Jonah Talk 1

‘Get Up Jonah!’

Context, Setting and characters
The book of Jonah is an enigmatic story, where everything is up side down. It is a story where irony is at the fore. It is also a rhythmic book that at times is explicitly poetic, and other times plays upon itself with these great parallel scenes that repeat, and in turn help us to interpret the message of each scene in light of the other.

Jonah itself is part of what is called the book of the twelve, or the minor prophets in the Old Testament. The book of Jonah is unique amongst these twelve, as it is the only one presented as a narrative, rather than a written account of a prophetic announcement or a set of oracles.

And It has been said that Jonah is a book, where people have a tendency; to mislay a Big God because of a Big Fish!

Now in terms of historical context, How does Jonah fit into the OT?
Creation, Fall, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon and the two kingdoms.

And now we join the story and find ourselves with Jonah in 770bc which is of course prior to the northern kingdom of Israel being invaded by Assyria in 710bc, and prior to the southern kingdom of Judah being invaded by Babylon in 586bc

The story of Jonah is composed of four distinct scenes:

The first scene is set on the sea 1:1 to 1:16
The second scene is set in the belly of a fish 1:17 to 2:10
The third scene is set in the great city of Nineveh from 3:1 through to 4:4.
And the final scene takes place just outside the city of Nineveh and goes from 4:5 to 4:11.
And today we are looking at the first scene that is set upon the sea.

So who are the characters we will meet in this first scene of Jonah’s story?


The Lord
The Lord of Israel, God who is termed by His personal name YHWH which is of course translated LORD. The Lord who made the heavens and the earth and all the people upon that earth. The Lord who made the promises to Abraham and then called Israel to be THE LIGHT to the nations, because of his concern for all of His creation.

The Lord is the one who speaks to his world through his mouthpieces the Prophets. And on this occasion he chooses a most unlikely candidate - Jonah

Jonah the Prophet
Jonah is nothing short of an enigma in my opinion, he is nothing like the magisterial Isaiah or the eccentric Ezekiel. But you do have to give it to him, when it comes to brevity he is without peer. His message of prophecy will consist of only eight words, and in contrast to Isaiah, the people will hear the message and respond. But like both those prophets, Jonah’s experience will form an important part of the message he is to bring!

And who is the message Jonah is given to speak be delivered to?
Well Nineveh! And we’ll get to them next.

It worth noting that Jonah’s only other appearance in the OT outside of the book that bears his name is 2 Kings 14:25

Jeroboam the son of Nebat.. restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.

So we know that Jonah was understood by all to be a prophet, and in addition he had more to say to the people than was recorded in the book that bears his name. A message that was very pro Israel!

The Great City of Nineveh
Capital of Assyria which was the dominant nation, or the superpower, in the Ancient Near East at this time. Nineveh was something of the centre of Power and life in their day, a New York City of its time.

The Gentile Sailors
Robust kind of People, because the sea in ancient times was a thing to be feared, to say you worked on a sea going vessel, was up there with equivalent today, of saying I’m an ultra-light pilot, and I made it myself – it’s a little crazy and for a sane person, a little disturbing. In this profession you really are at the whim of the gods.

But we note these sailors are Gentile sailors, ones who have no understanding of the living God, the God of Israel.

Telling the Story
NIV Jonah 1:1
The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai:
2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and
preach against it,
because its wickedness has come up before me."


Well the Story of Jonah begins in V1 with a prophetic announcement of the Lord, to his chosen prophet and mouthpiece Jonah. And in V2 God gives His prophet Jonah these three direct commands, commands that will be repeated to Jonah throughout this episode.

Jonah is told by God to Get up, Go and Call to them – call to Nineveh of the judgment that is to come because of their wickedness before God. And we see from his message to Jonah that the Lord knows and cares about the action of all nations, Jew and Gentile alike, they are all His creation.

So in V3 as the story continues,
3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD
and headed for Tarshish.
He went down to Joppa,
where he found a ship bound for that port.
After paying the fare,
he went aboard
and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.


Jonah gets up just as he was told to, and then promptly, does the Harold Holt. Which is ironic on a number of levels I realize, but Jonah could not have done more opposite to the command if he had of tried. [MAP]. This is Israel, this is Nineveh and this is Tarshish.

I’m sure Jonah knew you cant really run away from the Lord, but it is worth knowing that in his time most nations were henotheistic. This meant that the people of Jonah’s time believed in national and hence geographic gods. Each national god had a territory of influence that finished at the boundaries of the nation. But I’m sure despite his attempts at fleeing Jonah knew better, and in fact we will learn that for sure a little later in verse 9.

And so as V3 continues Jonah boards a ship that will get him away from Nineveh and the service of the Lord. But in V4 The Lord sent a great a storm. Literally God flung a storm at the boat, and it’s big one!

4 Then the LORD sent a great [flung] wind on the sea,
and such a violent storm arose
that the ship threatened to break up.
5 All the sailors were afraid [feared]
and each cried out to his own god [elohim].
And they threw [flung] the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck,
where he lay down and
fell into a deep sleep.

And the men feared this storm. And to be quite frank that’s fair enough too!
I mean just imagine being in a small ship made of timber in a large storm.
This is a life a death situation for these guys.

If that image doesn’t work for you, well imagine you are flying with air new guinea, on a small single engine plane, with gaffa tape on the windows, flying through a sever electrical storm, in mist, amongst the highland peaks of new Guinea. It would be nothing short of petrifying wouldn’t it?
I guarantee even the most hardened atheist, would be inclined to pray under those circumstances.

And that is what the sailors did, they prayed to their ‘own gods’. The text at this point uses the general name for a god of ‘elohim’. And their prayers, notwithstanding, they continue try to outflank the storm, and presumably the gods, by throwing cargo overboard to make it lighter.

In fact the sailors don’t ‘throw it’ as much as it is ‘flung’ overboard. And this word has a great thread of connection throughout this scene, just as God has ‘flung’ a storm at the sailors upon the sea, the sailors ‘flung’ off cargo in response.

But God isn’t bought off from his intent with some ‘flung’ goods, like some sought of cheap sacrifice or offering to appease his fearsome onslaught. The debt to be paid will be much higher for the people upon the boat, much higher than a couple of boxes of fake Rolex watches and some ‘hokey’ imitation Luis Vitton bags. Admittedly, it was probably grain or something, but you get the point.

And where is Jonah when all this is happening?
Well he has gone below deck to get some sleep, like some overgrown teenager who is always sleeping! That is quite a staggering reaction isn’t it?
I don’ think I could fall asleep on a water bed, much less fall asleep in the middle of this. But when you think about it, Jonah isn’t alone in his ability to do this is he? (But we’ll get back to that in a minute).

6 The captain went to him and said,

"How can you sleep?
Get up and
call on your god [elohim]!
Maybe he will take notice of us,
and we will not perish."
7
Then the sailors said to each other,

"Come,
let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity [upon us]."

They cast lots
and the lot fell on Jonah.

And now the captain reacts in V6 is much the same as any frustrated parent of a teenager, and he commands Jonah to do two things, to Get up and to call. (Which is of course two out the three things God has just told Jonah to do only five verses ago!)
And this scene is suspended in the tension of the characters being upon the water in this treacherous storm, and it is desperate stakes, all hands on deck. It seems to all involved that only divine intervention will be enough to solve this situation.

The sailors are able to see beyond the physical difficulties they are enduring and realize they are the subject of a divine incident. So they seek to find out who is responsible of all these problems by casting lots in V7.
And the lot falls upon Jonah, which is unsurprising to both us and no doubt Jonah.
So the sailors demand of Jonah that he answers 4 questions!

8 So they asked him,

"Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us?
What do you do?
Where do you come from?
What is your country?
From what people are you?"

And Finally, after being told 8 verses ago to call to the gentiles, Jonah speaks to the Gentiles and says:
9
"I am a Hebrew
and I worship [fear] the LORD [YHWH], the God of heaven,
who made the sea and the land."

Jonah serves no regional deity, no underling god, but he is a Hebrew, and he worships (fears) the Lord YHWH, the God of Heaven the one who made and controls the sea.

These previously ignorant Gentiles now know the truth about their situation, but also the truth about their whole lives, The LORD is the God over all, and they fear God as a response.

In addition though, these gentiles also realize that this disobedience of God’s prophet will cost a life. The disobedient man must be ‘flung’ into the sea! The creator will not be dictated to by the creation.

And you have to wonder at this point, just how badly does Jonah not want Nineveh to be saved?
He would rather be ‘flung’ into the sea, than turn around and do the right thing.

But in contrast these Gentiles fear the living God, and will try everything they can to do the right thing and protect the Life of this Israelite in V13. Which is of course a wonderfully Ironic state of affairs when you consider that this Israelite has tried everything he can to avoid saving the lives of gentiles of Nineveh!!

But despite their best efforts the Sailors realize, that Jonah’s words are true, and that the true God has spoken. So the sailors call again to the gods in V14, only this time they call to the true God of Heaven and earth, the God of Israel, and this time they use Israel’s God’s personal name ‘YHWH’. No longer do the sailors fear the generic national gods the ‘elohim’, they fear Israel’s God the Lord, ‘YHWH’.

And they call on the Lord to NOT hold them accountable for the life of this one man. And in V15 So they ‘flung’ Jonah into the sea!

And the sea stopped, immediately… And in response these gentile men feared and Sacrificed to the Lord to YHWH the God of the land and sea, the heavens and hades, the God of Israel.

And the first scene of Jonah’s story finishes in V16 with this disobedient prophet drifting to the bottom of the sea, under the strong hand of the Lord who has ‘flung’ him into the deep!

Interpreting the Story
So what do we make of the man Jonah, and in particular in this first scene of the book of Jonah?

Well firstly, it seems as we look at Jonah the prophet, we see a man who is truly representative of the attitude of the nation of Israel at this time. Israel is supposed to be a light to the nations, to represent God to the nations. But instead he is self serving, and nationalistic in a way that the God of all creation is not!

Jonah needed to understand God’s passionate desire, that all people would experience his grace.

And secondly, Jonah’s story highlights for us the theme of the true sovereignty of God.
Jonah’s plight highlights the wonderful irony of the situation and the undisputed Sovereignty of God. We see that despite Jonah’s best intentions to run away from what he is meant to be doing, (which is of course saving gentiles), and despite these best efforts not to, he does in fact wind up saving gentiles when he opens his mouth, because of the sovereign purposes and action of God.

In his sovereignty, Our God can even use broken and stubborn people to achieve his purposes. Jonah is told to call, and instead it takes him to verse 9 to say anything!
And even then he only offers to answer the direct question he has been asked. But still God saves the intended object of his affection, these Gentile sailors.

Interpreting the Story in light of NT
Well as we look at the story of Jonah, there are a number of New Testament passages that illuminate our understanding of the meaning of the story, in particular a number of parallels, but also a number of contrasts.

Primarily in terms of parallels and contrasts, we have Jonah and Jesus himself. Quite an odd couple if ever there was one. Why would Jesus chose Jonah (of all the prophets available to him from the Old Testament), why would he choose to illustrate his ministry so directly by this most recalcitrant of prophets, (to use a keatingism).

Well it seems primarily, Jesus chose Jonah because of the strong parallel of the ‘sign of Jonah’ from Matt 12 which we will talk about next week, but also because of the stark contrast between the two of them.

And so from the first scene of Jonah’s story we have looked at today, we see a deliberate comparison with Jesus in Mark 4.

mark4:35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side."
36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.
37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
41 They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
NIV Mark 5:1 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.

So you see in this scene a direct parallel of Jonah, with the storm raising up, Jesus sleeping in the boat, and the men in the boat being afraid. But of course it is the contrasts to Jonah’s story that bring out the great riches of Jesus story. Jesus is going toward the gentiles to save and heal them, Jonah was running away.

But of course the greatest contrast is that Jesus did not call to his God to calm the storm, he just commanded it directly. Jonah may have been a prophet of God, but Jesus is God!

And the disciples no longer fear the storm, but they fear Jesus!

But the comparisons could be even deeper I suspect, Jonah on the one hand would have to give his life, literally the text says ‘his blood’, to save the boat load of people. Jesus on the other hand would give his blood to be a ransom for the whole world.

In addition another comparison is the gentile sailors as a great contrast to Israel, and in particular Israel in Jesus day. The Gentile sailors would say to God, please don’t make us kill your prophet, Jerusalem when later they were given the chance, they would say kill the Son, and instead give us Barabbas.

By a comparison of parallel and contrast to Jonah, the NT points out the supremeness of Jesus in every way.

The Theological implications of the Story
It seems there are four main theological implications from the first Scene of Jonah’s story, and they are themes that will be developed throughout the book.

The first and outstanding theological theme of Jonah is the Sovereignty of God.
NO matter how sovereign you think God is, the book of Jonah will challenge you to have a higher regard and insight into the sovereignty of God. But we’ll have time to think a little more about this type of Sovereignty, next week.

The second great theological theme of this scene is understanding mercy of God, and understanding it particularly in light of the surpassing greatness of the Sovereignty of God.

In Jonah’s story we see the profound Mercy of God, his irrefutable determination to display his mercy to all his creation, even the wicked of Nineveh. God’s desire is for all people to turn to him and be saved and he will use even a stubborn prophet to do it.

The third theological truth Jonah’s story helps us to see, It that is no small thing to be addressed directly by the ‘Word of Lord’. The same God that spoke to Jonah is the same God who speaks to us today.

Jonah’s command or ‘word from the Lord’ as his mouthpiece to the world was to preach the truth about the coming judgment of God. SO the question is do we have a command or ‘word from the Lord’?

It Seems to me that Matthew 28:19:20 would be a pretty good reference point,

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

And then again maybe you could add to that, Matt 9:37-38..

37 Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

So the tough question Jonah begs of us all is:
Would you say as a group, or as individuals, we are currently heading for Tarshish or Nineveh with our ‘Word from the Lord’?

Are we really concerned to head out to the lost and those under impending judgment, with the word of the Lord?

Or do we have the attitude like Jonah, (which is a little like what my mates dad used to say about him as a lazy teenager who was always sleeping), ‘I’m right Jack, pull up the drawbridge!’?

The fourth theological idea here, is the clear fact of the hard and real discipline of God upon his children, when they are disobedient. Jonah is no story of cheap grace but of the genuine concern of God (for the lost certainly), but also his concern for the obedience of his own people!

Jonah brings before us a warning of the real danger, that the conscious disobedience of God’s direct command, resulted in a hard discipline in this life.
We need to hear the clear warning about the dangers of the real and difficult discipline of God. God is making for himself a Holy people, not a comfortable people!

God has promised from his word, and shown in his dealings with Jonah that he will discipline his disobedient children……..

Jonah’s story is the story of his God who is the sovereign and merciful God, but not a God to be toyed with, for what he has spoken will happen………….

‘Get up Jonah, Go and Call to them, that judgment is coming, because their wickedness has come before me!’

Christ Alone

‘Christ Alone has done all that is required for salvation to be available as a gift which is received by faith alone.’


‘Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.’ Hebrews 10:19-23

Intro
Have you ever lost something important, I mean really important?
I mean got home in the car and then realized that you left one child at the shopping centre?
I mean got to the airport and realized you had forgotten to take your passport?
Or even worse you remembered your passport, and as you boarded the plane you realized you forgot to get a visa – and not the credit card – I mean a travel visa, so you didn’t need to turn around and just come home again on the next flight..

I mean forgotten something really important like what ‘nil-by-mouth’ means?
Y’know, going in for day surgery and forgetting that you can’t eat before hand, so after your luxurious breakfast you are sent home, because the surgery can’t happen anymore that day.
And don’t even ask what kind of day you are having at hospital when you forget what ‘NFR’ means!

It’s staggering how easily you can forget the most essential things, going to the beach without cossies or even worse without sunscreen. It’s embarrassing, but we all have done it haven’t we, it just is human to sometimes forget the basics. Like how to spell ‘of’.

And in the middle ages, as staggering as it seems, the Roman Catholic forgot the essential and basic truths about Jesus Christ. They mislaid THE GREAT Christmas present, amongst a pile of entangled cheesy rapping paper and tinsel, of religious rituals, of the saints, and Mary, the Pope, indulgences, confession, the Mass, and services in Latin when people in Germany funnily enough only understood German.

Martin Luther asked a question of almost child like simplicity.
Excuse me, but Doesn’t the Bible teach Jesus death dealt with our sin problem before God?

Through reading Romans, this Roman Catholic Monk came back to this astounding and yet Simple truth of the Christian faith. Christ Alone Saves, because Christ Alone can save. No one and nothing else can save, and nothing else will!!

Well we are at the last of our four talks about the reformation teaching, and its’ central importance to the Christian faith. The truths about Christ that got re-found when the clutter of religious wrapping paper was disposed of, the Truth that:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn from the Bible Alone.’

So today, we are at our last talk and there are two main points I want to make in regard to Christ Alone:
Firstly, The supremacy of Christ over all! and
Secondly, The Sufficiency of Christ for all!

The supremacy of Christ over all [How can salvation come from somewhere else!]
NIV Hebrews 1:1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4 So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. 5 For to which of the angels did God ever say, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father"? Or again, "I will be his Father, and he will be my Son"?

The clear testimony of God in the scriptures, and in particular the New Testament book of Hebrews is that there is a profound and incomparable uniqueness of God’s purposes in Jesus Christ. All of God’s purposes in creation, in revelation, and in salvation, focus upon (and testify about) Jesus Christ. It is impossible to overstate the glory and the wonder and the enormity of who Jesus is.

Christ is Supreme in every single way, for God made the world through him, and for him, and for him alone it exists, and in him it has its being, Colossians 1 tells us.

Christ is Supreme in all things, but the passage we just read in Hebrews points out two particular ways Christ is supreme. Firstly, Christ is the supreme revelation of God. And Secondly, Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man.

Firstly, Christ is the supreme Revelation of God
Christ is the final and full revelation of God. As much as all that Moses and the Prophets had to say was the true word of God, from God himself, nothing told the world the truth about God and his purposes as clearly as the appearing of THE WORD of God in the flesh. The word of God incarnate Jesus Christ, the word of God now enscripturated for us in the Bible. Christ is ‘the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being’ Hebrews 1:3 tells us, & he is ‘in very nature God’ Philippians 2 tells us.

Christ is both the creator of the World, and he is the sustainer of the world, upholding it by his powerful word. He is far above all his creation as its creator, far above even the angels in the heavenly realm, the angels it was believed who held men accountable to the Law of Moses before God.

Christ is supreme over all, because Christ is God himself. All of God’s purposes for creation focus upon him, as we now learn from the Bible alone.

Christ is the supreme Revelation of God.

And if that is not enough for you, we discover the second great truth that:
Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man.
God the creator, entered into his own creation, to mediate and negotiate a peace between himself and mankind. Christ would mediate the salvation of mankind, because only Christ could. Because only Christ, God the creator, could become the obedient man Jesus Christ, who would live the life and then pay the penalty that mankind needed to pay.

Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man, because only Christ is the real High-priest on behalf of the people. And this is because only Christ could enter the heavenly temple to deal with God direct.
When you need action, you need to go to the decision maker don’t you?
Not some underling! ‘Ill have to check with my boss first!’.
Christ was the only one who was able to access the decision maker, by accessing the heavenly temple, and not some copy of the real thing.

Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man, because only Christ, the real High-priest, could offer the real and acceptable sacrifice of the perfect and obedient man, the one who had never broken relationship with God, the God Man.

Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man, because only he had the access to deal with the decision maker, and only he had the capacity to pay the debt required to negotiate the peace. Christ Alone saves, because Christ Alone can save.

God in Christ reconciled himself to us, though his brutal and unjust death upon a Roman cross. Christ Alone saves, because Christ Alone can save.

Christ is Supreme over all!

APPLICATION:
It means that if Christ is supreme over all, then Christ really is THE LORD, he is God over all. Christ is the LORD over the creation of the world and its sustaining, he is LORD over evil and the heavenly realms, both angels and demons, he is LORD over sickness, he is LORD over Sin and death, he is LORD over judgment, and consequently he is LORD over Salvation. Christ is LORD over you and me and we now no longer fear the things of this world, but we serve the LORD over all.

Christ is supreme, incomparable and unconquerable, Christ is LORD over all, he has paid all the penalty of sin in his death, he has crushed the power of sin in his resurrection, and he will soon deal with the presence of sin, when he returns.

Christ Alone can save, because Christ alone has the power to save, because Christ Alone has paid the great penalty it cost to redeem us from our sin.
Christ is Supreme over all!

And our second main point for today.
The sufficiency of Christ for all [by faith God’s riches become mine!]
Heb 10:19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Christ is the grounds of our confidence of who God is, because Christ is God. Christ is the supreme revelation of God. But not only can we know God because of this, we can have confidence of God’s purposes for mankind, his purposes for you and me in Christ!

We can confidently answer the question, ‘How is God towards Me?’


Christ is the supreme mediator between God and man, because Christ is the true High-priest. The one mediator who has access to the true heavenly temple, the one mediator who could offer the true sacrifice for sin, offered once for all for mankind, of himself upon a cross. As we learned from Hebrews 9.

Christ’s revelation of God is sufficient for all, but more than that Christ’s mediatorial representation is sufficient for all, for all who would accept this gift by faith.

Faith is our simple and genuine ‘yes’ to God’s offer of ‘would we like Christ to set us free, by paying our debt for us?’. A debt we are unable to pay ourselves.


It seems appropriate at this point to let Martin Luther explain the sufficiency of Christ, ‘Jesus takes all the filth of my life, that is mine alone, and my doing and he makes it his at the Cross. Then he takes all the riches that he received from his father, because of his obedience, and he makes them mine’. Luther called it the great exchange. Christ’s great riches given by God are sufficient for all who would accept them. An acceptance that is by faith.

The reformers saw the bright light of the Bible’s teaching about Christ Alone. Christ alone could save, not Christ plus anything else, as well meaning as these other things may have been. No partaking in sacrifices of mass, or receiving indulgences and no other ritual observance ever added anything, all it did was take away. Take away the riches of Christ, and therefore take away any sense of personal assurance.

ILLUSTRATION:
It is crazy to think we add anything of value to Salvation in Christ. Christ who is supreme over all, and Christ who is sufficient for all.

It is as crazy as inheriting the federal reserves of gold, and you want to add your handful of tin foil from your Easter eggs to increase its worth.

It’s like inheriting the gift of the hope diamond, all 110 carots of the original thing and deciding to set it on a stainless steel ring surrounded by 110 diamontes!

It’s not only crazy, its just plain insulting.

The prayer book puts it this way in the 11 article of religion, ‘We are accounted righteous before God, only on the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not by our own works or deservings: wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort..’

Questions:
If the great treasures of Christ alone aren’t good enough, how can you be saved? Or More to the point how can you be ever be sure of where you stand before God?
How could you ever be sure of the answer to the question, ‘How is God towards me?’
Doesn’t sound much like the salvation the God of the Bible offers does it?
The one who says there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The reformation teaching reminds us of these great truths of our God given salvation, our new relationship with God our heavenly Father, that are indeed ‘wholesome and full of comfort!’. Great truths that assure us of how is God towards us’, that God is for us in Christ, that salvation is from God alone, the truths that:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn from the Bible Alone.’

Bible Alone (the sermon that never was!)

‘..you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed..’ 2 Timothy 3:15-16

What is God Like towards me?
Throughout history people have sought to answer the question, what is God like? And many have attempted an answer to this question, by making claims about God’s nature and character.
People’s investigation on this matter, Maybe lead them to claim, ‘there is no God!’
Or ‘if there is a God they are unknowable!’

But for every claim that someone makes as to the existence or even the non-existence of God, there is an equally valid and important question to ask of them, the question, ‘How do you know, what you claim to know’.

You see the answer’s you will come to about what God is like, will be intrinsically shaped by How you went about answering the question, your method if you like. People will come up with vary different looking ‘gods’ depending upon how they go about finding their answers.

Our society says that any real knowledge has to be ‘scientifically based’, that is if you can’t examine it (smell, taste, hear, touch, see it) well it can’t really be known. And where exactly do national geographic send the expedition team to find and examine God?

For society today God is off the table, as a subject of ‘scientific and reasonable’ investigation.

And at one level this is true isn’t it?

I mean God is not physical like us, so how can we really know what he is like?

If God is behind this sensory ‘curtain’ that shields him from our prying investigations, how can we know what God is like?
How can we make any claim about him?

SO, what if I start by using my mind to look at the world and then conceive of what God is like from what I observe?
And people have often done that. And usually they say something like, ‘the god I find would be the greatest thing conceivable’, or they say ‘this god is all powerful, all knowing and all present’.

Or on the other hand, if I try and work out what god is like just by looking at the world, and then thinking big thoughts, well then maybe in reality there are two god’s, I mean how else do you account for all the evil and bad in the world. I mean it seems like the good god wins most of the time, but then the bad god wins in the end doesn’t he? because everyone dies in the end, so maybe life is just a tragedy as we get caught up in the battle of these two gods?

What about some other approach. In a significant contrast to using their minds to conceive of god, many religious people today make an appeal to a mystical Experience of God. I know God because I know him in my inner being, in my spirit. Which could well be true, but how can we really know what god is like based on someone else’s experience?

If mystical experience is the medium of god’s revelation How can we intelligently share our knowledge of God, other than to say; ‘well you just know’. And then how can I be really sure that I have the same experience as you?

And then what is to say that your experience is actually God?
And not just some mental or emotional aberration?

How do I know I really did experience God?
And not just fall victim to one too many expresso’s today?

And then again, in these days of post-modernism where the truth is just relative or subjective, what does your experience really matter to me anyway. I mean that is just your truth and not my truth or their truth, so it seems there really is no way to claim any sought of absolute truth anyway.

So how can we today talk intelligently and meaningfully about what God is like in a world where God seems absent to our advances and investigations, a world where God is behind the curtain from our senses.

Well, the important thing to note here from the approaches we just talked about is that there is an implicit assumption underlying this view that we find society today, the view is that somehow, this God if they exist, are ‘dumb’ and ‘mute’ when it comes to communicating with their creation.

But in total Contrast, Christianity claims We really can know God, because God has made himself known in our sensory world. God has publicly acted upon the world stage in history, in action that could be heard and seen and verified by many people. This kind of Public action that was physically verifiable by people, we can call the:


The Public Word of God (The Objective Word of God)
This public word of God is where God spoke to the entire community of Israel, and through them God addressed the world, as he did at Mt Sinai in Exodus Chapter 20
1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 You shall have no other gods before me.

In an act of brilliant clarity, the silence about God has been broken, because God has spoken publicly to tell Israel, and through them the world, about what he is like. God is a God who has spoken into this point of history to reveal himself, and in revealing himself he points out he is a God that can be likened to no other.

But he is also a God who has acted clearly into our world. If you were in Egypt, you would have seen the actual public events of the plagues, and the events of the mass exodus of Israel.

God has broken into our world, he has come from behind the sensory curtain to let himself be heard and known in public, by speaking and acting in time and history. In our sensory world.

I remember hearing John Chapman, whom most of you will know, talking about this point and telling the story, that one time he was babysitting a friends child, and they decided to play a game of hide and seek to pass the time. So Chappo was keen to get the local rules straight and asked the child, ‘how do play this game’. And the child replied, ‘well, you close your eyes and count to 20, and I go and hide in the laundry, and then you try to find me.’

You can’t help thinking the kid hadn’t exactly picked up on the subtleties of the game had he. It is after all a simple concept, if you don’t want to be found. Don’t say anything.

Well God could have remained hidden behind the sensory curtain forever, and we would have never been able to find him, even if we suspected that he was there. But God didn’t hide away, God broke into our world and made himself known. God spoke to us, at various times and many ways.

Exodus 20 is of course the classic speech and action of God in Old Testament times into our history. But we see it also throughout the events of the lives of the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah about the action of God to exile Israel and Judah into Babylon.

This action of God wasn’t just speaking the whole of his revelation to only one enlightened person either, like many other religions, where their god speaks to only one person, and so it becomes a matter of trusting one person’s subjective experience. God spoke to the public, through various individuals and God then acted in Public to enable them to verify the word he had spoken.

God may have used various individuals to speak, such as Moses and the other prophets, but he objectively put himself into time and space by his speech and action so that people may truly know him.

God really has made himself known into this world because he has revealed himself and his purposes in both speech and action.

But of course, the Public or objective word of God in our world, ‘par excellence’ is of course the breaking of God into our world in his WORD, in action and indeed even in the flesh.
Jesus Christ is THE WORD of God And John’s Gospel chapter 1 Tells us that:
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

God has acted to punch a whole through the dark ignorance of man, with the piercing light of his son. God didn’t just speak into time and space, he physically entered it through his Son, Jesus Christ. The Public WORD of God for all to see, a physical person walking the streets of our world. You could see this public revelation of God.
Hebrews 1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Jesus, the word of God, the exact representation of God’s being, the one who is in very nature God.. This person walked the earth.
If you like God had come from behind the sensory curtain and had an open house inspection!!
You really could see God in time and space… that is amazing isn’t it?

God’s person and God’s purposes have been publicly revealed, and what has been revealed is that all God’s purposes and promises are found in, and centred on, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s public declaration and guarantee that we can really and truly know what God is like. This is not just a matter of personal opinion, but a matter of public record of historical events.

The suspicion people have today about God’s objective Word and work, is kind of like that philosophical conundrum they give to first year university students. The question, ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one sees it fall, did it really fall?’

And the question it seems to me is designed to ask the question ‘how do we determine what is reality’. Without getting too carried away, and in short..
well of course it fell!!
And why? well because humanity, and when I say humanity, I mean you - the individual, are not the centre of the universe!
And neither are you the determiner of what is reality.
The tree fell, just like if a man dies, and you didn’t know about it, he really did die. And in just the same way, If God speaks, and you didn’t hear it, it still means he really did speak. And so it follows that if God came to earth, and you didn’t personally see it, did it really happen?

And the answer is, of course it did.

Now God could have legitimately thought after his public action, I’ve done my bit and I’m off. I spoke to you, I came to you in my Son. Now you guys sought yourselves out.

But thankfully God’s concern and love is much greater than that, not only did he act publicly, but he has acted personally. So not only can we answer the question what is God like, we can answer the question ‘what is God like towards us?’

God has come to his world and acted through his Public word, but he has also lovingly condescended to coming to us personally, so we can know what God is like towards us. And this we can call the:

The Personal Word of God (The Subjective Word of God)
This is God’s Public word applied to me!
The personal word of God, is in fact the gospel of Christ, it is the message for me from God. It is how the Public word of God becomes my treasured possesion. The Gospel message is the private Word of God for us, that God is for us in Christ.

This reformers asked the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’.
The answer they found in the gospel, that God is for us in Christ.
The public work of God in Christ (of his birth, his revealing of God, his life of obedience, his atoning death on a cross and his resurrection and ascension) has become God’s personal word to us in the Gospel. And Christ comes to us personally and reveals the truth about himself in his gospel message, that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Saviour.
The Public word available for all humanity, becomes the private word to you and me in the Gospel. The Public word of Christ is available to all, but the private benefits to us, of Justification, grace and faith and the like, only come to us in the Gospel of Christ, the personal WORD of God.

A personal word that must be receive by us personally through faith, but a word that can only be received because of God’s gracious gift to us of the Spirit of God, which enlivens our minds and empowers our hearts to receive this personal Word of the truth.

And what does this mean for us?
Well it means even the faltering and broken human words of a very average preacher, or a very average youth group leader, or a very average parent, can be the words that bring eternal life, the words that bring the personal word of God, the words that bring the Gospel of Christ. The words that tell the truth of the Public work of Christ, that God is pleased to use to bring his personal Word of God, the saving word to them, in the power of his Spirit.

But the big question is, we weren’t there to see the public word of God in Christ, how can we be sure that we have heard the personal word of God to us in the Gospel rightly?

The Bible is the Authoritative Public and Personal Word of God
2 Tim 3:
from infancy
you have known the holy Scriptures,
which are able to make
you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for
teaching,
rebuking,
correcting and
training in righteousness,
17 so that the man of God
may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work.

How do we know that the personal word of God that came to us is actually the Word of God?
Well it has been authoritatively written down for us to check we heard it right!

The Bible is the place where the Public word of God to all, and the private word of God to you and me meet, and have been authoritatively recorded, ‘all scripture is God breathed’. It is the place where God has chosen to leave his public and personal revelation for this world.
Jude puts it in these terms:
3 I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

Jude reminds us that We need to check that the personal word of God, is true against the faith delivered once for all to the Saints. The delivered truth of Jesus Christ, a truth on which the scriptures are the final and ultimate authority.

The issue for the reformers faced was one of who has the final authority in speaking for God, is it the church itself, like the Roman Catholic Church teaches or is it the Bible?

Well, The Catholic church desired a good thing, in having a uniform and confident interpretation of the faith, but unfortunately they did it at the expense of what God had said in his final and authoritative word the Bible.

And I’m sure a few of you are thinking, ‘It’s all well and good to say it’s just the Bible, but then how come so many people seem to use the Bible to say different things, how can we be certain what the Bible says?’

Interpreting the Bible as the Authoritative Word of God
Well this is quite a massive topic really, and it is deserving of at least a sermon on its own. So I just want to make a couple of brief comments about this before we finish.

The central thread of the Bible is clear, Jesus Christ is the Lord of all, who has redeemed his people by his cross. But unfortunately not all the Bible is equally as clear, and that can be a frustration at times. So we need to have two attitudes when we approach the Bible, Confidence and Humility.

Firstly, Confidence!
Jesus said come unto me all of you who are tired and weary and I will give you rest.
But we can only hear the teaching and the words of Christ today from the pages of the Bible. Through the Bible’s words God comes to us personally, he reveals himself to us through his speech, and he wants us to know him personally.

So it means that Reading the Bible isn’t about religious observance, but about expressing our relationship with GOd. When you pick it up and read it, you are in a real way before the face of God, hearing these words of breath fall from his mouth to your ear. It is and incredibly personal experience of God, the Bible is his private word to us, through the power of his holy Spirit.

God has spoken publicly and authoritatively in the Bible, and God continues to speak personally to us today through this same living and active Word.


Secondly, Humility.
The ‘Bible Alone’ is the final authoritative word of God, and it is a personal word of God. But the body of Christ is a big place and God does use different people with different gifts to help explain his word. So we all need to be humble to hear what Christian brothers and sisters have to share, And in the same breath we always have confidence to check their words against the authoritative word of God in the Bible.

In light of this it is worth saying something about the blessing and curse of tradition.

In Luther’s day tradition needed a smack on the nose, it thought it was the master and God’s word the Bible was the servant. In contrast, clearly the Bible is the authoritative word of God.
So usually in this kind of talk, evangelicals get a bit fired up and put the boot into tradition. In Luther’s time, this was entirely appropriate, but in our time I suspect we actually need to hear the opposite, to hear the call to actually respect tradition a little more.

The Body of Christ not only spans geography across the physical world, but through writing and printing, it also spans time and history. Great Christian people throughout time have handed down to us, some trustworthy traditions that point out to us Gospel truth, like the creeds, or the prayer book or Calvin’s institutes of the Christian religion. They put these down to help future generations from going astray with the gospel, to try and stop us from making the same mistakes of the previous generations.

It seems our generation is in danger of being a little too enamored with its own discovers, and forgetting the important lessons of history that the Christians of the past have handed down to us. It seems to me we are faced with the very real danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, under the guise of ‘Bible Alone’.


God has given us other members of the body, to help to make sure the personal word of God we think we have heard, is the true personal word of God, the personal word of God that conforms to the public and authoritative word of God, the Bible. Those members of the body, who have long since departed this world to be with the Lord, still do us a great service in pointing out the truth of the gospel, a witness we would be wise to hear, and yet always checking it against the Bible itself.

God has done everything, personal and public, to ensure we can have confidence about knowing, that he is for us in Christ. That because of Christ:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn in the Bible alone.’

Faith Alone

‘For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith.. “The Righteous will live by faith”’ Romans 1:17.

As some of you may be aware I ride a motorcycle. I’ve ridden bikes for a bit over 12 years now. The motorcycle I ride now I purchased exactly 10 years ago today. And it was an experience I won’t forget in a hurry, for various reasons but particularly the test ride I had.

Up until that point I only had a provisional riders license, which is a controlled license meaning you can only ride a bike up to 250cc. But come the 6th of April 1998, I had a full license and could ride any sized bike my heart desired. Unfortunately, my wallet didn’t quite have the same level of commitment as my heart, but a compromise was reached and I decided on my 850cc twin cylinder bike, which is still a fair lump of bike though, let me assure you.

Now after my research I discovered the best price for this bike was in fact from a dealer that was in Elizabeth St in the city, near central railway station. Which was all fine to get there off the train, but it meant my first ride, the test ride of this bike, was in the congested streets of weekday traffic at central railway. It was some experience, and in when I managed to get the bike back to the dealer without knocking over every bike in the store in the process, my eyes were about the size of 50c pieces and I needed a quiet little sit down.

Afterwards, I relayed my experience to a friend from work who also rode, and was something of a mentor in the process and he said to me, ‘Andrew, there are two types of people in this world when it comes to motorcycling:
Those who ride a bike and say that scared the daylights out of me, and I never-ever want to do it again!
And Those who ride a bike and say that scared the daylights out of me, and I love it!

Well what has that got to do with anything? Glad you asked, thank you. Well motorcycles in this regard are just like the ‘Righteousness of God’.. No really stay with me here!!

By the end of the talk today we’ll be able to see that there are only two types of people in the world when it comes to the ‘Righteousness of God’, much the same as motorcycles:
Those who it scares the daylights out of and say I never want to having anything to do with it again.
And those who it scares the daylights out of and say, ‘and I love it!’

There are only two types of people, but the encouraging news is, it is possible to be one type and then change to the other. And that is what Martin Luther, an Augustinian Monk in the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th Century in Germany, discovered from his reading of the Bible and in particular the book of Romans. Luther was one who had nothing but fear and trepidation when it came to the ‘Righteousness of God’, but then discovered the great treasure and Joy that is found in the ‘Righteousness of God’ that has been revealed in Jesus Christ.

As you may be aware this week is the second of four sermons in a series about some of the central truths of the Christian faith, that were rediscovered by a group of Christians called the reformers.

The reformers, and Martin Luther in particular, had set out to find some answers to the big questions of life, like ‘what is God like?’. And not just those kind of abstract questions about God, but the more difficult question, the personal question, the dangerous question, the question that changes everything, the question the reformers asked is ‘What is God like toward me?’.

How will I find God when I meet him at my life’s end. What will my creator be like to me, Will he be angry with how I have used my life? Will he be my judge? Will he just be disinterested and pay me no regard at all?

The reformers found themselves within a Roman Catholic church of the middle ages, that offered them no genuine hope in the response to the question of ‘What is God like towards me?’.

The Official catholic teaching of the day offered only a general sense of hope, that because of Christ death, and God’s grace working in us, if you did right you could be right with God. In Luther’s world, the Roman Catholic churches answer to question ‘How can I be sure of what God is like towards me?’ was in simple terms, ’just try harder!’. You need to do right, to be right!

But in total contrast, the answer the reformers were to find in the Bible, was to rock the foundation of the Church they belonged to, and it even tore at the fabric of the societies they lived in. In fact this question and the answers they found changed the face of society across the entirety of Europe, and would go on to shape the nature of societies throughout the later developed world, including the USA and even Australia.

The answer to the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’ would come in the theological declaration that a person could be right with God, that a person need no longer fear God, and this based on five great truths of the Christian faith found in the Bible.

The five statements called solas, which is latin for alones were, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Bible alone and To the Glory of God alone. The summary of the reformation teaching we are looking at over this series is the theological statement:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn from the Bible Alone.’

Now if that phrase doesn’t kind of instantly ring true in your head, or you even think, I have no idea what he is talking about, well relax, it’s ok, it can sound a little technical with a lot of definitions to understand, so if you don’t catch all the detail, don’t sweat it, that’s ok, just let the general sense of the things kind of wash over you and sink in.

In Short is means, God saves us by his grace – his gift to us of Jesus who died on the cross. And because of this we can be children of God. We can have a right standing with God, or we can be justified which is the language of the Bible.
And all we can do is accept this gift and add nothing to it – nothing at all!

Over this series we are looking at four of these truths, and today we are thinking about the concept of Faith or Faith Alone as the reformers termed it. Faith alone is our right response to ‘Righteousness of God’ that has been revealed in the gospel message about Jesus Christ.

The dark Specter of the ‘Righteousness of God’
Whatever else the righteousness of God is, it is first and foremost a description of the Character of God. It is a description of the character of God, because it is also a description of all his actions. God is in himself righteous, both right and just in himself, but he is also right and just in all his actions towards us.

Luther rightly understood from reading Romans, that when the Righteous meets the unrighteous, what you get is judgment.
1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

Luther, understood that a Holy God must be a righteous judge of all that is unrighteous and all that is unholy in his creation.
In Romans 3:10-13 we read where Paul is quoting the Psalms of the Old Testament:
10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."

And this concerned Luther greatly, because although he was the most conscientious of all monks, but even he knew despite all his devout religious observations, within himself he was not righteous. He knew he had not ‘done enough good’ to wash away the stain of his unrighteous deeds. His unrighteous deeds were his, they were his doing, and his problem before God. Like an albatross around his neck, if you know the poem.

But I’m sure Luther is not alone in this, my own experience and I’m quite certain yours, if you’re being honest, will agree with what we read in Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
And all people do it knowing that, 1:32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Both the Bible and experience tell us, we have done and do things, (that are not even pleasing to ourselves), much less God.

Given this the ‘Righteousness of God’ is a fearful prospect isn’t it?
I mean, I don’t even want people to know the things of done, much less have to them all exposed before God and then be called to account absolutely justly and rightly for each of them?

Luther knew that even with a lifetime to prepare for it, He couldn’t possibly be ready to meet the righteousness of God. He knew he could never make himself perfectly right or righteous in order to meet God on right terms.

But as he kept reading Romans he discovered something that would change his life for ever. He Discovered:



The Brilliant Light of the ‘Righteousness of God’
Luther new that God was right and just, Righteous, in his character and in all he dealings with man, and this scared the life out of him. But Luther hadn’t not yet come to comprehend the amazing depths of the ‘Righteousness of God’ in his character and especially in his dealings with mankind.

There are only two types of people when it comes to the ‘Righteousness of God’, those who fear it, and those who love it. And this is because there are only two types of people when it comes to the Cross of Christ. Those who get it, and those who don’t.

Luther, under God’s grace, went from being one who feared the ‘Righteousness of God’ to one whom loved the ‘Righteousness of God’. And this was because God’s Righteousness was of a far higher caliber than Luther had imagined. All of a sudden Luther understood the meaning of the Cross of Christ, that in that action, God was both Just and the Justifier, of all who accepted the gift of forgiveness in Christ. A gift to be accepted by grace alone.
3:21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished--
26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

God does something, and not just something BUT EVERYTHING, to deal with the problem for us of what will happen when a holy God, meets his unrighteous and wayward creation. A creation that in its natural inclination pays him no regard and does what it pleases.

God in Christ saved us from the penalty of our own sin, by dying on the cross in our place. Our sins, were paid for there. So that God’s righteousness would be far greater than what Luther had imagined. God is no cheap hanging judge just wanting to reek vengeance on guilty people. But God is both Just in his judgment, and the Justifier, because in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, God takes upon himself the penalty that the guilty deserved.

We are Justified (or put right with God) by grace alone though Faith Alone in Christ alone. Luther talked about salvation in this way, ‘Jesus takes all the filth of my life, that is mine alone, and my doing and he makes it his at the Cross. Then he takes all the riches that he received from his father, because of his obedience, and he makes them mine’. Luther called it the great exchange. God’s gracious gift.

And because of this God can give us the guilty a right standing and relationship with him. God saves the guilty, and brings us from spiritual death to spiritual life in relationship with him. But make no mistake this is not cheap forgiveness, a Holy God cannot be with an un-Holy people, but in Christ and on the cross where he died God was paying a heavy price to secure our freedom from our own sin. He is both Just and the Justifier.

But we still haven’t exactly answered the reformers question yet have we?
‘What is God like towards me?’ Well that’s what we’ll look at now.

The ‘Righteousness of God’ is by Faith from first to last (FAITH ALONE)
The ‘Righteousness of God’ is a description of the character of God, it is also a description of the action of God in his Son, Jesus Christ and of his Cross in particular. But The ‘Righteousness of God’ is also the Gift of God to us.

The answer to the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’, Is this: God is for us. God’s righteousness is revealed to us, and it is more wonderful than we could have ever imagined. God is not just some smug zero tolerance politician, but a just and loving heavenly father. God gives us the gift of salvation.

God’s grace to us, grace just means his gift to us, is his righteous action to save us from our sin, which is his gift to us, a gift we receive ‘by faith’. Or by faith alone, or a righteousness by faith, ‘from first to last’ to use the words of 1:17.

But that is how God has always saved his people, as Romans 4 points out that even Old Testament Patriarch Abraham was saved by faith, not by his works.

So I guess the follow up question is, what is faith?
Well the Bible tells us that faith is a simple and genuine trust in the promise and offer of God. Our Faith is a simple ‘yes’ to the question would you like Jesus to deliver you from the wrong you have done through his death in your place?

Our Faith is a conscious recognition of the truth of our situation before God and an acknowledgement of God’s gracious offer of a right relationship (or righteousness) with him. It is our genuine ‘thank you’ in accepting the gift of forgiveness and salvation he offers. We trust that what he has done will be given to us. In the same breath our ‘yes’ is a ‘yes’ to Christ alone, and at the same time a ‘No’ to our capacity to do anything to fix it ourselves.

But the question this always raises for us, in our desperate search for some dignity in all this, is surely you have to do more than say thank you?
This leads us to little saying Paul uses in the first chapter of Romans in V6 and in the last chapter of Romans in V26. Paul calls it:

The ‘Obedience of Faith’
Paul highlights throughout Romans, that any genuine ‘thank you’ to God, has to include an acknowledgement of guilt in the first place. You can’t accept a plea bargain from the judge, unless you plead guilty first!

So our ‘yes’ to God’s plea bargain, where Christ takes all our punishment for us and wipes our charge sheet clean for all time, has to be a genuine ‘thank you’, where we no longer live as the enemies of God like we once were. We now are saved and have been given a right status with God, and so we now set out to live in a way that is pleasing to God. Paul calls this mindset the ‘obedience of faith’. This is the same thing that James talks about in chapter 2:14 of his letter.

Faith alone is what saves, because Christ has done everything to save us. Now we are saved by faith, we live a life of obedience to God, the ‘obedience of faith’.
Conclusion:
The Bible only gives us two choices when it comes to the issue of ‘What is God like toward me?’.
There are only two ways you can understand the ‘Righteousness of God’, one as a fearful prospect of being shown truly for who you are towards God, and the other starts with a fearful acknowledgement, but it ends in great joy and hope, just like it did for Martin Luther.

There are only two ways you can understand this ‘Righteousness of God’, because there are only two ways you can understand the cross of Christ.

So the question is I guess, what is the cross of Christ to you?
Is it your ‘yes’, or will it be your ‘no’ to God’s gracious offer of forgiveness. A salvation from God that is his gift alone, of Christ alone, that we accept by faith alone. Our faith is a simple yes, to accepting God’s gift.

Today is a very good day to accept that gift, to say yes to the cross of Christ and to live like the apostle Paul who said:
16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

Grace Alone

Grace Alone
‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through Faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast’ Ephesians 2:8-9

Intro to the series
Well since the beginning of time, mankind has asked questions about, ‘what is the meaning of life?’. Which implies the next logical and personal question doesn’t it? In ‘what is the meaning of my life?’ and it seems reasonable to say, those two things are likely to be related aren’t they?

And throughout history this question of the meaning of life has more often than not, been tied back to the question of is there something that ties all of life together, the question is usually framed as ‘Is there a God?’ and again the subsequent questions of ‘If there is a God, what is he or even she like?’.


Well the group of Christians called the reformers asked similar questions of their age, and in particular they asked it of the Church they found themselves part of in the Roman Catholic church in the middle ages, and the period we are focusing on from 1500-1600 in particular. But these reformers asked these questions in light of what they felt were the unsatisfactory teaching of the Church in response to these questions.

But in particular one question stood out for them, one that the Church just didn’t offer an answer that they felt was convincing, much less satisfying. You see the question, ‘what is God like?’ is a good one, but a better question is the personal one, the scary one, the one that changes everything, the question the reformers asked was, ‘What is God like towards me?’.

How am I seen by this God, and how will find him when I meet him. Will he be angry, my judge, or just not interested. It’s a big question, ‘what is God like towards me?’.

And the answer the reformers were to find in the Bible, was to rock the foundation of the Church they belonged to, and it even tore at the fabric of the societies they lived in. In fact this question and the answers they found changed the face of society across the entirety of Europe, and would go on to shape the nature of societies throughout the later developed world, including the USA and even Australia.

The answer to the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’ would come in the theological declaration that a person could be right with God, that a person need no longer fear God based on five great truths of the Christian faith found in the Bible. The five statements called solas, which is latin for alones were, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Bible alone and To the Glory of God alone.

And over the next four weeks we are going to look at the first 4 of these Solas or alones. The summary of the reformation teaching we will look at over the next four weeks is the theological statement:
‘Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Which is the heart of the Gospel message we learn from the Bible Alone.’

Now if that phrase doesn’t kind of instantly ring true in your head, or you even think, I have no idea what he is talking about, well relax, it’s ok, it can sound a little technical with a lot of definitions to understand, so if you don’t catch all the detail, don’t sweat it, that’s ok, just let the general sense of the things kind of wash over you and sink in.

God saves us by his grace – his gift to us of Jesus who died on the cross. And because of this we can be children of God. And all we can do is accept this gift and add nothing to it – nothing at all!

Grace is the antidote to sin. Grace Alone deals with the power and the penalty of our sin.

Over the next four weeks we will unpack and explain these great biblical ideas of justification, grace, faith and Christ, that reveal and reinforce for us the great riches of God we find in Christ alone. These great ideas explain the answer to the question, ‘What is God like towards me?’

Essentially the first and probably most famous of the reformers was Roman catholic monk, a monk in the Augustinian order, called Martin Luther. Luther lived in the first half of the 16th Century, so around 1500-1550ish. Luther was sincerely devout monk. He had become a monk after promising that he would if he survived, when he found himself caught out in the open during a particularly bad electrical storm. Luther was a devoted monk, undertaking the extreme religious practices of the abbey he was part of and yet he could find no ease for his conscience, and no rest for his soul, all he saw was his wretched sinfulness of his life before a Holy God. Deep down Luther feared that God really could be his enemy.


Luther’s almost crippling concern of his standing before God might sound a little crazy to us, but we need to understand a little of his world view, his mental furniture if you like. He lived in a world that had been decimated by the plague, where the people died young and suddenly, and people didn’t even know how the plague was transmitted. It was a time of great personal uncertainty, quite a contrast to the days of fiscal certainty and medical marvels we know and take for granted today.

The one real hope for people, was the hope for some sought of relief in eternity. The hope for Luther’s society was from the church and its’ saviour. But, it was a culture that was being held to ransom spiritually by the same Roman Catholic church. You need to understand, that to die outside the Roman Catholic church was to die outside of salvation, to die outside of Christ. To Die belonging to the church was to have a hope in Christ.


The Roman Catholicism of Luther’s day had an extremely sacramental view of a relationship with God. What I mean is, it was about doing the right things in the eyes of the church foremost over anything else. It was about being Baptized, taking the mass, saying confession and even having a Catholic burial.

The Catholic teaching of the day was, you need to be holy to be sure of your standing before God. Let me say that again, if you want to be sure of your standing before God, you need to BE HOLY! You need to be perfect in your person and life. Not sincere, not devout, but holy! Anything less than holy, and your only hope was for purgatory. A place where you can earn off the debts that remain outstanding from your sins when you die.

Life was one big ledger, of Good Vs Sins. The debt of Sins were worked off here through Earnest religious rituals. This was the essence of being a ‘godly’ or ‘righteous’ person.

In the middle ages the Roman Catholic church could in practice offer you no personal assurance, only a general sense of hope in purgatory. And the best you could do was minimize your time there before heaven by performing rituals prescribed by the church, like saying hail marys etc. Or through the purchase of indulgences, a token bought from the church to buy time off.

And this action was the last straw for Luther, and it is what sparked the reformation, and in deed the protestant faith. If the church had salvation to give, why didn’t it give it for free rather than charge for it?

The roman Catholic church did not offer any personal assurance of God towards ME, but highlighted that Salvation belonged to the church, to be earned or even bought. In Luther’s world Jesus was lost amongst a clutter of other intermediateries who could buy off your time from purgatory, from Saints to Mary the mother of Jesus, to the Church itself.
This clutter was to take away from the startling supremacy of God’s purposes for creation found in Jesus Christ that was for lost people, not just people who attend a Roman Catholic Church.

Intro to this talk
For Luther the offers of the church for personal assurance basically boiled down to ‘just try harder!’. I mean sure they offered with the grace of God working in you, but Luther knew well in his own conscience and from his reading of the Bible and the book of Romans in particular, he knew he couldn’t do any better and he knew he couldn’t do enough. And he was the most devoted of Monks! All that was left was for him to buy his way out, an idea that he despised.

Luther set in motion a search for certain forgiveness from God. How can I be sure that God my creator, will be and is God my saviour, rather than God my enemy and my Judge. How can I be sure that God is for me and not against me.

The reformers clear, bold and confident answer to this question based upon the teaching of the Bible and the Bible alone that ‘justification is by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone’, would stand in stark contradiction to what the Roman Catholic church taught in the middle ages, and is in fact still a stark, important and clear contrast to what the Roman Catholic church teaches today.

The first problem with the teaching of the Church that the reformers found is that the Bible teachers, not that you are essentially able to do good, but in fact it teaches you are dead. Very Dead. So as we look at the passage of Ephesians we read earlier, we are going to look at some aspects of this text as it relates to this wider issue of the teaching of the Bible on salvation, and more particularly Grace Alone.

You were Dead!


2:1 As for you,
you were dead
in your transgressions
and sins,
2 in which you
used to live when you
followed the ways of this world
and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,
the spirit who is
now at work
in those who are disobedient.
3 All of us also
lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature
and following its desires and thoughts.
Like the rest,
we were by nature objects of wrath.


You were dead, disobedient, and objects of the wrath of God. All of you, every single person alive, Jews and Gentiles, all the children of Adam to use the language of Romans 5, are Dead. Spiritually dead towards God. And there is one thing that dead people cannot do. That one thing is ANYTHING! We have all sinned are rightly held to account for it by a holy and just God.

So, the first problem the reformers saw from scripture is the Church taught a confidence in man’s capacity to know and do good and help their own predicament before God, that the Bible’s witness doesn’t seem to support.

And consequently you can see that it is so important as to how you frame the question of salvation, and in particular man’s natural state, as to how you think he will be saved.

So What is man’s natural condition before God? This has been a massive question through out the history of the church. Now in the 4th Century AD, a guy called Pelagius would teach that man has everything with in him, to do good, and therefore be right with God. So you get that, it is a very positive view of the human condition, which is not unlike our society today is it? I’m a good person, I’ll be alright.


Now not surprisingly, some members of the Christian church opposed Pelagius, and in particular a man Called Augustine opposed him, and said ‘we are dead, it has to be grace alone that saves us’, because Augustine was aware of the Bible teachings but also his own frailties. And thankfully Augustine seemed to win the day, and that was good for the church.

But later under a number of influences of the time, in particular one philosopher, the middle ages Roman Catholic Church lost it’s way and came up with and idea that is called semi-pelagian. Now this technical little name means, we start on the path to salvation by the grace of God, but we also have the capacity to do ‘our bit’ of good as well. So ‘our bit’ became religious ritual, but the impact of this idea is, ‘how do you know you have ever done enough to please God?’ How much of this salvation is ‘your bit’ and how much is ‘God’s bit’?

Now for the reasons we mentioned earlier, Luther saw the madness of this position, in light of the Bible’s teaching, but also it probably had to do with the fact Luther was an Augustinian Monk, he knew what Augustine had said, and saw clearly how the Roman Church was deviating from him.

And what did the medieval Roman Catholic church do in response? Thank you Luther for helping us to see how we have wandered from the truth of the Bible and our earlier teaching?

Not likely, they excommunicated him. Which means not only is he a criminal who can be arrested on sight for trial, but he (in their minds anyway) has been excluded from salvation. Luther bore a heavy price for the truth of the Gospel, a gospel that has been passed on to us and assures us of our salvation.

And in summary the Roman Church formalized the teaching of semi- Pelagianism (So God does most of it, but we have to so our bit, to save ourselves – God is like a spiritual set of training wheels to get us on our way) as the official teaching of the Church at the Council of Trent.

But the Bible teaches ‘You were dead’. The dead cannot do anything, most especially they cannot revive themselves.
Ephesians continues:
But God Saved us! And it is By Grace you have been saved!
It is all God’s activity from start to finish, from death to certain new and eternal life.
4 But
because of his great love for us,
God,
who is rich in mercy,
5 made us alive
with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—
it is by grace you have been saved.
6 And God
raised us up with Christ and
seated us with him
in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
7 in order that
in the coming ages he might show the
incomparable riches of his grace,
expressed in his kindness to us
in Christ Jesus.
8 For it is by grace
you have been saved,
through faith-- and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God--
9 not by works,
so that no one can boast.
10 For we are God's workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus
to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Grace literally means ‘gift’, it is a present, not a contract, not a contribution towards a solution but a gift. Grace in the context here, also describes the nature of the gift and in turn the nature of the giver. God and his gift to us is ‘gracious’, it is generous, it definitely is not owed to us. No one can say to God, you owe me salvation. We are dead and deserving of God’s judgment, but he shows that he is generous, because he gives us a gracious gift of salvation, one that is complete, ‘you have been saved’, the Bible tells us, not you will be saved if you do enough good after what I have done for you, but ‘you have been saved’ and it is by God’s grace. Not by works so no one can boast.

Not one of you who know God’s salvation received it because you deserved it. You might find that a little staggering actually. But just because Mum and Dad were Christians, God owes YOU nothing. Just because you always have been at church or youth group – well woop de do ‘God owes you nothing!’. You might have even done some great Christian things, been to a Christian school, been on mission for God and done great things, well woop de do ‘God owes you nothing’.

You were Dead! And all you did were dead works. But God who is rich in mercy has made you alive, you have been saved, and it is by his grace, not by any works lest any of you think you deserve what God gave out of his generosity, and even worse if you think you deserve it more than others. Others who maybe aren’t from a Christian home, or aren’t as smart, or dare I say it as cool, or who don’t do up the front stuff at church. It is by God’s grace you have been pulled from the mire of your own sin. By God’s grace alone.

The Bible from start to finish teaches that God saves people from his Grace Alone.
God’s grace is his sovereign action and his sovereign action alone. When God saved the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt was it because they deserved it, was it because they were impressive. Nope not in least, in fact the Bible tells us that it is because it was God’s grace alone that they were saved, they weren’t impressive they were in fact the least of all people. They were dead in their slavery to Egypt and God saved them by his grace. The Israelite people didn’t save themselves and neither did we.
You cannot have God under an obligation to act.

What about the thief on the cross with Jesus, who asked him to remember him when he came into his kingdom. And Jesus answers, today you will be with me in paradise. Exactly what good things was the thief going to do on the cross to ensure his salvation. It had to be nothing didn’t it? For it is by grace alone that God saves. God’s gift, a complete gift, not a gift like those ones where batteries are not included.

Salvation is by grace alone.

So if you remember the reformers question was, ‘What is God like toward Me?’ and in the pages of the Bible they found the great answer, that ‘God is for me’. But not just in an abstract way, God is for me in Jesus Christ.

God is for me In Christ – which is another way of saying God’s ‘Grace Alone’ is found in ‘Christ Alone’.
4 But
because of his great love for us,
God,
who is rich in mercy,
5 made us alive
with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—
it is by grace you have been saved.
6 And God
raised us up with Christ and
seated us with him
in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
7 in order that
in the coming ages he might show the
incomparable riches of his grace,
expressed in his kindness to us
in Christ Jesus.
8 For it is by grace
you have been saved,
through faith-- and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God--
9 not by works,
so that no one can boast.
10 For we are God's workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus
to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.
All of God’s purposes for mankind centre on and are found in Jesus Christ. We are saved by Jesus Christ Alone. We are saved by his work alone, which we receive by grace alone.
Luther had a moment of discovery that was jaw-droppingly simple!

Luther saw that Christ is the centre of the scriptures, because he is the centre of God’s purposes. And the centre of Christ is his work on the Cross. And in Luther’s day the church had mislaid the treasure of the Cross. But then again, that is what many ‘churches’ still do today isn’t it?

We are saved by grace alone in Christ alone. Luther talked about salvation in this way, ‘Jesus takes all the filth of my life, that is mine alone, and my doing and he makes it his at the Cross. Then he takes all the riches that he received from his father, because of his obedience, and he makes them mine’. Luther called it the great exchange. God’s gracious gift. A gift we receive by faith, which we will talk about a little more next week.


Over the net couple of weeks we will look at the things we receive by grace and grace alone from God in Christ Alone. These are the great treasures of God that become ours in Christ, the Bible describes these as ours in our union with Christ. Because of this union we receive great treasures, of renewal, salvation, justification, sanctification and even glorification. And many of these rich Christian terms we will look into in the next weeks.

Why is this doctrine of Grace Alone still so important for us today?
What are the dangers for us today?

Every inclination of the human heart is proud, every human gets up in the morning and thinks, that they are ok. Or at least I’m not like them over there! – why wouldn’t God be good to me?
Well because you are dead! That’s why. Sin is riddle through your body in its’ natural state.

And I know that as Christians you will wake up every day of your life, and be tempted to think, that something about you, or what you have done is good, why wouldn’t God love me – deep down I suspect we all have times where we think we deserve God’s love. I suspect you only need to scratch the surface of your heart just a little and you’ll find something that you think is good, something that demands God must love me!!

And that is the constant threat and the danger of a conditional understanding of grace. We want to add just something, even just a little thing, to our salvation that we call our own, to give us some dignity in this. But the real problem you’ll find is how much would be enough to add?

Do you really think God will see your weekly attendance at church as more valuable than the life of his son? That would be a hard sell wouldn’t it?

It is grace alone found in Christ alone that saves us. I when I say saves, I don’t just mean forgives us, but it is definitely that, but it is also saved to be resurrected into the new life where we will experience all of God grace in full.

Q. But the Bible does talk about good works by Christians doesn’t it? it does, and so shall we next week.

It is by grace alone – as one theologian put it, the only thing a man supplies to his own salvation is sin! The thing that meant we needed to be saved in the first place!
We are confident we have been saved, because salvation is the work of God alone, through grace alone, found in Christ alone.

Grace is the antidote to sin. Good works cannot deal with Sin. They can’t deal with sin’s penalty, and the certainly can’t deal with sin’s power within our bodies. Only God’s grace is an antidote for Sin.
Like the hymn, as Christians we boast of the grace of God, that:
Nothing in my hand I bring, but simply to your cross I cling.

Mark talk 1

‘Jesus is now the true meeting place for God and Man because the Old Temple will be destroyed!’
Intro to Sermon
This week we are moving on from our series on Ephesians and are continuing for the next four weeks or so in Mark’s gospel. These sections of Mark’s gospel continues our series we have titled ‘encounters with Jesus’. And looking at Jesus life is particularly appropriate, as we approach Easter.

Now just as a reminder, the gospel of Mark is a fast paced read, Mark wrote with an intensity and brevity like he was a man who had somewhere else to be. But at the heart of his writing is a concern that we as readers would know Ch 1:1 ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. And Mark will convey this message by continually challenging us, through presenting these ‘encounters with Jesus’, and then demanding we answer the question Jesus asks of those who meet him, the question of ‘who do you say that I am?’ Ch 8:29. And that’s the question Mark asks of us even today, ‘who do you personally, think Jesus is?’

So as we look at this particular encounter with Jesus in chapter 11 we are going to be challenged personally as to our view of him, do we really understand him properly? Do we understand what he came to do properly? Because we will be incredibly challenged by Jesus actions as to who we really think this Jesus is.

This is no Jesus in a manger, this is no Jesus meek and mild. This day Jesus gets up and decides to go out and intentionally pick some fights – and definitely not in a meek and mild way, you know the meek and mild kind of like the way the movies of Jesus life tend to present him – like some sought of Shakespearean actor with an Oxbridge accent. Where ‘Sir I bite my thumb at you sir’.

This ‘encounter with Jesus’ is a little more Martin Scorsese, this encounter is gritty and aggressive and intense, it’s ‘Are you talking to me!, Are you talking to me!’.



This encounter is an intense and intentional confrontation as Jesus the King of Israel, God’s King, despises the sinfulness and selfishness of God’s people…. But before this particular encounter, Jesus warms up with an odd type of encounter of a confrontation with a fig tree.
Jesus picks a fight with a tree – part I
11:12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany,
Jesus was hungry.
13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.
14 Then he said to the tree,
"May no one ever eat fruit from you again."
And his disciples heard him say it.

So the days starts with Jesus setting out from his base at Bethany and heading towards Jerusalem, and again to the temple in particular. But on the way he seems to be way laid by being hungry. And you kind of wonder to yourself why the Son of God wouldn’t have thought to eat breakfast before he left home. But instead he decides to see if he can find some fruit upon a fig tree that is in full leaf.

This fig tree is in such full leaf you can see it from a distance, it looks good and inviting and impressive , but when Jesus got up close he found the tree to be barren, devoid of any fruit.

And Jesus response is quite unexpected, I mean really unexpected, because he curses the tree.. In essence we know from the bit that follows, that he kills the tree through his curse. And part of you is kind of thinking, that looks a little petulant doesn’t it? And I’m pretty certain that is what the disciples looking on would have thought!

I mean V13 tells us that ‘it was not the season for figs’, why would he condemn the tree?

Well we’ll leave that question to the side for the minute, because that is what Mark makes us do by the way he has written this encounter. So the story moves on, and now Jesus picks another fight – this time with a crowd.

Jesus picks a fight with a crowd
11:15 On reaching Jerusalem,
Jesus entered the temple area
and began driving out those who were buying and selling there.
He overturned the tables of the money changers
and the benches of those selling doves,
16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.
17 And as he taught them, he said,
"Is it not written:
"'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'?
But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"

So in this section of the story Jesus ‘reaches’ Jerusalem, he gets to his destination as he arrives at the temple, and ominously, we remember that the last place he ‘reached’ was the fig tree, so your suspicions are that this is not going to end well.

So Jesus reaches the temple – the place where the God of Israel met with his people, the dwelling place of God on earth – if we can use that language, knowing that no place could house the God of all creation. So then Jesus finds himself in the temple area, which of course is the outer court of the temple, called the court of the Gentiles. It was the part of the temple where the nations were allowed to go and meet with God. And Jesus finds it full of clutter.

Now the clutter is in itself important for the people who come to the temple, to enable them to offer to God what is fitting under the old covenant. They came to offer sacrifices for sin and money to repair the temple, clearly a right response for a sinful people who now serve the living God.

But all this religious paraphernalia, as essential as it is, should be outside the temple court, and not blocking the way of the Gentile people who have come to meet with this living God of Israel.

If it was on the outside of the temple courts however, you do wonder whether the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, would have had as strong of a monopoly on the market, if they had markets outside like they were supposed to, they would have surely lost money.

And Jesus in amazing act, picks another fight! And he does it by dramatically overturning tables and benches all through the temple court area. Now if you’re in the temple court, you’d think what is wrong with this guy?

Can you imagine being a disciple standing there and watching this unfolding?
What would you have made of it?
I suspect you’d be thinking this guy has finally lost it hasn’t he?

Irrespective of what they thought, he would have got everyone’s attention! And then for his follow up, he teaches them… teaches them…

But Jesus does teach them, and he begins with this emphatic statement, ‘Is it not written..’. Jesus commences his ‘lesson’ for these people based upon the theological truth of the utter trustworthiness of the scriptures, the utter reality of these words of promise. This is an utter trustworthiness of what has been spoken by the prophets of the past, because they are in fact God’s words. Jesus shows a confidence in God’s word that gives us confidence doesn’t it?

But as we continue in Mark, Jesus in the most unusual classroom lesson, teaches the crowds from two sections of Old Testament scripture that we had read for us earlier from Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Isaiah 56:6-7 ‘v6: And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. ‘

In short Jesus lesson seems to be about castigating the temple Jews for their casual and indifferent attitude to the Gentiles meeting with the God of Israel. This nation that was to become a light to the nations, that the nations may be drawn to the living God, they would rather protect their money making monopoly, than make way for the Gentile believers to be saved.

Jesus passionate desire, a desire that would consume his own life, is that the nations would have access to the God of Israel, the God of all creation.

And in Jeremiah 7:9-11 ‘9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered!—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. ‘.

Again Jesus lesson here seems to be about the Jewish unjustified confidence in their position before God. In the same error of their fathers in an earlier generation, they have mistaken a impressive building as being an assurance of their good standing with their God.


They are feeling secure in themselves because of material wealth and comfort and the grandeur of their ‘house of the Lord’. This same Lord who sees and despises their sinful hearts and actions. A Lord who can’t be bought out with a cheap offer of a heartless sacrifice to cover over consciously hypocritical lives.

Jesus is not impressed by religious superficiality.

So Jesus lesson has had the desired effect, and Jesus has picked his fight, and the Jewish leaders have not missed the intended slight against them. So we read in V18.

18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this
and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him,
because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
11:19 When evening came, they went out of the city.


They heard it, and they know what has to happen next. But Jesus knew before they did, because three times already in this gospel story he has predicted his own death.

Now it is interesting, that because of the Jewish leaders interaction with Jesus in this Encounter, it has caused them ‘to Fear’. Through out the gospel story, people meet Jesus and they ‘fear’, they are ‘afraid’, like the apostle’s in the boat in Ch 4 or the people after the healing of the demoniac in Ch 5. People see that when Jesus acts, it is unquestionably the power of God at work in his world. Jesus is someone to be feared, he is not one to be trifled with. IN this encounter, he is anything but Jesus meek and mild.

But what do you say?
Is Jesus someone to be feared?
Jesus the one who has burning desire for the lost of the nations?
Jesus who is not impressed by religious superficiality?
But what do you say?

Anyway this encounter leaves no one who saw it in any doubt, Jesus has changed the religious landscape forever, he is the undisputed Authority when it comes to the God of Israel, not the Jewish leaders.

And so Jesus leaves Jerusalem, and then we learn the fate of the fig tree.
Jesus picks a fight with a tree – part II – the reckoning
11:20 In the morning, as they went along,
they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.
21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus,
"Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!"

SO the fate of the fig tree is made clear, it has been withered at the roots, much the same as the plants that came from seeds in shallow ground in the parable Jesus told of the sower in Mark Chapter 4. The tree that Jesus has cursed has been expired, and again we see the miraculous power of God at work in the actions of Jesus. You see, Jesus really, and I mean really!! Is someone to be feared.. He is the raw power of God at work in His world.

This is the only miracle of Jesus recorded in the gospels that is a cursing, and we start to think why would he do this, it seems to make him look a little petulant. But in a typical way in Mark’s gospel, they way he has told the story, has helped us to interpret the story, the fig tree episode, sits either side of the temple episode and it has the effect of being like and enacted parable. As surely as Jesus has condemned the Fig tree to destruction, for having the outward appearance of health and not producing any fruit, the temple in same way is certain to be condemned.

The fig tree met its creator and it wasn’t prepared. It hadn’t done it’s God given job of producing fruit. And in the same way, the Founder of the temple, the God of Israel, the saving God, had come to his temple and neither was it ready. The Jewish people had not done their God appointed Job of being a light to the nations. They also had no fruit, and so the temple would be destroyed.

And it was in AD70, just 40 or so years after Jesus uttered these words of promise.

The creator has become the judge and the curser of disobedient life.

Is this Jesus meek and mild, or is this Jesus someone to be feared?
Who do you say that he is?

But we know the temple was to be replaced, by a much better way.

But before it can be replaced, Jesus is going to pick one more fight today.
Jesus picks a fight with a mountain
11:22 "Have faith in God,"
Jesus answered.
23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain,
'Go, throw yourself into the sea,'
and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.
24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer,
believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
25 And when you stand praying,
if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him,
so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

Jesus encourages his hearers here, that faith in God will express itself in prayer. Faith in a God of power, a God who can both create the world, re create people and dismantle mountains, and he does it all without opposition.

So in this encounter, we see Jesus tell this disciples that even a mountain, can be thrown into the see by prayer. But when he says ‘this mountain’ the question remains, which mountain. Now it seems given the geography outlined in the story there are two likely candidates.

The first option is the mount of olives, which without going into the detail you can find in commentaries, seems the less likely option to me. The second option which is mount Zion seems more likely given the context of the story. You see I suspect Jesus is telling them, it won’t just be the temple building that he will move, but the whole mountain. This seems to be a promise of the great end times activity of God in both judgment and recreation.

This amazing statement about the mountain being moved, seems to be the grounds that Jesus gives for bringing our prayers to a powerful God. It seems likely to me that we pray because Jesus has now replaced the old way of this mountain and the temple. And because of this we are able to bring these prayers to our God with belief about the response.

Now if your anything like me, at the point you read these verses you have nightmarish visions of an early morning TV evangelist claiming these words as some sought of all powerful divine good luck charm to reach out and touch the TV and be healed. And in light of this kind of uncomfortableness and uncertainty from our own experience it seems to me there are two main ways, we can lead ourselves into error by misunderstanding the meaning and role of these verses.

And both these errors tend to come from our own real life experience of expecting ‘big prayers’ to be answered, and y’now what I suspect that I don’t need to tell you that sometimes it seems to us that they aren’t!

Firstly, the danger of thinking if only I had enough faith when it seems our prayer hasn’t been answered as we wanted. In these verses when it talks about ‘faith’ in God, it describes ‘faith’ as a quality not a quantity. What it means is you believe God who is powerful and you trust that he is good to answer your prayer. The prayer is based on us trusting God. It isn’t dependent on us having a really big trust in God, It is focusing on us a having a true trust in a really big God!

I’ll say that again, this verse dependent on us having a really big trust in God, It is focusing on us a having a true trust in a really big God! We are called to believe God and trust in his power, not base our prayers upon our confidence.
And secondly, the danger of thinking if only God cared enough about my prayer. I mean it is a big promise isn’t it, he says he will move the mountain, and I only want him to move this kidney stone, or even worse maybe this tumour.

It’s a big issue for us to get our heads around as Christian’s isn’t it?
It’s the kind of thing, that when it doesn’t happen as you want, well people can easily be tempted or duped into giving away their Christian faith altogether.

This text is wanting to encourage us to approach God, our God, the all powerful God, who is also, our father in prayer. And to do this trusting in his goodness, much like Ephesians last week where we are to pray to the God who can ‘do more immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power..’.

But many people use this text as the one text to rule them all when it comes to God’s teaching to us on prayer, they ‘proof-text’ the passage like it is the sum total of all the Bible’s teaching on prayer. There are a number of reasons as to why it isn’t, but I think two in particular stand out.

So from the text, We are to approach God and not doubt.. but some mountains look pretty big when you stand in front of them.
It seems to me there are two BIG mountains that a Christian can personally face in this world that would implore us to pray.
- Firstly, chronic illness or physical incapacity
- Secondly, An untimely or premature death.
And there are two BIG, and I mean Big test cases as to why this text in Mark is not the one text to rule them all.

Firstly, Paul. Paul had some form of chronic incapacity or even illness, we aren’t sure exactly what it was, but three times he prayed that to God that he would take it away from him. And God didn’t (and you can read about it @ Cor 12:8).
So according to this verse DO you think Paul lacked faith?
Which if Paul did, what does that say for your and my chances!!

But God’s answer to Paul, was ‘my grace is sufficient for you’. God was good to Paul and heard his prayer, but for reasons that are not yet revealed to us, he did not answer it as Paul asked.

The second mountain that any Christian can face, is an untimely death (well any death really) but in particular an untimely death. And Jesus himself had one of those.
It is beyond ridiculous to ask whether he didn’t have enough faith! But when he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed for ‘your will be done’ to God his father, and you can read about that in Mark 14:36.

You see this text from Mark gives us confident reasons to pray to our God, but we need to acknowledge that this side of seeing God face to face, some things of the mind of God remain his alone. We pray confidently, knowing his power and determination to work in all things for the good of those who love him (Rom 8:28). But also this side of the new creation, we sometimes need to stop and trust God, knowing that his ways are not mans ways, in fact his ways are higher than man’s ways, as far as the sky is above the sea as we read in Isaiah 55.

The teaching of the Bible on prayer is much wider and deeper than what Mark 11 tells us, but what Mark 11 tells us is true. That we are able to boldly pray for our powerful of God to act in his world and in our lives. Remembering of course, the SIGNIFICANT challenge to forgive others as we have ourselves been forgiven by a generous God.

Who do you say that Jesus is?
Mark tells us he is the powerful Son of God, who he himself entrusted himself to God the father in prayer, in spite of the difficulty it brought to him in his innocent death. Jesus did this because of his burning desire to see the people of all nations being saved and not excluded (that’s you and me by the way).

And Jesus did it by picking a fight with the religiously superficial of age, to clear the way for us, but to also warn us of the dangers of a wrong placed confidence before God.

The only safe footing is to trust in Jesus, the true meeting place of God and man, the one who has done away with the temple, and the one who enables us to boldly approach God in prayer for our concerns. So why don’t we do that now.