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Church Offices – Sermon Manuscript

-Pre-marital counseling, part of the goal is to break down some bad ideas about what healthy marriage looks like

-Most of the time people either adopt the way their parents relationship worked, or react to that and refuse to do anything like their parents! But no 2 couples are the same! And all the best plans about splitting everything 50/50 get thrown out the window in about the first week of marriage when reality sets in. But it’s still important to talk about and ensure you’re on the same page: who cooks, who does the dishes, who cleans, who does the laundry, who balances the budget? 

-The reality is in marriage there’s no such thing as both person giving 50%, it takes both people in the marriage giving 100% every day, and the same is true in the church (of which the marriage and the family are supposed to serve as an example, a picture, as we’ll see later in this sermon). The church requires that you actually give something, it requires that you give of your time, talents, and treasures, and it requires all of us to do that so that we can be a healthy body. But when we think about the church, the way we structure and organize the church tends to be assumed instead of explicitly talked about (just as a husband and wife can begin to assume things about their spouse!) So today we’re going to explicitly talk about the roles in the church, the offices the Lord has given to us to function well, and the requirements of those offices in the life of our body.

READ/PRAY

  1. What is Church Polity?

-Just a fancy word to say structure of the church. Taken from GRK polis (city) think of Minneapolis: water (Dakota word) + city

-Many different ways the church has been organized throughout history, and all of them appeal to the Bible (in some form) for their position! 3 primary positions (of which there are some subsets of positions)

-Episcopalian (Episcopal and RCC) argue more for a natural outgrowth from the Bible instead of explicit biblical texts. Make a big deal out of the “bishop” title and make it distinct from elder (I, and many other scholars, would argue they’re synonymous) 

-Presbyterian: church elects elders (called a session), those elders are part of a “Presbytery” (state, city) (taken from GRK), some of the elders from the Presbytery are a part of the General Assembly (nation)

-Congregational: congregation itself is the highest governing body of the church, from the doctrine of the priesthood of ALL believers, corresponds to the way the early church functions (things are presented to the whole church), but among congregational there is a WIDE variety of thoughts and opinions, here’s the list of examples from Grudem’s Systematic Theology.

-I would like to propose a slightly different approach than any of these, and if you have sermon notes, you’ll find some blanks to fill it: Christ ruled, Elder led, Deacon served, Congregationally governed. I’m sure I stole all those pieces from somewhere, but I’ve lost track of where I found it! 

-I tried to make it look like Grudem’s chart here:

-First and foremost: Christ ruled. Unlike the way we Americans tend to think, the church is not a democracy, the church is a theocracy with a King who rules over us. That means our job isn’t to vote people in and out of office, our job isn’t to try to find a constituency who represents us, our job is to submit to His will. 

-Story of person who voted no to everything because nothing should be unanimous. 

-If we’re working to submit all our decisions to the will of God, and we’re all keeping in step with the Spirit, there should be unanimous votes on a regular basis! And notice the arrows connecting God to each position below: since we’re a theocracy, God is the one who appoints, the church looks to affirm and follow where God has called.

-Congregationally Governed: this means the highest form of authority in the church is the congregation, but again, this is not a democracy. The congregation is charged with affirming leaders in the church, looking for ways to honor each other, working to keep the unity of the Spirit in our midst, but it’s not their job to make every decision in the church. Instead, the congregation is called to submit to the leaders of the church (I realize that’s a 4 letter word today, that’s a topic for a different time)

-Elder led: God raises up qualified men to serve in this office (listen to last week for why I said men), and I put them at the bottom because in God’s kingdom those who are called to leadership roles are called to be the servant and others oriented. The world views authority through solely through the lens of power, exploitation and selfishness, but that’s not the way God’s kingdom works.

-Finally, Deacon served: God also gifts certain people in His body to help in various service-oriented roles to help the congregation operate well. We’ll get to that one in a minute too.

-I don’t see these offices as optional in the church of Jesus Christ – if God has given us instructions for how best to operate and function as His bride, we should follow them! So what are each of these 2 offices, and how did we come to have only 2 instead of the many others something like the RCC has?

-Other passages: Phil. 1:1, Titus 1:5, 

-Church history: Didache (GRK Teaching) (“The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations”)

-Definition of the officer, PUBLICLY RECOGNIZED. That means a pastor can’t be a pastor in his own mind, it requires the affirmation of a church, which means someday when I retire, I lose the title of “Pastor” and just become “Mike.” 

-1 office that no longer exists today is that of Apostle, because it requires 2 things: being an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus (Acts 1:22) and being specifically called by Jesus to be His Apostle. The Bible doesn’t have any other leadership offices described in the Bible.

  • What is an Elder?

-First up the name. Throughout the NT these 4 words are used to refer to the same office (pastor is the word for shepherd, think of pasture)

-What you should immediately think of when you think of this office is a shepherd, which is connected to the word “Pastor.” These words have become incredibly convoluted today, with people using all sorts of different words (clergy, minister, teacher). My personal preference is: pastor to refer to those who are paid elders, elders to refer to unpaid (lay) elders. Same office, different time commitment and time expectations. But the primary focus is shepherd:

-Peter, in his First Epistle writes to the elders of the church:

-Notice a few things here, after the shepherd. First is whose flock is it? God’s! We’re only here for a season, Jesus oversees His flock forever. 

-Willingly: called by God and affirmed by the congregation (Hold onto that, we’ll come back to it)

-Eagerly serving, hence the elders being on the bottom of my chart

-Being examples: do you ever tell someone to be like you? Seems prideful at first glance, doesn’t it? But the Bible tells us to! Paul even says to imitate him just like he imitates Christ. And the reality is we’re all copying someone, the question is does the person we’re copying make us more or less like Jesus? This is why voting to affirm elders is such a weighty issue that should not be taken lightly! It’s not a popularity contest, not looking for representation of your pet project, we’re looking to affirm the men God has appointed to serve as the examples of this body. 

-Which gets me to another passage (briefly, then we’ll go to the main one!) Paul commands Timothy to not be quick in appointing elders, and that’s because of what I just said: we’re going to become like them, so be careful as you affirm elders in the church! Since we’re now in 1 Timothy, we’ll go back a couple chapters to the section we read at the beginning:

-There’s a similar list in Titus 1 that adds a few pieces, and putting it all together in a running list you get this (broken down into do and don’ts)

-There are 2 big things I want you to notice about this list, first is what in this list is unique to an elder that’s not the call of every Christian? 

-Carson quote

-Able to teach! Maybe “not be a new convert” because that would leave some believers out, but the rest of the pieces in here are what every Christian should be striving for, there are other passages that explicitly command these other pieces of all Christians. Let’s think of just a couple:

-Hospitable: 1 Pet. 4:9 “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” That’s for everyone! 

-Not be an excessive drinker. Do you think this means that because this is on the list for elders the rest of you can go get rip roaring drunk all the time? No! Eph. 5:18 “Don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit.” 

-One more: self-controlled. Gal. 5:23, if you are Spirit filled (all Christians) then self-control should be evident in your life. Do you get the point? The 1 exception is “able to teach” because eventually everyone will stop being a new convert.

-The second thing I want you to note is how many of these are character traits, and how many of them are gifts/skills? Once again, the 1 gifting or skill required is “able to teach.” That’s it! The rest is character traits that should be the markers of any Christian who is growing in Christlikeness, as Carson said the list is fairly unremarkable, isn’t it?

-Now, one piece connected to last week: because the skill is teaching, that limits this office to qualified men, which is why our elders are only men here. That’s not a way of looking to denigrate or demean women, it’s a way of following God’s good design for His church.

-Where I would argue the church has run into problems is by NOT using this list and instead adopting other expectations for what should mark leaders, and in many cases the other list is worldly.

-I think back to some of my experiences with elders in previous churches. One church I served at was in an area with an Air Force Base nearby, and the military’s idea of leadership is a little different than Jesus’s idea of leadership! One of the elders decided he needed to teach a Sunday school class on leadership because the church just didn’t understand it. He said leadership was about taking charge and telling people what to do (not a bully?), when I asked about Jesus’s example about washing the disciple’s feet I was told that was for a different context. 

-Friends, this list that God has given us isn’t an optional add on. And how often do our expectations for leaders adopt worldly models instead of biblical models? We look for a CEO or someone with business experience instead of someone who’s faithfully following after God, and what we read in Scripture is God chooses what the world thinks is foolish. 

-But as you remember, this isn’t the only office listed in 1 Timothy 3! Paul goes on to 1 other:

  • What is a Deacon?

-Once again, we start with the name. Deacon is used all over the NT, but most of the time it’s translated as “servant,” and once Latin became the common language, it got translated into “minister” (do you see why I think everyone’s confused about terms today!) Here’s a couple verses that you may recognize where the word is used:

-So in one sense, every one of us is called to “deacon” each other, we’re all supposed to look for opportunities to serve each other. But there’s a difference between a general gift and being called to a church office, and this is also true of the elder/shepherd role. I know some women who are MUCH more gifted than I am pastorally (as shepherds), but that doesn’t mean they should be serving in the OFFICE of pastor/elder. Same here, just because all of us are called to serve each other doesn’t mean everyone is called to serve in the OFFICE of deacon, offices are recognized by the church to help serve in some specific way.

-Not mentioned a lot in the NT (unless you count all the times “servant” is used), but notice that Paul specifically says “likewise” in 1 Tim. Connecting it to the office of elder, and I would argue that we see it develop in 1 other place that we’ll get to after we look at the qualifications of a Deacon.

-First, do you see all the similarities between the 2 lists? Again, nothing extraordinary about this list, someone who is living a faithful Christian life.

-Now, one thought that may be slightly contentious, but I would argue that the flow of this section matters greatly, because I would argue that this office is open to women. See, God’s design for the church doesn’t prohibit women from all leadership in the church, women are VITAL to God’s good plans, but the office that is also open to women is Deacons. Why do I think that?

-Vs. 11, I would argue should instead be translated at “Women” referring to women deacons, so then the flow of this passage is:

-If this office is only mentioned once, what should deacons do?

–Acts 6, while it doesn’t list the office of Deacon, most people believe this is the origination of the office, where we see what Deacons are called to do, as well as a glimpse of what Elders are to focus on. Remember, not better/less than, both are essential for a healthy church to flourish, and both are appointed by God and recognized by the congregation.

-Unity was being threatened, so a group was set apart from the congregation to work towards building the harmony that only comes about through the gospel.

-In our Western ears this sounds like it’s creating a class system: Twelve are too good to wait on tables, but that’s not what’s happening, it’s splitting the needs up so everyone can better serve in their giftings and callings. If the elders were busy dealing with the daily food distribution it would take time away from them focusing on prayer and the ministry of the word (their primary task), doesn’t mean they’d never wait on tables, it means that’s not their primary focus.

-I’ll tell a personal anecdote from my ministry. In my first role, I was tasked with leading a children’s VBS. Can I do it? Sure! But I absolutely despised every piece of it! I wasn’t particularly good at planning it out, wasn’t good at coming up with a theme, wasn’t good at engaging the kids, I’ll be honest this was not in my top 5 skill set (probably not top 500 skill set)! But it succeeded when I recruited someone who was both passionate and gifted at it! It wasn’t below me at all, but it wasn’t the best use of my time. Similarly here: elders are primarily called to Word based ministry (of which I’d say prayer is a piece) and deacons are primarily called to service based ministry, and look at the outcome of this:

-“The Word of God spread.” Because the church was following God’s design and plan.

-So my proposal: Christ ruled, Elder led, Deacon served, and congregationally governed so that the Word of God may continue to spread, that the church may be built, that the saints can use their gifts, and that most importantly God would be honored and glorified in us and through us. 

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by mikethestrand on January 26, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 26, 2025

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Gender Roles in the Church – Sermon Manuscript

-Swimming, going off into the deep end today, as there’s some issues that we can’t paint with a broad brush on. Today’s message is one of those. 

-Make sure you have your Bibles out! We’ve got a bunch of texts to look at today!

-We’ll also be dealing with some difficult hermeneutical issues where some verses at first glance seem to be contradicting each other, so it’s important for us to understand the way all the pieces of the Bible fit together, otherwise the Bible is prone to misinterpretation and mis-application. 

Today’s topic is: gender roles in the church. We have talked about gender roles in marriage before, in our series through Ephesians, but today’s topic is a little different, and the question before us is: what does the Bible say are the appropriate roles to which we’re called? Is there anything that’s off limits to anyone? 

-This is not a major, but it is a distinctive of the EFCA and of our church. Even if you don’t agree with us on this issue, you’re welcome to join us, get plugged in and involved, as long as you know this is where we land. 

-Before we dive in, let’s read the first thing the Bible tells us about gender:

READ/PRAY

As we begin to think through gender roles, there are 4 primary “camps” that have different conclusions about this issue. We’ll begin with those 2 on the outside: first – feminism. 

Feminism argues that women are superior to men, thus women should lead everything. 

-I’ve actually gotten into trouble with people on this label before, so let me clarify. If your mind goes to women voting, working outside the home, or being fully equal to men when you heard the word “feminism” that’s not what it means today. If you search “fifth wave feminism” you’ll see a few articles talking about the way feminism has shifted over the past 100 years to focus now on things like intersectionality, or some even argue that 4th wave feminism is reacting to being “postfeminist”

–Within feminism, there’s a tendency to appeal to cases of abuse, of domineering, and of aggression and use that as the reason why all men are evil. They also have a tendency to throw out the Bible for the sake of experience or philosophical ideas. NOW – experience in and of itself is not bad, nor is philosophy, the problem is when those become the measuring stick instead of using the Bible which is dangerous! This leads them to generally be pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage because the standard of judgment is simply what feels right or fighting for whomever is marginalized. 

Patriarchy is the other side that we want to avoid. 

This takes the opposite approach in that men are superior to women, thus women are expected to remain passive and unengaged while the men make all the decisions. This has led to some immense oppression and neglect for women, and has led to the detriment of the church because women have not been encouraged to use their gifts, meaning half of the church isn’t involved in the life of the church. Think of what it would be like if you neglected or marginalized half of your body! Unfortunately, many people view this and complementarian as synonyms, but they are distinct positions, and some who claim complementarian are actually patriarchalists, so it gets difficult to define.

-Neither of these are good, so we’re down to these 2:

Egalitarianism argues that gender distinctives were part of the Fall, thus in this New Covenant area that we currently reside in, there is to be no distinctive anywhere. 

Any role that is open to men should be open to women as well. Where this is distinct from feminism is egalitarians will actually argue from the Bible, which is good! They appeal to passage like Gal. 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave not free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Their basic premise is that any gender role distinctive in the Bible are exclusively cultural, thus they are not applicable to today. This was the view of the college and seminary I attended, thus I’ve had to wrestle through this issue pretty intimately!

Where the EFCA, and South Suburban land is:

Complementarianism:

Coined in 1987 in Danvers, Massachusetts leading to the Danvers Statement, Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CAVEAT) 

-QUOTE

-Complementarians believe that men and women have distinct and unique roles to fulfill in the home and in church. This is based on passages that we’ll dig in to later, like 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; rather; she is to remain quiet.” 

-‘Where We Stand in the EFCA’

-Part of the difficulty, then is the old question: how far is too far? It’s one thing to ascribe to complementarianism theoretically, it’s a different thing to ascribe to it in practice. That’s where some who claim to be complementarian are practically patriarchs, and others who claim it are practically egalitarians. Within complementarianism there is a different scale. So those are waters we’ll be swimming in during our time together today: what does it mean to be complementarian, and what does that look like?

  1. Both Men and Women Are Created in the Image of God (Gen. 1)

This is where God begin, thus it’s where we’ll begin, and it should be a bit of a “well…duh!” but if it’s important enough for God to say it, it’s important enough for us to be reminded of it. 

-Both men and women are created in the image of God. Neither sex can claim to be “better” than the other because we both are created in the image of God. And both being created that way is “very good.” It is very good that we have men and women. 

-But let’s look at 2:18, A helpmate, a companion, a suitable other. This isn’t demeaning or belittling to Adam or Eve, this is necessary. In fact, this word ezer helper here is used to describe God in places like Psalm 54:4 “God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.” Psalm 118:7, “The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.” Adam needed Eve to fulfill God’s mandate in his life, just as Eve needed Adam to fulfill God’s mandate for her life. This is not a greater than/less than, this is a beautiful outworking of our genders for the fullness that God has intended in our lives. 

-This is why we throw out feminism and patriarchy, BOTH sexes are equal in dignity, value, and worth. There is no better or less than in genders when it comes to salvation, to gifting, or calling. “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” In God’s eyes, no gender is superior. 

-At the same time, notice that Eve isn’t the one held accountable for her sin in Gen. 3, God comes to Adam and asks him what he’s done. 

-This means that for men, there’s liability or accountability that women won’t have. 

-Men – you will be judged for how well the set the spiritual climate of your home. Yet both men and women are called by God and used by Him, let’s look at some examples of that.

  1. Both Men and Women Are Used By God (Judges 4, John 4, Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12)

-This point should be another “Well…duh!” point for you! 

-Nowhere in the Bible does it say that ONLY one gender can be used by God to fulfill his mission of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. Think of just a few chapters later in Genesis 18 when the Lord tells Abraham and Sarah that they would have a kid in their old age. Sarah isn’t treated as lesser than or ignored, but God addresses her directly in confirming that they’d have a kid.

-Or think of Miriam, the sister of Moses in Ex. 15 after Pharoah and his army have been rushed by the Red Sea:

-Or one of the most often mentioned people is Deborah in Judges 4. 

-This is one of the most cited examples by Egalitarians for their position that every position should be available to men and women. 

-Question in seminary: “Deborah was a prophet, judge and leader in Israel. Does this affect your view of women in ministry today?” I didn’t score very highly on my answer, and the prof who generally didn’t interact with our posts sent me a lengthy reply about why I was wrong. So as complimentarians, what do we do with this idea that Deborah was a leader? It’s a GREAT reminder that we NEED to be encouraging women to use their gifts for the sake of the body! 

-Imperative to distinguish between that which is DEscriptive and that which is PREscriptive. 

-There’s a lot of things that are descriptive in the Bible that we shouldn’t emulate. Abraham had multiple wives. Moses had a temper and killed an Egpytian. Notice that after those stories it DOESN’T say “go and do likewise.” Or even closer to the story of Deborah – Samson, who was a hot mess! His life reads like a season of The Bachelor. Again, doesn’t say “go and be like Samson”

-One thing the text does NOT say: Deborah was a priest. Those who served as Priests in the OT HAD to be men. There is no instance of a women “priestess” in the Bible. So we already see that there is some distinction between the roles of men & women in the OT. But does that change under the New Covenant, as some have argued? 

-John 4 the woman at the well. Verse 27 Think of this woman’s testimony! And she willingly runs and shares it!

-Jesus thought both men and women were crucial for faithful ministry.

-Think of Mary and Martha and Lazarus in John 11:5, Again, we see that Jesus ministered to both men and women, and both men and women were used by God. 

-We also read that women traveled with Jesus and the 12 and supported Jesus during His ministry (Luke 8)

-BUT there’s again a distinction. 

-How many of the 12 that Jesus called were women? 0 

-Some have argued that Jesus didn’t want to upset the social norms, but do you really think Jesus had any issues upsetting the social norms that weren’t applicable to them? He seemed to push back to any and every issue that needed! Sabbath, tithing, lusting, giving, the law, relationships with Gentiles…to name just a few. So all that to say, that again there seems to be a distinction between the roles of men and women, even in how Jesus ministered to people.  

-Also important, is that spiritual gifts are not gendered.

Romans 12:3-8. Prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, mercy. None of these say only for women OR men.

-At the end of Romans, Paul beings by thanking Phoebe, a woman, and in the list of names are both men AND women who are using their gifts for the sake of the church. 

-1 Corinthians 12:4-13.

Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues. 

-Again, doesn’t say only for women OR men. Open to everyone, regardless of the gender.

-We’ve seen God doesn’t care about which gender you are in order to use you, and that God equips everyone regardless of their gender for the sake of the church. But, that doesn’t mean that any role in the church is open to anyone. 

-One of the greatest disservices in the church is encouraging people in areas of weakness for the sake of being “nice.” Front row seat to this with music, but you’ve all seen it on American Idol! I had a friend who only watched the first 2 episodes every season. 

  1. Everyone Isn’t Called to Every Role (Eph. 4, 1 Cor. 11 & 14, 1 Tim. 2)

-Before we dig into this, one note for us to keep in mind. God’s Word is sufficient, and I would argue a lot more clear on how the church is supposed to be ordered than many people want to admit. One of the things we need to realize is the church isn’t like any other earthly institution, it’s actually completely alien to the world! The church is supposed to be an outpost of heaven, therefore we need to order ourselves differently from the world and follow the Bible where it commands us, but no further, that’s where we start to get into trouble and start demanding people follow man-made rules.

–Eph. 4 Notice how the body builds itself up: “proper working of each individual part.”

-Don’t belittle or diminish your role and gift in the church! I think this is part of where confusion about gender roles come from, in God’s alien kingdom, one gift isn’t better than the other. Many of those gifts that aren’t seen are the most important. There are people that come here on a regular basis just to clean and organize this room! Yes, some gifts are more visible than others, but don’t belittle your gift at the expense of wishing you had a different gift. (1 Cor. 12:27-31 addresses this issue)

-There are a couple key passages that we need to deal with to understand this issue, and as I said, we’re going to go wading through some weeds here. 

-1 Corinthians 14:32-35. (1020)

At first glance, this seems to be quite restrictive, doesn’t it? So how do we faithfully exegete these verses, and then apply them to today? 

Remember: spiritual gifts are not gendered, so now turn back a page to 1 Corinthians 11. 

1 Corinthians 11-14 are all a part of the same section dealing with the question: what should we do when we gather as the church? What does it look like? 

-1 Cor. 11:2-16. (1017-1018)

-Notice especially verse 5. So this is in the gathering where women are praying and prophesying. 

-So how do we reconcile these 1 Cor. 11 with 1 Cor. 14? 

-Some have argued that Paul’s prohibition here is exclusively cultural, and not applicable to today. They compare it to a passage like: 1 Corinthians 16:20. “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” One commentator said, “Greet each other with a hearty handshake!” 

-3 words: context, context, context. 

-This whole section is a reminder that what we do when we gather is supposed to build each other up. Even the spiritual gifts that we are given are supposed to be used to build each other up and help us in our walk with the Lord. 

-Let’s read 1 Cor. 14:26-35. Orderly Worship.

-We’ve got this leadership that oversees and judges the prophecies that are being made. This is a position of authority in the church, thus it impacts who can serve in this role. Paul’s prohibition here doesn’t mean that women aren’t supposed to do anything but attend on Sunday morning, instead he’s saying that in the judgment of prophecies, women are not to oversee. We don’t have time to get into the nuances of what constitutes a prophecy today, that’s a discussion for a different time, but we do see that women are encouraged to pray and prophecy in church, but not sit in judgment about the validity of the prophecies. There’s a big distinction between the 2! 

1 Timothy 2:8-15 (991)

-Specifically verse 12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” 

-Once again, people have argued that this was contextual, and thus does not carry weight for us today. Letter was written to Timothy who was at Ephesus, primary god was Artemis who was a woman, thus many women in Ephesus were what we would call feminists. (false argument, Artemis also had male priests) But Paul doesn’t ground his reason for this in the Artemis worship – it’s grounded in pre-fall creation, signifying that as long as man is created first, and then Eve created second, this prohibition remains in effect. Meaning, it’s still in effect today, and will continue to be until Christ returns. 

-There is an element that is counter-cultural here, look at verse 11: “Let a woman learn” Women had no place to be taught and learn apart from the home.

-Now, we have to ask the question here: what kind of teaching? Because once again this cannot be an absolute prohibition because we’ve got other passages like:

Titus 2:3-4

2 Timothy 1:5

Acts 18:26

Colossians 3:16

-We see other places in the Bible, even in Paul’s writings, women are encouraged to teach! 

-Then what kind of teaching is Paul talking about restricting in 1 Tim.? Remember that we saw in the spiritual gifts passage that some people are given the gift of teaching. But not everyone is given that gift! So not everyone is called to teach. So just because you’re a man doesn’t mean you should be teaching in the church if that’s not your gift.

-James 3:1

-Doug Moo, “While the word [teaching] can be used more broadly to describe the generally ministry of edification that takes place in various ways, the activity usually designated by teach is plainly restricted to certain individuals who have the gift of teaching. This makes it clear that not all Christians are engaged in teaching. In the pastoral epistles, teaching always has this restricted sense of authoritative doctrinal instruction.” 

-Thus 2 Timothy gives us 2 restrictions: women are not to teach Christian doctrine to men, and they are not to exercise authority over men in the church. 

-That being said, when does a boy become a man? Where do we draw the line where we should be encouraging women to teach and serve in various areas, and not others? What constitutes Christian doctrine? What does it mean to “exercise authority over”? Great questions! I don’t have time to answer them today! I’m just trying to give an overview of this! 

-Part of the difficulty is this position and idea has been used throughout history to marginalize women, which goes contrary to what the Bible commands! I think part of it is because many people are scared to disobey the Bible (good concern!) but that leads them to forgetting to encourage and foster women to serve in the church. (except for in women’s ministry and the nursery…)

-So what does that mean for us? Here at South Suburban, you’ll see women helping us worship God through singing, encouraging us through praying, reading Scripture to us, sharing their testimonies of God how is working in their lives to encourage us, in fact our staff is primarily comprised of women using their gifts, BUT you won’t see a women preaching. Again I don’t have time for this, but part of it gets to the role of preaching in the church being one of authority and speaking on behalf of God to his people (not something to take lightly!)

But this is also why I don’t want to end with the prohibition passages! Because:

  1. Everyone Is Called to Serve Within Their Gifts (1 Cor. 12)

-Everyone here has been uniquely gifted by God for the sake of building each other up. Within the spiritual realm there is a unique sense of equality between all the gifts where we all need each other to function in a healthy manner. 

1 Cor. 12:21

-Similarly, men cannot say to women “I have no need of you,” or women to men “I have no need of you.” Instead, we all need each other to build each other up and encourage each other to become more like Christ.

-Friends, this means none of you are off the hook from using your gifts to serve Christ’s body here! It requires all of us to give of ourselves, it requires us to be obedient to what God has commanded, even the sticky and difficult parts, but, it’s also completely worth it. God’s ways are best, and it’s only be faithfully following in His ways that we’ll find life to the full.

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by mikethestrand on January 19, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 19, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/19/gender-roles-in-the-church-sermon-manuscript/

The Practices of the Church – Sermon Manuscrip

-Family habits/practices

-Christmas was a BIG deal in my family growing up! We’d have a whole services before we were allowed to open presents. This was in addition to whatever church services we were also a part of. In my younger years, I latched on to this and planned out the whole thing (mostly so I’d know exactly how much time was left before I could open presents). 

-Got together with my cousins this year, we pulled out the same lyric sheet we’ve used since before I was born.

-Summer time at the cabin, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, every family has celebrations that mark the changing of seasons, but in the family of God, what are those things? How do we mark time according to God’s plan?

READ/PRAY

-Last week we looked at the reality that God has always had a people he’s called out from the world to be His representatives to the rest of the world (Jesus says we’re supposed to be salt and light: preserving and shining into the darkness)

-3 markers that must be in place to be considered a church: preaching the gospel, regular celebration of the sacraments (or ordinances, we’ll get to that), and church discipline. 

-Preaching of the gospel is commitment to the Word of God, church discipline is something I’ve talked about before (Matt. 18 gives clear instructions), but what are the sacraments of the church? And how many are there? Because if any of you have any Roman Catholic friends, they would tell you there are 7 sacraments (the word matters greatly, but hold on to it): 

-When Protestants came along, and with it a renewed focus on God’s Word alone, the question became how many did Jesus give us? 2 (very small minority say 3, based on John 13:14 “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Most Protestants have argued that’s a call to service, not an ordinance)

  1. What is an ordinance? 

-What term should we use? Historically, it’s been either a sacrament or an ordinance, and I use them interchangeable, although generally Protestants have preferred ordinance to sacrament to distinguish our beliefs from RCC.

-Sacrament refers to a mystery, the mysterious way grace is given from God to his people. Ordinance refers to “ordained” and attempts to bring the focus on the things Jesus ordained for His followers to do. 

-The other piece to note is what makes these sacraments effective? Is it merely taking a shot of grape juice and tiny cracker getting grace? RCC would say yes, we would say no: it’s connected to the Word & faith

-What does the EFCA say? Here’s statement 7 of our SOF, notice the later half of this statement: 2 ordinances, express the gospel (connection to God’s Word), requirement of faith, and they both “confirm and nourish” that is they do something. 

-There are spiritual realities/implications to literally everything we do, that was one of my biggest takeaways from the series in Revelation last year, we’re either actively living out the realities of heaven, or we’re actively living out the realities of hell.

-And we see this playing out in real time around us right now! Rise in people who say they’re “spiritual but not religious” or I was just reading this past week about people who believe in miracles has gone up for the first time in America in years! That’s where Paul will say “whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God,” we’re supposed to do everything as a way of living as citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth. 

-This should excite you! It excites me! Because it means everything we do has a deeper meaning and significance than any of us realize. We have the opportunity to live holy, set apart lives which has bearing on our eternal existence. That’s why what we do on earth matters! Friends, the way you spend your time, the way you spend your money, the way you spend your words all are loaded with eternal significance. 

-Which is also true of the sacraments or ordinances. Seemingly normal, insignificant things that are loaded with massive spiritual implications and meaning. Things that God has chosen to bind His people to each other and to Himself! Practices that Jesus began and connect us all the way back to Him, practices that tie us to all of the church throughout all of history.

  • Baptism 

-First is baptism, because it’s meant to be one of the first steps of obedience for a Christian. If you read through the NT you see faith connected to baptism repeatedly, and it all starts with Jesus in the great commission at the end of Matthew.

-What’s the sign that someone is a disciple? Baptism! Notice that it gives us 1 instruction too: in the name of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)

-Initially, baptism was immediate. As soon as someone was saved, they looked for water to dunk them in. As time went on, they started realizing that some people were claiming conversion for cultural influence, so they added a season of catechesis, education and training in Christianity to ensure that those who wanted to be baptized were truly saved and walking with the Lord.

-However, because of this intimate link between salvation and baptism, one of the debates was whether or not someone who wasn’t baptized was actually saved! One debate was imagine that someone confesses that Jesus is Lord, and on the way to the waters of baptism, they fall and break their neck and die, will they be with Jesus? Yes – salvation comes by faith alone in Christ alone apart from anything else, BUT that doesn’t mean that baptism is an optional tag on for a Christian. 

-Gregg Allison quote. To be a Christian means working to obey and follow all of Jesus’ commands, one of which is baptism, and just to be frank, it’s probably the easiest of all of Jesus’ commands! How many of you have perfected “turning the other cheek.” Or perfectly “love your neighbor just as you love yourself”? 

-Just as I shared last week that church membership isn’t essential to be saved, I’ll say the same thing about baptism, it’s not essential to be saved, but it is essential to be obedient to all of Jesus’s commands (which Jesus also says in the great commission)

-What should baptism look like, and who should be baptized? EFCA is an anomaly here, because historically this has been a divisive issue in the church, and it breaks down between credobaptism or pedobaptism (creedal vs. infant), should we baptize babies or is it for believer’s only?

-EFCA statement

-That being said, I am convictionally a credobaptist and wouldn’t be comfortable baptizing an infant for a few reasons. First is the word “baptize” means “to immerse,” which is also what we see with Jesus. He was laid all the way under the water, then brought back up to a heavenly affirmation of His calling.

-Second is because of what we see throughout the rest of the NT in the connection between salvation and baptism. If it’s a picture of salvation, then it should take place after salvation. Think of what Peter says in Acts 2 after his incredible sermon where 3,000 people are saved, “Repent and be baptized.” That connection must remain together.

-The third reason is the picture baptism serves, which we see in Romans 6. Here Paul tells us that as we go down into the water, it’s like we were buried with Him, signifying that we have died to our old ways of living. The early church even went so far as to have the person being baptized take off their clothes in the baptistry, and then put on new clothes after their baptism to signify that they have crucified their old selves and put on a new person following after Jesus. And that’s the significant part, is that you don’t stay under the water (even though my son told me the last time we had a baptism that he didn’t want to be baptized yet because he was scared I’d leave him under the water), we are raised with Jesus, which gets us to a final picture of being washed clean.

-So why does the EFCA allow infant baptism? Because VERY quickly the early church moved to adopt infant baptism as a sign of the children being a part of the household of God. And since true, orthodox Christians have differed on this issue, the EFCA allows both. I have dear friends that are pastors who were baptized as infants and I could allow them to be full members of South Suburban without changing their baptism position, which I think is a gift!

-The last reason I still hold to believer’s baptism is because of the baptism instructions we read in one of the oldest writings on church order called “The Didache” (Greek for “teaching”)

-We see the Trinity command, notice “living water” which means moving, natural water. So important that in excavations under St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva (4th cent), they’ve found this baptistry: notice the water coming in, and a pipe to let it out

-Then cold water, but warm is acceptable. If none of that is good, get a water bottle on the head! AND fasting leading up to it! Not something to take lightly!

-So who should be baptized? Any and everyone who has put their faith in Jesus!

-Summary: baptism is the first marker, signifying that you have been buried with Christ, had your sins washed away, and raised up to the newness of life. But there’s 1 additional piece to it, that we get as we trace the continual development of Christianity. Nicene Creed (happy 1700th birthday!) says: one baptism. 

-Meant to signify the entry into faith, thus it’s only supposed to happen once. How many times is a baby born? Once! Supposed to be the same thing with baptism. Unlike the next one, which is a regular and ongoing act meant to look back to our baptism.

  • The Lord’s Supper 

-The first thing I want you to note is the connection between baptism and the Lord’s Supper (we’ll get to the names). The earliest instruction to the church says that only those who have been baptized are to participate in the Lord’s Supper. Why is that? 

-Because the Lord’s Supper is meant to be done carefully and sequentially. Remember, as Protestants we believe that there are 2 ordinances, and they are meant to be done in order: baptism as the entry, the Lord’s Supper as the ongoing reminder of the baptism we have celebrated, but it doesn’t make sense to celebrate one if you’re unwilling to celebrate the other, so baptism should happen before you take the Lord’s Supper, as far as the passage quoted, I’m not sure that’s the best verse, but the ordering does make sense!

-So let’s think about this further. First, the name. What should we call it? Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist, the breaking of bread? Our SOF calls it “Lord’s Supper”, but the what does that mean, and what do all the other names mean?

-Communion refers to “sharing” or “participation,” we are sharing together a cup and bread, we are participating in what Jesus told His followers to celebrate

-Lord’s Supper refers to the language in the Gospels that say after supper Jesus instituted this new rite that His disciples continued practicing together

-Eucharist refers to thanksgiving, which is what we’re supposed to do as part of this celebration together

-Breaking of bread is picked up from Acts 2 where it describes the practices of the early church

-All of these refer to the same event: where Jesus on the night before he was betrayed took bread and wine, elements of the Passover celebration that he shifted in focus from the Exodus to Himself. 

-3 components: past, present, future. Past: tied to the Passover, the most significant even in Israel’s history. Celebrated annually to remember how God provided for His people in the midst of their slavery to Egypt. Each year, Israel was commanded to celebrate the night that God passed over their sins and brought death every firstborn son of Egypt. This was to point forward to the day when God would bring death on His own firstborn at the cross.

-Present: it’s a way of reminding of what God has done in our lives to save us and redeem us, and bring us together as 1 body and people.

-Future: Jesus also told us that He wouldn’t celebrate this again until He returns

-But what does it take for us to actually celebrate the Lord’s Supper? Can we use Oreos and Mountain Dew or do we need bread and wine? Let’s see what Paul says:

-The issue is divisions, which he says means what they’re celebrating “is not the Lord’s Supper.” (20) Which means one of the purpose of this celebration is unity.

-One of the purposes of communion is to demonstrate that we are united together in 1 body, even though all of us come from completely different backgrounds. Just think of what the church is supposed to signify: people from different background, countries, cultures, demographics, sexes, vocations all gathered around 1 thing: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet how often are we divided over things that don’t matter in eternity? Money, politics, house, cars. Friends, none of that matter when we approach the cross. 

-But what’s the main thing about this celebration? Jesus “in remembrance of me” Do you remember Jesus as we partake of these otherwise ordinary things together?

-Spiritual things are taking place around us regularly, but we don’t have the eyes to see them. And somethings (Lord’s Supper) are meant to be spiritual realities of the gospel and do we realize that? Even in partaking in this celebration or thanksgiving, we’re proclaiming the realities of the gospel!

-But Paul goes on to explain what else we need to consider when we celebrate this:

-Unworthy manner. Growing up I always thought this was general sin, but Paul gives more instructions:

-Examine, recognize the body. Yes, sin is a part of it, but particularly Paul is talking about sin that leads to division in our body. Each time we celebrate communion we’re supposed to think about how this unites us together as a body and continue working to preserve the unity among our body. This isn’t just a “me and God” thing, this is supposed to be a “we and God” thing. 

-This gets to something I said last week: that church discipline is a subset of the ordinances, because the practice of excommunication is meant to be disinviting someone from participating in the means of grace God has given, including the Lord’s Supper. Historically, some pastors would interview the entire membership of the church before the Lord’s Supper and give tokens to those who could come, more could be said but I need to keep moving: 

-Sick and ill: something more than just a spiritual thing, it has physical implications too. Yes, this nourishes us bodily, but in the same way it nourishes us spiritually, it gives grace to us.

-Real celebration: 

-Welcome one another

-Gather together

-I don’t know about you, but if there was something God had given to us that we would allow be to receive God’s grace on a regular basis, I’d want to celebrate that as much as I could, wouldn’t you?

-Been thinking the past year about “Holidays” (Holy-days) and the way we think of time because of my trip to Geneva this summer. In Geneva, the church bells told people what time it was. Who tells us what time it is today? Apple? Google? Target? Amazon?

-What habits or practices help to shape and form us into followers of Jesus? What clocks do we keep to help us in following after Him? What if we started to arrange our schedules and practices around God’s plans instead of our own? Think of the way the early church changed their worship practices: Saturday to Sunday. If you’ve ever been a part of a church that changed service times you know how big of a deal that is! (Cheyenne moving 30 min back) 

-If the Lord’s Supper is supposed to be a marker of God’s people, wouldn’t you want to celebrate that more than 1/month? Moving forward, we’re going to be celebrating 2/month, and we’re going to change some of the ways we practice it, because historically people would come forward and receive the elements (more in Sermon Scraps)

-One last piece to note about the sacraments is who recognizes and affirms baptism and the Lord’s Supper? It’s not meant to be an individual act that is meaningful to 1 person, it’s meant to be done by THE CHURCH. 

-You can’t baptize yourself, it’s done as a sacrament of the church. You can’t take the Lord’s Supper by yourself, it’s meant to be a practice (marker) of the church, which means it can’t be done by yourself

-COVID conversation about celebrating communion alone with your family

-2 sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s supper as markers of His people. Have you participated in them both, and if not what are you waiting for?

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by mikethestrand on January 12, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 12, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/12/the-practices-of-the-church-sermon-manuscrip/

The Called Out Ones – Sermon Manuscript

-Starting a new series for January that’s a continuation of what we’ve done the past couple years, “Theological Tune Up” but the tune up is only going to be connected to 1 thing: the church. 

-The 1 thing I’m most passionate about is the church. The church is what Jesus died for, the church is what Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against, and the church is what is going to last into eternity.

-The church isn’t viewed with a lot of trust today! Most people like to complain about the church, point out the problems in the church, run away from the church, but if God has promised that He will build His church, then if we claim to follow God that includes following Him in working to build His church.

-For today’s sermon, the most helpful book, and what I’m borrowing heavily from is The Local Churchby Edward Klink (EFCA Pastor in Roscoe, IL)

-We’re going to be looking at some important things about the church over the next few week: next week we’ll look at the practices of the church (baptism and communion), we’ll also look at how the church functions with men and women working together (complementarianism), and finally we’ll look at the implication of that in the offices God has called for the church to function (elders and deacons)

-It’s been interesting over my life seeing the engagement of people toward the church shift in some pretty dramatic ways.

-Growing up it was fairly trendy to engage in church. Even if you weren’t super involved, people still wanted some associating to the church (90s) but that’s looking back with slightly rose-colored glasses, because I was told that we were facing increasing hostility and persecution from the world (hence my parents homeschooling me to provide a safe environment for me). I even have a distinct memory of my mom telling me in early Middle School that it would break her heart, but even if someone were to take me away from her she wouldn’t be able to deny Jesus. You want trauma, let me tell you about it! 

-Starting in the late 90s into early 2000s came what became known as the “emergent church” movement. One of the leading churches was in Minneapolis called “Solomon’s Porch” (to the surprise of no one, it no longer exists). They started asking questions about the way church was run, so at Solomon’s Porch they sat on couches and had conversations, not sermons. I got to attend another emergent church called Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, where instead of having a platform on one side, they had a platform in the middle of the room. Asked TONS of questions of Christianity, but never seemed to resolve any of them, so pretty soon they tore down even the essentials of the faith (which is why many of them now are self-proclaimed speakers, writers, and activists)

-After that was what was called the “missional church” movement, where it was thought that the problem was the buildings and institutions, so we need to focus our energy outside the walls and become “missional” in everything we do. After all, God is a sending God (sent His Son, sends the Spirit, sends us as his missionaries). But if that’s true, then where and why do we ever meet? And why does Paul talk about the churches meeting in specific locations in His letters?

-And all this was before every church went livestream during COVID (remember those days??) and I think that even further revealed the ways we think about the church are so broken. I talked to some people who enjoyed being able to “attend” different churches each week because everyone was online!

-Also add in the rise of the EX-vangelical, the deconstructing of faith (including famous people like Joshua Harris who write I Kissed Dating Goodbye), the general distrust of institutions, and the church looks to be on either the losing side, or the wrong side of history. I even know of someone who used to be a pastor at an EFCA church nearby that is now working on trying to create “micro-churches” which are basically Life Groups that are all independent.

-So why on earth would someone devote their life to working in the church? What’s the point of fighting against these cultural tides and what should the church actually look like? Is the micro church more accurate than us gathering in a large room each week? 

-The reality is there are benefits to every component that I’ve mentioned, but they take either an implication or a periphery of what the church is called to be and make it the primary identity marker, which means everything is going to be off because of that.

-If you ever mow your lawn and pick the wrong spot in the distance to aim at, doesn’t your entire mowing line get thrown off? My back yard is a weird shape so I make it work, but it still bothers me! 

-We need to understand what God has called to the church to do and be PRIMARILY so that we can distinguish between the essential, the good or helpful, and the things that we really shouldn’t be spending our time on. 

READ/PRAY

-Let’s begin with what is essential: Belgic Confession of Faith (1561): 3 markers according to this. 

-EFCA:                

-Here we see some additional pieces, such as “all who have been justified” that is the members of the church must be believers. We also see the interplay between the invisible church and the invisible church. See every believer is immediately brought into the invisible church, but that also means they must look to live out that spiritual reality in the physical reality of a local church. 

-This is why I’ve talked so much and so regularly here about church membership since I first came! Whether you want to admit it or not, membership is the expectation for a Christian, it’s not salvific (just like baptism isn’t salvific), but it’s essential to your sanctification (growth in holiness). I’ve preached on this before, and we’ve got a membership class coming up on Feb. 9, so if you want to hear the whole reason I think membership is important come to that class! But to summarize, I’ll quote from the book I mentioned earlier: 

-Gospel, ordinances (sacraments), church discipline (which is a subset of the sacraments, and requires church leadership, we’ll get to that next week)

-These are the things that MUST be in place for a church to be called a church, if you don’t have 1 of those 3, by definition you don’t have a church. What’s fascinating to me is how often 1 of 2 of these get thrown out for convenience.

  1. Called Out By God

-When we talk about the church, we’re referring to the Greek word “ekklesia” which is a compound word made up of “from” and “to call” so literally the church is to be “called out from” or the “called out ones.” Generally in English we translate it as an “assembly,” “gathering,” or “church.”  

-But the key I want you to remember from this is that the church is meant to be those who are called out, and not just called out, but called out by God Himself. This is what the EFCA SOF is getting at when it says “The true church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of believers.” 

-The difficulty is that there are people who come to church each week who aren’t believers, and each church is going to have strengths and weaknesses, just like individual Christians have strengths and weaknesses. 

-One of the most helpful things the elders have used on a regular basis in the midst of our conversations about the way we structure our church is this graph. On this side of eternity, there will be no perfect church ever! Even when people who are Christians spend time together, there’s going to be conflict and issues because sin impacts all of us. But that doesn’t mean we run away from the church, it generally means we need to double down on our commitment, confess were we’ve sinned against others, forgive as Jesus forgave us, and work through the issues TOGETHER. This is how we move to a more pure church, TOGETHER. You literally can’t have a church by yourself! And at the same time, at some point the lack of purity in a church means they move from being a church to not being a church. However, the bar there is fairly basic, remember 3 things: gospel is being preached, sacraments or ordinances are being practiced, and church discipline is taking place (often we don’t know when it’s happening, Matt. 18)

-Back to the called out idea, God has always had a group of people that He has called out to be His faithful representatives to the world. Starting with Adam and Eve, then calling out Noah, then calling out Abraham from among the nations, then calling out the nation of Israel, then calling out His Son, and then now He calls out people to move from the world into being a part of His Kingdom, which is represented by the church, as we heard when we read through 1 Peter (we’re getting close to getting there!) But first, a brief overview of God’s calling out throughout Scripture.

-First, God calls out to creation in calling it, he separates the skies, the waters, the lands. Then He calls out to a person (Adam) and commissions Him to join with God in caring for the creation and expanding God’s rule over the rest of creation. But then Adam wants to BE God instead of obeying God, and He chooses sin instead of obedience, and then we read this fascinating account of God’s response.

-Even in sin, God’s response is to continue moving toward His people.

-Then God calls out a specific person, and tells Abram His plans.

-And the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham did this by faith, and in Galatians Paul tells us that this promise is fulfilled in the church.

-History moves forward, and Abraham’s descendants are sold into slavery in Egypt, but then God decides to save them through Moses, and God calls out to him from a burning bush while he’s working as a shepherd for his FIL.

-Last picture I want you to see of this is when God speaks to Isaiah to remind His people who has created them. 

-Friends, this is vital for us to understand. God is the one who calls and creates a people. It’s not something we do in our own power or strength, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. This is also true of the church! No person can create a church in their own power, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. So when we talk about the church, we ALWAYS need to remember that we are talking about God’s church. We’re just stewards, tasked with caring for a church in this time and place, but God is the only one who can claim ownership of every church. That’s why it’s so important for us to focus on the church!

  • By God We Are…

-With that, we can now come to Peter, where we see that the church has been called out from darkness into marvelous light. Look at all the descriptions: chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his possession, proclaim the praises, God’s people.

-4 things, seen in your outline, but before we see what we are, what does this mean the church is NOT:

-Church is not: 

-a social club. Not gathering to socialize around any human activity. Socializing is a component and will happen naturally, but that’s not the definition of a church. 

-a community organizing group. Not meant to create community, community is the byproduct of being brought into the family of God, but it is not a church

-merely a building. As we’ll see in a minute, the church needs a building, some kind of place to meet, and it helps to have 1 spot where we can gather, but the church can gather even without a building

-a voluntary society. This is why we need to remember that God is the one who creates the church. If we’re a Christian, we commit to the church.

-a political action committee. As Chuck Colson used to say “Salvation doesn’t come on Air Force One.” Jesus rules above any political conversations that take place in our world. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, but Christ sits forever on His throne ruling through His church.

-a metaphor. We tend to talk more about the invisible church and give secondary importance to the visible church of which we’re participating now. Church isn’t just a reference to a theoretical idea, it’s referring to a real thing.

-coffee with friends. That’s an outworking of it (especially when it’s good coffee), but that’s not a replacement for the actual weekly gathering of God’s people.

-A human endeavor. Only done by and for God.

-Look at how the NT describes the church.

  1. Present – a chosen race 

-A component to being a part of a specific lineage or family is location. Think of how much time people spent on their ancestry (I’m 100% Norwegian, thank you very much). This idea that we are a chosen race means that we’re supposed to be God’s ministering presence in the world.

-Think of it like a country and an individual. Anyone who owns a home has a spot to call their own within the boundaries of a country. Similarly, each local church is a part of the universal church (visible vs. invisible), but God places each church in a location for a purpose! To shine as His marvelous light into the darkness.

-This means the south metro should know that we’re here! If we’re commissioned by God to shine as a light, we must bring that light into the world with us. We need to look for ways to be present and engaged in the area God has placed us. This is where we need to acknowledge the reality that the church is an institution AND an organism. NT wording lean toward organism (body, flock), but the rest of the NT writings lean toward institution (a way of conducting ourselves)

-Believing the truth of the Gospels will lead to organizing yourself by the way the Epistles describe.

  • Priests

-Priests work as a go between so humans can meet with God. 3 components to this: corporately, individually, restricted.

-Corporately: we are to be a blessing to the world. We work to bring good into every sphere of human endeavor in which we participate. If we believe God is God then nothing is outside His oversight. Work, play, eating, resting are all to be brought underneath His Lordship. 1 Cor. 5 describes us as ambassadors, God is working to reconcile the world to Himself through the church:

-Individually: each of us is responsible to do that in our lives. All of us are meant to know God’s Word and be changed by knowing and applying God’s Word.

-Restricted: some people are set apart, recognized by God and the church as leaders, we call these pastors/elders. Not better, just called to a higher level of service. I have the freedom to read and study with the hours that many of you spend working to provide for your families or take care of your home. It’s not better, it’s a different calling, we’ll get to that in a few weeks!

  • Pilgrims

-Not Thanksgiving pilgrims, “a holy nation” a people who aren’t at home here. The early church was actually described as living as foreigners, only making use of their earthly citizenship when it served to help them spread the gospel. We need to be careful to regularly remember that this world isn’t our home. We’re not primarily Americans, we’re primarily Christians, our heavenly home will never disappear! 

-Church is supposed to be a picture of that! An embassy in a foreign land where we’re reminded what our home looks like!

  • Proclaimers

-“So that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you.”

-Our response matters in light of who God is. We proclaim the truths of the Bible in order for us to be reminded each and every week who we are, why we’re here, and what our aim in life is. On top of that, the Word of God compels us to proclaim to the world those exact same realities: Jesus is the King, and only by obeying Him and entering into His church can the world make sense.

-The church matters, and should matter to us because it matters to God. And God also has told us how the church should function and operate, and it comes down to us living in the reality of God calling us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, where we’re now a part of a body, a temple, a new people who are under God.

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by mikethestrand on January 5, 2025  •  Permalink
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End Time Ethics – Sermon Manuscript

-Spend some time giving thanks together for the ways God has worked among us over the past year, but before we look back, I want to take a minute and help us look forward into the next year. 

-Saw an Apple commercial this past week that was talking about the need to get an Apple Watch to motivate you through “quitting Friday” (the 2nd Friday of January)

-As we look forward to another year, what things has God been impressing on you to focus on in your spiritual life? How are you going to take 1 step closer to Him over 2025? It can be easy to assume your spiritual life because it’s less tangible. With physical health you can tell – you can lift more, you can run further, but how do you measure growth in love toward others? How do you measure being more holy?

READ/PRAY

-Begins “The end of all things is near” we’ve spent the last year studying Revelation together, and this is another reminder that we’re living in the last days, and have been living in the last days since Jesus ascended to heaven. But what do we do with that reality? Peter tells us 4 things we should do because we’re living in the last days:

1. Pray 

-How do we pray? The opposite of “The Gentiles” in the previous verses – self controlled and sober minded.

Juan Sanchez 1 Peter For You “We are not to lose our heads; we’re to think clearly. We’re not to set dates; we’re to be ready. We’re not to withdraw from society; we’re to proclaim God’s excellencies. We’re not to panic.” (148)

That is: to pray more effectively

-How are you planning to grow in your prayer life over the coming year?

-Asked at seminary: how’s your prayer life? I’ve always felt like I’m “supposed” to say “it could be better” here’s the thing: God takes the little and makes it that much better. Think of the 5 loaves and 2 fish. A little lunchable. So don’t give up! Keep praying with all you’ve got! As much or as little as you can, God loves when you engage with Him! There’s always room to improve, but don’t give us just because you’re not where you want to be. Start where you’re at and take 1 more step.

2. Love.

Alluding to Prov. 10:12 “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”

In a sense, it’s true that love covers EVERY sin! 1 John 4:8 “God is love” John 3:16 “For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It’s because of God’s love that sin our sin is payed for! And it’s only through God’s love that we can be forgiven.

“Above all”…this is the root of everything we as Christians are called to do

-We are commanded to love each other. Period. No ifs ands or buts. 

-These verses are very similar to 1 Cor. 12-14 where we’re reminded that love is the supreme virtue. You can be as gifted/talented/charismatic that you want, but if you don’t love you’re as helpful as a clashing cymbal. 

-We’re actually commanded to love each other in the same way that Jesus loved us. 

-Poster of the “one another’s” Again, no one is perfect at this, but what can you do to take 1 step closer to loving like Jesus loves over the coming year?

3. Be hospitable

-An article I shared before titled ‘Why Hospitality Beats Entertaining’ has been quoted back to me numerous times by people in the church (you should go read it) but the point is that this doesn’t mean our houses need to be perfectly cleaned to be hospitable.

-In the 1st century this would have involved a lot more intrusion into their lives because they didn’t have hotels, so as Christians traveled this was a command for people to open their homes to each other. 

-Friends, hospitality is supposed to be the norm for Christians. Whether your good at cooking or not, whether your house is perfectly clean or not, look for ways to invite people in, because the point is to be involved in each other’s lives. We’re supposed to love each other like family, and engage each other like family. 

-“Without complaining” Individualism leads to complaining. Individualism leads to NOT being hospitable. Individualism is a sin that needs to be repented of. Think of Mary and Martha. What was Martha’s response? 

4. Use Your Gifts

All spiritual gifts are a form of service. Remember, these are done IN LOVE

The point of your gifts isn’t to build yourself up, it’s so “serve one another.” 

My wife has a gift of discernment without being condemning. I don’t know how she does it! 

“as good stewards of the varied grace of God.”

James 1:17 “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”

You, ALL of you, have been given a gift by God to serve others. How are you doing at stewarding that gift? Maybe you have the gift of encouragement. Maybe you have the gift of setting up tables. Maybe you have the gift of hospitality. Maybe you have the gift of teaching.

Peter specifically mentions 2 gifts: speaking and serving.

“If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God’s words” the message, the words of God. Everything we do is supposed to point people back to God. We’re called the aroma of Christ. I LOVE that imagery

C.S. Lewis “You have never encountered a mere mortal. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”

Every conversation you have either points people to or away from God.

“if anyone serves, let it be from the strength God provides.”

We’re all commanded to serve in some way! But remember it’s serving from a never ending well that God supplies. 

Proverbs 21:31, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”

Galatians 6:9-10 “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” 

“so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”

Benediction (in many letters)

Everything we do is meant to be an act of worship. Our entire lives. 

“through Jesus Christ” Jesus as our only worship leader

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by mikethestrand on December 29, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 29, 2024

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Jesus Did You Know? John 1 – Sermon Manuscript

-End of our series, looked at Mary, Joseph, Herod, and we’re going to end this week looking at Jesus. 

-Not a lot about Jesus’ life to be able to accurately or fully answer this question, the Bible tells us a bit about his birth, we have 1 account of him as a 12 year old in the temple (Luke 2), but then all the accounts jump straight to Him as a 30 year old adult, so we’re somewhat in the realm of speculation when we try to answer this question.

-But I do think it’s important for us to talk about Jesus! If you haven’t figured it out yet, He’s going to come up every week here! He’s literally at the center of all of creation, He’s literally at the center of history, and He’s literally the center, the focal point of all of Scripture. One of the commentators I was reading this week was saying that the fulfillment of the OT isn’t the NT, it’s Jesus. The OT points forward to Jesus, and the NT looks back to Him.

-What’s hard today is what do we do with Jesus? You may have heard this quote attributed to Gandhi:

-On the one hand, this is disappointing because the name “Christian” is meant to signify “Little Christ” aka little representatives of Him, but this is also at the crux of Christianity: we can’t completely be like Christ, which is why He had to become like us! 

-But the other component to this quote is that obviously Gandhi wasn’t a Christian, but he liked what Jesus taught. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone that doesn’t like Jesus, or the Jesus they have in their mind, because often people haven’t actually studied much about Him, they go on what other people say, and it’s amazing how much of their interpretations tend to be more of a reflection of themselves than Jesus Himself! So today I want to look at what Jesus’ plan was, what did He know, and why did He enter into His creation? Because the reality is we can’t separate Christmas from eternity!

READ/PRAY

  1. The Word (1-3)

-“In the beginning”

-I hope by now you’re starting to learn that in order to interpret the NT correctly, we need to know the OT. 1 story from beginning to end. Pointing back to Gen. 1, almost as if he knows the other Gospel accounts that start with Jesus, this one tells us the story of Jesus goes back even further than his birth. John is saying: you think the birth is amazing, let me tell you the true beginning!

-Friends, this is what I said earlier: the reality is that the Christmas story begins before the dawn of creation. Our kids often ask where they were at various events in our lives before they came and we tell them it was before they were born, and Cara has trained them to say “When I was just in God’s mind?” That’s exactly right! Before the earth was here, when it was just in God’s mind, Christmas, the arrival of Jesus, the one and only God-man was the plan. This tells us that even when we go back and read Genesis 1 we should read Jesus in that event, which is where John goes next:

-“was the Word.” What word? What is meant by the word “word”? A whole lot, it turns out, because once again that single word contains a host of OT allusions that we need to understand! 

-First, the immediate context: what did John mean when he used this word? 1st cent. context can be essentially distilled down to basically 2 things: inner thoughts of something: some have argued translating this word as “reason” where we get science, bio-logy (study of bios created things), psych-ology (study of the psych) the-ology (study of God). Second option is an external message or speech, like we use WORDS. 

-And then, as always, what is meant by this throughout Scripture? How does God use words? Since we’ve already been there, and John’s readers would already be thinking about creation, how does God create? Through words. God’s act of speaking has consequences and demands a response! Out of nothing comes something, it can’t help itself since God spoke it, is MUST happen. God speaks, it happens, there’s no waiting, no fighting of anyone else. Have you ever considered how violent other creation myths are? Think of the Big Bang, the beginning of EVERYTHING is an explosion! Other stories talk about various gods fighting and the wreckage of that fighting is the creation. Here it almost is like someone sitting in a La-Z-Boy playing armchair QB, but in this case the creation actually responds!

-Throughout the OT there’s also references to God revealing Himself through words (prophets), and delivering His people (think of the whole Egypt story where God tells Moses “Go TELL Pharoah MY WORDS”)

-But then the most significant place where we see God’s Words is when God reveals Himself to Moses. They’d been led out of Egypt, God had called Moses to the mountain to tell His words and commands to him (10 commandments written by God on stone), Moses comes down to the people partying and worshipping a golden calf, so he goes back up the mountain to meet with God and beg Him to not destroy the nation. During his conversation with God, Moses asks “Let me see your glory.” 

-Does that seem a bit weird to you? What does Moses want? He’s looking to see God fully instead of mediated or clouded (pillar of fire or cloud). Think of the way Jesus is described during the Transfiguration: whiter than the whitest bleach can cause, the disciples can hardly look at Him! And that’s small stuff compared to the full glory of God!

-But notice, how does God say his goodness or glory passes by Moses? By proclaiming His name. God is connected to His name, you can’t separate God from His name, so then when we think of John describing Jesus as the Word, you can hardly find a better word (pun intended) to describe the God! I like the way Carson summarizes this idea:

-All this biblical background with just 1 word! And we’re only on the 6th word of this whole section, and John goes on to identify this Word as being with God and being God. So not only is there all this wealth of allusions in this word, but John leaves no room for interpretation or misinterpretation about what he’s talking about, he’s clear that this is the 2nd person of the Godhead, God the Son, who was the agent of creation, which means everything only exists because of Him, apart from Jesus everything would go back to nothing. Yet many people don’t realize all that is contained in this word, which is why John goes on:

  • The Light (4-13)

-We’ve had the Word to describe Jesus, but says that in Him is LIGHT. Well that has different connotations than the Word!

-John here says that light and darkness can’t coexist, which is true! He is the true light that shines, that reveals where there is darkness.

-Darkness did not overcome: master, comprehend. Darkness can’t comprehend the light, it doesn’t have a way to understand it, the light seems like foolishness to it. So how can the darkness be made aware of the light? Need a witness.

-John: witness, used 3x! “He came as a witness to witness about the light. He came to witness about the light.” I love that word! What are you a witness to?

-Think of that quote from Gandhi that I shared earlier. Does your witness make much of Christ or do you get in the way? Look at the sun (don’t actually look at it) but how can you see anything in the world? Isn’t it because of the shining sun? The sun is so bright that it’s literally the way we see everything in the world, apart from its light we would live in darkness.

-But what about when something gets in between the sun and the earth? Something like the moon? We call that an eclipse, and it’s an eerie experience! We were living in CO when the eclipse came through in 2017 and it was odd to experience darkness during the day! But I think that’s a picture of what we can tend to do with the light of the gospel. How often do we get in the way and refuse to let God’s light shine out because we’re too scared, or because our lives aren’t actually marked by the light of the gospel? Or what about when we add things to the gospel message, things that God didn’t say we needed to do? Look down at vs. 12 – it’s very simple: believe in His name. Trust that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world who came to earth as a baby, but grew and completely and perfectly obeyed God, letting the light of God shine perfectly into the world.

-The Word (that gives light) was in the world, the world only exists because of this Word, but the world wanted to be their own god instead.

-A.W. Pink. (pastor in the early 20th century) This is what we see in Gandhi! He’s blind to the fact that the Messiah, the Savior who came to save the world from their sins has come to the world. Friends, are you blind, or do you see and acknowledge that Jesus is God?

-This is where we’re already seeing that it’s not enough to just like Jesus as a cool dude. Like if you’ve ever heard the icebreaker question: what 3 people would you have dinner with, dead or alive? Jesus is almost always on the list, right? The thing is we already have a whole bunch of stuff that Jesus said about Himself, and God thinks what we have is enough! 

-His own people: we saw that last week. Scribes, rulers knew the right answers, but didn’t follow through on the correct response.

-All those who were supposedly watching completely missed it. If you’ve ever seen a street “magician” (really illusionist) performing you’re aware of this. The whole goal of those people is to distract others from what they’re really doing, which is why it’s often called sleight of hand, they’re essentially forcing you to focus on one thing while they do something else.

-What’s ironic in the Christmas story is that’s not what God did. It’s not like it was a massive secret! He sent angels to shepherd, He sent wise-men to Herod, He sent an angel to Mary and Joseph.

-Children of God: comes only by belief, demands a response “To all who did receive Him.” What’s amazing about that is the only thing it takes is receiving Jesus! Think about the Christmas carol ‘O Little Town’ “Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.” Then you become children of God, that’s all it takes

-What is this birth thing John talks about? He’ll expand on it in chpt 3 (which we don’t have time to go to), but he contrasts it here with 3 things, that feels unnecessarily repetitive and redundant, don’t they? We get it John, it’s only “of God” but what do you think all these things John’s talking about mean? 

-Natural descent: this is referring to genealogy. In Jewish circles, genealogy was literally make or break for you! Either you were Jew or you were of the “ethnicities.” So if you were of the wrong blood-line, you weren’t a part of God’s people. But this thought continues today! The assumption that you’re a Christian because you’re American (less so today) or that you’re good because your parents took you to church. Friends, I hate to say it, but your bloodline has no bearing in the kingdom of God.

-Will of the flesh: this has to do with sincerity. Originally, this is a husband and wife coming together to produce a baby, there’s desire there for children, earnest to earn the gift of a baby. But friends, all the sincerity in the world can’t make you a child of God. You see this with people who assume they’re good because they went through the right motions: I went to church all growing up, I went to Awana all the way through, I did confirmation. Once again, John is telling us here that none of those things can save you, which gets to the third one:

-Will of man: effort. No matter how hard you try you won’t become a child of God. I listened to a podcast this week that was comparing Christianity to other world religions, all of which have some element of effort required to achieve salvation, but Christianity doesn’t have that, which is why so many people struggle with it and add works to salvation. 

-There’s only 1 way to become a child of God: But of God. God redeems you and adopts you as His child. That’s it! It’s only by believing in His name! But what did it take for it to be that simple? 

  • The Flesh (14-18)

-Back to the Word, but this is weird, he became flesh and tabernacled (moved into the neighborhood) How can the eternal Word step into time? 

-To understand this one, we need to understand both tabernacle and (tabernacling) God dwelling among His people. Throughout the OT, God’s manifest presence was confined to the tabernacle (then the temple), so that His people wouldn’t die. Just as light can’t coexist with darkness, God’s glory can’t coexist with sin. So when we read that the Word, who was with God and IS God, became flesh that would have made NO sense, much less tabernacling among us, if God is with us we’re done for! But John keeps going:

-And we SAW his glory! Remember what we saw with Moses back in Exodus, no one could see God’s glory and live, and here John says WE SAW HIS GLORY! Suddenly, the God who was completely separate, unobtainable, unapproachable is here, walking and talking with us. Do you see why Jews struggled to believe Him?

-Full of what? Grace and truth. We need BOTH! This is the amazing thing about the gospel – we get the truth that we are far worse than we ever dared imagine, but we also get the grace that we are far more loved than we could ever dare to hope. Christianity is the 1 religion that can deal with the complexity of the world, because Christianity is the 1 religion that is true.

-From Him, we have received grace upon grace, better translated as grace instead of grace, grace on top of grace, but it only comes through the truth, the truth that Jesus is God and came to take away the sins of the world, which includes you if you’ve believed in His name.

-Jesus is better even than Moses, which is another reason we should be thinking back to Ex. 33-34 when we read John 1

-Jesus reveals the unseeable God in seeable form. John’s epistle begins this way: beginning, heard, seen, observed, touched, then passed down, JOY

-One of my favorite Christmas songs begins with “Joy to the world the Lord is come.” Joy is possible, but it only comes about be believing in Jesus, who had planned from all eternity to come to earth as a baby boy. To live the perfect life that we could never live, and die the death that we all deserved to die to give us joy and the opportunity to hear Him, to see Him, and to some day touch Him. Joy that nothing can take away, joy that lasts even when you don’t get the Christmas gift you wanted. Joy that can and will last into eternity all because the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood, which means we now can become children of God.

-And now, as we look forward to celebrating Christmas this week, we have the reminder that we are now the ones who are supposed to move into the neighborhood and shine as lights in the darkness. The Christmas story, the story of Jesus first coming culminates in a second coming where we’ll be with Him forever! And until that second coming, our job each Christmas is to continue overcoming the darkness, through joy.

-So church, by joyful, always.

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by mikethestrand on December 22, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 22, 2024

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Revelation 22:6-21 – Sermon Manuscript

-We did it! We’ve made it through the entire book of Revelation! After having someone tell me I should NEVER preach through this book because no one can understand, I was worried we’d end up with confusion and frustration every week, but I’ve already had a number of people tell me they finally feel like they have a grasp of how to interpret this book, which was my prayer when we started this.

-Today’s text serves as a summary, direct application to our lives, and some final reminders on what we’re supposed to do now that we’ve walked through this whole book, not only that, but it’s the last verse of all of Scripture, the last words God wanted us to hear regarding His plans for the reconciliation and renewal of all things. Because the reality is Jesus is coming soon. Now, it’s going to take us another 30 minutes to understand what that means!

READ/PRAY

  1. Look to the Word (6-11)

-The first thing we need to notice is there’s wording and themes here that should sound familiar. Look at the parallels between chapter 1 and 22. It’s almost like there was a plan, purpose, and direction to this entire book to communicate these ideas! This section also sounds very different from all the stuff we’ve been reading over the past number of months.

-Said this in the first sermon I preached in this series: combination of apocalyptic, prophecy, and letter. We’re back to the letter part.

-Begins with the reminder that these words are faithful and true, exact same phrasing we saw in 21:5. God communicates and identifies Himself through words. Words that come from a God who is faithful and true are also faithful and true. 

-Reflecting on why we have the written Word. What’s the best way to communicate something that can be saved and preserved for centuries? Write it down! Make copies of it! (working on digital stuff, have 3 copies of everything)

-Since God wants us to know Him, He had people write down what He wanted us to know, therefore the mark of a Christian is trusting that His Word is faithful and true. Friends, don’t give up on the Bible!

-God of the spirits of the prophets. What is that? True prophets only speak on behalf of God. John is identifying himself in that lineage. Just as God spoke previously to His prophets, He’s concluded His speaking here to John.

-Sent his angel, just like the beginning.

-Soon take place. Look I am coming soon. How soon?

-Is 2,000 years soon? God looks at time differently, think back to Rev. 6 where the martyrs beg God to return and He says “not yet.” My kids think waiting a half hour is FOREVER, and we laugh! Don’t you think that may be a picture of how God looks at time, even 100 years is nothing to Him! But whether it’s 2,000 or 20,000 years, the next step in salvation history is Jesus coming back. 

-If you just think through the primary events in God’s plan of redemption: creation, fall, redemption, salvation, and then consummation is the only thing left!  

-Blessed: Revelation beatitudes. Jesus gives beatitudes in Matt. 5, things like blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. 

-6th of 7 blessings promised throughout this book. Review the blessings:

-Read, hear, and keep the words (remember there’s an end goal for us to DO something with this text)

-If we die in Christ we actually live!

-Alert and clothed: alert to not give in to the way the world works to seduce us, and clothed in Christ’s clothing (19:8: “fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints.”)

-Invited to the marriage feast – those saved and washed by the blood of the lamb

-First resurrection, when Jesus returns and sets up His kingdom on earth

-Then here we’re back to the start: keep the words of this book (pointing back to the start), 1 more to come.

8-Reminder of who wrote this book: John! Once again, he’s tempted to worship an angel, one of God’s messengers. This happened once before in Rev. 19. 

-All of God’s creation is meant to have 1 aim and goal in life: worship God. Worship isn’t just what we do on Sunday morning (though it includes that), it’s not a type of music (though it includes music), worship is an orientation to our entire lives, it’s what we do all the time, everyone worships something or someone. The most dedicated atheist worships something, but generally their worship is geared/focused on themselves

-I think this focus of this book is to force us to answer the question: what are you worshipping? Some people worship politics (the beast from the sea) and some people worship the power and influence that comes from politics (the beast from the land) but we’re all tempted to worship in worldly categories instead of heavenly categories, the way God intended us to. The temptation is to worship the gifts God has given that point us to Him, because if we pursue them as an end in themselves we will always be lacking. Augustine: our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. That’s why Revelation is so timely! Do you think anyone is looking to politics for salvation today? Do you think anyone is looking to power and influence for salvation today? Pastors aren’t immune! Why do you think pastors always question how big each other’s church is?

-Friends, what are you worshipping?

-We glance by this: DON’T seal up. Why does that matter?

–Dan. 12:4. God is telling John that the end is now here. It has been the last days since this book was written, 1900 years ago. 

-Vs. 11 seems weird, doesn’t it? Where do we see God encouraging people to sin?

-Once again, John is picking up an idea from Daniel, where it’s not encouraging people to pursue sin, but it’s saying that sin blinds people, and until they are saved they will continue pursuing sin.

-Connection here is unrighteousness leads to being filthy, righteousness leads to being holy. The way you live has spiritual implications, we don’t just work to become a better human, we need a complete transformation. 

-I love the way Jeremiah 31 describes it, it says God will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. He’s saying even a quadruple bypass isn’t enough, we need a transplant, an inbreaking of something completely new and alien to us, we need to be spiritually raised from the dead.

  • Look at Your Works (12-15)

-Once again, a reminder that Jesus is coming soon! While He comes in judgment, He also comes with a reward that’s only given to those who live according to His will and ways.

-This comes about only by a transformed heart. You can’t offer good works to God without His Spirit changing you from the inside out. We talked about this idea in Rev. 19, so if you want to hear more about that go back and listen to that sermon, but the core idea is that faith comes by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, but then as Calvin says the faith that saves is never alone because it’s always accompanied by new good works that God has called us to

-And all of this is possible because in 3 different ways, Jesus identifies Himself with God and as the author of history: alpha and omega (A and Z), first and the last (and everything in between), and beginning and the end.

-Time itself only exists in God, that’s why He can speak with confidence and authority about the way everything is going to happen. 

-Final Beatitude (blessing) in the book: wash their robes. What does that mean? Picking up a theme from the rest of the book.

-Multitude in Rev. 7 praising God, one of the elders asks John who they are, John says that the elder must know, so the elder responds: 

-The way our robes are washed is by being washed in the blood of the Lamb. This is picking up another theme that God spoke about back in Isa. 1. The means by which clothes are washed is through faith in Jesus Christ, the outworking of that is “the right to the tree of life” and “entering the city by the gates”

-Remember back to last week where we saw this odd combination of a city and a garden. Reflections back to Eden with the tree of life and the water of life, but now remade as a city. The perfect place, the new Most Holy Place where God lives among His people.

-I also think it’s significant that we enter “by the gates,” where angels watch over them, and they point to the historical validity of Christianity. One of the reasons I remain a Christian is because of history! 

-Think of this: for Buddhism, what would happen if we were able to definitively say that Buddha didn’t exist? Nothing! Hinduism, too many gods to articulate, but has no reflection in reality. Mormons: take away Joseph Smith and nothing happens to their faith (even when their religion is proven time and time again to be historically unverifiable). What is often called Liberal theology even argues that even if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead they would still be Christians (which honestly is just dumb!). Friends, part of the reason you should be a Christian is because of history. We look back to a definitive event where Satan was defeated, and we look forward to an end point in history where death will be no more! Where the gates will never be closed, where everything will be finally work in perfect peace and harmony.

-But not everyone will be there, only those whose lives are marked by Jesus, who are clothed with the righteousness of Jesus, who realize that they can’t do anything in their own strength but need Jesus to work in them.

-For those people:

  • Look to Jesus to Come (16-21)

-Another reminder who’s in control: Jesus. Everything centers on Him, all of History hinges on Him, and the End is held off until He comes back. 

-He’s even in charge of the angels (messengers), notice that the angel’s job is just to serve as the messenger of Jesus.

-Who is the message to? Not to angels, to the churches, the churches which are comprised of those who have washed their clothes in the blood of the Lamb. Picks up the same idea at the very beginning where John recounts that Jesus sent an angel to John, who recorded everything that was revealed (Revelation) to him.

-Jesus is the root and descendent of David (the Messiah), picking up a theme from Isa. 11:1, Jesus is David’s promised son who sits eternally on God’s throne.

-Bright morning star: Num. 24:17. Balaam’s prophesy (mentioned back in 2:14, letter to Pergamum) Balaam hired by a king to curse Israel, goes to do it, but only blessings come out. Friends, God can use even greedy, wealth-seeking false prophets to carry out His will and plan! And the prophesy here is that some star will come to destroy the enemies of God’s people. What has happened over the course of this book? God’s enemies have been destroyed! All of them! None are left. The descendent of David has won!

-What word do you see repeated in vs. 17? Come! This is to anyone who is hearing this message (all of you), and it gives both a command and a commission:

-First the command: Spirit and the bride (anyone remember who the bride is? The church!) they say to come. Come and align yourself with Jesus, wash your clothes in His blood so that He can bring you near.

-Next, the commission: anyone who hears join with the Spirit and the church to say “Come!” Friends, this is where all of us are a part of God’s reconciling plan to bring all things under His sovereign rule and reign. This book isn’t meant to be us sitting in a room by ourselves trying to figure out if we’re living in the last days, because we are living in the last day, and even if Jesus were to come back tomorrow, it would change nothing about what we should be doing today! We’re supposed to be bearing fruit and inviting others to come to have their clothes washed in His blood. I shared this idea a few weeks ago, but I want to say it again: the point of a sermon isn’t for you to walk away with 3 new things to try to “fix” your life in your own strength, the point of a sermon is for you to behold God and remember what Jesus has done for you! And then we are sent back out into the world to continue inviting others to come!

-Which gets us to the third invitation: anyone who is thirsty. Thirsty for what? John 4 – eternal life. Jesus provides the solution to all the deepest longings of your heart. Jesus’ offer is for any and everyone. So if you’re here today and you haven’t yet trusted Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, why not? Your life won’t have any ultimate purpose or meaning until you do, you won’t find the answer to the deepest longings of your heart until you do!

-Then there’s a warning: do not add or take away from any words of this book, but that could also be extended to the rest of the Bible. If God has spoken, we must respond. This actually picks up almost the exact wording in Deut. 4:2. 

-Tertullian: “Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite errors.” 1 error is adding to God’s Word, this would be called “legalism.” This tells you not only what sin is, but how far you need to stay away from even the appearance of sin. But the opposite error is taking away from God’s word, this would be called “licentiousness” living however you want. We must be completely obedient to God’s Word alone, and the temptation is to lean one way or another and call it the gospel, but Jesus doesn’t allow us to do that, He perfectly embodies grace AND truth, not grace OR truth.

-Once again, we’re remined that Jesus is coming soon (in salvation history), and in response John (and we) respond with “Amen!” yes, we agree, come, Lord Jesus!

-This should be the prayer and cry of every Christian down through the ages. We’re supposed to live as Jesus comes back tomorrow, which means get busy being obedient to Him! Luther was asked if he knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow what would he do? He said he would plant a seed today. Where are you planting seeds today that will bear fruit in eternity? Where is God calling you to be faithful today so that you can be ready to see Jesus face to face? Because the reality is He is coming soon! No one knows when, but we need to faithful today because it’s one day closer to THE day.

-God’s grace (undeserving free gift) be with everyone. Amen. What an appropriate way to end this sermon! God’s grace is freely available to everyone! So come, and come Lord Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on November 24, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 24, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/24/revelation-226-21-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 21:1-22:5 – Sermon Manuscript

-This American Life, the Sound of Music favorite movie, sharing it with a friend who agreed, minus the Nazis. The primary person said what Nazis? Turned out she’d only ever seen half the movie, so in here mind it was a charming flick about a nanny who brings order to this house, teaches children how to sing, and then rides off into the sunset singing “Good night!” When she was growing up, her family only had 1 of the VHS tapes and had somehow lost the second one.

-That’s the temptations of the human heart, to miss the end of the story. Think of the impulse toward “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” If this is the only life we have that impulse makes sense. Pursue pleasure and alleviate pain

-But the reality is much different than that. Friends, life is only going to get better, but I can’t promise that will happen before eternity. However, when we know what eternity is like, it makes it easier to endure whatever happens here.

-Norwegian rats and swimming. 

-Book on navigating the future “We tend to oscillate between naïve optimism and cynical pessimism (see the narratives of decline across the political spectrum or the alarming statistical trends in depression, loneliness, and suicide.” “It is only if we can reclaim a sense of Purpose that we will be able to articulate a fully human and cosmic sense of flourishing and address our crisis.” I would say that Purpose (capital P) is to prepare for a new heavens and a new earth.

READ/PRAY

  1. What is New (1-8)

-New heaven and new earth: there is an earth! 

-Passed away – some debate about the significance of this, I would argue that this is similar to the death we will go through. We’ll be raised again, we’ll still be ourselves, but purified.

-Sea: place of chaos, doesn’t mean there’s no water in the new heavens and earth! Probably best to refer to it as the new earth, because the point of this passage is that heaven comes down to earth so they’re now 1 place instead of 2, where right now they separated, they won’t always be

-The holy city, new Jerusalem

–Gal. 4:26 – “The Jerusalem above” Heb. 12:22 “the heavenly Jerusalem”

-We’re supposed to contrast this description with the other woman John saw: Babylon the prostitute. Here all of God’s people are described as a new city

3-The goal of this entire thing, the goal since the Fall has been this reality: God dwelling, tabernacling, living with His people.

-Promised back in Leviticus, promised again in Ezekiel, God is saying all those promises that He made in the past are fulfilled here in the new earth.

-Also shows us that in the new heavens & earth we’re in community. There’s no isolationism in Christianity, there’s no just me and God, it’s always WE and God

4-God will take away all sadness and pain. Those are gone, along with death.

-I want to just mention this briefly (if you want to talk more about this let me know) but one of the realities of heaven is we’ll understand God’s justice rightly, so there won’t be the sadness of knowing someone we loved is in the lake of fire

-Goes on to say that nothing is left out of this renewal! EVERYTHING is made new. Trees and bees and grass and buildings and stars and planets and galaxies, all made new.

-And He guarantees it “faithful and true.”

6-Just like Jesus “it is finished” God has been there from the beginning, He will be there until the end. He gives ridiculously generously to all. But there is a caveat:

7-The one who conquers. Remember that language from the beginning of the book? To each of the churches, God had promised something to the one who conquers, pointing here. Sonship isn’t saying men only, it’s signifying the familial blessing, that context women didn’t receive inheritance

-Unlike the one who conquers is those who go to the lake of fire, not a complete list but representative of a wide assortment of sins

  • What is Symbolic (9-21)

-Some debate about this section (again), is this referring to a literal city, or is it signifying something else. Probably won’t surprise you that I lean toward this signifying something else, we shouldn’t expect to see this giant cube city on the new earth (but again, I’m fine being wrong because God can do whatever He wants!) Just to give you some perspective, here’s the measurements as outlined in the book.

-Why do I think it’s symbolic? Because of vs 10, carried me away in the Spirit, that happened before! Rev. 17 where he saw the fight between the dragon and the woman in labor. Just like that was a symbol of something else, I think this is a symbol of something else.

-Beautiful city, without any of the vices or problems of cities today. Cities in the 1st century were places of protection and security, walls meant bad guys were kept out.

12-12 gates, 3 on each side, named for the 12 sons (tribes) of Israel (Jacob), and 12 foundations built on the apostles.

-God’s goal has always been to have a people living in His place serving under His rule and reign. This is signifying that the ways the world divides people no longer exists. God’s people have come from every nation and culture and all of them are given unmediated access to God Himself! 

15-Angel is given a measuring rod, need the original wording here to not miss the focus of the numbers (symbols not statistics): 12,000 stadia. Just like the 12 gates and 12 foundations, 12 x 103 ALL of God’s people. Not just square, a perfect cube (which has 12 sides)

-Did you know that there’s 1 other place in the Bible that’s a perfect cube? The Most Holy Place in the temple, 1 Kings 6:20 tells us the measurements of it. What’s significant about this is where the Most Holy Place was only accessed 1/year by 1 person, now the whole city is the Most Holy Place, and everyone is welcome there! Direct access to God’s presence!

17-144 cubits (again perfect, 12×12)

-What is the significance of the jewels? No one’s sure, there’s some overlap between this list and the jewels on the priestly garments, but what scholars have found is this exact same list used in the signs of the Zodiac, but backwards. So some think it’s John’s way of saying all the predictions the world offers are cheap imitations, but this is the reality.

-Pearls were the most costly jewel in the 1st century, and I think it should make us think of the parable Jesus tells of the pearl of great value! In the new earth gates are made out of them, and lastly the streets of gold. Picked up from 1 King 6:30

-The temple was meant to be a picture of Eden, which was thought to be modeled after heaven itself, and here we see we now have the full picture. Turns out it was modeled after heaven! 

  • What is Missing (22-27)

-John notices something that’s gone that he was expecting to see. After millennia of God only meeting with his people in a temple, now there’s no temple because there’s no need for one! God is the temple! We have full access to Him without needing anything or anyone else standing in between.

-Vs. 23 doesn’t say there’s no sun or moon, it says there’s no need for them. God’s light illuminates everything else.

-Then vs. 24 says that the nations will walk by its light. So here we see that nations still exist, which means if you haven’t gotten to travel on this side of eternity but there’s places you’ve wanted to visit, just wait. But I would also argue that what is meant by this isn’t just referring to illumination, but is referring to the way everyone’s living is according to God’s will and way. Think of Psalm 119 which says God’s word is a lamp for me feet and a light for my path. Doesn’t mean we hold a Bible to navigate when we go into a dark room, it means our life is guided by God. And think of what Jesus says in John 8 “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” 

25-Gates will never close by day, and no night. 

-What’s the point of gates if they never close? Gates are meant to provide protection, and night is the time when people are most susceptible to being attacked. See I don’t think John is saying there’s no more sunsets or sunrises in heaven, I think we’ll still be able to enjoy them, as well as sleeping. What’s meant (similar to the sea) is the negatives that come during night no longer exist. Again, I could be wrong, I’m making speculations based on all Scripture, but I have reasons to think these things!

26-Bring the honor and glory of the nations. Friends, this means things will be redeemed from here and brought there. We’ll still have technology, we’ll still have trees and grass and food and water, but they’ll all function perfectly without ever breaking.

-I read Heaven by Randy Alcorn this week, if you haven’t read it PLEASE get it and read it ASAP, it’s just beautiful. (don’t read “heaven tourism books though) But one of the words he uses in there that I want you to understand is what is being described here is very earthy. It says new heavens and NEW EARTH. I would postulate that what we’ll see there will look very similar to what we see here, but better. Colors will be more vivid, smells will be more potent, but it will be real. 

-Picture of this in The Last Battle of Chronicles of Narnia where Peter and Edmund are looking around at Narnia’s version of heaven where they start to notice familiar hills nearby, then looking closer they realize they are the exact hills they were thinking of!

-What I would argue based on Scripture, is that heaven is all around us, but our eyes can’t see it. Sometimes you can get glimpses, maybe it’s through a specific song or a conversation with a friend or a bite of the most delicious food you’ve ever had or a time of prayer where you get a sense of how wonderful God is, God allows us these glimpses to spur us on. I think there are 2 examples in the Bible that bear this out – think of the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. He’s giving a glimpse of heaven to encourage him as he faces death! And then 2 chapters later, I think Paul is given the same glimpse, but because he’s not saved he falls on his face. 

-I realize this sounds a little weird, but I truly believe that heaven is a different realm that we can’t see right now. Quantum physics even points us in this direction where they say that there’s all these quarks (real word!) that all interact and engage with each other across the universe. Over my head, so I’ll stop there, but I think heaven is real, those who have died in faith before us are there now waiting for the Lord to enact his Kingdom here just like it is there. There’s more, but let’s finish these last 5 verses:

  • What is Central (22:1-5)

-River of the water of life, where does it come from? Throne, God’s provision for His people. Straight through the heart of this city. Tree of life (apparently a LARGE tree, enough to go across the river) 12 seasons of fruit.

-Once again, I would argue science backs this up. People are trying to bio-hack their bodies to lower their biological age. I read a story this week of someone who celebrates his birthday every 19 months because that’s how long he believes it takes his body to advance a year. What if God has created a fruit that allows our bodies to live forever?

-Leave are for healing of the nations (once again, nations in heaven) 

-No curse, no thorns or thistles in response to our work

4-Right now, no one can see God and live is now changed to we will see His face and our entire orientation is toward Him.

-Finally, we will reign with God. God will have some area (I’m sure of varying sizes) delegated to us. Think of the parable of the servants who were left with talents to steward, then God commissions them with more. Some will be given oversight of a little piece of land, others will be given oversight of cities or nations, but everyone will have some oversight of something in the earth.

-So what? Why is all this important? Because we need to have hope in the midst of the uncertainty of this world. The movie doesn’t end in the middle where we sing “the sun has gone to bed and so must I” and ride off into the sunset, there’s a direction we’re heading. AND in Col. 3 we’re commanded to set our minds on heaven. I believe we’ve over-spiritualized heaven and neglected to read Scripture as God has actually revealed the new heavens AND EARTH to us. 

-And here’s what I mean when I say that. The primary thing we’ll get is being with Jesus, but there’s also additional benefits that are OK to hope for and look forward to. Things like time with dear friends, going for long walks where you knees don’t hurt, time to spend doing the things you love that you don’t have time for now. All those things will be redeemed in heaven. Here’s why I believe that, Heb. 11, the hall of faith: seeking a homeland, desire a better place. Friends, it’s ok to get excited about the gifts of God’s creation, He wants you to! That’s why there’s things that are enjoyable even on this side of heaven. That’s why sunsets are so pretty, that’s why the gentle lapping of the waves at the beach is so soothing, that’s why a perfectly cooked medium rare steak tastes so good, God gives us these things to point to Him and help us remember that He loves us extravagantly!

-But what’s even crazier about this is when can we start getting excited about heaven and preparing for that new home? Right now. Look up at vs. 5, what tense is the verb in? Present. God right now is enacting this new heavens and earth among us. Think of what Jesus said when He taught His disciples to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s eternal kingdom is breaking into this earth right here and right now. When you are a humble you’re living in heaven, when you are a peacemaker you’re living in heaven. When you live as God intends you to live, you’re living as a citizen of heaven instead of earth. You’re preparing yourself for life after life after death. God’s plan to redeem creation has already started, it started the moment Jesus rose from the dead. 

-So what are you doing today to take 1 step closer to living in the new earth? And not just for you, who else are you encouraging to grow 1 step closer to living in the new earth? You don’t need to wait to live for eternity, because eternity starts now. Friends, set your minds on heaven, and as the old hymn says “The things of earth (the old earth) will grow strangely dim.” By focusing on heaven we are able to live faithfully here and now.

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by mikethestrand on November 17, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 17, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/17/revelation-211-225-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 20:11-14 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of my favorite movies is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), based on a ride that’s been at Disneyland since 1967. Who knew you could make a whole feature length movie on a theme park ride, but they did it! The reason I liked it is because it was the next movie from a LOTR star (had to get that movie in there somewhere)

-If you haven’t seen it, follows the story of Captain Jack Sparrow, a pirate who is on a quest to recover his perceived rightful place as the captain of the Black Pearl, a ship from which he was mutinied. Early in the movie, Jack is shown arriving to town on a sinking ship where he quickly runs into trouble. After being cornered by a group of soldiers, a woman that he accidentally saved protests his arrest saying “Commodore, I really must protest. Pirate or not, this man saved my life.” Commodore: “One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness.” Jack: “Though it seems enough to condemn him.” Commodore: “Indeed”

-I think this is the way many of us tend to view today’s topic: the final judgment, here called the lake of fire, otherwise referred to as hell. If we think of hell at all, we tend to view it as unfair condemnation, and I understand that impulse.

-Not something to take lightly, don’t joke about it, I understand that this topic often comes with much grief 

-I approach this topic with great fear and trembling

-At the same time, as I’ve shared before, where Scripture is emphatic, I’m going to be emphatic, so because it’s in here (and not just a periphery issue), it’s something we need to address.

READ/PRAY

  1. The Great White Throne (11)

-This is the 7th glimpse of the throne in Revelation, so when John mentions it this time he wants us to remember all the previous things we’ve seen:

-1: Rev. 4:2 – someone seated on a throne (no one else is allowed to sit there, and no votes for this position), rainbow around the throne signifying God’s mercy, 24 more thrones with elders on them, in the middle of the throne stands the slaughtered lamb. Centrality of Jesus on the throne, friends this cannot be overstated!

-2: Rev. 7:9 – great multitude who can’t be counted, who cry out that salvation belongs to God, shows us the central place that worship should have in our lives

-3: Rev. 8:1-5 – silence in heaven about a half hour, prayers of the saints rise up to God like incense, shows us that prayer is brought to God’s very throne

-4: Rev. 11:16 – elders giving thanks to God that He has begun to reign and the time to judge has come. Shows us the way God’s just judgment is worthy of praise

-5: Rev. 16:17-19 – voice from heaven “It is done,” praise to God for his ways are just and evil has been vanquished, goes on to recount the destruction of Babylon viewed from the throne. Even the most powerful human institutions can’t stand against God.

-6: 19:4-5 – God seated on his throne, voice from the throne saying to praise God, multitude responds who are invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb showing that there is a way to come before God’s throne: being his pure bride. People used to complain to me about “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs, and I would tell that the problem wasn’t that it was too intimate, it was that they weren’t intimate enough, because Scripture talks about Jesus as our husband.

-All that is now gone, and the focus is on the “great white throne” Great: large, impressive. White: purity

-One seated: the Lamb. That’s why it was important for us to think through all those other glimpses we had of the throne previously. 

-So pure that the corrupted earth and heavens can’t be in his presence. Think of some of the other examples we’ve seen of creation coming undone. 16:20 “every island fled, and the mountains disappeared” peals of thunder, millstones thrown to earth, hail, earthquakes. Think of Rom. 8 where Paul tells us that creation is groaning for this day. Creation was subjected to sin, to death, to decay because the people God created to steward creation destroyed His perfect plans

-Sin can’t be in the presence of holiness. Isa. 6 the prophet catches a glimpse of God seated on His throne and he becomes undone! He worries that he’s going to die because he can’t be in God’s presence and live. God has to send an angel with a burning coal to touch Isaiah’s lips so that he can speak to God. 

-And what’s amazing is because of the slain Lamb we can come boldly into God’s presence. We don’t need any other sacrifices, we don’t need coal from the altar, we can talk to God whenever from wherever! 

-Not a literal fleeing, but creation is coming undone, just like we’ve seen at the end of the seals, trumpets, and bowls. This is preparation for the new heavens & earth

  • The Dead (12-13)

-Throne is the predominant focus, but that’s not all John sees: there’s also the dead

-“great and small” not just wealthy or well known, this is everyone who has ever lived coming to stand before God waiting their turn to be judged.

-And books were opened? Maybe like me, you enjoy reading! Perennially, some of the best-selling books are biographies, and there’s always some bit of juice that comes out each time some new celebrity releases one.

-Look at the end of the verse, “according to their works by what was written in the books.” Apparently there’s a library in heaven with the biography of everyone who’s ever lived. You and me have book that recount our entire life story in them, and according to this everyone will be judged “according to their works.”

–Luke 12:2-3 “There is nothing covered that won’t be uncovered, nothing hidden that won’t be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in an ear in private rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.” When I was growing up, the way this was taught to me was that someday there’s going to be a movie that plays for everyone to see what you did in your life, so be careful! But I don’t think that’s what’s meant here.

-Pointing that God is aware of everything. Every thought in your mind, every step you take, Jesus says He knows how many hairs are on your head! Nothing is hidden from Him, which means His judgments weigh everything, He knows everything that has ever happened and nothing escapes from His oversight. Friends, think just how comforting that is! When you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death, who is with you? God is! Nothing catches Him by surprise, nothing catches Him off guard, even your sins. He knew every sin you would commit, He knew that before sent Jesus to die for you, yet He still did it so that now nothing can separate you from Him.

-What this means is everyone will someday give an account for their actions, and the question for us is whose actions will you be judged by? Because all our actions are as useful to getting to heaven as garbage. Jonathan Edwards said “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary” Your contribution is the problem, but we’ll talk about that again at the end.

-Who else comes?

-Sea: if people weren’t given a proper burial, as was customary

-death and Hades: the storehouses of the dead (Rev. 1:18 – Jesus holds the keys to these places meaning He’s in charge of them) 

-These people are also judged according to their works

-How does this language fit with the belief that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and not according to works? 

-John Calvin: “It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.”

-How do you know if someone is saved? How do you know if someone just says they’re saved? And how do you know if someone isn’t saved? Jesus tells us how in Matt. 7:16 “You’ll recognize them by their fruit.” The question is: what fruit is being demonstrated? See, we’re not commanded to judge whether or not someone is saved, but if someone claims to be saved we do have room to ask if their lives are marked by the right fruit. Jesus says that people can claim to follow Him, prophesy in His name, and even perform miracles in His name, but still not be saved. It must change everything about us, including the ways we live. If we claim to be in Christ but don’t give any evidence of that in our lives (bear fruit) then people should ask us if we’re truly believers. 

-That’s what John is saving here. Salvation only happens by faith alone through grace alone in Jesus Christ alone, but then if we’re truly saved, there will be enough evidence in our lives to demonstrate that reality. 

-This connects to what I shared last week: Jesus wants to be with us in every area of our lives, which means everything we do is an opportunity to honor and glorify Him. Eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing: all can be done as a way of honoring Jesus as your Lord. And if not, the Bible calls that sin, which as Jack Sparrow learned is enough to condemn someone.

  • The Lake of Fire (14-15)

-This section begins with death and hades are thrown into the lake of fire

-Joining the 2 beasts and Satan, the second death. Everyone dies once, but only those who are going to the lake of fire will die a second time. Similar to Jesus talking about being born again. Everyone is born once, but only those who put their faith in Jesus are born a second time.

-Just so we understand how all the Bible fits together: 1 Cor. 15:26 the last enemy to be abolished is literally death itself. Just as we’ve seen creation coming undone, death is now undone as well.

-Who else? Anyone whose name was not written in the book of life

-This took place before the earth was created. Referring to the beast: (Rev. 13:8) Notice WHEN this happened “from the foundation of the world.”

-Friends, what this means is the ultimate destiny for anyone who worships the beast is the lake of fire

-How could a loving God send anyone to hell? That’s a good and right question to ask! God describes Himself as love, as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and mercy, as gracious, as patient, so why would He send His creatures to hell? We first need to address what it is we’re talking about, and then I have 7 things (in keeping with the theme in Revelation) we must believe about hell based on Scripture.

-First, when we talk about God we need to recognize that He is God and we are not. He knows more than we do and His judgments are completely right, even when we don’t agree. What that means is while God describes Himself as love, He gets to define love, and while God is love, His love also includes wrath and justice. Think of it like marriage. My wife loves me. If I were to be unfaithful toward her she would rightfully be full of wrath. Throughout this book we’ve seen spiritual idolatry referred to as harlotry, so God’s response to that is condemnation.

-Secondly, everyone believes that some people deserve hell. Hitler, Stalin, etc. THOSE guys deserve hell! Why do we get to go from there to determine who should be deserving of hell? Our judgments are going to be off, but not God’s. Anytime someone wants to debate this topic this is where I go.

-Emotional reaction to this. Emotions aren’t necessarily wrong, but our emotions can’t always bear up to the weight of reality. Pinnock, Stott

-EFCA SOF: “We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace.”

1-The lake of fire is real. While there is a lot of imagery that we shouldn’t take literally in Revelation, the lake of fire is a real place where the unholy trinity will spend eternity with all those he deceived in rebellion against God.

2-The lake of fire is eternal – both in existence and in terms of decision. Once someone dies there are no second chances. Heb. 9:27 tells us that people die once, and after that death face judgment. 

3-The lake of fire is just. No one can blame God (even though they will), no one is there who doesn’t deserve to be there because the judgment of God is perfect. We saw this in Rev. 19:2, the multitude praises God because His judgments are true and righteous. We will someday worship God because He judges everything as it is supposed to be judged. There won’t be any room to debate or defend yourself

4-The lake of fire is where God’s presence in wrath is poured out. We saw this back in Rev. 14:9-11. Undiluted wrath poured out on the unbelieving, and how long does it endure? Forever and ever. That’s a VERY long time!

5-Jesus believed and preached on hell, a lot! He had no issue telling people exactly where their destiny was! For the sake of time, just one example, but we could pick any of the Gospel accounts and find Jesus talking about the reality of hell.

6-People choose to spend eternity in the lake of fire we often quickly jump to the throwing into the lake of fire, but what we miss is that people willingly pursue it. Remember, people will give an account for how they lived, and even if they were given the choice to leave they would still want to stay in torment. You can see this in the parable Jesus tells of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. The rich man in hell never asks to be released. Hell is where he’s supposed to be. 

7-Eternity is the destiny for everyone. Everyone lives forever, some will spend eternity in the new heavens and earth, and some will spend eternity in the lake of fire.

-Once again, just as we’ve seen throughout this whole book, there’s only 2 ways to live: either for God, or opposed to God. You either willingly bow the knee to Jesus now and find the life you’ve been looking for, or you’ll be forced to bow the knee to Him later where you’ll get the life you deserve.

-But this isn’t something to gloat over, it’s not something to wish away, it’s something to remember because each day you’re helping point people (and yourself) to one of these 2 places.

-I shared the story of Jack Sparrow at the beginning, and we saw in the passage that everyone’s story is being recorded in heaven. But there’s a big difference in the story between someone who’s been washed by the blood of the Lamb, and those who have chosen to live their own way. In many cases, the stories would read exactly the same! Snapped at his kids here, gossiped about a friend there, cut someone off in traffic here, but for some people, next to the sins it says “forgiven.” Those sins are crossed out and in their place it says “read Jesus’ book here.” 

-If anyone here wants to have their story changed, now is the time! Don’t let this moment pass you by, believe in your heart that Jesus is who He said He was: the Savior of the world, and then confess that He rose again your book can be rewritten, you no longer need to worry about ever being condemned.

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by mikethestrand on November 10, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 10, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/10/revelation-2011-14-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 20:1-10 – Sermon Manuscript

-Think back to the most significant moments in your life. You can probably remember the smells, the feel, the emotions behind all of it, right?

-Receiving an award in high school, the day I got married, the day my kids were born (somewhat foggy due to lack of sleep after)

-In those moments, who was with you? Significant events don’t happen in isolation, it’s always with someone else, and Jesus wants to be that someone else for every human.

READ/PRAY

-What is this 1,000 years? One of the most hotly debated passages, with entire systems of theology built around interpretations of this.

-First thing to note: all of these positions are trying to make arguments from the text of Scripture, therefore none of them are heresy. You can believe any of these positions and still be a faithful, orthodox Christian, if anyone tries to tell you that you HAVE to believe certain things about the end times just give up the conversation because it won’t be worth your time! 

-Second is this 1,000 years is used 6x in the entire Bible, and they’re all in vs. 2-7 that doesn’t mean we just ignore them, but keep them in perspective!

-Third: the main point of this entire story isn’t the 1,000 years, it’s the new heavens and earth! In the timeline of eternity, 1,000 years is nothing! 2 Peter 3:8 “Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” When we have eternity, 1,000 years is as significant as we count a day. It matters, but it’s not the main thing.

-So what MUST you believe about the end times?

1. Jesus is coming back physically, for real. He will return bodily to enact His perfect, just, and eternal reign. His kingdom will be established, and it will be a physical reality, not just a spiritual one. Everyone agrees on this point.

2. No one knows the day or the hour. The only thing we can say with certainty is each day gets us 1 day closer to THE day. That’s it! And if you try to predict it you’ll ruin it for the rest of us because NO ONE knows!

3. Jesus isn’t going to become King. You can’t become something you already are. Jesus is already ruling from His throne, and He invites us to join with Him in His work of reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19)

-3 positions (all of which have subsets of thought): premil, amil, postmil. None of these positions require the 1,000 years to refer to a literal 1,000 years (numbers are often signs) This is the only time I’ll use charts in Revelation!

-Amillennial: many prefer to call this “realized millennialism” “a” means no, they argue that this 1,000 years refers to the time between Jesus’ 2 comings, not future. This was the predominant thought among the church from the 400s until the 1800s, due to the influence of Augustine. They argue that the binding of Satan took place when Jesus died, and since then, God has regularly been working to draw people to Himself and conform them into His image, literally stealing them from the domain of Satan (we’ll get there)

-Postmillennialist: the gospel will continually spread across the globe until we get “1,000 year” time period where God’s peace and justice are the predominant focus across the world.

-Premillennial: Jesus returns before (pre) His millennial reign. This one has a sharp divide between historic (classical) vs. dispensational premillennial. Historic appeal to early church fathers like Papias and Irenaeus for their support, and dispensational premil didn’t come onto the scene until the 1800s. Dispensational argue for a secret rapture 7 years before Jesus’ return, and that was what most evangelicals in America believed in the 20th century (if you ever heard teaching on Revelation it was probably this kind) I don’t agree with it for 3 reasons (1) partly because most of church history was dominated by amil, (2) nothing in Revelation points to a secret taking away of the church because the church remains throughout the entire book, and (3) the passages people appeal to for a secret rapture I would argue shouldn’t be interpreted as a secret rapture, but should instead be read as either punishment/judgment or being a part of God’s welcoming committee. If you want to talk more about that, let me know!

-There is a very tiny difference between postmil and classical premil, they both use the same interpretive tools for approaching all of Scripture, including this text. My caution to you is to not use this text as a way of trying to interpret the rest of Scripture. Remember: numbers throughout Revelation are symbols and not statistics. However, the reason I’m still in the premil camp (barely) is because nowhere in Revelation does time serve as a symbol for something other than time (which is my issue with amil), my issue with postmil is it’s too positive, and my issue with premil is it tends to be too pessimistic!

-Every interpretive option has “problem” texts, does better with some verses than others, as we work through today, I’ll be primarily arguing for the historical premil, but will also share how the other options make their arguments.

  1. Serpent Bound (1-3)

-We’ve seen lots of angels! And we saw an angel holding the key to the abyss back in Rev. 9 to allow the locusts to escape. This time, instead of letting things out, he’s throwing something into the abyss.

-Apparently different than the lake of fire, as we’ll see in vs. 10. 

-Binds Satan for a thousand years

-Last week we saw the 2 beasts captured and thrown into the lake of fire

-Lots of emphasis given to this binding: seized, bound, threw, closed, sealed.

-Premil believes this is part of Jesus’ return

-Amil believes this binding happened when Jesus was rose from the dead (based on Mark 3:27 “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.”)

-Do you think Satan is currently bound and not deceiving the nations? Seems to miss the way the beast has been the puppet master behind all the political persecution throughout this section.

-Released a second time, or is this recounting the same event we saw last week: the final “battle” where God’s rule is enacted? 

-I believe this is referring to a second battle, but you’ll need to wait until the end to see why! It comes up in vs. 9

  • Saints Seated and Share (4-6)

-John’s focus shifts from the dragon to the saints. Some work needed to understand what John’s saying here! 

-Thrones, people seated on them with authority. Rev. 2:26

-And the souls who had been beheaded, connects back to Rev. 1:2

-Don’t push the idea of beheading too far – most likely a stand in for all believers, who may be required to pay for their belief with their life, because the descriptions are true of all believers.

-They reigned with Christ, which we are currently doing! Eph. 2:6, right now we’re meant to serve as Jesus’ ambassadors, that is we represent Him and His rule and reign to the rest of the world. 

-If what I’ve proposed on vs. 4 is true, then vs. 5 refers to the resurrection of the unbelievers. John calls this the “first resurrection,” but he never goes on to talk about a second resurrection, so we need to do some inferring.

-Blessed – every other time it’s used in the book (6 others for total of 7) it refers to all believers. Priests – same, every other time it refers to all believers.

-“Second death” John never refers to a first death, so once again we’re speculating. 

-This is where the premil position is probably weakest and amil is strongest because there’s some things here that seem to not make sense to us. At face value, it appears that all believers will be resurrected to receive their glorified bodies, and will be living and judging on earth at the same time that unbelievers have their normal unglorified bodies for this thousand year time period (however long that actually is!) Is that even possible? Is that correct?

-I’m going to go ahead and argue yes! But why? Because God is FAR more patient than any of us, and once again in the grand scheme of eternity 1,000 years isn’t that long. I believe this 1,000 years is the final demonstration that even when people are no longer blinded and deceived by Satan, they’ll still reject Jesus and choose sin.

-The other reason I think this is because we already have an instance where a glorified body was here walking around the earth hanging out with people who didn’t have their glorified bodies yet, and people still didn’t believe Him, that’s Jesus. Believe it or not, we do have a picture of this reality and if God’s done it once, why wouldn’t He do it again?

-If this feels or sounds odd to you, it may be because of how culturally conditioned we are, and how much we tend to view the material as only bad and negative.

-I was at a funeral recently where the speaker mentioned that the important part, the spiritual and immaterial part was saved. But that’s wrong! That’s platonic philosophy, not Christianity! God’s plan is to renew both heaven AND EARTH. So God’s plan includes a period of time where the world will be operating as it should have been operating forever. Where He is on His throne and all of us are given a job to spread His influence across the world. 

-The hard part for me is that I’ll have to find a new job when we get to this point, because I theoretically won’t need to preach anymore! But anyone who has a job outside of ministry will be able to take that vocation with you (we’ll get there in a couple weeks, this is just a teaser!) 

-And remember, this isn’t the ultimate end for us. This is just a taste of how great it will be! Yet even when everything is as it should be, with Jesus on His throne and His followers faithfully following after Him, people will still reject Him. That’s just how depraved humans are, just how prone humans are to reject and walk away from Him, at the end of time no one will be able to blame God for being unkind or impatient with them.

-If you’ve ever read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, this is the closest you can find in the Bible as evidence for his beliefs in there.

  • Satan’s Demise (7-10)

-After these 1,000 years, Satan is released for what was earlier called “a short time” to conduct the true final battle.

-Similarities to last time, drawing the armies up, but where in 19 it only listed kings of the earth and their armies, now it says all nations. So interpreters argue that Gog & Magog are a stand in for the nations of the world (picking up on the terminology Ezekiel uses Ezek. 38-39). Much larger army than before!

-Shows that even after all this time where Jesus was ruling, the world was as it should be, as soon as Satan is released the people flock to him with their plans to attempt to overthrow Jesus’ perfect reign.

-“Beloved city” aka “encampment of the saints” which is Jerusalem, but not the Jerusalem we know today, because that’s a stand in/representative for the entire universe (which you’ll need to come back for in 2 weeks to see how!)

-Once again, a very anticlimactic battle. 

-Saved the illustration for this week: end of ROTK, Aragorn and a tiny army of men and elves (with a dwarf and a couple hobbits) draw up against Sauron and all the forces of evil. Aragorn whispers “For Frodo” and charges. Outnumbered, impossible odds, and then the moment the ring is destroyed the earth caves in on itself and Mordor is destroyed, leaving only the good guys standing.

-Similarly here: fire consumes the army, reminiscent of another showdown in the OT (1 Kings 18) where Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal and attempt to call down fire from heaven. Spoiler alert, Elijah wins, and to connect it to last week, he wins by speaking and asking God to respond.

-Devil, dragon, ancient serpent, Satan (deceiver) finally thrown into the same place as the 2 beasts. Place of never-ending torment “day and night forever and ever.”

-We’ll look at this more closely next week, but the lake of fire is the same place unbelievers are thrown, too. After all this time to repent and turn to God, even at this late stage they refuse.

-Shared a story before of someone I heard at school saying he would just wait until he was on his deathbed to confess and get into heaven, this shows us that won’t actually happen. His choices even up to the end will be to turn away from God and pursue his own sin.

-Friends, everything we do has consequences, either positive or negative. That’s why you have to walk by a sign that say “One Step Closer” each time you walk into our doors. Every day is a new opportunity for us to grow closer to Jesus. Unfortunately, it’s also an opportunity to walk further away from him.

-PDT life isn’t made up of a few major decisions, it’s made up of millions of tiny decisions that turn into your life. What decisions are you going to make today?

-Talking with staff this week about technology – how do we use technology as Christians, as something that draws us closer to Jesus? 

-Conversations with others: how do we engage with other people in a way that allows us to better model Jesus to them AND push them closer to Jesus?

-Watching the Vikings tonight, how can we walk that in a way that brings us closer to Jesus? 

-Friends, Jesus wants every tiny little part of your life to be a way of engaging with Him. Will you allow Him in?

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by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/03/revelation-201-10-sermon-manuscript/

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