Soteriology | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

February 29, 2024

How to Not Be Ashamed of Jesus (Mark 8:31–38)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Courage,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Greek,Lent,Life of Christ,Mark Gospel of,Passion,Psalms,Repentance,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 10:47 pm
Tags: ashamed, bible, christianity, encouragement, encouragement in trials, epaischynomai, Ephesians 3:20, faith, jesus, Judas's betrayal, Mark 8:31-38, not ashamed, Peter's denial, Psalm 22, shame vs. strength

Message preached second Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2024, at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, NE.

Think for a moment about the things people give up for Lent: Chocolate, coffee or other caffeinated beverages, maybe adult beverages, or something that might take more discipline like trading in turf for surf on Fridays or not watching TV. But should Lent really be about giving up things that maybe aren’t so good for us physically or spiritually anyway? Why not instead give up those things that distract us from our commitment to Christ? For those not familiar with the seasons of the church calendar, it may be best to first answer the question, “What is Lent?”

The word Lent itself simply means springtime. For those of us in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere, that seems like a funny thing to call it, because it starts in the dead of winter, anywhere from the middle of February through first week of March, typically. But it does end just before Easter, or Resurrection Sunday as some call it, so that is springtime for us.

Because it typically starts in the dead of winter, the acts of denial typically associated with Lent may not have been a deliberate choice in the early and formative years of church polity. Winters were probably pretty harsh for some. But the fact that Lent looked forward to a time of emerging from the darkness and coldness of winter into the light and life of spring was certainly a means of hope and a renewed sense of purpose. But it wasn’t just a meteorological hope: Lent as a religious holiday always looks forward to the eternal hope we have because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As we come to our passage today, we see Jesus is beginning to experience some frustration with his closest followers. Peter has just made the good confession that Jesus is the Messiah when the other apostles couldn’t figure that out. Up to this time, the disciples had been holding out the hope that Jesus would finally be the political leader the Jews had been expecting to come throw off the chains of Rome and allow them to live as a free people again. But Jesus knew he had to set them straight on just what his kingdom was going to be like. He knew freedom was coming, but it wouldn’t necessarily be from Roman rule. He knew blood must shed, but it wouldn’t be the blood of Romans. He was looking for a kingdom that would not be limited by a geographical region because it would rise up in the hearts and souls of his followers. But just because this kingdom wouldn’t come by war doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be difficult.

This is why Jesus starts teaching his disciples and followers about his upcoming suffering. He wants his disciples to be ready as well, as they will not be immune to suffering and persecution. Peter, ever the fireball, rebukes Jesus for talking about suffering and rejection. After all, Peter thought Jesus would use his divine power to take care of Rome once and for all. Yet Jesus rebukes Peter harshly for thinking like this: “Get behind me, Satan!” O you of little faith. When James and John ask if they can sit at the right and left hand of Jesus, that must have broken his heart as well. Even Judas, we’re told, is “helping himself” to the group’s funds at this point, presumably thinking he might be the minister of finance in the kingdom he thought was coming. Jesus was realizing their human frailty didn’t allow them yet to see what kind of kingdom he would raise up.

What’s interesting about v. 31–32 in our gospel passage this morning is that, when Jesus talks about what he must suffer and at whose hands he must suffer, never once does Jesus mention Rome. Jesus said he would suffer at the hands of the religious leaders of his day, not at the hands of Rome. Did you ever notice that little detail? Apparently the disciples didn’t notice that little detail either when he said it, because they went on thinking the kingdom would be all about confronting Rome. That’s why Jesus must tell them two or three times about his suffering and death in the last half of the gospel accounts.

So what can Jesus do about it at this point? The Jews were not expecting a suffering Messiah, so they weren’t even paying attention to the suffering Messiah psalms or prophecies. We read the last part of Psalm 22 this morning, which is quite upbeat compared to the first part of that Psalm whose verses detail many aspects about what happened to Christ on the cross. The truth is, Jesus knew he must begin to explain more in detail about what he himself would be facing, “the baptism with which Jesus will be baptized with,” and for that matter, what John and James and the rest of the disciples would be facing.

For whatever reason, the Lent passages are a little out of order. A couple weeks ago was “Transfiguation Sunday,” and the Scripture for that Sunday was the gospel text immediately following today’s passage, Mark 9. Apart from Jesus’s words and teaching in the last part of Mark 8, the Transfiguration event should have been the first clue to Peter, James, and John that Jesus’s coming kingdom was not going to be one of this world. It would in fact be a very different kingdom and look nothing like any kingdom ever before seen on earth.

Notice after Jesus finishes rebuking Peter, the very next thing Mark records Jesus saying is that his disciples must take up their cross and follow him. The question is, how would the disciples have understood the “taking up the cross” reference if they hadn’t yet seen Jesus crucified? They knew that the cross was an instrument of Roman torture and punishment, so Jesus’s mention of it must have been somewhat concerning to them if not frightening.

His words get more concerning as he goes on. It’s not enough for one to take up their own cross, but then he starts talking about “losing” your life or your very being. The contradiction of what he was saying must have been mind blowing. If they want to keep their current life, they’ll actually wind up losing it. But if they give up their current life in favor of following Christ and proclaiming his gospel, they’ll actually find out who they truly can be in Christ and what is God’s purpose for their life.

He begins to cut at the heart of the disciples’ misleading conception that they would be “gaining the world” by following Christ, gaining positions of influence and power in an earthly kingdom. What good is it to get all that power if you forfeit who you are and what God wants of your life? O, that many of our politicians would learn that lesson, right? How much is your soul, your very being worth if you would cast it aside for earthly gain, especially when you hold that up against the value that God places on your soul?

Jesus minces no words as he closes out his teaching. It’s time to take sides. If you’re ashamed of Jesus, Jesus honors that and won’t invite you to hang out with him anymore. You won’t have to worry about being seen with someone you’re ashamed of. Is that what you want? On the other hand, if you’re “at home” with Jesus and not afraid to be identified as one of his followers, then you’ll get to join him in the eternal home prepared for you.

Before addressing the positive elements of this passage, I want to wrestle with one question about the negative element: What does it mean to be ashamed of Jesus? The concept in the Bible suggests that being “ashamed” of something is the opposite of being confident you’ve done something right or good and taking a sense of inner pride in that. Being ashamed is more akin to being disgraced, that is, wanting to hide your face from others for whatever it is you’re doing, whether it is a sinful act that deserves shame or a cowardly attitude that causes you to either not take action when you should or even worse, to outright deny the value of something. Additionally, the root of the word is also the root for the concept of strength or power in the New Testament, but for the meaning “ashamed,” the negative prefix is added ἐπαισχύνομαι (epaischynomai)[1]. So there is an underlying nuance of not having or losing strength or power when your ashamed of good things. However, the shame we experience when doing something wrong is meant to motivate us to strengthen our resolve and our character so we have the power to do better the next time.

I know I’m jumping ahead a bit in the biblical timeline, but we have two appropriate examples of shame we can point to, especially in the events surrounding the crucifixion. Perhaps you’ve probably already made the connection to Peter’s actions outside the high priest’s residence at the illegal trial of Jesus the night before his crucifixion. Not once, not twice, but three times Peter denies knowing Jesus. Those were acts of cowardice on his part, but I’ll give him credit for at least showing up there. Where were the rest of the disciples after Jesus’s arrest?

The other example that perhaps you haven’t considered as an act of being ashamed of Jesus would be Judas’s betrayal. As I said above, Judas and the other disciples were expecting an earthly kingdom. Judas seems to have become disillusioned with the direction Jesus’s teaching and ministry had taken and was ashamed that things seemed to be falling apart from a worldly perspective. Perhaps he thought that getting Jesus arrested would be just the catalyst needed to start a revolt or rebellion that would cast off Roman rule once and for all. He wasn’t the only one who hadn’t yet grasped that there was a more eternal, spiritual kingdom on the way. When what he had hoped for didn’t pan out, his own shame was so great that he went out and hanged himself. He lost any shot at redemption at that point.

Peter, it seems, gave up at the point of his denials, but fortunately for the early church and the rest of us today, he didn’t follow in Judas’s footsteps. A few days after the resurrection, Peter received forgiveness when Jesus asked him not once, not twice, but three times if Peter loved him. It was as if each yes answer Peter gave undid each of his denials at Jesus’s trial.

How can we today show that we’re not ashamed of Jesus? The most obvious thing is keep sharing the good news of Jesus. As long as this congregation is doing the work God is calling and gifting you to do, you have no reason to be ashamed about any aspect of the ministry of this church. Don’t even be ashamed of the size of your congregation. Where two or three are gathered in Jesus’s name, he’s here in our midst. Don’t be discouraged. I also want to encourage you NOT to think that this church will inevitably close its doors. God works in mysterious ways, and he can bring life to places in ways we never imagined.

The Gospel of John has a slightly different version of this passage. It’s not strictly a parallel passage, but it does involve Jesus predicting his death and has the piece in it about losing your life for the sake of eternal reward. Listen to the words of Jesus John records for us:

²³Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ²⁵Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.^[2]

Now of course, in this passage, Jesus is referring to himself as the seed. But if we are in Christ, we also can be the seeds that produce a whole new crop. So I would encourage you not to think of Mount View Presbyterian in terms of it being in its twilight. Think of this church as a seed that is planted here in the neighborhood of 52^nd & Hartman, where you have several grade schools within a three-mile radius. I would encourage you to look beyond yourselves and see what possibilities lie ahead, because God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work in us (Ephesians 3:20). We may not see it ourselves, but I truly believe God has a long-term vision and plan for this congregation in this location.

Need more encouragement? I told you a few weeks ago in the parlor about how I’ve been recording my messages and putting them on my blog page. Well, I found out I underestimated how much impact that is having, apparently around the world. Last year, my messages were downloaded over 2,000 times by I don’t know how many people. Just so you understand how that works, someone has to send out a link to the message file on my blog, and others have to intentionally click the link to pull it up on their computer or phone and listen to it. Already this year, there have been an additional 400 downloads of these sermon files. As I said a few weeks ago, I always put on the text version of the file that I’ve preached the sermon here at Mount View.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where these people are who are downloading and listening to these sermons. But am I crazy to think that maybe someday someone might show up at our doors who says, “Hey, I thought I’d check out your church because I heard one of your messages on the Internet”? Regardless of the long-term outcome, know that people all over the world are hearing the word of God in messages preached from this pulpit. Last year alone, people from over 160 countries read at least one article or listened to at least one sermon on my blog. I don’t say this to brag about me. All I do is post the files on the Internet. I don’t do any significant promotion. This all happens by word of mouth and the power of God in fulfillment of his promise that his word never returns void. This has been a God thing through and through, and I pray that this congregation will reap the reward from that.

So I leave you with this: Do not be ashamed of your congregation, because you are the body of Christ, placed here for his purposes. Do not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation. And do not be ashamed of Jesus, who has given us life and hope in his kingdom, both now and for eternity. Amen.

^[1] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc. Accessed February 29, 2024, from the software. The word used here has an intensifying prefix (ἐπ’) before the more common word for “ashamed.” The root of the word appears to be *ἰσχύ, which means “to be strong, capable.” The negative prefix alpha is added to the beginning of the root and after the intensifying prefix. The complete concept of the word “ashamed” in context, then, is akin to a complete absence of strength of character to stand for one’s convictions.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

My thoughts and ideas are my own, and I have given credit where credit is due.

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December 31, 2023

Praising the Savior (Luke 2:22–40)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Christology,Christology,Epifanía,Epiphany,Hebrews,Isaiah,Luke Gospel of,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 3:51 pm
Tags: Anna, Body of Christ, Church Attendance, Consecration of Jesus, First Sunday after Christmas, Hebrews 10:24-25, Isaiah 9, Luke 2:22-40, praise, Service, Simeon

I preached this sermon at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on December 31, 2023, the First Sunday After Christmas on the liturgical calendar year B. I was on the back end of a cold, so I sound a little different.

Last Sunday, Christmas Eve, I had the privilege of baptizing my half-sister at my home church. Thirty-three years and day before that, December 23, 1990, I had been present at her dedication and baptism at the Lutheran church on N. 30^th Street. My dad and her mom wanted me to be her “sponsor” or “Godfather.” It was a distinct honor to come full circle like that on a commitment I quite frankly had little influence on in her early life because I lived 500 miles away.

Lindee’s story parallels my own faith journey as I’ve shared with you in past, but our stories both parallel the life of Jesus in this regard as well, and we see the first part of that story in our passage today. Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the Temple to go through the Jewish purification rites. Mary had to wait 40 days to be purified from giving birth, which as we all know involves some blood. But because Jesus was also a firstborn son, he had to be dedicated to the service of the Lord as the Israelites were commanded in Exodus. That involved a sacrifice as well, as we see in the final “plague” of the Exodus. And of course we know that Jesus was baptized as an adult “to fulfill all righteousness,” as Matthew records. The Western church recognizes that event the day after Epiphany next week.[1]

Now when you and I dedicate ourselves to raising our children in the Lord, whatever that looks like from your perspective, I would venture to guess none of us has any idea what our kids are going to be like some thirty years later. But Mary and Joseph encountered two people in the Temple that day of Jesus’s consecration who seemed to know quite a bit about what Jesus would be doing thirty years later.

Simeon’s prophecy about Jesus is both encouraging and haunting. On the one hand, he is saying that Jesus is the light to the Gentiles Isaiah spoke of in Chapter 9 of his prophecy. But then it takes a darker turn, speaking of the rising and falling of many and that he would be a sign spoken against. The final part of his prophecy to Mary is the most haunting of all: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” That little word “too” at the end of the prophecy reveals that Jesus is destined for incredible suffering at some point in the future, which we now know was the cross. Mary witnessed that event as well, so you can imagine the pain she must have felt.

Anna also had what at least on the surface appears to be an encouraging prophecy as well, giving thanks to God, but she mentions the redemption of Jerusalem. Now I know we may tend to throw around these $20 religious words like “salvation” and “redemption” without thinking more deeply about what they imply, but the Jews would have understood from their sacrificial system that “salvation” and “redemption” both required blood sacrifices in the Old Testament. So even as Simeon and Anna spoke over the infant Jesus, their words prefigured in some way, subtle or not, that Jesus would suffer death at some point.

It’s hard to say what the son of God knew or understood as an infant when he heard these words. His human side would not have understood them, but his divine nature surely would have, and how those two natures worked together will perhaps forever be a beautiful mystery to us. But the text in Luke goes on to say that Jesus’s parents took Jesus to the Passover every year in Jerusalem, so Jesus, as he grew older, began to understand that the Temple wasn’t just a place of worship, but his own spiritual home, because the Temple was his Father’s house.

It’s a fair extrapolation, I think, to assume that Jesus and his family were regulars in the local synagogue as well when they weren’t in Jerusalem for the Passover. Luke gives us just a glimpse of Jesus as a preteen with the story of him staying behind to school the teachers of the law in the Temple courts. Now if he was doing that with the teachers in the Temple, can you imagine what he must have been like in the local synagogue? We don’t see Jesus begin his ministry until he was thirty years old, but what was he like as a young adult? Did he give the synagogue leader some pointers after each message? Surely he didn’t live in isolation as a young man. Were the women oohing and aahing about his theological prowess? I’m guessing not. He was probably a Nazarite like Samson, except he knew how to behave himself, which is why we never read about him getting married. He was off limits to women, because he was laser-focused on preparing for his ministry as the Messiah.

All of what I’ve said up to this point is more or less an intellectual exercise, examining the history and background around the birth and dedication of Jesus and the times he lived in. But what are some takeaways for us? What are some things we can do to help our kids and grandkids raise their own kids so they can take ownership of their faith and understand God’s purposes for them in this day and age?

The most obvious takeaway for us is the importance of gathering with God’s people in God’s house. For the Jews, that was primarily the local synagogue, with the Temple being a special destination, one to three times a year depending on how often people could make the journey. For us Christians, we really don’t have anything akin to the Temple, so it’s the local church that’s important.

I’ve often had people tell me, and perhaps you’ve experienced this as well, that you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. I would beg to differ. As believers, we are part of the body of Christ; we may be set apart from the world in God’s eyes, but we are not set apart from our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are united essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally in God’s eyes through Christ. Wherever God has a child, we have a sibling in Christ. Hebrews 10:24 and 25 puts it this way:

²⁴And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.^[2]

Most of us who have grown up in the church recognize this distinctly. We recognize the power of connection and the shared purpose and goals that develop from such a connection. The local church is not just a place where we come to be uplifted and encouraged, but where we can also uplift and encourage others. It is a community with bonds that are not easily broken.

Related to this is the idea of service. Some churches have signs above the doors that exit out of their sanctuaries that say, “You are now entering the mission field.” In Acts 6, we see the apostles were concerned about the Hellenistic Jewish widows who were being overlooked in the distribution of food. They gathered everyone together and quickly worked out a solution and appointed capable people to handle that specific ministry. That couldn’t have happened if everyone was doing their own thing.

Another takeaway for us comes from the responses of Simeon and Anna. Granted, they had some prophetic insight into who the baby Jesus was and how he fit into God’s plan for salvation and redemption, but we now have the hindsight to know exactly what that looked like. Just as Simeon and Anna praised God for who he is and what he was doing through Jesus, so to can we praise God for who he is, what he has done for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and what he is doing in us through the work of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Our reading from Psalm 148 gives us some hints about how we can praise God:

¹¹kings of the earth and all nations,

you princes and all rulers on earth,

¹²young men and women,

old men and children.

¹³Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for his name alone is exalted;

his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. ^[3]

Like attending church, praise is not just an individual effort we make to show our gratitude to God. Praise also flows from our experience together as a community, especially as we see the fruit of our mutual and collective labors. It also flows from reading and hearing about God’s great works in the service. Psalm 148 also has several references to God’s wonderful creation that is available to all mankind, not just to those of us who believe.

One final thought about Luke’s passage here: Simeon especially indicates that following Jesus is going to cause people to take sides. We see more and more in our world today the antagonism toward the good news of Jesus. This is all the more reason for us to maintain community on the one hand, so there’s strength in numbers. But also we can take a unified stand for righteousness and truth and send a powerful message of unity and steadfastness to the world.

As we look forward to the new year, then, let us resolve and recommit ourselves to serving and praising God and meeting together as body of believers to carry out the various ministries he’s called us to. Together, we can be shining lights in a world of darkness, a beacon of hope amidst the signs of fear and despair. Amen.

[1] I removed the following because I didn’t want the sermon to get too long, and I didn’t want to dive into the topic of adult baptism with an older congregation.

But the parallel doesn’t stop there. I think most of us recognize that next week is Epiphany, where the Western church celebrates the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus. But how many of you know that the day after Epiphany is the recognition of Jesus’s baptism by John? Even though John knew he needed to be baptized by Jesus, and even though Jesus knew he was the son of God and sinless and had no need to “repent and be baptized” as John was preaching, still Matthew records Jesus’s desire that he be baptized “to fulfill all righteousness.”

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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October 29, 2023

Living the Greatest Commandments (Matthew 22:34–46; Leviticus 19:11–18; Psalm 110:1)

Our gospel passage this morning contains the two most-quoted Old Testament verses in the New Testament. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” from Leviticus 19:18 of all places, is quoted directly 10 times, with one other allusion to it, spread across several books in the NT, not just the Gospels.

Psalm 110:1, which Matthew quotes in the second part of our gospel passage this morning, is the second most-quoted OT verse in the NT, with a total of 8 direct quotes of and another 10 allusions to the passage. But it doesn’t end there. Dozens of early Christian writers in the first 300 or so years after the birth of the church referenced the passage as well.

Jesus uses this verse twice in each of the first three gospels. The first occurrence is what we read here this morning, when he’s speaking to the pharisees during his last week before his crucifixion and claiming that he is the Messiah, son of David, that the OT points to; the second occurrence in each Gospel is when he’s defending himself before the Sanhedrin after his arrest and affirms his place as the preexistent Messiah and descendant of David. That was the statement that caused the high priest to tear his robe and accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Outside of the gospels, the NT writers and early church fathers use it to demonstrate his resurrection and appointment to the right hand of God.

You probably also noticed that Psalm 110:1’s popularity among early Christian writers pretty much forced the ecumenical councils of the day to use a form of the verse in their respective creeds; we read it every week here in the last part of the Apostle’s Creed: “He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”

Jesus knows his day of crucifixion is coming, so he’s essentially pulling out all the stops now as far as letting people know who he is. No more hints or subtle innuendos: by citing Psalm 110:1 about himself, Jesus is making the ultimate claim that he’s the Messiah come to earth. No stone will be left unturned before he breathes his last on the cross for our forgiveness, and one stone will be rolled away when he rises from the dead for our hope of eternity.

So we can have absolute assurance that Jesus is who he says he is: To the Jews, Messiah; to the Greeks, Christ. He’s the son of God, son of Man, son of David, three descriptions of the same person. He’s the one we can put our total and complete faith in, because we know how great his love is for us. And we owe him our very lives, dedicated to living out the hope he’s given us.

This is where we back up and look at the first part of our passage today for the two greatest commandments he’s left to us. Matthew and Mark place these commandments in Jesus’s mouth during the week before his crucifixion, while Luke has them much earlier, so it would seem, as a lead-in to the Good Samaritan parable.

Because these are the greatest commandments, we must of course be careful not to let the familiarity of these verses make them “trite” to us. Many of us recognize that these two greatest commandments come from the Old Testament. The “Love the Lord you God” passage comes from Deuteronomy 6:5, as Moses begins his final sermon on the Ten Commandments, in which we hear the oft-repeated refrain to “be very careful to obey all I have commanded you.”

This particular verse underwent a couple minor tweaks as it came into the New Testament. In the original passage, Moses says “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength,” as the NIV translates it. That last phrase about “all your strength” could be translated “all your utmost.” The word translated “strength” there is most commonly translated as “very” or “great/greatly,” so it implies the best of the best of the best, the utmost of the utmost.

In our passage this morning, Matthew changes “strength” to “mind,” which is acceptable given the otherwise generic nature of the original Hebrew. Mark and Luke add “mind” to the original “heart,” “soul,” and “strength” from the Hebrew. Including the word “mind” here is most likely a hat tip to the prolific Greek and Roman philosophers, historians, and statesmen and the knowledge base they had accumulated. That doesn’t mean Jesus agreed with Greek and Roman philosophers, however; it just means he wanted his followers to have some intellectual understanding of how his teachings and way of living were different from theirs.

Now loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind is noble indeed, and should be first on the minds of all Christ followers. But then there’s that second greatest command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Unlike the greatest command, which is found at the beginning of Moses’s greatest sermon, the “neighbor” command is tucked away in the middle of one of the most exciting books in the Old Testament: Leviticus, chapter 19, vs. 18.

Leviticus 19 reads very much like the Ten Commandments themselves, at least in the early going. But then beginning in vs. 13, after Moses gives the general command not to defraud or rob your neighbor, he begins to break down what that might look like in his “negative” commands. Listen to some of the context leading up to vs. 18, beginning in vs. 11:

¹¹ Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Do not deceive one another.

¹² Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

¹³ Do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight.

¹⁴ Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord.

¹⁵ Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

¹⁶ Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.

¹⁷ Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.

¹⁸ Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.^[1]

So NOT doing these things to your neighbor, I suppose, is a passive way of telegraphing your love for them.

The flip side of this, that is, the positive way to state this, is found in other scriptures, notably Micah 6:8:

⁸He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.^[2]

Proverbs 3:27–30 has some more sage advice about loving your neighbor with a mix of things we should and shouldn’t do:

²⁷Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,

when it is in your power to act.

²⁸Do not say to your neighbor,

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”—

when you already have it with you.

²⁹Do not plot harm against your neighbor,

who lives trustfully near you.

³⁰Do not accuse anyone for no reason—

when they have done you no harm.^[3]

There’s no shortage of advice and commands in the Bible about how to love our neighbor. In the New Testament, there are nearly 100 verses about how to treat “one another.” If you have a concordance or good computer Bible software or Internet site that allows you to search, spend some time looking up all of the “one another” passages in the New Testament. It’s eye opening. All kinds of positive ways to love your neighbor: love, serve, greet, submit to, encourage, offer hospitality to, and so on. One interesting fact about this: the Greek word for “one another” (ἀλλήλων) in the New Testament is pronounced “all-LAY-lone”; the easy way to remember this is that “you’re never all alone with “all-LAY-lone.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that your quilt ministry, which we’re honoring today, is an important way to love your neighbor as well. Your painstaking efforts in cutting the pieces of fabric, arranging them in the various patterns, and stitching them together put meat on the bones of another scripture, Ephesians 4:28b: “doing something useful with [your] own hands, that [you] may have something to share with those in need.”

With all the help we have in scripture about loving your neighbor, you might think that’s always an easy task. But I think we all know better. Sometimes it’s very easy to love our neighbors; other times, there may be hurts or fears that run so deep that it can be hard to break through. There may also be times where “tough love” means we might have to separate ourselves from a situation because the pain or risk of harm is too great to ignore or too much for us to bear.

In those times, it’s good to know we have a God who loves us unconditionally and whose presence is always with us as we saw in last week’s message. But how can we as mere mortals love an almighty, all-sufficient God who has no “need” for anything from us? Just as God’s presence goes with us, God also desires our presence before him. He wants us to love and honor him with all that we are and could be, all that he’s made us to be, and all that we have, to the extent we are in-line with his commands and precepts.

Our reading from Psalm 1 this morning helps us to understand this relationship. The passage in our bulletin is, I believe, from the New Revised Standard Version. When I saw the first word was “Happy,” I actually cringed inside for a moment, because I knew most translations had the word “Blessed” for the first word. I had always figured that was the traditional word for “blessed” used by the Hebrews in their standard blessing: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, King of the Universe.” But I suspended judgment and checked the Hebrew, and sure enough, it was NOT the typical word for blessing. The word does carry the idea of blessing, but it also refers to an emotional state as well as a spiritual state. One lexicon I looked at had it translated as an exclamation: “How happy!” Eugene Peterson, the Presbyterian minister who translated the Message version of the Bible, picked up on that emotional aspect in his translation of Psalm 1, and I want to read that for you this morning. But I’ll give you a head’s up: if you’ve never read the Message translation, it doesn’t really read like a traditional Bible translation. In fact, Psalm 1 is about as far away from a traditional translation as you can get. The first phrase of Psalm 1 sounds a bit sarcastic, but it’s not intended to be. Listen, and you’ll hear why:

¹    How well God must like you—

      you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,

      you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,

      you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.

^2–3 Instead you thrill to God’s Word,

      you chew on Scripture day and night.

      You’re a tree replanted in Eden,

      bearing fresh fruit every month,

      Never dropping a leaf,

      always in blossom.

^4–5 You’re not at all like the wicked,

      who are mere wind-blown dust—

      Without defense in court,

      unfit company for innocent people.

⁶    God charts the road you take.

      The road they take is Skid Row.^[4]

That is how we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. We spend time with him by fellowshipping with one another on Sunday and throughout the week in our various ministries we have. We spend time in his word getting to know his precepts, statutes, and commands. We do things that bear fruit for God’s kingdom, for after all, Jesus said his followers would be known by their fruit. We “plant” ourselves in the God’s presence so he can nourish and sustain us, because that is how great his love is for us.

As the world around us continues to get scarier, with another mass shooting, a war in the Middle East that has Christians thinking about end-time prophecies and the book of Revelation again, and the general downhill spiral of morality around us, abiding in the presence of God and rekindling our love for him will become all the more important for our own spiritual security and emotional well-being. We can know without a doubt that God is with us; that’s an unfailing promise. We also know that his word will sustain us, for God’s word never returns void. Grace and peace to you all this morning. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] Peterson, Eugene H. 2005. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.

October 2, 2023

Obedient Sons (Psalm 25:1–9; Matthew 21:23–32)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Christology,Ecclesiology,Eschatology,Faith, Faithfulness,Matthew Gospel of,Passion,Prophet,Psalms,Repentance,Soteriology,Spiritual Warfare,Work — Scott Stocking @ 10:54 pm
Tags: 2023 Proper 21, Authority of Jesus questioned, John the Baptist, John the Baptizer, Matthew 21:23-32, Obedience, Obedience as sons, Parable of two sons, Psalm 25:1-9, Sifre to Deuteronomy

Message preached October 1, 2023, at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE.

What does it mean to trust someone? How does it affect your life when you either learn that you can trust a person, especially someone who might be new in your life, like a new significant other in the life of your kids or grandkids? What does it feel like when someone violates your trust?

Our reading from Psalm 25 this morning lets us know that we can put our trust in God, even in the face of our worst enemies. One thing that is striking about Psalm 25 is that it begins and end with David’s concern that he not be put to shame. In a culture that valued honor above all else, shame could be devastating to someone personally, professionally, and even spiritually. David says the surest guarantee against shame was to put his trust in the Lord. But again, what does that look like? David paints a pretty good picture in Psalm 25, so let’s take a look at that.

First we see that David’s trust involves putting his hope in the Lord. That “hope” in God gives David the confidence to know his enemies will not defeat him. Psalm 25:3 has one of the two negative statements about David’s enemies: they are treacherous without cause, and because of that, they will suffer the social stigma of shame.

But David also shows us the path to avoid shame: He asks God, by his personal name “Yahweh,” to teach him about and guide him in his divine paths. In David’s day, pretty much all he had to go on for spiritual guidance was the Torah itself, the first five books of the Old Testament, and perhaps a prophet or a seer. He didn’t have all 66 books of the Bible like you and I have to keep us on the straight and narrow. David most likely had read the Torah himself a few times during his kingship; his many psalms that he wrote offer ample proof of how well he knew the Torah.

He also asks God to remember the good and forgive the bad. He first asks God to remember his own character, his mercy and his love for his creation. Then he asks God to forget, and essentially forgive, his own sins and shortcomings. But then he asks God to remember him as a person who can’t survive without God’s love.

Verses 6 & 7 here give us a nice concise pattern for a quick prayer should we ever need to utter one. Acknowledge God for who he is and what he’s done; cry out for forgiveness; and ask him to remember us, just as the thief on the cross would do 1,000 years later. The word “remember” here should not be overlooked, since it’s use three times. In the Bible, when God remembers, he acts. So when he remembers his mercy and his love, he shows his mercy and his love. When he remembers us, he loves us and reassures us of our place in eternity with him.

As an aside, there’s another application of that word remember as we celebrate World Communion Day today. What do most communion tables say? “In remembrance of me.” So when we partake of communion later, let us not only remember what Christ has done for us, but act on it by sharing it with others and recommitting ourselves as his followers.

In the last couple verses of our Psalm reading today, David again reminds us of God’s goodness and guidance in the lives of those who humble themselves before him.

These principles from this first part of Psalm 25 tie together our two gospel stories we read this morning. The first passage is an actual account from the life of Jesus as he encounters the Pharisees. The second is a parable targeted at the Pharisees.

The first story takes place the next day after Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do you remember what the first thing Jesus did was after his triumphal entry? He entered the Temple courts and threw out the money changers! And what did he say when he did that? “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers,” bringing together two quotes from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Because Jesus’s true father is God himself, and the temple is God’s dwelling place on earth, the Temple is also Jesus’s birthright home. He is the earthly steward of the Temple, not the priests or the religious rulers. Jesus’s first act after entering Jerusalem was to establish his authority over and ownership of the Temple as his rightful home. This sets the stage then, for day two, when the chief priests and the elders of the people ask Jesus where his authority comes from.

It’s interesting in this passage that these religious leaders don’t want to engage Jesus on the Scriptures he cited when clearing the temple. The religious leaders are evidently well aware that they’ve been using the temple as an excuse to place a financial burden on the people. Instead of addressing that fact, they try to do what? They try to assassinate his character! Sound familiar? But Jesus, ever the shrewd one with the religious leaders, comes back with a question of his own, which puts them in a pinch. Either way they answer it, they know they’re in trouble of losing their respect and power with the people. Jesus had already said that John represented the return of Elijah, so that put him above the religious leaders in the eyes of the people. If John’s authority was from God, the religious leaders should have believed him. If it wasn’t, the people knew better and would most likely rebel against the religious leaders. Only a nonanswer could save their skins in the short run: “I don’t recall.”

Because the religious leaders couldn’t answer Jesus’s question, which was a perfectly legitimate response in Jesus’s day according to the rules of rhetoric in Greek culture, Jesus deferred the answer to his question as well. Of course, Jesus had already demonstrated his authority at the Temple the day before, but he had also been demonstrating it all along with his healings and miracles he’d done in full sight of the people and the religious rulers. Any attempt to damage Jesus’s character would result in the same backlash to the religious rulers as either of their answers about John the Baptizer would have. Jesus’s response, then, actually helps the religious rulers save face as well.

Jesus was obedient as a son to his Father by defending both the honor of the Temple and his own honor as the true image of God on earth. In the second story from the Gospel reading today, a parable, we have two sons who would in that culture be expected to do their father’s will when asked. The first one says no, but then later reconsiders and decides to go anyway. The second one says he will go, but he never does. The first and I think most important point from the parable is that God expects us to do his will. There’s really no hiding from that.

At first glance, you might think the parable is about keeping your word to do what you promised. But then, if the son who said he wouldn’t go never actually went, would he really deserve anything for keeping his word if he didn’t do his father’s will? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? But by the same token, the son who said he would go but didn’t is in a bit of double jeopardy. Not only has he not kept his word, but he’s failed to do his father’s will as well.

The point of the parable, then, is not how or when you do God’s will, but THAT you do God’s will. Jesus goes on to continue the comparison to John the Baptizer’s ministry that he began in the first part of our Gospel reading. The religious leaders had not heeded John’s warnings to repent, but the “tax collectors and the prostitutes” did believe him and they repented, thus gaining access to the kingdom of God. Their past didn’t matter. God accepts those who humbly come to him in repentance seeking forgiveness.

But the more amazing thing is that, even after the tax collectors and sinners began to repent and turn back to God, the religious leaders still refused to repent themselves! They could see the work of God happening right before their eyes, but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe it. Jesus says earlier in Matthew that his followers would be known by the fruit they bear. Those who do his will bear good fruit. Those who do not bear no fruit or bad fruit.

It’s not clear why the religious leaders didn’t see the importance of John’s (and Jesus’s) message of repentance. The biblical story is full of examples from the patriarchs and other men of faith who repented and went on to do great things for God.

Abraham took Sarah’s slave as a second wife and had a child by her, but God still allowed the line of his chosen people to descend from Sarah.

Abraham and Isaac both lied to kings about their respective relationships with their own wives, but God continued to propagate that family line as his chosen people.

Moses directly disobeyed God’s command, yet God still allowed him to finish his task of leading the people to the doorstep of the Promised Land.

David committed adultery and had the husband of the woman killed in battle, but God still used him to lead Israel to greatness and write numerous inspiring Psalms that are still with us today.

Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, yet God still allowed his wisdom to survive the ages in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

In Isaiah’s day, Hezekiah repented while Jerusalem was under siege, and he witnessed the miraculous fatal judgment upon 185,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers overnight.

Every single one of Jesus’s disciples, with the exception of John, abandoned him on the night of his arrest, and Peter denied knowing him, yet all except Judas were restored to leadership status by Jesus after his resurrection. Peter went on to preach at the birth of the church on Pentecost. The teaching of the apostles was the standard of the early church according to Acts 2:42.

Paul persecuted the early church and tacitly approved of the stoning of Steven, yet God used him to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, and his letters form a significant portion of our Scriptures today.

Jesus never promised that the path of following him would be without struggle and effort, failure and heartache. When he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” we can’t forget that we still have a “yoke” on; there’s still fertile ground to plow, and that takes some measure of strength and effort. In researching this passage, I came across an anonymous Jewish parable that the rabbis used to teach a similar point to this one. It goes like this:

The matter may be compared to someone sitting at a crossroads. Before him were two paths. One of them began in clear ground but ended in thorns. The other began in thorns but ended in clear ground….

So did Moses say to Israel, “You see how the wicked flourish in the is world, for two or three days succeeding. But in the end they will have occasion for regret.” So it is said, “For there shall be no reward for the evil man” (Proverbs 24:20)….”You see the righteous, who are distressed in this world? For two or three days they are distressed, but in the end they will have occasion for rejoicing.” And so it is said, “That he may prove you, to do you good at the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). (Sifre to Deut. 53).[1]

So following God may have its thorny patches in the beginning, but when we get to the end of the road, the path is clear and welcoming. But if we try to go our own way, thinking that might be the easier way, and never get on the right path with God, we can only expect trouble in the end. The tax collectors and prostitutes realized they were on the wrong path and changed their ways and their destination. I know many of you have been on the right path, and you’ve experienced your thorny times, but you are stronger, wiser, and more dedicated to God for that because you know his is and will continue leading your through it. Your obedience will yield a great reward. I would encourage you to remain firm and steadfast on that path.

So we see how the truths of Psalm 25 play out in these two stories from the Gospel of Matthew. If we put our trust in God and allow him to guide us, even through the most difficult times, we will know his reward and his glory. I pray that each of us here will continue on that straight and narrow path that is the road to eternal life. Peace to you all. Amen.

[1][1] Trans. Jacob Neusner, Sifre to Deuteronomy, vol. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), pp. 175‒76.

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July 10, 2023

A Childlike Faith in a Patient God (Matthew 11:16–30)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Evangelism,Faith, Faithfulness,Matthew Gospel of,Psalms,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 8:12 pm
Tags: burden is light, John the Baptist, John the Baptizer, Matthew 11, Psalm 145, rest for your souls, revealing the father, yoke is easy

Sermon preached at Mt. View Presbyterian Church July 9, 2023. Click above to hear the audio recording.

How patient is God?

We’re not sure how long Adam and Eve had been in the Garden of Eden before they took a couple bites from the forbidden fruit, but upon that violation of the only prohibition he’d given Adam and Eve, God moved rather swiftly. There was no, “Oh, they didn’t really understand. Let’s try this again.” Or “You know, I must have made that fruit just too irresistible for them; it’s my fault.” No, when Eve and Adam committed that first sin, the damage was done. The veil was broken that protected them from the knowledge of evil. They had their chance to know only life with God, and if they had chosen that route, the goodness they would have lived in would have never had anything to contrast itself with. God banished them from the garden immediately.

Then, after Cain and Abel had grown up, Cain being the firstborn of the first created, he decided he didn’t like how God preferred Abel’s offering to his, so he murdered Abel. Again, God dealt swiftly with it, but did not give Cain the death penalty he deserved. Instead, the Scriptures say God marked Cain somehow so people wouldn’t kill him. But Cain had caused a bigger problem that would establish an undertone throughout the OT: the curse of the firstborn. With the possible exceptions of Abraham and Noah (we don’t know their full genealogies), the firstborn in most of the major biblical stories are often bypassed for the continuation of God’s kingdom and the lineage of God’s one and only son, Jesus.

God must have turned on his patience after the Cain and Abel incident, because we don’t really hear of any judgment of God type events until we get to the flood in Genesis 6, 1,656 years after Adam and Eve were created if we’re to take the genealogies in Genesis at their word. God’s judgment is a little less swift as the story moves on. God allows Abraham to negotiate with him over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. God tolerates Abraham’s and Isaac’s deceptions about their respective lies about their wives to Pharaoh and Abimelek. God sends ten plagues over the course of a couple years, it seems, to try to get Pharaoh to change his mind about enslaving the Hebrews. And God uses a prophet to remind David of his sin with Bathsheba, a sin for which he could have been put to death, instead of dealing with him directly at the moment of his moral failure.

This is why David can write what he did in Psalm 145:

8 The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.^[1]

We all know that children require patience, a TON of patience! But sometimes we have to act quickly to protect them from danger. Maybe they’re getting too close to a hot stove or aren’t watching what they’re doing playing in the front yard near the street. No time for patience in some of those situations. But many more times, teaching a child how to navigate the world around them can be filled with a lot of trial and error, bumps and bruises, and scraped knees and elbows. At some point, they have to learn to walk on their own, ride a bike on their own, feed themselves with a spoon and fork, and other “big kid” stuff.

In our gospel passage this morning, we have an interesting analogy that both Matthew and Luke use about Jesus and John the Baptizer. The first-century readers of this gospel would have understood the pipe and dirge references as part of a children’s game. They would have a mock wedding or funeral and try to get people to participate, but no one was responding to them. The pipe referred to the mock wedding ceremony, and the dirge referred to the funeral, of course.

It was a simple game, really. All you had to do was show up and listen to the ceremony and enjoy or take comfort in the company of others, because that’s what the cultural custom told you to do.

John the Baptizer fasted quite often, so the dirge represented his ministry. Many followed him but not many listened to him, and those who didn’t or who were critical of him missed the message that the Messiah had indeed come. Jesus’s ministry was represented by the pipes, the wedding ceremony. Jesus used the wedding ceremony as parable of his own ministry elsewhere in the gospels, when he chides those who were invited but did not come to a wedding feast. The children playing these games had a childlike faith that people would follow along in their “game.”

Jesus had many followers and curiosity seekers as well but he was disappointed that many people did not take his message to heart and believe, especially from among the religious ruling class of his day. The problem wasn’t the general population, so much. They longed to be free from a legalistic Judaism that was crushing their spirit and making them fearful of “outliers” like John and Jesus. The problem was that both Jesus and John represented a challenge to the power of the religious leadership by the number of followers they were attracting, so like any politician threatened with the prospect of losing power or influence, they found a way to play both sides of the coin.

“John has a demon!” they cried, because he fasted and only ate locusts and honey.

“Jesus is a glutton!” “Jesus is a drunkard!” they cried, because he ate and drank with the outsiders and the outcasts, the sinners and tax collectors.

Our gospel reading skips over a few verses in Matthew where Jesus mentions several towns where they had ample opportunity to repent and believe in God. He even says his hometown of Capernaum will fare worse than Sodom in the final judgment. The people are seeing miracle upon miracle from Jesus; they’re hearing incredibly insightful and liberating teaching from Jesus; but these towns could not bring themselves to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.

Our passage picks up again with Jesus praising God for revealing the mystery of heaven to “little children.” The term “children” there most likely refers to toddlers, three- and four-year-olds. Not only that, but he emphasizes that God was pleased to reveal his purposes in that way. God doesn’t require us to be intellectual superstars when it comes to being a Christ-follower. We don’t have to know the right doctrines or even be able to explain them perfectly. His main goal for us is that we receive the love and forgiveness he’s offered us through Jesus, to return that love to him out of gratitude, and to share that love and good news with others. Nothing else should be a test of faith for us.

Most children have an innate desire to attach to a grown-up who loves them, cares for them, guides them into right behavior and thinking, and teaches them the things they need to know to survive in life. It’s a matter of simple trust for them. That’s how God wants us to come to him. When we come to him without all the worldly pretense we’ve developed over the years, we, like a child, can see the true character of our heavenly Father. He reveals himself to us, sometimes in ways we’d never imagine.

The Jews in Jesus’s day were burdened with many legalistic requirements that the rabbis had implemented to help keep the people from sinning. It was a “hedge,” as they called it, around the law. It was possible to violate the hedge a little and not sin; but they valued ritualistic purity so much, they wanted to ensure there was no trace of doubt of anyone’s purity. It was a difficult system to live under, because you could suffer disheartening short-term ostracism for not strictly adhering to the Law.

Jesus is out to change that conception, though. He says:

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”^[2]

Jesus wants to change the system that had become bloated with legalism over the centuries. Much of that may have been well-intentioned when implemented, but taken all together, it had become something quite burdensome to keep. Jesus wants to make it simple again. “Rest in me,” he says. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus will teach us the true way to be a child of God, a Christ-follower. He will rescue us from our weariness and our burdens. Amen to that!

The apostle Paul seems to have wrestled with that quite a bit as well. I believe he understood God’s patience when it comes to our own response to God. But Paul also recognized we have an internal struggle sometimes, and we have to be patient with ourselves as we grow into that simple, childlike trust in God’s goodness and grace. He exemplifies that in Romans 7, where Paul seems to be having a little argument with himself: “¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.^[3]” Paul recognizes his own need not only for patience with himself, but patience from God as well as he fights a constant internal battle with his fleshly desires.

Before I wrap this up, I do want to return to our reading from Psalm 145:8–14 and hit a few high points from that passage. I think it puts a nice bow on what it means to have a childlike faith in God.

When we’re saved by grace, Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 that “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared in advance for us to walk in.” He may have had Psalm 145:10–12 in mind when he wrote this:

10 All your works praise you, Lord;

your faithful people extol you.

11 They tell of the glory of your kingdom

and speak of your might,

12 so that all people may know of your mighty acts

and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.^[4]

Jesus calls us to be light and life in this world. He’s empowered us to do that by imparting the Holy Spirit to us and making us righteous through his sacrifice on the cross. Again, it’s an easy burden from the Savior; certainly easier than trying to live life outside of the hope, healing, and forgiveness he brings. Just as we take joy at the innocence of children as they play their childhood games, so God wants us to experience the joy we can have by trusting in him.

But Jesus also realizes we may miss a step sometimes. His yoke is on us, not to enslave us, but to guide us on a straight path. Psalm 145:13b–14 reassures us that, when we stray from God’s path, he’s ready and willing to lift us up and put us back on the straight path:

The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises

and faithful in all he does.

14 The Lord upholds all who fall

and lifts up all who are bowed down.^[5]

May the Lord lift us up, sustain us, and bless us as we learn to walk in his will each and every day with the simple faith of a child. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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May 17, 2023

Life in the Spirit (John 14:15–21)

Filed under: 1 John,Biblical Studies,Christology,Ephesians,Greek,John Gospel of,Life of Christ,New Testament,Pneumatology,Soteriology,Textual Criticism,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 11:35 pm
Tags: 1 John 2:1-2, Acts 17, Advocate, Areopagus, Ephesians 6:10-14, Holy Spirit Advocate, John 14:15-21, Sixth Sunday of Easter

Message preached on Sixth Sunday of Easter 2023 (May 14) at Mt. View Presbyterian Church. I added some technical details about the text for the blog article that I did not cover in my sermon.

Acts 17 is perhaps the most significant event we have recorded from the life of Paul in terms of his ministry. No, that chapter doesn’t recount any of his appearances before Roman rulers in defense of his faith and ministry. Rather, Paul attends a meeting of philosophers at a place called the Areopagus in Athens. It is safe to say that the Areopagus represented the “melting pot,” as it were, of worldviews and ideas on the meaning of life and purpose of humankind. Two of the more prominent philosophies mentioned in Acts 17 are Epicureanism, which originally focused on pursuing happiness, and Stoicism, which originally focused on living according to nature and suppressing one’s desires. Now I say “originally,” because by Paul’s time, Epicureanism had become more focused on sensuality than happiness, and Stoicism had just made its adherents prideful.

But we also learn from Acts 17 that most of the Roman gods and goddesses, or at least the Roman versions of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, were still quite popular still in the day, so much so that Paul comments on and is distressed by the number of idols and other symbols of pagan worship that fill the city. Apparently, the Athenians were even afraid of leaving out a forgotten deity, so they had a statue with the inscription: “to an unknown god” (Acts 17:23).

Paul would use that statue as an object lesson to introduce these philosophers to a God they knew virtually nothing about: the God of the Jews, Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts, the One True God. Paul spoke of the resurrection of Jesus, a truly foreign concept to them. He spoke of the Creator God who “does not live in temples built by human hands.” Paul’s message certainly stirred the philosophical pot of thought in Athens, as a several who’d heard him at that meeting wanted more information from him, and an even smaller group actually started following Paul.

In our gospel passage today, Jesus stirs the pot in his own way by talking about someone called “The Advocate.” Sounds like a John Grisham or James Patterson title, right? Jesus introduces his disciples to a familiar concept with an unfamiliar application: the concept of the Holy Spirit guiding each of us, not just the prophets. Let’s take a closer look at the passage, beginning in John 14:15.

Our reading printed in the bulletin is from the New Revised Standard Version. Depending on which version you read, you may see a few different English words in your translation, so I want to help clear that up a bit. These differences by themselves don’t mean that any one version is better than another. Translation committees often will have a certain audience in mind or a certain writing style or worldview that governs the words they choose, especially to translate complex concepts from the source language into English.

Verse 15 says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Sounds pretty straightforward, right? It seems that the last part of the sentence naturally follows from the first part. “If you love your kids, you’ll give them attention.” “If you love your mom, you’ll buy her flowers occasionally.” You get the idea, right? But if you were to read it in New International or King James Version, it sounds more like a command: “If you love me, keep my commands.” I won’t bore you with the technical details of why there is such a difference, but the end result is the same in Jesus’s mind: he wants us to obey his commandments. I do prefer the NRSV translation in our bulletin, because it’s closer to what the original language says, and it sounds less authoritarian.

[For my blog readers, I will give you some of the technical details here. First, verse 15 is a third-class conditional sentence. That means, according to Daniel Wallace in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (GGBB)[1], that often, “the condition [is] uncertain of fulfillment, but still likely” (emphasis in original). The third-class condition can take any mood-tense combination in the apodosis (the last part of an “if-then” or conditional statement), and therein lies the second technicality. There are three variant spellings of the verb in the phrase in question. The chosen reading is the future tense form of τηρέω (tēreō, “I keep”), τηρήσετε (“you will keep”), being found in its most prominent witness B. The Aleph (א) witness has τηρήσητε aorist subjunctive (“you would keep my commands”). The witnesses A and D have τηρήσατε imperative (“keep my commands”). Notice, for all three variants, there is a difference in spelling of one vowel, which could have easily been confused in a scriptorium where the copy was read aloud for scribes to transcribe. Metzger says the editorial committee for the UBS text felt the future tense reading best fit the context.[2]]

Verse 16 is where you really start seeing the different ways the description of the Holy Spirit is translated. In our text today, Jesus says “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate [capital A], to be with you forever.” The current version of the NIV, which was updated in 2011, has “another advocate [lower case A] to help you and be with you.” So the NIV uses a phrase to translate the word to uncover a bit of the meaning behind what the role of the advocate is. Notice that the NIV doesn’t interpret it as a title like our current text in this verse, but later in the chapter, they do treat it as a title. Some other translations of this word you might see are “Comforter” (KJV); “Counselor” (older version of the NIV); or “Helper” (ESV, NASB).

If you’ve been in the church for a while, you’ve probably heard the Greek term that is behind these English translations: paraclete. The word is not used in the Greek version of the Old Testament, so we can’t make a connection to the “Wonderful Counselor” in Isaiah 9. In ancient Greece, it carried the idea of a helper or assistant in a court of law. John is the only NT writer who uses the word. He uses it of Jesus in 1 John 2:1–2 to speak of Jesus’s role in advocating for us before the Father: “If anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ²He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins^[3]”

But the Holy Spirit’s role as the Advocate in our lives is different than that of Jesus’s role before the Father. It opens the door to a new concept: that God’s Holy Spirit would soon be available to all his disciples, and indeed to all believers, once Jesus ascended to Heaven, not just to a select few as in the Old Testament. We see that in the promise of the prophet Joel that Peter cites in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit’s role really does seem to be best described by the word Advocate. The NIV I think does the best job of explaining the role when the translators added “to help you” as a gloss to “advocate.” The Holy Spirit’s role is twofold: First, he is the living representative of Christ and God in us. Verse 17 says “You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” In verse 18, Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans.” The Holy Spirit’s presence will be a constant reminder that God loves us, just as he loves his one and only son. And it’s because of that love, as John indicates in vs. 15 above and reemphasizes in vs. 21. John also closes out this short section by saying Jesus will show himself to his disciples through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Beyond our passage, we see in 14:26 that our Advocate comes in the name of Jesus “will teach us all things and will remind us of everything [Jesus] said to us.” In saying this, Jesus also says he’ll leave us with peace and assurance that he will come and ultimately rescue us from the evil one himself.

The Holy Spirit’s first role, then, is ultimately to help us mature in our faith. As we spoke about a couple weeks ago when we looked at the “I am the door” passage, Jesus’s sheep know his voice. The Holy Spirit IS the voice of Jesus, the good shepherd, in our lives. The more we love God and Jesus, the more we will come to recognize the Holy Spirit’s voice speaking into our lives.

The second role of the Holy Spirit is to testify about Jesus through us, John 15:26–27. As we begin and continue to grow in our understanding of what life in the Holy Spirit means, we begin to recognize when the Holy Spirit is prompting us to act and to testify about who Jesus is. People will challenge us, and indeed are challenging us today, about our faith in God. According to Jesus in John 16, these challenges to our faith are not new and should not surprise us when they happen. Jesus reminds his disciples in John 16:7–11:

⁷But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because people do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; ¹¹and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.^[4]

John goes on to say that when persecution starts to come our way, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will guide us into all truth. We won’t have to worry about what we’ll say, because the Holy Spirit will be directing us straight from the heavenly throne.

How does this look in real life? I want to close by giving an example from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Five times in that letter, Paul emphasizes that believers on earth have a connection to “the heavenly realms.” In 1:3, Paul says we, that is, the corporate body of Christ, together, have been “blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” This comes from the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. I want to emphasize that this a corporate gift, that is, no one person has every spiritual blessing, but as a body of believers, in the aggregate, we have on earth everything God wants us to have to carry out the ministries he’s called us to.

We learn toward the end of chapter 1 that the heavenly realms are where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, and all things have been placed under the rule and authority of Christ for benefit of the body of Christ. A few verses later, in 2:6, we find out that when Christ calls us and saves us, we too already have the blessing of being raised up and seated with Christ “in the heavenly realms.” It is from that vantage point, our souls connected to heaven, and our feet touching the ground, that we can “do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

In chapter 3 vs. 10, Paul reveals that God’s intent was that as the corporate body of Christ, the church, “the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.” Without getting too involved in the concept of spiritual warfare, this speaks to our role of testifying about Jesus to the world as we saw in John 14–16 above. That is our purpose: to speak forth the word of God in both action and deed. In the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul affirms who we are in Christ and what our exalted position is before him. In the last three chapters of Ephesians, he gives several examples of what it means to live in the heavenly realms, culminating with chapter 6 about putting on the armor of God, where we find his final reference to the heavenly realms:

¹⁰Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹²For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴Stand firm then…”^[5]

Paul goes on to describe the armor of God, for that is what it truly is. If you were to look up the references to each of the pieces of armor mentioned in the Old Testament, you would find that every one is mentioned in the context of God wearing it or wielding it. That armor isn’t a cheap imitation or a mass-produced copy. It’s the protection and strength of God himself. That’s what Jesus was affirming for us by speaking of our Advocate, the Holy Spirit, coming to dwell within us to teach us, empower us, and embolden us to speak his word.

It seems like the days of evil are fast encroaching on us. Don’t get left behind. Believe in Jesus if you don’t already. Commit yourself to loving him and receive the strength and power of the Advocate for our souls, the Holy Spirit. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus! Amen!

[1] Wallace, Daniel B. 1996. Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan (Logos version).

[2] Metzger, Bruce M. 1971/1975 (corrected). A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. Stuttgart: United Bible Societies.

^[3] 1 John 2:1–2. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] John 16:7–11. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] Ephesians 6:10–14a. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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May 12, 2023

Strength from Forgiveness (Psalm 51; 1 Timothy 1:12–17)

Filed under: 1 Timothy,2 Samuel,Biblical Studies,Faith, Faithfulness,Greek,Hebrew,Repentance,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 6:27 pm
Tags: (חָנַן ḥā·nǎn) mercy, 1 Timothy 1:12–17, David and Bathsheba, forgiveness, God’s “unfailing love”, mercy, restoration, חֶסֶד (ḥě·sěḏ)

Click above to listen to message.

Sermon preached at Mt. View Presbyterian Church, September 11, 2022. Edited for publication.

There is no price we can pay or effort we can make to compel God to give us mercy or grace.

I think most of us are familiar with the story of David and Bathsheba. One evening (we don’t know how late, but the text says David had gotten out bed), David was out on the roof of his palace looking over the city when he saw at a nearby neighbor’s house the beautiful Bathsheba bathing (2 Sam 11:2–5). In that moment, David forgot he was otherwise known as a man after God’s own heart. The key word there is “forgot.” David should have known better. Bathsheba was not some exhibitionist bathing for all of Jerusalem to see. She had in that culture that valued purity and faithfulness a reasonable expectation of privacy. Most likely there were civic codes that prevented you from building your home in such a way as to risk violating your neighbor’s privacy. For example, in some Mediterranean cultures, they had rules that you couldn’t have a window in your house that allowed you to see directly into your neighbor’s house or back yard, especially if such a window was on the second floor. The palace may have been large enough to be exempted from such rules, but the principle existed nonetheless.

Add to this that shame of nakedness in that day would not have been on the one who was naked outside, especially if she had a right to privacy, but the shame would have been on the one who looked upon the nakedness. That is why Noah’s sons had to back into the tent to cover their naked, drunk father after the flood. David should have known immediately to avert his gaze and go somewhere else where such a view was not possible. It may be that David was on the roof of his palace, perhaps trying to get a view of the distant battle or the campfires of the troops or just to take in the cooler air. It would not have been a normal place for him to hang out. David had several opportunities to do the right thing in this situation, but the more he looked, the more he wanted Bathsheba. He could have done nothing at that point except walk away, but he didn’t. Instead, he sent someone to bring Bathsheba to him. He lay with her and got her pregnant.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he tried to manipulate the situation by first giving Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, a break from the battle in the hopes he would lay with Bathsheba and some might not question the paternity of the baby. But Uriah showed more integrity than David, so David sent him back to the battle with instructions to his commander, Joab, to manipulate the battle in such a way that Uriah would surely perish, and he did.

Of course, we know that David’s sin was exposed by the prophet Nathan, and we see David’s repentant, godly response in Psalm 51.

Read Psalm 51:1–10

¹Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

²Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

⁴Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight;

so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.

⁵Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

⁶Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

⁷Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

⁸Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

⁹Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.

¹⁰Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

¹¹Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. ^[1]

So David is busted. Found out. Exposed. It was pointless for him to deny it. And he didn’t live in a culture where such behavior, especially in the political class, would be ignored and swept under the rug. He had to face his maker. And he chose the best path, the only path, really, to put him on the road to restoration. God was giving his anointed a chance to come clean through the prophet Nathan’s intervention, and David accepted. He pleaded with God for mercy and owned up to his mistake.

This word for “mercy” here, (חָנַן ḥā·nǎn), is almost always used in the context of someone speaking, more so than in a running narrative that tells a story. The New International Version tends to translate it based on the perspective of the speaker. In the current passage, and for about one-third of the total occurrences of the word in the OT, if the speaker knows they’ve done wrong and they ask for ḥānǎn, the translators use the word “mercy.” On the other hand, if the speaker has acted justly and feels threatened by the enemy, or is referencing the goodness of God generally, the translators usually use “gracious” or “generous” for the word. That sense of the word represents about half the total occurrences of the word. These two primary meanings represent a modern distinction that some have made between “mercy” and “grace.” “Mercy” is not getting what you deserve, while “grace” is getting what you don’t deserve or didn’t earn. In both cases, it is a gift of God. And in both cases, there is no price we can pay or effort we can make to compel God to give us mercy or grace. We can ask for it, we can search for it, but the “price” for such a gift can only be paid by God, which he ultimately did through Jesus on the cross.

This is where the other key word in Psalm 51:1 comes in, a Hebrew word you’ve most likely heard before if you been in church or Bible studies for any length of time: חֶסֶד (ḥě·sěḏ), God’s “unfailing love.” Of the 245 times this word is used in the OT, well over three-fourths of the occurrences refer to God’s enduring, unfailing love and kindness. And nearly half of the uses of the word are found in the Psalms, including in the praise Psalm 136, where “His love (ḥěsěḏ) endures forever” is a repeated refrain at the end of each of its 26 verses.

As one Bible dictionary puts it, ḥěsěḏ is not a “disposition,” that is, it’s not just a feeling or a certain way of thinking. It is in the end a helpful act of God rooted in his covenant relationship to us, or when applied to us mortals, our helpful acts of love toward family and friends. It is an overflow of his righteousness, mercy, and shalom peace. As a covenant responsibility, David expects to and has a certain level of assurance that he will be forgiven. This is the same assurance we have when we come to Jesus: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). As I said above, there’s nothing we can do to earn this, but we can and should respond to it with a ḥěsěḏ of our own. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Not only is this ḥěsěḏ toward God, but toward our family and friends as well.

In vv. 5–6, David gives us a contrast between the way we are and the way God wants us to be. I want to use the English Standard Version translation of these two verses here because I think they’re a little less interpretive of the Hebrew text, and come much closer to what David was trying to convey:

⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

⁶ Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.^[2]

On the one hand, David realizes he is a sinner in need of God’s grace. But on the other hand, David knows that only God can transform his inner being into the godly character he desires. God knew David was a sinner in need of his grace, and that David might fall short of the ḥěsěḏ standard miserably at times, but he still chooses him anyway to lead his people. Verse 5 is similar to Paul’s essay in Romans 7 about doing what he doesn’t want to do and recognizing that sin still may try to get a stranglehold on him. But by sending the prophet to David, God is giving David a chance to come clean, to repent, and he does. God doesn’t ostracize or “cancel” his anointed because of one or two or five or ten mistakes. God’s ḥěsěḏ requires our willingness to be taught and to seek his truth to transform our inner being. God is forever the God of the next chance. God’s gift and his calling on our lives are without repentance, “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). So no matter how many times you think you’ve failed or fallen short, know that he has called you for a purpose, and that he is guiding you and strengthening you in his ḥěsěḏ love to bring about his will.

Verses 10–12 give us a glimpse of how we get God’s truth in our inward being and his wisdom in our “secret” heart. After forgiving us and cleansing us, David recognizes that he must immerse himself in the presence of God to experience the restoration and renewal that awaits him. This is not a passive process: David goes on in the psalm to commit himself to teaching others about God’s ways and singing the praises of God aloud.

Verse 12, then, ties into our Gospel reading this morning from Luke 15: Both the shepherd and the woman have lost something of value. In the case of the shepherd, he leaves behind everything of value he does have, that is, the flock, to find the one sheep that is missing. This is what God does for us to bring us back to him.

In the case of the woman, she must clean her whole household to find the missing coin. David asked God to “cleanse” him with hyssop and remove from him all that would keep him from experiencing God to the fullest. Notice that he didn’t pledge to clean up his own life. God doesn’t need to wait for us to do that on our own. He meets us where we are and works with us from that point forward to bring restoration.

For both the shepherd and woman, there is rejoicing for finding what was lost and restoring it to its rightful place. Jesus draws the parallels there with both stories to the heavens rejoicing when one sinner repents. When we know God is with us, we can feel assured of our salvation, our calling, and the power of his ḥěsěḏ love.

Before I wrap up this morning, I want to bring in a passage that shows how this transformation from sin to victory worked itself out in Paul’s life. Let’s look at 1 Timothy 1:12–17:

¹²I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. ¹³Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. ¹⁴The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

¹⁵Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. ¹⁶But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. ¹⁷Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.^[3]

We only need to look at verse 13 to see how far Paul was from the Christian faith. First of all, he calls himself a blasphemer, which by itself would have been enough to get him stoned to death in Israel. But in context here, he’s probably referring to his initial denial of Christ as Lord and his approval of the stoning of Stephen, because the Jews thought Stephen had blasphemed in his final, fatal message. Paul was a persecutor. He thought this new Jesus movement was so dangerous to traditional Judaism that the followers had to be jailed or snuffed out, violently if necessary. He even admits to acting ignorantly and in unbelief, and that he was the worst of all sinners.

Yet with all that, God still chose to use Paul to be the main messenger of the faith in the northern Mediterranean region. He humbly gives thanks and praise for all that God has done for him and is doing through him. His life would be the ultimate testimony of the transforming power of God’s grace and salvation.

I want to focus for a moment here on verse 12, because I believe that parallels what David’s desire was in his psalm of repentance: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength.” I guess you could say Paul was “fortunate” enough to have a direct revelation from Jesus to set his life in the right direction. Granted, that was probably a pretty scary situation for him, as it would be for any of us, I imagine. But the attempt to turn a violent and desperate man from his ways required corresponding radical action of God to set him straight. That seems to have been enough, at least initially, to have “strengthened” Paul, because we see very soon after his conversion in Acts 9:22 that Luke tells us, “Saul (Paul) grew more and more powerful (or strengthened) and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.” He relates his own story here so that in 2 Timothy 2:1, he can also encourage Timothy to be strong in God’s grace as well. Having the examples of men and women of faith, both in the Bible and in our own lives, will help us stay grounded in the faith and give us strength and endurance for our Christian walk. The author of Hebrews said it well:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ²fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.^[4]

My friends, do not lose heart. Every day, lift up the Lord Jesus in your life through word and deed, and give God the praise and glory he deserves.

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.^[5]

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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May 6, 2023

Of Sheep, the Shepherd, and His Open Door (John 10:1–10)

Filed under: "I Am" Statements,Christology,Ecclesiology,Evangelism,Greek,John Gospel of,Nehemiah,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 10:17 pm
Tags: "I am the door", "I am the gate", Fellowship, Hearing God's voice, John 10:1–10, Nehemiah's wall, Sheep Gate

My message from three weeks after Easter, 4/30/23. I’ll add the audio file later.

Nehemiah was a central figure in the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Exile. Around the year 444 BC, he had approached King Artaxerxes about returning to Jerusalem to see the city walls restored. Some families had been there for almost 70 years already, beginning to return in earnest after the new temple was completed, but they had no protection from enemies around them because of the decimated walls. Most of us, I think, are somewhat familiar with the big picture of the story of rebuilding the wall. The task was divided up among several different groups, with each group taking responsibility for a section of the wall that contained a particular gate—10 gates are mentioned as Nehemiah details the assignments.

One thing of note in this story, especially as it relates to our passage today, is that the Sheep Gate was the first section of the wall to be assigned. It was on the northeast corner of the Temple mount near the recently rebuilt Temple and adjacent to the Pool of Bethesda, and it was most likely the gate the sheep would come through when brought in for the sacrifices. This particular gate was so significant and so important that Nehemiah assigned the high priest and his fellow priests to be in charge of that section. This would be the cornerstone, as it were, for the rest of the wall. That the high priest was involved let everyone know in Jerusalem that this project was serious business. They would establish the standard and the work ethic for getting this project done in 52 days.

John doesn’t give a lot of details about where Jesus is at when he speaks the message of the sheep and the good shepherd in John 10. I can imagine, however, if he was in Jerusalem, he was probably pretty close to the Sheep Gate. Five chapters earlier, Jesus had healed an invalid of his 38-year disability at the nearby Pool of Bethesda. One might say Jesus had already rescued one of his sheep in that instance, just like the parable of the lost sheep from Luke 15.

This location was special not only to Jesus, then, but also to his followers and to those who had witnessed that miracle. Historically, there has been and continues to be an occasional sheep market near that gate, so it’s special to the shepherds as well. It’s entirely possible that Jesus had this as his backdrop while teaching his disciples.

Now the word used for “gate” here is the typical word that would have been used for the door of a house, or more figuratively, a “door” of opportunity. The Greeks had a unique word for gate that typically implied either the entrance into an outdoor enclosed area that didn’t have a frame save for the fence on either side, or a city gate, which may have been reinforced to withstand attacks. In the context of shepherding, a “door” for the sheep may have referred to a corral that had some sort of sheltered area the sheep entered through and could stay under in bad weather.

Regardless, the purpose of the door or gate was to keep the predators out. Verse 1 makes that plain: “Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber.” In verse 8, Jesus tells his listeners that “all who have come before me are thieves and robbers,” and he finishes off this section by warning them of their purpose: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”

That sounds pretty scary, right? But in this story, we also get a glimpse of the relationship between the sheep and the shepherd that has helped the sheep develop a sense of when danger is near so they know when to flee. In verse 8, Jesus says the sheep won’t even listen to the thieves and robbers, and in fact, as verse 5 says, they will run away from the thieves and robbers because they don’t recognize the stranger’s voice.

But they do recognize the shepherd’s voice, and they will follow the shepherd. If they’re out in the field grazing, they know when it’s time to come in. If they get lost, they can listen for the shepherd’s call and follow their voice to get home safely.

I think the parallels here for our own lives are obvious to most people, but they always bear repeating. How do you recognize the Shepherd’s voice? How many times have we caught ourselves saying something like, “I just wish God would tell me what to do!” If you’ve spent enough time reading and studying Scripture, praying to God, and hiding his word in your heart, you probably already have the ability to discern God’s voice. You may not hear an audible voice, but sometimes the Holy Spirit’s promptings are so powerful, you cannot help but pay attention and act accordingly. We’ll talk about that some more in a couple weeks.

Another way to hear God’s voice is to read the Bible out loud for yourself. This same John who wrote this gospel says in the introduction to the book of Revelation, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near^[1]” Did you know that reading out loud takes longer than reading without speaking? When I’m reviewing my sermon to put the finishing touches on it, I can read through it on paper in about 5 minutes just in my head. But when I read it out loud, it forces me to consider how my words sound as they come out of my mouth. What seems perfectly normal to me on paper may have a slightly different nuance when I read it out loud.

When we read silently, we typically read in monotone in our minds. When we read out loud, especially if we’re familiar with the passage, we begin to understand where the author may have intended to inflect their voice one way or the other. When we speak, we tend to emphasize certain words by raising our voice, or maybe drop it to a whisper if we want to add some more drama to it. We raise our voice at the end of a question, right? When we’re getting to our conclusion, we tend to slow down a bit to make sure every word is clearly understood. I do love it that we read whole passages out loud here every Sunday. I think that’s important for any church to do that. And those of you do read up here on Sundays do a great job of putting expression and emotion into the passages you’re reading. That brings God’s word alive and gives all of us a chance to learn it and take it to heart even more fully.

Finally, hearing God’s word read or seeing it portrayed in a movie or television show adds extra depth to God’s word, because you can see an interpretation of the historical and cultural setting in which it’s spoken. A few weeks ago, when I spoke on the woman at the well, instead of reading that long passage from John chapter 4, a passage filled with drama, emotion, and suspense, I thought it much better to show you the clip from The Chosen series about that passage. I think I’m a pretty good reader, but my speaking skills just were not up to the task of trying to portray a frustrated, heart-broken, oppressed woman who’s had five husbands. I just can’t do that role justice! Watching a series like The Chosen, or any of the movies depicting the biblical stories like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ or Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, can help bring the biblical story to life for us and give us a new and deeper understanding of God’s word. They help us hear God’s voice in a different way.

Another way we can hear his voice is by fellowshipping with one another. Since we’re called to be part of the body of Christ, fellowshipping with one another allows us to share our experiences with each other and learn from each other how God has worked in and spoken in their lives. We are not alone, and I don’t mean there are aliens out there. We have a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us to give us their historical perspective through their lives, their written or recorded word, and the fruit of their ministry.

If you’re more of a politically or civically minded person, you might be hearing God’s voice if you find you have a passion for some social justice cause on any side of the issue. It’s not my job to tell you which side to take, of course. This is America, after all, and we’re all free to not only express our opinions and beliefs, but to defend and try to persuade others of our beliefs, in love of course. God’s kingdom has a diverse population, and we can’t always expect that everyone will be on the same page of every issue all the time. But let’s not resort to extremes like “cancelling” or ostracism either just because we disagree with a brother or sister in Christ. Let us speak the truth in love to each other. Even if we don’t agree with one another on something, having a robust discussion on issues of the day helps us to understand one another and develops a certain sense of empathy, even if in the end neither side budges. It helps us to see how God may be moving in others’ lives.

There’s one other aspect of this passage that is worth noting, and this really cuts to the core of what Jesus’s statement “I am the gate” is all about. Look at verse 9 again: “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.” First notice that Jesus says he is THE gate. He’s not just any old gate, and he’s not one of many gates; he’s the only gate. And what does that gate lead to? The salvation of our souls. It’s interesting, I think, that there is only one other time in John’s gospel where Jesus uses the phrase “through me.” It comes in the sixth “I am” statement of Jesus in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is the only way to get to our eternal reward. But what does it mean to go “through” Jesus? It means we become part of the body of the Christ and maintain that connection by being faithful to him. We immerse ourselves in God’s word and surround ourselves with other faithful followers so we have a strong support network. But notice the other part of vs. 9: “The will come in and go out, and find pasture.” Jesus is not saying here that we move in and out of salvation. What he recognizes here is that, as Christ-followers, we can’t avoid being out in the world where wolves and thieves and robbers want to attack us. But we have a safe haven in Christ, where we can enter in and find rest from the struggles of life. Knowing we have that safe haven helps us endure in the “pasture.” In vs. 11, Jesus says he’s the good shepherd. As the good (and perfect) shepherd, he maintains the boundaries of his pen so that we can have that safe place to rest. But he also promises that he won’t abandon us when the wolves come after us in the pasture. He is watching over us, giving us a strong sense of security that he will never leave us nor forsake us. We have a wonderful shepherd, a great high priest who knows what it’s like to be us and can empathize with us in every way.

I suppose we can say that our church family is our “sheep pen.” I do hope that you all feel that sense of security and belonging being here on Sunday mornings and whenever else you gather to make quilts or carry out your other ministry activities. The church is the place where that should happen. I also hope you know that your church family can be a valuable source of support for you in times of trouble, darkness, and even despair. Even though this congregation is small in numbers right now, I have seen the impact of your ministry. I am one of the results of the ministry of this church from 50+ years ago. Many of you have been faithful to this ministry for even longer. I know the good shepherd looks down on this part of his flock and smiles, and I pray you will continue to lead others to gates of heaven, just as you have been doing. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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Assurance, Hope, and Power: The Disciples’ Resurrection Rebound (John 20:19–31)

Filed under: Greek,John Gospel of,Liturgical Calendar,Passion,Psalms,Resurrection,Soteriology,Theophany — Scott Stocking @ 12:20 pm
Tags: audio sermon, commissioning disciples, disciples, Doubting Thomas, Early Church, house churches, John 20:19–31, primitive church, Psalm 16:9-11, Resurrection, second Sunday of Easter, sermon

Click the Play button below to hear the recording of the message.

My message from 4/16/23, the week after Easter, at Mt. View Presbyterian Church in Omaha.

I learned a fancy new ten-dollar word this week. “Denouement” (day new MA). If you’re into literature or are a member of book club, perhaps you already knew the term before today. It’s a French word that’s made its way into English that refers to what happens in a story after the climax or high point of the action has occurred. The meaning of denouement is “untying of the knot.” An English equivalent, at least in the context of literature, might be “resolution.” How does the story “resolve” or work itself out after the climax.

Why am I starting my message this morning with a vocabulary lesson? (Don’t worry, no quiz at the end!) Well, you may have already guessed where I’m going with this. The crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Christ is the climax of the Gospel story in the New Testament. Like the Gospels, the Christian liturgical calendar begins with the “prequel” of the Advent, the birth of Christ, beginning the Sunday after Thanksgiving; passes through several “seasons” in which we see the nature and work of our servant-savior; and leads up to the crucifixion and resurrection.

We’ve now entered the “denouement” of the liturgical seasons, the time between the Resurrection, celebrated on Easter Sunday, and Pentecost, 50 days following. After that, aside from the first Sunday after Pentecost being “Trinity Sunday” and the last Sunday of the liturgical year being “Christ the King,” the rest of the liturgical calendar is officially “proper,” or the nth Sunday after Pentecost. That’s doesn’t sound near as exciting as all the stuff at the beginning of the liturgical year.

Of course, the Gospel is a compelling and engaging story regardless of the season, month, or day in our liturgical or regular calendars. It is made so, in part, by the way you and I live out our faith in the places we find ourselves in this world. As disciples of Christ, we have been charged with being light and salt in an increasingly dark and bland world. But it’s hard to do that if we’re not convinced and assured that the resurrection of Christ has secured that hope for us.

That is where we find ourselves in the early stages of this denouement: Jesus had appeared to the women who came to the tomb, and even to two unnamed disciples on the road to the Emmaus, but the 11 remaining apostles had not yet seen him and, according to the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel, they didn’t believe either of those reports from earlier in the day. But on the evening of that same day Jesus was resurrected, Jesus literally drops in on them in the house where they were staying; the door was locked.

All the apostles (“the Twelve”) except Thomas (and of course Judas) were there for the first visit. It’s likely that others were there as well, but the text is silent on that detail. Jesus shows his disciples his pierced hands and side and even asks his disciples to put their fingers in the holes. The disciples are not only convinced, but the text says they are overjoyed as well. Something else happens here that I think gets overlooked in the Gospel story. Jesus essentially commissions the disciples—we don’t know if this meant only those of the Twelve who were present or everyone—by giving them the Holy Spirit in advance of the day of Pentecost. He also gives them authority to forgive sins or not forgive sins. Jesus was granting them a portion of divine authority here, collectively, so that he could have an official complement of representatives to prepare the world for the coming of the Holy Spirit to believers and birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost.

This is important for a couple reasons. First, just as plant seedlings are often nurtured in the controlled environment of a greenhouse or a baby is born in sterile conditions in the hospital, so too did the church need a perfect or near-perfect spiritual environment to get started and to grow. I believe the authority Jesus gives them, again collectively, included the knowledge of the perfect, untainted Gospel on which Jesus wanted to found the church. Their proclamations were considered authoritative, and as a group, they could hold each other accountable for that perfect doctrine, instead of having all of the authority for the church rest in one person. Eight days later, Thomas would be added to that group when he finally got to see Jesus and had every doubt erased. He would be able to proclaim, “My Lord and my God!” after seeing Jesus for himself.

On the other hand, having a group of leaders thus empowered and commission would also help with the stability of the local, usually house, churches that would begin to form after the day of Pentecost. With so many hearing the Gospel in their own language that day, it would be important that someone with that kind of authority could be sort of a regional overseer for the fledgling churches and communicate officially on behalf of the apostles whenever questions arose. We see some hints of that in the middle chapters of the book of Acts. I think it’s safe to say the apostles didn’t want 3,000 new converts going back to their respective homelands without some kind of help from those who had first-hand experience with Jesus and the apostles.

Getting back to Jesus’s first appearances to the disciples, they had assurance of what we read in our passage from Psalm 16 this morning. Here’s verses 9–11 from the New International Version:

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

¹¹ You make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand.^[1]

The apostles realized that Jesus was the “faithful one” who did not see decay, and by implication, those faithful ones who had died before had also been safe from that decay. Paul tells us in Ephesians that Christ, upon his resurrection, led an army of captives out of the “lower earthly regions” into the heavenly realms. Peter would use this passage from Psalm 16 in his powerful sermon on the day of Pentecost because he had realized and experienced its truth for himself.

Peter would later write in one of his two letters about the living hope that comes through the resurrection of Jesus. He says this in the opening chapter of his first letter:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. ^[2]

Thomas had the luxury of seeing Jesus on his second appearance to the group and finally believing he had risen, even though he refused to believe his closest friends after Jesus’s first appearance convinced them. You and I will probably not have that luxury of seeing Jesus while we dwell on earth, unless he comes again in the immediate future. We would fall, then, in the second category: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

As disciples of Christ, we have a wealth of resources available to us as we live and serve in God’s kingdom. We have a new birth, or as Jesus told Nicodemus, we’re “born again” of the Spirit. The old has gone; the new has come! The past no longer controls us. We have a living hope affirmed by the resurrection. The faithful in the Old Testament probably could not have even conceived of what the New Testament has revealed to us about eternal life in the heavenly kingdom. Our inheritance is permanent! No moth or rust can destroy it!

We’re shielded by God’s power (and his armor) through faith, and we have the hope of his second coming and the eternal salvation that will be ours to claim. We have this assurance even in the midst of the trials and griefs we suffer corporately and individually, for it is in standing firm through these trials that our faith is tested, purified, and proven true. Paul says in Ephesians that when we put on God’s armor, we can stand firm in the faith. We can know in part here on earth that joy we will fully know in heaven!

Even though Easter is the climax of our liturgical year, our denouement need not in any way diminish the joy and excitement of living for Christ in the hope of our resurrection and our salvation. Each and every day can be an adventure with Christ as we read his word, serve those who need an extra measure of his grace, and walk in faithful fellowship with one another. Those first few weeks after the resurrection, the believers had a lot of knots to untie to figure out their part in growing the early church. Of course, the Spirit was calling people, and that couldn’t be stopped. But they had to move quickly. For us today, we could use this season to think about how we do our own ministries. How can we use the excitement of celebrating Jesus’s resurrection to channel that energy into “untying the knots” that may be holding us back from doing more for God’s kingdom or for the local church or community? Are there others we could reach? Are there others we could invite? Are there others who need our help? Who could I talk to about my doubts and fears? These don’t have to be grandiose, but I do think the answers should be just big enough to require some faith in and reliance on God to get them done.

As we move through this season leading up to Pentecost, remember that Christ has given us assurance of his resurrection and our own, the hope of eternal life in an imperishable kingdom, and the power to minister in his name and encourage those who also need that assurance and hope. Peace to you! Amen.

^[1] Psalm 16:9–11. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] 1 Peter 1:3–9. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

March 12, 2023

A Woman, a Well, and Worshipping God (John 4; Romans 5:1–11)

Filed under: "I Am" Statements,Biblical Studies,Christology,Courage,Ecclesiology,Isaiah,John Gospel of,Life of Christ,Old Testament,Romans,Soteriology,Theology, Biblical — Scott Stocking @ 8:53 pm
Tags: forgiveness, Isaiah 49:5-10, Jacob's well, John 4, Romans 5:1-11, woman at the well

I preached this message on March 12, 2023, Third Sunday in Lent, at Mt. View Presbyterian Church. The Gospel text was pretty much the entire chapter of John 4, so instead of reading all that, I showed a clip from The Chosen, Season 1, Episode 8, where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. Unfortunately, I forgot to record the message, so I do not have an audio file to share with you at this time.

Someone might think John was trying to create scandal from the very first words of his Gospel. In the first couple verses, he claims Jesus is God and was present at creation. The Jewish leaders would have considered that blasphemy. John the Baptizer, who is NOT the same John who wrote this gospel, goes on to claim he is the one sent to prepare the way for the Messiah, and upon Jesus’s baptism, John declares him to be the Son of God.

Then, instead of picking the leading religious rulers of his day, Jesus chooses a few fishermen and other average, everyday men to be in his band of disciples. After that, instead of his first miracle being a healing or exorcism, he decides to make about 180 gallons of premium wine so the party can keep going at the wedding. Then John throws in a story about Jesus cleansing the temple of the money changers and about how he’ll be able to rebuild the temple in three days if it’s destroyed. In John 3, he declares that belief in him ensures eternal life. Again, probably grounds for blasphemy if he were just an ordinary man.

And so we come to John chapter 4, and the scandalous behavior continues. How dare he travel through Samaria! His disciples would have rather walked the extra distance around Samaria rather than soil their sandals with the dust of that land. How dare he talk to a Samaritan woman, let alone ask her for a drink from Jacob’s well, especially when the rest of his followers aren’t around. Don’t you know, Jesus, that we’re not supposed to even touch the Samaritans let alone eat and drink with them?

Many of you know that the Gospel of John is unique in that it has many stories about Jesus’s ministry that are not reflected in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Many think that John may have organized his Gospel theologically rather than chronologically. For example, the story of Jesus clearing the temple, which is found in chapter 2 of John’s gospel, is placed in the last week of Jesus’s ministry. It’s not clear whether this is the same story, or if there were two different episodes when Jesus cleared the temple.

Jesus is in the land of his ancestors, so it seems fitting, at least to John, that Jesus would want to reveal himself first to his ancestors.

For the sake of argument, then, I’m going to assume there’s a theological message John is trying to get across here: He establishes Jesus is fully divine and that God is his Father. Since he’s God’s “only begotten” on Earth, Jesus then is the primary authority in the Temple, which the Jews believed was home of God’s presence. Finally, Jesus, having been established as the authority for the Jewish religion, essentially abolishes the long-standing prejudice against Samaria by going to the place where his ancestor Judah’s father, Jacob (renamed Israel) first established himself in the Promised Land after returning from Laban’s home. I think this aspect of the story lends to its credibility and to the principle of worship he puts forth.

One of the most important things to note about this encounter with the woman is that Jesus actually takes the time to have a real conversation with the woman, although he slowly reveals that he knows more about her than she thinks he knows. Jesus is in the land of his ancestors, so it seems fitting, at least to John, that Jesus would want to reveal himself first to his ancestors. That would be like me going to the Stocking Township, named after my great, great, great grandfather in the Wahoo area, or perhaps even to the historic site of the 12th-century Stocking Abbey in England, where my ancestors likely came from and ministering to a congregation in either of those places.

So what can we learn from the encounter between Jesus and this woman? The first thing is that Jesus did not recognize the ethnic boundaries that existed in his day and age. The Samaritans followed only the Torah, the five books of Moses, but not the prophets who came later. So they were a people who had deep Jewish roots, but because the Northern Kingdom had been conquered within a couple generations of rise of the prophets and the prohibition against intermarriage had been abandoned, they had little connection to the prophets and they were no longer considered “pure” Jews. The Jews considered them unclean. That didn’t matter to Jesus, though. He wanted the Samaritans to know that a “prophet” had returned to the area after some 700 years,

Because the Jews considered Samaritans unclean, they weren’t permitted to eat or drink from any of any of their plates or vessels. And the fact that she was divorced several times, well beyond what Jewish law would have permitted to remain in good standing, added to her social stigma among her own people not to mention the Jews. This is another barrier that Jesus would shatter: that it was okay to eat and drink with “sinners” and other outcasts like tax collectors.

The other New Testament text from today’s lectionary reading is Romans 5:1–11. Verses 6–8 say this:

⁶You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.^[1]

Did you catch that? This is really important to understand. When we cry out to God for help, does he say “Quit your womanizing! Quit lying! Quit getting drunk! Then you can come to me and I’ll consider your request?” By no means! That passage doesn’t say Christ died for those who’ve cleaned up their lives first. It says Christ died for the ungodly, while we were still sinners! That sounds like we can have a great weight lifted from us so we can see more hope and more light at the end of whatever dark tunnel sin has led us through. God loves us even before we realize that his love is the greatest gift of all, even when we think we may not be worthy of it. That’s grace!

The offer of “living water” is the centerpiece of the story. Parts of this story hearkens back to Isaiah 49:6 and 10, a prophecy about the Servant of the Lord and the restoration of Israel:

⁵And now the Lord says—

he who formed me in the womb to be his servant

to bring Jacob back to him

and gather Israel to himself,

for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord

and my God has been my strength—

⁶he says:

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant

to restore the tribes of Jacob

and bring back those of Israel I have kept.

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

…

¹⁰They will neither hunger nor thirst,

nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them.

He who has compassion on them will guide them

and lead them beside springs of water. ^[2]

This woman seems to have been suffering for some time because she felt like she needed to draw water in the heat of the day. We don’t know very much about her personal life aside from the divorces; no indication she had any children or what her current relationship was like. This leads us to another principle at play here: Don’t be afraid to speak to someone about whatever it is in their life that is holding them back from a full and vibrant relationship with God. Now Jesus had some special knowledge of her situation here, so he holds the advantage, but it’s for her benefit ultimately. Once he discloses what he knows about her marital status, she understands not only that Jesus is a prophet, but she also believes his claim that he is the Messiah and shared that convincingly with many people in her town.

Don’t be afraid to speak to someone about whatever it is in their life that is holding them back from a full and vibrant relationship with God.

Jeremiah mentions a couple times (2:13; 17:13) about how his listeners have “forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.” But Zechariah, when prophesying about the second coming of Christ and the consummation of history, says this in 14:8:

On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter.

⁹The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.^[3]

This is the ultimate and absolute promise of fulfillment we can look forward to when we humble ourselves before God and accept his free gifts of reconciliation and salvation. God will be in total control. No more crying, pain, or grief, just living eternally in the glory of God’s light.

Turning back to Romans 5 for a moment, Paul describes what happens when we come into that justification, and the woman seems to have experienced that, especially with respect to addressing the own suffering she had experienced for so long. Listen to verses 1–5:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. ^[4]

The final takeaway from this passage is how Jesus is overturning the traditions (and exclusions) about worship. The woman was upset about how the Jews thought the Temple in Jerusalem was the only place you could really worship God. In fact, it seems like she’s trying to use that to get out of talking about her marital history. But Jesus assures her that a new way of worship has arrived. The place no longer matters; what matters is expressing her true feelings and emotions from her heart, soul, and mind to praise God for all he’s done for her. It’s that joy that causes her to leave her water jars behind and hurry back to her people proclaiming, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”^[5]

John notes that the woman at the well was responsible, by virtue of her testimony, for many in her town believing, and they had that testimony confirmed by Jesus himself, because he stayed there a few days preaching and teaching. They knew the joy of personal justification and reconciliation with God. They also found the hope of eternal life as well. Listen to Romans 5:9–11:

⁹Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.^[6]

My prayer for you this Lenten and Easter season is that you know the salvation of God and receive it with joy just as the woman at the well did. Let us hold fast to our faith and hope and continue to reach out to those who need to experience God’s love, forgiveness, compassion and grace. Amen.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[6] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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Assurance, Hope, and Power: The Disciples’ Resurrection Rebound (John 20:19–31)

March 12, 2023

A Woman, a Well, and Worshipping God (John 4; Romans 5:1–11)

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