Experience looks Forward
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 33:00
0 ratings
· 6 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them,
I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,
loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Psalm139.1-6
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?
Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,
saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker
and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers,
because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints,
and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.
For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.
Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required,
yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus—
I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.
(Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.)
I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.
I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel,
but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.
For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever,
no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.
If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.
I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it—to say nothing of your owing me even your own self.
Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.
Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.
Experience looks forward
Big Idea: Believers mature in understanding God
3 Points
Prophecy brings comfort and warning
Our lives should have a rhythm of repentance
God is not the underdog
My family is an insurance family. Growing up, my dad was an insurance agent and for 35 years he was in that business. I love some parts of insurance. It is very logical. Everything is based upon real numbers and results. It is statistical and also mathematical. When you pay a certain rate for your insurance, it is rated that way based upon statistics that predict the chances of you having to collect on your insurance policy. For car insurance, a number of factors are calculated into the rate.
Age and gender help predict the chances you will cause an accident. The area you live in may have higher or lower numbers of vehicle collisions. Some area have high rates of deer collisions. Some areas are more prone to hail. Then there is the vehicle you are insuring. What will it cost to repair if you have an accident? Even your credit rating is a predictor of your likelihood to file a claim. People with poor credit tend to file claims more often. Also, a major factor is your driving record. If you have had a lot of traffic tickets, you are more likely to cause an accident.
All of these things, in a sense, are discriminatory. They are profiling. If you fit certain profiles, you may pay a higher rate for your insurance. If you fit other profiles, your rate may be lower. Most of the time, we understand and are fine with this type of profiling. If a person has had multiple DUIs, we agree that they should pay more for insurance. The rest of us should not have to pay extra for the cost of insurance for those who are higher risk. We also don’t think that if we have a $15,000 car that we should pay equal insurance cost as someone with a $100,000 vehicle. We generally agree that these ratings, which again are based upon statistical models, are fair. Everyone agrees. Except the parent whose teenager just got licensed and now they find out the cost of insuring that young driver.
It is true that the youngest drivers have the highest cost of insurance because it is also true that they have a much higher percentage of accidents than the general population. In fact, if you were to look at a chart with accidents based upon age, it has an upside down bell curve. A bell curve looks like this. On each end of the age spectrum are the highest incidents of accidents. In other words, not only do teenage drivers have a high percentage of accidents, so do people in their 80s. In the middle, with the lowest percentage of accidents, are people aged about 35-40.
Why is this? On the one hand, it is clear that young drivers simply do not have the experience. One study tracked the eyes of drivers of different ages, and it found that as we grow in driving experience, we are focused on the road much further ahead. The young driver may only be aware of things a few car lengths ahead, while the more experienced driver notices things much further up the road. this means the more mature driver is prepared earlier for a potential interference on the road.
However, as the driver gets older past those years of age 35-40, while they may still see up the road a ways, they are less aware of the things to their side. Those things on the side of us often are as dangerous as those things ahead of us. So the best drivers, statistically speaking, are those that have experience to look ahead, but are still aware enough of the dangers that may approach from the sides. So how can we live out our faith in a way that our experiences keep us looking ahead, to our blessed hope and future in Christ, our Coming King, and at the same time be aware of those things around us, the idols that may come from the side and disrupt us from the path we are on?
3 Points
Prophecy brings comfort and warning
Our lives should have a rhythm of repentance
God is not the underdog
The oracle of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus declares the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him:
“Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah.
On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it.
On that day, declares the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah I will keep my eyes open, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.
Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God.’
“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves. And they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.
“And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah.
On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, going before them.
And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.
The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves;
the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves;
and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.
“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.
“And on that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness.
And if anyone again prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord.’ And his father and mother who bore him shall pierce him through when he prophesies.
“On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive,
but he will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a worker of the soil, for a man sold me in my youth.’
And if one asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your back?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’
Prophecy brings comfort and warning: In these first verses, we see that the prophecy is a comfort to the people of Israel. God is promising them that He is going to avenge them for the mistreatment they have received. In fact, as Jerusalem has been under fire and under siege off and on throughout history up until the time this prophecy was given, God would make Jerusalem the one holding other under siege. In verse 2 it says he will make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to the surrounding peoples. What is a cup of staggering? This is language that reflects the effects of drunkenness. Being drunk to the point of staggering is an embarrassment. The one who is drunk like this not only is one who is ridiculed, but they also are very vulnerable to enemies.
Someone puking, falling down drunk, is easy prey to the predator. Just like lions and wolves will attack the weak ones of the herd because they are the most vulnerable and easy to catch, the person who is staggering drunk is an easy target. In case this metaphor wasn't convincing, he uses another one. vs 3 Jerusalem will be a heavy stone. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. If you have ever tried to show some bravado by trying to lift something too heavy for you, and were hurt as a result, you will appreciate this metaphor. Jerusalem will just not be unseated.
Now, does this mean that this always going to be the case? Clearly not. The prophecy here was made 2500 years ago, and certainly Jerusalem has had a checkered history. Today, many people keep saying things like “God will always protect Israel.” Anyone who says this as a blanket statement does not know scripture or history. There have been many times in the history of Israel where God did not stop all of Israel enemies from harming her.
However, God will honor his covenants. And His covenants are always conditional. So we cannot say that Israel will always be protected from God, but we can say that when Israel keeps their end of the covenant, they can expect that God will be gracious towards them. Ultimately, when all of history is completed, God will do all He said He would for Israel. He will keep his end. But unless Israel turns to Him, it does not always have divine protection from him, which history has made clear.
So we see comfort and warning in this prophecy, and we also see why our lives should have a rhythm of repentance. When we have a rhythm of repentance, we are recognizing our shortcomings. These things go together with the idea of experience. Our experience should tell us that God always delivers on His Word. But also, we must not become so “experienced” that we are casual to what is going on around us. So we want to be like that good driver, who sees ahead to know what is coming up, but also is aware of those things coming up from the sides, those things that are easy to miss until they slam into us.
God is not the underdog: So many times, our shortsightedness keeps us from that fact. We look around at the bad things happening in our personal lives, or in the world around us. Even though we know God is the victor, we sometimes act like that isn't going to happen for a long time. But God is not the underdog. We only see so far in front of us. We may even see far enough down the road to know our victorious end is coming, but don’t think somehow that Satan is winning, and God is falling behind, and when Jesus comes again, it will be this Cinderella story where God came back from behind and overcame. God has always been the victor. Time is still playing out, but He is sovereign over all, and has never been and never will be behind.
“And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah.
On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, going before them.
And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
Again, there is comfort here. Even the most feeble among them would be as powerful as David. He makes the weak strong. This appears to be a foreshadowing of that one Jesus called the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. God empowers ordinary people to do extraordinary things for His kingdom. And His way of empowering us is by a filling of His Holy Spirit.
There is comfort in knowing justice will ultimately take place. He will destroy the nations that came against Jerusalem. Again, this is the Word of God. He said it would happen, and it will. Ultimately, nations who aligned against Jerusalem will face God. Comfort for Israel is at the same time a warning towards those against Israel. So even though Israel may not be keeping the covenant, those nations coming against them could have heeded this warning.
Remember that we should not read too much into current events into this passage. Parts of this prophecy were fulfilled in history, parts are yet to be fulfilled, but we wont really understand it all until it is finished. The point is that God owns the timeline and controls the timeline because He created the timeline. When He says something is done, it is done!
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
The meaning of this piercing is not just a poke, but a piercing that leads to death. In the days when Israel served idols instead of God, they were basically trying to put God to death. The gospel writers and Revelation allude to this passage in describing Jesus. Just as the Israelites scorned God and pierced Him by their idol worship, those who crucified Christ were also attempting to put to death the Creator. In Old testament times, when Israel would come into apostasy and idol worship, things would get bad. They had pierced God by rejecting His ways and turning to idols. Eventually, His favor would be removed, and they would mourn their actions.
The Israelites learned a rhythm of repentance the hard way. The rhythm was repeated over and over. Turn back to God, enjoy His blessings, turn away to idols, see His hand of protection removed, mourn over their sins because they realize life is harder when we aren't doing things God’s way, turn back to God, and the rhythm continues.
Instead of going through this vicious cycle, we have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and we have the Holy Spirit to guide us, the scriptures to live by, and Christ to follow. We don’t need to wait until we are so far gone to get back into a rhythm of repentance. We can develop a rhythm of repentance that in our daily lives, we turn our hearts to Him, committing our day to Him each day, repenting not only after things get bad, but as soon as we recognize we have fallen short.
In Revelation, we see that Jesus is the one who was pierced, and when those who have rejected Him see Him, there will, like in this passage, be great mourning over Him. The realization of His Lordship will be clear to everyone, and they will mourn. They will mourn realizing that they rejected Him, mocked Him. By rejecting Him as sovereign, they pierced Him, just as much as those Roman soldiers. Worse than that, they will know the truth, that their sin had but one way to be settled. One way to appease the wrath of God, and they squandered that. They rejected Him as Son of God, they rejected Him as Lord of Lords, and they rejected Him as Savior.
Oh, my friends, when the unsaved are before the throne and have this horrible realization that they rejected Christ when they had the chance, when they clearly see that they were self-deluded, when they finally face the music and realize they danced the dance but have no way to pay the band, they will mourn. They will be utterly devastated to know that their eternity is now sealed, and the opportunity has passed by for them. Oh, they will recognize Him. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, but sadly, many will only bow the knee and confess His Lordship once it is too late to be saved by that confession, too late to be redeemed by His blood.
Instead, they will bow their knee and confess He is Lord because He will then be Lord of their judgment, Lord of their eternal damnation, the God of justice will bring all of the punishment deserved for sin upon each one who foolishly denied Him, who recklessly slammed the door in His face when He came knocking.
That isn't what God wants! He offers us each an opportunity to respond to His grace today!
“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live;
You are granted today the opportunity to choose to follow Christ, to choose to receive Him as Savior. May your knee bow to Him willingly now instead of under compulsion later. May your confession be that He is Lord because you want Him as Lord, because you love Him as Lord, not because you have missed the chance and are being judged. If you accept Him now, you need not quake when you see Him, if you accept Him now, you will meet Him with excited expectation.
The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves;
the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves;
and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.
Here we see a picture of community repentance. Western Christianity misses a big part of the community of Christ when we do not take times to confess together. We see some of the greatest times for people in redemptive history when as a group or nation, they repented and committed to turn again to God.
One of the great lessons of Nehemiah is the repentant and broken heart, not only of Nehemiah and Ezra, but the entire people. When God’s people come as one with a purpose to follow Him, really great things happen. When Josiah was brought the book of the law, and heard it read, and the people had abandoned God for so long, he tore his clothes. And then he made the people listen to the law being read, and they followed the word, and God gave peace during Josiah’s time. Throughout the Word of God, we see, when people as a group are of one mind towards God, He does great things through them.
I can’t go on without another great example of what can happen when people are in one heart of repentance and serve towards God. The day of Pentecost was an ordinary feast day expect for one thing: A group of followers of Jesus, praying together, with their hearts in one accord.
They received the Holy Spirit, and even the weakest became like David, as God delivered to them the promised comforter. We can experience this today, if we turn our hearts towards God.
“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.
“And on that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness.
Oh, the beauty of how God does for us what we cannot do ourselves! He will remove the sin from us, He will destroy our idols, He will remove the uncleanness. Those idols will be remembered no more. In the language here, we don't see all the subtleties in English, but let me try and give you a feeling of what this means. To remember and to forget in this context is about worship. What you worship is what you remember. What you forget you no longer worship. Idols would no longer be worshiped. Where before it was God that they had forgotten, and Him they ceased to worship, now it would be the idols forgotten. Instead, they would remember God.
think of that as you worship and as you pray. When you acknowledge God with words of praise and worship, or song, or poem, or painting, when you worship God in any way, you remember Him. Don’t forget Him! Remember Him!
And if anyone again prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord.’ And his father and mother who bore him shall pierce him through when he prophesies.
The attitude of purity and holiness will be so heavy that even the parents of one who was a false prophet will rebuke and even kill them. In the old testament law, there was provision made to kill a false prophet to remove the bad influence from the congregation. Here false prophets would be seen as a deadly poison and would be dealt with harshly.
Interesting that here we see the word pierced again. Just as they had pierced God with their false prophecy, they too would be pierced.
“On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive,
but he will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a worker of the soil, for a man sold me in my youth.’
And if one asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your back?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’
Who would put on a hairy cloak? Well, often prophets would wear a coat made of hair. In the old testament we see this with Elijah and in the New Testament, the man according to Jesus who was the greatest prophet, John the Baptist, wore a garment of hair. This phrase, though, exactly as it is in verse 4 is only found in one other place in scripture. Do you know where else we see the Hebrew words that we translate here to hairy cloak?
The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau.
Esau was named because he was hairy. Esau was the real deal. He really was hairy. But there was one who sought to deceive, and tried to make himself hairy. that was Jacob. And who was Jacob? Does anyone remember what his other name was, the name that was given to the nation that came from him? Israel. Jacob’s name meant “He cheats”, but God changed his name to Israel, which means “one who strives with God”.
Do you see the imagery used here? People love connections and illustrations. They help us to remember and they help us to understand. So what could be more clear to the people about who the false prophets were? They wore hairy cloaks, but they were frauds, just like Jacob was a fraud when he posed as his brother Esau. Esau was the real hairy deal, Jacob was the one who cheats.
The image would be clear to the people who first heard this prophecy so many years ago. false prophets were imposters, fakes, posers. And they are still around. Paul called them sheep in wolves clothing.
Prophecy brings comfort and warning
Our lives should have a rhythm of repentance
God is not the underdog
