All posts for the month November, 2021

Peace – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

Peace

2 Corinthians 5:11-21 (pg. 562)

INTRO

-Advent season: celebrating the reality of the incarnation (God took on flesh) So we rejoice, give thanks for that miracle, but we also acknowledge that while we can celebrate, things aren’t as they should be, so we wait with eager anticipation.

-One scholar compared this idea to the difference between D-Day and V-Day in WW2.

-One way we celebrate is by lighting candles to remember that Jesus came as the light of the world. Each week leading up to Christmas we’ll by studying a different theme of what Jesus came to offer us. This week is peace, next is joy, then love, then hope, and finally on Christmas Eve we’ll be looking at Jesus as the embodiment of all of these characteristics.

-Peace is a theme prevalent in the story of Jesus’ birth.

-Zechariah’s prophecy ends with “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

-When the angels appear to the shepherds to announce Jesus’ birth, they proclaim “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

-When Simeon, who had been waiting for this baby sees Jesus he exclaims: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,”

-Doesn’t that seem idealistic though? An article written in 1988 “since the Second World War the globe has only been without a war for…26 days in September 1945.”

-How do we go about pursuing peace?

READ/PRAY

Persuade (11-17)

-Once again dropping into the middle of a text (there’s a reason I prefer walking exegetically through a book!)

-Written by Paul, 4^th letter written by him to the Corinthian church. Meant to continue encouraging them to remain faithful in their calling. First couple chapters are dealing with Paul’s call to ministry, his concern for the church, then he talks about the reality of this new life we have in Christ in chpts 3, 4-5talk about the future realities we will have in Christ, then we need to read vs. 9-10 to understand the “therefore” in vs. 11.

-Our goal in this life and the next is to please God. Everything else should pale in comparison to that goal, that aim in life. Why do we live that way? Because someday we’ll all stand before Christ’s judgment seat. If that fills you with fear, good! That’s exactly why Paul is saying this. He’s building his argument as he’s walking through his argument here, that’s why the first word we heard in today’s text is “therefore.”

As Ourselves (11-13)

-Knowing what? The fear of the Lord. Don’t you find that a slightly odd place to start, especially as we think about today’s focus: peace! How does fear relate to peace?

-One commentator said “whatever it is that one fears the most that is what one will serve the most.”

-Some people will prefer to translate this as “reverential awe” or “respect” and that’s true, but we give him respect out of fear of what COULD happen.

-A couple illustrations that might help: my son is 4. He knows I love him, care for him, provide for him, but if he starts being disrespectful toward especially his mother, then sees me getting up to interject, he gets a little fear in his eyes! He knows he hasn’t been acting in according with daddy’s rules (even when he says it’s “not kind”)

-I think most people in the room drive, or will someday drive (way to go Fritz!). If you’ve ever been pulled over while driving, don’t you get fearful? I’ve only been pulled over a handful of times, but each time I have my heart rate increased, my palms start sweating, I triple check my speed, start thinking about whether I registered my car this year, look around to see if there’s someone else that they’re following instead of me. There’s a definite level of fear/respect there!

-We also need to remember that, as Prov. 7:1 says, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” If you want wisdom, the 1^st step is fearing God.

-After that first step of fearing the Lord, we then move outward to “persuade others.”

-I’ve titled this first section “as ourselves.” We often conflate this point to either persuade through our own gifts, persuasions, or abilities, or we try to be a duplicate of someone else.

-One time attending a preaching seminar titled “preaching not ourselves, but preaching AS ourselves.” Or as Paul put it earlier in 2 Cor. 4:5 “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” All of us are uniquely wired and gifted. No 2 people have the exact same measure of gifts, and that’s exactly why God has given us each other. We are commanded to persuade others here, but it doesn’t give us a specific method (other than pointing everything to Christ).

-This is a 2 step process for all of us: 1- fear the Lord, 2- use whatever gifts you have to persuade others to join with you in fearing the Lord

-But I also think there may be a sense in which we’ve lost the art of persuasion in our evangelism. I struggle with this! For the sake of not offending I soft-shoe my conversations instead of trying to “persuade” others. As we’ll see in this text, God gives us the blueprints for lasting peace, why don’t we try to persuade others about this reality?

-In the midst of this persuasion (making our aim to please the Lord), we remember that whatever else happens, we are “known to God.”

-Another translation says this is “well known” or “clearly evident,” to God. In our persuasion, we may me mocked, ridiculed, belittled, but is we could look at things through God’s eyes instead of ours, we’d be just fine! This reality gives Paul, and us, confidence for the rest of this section:

-We don’t preach ourselves, we’re not the point of the story!

-Others worry about external appearances, but God worries about our internal motivation. It’s not enough to put on a façade of holiness, God even worries about what happens in your heart and mind!

13
-Paul does all this for their sake, to encourage and support them and not worry about what others say

-Since we’ve seen that God cares about your internal motivation and desires, that’s what Paul talks about next, our persuasion must be:

Through the Love of Christ (14- 17)

-We’ve seen our aim is to please God, here we see that the driving force behind that is the love of Christ. Think of it as pleasing God is the finish line, the fear of God is the starting line, and the fuel that gets us there is the love of Christ.

-This word “controls” is a fascinating word in Greek, includes “seized, surrounded, occupied, hemmed in” Is used when Jesus is held in custody by soldiers in Luke 22:63. The point is that once we are in Christ, we have no option but to operate out of His love for others. The primary force that drives everything else in the life of the Christian is Christ’s love.

-Now, we often miss the implications of that because today love is often used as a synonym with acceptance. People will say if you love me you must accept/endorse everything I want. We’ll take a look at that belief in a couple weeks (spoiler alert, that’s not the best definition of love!). Why is it that Christ’s love is what controls/compels us and hems us in?

-Because we have concluded this reality: 1 died for all, so all have died.

-This idea can be difficult for us to wrap our minds around, in addition to love being acceptance of who I am, the idea of 1 person serving as a representative goes against the second Western ideal of individualism. This is known as corporate solidarity: “the one stands for the many and the many are represented by the one.” (ESV Exegetical Commentary) Just as we saw in Genesis that Adam’s sin cast the cosmos into sin, so in Jesus his 1 perfect life redeems the entire cosmos. We’ll see the implications of that in the next section.

-Paul doubles down on this idea, Jesus died for all SO THAT those who are now alive in Him will no longer live for themselves, but for Christ.

-Christ’s love controls us, everything we do is meant to bring honor to God, so we need to die to our own desires, preferences, and ideals so that Christ can be seen in us.

-What does this mean for us in the church? It means we look to honor others even better than we honor ourselves. It means we come to Sunday morning looking to see how we can serve our brothers and sisters instead of coming to get our felt needs met. It means we look for opportunities to humble ourselves and sacrifice for each other.

-I was thinking this past week about how Jesus describes the righteous vs. the unrighteous as those: fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, and clothed the naked. That’s how we live for Christ!

-This verse is a beautiful, succinct summary of the gospel message! Christ died for all, so that we could now live in Him.

-But if Jesus had just died it wouldn’t change anything. Many people have died. Actually, everyone who ever lived has died (with the rare exception of Enoch and Elisha), and if you haven’t died yet, don’t worry, it’s coming! I don’t say that to be morbid, but I do say that as a reminder that this life isn’t all we have. And that’s only true because of the last 2 words: was raised.

-It almost feels like just a throwaway phrase, doesn’t it? All this big build up to: and was raised. Because if Jesus wasn’t raised, then we have no reason for living, no reason for hope, no reason to celebrate this or any other Christmas.

-Because Jesus was raised, we no longer treat people as mere humans.

-C.S. Lewis The Weight of Glory “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit.”

-All this is building to the fact that: anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. This is the theme we saw in Genesis: the first thing we learn about God is that He is the Creator, but he hasn’t stopped creating. Each time someone is saved they are re-born, re-created, brought to true life. This is what Pastor Jeramy talked about last week from John 3: you must be born a second time!

-And now that this new creation has broken through into the old, we have a new ministry.

-Have you ever thought of Jesus as the only perfect picture of this new creation? We have all these hopes/ideas for what heaven will be like, but we don’t to wonder because Jesus already showed us! Might mean heaven is a lot more like this world than we would care to admit!

Preach Reconciliation (18-21)
- From God (18-19)

-This shows us the wide-reaching implications of our salvation.

-Dane Ortlund: “Whereas for justification the sphere is the courtroom, for sanctification the temple, for redemption the slave market, and for adoption the family, the sphere of reconciliation is that of friendship.”

-Have you ever realized that part of the reason Jesus came was to befriend us? Now I want to be careful because this can lead to an overly casual approach to Jesus, but just as the Father welcomes us in, so Jesus makes us friends. This is what he says in John 15. This friendship with Jesus then pours out into our friendships with others.

-Let’s look at how we do this. “All this” all the realities we’ve seen in the previous verse, the new life, new creation, Christ’s love, it’s from God.

-As we saw in Genesis the perfect relationship between humanity and God was severed because of sin. God’s desire is to restore every aspect of the broken relationship, so God sent his one and only son to bring about reconciliation.

-Notice that it’s “through” Christ. It is literally through his broken body, but it’s also only through faith in Him that reconciliation happens. It’s only through faith in Him that He will now call us friends!

-Once we’re reconciled to God, we’re given a ministry to carry out: the ministry of reconciliation.

-This is what Christ’s love compels us to, horizonal reconciliation. Do you see how both components of reconciliation are found here? Vertical AND horizontal. And you don’t get horizonal reconciliation between people apart from vertical reconciliation with God. What does this ministry look like?

-In Christ God is actively reconciling the entire world to Himself.

-Our scope of ministry is literally the entire world! There is no sphere, no domain, no relationship that’s beyond the reach of God’s reconciliation!

-We have no reason to view any person who is created in the image of God as too far beyond the reach of reconciliation. The gospel that we believe in, that has brought us into this new life means there is ALWAYS reason to hope that God is working in someone’s life, and you might be the person who brings about the message of reconciliation to that person.

-Isn’t that amazing that God uses ordinary people like us?

-As if to double down on the reality of our reconciliatory ministry, Paul says God has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation.

-That word translated “message” is the same word we looked at 2 weeks ago: logos, word. Once again, just as the gospel can’t be communicated apart from words, so reconciliation cannot be communicated without using words.

-We are called through Scripture to go out into the entire world and speak/preach the words of reconciliation. Each and every opportunity we have in the world to push this message we should celebrate!

-Our city/state have over the past 18 months been rocked by calls for justice and reconciliation, and when we hear people talking that way, we should be on the forefront in joining them in pleading and praying for reconciliation. But we need to remember the answers the world gives will only be 1 sided, they’ll neglect the vertical dimensions to this reconciliation and try to only deal with the horizontal dimensions. God has called us as the church to both demonstrate and PREACH for reconciliation that comes only through Him, and only then can we have a prayer of having true and lasting reconciliation.

-Paul’s final point in this section is that reconciliation is meant to come:

Through Us (20-21)

-“Therefore” this message of reconciliation finds its’ summation in the reality that:

-we are ambassadors

-Do you know how ambassadors work? Same today as in the 1^st century. Ambassadors are sent to another country to represent and act on behalf of their home country.

-Just as Jesus was sent here as an ambassador from another world, now God sends us out into the world as ambassadors, representing Him, speaking for Him. This is why Jesus says “this world is not our home.” We’re not first and foremost Americans, we are citizens of heaven. Our primary home, our primary allegiance, our primary focus is our homeland. We’re only here to serve as ambassadors of that other country.

-Continuing that theme, Paul tells us what our ambassadorial message is: God is appealing through us. Another way we could translate that phrase is “as though God were begging through us.”

-Similarly, we “beg you” be reconciled to God! When’s the last time you begged someone to be reconciled to God?

-There’s some pretty weighty words of exhortation in here for us: persuade, implore, appeal. All for the ultimate goal of being reconciled to God.

-Just as reconciliation is through Christ’s death, so our ambassadorial role is THROUGH us, which means each and every day we need to die.

-Paul ends this section in a very appropriate place: repeating the gospel message.

-This verse is saying God quite literally equated Jesus to sin when He died for us on the cross. That’s where we can sing “the Father turned His face away” because God can have nothing to do with sin.

-Martin Luther called this the “great exchange,” our unmeasurable debt traded for innumerable riches in Christ!

-Vs. 21 MSG – “How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.”

-The only hope we have for true and lasting peace is for us to get serious about begging others to be reconciled to God. Until that disordered relationship is put back in place, the world will continue living in a Gen. 3 falling world.

John 1 – Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

A New Beginning

John 1:1-18

INTRO: Grew up in the church ALL THE TIME. “Midwest goodbye” I did things like: play computer games, read all the books in the library, watch movies, count all my dad’s books, one of the “fun” things I did: write a suggested sermon for my dad, on John 1. Titled, this will give you some insight into my mind at the time “A Very Short Sermon.” You could tell from a young age I was destined for where I am today! It planned to cover 1 verse, had 2 points, and I told my dad even he couldn’t go longer than 5 minutes on it! The 2 points were: The Word was With God, The Word was God. My Christology was on point! But now I actually get to preach that sermon, I’ve got 3 points, and we’re going to be here a lot longer than 5 minutes!

READ/PRAY (pg. 517)

-Similar themes/ideas to the past couple months in Genesis, light, darkness, God speaking, echoes of creation trickle down to this text.

-I want us to think this morning about the reality of the new creation that we have today. We’ve seen how history started, how our story intersects with that history, and how God’s plan from the beginning of the world was to send His Son into our story.

-We’re also coming up on the Advent season, in which we contemplate the reality of the incarnation (God himself took on flesh) and how we live in eager anticipation of that day.

-In short, I want us to use this Advent season as a time to better worship/adore God because of how He was worked in human history, but also because of how he’s worked in our individual stories. Each of us is here for a reason, because the message of hope that we remember at Christmas was shared with us.

In the Beginning (1-5)

-Sound familiar? Where have we seen a verse like that before?

-We don’t have new revelation today, but what we can do is look back and more faithfully interpret the text that God wrote. Paul’s idea “mirror dimly”

-Ever seen a window that’s super old so it distorts the image you’re trying to look through? That’s how the OT views Jesus, can see shapes/ideas, but not the correct image, it’s distorted. Now in the NT the window is fixed!

-So what does this tell us about the original creation all the way back in Gen. 1?

-Creation was a trinitarian act. The Father spoke, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the waters (Col. 1:16 “for by Him (Jesus) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, all things were created through him and for him.”)

-If we were able to see things through a spiritual instead of physical lens, if we could zoom into every particle in the universe, we’d find that Jesus holds it together. We exist because Jesus holds us together. If it weren’t for Jesus we would cease to be.

-One of the implications of that is that we need to be looking for areas where we see God at work. Since Jesus holds all things together, everything can be used to point to Him. Listening to a podcast this morning on the way we as Christians tend to look at culture as negative, but God commanded us in the garden to create culture. So art, buildings, music, theater all should point us to God, we should look for the areas in which they all point us to God!

-John is reminding us of God’s act of creation to point out that this is the beginning of a NEW kind of creation. Just as in the beginning God made something out of nothing, so with Jesus, God makes a child appear in Mary’s womb out of nothing.

-But does any remember HOW God creates? Gen. 1:3, “And God said…”

-The second reality we learned about God in Gen. 1 (after creator) is that God is a SPEAKING God.

-God’s Words carry meaning, and he’s chosen to use words to reveal himself to us. Words carry significance and meaning, so when we come to the words of the Bible we need to dig in to understand what God means when He uses them.

-Throughout the Old Testament God’s Word is his revelation of himself, Isaiah 55:10-11 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

-God’s word is connected to Himself. We can trust His Word because He is the source of all truth. Anytime we talk about words, I’m reminded of one of my least favorite quotes that I seem to stumble across at least yearly. “preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.”

-Sounds catchy! And at first glance you think “that makes sense!” Half of it’s right! We’re called to love in word & deed, our lives MUST be radically different, but half of it’s not. Rom. 10:14, “How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” God reveals himself to us through words and THE Word, Jesus Christ.

-What this means is just as the first creation came about THORUGH the Word Jesus, it’s the exact same thing with the NEW creation, it only comes about THROUGH the Word, Jesus.

Now we’re back to John 1 with the Word. John’s point is different than all the other Gospels because he’s beginning his book in the very beginning.

-John has a very high Christology, as we see in these first few verses, and John’s point in the beginning is to remind us of 2 thoughts that make up the gospel message: visible and invisible. The invisible reached out into the visible to make himself known as the Word. John then spends to rest of this passage talking about the interaction of the visible and the invisible.

-Vs. 2 reminds us that Jesus has always existed, and 3 reminds us what we saw in Col. 1, everything was made through him.

-But this creation isn’t JUST referring to physical creation, this also refers to invisible, spiritual creation, as seen in 4-5.

-This points to the reason Jesus came to earth, which is explicitly stated in Matt. 1:21, “he will save his people from their sins.” He will give them life.

-Interplay between life and light here.

-Pointing us back to Gen. where the light and the darkness were the first day of creation. Another evidence of this being a new, unique act of creation

-There’s even a sense of hope John uses to end this section: the light SHINES – present tense. The light is STILL SHINING in the darkness!

-This leads us to the next section, what do we do with the knowledge of the light? We bear witness, just like John the Baptist.

Bearing Witness (6-13)

-See God’s working again in John who was “sent from God…to bear witness about the light.”

-Notice just how explicitly John explains the role of the Baptist: witness, witness, witness. John wasn’t the light, he came to REFLECT the light back to the Son.

-Do you know how the moon works? The moon isn’t a source of light, the reason we can see the moon is because it reflects the light of the sun, which is why we end up with something called an eclipse, because we on earth, get in the way of the light.

-We can often do the same thing by getting in the way of the message of the gospel. So many people think we need to add rules and ideas and expectations on what it means to follow Christ, yet verse 12 tells us it’s very simple: believe in his name.

-I think the Christmas season is the perfect time to think about this idea because opening presents often leads to a sense of injustice. You see what someone else got you and go, “Shoot, I didn’t get you enough!” Or else you open their present and go “Well I wasted my money!” That defeats the purpose of receiving a gift!

-We operate the same way in the spiritual realm. We either try to atone for our own sins or clean up our own lives because we think we’re unworthy to receive salvation. Here’s the thing: we are! Because the point of our lives isn’t about us, it’s about Jesus, just like John made the goal of his life.

-A little later on in John, we see just how willing John was to be a witness and get out to the way of Jesus, toward the end of John 3, John the Baptist’s disciples came to him complaining that more people were being baptized by Jesus now, but John knows his job: to point to Christ, so he says one of the most helpful verses in the Bible: He must increase, but I must decrease.

-His entire aim and goal in his life was to be a witness to Jesus, to prepare the way for him. That’s the goal of every single one of us as Christians: to bear witness to who God is, to get out of the way so that people can see Christ working in us.

-Throughout the Old Testament there were hints that someone was going to be coming who would usher in a new era of history. We saw that with the line of Cain vs the line of Seth, or the seed of the woman vs. the seed of the serpent. God sent people, prophets, who would remind people to turn from their sins, repent, and believe in God. The problem is those who were supposedly anxiously waiting for him missed him. Completely.

-Think of those little kids who try so hard to stay up waiting for Santa but miss him every year. God’s chosen people, who had been given the prophecies and promises from old fell asleep and missed him when he came.

-A.W. Pink, “When the sun is shining in all its beauty, who are the ones unconscious of the fact? Who need to be told it is shining? The blind! How tragic, then, when we read that God sent John to ‘bear witness of the light.’ How pathetic that there should be any need for this! How solemn the statement that men have to be told ‘the light’ is now in their midst. What a revelation of man’s fallen condition.”

-How often do we miss the way God is working around us because we’re overly worried about appearances, or recognition, or are too busy worrying about ourselves? How many times do we fixate on how terrible our culture is instead of looking for the positives that are taking place around us?

-That’s why we need this next verse. Once you believe, God makes you a child of God. But how do we remain children of God?

-John reminds us that there is nothing we can do to ensure our salvation.

-not of blood – genealogy doesn’t matter, being born into a believing family doesn’t make you a believer. Going to church doesn’t make you a believer. Family heritage doesn’t make you a believer. Tradition doesn’t make you a believer. Even acts of “obedience” don’t make you a believer!

-not of the will of flesh – sincerity doesn’t save you. No matter how much you want it/desire it/hope for it, that won’t save you. On top of that, I can guarantee that your sincerity will fade.

-not of the will of man – effort can’t save you, because Isaiah reminds us that all our “righteous” deeds are as helpful for our salvation as ratty old rags. If you’ve ever tried to do better, just pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, eventually your effort will run out. What do you do then?

-Instead, we become children of God BY God’s grace alone. (we’ll see that in the next section)

-We’ve talked about this idea before: But can literally change your life! Think of news you get: you have cancer, BUT it’s easily treatable. I got in a car accident, BUT I’m fine.

-We were dead in our sins, BUT God has made us alive together with Christ. And how is that possible? This is where we get to the best news ever:

The Word Became Flesh (14-18)

-Literally, The Word became flesh and tabernacled/tented among us. The Message: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

-In the minds of the Jews, they would’ve heard tabernacled as a reminder of the Exodus. Same word used in the Greek version of the OT when it talks about the tabernacle. God gave his people instructions to build a tabernacle where his manifest presence/glory could dwell with his people, because no one could see God and live (Ex. 33:20). But notice what John says about Jesus, “WE HAVE SEEN.”

-Seismic shift: We go from no one can see God and live, to WE SAW HIM. That’s why I like what The Message says, he came and lived with us. We saw him, we ate with him, we touched him, we were WITNESSES to this truth, just like John the Baptist.

-Remember who this is: God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, becoming Emmanuel, God with Us.

-Why did Jesus do that? This is where it’s helpful to read/study/memorize catechisms, summaries of what the church has believed. One is the New City Catechism:

22: Why must the Redeemer be truly human?

That in human nature he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin; and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses.

23: Why must the Redeemer be truly God?

That because of his divine nature his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective; and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death.

-Not God’s Word, but takes ideas/summaries from God’s Word and puts them in a concise statement.

“We have seen his glory, full of grace and truth”

-The hope of the OT was that the whole world would see God’s glory, “For I knowtheir works and their thoughts, and the time is comingto gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory,” (Is. 66:18)

-Whose glory? The only Son – there’s a unique relationship. This is the one all of human history has pointed to. One author describes it as the OT is Promises Made, the NT is Promises Kept. All the promises of the OT find their fulfillment in Jesus, the Word made flesh.

-This is where we see worship radically changing after Jesus comes. Tabernacle – temple – anywhere because now we worship in spirit & truth.

-Then there’s a parenthetical note about John as a witness again in 15.

-Connects to the “full of grace and truth” in 14

-This fullness connects us as believers today to the same fullness of Jesus

-What do we get? We get “grace in place of grace.”

-This is demonstrating that both the OT (old covenant) and the NT (new covenant) are acts of grace, so what God is doing by sending his only Son is replacing one act of grace with a new act of grace in the gospel message of His one and only Son.

-We see the final expression of grace by God sending his son. This isn’t law versus grace, this is grace UPON grace! What this means is we move from a God who has given to his people to a God who has come to his people.

-Throughout the OT we see these hints of something to come that is far greater, and all those things are fulfilled in Jesus. We no longer need the shadow of the law because we have the light of Christ who has revealed himself to us!

So how do we respond to the reality that God took on flesh? 2 things:

1 –witness. I’ve told many people that for every pastor their job is one of preparation, but that’s also true for every Christian! We work together to prepare each other to grow more like Christ for the people they’ll interact with, or for coming face to face with God!

2 – worship. Apart from God we are dead in our sins, but from God we receive grace on top of grace. Because of Jesus moving into the neighborhood we now have eternal hope, and a day to look forward to when we will see God face to face.

Genesis 10-11 Sermon Manuscript

PLEASE NOTE: these are the notes I use to preach from, if you would like to hear them in context, please watch our YouTube video.

The Dispersion of the Peoples

Genesis 10:1-11:9

Membership in the church. 2 key passages

–2 Cor. 12 “¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. ¹⁴For the body does not consist of one member but of many.”

-We all have a part to play, integral member of the church

–Heb. 13 “⁷Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

¹⁷Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

-Who are your leaders? And who will I give an account for when I stand before Jesus?

-Walking into a church building doesn’t make me a Christian or a part of the church. (walking into the Target Center doesn’t make me an NBA player, wearing a jersey doesn’t make me a football player)

-How long does someone need to come to a church before they’re “a part”? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year?

-Think of membership like an embassy.

-Church isn’t God’s “plan B” it’s His intention to build the church.

-Been popular since I was in college to bash/complain about “the church” as if individuals are not contributing to any problems. This is part of what we’ve seen through Genesis – we’re sinners, all of us. EFCA SOF: “In union with Adam, human beings are sinners by nature and by choice, alienated from God, and under His wrath.” So what do you think happens when a bunch of sinners gather together regularly? Think sin becomes less of a problem, or more of a problem?

-Church is a group of sinners, saved by God’s ridiculous grace, who have covenanted to God and each other to love each other DESPITE the ways we sin against each other. This commitment, despite ethnic, gender, intelligence, gifting differences serves to demonstrate to the world a picture of God’s love for them.

-Also provides a different level of 2 things: support and accountability.

-Support: OSB prays for all our members, we all need each other to function properly according to 1 Cor. 12, you can know that no matter what happens you’ve got a family who will come around you

-Accountability: we’re not meant to survive alone. None of us can! I’ve had people here tell me when I say something too careless in my messages, I need that! I’m a sinner too! This means we’re going to be better together – God saves us individually, but then calls us/draws us into a new family.

-What does this have to do with Genesis? Great question! Generally what happens when people come together is sin gets amplified, that’s true in cities, in apartment buildings, and yes, even in the church. So what’s the solution to living near people? Great question, let’s take a look at today’s text!

READ/PRAY

The Table of Nations (10)

At this point in human history, we’ve got 8 people left on the face of the earth: Noah and his wife, 3 sons and their wives.

-We know that book is meant to serve as the introduction to the entire world and explain how things got where they were, specifically how Abram came to be, and then culminating in God’s chosen people, the Israelite nation.

-Thus, the purpose of this whole chapter is to describe the various nations that would have been surrounding Israel when Moses was writing this, centuries later. Longman: “This ‘genealogy’ is really a primitive linguistic, political map that reflects realities of a later time.”

-Showing what the world/cultural ideas were thousands of years ago

-First son listed:

Japheth (2-5)

-14 names listed here

-Don’t treat this like ancestry.com or geneaology.com the way we think of it today

-Names are here to make a point, each name is in for some reason, not necessarily every single person in the line

-Notice this line focuses primarily on sea-towns, or “coastland peoples”

-Second son listed:

Ham (6-20)

-We all remember what happened to Ham last week! If you weren’t here, Ham looked upon his father Noah’s nakedness and dishonored him.

-Has the biggest group with 30 names/groups

-His descendants primarily go to the southern side of the Mediterranean

-Again, most likely signifying that these were the most impressive people (line of Cain, seed of the serpent) and contains most of Israel’s enemies.

-Random excurses on this Nimrod guy.

-No one knows who he is or why he gets the significance he does. We know he was a mighty hunter, so much so that he gets a poem written about him

-Founded many cities that serve as enemies to Israel later on, also points back to Cain, who also “built” cities (seed of the serpent)

-Contrast this idea of Nimrod “building” places like Nineveh and Babel to Noah (and later on Abram) who “built” an altar.

-Also setting the foundation for what we’ll see in the next section, with the tower of Babel

-Finally, the third son:

Shem (21-31)

-Last because he’s the one whose eventually child will be Abram, the Father of Israel. His people (primarily) went further east than the other

-26 descendants

-Combine all the descendants up in these lists, and you get 70. There’s a couple other places in the Bible that pops up again:

–Exod. 1:5 “All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.” Israel is meant to serve as a picture of the world on a smaller scale.

–Luke 10:1 “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two (70) others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.” Similarly, Jesus’ disciples are meant to serve as a picture of the world on a micro scale, and they’re to go INTO all the world!

-and NOW that command is on us, to continue going out into all the world

Noah (1, 32)

-To wrap up this “table of the nations,” we end where we began, with “righteous and blameless” Noah. The second Adam who failed just like the first Adam.

-We read this with the knowledge of what happens next, and so would Moses’ first hearers, but we also need to remember that we read this with an eager anticipation of when the TRUE second Adam will come

-There’s a longing/desire to know where we fit in humanity, to enact the right changes, and even to be on the “right side of history” Do you want to know how to do that? Make sure you’re a part of the “seed of the woman” and not the “seed of the serpent” because at the end of all things, that’s the only hope we have.

-Let’s see how this dispersion began. The genealogy serves as the ending of Noah’s story, then chapter 11 begins with the explanation of how and why this dispersion took place.

The Tower of Babel (11)

-This first verse tells us that this is a flashback from the previous verse. Multiple times throughout chapter 10 it tells us each person had their own language.

-Shinar. Where have we seen that before? 10:10, suddenly we see why Nimrod was mentioned!

-Some people have taken this to mean that Nimrod built the tower

-Shinar was the home of Babel back in that same verse, this is focusing in on something that was just mentioned/alluded to back then

-This reads like a technological advancement, like human ingenuity coming to play.

-One of the things that I find fascinating reading through Genesis is how much sin still affects things even through today. How many people would say the world is slowly becoming a better place?

-Looked through a book over the summer titled ‘Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know’

-“Since 1820, the size of the world’s economy has grown more than a hundredfold. Over the past 200 years, the world population grew somewhat less than eightfold.”

-As late as 1820, nearly 84% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, that dropped to 66% by 1910, 55% by 1950, and 42% by 1981. In 2018 that number dropped to 8.6%, meaning that by 2030 (assuming trends continue) less than 5% of the global population will live in extreme poverty

-Famine’s have essentially disappeared worldwide, except in war zones. “In Sub-Saharan Africa, the average food supply per person per day rose from approximately 1,800 calories in 1961 to 2,449 calories in 2017.”

-Last one: the global tree canopy increased by 2.24 million sq. km (865,000 sq. mil.) between 1982-2016.

-Even when we’re not aware, good things still are happening, God is still on his throne, and His common grace means incredible things will continue to happen

-They’re not just building a tower, the tower gets special notice/significance, but this is a whole way of life centered around the tower.

-Some archeological excavations have uncovered temples from this era in human history, would have been what is known as a ziggurat, series of increasingly smaller levels.

-Moses tells us their hopes/dreams with this: the top will reach the heavens (the realm of the gods) they will make a name for themselves so they won’t have to be dispersed.

-One of the commands God gave to His people was to “fill the earth” that means they have to go out and actually go out into filling the earth!

-We know that’s not the primary/only problem, because one of the things His chosen people do is settlein the Promised Land

-I’ve even heard/read that some people argue that this is why cities are inherently bad/evil. But what they forget is that in the new heavens and the new earth, one of the most distinct features is: a new city, Jerusalem!

-Let’s admit, there are some unique things about cities that can exacerbate/accentuate the evil proclivities of the human heart, but those tendencies are there without cities! It’s some of what happens when a large group of sinners gather in 1 place! Yet another reason the church is such a unique entity – the one place where sinners can gather together in close proximity and have your sins become LESS of a problem!

-The whole goal/purpose of this city/tower is to build on their pride (make a name for themselves) and allow them to disobey the explicit commands of God.

-This is a theme throughout all of human history. People are still people, sin is still sin, and we are not prone to obedience toward God. D.A. Carson For the Love of God: “People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

-I’ve been listening to the big biography about Alexander Hamilton recently (inspired by the musical) and it honestly just sounds like the guy wanted to build a tower in his image!

-But we tend towards the same things – wanting to be known/ recognized/ acknowledged instead of trying to be faithful. Another theme we’ve seen is what’s considered success in God’s economy is VERY different than ours!

-That’s their goal, what’s God’s response? Look at vs. 5

-“came down” is worded VERY intentionally. Look how the builders described their “impressive” tower, and God still has to “come down” to look at it. That’s a really good summary of how God views most of our feeble attempts at building a name for ourselves!

-Scene in Avengers Endgame that encapsulates this idea really well, spoiler alert, but if you haven’t seen it by now that’s not my fault! Thanos, big bag guy intent on wiping out half of every living thing has an adopted daughter Gamora that’s not scared of anyone/anything, attempts to kill Thanos and is still referred to as “little one.” That’s kind of how God views these human attempts to reach him, apart from faith in Him.

-After coming down to see what they’re trying to do, God decides to confuse their language, further complicating human relationships (and confusing them to this day!) They left defeated, unable to communicate, and finally spread across the earth.

-Name is Babel: in Babylonian literature it means “the gate of God” in Hebrew it means “confusion.” Babylon serves as a key city throughout the rest of the OT too, but it gets its start here.

-What in the world does this story mean for today?

-First, this is the origination of the diversity of languages we have across the world today (side note, just so you’re aware, the Bible wasn’t originally written in English!)

-Second, this lack of communication is a demonstration of the Fall. The OT has a couple texts that point to a new day coming when language will no longer be a barrier to human relationships. Let’s take a look at a couple:

–Zeph. 3:9 “at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord.”

–Acts 2 – “⁵Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. ⁶And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. ⁷And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?”

-Today, God sends us to speak in every language, phrasing, understanding we can to point others to him. Do you speak of Him in every area of your life? What do you think it would look like to not build towers to yourself, but instead point everything to God? How can we as a church ensure we’re not building a tower of Babel, and instead are using every opportunity we have to point others to God?

Pastor Mike's Musings

All posts for the month November, 2021

Peace – Sermon Manuscript

John 1 – Sermon Manuscript

Genesis 10-11 Sermon Manuscript

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