Good Friday – 3/30/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Luke 23:44-46

⁴⁴ It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, ⁴⁵ for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶ Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Does “Good Friday” confuse you a little?  Children often ask how a man is executed on a cross and we can call it “good.”  Of course I answer with the standard Easter message and all the theological wisdom I have been taught.  But if I want to experience Good Friday, along with the original disciples, I’m going to allow myself to be completely confused.

Peter denied our lord three times during the trial of Jesus.  Don’t be hard on him, you would have done the same.  It is said that Peter denied knowing him because he was afraid that the Romans would come after him next.  While this was true, I suspect that Peter also denied Jesus for the same reason Judas did; because all Jews knew that Messiah could not hung on a tree (Galatians 3:13),  and the way that the trial was going, it looked like this was where he was headed.  Now none of the disciples could be sure that they ever really knew him at all.

Messiah was supposed to come and destroy the oppressors of the Israelites (Rome) in the fashion of King David – but here he was executed by the Romans.

Messiah was supposed to redeem the Israelites like God had done when he redeemed them from Egypt back in the days of Moses – but a dead messiah cannot possibly do that.

Messiah was supposed to be God’s approved Man of God – but certainly Jesus was not Messiah because he was dead.

It must have been terrible to see Jesus die.  The disappointment they must have felt when they realized that they had given up everything to follow him for three years only to realize that he was dead must have been horrific.  They must have thought more than once that they wished they could just wake up and have it be simply a terrible nightmare.  

But this was “Good Friday” and the terrible confusion would torment them for the next agonizingly long three days.

Matthew 18:3
³ And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The Jewish Me – 3/18/2018

WARNING PREACHY…

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NIV)

³¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

³³ “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.  ”I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ³⁴ No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

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I have listed all the sermons in Acts below in a chart (I stole this from a website that in turn stole it from a book).  What is interesting in all of these sermons is that it does not sound a bit like what I hear at my church (and I say “my church” meaning the protestant church in general).  As I peruse the themes below I realize something that is missing, can you tell what it is?  What’s missing is the class on the authority of the Scriptures.  While the authority of the Scripture is indeed an important class the early church did not start there – if ever they went there. 

I’ve been reading a book by N.T. Wright called Paul, A Biography[1] (Buy it here! http://a.co/7CdwKpl) and I was alerted to the fact that the Apostle Paul was a first century Jewish man who understood the Gospel of Jesus differently than I do as a twenty-first century Christian.

Well Duh that makes absolute sense!  That explains why Paul doesn’t write with an Enlightenment world view nor with a dominant Reformed perspective.  Dr. Wright is correct when he states that if this is how we read our New Testaments then we are misreading it.

Now to Jeremiah, the passage above.

This proclamation by the Prophet is the promise of God.  It is the promise of God from all the way back in the beginning in Genesis 12 when God promised Abram that He would make him into a great nation so that he could be a blessing to the nations.  For the Jews, this was the Gospel (the Good News), that God had at long last fulfilled His promise and redeemed the Israelites through the Messiah – Jesus Christ! 

The reason however that there was so much issue from the Jewish community was that the Jews did not believe that God would use a crucified Messiah to redeem them, many (most) would not believe that it would be through shame and weakness that God would restore Israel.  I guess they expected to have a little less egg on their faces when God “defeated” the nations.  But for the Apostles and Jesus it was a gospel of how the Kingdom of God had come, and was here, and for Paul, the fulfillment of God’s promise was about how He has used Israel to usher in the blessing to the Gentiles through their Crucified Messiah.

As I read Dr. Wright’s book I am becoming aware of how completely Enlightened and reformed I am in my thinking and I’m considering that I need to take a course in how to think Jewish.  I have been grafted into the Jewish family of Abraham (Romans 11:11-31) and I have been adopted (Ephesians 1:5) into the very family of God – even though I am a Gentile!  (And you are too unless you are Jewish: then no, not you.)

This changes everything for me.  Instead of a Gospel that asks if you are “going to heaven when you die?”  The question is now “are you a part of the Kingdom of God while you live?”  For indeed Jesus was crucified on the Cross to destroy the sin and death of Adam and gives you new life that you might live and be a blessing to the nations!  The gospel I am used to is self-focused where this gospel saves me so that I will be a blessing.  I like it! I think I’ll preach it.

Back in the Garden Adam and Eve ate the fruit of a tree that brought them death.  Now, through the crucified Messiah we are brought to a tree that gives us life.  

John 15:5

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Major Sermons and Preaching in the Book of Acts
SERMON	THEME	BIBLICAL REFERENCE
Peter to Crowds at Pentecost	Peter’s Explanation of Pentecost	Acts 2:14-40
Peter to Crowds at the Temple	The Jewish People should repent for crucifying the Messiah	Acts 3:12-26
Peter to the Sanhedrin	Testimony that a helpless man was healed by the power of Jesus	Acts 4:5-12
Stephen to the Sanhedrin	Stephen reviews Jewish history, accusing the Jews of killing the Messiah	Acts 7
Philip to the Samaritans	Philip flees Jerusalem after the stoning of Stephen and begins to preach to the Samaritans	Acts 8:5
Peter to Gentiles	Gentiles can be saved in the same manner as Jews	Acts 10:28-47
Peter to church at Jerusalem	Peter’s Testimony of his experiences at Joppa and a defense of this ministry to the Gentiles	Acts 11:4-18
Paul to Synagogue at Antioch	Jesus was the Messiah in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies	Acts 13:16-41
Paul and Barnabus at Iconium	Paul and Barnabus spoke boldly in Iconium’s Jewish Synagogue, causing many to believe and disbelievers to stir up opposition	Acts 14:3-7
Peter to Jerusalem Council	Salvation by grace available to all	Acts 15:7-11
James to Jerusalem Council	Gentile converts do not require circumcision	Acts 15:13-21
Paul and Silas in Prison	Paul and Silas preach to the prison guard after a terrible earthquake	Acts 16:31
Paul in Athens at the Areopagus	Paul preaches the Gospel in the Athenian culture that has no knowledge of the God of Judaism	Acts 17:22-35
Paul to Ephesian Elders	Remain faithful in spite of false teachers and persecution	Acts 20:17-35
Paul to crowd at Jerusalem	Paul’s statement of his conversion and his mission to the Gentiles	Acts 22:1-21
Paul to Sanhedrin	Paul’s defense declaring himself a Pharisee and Roman Citizen	Acts 23:1-6
Paul’s defense before Felix in Caesarea	Paul proclaims his righteousness and judgment to come	Acts 24:10-21
Paul to King Agrippa	Paul’s statement of his conversion and zeal for the Gospel	Acts 26:2-23
Paul to Jewish leaders at Rome	Paul’s statement about his Jewish Heritage	Acts 28:17-20[2]

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[1] Paul, A Biography, 2018: N.T. Wright.  http://a.co/7CdwKpl

[2] https://www.leadershipresources.org/blog/list-of-sermons-in-acts/