The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: The Generous Marriage (Proverbs 11:22-31)

The Generous MarriageSunday, February 11th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Proverbs 11:22-31 (NKJV)
22       As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, So is a lovely woman who lacks discretion.23       The desire of the righteous is only good, But the expectation of the wicked is wrath.24       There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.25       The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself.26       The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.27       He who earnestly seeks good finds favor, But trouble will come to him who seeks evil.28       He who trusts in his riches will fall, But the righteous will flourish like foliage.29       He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind, And the fool will be servant to the wise of heart.30       The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, And he who wins souls is wise.31       If the righteous will be recompensed on the earth, How much more the ungodly and the sinner.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for this wisdom contained in Proverbs. We thank you for the blessing of marriage, and children, and the unique challenges that come from all these relationships. And so we ask now for your Holy Spirit to be upon us, that spirit of love which is the bond of unity and peace and the source of our joy. We ask all this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
Next Sunday, Pastor Dave Hatcher from Trinity Church will be coming down to preach for me. And I asked Dave to preach on the topic of “Parenting in the Middle Years,” so how do you raise middle schoolers and teenagers into faithful adults. And then the Sunday after that, I will give a sermon on the biblical doctrine of work. And then after that we’ll try to get back into Mark’s gospel So consider today and next Sunday, and the Sunday after, a little mini-series on the family.
The title of my sermon is “The Generous Marriage.” And I want to consider this section of Proverbs from the perspective of the Christian Household, and particularly the relationship between husband and wife. So what does it mean to be a generous husband or a generous wife? That is the question I want to answer with help from Proverbs.
Now one of the things we all like about Proverbs, or at least should like about it, is that Proverbs is an eminently practical book. Or at least it appears to be. Proverbs “keeps it real” with how people actually are, with how life in the “real world” actually is.
You read Proverbs and get this sense that there is cosmic justice in the world. The righteous are rewarded, the wicked are punished. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. And for those of us who struggle to follow and understand long and complicated logical arguments (like Paul’s letters), Proverbs condenses things into two lines, or one sentence. Here is the cause and here is the effect. If you do this, this is the result. Proverbs is given to make simple people wise. It is the book for teenagers and young people with short attention spans.
So Proverbs is kind of like God’s twitter feed. Solomon has gathered all of the good common sense and street smarts that a young man needs as he enters adulthood and puts it all in one place.
And because finding a wife is high on the priority list for a young man, a young prince, Solomon has collected some sage advice about what to look for and what to avoid in a potential spouse. He also gives advice for how to maintain fidelity and love after you are married.
To give you one example, Solomon says in Proverbs 5:17-20, “Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?”
So God wants a husband to be intoxicated always with the love of his wife, to delight in her, to enjoy her, to find satisfaction in her, and that is the strongest antidote to infidelity (to the seductress) that there is. In modern terms, we might say, “In marriage, the best defense is a good offense.”
So that is just one example of Solomon’s marriage advice, and what we want to know is how do you get and sustain that kind of intoxication and enrapture of love in marriage, “until death do us part?” Is it really possible to have a happy and loving marriage all your days?
Well, the answer God gives in Scripture is essentially, “Yes, but it’s going to take a lot of work.” And the kind of work that a husband and a wife must engage in, is chiefly a work of generosity. A work of giving oneself to the other, a work of self-sacrifice and self-denial, and spending and being spent for one another. And this radical generosity is only possible with the help of One whose very nature is generosity, namely God.
Two of God’s essential attributes are that God is Good and that God is Love. And together this is what we call generosity, to bestow goodness upon another. Goodness is simply what all creatures desire, and love is the hand that satisfies that desire.
Psalm 145:16 says of God, “Thou openest thine hand, And satisfiest the desire of every living thing.”
Psalm 104:28 says, “You open Your hand, they are filled with good.”
So to be generous is who God is in His very essence. It is who God is as the Blessed Trinity. It is what God reveals by creating the world and calling it all “good,” and most supremely, it is what God does to redeem this fallen creation as that most famous verse of John 3:16 declares, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
So the foundation of all generosity, whether in marriage or outside of it, is the very nature of God. It is the very shape of the Trinity that the Father eternally gives/begets/communicates the Divine Essence, His very goodness to the Son, and together as one principle they breathe forth the Holy Spirit whose personal name is Love and Gift.
When the New Testament speak of spiritual gifts or graces, this is none other than the action of God’s love and goodness working within you.
Those who have the Holy Spirit, bear the fruit of the spirit, among which are love and goodness (Gal. 5:22).
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 that there are many good and wonderful spiritual gifts, and you should earnestly desire them, but the greatest gift is supernatural love.
It is this love and goodness that descends from God that is the only way you can have a marriage full of generosity. Put another way, apart from Christ, there is no hope for your marriage. Both the power and example of Jesus Christ, and His bleeding love for the church, and the church’s submission to Him as bridegroom, is the engine for generosity between husband and wife.
We are such sinful and selfish creatures by default, that we need outside help. Left to ourselves, we will only make ourselves and one another miserable. You need divine help to dwell within you. And from that infinite ocean and superabundant goodness that is God, we too can pour forth goodness into others.
That is the foundation for a lifelong and joy-filled marriage. Now with that as the foundation, we can turn and consider each of these proverbs and try to make some application to our marriages. How specifically can we be generous in marriage?
Verse 22
22       As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, So is a lovely woman who lacks discretion.
What a comical picture the Scripture paints. A pig, a muddy sow, with a valuable gold ring in its nose, and God says, if you lack discretion that’s what you are like.
Is that insulting? Yes. But it’s the kind of insult that comes from a father who loves you.
The first audience here is really a young man looking for a wife. Stay away from a woman who talks too much, who is immodest, imprudent, and indiscrete. If she follows a bunch of vanity accounts on Instagram, don’t ask her out.
The Apostle Peter states similarly in 1 Peter 3 saying, “Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”
So in Scripture and in reality there are two kinds of beauty. There is beauty that fades and beauty that does not fade. There is beauty that is corruptible, and there is beauty that is incorruptible. Both beauties are good but one is more valuable. External, physical beauty is good, but it does not last. Whereas internal and spiritual beauty is good now and forever.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:8, the all the men, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”
So external beauty, like physical strength, is good and glorious but temporary. You are going to get old. You are going to get weak. And therefore budget your time and energy accordingly.
God wants women to be beautiful, and he created you women to desire to be beautiful. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, “woman is the glory of man.” Woman is the crown of all creation. And while external beauty is good and has its place, without discretion, without modesty, without a quiet and gentle spirit to accompany it, God says you are like a ring of gold in a ping’s snout.
So wives, one of the ways you can be generous to your husband is by cultivating this most excellent virtue and quality of discretion. Yes, do your hair. Yes, try to look pretty for your husband. But prize discretion above all of that.
What is discretion?
Discretion is verbal and emotional self-control. It is restraining yourself from the need to tell everyone everything all the time.
And this is not merely a personality difference between introverts and extroverts, discretion is about appropriate timing.
It says in Ecclesiastes 3, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak…”
Discretion is knowing what season it is, and what to do in it. It is the habit of constantly asking the Lord, in every circumstance, how can I please you with my attitude and actions? Do I really need to share/say this?
It says in James 3:6-8, “the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”
How many petty fights and fruitless squabbles could have been avoided if you had simply kept your mouth shut? This goes for both husbands and wives of course, but either way, nobody wants to be a gold ring in a pig’s snout.
And so Solomon charges us, but especially beautiful women (who might be tempted to trust in their beauty, Ezek. 16:15) to learn discretion. If you want to be generous to your husband, become like the virtuous wife of whom it says in Proverbs 31, “The heart of her husband safely trusts her; So he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil All the days of her life” (Pr. 31:11-12).
Husbands, can you say that about your wife? If not, it is your responsibility to figure out how to get her there.
Wives, if your husband cannot say that about you, why not? What needs to change in you, so that he can praise extol your virtues?
A generous marriage is built on love and trust, and we should all, husband and wife, be seeking to grow in our discretion of what season it is. Is it a time speak, or a time to be silent? Is it a time to sit down face to face, or is it time to work back to back and side by side in the work God has given you? Discretion is all about knowing what time it is, and what God wants you to do in that moment.
Continuing in verses 23-26 we have an assortment of proverbs about how God blesses the generous. As we give to others, God pours back into us. Or as Jesus says, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” This is Solomonic wisdom.
Verses 23-26
23       The desire of the righteous is only good, But the expectation of the wicked is wrath.24       There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.25       The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself.26       The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.
The vast majority of marital conflicts come from forgetting that you are one-flesh with your spouse. You and your wife are not on opposite teams, you are on the same team. And God says, you are as one person, husband is head, wife is the body. Just like Christ is the head, and the church is his body.
Paul says in Ephesians 5:28, “men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.”
So when you love your spouse, you are in an indirect way doing what is best for you. By being a generous soul to your spouse, and giving to them, you are the one becoming rich! “By watering them, God waters you.”
Marriage is not zero-sum game. Marriage is not a competition between rivals. God intended marriage to be a win-win scenario for both husband and wife. And when you put your spouse’s interests above your own, you do as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:24, “Let no one seek his own, but each one the other’s well-being,” then you are becoming like Jesus. And regardless of whether your spouse reciprocates or not, you are doing what pleases God and that is what all of us should be living for.
You cannot control how your spouse responds, but you can control you, and that is all God is asking you to control. If Jesus commands you to love your enemies, how much more ought you love the person who is one-flesh with you?
When we wound our spouse, we are wounding ourselves. No sane man shoots his own kneecap. And yet that is what you are doing when you sin against your spouse.
So this is the principle of marriage that you have to drill into your head: Genesis 2:24, “the two shall be one flesh.” We are one flesh together. “What is good for you in God’s eyes, is good for both of us.”
Consider verse 24 from the lens of marital generosity.  “There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.”
In this proverb, one person is being stingy and tightfisted, and that stinginess actually impoverishes them. They hurt themselves by their own fear of relinquishing something they really want. Whereas, the one who scatters and gives and is open-handed with what God has given, increases more and more. You get richer by giving.
Now apply this to the marriage bed. When sexual intimacy becomes weaponized or used as tool or bargaining chip to get something else that you want, it is yourself that you are robbing.
God intended the marriage bed to be a place of mutual generosity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, “Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
So here is one place where there is “total equality” in marriage. The husband does not have authority over his own body, the wife does. And the wife does not have authority over her own body, the husband does. And what is this authority used for, bringing pleasure to the other.
“Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time.” This means communicate, talk about what your desires are, what do you hope for in this season of life. Ask your spouse, how I can be more generous to you in this part of our marriage? I’ll leave that there.
Continuing in Verse 25 it says, “The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself.”
So how rich do you want to be? How good of a marriage do you want to have? Many people are just content with the status quo and don’t realize that you can be enraptured and intoxicated with one another’s love if you obey God. That is the big if.
Now I want to highlight one potential pitfall for those who of you desire to be more generous.
Think of generosity as like a great fountainhead of water that is just gushing out of you.
Jesus says in John 4:14 to the woman at the well, “the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
So the fountain of God’s love is flowing, and the question is who do you give this living water to first?
Well, this is where I have seen many people go wrong. They overlook those closest to them, because they think generosity is only for those outside and far away from us. They think that hospitality is just serving the poor and needy, but not your own household. This is the false dichotomy that well-meaning people can fall into.
This is the missionary who sells everything and goes to evangelize some distant foreign tribe but does so at the expense of his wife and children. The missionary thinks he is being generous, and to the tribe indeed perhaps he is. But the generosity that God wants us from us, is like a growing river. It starts in us and goes outward watering everyone along the way. Jesus says to love your neighbor, and that begins with the neighbor closest to you, namely your wife, and then your children, and from there on outward.
Generosity and hospitality must begin in our own soul, and only after we have drenched our own marriage and household with love and goodness, are we qualified to give real goodness to anyone else.
It does you no good to invite more distant neighbors into your home, if your home is a place of bitterness, resentment, and enmity.
Nobody wants to be a guest at your table if there is no love between husband and wife and children.
So prioritize your generosity as God commands.
Paul says in Galatians 6:10, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
So do good to everyone but prioritize your church body.
Or consider Proverbs 13:22, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.”
So this is a charge to parents and grandparents. Plan, save, and be generous to your children and grandchildren. And don’t feel bad about it. Don’t be that wealthy billionaire who gives all his money to charity and not a dime to his own flesh. That is not biblically ordered generosity, and it will only provoke resentment.
There’s a great story from Jim Wilson (Doug Wilson’s dad), who was a marvelous evangelist. And he would have people over to his house for counseling. And one day little Doug Wilson kept running into the room and interrupting their meeting. And the person being counselled was annoyed and asked Jim, hey can do you something about this?
And Jim in his blunt way said, “He’s more important than you.”
Jim Wilson knew his priorities. He knew that his children were his qualification to minister grace to anyone else.
And it was that kind of thing that taught little Doug Wilson, what God the Father is like.
God is not too busy for you. God is not preoccupied with other people’s problems. God is not so far away that he will not drop everything, get down on the floor and wrestle with you. God is good and God is love in his very essence. It is the Father’s name and nature to give, to beget, and to pour forth very being.
And that is what we as earthly husbands and fathers should want to imitate and communicate (in our very finite and imperfect way) to our wife and children. “You are more important.”
Conclusion
God wants you to be happy. God wants you to possess a joy that no-one and no-thing can take from you (John 16:22). And that indestructible gladness and joy is found exclusively in God. It says in Psalm 43:4, “I will go unto the altar of God, Unto God my exceeding joy.”
The only way to participate in God’s superabundant and overflowing joy, is to first participate in God’s goodness and love. To become like the most blessed and happy God, you must acquire a generous soul, you must be willing as the Apostle Paul says, “to spend and be spent” for your wife, for your children, for your people, for your God.
For this is what God has done for us. He has given Himself, He has given His Son, He is the very Gift and Love that our hearts yearn for, and as St. Augustine said, our heart is restless O God, until it finds its rest in thee. May you know this peace, love, and joy in your marriage.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Sermon: On Church Discipline (Hebrews 12:1-14)

On Church DisciplineSunday, February 4th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Hebrews 12:1-14
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. 4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. 5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? 8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. 9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. 11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. 12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; 13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. 14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the blessing of church discipline, which although is very painful and grievous and hard in the moment, nevertheless, as your word says, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness in those who are exercised by it. So as you exercise us as a congregation, we ask that by your Spirit, you would make us holy, without which, none of us shall see You. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
As most of you know, this coming Wednesday night, we have a church discipline case that is going to trial, and because church discipline is something that many people have never witnessed, and many churches refuse to practice altogether, our circumstances warrant some instruction on this topic.
So there are three practical questions I want to answer in this sermon. And if you have a question that I don’t address, please do come and ask me afterward, or email me this week, I am happy to field whatever questions you may have.
I’ll also add that this is going to be a more topical sermon, so I won’t be giving a full verse-by-verse exposition of Hebrews 12, but I will reference it throughout.
So three questions I want to answer from the Scriptures, and they are:
What is church discipline?
Why does God command the church to exercise discipline?
What is the purpose of a public trial, like the one we will be conducting?
#1 – What is church discipline?
At the most basic level, church discipline is God’s way of treating us as His beloved children.
It says in Psalm 103:13-14, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
So when you became a Christian, and were baptized into Jesus Christ, you became an adopted child of God, and from that day forward, God promises to be Your God and to treat you as His beloved son or daughter. That is the promise of the covenant of grace, “I will be your God, and you will be by my people” (Ex. 6:7).
To become a Christian is to have God as your Heavenly Father, who loves you, and cares for you, and only and always seeks what is good for you.
David reflecting on this great truth says in Psalm 27:10, “when my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me in.”
In Psalm 68:5, he calls God, “the father of the fatherless, a defender of widows.”
How did Jesus teach us to pray and call upon God in time of need? As “our Father who art in heaven.”
So if you are a Christian, regardless of the status of your relationship with your earthly parents, however good or bad that relationship may be, God is now your Father. He has adopted you, and you belong to Him, body, soul, and spirit.
As it says in our text of Hebrews 12:9, God is the “Father of spirits.” Our earthly father and mother may have given us our flesh, our genes, our DNA, our looks, our hair color and eye color, our first and last name, but when God becomes our Father, He gives us a new name, a new spirit, a new heart, a new nature, a new family, a new destiny, and a new future that is glorious and everlasting. This is the new creation Jesus brings about in those who are united to him by faith.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
To become a Christian is to receive a new Father.
Now we see in our text that one of the things a good father does is discipline his children. And it is this discipline from our earthly fathers, that tells us who our father is. Fathers do not spank, at least ordinarily they don’t spank, the neighbor’s children. A father disciplines his own children.
And therefore, Paul says that when God disciplines us, as grievous and as painful as it may feel in the moment, it is actually a sign of sonship and an act of love. The fact that God disciplines us, the fact that God loves us enough to spank us, is a sign that we are His children, and not children of the devil.
It says in Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares the rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”
Likewise it says in Psalm 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word.”
And then again in Psalm 119:75 the psalmist says, “I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are right, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.”
If God spares the rod, then He hates us. If God never disciplines you, then you are not His child. We are so sick with sin, that we need God to cut us open, take out our heart of stone, and give us a new heart altogether.
And if you ever undergone surgery, you know that it’s not much fun. These days we have all kinds of drugs that can numb some of the pain, but if the doctor has replaced a ligament, or a limb, or an organ, or set a bone, you may never be the same.
When God wrestled with Jacob, and then blessed him, he put out Jacob’s hip. And while Jacob received a blessing and new name from God, Israel, from that day on, he walked with a limp.
So God plays rough with us. But He wounds us because He loves us, and as the Father Almighty who knows all things, beginning and end, He knows best what is good for us. Therefore, any pain that He permits into our life, we can patiently endure and receive as His way of lifting our eyes to heaven and the life to come.
Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” And when our affections are stuck down here, God disciplines us to elevate our minds to Him.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, that God permitted him to be “burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves.”
Paul was so burdened, that he despaired of life itself. But then he tells us why His Heavenly Father did this, so “that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”
The discipline of the Lord, in all its many forms, is given to all of God’s children, so “that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”
So if God is your Father, at some point, and throughout your life, He is going to permit pain, and use the rod, to purge out the sin in your life. And as it says in Hebrews 12:10, this is all “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.”
Now that is God’s discipline in the broadest of terms, and then church discipline is one of the means or instruments that God uses to make us holy.
If we were to survey the entire Bible on this topic of church discipline, we would find that there are different kinds and degrees of discipline within the church.
For example, there is informal discipline and formal discipline.
Informal discipline is what we all receive every Sunday when the word of God is read, taught, and preached to us. For those with ears to hear, the Word cuts us, the Spirit convicts us, and we are moved to repent and change our ways so that we do what pleases our Father.
And just as parents should not spank their children for every little fault, so also God does not spank us for every little fault. God is patient. God knows what we can handle. And he often gives us a long time to repent and work on things that He wants us to change.
However, if we presume on this patience and kindness, if we don’t actually ever repent, well that is when God may bring pain into our life to wake us up.
So informal discipline is what all of us are constantly subjecting ourselves to when we hear the Word, pray, humble ourselves, and confess our sins each day.
Romans 8:13 describes this kind of informal self discipline when it says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Now what happens when you refuse this informal self-discipline? What happens when you resist the Holy Spirit’s work in your life?
Well, the sins that we think are private or personal or hidden, do not stay hidden for long. And eventually these sins spread, like leaven, and can start to affect and infect other people. Jesus says, “out of the abundance of your heart, the mouth speaks,” and if you have a sinful heart, it won’t be long before you are sinning against others.
When we sin against someone else, Jesus gives us a process for dealing with it that starts with informal correction and escalates to formal discipline.
It says in Matthew 18:15, “if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.” This is informal church discipline: you confronting and admonishing your fellow Christian.
Now if that brother refuses to repent, Jesus says in the next verse, “But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.”
Still at this point, this is usually informal church discipline. You take a brother or sister with you to confront the person again and call them to repent.
And it is only after that step, that if the person still refuses to repent, Jesus says, “tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” This would be where we enter into the realm of “formal church discipline,” because now the elders are involved.
The “church” here can refer both to the elders of the congregation, or to the whole membership, and if after refusing to listen to the elders and the whole church, then comes the last and final stage of discipline which is excommunication.
Excommunication is simply the announcement that someone is no longer a Christian. They refuse to repent, they refuse to submit to the government of the church, and therefore Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:5, “deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
So there are degrees of discipline, ranging from informal self-discipline, to admonishment between brothers, to formal discipline from the elders which, if the person still is unrepentant, can finally lead to excommunication. But even then, when a person is put out of the church, the goal Paul says, is so that “their spirit may be saved.”
The goal of all discipline, up to and including excommunication, is that the wayward son or daughter of God may be restored to the family. Restoration is always the goal when God disciplines us.
Summary: Church discipline, whether formal or informal, private or public, when done in obedience to the Scriptures, is all God’s way of treating us His beloved sons and daughters. And therefore we are commanded in Hebrews 12:5-6, “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
Do not despise your Father in Heaven, when he scourges you. Remember it is a sign of love and sonship. And this is true of church discipline as well. “He who spares the rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly.”
#2 – Why does God command the church to exercise discipline?
We have already begun to answer this question, it is because God loves us. But there are additional reasons that Scripture gives for why the church must exercise both formal and informal, private and public discipline. So let us consider some of those other reasons.
The Westminster Confession, which is our church’s doctrinal standard, nicely summarizes these other reasons, so I’ll read this paragraph from the confession, and then elaborate on it.
WCF 30.3, “Church censures are necessary for 1) the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren; 2) for deterring of others from the like offences; 3) for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump; 4) for vindicating the honour of Christ, and the holy profession of the gospel; and 5) for preventing the wrath of God, which might justly fall upon the church, if they should suffer his covenant, and the seals thereof, to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders.”
So let me restate those 5 reasons for us and then point you to where they are found in Scripture.
God commands the church to exercise discipline why?
1. To call back the wayward sheep.
We saw in Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, the purpose of confronting someone is to call them back to Christ. We want them to return to Jesus who is the Good Shepherd.
2. To deter others from committing similar sins.
So one of the reasons God commands that certain unrepentant sins be made public and brought into the light, is to warn others against committing that same sin.
Paul says in Ephesians 5:11-12, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.”
Likewise in 1 Timothy 5:20 it says, “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.”
Proverbs 19:25 says, “Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware.”
So God commands the church to publicly rebuke, admonish, and bring certain unrepentant sins into the light, so that the offender will be ashamed and repent, but also so that we will stand in fear, that if we do not repent, the same discipline may come to us.
So church discipline, especially public and formal discipline, is God’s way of warning the rest of us. When you were a child, and your older sibling got in trouble for talking back to mom, the wise child observes and learns from that.
You can either learn from observing others or learn by personal experience. But either way, God wants you to learn that in his house, unrepentant sin is not tolerated.
3. To prevent sin from spreading to others.
The image Scriptures gives us is of leaven that spreads through the dough. Another image might be cancer that spreads to other parts of the body.
Jesus says in John 15, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
So sin is a disease that must be cut out of the body. And either we can cut it out ourselves, disciplining our flesh, or, if we let it grow, we force the church to do the cutting.
If we are one body, and fellow members together, which God says we are in 1 Corinthians 12 and other places, then there is no such thing as a truly private sin. All sin is communal in that it impacts the body of Christ of which you are a member.
Therefore, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven…put away from yourselves the evil person.”
4. To Honor Christ, who is our Spouse and the Head of the Church.
Just as a wife’s actions reflect upon her husband, so also the church’s actions reflect upon the Lord Jesus.
When the church tolerates unrepentant sin and does not exercise discipline, we dishonor Christ and give him a bad name. The church is where repentant sinners can be cleansed and forgiven, the church is not the place where unrepentant sinners can continue to live comfortable in a life of hypocrisy.
When Jesus sends letters to the pastors of the seven churches in Revelation 2-3, a recurring theme is that if you don’t exercise discipline, and throw out false teachers and Jezebel, and fornicators, and liars, then I will come myself and remove your lampstand.
Church discipline is the immune system in Christ’s body. And the threat that hangs over every church, and every pastor and session of elders, is “you exercise discipline, or I will come and remove your lampstand,” Jesus says.
Many churches have a compromised immune system, because the elders are too cowardly to make anyone upset. They fear the displeasure of certain women in the church. They fear the disapproval of those who might think they are being too harsh.
And this is why God requires that 1) only men be elders, and then, 2) only men who are impartial, fair-minded, and who hate a bribe.
Churches are fraught with emotional bribery. And so God requires that His servants, His elders, those who rule and judge in cases of discipline, fear God more than man. Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Discipline as Hebrews says is “grievous.” It feels harsh, it feels painful, it feels uncomfortable because it is. And yet, this is the severe cure for severe sin. Romans 11:22 says, “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.”
We exercise the Lord’s discipline to Honor Christ, because the purity of His bride and our testimony to the world is at stake, and that trumps all of our feelings.
5. Finally, the church exercises discipline to prevent the wrath of God from coming upon us.
Remember when Achan stole the spoils from Jericho and hid them in his tent. And then Joshua sent an army to destroy Ai, but instead of defeating them, 36 Israelite soldiers were killed.
Joshua cries out to God and says, God why did this happen?
Listen to what God says in Joshua 7:10-12, “So the Lord said to Joshua: “Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you.”
When there is sin in the camp, the church becomes impotent against its adversaries.
And so God commands the church to be holy as He is holy, so that when judgment comes, we are purified and spared like the land of Goshen, rather than destroyed like Egypt and the ungodly.
This is also why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:31-32 regarding the Lord’s Supper, “For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.”
Either the world will condemn you, or God will condemn you. Whose displeasure do you fear more, the world’s or your Father in Heaven? Because you cannot have it both ways.
Finally, we come to our third question…
#3 – What is the purpose of a public trial, like the one we will be conducting?
We already know the purposes for church discipline in general, but why do we need a public trial? Is that really necessary?
I should note first that the only sin that someone can ultimately be excommunicated for is unrepentance. And so a public trial for excommunication would only be warranted in two situations 1) when a person had said, “I am not going to repent,” or 2) their actions over time demonstrated that their repentance was not genuine.
And then, even if the accused is found guilty of whatever charges are brought, they can plead guilty, but then repent, and if that repentance is genuine, they would not be excommunicated.
So the fact that a trial for excommunication is taking place, does not mean the outcome is already a foregone conclusion. The point of the trial is to establish the truth or falsity of the charges and determine whether the accused (if guilty) is willing to repent.
So with that as an aside, let me give you two reasons for conducting a public trial as we shall have on Wednesday.
1. The first, is to protect the person accused from any mistreatment or injustice from the elders, and to protect the elders from any charges of injustice.
It is the most serious thing for someone to be excommunicated, and if the charges are false, or the person is innocent, a public trial allows them to defend themselves and even vindicate themselves against false accusations.
If the trial was done behind closed doors, and the elders simply announced one Sunday that so-and-so was excommunicated, and the church never heard from the person themselves whether they plead guilty or innocent, that would not be a transparent and honest process.
That was the process they used to crucify Jesus, rushing him through a trial in the night, and we want nothing to do with that kind of backdoor dealing.
This is also just following the basic command all throughout Scripture that judgment is to be established in the gates.
It was customary for the elders and priests to gather at the gates of the city to hear cases and render judgment. And by doing so in the public square, it has the effect of keeping people honest to their word. Whatever you say, or do, and whatever the judges judge, is open for all to see. It keeps elders, witnesses, prosecution, and defendant accountable to the broader community. This is healthy peer pressure.
2. A second reason is because excommunication is a public and communal punishment, as is restoration to the church.
So this is an opportunity for the accused to make known to the church, whether they are innocent or guilty, and if guilty, whether they are repentant or unrepentant.
If an innocent verdict is reached, then the person can be publicly restored to the body. They are vindicated against false or untrue accusation.
If a guilty verdict is reached, but the person is repentant, then they can begin the process of restoration with far more help, prayer, accountability, and encouragement than if was never made public at all.
Finally, if a guilty verdict is reached, and the person is unrepentant, only then is excommunication the punishment.
And in all these cases, by making this process public, the members of the church become additional witnesses to whatever takes place.
This is the due process that God’s justice commands.
Conclusion
The test for all of us is: Do you trust God’s Word and that His ways are better and more just than your ways? Do you trust the Lord Jesus to use this process to purify His Bride and glorify His Name? Do you fear the Holy Ghost and His power among us?
When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead for lying to the Holy Spirit, it says in Acts 5, “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things… And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.”
Discipline is how God grows His church. It is how our Father raises us up from foolish children into wise kings and queens. So trust your Father, who loves you and knows what is best.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Interview: Evangelizing College Students with Campus Preacher Keith Darrell

Find out more about Keith Darrell's ministry at https://www.campuspreacher.com/
 
 

Sermon: David's Lord (Mark 12:28-44)

David’s LordSunday, January 28th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 12:28-44
28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? 29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. 32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: 33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.
35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? 36 For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. 37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.
38 And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, 39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: 40 Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.
41 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. 42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. 43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: 44 For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for Your law which is perfect, converting the soul. We thank you for your testimony that is sure, making wise the simple. We thank you for Your statutes that are right, rejoicing the heart. And we praise you for Your commandment that is pure and enlightening to our eyes. Fill us now O Lord with love that descends from above, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
This morning, we finish out Mark chapter 12, and this is the conclusion of an ongoing showdown between Jesus and the highest authorities of the Jews.
Jesus is teaching in the outer court of the Temple, it is Passover week, and so the place is filled with visitors. So far we have seen representatives from different Jewish factions take turns trying to stump the Lord Jesus.
First the chief priests, scribes, and elders (the Sanhedrin) challenged Jesus’ authority, “who gave thee this authority to do these things?” (Mark 11:28).
Jesus’ answer was “the same authority as John the Baptist.”
Next, the Pharisees and Herodians came along and asked whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar.
Jesus’ answer was, “give to Caesar what belongs to him, and give to God what belongs to God.”
Then, last week, we saw the Sadducees come with an argument against the resurrection.
Jesus answered them by saying, “ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?” and then proceeded to demonstrate the resurrection from Exodus 3:6.
So Jesus is as a great fighter in the ring, and when he knocks out one opponent, immediately another arises. And yet for all their persistent attempts to catch Jesus in his words, to stump him theologically, in every case they end up indicting themselves.
And so this section in Mark’s gospel, Chapters 11-12, are really intended to expose the falsity and wickedness and duplicity and hypocrisy of the entire Jerusalem establishment. There are still pockets of faithfulness here and there, God promised there would always be a faithful remnant, but on the whole, the powers that be are corrupt and unjust. These are the false shepherds in Israel who devour the sheep (Jer. 23:1). These are the wicked servants in Jesus’ parable of the vineyard who steal God’s stuff and murder his servants.
And what all of this exposing of sin is building up to is chapter 13, where Jesus is going to foretell that within one generation, the temple and its leaders are going to be destroyed. The powers that be will be shaken, the stars will fall from the sky. And the Son of Man shall come with power and glory to bring judgment on the old world, and usher in the new.
So this radical change in the authority structure of the whole cosmos, is what these doctrinal controversies are really about. The Jews recognized that Jerusalem and the Temple was the center of the world, they know the promise of Isaiah 2:1 that, “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow unto it…For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
The Jews also knew the many prophecies that a king would arise from the line of David, and that as it says in Psalm 72:8, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, And from the river unto the ends of the earth.”
So the Jews were primed for this universal king to come and reign. But as with the arrival of any new power or regime or kingdom, it is those who are currently in power who are most threatened by any change to the status quo. And it is that change that Jesus comes to bring about, but it is a change far more profound than either the populists (who love Jesus) or the upper classes (who hate Jesus) recognize.
What almost everyone is blind to is that Jesus is God in the flesh. In Jesus, God Himself has come to reign. And so in arguing with Jesus in the temple, they are arguing with God about His Law and doing so in His House. And this is what makes their opposition to Jesus so ironic and outrageous. These are the people who claim to speak for and represent God and His Word. And yet they cannot recognize God, or the Word incarnate, when he is staring them in the face.
So our text this morning is the conclusion of this public showdown, and there are four sections to this passage, and each has an important application for us.
1. In verses 28-34, Jesus tells us what the greatest commandment is.
2. In verses 35-37, Jesus tells us who the Messiah is.
3. In verses 38-40, Jesus warns us of seeking worldly honorand riches.
4. In verses 41-44, Jesus gives us the example of the poor widow.
#1 – What is the greatest commandment according to Jesus?
This is the question a scribe poses to Jesus in verse 28, and Jesus responds by saying, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
Notice that Jesus begins his answer with the most famous verse in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6:4, also known as the Shema. It was customary for Jews to say the Shema twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, and it is the Old Testament equivalent to our Christian confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
And so notice the first verb, or action Jesus commends for us as the greatest commandment, is “Hear.” Yes, love for God and love for neighbor is the great commandment, but even prior to love is the necessity of Hearing. We must hear and know the voice of God and believe that He is one Lord.
We cannot love what we do not know, and therefore you must know the One God and to Him alone should all your heart, soul, mind, and strength be given.
In other words, it is not enough to be radical in your devotion if the object of your devotion is false. If the object of your devotion is anyone or anything other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then it is idolatry. And so Jesus says “Hear,” take heed to who it is that you are worshipping.
Now if you have ever read the Old Testament, you know that there are many strange laws and regulations and many of them are hard to understand. And what Jesus is giving us here is the answer to key to understanding all of those laws. Because when you reduce the divine intent behind every law down to its most basic principle, it is simply: love God more than anything, and love your neighbor as yourself. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:40).
The scribe recognizes that Jesus has spoken well, and in a surprising and refreshing turn of events, after all the aggressive opposition, he agrees with Jesus and adds that this is “more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
As it says in 1 Samuel 15:22, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”
God says in Hosea 6:6, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
And so here Jesus gives us the ultimate end of our existence. Why did God create you? What are you here for? What is life all about? What is my purpose? What should occupy your attention? One thing: God.
Man’s final end is to know and love God, there is nothing higher. And therefore, everything else, even and especially many other good things, must be subordinated and ordered towards that end.
Now, if knowing and loving God is our highest good, then what is sin? Sin is settling for any lesser good than God. There are many ways we can do this, but at bottom, sin is choosing to give your heart, soul, mind, or strength, to someone or something other than God.
Or to put it in terms of St. Augustine, sin is to have disordered loves.
So we exist to know and love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbor as ourself, and this Jewish scribe agrees with Jesus that is the first and highest commandment. And yet, according to Jesus, this is not sufficient for him to enter the kingdom.
In verse 34 it says, “Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” He is close, he is near, but he is not yet in.
And so what is this scribe missing? Well, that is what Jesus is going to address with a question of his own. And he poses it in the form of riddle, taken from one of the psalms.
Verse 35-37
35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? 36 For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. 37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.
#2 – Who is the Christ?
The question Jesus is asking is, “How can the Christ be both David’s son and David’s Lord?”
If the Christ is David’s son, and no son is greater than his father, no father calls his son lord, how then can David call his son in Psalm 110, “my lord.”
Scripture teaches both of these realities about the Messiah. God promised in 2 Samuel 7, that David’s throne would last forever. And even after the kingdom was divided, and the Jews were in exile, God promised again in Jeremiah 23, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth” (Jer. 23:5).
So whoever the Christ is, must be a fleshly descendent of David. And yet David, inspired by the Holy Ghost says in Psalm 110, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool.”
What the scribes could not understand, was that in this Psalm, David was extolling the Lord Jesus. David was contemplating the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation.
The Father who is God and LORD, said unto the Son, who is God and David’s Lord, “sit thou at my right hand.”
And so the answer to Jesus’ riddle is also the thesis of Mark’s Gospel. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the eternal Son of God (Mark 1:1).
And so only God could be both David’s son and David’s Lord, and that is who Jesus is.
It is this belief and faith in Jesus as both son of David according to the flesh and Son of God as a fully divine person, that grants us entrance into the kingdom. While the Shema is good and right and true, the Shema is not sufficient to enter the kingdom of heaven. Because to truly Hear and know the one true God and one Lord, one must also accept that Jesus Christ is that one true God and Lord.
This is why Jesus says in John 17:3, “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” Jesus is the doorway into the kingdom.And so it is doubly true that this scribe was not far from the kingdom for indeed he was talking to the king himself.
Who is the Christ? He is both David’s son and David’s Lord. The Christ can be none other than the One God of the Shema.
Having posed this riddle so that the one who figures it out may enter the kingdom, Jesus now proceeds to do two things: First, he warns us of seeking worldly honor, and second, he shows us what keeping the greatest commandment looks like.
#3 – A Warning Against Worldliness
Verses 38-40
38 And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, 39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: 40 Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.
There are two warnings here.
The first is to beware of the people who use religion for selfish and self-serving purposes.
There are scribes who pray and teach and look very religious, but in the eyes of God it is all a show. It is all a pretense to devour widows’ houses and gain status in society.
The church must be on guard against such hypocrisy both in ourselves and in our leaders.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:17, “keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.” He says in 1 Timothy 3:8, that officers in the church (elders and deacons) must not be greedy for filthy lucre.
What is filthy lucre? It’s ill-gotten gain. It’s using your authority and influence to manipulate the widows in the church. To steal their deceased husband’s estate, taking their inheritance and putting it into your own pockets. This is what the teachers of God’s law were doing in Jerusalem. And so Jesus is saying, beware of those scribes, they are liars and frauds, not everyone deserves your trust.
The second warning is to beware of the temptation to worldly glory.
All of us are susceptible to vanity. All of us naturally desire to look good in front of others (make a good impression), and we all want people to think and speak well of us. And while none of those things is inherently evil, when that becomes our aim, instead of honoring and pleasing God, we quickly become slaves to the world and to our own self-image.
This is why Jesus says in Luke 6:26, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.”
It is not a sin to care what people think of you. We should all aspire to have a good name and witness and reputation. Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, And loving favour rather than silver and gold.”
So having a good name is not a sin, but it is a sin if you have a good name with the world, and a bad name in the eyes of God. And this is what the whole Jewish establishment was guilty of.
So how then shall we live? How then shall we keep the first and greatest commandment, and enter into the kingdom?
Well, we have had many negative examples, and many cautionary tales of what not to be like, and finally, Jesus gives us the positive example of the poor widow.
#4 – The Poor Widow
Verses 41-44
41 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. 42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. 43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: 44 For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
So within the temple complex, there was a place to give your offerings. And tradition holds that there were thirteen of these “shofar chests,” which were large trumpet-shaped receiving containers where people could throw in their contributions. And as the coins went in, you could hear the clink-clink-clink and know, was that a large offering, or a small offering.
So Jesus is watching people bring their offerings (into His House) and put them into His treasury. And many rich folks come through and give large offerings (clink clink clink clink clink clink) very good. But then comes the poor widow, and she has the equivalent of what we could call pocket change, perhaps enough to buy a candy bar or a package of top ramen. Two mites. And she puts both of them into the treasury (clink clink).
And then Jesus says, “this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury. Because the rich gave from their abundance, but she gave all her living from her want.”
In other words, if ever it would have been reasonable for a woman to keep back at least one of her mites, this was the occasion. And yet, she so casts herself upon the mercy and generosity of God that she gives to Him what probably was her daily bread. She exchanges the totality of her temporal goods (“all her living”), which is not much, so that she might gain more of God.
What is the price of heaven? What is the cost to enter Christ’s kingdom? Well, Jesus is teaching us here that the price cannot be measured in dollars or coins or any worldly possession. It is measured rather, according to the intention and contents of the heart.
Not only is the gift measured in proportion to what God has given us, more importantly, it is measured according to the love for God we have for him in our offering. Do we regard God as worth all our living? When we give to Him our tithes and offerings, does it represent all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, or is it just 10% off the top to keep our conscience clean?
Two people can give to God the same 10% of their income, but in God’s eyes, one could be robbing Him (because they are giving it grudgingly), and the other could be offering their whole self to Him in that tithe. This is why God says, “I love a cheerful giver.”
So love for God is what makes an offering acceptable in His sight, no matter the amount. And this is what makes the widow’s offering of two mites worth more than a king’s ransom. And yet it is not just that the widow has given God all her living, it is that her gift represents her real spiritual state. She is both materially poor and poor in spirit, and thus the beatitude comes to pass as Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). This woman is not far from the kingdom, she is inside of it because of her love for God.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:3, “though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”
In other words, you could hear this sermon, and try to be like the poor widow and give God all your goods, but if you lack charity, then you haven’t actually given Him what He wants. He wants your heart!
This principle is crucial for us to understand because it means that all of our actions and attitudes all day long, can either be a pleasing offering acceptable to the Lord, or a foul smell in his nostrils.
Remember Cain and Abel. Both offered sacrifices, but one was accepted and one was not.
And so what are the two mites God has given you? Or what is the great abundance God has blessed you with? What is your livelihood and vocation? Because no matter how much or little you think you have, all of us have an equal opportunity to give all of ourselves in love to God.
Moreover, God Himself is the greatest reward any of us could receive, and the more we die to this world, and give him all our living, the more we make space in our soul to be filled by Him.
Remember what God said to Abram in Genesis 15? Abram had just returned from rescuing Lot from Chedorlaomer and three other kings. He defeated them, and thenMelchizedek came out and blessed Abram and Abram gave him a tithe. And yet he would not receive any gifts or reward from the king of Sodom. And then it says in Genesis 15:1, “After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.’”
This poor widow was a true daughter of Abraham, a true woman of faith. She had God for her shield and her exceedingly great reward. And so the more you divest yourself of worldly desire, and the more you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, the richer you become.
This is how Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 6:10, we are “as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”
The person who has God as supreme in their affections is the one who possesses everything. And God is the gift that Jesus Christ comes to offer.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ offered Himself on the cross for the life of the world. He loved His Father, and He loved you, even unto death.
And so what is two mites, or what is all your possessions, compared to so great a love?
Become like Abraham, become like the poor widow, and choose God as your shield and as your exceedingly great reward, for that is a reward that can never be taken from you.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Lesson 6: As Knowledge in the Knower and the Beloved in the Lover (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture)

The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy ScriptureLesson 6 – As Knowledge in the Knower and the Beloved in the Lover
Review of Lesson 5
Last time we were together, we started working on this question, “In what sense is God inside of us?” And we spent a good half hour studying all the ways God is not and cannot be inside of us. Does anyone remember some of the ways we said that God cannot be inside of us?
We looked at 8 modes/ways that one thing can be said to be in another:
As a body is in place. Example: Paul is in the Areopagus. Or, you are in this room and not at home.
As a part is in the whole. Example: A finger is in the hand.
As the whole is in its parts. Example: A hand is in the fingers, for there is no whole hand over and above the parts (fingers).
As a species is in its genus. Example: The species (man) is in the genus (animal).
As the genus is in the species. Example:The animal (genus) is in the man who is of the species rational animal.
As form is in matter. Example: The soul (immaterial form) is in the body (matter).
As an accident is in a substance. For example, whiteness is an accident that exists in the substance Socrates, and yet if Socrates goes out in the sun and gets dark/tan, he is still Socrates despite no longer being white, thus whiteness is accidental to Socrates. Substance on the other hand is the principle of unity and self-identity that persists across all accidental changes.
As agent is in a patient. Or put another way, as an efficient cause is in its effects. Example: As an author is in his story. As Tolkien is in Middle-Earth.
God is in us in this way, as the one who gives us our very existence (“in him we live and move and have our being,” Acts 17:28). However, this is God’s Common Presence in all things and all people, not His Special Presence in the saints.
Question: Did anyone think of some other ways that one thing can be inside another?
Lesson 6
Tonight, I am finally going to tell you the true and actual way that God is present inside the believer. So we are not talking about God’s common presence (as efficient cause) in that He makes us to live and move and have our being, we are talking now about God’s special presence in the saints by grace.
Remember the reason we are asking this question is twofold:
1) Because this is one of the two realities signified by God coming and dwelling in the Tabernacle and Temple (the other is the Incarnation).
2) Because there are a ton of verses in the Bible that speak of God/Christ/Holy Spirit being in us and us being in God. And because there is no higher joy or pleasure than being united to God, we should want to 1) understand what this union is, and 2) see if Scripture tells us how we can experience more of it.
So how does God dwell inside the believer?
The answer to the question is that God dwells in the believer as knowledge is in the knower and as the beloved is in the lover. God is in us as knowledge is in the person knowing, and as the object loved is in the person loving. God dwells in the saints by knowledge and by love.
Let me read you a few examples of this from Scripture, and as I read, listen for that connection between knowledge, love, and indwelling.
John 14:15-17, “If ye love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
1 Corinthians 2:12, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”
1 John 4:12-13, “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.”
Ephesians 3:14-19, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
So when we become Christians and make God our refuge and dwelling place, He also comes and makes us His dwelling place. So there is a mutual indwelling of us in God and God in us.
Now to better understand what this means, that “knowledge is in the knower and the beloved is in the lover,” let us consider how this kind of indwelling work amongst creatures, and then work our back up to God.
So consider two people falling in love, we’ll call them Adam and Eve.
Adam is lonely, he has a knowledge of animals and even loves the animals, but something is missing in his life.Adam wants to know and love someone that is his equal, someone more like him. Well, it’s Adam’s lucky day, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up there is a beautiful something standing in his garden.
Adam sees this something, and what happens in his soul/mind/intellect?
First, he apprehends that this is no mere animal. This thing is shaped like he is, but a little different. He abstracts from the images that his sensory powers are feeding him, and judges, this animal has the same substantial form as he does: human. It speaks and laughs and reasons, and therefore must be like Adam as a rational animal with a human nature.
But despite having this shared human nature with Adam, there are also some real bodily differences. Adam sees that this naked woman has different organs for generation than he does.
And therefore, in his mind, proceeds this internal word or concept of understanding that we might call a name/definition.
You cannot name/define something until you have grasped and understood it’s nature. What is its genus? And what is its species? How is it like or unlike other things.
So Adam beholds this other person, and grasps both the similarity and dissimilarity that is evidenced in her body and pronounces externally what is said in Genesis 2:23, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” And then in the next verse Adam is married to this Woman, and the two become one flesh.
There is physical union and indwelling of husband and wife.
Now after the fall, in Genesis 3, Adam’s knowledge of his Wife/Woman increases, and he learns that she is the mother of all the living. And because of this increase in knowledge about her, he gives her a new name, which is Eve (Gen. 3:20).
And then in Genesis 4:1 it says, “And Adam knewEve his wife; and she conceived.”
So in what ways are Adam and Eve united?
1. They are physically unitedin the marital act.
2. They are legally/covenantally united as one household/family.
3. But they are also spiritually united as knowledge in the knower and beloved in the lover.
When Adam’s knowledge of Eve increases, and he knows her to be good, His desire for her is aroused and he freely chooses to love and delight in her. And so even if Eve is not physically present, she is present to Adam in his memory, in his affections, and in his enjoyment of knowing who she is and that she belongs to Him.
This is what we mean by the mingling of souls. Because love is a unitive force, it draws us out of ourselves and into the object of our love, so that the mind and will of the person we love, the more we know and love them, the more their mind and love is inside us.
We can know what they are thinking and feeling because they are inside of us a knowledge in the knower and the beloved in the lover.
To give you a couple non-romantic examples of this, Paul says to the Philippians, “It is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart.”
He says to the Colossians, “For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.”
So the Philippians and the Colossians, and all the churches and people Paul knew and loved, dwelt within him. And so it is with us.
The things we know, remember, love and delight in, are inside of us, and that is how God wants to be inside of us. As the supreme object of knowledge, and the supreme object of our love.
Conclusion
It says in Psalm 10:4, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.”
God does not dwell in the wicked, because He is not in their thoughts.
And unlike Eve, and unlike any other created thing that we can see and know with our eyes, God is invisible, God is a spirit, God is incorporeal, eternal, and infinite, and as it says in 1 John 4:12, “No man hath seen God at any time.”
So how God can the invisible Triune God come and well inside of us?
Well, this is why Christ came, he is the image of the invisible God. And as the true knowledge of God is proclaimed in the world, and as we increase in that knowledge of God through reading the Bible, hearing sermons, praying and meditating, God dwells in us personally as knowledge in us who know Him.
And then from that understanding of the truths that we know about God, proceeds the supernatural love that unites us to Him. And so Paul can say in 1 Cor. 2:16, “we have the mind of Christ.”
This is eternal life, this is the purpose for man’s existence, it is know God and love Him, and that is how God dwells within the saints.

Sermon: Because Ye Know Not The Scriptures (Mark 12:18-27)

Because Ye Know Not the ScripturesSunday, January 21st, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 12:18–27
18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 19 Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. 22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. 23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. 24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? 25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. 26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.
Prayer
Father as we consider the life that is to come, and ponder what resurrection and eternity with you shall be like, we confess that we are far too carnal in our thinking. It is hard for us to imagine any joy or pleasure or love that surpasses what we enjoy in a good marriage or enjoy with our bodily senses. And yet, you have promised to us a life of bliss and fullness of joy in your presence, for as it says in Psalm 16:11, “at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.” And so we ask now for you Spirit to be at work within us to make us into more spiritual creatures, with spiritual desires, that transcend this world which is passing away. Make us to live for eternity, for we ask this Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
What will life in the new heavens and new earth be like? What will that future state of glory and resurrection be like for the saints?
The Bible teaches that when we die, and our soul is separated from our body, our soul (that immaterial part of us that knows and loves) immediately goes to heaven to be with God.
Paul says in Philippians 1:22-23 that to live in the body is fruitful labor for the Christian, but to depart and be with Christ is far better.
Likewise in 2 Corinthians 5:1-2 he says, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle [referring to the body] were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.”
So in this life we groan to be with God. And when we die, our soul is welcomed into the Father’s House, and God Himself becomes our dwelling place, our habitation, our house not made with hands. We behold Him in His essence and our soul is made radiant.
And it is there in heaven with God, that our glorified soul awaits the final resurrection and reunion with the body.
This final resurrection is spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 where the Apostle says, “the body is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
The final destination for the Christian, is not being a disembodied soul in heaven, though that is far better than being here. Our final destination is the resurrection of the dead wherein God by His power reunites soul and body never to die again. This is the eternal life that the resurrected Son of God has purchased for us, and it this power and resurrection that the Sadducees of Jesus day did not believe in.
In our text this morning, the Sadducees pose a question for Jesus that is a kind of reductio ad absurdum. What isa reductio ad absurdum? It is an argument where you take the premises of your opponent and follow them out to their logical end, and the intent is that the logical conclusion is so absurd or contradictory that it makes the premises invalid.
For example, against atheists we can run the reductio that if there is no God (as they claim), then there is no objective basis for morality, and therefore any moral objections they have against Christianity are purely arbitrary.
Or to give a very different example, if the world is flat, then there is an edge, but because no one has seen or found that edge, it is absurd to think the world is flat.
So that’s the basic structure of a reductio ad absurdum. And this is the argument the Sadducees deploy against Jesus regarding what is in their mind the absurdity of the resurrection.
Now before we look at their argument, let me first say a word about who the Sadducees were.
Who were the Sadducees?
The best we can conclude from what Scripture and other ancient sources tell us, is that the Sadducees were an upper class or aristocratic group of Jews, and they had strong ties to the high priesthood in Jerusalem (Acts 5:18). It is possible they received their name and lineage from Zadok and thus laid claim to being the divinely appointed heirs of the high priesthood (Ezek. 44:15).
As to their doctrine, Mark tells us here in vs. 18 that they did not believe in the resurrection, and we are also told in Acts 23:8, “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.”
So the Sadducees were theological enemies of the Pharisees (Jewish heretics), and Paul actually uses this to his advantage when the Jews are trying to kill him.
Josephus (who was a 1st century Jewish historian) tells us, “But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of anything besides what the law enjoins them” (Antiquities 18.16). Elsewhere he adds that they reject God’s sovereignty over man’s actions.
So the Sadducees rejected any Scripture outside of the law of Moses, the Pentateuch alone was their canon (Genesis-Deuteronomy).So they are already working with a truncated canon, and one of their great points of contention with the Pharisees was this doctrine of the resurrection and the existence of spiritual substances (angels, an immortal soul, etc.).
So those are their premises, and what they try to do against Jesus is take the Pharisees premises and run them out to absurdity.
How do they try to do this? Well let us turn to expound our text.
Verse 19
19 Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
Note first the appeal to Moses and the law as their authority. What specific law are they referring to?
It is Deuteronomy 25:5-10, which we heard earlier in the service, and this is often called the “levirate marriage law.” This word levirate comes from the Latin word levir, which means “a husband’s brother.” So a levirate marriage is literally a marriage to a brother-in-law. Elsewhere the man who fulfills this law is called the “kinsman redeemer” (גאל).
We are given the purpose of this law in Deuteronomy 25:6, which states, “it shall be that the firstborn son which she bears will succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”
So because of the tribal inheritance each family received in the promised land, it was importantfor a male heir to carry on his father’s name and ensure that the inheritance God had given them stayed within the family.
One of the most famous instances of levirate marriage is the story of Ruth. Ruth is a Moabite who married into the tribe of Judah, but her husband dies, and her father-in-law Elimelech dies, and so both Naomi and Ruth are widowed and in danger of seeing their family line come to an end.
In God’s providence, Ruth meets Boaz, and Boaz fulfills this duty (after a closer relative declines) and raises up seed to carry on Elimelech’s name. And it is by this obedience to the law in Deuteronomy 25, that Obed is born, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David, and from that line of Elimelech we eventually have the birth of Jesus Christ.
Now while this law might sound strange to our modern ears, it was God’s way of both providing for widows and also the means by which His promise to Abraham could be fulfilled.
God had promised in Genesis 15, to give Abraham seed as numerous as the stars, and also to give him the land of Canaan as his inheritance (Gen. 15:7, 18-21). And so for family name to die out, was like having a star go out in the sky.
We read in Galatians 3:19, Paul answers the question, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made.”
So God gave many ceremonial and judicial laws in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, laws like this levirate marriage law, as a temporary and typological safeguard to preserve the people of Israel until the Seed, the Lord Jesus Christ was born. Jesus is the seed God promised to Abraham, and by faith in Jesus, we also become heirs together with him.
So that is the background to this law that the Sadducees are now going to use to prove the absurdity of the resurrection.
Verses 20-23
20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. 22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. 23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.
So the argument of the Sadducees is that if there is a resurrection from the dead, then in that resurrected state, this woman will have 7 husbands. And because having 7 husbands is clearly contrary to God’s law and violates the one flesh monogamous union of marriage, there can be no resurrection.
How does Jesus respond to this attempted reductio of the Sadducees?
He begins by rebuking them for their ignorance.
Verse 24
24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?
There are times when ignorant people ask stupid questions and the best way to respond is to not answer at all (Titus 3:9-11). As it says in Proverbs 26:4-5, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.”
This is one of those occasions where Jesus chooses the latter and will answer them according to their folly so that they are not wise in their own eyes. The way he begins then is with a stern rebuke: You are in error because you don’t know the Scriptures, neither the power of God. In other words, “You have no idea what you are talking about.”
And just in case they didn’t understand this rebuke the first time, Jesus will say again at the end of his response in vs. 27, “ye therefore do greatly err.”
So Jesus is challenging the false assumptions behind their question, which they have arrived at because they don’t know the Scriptures or God’s power. And remember he is saying this to men who style themselves experts in the Scriptures. In verse 25 he tells them what that false premise is.
Verse 25
25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
So whereas the Sadducees argued that there is no resurrection because that would make marriage eternal (and create all kinds of polygamous situations), Jesus says that they’ve got it backwards. Marriage is not eternal, but the soul is, and in the resurrected state men do not marry, and women are not given in marriage, but are like the angels who cannot die and find all their satisfaction in God.
The problem with the Sadducees is that they are enslaved to their carnal senses, and therefore when they read the law of Moses, they come to it with a warped and corrupt mind, and therefore warp and corrupt the Scriptures. In their minds, the only sense in which man “rises again” and “lives on after death,” is in his children. This is the only “resurrection” or “raising up” they can imagine.
And because the Sadducees denied that there even is a spirit, or an immortal soul,what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:6 comes to pass, that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
If you come to the Bible with false assumptions, you are going to read it and the letters will slay you. False assumptions lead to false conclusions which lead to ignorant questions, and this is the great error Jesus wants to expose.
So Jesus says that when we rise from the dead, we are not rejoined in marriage to the spouse (or spouses) we were married to on earth. Marriage is a temporal institution for the raising of children, for help and companionship, but as Paul says in Ephesians 5, marriage is a great mystery that will give way to something far greater, which is the union of Christ and the church, the union of God with the human soul.
Now many people find this teaching about no marriage and no sex in the resurrection to be a bit of a letdown. But that is only because we are thinking like Sadducees. We are allowing our carnal senses and sentiments to blind us to the far greater love and intimacy that we shall have with God and all the saints, including our former spouse (if they were a believer) in the resurrection.
The truth is that however great and pleasurable your marriage may be (and I hope that is!), it is not worthy to be compared with the love and pleasure we shall enjoy in the world to come. Even in this life, there are far higher pleasures than sexual intimacy and marital friendship, namely the pleasures of knowing and loving God.
This is why Jesus can say in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
To be a Christian is to love God in such a way that nothing and no-one else competes with God in your affections. You love God more than life itself.
And so if you have not experienced this pleasure of the soul, this pleasure of union with God that brings peace and gladness and indestructible joy, then search your heart. Consider what it is that you really love and are living for. Because no matter your state, whether single, or married, or widowed, or divorced, the love of God and abundant joy is constantly held out to you.
Unlike a husband or wife, whose time and attention and affections are limited, God is unlimited. God is not bound by time or matter. He does not grow weary, He neither slumbers nor sleeps, and therefore God alone can be your constant companion.
Moreover, whatever goodness or beauty you find in your spouse, whatever loveliness there is in them, God is the source and fount of that goodness and beauty and loveliness, for it is from Him that anyone has these qualities. God has all of those things essentially, infinitely, endlessly.
And so if you find it a letdown that there is no sex or marriage in the resurrection, consider that when you were a child, you thought that eating ice cream or chocolate, or playing in the mud was the highest pleasure there was. Before puberty, you thought girls had cooties. A newborn baby has no conception or ability to begin to understand sexual marital love.
Well in this life, we are babies, and we cannot even begin to imagine the joys that await us in the resurrection. When the Apostle Paul was caught up into Paradise, he says “I heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Cor. 12:4). The things that Paul heard and saw were so great, that God had to give Paul a thorn in his flesh, to keep him humble. And that was just heaven, not even the full consummation that awaits us.
Isaiah 64:4 says, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man, The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
In Isaiah 65:17 God says, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: And the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.”
The joys that await us in the resurrection are so great, that this life will become as a distant memory. As it says in Ecclesiastes 5:20, “For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.”
So again I say, if this joy is foreign to you, search your heart, consider your loves, and then ask God to help you re-order them so that He is utmost in your affections.
Returning to our text, Jesus having stated their errors regarding marriage and the resurrection, he goes on to prove from the law of Moses, that the dead rise again.
And it is a good test for us to pause here and ask ourselves, if we were in Jesus’ shoes, and had to prove the resurrection from the Old Testament, where would we go? What verses would we use?
Perhaps some of the Psalms comes to mind, David speaks of God not leaving his soul in Sheol in Psalm 16. Or we might think of Job who says famously in Job 19:25-26, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God.”
Well of all the passages Jesus could have used to prove the resurrection, he limits himself to only what the Sadducees considered to be authoritative, namely the law of Moses.
Verses 26-27
26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.
Now maybe, you are scratching your head, and wondering how is it that that verse proves the resurrection. What does Jesus see in this text that the Sadducees (and many of us) are blind to?
The passage Jesus cites is Exodus 3:6, where God speaks to Moses from the burning bush and reveals this name to him, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
There are at least two ways in which this passage proves the resurrection:
1. First, is from the fact that “God is the God of the living and not the dead.” The argument runs as follows:
Premise 1: Dead bodies cannot worship God or have him as their God.
Premise 2: When God revealed this name to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for hundreds of years.
Conclusion: Therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must still be alive in some sense, and this proves the existence of the immortal soul. And because it belongs naturally to the soul to be united to the body (since that is how God created it), by the same power of God, the body and soul of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall be reunited in the resurrection.
Summary: So if God is the God of the living, as the Sadducees accept, and if God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as they also accept, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive and shall rise again.
2. The second way this can prove the resurrection, is by remembering the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This argument runs as follows:
Premise 1: God promised to Abraham in Genesis 13:15, “All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.”
Premise 2: Abraham died not having received that promise (Heb. 11:13-16).
Conclusion: Therefore, either God is a liar, or He keeps His Word, and one day Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall be resurrected and the whole land given to them.
So both of these arguments demonstrate that the Sadducees have not rightly interpreted their own Scriptures. And Jesus has used their highest authority, Moses, to prove what they reject.
In Matthew’s version of this same scene it says, “And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching” (Matt. 22:33).
Conclusion
One of the things that our world and our region is in desperate need of is hope.
Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”
Our land is filled with hopeless people who think they can treat a sickness of the heart, a sickness of the soul, with medication, with prescription drugs, with surgery, with money, with things that promise to make us happy but cannot actually touch that spiritual part of us that needs healing.
Well Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. And it is He alone who can touch our soul and heal us. Only the God who never changes and who is infinitely happy in Himself can give us a new heart, with new desires, that shall be fulfilled and make us into trees of life.
As Paul says in Romans 5:5, the hope that God gives is a hope that shall never put us to shame, “because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
God wants to you give His very Self, His Holy Spirit. And when you receive the Holy Spirit, you are receiving thedown payment and guarantee of a resurrection to come. And so forsake your earthly and carnal hopes, lift your heart to heaven and say with the Psalmist in Psalm 43:5, “Hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: The State of the Church 2024

The State of the Church 2024Sunday, January 14th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Proverbs 16:2-9
2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; But the Lord weigheth the spirits.
3 Commit thy works unto the Lord, And thy thoughts shall be established.
4 The Lord hath made all things for himself: Yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
5 Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.
6 By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: And by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.
7 When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.
8 Better is a little with righteousness Than great revenues without right.
9 A man’s heart deviseth his way: But the Lord directeth his steps.
Prayer
Father as we enter into another year of service in the Lord’s Army, as members of the Church Militant, we ask that you would give us renewed courage to act like men, to be brave, to be strong, to fight the good fight of faith, and to let all that we do be done from love. Please crown us with charity, for without love, we are nothing. We ask this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
I was not initially planning on giving this State of the Church 2024 sermon, but because of where we are in Mark’s Gospel, and because I want to further develop some of what we studied last week, with the whole “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” bit, you can consider this sermon as a kind of Part 2 to last week. This is essentially all the personal application from last week’s text, so I won’t be giving an exposition of Proverbs, although these Proverbs summarize a lot of what I want to exhort us with.
So just to briefly refresh your memory. Last week we were in Mark 12:13-17, and we saw that the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the highest Jewish authorities are all trying to catch Jesus in his words. Because Jesus is a threat to their political power, they are trying to do everything they can to either discredit him before the populists, the Jewish masses, OR, provoke him to run afoul of the Roman authorities.
They thought they had the perfect question to trap Jesus, which was, “is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not?”
If Jesus answered, Yes, then he would lose credibility with the masses who wanted relief from this tax.
If Jesus answers, No, then he could be hauled before the authorities as stirring up rebellion.
Jesus responds by making the Herodians and Pharisees answer their own question. He asks for the coin, and they give to Jesus the denarius with Caesar’s name and inscription on it. What this reveals in front of everyone is that they approve of the tribute. By the very fact that they have such a coin within the temple complex and knows whose image is on it, proves that they are being hypocritical in asking Jesus this question.
Nevertheless, Jesus gives them an answer which makes them marvel. The answer in so many words is to give back to Caesar what Caesar has given them, namely this coin and its tribute (pay the tax), but also and equally, give back to God what God has given, namely our entire selves and all that we are, for we, and Caesar, and everyone else, bears God’s image, and the saints doubly so, because God’s name was inscribed upon us in baptism.
So far from Christianity undermining or nullifying our earthly duties to our earthly authorities, God commands and requires that the way we give back to God what belongs to Him, is by giving to our earthly superiors what is their due. The New Testaments gives us many specifics as to how are to do this. For example, Paul says…
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is just” (Eph. 6:1). This is rendering, giving back to your parents, what is due to them.
This also means, “servants (employees) obey your masters according to the flesh, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unreasonable and harsh. For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully” (1 Peter 2:18-19, Eph. 6:5-6).
This also means, masters, employers, owners, political leaders, church leaders, managers, “do the will of God from the heart, not with eyeservice as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, judge justly, without partiality, leave off threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him…He will reward and punish each according to his works” (Eph. 6:9, Rom. 2:6).
So when Jesus says “render to God what belongs to God,” this includes rendering to our various earthly authorities the submission, obedience, honor, and tribute that is due to them. Because as Romans 13 says, “there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves” (Rom. 13:1-2).
Now we live in a day and culture not totally unlike the Jews and Christians in the 1st century. And that means, there are times when Caesar claims something that does not actually belong to him. So while Jesus commanded they pay tribute to Caesar in the form of the denarius, he is also forbidding by that very same command, giving worship to Caesar as if he is Lord. So Jesus’ words establish limits on what Caesar can claim.
And so when the Romans started to persecute the Christians, and require that they offer sacrifices to Caesar and worship him as Lord, the faithful refused even unto death. And why? Because render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to Caesar worship does not belong. As Jesus says to Satan in Matthew 4:10, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”
So there is a line that Christians must not cross in our submission to the God-ordained authorities. That line is when the government commands us to sin. It is no sin to be stolen from. It is not a sin to be oppressed, or to be made a slave, or to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. It is a sin for the government to do this, and God will judge them, but it is not a sin for us to be sinned against. This is just what Jesus suffered and we also at times will suffer the same.
But it is a sin for us to commit idolatry. And so should Caesar ever demand our worship, it is there that we must simply not comply.
The Martyrdom of Polycarp in 155 AD is one of the most famous of such acts of resistance to the government overstepping their authority.
Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna, he was at least 86 years old when the civil authorities arrested him, and they said to this old bishop, “What harm is it to say, ‘Lord Caesar’ and to offer a sacrifice and so forth and be saved?” to which he responded, “I am not about to do what you advise.”
They then brought him into the stadium, before the crowds, and threatened him with death by wild beasts. The proconsul said, “I have beasts, I will throw you to them, unless you repent…(and swear oaths to Caesar and revile Christ),” to which Polycarp said, “Call for the beasts, for repentance is impossible for us from better to worse, but it is good to change from wickedness to righteousness.” Then the proconsul said, “I will cause you to be consumed by fire, since you despise the beasts, unless you repent.” To which Polycarp responded, “You threaten with fire that burns for a little awhile and then is extinguished. For you are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly. But why do you wait, bring about what you wish.”
The crowds hearing that Polycarp was a Christian began to shout and rage, “this is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, who teaches many to not offer sacrifice or to worship them. Let a lion be loosed upon him!”
Polycarp turned and said to the faithful with him, “I must be burned alive.” And then the crowd frantically began building a funeral pyre around him, Polycarp uttered his final prayer and praise to God, and after his “Amen,” the fire was lit. And yet by some miracle, the fire would not consume him, and so the executioner was commanded to stab him with a dagger, and the report is that so much blood came out that it put the fire out.
It was these kinds of acts of courage, love, resistance, and martyrdom, that eventually won the world over to the Christian faith. And while we pray fervently that such days of persecution never arise in our nation, we must always be ready in principle to suffer and die for the sake of Christ. We must always have ready at hand, the apostolic conviction, that “we must obey God rather than men.”
Caesar has his jurisdiction, he has duties before the Lord which he will answer for, but there are limits to that authority established by Jesus Christ.
So as we consider the year ahead of us, we must remember first and foremost that is the year 2024 Anno Domini, the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is king, all authority belongs to him, and we want to see that authority manifested on earth as it is in heaven.
So I want to place before you three things that Caesar (our civil government) wants from you, that you must not give them. And they are:
1. Your children.
2. Your morals.
3. Your worship.
#1 – Your Children
To whom do your children belong?
Remember the word Jesus uses when speaking of giving to Caesar or giving to God is this word render, which means “to give back.” So if you want to know to whom something belongs, just ask yourself, who gave this thing to me? Where did it come from?
According to Isaiah 66:9, God is the one who opens and closes the womb. Caesar does not!
According to Psalm 127:3, “children are a heritage from the LORD,” not from Caesar.
Psalm 139 says that God formed our inward parts, He wove us together in our mother’s womb, and He wrote all our days in His book before we were even born.
So in a very real sense, children most certainly do not belong body and soul to Caesar, and they do not even belong to us as parents in the first instance. Children belong first and foremost to the God who created them and placed them in our arms. This means we parents are stewards, not owners, of these little humans God has given us. And as stewards, we are going to be judged by God as to how we return these children to Him.
What does God desire from us as parents? It says in Malachi 2:15, “He seeks godly offspring.” God does not merely want children from our marriages, he wants godly children from our marriages. And so he appends this warning in the next verse, “Therefore take heed to your spirit, And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.”
So children belong in the very first instance to God who gave them to us. They belong in the second instance to us as parents who are stewards. And then He commands certain duties of stewardship for fathers and mothers towards these children, so that they become the godly offspring that He desires.
So God does not just demand godly offspring and then leave us to figure it out. No, he gives us tools and instruments to accomplish this by faith, and those tools are the various duties He commands of us in Scripture.
What are some of those duties?
Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.”
This means training your children to live as Christians, from their very earliest years, from birth to adulthood. It means requiring of them faith in Christ and obedience to His word, and doing with them what Deuteronomy 6 commands, “You shall teach God’s laws diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”
Paul says it is the Father’s responsibility to make sure this happens. Ephesians 6:4 says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture (paideia) and admonition of the Lord.”
There are many methods by which this principle can be accomplished. The method might be homeschooling, or a co-op, or a private school, or a private tutor, and these methods may fluctuate and change as the years go by. But what must not be surrendered in any method, is the principle that your children receive a distinctly Christian education.
Jesus says that when a student is fully trained, he will become like his teacher (Luke 6:40), and so we should not expect to send our children to be taught by unbelievers and then expect them to turn out as the godly offspring God desires. We would be tempting God to expect good fruit from our disobedience.
Now our civil government has stacked the deck against Christian parents wanting to do this. We have to pay for the secular indoctrination of our neighbor’s children, while also trying to fund our own children’s Christian education. Financially, this can be a real challenge, and it is why CKA exists, and why we have things like the Christian Education Fund for our members. Because if we will not train our children “in the Lord,” the government is more than happy to train them in the ways of the world, and those ways lead to death.
If our children come from God, then we must do whatever it takes to give them back to God holier and more righteous than we found them.
Jesus says in Matthew 7:6, “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine.” So do not give your children, who God claims are holy (1 Cor. 7:14), and who are more precious than pearls, do not give them to Caesar, to the dogs, or to the swine of our filthy culture.
The second thing you must render to God and not to Caesar is…
#2 – Your Morals
By morals I simply mean your biblical convictions about what is right and what is wrong.
When each of us became a Christian, we all had to acknowledge up front that we had sinned against God. This was a confession that whatever morals we had, we did not live up to them, OR our morals were wrong altogether.
And so from the moment we repented of our sins and trusted in Jesus, we were in essence declaring the words of Isaiah 33:22, which says, “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, The Lord is our king; he will save us.” When we confess that Jesus is Lord, this is what we mean.
And so to become a Christian is to have your entire moral compass and sensibilities reshaped by God’s Word. Because Jesus is judge, Jesus is lawgiver, Jesus is king. What Jesus says, goes.
Now what kind of moral standards does our civil government and culture promote and enforce? Is it a Christian morality, or is it what the Bible calls immorality, lawlessness, injustice?
While there are still some remnants of our nation’s Christian heritage, weAmericans are an overwhelmingly immoral, apostate, and hypocritical people. We no longer believe the basic moral laws that God gave in the Ten Commandments. There are entire denominations of professing Christians who do not even know what the ten commandments are, and if they did they would not bother to keep them. It is in large part because of the church’s apostasy that we now have:
An economy built on envy, bribery, and false weights and measures.
We have parades and celebrations for the very sins that turned Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes.
We have denigrated marriage and motherhood and made “sanctuary states” for murdering the innocent.
And all of this while 70% of Americans claim to be Christian. This is what I mean by Americans being hypocritical. Jesus says to the Pharisees, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:8-9).
So I have two exhortations for you on this issue:
1. Do not let Caesar or our secular culture dictate your morality.
2. Do not make a hypocrite of yourself by claiming Christ while your heart is far from him.
As much as our world wants to normalize all that is wicked and ungodly, do not compromise, do not comply, do not be false to the truth.
The reason why so many churches folded like a cheap lawn chair when Covid happened, or whenWoke happened, or when the push for gay marriage happened, was because so many Christians were already living with a bad conscience, with unconfessed sins, and with hypocritical hearts.
When people are guilt-ridden, they are easy to manipulate. When a nation is addicted to sports and television and they watch pornography every day, they have no courage to stand for what is morally upright.
It is hard to be courageous when you have a guilty conscience. It is impossible to fight for freedom when you are a slave to your own appetites. This is how we got to $34 trillion of debt as a nation. We don’t know how to say to no to ourselves.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Our loss of liberty, and our voluntary (we voted for it) slavery, is because weas a nation, have rejected the authority of Jesus Christ.
As God says in Jeremiah 2:13, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”
Our secular immorality can hold no water. Our “free” and “tolerant” and “liberal” society devoid of Jesus, can hold no water.
There is no other fountain of life and freedom than the fountain of forgiveness that Jesus offers. And so do not budge an inch on the law of God, because God’s moral law brings knowledge of sin, and sin is exactly what Jesus Christ has come to forgive. Do not rob yourself, or your neighbor of that knowledge. Because the knowledge of sin is the pre-requisite for the knowledge of salvation.
The third thing you must not ever give to Caesar is…
#3 – Your Worship
We already said that if Caesar wants you to call him “Lord” and burn incense to him, of course you must not comply. But not giving Caesar worship is just half of the commandment, there is still the give back to God what is God’s part that we must obey.
So practically how should we render ourselves to God?
Paul says in Romans 12:1-2, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
If you want to know God’s will for your life, then offer your body to Him as a living sacrifice. How do you do that? By treating every action as an act of worship, and by treating every location, as a place of worship.
Worship in the strictest sense is to bow down and kneel before the Lord our maker (Ps. 95:6). It is to do physical obeisance at the same time you are reverencing and adoring Him in your heart. This is the special act of worship that we do privately in our homes when we pray, and publicly when we gather every Lord’s Day. And it is worship in this strict sense that inspires and informs worship in the broader sense of doing everything for the glory of God. How exactly do we do everything for the glory of God?
It says in Ecclesiastes 9:10, “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” And as Paul says in Colossians 3:23, “whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord.”
So what has God given you to do? Well give to Him the worship of doing that thing with all your might, heartily as unto the Lord. Because that is the altar upon which you offer yourself as a living sacrifice.
Does it feel like death to do the dishes with a good attitude? Does it feel like dying to continue on in that job you don’t really like but have to do to pay the bills? Well, that’s what being a living sacrifice feels like at times. What turns those often-monotonous routines into worship is that you render them to God as an offering.
You say in your heart, “God, I am flipping this burger for You.” “God, thank you for this vomit I get to clean out of the carpet and my hair.” “God, thank you for this co-worker who gets on my nerves, help me to show them the love of Christ.”
When you do those things with lovefor God in your heart, and love for your neighbor, you are starting to do it for the glory of God. That is how you turn every time and every place into an altar for worship.
The is how you render to God the things that are God’s.
Conclusion
We are going into an election year, and I expect there will be many opportunities for us to be loving, and courageous, and to witness for the truth.
And the truth that we must lead with is well summarized by our text Proverbs 16:6, “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: And by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.
We have good news for lawless sinners: that by God’s mercy, and the truth of Jesus Christ, the iniquities of our nation can be purged. Our sins can be cast into the bottom of the sea, never to be seen again.
Moreover, how can America depart from evil? By the fear of the Lord, and nothing else.
This is the message of hope to our hopeless world. This is the message of freedom for those who are guilt-ridden.
Jesus Christ already knows what you have done. And Jesus Christ has already died and rose to forgive those sins. So worship Him, obey Him, because as verse 7 says, “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
I don’t know about you, but I do not expect 2024 to be a peaceful year in our nation. Primarily because there can be no peace until all our ways please the Lord. So while I do not expect much political peace, and much of that is outside my control, I do intend to pursue peace with God and peace in the church, by seeking to please Him, come what may. And it is that peace that I invite you all to zealously pursue as well, so that God will make even our enemies to be at peace with us.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Lesson 5: The Mode of God’s Indwelling (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture)

The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy ScriptureLesson 5 – The Mode of God’s Indwelling
Prayer
Father, we thank you for your indwelling presence, and that you are closer to us than we are to ourselves. We praise you for this knowledge that is too wonderful for us, and so high that we cannot attain it. And so we ask for help now as we attempt to ascend to You, give us the mind of Christ, for we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
Review of Lesson 4
Last time we were exploring how the Tabernacle and the Temple are humaniform structures, that is, they are buildings that have human features or characteristics. And when you put these all together, what you have is the tabernacle or temple as a symbol of the human person.
We already know from the New Testament that Christ and the saints are temples/tabernacles, but from the perspective of the Old Testament, it is the tabernacle or temple that is the pointer to God’s future presence in the person of Christ and in the church, his bride.
We saw last time that this is hinted at by the fact that the dimensions of both structures are given in terms of the proportions of our body (a cubit, a span, etc.).
More explicitly, we saw that in Hebrew, in 1 Kings 6:3, the temple is said to have a face (עַל־פְּנֵי֙ הֵיכַ֣ל “upon the face of the temple”).
If we continue reading, we discover that the temple also has shoulders and even ribs.
Again, this is somewhat obscured in English where they translate כָּתֵף (shoulder) as side (Ex. 27:14-15, 1 Kings 6:8, 7:29), and צְלָע֖וֹת (צֵלָע) (rib) as chambers. This is the same Hebrew word that is used to describe the rib that God took from Adam and then built into a woman (Gen. 2:21-22).
So the temple has human proportions, a face, shoulders, ribs, and more. Depending on how imaginative you want to get, there are other humaniform features you can find such as eyes, mouth, nose, stomach, legs, feet, etc.
It could be argued that everything that man builds/creates is inherently humaniform because we cannot help but fashion things after our own image. The highest form of sub-creation is the begetting of children who are in our very image and likeness. And then there is a descending scale of image bearing that other things have (cars, houses, computers, furniture, etc.). We cannot help but leave marks/traces of our human nature (intelligent design) on whatever we build.
In a similar way, God cannot help but leave traces of his wisdom on all that he fashions, and so when He gives us detailed instructions for a place of worship, and then says that Christ and the Church are those places, we have in these structures a fruitful place for learning about Christ and the Church, and even what it means to be human.
So this is what we mean by humaniform structures. Any questions?
Lesson 5 – The Mode of God’s Indwelling Presence
Tonight, we are going to begin our study of God’s special presence in the saints. By way of reminder, who can tell us the three ways in which God is said to be present?
Common Presence: as efficient cause of all that is.
Special Presence: by grace in the believer.
Hypostatic Presence: in Christ as the God-man.
We’ve already covered God’s common presence. In my sermon on Christmas Eve we studied hypostatic presence, and now we will explore God’s special presence in the saints. So the question before us is as follows:
In What Sense Does God Dwell In Us?
When the Bible speaks of God dwelling inside of us, what does this mean in reality (metaphysically)?
John 14:23 says, “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
Romans 8:10-11 says, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
Colossians 1:27 says, “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
So we know based on these passages and many others that God/Christ/Holy Spirit dwells in us, but how should we understand God’s presence within us?
In order to answer this question, I want to proceed by way of a process of elimination, and so tonight we are going to look at all the ways in which God being inside of us cannot be true. And my hope is that by eliminating some of these false notions, it will help us better grasp the true sense/mode in which God indwells the saints.
Aristotle identified eight different senses in which one thing can be said to be “in” another (Physics IV, Chapter 3). Philosophers have made additions to this list, and the Bible supplies us with examples of just about all of these different ways in which one thing can be said to in another. So let us consider if any of these modes of being “in” can account for God’s dwelling in us, based on what Scripture says about who God is.
The Possible Modes of Being In Another
1. As a body is in place.
Example: Paul is in the Areopagus. Or, you are in this room and not at home.
Is God in us like a body is in place?
No, because God is not a body, He is immaterial, He is infinite, therefore it would be impossible for God to be in us like a body is in a place.
This is however the primary(?) metaphor in the Bible for how God indwells us. The question we are asking is, “What does this metaphor of God being in us like a king is on his throne, or like a glory cloud is in the sanctuary, actually mean?”
To grasp the truth of this metaphor we have to first negate and strip away any body-ness or finitude about God. For as Solomon says in 1 Kings 8:27, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!”
So God is not in us like a body is in place.
2. As a part is in the whole.
Example: A finger is in the hand.
Is God in us like a finger is in the hand? God is the finger, and we are the hand, and so without God we are not wholly a hand.This is false for many reasons. Why?God is altogether simple and unchangeable, which means he has no real composition in himself, there are no parts in God, for “all that is in God is God.” So whereas we are composed of soul and body, God is a spirt, and you can’t take any parts of God and attach it to something else. (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q3.A7)If God was in us like a finger is in the hand, this would make God finite, and it would make us a part of God. This is monism, pantheism, etc.
So God is not us as a part is in the whole, and logically this means that God is also not in us in Aristotle’s second mode, which is as the whole is in its parts.
3. As the whole is in its parts.
Example: A hand is in the fingers, for there is no whole hand over and above the parts (fingers).
So God is not in us as a part is in the whole or as the whole is in the part, because this would make God dependent on creatures. He could not be God without us.
4. As a species is in its genus.
Example: The species (man) is in the genus (animal).
An animal is just a something that has a sensitive nature, i.e. some kind of sense organs (it can see, taste, touch, smell, and hear). We call this the sensitive soul. So man has five senses which places him in the genus animal (unlike plants). And then what kind of animal is he? He is the kind of animal that has a rational soul. In biblical terms, this is the image of God that distinguishes us from the animals.
So we say that man has the specific difference of rationality which is inthe genus (larger category) animal. And likewise, we can say that the genus animal (a sensitive nature) is in the species man.
5. As the genus is in the species.
Example: The animal (genus) is in the man who is of the species rational animal.
So is God in us like a genus is in its species or like a species is in its genus?
If God was in us like a genus is in a species, then that would make us God, which is false. Isaiah 46:5 says, “To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal and compare Me, that we should be alike?”If God was in us like a species is in a genus, then that would make us higher than God, which is false.
In our mind, a genus is prior to what it contains, but nothing is prior to God either mentally or in reality. Therefore, God is not in any genus, and therefore also not in any species. For example, there is not a genus called divinity, wherein the Christian God is contained, rather, the Christian God just is divinity. (For more on this read: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q3.A5)
6. As form is in matter.
Example: The soul (immaterial form) is in the body (matter).
Is God in us like the soul is in the body? God is the form, and we are the matter.We already handled this question under God’s Common Presence and said the answer is “No,” because pantheism.This is also impossible because whatever is composed of matter and form is a body (that is, it has dimensive quantity, exists in three dimensions: height, width, length.) But God is not a body as already stated, and God is infinite. (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q3.A1)
God is not even in Christ as a form is in matter, because finite matter cannot contain the infinite divinity. Which is why we say that in the hypostatic union, the Son of God joined a human nature to his Divine person.
7. As an accident is in substance.
To understand this mode of indwelling, we have to explain what an accident is and what a substance is.
By accident we do not mean something that is unintentional (like a car accident), but rather as something that does not have existence in itself. Accidents, by definition, only exist in a substance.
For example, whiteness is an accident that exists in the substance Socrates, and yet if Socrates goes out in the sun and gets dark/tan, he is still Socrates despite no longer being white.
So substance is the principle of unity and self-identity that persists across all accidental changes.
In Aristotle’s famous ten categories/predicaments, which is his attempt to adequately reduce the entire created order into its most basic categories/predicates, there is first substance, and then 9 accidents (quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, having/habitus, action, passion) which only have existence in a substance. These accidents help us account for different kinds of change in the world.
To give you a few other examples, the accident in Centralia is in all of us substances sitting here, and yet we will still all be ourselves if we leave Centralia.In Centralia is accidental to our being.
The accident hard-working is in the substance Hank Doelman, so Hank has hard-working as a quality or habit of his being, but if Hank retired and did nothing but crossword puzzles all day, he would lose that habit of hard-working (unless those crossword puzzles are really hard!).
So is God in us like an accident is in a substance? Obviously not.
God is not an accident that only has existence insofar as He is in us, this is absurd and blasphemous.
God is not even a substance in that there is not a genus substance into which God can be placed, for we cannot know what God is in this life (Job 36:26). God is therefore “super-substantial,” or "substance beyond substance."
8. As an agent is in its patient. (As an efficient cause it is in its effects.)
Example: As Tolkien is in Middle-Earth.
Yes! God is in us as the one who gives us our very existence (“in him we live and move and have our being,” Acts 17:28). However, this is God’s Common Presence in all things and all people, not His Special Presence in the saints.
Closing Question: Are there any other modes or ways that we say that one thing is in or united to another that you can think of?
Next time we will study the actual way in which God indwells the sai