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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Proclaiming The Gospel, Part IV: The Eighteen Dimensions Of The Kingdom Of God, Each More Exciting Than Random Acts Of Kindness

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Pastor Foley

At www.livingintheoverlap.com, Steve Schaefer has a great free downloadable chart of the eighteen dimensions of what the Old Testaments prophesied that the coming of the Kingdom of God would mean. His book, Living in the Overlap, goes into helpful detail on each dimension. It’s worth summarizing Steve’s work here just to get a taste of the electricity that coursed through the room each time Jesus proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!”

  • The Kingdom means the Messiah will rule (p. 5), and he’ll do so with justice, righteousness, and love (p. 6). Check out Isaiah 16:5: “In love a throne will be established. In faithfulness a man will sit on it—one from the house of David—one who in judging seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness.”
  • The Kingdom means the wicked—the enemies of God who bring suffering to his people—will be destroyed (p. 6), and those who have been hurt will be healed by God himself. Malachi 4:1-3 says, “1For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.”
  • The Kingdom means a new covenant and intimacy with God (p. 8). It won’t be about us and our sinful hearts trying to “be good” and “do the right thing,” trying our hardest to obey external rules that God sets up for us…and still falling short. Instead, God will place a new heart within us—his own, in fact—a heart that does good by nature. And he will guide us personally and gently in every decision we face. Jeremiah 31:33b-34 says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD, ‘for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.”
  • The Kingdom means forgiveness of sins and newness (p. 9). In Jeremiah 31:34, God says, “I will remember their sin no more.” Schaefer quotes theologian William J. Dumbrell on what that really means and why it’s so important:

God thus “remembered” Noah and caused the waters to abate (Genesis 8:1). God also “remembered” Hannah (1 Samuel 1:19), and the promise of a son became an actuality….In Jeremiah 31:34, for God not to remember means that no action in the new age will need to be taken against sin. The forgiveness of which this verse speaks is so comprehensive that sin has finally been dealt with in the experience of the nation and the individual believer.

  • Dealing with sin so that it would be remembered no more meant the creation of a new heavens and a new earth. The old ones would be rolled up like a scroll and thrown away.
  • The Kingdom means God’s Spirit would be poured out “on all kinds of people regardless of gender, age, or station in life” (p. 10). Schaefer quotes biblical studies professor James M. Hamilton, Jr. in saying, “The Old Testament teaches that God was with his people by dwelling among them in the temple rather than in them as under the new covenant” (p. 10).
  • The Kingdom means that “all nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord and the temple would be a house of prayer for all nations”; “God would be present with his people forever in this temple, and God’s glory would be revealed to all humankind” (p. 11).
  • The Kingdom means peace, physical wholeness, and safety and security (p. 12). As Isaiah 35:5-7 shares, we’re talking here not only about people being healed, but nature as well:

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
7 the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

  • The Kingdom means abundant provision and joy (p. 13). Isaiah 25:6 says, “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” If God cooks for you, you can be sure it will be a meal worth rejoicing over!
  • Finally, the Kingdom means death would be destroyed. “He will swallow up death forever,” says Isaiah 25:8.

Now perhaps 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. Getting kittens down from trees, helping old ladies cross the street, not cursing when he hits his thumb with his carpenter’s hammer. But now that you’ve heard about the eighteen ways in which the Kingdom of God would rock the world off its hinges…do you see that in his ministry Jesus was carefully following a meticulously laid out plan to embody every one of these eighteen ways?

This is why people watched him and wondered. And you couldn’t help but wonder when through his actions—his healings, his miraculous meals, his forgiveness of sins, his pronouncing of woes on the enemies of God—he enacted one by one each of the eighteen dimensions which the prophets said would be unleashed on the “great and terrible day of the Lord.”

In fact, before his death and after his resurrection, he even said that this is exactly what he was doing.

And this leads to what may be the most crucial insight of all related to the Work of Mercy of proclaiming the gospel:

When we proclaim the gospel, we often focus only on the personal forgiveness of sins and individual destiny after death of our hearer because we ourselves are slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

Jesus’ words, not mine, by the way. We’ll take a closer look at this in our next post.

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