The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: The State of the Church 2024

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

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

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

Sermon: Render To Caesar (Mark 12:13-17)

Render to CaesarSunday, January 7th, 2024Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 12:13-17
13 And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words. 14 And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? 15 Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it. 16 And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar’s. 17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
Prayer
O Father, we praise You for impressing upon our soul the image of the Holy Trinity. We thank you for creating us in your image and likeness, and for writing upon our foreheads the Name that is above all names. We thank you also for ordaining the governing powers that be, and we ask that you would establish them in righteousness so that instead of groaning your people might rejoice. Teach us to render to each man what is their due, but most of all to give back to you our very selves, whole and entire. We ask for Your Spirit now in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
It is Tuesday of Passion week in Mark’s gospel, andJesus is continuing to faceoff against the Jewish authorities in the temple. And it is these interactions that will provoke and bring about Jesus’ crucifixion a few days later.
Recall that Jesus has just cleansed the court of the Gentiles, which was to be a place of prayer for all nations. He then masterfully refuted their questioning of where his authority comes from (from God or from man) by standing in solidarity with John the Baptist. Where John’s authority came from, so also Christ’s. And then last week we saw that Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Jewish leaders/husbandmen in the parable of the vineyard.
What was the sin of these husbandmen/tenants in the vineyard? It was twofold, first they were stealing God’s stuff, not giving to God the tribute or fruit He deserved. And second, they were killing the prophets and messengers that God had sent to them. They refused John the Baptist, and now they are refusing God himself in Jesus Christ.
Malachi 3:1-3 prophesies of both John and Jesus’ ministry in these terms: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, Even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”
What is Jesus doing in these arguments with the Jews? He is purifying the sons of Levi (the priests, the scribes, the elders). He is coming like a refiner’s fire so that only gold and silver will remain. And the purpose of all this cleansing is so that God’s people “may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.”
Israel is God’s vineyard, God still wants the fruit of love and good works and justice from them, and He is going to get that fruit one way or another. So God prunes us to make us more fruitful. God purges us with fire to make us more glorious. What destroys the evil in us, makes us more like God.
Now all of this is important context for understanding the hypocrisy of the question the Pharisees and Herodians pose for Jesus, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give?” Do you see the hypocrisy?
Here are the husbandman from Jesus’ parable who refuse to give God His tribute, they refuse to give God the fruit that He deserves, and yet here they are now pretending in front of Jesus to be torn on this question of whether it is really lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not, as if there is some tension between paying taxes to Rome and giving God His due.
This is kind of like someone who refuses to pay their tithes to God, but then wants to object to paying their income taxes on religious grounds. They claim “no king but Christ” when it comes to paying their taxes, but then they don’t give to God as king what actually belongs to Him. So this the hypocrisy Jesus is going to expose.
So we’ll consider this text at two levels.
First, we’ll try to understand what Jesus is teaching and how it would apply in the 1st century. And that is going to require a lot of historical background.
And then next week we’ll attempt the more difficult work of applying this to us living in the 21st century, where I’ll give a kind of State of the Church 2024 message.
So this sermon might leave you with some practical questions, and we’ll try to handle those next week.
Verse 13
13 And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words.
Who are the they that are sending the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus?
These are the same “chief priests, scribes, and elders” he started talking to back in Mark 11:27. They are the highest Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, and together they composed the Sanhedrin, which is kind of like the Jewish Supreme Court. They are also the “husbandmen/tenants” that Jesus just described in his parable of the vineyard.
So the chief priest, scribes, and elders send the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus.
Why send these two groups to Jesus to ask this specific question about paying tribute to Caesar? The Sanhedrin are clearly setting a trap for Jesus, but what trap are they setting, why send the Pharisees and Herodians?
The reason is because the Pharisees and Herodians were theological enemies on some issues (like who the Messiah was), but they were united in that Jesus was threat to both of their power.
Who were the Herodians?
The Herodians likely believed that Herod and his sons were the rightful heirs of the Davidic monarchy. For them, the Herodian line was the coming of the Messiah, and in proof of this they could point to various exploits and actions of Herod the Great, chief of which was that he rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem.
In 20 BC, Herod leveled the temple that was built by Zerubbabel in Ezra and Nehemiah’s day (Ezra 5), and he expanded and beatified the structure into one of the greatest wonders of the world at that time.
It’s also interesting, especially in the light of Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, that one of the additions Herod made to the temple was the construction of an enormous gold and jeweled grape vine that hung above the entrance to the sanctuary. Ancient writers speak of how beautiful this golden grape vine was and so Herod was in many respects, the one responsible for making Jerusalem and the temple externally glorious again. Jerusalem was a real tourist destination because of the beauty of its temple.
Furthermore, during Herod the Great’s reign there was a time of severe famine in Judea, and Herod generously fed the nation and kept them from starving. He was perhaps in some minds like a new Joseph in this respect. And so despite being born from an Edomite father, Herod had a Jewish mother and claimed to be a Jew, and that was enough for some people to accept his rule.
At the same time, this was the same Herod the Great who tried to kill Jesus as a child. He ordered the slaughter of all the male infants born in Bethlehem, because such a child born according to the Scriptures threatened his claim to be the king of the Jews.
So that was Herod the Great he died around 4/1 BC, and at his death the kingdom was divided amongst three of his sons. Herod Archelaus was made ruler of Judea/Jerusalem but was removed after 9 years by Rome for his incompetence, and from then on Judea/Jerusalem became a Roman province and subject to paying tribute to Caesar (6 AD).
One of Herod the Great’s other sons, Herod Antipas ruled over Galilee in the North and Perea (to the East), and he is the one we met earlier who killed John the Baptist, and he is the Herod that these Herodians represent.
So the Herodians had a complicated relationship with Rome, and the Jews had a complicated relationship with Herod. Herod was a kind of buffer between the Jews and Caesar, and while far from ideal, many Jews preferred to be ruled by an impious quasi-Jew like Herod, instead of being ruled directly by pagan Romans.
This is not unlike our situation today in that most Christians would prefer to have as President or Governor, someone who is a professing Christian even if they are immoral and hypocritical, rather than an avowed atheist or anti-Christian in power. Herod was the lesser of two evils as far as many Jews were concerned.
So the Herodians were pro-Roman in that they derived their power and actual authority from Rome. Herod Antipas could be deposed by Caesar if he got out of line. At the same time, Herod was interested in expanding his power to include Judea/Jerusalem as well, just like his father Herod the Great. This is likely what is behind the comment in Luke 23:12 during Jesus’ trial, that “Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves.”
So Herod needed Rome, but he also eyed Jerusalem as a place he would love to govern.
There is a lot of politics happening in the gospels and different parties jockeying for power, and the Herodians were one faction.
The Pharisees on the other hand were the more “orthodox” and “conservative” party in that they rightly believed that the Messiah had to be a real Jew, from the tribe of Judah, born in Bethlehem, and descended from David. And since Herod the Great was an Edomite, and had murdered his wife, and many other family members, and Herod Antipas was not much better, it was clear that he was not the promised Messianic king.
So the Pharisees rightly rejected Herod’s messianic pretensions, they knew better, and their chief concern was to maintain their own power and eventually regain real Jewish sovereignty in Judea. So they did not like paying tribute to Caesar, but they had no choice and so paid it anyways.
Summary: Despite whatever theological disagreements there were between Pharisees and Herodians, they were united in their hatred for Jesus, and thus as it says in verse 13 they want, “to catch him in his words.”
What is the trap they are going to set?
Verse 14-15a
14 And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? 15 Shall we give, or shall we not give?
Well as it says in Psalm 12:2, “With flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.” These Herodians and Pharisees set their trap with flattery and false compliments to Jesus.
They say that Jesus is true. They say that Jesus judges justly, that is without respect of persons (he “carest for no man”). They say that Jesus teaches the way of God in truth.
And in all this flattery there is a double irony. First in that they themselves are doing the opposite of everything they are applauding in Jesus.
And second, while they intend these compliments falsely, in reality they are speaking truer words than they realize.
Because Jesus really is the truth. Jesus really does judge without respect of persons. Jesus really does teach the way of God and is himself the way the truth and the life.
So while the Pharisees and Herodians think they are setting a trap for Jesus, they are really setting a trap for themselves.
As it says in the next verse in Psalm 12:3, “The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips, And the tongue that speaketh proud things.”
Now before we see how Jesus cuts of these flattering lips, let us consider the human cunning behind their question, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”
What outcome are the Sanhedrin hoping for? In their minds this is win-win question no matter how Jesus answers.
1. If Jesus says “yes, it is unlawful to give tribute to Caesar,” then they can have him arrested by the Romans for stirring up rebellion. “He claims to be a king, and now he’s telling people not to pay their taxes, that is the definition of treason and sedition, therefore he must die.”
A few days later, when they actually do arrest him and drag him before Pontius Pilate, they are going to run this same play. It says in Luke 23:2, “And they began to accuse Him, saying, ‘We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.’”
Pilate sees through this false accusation and sends him to Herod. But you can see that this is the charge they are trying to make stick to Jesus.
2. The other option is that Jesus says “no, it is lawful to pay tribute to Caesar,” and then he loses the favor of the masses who expect him, as the Messiah, to throw off Roman oppression and restore to the Jews their political and economic freedom.
So as far as the Sanhedrin are concerned, either Jesus alienates his “base,” the Jewish masses who want to enthrone him as king and get some tax relief, OR he incriminates himself by saying tribute to Caesar is unlawful, and they can charge him with sedition. In their minds, this is the perfect question with a win-win outcome. Whatever he answers, Jesus will lose his influence.
How does Jesus respond?   
Verse 15b
But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
So Jesus openly says, “why are you testing me?” He wants them to know that he knows that they are being hypocrites.
This question about the lawfulness of paying tribute is not an actual question, it is merely hypothetical, because if any of them actually refused to pay the tribute, they would lose the very thing they are desperately trying to hold onto, namely their status and authority which Rome gives them.
And so at first he does not answer their question, but rather asks them to bring him a Roman denarius (translated as penny in the KJV).
The denarius was a standard issue Roman silver coin (you can see a picture of it in the bulletin),and it represented about a day’s worth of labor (Matt. 20:2). So if minimum wage is $15 an hour, and you do 8 hours of work, a denarius would be roughly equivalent to $120. So it’s not a lot, but it’s something. And everyone in Judea was required to pay this tribute/head-tax.
Now remember, because Jesus was living in Galilee, he was in Herod’s jurisdiction, not Pontius Pilate’s, and therefore this tribute/tax did not actually apply to Jesus. He did not have to pay it. So the Sanhedrin could appear to be asking Jesus this question because he is an outsider, He’s a Galilean. He is a neutral third-party judge who can settle this “intramural question” among the Jews. Does it violate God’s law to pay tribute to Caesar?
One of the arguments that some zealots used against paying this tax, was that the money itself was idolatrous and blasphemous.
Leviticus 26:1 says, “Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land…”
And if you look at the coin, you can see that on one side is a graven image of Caesar, and written upon it says, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus,” and on the other side, PONTIF MAXIM, “High-Priest.”
So on this coin, was a graven image and Caesar was claiming to be both son of God and high-priest. And so the argument goes that to pay such tribute was to break the first commandment. It was to commit idolatry. And no such images should be allowed in the holy temple.
A generation earlier, in the year 6 AD, a man named Judas the Galilean led a tax revolt against this tribute to Caesar, and he is quoted as saying, “They are cowards who would endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would after God, submit to mortal men as their lords.” The logic of these zealots was that Israel was a sovereign theocracy ruled by God and God alone, and therefore no foreign power could extract tribute from them.
And while that might sound biblical and pious, it is actually the opposite of what God had commanded after the first temple was destroyed (see Jeremiah, Daniel, etc.).
So these zealots were the more extreme “Jewish nationalists” who wanted to set up God’s kingdom by force, rather than submit to the authorities God had placed over them, and the reward for their zealotry was that Rome violently destroyed them. It would be this same zealotry that would spark the final war between Rome and Jerusalem which Jesus will foretell in the next chapter (Mark 13).
So the Pharisees and Herodians and the Jews are all aware that this tribute to Caesar is a touchy subject. People had died rebelling against it a generation earlier, and there was a diversity of opinion about whether such tribute and revolt was lawful or not.
But Jesus sees through this trap, and calls them on their hypocrisy by telling them, “Bring me a penny, that I may see it.”
What is Jesus doing by asking for this coin? He is making them answer their own question. If they bring him the coin, then they reveal that they believe it is lawful and therefore lose whatever influence they had with the populists. If they don’t bring him the coin, then the charge of sedition and disloyalty to Rome can be leveled at them. Jesus has now put them in a lose-lose dilemma.
What do they do?
Verses 16a
16 And they brought it.
So they could have said, “we don’t have any, we have the courage of our convictions and refuse to pay such idolatrous (or oppressive) tribute to Caesar.” But by the very fact of them having and bringing to him such a coin, within the Temple complex, they are revealing where they stand on this question. They cannot pretend to be sympathetic with the zealots or Jewish masses.
Jesus goes further and makes them acknowledge what is on the coin.
Verse 16b
And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar’s.
Whatever arguments they pretend to have against paying this tribute, whether theological, political, or otherwise, Jesus is exposing as hypocrisy.
The fact that they have a denarius, and know what is on it, and all of them pay it, proves that their question about its lawfulness is hypocritical.
Nevertheless, Jesus gives them an answer to their question that makes them marvel.
Verse 17
17 And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
What is Jesus saying in answer to their question? Is it lawful or not?
The crucial word in Jesus’ answer is this word “render” (Ἀπόδοτε), which means to give back to someone. And since you can only give back to someone what was first given to you from them, the question becomes, what is it that Caesar had given to the Jews?
For starters, the denarius that bears his image and inscription was only in circulation because Caesar made it so. And what that coin and tribute represented was the many other blessings that Caesar had provided for them, like safety and protection from foreign invaders.
Before Rome had authority over Jerusalem, the region was fraught with civil wars and constant threats from other nations and empires. Jerusalem was geographically located at the crossroads of many trade routes, and so it was a very strategic city that any empire would want to occupy.
So humanly speaking, Caesar and the Roman Empire provided the security, stability, and peaceful conditions for the Jews to worship God and even prosper.
And for those who knew the prophets well, especially the book of Daniel, God had revealed that the Jews would be governed by four subsequent foreign empires until the coming of the Messiah (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and then Rome). This is what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 foretold (the great statue), it is what God revealed to Daniel in Daniel 7 with the four beast empires, and so the Jews should have known that if they kept covenant with God, He would take care of them just like he had in Esther’s day, just like he had preserved them under the Assyrians, preserved them under the Babylonians, preserved them under the Persians, and so forth.
If they obeyed God and were faithful to Him, these beast empires would eventually either convert or God would replace them. Which is exactly what happened in those 400 years between Old and New Testament.
And so when we read in Romans 13, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,” we have restated for us what the policy had always been: Bear witness, be faithful, worship God alone, keep the commandments, and unless the government is requiring you to sin (bowing down to the image), submit to their authority, pay the tribute. Maybe its theft, maybe its unjust, maybe its tyrannical, but it is not a sin to be stolen from. It is not a sin to give back to Caesar what Caesar has made.
Paul says more explicitly in Romans 13:6, “for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”
Now it is this second part of Jesus’ answer that really makes the crowd marvel, “Render to God the things that are God’s.”
If the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image, what bears God’s image? Caesar. You. Everyone. Everything belongs to God, and therefore we can trust that when we give back to Caesar what God commands, namely tribute/taxes, we are giving to God what belongs to God. Because all things come from Him and the powers that be are ordained by Him.
And so Jesus is calling all of his hearers to not only give to Caesar his due, but to give back to God what God has first given to them, and that means giving to God our everything, our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength, our breath, our time, our talent, our treasure.
And when you truly belong to God and offer yourself to Him, and you know that God is the power behind all earthly powers, including the evil ones, you can live in the midst of a wicked world with “a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5).
Or as it says in 1 Peter 2:16-17, we can live “as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. 17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.”
The Jews wanted to use God as a cloke for their envy, and greed, and maliciousness. The Jewish zealots tried to use God as their justification for rebellion, and murders, and civil wars.
And in a similar way Christians, especially those living under oppressive and wicked regimes (as we are) will be tempted to use God and the Scriptures as a cloke for all kinds of things that are actually disobedience to Him.
So we need to get really clear in our minds what belongs to Caesar, and what does not, and we will work on that next week. But you cannot actually answer that question unless you know first and foremost what belongs to God, and whose image you bear.
Conclusion
Jesus Christ suffered and died and rose again, so that the image of God in you, could be renewed and transformed into the image of Christ. As Paul says in Romans 8:28-29, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son…”
The life of a Christian, whether under Caesar or under any other authority, is one in which if you love God, He will make all things conspire for your good. And what is that good? That you are conformed into the image of Christ.
There is no higher good or higher reward than to know God and be made more like Him. So render to your Creator the life He has given, and He will give it back to you immortal and resurrected and far more glorious than before.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: Lord of the Vineyard (Mark 12:1-12)

Lord of the VineyardSunday, December 31st, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 12:1–12
1And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winevat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. 2And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. 3And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. 4And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. 5And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some. 6Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son. 7But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. 8And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. 9What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others. 10And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: 11This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? 12And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.
Prayer
Father, we praise You who are Lord of the Vineyard. We thank you for sending your beloved son, to suffer and die on our behalf, so that we might become heirs of your kingdom. Make us to abide in Christ who is the vine, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
When God created the first man, it says in Genesis 2:15 that, “the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” The very first job that mankind was given, was to be a guardian and servant in God’s Garden. God had already planted the garden, it was already bearing fruit, and Adam’s job was to be a faithful steward and cultivator of what God had given him. Moreover, when Adam and Eve were married, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Together they were to extend the fruitfulness of God’s Garden to wherever the four rivers from Eden flowed.
Later in Israel’s history, we learn that the priests were given this same task of guarding and keeping the Tabernacle. In Solomon’s Temple there were cherubim and palm trees and flowers and pomegranates carved into the walls, so that to enter the Temple was like entering the Garden of Eden again. To worship at the temple was to return to Paradise.
Likewise in Ezekiel’s Visionary Temple there was a river of healing waters that flowed from the sanctuary. It says in Ezekiel 47:12, “Along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.”
So from the very beginning, God gave to man the task of tending God’s garden sanctuary. Adam, like a priest, was to cultivate God’s vineyard and give Him the produce from it. This was instituted in the law by the various harvest festivals wherein the Israelites would bring their first fruits, their tithes and offerings, and offer them to God at His sanctuary.
Of course, these literal fruits were themselves symbolic of the person offering them. We are made out of earth, we cultivate the earth, the earth feeds us, and so to give God the fruit of the earth is to give Him a portion of ourselves.
We offer to God our first and our best produce as a sign that He owns us. We give Him tribute and a tithe to remind ourselves that we are stewards, we are servants, and God is in charge, He is Lord, He is master, and to Him belongs all things.
If we were to survey the entirety of Scripture, we would learn that human beings are signified by different kinds of plants and trees. Perhaps most famously in Psalm 1, we read that the person who meditates upon the law of God day and night is, “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season; His leaf also shall not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.”
So in the Bible, there are wicked men who are thorns and thistles, chaff and bramble bushes. And then there are the godly, the saints, who are as cedars of Lebanon, as pillars in the house of God, as Jachin and Boaz at the entrance of the temple. Or they are as Esther, whose name is Hadassah which refers to the humble and fair myrtle tree. Or they are as children who grow up like olive trees around the table. Or as Psalm 144:12 prays, “That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; That our daughters may be as pillars, Sculptured in palace style.”
So from Genesis to Revelation, human beings are portrayed as different kinds of plants and trees. And the nation of Israel itself is identified among other things as the vineyard of God.
We heard in Isaiah 5:7 that God says, “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, And the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; For righteousness, but behold, a cry for help.”
So people are trees, the vineyard is the nation of Israel, and what is the fruit that God desires? In Isaiah 5 it is justice and righteousness.
In Galatians 5 Paul expands this saying that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” This is what means to bear fruit for God.
When God placed Adam in the Garden to tend and keep it, he put him there to bear spiritual fruit. And the test for Adam was to obey God, by not stealing fruit from one forbidden tree. This test, Adam and Eve failed, and the history of Israel in the Old Testament is the story of many sons and daughters of Adam failing again and again.
So when Jesus comes along and tells this parable of the vineyard, we find that unlike some of Jesus’ other parables, this one is pretty easy to understand. So easy that even the scribes and Pharisees and elders can interpret it.
So this morning I want to consider this parable from two different perspectives:
First, we’ll consider it in its original historical setting as a judgment from Jesus upon the leaders in Jerusalem.
Second, we’ll apply this parable to the church today because we are now the vineyard of the Lord.
So we’ll look at this parable first as it applies to Jesus audience, and then as it applies to us.
#1 – Exposition of the Text
Verse 1
1And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winevat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
So let’s identify the different characters and figures in this allegory.
Who is the “certain man” who planted the vineyard? This is God, and specifically God the Father. He is later called the Lord of the Vineyard who sends his well-beloved son.
What is the “hedge” around the vineyard? Most likely this refers to the law of God which separated Israel from the nations, or perhaps the angels who were ordained to administer that covenant. Paul says in Galatians 3:19, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.”
So this hedge around the vineyard might be the law, it might be the angels, whatever the case, there is a hedge of protection around this vineyard.
What about the winevat? A winevat is a place where grapes are treaded and crushed into liquid. The winevat holds the blood of the grapes. In Isaiah 63:2-3 we read of God trampling his enemies “like a man treadeth in the winevat.” Since this is the place where the blood of the grapes is poured out, this is almost certainly a reference to the altar of sacrifice in the temple court.
As for the “tower” in the vineyard, this likely refers to the temple and sanctuary, which was the center of the nation and the high place to which all of Israel looked.In the parable,this tower would have functioned as a place to oversee what is happening in the vineyard.
What about the “husbandmen (γεωργοῖς)”? Who are they? A husbandman is a farmer, specifically a vine dresser in this case, and they are contract workers or tenants who lease the land from the owner in exchange for giving the owner a certain amount of fruit as rent.
By the end of this parable, the scribes, pharisees, and elders recognize that Jesus is talking about them. They are husbandmen, they are the God-ordained authority figures in Jerusalem who have been entrusted to guard and keep the people. They are the shepherds, they are the farmers, they are the overseers of God’s property. But they are renters/tenants who have contractual obligations to the owner while he is away in a far country.
So that’s the basic setup. Let us see now how this plays out.
Verses 2-5
2And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. 3And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. 4And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. 5And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.
Who are these servants that the Lord of the Vineyard sends? They are the prophets. Prophets are the ones who enforce the law of the covenant when it is not being kept.
Ordinarily, the husbandmen would be doing this (this is their job). But when the priests, and scribes and elders are failing in this duty, God raises up a prophet, sometimes from among them, sometimes from outside their ranks, and he sends that prophet to “enforce the contract,” to call them to repent and obey what they swore to do.
It says in Amos 3:7, “Surely the Lord God does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.”
So God sends Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Joel, Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, Jonah, Nahum, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and most recently, John the Baptist. And the message of all of these prophets could be summarized as, “repent and keep covenant with the Lord.” Listen to how John the Baptist preached this message, and note all the references to trees and fruit:
He says in Matthew 3:8-10, “Bring forth fruits keeping with repentance: 9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”
So John is the last of old covenant prophets, he is the last of the servants sent by the Lord of the Vineyard to receive fruit from Israel. And John’s message is that if you do not bear fruit, the axe is laid at the root of the trees, ready to cut you down and cast you into the fire.
How did the husbandmen respond to such a message? The scribes and pharisees refused John’s baptism, they refused to repent, and they are delighted when Herod cuts off his head.
Remember the context of this parable is that Jesus has just asked the leaders of Jerusalem, whether the baptism of John was from heaven, or from men. And they could not answer. And so Jesus gives them this parable as a final warning about where they are in the timeline of the story.
Jesus is giving them in story form what he will later make explicit in his “Woe’s” against these husbandmen. Jesus says in Matthew 23,“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? 34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35 That upon you 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. 36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
This is the judgment that these husbandmen are going to receive if they do not repent and keep the covenant. And so in verses 6-9, Jesus describes that immanent destruction in these terms…
Verses 6-9
6Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.
7But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.
8And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
9What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.
In Matthew’s version of this same parable, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”
So this a prophecy about a transfer of power from the leaders in Jerusalem, to Christ and the apostles.The husbandmen will be deposed, they will be fired, andthe Lord of the Vineyard will give to the Son all authority in heaven and on earth, and then the Son delegates that authority to the Apostles as they lay the foundation for the church.
The church is the new vineyard that God plants in Jesus Christ. Christ’s body is composed of both Jew and Gentile, and together, we are as it says in 1 Peter 2:9-10, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God…”
Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:9, “For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry (γεώργιον, cultivated land), ye are God’s building.”
The church is God’s vineyard, we are now that holy nation who is to bring forth the fruit that the Lord of the Vineyard desires.
Jesus then concludes his parable by asking these husbandmen, the Sanhedrin, if they know their own song book. He says…
Verses 10-12
10And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: 11This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? [that is a quote from Psalm 118:22-23]
12And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.
So Jesus uses Psalm 118 to sum up the point of his parable. Which is that God himself is going to come to His vineyard in the form of a servant, he will be rejected, he will be murdered by the husbandmen, but somehow, miraculously, he will become the cornerstone for a new temple and a new nation. This is what the murder of the well-beloved son ironically brings about.For “this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
Well that’s our exposition, let us turn now to apply this parable to us as the church.
#2 – Application to the Church
Just as the nation of Israel had husbandmen/tenants to watch over and tend the vineyard for God, so also the church has elders and deacons and at times civil rulers to watch over her.
One of the major differences between Jesus’ parable of the vineyard, and the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5, is that in Isaiah the vineyard was destroyed and laid waste, whereas in Jesus’ parable, the wicked tenants are destroyed, and new tenants are installed, so the vineyard survives. Jesus says, “he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.”
So we see in the book of Acts, the remnant of faithful Jews was preserved, they became Christians. Gentiles were joined together with them as the gospel went forth. And the apostles ordained elders and deacons throughout the church to be the new tenants over God’s vineyard.
There is warning then in this parable for all who are in authority, but especially for us who have authority in God’s vineyard. And the warning is that if we are unfaithful tenants, if we do not keep and enforce the law of Christ, if we do not give the master his fruit in its season, then we also shall be destroyed.
How does the Apostle Paul refer to himself in so many of his letters? As “Paul a servant of Christ.” Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Elders, Deacons, we are all servants and stewards who tend to God’s property. The saints are God’s vineyard, God wants the fruit of the Spirit, justice and righteousness must be growing among us, and our job as husbandmen, as servants, is to help make that happen.
Of course, we cannot in ourselves make anything grow, that is God’s job, but as Paul says, one man plants, another waters, but it is God who gives the growth.
So our job among you is to till the soil, to pull the weeds, to prune the branches, and keep our the little foxes that soil the vines. Our job is to make you sure get plenty of sunlight and nourishment (which can be hard to do in the PNW).
How do we do this? This is why we have Reformation Roundtable and Ladies Fellowship and Mid-Week Service and Psalm Sings and Feast days and do counseling meetings and elder visits. But most importantly this is what Lord’s Day Worship is, this is what our liturgy seeks to accomplish.
We confess our sins; we ask God to take away our bad fruit. We profess our faith; the creed is like a trellis for the vine to shows us how to grow up into Christ. We sing the psalms to teach us to how to pray, to teach us how to worship, how to feel and how to govern our feelings by the Holy Spirit.
We hear the word of God read. We fellowship together before and after service. We partake of communion. We play. We eat snacks. This is all light and fresh air that our souls desperately need.
And perhaps most importantly, we hear the word of God preached. Scripture tells us that preaching is like the scattering of seed upon the soil. James 1:21 says, “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” (1 Cor. 3:6).
So God through his servants, through his ministers, through the liturgy, through His Word, tends to his beloved vineyard, which is you.
Our job is to make sure that you are abiding in Christ and bearing fruit for God. And your job, is to bear fruit that remains.
So we each have our job. And all of us are going to have to give an account for what we did with what God entrusted to us. Were you a faithful member? Are you bearing fruit? Are you turning a profit on the trials and challenges that God has given you? Are you serving the Lord with joy, or do you have a bad attitude?
We have a great and high calling as the people of God. And so look to your branches. What are you producing? Paul says in Galatians 6:8-9, “For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
Conclusion
When you read this parable and see how the wicked tenants treated the Lord’s servants, it is almost unbelievable that after all those deaths and beatings and mistreatment of his servants, that the Lord would think to send his most-beloved son and say, “they will reverence him” (vs. 6).
Imagine you owned a property on the other side of the country. And you hired someone to manage it for you, and had not received a single dollar of rent money in 15 years. You had sent letters, you had sent employees to go and collect what was owed to you. But instead the manager you hired killed those employees of yours and is now claiming your property as his own. How would you feel? What would you do?
First of all, none of us is that patient. None of us would allow 15 years to go by without getting paid from our property. Our patience would have been spent after the first year we were not paid and after the first servant got killed. And the last thing we would do is send what is most precious to us, our own child, to go and collect what is owed from such a wicked manager.
And yet, this is what God has done for the human race. He has been exceedingly and painfully patient with us and our sins. When he tells us his name, He calls himself “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps.103:8).
How many years have you not given to God the fruit that He deserves? How long will you go on sowing to your flesh and reaping corruption?
God sent Christ to give you a fresh start. So take it! Receive forgiveness. Repent and keep covenant. If you do this, you will be saved.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: The Fourfold Advent of Our Lord (Christmas Eve Evening Homily)

The Fourfold Advent of Our LordSunday, December 24th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Psalm 50:2-32 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.3 Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence…
Prayer
O Father, we praise you for your infinite wisdom. We thank you for making good on your promise to send a savior to crush the serpent’s head, to save the world from sin and death, and to renew all creation, so that your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Come unto us now, by the power of your Holy Spirit, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, and Amen.
Introduction
Tonight, we celebrate the fourth and final Sunday of Advent. Advent simply means “coming” or “arrival,” and traditionally, the first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the new church year, and then the final Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of Christmastide, or the twelve days of Christmas. It was also customary in the church to preach a sermon on each Sunday of Advent that focused on one of the different comings/advents of our Lord. In Holy Scripture, Jesus is said to come to us in many ways, and so this is a season not only of remembering his first coming to earth as a baby, born of the virgin Mary, but also to remember the other ways he has promised to come to us. And so this evening I want to consider the fourfold coming/advent of our Lord. You can consider this four different advent sermons all condensed into one.
So what are the four ways in which Jesus is said to come to us in Holy Scripture?
#1 – The First Advent: Incarnation
The first, as I mentioned before, is Christ’s coming to us in the Incarnation.
This coming of God in the flesh, was prophesied in manifold ways in the Old Testament.
For example, Micah 5:2 speaks of a ruler who will come from Bethlehem, “Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
Whoever this ruler is that will come from Bethlehem, is someone who also has existed from time everlasting, from ancient of days. Who else but God can be said to “go forth from everlasting?”
Likewise, Isaiah 9:6 speaks of a child who will be born, “And the government shall be upon his shoulder, And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
Jesus is called Wonderful because a single name cannot suffice to describe all his excellency. As the angel of the Lord said to Samson’s father in Judges 13:18, “Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?”
Jesus is also called Counselor because he possesses the fullness of all wisdom.
He is called the Mighty God because His power is infinite.
He is called the everlasting Father, not referring to God the Father, but to the Son as the one who begets many sons to glory (Heb. 2:10), and as it says in Isaiah 22:21, “he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, And to the house of Judah.”
Jesus is also called The Prince of Peace because he is the one mediator between God and man, and as it says in Ephesians 2:14, “He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation.”
Who else but God could be this child born and given to rule forever? His goings forth were of old, even from everlasting, and yet this eternal Word from the Father was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
So Christ comes to us in the fullness of time, born of a woman, born under the law, born to save us from our sins. The God who cannot change, the God who cannot die, took to himself a human nature, so that in our nature, he could die and in so doing conquer death (and our fear of death) once and for all. As Jesus says in John 10:18, “No one takes my life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” Who else can say this but God?
It is this first coming of Christ that establishes all the rest. And during his first advent and ministry on earth, Jesus promised also to come into us. And so we’ll call this second advent, “the coming of Christ into our soul.”
#2 – The Second Advent: Christ Comes into Our Soul
Jesus says in John 14:23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
How does Christ and the Father, come to dwell in us?
Well, first we must consider who we are as human beings, what are the “places” inside of us that God could possibly come and dwell in?
Because God is immaterial, it should be obvious that He cannot dwell in us like food dwells in our bodies.And of course, Jesus says in Matthew 15:17, “whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated.” So (transubstantiation notwithstanding) God does not come and dwell in our bodies in any corporeal or material fashion, nor could He, because God is a spirit (John 4:24).
So if it’s not our body that God comes into, well there is only one other place God could come and dwell, and that is in our soul.
In order to understand how God comes into our soul, we need to know what our soul is.
The soul is that which gives life to the body. In technical terms, we say the soul is the substantial form of the body, it is what gives us our shape. So the essence of human nature is to have soul and body joined together, and when they are separated, we call that death.
And yet within the soul, we can distinguish different powers. The highest of our powers are what we call rational/intellectual powers, in biblical terms this is the image of God in us, and is sometimes called the spirit, or the mind, or the heart (1 Thess. 5:23, Heb. 4:12, Mark 12:28). This refers to the strictly immaterial aspect of our soul which we can further distinguish into two powers or “places.”
1. Intellect/Reason, which is ordered towards the universal truth. Our intellect is where we apprehend, judge, and reason. It’s also where we abstract species from our physical senses and retain them in our memory.
2. Will/Rational Appetite, which is ordered towards the universal good. It is where we enjoy, delight, intend, deliberate, take counsel, and choose.
Put another way, the intellect is where we judge what is true, and the will is where we love what is good. And together these two rational powers are given to us by God to order everything beneath them (our appetites, our passions, emotions, etc.).
And it is in these two highest “places” of our soul that God comes and indwells us by grace. Christ dwells in us as the truth that we apprehend and hold onto (we call this faith), and Christ dwells in us as the object of our love, as the beloved is in the lover (we call this charity). When we tell our spouse or our children that they are “inside of our hearts,” this is basically what we mean. In a similar way Christ comes into us, and we are in Him.
Let give me you some examples of this from the New Testament.
Paul says Ephesians 3:17-19, I pray, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Likewise in 1 John 4:12-16 it says, “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
Notice that in both these texts (and there are many others), God is said to come and dwell inside of us when we have true knowledge of Him by faith, and when we love God and love one another.
So if you want Christ to come and live within you, you must first know who He is in his first coming, and then adore Him. Jesus says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
That is the coming of Christ into our soul. So Christ comes first in the incarnation, He then comes by grace into our soul, and then the third advent/coming of Christ is when He comes to us at death.
#3 – Third Advent: Christ Coming to Us at Death
Jesus says in John 14:3, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
The context of this statement is the immanent death of Christ, and the fear the disciples have about Jesus dying and leaving them. And so to give them comfort, Jesus tells them that although he is indeed going away, he is going to prepare a place for them, and afterwards he will come and receive them to himself, so that they will be together always.
The place that Jesus is going is to the Father. Just before this in verse 2, he says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
According to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthian 5, our life in this mortal body is like living in a house that wears out, and breaks down, and has issues, and is eventually demolished. We are all fixer-uppers that eventually get bulldozed. And Paul says that while we are in this earthly house, “we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.”
The promise that Jesus gives his disciples, is that there is a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, that awaits us when we die. It is the Father’s house, and there are many mansions inside of it. That is, there are many ways in which we will enjoy the infinite happiness of God.
And so for the Christian, who has Christ dwelling in them by knowledge and by love, death is when Christ comes to us with an inseparable fullness. Death is when Christ brings us to the Father’s house, and we behold God face to face. For as Jesus promises in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8).
If God is your refuge and strength in this life, then when you die, He will become your home and dwelling place forever. This is how Christ comes to us at death, to receive us into everlasting life.
Finally, Jesus promises to come again at the final judgment.
#4 – Fourth Advent: The Final Judgment
After Jesus ascended into heaven in Acts 1, the angels say to the disciples, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 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.”
So just as Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, so also He shall come bodily back to earth.
This final coming in judgment is described in Revelation 20 as follows. John says, “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.”
This present life is passing away. We are only here a for a little while, and then judgment. And how you feel about the final coming of Christ, will depend upon how you respond to the first coming of Christ.
Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God? Do you receive from Him forgiveness for your sins? Do you love Him and embrace Him as your ruler, king, and master?
If so, then the final coming of Christ, will be your victory. It will be the day of your resurrection unto glory, it will be a day of crowning, and entrance into an ever-increasing enjoyment of His kingdom.
But if you refuse this Christ, if you do not repent of your sins. Then this life is as close to heaven as you’ll ever get. And that’s pretty sad. So do not choose the lake of fire, do not choose the second death. Choose Christ today, and know that this time when he comes, he will not keep silent.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: The Christ of Christmas (John 1:1-5, 14)

The Christ of ChristmasSunday, December 24th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
John 1:1-5, 14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Prayer
Father your Word says in Jeremiah 17, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man…[but] Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” O God, we believe that Jesus Christ is no mere man, and therefore we put our trust in him, as one is who is very God of very God, begotten not made, of one substance with You O Holy Father. We also confess on behalf of our nation that we are rightly cursed for trusting in men, in flesh, in mammon, rather than in God who raises the dead. We ask that you would dispel such misplaced trust in our own hearts, and establish us firmly in the faith once received. We ask this in Christ’s name, and Amen.
Introduction
Merry Christmas to you all. This morning I want to do something a little different than what I normally offer you in the sermon. As most of you know we have been preaching verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark, we started back in April, and have made it through chapter 11. So we will still have a little ways to go. And while verse by verse exposition is typically my preferred method for preaching (because it is easier), it is equally or perhaps even more important to teach the word of God topically, that is where we gather what all of Scripture has to say about one doctrine, and then expound the truth of that doctrine rather than just a single text. Both methods are legitimate, each has its own virtue according to the preacher’s intended end, but this morning I want to give you one of those topical sermons. And the sermon this morning is going to focus on a single question and that is, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
On the surface, that may sound like a rather easy or simple question to answer, and yet history testifies to how difficult this question actually is. Moreover, Scripture itself warns us that there will be false versions of Christ and false prophets and false doctrines about Christ that we must be on guard against.
The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 1:8-9, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed (anathema). As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
There is one gospel, there is one Christ, and God reserves the strongest words of condemnation (anathema) for those who preach a different gospel or a different Christ than what was already preached to them.
Moreover, He commands the church in Jude 3, to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
Why? Verse 4, “Because certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As soon as the truth of who Christ is came into this world, wicked men governed by evil spirits and impure thoughts attacked the truth and began to mix it with many errors. And so the first 700 years of church history, wherein six ecumenical councils were convened, were marked by the church defining the truth, clarifying the truth, explaining the truth, and at times dying for the truth.
That is how our forefathers contended for the faith, and without their efforts, and without their sufferings, and exiles, and martyrdoms, perhaps none of us in this room would be Christians today.
The Nicene creed that we recite every Lord’s Day is the result of a world in crisis over the identity of Jesus Christ. The questions that we ask before someone is baptized, are questions about the identity of Jesus Christ. Your very salvation, your eternal destiny hangs upon how you answer this question, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
And so this morning I want to answer that question according to the Holy Scriptures, and then survey how this truth has been defended against various heresies and competing interpretations of who Jesus is. So the outline of the sermon is as follows:
1. A basic explanation of who Christ is.
2. A summary defense of that explanation from our passage (John 1:1-5, 14).
3. Heresy Parade wherein we will look at and then refute each heresy the church has faced.
#1 – A Basic Explanation of Who Christ Is
According to the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon, there are three basic truths that Scripture gives us about Christ.
1. Jesus Christ is fully God.
2. Jesus Christ is fully man.
3. Jesus Christ is one divine person.
Put another way, Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who has taken to himself a fully human nature. In theological terms we call this joining of the human nature with the divine, the hypostatic union. The two natures are united in the hypostasis/person who is the Son.
So Jesus is God in the flesh, He is one divine person with two distinct natures, and the divine nature and human nature do not mix, they do not mingle, they do not morph into some third thing, they are joined together hypostatically, in the Son of God.
If that seems hard to understand well it is, but it is in no way a contradiction in terms or in reality. The mystery of the incarnation is not saying that there are square circles, or circular squares, or that 2+2=5. No. There is a real, genuine, and harmonious truth that Scripture gives us about Christ, and the creeds summarize for us what that truth is.
To give you just one imperfect analogy for how Jesus can be one person with two natures, consider that you are one person and you have two natures. Every person has a body and a soul, and those two natures come together and form a human person.
Jesus however, is not a human person. He is a divine person with a divine nature, and then he joins to himself the fullness of human nature, which includes the nature of body and the nature of soul (together we call those two things human nature). And so while Jesus has a divine mind and a human mind, a divine will and a human will, this is only possible because he is a divine person, not a human person.
We can kind of understand this a little bit when we feel tension between our two natures. The alarm goes off in the morning, our body is tired, but our mind says, gotta get up. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And while we have that tension in ourselves because of sin, Jesus had no sin, and therefore even his human mind could perfectly rule his human body (as we have seen in Mark’s gospel).
So these analogies help us to see that while we cannot fully understand the hypostatic union, there is nothing contradictory about it. We are one person; we have two natures. Jesus is one divine person, and he has two natures.
And what you will find in the history of the church, is that just about every heresy about Christ is a denial of one of those three basic truths. That Jesus is fully God, Jesus is fully man, and Jesus is one divine person. And we’ll see this more clearly when we get to our heresy parade.
Well let us move now to our text and see how the church arrived at these three basic truths.
It has been said that in these opening two verses of John’s gospel, together with verse 14, are contained all the truths necessary to refute every heresy about Christ. If we consider well what is contained in these verses, we will arrive at the true doctrine of Christ.
#2 – Exposition of John 1:1-5, 14
Verses 1-2
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God.
John does four things in these opening lines of His gospel.
First, he tells us when the Word was, “in the beginning.”
Second, he tells us where the Word was, “the Word was with God.”
Third, he tells us what the Word was, “the Word was God.”
Fourth, he tells us in what mode the Word was, he “was in the beginning with God.”
Together these four statements establish that the Word who became flesh (in verse 14) is wholly divine. So let us examine each phrase in greater detail.
“In the beginning was the Word.” (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος)
Our English word Word translates the Greek logos. But what is a logos/word? We need to think about this deeply.
A spoken word is vocal sound that is a sign of an affection in our soul. Before we make any noise with our mouth to communicate to others, first we form in ourselves or conceive some notion or intention of what we want to express. And it is that interior idea or understanding that we call an interior word/logos/verbum. And then when we make sounds with our mouth to communicate that concept in our mind, we call that spoken sound an exterior word/logos/verbum.
So with us and among creatures, a Word is something that is first intellectual, interior to us, and immaterial, it is something that proceeds from within ourselves as we understand something, and yet this Word/logos is distinct from us. It is in us, but not identical to us. There is a lot more we could say about this but for now let that suffice. A Word/logos is first a concept/notion of understanding in our mind.
John says, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Why does John say, “in the beginning?”
This word beginning translates the Greek word arche, (in Latin it is principium). And arche/principium/beginning can have a diversity of meanings.
It of course can refer naturally to the beginning of time. But it can also refer to the first principle/cause in certain hierarchy or order. It can refer to the point at which two surfaces or lines meet (ie. a corner or an arch). It can refer to the beginning or first principle from which we gain further understanding (Heb. 5:12). It can even refer to a person, like a ruler or authority figure, Paul speaks of Jesus spoiling the principalities (τὰς ἀρχὰς).
And yet whatever meaning of arche is intended here, John makes known to us that in the beginning the Word already was, whether of time, or order, or anything created, when those things were, already the Word was.
As it says of wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-23, “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.”
So pick your beginning, pick your arche, whatever and whenever it is, John tells us the Word already was. And thus we have established that this intellectual, interior, and immaterial Word is what we call “eternal.”
Next we are told…
“and the Word was with God,” (καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν,)
So when was the Word? Always. In the beginning he was. And now where was the Word in his eternity? The Word was with God.
So here we now have two subjects, God and the Word. They are both distinct and yet together, they are “with” one another before the beginning.
This “with” signifies as we will discover in the next phrase, a union of nature between God and the Word. The Word was with God in that they share the divine nature (they are both God). And yet this “with” also signifies that they are distinct from one another. There is a genuine relation of otherness between the Word and God such that they can be said to be with one another.
So the Word was with God as sharing the divine nature, and with God as somehow distinct from Him.
Next we are told…
“and the Word was God.” (καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.)
So when was the Word? Always, eternally. Where was the Word? With God as together and yet distinct from Him. And now what is the Word? The Word was God.
By this identity of Word and God, we are forced to further adjust our concept of Word so that it matches up with everything else we know about God.
So whereas a Word that proceeds from our intellect is both in us and distinct from us, it is not of the same nature as us. Put another way, our conception or understanding of ourself is not identical to who we are as real beings. It is real in our mind, but it is not real outside of our mind.
But when it comes to the Word in God, this interior procession in the Divine Intellect, God’s own self-understanding, is of the same nature as God. John is telling us God and God’s Word are both God.
We can also add that this Divine Word is unchanging and immoveable. Whereas our thoughts and words change and develop over time or are forgotten altogether, the Divine Word comprehends everything, eternally, in Himself, and knows everything through His own essence. God’s Word and God’s Essence are One.
We should also note that however we account for this Word being with God, in God, and God, it does not and cannot equal out to two gods, that would be a genuine contradiction of John’s statement. There is one singular God all the way through.
So here is the beginning of the mystery of the Trinity. There is one God. And yet there is a real procession in the Divine Mind that John calls the Word. And this Word adds nothing new to the Divine Essence, it just is the Divine Essence, the Word was God.
Finally, in verse 2 we have our fourth phrase which is a kind of epilogue and summary of these three statements that ties it all together.
Verse 2
2 The same was in the beginning with God. (οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεόν.)
Just in case there was any misunderstanding about the previous three statements, John clarifies here that this same Word was with God in the beginning. So contrary to Arius, there was never a time when the Word was not. When God was, the Word was also. The Word is what we call coeternal and consubstantial (of the same nature) with God.
And then in case you still did not believe that this Word is really God, John says in verse 3…
Verse 3
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
So according to Genesis 1, who created the world? God. And here John is telling us that this Word is the one God who made everything, “without him was not any thing made that was made.”
John is really clear that this Word is God. You cannot say that the Word is a lower created being, because the Word is the one who created everything. If it has being, the Word gave that thing its being, “all things were made by him.”
Furthermore, in verses 4 and 5, John tells us that this Divine Word has life in Himself.
Verses 4-5
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
So whatever life, whatever knowledge and light that men possess, it comes from the Word who is God. And the darkness cannot encompass it. The Word is the light that is impossible to extinguish. He is the light and life of men.
And so take all of what John says about the Word here in these 5 verses, and see what John does with it in verse 14, “And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Who is Jesus Christ?
According to John 1, he is the Divine Word who was in the beginning with God, eternally begotten from the Father, who was made flesh and dwelt among us.
Jesus is the one divine person we call the Son of God. He has the fullness of divinity from the Father, and a real human nature like you and I, except without sin. For he is full of grace and truth.
So there’s a brief exposition of our text. Let us turn now to consider how this biblical doctrine of Christ was challenged by a parade of heresies. And these are printed for you in the bulletin.
And I remind you that every heresy boils down to a rejection of one of three truths.
1. Jesus is fully God.
2. Jesus is fully man.
3. Jesus is one divine person.
So as we go through these different heresies, you can try figure out which truth they are rejecting.
#3 – Heresy Parade
The first heresy in our parade is Docetism (which is a form of Gnosticism), which taught that Jesus only seemed/appeared to have a real human body, but in reality he was a pure spirit.
Which truth does this deny? That Jesus is fully human, Docetism denies that God came in real human flesh.
Against this heresy, it says in 2 John 6, “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.”
Likewise in 1 John 4:3 it says, “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”
So contrary to many of the reformers and even the original Westminster Divines, Pope Francis is not The Antichrist. The Antichrist is not a future incarnation of the devil. An antichrist is anyone who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. It says in 1 John 2:22, “He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”
So there were many antichrists in the apostolic era (1 John 2:18), and that spirit of antichrist continues down to the present day in all who reject the Father and the Son, and the full humanity of Jesus Christ. This includes Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Atheists, etc.
Simultaneous with various Gnostic heresies, there were also some uniquely Jewish heresies like Ebionism that taught that Jesus was the supreme prophet, he perfectly kept the law of God, and was adopted as God’s Son at his baptism.
Which truth does this deny? That Jesus is fully God. You can imagine how this would be a temptation for many Jews who could not square their Old Testament monotheism, with the belief that Jesus is God in the flesh. And so they tried to split the difference, by acknowledging that Jesus was the greatest of men and inspired by God, but not identical to the One Supreme and Invisible God.
Against this heresy you have the witness of all four gospels where Jesus does what only God can do, like forgiving sin.
So in the apostolic and early church era there were all kinds of fringe belief systems, gnostic and Jewish heresies, but the first real great doctrinal crisis came from within the church, amongst its own leaders, and this became known as the Arian crisis.
Arius (256-336 AD) was a presbyter who taught that “there was a time when the Son was not.” He believed that if Jesus is God, then that makes two Gods, the Son and the Father, and this would of course violate monotheism. So by trying to protect the Father as the one God, he taught that Jesus was an exalted but created being.
This doctrinal division was tearing the Roman Empire apart, and so in 325 AD, the emperor Constantine called for the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (modern day Turkey) to settle this dispute.
The result of this church council was the original version of the Nicene Creed, which stated against Arius’ position that the Lord Jesus Christ is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence (homoousias) as the Father…”
It then pronounced anathemas against anyone who taught otherwise: “As for those who say, ‘there was a time when He [the Logos] was not,’ and ‘He was not before He was created,’ and ‘He was created out of nothing, or out of another essence or thing,’ and ‘the Son of God is created, or changeable, or can alter,’ the holy catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes those who say such things.”
Arius refused to sign the Creed of Nicaea, and so Constantine sent him and two other bishops who refused to sign, into exile.
This defense of the truth and its victory over error marks the beginnings of what would eventually become Christendom. For here in Constantine was the most powerful man on the face of the earth, and he was defending and enforcing the orthodox faith, the true religion.
Constantine knew what many Christians now overtly reject, namely that an empire cannot stand unless the truth of Christianity prevails. If there is a division and schism in the church, there will be even greater division and war in society. And only the true Jesus Christ can be the glue that holds everything together.
This is also just what the first commandment teaches. “You shall have no other gods beside me.” The Christianity that Arius proclaimed was a different God and a different Christ than what Scripture teachers, and therefore it was rightly condemned as heretical.
By the way, do you know what happened to Arius? Eleven years after the Council of Nicaea, Arian Christianity was on the rise, the great Athanasius was in exile, and the church in Constantinople was preparing to formally bring Arius back into the church. But on the day before the ceremony in 336, he was in a public restroom, where he suffered a hemorrhage in his intestines and died.
Christ is the king of his church. And he will defend her from wicked heretics.
Summary: So Arianism denied that Jesus was fully God, and at the next ecumenical council in 381 AD, the church would have to refute a new and opposite error, called Apollinarianism.
Apollinarianism taught that Jesus was God but denied that Jesus had a human mind/soul. In Apollinarianism, the divine mind replaced Jesus’ human mind, and therefore, which truth do they deny? That Jesus is fully man.
This was rejected at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, and out of this controversy, Gregory of Nazianzus established an important principle in Christology that is, “What has not been assumed [by the Son of God] has not been healed.” In other words, if the fullness of our humanity (our mind/soul especially), has not been united to God, then that part of our nature has not been redeemed.
Therefore, in order to secure our complete salvation, Jesus Christ had to have a complete human nature joined to His Divine Person.
Against this idea that Jesus had no human mind/soul, we can point to texts such as Hebrews 4:15 which says, that Jesus “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Or the many places where Jesus does something that only someone with a human mind can do, like marvel (Matt. 8:10), or lay down one’s life/soul (John 10:17) or increase in wisdom (Luke 2:52).
So as much as we must defend that Jesus Christ is a fully divine person, we also must defend that Jesus Christ has a fully human nature, that is our real humanity minus sin and its effects.
The next great heresy that arose was Nestorianism, which taught that Christ is two persons, a divine person and a human person. This was rejected at the council of Ephesus in 431.
One of the creedal affirmations that came out of this controversy and was included 20 years later in the Definition of Chalcedon (which our church holds to), was that Mary was the mother of God (theotokos in Greek).
I’ll read you the relevant line from the Definition of Chalcedon, “He was begotten before the ages from the Father according to his deity, but in the last days for us and our salvation, the same one was born of the Virgin Mary, the bearer of God (Theotokos), according to his humanity.”
So this is not saying that Mary is divine or that she somehow gave divinity to Jesus, but what it does force you to say is that Mary gave birth to a divine person (the Son of God) according to his humanity.
If you think about it, to reject Mary as theotokos, as God-bearer, is to divide Jesus into two persons, as if the baby Jesus who comes out of her is not the Son of God, but rather some other individual. The theotokos title for Mary ensures that Jesus Christ is one divine person, not two persons, and not a human person with a divine nature. This is the genius of the Definition of Chalcedon which goes on to say, “He is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, and Only Begotten, who is made known in two natures (physeis) united unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. The distinction between the natures (physeis) is not at all destroyed because of the union, but rather the property of each nature (physis) is preserved and concurs together into one person (prosopon) and subsistence (hypostasis). He is not separated or divided into two persons (prosopa), but he is one and the same Son, the Only Begotten, God the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way the prophets spoke of him from the beginning, and Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and the Council of the fathers has handed the faith down to us.”
If you want the best creedal formula for who Christ is, read the Definition of Chalcedon.
After Chalcedon there were two other errors that had to be refuted. One was Monophysitism, which taught that Christ had only one divine nature, so Jesus was not fully man. And then there was a lighter form of Apollinarianism called Monotheletism, which affirmed two natures in Christ, but denied that Jesus had a human will. Both of these heresies were soundly rejected on Chalcedonian principles, and thus ends our heresy parade.
Conclusion
Peter says in Acts 4:12, that there is no other name under heaven but Jesus Christ of Nazareth by which we must be saved. And what we learn from John’s gospel, what we learn from church history, is that it really matters what you mean by the name Jesus Christ.
Even Arius said that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” but he meant something false by it, and so it is who do you say that Jesus Christ is? Confess He is God, Confess He is fully man, and confess that He is one divine person. For there is no other Christ but this, than can save you.
In the name of the Father, and the Word, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Lesson 4: Humaniform Structures (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture)

Review of Lesson 3
We are in the middle of giving a theological account for how the Bible makes us to say that “God is present.” And the reason we are doing this is because we are trying to understand the significance and meaning of the Tabernacle and Temple.
And because both of these physical structures are symbols of God’s presence, we want to make sure we understand the ways in which God can actually be present, so that we tie our symbols to a concrete reality. The whole point of a symbol/sign is to lead us to the actual thing signified, and in this case, it is the reality of God’s Presence.
There are three ways that Scripture makes us to say that God is present. Does anyone remember those three kinds of presence?
1. Common Presence: God is present in every reality as giving them to be (efficient cause).2. Special Presence: God is present in a special way by grace in believers.3. Hypostatic Presence: God is wholly present in Christ.
We ended Lesson 3 by comparing and contrasting God’s Omnipresence (Common Presence) with various heretical beliefs such as pantheism and monism.
Pantheism teaches that God is the soul of the world, or that God fills the world like the soul fills the body. This is ultimately a form of monism that posits no real distinction between God and creatures.
Both pantheism and monism commit the cardinal sin of making God a creature, either by attributing to him some vast spiritual body that fills the world like air fills a balloon, or by making us all a part of God and one with him in essence.
The crucial distinction we have to make when we talk about God’s relationship to the world is that God is present everywhere as the efficient cause, not as the material cause.
God is present to creation like C.S. Lewis is present to Narnia, in that He gives it being. This is an analogy for God’s efficient causation.
God is not present to creation as the material substance (atoms, molecules, etc.) that everything is made out of. God gives things to be (efficient cause), God is not the material out of which things are made (material cause).
Summary: Acts 17:28 says, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” From this we arrive at the true judgment that: God is present in every reality, not as being contained within creation, but as containing all creation as giving them existence.
To use the balloon analogy again, God is in creation, not like air is inside a balloon, but as the one blowing air into the balloon from outside.
So that is God’s Common Presence, any questions before we talk about God’s special and hypostatic presence?
Lesson 4 – Humaniform Structures
The New Testament explicitly tells us that the Tabernacle/Temple are figures of Christ and the Church. That is, these architectural structures symbolize the Divine Person of the Son who became incarnate, and the body and bride of Christ that is you and I, the church.
Christ as Tabernacle & Temple:
John 1:14 says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, σκηνόω, lit. tented/tabernacled) among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
John 2:19-21 says, “Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body.”
The Church/Christians as Tabernacle & Temple”
2 Peter 1:13-14 says, “Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent (σκηνώματι, σκήνωμα, lit. habitation, see Acts 7:46 and Psalm 132:5), to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.
2 Corinthians 5:1-5 says, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”
St. Thomas says, “Man is called a mind, since that is the most important thing in man. Now this mind is to the body as a man is to a house. For just as the man living in a house is not destroyed, when the house is destroyed, but he continues to exist, so when the body is destroyed, the mind, i.e., the rational soul, is not destroyed, but continues to exist.” (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~2Cor.C5.L1.n153.2)
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
Summary: So both Christ and the Church are called Tabernacles/Temples in the New Testament, but where is this idea coming from? Well the idea that these structures signified a person can be found in the very letters of the Old Testament. I will give you just a few examples of this from 1 Kings 6.
Old Testament Hints of a Humaniform Structure
1 Kings 6 describes the construction of Solomon’s Temple. And there we find a variety of anatomical terms for this building.
1 Kings 6:1-5And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. 2 And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
Note first that the dimensions are derived from the human body. A cubit (אַמָּה) is about 1.5 feet and is derived from measuring the elbow to the tip of your middle finger.
The original Tabernacle was 30 cubits long (about 45 feet). The Temple was double that at 60 cubits in length.
Smaller items like the table of showbread included dimensions such as the hand breadth (Ex. 25:25). The breastplate for the high priest was measured as a span in length and breadth (Ex. 28:16).
3 And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.
Now this is obscured in English, but in Hebrew, where we read “and the porch before the temple” or some translation have “in front of the temple,” it says in Hebrew, עַל־פְּנֵי֙ הֵיכַ֣ל “upon the face of the temple.”
So the imagery is that the entrance to the holy place is an entrance into the face/mind/head of the temple.
Next time, we will look at a few more examples of this and then explore the implications.

Sermon: By What Authority (Mark 11:27-33)

By What Authority?Sunday, December 10th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 11:27-33
27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? 29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me. 31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32 But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for giving to Christ all authority in heaven and on earth. We thank you Lord Jesus for commissioning the apostles to proclaim your death and resurrection to all creation. We thank you also for the faithful transmission of that message to us living in 2023, the Year of Our Lord’s Everlasting Dominion. We ask now for your Holy Spirit to descend upon us and give us fresh faith and courage, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
It is Tuesday of Passion Week in Mark’s Gospel.
On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding upon a donkey.
On Monday, Jesus cursed a fig tree and enacted judgment on the temple.
And now here on Tuesday, Jesus again comes to Jerusalem, but this time is confronted by “the chief priests, scribes, and elders.”
The charge against Jesus is that he has no jurisdiction in the temple. The Jewish authorities want to know by what authority Jesus is teaching and healing and rearranging things. They want to see his “license and registration please.” “By what authority do you do these things?” They ask.
And what follows in this brief interchange is Jesus exposing the Jewish leadership for the frauds they are. Jesus knows they are hypocrites and blind guides, who are seeking to murder him, and therefore as the king who is wiser and greater than Solomon, Jesus brings the true proverb to pass that “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls a stone will have it roll back on him.”
The question that the Jews are using to trap Jesus to discount his authority, will end up rolling back on them and discounting their authority.
What wicked men employ for the destruction of our Lord, will become the instrument of their own destruction. This is the wisdom and justice of God, so let us watch as our Master go to work against the corruption in His House.
Outline of the Text
Our text divides neatly into four sections.
In verses 27-28, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus by what authority he does what he does.
In verses 29-30, Jesus responds with a counter-question.
In verses 31-33a, the Jewish leaders deliberate and give no answer.
In verse 33b, Jesus likewise refuses to answer.
This passage is a kind of Q&A session between two adversaries. On one hand we have Jesus, prophet, messiah, populist, and God, and on the other hand we have the Jewish elite and aristocracy. And the scene that plays out here in the public square, is a scene that will be replayed a few days later, but in private, when Jesus is secretly captured, tried, and condemned in the middle of the night. So this scene anticipates the charges that will lead to Christ’s crucifixion. “Who are you and by what authority do you come?” So let us expound our text.
Verses 27-28
27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?
This reference to the “chief priests, scribes, and elders” should remind us of what Jesus predicted back Mark 8:31, where it says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
So this is the beginning of that rejection that Jesus foretold. Who were these three groups?
The chief priests were the highest ecclesiastical/church authority.
The scribes were the highest legal authority being experts in the law.
And the elders are the highest non-priestly authorities.
Together these groups composed the high council in Jerusalem, which is sometimes called the Sanhedrin.
So these are the heads of the most influential families in Jerusalem.
A modern equivalent would be something like if all three branches of our civil government got together (the president, the supreme court, and congress), and also all the highest religious leaders, the bishops, the denominational heads, the CEO’s of the big publishing houses, and together they sent a delegation to Jesus and asked him, “who do you think you are?”
That is what the high council in Jerusalem functioned like. As far as they are concerned, with the exception of Caesar, they are the highest authority in Jerusalem.
So they are in the temple (likely in the outer court), and it is Jesus and his disciples one on side, and this Jerusalem council on the other. And undoubtedly a large crowd gathers to see this showdown.
They ask Jesus, “By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?”
Now before we see how Jesus answers. Think about how Jesus could have answered.
Jesus is God, and He could have just said right then and there, I am God. I am the Creator. I am the Word made flesh. I am that I AM.
But Jesus chooses not to do this.
He could have also said, I am Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, and if you look up my family lineage, I am the promised son of David who would be born in Bethlehem. I am the Messiah from the tribe of Judah you all have been waiting for.
But again, Jesus chooses not to say this either.
Why is that?
Think about why Jesus came in the first place. He came to offer his life as a sacrifice for sinners. Jesus says in John 10:17-18,“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”
So in this great conflict between good and evil, between Jesus and Jerusalem, there is this deep irony that both sides want Jesus dead; just for very different reasons.
Jesus wants to die to save the world. And the chief priests want him dead because he is a threat to their power.
But despite this apparent unity of purpose, the time has not yet come for Jesus to offer up his life. Before he lays it down of his own accord, at his own will, he comes to give these authorities another chance to repent. And should they refuse, he will expose them for the wicked shepherds and frauds that they are.
In a very real sense, Jesus has come as a judge, to gather evidence, to hear testimony, and to see with his own eyes how the chief priests, scribes, and elders are doing. Are they obeying God’s law? Are they doing justice and mercy? Are they teaching true doctrine?
Jesus is kind of like the owner of a company, who dresses up as a customer to see how the supervisors and management are treating those they are called to serve.
As God, Jesus is the owner of the Temple (it’s his house). As God, Jesus is the authority from which the chief priests, scribes, and elders, derive their authority.
And when we get to chapter 12, immediately following this scene, Jesus will give them the parable of the vineyard owner, which essentially makes this same point.
God is the owner of the vineyard, and these leaders are the wicked tenants who murder the owner’s son.
Jesus is like that undercover boss who goes to see how management is doing. And behold, they are all going to get fired.
So they want to know where Jesus authority comes from, and Jesus answers with a counter-question.
Verses 29-30
29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.
This is one of those great trick questions that makes you marvel at Christ’s wisdom. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:19, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness.” He beats them at their own game.
In a certain respect, by posing this counter-question, Jesus is indirectly giving them the answer to theirs.
Where did Jesus’ authority come from?
Well humanly speaking, who ordained Jesus to the ministry? John the Baptist. Jesus’ baptism by John, at 30 years of age, was his ordination ceremony, after which his public ministry began.
Moreover, who was John the Baptist? He was the son of Zacharias the priest. John was of priestly lineage, just like the chief priests were. He was the miracle son of Zacharias and Elizabeth, who was filled with the Holy Spirit, even from the womb (Luke 1:15).
And so John the Baptist had all the right credentials for a priest and prophet. Remember it was in the temple, where Zacharias had ministered 33 years earlier, that an angel appeared to him to announce John’s heavenly calling.
But despite all these signs and wonders, it says in Luke 7:30, “But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.”
So apart from Jesus’ divine authority as being the very person of the Word, the eternal Son of God, he also hadthis publicly known ordination from a publicly recognized prophet who was descended from the priestly line.
And so in a certain sense, Jesus counter-question is a statement that his authority (humanly speaking) comes from John. And so what you think about John’s authority, is what you should think about Christ’s. If John’s authority was from heaven, so also is Christ’s.
So how do these chief priests, scribes, and elders answer?
Verses 31-33a
31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32 But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell.
This Jerusalem council recognizes that if they say that John’s authority was from heaven, they condemn themselves as having rejected God’s authority. They would have to admit that they were wrong, which nobody ever wants to do.
And so they would like to say that John’s authority was from men. They would like to claim that John was a false prophet, or self-ordained, and discredit his whole ministry. And this they would do except that the masses believed John was a prophet and many had been baptized by him. If they say John’s authority was from men, or was false, they would be endangering their own lives.
For as the parallel passage in Luke 20:6 says, “But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
So Jesus has cornered them. Either they acknowledge that John’s authority and therefore Jesus’ authority are heavenly, or if they say it was from men, the people will stone them. And therefore, they choose the best of their bad options, which is to plead ignorance. They tap out and concede the question saying, “we cannot tell.”
And then in 33b, it says…
Verse 33b
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Jesus has just publicly humiliated the highest authorities in Jerusalem. They tried to double down on their rejection of Christ by questioning his authority, and Jesus makes them pay, now their authority is in question.
It is this showdown that precipitates and accelerates their desire to murder him. What do proud men fear the most? They fear losing their power, their reputation, their authority, they fear losing the basis of their pride. And with one question, Jesus has threatened all of that.
What was this council’s whole job after all? It was to judge and discern the will of God. And if they cannot do this, they show themselves to be disqualified and unfit for office.
The chief priests were in charge of maintaining God’s worship at the Temple.
The scribes were in charge of interpreting and applying God’s law.
And the elders were in charge of judging and enforcing God’s law.
And so if they are unable to discern that John was a true prophet (as he was), they show themselves to be false judges who have no real interest in the truth.
And so Jesus gives them just enough rope to hang themselves.
Well that is the exposition of our text. Let us make a few applications now from it.
Application #1
The longer you reject Christ’s authority, the more miserable your life becomes.
Take this Jerusalem council as a cautionary tale for what happens when you reject Christ as Lord.
These men were given countless opportunities to repent. They had heard John preach; they had heard Jesus teach. They were eyewitnesses of the invisible God coming in the flesh. And yet because they did not love the truth, they were blind to His arrival, so blind that they murdered him.
For many people, the obstacle to salvation is not a lack of data, it is not a lack of knowledge, instead it is their own unwillingness to admit they are wrong, that keeps them from heaven. Hell is locked from the inside, and it is the pride of man that prevents him from being truly happy.
Do you think the chief priests, scribes, and elders, were happy, joyful, contented men? Is anyone happy who has to constantly keep up appearances, and justify themselves to themselves, and spin lies and believe those lies to soothe their conscience? No. Living in sin is miserable, and one of the first signs of God’s grace in our lives, is that we recognize just how miserable we are without God.
Repentance happens when you are willing to say, “I am wrong. God is right. I am not the highest authority, Christ is, and I will submit myself to his judgment. Whatever he says, goes.”
The Jerusalem authorities were unwilling to undergo a temporary humiliation so that they might be eternally exalted with Christ. And when you refuse God’s will for your salvation, the harder it gets to repent, and the more blind and miserable you become.
The person is self-deceived who thinks he can sin now and repent later. Which is why the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, “We then, as workers together with Christ also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
It is dangerous to presume upon the grace of God. For no man knows when his last day might be, or when God shall require of him his soul.
And therefore, “If today you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Lest you become like Esau of whom it says in Hebrews 12:17, that “when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”
If you refuse to repent now, what makes you think you will choose any differently later? Esau rejected God’s blessing, he sold it to Jacob, and later when he wanted that blessing, his repentance was not genuine, but rather it was a worldly sorrow that leads to death. And we know this because the next thing Esau did was try to kill Jacob. Just as the Sanhedrin will try to kill Christ.
Remember that sin is a liar. Sin is a deceiver. Sin is not your friend. Sin promises life but leads to death. And the longer you persist in sin, and reject Christ’s authority, the more miserable you will become. So make confession. Come clean. Do not do as the scribes and Pharisees, and reject God’s will for your life.
Application #2
If Christ is Lord, then his authority has no bounds. And therefore, your submission to Him must be absolute.
The sin that many professing Christians commit, is that of thinking they can pick and choose which areas of their life they will surrender to God, and which areas will remain under their own authority. They live as if, “Jesus can be Lord of Sunday morning, but the rest of the week belongs to me.”
And what is this but the same sin as the Sanhedrin. They let Christ clear out some portion of the temple, but anything more and they’ll murder him.
If you are a temple, as the Bible says you are, then where is Christ not allowed to go?
If your life is a house, which rooms are “off limits” to Jesus?
Is there a closet or an attic that is too messy to let him into?
Is there a “man cave” where you keep your secret vices that no one knows about. No one except God.
Whatever you have deemed “off-limits,” wherever you are still holding on to your authority, Jesus has come to take over.
Why did Jesus suffer and die? Because he wants all of you.
Why does he call us to repent of our sins? Because he wants you to be truly happy and at peace with Him.
The absolute authority of Jesus Christ is the greatest news in the world. Because in Christ, perfect love and perfect goodness is married with perfect power. And that means, God’s authority in your life is unbreakably and infallibly good for you. There is no room that if you let Him into, that he will not renovate and cleanse and make better than before. It might be embarrassing to let him see what’s inside, but He is the one who already knows.
So drop the front. Stop lying. Don’t double down like the Pharisees did. Open the door, and let Christ in. Let him rule everywhere.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.