The Cup of God's Wrath AM Sermon 12/12/10

Have you ever sensed an impending sense of doom? Much like when you have done something wrong and you know the punishment will just be terrible. I remember that once getting in trouble at Church and I knew my Dad was furious. I was on the front seat playing with a friend. He was breaking my hot A-Team van and I was pretty upset. In a moment I forgot I was in an assembly and my Dad was preaching. I guess me and this kid got into a type of tussle on the front row and my Dad stopped preaching and told me to go sit with my Mom and he would deal with me after church. I remember walking in embarrassment to the seat my Mom was sitting in and it felt like that as I walked I was floating. I knew it was bad and I was in big trouble. I remember my Dad was in the back greeting people after church and I thought I would just slip by. I thought that if I could just get to the foyer of the church I would make it free. I got up a head of steam and started to run down the aisle. There were steps that went down from the auditorium to the foyer of the church and I wanted to run and jump down into the foyer and by pass my dad shaking hands. Well in mid leap he caught me in the air and quickly took me in the bathroom and beat the snot out of me and then walked right out and kept shaking hands like nothing happened. That experience burned into my memory and I never acted up in Church again. I deserved that beating and probably deserved more. I was guilty and I knew I was wrong. I deserved punishment.
There is something inside all of us that makes us feel guilty when we do something bad. It sticks with us and we know that there is something bigger than us. Something that is greater than all. When we sin we offend God, the Creator of the Universe.
Scripture tells us that sin is an affront to God. God is Holy, God is Just and sin cannot be tolerated in any way.
Our sin is a serious problem.
Scripture tells us that there will be a day in which God will come in judgment. He will come and put this world to rights and people will answer for the deeds that they did in the body.
People long to KNOW GOD – People want to know God so that they can seek Him for salvation.

2 Thessalonians 1: 5-8
5 This is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. 6 For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, 8 dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus


Paul is speaking to a group that is being persecuted for the faith and is letting them know that there will be retribution. God can put the world to rights and will bring Justice.
God will come and take retribution to those that do not know God.
Paul is talking about a cosmic collision course that the world is on to God. We are all going to stand before God.
All tongues will confess and every knee will bow, it will be done in this life or the life to come.
There are two types of KNOWING GOD that the Bible talks about and we all have to deal with that fact.
There is a knowing God that is positive and brings hope and assurance of salvation.
There is another type that deals with falling in the wrath of a God that will deal retribution in His JUSTICE on all that do not KNOW HIM through Jesus His Son.
Two types of KNOWING GOD we will look at this morning.
Also, we will look at two attributes of God that people have such a hard time holding together and hopefully we can make sense of them.

1) God’s Justice and Holy Nature
2) God’s infinite Love and Mercy

How can we hold together a Just God and a Loving and Merciful God at the same time?
There is a case in the OT that proves as an example of what this is like and the character of God.
Our story finds Israel crying out to God for help in slavery in Egypt. God hears their cry and sends Moses.

We read.

“And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it" (Exodus 7:5).
Yadah is translated as 'will know,' but can better be described as experiencing intimately.

It is not as much a story of freedom for Israelites as it is a story of confrontation between two great powers.

God is going to visit Egypt in His Just wrath because of their sin. God is going to let the Egyptians KNOW HIM.

This type of Knowing is knowing of His Justice and Holiness.
The Just HOLY God of Israel will come in judgment of Egypt.

Egypt had made an Empire of the backs of the Hebrew Slaves and God’s anger was hot against Egypt for what they had done. The warfare that God brings against Egypt is against all the gods of Egypt. Each plague was a particular attack on an Egyptian God.

This warfare of God against Egypt – this visitation – this getting to know God will be intense.
God declares war on the gods of Egypt.

– Each plague specifically targets an Egyptian god:
– Water to blood—Osiris
– Frogs—Heqet
– Gnats (lice)--Geb
– Flies (swarms)--Nepthys
– Plague on Livestock— Apis
– Boils—Thoth
– Hail—Isis
– Grasshoppers—Min
– Darkness—Amun Ra
With all the plagues that come upon Egypt we read that Pharaoh hardened his heart and eventually God Himself would harden Pharaoh’s heart.

Cavid is 'hardened,' or more accurately 'made heavy' —something God did to Pharaoh.

Egyptians believed that there was a scale as you approached the afterlife.
Your heart needed to be lighter than a feather in order to pass. Egyptians thought that sin (primarily doing something to offend the gods) made a person's heart heavy.

They believed that the only sinless person in Egypt was Pharaoh, and he was never to be judged.

Pharaoh's heart was made heavy by his stubbornness. The power of Pharaoh is undermined if he is a sinner.

IN THIS STORY OF THE EXODUS GOD IS TEACHING US THAT EVEN THE MOST POWERFUL LEADER IN THE WORLD IS UNDER THE JUDGMENT OF GOD.

HIS HEART WAS HEAVY AND GOD CAN SEE RIGHT THROUGH A PERSON’S OUTWARD TO SEE THEIR HEART.

PHARAOH’S HEART WAS HARDENED TO GLORIFY GOD IN THE BRINGING OF THE FINAL PLAGUE OF ULTIMATE JUDGMENT.

GOD’S JUDGMENT WAS BROUGHT AGAINST EGYPT WITH THE DEATH OF THE FIRSTBORN BUT ISRAEL WOULD BE SAVED FROM THIS PLAGUE.

The Final Plague will be the one that really shows God’s Just Final back breaking judgment of Egypt.

“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord” (Exodus 12:12).

They were to put the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts of their house that night of Passover.

The first Passover was a deliverance from the wrath of God.
If you had the blood on the door posts of the house you would be passed over by the death angel. Imagine the suspense but there is more to the story.

All of the 1st 9 plagues Israel had been an innocent bystander but the 10th plague would require Israel to be part of this plague.

God tells Israel to go get a lamb or ram and tie it up outside their house for 4 days and then on the 5th day they would sacrifice the lamb and roast it so that everyone in Egypt could smell the roasting Lamb.

There is one problem with this. Killing a lamb in Egypt was illegal.

They saw the Lamb as a protector of Pharaoh. Engravings in Ancient Egypt show Pharaoh under a lamb and the lamb acting as a protector.

Aman-RA, the chief god of Egypt, was symbolized by a lamb.

To kill a lamb, to tie one up in front of your house, to roast it so the entire city would smell it would require some guts and faith.

It break it down and make it simple God is saying this to Israel:

MY WRATH IS COMING – GET READY – PUT YOUR FAITH IN ME, FAITH THAT IS SO ALIVE THAT IT WILL RISK EVERYTHING AND YOU WILL BE SAVED.

ISRAEL IS REQUIRED TO DO THIS ACT OF FAITH TO BE SAVED.

WOULD THEY HAVE FAITH THAT TRUSTS TOTALLY IN GOD OR WILL THEY COWER IN FEAR OF THE EGYPTIANS?

We know this story – the Death Angel comes and passes over the houses of the Israelites with the blood on the doorposts.

God shows his gracious love to Israel but shows Justice to Egypt.

Israel knows God as a Redeemer but Egypt knows God as a God that takes retribution on those that do not do His will.

But this story goes further. It goes to the very ritual of Passover.
The Jews would celebrate this feast for many years to come.

Every year the Israelites would celebrate their deliverance from Egypt and would do so by sacrificing a Lamb, eating bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and cups of wine.

The ceremony at one point in Israel’s history was very concise. It had four cups of wine that would be celebrated.

There came to be a fifth cup that Israel would celebrate in this ceremony. This fifth cup would be set off on a Table to the side but would not be drunk from.

This cup would be called the cup of Elijah. The 5th cup of Passover or the cup of Elijah was the cup of God’s vengeance on the world. Just as God poured out His wrath on the Egyptians, the Jews believed that God would one day pour out His wrath on all the nations.

Malachi the Prophet foretells of this time when Elijah would return before the Day of the Lord.

Malachi 4:5
"Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.

The great Prophet Elijah would return right before this event. The cup of wrath would come when Elijah came back.

If you remember Jesus tells us that in the ministry of John the Baptist Elijah the prophet had returned to Israel. The Messiah would be coming soon and God’s wrath would come against the nations.

This cup of wrath would be identified with Messianic times.

Jeremiah the prophet speaks of this wrath to come against the nations that have rejected God.

Jeremiah’s prophecy was against Judah, the surrounding nations, and also Babylon.

Except for a couple of points of interest, this passage reads like a typical judgment chapter in the Old Testament prophets, so it is tempting to pass on its significance.
First of all, it goes to great lengths to describe not only God’s heavy judgment, but the depth of sin as well. We learn, through the weight of the judgment how weighty sin is: the punishment fits the crime, so to speak.
It is a lesson throughout the book of Jeremiah that judgment is neither arbitrary nor pleasant for God. It is always the just response to rebellion after God has pleaded with His people over and over to repent.
Secondly, Jeremiah uses the image of a cup of wrath.
A fairly common image for the Old Testament prophets, it is designed to give us an image of a goblet filled to the brim and overflowing with wine.
Jeremiah is vivid in his description of this cup.

Jeremiah 25: 13-16
13 'I will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations. 14 '(For many nations and great kings will make slaves of them, even them; and I will recompense them according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.)' " 15 For thus the LORD, the God of Israel, says to me, "Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. 16 "They will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among them."
27 "You shall say to them, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, "Drink, be drunk, vomit, fall and rise no more because of the sword which I will send among you."' 28 "And it will be, if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, then you will say to them, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts : "You shall surely drink !

These are images, not of someone who has had “one too many,” but of something akin to alcohol poisoning.
The rebellious decisions made by these people have destroyed them.

This, however, is not all there is to be said about this cup or wrath.
Isaiah 51:17-23 also describes this time in history for Judah with the same image. But near the end something drastic and unexpected is recorded.

Isaiah 51: 22
22 Thus says you Lord, the Lord, your God who pleads the cause of his people: “Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more…”

How is it the cup is simply taken away from sinful and rebellious people?
The answer lies in a prayer spoken by Jesus moments before his trial and crucifixion.
Remember that Jesus accomplishes His Atonement at Passover.
It was at Passover that the mystery of the 5th cup of Wrath was celebrated. They wanted to know about this Cup.
There was a mystery to the Cup, how would it be given to the nations but not to Israel? In the prophets the wrath of God’s judgment was promised to all that were disobedient.
Then answer is found in Matthew’s Gospel.

In Matthew 26:39 He prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

You see, Jesus saw this cup of wrath, being poured out on Him, and shook.
At this part of the Passover ceremony, the door is opened, and the head of household says, “Pour out your wrath on the world!”

In the traditional ceremony, this cup is filled but not drunk — not until the coming of Elijah. But Jesus drank the cup.

Jesus has not only taken away this cup of wrath, He has provided a cup of a new relationship, the one provided by his blood shed on the cross.
Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath against the nations
What we see in the passion of Jesus is the wrath of God that was reserved for the nations poured out on Jesus. Jesus willfully accepted the separation from God the Father by taking on that wrath that we deserve.
Jesus became sin on our behalf.

2 Corinthians 5: 21
21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The imagery from the story of the Exodus comes to its fruition in Jesus. Jesus takes on the wrath of God.
We talked earlier about two types of Knowing and two ways to look at God.
Scripture promises that there are two ways we are going to know God. We can KNOW GOD’s Wrath or we can know GOD’s Deliverance.
We can be like Pharaoh and have a hard heart and experience God in a way that lets us know that He is the living Just God of Israel.
We can be like the Israelites and step out in faith and believe in God’s deliverance and know him in a different way.
In Jesus we see the true LOVE of God. God is perfect and Just and out of His love He has provided a way to escape the wrath of our sin.
Jesus allowed that wrath to come crashing down on HIM.

Romans 2: 5
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
Romans 5: 7-9
7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man ; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him


Paul tells us the beautiful message of the Gospel that Jesus takes on the wrath so that through HIS blood we can be cleansed.
Without the blood of Jesus covering us, we will experience the wrath that we deserve.
On that final day we will fall into the hands of the living God either saved or lost.

1 Thessalonians 1: 9-10
you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.

We can be rescued or we can turn our back on the loving sacrifice of Jesus.

John 3: 35-36
35 "The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. 36 "He who believes in the Son has eternal life ; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

Just as Israel was given a chance, we are given a chance.
The wrath of God will come on one great day. It can be a day of vindication for Christians or a day of wrath and destruction for those that do not know Jesus.
There is a way that you can have confidence and assurance that you are in fellowship with God.
Satan would like nothing more than dog you and accuse you of sin. Satan knows that his time is limited and would love nothing more than to take as many with him as he can.
One of the names of Satan is ACCUSER – He is the one that stands and accuses us against God. We see this in the book of Job and the book of Zechariah- Satan accuses God’s elect.
In the 14th century, Robert Bruce of Scotland was leading his men in a battle to gain independence from England. Near the end of the conflict, the English wanted to capture Bruce to keep him from the Scottish crown. So they put his own bloodhounds on his trail. When the bloodhounds got close, Bruce could hear their baying. His attendant said, 'We are done for. They are on your trail, and they will reveal your hiding place."
Bruce replied, 'It's all right." Then he headed for a stream that flowed through the forest. He plunged in and waded upstream a short distance. When he came out on the other bank, he was in the depths of the forest. Within minutes, the hounds, tracing their master's steps, came to the bank. They went no farther. The English soldiers urged them on, but the trail was broken. The stream had carried the scent away. A short time later, the crown of Scotland rested on the head of Robert Bruce.
The memory of our sins, prodded on by Satan, can be like those baying dogs,but a stream flows, red with the blood of God's own Son.
By grace through faith we are safe. No sin-hound can touch us. The trail is broken by the precious blood of Christ.
'The purpose of the cross," someone observed, 'is to repair the irreparable."
Today, put on Christ if you haven’t. Put your trust and faith in Him and put him on in Baptism being cleansed in His blood.

Grafted in and Called - AM sermon 12/06/10

GRAFTED IN AND CALLED
Jeff Foxworthy has put together a collection of many sayings that I find very humorous. I find them even more interesting because my first cousin was his friend growing up and my uncle and his father were friends. It always made me wonder if he modeled some of his sayings on my family.
One of these sayings of Foxworthy that I found quiet funny was, You may be a redneck if you stare for hours at an Orange Juice container because you read on the package CONCENTRATE
This morning I want to propose to you that sometimes we concentrate on the wrong phrases or methodologies of Bible study that lead us to some bad conclusions.
1st of all I want to tell you that our NT is firmly rooted in the OT. To be ignorant of the OT is to be ignorant of Christ.
It is to ignorant of Salvation and the world Christ lived in. I would go so far to propose to you that it is hard to understand our own salvation without understanding the Call and Election of Israel.
Many times we neglect words and phrases in our own churches because of ignorance of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Many times we speak of our own Salvation but to Paul in the NT the word he uses more than any is CALLED which is firmly rooted in the OT.
This morning I want build a case for a good knowledge of the OT and then spend some time in telling you how that informs us about our salvation.
First of all, one could look at Paul in Romans 11 and see how this argument takes shape and how we are founded on the foundation of Israel and the Hebrew Bible.
Paul in Romans 11 uses the analogy of Israel as being the root of an Olive Tree. In sermons past we have talked about the olive tree and how it had big gnarly roots and could live for 2000 years. They could seem dead but after being cut to the root could sprout new life.
In Romans 11 Paul goes to this analogy of the Olive Tree and talks how Israel is the root and uses an example for horticulture in which a wild olive branch could be grafted into the roots.
In this chapter Paul is referring to the Gentile Christians as wild olive shoots being grafted into the roots of Israel.
This chapter is packed full of other teachings that we don’t have time to talk about this morning but is one of the most dense and toughest of Paul’s teachings but it is something that would be good to read and grapple with as a Christian.
Paul’s argument goes as follows:
Israel was God’s chosen nation, their chosen status had not been revoked.
God was using the Gentile Converts to make the Jewish people Jealous so that they might turn to the Messiah Jesus.
But the point I would like to zero in is that we are firmly planted on Israel and the Hebrew Scripture. That is our roots and that is where we come from
The earliest Christians did not have the NT.
As a matter of fact the first NT book that was written did not come until at least 12 – 15 years after the ministry of Jesus.
The NT as an entire book was not completed until around 96 AD and those 27 books did not start getting circulated together until the 2nd century.
That tells us that in the earliest years of the Church were using the OT to preach the Gospel. When we look at passages like the Bereans in Acts that were more noble because they examined the Scripture to test Paul’s teaching were studying the OT because the NT did not exist at that time.
I think we have done ourselves a dis-service by not being steeped and founded in the OT. Most of Jesus ministry will not make sense without a firm knowledge of the OT.
Jesus will say something like let the dead bury the dead, and we think how tough is that teaching , it makes no sense but the earliest Christians knew that Jesus is referring to a story in Elijah about the remnant and the 7000 faithful.
The point is that Jesus constantly is making references to the OT in His teaching.
I think part of many people’s fear of looking too much at the OT is that they really don’t know how the OT and NT fit together.
This morning I hope we can make some headway into this and help you understand the role of the OT in light of the New.
Once we have made that connection I want to talk about how that informs us about our Salvation
Matthew 5: 17-20
17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets ; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven ; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

There is a lot that we can glean from this passage and this is one of the most misunderstood passages in the NT.
Jesus explains that he has come to fulfill the Law of Moses and not Abolish the Law.
This tandem of terms of Fulfill and Abolish were very commonly used of Judaism in the time of Jesus. They referred to how one interpreted the OT.
The term Fulfill comes from a Hebrew word KIYEM from which the Greek word in this passage Pleroo comes from.
This term KIYEM means to interpret or apply the OT properly. In the context of this verse this is the best way to understand what Jesus is saying.
The word abolish comes from a Rabbinic term of BATEL which means to interpret the Law wrongly so that one does not obey the OT.
If a teacher were to say, it is okay for a man to commit adultery in his heart or mind, a Rabbi might say you have abolished the Law.
This means you interpreted the Law so badly that one could not fulfill the requirements of the Law.
Jesus came to KIYEM – Fulfill – Complete or show the way to how to completely obey the Law – The purpose of the Law.
In Jesus you have the very author if the Law of Moses – God in Flesh – sanding there before them telling them that he has come to show the way to properly understand the place of the Law.
In God’s Kingdom that Christ came to establish the Law will be kept and people will exhibit righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees.
Remember the Scribes and Pharisees were pretty righteous people. This would not be an easy task and pretty much would be humanly impossible for one to do on their own.
Jesus has inaugurated a new phase of salvation history. The temporal law of Moses was to help establish Israel as a temporal nation state in the Land.
Deuteronomy for a big part was about this identity as a nation. Now Jesus is coming to expand this covenant with Israel to encompass all flesh.
In doing so he is taking this covenant expectation to a new level. The Heart will be taken captive and God will look for people to change from the inside to become covenantly faithful.
God had always wanted people that were circumcised in the heart and not just outwardly.
To understand how Jesus would go about fulfilling the Law we would have to go back and look at the types of laws in the OT.
There were basically three types.
1) Moral Law/ Ethical Law – adultery, theft, Murder
2) Levitical or Sacrificial Law
3) Works of the Law
I believe that none of us would disagree that Jesus came to uphold the moral requirements of the Law such as theft, murder, respect for parents, idolatry, adultery, etc.
As a matter of fact he kicks it up a notch and says that anyone that has lusted for a woman has commited adultery in his heart.
The Levitical Law and the sacrificial system found their fulfillment in Jesus. No longer was the Temple system with its sacrifices needed because Jesus was perfected in Jesus.
Works of the Law- in the time of Jesus this was a technical term used in Judaism, and was also used by Paul
Works of the Law were the things that made one distinctively Jewish. They were Kosher diet, Sabbath day festivals, Tassels on the garments, how your hair was cut, and circumcision. We see at the Jerusalem Council that these things were abolished for the Gentile Christians.
There are other places where Jesus alludes to this:
Matthew 11: 28-30
28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
Jesus is referring here to a yoke that would be placed across the shoulders and commonly has been understood to be one used on oxen but the better usage is the yoke used by Jewish women to carry water.
This yoke would go across the shoulders and one could hang buckets on each end to carry water from the well to their home.
A yoke in the time of Jesus also referred to how one interpreted the Bible. A rabbi’s teaching would be called his yoke.
Many people look at this passage and think that Jesus was saying that his way of life is easy.
The point of this passage is not ease but where it will lead you.
We know that Jesus is talking about his interpretation of Scripture because he says to come and Learn from Him.
Much more is at work in this passage – Jesus is claiming to be God.
God said in Exodus-

Exodus 33:14
14 And He said, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."
God’s presence will go out with the Israelites as He leads them and He will Give them REST
-God will Give Israel Rest
Now Jesus is claiming to be the one to bring them to Rest – Jesus is saying that He is Jehovah God.
This is also an allusion to Jeremiah-
Jeremiah 6: 16
16 Thus says the LORD, "Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is, and walk in it; And you will find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'
Israel’s doom is imminent and the Babylonians will soon conquer them. Jeremiah the prophet is telling them the way to go.
There are themes that recur here in this passage that tie back into Jesus’ ministry.
The Way or the Path – the same word is used for both
The Idea of Rest
How one finds rest is by following the Path of God. To find Rest in God and live with Him in harmony for eternity is to follow the ancient way or the path to God. One must be on the WAY of God to find this REST.

John 14: 6
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life ; no one comes to the Father but through Me
Jesus is the way to Rest in God’s presence. If we want to be righteous we have to walk as Jesus walked and lived as Jesus lived.
Jesus is the way to God
IN tying all of this together we need to see that the New Covenant ties together what the Old Covenant was trying to do but could never do.
Jesus did not come to give cheap grace where it is easy to be saved and people can just punch their ticket, claim to be saved, and live how they want to.
It is just the opposite.
God worked in Christ to open up Heaven’s flood gates to infuse the world of his radical transforming Grace that comes in the work of the Holy Spirit.
I mentioned earlier that knowledge of the Old informs us on how to look at our own salvation. There is a word used by Paul that is a very OT Hebrew type of word and that is CALLED.
I would propose that instead of using salvation as much as we do we might want to consider ourselves as God’s Called or God’s Elect.
As we put back together a proper view of our salvation based on the OT we must put God back in the center. So much of our view of salvation is focused on man and our response to God but we need to understand that everything is wrapped up in God’s Sovereignty.
We are called by God just as Israel was called. Calling is a very well attested term used in the OT and it always referred to God calling Israel out of slavery, setting them on a path of holiness, and then bringing them to the inheritance of the Land.
CALLING:
2 Timothy 1: 8-9
8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, 9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
God CALLED US – not because of our works but because of His Purposes.
Many people see salvation as something like this – I will pick up my Bible read it and then get so good on my own that God will look at their life and say okay that person is so good I am going to save them.
It doesn’t work that way. Every step of the way it is all about God. We are called out of the world by God, by the Gospel Call, we are changed, we undergo a heart transplant.
From the beginning it is God working in us. We are God’s cooperative friends but it is God as the author and finisher of our faith.
This is not saying that we just sit back and do nothing and just wait on God. We are constantly in a struggle with the flesh to work through these issues of sanctification.
One sure sign of one’s salvation is the change that takes place, saving faith is the type the begins a work of santificaiton that is evident in the works of the Spirit.
We have to rest in that it is God’s Sovereign purpose to work in us, through us and For His Glory.
Philippians 2: 12-13
12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling ; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
This ties right in with what Jesus said in Matthew 5 about our righteousness exceeding that of the Scribes and Pharisees – we must be transformed.
Work out doesn’t mean you are working for your salvation. This would be heresy – We are already saved in this passage and are working out this process of transformation that takes place by God’s Spirit. We cooperate with this sanctification through study, prayer, worship and God working in us.
Paul ends this passage with the real Key – IT IS FOR GOD”s Pleasure
When a person is saved, when they exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, when the evidence of saving faith is there one can look to them and say that is for God’s Glory – It is God’s work not our work.
This was the mindset that Jesus came to transform and Paul came to display as false. Works of the Law mentality was that one would say look at me I have been circumcised, I eat Kosher, I keep the holidays, etc, Look God should merit that work – Paul would say NO – it is God’s work that matters – God must be at work in your life for you to bring about the righteousness that is pleasing to God.
Romans 8: 1-4
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
The requirement of the Law – that moral code of living Holy – can now be fulfilled in our sinful flesh because the Spirit of God has been sent to transform our lives – The Spirit has come to transform and make us the people that God has always wanted us to be.
CONCLUSION –
In the beginning of our sermon I laid out the importance of the OT but it was for a purpose, for one thing – So you will be motivated to go out and learn it backwards and forwards to be able to better understand the New Covenant.
But most importantly to see our salvation in light of God’s dealing with Israel in this idea of the purpose of the Law- Paul provides a great backdrop for this in Romans 8.
God has filled our life with His Spirit.
The flesh is weak and even Paul says in Romans 7 that his state before his life in Christ was such.
In Romans 7 Paul speaks of how the mind wants to obey God’s law but the flesh is weak.
Because we have been Chosen by God we are given His Spirit. The Spirit of God makes obedience to the Law possible.
The Moral Law that man had failed at has been made possible because this sinful flesh has been give power.
This Power in the NT comes from the Greek word DUNAMIS where we get the word Dynamite.
How do we appropriate this Power – How do we get this power to live in harmony with God and live transformed lives?
Ephesians 5:18 says, "Be not drunk with wine, in which is excess but be filled with the Spirit."
[Greek., asotia, "dissipation"],
When you are filled with the Spirit, you are controlled by Him
Ephesians 5:19-21 lists the results of being filled with the Spirit: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things ... submitting yourselves one to another."
Colossians 3 is a parallel, condensed version of Ephesians 5:18--6:9. Verse 16 says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly."
Notice that the results are the same as those from being filled with the Spirit. You will speak in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (v. 16); give thanks (v. 17); and relationships among husbands and wives (vv. 18-19), children and parents (vv. 20-21), and servants and masters (3:22; 4:1) will be positively affected.
The only apparent difference between Colossians 3:16; 4:1 and Ephesians 5:18; 6:9 is what produces the results.
If you get the same results from letting "the word of Christ dwell in you" as you do when you are "filled with the Spirit," then they both must be the same thing.
We as Christians have been given Power to overcome and live a life that is different.
How many of you here today want to live a better life?
How many of us deal with guilt because we are not living as well as we should?
The Scripture makes it clear that you can live a life that is pleasing to God and that shows the fruits of the Spirit.
At the village church in Kalonovka, Russia, attendance at Sunday school picked up after the priest started handing out candy to the peasant children. One of the most faithful was a pug-nosed, pugnacious lad who recited his Scriptures with proper piety, pocketed his reward, then fled into the fields to munch on it. The priest took a liking to the boy, persuaded him to attend church school. This was preferable to doing household chores from which his devout parents excused him. By offering other inducements, the priest managed to teach the boy the four Gospels. In fact, he won a special prize for learning all four by heart and reciting them nonstop in church. Now, 60 years later, he still likes to recite Scriptures, but in a context that would horrify the old priest. For the prize pupil, who memorized so much of the Bible, is Nikita Khrushchev, the former Communist czar.
As this anecdote illustrates, the "why" behind memorization is fully as important as the "what." The same Nikita Khrushchev who nimbly mouthed God's Word when a child, later declared God to be nonexistent -- because his cosmonauts had not seen Him. Khrushchev memorized the Scriptures for the candy, the rewards, the bribes, rather than for the meaning it had for his life. Artificial motivation will produce artificial results.

Sometimes we so emphasize the study of the Bible and knowing the word of God but we need in closing to understand that our hearts must change.
The word of God from cover to cover should challenge every aspect of our lives.
The WHY of study and living a Spirit filled life is important.
In closing:
Why are you here today?
What is your reason for getting up everyday?
Are you totally consumed with living a life that is pleasing to God?

The Parable of the Sower AM Sermon 11/28/10

The Parable of the Sower
There was a family that I got to know decently well in Augusta, GA. This family was different. We ate dinner with them and you could tell the Mother was just a woman of great faith. The Father was an elder in their church. They had one son that was 14 years old and he was just something else. He would stay after practice and ask me if I needed help. He wanted to please his coaches so much and would be a young man that you would feel comfortable to allow your own kids to be around. Michael Cave was a young man of faith and love of Jesus Christ. His faith in Jesus just exuded everything about him. A few days ago we learned that he had caught a virus and died after a week fight. He had a type of anemia that depleted his red blood cell count and the virus caught him at a low point. He was healthy and athletic and vibrant and was cut down in the prime of his life.
The fascinating thing about the family is that during his sickness and eventual death his family shared their faith with doctors and nurses.
When their son was dying they understood that God loved them still, the understood, even though some of us struggled to understand, the family saw their role as bringing the gospel to that hospital.
People look at that and wonder how they do it. Of course they are hurting, of course this Thanksgiving was tough on that family but they had prepared their heart so much for God that they were ready for tough times. They were ready to spread the Gospel. Their hearts were cultivated and waiting for God’s transforming and comforting love.
They were so in-tune with God that He pulled them through and will continue to pull them through.
This morning I want to talk about preparing our heart for God.
I want us to talk about cultivating our heart to make it ready that we can experience the love of God and the word of God.

Mark 4: 21-25
21 And He was saying to them, "A lamp is not brought to be put under a basket, is it, or under a bed ? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand ? 22 "For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light. 23 "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." 24 And He was saying to them, "Take care what you listen to. By your standard of measure it will be measured to you; and more will be given you besides. 25 "For whoever has, to him more shall be given ; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him."

This passage finds its parallel in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 but in Mark’s Gospel it is found in another context and more than likely this was a similar teaching of Jesus given at another time.
I would propose that this passage finds its best setting Mark’s Gospel between two stories about a person sowing seed in a field.
When we look at this passage in the beginning we see Jesus telling us that a follower of Him must be willing to shine the light of the Gospel before others. This truth that we are given is to be shared and shown.
There are two aspects to this:
1) First we are to open our mouths and share with others what God has done for us.
Last week we talked about the man that had the demons cast out of him called Legion. If you remember Jesus told him to to the pagan people of the Decapolis and share what God had done for him.
That is evangelism in a nut-shell – Telling others the good things that God has done for them in Jesus and their salvation.
2) We shine our light by what we do, and how we carry ourselves.
I had a friend recently tell me that when he met with a lawyer to discuss his case the Lawyer just sat back and said to him that there is just something about you Christians that intrigues me but also makes me want to stand up and fight for you. How we live our lives day to day will cry out what we are all about.

We are the light of the world – you have to be put on a stand and give light to everyone.
This story in Mark is sandwiched between two sower stories. Mark is known from sandwiching stories.
What Mark’s Gospel is full of is a Teaching and then two stories on both sides of this teaching to illustrate this story.
In other words the meat of the sandwich is the teaching and the bread is the stories that illustrate the meat of the teaching.
There is a connection between the sower parable and the Lamp story that is found in the OT. They are connected to one another.
The idea of the Sower and Farming is connected to the Idea of a Lamp.
There is an OT tie in and there is cultural tie in.
Farming in the Middle East-
The average field is about 1 Acre in the Biblical times.
Many times we see the story of Ruth and Boaz as Boaz having 300 acres of land but a big farm would have been 2 acres or more.
Each field belonged to a family and they were divided by marker stones that had been there since the time of the Canaanites.
When they entered the Land of Canaan the Israelites were to keep these boundary markers fixed and not change them.

Deuteronomy 19: 14
"You shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that the LORD your God gives you to possess.

God had given them just enough land for each person to have enough to live okay but not extravagant.
God is telling them to keep these ancient boundary markers – About 1 acre tracts of land and don’t go and try to take over your neighbor’s field.
God was so adamant about this that he didn’t even want the widowed or the orphaned to have their land taken away from them

Proverbs 23:10
10 Do not move the ancient boundary Or go into the fields of the fatherless

So I want you to understand as we start to break down this teaching of Jesus in Mark 4 that these fields were fixed with boundary markers and were to be kept the same for generations.
Also, a sense of being content with what you were given was a teaching that the Israelites were having hammered into their thick noggins.
These fields had been divided up in these small portions for thousands of years.
They had just enough to live comfortably if they obeyed God. They were not given too much but just enough.
This land was given to you until your death. There was never a break, you were given this land that was marked by the ancient land mark and was not given away until you died.
You were expected to work this land until you died and gave it to your children or those you left behind.
You worked until you died, there was no retirement in Ancient Israel.
Stone walls would be the boundary markers of your field.
They would allow thorns and thistles to grow up on these boundary stones - These thorns and thistles would act as a barbed wire fence. Close to the fields would be flocks of sheep.
8 months per year the sheep would be in the desert or wilderness but after the wheat harvest to place the flocks were allowed to come in the field.
The farmers and the shepherds would make a deal with each other to allow the flocks to graze in their field after the harvest.
Shepherds would come into the fields between the 1st of July to the month of October.
The boundary markers of the fields also served as paths and walkways between the towns and cities so that people would no walk through the fields. The stone walls would serve as the outline for the walking path.
Imagine Jesus possibly telling this story of the sower in Mark 4 as he watched a sower sow seed in a field.
It is believed that Jesus possibly told His stories and parables as he watched a person do everyday work to illustrate His point or tell a story that people in that town would be familiar with.
In any field of ancient Israel you would have a pathway or roadway that went between the fields to allow one to travel without walking through the crops.
There would be a rocky wall that would outline the field which the Bible refers to the Boundary Marks, and these marks had been there since the Canaanites.
The fields also had thorns in that the farmer allowed to grow up around the rocky boundary to keep the sheep and goats out of the field.
With this picture in mind let us look at this parable that Jesus tells in Mark 4



Mark 4: 2-9
2 And He was teaching them many things in parables, and was saying to them in His teaching, 3 "Listen to this! Behold, the sower went out to sow ; 4 as he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 "Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil ; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil. 6 "And after the sun had risen, it was scorched ; and because it had no root, it withered away. 7 "Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. 8 "Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold." 9 And He was saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

In this story of Jesus we see the four different types of ground that you would find in any Jewish field.
This is a story that they would really understand and it was something that was an everyday part of their life. These types of soil would make sense to his immediate audience but sometimes we miss the point and actually miss out on some of the meat of this story.
Let’s look at Jesus explanation of this story:

Mark 4: 14-20
14 "The sower sows the word. 15 "These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown ; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. 16 "In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy ; 17 and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary ; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 "And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns ; these are the ones who have heard the word, 19 but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 20 "And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil ; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."

The seed falls in all of these types of soil .
The seed fell in four places,
On the Path –
They never even respond to the Word of God – They are so wrapped up this world that they will not even start to receive this word of God.
On the rocks –
They initially receive the word of God but it soon they return right back to where they were before. They totally fall away before any real change or transformation by the Gospel even takes place.
On the thorns –
This is the one that we have to really be concerned about. This is the type of soil that keeps me up at night and is what makes me struggle with this passage.
These are the folks that grow roots, take the word in and start to really change and make a difference. But this life with its pursuit of wealth and things to do tend to distract them.
This type of soil is 21st century American Life - This is exactly the type of issues that Jesus is dealing with.
We are so busy with stuff that we lose sight to what is really important. Church is an afterthought.
If we were to make a checklist –
1) Shopping
2) School Activities
3) Job or place of employment
4) Ball games
5) Hunting, fishing, boating, leisure
And somewhere dead last – way down the list – Church and the Kingdom of God.
This is the one that I struggle with, I am challenged by this passage and I hope you are to because if you are not challenged by this type of soil I would be really worried.
The Good ground is something I want to take a look at for a minute and get to something that we might be missing.
To do this we need to look at the OT passage that is the background to this teaching.
This teaching is found in Jeremiah chapter 4 and it is a passage in which God is calling Israel to repentance before it is too late. He is very close to sending them into a 70 year Babylonian Exile if they don’t heed His warning and he uses some familiar pictures to make His point.
You will see quickly that Jesus’ listeners would have known exactly where Jesus was drawing from.

Jeremiah 4: 3-4
3 For thus says the LORD to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem, "Break up your fallow ground, And do not sow among thorns. 4 "Circumcise yourselves to the LORD And remove the foreskins of your heart, Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Or else My wrath will go forth like fire And burn with none to quench it, Because of the evil of your deeds."
BREAK UP THE GROUND - BREAK UP – Hebrew word NEERO
Hebrew word for Break Up – Neeroo
God is telling them that they need to circumcise their heart – you need to break up the unplowed ground of your heart. To the Jew the Heart was symbolized by Soil that was tilled up.
Jeremiah the prophet is telling them to plow up the soil of their heart to prepare it for judgment – to get ready.
How do you become good soil – you have to break up you unplowed ground of your heart, that is how you get your heart ready for God to plant His word.
In Jeremiah’s passage we see a real interesting play on words. The word for Fire, Soil, and Break up are very close to each other in Hebrew,
Fire is Ner
Soil NEER
Break up - NEERO
In the Hebrew there would not be in any vowels in the words so all three of these words would be the same in the Hebrew text.
To break up unplowed ground – in ancient Hebrew culture before they would plow their fields they would have to burn the thorns and thistles away.
In Israel you would take a lamp to your field and burn up the dried thorns and thistles before you sowed your field to expose the ground.
Burn away the thistles and then you take a one handed plow that breaks up the heavy clay and dirt.
Breaking up the unplowed ground meant to burn away and then plow
Go back to Mark – the Lamp is used to illuminate but also to burn away the thorns.
The fire reveals the ground of your heart, the fire burns away the thorns to show what really is there in your heart.

Jeremiah 23:29
"Is not My word like fire ?" declares the LORD, "and like a hammer which shatters a rock ?

The word of God is like a Fire that Consumes and like a hammer that can break up the toughest of soil even rock.
Are you getting your soil ready, are you preparing your heart for the word of God?
Much of this parable and teaching that Jesus teaches is about getting your heart prepared for the Word of God.
How much do you work at your own heart to make it ready for God’s word.
Sometimes we have this picture that some type of great preaching or some miracle is going to rip the barnacles from our heart and make us ready for the word of God but Jesus tells a different story.
The prophet Jeremiah tells a different story.
WE need to burn away the things that are crowding our heart from God’s attention.
WE need to break up the stone that surrounds our heart or the animosity or the hypocrisy that has burned us in the past to be open to Christ all over again.
I have met people that are soured to God because they have been hurt by Christians, they have had personal tragedy and blame God, or maybe they just don’t care about God’s and His word.
My question to all of you this morning is that do you ever feel like you want better?
Do you want to be better? Sometimes I hate the way I act and I want to be better. I want to serve God. I want to be a good Father to my Children, I want to be a good minister.
I want you to join me in letting this lesson challenge us to really consider the breaking up this tough ground of our heart, burn away the distractions and allow God’s Word to plant deep, grow and make us all different people.
Whether you want to believe it or not God is searching for you desparately and wants you to open your heat to His word.
In 1989 there was a terrible Earthquake in Armenia. One of the victims of this viscous earthquake was an elementary school.
A Dad knew his son was in the school and ran across town to search for his son.
His heart sank when he saw the school laying in ruins. He ran and started to dig through the rubble.
The policeman told him that there was no use to try because no one would have survived that type of collapse. The man continued to dig through the rubble calling for Arman his son.
After 12 hours the rescue crews asked him to leave because they feared for his safety but he would not listen.
He worked for 20 – 24 hours and then after 36 hours of pulling away rubble he uncovered his son and his entire class still alive but trapped.
The entire class was saved by this man’s valiant effort. The little boy told his father that he calmed his classmates by telling them that his dad always said that he would never leave him but would always come for him.
In the same way Jesus has done all that He could possibly do to illustrate that He is going to do the same for us. All He has asked us to do is to make our heart’s ready, to be open to His word and accept His love for us.

Baptism and Restoration of Israel

Baptism as Restoration and Promise

A few years ago, an angry man rushed through the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam until he reached Rembrandt's famous painting "Nightwatch." Then he took out a knife and slashed it repeatedly before he could be stopped. A short time later, a distraught, hostile man slipped into St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome with a hammer and began to smash Michelangelo's beautiful sculpture The Pieta. Two cherished works of art were severely damaged. But what did officials do? Throw them out and forget about them? Absolutely not! Using the best experts, who worked with the utmost care and precision, they made every effort to restore the treasures.
By His sovereign grace, God can bring good out of our failures, and even out of our sins. J. Stuart Holden tells of an old Scottish mansion close to where he had his little summer home. The walls of one room were filled with sketches made by distinguished artists. The practice began after a pitcher of soda water was accidentally spilled on a freshly decorated wall and left an unsightly stain. At the time, a noted artist, Lord Landseer, was a guest in the house. One day when the family went out to the moors, he stayed behind. With a few masterful strokes of a piece of charcoal, that ugly spot became the outline of a beautiful waterfall, bordered by trees and wildlife. He turned that disfigured wall into one of his most successful depictions of Highland life.

In the same way God can take something that seems impossible and can put it back together. So many times I have shared with you how broken the situation the world was in when Jesus was born and began His ministry. Israel was broken, dysfunctional, and was not being what she was called to do.
There was a time that many were looking forward to in the time of Jesus and it is a time that we don’t discuss very much in Churches.
The word is RESTORATION – many were reading the OT prophets and were looking forward to a time that God would Restore Israel.

Tonight we will particularly explore this theme of the Restoration of Israel in the Book of Acts and how that relates to our study on Baptism.
God would restore the Davidic Kingdom to Israel.
I would propose to understand many things about the Early Church and their expectations one would have to understand these expectations. One would have to know the template of expectations upon which the Church exploded onto the scene.
The subject that we picked up last week and will continue to talk about tonight is Baptism. I want to propose that the best way to see baptism in the Scripture is connected to the pouring out of the Spirit on the Last Days.
When we say the LAST DAYS the image conjours up to the modern American Armageddon and the end of the Space Time Universe but to a 1st Century Jew it meant something very different.

The Last Days were the days that the God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh as the prophets had foretold. Something great was going to occur in Israel and through Israel.

It goes back to the promise Made to Abraham that all nations would be blessed by the Seed of Abraham.
Father Abraham would have a descendent that would bless all nations.
We have to trace all of these lines of thought and pull them together to get a picture of what Luke is proposing to us in the book of Acts.
The IDEA OF PROMISE - This in the time of the Intertestament Period became known as just the PROMISE
The idea of the KINGDOM OF DAVID – the Davidic Kingdom
The idea of the Restoration of Israel – The reconstituting of the 12 tribes- Israel would be reformed from the dust so to speak – Remember the Assyrians had scattered the 10 Northern Tribes into oblivion and all that was left were the Samaritans.
These three themes were all tied into the hope of the Messiah – The Messiah the Anointed one of Israel would come and bring about those three hopes – PROMISE of ABRAHAM, KINGDOM OF DAVID, and RESTORATION OF ISRAEL.
PROMISE IN ACTS

Acts 3: 24-26
24 "And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 25 "It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, 'AND IN YOUR SEED ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.' 26 "For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways."

Peter in his sermon in the Temple points out that Jesus is the fulfillment of this Promise made to Abraham.
Paul in his defense before Agrippa sees his ministry tied into this promise made to Abraham. These early Christians were heralds to the world that God was fulfilling this promise made in Jesus.

Acts 26: 6-7
6 "And now I am standing trial for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers ; 7 the promise to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly serve God night and day. And for this hope, O King, I am being accused by Jews.

Paul saw his ministry intimately attached to the idea of the Promise made to Abraham
This same Apostle Paul gives one the best descriptions of this Promise made to Abraham in Galatians 3. Tonight we don’t have time to go through the entire Chapter but we will focus in on one verse that connects the Spirit of God to the Promise made to Abraham and then we will unpack that idea just a bit.
Paul tells us about this connection in

Galatians 3: 13-14
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE "- 14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Paul lays out a thick theology here that we need to really take into understand the event of Christian Baptism.
Jesus takes on the Curse of the Cross to open up the Promise made to Abraham and the vehicle of the Promise will be the Holy Spirit.
Lets here Paul right here: Jesus died so that the Spirit can come into the world. The Spirit will bring life and will renew the earth and convict sinners.

Ephesians 1:13
13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation -having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,

Paul here in Ephesians speaks of a seal of the Spirit that is connected to the Promise.
He even calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Promise.
To understand how this works its way out in Acts we have to look at what Jesus said in John before he was crucified.

John 16: 7-8
7 "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away ; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8 "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment ;

It is better Jesus to win the victory of the Cross and be resurrected and ascend into Heaven so that the Spirit of God can come into the world and Heaven and Earth be joined through that Spirit.
The Role of the Spirit will be to unite Man to God- to act as the one that mediates the Grace that Christ won on Calvary. To understand Acts and Baptism we have to understand the Spirit.
What is it that the Spirit will do that should concern us?
Convict the world of sin – Reveal Truth
But something even more,

Romans 8: 7-11
7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God ; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

It is the Spirit that brings Life – but in particular Paul makes it clear in Romans 8 that it will be the Spirit of God that has a role in our bodily resurrection.
The new resurrected body will be powered by God’s Spirit.
So where does this lead us in the discussion of Baptism? We had to lay this ground work to make sense of Acts.
Many Scholars have noted how Luke in the gospel of Luke and in Acts lays out templates to understand his writing. You can tell he has been educated in Greek thinking.
This template is laid out in Acts 1 and will help us understand much of the book.

Acts 1: 6-8
So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel ?" 7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority ; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."

In this passage we see the idea of RESTORATION KINGDOM and THE HOLY SPIRIT CONNECTED
They ask Jesus a question that you would expect from a 1st century Jew.
Is this the time that you are restoring the Kingdom – this combines two ideas – RESTORATION and KINGDOM – these are important to understand.
Jesus answer- ties together the idea of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit being poured out which had been prophesied by the prophet Joel and then Jesus lays out the geography of this book.
He lays out that they will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the remotest parts of the Earth.
Jerusalem – Judea – Samaria- The World
These geographical places mean something – the Gospel will go out in the Land Promised to Abraham but just as prophets like Isaiah had proclaimed – the knowledge of God would go into the world. No longer was the geographical promise made to Abraham restricted to the Land of Israel but now it could go into the entire world.
The Entire world will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of God.
So what we are witnessing in Baptism is the following:
Israel is being restored and the Kingdom is being re-established, and the promise is being fulfilled.
That is the best way to understand Peter’s sermon in Acts 2. If you read that sermon in light of these expectations it will make so much more sense to you.
As a matter of fact when Peter gets up to preach the 1st Gospel sermon to the men of Israel on Pentecost he cites the expectation of the Restoration of Israel by the prophet Joel.
They accuse the apostles of being drunk but Peter takes his stand and quotes Joel when he says:

Acts 2: 16-21
16 but this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams: 18 Yea and on My servants and on My handmaidens in those days Will I pour forth of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show wonders in the heaven above, And signs on the earth beneath; Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: 20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the day of the Lord come, That great and notable [day]. 21 And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Peter points to the great prophecy of Joel that cites what they are seeing before their eyes as that last great day Restoration of Israel.
What these men were seeing was apocalyptic in the sense that God was going a great act in their site.
He cites all these wonderful acts of the moon to blood and pillars of smoke to prove his point. These are apocalyptic terms that refer to the visitation of Jehovah.
God’s day of visitation has come and he has come to put things back right through the Gospel of His Son Jesus.
If we take Peter’s Sermon and pull out the highlights you will see that he is building a water-tight case for all of Israel’s Hopes being tied into Jesus.
Here was this group of people that had waited for Abraham’s Promise, For the Restoration of the 12 tribes of Israel and the Restoration of the Davidic Kingdom - For the Messiah
And what had they done? They had killed him brutally and on top of that they used the pagan Romans to pull it off. The pagan Roman authorities helped them kill the King of Israel.
Of course Peter tells them that this was all part of the plan but they have a very Jewish response.
Their response is not what head knowledge do we need or facts that we have to memorize. Their Response is WHAT SHALL WE DO?
What do we have to do to make things right? How do we experience the Promise.
Peter tells them-

ACTS 2: 38-39
38 And Peter [said] unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, [even] as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him

In this passage we see Luke lay out a template for the Promise made to Abraham and the Holy Spirit.
You see the formula if you like that term:
Repent, Baptized, Holy Spirit
This is what he tells them in verse 39 is part of the Promise.
God will now start putting together this plan starting here in Jerusalem and it will spread to Judea, Samaria, and then to the Earth.
Now God will start to make His point clear using water baptism.
1st – It will be the Samaritans.
Remember we talked about how Luke uses Templates to follow but we will see two exceptions that are exceptions for a reason. They are there to show that God is making an exclamation point.
In ACTS 8: 5 we see Phillip go to Samaria to preach the Gospel. Many believed and were baptized. They were baptized in the name of Jesus but did not receive the Holy Spirit.
Now we can look at that and say, I thought that Acts 2:38 promised you would receive the Holy Spirit at water baptism? Why the Exception?
The information is found in the fact that they are Samaritans and outcasts.
It would be hard for Jewish Christians to accept these Samaritans without Apostolic authority.

Acts 8: 14-16
14 Now when the apostles that were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: 15 who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit: 16 for as yet it was fallen upon none of them: only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus

In this passage we see that it takes the laying on of the apostles hands for one to
receive the Holy Spirit for the Samaritans.

This is out of the ordinary.
This is an exception to the rubric laid out in Acts 2:38 but the reason is that God is reclaiming lost territory. God was calling the Samaritans into the Kingdom.
This is a vivid picture to anyone that would want to lock them out of the kingdom and it is two pillar apostles Peter and John that go to Samaria to show that the Church and God has accepted the Samaritans.
We see this same type of change for the ordinary when it comes to the bringing in of the Gentiles to the Church.
In the story of Cornelius we see something happen out of the ordinary so much so that Peter is shocked by what happens.
In the story of Cornelius, Cornelius was a Roman Soldier and was a Gentile. He was a good man that prayed to God and gave alms to the poor. God sent him an angel to tell him to send for the Apostle Peter.
If you remember in the story Peter was having a vision about what is clean and unclean as Cornelius men came to get him. In this story we see a radical change and a shift in the history of the Bible. A turning point because God now includes the Gentiles fully into His family.
In this story Peter is preaching the gospel to Cornelius and we pick up in Acts 10 with the story

Acts 10: 44-48
44 While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word. 45 And they of the circumcision that believed were amazed, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit. 46 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, 47 Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we? 48 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.

We see another exception to Acts 2:38 – you see the Holy Spirit come upon them before water baptism.
Why would God do this? If you notice the reaction of Peter and the Jewish Christians with him react by allowing these Gentiles to receive water baptism.
God is showing Peter and teaching the Jewish Christians a lesson that He accepts the Gentiles into the Church.
When we put all of the pieces of this puzzle together you start to see that Baptism is much more important than we make it in many Churches.
Last week we looked at how the great events of the OT of the Exodus, Flood, and the Day of Atonement in the Temple were all foreshadowings to the Baptism of Christ.
Tonight, I traced through the idea of the Promise made to Abraham and God’s great project of Restoring Israel are all tied together in the even of baptism.
In Baptism God kicked off the renewal of Israel in Jerusalem with the 3000 obedient Israelites that were baptized, in the Acts 8 we see baptism mark out the Samaritans as acceptable, and in Cornelius God shows the Jewish Church that now the doors of Grace are flung open to the Gentiles.
We see in Paul a summing up of our point when he says in Galatians 3
Earlier I told you that Galatians 3 lays out a thick theology on the Promise made to Abraham and then you will not be shocked to see that he closes out his argument with a talk on baptism at the end of the chapter.

Galatians 3: 26-29
26 For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. 28 There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one [man] in Christ Jesus. 29 And if ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise.

Man is no longer distinguished by his ethnic background or keeping of the Mosaic law but the badge of acceptance to God is Faith in Jesus.
Faithful people that have been baptized in Jesus are now inheritors of the Promise made to Abraham.
Tonight is a night to go back to reflect on your own baptism and think about what happened on that day.
Think about the seismic shift in Eternity that you were grafted into God’s family and you were accepting a promise made to Abraham a few thousand years ago. A promise that Abraham never got to see but had to look forward in faith is not something you have.
How do we live now knowing this?
Do we live a life that reflects this type of Promise of our future?

Going to the Other Side reflecting God to the Lost AM Sermon 11/21/10

My grandmother would always harp on me about how important it was to not get into trouble at school or in our community. She always reminded me that my Grandfather had worked hard to build up a good name and passed that down to my Dad. It was up to me and my brother to keep up that good name by having a good reputation in the community.
One of the main things that we see in the Bible is the idea of His people reflecting His glory to those around them.
God’s people, the Israelites, would be ambassador’s to the world to show who God is.
IN a past lesson we explored how the geography of Israel was critical in this role. God put the nation of Israel in the most strategic place you put them. Israel was at the crossroads of civilization.
God wanted Israel to be a Kingdom of Priests.
If you remember Israel failed miserably at this task of being a Priest to God.
To understand this call to be priests you must understand the roll of a priest in the ancient world.

PRIESTS
1) A priest was to be set apart – to live holy and separate to God.
2) A priest mediates for other people to God. A priest is one that goes to God on behalf of others.
3) One of the most important rolls is that the priest is to reflect God to the world.

We also need to let it sink in that God called each and every one of the Israelites to this roll. That was his original plan that man would be His priest.
When HE put Adam in the Garden that was one of his rolls that he was to carry out. Adam was to have dominion like a King in a Kingdom.
Adam was also to till and keep the Garden and the Hebrew words used is SHAMAR which is a priestly term used for the Levitical Priesthood.
Adam was supposed to be a King and Priest

Mark 4: 35-4135 On that day, when evening came, He said to them, "Let us go over to the other side." 36 Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. 37 And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. 38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion ; and they woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing ?" 39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. 40 And He said to them, "Why are you afraid ? Do you still have no faith ?" 41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"
Mark 5: 1-20
1 They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes. 2 When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him, 3 and he had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain ; 4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones. 6 Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him; 7 and shouting with a loud voice, he said, "What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God ? I implore You by God, do not torment me!" 8 For He had been saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit !" 9 And He was asking him, "What is your name ?" And he said to Him, "My name is Legion ; for we are many." 10 And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. 12 The demons implored Him, saying, "Send us into the swine so that we may enter them." 13 Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine ; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about two thousand of them; and they were drowned in the sea. 14 Their herdsmen ran away and reported it in the city and in the country. And the people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the "legion "; and they became frightened. 16 Those who had seen it described to them how it had happened to the demon-possessed man, and all about the swine. 17 And they began to implore Him to leave their region. 18 As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed was imploring Him that he might accompany Him. 19 And He did not let him, but He said to him, "Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed


In Mark 4:35 we see that Jesus tells His disciples lets go on to the other side. Jesus is going to leave his base of operation around the area of Capernaum and go to a strange place.

Jesus is going to take His disciples to a place that they would not want to go to. This would be about as scandalous as going to the region of the Samaritans. This would be as scandalous as going to the area of Caesarea Philippi.
Consider the Geography of Jesus Ministry and where he would take his disciples.
Remember that I told you before that Israel was called to be a royal priesthood. They did not take this job very serious and they were sent into Exile in Babylon.
They had returned home and Judaism in the time of Jesus – this Judaism during the time of the 2nd Temple had made sure that they kept themselves pure.
They were really strict about what was clean and unclean. They had set up all kinds of rules to keep their purity.

In their quest to not make the same mistake twice they had become legalistic and could care less about the lost sheep of the land of Israel.
They had declared that the Samaritans were unclean, they had declared the pagans were unclean, they had declared that the Hellenistic Jews were unclean.
They had turned their back on these people that were lost and had basically taken the light of God and put it under a bushel.
They were not a light set on a hill.

In the ministry of Jesus we see Him go to these various regions of the outcasts and do some of his most important miracles and teachings there.
Jesus would tell parables about these people like the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son. It would enrage the Jews of his time and puzzle His own disciples.

Jesus had come to show Israel and the world exactly what God looks like and how we are to reflect God.

This also goes back to the time of Genesis when we are told that we are made in the image of God. That means that in worship we reflect God back to God but we are also angled mirrors that reflect God to the Creation.
Man had lost his way and did not know how to reflect God to the world. Jesus who is the VERY IMAGE and BEING OF GOD took on flesh and in His ministry He is showing us exactly what it is like to be a priest of God-To reflect the glory of God to the world.

Now we are getting another lesson in what this looks like by going TO THE OTHER SIDE
The Other Side is the Decapolis, this is what we have talked about before as being the place where the Hellenistic, Greek, pagan Jews and Gentiles lived.
This is also called A FAR COUNTRY in Judaism.
Jesus is going to a place that did not share the values of the Jews, a place that is very pagan, and a Place that His disciples would not have wanted to go to.
As we read the story in Mark 4 and 5 we see a storm come while they are crossing the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea was associated with the Abyss in Judaism and storms were associated with evil, with Chaos, and in particular Satan.
It is amazing that the Disciples reacted like they did to Jesus calming the storm.
They state, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"
Why would they react this way, Jesus could feed 5000, and raise people form the dead but the disciples did not react the same to those miracles.

Why NOT?Remember that Moses brought Manna from Heaven for the Israelites and Elijah had raised the widow’s son but Jesus had done something that the Psalms said that only Jehovah could do.
The calming of the Sea was a big deal in Judaism. There were two very important passages that the disciples would be very familiar with. Both of these passages referred to the sea and the calming of the seas.

Psalm 89: 8-98 O LORD God of hosts, who is like You, O mighty LORD ? Your faithfulness also surrounds You. 9 You rule the swelling of the sea ; When its waves rise, You still them.
Psalm 107: 24-2924 They have seen the works of the LORD, And His wonders in the deep. 25 For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind, Which lifted up the waves of the sea. 26 They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths ; Their soul melted away in their misery. 27 They reeled and staggered like a drunken man, And were at their wits' end. 28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, And He brought them out of their distresses. 29 He caused the storm to be still, So that the waves of the sea were hushed.
Jesus shows His identity as God in the Flesh by working the miracle of calming the sea. He goes about proving His identity beyond a question.
Jesus is Jehovah God.

SYMBOLISM of the PASSAGE –
Jesus goes to the OTHER SIDE – NO Swine would have been found in any Israelite village that was faithful to God.
Swine were unclean and they would have been abhorrent to any good Law observing Jew
In this story we run into a man that it is so Demon possessed that the demon is called LEGION.
A ROMAN Legion has about 6000 soldiers so this may not be a literal number that Mark is giving us in this account as a Legion but we are to understand that many demons are possessing this man. In the day of Jesus there was much superstition and belief in the demonic.
There were types of demons and genders of demons. Many believed that every part of the body could be possessed by demons.
What we need to understand is that we are seeing a conflict between Good and Evil. The Kingdom of God is doing battle with the Kingdom of Darkness.
The man is in the Tombs because that is where a demon possessed man is supposed to be. This is where many that are demon possessed are sentenced to live. The tombs in ancient Palestine would be caves hewn out of a rocky hillside with shelves hewn out for the bodies to be laid on.
Tombs and Desert regions would be the places that demon possessed people would live as outcasts from society.
We see that this man sees Jesus and comes to encounter Him and calls Him by His Divine Title. This name that the Demon possessed man uses is the most orthodox name that this demon could use.
Why would this demon use Jesus real name?
“Son of the Most High God”
One answer is that in the process of Exorcism one could get control of the situation by invoking the name of God. Many scholars have looked at this passage and realized that this Demon Possessed man is trying to get one up on Jesus before Jesus takes over the situation.
He is flattering Jesus but at the same time rushes down to meet him and quickly tries to control the situation by invoking the Divine Name.
We see that Jesus is in the driver’s seat because the man has to state his name. In the rite of exorcism in Judaism when the demonic stated their name it showed that the exorcist had taken control of the situation. Jesus came to destroy the works of Satan.
1 John 3:8 tells us- The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
Earlier in Mark’s Gospel Jesus was accused of casting out demons by the power of Satan and he challenges this belief and refers to something that we see in this passage.

Mark 3:22-2722 The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons." 23 And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan ? 24 "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 "If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 "If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished ! 27 "But no one can enter the strong man's house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.
We see in the story of the Gerasene Demoniac that they had tried to bind this man with chains but he was so powerful that he broke them.
This man was uncontrollable but now he has come in contact with someone more powerful than he could ever imagine. Now the Creator of the universe has come to his region.
Jesus is the strong man, Jesus will bind Satan and plunder his property.
In the passage before, Jesus was talking about having to bind Satan and plunder His property. This man was the property of Satan but Jesus is taking him back.
Jesus sends the demons into the Swine- 2000 pigs are killed.
In Matthew’s account we see the demon possessed man implore Jesus not to send Him into the Abyss before the appointed time.
The Abyss is the place of the damned souls awaiting Judgment, this demon understood that he was sentenced to eternal damnation and he did not want to go early.
Jesus sends him into the swine and this could be seen as a symbolic act for two reasons.
Near this area of the Gerasenes was a Roman Legion stationed that had on their flag a symbol of a wild pig or swine.
Also the pigs were unclean animals and should not be in the land of Israel in the first place. The destruction of the pigs could show God’s displeasure with having unclean animals in the Land but also make the point that these demons were cast out never to return.
The reaction of the man and the reaction of the people of the city are interesting.
This man wants to be ‘with Jesus’ which is a word used to refer to Jesus inner circle. He wants to be a follower of Jesus. He wants Jesus to take him in as His own.
Jesus commands him to go to his own people.
The city has had their total economy turned upside down and they want Jesus to leave immediately.
There are some points we can take from this story:

1) God is powerful and everywhere the Gospel goes, Satan is being challenged.
We see that He is Jehovah God when he calms the storm.
When people are brought to Christ, we are binding the strong man with the Gospel and we are plundering his property. That was the work of Jesus and that is our work to plunder the property of Satan and take it back for Christ.

2) The Disciples never get out of the boat. If you look at the account of the story Jesus is the only one that gets out of the boat.
They are probably terrified to go to the Decapolis in the first place but now they see this demoniac man and they certainly will not get out the boat when they see him.
It is the apostle Peter that gets out and walks to Jesus in the stormy waters but now they will not even get out of the boat because of where they are.
The reaction of the Disciples is telling in this story.

3) The man makes a big difference. He goes from Demon possessed to an evangelist to the Decapolis. He will go to this pagan region and preach about Jesus.
The next time Jesus returns to the Decapolis he will feed 4000 people.
This man makes such a difference and it is evident in how many people are interested in Jesus ministry from this pagan region when he returns.

4) The people reject Jesus because it costs them something. They care more about economics than about this person that is being healed and brought to wholeness.
They don’t care about this man or the Kingdom of God. They are more worried about the 2000 pigs. It tells you about the value system of people
The Jews on the other side of the lake don’t even care enough about them to come and evangelize them and they care more about the pigs than the man that had the demon cast out of him.

Application for us:In this story we are confronted by different responses to Jesus.
We are called to be priests of God, to reflect God to the world. Now we see the very Image of God, God Himself in action to show us how we are to be,
We cannot become what we were meant to be unless we look to Jesus. Jesus is the model of what real living is all about.
It is Jesus that goes to the place that no one else will go to. Jesus confronts Evil head on and defeats it.
Who are we in this story?
-Are we the person that has been made Whole by Jesus and are now on fire to tell everyone about Him?
-Are we the apostles that are so scared to get out the boat to get to work, or are we just indifferent to the lost of this world that we don’t want to get involved, too busy.
-are we the townspeople that think Jesus is okay just long as He doesn’t upset things. Christianity is cool until it costs me something, demands something of me, don’t upset my comfortable life because of Jesus.

The Master has come to show us what it means to be His priest, his called out, we have to go to the places where other people run from.
We have to enter the fray, we have to get out of the boat, we have to proclaim to those who will listen,
We are called to plunder the possessions of the strong man. The Kingdom is inbreaking and things will never be the same.

The Waters that Divide PM Sermon 11/14/10

Waters that Divide

Baptism was something that united the Early Church but today has brought division to Christianity.
There are many misunderstandings about Baptism and what it means and how you should administer baptism.
This goes back to some of the earliest Christians. A story illustrates this point.
The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king's foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king's forgiveness. Why did you suffer this pain in silence, the Saint wanted to know.
The king replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual."

Tonight I would like to look back at the origin of the rite of Baptism in particular and Christian Baptism’s roots in the Old Testament.
I think in doing this it will clear up a lot of misconceptions in the world about baptism and people will be able to find some type of unity on this basic doctrine.
To lay out the importance of this, I would say that baptism is a foundational doctrine and teaching.


I. Baptism in Israel
When I was a kid I thought that baptism in the ministry of John the Baptist and in Jesus was a new thing on the world stage.
What I have found out over the years is that baptism was very common in Israel in what is called the 2nd Temple Era.
The Second Temple was the one rebuilt after the return from Exile that was finally completed by Herod the Great. The Second Temple Era goes from 200 BC to 70 AD.
Archaeologists have unearthed over 150 baptisteries near the Temple. These baptisteries were called Miktvah and were made to immerse your body in water. They had steps the descended into the water and steps that lead out the other side. The person would immerse themselves.
In Jerusalem, many houses of influential Jews in the time of Jesus were furnished with Baptisteries. Some Pharisees believed in immersion in water every morning for ritual cleanliness and some immersed themselves in water every night for ritual purity.
On the Day of Atonement the High Priest of Israel was required to be immersed in water before he could enter the Holy Place.
Rabbinic sources show that complete immersion was the requirement.
The Rabbinic rule was that water had to be in contact with every part of your body and the only way that is possible is complete immersion.
So we know that baptism was common in Judaism as well as it was unanimous that baptism meant that a person should be immersed for a baptism to valid.
The very word Baptism comes from a use of meaning complete immersion.
Strabo the Roman Historian uses this word to describe the sinking of ships in a naval battle. This word meant to completely immerse or to dip in a liquid.
One group that was very well known in the time of Christ for baptism and purification is the Essenes. The Essenes believed that one had to be immersed in water to be renewed.
Many people connect the baptism of John the Baptist with this group but there is no conclusive evidence for this.
Another phase of Judaism that required baptism was Jewish proselyte baptism. If one were a Gentile and desired baptism they would have to be immersed in water as well as undergo circumcision. One great Rabbi that was the teacher of the Great Gameliel who was Paul’s teacher taught that Gentile converts had to be baptized because Israel had gone through the Red Sea.
They called this being baptized into Moses. The Jews had been baptized into Moses because they were in the bodies of their ancestors but these Gentiles had to undergo baptism to be a part of Moses.


II. John the Baptist Baptism

John’s call of baptism was not a new thing but there was a new twist.
Baptism in Israel had purely been for ritual outward purity but had never been connected to the condition of one’s heart.
John came as a prophet of Israel’s Restoration.
He came a as fulfillment of Isaiah 40’s prophecy of one crying in the wilderness to make the path straight for the Messiah to come. John comes to warn of the Judgment to come.


Luke 3:2-3
2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. 3 And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins ;


Part of this repentance had John telling the people to bear fruit in accordance with repentance. If you have two tunics share with those in need, if you are a tax collector only take what you have been ordered to take.
Soldiers are not to abuse people by force but we content with your wages.
John’s baptism was connected with inner change and this is something new. This is a baptism just to prepare people for the ministry of Jesus.
The shift though is that now baptism is not just connected with outward cleansing but inward change that is connected to that change.


III. The third aspect of Baptism that I want to look at is something called Typology.
This is a less explored view of baptism but it is fascinating and very much a part of the New Testament.
I would propose that he early church would have understood baptism much more in this light than how people argue or explain baptism today. Let me explain what Typology is. It comes from the Greek word TUPOS which is found in the New Testament.
A TUPOS is a shadowy type of the reality. A great example would be what a footprint in mud would be to the shoe that made the print. The print is not the shoe itself but is the TUPOS or sign that the shoe was there.
The word ANTITUPOS or what we call and ANTITYPE is the reality being signified. The shoe in the example is the ANTITYPE – it is the reality where the print is the TUPOS or Type.
This same language is used to compare Baptism to events of the Old Testament. Tonight I want to look at three types that are found in the Old Testament to Christian Baptism.
The first type that is compared to Baptism in the New Testament is the Flood.


1 Peter 3: 18-21
18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit ; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you-not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience -through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,


The word in verse 21 that is translated as Corresponding to in the New American Standard Version
The NIV translates this word in verse 21 as Symbolizes
The KJV translates this word as LIKE FIGURE
The Greek word is ANTITUPON
In other words what Peter is saying is the flood is a type of baptism and symbolizes Baptism, Christian Baptism is the reality and is the subject that he is talking about.
How does the flood act as a type to baptism or symbolize baptism.
In the flood you have righteous people being saved by water. The water cleanses away the sin and separates the New Humanity from the Old humanity.
Noah and his family represent God’s new start with humanity and the sinful people are washed away in the water.
In the same way in the waters of baptism sin is washed away.
Now is Peter saying that Baptism is magical and you can just take anyone off the street and say the right words, dunk them and expect them to be saved?
That is definetly NOT what he is saying.
The key word in this passage is the word APPEAL
This word that is used to say that Baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience can be likened to a Prayer.
Many times I am asked why we don’t have the sinners’ prayer in our churches. I always tell them that we do believe in the sinner’s prayer but we believe the sinner’s prayer is water baptism.
This is exactly what Peter is saying – in Baptism you make your appeal to God.
What better way to say I believe in the Gospel than to reenact the Gospel. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that the Gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
In baptism we are declaring or appealing to God that we believe that Jesus died so we therefore repent and put the old person to death, and we too are buried as Jesus was buried, and we are raised up out of the water with the hope of the resurrection.

In Acts 22: 16 we see baptism connected to calling out to God just like this passage in 1 Peter
In Acts 22:16 Ananias says to Paul,

16 'Now why do you delay ? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.'

Baptism is the event that we are separated from sin and Call UPON GOD – CRY OUT TO GOD
Calling on his name could be translated as MAKE AN APPEAL
It means the same as what we looked at before.
Christian Baptism is all about an inward change, a cry to God, and an act of faith that cries out to the world that you believe the Gospel.
For 1800 years of Church history Baptism has always been the proper response to the Gospel call. It wasn’t until the American Great Awakening that people started to separate a person’s profession of faith from baptism.
It wasn’t until the 1800’s that the Sinner’s prayer came into existence. It had always been sufficient for someone to make a public proclamation of faith and be immediately baptized.
This is the same model that we will see in Acts that we will look at next Sunday night.


IV. Baptism linked to the Exodus Event
The second OT type that I wanted to look at tonight was the crossing of the Israelites.
As a matter of fact the Jewish Rabbis as I pointed out earlier said that the reason Gentile converts had to be baptized in water to become a Jew went back to the crossing of the Red Sea.


1 Corinthians 10: 1-5
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea ; 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea ; 3 and all ate the same spiritual food ; 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased ; for they were laid low in the wilderness. 6 Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.


In verse 6 of this passage Paul uses the Word EXAMPLES – In other words Israel had these experiences as a type of what is to come.
This Greek word is literally TUPOS or TYPE –
Israel crossing the Red Sea is Type of our baptism into Christ.


Romans 6: 1-6
1 What shall we say then ? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase ? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death ? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin ;

We are baptized into Christ – Just as Israel was identified with Moses.
When the crossed the Red Sea there was no turning back. They were ALL IN with Moses and God leading them.
This is what Paul is talking about in Romans. We are baptized into Christ and we are no longer slaves. We have broken the slavery of sin and crucified the old person and have united with Christ in baptism.
So we should see Baptism as a liberating event. An Exodus from Sin and Transforming Experience.


V. The Holy of Holies and the Day of Atonement acts as a type of Christian baptism
You may think this is an odd place to find a connection to Christian baptism and the Holy of Holies but you will see the connection in Hebrews.
In Hebrews 9 we are told that the Holy of Holies is a type or TUPOS of a reality that is in Heaven.
The High Priest of Israel would have to immerse himself in water every year and offer a sacrifice for himself and Israel and sprinkle blood on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
Jesus will become the perfect sacrifice and by His blood he will enter the Holy Place of Heaven through that blood.


It is with this in mind we see what the Hebrew writer says about us in Hebrews 10: 19-22
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.


In this passage we see again a connection between bodies washed in water – this is a direct reference to the baptism of the High Priest.
We are the new priesthood in the new covenant. Our baptism allows us to go into the most Holy Place of God with confidence.
This word for the ceremonial baptism of the priesthood is used in Titus 3.


Titus 3: 5-6
5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,


The Washing of Regeneration that Paul uses is a word from the Jewish Scriptures that refers to the Laver in the Temple that was used for these baptisms.
The NIV translates this as Washing of Rebirth
The New Revised Standard actually translates the Greek of this passage the best- water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
Water is involved in this Greek word Loutron – you cannot translate this word without water.
This passage is talking about the water of rebirth and it is not a metaphor- to a Jew this word meant H2O water.
So you have Paul using this same term for the High Priestly baptism in reference to Christian baptism.


Conclusion:
From looking at the OT types we can draw a few conclusions:
1) Baptism is about separating sin from man. We are leaving the sinful way behind and becoming a new humanity In Christ.
Just as in Noah mankind got a new start, we are getting a new start in Christ with our baptism.
2) Baptism is a petition to God, If you like a prayer of faith to God.
3) Baptism is an Exodus event in which you leave the slavery of sin behind, it is about Freedom in Christ
4) Baptism is an event that purifies us by the shed blood of Christ that we can now go into the most Holy Place of God.