This is a teaching from Wednesday Nights at Immanuel on October 29, 2025.

Introduction

We’re just days away from the 508th anniversary of Reformation Day, October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, and ignited the Protestant Reformation. So it’s a fitting time to reflect on Reformation theology.

What was the Reformation? It was a rediscovery of the biblical gospel. It was a return to the Bible’s message of salvation freely given in Christ.

Tonight, I want to consider the Five Solas—five Latin phrases that summarize Reformation theology: Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

As you can see, the keyword is sola, alone. They express the amazingly wonderful truth that salvation belongs to the Lord alone. I want to show you they still matter and how they are good news.

So, let’s dive in.

Picture this: It’s the middle of the night, and you can’t sleep. You're miserable, worn out, and burdened. The blackness outside is like a screen showing all your sins and failures. You’ve tried to fight temptation, but you keep giving in. It’s eroding your assurance of salvation. You want to pray, but it feels useless. You know God is holy, and you feel anything but. Your head drops into your hands, and you feel a deep lostness, a despair that overwhelms, shame and guilt that feel like a dark night of the soul that no light could break into.

Now, imagine Jesus stepping into the room. You look up at him. What kind of look is on his face?

That question haunted a German monk named Martin Luther.

Martin Luther

Luther was a spiritually anxious man. The words “righteousness of God” struck him like lightning. He said, “When I heard them, I was exceedingly terrified. If God is righteous, I thought, he must punish me.”[1] He entered the monastery driven by fear, hoping that devotion could please God and ease his conscience. But he found the opposite. “Though I lived as a monk without reproach,” he said, “I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that anything that I thought or did or prayed satisfied God.”[2]

His struggles resonate with us because they are our struggles, too. We long for a release of guilt, a free grace to cover our sins, and a righteousness we can’t lose.

Luther tried fasting, prayer, pilgrimages—everything he could to root out sin and earn righteousness. But all he could imagine was condemnation on Christ’s face. Then, as he taught through Romans, he had a breakthrough. It was Romans 1:17 that made the difference. “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.” He saw that justification was not earned but given, not by works but by grace, not through penance but repentance. He later wrote, “Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open.”

What he saw can be summarized in the Five Solas. Each Sola answers a question of the heart.

Question: Where can I find truth I can trust?

Answer: In Scripture alone

Question: How could God love someone like me?

Answer: By grace alone

Question: How can I ever be right with God?

Answer: Through faith alone

Question: Where can I find salvation?

Answer: In Christ alone

Question: Does my life even matter?

Answer: Yes, to the glory of God alone

The deepest questions of your heart not only matter to God but are answered by God in the Bible, so let’s start there—where can you find truth you can trust? In Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone.

Sola Scriptura  

Is there any place of everlasting, infallible, totally reliable truth? Where can you go when you need answers about your standing with God?

Sola Scriptura asserts that Scripture alone is the place.

Gavin Ortlund explains it this way.

“The core idea is that Scripture is the church’s only infallible rule. A rule is a standard that governs the church’s faith and practice. Infallible means being incapable of error. So sola Scriptura is essentially the claim that Scripture is the only authority standing over the church that is incapable of error…

“In other words, the fault line of difference between sola Scriptura and alternative positions is this: Does the church possess any rule other than Scripture that is infallible?”[3]

The Reformers answered, “No.”

The Roman Catholic Church says that Scripture and apostolic tradition, mediated through the church’s authority, together form the rule of faith. The Reformers valued tradition but refused to place it alongside Scripture, because only the Bible carries the authority of God himself. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The Scriptures alone are God’s very breath. Tradition and church councils may be helpful, but they are human and can be fallible. God did not breathe them.

Here's why that mattered in the 16th century. To fund St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope issued indulgences—reductions of time in purgatory based on the borrowed merit of saints. Johann Tetzel popularized it with, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Luther saw this as a distortion of the gospel that led to shallow repentance and false assurance.

That may sound distant from us, but the same question still matters today: Where will we look for assurance? In the words of men or in the Word of God?

That question bothered Luther. He started to wonder: If the pope can release souls, why not empty purgatory? That raised further questions. How are sins paid for? How is one set right with God? Where could he find truth he could trust?

He went back to the Bible and found passages like these:

• Romans 3:23–24 - For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

• Colossians 1:13–14 - He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

• Hebrews 10:10–14 - We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

• Romans 8:1 - There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Luther found in the Bible no mention of indulgences, no treasury of merit, no pope with power over souls. Instead, he discovered that salvation is God’s work alone, by grace, through faith, in Christ. He wrote about it, which got him into trouble with the church. He was summoned to recant before the authorities at the Diet of Worms. He replied, “I am bound by the Scriptures…and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything.”

When everything was on the line for Luther, he trusted Scripture alone. And that was enough. When everything is on the line for you—when you’re in that room of despair facing an uncertain future, what the Bible says about that future is your ultimate authority. You can listen to it alone. It’s God’s very breath for you.

So let’s go deeper into what it says. Next stop, Sola Gratia—grace alone.

Sola Gratia

Before the Reformation, Luther believed grace was God’s gift, but also an enabling power given to cooperate in justification through merit. He never had assurance—too much depended on him. He wrestled constantly: How could God love someone like me? He knew he didn’t deserve salvation. He echoed Paul in Romans 7, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He feared dying without the necessary righteousness to enter heaven, so he worked hard. He said, “If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.”

But that’s not the way to God’s love. The path is easier, clearer, freer. It’s by grace alone—Sola Gratia.

So what is this grace that could set a man like Luther—and us—free?

The Dutch theologian Louis Berkhof defined grace as “the free bestowal of kindness on one who has no claim to it.”[4] God’s grace is not for perfect disciples but imperfect disciples, for people who can’t get their act together, for people who can’t even find the act. It’s like getting an A when you never showed up or passed a test. It’s wholly undeserved.

John Calvin said, “Grace does not merely assist; it does everything.”[5] Salvation is not something we earn or contribute to. It’s all of grace. God owes us nothing but punishment. Our sin is too sinful. God’s judgment is too just. Our inability is too great. If we are saved, God’s grace alone must be the reason.[6] His grace must be greater than our sin. And that’s what the Bible says.

Consider these passages.

• Ephesians 2:4-10: 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

• Romans 3:24: We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Charles Spurgeon points out that there’s no adjective before the noun—no qualification at all, except that they are sinners.[7] We don’t need to qualify it. God saves sinners, not the good or the improved sinners—just sinners.

Justification is not a process of grace-produced merit but a declaration of imputed righteousness through Christ’s cross. The merit we need belongs to Jesus, who gives it freely. Luther called it an “alien righteousness”—a righteousness outside us in Christ, that becomes ours by his grace. No wonder Paul ends Romans 7 with doxology: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

The Bible isn’t calling us to get better and get Christ; it’s calling us to receive grace and get Christ. When Jesus steps into that room of guilt or exhaustion with you, he doesn’t bring a to-do list. He doesn’t bring a challenge. He brings grace alone—grace upon grace (John 1:16). He brings assurance that, because of his grace, your sin doesn’t have to define you anymore.

How can we grab hold of that grace? Through Sola Fide, faith alone.     

Sola Fide

Luther called justification by faith alone ‘the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.’ It’s the hinge of the gospel, the answer to the heart’s question: How can I be right with God?

Is justification something we earn or something we receive? Here’s Paul’s answer:

• Romans 3:28 — “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

• Galatians 2:16 — “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This is amazing news. If our works justify us, we’re doomed. Paul said in Romans 3:10. “None is righteous, no, not one.” If it’s up to us, there is no hope. Even if we could obey from this point on, what about all our past failures? How could we ever make up for those? We would still lack the righteousness God requires.

That’s why justification by faith alone isn’t just good theology—it’s good news for weary sinners. The righteousness we need is not achieved but received. Faith connects us to Christ, whose perfect righteousness is freely given by grace.

So how do we get faith? The Bible says—this is amazing—that faith itself is a gift. Look at Ephesians 2:8 again. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” There is some debate on the referent to “this” and “it”. Is Paul referring to grace or faith? Without getting into the weeds, the answer is both—faith, like grace, is part of the gift of salvation. Other passages say so. Here are a few.

• Philippians 1:29-30 – “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” “Granted” means to give freely and graciously.

• Acts 16:14, speaking of Lydia’s conversion, says, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.”

• 2 Peter 1:1 – “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” “Obtained” means to receive by lot. It’s a gift God distributes.

Here’s how it works. God’s gift of faith connects us to the righteousness we need. The authors of the Westminster Confession said it is “the alone instrument of justification.” By instrument, they mean faith is the thing that attaches us to Christ. It’s the way we lay hold of Christ and receive all his righteousness. Charles Spurgeon said, “Faith justifies, but not in and by itself, but because it grasps the obedience of Christ.”[8] Faith is the way we grasp Christ. Theologian R.C. Sproul called faith, “nothing more than the empty hand that receives the righteousness of Christ. It adds nothing to that righteousness, and it accomplishes nothing apart from it.”[9] We’re justified by faith alone. It’s enough because it connects us to Christ, whose righteousness is ours by grace, and his righteousness is all the righteousness we need

So when Jesus walks into the room with you, he’s not looking for something in your hands to offer him. He’s not waiting for your gift—he is the gift. All he looks for is an empty hand to fill with his righteousness. And even if that hand trembles, that’s okay. It’s not your strength but his that makes the difference.

That’s where we’ll turn next—Solus Christus.

Solus Christus

Scripture says we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—Solus Christus.  

Christ holds the key to it all. To the heart’s question, Where can I find salvation? Jesus answers joyfully, “In me!”

Romans 4:5 says, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Justification by faith alone means justification by the righteousness of Christ alone.[10] Faith itself has no power to save unless it’s connected to a strong object. Faith justifies because Christ has all the necessary merit we need.

Jesus alone deserves heaven. He alone lived a perfectly righteous life, fulfilling every demand of the law. And what did he do with that perfection? He gave it away on the cross. Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The ultimate innocent one became the ultimate guilty one.

Why did he do this? Not to make our salvation possible, or even eventual, but to make it effectual—to make it certain. Not to give us a starting point, but to be the finishing point.

Calvin put it this way: “When God justifies us through Christ, he does not acquit us on a proof of our own innocence, but by an imputation of righteousness, so that though not righteous in ourselves, we are deemed righteous in Christ.”[11] The church father Irenaeus said, “For the sake of his infinite love [Jesus] has become what we are in order that he may make us entirely what he is.”

On the cross, our sin was transferred to Christ’s account, and his righteousness was transferred to ours. This is what the Reformers called the double imputation. Our sin became Christ’s sin; our unrighteousness became Christ’s unrighteousness. And Christ’s work became our work; his merit became our merit. All the righteousness needed to stand before God is ours in Christ—free by grace through faith.

Luther called this a “wonderful exchange.” The Swiss theologian Emil Bruner called it “the most incomprehensible thing that exists.”[12] It’s mind-blowing. The all-holy God we offended, whose wrath we rightly deserve, in his great love for sinners, provided the one way his wrath could be satisfied—through Christ, and Christ alone.

Christ is our substitute who sacrificed himself to satisfy everything needed for our justification.[13] In him and him alone, we are set right with God. When Jesus cried out from the cross, ‘It is finished,’ he meant it. Praise God!

That’s why, in Acts 4:12, the early church preached, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” It is not Christ plus anything. It is Christ alone.   

When you’re in that room in the darkness by yourself, if salvation is not by Christ alone, then you are really alone. It’s up to you to finish the job. Who else can if Christ can’t?

But if, on the cross, Jesus gave his perfection to the imperfect you, then God’s not asking for anything else from you. It is finished. You can rest in that. You can receive that.  

Soli Deo Gloria

Finally, Scripture tells us we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—for the glory of God alone. Soli Deo Gloria.

One of our key values at Immanuel is calling. We all want our lives to matter. Soli Deo Gloria tells us our lives matter because our lives are a testament to God’s glory, and nothing matters more than his glory.

Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

Psalm 115:1, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory.”

Habakkuk 2:14 promises, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is this: What is the chief end of man? Answer: To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This is the end to which everything is designed, and out salvation contributes to that. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, so that God’s glory might be seen, adored, enjoyed, worshiped. As Paul says in Romans 3:26, God might be both just and the justifier, upholding his righteousness even as he gives righteousness to sinners through Christ. Amazing!

Everything exists for the glory of God—that’s why you’re here. That’s why stars shine, winds blow, and hearts beat. It’s all for him.

It’s easy for our Christianity to drift from God-centered to man-centered, as if salvation were something we help bring about. But God is the one who planned it and brought it to pass. That’s why Paul says in Ephesians 1:6, 12, and 14 some variation of “to the praise of His glory.”

The Solas show the beautiful chain of how we are saved: by grace alone (not by law), through faith alone (not through works), in Christ alone (not in anything else). If that is true—and it is—then who can get the glory but God?

Conclusion

Now, one final time, come back with me into that room. You have nothing to offer Jesus but need. You know you can’t be your own savior. You’ve tried and failed. But that’s okay with Jesus. He’s not afraid of your need. He’s not looking for help from you. He’s there to show you that your sin is forgiven in him, that you are justified in him, that your future is not dark like that nighttime sky but is brighter than the morning sun.

So when you look up at Jesus, what is the look on his face? That look makes all the difference—and you can’t control it. That’s what the Reformers rediscovered in Scripture. Salvation is not in our hands but his. It doesn’t come by our law-keeping but by his grace, not through our works but through faith in his finished work. It comes through him alone. It’s not because we’re great, but because he is.

What is the look on his face? It isn’t disgust or disappointment. It’s not a frown. It’s a smile. A welcome. All the sympathy of a gracious and merciful Christ who came not to damn but to save, not to condemn but to redeem, not to destroy but to restore. That’s the gospel.

So when you’re alone in the dark, head in your hands and despair in your heart, and the Righteousness of God comes into the room, it’s not a sword coming to slay but a Savior coming to save. Yes, you’ve failed. Yes, you’ve sinned. But the way forward is simply to receive, with the empty hands of faith, the grace and peace that just entered the room in Christ. All you need for your justification is already done.

How can you know that’s true? Because the darkness outside your window is only a shadow of the real darkness that Jesus entered for you. He paid the penalty and won the victory. The motto of the reformation was post tenebras lux—after darkness light. That’s who Jesus is for you. He’s a complete savior. To God alone be the glory!

Endnotes:

[1] Luther, Martin, Luther’s Works, Vol. 54, page 193.

[2] Luther, Martin, Luther’s Works, Vol. 34, page 336.

[3] Gavin Ortlund, What it Means to Be Protestant, page 72.

[4] Berkhof, Louis, Systematic Theology, page 71

[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.6

[6] J.I. Packer listed these truths in Knowing God, pages 117-119.

[7] https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-whole-gospel-in-a-single-verse/#flipbook/

[8] C. H. Spurgeon, Sermon No. 1812, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 31, p. 403.

[9] R.C. Sproul, Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification.

[10] R.C. Sproul, What is Reformed Theology?, page 67.

[11] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., trans, Henry Beveridge (1845; reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Erdmans, 1964), 3:27 (3.11.1)

[12] Emil Bruner, The Mediator, page 524.

[13] The concept of Jesus as our satisfaction, sacrifice, and substitute comes from James Montgomery Boice, “Christ Alone,” Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?

We’re at the end of John’s gospel. We’ve seen Jesus's death and burial, and today, we see his resurrection. 

Let’s read it now. 

The Resurrection 

1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes. 

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene 

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her. 

This is God’s word. 

Introduction 

If John’s gospel were a typical biography, all we’d have left at the end would be a few final words about Jesus. Instead, we find something anything but typical. The story doesn’t end; it begins anew. We find a new hope, a new dawn, a new day, an entirely new era. 

This new era is why John wrote the book. Jesus's resurrection is the foundation of the Christian faith. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” But he has been raised! We are not still in our sins!‌ That’s the whole point. 

The resurrection ensures our salvation. In Romans 4:25, Paul said Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” If our transgressions were the reason for his death, then his resurrection is the reason for our justification. In other words, Jesus’s resurrection confirms that his payment for our sins is sufficient and wholly accepted by God. We are free and forgiven in Christ from all unrighteousness. 

Jesus’s resurrection is the exclamation point ushering in the new chapter of God’s story, the new age of new life where all who believe receive glory in heaven with Jesus, where we will experience in resurrected bodies the ultimate love, peace, and joy, where everything sad comes untrue, and where we are loved forever by the one whom the Bible says is love (1 John 4:8).  

At the end of his gospel, John wants to leave us with the reality and the hope of the resurrection. So, today, we’ll consider those two purposes. 

1. The reality of Jesus’s resurrection. 

2. The hope of Jesus’s resurrection. 

First, the reality of Jesus’s resurrection. 

The Reality of Jesus’s Resurrection 

Three days after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene arrived at Jesus’s tomb early in the morning on the first day of the week. The newness of the day and the newness of the week point to the newness of the age Jesus is ushering into the world with his resurrection. Something new is happening. It’s not a normal morning. It’s not a normal week. A new day is dawning. 

Now, Mary didn’t go to the tomb looking for a resurrection, and when she got there, she didn’t even consider it a possibility. She saw the stone had been taken away from the tomb, and her heart did not soar; it sank. Mary uses the word “taken” three times—here in verse 1 and again in verses 2 and 12. “Taken” was the narrative running in her mind. Jesus had been taken. Her Lord was gone.  

Heartbroken all over again, she ran back to the disciples and told them the devastating news. Peter and John ran to the tomb. John arrived first, looked inside, and saw the linen cloths lying there. Then, Peter went inside the tomb and saw the clothes as well, and he saw an additional detail—the face cloth that had been on Jesus’s head folded up by itself. 

In his book, Hope in Times of Fear, Tim Keller points out that the Greek word used for the word “saw” is important in this passage. When Mary “saw” that the stone had been removed, John used the typical Greek word for sight. But when Peter and John “saw,” John used a Greek word that means to reason, theorize, ponder. Keller says, “In other words, they were not merely glancing. They began theorizing about the condition of the grave clothes—they began to posit hypotheses in their minds that could account for what they saw. This is the same reasoning process that a scientist uses in seeking a working hypothesis to explain a phenomenon.” [Keller, page 89] 

So, John is taking us on a scientific-method-type journey. What happened in that tomb? 

The details about the linen cloth matter. They saw that the linen cloths weren’t disturbed. Dead bodies were wrapped in long strips of cloth. But Jesus’s cloths were just lying there without a body inside.  

Now, we have to wrestle with this. There are many proposals about what happened to Jesus.  

First, there is what I call the Mostly Dead Hypothesis. Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. He somehow survived the beating, crucifixion, and spear thrust into his side. He didn’t resurrect from the dead; he just recovered from injuries. In other words, he was only mostly dead. Now, thanks to the classic movie The Princess Bride, we know there is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. As Miracle Max explained to Inigo Montoya, “Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, there's usually only one thing you can do—go through his clothes and look for loose change.”  

Jesus was all dead. But if Jesus was only mostly dead, there is still a problem. When Miracle Max revived Westly, he couldn’t stand or walk. Andre the Giant had to push him in a wheelbarrow and carry him around. But the mostly dead Jesus had enough strength to unwrap himself and move the stone? 

A more realistic and biblical example: when Jesus raised Lazarus in John 11, he told the people to “unbind him and let him go.” Lazarus was raised to life with enough strength to walk out of the grave and yet even he couldn’t unwrap himself. He hadn’t been beaten and crucified. No spear went through his side. Jesus was in far worse pre-death condition. But the mostly dead Jesus had enough strength to unwrap himself and move the stone?  

I don’t think so. Jesus was all dead. Professional executioners saw to that. 

Then there is Mary’s Hypothesis: someone took Jesus’s body. Maybe grave robbers went through and looked for loose change, as it were. But why not take the one thing valuable in the tomb—the linen cloths? Or maybe his friends took him. But why would they unwrap him in the grave and presumably take him away naked? Wouldn’t that only further degrade and disrespect him? 

Regardless, the Greek text doesn’t allow for the unwrapping hypothesis anyway. The Greek word John used for “lying there” is used for things kept in careful order. In other words, the cloths weren’t disturbed at all. They were lying there in the same shape and form as they had been wrapped around Jesus. The only difference was there was no body inside. It was as if Jesus passed through them and left them behind. Apparently, death not only could not bind him as it had Lazarus; it couldn’t even hold him down. 

The final hypothesis I’ll mention is the Folklore Hypothesis. Jesus didn’t really rise, but the story of his resurrection grew to be considered true over time, like a piece of folklore. His followers were so heartbroken that he was dead that his resurrection became true to them in some spiritual way as they sensed his presence guiding them. After all, weren’t those people less scientific than we are? Weren’t they more open to the idea of a bodily resurrection because they just didn’t know as much as we know now? C.S. Lewis calls that “chronological snobbery.” 

Besides, it’s not historically accurate. In his book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright spends a lot of time proving that no ancient society had a category for bodily resurrection. It was discussed, but the verdict was clear: it simply did not happen. It wasn’t possible. Everyone knew that. Even among the Jewish people of the time, it was nuanced. Of the various sects of Judaism, the Sadducees didn’t believe in a resurrection at all. We’re not sure if the Essenes did or not. The Pharisees did, but they didn’t teach anything remotely like what happened that first Easter Sunday. They taught a resurrection at the end of time but not in the middle of it. When Jesus stood with Martha outside Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She believed in a last-day resurrection, but no one had a category for a resurrection in the middle of history. Yet that’s exactly what happened in the resurrection of Jesus. 

The point is that no one thought it could or would happen. That’s why Peter and John had to think through what they saw. If they already had a category for bodily resurrection, why wouldn’t they jump right to that conclusion? It’s not that they got to the tomb and said, “Oh, yeah, of course Jesus is alive. We knew that was going to happen.” No, they didn’t know that at all. 

Now, it wasn’t because the Bible was silent on the matter. John says in verse 9 that “as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” That’s an admission that it was there all along. Jesus even told them it was going to happen. But they just didn’t see it or understand it. Later, they would. But they didn’t at first. They didn’t believe in the resurrection until it happened, and then they believed because it had happened. 

In verse 8, we see the light dawning on John. Speaking of himself, John said, “Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.” Some commentators say that just means John believed what Mary said—that the tomb was empty. But that’s not all it means. The Greek word for “believed” doesn’t just mean to assent to some truth claim intellectually. It’s not mere agreement with facts. Something else is going on here.  

John uses the word “believe” a lot. The word in verse 8 is the same word, for example, in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The Greek is literally, “whoever believes into him…” The belief John is talking about is something that takes us into Christ. It’s more than agreement. It’s an entrance into a whole new way of thinking, a whole new life, a whole new trust, centered in and resting on Jesus. It’s something you enter into deep in your heart, not something you pass along the way with a nodded head.  

Let me illustrate it this way. By 1908, the Wright brothers had invented the first airplane. They were trying to sell their invention to the US Army, but the Army said they needed it to hold a passenger before they would sign the deal. So, the Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk, NC, to create and test a new two-passenger plane. A friend named Charley Furnas went with them. They designed the passenger plane and began test flights. At first, Wilbur or Orville would fly alone with a sandbag in the passenger seat. Once they were comfortable that it would work, the day came for the first human passenger. Who would dare to take that first ride? Their friend, Charley Furnas, would. Now, Charley was there for all the test flights. He believed it would work. But on May 14, 1908, he put that belief to the test. He got into the plane. Biblical faith is more than knowing the truth. Biblical faith is, as it were, getting into the plane with Jesus. This is the belief John is talking about. He didn’t just agree that the tomb was empty; he believed into the new life of Christ. 

Have you believed into new life in Christ? 

You might think, “Well, you know, John was actually there that morning. I wasn’t. I can’t see the empty tomb. I can’t see the risen Christ like he did.” Ah, yes, that’s right. You can’t. But let’s think about this for a minute.  

You know, John didn’t say he believed after he saw Jesus’s resurrected body. What did he say? When did he see and believe? At the empty tomb. He hadn’t seen Jesus yet. That’s really interesting, isn’t it? This makes John the only apostle we’re told of who believed in the resurrection before seeing the resurrected Jesus. Later, Jesus will tell Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John was the first to do that. That means he’s a model for us. John was in the same spot we are today, and he’s asking us to believe into Christ along with him. I think that’s something to consider.  

Of course, more could be said about this, but let’s think about what the reality of Jesus’s resurrection means for us. If Jesus has risen, it changes absolutely everything. How we live today hinges on what we think about Jesus’s resurrection. If it happened, it means Jesus has shown us his people’s future already. If Jesus already defeated death, that means he can defeat death for us too.  

Because the resurrection of Jesus really happened, we can know our resurrection will really happen, too. We can have hope now, too. We can live backward, as it were. We can live today as we will live in that day. We can live as citizens of heaven in a fallen world that needs the light of Christ. We can be joyful in hardship. We can be generous in tough times. We can be hopeful in times of despair. We can serve selflessly. We can love with all our hearts. We can admit our sins and failures because we know redemption has been accomplished for us, and we have nothing to prove except Jesus’s grace and mercy. We can lay down our lives for God and others because we know that whatever happens, God will raise us up again. We can follow Jesus wherever he leads because even if he takes us through the valley of the shadow of death, we know it’s only a shadow. He took the real death for us, and he’s only leading us now into green pastures and beside still waters to a glorious resurrection like his. 

This is the hope that John went home with. And remember who John cared for in his home now. Jesus’s mother, Mary. She was about to hear the news that her son lived, and because he lived, she would live, too. 

And it’s the same hopeful news another Mary, Mary Magdalene, would soon receive, which leads us to our second point, the hope of Jesus’s resurrection.  

The Hope of Jesus’s Resurrection 

Verse 11 shows Mary Magdalene weeping outside the tomb. The word used for “weeping” means to weep or wail, with emphasis upon the noise accompanying the weeping [Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 303.]  

This was one of those full-body, overwhelming bouts of sadness that accompanies the loss of someone dearly loved. Some of us know that feeling all too well. Mary had already wept for the loss of her friend. She now wept for the loss of even his body. None of him was left. He was totally gone.  

She looked into the tomb again, and she saw something that didn’t seem to register with her in her grief. Two angels in white sat where Jesus had lain, and they asked her why she was weeping. Her Lord has been taken. Why wouldn’t she be weeping? 

But then things started to change for Mary. She turned from the tomb and saw someone standing before her. She didn’t recognize that it was Jesus. Perhaps that was because she wasn’t expecting him. Perhaps it was because her eyes were too blurred from tears. She thought he was the gardener. (By the way, that is just filled with all kinds of biblical imagery. It was in a garden where Adam threw the world into death, and it was in a garden tomb where the new Adam defeated death. As the poet George Herbert said, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.”) 

Jesus spoke to Mary, asking the same question the angels had: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Jesus was reasoning with her, metaphorically beginning to wipe the tears from her eyes.  

Then, in verse 16, Jesus said something that changed Mary. Look what he said. One word that changed everything. He said, “Mary.”  

Something happened inside her when he spoke her name. She recognized him instantly. It was his voice—the voice she thought she would never hear again. She turned to him and said, in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” John used the Aramaic word there. You can see the parenthetical note “which means Teacher.” John wants to preserve the scene, how intensely personal it was. Jesus said Mary’s name as he always had, and she called him Rabboni as she always had. 

Why did that one word open her eyes? Think back to John 10. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” Mary knew his voice. But at first, she didn’t. So, what’s happening? There is a hearing that isn’t really hearing, and then there is a God-given hearing. Mary experienced both in a matter of minutes. There was the hearing with dead ears and then the hearing of ears alive in Christ. What was the switch? It was Jesus calling her name. His sheep heard his voice. It was a knowing call. It was a faith-giving call. My friend T.J. says, “This is the shortest sermon in the Bible. Just one word. And yet it is the heart and goal of every sermon preached in the name of Jesus Christ: that we would all hear our names spoken.” 

The hope of the resurrection is that it not only brought Jesus back to life but also brings his sheep back to life. The hope of the resurrection is not reserved for Mary only. We will see next week this hope surging through the disciples and eventually out into the world. The hope of the resurrection is the power of the Spirit bringing people to life in Christ. It is the power of God turning weeping into joy. It is the Gardener doing his work in our hearts, uprooting unbelief, and planting the flower of faith that saves. 

Between verse 16, when Mary’s eyes were opened, and verse 17, when Jesus again spoke, Mary hugged him. We don’t know how long that hug was, but I doubt it was a short one. It was the hug for someone she thought she would never see again. She didn’t ever want to let go. But Jesus told her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Now, that’s a very difficult verse to understand. What does Jesus mean? D.A. Carson put it this way. 

The thought might be paraphrased this way: ‘Stop touching me (or, Stop holding on to me), for I am not yet in the ascended state, so you do not have to hang on to me as if I were about to disappear permanently. This is a time for joy and sharing the good news, not for clutching me as if I were some jealously guarded private dream-come-true. Stop clinging to me, but go and tell my disciples that I am in process of ascending to my Father and your Father.’ [Carson, The Gospel according to John, 644.] 

Jesus told Mary that his resurrection was good news for everyone, and she now had an important job. He made her the apostle to the apostles. She would be the one to share the good news of the resurrection. Jesus entrusted that honor to a woman who, at that time, would not even be allowed to testify in a court of law. Isn’t that remarkable?  

We know from Luke 8 that Mary was once possessed by seven demons. Jesus drove them from her. Now, at his tomb, he drove another darkness from her. He was alive! There is no greater joy. And Jesus, in his massive grace, charged this once demon-possessed woman with taking the news of the resurrection to the apostles. Don’t tell me Jesus can’t change someone’s life!  

Mary was in a unique position that day, but she is a model for us all. We, too, have been delivered from darkness, and we, too, have good news of Jesus’s resurrection to share.  

Mary knew the resurrection changed everything, and the other disciples soon would, too. But imagine for a second that you were one of Jesus’s disciples that day. You had walked with him throughout his ministry, but by the time of his arrest and crucifixion, you weren’t the friend he needed at that hour. You couldn’t stay awake and pray, as he asked. If you were Peter, you denied knowing him three times. Would you receive the news with great joy or with also a little fear as to how he would respond?  

Some of us don’t have to imagine that. We feel so unworthy of being his disciples that we can barely rejoice in his life. We fear him coming to us. Our sins are many. Oh, but his mercy is more! Look at verse 17. What did Jesus say to Mary? “Go to my brothers.” He could have said, “Go to those failures,” but he didn’t. That’s not who they were to him, not because of his life, death, and resurrection. They were his brothers. 

Because of the cross and resurrection, all whom Jesus calls are no longer outsiders hoping to get in. All in Christ are insiders. Brothers and sisters. Like the disciples, we aren’t in God’s family because we earn a spot; we are in God’s family because he purchased us on the cross and gathered us in his resurrection. That’s why He told Mary he was ascending to “my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” We don’t earn our way in, and we can’t sin our way out. His cross is our deliverance from darkness, and his resurrection is his welcome into his kingdom.  

So, as her Lord told her to do, Mary went and, full of joy, announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”  

I love how Sally Lloyd-Jones describes what that joy might have been like in The Jesus Storybook Bible.  

Mary ran and ran, all the way to the city. She had never run so fast or so far in all her life. She felt like she could have run forever. She didn’t even feel like her feet touched the ground. The sun seemed to be dancing and gleaming and bounding across the sky, racing with her and shining brighter than she could ever remember in the clear, fresh air.  

And it seemed to her that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world had been made anew, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy—the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds…her heart.  

Was God really making everything sad come untrue? Was he making even death come untrue? 

She couldn’t wait to tell Jesus’s friends. “They won’t believe it!” she laughed. 

Of course, we don’t know if that’s what Mary thought as she ran to the disciples, but it sounds about right, doesn’t it? The resurrection changes everything. Everything sad is coming untrue.  

Jesus has risen! He has risen indeed. 

Let’s pray. 

Let’s open the Bible now to Luke 1:46-55.

We’re looking at Mary’s song, known as the Magnificat. Magnificat is a word we don’t use very often. It’s a Latin word that means “magnifies,” which is the first word of this passage in the Latin translation of the Bible. It’s a fitting title. In this song, Mary magnifies the Lord.

The song comes after the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would bear a son by the Holy Spirit. In response to that unbelievable message, she asked, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel said the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and she would be the mother of the Son of God.

Gabriel then added additional confirmation that nothing is impossible with God when he told Mary that Elizabeth, her much older relative, was also pregnant. So, Luke says, Mary went in haste to Elizabeth. When Mary arrived, she didn’t even have to tell Elizabeth what happened. She already knew, and she cried out. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary was pregnant with Jesus Christ. They were joined by a common situation, which itself is a wonderful gift of grace to each. Elizabeth’s words confirmed what Mary had heard from the angel. She wasn’t crazy. Elizabeth didn’t downplay what was happening in Mary’s life. She magnified it, which might be one reason why Mary then magnified the Lord through song.

Mary’s song is the first Christmas carol, and as we will see, it’s the best one too. Let’s read it now.

46 And Mary said,

       “My soul magnifies the Lord,

    47  and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

    48  for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

    49  for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

    50  And his mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

    51  He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

    52  he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

    53  he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

    54  He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

    55  as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

This is God’s word.

INTRODUCTION

Buddy the Elf said, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” Mary knew that, too. Now, this song wasn’t a performance. Mary didn’t write it for a crowd. She wrote it as a response to God for God. It’s very personal and real to her, but God has used it to spread Christmas cheer for 2,000 years.

Her song is in the form of a Psalm of Thanksgiving. She begins by thanking God and then tells why she is thankful. It’s highly theological and worshipful. It’s amazing that a woman so young as Mary could have composed it, and some commentators think it must have been a later addition written by someone else. It would be quite amazing if an American girl wrote a song like this today, but our day of biblical illiteracy was not the norm in Mary’s day. Every young Israelite would know the great songs of the Old Testament by heart. They would know the great story of God’s redemptive work by heart. They knew the Bible very well. Mary knew it so well that commentators have pointed out the song either quotes from or alludes to verses from Genesis, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Samuel, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Mary knew her Bible.

But what else did Mary know? There’s a song we sing this time of year that asks that question. People have strong feelings about that song because people have strong feelings about everything. But feelings aside, I do think the question is a good one for our text today. What did Mary know?

Her song tells us she knew at least three things. 

1. The Wonder of Christmas

2. The Purpose of Christmas

3. The Faithfulness of Christmas

THE WONDER OF CHRISTMAS

A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Mary’s song shows us what came into her mind when she thought about God.

Look at the opening in verses 46 and 47. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” By “soul” and “spirit,” we aren’t to take that as two separate parts. It’s parallelism. She’s saying the same thing twice. She’s talking about the deepest core of her being. Her innermost self. Her heart. She’s been touched by, moved by, and captivated by God deep inside. Her soul magnifies, and her spirit rejoices. Her heart worships God.

In verses 48-49, Mary tells us why she sings. “For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”

Here’s where this song starts to get really convicting and really remarkable. Mary knew who she was. She wasn’t a big deal. Later, when Mary sings about those of humble estate in verse 52, she means those like her at the bottom of the social order. She was a nobody from nowhere. She knew she wasn’t perfect. That’s why she calls God her savior in verse 47. She wasn’t deserving of God’s attention. But God looked down upon her with mercy and grace. She had a deep sense of wonder over this. She wonders, “Why would God do great things for me? Why would he care about me? Why will all generations call me blessed?”

Mary’s response to the news of Christmas was, “Why me?” Isn’t that amazing? Now, if something bad happens to me, I ask, “Why me?” You probably do, too. But when this wonderful thing happened to Mary, that’s when she asked, “Why me?” She made no assumptions about her relationship with God. She did not assume she was deserving. She did not think to herself, “Well, of course, I would be the mother of God.” No. She didn’t think that at all. She is a great example of the kind of humble amazement that should mark every Christian.

Mary shows us what true Christianity looks like. True Christianity is a humble faith. It’s not something done by you; it’s something done for you. I like how Tim Keller puts it.

What is Christianity? If you think Christianity is mainly going to church, believing a certain creed, and living a certain kind of life, then there will be no note of wonder and surprise about the fact that you are a believer. If someone asks you, ‘Are you a Christian?’ You will say, ‘Of course I am! It’s hard work but I’m doing it. Why do you ask?’ Christianity is, in this view, something done by you—and so there’s no astonishment about being a Christian. However, if Christianity is something done for you, and to you, and in you, then there is a constant note of surprise and wonder…

So if someone asks you if you are a Christian, you should not say, ‘Of Course!’ There should be no ‘of-course-ness’ about it. It would be more appropriate to say, ‘Yes, I am, and that’s a miracle. Me! A Christian! Who would have ever thought it? Yet he did it, and I’m his.’

Christianity is a religion of utter shock. It’s all grace. So here’s what this means in light of Mary’s song. If you are in Christ, Mary’s song is your song, too. Yes, she was blessed in a unique way as the mother of Jesus, and maybe you think, “Well, you know, it’s not hard to praise God when you’ve got Jesus inside you!” But don’t you, Christian brothers and sisters, have him inside you, too? Doesn’t the Bible tell us that? The apostle Paul spends a lot of ink saying we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Colossians 1:7—one of my favorites—“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

The hope of Christmas isn’t for Mary only. It’s for you, too. Every Christian is like Mary, and Mary is like every Christian. Mary’s song is your song if you are in Christ. What moved Mary to sing was not so much the physical reality of Jesus, the baby, in her womb as it was the spiritual reality of Jesus, her savior, looking upon her with his grace and mercy. We have been recipients of the same grace and mercy. Her song is our song.

There are basically two ways to think of God. We can minimize him, or we can magnify him. Mary shows us the kind of people that magnify the Lord. They ask, “Why me?” in humility and wonder. They praise him for his work in the world and in their lives. That’s not to say it’s easy. Think of Mary’s situation. Without her doing anything but receiving the grace of God, she became a pregnant, unwed virgin. She was young. She was not socially well-off. The situation could have sent her through a break-up, a scandal, and a life of exclusion and derision. Her life could be ruined by this news. But instead of spiraling downward, she looked upward. Isn’t that amazing?

 The opposite of magnification is minimization. We minimize God when we ask, “Why me?” in a despairing way, in a way that looks for a way out of the situation he’s put us in, where we just can’t seem to trust he has anything good in this for us. We minimize him when we let our circumstances get bigger in our minds than God. We minimize him when when we consider our feelings as greater than his purposes. We minimize him when we don’t factor him into the moment-by-moment events, thoughts, and realities of our lives.

Isn’t Mary’s way the better way? Isn’t it the biblical way? Isn’t it the way we most long to live? How can we get there? We get there the same way Mary did—by standing in awe of God, by being captivated by him. That’s not an automatic thing. Not for sinners like us. But that can be our reality if we open our hearts to God, moment by moment.

Francis Schaeffer used a great phrase for this: active passivity. Active passivity is putting yourself in the path of God’s grace and letting him do his work in your life. It’s active in that it’s a conscious effort with the help of the Holy Spirit, and it’s passive in that it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It’s our faith in his work. It’s an active looking to him, moment by moment, like Mary did, receiving moment by moment all that he is. Isn’t it freeing to know that God is not asking us to save ourselves? He’s asking us only to receive his salvation. Mary did that, and she stood in awe and wonder. “Why me?”

Mary sang because God had done great things for her. He has done great things for us, too, has he not? Shouldn’t we respond like Mary? “Why me?”

Now, Mary’s song starts out with a lot of personal pronouns—“me” and “my.” I think it has to. There is a very personal element to faith. But faith leads us on to consider God’s grander purposes, which is our second point.

THE PURPOSE OF CHRISTMAS

By faith, Mary was caught up in God’s grand story. By grace, she had a role to play. That grand narrative is where Mary takes us next. She extols God’s work in the world. What he is doing for Mary is what he has been doing for all like her throughout history. It’s the normal way God operates in the world.

Look at what she says in verses 50-53. “And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

God’s mercy isn’t for everyone. Who is it for? Look at verse 50. “His mercy is for those who fear him.” The word fear means reverence. Those who revere and honor God as holy and look to him by faith are the recipients of his mercy. And the wonderful thing is it’s not limited to a certain era. This offer of mercy extends “from generation to generation.” All God asks of us is that we treat him as God and receive his mercy in humility. The bar is really so low, but our pride can get in the way.

These verses help us see how God relates to the proud and the humble.

God humbles the proud. Verse 51, “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.” Verse 52, “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones.” Verse 53, “The rich he has sent away empty.” I think of the traditional American folk song, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” You can run on for a long time, but sooner or later, God’s gonna cut you down. History shows us this. All who set themselves against God end up scattered. He brings down the mighty from their thrones, and by thrones, Mary means those actually ruling. Think of the examples we see of this in the Bible. Pharaoh. Nebuchadnezzar. The Assyrians. The Babylonians. Where are they now? When God comes in judgment, he scatters. He did it at the tower of Babel. He did it to the armies that faced Israel in the Promised Land. He still does it today.

On the other hand, God exalts the humble. Verse 50, “He has mercy on those who fear him.” Verse 52, “He has exalted those of humble estate.” Verse 53, “He has filled the hungry with good things.” Think of Joseph in Genesis. Think of David and Goliath. Think of Job in his suffering. Think of Daniel in Babylon. Think of Mary at Christmas. Think of Jesus in his resurrection after the cross.

When God comes in judgment, he scatters. When God comes in salvation, he gathers. What is true for us depends on our willingness or unwillingness to receive the reality of Christmas. Jesus came to save sinners. Are you sinful enough for Jesus?

Do you feel a need deep in your heart for forgiveness, for mercy, for grace, for a new start? Jesus has come for you.

Do you feel like you’ve ruined your life, and you’re not sure where to go next? Jesus has come for you.

Do you feel like you’ve blown it, and there’s just no hope left? Jesus has come for you.

Do you feel trapped by your own sin? Jesus has come for you.

On Andrew Peterson’s amazing album, Behold the Lamb of God, there is a haunting song called “Deliver Us.”

Our sins, they are more numerous than all the lambs we slay

Our shackles, they were made with our own hands

Our toil is our atonement and our freedom Yours to give

So Yahweh, break this silence if You can

 

Deliver us, deliver us

Oh Yahweh, hear our cry

And gather us beneath Your wings tonight

Christmas tells us that Yahweh has heard our cry, and Jesus has come to gather us beneath his wings tonight.

Jesus is not asking for any sacrifice from you. He’s already provided that on his cross. All he’s asking for is your empty hands of faith. He’s asking for you to accept his sacrifice and to fall into his arms and find rest. Christmas tells us God is not silent in the face of our deep despair. To the humble of the world, to the poor in spirit, to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Jesus has come to gather you!

In your fear and longing and despair and suffering and sins and all the rest of the terrible, horrible things that frighten you and wound you, Jesus has come to deliver you. Your sins are your shackles, but Jesus came to set you free. If you want him, and you’re willing to lay down your weapons of sin and rebellion, if you’re willing to be weak enough to accept his salvation, to humble yourself before him, he will gather you into his arms where there is safety and refuge forever. You cannot be too low for Jesus. He came all the way down here to get you.

But if we don’t want that. If we refuse him. If we set ourselves against him and do all we can to minimize him, he will have his glory anyway. All that you work for will be for nothing in the end. He will scatter you. And, you know, perhaps that’s exactly what you need to be humbled enough to come to him. I don’t know, but he does. If it takes scattering to gather, there is mercy in that, too.

These verses are not just comfort for the humble; they are also a warning to the proud. Heed both.

It’s not too late to make a change. Mary sang these verses in the past tense, but commentators point out that based on the grammar, Mary is also being prophetic. These words are true not only of history but also of the present. The comfort still stands. So does the warning. Jesus came to live and die and rise again. Will you accept mercy from the Savior’s crucified hands?

If we will, God will be faithful to have mercy on us. Christmas shows the faithfulness of God, which is our final point.

THE FAITHFULNESS OF CHRISTMAS

Mary ends her song by looking back to the very beginning in verses 54 and 55. “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

In the book of Genesis, God made a covenant with Abraham. In Genesis 15, God and Abraham perform a covenant ceremony. In those days, two parties would cut animals in half, and each party would walk through the separated pieces of flesh as a way of saying, “If I break my promise, I’ll become like these animals. Torn apart.” It was an agreement to uphold their end of the deal or die.

But something interesting happened during this particular ceremony. The Bible says that God put Abraham in a deep sleep, and at the time when both parties would traditionally walk through the separated flesh together, God walked alone. God was saying, “If the covenant is broken by either of us, I alone will be torn apart. You, Abraham, are not held responsible for this promise. This is mine to bring about, and I will do it.” God’s covenant doesn’t depend on us; it depends all on him, on his faithfulness to bring it to completion.

Two thousand years later, Jesus came and said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” Jesus came to pay the covenant penalties on behalf of the party who broke it. We deserved death. But God made the promise alone, and he bore the penalty alone. Jesus died so that we might live. He came to make peace with God on our behalf. The hopes and fears of all the years were met in him that night. Jesus will gather us beneath his wings. We are safe in him. Always. God is faithful. Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday prove it.

When Mary looked at God’s promise to Abraham, she knew it was a promise beyond Abraham. It was a promise to his offspring, from generation to generation forever. Abraham lived inside the story God was creating for his people in the future. Mary did, too. In a sense, we all do. The promises of God are guarantees sealed by the Spirit of the weight of glory that is to come when Jesus returns. And he will come again because God is faithful. No one can defeat his plans.

Mary shows us that God’s story is an everlasting one of his Never-Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love. It’s a song for all who are weary and need rest, for all who mourn and long for comfort, for all who are anxious and yearn for peace, for all who fail and desire strength, and for all who sin and need a savior.

 This is your gift from your Heavenly Father. Will you take it and enjoy it?

Let’s pray.

Let’s open the Bible now to Matthew 1:18-25.

It’s the Christmas season, so we’re taking a few weeks to look at the Christmas story. Today, we’re looking at one of the quintessential Christmas passages from Matthew’s gospel. And what Matthew tells us is that this baby born so long ago is both like and unlike every other baby ever born. He is like us in that he is human like us. But he is unlike us in that he is God. He’s God come down to us. That is, of course, what Christmas is all about.

So, today, I want us to consider what that means. I want to behold Jesus together, considering his might and glory, his humility and love, and his presence and peace.

So, let’s read the passage together now.

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

  23      “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). 24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

This is God’s word.

INTRODUCTION

You know, it’s easy to get used to the Christmas story, isn’t it? Christmas is the most celebrated holiday in our culture. Even the most secular places play songs about Jesus this time of year. With all that familiarity, it’s not hard for the razor’s edge of Christmas to become dull to us. The story slips into the rest of the season’s sentimentality. I think that’s a tragedy. We need Christmas. We need this story. We need this truth. And we need to be sure we don’t miss it.

Christmas is the answer to our deepest problems, most wicked sins, and most profound longings. We need Christmas because we are not who we should be, and we don’t know how to get where we need to be. We need Christmas because, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, we need a hope from beyond. We need someone to save us from what we’ve done and who we’ve become.

Christmas is the answer to that deep problem. All of history pivots at the birth of Jesus, from anticipating the Savior to accepting the Savior. It changes everything. It preaches good news to sinners and sufferers. As Tim Keller said, “To understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel.”

And, oh, how we need the gospel! Christmas comes to us each year as a fresh pronouncement of the Savior’s birth, the Savior’s mission, the Savior’s love, the Savior’s saving. Christmas is heaven’s cry that though we are profoundly sinful and undeserving, God has not abandoned us. He has come to be with us. The gospel is a paradox. The holy God cannot abide with sinners, but in Christ, he does, not by giving up his holiness but by giving his holiness to us in Christ. Jesus, being born like us, became the perfect us through his perfect life. And in his substitutionary death and glorious resurrection, he both paid for all our sins and gave us all his righteousness. In Christ, the Holy God is with us—he could not be closer.

This is the amazing story of Christmas. When this world, by its sin, declared war on God, the Lord of Armies sent a baby who lived and died and rose again to usher in a kingdom that cannot fail and cannot fade, where tomorrow is better than today, and the future consists of an increase of glory and hope and joy because Jesus, our Savior, has redeemed us.

So, let’s look at this Savior now. He’s more than we bargained for, but he’s all that we need. He’s God, he’s man, and he’s Immanuel—God with man. Let’s consider each of those truths.

JESUS IS GOD

Matthew tells us plainly who Jesus is. He gets right to the point. Jesus is God. Look at verse 18. “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” We hear the same again when the angel told Joseph in verse 20, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

The weight of these words is magnificent. From the Holy Spirit. Birth is always miraculous, but this was truly unique. Matthew is saying that the baby in Mary’s womb had no earthly father’s DNA. This child came from the Heavenly Father, from the Holy Spirit, from God himself. In no uncertain terms, Matthew is saying that Jesus is God.

Now, that statement has always been controversial, no less in our day than in any other. But this isn’t a one-off. Go to any New Testament writer, and you will find them talking about the divinity of Jesus. They all treat him and worship him and follow him as God. The divinity of Jesus is a basic tenant of biblical Christianity. The Bible tells us of this Triune God, this one God in three persons. This is why Christmas demands as much as it comforts. It demands that we treat Jesus as God. We laugh at Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights around the dinner table praying to baby Jesus because he likes the Christmas Jesus the best, but the Christmas Jesus isn’t a sweet little harmless baby. He’s the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power. He’s the one who conquered sin, death, and Satan. He’s the mighty God. Christmas is not just a nice holiday that gives families and friends time to give gifts and be kind and eat good food and take a day off work. Christmas is a declaration. It’s a line in the sand. It’s a proclamation the God is here, his name is Jesus, and you can have him if you want him, but you have to take him whole. You have to take him as God. You can’t have him as only a teacher. You can’t have him as only a good example. You can only have him as God and Lord because that’s who he is. You can have him, but you must have him as God. There is simply no other way.

Now, I also want to point out that this couldn’t have been easy for Joseph to accept. Joseph was a Jew. Jews didn’t exactly have a category for God coming down to his people like this. If he were a Greek or Roman, he may have accepted it easier. Their religions included gods who often disguised themselves as humans and came into the world. But Jews did not have a category for that kind of thing. God was personal but also infinite. He was the Creator of all, the Sustainer of all, above everything and over everything, transcendent. The glory and majesty of God were so fearful that Jews wouldn’t even say his name because it was deemed so holy. Yet here is an angel telling Joseph in a dream that this transcendent God is coming down to earth in the form of a human baby.

To get an idea of the magnitude, we have to think of all that Scripture says about God. I love how Ray Ortlund put it.

Think of the names of God in the Bible: Yahweh, the one who is near; El Shaddai, the Almighty; El Elyon, the Most High; Adonai, Master; El Olam, the Everlasting God; El Qanna, the Jealous God; Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide; Jehovah Sebaoth, the Lord of Armies; Jehovah Ropheka (Rof-a-ka), the Lord who heals you; Jehovah Tsidkenu (Sid-ke-new), the Lord our righteousness.

Think of the images of God in the Bible: king, shepherd, warrior, rock, refuge, shield, father, maker, judge, lawgiver, comforter, savior, lion, lamb, and many more.

Think of the attributes of God in the Bible: living, powerful, shrewd, just, merciful, pure, honest, faithful, joyful, patient, rich, sovereign, kind, and above all, loving.

Christmas tells us that glorious God came down to us in Jesus. Perhaps it’s difficult to accept Jesus is God. It’s easier to think of him as semi-God, something like God but less than. I mean, could glory like that inhabit flesh like ours? But if we are to accept the Bible as it is, to swallow it whole, as it were, we must accept that Jesus is God. If we can’t accept Jesus’s divinity, it means our Jesus is just too small.

Let me say it one more time. Christmas is about the God of glory coming down from heaven to save his people from their sins. The Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8) has come down to us. In Jesus, God came into the world!

And Joseph was to be his father. Of course, not in the traditional sense. There is a reversal of sorts here. Notice Joseph didn’t choose to be the father of the incarnate God. He was told he would serve that role, making him the adoptive father. Joseph didn’t choose Jesus. Jesus chose him. The child adopted the father. That’s amazing. Jesus is the only baby in history that chose his family. And what a family he chose! Sinners, all of them. Unworthy, every one of them. Undeserving, each and all.

Now, why did God choose Joseph? Of all men at the time, why him? He didn’t seem particularly important. We don’t even hear much else from him after Jesus is born. To understand why he was chosen, we have to go back to the Old Testament. A long time ago, when David was king of Israel, in 2 Samuel 7, God promised David that one of his sons would rule forever. Years and years later, an angel came to Joseph and—look at verse 20—referred to him as who? “Son of David.” In other words, Joseph had the lineage God promised would rule. God’s promise was coming true. More was at stake with Joseph accepting God’s call than another child born into the world. This child was the everlasting ruler promised long ago, coming to reign as prophecied. God was fulfilling his promise.

It turned Joseph’s world upside down. It turned the whole world upside down. Christmas is good news of great joy for all the people. It’s the story of the baby born in a manger who is the Lord of lords and King of kings. The one for whom there was no room in the inn but made room in heaven for sinners. The child who was born like us to give us a new birth so that we may be like him. This boy in the barn was the glory of heaven. We have been visited not by a vision of God, not by an apparition of God, not even by a messenger of God, but by God himself, in Jesus.

This is the great hope in which we live. God has come. He stepped into our mess, into our lives, into our experience, into our hopelessness, into his promises, and brought life and hope and everything else. He came to us to bring us to himself. He did it not from heaven but from earth. Jesus is God, but Christmas tells us more. Jesus is also man.

JESUS IS MAN

In verse 21, the angel told Joseph that Mary would “Bear a son...” Sons are born every day. But that day was special. The glorious God became a humble man. We might be so used to this that it’s lost its edge, so let’s listen to a couple of men who thought this through.

C.S. Lewis tried to help us grasp the humility of Jesus.

The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

J.I. Packer put it this way.

God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child…The babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.

Jesus is God. He is also man. Just as Jesus is not something like but less than God, he is not something like but less than man. He is fully man even as he is fully God. He is profoundly and completely one of us. As the author of Hebrews put it, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things.” Not similar things. The same things.

Jesus was born just like you were. He grew up just like you did. His body changed and developed and matured just like yours did. He had to learn how to walk, how to talk, how to do things for himself. He lived a human life just like you live. He ate food. He drank water. He laughed. He cried. He felt the coolness of the breeze on a summer day and the chill of night after the sun went down. He knew how good it felt to sit down and take your shoes off at the end of a long day’s work. He felt the comfort of friendship. He experienced the joy of life at weddings and parties.

He also experienced the pain of life. He got splinters in his hands. He lost friends to illness and death. He knew betrayal. He knew what it was like to have those close not trust him. He bled. He died. He went through it all. The only difference between your human life and his human life is that he never sinned. And if that difference weren’t there, we wouldn’t be here talking about him at all. But there is that difference. The sinlessness of the man Jesus Christ is the hinge upon which the door of Christmas opens and stays open. It’s the only way we could be saved. Jesus becoming man to become the perfect man to save sinful man was the whole point of Christmas. Christmas is God’s great rescue plan. It’s his great story.

As it always is with God, the deeper we go, the bigger the truth gets. The comfort of Christmas grows the more you consider it. Jesus is God. Jesus is also man. Fully both. That means that God has now been on the inside of man. He knows this life we live. He understands you. He’s been in your shoes. There is nothing you face that God doesn’t know intimately. There is nothing you face that God hasn’t conquered for you. There is nothing you face that can keep you from God.

We know this not only because of the story but also because of the name of this child born in Bethlehem. Look at verse 21. “And you shall call his name Jesus.” Now, I have four kids, and I think they have wonderful names. I named them. But their names don’t really mean anything. They’re labels. Nice labels, I think, but really just labels. It’s not that way with Jesus. His name isn’t a label. It’s a message. The name Jesus means “savior” or “God is salvation.” That’s why, in the phrase immediately after, the angel adds an explanatory note. “And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” So, every time we say the name Jesus, we are proclaiming the gospel message: God is salvation.

Jesus’s name meant he had a mission. He had to live up to the name. He was to save his people. What was he to save them from? From their oppressors? God’s people had many throughout the ages. From their suffering? There is plenty of that in this world. Maybe he would save them from disease or accidents or storms or disasters? But it wasn’t any of those things. He was to save them from what? Look at verse 21 again. “He will save his people from their sins.”

Our greatest enemy is not anything outside of us. It is who we are, the sin we are born with, the sin we act out and think with. The most tragic thing about us is not what happens to us but what happens in us. That doesn’t mean terrible things don’t happen to us. They do. But it does mean that we, too, are guilty of our own sin. As much as we may need salvation from others, we need salvation from ourselves—from our sins.

So Jesus came on a mission with a purpose to save us from that. But why did God have to become man to save us from our sins? Couldn’t he save us without leaving heaven? In Hebrews 9:22, the author tells us, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” In the Old Testament, God instituted the sacrificial system in Israel to give them a pathway to forgiveness of sins by sacrificing bulls and goats. But in Hebrews 10:4, the author says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” So what’s the deal? God gave a sacrificial system that wasn’t good enough? Yes. The truth remains—only blood atones—but not the blood of animals. It all pointed to what was to come in Jesus.

The Bible tells us the wages of sin is death. Our sin deserves the death penalty. God, in his mercy, provided a way of forgiveness in the sacrificial system, but it was only temporary. The blood of animals could never satisfy the penalty of our sins. Man’s sin requires man’s blood. So, as Paul says in Romans 3:25, God put forth Christ as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Jesus offered his blood for us. After living a perfect life we could never live, he died a guilty death he never deserved. On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Of course, he knew the answer. The answer begins at Christmas. Jesus came to be the one on whom our sins were laid as a propitiatory sacrifice to take the judgment of God against us and set us free in him.

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Here’s what that means: In Christ, you are free. You owe God nothing and you have in God everything. That’s the story of Christmas. That’s the great gift.

But, as hard as it may be to believe, there is even more in the gift. It’s kind of like Mary Poppins’s bag. How can it all fit in there? Jesus came not only to pay for our sins but to welcome us into his arms. He came not just to fix our problems but to give us peace. He came not just to save us but to redeem us. He came not just to deal with us but to be with us, and that’s our third point.

JESUS IS GOD WITH MAN

Look at verses 22 and 23. “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us).” If Jesus is his name, Immanuel is his nature. He saves us, and he stays with us.

Here’s why this matters so much. I think most of us has realized by now just how hard life can be. For some of us, every day is a struggle. It might be physical pain. It might be emotional pain. It might be mental pain. It might be a combination of all three or any number of other things. Sins against us and sins we have committed harm and wound us. Our thoughts are not safe. We can go to dark places. Even Christians can. We might have been saved by Christ’s cross, but that’s 2,000 years ago. What about yesterday? What about today? What about tomorrow? When I face that hard thing I know is coming, who will be with me then? Christmas says Jesus will be.

You know, at some point, a question will arise: has God abandoned me? Sometimes, we suffer so profoundly that we wonder if God has forsaken us. Our Bedford Falls turns into Pottersville. Our childhood dreams of B.B. Guns never arrive on Christmas morning. Our Cousin Eddies are the only ones who show up, lugging their junk along with them, making our embarrassment greater and our seasons harder. Our Christmas is stolen, and there is no song around the tree in the morning because the Grinch actually knew how to strike our hopes. There is no miracle on 34th Street or any other street. We are left home alone, and no one is looking for us. We strike out to find our dad, only to find a cold city with a hard heart and no Christmas spirit. Life sometimes feels that way, doesn’t it?

What does Christmas say to those feelings? It says this, and it says it as loud as possible: God is with us!

That doesn’t mean life is easy. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to live through Pottersville. It doesn’t mean our hopes aren’t sometimes disappointed. It doesn’t mean others don’t cause us problems. It doesn’t mean what is precious to us isn’t stolen. But it does mean you aren’t alone. Your life is not limited to what this world can give. It’s not limited to what you can achieve. It’s not limited to what you can get through your hard work and sacrifice. It’s not limited to your own luck. Your life is defined by a miracle. God is with you!

It is so easy for us to believe God is against us. He has every reason to be, doesn’t he? Our sins are many. Our failures pile up. Our weaknesses shine brighter than our strengths. But Christmas says God is not against us. Not anymore. Not because of Christ.

I just want that to settle in your heart today. Christmas means God is with you. Jesus makes this a reality. He entered this very real world you and I live in right now. He came into this darkness. He came into this situation. He came into this difficulty. He came into this life of suffering. He came into this judgey world with its constant demands and never-ending criticisms and unwavering conflict. And though he died, he rose again, and this ehe ascended to the Father, he sent his Spirit. He’s still with us today. He’s here right now, and he’ll be there tomorrow when that thing you dread comes.

Perhaps the best thing of all is that none of this depends one bit on you. Jesus isn’t with you because you deserve him. He’s with you because of his grace. And God is so with you that there is not a single second that he turns from you. He never gets weary of you. He hears your cries. He knows your needs. He sees your sins, and instead of turning away, he comes to save you. He is your ally when you feel abandoned and alone. He is your defender when you are guilty. He is your justifier when you have no excuses. He is your surety when there is only uncertainty. He is the anchor of your soul when your life hangs in the balance.  And he is the one you can turn to when life feels so sweet you just want to thank someone. He is personally involved with you. Jesus is more than what he did for you. He is a very real presence with you. Jesus came to be your savior and your friend. Receive that gift. Enjoy it. It’s yours in Christ.

All you need to have Jesus is need. Your sin and weakness that you believe disqualify you actually qualify you for his grace. Jesus came to the lowly for the lowly. He’s not just with the cool kids. He’s with all who are weary and need rest, all who mourn and long for comfort, all who feel anxious and yearn for peace, all who fail and desire strength, all who sin and need a Savior. He is Immanuel. God with you.

In Christ, you can have your life back. Pottersville is fading away. Bedford Falls is being restored.

Let’s pray.

Let’s open the Bible now to John 15:1-17. We’re in the middle of Jesus’s Farewell Discourse, where Jesus instructs his disciples on how to live in this world. We’re listening in on those conversations now because they are for us just as they were for his original hearers.

John 15:1-17

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Introduction

John’s gospel includes seven “I am” sayings of Jesus. “I am the bread of life” (6:35). “I am the light of the world” (8:12). “I am the door” (10:7). “I am the good shepherd” (10:11,14). “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25). “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6). And, lastly, “I am the true vine” (15:1).

One reason Jesus defines himself that way is because he’s affirming that he’s the God of the Old Testament who has come to save his people.

But he also wants us to know that he is everything we need. He’s a complete savior. He feeds and nourishes us. He enlightens and illuminates us. He lets us in and welcomes us. He cares for and tends to us. He restores and redeems us. He leads and saves us. He sustains and grows us. Jesus is all the savior any of us will ever need.

Our passage today confirms who Jesus is for us and what Jesus can do in us. It explains what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about what we do for God but about what God does for us.

We see the seventh and final of Jesus’s “I am” sayings. “I am the true vine.” For 11 verses, he explains what that means. Then, in verse 12, he seems to jump to a different subject, but the common thread of fruit-bearing appears again in verse 16, indicating that these two paragraphs are one unit.

In verses 1-11, we see Jesus, the true vine. In verses 12-17, we see Jesus, the true friend. We need both, and he is both. He’s the vine who will grow us and sustain us, and he’s the friend who will be with us and for us, bearing fruit in us and through us, for his glory and our joy. So, let’s look at each one of these truths—Jesus, the true vine, and Jesus, the true friend.

Jesus, the True Vine (15:1-11)

Verse 1. “I am the true vine.”

What does Jesus mean? Well, in the Old Testament, a vine is a recurring metaphor for Israel. Israel was God’s vine. But Israel proved to be a bad one. They wouldn’t open their heart to God and let him do his gracious work in them. They wanted to be a nation like all the others, and so God’s purpose for them to be the conduit through which his grace would stretch out to the whole world did not bear fruit.

But, of course, God planned for this, and his plan included the sending of the Son, Jesus, who, in the fullness of time, came and became what Israel was supposed to be. He was the true vine that bore good fruit. Through him and in him, the world would find the grace of God pulsating into all his branches, through all his people, through all his churches, ushering in the kingdom of God that will never fail to have good grapes.

So when Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” the emphasis is on the word true. He’s the true vine because he is the true Israel.

But Jesus says something more in verse 1. This is the only “I am” saying with an additional assertion. “And my Father is the vinedresser.” We not only have the true vine, but we also have a Gardener who cultivates his vineyard in two ways, as Jesus says in verse 2. “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

A good gardener walks through the vineyard to find branches that produce no fruit. They’re just taking strength away from the good vines, so he cuts them off. They’re worthless but costly. Then, he finds the branches with fruit and prunes them to make them even more fruitful. God designed gardening to work this way. Pruning promotes growth.

Now, this metaphor works on two levels. It is true of the church as a whole and of individual believers. Every branch that does not bear fruit in the church—unbelievers—he takes away. Judas is an example of a branch that was cut off.

But it is also true that God cuts off branches in believers. He removes the dead weight. He takes his knife and lops off big, bad things and prunes good branches. The Greek meaning of pruning in verse 2 is hard to translate into English. The idea is that God cleans his people. We see the word clean in verse 3, “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.”

By nature of your conversion to Christ, you are, in a sense, already pruned. But the work is ongoing. It has to be. One of the ways God continually prunes is through the Word. We know this experientially, don’t we? Think of the times when you’ve read the Bible and come across something that cuts against your desires, and you let that word change you and you started to rethink your life. That’s God pruning and cleansing with the Word.

Yet we also know experientially that, though we may be already clean, it sure seems as if God has a lot of work to do in us, doesn’t it? There is an old adage in novel writing that says you must always keep your hero in trouble. Well, some of us feel like that’s our life. Our lives are not easy, and we suffer so many trials. Some of us encounter such trouble because we’re sinful and rebellious. But others of us face it seemingly just because it’s our lot in life. But what if that was because God is deeply at work in us? The trouble we feel is his pruning. He’s a good Gardener. He knows what he’s doing. He’s skilled. He’s a professional. If you ever see a plant after a good gardener has gotten a hold of it, it looks like a disaster, it looks like it’s in trouble, but come back later and you can see the beautiful, fruitful result. Our lives are like that in God’s hands.

Now, that can sound harsh, like God is being mean. But is he? If he’s really God, doesn’t he know best? Talk to anyone who’s been a Christian for a while and they can bear witness that God can be trusted with his shears. They can tell you that God only cuts what would be a loss to keep and what ends up a gain to lose.

This is where we get deep inside Christianity. Other religions set the rules and step back and say, “Get to work.” In Christianity, God comes down to you in Christ and connects you to himself by his Spirit and says gently and seriously, “Let me get to work in you.” You are not left alone to figure out your spiritual life. You are tended to and gardened by your gracious and merciful God. All he asks of you is what Jesus commands in verse 4, “Abide in me, and I in you.”

The word abide is a great word. It means to remain or to stay or to make your home. Isn’t this amazing? Of all the things Jesus could demand, he asks only that we abide with him, to make our home with him. Who of us can’t do that?

But it’s not easy to do, of course. You know those charging stations you see in airports and other public places? They’re great, right? It’s a great amenity when your iPhone is dying and you need a quick recharge. Well, we can treat Jesus like that—like a charging station. We’re thankful to have him when we need him, but he’s a stop along the way. We don’t stay connected to him. He’s merely an amenity. And as a result, our spiritual life doesn’t really work.

Abiding with Jesus is treating him as more than a charging station. He’s offering a life of full power all the time. He’s offering all of himself for all of our needs. And he’s offering it on terms of grace, without any prerequisite, without us bringing anything to the table. He’s offering a constant flow of his everlasting, empowering grace, moment by moment, for the entirety of our lives. We plug into that life source by abiding with him. How can we say no to that offer?

Jesus knows this is hard for us, but he’s so gracious to us. He tells us what we need to know, and when we fail, he forgives us. When we grow bad branches, he cuts them off. When we’re not as fruitful as we could be, he prunes us. He’s making us into who we most deeply desire to be in him. Who wouldn’t want to live in that kind of environment? That’s Christianity. It’s Jesus working in you to make you like himself, the only perfect human to ever live.

Abiding in Jesus is the home we’ve been looking for all our lives, and this wonderful place of endless fruitfulness is ours by grace. In fact, it’s the only true home at all. Everything else is only a mirage, a fake, a con. Even the greatest this world can offer apart from Christ is only a puddle on the shore of God’s great ocean. One wave, and it amounts to nothing. Why not instead dive into the deep places of abiding with Christ?

Our problem all too often is that we think we can get the same peace and assurance by other means. Abiding with Christ doesn’t sound like enough. It sounds too easy. So we get busy, and we end up busy but barren. In verse 4, Jesus says, “The branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” And in verse 5, he says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

We are not self-made Christians. We are grace-made Christians, Christ-made Christians. We are not planted nor grown by ourselves, and we don’t bear fruit on our own.

Now, what fruit is Jesus talking about anyway? We see a few aspects of what it might be in the passage.

There is the fruit of effective prayer, verse 7. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

There is the ability to keep his commandments, verse 10. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

There is the experience of his joy, verse 11. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

There is love for one another, verse 12. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

And there is the fruit of our witness and the winning of the world to Christ, verse 16. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”

Some say the fruit is obedience. Others say it’s evangelism. I think both are right. It’s much bigger than one single thing. It’s a whole life change. Think of how Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It’s an entirely new heart. It’s Christ-likeness.

Now, we can’t do any of this in ourselves, can we? We can try, but we just fail. No wonder he says we can do nothing apart from him. Our self-made fruit might look impressive, but it’s like fake fruit on a coffee table. One bite, and it proves itself as nothing. You can fake it with others, but you can’t fool God. Even churches can fall into this trap of faking it. A church can look outwardly like they’re doing the Lord’s work. But if that church does not abide with Christ, it will be like the Church of Sardis in Revelation 3, to whom Jesus said, “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” We can’t fool God.

Francis Schaeffer said something that is never far from my mind. “We must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.” Anything done in our own strength, though it may look like a wild success, is a massive failure. Anything done in abiding with Christ, though it may look like an absolute disaster, is a massive success. Let’s be people and a church abiding with Christ, doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. Maybe that’s not impressive, and that might be hard in this world we live in. Our reputation might be of being dead, but if we’re abiding with Christ, we are really alive. Is that ok with us?

The alternative is a life we don’t want to live. Jesus says in verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Fruitless branches are cut off and burned. But abiding with him guarantees fruitfulness—not because we “figured it out” but because we are connected to the life source itself—to the true vine. Abiding with Christ is the only way to true success.

One more thing before we move on. Look at verse 9. What is the foundation of all this? Where does this come from? Why would God prune us at all? Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” Jesus loves us with the same love as the Father loves him. There is no deeper, truer love than that. The foundation of God’s gardening work is his deep love for us. Jesus is asking us to make our home there, in his love. Why would we not be willing to do that? Even if it hurts sometimes, and we don’t understand it all, knowing what we know, can we not trust him? When has Jesus proven untrue? When has he not come through? What in him is untested? When did he prove untrustworthy?

So, that’s Jesus, the vine. Now, Jesus, the friend.

Jesus, the True Friend (15:12-17)

John 15:12 is a verse that, if we took it to heart, would transform our age, as it would every age. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The true vine is also our true friend. Abiding in Christ grants more than growth. His love brings us inside the sacred circle of friendship.

And his love changes us into lovers, too. “Love one another as I have loved you.” How does he love us? Verse 13 tells us. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” That wasn’t just a nice saying to Jesus. It would soon become his reality.

Knowing the hell of the cross, Jesus told you, his friend, “I’ll do that for you.” Jesus loves you to death. He loves you sacrificially. He left heaven to come and live the perfect life you couldn’t live and die the guilty death you deserve to die so that you could have new life in him and bear spiritual fruit if you simply accept his offer. On the cross, he was, as it were, cut off so that you wouldn’t have to be. Now, in him, you’re only pruned.

So when we get to verse 14 and read, “You are my friends if you do what I command you,” we can receive that the way he means it. He’s not telling us how to make him our friend. He’s telling us what proves we are his friends. When you see fruit on a branch, you don’t wonder if it’s connected to the vine. You know it is. The fruit is proof. Our obedience proves that we are—not makes us into—his friends.

Verse 15 gives even more insight into what friendship with Jesus means. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

There is a difference between a servant and a friend. A servant—the meaning there is really a slave—is told what to do but never told why. He is not invited into the conversation. Jesus could treat us that way, but he doesn’t. Instead, he invites us into the conversation. He reveals to us the plan, the mystery of the gospel. He tells us where this world is headed, where he is headed, where we are headed with him. Jesus lets us in on his plans and his purposes, just like a friend would.

This ought to melt our hearts with gratitude, but it can also have the opposite effect if we are not careful. We can puff up with pride. We can attach more importance to ourselves than we should, as if we deserve this knowledge, as if we are better than others because of it. So, to make sure we don’t get too high and mighty on our own self-importance, Jesus reminds us in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Our standing as friends of Jesus Christ is not based on anything we have done, are doing, or will do in the future. It is not even based on our reaching out to him to make him our friend. It is based on his sovereign, electing grace. We did not choose him. He chose us.

And he chose us for a purpose. This is so dignifying. Jesus did not choose you for a life of mediocrity. He did not choose you to just get by. He chose you for glory. It’s so easy for us to think of ourselves too highly, but it’s also easy for us to think of ourselves too lowly. The gospel is the answer to both. We’re not so great that we don’t need saving, and we’re not so bad that we can’t be saved. We haven’t done anything so great to deserve his attention, and we haven’t done anything so poorly to disqualify ourselves from his mission.

If you tend to see yourself as too low, as I often do, you need to know that Jesus chose you to be his friend. You are not basically a problem to him. You are a divine strategy. Your life matters to him and he aims to use you for his glory in this broken world. Verse 16 says as much. “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

In other words, Jesus chose you because he has chosen others, too, and your friend Jesus is asking you to go out into his world and invite others into friendship with him. And to give us even more confidence, he tells us that whatever we ask the Father in his name, he will give to us. People can and have taken that the wrong way. The context is key. Jesus isn’t saying we can ask for whatever we want, generally, but for whatever we need in Christ, specifically. As we abide with him and go out to bear fruit for him through a life devoted to him, and we run into a need that only he can meet, we can ask the Father in Jesus’s name, and he will provide. That’s the kind of friend we have in Jesus. He is a true one. One that stands by us, always.

So, when Jesus says in verse 17, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another,” we know the place from which he says this has the power of his love behind it. It’s a love as deep as the cross and as glorious as the resurrection. Our love is based on his love, and his love is as big as it gets. Why not abide there for our whole lives? I can’t think of a better place.

Conclusion

I want to end with a story that shows what abiding in Christ looks like.

Corrie Ten Boom lived in Nazi-occupied land during World War II. She and her family were sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews in their home. Her father was killed. Her sister, Betsie, died in the camp. Corrie survived. One day after the war, she spoke on forgiveness at a church, and afterward, a former guard at the concentration camp came forward to greet her. Here’s what she said about that day.

    It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands…

    It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

    “When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”

    The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

    And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

    It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin…

    Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

    And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

    But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

    “You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

    And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

    It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

    For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

    And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

    “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

    “But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

    And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

    “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

    For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.

    And having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I never again had difficulty in forgiving: I wish I could say it! I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on. But they didn’t.

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior–but only draw them fresh from God each day.

That’s what abiding in Christ looks like. Corrie Ten Boom was already clean by the washing of the word, but she was pruned that day to do something she never imagined possible, to bear the fruit of forgiveness to a man who didn’t deserve it, just as she didn’t deserve her Father’s forgiveness. That’s the kind of Gardener God is. Isn’t he good?

Let’s pray.

The Coming King of Zion

    9       Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! 

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! 

            Behold, your king is coming to you; 

righteous and having salvation is he, 

            humble and mounted on a donkey, 

on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 

    10      I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim 

and the war horse from Jerusalem; 

            and the battle bow shall be cut off, 

and he shall speak peace to the nations; 

            his rule shall be from sea to sea, 

and from the River to the ends of the earth. 

    11      As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, 

I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. 

    12      Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; 

today I declare that I will restore to you double. 

    13      For I have bent Judah as my bow; 

I have made Ephraim its arrow. 

            I will stir up your sons, O Zion, 

against your sons, O Greece, 

and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

John 12:12-36

The Triumphal Entry

12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, 

    15      “Fear not, daughter of Zion; 

            behold, your king is coming, 

sitting on a donkey’s colt!” 

16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.” 

Some Greeks Seek Jesus

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. 21 So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

The Son of Man Must Be Lifted Up

27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 34 So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35 So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”

Introduction

We’re at a pivot point in John’s gospel. For 12 chapters, Jesus, in his public ministry, performed miracles and signs proving he was the long-awaited Messiah. In chapter 12, that public ministry ends as he steps into the role of Messianic King in a new way, setting his face toward Jerusalem and marching toward the cross.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem showed the deliberate steps he took to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies, specifically that of Zechariah’s king. Written about 500 years before Christ, the Israel of that time wasn’t very impressive. Returned from exile in Babylon, their nation, ruined by sin, was a shell of its former self. No king. No temple. No vitality. But God did not give up on them. He kept and restored a remnant of the people. The days looked bleak, but a King was rising on the horizon.

This King would not be like the kings of the world. He would come in a different way, with a different purpose, with a greater power. “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he,” Zechariah said. (Zech 9:9). He would be everything Israel and her kings had not been: righteous, compassionate, just, merciful, faithful, loving, true, obedient, and able to truly save his people.

His kingship would be hard to see at first. When Jesus stepped into the role, people were confused. They couldn’t see how he fulfilled the prophecy at all. His life ended with a crown of thorns rather than a crown of glory. He was shamed and derided. Written over his cross was a mocking sign that read “King of the Jews.” Who would believe it? Yet the sign was right. He was the King, not only of the Jews but of the whole world. He is still the king—the king every human heart longs for, even ours today.

In three parts, John 12:12-36 gives us three pictures of the king of King we have in Jesus.

1. The Humble King (12:12-19)

2. The Fruitful King (12:20-26)

3. The Exalted King (12:27-36)

The Humble King (12:12-19)

It was Passover week, and Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead. There was a buzz around town, and as Jesus headed from Bethany toward Jerusalem, a large crowd heard he was coming. They took palm branches and welcomed him, crying out, “Hosanna! [which means “Save now!”] Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” It was a King’s welcome. 

Earlier in John’s gospel, after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus eluded those who wanted to make him king (6:15), but here he accepted the role.

There is a great irony here, as there is in the rest of the chapter. Here was this great Messianic King who came in the most humble way. It wasn’t what the crowd expected. It’s not what we would have expected either if we were there. But he was exactly the kind of king we long for.

There is an old ache in our hearts for a great king. One fierce with his enemies yet gentle with his own. The bravery and courage of a great warrior but with fatherly affection. Exalted above all but with an open throne room to which we can come with our needs. More glorious than us, of course, yet one of us. We want to do more than behold him. We want to be with him. We want more than his greatness, we want to be inside it. We want protection from all that threatens. We want grandeur, yes, but also humility. We want a lion and a lamb in the same person. The problem is that no king ever lived up to that standard except Jesus. He meets all the requirements. Jesus holds within himself all those excellencies we most desire yet cannot seem to be held in any one person. That old ache for a glorious and all-sufficient king deep inside of us is fully satisfied in him and in him alone. He’s the king we most deeply want, and he’s the king we most wonderfully have.

But when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem that day, and the people went out to welcome him as King, he defied expectations. He brought no pomp and circumstance in himself. He didn’t look like a great warrior who would come and save his people from Roman rule, restore their land, bring back their honor, and renew their nation.

Instead, Jesus did something that was, on the one hand, absolutely surprising and yet, on the other hand, absolutely to be expected. In fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, he found a young donkey, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” 

Instead of a great warhorse and chariot, Jesus rode into town on a donkey’s colt, a small, humble animal. Not quite King David being sung into the city after a great military victory. Not much like King Arthur pulling the Excalibur sword from the stone. Here is a meek and humble king. When the crowd cheered out, “Save us!” I’m not sure they had this kind of king in mind.

But Jesus knew what he was doing. He was showing the nature of his kingship. He was identifying himself with the king prophecied in Zechariah 9. Instead of bringing war, he was bringing peace. He was the king they longed for, they just didn’t understand what his victory would look like.

Let’s think about it. What if Jesus had come in on a war horse, rounding up an army of millions to take on the Roman oppressors? Maybe he could have led them to a great victory. But if they beat the Romans, what good would that ultimately do? They’d still die sometime, and then what would happen? How would that victory help you? We need a King who can reign and rule for much longer than a lifetime. Jesus was there to solve a much greater problem than the Romans. He was a King leading his people in a different battle, an ancient one, with no higher stakes. And the only way to win was through humility. 

This was not something the crowd or Jesus’s disciples understood immediately. John said they only understood it after his resurrection. They must have cocked their head in confusion. Some among the crowd had seen him raise Lazarus from the dead. Some just now wanted a glimpse of this great king who was finally coming into the great city. All their hopes were pinned on Jesus, but they barely understood what they were even hoping for. Jesus would go on to do far more than they could ever ask or think. He came there to defeat death and sin, and the only way to do that was through the weakness of the cross.

Now, the Pharisees were also watching. And what they saw confirmed their greatest fears. Jesus was too big now. All their efforts were for nothing. “Look, the world has gone after him,” they said. Their words were more true than they knew, which leads us to our second point. Jesus is the humble king. He’s also the fruitful king.

The Fruitful King (12:20-26)

The Passover feast brought millions of people to Jerusalem. Most, of course, were Jews, but in verse 20, John tells us that some Greeks were also there. Some wanted to see Jesus. So Philip and Andrew took them to him. We aren’t told what they said, but in verse 23, Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

This is the fourth of nine times Jesus referred to his “hour” in John’s gospel, always in reference to his death. Up until this time, Jesus said his hour had not yet come. For 11 chapters, John prepared us for this moment. The coming of the Greeks was the trigger for the change from not time to time. Why? Well, interestingly, this is the first time in John’s gospel that non-Israelites seek Jesus. The world was coming to him now, just as he was coming to the world. His mission was wider than the boundaries of Israel.

Jesus was king of the Jews, and riding in on a donkey proved that, fulfilling Zechariah 9:9. But Zechariah 9:10 tells us that his reign extends to the ends of the earth. “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Zechariah 9:10 quoted Psalm 72:8, which promised a worldwide reign of Israel’s king. The Messiah is more than the King of the Jews. He is the King of the world. Now, as Jesus welcomes the Greeks, he proclaims that this worldwide salvation has come.

In verse 24, in one of the most profound statements ever spoken, Jesus told how this salvation would come. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Jesus said this about himself. He came to fall into the earth and die. Why? Because that’s how a fruitful harvest is born. Think about that. It’s a shocking statement. Like the grain, Jesus would die. But how can the King die? The King must live. Long live the King, right?

This is where the gospel starts to defy our thinking. We just don’t expect life to come through death. We don’t expect the world to be saved by a crucified king. But it’s the only way it could happen. There is no salvation without the death of Christ.

Here’s why. Because of our sins, we are under the wrath of God. It’s our fault. Because of our sins, there is no way for us to get back our righteousness. We can’t be sorry enough. We can’t do enough good deeds. Our sin completely cuts us off from God. There is a gap between us and God, and there is no way for us to bridge that gap on our own. That’s the bad news of the gospel.

But here is the good news of the gospel. God bridged the gap. As prophecied in the Scriptures, Jesus came to live the perfect, obedient life that we should have lived but didn’t. Our heavenly King, rather than passing condemnation on his people, stepped off his eternal and sovereign throne to be born of a virgin, live thirty years as a carpenter, and enter into a public ministry to sinners and sufferers of all kinds to inaugurate his kingdom. Then, knowing the only way to bring this story to completion, set his face toward the cross and went steadfastly to it. He was willing to go to the front and die for his people because he loved them. Taking their place, he was condemned as a criminal and beaten and nailed to a Roman cross, where he died for his people’s sins. In his death, he took upon himself the full wrath of God for sin and paid the penalty in total.

To be the fruitful King, he had to first be the crucified King. His triumphal entry was a gateway to a cross where he laid down his life for sinful people. Our King’s victory came through defeat because the only way to save us from the only enemy that can truly kill us is to be killed on our behalf. As the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, so Jesus fell to the earth and died.

But just as the wheat then grows into a bountiful harvest, so too does Christ. When the Holy Spirit rose Jesus from the grave, he brought with him a host of captives in his train (Ps. 68:18). He led many sons and daughters to glory. He is the fruitful King whose fruit is born out of the grave, through his blood, by his death.

We should never look at a seed the same way again. Even a grain of wheat preaches the gospel!

Now, this is more than just an explanation of how Jesus saves. It is also a message for how we ought to live in light of his gospel. Jesus followed up verse 24 with verses 25 and 26, which say, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” Jesus went first, and he’s asking us to follow him.

Here’s the irony of life. Only by losing the life we think we really want and handing that over to God will we ever get the life we really, most deeply want. We don’t know what we want. But God does. Following Jesus might feel like a lot of little deaths. But we’re only dying to the things that will kill us so that we can come alive to God.

Following Jesus ensures that we have the one King who can truly save us. Sometimes where he takes us won’t make sense. Sometimes it might feel like darkness covers us. But how can a grain of wheat grow unless it falls into the ground and dies?

If we follow Jesus, we will walk his path. If we serve Jesus, we will be where he is. And if we are where he is, the Father will be there too, and he will honor us. Everything we do in life is to get honor and glory, isn’t it? Isn’t that what motivates everything? Well, where can you get it? Not for a fleeting moment, but forever? Only one place: with the glorious One, with Jesus. The only place of true glory is being with Jesus. So how do we get to be with him? Well, that leads us to the final point. Jesus is the humble king. He is the fruitful king. Finally, he is the exalted king.

The Exalted King (12:27-36)

In Zechariah 9:11, the coming King is prophesied as the one whose blood sets the prisoners free from the waterless pit. No wonder, then, that in John 12:27, Jesus says, “Now is my soul troubled.”

John’s gospel doesn’t include the Gethsemane scene where Jesus asks that the cup be removed from him. This is John’s Gethsemane moment here. His soul is troubled because the time is now at hand. But look at how Jesus responds to his troubled soul. “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.”

Jesus knew this is why he was there. He was born for this. This was his moment. It was the time that all of human history was leading up to. What was he going to do now? Could he turn away? Does the King retreat? Our King doesn’t.

In a wonderful moment when we glimpse the glory of the Trinity, Jesus turned his troubled soul to the Father and, in verse 28, prayed the greatest prayer anyone can ever pray. “Father, glorify your name.” What happened next is amazing. It’s one of only three times we hear the Father’s voice in Jesus’s earthly life. It happened at his baptism, and it happened at his transfiguration. In both, the Father glorified the Son. Here, the Father glorifies himself in response to Jesus’s prayer. “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

Jesus is in a moment of crisis. The entirety of his life is funneling down to the next few days, where he will endure suffering unlike any human ever did or would again. He had the weight of the world upon his shoulders, and in his desperation, he called out to the Father. His greatest desire is to glorify the Father, and the Father responds with assurance that he will.

Now, this is not the main point of this passage, but let me just say this. The Father will be there with you too. When everything is on the line for you, your prayer needs to be nothing more than “Father, glorify yourself.” Your life is most valuable and worthwhile and exciting and weighty when the glory of God is primary. God can glorify himself in little old you—not to the same effect as in Jesus, of course, but no less truly. You can trust him even when the prospects are dim. In fact, that’s where his glory shines the most clearly.

Now, the crowd that stood there heard the voice but could not make out the words. They knew something supernatural occurred and thought it was an angel. Jesus said it came for their sake. The voice confirmed that Jesus was on a bigger mission than any they had in mind. Jesus said to them, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” Though Jesus was a humble king, he was also a mighty warrior, even if the world couldn’t see it. Now was the time of the judgment for the world and for sin and for the devil. Jesus was strapping on his armor by humbling himself. He was saving his people by going to his death. He was to be lifted up by going down. The issue is not his strength or his bravery; it is his method. The way to win the war looked like losing it. The way to eternal life for his people was his death upon the cross. Look at verse 32. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John helps us by saying, “He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.” The humble king would be exalted, but the place of exaltation was the cross. The irony of the gospel is amazing. The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor. 1:25).

Now, I know we are all familiar with the cross, but let me just remind you that the cross was not a pretty thing. It was a method of punishment designed for utmost humiliation, Author Fleming Rutledge said, “Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the ultimate insult to personal dignity, the last word in humiliating and dehumanizing treatment. Degradation was the whole point.” What King would willingly allow himself that?

Jesus would. And he said this is how he will draw all people to himself. Only Jesus could turn the symbol of humiliation into the symbol of glorification. Despite insults, he brought praise. Despite the loss of dignity, he showed forth honor. Through disgrace, he attracted worshipers. In his dehumanization, he gave us back our humanity. In his degradation, he restored our relationship with the God against whom we rebelled. God will have his glory in the cross of Christ, and the world will flock to it and behold the King.

Now, that seems to defy all logic. The crowd couldn’t understand. Look at verse 34. “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”

It didn’t compute with them. No wonder. It’s not at all what anyone would expect. But this is the message from of old. This is the gospel embedded in the fabric of God’s universe. The King would save his people, usher in his Kingdom, and welcome the world inside. He would do it from a cross, not a palace. He would do it through the victory of death. He would do it by dying and rising again, like a seed that bears much fruit.

He would be the exalted King, lifted on a cross for the whole world to behold.

Conclusion

Finally, look at verses 35 and 36. “So Jesus said to them, ‘The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.’”

Here is the invitation. Step into the light of Christ. Believe in the light that you may become sons of light.

How can you do that? It’s simple, really. Just behold the King. Listen to Jesus’s words and trust his work. Accept the grace of God, who draws you in through the exaltation of his Son on the cross.

The King has come and won the victory over the only enemy that can truly kill you. He’s the King you long for. Though he died, he now lives by the power of his resurrection, and one day he will return to gather his people into his everlasting kingdom of grace and glory.

As a herald of the King, with the authority of the crucified and risen Christ, I invite you into his kingdom. Come and see what the Lord has done. Come with me and worship this great King.

Let’s pray.

Let’s read it now.

22 At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— 36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; 38 but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” 39 Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. 41 And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.

Introduction

There are ultimately only two responses to Jesus. Fall at his feet in worship or pick up stones to kill him.

It’s been that way from the beginning. John’s gospel shows us that. We find some, like the woman at the well, who fell in worship. We find others, like the religious leaders, who picked up stones to throw at him. Everyone Jesus met had one of those two reactions. Some aren’t as obvious. Some doubted before they believed. Nicodemus is one example. But in the end, it’s either worship or total rejection.

The real Jesus we find in the Bible demands a response, and he will make us happy or angry, but he won’t leave us unchanged because the gospel never does nothing. Whenever we encounter God, we move closer to or further from him, but we never remain the same.

The main goal of John’s gospel is our deep and sincere belief in Jesus. That’s true of every part of the book, including this passage today. Because it’s broken into two main paragraphs, we’re going to look at it in two major points.

1. True belief in Jesus is a gracious gift and a rock-solid assurance (22-30).

2. True belief in Jesus is biblically reasonable and empirically verifiable (31-42).

True belief in Jesus is a gracious gift and a rock-solid assurance (22-30)

John orients us by telling us where Jesus is and the time of year. It’s the Feast of Dedication, which is Hanukkah. It’s winter, and Jesus is in the temple, where he went often. The problem that day started as the Jews gathered around him with a question, as we see in verse 24. “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

They wanted to know whether Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah or not. They had asked this question before, and Jesus answered it, as he said in verse 25. “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me.” Not only had he said enough, but he had also done enough. His words and his works bore witness about him. Have we not seen throughout this gospel clear expressions of himself? Didn’t Jesus reveal himself as the long-awaited Messiah in his word and deed? They saw it firsthand and still wouldn’t believe it.

Continuing the figure of speech used in the passage we saw last week, Jesus gave a very clear reason as to why these Jews didn’t believe. Look at verse 26. “But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.” The implication is that true belief is a gift from God. Those who belong to Jesus’s flock are those whom God chooses for eternal life, and they believe that Jesus is the Christ. They don’t need constant proof. They hear his voice and follow him. These Jews, not among Jesus’s flock, couldn’t believe because the gift of faith was not granted to them, so they couldn’t hear his voice and wouldn’t hear his voice. It takes a new heart, softened by the Holy Spirit, to trust in Christ. Sin deadens our hearts to God. Only God can change the heart. Hard-hearted sinners come through the door of salvation by having their hearts melted by the grace of Jesus, and that melting happens as we hear the good news of his gospel message and accept Jesus as Christ.

 We must remember that no one is good. No one deserves God because we have all rebelled against him with our sins. No one could naturally choose God because sin deadens our hearts toward God. We don’t want him. He must first come to us and change our desires to want him. All those who go to hell are those who never wanted heaven anyway, and all those who go to heaven are those who deserved hell but received grace. True belief in Jesus is an undeserved, gracious gift of God.

Now, Jesus told us in the first part of John 10 who the sheep are. They are the believers who put themselves in their Shepherd’s care, who enter by the door of Jesus and enjoy him. Here in verses 27-28, Jesus revealed the kind of gift and assurance his grace grants to all those sheep. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Let’s just think about what he just said for a few minutes. Let’s take it phrase by phrase. I don’t want to skip over it too quickly because if we receive this gift of grace, we will never find a more assuring passage anywhere else.

“My sheep hear my voice.”

Later in John’s gospel, we see Mary Magdalene standing outside the tomb weeping on the morning of his resurrection. Two angels appear and ask, “Why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” She looked in the tomb; he was gone, and her heart broke again. Jesus was dead, and now even his body was missing. Her life was already shattered, this only added to the pain. But then, she turned around and saw someone she thought was the gardener. She said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” She’s just dying to find Jesus. Then, this amazing thing happens. The man she thought was the gardener was actually Jesus, but she couldn’t see him yet. Not until Jesus said her name. “Mary” (John 20:11-18).

That first Easter morning, Mary heard her Shepherd’s voice. He spoke directly to her heart in a way no one else could. Not even the angels could make her feel better, but when Jesus spoke, she instantly knew it was him. Her tears went from sadness to joy. With one word, he changed everything for her.

If you are in Christ, you know something of this voice, don’t you? He speaks to the deep places of our hearts. He uses our name in a way no one else can. Why? Because of the next phrase in verse 28.

“And I know them.”

When he speaks, you hear because he’s speaking personally. You are not a nameless person among the crowd. Jesus knows you intimately. You are his. He knows you totally. He knows exactly what you need. He knows what’s going on in your life. He knows the difficulties. He knows the joys. He knows the uncertainty you feel. He knows the depression and the anxiety. He knows the hopes and dreams. He knows the longings and hopings. He knows the sins and failures. He hears the prayers and even prays himself on your behalf.

Remember when Nathaniel met Jesus back in Chapter 1? When Jesus saw him, he said, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathaniel said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” That did it for Nathaniel. “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:47-49).

We have no idea what Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree. That’s not for us to know. It’s only for Nathaniel and Jesus to know. But Jesus knew it, and that convinced Nathaniel of his deity. Maybe Nathaniel was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Maybe he was sitting there longing for God and praying. We don’t know. Whatever it was, it was the thing that made Nathaniel know that Jesus knew him.

Jesus knows you like that too. He really, truly, deeply knows you.

“And they follow me.”

What else are you going to do if someone speaks to your heart so deeply? Who else knows you like him? Why would you not follow him? It’s the natural outflow of his grace.

Your only calling in this life is to follow Jesus wherever he goes (Rev. 14:4). I can’t say where all the paths he might lead you down. Psalm 23 comes to mind. There might be some valleys of the shadow of death, but he will bring you out the other side. You just have to trust him. The destination is glorious. It’s worth the wait. It’s worth the hardship. It’s worth all the fears and doubts and uncertainties. He will bring you all the way home to be with him in a restored and redeemed world where you have unhindered access to him for eternity. He is leading you into green pastures and beside still waters.

“I give them eternal life.”

The other day, two of my boys were talking to my young daughter in the backseat of the car. They mentioned how everyone would die. My precious daughter asked, “Daddy, will everyone die?” This was news to her. I told her that her brothers were right. Everyone would die one day. She said, “But I don’t want to die.” So I told her that if she loves Jesus, death is nothing to fear because he gives eternal life. That seemed to settle her. Oh, how it should settle us! Death? Where’s his sting? Jesus has conquered him. He is utterly defeated.

Hebrews 2:15 says Jesus defeated death by going through it. He destroyed the devil and delivered all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. The fear of death enslaves us, but if we have Jesus, the chains are broken. We can truly live now because we will truly live forever.

If you are in Christ, you have this promise in black and white: I give them eternal life. In verse 10, which we saw last week, he already said the life he gives is abundant life. Now, added to that abundance is eternality. Oh man, think about this. The life your heart most longs for. The life that is so fulfilling that you can’t wait to get up in the morning to go and live. The life that is so deep and rich and meaningful. The life that is literally the ideal, perfect life is yours forever in Christ. It’s better than you can even imagine it to be.

So, okay, this life we currently live might not be the best. Jesus never said we were going to live our best life here. But there is another life to come—an eternal one, an abundant one. And you know what? Knowing that life is out ahead actually changes our life here today, doesn’t it? It’s like knowing vacation is coming. We can endure another day. We can even be excited about it.

“And they will never perish.”

The corollary to eternal life is the promise that you will never perish. You won’t wear out. You will last forever with God. You will never perish because Jesus will never perish. You are as secure as he is. He lives for you. Sticks and stones may break your bones and even kill you, but Jesus will forever save you.

“And no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

I challenge you to show me a more assuring sentence. I’m so glad this is in the Bible. No wolf can sneak in and capture. No thief can come through the back door and steal. Satan cannot snatch you away. You can’t even ruin yourself. In Jesus’s mighty hand, you are safe and secure. You have a rock-solid assurance that you will never be lost because Jesus has found you.

As if that wasn’t enough, Jesus said more in verses 29-30 to reinforce these already comforting words. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” The Father himself stands behind Jesus’s words. If we doubt Jesus can hold us tight, we also have the Father’s grip. If we doubt Jesus’s words are true, we also have the Father’s words. If we doubt that Jesus is working in concert with the Father, we can rest assured he is not. The Father and the Son, and the Spirit, are united in mission to seek and save the lost and to keep and provide for the sheep. Whatever Jesus does only reveals to us the heart of the Father. And what does Jesus reveal about his heart? That the Father himself loves you. There is no greater comfort than this.

Jesus is the shepherd we’re all looking for—the one who can care for us powerfully, relentlessly, and everlastingly.

Now, maybe this is all just sentimental talk. Maybe Jesus is just hoodwinking his people. Maybe he’s making it all up, gaining followers for his own ego. People do that, you know.

But Jesus doesn’t.

Everything Jesus said and did is biblically reasonable and empirically verifiable.

True belief in Jesus is biblically reasonable and empirically verifiable (31-42)

The Jews listening to Jesus that day did not find comfort in his words. They grew angry. Verse 31 says they picked up stones again to stone him. As they picked up the stones, Jesus asked a question in verse 32. “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” It wasn’t the works that angered them—at least, that’s what they said here. It was the blasphemy of making himself God though they believed he was only a man.

They asked for clarity from Jesus, and they got it. When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” that was their final straw. He was claiming equality and oneness with God. He was, of course, right in saying that, but they didn’t believe him. And if Jesus was not telling the truth, he would have been blasphemous. It came down to what they believed. They believed he was lying.

So Jesus goes to the Bible. Think of how amazing this is. Jesus is so calm here. A mob surrounds him with stones in their hands, and he has the calmness and clarity of mind to recall a portion of scripture to refute their argument. That’s amazing to me.

But what Jesus said isn’t easy to understand. Look at it in verses 34-36. “Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”

Jesus quoted from Psalm 82. It was a powerful statement in rabbinical thought and logic. Jesus used that portion of Scripture because those to whom the law was given meant they could serve as God’s representatives for justice in the world. They had authority from God through his revealed law. So if they were gods, then what about Jesus? Wasn’t he a god? He has authority. He has the law. It said far more to them than it does to us, and it made them even angrier because it was an even clearer statement of his divinity. He claimed to be the judge of the world. And the force of the argument grows even more when Jesus adds that he was consecrated by God and sent into the world by him. If those to whom the law was given were called gods, then cannot the one whom God sent into the world call himself the Son of God?

It’s a brilliant move. Jesus argued from Scripture. It didn’t persuade them, but it did make them think. He challenged them with the word of God they claimed to believe and know and obey. Jesus was always doing this, wasn’t he? He based everything he did on the Bible. He was always explaining, teaching, and proving who he was from it. True belief in Jesus is biblically reasonable. 

True belief is also empirically verifiable, and that’s what Jesus argued for next. In verses 37-38, he challenged them, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

There is immense mercy in these words. They wouldn’t take Jesus at his word. Okay. Take him at his deeds. What did he do that disproved he was from the Father? What did he do that wasn’t found somewhere in the Bible as a promise of the Messiah’s coming? What did he do that wasn’t a promise fulfilled? What did he do that denied his union with the Father? If they can’t believe his words, why can they not believe his works?

Jesus was merciful toward them. It was a final plea. “Look at my works, and then listen to my words.” But what did they do? “Again they sought to arrest him.” Is there anything more tragic than that? Standing before Jesus, listening to his words, and having him plead for them to look at his works, they got out the handcuffs and told him to shut up. Utter tragedy.

I hope none of us in this room is like these Jews. I hope no one has an unbelieving heart. But if there are any, let me ask a question—and this is something you can ask your unbelieving friends when the time is right. Maybe you don’t know what to do with Jesus. You just aren’t sure what he said and did is true. Okay. But don’t you want it to be true? Don’t you want a Shepherd like him who can care for you in all your various needs? Who will never let you wander off and die? Who will always know what you need even before you do? Who will run to you when you’re in trouble? Who will fight for you when you’re in danger? Who will lead you where you should go? Who will tend to your wounds? Who will literally lay his life down to save you? Not just metaphorical but actually. Don’t you want eternal, abundant life? Don’t you want more than what you have? Don’t you want to know that behind everything is a kind, loving, gracious, and merciful God who can take your life in his hands and truly know you and care for you forever? Don’t you want it to be true? How can you know it is?

That’s the point of this passage. That’s the kind of God the Old Testament presents to us, and Jesus wasn’t breaking new ground. He said he is that God. He was building on the foundation laid from the beginning. All the way back to the very beginning. Jesus’s words and deeds are biblically reasonable, and if you don’t trust the Bible, they are also empirically rational. He really did do the deeds recorded in the Bible. He really did rise from the grave. No one has ever been able to refute that it actually happened, and millions of people have borne witness that it did.

You can know because Jesus showed up in this world and said the things he said and did the things he did. God is not sitting in some corner of the universe, hiding from his people, and then blaming them when they can’t find him. No, he comes to his people. He showed up two thousand years ago in the person of Jesus to live and die and rise again to give us the eternal, abundant life our hearts long for. Don’t you want that to be true? Well, this passage tells us it really is true. It’s not made up. Jesus isn’t hoodwinking his people. Everything he said and everything he did has the entire history of God’s Scripture holding it up and confirming it. Scripture cannot be broken. Jesus said that in verse 35. He didn’t show up to break it. He showed up to reveal how true it has always been and always will be.

The urging of this passage is to accept Jesus as the Christ. To listen to his words and to consider his works. Is he not God incarnate? Is he not the Savior of the world? Will you come into the door of his pasture, or will you stand outside with stones in your hands? Those are the only two choices you ultimately have. Which will you choose?

Conclusion

At the end of verse 39, we see that Jesus escaped from their hands. We don’t know how, but he did. In verse 40, we see Jesus returning to the Jordan, where John had baptized at the beginning. He remained there, and many came to him, and many believed in him. Why did they believe? Verse 41. “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” It wasn’t the signs, it was the message. It was the word. The witness of John the Baptist proved true. Jesus was who he said he was.

We can’t see Jesus’s signs anymore like those first-century eyewitnesses did. But we have his word. Will you trust it? Will you listen and believe?

Don’t you want to? Go to him.

Let’s pray.

Let’s open the Bible to John 8:1-11, the story of the woman caught in adultery.

First of all, happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there. I hope you had a great Sunday.

Now, your Bible probably has a notation about this text. For example, my ESV Bible has double brackets around the text with a note saying. “The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53-8:11.”

What’s that about? Well, most scholars don’t think this passage is original to John’s gospel. It wasn’t in the earliest manuscripts we have. It was added later by the early church. When we find the passage in later manuscripts, it’s in different places: John 7, John 21, and even Luke 21.

Now, there is a whole branch of biblical studies known as textual criticism that researches all these kinds of things. I don’t have time to get into those details right now, but I want to say a few things.

First, having these kinds of notes in our Bible is a great gift of scholarship and should only increase our confidence in scripture. There are other textual variants that your Bible will notate as well. In all of them, choosing one word over another doesn’t change Christian doctrine one bit. You can be absolutely certain that the Bible you have in your hands is the word of God that he wants you to have.

Second, though its place in the Bible is debated, this is an ancient story that several early church fathers reference, and the church has historically held to its authenticity. It’s so consistent with Jesus and doesn’t contradict anything else we know about him in the scriptures. So, as John Calvin said, since the passage “contains nothing unworthy of an Apostolic Spirit, there is no reason why we should refuse to apply it to our advantage.”

Now, let’s read the passage.

The Woman Caught in Adultery

8 53 [[They went each to his own house, 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5 Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” ]]

What do we see in this passage? Two things.

1. Jesus confronted the accusers (8:1-9)

2. Jesus comforted the accused (8:10-11)

Jesus Confronted the Accusers (John 8:1-6)

The religious leaders loved to test Jesus with traps veiled as questions. He was so different from their expectations of the Messiah and so vastly different from how they lived that they couldn’t fathom how Jesus could be anything but a blasphemer.

We pick up the story in the temple. Jesus was teaching that day when the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman in and said, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” Jesus was put on the spot in front of everyone. What would the great teacher say?

There are a couple of things worth noticing about this accusation.

The law they are referring to is found in a couple of places. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 says, “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” Leviticus 20:10 says, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

Now, I wonder if you noticed something about those laws. There’s something missing in how they brought the accusation. Do you see it? The law command both parties to be punished. So, where is the man? Maybe we could assume they didn’t see him, but that’s not really a possibility. To gain conviction in Jewish law required a very specific type of witness. At least two witnesses must agree on absolutely everything. There’s an old Jewish story about a woman named Susanna who was accused of adultery under a tree, but she was acquitted because, in the cross-examination, the witnesses couldn’t agree on the size of the leaves.

On top of two witnesses agreeing, they had to actually see the act being played out. In other words, it wouldn’t work if they saw her leaving a room or in a compromising situation. They had to see the act itself.

 So, these religious leaders are saying they saw the woman in the act of adultery. If that’s the case, again, where is the man? Why is it so often only women who bear reproach?

Some speculate perhaps the woman was set up. Maybe the man was even among them in the accusing party. The text doesn’t tell us, so we can’t be sure. But if these scribes and Pharisees were really concerned about upholding the law, they should have brought the man too since, by their own accusation, they surely had seen him. But the woman was enough for their purposes. They were using her to trap Jesus. They were taking her shame for their gain. They were more threatened by Jesus than they were by any lawbreakers. There was no formal trial. There was only an accusation and then a question, “What do you say, Jesus?”

Now, let’s consider the stakes. If Jesus didn’t uphold the law, then all he said about fulfilling the law was a lie. But if he did uphold the law and commanded stoning, how would that jive with his insistence on grace and mercy and the compassion he showed to sinners throughout his ministry? Do you see what’s on the line? This isn’t an easy one. It comes down to this: is Jesus just, or is he just compassionate? But, as Tim Keller said, “Jesus combines compassion and justice so perfectly that the world has never seen its like.”

How did Jesus respond? Verse 6. “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” What did he write? Don’t you want to know? Well, I do too, but there is no way to know. No one knows what he wrote, and anyone who says they know what he wrote is just making it up.

I don’t think it matters what he wrote because immediately after, he spoke. In verse 7, he stood and said some of the most famous words ever spoken, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Let’s not overlook the brilliance of this. Notice what Jesus didn’t say. He didn’t say, “Don’t throw any stones.” What did he say? He said, “Go ahead, but make sure the one who throws it is without sin.” He trapped the trappers. He confronted the accusers. He turned the tables on them. He said, “You want to apply the law? Then let’s apply it.” It’s a brilliant move. He didn’t deny the law, he applied the law. And no one could stand before it. No one there was without sin except for him. No one was qualified to throw the first stone but him. And he didn’t do it—we’ll look at why in a minute.

Then he went back to writing on the ground. Again, we don’t know what he wrote. It doesn’t matter. Maybe all this writing on the ground shows how far outside of this fabricated drama Jesus remained. They came to him with this big deal, and he kind of ignored them. Not that obeying the law doesn’t matter, but he sees right through them. He knows what they’re up to, so his writing on the ground is a way to show his disinterest in their little show—like a kid playing in the dirt in t-ball. The coaches are yelling about a close call at first, and the kids don’t even acknowledge anything happened.

His words, however, hit home. And maybe he went back to writing in the dirt because it took a few minutes for his words to sink in and drive action. Verse 9 says, “When they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones…” Why the older ones first? Maybe because as you age, you start to realize just how far from perfect you really are. You can trick yourself into thinking you’re not that bad when you’re young. There are things you would never do, and as long as you’re on the right side of the proverbial line, you can convince yourself you’re a decent person. But the longer you live, the harder it becomes to keep that self-image up. After the older ones started the trend, everyone eventually left. They realize they don’t have the righteousness required to throw the first stone. Whatever we want to say about the scribes and Pharisees, I think it’s disingenuous to say they didn’t want to obey God.

The focus now turns from the accusers to the accused. Moments before, the angry crowd was ready to stone her. Now, not a single one was left to condemn her. As D.A. Carson says, “Those who had come to shame Jesus now leave in shame...the ring around her melted away.” It was her and Jesus only.

Now, that’s not necessarily good news for her—not yet. Jesus didn’t say, “No stones need to be thrown.” He only said, “Whoever has no sin, go ahead and throw it.” Jesus was the only one without sin. He was the only one who could truly condemn, the only one who could truly throw the first stone. Would he? She knew what she deserved. What would Jesus give? He would give the most amazing thing. Jesus confronted the accusers, but he comforted the accused, which is our second point.

Jesus Comforted the Accused (10-11)

Jesus stood, looked at the woman, and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

Commentator Colin Kruse points out that this is the first time in the whole episode that anyone addressed the woman. They dragged her in, accused her of adultery, and demanded her death, but until then, no one spoke anything to her.

Jesus did not start with her sin. He started with her accusers. Isn’t that interesting—and just like him? When she answered that none of them condemned her, Jesus said something amazing in response. “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

How can Jesus say this? Well, in a way, he could say it because now that everyone is gone, there is no real case against her. The charges are dropped, as it were. But there’s a more puzzling question. The scribes and Pharisees weren’t totally wrong. If the law is violated, doesn’t that demand punishment? Shouldn’t Jesus act justly? Is he ignoring the law?

Well, notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “You aren’t guilty.” The last thing he tells her is to sin no more. He’s not saying she’s innocent. But he doesn’t condemn her. Isn’t that interesting? Jesus is the most holy person that exists. He can’t overlook sin because if God overlooks sin, that is a real problem. How can there be any justice in the world if God overlooks sin?

Here’s where we get straight to the very heart of Christianity. Christianity says that we are guilty, but we aren’t condemned. How can that be? If we are guilty, we must be condemned. Justice demands it. If we are truly guilty, there is no way around it. Try telling parents whose child is murdered that there is no condemnation for the murderer. They would be outraged, and rightly so. So, how can Jesus say this? How can we be guilty but not condemned?

Perhaps the most amazing verse in the Bible, Romans 8:1, says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Here’s how we can be guilty but not condemned. Only if we’re in Christ. It can only be true if Jesus takes our guilt for us. It only works if 2 Corinthians 5:21 is true. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Only if Jesus takes our guilt and our sin and pays the price for us can we not be condemned. It’s only true if Jesus is condemned for us. The guilt and sin don’t just disappear. The penalty must be paid. Someone must pay it.

We can only be guilty but not condemned by the law if Jesus upholds the law for us. Jesus can only not condemn this woman now if he’s going to be condemned for her later, and that’s exactly what he will do. Jesus knows she should be stoned. He wrote that law! As God, he does demand perfect holiness from his people. But as Savior, he knows that cannot come apart from himself. Instead of throwing the first stone, he will let stones be thrown at him. Instead of her being crushed beneath the weight of their blows, he will suffocate upon the cross under God’s wrath for her sin. Jesus didn’t condemn her then because he would be condemned for her later. That’s why Paul says in Romans 3:26 that God is both just and the justifier—he is just, and no sin will go unpunished, but for his people, he is also the justifier, the one who sets things right on the cross. That’s the only way this works. He can only forgive because he will pay the penalty himself. That’s the heart of Christianity.

Left before Jesus, the only one who really could condemn her, she finds a rock she didn’t expect to receive—the rock that will be struck for her, the cornerstone that becomes a new foundation for her life. If she found that, you can too. This is not a one-off story. One of the things that makes this so powerful is that this is the normative way Jesus works. We don’t see this only here in John 8. We see it throughout his interactions in the Bible.

Throughout the gospels, we see Jesus moving toward sinners and sufferers in ways that shock and surprise us. Jesus shows us that God’s heart isn’t trigger-happy to condemn. In Luke 7, When the woman of the city (likely a prostitute) poured ointment on Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair, and kissed them, the Pharisees were repulsed, but Jesus welcomed and forgave her for her many sins. In Luke 19, Jesus ate with Zacchaeus the tax collector. When the friends of the paralytic brought their suffering friend to Jesus in Matthew 9, Jesus didn’t even wait for them to speak. When he “saw” their faith, he told the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven,” and the paralytic got up and walked out. As Jesus traveled and saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. He taught them from God’s law but bent down and healed their diseases (Matt. 9). Jesus stood outside Jerusalem and wept over them. Throughout his ministry, we find the truth of Isaiah 42:3, “A bruised reed he will not break; a smoking wick he will not put out, till he brings forth judgment to victory.” He brought forth judgment to victory on the cross. He will not break us. He will not put us out. He was broken for us. He was put out for us.

The thing that pours out most naturally from Jesus’s heart is compassion for the undeserving. In his book Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund says it this way: “Time and again it is the morally disgusting, the socially reviled, the inexcusable and undeserving, who do not simply receive Christ’s mercy but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates. He is, by his enemies’ testimony, the ‘friend of sinners’ (Luke 7:34).”

When you come to Jesus “caught in the act,” you expect the full weight of the law to crash into you. It’s what you deserve. But with Jesus, you get what you don’t deserve. You are guilty but not condemned because he was condemned for you. All you have to do to receive that is receive that. Just open your empty hands of faith and accept his cleansing blood. That’s the scandalous grace of the gospel.

Now, Jesus comforted her by not condemning her, but he didn’t stop there. Look again at verse 11. “Go, and from now on sin no more.”

We must remember this. Jesus did not merely say, “I don’t condemn you.” He also said, “Sin no more.” True Christianity is both the full grace and forgiveness found in Christ and a call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. It includes both melting before his grace and stepping into the obedience he calls us to. He forgives, and he challenges. But notice the order. It’s so important to remember the order. He could have said, “I won’t condemn you if you don’t sin anymore.” But he didn’t say that, did he? His grace comes first, and that grace empowers obedience.

This is how we know Jesus really loved that woman and how we know he loves us too. If he only forgives and doesn’t care how we then go and live, does he really care about us at all? If he only sends us back into the same lifestyle that got us dragged into accusation, pain, and potential death, would he send us back after forgiving us? Is that what you would do to someone you love? Of course not. Real love is loving someone enough to help them change into who you know they can be. Jesus loves like that. That’s why he calls us to obedience. He wants us to be like him; we can’t do that unless we obey him. But we can’t obey him—not truly—until we’ve been changed by his grace and mercy. Don’t mistake the order, and don’t mistake his love for you. Real grace forgives us completely, and real love calls us higher. Only in Christianity do sinners become saints. Heaven will be filled not with the deserving but with the undeserving.

Conclusion

Now, how does this passage help us? I think in two ways—personally and corporately.

First, personally.

Perhaps no sins result in as much shame as sexual sins. It’s not just what we act out, it’s also the thoughts we have. When Jesus added insight to the law in his Sermon on the Mount, he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt. 5:27-28). Are any of us not adulterers? We are more like this woman than we want to believe. Who among us is qualified to throw stones? We ought to be stoned. Many of us feel so broken, unworthy, and even sometimes repulsive to God. We might even wonder if we’re even Christians.

Well, when your heart condemns you, God is greater than your heart, and he knows everything (1 John 3:20). You are not repulsive to Jesus. You do not shock him. Jesus came to save people like you. He wants you to know that. He wants you to experience the cleansing he can give.

Hebrews 4:14-16 says we have a great high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. He calls us to draw near to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Here’s what that means. It means that if Jesus is really a savior—if he’s not just a mentor, or a self-help guru, or an example, or just a judge—if he’s really a savior, he will get down in the mess with you, and save you in time of need because he perfectly understands you. He will be there in the grossness, the desperation, the deepest temptation, and the hottest part of the battle. He is not just a counselor for the after-party when the high has worn off. He’s the hero running into the war with you. His throne is not the bench to approach to pay your fine after the infraction. His throne is a wartime walkie-talkie that you can call when the battle gets hot. He’s there for the dark moments, the moments you don’t even like to think about. He’s there with grace and mercy. He is not aloof to your real life, your real sins, the real you.

Jesus was tempted as we are but remains perfect and sinless, so he knows the real cost of holiness. And his perfection is not a platform from which he condemns but from which he saves. As Romans 8:34 says, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” When you are caught in the act, he won’t condemn you because he was condemned for you.

Your most desperate need when you are most desperate is not to get your act together so you can come to him; it is to simply come to him and receive from his deep wells of grace upon grace. Only then will you even have a chance at getting your act together. Don’t take your problems to the law; take them to the gospel. If you go to the law, you will get justice, which will crush you. That’s its job. But if you go to Jesus, you will find that the law has been fulfilled on your behalf in him, and, therefore, you can find, from his fullness, grace upon grace (John 1:16).

Now, here’s how this helps us corporately.

If the only person who had the moral perfection to throw stones at the woman didn’t, let’s be very careful about picking up any rocks. Sin is serious, but it is no match for Jesus’s cleansing blood. Let’s always remember the heart of Jesus for sinners and sufferers. If we are to make an impact at all in this judging and condemning world, we are going to do it by stepping into the grace of Jesus together. We are going to do it by laying aside our weapons—stones or otherwise—and coming together to find the mercy of Christ for us. I don’t know about you, but I have enough of my own sins. I don’t need to go looking at yours. I have enough need of the cleansing blood of Jesus for myself to keep me on my knees for a while. Don’t you?

We have two options. We can become a community that radiates the beauty of Christ so profoundly that condemnation is only something we know we’ve been saved from, not something we’re looking to bring upon others, or we can become a community that is so hard to please even Jesus himself wouldn’t be welcome. Which kind of community do we want? I believe we have the first kind right now, but let us never think because we have it now, we will automatically have it later. If we stop trusting Jesus, if we remove ourselves from his light, if we grow bored with his grace and start looking for our righteousness somewhere else, we can become the very opposite of what God wants most for us.

Let’s not do that. Instead, let’s continue to cultivate a gospel culture where Jesus is our greatest love. Where sin isn’t safe, but sinners are. Where we take each other to the gospel and not the law. Where we together boldly approach the throne of grace to find the help we need. Where we treat no sin too lightly nor too heavily because Jesus commands real obedience, but he forgives the worst we can do because he paid the price. And because he paid the price, we don’t have to. Let’s not ever make anyone pay for what Jesus already paid for. Let’s love him together, and let’s see what only he can do.

Let’s pray.

John chapter 6 is the longest and one of the most important chapters in the New Testament. We’re only going to look at the opening portion today, where we’ll see another one of Jesus’s signs.

This is the only miracle recorded in all four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In John’s gospel, this miracle helps us connect the dots between God’s provision to Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus as the Bread of Life in the New Testament. We will see that more clearly in the coming weeks, but today, we are going to look at the miracle that sets the scene in John 6:1-15.

Let’s read it now.

JESUS FEEDS THE FIVE THOUSAND (JOHN 6:1-15)

1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

INTRODUCTION

In the Old Testament, God took his people into the wilderness and provided bread from heaven for them. Here in John 6, Jesus takes his people into the wilderness to provide bread again. It’s a story about how Jesus cares for his people—not just to care for them for a day but as a sign of how he cares for them for eternity. It’s a story about an insignificant little boy that loses his lunch to feed a city, about a couple of disciples who have no answers through whom Jesus provides for a multitude.

This is a story about a power from heaven that can not only fill you but can sustain you, that not only satisfies you but uses you for God's glory, that not only settles you in the deepest possible comfort in this word but resettles you inside the heart of Christ your Savior.

It’s a story about the super-abundance of God, about how we can entrust it all to Jesus, how we can boldly believe that with him, all things are possible and that he is all we need. It’s a story about the all-sufficiency of Jesus in the face of our all-insufficiency. Those are our two points today.

1. Our insufficiency

2. Jesus’s all-sufficiency

OUR INSUFFICIENCY

In the Christian life, there is no other place to start than with our own insufficiency—to see our weakness and powerlessness. That’s not easy. We like to deny it. We cover it up. But the whole thrust of this story is to take us right to the idea of our powerlessness. Everything Jesus does takes us to that low place because that low place is where the blessing is.

Jesus and his disciples were in Galilee, where Philip and Andrew were from and where he had been healing sick people. A large crowd followed them, eager for more. So, Jesus took them on a field trip outside the city and taught them all day. They went up a mountain. It was springtime, and the grass was green. But that doesn’t mean it was a well-manicured place. It wasn’t a city park. It was a wilderness. And he was about to teach something important to this crowd, to his disciples, and to the world.

According to Verse 4, he performed this act during the Passover festivities, which was an important time for Israel, harkening back to the time of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. It was a time of great nationalism, kind of like the 4th of July or something for us. It was their celebration of freedom.

Remember what happened after the Exodus. They went into the desert, and what happened? They started to get hungry, and they started to complain. What did God do? He sent them bread from heaven. He sent manna, this flaky bread that literally fell from heaven every night like the dew, and the Israelites could go out each morning and eat it. That was a sign of God’s powerful provision. He could feed his people when it looked like no food was available anywhere—when there was no food available anywhere.

Fast forward thousands of years later, and here is Jesus, the Lamb of God, soon to be slain to bring his people out in a new kind of Exodus, and he’s taking them out into the wilderness. He’s taking this massive group of people and providing enough bread for all of them to eat. Do you see what’s happening? Jesus is filling the role of God in the Old Testament. Jesus is doing what God always does. He’s providing when there is no one else to do so.

In verse 5, we see how Jesus is going to do this. He saw a crowd coming toward him. By the way, we know this crowd was huge because John says in verse 10 that it was five thousand men. Do you see that there? Now, it was surely greater than just five thousand. That numbered only the men. There were women and children in this crowd too. We know that because of the little boy that shows up in the story. D.A. Carson says in his commentary on this passage that the total number may have been twenty thousand or more. That’s an unbelievably big crowd that witnessed this miracle. It’s the kind of crowd that, if it didn’t happen, I don’t think it would have made it into four separate gospels.

Think about it this way. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that up to 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus, and that is considered a huge number of eyewitnesses. This is a crowd 40 times that size. It’s a huge number. I’m not saying this is a miracle greater than the resurrection—there isn’t one greater—but this was an important miracle. Jesus made sure there was a big crowd for this one.

So Jesus saw this crowd coming toward him, and he said something to Philip. Look at verse 5. “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” Notice Jesus said this to Philip. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t as if Jesus was wondering what he was going to do, and he was buying time to search for an answer. No, that’s not it at all. We know that because of verse 6. “He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.”

What’s going on here? What is Jesus doing? I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s getting Philip desperate. He’s revealing a need to Philip that Philip can’t possibly meet, and Jesus knows that. But Philip doesn’t yet. He doesn’t even yet see the need.  So Jesus showed him the need and then made him feel how insufficient he was to meet it.

Now, why did Jesus do that? Was Jesus just a practical joker? Was he just trying to have a little fun at poor Philip’s expense? I don’t think so. That doesn’t make sense to me. Jesus was teaching his disciple something here, and through him, he’s teaching all his disciples, and the first lesson is a lesson in insufficiency.

Do you see how powerless Philip must have felt? All those people, and no bread, and Jesus asked where to get some. What would you do? What would you say?

Philip was in an incredibly difficult situation, and it was right where Jesus wanted him. He wanted him to feel the powerlessness. Jesus is teaching Philip about ministry. In ministry, there are always needs, and the needs are always beyond our human capabilities. He wanted all of his disciples to learn that.

In fact, Mark places this story right after the disciples return from their missionary journey, paired up two by two to preach the gospel and cast out demons, and heal. They took nothing with them but the power of Jesus and came back utterly exhausted. When they got back, Jesus said, “Let’s go away to rest.” But when they get out to the mountain, this huge crowd came, and Jesus told the disciples to serve them.

You can kind of imagine how that feels, can’t you? We’ve all had time when we’re just absolutely beat, totally sapped, absolutely exhausted, and we get home thinking we’re finally going to get some rest, and then the phone rings, and more need just comes pouring into our lap. We can’t rest. We have to keep going. And in those moments, we feel so powerless, don’t we? When we are full of strength, we might start thinking life is manageable, but when everything is falling apart around us, we start to understand we have no power at all. Our power is a facade. It’s a mirage. It’s not real at all. We don’t have any power. When life gets real real, we realize how insufficient we truly are.

We are all like Philip in those moments. We’re facing utter need and zero resources, and everyone is looking to us for answers. What do we say? What did Philip say? Look at verse 7. He said, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” In other words, “Jesus, you’re crazy. There’s nothing to do. We can’t possibly buy enough bread for them. Eight months’ salary wouldn’t be enough to pay for it. We don’t have enough money to give everyone even just a slice. Forget about it.”

Now, what’s wrong with his statement? Wasn’t it true? Do you see anything wrong with it? Here’s what’s wrong with it. It’s what’s wrong with so many of our reactions to the seeming impossibilities of life. We don’t factor Jesus in. Philip didn’t factor Jesus in. He looked at the situation and looked at the resources he had, and he said, “Nope. Can’t do it.”

Remember, verse 6 tells us this was a test. What was the test? It was this. Jesus is saying to Philip, “Philip, do you remember how God gave the bread from heaven in the desert? Do you remember how God provided when there were no earthly answers? The Israelites had to learn to factor God into their lives. Will you factor me into your life? Will you think of what I can do in you and through you by faith in me? Will you trust me when there are no worldly answers? Or will you rely only on yourself and what you can see?” That’s the test. It’s the same for each of us. Will we factor Jesus into our life or not?

It’s a perfect way to test him, isn’t it? Take him out in the wilderness away from all resources, present a need so great he can’t possibly meet it, and then ask him what to do. What if Philip had turned to Jesus with a smile and just said, “Jesus, I don’t know where to get that bread, and even if I did, we couldn’t afford it, but I have a hunch you have an idea up your sleeve. I think maybe you have a plan, and I’m just wondering what that is and how I can be a part of it.”

What if Philip had said that? What if you said that to Jesus the next time you’re confronted with a need for which you have no answers? That’s what faith looks like.

The raw facts are that we are totally insufficient in ourselves. We simply do not have what it takes, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we get traction in our Christian lives. The Christian life is not about coming to Jesus to let him give you some new tools to live better. Christianity is not about God sprinkling his wisdom on our little brains to help us through our days. Christianity is about reality with Jesus. It’s about factoring Jesus into every situation. It is about coming to God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to live a life fully open to him such that the impossibilities of life are no longer threats to us but opportunities for us.

If Philip had only remembered what Jesus initially said to him way back in John 1:43—remember what he said?—“Follow me.” Maybe if he remembered that he would have turned to Jesus in a different way that day on the mountainside. Well, you can. Jesus has called you to follow him. He’s in charge. He knows you don’t have the answers. He’s not asking you to figure it out. He already has the plan ready. Your part is only to follow. He’s inviting you to be involved with him, to let him work through you, to understand your total insufficiency so that you can receive the totality of his sufficiency.

So that’s the first thing we need to see—our insufficiency.

JESUS’S ALL-SUFFICIENCY

Let’s turn now from our insufficiency to Christ’s sufficiency. Look at verses 8 and 9.

After Jesus asked Philip what to do, and after Philip had no answers, Andrew piped up. Andrew was another of Jesus’s disciples, and he was there with Jesus, overhearing the conversation, and he noticed something. How he noticed it, we’re not told. He saw a little boy who had five barley loaves and two fish. But then Andrew, like Philip, failed the test in the same way. He followed up his observation with a question, “What are they for so many?” Andrew saw some food, but he knew it wasn’t enough. Oh well.

You know, Andrew was right. It wasn’t much at all, especially for so many. He didn’t have good bread. Barley loaves were poor people’s bread. It wasn’t the nice bread you eat. You probably wouldn’t like it. And the two fish weren’t much either. They were small, like sardines, that were mostly to help flavor the bread. So, it wasn’t much, but it was something, and Jesus created the world out of nothing, so something small like this is just perfect for him. He can do a lot with nothing. He can do a lot with just a little bit. He doesn’t need much.

What Jesus did next is so amazing. In verse 10, he told his disciples to have the people sit down. He organized them. He settled them. He seated them at the table, as it were. And then Jesus did the most amazing thing. He took the little boy’s lunch! Isn’t that amazing? I mean, imagine the scene! This is so incredibly fascinating to me. I wonder what that interaction was like.

You know, I bet that little boy was probably really looking forward to eating that bread and fish. But this little boy is a lesson to us all. He gave a small gift to Jesus, and it was all he had, but in the hands of Jesus, it was more than enough. Jesus used that little boy to feed twenty thousand people! But because he lost control of his lunch and gave that control to Jesus, he had far more of it than he could have ever possibly had.

Jesus used that little boy to teach a lesson to his disciples. He used him to teach a lesson to the crowd. But even more than that, Jesus loved that little boy. He taught that little boy to trust him. He took what was his, and maybe that even hurt the little boy’s feelings at first, but then Jesus gave back far more than what he originally took. Look at verses 11-13. Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to the crowd. Then he did the same to the fish. And—look at the end of verse 11—it was as much fish as they wanted. When they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

The little boy gave his lunch to Jesus, and Jesus gave him back a feast. What was once so little that he might have even still been hungry afterward is now so much food he can eat as much as he wants and still have leftovers. Isn’t that just like Jesus? Isn’t that how he always works? So why don’t we trust him more? Why do we cling to things as we do? When we have this kind of God who does this kind of thing, why can we not let go of our little loaves and fish? Why can we not entrust to his mighty care all that we have and see what he can do with it?

A.W. Pink was an English pastor in the early 20th century. He made a profound observation about this very reality. Remember in 2 Kings when Elisha filled the widow’s jars with oil so that she might have provision after her husband’s death? The oil lasted as long as there were vessels. Probably if there were more vessels, the oil would have lasted.

The point is that we have an all-sufficient Jesus, one who can meet and super-meet your every need. He’s always been that way. This is not a one-time thing. It’s the way he rolls. Always has been. If there is truly a need, Jesus is there to meet it. Remember in Matthew 6 when Jesus said to consider the birds? His point was that God takes care of them, and they don’t have to worry about what to eat, they don’t have to worry about tomorrow, so we don’t either. There’s something like 50 billion birds in the world. Why? Partly because that gives us 50 billion reasons to trust him for our lives.

Jesus might ask you to give something up, but if he does, he gives it back to you in more fullness than you could ever imagine. We might grumble and complain. We might not see the way forward. But if Jesus is there, what else do we need? We can trust him. The birds do.

Now, there is something else I want you to see. Not only did that little boy get back more than he gave up, he and the disciples both became more than they originally were. In other words, in the hands of Jesus, they were used by him to reveal his power. They became channels of his power. They became ministers under him, for him, with him.

Here’s Philip and Andrew, a couple of blockheads who can’t see the Creator of Heaven and the Earth right beside them, worrying about how they can buy bread. And here’s this little, poor boy with a little lunchbox of a very modest meal. Those people became the instruments through which Jesus worked his power. Isn’t that incredible?

Here’s the lesson. When Jesus calls us to follow him—and I hope you have heard that call. If not, I hope you hear it today—When Jesus calls us to follow him, he will take us to some tough places, maybe even into the desert. And he will take from us some very precious things, maybe all the food we have left. And he will ask of us some impossible things, maybe to feed more mouths than our bank accounts can afford. But he will be with us in those hard places. It will be his power coming through. He’s not asking for our power. He’s asking for our weakness. He’s using our insufficiency to prove his all-sufficiency. He’s taking our meager bread and giving back himself. He will always give back more than he takes. He will always answer our doubts with his grace. He will always fill us. He is a God of super-abundance. Maybe the wilderness is in our future, but so what. There’s always manna in the morning. And, better than all the bread in the world, there’s Jesus, the Bread of Life.

We have two options. We can be like Philip and Andrew, who looked at the situation before them and doubted anything could be done, or we can be like that little boy who handed Jesus his little lunch and watch Jesus feed a city. We can factor Jesus into our lives, or we can forget about him. We can be the channels through which Jesus works his power in this world, or we can close our lunchboxes and go home. We can starve a city, or we can feed one. Which life do you want to live?

When we start factoring Jesus into our lives, impossibilities become opportunities. Possessions become tools. We become channels of his power. Don’t you want that?

All you have to do is recognize your insufficiency and turn to Christ and his all-sufficiency. Who among us can’t do that? Who among us can’t just say, “I cannot figure this out! I have no answers. I have no strength left.” The bar is so low. It’s not as if Jesus is saying, “Come up to ‘Here,’ and then we’ll start talking.” No! He’s saying, “Admit you can’t do it. Admit your weakness. See your insufficiency. That’s where we’ll start. Because that’s where my power is seen most clearly.”

Only some of us can reach the heights of this world, but who among us can’t fall down? When we do, that’s where Jesus is. His grace lives there. That’s where we learn to take our hands off our own life and allow his mighty hand to take over. That’s where we become channels of his power, of his grace, of his mercy, messengers of his gospel.

There is right now a city that needs to be fed, and there is a Christ who can feed them. He wants to do it through you. Will you let him? Or do you have some really good objection to why it just can’t happen? Will you be Philip and Andrew? Or will you be the little boy?

CONCLUSION

Oh, what a life we could live if we just learned to factor Jesus into it!

But let me warn you. When you start to do that, I can’t say what he will do in your life. You can’t tame him. Look at verses 14 and 15. We’ll close with this.

When the people saw the sign, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Then they sought to make him king, and Jesus withdrew from them. Verse 26 helps us understand why. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you of your fill of the loaves.” In other words, they wanted him as king because of their full bellies. He was satisfying their worldly desires. But as John Piper said, “Jesus didn’t come into the world to lend his power to already existing appetites.”

If you want Jesus to be king over your preconceived plan, then I’m sorry, he just won’t do that. But if you want Jesus to be king over your failed life, over your wounded heart, over your wilderness wandering, he will be your king. He will walk away if, in the face of his miracles, you only want more miracles. But if you want him, he will draw you to his heart. Want miracles alone, and you’ll have none. Want him alone, and you’ll have all the miracles you can stand. He didn’t come to give you bread; he came to be your bread. How did he do that? Hear what he said in verse 51. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Jesus is the king who dies for his people, who gives his life on the cross for sinners insufficient enough to receive his sufficiency, weak enough to receive his power, hungry enough to eat his bread.

Let’s pray.

The last time I spoke, we were in Cana in Galilee, and here we are again in the same place.

At this point in John’s gospel, Jesus has returned home from his trips to Capernaum, Jerusalem, and Samaria, where he’s done a number of miraculous things and talked to a wide variety of people.

The last time he was in Cana was for a wedding. This time, he meets a much more somber event. That’s how life goes, doesn’t it? We have joy, and we have sorrow. We have weddings, and we have funerals. Jesus’s presence makes a difference in both. He’s the one you want at the party and the one you need in your desperation.

So, let’s read our passage now. John 4:46-54

JESUS HEALS AN OFFICIAL’S SON

46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

This is God’s word.

I think it’s helpful to remember what John tells us at the end of his gospel about why he wrote the book. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).

John’s whole purpose is that we would have faith in Jesus, and our passage today is all about faith. How does faith grow? That’s the question we have before us today. Through the story of this official, God shows us that there is a progression of faith, a journey of faith, in three stages.

1. True faith in Jesus brings us to him (it is reasonable)

2. True faith in Jesus takes him at his word (it is trusting)

3. True faith in Jesus settles our heart in him (it is transforming)

TRUE FAITH IN JESUS BRINGS US TO HIM (IT IS REASONABLE)

This first point is my longest point by far because if we don’t get this right, we miss so much of what’s going on here. We have to start unbelieving some things about him before we can start believing the truth about him.

We pick up the story in Cana in Galilee, where Jesus made the water wine. There’s a man whom John calls “an official” from Capernaum whose son was ill. Some translations call him a “royal official” or a “nobleman.” During this time, Herod Antipas was the king of Galilee, so this man was likely one of Herod’s officials. He was likely a man of significant status. But as this man has learned, significant statuses don’t exempt people from sorrow.

We don’t know a lot about this official. He doesn’t appear in any other story. Though the stories are similar, he is not the centurion that appears in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. This is a different man.

From what we can gather, he seems to be a good father. Capernaum was about 20 miles from Cana. That’s no small distance in those days to travel, but there is no indication he deemed it too far to go to help his son. He seemed also to be a decent man. Later in the story, when he goes home, his servants come to meet to share about his son’s health. They seem to care about him, presumably because he cares about them. But just as a good socio-economic status doesn’t prevent sorrow, neither does a good moral status. This man was in dire straights. His son was dying, and he had no more answers. In the midst of his sorrow and anxiety over his son, he heard about Jesus and came to him for help.

Why did he come to Jesus? Verse 46 refers to Jesus’s miracle of turning water into wine. We also know from verse 45 that people had been talking about the miracles he was doing in Jerusalem. He was a well-known miracle worker by this point. So John tells us in verse 47, “When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.”

We see here the first stage of faith. The official heard and came. This is how faith starts. We hear something about Jesus, and we sense he has what we need. So we come. It’s a reasonable act. It’s a considered step. It’s thinking things through. It’s not a strong thing yet, but it’s something.

This official heard Jesus was able to do things no one else could do, and he started thinking about it. “Maybe,” he thought, “Jesus could do something for my son.” It was desperation that brought him to Jesus. How many of us came in a similar way? At the end of our rope. With tears in our eyes. With no other answers.

This official had no other answers. The doctors couldn’t do anything. Nothing was working. So he went to someone whom he knew had already worked a miracle. He heard what Jesus had done, so he came to see what he could do for him. That’s how faith starts. It starts with hearing truth and letting it inside you.

John tells us he heard and went to Jesus, and then what? He asked him to come down and heal his son. Jesus’s response in verse 48 is interesting. Look at it. Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Huh. Why did he say that?

It’s a strange response, isn’t it? But, you know, Jesus had a lot of strange responses to people. Think of how he responded to his mother at the wedding in Cana. She said, “They’re out of wine.” And Jesus said, “What does that have to do with me? It’s not my time to die.” Then when Nicodemus came to Jesus, he said, “You have to be born again. The Spirit is like the wind. It goes where it wills.” Then at the well in Samaria, he said to the woman, “I’m thirsty.” When she offered him water, he said, “I have water you don’t know about…living water. You should ask me for that.”

In each of these conversations, we have to think to understand what Jesus is saying. Christianity is a thinking faith. Jesus engages our minds to enflame our hearts. When we think through these conversations, we start to see what Jesus is doing. He’s telling a bigger story. He’s revealing who he really is. He’s manifesting the glory of God.

Why did he respond like that? To get them—and us—thinking. What was his mother doing at the wedding? She was forcing him out before he was ready to reveal himself. What was Nicodemus doing? He was misunderstanding Jesus’s teaching, looking for salvation through works instead of from the Spirit. What was the woman at the well doing? She was there in the middle of the day to avoid her shame. What was this official doing? He was there to ask Jesus for a miracle because he had heard Jesus could do that sort of thing.

In each case, Jesus is confronting something much deeper than outward appearances. He’s cutting to the heart. He’s getting to the core issue. When you come to Jesus, you will get much more than surface-level help. You will get the deepest possible help.

Now, to get that help, we need to understand Jesus’s response to him. There’s an interesting grammatical thing going on in the Greek that we can’t see in our English translations. The “you” in verse 48…”Unless you see signs and wonders…” that’s a plural “you.” He’s speaking to this official, yes, but also to everyone in his hometown of Galilee. Why? Because as we see in verse 44, a prophet has no honor in his hometown. But then in verse 44, we see they welcomed him home. What’s going on? Yes, they welcomed Jesus home for what he could do, but they didn’t welcome him for who he was, for what he would say. He was a prophet, and the hometown crowd doesn’t like to hear from the hometown prophet. Jesus’s signs weren’t just neat things to discuss and marvel at. They were revelations of God’s glory, and they didn’t accept those words.

Jesus is not singling this guy out. He’s lumping him in with everyone else in town. “You people,” he’s saying. “You people don’t care about me for me. You only care about what I can do. You’re missing the whole point.”

It’s not an unfounded rebuke. Look at how the official approached him. He was an important person, and he approached Jesus like an important person. He came with a demand that sounded like a question. “Come down before my child dies.” There wasn’t really much humility in him yet. He doesn’t even think about what Jesus might have going on. At this point, he sees Jesus only for what Jesus can do for him. He doesn’t yet see Jesus for who Jesus is. He expected Jesus to drop whatever he was doing and come with him. He didn’t even consider that Jesus would do something else.

So Jesus rebukes his thinking. Do you see how deep he’s getting here? This official, who had a real, desperate need, came to him because he heard about the miracles Jesus could do. In that way, he was like everyone else. But was he really? That’s what Jesus wants him to think about. Was he there just for a miracle? Or was he there for something else? As his life is falling apart, can Jesus do more than ease his pain?

Jesus is redefining some things for this man. He’s getting him thinking deeper than he is. He’s distracted by his situation, which makes sense. There’s nothing really wrong with that. But his situation, as dire as it is, is not his greatest need. Was he there for signs and wonders, or was he there for something else? Is there something else? Is there something more to Jesus than miracles? Maybe he hadn’t even thought in that category before. Faith brought him to Jesus, and now Jesus is about to bring him all the way in. He’s about to heal much more than his son’s fever.

This is amazing to me. Jesus is not caught up in our circumstances. He stands above them, and he can use them to give us living water we don’t even know about. In every situation we find ourselves in, Jesus works in ways we might not expect to give us the life we want most but don’t even know is possible. Aren’t you glad we have a God who doesn’t wait for us to realize what we need but gives it graciously even when we’re too hard-headed or anxious or distracted to even see it?

Maybe you’re coming to Jesus for a better life in some way. Jesus wants you to think that through. We all want relief, but do we even know what relief is possible in him? Are we, as C.S. Lewis once said, playing with mud pies in a slum when Jesus offers us a holiday at sea? What if there is a greater miracle Jesus can do in us?

Maybe we don’t have a sick son that needs healing, but we all have some need only Jesus can meet. And I hope you’re asking him to help. But how are you asking? Are you even asking? Or are you demanding? What limits are you putting on Jesus? This man wanted Jesus to come to his house, but Jesus had another way to heal. He wasn’t even aware of that category. Are you like that? Will you allow Jesus to deal with you on his own terms? Will you trust him to handle things his way?

This official doesn’t yet get it, but he will. He has the reasonableness of faith to come to Jesus, and that’s the first step, but he hasn’t yet learned to trust him. He still thinks he needs to see to believe. But Jesus will teach him how to believe without sight next. He will teach him to take him at his word, to trust him, which is the next stage of faith’s progression.

TRUE FAITH IN JESUS TAKES HIM AT HIS WORD (IT IS TRUSTING)

Look at verse 50. “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.”

Jesus spoke, and the man went. Jesus did not do what the man requested. He asked him to come down to his house. But Jesus said to him, “No, I don’t need to go. I said your son will live, so you can go, but I will stay.” And the man did the most amazing thing. He trusted him! He turned and went on his way. This is the end of the conversation. He didn’t press Jesus to come with him again. Why? Because at that moment, he trusted Jesus’s word. He had confidence that his son would live because Jesus said he would. Faith was blossoming.

How do we know the man thought this? I mean, maybe he just thought to himself, “Gosh, you know, Jesus seemed a little upset that I was there. I asked what I wanted to ask. I guess I’ll just leave it at that, and I’ll see what happens next.” Maybe this man was just a bit shy. Maybe he wasn’t a type A personality. Is that it?

I’m not so sure. After all, this man walked 20 miles for help. He was at his wit’s end. Nothing else had worked. This was his last resort. If your son was dying, would you leave just because someone seemed a bit put off that you asked them for help? Wouldn’t you press? Wouldn’t you keep pressing? So why didn’t this man? Because he trusted Jesus’s word. He believed him. We don’t have to assume that. John tells us he did. Look again at verse 50. “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him.” He had everything he needed. He could go now.

Jesus gave this man a bigger gift than he expected. If Jesus had come down to his house with that man, the man would have believed because he saw. But as Jesus later told Thomas after his resurrection, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” This official was one of those blessed ones. He didn’t see, yet he believed. He knew the miracle was done, even though his eyes had not yet beheld it. He had in his heart the kind of trust faith gives. He took Jesus at his word. It was enough for him.

True faith in Jesus takes him at his word. It trusts him. Do you trust him like this official did? Do you take Jesus at his word? Think about it. Your faith starts with reasonableness. You come to Jesus because you see the logic of it. You heard what he could do. You heard who he is. And so you came. But coming alone isn’t enough. Being in the room isn’t enough. Your faith has to move from reason to trust. You have to come. That’s the first step. But do you trust? Do you place your faith in the person of Christ? Not even in the work of Christ but in his person. Do you trust him?

By the way, that’s the key to faith. Trusting him. It’s not about the strength of your faith. John tells us nothing about the strength of this official’s faith. It’s all about where his faith is, who he puts his faith in. That’s the key.

Jesus can do amazing things. He can perform miracles. But it is Jesus himself who matters most. The greatest miracle is not what Jesus can do for you but who Jesus is for you. Do you see that? Jesus is a miracle.

When you realize that, when faith grows from reasonableness to trust, something else starts to happen in your heart, which is our final point.

TRUE FAITH IN JESUS SETTLES OUR HEART IN HIM (IT IS TRANSFORMING)

What happened to this official? Verse 50 says he went home. Verses 51 and following tell us more. As he went, his servants met him and told him his son was recovering. He asked when he started getting better, and they said, “Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him.”

Now, there’s a little debate about what the 7th hour is, but I think the best arguments place this at around 1 PM. At 1 PM the day before, Jesus said, “Your son will live.” Why is that important? I mean, who cares? The point is he’s healed, right?

Well, this shows us two things. First, it confirms the man’s faith in Jesus’s word. As soon as Jesus said his son would live, he started to live again. That’s just flat-out amazing, isn’t it? Jesus didn’t have to go to his house. He didn’t have to perform a little song and dance. He didn’t even have to pray to God. He is God. His word is authoritative, and John’s little detail here is not only historically accurate but is theologically important. Jesus’s word is effective. What he says is true and does happen. That has massive implications for us today. If Jesus said it, it’s as good as done.

Second, this little detail tells us something else about this man’s faith. Think about it this way. If it was 1 PM, the man likely departed his house early that morning to go find Jesus. At 1 PM, there was still time to turn and head home. But he goes the next day. This is a little detail that I think makes a big difference. Why didn’t he rush home? He came in such anxiety to get help. Then he met Jesus and believed Jesus’s word, and he didn’t rush back home! All that he needed was already done. Jesus had spoken. What was there left to do? His son shall live. He can see him tomorrow. He doesn’t have to rush home today. His anxiety was gone. His heart was calmed. He was utterly transformed. He changed from an anxious father into a calm father. Isn’t that amazing?

You know, you’re in the same position as this man, right? Maybe you don’t have a dying son, but you have anxieties. You feel the weight of worry. You have fears of tomorrow. You have the burden of responsibility. But Jesus has spoken. His gospel rings out. You are ok. You can rest. You can rejoice. You can be still and know that he is Lord.

When faith goes from reasonableness to trust, it leads to peace. When you trust Jesus—really trust him—you are transformed from someone always worried to someone who knows the outcome already. That doesn’t mean we never worry; it just means we don’t have to anymore. Underneath the entirety of your life are the everlasting arms of Jesus. You can rest there.

It’s interesting to me that we never actually hear what happened when the father saw his healed son. We know he saw him, but we don’t get the details. Why? Because that meeting isn’t important. The important meeting was the one he had with Jesus. It was the faith of the father John wants us to see, not the healing of the son. The faith of the father then leads to the faith of the household. You see that in verse 53. “And he himself believed, and all his household.” His faith took root inward, and it grew outward, and the healing healed more than a fever.

We don’t know the rest of the story, but you know, one day, the father may have faced his son’s impending death again, and he certainly faced his own. But Jesus’s sign that day in Cana foretold what was to come for this official and his family. Death was no longer the problem it once was because when he got home and shared the good news of Jesus, his son believed in Jesus, too, along with all his household. When someone got sick again, and healing didn’t come, they didn’t blame Jesus for letting them die. They rejoiced that they would forever live. They didn’t need to see another miracle. They had the miracle within them. They had faith. They had Jesus. They had all they needed. Do you have Jesus like this? Do you trust him like this? Do you know his peace?

If you don’t, you can. He’s available right now to give it to you. If you do, you know the joy it gives. Praise him for it, and share that good news with others.

CONCLUSION

In closing, I want us to see one final thing. Look at verse 54. “This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.”

C.S. Lewis said miracles are more than powerful acts. They are demonstrations of who Jesus is. They are signs.

What did we see in the sign at the wedding in Cana when he turned water into wine? We saw that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament law and ritual. He took ceremonial water jars and filled them with the new wine of the gospel. He was saying something about who he is. Maybe his most amazing miracle, in John 11, when he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus said something about who he is. He is the resurrection and the life. Miracles don’t just impress us, they teach us. They not only show us God’s power; they show us God’s character. They help us learn to trust him because miracles are never just cool tricks. They are revelations of God’s glory, his goodness, his salvation, of his deepest heart.

Remember what we said Jesus was thinking about at the wedding in Cana back in chapter 2? He was thinking about his own wedding to come. The wedding supper of the Lamb, where his bride, the church, would be wed to him for eternity. What is he thinking about now with this official? What does he say to him? “Your son will live.”

You know, he could have said so many things. He could have said, “Your son will be healed of his fever.” He could have said, “Your son is better now.” He could have said all kinds of things, but he says, “Your son will live.” And since we know the son came to faith in Jesus when the father got home, Jesus meant more than recovery from the fever. The son will live.

Think about it. Why was Jesus there anyway? Why did he come? Think back to John 1:12. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Jesus came to give a right to all who believe—the right to become a child of God. This world is full of dying sons. But then Jesus came. Why? So that the children would live. This royal official coming to Jesus is but a shadow of the true Royal Official who left his home to go get salvation for God’s sons. Jesus understands this man deeper than the man even knows. Jesus is on the same mission. There is a sickness unto death in the children of God, but Jesus has come to destroy it by letting himself be destroyed. He’s come to kill sin by being killed. He’s come to rise again so that the children may live.

Are you one of the children of God? Then you, too, will live.

If you’re not one of the children of God yet, why not? Why don’t you come to Jesus and see what he has for you, who he is for you?

Jesus has spoken. Take him at his word. Trust him. Let him transform you. Let him give you life.

Let’s pray.

We come to a section of John’s gospel now that stretches to chapter 12, known as “the book of signs,” where John focuses on the revelation of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. John wants us to see the glory of Jesus in these chapters and, through them, to place our faith in Jesus as Savior. In fact, that’s the purpose of the whole book. We know that because John said so. If you flip to the end of the book, in 20:30-31, you can see this. “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” 

The whole point is to give you good reasons to believe in Jesus. These stories aren’t just neat little tricks Jesus performed. What John tells us in the coming pages is how Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures and how Jesus is the Messiah who is the answer to God’s promises. John wants you to see how wonderful Jesus is. How capable Jesus is. How worthy Jesus is. How loving and kind and mighty and glorious Jesus is. He wants you to believe in Jesus. And I want you to as well.

So let’s read 2:1-12 now.

The Wedding at Cana

2 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

Introduction

We find ourselves peeking into a little slice of history that, on one level, is not all that remarkable. A young couple is getting married. But on another level, Jesus is there to transform that little Galilean wedding into a revelation of God’s glory. That’s the difference Jesus makes. He turns weddings into foretastes of heaven. He turns a party into a mega party. He turns bad news into good news. He turns water into wine. He turns the law of the Old Testament into the grace of the New Testament. He turns ceremonial jars into vats of celebratory wine. He does this because he’s thinking about something much bigger than this little wedding at Cana in Galilee.

So let’s look at this in two headings: the story and the sign. Let’s consider the story’s details and then consider what those details tell us about the sign.

So, first, the story.

The Story

 Look at verse 1. “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.” John orients us to the time and place. He did this throughout chapter 1 as well. In 1:19, the chronology began. The Jews came to John asking about his baptism. The next day, 1:29, John proclaimed Jesus as the Lamb of God. On the third day, 1:39, Jesus took his new disciples home. On the fourth day, 1:43, Jesus met Nathaniel. Now, here in 2:1, John says it’s the third day. He means it’s the third day after his encounter with Nathaniel. So this is the seventh day since John started recounting Jesus’s acts.

Now, who cares what day it is? Well, normally, John doesn’t care at all, which makes this so interesting to me. When Jesus is resurrected, for example, he doesn’t even mention that it’s the third day. Throughout the rest of John’s writings, he is totally ambivalent about days. But not here in the first two chapters of his gospel. Why is that?

Remember John 1:1. “In the beginning…” Remember how it reminded us of Genesis 1? That’s intentional. As we meet Jesus in his public ministry, John is taking us on a journey of seven days that correspond in some way to the seven days of creation. But instead of focusing on the creating power of Jesus, John focuses on the recreating power of Jesus. By the seventh day, Jesus had already, in a sense, recreated the Messianic hopes and realizations. He had recreated the purpose of baptism. He had recreated the hearts of his disciples. And now, at a wedding, he recreated water into wine. John presents to us the One who was there in Genesis 1 and the One who will do even more than Genesis had time to tell us. John is preparing us for something magnificent. The story is really about to take off.

Verse 1 again. “The mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with his disciples.” We don’t know how Jesus knew the couple getting married. Perhaps they were friends of Nathaniel. He was from Cana. Maybe they were old family friends. But based on what happens next, we can assume that Mary had a significant role to play in the wedding. When a problem arose, Mary was the one who took some responsibility for solving it. Look at verse 3. “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”

That was a big deal. The groom was charged with providing enough wine for the wedding party, which lasted about a week. It was as if the wedding planner came to you at your reception and said, “Well, we made it halfway, but the food’s all gone.” You’d have some disappointed guests, and you’d be so embarrassed. But for this young couple, it was more than just an embarrassment. In those days, this was grounds for a lawsuit from the wedding guests. It was that big of a deal. Their new life together was threatened. Instead of entering into it with joy, they might now enter into it with a great burden. Mary did not come to Jesus with a minor inconvenience; she came with a crisis.

But why did Mary go to Jesus at all? Well, Jesus wanted to know that too. Verse 4, “And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’”

Jesus’s response is really interesting. The translation you have will determine the level of confusion you have over the way Jesus responds. The New Living Translation and the older version of the NIV, for example, say Jesus responded with something like, “Dear woman.” The ESV and others, however, puts it more accurately. “Woman.” Now, I don’t know where you came from, but if I spoke to my mother like that, I might not speak again. If my kids spoke to my wife like that, no more YouTube time for a good, long while. So what’s the deal here? Was Jesus disrespectful? We know Jesus never sinned, so we need to understand his response.

The way he says it is not as bad as it sounds to our ears. This is how Jesus speaks to Mary later in John’s gospel when he’s hanging on the cross, and there was nothing but love from Jesus on the cross. We know that.

So why does he say it this way? What he says next helps us understand. “My hour has not yet come.” Whenever Jesus refers to his “hour,” he means the time of his death. So, Mary says to Jesus, “They have no wine,” and Jesus responds, “It’s not my time to die.”  Isn’t that interesting? What’s going on? Jesus is distancing Mary’s wishes from his mission. Given the misconceptions about the coming Messiah he’s already experienced in his week in public ministry, Jesus knows now is not the time to reveal himself to the world as the Messiah. His hour has not yet come, so he distances himself from her, letting her know what time it really is. Jesus wasn’t Mary’s huckleberry. He wasn’t a mama’s boy, doing whatever she wanted. He answered to God’s plan only, and no one else would be his boss. His mission superseded his familial relationships. The driving force of Jesus’s life was faith, not family.

However, Mary didn’t seem too discouraged. She humbly submitted to Jesus and said to the servants in verse 5, “Do whatever he tells you,” Which, by the way, is the best advice ever given. Mary believed Jesus could and would do something. Mary got the point. She would not push him to the spotlight, but if Jesus would do something, she didn’t want the servants to miss the opportunity. D.A. Carson points out that in these two verses, we see two Marys. The Mary as mother and the Mary as believer. “In 2:3 Mary approaches Jesus as his mother, and is reproached; in 2:5, she responds as a believer, and her faith is honored.” Jesus is not our errand boy. He wasn’t for his mother, and he won’t be for us. But if we come to him by faith, we are rewarded. As Carson says, “These two verses, as difficult as they are, help to shape this account of Jesus’ first miracle, and ensure that the focus is on Jesus’ glory, not Mary’s, and on the disciples’ faith, including Mary’s.”

We now reach the story’s climax, where Jesus’s glory is revealed. The details John includes are important. Verse 6 says, “Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.” These jars were a symbol of the Old Testament law and ritual. They were stone because it was believed stone could not contract uncleanness. These were ceremonial washing jars used by the Jews as they went in to worship. They would symbolically wash with water proclaiming their sinfulness and their need for cleansing. In the story’s context, they represent the old way of Jewish law and ritual that Jesus is about to replace with something else. Everything Jesus does here points beyond the mere facts of the story. Through his actions, he tells the story of the Bible, the Messiah coming to fulfill the law to usher in the new age of grace. As Craig Blomberg says, this is a “vivid illustration of the transformation of the old ‘water’ of Mosaic religion into the new ‘wine’ of the kingdom.”

The jars held a lot of liquid, about twenty or thirty gallons each. That’s anywhere from 120 to 160 gallons. Verse 7 says, “Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim.” There was no room for a magic trick here. It wasn’t as if Jesus would add a little wine to the water and trick the palate. He was going to turn pure water into pure wine. The time for the ceremonial purification is complete. Now, the wine of the new age is beginning, and it comes through Jesus, and it’s not just a little to get us by. It’s overabundant. That’s just like Jesus, isn’t it?

In one of the greatest verses in the Bible, God says through Isaiah in Isaiah 55:1, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This is what Jesus is doing. He’s taking their nothing and giving his everything. This is what Jesus always does, isn’t it? He says to us, “Bring your dirty purification water to me, and I’ll make it something new. Bring that old-time religion that never got you anywhere, and I’ll give you the new wine of the gospel that changes the heart and saves the soul.” We can fill our spiritual pots to the brim, but until Jesus puts his miraculous touch upon us, all we will ever have is water, but when he touches us, we will have the best wine.

Now, look at verse 8. Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” The master of the feast was like the head waiter. When he tasted it, he was amazed. He didn’t know where the wine came from. John is careful to state that. Only the servants, his disciples, and, we presume, Mary knew what happened. This is an undercover miracle. So the master of the feast called the bridegroom—not Jesus—and said in verse 10, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

Apparently, Jesus makes some good-tasting wine. Why? Because this is more than just a small-town miracle to save a wedding. This is a manifestation of glory to reveal the Messianic Age. Like all the best wine, Jesus’s was aged. It had all the Old Testament promises and expectations. It held all the sweetness of joy and hope of the Messiah. It carried the aroma of Christ. It sang of notes of the patriarchs and the prophets. It was aged in the parchments of the Scriptures and poured out of the glory of heaven. It was the wine of the promised age, the wine of the Kingdom of God. And it’s to that Kingdom of God we now look.

That’s the story. Now let’s consider the sign.

The Sign

Verse 11 says, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

Here’s the whole reason John wrote about this. He didn’t write it because it’s a cool little party-trick Jesus of Nazareth performed a long time ago. It’s not a novelty act. It would be a big mistake if we only saw the miracle and not the miracle worker.

Notice that John doesn’t even call this a miracle. It is a miracle, but that’s not how John describes it. He calls it a sign. Why? What does a sign do? It points to something. You see a sign on the road that says Nashville, 20 miles, and you know what’s up ahead. The sign orients you. Or, if you’re Dustin, you see a sign that says, “Vinyls Records for Sale,” and you get giddy with excitement, not over the sign itself but over what the sign signifies.

John is orienting us here. Not only is this a sign, but this is Jesus’s first sign. Kind of an odd first one, right? Turning water into wine. Couldn’t he have raised someone from the dead? Couldn’t he have healed someone? Why this one first?

Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Bible opens with a wedding (Genesis 2) and ends with a wedding (Revelation 19). The wedding theme runs prominently throughout the Bible, and that helps us understand this passage. What was Jesus doing at the wedding? Well, he was performing this miracle, and before that, he was just an invited guest. But what do you think he was thinking about?

Tim Keller asks this question, and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I’m so indebted to him for these next insights. Well, I’m indebted to him for so much more….

Anyway, have you ever been to a wedding as a young, single adult? What were you thinking about then? You were probably thinking about your future wedding. Maybe you wondered when it would come or if it would ever come. Well, what if Jesus was thinking about his wedding that day? What would that tell us about what he’s doing here?

Here’s what. Throughout the Old Testament, God refers to himself as the Bridegroom of his people. We see this, for example, in Isaiah 62, Hosea 2, Ezekiel 16, and Jeremiah 2. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the bridegroom in places like Matthew 9, Luke 5, Mark 2, Ephesians 5, and Revelation 21. The image of God as his people’s bridegroom runs the entire length of the Bible.

Think about it. Why was Jesus even there that day at Cana in Galilee? Not because he just happened to be born at that time and around that particular place, and he just happened to get in because of family connections. No, he chose that time and place. He was there because about 30 years earlier, he came down in a deliberate act on a mission to save his people from their sins and to wed them to himself. Jesus performed this sign at this wedding not only because it was a tragedy that he could fix but, more truly,  because it was a foretaste of the kind of wedding he would throw later on. He was thinking about his wedding day with his bride, the Church. He was thinking about the wine on that day, after the last drink at the last supper, when he said he wouldn’t drink it again until he did so with his people in his Father’s kingdom. He was thinking about what it would cost and how it wasn’t too high for him. He was thinking about his death so that he could gain his bride. He was thinking of the wedding supper of the Lamb, where the restored universe would be set right, and he would make his dwelling with his people, and he would wipe every tear from their eye, and there would be no more pain, no more sorrow, and no more death ever again. His bride would never break his heart because, in him, they would now be perfect. And he would never break theirs because his love for them spurred the whole story to start with.

Maybe this sounds like a stretch. It did to me at first, too. But think about it. Everything Jesus did that day pointed to that day later on. Why did he use those ceremonial jars? That’s not a normal place to put wine. Couldn’t he have just refilled the old wineskins? No, because their filling was to say the law was fulfilled, and the new wine was now ready. The saving of the best for last was to say that the marriage of Jesus and his bride would be the best of all things. The belief it gave to his disciples was the gift that brought his people in. Jesus was signifying far more than a neat trick that God can do. He was signifying the gospel story from the days of old that was now at hand with his coming. Here is the true Bridegroom longing for his bride, looking forward to what he would do to set things right, looking forward to his wedding still out ahead, looking forward to the consummation in the age to come.

Jesus was at the wedding thinking of his wedding, and his heart was filled with longing for his bride. He wanted to show her how thoroughly, how completely, how abundantly, how graciously he would fulfill all things.

If you read the Bible, you can’t avoid this kind of martial language between Jesus and his Church. Jesus longs for us and provides for us with the love of a bridegroom. Jesus does not moderately love his bride. He adores her. He longs for her. He cannot wait to finally have her with him forever.

Conclusion

So what does this mean for you? First, if you are a believer, it means that day at Cana in Galilee, Jesus was thinking of you. What he did that day was to show you the kind of groom he is. If you are not a believer, it means that day at Cana in Galilee, Jesus was doing this so that you might come to faith in him. He wants you to see that he is what you’ve been longing for. All your failed attempts at purity can become real in him. All your shame in life can be washed away in his gospel wine. All your desires for a love that will never end, a joy that will never fade, the wine that will never run out, can be yours. At a wedding, where two people become one new family, Jesus takes the Old Covenant law and weds it to himself to make New Testament wine. He does it there at Cana because he will do it one day in heaven. And he wants you to see that.

Jesus is signifying the newness he’s bringing into the world by showing that his newness is good because it’s aged in the oldness of the gospel promises. He is the true bridegroom who has come to wed his sinful people to himself and save his bride by giving her a new name in himself. He will spare no expense. You will not get part of him but all of him. You will not get wine mixed with water in some dirty pot. You will get the Scripture-aged and glory-infused wine of the kingdom of God. You will receive a husband who always saves the best for last, who doesn’t just hope to make a good impression but who will love and care and provide for you for eternity. You will get a new start on a new life that, with him at the center, will never disappoint. You will get the real, 100-proof Jesus. He makes the end of the party better than the beginning. He takes tragedy and turns it into triumph. He takes sorrow and turns it into joy.

How do we know this is true? Because in John 16:20, Jesus told his disciples about his coming death. He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament…You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” How will their sorrow turn into joy? Because on the cross, Jesus would give himself up for his people. He would lay his life down for his bride. His blood would become the wine we partake of in Holy Communion, which reminds us of his dying love. His blood is the wine that sustains us, cleanses us, remakes us, and saves us until that day we are with him and sit down at the wedding supper of the lamb to drink the wine of the Father’s kingdom with him.

Let’s pray.

We’ve come to what some people call “the most wonderful time of the year.” I might argue for summer instead of winter, but it’s not wonderful because of the weather. It’s wonderful because of something else. It’s wonderful because this time of year, we’re all caught up in a story. It’s a story of a king coming in an unexpected way who wins a war for his people that they could not win on their own. It’s a story that has spawned a thousand stories, but no one has ever improved on the original. They can’t. It’s the best.

So, let me tell you that story.

A long time ago, in a place not so far away, a man and a woman lived in a perfect world. They enjoyed God’s presence with them. Work was easy and rewarding. Their relationship was without strain. They had all they needed. It was paradise. But one day, a serpent slithered in with some lies about God, and in their hearts, they began believing God was holding out on them. They listened to the serpent’s lies and rebelled against God. But instead of giving them something better, their rebellion brought something bad into the world. Something God had warned them about but that they decided not to believe. Something so terrible that every person who came after would fear it. It was called Death. For every person since that day, death has been the greatest threat. It lurks behind every corner, hides in every dark room, shadows every joy, and is the end of even the greatest lives. Death is the enemy we cannot avoid facing and the one we cannot beat. It will come for us all, and the only difference between us is when it comes.

We’ve tried to solve the problem of death. We’ve searched for fountains of youth. Our laboratories mine the depths of science for a cure. Medicine can prolong us, but it cannot insure us. Diet and exercise can extend us, but they cannot save us. Of all things in this world, death is the most certain event that will happen to us. Because of that, we fear death—the manner, the method, the reality—and are enslaved by that fear.

But something else happened that day in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, God promised that one day the woman’s Offspring would crush the serpent’s head under his heel. One day, the devil, a midwife for death’s birth in the Garden, would lose his power to hold it over our heads. One day, God’s children would get their life back. One day, death would die.

Then the world kept spinning, centuries upon centuries added together, and nation upon nation was founded, flourished, and disappeared. But through it all, God’s promise never faded. He never wavered. He never yielded. He kept telling the same story again and again: the Savior is coming.

And one day, a long time ago, in a place not so far away, when it seemed as if there was no hope God’s savior would come, God waged war on death, and his Savior marched into battle. But to everyone’s surprise, he wasn’t a giant like Goliath. He was humble like David. He wasn’t an impressive politician like Caesar. He was a normal person like me and you, a carpenter by trade. He was a baby born in a manger in the city of Bethlehem. His name was Jesus. He was like us—flesh and blood, but though he was like in that way, he was also unlike us in another way. He was the Son of God, very God of very God, the radiance of God’s glory, and the exact imprint of God’s nature. The Savior had come, and the savior was God himself.

We celebrate this story each year at Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year because it reminds us that God has kept his promise. He has come to make things right. Jesus did not rise from the ranks of this world but came down from the heavenly throne. At Christmas, God came down. We call this the incarnation of Jesus. The heir of all things, the creator of all things, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power, came down to save us. He became like us, so when we see the salvation he has wrought by his blood, we know this is one like us who saves people like us. This isn’t some theoretical salvation. This is the real stuff.

Jesus came down not like a Greek god from Olympus to check on things down here but to become like us in every way except for sin to save us because he knows how things are down here. Christmas is the story of God becoming like us. And he didn’t just make a cameo. He moved into the neighborhood. He came on a mission for a purpose, which takes us to our text today, Hebrews 2:14-15.

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

This is God’s word.

Now that’s real comfort and joy.

We see two reasons for Christmas. The first is for the second.

(Reason #1) Jesus made himself like us so that (Reason #2) Jesus could conquer death for us.

Reason #1: Jesus Made Himself Like Us

Look at verse 14. “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things….”

As the author of Hebrews begins explaining God’s solution to death, he begins with the incarnation at Christmas. Since the children are flesh and blood, Jesus partook of the same things. Jesus became human because we are human. Jesus needed to be human to save humanity. Our salvation could only come from the inside, as it were.

Why is that? Why did Jesus need to be human? The Heidelberg Catechism, written in the 1500s, asks the same question.

Q: Why must he be a true and righteous man?

A: He must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.

Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” Death is something we get because we deserve it. Death is our “reward,” you could say. It might not be the reward we want, but it is the one due to us. We get what we earn. Every person ever born—with one exception—is a sinner, and our sin earns us death. Now that might sound drastic to us. It makes sense that it would. We’re the ones on the hook, after all. But God warned Adam and Eve about this. He warns us in the Bible about this. We sin with our eyes wide open. We know what we’re doing. We cannot claim innocence. Our guilt is all too real.

Still, it helps to understand why death is the reward for sin. (And, by the way, it’s important to understand that by “death,” we don’t just mean physical death but also eternal death. Sin’s rewards are not paid out with a death certificate.) Death is the reward for sin because of the nature of who God is. God is holy and righteous. By his nature, he must punish sin. Otherwise, he would not be holy and righteous. Therefore, it's holiness or else. It’s not like he hasn’t given us enough information. We have God’s law written down. We know what he’s asking. The problem is that we can’t live up to it. Adam and Eve ruined our only real shot, and the Bible says we inherit a sinful nature by birth because of them. But we can’t blame them too much. We’ve all added our own sins on top of theirs. We are all guilty, and where holiness is not present, death must be.

Romans 6:23 is terrifying. “The wages of sin is death.” But there is a second part to that verse, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God provides a gift to his children—the gift of eternal life. How does that gift come to us? In Christ Jesus our Lord. As the Heidelberg Catechism says, because God’s justice requires human nature to pay for sin, Jesus had to be like us. He had to partake of the same things. If we are going to be saved, Jesus had to be really, fully, truly human. And he had to be a perfect human. He had to be righteous. He had to be holy. Because only a righteous man can pay the penalty for unrighteous men, only a holy man can make sinners holy by his sacrifice. This is the reason for Christmas. We needed a savior, and Jesus is that savior.

At Christmas, the all-holy God above put on skin and flesh on top of bones and organs and was born as a human baby, just like we were, to save his unholy people. In Jesus, God has a neck we can hug. He has a laugh we can hear. He has a face with a smile that we can see. And because of that, he has hands that can be pierced. He has a side that can be cut open with a spear. He has righteousness that can be ours by faith. At Christmas, Jesus became die-able so that he could die to save us. God didn’t outsource this job. He couldn’t.

That’s so important to understand. Christmas will never mean very much beyond some vague sense of happiness resulting from the “spirit of the season” if you don’t understand the enormity of these truths. Before anything else, Christmas screams to us, “You need a savior!” And Christmas provides that savior.

Christmas is God telling us that our most desperate need is fulfilled in Jesus. That’s why it’s merry and bright. That’s why it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

So, reason #1 for Christmas: Jesus himself became like us. Now, reason #2: so that he could conquer death for us.

Reason #2: Jesus Conquered Death For Us

Let’s keep reading. “14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

Only a human Jesus can live for us, and only a dead Jesus can rescue us. The reason for Christmas is Good Friday and Easter.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet says death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Jesus said, “Not so fast.” He went to that undiscovered country and returned. That reality is the most astounding thing in all the world. Jesus came not only to live the perfect life we failed to live but also to die the guilty death we don’t want to die. And when he did, he secured something for his people that no one else could ever do. He secured life for us.

Jesus secured life for us in a surprising way: by death. Jesus destroyed death from the inside. He destroyed death by going through it. In all human history, there has not been, and will not be, any greater accomplishment. Everyone in the world is looking for a solution to death. It hangs over our heads. We fear it. We’re enslaved to it. Death is, as one commentator put it (Phillips), not only an event that awaits us but a power that rules us. The fear of death plays itself out in a million different ways. It’s the reason for our mid-life crisis. It’s the reason for our despair. It’s the reason for our anxiety. It’s the reason we hold on to things too tightly. Death rules us.

But the author of Hebrews wants us to see how this great enemy has been dealt with in Christ’s hands. Because Jesus has gone through death, he has destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. This doesn’t mean Satan ceases to exist. He’s still around. It means he no longer has the power he once had over death.

That does beg the question as to how the devil gained the power of death to begin with. How did that happen? Well, we have to look back at the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 3, the devil ushered death into the world in the Garden of Eden by tempting Adam and Eve to sin. Because he introduced sin, he also introduced death. When God passed the death sentence on sin, the devil frightened humanity’s conscience and brought them into slavery under the fear of death. That’s why Satan is called the “god” of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) in the Bible. He’s the author of sin and the enslaver of those under sin’s penalty.

But then Jesus stepped onto the battlefield, dressed not in armor fit for another but dressed like us, in flesh and bones and skin that could be pierced and blood that could be spilled. When Jesus died upon the cross, he entered death with all the sins of God’s people and took those sins into the grave with him. But he then did something the devil wasn’t prepared for. He rose from the grave but left those sins buried. When he rose on the third day, Jesus ripped the sword from the devil’s hand. His ability to hold our guilt over our heads was gone. The sting of death has been taken away because Jesus bore it on the cross. The devil has no power to condemn us any longer because Jesus has made us right with God.  On the cross, he took our guilt and gave back his righteousness. He took our shame and gave back his holiness. This was a real transfer. He really took our sins, and he really gave us his righteousness. It is as much ours as it is his because, on the cross, our sin was as much his as it is ours. This is how, as we saw in our Colossians series, “Jesus disarmed the powers and authorities, triumphing over them on the cross.” The devil’s power was destroyed by the death of Christ.

Since death is dead, the fear of death isn’t what it once was. By his death, when Jesus defeated our great enemy, he also delivered us from our great slavery. Death no longer hangs over our heads. We no longer need to fear the judgment to come. We no longer need to ensure we wring every ounce out of this life because it’s all we have. We no longer need to avoid thinking about death. We aren’t enslaved to fear of death anymore. We are free because Christ set us free. Oh, death, where is your sting?

If you have Christ, your death day can be the greatest day of your life. Death cannot destroy you. It can only usher you into the waiting arms of your Savior. Death will separate you from this world for a while, but it will not separate you from God. It will unite you with him even more closely. Now, that’s freedom!

Conclusion

Church history helps us see what this freedom looks like. I want to tell a few stories as we close.

John Wesley, the English evangelist in the Great Awakening, was on a ship heading across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Georgia. Two groups of people were on board: his English countrymen and a group of German Moravian Christians. One day, the Germans had a church service on the boat’s deck, and as they were singing, a big storm came. They were on this little wooden boat in this big ocean, and Wesley was scared. Here’s what he said in his journal about that day.

In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the main-sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sung on. I asked one of them afterwards, “Were you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.” From them I went to their crying, trembling neighbours and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that fears God, and him that fears him not.

DL Moody, the 19th-century evangelist, said, "Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now.”

F.B. Meyer was a pastor and a friend of D.L. Moody. He was near death and sent a postcard to a friend. “I raced you to heaven. I’m just off. See you there.” 

Donald Cargill was a Scottish Reformed preacher who was hung in 1681 for his reformed preaching. He said, “This is the most joyful day I ever saw on earth. I am no more terrified of death because of sin than if I had never sinned. For all my sins are freely pardoned and washed thoroughly away by the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Donald Grey Barnhouse was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. His wife died of cancer. He was left with four kids, all under the age of twelve. They were driving down the road one day when a big semi-truck pulled past them, casting its shadow over them. Barnhouse asked his kids, “Would you rather be run over by the truck or the shadow of the truck?” One of the children said, “Shadow, of course.” Barnhouse said, “Well, that’s what has happened to your mother….only the shadow of death has passed over her because death itself ran over Jesus.”

In the 3rd century, in the city of Carthage, Perpetua was a recently married mother of an infant son. She and others from her church were arrested for being Christians. Their sentence was to be fed to wild beasts to entertain the paying crowd. When they heard their fate, they returned to their prison, glad to be able to die for the glory of God. Perpetua’s father came to persuade her to deny her faith and live, but she wouldn’t. She said, “I am unable to call myself other than what I am, a Christian.” When the day came, a bull tossed her in the air, and her hair came undone. She asked for time to put her hair back up because undone hair was a sign of mourning and this was a day of joy for her.

There was another girl there that day in Carthage, a slave named Felicity. She was pregnant, and it was against Roman law for pregnant women to be executed until their child was born. Not wanting to face execution without her church members, she asked for prayer that her child would be born before the execution day. God granted their prayer. During childbirth, Felicity cried out in pain. The prison guards mocked her, asking how she could face the wild beasts if she couldn’t stay silent during childbirth. Felicity replied: “Now I alone suffer what I am suffering, but then there will be another inside me who will suffer for me because I am going to suffer for him.”

When it’s your turn to die, what can you expect by faith? You can expect the same thing. These were not super-human people. These were normal Christians like you and me. All they had is all we have—the gospel of Jesus Christ and faith in him by the power of the Holy Spirit. They were free from the fear of death because they were free from the consequences of death by the grace of Christ. They knew they were free, and if you trust Christ, you need to know you are free too. Jesus is your death defeater. He is your redeemer. He is your Savior. When it’s your turn to die, he will come and get you!

This is the reason this is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the reason we sing “Joy to the world.” Because a long time ago, in a place not so very far away, the curse of sin entered the world, but then Christmas came, and through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, we have a new song. “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.”

Let’s pray.

22 Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

1 Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

We’ve seen the past couple of weeks how Paul takes us inside the Christian home with instructions to husbands, wives, parents, and children. But there is another group in that ancient household Paul also addressed: bondservants. Other translations say “slaves” or “servants.” It’s the same word. There were about 60 million slaves in Paul’s day, about one-half of the entire population. Slaves did most of the work in those days. That was their entire purpose. They were viewed as tools—animate ones, but nothing more. So what Paul said to them addressed the very heart of their existence.

This is a passage, first and foremost, about work, but we can’t ignore that these words are directed toward slaves and slave masters, which makes this difficult. So before we look at what Paul has to say about work, I want first to say something about slavery.

A WORD ABOUT SLAVERY

Paul’s address to husbands, wives, parents, and children addresses God-ordained and God-blessed social structures. In this address to slaves, Paul is stepping into a social construction of oppression that God does not condone. Some wonder why Paul didn’t attack the institution of slavery head-on. Why give instructions rather than condemnation? Because radical social change never happens in an instant, and in the meantime, the gospel has something to say to everyone in any situation. Paul is applying the gospel to this reality, showing how the fullness of Christ makes a difference today amid everything going on.

It’s important, I think, to point out that this passage should never be viewed as the Bible’s approval of slavery. Like anything, to understand what the Bible says about a topic, we have to take the Bible as a whole. If we take the totality of what the Bible says, we could never conclude God is pro-slavery. In fact, the Bible is the very reason we have any anti-slavery ideas at all. Passages like ours today introduced a new idea to the world. No one else was saying anything remotely close to this. It was the idea that slaves were inherently equal to their masters, just as wives were to husbands and children to parents. Paul destroyed the normative social constructs as he brought the fullness of Christ to bear upon their lives. This was a radical new idea. Paul turned his modern world’s view of humanity on its head. If we do away with the Bible because we believe its views of human equality are too backward, we are cutting off the branch we’re sitting on. The only reason we have those ideas of human equality at all is because the Bible quite literally gave them to us. No one in the ancient world talked to slaves as inherent equals to masters. Only Christians did that. Luc Ferry is a French philosopher. He is not a Christian. Some years ago, he wrote a book called A Brief History of Thought. Here’s what he said about Christianity.

“Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity - an unprecedented idea at the time….This idea may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard of at the time, and it turned an entire world-order upside down.” (Pp. 72-73)

Without Christianity’s idea of human equality found in the gospel of Christ, we would never have our modern ideas of social equality. The Civil Rights Movement would never have happened without Jesus breaking into the world with this new vision of humanity. Christianity changed the social game. So, just because Paul addressed slaves doesn’t mean he’s falling in line with the social norm. By addressing slaves as human beings with moral agency and being on the same level as masters was quite literally a new thing. God is the first abolitionist. He’s the originator of the Civil Rights Movement throughout the world.

The Bible has some amazing verses about this. One we’ve already seen in Colossians 3:11. “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Pauls said almost the same thing in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In the Christian church, there is no room for sexism or racism, or any other social separation into upper and lower classes. We are all one in Christ Jesus. We are used to that idea today, but that’s only because the Bible gave us that idea. Every person who has ever fought for social equality has done so because the Bible gave them the framework of understanding. The moral ground for every civil rights movement is the Bible. God gave us these ideas. This is just one of a million ways Christianity changed the world.

We see this play out early in the Church’s history. Inside the Colossian church sat at least one slave that we know of. His name was Onesimus. The house in which the Colossian church met was likely owned by a man named Philemon. Philemon also owned Onesimus. One day, Onesimus escaped and ran to Rome. He apparently stole something from Philemon on the way out and was hoping to hide in the big city. But by God’s providence, he came into contact with Paul, heard the gospel, and was saved. Later, Paul wrote a letter to Philemon. We have it in our Bible. In it, he appealed to Philemon in Christ to receive Onesimus back not as a bondservant but as a beloved brother (16). He asked Philemon to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul and promised to repay any debts Onesimus owed. It was a radical thing to ask. No one else in the ancient world would ask such a thing. It’s the kind of thing only the gospel makes possible.

The Christian gospel speaks to all people in every situation all the time. You cannot get any socially lower than a slave. But Jesus doesn’t ignore the lowly. He speaks directly to them. This is nothing new for God. Remember in Exodus when Israel was in slavery? God heard their groanings. Fast forward thousands of years, and here is a slave in the Colossian church wondering how what Paul is saying applies to his life in bondage. He was seen as equal to a tool with no rights or dignity, and then he hears this: “Bondservants….” Jesus is speaking to him. That’s glorious. In the hands of our Savior, even the lowliness of slavery can be a glorious calling in Christ. I don’t say that flippantly. I say it because the Bible says it. Slaves are not nobodies to Jesus. They are somebodies on the same level as the richest man.

So that’s my brief word on slavery.

Now, what does this passage have to say to us today?

LISTENING TO THIS TODAY

Looking at just about any commentary on this passage, past or present, it jumps into how this applies to the workplace. What Paul says to slaves can be applied to employees, and what Paul says to slave masters can be applied to employers. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Our modern workplace and slavery are not the same situations. But what Paul says about how one is to work and the attitude one is to take toward his or her workers should be applied to our modern workplace. He’s not so much talking about slavery as he is talking about work itself.

This is more amazing than I think we might see at first glance. Just as Jesus cares about the husband-wife relationship and the parent-child relationship, he cares also about our work relationships. That’s amazing. Our lives are split basically into thirds. We spend a third sleeping, a third working, and a third doing everything else, and most of that is filled with other types of work. Isn’t it comforting to know that Jesus cares about all of our life? He doesn’t only care about the “sacred” parts. It’s all sacred to him. He is deeply involved in the entirety of our life.

We can get so bogged down in the day-to-day details, but Paul lifts us up and shows us what Jesus thinks about our work. So let’s look at three truths Jesus wants us to know as we work.

1. There is a higher master (22-23)

2. There is a great inheritance (24)

3. There is a just reward (25-1)

THERE IS A HIGHER MASTER (22-23)

Look at verse 22. “Bondservants.” Let’s stop there. We might expect Paul to start a different way. Why address the slaves before the masters? But this is how Paul arranged the entire section. Why not the husbands before the wives? Why not the fathers before the children? Paul started with the powerless because the powerful are always first. He started where there is the least natural hope. There is grace and mercy in even the arrangement of the verses. God’s word is amazing.

Paul tells the bondservants to “obey in everything those who are your earthly masters.” This is similar to his command to children. Of course, as Dustin has said previously, Paul is not condoning sinful behavior. Bondservants are not to be disobedient to their masters, but if their masters ask them to do something sinful, they have a higher master. They are to obey their earthly masters, but they are to fear the Lord. Jesus not only limits the slave master’s authority but also frees the slave to disobey when morally necessary. Their earthly master is only earthly. Jesus is the big boss.

We all have an earthly boss. Someone demands our time and attention. How are we to obey? How are we to work? “Not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” There are two things here—a positive and a negative. Negatively, we can’t slack off when no one’s looking. Jesus’s eye is ever upon us. Positively, we don’t have to hope someone notices our hard work. Jesus’s eye is ever upon us. Both of these are good news. There isn’t a meaningless moment. The King of the Universe is right there with you. When the King notices you, you can’t slack off. You don’t want to. When the King notices you, you need no other praise. His is enough.  Someone once asked G.K. Chesterton, “If the risen Christ suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you do?” Chesterton looked them squarely in the eye and said, “He is.”

So when you’re sitting at your desk, tempted to slack off, remember Jesus is watching. Your work matters to him. How you work matters to him. He wants you to work hard because that is how his people work. It’s like the Patriot way or the Yankee way. There is a certain way Christians go about their work. It looks like Jesus—always about his Father’s business. And when you’re sitting at your desk, wishing someone noticed the care you put into every task, remember Jesus is watching. He sees the effort, and he rejoices in it. That care you put into your work is putting the glory of Jesus on display as you devote yourself and your work to him.

This changes our Mondays, doesn’t it? As we serve our earthly masters, we are serving the Lord himself. We are working, most truly, for him. Verse 23, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” This is the fullness of Christ for the worker. Some of us work joyless jobs. All of us have some joyless tasks in our jobs. But Jesus is saying it doesn’t matter what you do. “Whatever you do.” Our work, no matter how small, isn’t too small for Jesus. Our work matters because it matters to him. He is that involved with us. Our little work life isn’t so little. Even the slave’s work is cherished by Jesus and received by him as unto him. That’s amazing.

We all have earthly masters. Some of them are good bosses. Some are not. But we all have a higher master who is good and does good, and he is who ultimately matters. What kind of boss is Jesus? He’s a good one, I promise you. He’s forgiving. He’s gracious. He’s merciful. He’s kind. He expects a lot. He doesn’t coddle us. But he cares for us. He asks us to work hard. Working as unto the Lord means the work actually gets harder—no eye-service, no people-pleasing—but it’s far more rewarding. Jesus makes even the most menial task an important one—not because of what we’re doing but because of who we’re doing it for. We won’t slack off because his eye is always upon us. And he will send his help by the power of his Spirit to give us energy for the task. He will give us rest at night after a hard day. He will give us peace during the tough parts. He will be all we need anyone to be for us and far more. He may ask us to do hard things, but he won’t be hard on us. No matter our current situation, the deepest truth about our work is that Jesus is over it and in it all. His gospel goes everywhere.

And on top of all that, there is another truth to remember in our work: there is a great inheritance.

THERE IS A GREAT INHERITANCE (24)

Look at verse 24. We are to work hard, “knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

Here is a truth we know and a promise we receive. Because we are in Christ, who is all in all, who is the firstborn of all creation, we know that from him, we will receive something: an inheritance. Paul calls this the reward. Then, he connects that with another truth. You are serving the Lord Christ. You may serve your boss, but if you are a Christian, you serve Jesus first and foremost. Nothing in your life is outside your relationship with him. He’s all in. He wants you to know that, and he seals it with a blood-bought promise of a heavenly inheritance.

I can’t help but think of the slave’s situation here. Think of the suffering at work. Every task reminds them of their status. 1 Peter 1:3-4 comes to mind. “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” There is gospel hope! A slave has no hope of an inheritance in this world. He has only to work and then die. Then Jesus comes along and says, “No, dear one. There is a reward for you in me. You can work hard here because this life isn’t all there is. One day you will be with me in my glory and share in all I have. You are a co-heir with me, the Son of the living God. All I ask is that you trust me now. Follow me. I will lead you to paradise. And I will show you that your work was not in vain.”

How do you think that changes the way we spend our days? And because our days are made up of so much work, mustn’t it also change how we work? We don’t need to scratch for a dollar hoping to build a life of ease and comfort and security in this world. Let me let you in on a little secret: no amount of money is ever enough to secure you from your greatest fears. Work must be about more than money. So what about status? Our work is important. It can define who we are. But let me let you in on a little secret: no status is greater than the one we are given freely in Christ—child of God. You receive the heavenly inheritance not by merit but by grace. And that changes everything. All you need work to do for you is already given freely by the grace of Christ. If you rest in that, then you’ll start doing your work as he intended all along. It will suddenly satisfy you in a way it never could before. Only when you receive the grace of Christ for your work will you ever be able to find contentment in work. Jesus has already given you all the riches of heaven, all the status of a child of God, all the comfort of abundant life, all the security of eternity.

When you realize what you’ve been given by Christ, you actually are then free to do your best work. You can serve without fear. You can work hard knowing rest is coming. You can accomplish tasks you deem beneath you because Jesus asked you to do them, and how can you say no to him? Who knows what he might do with even the smallest task done unto him? He can change the world through that. He has many times before. Our work is not a wilderness where we go looking for God. It is a garden God gives us to cultivate for his sake. He comes walking in it with us. You need to know that.

J.R.R Tolkien feared he would never finish The Lord of the Rings. In that despair, he wrote a short story called Leaf by Niggle. Niggle, whose name means “to work in a fiddling or ineffective way,” was a painter commissioned to paint a grand tree. He never could get it out on the canvas. All he could manage was to paint a single leaf. He comes to the end of his life with nothing more than that leaf. It’s hung in a museum as Leaf: by Niggle. A few people see it. Was it all a waste?

Niggle then goes to the afterlife. On his journey, he hears two voices. One is the voice of Justice that reprimands him for wasting so much time. The other is the voice of Mercy, who is much kinder, promising a reward. As he nears the destination, he notices something. “Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished; its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and yet had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. ‘It is a gift!’ he said.”

Here’s the point. The leaf wasn’t a waste of time. It was a request not from his earthly boss but from Jesus himself. Part of Niggle’s reward was the completion of the task. His life’s work was but a leaf on Jesus’s great tree. Your work is like that too, and one day you will see the fullness of it. One day, you will enter God’s rest. One day, you will receive the inheritance because you are serving the Lord Christ.

Now, one more thing to see in verse 25 and extending into chapter 4, verse 1. There is a just reward for our work.

THERE IS A JUST REWARD (25-1)

All we’ve seen so far has been directed at the workers. In 4:1, the attention is turned to the masters. But verse 25 is a bit ambiguous. Look at it. “For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.” Is it directed at workers or masters? I think it’s directed at both. Both parties can do wrong, and the wrongdoer will be repaid for his wrong. In God, there is no partiality. It doesn’t matter if you are powerful and can get away with something. It doesn’t matter if you are so lowly no one will notice you not working as you ought. God sees and knows everything, and he doesn’t care who you are in this world. Everyone is below him. And he is just. He’s the perfect Judge. Home plate umpire Pat Hoberg had a perfect game in the World Series the other night. He called every pitch perfectly. All true strikes were strikes. All true balls were balls. That’s the kind of judge God is. It doesn’t matter if it’s the clean-up hitter in the box or the ace on the mound. He calls it as it is.

That’s actually really comforting, isn’t it? No one is getting away with anything. This truth gives hope to the servant as it gives a warning to the master. You might feel taken advantage of, but if you are, God knows about that. You might think something is unfair, but if it is, God sees it. No one is getting away with anything. All that is wrong will come to light and be made right in the end because God’s eye is perfect. From heaven’s perspective, earthly masters and slaves are in the same boat: all under God.

Now, chapter 4, verse 1, is clearly written to masters. “Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” Notice how Paul connects the logic of who God is to who masters ought to be. God is a Master, and he’s a certain kind of Master. He goes about his business justly and fairly. He expects his under-masters to do the same. Masters may be masters, but they have a Master too. As masters expect their workers to obey, Jesus expects masters to obey.

This means masters cannot be harsh with their servants. Bosses can’t be harsh with their employees. They are to be fair and just. This sounds easier than it is. When someone works for us, it is far too easy to think too lowly of them, to assume the worst rather than the best, to pass the work you are supposed to do down to those who have other, more important tasks, and to over-burden and under-resource and discourage the worker. The boss has a lot of responsibility, but none greater than to treat those under him or her well. Jesus is watching how we treat those under our supervision.

Of course, Jesus is our model here, just as he is our power to live it out. He is our Lord. What kind of Master is he? How do we need to change in light of who he is? He will forgive us for our failures, and he will empower us to do it his way.

We will all one day fall under the judgment of God for how we lived our lives. If we are in Christ, even our greatest and most damning sins will be wholly forgiven. If we are not, even our greatest deeds will be condemned. Our only hope is to find ourselves hidden in Christ. And when we are, as the author of Hebrews says, “God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name” (Heb. 6:10). On that great and final day, we want to hear that we did well with what he had given us.

Alongside that, our work displays the glory of Jesus in this world. Think of what the Roman world would have seen in the master-slave relationship inside the Christian church! How different it was from the world’s way. How honoring to Jesus. Their work was bound up in his work. The world was seeing a different way to live—a gospel way.

CONCLUSION

I’ll close with this.

Jesus is saying to us today that the motivation for our good, hard work is not to be noticed by him but comes from already being noticed by him. We are under his kind watch. He is not only infusing our work with his grace to honor and glorify him and provide goods and services to others that help them flourish, but he is also receiving all our work unto himself as service to him. No task is meaningless. How could it be? Jesus is in it.

Isn’t that amazing? Is there an area of life that the gospel does not change? There isn’t. That’s the point. Even slaves have meaning now. Even tasks no one else notices are holy moments of service to the King of the Universe. He sees it. He honors it. He rewards it.

So, let’s go and do it, looking to Jesus and trusting him moment by moment.

Let’s pray.

Let’s open the Bible now to Colossians 3:12-17. The old self is dead, and the new self is now alive in Christ. One of the gifts of that new self is a new way to live together, and that’s our subject today.

Let’s read the passage now.

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This is God’s word.

INTRODUCTION

In his book The Church Before the Watching World, Francis Schaeffer said (page 62):

One cannot explain the explosive dynamite of the early church apart from the fact that they practiced two things simultaneously: orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community in the midst of the visible church, a community which the world could see. By the grace of God, therefore, the church must be known simultaneously for its purity of doctrine and the reality of its community.

In Colossians 3, we see the gospel culture that gospel doctrine creates. Gospel doctrine is what we believe: the gospel, the message of God’s grace for the undeserving. Gospel culture is the lived experience that doctrine creates. As Ray Ortlund says, “Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. The message of grace creates a culture of grace.” (Ortlund, The Gospel, page 21) When a church has gospel doctrine plus gospel culture, that church is a powerful witness to the watching world. The true test of a gospel-centered church is the doctrine it says it believes plus the culture it actually experiences.

Now, a wonderful thing about God is that what he asks of us, he also gives us the power to do. When we come to a passage like this, prescriptive in nature, we must come to it under the same terms of grace that we come to all of Scripture. God’s call is high, and his grace matches the call. God can create a gospel culture in any church that will simply open themselves to his amazing grace.

In our passage today, Paul exhorts us to put on the new clothes of the gospel to live out a gospel culture. It all starts with where we find our identity. Because we are in Christ, we have his characteristics. This is not something we achieve; it is something God gives. Because we are new people, we have new clothes to wear, which display our new nature and lead to a new community.

So we can break the passage down into three simple points:

1.   Our new identity

2.   Our new nature

3.   Our new community

OUR NEW IDENTITY

In verse 5, Paul commanded us to put to death what is earthly in us. In verse 12, he commands us to put on something new. The grimy clothes of sin are to be exchanged for the glorious clothes of the gospel. God has done something transformational in us. We have a new self. This new self supersedes all other selves. We are Christians now.

So Paul says in verse 12, “Put on then….” Now what he says next matters so much. Everything flows from it. If we don’t let the truth of these next few words settle deep in our hearts, we will never be able to live out the rest of the passage. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved….” Here is the miracle of Christianity for all who believe. Chosen. Holy. Beloved.

We are chosen, holy, and beloved because of the cross of Christ. Jesus paid for our sins and gave us his righteousness. He reconciled us to God on the cross. He didn’t do that for a nameless bunch of people. He did that for you. Why? Because you are God’s chosen one. Because you are his chosen, he made you holy. Because you are chosen, you are his beloved. You didn’t deserve that. You deserved God’s wrath. But in his grace and mercy, he chose you to be his forever. He did all that was necessary to save you from the domain of darkness and transfer you into the kingdom of his beloved son (Col. 1:13). No matter what else you are: a parent, a businessman, an American, whatever, you are first and foremost a Christian—one chosen by God.

This is so massively important to the rest of the passage. It’s Exhibit A that gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. When we find ourselves wonderfully in the love of God, only then will we be able to truly live out his call on our lives. When we see who we are to God, only then will we be able to live as he desires. When we understand that we are his, by his choice, we can live freely with others. We have to see the grace of this doctrine. We have to understand this isn’t because we knew the right people or paid the set dues or earned our spot on the team. God simply chose us and brought us in by his grace.

So much goes wrong when we are trying to fight up the hill of holiness in our own strength. But when we see that we are made holy in Christ, the weight of the world drops off our shoulders. So much goes wrong when we constantly pine to be loved deep down. But when we see that we are loved by God, and his love took Jesus to the cross, we find peace. Being loved changes us more than anything else. It gives us the power to live as God asks us to live more than anything else.

Paul says on the front end that we are loved by God, by his choice. We are not coercing God to love us. He loves us because he loves us. If God loved us because of something he saw that was loveable in us, we would never have peace. How could we? We might change. We might disappoint him. He might get sick of us at some point, and like we’ve experienced so many times with human love, he might decide to leave us. But that’s not how God’s love for us works. Nothing in us compelled God to love us, so nothing in us can compel him to unlove us. God loves us despite our sins. God loves us despite our failures. God loves us because he loves us, and all God asks us to do is accept his love. We don’t have to earn it. We just have to accept it with the empty hands of faith. All the holiness and love we desire deep down is ours for the taking by the grace of God in the Spirit of God by the cross of Christ.

The motivation for the rest of what Paul wants to say to us is grounded in this one simple truth of the gospel: all in Christ are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. Try as we may, we will never live out the rest of this passage if we don’t ground it all in the gospel doctrine of the deep love of God for the undeserving. And conversely, when this gospel doctrine settles on our hearts and keeps settling on our hearts moment by moment as we look to Jesus, the rest of the passage comes naturally. After all, we are new creations in Christ. God’s only asking us to be who we already are in Christ.

It all starts with who you are. Who you are determines what you do. If you are a Christian, you can live as God calls because your identity is a miracle already. The hard part is done. Jesus died to make you holy. The call of all that comes next may sound impossible to live out, but “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)

We are new people now. We are Christians. We are the chosen, the holy, the beloved.

This new identity leads to our new nature. Let’s look at what that is now.

OUR NEW NATURE

We see the new nature beginning in verse 12. It includes certain attributes: compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Verse 13 tells us to bear with and forgive one another. Verse 14 tells us to put on love. Verses 15 and 16 call us to be thankful in all we do. This is all in the context of community. The beauty of the gospel becomes visible to the world in part through the beauty of our relationships with one another. One way we know Jesus is real and living is through the culture of life he creates in his churches.

Paul is paralleling the negative attributes listed in verses 5 and 8. Our old nature was filled with sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. The new clothes are the antithesis of the old clothes, bearing witness to what only God can do among his people.

Now, here’s the amazing thing about this new nature. All these virtues are associated with Jesus himself. When we put on these new clothes, we are putting on Christ. Jesus is not only all these wonderful things for us; he also makes all these wonderful things a reality in us and among us.

Compassionate hearts make us deeply sensitive to the needs and sorrows of others (Wright). Literally translated, it means the “bowels of mercy” (Moo). 1 John 3:17 says, “If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?” That’s the logic of the new nature. We cannot see someone in need and not feel deeply moved as Jesus does. Remember when the leper came to Jesus? “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” (Mark 1:40-41). We may not be able to heal with a touch like Jesus, but he’s asking that we care with his compassion—the compassion that takes us close to the weak and needy.

Kindness makes us Christlike toward others, loving them as we love ourselves. We are good to one another like Jesus is to us. He bends down to the children and welcomes them (Matt. 19:14). He makes room for the outsiders and the outcasts (Mark 2:13-17). He goes to the well to talk to the woman no one else would dare be seen with (John 4). He extends kindness. That can be exhausting, but when we wonder if we can go on, Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heaven laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 28:11). We have a kind savior who creates and sustains kind people.

Humility is the beauty of self-forgetfulness, where we consider others more important than ourselves. It is the low place Jesus took when he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:7-8). We don’t have to be impressive. We can stoop low because Jesus did.

Meekness means we stop jockeying for position. We are not impressed by our own self-importance. The word could be translated as “gentle.” Jesus is the most magnificent person in the universe, yet he is gentle and lowly at heart (Matt. 11:29). A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench (Isa. 42:3; Matt. 12:20). In a world of harshness, we are to be meek and gentle, like Jesus.

Patience means we bear with one another. We don’t pressure each other to change quickly but give time and safety under the gospel to let Jesus change us from one degree of glory to another in his timing, not ours. Jesus was patient with his disciples, who, again and again, just didn’t get it. But he knew they would when he was lifted up on the cross and resurrected on the third day. Gospel truth compels us to be patient and let God do his work. Where would you be without the patience of God? I know some people are difficult to live with. They grate on our nerves, and sometimes we just wish they’d go away. We don’t click with everyone. But Jesus can click with any personality type. And for his sake, he calls us to bear with one another. Like a tapestry made of many parts, the beauty of the gospel is seen in the varied people God unites.

Our new nature gives us the power to forgive. The forgiveness he lavishes on us flows out to others. As Jesus said in the parable of the unforgiving servant, we are not to hold others’ sins against them but to forgive them freely and fully as the Lord has forgiven us. Jesus’s forgiveness is not only our example but also our power.

I was recently reminded of this power. My family and I just got back from Washington, D.C. We went to the Holocaust Museum and learned about the horror of Hitler’s Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. I remember a story from Corrie Ten Boom, who, with her family, was sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews in their home. Her father was killed. Her sister, Betsie, also died in the camp. Corrie survived. One day after the war, she spoke on forgiveness at a church. Afterward, one of the guards at the concentration camp came forward to greet her. Here’s what she said about that day.

      It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

      He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message.’ He said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who preached so often to the people the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

      Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

      I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

      As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

      And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

That’s the new nature of the gospel. Perhaps nothing shows it as powerfully as forgiveness.

Then there is love. Love is what binds this all together. Without love, it's all just clanging symbols, a bunch of noise (1 Cor.13:1). Forgiveness might be the most shocking of the new nature, but love is the key that drives it all. It’s the outer garment that holds it all together. In every interaction, love is to set the tone. Love is to lead. It was love that compelled God to send his Son. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son” (John 3:16). Only when love is real will unity be real, and that is Paul’s aim. As Jesus said, they will know us by our love (John 13:35). Love from God flows into God’s beloved, and love from the beloved flows out to others. It’s a river of love, sweeping others into its flow.

Finally, our new nature makes us thankful in everything we do. Jesus was the perfect model of this. He thanked his Father for everything constantly. He accepted with thanksgiving every good thing and every hard thing. He only asks us to do the same. And shouldn’t we? All we want most deeply is ours in Christ and will be forever. Christ has saved us! Jesus has restored our fortunes. He has paid for our sins. He has promised abundant life. He is coming again to restore this broken world. He is going to make everything sad come untrue. He is our Lord and Savior, and he will never leave us nor forsake us. He will love us when we’re unlovable. He will be gracious and merciful forever. He will care for us in all our needs and sorrows. He will go before us in all our trials. He will stand with us when no one else will. He will be for us even though the world is against us. He will be all we need anyone to be for us and more. The new nature is kind of like Whoville. The Grinch can take what he wants, but he can’t take our joy. He can’t take our thankfulness. He can’t take our song.

That’s the new nature our new identity creates. Now, the new community that flows from it all.

OUR NEW COMMUNITY

Our new identity and our new nature create a new community. Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. All that Paul has said applies to each one of us individually, but when individuals like that gather, God creates among them a radiant community centered on his gospel and sustained by his love. God calls that a church.

The key verse is verse 15. “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” Our way forward in beauty and unity and radiance in the gospel is by letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. The Greek word for “rule” refers to “umpire.” What do umpires do? They render a verdict on situations. They call balls and strikes. They call safe or out. They interpret the rules and apply them. In baseball, it is the official rule book that is the decisive factor. In the church, it’s the peace of Christ.

When the peace of Christ rules in a church, that church shines bright for all the world to see. Have you noticed how unpeaceful the world is? You can’t open social media without witnessing a fight. How many office meetings tomorrow morning will be filled with tension? How many ex-coworkers and ex-friends and ex-whatevers in the world will be created just in this next week? But inside the church, as we let the peace of Christ rule, we find a way forward even when the light ahead is dim. We have been united by Christ, and his kingdom is a kingdom of peace. He is a ruler of peace. Whatever our disagreements may be, however much we may be suspicious of others, we are to deal with it all in terms of the peace Christ has made. He has reconciled us to God. Can he not bring peace among us? We do not have a dead savior. In all our disputes, he is living and active.

Verse 16 helps us see one way the peace of Christ can rule in our hearts. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly….” The word of Christ means, essentially, the gospel. The Bible is front and center. It’s where we see the gospel in black and white. It’s on the authority of the Bible that we teach and admonish one another. But notice also what else Paul mentions: singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Then, to expand it even further, he says in verse 17, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” In other words, Paul is presenting a community in which the message of the gospel of Christ is preeminent, where Christ is all in all in the Church’s individual and corporate experience. The gospel must go deep in us and wide among us.

When the gospel goes deep and wide, God creates a radiant community that proves the gospel is true. Now, the gospel is true whether we act like it or not. We don’t make the gospel true; God does. But we can bear witness to it. We can say to the watching world, “Here’s what Jesus can do.” The church is where the gospel is field-tested for real life (Ray Ortlund, The Gospel, page 66).

The church is the model house in the new neighborhood God is building in this world. We have a message of grace that frees captives from sin and death. We have a Savior who loves and cares and saves the undeserving. The center of the church must be Jesus and Jesus alone. And we must never leave him nor stray from his message.

When we put on the new clothes of Jesus, we become in God’s gracious hands the kind of community everyone in this world longs for. A place where they can be loved and forgiven and find freedom and peace and safety. Here’s how we get there. We look to Jesus alone, and we never stop looking. We let him define us, and we stop defining ourselves. We let him be the center and stop putting ourselves there in that sacred circle where only he belongs. We live a life of faith, moment by moment, letting the peace of Christ rule and letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and we become in his merciful hands a thoroughly thankful community that looks like an outpost of heaven on earth.

It’s not easy, but it is possible because we aren’t who we once were. We’re new creations in Christ, empowered by his Spirit to live as he desires. In all our needs, he is there. In all our failures, he is our success. All we have to do is humbly submit to his way of life, and then we will see what only God can do, and it will be radiant, and it will say to this world, “Jesus is beautiful. Come and see.” And we will be happy beyond our wildest dreams. It won’t be easy. Living for Jesus never is. But it will be glorious. And, really, what choice do we have? It’s who God has made us to be. Isn’t that amazing? Who could ask for a more glorious community? That’s what God is granting. All we have to do is accept it and live into it, by his power, for his glory, and for our joy.

Let’s pray.

Let’s open the Bible to Colossians 2:16-23. Last week, Paul exulted in our life in Christ, who has overcome all earthly and demonic opposition. Today, Paul fleshes out what it means for us to live as new creations now that Christ has triumphed over all other powers.

Let’s read it now.

COLOSSIAN 2:16-23

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

INTRODUCTION

Here’s an important question we must all answer at some point. How do you know you are truly a Christian?

How do you know?

Are there certain things you do? Certain things you don’t do? Certain things you know that others don’t?

How do you know you’re a Christian?

That was the question the Colossians faced. Someone was questioning their Christianity, judging them, and deeming them religiously insufficient. They were told they needed Jesus, plus something: the proper ascetic lifestyle and religious rule-following. But Jesus, plus something, though it may be a religion, is not Christianity. Jesus, plus anything, is a distortion of the gospel. It is an offense to the free grace of God in Christ.

Listen to what Jesus says in John 6:63. “The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh is no help at all.” Did Jesus say the flesh is some help? He said the flesh is no help at all. We cannot define our Christianity by what we do in the flesh. It is no help at all. We must define our Christianity by what God has done for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel is news we receive, not a badge we earn. The gospel is not Jesus plus; it is Jesus only.

The gospel does not come to us in our Father’s wisdom to say, “Here’s an outline of life if you’d like to use it for yours.” The gospel does not come to us from the nail-pierced hands of Jesus our Savior and say, “Here’s my body and blood to give you a boost.” The gospel is not spoken to the deep places of our hearts by the Spirit to say, “You can do it, and here’s a little internal motivation.” No, the gospel proclaims over us, “You are redeemed by God finally and fully, for God’s glory and by his grace. The only thing you contributed to this finished work is the sin that made salvation necessary. But that is taken care of in the cross of Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

There is the temptation to come to God with more than empty hands, but he asks for nothing more. Listen to what the Bible says. In Isaiah 55:1-2, God speaks through his prophet, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” In Matthew 28:11, Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” We don’t bring our resumes. We don’t list our achievements. We come with nothing. In fact, to come with anything but nothing is to not come at all.

There are no conditions we must meet. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Charles Spurgeon said, “Between that word ‘save’ and the next word ‘sinners,’ there is no adjective. It does not say, ‘penitent sinners,’ ‘awakened sinners,’ ‘sensible sinners,’ ‘grieving sinners,’ or ‘alarmed sinners.’ No, it only says, ‘sinners.’” The only qualification we need for the salvation of Christ is our need. We need only be a sinner. We bring the sin. He provides the saving. No need to qualify yourself through deeds. No need to clean yourself first. There is only the call to come. The gospel call of God is a simple one. I might say even an easy one. It is a light one. It is an inviting one. It is a promise to save all who merely come to him, who go straight to him with the empty hands of faith. Nothing else is needed. When we come, we find in him the fullness of salvation, with all the benefits we could ever have in Christ, now and forever, fully and freely given to us.

Some people in Colossae believed that was good enough for a start, but it doesn’t take you to the deep end. Some people today believe that too. But the gospel isn’t merely the start of our journey. It’s not just the doorway but the pathway. The gospel is not something we graduate from and then go on to get our Ph.D. in spirituality by other means. The way to a deeper spirituality is to dive into the gospel deeps. The deeper in we go, the bigger it gets, and the more holy we become.  Not because of what we are doing, but because of what Jesus is doing in us.

So to the question, “How do you know you are a Christian?” the answer is not more difficult than saying boldly by faith, “Because Jesus saved me.” True spirituality does not consist of outward appearances by inward reality with Christ.

To encourage these Colossian believers, Paul wants to confront the false teachers and break the bonds they attempted to tie around the church. Paul does this in three exhortations.

1. Only God can judge you (16-17)

2. Only God can qualify you (18-19)

3. Only God can free you (20-23)

ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE YOU (16-17)

Inside the Colossian church was a self-appointed jury that looked out on others with judgment upon their spiritual lives. There was an Inner Ring claiming the inside scoop on true spirituality.

So far in Colossians, we haven’t heard exactly what the false teaching was, but we see some specifics starting in verse 16. It included abstaining from certain food and drink and observing certain days: festivals, new moons, and the Sabbath. This sounds like Jewish law. Most scholars don’t believe this was purely a Jewish heresy, but whatever it was, it included Jewish elements.  Regardless of its roots, the false teachers set the boundaries of true spirituality around these doctrines and judged others accordingly. Paul wants both parties, especially those who cling to Jesus as their only hope, to know that this judgment is wrong. No man can judge another. Only God can judge. And God has already passed his judgment on these Christians on the cross of Christ.

As we saw last week, God forgives our trespasses and cancels our debt by nailing it to the cross. Jesus was perfect in every way. He never sinned. But on the cross, Jesus was judged for our sins as if they were his sins, as our substitute. This is why the cross is called the great exchange. All our sin was placed on Jesus, and in return, all his righteousness was granted to us. So now it is not only just as if we never sinned but also as if we have always obeyed.

If that’s true, who is left to judge these Colossians? If God has judged and acquitted in Christ, there is no higher court of appeal. That’s Paul’s point. No one can judge you now because, in Christ, you have been judged and found not guilty by grace. That’s not only true when you first believe, but it remains true for the rest of your life. Every day, you are as free as if Jesus died for you yesterday.

Now, in fairness, perhaps the false teachers would agree Jesus paid for our sins, but they still held to a certain path as the way to true spirituality. But that is only a new law. Like the Old Testament law, it’s only a shadow of the things to come. As Paul said in Romans 7:4, when Christ died, “You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead.” If we have died to the law, what good is it to live to it again, as if it can give something Jesus can’t?

Paul says these false teachers are merely chasing shadows. They’re after the old age, but the new age has come. The law was a shadow of the good things to come (Heb. 10:1). The substance belongs to Christ. He is the fulfillment of the law, and we have that fullness now in him. Why then go back to the law?

The problem can be boiled down to one word: legalism. Legalism is the idea that we earn favor with God through works. Obedience is important. God requires it. But it does not gain us favor with him. We have all the favor we will ever need in Christ by grace. Our works add nothing to that, any more than the works of your children add to your love for them. You love them because you love them, and for those in Christ, God loves you because he loves you.

Maybe you’re a child with many siblings, and you know your parents love you, but you’re the black sheep of the family. No way your parents love you like your all-star brother or sister. I doubt that’s true, but let’s just grant for a moment it is. Is that how God loves? With degrees of affection? No. He loves you as he loves Christ. The doctrine of the adoption of God means we are adopted as sons and daughters in Christ. As Jesus prayed in John 17:23, “You…have loved them even as you have loved me.” You have the fullness of God’s love and favor in Christ freely and fully.

But legalism says you don’t. Legalism establishes requirements of moral conduct beyond what the Bible teaches and then sets the boundaries of true spirituality and acceptance dependent upon adhering to those requirements. In its ugliest form, legalism forces that theology on others. The only way someone is fully “in” is to fully obey their rules, and faith becomes a side-bar issue. Works are what really matter. This is what happened to the Colossians. Legalists were excluding Christians from the Church. The problem is, they aren’t in charge. Jesus is.

One of my favorite phrases is “the finished work of Christ.” When Jesus died on the cross, he did not say, “My part is done, now your turn.” No. He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Jesus lived the perfect life we failed to live and, on the cross, atoned for all our sins to set us right with God now and forever. He finished that work and was raised on the third day. What Jesus has accomplished and filled up on our behalf, he does not also ask us to do to earn his favor. What God has deemed finished, let no man continue.

God asks us to obey him, yes, but out of his fullness of grace, not as a path to it. We obey because we are loved, not to be loved. We obey because we have spiritual life in him, not to gain it. True spirituality is found in Christ alone, in communion with him, in living inside his gospel promises, in going into the gospel deeps, not in eating or drinking the right things or observing the right days, but in loving the Savior and following him only.

That’s God’s judgment, and only he can judge you. Secondly, only God can qualify you.

ONLY GOD CAN QUALIFY YOU (18-19)

Paul cast off their judge in verses 16 and 17, and in verses 18 and 19, he goes after their self-appointed referee, who proclaimed they violated the rules of the game and therefore were disqualified. Whereas before it was a matter of dos and don’ts, now it is a matter of whos and whats. Who do they worship, and to what are they holding fast?

They insist on asceticism, which is a Greek word for humility. They thought themselves humble for their actions, but it was a false humility. True humility doesn’t hold others to its standard. It goes to the low place. Their humility lifted them above others as judges and referees. It puffed them up. In the area of worship, they venerated angels. This was common in the ancient world. The author of Hebrews confronted something similar. They also go on about their visions. They are puffed up by a sensuous mind. In a word, they are misfocused, looking at things other than Jesus.

The key for these false teachers is this mysticism that seems spiritual and supposedly leads one to the “fullness of life” but is not Christ-centered. Too many other things are crowded in with him. Jesus may have a seat at the table, but he’s one of the board members, not the one head.

That’s an easy reality for us to fall into. We can crowd our lives with all kinds of “spiritual” things, but the one true source of spiritual health is Jesus and him alone. True spirituality is found only in Christ because the fullness of deity dwells in him (2:9). Fullness is not found in the angels. It’s not found in mysticism. It’s not found in asceticism. It’s found in Jesus alone. Anything done apart from holding fast to Jesus is a dead end. It may claim spirituality, but it is the opposite. The only truly spiritual people are those who hold fast to the Head because the body is nourished and knit together with growth from God.

Francis Schaeffer said, “This is where true worship is found: not in stained-glass windows, candles, or altarpieces, not in contentless experiences, but in communion with the God who is there—communion for eternity, and communion now, with the infinite-personal God as Abba, Father.”

It comes down to one simple thing, communion with God. That’s why Paul says in verse 19 that the problem with all this extra stuff is that it leads to a puffed-up mind. It doesn’t do anything at all to connect one to Jesus. Whether one is a Christian is not their observance of dietary laws of observance of days or even their super-spiritual lifestyle but whether one belongs to Jesus. It’s not about a certain experience but a certain reality—reality with Christ. Jesus must be not only a board member but the only leader of your life.

Paul uses the illustration of a body in verse 19. A body has only one head, and for the church communally and the Christian individually, that is Jesus. We are nourished by him. We are knit together through joints and ligaments, and the growth is from God himself, apart from all other things. If you are in Christ, you are a part of his body. A body part does not qualify itself. Merely being joined is enough.

True spirituality is Jesus reigning and ruling and guiding and leading and caring and providing and nourishing our life. If we have him, he will take us to the deep places of true spirituality. If we leave him, no matter how spiritual we may look on the outside, we are but whitewashed tombs inside.

Jesus joined us to himself. Let’s not cut ourselves off. No one can say to a body part, “You don’t belong.” Let no one say it to you, either.

Only God can judge you. Only God can qualify you. And third, only God can free you.

ONLY GOD CAN FREE YOU (20-23)

Verse 20 takes us into the crux of Paul’s argument. It is the same as what we saw last week. It all hinges on the death of Christ and our death in him at the cross. Notice the logic Paul uses. Everything the false teaching did was only enslavement to the things of this world. But “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?” The false teaching said if you would only do these things and not do these other things, you will find spiritual freedom. But that was a lie. It looks good, but it’s ineffective. Rules and regulations can never free you. Only God can free you.

True spirituality is not a negative reality but a positive one. Galatians 5:1 says, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” God’s desire is not our continued enslavement to this world or the powers of this world but rather freedom in Christ to live as we were made to live. So many people look at religion and see only shackles. I understand why they do. If we define our spirituality in terms of dos and don’ts, I don’t know why anyone would ever want it. But if we define our spirituality in terms of freedom in Christ, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want it.

So what does it mean to be free in Christ? Let’s just think about that for a little while as we close this sermon.

To be free in Christ means we are dead to everything unholy in this world. We are no longer slaves to our sinful desires. We may not always win the battle, but Jesus won the war for us. Sin may tempt us and sometimes even trip us, but it can never rule again.

To be free in Christ means we are dead to the law, which, though a gift of grace from God, was only our schoolmaster to keep us until the coming of Christ who can free us. Because Jesus obeyed the law perfectly and gave his perfection to us in his sacrifice on the cross, we now have the power to obey in a way we never did before. It’s not just a clean slate; it’s the righteousness of Christ that is ours for the taking.

To be free in Christ means we don’t need to be impressive because we are fully known and yet deeply loved. Everyone in this world is afraid of being found out. But God sees and knows everything in your life, and all it did was give him even more reason to save you. God knows your deepest fears and longings and regrets and temptations and all the rest, and he lavishes his love and grace and mercy upon you in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, moment by moment.

To be free in Christ means you are fully qualified for heaven right now. You didn’t earn it because you couldn’t. God gave it freely in Christ. He earned it for you. He is your entry ticket. More than that, he is your life. Your life is bound up with his. You are hidden in him. You are seated with him. All you want most deeply is found in him and can never be lost and will never fade. Your future is incredibly bright, and you nor anyone else can do anything to change that. No one can snatch you from his hands.

To be free in Christ means more than we can even say here today. It will take eternity for us to plumb the depths, and there will still be more.

In Christ, you have all you will ever need. Cling to him. Don’t chase shadows. Hug the substance. Don’t cut yourself off. Hold fast to the Head. Don’t live for this world. Rejoice in your death in Christ. Even more, rejoice in your life in him.

Let’s pray.

INTRODUCTION

Let’s open the Bible now to Colossians 1:15-20.

Last week, we saw Paul’s prayer that the Colossian Christians would be filled and strengthened with the knowledge of God. Then, as if answering his prayer, Paul praises Jesus through words that can’t do anything but fill us and strengthen us in the knowledge of God.

Some scholars believe this passage is a quotation from an ancient Christian hymn. Maybe some of your Bibles even have it formatted as poetry. That may be true. Whatever the case, we’ve moved beyond introductions now, and Paul launches into a description of Jesus that stands as one of the most majestic in all of the Bible.

The most important person in existence is lifted up, and like a diamond, he is turned so that we see his many facets of glory.

 So, let’s read it now.

         15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

      16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him

      17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

      18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the       dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

      19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

      20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

This is God’s word.

Here’s how a passage like this really helps us. We live our days mired in the details of life. We go to work, take the kids to school or go to school ourselves, do our chores, watch TV, and so on. Throughout our day, we are bombarded with news and information and so forth. We walk around with our heads down. We look at our screens. We look at what’s in front of us. And all the stuff of life starts to weigh heavy upon us. Our vision gets small and focused. Before long, we start redefining our life according to what we see in front of us. That can lead to several problems. Small things become big things. Anxiety grows. Wrong, inflated views of ourselves increase. We start to define life on our terms. The more inward-focused we get, the more out of focus ultimate reality gets. We start to believe something other than Jesus is at the center of the universe.

Then we come to a passage like this, and we are confronted with a God so big and mighty and glorious that we start to rethink what really matters. We start to see that ultimate reality is not what we make it. Ultimate reality is who God is. So who is he?

We’ll organize the passage this way:

1. The Supremacy of Jesus (verses 15-17)

2. The Leadership of Jesus (verse 18)

3. The Reconciliation of Jesus (verses 19-20)

Just so you know, my first point is as long as the final two points. So when you look at your watch when we get to point 2, don’t worry.

THE SUPREMACY OF JESUS (verses 15-17)

Let’s not forget our context. The Colossians were confronted with destructive teaching about Christianity. Paul writes this letter to defeat that wrong teaching. So how did he do that? By lifting Jesus up for the church to see. That’s always the best way. When we see Jesus, it’s easy to see wrong theology. But when we take our eyes off Jesus, all kinds of wrong things can slip into our minds and find a home there. What these Colossians needed, and what we need, is a big vision of the glorious Jesus. We need to see how sufficient he really is. We do not need anything else. Jesus is enough. When we start thinking something else is better, something else is needed, we need to come back and stare at Jesus.

So let’s start staring at him.

We’ll take it bit by bit. Look at the first half of verse 15. “He is the image of the invisible God.”

This is not the only place in the Bible we see this language. John said something similar in the opening chapter of his gospel. “No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). The author of Hebrews uses a similar phrase when he refers to Jesus as “the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus himself said in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

So what does it mean that Jesus is the image of God? It means Jesus represents God. He shows us who God is. How does he do that? I have four children. Two take after me, and two look like Sarah. Andy, for example, is basically the spitting image of me at his age. Is that what Paul means—that Jesus looks like his Father? Well, yes, and no. We can’t say that in the physical sense because God the Father is invisible. So Jesus must image him in another way. What way? In his essence. In his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, holiness—in all the invisible attributes.

Now, in a way, I think this helps us see the point even more clearly. If my son looks like me, you can say he is an image of me, but that’s only surface level. Do we share the same temperament? Are we the same person underneath our skin? With Jesus, the answer is yes. Everything that God is, Jesus is. He just puts a face on God in the incarnation. Jesus shows us God because—and here’s the point—he is God. When we look at Jesus, we are looking at God.

In Jesus, God becomes very definite to us. In Jesus, we can point to a specific person who lived in real space and time. The name “god” is used all the time, but how do we know we’re all talking about the same god? The answer is who do we say Jesus is. Is he God? If the god we talk about doesn’t look like Jesus, then it isn’t the true God we’re talking about. The Bible makes it clear: if you accept Jesus, you accept God; if you don’t accept Jesus, you don’t accept God. No more than any other person, God is not someone we get to define. He defines himself, and he reveals himself in the visible Jesus.

Now, Jesus is also the image of God in another way. Think back to the beginning of the Bible when God created everything. In what way did he create man and woman? In his image. Our sin kind of messed that up. We’re not very good image-bearers, are we? But what about Jesus? The Bible tells us he never sinned. But in the incarnation, as the eternal God stepped into our world and took on flesh, he became the perfect image of God in the Genesis sense as well. He became the perfect image-bearer we failed to be.

So Jesus is both the image of the invisible God and the perfect image of humanity, made in God’s image.

Therefore, we have a double blessing as we behold Jesus. We see God as he truly is, and we see ourselves as we will one day truly be. We see God because Jesus is God. We see ourselves as we will one day be because Jesus, in his humanity, became the perfect image-bearer and showed us who we will become in him by the power of his resurrection. So as we follow Jesus, we are following God, and he is making us more our true selves. Jesus does not remove our humanity from us. He gives it back, redeemed and restored. By the way, this is how we find our truest self—by following Jesus and letting him mend our broken humanity.

Paul goes on. Look at the second half of verse 15. Jesus is “the firstborn of all creation.”

This is an easy phrase to misunderstand. What is Paul really saying? Is he saying Jesus is the first created being? That’s what Jehovah’s Witnesses say today. But that’s not a new heresy. It’s an old one.

In the 4th century, there was a man named Arius who denied the deity of Jesus by asserting there was a time when the Son did not exist. In his desire to protect monotheism, he said that while God has always existed, the Son has not. There was a point at which the Father became a Father. He didn’t deny the holiness of Jesus, just the infinity and equality of Jesus with God. Now, the Bible clearly presents God as a Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But to Arius, the Trinity was not an eternal reality.

This heresy, known as Arianism, spread around the ancient world until, eventually, at the council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the Church officially distinguished between two words that Arius smushed together to mean the same thing. Those two words were “begotten” and “made.” Begotten is a biblical word. You recognize it from maybe the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” Does that mean God made Jesus? Arius thought so. But if that is true, it means Jesus isn’t really God because he is a creation of God, and the created can never be the creator. There is a difference in nature. But the Bible does not distinguish the nature of the Son from the nature of the Father nor from the nature of the Spirit. The Triune God is one in nature.

So how did the council of Nicaea resolve this? They resolved it by expounding on the word begotten and how it related to God the Father and God the Son. The key distinction comes down to a doctrine known as the eternal generation of the Son. That’s a good five-dollar theological word for you. Obviously, to be a son means to be from a father. But when talking about God, does it mean the Father created the Son, or does it mean something else? In God, this generation is an eternal act, not as an act of creation but as an act of eternal reality in himself. If Jesus was never sent into the world to save it, he would still be the Son because his sonship does not depend on creation at all. He is the eternal Son from the Father regardless of creation. Jesus has always existed as God, with God. There was never a time when the Father was not the Father, and there was never a time when the Son was not the Son, and there was never a time when the Spirit was not the Spirit. The Son is called the Son because he is eternally generated from the Father, not as a different creation of him, but from the same eternal, infinite, immutable, impassible, divine essence of God. To affirm Jesus as he really is requires we affirm his whole divinity—he is of the same essence as God the Father and God the Spirit.

They hashed all this out at the council of Nicaea. Whatever we might think of ancient people, we can’t say they were dumb, can we? This is hard stuff!

At the council of Nicaea, they wrote the Nicene Creed. It is one of the most important statements of faith in Church history. That creed says Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”

Now, in a way, that’s a sidebar to our text today, but it’s important we understand Jesus was not made. Jesus is the eternal God. There are other clues in our text today that affirm this. For example, I couldn’t help but notice a phrase in verses 15, 17, and 18—“he is.” He is the image of God. He is before all things. He is the head of the body. Jesus is. Not he was or he will be, but he is. He has existed eternally with God, as God, in the person of the Son. He is as the Father is, the great I AM.

So if Paul isn’t saying Jesus is the first created being, then what is he saying? He’s using firstborn language in the sense of priority. In the ancient world, if you were the firstborn, everything was yours by right. That’s what Paul means. Everything belongs to Jesus by right as the eternal Son, and because he is God, he is the ruler and creator of it all.

That’s why Paul says in verse 16—notice the prepositions—“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” If all things were created by him and through him, he cannot be among those things created because then it wouldn’t be all things. It would be almost all things. But Jesus stands above all.

Notice that Paul includes heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. He doesn’t leave anything out, does he? As Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” Jesus is supreme over it all. Jesus rules heaven just as he rules earth. Jesus rules over things we can’t even see, just as he rules over what we can see. There are things in the depths of the ocean and in the expanse of space we haven’t yet seen, but Jesus is lord of those things too. There is no power anywhere that Jesus isn’t supreme over.

We owe all we have and all we see and all we are and all that is to Jesus, the Son of God, the King of the universe, the Lord of all. So, as Paul says in verse 17, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Without Jesus, this entire universe ceases to exist. As John Calvin once said, “If God should withdraw his hand a little, all things would immediately perish and dissolve into nothing.”

I want you to see one more thing before we move on. Notice it says all things were created not only by him and through him but also for him. Let’s personalize this a minute. You were created for Jesus. He cares about you because you belong to him. Your life has meaning, and that meaning is not defined by you; it is defined by Jesus. You are not ultimately in charge of your life, and that is very good news because you—the real you—were created for Jesus. He loves you.

Jesus is supreme. He will always be enough. If you are a Christian, there is nothing else you need but Jesus. If you are not a Christian, there is nothing else you need but Jesus. He is the goal and purpose and joy of life.

So that’s the supremacy of Jesus. Next, the leadership of Jesus.

THE LEADERSHIP OF JESUS (verse 18)

Jesus is not only the creator and ruler of all. He is also the leader of worldwide redemption.

In verse 18, we zoom in from all of creation to a specific new creation in Jesus, the church. Paul picks up on a common biblical metaphor for the church: a body. Jesus is the head of that body.

This is fascinating to me. The glorious Jesus, who is supreme over all created things, takes shape in this world in a specific body. What is that body? It’s the Church. Isn’t that fascinating? Of all things he could inhabit, Jesus chose the church. Think of all the governments with worldwide influence. Think of all the famous people. Think of all the nations expanding throughout the world. Think of all the power structures. And what does Jesus choose to be the head of? What body is his? It is the Church.

Here's what that means. If you are a member of Christ’s church, you are a member of Christ’s body, which means you are joined to the One Supreme Lord of all, and he has chosen you to be a part of his cosmic plan in his own body. Your very small, very regular, very ordinary church life is not so small and regular and ordinary as you think. It is as big as Jesus is.

We have to keep reading to see what this means. “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

Again, we have this firstborn language. What does it mean here? In coming to earth, Jesus was bringing something new into the world. Something of which he would be the first of, the beginning of. What was it?

Think of the storyline of the Bible. God created the world and placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and then what happened? They sinned. They cut themselves off from God, and God banished them from the Garden. From that day forward, the world continued in sin. But God did not give up on his people. He planned to send the Son to redeem and restore this broken world and to create a new creation called the Church through which his plan of redemption would flow into the darkness of the world.

How did that new creation come about? When Jesus came to earth, he came as the new Adam. The Bible talks about this. Ladies, you’ll see it in your Bible study when you get to Romans 5. As the new Adam, Jesus came to undo the fall. When he went into the wilderness after his baptism, what did he do? He cast Satan out by the power of the word. He did what Adam should have done in the Garden. When Jesus touched the sick and healed them, what was he doing? He was undoing the effects of sin and death. When Jesus rejected temptation and stayed faithful to God, what was he doing? He was living the life no other human ever did.

Theologians call that the active obedience of Christ. Without it, we have no hope. But there is another obedience of Christ to which this passage pushes us, the passive obedience of Christ—his death on the cross. When Jesus went to the cross, what was he doing? He was fulfilling the sacrificial system, dying on our behalf to pay for our sins and bring us back to God. Then, three days later, he rose from the grave and became the firstborn from the dead. That doesn’t mean he was the first to be raised from the dead. Jesus raised Lazarus. It means Jesus was the first raised from the dead in this way: in perfection and in glory and in the finished work of the cross. The new creation God was creating came through the death of Christ.

As the firstborn of the dead, Jesus ushered in the new age of man—one where glorified bodies do not grow sick or weary or die, where the life we were intended to have in the beginning is given back but now better than before because of the story that’s now been told. This is not a zombie Jesus merely coming back from the dead to live in a half-life kind of existence. This is the redeeming Jesus ushering in new, abundant life as it was meant to be.

Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of the new creation. It is the spark that sets the world on fire. And what did it take? It took his death. The preeminence of Jesus comes not only from who he is in himself but also from the work he has done in his death and resurrection. No one can beat him now. Sin couldn’t do it. Satan couldn’t do it. Death couldn’t do it. Jesus rules. And Jesus leads his new creation, the Church, using his body to bring the gospel to a dying world.

That big gospel story is reflected in the Church. Your little church life isn’t so little, is it?

So that’s the leadership of Jesus. Now, our final point: the reconciliation of Jesus.

THE RECONCILIATION OF JESUS (verses 19-20)

Here is the end to which this passage takes us: the reconciliation of everything to Jesus Christ.

We have not left the earthly work of Jesus in these verses. They are still firmly in mind. “In him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” The past tense doesn’t mean the fullness of God no longer dwells in Jesus. It does and always has and always will. But the work of Jesus on earth in his life, death, and resurrection is the focus. Jesus came with the fullness of God’s will and mission and purpose to do the work of reconciliation.

What is Jesus reconciling to himself? Verse 20 says “all things.” The gospel of Jesus is that big. It’s bigger than you and me. Its effects reach all the way to everything in creation. The Bible tells us that creation waits in eager expectation and that creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth (Romans 8:19,22). But Jesus is reconciling it all to himself. How? This is really important. Listen to this. Jesus reconciles all things to himself by reconciling us to himself. It starts with setting humanity right with God. We are The great problem in the world. When humanity fell, the world fell. All of creation was affected by our sinfulness. For the ground and the trees and the animals and planets and everything else to be made right again, we must be made right. Jesus must reconcile us to himself, and as he does, all things come along too.

But this reconciliation doesn’t just happen. Something must occur for it to come to pass. What is it? The cross of Christ. Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross.

Why his blood? It seems drastic, doesn’t it? Jesus is over all things. Could he not bring reconciliation about another way? The answer must be no because the cross stands at the center of history. The path to heaven is paved by the blood of Jesus.

It had to be this way. We needed Jesus’s blood to atone for our sins. It had to be God’s initiative. It had to be God’s work. We could never attain reconciliation by ourselves. Our blood isn’t sufficient to atone for our sins. The blood of bulls and goats isn’t sufficient to atone for our sins. Only the blood of Jesus, the perfect man, was enough. The only way we could be set right with God is for God to do exactly what he did in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is not that this was merely the best way; it was the only way. There is no other. Our sin is that big. Only Jesus could pay the price.

The reconciliation of Jesus not only brings things back into proper order also gives us something else that we can take hold of right now. Look at the end of verse 20, “making peace by the blood of his cross.” We have peace with God. We were under the wrath of God, but the full measure of that wrath was poured out on Jesus at the cross, and he no longer stands against us because of our sin. In Christ, God has declared peace over us. He has brought us back to himself. Our only part in that peace treaty is the acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus on our behalf.

So here’s what that means for all who trust in Christ today. We all have many sins. But each of us has at least one sin that nags at us still. We can’t seem to get over it. We struggle to accept forgiveness. It looms so large in our minds. It’s the reason we sometimes believe the gospel for others but not for ourselves. It’s the sin we don’t want to think about, but we can’t help thinking about it, usually at night when we can’t sleep. You’re probably thinking of it right now, and a twinge of guilt and shame rises to the surface of your heart.

What has God done with that great big sin? He has paid for it on the cross of Christ. He has forgiven it on the cross of Christ. By that sin, you disconnected yourself from God. But by the blood of Jesus, God reconnected you to himself. He reconciled you to himself. It is not only as if that sin never existed, it is now as if you always obeyed just as Jesus did. You are loved like Jesus, by Jesus, for Jesus’s sake. You are as secure as Christ is. Jesus reconciled you by his blood, and your sin is paid in full.

But the gospel is bigger than just me and you. It is Christ reconciling the world to himself. The Bible says that one day, “Every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, [will say], ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” (Revelation 5:13). Isaiah says, “The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12). As we are reconciled to Christ, creation is reconciled to Christ, and it rejoices. I don’t know what it looks like for the trees to clap. Maybe there really are Ents in this world (Lord of the Rings fans). Whatever that looks like, I can’t wait to see it. In Christ, this broken world will be restored better than before as he reconciles all things to himself.

There is nothing in this world so broken that Jesus can’t mend it. That’s what it means to say he’s a redeemer. Jesus fixes things. He restores things. He renews things. Because he is Lord over all things, and all things are being reconciled to himself. He is God, and he will bring it all to pass.

Thanks for staring at Jesus with me this morning. He’s good, amen?

Let’s pray.

INTRODUCTION

Let’s open the Bible now to Ruth, chapter 2. We’re looking at this little book in the Old Testament because we need constant reminders of the faithfulness of God. When the hope of redemption seems to get dim, God provides in surprising ways. Ruth is a poor, widowed, foreign woman from whom the Savior came. This is a story of what only God can do.

But the story doesn’t start out hopeful, as we saw last week.

In his novel This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger tells the story of orphan brothers, Odie and Albert. They are sent to a training school primarily for Native Americans in the 1930s. The people running the school are hard and mean, but they act under the veil of the Bible. In one instance, the headmaster reads from Psalm 23 and puts himself in the shoes of the shepherd and the children as the sheep. Odie sees through it, but he’s not yet given up that what God says is true. Maybe God does care, despite his current circumstances.

One night back in the dormitory, as they lie listening to the lonely cries of a child in the darkness, Odie and Albert have a conversation. Albert, the older brother, lives in fear of having to leave Odie behind. Albert says,

“I’m afraid I’ll get taken from you, and who’d look after you then?”

“Maybe God?” [Odie replied]

“God?”

He said it as if I were joking.

“Maybe it really is like it says in the Bible,” I offered. “God’s a shepherd and we’re his flock and he watches over us.”

For a long while, Albert didn’t say anything. I listened to that kid crying in the dark because he felt lost and alone and believed no one cared.

Finally Albert whispered, “Listen, Odie, what does a shepherd eat?”

I didn’t know where he was going with that, so I didn’t reply.

“His flock,” Albert told me. “One by one.”

I wonder if that’s how Naomi felt. She felt the bitterness of God toward her. She felt consumed by his anger, not comforted by his love. I wonder if in her darkest moments she would agree with Albert. Was the shepherd eating his flock one by one? Her husband was gone. Her sons were gone. Orpah was gone. Only she and Ruth remained. Was their time coming soon?

As we step through the doorway of chapter 2, we enter a new land at harvest time. Bethlehem is beaming with fullness after a long famine. The barley harvest had just begun, and empty bellies were filling up.

But Namoi’s and Ruth’s belly still grumbled. Did God hear? Did he care? Their circumstances would shout that he didn’t. But there are whispers of grace rumbling through the pages of this chapter. God is changing their fortunes. We see no miracles as we do in the Exodus or the victories of the Judges. Instead, we see a course of seemingly normal events. A girl gleaning on the edges of a field. A man coming from the city to check on his work. A harvest in full force. It’s in everyday life that God does most of his work. It was true for Naomi and Ruth, and it’s true for you and me. God is always doing 10,000 things in our lives and we might see only a few. We might feel his absence, but he is ever-present. We might wonder if he cares, but he’s working now for our good. We might ask why our lives aren’t better, but he’s preparing a home for us out ahead.

Following God doesn’t always feel like a straight line upward to glory. Sometimes our circumstances push us way down low. But the low place is where we find our Savior. He was born in a manger. He had no place to lay his head. He died condemned on a cross. But he is called the King of Glory. In God’s economy, the low place is the high place. The story of Ruth reaffirms that truth. It makes sense. Jesus came from this lowly woman—this poor outsider is the ancestral mother of the King.

Naomi had complaints in chapter 1. But what God shows Naomi, and through her what he shows us, is that behind the bitter circumstances is a sweetness of a Savior. So let’s read chapter 2 now, and let’s pay attention to the sweetness of God in the bitterness of life.

1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 3 So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech. 4 And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” 5 Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 6 And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.”

8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 9 Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.” 10 Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” 11 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. 12 The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” 13 Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”

14 And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. 15 When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. 16 And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”

17 So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. 19 And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20 And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” 21 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’ ” 22 And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.” 23 So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

Did you notice the sweetness of God in this chapter?

The bitterness of chapter one begins to be counteracted by the sweetness of chapter two. Through what appears at first a random set of events, we see three truths about the sweetness of God.

1. The sweet providence of God (2:1-7)

2. The sweet protection of God (2:8-13)

3. The sweet provision of God (2:14-23)

THE SWEET PROVIDENCE OF GOD (2:1-7)

Nothing happens in our lives that is not a result of God working in our lives. The events of Ruth 2 are proof.

Ruth and Naomi came from Moab to Naomi’s old home of Bethlehem. Ruth is a Moabite, as we are constantly reminded throughout the book. That’s an important detail to remember because it helps us understand her position. Moab is infamous in the Old Testament for being an enemy of Israel. Naomi is poor, husbandless, food-less, and everything-else-less. But she’s at least a true Israelite. Ruth is a Moabite. Naomi has a lot going against her, but Ruth has even more. But they have God on their side, and that makes all the difference. The author wants us to see that God is behind everything that happens in this story, just as he is in everything that happens in your story.

In verse 2, Ruth has an idea. “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” Here we already see the sweet providence of God. Ruth and Naomi are in the land of Israel, a place ruled by God’s law, which made provision for poor women like them. God’s law allowed for poor people and foreigners to glean from the fields by restricting landowners from scraping out every possible grain. The edges were for the hungry. Leviticus 19:9-10 says, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.” Here is the sweetness of God revealed in his law. When setting up Israel’s economy, God provided for the poor.

Not only that, but God also commanded his people should protect widows and aliens. Exodus 22:22, “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.” Deuteronomy 10:18 says, “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.” Psalm 146:9 says, “The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow.” God cares about people like Naomi and Ruth, and Ruth takes a step of faith knowing this is God’s land, and this is God’s field, and if there is a godly man running it, she will find food.

Let’s linger here a moment. There was no one less worthy of care from an economic, social, political, or otherwise standpoint than an aging widow and her foreign, also widowed, daughter-in-law. They could be nothing but a burden on society. But God cares about them. God cares about those whom no one else has any reason to care about. Here is the mighty heart of God. Naomi and Ruth deserved, from a social standpoint, nothing. But God was not too busy to care for them. He was not too great to notice them. His eye was upon them. He knew their comings and goings. He saw all Naomi’s bitterness toward him and yet loved her anyway. He knew Ruth was a Moabite, yet she found a place in God’s heart. Here’s the implication. If you feel low and overlooked as Ruth and Naomi felt, God is not too great to notice you; he’s too great not to. God is not too busy to care for you; he’s doing it already, even if you can’t yet feel it. God is not too distant to know the details of your life; he knows them all, down to the number of hairs on your head. He feels every stomach grumble. He hears every sigh of desperation. He knows every kind of suffering. And he cares.

One way God cares is through his providence. What is God’s providence? We often think of it in terms of his sovereignty. The Bible says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3). God has the right and the power to control all things. But that is different from his providence. Providence is the use of that sovereignty for the specific purpose of caring for this world and using his sovereignty for his wise purposes. One definition I found put it this way, “The providence of God is the working of God’s sovereignty to continually uphold, guide, and care for his creation.” [Helm]

God’s providence is all over this book, and all of this chapter of this book. I want to hone in on one phrase first and then step back to examine the whole. In verse 3, the author says, “So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.”

Did you notice those words there in the middle of that sentence? She happened to come. The Hebrew literally says, she “chanced to chance” or “her chance chanced.” She “happened to come” upon the part of the field Boaz owned. What a coincidence! Here is a widowed foreigner who just so happens to come to the part of this big field owned by someone who understands the heart of God’s law and knows how to care for someone like her.

The author intends us to see the irony of this. Ruth comes to the one part of the field in all of Israel where she could find the help she needed, the protection she needed, the provision she needed. Here is the sweetness of God. God is working behind the scenes to bring about his purposes. There is nothing random or left to chance about life. There is only the providence of God.

So we zoom out a bit and we see the providence of God laying all over these verses. Ruth not only came to the one part of the field most accepting of her but that field was also owned by a certain man. Look again at verse 1. Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s husband. We find out later that means he’s one of their redeemers. We’ll look at that more in the future. For now, it’s enough to know that means Boaz can help pull Ruth and Naomi out of their plight by redeeming them—marrying Ruth and redeeming Elimelech’s old land. God made provision for this also in his law. This is all the more remarkable because when Ruth told Naomi she was going to glean, Naomi offered no direction. If God is not in this, how did Ruth get to this part of the field under the care of this man?

Boaz’s introduction is also important. In verse 1, he’s called “a worthy man.” Other translations of that phrase are “a man of standing,” “a man of valor,” and my favorite because of who comes from Boaz and Ruth, King David, “a mighty man.” Boaz is not just some nice guy. He’s a God-loving, Spirit-empowered, Redeemer-producing, kind-hearted man of standing, valor, and might who just so happens to come to the field while Ruth is there gleaning. After the darkness of chapter 1, Boaz is like the morning sun, full of hope. Look at verse 4. “And behold [the author wants us to see the providence here], Boaz came from Bethlehem [the field was outside the city].” Notice even his greeting of his workers. “The Lord be with you!” Apparently, Boaz’s faith wasn’t a private affair. He took his Christianity into the office with him. Then, Boaz did something amazing. He noticed Ruth, an unnoticeable, and he was impressed with her. The servant in charge of the reapers told Boaz about her. Ruth took the initiative to care for Naomi. She humbly asked to glean. She worked hard all day without rest. She has the qualities of a Proverbs 31 woman. And Boaz took notice. Ruth hoped to find someone kind enough to let her glean. In God’s sweet providence, she found a future husband who would redeem Naomi’s house. Not bad for a day’s work!

Here’s the point: where you go and what you do is not left to mere chance. It is the result of the sweet providence of God. It may not always feel sweet at first, but it is leading ultimately to something glorious. It was for Ruth. It was for Boaz. It was for Naomi. If you love God, it is for you too.

Now that we’ve seen the sweet providence of God, let’s look at the sweet protection of God.

THE SWEET PROTECTION OF GOD (2:8-13)

Not only did God providentially lead Ruth to a field, but he also lead her to a kind protector. Notice how Boaz jumped into the relationship with Ruth in verses 8 and 9. He knew who she was, and he knew how vulnerable she was. He didn’t sit back and wait. He didn’t let things play out before he acted. He took the initiative to help. He commanded her not to leave his field for another. He gave her the right to stay close to his young women. He gave her permission to go after his servants who are reaping, getting the best of what’s left over. And he charged his men not to touch her. When she was thirsty, she could go and drink from his wells. He built fences around her to ensure her safety in a world that was not naturally safe, especially for people like her. Boaz used all he had for Ruth’s protection. The sweet providence of God is taking form in the sweet protection he offers through Boaz.

What is Ruth’s response? Humble amazement. Verse 10 says she fell on her face and bowed to the ground in astonishment that Boaz would do this for her. Everything in her life indicated a continual struggle for survival. She didn’t leave Moab with Naomi because she saw a better life in Bethlehem. It was guaranteed to be harder for someone like her, a foreign widow. But she went anyway. She could not possibly have had any great expectations, so when Boaz noticed her and cared for her, and invited her inside his circle, she could not believe it. She knew who she was. And Boaz knew who she was, and to Boaz, she was impressive.

Boaz answered her question in verse 11. “Why am I doing this? Because I heard about all you did for your mother-in-law. I know you left your father and mother and your native land and came to these people that you did not know, not because you were in search of a better life, but because you had steadfast love for Naomi. You were unwilling to let Naomi go it alone.” Because he saw that, Boaz was unwilling to let Ruth go it alone now.

But there was something else Boaz saw that impressed him more than all the rest. He saw Ruth’s faith. Of all the places she could have gone and all the gods she could have worshipped, she came to Israel and to the God of Israel. She took refuge under God’s wings. So Boaz prayed a prayer of protection over her in verse 12. “The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” Remember what Ruth said to Naomi when she vowed to stay with her? It was not only her love for her friend and mother-in-law that compelled her. She took Naomi’s God as her own. Ultimately, faith drove Ruth to Bethlehem. Faith drove Ruth to stay with Naomi. Faith drove Ruth to Boaz’s field. When her life fell apart, she sought refuge under the wings of God by faith. Ruth esteemed God’s protection as the only true protection, though at the time she could probably barely see how it could possibly play out for good. God was her hope and her joy. Therefore, she was “repaid” and “rewarded” as Boaz puts it. Not in some kind of justification by works but in the blessing of her hope in God’s work on her behalf. She trusted God, and he did not let her down. She came under the mighty and safe and protective wings of God, and he carried her along.

Ruth points the way forward for us all. When your life falls apart, God’s wings are spread to protect you. Nothing can ultimately harm you there in that safe place. That won’t mean days won’t be hard. You might even die. But if you love God, you will not die again. You will live. You will be resurrected. You will find the wings of God are the only true shelter.

Come under the wings of God and you will live. Come under the wings of God and you will find protection from all that scares you in the world. Come under the wings of God and you will find a refuge for your soul, a safe place for your life, a shelter from the storm. Why? Because One like Boaz is there, able to save. When Jesus came to Jerusalem, he looked out over it and said, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus is not the holdout. The only requirement for the sweet protection of his wings is the willingness to go under them.

When you are tired and needy and weak and wounded, and when life gets so hard you can’t see the way forward, draw near to God in Christ. Go under his wings. How will he respond? He will pull you in tight—so tight that you might even hear his heartbeat. Finding refuge under God’s wings might mean you can’t see much else around you. He might hug you that tight. But you can trust him. Perhaps your hard circumstances are for this reason only—to be pulled closer to the heart of Christ.  Have you ever had those moments? You sense God is carrying you somewhere, but you can’t see the path, and when you arrive you don’t even know why you’re there. How did it turn out?

Hiding under the wings of God might feel pretty dark, but there is no brighter place to be. You can trust him.

There’s one more thing to see in this chapter: the sweet provision of God.

THE SWEET PROVISION OF GOD (2:14-23)

Ruth the widowed Moabite who left her homeland with an empty stomach now finds a fullness she could never have imagined. Boaz not only gave her permission to glean from her field and to protect her as she does but he also filled her to the brim with food both then and later. He invited her to eat bread and dip it in the wine. How long had it been since Ruth tasted something that grand? She sat beside the reapers, among Boaz’s people. Not behind them, but beside them. He elevated and invited her inside his inner circle. He passed roasted grain to her. He passed it to her. She ate from his hand until she was satisfied. And just like the apostles of Jesus after the feeding of the multitudes, there was some left over. She was given permission to get up and glean again with a full belly and more strength than when she came, and he told his men to let her take not only the crumbs but the sheaves, and he pulled out some food from the bundles they had already reaped and left it on the ground for her to find. Boaz provided abundantly for this dear woman. This is God’s sweet provision through his servant Boaz. This is a vision of the kind of fullness God offers all who come to him.

When your life falls apart, there is a field to which you can come with an owner that will care for you. There is a God who owns all this world who has a man who came to this world to find us poor outsiders reaching for crumbs on the ground. He sees us. He knows us. He invites us to his table. He feeds us from his hand—more than that, from his very body, which was broken for us to atone for our sin. He lifts us up to an honorable place with him. His eye is on the one no one else notices. His heart is big enough for all our needs. His field is big enough for all our hunger. His wings are wide enough for all who need refuge. His house is big enough for all who need a room. He is a Redeemer not only of our earthly lives but of our eternal souls. He is a complete Savior with complete love and care, with sweet providence and protection and provision that never ends, never fades, never fails, and never runs out. You are not forsaken.

What happened to Ruth that day is a picture of what happens to all who come to Christ. He lifts us up. He cares. He provides. His eye is upon you right now, and everything in your life is leading you to a place of glory and fullness and redemption in him.

Remember what Odie said to Albert? I think he was right. It really is like it says in the Bible. God’s a shepherd and we’re his flock and he watches over us. Isn’t Ruth proof? Isn’t your life proof? If you don’t believe that yet, why not take a chance with God? He can prove himself to you. When your belly starts to rumble; when the pain just doesn’t seem to end; when the tears won’t dry; when the land is barren; when despair is a constant friend; when almost no one is left to care for you; when life feels bitter; wait for the sweetness to come. Jesus will pull you in tight under his wings. He will be your redeemer. He will shepherd you and watch over you, and you will eat from his table.

Let’s pray.

The Death of Jesus

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Jesus Is Buried

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. 46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Introduction

John Calvin said, “In the cross of Christ, as in a splendid theatre, the incomparable goodness of God is set before the whole world.” In his classic book The Cross of Christ, John Stott said, “If we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.”

The ultimate expression of both God’s glory and God’s love is found in the cross of Christ. On the cross, God glorified himself. His justice became manifest. His wrath was satisfied. His grace and mercy exploded. On the cross, Jesus atoned for our sin, paid for our failures, bled for our transgressions, and died for our iniquities. He reconciled us to himself, cleansed us of our filth, redeemed us from slavery, rescued us from hell, reinstated us into communion, and restored us to life. On the cross, Jesus substituted his life for ours, taking our sin and giving his righteousness. As the church father, Irenaeus, said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” On the cross, Jesus died to make us fully alive.

Today, let’s marvel at this collision of God’s glory and God’s love for us revealed at the cross of Christ. Let’s see the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18).

Jesus is not a part-time lover. John 13:1 says Jesus loved us to the end. I need a love, and you need a love, that doesn’t stop halfway. We’ve all had enough halfway love in our lives. We need a love that goes all the way to the end. A kind of love that reaches all the way down into the darkest corners of our hearts and brings the light in where we didn’t even know we needed it. A halfway love brings a halfway salvation, but an all-the-way love, as we find in Christ, brings an all-the-way salvation. Jesus loved us to the end: to death.

God didn’t do this begrudgingly, like a parent helping their child out of frustration do something the child could easily do themselves. We couldn’t do it ourselves. He’s not angry that it took this drastic measure. He’s not regretting the cost to himself. It was for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the cross (Heb. 12:2). In fact, as our intercessor now in heaven, he’s still saving us. The way the author of Hebrews says it, he loves to the “uttermost” (Hebrews 7:25). Jesus loves us to the uttermost of our need, to the uttermost of our sin, to the uttermost of his divine capabilities. Jesus is the only one who can perfectly say, “I love you to death.”

That is not to say that the death of Jesus isn’t something to look at soberly. Before the light of the resurrection, there is the darkness of the cross. We see three things in this passage.

1. The Darkness On the Earth

2. The Darkness Over the Son

3. The Darkness In the Grave

The Darkness on the Earth

It’s not hard to see that something is deeply wrong with the world. But it wasn’t always this way. When God created the world, he said it was good. So what happened to God’s good creation? The tragedy started in a garden. Adam and Eve listened to the lies of Satan and rebelled. From there, sin went viral, passed down from generation to generation. We’ve all contracted this sickness unto death. It darkens all we do, even the good things we take part in. The Puritan William Beveridge put it this way.

I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give an alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears need still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.

Sin is pervasive in us, and therefore in the world. We are not good people who occasionally do bad things. We are evil people proving it all the time. Sin separates us from God. Sin separates us from other people. Sin separates us from creation. Sin separates us from ourselves. The shadow of sin stands over this world because we have rejected God. As a result, here is Jesus on the cross.

By this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has been on the cross for three hours. At noon, the sixth hour, the very heart of the day, darkness covered the whole land until 3PM, the ninth hour. Some scholars try to write this off as just a solar eclipse—nothing special. But solar eclipses don’t last three hours. They last about seven minutes. This was an act of God. He was showing us the darkness of sin that placed Christ on the cross. The physical darkness represented our spiritual darkness.

The Old Testament prophets talked about the darkness of the “Day of the Lord,” which was like biblical-code language for Judgment Day. For example, Jeremiah said, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jeremiah 4:23). The Old Testament tells repeatedly of how God’s people broke God’s covenant, dimming the light and ushering in the darkness. Our sin prevents us from seeing the true depth and tragedy of our real plight, our real condition, of what we truly deserve, of the judgment it requires. The prophet Isaiah said, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men” (Isaiah 59:10). God tells Isaiah that no one can lead themselves out of their own darkness, so God will strap on the armor himself and save them. The Redeemer will come to Jerusalem (Isaiah 59:15-20). Here is the fulfillment of that prophecy: their Redeemer, hanging on a cross, going under the darkness for his people.

Amid the darkness all around, the spotlight is on the cross. There, our savior hangs, mangled and marred. It’s messy and it’s bloody because it must be. This is the only way of forgiveness. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22) and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Nothing less than Christ’s cross can save us. The only hope of any light at all is by the Light himself going under the darkness for us, dying in the darkness for our darkness, letting the darkness engulf him and take him down, which is our second point.

The Darkness Over the Son

Jesus felt the darkness that day. Verse 34 says Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark includes both the Aramaic version Jesus actually spoke and the Greek translation for his readers. According to verse 35, some thought he was calling for Elijah. The Aramaic words misheard certainly could sound like it, and in Jewish thought, Elijah, who had not died but had been lifted into heaven, would come back to help God’s people. In verse 36, they took sour wine to him, fulfilling the prophecy of Psalm 69:21, “for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” This isn’t the wine with myrrh offered to Jesus on the way to the cross. This wasn’t meant dull his pain but to prolong his life, to see if Elijah would come. But Elijah wasn’t coming. He wasn’t crying out for Elijah anyway. He was crying out for another reason—not for someone to save him but to show the kind of salvation he’s securing.

His cry was the first verse of Psalm 22. Why that Psalm? Because there the Psalmist David laments the feeling of forsakenness. The first two verses say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” Do you know that feeling? Have you felt forsaken? Have you felt abandoned? On the cross, that’s how Jesus felt as the darkness came over him. He wants us to know he identifies with us. His cry is our cry because our cry is his cry. Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly, says this.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham notes that while Psalm 22:1 was originally written in Hebrew, Jesus spoke it in Aramaic and thus was personally appropriating it. Jesus wasn’t simply repeating David’s experience of a thousand years earlier as a convenient parallel expression. Rather, every anguished Psalm 22:1 cry across the millenia was being recapitulated and fulfilled and deepened in Jesus. His was the true Psalm 22:1 of which ours are the shadows. As the people of God, all our feelings of forsakenness funneled through an actual human heart in a single moment of anguished horror on Calvary, an actual forsakenness…The world’s Light was going out.

As the Bible says, he who knew no sin was becoming sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). All our darkness was placed on him. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6). On the cross, all the iniquity of all God’s people throughout all history past, present, and future was laid upon his Son and God’s wrath was poured out on him. And it killed him. Jesus did not die a normal death of mere physical expiration; Jesus died the extraordinary death of spiritual expiation. He made amends for our guilt. He atoned for our sins. By his death, Jesus set us right with God. He went into God’s courtroom of Divine Justice as our substitute and received a guilty verdict. He was led to the place of slaughter and executed for our sins. Jesus hung there, covered in darkness, physically and spiritually, experiencing the very Hell we deserve to give us the very heaven we long for.

So when Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” it means there is therefore now no condemnation for any who receive this offer of salvation from Jesus! Right now, you are free from the eternal punishment of sin. Right now, you are free from condemnation. You might condemn yourself, but God won’t condemn you because he condemned Jesus instead. Right now, God fully approves of you because Jesus paid it all—not some: all. There is therefore now no condemnation. You are utterly and eternally free forever. This is the grace of God. Grace is like looking behind you and realizing God isn’t chasing you down with a hammer to condemn; grace is looking ahead and seeing the nail-pierced hands of Jesus welcoming you.

All you need to do to receive this gift of grace is accept it with the empty hands of faith. I love what Gerhard Forde said.

We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, “What shall I do to be saved?” the confessional answer is shocking: “Nothing! Just be still: shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!”

We see something of this in the Centurion’s reaction to Jesus’s death. Verse 39 says when Jesus made a loud cry and gave up his spirit, the Centurion said, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” This is the first time in Mark’s gospel a human voice refers to Jesus as the Son of God. The centurion saw the struggle of Jesus on the cross. He saw the darkness descend. He heard the words uttered. This professional executioner noticed something different was happening.

On the cross, Jesus represented his people. The Greek used for “loud cry” is what the author of Hebrews used when he said, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). The context there is Jesus’s learning obedience through what he suffered. So then the cry on the cross was a cry of obedient suffering. Why was he obeying? Because we needed him to. His cry was our cry. His obedience was our obedience. His suffering was our suffering. His forsakenness was our forsakenness. Like Isaac taken up the mountain by his father, Jesus is there as a sacrifice, but this time the Father will not relent. The knife is plunged. The Son dies.

When he died, verse 38 says the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. That’s important because it tells us another result of the cross. Where there was once separation between man and God in the very heart of God’s temple, there is now open access. The Great High Priest has gone behind the curtain and offered himself as the final sacrifice. When his flesh was torn, the temple curtain came down with it. No more separation. No other mediator between God and man is needed. By his blood, we now have all the access to God we will ever need (Hebrews 10:19-22). We can come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). God will hear us now because on the cross Jesus wasn’t heard. We will never be forsaken because on the cross he was.

Psalm 22 starts with lament, but it ends in praise for God’s deliverance. Jesus cried verse 1 to give us the rest of the Psalm. He asked for our deliverance through him, and we received it! Satan can’t condemn us. The world can’t destroy us. We can’t even ruin ourselves anymore. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice conquered it all!

Jesus endured the darkness of our sin on our behalf. Then, he entered the darkness of the grave. Let’s look at that now.

The Darkness in the Grave

Why does Mark record the burial of Jesus? Throughout history, this has been a contested point of the story. Some say Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Maybe he passed out, was taken down, and recovered somewhere. Muslims say he was taken to heaven before he died on the cross. Others say dogs ate his body. But from the earliest of days, the burial of Jesus was an important and well-recorded point. All four gospels record his burial, and the earliest Christian creed, the Apostles’ Creed, includes it.

But why does his burial matter so much? Because only a dead Jesus saves. Only a dead and buried Jesus experienced the full wrath of God against our sin. Only a dead and buried Jesus can resurrect. If he wasn’t really dead and truly buried, the resurrection couldn’t have happened, it was only for show, and if the resurrection didn’t happen then, as Paul said, “our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain.”

The details Mark includes lead us to the conclusion that Jesus really did die, and he really was buried. Verses 42-43 tell us that by evening, because it was the day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin council, took courage and went to Pilate to ask for the body. Those details matter because of what comes next. Verse 44 says Pilate was surprised to hear Jesus was already dead. Crucifixion could take days. Jesus was dead in a few hours. So he called the centurion who oversaw the death. After confirming, Pilate gave Joseph his body. This wasn’t normal practice. Usually, to complete the humiliation of crucifixion, the body was thrown in the trash heap. So why did Pilate give the body to Joseph? Mark doesn’t say. All he says is that he did, and that’s important because it’s different from the normal way of things. It’s the kind of thing that is only written down if it’s true.

But it’s important for other reasons too. It’s a fulfillment of prophecy. The Old Testament prophesied this kind of burial for the Messiah. Joseph was a rich man—only a rich man had a tomb like this prepared. Isaiah said the Messiah would have his grave made with a rich man in his death (Isaiah 53:9) and that the tomb would be cut out of a rock (Isaiah 22:16). Even more amazing, John says in his account that this tomb was in a garden (John 19:41). Remember, that’s where the tragedy of this world’s darkness began. The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry puts it this way, “In the garden of Eden death and the grave first received their power, and now in a garden they are conquered, disarmed, and triumphed over. In a garden Christ began his passion, and from a garden he would rise, and begin his exaltation.” In his death, Jesus is undoing the terrible events of the Garden of Eden. In his burial, he is planted to become the first fruits of the resurrection. If you’re in Christ, his burial represents your burial. As Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.” That’s important because of what he says next. “In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). In other words, when that stone was rolled over Jesus’ grave, he took your sin in there with him. He buried it away in his death, which means you don’t have to bear the punishment anymore. Yes, you still have some darkness in you, but there is also now a new light. His death purchased it and his burial sealed it. Your sins are there in that grave, dead and gone in the sight of God, never to be resurrected.

But on the third day, Jesus was resurrected. His body came back to life, and he became for us the first fruits of what we will one day be in him. Paul says in Romans 4:25, “[Jesus] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Though the wages of our sin is death, the wages of Jesus’s death is our resurrection. God accepts Jesus’s payment, and in him promises us newness of life. As dark as this world is, as dark as your heart is, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Conclusion

 This is the good news of the gospel. It is available to all who will accept it. You might think you’re not worthy, but the cross says you can’t be too low for Jesus. In fact, the cross was the lowest form of death, the most humiliating kind of execution ever invented. Jesus came all the way down to be visible to those at the very bottom.

Did you notice Mark’s inclusion of the women in verses 40-41? Why mention them? Because women were the lowest of all in those days. They were watching from afar because Jewish convention demanded it. Their witness didn’t even matter in court, but they were witnesses to God’s salvation. When almost nothing else was, God was available to them. His salvation was for them. They saw Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. God was using them—the lowest—to tell his story. He always does.

Even if you watch from afar, the cross is God’s action that draws you near. You might think, “Okay, but what if I mess up? I mean really mess up. Isn’t there some point at which this salvation can’t be true for me anymore?” John Bunyan was a man who knew this feeling well, and he spoke the gospel to himself to assure his heart. He wrote a book called Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ. It was devoted to one verse in John 6:37 which, in the KJV Jesus, says, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

         But I am a great sinner, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I am an old sinner, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I am a hard-hearted sinner, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I am a backsliding sinner, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I have served Satan all my days, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I have sinned against light, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I have sinned against mercy, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

         But I have no good thing to bring with me, you say.

                  “I will in no wise cast out,” says Christ.

The very place where you see yourself as most undeserving is the very place at which Jesus’ cross says to you, “Come to me.” You say, “But when does his welcome end?” The cross says, “Never.” Jesus has the final word with us. His salvation is not temporary. His sacrifice is not for a limited time. This is a permanent deal.

Let’s pray.

INTRODUCTION

13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The words “pray” or “prayer” are used in every verse, a total of seven times in the passage. The big idea is obvious to us. As James winds down his letter, he wants us to see that true Christianity is fueled by praying faith. The heart of God is open to every aspect of our life through prayer. We not only have a God to worship; we have a Father who cares.

This passage takes us deep into God’s grace. It tells us the good news that God is for us, not against us. Now, he has every reason to be against us. We have sinned and rebelled and turned away from him. But what is his response? In the face of our weakness and sin, God’s response in the cleansing blood of Christ is an open door to heaven by prayer. He could slam the door of his throne room. He has every right to. Instead, he calls us to come boldly before him with all our needs, promising his throne of grace is never closed.

Before we go too far into this passage, let’s just marvel at the grace of prayer. We have the privilege to come to God, and he listens to us and responds! That is astounding. The God of the universe cares about your little life. It’s not little to him. He made your life. He sustains your life. He cares about your life. God gives you your good days. God does not stand aloof on your bad days. God doesn’t shame you for your failures but redeems you from the slavery of sin. God does not regret getting involved with you. He delights to care for you as only he can. He provides a way to healing and peace, though none of us deserve it. The God who created and rules all we see and know sees and knows us at the deepest possible level, and he calls us to himself to find provision for all that ails us and a fitting end for all that delights us.

What does God want us to see about prayer in this passage? At least two things:

1. When we pray

2. Why we pray

WHEN WE PRAY

Muslims pray five times a day. Buddhists pray three times a day. Hindus pray at least once a day. But the Bible calls Christians to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:16-18). Why? Because the God we serve is a God who is near. Yes, he is transcendently above us, but he is also immanently near to us. He is always with us. We can pray any time. We don’t have to face Mecca. We don’t have to bow before hand-made idols. We don’t have to be in a temple or in deep meditation. Our God is always available to us moment by moment throughout our day. God’s ears are always open. His throne-room door is never shut, and the only access we need is faith in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit who is freely given to all who believe. We don’t have to wait until we get our act together. We don’t have to find the right words first. All we must do is come.

Jesus told us not only to come but to come often, to pester God in prayer, to knock on his door no matter the hour. As Tim Keller once said, “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.” But unlike a father who might eventually get tired of being woken up, God will never grow frustrated. Every earthly father has a limit. God doesn’t. He’s perfect for needy people like us. High-maintenance people like us are perfect for God. Our need doesn’t turn him off, it energizes him to draw ever nearer. He doesn’t grow annoyed or overwhelmed. He calmly and gently and lovingly receives us and cares for us.

James highlights this access to God beginning in verse 13. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.” When do we pray? When life hurts. When life feels good. Prayer is an outlet for everything that happens. Nothing is too insignificant. Are you suffering? Pray. James doesn’t qualify the type or amount of suffering. Sometimes we tend to think things need to be really bad before we go to God. We think, “This is hard, but I should be able to handle it. I should know the answer. I should be better at dealing with hard things. I should, I should, I should.” We should all over ourselves, and we don’t seek the help we need. But James doesn’t say, “Pray as the last resort.” He doesn’t say, “Pray when things are so hard you can’t do anything else.” He doesn’t say, “Pray when suffering reaches more than you can handle.” He doesn’t put a qualification on our suffering. God cares. He’s there. He will help you. In suffering, you always feel alone. The gospel says you never are. Jesus suffered like us that we might have a merciful and faithful high priest. He’s there, always. If life hurts for whatever reason, you should pray.

And the opposite is also true. When life is going well, praise. Andrew Peterson has a great song that really helps me grasp this point. It’s called Don’t You Want To Thank Someone. Here are just a few lyrics.

Don't you ever wonder why

In spite of all that's wrong here

There's still so much that goes so right

And beauty abounds?

 

'Cause sometimes when you walk outside

The air is full of song here

The thunder rolls and the baby sighs

And the rain comes down

 

And when you see the spring has come

And it warms you like a mother's kiss

Don't you want to thank someone?

Don't you want to thank someone for this?

This world, for all its fallenness, still holds beauty that takes our breath away. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” When we wake up and the sun is shining and the air is crisp and the coffee is good and the day is open and available and we get to do meaningful work and our heart swells with the good things, what do we do with that gratitude? We praise God. Prayer and praise are the same things. Praise rightly directed is prayer. It’s the heart’s cry to its Maker, “Thank you!”

So, generally and individually, we pray when something bad or good happens to us. Now, James moves from the general to the specific, from individual to small group in verse 14. “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.”

Here's another time to pray. When sickness overwhelms us and takes us into the shadow of death. James is not talking about a common cold—though we should pray then as well—but about those particularly bad illnesses that leave us wondering if life will go on. The sick person can call the elders of the church, and they can come and pray over them, and anoint them with oil. This is not an “I’ll try anything” shot in the dark but a humble seeking of God’s help, letting God minister through the prayers of your pastors. When you are down and out, God still provides. He has ministers to help you by prayer.

James gives specific instructions to the elders. They pray and anoint the sick person’s head with oil. What does this oil do? In the Roman Catholic church, there is the sacrament of unction, where the dying is anointed with oil to remove remnants of sin and get the soul ready to die. This is not what James means. He also doesn’t mean the oil holds some special healing power. It’s not medicinal in nature. Rather, the oil consecrates and sets the person apart to God. It’s a symbol that the elders are bringing this specific person and this specific request for healing to God.

Verse 15 speaks of this kind of prayer’s result. “And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” This is a tricky verse. Some people have used it as God’s promise that all who pray the “prayer of faith” will be healed. So when the person isn’t healed it’s usually blamed on a lack of faith. The elders didn’t believe enough. Or, as it often goes, the sick person doesn’t have enough faith. But is that what James means when he talks about the prayer of faith? Does it sound like God to require a certain strength from us to bless us? Did Jesus come to us with demands that we measure up to his standard? Did he rebuke the man who said, “I believe, help my unbelief?” Did he recoil when Thomas sought to touch his scars after his resurrection? Or did he stoop low and humble himself to our level? Did not Jesus come gentle and lowly, with his heart open to the weak and sinful and doubting? Would God then be so cruel as to keep his blessing from those whose faith he deemed insufficient, even as they looked to him for help? Would God withhold his power until we mustered up the right amount of faith?

If the prayer of faith means all who believe enough are healed and only those who believe enough are healed then why was Paul’s thorn not taken away? Why did Paul have to leave a sick friend behind on his missionary journeys as we see in the book of Acts? Did Paul lack faith? Lack of healing cannot be because of a lack of faith. When God says no, it must be for a reason we can’t yet see.

Conversely, Jesus healed some not because of their faith, but to stimulate their faith. In John 9, Jesus healed a man born blind. The man didn’t ask for healing. But Jesus healed him anyway. In that instance, faith was a result of healing, not a prerequisite for it.

Here’s the point. Healing is a gift, not a reward. We are not in charge of God, pulling the lever of his healing powers by the right kind of prayer, working the angles, and mustering up enough faith like coins for the vending machine. We humbly trust God and ask for healing, but we leave the result in his hands, in his will. The prayer of faith is not faith that something we want—even desperately think we need—will be granted if we pray hard enough. It is laying our lives in God’s hands, consecrating ourselves to him, and trusting his will by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s truly looking to God, not to anything else, for help.

That doesn’t mean physical healing always comes now. It also means God can heal despite our doubting. It’s not the strength of our faith that matters. What matters is the one in whom we have faith. God knows what he’s doing, and we need only to trust his will. Maybe he will heal. Maybe he won’t. But we know, ultimately, no matter what the answer to our prayer is right now that one day those who pray with such faith will be healed. We all must die, but those in Christ will be raised again. We will have perfect, glorified bodies in the new heavens and the new earth.

How do we get this glorious new body? James goes on, “And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Healing has more than a physical dimension. Confession of sin heals. Not every sickness is a result of sin. That’s not what James means. But sickness can be a result of sin. We barely believe that today, but the Bible does link sin and sickness. Jesus healed the paralytic by saying his sins were forgiven (Luke 5:20). Paul told the Corinthians some were sick because they abused the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:30). Confession of sin heals us as we pour out our souls to our gracious and merciful God. And sometimes we can’t do that on a normal day. Sometimes sickness is the means by which we are humbled enough to confess and seek God’s face. And notice what James says. “He will be forgiven.” God is faithful to forgive our sins because Jesus, our substitute, took the penalty for them on the cross. And God is faithful to raise us up because Jesus, our redeemer, conquered the grave. Our big issue with this passage shouldn’t be trying to figure out exactly what the prayer of faith is, but to figure out the God who calls us to have faith in him, and leave our lives in his hands, humbly confessing and trusting his perfect will.

James then takes us a step further—from individual prayer to small group prayer to corporate prayer. Look at verse 16. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” The exhortation to confession and prayer isn’t reserved only for the sick. It is for everyone. Confession is like removing the oxygen from sin’s lungs. It heals. And when others listen and then pray on our behalf, they help us find the healing of forgiveness.

Now, in context, James may have in mind those who have mutually sinned against one another and harmed the church body. Sins against God are confessed to God. But sins against God and others are confessed to God and to others. We do that carefully and humbly. God wants us to be right with one another. So, James says, “Confess your sins to one another.” He doesn’t say “confess one another’s sins.” What does he say? “And pray for one another.” Just as there is a command to the sinner to confess, there is the responsibility of the one hearing to pray, intercede, take the matter to God, and move forward. James doesn’t say, “embarrass one another” or “shame one another” but “pray for one another.” What we really believe about God is seen in this interaction when sins are confessed. If we believe in the free grace and forgiveness of God in Christ, we will freely forgive others, because we have experienced such grace ourselves. Do you see the beauty in that? This is how deep fellowship is birthed in God. In this simple but profound practice, we cultivate a gospel culture built on the gospel doctrine of grace in Christ. This is a path to corporate healing, anytime we need it.

So that’s when we pray. God invites us to prayer because he cares about our lives, and the specifics in this passage reaffirm that.

Now, why we pray.

WHY WE PRAY

God not only coaches us on when to pray, but he also shows us why we pray. We’ve seen it already. We pray because, by prayer, God heals and forgives. But there is more. In the second part of verse 16, James says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Then he jumps into an example of Elijah in verses 17 and 18. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” Elijah is an example of the righteous person’s powerful prayer that works. So, at the most basic level, we pray because God says prayer works.

We know Elijah as a prophet in the Old Testament. But the reason James chose Elijah as an example is not that he was an extraordinary prophet, someone so far “above” us. James says Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. It is the ordinariness of Elijah that James wants us to see. He was just a man, but his prayers worked. Why?

If we go back to the Old Testament, we see that Elijah’s prayers are not out of nowhere. He wasn’t sitting there one day thinking, “You know, I’m going to pray for no rain and that’ll show ‘em.” No. In Deuteronomy 28, God told Moses to tell the Israelites, “If you do not obey the Lord your God…these curses will come upon you…The Lord will strike you…with scorching heat and drought…the sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder.” Elijah lived in a day of Israel’s rebellion against God. He was praying God’s words after him. That’s why it worked. Working prayer is asking God to do what he has already said he would do. Elijah is the righteous person aligning his prayers will the promises of God. Elijah is praying the prayer of faith, prayer aligned with the will of God, asking God to do what he has said he would do. We pray, ultimately, because God is true to his word, and when our prayers are aligned to his word, we have confidence he will do what he said he would do.

Elijah prayed because God had spoken. We pray because God has spoken. Prayer is not a string of empty words to a wordless God but a pointed plea to a speaking Savior. We know what God plans to do in this world because he has told us. We know his purposes. We know his intentions. We have the Bible as our ever-present Word from God about his plans for our lives and for this world. And in the Bible we have examples like that of Elijah, of people who prayed, asking God to do what he said he would do, and God answered those prayers. We pray not because it’s our idea or because it makes us feel better but because God has ordained that the prayers of his people bring about his purposes. By prayer, God invites us into his work. Charles Spurgeon said, “Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.” Just as Elijah’s prayers directed the rain, your prayers—if you are in Christ—direct the world. Yes, God is sovereign and can do what he will without us, but he chooses to use our prayers. The Bible sees no contradiction there. Your prayers matter. You’re just like Elijah. You’re weak. You’re not enough. You’re powerless. But your prayers are not powerless because God is not powerless. Prayer is not magic incantations thrown to the wind but faith put in the God whose arms are not short, whose hands are not weak, and whose power upholds the universe. Your prayers, like Elijah’s, are powerful because you’re praying to a powerful God.

How does this relate to what James has said before? In our lives, we pray because God is involved. He is near. He is with us. He cares. We take our hard things and our good things to him as their proper landing place inside a love that is too great to give us what we deserve but instead gives us grace and peace and a secure place to stand in this ever-shifting world. We pray for healing and confess our sins because we know God has promised to heal and to save. Even if our physical healing must wait until heaven, the healing of forgiveness is available right now. Romans 8:1 is always true. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We know, because of Jesus, that there is a glorious new life out ahead for all who love him.

How do we know that? Because like Elijah, Jesus was made a human just like us. The author of Hebrews says in chapter 2, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things…he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.” In the incarnation, Jesus became like us. He lived a human life, with human suffering, with human prayers. He entered our world in order to save us by living the life we should have lived and dying the death we are owed because of our sin. Jesus became a man like us to save us. Because of that, when he rose from the grave three days after the cross, he put a “Yes!” at the end of every one of God’s promises. Because of Jesus, we will be raised one day. We will be healed. We will be forgiven. We will find that the deepest prayers of our hearts are granted as God plants his word in us, not because we deserve it, not even because we prayed the right prayers, but because God will bring all his good promises to pass, and not one word of all that he promises will fail. We pray because prayer aligned with God’s word works.

Prayer draws us closer to God, closer to his gospel, closer to his word, closer to his heart. In prayer, God is inviting us into reality with him as we await the day we see him face to face. What is better than that?

Let’s pray.

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

This is God’s word.

INTRODUCTION

Here’s a problem we all face: we talk a lot. We never shut up. If you have young kids, you know this without me even proving it. But let me try to prove it anyway. Some research reports the average American speaks 700 times a day. 700! Even if we think that’s way too high, let’s just say it’s 100. What else do you do 100 times a day? Other research says we spend about one-fifth of our life talking. If we wrote down all your words just from today, it would be about a 50-page book. Just one day!

No wonder the Word of God has something to say about our words. Our passage today isn’t the first time James mentions the subject. In 1:19, he exhorted us to be slow to speak. In 1:26, he said our use of the tongue is one indicator of true religion. In chapter 2, it’s our tongue that reveals our partiality and proclaims our faith. James isn’t done talking about our talking either. He’ll bring it up again, as we will see in the weeks to come.

All this shows that God cares a lot about how we speak. The Bible tells us God is a speaking God. Unlike idols, God opens his mouth. One of the names of Jesus is literally “The Word of God.” Hebrews says he upholds the universe by his powerful word. God spoke the world into existence. God created us in his image with his words, and part of that image is the ability to communicate through speech. So it makes sense that God would care deeply about how we use our words in his world. Words have immense power. We can use words to create a culture of safety and trust and love, to nurture and build a radiant culture, or we can use words to burn it all down.

One of the greatest tragedies is how we abuse our tongues. In the fall, Adam blamed Eve (Gen. 3:12). The Psalms refer to those whose throat is an open grave, whose tongues deceive, and whose mouths are full of curses and bitterness (Ps. 5:9, 10:7, 140:3; Rom. 3:13-14). Isaiah sensed the weight of words when he saw a vision of God’s throne room and responded with woe over his unclean lips (Is. 6:5). Proverbs 18:21 tells us death and life are in the power of the tongue and Proverbs 12:18 says words are like sword thrusts. Jesus says in Matthew 12:36 that we will give account for every careless word. Our tongue is one of the most important things about us.

You know the saying, “Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I have no idea who came up with that. It’s simply not true at all. No one stays in a hospital with a broken bone forever, but the couches of counselors are dented by those who sit week after week searching for healing from harmful words. Some of the things you hate about yourself most are things others have said to you, probably when you were young and didn’t know how to handle them. Words can damage the soul. Or how about this saying, “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” Another lie. Words don’t only stick to us, they bury themselves deep in our hearts. Commentator Derek Kidner wrote, “What is done to you is of little account beside what is done in you.” Words go deep, and they shape our lives.

Our speaking God wants us to understand the proper use of the tongue he gave us. This passage is his gracious gift to us, to help us build the gospel culture he wants us to have here at Refuge, where we take seriously the way we speak, with awareness that our words deeply matter.

We’re going to see three things God wants us to understand about our tongues:

1. The Tongue is Powerful (1-5a)

2. The Tongue is Dangerous (5b-6)

3. The Tongue is Untamable (7-12)

THE TONGUE IS POWERFUL (1-5a)

One way to think of the book of James is as the Proverbs of the New Testament. It’s filled with wisdom. There are about 90 proverbs about speech, which is more than it says about money or sex or family or anything else. Isn’t that fascinating? Apparently to live wisely and well requires we learn a lot about the power of the tongue, more so than the power of any other bodily desire or function. When Paul said to glorify God in your bodies, James says that starts with your tongue [1].

It gets uncomfortable right from the start for me. In verse 1, James directs attention to those who teach. So here I am, standing in front of you to teach, and by reading this passage I’m inviting judgment on myself. Teachers must be careful with their words. Because they say more and talk to more people, it’s vital they use thoughtful and intentional words, with life and conviction and purpose. By nature of the position, teachers hold a lot of power to do a lot of good or a lot of bad. And while James is primarily talking about those who teach in the church, we can expand that even to our parenting. We parents teach all the time, don’t we? We must be careful when doing so. Our words hold immense weight. How we use them shapes our children. We can build up or tear down, announce forgiveness or bring condemnation, proclaim the gospel that saves or the law that kills. God is listening.

But you don’t have to be a teacher to fall into sins of speech. James opens is up in verse 2, saying we all stumble with our tongue. No one is exempt, teacher or not. James says, “If anyone doesn’t stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” So let me ask: do we have any perfect people among us today? Is there anyone who is so in control of their tongue that they have no regrets, have caused no past wounds, have no words they want to take back? We all stumble, don’t we? As one teacher (Rabbi Joseph Telushkin) put it, “If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without drinking liquor, you are addicted to alcohol. If you cannot go for twenty-four hours without smoking, you are addicted to nicotine. Similarly, if you cannot go for twenty-four hours without saying unkind words about others, then you have lost control over your tongue.”

The problem with an uncontrolled tongue is the immense power it holds. It has the ability to move our entire lives in one direction or another. James uses some illustrations to help us get the point. The tongue is really small but incredibly powerful. A bit in a horse’s mouth moves the massive animal wherever it wills. A rudder on a ship beats out the winds and waves. Likewise, the tongue is small, but it boasts of great things.

One commentator refers to the tongue as the master key of our bodies. It determines everything else, moving us either positively or negatively. Our tongue takes us places. But, of course, the tongue is only as good as the heart guiding it, just as the bit in a horse’s mouth is only as good as the rider, and the rudder on the ship is only as good as the pilot. In other words, when we talk about the tongue, we’re really talking about the heart. James does this a lot. He points to outward actions as revelations of inward reality. Who we are is what we say. We never truly speak out of character, we only reveal our true character. Our words show our cards. We might not say all we really think but, what we say, we really think. We can never truly say, “I didn’t mean it.” We always mean it, and usually, we mean much more than we actually say. Jesus said that out of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). That’s enough to condemn us all, isn’t it? That’s why though the tongue is small and maybe we’re small too, the weakest among us can still cause devastating harm. We’re all like Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility.

So that’s the first thing James wants us to understand: the power of the tongue. Next, he wants us to see the danger of that power.

THE TONGUE IS DANGEROUS (5b-6)

A friend once heard about a woman in LA who took her own life. Her suicide note read only this: “They said.” Don’t you feel the weight of that? Isn’t so much of our life determined by “They said”? Perhaps worse still, we have contributed to the “They said” moments of others.

No wonder James says in verse 5, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.” No wonder Proverbs 18:21 says, “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” The tongue can kill. All it takes is a spark: one bit of gossip, one explosion of anger, one biting remark, one lie, one word. A small fire sets a forest ablaze.

Our words don’t even have to be intentionally murderous to do great harm. All it takes is a little carelessness. Not too long ago, there was a wildfire raging through Southern California that burned 22,000 acres, eating up homes and businesses. How did it start? From a smoke bomb used in a gender reveal party. The party was held on September 5th. The flames were finally extinguished on November 16th.

Closer to home, maybe you remember the videos of the wildfire in Gatlinburg not long ago. I remember people driving down the mountain with fire raging on both sides of the street. It looked like hell. It was the deadliest wildfire in the state in 100 years. How did it start? Two kids were playing with matches on the Chimney Tops Trail. The fire killed 14 people and destroyed 2,400 buildings. Our words can be like that.

No wonder James says, “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.” The tongue holds continents of bad things. John Calvin said the tongue is “a slender portion of flesh [that] contains the whole world of iniquity.” Just take the Ten Commandments, for example, and see how we break them with our tongues. We worship other gods, we praise idols, we take the Lord’s name in vain, we profane the sabbath, we verbally dishonor our mother and father, we murder through angry speech, we commit adultery through lustful words, we steal the truth by our lies, we complain about things we don’t have but others do. That’s the character of our tongue.

The tongue also has immense influence not only communally but personally as well. Look at verse 6, “Staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life.” James said earlier that pure religion is unstained from the world, but the tongue pollutes the rest of our bodies, affecting the whole of our life, from beginning to end, and everything in between. So not only is the tongue a fire that sets ablaze the forest of others, it sets ablaze our own. How many times has our stupid mouth gotten us in trouble? Our tongues reveal how weak our flesh truly is.

But worse still, there is something underneath it all playing with our weakness of flesh. Maybe we think, like Billy Joel, that we didn’t start the fire. But someone did. Who? James tells us at the end of verse 6. It is set on fire by hell. The word he uses is Gehenna. The only other use of the word in the New Testament is from Jesus when he described the place of ultimate judgment and condemnation where Satan lives. Do you see what James is saying? He’s saying no less than Satan himself works with the evil of our tongues. He lit the fire. He is the Father of lies. He is walking to and fro with his torch of mischief, lighting our tongues like wicks of a bomb, watching and enjoying the explosions that result.

In our sinfulness, we comply all too easily. The tongue houses a universe of potential evil greater than Darth Vader and his stormtroopers, where planets of sin dance around the fires of hell, and sparks of lies and gossip and all kinds of unrighteousness burn down people and houses and companies and countries and churches. The tongue is a dangerous weapon, and we must know the power each one of us has that can be so easily used for evil. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words pierce the soul. Words stick like glue.

Unfortunately, the news doesn’t get much better yet. Not only is the tongue powerful and dangerous, but it is also untamable.

THE TONGUE IS UNTAMABLE (7-12)

Think back to the illustrations James used of a horse and a bit. A horse is wild and majestic, but it is tamable with a bit in its mouth. In fact, James says in verse 7, every kind of beast and bird and reptile and sea creature can be tamed. Siegfried and Roy tamed tigers (kind of). Eagles are trained to fly into a stadium on command during the National Anthem. Snake charmers tame aggressive and venomous snakes. Have you ever seen what they can do with sea lions or seals or dolphins? It’s amazing. Humans have the extraordinary ability to train and tame even the wildest of animals. I heard a story the other day from Buck Showalter, now the manager of the New York Mets, who said one of his teams once brought monkeys in from the zoo to throw batting practice!

Mankind can tame any kind of animal. But in verse 8 James says there is one thing no human being can tame: our tongue. Isn’t that an amazing statement? How can that be? Didn’t our mama raise us right? We say please and thank you. We have manners. But we cannot get out from under the gaze of Scripture. God knows us better than we know ourselves. We cannot tame the tongue. We can cage it a bit. But we can’t tame it. We can teach it some tricks, but we can’t take the wildness out. We can defang it, but we can’t remove the venom. “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” James says.

Bible translator J.B. Phillips shows the word restless in verse 8 means “always liable to break out.” It’s in there, just biding its time until all hell breaks loose. One bad look from someone. One piece of gossip we can’t keep in. One tirade played out in a bit of weary frustration. One thoughtless word slipping through the filter. A single word and the fire rages, the lion is loose and hungry, the snake slithers into the garden with the lie, and the dragon opens its mouth to devour. It’s a restless evil. What we can do with wild beasts we cannot do with the little bitty tongue in our own mouth. We can’t tame it.

There’s a further problem. The same tongue with which we use bless our Lord and Father we can also use to curse people made in his image. “These things ought not to be so,” James says in verse 10. This is hypocrisy. Those who come on Sunday and sing praise to God then go out to lunch and share the latest gossip. Those who say their morning prayers and then go into their work with an agenda to get ahead by putting others down. Those who have their quiet time with the Lord and then hop on social media to like the post from the guys on “their side.” Blessing and cursing, all with the same tongue.

James asks how this can be. Look at the natural world. Can two different things come from the same source? Look at verses 11 and 12. A spring can’t produce both fresh water and saltwater. A fig tree only produces figs. An olive tree only produces olives. A grapevine only produces grapes. James is taking us back to a theme of his. He talks a lot about being double-minded. The spiritual person is single-minded. They do not bless God and curse his image-bearers at the same time. It should not be possible to bless God and curse his image-bearers with the same tongue. That is an anti-Christian thing. It is an evil thing. As it praises God it curses him for his people. How can that be?

And that’s all James says here. No follow-up with “Seven Ways to Tame Your Tongue.” Just the tension of needing to tame it and the inability to do so. The logic that two different things can’t come from the same source, but the reality that with us, that happens too often.

So we’re stuck with this great need to tame the tongue because it is our duty to do so as followers of Jesus. But at the same time, James says it’s impossible for us to tame it. We must tame it, but we can’t tame it.

CONCLUSION

So, to conclude, what do we do with this? How do we resolve the tension?

Look again at verse 8. James says no human being can tame the tongue. But he doesn’t say no one can. You can’t tame your tongue, but the one who made it can. My third point is only right from a certain perspective. The tongue isn’t ultimately untamable. It’s just untamable by us. We can’t tame the tongue, but Jesus can.

After all, it was Jesus who told us in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” He didn’t say the flesh is some help. He said it is no help at all. We cannot rely on ourselves. If we need living water, we need Jesus to provide it. If we need pure fruit, we need Jesus to grow it. If we need control of the tongue, we need Jesus to tame it. He is our only hope because the only way to transform the tongue is to change the heart, and the only one who can change the heart is the one who made it.

We cannot hope for self-improvement. We cannot act our way out of this. But the same tongue that we misuse, we can also use to repent. We can turn to Jesus with the empty hands of faith and trust him for help.

Why can we trust him? Because on the cross, Jesus did more than die a painful death. He died as a guilty man for sin he never committed. Jesus never said a wrong word to anyone. He was the only human to ever tame his tongue.  But on the cross, he took upon himself all our wrong words as if they were his wrong words. He put himself in our place under the wrath of God.

And God accepted Jesus’s sacrifice. Because of the cross of Christ, God does not look down on us now and think, “You failures. You just can’t shut up, can you? You can’t figure out how to tame that little bitty tongue in your mouth. Well, this is the last you’ll hear from me.” God does not cut us out of his conversation. He still talks to us because on the cross he stopped talking to his Son.

We’ve said a lot of bad and wrong things, but Jesus spoke a better word by his blood. He took our words and gave back his Father’s. Our words condemn, but his word proclaims, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Jesus covered the cost of every wrong word we’ve ever said or will ever say. Every bit of gossip, every put-down, every curse, every lie, every complaint, every angry word. Every sinful thing we’ve ever uttered out of the darkness of our fallen heart stuck to Jesus like glue on the cross, and he died for those sins—our sins.

But Jesus didn’t stay dead. The Word of God rose again and conquered Satan’s torch that sets our tongues on fire. We have a new speechwriter now. We have fire from heaven. All he’s asking us to do is give ourselves over to him, to turn to him in repentance and faith, to let him renew us deep within.

If we just keep listening to the Word of God and his gospel, he will keep renewing our hearts and his word will go deeper and deeper into us. And like a spring of living waters bursting forth, our powerful tongue can be used by God’s grace to bring life instead of death, hope instead of despair, the beauty of heaven instead of the fire of hell. Jesus can change our hearts and tame our tongues, and all we need to do is ask him. We can ask him to not let anything come out of our mouths that isn’t of him. We can ask him that as we drive to work tomorrow morning, as we pick up the kids from school tomorrow afternoon, and as we come to church next week. As we go about our days, we can give ourselves fully to Jesus and let his words be ours. If we do that simple and humble thing, Jesus can use us to bring shalom to this broken and tired and hurting world. Will we let him?

Let’s pray.

[1] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works, ed. R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 132.