We may define spiritual gifts as follows: A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church. This broad definition includes both gifts that are related to natural abilities (such as teaching, showing mercy, or administration) and gifts that seem to be more “miraculous” and less related to natural abilities (such as prophecy, healing, or distinguishing between spirits). The reason for this is that when Paul lists spiritual gifts (in Rom. 12:6-8); 1 Cor. 7:7; 12:8-10, 28; and Eph. 4:11) he includes both kinds of gifts. Yet not every natural ability is included here, because Paul is clear that all spiritual gifts must be empowered “by one and the same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:11), that they are given”for the common good” (1 Cor.12:7), and that they are all to be used for “edification”(1 Cor. 14:26), or for building up the church. Read more here - (1) What are spiritual gifts?
Grudem: The New Testament lists specific spiritual gifts in six different passages. See table here -1 Corinthians 12:28 , 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, Ephesians 4:11, Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 7:7, 1 Peter 4:11.
Gifts of the Holy Spirit:
apostle – (1-8 from 1 Cor. 12:28)
prophet
teacher
miracles
kinds of healing
helps
administration
tongues
word of wisdom – (9-13 from 1 Cor. 12:8-10)
word of knowledge
faith
distinguishing between spirits
interpretation of tongues
evangelist - (14-15 from Ephesians 4:11)
pastor-teacher
serving - (16-20 from Romans 12:6-8)
encouraging
contributing
leadership
mercy
marriage – (21-22 from 1 Cor. 7:7)
celibacy
1 Peter 4:11 whoever speaks (covering several gifts) and whoever renders service (also covering several gifts).
What is obvious is that these lists are all quite different. No one list has all these gifts, and no gift is mentioned on all these lists: in the context of speaking of marriage and celibacy, Paul says, “Each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.”
Grudem: Paul says that if we have the gift of prophecy, we should use it “in proportion to our faith” (Rom. 12:6), indicating that the gift can be more or less strongly developed in different individuals, or in the same individual over a period of time. This is why Paul can remind Timothy, “Do not neglect the gift you have” (1 Tim. 4:14), and can say, “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you” (2 Tim. 1:6). It was possible for Timothy to allow his gift to weaken, apparently through infrequent use, and Paul reminds him to stir it up by using it and thereby strengthening it. This should not be surprising, for we realize that many gifts increase in strength and effectiveness as they are used, whether evangelism, teaching, encouraging, administration, or faith.
Texts such as these indicate that spiritual gifts may vary in strength. If we think of any gift, whether teaching or evangelism on the one hand, or prophecy or healing on the other, we should realize that within any congregation there will likely be people who are very effective in the use of that gift, perhaps through long use and experience, others who are moderately strong in that gift, and others who probably have the gift but are just beginning to use it. This variation in strength in spiritual gifts depends on a combination of divine and human influence. The divine influence in the sovereign working of the Holy Spirit as he “apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). The human influence comes from experience, training, wisdom, and natural ability in the use of that gift. It is usually not possible to know in what proportion the divine and human influences combine at any one time, nor is it really necessary to know, for even the abilities we think to be “natural” are from God (1 Cor. 4:7) and under his sovereign control.
But this leads to an interesting question: how strong does an ability have to be before it can be called a spiritual gift? How much teaching ability does someone need before he or she could be said to have a gift of teaching, for example? Or how effective in evangelism would someone need to be before we would recognize a gift of evangelism? Or how frequently would someone have to see prayers for healing answered before he or she could be said to have a gift of healing?
It is important to realize the ascension of Christ has always been a part of the overall plan of God. The idea of the ascension was not some last minute idea thought up by hapless and hopeless disciples.
Isaiah 52:13 Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up, and greatly exalted.
Belief in the ascension and its accomplishments has it source in the expectations and promises of Old Testament prophecy.
Psalm 16:8-11 I have set the LORD continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely. 10 For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay. 11 Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In Thy presence is fulness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever. (emphasis mine)
This prophecy traces Christ from the cross through resurrection back into His glory at God’s right hand through the ascension (cf. Acts 2:24-36).
Psalm 110:1-5 A Psalm of David. The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet.” . . ..5 The Lord is at Thy right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
Also compare:
Matthew 22:41-44 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42saying, “What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” They said to Him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “Then how does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I put Thine enemies beneath Thy feet”’?
Christ used this Old Testament passage which anticipated the ascension of David’s son to God’s right hand to demonstrate just who Messiah was and what this should mean to mankind. Messiah would be David’s son but also David’s Lord–one who shared God’s throne as God Himself. The ascension is alluded to in the words “at my right hand.” This shows us an understanding of what the ascension means and teaches us about Jesus Christ is vital for right thinking and response to the person of Christ. (Cf. Psalm 68:18; Eph. 4:8ff; Isa 52:13).
The Lord’s ascension was anticipated in the Old Testament and viewed as essential to a proper understanding of just who Messiah is and of His ministry to men. (Photo Jesus ascension.jpg)
Christ Anticipated the Ascension
The ascension was no surprise to the Lord. From the very beginning of His ministry, the Lord was not only aware that He had come to die for our sin, but anticipated both the resurrection and the ascension. Both were foretold in the Old Testament and Christ knew that like His death, the resurrection and ascension were essential for fulfilling God’s purposes and solving man’s dilemma. There must be both the DESCENT from heaven and theASCENT back into heaven.
There are some fifteen or more passages where the Lord speaks of the ascension or alludes to it in one way or another. That is not without significance. In each of the passages the Lord used the ascension much like the fact of the resurrection. He used it to authenticate His person and to give reasons for what He could and would do for man, and why the person and work of Christ demands a verdict–the verdict of faith and commitment.
The ascension is a vital link in the entire chain of events, all of which are essential. It is the link between His past finished work and His present and future work. It demonstrates Jesus Christ to be the final solution for man’s need of prophet, priest, and king (Cf. John 3:13; John 6:62; John 13:1; John 14:1-2; Luke 20:41-44).
New Testament Believers Witnessed the Ascension
The Time of the Ascension
There are some who contend that Christ ascended into heaven prior to the event recorded in Acts 1. A number of expositors teach that Christ ascended to heaven on the day of His resurrection based on the implications of John 20:17 and Hebrews 9:6-20. Let me suggest several reasons why this is unlikely:
(1) In Hebrews 9:11-12 the statement, “through His own blood” (or in the KJV, “with His blood”) has been taken to mean Christ took His actual blood into heaven. They say in John 20:17, Christ was telling Mary not to touch Him because this had not yet been done. But the Greek text here uses a construction which means “through the agency of” or “by means of.” It simply means that Christ was able to enter heaven once and for all by means of (or through) His death on the cross.
(2) The Lord did not actually say in John 20:17 He would ascend immediately, or at a time prior to the record in Luke 24 and Acts 1. “I ascend” is a prediction and illustrates what grammarians call a “futuristic use of the present tense.” This is a well established use in the New Testament (cf. A.T. Robertson, A Grammar Of The Greek New Testament In The Light of Historical Research, Broadman Press, p. 880).
(3) The only biblical record we have of His ascension is the one recorded 40 days after the resurrection (Acts 1:9-11; Luke 24:50-53). Many able scholars have concluded that it is improbable that Christ ascended in a formal way to heaven until the event of Acts 1.
But that He did ascend and that we have the record is enormously instructive.
This record is a confirmation of the fact of the ascension by those who had access to this information and who very carefully examined the facts (Luke 1:3) And the record of the ascension is such that it gives us important information about its nature and meaning.
The Nature of the Ascension
For the purposes of our study, we are going to focus our attention on the account in Acts 1:6-11.
Acts 1:6-11 And so when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. “ 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10 And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was departing, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them; 11 and they also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
First, we want to note the context in which the ascension occurs. This passage shows us there was concern and longing for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, and so there was the question about when. This would mean the reign of righteousness with Jesus Christ on the throne, and an end to the times of the Gentiles and the turmoil we now know in the world.
The Lord tells the disciples this was all in the Father’s sovereign plan and timing (vs. 7). In the meantime, they had the responsibility of representing the Lord to the world, a responsibility for which they would be adequately supplied by the power of the Holy Spirit once He had come to indwell the church, the body of Christ (vs. 8).
Christ’s ascension is immediately followed by the promise of the Holy Spirit and instructions regarding the purpose and mission of the church. The ascension is designed to provide an incentive to faith, courage, and a motivation to ministry.
Immediately after this commission in verse 8, the ascension occurred. The Lord was lifted up by a cloud of glory out of their sight and taken into heaven. He was ascending to the right hand of the Father from whence He would send the Holy Spirit to empower them for ministry. There also He would sit to represent them providing access into God’s presence.
Let’s note the words used for Christ’s departure and what they teach us.
Verse 9a tells us “He was lifted up.” This is the passive form of the Greek epairo and means “to lift up” as in the hoisting of a sail (Acts 27:40). This stresses that the ascension is upward and shows the Father was taking His Son up into heaven. The ascension was an act of exaltation and an affirmation of Christ’s person.
Verse 9b tells us “a cloud received Him out of their sight.” The Greek word “received” is hupolambano, “to take or bear up by supporting from beneath.” Literally the cloud “took under him.” He appeared to be supported by the cloud.
It appears that once Christ was in the atmospheric heaven, He was received by a cloud. Though we are not told so, this may have been like the cloud connected with the transfiguration, and which descended on the tabernacle in the wilderness and filled Solomon’s temple. Many believe it was the shekinah cloud, a symbol of the glory of God. In other words, it was a supernatural cloud, a symbol of the glorification of the Son. He was resuming His preincarnate glory–the glory He had before the incarnation.
Verse 10 describes the ascent by the words, “while He was departing.” “Departing” is the Greek poreuomai. This was a common word that meant to “go on a journey.” This suggests to us the ascension was a journey, not merely a disappearance. The Son of Man who was the Son of God was passing through the heavens into the heaven of heavens, into the very presence of God to appear there for us (cf. Heb. 4:14; 7:20; 9:24).
Verse 11 describes the ascent by the words, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven.” “Taken up” is the Greek analambano, “to receive up.” This is probably best understood as culminative or climatic and describes His reception into heaven. It describes the final results of the ascension and declares the fact of Christ’s arrival in heaven. By the testimony of two angels from heaven we are told He had reached His destination.
Everywhere we turn in the New Testament we find the Lord Jesus declared to be in heaven at the right hand of the Father in the PLACE OF GLORY, POWER, AUTHORITY, AND PROVISION FOR US.
The Response of the Disciples
What happened next is also important. We find the disciples almost trance-like and bewildered, staring after the Lord into the sky. The Greek text indicates they continued to stare or gaze up into heaven. Partly, I am sure because they were amazed and perplexed, but partly because they didn’t want to see Him go. Perhaps also they were waiting to see if He would soon return.
Suddenly, two men in white clothing, angels, messengers from God, appear beside them and address the disciples first with a question and then with a statement of promise.
The Question: “Why do you stand looking into the sky?”
I believe this question shows us how the ascension should and should not affect us. It may have been a gentle rebuke, but I think it is clear that the angels were calling the disciples’ attention to several important principles:
We should not be bewildered by the ascension nor stand transfixed or immobile just looking into the heavens. They (and we) should have expected it based on the Old Testament and Christ’s own predictions.SEEING THE LORD AS ASCENDED SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT EFFECT ON US.
We must know and believe that the ascension and session of the Lord is an important and necessary part in the plan of God for the church and for the world. We must trust in God’s plan. The Lord must be absent from us for a time.
The Lord’s departure means Christ’s exalted position in heaven and the promise of His return. But it also means that we have important matters to attend to as His people whom He has left here to represent Him.
The question posed by the angels implies “do you not understand what all this means to you?” It means Christ is exalted, but it also means the promise of His abiding presence with each believer in a very new and special way. It also means His sure return as King of Kings. The promise of His return means the establishment of His kingdom and His sure reward for faithful service with all the glories of the future.
The Reasons for Witnessing the Ascension
No one saw the Lord rise from the dead, but He was seen ascending into heaven by the disciples.
Men saw the results of resurrection–the living, glorified and resurrected Christ. But the act was not seen, only the results. To confirm the resurrection it was not necessary that men see him rise out of the grave. Knowing He was surely dead, men only needed to see clear evidences for the resurrection such as the empty tomb, the grave clothes as they were lying in the tomb, and the risen Christ who appeared over and over again.
By contrast, the disciples saw Christ ascend into heaven–they saw the act of ascension, but not the result–Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of God. This they could not see except by prophetic vision (e.g., Stephen in Acts 7:55-56, John in the book of Revelation, or Paul on the Damascus road).
The act of ascension was necessary to confirm the result–Christ seated. One of the great doctrines of the epistles is Christ seated in heaven, exalted at God’s right hand and the historic act confirms that for us.
The Lord Jesus physically disappeared from off the face of the earth. Where did He go? Where was He? The ascension with the eye witness account of the disciples provides us with the answer and verifies this great doctrine of Scripture.
Christ’s ascension (the act seen) is the proof of the result (Christ seated as the victorious and exalted Savior).
What difference does all this make to us, to the church in the world? What are the consequences of the ascension? The consequences are so tremendous that the ascended and seated Lord becomes one of the great themes of the New Testament. Everywhere we turn we find references of the ascended and seated Christ, and this has all kinds of implications on the individual and corporate life of the church of Jesus
Even during Christ’s appearances in His post-resurrection ministry, to some extent, He limited the manifestation of His glory. But through the ascension, though still possessing a glorified human body, the Lord assumed all of His former glory and authority.
(2) It ended His public ministry of words and works (John 17:4-11).
The ascension concluded His prophetic ministry and miracles accomplished by His bodily presence on earth (Walvoord, p. 224). His prophetic ministry and miracles would continue for a while, but only through the lives and ministry of the Apostles.
(3) It ended His redemptive work (Heb. 1:3; 10:12).
The ascension declared His work on the cross was finished. It demonstrated that there was nothing more that could be done for our sin and that He and He alone had accomplished our redemption (Note Heb. 9:11-12).
(4) It ended the Old Testament Covenant and declares the New Covenant to be better and in force (Heb. 8:7-13; 9:11-15, 23-10:1).
The ascension declared that the old Mosaic Covenant was no longer valid, that it was only a temporary covenant until Messiah-Savior could come.
Affirmations of the Ascension–what it says and teaches us about the Lord.
It Affirmed Christ’s Identification
It Affirmed Christ as the God-Man (John 6:62). In John 6 we have the great discourse on Christ as the Bread of Life. Because of His unique person, He is able to give eternal life. This is true because He is not mere man, but the God-Man, the one who came down from heaven. This was difficult to grasp and some grumbled over it. So what did the Lord do? He spoke of His ascension as proof of His origin. The ascension, like the resurrection, would prove His divine origin and that He had been sent of God to solve man’s sin problem.
It Affirmed Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King
(1) As Prophet
In John 3:2, the words “a teacher come from God” set the stage for this encounter. First, it shows his inadequate understanding of the person of Jesus. Christ sought to eliminate an incomplete grasp of His person because this is essential to faith and salvation. A teacher is a communicator of truth and Christ will show Nicodemus why He is able, above all teachers, to reveal God’s truth.
In John 3:13 our Lord shows Nicodemus He has the right and ability to explain and reveal heavenly truth because He is the true prophet, the one who came from heaven and who, following His finished work on the cross, would return–the proof that He had truly come from God. Note Peter’s grasp of this in Acts 3:19-26. (Cf. also John 3:13; 16:7, compare with 12f; 6:14)
As the great prophet and revealer of truth, He would continue this ministry through the apostles via the Holy Spirit (John 16:7, 12f).
(2) As Priest
Jesus’ ascension and return to the Father would demonstrate that He had successfully, as our great and righteous High Priest, offered the one sacrifice that effectively deals with man’s sin and provides justification–righteousness with God. (Cf. Heb. 8:1-2; 9:11-12; John 16:10)
In John 13:1-3 the ascension is mentioned twice because it is on the basis of His work as Priest (Christ in the presence of the Father) that He would be able to continue His ministry as our High Priest and provide continual cleansing. On the basis of His confidence in the ascension, He performed an act which symbolized His continuing ministry of cleansing us as our advocate in heaven at God’s right hand (John 13:4f, cf. 1 John 2:1-2).
(3) As King
In answer to who He was, Christ again made reference to His ascended and exalted position at God’s right hand, only now in connection with His second coming from that ascended and exalted position as King of kings. (Cf. Matt. 26:64.)
It Affirmed Christ’s Exaltation
As with the vision of Isaiah, it declared the Lord Jesus, the God-Man Savior, as high and lifted up. This included the following:
His Glorification (John 17:5; Acts 7:55; Rev. 1:12-16) It meant a return to His pre-incarnate glory, but it also constituted a glorification of His humanity where He is the Forerunner of all believers who will follow.
His Session (Eph. 1:20-23; Phil. 2:9; Heb. 1:3; 1 Pet. 3:22) It declared that He was in heaven, at God’s right hand, the place of the highest honor and authority. It means the possession of the throne of God without dispossession of the father. It means all glory, authority and power is shared by the father with the Son.
His Intercession and Protection over His own (John 17:11f; Rom. 8:32f; Heb. 4:14-16) It affirms His continuing ministry for us at God’s right hand: kept by His presence with the Father and His work as High Priest. In this regard, it declares we have an advocate with the Father and a compassionate High Priest, one who cares for us with the greatest compassion and who both intercedes for us when we sin and prays for us in our need.
His Provision for spiritual power (John 14:25-26; 16:7-10: Luke 24:49f; Acts. 1:8-11) It provided the means of His gift of the Comforter. Without the ascension, there would be none of the ministries of the Holy Spirit as we know it today: no indwelling, no baptism into Christ, and no filling. This would mean the absence of power over sin and power for witnessing. We would be a helpless people.
His Distribution (Eph. 4:7-11) It affirmed His right to give gifts to His church.
His Preparation (John 14:3,4) It affirms His promise to prepare a home for His bride. When we lose a loved one who knows the Lord, one of the great comforts is the fact that our loved one has actually gone home and that we will someday be joining them.
Commission (Matt. 28:19f; Luke 24:44f; John 12:32; 14:12; 17:11-23; Mark 16:19-20). By His commission I am referring to His earthly ministry and that He intends to continue this through the church. Continue it through you and me as we make ourselves available to Him as the risen and ascended Lord through the Holy Spirit His gift for ministry. As with Isaiah, this vision of Christ and its consequences to us, should mean “here am I Lord, send me; do with me according to your purpose.”
It Affirms the Need of Celebration
It affirms our need to celebrate and respond in the worship of the Savior. Remember, worship is not just something we do in some special place. Worship may, as with Israel, be merely external and religious formalism. (Cf. Luke 24:51-53; Col. 3:1)
True worship involves something we are, a people who count on the worth of God for the totality of our lives. Worship includes hearing God’s Word, confessing our sin, prayer, praise, singing and making melody in our hearts, but all of this can be mere religiosity.
What we must see is that true worship means we think, respond and act on the fact of our ascended Lord with obedience, with commitment, and availability to the plan of God for our lives.
It Affords Us With Motivation and Courage
The ascension provides every reason why we should endure and be bold in service for the Lord knowing that our labor is never in vain in the Lord. (Cf. Mat. 28:19; Heb. 12:1,2).
It Affirms His Inauguration as King
The ascension anticipates the establishment of His kingdom and the fact that we will have the privilege of reigning with Him in the millennium and the eternal kingdom of the new heavens and earth. (Cf. John 14:28; 16:16;Acts. 1:11; Ps. 110:1; Heb. 1:13; Rev. 5:1-11.)
It Demands a Response
Because of what the ascension means, it demands a response from us to the person and work of Christ. (John 6:62) Failing to assimilate the truth of Christ as the Bread of Life, as the source of our spiritual nourishment and life through feeding on Him by faith and study, the Lord challenged His audience (and challenges us) with these words: “What then if you should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before?”
If the Bible is coherent, then understanding the Bible means grasping how things fit together. Becoming a Biblical theologian means seeing more and more pieces fit together into a glorious mosaic of the divine will. And doing exegesis means querying the text about how its many propositions cohere in the author’s mind.
If we are going to feed our people, we must ever advance in our grasp of biblical truth. And to advance in our grasp of biblical truth we must be troubled by biblical affirmations.
It must bother us that James and Paul don’t seem to jibe. Only when we are troubled and bothered do we think hard. And if we don’t think hard about how biblical affirmations fit together, we will never penetrate to their common root and discover the beauty of unified divine truth. The end result is that our Bible reading will become insipid, we will turn to fascinating “secondary literature,” our sermons will be the lame work of “second-handers,” and the people will go hungry.
“We never think until we have been confronted with a problem,” said John Dewey. He was right. And that is why we will never think hard about biblical truth until we are troubled by its complexity.
Habitually Disturbed
We must form the habit of being systematically disturbed by things that at first glance don’t make sense. Or to put it a different way, we must relentlessly query the text. One of the greatest honors I received while teaching at Bethel was when the teaching assistants in the Bible department gave me a T-shirt which had the initials of Jonathan Edwards on the front and on the back the words: “Asking questions is the key to understanding.”
But there are several strong forces which oppose our relentless and systematic interrogating of biblical texts. One is that it consumes a great deal of time and energy on one small portion of Scripture. We have been schooled [quite erroneously] that there is a direct correlation between reading a lot and gaining insight. But in fact there is no positive correlation at all been quantity of pages read and quality of insight gained. Just the reverse. Except for a few geniuses, insight diminishes as we try to read more and more. Insight or understanding is the product of intensive, headache-producing meditation on two or three verses and how they fit together. This kind of reflection and rumination is provoked by asking questions of the text. And you cannot do it if you hurry. Therefore, we must resist the deceptive urge to carve notches in our bibliographic gun. Take two hours to ask ten questions of Galatians 2:20 and you will gain one hundred times the insight you would have attained by reading 30 pages of the New Testament or any other book. Slow down. Query. Ponder. Chew.
Another reason it is hard to spend hours probing for the roots of coherence is that it is fundamentally unfashionable today to systematize and seek for harmony and unity. This noble quest has fallen on hard times because so much artificial harmony has been discovered by impatient and nervous Bible defenders. But if God’s mind is truly coherent and not confused, then exegesis must aim to see the coherence of biblical revelation and the profound unity of divine truth. Unless we are to dabble forever on the surface of things (content to turn up “tensions” and “difficulties”) then we must resist the atomistic (and basically anti-intellectual) fashions in the contemporary theological establishment. There is far too much debunking of past failures and far too little construction going on.
A third force that opposes the effort to ask the Bible questions is this: Asking questions is the same as posing problems, and we have been discouraged all our lives from finding problems in God’s Holy Book.
Rightfully Respecting God’s Word
It is impossible to respect the Bible too highly, but it is very possible to respect it wrongly. If we do not ask seriously how differing texts fit together, then we are either superhuman (and glance all truth at a glance) or indifferent (and don’t care about seeing more truth). But I don’t see how anyone who is indifferent or superhuman can have a proper respect for the Bible. Therefore reverence for God’s Word demands that we ask questions and pose problems and that we believe there are answers and solutions which will reward our labor with “treasures new and old” (Matt. 13:52).
We must train our people that it is not irreverent to see difficulties in the biblical text and to think hard about how they can be resolved.
I do not accuse my 6-year-old son, Benjamin, of irreverence when he cannot make sense out of a Bible verse and asks me about it. He is just learning to read. But have our abilities to read been perfected? Can any of us at one reading grasp the logic of a paragraph and see how every part relates to all the others and how they all fit together to make a unified point? How much less the thought of an entire epistle, the New Testament, the Bible! If we care about truth, we must relentlessly query the text and form the habit of being bothered by things we read.
Reading for Reverence
This is just the opposite of irreverence. It is what we do if we crave the mind of Christ. Nothing sends us deeper into the counsels of God than seeing apparent theological discrepancies in the Bible and pondering them day and night until they fit into an emerging system of unified truth. For example, a year ago I struggled for days with how Paul could say on the one hand, “Have no anxiety about anything” (Phil. 4:6), but on the other hand say (with apparent impunity) that his “anxiety for all the churches” was a daily pressure on him (2 Cor. 11:28). How could he say, “Rejoice always” (1 Thess. 5:16), and “Weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15)? How would he say to give thanks “always and for everything” (Eph. 5:20) and then admit, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” (Rom. (9:2)?
More recently I have asked, What does it mean that Jesus said in Matthew 5:39 to turn the other cheek when struck, but said in Matthew 10:23, “When they persecute you in one town, flee. . .”? When do you flee and when do endure hardship and turn the other cheek? I have also been pondering in what sense it is true that God is “slow to anger” (Ex. 34:6) and in what sense “His wrath is quickly kindled” (Ps. 2:11).
There are hundreds and hundreds of such seeming discrepancies in the Holy Scripture, and we dishonor the text not to see them and think them through. God is not a God of confusion. His tongue is not forked. There are profound and wonderful resolutions to all problems. He has called us to an eternity of discovery so that every morning for ages to come we might break forth in new songs of praise.
In 2 Timothy 2:7 Paul gave us a command and a promise. He commanded, “Think over what I say.” And he promised, “God will give you understanding in everything.”
How do the command and promise fit together? The little “for” (gar) gives the answer. “Think . . . because God will reward you with understanding.”
The promise is not made to all. It is made to those who think. And we do not think until we are confronted with a problem. Therefore, brothers, let us query the text.
Romans – 16:25-27 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages 26 but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith– 27 to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
As we come to the end of this letter, Paul does not disappoint. It has been said that “orthodoxy always leads to orthopraxy”. In other words “right believing” will lead us to our right behaving, eventually. If we don’t believe rightly, we won’t behave rightly. But, it is also true, perhaps even more true that orthodoxy always leads to doxology. Doxology, or praise. When you know God rightly, you cannot help but worship God. And, it is quite ironic that there are those in our day, and those in our culture, who pit our knowledge of God, over and against our worship of God, as though we have to choose one or the other. As if we can only be heady Christians who know a lot about God, or we can be spiritual Christians who experience a lot with God. That is a false dichotomy. Nothing could be further from the truth. You cannot fully worship what you do not know.
You will never worship God rightly, unless you know God rightly. And here’s the beauty of it, because the knowledge of God is inexhaustible, we have an eternity growing in our appreciation for and worship of the almighty God. You cannot exhaust the knowledge of God. You cannot exhaust an understanding of what He’s done , and who He is, and because of that, you cannot and will not stop growing in your doxology, your praise. As Paul has walked through this, his magnum opus, the Book of Romans, and as he has dug more deeply than anywhere else in the New Testament, into this doctrine of our justification, it is only fitting, that as he comes to the end, he leaves us with this parting statement. If I had to give a title to this ending statement, it would be “Praise God for the Gospel!” That’s basically where Paul finishes.
I couldn’t help it, as I read through this passage and worked through this passage, through all of the implications here in this passage, I couldn’t help but just see the stark contrast between what we understand as worship and what Paul does here as worship. Because again, culturally, we’ve come to this place, where we believe that worship is purely experiential. That worship is about our experience with God. It is not about knowing God rightly. It is about encountering God passionately. If you read the lyrics of much of what we call worship music today, what you will find is that it is by and large not about God at all, but about our experience of God. About the way God makes me feel about me.
And so, when we gather, our desire is to bring ourselves to this cathartic experience of overwhelming ecstasy in how much God loves me. And how central I am in the grand scheme of things. We gather to make much of “me”, when what Paul does here, at the end of the Book of Romans is not to pause and talk about his experience, with these great truths. But, basically, to pause and say, “Before I go, let me remind you to praise God for the Gospel.”
In the text above, basically what you can do- there’s a bunch of propositional phrases and subordinate clauses in that sentence, and basically, what you can do is take all those propositions and all those clauses away and here’s what you get: “Now to Him”. Stop there. Cause, who is qualifying the Him? Stope there, and then it picks up in verse 27. You have another phrase there: To the only wise God. Go right after that, because that goes to describing this “Him”. So, if you put a line right after “the only wise God”, and you put a line right after “Him”, then, you’ve just connected those two. Here’s what you find: Now to Him be glory, forever more, through Jesus Christ. Amen. That’s his statement. The rest of this sort of explains the why and how there’s glory to Him, through Jesus Christ forevermore.
So, as we plow through this statement, let’s not actually lose sight of what Paul is doing here: Praising God for the Gospel. First of all, because the Gospel magnifies God. “Now to Him,” God is being magnified here. “To Him be glory, forever more, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Why through Jesus Christ? Because the gospel is the good news about what God has done in Jesus Christ. And that magnifies God. The Gospel magnifies God. That is why we worship God, that is why we thank God for the Gospel. That is why understanding the Gospel leads you to the right worship of God.
What is the Gospel?
Notice, first of all what Paul says here about God. He says that God is able, he goes on to say that God is eternal. Then, if you go down and look at verse 26, the last part of that, “according to the command of the eternal God.” So, God’s able, God’s eternal. He also says that God is singular, and that God is wise. So we see here a picture of God as able, as eternal, as singular, and as wise. So, God is magnified here, even in the words that Paul chooses to use to describe God. So, as he comes to this point of praise, as he comes to this point of worship, what he says is: If you’ve been listening and following all the way through the book of Romans, I’ve pointed you to God, by explaining to you the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As I’ve explained to you the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we’ve seen that God is able. We’ve seen that God is eternal, so this is not an afterthought. We’ve seen that God is singular, there is no other God. And we see that God is wise. You couldn’t have figured this out on your own. But, beyond that, the Gospel itself magnifies this powerful, eternal, singular, wise God. If we understand the Gospel rightly.
What the Gospel is not
For the most part, we do not understand the Gospel rightly. We basically make 4 mistakes when we talk about the Gospel. And, this is what you and I encounter, when people say ‘the Gospel’. And why is it important here? Because Paul says “Praise God for the Gospel”. And, f you don’t know what the Gospel is, you are praising God for the law, and you are praising God for yourself. May it never be! Here is what the Gospel is not:
Mistake #1 – We see the Gospel as (just) the plan of salvation – You ask the average Christian in our culture what is the Gospel, and they will not give you an announcement about what God has done, they will give you steps by which you get saved. Here is the danger in that: When you see the Gospel just as the plan of salvation, your understanding of the Gospel is truncated. So you are saved by the Gospel, but you are sanctified and you are kept by something other than the Gospel, if the Gospel is just the plan of salvation. Look at verse 25 again “now to Him who is able to strengthen you, according to my Gospel..” He doesn’t say “save you” according to my Gospel. If you read the Book, you know that God is able to save you according to His Gospel. It is the power of God to save.. (Romans 1:16). But, he says here that God is able to strengthen you, or to establish you. God is able to keep you, to make you firm, by the Gospel. The Gospel is not just how we get in, the Gospel is not just the plan of salvation. That’s a truncated view and it robs God of worship. Because, when we view the Gospel as just the means by which we are saved, and not the means by which we are also sanctified and kept, then we believe God does the initial work, and we do the rest. That’s a problem. (14)
Mistake #2 – We see the Gospel as (just) the great commandment- there are those who boil down the Gospel, basically to the commandment, “Love God, love people.” There are thousands of churches out there whose statement is “We’re so and so church” and we’re about loving God and loving people. And, what it’s supposed to be is this sort of encapsulation of the Gospel. There’s a slight problem. That’s actually not an encapsulation of the Gospel. It’s an encapsulation of the law. That “Love God, love people,” it actually comes from Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39, where they ask: Jesus, what’s the greatest commandment, and they want to see which scholar He’s going to align Himself with. “What’s the greatest commandment?” There, Jesus says, “The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” By the way, that’s a summary of the first 4 commandments. So, “Jesus, what’s your greatest commandment?” His response, “I think 1 through 4.” And then He says, “And the second one is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the summary of commandments 5-10. “Jesus, what’s the greatest commandment?” “I’m gonna have to say 1-4, followed closely by 5-10.” ‘Love God, and love your neighbor is not a summary of the Gospel, it’s a summary of the law. It is bondage, but, it is only the Gospel that frees us to love God, and love our neighbor. It’s the Gospel that empowers us to do that. If you replace the Gospel with ‘Love God, love people,’ you have actually replaced the Gospel with the law. There is no salvation in the law. By the works of salvation shall no flesh be justified. That’s not the Gospel.
Mistake #3 – We see the Gospel (just) as the great commission. In other words, when Jesus says to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe whatsoever I commanded you (Matthew 28:16-20) there are those who say, “That’s the Gospel”. That ‘the whatsoever I commanded you’, that’s the Gospel. That is another instance of replacing Gospel with law, by telling everybody to go out and obey everything that Jesus commanded. The Gospel is not all the moral teachings of Jesus.
Mistake #4 – We see the Gospel (just) as personal testimony- There are many evangelism training methods, that teach you to go out and share the Gospel with people. And, what they mean by that is ‘share your story’ with people. You know how ironic that is? The Gospel is Christ’s story. (18)
The Gospel is an announcement, it is news. It is God centered news. It is an announcement of what God has done. It is Christ centered news. It is an announcement of what God has done in Christ. It is cross centered news. It is an announcement of what God has done, in Christ, through the cross, to save sinners. The Gospel is grace centered news. The Gospel is an announcement of what God has done, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, through His cross, through His active and passive obedience, laying down His life, on the behalf of sinners, who are saved by the sheer grace of God, as that death is applied to them. And the Gospel is eschatological news. It is news for the now, and the hereafter. It has implications for every aspect of our lives.
Implications for how we love God, and love people.
Implications for how we carry out the Great Commission.
Implications for how we understand, let alone tell our story
Implications for all those things
The Gospel is an announcement of news. You are not the Gospel. The Gospel is not your story. The Gospel is not something that happens in you. The Gospel is something that has happened outside of you.
The Gospel displays God’s power
Not only does the Gospel magnify God, but the Gospel displays God’s power. Verse 25 “Now to Him who is able”. God is able- you could spend the rest of your life unpacking that one, right there. But, what has Paul been writing about? By the way, there is in this last sentence, a recapitulation of the major points that Paul has been making. It’s glorious when you see it. Paul goes bak here- “Now to Him, who is able to strengthen you..” In Ephesians 3, there is a doxology in the middle of the letter, that sounds just like this. Ephesians 3:20-21 20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. Jude 1:24 24 To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25 to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. And it goes back to this in Romans 1:4 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. and Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
This is not just our justification. You go to Romans 8 and it’s the whole golden thread. This Gospel is not just how God gets us justified, but it’s how He gets us adopted, and sanctified, and glorified. All of it, right there in that chapter. And it is the Gospel, by which that is accomplished. In Romans 1:11 Paul says, “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong.” What is the spiritual gift to strengthen them? The Gospel. The Gospel displays the power of God.
We see the power of God here. The power to save us, the power to strengthen and sanctify us, and the power to secure us. Paul says, “Praise God for the Gospel, because the Gospel doesn’t just magnify God, but it displays His power. God’s power saves. God’s power strengthens. God’s power keeps. Isn’t it interesting that here in this doxology, Paul doesn’t say, “Now, in light of what I have given you, hold on tight and work real hard. By the way, he’s not against holding on tight, and he’s not against working real hard. But, you have to understand that your holding on tight, and your working real hard is not what keeps you. It is a byproduct of the only thing that keeps you, which is the Gospel. (29)
The Gospel unfolds God’s providence
“according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but now has been disclosed through the prophetic writings, and has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith. What does he recap here? Salvation history. Paul, the Jew, the Benjamite, was anticipating the fulfillment of of the promises that God made to his forefather Abraham, and is now seeing the conversion of the Gentile world, the very fulfillment of the promises that he’s longing for, and beyond that, he gets to walk the ground and watch it happen first hand. So, when he says, “Praise God for the Gospel, he cannot help but recount salvation history, and what it is that God has done. We see this also throughout the letter, that which is revealed or manifested. That goes back to 1:17 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith, and 3:21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. Paul’s pointing back to it, here in his doxology. “Praise God!” But, not just praise God because I feel warm and fuzzy about God right now. Praise God because of the things I told you earlier. Praise God because of what I said in chapters 1,2,3,4,5. Praise God for all of these things I have just unfolded for you. Praise God for that which was present even in the writings of the prophets, but is only now being fully understood. Praise God for His timing in His bringing these things about in His fullness of time. Romans 1:2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. Again, Paul is not just praising God because he’s finished writing, he’s praising God and he’s pointing back to what he’s written, much of it in the first chapter. Again, this is a bookend. WE PREACH THE GOSPEL, and THAT’S WHAT MAKES THEM OBEDIENT SONS OF GOD, because it unfolds God’s providence before us. How can you hear the Gospel and not pause in awe of the unfolding providence of God?
Note: This clip is not from the recent Good Friday Secret Church event 2013, but of an older one.
From a Secret Church event, David Platt, Pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, introduces Matthew, Mark, & Luke as the synoptic gospels & describes the characteristics that define each gospel message about the life of Jesus Christ.
Platt:
Three primary divisions:
First of all as the story of the New Testament. About 60% of the New Testament is a story. It’s the first 5 books- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, tell us the story of the New Testament.
Second is the letters of the New Testament. Those are epistles, letters that are written, that help us understand the story that’s going on in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts. Most of these letters are in context of what we see happening in Acts chapter 1 through Acts chapter 28. So you’ve got the stories of what’s happening, you’ve got the letters, and then
The conclusion of the New Testament – Revelation, which is technically a letter, but is also a lot different.
There’s 2 categories in the New Testament:
1. The life and the ministry of Christ (from Matthew to John)
All of these books- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John unites them as if they were all written for the same primary purpose. They were written to show us a picture of Christ and the Gospel. I want you to hear this. These books were not written to be biographies of Jesus, that go chronologically through his life. Some of these Gospels are not arranged chronologically at all. They were written for the primary purpose to show Christ to the people that were listening to them. Why we see some differences, why we see some different stories told by some different authors is because, yeah, they were written for the same primary purpose, but, they’re written from different viewpoints and for different audiences. These are four different guys, with four different personalities, different perspectives, talking to different people.
Now, I want you to think about how the audience is going to affect the way you write. We’ve got to realize that in order to understand Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, we’ve got to put ourselves in the shoes of the people Matthew was writing to. Cause, whenever you communicate with someone, you take into account what they already know, you take into account what they already understand, and this is the challenge for us 2,000 years later, to put ourselves in the shoes of Matthew’s readers and to realize what was already in their frame of reference in order to understand why Matthew was doing this or that. That’s why New Testament Biblical study is more than just reading through the Bible. Not to minimize reading through the Bible, but in order to understand it, we’ve got to dive into what this meant to the people who heard it at that time.
2. The life and the ministry of the Church
..which is basically part 2 of Luke’s Gospel. So, Luke wrote both the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts (4:00)
1. Gospel of Matthew
Matthew was a jewish tax collector. Isn’t this great? The way that the New Testament starts- that God would decide the first author should be a guy who is known and suspected for taking advantage of His people. The least likely candidate for writing the first book of the New Testament is Matthew. Aren’t you glad we have a God who doesn’t choose the most likely candidates, but He chooses the least likely candidates. Praise God that He has poured out His grace on those who can never begin to deserve it. We see that from the very beginning, in even the author here. He wrote it in the 70′s to 80′s A.D. which meant that he wrote soon after the destruction of the temple.
Now, this is important. What we’re gonna see is that Matthew, in his writing, is in a battle for the hearts and souls of Judaism. You’ve got Judaism, that’s gonna go one way or the other. It’s either gonna go the way of the Pharisees, or it’s gonna go the way of Christ. And he is urging Jewish christians , or those Jews who were thinking about coming to faith in Christ, he is urging them to follow Christ. That’s why he gives us this picture in this book, he wants the heart of Judaism to realize that Judaism has been fulfilled in the picture of Jesus Christ. So, that’s why he writes this whole book. The primary theme is that Jesus is the king of the jews. From the very beginning he is pointing out over and over again the kingship of Jesus.
Practical advice for study: I wanna encourage you to look for the focus on the kingdom of God, all throughout Matthew. When you read through this book, you’ll see either the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven mentioned over, and over again. You see this outline, this structure that’s here. It’s emphasizing the kit. What it does, Matthew does this; He puts a lot of emphasis on the teachings of Christ, and there are 5 major blocks of teaching in each one of these parts of this outline- and then his actions, which show the meanings of those teachings. So that’s what Matthew’s doing, he’s not arranging things chronologically, he’s helping highlight what Christ is teaching. Probably Christ’s most famous teaching, at the very beginning of Matthew, in the ministry of Christ – the sermon on the mount. It’s an emphasis on the teaching of Christ, throughout this book.
I want to encourage you, if you read Matthew, look up cross references. That’s when the Bible is making references to different points, allusions, quotations. There’s 129 references or allusions to 25 of the 39 Old Testament books. You see why surveying the Old Testament was important? Cause in order to read Matthew, we’ve got to know the Old Testament. 12 different times in this book he talks about how this was fulfilled, or that was fulfilled.All throughout the beginning of the sermon on the mount, Jesus said, “It was fulfilled this, it was fulfilled that”- a strong link to the Old Testament.When reading about the teachings of Jesus remember to put yourselves in the hearers shows. We’ve got to get in the jewish mindset, in order to understand the book of Matthew.
2. Gospel of Mark
This was written by John Mark, who was close to Peter. He wrote it between 65 and 70 A.D. So this was written before the fall of the temple. But, it was written during a time when there was a lot of insurrection between the Jewish people and the Roman empire over them. Obviously, if something is leading up to the battle in the temple, where the city of Jerusalem were going to be ravaged, that there’s some tension that leads up to that time. And so, Mark is writing to gentile christians that are in Rome suffering persecution. Mark’s writing to gentile christians in Rome who are suffering persecution. Obviously, there’s some conflict between Rome and Judaism, christianity is this sect of Judaism, so to speak in some people’s eyes, and so, they are experiencing some major persecution in Rome, and he’s writing to them to encourage them.
Look at Mark 16, these believers are facing some very intense persecution, and many of them are wavering in their faith. When they start to get persecuted, they start to wonder: Is Christ real, should we really go on with this? Should we really move forward in our faith with Him? In Mark 16, you have the resurrection, and then look at verse 6. It says, “Don’t be alarmed”, this is a young man speaking to those who had come to the tomb, “Don’t be alarmed, you’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they had laid Him. But, go, tell His disciples and Peter. He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you”.
If you are reading Mark for the first time, you are in a situation (where) you are tempted to read and be quiet, and not share your faith with anybody. Listen to where verse 8 leaves us, and this is that point where some people actually think the book of Mark stops. So let’s imagine if it does stop here. Verse 8- “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled form the tomb, they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.” Now, what if the book stopped right there? You realize what kind of message that puts – what if the resurrection of Christ, nobody said anything because they were afraid? Mark is reminding us that this is something we must tell people. If it stops with us, then the resurrection of Christ is just a historical fact that doesn’t expand to the 2nd and 3rd century. But, praise God that the believers who read Mark did not walk away and say nothing to anyone. He wrote to these Jewish christians in Rome who were facing persecution.
The primary theme in the Book of Mark: Jesus is the suffering servant of God. We see suffering, over and over mentioned. We see the key verses there: Mark 8:31-38 is talking about the unexpected suffering, when Jesus told His disciples that He was going to experience suffering and Peter pulled Jesus aside and said, “Maybe you don’t know what you’re doing”. And Jesus said, “You don’t tell Me, I don’t know what I’m doing”. He says it pretty sternly. And He says, “This is exactly what I’m doing”. All throughout Mark, you see what is called the Messianic secret. And this is a different point. Do you ever wonder why Jesus wanted to keep Himself a secret? As the demons start telling how He’s Jesus the Christ? And the demons recognize Him when nobody else does, and He’s like, “Shh, don’t tell anybody”. Or sometimes He heals people and He tells them, “Don’t tell anybody. Walk away, don’t say a thing”. Why is He doing that? Because He’s got a mission. He’s headed to the cross. It’s a much different mission than what everybody else had in mind for him. Everybody else’s agenda was to bring in Messiah, exalt Him, put Him up as king, and He’s gonna take Rome out. So, they were not expecting in any way this Messiah who was born to a girl named Mary. Raised in avery humble setting and then, least of all put on a cross. That’s not where the Messiah goes. So it made sense that people were not seeing Him as the Messiah. And so, when people did expose to that truth He said, “You wait, I’ve got a mission that I’m on”. So we see that over and over again.
Practical study advice: Keep up. Mark show Jesus constantly on the move – 41 times. If you ever think your life is busy, just pull out and read Mark chapter 1 and you’ll see a day in the life of Jesus. He starts preaching in the morning, finishes up the sermon there, and He goes home to some friends’ house, the friend’s mom is sick so He heals her so she can get up and be a part of this afternoon, and then, all the town starts coming. And it says, the whole town lined up outside His door, to have demons cast out of them, to be healed of all their diseases, and so, all night He spent time healing everybody in the town. So, that’s one full day. The beauty of it is Mark 1:35 – Jesus got up very early in the morning and went to a solitary place, where He spent time with the Lord. That is the key. God help us to see Mark 1:35, that in the midst of a busy world, that we find ourselves in, that we go to a solitary place and that we spend time with the Father. Notice that almost 1/2 of his gospel is devoted to events of the last week of Jesus’s life. Overall structure, you see that based around the servant ministry.
Synoptic Gospels
basically, what synoptic means is to see together. And what we need to realize, when we come to the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are very similar to each other. They see the life and ministry of Christ in a very similar way. John is sort of an oddball. The confusion, basically centers around a couple of different questions.
Is Mark the primary source for Matthew and Luke? In other words, is Mark the anchor from which Matthew and Luke wrote? There’s some evidence that would seem to point to that. 97% of Mark’s words are in Matthew. Out of about 660 verses, 600 are there. If you’ve read Matthew, you’ve got Mark covered. Different perspectives, different things emphasized, but it’s pretty much Mark + = Matthew. Then you’ve got Luke. 88% of Mark’s words are in Luke. Now, there’s another theory that there’s an unknown source. That there was a foundation for these books and they call that foundation Q. Well, we’re not sure. And obviously the life and ministry of Christ wasn’t confined to what Matthew, Mark, Luke was saying about it. But, the overall theme we need to realize is they do come together pretty clearly, those 3. Matthew Mark and Luke did not write their Gospels in isolation from one another. They were connected together.
The Gospel of Luke
Luke was written by Luke, a gentile physician, he’s the only gentile author of the Bible. But this idea that he’s a physician, let me show you something. Go with me to Mark 5. Now, if Mark was somewhat of a foundation, these books were written from different perspectives. Mark 5:25-28 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Jesus goes on to heal her. That’s the story that Mark gives. Now, go over to Luke 8 and hear Luke’s version of the story, and what I want you to see if there are any differences in what Mark said and Luke said. Luke 8:42 As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. 43And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, Do you notice what Luke wrote that Mark did not? Mark said, “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors”. So Luke takes this and tells the story- you don’t have to slam the doctors, and so you see that left out in Luke. Mark decides the detail is important, Luke decides, for his own reputation, maybe this is not gonna be included. So, you see the different personalities coming out in these different stories.
On February 27, 2013 at Convocation, North America’s largest weekly gathering of Christian students, Dr. Gary Habermas talked about how to defend the legitimacy of Christ’s resurrection using historical evidence/dates in a way that is granted by skeptics. In doing so, he provided students a way to defend the Gospel against arguments that say the New Testament was written too long after the resurrection for the information to be correct.
Dr. Gary Habermas is a distinguished research professor of apologetics at Liberty University as well as the department chair of Philosophy. He has authored over 36 books and teaches primarily in the Ph.D. program for theology and apologetics at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.
Gary Habermas:
Easter gives a stamp of approval to Jesus’s ministry and what he taught. Usually, when I go to university campuses, I am asked to speak on the resurrection, and I tell them I’m going to start speaking on 1 Corinthians 15, and the interesting thing about this is that I can start by defining the Gospel, because that’s how Paul starts 1 Corinthians 15. Paul begins by saying, “I gave you the Gospel when I came to Corinth. And, paraphrasing Paul, he says, “Whatever you do with the Gospel will determine whether you will or will not be saved. What you do with the Gospel determines where you will spend your eternity. He begins with that, and I’ll just add this: Whenever the Gospel data, God’s side of the Gospel- there’s God’s side, there’s our side, what we need to do. But, on God’s side, these 3 facts are always mentioned when the definition of the Gospel is given:
The deity
The death,
and The resurrection of Jesus.
Paul begins, and he says, I taught you that when I first came here. And then, you’ve got a response to make: Believe, which in Greek the synonym means to commit to, to surrender to, to trust, to commit, and that’s what we’re called to do with regards to Christ. The Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus who is the Son of God, who died for our sins, who was raised from the dead. What are we gonna do about it? Are we ready to make a lifetime, indeed, an eternal commitment? Those 2 sides is what we call salvation. Facts + faith = salvation. But, faith by the biblical definition, which means your life will change, and so on…
Even on a skeptical look at the New Testament, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, skeptics will quote the New Testament- they’re not opposed to using the New Testament.But, of course they will only use verses they think can be verified by other means. And, my point is that you can take those facts alone, and show that Jesus is raised from the dead. So, theoretically, the skeptic who gives you certain facts, they’re enough to show that Jesus is saved. In the timeline today, (I’m not gonna keep reminding you of this, but) virtually everything I say to you today is granted by the critics/ skeptics.
What makes a fact a fact. How do our historical tools work? How do we determine that George Washington was the first president of the United States? Or that Julius Caesar conquered Gaul? How do we determine these sorts of things? Two of the most important things you need are early reports (as close to the facts as possible) and eye witness testimony. Unfortunately, in the ancient world we rarely have these things.
Habermas goes through a timeline of 25 years after the cross
What are the historical facts that most historians accept?
1. Jesus died by crucifixion.
2. He was buried.
3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope.
4. The tomb was empty (the most contested).
5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus (the most important proof).
6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers.
7. The resurrection was the central message.
8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem.
9. The Church was born and grew.
10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship.
11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus (James was a family skeptic).
12. Paul was converted to the faith (Paul was an outsider skeptic).
Recently I have been pondering the question: why in traditional theological circles is there such a lack of emphasis on the theology of the resurrection yet so much stress on Christ’s death? Not to de-emphasize his atoning death but this oversight is especialy curious in light of the fact that in the New Testament there appears to be a great importance placed on the resurrection, at least, it seems, equal in emphasis to Christ’s death, but we don’t talk about or theologize about it much … why? I have to ask because the implications of Christ’s resurrection is a critical part of Christ’s redemptive work in and for us.
In light of the resurrection of Christ, 1 Corinthians 15 speaks of our present victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of the work of Christ in his resurrection Paul is able to say in verse 58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” As we participate in his resurrection now and are seated with him at God’s right hand, where He reigns over all his enemies, including the world, the flesh, the devil and death, then, in light of this, this should somehow translate to our living in the world now.
We rightly place a great deal of stress on Christ’s death and atoning sacrifice but often seem to leave off the saving dimension of Christ’s resurrection. The finished work of Christ includes both his death and resurrection in NT biblical theology, because we would still be in our sins if Christ has not been raised from the dead according to the same 1 Corinthians passage. In seminaries and theology books very little space seems to be devoted to this, to a degree we should find alarming. Any victory we have now is from the life which Christ gives our mortal bodies in His resurrection (Rom 8:11). In Rom. 6 Paul also states that we are baptized into Christ’s resurrection, which is the power that saves us through regeneration. It is not only what gives us a new heart that we might be raised up from being spiritually dead and so believe the gospel, but grants us the power to live a new life, have spiritual affections for Christ and the grace to live a godly life because of the ethical change that has taken place within us. The disposition in us toward death has been crushed by Jesus’ resurrection.
Since the “last days” were inaugurated with Christ’s resurrection, we are living in the already/not yet time where Christ’s victory over death is being worked out in and through us. There is no such thing, therefore, as Christian who lives in sin as a lifestyle. The resurrected Lord who lives in us is greater than he who is in the world. We may be deceived for a time, but the Spirit working in us compells us to cry ABBA Father and look to Christ in faith for the victory and mortification of any besetting sin. But we cannot do this as individuals since Christ has established his church as the agency for advancing his kingdom rule on earth (Eph 1:22). God calls us to do this through the weakness of preaching the gospel through which he will confound worldly powers and destroy all vain speculations.
It is important to note Paul use of the word “firstfruits” in 1 Cor 15. Without historical background this may not make sense, but what it points to is the Jewish feasts of Passover and Pentecost, each of which had the first fruits of the harvest given to the Lord. These firstfruits were a sign of the full harvest that would come soon after. Of course, more to the point, these festivals were in the Jewish calendar to remember Israel being freed from Egyptian slavery (Passover) and the giving of the Law at Sinai (Pentecost). Here in 1 Cor. 15 Paul is saying that the Christ is our Passover, the firstfruits of the resurrection from the dead … with many more to follow. This is an act of God’s grace alone, not something we work toward, yet that grace, that resurrection which we are untied to in Christ compels us to work, not in order to be saved, but because we are saved. There is nothing natural about this. Christ has saved us completely with no contribution owing to ourselves. His kingdom now reigns in His people and He is extending it by redeeming people and the creation through us. Even now, according to the Scriptures, all powers are being subjected to Christ with death being the last enemy.
As we can see that this is no small matter which has profound theological and pastoral implications. There I would challenge and encourage the Reformed community to develop a more robust biblical theology of the resurrection.
1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. 2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
1. According to the four gospels, Jesus rose from the dead following
His crucifixion...
a. Matthew records how the women found the tomb empty and were
instructed by an angel to tell the disciples - Mt 28:1-8
b. Also how Jesus appeared to them while on their way - Mt 28:9-10
-- In all, the New Testament records ten distinct resurrection
appearances of Christ prior to His ascension to heaven
2. The significance of the resurrection of Jesus to the Christian faith
cannot be overestimated...
a. It has great significance for one who has yet to believe in Jesus
b. It also has great significance for those who are Christians
[In this study we shall consider "The Significance Of The Resurrection"
for both unbelievers and believers...]
I. FOR THE UNBELIEVERA. IT VERIFIES THE DEITY OF JESUS...
1. The resurrection proves that Jesus truly is the Son of God
- Ro 1:4
2. It also demonstrates that He truly has all authority in heaven
and on earth - Mt 28:18; Ac 2:36B. IT VERIFIES THE TRUTHFULNESS OF JESUS...
1. Jesus foretold His resurrection on three occasions - Mt 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19
a. If Jesus was telling the truth in describing His suffering
and resurrection...
b. ...then He was telling the truth in everything else He said
-- Would God raise a liar?
2. Therefore the following teachings of Jesus are true:
a. He was from the Father above, and spoke the words of the
Father - Jn 8:28-29
b. No one can come to the Father but through Him - Jn 14:6
c. His blood was shed for the remission of sins - Mt 26:28
d. He came to offer abundant life - Jn 10:10
e. He went to prepare a place for us - Jn 14:2
f. He shall come again - Jn 14:3
g. There will be a resurrection of the dead and ensuing
judgment - Jn 5:28-29; 12:48; Ac 17:30-31
[If Jesus was in fact raised from the dead, "The Significance Of The Resurrection" for the unbeliever is enormous! It compels unbelievers
to come face to face with reality, and the need to accept the Lordship
of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus has even more significance...]
II. FOR THE BELIEVERA. IF JESUS HAS NOT BEEN RAISED...
1. Gospel preaching is vain - 1Co 15:14
a. The preaching of the apostles is empty, meaningless
b. There would be no purpose in preaching about a liar, or
lunatic
2. Our faith is vain - 1Co 15:14
a. Our belief in Christ would also be empty, meaningless
b. For our faith would be in a liar, or lunatic
3. The apostles were false witnesses - 1Co 15:15
a. They swore that God raised Jesus from the dead - Ac 2:32
b. They claimed to spend 40 days with Him after the
resurrection, eating and drinking with Him - Ac 10:39-41
c. There is no way they could have been deceived or mistaken;
either they told the truth or they were deliberate liars,
deceivers, and frauds!
4. We are still in our sins - 1Co 15:17
a. It would have been a liar or lunatic that died on the cross
b. No such person could have provided a sacrifice that was
holy and without blemish
5. Believers have perished at death - 1Co 15:18
a. Their faith would have been in a false Messiah
b. They would have had no atonement for their sins
c. Dying in their sins, there would be no hope
6. Christians are to be pitied - 1Co 15:19
a. Because we believe in a false Messiah
b. Because our faith in Him leads us to refrain from much
worldly pleasure
c. Because we are often ridiculed or persecuted for our faith
B. IF JESUS HAS BEEN RAISED...
1. It verifies our justification - Ro 4:24-25
a. Jesus claimed His blood would be adequate - Mt 26:28
b. By raising Jesus from the dead, God demonstrated His
acceptance of Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins! - Ro 8: 33-34
2. It demonstrates the power available to the Christian - Ep 1: 18-20
a. Power available at our conversion - Col 2:11-12; 1Pe 3:21
b. Power available to live the Christian life - Ro 8:11-13; Php 2:12-13; 4:13; Ep 3:20; 6:10
3. It gives us hope concerning our own resurrection - 1Pe 1:3
a. His resurrection gives us a living hope! - 1Pe 1:21
b. Especially concerning the resurrection of believers! - 1 Th 4:13-14
4. It demands our complete loyalty to Him - Ro 14:9
a. He was raised and then exalted to become our Lord - Ac 2: 32-36; Ep 1:20-23
b. Thus our lives and service belong to Him - Ro 14:7-8; 2 Co 5:15CONCLUSION
1. The impact of the resurrection of Jesus should not go unfelt in our
lives...
a. As a historical event it has everlasting implications
b. For both the unbeliever and believer
2. The unbeliever needs to examine the evidence for the resurrection
carefully...
a. The nature of the testimony provided by the witnesses
b. The unfeasibility of alternative explanations for the empty tomb
-- For if Jesus rose from the dead, one must believe in Him! - Jn 8: 243. The believer must never lose sight of the significance of the
resurrection...
a. Do our lives demonstrate that we serve a risen Lord and Savior?
b. Do we possess the hope, peace, and strength that the reality and
power of His resurrection gives to the Christian?May we never forget "The Significance Of The Resurrection" of Jesus
Christ in our lives!
(VIA)
I am indebted to Adrian for pointing me to this treaty on Job. Any dedicated believer, who has suffered deeply, or has seen a loved one suffer is fascinated with the mechanics of Job’s dialogue with God in the midst of his own deep suffering and the wisdom, peace, and understanding that can be derived from it. You can read this article in it’s entirety, in pdf form here (18 pages) -
D. A. Carson is Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of numerous commentar- ies and monographs, and is one of this country’s foremost New Testament scholars. Among his books are Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility (John Knox Press, 1981; reprint, Baker, 1994) and How Long, O Lord?: Per- spectives on Suffering and Evil (Baker, 1990).
Chapters 32-37 are among the most interesting, and the most difficult, in the book. They start off by raising our expec- tations. Elihu, not mentioned until this point, has kept his peace throughout the debate, because the other participants are older than he: custom demanded that age take precedence. But now they fall silent, and Elihu, whose wrath has been stoked by the debate, declares himself angry with both Job and his three friends. He is angry with the three friends, “because they had found no way to refute Job “for justifying himself rather than God” (32:2). And so his lengthy contribution begins.
(1) Elihu begins with a rather lengthy apology for speaking to his seniors (32:6- 22). Among the factors that compel him to speak is his conviction (as he says to Job’s three friends), that “not one of you has proved Job wrong; none of you has answered his arguments” (32:12). This does not mean he thinks Job is entirely right, as we shall see; but Elihu has care- fully distanced himself from the theology of the “miserable comforters.”
(2) When Elihu turns to Job, he first rebukes him for impugning God’s justice (33:8ff.). Job may be innocent (Elihu will come to that in due course), but that does not give him the right to charge God with injustice. There is a sense in which Job himself has been snookered by a simplis- tic doctrine of mathematically precise ret- ribution. The major difference between Job and his three friends is not their underlying views of retribution, but their views of Job’s guilt or innocence. Because Job is convinced he is innocent, he is pre- pared to skirt the view that God himself is guilty. Elihu will not have it: “But I tell you, in this you are not right” (33:12).
The first reason why Job is not right is that “God is greater than man” (33:12). By this Elihu does not mean to say that great- ness provides an excuse for wrongdoing, but that God may well have some pur- poses and perspectives in mind of which Job knows nothing. However much Job insists he is innocent, he must therefore put a guard on his tongue and refrain from making God guilty.
(3) The second thing Elihu says to Job is that God speaks more often and in more ways than Job acknowledges. “Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man’s words?” (33:13). The truth of the matter, Elihu insists, is that “God does speak—now one way, now another— though man may not perceive it” (33:14). He speaks in revelation: in dreams and visions (33:15-18). But God may also speak in the language of pain (33:19ff.). This is an advance on the argument between Job and his friends. Here is a chastening use of suffering that may be independent of some particular sin. Its purpose may be preventative: it can stop a person from slithering down the slope to destruction.
(4) In chapter 34, Elihu is so concerned to defend the justice of God that his rheto- ric becomes a little overheated. On the positive side, Elihu is determined to stop Job from charging God with injustice. The proper response to suffering is to accept it: God cannot possibly do wrong. By speaking the way he has, Job has added rebellion to his sin (34:37); “scornfully he claps his hands among us and multiplies his words against God.”
If Elihu is at times dangerously close to siding with the three miserable comfort- ers, it is here. Certainly he has not empathetically entered into Job’s suffering, or tried to fathom the anguish that leads Job to defend his integrity in such extrava- gant terms. But Elihu is right to defend the justice of God, and he has advanced the discussion by suggesting that Job’s great- est sin may not be something he said or did before the suffering started, but the rebellion he is displaying in the suffering. Even so, that does not explain the genesis of the suffering. It may, however, prepare Job to be a little more attentive to listen to God when God finally does speak.
In chapter 35, Elihu expressly disavows that Job is innocent. But unlike Eliphaz (22:5-9), he does not compose a list of sins Job must have committed, but challenges Job’s fundamental presumption. To take but one example: Job assumes that when people are oppressed they cry to God for help, and charges that God does not answer. Not so, insists Elihu: one is far more likely to find people crying out “under a load of oppression” and vaguely pleading “for relief from the arm of the powerful” (35:9), but still not praying. They want relief, but do not turn to God and pray. They cry for freedom, “[but] no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker … ?’” (35:10). God does not listen to such empty pleas (35:13). What makes Job think, then, that God will answer him when the assumption underlying his entire approach to God is that God owes him an answer, and may well be guilty of injustice (35:14-16)?
(5) In the last two chapters devoted to Elihu (chaps. 36-37), several themes come together, and Elihu begins to appear in more compassionate guise. The burden of the passage is this: whatever else may be said about the problem of evil and suffer- ing, the justice of God must be the “given”: “I will ascribe justice to my Maker,” Elihu pledges (36:3). But God is not malicious. He does care for his people. Therefore the proper response to suffering we cannot fathom is faith and perseverance; the response to avoid bitterness (for it is the godless who harbor resentment, 36:13). Job is in danger here: “Beware of turning to evil, which you seem to prefer to afflic- tion” (36:21)—that is, Job must not turn to evil as a way of alleviating his suffer- ing. Be patient, Elihu is saying, “those who suffer [God] delivers in [lit. through] their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food” (36:15-16). Be patient; it is better to be a chastened saint than a carefree sinner.
Matthew 8:1-17 (this follows immediately after the sermon on the mount.
We become so used to thinking about Jesus, that we sometimes fail to recognize how utterly different Jesus and the world are. They’re thinking in different categories. They’re on different planes. The world is essentially self focused. Jesus is self emptying. SO much so, that He goes to the cross on our behalf. The world is time bound, and it’s temporary. Jesus enter time. The eternal Son enters time, but, one with God, He inhabits eternity. And, even now, at the Father’s right hand He upholds all things in heaven and on earth, by His powerful word.
The world needs saving. Jesus doesn’t need saving, He comes as the Savior. And so, we cold press on, and on, and on. But, one of the dimensions is which there is a perennial clash between the world and Jesus is in the dimension of authority. Who is boss? Who reigns? Who has the last say? What is authority? It’s actually quite a slippery word. In the verses I just read, Jesus demonstrates His authority, and these verses are linked to the verses in the sermon on the mount, which focus again on Jesus’s authority. At the end of the sermon on the mount, we read, in 7:28 “When Jesus finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at His teaching, because He taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
The authority to judge
The way Jesus manifested His authority when He was speaking was on several levels. On the one hand, He didn’t use lesser authorities and footnotes. It was not uncommon in the day for someone to say, “Well, rabbi so and so says that rabbi so and so…says such and such”. And, you’ve got a string of authorities to enhance your authority. Jesus comes along and says, “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you,” with matchless, self conscious authority. He is the expert.. on everything on which He cares to speak. And, it’s more than that. It’s not simply that He’s more credible, because He’s more knowledgable, but He actually determines, Himself, who does not enter the Kingdom. A few verses earlier, in 7:21 “not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom, but only the one who does the will of my Father, who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?’ And I will tell you plainly ‘I never knew you, away from me you evildoers.’”
This is stunning. Jesus claims to have the authority of God Himself on the last day. He ultimately decides who enters the consummated kingdom and who does not. So, this is more than mere credibility because of superior knowledge. It’s the authority to judge, the authority of God Himself on the last day.
Earlier, in the sermon on the mount, He claims that He did not come to abolish the law of the prophets, but to fulfill them. That is, the law and the prophets point to Him, and He actually brings them to fulfillment. Or, again, in chapter 5, right at the beginning of the sermon on the mount, where He’s talking about persecution, He says, “Blessed are you when people insult you, accuse you, and say all kinds of evil against you BECAUSE OF ME. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven..” In other words, He is at the center of the conflict with the world. And, His followers will either side with Him and be persecuted, or they’ll side with the world and do the persecution the other way.
Now, that’s all the sermon on the mount. Then, we turn to Matthew 8, and following. And what we discover is that Jesus now demonstrates His authority, not simply by his teaching, but by His actions. And what is displayed is stunning. He has the power to heal, to cast out demons. He has the power to command nature. He has the power to bring in the consummated kingdom. He has the power to even delegate some of His authority to His followers in chapter 10. He gives to His disciples certain authority to cast out demons, to preach and teach themselves.
He has a genuine authority which entails both a moral center, and the power to make His word effective. In these first 17 verses, we learn 5 things about the authority of Jesus. (12:36) Transcript continues under the video.
1. The authority of Jesus to heal and transform
is implicit in His purpose, in His person, His mission.
Jesus’s authority is absolutely unconstrained. It’s implicit in His person, in His majesty, His mission. The first three verses-Jesus comes down from the mountainside, where He has been teaching, which shows that in Matthew’s mind, he’s still connecting what He’s doing to the sermon on the mount, which He had preached up on the mountain. Large crowds follow Him. The man with leprosy, some kind of skin disease came and knelt before Him and said, “Lord, is you are willing, you can make me clean.” And Jesus heals the man. Now, this is bound up with prophesies from the Old Testament. When the Messiah ultimately comes, all of the brokenness of this world order will be itself broken. So, in Isaiah 11, which looks forward to a time when a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse. That is, a Davidic king will rise again from Jesse’s line. Amongst the things we read, then, are these: Righteousness will be His belt, faithfulness the sash around His waist, the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat. The calf and the lion, and the yearling together. And the child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den. The child will put his hand into the viper’s nest, they will neither harm nor destroy. On all my holy mountain, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
(This was) brought about by David’s greater son. Brought about by what He does. So that the healings that Jesus does during His earthly ministry are a kind of foretaste, an anticipation of all the authority of God, mediated through Him, to reverse all the effects of sin, finally brought about in the consummation itself. In fact, it’s deeply hinted at in verses 2 and 3. We focus on the wrong thing in verse 2. “You are willing,” the man says, “You can make me clean.” So, we scratch our heads, “What does he mean ‘if Jesus is willing?’” Surely Jesus is willing. Wouldn’t He be willing? That’s not the point. The point is that the only thing that stops Him from doing it is His will. It’s not a question of His power. This man assumes that Jesus has the authority. He can do it, He can speak a word and it will be done. The only question is whether Jesus, at this point in redemptive history is going to do it in this particular case.
The authority, however, is matchless, unrestrained. Jesus says, “I am willing. BE CLEAN!”. This is of a piece of passage after passage in the New Testament.
He speaks to the storms on Galilee: Peace. BE STILL!” And immediately there was a great calm.
“I charge you, come out of him!” And the man is released.
“Lazarus, come forth!” And Lazarus comes forth from the tomb. WAG has said, “If Jesus hadn’t specified ‘Lazarus’, every tomb in Jerusalem would have been empty. (16:00)
Jesus’s authority is absolutely unconstrained. It’s implicit in His person, in His majesty, His mission.
2. The authority of Jesus, formally submissive to the law of Moses
in fact transcends it and fulfills it
Jesus has this remarkable authority even to overturn all the ravages of sin. He is the healer that only needs to will for it to be done.Verse 4 – “After Jesus healed this man, He says to him, ‘See that you don’t tell anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them,’” The reference, of course, is to Leviticus 14. Skin diseases were not all leprosy, as we know it today. But, some of them were, and in any case, they could be highly contagious and run right through a camp or a city. So, the laws were put in place that those with certain skin conditions, then had to be banned, outside the camp. And, if then, those skin conditions got better, somehow, then there was a prescribed sacrifice. A sacrifice to offer things up in the temple and to check things out with a priest, who would inspect the wound and then wait 7 days, and inspect it all again. So, what Jesus tells this man is, “Do what the law says. I healed you, go to the Temple, offer the sacrifice. Do what it says.”
“Do it as a testimony to them.” What does that mean? Some think it should be interpreted positively, that is: As a testimony to them of who I am. Some think it should be interpreted negatively, as a testimony against them. That’ll put them in their place. I suspect the expression is most probably neutral. The end result is startling: In submitting to the law, to what the law itself demands, the cured leper becomes the occasion for the law to confirm Jesus’s authority. It’s not just confirming that the man is better. But, it is confirming, on the standard set by the law itself, that Jesus has this remarkable authority, even to overturn all the ravages of sin, all the ravages of disease. He is the healer that only needs to will for it to be done. Indeed, one of the stunning things, under the law, Jesus was not supposed to touch anyone who was impure or skin diseased. But, Jesus is the sort of person who, in touching a diseased person, does not Himself become diseased, but Himself, overturns the disease. The authority if Jesus is matchless, and when He exercises it, it turns out that although it is formally submissive to the law of Moses, in fact it transcends the law of Moses and fulfills it. (21:00)
3. The authority of Jesus is so sweeping,
when Jesus speaks God speaks
Jesus comes up to a centurion, a Roman soldier. Roughly the rank, of perhaps the rank of a captain here, conceivably a major. He says to Jesus, “My servant is at home paralyzed, suffering terribly. Jesus says, “Shall I come and heal Him?” Be explicit in what you’re asking for. And the centurion replies, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.” That’s already startling, isn’t it? He doesn’t say, “I am quite an important person. You know, I am part of the overlord party in this country.” The least you can do is show me a bit of respect. Rather, he approaches Jesus with amazing humility, for an officer in the Roman legions. “Just say the word and my servant will be healed. Because, you see Jesus, I understand how this works. Because, I am a man under authority.” He stresses that he is under authority, not just that he has authority over others. But, rather, he’s under authority, and that gives him authority over others. So, when he says to a foot soldier, “Go,” the foot soldier goes. And when he says, “Come,” the soldier comes.
What the soldier means by this is that when he commands a foot soldier, it is not just this centurion speaking out of his personal authority, he speaks now for Rome. He is in an entire chain of command. When the centurion speaks, he speaks with the authority of the tribune over him, and over the tribune, senior officers all the way back to Caesar himself. When this soldier gives a legitimate command to a foot soldier under him, when he speaks Caesar speaks. When he speaks, Rome speaks. And, that’s why there is no way a foot soldier is going to thumb his nose at his centurion officer. And this is what he applies to Jesus.
You must not think that this centurion has got the doctrine of the trinity sorted out yet. He couldn’t of expounded incarnation, but he has watched Jesus enough to know that when Jesus speaks, God speaks. He does the Father’s will so absolutely perfectly, that when Jesus speaks, God speaks. And that word is so effective that Jesus doesn’t have to show up in person, or lay His hands. He speaks with the authority of God. When God says something and wants it to be effected, it is effective.
Jesus said He has not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. The authority of Jesus is so sweeping, when Jesus speaks God speaks. And that, brothers and sisters, means that not to listen to Jesus is to defy almighty God.
4. The authority of Jesus is a great comfort to the eyes of faith
and a great terror to the merely religious
Jesus praises the faith of this centurion. A Roman, without al of the background of what we now call the Old Testament and Scripture. “Truly, I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But, the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness, where there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” Now, He says this, after having said, just a few verses earlier at the end of the sermon on the mount that He has the authority to determine who enters the consummated kingdom and who does not. He is the one that will say, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you.” And He is the one who grants entrance. And now He says, “On the last day, there will be many people there who will exhibit the same faith this centurion exhibited,” even though this centurion is not an Israelite, he’s a gentile, part of the overlord party. But, he has this faith is Jesus that is so transparently submissive to the authority of God in this God man, that he understands that when God speaks, Jesus speaks. It’s the same faith of an Abraham, who heard the voice of God and went out, not knowing where he was going. And thus, in the consummated kingdom, such people will gather around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They will be part of this consummated glory, where elsewhere it is described as resurrection existence in the new heaven and the new earth- the home of righteousness.
And, meanwhile, many who have had the privilege of being part of that old covenant heritage, with all of its revelation and its sacrificial system, and its Godly prophets, and its wisdom literature, many who are absorbed into the kind of religiosity that really does not bow to the authority of Jesus, they will be cast out, we are told- where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is not popular today to talk about hell. Indeed, many Christians are trying to find ways of interpreting the Scripture in such a way that ‘hell becomes a little less embarrassing’: …maybe it doesn’t go on forever… maybe God’s love is so sweeping that somehow, eventually, everybody in hell will repent and hell will be emptied out.And God’s love will win.
Many, many voices like this are heard. It sounds so gentle, and so loving, but, it is very hard to square such notions with what Jesus Himself says. Most of the most startling metaphors for hell are first voiced in the Scripture by the Lord Jesus Himself. He is the one here, who speaks of outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Revelation 14 and Revelation 20 speak of hell as a place of ongoing terror. I think that one of the reasons why people will not face what Scripture plainly says is because we have talked ourselves into thinking that perhaps, that perhaps we should recognize that our sins can’t be eternal sins, or infinite sins. Our sins are finite, we’re finite people, who commit only finite sins, so, why should we be punished infinitely? And, if that’s the case, we must have some other explanation for infinite punishment. But, that presupposes that once we get to hell we all want to repent and we don’t want to sin anymore. But, I have ransacked Scripture and I cannot, for the life of me, find a single place anywhere in Scripture that suggests there’s a word of repentance in hell.
Even in the account of the rich man and Lazarus- he doesn’t want to be there. But, he lifts his eyes up, being in torment, the Scripture says, and somehow sees Abraham and Lazarus a far distance off. What do you think he will say? “Oh, Lazarus, did I get that one wrong? I am so sorry, would you forgive me please? I really did abuse you. I didn’t show any generosity, compassion. I left you ill and broken, and poor outside my gate, even though I was filthy rich. I really am very sorry. I do want to repent, I am so sorry.” Is that what he says? No, what he says is, “Father Abraham,” playing the race card, “Father Abraham, why don’t you send Lazarus to dip his finger in some water, so that he can bring it to me?” Lazarus is still the ‘Joe’ boy, he’s still the menial. He doesn’t even address him. He’s gonna pull strings and get father Abraham… There’s not a hint of repentance anywhere. Hell is not filled with people who are deeply repentant and wanting to get out. It’s filled with broken rebels who still want to justify themselves and think of them selves as at the center of the universe for all of eternity- sinning and being punished, sinning and being punished, world without end. At the end of that conversation with Abraham, the rich man is actually contradicting Abraham, “No, father Abraham, your interpretation of things is wrong. Let me correct your theology.” This man, even in hell thinks he’s got a superior theology to Abraham in heaven. It’s unbelievable.
And, the person who is exclusively, finally responsible for making the decisions about who goes to heaven and who does not, and on what ground is Jesus Himself. The authority of Jesus is great comfort to the eyes of faith and a great terror to the merely religious. (32:00)
5. Jesus’s authority is in function of His work on the cross
verses 14-17 “When Jesus came into Peter’s house, He saw Peter’s mother in law lying in bed with a fever.” And so He heals her. Verse 16- When evening came, many who were demon possessed were brought to Him and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.” Now, many who are listening to me this morning will know that this quotation is from Isaiah 53, which New Testament writers, which Christians around the world tie to Jesus’s cross work. “He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. He bore our sin on His own body on the tree,” the apostle Peter elsewhere writes.
But, here, we are told that when Jesus cast out demons and healed sick people, even before the cross, this was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.’ So, Jesus is fulfilling Isaiah 53, even as He’s healing people. And this before the cross. How does that make sense? How do you put all that together? And sometimes, in our theological discussions, we ask questions such as, “Is there healing in the atonement? By which we mean something like, “If Jesus paid for all the sin and its effects, including illness, if He paid for all of it, then shouldn’t it follow that we should be healed when we ask for it? There is healing in the atonement, in what Christ accomplished on the cross? Isn’t there? Doesn’t this text suggest the same? Well, yes and no.
Yes, of course there’s healing in the atonement. If you read the Bible as a whole, you discover that there’s resurrections existence in the atonement too. There is the new heaven and the new earth in the atonement. That is what assures resurrection existence for God’s people on the last day is the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. What is at stake is a worldview consideration, that clashes massively with what this world thinks. That worldview consideration is this: Although God made all things good, with sin and the curse, there is not only guilt over moral defection, but there is death and suffering, and disease. Nature itself is out of order. There is disaster, there is war. For all that there is so many good things, the residue of the image of God still on us so that by common grace we can create art and perform music, and write books and work with our hands, and do skilled things.
Yet, the fact remains that we are a damned brood. And, biblically speaking, that means that every instance of disease and demon possession, and malice, and suffering, death itself is finally traceable to sin. I don’t mean that you get pancreatic cancer because you’ve committed a particular sin. It’s conceivable, but I have no way of demonstrating that. What I do know is that all kinds of people- good, bad and indifferent from a social perspective can succumb to the disease, and sometime decidedly wicked people can live to a ripe old age. The Psalmist observed the point himself. But, eventually, all of us end up dead. If you live long enough you will suffer. To suffer, all you’ve got to do is keep living. If you live long enough you will be bereaved. Your only options are to bereave someone else, or be bereaved yourself. That’s it. If you live long enough you’ll get cancer or alzheimer, or both. Because, not only morally are we a damned brood, but, we are under this curse which has to be lifted if we are to be reconciled to God. And the way it is lifted is by the visit from the God man who bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
And, that means that every time Jesus heals someone in His ministry, even before He had gone to the cross, every single time it was in function of what He was about to do on the cross. Not yet done. But, it was not just an act of power. It was an act of power, of authority that issued from the cross, that still lay around the corner. In that sense, every healing was prophetic of what the cross would achieve. And, the way we knew that Matthew understood it that way is because he cites Isaiah 53. This was done in order to fulfill what God had said through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.” This theme runs right through Matthew’s Gospel, and right through the New Testament. In chapter 1, Joseph is told, “You will give Him the name Jesus- “Yahweh saves” for He will save His people from their sins. To placard that in chapter 1 is the way of saying, “This is one of the controlling themes right through Matthew’s Gospel. This is the Gospel in which we show how Yahweh saves His people from their sins.
So that, when you read the sermon on the mount, one of the things that you should be reading is, one of the things you should be thinking is: Here is the word of the Messiah, whose name means “Yahweh saves”, who came to save people from their sins. This is what the new society in the consummated heaven and earth will look like . Already it is moving in that direction. The kingdom dawns. And here, He is fulfilling Scripture- Isaiah 53. In chapter 9 again, when a man is lowered to Him in a house. He says, “Take heart son, your sins are forgiven.” Who has the authority to forgive sins? But, He came to save His people form their sins.
And, when He overthrows the power of darkness, it shows what He is doing to save His people from their sins. It means more than just forgiving them. It means triumphing over these sins, thrashing down the death and decay, in anticipation of a time when sin and all of its effects , death itself will be utterly destroyed. All on the basis of the work on the cross of Christ Jesus. He will save His people from their sins, until, finally we find Him hanging on the cross, and over His head is the charge: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” This is meant to be deeply ironic, scandalously demeaning and belittling, when Pilate posts it up there. But, to the eyes of faith, we say: Yes indeed, this is Jesus, reigning from the cross, which was one of the churches great confessions during the first 3 centuries of its existence- Jesus reigning from the cross. He will save His people from their sins.
Do you want to know where the authority of Jesus is? Look at the cross. It is Jesus reigning from the cross. But, He doesn’t stay there. He rises again. And then, how does this Gospel end? “Al authority is given Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, and make disciples. So that the authority of Jesus, thus is delegated. It is mandated. It is part of the elementary Christianity that we say “the Lord Jesus Christ”. We’re recognizing His authority. And we join with Christians across century, across ages, across nations. We share this common faith in, and submission to the Lord Jesus, whose authority enables us and authorizes us to preach the Gospel and throw back the powers of the darkness, by the preaching of the cross and the resurrection, in anticipation of the consummation on the last day. Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the age. It is this Gospel that finds Jesus saying in Matthew 16: I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. My friends Tim Keller likes to say: For Christians, optimism is naive. That’s because we really do see the power of sin in peoples lives. Pessimism is atheistic, because we serve a God with absolute authority. This God whose authority comes and shatters the spear and the sword. This God who reverses death in anticipation now, in His ministry, of what He Himself will accomplish in the resurrection. And in anticipation of the mission He gives to us under His authority. In anticipation of the consummation on the last day. And so, the church of Jesus Christ bows before the Lord Jesus Himself, and says, “Yes, yes, yes. Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Listen to other recent messages by Don Carson at the Gospel Coalition:
Trace Jesus Passion Week Google Maps Isus- Saptamina Patimilor cu harta Google
Filmul Isus (vizionati in limba Romana / choose any language to watch the ‘Jesus’ film)
RICHARD WURMBRAND – English/Romanian
Global Persecution Watch
Christian movies & Beautiful nature shots – Filme crestine si Filmari din natura pe Youtube Channel
PREDICI – Florin Ianovici
PREDICI – Vladimir Pustan
PREDICI – Nelu Brie
Cristian Barbosu Arad – PREDICI
Biserica Gloria Arad Bujac Transmisie Live
Pagina – Predici
Faceti click pe poza pt. site – Administrat In Romania
PREDICI de la A 44-a Conventie USA/CANADA la Seattle, Washington 2012
Predici de la Congresul Bisericilor Baptiste USA si Canada 2012 Cleveland Ohio
Biserica Baptista Speranta Oradea
Vasile Oprea Interviu, Cintari – Nou: Serviciul de Florii 2012
NEW PAGE – All family related articles and videos – on being single, marriage, intimate relations, on raising kids…
Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:26. Isus a zis: “Si ce ar folosi unui om sa cistige toata lumea daca si-ar pierde sufletul?”
Grudem: Paul says that if we have the gift of prophecy, we should use it “in proportion to our faith” (Rom. 12:6), indicating that the gift can be more or less strongly developed in different individuals, or in the same individual over a period of time. This is why Paul can remind Timothy, “Do not neglect the gift you have” (1 Tim. 4:14), and can say, “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you” (2 Tim. 1:6). It was possible for Timothy to allow his gift to weaken, apparently through infrequent use, and Paul reminds him to stir it up by using it and thereby strengthening it. This should not be surprising, for we realize that many gifts increase in strength and effectiveness as they are used, whether evangelism, teaching, encouraging, administration, or faith.
If the Bible is coherent, then understanding the Bible means grasping how things fit together. Becoming a Biblical theologian means seeing more and more pieces fit together into a glorious mosaic of the divine will. And doing exegesis means querying the text about how its many propositions cohere in the author’s mind.
From a Secret Church event, David Platt, Pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, introduces Matthew, Mark, & Luke as the synoptic gospels & describes the characteristics that define each gospel message about the life of Jesus Christ.
8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
D. A. Carson is Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of numerous commentar- ies and monographs, and is one of this country’s foremost New Testament scholars. Among his books are Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility (John Knox Press, 1981; reprint, Baker, 1994) and How Long, O Lord?: Per- spectives on Suffering and Evil (Baker, 1990).
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