On the Second Sunday of Advent, our Assistant Pastor, Dr. Jack Benzenhafer, preached on the Magnificat, Mary's Song, as found in Luke 1:2-55. The message can be heard online here.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
The Benedictus: Zacharias' Song of Praise (Luke 1:57-79)
Every year, we begin to realize that the Christmas Season is
upon us when, sometime in November, we begin to hear the songs of the season on
the radio, in the stores where we shop, and in many other places. But for
Christians throughout history and around the world, we are still several weeks
away from the Christmas Season. Historically, the Christian Church has observed
the days between Christmas Day, December 25 and Epiphany, January 6 as the
Christmas Season. These are “the 12 days of Christmas,” though I am not really
sure what partridges in a pear tree or five gold rings really have to do with
it. The season that begins today on the Christian calendar is not Christmas,
but Advent. This is a season of anticipation, expectation, and preparation. We
celebrate that the longing of the ancients has been fulfilled in the
incarnation of Jesus Christ as God became a man, born for us at Christmas. But
during this season, we also express our own longing and expectation, as we
prepare for the Second Coming of the Lord. Just as He came 2,000 years ago, He
also promised that He would come again to consummate His Kingdom, and we are
awaiting His return and preparing ourselves spiritually for that day. Like the
ancients, we do not know when He will come. But we know that when He comes, all
wrongs will be made right, and we who belong to Christ will enter into His
presence to dwell forever. And so, even as we celebrate the fact that He has
come, we long for His return, crying out with anticipation, Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus. As we sing
songs like “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” we are celebrating a past reality,
even as we long for a future event to come to pass.
Of course, when we hear “the songs of the season,” many of
them have nothing to do with Jesus. They are about snow, and winter, and Santa,
and things like that; not about the birth of the Savior. This week, I pulled up
the Holiday section on iTunes and took a look
at the top 10 songs, ranked by the number of downloads. Not one of them are
lyrically focused on the birth of the Savior. It seems that if you want to sing
or hear a song about Jesus at Christmas, you have to come to church (which is
not that bad of an idea anyway)! This year, during Advent, Pastor Jack and I
will be exploring four songs that we might call “the first Christmas Carols.”
We don’t sing them these days, we really don’t know the tune to which they were
sung, but these songs capture the sense of longing that is satisfied in the
coming of Christ in the world. Today, I will begin with the Benedictus of Zacharias. Next Sunday,
Jack will deal with Mary’s Magnificat,
and the following Sunday I will discuss the Nunc
Dimittis, the song of Simeon. Then on the final Sunday of Advent, Jack will
present the Gloria, sung by the
angels to the shepherds in the fields.
We first meet Zacharias, the priest and the father of John
the Baptist, in Luke 1:5-25. He and his wife Elizabeth are described there as
“righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments of
and requirements of the Lord.” And yet, all is not well for the couple for they
“had no child because Elizabeth
was barren, and they were both advancing in years.” It came about that while
Zacharias was on duty in the temple, that he had an encounter with an angel who
announced to him that his prayers had been answered and that he and his wife
would have a son, and the child’s name was to be John. The angel proclaimed
that this child would become the forerunner of the Lord who would go before Him
in the spirit and power of Elijah “to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord.” They were to call this child “John.” Now, rather than rejoicing that his
prayers had been answered and his longings fulfilled, Zacharias did something
stupid. He questioned God. He said to the angel, “How will I know this for
certain? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.” The response is
pointed and direct. The angel says, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of
God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.” The
fact that Zacharias is face-to-face with an angel of God should be enough to
convince him of the truth of this promise, but he asked for a sign. And the
sign he received is not just a proof, it is a judgment upon him for his lack of
faith. The angel said, “Behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak until
the day when these things take place, because you did not believe my words.”
Now, for Elizabeth ,
things aren’t so bad. She has what many women dream of having – a baby on the
way, and a husband who cannot speak!
In time, the baby was born just as promised. In keeping with
tradition, the boy was circumcised on the eighth day, and it was on this day
that his name was to be given. Everyone expected that he was going to be a
“Junior,” and be given the name of his father, Zacharias. It was tradition for
the firstborn child to bear the name of his father. But Elizabeth protested and said, “No, indeed;
but he shall be called John.” The people couldn’t figure out where “John” came
from. They said, “There is no one among your relatives who is called by that
name.” They appealed to Zacharias, who still could not speak, and he demanded a
writing tablet, and he wrote, “His name is John.” Zacharias made it clear, in
no uncertain terms, that the matter was already settled. His name had been
given from heaven. And immediately, as Zacharias followed through in obedience
to the angelic message he had received, his tongue was loosed and he broke
forth in song to praise the God who remembers His promises and is faithful to
bring them to pass in His grace!
Zacharias’ song is called the Benedictus, the first word of the song
in the Latin Bible. It is a song of praise. He says, “Blessed be the Lord God
of Israel .”
And then the remainder of the song supplies the reasons why his freshly loosed
tongue is employed in such exuberant praise. The theme of the song is
salvation. He blesses the Lord because “He has visited us and accomplished
redemption for His people and raised up a horn of salvation.” So, the song goes
on to magnify the God who saves, as the old priest sings of the promise of
salvation, the preparation for salvation, and the product of salvation. As we
come to experience the saving grace of God, Zacharias’ song becomes our song,
which we sing with renewed tongues to the Lord as well.
I. We sing of the promise of
salvation!
There have been many songs
over the years that express the heartbreak of broken promises. We have become
so accustomed to broken promises that we take no assurance at all from the fact
that someone has promised us something. But when it comes to the promises of
God, it’s an entirely different story. He has never broken a promise. There are
no songs sung to God about broken promises. If we could put a succinct heading
over the entire Old Testament, we would say that it is a book of Promises Made.
If we wanted to place a similar heading over the New Testament, we could say
that it is a book of Promises Kept. The Benedictus
sings of how God has kept the promises that He has made.
Zacharias’ song is filled with
Old Testament language. There are hints in this song of dozens of passages from
at least 10 Old Testament books. This in itself reminds us that all true
worship is fueled by the truth of God’s Word that is hidden in our hearts. When
we have saturated ourselves in Scripture, as Zacharias obviously had, it is not
hard to come up with the right words to say, or even to sing. Zacharias was not
only drawing from his memory bank, though. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. He
demonstrates for us what it means to be a true worshiper. Jesus said that true
worshipers worship “in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Zacharias’ song of
praise is empowered by the Holy Spirit and filled with the truth of God’s Word.
He models for us what Paul says in Ephesians 5:18 -- “Be filled with the
Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing
and making melody with your heart to the Lord.” Not only is Zacharias’ song praise; it is also prophecy. Verse 67 says that, filled with the Holy Spirit,
Zacharias prophesied. Most of the
time, we assume that prophecy involves
foretelling the future, and sometimes it does. But most of the time in
Scripture, prophecy is not a foretelling,
but a forthtelling of God’s
truth. It is a declaration of what God has spoken. Zacharias’ song does both.
It speaks of what God has declared in the past, what He is doing in the
present, and what He will do in the future.
Notice how Zacharias proclaims in song the promises that God
had made in the past. He speaks of the oath which He swore to Abraham. This is
obviously a reference to the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “in
you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” In visiting us, God has
brought that oath to pass by bringing salvation through the line of Abraham
that will be offered to the whole world. That promised seed of Abraham is the
Lord Jesus Christ, whose birth would soon occur when Zacharias sang this
prophetic song. God has shown mercy toward the fathers of Israel ,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by fulfilling the promise He had made to bring the
Savior into the world through their lineage. Though the fulfillment has been a
long time in coming, God has not forgotten it. Zacharias praises the God who
has remembered His holy covenant!
He also mentions “the house of David.” He says that The Lord
God of Israel
is to be praised because “He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His
people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His
servant.” What is a horn of salvation? The imagery is of an animal’s horns,
which are the symbols of its strength. As Phil Ryken says, “Horns are an
animal’s ‘business end,’ so to speak, and in a similar way, the Messiah is the
business end of God’s saving plan. With the coming of Christ, He was shaking
the mighty horn of His salvation the way a mighty beast intimidates his
rivals.”[1]
Jesus Christ is the strength and power of God to save. He came to be the horn
of salvation that David had longed for. His song of deliverance from his
enemies in 2 Samuel 22:3 is echoed in Psalm 18:2, and in both songs David
proclaimed that the Lord is “My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield
and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” This horn of salvation has been
raised up in the world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it has been
raised up in the house of David. This
harkens back to the promise that God made to David when David longed to build
the temple for the Lord. In 2 Samuel 7, the Lord spoke to David through the
prophet Nathan. He said that David would not build a house for the Lord, but
rather, “the Lord will make a house for you. … I will raise up your descendant
after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He
shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom
forever.” The house that the Lord would build for David was more than a
building; it was a dynasty that would endure in spite of his descendants’
failure to occupy and preserve the nation or the throne. There was another
descendant of David who would come later, and His reign would never end.
Through the house of David, God would bring an everlasting King to the throne,
and He shall reign forever and ever, Hallelujah! The Lord Jesus Christ is this
King, and He is the horn of salvation that God has raised up in the house of
David.
This promise of salvation has been sworn on oath to Abraham;
it has been proclaimed as a promise to King David. And it has been announced
through the prophets of Israel .
Zacharias sings that God has spoken “by the mouth of His holy prophets from of
old.” Notice that it was God who was speaking; the prophets were merely His
mouthpieces. And God spoke words of saving grace through His prophets:
“Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.” This
redemption, this salvation, that God has established in His visitation fulfills
all that God has spoken through His prophets. The divine Messiah that Isaiah
promised to be born of a virgin (7:14; 9:6-7); whom Micah promised would be
born in Bethlehem
(5:2); and whom other prophets proclaimed “in many portions and in many ways”
(Hebrews 1:1) would soon be born, and this causes Zacharias to break forth in song
praising God for the promises of His salvation. As we come to realize that the
Lord Jesus is the Savior for whom all the world so desperately longs, that in
Him all of God’s promises are “yes and Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20), we will join
him in singing of promises not only made, but kept!
II. We sing of the preparation of salvation!
How did Zacharias know that the Messiah’s birth was
imminent? After all, his son who had just been born was not the Redeemer, yet
he sings as if the birth of the Savior of the world is just on the horizon.
Well, we must remember that Zechariah had been told that his son would be the forerunner, the one who would “make
ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:17). So, if the forerunner is coming,
then the Lord must not be far behind. Remember also that Mary, the virgin
mother of the Lord, was a relative of Elizabeth, Zacharias’ wife, and that she
had come to spend time with them when both women were pregnant and they had
rejoiced together about God’s plan for each of their sons. Mary stayed with
Zacharias and Elizabeth for three months (1:56), and during that time, I am
sure that there had been many conversations about how God would change the
world through John and through Jesus.
Zacharias knew by both revelation and conversation that the
birth of his son marked the beginning of a new era – a time of preparation for
the salvation that God would bring to the world through Jesus Christ. And so as
the old man sings, he sings of his son, saying, “you, child, will be called the
prophet of the Most High.” Though there had been some who had prophesied, no one had been called a prophet in Israel for 400 years. Just as Zacharias’
silence was broken at the birth of his son, so heaven’s silence was broken when
John began to preach about the Lord Jesus Christ.
John’s ministry would be one of preparing Israel and the
world for the coming of Christ. He would do this by giving “to His people the
knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of sins.” It would be fair to say
that most people in that day were looking for salvation, but they weren’t all
looking for this kind of salvation. The expectation of multitudes was that the
Messiah was coming to save them from the oppression of Rome . He would come in like a military
warrior on a white stallion to wipe out the enemies of Israel . But
John’s ministry would prepare the way for the Lord Jesus by proclaiming to the
people that this was not their greatest need. In fact, if they were liberated
from Rome , they
would still be enslaved to a stronger power. Though Rome
was the most recent political power to oppress the nation, and could certainly
be described by Israel as
“our enemies” and those “who hate us” (v71), an enemy greater than Rome had enslaved the
entire world under the oppression of a greater hatred. The salvation that the
Messiah Jesus had come to bring was a redemption from the power of sin. The
human race wastes away under the yoke of the ultimate spiritual enemy, Satan.
Jesus said, “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). John
said that “the one who practices sin is of the devil” (1 John 3:8a). That is
the bad news. We are oppressed and enslaved in sin by a harsh task master who
hates us. Satan delights to ensnare us in sin because He hates God and he hates
us. Thus, it pleases him to keep us at enmity with God. But the good news is,
as 1 John 3:8 goes on to say, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to
destroy the works of the devil.” It would not be sufficient to deliver Israel from Rome , for they would still be enslaved along
with the rest of humanity. But if the Savior comes to redeem us from sin, then
all the chains are broken. Jesus said, “If the Son makes you free, you will be
free indeed” (John 8:36). So, John the Baptist’s ministry was to go before the
Lord to proclaim that salvation was coming, not from political powers or
worldly discomforts, but the ultimate redemption that comes through the
forgiveness of sins.
Zacharias sings of the preparation for salvation. He sings
of John’s ministry of going before the Lord Jesus to make the people ready to
receive Him. We who understand the nature of the salvation that Jesus brings,
and find in Him the redemption from the bondage to sin and Satan, can add our
voice to the song and bless the name of the Lord, even as we labor to prepare
the way for others to come to know Him!
III. We sing of the product of salvation!
In C. S. Lewis’ essay collection entitled God in the Dock, we find a brief work
called “What Christmas Means to Me.” He says, “Three things go by the name of
Christmas. One is a religious festival” that is of primary importance to
Christians; but it “can be of no interest to anyone else.” The second thing
called Christmas is “a popular holiday and occasion for merry-making and
hospitality.” Lewis insists that he very much approves of merry-making, but he
says, “what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business.” The
third thing called Christmas, Lewis says, is “unfortunately everybody’s
business,” namely “the commercial racket.”[2] A
few years ago, Donia and I began trying to use the word “Christmas” to only
refer to the things of the season that pertain to Christ. The rest of it all,
we refer to as “Winter Holiday.” Like Lewis, I have a hard time understanding
why a person who doesn’t believe in, worship, or serve the Lord Jesus would
have any interest in Christmas at all, but then again, I don’t see what most of
“Winter Holiday” has to do with Jesus anyway. I know, I know: “Bah Humbug!” and
all of that!
Why do so many people have so much interest in “Winter
Holiday” (as I call it) while having so little interest in the Lord Jesus? I
believe it is because they have not truly understood what He came to do for us.
We are partly to blame for this, because we have not communicated the good news
of Jesus Christ clearly to those we know. And perhaps this is also because we
ourselves have not truly comprehended “the breadth and length and height and depth ... [of] the love of
Christ” (Ephesians 3:18-19). Have we truly come to understand what He accomplished
for us? Do we understand the effect, the result, the product (if you will) of this salvation that Jesus was born to
bring us, that He lived to offer us, that He died and rose again to secure for
us? Zacharias understood it, even before it happened. And he praised the Lord
in this glorious hymn for the product of the salvation that the Messiah Jesus
had come to bring us.
Apart from Christ, we are all dwelling in darkness. We are
like those Zacharias describes in verse 79: we “sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death.” But like the rising of the Sun, God has visited us in the
person of Christ to bring light to us. The prophet Isaiah declared that “the
people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark
land, the light will shine upon them” (9:2). He said, “Arise, shine; for your
light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold,
darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will
rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you” (60:1-2). Christ has come
like the rising sun to bring light to us. In Him the glory of God is fully
manifest to humanity! Christ has revealed God to us who were blinded in
darkness and wasting away in the shadow of death. He has defeated death for us
through His death and resurrection so that we no longer need to fear its
shadow. We know there is life beyond death, and we know, through faith in Him,
that this everlasting life is ours because of the salvation that He
accomplished for us. We no longer sit in darkness. We have been “rescued from
the domain of darkness” and transferred to the Kingdom of the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians
1:13-14).
This salvation brings us the forgiveness of sins! The sins
that keep us separated from God have been dealt with fully and finally through
the cross of Jesus Christ. He came to redeem us and give us life through His
death. The crude manger in which the baby Jesus was placed was a foreshadowing
of the cruel cross on which He would hang to bear our sins in His body as our
substitute under the righteous judgment of God. Thus, we can be forgiven
because He took our penalty for us! As the wonderful hymn “It is Well With My
Soul” proclaims, “My sin, o the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in
part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more! Praise the
Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.”
And being rescued from the enemies of Satan, sin and death,
we can “serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our
days” (v74-75). God has declared those who come to Him by faith in Christ to be
righteous and holy before Him. He has granted us a glorious exchange. He placed
our sins upon Christ as He died, and He bestows to us the righteousness and
holiness of Christ’s life in return. Thus, we are cleansed and covered, and
enabled to render service to the holy God from whom we were once separated and
alienated because of our sins. The blood of Christ has cleansed us, as the
writer of Hebrews says, “to serve the living God” (9:14)! He has made us to be
a kingdom of priests, “a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so
that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of
darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
Notice in verse 78 that the basis of all of this is the
“tender mercy of our God.” Isaac Watts, the greatest composer in English
hymnody, penned a song in the early 1700s that is called “With Joy We Meditate
the Grace.” It is not in many hymnals today, including ours. But when it
occurs, there is a line that is usually worded something like this: “His heart
is made with tenderness and overflows with love.” But those are not the words
that Watts wrote. Watts
wrote, “His heart is made of tenderness, His bowels melt with love.” My
goodness, who wants to come to church to sing about bowels? But Isaac Watts was
not being crude. He was being a good student of the Word of God. He was merely translating
the phrase that occurs here in verse 78 of Zacharias’ song.[3]
Where the NASB says “the tender mercy of our God” the Greek text reads
literally, “the bowels of the mercy of our God.” While we tend to speak of the
heart as the seat of emotion, the ancients spoke of the entrails as the
emotional center of a person. Thus, this is the strongest wording that
Zacharias could employ to convey the great compassion, the deep love, and the
overwhelming mercy of God that compelled Him to visit us in the person of the
Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, this Rising Sun, this Horn of Salvation. How much
does God love you? He loves you so much that He is moved with mercy from the
core of His being to act to bring you salvation: the forgiveness of sin, light
in the darkness, the righteousness that He requires of you, which you cannot
produce on your own, and which He bestows on you freely by His grace; in
faithfulness to His promises. That made Zacharias sing! Do you sing with him?
We love the songs of the Christmas season. It is my prayer
that today you have learned a new one. I wish I knew the tune, so I could sing
it aloud! But we can sing it in our hearts, and if we have experienced this
salvation that Zacharias sings about, the salvation that Christ was born to
bring us, we can’t help joining him in singing, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel , for He
has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people.” Sing that song!
Tell that good news to all who are near and far, so that they will know and
experience the wonder of this God who saves and praise Him with us!
[1] Daniel
M. Doriani, Philip Graham Ryken, Richard D. Phillips, The Incarnation in the Gospels (Reformed Expository Commentary; Phillipsburg , NJ
[2] C. S.
Lewis, The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis:
The Pilgrim’s Regress, Christian Reflections, God in the Dock (New York:
Inspirational, 1996), 507-508.
[3] G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to Luke (Grand
Rapids: Revell, 1931), 33.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Witnesses to Jesus (John 5:31-47)
We’ve all watched enough courtroom television shows, or
perhaps had some personal experiences, to know that when a person is put on
trial for something, the defendant is allowed to give his defense to the
charges, and then witnesses are summoned to provide supporting evidence for
each side. In the end, the judge and jury have to determine which side has the
most supporting evidence, and cast a final verdict on the matter. Well, the
Lord Jesus is not in a courtroom in this passage, but He has been accused of a
terrible crime. Going back to the beginning of Chapter 5, when He healed the
lame and helpless man by the pool, He was accused of violating the Sabbath. His
defense, in response to that charge, was that it is impossible for God to
violate the Sabbath, therefore it is impossible for Him to violate the Sabbath
since God is His Father, and He is the Son, and therefore also God. This entire
section of John’s Gospel is rich in Trinitarian teaching about how the one true
God of the universe exists in the person of Father, of Son, and (less explicit
here), of Holy Spirit; not three gods, but one God, eternally existent in three
persons of equal deity. Of course, this hardly got Jesus off the hook of the
allegations of Sabbath breaking. It merely added another charge against Him,
namely that of blasphemy, for the Jewish officials understood clearly that by
claiming God as His Father, and claiming to be the Son of God, He was making
Himself out to be equal with God. In response to this charge, Jesus spoke of
how He did nothing on His own accord, but only and exclusively the will of His
Father, who had given Him the power to have life in Himself and to bestow it as
He so desired, and the authority to act as judge of entire human race. They say
Jesus blasphemed, and it would be blasphemy indeed, if it wasn’t true. But is
it true? That is the question. And you are the jury. You must decide, based on
the evidence supplied by the witnesses, if Jesus truly is who He claims to be.
And if He is, then we are compelled to make a personal response of faith,
devotion, worship, obedience, and service to Him as Lord. If He isn’t, then we
can just write Him off as a lunatic lawbreaker. So, which will it be?
The Law that God had given to Israel through Moses specified that
a fact has to be established on the basis of multiple witnesses. Concerning
capital offenses, of which both Sabbath breaking and blasphemy both were,
Deuteronomy 17:6 said that the conviction must be based “on the evidence of two
witnesses or three witnesses” (cf. Numbers 35:30). But even on any other
charge, Deuteronomy 19:15 said, “A single witness shall not rise up against a
man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the
evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.” Jesus does not
violate God’s Law in any point at any time, and this is no exception. He admits
in verse 31, “If I testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.” Well, Jesus
is testifying about Himself, so does that mean He is lying? And if He is lying,
then can we claim Him to be the sinless Son of God? Actually, what Jesus is
saying here is that, if He alone testifies
about Himself, the people have no reason to believe Him. His testimony about
Himself is not valid unless it is corroborated by other evidence from other
witnesses. He is saying that He would not expect anyone to regard His claims as
true simply on the basis of His own testimony about Himself. So, He says
matter-of-factly, “There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the
testimony which He gives about Me is true.” Who is this other witness? Well,
Jesus goes on to describe the witnesses who testify to to His claims and His
identity, and we will hear the testimony of each of them as we examine this
text.
I. The witness of John the Baptist
When Jesus speaks of this “other witness,” undoubtedly the
minds of His accusers went immediately to John the Baptist. Perhaps some of us
thought that is who He had in mind as well. After all, we read in John 1:7 that
John the Baptist “came as a witness, to testify about the Light (Jesus), so
that all might believe through him.” And these religious officials have “sent
to John.” Jesus is referring to the events described in John 1:19-28 when the
Pharisees had sent a delegation of priests and Levites from Jerusalem to inquire about his identity and
his ministry. And when they sent this delegation to John, Jesus says that “he
has testified to the truth.” John had told the delegation that he was not the
Christ, but was the one that Isaiah had foretold of as the voice that cried out
in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. He told them of another One,
whom they did not know, “the thong of whose sandal,” John said that he was “not
worthy to untie.”
John’s ministry was unique. He was the first prophet to come
announcing God’s Word to Israel
in 400 years. John 1:8 says of him, “He was not the Light, but he came to
testify about the Light.” Of course, that Light is Jesus. John 1:4-5 says of
the Lord Jesus, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” No, John was
not the Light, but Jesus says that he was “the lamp.” Lamps do not create
light, but they bear light. They hold up light so that all can see it. And John
did that in his ministry. The light that others saw in John’s ministry was not
his own, it was the Light of Jesus, that John was lifting up for all to see.
Jesus says that John was the lamp that was burning and shining.” The Greek
wording here might be translated, “He was the lamp that was ignited and gave light.”[1] He
was a man on fire, and he had been set on fire by God Himself, to burn and
shine as a witness for Christ. When God sets a man on fire, the world will come
to watch him burn. They did that by the multitude as John burned and shined.
But Jesus expresses the sad reality of their interest in John: they were
“willing to rejoice” in his light, but it was only “for a while.” Sometimes
when a preacher’s message starts stepping on too many toes, we say that he’s
“gone from preachin’ to meddlin’.” And John had done that. He was calling the
Jews to repent and be baptized, but Jews did not believe they needed baptism or
that they needed to be made right with God. Jews only practiced baptism on
Gentiles who converted to Judaism. But here was John saying that everyone,
including the Jews, needed to get right with God. He denounced the hypocrisy of
the Jewish leaders, and even called out King Herod for his immorality (which
ultimately led to his execution). And when John went from preachin’ to
meddlin’, the interest of the people began to wane and they turned away from
the light that burned and shined in this lamp set ablaze by God. If they had
heeded John’s testimony, then they might have been saved. And it was not too
late! In verse 34 Jesus reminds them of John’s testimony, not because He needs
the testimony of John to validate him, but because they need to hear and heed
what they heard John saying in order to be saved!
But Jesus says here that John was not His only witness. He
says here that there is a testimony that is greater than the witness of John.
II. The Witness of God the Father
If you’ve ever had to apply for a job and were required to
supply a list of references, you know that most of the time they tell you not
to include your family members. The assumption is that, of course, your family
members are only going to say good things about you even if they aren’t true,
because they want you to get the job. You have to supply impartial references, who will tell the truth about you, even if
the truth means that you won’t get the job. Now, here Jesus says, “There is
another who testifies about Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives
about Me is true” (v32). But this “another” is not John the Baptist. He is
greater than John. So who could it be? After all Jesus said, “Among those born
of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew
11:11). “Those born of women” seems to pretty accurately describe the entire
human race, with the exception of Adam and Eve. So if John is the greatest
human, but Jesus has a witness, a testifier, a reference (if you will) who is
greater than John, then this witness must not be human. And He is not. In verse
37, Jesus says that “the Father who sent Me Has testified of Me.” Now, we might
protest and say, “You can’t list your Dad as a reference!” But here’s the
thing: what is the charge? The charge is blasphemy because Jesus has claimed
God as His Father, thus equating Himself with God. Now, if that is not true,
then God is most certainly not going
to add His testimony to that. God has declared, “I will not give my glory to
another” (Isaiah 42:8; 48:11). We are told in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man,
that He should lie;” and in Titus 1:2 we read that God “cannot lie;” and
Hebrews 6:18 says that it is “impossible for God to lie.” So if God validates
the testimony of Jesus, then that testimony is true. So, how is it that God the
Father has testified to the claims of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?
First and foremost, there was a direct testimony given at
the baptism of Jesus. In one of the great Trinitarian texts of Scripture, in
Matthew 3, as God the Son emerged from the baptismal waters, God the Holy
Spirit descended visibly upon Him in the form of a dove, and God the Father
spoke from heaven audibly declaring, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.” So, there, that one scene, the entire Triune Godhead is on display as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are manifested publicly. Again, later at the Mount
of Transfiguration, the Father will speak from heaven and declare, “This is My
beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him” (Matt 17:15; Mk 9:7;
cf. 2 Peter 1:17). But this particular group of Jewish leaders to whom Jesus is
speaking now could plead, “We were not there! We never heard such an utterance
from heaven!” And so Jesus speaks of other ways that the Father has testified
of Him.
He speaks first of the works which He does (v36b). Jesus
says that these works were given to Him by the Father to accomplish. So, in the
doing of them, the Father is testifying through Him. The works proclaim that
Jesus has been sent by His Father to do His will. This was obvious to those who
could suspend their prejudice against Jesus. Even Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee
and in party with these leaders who are opposing Jesus in the present context,
could say as he came to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these
signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). In John 7:31, we read
that a large crowd of people were saying, “When the Christ comes, He will not
perform more signs that those which
this man has, will He?” Jesus spoke of the testimony of these works repeatedly,
saying in John 10, “The works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of
Me. … If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do
them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and
understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (10:25, 37-38).
Everything that Jesus did was evidence of the Father’s testimony of His as the
divine Son of God. The Gospels record at least three dozen supernatural
miracles performed by Jesus, and John tells us that there were “many other
signs Jesus also performed … which are not written” (20:30). Of course, the
ultimate work that the Father gave to Jesus to accomplish was the work of
redemption which was finalized in His substitutionary death on the cross for
our sins, and His glorious resurrection. But until that event occurred, all of
Jesus’ other miracles were signs pointing to this ultimate work that He would
do on behalf of all humanity.[2]
When John the Baptist wondered if Jesus was truly the Promised One who was to
come, Jesus said to take word back to him that “the blind receive sight, the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and
the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Matt 11:3-5); and all of these were
fulfillments of the prophecies that had been made about the Messiah, as well as
signposts pointing to the glorious salvation that He would make available to
all humanity through His death and resurrection. The Father was testifying of
Jesus Christ through these works that He performed.
But notice that Jesus also says that the Father testified of
Him through His word. Jesus says in verse 39 that the Scriptures testify of
Him. Now, no one in history has ever more fastidious about the study of the
Scriptures than the Pharisees and their peers in ancient Israel . They
devoted vast portions of their waking hours every day to the study of the
Scriptures, and Jesus acknowledges that they “search the Scriptures.” But their
approach to the Scriptures was all wrong. They believed that by their effort in
reading, studying, and memorizing the Scriptures, that they were earning favor
with God and eternal life, merely by the physical exercise of it. The esteemed
Rabbi Hillel claimed that the more one studied the Law, the more life one would
have, and that if a man gains for himself
the words of the Law, he will gain
for himself life in the world to come.[3]
But Jesus says here that they were missing the point. For all their study of
the Scriptures, they completely missed the fact that they were pointing to Him
all along in the words of prophecy, in the typological images, in the events of
redemptive history, and in the provisions for salvation found within the Law. If
they would only come to Him, as the Scriptures testified of Him, then they
would find life in Him. But He says “you are unwilling to come to Me so that
you may have life.”
Thus, there is a fourfold indictment against the unbelieving
religious leaders in verse 37: (1) They have not heard the voice of God at any
time. They did not hear His voice announcing His approval of the Lord Jesus at
His baptism; nor have they heard His voice speaking through the Scriptures. (2)
They have not seen His form. They might protest and say that no one could see
the form of God. That had been true for the most part through all of history,
but it all changed when Jesus came on the scene. John 1:18 says, “No one has
seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father,
He has explained Him.”
When Jesus spoke with His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion, He said, “If
you had known Me, you have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and
have seen Him. … He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:7-9). But
when these religious leaders looked at Jesus, they didn’t see God in Him.
Therefore, they never saw the form of God at all, because the only place He can
be seen is in Jesus. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that God has shone in our
hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (3) They do not
have His word abiding in them. For all their time spent studying the
Scriptures, the word has not taken root in their hearts. If it had, they would
have seen the Scriptures pointing to Christ as the divine, promised Messiah who
had come to save them. But they didn’t. (4) Jesus says in v42, “You do not have
the love of God in yourselves.” They would claim to love God more devoutly than
anyone in the world, but it is lip service, because Jesus has come, not in His
own name, but in the name of His Father, and they have not received Him.
Ironic, considering that multitudes turned in belief to any one of dozens of
false Messiahs who came to Israel in their own name and making boastful claims
of themselves, telling the people only what they wanted to hear. So the tables
are turned. It began as an indictment against Jesus for Sabbath-breaking and
blasphemy, but He has responded with testimony to vindicate Himself. Now, He
has now turned the incident into an indictment against unbelieving Israel , which
could be broadened to include the entire unbelieving world. The evidence of
these indictments is simple: “You do not believe Him whom He sent.” If they
would hear the voice of God testifying through the words and works of Jesus,
and see God in Christ, and allow the Scriptures to take root in their hearts,
they would turn to Him in faith and repentance and be saved.
Jesus has already announced that there is coming a day of
judgment, when He will exercise the authority given to Him by His Father to
judge the entire human race. And He warns here, “Do not think that I will
accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have
set your hope.” They had set their hope on Moses as the deliverer of the Law
and the mediator of the covenant God established with Israel . But
Jesus says that Moses will testify against them, and he will be their chief
accuser on that day of judgment, because ultimately, though they claimed to
regard the writings of Moses, they did not truly believe them. The entire Old
Testament was pointing the way forward to Jesus, and He says, “If you believed
Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe
his writings, how will you believe My words?”
What then is the verdict on the matter? Is Jesus who He
claims to be? Well, we have seen in this text that it is not He alone who
testifies of Himself. John the Baptist has testified of Him, but even more
significantly, God the Father has testified of Jesus through His word, through
the works of Jesus, and in the words of Hebrews 1:1, “in many portions and in
many ways.” So who is He? He is God-incarnate, the supreme and almighty God of
the universe, who became a man and lived a life of perfect righteousness, died
to redeem us from sin by bearing our sins in His body on the cross, and
conquering sin, death, and hell through His resurrection from the dead, which
provided additional testimony to His identity and His mission of redemption.
The question for every human being therefore is: Do you believe in Him? Not
just in a historical, intellectual sense, but have you received Him? Have you
come to Him? These are the words that Jesus uses in His indictment of His
critics in this passage: believe, receive, come to. To believe in Jesus, or
receive Him, or come to Him, means to turn to Him in faith as your only hope of
life eternal and abundant. It is to receive Him as the life-giving Savior who
rescues you from your sin. It is to come to Him in total abandon of all your
other beliefs and practices in which you trust to make you right before God.
Hope is found in Him and in Him alone.
If you do not believe in Him in this way, then you are like
these who opposed Him in our text today. The indictments fall on you as well.
You have not heard the voice of God, nor beheld His form in the person of
Christ, nor do His word or His love abide in you. And yet, you will stand
before Him as your righteous judge when you step into eternity. What hope will
you have? You have not only rejected Him, but you have rejected the testimony
of Moses, of John the Baptist, and even that of God the Father Himself. And the
outcome will be condemnation and eternal separation from God, when the offer of
life, free, abundant, and eternal was extended to you by Jesus Christ. There is
still hope while you have life and breath, but the hope is found only in Jesus,
so come to Him; receive Him; believe in Him. Trust Him as Lord and Savior by
faith, not blind faith mind you, but faith that rests confidently on His own
word, that of His Father, and that of a multitude of witnesses, including those
of us here whose lives have been transformed by His grace.
And remember, if you have turned to Jesus and received Him
as Lord and Savior, that you too are called to be His witness. You are the
living proof of His power to save sinners. May His love and His word abide in
you as you walk through this fallen world, pointing the way to Christ that others
may know the joy of His salvation.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Giving Life to the Dead (John 5:25-30)
I suppose sooner or later in everyone’s life, they wrestle with the question,
“Is there life beyond death?” It is an age-old question. Most biblical scholars
seem to agree that the Book of Job is the oldest writing in our Bibles. Though
the events of the first half of Genesis pre-date the events of Job, they were
not recorded in writing until the time of Moses, whereas Job seems to have been
written long before Moses’ day. And, in Job, we find the suffering patriarch wrestling
with the question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). I remember
the first time I wrestled with that question. Somehow, I had avoided it for the
first 18 years of my life. But, in the summer following my high school
graduation, my grandmother died, and my cousins and I were pallbearers at her
funeral. It was the first funeral I had ever attended, and it was the closest
that death had ever struck me. I distinctly remember the sound of the mausoleum
vault closing, and as it echoed I was perplexed with mixture of despair, fear,
and curiosity. The questions that kept bouncing around in my head were, “Now
what? Is that the end, or is there something more?” God used those questions
and emotions that I wrestled with to draw me to Himself. And it was there I
found the answers in His Word. I found that not only is there life after death,
but there is also a death before death. I was afraid of what would happen when
I died, all the while not knowing that I was already dead and in need of being brought
to life by Jesus. So, these are the kinds of things that Jesus is talking about
here in this brief text today. He is talking about His power to give life to
the dead.
I. Jesus has the power to give life to the spiritually dead.
(vv25-26)
Many of you have undoubtedly noticed that there is a craze
going around about zombies. What is a zombie? Well, in popular folklore, a
zombie is a dead body that has been enlivened by a mystical or paranormal
power. In short, zombies are the semi-living, walking dead, or the “undead” as
they are commonly called. Walk into any bookstore, and you will find titles
like The Zombie Survival Guide or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In the
toy aisle of your local big box store, you will find a whole line of “Monster
High” dolls. Movies, TV shows, and video games commonly feature human beings
pitted against hordes of the undead, and on a somewhat regular basis, otherwise
mainstream news outlets report stories dealing with the fears of a zombie
apocalypse. In fact, in September of this year, the Centers for Disease Control
launched a campaign to prepare citizens for a zombie apocalypse, and just a
couple of weeks ago in San Diego, United States Navy and Marine personnel
engaged in zombie apocalypse training exercises.[1]
Now, admittedly, those training exercises and the CDC campaign were promoted
with tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that if you are prepared for a zombie
apocalypse, you will be well prepared for any sort of emergency that may arise.[2]
But they are capitalizing on the popularity of the zombie meme in contemporary
popular culture. It’s all kind of foolish, don’t you think? This idea that we
can be invaded by multitudes of walking, undead corpses? Well, what if I told
you that I believe you are already surrounded by walking corpses? You might
want to call in some professionals to evaluate my mental well-being. But in a
very real and spiritual sense, we are surrounded by the living dead: spiritual
zombies.
Notice in verse 25 that Jesus says, “An hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the
Son of God and those who hear will live.” Now, notice the phrase “and now
is.” Jesus is talking about something that is taking place, not in the future
(though it will happen then as well, for He says “an hour is coming”), but it
is happening in the present, at the time of His earthly ministry. The dead are
able to hear His voice and those who hear will live. Now, we know that Jesus
did in fact raise the dead to life on a few occasions: Lazarus (John 11:1-44),
the son of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-17); and Jairus’s daughter (Matthew
9:18-26). Aside from these three, we do not know how many others experienced
this unusual and temporary deliverance from death. That doesn’t seem to be what
He is speaking of here. Notice that here, in the present tense, Jesus speaks of
giving life to the dead, but it is not universal in effect. Though He says that
the time now is when “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,” He seems
to indicate that not all will hear, and thus not all will receive life. Contrast
this with verse 28. There, we do not find any mention of a present work, only
future; and those who are described as “dead” in verse 25 are contrasted with
those who are described as “in the tombs” in verse 28. In the present state, in
verse 25, not all receive life; whereas in verse 28, in the future, all who are in the tombs will hear His
voice and come forth. So it seems that Jesus is saying that not all who are
dead are in the tombs. There are some others who are dead outside of the tomb,
and if they will hear His voice, they will receive life. So, what is going on
here?
The dead that Jesus is describing in verse 25 are what I
would call “the living dead,” these spiritual zombies who are walking around in
human bodies, but who are dead spiritually. Who are they? Well, in fact, every
member of the human race is born in this condition, and a good plenty remain
that way. Turn over to Ephesians 2:1, and let’s look at this for a moment. Here
Paul says, “And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins.” He does not say, “You were sick,” or “you were disabled,”
or “you were a little unwell.” He says, “You were dead.” You remember that God
told Adam that in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely
die. Now physically, Adam did not die that day. Sin brought about a condition
in him that would ultimately lead to an eventual physical death. But
immediately, at the very moment of his sin, he died spiritually. And the
terminal disease of sin has been spread to all of humanity; thus, we are all
born dead in the spiritual sense, and we are all susceptible to physical death
– we live in dying bodies with dead spirits – because of the effect of sin on
the human race. So, Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,
because all sinned.” So, what is the natural condition of a human being? Dead
and dying; spiritually dead and physically dying because of sin.
Now, you might say, “But I feel pretty good. I don’t feel
dead.” A couple of weeks ago I was engaged in the first battle of annual war on
leaves in my yard. And in the course of the battle, I was attacked by a
multitude of yellowjackets. So, I went to the store to find something to deal
with the yellowjacket problem, and I found this can of Raid that was supposed
to do the trick. It said, “Raid Kills Bugs Dead.” That’s good. I wanted to kill
them. And I wanted to kill them dead. So I sprayed the whole can into their
nest. The next day I went out, and those yellowjackets were still swarming all
over the place. It occurred to me that if that Raid had indeed killed the
yellowjackets, it had not killed them dead. There must have been some kind of
live kind of killing that the Raid had accomplished. When I think about that, I
am reminded of how sin works in us. It kills us. But we are still buzzing
around, aren’t we? Sin kills us, but it has not yet killed us dead. There’s
some kind of live kind of killing that sin is accomplishing in us. But it will
kill us dead eventually. Before that physical death occurs, however, we are
spiritually dead in sin.
What does spiritual death look like? Notice how Paul
describes it in Ephesians 2:2. He says that these spiritual zombies “walk
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air (that’s Satan), of the spirit that is now working in the sons of
disobedience.” So, their lives are characterized by an enslavement to worldly
values that are disobedient to will and Word of God, and which are dictated by
Satan himself. Then in verse 3, he says that spiritual zombies live in the
lusts of their flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and by nature they are children of wrath. They live under the condemnation of
God because they serve their own warped desires as a god. To be spiritually
dead is “to be insensible to the things of God and totally unable to respond to
Him.”[3]
That part of our being that communicates and interacts with God is dead within
us from birth.
But notice the most amazing thing about this passage. Paul
says in verse 1, “you were dead.”
That’s past tense. In verse 3 he says that we formerly lived this way. So how did we go from being spiritual
zombies to being spiritually alive? Paul says it this way in verses 4 and 5 of
Ephesians 2: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with
which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” What is he saying? He’s
saying exactly what Jesus is saying back in our text in John 5. The hour is
coming, and Jesus says that hour is already here, when those who are dead –
these spiritual zombies – will hear the voice of the Son of God. And when they
hear His voice, He brings them to life. We are transformed from spiritual death
to spiritual life by the effectual call of Christ through the Gospel. The voice
of Christ comes breaking into the life of spiritually dead person like “a kind
of summons from the King of the universe, and it has such power that it brings
about the response that it asks for in people’s hearts. … This calling has the
capacity to draw us out of the kingdom of darkness and bring us into God’s
kingdom.”[4] It
raises us up from spiritual death and makes us finally spiritually alive. And
that happened to you the moment you heard and believed the promise of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. You were made alive in Him. We call it being born
again.
Now, how is it that the Son, the Lord Jesus can give life? He
says in verse 26 that it is because He has life in Himself. You see, our lives
are “derived.” Most immediately, our lives our derived from the lives of our
parents, who “gave life” (for lack of a better word) to us through procreation.
But more ultimately, all human life is derived from God, who created humanity,
who gave life to man, and with it the ability to procreate, and who upholds and
sustains human life through His providential care. Thus, when Job was presented
with the news that his children had died, he responded, “the Lord gave, and the
Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And concerning that
response, the Bible says, “Through all this, Job did not sin nor did he blame
God” (Job 1:21-22). Job understood that human life is a derived life. But when
it comes to the life that is in Jesus, it is not derived in any way. He has
life in Himself. His is self-existent, and the life that He has, He is able to
impart to others.
But what are we to make of the idea here in verse 26 that
the life that Jesus has in Himself was given to Him by the Father? Admittedly,
this is a complicated and mysterious truth, bound up in the infinite mystery of
the Trinity. But the idea here seems to have something to do with the
condescension of the Son in the incarnation as He took upon Himself human flesh
and a human nature. Philippians 2:6-8 describes it this way: “although He
existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself….” Theologians
refer to this as the kenosis, a Greek
word that means “emptying.” Christ emptied Himself of His divine glory and
power to become a man. But it was pleasing to the Father that Christ should
retain some of His divine attributes even as He condescended to human nature.
And one of these attributes was the power to have life in Himself and the power
to grant that life to others. Thus, we read in John 1:4 that in Him (in Christ,
the Living Word of God) was life, and the life was the Light of men.” The
Father was pleased to grant the Son to retain His self-existent nature – this
life-in-Himself, which He has the power to give to the spiritually dead who
hear and respond in faith to the call of His voice in the proclamation of the
Gospel. Jesus says in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will
never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” When we were dead in
our trespasses and sins, the voice of Christ came flooding in and brought life
to those spiritually dead who heard His voice in the Gospel and turned in faith
to receive Him as Lord and Savior. The hour is coming, Jesus says, and now is.
If you are spiritually dead, having never turned in faith to the Lord Jesus,
then He is calling out to you even today to announce that through His sinless
life, His sacrificial death for your sins, and His glorious resurrection, your
sins can be washed away and you can have life – eternal and abundant –
beginning even in this very moment. The spiritual life that Jesus gives to the
spiritually dead here and now foreshadows a coming day, yet future, which is
described in the following verses.
II. Jesus has the authority to raise and judge the entire
human race
Donia and I have been married for 15 years. For the first
six years of our marriage, we lived beside of a cemetery; and for the last 7
years of our marriage we’ve lived beside of another cemetery. People often ask
us, “What’s it like living beside of a graveyard?” Well, we don’t have to worry
about noisy or nosey neighbors, so it really has some significant advantages.
There’s not a lot of activity in most graveyards. But that won’t always be
true. There is a day coming, the Lord Jesus says, in which there will be a
great upheaval in every cemetery in the world. That day remains in the future.
Unlike verse 25, there is no present tense component of this promise. How far
in the future will this event occur? We don’t know. But we do know that every
day that elapses brings us one day closer. In the previous section we were
talking about the spiritual dead – those spiritual zombies who are walking
around among us every day. But now we are talking about the physical dead –
they are in the tombs. And one day, “all who are in the tombs will hear His
voice, and will come forth.” The same voice that brings life to the spiritually
dead here and now will call the dead to rise from their tombs and stand face to
face before Him. Thus Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the
last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet
from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).
For at least 350 years, and probably much longer than that,
as Christians gather to bury their dead, words similar to this are spoken: “we
commit this body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead unto eternal
life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This wording originates in the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer from 1662, but certainly the ideas that these words
express are rooted in the Word of God itself. No matter the circumstances or the
degree of sorrow in my heart over the death of a loved one, when I officiate at
the graveside of a believer, I find tremendous joy as I utter the words, “sure
and certain hope of the Resurrection.” Folks, I really believe that, and I hope
you do too! For the believer in Jesus Christ, death is not the end. We are
confident by faith that the day is coming when the soul of our departed loved
one, who is already with the Lord, will be reunited with a risen and glorified
body! Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have a sure and certain hope of
resurrection from the dead unto eternal life! There is no greater comfort a
grieving Christian can know that this!
However, what we do not often express verbally at the
graveside is that there is also a sure and certain promise of resurrection for
those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no hope and comfort in
that promise. Though the unbeliever has the promise of resurrection and
conscious existence beyond death, it is not a joyous existence in the glorious presence
of Christ in heaven. It is a perpetual, eternal existence of judgment and
condemnation. It seems odd to even call it life. It is at best a mere existence
in the most agonizing of conditions. But it is a real, conscious, and unending
existence, and that is a sure and certain promise made by none other than the
Lord Jesus Himself. Therefore, we can believe it, and as He says in verse 28,
we must not marvel at the truthfulness of these words.
When all who are in the tombs come forth in response to the
voice of Christ, there will be a great separating of humanity. Now, this text
really says nothing about chronology or time. There are other texts in
Scripture that seem to indicate that the resurrection of the righteous dead
will occur long before the resurrection of the unrighteous dead. This text does
not contradict that. It merely asserts that all humanity – saved and unsaved;
righteous and unrighteous – will be raised will be separated into two
populations. Jesus says here that those who “did the good deeds” will be raised
“to a resurrection of life.” It would be easy to mistakenly infer that Jesus is
saying here that people will earn eternal life on the basis of their works, but
that is most definitely NOT what He is saying. The Bible makes abundantly clear
from cover to cover that works do not and cannot save human beings, for as
spiritually dead people we are unable to do anything in our own power to bring
pleasure to God, and our so-called righteousness is nothing but filthy rags in
His sight. So, how then will those who did the good deeds be raised to a
resurrection of life? We must rely on the whole context of Scripture to
understand this. In John 6:28, the people asked Jesus, “What shall we do, so
that we may work the works of God?” He responded (6:29) by saying, “This is the
work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” What is the “good deed”
that leads to the resurrection of life? It is believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ! It is not a doing of something, but the receiving of something that has
been done for you! It is the receiving of Christ as Lord and Savior on the
basis of His sinless life, the death He died in your place for your sins, and
the power of His resurrection. And when a person has received Him, they are
transformed from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now, and will
eventually be raised to eternal life with Him in the glory of heaven. The
validity of this person’s faith in Christ is demonstrated by perseverance in a
God-glorifying of righteous living, not done in an effort to earn salvation;
but done as an overflowing of His life within us. These deeds are not the
working of our own power to appease God; they are the outworking of the
indwelling Christ within us. As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified
with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved
me and gave Himself up for me.” So the good deeds that lead to a resurrection
of life are not even our own. We merely receive and appropriate for ourselves
what Christ has done for us, and He lives and works through us those deeds that
demonstrate that our relationship with Him is real and viable. Works do not
make a person a Christian, but they can and should reveal whether or not a
person is a genuine Christian, and not merely one who calls himself or herself
Christian.
Apart from life in Him, the best that we can do is sin. Sin
so totally corrupts the spiritually dead person that our self-instigated acts
of righteousness amount only to unrighteousness. Thus, Jesus says that those who
committed the evil deeds – that is, they did not believe upon Christ; they did
not receive spiritual life in their state of spiritual death; they do not have
Christ in them as the hope of glory – these will be raised, but not to eternal
life with Him. These will be raised to a resurrection of judgment. The word
also means condemnation. It describes
the eternal, conscious existence which is separated from Him in hell, where for
all eternity the condemnation of our sins is experienced moment by moment.
For a multitude of people, this message is now and always
has been a highly offensive message. Christians who proclaim this truth are
called judgmental and narrow-minded. It is often said that Christians do not
reflect the nature of Christ in making statements like this, but I remind you
that these are the words of Jesus Himself. He has been granted the authority by
His Father to execute judgment, and the judgment is based on human response to
Him as Lord and as Savior of the world. Verse 27 says that the Father has given
Him this prerogative “because He is the Son of Man.” We’ve discussed this title
before many times, and noted that it is the favorite title that Jesus uses to
refer to Himself. In fact, no one else ever calls Him this; He alone uses the
title, and more often than any other title, to refer to Himself. It is rooted
in the messianic announcement of Daniel 7:13-14, in which we read that the Son
of Man will receive from the Ancient of Days an everlasting dominion and
kingdom which will never pass away. This is a vivid picture of the authority
that is granted to God the Son by God the Father. Because the Son is the
eternal God, and has been invested by the Father with this authority, and
because He has become man and lived in perfect obedience to His Father’s will,
He has demonstrated His authority to judge all humanity. Though some will
object that this judgment is unfair, that all humanity should be saved or perish
on the basis of Christ, and Him alone, Jesus says in verse 30 that His judgment
is just. It is based on the will of His Father, who sent Him for this mission
and purpose. Peter announced in Acts 10:42-43 that Christ has “ordered us to
preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been
appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead,” for “through His name
everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”
Thus, by the Lord Jesus’ very own words, we have the sure
and certain promise that there is a life that exists beyond death. All who are
in the tombs will come forth. Those who have received life in His name have
been cleansed of sin and covered in His righteousness. Our sins have been dealt
with fully and finally in Christ crucified. He died to bear the wrath of our
sin, that we might be brought forth from death into life – a spiritual
quickening of our dead spirit that we might know the abundant life Christ
offers to us here and now, and the physical life of resurrected glory after
death has done its best to destroy us. In Christ we overwhelmingly conquer sin
and death and hell, and are raised to a life that shall never end. But for
those who do not experience the gift of His salvation which transforms us from death
to life, eternity shall hold for them no hope or comfort – only the conscious
experience of eternal torment, separated from Him in the despair and agony of
hell. That reality can lead you to live in fear and dread, wondering against
all odds how you will fare on the day of resurrection and judgment. Or, this
promise can beckon you to call out to Him and know the glory of being raised
from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now. He calls out to you even
in the state of spiritual death. And so it is for good reason that the warning
is given to us in Hebrews 4:7, saying that God has fixed a certain day and
called it “Today,” saying, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your
hearts.” His voice comes to you through
message of His death and resurrection for your sin and for your salvation,
saying as it were, “Awake sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will
shine on you” (Eph 5:14).
If
today you are a spiritual zombie – a dead spirit walking around in a living
body – hear the voice of the Son of God calling and turn to Him and live. Then
you will know the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from death unto
life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. And if you have already experienced
that transformation from death to life in your spirit, live in the hope and
glory of it. Show those around you who are dead what it really means to live by
resting in Him and allowing His life to break forth into the world through you.
The world may not always like what they see of Him in you, but fear not. The
worst that this world can do to you is kill you. But take courage, Christ has
overcome the world, and He has overcome death, and He will call you forth from
the tomb and you will rise to life eternal with Him.
[1] http://news.yahoo.com/no-prank-halloween-us-military-forces-train-zombie-162141684.html.
Accessed November 8, 2012.
[2] http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm.
Accessed November 8, 2012.
[3] John
MacArthur, John 1-11 (MacArthur New
Testament Commentary; Chicago: Moody, 2006), 196-7.
[4] Wayne
Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 692.
Monday, November 05, 2012
Epaphras: A Model of Christian Ministry (Colossians 1:1-7; 4:12-23)
(Audio)
This past Lord's Day, we were so blessed to have Wes & Beth with us, dear missionary friends serving the Lord abroad who have deep ties to our church family. Wes proclaimed a powerful and challenging message, enhanced by a testimony from Beth, about the man named Epaphras that we meet in the book of Colossians.
His outline for the message is as follows:
I. We have a responsibility to be teachers of God's Word (1:7)
"You learned it from Epaphras"
II. We have a responsibility to be team players (1:7)
"Our dear fellow servant"
III. We have a responsibility to be faithful (1:7)
"a faithful minister of Christ"
IV. We have a responsibility to reach out to the people around us (4:12)
"Epaphras, who is one of you"
V. We have a responsibility to be people of prayer (4:12)
"always wrestling in prayer for you"
VI. We have a responsibility to have a missions vision that begins at home and extends to the nations (4:13)
"working hard for you, and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis"
This past Lord's Day, we were so blessed to have Wes & Beth with us, dear missionary friends serving the Lord abroad who have deep ties to our church family. Wes proclaimed a powerful and challenging message, enhanced by a testimony from Beth, about the man named Epaphras that we meet in the book of Colossians.
His outline for the message is as follows:
I. We have a responsibility to be teachers of God's Word (1:7)
"You learned it from Epaphras"
II. We have a responsibility to be team players (1:7)
"Our dear fellow servant"
III. We have a responsibility to be faithful (1:7)
"a faithful minister of Christ"
IV. We have a responsibility to reach out to the people around us (4:12)
"Epaphras, who is one of you"
V. We have a responsibility to be people of prayer (4:12)
"always wrestling in prayer for you"
VI. We have a responsibility to have a missions vision that begins at home and extends to the nations (4:13)
"working hard for you, and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis"
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