God of the New - Jeremiah 31:31-34

            “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of a Jacob!” 

God is a God of covenants.  There was a covenant with Noah after the flood.  Never again will I curse the ground because of humankind (Gen. 8:21).  Remember the covenant with Abraham. God tells him, I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.  … You shall be the ancestor of [many] nations (Gen. 17:2, 4).   Of course, there’s the covenant with Moses.  I hereby make a covenant.  Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation (Exodus 34:10).  And let’s not forget the covenant with King David.  Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever (2 Samuel 7:16). 

The covenant is deeper than just some agreement and requires more of each party.  The covenant is more personal than a contract and more binding.  And when the covenant is with God, it can be trusted without reservation. 

Herein lies the problem when we turn to Jeremiah 31.  For starters, The Lord says the new covenant will be with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob.  Ancient Israel was comprised of 12 tribes – descendants of the 12 sons of Jacob.  The 10 northern tribes were taken into exile by the Assyrians in the 8^th century BC.  They intermarried with other nations the Assyrians had conquered and were essentially lost to history.  The only remnant in the land was a mixed race people – Jewish and other.  They lived in Samaria.  In the New Testament, Jesus has encounters with these Samaritans and even features a Samaritan in one of his most popular parables. 

How can God say he will make a new covenant with the house of Israel?  There is no more house of Israel.  Sure, God is God.  But, exile is exile.  Some problems are too big.  Aren’t they?

The remaining two tribes, the southern tribes make up the house of Judah and are the location of the city of Zion, Jerusalem.  In Jeremiah 31, these tribes have gone the way of their northern cousins.  They have been taken in exile and anticipate being lost. 

The walls of the city fell and Solomon’s amazing temple was completely destroyed in 587BC.  Walter Brueggemann writes, “Landed folks [Israel – even if it is just Judah, two of what was originally 12 tribes] – Landed folks want to cling to continuity and believe that old forms will continue.  But the wrenching of 587 and the discernment of the prophets [Jeremiah, 2^nd Isaiah, Ezekiel] are about discontinuity.  The land is really lost and history is really ended.”[i]

God told Noah he would never again curse the land.  The Babylonians have ravaged the land.  God told Abraham he would be the ancestor of many nations.  The one nation begun in Abraham’s name has been lost.  God told Moses he would do marvels unlike any ever seen, but that was 1500 years prior to this event, the crushing of the people.  When Babylon came and the walls fell, where were the marvels of God?  God told David, your kingdom shall be forever.  David’s descendant, Zedekiah was forced to watch as Babylonian soldiers executed his sons.  Then, after seeing that, they gouged out his eyes, so that the last thing he ever saw would be the death of his own children.  Then, the king was chained and dragged off to Babylon. 

See how each covenant ended?  What do those Jews in exile hear when they hear Jeremiah speak God’s word?  “The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant.”  A covenant with a people – the house of Israel – that are no more.  What kind of covenant is that?  A covenant with the house of Judah in exile.  Can they still be the people of God while living in Babylon?  What do those exiles hear in this promise?  Do they dare believe it?  Do they dare hope?  Can they trust this covenant God?

Jeremiah does.  This exile has happened and the former covenants appear lost because God’s people have turned away from God.  This is not happening because Babylon or Assyria is stronger than God.  This is not happening because God is flippant.  God is not fickle.  What God promised to Noah and Moses and Abraham and David is as true as it ever was.  Jeremiah said it and I claim those promises today, October 16, 2016.  Under the midnight shadow of exile, Jeremiah trusts God and calls the people to see God at work even in this time of death.

I wonder if the discontent in America right now makes it hard to see God at work.  I wonder if our land is a long way on the path of entry into a time of death.  I couldn’t identify the number of different ways people in our country are divided, but I’ll discuss just one.  Keep in mind, this is one description among many; one example of how culture in America is shifting dramatically.

Until this century, America was led by white men.  At the end of the 20^th century, a few women, like Sandra Day O’Conner and a few African Americans, like Colin Powell and Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan broke into the leadership dominion of white men.  Still, white men owned the companies, got elected, and hammered the judges’ gavels. 

The hegemony, the domination of white men is ending.  Some people in our country are perfectly comfortable with this.  I am.  I am comfortable with women in positions of leadership and power – if they are qualified to be there.  And many are.  I am happy to yield authority to people of color if they merit having that authority. And many do.  Qualified leaders are found in both genders and in all races.  I welcome a culture shift that makes space for qualified leaders to have opportunities.

Some are terrified of it.  They feel like they are losing the America they thought was theirs.  In a sense, they are.  By the middle of this century, white people will not have a numerical majority in the United States.  By the time we are 2/3 of the way through this century, the largest group of American citizens will be Hispanic.  It is ludicrous to think we could reach back to the halcyon days of the 1950’s.  Those days were only idyllic for a segment of our population.  In the 2050’s, that segment will lack the power to enforce their will.  In 2016, our nation feels this shift happening.  Those who fear the shift will fight it.    

Crisis is defined as a turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death.[ii]  In this crisis, can God be trusted?  For the people of Judah, when the crisis of 587 BC ended in exile, it felt like death.  But Jeremiah stood up and said, yes death, but after death, covenant.  Can the covenant God still be trusted?

We know this covenant God through Jesus, the crucified, resurrected one.  Jesus is where we meet this God, but Jesus ascended after the resurrection and left things in the hands of his church. The church is supposed to be the body of Christ on earth giving witness to God’s goodness and love and salvation.  We point a dying world to the God who saves.  But, we are full of broken, sinful people who snipe at one another.  The forces that divide American culture are as much inside the church, inside the body of Christ as they are outside it. 

God left things in the mouths of prophets and in the workings of imperfect churches?  Really God?  Can the covenant God be trusted?  Jeremiah says yes. 

I will make a new covenant says the Lord.  The next God says is it will not be like the old covenant, the one made in the wilderness.  Exile bore similarities to Egypt.  The people were slaves under Pharaoh, far from the land God promised to Abraham.  Now they’ve sinned and they are in a forced exile in Babylon, far from the land God promised to Abraham.  God gave Moses the power to lead the people east to Canaan.  Couldn’t God give Jeremiah or more likely Ezekiel the same power to lead the people west, back to the Promised Land?  No, Jeremiah says.  This is not going to be like the old covenant, the one they broke repeatedly.  There is no going back.  The Red Sea will not be parted for us again. 

The promises made in the covenants with Noah and Abraham and Moses and David – those promises will be kept.  But it won’t look like what we may have thought it would look like.  Read through the New Testament and then go through history from the days of the New Testament up to now. 

Many point to Revelation, the last book of the Bible, as an outline for God’s future plans.  At the end of Revelation, the faithful, those who are saved, are not gathered unto God in a new Garden of Eden.  We don’t go back to Eden. 

Church leadership literature sometimes calls the church to revert back to the way the church functioned in the 1^st century, in the decades immediately after the resurrection.  But, the New Testament reveals that the early church was full of conflict – conflict we don’t want.  Just as Revelation does not promise a return to Eden, it does not offer vision anything like the early church.

What we find in Revelation is something new because God is a God of the new.  This is why going forward with God is an act of faith.  Noah, got on that ark not knowing if he’d ever get off.  Abraham trusted God before he ever saw evidence of the covenant.  Moses led a nation into the desert and their best moments in the desert came when they had nothing and had to live in total dependence on God.  David’s best moments with God came when he was hiding in a cave from people who had armies bigger than his and who sought his life.  None of these great people in the history of the faith tried to retreat back to an earlier, greater time.  In the valley of the shadow of death, they trusted God with everything.  They were all in with God.

Jeremiah looks at exiled Judah – a people who feel completely lost and feel that they have lost everything and he invokes one of the matriarchs, Rachel, the favored wife of Jacob.  Jeremiah’s 31:15 says, “Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”  In Jeremiah, this poetry means that exile is the end of God’s people. The Gospel writer Matthew quotes this verse when he describes King Herod’s evil act of murdering all the toddlers in Bethlehem in an attempt to destroy Jesus.  Rachel is weeping for her children. 

Nothing should lessen the weight of the tragedy either in Matthew or Jeremiah.  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed nations and enslaved people in 587BC.  King Herod murdered children to keep hold of his fragile, fleeting power in the days of Jesus’ infancy.  God did not bring about either evil, but acted in both.  Our rebellion always leads to evil, and as our evil brings about death, God always brings about a new thing.

Jeremiah quotes God who says, the days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant.  This will even include the house of Israel who you thought was lost because God can bring new life even where there are only dead, dry bones.

A new covenant; and, says God, this will not be like the old covenant.  Promises to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David will be kept, but it won’t look as we thought it would.  It will be new.  The new promises of God will look unlike anything we have ever imagined just as growing divisions will make our country look different than it looked previously.  But we are unafraid.  We know that who is in the white house or in the congress or on the Supreme Court does not determine who we are.  The resurrected Christ determines who we are. 

It’s a new covenant.  It’s not like the old.  We remember the past, but don’t long for it.  Yes remember, but no, don’t reach back.  Our God is a God of the new.  So then, what is the new, promised covenant?

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  They shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest.  For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (31:33-34).

Included in the observation from Walter Brueggemann I shared at the beginning is that the prophetic message is about discontinuity.  Things won’t be as they were.  The world is changing and the prophet is the one who sees it ahead of everyone else and speaks it sometimes before people are ready to hear it.  One reality though never changes.  From Noah to Abraham to Moses to David to Jeremiah to the days of Jesus’ birth to the days of the early church to the experiences of God’s church throughout history up to our day and time as we strive to be God’s people in a time of dramatic and scary change, God delivers.  God saves.  God is present.  God heals.  God brings life out of death.

Rachel is weeping for her children.  God responds in Jeremiah 31:16, keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord, [and] there is a hope for your future.  With knowledge of God planted in their hearts, they can point the world to Him whether they are in Babylon or in Egypt or in Jerusalem. 

With the Holy Spirit of God in us, planting God’s word in our hearts and making us new creations, we can count on God’s salvation today.  It’s not a future promise.  Salvation is a present reality that calls us to share Christ with the world however the world is, and draws us forward into the future, anticipating the day when the Kingdom comes in full. 

Can we trust the covenant God?  There is nothing else we can do for although we were born of this earth, born in sin, we have been born again, made new, called into a new covenant with the God of the new.  Amid the disorienting journey into death our culture is on, we followers of the Covenant God, proclaim life.  Jesus Christ is Lord and all who repent and turn to him can have salvation, life in his name.  No government, power, or temptation is able to threaten that promise.  We stand on it and from that we stand join Jeremiah as hope-announcers, proclaimers of good news.

AMEN

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[i] W. Brueggemann (1977), The Land, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.131.

[ii] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS683US683&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=crisis

Are We Eating the Bread We Have? (Mark 8)

Sunday, August 12, 2012

            You’re in a National Park in the mountains – a day set aside to be revitalized by nature.  You hike in, the trail taking you gradually up the steep climb until you’re on the ridgeline.  You tell those aching legs it’s worth it, just a few more steps and then a couple of miles along the ridge until you get to the clearing. Reluctantly your legs comply and after 4 hours, you’re finally there.  The view is so vast, so breathtaking; you feel like you can see all the way to the Mississippi. 

            Basking in the joy of the birdsong, the expanse of the canyon, the hum of the river hundreds of feet below down in the valley, you feel alive.  Your body reminds you that living things eat and drink, so you tip back your canteen.  It’s still ice cold, so refreshing.  Then you open the pack for those delicious and enormous sandwiches that will taste incredible after all the walking. 

            To your horror you see a bag of chips, two apples, two granola bars, and no sandwiches. You look at your hiking buddy.  Didn’t you pack the sandwiches? 

I was in the garage putting ice in the cooler.  Didn’t you hear me yell in to put the sandwiches in the pack?

No.  I was upstairs looking for sunscreen.  … Our sandwiches!  They’re on the counter.

That sort of happened to me.  I was with four guys on a 5-day trip and we wanted our camp breakfast the first morning to be extra good so we brought some packaged ham.  We knew that for most of the week we’d be on ramen noodles.  Some nice meat would be a good beginning.  The bear that visited our food bag while we slept that night agreed.  He was quiet enough not to disturb us and he was completely uninterested in our ramen noodles.  But, he opened our packaged ham and polished it off like he done that kind of thing before.  The only thing he didn’t do was leave a “thank you” note. 

In Mark 8, for a third time, the disciples are out on the boat on the sea.  In the first instance, Jesus is asleep in the boat as a huge storm hits.  Fearing for their lives, they wake him.  He calms the storm and chastises them for lack of faith.  The second time, the disciples are without Jesus and are trying to make way in a heavy wind.  They are straining and making no progress.  Jesus walks on the water to them, revealing his divine identity.  They immediately arrive at their destination, but Mark offers an editorial note.  Their hearts were hardened.  Jesus showed himself to be God, but they couldn’t see it, not fully.

In this third instance, there are no heavy waves to scare the pants off them and no frustrating wind to impede their progress.  The problem is not the weather but the preparation.  The disciples all look at each other and realize that they are miles out to sea, but the sandwiches are at home on the kitchen counter.  What do they do now?  What does Jesus do?

This question comes at the end of our six-week journey of looking for Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and in doing so, we look for Jesus in our lives.  Yes, he lived 2000 years ago, but in His Word, in His church, and in the activity of His Holy Spirit we actively look for Him today and in looking, we expect to see Him, hear from Him, and be led by Him that we might follow as his disciples.

But can we truly be his disciples?  Not on our own ability, we can’t.  Last week we heard Jesus say it is what comes out of a person that determines whether that one is defiled or pure on the inside.  As we digested his words, we acknowledged that all of us our sinners, so if you hang around us long enough, you’ll hear something to show us to be defiled, not pure.  But, then we looked closer and found that Jesus surrounded himself with defiled people. 

In following him, they got a bit cleaner.  What came out from them changed over time because their hearts were made new by God – God at work in them, working through Jesus.  What happened to those first followers also happens to us.  Call it transformation of the heart that is seen in the living of our lives.  Call it being made new in Christ.  Call it dying to self and being born again. However we phrase it, this newness – us becoming new creations – happens when we actively decide to follow Jesus and he works in us.  It is His work.  We must be open to it and cooperative and receptive.  Saying this is not a way of saying we achieve our salvation or our growth in holiness.  Salvation and spiritual maturation are things accomplished by God.  Mark is showing that as God worked in Christ and works through Holy Spirit to save the world, we, the ones being saved participate by being open and receiving what God gives. 

This we requires us to let go of many of the expectations that our culture has imprinted on us, expectations about what it means to be successful or happy.  I am not just twisting words around here.  Our cultural world encourages us to seek our own happiness as a primary value.  The Gospel says we are to rejoice in all circumstances.  Our culture values winners.  The Gospel tells us to strive as hard as an Olympic athlete but at the same time to die to self.  Our culture affirms giving to charity from our excess, after our needs and wants have been satisfied.  The Gospel calls for extravagant, sacrificial generosity. 

On the boat, a third boat trip in Mark’s gospel, the disciples are fretting about not having any bread.  Jesus seems completely uninterested in their dilemma.  “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees,” he tells them (8:15b).  They’ve heard so many amazing and sometimes to them incomprehensible things from him, this seems to be another.  Another odd teaching.  They whisper & mutter, “He’s irritated that we forgot the sandwiches.  We have no bread.” 

Whoops!  The disciples get it wrong – AGAIN!  Jesus unleashes a torrent of questions. 

Why are you talking about having no bread?

James: “Well you said the yeast, and we …”

Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?

Peter: “No Rabbi, of course our hearts are not …”

Do you have eyes and fail to see?  Do you have ears and fail to hear

Andrew, elbowing Peter in the ribs: “I don’t think we’re supposed to answer.”

Do you not remember?  When I broke the five loaves for the 5000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?

Philip, nervously looking to the others for helping and getting none, “um, 12.”

And the seven loaves that fed 4000, from that, how many baskets of leftovers did you collect?

James: “Well Lord, we all know it was seven, but we ate all those leftovers a couple of days ago.  Everybody knows John was supposed to go the market and …”

James, zip it.  Seriously, guys, do you not yet understand?

Jesus did not want his group worrying about lunch.  If need be, he would take care of lunch.  In this gospel, he allowed them to pluck grain on the Sabbath, technically a Sabbath violation.  He allowed them to eat without going through the elaborate hand-washing ritual.  Luke tells us that much of the time, a group of affluent women followed making sure the disciples never went hungry.  Twice, Jesus miraculously multiplied one person’s simple lunch and fed the population of a small town with leftovers.  Stop fussing over lunch.  Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. 

David Garland writes that really, what Jesus said was beware of the “leaven,” not the yeast of the “Pharisees.”  Both leaven and yeast are used to make dough rise.  In Jesus’ time what was most likely used was leaven which had dangerous potential.  If the process for producing the leaven was tainted in any way, it would spread poison through the bread.[i] 

The teaching of the Pharisees was strictly on the Law of Moses – a good thing; a great thing.  The Torah, the Law, what we read in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is a gift of grace from God.  Just as leaven fills the dough so it will become life-giving nourishment, the Law gives holiness to the community.  Our highest calling from God is holiness.  But just as tainted leaven poisons the bread, the way the Pharisees applied the law – paying attention to their spin on it while ignoring that it is a means of drawing people to God’s heart – leads people to death instead of life.  Legalism that neglects the heart kills the person.  Jesus offered a different way, but the disciples and the watching world and each one of us has to decide what we will choose. 

Would the disciples live under legalism and with the expectations of God that the Pharisees had imposed?  Prior to Jesus coming, their choices were the Pharisees or the Sadducees or the armed rebellion against Rome or full submission to Rome or retreat to the desert to live as a hermit while waiting for the end of time.  All these choices were awful.  With the arrival of Jesus, there was another choice – the true way of God, which is a way of love, invitation, forgiveness, inclusion, grace, and life. 

As I mentioned a moment ago, in our day and time, there are sets of values, priorities, and even thoughts about what is real and what is true – all dictated by various voices in our surrounding culture.  Much of this in direct conflict with what the Gospel says is real and true and important.  Which will determine how we live, the world around us or the Holy Spirit speaking through the Gospel?  The challenges we face in seeing Jesus and following Jesus are not identical to those the disciples faced, but the dynamic is the same.  Do we understand that Jesus is God and the only for salvation is in Him?  If we do understand that, then will we trust that truth to the point that when we have to choose between being of our culture or being of the Kingdom of God, we will choose being of the Kingdom?

Curiously, examine again how Mark describes the disciples in the boat.  They had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them (v.14).  To me it seemed that someone was supposed to plan for the journey and forgot or left the bread on the dock.  But, there’s always someone in the crowd who is a preparer, someone who is always ready for anything, always with a granola or a pack of crackers in the pocket.  They had forgotten to bring any bread.  But they had one loaf.

On a second look, it’s peculiar.  Garland, the scholar I mentioned, proposes that the one loaf Mark mentions is Jesus himself.  He writes that when Jesus quizzes them about the miracle feedings of thousands, they get the answers right, but they cannot see past the numbers of those fed to understand that they have, right there in the boat, a bread maker. 

This requires imagination, but by imagination, I don’t pretend.  I don’t mean if we all visualize bread, it will appear in our mouths and our and taste buds and bellies will be happy.   By imagination, I mean seeing the possibilities when we realize we are walking through life with Jesus, following Jesus, living in the power of Jesus.  Will he snap his fingers and suddenly the disciples all have the best bread they’ve ever eaten?  Will the water turn to heavenly wine as they consume it?  Or, will focusing on him and his way of submitting to God and choosing his way while rejecting the Pharisees way – will that mental/spiritual/emotional process occupy them?  They arrive at the next port with hungry bellies but with satisfied souls.

To see Jesus in our lives demands that we have the imagination to see the world on His terms and to live seeing his possibilities and participating with him as He brings His possibilities to reality. 

Here’s an example from preacher/writer Frederick Buechner:

You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay their the evening before is no longer there – the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to  take in last fall.  All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on now is not the snow of Narnia nut the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls.  The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence.  It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up.  It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever dream.

            If snow can do that in us, what can Jesus do, if we open ourselves to Him?  If the seeking of deep reality and mind blowing wonder has not died in us, what will Jesus do when we see Him?  See him requires imagination – not make believe; but, imagination that dares to believe that God is real and the hungry can be fed and the world can be redeemed and love can win because God is love and Jesus came to show us God’s love. 

            It’s a choice of the Pharisees’ leaven or Jesus’ wine.   It’s Martha in the kitchen worrying about hospitality, or Mary sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet, drinking him in.  It’s fear of not enough v. seeing hope.  It’s missing out on the big things God as we succumb to tyranny of the urgent, or living with divine purpose every day.  It accepting that death on a cross ends the story, or daring to imagine that resurrection can really be true. 

            But!  We have to make the choice to look for Him.  We have to open our hearts and our minds to see Him.  From what we already know – in the word, in the church, in the Spirit – we have to say resoundingly “No!” to our culture when our culture defies God.  We love our world passionately and compassionately, but we say No when our world draws away from God.  And we say Yes emphatically, by submitting ourselves to His teaching and His love.  He is the bread of life and He has come for us.  We choose not even worry about what we are missing because He is enough.  We eat the bread we have.

AMEN

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[i] David Garland, NIV Application Commentary: Mark, p.310.

The Word of God creating a New Culture

Every year at our church, we do a 7-week church wide emphasis. This year our church-wide emphasis is on the culture of follow Jesus Christ, and the new culture Jesus creates. During the church-wide emphasis, all of our small groups focus on the same subject as the Sunday morning Sermon. We don't do this during the Sundays of Lent but this year, we are.

For more on the culture-making idea, check out Andy Crouch's website:

www.culture-making.com

Here is the sermon text from March 13, 2011:

The Word (John 1:1-18), Sunday, March 13, 2011

First Sunday of Lent

First Sunday of Church-wide Emphasis on Culture Making

What are we referring to when we say “the word?”

When I hear the phrase word of God, I think of the Bible. The entire Bible. Is that what we mean?

The word of God – are we talking about scripture? On Ash Wednesday service I suggested that disciples of Jesus Christ all agree we should read the Bible because it is authoritative in our lives. We should read it, listen, and live by what it says. But, when we say the word do we mean the Bible, Genesis to Revelation?

Or, referring to the word as Christians, do we mean the Gospel?

In the outstanding study guide Heather has written for our church-wide emphasis, she quoted Anglican scholar N.T. Wright. He says the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) give the story of the life of Jesus Christ. Gospel is the proclamation of the saving work of Jesus.

Is that the word of God? In that phrase are we talking about the details of the life of Jesus? Or more specifically, are we talking about the saving work of Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection?

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Here ‘Word’ does not refer to the scriptures and Word does not refer to something Jesus did; his saving work on behalf of people. In John 1:1, Word means Jesus. Word is capitalized, as if a person’s name in the New Revised Standard Version, the Homan Christian Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, the New King James Version; and the NIV. Bible translators who disagree often are unanimous on this even though in Greek word, ‘logos,’ is not capitalized. Scholars of all different stripes know who John means. The word is Jesus.

Yet, that does not mean we look at Word as simply another name for him. Word does mean Jesus. The word of God is the Bible. And the Bible does introduce the Gospel. Bible-Gospel-Jesus each speaks when we listen to the Word. So, everyone who can get there hands on a Bible can hear the Gospel and meet Jesus.

The Word changed history. For people who believe it, the word changes the future. No person anywhere is able to live as if the word never happened. The Word creates a culture – a way of being human and of being human in relation others, in relation to society, and to creation. To see how, we put five questions to the Word.

First, what does the Word assume about the world? It assumes that the world is lost, far from God, and unable to make its back to God.

Jesus said to a crowd that gathered for dinner in Zacchaeus’ home that he, Jesus, came to seek out and save the lost (Luke 19:10). He purpose was finding and saving the lost because the lost need to be saved.

The writer of John says, he wrote the fourth Gospel so that through reading we come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and through believing have life in Jesus’ name (John 20:31). Without Jesus, life is not possible. We are sinners cutoff from God. Only in hearing the story and believing in Jesus can we move from death to life.

One morning Jesus was slipped away from the group for pre-dawn time alone with God. Mobs of people led by his new disciple, Peter, found him. They were diseased people, tired and desperate and full of pain that blinded them to the fact that Jesus had healed late into the previous night and now needed solitude. The crowd couldn’t see how they were intruding, either on Jesus or on the home of Peter’s Mother-in-law where the healings took place. All they could see was Jesus as the only hope they had for anything.

Did he get mad? No. He said to Peter, “Let us go on to neighboring towns so that I might preach the message their also; for that is what I came to do” (Mark 1:38).

Jesus came to seek out and save. The gospel was written so readers would believe in Jesus and be saved. Jesus came to preach to people the Gospel of forgiveness of sins. What does the Word assume about the world? The Word assumes that the world is hopelessly sinful and the only salvation from eternal death comes from Jesus.

What does the Word assume about the way the world should be?

To all who believed, John 1:12 tells us, Jesus gave power to be sons and daughters of God.

We know John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

We listen as Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31b-32).

The word assumes that we should be sons and daughters of God who have the freedom of Christ as we spend eternity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Victims of abuse needs to hear this. Abuse happens because we are lost in sin. When a husband strikes a wife it is abuse. When orphans go hungry it is abuse. When preachers thunder about certain people groups, how they are hell-bound; that is spiritual abuse. When governments manipulate the poor in their country or in other countries and cater to wealthy business men it is absolutely abuse.

If in your life, you have felt victimized or abused, or if you have been riled with passion on behalf of an individual who has been abused, then hear what the Word assumes about the way the world should be. This includes the way your life should be. The Word assumes you should be a child of God who as a relationship of spiritual intimacy with God. The Word assumes God desires for you to be with Him for eternity. The Word wants you to be free.

With that in mind, what does the Word make possible?

The Word comes before all that is; before the earth, before human culture, before the Bible, and before all that we see. In our text this morning, John 1, verse 3, we read, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The Word makes existence possible.

The word is also the source of life. We read this earlier, John 1:4. “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Elsewhere in scripture we see that the Son of God – Jesus – is the totality. Colossians says, “He himself is before all things and in Him all things hold together” (1:17).

The word makes life possible. The Word makes existence possible. And in John 1:12, from today’s reading, “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God.” The Word makes relationship with God possible, and not just any relationship. It is a family relationship.

What does the Word of God render impossible?

Again look at John’s prologue, the Gospel of John, 1:1-18. The light of the Word shines in the darkness and darkness cannot overcome it. The Word makes it impossible for sin to claim victory over the human heart. The Word makes it impossible for Satan to impose His will on humanity. Evil does not win. Sin has been vanquished. Death will be no more.

Some may live with the mistaken notion that God and Satan are polar opposites, two sides of the same coin, rivals. Lies all. Not only is God completely superior to Satan, the two aren’t even comparable. What’s more, Satan has already been defeated. When Jesus died on the cross, Satan was snuffed out.

I recently read of a missionary couple that several years ago was serving in another country in a rain forest climate. Where they lived, anacondas – snakes that exceed 6 feet in length – roam freely. One day, an anaconda came right into their kitchen. The wife, as wives sometimes do, went to ask her husband to take of this unfortunate intrusion. Only she couldn’t ask him because he already had run out the front door. She quickly followed. They found a villager, explained the problem, and he went in with a machete.

A few moments later he emerged smiling, severed snake head in hand. The deed was done, he proclaimed. But then he warned them. The snake’s body doesn’t know it is dead yet. It’s blood, flowing through the 5½ feet that remained, would cause the body to thrash around for a couple of hours.[i]

Satan is like that headless, dead snake. He’s thrashing around, making a mess, not completely aware that he is dead and has been since Jesus came. The Word makes darkness impossible. The Word makes victory for Satan and annihilation by sin impossible.

The Word assumes the world is lost. The Word assumes we people should be in relationship with God. The Word made flesh, Jesus, makes that relationship possible. The Word makes Satan’s chances at victory impossible.

What new culture is created by the Word?

I believe the answer to this final question is church! I don’t mean HillSong Church or Mount Carmel Baptist Church or any other specific individual church. I don’t mean a denomination like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I don’t mean a wider communion, like the Baptist World Alliance or the World Wide Anglican Communion.

The church is the new culture created by the Word. Church means all believers everywhere. Some have called this the church universal or the invisible church. It includes all who truly receive Jesus as Savior and acknowledge Him as Lord; all who worship Jesus and are baptized in his name and in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit. The church created by the Word, with Jesus as its head, includes Orthodox, Protestants, Catholics, Coptics, and us – Evangelicals. The church is seen at work in the world, when the poor are fed, the lost hear the Gospel the captives are released, people love one another in Jesus’ name, and God is worshiped in Spirit and in truth.

Some may say the culture created by the Word is the Kingdom of God. I decided not to answer the question that way because the Kingdom has always existed. Jesus did not come to establish the Kingdom but to reveal it. We live in the Kingdom when we follow Jesus. We come to the Kingdom by way of Jesus and usually we meet Jesus in the church (either literally in a building like ours, or when the church goes out in the world to share Jesus).

The Kingdom is our destination. The Church is the cultural worldview created in us when we live in the Word and the Spirit of Christ resides in us.

To conclude then, I go back to Jesus-Bible-Gospel. To live in the cultural word created by the Word, receive Jesus, worship Jesus, and follow Jesus. To know how to do all of that, read the Bible, starting with the four gospels. Read and be filled with the words of the four gospels. To share the culture of the Word, be prepared to share the Gospel with unchurched people when the opportunity comes.

God loves us. Jesus died for us, to take away our sins. When we put our faith in Jesus, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and adopted as sons and daughters of God.

As we share, we remember who the Word is and what the Word does. And, we invite others into the world the Word creates. So we have our culture, a way of living, the culture of the Word.

AMEN

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[i] Carolyn Arends, “Satan’s a Goner, Christianity Today, February 2011, p.54.