Refusing to Repent

Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 11:20-24.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 10, 2021.

Repentance in the Bible is not just a word that means to change your mind.  The etymology of the word breaks down into that concept, but the biblical texts make it clear that a change in mind needed to include a change in action, i.e., a real change of mind that involved remorse over error and desire for the righteousness of God.

When we think about the Garden of Eden, we see that Adam and Eve are place in a paradise and have perfect fellowship with God.  However, they are cast out of this paradise because they rebelled against God.  On top of this separation, a curse is placed upon the world, Adam and Eve, as well as the devil.  The Bible calls mankind to repentance, and proper repentance will involve turning away from our ways, and back to God and His ways.  When we do that, God helps us to get back “home.”  Yes, a person may have never been a believer when they turn to faith in Christ, but in a very real sense, salvation is coming back home where we were meant to be and what is good and right.  Only God can help us know how to get back home as an individual or humanity as a whole.

Easier said than done, eh?  Let’s look at our first passage today.

Jesus calls us to repentance

When Jesus started preaching, he called people to repentance (vs. 15).  In fact, repentance was the core of the message that he proclaimed.  He is essentially saying, “Change your mind and believe God’s Word!”  We will come back to this in a moment.

First, let’s ask ourselves, “How many things am I doing because I don’t really believe what God’s Word says?”  This is important because many people who say they believe in God’s Word fail to actually do what it says.  When you ask them why, it always boils down to some kind of excuse.  “God can’t expect me to …”  Anything that follows those words is just me rejecting God’s Word.  Let’s put that on the back burner for a bit and let it simmer.

In the first century AD, the times were changing.  They were changing specifically because God was beginning to do something different.  Israel’s service under the law was coming to an end.  They needed to step into a “mature son” status.  You see, God’s goal is not for mankind to be laboring under 613 laws on into eternity.  Like parents giving their children a bed time, it is not their intention that their kids will always go to bed at 9 PM, or whatever, when they become adults.  Instead, they hope to train them in good habits so that they can make good decisions for themselves later.  This is the picture of a mature son, one who is able to step into the family business and even run it, without running it into the ground.

The times were changing for the Gentiles too.  For over a millennium, they had been stumbling in the dark of false religion, worshipping false gods, and chasing false hopes.

How did they get in that situation?  When 8 humans stepped off Noah’s ark, all mankind knew the truth of God.  Over the years, different families began to wander away from the truth of God, until they were seduced to reject God’s command and build a tower to the heavens.  In an attempt to connect with “gods” other than the true God, they rebelled against the King of Heaven.  This brought judgment and scattering.  Like the casting out of the original parents, the Gentiles are cast out of favor with God.  He gives them over to their faulty thinking, and the doctrine of demons.  They end up in a place of letting go of the truth and embracing lies, walking in darkness, and their minds debased.  God was gearing up to change this through Jesus.

Israel and the Gentiles were actually in the same boat spiritually.  We would expect the Gentiles to be lost and far from God, but Israel had the truth of God and gave lip service to it.  Yet, Israel had become lost like the blind nations around them.  They did so by layering their own reasoning over the top of God’s Word.  Little by little they had created a false system that only paid precious little tribute to the blazing truth delivered by Moses.  Yet, despite this, God was ready to bring the grace of truth to them.  Always remember this, in your life, or the life of a nation, the world, there always comes a day when God steps in.  He does so to change the situation.  The question is, “What will you do in that critical time?”  Listen, friend, none of us can change ourselves, but we can believe God when He purposes to change us.  This is what Jesus, and John the Baptist, were doing.  They were telling people to come and receive from God the grace of the changing of their situation.  They could go from being lost without hope, eating pig slop, in destitution, to coming home to the Father where they belonged.

Jesus tells us to repent, and believe in the Gospel.  The Gospel, the good news, is that both Jews and Gentiles can now enter into the Kingdom that God had promised through the prophets.  It was happening in their day!  Imagine how incredible this must have sounded.  For 400 years before John the Baptist, Israel had not had a true prophet give them a new word from God.  For 600 years, they had been under the thumb of the Gentile powers.  Even before that, their kings had been mostly evil and the nation languished under the lack of righteousness and favor from God.  It was during this time that God promised Israel through His prophets that an Anointed King would come forth to save Israel and even the Gentiles.  He would fix all that is wrong with the world under the administration of a global messianic kingdom.  However, precious few qualified to enter this kingdom because most people had quit truly believing.

Israel and the Gentiles represent two classes of people.  Those who have the truth, some believing, but most not.  And, those who are trapped in the lies and ignorance that they have inherited from their father, who inherited it from their father, on and on.  Both classes can be boiled down to the essential problem: they are not believing God.  So, the bad news is that our sins separate us from God and His coming Kingdom, but the good news is that we can participate in it if we will repent.

The key to the Kingdom promised by God is to repent and believe Him.  Change your mind about all the ways in which you have not believed Him, and start believing Him in your life.

Repentance is a little different for each one.  A gentile would have to leave his religion and embrace a new religion, the truth.  Whereas, an Israelite would have to let go of some tradition, but others they would keep.  In essence, they would get back to the simple truth of God’s Word instead of following the human reasoning of rabbis.

In the first century AD, God was giving a new prophecy, a new decree.  The Law of Moses was ending with its sacrificial system, dietary laws, and laws of cleansing.  It was time to enter the Kingdom of God.  No one would get in (gets in) because of their race, religion, or pedigree.  Jew and Gentile alike can only get in through repentance and believing God’s call to enter the Kingdom.  Particularly, He requires all men everywhere to believe that Jesus was sent by Him to be the Anointed King over that Kingdom.  To believe this is to become something radically different than you were the day before.

Now, let’s go to Matthew 11:20-24.

Jesus rebukes the squandering of grace

When you don’t take advantage of grace, you don’t realize how important it was when you had it.  Like the prodigal son, most in Israel had wasted the immense grace that God had given them as a people.  They were headed the wrong way and would miss out on the Kingdom if they didn’t change.

Jesus points out that the cities of the Galilee had received a large measure of grace in the fact that Jesus did most of his ministry and miracles in them.  If you were to plot the ministry of Jesus geographically and by amount of time, you would see that the cities of the Galilee received the lion share of it.  Why?  Most likely because Jerusalem rejected him and tried to kill him when he went to it and its surrounds.  The grace of God was there for them, but they kept pushing it away, and therefore others received more grace than they would have.

It is not enough to be the recipient of a lot of grace.  We can make our prayers focus on asking for more grace, but we should be careful.  What are you doing with the grace that He is giving you?  Are you pushing it away like Jerusalem, or are you sucking it up like the cities of Galilee and yet not truly believing in Jesus?  The cities of Galilee were fortunate because of the hardness of other cities, but that just puts them in a place of being even more accountable.

Jesus warns Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum that they are headed for a harsh judgment.  There are two aspects to the judgment of God.  There are temporal judgments that happen throughout life and attempt to draw us back to God.  Like a shot across the bow, they are to get our attention, and warn us of a greater judgment looming over us.  The second aspect is eternal judgment.  This is a final judgment and it is too late to repent when you receive it.

These temporal judgments are times when God holds us accountable for our choices, good or bad.  I believe that America is in such a time.  We are under the temporal judgment of God.  What we do today, repent or continue in obstinacy, will determine what we experience next.  Yes, this is a dangerous time because choices have consequences.  However, even now God is offering us grace by showing us how great our sin has become.

Clearly, Jesus is looking ahead to the eternal judgment because he speaks of Sodom.  Sodom was no longer in existence.  There could be no more temporal judgments for Sodom.  She was in Hades awaiting the Judgment Day in which they would receive their eternal judgment.

So, what is meant by this statement?  “It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.”  I believe it is left cryptic on purpose.  It is intended first to shock the hearer, and second to warn them of harsher judgment.  How could it be harder for a person from Capernaum to survive The Judgment Day than a person from Sodom?  And, what would that look like; what does that mean?  Again, it is not spelled out.  However, the power is in neutralizing that inane ability of people to look at others and think they are better than them for all the wrong reasons.  Sodom is surely in big trouble when it comes to The Judgment Day, but Capernaum was in even bigger trouble.  Are the cities of America in any less trouble?

We didn’t have the physical ministry of Jesus like they did, but we have received far more grace than Sodom, and many other cities of this world.  In fact, we should not take credit for the great amount of grace we have received.  Like Capernaum, we have received such great grace because it was actively being rejected and pushed away by other places.  To have received great grace is to be held to a much higher standard at Judgment Day because God is just and hands down judgments that are righteous.

Repentance is better late than never.  We have received a great light.  The Gospel has been powerfully preached all across this great land.  However, we have been rejecting the truth of Christ and his rule.  We have been refusing to enter the Kingdom of God as decreed by the Father, and we have attempted to blaze our own path to an alternate Kingdom of our own making.

The Kingdom of God is both present and not yet.  Those who truly believe can participate spiritually in the Kingdom of God, while we await the physical return of Jesus.  Meanwhile, we live out our faith in Jesus through daily repentance.  To enter the people of God is to join a group of repenters, penitents.  The problem is that we are blind to all the ways we are rebelling against God’s truth.  In His grace, He works by His Holy Spirit to open our eyes.  Thus, we are to be walking in repentance daily.  Always humbly keeping our eyes on Him.

I hope that you are part of the repentant remnant in this land that is believing God.  The beauty is that during temporal judgments you can still repent and believe God.  If you tarry too long, temporal judgments become eternal judgments for some.  Even now, many are dying and entering into eternity.  What will their judgment be?  Those who believe God will do the works of faith, the works of God.  May the Lord help us!

Repent audio

The Things that God Hates 4: Hands that Shed Innocent Blood

Proverbs 6:16-17; Deuteronomy 19:9-10; Matthew 5:21-22; John 8:44; Luke 10:29-36.

This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on September 5, 2021.

Today, we are going to look at the third thing in the list of seven things that God hates.  The emphasis moves down to our hands.  There are many sins that we do with our hands.  However, the Spirit emphasizes hands that shed innocent blood.  This is a way of emphasizing murder versus capital punishment.

God hates hands that shed innocent blood

So, what is meant by innocent blood?  The point in this phrase is that they are not guilty of anything that deserves death at the hands of society.  It is not saying that they have no sin. 

Another point to be aware of is this.  It is easy to be confused between the laws of a country and the Law of God that is made clear in the Bible.  The taking of a life of someone who does not deserve it will always be hated by God, even when the society declares it legal.  Rome had no problem killing innocents in their Colosseum in order to keep the populace entertained and distracted.  Many places in the world have no problem killing innocents because they follow a different religion.  Even in these united States, we have no problem killing innocents in the womb because their presence is an inconvenience.  Of course, to assuage our conscience, we they are treated as not being a full person yet.  Sound familiar?  Such arguments were used by some to support slavery 200 years ago.

Don’t kid yourself.  When you stand before God, you will not be able to use the excuse that it was legal where you lived.  God’s Word stands above all nations, and this Republic, and holds us accountable to the truth about God and His Law.

Exodus 20:13 is the sixth commandment that God gave to Moses.  “You shall not murder.”  Yes, we are no longer under the Law of Moses.  Yet, murder was wrong before the Law of Moses (God held Cain accountable to his murder of Abel).  In the New Testament, we are reminded that murder is still wrong in the era of the Everlasting Covenant.  Why?  It is wrong because God still hates it, and it represents a rejection of the Truth of Christ.  The Law of Moses is filled with laws that were intended to teach symbolic truths such as the laws on sacrifice and the dietary laws.  However, the moral laws were not symbolic.  Early Christians understood that these things were still sin and God did not want people of any era participating in it.

It has become common place for our larger cities to see over a hundred murders a year, with places like Chicago leading the pack with over 1 murder a day.  Our systems do not keep track of the innocent who were murdered, and even if we did, they would not put the abortion numbers in it.  How enlightened we must be that we have legalized murder at the hands of some of the doctors in our land.  Around a million innocents a year have their blood shed in the united States of America.  Yes, the Taliban in Afghanistan are even now going door to door to kill collaborators and Christians.  This may seem repugnant to our delicate Western sensibilities, but God is just as repulsed by our clinical slaughter of babies in the womb.  You shall not shed the blood of the innocent!

Even though we are not under the Law of Moses, a study of it can help us to understand how God thinks on these matters.  For instance, take the cities of refuge talked about in Deuteronomy 19.  God is making provision for a person who accidentally kills another person (innocent blood).  He does this by having Israel set apart three cities to be a place of refuge for such a person.  He even tells them to add three more as they expand.  The point is not the system, but the intent that God had in setting it up.

Not all deaths are intentional.  Though it is bad to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it, it is also bad to kill the person who accidentally killed another.  By the way, the cities of refuge were never used as a sanctuary for murderers, law breakers.  The leaders of the city were to hear both sides of the event and any witnesses that were available.  If there was enough evidence to make it clear that the death was intentional, then they were to be handed over to their executioner.  There can be no sanctuary for a murderer, but the sanctuary of true repentance and faith in Jesus.  Our Republic has done a fairly good job in making a system that protects in the cases of manslaughter, though any system can be abused.

In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus raises the bar for murder.  If God hates murder, then He hates the junk that goes on in a heart that leads to it.  No society can hold people accountable for the things that are listed in this passage: being angry at someone without a proper cause, calling someone an “idiot” (literally “empty-head”), and calling someone a fool (as an insult).  Yet, God will hold us accountable to these things.  He hates these things.  Jesus reminds us that to think and act in these ways towards another person is to be in danger of hell.  Like Jesus told the “Sons of Thunder,” you do not know what manner of spirit you are.  God is trying to save people from their sins, not execute them for them.  However, the rebellious will eventually be dealt with by Him.

A Christian doesn’t need to be against capital punishment, but they do need to have a heart that has given up anger, hatred, and despising others for their sins.  A Christian is a person who has repented of doing things that God hates, and who seeks to become like God, like Jesus, which raises this question. 

What image am I taking on?  When Cain killed Abel, 1 John 3:12 tells us that he was “of the wicked one.”  Cain had been warned by his Heavenly Father (God).  God was trying to help him overcome the temptation to sin, but Cain didn’t want to be like God.  He didn’t know it, but in refusing to become like God, he then became like someone else, the wicked one, aka the devil.  According to the Bible, Cain was not the first murderer.

John 8:44 tells us that the devil was a murderer “from the beginning.”  Who did he murder?  There may be more behind this verse than we know, since Jesus has knowledge that we do not and may be sending a message to the devil through it.  However, Genesis 3 lays out the classical act of talking someone into killing themselves.  We cannot blame our sin upon Satan, but his heart was the heart of a murderer when he tempted Eve to disobey God.  He is guilty of the death of innocent blood when he took advantage of their naivety.

I am either a child of God becoming more like Him each day, or I am a child of the devil, expressing one more novel way of becoming like the wicked one.  Thus, Jesus brought to the surface the real image that the religious leaders of his day had been taking on.  They didn’t believe that they were killers any more than our society today thinks that we are enlightened and righteous, more righteous than God Himself.  If Jesus were to step into my life, and I didn’t know it was him, would I hate him for revealing my sin?  Would I despise him and malign him to others behind his back?  Would I openly attack him?  Would I have the heart of a murderer towards him?  We duck these questions in this life because the people who may confront us are humans who are fallen too.  Lord, help us to be more aware of the image that we are taking on, and through repentance, keep near to God.

God loves hands that heal

Let’s take some time to focus on what God loves.  Instead of hands that shed innocent blood, we should have hands that help and heal others.  To show this, let’s look at the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:29-36. 

The Good Samaritan had compassion upon an enemy.  The story is not ultimately about having compassion.  Most people are capable of compassion when they want to be.  However, those who were most likely to help this Jewish man along the road, a priest and a Levite, chose not to help.  We don’t know what their rationalizations look like.  Perhaps they speculated that it was a trick.  Maybe they just didn’t want to be inconvenienced or made late for the temple service.  For some reason, they both ignored the man’s dire situation.

Jesus makes the hero of the story a person that Jews despised, a Samaritan.  To be fair, there was much despising coming from the direction of the Samaritans also.  This “half-breed” follower of a religious cult was the one who stopped and had compassion on the dying Jewish man.  I know the story doesn’t exactly say the man is Jewish, but it is most likely since the man had gone “down from Jerusalem to Jericho.”  The people hearing the story that day would have understood him to be a Jew that was helped by a Samaritan.  This would be like a BLM protester finding a wounded cop and helping him, or the reverse, a cop finding a wounded BLM protester and helping him.

Just because someone is my enemy doesn’t mean that I should desire their death.  The good Samaritan is good because he did what God would do.  He did all he could do to save the dying person.  He had compassion.  The reason I said this isn’t about compassion is because it is ultimately about who we are imaging in our actions.  Many priests and Levites in Jerusalem of the days of Jesus lacked far more than compassion.  They lacked the image of God.

We are told some very practical things that the Samaritan did to help the man.  He treated his wounds with the equivalent of antiseptic and salve.  He bandaged the wounds.  He then took the man to a safe place where he would not be harmed further, and where he could recuperate.  This couldn’t guarantee that the man would live, but it would give him the best chance.  The rest would be up to God.  He even paid for the cost of the man’s convalescence.  This man was more than a neighbor.  He was more than a good neighbor.  He was a godly neighbor, the hand of God to a man in need.

Think about it.  This Samaritan, if he was religious at all, would have had some twisted doctrines.  No self-respecting Jew of that day would want a Samaritan living by them.  Rather, they would want good Jewish neighbors, especially a Levite or a priest.  Maybe some of their blessing will land on me!  However, this Samaritan was the better neighbor of the three, a better lover of his neighbors.  His hands were not quick to shed blood, or to allow it to happen, but quite the opposite.  They were quick to help and to heal.

So, what can I do?  Notice that this story is not about a Samaritan who purposefully walked the road looking for robbed travelers.  It was a chance (or was it) meeting that gave him no time to prepare.  This is life.  Tests and choices that come our way that we were not expecting.

What can I do?  It starts with quick repentance when hard-heartedness surfaces in me.  I must develop the image of God within my life through choosing to help others, spiritually and physically.  The sad thing is that they won’t always want your help, and may even reject it.  How more like God can you get than that?  His help is spurned every day by hundreds of millions of people.

Friend, the spirit of this world is stirring us up against one another, to despise, and not love one another, but the Spirit of Christ is here this morning to teach us to love one another, even when it hurts.

Father, Turn Our Hearts

Luke 1:11-17.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 20, 2021, Father’s Day.

We are celebrating Father’s Day.  It is easy in life to let your heart turn towards the things that it wants to turn towards.  It doesn’t help when you have a society that elevates following the heart over doing what is right and pleasing God.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes, God puts things in our hearts, but the follower of Jesus will wrestle with those things, seeking to be intellectually honest before God.  They desire more to follow him than to follow their own heart.

Today, we will look at a man who was grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have any children, and through his interaction with an angel, we are reminded of God the Father’s heart for us.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Father’s impact

In this passage, we are not told whether Zacharias was praying for a child that day in the temple.  He was a priest who had been picked by lot to offer the incense in the Holy Place before the veil, and the Presence of God.  We are told that he and his wife were “well advanced in years.”  This probably means that his years of praying for a child had long since ceased, and his hopes for such had long since died.

God the Father chose a particular day, when it looked like there was no hope, and in fact he wasn’t even looking to see if there was hope anymore.  It was at that moment that He sent an angel to give Zacharias the good news.  God had a present for him, a large measure of grace; he was going to have a son!  As exciting as this news was to Zacharias, notice that this grace is not all about him and his wife.  It is also about the nation of Israel and its need to turn back to God.  We must always remember that the grace of God in our life is a present from a loving Father, but it is also intended to bless more than just me.  It is our natural tendency to be short-sided in regard to the grace of God in our life.

This is probably the first time that Zacharias has seen an angel.  Though we are not given a description in Luke, the angel explains that he is Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.  This angel called Gabriel also interacted with Daniel in Daniel chapters 8 and 9.  There he is described as looking like a man (no wings).   So, it is most likely not what Gabriel looks like that startles Zacharias, but the fact that no one is supposed to be in the Holy Place at that time, but him.

There are things that can make men afraid.  Zacharias is a righteous man who has been serving God “blamelessly.”  It would be easy to say that a righteous man shouldn’t fear anything, even that we shouldn’t fear God; He is on our side!  However, God still does things, or allows things, in our life that we can’t control, and that we weren’t expecting.  Fear is a natural response in these times.

Many fathers try to look like they aren’t afraid, but if we don’t keep our heart and eyes turned towards God, we can become entangled in a web of fears.  You can spend your life trying to become greater than your fears, or you can turn to the One who is greater than all that you fear.  In fact, when we are not living right before God, we often fear things that we shouldn’t.  Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”  We can become trapped by a mixture of real things and figments of our warped imagination.

The real problem in life is not that we fear, but that we are truly bad at fearing the right things.  There are many fathers today who are not afraid to abandon their children, or they are not afraid to help a girl abort their baby.  They aren’t afraid to abuse the woman that they are with.  Really, they don’t fear God who has warned those who do such things of the consequences of the things they are doing.  We are not afraid to play God in our labs, businesses, and government buildings.  We are not afraid of throwing off the time-proven wisdom of the past for the seduction of a future that we think we can control.  Yes, the real problem is that we aren’t afraid of running off the cliff with all the other lemmings.

In the end, God is not a danger to those who serve Him in love.  I should add a caveat to this.  It all comes down to the definition of “danger.”  Jesus served the Father faithfully in love, but he died on a cross.  Yet, God is showing us through the resurrection of Jesus that any danger He purposefully brings before us, or even allows to come before us, has a way through it that brings us to the good things that He intends for us on the other side.

In truth, He is a danger to our flesh, but He is Eternal Life, Peace, and Joy to our soul, and to our future.  He really does love you, and will bless you if you will turn to Him in faithful love.  Like Zacharias, we must be those ones who are rare in a land of men who have turned away from God.  We must pass that reality on to the next generation, both with our natural children and with the spiritual children that God brings into our lives.

The Father’s desire

As the angel describes God’s purpose for the child that Zacharias will have, we see the desire of our heavenly Father’s heart, and the things that were keeping Israel in bondage.

The term “children of Israel” is used in this context as a reference to generation, and not as a reference to age.  It is not talking about everyone under the age of 12, but of the current generation who had been birthed by the generation before.  It pictures each generation as Israel giving birth to the next generation of Israel.  The nation of Israel, both young and old, were the children of Israel, just as we today are the children of the United States of America. 

The problem with any nation is that our hearts get turned away from God the Father.  No matter how good our beginning may have been, all nations run into peril as more and more of their people turn their hearts away from God.  The Father’s desire was that the hearts of that generation be turned back towards Him.

We must not see God as a Father who is hurt and mad that His children don’t love Him.  Instead, we must see the reality of what happens to children who turn away from loving parents, and cast off their godly instruction.  Such children turn towards foolish things, and the path of folly always brings ruin to a person and to a nation.  God’s heart breaks over the folly that is taking over, not just our land, but all of the nations on this earth.  With a Father’s heart, He cries out, “Why will you die?  Choose Life, and turn back to Me!”

He also desires to turn the hearts of the fathers towards their children.  When our hearts are turned towards God, He teaches us to have our hearts turned towards each other in the right way.  There is a plague of fatherless children across our land.  Too many fathers have rejected the heavenly Father and His desire to turn their heart towards their wives and children.  This is not just a problem for fathers.  Mothers and children have the same problems too.

However, men, we must be bold as lions and care for the people that God has put in our lives.  Regardless of how they respond, we must love them and seek God’s best for them, by showing them what a righteous man looks like, and how he lives.  This world successfully seduces our hearts away from what really matters because it first seduced our heart away from God.  This is how Satan plunders us from the goodness and inheritance of God.

Ultimately, the Father desires to turn the disobedient towards the wisdom of the righteous.  Israel had become disobedient children.  They were fathers who were disobedient to the heaven Father, and children who were disobedient to earthly fathers.  They refused to hear the words of wisdom spoken through the righteous men of the past, and written down in the Bible.  In short, to turn is to repent.  There is a lot of turning going on in this world.  People turn from one thing to the next seeking their own happiness.  However, it is not good enough to repent of one fleshly pursuit to go after another.  The only repentance that will actually do you any good, and even do good for the people around you, is the repentance that turns all the way around back towards God.  Finally, when we are truly oriented towards Him, He is able to turn us back around to the people and things in our life in wisdom and righteousness, in a way that gives life, and not death.  May God help us to cast aside disobedience, hear the heart of a loving Father, and turn into the path of life!

The Great Commission

John 20:21-22; Mark 16:15-18; Luke 24:46-49; Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:18-20.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty on January 24, 2021.

Last week, we talked about the importance of making the good confession to the world around us.  In short, it is a declaration of our faith in Jesus and his teachings.  We stand with him.

Today, we are going to recognize that this confession and testimony that we should give about Jesus is part of a larger task, or commission, that Christ has given us.

Let’s look at our passage.

John’s Gospel

We will look at each of the Gospel’s version of the Great Commission.  They all highlight various things.  Ultimately, Jesus had been crucified and resurrected.  Over the course of 40 days, he appeared to them in order to prove the reality of the resurrection before he ascended into heaven, and to leave the apostles and his Church, that they would help build, with a task, a mission.  Thus, we speak of Christ commissioning his Church and call it the Great Commission.

John emphasizes sending.  We have been sent by Jesus as he was sent by God the Father.  We are sent for a purpose, to do what he tells us to do.  This is not a cultural thing.  Jesus is not trying to spread first century AD Israelite culture all around the world, much less white culture.  It is beyond culture.  In fact, if we must use the term, it is the spread of heaven’s culture.  All cultures are found wanting in the face of the Gospel and its obligation upon us all.  Christians must never confuse the Gospel with their own native culture.  Yes, some cultures have been impacted by Christianity more than others, but still, we are not representing our country, but rather Jesus and The Father.

John also shows Jesus breathing on his disciples and telling them to receive the Holy Spirit.  The receiving is emphasized, but it is not explained why.  We will save this for later.

Jesus also says that they, and we, will be a conduit to the forgiveness of sins for others.  This statement sounds like the apostles can keep some people from being forgiven, but that is a misreading.  Only Jesus can forgive sins, and thereby also refuse to forgive sins.  However, we are sent by Jesus as his ambassadors with his words.  We will be the representative of Jesus to those that we meet.  We don’t create forgiveness or deny it to those who desire it.  Rather, we announce it according to God’s Word, and the Holy Spirit’s wisdom.  Like the prophets of old, we can speak to people because of the authority of the Word of Jesus.  We can confidently tell people how to be forgiven of their sins, and how they cannot be forgiven.  The emphasis is not on their inherent ability, but in the function, they serve in being sent by Christ.

Mark’s Gospel

Mark focuses on our proclaiming the Gospel, or good news.  The NKJV uses the word “preach,” but the connotations of this word would be better translated as proclaim.  It is not about standing behind a pulpit in a church, but about sharing the Good News with anyone anywhere.  Mark’s gospel also emphasizes the scope of this mission, “all the world.”

A second aspect that we see here is the fact that powerful signs would follow Christ’s representatives.  Jesus doesn’t command them to do powerful signs.  Rather, the signs would follow them, and the signs listed are not an exhaustive list.  As God’s people commit themselves to this task of proclaiming the Gospel, signs would follow them.  Signs are not the focus, nor our job to make happen.  Our job is to be faithful to the task of sharing the Good News with people.

I will take a moment to clear up the passage about taking up serpents, due to the fact that some Christians believe they should prove their faith in Jesus by handling poisonous snakes.  Jesus is not talking about a means of proving your faith to onlookers, and neither is he talking about a test that all believers must do.  The best example of what Jesus is talking about happened to the Apostle Paul on the Island of Malta in Acts 28.  He was a prisoner on a ship going to Rome.  The ship was wrecked by a storm and they all jumped ship and swam to nearby Malta.  The natives met them on the shore and people began foraging for wood along the shore to build a fire and warm up the soaked men.  While gathering a bundle of sticks to throw on the fire, the apostle Paul was bitten by a viper on the hand and he shook it off into the fire.  The Bible tells us that the natives saw the viper hanging from Paul’s hand and figured that he would die, and that it was a punishment for some evil that he had done.  Over time, it became clear that Paul was not harmed by the poison.  This opened the people up greatly to hearing the Gospel.  The point is not invulnerability of believers to poison, but that these kinds of signs would follow them as a whole as they took the Gospel to the nations.  We too should expect that amazing things will happen from time to time as we are faithful to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Luke’s Gospel

In Luke, we have some of the content of the Gospel described.  First, Jesus had to do all of the things that he did.  They had been prophesied in Scripture, and they were functionally important for the saving of people.  Jesus lived a perfect life, and perfectly revealed the Father’s love by dying in our place, and being resurrected as proof that his sacrifice on our behalf was accepted.  It is also proof that he has the power to resurrect us at the last day.

For those who believe the message about who Jesus is and what he has done for us, repentance from sin is in order.  Those who believe and repent of their sins will have their sins remitted from them.  Luke also records that this is for all nations, not just one people group.

Lastly, Luke also records that they were to wait for the Promise from the Father to come upon them and empower them before going out to accomplish this commission.  The Promise from the Father is talking about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon all of God’s people, instead of just a select few.  This is a task that is not intended to be done only by our power, strength, and abilities.  God Himself will work through us and assist us by His Holy Spirit.  Thus, we are not to hang back in fear, nor are we to rush forward in self-confidence.  We are to be a people who are led by the Holy Spirit, and empowered by Him.

This should remind us of Acts chapter 1 verse 8.  The book of Acts is technically Luke’s second volume.  It is not a second Gospel, but rather describes the apostles doing what Jesus told them to do.  We could think of Luke’s Gospel as the good news of what Jesus did, and his second volume as the good news that the apostles faithfully walked in his footsteps.  Another way to look at these to books is to see Luke as the acts of Jesus and the book of Acts as the acts of his apostles. 

Regardless, verse 8 emphasizes why we are to wait for the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit would help us do.  The Holy Spirit would fill their whole being and enable them to be witnesses of Christ everywhere.  They would be empowered by God Himself.  A person cannot believe the Gospel without the influence of the Holy Spirit in their life.  He is the one who convicts us of the judgment that hangs over our head.  The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit takes up residence or dwells inside of those who believe on Jesus and repent of their sins.  However, we are to also open up our hearts and minds to Him through prayer so that He can fill our whole inner being.  This is not a one-time thing, but a daily empowering experience that we can have to help us in our battle against sin, and our task to proclaim the Gospel.

Matthew’s Gospel

John emphasized our being sent, but in Matthew we are shown why that is so important.  Jesus has authorized us to go to all nations and call them to repentance and faith in him.  What gives Christians the right to tell Romans that the idols they serve are lies and they need to repent?  We could ask the same question today.  Multiculturalism has some good to it.  It reminds us that we should not look down upon styles of life simply because they are different from our own.  However, Christianity is not supposed to be a cultural oppression. 

The Spirit of God started with Israel and challenged the sin in their culture.  It then moved to all other cultures.  We are authorized by the God who made and loves all people.  All of our cultures were, and still are, full of sin and ignorance.  Satan wants to make people feel that they are doing something wrong when they tell people that God commands all people everywhere to repent of their sins and believe on Jesus.  We must not give into this persuasion.

Next, we are to disciple those who believe by teaching them the commands of Jesus.  The disciple is a student who is learning to become like their master teacher.  Another image that is used in the Bible is that we are children of God.  God’s people are a family that baby Christians are born into.  We help the spiritually young to grow up and become more like our heavenly Father, which has been perfectly imaged to us by Jesus.

Lastly, Jesus tells us that he will be with us even to the end of the age.  How important it is to know that Jesus is still with us through the Spirit of God that is within us.  He hasn’t forgotten us no matter how difficult it may get at times.  We must hold onto this promise.

The Conclusion

When we put all of these things together, we end up with a lot of powerful concepts, so I have broken this up into two statements.

First, we have been authorized and sent by Jesus to proclaim the Gospel to all nations that only He can forgive and remove their sins because of his life, death, and resurrection.

Second, we are to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, which will have powerful signs as we teach people the commands of Jesus.

All of this emphasizes the task and purpose that Jesus has given us, and so it is missing an important component found elsewhere.  God so loved the world that He sent His One and Only Son that whoever believes on him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  God’s love for you, for me, and for those lost in this world, could not sit by as we destroyed ourselves through sin.  The love of God and the demonstration of its depth by Jesus on the cross are the foundation of a relationship that we can have with our Lord and invite others to join.  This is the Great Commission.

Great Comm audio