Talk About a Super Bowl

Psalm 24:7-8 7 Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. 8 Who is this Psalm 107:17-20 17 Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. 18 They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. 19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. 20 He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Ephesians 2:1-10 2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of His great love with which He has loved us, 5 has made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. John 3:14-21 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. 2 Talk About a Super Bowl! Psalm 24:7-8; 107:17-20; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 From both the Psalms and Ephesians, we hear about a God who snatches us from certain death and offers us more than a rescue. We receive a chance for a new life in a relationship with the Divine. The psalmist speaks about "the gates” meaning the gates of death that yawn open before the stumbling, staring Israelites, threatening to swallow them down into the shadowy eternity of Sheol. Paul also describes a state of impending death, though it appears to be a living state of hell. Captivated by the powers of "the ruler of the air," fallen humanity - children of wrath - are hopelessly trapped in their own desires and passions. Today it is hard for us to imagine how such a simple boundary as a gate could be the impenetrable barrier between two worlds as the biblical writers saw it. In the ancient world, gates were important features. Gates made cities secure, and to "possess the gates," was to possess the city. Gatekeepers were important people; the safety of the city depended on them. Gates were also gathering places, much as doorways are for us. A lot of business and conversation goes on around a doorway, or a gate. Perhaps the scripture most noted for "gates" is in Matthew 16:18 where it promises that, "the gates of hell will not prevail" against the church. How can gates be said to prevail? It means that when the gates of hell are under attack, they will not prevail, they will be breached and the one being attacked, the devil and all his minions, will be defeated. More simply, as the church is on the move, all the agents of hell will be conquered. Theologian Joel Marcus, suggests that the gates of Hades described in Mat. 16:18 go along with the gates of heaven implied in 16:19 where Peter is promised "the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." In Jesus’ day, Hades was thought to be a place of the dead, rather than a place of punishment. As a place of the dead, some also considered it to be the residence of those causes of death; namely, demonic forces of disease and destruction. Our Apostles' Creed, written around 500 AD, was in part a result of an earlier creed of the church, written in 359 AD by the Council of Sirmium which reflects this image. It reads, "He was crucified and he died, and he descended into hell, and there he ruled all things. The gatekeepers of hell, seeing him, were terrified. After three days he was resurrected from hell..." Talk about a Super Bowl… So let's put two and two together. First, the gates of hell seem to symbolize the entire underworld of the dead. Secondly, the keys to heaven are not keys to unlock the Pearly Gates so that good humans may be let in. 3 Rather, if the two sets of gates are meant to be opposites of each other, then the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, like the gates of Hades - open - not in order to let something in, but in order to let something out. What is to be let out? Well, as we prayed earlier, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The reign of God's power and dominion of earth, as it is now in heaven, that is what is to be let out and let go to triumph over the forces of evil in the world. Too often we may think the church is a place of shelter from the world, a place to keep the world out. But from the New Testament, the church is not something that we join to hide out in, to escape the powers let loose from Hades. Rather, the church is, and each one of us in the church is, I have always believed, the site of the battle between the powers of Hades and the power of Heaven. That battle is in us, in our hearts and minds. In this age of ours, inaugurated by Jesus' death and resurrection, the gates of the underworld will swing open, and the horrors of the pit will erupt unto the earth with a roar, attacking everything in it - including the church - with unbridled fury. In the midst of this peril, however, Peter will be given the keys that unlock the gates of heaven. Those gates, too, will swing open, and the kingly power of God will break forth from heaven to enter the arena against the demons. Hades will not prevail against the church because God will be powerfully at work in it, and through it, through us, revealing His purpose for us, and giving the heavenly power to us to fulfill those purposes of redemption, so that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. The gates of hell are already swinging wide open. Rushing out is every evil imaginable. One just has to see the news to see the unleashing of evil intentions. The storming of the Capital this past January, is just the crescendo, the climax of a long line of evil offenses. The Proud Boys is an extremist, far-right, neo-fascist, and male-only white nationalist political organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada. Canada has now designated them a terrorist organization. Q-Anon is a cult that believes a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a secret cabal or secret political faction of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and is plotting to run the country. Crazy? You bet. Evil intentions? Yes again. The unleashing of the gates of hell, scary to think about, but maybe so… It would seem the gates of heaven are only slightly ajar, for now, keeping in the forces of goodness, beauty and truth. What shall we the church say? Open the gates! Open the gates to what? To eternity, here and now, and let the Spirit of God go forth. Overwhelm the gates of wickedness and evil. Unlock the gates to God's Spirit, let the church speak the Word of God, loudly and widely to vanquish the messages out there now. Let the church spread grace and love and 4 forgiveness and good will to overcome the brutality of evil intentions. When I say to open the gates to eternity here and now, I mean that our eternal life may begin now, not just when we die. The Bible calls us to live in this world as we would expect to live in the next, does it not? To live that spiritual dimension of life in the here and now, as God has called us to do, is to create something eternal now. Jesus said in John 3:14-21 that "whoever believes in me may have eternal life." The resurrected Christ was victorious over death, in this life. He calls us from the hellholes of this world to join Him in a ministry of life to those who are yet under siege by the forces of the “prince of the power of this age.” We are indeed under siege in this age. Just read the headlines of the past month, year, decade… Is not the devil the author of confusion and maliciousness and murder? Many denominations are reporting 50+ years of membership declines, beginning in the 1970’s or before. So how do you think the war is going, and what have you done to help out the church turn the tide? When confronted with the gates of hell and death, Christians should find themselves armed with two very powerful "open sesame" keys. Using these "open sesame" phrases, we can face and out flank the principalities and powers of this world. The first one is "JUST STOP IT!" Ours is a culture that wants to hear "Just do it" and in many ways we do "just do it." We do it all. I had a friend whose favorite phrase was, “Don’t fight the feelin’, man, just do it.” But there is another side to the "Just do it" coin that our culture also needs to hear and heed. It is "Just Stop It!" A bicyclist barreling along the streets of Manhattan spotted two men hurling abuse and profanity at a grocer and an elderly woman shopper. He slowed down and yelled, "Stop it, Just Stop it!!" Surprisingly, they did. What these thugs didn't know was that they had been taken to task by John F. Kennedy, Jr. It's time we got outraged. Justice Edwin Torres, a former Supreme Court justice in New York, writes that, "A society that loses its sense of outrage is doomed to extinction." He condemns our acceptance of the unacceptable. The Bible says, "Be angry but do not sin, (Ephesians 4:26). It's time to take issue with at least some of the atrocities of our society, and say, "Just Stop It." The second "open sesame" key that would open the gates and help to unleash the forces of heaven is simply, "But God." In our scripture Paul says again, "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of His great love with which He has loved us, has made us alive with Christ." Again and again throughout the Bible, whenever things look the bleakest, whenever the gates of Hades and powers of the "ruler of the air" seem to prevail, the promise of eternal life is kept alive through the miracle of two words: "But God." One of the most fearfully shuddering passages in all of scripture is Luke 3:1. It reads, "In the fifteenth year 5 of the reign of Tiberius Caesar - when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitus, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene - during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John..." You would have trouble putting together in one sentence a bigger gallery of rogues and outlaws and a bigger galaxy of evil, than what was in that sentence and in that time. But here is the arresting surprise, that was the time in which Jesus came to minister. Heaven‘s gate was opened and Jesus came down and John said to all the world, "Prepare the way for the Lord." But God!! Again and again throughout the Bible, God has intervened in the affairs of humanity, and out of His mercy and because there were the faithful through which He might work His will, the church prevailed then and the church can prevail now. Hear some of the "But God's" we find in the Bible.  But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. (Genesis 8:1)  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)  But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me. (Psalm 49:15)  The patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold Joseph into Egypt; but God was with him. (Acts 7:9)  But God proves his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)  So then, neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. (I Corinthians 3:7)  No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God who is faithful, will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. (I Corinthians 10:13)  You were once spiritually dead because of your sins. But God has brought you to life with Christ. (Colossians 2:13) Now for a sprint to the end...  But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. (Acts 2:24)  But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: 'The Lord knows who are his.' (II Timothy 2:19) Does the Lord know that you are His? How does He know that? Because you say so, and because you have done so! And if you haven’t said so or done so, then do so today. As you are confronted with the trials and temptations of life, don’t retreat, enter in to the fray, helping the heavenly hosts keep the evil at bay, knowing it is but by God that we will be kept secure in this day to see the day eternal.