Lent - Week 1

"Lent 1 - The Manifestation of Christ's Desire II"

Matthew 28:16-20

Lent is a time of confession and repentance. But Protestants don't always pick that up. The Church calendar was said to have been forced out because it caused a lack of focus on the Lord's Day. There was a whole argument against the Church calendar. First they would say that the Bible never spoke about holidays like Ash Wednesday so it had to go. Second, they would say it also set up competition with the Lord's Day. If every day became the Lord's Day, then no day would be holy of special. And thirdly it would violate the consciousness of Christians to have to attend church when it wasn't even necessary. Our focus must remain on the real Lord's Day and not just any random holiday on the Hallmark calendar. Lent was originally and sometimes even now a way to communicate penance and our contribution to our salvation through that. And as Christians it should not be about our work for salvation, but rather His work for us. The CRC Church has given it up for this reason, it has nothing to do with us. Yes, we are to repent and confess, but it is not those works that are what actually saves us. It is not to be focused on us. 

This time of penance and withdrawal it is to carry a weighty-ness and transcendence. It can be a connection from our past. We are to have a true view of worship. We are to have a holy view of God and His holy day. There is nothing wrong with singing psalms or hymns with any number of voices or instruments. There is nothing wrong with banners or decorations or a symbol of the cross in the church. All of these have been discouraged by some before. 

Lent is characterized by prayer and fasting, which eventually led to giving up something. The problem is not with the idea of it, but rather your purpose behind it. It cannot be a tool with which we use to climb up into the lap of God. Lent means spring and Lenten means springtime. However we can still rescue the true Lent and there are a few ways we could do that. 

We must change the focus from our work in Lent time to Christ's past work for us. *I* am giving up and *I* am repenting and on it goes. 

We can keep penance as a theme in Lent while knowing it does not earn us God's favor just by us repenting. We must be mindful that we already have His favor. Even our best repentance needs repenting over.

Another theme of Lent has been baptism. We can focus and preach on humility and the importance of Christ's baptism and how it works out within our baptism as well. 

We need to steer away from anything that would distract from our regular Lord's Day...Lent is good, but it cannot be greater than our regular Holy Day of God. 

We would take out any habit of Lent that would take away the importance of the cross and the work on the cross. We must use this time to be an emphasis on His work. No matter what, salvation must be focused on Him. 

Conclusion of last week's passage: we must disciple the structures of a people. We don't have the capacity to disciple whole nations, we usually go for an individual. God is a nationalist, He speaks about His nations of people throughout His whole Scripture. Another thing is that we shy away from dominion. Christ is the second Adam where the first Adam failed when he did not take dominion over the serpent and his wife. God made man to have dominion over His earth and man failed with that. Adam was to have dominion over the earth and animals and instead, an image of animals had dominion over him. When Christ left, He commanded us to have dominion to carry on His true dominion. As Christians, we have a fear that dominion means tyrannical and overpowering authority. When Christ came, He had dominion and He passed it off to us. We are to take it and dominate the world for Christ. 

"When error is admitted into the church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: 'You need not be afraid of us, we are few and weak. Just let us alone, we shall not disturb the faith of the others. The church has her standards of doctrine, and of course we shall never interfere with them. We only ask for ourselves that we be spared from interference with our private opinions.'

Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error become two balancing forces. The church is permitted to do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is considered bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth - because it is truth - is partisanship. Any points of doctrine that the friends of truth and error hold in common are considered to be "fundamental doctrines," and any points of doctrine on which they differ are effectively set aside by being labeled "non-essential doctrines." If anybody objects to such a watering-down of the truth, he is labeled a disturber of the peace of the church. At this point, truth and error have become two coordinate powers, and the goal of church officers is to be skillful in diplomatically preserving the balance between them. 

From this point, error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. The adherents of truth began by tolerating errorists, and then they themselves come to be merely tolerates, but only for a time. Error henceforth claims a preference for its judgements on all disputed points. Men are placed into positions of authority, not - as at first - in spite of their departure from biblical truth, but because of it. They are rewarded for repudiating the doctrines of the faith, and are given positions from which they can teach others to repudiate them, and help make them skillful in combating them."

- Charles P. Krauth

Lutheran Minister -- 1823-1883

Epiphany Part 6

Epiphany Part 6 - The Manifestation of the God-Man as Merciful

Matthew 11:25-30

Often we get caught up in the emphasis of God's harsh justice and firm law and we skip over His mercy. Jesus begins by thanking God for hiding things from certain people. In evangelism, we ought to do this as well...whether the gospel is rejected or accepted we are to thank God for paving the road for both. Amid discouragement, He closes the eyes of those who will not see and opens the eyes of His people. Mindful of this, we cannot predict if someone has or has not accepted the gospel, we are to always try and try more to preach the gospel, never giving up. We are to always be thanking the Father for the blinding or clarifying work that He does constantly. He will be glorified no matter what, whether through the blinded or the seeing. We often get so focused on the converting that we reduce the content of the gospel in order to see more come to Christ. We change it and make it more tolerable in order to get more blinded converts in the Church. Christianity, or the conversion to it, has become about dreams, emotions, and feelings *only*, and never speak on God's holy majesty or mercy, the Law, the need for forgiveness, or the self's sin. It speaks only to what people really want to hear, their feelings. 

"Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." Our God given belief is not of ourselves, it has nothing about ourselves. It goes on speak about how it is up to the Father. We stand as no holier than those without because of ourselves. We cannot take pride or an upturned nose to it, because it has nothing to do with us. We did nothing to deserve it. It is only of God's great mercy and grace. We are never to refer to ourselves as wise or intelligent apart from anything of Christ. Christ, Himself, refers to us in the passage as "babes". 

He calls us to Himself, saying how light His burden is. The ones He invites are the ones who know that they are dependent only on Him. They realize their lack of sufficiency in and of themselves. He raises up those who see themselves as needy of Him. Too often is is our pride that stands in the way of gaining that mercy and knowledge of God. It is a holy prayer to ask of God to take away selfish pride. 

Christ calls us to come to Him. The habits and rituals were overbearing and heavy, near impossible to achieve. But Christ takes it all away and says clearly "This is what the Law says." He says how His way is light, how He has made it light. To have his yoke and burden is a good thing, it is what we were made for. You will always have a yoke and burden in life, the only question is what yoke and burden will it be? Christ tells us of how this yoke and burden were made exactly to fit is. Christ came not to dismiss the whole Law, but to fulfill it and create a light burden, to rescue from an overwhelming burden of sin. 

Epiphany Part 4

Epiphany Part 4 -- "Transfigured"

Mark 9:2-32

There is a good deal of imagery going on in this passage. There is a symbolic image of Moses and Elijah being "present" because of the idea of the law being among them. This points to Christ's redemptive aspect. They both prophesied him and so it is of great importance that they were here in the transfiguration passage. 

The idea of the mountain and clouds were not by accident. It has always been through Scripture an image of God being present when mountains are mentioned. Abraham with his sacrifice of his son, Moses and the law, Elijah...with each there was a mountain and the presence of God. 

Clouds are also a picture of the coming of Christ and His dominion. Throughout Scripture we find the image of clouds with the image of God. 

We are already living in the age to come as we live with Christ. This is visited in God's people, we do live in this present wicked age, but we are to walk as one who lives in the times to come. We are to walk in the age of Christ, we are to be like Tolkien's character Legolas, who is said to have walked through two realms. 

Honor and glory are the words used to described the enthronement of Christ when God says "This is my beloved Son". This is a reference to the previous passage in Psalm 2:7 when it speaks of God in the image of Father and Son. The King has come. 

Our salvation is complete. Christ calls for a difficult life. Christ did not come to co-exist. He came to bring life to those who would believe. He came to bring judgement to those who would not believe. Christ was a man who could relate to us, he remained a man, as the son of man, to be a corporeal image to us as humans. Matter matters.

"Christianity does not claim to convey merely religious truth, but truth about all reality. This vision of reality is radically different from a secularist vision that wants Christianity to scuttle into the corner of the hearth by the coal shovel conveniently out of the way of anything but private religious concerns." -D.A. Carson

Epiphany Part 3.5

Epiphany Part 3.5 -- Jesus' First Miracle

John 2:1-11

The wedding part is important, but it is Christ that is shown forth through this passage. He didn't just confirm the wedding, He confirmed himself. 

"On the third day" is an important phrase. Throughout the book of John, he tries to parallel and you almost get a sense that he is making a new creation story. Both books begin with "In the beginning" and both speak of light coming forth. In Genesis it is a real light and in John it is a salvation light. Christ is the new creation. You get a sense of a day after day account in both books. On the real seventh day of this new creation in the book of John, we see the pinochle of creation. We see a woman enter the story, this woman who leads the creation, not hinders it. The seventh day is Genesis is the greatest day and so it is here in John. 

This is seen as a new wedding for a new covenant between God and His people. Hosea speaks of a marriage between God and His people and this is a great image of it. The old covenant was seen to bring condemnation with the first plague of bloody water but this new and better covenant is seen by a miracle of wine and joy. 

An underlying meaning to the passage of the master speaking of the best wine is that saving the best for last, in relation to redemption. You find the first miracle being one of joy and merriment and great mirth. That is supposed to mean something to Christians. We are to be a people of joy and laughter. 

The stone water jars that he used for the wine. In 3:25 there is an argument that arose about tradition. Now the stone jars may be a symbol of the old covenant. Christ uses that to say that everything spoken in the old covenant has come to be fulfilled with Me. It speaks of the new being past and the new covenant has come to be fulfilled. 

In John, Christ speaks to his mother here, the woman at the well, the woman accused of prostitution, and his mother at the cross, as "woman". It sounds cross and/or crude to us, but it was customary to them. The fact that Mary was so concerned about the wedding hints that it might have been a family wedding and if so it was fitting to have done His first miracle around His family. 

This wedding was symbolic of His death. He takes wine and uses it to symbolize His body. Just as that water was turned to wine, so our sin nature must use the hand of God to become anything like our Christ Lord. 

This new creation is this whole idea of the passage. He is our return to the beautiful Eden, our celebration of wine with joy. Paul speaks of joy unspeakable and that is what Christ has brought us. His first miracle circles around great joy and merriment, not just with the wine, but also with the wedding. The fulfillment has come to fruition with Christ. 

Epiphany Part 3

Epiphany #3 - The Naming of Jesus 

Luke 2:22-40

This was the day of dedication to God of the baby Christ. Epiphany - a making known. There are many points here being manifested and made know. The overall theme is redemption and salvation. Redemption is spoken over and over in this passage with everyone involved. The sacrifice was a sign of devotion and dedication to God. A complete commitment to giving the child to God. Christ came to satisfy the law, He came to come and fulfill it for us. The firstborn of anything was considered to be holy and sacred and set apart as a consecration of God. So Christ was the firstborn to be set aside for the purpose and consecration of God. Without the shedding of blood, there is no consecration for sin. 

The Bible records that Simeon was promised to see the Christ. The words that Simeon speaks of Christ reflects exact passages from Isaiah when they speak of Christ and His nations, speaking of the light of the nations that overcomes the darkness of the world. Christ is the light that must suffer but will eventually overcome any darkness. We find the light of Christ explodes out to all nations and whole people groups are brought into the salvation paid for on the cross. We labor and pray for the West, that the light originally there will be shown forth and restored as it once was. Christ is coming to bring hat salvation, but it cannot come without the idea also of judgement. There will be those that will fall. To some He is the salvation of life and to others the destruction of eternal damnation. Simeon's words bring the conflict to our minds, the conflict of Christ. Christ cannot leave men neutral, either life or death. 

With the visitation of Anna we see that Christ opens up salvation to all, men and women alike, it is for all people from everywhere. Shepherds, wise men. , men and women everywhere. Anna was a prophetess and it was unusual for a woman to do this. She was older, reminding us that salvation is for young and old. She was to be especially respected for her age. 

Christ has come to divide people. Those that choose Christ shall have redemption.