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​Putting away Christmas decorations can be a hazard. I saw a photo recently of a ladder leading up into a person's attic. Just to the left of the ladder, sticking through the ceiling's drywall, was a foot. The caption read that the person was warned not to step on the drywall, but they didn't admit to not knowing what drywall was until after stepping through it. If you, too, don't know what drywall is, it is a plaster that is held together between two sheets of paper. It is usually fastened to planks of wood to hold it up. When you are in the attic, you are to place your weight on the wood holding up the drywall, not the drywall itself. 

Now, maybe you are bit handier and wouldn't make such a mistake. You wouldn't place your trust in things that can't hold your physical weight. But are you as careful with your soul? The thing about the Lord is He gives wonderful gifts of financial resources, family, and even your local church, but the gifts are meant to be the pointer to Himself, the actual object of your trust. We don't trust the gifts; we trust the giver. 

Today, we jump back into Genesis to continue the story of redemption as it relates to Abraham so far. It began with the creation account showing us that God is very powerful. Once we got to Abraham's story, we see that God is faithful. He made promises to Abraham that He fulfilled and was faithful to Abraham even when Abraham wasn't always faithful to God.  

Today, we pick up with Abraham's son Isaac. What may be so surprising in this story is how little time we spend with him. Isaac's story only lasts about a chapter before moving quickly on to Jacob who will be the focus more or less through the end of the book. This doesn't mean that he is unimportant or that there isn't so much that we can learn from this chapter. 

Our main point today is that we are to Trust in the Giver, not the Gifts. 

Chapter 26 opens by reminding us very much of Abraham. There is famine in the land yet again. This is the land granted by God, but that doesn't mean that things will always be going well. Isaac heads off to Gerar and is approach the land of Egypt. His father before him went the same way for the same reason, but this time, God tells him not to go down there but remain in the land. 

The opportunities to trust God immediately begin. Famine means that there is no food, so to stay in such an area would seem very non-sensical, but this is exactly what he does. It helps that this is a path that his father has walked before, but more importantly, the promise are following, too. 

God isn't asking for a blind leap of faith, for He lays out the promises. Here we see the same land, seed, and blessing promise that we saw in Genesis 12, but there is one important addition: God promises to be with him. 

God's presence is such a precious promise. It is moving back towards Eden as God is committing to be personally involved and present. This is something that we will see grow in greater degree as the Bible unfolds. Later on in the Old Testament, God will be present in the Tabernacle and Temple, but one can only get so close. When the New Testament comes, Jesus will arrive, physically present! 

How do these promises arrive? At first glance, it looks like Abraham earned it for Isaac. Abraham did what he was supposed to do, and now Isaac gets the benefit of it. As always, we need to keep all of Scripture in mind. The reason why Abraham is blessed is not because Abraham so impressed God that He had to respond with reward. It is, as one scholar put it, “God will fulfill His purposes because He has taken the oath, but we pray that He will be able to use the faithfulness and obedience of His people to help accomplish His plan for the blessing of Abraham to come to the nations" (Belcher, 175). In other words, God uses means. God always planned to use Abraham to bring blessing to the nations, but He decided to use Abraham's obedience to accomplish His will. Abraham's obedience was real and useful, and Isaac does get the benefit of it, but all the credit goes ultimately to God for fueling that obedience. May we be so blessed as to be used in the same way. 

Now, while the famine is a real problem, at the very least Isaac is heading back into what should be friendly territory. This is the same place that Abraham journeyed in, and when he was there, the local king made a covenant with him. Amazingly, this promise was made despite the fact that Abraham's deception nearly killed the king when he said Sarah was his sister. 

We might think that Isaac should be comforted by the previous history of covenant making, and should have been unafraid of the people of Gerar. In addition, he had a personal visit from God, not only confirming the promises, but additionally promising to be with him! If there was ever a moment in which fear would be banished it would be this one, right? 

Instead, Isaac pulls the old "she's just my sister" scheme again. What happened? Isaac forgot about the promises. He wasn't trusting God. You play by the rules of the one you trust. If Isaac was trusting in God in that moment, he wouldn't be lying. However, he did trust the Philistines that they wouldn't kill him as long as they didn't think they needed to. Those rules demanded he lie. 

We are quick to make the same error. We trust that we need our jobs more than be faithful to the truth, so we will sin in order to keep our jobs. We believe that it is more important to be thought well of in the community, so we will keep our Christian faith to ourselves. We feel the pressure to make sure our kids have every advantage they need, even if that means putting them in sports over and against Sunday worship. Whomever we trust is the one we obey. 

Isaac decides to lie, but just like all other lies, the truth comes out eventually. The king happens to see Isaac being a little closer with Rebekah than would be expected of siblings. Interestingly, the word that the Bible uses euphemistically is "laughing." My old Hebrew professor points out that Isaac's name means "laughter," so named because Sarah dismissed the idea of being able to have a child in her nineties. She wasn't showing faith. And here, in this moment, neither is Isaac. He is making a mockery of God's promises by lying. He's laughing at them, and laughing at the people of the country as he does so. 

Thankfully, just like last time, the Lord is faithful and the people are more honorable than given credit for, and the king makes sure that Rebekah is protected. And that isn't all. Isaac proves to be quite the farmer as the seed that he sows reap a hundred times more than planted! Truly a miracle! 

We might stop here and ask, "Why does God bless Isaac like that and not me?" Why don't my crops or paycheck increase a hundredfold? Well, for one thing, as moderns, we are living in a world in which Isaac could have barely imagined in how good it is, but secondly, it isn't always good for Isaac either. In fact, even the increasing riches themselves prove that ancient wisdom: mo money; mo problems. He gets so rich and powerful, the locals are afraid of him and want him gone! So they keep him moving, and the way they do this is by sealing up the wells, the wells that his father dug. He reopens them, and they claim them back. Instead of fighting over it, he renames them "Esek" which means "contention" and "Sitnah" which means "enmity." Usually, in the Old Testament, to name something is to own it, so I don't wonder if this is the Bible's way of saying, "Yes, Isaac gave the wells away, but he was just going to let them use them."

Despite these troubles, things end well for Isaac. For those of us who have hoses attached to our houses, the idea of losing a well sounds more like the loss of something nice rather than something necessary. Remember, he's got flocks and servants in a desert climate, but he trusts that God is with him and eventually ends up in Beersheba, the place where Abraham settled. Once there, God appears to Him and restates the promises made to him, which he responds to in worship. Finally, just like with his father, the next generation of Abimelech comes out to make a treaty with him, because the blessings of God are undeniable, which he does. 

What can we draw from a story like this? 

One of the main things we miss in our Christian life is that the peace we desire for our souls is not found in new information but a reminder of that which is old. In this story, yes, Isaac is told that God is with him, but we have been blessed to know that this whole time. This is the only anchor that we have in our lives. It isn't the presence or absence of gifts. 

Isaac should have been, from a human perspective, been set for life. He was heading back into a land which he has a divine right to, the people who live there made a treaty with his father century ago, and he is the rightful heir to that promise. He is going towards wells that belong to him, and the seed that he plants turns out to grow more than any farmer's wildest expectations. He knows how to interact with the locals to protect his wife. All's good! 

Yet it can all change. One look out the window at the right time shatters that seemingly protective lie. The very riches that brought comfort, caused him to need to be moved. And well after well that was rightfully his gets stopped up and claimed. This wasn't a bad week for Isaac, for according to one source, this chapter plays out over the course of one hundred years (Phillips, 157)! Isaac has to deal with things over and over just like you and I need to. The difference is, with a misstep or two along the way, he trusts God to provide more water (which he does) and hold up His promises. We must do the same. 

A key thing for what this looks like practically is our prayer life. This will mean that when problems inevitably surface our first response is prayer. After that, the next course of action is guided by Scripture and good old common sense. Don Whitney: if you only have 15 minutes, read for five and pray for ten! You have a Savior who has also promised that He will be with you to the end of time, so trust in that, and not what you can see. All that we can see is drywall. Don't lean your weight on it.

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We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot?
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Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits!
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Deuteronomy 8points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year.
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The Cure for Prosperity is Remembrance
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Right at the beginning, we are told to obey God’s commandments and remember God’s care. This book is Moses’ final words to the people of Israel as they are about to enter the Promised Land after wandering in the desert for 40 years. This hasn’t been an easy journey, but it is about to be over. Before we even talk about what good is coming, they are told upfront that it is critical that they are to obey every commandment God has for them, as it is emphatic in the original language (Woods, Deuteronomy, Tyndale). We often forget that there are two words to emphasize there in verse 3. It isn’t just that we live by every Word that God speaks, but EVERY WORD, that God speaks.
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Don’t discount the blessedness of simple obedience to God’s commands. Believe it or not, those commands there are for your good, and you have no idea how much you need them. One scholar put it this way: “To eat and drink is merely to exist; only as men and women receive and obey God’s truth can they really ‘live’ as God intended—lives which bring them lasting satisfaction and eternal security.” (Brown, 120) Too many of us live like we don’t have souls. Yes, physical nourishment and proper sleep is important, but you can have those things and just exist. If you want to live as you were meant to, you need this Word.
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God will do whatever it takes to teach you this. God isn’t leading you to a hard life for its own sake. He is leading you through a hard time in order to know God’s good commands. That’s exactly what verse three says. One scholar put it this way: “The Lord may be using such events to ‘discipline’ us, to show us how much we have been relying on our own resources, or how prayerless we have become, or how we have allowed our lives to be determined by materialistic values, and a host of other things. Testing times are learning times. Writing from his prison cell in 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘Much as I long to be out of here, I don’t believe a single day has been wasted … something is bound to come out of it … We shall come out of it all much strengthened.’” (Brown, 121)
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Some of you have had an extremely difficult year. But it isn’t a waste. Some of you have lost a loved one (and death isn’t the only way to lose a person) only to find that God will never leave you. Some of you are losing your ability to see, and that could be to show you that all of life is lived by faith and not by sight. None of that is meant to minimize what you are going through; it’s hard! But “Some lessons can only be learnt in trouble.” (Brown, 120). This is going somewhere. “The Puritan preacher, Stephen Charnock, reminded his friends who were suffering fierce persecution in the late seventeenth century that ‘if we did remember his former goodness we should not be so ready to doubt … his future care’.” (quoted in Brown, 119). God will take care of you because He has.
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Jesus knows how hard this is. This passage contains one of the verses that Jesus quotes to Satan. Satan tries to get Jesus to doubt what had just been said to Him. The Father had said, “You are my Beloved Son,” and what does Satan say? “IF you are the Son of God, make these stones bread.” The subtle lie here is that if Jesus was really God’s Son, then where is the provision? The Father is either forgetful or a liar. Either way, bread isn’t here, so just make some. You don’t have to wait for the Father. I love what one scholar said about that passage: “When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his Father to supply the food, but, if not, he would not adopt the devil’s suggestions.” (Brown, 121). This is the example for us. We will be told all kinds of things that aren’t true, that God explicitly said aren’t true, that deep down we know aren’t true, but unless we are careful, we will still believe them. Remember and obey.
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But what happens when He blesses?
The Danger of Prosperity is Pride
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As we move into the second half of the chapter, we are told of all the wonderful things that God has in store for the Israelites. Food beyond comprehension, natural resources, and the hope of a future. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
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But there is a new challenge. There is the challenge to remember to never forget. This is the danger of comfort. What makes comfort dangerous is you begin to forget God.
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When you were a toddler, how many times do you think you asked your parents for something per day? The answer is billions. You saw your need, so there was no forgetting about your parents or the ability to call them when there is a problem. Once you get older, though, you begin to have a few things figured out (or at least you think you do), and what happens? You start to forget. You stop calling. You really don’t even notice until something blows up in your life.
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This happens even more so with God. Once you begin to think about how much you’ve grown this year, how much you’ve gotten done, the things you’ve finally got straightened out, oh, watch out. Beware! You’ve begun to lift up your heart. What does it mean to lift up your heart? It means to put it in the place where God should be. A lifted up heart, a prideful heart believes that everything that it has was created by its own work. Who needs God when the money is doing well? Who needs God when you’ve finally “figured out who you are”? Who needs God when the country is stable again? We all do.
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In order to fight this, we have to recognize that we are all susceptible to it. And it isn’t prosperity’s fault! After all, God is the one who grants these things! The proper purpose of prosperity is praise! That is what we see in verse 10. God gives all of these gifts so that we might praise Him! And when He withholds something, it means that He is giving us something else.
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If you’ve got a particular sin that you are struggling with, might I suggest interrogating it? What I mean is, see if you can figure out what you are forgetting about God that is leading you to this sin. Sure, we can say that we spend too much money because we are selfish or greedy, but that doesn’t go far enough. You are also forgetting that your joy and fulfillment comes from Christ not stuff. Instead of trying to scroll past that “buy now” button by saying, “Don’t be greedy,” instead say, “Look at how much God has given to me. Look at what God Himself is to me.” Tie your sin to what you are forgetting about God and what He commands you to do.
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But how do we remember to even do that? How do we keep our minds focused where they need to be? How can we remember to remember?
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Well, God has given to us a sacrament to do just that. We are going to approach the Lord’s Table here in a few moments, and one of the things that you will hear many times in the liturgy is “do this in remembrance.” Now, there is more than just remembering, but it isn’t any less. When we come to this table we are reminded of what Jesus has done for us in the past and proclaim that work until—what?—He comes again. Our sin is forgiven, and there is a land coming, a future coming. Yet we can be so weighed down from troubles AND triumphs that unless we regularly remind ourselves, regularly come face to face with Christ by faith we will forget. And once we forget, disobedience is never far away. (Brown, 123).
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Maybe you are here today looking back over this year with regret. Perhaps you think that it hasn’t necessarily been wasted with troubles but has been wasted with sin. Listen to these words of comfort, “Moses tells the Hebrew people that those forty years in the desert had been difficult years, but not wasted ones. Disobedience had kept a whole generation out of a land they might have enjoyed, but God had been with them just the same. When people grieve him, he does not utterly forsake them. If rebels run away from him, he lovingly pursues them, as Bunyan reminded us, ‘with a pardon in his hand’. (Brown, 119) That pardon is carried by a nail-pierced hand, family. So if you realize you’ve got to get back with it, simply remember and obey. I don’t mean earn your way to heaven. I simply mean remember the way God uses the word “remember.” It isn’t just calling it to mind. It means living like this is true. Pardon is here for the asking. Turn from your sin, repent, and put your faith in Christ. It will never be perfect repentance or perfect faith, but it is towards and in the Perfect Savior. Live like that is true. Live like the Father loves you, like the Son has died for you, like the Spirit lives within you. Remember and in that knowledge, obey with joy.
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Work Cited 
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Raymond Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy: Not by Bread Alone, ed. J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993).

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It has been said that the best way to sum up the book of Revelation is to say, “Jesus wins.” Now, that is true as far as it goes, but this doesn’t go far enough. The book tells us more than just Jesus wins, because it tells us how Jesus wins. Details are important, because details give us a clearer picture of who Jesus is and always was.
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This scene is an important detail in our Portrait of Jesus series because it helps form the final word of the subtitle I stole from Beth McGrew for this series: Jesus, Meek and Wild. This is the wild part.
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Jesus isn’t a general leading from the rear. His garments have blood on them. He is getting personally involved. His eyes are described as flames, and His mouth wields a sword! This is a very different picture of a Lamb being led to slaughter, but I think a careful study of this passage will enhance your view of Jesus.
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For one, this picture will help us appreciate how patient Jesus was. At any moment, He would have been justified to slaughter everyone there, especially at the cross. But He doesn’t.
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I think that this also shows us where Christmas is ultimately going. We rightly talk about that Christmas begins in the manger and goes to the cross, but that isn’t all there is. The cross is the redemptive moment for us, but the ultimately victorious moment is here. It begins in the manger, and it ends on the Throne, all enemies and threats to it being decisively defeated.
Our King Will Return
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While the book of the Revelation is complex, what comes here in this chapter is not overly difficult to understand. While we simply don’t have time to unravel all of the arguments as to when or precisely how this takes place, let’s simply look at what it is showing us about Who is doing all this work.
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We begin in verse 11 with an introduction to a figure sitting on a white horse riding into battle. As this passage unfolds, it becomes blindingly obvious that this is Jesus riding this horse. There are many names and titles that are given to Jesus that when they are all stacked together, you paint this picture of a really imposing figure! He is called Faithful and True. This title is given to Jesus earlier in the letters that are sent to the churches (3:7, 14).
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He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and our faithful High priest, but there is something that is not often talked about: Jesus brings war. His eyes are described as a flame of fire, crowns stacked on top of each other on His head, and most graphically, is wearing a robe that is dipped in blood!
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Let’s take a look at that robe for a moment. Some might think that the blood on the robe is actually His own blood. After all, His is known for shedding His blood for our redemption, isn’t He? Obviously, yes, that is still true, but as always, we have to look at the context of the rest of the passage to see what is going on.
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Verse 15 gives us a pretty good hint as to what exactly this blood is. The last line of that verse mentions Him treading the winepress of God’s wrath, and this image isn’t something that John is coming up with on His own. One key thing to understand about Revelation is that there is a reference to the Old Testament practically every three verses. This is just loaded with call backs and allusions to the Old Testament, and this is one of them. Specifically, this is pointing back to
Isaiah 63:1-3. God is speaking in this chapter, and He arrives, as it were, with stained garments, stained with blood. They are splattered like one who’s garments are stained from a wine press.
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A winepress would have looked like a small pool dug into the ground and lined with stone. You would pour the grapes into the pool and then stomp around with your bare feet to press all the grapes down to squash the juice out of it. This would not be the time to wear your best garment. Can you imagine the mess you would make on a tunic stomping around a wading pool of wine? Can you also imagine what this would be like from the perspective of a grape? This is utter destruction. This is absolutely apocalyptic!
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This is the image that is ascribed to Jesus. He has dominated His enemies like a winepress of grapes, and His robe tells the tale. He has stomped them, and now He rules with a rod of iron. This is a rule that is not going to expire. This is a definitive victory that was prophesied all the way back in
Psalm 2
. This judgment has been a slow burn, and absolutely no one can be said to be surprised by it. God has been announcing that it is coming for the last 3,000 years. When Jesus comes to reign, He takes that title of King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
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The battle that ensues here is quite definitive. And quick. We are going to skip down to verse 20 showing that the beast and false prophet (without getting into all the ways that we can look at the specific identity of this beast and prophet, let’s suffice it to say that these are Satanic agents bent on harming the Church). The heads of this resistance (with Satan himself bound up in the next chapter) are cast into hell, and “the rest” are slain by the sword. Who are “the rest”? Well, these are the kings of the earth and their armies. This would be absolutely terrifying to witness on the horizon, yet Christ defeats them all with His Word. This isn’t even a contest or challenge.
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What happens to all the bodies? Well, the birds are commanded to come to a feast. Here is God still taking care of the birds. What you’ll notice is that no one gets special treatment, either. Kings, captains, mighty men, animals, free men, and even slaves. There are no social categories that excuse from the wrath of God. There is no one above the law and no one too lowly to be noticed. Everyone is equal before the judgment of God. If this chapter were to be fulfilled today everyone opposed to God from the halls of power to the projects lie slain. The only thing that delivers anyone from a fate like that is a relationship with the King.
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We can try to soften this, but there is no way to do so. Some might say that this is just symbolic, and in a way, they are correct. After all, Jesus isn’t literally going to produce a sword from between His teeth. “But” as one scholar asks, “if that is a mere symbol, what will be the reality?” (Wilcock, 187). That’s a good question. This wedding ring that I have on is meant to symbolize everlasting love for my wife. But this circular piece of metal in and of itself pales in comparison to wedded love. The same is true of God’s wrath. It is put here in terms that we can understand, but this isn’t even the half of what God’s wrath really looks like when it is spilled in judgement on the last day.
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This is a very different picture from a wriggling infant from Luke 2, isn’t it?
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So why bring all this up now? After all, this is Christmas, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be ending things on a little bit more of an encouraging note?
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Well, for one, this is who Jesus is. As one scholar puts it, “Apart from the reference to
Psalm 2 (‘he will rule them’), there is not even a verb in the future tense anywhere in these verses. They describe not what Christ is going to do but what he is: conquering King, righteous Judge, Captain of the armies of heaven.” (Wilcock, 183) If we are going to do a portrait of Christ, we have to include the meek and the wild.
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So why are we often uncomfortable with this picture? I think there are a couple of possibilities.
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1) We might have forgotten how awful sin is, and that this is actually the right response. This is actually what justice looks like. Jesus isn’t overdoing here. He isn’t flying off the handle and doing things that He will later regret. Sin really is that bad, and it is a passage like this that reminds us of that.
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2) We might shudder to bring this kind of Jesus to the world who expects Jesus to be “Nice.” Of course, we have defined “nice” by the world’s standards of non-judgement. But Jesus is gong to judge, and no amount of pretending is going to change that, so it is, in fact, not nice to hide that fact from people! There is a warning as well as an invitation around Christmas time.
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But why should we want to have this perspective on Jesus?
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One, we need a proper fear of the Lord. There is a place to be reminded that our Lord is a lion. Not safe, but He is good. Let us not be found on the other end of that sword.
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Two, this should comfort us in that no one is going to get away with anything forever. When we ask, “Is there no justice in this world?” We can point to this passage and say, “It is on its way.”
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Three, we need a proper compassion for the lost. This is their fate if they step out of this world without Christ. Remembering these things is what helps us pray for the most despicable people in our world. Those who oppose Christ will one day be slain and fed to the birds. Then it gets worse. So pray for them. Tell them about the gospel, because the same person who could be covered in their blood shed His.
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Finally, we need to be reminded that this same King is our King. He bled for us so that we don’t have to be the slain in the final battle. We have been delivered from this fate, if you are a believer in Christ. He spared us. He calls us to go and spread the good news that more of the world can be spared, too!
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Seeing this kind of picture shows how merciful God is. Jesus isn’t some kind of pushover that felt guilted into saving us. He isn’t some sort of overly permissive parent that just couldn’t stand the idea of punishing. No, He is a King radically committed to His own glory and justice but is yet a gracious and merciful God who delights to show mercy. He loves to, despite His obvious hatred of sin, despite His obvious disgust and wrath against rebellion, show mercy to the undeserving. The same one who comes riding in with bloody robes is the same who rescued you.
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That is your Champion on that horse. So, y’all, don’t fret this Christmas. There is so much evil in this world. That fact is undeniable. Satan doesn’t take Christmas week off. There will be more sin and tragedy during this time just like the rest of the year. But its time is coming to an end. Unrepentant evildoers find their end here. Evil finds its end here, the birth of Christ hails the destruction of the wicked. You are not being abandoned in this world.
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This fact is why Christians can sing in the ICU. It is why we should sing loudly and heartily here. We sing as people who have been redeemed from this fate. We sing as those who love our enemies and are praying for them to the same loving and gracious God Who saved us. We sing as those who have been waiting in a dark night yet know that the sun will rise soon.
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Jesus isn’t done yet. Redemption has only begun. So sing, Christian. Rest today. The fate of the world does not rest on your shoulders. Mom and Dad, making Christmas magic for your family is retelling this story to your children. Give them this foundation of hope. Enchant their world with the true story of the Hero Who beats the Beast.
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Grandma and Grandpa, I know you often worry about the world that is being left to your kids and grandkids. I can’t promise anything in the short term, and even if I could, it wouldn’t be better than what is here. The world is in good hands. Everything is going to be set right.
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Kids, you have a real Hero looking after you. You don’t have to be afraid of anything. Really. Get used to that. The world tries to scare you, but we have a God who doesn’t want you to be scared. He told you what the end of the movie is so you can enjoy it.
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Rest today, everyone. Celebrate this week. I know, there is so much going on. Please, try to take a moment. Everything is going to be ok. Rest, and then, in the New Year, let’s get back to it. Let’s go and win the world. It is already won in Christ, so let’s be involved in showing the world that victory.
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Work Cited 
Michael Wilcock, The Message of Revelation: I Saw Heaven Opened, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 187.

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We are going to take a look at one of the most complicated and comforting mysteries in the Bible. How is Jesus in one Person able to have a fully divine nature and a fully human nature? There is one sense in which that mystery is simply left at that: a mystery. As one theologian put it: “We are simply told what Jesus is, without any attempt to show how He became what He is…It has always recognized the incarnation as a mystery which defies explanation. And so it will remain, because it is the miracle of miracles” (Berkhof, 321).
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But just because we can’t explain how this mystery works, doesn’t mean we can’t be awed by viewing it. I can’t possibly explain how a star manages for most of its life not to be crushed by its own gravity or how a hunk of rock and gases emit light, but I can still be captured by its beauty in the night sky.
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Now, unlike a star, Jesus is more than someone to admire and ultimately worship and obey. He’s not less than that, but the angle that I want to take a look at today is the comforting aspect of knowing who our God is.
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The last couple of weeks, we have been examining the Person of Jesus. The first week of Advent, we look at Jesus’ divinity, as clearly seen in John 1:1-14. Next, we saw the humanity of Jesus out of Luke 2:52. Now, we are going to look at those two elements together and see what it means for Jesus to be the Godman. Again, how this works is a mystery beyond human mental capability, but what this means for us is well within our grasp to understand and worship.
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We will consider this chapter under a couple of broad headings. The first is Jesus is the King of all Kings. Second, Jesus is the reconciler of all things, and Third, Therefore, Jesus is your sole Hope
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Jesus is the King of all Kings
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This letter was written to the church because the church at Colosse was beset by a culture that was very afraid of spiritual powers. The people in the area were concerned that angels, demons, other gods might have an impact on things like their crops, so keeping them happy was very important. It is difficult for us to imagine the level of concern that this would bring because for most of us, having food is a given. The thought that all your crops might die because you didn’t offer a little sacrifice to the gods would be very powerful.
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Here, Paul is reminding everyone who is really in charge. Speaking of Christ, Paul says that He is the revealer of God, which is just another way of saying that He is God Himself. To look at the face of Christ is to look at the face of God. He is called the firstborn of all creation not because He was created Himself, but because “he existed before creation.” (McLaurin, Lexham Theological Wordbook). This is made explicit in the next verse (16) by saying that all things, including any and all authority figures on Earth or in the spiritual realm were created through Him and for Him. This means that not only was everything created by Christ, but everything was created to serve Christ as well!
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However, I want us to look at verse 17 closely. Not only did He create all things, but He is the one who holds all things together. All things, rulers spiritual and earthly included, not only started to exist because of Jesus, but they also continue to exist because of Jesus! The word translated “hold together” or “endure” is in the perfect tense, meaning this is something that happened in the past that has enduring effect to the present. In other words He has held things all together and continues to do so. So if Jesus ever wanted to remove someone from power, all He has to do is relax. He just has to stop sustaining that person’s life and they immediately stop. He doesn’t have to figure out how to stop this person, come up with a plan to defeat them, He just has to stop holding them together.
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This comprehensive control should bring us a lot of comfort and direct us on how to deal with problems in our world. Nothing that a ruler of any sphere does is outside the realm of God’s control, so this means that we do not have to go outside the moral limits that God has placed on us. He does not need us to “do something—anything” to protect ourselves. He’s got it under control. In a recently relevant example, we do not murder insurance company CEOs even if we think their business model is bad. Without getting into the weeds about when is a killing justified, we should be able to agree at least to that distinction. To a more specific application to our group here, we don’t have to spend inordinate time worrying about the future government or corporations do. They cannot oppose God’s plans. They can only advance them. That doesn’t mean our lives will be easier for it or that we resign our responsibilities to be good and lawful citizens. It takes the sting of concern and sleeplessness out of the equation. We serve a powerful God.
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Not only do we serve a powerful God, but that same God is head over our Church. What does it mean to be head? It can be thought of in two ways: God directly orders the church what to do or God takes care of the church like a brain cares for its body. As scholars point out, “The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and some commentators argue in favor of a combination of the two (see Bruce 1984, 66–71).” (Brown, Colossians). In other words, God (the same one who makes and sustains the entire universe, including our enemies) pays particular attention to the Church.
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How is Jesus able to do that? Because, as we see in verse 19, all the fullness of God dwells in Him. Jesus has a completely divine nature. Jesus is not some limp-wristed hippy.

Jesus is the Reconciler of All Things
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However, even more powerfully, we see in verse 20 the idea that Jesus brings reconciliation between God and all things. This is only possible by the blood of His cross.
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Have you ever been kinda weirded out by how often Christians sing about blood? This isn’t because we want to be gross, but this is because that is the most important part of our doctrine. In order to have reconciliation, as we have covered before, there has to be blood spilled. And it can’t be just any old human blood. First of all humans are sinners now, and a tainted sacrifice isn’t going to do anything. You can’t substitute one criminal for another. Each criminal has to pay their own fine. Second, even if you could find a perfect human being, that person in their human nature is finite. God’s wrath against sin is infinite. At most, the perfect human being could suffer for all eternity to spring one other human being from hell. One human being only couldn’t save anyone else.
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However, Jesus isn’t just human. He is also God. The Person of Jesus has the attributes of BOTH humanity and divinity. He possesses the ability to bleed and die in His human nature, but His person is infinite because He also has all the divine attributes. He can reconcile all things because He is infinite! Jesus is the only person in the universe who could do this! He is the only person to have divine and human attributes. This is why He must be both. His sacrifice is sufficient for all things, but there will be those who reject their own mercy and refuse to surrender their lives to Jesus. Even this, for reasons beyond our ability to cover here, is part of God’s plan as well.
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Therefore, Jesus is Your Sole Hope
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As we settle into our final verses here, Paul turns to emphatically address the recipients of this letter. The “you” there is plural and emphatic. Translated correctly, and Southern English is the best to translate this word, Paul is saying, “and Y’ALL…” Paul is directly addressing this specific church, and we who are also united in Christ are included here. We, here at Knollwood Presbyterian Church today, were once alienated and hostile and evil towards God, but we have been reconciled, brought back into a good relationship with God, through Christ’s body of flesh. Our sin had to be dealt with.
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Notice also that this reconciliation happens with Jesus. Note that He reconciles all things to Himself! Christ is the offended one, along with the rest of the Godhead! Yet, He is the one who suffers, bleeds, and dies to make it right. It doesn’t get more gracious and merciful than that.
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So what’s a person to do? How on earth do we respond to that? Well, the emphatic “y’all’s” continue in the following verses. He has done all of this so that we might be blameless and holy before Him. This doesn’t mean that Jesus started the process with us finishing it. No, no! Jesus has made us perfectly holy before God on the cross. Period. And from that new status of holy, we begin to shape our lives to live up to this new name. The life that God intends for us is a holy one. God isn’t calling us to a lower life to serve Him. He is simply redefining for our sinful minds what the good life is. The good life is a holy life, which is why He is calling us to it.
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We are called to continue in the faith, being stable and steadfast, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel. Now, as one commentator points out, the “if” isn’t Paul saying that Christians can lose their salvation. He is just saying, “Don’t fall away”! (Wilson, 227). He quotes J.I. Packer as summing it up this way, “The only proof of past conversion is present covertedness.” (ibid, 227).
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In closing, what does a stable and steadfast life that looks to the hope of the gospel look like?
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Well, it begins by realizing, like we said last week, that everything here said is in fact true. It is an actual reality that the God whom you serve is capable of all these things and has actually purchased your redemption.
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You actually need to remind yourself of this every day. I heard a Piper sermon this week where he talked about when he forgets about the forgiveness he has in Christ. He said something to the effect of, we have people in here who feel the guilt of their sin as they are going to bed, and some feel totally insecure of their place in Christ in the morning when they first wake up. He said he was a “morning guilt” person! He feels totally secure as he is going to bed. I’m actually the same way. In that fog of the morning, all the regrets and sins of the past rush to accuse. It is at that very moment that you have to remind yourself of the gospel.
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Once you are re-stabilized, run the rest of your life through that truth. You are reconciled to God, the Creator of all the world, the one who can destroy enemies just by relaxing, through His pouring out His lifeblood on the cross in utter humiliation. There was actual pain involved to remove that sin. Will you now, keeping that in mind, contribute more sin by yelling at your kids? By arguing with your spouse? By gossiping (a form of immodesty)? What sin do you commit that is worth that? Do you really need another hour of scrolling when your Bible hasn’t been touched in a week? Is there really something more glorious to spend your time thinking about?
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And then, once that truth of the glorious Christ has caused you to sin less and enjoy Him more, you will not be able to help yourself from sharing Him with others. You evangelize things and people you love all the time. Look at grandparents! How long can you even go in conversation with them without them bringing the little tykes up, especially if they are proud of them? If you even mention my kids, I am already reaching for my phone to show you a picture! I don’t even have to scroll far to show you one!
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Let us be that way with Christ. Let us adore Him. We can’t do that if we don’t know Him. And we can’t do that if we don’t remind ourselves regularly about Him. We don’t forget because He is forgettable. We forget because we are sinful. Fight to learn; fight to remember. Then enjoy Him. Announce to the world, “Joy! The Lord has come.”

‌Works Cited 
Alisair Wilson, Colossians, ESV Expository Commentary, Crossway.
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L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 321.
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Dougald McLaurin III, “Ancestry and Posterity,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
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Derek R. Brown, Colossians, ed. Douglas Mangum, Lexham Research Commentaries (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013),
Col 1:15–23
.

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​Interestingly, one of the harder things for the ancient peoples to believe about Jesus was that He was truly human. When a person rises from the dead, it isn’t too difficult to believe that they are truly divine, but the idea that Jesus was also truly human was a little much. Many at that time thought that Jesus only “appeared” to be human, walking around the earth like some sort of phantom. It was just too hard to imagine.
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It is hard for us to conceive as well. It is hard for us to express that God experienced limits in the person of Jesus. It is hard for us to believe that Jesus actually does understand where we are coming from. He doesn’t know our weaknesses in just an academic sense. He has actually experienced our troubles physically AND emotionally. All those things that we would say makes us human from a theological understanding to a popular understanding were true of Jesus.
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There are practical reasons for exploring this doctrine. I think the area that this improves the most immediately is patience in the hard things of life.
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Military training is a really hard thing to get through, particularly if you want to join the best of the best. For example, I heard one sort of training exercise where a recruit had to run across the beach, fill his mouth with salt water, run back to a bucket way too far away, spit the water into the bucket, and then go back for another mouthful, continuing this exercise until the bucket was full. Once full, the instructor kicked the bucket over and flatly said, “Do it again.” Now, you might think that the instructor is just trying to torture the recruit until you hear that the instructor was once a recruit. The instructor has seen combat. He actually knows what is coming, and sees the ability to follow orders even through great disappointment and fatigue as important to build in the coming generation. If the instructor were just a civilian, a non-combatant, the temptation would be to stuff him in the bucket, but because the recruit knows that this instructor has not only done this exercise himself and has survived in part because of it, he will continue with the training.
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Jesus doesn’t ask you to suffer without having done so Himself. Jesus will never ask you to go somewhere He hasn’t gone, suffer something that He hasn’t suffered, because at the end of the day, no matter what we suffer, Jesus endured the very wrath of God on the cross.
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So let’s examine this doctrine that we especially celebrate at Christmas time, the incarnation, God taking on human nature, on Jesus being fully human.
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Jesus is truly human
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What does it mean to be human? This is a question that we are increasingly wrestling with today, but the Bible answers that in Genesis 1 as a creature made in God’s image. They come in two flavors, male and female, but both are equally made in God’s image, both equally human. At the core, that is what it means to be human. There are many other attributes that are found with that identity that are physical (arms, legs, eyes, that sort of thing) and some that are less easily seen (the ability to think, the possession of a soul).
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As humans, we are creatures of God’s creation. This means that we are not God and are different from Him. God is eternal, having neither beginning nor end, nor having any real boundaries whatever. He is outside of space and time and has nothing on which He depends (like air, blood, or food). We are very different. We can only be in one place at one time and are wholly dependent on all kinds of things.
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One of the very first people we depend on is a mother. Jesus had one, too! One scholar noted that we often talk about the “virgin birth” of Jesus, but the birth itself really was quite ordinary. What was remarkable, though, was the conception (John Frame). Mary never knew a man, yet she carried the embryonic Christ in her womb. Just like us, half of Jesus’ genetic material came from Mary. The other half from the Holy Spirit. Jesus would have had physical characteristics that would have made Him recognizable as Mary’s son. Perhaps He got her nose or her smile.
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Ok, you may say, Jesus had to enter the world in some way, but what about once He was here? Did Jesus really need to be nursed or go to school? Yes and yes. Just like any other child, Jesus had to learn things. This is why our passage says that He grew (or progressed) in wisdom and stature. At one point in His life, He was two feet tall and had to grow. The Gospel of Luke records in chapter 1:80 that the baby John the Baptist grew and the exact same word is used to describe Jesus in
Luke 2:40. By the same token, he had to learn, which is why it is said that He progressed in wisdom. He had a fully human mind that needed to learn and memorize.
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It may sound surprising to phrase it this way, but from the outside, there would be nothing special about Jesus. I know “Away in a Manger” says that “the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes” but that’s ridiculous. All babies cry, especially when they are woken up by a cow. Jesus would have been no different.
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So can we say that Jesus was dependent as an adult? In His humanity, yes he was. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, in Matthew 4 it had been 40 days since He had anything to eat, and the text says that He was hungry. Jesus wasn’t pretending to be hungry. He really was hungry, and not in a “oops, I forgot to eat lunch today” sort of hungry but a “I haven’t eaten in nearly a month and a half” sort of hungry. Jesus’s body is basically breaking down muscle at this point. Jesus knows what it means to be starving. He knows what it means to be emotional “weeping (Luke 19:41; John 11:35), being moved (John 12:27), feeling grief (Matt. 26:38), being furious (John 2:17)” (As Bavinck points out in his dogmatics).
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Now, why are we going over this is such exhaustive detail? Well, believe it or not, it is critically important for our salvation. It was said by the ancient theologian, John of Damascus, “that which is unassumed is unredeemed.” What that means is Jesus has to be like us in every way because if Jesus was, say, missing a human mind, then it wouldn’t be changed in our salvation. We sin with our minds as much as we sin with our hands, and every sin needs to be paid for. Not only that, but every act of goodness has to be done as well. We need to not only avoid sin but accomplish righteousness in all our members. Jesus has to be righteous in every respect in every member we have. This is why He must be like us in ALMOST every way.
Jesus is sinless in every way
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Now, why do I say “almost” every way? Well, there is one crucially important difference between Jesus and us: sinlessness. Hebrews 4:15 tells us very clearly, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, [and here is the key phrase] yet without sin.” Jesus not only never sinned, but didn’t have a sinful nature.
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Now, why do we stress all these things? Why is it so important for Jesus to be fully human yet without sin? Well, there are a few reasons, with the help of Augustine, why this is important to us.
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Jesus needs to be our perfect sacrifice.
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Jesus being without sin is an absolutely critical difference between us and Jesus. Without this being true, Jesus could do nothing for us. If Jesus was a sinner, then He would have to pay for His own sins, and there would be no way for Him to pay for ours. That is what the priests of the Old Testament had to do as the writer of Hebrews points out in
Hebrews 7:27 “He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” (Letham, 531).
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Jesus needs to be our re-creation.
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Now, you may say, “Wait a minute! I thought he was like us in every respect. To be human is to be a sinner, so what’s the deal?” Well, being a sinner wasn’t the original design of humanity. Adam and Eve were originally sinless. Humans being sinners is only a given after
Genesis 3. Taking the original design for human beings means that being righteous is what it means to be truly human.
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We’ve had a number of food recalls lately because certain diseases have gotten into spinach or ice cream, or something of that nature. If someone’s only experience with these foods is with the contaminated ones, that person may assume that sickness simply comes with ice cream. But we would not say, not that original ice cream was this way. So if we wanted to show what true ice cream was supposed to be, it would need to be remade. It would need to be re-created.
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That is what Jesus is doing here. Jesus’s perfection is the picture of what it means to be human, and His work is restoring us to true humanity. The ancient theologian Augustine sees sin as not just corruption, but a corruption that is sliding us into non-existence. After all, sin is moving away from God, and God is “being” itself. For Jesus to save us, we need to be re-created, and that is just what He is doing. And what better person to recreate us than the person who made us in the first place? (Augustine, 93).
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When we are united to Christ by faith, our souls are restored (Psalm 23:3). We are given a new nature, the nature we were originally created to have. To be a Christian is to be human.
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Now, of course, we still are living in our corrupted flesh here on earth warring with the Spirit as
Galatians 5:17 points out, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” But one day that is going to be remade as well!
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Jesus needs to be our example.
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We need to be shown how to be human, and Jesus does that in His life. John Frame, one of my favorite theologians, points to 1 Peter 2:21 to make this point: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” And it isn’t just the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” part of Jesus’ ethic (as revolutionary and difficult as that is on its own), Frame points out that following Jesus’s footsteps necessarily involves self-sacrifice, even to the point of death (Frame, 885). He points to Philippians 2:5–8 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” If we want to describe ourselves as loving, that’s what we need to do according to  1 John 3:16 “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” We have a Savior who laid down His life for us. I mean, it was humiliating enough just to become human, but to become human in this sinful world, AND die for it is simply staggering (Frame, 883, quoting John Murray). Think back to the worst sin you’ve committed, the one that haunts you in the silence of the dark. Know that Jesus knew about that sin and all the other ones. He died for you anyway. And He could only do that by taking on human nature.
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So what does this mean for us today? We have a God Who understands us intimately and calls us to a sacrificial life of righteousness. He has already gone before us, so let us follow after Him.
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When we think about Christmas, it is so easy to be distracted by all the wonderful things that happen in this time of year. We are reminded by literally all the Christmas movies that Christmas isn’t about the gifts, the lights, the trees, but when asked what Christmas is actually about  usually the answer is “the people that you are with.” Of course, as wonderful as family and friends are, that isn’t what Christmas is about.  
This might be the moment at which Charlie Brown’s Linus might be feeling a little smug in that he quotes from Luke 2 when asked what Christmas is about. And Linus is right! It is about the birth of Jesus! But what does that mean? We are so familiar with this passage that we can zip right by what that incredible sentence is saying in verse 11 of Luke 2. 
Who is Jesus, and how is He able to be that Savior and Lord? 
That is the question I would like for us to dwell on during this advent season. Jesus is more than a manger. What happens here in the Christmas story is something that has kept historians and theologians busy for the last 2000 years. More has been written and thought about concerning Jesus than any other figure, and this Christmas, we are going to meditate on why. 
I’m calling this series “A Portrait of Jesus” but if I could give a subtitle, I would steal it from an online author I follow, Bethel McGrew, and call it “Jesus: Meek and Wild.” 
I fear that we think we serve a domesticated Jesus. A Jesus who fits comfortably within our homes and doesn’t take up much space. He comes out of storage every year about this time and is represented as a cute, harmless baby (a reason I’m often uncomfortable with nativity scenes). Yes, we do need to wrestle with the miracle of God becoming human (which we will next time), but first we have to remember the part about Jesus we often functionally, if not completely, forget: Jesus is God Himself. 
Even if we don’t forget that, there are many people out there for whom this season is a great time to talk about the gospel. If you believe that Jesus is God but don’t know quite where you would go in the Bible to show that claim, then this sermon will help you do that! 
Today we are going to focus on Jesus as Deity as we examine John 1:1-14. 
Jesus is God
We begin with the beginning. As one scholar points out: “The opening words of this gospel bear a striking parallel with the opening words of Genesis,” and this is of course intentional (Guthrie). John wants to take us back to the very beginning because that is as far back as Jesus goes. Jesus is eternal, no beginning or end, completely outside of time.
Now, Jesus isn’t explicitly named here yet (that won’t come up until verse 14), but He is given a very significant title here “the Word” which we need to think about for a moment. The word that John uses here is “logos.” In many places in the New Testament “logos is used to express the idea of divine revelation…The Gospel shows that Jesus is this logos, and is, therefore, the ultimate divine revelation.” (Robertson) 
In other words, there was no one and nothing that told the world who God was as well as Jesus did, because He is God! He came to save and to reveal Himself and what He is like. As one scholar put it, “John intends us to see in the ministry of Jesus an expression of God’s grace and a revelation of his truth.” (Guthrie)
Have you ever seen those “Day in the Life” sort of shows? The idea is that these cameras will come in to show you how some famous celebrity or political figure lives. The idea ostensibly is that you will get the “real” person by being around them. How do they order their coffee? How do they interact with their kids? We don’t just hear their words, we see their actions, their expressions, their tone of voice to give us a full picture. 
This is what Jesus does for God. We can read what He said and know that this is exactly what God thinks and feels. 
But how do we know that Jesus is God? How do we know that we are getting the real story of God and aren’t just getting things said through a spokesperson? Let’s see how John reports this. As we will see, John takes tremendous pains here to show that Jesus is definitely God.
We are told that the Word was with God and was God. At first this may seem a little confusing. I wouldn’t say that I was with myself! So how is the Word able to be WITH God AND God Himself at the same time?
John, in an amazingly short amount of time, gives us a preview into the doctrine of the Trinity. The Word is obviously a distinct person, but the way the language is structured, it is unmistakable that the Word is fully divine. Jesus isn’t part of God or a step down from God. He is just as fully God as the Father. After all, this Word created all things (v 3). He is the source of life and light (v 4). And He will ultimately be the one to make it possible for people to be in a relationship with God (v 14). 
But this isn’t just John’s assessment of Jesus. There are many other places that we could go in the gospel of John where Jesus claims this position for Himself: 
• “I am the bread of life” (6:35, 48; see also 6:41, 51);
• “I am the light of the world” (8:12; 9:5);
• “I am the door” (10:7, 9);
• “I am the good shepherd” (10:11, 14);
• “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25);
• “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6);
• “I am the true vine” (15:1; see also 15:5). (Miller).
With Jesus saying these things, He isn’t just claiming metaphors for Himself. By introducing each of these things with the phrase “I Am” He is using the same title as God uses for Himself in Exodus “the I am Who I Am” in Exodus 3. 
However, probably one of the most stark statements of claiming to be God (and helps us understand the first few verses of our chapter) comes from Jesus’ own mouth in John 10:30-33 
John 10:30–33 ESV
I and the Father are one.”

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
Cleary the Jews got the message. If someone claims to be God who isn’t, they are blaspheming and deserve to die under the Law. They obviously didn’t believe Him, yet clearly understood what He was saying. 
Of course, it is one thing to claim something, and quite another to prove it. He gives copious amounts of proof in miracles which include ruling over nature (Matthew 8:23-27), feeding thousands of people (John 6), and most importantly, rising from the dead (the end of every Gospel)! 
It is very clear that the New Testament sees Jesus as exactly who He claimed to be. But there is more here in these verses than just winning the theological battle against the worlds nicest Biker Gang, the Mormons (they don’t believe that Jesus is God, you see). 
I bring all of these things up because we have to keep in mind who we are dealing with here. When Jesus calmed the storm, for instance, Mark 4 records that AFTER the storm, the disciples were afraid. This was because they wanted to know what sort of person can control the weather. There should be a layer of awe in our own minds as we approach this Jesus. 
He is unlike any other
In a world where there are pictures of Jesus everywhere, we spend more time thinking about how Jesus is so much like us. And again, there are elements where that is true. But we have to realize how unlike us He is with His divinity. 
Even when you aren’t dealing with Mormons who deny that Jesus is God, you will find plenty of Americans with a passing knowledge of Jesus who will add Him to the  halls of “Great Teachers.” There will even be some well meaning, artsy type Christians who will introduce Jesus as “Rabbi Jesus” or “The Teacher.” This is an effort to make Jesus seem approachable and help the world take a second look at Him without all the “churchy” words. 
The problem is we aren’t introducing them to a Teacher only. We are introducing a world to their God. Jesus wasn’t making suggestions for a better life when He was preaching the Sermon on the Mount. You can’t sum up Jesus with the Golden Rule. Jesus is someone to whom you must submit. 
Jesus is the way, not a pointer to the way. In this, Jesus separates Himself from every other major religion. Mohammed wasn’t the way to heaven. He just claimed to point the way to Allah. Buddha wasn’t the path to enlightenment; he just claimed to teach the way to enlightenment. When Jesus came into the world, He proclaimed Himself. 
Do you believe Him? Do you submit to Him? Do we take Him seriously at a time when we are buying everything when He rhetorically asks, what does it profit a man if He gains the whole world and loses His soul (Mark 8:36)? At a time in which families are nursing old grudges around the holiday table, do we believe Him when He says that we are to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22)? At a time in which the gospel is the easiest to share, do we take seriously the great commission that Jesus gave to us? Jesus is no mere baby, He is the Son of God. 
And what is amazing is, unlike all those other false gods out there, He came to save you. God could have stayed in heaven where things were blissful. He could have remained in a place without any limitation, yet, as we will explore next time, God became a human being to live with us. Verse 14 recalls the first time God dwelt with His people post Garden. The word “dwell” is literally “Tabernacled” with us. God coming down to live in a tent amongst His people. He did so in the desert, and He did so again right here as a human being. All this to not only proclaim Who He is in Words, but showed Who He is in action by dying on a cross to deliver us from sin. What a God! 




Donald Guthrie, “John,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 1025.”
Jeffrey E. Miller, “I Am Sayings,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
Michael Scott Robertson, “Divine Revelation,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

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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. 
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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?
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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.
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Giving God Glory frees us from ourselves
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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!
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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So why is it different with God?
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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.
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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?
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But there is another layer of oughtness to our giving glory only to God.
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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!
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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?
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But wait! There is even more!
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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.
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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.
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This is why God will not share His glory with anyone or anything. It is all His to have.
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So now that we know this, what does worshiping God, giving Him glory look like and how do we often take glory away?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Aaron C. Fenlason, “Beauty,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

Photo by André on Unsplash
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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. 
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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!
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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
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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?
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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.
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Let’s break this down so we can be sure to understand how we are accepted by God.
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Let’s define faith by first realizing what it is not.
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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.
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I know this because I have toddlers. They believe in the power of belief harder than any of us can imagine.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We confessed a great definition of faith from the Heidelberg Catechism:
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“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.”
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Now, is that all there is to faith? Is it just stuff to know?
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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.”
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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.
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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:
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“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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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It might be because your faith isn’t being acted out.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nijay K. Gupta, “Faith,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
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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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Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

If you were given the task to describe God in a single sentence, what would you emphasize?
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Listen to how the Old Testament describes God:
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Psalm 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Let’s take a look at these passages to see what they tell us about grace and the God who wields it.
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God is more gracious than you can imagine
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!”
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Fine. Let’s do it.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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So what happens when God is on the warpath? What happens when God’s people are the villains?
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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.
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Here in  Joel 2, we are seeing what it looks like when God is coming.
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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.”
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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?”
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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!
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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.”
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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.”
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Gracious and mercy. Good gracious.
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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.
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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.”
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It doesn’t get any more evil, any more sinister than that.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?”
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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.”
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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.
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James Robertson, “Joel,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915), 1690.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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How do we know what, if anything, is true in this world? 
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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).  
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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.