Two Journeys

This first sermon in the Mark series discusses the importance of studying Mark and covers the reason why the book starts with John the Baptist.

Turning your Bibles to Mark chapter one. I have been so excited to say those words to you, been looking forward to this for probably a year, as we look at the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God. Today, we begin in some sense, one of the most thrilling journeys on which we could ever embark. Ultimately that journey, which many of us have begun even years ago, is far more exciting and fruitful than any that has ever happened.

I think about the voyage of Columbus sailing west, trying to find the East China and all the routes, and courageously sailing west, and bumping into the new worlds. And that was exciting. I think about Lewis and Clark going out and exploring the Louisiana Purchase and all of the excitement of discovering the new lands that were now part of the United States, a discovery journey that led ultimately to the shimmering Pacific Ocean. A journey far more mysterious and courageous than that which led to the first man walking on the moon, the Apollo missions to the moon. All of these were exciting in their own ways. But today, as we begin a verse-by-verse journey through the perfect words of the Gospel of Mark, we are continuing our own deeper discovery of the person of Jesus Christ.

And why do I say all these things? Why do I use this grandiose language? Well, it's because the study, the person, and the work of the son of God is infinitely glorious. It has infinite dimensions that we will never finish exploring. It will extend on into all eternity. We will never be able to fathom the depths of Christ. We will never be able fully to study the dimensions and details of the person and work of the incarnate son of God, of Jesus Christ. And I think that is what heaven ultimately will be for.

Now, last Christmas, as I was writing my Christmas message, I came across a marvelous statement by the church father, Athanasius, who lived in the fourth century and defended, sometimes it seems almost alone, the Orthodox doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus against a heresy that was rising up today Arianism, or then that was rising up Arianism, which we know today as the Jehovah's Witness doctrine, that Jesus is actually Jehovah, God's greatest creature, greatest creation, rather than actually God. An Athanasius wrote an incredible work called, On the Incarnation of the Word of God. And I found a quote in that that was so powerful and meaningful and I want to read it to you today: "And in a word, the achievements of the savior, resulting from his becoming man, are of such a kind and number that if one should wish to enumerate them, he may be compared to men who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves. For as one cannot take in the whole of the waves with his eyes, for those which are coming on baffle the sense of him that attempts it; so for him, that would take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, it is impossible to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up as those which go beyond his thought are more than those he thinks he has taken in. Better is it then not to aim at speaking of the whole, where one cannot do justice even to a part, but after mentioning one more to leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all alike are marvelous and wherever a man turns his glance, he may be hold on that side, the divinity of the Word and be struck with exceeding great awe."

Well, in simple terms, Athanasius is likening the depths of the incarnation of Christ and his achievements to trying to study ocean, wave upon wave of power. There are too many waves and the shoreline extends beyond what the eye can see and even to comprehend one wave would overwhelm his mind. How then could anyone take in Christ? It's just too much. Now, I remember a number of years ago after Carolyn was born - our third child - and she was born in June, in Louisville, Kentucky, a landlocked state. We brought her to our home state of Massachusetts and we went to visit my mom on her house on Cape Cod and went to Nauset Beach. And I brought Carolyn there to show her for the very first time, she was about six months old, the ocean. And I'll never forget, because there's this little rise that you go out from the parking lot at Nauset Beach, and you get to the rise on the sand dune, and then there it is, there's the ocean. And there had been a very powerful storm in the days that preceded that. And I was holding this little six-month-old baby, and I knew not to look at the ocean, but rather to look at her face. And as we crested and walked down, and she saw this overwhelming sight, she obviously couldn't put into words what she was thinking, but just pointed, and pointed, and pointed. Again and again like, "Don't look at me, look at that." And I thought to myself, "The excitement and the joy of discovery inside her heart, she couldn't put into words."

Now, I'd been in Nauset Beach more times than I could count. I'd been on the Cape, I'd seen the ocean. It was kind of old hat to me. Well, why is that? Why is it that awesome, majestic, incredible things become old hat for us? I think it's just part of the problem that we have of sin. And we're just kind of used to it. It's like, "What new things can you possibly say to us, Pastor, from the gospel of Mark? Just want you to know, we've read the gospel before, we've seen it." But I think that's just the dullness that comes over our minds through sin and the fact that we have lost some of the wonder and the amazement of the person of Christ. And I'm telling you, you're going to get it back. Now, I don't know if you're going to get it back through this preaching series. I hope so. I hope that I'll be able to ignite in you that sense of wonder, but I know that when you lose the sin nature and when you are transformed in glory, you are going to have a sense of wonder and amazement at the person of Christ that will never end.

If you look at verse one of chapter one, and maybe this is a detail you hadn't noticed before, I really hadn't before. But look what it says. Mark 1:1, "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The beginning of the gospel, that's what you're going to get here when you read this gospel of Mark. And that is what heaven is for, for us to be educated in the infinite greatness of Christ to try to comprehend the whole, even as we were to finish careful study of this magnificent gospel, became believers in Christ along the way, or did even before that. The gospel, the good news of his eternal kingship, of his majestic person, his perfect rule over his adoring people, would just be beginning. In this world that is all that we can do, begin to study the good news of the son of God, Jesus Christ.

Heaven is infinite in its scope because it will take eternity to study and comprehend all the dimensions and details of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And at that time, we're going to see him face to face, and we're going to be in this new world, which we're told in Revelation 21, "…does not need the light of the sun or the moon, but the glory of God will give it light and the lamb," Jesus, "will be its lamp." And so through Jesus, the full glory of God will be put on display in the new heaven and new earth. We will be set free. We'll be set free from everything that sin has done to us and from all of our limitations. Now, we're limited in time, limited in comprehension, limited in love, all of that will be done. And so heaven study will be infinitely better than this one. This is just another sermon series. It's another chance to do what the Apostle Paul says in first Corinthians 13, "To see through a glass darkly, then in heaven face to face." But now we're going to see through a glass darkly. And we do that by studying words - the words that come from God, the words of God. This is what God has given to us, to study the words of the scripture. And with the study of the life of Christ and with our repentance and faith, comes the salvation of our souls, that we would spend eternity in heaven and not in hell. That is the treasure that awaits the careful study of Christ through the words of scripture. The facts of the life of Christ are essential to our salvation. The history of Christ, you could say the biography of Christ, is essential to the salvation of our souls.

Now, the gospel mentioned here right away, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the gospel Paul says is the only power that there is for the salvation of our souls. Romans 1:16 says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of God because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." So the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to save sinners from the condemnation that we deserve. Now, the word gospel means good news - means good news - and the good news is Jesus Christ himself, that he is a good and loving king, that he is calling us out of our rebellion into full submission to his kingly reign. The good news is that this good king laid down his life on the cross for those who were not good, for those who are in rebellion against his kingdom. This is the gospel story, and this gospel story must be received by faith. As Paul says, in Romans 1:17, "The righteous will live by faith." Now, in the book of Romans, Paul makes it very clear how we sinners can be saved by the gospel. And that is by calling on the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Romans 10:9 says, "If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." And he says a few verses later, "For everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved."

Well, the facts of Christ's life are essential to that. They're essential to the gospel. How can we know on what basis are we going to say, "Jesus of Nazareth is Lord,” that means God, that he is actually the son of God? Romans 10 makes it plain that without those facts, we can never believe in him. And we will never call on him without the facts of his life. He says in Romans 10, 14- 15, "How then can they, anyone, call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in one of whom they've not heard?" So just stop right there. Without the facts of the life of Christ, you're not going to have any basis for faith in Jesus and you're not going to call on the name of the Lord to be saved. And how can they hear those facts without someone preaching to them, and how can they preach unless they're sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news?" So, he says there in Romans 10, a few verses later in verse 17, "Faith, which saves us, comes from hearing the message" about Christ. "…the message is heard through the word of Christ." So the facts of Jesus's life, of his death and his resurrection, are essential to the salvation of our souls.

Now, God in his kindness has given us four perfect records of the life of Jesus - four relatively short biographies of Jesus. The New Testament begins with those four. The gospels of Matthew, of Mark, Luke, and John. Now, these four perfect records of the life of Jesus are equally inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. Therefore, they are perfect histories of the person, the words, the works, the miracles, the activities of Jesus Christ. They are all four of them perfectly true. And though it is sometimes difficult, they can all be perfectly harmonized with one another. So while we are studying this one gospel, the gospel of Mark, we will feel free from time to time, to reach over to some of the other gospels and get some more information about the life of Christ. And we'll take that information and feed it into what we're learning about Jesus in the gospel of Mark, but we're going to focus primarily on this one simple gospel.

Now, for are any that are listening here that are not yet believers in Christ, the gospel gives us a call right away to hear and believe even for the first time. And I believe that the Gospel of Mark may be the best book to give to somebody who is not yet a Christian. As we're seeking to win the loss here in Durham, as we seek to reach out, we're going to have conversations with people that haven't read the Bible much. They've maybe never read it and they don't understand how the Bible works. It's different than ordinary books. Really, the Bible is a library of 66 books. And sometimes Christians will give to non-Christians the Bible and say, "Read the Bible." And that's all they said. And so what are they going to do, except just begin at the beginning? And they'll be encouraged because it'll say right away, "In the beginning," so they'll think, "All right, this is the best place to start." But what's going to happen is they're going to keep reading and at some point they're going to be like, "What is this?" They're going to be somewhere in Genesis, or in Exodus, probably in Leviticus, and they'll be like, "All right, I don't get it." And they're going to give up.

I would suggest a different strategy. Tell them to read the Gospel of Mark. Some people recommend the Gospel of John, and that's beautiful, I think it's fantastic, but it's much more complex. It's got deep, fully expanded theology that Jesus gives. It's harder to understand. The Gospel of Mark reads like a simple newspaper account of the events of yesterday, like it just happened. The facts of Jesus' life start there, and the first eight chapters give us a sense of the words and works of Jesus - very streamlined. It's very efficient. There's a lot more he could have said, but those first eight chapters show the deity of Jesus. And that's the thesis statement, right from the beginning, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. And so the deity of Christ, the evidence of his deity, given from the very beginning, eight chapters by his mighty works, his amazing words. Then the second eight chapters showed Jesus' deity by his death on the cross for our sins and his resurrection from the dead. So for many people, this Gospel of Mark may be the first time they've bumped into the facts of Jesus's life and it's something you could read in an evening if you wanted to, in a very simple, clear way.

But for the rest of us, we've heard it before, we read the gospel of Mark before, we're familiar with it.  Most of you have been Christians for a long time, I'm sure some of you for decades, and you've heard many sermons and you've read the Bible for years, and there's very little in the 16 chapters of the Gospel of Mark that you aren't at least familiar with, that you haven't at least at some level heard before. And yet this is an opportunity for you to hear and believe again, for you to actually hear and believe continually, because I believe you'll need your faith until you finally see Jesus with your own sight. When you lay faith aside, you won't need it anymore, you'll see him face to face. But while you live in this world, you'll need your faith, and faith is the eyesight of the soul. And faith, like any living thing, needs food in order to live, in order to keep surviving. And so, the food of faith is the word of God. And so you need to feed your soul on the Gospel of Mark. "Faith comes by hearing the Word," Romans 10:17. Faith is also nourished and sustained, fed continually by hearing the Word.

Now, my own recent study in the Gospel of Mark began when I was on sabbatical in Cardiff, in Wales, on October 3rd, 2020. It was my next extended scripture memory project and I began memorizing the Gospel of Mark, three verses a day, and just continuing to add more and more of the verses of the Gospel of Mark. And I must say it was one of the most delightful studies that I've ever been on in my whole life. Day after day, by the words I was memorizing and reciting, going over, day after day, I was fellowshipping with Christ by the power of the Spirit. I had a sense of intimacy, a sense of the friendship with Christ, a sense of newness of him walking with me through the day. I was amazed at his teaching, I marveled at the effortless power he displayed in his healings and the effortless power he displayed over every demon, the fact that the demons were so terrified of him and fled from him, the wisdom in his teachings, all of these things. I fed on these things, day after day. As Jesus said in John 15, "I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me, my words remain in you. Have fellowship with me. You can ask whatever you wish and it'll be done for you." That's the fellowship, the feeding of the soul day after day. And these sermons that I hope to preach over the next year, come out of the hours and hours, of the hundreds of hours of meditation on the Gospel of Mark, and I hope to be able to excite your own faith through this study as well. And so now here we begin at the beginning, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, that's the theme of this gospel, and I believe it's the theme of all our gospels. I think they work together to achieve one end in our soul.

So, the apostle John, in giving the purpose for the gospel of John, rights in John 20:31, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." So, John is saying there, "I wrote my gospel so that you could believe that Jesus is God, and that you might have life through his name.” So that a man named Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, that lived 2000 years ago, actually was the incarnate son of God, the savior of the world. That is the purpose of all four gospels. And it's the purpose statement right away in the Gospel of Mark. Look at it again. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, so I think that's the thesis of the entire Gospel of Mark.

And it's really quite beautiful because there's a kind of a perfect bracketing of the entire gospel at the end, toward the end, not the final chapter, but at the end of Mark 15, the centurion standing there at the cross when he hears Jesus' cry and how he died. He said the words, "Truly, this man was the son of God." So, you get that phrase again, the Son of God. So, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God, and the centurion testifies, "Truly, he was the son of God." And so everything in between is to us to that point, to believe that Jesus is in effect the son of God. But that's not enough, it's to call us out of our sinful rebellion against him into the kingdom of God. And so, Mark 1:15, you can see it right there on the same page, tells us, and this is the preaching, "The time has come, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news, that we will repent of our sins and believe in the good news of the kingdom of God and enter the king of God." That's the purpose of the Gospel of Mark.

Now, amazingly, the first section of this doesn't begin with Jesus himself, with the king himself, but rather with the herald of the king, a man known as John the Baptist. So we're going to talk about now the herald of this great king, and that is John the Baptist. Now, what was the mission of the king's herald? It may seem strange to us to start with the herald. Why not start with the king? But that's only because we are not used to the patterns of a king. We're not used to how they behave. A king doesn't usually just show up in a town or village, "Here I am," but he sends officials who will run before him, who will go before him, will prepare the way for him, make sure everything's set up, get everything ready for his arrival, the herald of the king. And the heralds run before and announce he's coming, that the king is coming. John the Baptist was that, he was the herald of the king, sent before him to prepare the way of the king.

And that was his mission. As it says in verse two and three, "As it is written in Isaiah the Prophet, 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. A voice of one calling in the desert prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" So, God sent his messenger ahead of Christ, whose task was clear. That is to go ahead of Jesus and prepare the way for him. Now, it's interesting he quotes Isaiah the Prophet. There was a prophetic preparation long before John the Baptist, long before Jesus was born. God went ahead of Christ and prepared the human race by prophecy. Right from the Garden of Eden, a prophecy was made right after Adam fell into sin, tempted by the serpent. A prophecy was made that someday a serpent slayer would come, who would crush the head of the serpent. That was a prophecy, a prediction of the coming of Jesus. And so, God sent prophet after prophet through the history of Israel, the Jewish people, and instructed the Jewish nation of the coming Messiah, the son of David, the Anointed One who would come and he would reign forever on David's throne and to the ends of the earth. And also another vision in which the Jews had very difficult time harmonizing of the suffering servant of Isaiah, who would die for the sins of the people, Isaiah 53. But we know now as Christians, they are the same one. The Davidic King, the Great King, the Messiah, would come and who would also be the suffering servant, who would suffer for the sins of the people. So Mark's gospel begins with two Old Testament prophecies preparing the way, but they're not focused directly on Jesus Christ, but on Christ's herald, John the Baptist.

Now, God speaks directly to Jesus in the first prophecy, Malachi 3:1, saying, "I [God, the Father], will send my messenger ahead of you, the son of God, who will prepare your way." And that is the mission, to prepare the way of the Lord or the road of the Lord, the journey of the Lord. So the image is one of road building, you could imagine a massive road grader that goes and levels the road and removes obstacles. So, if you were to read the fuller quote in Isaiah 40, it makes this powerfully clear. Listen to Isaiah 40, verse 3-4, "In the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up and every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level, and the rugged places, the plane."

That's very visual imagery. Isaiah was beautiful at getting images into our minds. And since John the Baptist, who fulfilled these words was not a literal civil engineer building roads out there, it's a spiritual work that he's doing, a work in people's hearts. "Every valley shall be raised up," I think refers to sinners who feel that they have sinned so much that God could never forgive them. They have no hope of heaven. They don't know how they could ever be welcomed by such a holy God. They had no hope of forgiveness of sins, like a prostitute, or a tax collector, or some kind of a thief, or murderer who thought, "There's no way that I could ever be forgiven because of what I've done." And so when it says, "Every valley should be raised up," the hearts of such crushed, broken people could be lifted up so that they have hope. They actually think they could be forgiven. And then it says, on the other hand, "Every mountain and hill made low." Well, this is referring to the opposite kind of person, who's so filled with self-righteousness, they don't think they need a savior. They have no need for Jesus. They don't need Christ. They're fine on their own, like the Pharisees and the scribes, or the teachers of the law, who were so confident in their own righteousness, they felt they needed no savior at all. Those had to be leveled. And then it says, "The rough ground shall become level and the rugged places, the plane." So, this is just kind of a universal statement of the devious nature of the human heart. We have all kinds of twists and turns inside our hearts. We can shirk our duties, and we can blame others for our sins, and we have twisted logic inside. And so all of these bizarre, twisted, strange heart states need to be leveled for the way of the Lord. And John the Baptist came to do that.

Now, in these verses though, you may not see it obviously, if you look closely and know what to look for, the deity of Christ is clearly proclaimed. Fundamental to the mission of the herald was the greatness of the coming king, and you see it literally in these two prophecies. Malachi 3:1, let me read it right from the Old Testament. "Behold, I send my messenger and he'll prepare the way before me." That's what the text actually says. "And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple." And then Isaiah 40, verse 3, says, "A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord." Now, if you were to read that in the Old Testament, you'd see that the word Lord would have all four letters capitalized, capital L-O-R-D. That means Yahweh, sometimes Jehovah, the creator God, the only God there is, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, Yahweh. And it says, "…make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God." All of that ascribed to Jesus, preparing the way for Jesus because he is the Lord. He is truly God in the flesh. And that's what these verses are claiming. So this is the king that John the Baptist came to herald.

Now, how did John do his ministry? How did he prepare the way of the Lord? Well, we begin by just trying to understand who this individual is, John the Baptist. We don't have much information about him here. We have a little and we're going to walk through it today. But the other gospels, Matthew and Luke, give us more information about John the Baptist. For example, Luke 1 tells us the amazing story of how he came to be conceived. He was conceived by an elderly couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were beyond childbearing years and had been barren, they'd never had any children. And so, an angel came and told Zechariah what would happen. He didn't believe it, God struck him mute for a time, and then Elizabeth became pregnant, and she gave birth to John, so it's an amazing story of how he was born. And there were some prophecies and some things around John given in Luke one.

Now, Jesus, in Matthew's gospel, after John had been arrested and was about to be executed, tells us this amazing statement about John the Baptist, Matthew 11:11. This is what Jesus said about him. "I tell you the truth. Among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist." It's an incredible statement by Jesus. In other words, in the hierarchy of greatness, of all of the individual that ever lived up to that point, John was the greatest. Now, literally said there's not risen anyone greater, so perhaps Abraham was equal in greatness, but not greater. And you could do the same thing, but it's not likely for people to be absolutely perfectly equal in greatness. So effectively, he's saying that John is the greatest man that had ever lived up to that point. When you think about all of the Old Testament heroes, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of those, think about David, think about Noah, think about Job, Daniel, all of these godly great individuals, John was greater than all of them. And Jesus made that evaluation.

Now, Mark doesn't tell us hardly anything about these things, he just launches in. And he starts with John's desert ministry, "A voice of a one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him." And so John came, verse four, "Baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.” So John's ministry was based in the desert.

This must have reminded Israel of the Exodus when God sustained them out in the desert and when they were purified of their sinful idols, 40 years wandering in the desert. The desert also just represents austerity. There's nothing to eat or drink out there. It's not a luxurious, comfortable life. And so John's manner, and his clothing, and his diet, all represented a rejection of luxury. Look at verse six, "John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locus and wild honey." So I think in this way, just by how he was living, by what he looked like, where he was, he was a rebuke to a luxurious lifestyle. Now, it is important to note that John never called anyone to imitate that austere lifestyle. He wasn't saying, "It's essential to your forgiveness of sins that you come and be like me, that you dress in camel's hair and that you eat locus and wild honey." He didn't call people to that, but I still believe that his austere lifestyle must have been a rebuke to many in Israel at that time.

Jesus later would point this out, again, in Matthew 11, "As John's disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John, 'What did you go out into the desert to see a reed swayed by the wind?'" Was he some weak, kind of blowing one way blowing the other? He wasn't that way at all. Well, if not then what did you go out to see, "A man dressed in fine clothes?" No, those who wear fine clothes are in king's palaces. So, John had this austere lifestyle. He was an otherworldly figure, like those mentioned in Hebrews 11, men and women of faith, those of whom the world was not worthy, "They went about in sheepskins and goat skins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts, and mountains, and in caves, and holes in the ground."

Now, John, it is also said, went in the spirit and power of Elijah- in the spirit and power of Elijah. John's clothing immediately reminded any careful Bible student of Elijah, because that's exactly what he wore, and he also ministered out in the desert. On 2 Kings 1, when a wicked king sent some messengers out to find out whether he was going to live or die from some injury he had sustained, he was met by a man. "Is there no God in Israel that you're going out to Baal-Zebub to find out?" Etc. Well, they came back very quickly and they said with a man met us and he said what he'd told him to say. And he said, "'Well, he was a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist.' 'Ah,' said the king, 'That was Elijah the Tishbite.'" So that's how he knew him, what he wore and the leather belts.

And so, John is the fulfillment of this. He's the fulfillment of the last prophecy that was made in the Old Testament, Malachi 4:5-6, "Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah, before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, or else I'll come and strike the land with a curse." Those are the last words in your Old Testament. It's the last prophecy that was given, that Elijah would come. Now, Elijah himself didn't come, but as was said plainly, as the angel Gabriel foretold to his father Zechariah in Luke 1:17, "He will go on before the Lord, listen in the spirit and power of Elijah. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children to make the disobedient and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." So, it wasn't literally Elijah, but he came in that demeanor, in that spirit. The same lifestyle, the same manner of living, the same manner of preaching.

And this preaching was powerful. Remember how he said he had to level those high mountains. "Every mountain in hill will be leveled." So, Matthew gives us a sample of some of John's leveling, some of his bold preaching. Matthew 3:7-10, "When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them, 'You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." That's bold preaching, powerful preaching. That's what it looks like to level every high mountain and every hill.

John also came baptizing. Again, verse four. "And so John came baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." Now, the word baptize is just transliteration of the Greek word, which means to him immerse, to immerse in a liquid, to plunge. And so that's this word. Now, John was doing something radically new, something that had never been done in the Old Testament. There's no example of baptism in the Old Testament. It was something that seems historically that rose up in the inter-testamental period between the Old Testament and New Testament, when the Jews had been scattered all over the Gentile world and there were synagogues coming up, and so they would interact with Gentiles and Gentiles wanted to join the Jewish religion, they wanted to become Jews, they were converts to Judaism. And so sometimes the rabbis would tell them that they had to be cleansed of all of their filthy Gentile ways. And so, they would baptize them, they would plunge them in water.

Well, John picked up this image and was doing it, but not to Gentiles, he's doing it to Jews. And what he's saying by that is, "You're every bit is filthy and every bit as idolatrous, and every bit as on the outside, as the Gentiles are." It was the radical act. As he said, "Your having Abraham as your father doesn't save you. It has to go beyond that." And they were submitting and they were letting John baptize him, immerse them in water. That's what he was doing. And the baptism was a baptism of repentance, so they were being called unto repent of their sins. To repent means to turn in your mind and your heart away from sin to God and say, "I've been living a wicked life. I've been sinning and I need to turn away from sin now into God." It was a baptism of repentance. They're saying, "I want to live a different kind of life." And it was for the forgiveness of sins. John's ministry was to proclaim the possibility of the forgiveness of sins, that God was coming to work a deep work of restoration in the hearts of the people resulting in their forgiveness, in their reconciliation with God.

Now, John was incredibly popular. Look at verse five, the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins. They were baptized by him in the Jordan River. So, John's ministry was electrifying. He prepared the way of the Lord by heightening everyone's expectation. Now, some misunderstood and thought that he himself might be the Messiah. That's the level of expectation where people's hearts were up. They're saying, "Maybe he's the Messiah," but his message was plain and clear.

Listen to the message of the king's herald, verse seven and eight. This was his message, "After me will come one more powerful than I. The thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." So, the centerpiece of John's ministry was getting the way, getting ready for Jesus Christ. The coming of Jesus Christ.

And John has humility here. He said, "I don't deserve to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals." I just want to stop and tell you what an impact that statement has made in my life. I don't deserve to touch Jesus' feet. I mean, the lowest of slaves, I don't think would even be asked to wash their master's feet. It would just be something they would do maybe occasionally.  The lowest of the low would wash someone else's feet. John says, "I don't even deserve to do that. I don't deserve to touch the thongs of his sandals." Now, you think, put all that together. Jesus says, this is the greatest man that has ever lived up to that point and he said, "I don't deserve to touch Jesus' feet." Could it be? This is what the Spirit was saying to me. "Could it be, Andy, you think too highly of yourself? Could it be that your pride still needs a little more leveling? Could it be on the other hand, you think too lowly of Jesus, that you underestimate his greatness?" "I don't deserve to touch his feet." That was John's humility. "So, no, I'm not the Messiah. There's one coming after and I don't even deserve to touch his feet." Now, that kind of humility is essential to entering the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, "Blessed are the spiritual beggars, poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

And look at the infinite superiority of Jesus's ministry, verse eight, "I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." So, John's baptism was symbolic only. It was just water only. He would immerse all the people that came in water, but Jesus, his ministry's superior because his baptism is superior. He would baptize people in the Holy Spirit. And that's what he says. Now, this is a direct fulfillment of a prophecy in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 36, 26, 27. "I will give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." That is the work that Jesus does to all who true believe in him. He immerses their souls in the Holy Spirit of God, working a total internal transformation, removing the heart of stone, putting in the heart of flesh that prepares us for eternity in his heavenly kingdom.

Now, John's fuller message in the gospel of John shows that he understood how Jesus would save sinners like us. And so, in John, 1:29, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." And then he talked about a man on whom he saw the Spirit descend and remain as a dove. And God willing, we'll talk about that next time in Jesus baptism. But John said, "I wouldn't have recognized him. I wouldn't have known who he was, except that the one who sent me to baptize, God, told me, 'The man on whom you see the spirit descend and remain, he is the one who will baptize people in the Holy Spirit. I have seen, and I testify, that he is the son of God.'" So that's his full message. That's what John the Baptist came to say. The herald of the king, he made it plain that this coming king was actually both the son of God who had ruled over all the world, and the lamb of God, who's bloody death on the cross would take away our sins. The same. That is the good news, the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ available for all who will repent and believe.

Now, in this text, the Holy Spirit is calling on all of us as we read it to respond. John's message and Jesus' message are the same. They are the same. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. That's what we're called on to do. Well, how do we enter? Well, we recognize that Jesus is a king, that he has the right to give comprehensive commands in our lives. He has the right to meddle in everything in your life, because it's not meddle; he is your king. He has the right to tell you how to spend your money, how to spend your time. He has the right to tell you everything. He is the king.

Also, we recognize that we have been rebelling against this kingly reign and that we need to enter and submit to it. And I think the best passage to talk about that is in Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus invites us saying, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light." The only way I think to understand that word yoke is kingly authority. Jesus has kingly authority, the right to command, and he's calling on all of us to take our stiff necks and put them under his yoke. And if we do, if we submit to his kingly reign, we will find out that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. It really was sin that was crushing us, and Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart. So, this involves continual repentance, and faith, and submission. And we're only going to do that and live out that Christian life by the baptism that Jesus gives us, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Now, when we look at that expression, baptism of the Spirit, we're not talking about what some charismatic Christians talk about, about some second experience, where you then speak in tongues or something like that. I believe every single Christian is baptized by Jesus, into the body of Christ, at the moment of conversion. He immerses you spiritually in the spirit of God at the moment of conversion. First Corinthians 12:13 says plainly, "By one spirit, we're baptized into one body." And so that happens when we are converted, but think about what that word means, immersion in the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus said in John 14: 16, and 17, "I will ask the father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him or knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." And so that in dwelling Holy Spirit is in each one of you who are Christians.

So, what does that mean? The Holy Spirit is in you to enable you to put sin to death. Romans chapter 8:2. "By the Spirit, put to death the misdeeds of the body." Romans 8:13. And that's negative, positively to imitate Christ-like virtues. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And by the Spirit, immersed in the Spirit, we have the power to be witnesses. So, God's going to give you perhaps some opportunities even this week, to be witnesses. And Acts chapter one, verse eight says, "You'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." So, we can be gospel witnesses. So, our responsibility is to "…be filled with the Spirit," Ephesians 5:18, and "…keep in step with the Spirit," Galatians 5:25.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the beginning of this journey and the Gospel of Mark. We thank you for the things that we have learned. Lord, I pray that you would enable us to see the full power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, in the church, as witnesses in the holy living that we do, by putting sin to death in the way that we carry ourselves, the demeanor that we display. We thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that Jesus baptizes, not merely in water, but in the far richer, more powerful baptism of the Holy Spirit. We thank you also for John the Baptist, who came as a forerunner and a herald to the Eternal King. We thank you for his ministry and what we've learned from it today. In Jesus name. Amen.

Why is studying Mark important? Why does it start with John the Baptist? And who is Jesus, the Eternal King and Son of Man?

The post The Herald of the Eternal King (Mark Sermon 1) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Jesus came down from heaven for the purpose of being bread, to give life to the world.

I'd like to ask if you have a copy of the scriptures tonight to turn to John chapter 6, and I'm going to focus our brief time, just a little meditation tonight on John 6:25-35. We're jumping right in the middle of the chapter. Jesus has fed the 5,000 and this is the reading that comes after that miracle.

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, 'Rabbi, when did you get here?' Jesus answered, 'I tell you the truth, you're looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you. On him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval.' Then they asked him, 'What must we do to do the works God requires?'.

Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this; to believe in the one he has sent.' So they asked him, 'What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.' Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world?' 'Sir', they said, 'From now on give us this bread.' Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.'

Well, all over the world where Christ birth is celebrated, Christmas time, sumptuous feasting is a big part of the heritage of Christmas celebrations. A table laden with specialties and delicacies and aromatic dishes that fill the senses. The sight of fine dishes and cutlery and a nice tablecloth and the aromas that waft up from each dish and mingle in the air and mysteriously float toward your nose and entice your mouth to salivate, that's all part of the delight, but nothing compares with the actual feasting that follows, feasting on those foods with great eagerness. Hopefully you've saved enough room in your stomach for the wonderful dishes that have been so marvelously prepared by the cook or cooks in your home.

In his novel A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens taps into those sensory expectations in 19th Century Victorian England. The Ghost of Christmas present is a luxurious figure. He's sitting up on a kind of throne made up of food, a throne of food with all the foods that the people would be gorging themselves in their Christmas feasts that day. The turkeys and geese and game and poultry and pork and sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, seething bowls of punch that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. Everything the whole nation of England would need to make merry by feasting at Christmas time. Then the ghost takes Scrooge on a visionary journey to the home of Bob Cratchit, his overworked and underpaid clerk as they prepare their own version of the Christmas feast. That family is having a dinner of roast goose with sage and onion stuffing, mashed potatoes, and applesauce, and this is followed by a Christmas plum pudding with a brandy sauce.

Now this was a substantial meal that the Cratchit family had had to save up for the entire year in order to afford to put on their table, but it's still too small for what their needs really were. And then as you remember, when Scrooge experiences his form of a conversion at the end of the night, one of the first things he does is to buy the massive prized turkey still hanging in the window of the poulterer's shop, the one that was said to be bigger than Tiny Tim and sent it off by cab to the Cratchit residence to improve their Christmas feast. So I honestly don't know what each of your families are going to do when it comes to eating tomorrow. You have your own traditions, I'm sure, but tonight we get to partake in a different kind of feast than all of that. We get to partake in a spiritual one in which the bread of heaven is the food that is provided. The bread of heaven. That's what I want to focus on with you. The concept of feasting on the bread of heaven.

The term bread of heaven first appears in the Bible in Exodus 16:4. It is during that astonishing exodus of the Jewish nation from their slavery in Egypt. Just before this, God had miraculously split open the Red Sea and made a dry avenue for the whole nation to cross while the water was walling up on the right and on the left, perhaps the most visually spectacular miracle God ever did. Really remarkable. And then God had drowned the pursuing Egyptian army in the same water, thus delivering Israel forever from that threat. But now a new threat came as they're in the desert without anything to drink, without anything to eat. God miraculously turned the bitter waters of Marah sweet for them to drink and then he addressed himself to the task of feeding the nation. We don't know exactly how many people there were, but there were 650,000 men plus women and children so maybe we're talking 2 million plus people to feed out in the desert. And Exodus 16:4 tells us, "The Lord said to Moses, 'I will rain down bread from heaven for you.'"

Now, this bread from heaven was called manna which just is the Hebrew for what is it? They didn't know what it was and so they called it, “What is it?” But it was bread from heaven and it miraculously just appeared on the ground every morning feeding the 2 million plus people. They were to go out and collect this bread from heaven up off the ground in baskets and in this way, God fed the whole nation for 40 years in the desert, bread from heaven. This manna, this bread from heaven was mentioned or celebrated. That phrase appears a few other times in the Old Testament in Nehemiah 9 and Psalm 105, but it's just referring to that same 40-year daily miracle.

The next new reference to bread of heaven is in the text we're studying briefly tonight, John chapter 6. Now the context here in John 6 is powerful. As I've mentioned, Jesus had just fed the 5,000, 5,000 men plus women and children, so again, maybe 20,000 or more people, with five small barley loaves and two fish. Some of the people return the next day for another feeding and so this conversation emerges from that. The next day they're there for more and Jesus immediately made it plain what their priorities should be. Verses 26-27,  Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you're looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you." So it is always with us. Though we don't want to act like pagans, there's a strong physical drive in all of us to meet those physical needs. Pagans, of them it said in another place, their God is their stomach and this is always our tendency.

Ecclesiastes 6:7 says, "All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied." So we tend to be creatures of the moment, creatures of the physical, creatures of our physical appetites. And we need to hear again and again, don't we, from Jesus, "Do not work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you.” When Jesus said this, the people pressed in on him, “They asked him, 'What must we do to work the works of God or to do the works that God requires?' And Jesus answered very powerfully, 'The work of God is this. Believe in the one he has sent.'” So many of us all over the world want to know that one thing. What must I do to get eternal life? What good work or set of good works could I do that would be pleasing enough to God that he would welcome me? How could I pay for my sins and live happily ever after in heaven? We want somehow to earn heaven by our good works. Jesus made it plain. There is one thing and one thing only necessary. This is the work of God, to believe in the one that God has sent. This is an amazing requirement. Believe only. No great works are required of us for the forgiveness of our sins, full forgiveness of our sins. No works required. No achievements, no pilgrimages, no valiant quests, no heroic bloody victories over dragons or over knights in black armor. No secret knowledge gained through mystical meditations, none of any of that. Just think of the thief on the cross. What did he do? He just believed in Jesus. He looked over and saw in Jesus a coming king and he said, "Remember me when you come in your kingdom." And Jesus said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." Just that. Believe in the one that he has sent.

That's the focus of our celebration this time of year, the sent one. God sent someone. This is the reason for the season, as we say. The sending, the fact that God sent his son, he sent from where? Well sent from the throne of glory, sent from his own side, sent to earth through the virgin's womb to Bethlehem, sent to the stable, sent to the manger, the one that God sent to save sinners like you and me. Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. This is the one that God has sent.

And what does it mean to believe in him, to believe in the one that he has sent? Well, it means to know and be assured in your heart that this one is actually God in the flesh and that he by his death and by his resurrection alone, can save you from all your sins. That's what it means to believe in the one that he has sent. Well, the Jews that were standing around Jesus at that moment were in a mood and a frame of mind to challenge him, challenge him because Jesus was not doing what they had come for him to do. He knew why they were there. They wanted to eat again. I mean, that would be a pretty good gig, didn't you think? Just stay near Jesus and look what happens. I mean, you could quit your job at that point. You don't have to work out in the field or be a fisherman anymore. Just stay near Jesus and he's going to give you bread from heaven.

So they ask him in verse 30-31, "What miraculous sign will you do that we may see it and believe you?" This is a day after the feeding of the 5,000. What will you do? "Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert as it is written. 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" So there's that phrase again, that phrase, bread from heaven. And these increasingly hostile people are demanding effectively a daily miracle, a daily miracle, day after day, just like Moses did. Moses won their loyalty by doing a miracle day after day for 40 years, giving a nation of two million people enough to eat every single day. So that's the way they're thinking. Moses did that every day, remember? Forty years, day after day, what are you going to do? So Jesus has to recalibrate their minds and their souls to understand what really happened back then. Verse 32, he says, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven." Moses was just simply a servant in God's house. He did nothing great except that God chose to use him in a great way. The real source of the manna was almighty God, not Moses.

And now the same one who fed the nation back then Jesus is saying, that same God wants to feed you now, wants to feed you now. That's what he's saying. But with a more perfect bread, the true bread, he says from heaven. Now when he says the true bread from heaven, he's not denying the miracle that happened so many centuries before that. There was actual physical manna that happened at that time. They actually fed their stomachs with it. It was real. Jesus isn't denying that. But when he says the true bread, he means the better bread, the more perfect bread, the more lasting bread, the bread that feeds you better than that bread. That's what he's saying by true bread.

So that manna was indeed physical, but it was also an acted out prophecy of Jesus as many of the significant moments in the Old Testament were acted-out prophecies of Jesus, the Savior of the world. And so he says in verse 33, "For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." The true bread from heaven is a person. It's a he, who came down from heaven. Not flakes of sweet wafers that you picked up off the ground and put in a basket that tasted like coriander seed and honey. No, not that. The true bread from heaven, the perfect, the final feast from heaven is a person. He, who came down from heaven, that person is the one who gives, Jesus said, life to the world.

Now, this is the mystical and the perfect and the final truth of Christmas. This is what we're celebrating. It's what we're gathered tonight to celebrate. We're going to celebrate tomorrow and we celebrate every day throughout the year, not just at Christmas time. Jesus came down from heaven for the purpose of being bread to give life to the world, to the world. But just as physical bread gives physical life, so Jesus gives life. But the life that the physical bread gives is temporal or temporary. It will end in death. The life that Jesus gives is eternal and death cannot touch it. Jesus wants them focusing on that life, the eternal life. The people not understanding Jesus words said they wanted that bread. Verse 34, "Sir, they said, from now on, give us this bread."

You get it. It's just the same thing again and again. They are persistent, aren't they? They're consistent. You're not hearing us. So from now on, give us that bread. But they don't understand, they don't understand and so he makes it clear in verse 35 focuses our mind on what's needed. Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." So in this he uses this idea of coming to Jesus. You hear that expression, come to Christ, coming to Jesus. But in that beautiful Hebrew parallelism, the way that they would speak, he says the same thing in different words and so you get a clear understanding of what he means. "He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." It's the same thing. So to come to Jesus is to believe in him. And if you do, you'll never be hungry and you'll never be thirsty.

Now, later in this passage, he's going to explain how he is the bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world, verses 47-51 says, "I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

So tonight we celebrate the true Christmas feast. Whatever delicacies you're going to feast on tomorrow, and I'm sure they'll be wonderful. But this is the true feast that we're talking about here. Now, the Lord's Supper that we're about to partake in is a picture of this feasting but itself just a symbol. We don't believe that it's the actual body and blood of Jesus, just a symbol. But it's a symbol of the feasting that we are to do in Christ. And beyond that reality, just like the bread we're going to take in our hands, we can touch it and we will chew it and swallow it. Just as we have that physicality of the Lord's Supper, so Jesus' physical body which was crafted by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin, grew up and was broken for us on the cross. He died on the cross, physically died. His blood was shed. And by that physical death, by the shedding of his blood, he has atoned for our sins.

He has paid the death penalty we deserve for our sins and to eat therefore his flesh, as he says in John 6, and to drink his blood, is a spiritual eating and drinking which is the same as believing. It's to immerse yourself in the concept of Jesus' atoning sacrifice for you. I needed a savior. My sins are real and powerful and many and I deserve the wrath of God. But Jesus came and gave his physical life, his body in my place on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins. I believe that's what it means to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. Now, they didn't understand at all what he meant. I don't know that there was anybody that heard it that first time that understood what he meant.

Imagine being one of the apostles kind of laying down that night. I don't know if they used sleeping bags back then or what they did where he said he had no place to lay his head, but they're there and Peter's saying to Andrew, "Did you get that? Did you understand what that ...?" "No, I have no idea." I don't think any of them understood. But we have much clearer conception now. We can look back and we know exactly what he means. His body was given by his death on the cross and the eating is by faith and immersion in that death for our forgiveness. But beyond that, we also have the benefit of feasting on God's word. And so we come to the scriptures like we're doing tonight in John 6. We come to the scriptures and we read it and by feasting on the scriptures, we are strengthening our souls. Our souls are renewed as Psalm 23 says, "He restores my soul." And so you feast on Christ in the word of God.

I'm so excited. On Sunday, I begin a sermon series on the gospel of Mark and we're going to be feasting on the words of the gospel. God has given us the gospel of Mark so that we can understand the greatness of the person of Christ. And when we read those stories and those accounts, our soul is strengthened. Just like when we eat physical food, we are renewed and strengthened physically. And so that's the feasting that we can do. And then we're about to partake in the Lord's Supper. And I've already said we don't believe in any transformation of the elements to the actual body and blood of Christ. Not at all. It's just bread and just juice. But when you partake by faith in these elements, you understand the things I've been talking about tonight. You understand the death of Christ for sinners like you and me. You have trusted in him as your Lord and Savior. You are partaking and feasting by faith.

You are also in a similar way to reading scripture, strengthened in your inner man. You're strengthened and renewed in your spirit and your soul. So that's what we're about to do. I'm going to close this time of meditation and scripture in prayer and then I'm going to come down there and Andy and Kevin are going to join at the table. This is a little bit different even than we usually do on Christmas Eve. Just seemed best to us to use the ordinary, the same elements we usually use, but we're going to do it differently than having you sitting in the pews. We're going to invite people to come up and stand around the table in groups of eight or 10, something like that around each table. And we're going to pass around the elements and partake and then the next group will come, et cetera.

We would ask that the only ones that actually partake in the elements be genuine believers in Christ who have testified to that by water baptism, so that's what we're asking. But I'm going to close this time in scripture in prayer and then we'll go to the Lord Supper.

Father, we thank you for the feast of the Word of God. Lord, we know that you feed us well here. We are, are amply supplied. But Lord, we are needy and so we pray that we would heed the strong word that Jesus gave, that we would not labor for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which you will give us. So thank you that you have saved us through faith, and now we pray that you'd renew our faith through the ministry of the Word as we've just heard. And now as we turn to the Lord's Supper. In Jesus name. Amen.

Jesus came down from heaven for the purpose of being bread, to give life to the world.

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Paul finishes his epistle to the Corinthians with some final warnings, urging them to take very seriously their salvation in Christ.

The post 2 Corinthians Episode 15: Paul’s Final Warnings to the Corinthian Church appeared first on Two Journeys.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light in Jesus Christ. Andy covers Isaiah 9:1-7 and Luke 2:8-14 and examines the darkness that Christ saved us from.

Turn your Bibles this morning to Isaiah 9. We're going to be going back and forth between Isaiah 9 and Luke 2 as we celebrate the birth of Christ. On Christmas Eve in 1841, Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert, set up the first Tannenbaum, first Christmas tree in the history of England in Windsor Castle. The tree was decorated with various artistic ornaments, very costly and beautiful. And in order to show the beauty and the artistry of these ornaments, the tree was also lit with dozens of actual white candles, like the kind you light with flame, stuck to the branches with wax. This tradition caught on in Victorian England and soon spread across the ocean to America. President Franklin Pierce set up a Christmas tree, the first one, in the White House in 1856, and the tradition's been a fixture in our celebration of Christmas ever since.

Now, I can hardly imagine the number of fires that needed to be put out from time to time. I mean, here the pine is combustible. If you don't keep the tree watered, you know what happens. The thing starts to get shriveled up. And to have actual burning candles stuck to the branches with wax, I don't know, sounds dangerous to me, but apparently they would light them, watch them, and then put them all out. They didn't go to bed with them on, so they weren't that foolish. In 1882, however, the tradition took a decided turn toward the safer side. Two years before that, Thomas Edison had invented the electric light bulb, and in 1882, his good friend, Edward Hibberd Johnson, applied the new technology to the Christmas tree. At a townhouse 136 East 36th Street in New York City, Johnson set up a tree by the street side window of his parlor in full display of the pedestrians that bustle passed. Now, Johnson had hand wired 80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs, encasing them in delicate glass eggs of those colors and strung them together around the branches of his tree. He then placed the tree on a revolving base, a pedestal powered by a generator. The effect was stunning. New Yorkers stood in large numbers, transfixed on the sidewalk outside his home, gazing at this rotating, lit up tree. In subsequent years, Johnson kept increasing the number of bulbs on the tree. Of course, Johnson and Edison saw these as a commercial venture and made lots of money off of these early strings of Christmas lights. They were a luxury item. Each string cost $12. Now you need to understand just how much money that was back then. That would be roughly $340 per light string today. So aren't you glad the prices come down?

Friends, Christmas is a season of lights. This is one of my favorite parts of Christmas, the way that people and towns and cities decorate with lights. One of my favorite childhood memories when I was growing up in Boston, Eastern Massachusetts, we would drive from my home in Framingham and we'd go into the big city in Boston and see the lights of the Boston Common. And so, the city would drape long strings of lights on these big trees in the Common, they would go right up to the top of the tree. I don't know how they would do that, but some of those trees were 60, 70 feet high, and it was just spectacular. So also in our region, you'd drive around, you probably have some of your favorite houses to go look at. I don't know how people do it and the amount of work it takes to put out some of these light displays, but they're marvelous. Even here in our city, right here on Mangum Street, if you go a little bit further, there's some blue lights that are just vivid and spectacular and very pretty. I like to drive around trees that are hung with lights and just see them kind of rotate in my eyes. I feel like I'm looking, I don't know, like the DNA of the cell or something like that. That's just me. I'm weird. I'm geeky that way. But you go around and the lights just are kind of rotating in your eyes and they're beautiful. Even the Lucky Strike Water Tower is decorated. So that's a good thing, I guess. But it's beautiful.

Now for me as a Christian, these colored lights represent the birth of Jesus Christ into the world. And Jesus said in John 8:12, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." In order to understand, however, the gift of this light that Jesus is, we need to also to understand the darkness that preceded his coming and has characterized the world since his coming. The darkness that prevails even to this present day. It is a powerful darkness. It is a pervasive darkness. It is a darkness that in some senses can be felt. It is a gloomy, deep, thick darkness, the darkness of the land of the shadow of death.

Now, a number of years ago, I experienced a very deep, powerful darkness in a way I'd never experienced it before. For many years our family enjoyed a vacation time just over the border in Southern Virginia at Lake Gaston. We used to love going there, and I would enjoy the beautiful fall foliage in a one-way bike ride from our home in Bahama to Lake Gaston. And it was a wonderful time, usually. But that year my ride turned into somewhat of a nightmare. I got a very late start and I entirely lost my mind. I mean, my simple ability to calculate time, how many daylight hours there were left in the day and when the sunset was going to happen. These are things I should have known, and that the hour I was setting out, I wouldn't make it, but I was determined to uphold my tradition and do this ride. And I had my smartphone with me, so what could happen? So, you know, safety net, I figured I'd be fine. So the day was spectacular. It was lovely. The weather was perfect and off I went, mile after mile. But the shadows lengthened more and more and finally, the sunset. I was shocked. Didn't see it coming. I had a few more twilight minutes to work with, but I was many miles from my destination. It wasn't even close. And pretty soon, I was cast into total darkness. Then I pulled over, unclipped from my pedals, got down and pulled out my smartphone. Now, my smartphone was more or less at the end of its life, and I was using a satellite app called MapMyRide, which sucked the battery life out of my phone. It was just in my little pouch back there, just kind of running away for a while, at least it had been until probably about an hour before I pulled out my phone. Because when I pulled it out, it was entirely dead. I had nothing.

And so now I'm in incommunicado in a very rural part of Northern North Carolina and heading near the border. And the night, that was a weird night. It was entirely devoid of light. I looked up, I couldn't see anything. I think there was a cloud cover. So there were no stars, no moon, nothing. And in that part of where I was, there was no electric light either. There was no light of houses. I was in a very remote area and I was in great danger. I was a man walking in darkness. I couldn't see the edge of the road. So I couldn't ride my bike anymore. And it was a very dangerous time. And I realize how much of our life and our safety depends on light. I mean, light itself provides food through photosynthesis, through even all of the creatures that eat the green plants depend on light to live. And without light, we can't move around. We don't know where we're going. And so I felt myself going off the road numbers of times. Well, today in order to understand the gift of the light of God that is Jesus I want to probe that darkness. I want to have a sense of that darkness and then be able to see spectacularly the light that shines in the darkness.

So look at Isaiah 9:2 and the text there, "The people walking in darkness," it says, "have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." Now, let's understand the immediate context there. If you were to go back to the end of chapter 8 in Isaiah 8:19-21, it says there, "When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; and when they are famished, they will become enraged and looking upward will curse their king and their God." So this is an intense spiritual darkness that Isaiah's talking about, the nation of Israel walking in spiritual darkness. They had imitated the wicked pagan religions of the nations that were around them and in their midst, including Baal worship, and the Ashtoreth and Molech, child sacrifice, fertility rituals. Utter wickedness. They had rejected furthermore, the word of God. And they were seeking spiritual truth from other sources. So they were into occult practices. They were consulting mediums and spiritists, consulting the dead on behalf of the living. So this is séances and necromancy and witchcraft. Remember how King Saul at the end of his life visited a witch in Endor and sought information about his own future. But the word of God, the pure word of God, the laws of Moses and all the scriptures that followed, they had rejected that truth. And that's why Isaiah cries out to them, to the law, and to the testimony, "Go to the word of God not to all these occultic sources." And he stated clearly that if they did not speak according to this light, the light of the word of God, they had no light. They were in darkness. They were a people walking in darkness.

And that darkness resulted in them being incredibly angry, intensely angry. They were enraged at life. They were enraged at God. There's a text that says, "A man's own folly ruins his life, but his heart rages against the Lord." And so by our sins, we destroy our world and then we blame God. And so these people were like that. They were looking upward and cursing God. That's the nature of their darkness. And this terrible spiritual condition of Israel was the darkness that Isaiah writes about. And it prevailed over those six centuries, right through the time of the birth of Christ, because that darkness is captured in the words of prophecy, this ancient prophecy. And so that's the nature of the darkness into which Christ was born. And the good news comes with a simple turn of the phrase, a single word saying that the reign of darkness would come to an end, "Nevertheless," verse 1, "Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.” A pure, a perfect, and eternal light was coming into the world." And that light would drive away forever that darkness that he just described at the end of chapter 8.

Now, darkness is a powerful symbol in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, darkness is a symbol of evil, of a world gone astray from God. Darkness, first and foremost represents evil, anti-God, or the absence of the goodness of God. Right from the beginning, Genesis 1:3-4, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.’” He doesn't commend the darkness. He says that the light is good. And so in the text you heard Wes read earlier, 1 John 1:5, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you, God is light and in him, there is no darkness at all." Therefore, darkness represents evil. It represents the absence of God, the opposite of everything God is. It also represents Satan and his evil kingdom, a kingdom of darkness. Colossians 1:13 says that, “He [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” A dominion of darkness where Paul writes at the end of Ephesians 6:12, "For we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness and against the spiritual force of evil in the heavenly places." So this is the darkness we also now experience apart from Christ.

Darkness also historically has represented ignorance. That's represented ignorance, not knowing the truth. We speak for example of the Middle Ages as being the dark ages. People use that expression to speak of the effect of marauding barbarians like the Visigoths and the Vandals and the Franks and the Angles and the Saxons, the Huns and the Vikings that had no respect for learning and culture. They crushed the remnants of the Western Roman empire, destroying libraries, burning scrolls, destroying culture, art, and sinking people into the darkness of ignorance, a lack of knowledge. Well, that's a secular view of darkness, the dark ages. The Bible has, however, a similar sense of ignorance being darkness, the mental process of darkness, of not knowing the truth of God, of not knowing the Bible, not knowing what God says. That's darkness of not knowing God himself and turning away from the true God to idols, to dark images and a dark and wicked lifestyle that flows from that ignorance. Ephesians 4:17-18 captures it very well, "You must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They're darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." So that's a mental, moral darkness that comes on people. Psalm 119:105 says, "The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path." So therefore, darkness represents not knowing the word of God, walking in the darkness. You don't know the Scripture.

And this spiritual blindness engulfs the entirety of our existence. It characterizes everything. Jesus said in Matthew 6:22-23, "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. And if then that light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?" You know he is not speaking about physical light there, but spiritual light of truth and of the word of God. So darkness represents the evil life that flows from that ignorance, from that moral, spiritual ignorance, people stumbling in the darkness. They don't know which way to go. They don't know how to live. That's what it means to walk in darkness. Isaiah 59:9-10 captures it very well, "Justice is far from us. Righteousness does not reach us. We look for lights, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows. Like the blind, we grope along the wall, feeling our way like men without eyes. At midday, we stumble as if it were twilight. Among the strong, we are like the dead." Isaiah was so good at that visual imagery. It's so rich, the book of Isaiah. And you get the picture of people without eyes groping by feel along a wall, feeling for some place to turn or where to go. It's the picture of walking in darkness.

The Bible has many descriptions of the dark life that flows from this. Titus 3:3 for example says, "At one time we were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another." Doesn't that characterize a lot of the darkness we see today? People who are hated and hate one another, and they walk in immorality and wickedness and don't know that what they're doing is evil and wrong.

Darkness also represents the illusion of thinking you can get away with the dark things you're doing, like the darkness hides others from knowing what you're doing. Isaiah 29:15 speaks especially vertically that people think they can hide what they're doing from God. Isaiah 29:15 says, "Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'Who sees us? Who will know?'" And John 3:20, Jesus says, "Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." So people are under the illusion that they can do these evil things and will never be caught and nobody will ever know, they can do them in secret and God does not see.

Darkness also represents a persistent, willful spiritual blindness so that you cannot see what is right in front of you. You can't recognize the truth though it shines brightly right in front of you. 2 Corinthians 4:4, it says, "The god of this age [Satan] 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 this beautiful brightness of Christ shining right in front of them and they can't see it because Satan has blinded them.

Darkness also represents hopelessness. If hope is a feeling that the future is bright, then hopelessness must be a feeling that the future is dark. We're not going to anything good. I mean, nothing good is going to come from all of this. Job talks about this in Job 30:26, "Yet when I hope for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness." “So as I look ahead for the rest of my life, it's just darkness. I don't see anything worth living for. And then after that, who knows? Who knows? Grave is just nothing but darkness.” So the essence of this hopelessness then is terror of death, fear of death, which stands over everything we do and mocks it. Look again at our texts. Look at Isaiah 9:2, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." So the terror of death is acute because death cannot be predicted. It comes unannounced whenever it will, and it instantly ends everything we hope for in this life. Hebrews 2 says that before Christ came, people walk daily in the fear of death. Death loomed darkly, standing over us at every moment. Like you can picture the Grim Reaper and that shroud with that scythe. And you never know when the scythe is going to swing. You just never know. And so then what is the point of all we strive for, all of our projects, all of our love? All of the things we hope for in this world come to nothing because of death. We must all die and leave it behind. And within a short time, no one on earth will even know that we were ever alive and none of the projects we worked on will be standing. They'll all be gone. The darkness of the grave then comes. And what is that? Job 10:20-22 Job said, "Are not my days, my few days almost over? Then I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow, to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow, and disorder where even the light is like darkness." We know from the book of Job that's the way he saw the grave in that he didn't have that hope of resurrection like we do.

Darkness also represents judgment from God. Sometimes God just brought darkness on people, physical darkness to judge them. Like in the 10 plagues, remember one of the plagues was the plague of darkness that came on Egypt. Exodus 10:21, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt, darkness that can be felt.’" And again, at the end of the world, Revelation 16:10, "The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast and his kingdom [the antichrist’s kingdom] was plunged into darkness." It's just a judgment of God, “If you're going to live a dark life, I'm going to actually take physical light away.” It's a judgment. And so also a spiritual darkness can be a judgment from God as well. If you turn away from the light you have, you'll have even less light.

Finally, darkness represents eternal damnation in hell. The absence of every good gift of God, an eternal blindness, no beauty, no goodness, no blessing, just wrath and judgment from God being on the outside of everything good and stripped of every good and perfect gift. As Matthew 8:12 speaks of being, “thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." That's how Jesus described hell. So these are the dimensions, the biblical dimensions of darkness. This is what it means in Isaiah 9:2, when it speaks of a people walking in darkness, a mental darkness, a moral darkness, emotional darkness, and especially spiritual darkness, to be without hope and without God in the world.

Now, friends, apart from Jesus Christ, the same darkness is over our world today. Don't be surprised at what we're seeing in our culture, in current events, and worldwide. Don't be surprised. It's the same thing. This is the darkness. Satan continues to spread the darkness of his lies and his hatred of God to blind people's minds and harden people's hearts and to send people false teachers who are, as Jesus said, "The blind leading the blind." those in darkness, leading others in darkness. 

Well, that dear friends, is why this light of Christmas is so beautiful. So radiantly beautiful, a great light in Christ has dawned. Look again at verse 2, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." Through the prophetic gift of Isaiah, God predicted the coming of his only begotten Son in terms of a great light that would dawn. As John puts it, "In him [Christ] was life and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it." So Isaiah predicted the coming of a light that would drive away forever the deep darkness of the people of God, a great light that would dawn forever. And it all started on the darkened hills outside Bethlehem, where a group of shepherds were just out there watching their sheep.

So if you look, you can stay with your finger in Isaiah 9 because we're going to go back and forth. But over to Luke chapter 2:8-9, very familiar, "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them and they were terrified." Number of years ago, I went on a mission trip to Kenya and ministered in different parts of the country, but much of the summer I spent out in the rural parts, the farm areas of Kenya. I never realized how accustomed I was as an American to electric light extending the day. It's like when the sun sets, the day is really just getting started for us. Edison, we're way past that, I mean, it's just the city never sleeps. And so I'm just used to that. Well, out there in that rural area, when the sun went down, they had some Coleman lanterns and they had some fires and they finished eating and all that. And then shortly after that, they went to bed. The day was over. And I remember looking out over a valley and seeing almost no light at all. We're just used to light all day long and into the night, into midnight. Well, these simple shepherds are outside Bethlehem and they're guarding their flocks at night and there's that dark mantle of the night sky. Probably they maybe had some stars that they could look at, and they were used to it. They're used to being out there. But imagine what that must have been like. And there was no electric light back then. There was nothing that would light up a night except fire. That's all there was. Maybe they had a fire, maybe they didn't. They're just sitting out there. Then suddenly, don't you love that word? Suddenly, an angel appears and their night is just ripped apart by this radiant lights. Luke tells us, the angel of the Lord appeared, and with him was the glory of the Lord. This radiant light came. God's glory has that power to do that. As a matter of fact, our future heavenly home will be lit for all eternity with the light of the glory of God in Christ. The new Jerusalem will be lit up with it. As Revelation 21 says, "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light and the lamb is its lamp, and the nations will walk by its light."

Well, the reaction by the shepherds was predictable. I love the KJV. It has it best. "They were sore afraid." Isn't that awesome? Sore afraid. I mean, they were terrified. And so the angel speaks the words that angels must always speak when they come doing their business, "Don't be afraid." It's like when you're in heavenly angel school and you get sent on a mission, that's the first thing you always need to say to the people, "Don't be afraid or fear not." And so the angel says that. Just like the Son of God himself, the angel did not descend from heaven to earth to destroy people, but rather that people might be saved. And so the angel comes to give this wonderful good news that he had been tasked to announce. So just picture it. There's this radiant light around this individual, terrified shepherds looking at him. And here come these words that change history, "I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all people. Today, in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Well, dear friends, this is the whole point of Christmas, the reality of who this baby was, what he was coming to do, and the angel calls it good news of a great joy for all people. Now, Isaiah, in our passage, likens it to a vast celebration. In Isaiah 9:3, it says, "They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder." So there's this vast celebration of the giving of Jesus and the giving of Jesus Christ as Savior of the world is a limitless source of joy. He's a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Now, many of you may say, "Pastor, if I could just be honest, if you don't know this, this isn't news to me. We've had Christmas a lot." I just want to say, when you've been in one pulpit for 20... This is my 24th Christmas message. You run out of new ideas. It's a bit of a challenge. And the older I get, I don't know if you older people can relate, the faster my life is going. It's like a truck with its brakes out. So, "Oh, it's Christmas again, what shall I say?" But here's the thing, I know that you've heard this before. I know you're like, "How is this news? Even it's good new, how is it news? I've heard this before." But the more I've contemplated this, the more I realize, you have only begun to scratch the surface of what we're talking about here and so have I.

We have not the tiniest fraction of a millionth of the percent of the reality, of the incarnation, the reality of the God-Man, of the gift of Jesus in a human body for us. And therefore, we have eternity to study it. As it says at the end of our text in Isaiah 9:7, "Of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end." So for all eternity, his people will increasingly have a sense of his glory and his majesty for all eternity. This is news that never gets old. And I understand that our lives in this world can make us jaded, they can make us be bored with things that should be exciting. It's just what sin does to us. We get tired of things that should still bring us joy and beauty. I get it. That's all part of this struggle we have with sin. But in our resurrection minds and bodies, we'll be free from that forever. And we're going to spend forever celebrating the truth of this good news.

This is good news that we'll never get old, there's always more to tell. And the great significance of the word that the angel brought is the word Savior, "The Savior who is born to you." therefore, a personal Savior. Out of our darkness, stepping into our darkness and shredding that darkness with glorious light, a Savior born for us. You yourself, individually as a human being, as a sinner, you stand in need of this Savior. Because of your sins and I say because of my sins, we stand rightly under the terrifying wrath and judgment of God. There would be no escape for us, for Almighty God sees everywhere we go and He can reach us at any time. Christ alone is the refuge. And he was given by God to be precisely that, a refuge from the wrath and judgment of God, a refuge, a shelter, a savior who takes away the death penalty we have earned for our darkness, for our sin.

So the angel said plainly, "This Savior is born to you” for each of us individually and personally. And yet the angel makes it plain that this good news is for all people, people all over the world, even to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time. This baby who was being born that night is called Christ the Lord. Christ means anointed one, the one promised as the fulfillment of Davidic Covenant. Promised to the Jewish people through prophecies, like Isaiah's prophecy. This is the Messiah, the Christ, and he is Lord. That's the mystery. He is God in the flesh. Now, the shepherds could not have fully understood these words. Indeed, no creature will ever fully understand these words while we live in this world. Even though we study it for all eternity, we'll never finally reach an end.

So this is the astonishing message given by this single angel robed in the glory of the Lord. But God had yet more glory to pour out on these simple shepherds. And in comes that word "suddenly" that I mentioned earlier before. But here's where it comes. "Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.'" Now, this is one of those amazing times I've spoken of recently when I was preaching through Job about Leviathan and how there's, it seems somewhat a wall or a barrier or a membrane between the physical five senses world that we're used to and the spiritual realm that surrounds us. And occasionally, that realm is rent. We're going to see this, God willing, in a few weeks when we begin the gospel of Mark at Jesus's baptism. Heaven is torn open. And in this case, heaven is opened, "and a great company," it says, "of the heavenly host." Now, we don't know how many. What is a great company? Lots of them. Now, both Daniel and the book of Revelation speak of myriad of myriads or 10,000 times 10,000. Some Christians do the math. I won't say who that is, but that's a hundred million angels. How many of them showed up that night? I don't know. But to some degree, just the heavens are open and they could see this heavenly host appearing. Now, the word host really is a military term. This is an army, you can imagine like the Roman legions in array and battle array. But they're not there to do warfare, they're there to worship. They're there to celebrate “glory to the newborn King.”

Now, I don't know that they sang. I know that Charles Wesley thinks they sang. Maybe they did. I hope they did. I don't know. All it says is they were praising God and saying, all right? But you're like, "No, no, no, they're singing." So go ahead, cross out saying and just write singing in there if you want. Maybe they were singing, but I do know what they were praising God about. "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests." First, glory to God is the centerpiece of all worship. Do not misunderstand. You're not giving anything to God he doesn't already possess. It's this way, “God is glorious. Oh, I see it or an aspect of it and I'm giving him the praise he deserves for that glory." That's what glory to God means. And then it's glory to God in the highest or in the highest degree. This is the most glorious thing that God can do. The greatest display of his attributes and his perfections is in his Son. For Hebrews 1:3 says, "He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being." That's what we're seeing. That's what we're celebrating, "Glory to God in the highest degree and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests” peace on earth.

Now, the backdrop of that is this darkness is not a passive, quiet kind of darkness. This is the darkness of open rebellion against God the king. We, apart from Christ, are at war with him. He is our enemy and we are his. Colossians 1:21-22 says this, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now, he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death,” through his death on the cross, “to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation.” And so Christ came to end the warfare between God's people and God himself and to bring a situation in which God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, all of this, because of the coming of Christ. So the angelic host is celebrating, the army of heaven could easily have just poured down on earth like molten lava and just destroyed all the sinners. But that was not God's purpose. And they knew that it was God's purpose to save people so that they would worship him.

Now concerning the second phrase, the most famous translation in English will always be the KJV. "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men." Now most of the modern translations zero in a little more specifically on the word favor or goodwill that the gift is for those on whom God has set his grace, those on whom he has set his grace. Not everyone is going to experience this peace on earth, goodwill; they're not. But God's people will, the elects will. As Romans 5:1 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

So the angels were dispatched by God to celebrate the moment of his birth. And so this is the eternal light. Go back to Isaiah 9 and look at the nature of the kingdom he comes to bring and the good news. Isaiah 9:6, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." This is one of the great verses in the Bible and just the wonder of “To us, a child is born, a son is given” this little baby being born and then the mystery of the incarnation and these titles, a blending of the supernatural and natural in them. Wonderful Counselor, it's really more like miracle counselor. Wonder-working counselor. So there's a normal counseling aspect, but then there's the supernatural wonder working aspect, Wonderful Counselor. And then Mighty God, the word "mighty" is used frequently of individuals, of mighty warriors. Gideon was called mighty. So just individual people are called mighty from time to time. But look at the next word, God, Mighty God. "For to us a child is born and he'll be called Mighty God." That's the incarnation. And then Everlasting Father, again, that blending father is a very normal word, family word. But then Father of Eternity, an Eternal Father. And then Prince of Peace, which he came to give. And this is the nature of Christ who he is and then the amazing freedom of his rule. The government will be on his shoulders.

I'm weary of sinful, wicked human government. Don't be afraid, I'm not going into details. I'm saying whatever government you're thinking about, whatever that might be, this is better. Amen? This is better: Jesus ruling for all eternity, the government being on his shoulders. And verse 7, “Of the increase of his government,” I already talked about that, "and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever, an eternal throne of justice and righteousness, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”

So listen, the angels’ light only shown temporarily, and then he was gone. The angels went back up to heaven. But then the real light started shining. I really think it's captured by this phrase, "The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." We cannot measure the zeal, the fiery zeal of God the Father, to make Jesus' kingdom established and reign forever. "Sit at my right hand," he says, "I'm going to put all of your enemies under your feet and you will reign forever and ever. Ask of me, and I'll make the nation's your inheritance." The zeal of the Lord Almighty burning for Jesus will accomplish this. 

So this light has dawned. The question is, are you going to come toward it or run from it in terror? As Jesus said in John 3, this is the verdict, "Light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than the light for their deeds are evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." And again, John 8:12, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

So a couple of exhortations and we’ll be done. First, don't grieve over the present darkness that you see as though it's some new thing. It's been around a long time. It is grievous in and of itself, but don't think we're in some whole new phase of darkness on planet earth. There has been darkness since the fall, and God is able to, in a beautiful way, shine in the midst of this darkness. Secondly, trust in Christ. Be drawn into him, into his beautiful light. Understand that only Christ's glorious death on the cross can defeat the true darkness of sin and death and hell. So cast yourself wholly in the abandon of faith into Jesus. Just dive into the ocean of light and then walk in the light as he is in the light. Put all the darkness of sin out of your life. Even if you've been a Christian for many years, there is a darkness in each of us. By the light of God's word, his word a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, through the atoning work of Christ, all of the darkness in our lives can be driven back, driven out, ultimately driven out entirely.

Finally, when you celebrate Christmas about a week from now, when you gather together as a family, I would commend that you read Isaiah 9:1-7. Just read and celebrate. Focus your minds not on all of the temporary blessings, and they're good. It's good to enjoy those temporary blessings, but focus your mind on the light that shines in the darkness. Close with me in prayer.

Lord, thank you for the incredible truth of the word of God. The depths are amazing, the levels of truth are beyond us, and we thank you for the simple truth that even a child can understand, that Jesus is the Son of God, he died for us that we might live forever. Lord, thank you for that. And thank you for all of the gifts and the blessings that you give us along the way that are tokens of your kindness in Christ and of a future world of light and celebration and glory. In Jesus’ name, amen. 

To understand the light of Jesus Christ, we must understand the darkness of our situation.

The post A Great Light appeared first on Two Journeys.

Andy and Wes cover 2 Cor. 12:1-21 and unpack Paul's heavenly experience, his thorn in the flesh, and his apostleship.

The post 2 Corinthians Episode 14: Paul’s Vision of Heaven and His Thorn in the Flesh appeared first on Two Journeys.

The Book of Job was written to help Christians suffer well, to let God bring suffering into our lives and still trust him and his purposes.

The post Timeless Lessons from the Book of Job appeared first on Two Journeys.

The main point of the book of Job is to help Christians suffer well. To let God bring suffering into our lives and still trust him and his purposes. Listen to this final summary sermon in the Job series.

Ordinarily, I'd say turn in your Bibles to... So, I don't know, find someplace in Job. Mason, who just read scripture, he's read the whole chapter. I said, "Well, just thank God I didn't have you read the whole book.” We'd be here a while. But it is time for us now to draw this study in Job to conclusion. What lessons can we draw from this incredible book of Job that will help us? Every book in the Bible has its place and its purpose. Its mission from the Holy Spirit for the people of God. Recently, I was meditating on a single verse in the gospel of Mark, Mark 15:38. It's a book, God willing, that we'll be turning to after Christmas. The context of Mark 15:38 is powerful, Christ has just died in verse 37. And in verse 39, the Roman centurion's about to make an incredible pronouncement about Christ. So, Mark 15:37, "With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last." Verse 39, "When the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, 'Surely he was the Son of God.'" 

Right in the middle of these two statements, we have this one historical fact, Mark 15:38, "The curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." It occurred to me, as I was meditating on that verse, that the Holy Spirit, inspiring Mark to write his gospel, moved him to record the simple fact of the curtain in the temple being torn in two. And then the additional detail that it was torn in two from top to bottom. But what struck me was that the Holy Spirit did not inspire Mark to add a single word of explanation about it. Not one word about what the curtain in the temple was, what it was for, what was the significance of it being rent, of it being torn in two, and from top to bottom. I've heard, don't know this for certain, but I've heard that the gospel of Mark seems to have been written as an introduction of Christ to the Gentile worlds, to the Roman worlds. That the person and work of Christ would be introduced to the Romans.

So if you were a Roman citizen and you held this ancient document in your hands there in the first century, and you were reading this, you would get to this point, what we know as Mark 15:38, and you'd have no idea what it was talking about. No idea what this curtain was and what was the significance of it being torn in two from top to bottom. You would be in the dark. But the Holy Spirit is very wise. He left the full explanation of that event to other books of the Bible.

He left it, especially to the author of the book of Hebrews, the task of explaining it. The curtain in the temple separated the Holy place from the Most Holy place. And the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, was a place where God himself symbolically dwelt in a glory cloud above the arc of the covenant. And the curtain was a barrier keeping sinful human beings out of God's holy presence. The one exception was the Day of Atonement, and that only once a year. And only the high priest, the descendant of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, from the Jewish nation could enter. Once a year with the blood of the atoning sacrifice."

Now, Jesus, by dying on the cross, has changed all that forever. By his death on the cross, God himself has torn the curtain and thrown it open for all sinners to come near through Christ’s atoning work. So we have the full theology of the curtain of the temple in Hebrews 10:19-22, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way open 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 with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our heart sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water."

So my point here is that the Holy Spirit did not assign to Mark, the gospel writer, the task of explaining all that. He knew that explanation would be made later by the author to the book of Hebrews and other places. So, as I was meditating on that, I thought, "Every book in the Bible has its role to play." It has a role to play in our lives. It has an assigned task. And that assigned task is limited and bounded by the wisdom of God, by the Holy Spirit, to achieve that task.

Let's take that whole thing and move it over now to the book of Job. What is its purpose? What is its assigned task? Now, obviously, there's not just one purpose for the book of Job, because it's a long book, 42 chapters, many verses. And many concepts, many theological themes flow from Job. It's not just one. But I would say plainly that the book of Job was given to us by God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to help God's people with the problem of pain, with the problem of suffering. Even the problem of evil in a world governed by a wise and loving all-powerful God. Simply put, the book of Job was given to us, the people of God, to help us suffer well. Suffer well.

 Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to suffer well? Well, I believe it means to let God bring suffering into your life without you accusing him of wrongdoing. Without you cursing God. Without you being estranged from God. Well, that's putting it negatively. Suffering well means not doing those things or anything like them. 

More positively, I think this one verse from Job sums the whole thing up very well. Job 13:15, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him." If I could choose one verse from the whole book, I would say that's the point. Even though God brings suffering into my life, I will use that suffering. I will use it to learn from God and draw close to God, and be strengthened in my faith in God. And yes, I will be filled with hope in God, even while I am suffering.

Now, as I've said, many times before, hope is a strong feeling in the heart that the future is bright based on the promises of God. So the book of Job will help you get the most out of your suffering. To not waste your cancer, as pastor John Piper puts in his book, Don't Waste Your Cancer. Or to not waste your unemployment or to not waste your experience of aging. Or to not waste even the sorrow of burying a loved one. Even a child. Even a child. That you will not waste your suffering through unbelief and through accusing God of wrongdoing. Through rebellion, and yes, through sin. I think that's what the book of Job was given to help us with.

Along with that, we see that the book of Job was given to the cannon in the Bible at a certain moment in redemptive history, the Old Testament era. It seems to be very old. Some people say it was the first Bible book ever written. Some of you may even have chronological Bibles and you open up and there's Job right away. I'm not a big fan of that. I don't really know how anyone can know exactly when the book of Job was written. Just seems to me to be an elaborate argument from silence based on the things that are not spoken of in the book of Job. Moses isn't mentioned, the Jews aren't mentioned, Abraham isn't mentioned. All of that. So the assumption is that Job must have preceded all of those things. We don't know that.

One thing we definitely do know, however, it definitely preceded the birth of Jesus Christ. It's definitely an Old Testament book. And therefore, the author of Hebrews tells us, speaking of the whole old covenant, "It's shadow wisdom. Shadow. Shadow wisdom. The reality is Christ." So it is helpful, but it's, "Shadow. The reality is Christ. The full light of glory is Christ."

So as we saw, Old Testament saints had a very limited, and in many cases, defective view of death and of the grave and anything beyond it. There is, it seems to me, almost no clear teaching on hell as eternal conscious torment in the 39 books of the Old Testament. That teaching was brought into the world clearly by the son of God, by Jesus Christ. No one warned the human race as clearly about hell as Jesus did. Christ himself.

And in the same way, even a great man like Job seemed to have a very defective view of death and the grave. Not much of a view of eternal life in heaven or of the bodily resurrection from the dead that Christ promised for all who believe in him. How could he? Those things hadn't been revealed yet. So, as I learned in this process, preparing all these sermons. At one point, it just hit me this statement that I've made many times since then, “Job was a better man than any of us will ever be”. But we, we have a better hope than Job ever had. So that's a redemptive-historical argument for the position of the book of Job. And just say, "Look, friends, we can do better than this." Not because we're any better people, but because we have a better hope. 

So, we drink in his words and we live in imitation where we can, but in contrast where we must. We hope to imitate him in his godliness, but we want to surpass him in his articulation of hope. Not because we're better people, we aren't, but because we live beyond Christ cross and the empty tomb. Because we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Because we have the book of Acts. Because we have the epistles of Paul and of Peter and of John. We have that grand glorious book of Revelation, which tells us how wonderfully all of this comes out. We have all of those things.

So that's how I want to position this.. That's just my introduction. We're going to walk through today 10 lessons, timeless lessons from the book of Job. I'm not going to say everything about each of these lessons that could be said. Each one, I think, really would bear a full sermon, I think.

Also, I don't think these 10 are an exhaustive list. This morning, Daphne and I were driving in. I said, "If you had to give some timeless lessons from the book of Job, what would you say?" One of the first things she said is, "Don't be like Job's friends." I was like, "That's good. It's not on the list here, but that's a good one." Would you all agree that's a good lesson from the don't do that? All right. I think God would approve of that one. So thank you, Daphne, for that one. So that's number 11, don't be like Job's friends. So this is not exhaustive list, but I hope that these 10 will be helpful to you. Let's walk through them.

 Number one, suffering will most certainly come, but don't live in fear. Suffering will most certainly come, but don't live in fear. So we need to have a proper view of life under the curse. Job 5:7, "Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward." And again, Job 14:1 and 2, "Man born of woman is a few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away like a fleeting shadow he does not endure." 

Well, that's just true. I think sometimes it seems we're surprised when trials come, "Never saw this coming." As though we somehow expect a trouble-free existence. And we forget that we are descendants of Adam, and that in Adam, the original sinner, we all sin. And in Adam, we die. And because of Adam's sin, God cursed the world and cursed the ground to produce thorns and thistles for our labors. 

So let us not be surprised when trials and affliction come. Yet, don't dread them before they come. Don't live in fear over them. Job said in Job 3:25, "What I feared has come upon me. What I dreaded has happened to me." God does not want us to live in constant fear, of the three categories of loss that Job experienced. The loss of his wealth, possessions, the loss of his loved ones, then the loss of his health. Those are the three big categories of suffering. He doesn't want us to live in fear of those things. 

We see the final purpose of God and Job's life, as all blessings were fully restored to him in the end. We also know that our true blessedness is our citizenship in heaven, not on earth. Faith, biblical faith, is designed to drive out fear. They're pitted against each other, again and again, in the Bible. It's been sad for me over the last stretch of time, year and a half or more, to see so many people living in constant fear concerning the COVID pandemic. It's been sad for me to see that fear among God's people, even. I mean, both sides of the equation, fear of the virus, fear of the vaccine. I've seen both. Just fear. 

I wonder if some of the individuals will ever get beyond it. But as we said, faith and fear are often juxtaposed as opposites. You see this in the gospels frequently. Like when he went to heal Jairus' daughter and some messengers come to tell Jairus, "Your little daughter is dead. Why bother to teach her anymore?" Just zero compassion, it seems. And Jesus, ignoring what they said, spoke directly to Jairus. And he said, "Don't be afraid, just believe." So there it is. Don't be afraid, just believe. They're juxtaposed as enemies, fear, and faith. Or again, in the stilling of the storm, Matthew 8:26. He replied to his disciples, "You of little faith. Why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuke the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. So afflictions are going to come. God is saying, "I cannot save you unless I hurt you." It's not possible for him to finish our salvation pain-free. But don't live in fear of those things.

Number two, love your earthly blessings, but hold all of them loosely. Hold them loosely. Now, we stand in amazement how quickly all of Job's earthly blessings were taken from him. In a single day, he lost all his wealth and his 10 children. Then in phase two, he lost his health in a single day. So, earthly blessings are a delight. We should not refuse to partake for fear they will be taken from us. That's not the right way to live. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows," James 1:17. He wants us to enjoy good things. 

1 Timothy 6:17. It says that God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. But the book of Job tells us to hold them loosely, open hand. They belong to God, and God has the right to do whatever he wants with them. So our children are not really ours. They really aren't. They belong to God, and God has the right to do with them whatever he thinks best. They belong to God because it was God who knit them together in their mother's womb. As Job himself said beautifully in Job 10:9-12, Job speaking to God, "Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness. And in your Providence, watched over my spirit." That's God knitting together every human being that has ever lived in his mother's womb. God owns us. All of us. 

So much of the trouble comes from us thinking that our money and our homes and our clothes and our bodies and our children and our days, "All of those things really are ours, and they're ours to do with as we see fit." They're not. We're stewards of things that belong to someone else. And we are, and will continue to be, vulnerable in this present age. We're vulnerable. Proverbs 23:5 says, "Cast but a glance at riches and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an Eagle." So instead, James tells us how we ought to live. James 4:15 says, "Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" So do that with all of your blessings, all your earthly blessings. If it is the Lord's will, I'll continue to have them. If it is not his will, then I won't.

Number three, understand Satan's relentless hatred, and also, the hedge of protection. The book of Job clearly reveals the hidden activities of Satan. Job 1:7, which you just heard Mason read a moment ago. “The Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the Lord, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it." His accusations of Job prompted the test that God allowed. Job 1:11, "Stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." His direct involvement in Job's sickness, in chapter two, implies that he was just as involved in all of the earlier assaults in chapter one, on his wealth in his family.

So Job 2:7, "So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head." Satan, therefore, in 1 Peter 5:8, is presented as, "A roaring lion prowling around seeking someone to devour." That's Satan. Jesus said in John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy." Therefore, much of the sorrow and misery we experience in this life is delivered to us by Satan and his demons. Though, their activities are hidden from our sight. We can't see them, but they bring it. They deliver misery. 

It is quite possible, as we said at the time, that Behemoth and Leviathan are referring to the secret activities of demons and of Satan. Various reasons that I articulated at the time. Probably the central reason other than Isaiah 27:1, which presents Leviathan as an embodiment of evil, that God directly will kill by his sword. Beyond that is the fact that the message is, "You can't handle these animals. They're too strong for you. You can't corral them. You can't control them. You can't kill them." That's just not true of any physical animal that we know of. So I think it just makes sense that we're talking ultimately about Satan.

So we need to be aware that we have a relentless enemy prowling around like a lion. Satan wants to trick us into thinking of God as a raving beast, God is the mindless beast that's tearing you to shreds. It's sad that Job fell into that a little bit. In Job 10:16, he said, "If I hold my head high, you stalk me like a lion, and again, display your awesome power against me." That's Job speaking to God, "You're hunting me down like a lion." Don't do that. Don't do that. The ravenous beast is Satan, not God.

But the teaching of the hedge of protection is vital for us. Satan is frustrated by the hedge of protection. Do you get that sense? He would like to do more than he is allowed to do to Job. He would like to get at him, but God won't let him. Job 1:10, "Have you not put a hedge around him in his household and everything he has. You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flock and herds are spread throughout the land." The image I have is of Behemoth and Leviathan on a leash or in a cage is very comforting.

God says this to us, "You can't do it." Job 41:5, "Can you make a pet of him, Leviathan like a bird, or put him on a leash for your girls?" A few verses later, "No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me." So God is just infinitely more powerful than Leviathan. He's got him on a leash, absolutely. Central to this is the promise. 1 Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation will make a way of escape so you can stand up under it." That's true of all of the afflictions, all of the sorrows. Satan's on a leash, he's blocked, continually blocked. And when God opens up an opening for you, he has a wise purpose in that. 

Number four, when suffering comes, respond like Job did. All right. Now, you know I have to put a little asterisks on this, like he mostly did. Or like he did at the beginning. But he does get vindicated, doesn't he, by God at the end. When he says to the friends, "You have not spoken what is right of me, as my servant Job has."

So, at the beginning of the book that you just heard Mason read Job 1:21-22, Job responded this way, "Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. 

So when you are shocked by the news, the news that comes, whatever that news is, respond like Job did. The Lord gave, and now the Lord's chosen to take away. May the name of the Lord be praised. Do that. Get ready to do that. Prepare ahead of time to do that. He does that again in chapter two, Job 2:10, "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble." In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. God is wisely mixing, mixing things we consider blessings with things that we consider afflictions. There's a recipe for your salvation that he's wisely mixing. He knows how much of the one to put in and how much of the other. Trust him. Show we accept from God good and not trouble.

 Fifth, expect God to use the suffering to probe you, expose you, and convict you. This trial went on much longer than Job wanted it to go. It kept going on. That's why he began to decay in his piety, to say harsh things about God. Now, expect the trial to keep going. God is probing the depths of your being. He's probing the inner workings of your heart. He's exposing deep-seated sin. Job 7:17-20, Job says to God, "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him at every moment? Will you never look away from me or let me alone, even for an instant? If I have sinned, what have I done to you, a watcher of men? Why have you made me your target?" Job was being probed to the deepest level of his being. And in the end, some sins had bubbled from inside to the surface.

 You need to know that there are trapped sins and attitudes within the depths of your being that trials bring bubbling to the surface. It's God's intention. He wants it to come out so that you can repent of it. So Job did repent. Job 40:4 and 5, "I'm unworthy." He said to God, "How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer twice. But I will say no more."

And then Job 42:1-6, Job replied to the Lord, "I know that you can do all things. No plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, listen now and I will speak. I will question you, and you shall answer me. My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." So understand that the trials that God will bring into your life are meant to sanctify you. And part of that sanctification is to become increasingly aware of how much you needed Jesus to be your savior, how much you needed an atoning sacrifice. You underestimate it. So do I. And trials bring it to the surface.

Number six, develop a deep and powerful sense of the overwhelming majesty of God. Perhaps no book in the Bible gives a greater sense of this, the infinite, searchable majesty of God. One verse in particular struck me as I was walking through these 42 chapters. It was way back in Job 13:11. I preached a whole sermon on this theme. "Would not his splendor terrify you. Would not the dread of him fall upon you." Remember how I said, "What if God showed up in your life in one of those Old Testament theophanies, like happened from time to time? What do you think you'd be doing?" I know what you'd be doing. You'd be on your face. You'd be on the ground. It's good for us to know that, to know the infinite majesty of almighty God, to have a sense of that.

We get it just from reading the book, just the sense of the majesty when God shows up in the whirlwind. Job 38, then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind. He said, "Who is this that darkens my counsel, by speaking words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched out a measuring line across it? On what were it's footing set, or who laid its cornerstone while the mourning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind the doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther;  here is where your proud waves halt'?" If God did that for you, showed up in a whirlwind, and talked to you like that, what do you think you'd be doing? You'd be on your face. The more we have a sense of the fear of the Lord, an appropriate fear of the Lord that's the beginning of wisdom, the better it will be for our souls. We need to develop this deep sense of the holiness of God, the infinite glory and majesty of God 

What is it that causes the holy seraphim to cover their faces in his presence? And to cover their feet, and to be overwhelmed with one theme, the holiness of God? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty… the whole earth is full of his glory! The more that we see that by faith, the better we will be prepared to live well, to prosper well, and then when the time comes, yes, to suffer well.

Number seven, don't ever question God's love, God's justice, or God's wisdom. Satan predicted that he could make Job curse God to his face. In the heat of the trial, Job's wife was Satan's mouthpiece, when she said, "Curse God and die." It's the same theme. It is very humbling for us to realize we can all play that role from time to time. We can be Satan's mouthpiece in the life of someone else. Don't ever do that.

As the trial wore on, Job's negative attitude toward God became more and more pronounced, more and more shocking even. Probably the low point for me was in Job 9:17-18. It's the kind of thing you can read through and you don't fully understand what he's saying to God. But he said this of God, "He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me regain my breath, but would overwhelm me with misery." And five verses later, "When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent." Stop right there. That is not the God of the Bible. He doesn't mock the despair of his hurting children. Not at all. 

Now, this is the essence, I think, of suffering poorly. Don't do this. Don't accuse God of wrongdoing. Don't accuse him of injustice. Don't tell him he doesn't love you anymore because you're going through this. It's just not true. And don't think that by doing this, you're doing therapeutic venting. It's just helping you psychologically. It's not!  You're further away from the throne of grace and the help you need. It's making you further from it. Run to the throne of grace. Receive mercy and find grace to help through Jesus Christ, the help you need in a time of need. Go to him. Yes, the psalmists pour out their complaint before God. That's how to do it. Imitate the psalmists in bringing their troubles to God, but don't think of God as a vicious, cruel, unloving tyrant as you're going through trial.

Number eight, do not expect here on earth, full explanations of your suffering. Even when God spoke to Job directly in the whirlwind, he never explained anything about his own conditions or the reason why. Job was yearning for the why. As I read earlier, Job 7:20, "Why have you made me your target? Why?" I think everyone that goes through suffering wants that question answered, right? "Why is this happening to me? Why? Why are you doing this?" But notice, once he shows up in the whirlwind, he never gives any explanation. He doesn't say a word about it. And he doesn't talk about Satan. He doesn't talk about Satan's accusations or God boasting about him in heaven. "Have you considered my servant, Job?" He didn't tell him anything. Nothing about any of that. He gives him no explanation.

We readers know more as we're reading than Job knew at the time. Fundamentally, God makes it plain, that he doesn't owe any of us anything, including an explanation. Job 41:11, he says, "Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me." Think about that. Who has a claim against me that I must pay? No one. So you cannot demand anything from God, including an explanation. He doesn't owe you anything. But that is not the final word on you understanding why things happen to you. We'll get to that on my 10th point.

Now, number nine, and this is the main point of everything, because it's the main point of the Bible. What is the main point, not just of the book of Job, but of all 66 books? Jesus. Jesus Christ. The mediator, the Redeemer, he is the point of the book of Job. Know that in Christ you have a perfect mediator and a perfect Redeemer. All roads lead eventually to Christ. Again and again, Job yearns for a mediator and Redeemer. We know very well, as we're reading, as Christians, we know who that is, don't we?

Remember how he says in Job 9:33-34, "If only, if only there were someone to arbitrate between us, between me and God. Someone who could lay his hand upon us both as a mediator," he's saying. "Someone," listen to this, "to remove God's rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more." That is the theology of propitiation. The wrath of God is gone. You don't need to fear the wrath of God. Through faith in Christ, God presented him as a propitiation, a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. Once you come to faith in Christ, you need fear his terrors no more. 

And Job's there saying, "If only there were someone like that. Don't you want to talk to me? 'Job, I got just the person. I want to tell you about Jesus.'" But then he says so beautifully, the most famous verses, I think, in the book, Job 19:25-27, Job says, "I know that my Redeemer lives. And that in the end, he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes. I and not another, how my heart yearns within me."

Now, whatever Job fully understood and spoke at that moment is no longer my concern. How can I read those wonderful words as a Christian? The greatest calamity, the greatest earthly calamity that can possibly happen to me has not yet happened, but will happen. It's called death. If we're not the final generation, it is appointed to each one of us to die. And those three categories, your wealth, gone. All of it. Your loved ones, your time here on earth with them is done. It's over. And your health, gone. You will die. Now listen to these words, "I know that my Redeemer lives. The one who's paid a price to buy me out of sin and hell and death. He lives. He rose again. And that in the end, in the final analysis, he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed in the grave and the worm has had its way with me, I will see him, my savior, in my body. My resurrection body." That's how I read those words. That's how I read them. 

Therefore, in Christ, we have Emmanuel, the very thing we've been singing. We have God with us, walking with us through the trial. He's familiar with our sufferings. He knows what it's like to hurt. So it says in Isaiah 43, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name. You're mine. And when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. And when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you ablaze." And because Christ has risen from the dead, we know that this world is not all there is friends. We know it's not all there is. All of our earthly loss, all of our sufferings, all of our deeper questions are waiting for the next world. That's why I say Job is a better man than any of us will ever be, but we definitely have a better hope than he had. 

For Job, the grave was a place of deep darkness and hopelessness. Listen again to Job 17:13-16, "If the only home I hope for is the grave, if I spread out my bed in darkness, if I say to corruption, 'You are my father, and to the worm, my mother or my sister,' where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Will it go down to the gates of death? Will we descend together into the dust?" Now that is pretty depressing. But now that Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of a mighty harvest of righteousness, we are going to be, by death, transported like a portal from a world of death and sorrow and misery and pain, into a world where there'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain. It's a portal. That's what Jesus has done for us. Opened up a doorway. 

So we're going to be able to say, "Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?" And like Paul says in Philippians 1, "For me to live is Christ and die is what, gain, and better by far." I just feel like I would rather spend the afternoon with the apostle Paul in the Philippian jail, as he contemplates death, then Job as he was contemplating death. Amen?  Just so much happier and better. And we get to do that. If you're a Christian. If you're a Christian. Are you? Are you a Christian? Have you repented and trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins? Have you been delivered from judgment and sin and hell by faith in Christ? There is no other way. There's no other savior. Have you trusted in him? Do you know that forgiveness, or not?

Finally, number 10, know that in heaven, God will perfectly restore, vindicate, bless, and educate you. Job died old and full of years, as we know, and as we preached last week from the New Testament. However, we know that was not the end of Job's story. In heaven, God has been completing Job's education in his own glory. Job's true wealth in heaven will never be taken from him. His redeemed children in heaven will never die. There'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain for him. Job is perfectly vindicated before all the redeemed as a hero of the faith. You can put in your reservation once you die for a dinner with Job. Sit down and talk to him and tell him how thankful you are for what God did in your life through his story. And that'll be a wonderful time. 

And so it'll be with us. Our true vindication will be our resurrection in glorious bodies. Our eternal blessing will be in the new heaven, new earth. And then God will explain himself to you. I really believe that. I believe he will tell you why you suffered. Why do I think that? Because that's just what God does with his children. He says very plainly, in John 15:15, Jesus said, "I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't know his master's business. Instead, I've called you friends, because everything I've heard from the father, I've made known to you." Or again, as he said to Abraham, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?" What does that tell you? God wants to tell you things. He wants to let you in on his thinking.

As I was writing my book on heaven, I came across a story, and I'll close with this. It's a tragedy that I'd known about, but there was an aspect or detail that I hadn't known. Has to do with the famous hymn, It Is Well With My Soul. It was written by a man named Horatio Spafford. What happened was his wife, Anna, and their four young daughters, the oldest, I think, was 12, were on a ship that collided in the middle of the ocean off Cardiff and sank very quickly. Anna somehow was amazingly rescued, but all four daughters drowned. All of them. She wired her husband, Horatio, these words, saved alone. Saved alone. What I didn't know is that she was lying unconscious floating on a piece of wreckage. Someone found her and she came to and immediately realized what had happened with the girls, that they were gone. She cried out in a loud voice, "God gave me four daughters. Someday I will understand why he took them from me. Someday I'll understand why." 

But not in this life. Not in this life. Not in this life. I do think in the next. I think God will bring us into his council and explain why that was helpful for you, beneficial for your salvation, horizontally helpful to everyone who knew you, how that story has blessed to others. How, in this case, that particular case, how the hymn has helped other people, et cetera. God will give an explanation, and he'll tell you the reason why. I'm looking forward to that.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for all the things that we've learned from the book of Job. There's a lot to take in. Probably the most sobering message for me is to know that I, that all of us, will need this book at some point. That we're going to need it. And that you're getting us ready for a suffering that you will choose to bring in our lives. Help us not to dread it, help us to walk in faith in Christ, knowing that you are able, Lord, to sustain us and to encourage us through anything you choose to bring us through. Jesus name. Amen.