Wilderness Wanderings

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:4)

The next verb we meet in Paul's long run-on sentence running from verse 3-14 is the verb "chose." As in, "God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight."

Peterson quips that "everyone he has ever become acquainted with has a story, usually from childhood, of not being chosen: not chosen for the glee club, not chosen for the hockey team, being chosen last for the sandlot softball team, not chosen for a job, not chosen as a spouse."

All of us probably have a story like that somewhere in our past or present—the story of being left out, ignored, and counted as worthless. In fact, I know this is true. So many members of our church have told me over the years how they have this feeling of just not quite ever belonging to this church. It is one of the most consistent and pervasive feelings that describes our congregation. A group of people who don't feel like they quite belong to each other. Ironically, I think this sense of "not belonging to the group" is part of the secret sauce that makes Immanuel such a hospitable and welcoming congregation to newcomers, that like us, don't yet belong.

But against that story of our not-belonging, God's story speaks a different word. God chose us. And not like two captains picking the best for their teams or like the last-minute sympathy rescue of a stray mutt at the pound. No, God chose us before the creation of the world—before we had done anything good or bad, indeed before we had done anything at all.

This is a significant point. Against the backdrop of concerns over human sexuality and whose in and out of the church because of the bad things they have done or believed about it—the Canons of Dort with its so-called five points of Calvinism reminds us together with Paul here in Ephesians that before the Creation of the world God chose us. That is—before we existed, before we were sinners, and before we were saints—God, in Christ, chose us. Our place in the Church of Jesus Christ does not depend on our faithfulness, but on God's choosing. In the Reformed tradition, we have called this—to go back to those five points of Calvinism—the doctrine of "Unconditional Election." Without any conditions—without any thought to our own worthiness or unworthiness—God chose us.

Another couple points of Calvinism are important to remember here too: "Irresistible Grace" and the "Perseverance of the Saints." Having been chosen by God before the Creation of the world, we are unable to wriggle our way out of God's hand. His grace is irresistible and his preservation of his people complete, such that every one of those who he chooses, he is able to save by drawing them into and keeping them in, his grace. Every one that God has chosen becomes "holy and blameless in his sight." Not because they stop sinning, but because Christ has become sin for them such that God sees—not our sin—but the holiness and blamelessness of Christ that has been given us.

To anyone who would suggest that a habitual, unrepentant life of sexual sin puts someone out of the church has not yet grappled sufficiently with the Canons of Dort, nor the strength of the Covenant established by the Sovereignty of a God who choses without conditions, and who through the utterly effective work of Christ is able to make his church holy despite their sins. The Gospel is good news—stronger than any secular culture, more powerful than any sin. Dare you believe it?

If so, then it is also good news for those of us who feel we just don't belong. God's sovereign choosing is not just for the worst of the sinners that we can currently imagine in our culture today. It is for all his chosen people. And the gift that comes through God's choosing is the assurance that despite all our feelings to the contrary, we do belong: body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ—and so also to his church. To this church, where together, in faith we learn ever so slowly what it means to belong truly to one another in love, as fellow members of God's holy and blameless, chosen covenant people.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)

In attending to the story of God that we've been caught up in, it is important to pay attention to the action words. That is, the verbs. This tells us where things are happening and trains our attention for the places that God is at work.

Eugene Peterson does this as he works through the letter of Ephesians in one of the last books he wrote, called Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. It is, essentially, a commentary on the book of Ephesians. Except that it is also more than that—it's a discipleship manual too, teaching how we grow up to maturity in Christ as members of Christ's church. It's a book I very much appreciate, so forgive me if I reference Peterson more often across these devotionals. Of course—if you're looking for book recommendations, this is a good one!

But coming back to those action words Paul uses to train our attention on God, the first one we hear is the word "bless." Three times it occurs in just this first verse. We discover that God is both the blessed one and the blesser. "Blessed be" or "praise to" God because he has "blessed" us with every spiritual "blessing" in Christ. God is blessed, and he gives blessing.

In other words, God gives to us out of who and what He is. The blessed One blesses. This is actually true of most everything that we have from God. God is love, and God loves us. God is gracious and gives us grace. God is compassionate and shows us compassion. God is perfectly consistent with Who He Is.

The name with which God reveled himself to Moses is "Yahweh," which when literally translated means: "I am who I am." It is out of God's being—his Great "I Am"—that every good gift flows. God is blessed. He is who he is. And so in meeting God, the Blessed One, what do we meet? We meet blessing—the one who blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. God gives us Himself. This means of course, that wherever we have blessings that we can name, love that we have received, grace that we have given—what we have—is God. What we receive, what we give, what we hold on to—all of it is something of God. Which is to say: God is far more intimately involved in our lives than we may have expected!

Peterson puts it another way too. "What God does comes out of who God is." Such that "our experience of God is who God is." There is no distinction between God's being and God's doing. "There is no dividing God up into parts or attributes. …We don't figure God out. We don't explain God. We don't define God. We worship God who is as he is."

So, take stock today. What of God's actions, blessings, and gifts is rippling through your life today? Take time to worship and praise him for it.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-3)

While we've kept the music and graphics the same, we're going to start in on a new series this week that hopefully connects well with our 1 Samuel series. The theme for both being this idea of growing up to maturity in Christ.

It's interesting that in each of these first four verses of the letter, God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son are both mentioned. Four times each alongside various references to God's people. God's will is active, God's people are responsive. Jesus's grace and peace are flowing, as are his blessings, and again, we his people respond in praise.

Throughout the letter of Ephesians, Paul is constantly knitting together the smaller stories of our own lives with the larger, universal, eternal story of God's work in Christ. To become mature is a continual work of seeking to see God's story in and as our own.

Of course, in the day-to-day grind that can be a challenge. We have jobs to do, children to raise, parents to care after, errands to run, books to read, shows to watch, notifications to chase, leaves to rake, food to prepare, and garbage to take out. These are all things that we can do on our own seemingly without God's help or counsel, and so we usually do.

It often takes something like an accident, diagnosis, or death to jar us out of the ordinary and into pondering what God's up to beyond the flow of our hours and weeks. In those moments, we're caught looking toward the heavenly realms to be reminded of just what those spiritual blessings were that we received in Christ. We seek to be reminded of the bigger story we've been caught up in, a story that goes beyond just our own work, family, and food.

That's the story Paul's writing about as he begins this letter to the Ephesians. He's talking about the cosmic actions and decisions of God that span from before the creation of the world until the times reach their fulfillment. He's talking about not just individuals, but every individual that ever was or will be—nations, peoples, cultures, and continents.

It is a story of the entirety of the Earthly Creation, all of which will be brought to unity together with every heavenly thing under Christ. It is the story of how heaven and earth meet—how God's realm and ours are reconciled together into one through Christ.

Whether in the ordinary moments of grinding out the days, or in those exceptional moments where the carpet has been pulled from under us—this larger story of God in Christ is always the background of our own. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that it is, for it is in this story that we find the meaning, hope, and faith that can sustain our own.

A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 1 Samuel 20 from the New International Version of the Bible.

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

You also are like living stones. As you come to Christ, you are being built into a house for worship. There you will be holy priests. You will offer spiritual sacrifices. God will accept them because of what Jesus Christ has done (1 Peter 2:5).

We come to the end of our 4-weeks of reflections on Immanuel's tagline, Together in Faith. The image of the church as 'priests' will be our conclusion. This image occurs several times in the Bible. As few verses after our text, Peter writes, "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (9).

The opening scene in Revelation includes this, "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen" (1:5,6). Later, John overhears the heavenly choir sing, "You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth" (5:10).

Through Moses, God established that the priests worked in the tabernacle and later the temple. The rest of Israel accessed God through the work of the priests. Living historically and culturally far from those days, it is easy for us to miss the import of this image. Today, everyone has access to God through Christ. We are all priests.

Deeply embedded in this image is the blood of Christ. Jesus is the great high priest of his people. His blood washes away our sin and gives us entry to God's presence. We may come boldly and confidently before God because we come in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, washed in his blood.

Christ has established his redeemed people as a priesthood for the purpose of praising and glorying God. We are 'being built into a house of worship'; we are to 'declare the praise of him who called us'; we are 'to serve God' and 'to him give glory and power for ever and ever'. This is not just a Sunday thing. This is an all of life matter. As Paul wrote, 'we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God' (Romans 12:1) and 'so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God' (1 Corinthians 10:31).

What does this look like in real life? In the days of the Reformation, Martin Luther pointed out that rather than every person being their own priest, we must remember that every Christian is someone else's priest, and we are all priests to one another. When we comfort the grieving, when we feed the hungry, when we pray on behalf of the broken, when we study the word together, we are fulfilling our calling to be priests in God's kingdom.

As a holy priesthood, we are designed and intended to pursue Christ together, united around a common confession: "But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other" (1 Corinthians 12:24-25).

This is one of the profound Biblical teachings recovered in the Reformation. Sadly, it has been neglected. Let us recover it hear at Immanuel. Let us understand the phrase, Together in Faith, in light of this doctrine. Its recovery during the Protestant Reformation brought many Christians to their knees in prayer while at the same time sending forth countless missionaries. This doctrine propelled the church upwards, the redeemed worshipping God together, inwards, Christians serving each other and outwards, the church addressing the needs of the neighbour and proclaiming the gospel.

Having named Christians priests, Peter continued, "Dear friends, you are outsiders and those who are [wandering in the wilderness of this] world. So, I'm asking you not to give in to your sinful desires. They fight against your soul. People who don't believe might say you are doing wrong. But lead good lives among them. Then they will see your good deeds. And they will give glory to God on the day he comes to judge" (1 Peter 2:11-12).

And we end in praise to God,

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. … I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:1,2,5)

It is incredibly easy for any of us to begin to believe that we, and not Christ, are at the centre of the church's story. It is a script we follow pretty faithfully throughout the week. We do our work. We seek to entertain ourselves. We seek to earn enough to pay our bills. We look out for our family. We do our homework. We keep up our friendships. We wonder about who we are and what we should be doing with our lives. It all gets pretty self-centered after a while.

Unless. Unless we take this vine-and-branches picture of the church seriously and intentionally take time to focus in and wait on God's work, rather than on our own. Thankfully, God has given a day and a practice to help us: Sabbath.

The heart of this reality is displayed in Jesus' words about the vine and the branches. He says rather bluntly that apart from him, we can do nothing. It is only through connection with Christ that the lifegiving sap of his love flows into and through us out to the world around. So: Christ must remain at the centre: he's the vine that supports us, not the other way around.

It's only from that place, of being nurtured and fed by the life-giving sap of Jesus' love, that we are asked or able to do anything. And what we are asked to do, is simply to be conduits of what we have received. Love has been given to us and we pass it on. Joy has been infused into our souls, and we radiate it. Life is ours in Christ, and from his life in us: we bear fruit. This is true for us as individuals, but also true for us collectively as the church. We are all, together, branches on the vine that is Jesus Christ.

But the curious thing that we find in the first verse is that fruitfulness also requires pruning. I believe God's gift, invitation, indeed command to take a Sabbath is part of his work of pruning the fruitful branches. Sabbath forces us to say no: no to our work, no to appointments on our calendars, no to our technology, and no to the needs and desires that pull us into a flurry of us-at-the-centre activity.

Sabbath puts God at the centre instead, forcing us to trust that he'll keep the world, our work, and our lives spinning even if we take a break for a day. In that space, we can also listen to him, worship him, and take time to love and be loved by others in our lives too: because for a day, we don't need them to be useful or need to be useful for them. Our relationships are put back in the right order, including our relationship to Christ where we remember and believe that he is the vine and we the branches, rather than the other way round.

What is God seeking to prune out of your life? What do you need to say "no" to in order to take a true Sabbath this week?

There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body. It is the same with Christ. We were all baptized by one Holy Spirit. And so, we are formed into one body. It didn't matter whether we were Jews or Gentiles, slaves, or free people. We were all given the same Spirit to drink. So, the body is not made up of just one part. It has many parts" (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).

This week we are considering various images the Bible uses to help us understand the church. Today, we consider that she is the body of Christ. He is the head; the church is his body. Let us recognize that, for some, 'body shaming' makes this a difficult image to consider. We "body shame" when we "humiliate someone by making inappropriate or negative comments about their body size or shape". Among the effects it causes are "depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem."

I bring this up because many congregations suffer the effects of 'body shaming.' We Christians are extremely gifted at naming each others sins and even naming our own sins. The results are that many Christian communities suffer from collective forms of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Christian congregations throughout the country live in the false belief that they just don't make the cut; that they aren't good enough, gifted enough, spiritual enough to be valuable for the kingdom of God in this world.

These images describing the church put the lie to that kind of thinking. Consider this image of the church as a body. "We are formed into one body." The church has many members, each differently gifted according to the gifts the Spirit gives. Through baptism, this same Spirit forms us into one body. We do not do the gathering of the pieces, fitting them together into a working body. We'd definitely make a mess of that. No. It is the Spirit who makes us into the body. "We are all given the same Spirit to drink."

Consider how hopefully Our World Belongs to God describes the church: "In our world, where many journey alone, nameless in the bustling crowd, Satan and his evil forces seek whom they may scatter and isolate; but God, by his gracious choosing in Christ, gathers a new community-those who by God's gift put their trust in Christ. In the new community all are welcome: the homeless come home, the broken find healing, the sinner makes a new start; the despised are esteemed, the least are honored, and the last are first. Here the Spirit guides and grace abounds" (#34).

This image of the church as the body of Christ has two components. First, our unity. By faith in Christ, we are one body. A thing that is true, despite the disintegration of the church into a plethora of denominations. Within a local congregation as well, we are one in Christ. This unity is not dependent on our getting along with each other. Rather, we "make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3) because we are one.

Second, as human bodies have many parts, so the church has many people, each one gifted by the Spirit to contribute to the life of the body. This picture of the church as a body made up of different parts shows us that in Christ we should have unity, yet diversity. Moreover, it shows us how, in the church, we should have a mutual dependence, 'If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it' (1 Corinthians 12:26). A church in which everyone is identical might display a fascinating uniformity but not necessarily any real unity. It certainly won't be healthy, and it won't be the sort of church pictured in our Bibles.

Our response to this teaching should be one of joy. It should be one of faith that Christ is building his church. It should be one of expectation that God will add to the church those from every tribe and nation and language. We should long for this and lean into it when God brings new folks into our fellowship. We should see difference as a gift. What are these new people bringing to us? How does God intend to use them to help us more fully be the church?

The church, the body of Christ, is the Spirit's masterpiece. Sure, it's a work in progress. But all believers in Jesus are part of it. We eagerly await the day when we will be presented as the bride of Christ. Until that day, we proclaim with the apostle,

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

The Temple in the Old Testament was the place where earth and heaven met. It was the place where God caused his name to dwell. It was the tangible place where God was present, on earth with his people.

Paul has just finished telling us how Jesus, in his cross, has abolished all the dividing walls of hostility that divided Israel from everyone else in the world. There were inner and outer courts that separated Israel from the nations. But no more. There was an inner veil that separated the presence of God from his people. But no more. All these dividing walls have been torn up and torn down in the cross of Christ.

Jesus himself came as that place where heaven and earth meet. God became man, took on flesh, dwelt among us. In his cross, the temple was torn down. In the three days leading up to his resurrection it was rebuilt. And in the gift of the Spirit—that temple exploded out into the world such that wherever two or three gather in the name of Jesus, God is there with them.

Now the Spirit continually gathers people together in gatherings we call the church—building them up into incarnations of God's temple. They become little houses of prayer and worship where heaven and earth meet as the prayer "on earth as it is in heaven" is prayed.

To understand ourselves—together in faith as a church—under this image of the temple has a few implications.

Firstly, the temple is the place where worship happens. It is the place where we hear God speak, and where we speak with him in prayer and songs. It is the place where we receive nourishment in word and sacrament for our faith. It is the place where we surrender ourselves and our offerings. It is the place of confession and assurance where the covenant is regularly renewed. Worship happens in the temple that we, together as the church, are.

Secondly, and more specifically, the temple is the place where prayers of intercession are offered on behalf of one another and on behalf of the world. We together are priests—continually bringing the needs and hurts of this world before the God who is present among and within us, gathered as his temple.

Thirdly, we can do this work of worship and intercession because the temple is the place where God dwells. Coming together, in faith, as the church comes with this promise that through the Spirit—God is indeed Immanuel—with us. He lives in our community. He is present in our worship. He hears our prayers of intercession. We not only have direct access to the Father—we commune with him in our conversation of worship and our sharing of the meal. Thanks be to God!

Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: "Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear" (Revelation 19:6-8).

For this final week of reflections on Immanuel's tagline, "Together in Faith", we will offer meditations on several images the New Testament uses to portray the church. For those of you not familiar with Immanuel, early in the summer we invited Larry Doornbos to lead our congregation in a 'Vibrant Church' conversation. Wilderness Wanderings has been exploring some of the learnings of that process.

If you were expecting radical new things for Immanuel because of these conversations, you may be experiencing some disappointment. You have not received revolutionary ideas. Why not? Well, as Ecclesiastes mentions, "there is nothing new under the sun." There is much to be thankful about at Immanuel, many good Christian things. As I have been mulling over these conversations, I'm inclined to summarize them this way: 'Deeper into God – deeper into His mission." This is another way of expressing the vertical and horizontal axes of the Christian life: to love God and our neighbour. We know our calling, but we can and should do it better than we are.

The word pictures the Bible uses to describe the church and her mission help us go deeper. Today, the image of the church as 'the bride of Christ.' The picture of God's relentless pursuit of a bride runs through the whole Bible. Beginning with God's question in the garden, "Where are you?", this desire culminates in the marriage feast of the Lamb, found in Revelation 19. We see a perfect bride coming before the conquering Saviour. This bride is the church, and Christ is her groom.

This image speaks to us of the love which the church receives from Jesus. The simplest way to understand a wedding is in terms of love between two people. Yet this picture goes deeper than vows and rings. It isn't Jesus who is named in the place of the groom, it's the Lamb. The same Lamb that was slain. The groom is the one who loves the bride even to the point of dying for her. The picture of the church as a bride shows us the true extent of God's care, concern, and love for us.

Is there any better place than this to refocus the church? Any of us who come to God on our own credit come in filthy rags. The image here is of the bride dressed in fine, bright, clean, washed linen gifted to her by the Lamb. We have already received so much from Jesus we can be confident he will take us all the way to the finish.

The prophets of the Old Testament already portrayed God's relationship with his people as a marriage covenant. Several of them use it to accuse Israel of being an unfaithful bride--Hosea 2; Jeremiah 2; Ezekiel 16. Yet, despite all of Israel's waywardness, God continues to pursue her. Clearly, God wants a people who are united to him in mutual loving devotion as husband and wife ideally should be. So, the Bible ends with the picture of a wedding--the church, the bride of Christ, made spotless in the blood of the Lamb.

The metaphor highlights Christ's love for the church, especially his self-giving, sacrificial care for his Bride. It speaks of the beauty and adornment of the Bride, who will one day be perfect and without blemish for her divine husband (Revelation 21:2). The picture is one of love, commitment, and beauty – and celebration.

This message of Christ's love for us, invites us to proclaim the profound gospel of grace. But before that, it calls us to bow down in adoration for the immense love God lavishes on us. To marinate deep and long in the love of God is always the best starting point for the church in mission. As Paul writes, "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Which he concludes with:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 1 Samuel 19 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

DIVE IN!

1. How does the portrayal of David in this chapter (and the last) differ from the way we usually think of him? Does that make him more relatable?
2. David again escapes Saul's murderous attempts several times. What is the story telling us about Saul?
3. David's marriage to Michal has echoes of other marriages in Israel. What do these suggest about the challenges David faces? How is there good news embedded in this story?
4. At the end of the chapter, we read that Saul "stripped off his garments". What does this convey? What New Testament event is foreshadowed at the end of this chapter? Spend some time this week reflecting on Colossians 2:13-15 & Revelation 12.