The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: Seeing & Believing (John 20:24-31)

Seeing and BelievingEaster Sunday, March 31st, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
John 20:24-31
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. 26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. 27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. 28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. 29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. 30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Prayer
O Father, we thank you for opening to us from Christ’s side, the door of life. We thank you most of all for the death and resurrection of Your Son, which is the greatest of all signs, and is a perpetual testimony that your love for us is stronger than death. As we open now Your Word, we ask for spiritual strength, so that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is incomprehensible:the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fulness of God. We ask for this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
In Matthew 16, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” And his disciples answer him saying, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” And Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The chief purpose of the four gospels is to make you to say what Peter said, and more personally, to make you say what Thomas says here in our sermon text. In answer to the question, “Who is Jesus? Who do you say that I am?” The gospels are written so that you might answer, “Jesus is my Lord and my God.” My lord and my God.
More important than any other truth there is. More important than any other confession you make. Is this confession of faith from Thomas the Apostle. Who is Jesus? He is “My Lord and my God.”
We are told in Philippians 2:10-11, that there will come a day when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
And so Scripture teaches us that there are two ways of confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.
One is voluntary and arises from the grace of faith: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and my God.”
The other confession is involuntary. It is the forced confession of a conquered foe. It is the fearful and shuddering confession that demons and the reprobate shall make when they stand before the throne of the Lord Jesus on judgment day.
James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!”
The unclean spirit in Mark 1:24 says, “what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.”
So you can believe that Jesus is Lord and God like a demon with a lifeless faith that has no love in it. Or you can believe like an apostle, with a faith that flows from charity, and thanksgiving, and joy that God loves you and has forgiven your sins. Which confession shall you make?
Every rational creature, angel and saint, demon and sinner, will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But one confession will come from loving faith, and the other will come from a fearful hatred. When the final judgment comes, there will be no other options. And so I declare to you today what the Apostle Paul declared to the men of Athens 2,000 years ago, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent, [and why?] because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
What does the resurrection of Jesus 2,000 years ago mean for you today? It means that Jesus is Judge, Lord, and God whether you like it or not. He is Lord and God objectively, irrevocably, and there is nothing you can do to change that.
The resurrection of Jesus means that Psalm 2 has come to pass, and that “He who sits in the heavens now laughs, and holds his foes in derision” (Ps. 2:4). It means the nations of men are put on notice and the notice the church proclaims is Psalm 2:10-12, “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, And rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, And ye perish from the way, When his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
The resurrection of Jesus 2,000 years ago means that to Christ and his body has been given, “dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14).
So do you want to reign and live with Christ in glory? Do you want to be seated with in heavenly places? Then confess now with Thomas, while you still have life, while you still have breath in your lungs and time to say voluntarily, Jesus is “my Lord and my God.” And if there is any hesitancy in you to make that confession, I invite you to consider these words from John’s gospel and the example of Thomas.
In our sermon text this morning, we are given the story of how Thomas came to make that personal confession of faith. And my hope is that by retracing Thomas’ steps, and by considering the pitfalls of Thomas in his state of unbelief, we too might be healed and rescued from our doubts. So with that, let us turn and expound these most precious words of God.
Verse 24
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
Here we are given the occasion for Thomas’ unbelief. And that occasion is his absence from church. His absence from the assembly of the apostles. For some reason (we are not told exactly), Thomas did not gather with the other ten disciples on Sunday.
We are told in verse 19, just before our text, that after Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”
And so Thomas is absent for this first appearance of Jesus to the apostles on Easter Sunday. And this absence tells us at the very least, that Thomas must have not been listening when Jesus said very explicitly, that “the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, He will rise the third day” (Mark 9:31). Explaining the disciples’ ignorance it says in John 20:9, “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.”
So Jesus had already told the disciples what the gameplan was. He is going to die, but three days later, he will rise again. But for some reason, Thomas thinks that Christ’s death is the end of the story. For Thomas, the crucifixion was merely another evil thing happening to a good man, and not the divine plan of God to save the world.
So Thomas does not believe what Jesus had told them earlier, he does not understand the Scriptures, and we see in the next verse he does not believe his fellow disciples when they tell him Jesus is risen and has appeared to us.
Verse 25a
25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord.
It is here that Thomas’ unbelief is perhaps most shameful. It is one thing to not believe Jesus prior to his death and resurrection. After all, nobody in the history of the world had ever died and come back again like Jesus did.
But now, here are ten additional witnesses to that resurrection, confirming what Jesus had himself foretold, ten men who Thomas had lived with and done ministry with for years, and yet when they say, “we have seen the Lord,” he does not believe them. Instead, how does Thomas respond?
Verse 25b
But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Compounding the unbelief already in Thomas’ heart is this doubling down on doubt. The disciples may have seen Jesus, but Thomas says seeing Jesus is not sufficient! He must physically touch his body and feel with his own finger the places where the nails pierced him. He must thrust his hand into Jesus side and feel where the soldier pierced him. Thomas will not believe he says unless his physical senses, his feelings are gratified.
Now the Bible has a name for this kind of person, do you know what it is?
Thomas is being what the Bible calls a carnal man, that is someone who walks and lives according to the flesh. The carnal or fleshly person is someone who is more concerned with worldly things than heavenly things. And because worldly possessions and material goods are finite, carnal men often bite and devour one another for those worldly goods. Or they are anxious and fearful about tomorrow, about food and clothing and things pertaining to the body. The carnal person’s life revolves around and terminates in the temporal goods that God gives and never traces them up to their Source. This is the essence of carnal living.
Paul charges the Corinthians with acting this way in 1 Corinthians 3 when he says (to a bunch of baptized Christians), “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?”
Likewise, Paul says in Romans 8:5-8, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace…So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
So do you have life and peace? Does peace of soul characterize your life? If not, then you, like Thomas, have a carnal mind.
So the carnal/fleshly person is the person who lives to gratify his sensual appetite. The carnal man or carnal woman lives to acquire and enjoy the lusts of the flesh. They are the “Anti-Joseph” or the “Anti-Moses” who embraces Egypt and the fleeting pleasures of sin, who embrace the seductions of Potiphar’s wife, and esteem the riches of this world as preferable to suffering with Christ.
This is the carnal and fleshly mind that all of us default to unless we are born again by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And even after we are born again, Paul says in Galatians 5 that there is now an ongoing war that goes on between the spirit and the flesh, and if you make provision for the lusts of the flesh, if you sow to the flesh and feed your carnal appetites, you will from your flesh reap corruption (you will die!).
So no man ought to presume that just because he has had some spirit-filled moments in the past, that he is no longer at war with the flesh. Otherwise, Paul would not have told us in Romans 8:13, “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.”
Your salvation is dependent on you cooperating with God’s grace to put off the old man and put on the new (Eph. 4:22-24).
Your salvation is conditional upon you working out the grace that God works in (Phil. 2:12-13).
And it is because your salvation depends upon a living and loving faith and not a empty belief, that the Apostle Peter says, “Brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Summary: So salvation is ALL of grace, and that grace includes you freely willing and choosing to obey Christ and trust Him. That grace includes the hard work of denying yourself, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. There is no conflict between free grace and hard work. And this the life of Jesus bears witness to. For Jesus is Himself the very fullness of grace and truth, and yet no man worked harder and suffered more than Jesus.
So Thomas at this stage in verse 25 is being a carnal man. He is faithless. He is doubting. He is stubborn. He is not pleasing God.
And yet behold how God condescends to love this carnal sinner.
Verses 26-27
26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. 27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
So a full week passes between Thomas hearing that Jesus has risen, and him actually believing that Jesus is risen. And we can only imagine what that week must have been like for doubting Thomas.
While the women and the other ten disciples are rejoicing that Jesus is alive and pondering the implications of his resurrection, Thomas is still skeptical. Thomas is still faithless and distressed. Thomas is still indulging the doubts of his flesh.
In this instance, Thomas exemplifies what the rest of the world is like before they come to faith. It is an objective and verifiable fact that Jesus Christ is risen. The tomb is empty. You won’t be able to find the body. People have seen him and touched him. The sun is rising in the eastern sky. The world is being reborn. And yet Thomas in unbelief places his hands over his eyes.
This is what the carnal world is like when they refuse to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They are stubbornly saying “I refuse to believe in the sun,” while their eyes are closed and their hands are covering them. For as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
One of the lessons we learn from Thomas is that there is a kind of unbelief that cannot be reasoned with. Would you argue with someone who did not believe that the sun existed? Well, there are people who have chosen to live in the dark, and their eyes have grown so accustomed to living in the dark, that even if they were to stand in the sunshine at noonday and open their eyes, it would only blind them and confirm their belief that the sun does not exist!
This is the blindness that man has chosen for himself because of his sin. And it is for this reason that Jesus says in John 3:3, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
So a full week goes by after Jesus Christ has risen, but there is no joy in Thomas’ heart because of his unbelief. For Thomas, the resurrection of Jesus has not yet become true. And yet, there is enough hope in his heart (or perhaps some doubting of his doubts) that he chooses to gather with the other apostles on the following Sunday. And it is then and there, with the doors shut, and the church assembled, that Jesus chooses to appear, stands in their midst and says, “Peace be unto you.”
We then read in verse 27 what Jesus says directly to Thomas, “Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”
So how does Jesus condescend to his elect when they are doubting, when they are being carnal?
Well, note first that He does not come to Thomas immediately. He makes him wait. He gives him time to repent. He gives him time to think it over. And this is often how God deals with us and it is why the Psalmist sometimes cries, “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me” (Ps. 13:1).
Moreover, it is during this period of feeling that God is absent that our faith is tested, and mockers start to run their mouth. The Apostle Peter speaks of this in 2 Peter 3:3-4 saying, “scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?”
So God’s timing and our timing are not the same, and often what we think is the right time for God to show up in the way we want him to, is often not what is actually best for us. And so the Psalmist also prays and exhorts us saying, “Wait on the Lord: Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: Wait, I say, on the Lord” (Ps. 27:14).
So Jesus gives Thomas time to change his mind and walk back his bold doubting. And something happens during that week to make Thomas go to church and gather with the disciples. And it is significant that only then and only there, where two or three (or ten) are gathered, that Jesus chooses to appear in the midst of them.
The next thing Jesus does for this doubting apostle is offer to him the proofs he desired, to touch and feel his resurrected body. And by offering his body to Thomas, he also reveals his divinity. Because although Jesus was not physically present when Thomas made those stubborn demands, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe,” Jesus was there listening, He was spiritually present. And this is because Jesus is God and there is no place where God is not. So Jesus was there all along according to His divine nature, even when Thomas was doubting. And it is this truth that should be a great comfort to us when we feel like God is absent. You cannot get away from Him for it is in Him that we live and move and have our being.
David says in Psalm 139:7-12, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” Even the night shall be light about me; Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”
So despite the felt darkness that Thomas was living in, the darkness of doubt and unbelief, even in that hell, Jesus was there all along. And Jesus wants Thomas to know that, and so he offers to him the very things he demanded when thinking that Jesus was still dead and absent, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. And be not faithless, but believing.”
In these words, is a kind and gentle rebuke from our Lord, “be not faithless, but believing.”
Doubt and unbelief are sins that we must confess and repent of. Paul says in Romans 14:23, “whatever is not from faith is sin.”
And so do not pretend that doubt is something that just happens to you, but rather, treat doubt as Jesus treats it, as an action and decision of your will to hear the truth and not believe it.
Remember, the sun is up, Christ is risen, this is the truth that saves the world. And so make war on anything thatmight undermine your precious faith. Make war on your doubts and doubters and carnal desires that dull your spiritual senses. Remember how the righteous man lives, “the just shall live by his faith.”
Summary: So Jesus comes to Thomas when he is gathered with the disciples on the Lord’s Day. For where two or three are gathered in love, there is Christ present in a special way. And it is there that Jesus reveals his resurrected humanity and the power of his divinity. And all that is left is for Thomas to keep his word and believe.
Verse 28
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
We are not told whether Thomas actually touched Jesus or not. The text does not say. Perhaps seeing and hearing Jesus was enough. Either way, Thomas makes a confession that only someone with the grace of faith can make, he calls Jesus “my Lord and my God.”
Notice that seeing and touching Jesus is one thing, it proves his resurrection (here he is!). But it is another thing altogether to believe that this resurrected Jesus is the invisible immortal all wise and only God.
Physical sensation alone cannot get you there, and that is because supernatural truths are not arrived at by the five senses. Supernatural truths are by definition above natura (supra sensible).
Where do you apprehend truth and choose what to believe? In the immaterial and spiritual part of you that the Bible calls the soul, or the mind, or the heart. It is in that part of your being that continues to exist even after your body dies that truth is found and faith is activated.
For as Jesus himself says in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
Likewise in 1 Corinthians 2:14 it says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
So you could see and feel the risen Lord Jesus, and still not believe that that Jesus is God. And so what we have here in Thomas confession is the light of the Spirit shining upon him. Thomas sees one thing, and believes another. Thomas sees Jesus with his physical eyes, but he believes a truth in his intellect that physical eyes cannot see, namely the divinity and lordship of Jesus. And therefore, Jesus says in the next verse…
Verse 29
29 Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Here again, Jesus calls us to become spiritual creatures and not carnal. Thomas was uniquely granted to physically see Jesus, and with that help he then believed that in Jesus was the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily.
As a good theologian proceeding from faith, Thomas attributed to the one divine person of the Son, a full humanity and full divinity, “my Lord, and my God.” Orthodox Christology.
But Jesus says, there is a greater blessing, it is more praise-worthy, to believe that same truth without seeing him. And that is because faith is what pleases God.
Finally, in verses 30-31, we are given the purpose for all of this story.
Verses 30-31
30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
The purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the purpose for John writing this all down, was so that you might hear and believe. And by believing have life through his name.
Jesus Christ suffered in the flesh, so that you might die to your flesh and put away your carnal mind. And Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day, so that you too might rise again and become a spiritual creature.
The carnal man settles for carnal goods. But the only good that can satisfy the infinite desire of your soul is a spiritual good, namely God. So make him your best and highest end. Say from faith He is “my lord and my God,” and you also shall be resurrected never to die again.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Sermon: Before The Great Tribulation - Part 2 (Mark 13:5-13)

Before The Great Tribulation – Part 2 (Mark 13:5-13)Sunday, March 17th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 13:1-13
And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! 2 And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled? 5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you: 6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. 8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. 9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. 10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations. 11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. 12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. 13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the promise and comfort of the Scriptures, and that through them we have hope. We ask now that you would enlighten the eyes of our understanding, give us ears to hear, and make us watchful, so that at all times we would be ready to die and see you face to face. We pray this all in Christ’s name, Amen.
Introduction
The title of my sermon this morning is Before The Great Tribulation (Part 2), and last time in Part 1 we introduced some new vocabulary.
We said that eschatology is the doctrine of last things, or the study of how the Christian story ends, and it this topic of eschatology that we are treating as we work through Mark 13.
We then said that there are two different positions on whether or not a particular event or prophecy has been fulfilled. A futurist believes that the prophecy/event will be fulfilled in our future. And the preterist believes the prophecy/event was fulfilled in our past, typically in the 1st century.
And we said that all of us are both futurists and preterists depending on which event or passage of Scripture we are talking about. For example, we are all futurists on the final resurrection and final judgment. We confess as an article of faith that Christ will return bodily just as he ascended (Acts 1:11). At the same time, we are all preterists on the death and resurrection of Christ.
One of the major places of contention amongst Christians is whether you are a futurist or a preterist with regards to the Olivet Discourse, which is recorded in three different places: Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21. And in case you missed last week’s sermon, my position and the one I will be arguing for throughout these sermons is that all of Mark 13 was fulfilled in the 1st century. And so as we work through this chapter verse-by-verse, I will be explaining how exactly that preterist interpretation does justice to everything that Jesus says here.
So for those of you who may have missed Part 1 or for those who just need a refresher, let me briefly summarize what Mark 13 is all about.
Overview of Mark 13
Mark 13 is the longest monologue from Jesus in this gospel, andthis speech comes right after his showdown with all the highest authorities in Jerusalem. In that showdown of chapters 11-12, Jesus condemns the scribes, elders, chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees as wolves who devour widows’ houses, who teach false doctrine, and who are full of hypocrisy. Jesus is the stone that the Jewish builders rejected, and yet He is going to become the cornerstone for a new temple, a new people, a new Jerusalem that shall last forever.
And so Jesus like the prophets of old (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.), uses both his words and actions to foretell a coming judgment. First, Jesus physically departs the temple just like the glory of God departed Solomon’s temple in Ezekiel’s day. And upon his departure he says in verse 2, “there shall not be left one stone upon another [in the temple], that shall not be thrown down.”
Then in verse 3 it says, “he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple.” And from this symbolic throne of judgment, from this holy of holies, Jesus answers a question from his disciples which is, “when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?”
And then the rest of Mark 13 is Jesus’ answer to that question.
Notice, the question is not, “When is the end of human history and the final judgment?”
The question is not, “When is the rapture and the bodily return of Jesus Christ?”
The question the disciples are asking is, “When is one stone not going to left upon another? When is the temple going to be destroyed, and what sign shall precede its destruction?” We could also restate the disciples’ question in different terms because in essence they are asking, “When is the kingdom of God going to arrive?”
Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God. He says in Luke 17 that the kingdom of God is inside of you, it is spiritual and invisible. And yet he also speaks of a day when this invisible kingdom shall be manifest, revealed, and in the prophets this is spoken of as the “coming of the Son of Man to receive dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him, his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).
So the disciples know that the end of the temple also means the beginning of Christ’s everlasting kingdom. The coming of the Son of Man to the Ancient of Days is also when “the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever” (Daniel 7:18, 22, 27),
And it this transfer of power from the Old Jerusalem to the New Jerusalem that Jesus is foretelling on the Mount of Olives. That is what the destruction of the temple in AD 70 is all about. It’s not just about physical stones being demolished, it is about the spiritual-political government of the world being transferred from the Roman Beast and Jewish Harlot, to Christ and the saints in Him. This is what the coming of the Son of Man with power and glory is referring to, and it is what Revelation 1-20 describes in great detail.
So that is the broad overview of what Jesus is addressing in Mark 13. It is not the end of our world; it is the end of their old covenant world, which was a system of spiritual government that God describes and reveals in the book of Daniel (and if you are interested in understanding this more, come to the next Mid-Week service where I’ll be teaching on this).
So Jesus describes all of these cataclysmic events in Mark 13:5-29, and then in verse 30 is where he gives a timeframe for when all these things will be fulfilled. He says, “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.”
From the disciples’ perspective, all these events will take place within roughly 20-40 years. From our perspective, we know it was a full 40 years until the temple was finally burned to the ground. So they are given that timeframe of one generation, and then Jesus adds in verse 32, “but of that day and hour” of his coming to destroy Jerusalem, “knoweth no man.” So he gives them the order of events, and the broad time range of 40 years, but he refuses to give the exact day or hour of his coming. And therefore, the recurring exhortation in Jesus’ speech is “Take heed,” “Watch,” “Stay Awake,” “Be alert.” Because 40 years is plenty of time to forget, and lose heart, and fall away.
And so for all of the interesting details in this prophecy and how it all plays out, what is most essential is that the disciples are prepared and primed to keep the faith, to proclaim the faith, to pass on the faith, and persevere in faith through the greatest tribulation that there ever was or shall be. The Olivet Discourse is given to bolster the apostles and prepare them to suffer and die for the name.
With that as the setup, let us now expound verses 5-13.
Outline of Verses 5-13
There are five exhortations Jesus gives his disciples. Remember all of these apply in the first instance to the twelve, and only by analogy to us living today.
In verse 5 he says, “Take heed lest any man deceive you,” because false Christs are going to come.
In verse 7 he says, “Be ye not troubled,” because of wars and rumors of wars.”
In verse 9 he says, “Take heed to yourselves” because you will be beaten and brought before rulers to testify.
In verse 11 he says, “take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak,” because the Holy Ghost will speak through you.
And then in verse 13 he gives an implicit exhortation saying, “he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
So let us consider this first exhortation in verse 5-6.
Verses 5-6
Exhortation #1 – “Take Heed Lest Any Man Deceive You”
5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you: 6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
It is the constant and recurring scheme of the devil, that whatever good thing God does or creates, the devil comes up with an alluring counterfeit. The devil is a copycat. The devil is not original. The devil is a liar and a bootlegger, and he always offers something that looks good on the outside, but actually kills you. The packaging of sin is always nice, but once you open it and eat it, you’re dead. This was the temptation in the Garden, and he still runs the same plays today. The world falls for it every time, and sometimes even Christians can become ensnared.
And so Jesus begins with this exhortation to be on guard against false teachers, against deceivers, antichrists, who come in his name. There will not just be a few of these deceivers, but “many.”
How will you know who is a false teacher and who is true teacher?
Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 give guidelines for testing the spirits, if you want to look those up.
Jesus says in Matthew 7:15-20, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits…Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”
So the apostles themselves are to be good trees, true teachers, who bear good fruit that confirms the truth of their doctrine. False teachers on the other hand will try to appear righteous, but righteous living can only be faked for so long. Eventually you will see the rotten fruit and corruption of their lives, and that will be the giveaway that they are agents of the devil.
This was obviously fulfilled in the 1st century, and we have countless examples of it in the New Testament itself. Almost every single letter that the apostles wrote deals with this problem of false teachers, deceivers, Judaizers, etc.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:13-14, “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.”
When Jesus sends letters to the pastors of the seven churches in Revelation 2-3, what is the recurring theme? Throw out and do not tolerate false teachers.
It says in Revelation 2:2 “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.”
Jesus encourages the church of Ephesus for doing exactly what he tells his disciples to do here in Mark 13, “take heed lest any man deceive you.”
Summary: So deception will come, many false Christs, false apostles, false teachers, and you will know them by their fruits. So that’s exhortation #1, “take heed lest any man deceive you.”
Verses 7-8
Exhortation #2 – “Be Ye Not Troubled”
7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. 8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
So here Jesus is warning about the temptation to despair at all that is going wrong in the world. These are the people who read the news and are full of anxiety. They hear about wars, and earthquakes, and famines, and troubles, and it puts fear into their hearts.If that is you, Jesus says, “do not be troubled.”
And in response, the disciples might have asked, “why?” Shouldn’t we be troubled at all this trouble in the world? Jesus anticipates that question and gives a surprising response, it is essentially, “don’t be troubled, these things must happen and it’s going to get even worse.”
He says, “these are the beginnings of sorrows,” and “the end shall not be yet.”
In other words, these cosmic distresses are just the beginnings of the birth pains, but they are necessary birth pains for the actual delivery/birth of the new creation. So be ye not troubled, this is just Christ reigning from heaven and shaking the earth so that what cannot be shaken shall remain.
What allows the disciples and us to not be troubled, is that Jesus Christ holds the world in his hands. He holds you in his hands. Jesus Christ is in the control center of the universe, and not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from His good pleasure. And Jesus says, “you are far more valuable than sparrows.” He says in Luke 12:32, “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
So for these disciples, all these troubles, wars, famines, earthquakes, etc. were just God in heaven, getting out the wrapping paper to give them the kingdom. The time is not yet, and so be not troubled. This is what must take place before The Great Tribulation (which I take as beginning around 62 AD).
The book of Acts (which covers events from 30 AD-59 AD) records instances of almost all of these kinds of events. And Jesus is describing roughly the same time period that is covered by the first four seals and horsemen in Revelation 6:1-8 (30 AD-61 AD).
To give just a few examples, Acts 16:26 says, “Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed.”
Of famine, Acts 11:28 says, “Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world (οἰκουμένη), which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.” This would have happened in 46 AD.
Of persecution it says right after this in Acts 12:1-3, “Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread.”
James the Apostle was the first of the Twelve to be martyred, and history records that in 62 AD, James the Just (brother of Jesus) was thrown down from the top of the Temple and then beaten to death in the temple court.
The earliest church historians Hegessipus and Eusebius mark this martyrdom of James the Just in 62 AD as the divine reason for the Roman siege against Jerusalem.
Eusebius writes, “So extraordinary a man was James, so esteemed by all for righteousness that even the more intelligent of the Jews thought that this was why the siege of Jerusalem immediately followed his martyrdom. Indeed, Josephus did not hesitate to write, ‘These things happened to the Jews as retribution for James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus who was called Christ, for the Jews killed him despite his great righteousness.’”
So again, we have in the New Testament itself, and from other 1st century sources that these sorrows were common and frequent in the years from Christ’s Ascension in 30 AD leading up to the Great Tribulation around 62 AD. And the exhortation to the apostles and the faithful in the midst of these sorrows was, “be ye not troubled…the end is not yet.”
Verses 9-11
Exhortations #3 & #4 – “Take Heed To Yourselves” and “Don’t Plan Your Testimony Ahead of Time”
9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. 10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations. 11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
If we read through the book of Acts, again we see that this was all fulfilled immediately after Christ’s ascension.
In Acts 4, Peter and John are arrested for preaching in the temple, and after they are released it says in verse 31, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.”
In Acts 5, the apostles are put on trial again for preaching. Acts 5:29 says, “But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’”
In Acts 6, Stephen is accused of blasphemy and martyred by the Jews after his spirit-filled testimony.
As soon as Paul’s ministry gets under way, the rest of Acts is essentially the story of Paul preaching, getting arrested, and bearing witness in the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts ends in 59 AD with Paul in Rome on house arrest, waiting to bear witness before Nero Caesar.
So we see again, Jesus is not false prophet, all these things took place just like he said they would within one generation.
Now one verse that has sometimes stumbled people into a futurist reading of Mark 13 is verse 10 which says, “And the gospel must first be published among all nations.” And they think that because the Great Commission has not yet been fulfilled, these events must still be off in our future. How do we solve this apparent contradiction? A few points of clarification are in order:
1. First of all, this phrase “all nations” (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη) does not refer to absolutely ever single nation on earth, and we know this because this exact Greek phrasing is used in the LXX of 1 Chronicles 14:17 to speak of King David’s fame. It says, “the fame of David went out into all lands; and the Lord brought the fear of him upon all nations (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη).” See also 1 Kings 4:34. So unless you think that the fear of David came upon absolutely every single nation on earth in his day, there is no reason for it to mean that when it is used in Mark 13:10.
What “all nations” refers to is all the nations in the Roman Hellenistic Empire.This is confirmed by how Matthew records this same idea in his gospel. Matthew 24:14 says, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
The word for “world” here is not cosmos, it is the Greek work οἰκουμένη, which is a technical term for the Roman Empire. When Paul says the gospel is to the Jew first and then to the Greek (Rom. 1:16), the Greeks are those nations within the Roman οἰκουμένη.
We know this because at Christ’s nativity, it says in Luke 2:1 that, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered,” the “all the world” there is this same οἰκουμένη that Jesus is referring to when he says, “all nations.”
Notice also that Jesus does not say all nations will be baptized and fully discipled within one generation, he says that the gospel will be published (κηρύσσω), made known/announced/heralded in all the nations of the Roman οἰκουμένη. And Matthew says that this preaching of the kingdom among all the nations in the Roman world is going to be a witness/testimony (μαρτύριον) to them, and then the end of Jerusalem and the Roman Oikumene will come.
It is God’s habit and regular pattern to give warnings and signs and witnesses/testimony prior to raining down his judgments on a place.He did this with Sodom and Gomorrah, he did it in Noah’s day by the building of the Ark, and so the gospel is a testimony like the Ark is a testimony, a flood is coming!
2. A second reason to believe verse 10 was fulfilled in the 1st century is because the New Testament itself says explicitly that the gospel went out to the whole world, it was published in all nations, within the lifetime of the apostles.
In 57 AD, Paul says in Romans 15, “from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” And then he says at the very end of Romans, in Romans 16:26, that the mystery of the gospel is “now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith.”
In 60 AD, when he wrote Colossians 1:7 he says, “the word of the truth of the gospel…has come to you, as it has also in all the world (κόσμος).” And then again in verse 23 he says, “You were reconciled…if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.”
When the book of Acts ends in 59 AD, Paul tells the Jews in Acts 28:28, “Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!” In other words, Paul has fulfilled what Isaiah prophesied about his apostolic ministry. He says in Acts 13:47, For so the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”
So according to the Apostle Paul, by 59 AD, the gospel had been published throughout the entire Greco-Roman oikumene, to all the nations, and as Matthew’s version has it, this would be a legal witness to them that Christ’s kingdom had come and his glorious enthronement as Son of Man would soon take place.
So this is what verse 10 is referring to, “the gospel must first be announced among all the nations in the Roman Empire.” This is different than what we call “The Great Commission,” which is the baptizing, teaching, and discipling of all the nations on planet earth. This work is still ongoing and shall indeed be completed before Christ’s bodily return. But that is not what is in view here in Mark 13 or Matthew 24.
Conclusion
Let us close with the fifth and final exhortation Jesus gives in verse 12-13:
12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. 13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, “that in the last days (referring to the last days of the old covenant age) perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God…”
Jesus and Paul are both describing what living through the great tribulation is going to be like. What we call the natural bonds of affection, between parents and children, brothers and sisters, a mother and her baby, those bonds are going to be broken because of people’s hatred for Christ and his followers. And it is the breaking of these most intimate bonds that if left unchecked, would destroy the whole world. This is why Jesus says a few verses later in verse 20, “And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.”
This is why it is so important to have God as your Father, and Christ as your elder brother, and the Holy Spirit who indwells the church as your Mother. Because without these spiritual bonds, without this threefold cord of the Holy Trinity, all of us would fall away. Apart from the grace of God, none of us would be able to endure unto the end.
So if you would become and remain a Christian, you must take these words of Jesus to heart. You must remember that you follow a Jesus who said this, “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. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”
So count the cost, and know that God is of infinite value. Friendship with God is more to be prized than the best and closest relationships we have on earth. And when the days get hard, when relationships are strained because of your religion, remember the promise of Christ, that he who endures unto the end shall be saved.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Sermon: Before The Great Tribulation - Part 1 (Mark 13:1-4)

Before The Great Tribulation – Part 1Sunday, March 3rd, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 13:1-13
And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! 2 And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled? 5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you: 6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. 8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. 9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. 10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations. 11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. 12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. 13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Prayer
O Father your Word says that it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out. As we desire to be kingly and to search out these words of the Lord Jesus, and try to understand them, we ask for divine illumination. We ask for the Holy Spirit. We ask for all of this in Christ’s name, Amen.
Introduction
Well, we are back in the Gospel of Mark this morning and have come to what is perhaps the most difficult chapter in the book. Mark 13 is the longest monologue from Jesus in this gospel, and in it he prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the old creation.
Now what makes this chapter difficult is not really the words themselves (which are pretty straightforward), but rather all the false ideas that we import and bring to this text when we hear it. There are entire denominations of Christians who have interpreted this chapter wrongly and from those errant (but often well-meaning) conclusions they have constructed a vision of the future that is not a true or accurate portrait.
I speak primarily of the viewpoint that teaches that the world is going from bad to worse, at some point the Antichrist is going to come, and there will be an evil one-world government that persecutes Christians and brings about The Great Tribulation. And then there is debate amongst these proponents as to whether a rapture will occur before, during, or after this Great Tribulation. For those of you familiar with the books or movies “Left Behind,” it is this dispensational reading of Scripture that has blinded many Christians from a biblical vision of the future. Which is a future far more glorious and full of hope than what the doomsdayers and alarmists continually perpetuate.
And so before we get into the first four verses of this chapter, we need to do some ground clearing exercises so that we can come to this passage and hear what Jesus is actually saying.
So I want to begin by defining a few terms for us that you will likely hear as we study this chapter.
1. The first term is eschatology. What is eschatology? Eschatology is simply the doctrine of last things.
Theology is the doctrine of God
Anthropology is the doctrine of man.
Protology is the doctrine of Creation/beginnings.
Eschatology is the doctrine of how things end.
So under this heading eschatology are things like, the resurrection of the dead. What happens when you die? Where does your soul go after death? What is heaven like? What is hell like? What is the final judgment? What happens after the final judgment? How should we understand the book of Revelation, and so forth. These are all eschatological questions.
And so what eschatology is concerned with is how the Christian story ends. Genesis tells us how the story began, how we ended up in such a sorry state. And then scattered throughout the rest of the Bible, but especially in the final chapters of Revelation, we are told how the story ends. This is what eschatology is concerned with.
Now the difficulty when it comes to a passage like Mark 13, is knowing which parts of it, if any, are referring to events that are future to us.
We know that Jesus is speaking about events that are future to his disciples, but the question for us is, is there anything in this chapter that is still in our future? And how you answer that question is going to make a BIG difference in your understanding of how the Christian story ends.
And so there are two other terms I want to introduce that signify which position someone holds on a particular passage. And those two labels or positions are called Futurism and Preterism.
What is futurism? Futurism is what it sounds like. It is the belief that a certain event is still in our future.
Preterism, on the other hands believes that an event has already happened and is therefore in the past.
So all of us are both futurists and preterists, depending on which text or prophecy or event we are discussing.
For example, we are all futurists in regards to the resurrection of our bodies and the bodily return of Jesus Christ.
The angel says in Acts 1:11 after Christ’s ascension, “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” And so we confess as an article of faith when we recite the Nicene Creed, “he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead…[and] I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Those things are still future to us living in 2024 AD.
Now the places of controversy are whether someone is a futurist or preterist on say, the book of Revelation. If you are a futurist, is it all in the future? Or just chapters 4-22?
My position on Revelation (which is of course the correct position), is that chapters 1-19 are all 1st century events (I am preterist there), and chapters 20-22 describe the period that began in AD 70, and continues to the final consummation when Christ returns. I am futurist on chapters 21-22.
So bringing this all back to Mark 13, the question before us now is which of these events were fulfilled in the 1st century and are therefore in our past. And which events, if any, are still in the future.
The position that I will contend for and seek to demonstrate throughout this series of sermons is that all of Mark 13 was fulfilled in the 1st century.
There are many arguments for this position and we’ll get into some of them this morning, but the clearest is what Jesus says in Mark 13:30. After all the wars and rumors of wars, after the abomination of desolation, after the stars fall from the sky, after all of that, Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.”
“This generation” refers to that generation of Jews then living, and in biblical terms a generation was a period of roughly 20-40 years.
So Jesus answers the disciples’ question in verse 4, about when the temple will be destroyed by first describing all of these cataclysmic events that will precede it, and he says here’s a list of things that must happen first, and then he guarantees that “this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.” And then he says in verse 32-33, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.”
So just as Jesus said in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power,” so also he says that the day and hour of his coming to destroy Jerusalem is not for them to know. But what they can know is all the events that must happen first, and that his word of prophecy (“not one stone will be left upon another”) will be fulfilled within one generation.
Summary: Mark 13 is all about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Son of Man coming to judge the old world and transfer the kingdom to the saints. This is exactly what Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 prophesied, and it is also what the book of Revelation describes in great detail. So this is not a prophecy about the end of our world, it is a prophesy about the end of the old covenant world and its spiritual-political government.
Moreover, if Mark’s gospel alone were not enough to convince us of this 1st century fulfillment, this same prophesy and timestamp is recorded in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 as well. God intended to give us three witnesses to this prophesy (“the Olivet Discourse”) so that we could compare and contrast and see that in every case, the conclusion is the same. The Old Creation and the Temple that held it together, is going to be destroyed within one generation. And, it turns out, that is exactly what happened in AD 70, as both secular and Christian history records for us.
So we ought to be preterists on the Olivet Discourse, on Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, because to be a futurist is at its worse, to call Jesus a false prophet (as many atheists and liberal biblical scholars have called him), and at best to badly misinterpret a central teaching of the New Testament.
So with that as a long setup, let us expound these opening verses of Mark 13.
Verses 1-2
And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! 2 And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
Remember the context. It is the week of Passover. It is springtime. And in just a few days Jesus is going to be crucified for the sins of the world. He has just refuted all the most influential authorities in Jerusalem, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, elders, and chief priests. He has demolished their false teaching and proclaimed the truth.
This is the work of a priest and a prophet to investigate the health of God’s house and its leadership, and to pronounce judgment upon it.
Just as the priest and prophet Ezekiel was carried in the spirit through the first temple and destroyed it by his prophecies (Ezekiel 43:3), so also Jesus visits the second temple and pronounces destruction upon it by his words and actions.
First, he physically departs the temple, just as God’s glory departed the temple in Ezekiel’s day. And as they are leaving, and his disciples are admiring the stones and craftsmanship of the buildings, Jesus says, “Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
This is the prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction, and it this prophecy that provokes the disciples to ask about when this going to happen.
Verses 3-4
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?
What we have here are two rival temples with two rival peoples. In Jerusalem you have the temple of the Jews and their corrupt and apostate worship. And then you have Jesus, the new temple, the one who is Himself holy, holy, holy, and he sits “upon the mount of Olives over against the temple.”
The Mount of Olives is almost certainly the same mountain upon which Jesus was crucified. And he was most likely crucified to a living olive tree. The olive tree is a symbol of the Holy of Holies and is associated with the Holy Spirit and the church who possess the Holy Spirit.
The two cherubim that stood above the mercy seat in the holy of holies were carved out of olive wood. The doors that lead into the holy of holies were carved out of olive wood (1 Kings 6:32-33).
David says in Psalm 52:8, “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God,” meaning, he clings to the mercy seat in the holy of holies by faith.
In Romans 11, the Apostle Paul describes the church as an olive tree, where unfaithful branches are cut off, and wild olive trees are grafted in.
So we have in this scene the Lord Jesus, who is the holy place, who is the head of the church, sitting upon the Mount of Olives. On one side, you have the Old Jerusalem and its corrupt priesthood and followers, and on the other side, you have the New Jerusalem and the priesthood of Christ with his disciples. True church and false church. True Jews and false Jews. And it is from this new holy of holies, this new throne upon which he sits on the Mount of Olives, that Jesus pronounces the end of the Old World.
Now pay close attention to the question in verse 4 that the disciples are asking, because the rest of this chapter is Jesus’ answer to that question. The disciples are not asking about the end of the space-time continuum. They are not asking about the final judgment and the end of the all things. Jesus has just said the temple will be destroyed and they say, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?”
The disciples knew that the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was a destruction of the entire cosmic, spiritual, and political order of the old creation. And this is because the Old Testament teaches that the Israel is a priestly nation who mediates God’s blessings and curses to the whole world.
God says in Exodus 19:6, “And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”
Remember the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 is, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
So the whole purpose of God calling Abraham, and making a covenant with him, and calling Israel out of Egypt, and making them into a priestly nation, and then giving them all of the sacrificial offerings and festivals and the priesthood and tabernacle, was so that God’s House would be a house of prayer for all nations.
Just as Adam was the head of the human race, the high priest was a Son of Man, a son of Adam, who functioned as a kind of federal representative not only of Israel, but of the whole world.
If someone had committed accidental manslaughter and fled to a city of refuge, the law states that they had to remain there until the death of the high priest. Because anytime innocent blood is shed, is must be atoned for, and only the death of a high priest could “reset” the system.
The high priest symbolically carried the sins of the nation and the whole world upon his shoulders. And when they offered sacrifices of animals, of incense, and of prayers to God, they were atoning/covering (pleading the blood of the Passover lamb) for the sins of the whole world. That is what it means to be priestly nation mediating God’s covenant promise to Abraham.
So what happens if those sacrifices stop? What happens if the priestly nation apostatizes? What happens when the high priest is corrupt? What happens when the Gentiles are not allowed to pray and offer sacrifices unto God? All those sins start to pile up. It is like static electricity building and building. They are going without atonement, without covering, and when blood goes uncovered it cries out for vengeance!
This is why Jesus says in Matthew 23, after pronouncing all of the woe’s against the scribes and Pharisees, “That upon you (Jerusalem) may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation” (Matt. 23:35-36).
The high priest and the sacrificial system was really only a way to delay judgment until the coming of Christ.
And because of the Jews rejection of Christ, and because of their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and their persecution of his witnesses, there is no atonement left for them. And so it is upon them that all the righteous blood that was ever shed is going to be required. And so Jesus says in Luke’s version of the Olivet Discourse, “For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.”
Paul says likewise in Hebrews 10:26, warning Jewish Christians of this same judgment, “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.”
So either you accept Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf, and die by faith in him. Or, you die in your own sins. You pay the price, and that price is eternal torment in the lake of fire. This is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. Because they have rejected the revealed will of God for them. As it says in 1 Timothy 2:4, “God desires all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Application: Right before this verse Paul commands the church saying, “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; 2 For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.”
The New Testament Church, we who are the New Jerusalem, we who are a royal priesthood, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), who have been made kings and priests unto God (Rev. 1:6), now have the responsibility to plead the blood of Jesus for our nation. It is our morning and evening sacrifices of praise and worship, it is our weekly prayers of intercession and offerings unto God, that now mediate God’s blessings and curses in the world. Those who bless the church God blesses, those who curse and persecute the church, God shall destroy.
The church is what holds the world together. We who are in Christ are the Son of Man that Daniel saw ascend to the Ancient of Days, and of whom it says in Daniel 7:14, “And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”
This is the kingdom that Christ came to bring, and in future weeks we will see the how and the when of Christ’s kingdom arriving. For now, just know that as Jesus answers in verse 30, it came within one generation, just like he said it would.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ is presently reigning from heaven right now, just like he began to reign in the 1st century when he ascended to heaven. And throughout the centuries, Christ has come in judgment upon many nations, and he continues to steer history, and footstool his enemies, and the promise of Psalm 110 and 1 Corinthians 15 and many other passages is that, “he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 27 For he hath put all things under his feet…And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.”
This is how the story ends, with every wrong made right. And every tear wiped away. And death made no more. And God all in all. May He hasten that glorious day.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Interview: Family Worship 24/7 with Joe Stout

In this interview, Joe Stout and Aaron Ventura discuss family worship, liturgy, parenting, and more.

Sermon: Why We Work (2 Corinthians 9:6-11)

Why We WorkSunday, February 25th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
2 Corinthians 9:6-11
6But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: 9(As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever. 10Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) 11Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for creating us as your workmanship, and for re-creating us in Christ Jesus to do good work, work that serves our neighbor and brings honor to You. We thank you that we get to participate with you in the renewal of all things, and we ask now for your Holy Spirit to animate and inspire us as we seek to exercise dominion on the earth. We ask this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
Every Sunday, after the sermon, we stand up and recite the Ten Commandments. And by now, many of us have those ten commandments memorized and so if I ask you, what is the fourth commandment? You know that it is, “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.”
Now the version of the ten commandments that we recite is actually an abbreviated version of the full Ten Commandments as they are given in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, and so we don’t actually recite the totality of the 4th commandment in all of its context.
And so when most people think of keeping the sabbath, or obeying the fourth commandment, they typically think and think rightly that they ought to rest and go to church and worship the Lord. This is the essence of sabbath keeping in the new covenant.
However, going to church on Sunday is really only one-half, or perhaps more accurately one-seventh of the commandment, because the rest of the 4th commandment reads as follows:
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
So not only are we commanded to rest as God rested one day in seven, but we are also to do good work on those six other days. Just as God worked and made heaven and earth in six days and called what he made “good,” so also he says, “six days shalt you labor, and do all thy work.” Meaning, you can’t actually have seventh day rest on the Lord’s Day, unless you have been busy working hard unto the Lord on those six other days. “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work” is just as much a part of obeying the 4th commandment as the cessation from work on the seventh day.
And so I have titled the sermon this morning, Why We Work, and in it I want focus on the other half or rather the other six-sevenths of the 4th commandment. I want to explore what God’s Word has to say about the way we live our lives on the six days that we are not here.
There are three basic truths I want to expound for us from the Scriptures, and they are these:
1. Work is good.
2. Work is hard.
3. Good work is service to the Lord.
Survey of the Text
Now before we consider these three truths in depth, let us briefly survey our text in 2 Corinthians 9:6-11. And I have chosen this passage to frame our study of work, because in it we find this most precious promise in verse 8, “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
Notice all the universals in this verse, the all’s and the every. Paul is telling the Corinthians in very comprehensive terms that they cannot outgive God. No matter how generous and loving and giving you are to others, the reward you receive from God in return, always surpasses whatever gift you gave. We pour ourselves out for others, and God makes us overflow even more than before.
He says in verse 6, “But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”
In the immediate historical context of this letter, Paul is gathering funds from the various churches to help alleviate the poor Christians who are suffering in Jerusalem. He is taking an offering.
And so he holds out this agricultural truism to illustrate the way God’s economy works. If you sow a little, you reap a little. If you sow a lot, you reap a lot. So what size harvest do you want?
He goes on in verse 7 to describe the kind of sowing/giving God wants, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”
When we give, or when we work, or when we sow a seed of whatever size, our sowing ought to be done without sadness in our heart for “losing” the thing we are giving. Because in God’s economy, no good thing is ever truly lost. And therefore, our giving should be done with cheerfulness and joy.
It would be a strange sight to see a farmer crying in his field, sorrowful at all the seed he is losing by planting it in the soil. And just so, it would be a strange sight for us to grieve at the gifts we offer to the Lord. God loves a cheerful giver.
This same principle of sowing seed cheerfully applies to every aspect of life. Whatever your vocation or calling or work is, God says in Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
And again, it says in 1 Corinthians 9:10, “he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope.”
And most famously in 1 Corinthians 10:31 it says, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
So our six days of labor in this world, at whatever job you have, whether it is scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, teaching children, or milking goats, is a work that God wants you to do cheerfully, joyfully, with hope in your heart that whatever you sow in faith, God shall reward richly.
It says in Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” This applies in the natural world with earthly things, and it applies in the supernatural realm with spiritual things.
God is always watching, God sees us at work when no one else does, and this truth allows Paul to encourage us by saying in Ephesians 6:5-8, “Bondservants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.”
If you are a wage slave, stuck in a job you do not love, with a boss or coworkers you cannot stand, you have the same opportunity and responsibility as the person who has their “dream job,” to do your best work for your Employer as serving the Lord.
God sees, and God blesses. Consider the life of Joseph. When Joseph was at the bottom of the pit, and then sold into slavery, and then unjustly accused and then put into prison, what was God doing?
God was preparing him to be ruler of Egypt. What looked like a downgrade or a demotion in the world’s eyes, was actually a promotion and preparation in God’s eyes.
In a similar way, our whole life in this world is a preparation for eternal life.We experience a taste of the eternal sabbath when we rest by faith in Christ, and from thr strength that God supplies we then do the good works God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
So consider whatever vocation/calling/work you have now as the field in which God wants you to sow for six days, and remember that whatever harvest you do not receive in this life, you shall receive in the next on that eternal sabbath.
If you are a husband, your wife and children are your field. If you are a mother, your children and grandchildren and household are your field. If you are student, your studies and tests and books are your field. Whatever lawful work God has called you to, that is the field God wants you to sow and plow and water and weed. And when you do this in obedience and service to Christ, God is the one who gives the growth.
Proverbs 3:9-10 reminds us that if we “Honor the Lord with your possessions, And with the firstfruits of all your increase; So your barns will be filled with plenty, And your vats will overflow with new wine.”
So this is the encouragement and promise we have from God and must cling to when things are hard, that “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
With that as the motivation for our work, let us turn to consider these three truths about the work itself.
1. Work is good.
2. Work is hard.
3. Good work is service to the Lord.
Truth #1 – Work is good.
One of the most common misconceptions that people have about work, is that work is a result of the Fall. Many people falsely imagine that if sin had never entered the world, our lives would be a perpetual vacation, lounging around, eating and drinking, playing games, and doing nothing productive with our time. But this is not the story that Scripture tells. Instead, we see in Genesis 1-2 that even before Adam sinned, Adam had a job.
Genesis 2:15 says, “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”
This word for tend is the Hebrew word עבד (avad), which is a very common word that is elsewhere translated as working, or serving, or doing, or tilling the ground.
Moreover, when God calls Israel out of Egypt, the whole purpose for delivering them from slavery and bondage is so that they can serve (avad) the Lord (Ex. 3:12).
So this avad, this work, or service, or tending of the garden, is something God gives Adam to do prior to sin entering the world.
When God looked out at all that He had created, and said it is all “very good” (Gen. 1:31), this included the work (the avad) that Adam was given to do. It was very good that Adam had to tend and keep the garden.
And so essential to who we are as human beings, not just as Christians, but as men and women created in the image of God, work is our first purpose and source of meaning in life.
Whereas many people work in order to live, the biblical doctrine is that we live in order to work. We live to avad, to serve the garden and serve the Lord. Rather than separating work from worship, Genesis 1-2 unites these concepts as the one purpose for which we were created.
You were created to work for six days, just like God worked for six days, and then rested on the seventh. So those six days of avad, of service in the soil are very good. And when we participate in this creational pattern that is reaffirmed after the fall in the 4th commandment, we participate in the life of God and His work to renew the world.
So work is not just good, it is very good, and when done as service unto the Lord it becomes a spiritual offering pleasing to Him. One of the reasons we work for six days is so that on the seventh day, when God calls us to his throne room, we can offer to Him the fruit of our hands labor.
Remember the story of Cain and Abel. Genesis 4:2 says, “Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Both men worked, both men made offerings from their work unto the Lord, but Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” And it says in 1 John 3:12, that Cain’s “works were evil and his brother’s righteous.”
So it is not enough to simply give God an offering from the labor of your hands (this is what Cain did), your work needs to be actually good (like Abel’s, and it needs to be offered in faith for God to accept it and be pleased with it.
So again you see that worshipping God every Sunday is an exercise in hypocrisy if you are not doing good work unto the Lord on the other six days. It is what we do Monday-Saturday that God judges and rewards (or punishes) on Sunday.
So work is good. Work is very good. And even before the Fall, the Bible teaches that we were created to work for six days and rest on the seventh. This brings us to a second truth about work which is…
Truth #2 – Work is hard.
If Adam’s original task as a bachelor was to tend and keep the garden, God added to him a second task after he was married, which was “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28).
This work of husband and wife is often called the Cultural/Dominion Mandate, which is God’s command to extend the order and beauty of the Garden of Eden to the four corners of the earth.
It says in Genesis 2:10-13, “Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush.”
So Adam and Eve were placed in a beautiful garden, and yet God doesn’t want them to just stay there forever. He wants them to follow these rivers and find gold, and precious stones and build things out of them.
It is the work of man and woman together that transforms nature into culture. God put raw materials into the ground and commissioned the human race to go and find them, dig them up, purify them, mix them, match them, build things out of them. And it is this cultivation of God’s world that transforms it from one degree of glory to another.
When we do good work in obedience to Genesis 1:28, we are God’s instruments for glorifying His creation. This is part of what it means to be God’s image upon the earth. God created, and we sub-create. God provides the raw material, and we refashion those materials into art.
Now as glorious as this task is, sin has made everything harder. When God pronounces the curse in Genesis 3, He tells them how their sin has frustrated and made more difficult the unique task that corresponds with their male/female nature.
Genesis 3:16 says, “To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
So because of our sin, being fruitful, bearing and raising children, becomes exponentially harder. And not only this, the woman’s work as a helper to her husband is going to be frustrated as well. Husband and wife will be tempted to blame one other when they get frustrated.
For the man, God says in Genesis 3:17-19, “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.”
So not only will everyone eventually die because of sin, it is now through toil that we will get our food, and thorns and thistles are going to fight against us. Instead of working without a sweat, now we must exert far more effort than we would have in our unfallen state.
So for all us who are descended from Adam and Eve, we still have the Cultural Mandate from God, work six days, be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth, but now it’s just way harder. Our work fights us.
So work is good, but because of sin, work is now toilsome and sweaty. And yet it is this hard and difficult work that Christ prepared in advance for you to do. All of the commands and promises of Scripture are given to us with the effects of sin already factored in. And this should bring us great joy. It is possible and can even become habitual for us to work joyfully unto the Lord no matter how difficult the task.
Jesus Christ is the supreme example of what good work looks like in a fallen world. And it is He who exemplifies for us this third truth…
Truth #3 – Good work is service to the Lord.
When God came to earth in Jesus Christ, He did not immediately start preaching and trying to evangelize his neighbors. As important as evangelism and missionary work is, Jesus Christ spent his first 30 years living in this toilsome world, first as a baby, then growing as a child “increasing in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52), and then working with his hands as a carpenter in Galilee (Mark 6:3). Before Jesus preached to the multitudes, he served the Lord by working with his hands.
Now what kind of work ethic do you think Jesus the carpenter had? We know that as a perfect man, he worked with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. We know that whatever he built or remodeled or fixed was done with all the care and attention to detail that the God who created the world could give. If Jesus Christ created the universe, imagine what kind of dining table he could build for you. Imagine the quality of the cabinets he installed. Imagine the excellence and craftsmanship of whatever came out of his shop.
It was the eternal and divine plan of salvation, that God would come to earth, and throughout his 20’s he would work with his hands building things, toiling in the same dusty and sweaty conditions that his father Joseph and every other blue-collar Galilean worked in. And yet that work was spiritual service to the Lord. It was not below the dignity of God to get his hands covered in sawdust. And this is the humble and excellent standard of work that all Christ’s followers should imitate.
Now there are two common misconceptions about work that many Christians have fallen into and must be rejected.
1. The first is that work is only a means to paying our bills or providing for our families. Many Christians view their 9-5 or 8-6 job as only a means to an end and that end is a paycheck. But this is not the biblical view of work.
Work is a means to many things, but work is also an end in and of itself. When work is done excellently, as working unto the Lord, it is of real benefit to the person you are serving, and of real merit in the eyes of God.
What is God going to reward believers for on judgment day?
Over and over again, the Bible says God is going to reward us for our works. Jesus says in Matthew 16:27, “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”
Listen to 1 Corinthians 3:9-15 as Paul describes his own works. He says, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
So think about your vocation(s), whatever it is, ask yourself, what is the quality of my work? What material am I building with? Are you building with “wood, hay, and straw,” which the fire of judgment is going to burn up? Or are you working in faith, hope, and love, building with gold, silver, and precious stones, materials that will be refined and made more glorious by God’s fire?
When Jesus was literally working with wood in his carpentry shop, in spiritual terms he was building with gold, because he was working excellently for the glory of God.
And so however humble your literal working materials might seem, remember that anything you do can become gold, silver, and precious stones, when you do it with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, cheerfully unto God.
And this is how good hard work becomes spiritual worship. We treat it not merely as a means to a paycheck, but as an end in itself, that glorifies Christ.
2. The second common misconception about work, is that in order for our work to please God, we have to use it as a means to evangelism or ministry. Again, the error is turning work into a means to a spiritual end rather than a spiritual end in itself.
This is the false teaching that says, the only purpose in your work is to give a portion of your paycheck to the church building fund. This is the false teaching that says, you are only serving the Lord at your job if you are leading a Bible study with your co-workers.
And while it is not a sin to lead a Bible study with your co-workers, assuming it’s not on company time, and it is no sin to give to the building fund,we must not view our work as somehow “less spiritual” if we are not doing those more “pious” sounds things. Christian piety includes doing excellent and outstanding work. God wants you to be tired and to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.
Remember Romans 12:1, what is spiritual worship? It is when you present your your body, as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”
Paul says in Romans 6:19, “present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.”
This means that wherever your body is, wherever your members are, is a place of “reasonable service” or as the ESV translates it, “spiritual worship.”
So regard whatever it is that your hand sets to do as work for God. Whether you are changing a diaper, or pouring concrete, or typing code, or managing an office, or doing the dishes. All good work is spiritual service to the Lord.
Conclusion
What makes the sabbath sweet, is when we work really hard for six days, toiling, suffering, getting up early, plowing in hope, and then we stop, and we sit down with God around this communion table, and we give thanks to Him for the fruit of our hands. And we remember the promise is that is given in Revelation 14:13-14 which says, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”
Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. But by faith in Jesus Christ, we shall leave this dust behind and shall attain to a resurrection harvest that will make these days of sweaty toil as a dream. And so in this life we plow in hope. We sow with joy. And we cling to the promise that in due season we shall reap God, if we do not lose heart.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

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/