Our Part in His-Story

SERMON: 2010-03-21--ac1046--our-part-in-his-story SOURCE DURATION: 00:39:33.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The material begins with conversational exposition setting up the topic and ends with the conclusion of the theological exposition before the applause. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:35:06.100-00:39:26.500 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, the chances are this morning that the name Wade Davis doesn't mean very much to you. Mr. Davis is a world-renowned anthropologist, ethnobotanist, filmmaker, prolific writer, and holds the position of National Geographic Explorer in Residence. I have no idea what it is to be the National Geographic Explorer in Residence, but I think it's probably a position you don't get unless you're really good at what you do. Well, Mr. Wade, as an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist, travels all over the world studying not only plants, but more especially people and people groups. And in the process of doing that, he probably has a better handle on what people believe and why they believe it than probably almost anybody else in the world. And it so happens that last Sunday night on TVO, I happened to catch a glimpse of an interview with him, with Greg Allen in his program In Conversation. This was in connection with Mr. Davis' most recent book, The Wayfinders, Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. And in that interview, I perked up my ears when I heard him say something that I had never thought about very much before. He said, "Of the 6,000 and some languages in the world today, fully 50% or 3,000 are not being passed on to the next generation." Which means that effectively at the end of this generation, that language and the culture that it represents will be totally lost. He said if that were true about animal species or plant species, the whole world would be up in arms. But he says most people don't realize the degree to which these languages and these cultures are disappearing. And then he asked the question that really made me sit up and take note, because it truly resonated with my own heart, he said, "What difference would it make anyway if all of these languages disappeared?" And the reason I say that resonated with my own heart is that I've sometimes wondered why do people make such a fuss about holding on to their language after all? Some of us here, we're Dutch immigrants. We had to stumble through learning the English language, and we're not ashamed of our background. But hey, life goes on and you learn to adapt to the culture in which you are a part. Then he went on to give an explanation that I had never heard before, and I had never thought of. And he says language is much more than a means of speaking with each other. He says it is also the vehicle, now listen carefully, the vehicle by which we communicate what he calls the collective narrative. And by narrative he means the story that gives purpose, direction, meaning, and explanation to life. And then he went on to add that every people group, wherever they live, at whatever time in history is always confronted by a series of universal questions that we all struggle with. What does it mean to be human, and what does it mean to be alive? In other words, how do I express my humanity in a world that is hostile? If you listen carefully to that question, that is a huge philosophical question. It is the question that every people group in history has had to face. Who am I, what am I here for, and how can I live life in a way that is successful and happy and that is in harmony with the universe and in harmony with my own nature and in harmony with other people and indeed all of creation. And he says language produces the narrative that describes the answer that people groups give to that huge question. Who am I, what am I here for, and how can I live life to the full. And he says the narrative of each of the people's land produces a series of values that are held, religious rituals that are developed, and ways of looking at life that are all geared to survival. That he says is the narrative. Everybody has got a narrative. Who am I, how did I get here, where am I going, how am I going to stay alive. All the peoples of the world, all the cultures, he says, have developed a way of describing how they can stay alive in the environment in which they find themselves. And it's when he said that, that I had, I think, a moment of epiphany. That means a moment of revelation, the light went on. And you know how that goes sometimes in the Christian life. It's not like you don't know it, but all of a sudden you know that you know it. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that scripture is God's narrative. What we call history is His story. That is to say, God's explanation of why we're here, God's explanation on what is the purpose of life, and God's explanation of how we can live life and do it successfully. And it stands in sharp contrast to all the other narratives of the world. In fact, if you read the Bible through that lens, then you discover that much of what is expressed in scripture is an antidote to the narrative of pagan religions, narratives which many times are infiltrated by the demonic. And so, for example, in the Babylonian narrative, one of the earliest stories of why people are here, the world was created in conflict between two gods, Marduk and Tiamat. Marduk was the good god, Tiamat is often pictured as the dragon of chaos. And in that ongoing conflict then, the world came to be Marduk cut Tiamat in two, half became the sky and half became the earth. And those become part of religious rituals in these cultures that are a way of priming the pump to make sure the cycle of nature goes on. Nature leads to spring and leads to harvest and fruitfulness. Now, the Bible's story stands in contradiction to that. It says God made the world. And the chaos that exists in the world doesn't simply exist because there are spiritual forces that are at work, although they contribute to it. But there is chaos in the world because we have sinned, we have rebelled against God, we have left a proper abode. And then of course, the whole story of Scripture is how God in Christ comes along, redeems all of creation and restoration happens when we repent, restoration happens when we turn to Jesus, restoration happens not by magic, doesn't happen by the practice of knowing how the whole universe works and it doesn't happen by negotiating with the powers of evil. No, restoration happens through faith in Jesus Christ. And that brings us full circle this morning then to this story here in Acts chapter 3 where Peter is preaching about Jesus to the Jewish people who have previously just put him to death. And to really get a grab of this in our thinking, we need to understand the dilemma that Peter's preaching presented to his listeners. Because you see, they had a narrative concerning Jesus, did they not? That is to say, they had a certain way of looking at Jesus, which wasn't very flattering because what did they just do? They had betrayed him. They had handed him over to Pontius Pilate. They had thought a murderer was better than Jesus and they had been instrumental in his crucifixion. You don't do that unless you believe everything that was said about Jesus, that he was a fraud, a charlatan, a person who was dangerous to society. That was their narrative. That was how they viewed life. Now along comes Peter and he says your narrative is out to lunch, people. You've bought the lie because this Jesus is not some marginal person of history. This Jesus is not some crook, not some charlatan, he's not a liar. No, he is the son of the living God who was put to death by your willful action, by the permissive plan and purpose of God, but God raised him from the dead. He is exalted at God's right hand. He's poured out the Holy Spirit and he's God's answer to everything that ails humanity. Can you imagine a bigger switch in your thinking from having written Jesus off as a liar and a cheat and a nobody to having to acknowledge, "Oh man, he is king of kings and he's lord of lords. How do I square to this story?" Have you ever been in a situation where you've had a certain set of beliefs, and we all have them but mostly we don't articulate them very clearly because we absorb them from our culture, but have you ever been in a situation where you believed a certain thing about life, about reality, maybe didn't believe there was a God, maybe didn't believe that Jesus was who he said that he was or if you believed it, it was intellectually but it didn't impact your heart, and then all of a sudden something happens and you get to hear a whole other story and now you live with attention. Can I make the transition? Can I give up my cherished beliefs in favor of something? If you've ever been in that situation or watched anybody go through that, you know how incredibly difficult that is and in many cases people would rather hold on to the lie because better the devil you know, to paraphrase, than a God you don't know, isn't that true? So here's these people, they have this dilemma and Peter is very anxious to win them over to the Lord Jesus and to bring them to faith, so what does he do? Well he takes them back to their old narrative and he says this story that I have just been telling you about Jesus, this isn't something new that you've never heard before, this is not in addition to what you have heard before, no, this in fact is at the center of everything that you have ever believed and then he goes on and he points out how in their Old Testament scriptures there was this revelation already of this new narrative, this new story of Jesus that he is telling and that's why he goes on to put it this way now, in the verses that we read together, "All the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days and you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers," he said to Abraham, "through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed and when God raised up his servant he sent him to you first, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways." And the time that we have this morning, a couple of things in there that I really want us to note, number one, Jesus was foretold by the prophets, "All the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days." What days? These days, these days being the most recent history that people have just been experiencing. What have they just experienced? They've watched the crucifixion, they've heard witness stories of the resurrection, they have heard of his ascension and they have seen the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and they have seen this crippled man walking by faith in the power of Jesus. These days, these days of restoration, these days of power, these days are not a new story, they are the old, old story that we have known so long and so well. Now here's a very interesting thing. Most of us here, I would think, are sufficiently familiar with the Old Testament to know that the birth of Jesus was very clearly foretold in the Old Testament. I mean, we quote verses like that all the time around Christmas, "For unto us a child is born," Isaiah 9, 6, "Micah 5, 2, "But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be a ruler over Israel whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." We also know that the death of Jesus was very clearly foretold in the Old Testament. We read passages like Isaiah 53, "He took upon himself our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." And we know I trust all those grand stories of the Old Testament sacrifices, especially the Passover lamb, which was an Old Testament foretelling of the coming of the Messiah. But Jesus goes much further, because I love that story in Luke chapter 24 after His resurrection. We have these two men, or these two people, we don't know if they were a couple or if they were men. They were walking on the way to Emmaus, and they were down in the mouth, because Jesus had just been crucified, and all their hopes and all their dreams had gone up in smoke. Jesus falls in alongside them, and He says, "What's going on with you guys?" And they say to Him, "Are you the only one that is a stranger to Jerusalem? Don't you know what has happened?" And then these verses from Luke chapter 24, He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning Him. And the scriptures not only talk about His birth, they not only talk about His suffering, but they also talk about His glory. And there are amazing predictions in the Old Testament. You know, some of these passages, Isaiah chapter 11, "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, and the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. They will neither harm nor destroy on all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea." Later on in the book of Isaiah, "I create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem, that is the people of God, to be a delight, and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in My people. The sound of weeping and of crying will be heard no more." You catch echoes there of the closing chapter of the book of Revelation. "All tears will be wiped from their eyes, and there will be no more mourning or crying or death." This Jesus, in His glory, was foretold in the Old Testament. He is the answer to every narrative, every cry that says, "When will life get better? When will my deepest longings be satisfied? When will the greatest pain in my heart be eased?" The message of Scripture, His name is Jesus. And when we connect up with Jesus and get our sins forgiven by Jesus, He comes and He dwells with that Holy Spirit who gives us a refreshing, He gives us a foretaste of that glory that will one day be revealed when God makes all things near. Jesus was foretold by the prophets. Not only that, but the Bible goes on to say, Peter does in this sermon, he says, "You are heirs of these promises." Verse 25, "And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers." He said to Abraham, "Through your offspring, all the peoples of the earth will be blessed." He says, "You are heirs to these promises. You are heirs to the prophets." Now to be an heir is to be the recipient of the promises that they have made. So all these promises of restoration in the Old Testament, of a day and an age where every tear is wiped away, when life will be shalom in the truest sense of the word, harmony with God, harmony with creation, harmony with each other, harmony in our own hearts, we are heirs of the prophets, he says to his audience, because of the covenant that God made with Abraham. And this is crucial if we are to understand how by faith we can claim the promises of God. Back in Genesis chapter 12, Abraham, as he was known then, living in Ur of the Chaldees, was a pagan idol worshiper. God comes along to him in Genesis chapter 12, calls him to leave his country, and he makes him an incredible series of blessings. The passage reads like this, "The Lord had said to Abraham, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.'" Three things there that he has to leave, he has to leave his country, he has to leave his people, he has to leave his father's household, and then God says, "For each of these that you have to leave, I'm going to give you a corresponding blessing. I'm going to give you a land, I'm going to multiply your offspring, I'm going to make out of you a great nation, and then God says, 'I will not only bless you, but you will be a blessing.'" Now, roll all of those together. What do you think God is promising to Abraham? God is saying to Abraham, "You and your offspring are going to inherit the earth." Because you see, the covenant with Abraham is made in the context of the creation and the fall story. Remember, in creation, God says to Adam and Eve, "The whole earth is yours. You're my children. I like you. I love you. I've made this huge playpen for you to have the time of your life in, because I delight in you." Then comes C. Adam and Eve think they can have it without God. They get kicked out of the garden, and you know as well as I do, every last one of us, we suffer today for those decisions and for the decisions that we make, because we don't recognize the blessing is ours only in relationship with God. God owns it all. He gives it to His children. So many years later now, God comes along and He comes to Abraham, who was a pagan worshiper, and God says, "Abraham, I've got some good news for you, man. You leave where you're living and the security that that world provides for you. You follow me, and I'm going to give you a land, and I'm going to multiply you, give you an offspring like the stars of the sky, the sand on the seashore, and I'm going to bless you, and through you, all nations will be blessed." Listen to how Paul understands this now in Romans chapter 4 verse 13. "Here is the Scripture. It was not through the law Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." Notice there, first of all, through Paul, God says the promise to Abraham and his offspring was that they would be heir of the world, and I've often said this, everything humanity fights for, strives to own, strives to be, God says to Abraham, "I'm going to give it to you, not because you're good, not because you're powerful, but because I love you, and the key is faith." That is to say, it's not the product of his own ability, the poor dude can't even have kids with his wife, what a promise, you're going to have offspring like the sand at the seashore, and poor Abraham says, "I'm old, my wife is old, her period of childbearing is long gone by, and you're going to give me kids?" And if you know the story, it's an amazing story, but the whole point is this, in worldly thinking and in the worldly narrative, who gets the power, who gets the glory, who gets the kingdom? It's the smartest, it's the firstborn, it's the most intelligent, it's sometimes the most wicked, it's the one who knows how to manipulate the powers of the universe. They're the ones that rise to the top and the rest of us, we're just also rands, but the Bible says that isn't true at all. The race is not to the swift, the battle is not to the strong, and lifting up doesn't come from the wilderness, it doesn't come from a whole lot of other people, it comes by faith in Jesus. And because Jesus was obedient to the Father, sat down at the Father's right hand, he earned the kingdom and all those who are made right with God through faith in Jesus are now heirs of the promise and God made through the prophets, heirs of the covenant God made with Abraham. Oh, if you really understand this, you're not just going to sit there, you're going to like whoop it out because this is the best news in all of the world. Now to clarify that even further, it's very important to understand that in this context of covenant with Abraham, there are two different groups that are included in this covenant. Two groups that are heirs. The first group, the physical descendants of Abraham. Who are they? They would be the Jewish people, the children born to Abraham through Sarah who we know of as the Jewish people. That's why Peter goes on to say in this particular passage, "When God raised up his servant, he sent him to you first, to bless you." It is the Jewish folks, it's the descendants of Abraham who are most in line with this promise that God has made to Abraham that they would inherit all the earth. And that's why Paul then in Romans 9 puts it this way. He says, "Theirs is the adoption as sons, theirs the divine glory, the covenants the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises, theirs are the patriarchs and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ who is God over all forever praised." And so throughout the New Testament, when the apostles preach the gospel, they always preach it to the Jews first because they get first dibs at the offer of salvation. Now as we'll see later on, they didn't take them up on it, at least not very many. And that's why you and I are here today. Because their rejection means the gospel now goes to the Gentiles. And so the second level of recipients in this story is not only the physical descendants of Abraham, but the spiritual descendants of Abraham. That is to say, those who share Abraham's faith. Notice how he goes on in that passage in Romans, "Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel." That is to say, not all the physical children of Abraham share in the covenant, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In other words, it's not the natural children who are God's children, but the children of promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. What is he saying there? What he is saying is the promise comes to the Jews first. Some of the Jews believe, many of them don't. Now God takes the promise to the Gentiles, and guess what? Even though we are not the physical descendants of Abraham, and therefore have no right to the covenant that God made with Abraham, which is to inherit the whole earth, God says if you share Abraham's faith, that is to say you know you cannot do it, you recognize that Jesus is the offspring who received the inheritance, then you are a spiritual child of Abraham. And because you are now a spiritual child of Abraham, you receive, you become eligible for the blessings of God. Paul puts it this way, in Galatians chapter 3, it's an incredible passage, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.' And he redeemed us, he brought us back from our hopeless condition where we were alienated from God, he redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit." Promise of the Holy Spirit. By faith in Christ, we are now the recipients of the promises made to Abraham and everything that God has given to Jesus. Every spiritual blessing in heavenly places is now ours by faith. And as God promised a land to Abraham and God promised to multiply Abraham and God promised that Abraham would be blessed to be a blessing, so the church shares in the blessings of God. And I wish we had more time because when we pick it up from here, we want to talk about the implications of that for raising our children. Because you see, our children live in a world that has its own narrative, doesn't it? What is the North American narrative? Well, you can sum it up this way. First of all, it's naturalistic. That is to say, there is no supernatural. It's all what you can see and feel. It's materialistic. There is no spiritual world. It's all what we've got around us. It's based on the notion that if you want to succeed in life, then you got to draw on your own talent, you got to draw on your beauty, you got to draw on your money. It's all about how you succeed in the world. And we live in a world where technology and science and all the cleverness of the human race is our answer to the world's problems. And don't you kid yourself, our kids absorb that narrative all the time. I have a book. It's called "Already Gone, Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do About It" by Ken Ham and Britt Beamer. They've done a survey of 20,000 kids raised in conservative evangelical churches. And they have discovered that by the time kids reach college, two-thirds of the kids raised in evangelical conservative Christian homes will have left the faith and will have left the church. Isn't that an astonishing figure? And he says he used to think it happened because they went to university. And any of us that have gone to secular universities will know the way faith can be attacked in that kind of setting. But you know, their surveys indicate that's not true at all. Of the two-thirds that left church, almost 40% began to entertain their first doubts in junior high. 43, 44% had their first doubts in high school. And less than 11% had their doubts at a university level. And so here's the challenge, every last one of us faces when we bring kids into the world. It's a challenge faced by each of the new parents whose babies were dedicated today. It's a challenge for us collectively. How do we bring the kids into the biblical narrative when almost every hour of every day by their friends, through the media, by the prevalence of entertainment, they are constantly being told stories of what we're here for, what is the importance of doing life and how we can succeed in doing it all without God? And as I said, Lord willing, when we can go back to this then, we'll look at that in some detail. How can we impart a biblical narrative to our children so that in the middle of all those temptations, they can stand firm, hold on to truth, and be devoted followers of Jesus Christ? That's the issue we face. And that's what God wants us to learn. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:35:06.100; remove through 00:39:33.000] To be revealed, it's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for the kingdom of our God. To be revealed, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for your light to shine, it's time for the kingdom of our God. To be revealed, it's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for the kingdom of our God. To be revealed. It's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for the kingdom of our God, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for the kingdom of our God. To be revealed, it's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for your light to shine, it's time for the kingdom of our God. To be revealed, it's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for the kingdom of our God, to be revealed, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for the reign of God, it's time for authority, it's time for your majesty, it's time for the kingdom of our God, it's time for the kingdom of our God, it's time for the kingdom of our God. [Applause] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:39:33.000; resume after this marked segment]