on in your life.

Like the Philippian jailer who brings Paul and Silas out in the middle of the night, trembling, falls in front of them and asks them this question: "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Wouldn't you love to have that happen to you this week? Maybe you don't want the public beating without a trial, or to be in the jail in the middle of the night or any of that, but maybe you would like somebody to fall down in some sense before you and say, "What must I do to be saved?" And how ready would you be to tell them the truth?

The Need for Wisdom

So that's what I think Paul's getting at. And first he says there's a need for wisdom. Paul says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders," and then he says, literally, "Redeeming the time." You need to redeem the time. Now, last week I preached on slavery, and the idea is of a captive, someone in chains, and you pay redemption money, and get the captive out of chains. Well, how is time then like a kidnapped captive? Well, to some degree, because it says in Ephesians, "The days are evil," you've got to go rescue the day. If you are passive toward the day, you will lose it, it will be gone. You must aggressively go, as the Latin people put it, carpe diem. You have to go seize the day. Like David and his men had to go rescue their wives and children from the raiding party that came, the Amalekites that came, so also we have to go rescue the day. Redeem the day. Redeem the hour, redeem the day, or you will lose it, that's what he's getting at.

George Whitefield, in effect, said, "There's no better way that I could obey the Scripture than by sharing the Gospel with somebody." And he said, George Whitefield said, "Woe to me if I should spend half an hour in a carriage with someone without sharing the Gospel of Christ." That's how we redeem the time. That's how we act in wisdom toward outsiders: Share the Gospel with them.

The Need for Integrity

And there's a need for integrity, because basically, you never know who's watching. Daniel had enemies who were watching him, he didn't know it. They watched him carefully to try to find some dirt on him so they could get him fired from his job. There was nothing to see. And they said, "We'll never find anything against this man, he's always at work, or praying, or doing something. The only way we can get him is with his prayer life," and that's what they tried to do. But they could not find any dirt on him. So we have to be people of integrity, living what we proclaim.

Speaking the Words of Life

The third kind of conversation he talks about here is sharing the words of life, the Gospel, look what he says in verse 6: "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Now, I just said a moment ago, we have to put our Christianity on display, we have to set a good example. But may I say to you, with all due respect, no one is going to get saved from their sins by watching what a good example you are of the Christian life. No one is going to get saved by watching how you live, not at all. God has ordained that it is word and not action that saves souls. Christ's actions, yes, but when it comes to us, we are to share the word of life. We are to speak the words of the Gospel.

Romans 1:16 says, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." It is the power. The Gospel message is the power of God for salvation. Later in that same book, Romans 10:17: "Faith comes by hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." Or in James 1:21, "Humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you." So we need to be ready to share the message of the Gospel.

Now, recently Andy, and Eric, and I went to a conference out at Ridgecrest, a Building Bridges conference, and Don Whitney was there. And he was talking about, how well do we know the Gospel? And he was teaching a Sunday school class, and he asked them, "Do you think you know the Gospel pretty well?" And they said, "We've been hearing the Gospel for years.” Longer than you, sonny! That kind of message. And he's like, "Alright, that's fine." So he passed out some sheets of paper and some pens. He said, "I want you to take 10 minutes, and I want you to write down the Gospel message. Just write it down. And boy, did they struggle. You see, they'd heard the Gospel so many times they could recognize it when they heard it, but they couldn't articulate it, they couldn't speak it.

Some time ago, I memorized a quick four-part outline of the Gospel on these headings: God, man, Christ, response. What do we say about God? He is a king, a creator, a law-giver, a judge. He is also savior. What do we say about man? He is sinful, and separated from God, all of us, created in the image of God, but yet sinful. What do we want to say about Christ? He is the eternal Son of God, who came into this world, who shed His blood on the cross, died, was buried, the third day He was raised to life. He is the only savior for the world. And what do we say about response? You must repent and believe this good news for the salvation of your soul. Are you able to do that in your own different style? Can you communicate the Gospel so that when someone comes, your speech is filled with grace, seasoned with salt, you're able to communicate the Gospel. If not, then study. “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed, but who rightly divides the word of truth.”

Gracious Speech

Gracious speech. Now, when I think of gracious speech, I think at least it means this: Mannerly, okay? No coarse language, no gossip, no slander, no off-color jokes, no worldliness. Your speech should reflect a heart filled with Christ. So gracious speech, but more than that, filled with the words of grace, with Scripture. Memorize lots of Scripture. Fill your heart with it, and when you open your mouth, Scripture may flow out. Because whatever you fill your heart with, that's what's going to come out of your mouth.

 So there you stand at a beautiful mountain valley, or one of those scenic overlooks, there's some people, strangers near you. What comes out of your mouth at that moment? "Boy, isn't that beautiful?" Well, that's very common, anybody would say that. Why don't you try something like this: "You know that the Scripture says that ‘God's righteousness are like the majestic mountains?’ What do you think that means, that God's righteousness is like majestic mountains?" "Gee, I never thought of it." "Well, it says it in Psalm 36:6. " Well, there's a conversation starter. They might say, "Woah, what a weirdo!" They might. Or they might come back and talk to you, and be interested in what you have to say. 

Or perhaps you're discussing a sensational crime, and a trial, and an issue of crime and punishment is the topic. What could you say that would be gracious at that particular moment? You could say something like, "Only the grace of God in Christ could cover a crime like that." Something like that. And a realization that I could, if it weren't for God's grace, I could commit a crime like that, a humility. Let your conversation be full of grace. Or you're standing there at Kroger, at the produce section, or Food Lion. I'm not endorsing one or the other, please. You get into all kinds of difficulties. Harris-Teeter, what are the others? Anyway, you're at a supermarket, and there's the produce. And somebody's there and you're going through. You could be silent, you could grab your cucumbers, whatever, and you could go. Or you could redeem the time. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, and say something about Christ. And you'll say, "They'll think I'm weird!" Well, they might. Is it worth it to you, though, that you might actually get in a conversation with somebody and lead them to Christ? Is it worth it to run the risk that they'll think you're weird? "I'd rather they not think about me at all than that I might actually bring them to Christ and they'd spend eternity in the presence of God." Oh, don't do that. Pay the price. Say something about Christ. Let grace flow out. I love this one pastor who, whenever he was asked by his church people, "How are you doing?" he always answered the same way: "Better than I deserve." Well, that's a gracious answer. Better than I deserve. "What do you mean, better than I deserve? Are you some kind of secret murderer?" Say, "Well, in one sense I am. The Sermon on the Mount says that if you're angry at your brother, it's like murder." Whatever, get in a conversation! Challenge Satan's status quo, go after the lost people, that's what I'm urging.

Salty Speech

Now, what does it mean, "full of grace seasoned with salt"? Well, I spent a little time learning about salt. Actually, at Barnes & Noble, there's a whole book, a 400-page book on the history of salt. And you're thinking, why in the world would you buy a book like that? Well, you buy a book like that if you're an expository preacher coming to Colossians chapter 4:6 and you know you're going to have to say something about salt. And after a while, you read and you start learning some things about salt like, for example, it's the only rock that we eat. That's an interesting thought, isn't it? Are there any other rocks that you know that we eat? I don't know of any. It's indestructible by water and by fire. It's a fascinating substance, really.

I asked my mother, who's a chemist, "What is salt used for in the body?" and she started getting into all these ionic transport systems, and I said, "I'm not going to tell the people that. I don't get it, so there's no point in communicating." But it's essential to the body. And when you sweat it goes out, you gotta take salt back in to live. But what did Paul mean? Now, that's the real question. And if you look at Scripture, salt is used in a variety of ways. For example, it's used to season or flavor food. And there's some kinds of food that are just tasteless without it.

I was reading one of those Arabian Nights stories, and there's this sultan, and he's got these three daughters. And he wants the daughters to come into his court and express their love for him. Well, what kind of man would do that? But at any rate, the first two daughters come in, and they give a flowery speech, "You are the... " You know, all this. And then the third daughter comes, and she's quiet and more studious, and she says, "You are the salt in my food." And he's actually insulted, actually enraged, and he ends up banishing her. Well, some time later, he is traveling through, and he stops at a place for a meal. And the meal tastes terrible, bland. Well, guess who cooked it? It was his daughter. And she gets finally to make the point. You bring out the flavor in the food, alright? And so it is there's certain kinds of things, starches, potatoes, whatever, that without the salt, they're totally bland. So there's an issue of flavorful speech, something that's fascinating, something that's worth listening to, not bland. It could be that.

Or it could refer to salt's preservative aspects. The fact that salt preserves meat, it's a desiccant, it dries out the meat so bacteria doesn't spread all over it. And back in the days before refrigeration, it enabled people to eat meat for long periods of time after it was slaughtered. And so it was an issue of purity, freedom from corruption. So let your conversation be pure conversation, let it be holy, let it stop gossip, let it stop slander. It comes to the salt block in you, and it just doesn't go any further, because you turn it around with a gracious statement, and then make it a Gospel opportunity. You're a salty person, and you're stopping the spread of corruption, because we're the salt of the earth.

There's another aspect, too, it says that all grain offerings, in Leviticus 2:13, should be offered with salt. And so all of the grain offerings were offered with salt. Well, what does that refer to? It refers to a covenant of salt. It says, in Numbers 19, "A covenant of salt that God made with Israel." It says in Numbers 19, "I have made a covenant of salt with my people." He says in 2 Chronicles 13, that, "God gave the kingdom to David as an everlasting covenant, a covenant of salt." And so I think it goes from preservative to eternity. Something that's preserved for eternity cannot change. And so let your conversation bring people's minds up into God's eternal covenant, salvation through faith in Christ. Speak of eternal things, things worthwhile, things that are worthy of conversation. Let your conversation be rich. And so, therefore, I think you ought to ask questions of people. You ought to ask questions. Ask, "Do you ever think what happens when you die? What do you think happens when you die?" Or say, "Let's say you're on your deathbed, you're in your 80s, and you've had a successful life. And you're looking back at a successful life. What elements are in that successful life, how do you count success?" Or ask this question: "Why do you think so many lottery winners end up worse off at the end in their lives than they were before they won the lottery?" Ask a question like that. Or, "What image do you have of Heaven?" or, "What image do you have of Hell?" These kind of thoughts. Or this one: "Why do you think Jesus Christ had such an impact on human history?" Ask those kinds of questions. But let your conversation be full of grace, seasoned with salt.

Reasoned Speech

And why? So that you may know how to answer everyone, this is reasoned speech. Answer what? Well, they're going to ask you questions like this: "Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? What happens to me when I die? How can I get my sins forgiven?" Will you have an answer for them then? When you've lived this kind of life, and you've enticed them into the Gospel, they will ask you to give a reason for the hope that you have. Be ready and share the Gospel then.

I want to close just with an exhortation. After worship today, we have a meeting, you heard it already announced. It's in the bulletin, Connection Partners, it is our attempt to reach out to visitors who come our church. We are privileged to have a steady stream of visitors to our church. Some of them that come are not believers yet. This is an opportunity for you, evangelistically, to get involved in the spread of the Gospel. Many people that come are already Christians, but many are not. Those that are already Christians may be looking for a church, they may be new to the area. It's a strategic ministry, but it's also a chance to share the Gospel.

The more laborers we have for that harvest field, the fewer, or less burdened it is on any one person. Just like those that take time to pray during Sunday morning worship. So I'd urge you to give consideration to come to a relatively brief meeting, I guess it can't be that brief if there's going to be food. But at any rate, it's going to be brief enough to eat the food, and to discuss Connection Partners. And I would urge you to consider sacrificing some of your time in being part of our ministry to guests and visitors. Close with me in prayer.

For the second week, we're looking at Colossians 3:22 up through 4:1. As we come to today's topic, in which I'm really going to be stepping back from just a verse by verse analysis of these, which I gave last time, to look at a larger issue, and that is the issue of slavery. And slavery in the Bible, I am amazed how rich this theme is biblically. And here we come to somewhat of a paradox, as I have studied church history, it is my conviction that one of the crown jewels of the church, in terms of its impact on the surrounding culture, has been the complete abolition of slavery around the world. It really is an astonishing feat, and I bring it right back to Jesus Christ, and to the doctrines He taught, and the effect He had in the world. We're called on to be salt and light, and in this way, the church has had an incredible impact on the world, and yet, it is the greatest accomplishment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, within the lives of an individual person, in the life and the heart of an individual person, to teach us how to be a slave of Christ, gladly, willingly laying down on our lives for His will and His purposes, and that seems to be a paradox. 

 2007: A Two Hundredth Anniversary of Wilberforce’s Triumph

How can it be the glory of the Church to abolish physical slavery in the world, and yet, the glory of the Gospel to make us cheerful slaves of God? And yet, so it is. And that's the paradox we're looking at today. We're going to try to understand slavery biblically and it's not going to be easy. Now, last year, 2007 marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, under the influence of evangelical Christians led in Parliament by William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce was an evangelical Christian in England, came to faith in Christ, he was also a member of Parliament. A physically small man, but with a tremendous heart, and a tremendous intellect, and amazing gift of speech, very persuasive. With a buoyant personality, kind of like a big chunk of cork, you just couldn't keep him down. And he is a hero for me, in that regard, because he needed all of that. It was an 18-year struggle. From the first time that he got up to address Parliament on the issue of the slave trade, until the abolition of the slave trade, was 18 years. And during that time, he was struck down, again and again. He was mocked, he was vilified, he was opposed, he was threatened. He was seen to be a traitor by his own people, but he tirelessly persevered, until, at last, success came through his efforts and the efforts of many others in 1807. But that was just the first step. That was the abolition of the slave trade. It took another 26 years for the British empire to free all the slaves throughout the empire. 1833, it happened a few days before he died, and that was just the second step. Then there was the abolition of slavery all over the world, so that every nation would come to that same conviction, and that didn't happen until 1981.

Mauritania was the last country, finally, to abolish slavery within its land. And that was just the next step. Then there's the abolition of illegal trafficking of human beings, which still goes on to this very day. And some agencies estimate that there are as many as 27 million people in some kind of involuntary servitude today, and so the battle goes on. But William Wilberforce focused on the slave trade to begin with, and that was the ending of that infamous Middle Passage. Estimates go as high as 15 million Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved in the Western Hemisphere. African kings, and warlords, and private kidnappers sold captives to Europeans, who held several coastal forts along the west coast of Africa. The captives were usually force-marched to these ports along the western coast of Africa, where they were held for purchase by European or American slave traders.

Ships contained as many as 300 slaves with 30 ship hands, a crew of 30. Male captives were usually chained very close together, the right leg of the one to the left leg of the next, while the women and children may have had a little bit more room. The captives were fed with beans, and corn, yams, rice, and palm oil. They were fed minimum amount of food, just to keep them alive. And if any were deemed as not probably going to survive the Middle Passage, they weren't fed anymore, they were allowed to die. That mentality reached its low point in 1781. The captain of a slave ship, Zong, threw overboard over 130 chained slaves living, so that he could get insurance money from them. It was called 'The Massacre of the Zong' by abolitionists; it was called 'The Incident of the Zong' by non-abolitionists. Well, it was in that backdrop that William Wilberforce spared nothing in making the horrors of the slave trade known to the people of England, and to the Parliament, and last year marked the 200th anniversary of their successful fight.

Now, as I read history, I've done some research on it this past week and learned a lot. Abolition really is a flowering of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You don't find any strong abolitionist movements in any land not saturated with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and even in those lands saturated with the Gospel it is quite a fight. At the time the Apostle Paul wrote Colossians, it's estimated between a third and a half of the human inhabitants of the Roman Empire were slaves. They were seen to have no legal right; they were not seen to be people in the eyes of the law. They couldn't even give testimony in a court of law, unless they were tortured first, to be sure that they were telling the truth. That was slavery in the Roman Empire. Islamic nations have resisted, stubbornly resisted abolition, and only eventually yielded, when they wanted to do business with Western nations who demanded it, required it. Or if they wanted a military alliance with Western nations who required it. And so, therefore, it's really right to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it's a flowering of the Gospel of Christ, that there is no legal slavery anywhere in the world today.

Questions Still Linger About the Bible

But yet, for all of that, questions still linger about the Bible itself. Now, someone once said in the ministry, "You just need to know the Bible is a lion. It doesn't need any defending, it will defend itself." And so, it is true. The Bible's the Word of God. “Heaven and Earth will pass away,” but yet, I feel a zeal today to reveal the glories of the Bible's handling of this difficult issue. And the reason that we need to do this, is because some slaveholders in the American South, and other places, defended their actions based on texts of Scripture. And so it's left people in modern life questioning the Scripture, to see if maybe it's a time-oriented book whose time has passed it by. And I think the closer you look at this issue, the more wisdom you see in the mind of God, in dealing with it just the way He did.

Now, what do we mean by slavery? What are we talking about? Well, as I was reading the article in Encyclopedia Britannica about it, "It is the social sanction that permits one person or group to compel the involuntary labor of another person or group. Now, whether slave, or serf, or indentured servant, or otherwise, that bonded person is obliged to perform personal service for his lord or master, under conditions that make him socially inferior and are restrictive of his freedom." Now, I filtered through all those words and I got out some key issues. Issue number one: Involuntary labor. You don't have a choice in the matter. You're compelled, legally and physically, to do work that you wouldn't want to do. Conditions, living conditions that speak to your essential inferiority as a human being, and perhaps, even a denial of the fact that you are a human being, somehow subhuman. And a taking away of personal freedom. The Gospel of Jesus Christ attacks and transforms each of these topics. It doesn't just seek to abolish slavery, but it seeks to transform the way we think about all of these things, and there is the glory of the Gospel.

Overview of Slavery in the Old Testament

Now, as we look at the Old Testament, we find slavery in the Old Testament. It's first mention is in Genesis 9, when Noah's son, Ham, saw him drunk and uncovered in his tent, and went and told his brothers, in a way that seems that he was mocking them. When Noah woke up and was aware of what had happened, interestingly, he didn't curse Ham for what he did, he cursed his son, Canaan. He said, "Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers." That's the first time you have a mention of that. Now, of course, the verb is found way back in Genesis 2, when Adam was told that he would serve the ground. You remember, we already covered that, but here's the first time, in which you have the issue of slavery brought up.

Abraham had male and female slaves. Hagar was one of them, a maidservant to his wife, Sarah. You remember, after she became pregnant by Abraham, she was somewhat abused by her mistress, Sarah, and ran away. And the Angel of the Lord came and found her in the desert, and commanded her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." Amazing, the consistency of Scripture, isn't it? The very same thing that the Apostle Paul commands, and so, she did. Joseph was sold as a slave into Egypt by his brothers, trying to get money from his body, basically. But then, ironically, he threatened his brothers with slavery if one of them was discovered to have stolen a silver cup. And so this becomes an interesting little paradigm for what happens with Israel, because after Joseph died, they become enslaved in Egypt, and they're put to bitter bondage in Egypt. God then delivers them, and then, in the Laws of Moses, there are laws regulating slavery, how they are going to be masters to their slaves. Quite interesting, and therein is the trouble. And so some people try to find defense for slavery, right there in the puzzling Laws of Moses.

The Puzzling Laws of Moses

Now, Moses consistently reminded them that they had been slaves in Egypt, and therefore, they should deal well with the aliens and strangers in their land. He says in Exodus 23:9, "Do not oppress an alien. You, yourselves, know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt." You see, there's generally a heart of compassion there, and yet, slavery was not abolished, but rather regulated in the Laws of Moses. One key text that I find in the Laws of Moses, that just expands out into the New Covenant, and frankly, on into the New Heaven and the New Earth, and it has to do with a slave in a Hebrew household, who has served his time, six years, and the time has come for him to be set free, but he doesn't want to go. He loves his master so much, he loves living with his master so much, that he doesn't want to leave. He wants to be with him forever. And so the master is commanded to take the slave to the doorpost, and to put an awl through the ear. The piercing of the ear was a symbol of being a lifelong slave of a good,  beloved master. He had the freedom to go, he didn't want to go.

What's so amazing, is that this piercing of the ear, I believe, is picked up on in Psalm 40, speaking of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, I know there are other interpretations of this, but I think this is the right one. If you look at Psalm 40:6-8, the verses there say this, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears, you have pierced." Now, one translation will say, "My ears, you have opened," but I think a better translation here is, "My ears, you have pierced. Burnt offerings and sin offerings, you do not require. Then I said, 'Here I am. I have come. It is written about about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, oh, my God. Your law is within my heart.' " Here is the attitude of a servant or a slave, saying to the master, "Your law is in my heart. All I want to do is serve you. I just want to do whatever you command me to do." Well, the author to Hebrews picks up this quote and applies it to Jesus. And in effect, before Jesus entered the world, I guess He had His ear pierced, metaphorically, in reference to His Heavenly Father. And in effect, He said, "I am entering the world as your servant. I will do anything you command me to do." And so Christ came into the world, as the perfect slave of a perfect Master. He entered the world to do the will of Him who sent Him. John 6:38-39, He says this, "I have come down from Heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up at the last day." In effect, He said, "I live for the will of the one who sent me," and that is a slave mentality. Jesus came to be the slave of His Heavenly Father. Now, the pinnacle verse on this, is on the cover of your bulletin, and that's Philippians 2:5-8. You know the Philippian Church was bickering and arguing, like the disciples tend to do, about who's the best. And they did not have a servant heart toward one another. There were divisions and factions, there was pride. And that's just in the human heart all the time. Frankly, that's why the whole issue of slavery got corrupted to begin with, because of human pride. 

Christ the “Very Nature of a Slave”

But Jesus Christ is given as an example, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being, in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a bond-slave," basically ‘doulos’, "Being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross."

Now, this is very powerful, this Philippians 2 passage. As I said, the word servant is 'doulos,' usually translated 'bond-slave,' sometimes translated 'servant.' I asked somebody this week, "What's the difference between a servant and a slave?" And they said, "It's the nature of the task, I guess, and of the relationship." Well, the more I studied the life of Christ, the more I saw that no slave in all of history was asked to do a harder thing than Jesus. No one has ever had a lower task than Jesus, so let's stick with 'slave,' that's what 'doulos' means. And notice the parallel Greek construction here, "Who being, in very nature, God,” “very nature God," NIV gives us, "Did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a slave." It's exact same in construction. If you put it together, you're going to say, "Jesus was as much slave, as He was God." And that's a powerful thought, isn't it? He didn't play at it. It wasn't an act.

Christ’s Slave-like Demeanor to Others

It was who He was, when He took on a human body. Christ, therefore, carried Himself in a slave-like demeanor toward other people, didn't He? If anybody came to Jesus for a need, He stopped what He was doing, and got up, and went. I find that, as a pastor, incredibly challenging. Jesus seemed to be infinitely interruptible. I'm not sure that I meet that qualification, but it seemed anybody came to Jesus got what they wanted, except, you may say, the Syrophoenician woman. Well, she got what she wanted too, it just took a little longer. And she had to have a discussion with Jesus, as He challenged some thoughts. It was fascinating, that encounter, but she still got what she wanted. 

And so the Roman centurion sends a messenger, saying, "My servant is at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering." By the way, I think He was a good master. He had tremendous compassion. He was a godly man. And he cared about him, and he humbled himself to go to Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher, and said, "Could you come and heal him?" Jesus gets up and goes. And he said, "Look, you don't need to come, because I don't deserve to have you in my house, but just say the word and my servant will be healed." But you see, Jesus, He just gets up and goes, willing to go. Or Jairus comes and says, "My daughter is sick." And Jesus gets up, and goes. Or huge throngs of people are coming, and He stays there, and heals them all with a touch, with a word, with a personal encounter. It took all day, it must have been exhausting. He could have healed them all with a word, just like that, but that's not how He did it. He wanted to touch them, He wanted to pray for them, He wanted to heal them. He was a servant of everybody.

And that's especially displayed in that beautiful image of the foot washing, which I prayed about, and you heard Eric sing. What a beautiful song. Eric, thank you for singing that. I was so excited to hear that you were going to sing that today. And it fits beautifully on New Member Sunday, doesn't it? How we're called to be a community of servants to one another, and how Jesus gave us that example, by getting down and washing the feet of His disciples, something no menial slave would have been asked to do, at that point. A jarring image, to be sure. Peter didn't like it. He didn't like it. Jesus washed their feet.

Christ’s Ultimate “Bondage”: The Cross

But I'll tell you, the ultimate bondage for Jesus was the cross. It was the cross of Jesus Christ, that was His ultimate bondage as a slave. Now, why do I use that language? Well, you don't have to turn there, but in Luke 12:50, there's a statement there that's really not going to come across very well, in any translation, except the King James version. But there are times that the King James version just shines, and this is one of them, because it just gets so close to the original Greek meaning. Well, Luke 12:50, Jesus is giving a rare glimpse into His heart and His emotions, and He says, "I have a baptism to undergo and how distressed I am, until it is finished." Well, that's not speaking of a literal baptism. He had already been baptized by John,  He's talking about death. He's talking about His death on the cross. But what's so interesting, the NIV word translated, "How distressed." The KJV gives us, "I am straightened," like a straitjacket. "I'm bound in," and that's what the Greek word means. Basically, "I'm tied up, until I die on the cross." And you know what occurred to me? That He'd been so tied up, since before the foundation of the world, He'd been bearing that, knowing He would die some day for David's sin. When David committed that sin with Bathsheba, Jesus would pay that price. He'd been bound up, in his mind, knowing it would be He that would pay the price, He would shed His blood, as a slave for David. And He just gives us that glimpse, He says, "I'm in a straitjacket. I'm bound up, until, at last, I'm free from that task. But I can't go anywhere, I can't do anything, until I accomplish that." And He wrestles with it, of course, in Gethsemane, the depths of which, we will never be able to plumb. And woe to us, if we get heresy and bad doctrine from Gethsemane. You take off your shoes, for the place is holy ground, when you go to Gethsemane, and try to understand what's happening there. As He says, "Father, Abba Father, all things are possible through you. Let this cup be taken away from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. Not my will, but yours be done." That is a slave statement He's making to His Father. Jesus, therefore, was willing to drink the cup of God's wrath. And I say to you, there is no servitude, there's nothing that has ever been asked of any servant, that's greater, or more torturous, or more miserable, or more wretched, than the Father asked His own Son to do on our behalf. And in this way, He fulfills the beautiful role of Isaiah's suffering servant, or shall we say, 'suffering slave,' who entered the world to take on our infirmities, and our diseases, and to bear them to the cross, where they would be punished by a righteous God. And therefore, it says in Isaiah 53:11, "After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied by His knowledge. My righteous slave will justify many and He will bear their iniquities."

Now, this is a sermon on slavery, and I'm going to talk, in a minute, about the slavery of sin, but Jesus shed His blood on the cross, in our place. He died for us, in the place of God. This is the Gospel. And I don't know how you came here today, I don't know who invited you today, I don't know if you're saved, but this is your only hope for surviving Judgment Day. Look to Christ. Look to His blood shed on the cross. All you have to do is simply ask Him, "Lord, serve me, serve me. Wash, not just my feet, my hands, my head, my whole life. Wash my guilty conscience. Save me from my sin," and He will do it. He will not refuse. "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many," and that could include you, if you just simply repent, and trust in Christ. Don't leave this place in a lost condition. Simply trust in Him, and then we'll get to servanthood after that. But let Jesus serve you first or you will never survive Judgment Day. But Jesus was not only the ultimate servant, He is also our Master, the ultimate Master. And so in the passage that Matthew read, in Chapter 4:1, it says, "Master, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in Heaven." Jesus is the slave who is a Master. No one has ever gone so low and no one has ever been raised so high as Jesus, "Before Him, every knee bows. Before Him, every tongue swears that, 'Jesus Christ is Lord, the Master, the King.' "

Spiritual Slavery: Every Human Being a Slave

Now, I want to make some observations on slavery, the theme of slavery from the New Testament, and apply them to our Christian lives. First of all, let's talk about spiritual slavery, spiritual slavery, and I make this contention based on the Scripture. Every single human being that has ever lived, or lives now, or ever will live, is a slave to a master. There is no avoiding it. You will serve God, or you will serve Satan. You will serve righteousness, or you will serve sin. There is no third option. You have a master. It's either Jesus or it's Satan. It's either righteousness or it's the flesh. You have a master. Now, Satan is a liar on this very point. He comes and offers us freedom. He comes and tells us, "You can be free from all authority. You can do whatever you want. You don't need to submit to anyone. You can do what you want. You can choose and no one has the right to tell you what to do. You can eat what you want and no consequences." Do you believe that one? Some of us know better. "You can do what you want with your time. You can spend your money however you want. You can live for yourself. You can do what you want." Friends, it is bondage, it is a lie, because at the core of it, is slavery to sin. Jesus said in John 8:34, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin." There it is, that's what our Savior told us, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin." And Romans 6:17 says, "You used to be slaves to sin." Praise God for 'used to be,' by the way. Praise God for that emancipation, but you used to be slaves to sin. We walk around every day, surrounded by people who are still enslaved to sin, because they don't know the Savior. That's the real emancipation that matters. I'm not saying the physical one doesn't matter, we'll talk about it in a moment, but I'm saying that that's the one that lasts for eternity.

Conversely, every Christian is a slave of Christ. Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." You know the next part, don't you? "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." I've said before, that His is a kingly yoke. He's the Master, He's the King. And if you say, "I will have you as my Savior, but I don't want you as my Lord, I will not have you as my Master," then you can't have Him at all. As a matter of fact, that's the essence of the sin. It was rebellion, independence, doing your own thing. He wants to save you from that. And he says, "If you'll just bow that stiff neck of yours under my yoke, I will give you true freedom at last. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, your heart will be set free at last."

Paul uses slave language about Christians quite boldly. In First Corinthians 6:19-20, he says, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price." Stop right there. You are not your own? You were bought at a price? That sounds like slavery to me. Well, it is. Of course, it makes a big difference who the master is, doesn't it? But we have been told as Christians, "If you're truly a Christian, you were bought at a price. You serve at the will of a master. You're not your own. You don't get to do whatever you want." And the context there is sexual immorality, you can't do whatever you want with your body, it's not just your body. The Holy Spirit shares it with you and He will not have you be sexually immoral, that's what he's saying there. But more generally, just whatever the topic is, you're not your own. “You're bought at a price, and therefore, glorify God in your body.” That's what he's saying.

Many Christian leaders have taken, as their most exalted title, "I am a bond-slave of Christ." We tend to prefer the tamer version, "I'm a servant of Christ, a servant of Christ." The word 'slave' is a bit jarring, but I think it's good to be jarred on this one. We'll get to that in a moment, but, "Paul, a bond-slave of Christ Jesus, and set apart for the Gospel of God," Romans 1:1. That's how he starts, "I'm a 'doulos' of Christ." Epaphras was a bond-slave of Christ. James, the brother of the Lord, was a bond-slave of the Lord. Jude, also, a bond-slave. Simon Peter calls himself a bond-slave. Tychicus, a bond-slave. It's an exalted title used again and again. Bottomline then, every human being on the face of the Earth will either serve God through Christ, or serve Satan through sin. You have no choice in that matter, in terms of whether you'll have a master or not. You will, you do. Question is, is it Christ? Therefore, this week, if you're ever talking to somebody who says, "You know, I don't agree with that. I'm free. I can do whatever I want. I really am not accountable to anybody. I've got my own free time, I can do what I want with my money, etcetera." Be assured that they are in bondage, they just don't see the chains, and it's your job to tell them the truth. 

Freedom and Slavery Both Redefined by Christ

The second point I want to make about slavery, is that freedom and slavery are, therefore, both redefined by Christ. They're just redefined. Freedom is redefined by Jesus. It is not that sinful mental attitude I just shared with you, "I can do whatever I want." I fear that too many Christians still need to be instructed on this issue. I know I still struggle with it. I still behave like an employee of Christ, rather than a slave of Christ, you see? The employer has you from 9:00 to 5:00, when 5:01 comes around, we're done. Remember Flintstones? "Yabba dabba doo!" And you know it's quittin' time, and you're free, and you can go home, and do what you want. Just about every Christian struggles with the lie that there's a quittin' time in the Christian life. There isn't a quittin' time. That's the whole thing. Freedom is redefined. Well, what is freedom then? Well, how about this one from the Psalmist, Psalm 1:19, Verse 32, "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free." Now, that's a different kind of freedom. There's a defined narrow road, a path, and the Psalmist runs in it, like a little child playing in the path of God's commands, with delight and joy. Now, that is freedom. It's joyful obedience to the commands of the King, that there is. And there is a King, and there will always be a King, whether you think there is one or not. And therefore, freedom is acknowledging, "There is a King. He sits on His throne, and I'm glad about it, and I'll do anything He tells me to do. I run in the path of His commands." And where are His commands? They're in the written Word of God. And the written Word of God just sets me free. It's a different kind of freedom.

I already quoted John 8, but look at it again. You don't have to turn in the Bible, just listen, "To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, 'If you hold onto my teaching, then you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' " It bothers me when secular libraries put that up. You know, where you walk in. It's like, "I don't mind the quote. I'm glad to have the Word of God out there, but you misunderstand. It's the doctrine of Jesus Christ that is the truth. It's Jesus, Himself, who is the truth, and the truth sets you free. It sets you free from sin, it sets you free from the destruction of it, it sets you free from the disease of it, and from the death of it. You're free from sin."

Paul teaches this kind of freedom as well. Romans 6:18, "You've been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." Therefore, freedom is an internal hard attitude. It's totally irrespective of your external physical situation. You are free to be free, even if you're in chains. You can be like Paul and Silas, singing in the Philippian jail, in chains. You're the only free man. You're freer than the Philippian jailer, before he came to Christ. He's in bondage and he knows it. Here are Paul and Silas singing in jail, and they're free men. Oh, don't you yearn for that kind of freedom? To be free to rejoice in any and every situation, no matter what service, servitude the Lord calls you to, to be joyful and free, accepting what the Master has ordained for you. Oh, that's a freedom I yearn for. It's a freedom I'll have someday.

But it says in 1 Corinthians 7:22, "For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord, is actually the Lord's freed man,” even though he's still a slave. “And he who was a free man when he was called, is actually Christ's slave." See, it's just a redefinition of freedom, therefore, slavery, also redefined by Christ. Every Christian is now a slave to Christ, and therefore, to other people. We are free to serve both Christians and non-Christians alike. We serve Christians by washing their feet. As Jesus said, after He put His clothes back on, and sat down, He said, "Do you understand what I've done? I've given you an example, that you should follow in my steps.” “You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so." By the way, he was always King, Teacher, Master, while He was being slave. He doesn't give up any of those roles. He said, "You call me Teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." So we serve other Christians, we serve them by bearing their burdens, by praying for them, by giving financially, to help them if they need it, by putting an arm around them when they're hurting, by confronting them in sin. We serve each other, other Christians.

We're also called on to be slaves to the world, slaves to the world. The Apostle Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 9, this is to lost people, we're to be slaves to lost people, non-Christians. This is what he says, First Corinthians 9:19-22, "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law. Now, to those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but I'm under Christ's law, so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means, I might save some." Paul says, "I am willingly enbondaged to every person on the face of the Earth." He says, "I'm a debtor. I am obligated both to Jew and non-Jew, both to the Greek, the free, all of them, preach the Gospel."

And so you get a doctor like Paul Brand, who's a missionary doctor in India, and he and his father both went, and used their medical skills to take care of lepers in India. And these people would come from miles around with filthy, putrid sores. And the missionary doctors would get down on their hands and knees, and wash those sores, not fearing what would happen to their own bodies, but would serve them. And why? Because they wanted Indians to come to faith in Christ, that's why. And they were willing to do, therefore, the most menial, disgusting tasks, in order to bring others to Christ. Now, are they really slaves? Is that involuntary servitude? Not at all. It's voluntary. You say, "Well, that really isn't slavery." I told you, Jesus redefines everything. They're willing to do, even the most disgusting task, as Jesus went to the cross, you see. Therefore, there is no task that would be involuntary, if the Master has commanded me to do it, and He commands those missionary doctors.

Physical Slavery: Not Overthrown but Subverted

What, then, about physical slavery? I'm talking about what we think of when we think of slavery, a legal or social condition that was in the world. One third to one half of all the human beings in the Roman Empire, slaves. What about that? It is true that in the Scripture, Jesus never commands, "Masters, free all your slaves." It is true that in the Scripture, none of the Apostles command, "Masters, free all your slaves." But it is not true that that kind of legal bondage could survive under the doctrines of the Gospel. The Gospel was subversive when it came to chattel slavery.

You hear the stories about the settlers who go out West, and there's all these thick stands of trees, and all that, and some of them, they had to chop right down quickly, and clear a field, so that they could plant their crops, but it takes a long time to cut down a tree with an axe. Sometimes, all they would do, is they would girdle the tree by taking some of the bark 360 degrees around the tree, and if that happened to the tree, it was doomed. It was doomed. Once you take the bark 360 degrees off, that tree's going to die sooner or later, and so it did. Now, it took a while. You didn't do that, if you had to have that tree removed, to put your house there or field. But it worked, and it became rotten, and easy to deal with, right down to the stump and the roots. And so it is, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ subverted chattel slavery, and eventually won out. Now, it took a long time, it took 18 centuries and more, but that's what happened. Now, how was Scripture subversive? Well, there's the golden rule: "Do to others what you'd have them do to you." Abraham Booth, an English Calvinist Baptist, preached a sermon in 1792 about it, and he said, "Oh, how would you like it, if some foreign slave traders came to Liverpool, or London, and grabbed up your wife, and your kids, and maybe you too, and clapped you in irons, and sent you, would you enjoy that? Well, then don't do it to somebody else." It's just basic. There's the argument from the fact that we're all created in the image of God, and that dehumanizing is wicked and sinful. There's the argument that we've seen in Colossians, and also in Ephesians, that both master and slave are accountable to a higher master, and God shows no favoritism either side, and will judge either side based on how well they obeyed His commands. That has a subversive effect on slavery.

There's the fact that, in 1 Corinthians 7:21, Paul urged slaves to try to get their freedom, if they could, because it's better. The whole ethos of 1 Corinthians 7, as Paul says, "I would have you be free from earthly entanglements, even marriage. If your gift is singleness, be single by all means, because I want you to be free from concern. I want you to be able to serve the true Master, Jesus. And so it's better, if you don't have to go, day after day, to the man, to the master, and say, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ But if you can't get your freedom, don't let it trouble you. Your service to Christ is under the service you offer to that man. It's alright, the Lord will reward you on judgment day, because you couldn't get it. But if you can get your freedom, get it.” Well, that subversive. It means it's better to not be a slave, than be a slave, and therefore, to Christian masters, then it's better to set them free. Subversive.

But then there's the Book of Philemon, which is very subversive. In the Book of Philemon, Onesimus was an escaped slave. Paul finds him, or he finds him, and leads him to Christ. And it turns out that his master was another man that Paul had led to Christ. Aren't there so many lucky things in the Christian life? No true Christian should ever believe in luck. There's no such thing. God is sovereign. He brought the two of them together. And he sent him a letter, and now, it's in the Scripture. It's called Philemon, and in it, he said this, he said, "Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while, was that you might have him back for good. No longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord." That is subversive. "Set him free. Set him free, Philemon." "Now, I could remind you," he says, "I could remind you, you owe me everything, but I'm not going to compel you, as I could, as an apostle. I'm just going to ask you to do the right thing." Well, what is the right thing? It's, "Set him free, so that he can serve the Lord."

And then, finally, there is the condemnation of slave traders. Both in Exodus 21:16, it says, "Anyone who kidnaps another, and either sells them, or still has him when he's caught, must be put to death." Wow, that's in the Law of Moses. And then, in 1 Timothy 1:9-11, "We know, also, that the law is made not for the righteous, but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and the sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers, for perverts, for slave traders, and liars, and perjurers." Man-stealers, that's what they are. The image of wicked men lying in wait near some African village with a net in their hands. And someone strays too far from the village, and they jump up, and throw the net over them, and club them over the head with a club, and drag them to some West African port, and haul them across the Middle Passage to a life of bondage, is wickedness. It is clearly condemned in Scripture, and that also is subversive to slavery.

Basically the Lord cut around, 360 degrees around that bark, and let it fall of its own weight, but with great deal of suffering and effort, because human hearts are so stubborn, and selfish, and desire to have easy, comfortable lives, on the lives, on the backs of others. Is this the end of slavery? No. You're actually going to spend an eternity in it. You're like, "Well, gee, I thought we'd be free from it." Well, first of all, just know you're not going to be called that, because Jesus said, "No longer do I call you slaves, but I call you friends, because I tell you everything I'm doing." And then, later, in John's Gospel, He says, "Go and tell the brothers." We're brothers. We have all kinds of titles, all kinds of titles.

Eternal Rewards Based on Becoming Slaves

But first of all, we come to Judgment Day, and I just think it's good for me, as a pastor, to let you know on what basis you're going to be rewarded. You're going to stand before Christ, and if your soul is clean through the blood of Christ, He then will proceed to reward you for anything done by faith in the service of the Kingdom. And do you remember the story, where James and John are bickering about who's going to sit at the right and the left, and they come to Jesus. Actually, they get their mother to do it. I mean, please, if you're going to do it, do it yourself. But they get mom to come and say, "Jesus, could it be alright, if one of my sons sit at your right and the other at your left?" And Jesus says, "You don't know what you're asking." Well, that is true. He said, "Are you able to drink the cup I'm going to drink?" What's He talking about? "Suffering? Are you able to do that?" "We can," they said. They didn't know what they were talking about. Jesus said, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. Those places belong to those for whom they are prepared by the Father." When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with James and John, and began to murmur against them, like people do. Jesus said, "Let's deal with this now." He gathers them together. He said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials, they exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant," 'diakonos,' from which we get 'deacon,' 'table waiter,' "And whoever wants to be first must be your slave," 'doulos,' "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." He said, "You want to be fit for greatness in the Kingdom? Then become a servant. You want to be fit for even greater greatness? Become a slave." It's a downwardly mobile trend in the Christian life.

And so in 1 Corinthians 4, the apostles worried about that church in Corinth, because they're behaving and thinking like kings. He said, "Already, you have all you want. Already, you've become rich. You've become kings, and that, without us. Oh, how I wish you really had become kings, so we could be kings with you, for it seemed to me that God has put us apostles on display, at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have become the off-scouring of the world." In other words, "Corinthians, you don't go up, up, up. You go down, down, down, and then God exalts you. That's how it works." And I tell you, this is the hardest thing in my life. I'm telling you honestly. I know the principles. I just have a hard time living them out. In my marriage, in my parenting, as a brother in Christ, as a son, in every role of my life, I'm called to go humble. And it's a challenge, because my flesh wants to go up, and wants to become a king, and wants to dominate, and rule. And the Lord is saying, "Come down where I am. And if you do, I will exalt you on Judgment Day." That's how we're going to be assessed. That's how the positions are going to be given out in the Kingdom: How much you acted like a slave and thought like a slave in this world.

Service Itself Will Be Redeemed in Heaven

And then, finally, service itself is going to be redeemed in Heaven. Do you know that, right now, God is surrounded by servants, who will do anything He commands them to do? "Thousands upon thousands attended Him," Daniel 7, "10,000 times 10,000 stood before Him, eager to do anything God says." Revelation 22, John wanted to fall and worship an angel. You remember what the angel said? "Do not do it. I am a fellow servant with you. Get up." The angels are fellow servants with you. We are fellow servants. "Get up," he says.

John Newton, the former slave trader, he said, "If two angels were sent to the Earth, one to govern an empire, and one to sweep streets, each of them would do with it the same zeal for the Master who sent them, and would not try to exchange employment." That's our future, friends. Some are going to rule more than others, but everyone is going to be content with the lot that's given them by God. And we're going to delight in those relationships, and we are going to serve Him. Revelation 22:3, "No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him." We are headed to our future of servant-hood. "And we will reign with Christ," it says, two verses later.

But here's the real shock, and with this, I close: When we're sitting at a table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the other subjects of the Kingdom, in the Kingdom, and we're eating, someone may come, and tap you on the shoulder, and say, "Would you like something to drink?" And you're going to turn, and it'll be Jesus. And you're saying, "Do you have a Scripture for that?" I do. It's in Luke 12:37, "It will be good for those servants whose Master finds them watching when He comes. I tell you the truth, He will dress Himself to serve, and will have them recline at the table, and will come, and wait on them." He's going to be our slave up there in Heaven, saying, "Can I get you something to drink? Is there something I can do for you?" And we're going to do that for each other too. Servanthood, itself, will be totally redeemed, and we'll spend eternity doing it, and we'll be glad to do it, and that is the freedom that the Gospel gives. Close with me in prayer.

Chuck Colson began his book, "Why America doesn't work", began with what he called a true parable about the significance of work. It's a true story, but it showed just how important work is in the life of a human being. The story, the true story set in World War II at a Nazi concentration camp in Hungary and these prisoners, the ones that were physically able, were compelled to work for the Nazis. There was a camp factory that distilled hundreds of tons of human waste and garbage and made alcohol as a fuel additive for Nazi vehicles. It was disgusting work, you can hardly imagine the stench, it would cause people to wretch on a daily basis, but far worse for these enslaved workers was that just the idea that their work was being used to fuel the Nazi war machine that they hated viscerally. But yet they were compelled to do this work day after day. Well, one night, in 1944, an Allied air strike took out the factory, bombed it to rubble. Well, you can imagine if you're one of those laborers, how secretly happy you were about the destruction of that factory. That is until the sadistic guards gathered the laborers together and they were brought to the compound and compelled to move a pile of rubble from one side of the compound to the other. They spent the whole day in this back breaking labor and their hearts sank as they realized, so they thought, that the Nazis were going to make them rebuild the factory. But the next day, the guards made them move that same pile of rubble back to the original starting place. And on the third day, they moved it back to where it'd been the day before. And this went on back and forth, back and forth, this pile of rubble, for seemingly nothing. Wasn't long before some of the prisoners began to fall out. They wouldn't work, they'd be kicked, they'd be beaten, they'd be put in solitary confinement, they'd be tortured, but they wouldn't work. Some of them even chose suicide by running at the electrified barbed wire that surrounded the camp compound. They would rather do that than continue to do mindless, meaningless labor. And that's really odd, isn't it? That they would rather do something productive for the evil Nazi war machine, than do something that clearly was meaningless.

And the point that Colson drew from this parable is that we must have meaningful labor to do. It's essential to who we are as human beings, we were made to work. And if we don't work at something that we think is worthwhile, we'll go stark raving mad. Now that's a bit negative. That's the way Colson chose to begin his book. Let's turn it around and make it positive. Isn't it one of the greatest graces of the Gospel, that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us eternally meaningful work to do? That your labor, the labor of your hands, the labor of your minds, of your mouth can actually count for eternity. You can build something that will last for all eternity. Isn't that one of the greatest graces that Jesus Christ has ever given us? I think it is. Now the context of our passage today may on the surface, it seems, say nothing to us at all in 21st century America. You may read it and say, "Masters and slaves. Well, what does that have to do with us?" Ever since the 13th Amendment of the Constitution was passed in 1865, abolishing slavery in the United States, you may think that that passage ceased having any relevance whatsoever to our lives. Well, that is not the case.

The center of the command has to do with how you work. With what demeanor, what heart attitude do you do your work? And how do you treat those that are entrusted to your care, who are working for you? That's the center of the passage. Now, the structure of the master-slave relationship is so rich and so poignant and in some cases so painful a topic, that I think it deserves a whole separate treatment, which God willing, I'll give next week. The question of why is it the New Testament doesn't clearly overturn slavery? I want to talk about it next week, it's a poignant question. So, if I could just ask you to set those questions aside and this morning, let's just zero in on the question of work, "How are we to work?" And I think what I want us to do, is to just try to understand work historically, but even better than that, Biblically.

Greek’s Faulty View: Work is Punishment

Now, the Greeks, the Ancient Greeks, had a faulty view of work, they thought that the gods were punishing them. Here the gods just lounged around on divine couches, eating ambrosia and drinking nectar all day long while we are consigned to work down here below. And that's the way that they thought. As a matter of fact, Plato and Aristotle thought, even within the work, there was the aristocratic kind of work that was done by educated people and then there was the common labor as well. And so, the common laborer fueled the society that enabled higher people like them to do intellectual labor, that kind of thing. Plato and Aristotle. Well, even within church history, there have been faulty views of work. This kind of two tiered view came in and gripped the church for many centuries. In medieval Catholicism, there is this idea of a separation of sacred and profane work. Profane not being immoral, but secular. Common, not directly having to do with the Gospel of Christ. And so, the sacred laborers were the pope, and the cardinals, and the bishops, and archbishops, and the priests, and the nuns, and the monks. They were of a higher order of piety than those that were farmers, or tradesmen, or even magistrates who do work in secular labor. And Eusebius said, "To them is issued a kind of lower grade piety." So, you could find yourself on the hierarchy of holiness, if you weren't a priest or something like that, you were low and your work was of little value. Well, the Reformation changed all that.

Martin Luther among others, saw in the scriptures what he called the priesthood of all believers. And the idea is that all believers can offer up by their labors, by what they do in their everyday lives, priestly sacrifices to God. It's taught in 1 Peter 2 and Ephesians 2. He saw it there and he brought it forth and he applied it in this way. He said, "When a maid cooks and cleans and does other house work, because God's command is there, even such a small work must be praised as a service of God, far surpassing the holiness and the asceticism of all monks and nuns." Well, that was revolutionary talk. The idea that a maid's labor in the kitchen could be of equal holiness and value to a pope. He said it actually is better, because he saw them as false teachers and so, just the labor of a maid or a servant in a house could be holy, that was revolutionary. And again Luther said, seemingly secular works are a worship of God and an obedience well pleasing to God. There is no such thing as secular labor therefore. The question is do you as a Christian offer up to God, to Christ, your work as a fragrant offering? That's the real issue. The full fruition of this Protestant insight came in what later came to be known as the Puritan work ethic. Many people have that phrase in their minds, but they don't know what they're talking about. At the core of it was, the Puritans thought that their labors could be offered up to God as worship. And therefore they sought to glorify God in everything they did, no matter how little or how great. William Tyndale said, "If we look externally, there is a difference betwixt washing of dishes and preaching the word of God, but as touching to please God none at all." So, it's equal to wash dishes and preach the word? Well, what Luther said is if the command of God is there, yes. You can never do better than what God's commanding you to do at that present moment, do you see?

And so, I believe that God has commanded me to preach this sermon, therefore I can't do any better than this. And God has commanded you to listen. And you can't do any better than to listen to the glory of God. But this is the way it is, you can go home and whatever it is you find to do, if the command of God is there and the Spirit of God is there, you can glorify God with it at any time. That's revolutionary. But there's a detail and a concept here. Yes, lower levels of everyday kind of life can be consecrated, but we should also have an overall sense of calling before God. And the general direction of our lives should maximally advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ, according to whatever gifting God gives you. Look at Romans 12 for a fuller treatment of that, but whatever you're called to be in the Body of Christ, be it maximally to the glory of God so that the kingdom of Christ gets advanced. And so, the Puritans had the concept of a calling, one's calling or vocation which is just the Latinized word of that, vocare. The calling of God. He's calling on you to do something. And so, William Perkins said this, "A vocation or a calling is a certain kind of life, ordained and imposed on man by God for the common good. Every person of every degree, state, sex, or condition without exception must have some personal and particular calling to walk in." We as people of God, as Christians, need to recover that sense of calling. It's not, friends, just a career. And so, may I challenge those of you that are high school students, as you look ahead to what lies in your future, if you're college students, if you look ahead to what God may be calling you to do, have a sense of calling from God. Don't just choose a career. The real issue is what are you going to present to Christ on judgment day? How did you advance the kingdom of Christ? And so, that means, both the little, the minutia, of everyday life, washing dishes, and the overall grand calling of your life, all of it can be done and should be done to the glory of God for the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

God a Worker, Not an Idler

Now the Bible supports these concepts. The Bible actually has much to say about a right doctrine of work. Let me trace it out very quickly. It begins with the first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And so, in Genesis 1, we see God a worker, not an idler, He's doing creative work. He's calling something out of nothing. He is working. He's creating a universe filled with stars and planets. He creating a beautiful planet. He's separating the water from the dry land and He's causing plants to appear and beasts of the earth and birds of the air. He's doing all of this labor, the culmination on the sixth day, the creation of man. "And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, He rested from all the creative work that He'd been doing." You see, God is an active, creative laborer. And doesn't God enjoy His work? Doesn't He delight in it? Doesn't He look over all that He's made and said, behold it's very good. There's a sense of deep satisfaction in the labor of God. That's the first indication we get of a Biblical view of work. And then Jesus told us in John 5:17, He's still working. As a matter of fact, He works all the time. My Father is always at His work to this very day. "And I too am working," said Jesus. Well, God then intended to give that good gift to the human race in Eden. He gave them creative work to do. In Genesis 1:28, it said that God blessed them, male and female, created in the image of God. “He blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’" There was a whole world to be explored. There were gardens to be planted and harvests to be brought forth. There were all kinds of creative things to be done and that was just given to us as the human race to do.

Work in Eden: The Gift Given

And so, my friends, work is no punishment from God. It is a good gift of God. And Adam, even when he was alone before Eve was created, he was put in the garden it says, “to work it and to take care of it.” There was a work there and he was to till the ground. And all the animals are brought for him to name and so you have physical labor and intellectual labor. Both of them there in the garden, from the very beginning. Work then, is a good gift from God. But after the fall work itself became cursed. God cursed Adam specifically in the area of his work, his labor. It's what it says in Genesis 3:17 and following, to Adam He said, "Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you shall return." What is He doing? He's cursing work there. He's cursing his labor. I think the greatest curse then on work is its emptiness. Its futility. The fact that you wrestle with the dust and the dust wins. The stuff you make turns back into dust and nothing comes of it. It says in Ecclesiastes 2, "What does man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days, his work, his pain and grief. Even at night his mind does not rest, this too is meaningless." So, that's the curse really, it's a sense of meaninglessness attached to our work. That our work will amount to nothing. That is the curse. Well, work was carried on after the fall, Noah made an ark to save his family. Labor continued on, in some ways blessed by God, in some ways an experience of the curse. We see the greatest example of that with the Israelite's experience in Egypt, after Joseph had died and the Egyptians forced them into bitter bondage and servitude. It says in Exodus 1:14, "They made their lives bitter with hard labor and brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly." So, there you have the bitterness of work in bondage in slavery done there in Exodus 1.

Christ’s Example Glorifying the Father by Labor

Well, after the exodus, God regulated work at the Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments, and the fourth commandment, the Sabbath day commandment, He said this, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, on it you shall not do any work." Now let's read it fairly. Here work is both commanded, "Six days you shall labor." And it is also regulated, "The seventh day is holy to the Lord, on it you shall not do any work," and so, we have a balanced treatment then of what work is like in the Fall. Now in the New Testament, Jesus gives us a beautiful example of work, doesn't He? Jesus came as the Father's servant. I'm going to talk much about that next week. Very important in my understanding about slavery is Jesus' response to it. But Jesus came and He said, "My Father is always at His work to this very day and I too am working." And He said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and finish His work." It was like eating for Him, it was like a delicious meal to do the will of His Father, to labor for His Father. And the greatest glory, I believe that God has ever gotten from a human being on earth, is the finished body of work that Jesus presented to Him finished at the cross. And He says in John 17:4, "Father, I brought you glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do." That is the greatest glory God the Father ever received from a human being on earth. The finished body of work that Jesus hands to Him. Perfection itself, and friends, this is the Gospel. In that perfection we stand. That perfect work of Jesus, He shed His blood on the cross. He died on the cross that we might have eternal life. And we are sinners. We heard it four times today. The testimony of we are sinners. We can be freed from our sin by stepping into that finished body of work that Jesus gave us, where He shed His blood on the cross. Come to Christ. If you've never trusted Him, maybe you were invited today. I think we had a newspaper ad today about this sermon. Maybe you came because of a newspaper ad. Maybe you came to hear a friend's baptismal testimony. Come to faith in Christ. Worry about how you're going to work by and by, step into Jesus' work now. And trust in Him for the salvation of your soul.

Paul’s Example and Commands

But Jesus showed us how to work. He showed us that we should be working as unto God. A finished body of work. Paul, the apostle, gave us a beautiful example as well. He was a hard worker. He labored day and night for the cause of the gospel. And he did secular labor. You remember, in Acts 18:3, we learned that he was a tentmaker. He worked with his hands sewing tents. And I believe that if you put it all together, he worked hard late at night to support himself and his traveling companion so that during the day and into the evening he could preach the Gospel. Now that's labor. He was a hard worker. 1 Thessalonians 2:9 says, "Surely you remember brothers, our toil and hardship. We worked night and day, in order not to be a burden to anyone, while we preached the Gospel of God to you." Paul therefore gave consistent commands concerning work in his epistles. Not just here in Colossians 3, which we'll get to in a moment. But in many places he talked about work. He gives us commands about work like this one. 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10 tells us that idleness is a sin and that you need to provide for your own needs and the needs of your family by your own labors. Don't rest on the church, or lean on others, or lean on the state. But he said this, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you brothers to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." And so there's a labor there and a connection between eating. But Paul also taught the very thing that we're going to talk about in a moment, Colossians 3, that our work can be, should be, an offering of worship to Christ, that we should be giving up our lives. One final statement in the sweep of work, history of work, what about the New Heaven and the New Earth? Are we going to be like those Greek gods sitting on a divan couch, having angels bringing us grapes? Those poor angels, they're servants. It says right there, they're born to serve us, right? So they're going to be bringing us grapes up in the New Heaven and the New Earth. No, I don't believe so. I think just the curse of work will be removed. And we will have work to do, and we will delight in it like God delighted in Genesis 1. For it says in Revelation 22:3, "No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him." It says in another place, "We will reign with Christ." How can you reign and how can you serve without being a servant doing work? And so we'll talk about that more next time. But yes, you have work in your future. Yes, you have work eternally in your future, but it will not be cursed work, it will be a delightful blessing to you. That is the future. 

Basic Command: Obey Your Earthly Masters

Now, what does Paul command here in Colossians 3? Well, the basic command here is, "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything." This is comprehensive obedience, similar to wives being told to submit to their husbands in everything, and children being told to obey their parents in everything. We know that this sense of everything isn't absolute above the allegiance we owe to Christ. They can't contradict the commands of God and we have to follow them instead of God; that they cannot do. But in everything else, we must obey; that's what he's teaching here. It does imply God-ordained authority, and submission to it is glorifying to God. Now, it says, "Submit to your earthly masters." The Greek word here is "According to the flesh", literally. Your "according to the flesh" masters. And I think the indication here is that these are your temporary masters. These are the ones who have control over your bodily actions, but they don't own your soul. So there's a limit to their authority. God alone rules over our souls. God alone is King over both soul and body. But these are our earthly masters. It also implies it's temporary. That boss you're thinking of right now won't be your boss forever. Okay? But Jesus will be our master for all eternity. Thus, submission to God-ordained authority is the regular pattern established for God's people. Away then with rebellion. Away with murmuring against your boss, talking about your boss behind his back. Away with all of these kinds of things. Gladly submit to the ordained authority, to the glory of God.

Working with Integrity

Now, he teaches us here we are to work with integrity. He says, "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, and do it not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord." He's going for the heart here, isn't he? He's going for what's going on in your heart when you serve this boss, this master. The question is one of integrity of heart. Now, what do I mean by integrity? Well, I think of the word, or the sense of integer, or one. You are one person all the time, no matter who's watching. That is a goal of the Christian life, isn't it? A simplicity of the Christian life. You're going to be the same person all the time. And the issue here in the Greek, the original word, is "eye pleasers." Don't be an eye pleaser. The ESV just brings it right across neatly. And don't be a people pleaser, somebody doing eye service or people pleasing. Eye service is an act, isn't it? It's an act. We are actors. The boss comes in, "Oh, yes, sir. Right away, sir." And as soon as they go out, make a face around the corner. And behind their back we say edgy things about them. You have to do it in a certain way that they don't know, people don't know that you're slandering your boss, but that's what's going on. And why? Because we don't want to submit to authority. We don't like that relationship. He's saying don't do that, be the same person all the time. Be the same person all the time. Years ago, I had computer software, a piece of computer software, a chess game, and you could play chess against the computer, but it had a hotkey that if you hit it, a spreadsheet would come up. Just like that, a fake spreadsheet would come up. It had no software connected to it, it was just a picture of a very busy spreadsheet. And when the boss is coming, you just hit this thing. It actually told you that in the guide. It's like you hit this thing and you're just working, you've got a bunch of papers, and then you hit the hotkey and the chess game comes back. Well, I've heard there's many such things like that. Software programmers are building this kind of stuff in. And it's getting worse. It gets worse around March Madness, when it's actually openly encouraged that you're going to have office interruptions. You can watch the game in a lower window, down in the lower left-hand corner of the screen while you're doing the rest of the work. What is going on? Integrity of heart. Working as unto the Lord, that's what he's calling on us to do here, sincerity. Because if you behave differently in one case than another, you're an actor. And, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." You've gotta be a fake person. And if you really, at heart, are in seething resentment against your boss, it's going to show at some point. Don't do that.

 Worshiping Christ Through Work

Instead, worship Christ through your work. The key to that kind of labor is Christ-focused. Look what it says here, verse 22 through 24, "With sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord"; verse 23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men," verse 24, "Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward." It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Okay, we get it. Four times in three verses. It's the Lord, it's the Lord, it's the Lord. Focus on Christ in all your work, and everything you do will float up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 

Now, we've already seen this in Colossians in 3:17, where it says, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." And you ought to do it with an eye toward Judgment Day. Look ahead to Judgment Day. Look at verse 24, "you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord." It is the Lord you're serving. You're going to get an inheritance. What is that? That is a piece of the New Heaven and New Earth given to you forever. Jesus talked about possessions of your own, it will be yours. Now, next week, I want to talk about how our rewards are based on how much we think like slaves here on Earth now. We'll talk about that next week. It's really a vital understanding. I thought it's hard enough listening to one full sermon on labor and put a sermon on slavery right on top of it. But I think this is the idea. Your reward system is based on how much you serve like Christ did, and you will get an inheritance. And God, it says in Hebrews 6:10, “is not unjust.” “He is not unjust.” He will not forget your labor and the work you have shown Him as you have helped His people and continue to help Him. He will not forget. You may have an unjust master, you may have a tyrannical master who does not give you what is right and fair, but Christ is not like that. He will never forget even a cup of cold water given to serve Him.

Understand Your True Master: Christ

Now, there's also a warning, verse 25 "Anyone who does what is wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism." “There's no favoritism, oh slave. He's not going to give you an advantage because you are a slave. He wants to know "Did you obey Me in this? Did you follow Me in this word? Based on that, I will reward you." There's no favoritism. Now, fascinatingly, in Ephesians 6, the phrase "no favoritism" gets directed toward the master. And so in chapter 4, verse one, Paul now turns to the master, and he looks at the master and says "There's no favoritism there either." And someday you're going to have to give an account to Christ for how you treat those entrusted to your care. Look what it says, chapter four, verse one, "Master, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a master in Heaven." So understand your true master. It's easy for the master to lose perspective. You get corrupted by power. You forget that there's somebody above you and He's going to judge how you deal with your position of authority.

In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe published the second edition of her book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and it was a vivid description of the life of a slave and the American South prior to the Civil War, and in that second edition, in the deluxe edition, there were pictures done by artists of certain poignant scenes in her book. And in one of the scenes, the wicked master Simon Legree is beating Uncle Tom savagely, and he is behaving in a very Christ-like manner similar to Stephen, and his behavior is so effective in the lives of those standing around watching, even administering the beating, so the slave that was administering the beating, that they were converted to Christ as a result. But there's a picture, and the picture is of Simon Legree beating Uncle Tom and Jesus watching everything, watching everything. Now we don't need an artist's rendition of that, we have the Scripture, He's watching everything. He's watching everything. And so treat your slaves in a way that is right and fair, it says. Jesus watches everything. Someday you must give Him an account. 

Understand Your Responsibility: Fair Provision

Now, what is your responsibility as a master, it says? Well, fair provision. Fair provision, “provide your slaves with what is right and fair because you know that you also have a Master in Heaven.” In Ephesians 6:9, it says "Masters, treat your slaves in the same way." Well, in the same way as what? How about in the same way as you would want to be treated if it were reversed? How about that? Or even better, in the same way that Christ your master treats you as His slave? How about that? And how good is Christ as a master? Is He not a delightful master? More on that next week. But treat your slaves the same way as Christ is treating you as His slave. Now what is right and fair? I might get a little revolutionary here, but I think it has to do with wages. You say "Well it's not slavery if there's wages." Who told you that? Think about this, Matthew 10:10 says "The worker is worth his keep." Now I don't know necessarily keep has to be in cash money, but at least what is right and fair is a good living arrangement, food, clothing, and shelter, those kind of things that you have come to expect, at least that. His keep, a worker is worth his keep. But how about James 5:4, in which rich oppressors are called out by James for judgment? And he says "Look, the wages you fail to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” “He will repay if you don't pay those right wages.” James 5:4. Well, at least what is right and fair is sustenance, care for their bodies and for their lives, yes. So away with sweatshops where grossly underpaid Asian workers are doing labor now, and other people are marking up what they do and making great profit on it. Away with that, because it goes on today. What is right and fair? How would you want to be treated if the situation were reversed? And understand your future, someday you will give a full account to Christ. Ephesians 6:9 says "Masters, treat your slaves in the same way, do not threaten them, since you know that He who is both their Master and yours is in Heaven and there's no favoritism with Him."

Alright, what application can we take? We've had a history, a look at history and how different people have seen work. We've seen the Biblical correction that work is a delightful thing, creative and wonderful, but cursed after the Fall. And now Jesus has given us an example of how to work even under the curse, glorifying God. The Apostle Paul made it a command for us, how then shall we work? Well I think we ought to work as priests offering daily sacrifices to please the Lord. Consecrate yourself every day. Remind yourself "This work that I'm doing, no matter what it is, if it is honest labor, not immoral labor, honest labor, this work is my offering to Christ today." And if you can't do it with a clear conscience, then get out of that line of work, do something else. I'm not even talking about immoral things; it may be you feel you've missed your calling, then find it, find it. Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the hardest working composers that ever lived, 1685 was born. In 1985 at a radio station near where I was living at that time, they had the 300th anniversary of his birth, and they celebrated it with 300 consecutive hours of his music and never played a repeat. Wow. At the bottom of every page it said SDG in his own hand, "Soli Deo Gloria," "To the glory of God alone I write this music." He never forgot, he just thought about it all the time. This is for the glory of God. This is for the glory of God, so also you, when you do your labor to the glory of God.

Watch out for dangers connected with work. Don't waste your life working on things that don't matter. Ask the question, "Is my life calling advancing the kingdom of Christ as I feel it should? Is it lined up with my gifts? Am I advancing the cause of Christ with the work I spend all my life doing?" Do you want to present this to God on Judgment Day? This will be the majority of how you spend your waking hours. Is this what you're called to do? Ask that question. Because it says in 1 Corinthians 3, that “Judgment Day like a fire will test the quality of everyone's work, and if what you have built remains, you will receive a reward. But if it burns up like wood, hay and stubble, you'll lose it, though you yourself be saved as one escaping through the flames.” Don't let your work be burned up. Danger number two: Avoid careerism. Work as self-worship, 60 hours a week, 70 hours a week, the career, upwardly mobile, right? It's really a form of self-worship. It does not glorify Christ. Well why not? Because your family withers. Last week we talked about parental responsibilities to train and disciple your children. They're wondering where you are, wondering where you are. Can't do what you need to do because work is always getting in the way. Your church work suffers. You're not able to use your spiritual gifts. Church ministries, good church ministries go begging because people are too busy to do them because of careerism. Danger number three is laziness and earthly hedonism. More and more our culture is given over to entertainment and to pleasure. John Piper said this, he said, "I feel such a burden for us as a church to swim against the tide of almost every current in our culture. More and more America is a nation given over to play. The industries of play are huge. Houses are built today with entertainment centers, computers and videos and television and stereo all coordinate to give us ever more stimulating and captivating distractions from the realities of the world. When we need to be dreaming for the glory of Christ about how to spend our lives alleviating ignorance and sickness and misery and lostness, we're becoming more and more addicted to amusement." "And all you married couples and single people, in the prime of your life, beware of being swept into the all-consuming demands of your careers only to find yourself gasping for some fun and entertainment on the weekend, finding your relief from worldly work and worldly fun, and waking perhaps someday to realize you have no taste for the things of God. You have become a connoisseur of restaurants and videos and movies and sports and stocks and computers and 100 transient things, and all the while, your sense of Heaven and Hell has died. Wake up before it's too late. And tremble at these things today and set your mind to think about the biggest issues of life in the universe, eternal life or eternal death." Well I agree with him. Don't waste your life. Work for the glory of God.

Final comment, workplace evangelism. The number one way that we as Christians mesh with in a deeper level, the lives of unbelievers these days is the workplace. More than the neighborhood, more than any other place, it's the workplace, or for you students, it's school where you're learning. That's where you rub shoulders with unbelievers. Make it your place of ministry evangelistically. Jesus said, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." Do you have a strategy for reaching your company for Christ? You may say "Oh, I'm not the only Christian there." Well then get together with the other Christians and come up together with a strategy for reaching your workplace for Christ. No one else in this church can reach that place. You are the missionary from this church to that work place. I did a sheet called "Top 10 Ministry Tips for Workplace Evangelism", they're out at the doors. I'm not going to go through it with you now. Take that green sheet and look it over, and make the workplace a place where you see people coming to faith in Christ. I would love to see more and more people baptized in this church. It's my greatest burden here, is to see people converted from lostness, baptized as disciples of Jesus Christ, and then taught to obey everything He's commanded. Oh, how I yearn to see that. Workplace is one of the key ways for us to do it. Close with me if you would in prayer.

Childhood is full of wonders and mysteries. I think it's a problem of adulthood that we lose that sense of wonder and awe. And when I listen to that song, that's the song based on Psalm 8, I just close my eyes and think of the majesty and glory that God has put in physical creation. And for a moment again, I am a child, I think about the wonder of the new creation, the new Heaven, the new Earth when we get to see it with new eyes. When we get to walk on the new Earth in resurrection bodies and we'll be like children again, so childhood is a time of mysteries and wonders. Now recently I was reading part of the autobiography of Charles Spurgeon and he was talking about a mystery he saw in his grandparents' home. And I'm going to read this quote, I think it's so marvelous.

He said, "I remember well, in my early days seeing upon my grandmother's mantel shelf an apple contained in a bottle. This was a great wonder and mystery to me, and I tried to investigate it. My question was, ‘How came the apple to get inside so small a bottle?’ The apple was quite as big around as the bottle, by what means it was placed within it? That was the mystery. Though it was treason to touch anything on the mantelpiece at my grandparents' home, yet I took down the bottle and convinced my youthful mind that the apple could never have passed through the narrow neck. And by means of attempting to unscrew the bottom, I became equally certain the apple did not enter from below. What was the answer, then? I held to the notion that by occult means, magical means, somehow the bottle had been made in two pieces, the apple inserted and afterwards, somehow the bottle had been mysteriously joined in such a way, in so careful a manner that no trace of the joint remained. I was hardly satisfied with the theory, but as no philosopher was at hand to suggest any other hypothesis, I let the matter rest. Yet another mystery of childhood."

Now, it wasn't until the next summer, a year later, that he finally solved the mystery. He was walking through his grandparents' orchards, and there, he came to a tree on which was a bottle just like that one, and inside the narrow neck of the bottle was the branch and a little bud, where it was forming a new apple. And at last, the mystery was solved. He knew how the apple got inside the bottle. It was raised there, it grew up inside the bottle, and then at the right time they just pulled the bottle off the branch and set it up on the mantelpiece to stupefy and amaze young boys as they walked by, trying to wonder how in the world that apple got inside the bottle.

Another step toward adulthood, one more mystery solved for Charles Spurgeon. But being the preacher that he was, he sought to apply it spiritually, and he applied it to the parent-child relationship. The application was plain. Bring children into a healthy, loving relationship with the Savior early in life. So saturate their lives with Christ that they never know a time that they didn't know the Savior, they never know a time that they didn't love the Savior, that they were amazed with Him, that they loved Him and cherished Him. Saturate their lives from an early beginning in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is the awesome and joyful responsibility of parenting, isn't it? Of Christian parenting. To take a tiny, helpless baby that comes home from the hospital, and begin saturating that child's life and experience with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so that they come into a vibrant living faith with Jesus at an early age. And then lead fruitful, healthy, productive lives for the Savior until at last, Jesus takes them home and they live in eternity in the presence of their Father, their God and Father. That's a responsibility. That's the centerpiece of parenting for a Christian. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Describing the Fruitful New Life

We come to just two verses in Colossians 2, and I want to set parenting in context in light of Colossians. We've already talked about the new life in the Lord, that the Lord is giving us a new life. It's a life that only He can shape and craft. And He talked about taking out the heart of stone and giving you the heart of flesh, and with that comes a whole new way of living, a whole new life in Christ. And we described that life a number of times, in Colossians 1:10 for example, it says "We pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God." The life is again described in the early part of Colossians 2 in similar manner, a life pleasing to the Lord, bearing good fruit, rooted and grounded in the truth. Colossians 3, the life gets far more full treatment, far fuller treatment, and we've seen it richly developed there in Colossians 3. For example, in 1-4 it talks about “setting your hearts on things above since Christ is our life, and our life is hidden with Christ in God.” We should be setting our hearts on things above, not on things below. And then the connection to that in the second section was mortification, or the putting to death sin by the power of the Spirit, we are to “put to death the deeds of the flesh,” we're to be holy and be at warfare with our own sinfulness. And then thirdly, we are going to clothe ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,” and we're going to live at harmony with the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church of incredible variety where we lose our ultimate identity as “Barbarian, Scythian, slave or free,” but we come into an incredible new union with one another, the Church of Jesus Christ. And then finally saturating our hearts with Jesus Christ, “the peace of God ruling in your heart,” “the word of Christ richly dwelling in your heart,” the name of Christ motivating everything that you do and thankfulness given to Jesus Christ for everything.

That is the new life. Now, the most critical arena in which that new life is to be lived is the Christian family, the home. And it began two weeks ago, we looked at the relationship between husbands and wives. “Wives submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord,” and “husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” We have this teaching of the new life of Jesus Christ, applied to marriage. But then we go to what I consider the second most important relationship, human relationship, on Earth, and that is the parent-child relationship. It is second to the husband-wife relationship, it's contingent upon it of course, but it is absolutely vital to our future, so we focus on it today.

Now, there are two basic commands given to children here first. Children are dealt with first. Now, only one of the two commands is given here in Colossians. Both commands are given in the parallel text in Ephesians. Take a minute, and keep your finger here on Colossians 3, and go over to Ephesians 6:1-3. And these two are parallel texts but Ephesians is a little fuller, as it was also in marriage. And the two basic commands are given. In Colossian 3:20 it says, "Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord." Ephesians 6:1 picks up on the same command, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." And then Ephesian 6:2, "Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the Earth." And so these are the two commandments given to children.

Straight From the Mouth of God: Honor Your Parents

Children, it's very simple, honor your parents and obey them. It's that simple. And I believe the two are intimately related. In other words I think 'honor' is the basic commandment and 'obey' flowers up from that. I think the obedience is a subset of the honoring. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Now the first command, “honor your father and mother,” which is quoted directly by Paul in Ephesian 6 comes straight from the mouth of Almighty God. See, I believe that good preaching comes from a kind of a community conviction that this book is in fact the Word of God written, and the preacher realizes his job is to say, "This is what the text says." Right? We all see it, and then get out of the way and say, "Thus says the Lord. Now do it." And so that it is for children, you're hearing the mouth of God now, not the mouth of a preacher. There could be another preacher up here telling you the same thing. Picture yourselves at the foot of Mount Sinai and God descending in fire to the top of the mountain, and the ground beneath your feet shaking, and a voice such as you have never heard in history and has never been heard like that again, in history. The voice of Almighty God saying, "I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." And then He gives those first four commandments which describe that vertical relationship of human beings with Almighty God. But then comes the horizontal relationship, the final six commands of the 10 commandments.

And the first of that second table of the law, of the horizontal commands human to human is, children obey your parents. “Honor your father and mother in the Lord.” In Exodus 20 verse 12, God is speaking this word to you. And therefore, no matter how many flaws you see in your parents, and there are many. I never realized how many there were. I'm not talking about my own parents. I'm talking about me. But as many flaws as there are in your parents, you are still to honor them, for thus says the Lord. And Paul connects it to promises of long life and prosperity. “That it may go well with you and you may enjoy long life on the Earth.” The first commandment he says, with a promise. And so there is a rich life promised you if you'll simply obey this command to honor your father and mother. On the negative side, there are all kinds of threats connected with disobeying this commandment. Very next chapter, in Exodus 21:15 it says, "Anyone who attacks his father or mother must be put to death." Two verses later, Exodus 21:17 says, "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be to death." The death penalty is connected with dishonoring a parent, which Jesus upholds in Matthew 15, you can read it. Our gentle Saviour, meek and mild, saying, "Anyone who dishonors his father must be put to death," Matthew 15. Or in Deuteronomy 21:18-21, it says more fully, "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders of the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid." Or, I think in a very picturesque way, Proverbs 30:17 says, "The eye that mocks a father, that scorns obedience to a mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley and will be eaten by vultures." Therefore, this must be a very serious sin if so many warnings are connected with it, even capital punishment.

And I believe this issue is so significant that Paul, in his list of sins in Romans 1, puts it right there in the list, along with murder and other serious sins. Dishonoring a parent, listen what it says. In Romans 1:29-32 this is talking about the effect of sin and how it just pollutes all of human life. He says, "They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents." A few verses later he says, "Those who do such things deserve death." That's in the New Testament, friends. It's a very serious thing then to dishonor and to disobey your parents. Therefore, one of the most important things a Jewish father or mother could do is to train up their children in the fear and the nurture of the Lord to capture Paul's expression. To bring their children up diligently so that they would not at some point have to experience capital punishment for sin. It says in Proverbs 23:13-14, "Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death." Or again, Proverbs 13:24, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." We come to this first commandment. The commandment for children. It's the first of the second table of the law, the horizontal relationship. Honor your father and mother. What does it mean then to honor? That's a very, very important question.

Now, honor, I believe, starts in the heart. It's a heart disposition. It's an attitude. You know how it says, “sanctify in your hearts Jesus as Lord, and always be prepared to give a defense for the hope you have.” You've set Jesus apart in your heart as Lord. He has a special place in your heart. At a much lower level, so it is I think with parents. Your parents are set apart in your heart as worthy of honor simply because they are your parents. I think that's what it talks about. It's a heart attitude and there's many different commands in the Bible about who we are to honor. There's different levels of honor, it depends on the person you're talking about. It says, "We are to fear God and honor the King" in 1 Peter. We are to honor church leaders who govern well. We are to honor employers even if they are unbelievers. Honor them with our good service. We are to honor the elderly and to rise up in their presence. We are to honor widows and care for their needs. We are to honor people who risk their lives for the spread of the gospel. Philippians chapter 2. Above all, we are to honor Almighty God. We are to honor God in our hearts. 

It says in 1 Timothy 1:17, "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible. To the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." I believe then that children have to be taught that there's a connection between honoring their parents and honoring God. They're to be trained to know that honoring your father and mother is a way of honoring Almighty God. Now outward displays of honor, remember I said it starts in the heart. There's a heart disposition toward honoring, but then it flows out toward actions. There are certain physical actions that denote honor. For example, a husband speaking words of praise for his faithful and fruitful wife as Leah supposed that Jacob would now that she had borne him six sons, "Now my husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons." Or this, bowing low before a mighty governor who holds in his hand your lives as Joseph's brothers did, not knowing it was Joseph. But they bowed down and paid him honor as the ruler under Pharaoh of all of Egypt. Or a richly ornamented robe given to Aaron, to set him apart and give him honor in the eyes of the Israelites as the high priest. Or seats of honor at the banquet which some people grab inappropriately, selfishly. But Jesus said it's better if the master of the banquet invites you from the lower seat up to a seat of honor and you sit there and you are honored in the eyes of all there at the wedding banquet. Or being clothed in a kingly robe and seated on a horse the King has ridden, and having one of the King's princes lead you through the streets of the city and say this is what is “done for the man whom the King delights to honor.” As was done for Mordecai at the order of Xerxes when Xerxes wanted to honor him for rescuing him from the assassins. Or public recognition of honor given to David's mighty men for their deeds of valor on the battlefield. They are held in honor by the people because of public recognition of David and that they were his mighty men.

All of these things are physical actions. Robes and places of honor at the banquet, and five times as much food for Benjamin that Joseph gave. He was honored in the eyes of his brothers. All of these physical things should flow from a heart attitude of setting apart parents. Now you might say, I don't want to do that list. I don't think my parents want to be seated on any horse and ridden through downtown Durham saying, "This is what is done for parents whom I'm delighting to honor." I don't think that would do it. There's no need to do that kind of thing, however, there are physical actions that do communicate honor now. For example, both of you comes to the door, speaking now to you children, step back and let your father or your mother go through first. Hold the chair for your mom. Hold your chair for your mom and push it in at the dinner table. Wait at the dinner table until your parents begin eating. Or if there is a buffet line, you're going to step back and you're going to let your parents go ahead of you and also elderly people as well. Let your father lead spiritually in your family devotion times. We'll talk more about that in a few minutes, but follow his leadership, support it. Be glad that you have a father that's leading spiritually. When you answer your parents, answer with respectful titles, like “yes dad,” “yes mom,” “yes daddy,” “yes mommy,” “yes sir,” “yes ma'am.” Whatever your parents set up, there should be a title of honor there, not just “yeah” or “whatever,” or anything like that. But titles of honor. Words spoken of honor. Don't murmur against decisions that your parents make. But speak respectfully to them and about them behind their backs. Don't slander your parents. And when they tell you to do something, don't roll your eyes. Don't roll your eyes. I don't know if there's like a teen school, where you go to learn how to do that. I think it's best not to learn how to do that. But with your eyes, show respect and honor. Facial expressions matter. Don't you remember what Almighty God said to Cain before he killed Abel? "Why are you angry and why is your face downcast?" Facial expressions matter, so therefore put your honor of your parents on your face. Show them that you honor them.

A Culture of Dishonor

Now we live in a culture of dishonor, sadly. Post '60s, our culture delights in  stripping people, God-ordained authority, stripping them of the trappings of honor, and it's a sad commentary. It's the natural connection of “question authority.” It goes beyond that. Now strip authority of all honor, and you can go to websites and blogs and look at YouTube videos that are designed to strip God-ordained authorities of honor. Let's not be part of that, let's not be part of the culture of dishonor, but rather, let us honor our parents.

Now, a subset of honor, as I've said, is comprehensive obedience. Honor comes first in the heart, and out of that flows comprehensive obedience. So it says, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." Submission to God-ordained authority begins with this parent-child relationship. Starts there. If the child is not trained to submit gladly to parental authority, that child will struggle with that relationship the rest of their lives. Rest of their lives, especially they will struggle with submitting to God. So, there's comprehensive obedience. Now obviously, when it says, "in everything", this does not extend to an unbelieving father being able to forbid his children from coming to faith in Christ. There is no relationship more significant than that of the individual soul with Almighty God through Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Himself said, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." So we've got to put Jesus first. But in all other commands that are not contrary to scripture, the children are to obey completely.

Reasons for Obedience

Disobedience, I think, is the sin we inherited from our first father, Adam. He disobeyed the command concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so therefore, we are saved from rebellion back into a life of honor and obedience. And Jesus said, "If you love Me you will obey what I command." Those two are not contradictory. We can love our parents and obey them. And so therefore there's that sweet relationship of recognizing, "This one is in authority over me and I love them. And I'm going to obey them because the Lord told me to." So children who are trained in comprehensive obedience to their parents will then later readily submit to the difficult commands that Jesus will give them in their lives. They are being trained to obey Jesus ultimately. So there are practical aspects of this, practical daily life issues. Like daily chores, cleaning your bedroom. And if there is a standard set by the parents for the bedroom, it entails the following ten things: a bed made, all the pillows on the bed, all the books on the bookshelf, nothing under the bed, none of those secret hiding places or any of that kind of stuff. This is what a clean room is, then you are to clean the room completely.

So, we have learned the standard of obedience, we learned it early on in our parenting. It's down in the hall, down the children's hall, a godly woman put it up there. Obedience equals all the way, right away with a happy spirit. Those three aspects are what we look for from our children. “All the way” means you do all 10 things that equals cleaning the room. Not 4 of the 10 or 2 ½ of the 10, but all 10, that's what 'all the way' means. “Right away” is prompt obedience. As the slogan says, "To delay is to disobey." I will obey immediately whatever you say to do. And with a happy spirit, joyfully as unto the Lord saying, "I am glad I have a mom and dad. I'm glad there is a God who sits on His throne. It delights me to do this." As it says in 1 John, "His commands are not burdensome.” They actually bring health and delight to my life. I'm happy to do it. I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. This is one of the commands that God has given to the children, they should run in it and be happy.

Now, how can you tell if they're happy? Well, by what they say when you tell them what to do. And so we listen very carefully to the answer that's given. Jesus said, "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks." So there should be a respectful, happy response and if there is not, then parents, you have some work to do. And if there is not, children, you have some work to do. Say, "Yes, Dad, I'd be happy to do that." That's the delight. Now, the reasons given for this obedience in Ephesians 6:1 it says, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." Like two plus two equals four. Like the sun comes up in the east, it's just right in God's universe to do it. It's just right. Or in Colossians 3:20 it says, "Children obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord." The implication is, this is the only kind of life that God will bless. The only kind of life pleasing to Him.

Now, fuller instructions are given to parents, as usual. We bear the heavy burden and responsibility. And it's not reading your children's mail to read Colossians 3:20 and say, "I need to help them obey me." I mean, it's their command, but I need to help them to be obedient to me. But the fuller instructions are given here. Colossians 3:21 says, "Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged." And in Ephesians 6:4 it says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Now both Ephesians and Colossians begin with negative commands, in other words, what not to do. Now, the Greek word "fathers" I think does focus on the husband and father and his role of leading the family. But it is sometimes translated in such a way that it could mean parents. And so I think both father and mother can get some instruction from these commands, while the father still knows that he's the head of the house and responsible ultimately to see it done in his house.

So what are the negative commands? Well it says, "Do not exasperate your children." The Greek word literally means to provoke them or to fan them into a flame, implying to fan their sin natures into a flame. It's used of a bellows blowing on a spark and the spark becomes a fire. And so we all have in-dwelling sin nature. Don't blow on the spark of the sin nature, getting it to rise up. Don't do that. Don't provoke them. The word sometimes is used of a minor irritation, too, like a rock in your shoe, or a burr under your saddle. Don't be a rock in your son or daughter's shoe or a burr under their saddle. Don't irritate them and annoy them. Ephesians 6, the negative command focuses on anger. "Don't provoke them to anger." Don't get them enraged or bitter. Now the reason given in Colossians is they will become discouraged. Now, this is a very powerful Greek word, this word, discouraged. I believe that Satan almost more than anything else, tries to give the people of God depression or discouragement, to suck the life out of them, to feel a burden of God's commands. And so you're just crushed and you can't move.

Have you ever seen pictures of the people in the Great Depression, like the Oklahoma farmers during the Dust Bowl? Or you look at somebody in the streets of a major city, and they're just sitting there. These black and white photos of people whose spirit has been sucked from them by economic disaster. They're just devastated by it, and they have no life in their face. They have no energy, no hope. That can happen to children. Their parents can suck the hope out, the spirit is gone from them. Or that movie, I don't know if some of you saw it, "Amazing Grace," about William Wilberforce. I don't know if you remember at the beginning of the movie, Wilberforce is riding with a friend in a downpour, and he's in a horse-drawn carriage. They come around the bend, and there is a horse, a beast of burden, laying in the mud in front of an overloaded cart. And the masters of the horse are just beating on that horse, but it's not even twitching. It's not defending itself in any way. It's just beaten down. And Wilberforce gets out, and talks to the master, and then begins to talk to the horse. And before you know it, the horse is back up on its feet. There's a sense in which parents can do that to children, just beat them down, so that there's just no spark, no life left in them. That's what this word means. Do not exasperate your children, or they will become discouraged.

10 Ways Parents Can Cause Children to Lose Heart

Now, there are different ways we can do that. John MacArthur lists a number of ways. And I was reading this. First of all, by overprotection. You set the boundaries so narrowly in their lives that they have no freedom. They feel that you do not trust them in any way, and they're trying to break free from a noose they feel is around their neck. That's one way. Secondly, there's favoritism. Choosing one child and elevating that child above all the others, like Jacob did with Joseph. I think there's that sense of, "He's my favorite. Everybody like him please. I'm giving him a coat." It's difficult. Jacob played favorites with Joseph. That's dangerous. Thirdly, depreciating their worth. Saying things to tear them down with your words saying, "You'll never amount to anything.” “Look at that, you failed again." And the words just suck the life out of the heart of a child. They feel they can never please you. Fourthly, setting unrealistic goals. Never rewarding or praising your children, making them feel as though they have to be perfect to gain your approval. (Fifth) Failing to show affection, not hugging them, not holding their hand or putting an arm around them. And this needs to be done even through the teen years. Fathers need to do that with their teen daughters. Hug them, love them, show them physical affection in godly ways.

Sixthly, not providing for their needs. They need food, clothing, and shelter of course, but they need more than that. They need, above all things, a healthy relationship with their Creator, through faith in Christ. They need that, but they also need privacy. They need respect, they need encouragement. There are other psychological needs, depriving them of their needs. Seventh, lack of standards. This is the other side of overprotection. Lack of standards, being too loose, never interfering. As Eli didn't do with his sons, he never interfered with them, just let them run wild. Having no moral guidelines, tolerating sin. Or criticism. Some parents are just so harsh with their children. They use their words like a kind of an acid bath that's going to do them good, clean them up. But that's not the case. Children can get beaten down and discouraged by a constant stream of criticism. A feeling that it's inconceivable that they would receive just nothing but praise from their parents. Is God that way with us? Is He looking for perfect service to be able to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant"? No. He cleans up even our best good works, and then praises those good works on Judgement Day. So should parents also, find ways to praise their children. Or neglect, just neglecting children. Classic example is David with Absalom. After Absalom had murdered his half-brother Amnon, David eventually brought him back to the city, but he wouldn't see him. Remember? And Absalom had to burn Joab's field to get his father's attention. That's bad when you've got to burn somebody's field to get your dad's attention. I mean, he's a rebel in the making at that point. His rebellion was already set in his heart. It's not going to be long, frankly, before he's going to try to kill his father because his father neglected him, and because he was a sinner. And then finally, excessive discipline. A parent who abuses his or her children either verbally, emotionally or physically can suck the life right out of them. These are 10 ways John MacArthur gives us that we can discourage our children.

But what about positive? What are a father and a mother supposed to do positively for their children? Well, we have to look to Ephesians for that, but there's some positive instructions here. Look at verse four. Ephesians 6:4, "Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." The first phrase is, "bring them up." This is a rich word in the original language. It means to nourish them. Fathers should be setting a feast for their children. Now the context, bring them up in the training and nurture the Lord is spiritual. So the father should be like a chef of the Word of God every day for their children, just spreading a rich banquet of the Word of God before them, so that they grow to learn to love the Word of God, and love Jesus because they are being nourished by their fathers. Nourished in the Word of God. A delicious meal of Christ every day. It says in 2 Timothy 3:15, "How from infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." So from infancy God has richly blessed this church with lots of babies. Amen. All you have to do is come on Mother's Day when we dedicate the babies and we're in the 20's just about every year. That's fantastic. What an evangelistic opportunity, friends. They need to be brought to a living faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, let me say a word to you, if you're here today as a visitor and you were not raised in that kind of home, and you never knew that much about the Savior, and you've never come to faith in Christ, or even if you were raised in that kind of home, but you have never given your life to Christ, and I say the same thing now to parents who have not parented well up to this point. To all of you, I say the same thing, it's not too late. It's not too late. To the lost person I say come to Christ. All you have to do is just look to the Savior. Think of Jesus, shedding His blood on the cross. He died on the cross for sinners like you and me. But not only that, God raised Him from the dead on the third day so that if we just simply trust in Him, all of our sins can be forgiven. Put your trust in the Savior. It's not too late. And I say the same thing to fathers and mothers, if you have not put Christ at the center of your home up to this point, it is not too late. Start today, make Christ the aroma of your home. Make the Word of God the aroma of your home. Nurture them in Christ. “Bring them up,” it says, “in the discipline of the Lord.” The Greek word is paideia. It's a full, complete life training. That's a very rich word in Greek culture. And it's just this whole life training in the Lord. And, “in the admonition of the Lord,” nouthesia, from which we get Nouthetic counseling, we saw it before when we talked about counseling. It's more of a negative admonishment or warning about the things in this world that can cause sin. You want to see some good examples of some admonishment that a father gives to a son? Look at Proverbs 1 through 6. How many times does it say, "My son, hear my instruction and do not hang out with bad people who are lying in wait to murder people and take their goods." Proverbs 1. Don't do that. Don't fall in with the wrong crowd. Or he says, "Watch out for the adulteress, with her smooth talk and the young men go into her house and they don't realize that her house is a highway to Hell." So there's this warning given from a father to the son. Or he says, "Look if you've gotten involved in a bad business arrangement, you've made an agreement with your neighbor, don't allow sleep to your eyelids. Get out of it as soon as possible. It's a bad business arrangement." "Just go get your cloak back," he says. Get out of it as soon as you can. Or he says in Proverbs 4, "Above all, guard your heart, for from it flow the well-springs of life." These are warnings and admonishments given from a father to a son. That's what I think it means, bring them up in the admonishment of the Lord.

See Your Family as a Little Church

Now, what are some practical exhortations for parents? Well, just let me begin by saying, see your family as a little church. Parents, see your family as a little church. George Whitefield said this, "Every house is as it were a little parish, and every father a priest, every family a flock; and if any of them perish through the priest's neglect, their blood will be required from God at their hands." Jonathan Edwards said this, "Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, then all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful." Jonathan Edwards. See your family as a little church. And so, I think you ought to lead in family devotions, it's very practical.

Now, recently I was at a conference that talked about making family and church ministry relate, uniting church and home. And it was the end of a long weekend and I enjoyed the conference, but I was a bit weary. And a good friend of mine, Scott Brown, who preached here at this pulpit this summer, got up and just gave a series of convicting quotes from these great giants of church history about the need that fathers have to lead their family spiritually. And I was convicted because he picked up on this image of the family being a little church. And Matthew Henry said this, "Some of you perhaps have a church in your house, but it's not a flourishing church; 'tis like the church of Laodicea, neither cold nor hot; or like the church at Sardis, in which the things that remain are ready to die; so it hath little more than a name or a reputation."

Family Devotions

I started saying, "Is my reputation equal to my actual performance?" And I had to say honestly that I was not having family devotions as frequently as we should have. I was letting the busyness of life, even of church life, crowd out some of those devotions. I wasn't being faithful. And I was convicted, tired as I was, and I was convicted by Matthew Henry in particular. What Scott said was that Matthew Henry's commentary... Have you ever seen it? A one-volume commentary on the whole Bible. It's incredible. Those came from notes that he took while his father taught them the Bible at family devotion time, as he was growing up. He just took notes as his father went through every book of the Bible. And he transferred it over into his commentary. Incredible. And Matthew Henry said they used to meet morning and evening, that's twice a day. I was averaging less than that, no doubt about that. Less than that. And I said, "We have got to make a change. I've got to make a change.” So I went home and told my family, and I said, "We're going to make changes, we're definitely have... ". We had a family altar that Saturday night, “we're going to make changes.” Alright. Someone said, "Well, Dad, are we going to have a family devotion tomorrow morning?" I said, "Well, no we can't." They said, "Why not?", "It's Sunday morning. I've got to practice my sermon, get ready to preach." “Oh, okay,” and then, bing! The light went on. I had just made an excuse. And I said, "We have got to make some changes." I said, "Yes, we're going to have family devotion on Sunday morning. So we're going to sit at a certain time and we're going to do it, etcetera. Someone said "But Dad, we're usually... " I shouldn't even say this but, "We're usually a little late to church. How are we going to do it?" I said "You know what I believe? I believe if we do this tomorrow morning, we will actually be early to church." And we were. We were. God blessed it.

Now I would urge you, fathers, simply to do this. Just gather your families around on a daily basis, I mean daily. That equals to every day, okay? Daily basis unless there's just some physical reason you cannot do it. And even then, cell phones these days, they have like the speaker kind of thing, just put the cell phone on the chair and there's Dad on his business trip, leading the family devotion. Just be overcomers, brothers. Be overcomers. Make this a priority and it doesn't need to be long and as a matter of fact, I would urge that it not be long, lest your children become discouraged. Alright, doesn't it say that? Brief, you sing together, you pray together, you read the Bible together and you stop at an appropriate time. I think fathers need to do this.

And I want to say one more thing before we prepare for the Lord's Supper. Some time ago, I preached a sermon on Deuteronomy 6, on saturating your children's lives with the Word of God. And Deuteronomy 6 says, "Impress them,” the words of Moses, the Law of God, “impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." I think it was about two months ago that it occurred to me, "Wait a minute, he's talking about saturating Jewish kids' minds in the law of Moses, the Old Covenant." We are Christians, we're in the New Covenant. We can do better than that. The book of Hebrews says it is a superior covenant. We have Christ, plus all the laws of the Old Testament. We have even better reason to saturate our children's lives. So, what we’ve done is, we put this sermon together in a booklet and you can get it at the door and if they're out of them, we'll try to make them available next week as well, on how to saturate your children's lives with the Word of God. Saturate their lives with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Talk about Jesus when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Let's close in prayer and then prepare for the Lord's Supper.