This is a communion homily I gave on March 22,2009:

This is the season of Lent.  We at RCC don’t emphasize or do much to practice Lent, but the 40 days of Lent is a reminder of other 40 day events in scripture, not the least of which is the 40 days our Savior spent in the wilderness after His baptism.

In the gospel accounts of His baptism by John (which is Christ’s appointment by God as the warrior priest, prophet and king), Matthew says the Spirit descended on Him like a dove and the Father commended Him from Heaven, and then,

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. (4:1-2)

Mark says,

12 Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. 13 And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts…

And Luke says,

1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.

The very first thing Jesus did following His baptism was to do battle with the Devil. It was the Spirit who filled Him and led Him into this battle. He is our Spirit-empowered deliverer par excellence. When He finished the skirmish in the wilderness the Gospels say that the Devil left Him and angels came and ministered to Him. Presumably by giving Him food and rest. But that was just the beginning. Luke said that He went by the power of the Spirit to Galilee and began His public ministry, preaching about the coming of the kingdom and doing works that brought it forth in the world. Peter Leithart wrote:

The Spirit is the Warrior Spirit.  He clothes Othniel and Gideon, Jephthah and Samson and Saul, and trains their hands to fight.  He descends on Jesus like a dove, and then drives Him to the wilderness to battle Satan in the howling waste.  By the Spirit, Jesus heals.  By the Spirit, He casts out demons.  By the Spirit, He cleanses lepers.  By the Spirit, He topples Satan’s kingdom.  By the Spirit, He binds the strong man and plunders his house.

He is our example, for after the first Christian Pentecost, we too are Spirit-empowered deliverers. Again Peter Leithart:

The Warrior Spirit falls on the disciples, and Peter boldly calls the Jews to repentance for crucifying the Prince of Life.  The Spirit makes war against the flesh, as the flesh wars against the Spirit, but the Spirit will be the victor.  It’s only through the Spirit that we can trample Satan underfoot.  By Him, we put on the armor of God to fight principalities and powers and wickedness in high places.  The Spirit is a sword that circumcises hearts rather than flesh, and the word is the sword of the Spirit that divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  The Warrior Spirit stirs our spirits, filling us with battle rage, with holy blood wrath.  By the Spirit, each of us become one of God’s beserkers, [driven with] the zeal of Jesus.

After we are baptized we are filled with the Spirit and led into battle with the world, the flesh and the devil. We become hungry and weakened in the battle, and God invites us to this table to renew our strength so that we can rise up again for Kingdom work. Interestingly, the section in 1 Corinthians that deals with Paul’s instructions to the Church about the Lord’s Supper is followed immediately with a discussion of the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to believers enabling us to be His ministers of Christ in this world. We are His Spirit-empowered deliverers.

Tags: Holy Spirit, Lent, Peter Leithart

Discussions about the amount of continuity between the old and new covenants continue unabated.  The old adage “The Old Testament is the New concealed. The New Testament is the Old revealed” is good so far as it goes.  It does presuppose a connection between the two in Christ, and that there are differences. But it’s not sufficient to explain everything that needs to be said about the subject.  The problem in my mind is that too often our theology drives what we think about continuity questions, causing us to ignore some biblical text in favor of others.

Dispensationalists tend to primarily see a radical discontinuity between the covenants in order to secure their presupposition of the fundamental difference between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church.

The Reformed school of thought tends to primarily see a general continuity between the covenants so as to secure their presupposition that the New Testament Church is a continuation and culmination of God’s work through out history.

Often such assumptions tend to ignore the truly biblical continuities and discontinuities that exist on the other side of our theological presuppositions.  It is important to allow the Bible to speak on its own terms without imposing our theological assumptions about the degree of continuity.

An example of this can be found in discussions of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Covenants. Is His role virtually the same in both, or are their significant differences that the Bible talks about?  This became a matter of discussion at church following a sermon entitled, “Spirit-Empowered Deliverers.”

I see a number of texts that demonstrate considerable difference in the Old and New Covenant treatment of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Primarily, in my view, the Holy Spirit in the Old Covenant is seen as coming upon people for a specific purpose to empower them for a particular function.

• In Exodus we see that certain men (artisans) are filled with the Holy Spirit to have wisdom, understanding, knowledge and workmanship to make and teach others to make various items of for the construction of the tabernacle (28:3, 31:3; 35:31).
• Repeatedly in the book of Judges we see that the Spirit comes upon the judges to become Spirit-empowered deliverers of God’s people (3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 14:6, 19; 15:14, 16:20).
• The Holy Spirit comes upon the kings of Israel to empower them to fight the battles for God’s people. The Spirit came upon Saul for the first time to empower him to prophesy (1 Sam. 10:6, 10; 19:20-23), and then to become aroused to anger and led Israel to defeat the Ammonites (1 Sam. 11:6). 1 Samuel 16:14 says that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul (the kingdom being torn from him because of his disobedience and unfaithfulness as Israel’s king), and an evil spirit comes and regularly distressed him (vv. 15-23). David becomes the archetypical Spirit-Empowered deliverer for Israel (1 Sam. 16:13; 2 Sam. 23:2).
• The Spirit of Yahweh comes upon the prophets to declare that on the other side of the death of exile the Lord will resurrect Israel from the dead by pouring out his Spirit. In fact, the prophets say that the even the Gentiles will have the Spirit poured out upon them as well.

Thus, in the Old Testament the Spirit primarily “comes upon” people to empower them to do a particular task in service to God and His people. He is not generally described as working in, or filling all believers in the same way that we see in the New Testament.

We are united to Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit, who guarantees that we will receive all the benefits of Christ.  By the Spirit we have all (believers) been baptized into the body of Christ. By the Spirit, we who believe are given understanding of what we could not otherwise understand about God. We are all given power to do great things for God by His Spirit.

Jesus is the great Spirit-empower deliverer, and as those who have received the Holy Spirit, we are made Spirit-empowered workers in His Kingdom.

One element of the significance of the work of Christ is that He has now poured out His Spirit, and is transforming the world in a new and powerful ways – Ways unseen and unprecedented in history. In Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, the whole of humanity is being renewed and transformed so as to be brought into conformity to Christ.

Tags: Covenant, Holy Spirit, New Testament, Old Testament

This is a fascinating article written by Peter Leithart:

Keep the Fast, Keep the Feast

In the article Peter provides some excellent theological background for properly understanding fasting and Lent.  Lent and it’s propoer use has been the subject of much discussion recently amoung some of the CREC pastors. I think his insights are very useful to recovering a biblical and a modern Protestant understanding of the Lenten season.

Tags: Fasting, feasting, Lent, worship

Hear now the word of the Lord from Rev. 14:13, which Don asked for this verse to be part of the service:

Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me,

“Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

What a wonderful text to meditate on with the death of a dearly beloved Christian. To fully understand what the Apostle John wrote, it is important to be aware of the larger context of the book of Revelation.  It was written to Christians that were suffering dramatically in the years just before the destruction of Jerusalem in the 70 AD.  The believers in Jesus, faithful Christians, were being brutally persecuted, primarily, by the Jews that rejected the Lord Jesus. They were being compromised and corrupted by people within the church. They suffered from social discrimination from every corner of the culture.  Most of the Christians lost their livelihoods, homes, social status and were impoverished in almost every way. In short, they struggled with enemies that were mighty and powerful. Jesus, by His Spirit, revealed in this book that He would come to save His people by judging those who had rejected and killed Him and were now seeking to destroy His body, the Church.

Earlier in this same chapter, Jesus is shown to be the Lamb that was slain that now stands as King on His Holy Mountain. With Him are those who had been killed for their testimony for Jesus, and now had God the Father’s name written on their foreheads. Rev. 14:2-5 describes these dear saints as those who enthusiastically sing in heaven with the heavenly army:

And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps.  They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth. [They are no longer singing songs of sorrow - They have a new song of praise on their lips. Why?] These are the ones who [kept themselves pure]. These are the ones who follow[ed] the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God.

While these saints sang in the heavenlies, God sent forth His judgments on the earth to bring salvation to the world. A first Angel “came forth having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people-said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” Salvation comes to God’s people through judgment on His and their enemies. The good news is that God brought His judgment for sin upon His Son, the sacrificial Lamb of God, so that those who believe in Him shall be freed of enemies and have everlasting life. Because Jesus overcame death and was raised from death to sit at the right hand of the Father, He judges the wicked and brings life and salvation to His people, both Jews and Gentiles. What follows is one Angel after another declaring the judgment of God upon those who refuse to fear God and give glory to Him. These judgments were both temporal in time and history, but will extend into the eternal future. Vv. 11-12 says that there will be no rest, day or night, for those who refuse to keep the commandments of God or believe in Jesus.

And then John speaks the words we have already heard:

“Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ”

“Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

From now on, from the time of God’s judgments on His enemies in the first century, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”  Why? Because, by the Spirit of Christ, “they will rest from their labors in the world for Christ – and are assured that their works will follow them.”

Since the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all men are by nature sinners, and actual committers of sin. We inherited a sinfulness in our nature, and we are sinners in the way we live our lives.  And the penalty for sin is the just judgment of God. One of those judgments is death and dying (we are all, in a sense, dying from the time we are born).  Death is the means that God puts and end to sin. But dying and death do not give us life.  It ends life. Death has been the great enemy to all mankind since the Fall of man.

The only way to have life is for God conquer this enemy. This the Father has done by putting upon Jesus, His Son, all of His just judgment so that He would taste death and judgment for us.  And yet, if Christ remained in death, there would be no life on the other side.  He conquered death and was raised up to life again for our salvation from sin itself, judgment for sin, and to conquer death in us in and for us.  Since the time that Jesus ascended to His throne at the Father’s right hand He has been battling His and our enemies. Is it possible that He should fail? NOT A CHANCE. He will continue to put all of His and our enemies under His feet until the last enemy is defeated – Death.

You see, because of Jesus, for us final salvation comes on the other side of death.  Because believers are in union with Jesus, we can be assured that we too will have life on the other side of death – just as He did.

Life, health and joy are on the other side of dying and death.  Sickness, dying and death are part of the human condition.  But for those who are in Christ, death and dying have lost their sting – lost its power over us. Life is on the other side of death and dying: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Instead of singing songs characterized by dying and death, they sign new songs of life, health and joy.

We don’t generally struggle with the same enemies that the first century Christians did.  But we do yet fight with enemies don’t we? We fight the good fight against our sin, and the sinfulness of those around us. We still have to battle, Satan, the old Serpent who still wanders about trying to devour us through temptation to unfaithfulness and faithlessness. We still have to do battle with dying and death. But we fight, not like those who have no hope. Rather, we know that Life is on the other side of dying and death.

For almost 4 and a half decades Bonnie was stricken with the enemy of Multiple Sclerosis. She suffered, and many of those around her suffered with her. Is that what characterized her to us all?  Is that all she was to us? No – because for the last 30 or so years, she has been in union with Christ. She, though dying, was alive in Him.  In many ways she rose above herself and her infirmity

Often when people are stricken with suffering it is tempting for them to see the dying and trouble of life as something that marginalizes them – makes us of no consequence – makes us useless – causes us to be less than what we should be.  But in Christ, like Bonnie, we can still live as useful servants of Christ, anticipating that our works, as frail as they are, will be used by Him.  Our works will follow us, both in the lives of the people we leave behind and as the offerings we will present to God throughout eternity

Shortly we will sing about the fact that our God often moves in mysterious ways in our lives. Don tells me that in her last days of suffering and dying God used that time to reunite the family in profound and deeply meaningful ways.  This was a great joy to Bonnie and Don. One ways for the works of Bonnie to follow her in her heavenly rest is for that reestablishment of the family relationships to continue. I want to encourage you all to work hard to stay in relationship, which will continue to honor Bonnie through the rest of your lives.

‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ”

“Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

Tags: Funeral, Homily, NT - Revelation