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October 26, 2008
“There Is Only One Gospel”
Galatians 1: 1-12
October 26, 2008
I know that on this coming Friday many of you will be involved in one way or another in celebrating Halloween. But I hope you know and that you will remember that there is something else to celebrate on October 31st. October 31st is not only Halloween, it is also Reformation day. This coming Friday will be the 491st anniversary of the day on which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther nailed some papers on the door of the chapel of Wittenberg University. On those papers were the 95 Thesis. These were 95 concerns he had with the practice of the sale of indulgences.
The sale of papal indulgences had to do with the viewing and veneration of religious relics: hair from the virgin mary, pieces of the cross, pebbles from the tombs of one of the saints, etc. The Pope in Luther’s day had authorized the sale of the right to view these relics with the guarantee that such purchase and proper veneration of these relics would take some time off the time that one would have to spend in purgatory. In other words, The sale of indulgences involved the purchase of the grace of God.
Martin Luther was at that time a Priest in the church and a professor of New Testament at the University of Wittenberg. He had recently completed studies in the NT books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. From his studies he had come to the conviction that God’s grace in all cases and especially the grace of Forgiveness of sins was God’s free gift. He believed that the sale of indulgences constituted the selling of God’s grace and was therefore wrong.
The 95 theses were a list of 95 criticisms he had of the sale of indulgences. The posting of these 95 statements was an invitation to any and all comers to discuss these concerns with him in a public forum.
There was no act of rebellion involved nailing of these papers to the door of the chapel. The door of the chapel served as the bulletin board for the University. Martin was simply posting his invitation to discuss these issues on the university bulletin board.
These theses did not deal with the subject of the existence of Purgatory or most of the other issues that would be dealt with during the Reformation which would follow. Luther just wanted to discuss the reasons why he thought the Scriptures condemned the sale of indulgences.
And so the reformation really began with Luther’s understanding that the Holy Scriptures were the final authority in all matters of faith and behavior. Where he came into conflict with the church of his day was that he believed that the authority of the church was subject to and derived from the Scriptures. Others in his day believed that God had given the Church its own authority that was independent of and equal to the Scriptures.
Martin Luther, bless his heart, had no idea that what he was doing on October 31st would get him into trouble or begin a pivotal event in Church history and world history. He just wanted to challenge the church on a matter in which he considered the Church to be in error.
In that vein, and in his honor, I have decided to have us look at the first 12 verses of Saint Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. I have a reason for directing your attention to this passage.
In these verses, in the spirit of Luther and probably showing him the way, St Paul was challenging the churches in the district of Galatia to deal with some errors of belief that had crept into their churches.
It was the Evangelistic work of St. Paul in the district of Galatia that had brought the churches there into being. The people who believed in Jesus as a result of his preaching joined together and formed churches. But after Paul and his companions left the area, other Christian leaders came and told them that they had to abide by the Jewish dietary and circumcision laws to be Christians.
Paul wrote to the Galatians and accused them of abandoning the true message of and about Christ.
Because of the urgency of his task, Paul did not spend much time in this letter on his introduction and greeting. Also because of the nature of the letter, he started making theological statements in the very first verse.
In verse 1 he makes some doctrinal statements. He proclaims that he had been sent to them as an Apostle “Through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”
In using the name and title Jesus Christ, Paul is making a statement. Christ is not the last name or surname of Jesus. It is one of his titles. Christ is the English transliteration of the Greek word Christos which the Jews used as the Greek equivalent for their word Messiah, which meant, the anointed one. The Jews believed that God was going to send a special savior to them and the world. He would be especially chosen or anointed or ordained by God for his task. Their title for this coming savior was Messiah, or Christ. In using the words JESUS and CHRIST together Paul is reminding his readers that Jesus is the Messiah, the only savior sent by God.
In referring immediately thereafter to “God the Father” Paul is reminding them that Jesus is also the Son of God.
Paul also reminds them in this sentence that God the Father not only sent Jesus, but Raised him from the dead. One of the most basic and essential doctrines of the Christian faith is that Jesus physically and bodily rose from the dead. I have had people tell me that they think that Jesus rose spiritually from the dead and that the disciples and apostles spoke and wrote of it as physical to impress its reality on others who did not personally experience it. Now I have gotten to the point where I realize that people will believe whatever they want, but I also know that the Bible clearly proclaims that Jesus Physically rose from the dead. It is up to God to decide if the belief in a spiritual resurrection is a sign of true conversion and true repentance. God will decide whose beliefs to accept and not accept, but such beliefs are not confirmed by our scriptures. The Bible only speaks of a physical resurrection of Jesus.
In the third verse, Paul, now into his greeting, mentions the sacrifice of Jesus for us. He writes of “…the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age…”. Another of the basic doctrines of Christianity is that Jesus died to pay for our sins. He died so that God could forgive our sins. This forgiveness allows us to rise from the dead as Jesus did and to enter the eternal kingdom we sometimes refer to as Heaven.
But Paul doesn’t here mention our eternal salvation in those terms. He wrote that Christ gave himself up for us to set us free from this present evil age. Now getting us into heaven is a part of setting us free from this present evil age. But the power of Jesus’ resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit also helps us to free ourselves from the evil of this world while we are still here. After we become Christians we are supposed to use God’s power to resist the urges to sin that come to us in this world.
As Paul actually begins to address the situation in Galatia, he expresses astonishment or dismay that they are turning to a different Gospel. Then specifies and writes “not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ”
As I said earlier, some Jewish Christians had come to the churches in Galatia and had convinced the Gentile Christians there that in order to be complete Christians they also had to embrace the feasts, commandments, dietary rules and especially the circumcision requirement of Judaism.
Paul said this was a terrible addition to the Christian faith and doctrine. Why? Because such requirements implied or stated that faith in the saving work of Jesus was not enough, that something humans could do was also required.
The true Gospel or message of salvation is that Salvation only depends on the death and resurrection of Jesus. We become a part of that salvation solely by our faith in Jesus. Nothing else we can do will make us a part of the Kingdom of God. It is only Christ’s death that enables us to receive salvation.
Paul states that any one who teaches or preaches anything that is contrary to what Paul has taught and preached is to be cursed, to be under God’s curse.
Why? Because they opposed Paul? No. Because there is only one true message of Salvation. It was not a product of men or of Paul’s imagination or scholarship. It was reveled by God to Paul. It was also revealed to the 12 Apostles by God in Jesus.
There is only one true revelation of God, only one message of salvation. You will find it in the Bible. All others are false and are to be avoided.
This can be tricky, because when these false gospels or false messages of salvation come, they often come through the church. In Paul’s day it was false Christian leaders who taught other ways to salvation. In Luther’s day it was the Pope and Cardinals who taught that forgiveness of sins could be purchased from the church.
Not all messages that purport to be Christian are. Be careful, even if Christians tell you some new teaching, check it out against the true Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is presented in the New Testament.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2008
“The Glory of God”
Exodus 33: 18-23 & 40: 34-38
John 1: 1-2 & 14-18
October 19th, 2008
Last Sunday I talked about the Golden Calf and the sins of the Israelites in constructing and worshipping it. We also looked at Moses’ role as mediator between the angry God and the sinful people of Israel.
Moses mediation did not keep God or Moses from punishing Israel, it just kept God from totally destroying Israel.
When Moses came down the mountain to the Israelites who were worshipping the golden calf, he broke the tablets containing the 10 commandments. This may have been in anger, it also may have been a symbolic act, portraying the fact that the commandments had been broken by the Israelites.
Moses then ordered the Levites to take their swords and go through the camp killing many of those who had worshipped the golden calf. About 3,000 were killed that day. Then God sent a plague on the people as further punishment.
When God was ready to move the people away from Sinai and closer to the promised land, he informed Moses that he would not be leading them any longer with the fiery cloud. He would send an angel to accompany them. Moses begged God to reconsider and continue to lead them personally with the fiery cloud. God said that because He was pleased with Moses, He would continue to lead them.
Then Moses, evidently counting on God’s being pleased with him, made a bold request of God. He said “Now, show me your Glory”.
This seems at first sight to be a strange request in the light of the relationship that Moses already had with God. In the first part of chapter 33 we read that Moses had set up a tent outside the camp of Israel where he would go to meet with God. When Moses went there, the cloud of God would come down and stay at the entrance to the tent and Moses would meet with God there, “And the LORD would speak to Moses, face to face, as a man speaks with his friend”.
Now it seems that even though Moses had spoken in the tent and on the mountain to God “face to face” Moses understood that there was more to God’s glorious presence than he had seen. And he wanted to see it all.
God’s reply is, “Sorry, No can do”.
Because of Moses’ sinful humanity, he was unable to experience the full glory of God in person and still live. So God offered a compromise. He offered to put Moses into a cave on Mt Sinai and to block his visibility of God’s entire glory until most of God’s glory passed by. He would then allow Moses out to see the back part of God’s glory. So Moses would experience more of God’s glorious presence than he had, but still not the complete glory of God.
At the end of the book of Exodus, there is another mention of the Glory of God and Moses inability to be directly involved with it. Moses had followed God’s instructions to have the Israelites build the new tent of meeting, the Tabernacle. When it was complete, God moved into it with all his glory. And the passage tells us that Moses could not enter the tabernacle while God’s presence was so complete in it.
Part of God’s glory continued to rest on the tabernacle whenever it was set up in the camp of the Israelites. When God lifted up the cloud of his presence, it was time to dismantle the Tabernacle and move to a new place. This fiery cloud of God’s presence, called the Shekinah, continued to lead Israel and alternately fill the Tabernacle until Israel occupied the promised land.
But the point that is made in these passages is that the entire Glory of God was too much for any human, even Moses to experience and survive.
With that in mind, I now want to move to our NT passage, two snippets from the beginning of the gospel of John.
You have probably noticed that John’s gospel does not begin as the other 3 gospels. They all begin in the same period of written history. Matthew and Luke begin with the events surrounding the birth of Jesus in 6 BC. Mark begins with the ministry of the adult John the Baptist around 24 AD.
John starts further back. All the way back in the beginning. Both Genesis and John start with the words “In the beginning.” But John sort of takes us further back. John introduces us to someone he refers to as the LOGOS or Word, or Speech or Speaker. And he tells us that when creation occurred, the Speaker already was. This stress on speech beautifully parallels the beginning of the genesis account of creation because in genesis 1: 3 and several times shortly thereafter we read “And God Said…”
In the first verse John tells us that the Word or Speaker was with God at creation and that the Word or Speaker was God.
There is a part of God or a quality of God that John identifies as the Speaker or communicator.
Then in the 14th verse he tells us that the part of God previously identified as the Speaker became flesh. This Word or Speaker made flesh is Jesus.
Flesh is a bit of a strange word to use in this context, but it fits John’s purpose well. At the time John wrote his Gospel, there was a heresy starting which when fully grown would be known as Docetism. Docetism taught that God or the living Word of God could not become so degraded as to become fully human. Docetism taught that Jesus only appeared to be fully human but that he was really much more of a spiritual being than a material being. John deliberately used the most basic and material word he could think of to describe the humanity of Jesus. He became flesh. He had a physical body with all the limitations and problems that entailed.
John wrote that the Word became Flesh and lived among us, but that is not exactly what he wrote. The word that the RSV translates “lived” actually means Tabernacled or Dwelt, or pitched his tent with us. But the use of the word “tabernacle” is interesting in the light of the OT passage where God’s Glory inhabited the tabernacle. In the OT times the Glory of God dwelt among God’s people in the Tabernacle. In the NT times The Word of God dwelt in human flesh.
And then John finally gets to the point I have been trying to make since I started this sermon. Let me read the entire 14th verse for you again: “And the Word became Flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his Glory, the Glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
As Moses and the Israelites saw a portion of the Glory of God in the fiery cloud, So the Apostles saw a greater portion of God’s Glory in Jesus. Sometimes they had to look for that Glory, but it was always there, and it broke out on some occasions so many could see it. The Glory of God in Jesus was clearly seen in his miracles, it was heard in his teachings, it was seen in his transfiguration, it was seen in his resurrection and in his ascension.
The religion that is based on the teachings of the Apostles is greater than that which is based on the teachings of Moses because a greater degree of God’s glory was revealed to the apostles in Jesus than was revealed to Moses in the fiery cloud. Or as John wrote in the 17th verse: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”.
The law of Moses is but a summary of the grace and truth that was revealed more completely by Jesus.
If you want to experience the Glory of God, read the gospels. In those words describing the words and deeds of Jesus you will find the Glory of God. If not, read them again.
I told a few of you about my last trip to Niagra Falls about 7 or so years ago. We went in the one of the boats that takes you up the river right to the bottom of the falls. Three quarters of the way around us was a curtain of falling water. The sight and the sound was incredible. In the midst of this experience I glanced through the open door of the wheelhouse of the boat. There was our pilot or captain reading his newspaper. I wanted to go into that wheelhouse and rip that paper from his hands and say, “You need to look at the water again my friend”.
Folks, if you want to experience the glory of God, put down your newspapers, turn off your computers and your televisions, and read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, The Glory of God that is in Jesus is clearly presented in those pages. Enjoy, and be thrilled.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2008
“Holy Chutzpuh!”
Exodus 32: 1-14
October 12, 2008
I think that by now all Americans must be familiar with the term Chutzpah. Please notice that the CH is in this case a gutteral KH. This word and concept came into the English language through the Yiddish language. Yiddish was a language or dialect of German and Hebrew and other stuff. It was spoken by many European Jews and came to America as many Jews fled Russia and Europe. When I was a child, the older Jewish Americans I knew spoke Yiddish instead of Hebrew. Then, with the reestablishment of the nation of Israel and the creation of Modern Hebrew, the use of Yiddish decreased. It is now being used again and preserved and some universities offer courses that study it.
The Yiddish language has given several colorful words to the American version of English. Such words are Klutz, Mensch, Schlmiel, Schlep and Chutzpah. Since the word Chutzpah has now been used in a Supreme Court decision, I guess we can say that it is now an official part of American English.
Chutzpah originally came from a Hebrew word that meant arrogance, but it has come to imply extreme almost comical cases of arrogance, perhaps better stated as brazenness. The classic illustration of Chutzpah comes from the fictional story of a young man who murdered his parents then asked for mercy from the court because he was an orphan.
But in its American usage, Chutzpah is not always seen as a bad thing. Chutzpah is often used to describe the attitudes and actions of successful people who are not afraid to face great opposition or to challenge hallowed traditions.
The ancient passage that we are looking at this morning describes 2 cases of Chutzpah.
The first is the case of the Jews at the foot of Mt Sinai, demanding the creation of and then worshipping the Golden Calf.
Perhaps you did not pick up on the Chutzpah involved in this rebellion against God, because you have forgotten some of the details of the context. So I want to take a few moments to remind you of what had happened in the 3 months that preceded this event.
About 3 months earlier, God and Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt where they had become slaves. On the night they departed, God had killed the firstborn male of every family in Egypt except the Jewish families.
After the Egyptians had allowed and even ordered the Jews to depart, the King sent his army after them to bring them back. God led the Jews to escape through the Red Sea, then caused the sea to come down on and drown the pursuing Egyptian Army.
Then God brought the Jews into the dessert where He began to feed them daily with a bread-like substance they called Mannah. Every morning they would awake to find their daily supply of food scattered all over the ground. All they had to do was to pick it up and take it home and prepare it.
Then God led them to Mt. Sinai. All this time, God had been visibly leading them in a fiery cloud. When they arrived at Sinai, The cloud of God’s presence went up the mountain and the people were told to remain below. God verbally gave the 10 commandments to the people, then called Moses to come up the mountain for further instructions.
Moses stayed up on that mountain for about 40 days. He was receiving from God the rest of the Laws of God’s covenant, instructions for building the tabernacle and all of its furnishings, and instructions as to how they were to order their Worship.
It was while Moses was on the mountain receiving all these instructions from God that the Jews down below became impatient. They came to Aaron with a remarkably impudent request. “Come, make us gods (a god) who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to Him.”
There is so much Chutzpah displayed in these two sentences that I barely know where to begin.
They wanted Aaron to make a god, an idol for or of the true God that had led them out of Egypt. But less than 40 days before they had heard God recite to them the 10 commandments. The second of those commandments forbids the making of idols to worship.
But their arrogance was even worse than asking for an image to worship in violation of the commandment. They were asking for an image to lead them on their journey. The cloud of God and Moses were at that very moment on the mountain, but the Jews had become impatient and wanted an idol of God so it could lead them someplace else. Now the wonderful thing about idols is that they really can’t lead anywhere. They have to be taken. The Jews were intending to leave God’s cloud and Moses and push an idol out in front of them and follow it to where they would make it go.
That very morning they had gathered up the food God had provided them, then they determined to violate the second commandment and make G
od take them to where they wanted to go. If there is anywhere a better example of Chutzpah, I don’t know what it could be.
But before we condemn the Israelites in this case, we need to be careful lest we condemn ourselves. We all grow impatient with God. We all try to make him take us to places where we want to go when he clearly wants us to wait on him. And sometimes we have made ourselves miserable by not waiting for God. We talk approvingly about people who have the “patience of a saint” then refuse to be patient with others or God.
If you don’t remember anything else about this sermon or this passage of Scripture, remember this, The worshipping of the Golden calf, this great blemish on the people of Israel began with their being impatient. They were safe where they were, they were being fed where they were. Their needs were being met. They could have stayed there in those circumstances for 40 years, but they wanted to move on.
Aaron may have tried to dissuade them from wanting an idol by asking them to give up their valuable jewelry so he could make one. If so, he underestimated the propensity of fallen human beings to trade valuable stuff for junk. Jay Leno has a segment on the Tonight show called “stuff we found on ebay”. I occasionally laugh with him at the nonsensical items that people spend hundreds of dollars for, like a piece of toast that his a burn in the shape of the face of Jesus or Elvis. I laugh until I am forced to recall some of the junk I have purchased.
At the beginning of this sermon I said that this passage from Exodus provides us with 2 examples of Chutzpah.
Israel demanding an idol to follow and worship is one. What is the second?
Moses, arguing with God, pleading for mercy for the sinful Israelites.
Up on the mountain, God spoke out of the cloud to Moses and told him that the people down below were worshipping the golden calf. God told Moses that he was going to destroy them and make a new nation for himself out of Moses’ family.
And, as a demonstration of Good Chutzpah, or Chutzpah put to a good purpose, Moses takes it upon himself to convince God otherwise. He argues with God.
He told God that his destruction of the Jews would cause the Egyptians to rejoice and to think that He was a miserable God, destroying those whom he had delivered.
He reminded God of the promises that God had made to Abe, Isaac and Jacob.
And God relented. Then Moses went down the mountain and took it upon himself to announce God’s displeasure with Israel and to inflict punishments on them.
This is Holy Chutzpah. Moses pleaded for his people then announced God’s displeasure to them. God needs us to do the same for him and for our nation, our world, our denomination, and maybe some of our friends and loved ones.
It doesn’t take a wise person or a particularly pious person to see that some parts of our world, our nation, our society, our culture, and some people we care about are ripe for God’s holy judgment.
Sometimes we want to stand back and let the lightning bolts strike, and maybe even tell God where to direct them. But that is not why we are here. We are here to plead for God’s mercy and to announce God’s displeasure on what we see.
I think that God has given each of us a measure of Chutzpah. Let’s make sure we use it for Good, for God and for his people and not against God as did those who worshipped the Golden calf.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2008
“A Parable, A Metaphor, and a Prediction”
Matthew 21: 33-46
October 5, 2008 (World Communion)
Today we are looking at one of the later parables of Jesus. The parable of the evil tenants was delivered in Jerusalem during the last week of Jesus’ life. The parable of the evil tenants is an easy one for us to understand, because the meaning of it is basically given in the passage. It is more of an allegory than a pure parable. In this allegorical parable, God is the vineyard owner, the rulers of the Jews are the tenants who have rented the vineyard, the vineyard is the nation and religious establishment of Israel, the ill-treated servants of the vineyard owner are the Prophets God sent to Israel, and Jesus is the son of the Vineyard owner. We understand all of this because of what we know from the passage and from how things worked out for Jesus in Israel. But you may have wondered how the leaders of Israel picked up on the meaning so quickly.
They understood because Jesus gave it away in the first sentence. Jesus said that there was a man who planted a vineyard. In the Old Testament there were several prophets who referred to Israel as God’s vineyard. When anyone used the term Vineyard figuratively, it was assumed they were speaking of Israel. It would be like a person coming to West Lafayette and starting a story by saying “there was once a group of people who were involved in training people to design, maintain and improve Boilers.”
So every one who heard this parable from the lips of Jesus would have known who all the characters in the parable were symbols for.
This parable is an allegory of God’s relationship with his people from His bringing of them into the promised land. As the vinyard owner planted the vinyard, built a wall and tower to provide safety and protection, and carved a winepress out of the rock, God had given Israel everything they needed to be productive for Him.
And what produce did God expect from Israel? They were to live in justice and righteousness and to Worship God properly and exclusively. When they did not do these things God sent them prophets to call them to repent and to do what God wanted them to do. Some of the prophets were mistreated, some killed.
The parable then crosses over into the New Testament period when it describes the coming of the son of the vineyard owner. It tells us how Jesus the Son of God was received by the rulers of Israel and how his visit with them would end.
This parable even gives us the motivation of the rulers of Israel. The evil tenants killed the son so they could claim ownership of the vineyard. The rulers of the Jews wanted to rule Israel for their own sake and their own power. They did not want to rule for God, they wanted to rule for their own benefit.
After the parable, Jesus used a metaphor to describe himself. He said he was the cornerstone of Israel. This metaphor had also often been used of Israel. The metaphor comes from a story of the building of the original temple during the reign of Solomon.
According to the directions of God, the stones that would form the walls of the temple were given their final shape at the quarry. No hammers and chisels were to be used on the sacred temple mount. Early in the stone cutting process, a stone was cut that was to be used much later. It was to be the keystone at the top of the temple arch. It was an odd shaped stone and kept getting in the way at the quarry. But one day, it was used and this odd shaped stumbling stone was put into its proper place, a prominent place in the façade of the temple.
The story of that stone became a metaphor for Israel. It was the stone rejected and resisted by other nations and yet placed by God into a prominent place among the nations and in the history of the world.
But Now Jesus gave the stone a new meaning. HE was now the stone sent by God to cause many to stumble and to eventually be placed in the position of prominence in God’s eternal Temple.
Then Jesus gave a prediction or a prophecy. He said “Therefore I tell you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
That, of course is exactly what happened and continues to happen. The true religion of God became Christianity and the Gentiles became Christians. It is we who are now the keepers of the kingdom of God. And we are not the only ones. Today is Worldwide Communion Sunday. Today we recognize that we share the kingdom of God on earth with people around the world. Just down the street a Korean church is worshipping. The church in Korea is only about 100 years old. We rejoice in recognizing them as citizens in the kingdom of God. All around the world there are people who belong in the kingdom. Some of them are descendants of many generations of Christians. Some of them are among the first generations of Christians in their nations.
We rejoice that not only have these peoples come into the kingdom, but that they have produced the fruits of the kingdom of God. They live in justice and righteousness and worship God rightly and exclusively.
May we all continue to produce the fruits of the kingdom, lest it be removed from us.
Let us pray. Almighty God, on this worldwide Communion Sunday, we thank you for the fact that your communion is worldwide. Please help us all to continue to produce the fruits of the kingdom. Amen.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)