Israel finally has its meeting with God in Exodus 19. It would be an unforgettable experience. God came down on Mt Sinai accompanied by thick black smoke, lightning and thunder, and raging hot fire. The mountain itself trembled! The significance of this meeting is seen in Exodus 19:4-6. It was at this meeting with God that the covenant between God and Israel would be officially inaugurated. What is outlined for us in v.4-6 are details about what it would mean for Israel to now officially be God's people. These verses are significant ones in the Bible because they will later inform our understanding of what it means for the church to be God's people.
These verses tell us a couple of things about Israel and its role as a people of God.
1. Israel exists because of the special care and attention God gave them. God saw them in Egypt and specifically brought them out of Egypt to himself. (v.4)
2. Israel was God's "treasured possession." Out of all the nations in the earth, God specially choose and cherished them to be his standout possession. (v.5)
3. Israel was specially chosen for a purpose – to be a priestly, holy kingdom. (v.6) In other words, all of the Israelites were uniquely set apart to represent God to the whole world.
What we are seeing with Israel is God beginning to follow through on his promise to Abraham in Gen 12:2-3. Israel was saved out of the nations in order to be used by God to save the nations. Yet almost immediately we see Israel fail in her calling. Before they even left Mt Sinai they began worshipping something else besides God (see the golden calf episode in Exodus 32). Over and over again throughout their history Israel would blend in and be like all the pagan nations around them rather than stand out as God's people.
Their failure to keep to this covenant points us to the need for a new and better covenant. What was needed was an arrangement whereby a people of God could be formed who would actually be able to live up to their calling. What was needed was a new and better Moses who could usher in this new covenant and ensure that God's people would be able to keep this covenant and fulfill their calling.
All that was needed God provided through Jesus. Jesus is the new Moses who through his life, death, and resurrection forms a new people of God that we know today as the church. This is a people from all backgrounds, cultures, and races, who can now not only come near to God but actually be in his presence (cf Heb 12:18-24). In the old covenant, the best we could ever hear was "Don't come closer to God!" This all changes because of Jesus. Through faith in him we experience God's very Spirit dwelling in our midst. Through him the church can now be the new Israel, the new people of God. 1 Peter 2:9-10 says as much by applying the language of Exodus 19 to the church today.
This reveals some key things for us. Your identity as a Christian is tied up with being part of the people of God. You are of a different race (1 Peter 2:9, "But you are a chosen race") with a special commission, to proclaim the excellent work of God that took us and changed us into being a people of God. This work is known as the gospel. It is a work of God that should shine out in our world through our habits, relationships, actions, and words as a distinct witness to the special and holy God who calls people to himself and makes them into his special and holy people. We embody the gospel when we care for those our world commonly dismisses and pushes aside as outcasts, recognizing that God cared for us through Jesus when we were outcasts from his presence. We embody the gospel when reject the cultural trend to justify ourselves by success or money or power, knowing that we are already justified forever by the finished work of Christ on the cross. We embody the gospel when we are unconcerned about being unrecognized, pushed aside or even humiliated because we already have the only glory that matters shining in our lives – the eternal glory of God.
Our aim then as God's people today should be to live lives with a gospel distinctiveness and gospel missionality, praying that by God's grace it would produce a distinctly gospel result, namely, many people finding salvation in this gospel and thus knowing the joy and blessing that comes when you belong to God as part of his people.
Some parting questions: What will it look like practically today for the church to be a chosen people, a holy nation and a royal priesthood so that we might "proclaim the excellencies" of God? What might we do to build churches full of people who live lives with a gospel distinctiveness and missionality?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
A Basic Recap of Sunday’s Sermon: “Ministry Planning” Exodus 18:1-27
There are lots of ways we can do ministry – many of them guided more by following the latest trends or our nostalgic desires. The ministry plan that God would want us to follow however is not concerned about trends or our own selfish desires. Ministry is to be about God. Thus God's ministry plan involves telling people about God and then raising up leaders and people who will tell still others about God and be concerned to see everyone lead lives shaped around God's standards.
Exodus 18:1-12 shows the first part of this plan - telling people about God. Moses reunites with Jethro and his family and gives his personal testimony to Jethro of how God saved the Israelites. Jethro in response praises God and commits himself to God (Exodus 18:10-12). Testimonies are a powerful means by which we can tell people about God. What makes them powerful though is the degree in which they highlight how God has worked in your life. For the believer then, any such personal testimony must highlight how God has saved and is saving people through his Son Jesus Christ. The church is God's people today and is a living testimony to God's saving efforts.
Therefore, any true ministry plan must involve telling people about this God who saves people and explaining how he brought this about within individual people's lives. While Jethro had heard about what God had done in Egypt (Exodus 18:1), Moses still took time to specifically explain to Jethro what had happened and how the Lord had worked in the lives of the Israelites. In all the things we are concerned to do as Christians, we must never neglect this core mission of telling people about God, and specifically telling people about his saving work. (cf Rom 10:14-15)
Exodus 18:13-27 shows the second part of God's ministry plan – discipling leaders and people to live by God's ways. As people are saved they need to learn what it means to be a saved people and to see how God's truths should be applied to their everyday lives. In this section of Exodus 18, Moses is headed towards ministry burnout. All the people are coming to him to know what God wants of them, and he's putting in 12 hour work days just to keep up. Jethro gives Moses some good practical advice. He needs to delegate a lot of the basic parts of his leading. This will involve raising up key people (Exodus 18:21) who can be leaders with whom he can share ministry. Moses will still handle the difficult things that come up, but through these leaders all the people will be regularly led and instructed.
Raising up leaders is key to any effective ministry plan. Note that the basic requirement for these leaders was that they be honest and trustworthy and most importantly be people who respect and honor God (Exodus 18:21, "men who fear God). This is what we must look for and the direction we must disciple in – towards God-centered character. Having leaders like this will help produce a community of people who are at every level are being guided to shape their lives around God's standards and laws.
This then in effect is what ministry should be – to tell people about who God is and what he's done, specifically what's done through Jesus. And to then build a community where leaders are being raised up and people are being motivated and guided by their commitment to this God. What can motivate more of this kind of ministry in the church today (as opposed to the many wasted or apathetic ministry efforts of so many churches today)? Only a fresh sense of the gospel. If we have truly understood and experienced God's deliverance through Jesus, we will be sure that in whatever we plan we are telling people about God and working to be a people concerned to shape their lives around God.
Some parting questions in view of this passage: What does ministry look like in your life? Can you say that at the core of what you do is telling people about God and building a community full of leaders and people concerned to follow God.
(audio of last Sunday's sermon)
Exodus 18:1-12 shows the first part of this plan - telling people about God. Moses reunites with Jethro and his family and gives his personal testimony to Jethro of how God saved the Israelites. Jethro in response praises God and commits himself to God (Exodus 18:10-12). Testimonies are a powerful means by which we can tell people about God. What makes them powerful though is the degree in which they highlight how God has worked in your life. For the believer then, any such personal testimony must highlight how God has saved and is saving people through his Son Jesus Christ. The church is God's people today and is a living testimony to God's saving efforts.
Therefore, any true ministry plan must involve telling people about this God who saves people and explaining how he brought this about within individual people's lives. While Jethro had heard about what God had done in Egypt (Exodus 18:1), Moses still took time to specifically explain to Jethro what had happened and how the Lord had worked in the lives of the Israelites. In all the things we are concerned to do as Christians, we must never neglect this core mission of telling people about God, and specifically telling people about his saving work. (cf Rom 10:14-15)
Exodus 18:13-27 shows the second part of God's ministry plan – discipling leaders and people to live by God's ways. As people are saved they need to learn what it means to be a saved people and to see how God's truths should be applied to their everyday lives. In this section of Exodus 18, Moses is headed towards ministry burnout. All the people are coming to him to know what God wants of them, and he's putting in 12 hour work days just to keep up. Jethro gives Moses some good practical advice. He needs to delegate a lot of the basic parts of his leading. This will involve raising up key people (Exodus 18:21) who can be leaders with whom he can share ministry. Moses will still handle the difficult things that come up, but through these leaders all the people will be regularly led and instructed.
Raising up leaders is key to any effective ministry plan. Note that the basic requirement for these leaders was that they be honest and trustworthy and most importantly be people who respect and honor God (Exodus 18:21, "men who fear God). This is what we must look for and the direction we must disciple in – towards God-centered character. Having leaders like this will help produce a community of people who are at every level are being guided to shape their lives around God's standards and laws.
This then in effect is what ministry should be – to tell people about who God is and what he's done, specifically what's done through Jesus. And to then build a community where leaders are being raised up and people are being motivated and guided by their commitment to this God. What can motivate more of this kind of ministry in the church today (as opposed to the many wasted or apathetic ministry efforts of so many churches today)? Only a fresh sense of the gospel. If we have truly understood and experienced God's deliverance through Jesus, we will be sure that in whatever we plan we are telling people about God and working to be a people concerned to shape their lives around God.
Some parting questions in view of this passage: What does ministry look like in your life? Can you say that at the core of what you do is telling people about God and building a community full of leaders and people concerned to follow God.
(audio of last Sunday's sermon)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
A Basic Recap of Sunday’s Sermon: “Going to War with God” Exodus 17:8-16
This post begins a change in the sermon blog. I like writing sermon recaps and summaries, but they do take up a lot of time. And they’re a bit long! All of this adds up to me getting way behind on posting blogs connected to the sermons. So, I’m starting fresh this week. I’m going to try to post what I’m calling The Basic Recap every week, preferably on Mondays. These posts will be short pieces that bring attention to key ideas and thoughts from the last sermon I preached, along with some applicational questions or thoughts. I hope to do a few other posts each week besides this, but that’s all I’m promising for now!
So without further ado, here’s the basic recap of last Sunday:
Following God will mean struggle. The Christian life is not easy. There is regular spiritual threat. It’s a battle for your very soul. And far too many souls today are being slowly devoured. They are sinking into a dark pit as they become consumed by unresolved conflict, bitterness, addictive habits, and selfish motives. Fortunately, we don’t need to face such threat alone. To follow God means having God with us, fighting with us and for us. Our fight and struggle becomes God’s fight and struggle. And because it’s God’s fight, we can have the sure and certain hope that we will know God’s victory over all spiritual assaults.
The short account of Israel’s fight against the Amalekites illustrates this well. God’s people were viciously attacked (cf Deut 25:17-18). Up to this point God had given them immediate successes, with them only having to sit and watch as God defeated their enemies through various plagues and acts of power. Now they needed to fight. But they would not fight alone. As always, God would would be them, and this was physically symbolized by Moses standing on a hill and raising the staff that God had given him over the people as they fought (Exodus 18:9). This is made even more clear in Exodus 18:15, which describes the building of an altar called “The Lord is My Banner.” Israel’s fight and success in their fight was really the Lord’s fight and the Lord’s success. The Lord was the “banner” under which they rallied, fought, and won. The staff raised high, and kept high, over the battlefield symbolized the people’s active, ongoing dependence on the Lord. Their victory was not immediate victory. But it was a eventual victory. Eventually, they would (and did) win. As long as they fought and kept trusting in their God, they would eventually win.
This is the norm for every person who wants to get serious about their faith in God. Things will not be nice and easy. God will not become your personal genie if you decide to take him seriously as your God. The reality is that the fight to save and protect your soul will require great effort. The great comfort we have in this however is that God will rally us and lead us in our fight. The staff we fight under however is different today. Today God has given us the much better and greater staff that is the cross, and a much greater and better Moses to hold it up, his own Son Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:13-15 is especially helpful in showing us how this was done. We were dead, defeated already in the battle of our souls, devoured by our own sins against God. But at the cross, in the death of Jesus Christ God forgave us of our sins and ultimately triumphed over every enemy that stood against us. Thus the cross, and specifically Jesus, serves now as the perfect rallying point for all who want to save their soul (cf Isaiah 11:10).
Final victory will depend on several things:
1. We must recognize that there is a threat.
What would a snapshot of your soul look like? Too few people will admit or even recognize that there is a real battle going on for their soul, and that they are losing it through their regular choices and habits. Like a smoker who continues to smoke, ignoring the steady killing of his lungs, so also do we continue to live blissfully in our sin, ignoring the slow erosion and descent of our soul into eternal darkness.
2. We must rally under the right banner.
There are many good causes to follow and many good self help books to motivate and inspire you. But they aren’t in any way good enough for what’s at stake here. Remember the threat! It’s a battle for your soul! This is why we need divine help. We need Jesus, the only one who can fight and win against the soul destroying power of sin and death.
3. We must be prepared and willing to fight.
There is no such thing as a passive Christianity. The battle imagery we read about in Ephesians 6 is deliberate. It’s not there in order to give kids something to dress up in during Vacation Bible School. It’s there because we need all the pieces – things like truth, righteousness, faith, the gospel of piece, the word of God – if we are to fight successfully. Just going to church to sit and passively participate is not going to cut it. Having a pathetic prayer life will just get you trampled. Having a weak understanding of the Scriptures will mean you mostly running and hiding in the battle rather than standing and fighting for your soul and the souls of those around you.
Always remember what’s at stake. And know that God has given us everything we need – all the courage, strength, and hope we could possibly want. He gives it to us in Jesus Christ. There is no surer banner to fight under than him.
So without further ado, here’s the basic recap of last Sunday:
Following God will mean struggle. The Christian life is not easy. There is regular spiritual threat. It’s a battle for your very soul. And far too many souls today are being slowly devoured. They are sinking into a dark pit as they become consumed by unresolved conflict, bitterness, addictive habits, and selfish motives. Fortunately, we don’t need to face such threat alone. To follow God means having God with us, fighting with us and for us. Our fight and struggle becomes God’s fight and struggle. And because it’s God’s fight, we can have the sure and certain hope that we will know God’s victory over all spiritual assaults.
The short account of Israel’s fight against the Amalekites illustrates this well. God’s people were viciously attacked (cf Deut 25:17-18). Up to this point God had given them immediate successes, with them only having to sit and watch as God defeated their enemies through various plagues and acts of power. Now they needed to fight. But they would not fight alone. As always, God would would be them, and this was physically symbolized by Moses standing on a hill and raising the staff that God had given him over the people as they fought (Exodus 18:9). This is made even more clear in Exodus 18:15, which describes the building of an altar called “The Lord is My Banner.” Israel’s fight and success in their fight was really the Lord’s fight and the Lord’s success. The Lord was the “banner” under which they rallied, fought, and won. The staff raised high, and kept high, over the battlefield symbolized the people’s active, ongoing dependence on the Lord. Their victory was not immediate victory. But it was a eventual victory. Eventually, they would (and did) win. As long as they fought and kept trusting in their God, they would eventually win.
This is the norm for every person who wants to get serious about their faith in God. Things will not be nice and easy. God will not become your personal genie if you decide to take him seriously as your God. The reality is that the fight to save and protect your soul will require great effort. The great comfort we have in this however is that God will rally us and lead us in our fight. The staff we fight under however is different today. Today God has given us the much better and greater staff that is the cross, and a much greater and better Moses to hold it up, his own Son Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:13-15 is especially helpful in showing us how this was done. We were dead, defeated already in the battle of our souls, devoured by our own sins against God. But at the cross, in the death of Jesus Christ God forgave us of our sins and ultimately triumphed over every enemy that stood against us. Thus the cross, and specifically Jesus, serves now as the perfect rallying point for all who want to save their soul (cf Isaiah 11:10).
Final victory will depend on several things:
1. We must recognize that there is a threat.
What would a snapshot of your soul look like? Too few people will admit or even recognize that there is a real battle going on for their soul, and that they are losing it through their regular choices and habits. Like a smoker who continues to smoke, ignoring the steady killing of his lungs, so also do we continue to live blissfully in our sin, ignoring the slow erosion and descent of our soul into eternal darkness.
2. We must rally under the right banner.
There are many good causes to follow and many good self help books to motivate and inspire you. But they aren’t in any way good enough for what’s at stake here. Remember the threat! It’s a battle for your soul! This is why we need divine help. We need Jesus, the only one who can fight and win against the soul destroying power of sin and death.
3. We must be prepared and willing to fight.
There is no such thing as a passive Christianity. The battle imagery we read about in Ephesians 6 is deliberate. It’s not there in order to give kids something to dress up in during Vacation Bible School. It’s there because we need all the pieces – things like truth, righteousness, faith, the gospel of piece, the word of God – if we are to fight successfully. Just going to church to sit and passively participate is not going to cut it. Having a pathetic prayer life will just get you trampled. Having a weak understanding of the Scriptures will mean you mostly running and hiding in the battle rather than standing and fighting for your soul and the souls of those around you.
Always remember what’s at stake. And know that God has given us everything we need – all the courage, strength, and hope we could possibly want. He gives it to us in Jesus Christ. There is no surer banner to fight under than him.
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