The phrase “The Great Exchange” is often attributed to Martin Luther. Whether or not the phrase originated with him, the concept is simply the Biblical teaching that salvation hinges upon the placing of our guilt for sin on Christ at the cross, and the imputation of His righteousness to Believers through faith. In R. C. Sproul’s “How Can I Be Right With God” he summarizes the Scripture teaching as: “We are blessed because our sin is not counted to us but imputed to Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us by God’s forensic decree.” Sproul, R. C. 2017. How Can I Be Right with God?. First edition. Vol. 26. The Crucial Questions Series. Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust: A Division of Ligonier Ministries.
Now that has been the core of Biblical theology on the subject from the very beginning. Praise God for it!
But in our day, in 21st century America, the Great Exchange above has been supplanted by many for a different, and not-so-great-exchange. It is the exchange of lives consumed with spreading the Gospel of the saving grace of Jesus Christ and being transformed into His image by the power of the Spirit, to being consumed with preserving Western Culture and American Constitutionalism.
And it’s a raw deal.
The idea of praying “Your kingdom come” has been reshaped from seeking the fullness of Christ’s Kingship in our lives and His return to rule and reign on earth, to Christ helping us preserve the American way of life, and that, in material prosperity. We are no longer preoccupied with prosecuting the battle against the remnants of indwelling sin in ourselves and defending the faith once for all delivered to the saints, but battling the sin we perceive in others trying to encroach on an idealized and romantic notion of Americanism. It is Leave-it-to-Beaverism; as though the corruption of humankind hidden beneath the veneer of imagined external Pollyanna days was less deadly than the corruption we are increasingly seeing lived out in the culture. The dread disease was always there and just as fatal – it was just kept out of sight. Some.
When growing in Christ’s image no longer takes precedence, then other’s sins and other causes do.
The prayer closet has been exchanged for the voting booth.
Don’t get me wrong, Christians have civic responsibilities. We should carry them out as conscientiously as we can. But there is no policy, even legislated from the most godly body that can actually deal with sin, only certain of its manifestations. Is that good? Sure. But does it change anyone? Does it bring them into right standing with God? Does it produce actual righteousness? No. Only the Gospel can do that. It is not an ultimate answer. That doesn’t mean we ignore it, only that we do not see it as an end. We want to, we are commanded to – do good to our neighbors. But good that does not address the soul is only wallpapering a gaping hole in the wall.
Man’s problem is a sin problem, not a policy problem. Not a political system problem. Not a cultural problem. And we cannot win a spiritual war with earthly weapons or tactics “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) To which Paul by The Spirit adds His “therefore”. Therefore what? Sue? Vote? Become activists? Campaign? Hold rallies? Finance pacs? Decry conspiracies? March? No – take up the whole armor of God.
Now hear me – I’m not saying we can’t do all those other things. I’m not saying they are not useful to some degree. If my basement is flooding, I need to be about the business of bailing. Such bailing is needed to stave off further damage. But if I do not attack the broken pipe, if I do not stem the source of the flood – no matter how heroically I bail – in the end, the flood will overtake me and all will be lost. When Jesus was asleep in the boat in Mark 4, the Disciples tried to rouse Him to help. Help them what? Help manage the boat in the storm. And if that is what He did, how tragic the result would have been. They needed supernatural aid to their very real, existential peril. They needed Him to stand up and rebuke the wind and the waves, even though they weren’t aware He could even do that.
The Church, the nation, doesn’t need a revival of Americanism and/or patriotism, it needs a revival of souls through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Until the people of God are more interested in God’s plans and purposes than our own, for His cosmic and eternal causes and not for our temporary and temporal ones, we will be distracted by an exchange that damns men’s souls while attempting to recover human institutions.
So we’ve begun this look at prayer as a means to bring our own hearts and minds into tune with God’s great plans and purposes. Jesus teaches us to begin with a plea for the Father’s name to be rightly revered, respected and “hallowed.” For in the final analysis, nothing can be of greater importance than for God to be seen and related to rightly for who and what He is. It is the ultimate blessing for us as creatures. It is the end of all of Christ’s work. It overthrows everything of the Fall. And in the moment, it shores up the heart of the fainting saint. When you are facing big things – you need to see your truly big God.
This, Jesus asks us to consider in our prayers of first importance. We do not need to linger long there; though at times, we may begin turning our thoughts this way in prayer, and may find it an umbrella to all else we pray. But spend a few moments before Him considering this, and the rest will flow.
Secondly, He asks to pray that the Father’s Kingdom might come – might be fully manifested. Once again we see the hinge to vs. 33 – “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
And here, is a most vital matter for our hearts to consider before His throne – and that in 3 ways above all others.
1 – Heavenly Father – let your kingdom come IN me. Rule me. Own me. Possess me fully. Fill me with your Spirit so that Christ dwells in my heart through faith. Bring my emotions, my perceptions, my attitudes, my plans and purposes, my desires and aspirations, my responses to all peoples and circumstances under the hand of your absolute Lordship. Let Christ reign unopposed in my heart and mind. Take command over every last vestige atom of sin within me. Let every word that comes from my mouth and the very strains of my thought-life be wholly acceptable to you; for you are my rock and my redeemer. Your Kingdom come – in me.
2 – Heavenly Father, let your kingdom come THROUGH me. Make me a sower of the Gospel in all the world around me. Advance your kingdom in granting opportunities to call the lost to faith in Christ, and to bless and strengthen my brothers and sisters in Christ. Help me to be of use in the building of your Church. Use me as your agent where your infinite wisdom deems best. I care nothing for the theater of my service, only that I serve you when and where and how your Providence deems most useful to that end. Give your Gospel great success; subdue the hearts of your enemies through it. Advance and expand your Church and its influence with great power. Your kingdom come.
3 – Heavenly Father, send Jesus to rule and reign manifestly on this earth. We pray for His return. We cry that You might put down all sin and rebellion in all the cosmos. That indeed, every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to your praise and glory. Establish your Kingdom in His return. Send Him Father. Let Him break the nations with a rod of iron. Let Him judge all mankind in truth and righteousness. Let Him overthrow every human government and be established as your true, anointed king. Heavenly Father, your kingdom come.
Beloved, spend a few moments to be reminded of the great glory of our God and king – in calming the heart and mind before Him in the hallowing of His name – and then seek Him to finish the work He has begun. Seek to enter into it yourself. Seek to have all sin and its tendencies to be brought under His tender yoke within you, until the day when in His appearing, all sin is at last done away with.
Start here. Train the mind to go to these places first. It need not take long. But it will transform your inner man to rest and glory in Him – when all the world around you seems chaos and frightening.
Our Father, ruling and reigning in majesty above, may your name be restored in all the universe, and may your will be done on this earth even as it is in Heaven – immediately, unopposed and to the fullest degree. Amen.
Going all the way back to the 60’s (yeah, I go back even before that) – I heard discussions about how to make the Gospel relevant to people. Might I kindly but firmly say, that such thinking is completely upside down and misses the point of the Gospel entirely. In our preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the goal is to bring people back into a life of relevance to God! We were created FOR Him. He does not exist for us. In the Fall, we stepped away from our created purposes to follow our own plans and desires. And through the Gospel, we are reconciled back to God, so that we might once again take up His plans and purposes in the world. This is why the first petition Jesus taught us is of the highest importance.
In Luke 2 we’re told the account of Jesus when He was 12 years old, staying behind the returning caravan, in Jerusalem, after the Passover. His parents searched for Him for 3 days. When they finally find Him in the Temple interacting with the teachers there – His annoyed and no doubt worried parents – chasten Him for His action. His reply is noteworthy: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
He’s 12. But what is He about? His Father’s business. He is already living with an eye well past His immediate place and time. His heart and mind are set on the Father, on His plans, His purposes, His will.
So it is when He teaches us to pray, He seeks to help us come into that same heart/head space ourselves. To be drawn out of ourselves for a moment, to consider matters of cosmic importance. To consider God as God – and what that means. And as counterintuitive, as mind-boggling as it sounds – to pray for God in some way. This is truly astounding. What are we to pray for first? That the Father’s name would be hallowed. That the core issue in setting the cosmos right again – is seeing that the Father is honored, loved, respected, revered and “holified” once again – in all the universe.
Now this phrase, “hallowed be your name” can be thought of in many aspects, but let us consider only 4.
Jesus is forever desirous that His Father been seen and loved as He sees and loves Him because first and foremost – it is right. It is setting the cosmos to rights. And, because in it, we will find ultimate blessing ourselves.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
1 – Let your glory and wonder be restored and made real TO me, IN me, and THROUGH me.
All blessing comes from The Father. He is the source of all good. Good, without any defect. “The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” (Prov. 10:22) But when He is in any way suspect in our eyes; when we imagine that in some way, any way, His love toward us is defective and He does not have our best interest at heart or has not used His best wisdom in ordering His providences in our lives – we besmirch Him. So we need a fresh sense of His perfections and goodness toward us in all things.
When Peter is writhing to his exiled and suffering brethren, by The Spirit he writes: “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” (1 Pet. 3:13-15a) The way he tells them to endure suffering, must contain a heart and mind that is anchored in the fact that Christ is both Lord over their circumstances, and, that He is holy. That He cannot sin against them in His appointments. That He cannot do them wrong in any way. And we must begin there too beloved.
With all our needs, all our sorrows, all our cares, concerns, doubts, fears and worries – Father, help MY heart and mind, to hallow you aright. Be that holy, perfect, glorious, magnificent, all-loving, gracious, kind and compassionate sovereign TO ME! Be hallowed to ME right now. In this place in these circumstances. At this moment – open my eyes to the wonder of you afresh. And this, so that I might live in that reality, and might then proclaim that reality to the world.
A number of years ago, there was a TV commercial for Ritz Crackers. Andy Griffith was the spokesman, and the tag line was: “What are you hungry for when you don’t know what you’re hungry for?” Their answer? “Something on a crisp Ritz Cracker.”
Christians, what do you pray for when you don’t know what to pray for? That the Father’s name would be hallowed – and first and foremost to yourself. So that you may walk in love and confidence and trusting in a God who is so great, so glorious, so wondrous, so loving and true – that every dark shadow is blasted away by the refulgence of His bright glory.
Nothing, nothing will so strengthen, so cheer and refresh the soul as a fresh vision of His glory will. And so it is He teaches us to pray in this way before anything else. For all else will flow from this marvelous place.
As Spurgeon once wrote: “Depend upon it, there are countless holy influences which flow from the habitual maintenance of great thoughts of God, as there are incalculable mischiefs which flow from our small thoughts of him. The root of false theology is belittling God; and the essence of true divinity is greatening God, magnifying him, and enlarging our conceptions of his majesty and his glory to the utmost degree.” Spurgeon, C. H. 1891. “A Harp of Ten Strings.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, 37:446. London: Passmore & Alabaster.
Humor me as I take yet one more day to tease this out just a bit more. Trust me, it will be worth it. But for today, if you will take just five minutes to get alone with the Lord, and plead for the hallowing of His name afresh TO you, IN you and THROUGH you, you will find a new wellspring of freshness and joy welling up.
Our Father in heaven – Oh please, let your glorious wonder wash over our souls afresh today. May we bow in a true and renewed sense of your holy wonder even this very hour.
One of the destructive traits of our age, is the endless hype that surrounds communication – especially in the media.
Everything is a crisis. Every election, the most important in history. No one can just be excited about something, they have to be SUPER EXCITED! Every supplement is THE most essential to life. Every cause has us on the brink of extinction. Every everything is “the best in the history of the world!”
In the face of a truly serious issue in the Church, one that Jude interrupts his planned course to address, there is no panic, no absolute dire predictions. Yes this is serious. Yes this needs addressed. But this is Christ’s Church, Christ’s people, and even the very gates of Hell, death itself nor all the demon hordes together can prevail against it. So let’s not lose our heads.
So it is Jude apparently wanted to write somewhat generically about Christianity and the Christian life for his fellow Believers, but responds to the exigency of the day: Contending for the Faith. A faith that had already been delivered, and which by his assessment will admit of no additions, subtractions or innovations. “The Faith” was already a settled thing at this early point in history. This did not mean there would not be increased clarification in areas over time, but it did mean the essentials were already the essentials and that was a settled matter even by then.
Note secondly: Jude finds contending for the faith of more importance than contending for other, what even may be genuinely pressing and legitimate things.
Are we to assume there were no other issues his readers were facing? At what time in history has this ever been true? But there is no mention here of cultural, social, political, economic or others, which every Christian faces in each generation. But for Jude, if the basic faith is lost, everything else is moot.
If we were to believe the hype around us today IN the Church, we would be certain that politics, the sexual revolution, the economy and government overreach are our biggest concerns. When Jude wrote this letter, (probably in the mid-60’s AD) Nero was on the Roman throne. In 60, the great tragedy at Pompeii had just occured. In 64, the great fire in Rome, blamed on the Christians. Starting in 66, the first of the Jewish-Roman wars began which would find Jerusalem decimated in 70.
But the biggest concern on Jude’s mind – by The Spirit? The need to contend for The Faith, that was once for all time delivered unto the saints. Protecting and keeping The Faith. All other societal and global issues aside – this was to take precedence.
Note third: There were 3 chief things which challenged the faith “once for all delivered” in Jude’s mind.
a. The influence of ungodly men in the Church. And we must note these were IN the Church as professing Believers.
b. The perversion of grace into license to sin.
c. Failure to live with Christ as the authentic, rightful and absolute master of the Christian’s life. Not seeing ourselves as Christ’s slaves, set for His purposes and agenda. But being self-directed.
It is ever and always a danger that people will creep into the Church bringing with them some supposed completion to or advancement of the Gospel and the Christian life and experience, beyond what is recorded to be received in God’s Word. This is a perennial danger that needs to be resisted every time it rears its ugly head. This is a much needed battle Believers must enter into. This, is not a place for compromise. This is not to be tolerated. How we respond to it, as Jude will outline later – is just as important as that we respond. But we dare not ignore it.
What we know for sure from verse 4 is that God certainly will not ignore it. And He is not shy to tell us of their demise. Nor is this anything new. God has always had this end in view for those who would follow the recorded pattern: Religious but unregenerate purveyors of sinful behavior justified under a perverted notion of grace, and serving themselves to the de-throning of Christ.
Note lastly: Jude is not about “restoring” the Church to some imagined golden-age state. This is always part of the bedrock of every cult and false movement. Instead, Jude is calling us simply to defend and stand by what has already (and always) been committed into the Church’s hands. The sound truth of the Word and the Spirit of holiness. The church never needs to be reinvented.
Praise God! His Church WILL survive. He is still the Great Shepherd. This device of Satan will not prevail. And as His blood-bought ones, we have a job to do in contending for The Faith which was delivered to us from ancient times – and needs no modification.
The need to be born again.
The glory of true grace, grating us freedom FROM sin, not TO sin.
The most fundamental of all truths to the Believer – Jesus is Lord.
Due to the urgency and seriousness of the subject matter of Jude’s letter, The Spirit saw fit to give some preparatory material.
So in verse 1, in the letter’s first triad, Jude helps anchor his readers in the what genuine salvation consists in. Those who are true Believers in Christ Jesus have been called to that position by God’s sovereign grace, they are as loved as God can love by The Father, and they are being kept both by and for Jesus Christ and the final day. It is a glorious foundation indeed.
Verse 2 gives us the second triad or triplet of ideas.
Notice first: Given what Jude is about to discuss as both urgent and deadly serious, he is concerned that the subject matter will lead his readers into a merciless war against those he’ll be exposing, that their peace will be upset and that love will take a back seat. He is preparing them for what they are about to hear. How do we contend earnestly for core Gospel issues, without losing the need to be merciful to the deceived, at peace that the Lord is still Lord over His Church, and that God’s love never fails, nor should ours?
It is a massive lesson for us today when dealing with what may be dangerous ideas or trends in the Church. One thinks immediately of the way the political divide in America has fueled bitter debate and division in Churches.
This triad of things we need to have multiplied to us always, are a great means of preventing our being swept up into the false doctrines of false teachers. False teachers will major on personal worthiness, secrets to better peace with God for gain, and means to be better loved by God, or experience His love. This, because Christ is His fullness is not constantly brought before us.
Notice second: The need for multiplying Mercy.
Believers must never lose sight of how it is they are believers, by virtue of God’s mercy. There is never room for boasting. Never room for comparison. No place for any species of self-justification. And no minimizing our guilt and desert of eternal damnation. The realization of our guilt and that our salvation is the result of pure mercy needs to be magnified in our sight over and over. It must be multiplied. Herein is one of the great paradoxes of true Christianity – that we can only really understand God’s goodness, when we unsparingly embrace our fallenness. When we recognize that salvation is all of grace. And it is only when we are saturated with a sense of how mercied we are – that we will overflow with mercy toward others in their darkness, deception and straying from the central truths of the Faith.
May our sense of being the unworthy recipients of mercy in light of our own sins color the way we deal with others.
Notice third: The need for multiplying peace.
We must constantly remind ourselves of the wonder of Romans 5. Nothing so keeps and encourages the heart in all circumstances as does knowing that our peace with God is rooted in the finished work of Christ. That we are not on probation, but reconciled. The war with God is over, so that we can battle sin instead. And because we are the objects of His mercy, we can have peace even in the fiercest moments of that battle.
When the Church is troubled, we need peace regarding how we are kept in Him. Peace that His promise to complete His work in us cannot fail. Peace that our everlasting inheritance is secure. Peace that His Spirit always attends us, and that His Word is steadfast and sure. Peace that even in death, the resurrection to new life awaits us. Peace that even when this world is coming apart at the seams, and when life is at its hardest, He will not leave us nor forsake us. Peace, that even when the Church is challenged by the very ones Jude is about to mention, that Christ is still our great High Priest, and we are still held in his hands.
Notice fourth: The need for multiplying Love.
In concert with Paul’s prayer in Eph. 3:14-21, it is the knowledge of His great love multiplied to us so that we might be filled with all the fullness of God Himself. And this alone. We are not filled with His fullness through seminars, individual experiences, etc. We are so filled, when according to the riches of His own glory, and strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man so that Christ is at home in us as He is on His throne in Heaven – we are exposed to the height, depth, length and breadth of a love that surpasses knowledge. When we come to know we are loved by the Father even as The Son. Adopted heirs and co-heirs with Christ. Loved beyond all possible human imagination. Loved, not in the sense of merely felt for – but in the sense that the universe is ordered so as to advance our highest blessing in Him. Rom. 8:28.
O that we would be ever drinking at these fountains. How much less contentious we would be. For Jude will call us to contend for the faith, but not to be contentious, combative or pugnacious with those who oppose us. Only in this will we be merciful toward those who may foolishly stray for a time, and forget to love those caught in deceptions – while being merciless to the deceptions themselves. Such a balance comes only when mercy, peace and love are multiplied to us.
Jude is an extraordinary letter. It is remarkable on a number of fronts. Here are just a few.
1 – Its stylistic features – Jude’s penchant to bundle ideas in 3’s throughout.
2 – Its brevity. 25 verses, 459 words (in the ESV). A typical sermon of mine runs about 5,000 words.
3 – Its urgency. No other book, with the possible exception of The Revelation comes with such a sense of urgency. Jude himself says he intended to write to his audience about broader themes related to our salvation – but felt compelled to address a pressing need.
4 – Jude’s appeal to extra-Biblical material he knows his audience has interacted with.
5 – Jude’s obvious unwillingness to try and trade on being Jesus’ half-brother. He seeks no special authority.
6 – The unusual amount of shared material with 2 Peter.
7 – Jude’s assumption that the foundation of “The Faith” was already sufficiently established so that he could appeal to it without much detail.
8 – His most unexpected counsel as to how the Church ought to respond to the critical problem he cites as the reason for the letter in the first place.
Note first: Jude’s first triad. How does he denominate Christians? As those who are – “Called”, “Beloved in God the Father” and “kept for Jesus Christ.”
And we do not want to miss Jude’s thought process here. He is about to address his readers about a most urgent spiritual crisis among them. But he does not begin there. He begins by reminding them of who they are in Christ. He wants to them to be well fortified to face what he is about to unfold, by reaffirming their hearts and minds in the sureties of their salvation. He does not want them to be overwhelmed by the depth and severity of the problem they are facing.
Note second: The true Christian is first and foremost – called.
No one just stumbles into Christianity and right relationship with God. He must always initiate our coming to Him, or it is most certain we would never. In our fallen condition, we never seek Him out of ourselves, nor for Himself. As Paul draws from several Old Testament sources to make his case in this regard, he writes by The Spirit in Romans 3 “For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”
The idea here isn’t that man does not seek “god” in any sense, or there would not be idolatry as well as true religion. There are 2 things here:
1. No one seeks after the true God, excepting the Spirit of God working in him and drawing him. And this work, the Spirit is doing all the time. Thus we cannot absolutize this verse in a way that ignores or denies the Spirit of God at work all over the place, causing all manner of persons in all manner of places and circumstances to seek Him. He is active convincing the World of righteousness, sin and judgment. He draws people to Christ.
2. No man – left to him or her self, seeks God as God, for God. All man made religion seeks god in the sense of seeking power over circumstances and others, and in trying to clear oneself from the innate sense of guilt.
What then is to be done? How are any to be saved from God’s own just wrath? He must call us to Himself. For which purpose He does many things – but to speak of only 2: He sends His Church into the world to proclaim the Gospel to every creature – “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30); and secondly He sends His Spirit to draw them – “And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” (John 16:8-11)
Theologians have traditionally then divided God’s “call” into two species – The outward call of the Gospel to every human being which men resist, ignore, embrace and sometimes fall away from (see Jesus’ parable of the soils in Mark 4) , and the inward or effectual call of the Spirit which may be resisted, but the Spirit overcomes to make us Christ’s.
If you are Christ’s today beloved, a most miraculous thing has happened. The Gospel preached was like a seed planted in your heart, and the Spirit attended that seed that it might bring for new life in Jesus. He has called you to Himself. The sovereign Creator of all, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God of all – who rules and reigns in all power and authority over the cosmos – called you, by name, and despite all of your fallen objections and resistance, overcame them all to make you His own.
O what a wonder of wonders our salvation is! And who is this God who would do such for His enemies? Glory!
Note third: The Christian is not a Christian due to some mere transactional formulae in God. We are His, because He loved us! We love because He first loved us! (1 John 4:19)
Many have labored under the misconception that God the Father is like a grumpy old despot who only seeks revenge on His enemies, and that the kinder, milder Christ somehow interposed Himself between us, so that the Father must grudgingly save us. It is not so!
It was God the Father, who so loved the world, that He gave His only Son for us. Jesus coming and dying was the Father’s plan. He sent Jesus out of His great love.
Now contemplate this for a moment.
This God, who is as we just described Him above, who called you by name to Himself, did so out of the infinite depths of His love for you. You Believer are “beloved in God the Father.” Cherished. Valued. Esteemed. Delighted in. He takes pleasure in you. He did all He did in Christ that you might be reconciled to Him. That you might rejoice in Him, lavish in Him, delight in Him endlessly throughout the ages of eternity. “So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:7) We must do our utmost to deflect every lie of the Enemy who would somehow diminish in any capacity the purity and entirety of God’s love for His blood bought ones in Christ. As Galatians reminds us – faith works through love (Gal. 5:6) Our faith is always in direct proportion to our sense of God’s love for us. We must be convinced – supremely by the Cross – of His infinite, tender love for His own.
Note fourth: Believer’s are “kept”, preserved and protected – to be Christ’s Bride at His return.
The original here can be read two ways: Either that we are kept FOR Christ, or kept BY Christ. And perhaps it is best to just accept them both.
He has saved us, to be with us. Died for us, to purchase us. Rose again to raise us up. Sent His Spirit to seal us for the “day of redemption.” (Eph. 1:13; 4:30)
Many is the true Believer who in the aftermath of failure in sin, or due to the strains of external trials and tribulations is surrounded by dark clouds of doubt fearing they will not persevere in Christ to the end. It is not so! “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)
Weary, troubled, wounded fellow Believer – you are being kept by and for your Redeemer. And especially kept FOR Him, that He might take eternal delight in your union with Him as His own dear bride.
What glory belongs to us who are His by faith. Truly, the heart and mind of man are not capable of searching out the wonder of it all.
And so Jude begins his solemn and necessary letter – with the extraordinary reminder to his fellow Believers.
This is our last look into the Gospel according to Matthew. And it ends so wonderfully with Jesus’ appearance, and His commission to the disciples.
Note first: The very first thing Jesus does, is fulfill a promise. On the night of His passion, after the “last supper”, He told the disciples that they would all fall away because of Him that night and that the “Shepherd” would be struck. “But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.” (26:32) They had no idea what that meant at the time, but now, after the women leaving Jesus’ tomb carried the same message to them – it made some sense.
Now this is the way it is with so much of the Lord’s dealings with us. He often uses promises as proof. It is a dynamic we see throughout the Old Testament and it remains to this day. Why? Because it is the foundation of faith – believing what He has said is true, and acting accordingly. We see this most pointedly in Gen. 15, containing that most famous phrase: “he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”
When, in Gen. 15:8 Abraham asks how he is to know for sure that he will possess the land God had promised him – God has him offer a particular sacrifice and then presents him with – a promise: “Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
That’s it! A solemn promise. No more “proof” is offered. Faith grasps the promise, trusting the promisor. And this is the very same basis upon which the Gospel rests. We believe the promise that those who trust the words and works of Christ and rest the whole of our confidence in Him and His saving work on Calvary. We trust His substitution. That His sacrifice for sin on our behalf is alone sufficient to reconcile us to the Father. That He would send the Holy Spirit after His ascension and that He will come again to take us to Himself. We believe Him – and we are saved from the wrath of God. And we live in such a way as to demonstrate these promises to be the truth.
Following that earliest of patterns, Jesus promised them He would meet them in Galilee after He had risen, and so He did.
We can trust Him to fulfill EVERY promise.
Note second: While some of the Disciples immediately worshiped Him, some also had some doubts.
Just what those doubts may have been, the text does not make clear, and speculation is fruitless. What is wonderfully clear is that in simple obedience to go out and meet Him according to His promise, irrespective of their doubts – He still met them there.
Genuine Believers are not without their doubts. Sometimes we are confused. Faith can be weak, and yet be genuine faith. Listen to the words of John Rogers penned in 1634 – “Weak faith is true faith,—as precious, though not so great as strong faith: the same Holy Ghost the Author, the same Gospel the instrument…“If it never proves great, yet weak faith shall save; for it interests us in Christ, and makes Him and all His benefits ours. For it is not the strength of our faith that saves, but truth of our faith,—nor weakness of our faith that condemns, but the [lack] of faith; for the least faith lay[s] hold on Christ, and so will save us. Neither are we saved by the worth or quantity of our faith, but by Christ, who is laid hold on by a weak faith as well as a strong. Just as a weak hand that can put meat into the mouth shall feed and nourish the body as well as if it were a strong hand; seeing the body is not nourished by the strength of the hand, but by the goodness of the meat.” Ryle, J. C. Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots. William Hunt and Company, 1889, p. 182.
Don Carson supplies a most useful illustration regarding this principle.
“Supposing at the time of the first Passover, on Passover night, you have two Jews with the remarkable names Smith and Brown. Smith says to Brown, “Have you killed a Passover lamb yet and daubed your two doorposts and lintel with the blood of the Passover lamb?”
“Of course,” Brown says. “Moses has declared that the angel of death is going through the land tonight and anybody who doesn’t have the blood from the Passover lamb daubed on the doorposts and the lintel is going to lose their firstborn.” Smith says, “I know what Moses has said. I’ve daubed the blood as well, but you got to admit, there have been a lot of strange things that have gone on here the last little while.
Flies, frogs, water to blood, and all of that. I’ve only got one son. This is pretty shocking stuff. How is the angel going to tell that he shouldn’t take out my son?” Brown says, “Well, you have to trust what God has said through Moses. What God has said through Moses is if you kill a Passover lamb and put the blood on the doorposts and on the lintel then the angel will pass over. That’s why we call it a Passover lamb, for goodness’ sake. So don’t worry! If you’ve done what Moses said, don’t worry.”
Smith says, “That’s all right for you to say. You’ve got six kids already. You can afford to lose one. But in my case, it’s the only one. I’m really worried.” That night, the angel of the Lord passes through the land. Which one loses his son? The answer, of course, is neither. Because the condition is not made on the tenacity of the faith or the intensity of the faith or the sincerity of the faith or the maturity of the faith but on the object of the faith. Carson, D. A. 2016. “Revelation—Questions & Answers.” In D. A. Carson Sermon Library. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.
Yes, the faith of some of those was weak at first – but they still came. And so they still saw the resurrected Christ and still received the same commission to carry His gospel to the nations.
Praise God for His mercy toward us even in our weaknesses!
Note third: The wonder, clarity, simplicity and specificity of the Gospel commission.
Rooted first and foremost in Jesus’ cosmic authority – all authority in Heaven and on Earth –
1 – Go! Do not keep this to yourselves. Call upon everyone everywhere to become my Disciples.
2 – Make Disciples. Do not just tell them the good news of salvation wrought at Calvary – call them to give themselves to Me, to bow to My authority, to bring their lives into line with My eternal plans and purposes – to serve Me as Lord and love me as Savior. To come to know Me. To listen to My teaching. To trust Me. Don’t make them your disciples. Don’t bring them into a movement. Make them MY disciples.
3 – Make disciples of ALL nations. This is a global Gospel. The Gospel call is as broad as the human race.
Alexander MacLaren preaching on Eph. 3 writes: “What, Then, Is The Breadth Of That Love It is as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of Hi-love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in God’s great family, and none of them receives a more grudging or a less ample share of His love and goodness than every other. Far-stretching as the race, and curtaining it over as some great tent may enclose on a festal day a whole tribe, the breadth of Christ’s love is the breadth of humanity.
And it is universal because it is divine. No human mind can be stretched so as to comprehend the whole of the members of mankind, and no human heart can be so emptied of self as to be capable of this absolute universality and impartiality of affection. But the intellectual difficulties which stand in the way of the width of our affections, and the moral difficulties which stand still more frowningly and forbiddingly in the way, have no power over that love of Christ’s which is close and tender, and clinging with all the tenderness and closeness and clingingness of a human affection, and lofty and universal and passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calmness and eternity of a divine heart.
And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is broad. Our love is too often like the estuary of some great stream which runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow banks, but as soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. The intensity of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A universal philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ’s love is deep though it is wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread for five thousand men, women, and children, all seated on the grass, ‘and they did all eat and were filled.’
The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. He does not love as we do, who give a part of our heart to this one and a part to that one, and share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All this gift belongs to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every eye, and as every beholder sees the moon’s path across the dark waters, stretching from the place where He stands to the centre of light.
This broad love, universal as humanity, and deep as it is broad, is universal because it is individual. You and I have to generalise, as we say, when we try to extend our affections beyond the limits of household and family and personal friends, and the generalising is a sign of weakness and limitation. Nobody can love an abstraction, but God’s love and Christ’s love do not proceed in that fashion. He individualises, loving each and therefore loving all. It is because every man has a space in His heart singly and separately and conspicuously, that all men have a place there. So our task is to individualise this broad, universal love, and to say, in the simplicity of a glad faith, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’ The breadth is world-wide, and the whole breadth is condensed into, if I may so say, a shaft of light which may find its way through the narrowest chink of a single soul. There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ, both of them valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We have a right to say, ‘He loves all, therefore He loves me.’ And we have a right to say, ‘He loves me, therefore He loves all.’ For surely the love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul.
What is the breadth of the love of Christ? It is broad as mankind, it is narrow as myself.” MacLaren, Alexander. 2009. Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
4 – Baptizing them with the full authority of the triune Godhead. Baptizing for the purpose of identifying oneself as a disciple of Christ. And beware – using the Triune “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” is not some magic formula, as though the words somehow confer something. The idea is that the Triune God is giving His Church His own full authority to make disciples and baptize accordingly.
5 – Teaching them. Teaching them what? Not our opinions, ideas and pet concepts – teaching them to order their lives in accordance with all the JESUS has commanded. What He has spoken. And where do we find that? Only in His Word. Only in the Bible. Because He alone has all authority, it is His Word which conveys that authority, we do not. We have no authority but to call men to obey Christ’s Word. How this principle would protect the Church from abusers of all kinds. No man’s conscience is ever to be bound by us – only by Christ and His Word.
6 – Never forget, I am with you – as long as this time before my return lasts. Christ abides in and with His Church. In all places, at all times and in every generation. So we see Him in the Revelation, walking in the midst of His Churches, however flawed and in need of correction. We are not freelancers free-wheeling it. He is with us. Both to comfort, guide and discipline as needed.
All this being said – now go.
Holy Spirit, fill us and illumine us as we do. God your Gospel success in the hearts and minds of men everywhere. To God in Christ be all the glory, both now and forever more. Amen.
Is the picture above one of a white vase, or two silhouetted faces? It depends on your perspective.
The eye of faith grasps one thing. The eye of unbelief, another.
It would be hard to find a contrast more stark than that contain in verses 11-15, over and against 16-20.
The first is a commission to lie and obscure the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. It was designed to keep people in darkness and bondage.
Vs. 11 says that while the Marys were off telling the disciples the good news of Jesus resurrection, some of the guard went to the chief priests. Both told the very same story. But both came to very different responses. And herein is the work of Satan in the world writ large for us to see.
In Eden, Satan’s chief tool and tactic was to obscure the truth – especially the truth about God. Nothing has changed. This is why the Word of God is so central to the Believer, and the World as a whole. We must have some source of “true-truth” as Francis Schaeffer would phrase it. Personal perspectives, opinions and conjectures can bring eternal life to no one. We must know what THE truth really is if we are to know God and know ourselves.
We must know that God crested the heavens and the earth. That all that exists exists with a purpose and that by the omnipotent God who made it all for His own purposes.
We must know that humankind was made in the image of this God.
We must know that humankind – to a man – has rebelled against God’s right of supremacy over our lives, and that we are lost and condemned in our sin of rebellion.
We must know that God in His constitutional holiness and justice cannot simply dismiss sin, but must satisfy His own justice in judgment.
We must know that we have no means to be reconciled to our Creator by our own devices.
We must know God’s only provided means for that reconciliation, in having sent His Son – Jesus the Christ – to live in perfect holiness, and die a substitutionary death on a cross to satisfy His justice, and make a way for the unjust.
We must know that this salvation is held out to us, not because we deserve it, but because in His glorious, inscrutable love and grace – He delights to rescue His enemies and reconcile them to Himself, and at that, at the highest cost imaginable.
We must know that the only way we can have access to this salvation and reconciliation is by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of this Jesus.
Without knowledge of these basic realities, we live lost, aimless, purposeless, ultimately meaningless lives which end in judgement.
The second commission was by Jesus to the Marys to go and tell.
What the women told the disciples, motivated them to go to Galilee that they might see Jesus. What the guards told the priests, motivated them to do everything they could to keep people from seeing Jesus. And so it remains today.
The facts remained the same for both. Jesus rose from the dead. Angels attended His resurrection. He appeared to many. We will either embrace these truths so as to fall at the feet of the Savior, or respond by indifference and/or deliberate opposition. This is the difference that defines our eternity.
To you reader, if you do not yet know Him – know this: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
From Matthew 27:62-66 / Trying to do the Impossible
There are two passages in the Gospels that I find truly humorous. The first, is John 12:10 “So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well.” It it weren’t so seriously tragic on the part of the priests, one would have to laugh hysterically. Like Lazarus could in any way possible be intimidated by the threat of death after having been raised after 4 days dead. The very thought of it is so ludicrous as to defy one’s imagination. “Ooooh” I can hear him saying when he heard it – “they’re going to kill me. I’m SO scared!” Pretty tough to worry a guy who spent 4 days in the grave, only to be resurrected by the mere word of his Savior.
The 2nd humorous passage, again for how utterly ludicrous it is – is this one before us.
Jesus is dead and buried. Ostensibly, the fear on the part of the chief priests (Sadduccees) and the Pharisees was that Jesus’ disciples would come and take His body out of the grave and then claim He had risen from the dead. Little did they know He would soon appear to more than 500 (1 Cor. 15:6) – and that, all at one time.
What made their fear and attempt to secure the tomb so foolish? The promises of Ps. 16:8-11, expounded by Peter on the Day of Pentecost. Acts 2:23-24 has Peter saying: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
Did you catch that last sentence? It was not POSSIBLE for Jesus to remain bound by death. It was not possible. And why can Peter make that claim? “For” vs. 25 begins – because, David has prophesied of Jesus hundreds of years earlier that The Father would not suffer the Son to “see corruption;” to succumb to the inevitable decay which attaches itself to every lifeless corpse. No, as David would say: “I saw the Lord always before me.”
So it is Peter in his Pentecost sermon unpacks the following elements of this astounding and prophetic Psalm.
Why was it impossible for the grave to hold Jesus?
a. Because Jesus was God. “I saw the Lord” (Ps. 16:8) “before me.” The incarnate body of Jesus could die, but He could not utterly die – He was and is – The Lord!
b. Because He must fulfill the prophecy. vss. 26-28 of the Psalm declare that the Father would NOT abandon Him in the grave, and would not let His body rot.
c. Because He was sinless. Though he could be killed, He could not die. Death has no final claim over one who is perfectly righteous. So vs. 27 declares that Jesus is “Your Holy One”.
Lastly, d. Because God had promised. So Peter would say in Acts 2:30 – that David, speaking as a prophet, and knowing that God had “sworn with an oath” that one of his descendents would sit on Israel’s throne, “foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ.”
Now because of all this, can I cite one more impossibility? It is simply this – I will not elaborate but leave it with you to sink in – especially if you are one who has somehow imagined your sin to be so great as though Christ’s blood is not sufficient for you: Rom. 5:20 “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”
No one. No matter what they have done. And no matter how long they have done it, can make their sin greater than His grace.
If you would have salvation, come to Him today. He is the God of the impossible. As Jesus told the disciples upon their incredulity over the difficulty of a rich man inheriting heaven – “And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)
What an extraordinary scene this text contains. Jesus in glory is on full display. What specific aspects of His glory the Spirit has chosen to highlight here are most interesting and evocative.
Note first: The Savior’s humility. So little did Jesus stand out, it took Judas’ kiss to identify Him. How we flock to “stand outs”, and how He avoided standing out.
In a culture built upon celebrity today, celebrity which has spilled over into the Church – leaders are often trying to make their mark, stand out, do something to be seen apart. Not Jesus. He, in His humility is identifying with us: He comes in the likeness of fallen man. He cares nothing for recognition of self. He has no ego. He cares only that the Father be glorified, and that the Father’s will be done.
Heavenly Father, make this my own heart in all things.
Note second: The absolute wonder of grace.
He is every man’s friend, even when they are His worst enemies. He designs no harm, but reconciliation through the Cross. And yet, in due time, He will judge. Even His “friends”. “Today”, cries the writer to the Hebrews, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” If you can read this, it is not too late to repent of your sin and flee to Christ. He remains “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Luke 7:34)
Note third: How He remains utterly in control, when all appears to be cosmically out of control.
It is the feature of almost all anxiety, that we are faced with tings too big for us, and that we cannot change or impact.
News outlets spew hour upon hour of global crises we seem to have no power to effect in any way. Climate change. The economy. War in the Middle-east. Terrorism. The political landscape. Not to mention the demise of our own individual bodies and personal crises of all kinds. So we worry, fret and look for any person who appears to give us hope as a strong champion on our behalf; or for a movement, the unveiling of some gigantic conspiracy that once uncovered will restore all equilibrium, pundits and miracle cures.
All to no avail.
But not Jesus. He stands here, ready to face the horrors or unbridled human brutality and the full fury of The Father’s wrath against human sin – and He is perfectly in control. Not as though He is orchestrating the circumstances – but in perfect self-control. Nothing externally can rob Him of His reliance upon and trust in – the Father.
No wonder the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. God has not charges us with the duty to control the winds and the waves of human upheaval. He has gifted us to depend upon His indwelling Spirit for self-control. The Spirit never, never makes us out of control. He grants self-control while the world spins wildly.
Self-control, is the Spirit of Christ.
Note fourth: Jesus’ absolute confidence in the Father’s providence, in the fulfillment of The Scriptures.
He knows full well the Father’s love, and the Father’s power. And He is content then to commit Himself to the Father’s sovereign providence.
Oh how every Christian needs to see this in our Savior, and cry out to the Father for the same faith to fill our hearts each and every day.
We too, in the very worst of all circumstances, if, IF, we are His by the new birth, can rest in the same perfect love of the Father, knowing His power to keep, sustain and move where wisest and best, and trust His sovereign, providential care.
Heavenly Father – fill me with the Spirit of Christ.
ResponsiveReiding 