Proclaiming The Gospel, Part VII: If What You Believe Costs You Nothing, You’re Believing Too Little

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Evangelical Christians have a problem today: we believe too little.

We believe the things about Jesus that are important to us personally—we insist that these are the essential things—and we leave everything else in a category called “optional” or “for extra credit.”

Most Evangelical Christians believe, for example, that Jesus is loving, that he has personally forgiven them for their sins, and that as a result they will go to heaven when they die. 

But there’s something interesting about that belief:

It costs us nothing. It changes us not at all.

It can exist as pleasant background noise, like leaving the TV on while we get ready for work in the morning, or leaving the radio on in the car during our commute.

But once we get to the office, the gospel is a difference that makes very little difference in most Christians’ everyday lives. Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, we can walk away from Jerusalem more or less believing that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and yet we can still be sad. Our eyes can still be blinded because we may believe that Jesus saved us, but we can’t believe that he has redeemed Israel—meaning, we can’t believe that the day of the Lord has been inaugurated and all eighteen dimensions of what the prophets foretold are exploding around us as one age grinds to an end and a new one begins.

And we’re not alone in that. In fact, if you read the story of Jesus carefully in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you’ll see that from the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, people struggled to believe that all that he was saying was true. There were parts of it that they found easy to believe. If all Jesus had shared was the gospel that many evangelicals believe today—“I am God in the flesh. I have come to die for your sins. Load them up on my back and I will carry them to the Cross where God will punish me instead of you”—I think he would have been the most popular man in Jerusalem! I think people would have carried the cross for him! “Go Jesus go!”

But from the very outset, it was Jesus’ insistence that all that the prophets had spoken was being fulfilled in his ministry—that all eighteen dimensions of the day of the Lord were being inaugurated by him—that caused people to stumble and ultimately reject him because they didn’t see all these promises coming to pass in his ministry.

Remember, for example, the first public announcement of his ministry in Luke 4. That’s the one where he was in his hometown synagogue and he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” etc—“today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” When he finished his message, his hearers first “spoke well of him and marveled at his gracious words” (v. 22)…and then they literally tried to throw him off a cliff (v. 30)!

And remember what we mentioned earlier: Even after Jesus was raised from the dead, amidst reports that he might yet be alive, his disciples were sad—because from what they could see he had clearly failed to redeem Israel.

Even the guy you would think would be Jesus’ biggest supporter—John the Baptist—the forerunner—the prophet—the Elijah sent to prepare the way for Jesus—was confused by Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of God was at hand. Check out Matthew 11:2-6:

2Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Don’t misunderstand this Scripture. It sounds like Jesus is saying, “Hey, come on, John—I’m doing the best that I can here! Isn’t this impressive enough for you?”

But that’s not at all what Jesus is saying. To understand John’s confusion—and the confusion of many (including perhaps even Judas, who betrayed Jesus)—you have to go back to the expectation of the prophets about “the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

You don’t even need to go back to the Old Testament for such prophecies; John himself repeats these same messages when he is preparing the way for “the one who is to come”. Let’s look at John the Baptist’s prophecy in Matthew 3:10-12. John says:

10“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

11“I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Like all the Old Testament prophets, John saw “the day of the Lord” as the end of history. The earth would shake, stars would fall from the skies, and fire would descend from heaven to consume the unrighteous. Then Jesus shows up, and John recognizes him as the one who is to come—in John 1:29 he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And in 1:32 he says, “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” And then in 1:33-34 he says, “This is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

But then as Jesus’ ministry gets underway, John can’t help but notice that the earth isn’t shaking and the stars aren’t falling from the skies. No sign of burning chaff or unquenchable fire. The world was continuing on as it always had…yet Jesus insisted that the day of the Lord was at hand at the kingdom of God had come. John couldn’t figure it out. And neither could the religious leaders. It violated everything they knew from the Old Testament about the day of the Lord. So it’s no wonder that the religious leaders rejected him so completely.

It was in fact quite ridiculous if you think about it: Jesus claimed that the very kingdom of God was at hand and that the day of the Lord had come…and all that he had to show for it was a small band of tax collectors, prostitutes, and fishermen who didn’t even wash their hands before they ate! These were the “chaff” that were supposed to be consumed by the fire, poked by the winnowing fork! Instead, they were the only ones who believed Jesus, and he insisted that they were entering the kingdom of God ahead of the righteous (cf. Matthew 31)! Worse, he insisted that they were the righteous ones because they believed in him! 

We are wrong to simplify this by saying, “The Pharisees and the religious leaders were trying to work their way to heaven. They rejected Jesus because he said you could only get to heaven by grace.” The concept of grace runs way, way deep in the Old Testament. Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees wasn’t faith versus works; it was his claim that the kingdom of God had come in him—that he was inaugurating the day of the Lord—that all that the prophets had written was coming to pass in him—despite the fact that everything the Pharisees and John the Baptist and the religious leaders knew about the day of the Lord wasn’t happening. God’s enemies remained in power. Fire did not fall from heaven. Mountains did not shake. Not everyone who came to Jesus was healed. And he surrounded himself with those whom the Old Testament prophets had clearly said would not inherit the kingdom of God:

  • tax collectors who had collaborated with God’s enemies;
  • prostitutes who had defiled their bodies for money;
  • ordinary people who hardly even knew God’s law and who often did not obey it.

And in response to it all, Jesus talked about a mystery. He said to his followers in Matthew 13:11-12, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

In other words, to those who believed him, Jesus explained things. To those who didn’t, he never sought to justify or explain himself. Not even to John the Baptist! He just pointed to what could be seen. And in fact he goes on in Matthew 13:12 to say, “For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Believe Jesus even when you don’t understand, and he’ll open the mysteries to you. But if you struggle to believe in him or what he says, even what little faith you have will evaporate.

So what was the mystery he shared with those who believed?

We’ll save that for our next post. After all, what would a good mystery be without at least a little suspense?

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Proclaiming The Gospel, Part VI: The Most Important Phrase In The Gospel That Almost Always Gets Left Out

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Pastor Foley

So in our series here on the Work of Mercy of proclaiming the gospel, we’ve been taking a look, courtesy of Steve Schaefer’s great book, Living in the Overlap, at the eighteen dimensions of universe-rocking change that the prophets prophesied would come on the Day of the Lord—everything from the death of death…to the Messiah ruling with justice, love, and righteousness…to the destruction of the wicked…to God placing a new heart in us to obey him perfectly…to forgiveness of sin and deliverance from evil…to peace, physical wholeness, safety, and security…to healings…to abundant provision and joy. 

And we’ve been noting how Jesus in his ministry announced that all these promises were fulfilled in his coming. The kingdom of God, he said, was at hand. And far from roaming about the countryside doing random acts of kindness, Jesus went about meticulously inaugurating each one of these prophecies such that everyone watched and wondered, “Could he be right? Could the day of the Lord be at hand?”

And where we ended last post was with the disciples saying, “Er, no. Apparently not,” as they scattered like mice while Jesus was being crucified. Well, actually, that’s not quite right: we ended with the resurrected Jesus appearing, unrecognized, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They vocalized what everyone was thinking: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21).

And it’s important to see that even though they had heard a report from the women in their company that Jesus was alive (and from the men that the tomb was indeed empty), they were, according to Luke 24:17, sad.  

But why were they sad? Was it because they didn’t believe that Jesus had been resurrected? Given that they had heard that the tomb was empty, why wouldn’t they at least be confused, or maybe even a tiny bit hopeful? Why were they simply walking away from Jerusalem? Why weren’t they clinging to the reports of the women and huddled around the TV set with other disciples to see if Jesus indeed showed back up alive? Why are they just sad?

That’s why we have to read the Scripture very carefully. When we do, we see that Jesus does not rebuke the men for not believing the reports of the women. He rebukes the men for not believing all that the prophets have spoken. In Luke 24:25-27 he says, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

And after he breaks bread and their eyes are opened and he vanishes, note that the disciples don’t look at each other and say, “Wow—he is alive!” In fact, the first thing they say to each other is, “”Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

In 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel passage we’ve been learning throughout this year, Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” And then he goes on to say: “that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” Note that Paul doesn’t just say, “The gospel is that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day.” The phrase he emphasizes two times is in accordance with the Scriptures.

“In accordance with the Scriptures”–it’s the most important phrase in the gospel that almost always gets left out.

When Jesus is resurrected from the dead, he appears to the disciples in the upper room but Thomas is not with them. So Jesus reappears when Thomas returns, and Jesus says, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side” (John 21:27). Thomas responds by saying, “My Lord and my God!” And Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 21:28-29). Believed what? Believed the reports of the first disciples that Jesus was raised from the dead? Not only that. Believed all that the prophets have spoken. Believe that everything that was promised by God in the Old Testament has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ. 

To be a Christian is to believe that all that the prophets have spoken is now coming to pass in Christ. (That’s why the gospel says, “in accordance with the Scriptures.”) Being a Christian means believing these promises so fully that we live our lives vibrantly in accord with them in our daily lives, by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

And that leads us to pinpoint what with no exaggeration is one of the most serious problems facing evangelical Christendom today:

We believe too little.

But as we’ll talk about in our next post, we have good company in that regard: No less than John the Baptist and nearly everyone else who encountered Jesus’ ministry.

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Proclaiming The Gospel, Part V: The Mystery Of The Gospel That Most Christians Still Don’t Get

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Pastor Foley

As we talked about in our previous post, as you’ve read the New Testament you may have thought of Jesus as just traveling from place to place doing random acts of kindness. But in reality Jesus was carefully following a meticulously laid out plan to embody each of the eighteen dimensions of the coming of the kingdom of God identified by the prophets.

You can see this in Luke 4:16-21, Jesus’ formal public announcement of his ministry:

16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

So the crowds flocked to him and hoped. The disciples sat at his feet and learned. The religious leaders debated so fiercely about what to do with him…and then finally hatched a plot to have him executed.

That’s why there’s such a major focus in the story of Jesus of his heading to and entering into Jerusalem. What would happen when he arrived there? Would the day of the Lord come? Or would he be revealed as a false prophet?

Well, I don’t think I’m ruining the story for you when I tell you that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem ended with him on a cross and the disciples disillusioned and hopeless. The day of the Lord, it seems, did not come.

Albert Schweitzer, the illustrious medical missionary to Africa who was also a Lutheran, wrote a book about what he called “the historical Jesus” in which he summarized Jesus’ efforts to inaugurate the day of the Lord by saying that Jesus threw himself on the wheel of history and got crushed by it. 

And that’s certainly the perspective that the disciples had. Remember the story about the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus, joining up with the two depressed disciples who didn’t realize that he had been resurrected from the dead?

When Jesus asked them what they were talking about as they were moping along the road, they said to him in Luke 24:21, “We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Jesus’ response to the two disciples is fascinating.

  • He did not respond to them by saying what Schweitzer believed. He didn’t say, “Well, the wheel of history crushed me, but I got it rolling. From here on, the rest is up to you!”
  • And he didn’t say what evangelists today and for the last two hundred years have believed. He didn’t say, “No, no, no—you had it all wrong. I didn’t come to free you from the Romans. I was only interested in one of those eighteen dimensions of the kingdom of God: the forgiveness of your sins. Accept me into your heart so you can come live in heaven with me when you die.”

Listen carefully to what he did say, in Luke 24:25-27:

25And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” [Editor’s note: Did you catch that—all that the prophets have spoken? Not just the one part about forgiveness of sins, but all eighteen dimensions of the kingdom! Anyway, back to Jesus…]  26Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

It turns out that Jesus did inaugurate the kingdom of God—all eighteen dimensions! But he did it in a way that nobody—not even the Old Testament prophets themselves, nor any of Jesus contemporaries—ever expected. In fact, he did it in a way that most Christians today don’t even understand. 

And that’s because we omit from our understanding what may prove to be the most important phrase in the gospel–one so important that it has the unusual distinction of being the only phrase that appears twice in the gospel.

We’ll talk about that phrase–and why it’s so crucial to understanding how Jesus inaugurates every dimension of the kingdom–in our next post on “Mysteries of the Kingdom: Part VI of the Work of Mercy of Proclaiming the Gospel!”

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