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There is a whole genre of misbehavior online called “being the main character.” This “main character” label is given to people who act like they have the staring role in the world’s story. The camera is fixed on their situation and everyone else is a just an extra, a background character, and NPC. Main character people have all sorts of annoying habits like standing directly in front of elevators getting in the way of people trying to get out, or blocking other people’s view of an area so that they can get that perfect instagram shot. It is a pattern of behavior that says “life is about me, and no matter who else I affect negatively, I am going to do what I want.” Videos and posts online to shame such people are popular because we all understand (at least when WE aren’t behaving like that) that life is not all about us. But if life isn’t about us, then who is it about? If we aren’t the main character in this world, who is? And most importantly, how do we relate to this Main Character and His story? These are the questions that we are going to be asking ourselves as we close our series on the five solas. So far, we have seen in Scripture Alone that by Grace Alone in Christ Alone we find salvation through Faith Alone. Today, we find out that all of this, all of life, is for the Glory of God alone, Soli Deo Gloria. Giving God Glory frees us from ourselves So let’s start with our first question, if we aren’t the main character of history, who is? Well our passage today tells us who that is: God Himself. The Bible tells us quite plainly in Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” This is speaking of God and tells us very clearly that everything is from Him (meaning He created everything), everything works because of Him (through Him), and that everything is ultimately mean to glorify Him! There’s the answer in plain English, but just because something is in English doesn’t mean we understand it. Let’s take a look at the word “glory” for a minute. What does that mean? This is important to know, because in our passage today we find out that God does not give this glory to any other. In the New Testament the word “glory” is the Greek Word “doxa” from which we get the word “doxology.” It means to praise. However, “The meaning of the word in the nt seems to be shaped less by secular Greek usage and more by the Hebrew word כָּבוֹד (kābôd, “glory”), which the lxx usually renders with doxa.” (Fenlason). The word “kabod” has the idea of “heaviness” or weighty. When we say that something has weight in English, we are actually pretty close to what that Hebrew word is communicating. A weighty matter is an important matter, something that deserves your reverent consideration. In the simplest of terms, it is “importance.” When we are talking about giving God glory, we are talking about giving God the worship that is due to Him. And we are told in no uncertain terms here that God will not share that glory at all. Nothing else is going to be competing with God for first place in our considerations. In fact, that is the very first of the Ten Commandments “You shall have no other gods before me.” Now, is God right to demand this? When we encounter human beings who act like this, we call them “main characters” or narcissists. Demanding that one be considered as central to people’s thoughts is generally considered prideful at best. So why is it different with God? Well, the biggest difference between God and the human narcissist is that the human actually isn’t worthy of worship. No matter how consequential they are, no matter what country they rule, they didn’t create the world with their word. God did create us and continues to sustain us, so at the very least we owe Him thanks for providing and sustaining our lives. We think that way about human relationships, don’t we? Even if parents haven’t been the best, kids in general feel a sense of obligation to them because they bore us and cared for us (even if imperfectly). How much more so if it is God? But there is another layer of oughtness to our giving glory only to God. In our passage, you’ll notice that the word “LORD” is in all capital letters. That is referring to God’s actual name (which, near as we can tell, is Yaweh). That name is only given because God’s people are in a covenant with Him. They are in a relationship with Him! That relationship is only possible because He was willing to sacrifice His Son on the cross! There is no greater sacrifice that He could give! Going back to our parenting illustration, if there is a kid who not only had parents, but had exceedingly good and self-sacrificial parents, that child would feel that obligation to serve them even deeper! And can you imagine the shame that would result from someone who would not only not serve such parents, but who would actively betray them by giving that respect to someone who hadn’t don any of those things for them? But wait! There is even more! God doesn’t just demand worship because of what He has done, although that is more than enough. He also demands worship because that is actually where we find our deepest joy. we see this expressed in Psalm 16:11 “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” That is what we have been created to do, worship! In fact, as John Piper points out recently, this is what Jesus prays for in John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” We will worship something. But only God will be a joy to worship. That doesn’t mean that things are always easy, of course, but living out your purpose, worshiping God, is where you find your highest joy. Since that is true, God insisting on being worshiped is actually the kind thing for God to do. He insists we don’t spend time worshiping false things, and points us to Himself. This is why God will not share His glory with anyone or anything. It is all His to have. So now that we know this, what does worshiping God, giving Him glory look like and how do we often take glory away? It is worth stating first off that there is no way to damage God’s glory. You can no more dim God’s actual importance with your sin anymore than you can dim the stars by pulling our your iPhone flashlight. But what you can dim is your ability to perceive God’s glory. If you’ve ever had the experience of getting out into the country away from streetlights, it is amazing how many stars you can see. I got to go do some star photography with a friend out in Carbon Hill, and I was amazed that I could actually see stars of different color! The thing was, the longer I was out there, the more my eyes adjusted and the more I could see. However, as soon as a light turned on, or if I put a bright screen in front of my eyes for too long, things would begin to dim on me. Have you gone through those periods in your life where God just doesn’t seem as glorious and you find it harder to worship? There can be many reasons for that, but I wonder if it might be something else is in your eyes. When you noticed your view of God begin to fade, what did you start doing right around that time? Did you begin to entertain some sin in your life? Whenever we sin, we are disagreeing with God on how best to live. And once you disagree with God in one area, the idea that God has exclusive rights on worship immediately begins to fade. Pornography is a glory killer. Contempt of your spouse is a glory killer. Anger and self-pity (often those go together) is a glory killer. Things like this is like shining a flashlight right in your eye and keeps you from seeing those stars as well as you could have. If this is the case, then you need to put that sin away. The longer it shines into your eyes the harder it is to see and the longer it takes for vision to recover. It is actually very similar to our spiritual lives. If you have indulged a sin for a long time, the decision to stop and refocus on God often doesn’t immediately result in clear vision of Him again. It can take time, but the longer you spend staring at God in His Word and prayer, the more of Him you will see. Now, it doesn’t have to be a real serious sin like what I mentioned above. Sometimes it is just simple distraction. The vast majority of Americans are checking their phones within the first ten minutes of waking up! Many then are on them for hours upon hours outside of school or work. There is nothing wrong with a phone in and of itself, but when that becomes the dominating part of your attention, you can lose sight of God’s glory. What happens online becomes more interesting than what is happening in God’s Word. That isn’t because God is less interesting than the latest Twitter trend, it is because our eyes have adjusted to dimmer things. Be mindful of what you are doing. If you need to regain that vision of glory to God alone, take note of how much time you are actually looking at it. I can already tell you that the verse of the day app isn’t getting it done. The devotional pamphlet that takes a minute and a half to read likely isn’t filling your soul. If there is truly no time (I get it, father of three here), take what you can, but goal for more for your own sake. There is more time available than you think. I thought of most of this sermon between 4 and 5 am when Faye wasn’t sleeping very well. Look for opportunities to pray or just think over what you know about God. One great prompt for this is notice anytime you start complaining. If you have time to complain, you have time to think about God. Complaining about the dishes? Time to wash the dishes to the glory of God, which means wash them like you would wash Jesus’ dish. After all, He owns it. Thank God for the people in your home to share meals with, the meals you ate off those dishes, and the fact that you have dishes and running water that is clean to wash them in. All of this God has provided. Today, we have the special blessing of getting to behold God’s glory in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. God’s glory shines the clearest in Christ’s work which we are about to declare now. Aaron C. Fenlason, “Beauty,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
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Today, we are going to be talking about the only thing which separates true Christianity from every other religion or approach to God and life. That concept is faith alone. Faith alone is a humility boosting doctrine. Indeed, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9 that it is so that we would not boast. Reminding ourselves that we are only going to heaven because of the work of someone else is humiliating. This is why every other religion that is man made doesn’t like this concept. Every other religion says you have to do something to convince God to like you! Faith alone is also a God glorifying doctrine. God doesn’t need help saving us or need help being convinced to save us. It is His work that He has already done that saves us. He gets all the glory, all the praise, all the recognition that He is the important one here. We access grace alone through faith alone In our passage today, it is pretty straightforward as to what Paul wants to communicate. To give us some context, Paul brings up the fact that he had to correct Peter at a dinner one time. Peter was eating with Gentiles because Jesus had lifted that wall of separation (see Acts 10 and Ephesians 3). Notably, Peter was the first person to be told that! He had a whole vision about it! But when he saw some Jews who still wanted to observe the old law as well as trust Jesus, Peter felt the pressure from the legalists and left the Gentiles behind. Paul gets after him in verse 14. In other words, Paul reminds Peter that he doesn’t keep his place before God by keeping the law, so if he doesn’t need to do that, why would he make the Gentiles live that way? Our passage picks up from there with Paul teaching explicitly what was summed up in verse 14. Even those who by birth had the law, that is not how they were justified. Law keeping did nothing to make themselves acceptable before God. This is the point that Paul will hammer again and again throughout his writings not just in this letter. In one long sentence, Paul points out that it is not the adherence to the law that justifies, but faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s break this down so we can be sure to understand how we are accepted by God. Let’s define faith by first realizing what it is not. Faith is not the same thing as the power of belief. There is this old secular Proverb that says, “If you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right.” In other words, just believing something makes it so. Mind over matter. It’s just not true. I know this because I have toddlers. They believe in the power of belief harder than any of us can imagine. My daughter when she was just learning to crawl always believed that the bed was longer than it was. She would confidently and full of faith, crawl to the edge of the bed. Only a couple times did she exercise this faith faster than daddy could react. Despite her great faith, gravity still asserted itself. It is no less true in matters of the soul. It doesn’t matter how sincere you are in your belief. What is important is what or Who you believing in. This is why Jesus’ name shows up so much in our short passage. We have our faith in Jesus, the Son of God. And that is the only name that saves. Our age wants to say that the important thing is to be sincere in your belief, so what does it matter if you say God’s name is Allah or Brahmin? Just like gravity ruled my toddler when she crawled off the bed, eternal life has rules, a gravity if you will. Who you trust is the difference between heaven and hell (see John 14:6). Now, we have been talking about having faith in someone, but we haven’t really spelled out what faith is, really. We too often get confused about what faith is versus what it does. We confessed a great definition of faith from the Heidelberg Catechism: “True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace, granted solely by Christ’s merit.” We can’t go over every line here, but I do want you to see that there are two dimensions of faith here at work. The first is knowing something, and the second is trusting something. Let’s start with the knowing something. As one scholar points to 2 Corinthians 4:13–14 to show this: “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.” (Nijay K. Gupta) We know what the Bible says about Jesus how He died and rose again and calls us to turn from sin and follow Him. The thief on the cross recognized this. He knew that Jesus was Who He claimed to be and knew that this wasn’t the end for Jesus (“remember me when you come into your kingdom”). Jesus promised him that he would be with Him in paradise. So if you ever come up on someone whose got three minutes to live, that’s what they need to know. 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” They need to know they are sinners, they have a savior that they need to believe in. If you have more time with them, the Apostle’s Creed which we say most every week here for a reason, is the best distillation of the foundational doctrines of our faith. That’s what you need to know. Notice so far, there is nothing that you have done yet. It is only affirming what is obviously revealed to you. We don’t give people points for acknowledging gravity. It is. You can be foolish and ignore it, but one doesn’t see you as some master sage just for realizing what is there. Now, is that all there is to faith? Is it just stuff to know? Not at all! James 2:19 tells us this! “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” That word “believe” is the verb form of “faith.” We “believe” “have faith that” God is one (one God, three persons), but that knowledge alone doesn’t save you. That isn’t all there is to faith. You can memorize the Westminster standards, you can ace every theological quiz there is, but that isn’t all there is to faith or spiritual maturity. There is something more that our catechism gets at “a wholehearted trust.” What does a wholehearted trust look like? The catechism points to Abraham. God told him that He was going to bless him with children, and Abraham believed God. He trusted God. What did that look like? It looked like knowing what God said, trusting that God was trustworthy, and acted accordingly. One theologian put it this way: “If a doctor assures me that I will be regaining my health, and if this assurance is to put me at ease, I must first have a reasonable trust that he means it and does not have an untrustworthy character; further, the conviction that his statement contains the truth; and finally, the complete peace of mind that results. However difficult it may be to analyze this last element precisely, it is in any case something special.” (Vos) That is what faith is. It is a trust that what Jesus said is true and is true of me. That is the faith that justifies, that declares me righteous. Jesus said to come to me and I will give you rest, so come and find rest! Trust Him! Wholeheartedly. When I moved into my house, I found some old termite activity. Always a comforting discovery! I got the termites poisoned well enough, but would the wood hold up long-term? I didn’t know who to trust to give me an evaluation that didn’t have either a financial interest attached or enough experience. That is, until I thought of Keith and Jim Saturday. These guys are the masters of all things wood and building. They looked at it and said, “Yep, that’s old, but the problem is solved now, and your joists are in great shape despite the minor nibbling of the termites. I found relief. Why? Because I trusted their character, what they were saying, and I believed it, resulting in lower blood pressure. So thanks, Gentlemen. Do you have that with Jesus? Do you trust Him such that when you think about death you are not worried about what happens after? Obviously, we aren’t looking forward to the process of dying, but are you assured of where you are going after? If not, why not? It might be because your faith isn’t being acted out. Remember how I said there is what faith is and what it does? Faith is that wholehearted trust, but what it does is produce obedience to Christ. It is the faith that saves, not what it produces, obedience. But if there is no obedience, then you don’t have an obedience problem, you have a faith problem. Your faith is dead (James 2:20)! If you say, “Oh, yes, I completely trust Jesus, but not enough to actually make a difference in my life” then I’ve got news for you, you don’t trust Jesus. Faith will ALWAYS produce repentance (turning from sin) and good works. Let’s say that Jim and Keith told me that my floor joists are fine, but I needed to install a dehumidifier to make sure they stayed that way. If I walk away from the conversation still nervous about my joists and refuse to install the dehumidifier, it would be pretty obvious that I don’t actually trust them, wouldn’t it? Why would we think Jesus is any different? Now in my illustration of Keith and Jim, as wonderful as those men are, they didn’t create me. They didn’t die for my sins. They don’t sustain my every breath. Jesus did and does. He did for you. Why don’t you trust Him? Do you just not want to give up that sin? Do you secretly think that hell simply doesn’t exist? Do you think God is only making suggestions, and He’s not serious? He is. God is not mocked, y’all. Don’t play fast and loose with the Almighty. If that’s you here this morning, then this is your warning. God doesn’t threaten. He warns. Now, maybe you’re here today saying, I want to trust Jesus, but I just can’t for some reason. My heart resists that call. I know what this will mean for my life, and I just can’t make myself do it. There’s one aspect of that statement in which you are right. You can’t produce faith in yourself, and a sinful heart does resist God’s call. There is nothing in you that can raise yourself from the spiritual dead (Ephesians 2:1-10). Faith is a gift, sovereignly yet freely, given. If you want to trust Christ but find you can’t, then get on your knees this afternoon in the quiet of room and humbly request it. God is gracious and merciful and stands ready like the Father of the prodigal to run to you, throw His arms around you, and welcome you into His joy! Know and believe that the gospel is for you! The very fact that you would consider this is a very positive sign that God is already after you. Don’t delay. Put your wholehearted trust in Christ. Believe everything He says, place your eternal fate in His hands, and be comforted. You will then have the faith that Jesus promised in our passage that will access complete forgiveness of your sin by God’s grace. That’s why we say by grace through faith. Grace is what makes this whole thing possible, and we access that grace through faith, not works. If works got us favor, then it wouldn’t be grace anymore, would it? But grace isn’t just floating out there for everyone automatically. It is for those who access it through the gift of faith. And what you will see right alongside that is the abandonment of your sin. To turn to Christ is to turn from sin. You can’t serve two masters. To wholeheartedly believe Christ is to leave behind your sin. That’s what it means to repent. Your repentance will never be perfect, your faith will be weak at times, that is why it is the object of your faith, Christ Himself who will save you. So as you go home today, continue to trust Christ. Ask God to grow your wholehearted trust in Him not just for greater obedience, but for greater enjoyment of Him. Nijay K. Gupta, “Faith,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., vol. 4 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012–2016), 79.
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If you were given the task to describe God in a single sentence, what would you emphasize? Listen to how the Old Testament describes God: Psalm 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Joel 2:13 “and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” Finally, look at Jonah 4:2 “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Is this just some writer’s opinions? How do we know that they have the right view of God? Why does it seem like they are all working off that same line “gracious and merciful”? Sounds like that comes from somewhere. Well that line does come from somewhere. It turns out that this is the line that God uses to introduce Himself! God is going to use a sentence or two describe Himself. So what does a perfect (by definition) summary of God sound like? Exodus 34:6 “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” Now, there is more that we will get to in a moment, but let’s focus on this first part for right now. What does it mean to be gracious? One definition I found put it this way: “goodwill freely disseminated (by God); especially to the benefit of the recipient regardless of the benefit accrued to the disseminator.” In other words, God doesn’t need anything, so His showing grace to you doesn’t advance Him. It is coming purely from a character that loves to be gracious. Let’s take a look at these passages to see what they tell us about grace and the God who wields it. God is more gracious than you can imagine Let’s start with Psalm 86:14–15 “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them. But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Here, David is praying to God for favor (the same root word for “grace”) because “ruthless men” are after him to kill him. They possess power and are quick to use it for violence. Isn’t that what we see with people that get power? They use it for their own ends. God is different. God is in contrast to powerful, violent men. Instead, He is a God merciful and gracious. He uses His power for the good of His people. This is God’s character that He Himself introduces, so David is pleading not on the basis that God sometimes acts in a gracious way. He pleads on the base code of God. Is that how you think about God? I mean, usually people think about God, especially in the Old Testament, as being the mean and mad one until Jesus comes. This passage comes as a bit of surprise. King David pleads on the basis of God’s grace even when Jesus hasn’t come yet. Now, some may respond, “Well, of course God is gracious to the king of Israel! After all, King David is a man after God’s own heart (well, except that bit where he was philandering and murdering). But what about when God has to respond to, like, deep sinners. In fact, let’s challenge God further: Let Him respond to Gentile sinners!” Fine. Let’s do it. We actually have a humorous example of this very challenge in Jonah 4:2. Jonah, as you may remember, was told to go preach to the people of Nineveh, and he tries to go the exact opposite way. When we get to this verse at the very end of the book, we find out why. It turns out that Jonah, a member of God’s people and a prophet, hates these people, and he wanted to see them burned up by God. But Jonah knew, he KNEW that God was a gracious God and would haul off and forgive their sins when they repent. These were very cruel people, and Jonah wanted to see them destroyed not forgiven. It seems unfair, unjust even, when violent, evil people are forgiven. I mean, these people would go through an area and impale people and leave their twitching body on the side of the road on a pole! Yet, they repent in response to God’s Word, and God spares them. Don’t you feel a bit of indignation build up for just a minute? Right before you tamp it back down because you know you aren’t supposed to feel that. You feel almost a sense of injustice in this. But this is only because we are more like Jonah than Jesus. We are not gracious and full of mercy. When people do something wrong, especially when they do something wrong to us, we want to see them pay. This is why the revenge movie genre is so popular. We want to see a wrong set right, or at least as right as possible. When the bad guy kills a member of the hero’s family, we spend the whole movie rooting for the hero to put a bullet through the villain’s head, don’t we? What I find fascinating in some movies today, is they want to have it both ways. Some have the hero extend grace to the villain, saying something like, “Well, this won’t make it better,” and attempt to walk away from the villain the better man. Well, that’s an unsatisfying conclusion, isn’t it? We all sit forward and say, “Come on, Man! Take him out!” But the hero starts walking away despite our pleas. We begin to feel bad about ourselves until the villain begins to stir, he’s got a gun, the hero is going to die! So, left with no rational choice, the hero pulls out his own weapon and dispatches the villain forever! Everyone wins! Moral complication resolved! The ethicists are happy, and so are the moviegoers. The bullet traveling through the whole movie hits its mark. So what happens when God is on the warpath? What happens when God’s people are the villains? Let’s find out by looking at the prophet Joel. Turn if you will to Joel 2. According to scholars, Joel is hard to pin down as to exactly when, and therefore why, it was written. In fact, one source said, “The Book of Joel has been assigned by different authorities to very various dates, ranging over 4 or 5 cents …in fact, whether J. is perhaps the very earliest or the very last or among the last of the writing prophets” (Robertson, 1690). Thanks, scholars! Coulda been written anytime, really. But I think that’s on purpose, because what we see here I think can be applied to any time because what is being discussed here is God’s character. Here in Joel 2, we are seeing what it looks like when God is coming. Listen to Joel 2:1–7 “Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations. Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but behind them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them. Their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and like war horses they run. As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of the mountains, like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle. Before them peoples are in anguish; all faces grow pale. Like warriors they charge; like soldiers they scale the wall. They march each on his way; they do not swerve from their paths.” This culminates in verse 11, Joel 2:11 “The Lord utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great; he who executes his word is powerful. For the day of the Lord is great and very awesome; who can endure it?” God is coming! His army is swift, efficient, focused, devastatingly destructive, and heading for you! God isn’t rash or emotional. He means what says! You want to rebel against God? Well, then, here it comes! But then! Look at Joel 2:12–13 ““Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” What?? God is coming on you that hard, and yet even then, in the midst of judgement, when the army is in sight, burning all that is in front of them, at your door, yet EVEN NOW, if you turn, if you come back to the Lord, I will bless? It is as if God doesn’t want to punish, and that He will use the first excuse not to punish. If his people will repent, (which this passage seems to indicate the people did) look at how God responds in Joel 2:19 “The Lord answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.” Gracious and mercy. Good gracious. The hero has turned from the villain! He let’s the villain live! But now what happens when the villain turns yet again. What if at the end of the movie the villain trains his gun, not on the hero, but on his son? Anyone would step in front of a bullet to save the child, so the villain hits where it hurts. Sound familiar? God sent His only Son, the perfect representation of grace and mercy. The One who said, “Come to me and I will give you rest! Let the thirsty come and drink at the Living Water, let the hungry taste of the Bread of Life, come through the door to salvation, be taken up in the arms of the Good Shepherd” and God’s people said, “No! Not only will we not do that, we will take this Son and kill Him. Not only will we kill Him, but we will use His Father’s own words against Him in Deuteronomy 21:23, which says that any man hung on a tree is cursed! We will kill him in the most torturous, the most shameful way we can possibly think of to do it and on the very day in which we celebrate Your deliverance of us from Egypt.” It doesn’t get any more evil, any more sinister than that. And yet. Even Now. The hero turns to the villain with his bloodied son in his arms and says, “This body and blood is given for you. This very act of murder I am going to use to purchase your redemption!” And at these words, the Son rises from the grave, holes still in His hands and side, and offers you life. That’s gracious and merciful. That’s your God. It is by grace that you have been saved, and this is not of your own doing, for what villain having done this has any hope to redeem himself? This is not of works, don’t make it about you, lest you have anything to boast about. The villain gets no credit here. The Hero gets it all. So what does this mean for us? Why does Sola Gratia make a difference? Recognizing who God is will make you worship. Maybe that is why your heart gets cold because you don’t realize what has been given to you. Remind yourself of this grace, and I dare you not to worship. If you haven’t come to Christ yet, then I would urge you to do it today. The rest of our verse today says that this same God who is gracious and merciful, who loves to forgive sins, Exodus 34:7b, “but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Don’t take God’s gracious character to mean that He is a pushover. He is most decidedly not. Let’s see that from the New Testament, Hebrews 10:28–29“Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” If God is going to be that gracious to you to give you His Son, and you decide that you love your sin more, eventually, God will bring justice. He is good. He must punish. Eventually, the hero turns the gun on the villain. Hebrews 10:30–31 “For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Don’t push away your own salvation. Don’t despise your own grace. Embrace it. Turn from those sins in the power of Christ, and rest in the glorious grace of our merciful God. Drop the gun; the hero isn’t going to die. Instead, with a heart changed by the Spirit, tearfully receive the Son’s hand, and be lifted up into the joy of the Father. James Robertson, “Joel,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915), 1690.
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How do we know what, if anything, is true in this world? Where do you go when you want to know if something has really happened in this world? Do you go to the TV and tune into your favorite news caster? Do you run to your social media of your choice to follow after those who know the “real story”? Do you pull up your favorite long-form podcast and hope that somewhere in those 3 hours of a comedian interviewing a guest will you find what is really true? Or do you run to your favorite AI bot hoping that the machine will filter out human error (spoiler alert: it won’t). What we are increasingly finding is that really no matter which one we choose, there is some sort of drawback to getting the full truth. No matter who you listen to, there are biases in presenters. It’s just part of being human. There are limitations because of how they present their message. TV presenters are limited to how long their segments between commercials are (usually somewhere between the 7 and 15 minute mark) and podcasters have the opposite problem of making the key point in a sea of content. AI, for as interesting as a field as that is makes just as many, if not more, mistakes as the humans do! To sum it up, we live in an age of information but not an age of wisdom. Don’t you wish there was a reliable source not only of information but of the information you actually need? Well, I’ve got some good news for you: It’s the Bible, God’s Book. Now, I’m sure that most of you absolutely saw that coming. You knew I was going to say that. This is something that you are hopefully reading every day, so why do we still feel lost in navigating this world? You may be thinking to yourself, “This world has gotten too complicated for the Bible. They weren’t doing trans surgeries back then. Teenagers can get in way more trouble today then they could two thousand years ago. In an age where morals are degrading faster than they ever have before, can we really expect the Bible to mean anything to people outside the walls of the church? Doesn’t the Bible just guide people who already have most everything together? For those who don’t, they are going to need something more.” If you are feeling like that today, then this passage is here to comfort you. We are in the midst of a series that I have sprung on myself and the rest of you. We are going to be looking at the 5 Solas of the Reformation, the five key principles that define what it means to be a Christian. Last week, we saw that everything depends on Christ, Christ Alone is able to purchase our peace. The fancy term is “Solas Christus.” Today, we are going to be looking at how we know that as we dive into Sola Scriptura: the Scripture alone. God’s Word is Sure When the Reformation was happening the battle was over who gets to finally decide what Christians should believe: is it the Word of God on its own, or is it the Word of God AND the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church? Traditions are funny things. They involve things that you do or say around specific times, like the fact that most of us are going to be roasting a whole turkey for lunch in a few weeks when we would almost never otherwise do. It is part of the doctrine of being American! If you show up to someone’s house on Thanksgiving and they are serving burgers off the grill and pretzels, you’ll call the cops! But why? Didn’t the Pilgrims eat Turkey for Thanksgiving? Yes, William Bradford makes mention of that in his journal (page 105), but it is in a list of many other things including fish and deer. Turns out that Turkeys ended up on American tables for a whole variety of reasons including a popular novel from 1827 detailing what an American Thanksgiving looks like. Interestingly, the author of that novel, Sarah Hale, campaigned to make Thanksgiving a National Holiday granted eventually by Lincoln in 1863. Did you know all that? Probably not! I didn’t. But it didn’t matter to us because we have Turkey for the plain reason of “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” And who is to say that one tradition is better than another’s? That’s all well and good for a holiday meal, but what about when we are trying to figure out how we get to heaven? What about when we are trying to figure out if the way we are living is worth it? “That’s the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t cut it, especially when we don’t even know why that’s the way we’ve always done it. That applies for churches, families, and even individuals. “Well, it’s worked so far” is a flimsy foundation for living. Every building that eventually collapsed had a foundation that got them that far. We don’t want to rely on tradition. Let’s rely on a sure word. That’s what we see at the beginning of our passage in verse 16. Peter is speaking to the church in general, but this letter is the second one that he has written (3:1). “He addresses a wider range of readers (all believers) than in the first epistle, but includes especially those therein addressed, as ch. 3:1 proves” (Brown). Likely, this is the same audience as 1 Peter in which he is writing to people who have been scattered all over the Mediterranean because of their faith in Christ. They’ve lost everything, so let’s be sure it’s worth it! Here in verse 16, Peter is reminding them that this isn’t some sort of made up story they’re telling. This isn’t some fiction to help children get to sleep. Peter saw Jesus in glory. Here he is referring to the time he and the apostle John went up onto the mount of transfiguration and saw the divinity of Jesus shine through. We have an eyewitness account of the very glory of God as he details in verses 17-18. They saw the light, they heard God’s voice say of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” They were THERE. They didn’t see tweets about it. They didn’t watch a YouTube clip. They didn’t hear it from a friend of a friend; they saw it for themselves and wrote it down for us here. Now, you may say, “Well, what if Peter is just a liar or crazy? After all, didn’t Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon cult claim visions of this sort?” Well, Peter was crucified upside down for what he is claiming here. If he was just making it up, right before execution would be a great place to recant! Spurgeon put it this way: “He had no retractions to make as he came toward the close of his ministry. He did not have to say that, after all, he had been greatly mistaken. There had been an advance in theology since Jesus Christ had died, and he was sorry to say that he had preached a good deal when he was young that he would like to unsay now that he was old. Oh, no! Peter held fast to what he had previously preached because he knew that it was the very truth of God.” (Spurgeon) Ok, so he wasn’t lying, but what if he was just delusional? Well, that’s where we get to verse 19. Peter says that because of what he has seen, it makes the prophetic word (the Old Testament, and what had been written of the New Testament by then [see 3:16]) “more fully confirmed.” In other words, this isn’t something invented whole cloth from Peter’s mind. There is an entire canon of Scripture predicting these things. They were already sure because they came from God, but now that he himself has seen it in action, it is even more confirmed. Have you ever been given driving directions from someone you trust? You’ve never been there before, and you’re a little nervous about making it there. There isn’t GPS signal, so you have to rely on their directions and landmarks. Now, you trust them as you set out driving, but don’t you feel an extra layer of comfort once you start seeing the things you were told you would see? You knew the directions were good because of their source, but now you know that you know it is good because you see it just as they said. God had communicated since Genesis 3:15 that there was going to be one to come who would crush the head of the snake. Isaiah 53 goes into great detail of a Servant who would suffer for His people. Psalm 110 spoke of a descendant of David who was also David’s King. And there He was on the mountain with Peter and John who also writes down his experience of that moment: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) These passages are thousands of years apart. There is no conspiracy that would last that long to force it. This is God. And, skipping over the rest of verse 19 for just a second (we will come back to it), look onto verses 20-21. Peter makes it obvious here that God is the one who wrote all this down. He used men, but they were carried along by the Holy Spirit “as by a mighty wind” (Brown) to write it all down. God’s Word is sure. God’s Word is Your Only Guide Ok, so we’ve seen that God’s Word is sure, more sure than anything else in the world because it is written by someone who doesn’t make mistakes and sees all things. So what does it mean? How should we now live? What is the takeaway? Remember that part of verse 19 we skipped? Here it is now. That prophetic word, God’s written words “you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” In other words, listen. This book was written by the Being that made marriage and parenting, so you should listen to what it says about your marriage and parenting. There is literally no better source. Hear what it says about starting well and ending well. Know what it says about your life. God didn’t write all this just so we can buy 15 copies of it and look at it on our shelves. Jesus didn’t transfigure in front of Peter, James, and John just to show off. After God said “this is my beloved Son,” he closed with the line, “Listen to Him.” Notice how Peter describes how we listen. We look to it like a lamp in a dark place. You know when you had to go somewhere in the dark as a kid, you would be afraid unless you had a flashlight? You wouldn’t go in that room unless you had that light with you. Even as an adult, if you go outside at night, you don’t step somewhere unless that light as shown on it. You rely on that light and trust that light as an adult. As a kid, though, you love that light. It doesn’t just provide safe stepping; it provides security. That is what the Word is for your life. Psalm 119 describes it as a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. It’s dark out there. You need that light. Don’t look to other people walking in the dark without a light. Sure, by God’s grace they haven’t fallen yet, but there are a lot of holes, a lot of roots, a lot of dangers in the darkness. Your Father has given you a light to illumine and comfort in the dark. It is sure. Read it. Hold up everything in your life to it. Don’t be satisfied with “life as you’ve always done it.” Instead, take up this light. Let it lead you and your family as we all walk in the dark. But my friends, as we see at the end of this verse, it won’t always be dark. It’s a long walk in the dark, shadowy woods, but there is a brightly lit new day that will dawn. In heaven, we won’t need the lamp anymore, because there we will know. We will see it for ourselves. We will see God in the same glory that Peter saw and sees even now. And we will simply and joyfully get to say, “this word is even more fully confirmed.” Bibliography David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, vol. VI (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.), 622. Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon Commentary: 2 Peter, ed. Elliot Ritzema and Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Spurgeon Commentary Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 2 Pe 1:16. |
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