Monday, April 30, 2012
The One True Fairytale--Isaiah Series
In recent years, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings trilogy have gained immense popularity after they were adapted into movies. These stories—which were each written by Christian men—touch on timeless themes such as good versus evil, the hope of a golden age in which good triumphs, and the promise of a chosen one who will lead the world into this golden age.
I have to think that these stories have gained their popularity because their broad outlines tell the real story of mankind according to the Bible. In the Bible we read that mankind was created by God and placed into a paradise to rule over it with loving care, but we lost our position in this paradise after joining up with a rebellion against our Creator led by Satan. Ever since, mankind has been engaged in a struggle of good versus evil, with God giving us the promise that His Chosen One would come to defeat evil once and for all and lead mankind back into paradise and the honored position of rulership which we once held.
Now if all of this sounds a bit like a fairytale, it’s because fairytales have freely borrowed from the storyline of the Bible for centuries. This storyline has been so captivating to us because it is true! C. S. Lewis called Christianity “the one true fairytale,” and I think that is a great description. The message of Christianity may appear too good to be true, but that is only an appearance, because the awesome reality is that it is true!
In Isaiah 32-35, we read more about this Chosen One whom God has promised to send and how He will bring the world into a Golden Age that will restore so much of what we lost from the Garden of Eden. Let’s allow our hearts to rejoice and our imaginations to soar as we learn more about the coming kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In what ways will God’s original design for the world be restored during the kingdom of Christ?
1. Mankind will rule over the world in righteousness and justice (32:1-8; 33:5-6; 33:17-22)
According to Genesis 1, this is why God created us in the first place. He used Himself as the blueprint to create us so that we could be like His princes and princesses in this world by taking care of it and ruling over the other creatures within it. We strayed from God’s design for us when we sinned, but God has never given up on His original plan for us. Mankind will one day fulfill the role for which we were created, and this will be primarily through the reign of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will rule over this world as the perfect expression of what mankind was meant to be. Let’s read a bit about His reign [READ 32:1-8].
I think v. 5 of that passage is so encouraging—“the fool will no more be called noble, nor the scoundrel said to be honorable.” Think of how much suffering has been unleashed in this world through fools and scoundrels who have gotten into positions of power. Think of the people in North Korea today; think of the people of Cuba; think of the policy of infanticide in China. But when Jesus reigns, fools and scoundrels will never again be in positions of power, because Christ Himself will be our King.
Now please follow with me as I read 33:17-22 [READ 33:17-22]. Notice in v. 22 that Jesus will fulfill all three of the tasks that our government has assigned to different branches. The Lord is our judge—there’s the judicial branch; the Lord is our lawgiver—there’s the legislative branch; and the Lord is our king—there’s the executive branch. Now at the present time, it is wise for us to divide those powers because of the possibility of government corruption and abuse, but when Jesus reigns, we won’t have to worry about that problem anymore!
So Jesus will be Lord over all in His kingdom, but notice that Isaiah 32:1 also mentioned princes who will rule. These princes could be you and me depending on the rewards we receive from Christ. This idea corresponds to what Jesus told the Apostles in Matthew 19:28—“Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” This reward is held out to all followers of Christ in verses like Revelation 2:26-27, where Jesus states, “The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.”
So one day—led by the Lord Jesus as King—mankind will rule over the world as God has always intended. According to the Bible in the Gospel of John (12:31, 14:30, 16:11), Satan is the ruler of this world today because he has deceived us all into rebelling against God. But when Jesus takes His throne in this world, mankind will have a kind of second chance to do what God created us to do in the first place.
2. The Earth will be abundantly fruitful and productive (32:9-15; 35:1-2, 6b-7)
Around here, we know what it’s like to struggle with the Earth to make it fruitful and productive. We battle weeds that threaten to dominate and choke out our crops. We feel the effects of droughts and severe storms. But the Earth has not always been this way. Adam had been given the task of working the ground in the Garden of Eden, but his efforts were not resisted by thorns and weeds until after he had sinned. When God spoke to Adam after his sin, He said, “cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). When mankind began to suffer the effects of sin, so did the Earth over which he had been made to rule.
But Scripture tells us that this situation will be reversed when the Lord Jesus reigns in this world. Look at a couple of passages with me [READ 32:9-15; 35:1-2, 6b-7]. Imagine what it will be like to work the ground without having to battle weeds, to have the satisfaction of an abundant harvest from your efforts!
Now notice that Isaiah 32:15 tied the renewal of the Earth together with a spiritual renewal for mankind. That verse stated that the present conditions would continue, “until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high.” Since the Earth is suffering because of our sin, its suffering will end when righteousness reigns during the kingdom of Christ. Paul described this connection between the Earth and mankind in Romans 8:19-21—“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” So just as the rule of mankind will be restored to what it was meant to be, the Earth will be restored to what it was meant to be as well.
3. Mankind will live in peace with each other (32:16-18)
Hostility came into the human race as a result of sin, and hostility was only magnified after our race was divided at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. The threat of violence from other people is one of the worst things that we have to live with today. Some people face the threat of violence from their own parents or their own spouse. Many more people face the threat of violence from their neighbors, and even more people face the threat of violence from their own government or from the people of a neighboring country.
But friends, Jesus ain’t called the Prince of Peace for nothing! His kingdom will be characterized by peace and quiet [READ 32:16-18]. I know we think we have it good around here, where we can get away with leaving our doors unlocked, but even Montezuma isn’t totally untouched by the threat of violence. But one day, Jesus the King will bring about true world peace, which people have only dreamed about for so long. What a time to look forward to!
4. Human suffering of every kind will be eliminated
Suffering in our lives can take several different forms because of the different aspects of our humanity. We know that we have a physical aspect to who we are, an emotional aspect, a spiritual aspect, and a mental aspect as well, and we can face suffering in each of these different areas. But when Christ sets up His kingdom, He will address all of these areas of suffering and alleviate them:
• Physical (33:24, 35:5-6)
• Emotional (35:10)
• Spiritual (33:24)
• Mental (35:3-4)
The Old Testament consistently describes the promised kingdom as a time when human suffering will be alleviated. That’s why Jesus gave the answer that He did when John the Baptist had a moment of doubt about whether Jesus was truly God’s chosen one. John had sent messengers to Jesus to ask Him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” To a Jewish person like John the Baptist, this was the clearest answer that Jesus could give—I am relieving human suffering! And the Lord Jesus will do so again when He once again walks on this Earth.
Make no mistake, my friends—Jesus is coming again! Isaiah makes it clear in chapter 33 that this fact should be a source of fear for those who reject God, but He also describes for us the kind of person who has no need to fear the return of Christ. Let’s consider what Isaiah wrote in 33:13-16 [READ 33:13-16].
Notice that the person described in vv. 15-16 has a proper concern for God and a proper concern for others. These attitudes are consistent with what Jesus called the two greatest commandments—to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This person’s concern for God is shown by the fact that he “walks righteously and speaks uprightly.” In both his conduct and his speech, he is mindful of God’s commands. His concern for others is seen in that he “despises the gain of oppressions.” He does not oppress others just to get something for himself, as we see in the fact that he also refuses to take a bribe. Isaiah also writes that he “stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil.” Now this statement does NOT mean that he ignores violence committed against others—it means that he will not listen to temptations to do violence himself. He guards the points of entry where suggestions can enter the mind—namely, the eyes and the ears.
Now as anyone knows who has ever tried to live this way, we simply cannot produce this kind of behavior ourselves. As we’ve been reminded this morning, our hearts are tainted by sin, but Jesus made a way for us to be forgiven during His first coming to the Earth. Jesus offered himself as a sinless sacrifice for us by dying on the cross in our place to pay the price for our sins. Then He rose from the grave, and 40 days later He returned to heaven to wait until God the Father would send Him back into this world to establish His kingdom. His sacrifice for us makes us fit to enter His kingdom if we will confess our sin to God and believe that Jesus has paid the full price for our sins so that we can be saved.
Monday, April 23, 2012
A Father's Love for Rebellious Children--Isaiah Series
Every parent’s greatest nightmare is that their children will one day stop listening to them, stop responding to their discipline, and rebel against them. Most of us have seen others go through this heart-wrenching experience, and it can give us an almost irrational fear that its going to happen to us. Yet we have also seen enough of these situations to know that rebellion does not have to be the last chapter in that parent-child relationship. Reconciliation can occur, and it can lead to blessings that no one ever could have imagined.
Throughout Scripture, God is often pictured as the Father of His people, so it should be no surprise that the Bible also pictures sin as an act of rebellion by a child against his parent. Isaiah 28-31 pictures the people of Israel as children who have rebelled against their Father, God. These chapters describe a list of sins that have come between God and His people, and this list can be very informative for us as we assess our behavior.
What had pulled the children of Israel away from their Father?
1. Drunkenness (28:1-8)
The impairment of judgment that comes from being drunk is an open invitation for sinful decisions. Back in chapter 5, God had pronounced doom on those who were pursuing alcohol, and now he visits this subject again [READ 28:1-8]. Notice how even those people who were supposed to be spiritual leaders were giving in to drunkenness. Isaiah mentions the priests and the prophets—referring here to the false prophets whom the people listened to because they told the people what they wanted to hear. So the people were being led by others who had their own judgment impaired by drunkenness.
According to Scripture, drunkenness is a sin in its own right, but it also leaves us vulnerable to all kinds of temptations and sinful behaviors. Since our hearts are naturally inclined toward sin, we have to be sober and have our wits about us in order to be on guard against the sinful impulses that naturally arise within our hearts. That’s why drunkenness is so serious—it impairs our ability to think and thus counteract the sinful impulses that we have. Ephesians 5:18 says, “do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery,” which means a departure from the path of virtue. The Greek word behind that translation emphasizes recklessness and carelessness. Getting drunk is a reckless choice because it leaves us vulnerable to all kinds of temptations.
The alternative, according to Ephesians 5:18, is to be filled with the Spirit. Rather than hand control of ourselves over to alcohol, we need to hand control of ourselves over to the Holy Spirit—to ask Him to empower us to make good judgments.
By and large, our culture is far too casual about consuming something as powerful as alcohol. Advertisers spend millions upon millions of dollars to convince us that alcohol is the key to having a good time—just crack open a cold one and let the good times roll! But the Bible sobers us up about the dangers of alcohol. We must be very wise about how we handle something with such potential for danger.
2. An unwillingness to listen to Him (28:9-13, 30:8-11)
How often do we see this attitude in our own children? They are unwilling to take our advice, and since we’ve been at this thing called “life” longer than they have, we know they are making a bad decision, but we just can’t get them to listen to us. We can actually adopt the same kind of attitude toward God, as the children of Israel had in Isaiah’s time [READ 30:8-11]. Now God was obviously describing the people’s attitude in these verses, not their actual words, because no one knowingly asks for false things to be taught to them. But these verses point out the deceptive nature of messages that come from the world rather than from God. The people wanted to hear “smooth things,” as it says in v. 10—things that go down easy, things that are easy to accept and pleasant to hear.
God’s message through Isaiah was one of repentance and warnings about punishment, but the people didn’t want to hear that because it told them they were wrong and they needed to change. When we are presented with one message which tells us that we are wrong and another message that tells us that we are right, we want to believe the message which tells us that we are right because its much easier to accept. Its hard to admit that you’re wrong—that pill doesn’t go down smooth; that pill is a hard one to swallow.
In chapter 28, we read that some of the people mocked Isaiah’s message as being too childish and unsophisticated [READ 28:9-10]. In Hebrew, the repetition of those words creates an effect that just sounds like a baby babbling (Sav lasav, sav lasav, Kav lakav, kav lakav, Ze' er sham, ze' er sham). So these scoffers were saying that Isaiah’s message from God was nothing more than baby talk. How ironic that they would reject a message from God as mere baby talk, because in the Gospels Jesus tells us “whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:4). They said the message was only fit for children, and ironically, they were correct in a way.
How do we get to the point where we look down our noses at the Word of God? How do we lose our child-like faith in the Bible? Right now, we are teaching Adrianna that little song that says, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” How do we lose that simple trust in God’s Word?
Well, it starts as we grow up. We start to learn more and more things, and before long we’re feeling pretty smart. We don’t feel like we need God’s advice as much because we think we’re starting to figure everything out. Then we hear criticisms about the Bible from so-called experts and we don’t want to be weird, so we tone down our confidence in the Bible. At that point, we no longer consult the Bible for all matters of life and faith, and the culture continues to tell us that the Bible is a wonderfully inspirational read, but its teachings just aren’t relevant for today.
So our child-like faith gets undermined from within as we become wise in our own eyes and from without as we are pressured to conform to the wisdom of this world. And as all parents know, when your children won’t listen to good advice, there’s nothing left but for them to learn the hard way. I don’t believe God desires to teach us the hard way, but Hebrews 12 reminds us that He will discipline us when need be because He loves us and He wants to restore us to a place of blessing.
3. Hypocrisy (29:13-14)
For all of the criticisms of the people of Israel that we have read in this book, we must remember that they were still very religious. They hadn’t abandoned the feasts and the sacrifices that God called for in the Law of Moses, but unfortunately their actions no longer flowed from hearts that were devoted to God. They were simply going through the motions, following traditions which they had been taught. Look at 29:13-14. The Lord Jesus quoted v. 13 in the Gospels to describe the Pharisees [READ 29:13-14].
What a sad consequence that we read of in v. 14. When God looked at the hearts of His people, He could see that they really didn’t want to hear what He had to say, so He was going to make them numb to His message.
It is truly sad when people fall into hypocrisy because they are deceiving themselves. They think everything is okay between them and God because they are keeping up an outward conformity to His commands, but they are not allowing the purifying power of God’s Word to penetrate their hearts.
Because our hearts are inclined toward sin, hypocrisy is a major threat to all of us—even if we only succumb to little bouts of it here and there. This threat is all the more real after we have established good spiritual habits in our lives, because habits can easily slip into rituals which we can mindlessly perpetuate.
Hypocrisy can also be reinforced in a church setting in which church members are condemning toward each other and unwilling to admit their own faults. In these settings, we want to put up a good front for the people at church no matter what our lives are really like, and if we do that long enough we can convince ourselves that the good front is reality.
The remedy for hypocrisy is integrity, where we have every part of our lives pointing in the same direction. Hypocrisy offers no rest for our souls because there is always tension from the various parts of our lives that are going in different directions, but integrity offers the sweet peace of a life that is wholly devoted to God.
4. A belief that God didn’t know their actions (29:15-16)
Do you remember when you were a child and you just couldn’t figure out how your parents always knew what you were up to—especially when you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? We never realized how obvious our behavior was, nor did we know about the advanced network of spies that our parents had around the neighborhood in other parents. Somehow it just never occurred to us that parents talked to each other about what we were up to!
We read in chapter 29 that the children of Israel had a faulty understanding of God which led them to believe that God didn’t know everything that was going on. If you’ve ever been tempted to think that doctrine and theology are boring and irrelevant for daily life, here is yet another reminder that nothing could be further from the truth. Bad theology had given the children of Israel a twisted way of thinking, which led to an ungodly way of living [READ 29:15-16].
The children of Israel in the Old Testament lived during a time of widespread idolatry—some of which they bought into themselves. Idols were commonly thought to be localized gods who had authority over a certain area—like the mountains or the oceans—or a certain aspect of nature—like the harvest or fertility. The common denominator is that all of these idols were thought to have some kind of limits on their power, and it seems that the children of Israel had allowed that kind of thinking to influence the way they thought about their God—the one true God.
Now I doubt that we would fall into this exact temptation, because I think most of us understand that God is everywhere and He knows everything. But I suspect that we could fall into a mindset in which we think that God doesn’t care about all aspects of our lives in the same way or He doesn’t care about every moment of our lives in the same way. We tend to think that certain moments or certain events in our lives are more important than others, so we might let “little” sins or “tiny” bad habits persist in our lives because we don’t think they are “that BIG of a deal.”
But I don’t think God looks at our lives in quite the same way. He knows that every moment of life is significant and every choice we make is significant. He doesn’t pay attention to certain parts of our lives more than others—He cares about them all, so we must as well!
5. Looking for protection in other people rather than Him (30:1-5, 31:1-3)
At this period of time, Assyria was becoming a major threat to the other nations of the Middle East—much like Iran today. All of the nations in the Middle East today must decide how they will protect themselves, and Israel in Isaiah’s day had to make the same decision. But rather than simply trust in the promises of protection that God had already given to them, the leaders of Israel chose to seek for an alliance with Egypt, displaying an unfortunate lack of trust in God [READ 30:1-5, 31:1-3].
On a personal level for us today, we don’t have many concerns about our safety, and that is a tremendous blessing. But God calls on us to trust in Him during droughts, during economic downturns, during times of personal suffering and at all other moments in our lives. The question that is ever before is this—will we trust God to be in control or will we try to control our own situations through some sinful means? Will we choose to trust God’s promises or will we not?
The children of Israel at that were living like rebellious children against God their Father, but like any loving parent, God was ready to forgive His people and bless them once again [READ 30:18-22]. My friend, are you living in rebellion against God today? He is waiting for you; He is listening to hear your voice. He is ready to forgive you the moment that you repent of your sins and ask His forgiveness. Do not delay another day—run into the open arms of God your Father!
Monday, April 16, 2012
Go Rest High On That Mountain--Isaiah Series
Not so long ago, our little corner of Kansas was something of a highway for wagon trains that were travelling along the Santa Fe Trail. In general terms, this trail led people from cities back east—like Kansas City—to the mountainous area of the American Southwest. Trails like this have been an enduring image of American history and culture.
The picture of a trail is a biblical image as well that is used as a metaphor for our journey through life. In Isaiah 25-27, this metaphor covers terrain that calls to mind one of the great trails of the American West, as these chapters picture history moving from the cities of man to the mountain of God. Beginning with Babel in the book of Genesis, cities in the Bible often represent the heights of human accomplishment and are thus sources of pride for humanity that can lead them to feel self-sufficient. It’s not that cities are inherently bad—they are just idolized, especially at that time when all major cities were literally fortresses. Kings and their subjects felt that they were literally untouchable within the walls of their capital city.
In contrast to the cities of man, the seat of God’s future kingdom in this world is pictured as a mountain—something that is strong, enduring, immovable and unconquerable. Isaiah 25-27 pictures God humbling and destroying the cities of man to establish His holy mountain as a place of safety, peace, and celebration for His people. His mountain represents both the kingdom of Jesus Christ that we will enjoy in this world and the home with God that we will enjoy on the New Heavens and the New Earth. Let’s trace this path from the city to the mountain, and then we’ll discuss how we should live as we travel through life and wait for God to establish his kingdom.
The cities of man…
First of all, let’s take a look at the description of the cities of man in this chapter. We see from the opening verses of this section that:
…are not indestructible; they are vulnerable to the judgments of God (25:1-2; 27:10-11)
The first verses of this section describe what God had already done to some of the cities of Israel’s neighbors [READ 25:1-2]. This activity of God foreshadows further judgment to come upon the world in the future as described in 27:10-11 [READ 27:10-11]. The last part of v. 11 describes why God will bring judgment upon mankind—because we lack discernment. Our lack of discernment is revealed by the fact that we are at odds with our maker. Think about what its like for a little child to rebel against his parents, and then magnify that. We exist because of God—are we really to think that anything we can do or make cannot be undone by Him? Do we really think that we can disregard His commands and place our trust in something else?
Such foolishness on the part of mankind will one day be exposed when God humbles our race with his judgments. We will see then that even our grandest accomplishments cannot sustain us or withstand the judgments of God.
…are home to ruthless people who oppress the poor and needy (25:3-5)
In 25:2, Isaiah recalled how God had already acted in judgment against some of the cities and nations of his day, so he says in the next few verses [READ vv. 3-5]. Fortunately, God has a special concern for the poor and needy in our world, and He has provided some much-needed protection for them because the history of our race has been one of oppression and violence, often committed against the weakest members of society. Think about all of the Communist leaders who claim to represent the common folk, who then turn around and slaughter so many of their own people. Power structures in virtually every society have led to subjugation and oppression.
But, Isaiah 26:21 assures us that…
…will have all of their sins disclosed and judged (26:21)
This verse states [READ 26:21]. Think about all of the unsolved crimes in our world, all of the victims who have not yet seen justice. Rest assured that there will be no more cold cases when the Judge of all the earth settles accounts. The Lord will see to it that justice is served when He prepares to set up His kingdom. His kingdom is described in glorious terms in these chapters through the imagery of a mountain.
The mountain of God…
…is a place of feasting and celebration (25:6)
[READ 25:6] I think we have every reason to take this verse literally, which means that we will actually enjoy a feast with God—perhaps many of them. In the Gospels we read that Jesus could eat and drink after He was resurrected—in fact He did so to show the disciples that He had a real body and He wasn’t just some kind of ghost. Can you imagine enjoying a feast with Jesus? We look forward to family dinners today—how about a meal prepared for us by Jesus, with all of our Christian brothers and sisters there?
…is free from death and pain, a place where God dwells with man and our hope finds its fulfillment (25:7-9)
Though the sting of death has already been taken away by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death is still a grievous experience for us because it means a temporary separation from our loved ones and a temporary separation of our soul from our body. But one day, even death will be no more, and we will be in the presence of our God, whom we have longed for so many years. Just imagine what it will be like to see Jesus for the first time and to have our hope of being with Him fulfilled. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes a heart sick,” and don’t we feel that way sometimes? The longer we are in this world, the more wearisome it becomes, but one day our hope will be fulfilled, and our gladness will no longer have any twinge of sadness with it. Joy will no longer be the silver lining around a dark cloud—it will be our constant reality.
…is a place where God’s people are fruitful under His loving care (27:2-6)
Back in Isaiah 5, God described the people of Israel as a vineyard which produced rotten fruit. He was like a loving master gardener, but they were like vines that produced stink fruit. But one day, in Christ’s kingdom on Earth, His people will produce the fruit of righteousness under His loving care [READ 27:2-6]. Someday, God’s people Israel will be a righteous nation before Him, and we will join them building a righteous civilization in this world.
I hope at this point you just feel like shouting, “Come, Lord Jesus!” We are ready for this, aren’t we? But the timing is up to God, not us, and so until that day comes, how should we live as history is traveling the path from the cities of man to the mountain of God?
1. With a confident expectation of deliverance from God’s wrath (26:21)
As we read about the terrible descriptions of God’s judgment being poured out upon the world, it is easy to feel shaken and fearful. But I believe that as God’s people, we will be delivered from this coming time of wrath. Isaiah 26:20-21 speaks of God’s people being hidden away and protected during the time when God carries out his judgments [READ 26:20-21].
According to Scripture, God has a history of protecting His people during times when He has carried out judgments. Think of Noah and his family, who were spared from the worldwide flood. Think of Lot and his daughters, who were saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Think of the children of Israel during the plagues against Egypt. The Bible states that the area of Egypt in which the Israelites lived was unaffected. The clearest example of God’s protection was the Passover. If God’s protection wasn’t evident before, it certainly was after that night.
In 2 Peter 2, the apostle recounts some of these same events, and he states in v. 9—“the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.” I believe the descriptions of future judgment that we have read about in Isaiah will be fulfilled during a time known as “the Tribulation,” which is thoroughly described in the book of Revelation. I further believe that God will actually take the church out of the world prior to the Tribulation in an event known as the Rapture.
Thus, those of us who believe in the Lord today will not be on the Earth during the Tribulation. Instead, we will be with Him in heaven, and then we will return with Him when He comes to establish His kingdom in this world. And so, even though we should be sobered by the realization that there is a period of God’s judgment yet to come on the world, we can have the confident expectation that we will be spared from it—just as God has spared His people in times past.
2. By trusting in God and staying on the path of righteousness in our behavior (26:1-8)
Both of these actions are commended in Isaiah 26:1-8, and a blessing is mentioned for each of them as well. First, look at the blessing that comes from trusting God in vv. 1-4 [READ vv. 1-4]. We saw earlier that the cities of man are not indestructible, but according to the verse that we just read, “the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” We can trust in Him for strength and protection and know that He will always be here for us. And the blessing that comes from placing our trust in God is peace! My translation says “perfect peace;” the original Hebrew literally says, “peace peace.” The Hebrew language uses repetition like this for emphasis—as we saw with the angels declaring that God is not just holy, but “holy, holy, holy.”
This peace will come in its fullness when we are in heaven because we will literally have no enemies, but we get a foretaste of this peace today when we choose to trust in God. Verse 3 states that the battle to maintain this kind of trust takes place in the mind, and don’t we all know how true that is? That is why its so important for us to fill our minds with Scripture so that we can remember the promises of God and choose to believe them. Then we can be free from the anxiety and fear that come when we choose not to trust God.
A few verses later, Isaiah commends righteous or godly behavior and mentions a blessing for such behavior. Look at vv. 7-8 [READ vv. 7-8]. The level path of the righteous in v. 7 speaks of ease and smooth sailing. In a culture where people did a lot of traveling by foot, a level path was just the kind of path you wanted because it was easier to walk on. You didn’t have to exert as much effort and there was less chance that you would slip and fall.
When we choose to carry out godly behavior, we make life easier for ourselves. Generally speaking, life is easier and more pleasant when you obey God. Obedience keeps you from bringing more problems into your life. And even when problems come, obedience makes it easier to deal with them because it keeps you from making the problems worse.
So as history travels the path from the cities of man to the mountain of God, let us choose to travel the path of godly behavior, trusting in God to be our protection and the fulfillment of our hope.
The picture of a trail is a biblical image as well that is used as a metaphor for our journey through life. In Isaiah 25-27, this metaphor covers terrain that calls to mind one of the great trails of the American West, as these chapters picture history moving from the cities of man to the mountain of God. Beginning with Babel in the book of Genesis, cities in the Bible often represent the heights of human accomplishment and are thus sources of pride for humanity that can lead them to feel self-sufficient. It’s not that cities are inherently bad—they are just idolized, especially at that time when all major cities were literally fortresses. Kings and their subjects felt that they were literally untouchable within the walls of their capital city.
In contrast to the cities of man, the seat of God’s future kingdom in this world is pictured as a mountain—something that is strong, enduring, immovable and unconquerable. Isaiah 25-27 pictures God humbling and destroying the cities of man to establish His holy mountain as a place of safety, peace, and celebration for His people. His mountain represents both the kingdom of Jesus Christ that we will enjoy in this world and the home with God that we will enjoy on the New Heavens and the New Earth. Let’s trace this path from the city to the mountain, and then we’ll discuss how we should live as we travel through life and wait for God to establish his kingdom.
The cities of man…
First of all, let’s take a look at the description of the cities of man in this chapter. We see from the opening verses of this section that:
…are not indestructible; they are vulnerable to the judgments of God (25:1-2; 27:10-11)
The first verses of this section describe what God had already done to some of the cities of Israel’s neighbors [READ 25:1-2]. This activity of God foreshadows further judgment to come upon the world in the future as described in 27:10-11 [READ 27:10-11]. The last part of v. 11 describes why God will bring judgment upon mankind—because we lack discernment. Our lack of discernment is revealed by the fact that we are at odds with our maker. Think about what its like for a little child to rebel against his parents, and then magnify that. We exist because of God—are we really to think that anything we can do or make cannot be undone by Him? Do we really think that we can disregard His commands and place our trust in something else?
Such foolishness on the part of mankind will one day be exposed when God humbles our race with his judgments. We will see then that even our grandest accomplishments cannot sustain us or withstand the judgments of God.
…are home to ruthless people who oppress the poor and needy (25:3-5)
In 25:2, Isaiah recalled how God had already acted in judgment against some of the cities and nations of his day, so he says in the next few verses [READ vv. 3-5]. Fortunately, God has a special concern for the poor and needy in our world, and He has provided some much-needed protection for them because the history of our race has been one of oppression and violence, often committed against the weakest members of society. Think about all of the Communist leaders who claim to represent the common folk, who then turn around and slaughter so many of their own people. Power structures in virtually every society have led to subjugation and oppression.
But, Isaiah 26:21 assures us that…
…will have all of their sins disclosed and judged (26:21)
This verse states [READ 26:21]. Think about all of the unsolved crimes in our world, all of the victims who have not yet seen justice. Rest assured that there will be no more cold cases when the Judge of all the earth settles accounts. The Lord will see to it that justice is served when He prepares to set up His kingdom. His kingdom is described in glorious terms in these chapters through the imagery of a mountain.
The mountain of God…
…is a place of feasting and celebration (25:6)
[READ 25:6] I think we have every reason to take this verse literally, which means that we will actually enjoy a feast with God—perhaps many of them. In the Gospels we read that Jesus could eat and drink after He was resurrected—in fact He did so to show the disciples that He had a real body and He wasn’t just some kind of ghost. Can you imagine enjoying a feast with Jesus? We look forward to family dinners today—how about a meal prepared for us by Jesus, with all of our Christian brothers and sisters there?
…is free from death and pain, a place where God dwells with man and our hope finds its fulfillment (25:7-9)
Though the sting of death has already been taken away by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death is still a grievous experience for us because it means a temporary separation from our loved ones and a temporary separation of our soul from our body. But one day, even death will be no more, and we will be in the presence of our God, whom we have longed for so many years. Just imagine what it will be like to see Jesus for the first time and to have our hope of being with Him fulfilled. Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes a heart sick,” and don’t we feel that way sometimes? The longer we are in this world, the more wearisome it becomes, but one day our hope will be fulfilled, and our gladness will no longer have any twinge of sadness with it. Joy will no longer be the silver lining around a dark cloud—it will be our constant reality.
…is a place where God’s people are fruitful under His loving care (27:2-6)
Back in Isaiah 5, God described the people of Israel as a vineyard which produced rotten fruit. He was like a loving master gardener, but they were like vines that produced stink fruit. But one day, in Christ’s kingdom on Earth, His people will produce the fruit of righteousness under His loving care [READ 27:2-6]. Someday, God’s people Israel will be a righteous nation before Him, and we will join them building a righteous civilization in this world.
I hope at this point you just feel like shouting, “Come, Lord Jesus!” We are ready for this, aren’t we? But the timing is up to God, not us, and so until that day comes, how should we live as history is traveling the path from the cities of man to the mountain of God?
1. With a confident expectation of deliverance from God’s wrath (26:21)
As we read about the terrible descriptions of God’s judgment being poured out upon the world, it is easy to feel shaken and fearful. But I believe that as God’s people, we will be delivered from this coming time of wrath. Isaiah 26:20-21 speaks of God’s people being hidden away and protected during the time when God carries out his judgments [READ 26:20-21].
According to Scripture, God has a history of protecting His people during times when He has carried out judgments. Think of Noah and his family, who were spared from the worldwide flood. Think of Lot and his daughters, who were saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Think of the children of Israel during the plagues against Egypt. The Bible states that the area of Egypt in which the Israelites lived was unaffected. The clearest example of God’s protection was the Passover. If God’s protection wasn’t evident before, it certainly was after that night.
In 2 Peter 2, the apostle recounts some of these same events, and he states in v. 9—“the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.” I believe the descriptions of future judgment that we have read about in Isaiah will be fulfilled during a time known as “the Tribulation,” which is thoroughly described in the book of Revelation. I further believe that God will actually take the church out of the world prior to the Tribulation in an event known as the Rapture.
Thus, those of us who believe in the Lord today will not be on the Earth during the Tribulation. Instead, we will be with Him in heaven, and then we will return with Him when He comes to establish His kingdom in this world. And so, even though we should be sobered by the realization that there is a period of God’s judgment yet to come on the world, we can have the confident expectation that we will be spared from it—just as God has spared His people in times past.
2. By trusting in God and staying on the path of righteousness in our behavior (26:1-8)
Both of these actions are commended in Isaiah 26:1-8, and a blessing is mentioned for each of them as well. First, look at the blessing that comes from trusting God in vv. 1-4 [READ vv. 1-4]. We saw earlier that the cities of man are not indestructible, but according to the verse that we just read, “the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” We can trust in Him for strength and protection and know that He will always be here for us. And the blessing that comes from placing our trust in God is peace! My translation says “perfect peace;” the original Hebrew literally says, “peace peace.” The Hebrew language uses repetition like this for emphasis—as we saw with the angels declaring that God is not just holy, but “holy, holy, holy.”
This peace will come in its fullness when we are in heaven because we will literally have no enemies, but we get a foretaste of this peace today when we choose to trust in God. Verse 3 states that the battle to maintain this kind of trust takes place in the mind, and don’t we all know how true that is? That is why its so important for us to fill our minds with Scripture so that we can remember the promises of God and choose to believe them. Then we can be free from the anxiety and fear that come when we choose not to trust God.
A few verses later, Isaiah commends righteous or godly behavior and mentions a blessing for such behavior. Look at vv. 7-8 [READ vv. 7-8]. The level path of the righteous in v. 7 speaks of ease and smooth sailing. In a culture where people did a lot of traveling by foot, a level path was just the kind of path you wanted because it was easier to walk on. You didn’t have to exert as much effort and there was less chance that you would slip and fall.
When we choose to carry out godly behavior, we make life easier for ourselves. Generally speaking, life is easier and more pleasant when you obey God. Obedience keeps you from bringing more problems into your life. And even when problems come, obedience makes it easier to deal with them because it keeps you from making the problems worse.
So as history travels the path from the cities of man to the mountain of God, let us choose to travel the path of godly behavior, trusting in God to be our protection and the fulfillment of our hope.
Monday, April 9, 2012
He Arose?--Easter Sunday 2012
Last night, I had the most amazing experience I have ever had. I was getting ready for bed when I noticed a bright, greenish-colored light coming into my house from outside. When I went to the window, I saw a UFO in my backyard, hovering there like a giant metal Frisbee! It was about 15 feet off the ground, and after a few minutes, a staircase came down from the underbelly of the UFO, and a figure started to walk down to the ground. I looked closely, and soon I realized—it was Bigfoot! He was walking down right into my backyard! I hardly had time to think before I noticed another figure coming down the stairs. The second figure was somewhat smaller and more human, and then I saw him as clear as day—it was Elvis himself!
Now, some of you seem to be a little skeptical about my story of a UFO landing in my backyard, but I want you to realize what has just happened within the course of our church service. A few moments ago, we were singing about a dead man coming back to life, and no one seemed to think twice about it, but when I started talking about a UFO, you started laughing at me. Well, we don’t often realize this as Christians, but to many people in the world, the claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead is no different than the claim that Bigfoot and Elvis stepped out of a UFO in my backyard! Both of them sound ridiculous!
So let me ask you this—why do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” So what reasons do we have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?
Most people who deny the resurrection of Christ either claim that the disciples saw Jesus in a dream or a hallucination and came to believe that He was alive, or they claim that the disciples stole the body and made up the story of the resurrection. These two claims will serve as the backdrop of our discussion this morning, and as we look at the facts surrounding the burial place of Christ, we will see that the best explanation of the facts is that Jesus did in fact rise from the grave.
1. Jesus’ tomb was in a known location
If no one had known where Jesus was buried, then the disciples could have made up a story about a resurrection because no one could have checked it out; no one could have gone to the tomb to see if the body was still there. But since Jesus’ tomb was in a known location, once the disciples started talking about a resurrection, people could have easily gone to the tomb to check out their story. If the disciples had been just dreaming or hallucinating, then people could have seen that Jesus’ body was still in the grave, and the story would have immediately fallen apart.
The Gospels tell us that the disciples weren’t even involved in the burial of Jesus. According to the Gospels, Jesus was buried by two men who were members of the same Jewish council which had just condemned Jesus to death—a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who is called a respected member of the council, and a man named Nicodemus, whom Jesus called THE teacher of Israel in John 3. Please understand that this detail simply could not have been made up. If the disciples had made up these men for a fictional story, or if they had lied about real people, their lies would have easily been exposed. People could have simply talked to these men to find out if these details were true.
According to John 19, Jesus’ tomb was located in a garden in the same place that He was crucified, which we know was just on the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. John 19:20 says that many of the Jewish people witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion because the place was “near the city.”
So the significance of these details is that the location of Jesus’ tomb was widely known. Thus, the events surrounding His resurrection did not happen in secret; they were played out in the public eye. So when the disciples began to publicly declare just a month and a half later that Jesus had risen from the grave, anyone who was curious could have checked out the tomb and spoken to those who were directly involved in His burial.
This brings us to the second fact that we must consider.
2. Jesus’ tomb was found to be empty by several of His female disciples
According to the Gospels, a handful of Jesus’ female disciples were the first to find that Jesus’ tomb was empty, and they then reported their discovery to the men whom we call the Apostles. How do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? Even the strongest critics of Christianity accept that Jesus’ tomb must have been empty, because otherwise the disciples’ claims could have never gotten off the ground. Christianity would have been dead on arrival if Jesus’ body was still in His tomb.
So how do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? All of the suspicion falls on the disciples, because no one else would have moved Jesus’ body. The Jewish leaders wouldn’t have done it, because that was precisely what they wanted to prevent! According to Matthew 27:62-66, they requested to have Roman soldiers stationed at the tomb so that the disciples could not steal the body and claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
So the Jewish leaders would not have moved the body, and the Roman authorities had no reason to do so. Grave robbers could not have gotten past the Roman soldiers without being discovered, so the real question is whether the disciples were somehow able to move the body.
Many skeptics of Christianity have claimed that Jesus’ tomb was empty because the disciples stole the body and then made up a story about the resurrection so that they could become the leaders of a new religion. Supposedly the disciples were after fame and possibly even fortune, and they thought that this was a way that they could get it. But this skeptical theory doesn’t hold water for numerous reasons.
If the disciples had made up their story:
1. They would not have begun to spread it in Jerusalem.
As I mentioned earlier, anyone in Jerusalem could have easily checked out the disciples’ story by visiting the tomb and talking to the people who were involved in the burial. If this was all a big hoax, it would have made much more sense for the disciples to travel to another part of Israel and spread their story there. News traveled slowly back then, so by the time anyone in a different city could have checked out the facts, the disciples could have had their new movement up and running. In their new location, they could have developed something like a cult following, and by the time anyone could have challenged them with the facts, it would have been too late to stop their movement from getting off the ground.
2. They would not have claimed that women were the first people to find the empty tomb.
In the culture of that time, the testimony of women was not considered to be reliable. Even the apostles did not believe the women who first told them about the empty tomb. Luke 24:11 says that when the women reported what they had seen, “[their] words seemed to [the apostles] an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” These women were personal friends of the apostles, yet they still did not believe them. That tells you what society thought about the testimony of women.
If the disciples had made up this whole story, you would think that they would have made it as strong and convincing as possible, which means that they wouldn’t have claimed that women were the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Why include a detail that so many men would have mocked? Likewise, they probably wouldn’t have stated their own unbelief. One would think that they would have made themselves out to be heroes, but the story recorded in the Gospels doesn’t make them look very heroic at all.
3. There is no good explanation for their dramatic change in attitude after Jesus’ crucifixion.
In the Gospels, we find the disciples in hiding after the crucifixion because they were afraid that the Jewish authorities might arrest them as well. But just a month and a half later, they stood up in front of a crowd of thousands in Jerusalem and proclaimed that Jesus rose from the dead. And when they were arrested not long after that, they listened to the threats of the Jewish leaders and said, “We have to obey God rather than you, so we’re going to keep preaching!” How did their attitudes change from cowardly to courageous? Are we really supposed to believe that their confidence came from a story that they made up themselves?
We should consider the conversion of Paul as well. Paul himself was one of the Jewish leaders, and he knew all about the disciples’ claims. He surely knew that the tomb was empty, but he must have thought that the whole thing was a hoax. He initially tried to stamp out Christianity by arresting Christians for blasphemy, but after the risen Lord appeared to him, he became a fearless preacher of the gospel.
Paul had much to lose from his conversion. He himself wrote in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.” Paul was destined for power and prestige among the Jews, but he gave it all up to be persecuted the same way that he was persecuting others.
The idea of a made-up story doesn’t square with the facts, especially when we consider that the disciples maintained their claims to the point of death.
4. There is no good reason to believe that the disciples would have died for what they knew was a lie.
Historians from centuries ago tell us that all of the apostles except one died as a martyr for their claims about Jesus and the resurrection—and even the one who wasn’t killed suffered terribly. According to tradition and historical documents, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Jude, and Simon the Zealot were crucified; James (son of Zebedee), Bartholomew, and Matthias were beheaded; Matthew was killed with an axe; Thomas was killed with a spear; James the Less was clubbed to death.
Now, history is filled with the stories of martyrs who have died for a thousand different causes, but the common denominator between them all is that they sincerely believed in the truthfulness of their cause. But some critics of the resurrection would ask us to believe that the apostles died for what they knew was a lie—one which they had fabricated themselves. This is simply an unreasonable conclusion. Are we to believe that ALL of the apostles maintained a lie as they saw their friends being martyred one by one; as they saw the entire Christian community suffering because of what they were proclaiming? That sounds like Elvis in a UFO to me!
When you think through the facts that we have surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the truly reasonable conclusion is that He has risen, just as He said He would! The real reason that some people do not want to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is that His resurrection proves that He is God, and as God, He is worthy of our worship and obedience. There is no lack of evidence, nor is there a lack of logic and reasoning behind this belief—there is simply a corruption of the will which compels all of us to resist the call to humble ourselves before God and embrace the Son whom He has sent into this world.
We cannot ignore the fact that Jesus rose from the grave. We cannot hide it behind a plate of ham and potato salad or a basket of colored eggs and then put it away until next year like all of our other decorations. We must decide whether we will accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior or whether we will ignore his rightful claim over our lives.
The Apostle Paul—who was also a martyr—stated that God in His grace has overlooked times of ignorance, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed: and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).
One day, Jesus Christ will judge the world. Here is what he said himself in John 5—“[God] the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to [me], the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
God the Father has declared His acceptance of Jesus by raising Him from the dead—have you declared your acceptance of Him?
Now, some of you seem to be a little skeptical about my story of a UFO landing in my backyard, but I want you to realize what has just happened within the course of our church service. A few moments ago, we were singing about a dead man coming back to life, and no one seemed to think twice about it, but when I started talking about a UFO, you started laughing at me. Well, we don’t often realize this as Christians, but to many people in the world, the claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead is no different than the claim that Bigfoot and Elvis stepped out of a UFO in my backyard! Both of them sound ridiculous!
So let me ask you this—why do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” So what reasons do we have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?
Most people who deny the resurrection of Christ either claim that the disciples saw Jesus in a dream or a hallucination and came to believe that He was alive, or they claim that the disciples stole the body and made up the story of the resurrection. These two claims will serve as the backdrop of our discussion this morning, and as we look at the facts surrounding the burial place of Christ, we will see that the best explanation of the facts is that Jesus did in fact rise from the grave.
1. Jesus’ tomb was in a known location
If no one had known where Jesus was buried, then the disciples could have made up a story about a resurrection because no one could have checked it out; no one could have gone to the tomb to see if the body was still there. But since Jesus’ tomb was in a known location, once the disciples started talking about a resurrection, people could have easily gone to the tomb to check out their story. If the disciples had been just dreaming or hallucinating, then people could have seen that Jesus’ body was still in the grave, and the story would have immediately fallen apart.
The Gospels tell us that the disciples weren’t even involved in the burial of Jesus. According to the Gospels, Jesus was buried by two men who were members of the same Jewish council which had just condemned Jesus to death—a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who is called a respected member of the council, and a man named Nicodemus, whom Jesus called THE teacher of Israel in John 3. Please understand that this detail simply could not have been made up. If the disciples had made up these men for a fictional story, or if they had lied about real people, their lies would have easily been exposed. People could have simply talked to these men to find out if these details were true.
According to John 19, Jesus’ tomb was located in a garden in the same place that He was crucified, which we know was just on the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. John 19:20 says that many of the Jewish people witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion because the place was “near the city.”
So the significance of these details is that the location of Jesus’ tomb was widely known. Thus, the events surrounding His resurrection did not happen in secret; they were played out in the public eye. So when the disciples began to publicly declare just a month and a half later that Jesus had risen from the grave, anyone who was curious could have checked out the tomb and spoken to those who were directly involved in His burial.
This brings us to the second fact that we must consider.
2. Jesus’ tomb was found to be empty by several of His female disciples
According to the Gospels, a handful of Jesus’ female disciples were the first to find that Jesus’ tomb was empty, and they then reported their discovery to the men whom we call the Apostles. How do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? Even the strongest critics of Christianity accept that Jesus’ tomb must have been empty, because otherwise the disciples’ claims could have never gotten off the ground. Christianity would have been dead on arrival if Jesus’ body was still in His tomb.
So how do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? All of the suspicion falls on the disciples, because no one else would have moved Jesus’ body. The Jewish leaders wouldn’t have done it, because that was precisely what they wanted to prevent! According to Matthew 27:62-66, they requested to have Roman soldiers stationed at the tomb so that the disciples could not steal the body and claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
So the Jewish leaders would not have moved the body, and the Roman authorities had no reason to do so. Grave robbers could not have gotten past the Roman soldiers without being discovered, so the real question is whether the disciples were somehow able to move the body.
Many skeptics of Christianity have claimed that Jesus’ tomb was empty because the disciples stole the body and then made up a story about the resurrection so that they could become the leaders of a new religion. Supposedly the disciples were after fame and possibly even fortune, and they thought that this was a way that they could get it. But this skeptical theory doesn’t hold water for numerous reasons.
If the disciples had made up their story:
1. They would not have begun to spread it in Jerusalem.
As I mentioned earlier, anyone in Jerusalem could have easily checked out the disciples’ story by visiting the tomb and talking to the people who were involved in the burial. If this was all a big hoax, it would have made much more sense for the disciples to travel to another part of Israel and spread their story there. News traveled slowly back then, so by the time anyone in a different city could have checked out the facts, the disciples could have had their new movement up and running. In their new location, they could have developed something like a cult following, and by the time anyone could have challenged them with the facts, it would have been too late to stop their movement from getting off the ground.
2. They would not have claimed that women were the first people to find the empty tomb.
In the culture of that time, the testimony of women was not considered to be reliable. Even the apostles did not believe the women who first told them about the empty tomb. Luke 24:11 says that when the women reported what they had seen, “[their] words seemed to [the apostles] an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” These women were personal friends of the apostles, yet they still did not believe them. That tells you what society thought about the testimony of women.
If the disciples had made up this whole story, you would think that they would have made it as strong and convincing as possible, which means that they wouldn’t have claimed that women were the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Why include a detail that so many men would have mocked? Likewise, they probably wouldn’t have stated their own unbelief. One would think that they would have made themselves out to be heroes, but the story recorded in the Gospels doesn’t make them look very heroic at all.
3. There is no good explanation for their dramatic change in attitude after Jesus’ crucifixion.
In the Gospels, we find the disciples in hiding after the crucifixion because they were afraid that the Jewish authorities might arrest them as well. But just a month and a half later, they stood up in front of a crowd of thousands in Jerusalem and proclaimed that Jesus rose from the dead. And when they were arrested not long after that, they listened to the threats of the Jewish leaders and said, “We have to obey God rather than you, so we’re going to keep preaching!” How did their attitudes change from cowardly to courageous? Are we really supposed to believe that their confidence came from a story that they made up themselves?
We should consider the conversion of Paul as well. Paul himself was one of the Jewish leaders, and he knew all about the disciples’ claims. He surely knew that the tomb was empty, but he must have thought that the whole thing was a hoax. He initially tried to stamp out Christianity by arresting Christians for blasphemy, but after the risen Lord appeared to him, he became a fearless preacher of the gospel.
Paul had much to lose from his conversion. He himself wrote in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.” Paul was destined for power and prestige among the Jews, but he gave it all up to be persecuted the same way that he was persecuting others.
The idea of a made-up story doesn’t square with the facts, especially when we consider that the disciples maintained their claims to the point of death.
4. There is no good reason to believe that the disciples would have died for what they knew was a lie.
Historians from centuries ago tell us that all of the apostles except one died as a martyr for their claims about Jesus and the resurrection—and even the one who wasn’t killed suffered terribly. According to tradition and historical documents, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Jude, and Simon the Zealot were crucified; James (son of Zebedee), Bartholomew, and Matthias were beheaded; Matthew was killed with an axe; Thomas was killed with a spear; James the Less was clubbed to death.
Now, history is filled with the stories of martyrs who have died for a thousand different causes, but the common denominator between them all is that they sincerely believed in the truthfulness of their cause. But some critics of the resurrection would ask us to believe that the apostles died for what they knew was a lie—one which they had fabricated themselves. This is simply an unreasonable conclusion. Are we to believe that ALL of the apostles maintained a lie as they saw their friends being martyred one by one; as they saw the entire Christian community suffering because of what they were proclaiming? That sounds like Elvis in a UFO to me!
When you think through the facts that we have surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the truly reasonable conclusion is that He has risen, just as He said He would! The real reason that some people do not want to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is that His resurrection proves that He is God, and as God, He is worthy of our worship and obedience. There is no lack of evidence, nor is there a lack of logic and reasoning behind this belief—there is simply a corruption of the will which compels all of us to resist the call to humble ourselves before God and embrace the Son whom He has sent into this world.
We cannot ignore the fact that Jesus rose from the grave. We cannot hide it behind a plate of ham and potato salad or a basket of colored eggs and then put it away until next year like all of our other decorations. We must decide whether we will accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior or whether we will ignore his rightful claim over our lives.
The Apostle Paul—who was also a martyr—stated that God in His grace has overlooked times of ignorance, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed: and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).
One day, Jesus Christ will judge the world. Here is what he said himself in John 5—“[God] the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to [me], the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
God the Father has declared His acceptance of Jesus by raising Him from the dead—have you declared your acceptance of Him?
Monday, April 2, 2012
God's Eternal Existence--Attributes of God Series
I want you to think about this question for a moment—what comes into your mind when you think about God? More specifically, what characteristics do you think about Him possessing? Pastor A. W. Tozer once wrote, “Were we able to extract from any [person] a complete answer to the question, ‘What comes into your mind when you think about God?’ we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that [person].”1
That’s quite a claim! Did you think that your answer to that question could actually predict your spiritual future—in other words, your progress in developing Christian character? I must say that I think Pastor Tozer is correct, because in Romans 12:2, the Apostle Paul says that we become transformed or changed “by the renewing of [our] minds.” Christian growth happens as we change the way we think, and the cornerstone of the way we think is the beliefs that we hold about God.
Today, we are going to begin a series on the attributes of God, which is just a fancy term for those things that are true about God—the traits that accurately describe Him. We will continue this series for a while each time that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together so that we can learn more about this Being who has shown us such love and mercy through the death and resurrection of Christ.
This morning, we are going to discuss an attribute that describes the way in which God exists—namely, that God is eternal. To say that God is eternal means that He had no beginning to His existence, and He will have no end to His existence. He has simply always existed, and He always will exist; or as the angels in heaven declare in Revelation 4:8, God is the one “who was, and who is, and who is to come.” That statement is true at any point in time that you can imagine. If you could travel to any moment of history—past or future—you could truthfully say at that moment, “God was, God is, and God is to come.”
Let’s look at some of the biblical statements that describe this attribute of God. In numerous verses, God is simply referred to as the “eternal” or “everlasting” God. Isaiah 40:28 is a good example of such a verse: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” This attribute seemed to have a particularly strong impression on Moses, perhaps because he was the first to receive from God the divine name Yahweh, or Jehovah—which simply means “I am.” In Deuteronomy 33:27, Moses told the children of Israel, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” And in Psalm 90, which Moses composed, he wrote in vv. 1-2, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Job and his friends spent a fair amount of the book of Job talking about the nature of God, and in Job 36:26, a man named Elihu says, “God is exalted beyond our knowledge; the number of His years cannot be counted (CSB).” Now think about what this means: if the number of God’s years cannot be counted, then his lifespan must be infinite—without beginning and without end. If God had a beginning or an end—and thus a limited lifespan—you could count the number of His years. It might be a very large number, but you can count to a very large number—it just takes a while! So if the number of God’s years truly cannot be counted, then He must be eternal—without a beginning and without an end.
Paul stated in Romans 1:20 that we can learn that God is eternal simply from observing the world around us. In that verse, he writes, “For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” When we look at the world around us, we see a collection of things that all began to exist at some point in time. Even our universe itself began to exist at a point in time, as the Bible tells us, and as all but the most radical scientists will admit. Now, we all know that when things begin to exist, they don’t just come from nowhere—they come from something that existed before them, as you did with your parents. You began to exist when you were conceived, and you came from your parents, who existed before you did.
So we can conclude that if our universe began to exist at some point in time, then there must have been something that existed before the universe that caused it to exist. Now, logic also tells us that something which began to exist at some point in time must ultimately come from something which has always existed—something that did not begin to exist. Something that begins to exist is the effect of something else which caused it, and you cannot have an endless chain of causes and effects.
Think of it this way—suppose that you wanted to build a house. Before you can start, you have to have the necessary permits to build. Now suppose that you had to apply for a literally endless number of permits, and you had to have Permit A before you could get Permit B, and so on. Now, when could you start building your house? The answer is never—because you would never get to the end of this endless string of permits. There would always be one more permit that you had to have in order to start construction.
This scenario illustrates an endless chain of causes and effects. Something that begins to exist is an effect of something else, and there cannot be an endless chain of causes and effects behind that existing thing. Otherwise, the whole chain of cause and effect could never get started. Eventually, there has to be a cause which is uncaused; there has to be something that exists which simply exists and which did not need a cause.
Now that your brain has exploded, let’s remodel it by talking about what this attribute of God means for our lives. We learn several important lessons by reflecting on God’s eternal existence.
1. God does not need you
That statement may sound harsh, but this thought is actually a very healthy one for us to embrace because it puts us in our place, yet it also magnifies God’s love for you. Let me explain.
If God is eternal and thus had no beginning, this means that He exists by His own power. If that’s the case, then He has no needs that He cannot meet for Himself. He is thus self-sufficient, meaning that He doesn’t need anyone else. God doesn’t need someone to look after Him or take care of Him or any such thing. Here is how Paul put it in Acts 17:24-25—“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
What could God possibly need from us since He existed just fine without us? Perhaps someone has told you that God created us because He was lonely. God was never lonely! He is a Trinity—three persons in one being! God doesn’t need us to take care of Him, He doesn’t need us to love Him, and He doesn’t even need us in order to act in the world!
This observation cuts us down to size and keeps us from becoming proud, but here’s the thought the builds us up in a healthy way—God doesn’t need you, yet He chooses to love you. Isn’t that amazing? He doesn’t need you, yet you are not insignificant to Him. He chooses to love you and He chooses to use you to accomplish His will in this world. He sent His Son to die for you—not because He couldn’t stand to live without you, but simply because that’s the kind of God that He is. Here is how God describes Himself in Exodus 34:6-7—“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” This awe-inspiring God is completely self-sufficient, yet He chooses to extend mercy and grace to us, as we remember today in the Lord’s Supper.
2. God does not experience urgency
Since God’s existence cannot be measured by time, He does not experience time the way that we do. 2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This verse tells us that God’s interaction with time is so different from our own.
This lesson is so important to remember when we’re thinking about God’s work in our lives. When we have problems that feel extremely urgent, or when we pray about something for weeks or months or years and it seems like nothing is happening, we have to remember that God just doesn’t experience time the way we do. Urgency is only experienced by those who feel the pressure of time bearing down on them. We feel urgency when we feel like we are losing time or when we feel like we don’t have enough time.
But God doesn’t have such limitations on Him. The constraints of time do not bind Him. He can literally roll back the clock if He chooses, as He did for Joshua in Joshua 10 and for Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20.
This lesson simply reminds us that we cannot let ourselves become angry with God if He doesn’t seem to be working by our schedule. If He doesn’t seem to be answering one of your prayer requests, or if He seems to be “late” in coming through for you, just remember that God does not have to fit into your Day Timer!
3. God does not act in haste
Sometimes, we make mistakes or we do poor work or we make bad decisions because we act in haste. Sometimes we throw something together just before a deadline, or we make an uninformed decision because we feel the weight of urgency. But God does not have such constraints, so we don’t have to wonder if His work is imperfect because He rushed through it. Nor do we need to ask if God made a bad decision because He “didn’t have time to think through it.”
God’s actions are deliberate and on purpose. He is never forced to act by deadlines or by the fear that He may miss out on a moment in time that will never come around again. And so, this is just one of the reasons that God does not make mistakes. So when God acts in your life or when he allows certain circumstances to come into your life, you can know for sure that He did not make a hasty decision or have a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He knows exactly what He is doing and He does it at exactly the right time.
Learning what we have today about our God magnifies His love, grace, and mercy that we remember in the Lord’s Supper. That such a being would make such a sacrifice for us is indescribable. So as we partake, let us mourn for our sins which have made the Lord’s sacrifice necessary for our forgiveness, and let us rejoice over God’s willingness to provide it.
Notes:
1. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 1.
That’s quite a claim! Did you think that your answer to that question could actually predict your spiritual future—in other words, your progress in developing Christian character? I must say that I think Pastor Tozer is correct, because in Romans 12:2, the Apostle Paul says that we become transformed or changed “by the renewing of [our] minds.” Christian growth happens as we change the way we think, and the cornerstone of the way we think is the beliefs that we hold about God.
Today, we are going to begin a series on the attributes of God, which is just a fancy term for those things that are true about God—the traits that accurately describe Him. We will continue this series for a while each time that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together so that we can learn more about this Being who has shown us such love and mercy through the death and resurrection of Christ.
This morning, we are going to discuss an attribute that describes the way in which God exists—namely, that God is eternal. To say that God is eternal means that He had no beginning to His existence, and He will have no end to His existence. He has simply always existed, and He always will exist; or as the angels in heaven declare in Revelation 4:8, God is the one “who was, and who is, and who is to come.” That statement is true at any point in time that you can imagine. If you could travel to any moment of history—past or future—you could truthfully say at that moment, “God was, God is, and God is to come.”
Let’s look at some of the biblical statements that describe this attribute of God. In numerous verses, God is simply referred to as the “eternal” or “everlasting” God. Isaiah 40:28 is a good example of such a verse: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” This attribute seemed to have a particularly strong impression on Moses, perhaps because he was the first to receive from God the divine name Yahweh, or Jehovah—which simply means “I am.” In Deuteronomy 33:27, Moses told the children of Israel, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” And in Psalm 90, which Moses composed, he wrote in vv. 1-2, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Job and his friends spent a fair amount of the book of Job talking about the nature of God, and in Job 36:26, a man named Elihu says, “God is exalted beyond our knowledge; the number of His years cannot be counted (CSB).” Now think about what this means: if the number of God’s years cannot be counted, then his lifespan must be infinite—without beginning and without end. If God had a beginning or an end—and thus a limited lifespan—you could count the number of His years. It might be a very large number, but you can count to a very large number—it just takes a while! So if the number of God’s years truly cannot be counted, then He must be eternal—without a beginning and without an end.
Paul stated in Romans 1:20 that we can learn that God is eternal simply from observing the world around us. In that verse, he writes, “For [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” When we look at the world around us, we see a collection of things that all began to exist at some point in time. Even our universe itself began to exist at a point in time, as the Bible tells us, and as all but the most radical scientists will admit. Now, we all know that when things begin to exist, they don’t just come from nowhere—they come from something that existed before them, as you did with your parents. You began to exist when you were conceived, and you came from your parents, who existed before you did.
So we can conclude that if our universe began to exist at some point in time, then there must have been something that existed before the universe that caused it to exist. Now, logic also tells us that something which began to exist at some point in time must ultimately come from something which has always existed—something that did not begin to exist. Something that begins to exist is the effect of something else which caused it, and you cannot have an endless chain of causes and effects.
Think of it this way—suppose that you wanted to build a house. Before you can start, you have to have the necessary permits to build. Now suppose that you had to apply for a literally endless number of permits, and you had to have Permit A before you could get Permit B, and so on. Now, when could you start building your house? The answer is never—because you would never get to the end of this endless string of permits. There would always be one more permit that you had to have in order to start construction.
This scenario illustrates an endless chain of causes and effects. Something that begins to exist is an effect of something else, and there cannot be an endless chain of causes and effects behind that existing thing. Otherwise, the whole chain of cause and effect could never get started. Eventually, there has to be a cause which is uncaused; there has to be something that exists which simply exists and which did not need a cause.
Now that your brain has exploded, let’s remodel it by talking about what this attribute of God means for our lives. We learn several important lessons by reflecting on God’s eternal existence.
1. God does not need you
That statement may sound harsh, but this thought is actually a very healthy one for us to embrace because it puts us in our place, yet it also magnifies God’s love for you. Let me explain.
If God is eternal and thus had no beginning, this means that He exists by His own power. If that’s the case, then He has no needs that He cannot meet for Himself. He is thus self-sufficient, meaning that He doesn’t need anyone else. God doesn’t need someone to look after Him or take care of Him or any such thing. Here is how Paul put it in Acts 17:24-25—“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
What could God possibly need from us since He existed just fine without us? Perhaps someone has told you that God created us because He was lonely. God was never lonely! He is a Trinity—three persons in one being! God doesn’t need us to take care of Him, He doesn’t need us to love Him, and He doesn’t even need us in order to act in the world!
This observation cuts us down to size and keeps us from becoming proud, but here’s the thought the builds us up in a healthy way—God doesn’t need you, yet He chooses to love you. Isn’t that amazing? He doesn’t need you, yet you are not insignificant to Him. He chooses to love you and He chooses to use you to accomplish His will in this world. He sent His Son to die for you—not because He couldn’t stand to live without you, but simply because that’s the kind of God that He is. Here is how God describes Himself in Exodus 34:6-7—“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” This awe-inspiring God is completely self-sufficient, yet He chooses to extend mercy and grace to us, as we remember today in the Lord’s Supper.
2. God does not experience urgency
Since God’s existence cannot be measured by time, He does not experience time the way that we do. 2 Peter 3:8 says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This verse tells us that God’s interaction with time is so different from our own.
This lesson is so important to remember when we’re thinking about God’s work in our lives. When we have problems that feel extremely urgent, or when we pray about something for weeks or months or years and it seems like nothing is happening, we have to remember that God just doesn’t experience time the way we do. Urgency is only experienced by those who feel the pressure of time bearing down on them. We feel urgency when we feel like we are losing time or when we feel like we don’t have enough time.
But God doesn’t have such limitations on Him. The constraints of time do not bind Him. He can literally roll back the clock if He chooses, as He did for Joshua in Joshua 10 and for Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20.
This lesson simply reminds us that we cannot let ourselves become angry with God if He doesn’t seem to be working by our schedule. If He doesn’t seem to be answering one of your prayer requests, or if He seems to be “late” in coming through for you, just remember that God does not have to fit into your Day Timer!
3. God does not act in haste
Sometimes, we make mistakes or we do poor work or we make bad decisions because we act in haste. Sometimes we throw something together just before a deadline, or we make an uninformed decision because we feel the weight of urgency. But God does not have such constraints, so we don’t have to wonder if His work is imperfect because He rushed through it. Nor do we need to ask if God made a bad decision because He “didn’t have time to think through it.”
God’s actions are deliberate and on purpose. He is never forced to act by deadlines or by the fear that He may miss out on a moment in time that will never come around again. And so, this is just one of the reasons that God does not make mistakes. So when God acts in your life or when he allows certain circumstances to come into your life, you can know for sure that He did not make a hasty decision or have a spur-of-the-moment reaction. He knows exactly what He is doing and He does it at exactly the right time.
Learning what we have today about our God magnifies His love, grace, and mercy that we remember in the Lord’s Supper. That such a being would make such a sacrifice for us is indescribable. So as we partake, let us mourn for our sins which have made the Lord’s sacrifice necessary for our forgiveness, and let us rejoice over God’s willingness to provide it.
Notes:
1. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978), 1.
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