So that we do not get too esoteric about it all, let me try to boil down what I am after in prayer – and as it relates to the first petition Jesus taught to consider in prayer.
And by way of introduction to this portion, I am reminded of Jesus’ summarizing words in 6:33 – “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” There is in this a look into an extraordinary exchange which cannot be ours until we digest this first petition well. The idea is this: if we will make seeking the hallowing of God’s name, the advancement of His Kingdom and the doing of His will as our chief priority in prayer – He promises to make sure our personal needs are met in the process. It isn’t that we ignore our needs in prayer – we’ll get to that more in due course. It is rather that He brings us into His own cosmic plans and purposes and promises that in taking those on – He’ll take ours on.
So let me break this down into 4 things.
1 – Seek first that the Father’s name be restored to its rightful place – IN YOU.
Nothing so breaks the yoke of doubt and fear in your own circumstances, as having your heart and mind filled with the wonder, glory and awe of the greatness and goodness of God. This one who spoke the cosmos into existence, and who can in no wise sin against you, because in Him is no darkness at all.
Don’t know how to pray aright in confusing and monumental circumstances? Pray this: “Father, let my soul be over-awed once again by who and what you are as over and against all that troubles my heart and mind. Be who you are to me in all your fullness, afresh.”
2 – Seek that the Father’s name and reputation come into full view in the hearts and minds of the lost.
You can pray no great thing for your unsaved loved ones than that they too come to see Him for who and what He is. How do you pray for that erring child, that unsaved spouse, that perishing friend caught in destructive sin? “Father, let them see you. Let them come to know you as I know you. Let them be overwhelmed by your love, your grace, your mercy, and your holiness, so that they fall to their knees before you. Hallowed be your name, to them.”
3 – Seek that the Father’s name and reputation be restored to all sentient beings in the universe.
Nothing can be set to rights in this fallen world until all come to see Him and know Him and reverence Him for who and what He is – especially as revealed in Christ. “Father, the World is awash in confusion, degradation, sin, bondage and destruction. We need more than revival as a religious movement in our Church, our government or nation – we need true, cosmos shattering revival in the revealing of your glory to all – so that “at the name of jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to your glory.”
4 – Seek that the Father’s name and reputation be restored and reveled in, by your brother or sister in Christ as they face their trials, tribulations and even death. Nothing will do them in better stead.
“Father, I do not know how to pray in specificity and wisdom for this my brother and sister in their trial today – but this I know, they need to see you for who and what you are. They need their hearts lifted up out of their circumstances. They need to see you high and lifted up – ruling over all – and reminded that “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Let them glory in you anew. Let your sacred name be truly hallowed to them today.”
Beginning prayer in this way beloved, you tune your E string to Him. And everything else will be brought into its right relationship to it as you continue. Don’t know how to pray and what to pray for? Start here. And watch what happens.
When it comes to prayer, my thesis is simple; as Jesus taught us to pray, He did more than give us a rote model prayer to repeat. He gave us the chiefest tool for prayer in how His model functions. Let me try to explain by continuing with my tuning analogy.
If you were to sit down with a 6 string guitar, you would start by tuning it. The E string is the lowest, thickest string, and you end up tuning all the others to that one ascending higher as you go: E-A-D-G-B-E. Now that’s all good and well, but the E string you begin with, has to be tuned itself. There is an objective “E”. When the string vibrates at about 82 Hz (82 times per second), the sound that it makes is – E.
Back to prayer.
Prayer as Jesus taught it, is designed to tune our hearts to the mind, plans and purposes of God. Without getting wonky or New-Agey, it finds us in tune with Him. So when Jesus taught the Disciples to pray, starting at the top (the prayer runs from top down) He was in effect saying: “Do you know what the most important thing in all the cosmos is? It is that the whole of creation, especially all sentient beings – would come to honor, revere, sanctify, love – hallow – My Father’s name. That He might be seen and responded to as is right and fitting for who and what He is.”
This, was Jesus’ heart. And in order, nothing else beneath it can come to its proper place until this is set.
Do you remember Jesus’ own prayer in John 17? “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son THAT the Son may glorify you.” And “I glorified you on earth,” and, “I have manifested your name to the people.” (Emphases mine)
What does it mean to “glorify” God? The key is located in Jesus’ words “I have manifested your name.” In other words – I have made you known. To glorify God, is to reveal Him for who and what He is, and does.
To reveal Him.
Not to make Him greater than He is, for that is an impossibility.
Not to make Him other than He is, for that is idolatry.
Especially not to make Him less than He is, for that is blasphemy.
But to make Him known AS he is.
And why is this so important? Because the obscuring of God’s glory, the casting of a shadow on His goodness, greatness, justice, love, etc. is at the root of all sin. It was at the root of The Fall. Satan’s great ploy was to get Adam and Eve to question God’s character. To make Him suspect. To besmirch His name. To make Him seem as though petty, jealous, and withholding from them what was best and most pleasing.
So it is, the reversal of The Fall requires the undoing of what was done in The Garden. The restoration of His name. For all to see Him in His beauty, His majesty, His holiness, His goodness, His mercy, grace, kindness and power. To see Him in such august wonder that the creature cannot help but burst out into transcendent praise. To be overwhelmed with His wonder so as to be lost in an ocean of joy and awe.
This, is the very heartbeat of Christ – “O that all peoples everywhere would know My Father the way I know my Father. That they would love Him as I love Him. That they would honor Him as is right and proper and good. That they could see Him as He really is.” For He is the very fountain of all goodness.
Now I will do my best to unpack this first petition for the hallowing, the holy-ing of the Father’s name next time. But I want to emphasize here that until we are in tune with Jesus on what is most important cosmically, and enter into it purposefully ourselves, our prayer lives will really suffer loss. Not that God does not hear and answer – He does – ALL THE TIME! He is SO good, SO gracious, SO pleased to meet us in our needs from the most mundane to the most profound. He is ever and always open to the cries of His blood-bought ones. Hallelujah! But I do think we are missing much of the freedom and joy and pleasure that prayer can hold for us, when we fail to start by tuning our hearts and minds to His from the get go. It will make everything else flow in a most sweet and captivating way.
As I said, more on this next time as we see this initial petition as the foundation of all prayer. We’ll look at it in 4 brief dimensions. And I hope it will open a door to a true adventure in the growth of your own prayer life. In the meantime, I would only ask that you give this initial thought a little time to marinate within. What would the universe be like, if once again, the Father’s name was reverenced, cherished and delighted in as is proper given who He is? Let your mind soak that in a bit.
One last thing.
Note that in Jesus’ prefacing words to this prayer in Matt. 6 – how He instructs us first of all to enter into a room – someplace alone, shutting the door, and praying to the Father in secret. For this, Beloved, in all He has done for us in His life, Crosswork and resurrection is truly amazing. He has made the way for you and I, to step directly into the presence of His Father.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb. 10:19-22)
When we pray beloved, we are not engaging in some disconnected religious exercise – we are coming to His Father and now ours (if we are in Christ), in personal, face to face communion. So it is right this be done alone. In secret. It need not be with prescribed time limits – great or small. It DOES need to be thoughtful and deliberate, even if we do not know what to say. But to be someplace, where we acknowledge – for these moments – Father, I recognize I am before you. I’ve come to meet with you, and I take a moment to remember who and what you are.
Begin here Christian. And so very much will follow easily.
Harps are mentioned over 30 times in the Bible. Most typically as an instrument of praise and worship.
For most (I think), the image that comes to mind when the word harp is used, is some sort of cherubic plinking with soothing, pastoral tones. Maybe more like a lute or a lyre. Don Carson on the other hand thinks Biblical harps ought to be thought of more like the banjos of their day. More suggestive of happy foot tapping than angelic strains. Whatever the truth, harps are stringed instruments. And stringed instruments, of all stripes, require frequent tuning. Think of a guitar or a banjo. They need to be tuned every time you pick them up to play.
So it is, I want to use this image of a stringed instrument needing to be regularly tuned in order to be played rightly and the melodies played undistorted – to the human soul, and the practice of prayer. Maybe better, to the inward posture of prayer.
Prayer. We all do it. We all know we should do it. Most of us never feel as though we’ve done it enough. Or perhaps not rightly.
For all of our talk about a prayer life, the truth is most of us feel inadequate in our prayer lives and somewhat uncomfortable about 3 things: How to pray? How much to pray? And How often to pray?
In the process, prayer often becomes a duty which is still quite shrouded in some mystery.
O, we all know the simple “just talk to God.” But that can devolve into something rote, perhaps even boring, artificial.
But since we ourselves are the prayer “instrument” – I want to argue that we need to get tuned both in and for prayer even as we pray. Getting all the strings to vibrate in proper relationship to each other. And then to strum and pick and play in a truly musical form of worship. And I think it might be useful to use Jesus’ own means to tune ourselves aright. What He outlined for us in Matthew 6 as a sort of six-string prayer tuning device. Prayer itself tunes the soul properly, so that we face all of life in the right frame. Which in fact, circularly, leads to more and better prayer.
Now we are all aware that Jesus is observed talking about this in more than one place. Matthew has Him outlining it in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount by prefacing it with: “Pray then like this.”
Luke has Him covering the same basic material in ch. 11 of his Gospel; but there, in response to the Disciple’s request that He teach them to pray “as John taught his disciples.” And this, as they had just been observing Jesus Himself praying.
Two things come to mind then.
1 – How is it that John’s and Jesus’ prayer lives were so different from what they were used to, as to elicit this sort of request?
2 – What are the things we need to glean from Jesus’ instructions in both places?
But before we begin to unpack all of this in more detail, I think it is worth noting that in both Luke and Matthew, prayer as addressed by Jesus does not appear to be couched in all sorts of religio-talk. His approach to prayer has nothing to do with technique or high sounding, specialized theological verbiage. The biggest 3-syllable word is temptation. We might say He taught prayer in the language of the common man. Do not let that get by you. Prayer is never about the mystical use of magical vocabulary.
I observe too that Jesus’ template (if we might call it that) is relatively brief.
While the concepts He sets forth have infinite depth in what they cover, Jesus is careful to keep us from thinking that some sort of verbal diarrhea is what is needed. He is after far more essential matters. Sometimes, “HELP!” can be the most eloquent prayer anyone can pray. Length of prayers is no more an indication of their efficacy or propriety than using Elizabethan English is. Prayer is not about cosmic arm twisting, so dunning Him with endless soliloquies is simply a waste of time. Yours and His.
As Thomas Aquinas once wrote: “It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir up the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.”
As Jesus taught prayer, its very design is meant to bring our heart and soul and mind into such a frame of blessedness, that it truly becomes a joy, a refuge and a place of refreshing and renewing. Our sad neglect of what Jesus was after here has often led to prayer being just the opposite. When God gave the Sabbath to the Jews, He meant it for rest, renewal, rejoicing and restoration. They turned it into a burden to be scrupulously carried out. And I fear that we have followed suit with prayer. If that is our experience, we’re doing something wrong.
Lastly, it occurs to me that prayer is in fact the most supernatural activity we engage in in this life. As such, it does meet with opposition both from the remnants of our own inward fallenness, and the enemy of our souls. So there will always be an aspect of fight about it, even as it is attended with such joy and blessings. It is an odd paradox. We ought not to be too surprised by that.
John Piper is wont to remind us that joy is something we need to take seriously and fight for. And it is in prayer that that fight is primarily fought. On our knees.
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.”
It is an old Bible teacher’s quippy yarn that when you encounter the word “therefore” in the text, you should look above it to see what it is there for. It’s not exactly a hermeneutical principle, but it is worth considering in that it does indicate some kind of conclusion based on what came before. In this case, the sentence that starts this verse, is the necessary precursor to the command contained in the second sentence. “Moses my servant is dead – THEREFORE.”
Like the shift between the Old Judaic and the New covenants – the overall plan remains the same, but there is a vast difference in how things will work from a certain point on out. Failing to recognize these shifts always ends in confusion. And even within the covenants, shifts take place, like this one.
Moses’ ministry was focused on two things: 1 – Seeing the Israelites delivered from slavery in Egypt (a wonderful type of the Believer being delivered from the bondage of sin and the World.) 2 – Keeping God’s people in their wilderness wandering while communicating God’s will concerning how they were to conduct themselves in the World as His peculiar people.
That era, was now at an end.
The next era is all about conquering. Again, a wonderful type for the New Covenant Believer as we engage the perpetual battle against the remnants of indwelling sin.
Even then, will come even another era – truly inhabiting the land. A call and a warning to we under the New Covenant regarding standing fast in all Christ has delivered unto us so far. (Eph. 6:10-18)
Now back to our immediate text, it is interesting to note again the wording in vs. 2 – “therefore”.
Moses needed to pass off the scene before Joshua could lead Israel in conquest. And it is only until the issue of the Law is settled in Christ that we can actually begin the work of routing out the inhabitants of indwelling sin. If we try to do it BY the Law, we will fail. We will live in bondage. We must enter into the new era, the New Covenant, if we would have what that covenant promises.
The Christian life doesn’t stop at our initial deliverance – it only begins there.
Entering this beginning of our inheritance requires reliance on the Word already delivered to us, and then fresh, daily dependence upon the indwelling Holy Spirit to continually draw us to Christ and form His image in us progressively. Taking on and living out more and more of His own character as sons of God ourselves.
So the lesson here for us is this: Therefore, Moses my servant is dead – The Law covenant is dead. We do not live under it any longer. Moses was a great type of Christ as deliverer, but now we look to Him as our general, leading us into battle with sin. He is our Joshua too. He goes before us. He is fearless. He is undaunted by how cunning, pestiferous, many or frightening our sins might be. He knows well there are giants in this land. He has taken up the charge of leading us into all the Father has promised us. And He will not, He cannot fail. If we will follow and fight along side Him, He will bring us into victory. The days and campaigns may be long and hard – but victory is assured. Christ, is our Lord.
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)
ResponsiveReiding 