“The Blessing and Burden of the Bible”

Thank you, Cathy. 

"Unfailing love left heaven's throne.

Sought me out and brought me home."

Pretty definitive statement of the gospel, isn't it? When is the last time you tried to put your arms around it? Tried to define the dimensions of the gospel? Tried to measure what it really means? Tried to feel it with your hands and with your mind and with your soul that you believe there is a God.  That you believe God made this world and you are part of that creation.  That he designed you while you were in your mother's womb, he gave you life, and you have been a rebel.  You've not done the things that you know that God would have you to do, so let's use the Bible word, you have sinned.  And this God, who is perfect and does everything rightly would punish sin, but he sent his son from heaven who left  heaven's throne, died on the cross, took your sin and your sin's punishment on him and gave you, offered you the free gift of eternal life.  When is the last time you have tried to measure, to feel, to think that through?  Because one of the strangest marks of the church and of God's people is how stale we can get at times with that gospel, when it ceases to stun us that God did it for us.  When we get used to being saved.  When we take heaven for granted.  "Oh, yeah, I'm going there.  I trusted Jesus.  Gonna be good!"

I remember when I was in college, Campus Crusade guy came to my room.  This is when I was not in fellowship with the Lord, but I knew everyone of the answers to his gospel presentation.  "Yeah, I know that."  "Yeah, I did that."  Yeah, I'm going there." "Yeah, I understand that."  Thanks for coming, see ya later!"  Kind of weird, isn't it?  Kind of odd. 

I watched a wonderful religious celebration last night on religious broadcasting.  It was stunning.  I think there were 92,000, 93,000 people there.  It was called the game between Florida and LSU.  [Laughter]  Now those people know how to worship!  They dress up for it.  They paint themselves for it.  They either clothe themselves funnily, [Laughter] is that an adverb? In a funny way, where did that come from.  They even unclothe themselves in funny ways and paint their skin.

I'm not saying we need to act like that in God's sanctuary, but there is an element of deadness sometimes when we forget what God has done for us. 

We're going to launch ourselves on a series, beginning today, to become a bit distinct, to begin to understand in a clearer way, in a more full way, what the gospel is, who God is, what the Bible is, specifically who and what the church is.  What she is and what she is here to be and do.  That would be you and me, those of use who have trusted Christ, those of us who are members here. This is an excellent time if you're thinking about a church home and you want to take our pulse, over the next few weeks this will be an excellent time to take our pulse or at least to find out where we're headed.

Keith O'Gara, who just made the announcement about the elders, talking about some of the stuff the Body of Elders has been working on, just a couple of clues to that.  We have been examining Confessions of Faith that articulate as clearly as we can what we believe.  We have been working on a church covenant that says what kind of people we want to be and how we could commit together to be that. That's some of what we're working on, and some of what this series will help us work that out and understand it.

But today, I want to address us as a group and I want to address you  as an individual.  Now, we won't be here long.  I know how long sermons can seem and 5 minutes can seem like an eternity sometimes, but we won't be here long, you already know that, so please give me your ear. At least give God your ear.  We do church in a strange way here.  We all meet together. I'm speaking from everybody to children, young children to senior adults.  Conventional wisdom says have church for children, have church for teenagers, have church for college students, have church for singles and then have adult church.  Trouble is, once you start that you've got to keep doing that.  God, in heaven, is not going to have children's heaven, teenager's heaven, adult heaven, single's heaven so why would we want to do that here?  What, you don't like those people who dress different than you, look different than you, like different music than you?  Then my point is this, I'm talking to everyone of you this morning because the gospel applies to everyone of you and when we hear it together and when we see it together and when we live it together, we begin to experience what God's full intention was for his people on earth as it became a preview for what his people in heaven are going to be.  Part of it recognizes the greatness of the God we serve.  The other part recognizes the greatness of the mission of this God here for people.  The Bible teaches us through specific statement and through its overall picture that the God we serve is a God of very clear purpose.  He's out to do something.  In Creation, he created specifically in the way, in the order and for its perpetuation the way He wanted Creation to be.  In redemption, he worked a plan so that this Holy God could cease having this problem to get sinful man prepared to come to heaven, and he worked a divine plan through the gospel that we could have never figured out on our own. He has a mission and his mission is that His name be known.  Strangely, strangely, he's chosen you, yes, you as an individual to be the ones together who make his name known.  So one question we must ask ourselves, what do people know about the God of the universe through me?  My neighbors, my co-workers, my friends, the guys I just watched the ball game with last night. You know, if you can keep your Christian composure during a ball game, that ought to be the 10^th Fruit of the Spirit. 

[By the way, Warren said something about nobody from Kentucky or Louisville played football yesterday, nobody from Kentucky or Louisville played football all week! [Laughter] We have counseling rooms set up after church… [Laughter]]

What we're going to do over the next several weeks is we are going to take a look, in some senses, at the whole of the Bible, not in great detail, but so you can see this purposeness of God that is a steady stream.  It's like in the middle of the Bible is a deep ravine full of pure gospel and all the streams of the Bible, the history of the Jews, the life of Abraham, the life of Joseph, the wilderness, the exodus, all of those flow into this pure and deep gospel stream and they flow towards Christ in the Old Testament looking messianically towards him.  They flow out of him and get even deeper and clearer in the New Testament as they flow missionally out from him.  In the Old Testament they are looking for the Messiah forwards.  In the New Testament, we're looking at the Messiah and his mission that we're involved in - forward.  Alright? So, that's the way the gospel operates with you and I.  It comes to us when we’re outside the gospel and it gets in us.  And then once we're inside the gospel through faith in Christ, it's to go forward through us.  There are two things I want you to feel this morning and do something about, and yes I did use the word feel.  I want you to feel the blessing of the gospel and then I want you to feel the burden of the gospel. 

Open your Bibles please to the gospel of Luke, Chapter 24.  There are all kinds of scriptures that I could turn to for this, but I settle on these because they grasp so much and they chiefly come from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Today we're flying very high over the Bible.  We're taking a big look at it, but quickly we're going to descend really low and look at some specifics for you and I to become and to do.

In Luke 24, it's the end of Christ's early life.  We believe Luke was a physician, a medical doctor, we believe he was a Gentile.  When you count words, Luke has written more of the New Testament than any other author, even more than Paul. Luke's work is actually a 2-volume work.  Luke is Volume 1; the Book of Acts is Volume 2.  In Chapter 24, Christ has been crucified and is now resurrected.  He is speaking to his disciples, his closest followers. At this particular point, they know the grave is empty, but they don't know the full explanation of that, they haven't grasped, the women have found the tomb empty and there are two men walking on the road to a nearby town to Jerusalem, called Emaeus.  Jesus appears to them, but they don't recognize him.  No one can see and recognize Jesus on their own.  God has to open their eyes so they can see.  God is the one who saves us.  We don't have the smarts to figure it out and say, "Hey, I think this is the right way to go, I'm going to go that way." It's far more than that.  God has a mission.  He comes to us and then takes us on his mission.  And, so, they're talking to Jesus without knowing it's Jesus walking on this 7-mile trip and they're saying, "Yes, and this one named Jesus."  First of all, in talking to Jesus they did say to him, "What, have you been living in a corner? Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn’t know about these things? And I wonder what the Lord's thinking at this time while they're asking him that.  Then they talk about the empty tomb, and Jesus says in verse 25:

Luke 24: Beginning with verse 25:

Luk 24:25  And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Now, you know, we could stop  there for a lifetime.  Look at how he addresses them: The Son of God is saying it is foolish and we demonstrate a real slowness of heart when we get too smart believe all the prophets have spoken.  I know it's humiliating, but oh, what peace comes to us when we rest in his word of God. Jesus himself did and he was the Son of God.

Luk 24:26  Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

Luk 24:27  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

My point is that the entire Old Testament is stream after stream that runs into this deep beautiful gospel river and attests to Christ.  He is the one that the Bible is explaining.  If you take Christ and the gospel out of the Bible, it will make no sense.  That's the key to understanding Old and New Testament as well as how they relate together.  He goes on later when his disciples understand who he is, their eyes have been opened in Verse 44:

Luk 24:44  Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled."  [That's saying the whole of the Old Testament]

Luk 24:45  Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,

Do you see that? They couldn't recognize Jesus without the Spirit of God opening their eyes.  They can't understand the Word of God without the Spirit opening their eyes because it's a divine word.  We ask God to open our yes to understand those things.

Luk 24:46  and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,

Luk 24:47  and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Luk 24:48  You are witnesses of these things.

It is here that we begin to feel the blessing and the burden of the Bible.  The blessing comes in this mission of the Old Testament that God has articulated over thousands of years.  It comes to a head in Christ and at that point it is written that the Christ, the Messiah of God should suffer, and on the third day rise from the day, and that in that he would be giving repentance and forgiveness of sins.  That's the blessing of the Bible!  That God, in heaven, engaged in human history.  He selected people, Abraham, and then a people from him.  He's still selecting people.  He operates usually through the normal means of human history.  And the blessing of that is he sent his Son to take our sin, to do away with it, to rise from the dead and give us life.  That's the blessing of the gospel and the Bible.

Here's the burden:

Verse 47: Now that we have it, we should know that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.  How is it that our mouths are so tight shut when it comes to the gospel?  I think it's because we don't feel the burden and we don't feel the blessing.

Now, think with me for a few minutes.  The Bible, what is it?  It is God's own story telling his self-giving movement to his wayward creation.  It describes God's self-giving to us.  He gave us his son.  The Bible is both the product of, and the witness to God's ultimate mission.  We can understand through the scriptures who God is, what he's like and what he is up to, and what our part in that is.  That's how we have and that's why we have the Bible.  Had we not had this, we couldn't know any of that.  The Bible is read messianically in the Old Testament up to Christ.  It is read missionally in the New Testament from Christ.  This is what God has promised he's going to do.  This is what God says we need to do.  How are we going to do it?  That's what this series of sermons is for.  The Bible is the story direct from the mind and purpose of God in all the scriptures for all the peoples of the world, and what he's asking LaGrange Baptist Church and everyone of us in it is are we holding our part of the Biblical burden of the gospel? Can you feel it?

The Bible is God's expression of and interaction with the reality he created.  You need to catch that statement. The Bible, the Word of God, is God's own explanation of and the story of his interaction with the reality he created.  When you engage God in the Bible, my friend, you are engaging reality.  Every other lens through which we look at life is flawed.  God's the maker of life.  He's given us a lens to at life with and the focal point of that lens is the gospel of Christ.  That's how we understand the nature of man.  That's how we understand the nature of God.  That's where we find our salvation. That's where we gain peace.  That's where we gain a clear conscience.  That's where we gain new life so we can be with God forever in heaven.  When you look at life through any other lens, the lens of evolution, the scientific approach, an atheist approach, whatever it may be, another religion's approach, it is poured into with the mind of man.  This is God's clear…

By the way, it is a pluralistic society in which we live and there are all kinds of religions on the face of the earth.  Somewhere along the way, some hyperintelligent people have discovered what human beings for the last 6,000 - 7,000 years have never known.  They have discovered that Buddhists and Hindus and Christians and Muslims are all actually serving the same God.  And, they just have different representations of how they do that, but there's this overall real nondiscernible truth of God in which this is just our local and cultural expression of how we get to him. I have never in my life ever known a Buddhist and a Hindu that would sit down and agree to that.  I've never known a Christian and a Muslim that would sit down and agree that, "Yes, that's really what we're saying.  You're God is my God and we're going the same way." That's just stupid!  Who informed the intelligent professor who came up with that, that that's exactly why these religions were formed.  Nobody formed a religion to do that.  Every single religion on the face of the globe is distinctive.  It has its own path to God, the God they serve, most of which have a God they made up in their own mind. Nobody made up this God.  No interpretation of scripture is ever private to man.  Unless Christ opens our eyes, we can't even understand his revelation, so it is not intellectual suicide to believe a God wise enough to create the world and call the stars by name, it's not intellectual suicide nor stupidity, nor ignorance to believe what he said. So this Bible is God's explanation of the world he made and the story of the interaction with the reality he created, so if you want to see reality, see it through the lens of the Bible.

Now, the focal point of the lens is the gospel of Christ and the peak of that is Christ himself.  That is how you will understand what God has said, and that works all the way down to the ins and outs of your personal and private life.  So, who is this Jesus?

I'm only going to give one illustration.  There is a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. They translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into the Greek language.  That Bible was available in the time of Christ's life.  The Jews read that Bible.  It has been around for a long time.  The scholars that translated  that Bible from Hebrew into Greek took over the characteristic of something the scholars did in the Old Testament.  God revealed himself with a personal name.  That name was YAHWEH.  It was so holy of a name because God wants to be known by name that they condensed that down to 4 letters called the "Tetragrammaton".  They wouldn't even write the name of God.  So they substituted another name for God, Adonai, or LORD in the Old Testament writings because the scribes so revered God they wouldn't write out his name.  In the Greek New Testament, what they did every time they wanted to refer to Yahweh, Jehovah, they used the Greek word, Kurios, LORD. Do you know what Jesus is called throughout the New Testament? LORD.  Kurios. When these Hebrew writers, other than Luke, wrote in the New Testament, Jesus is LORD.  What they knew is the over 1600 times that word for LORD was used in the Greek Old Testament to refer to Jehovah God.  What they were saying is, This Jesus who became man is God, and LORD of the universe.  Bow before him and receive his grace.  He is the key through which we understand these scripture.  I'm not talking about a subjective understanding of him.  I'm talking about when you understand what he has revealed, then you can understand all that he has revealed.

Now, let's get to feel some things.  Who is this God? Who is this LORD of the Old Testament? Deuteronomy Chapter 10, don't turn there, I'm going to read these to you.  You can write that down, that Deuteronomy 10:14 says:

Deu 10:14  Behold, to the LORD [Jehovah]your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens…..

I stopped after that verse of scripture and I wrote it down and read it.  Listen:

Behold, to the LORD [Jehovah]your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens…..

Wouldn't you like to go there? What a description of a glorious place.  The heaven of heavens!  That's got to be way beyond our capacity now to understand it, but here's the point for this morning.

Deu 10:14  Behold, to the LORD [Jehovah]your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

He's LORD of all!

Isaiah 54:5b:

The Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.

Jeremiah 32:27

Jer 32:27  "Behold, I am the LORD, [Jehovah, Yahweh]the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?   That is our God!

Now, let me give you just an overview of this Bible.  We have the blessing of the Bible that I want you to feel this morning, just to get a taste of it.  You have the burden of the Bible.  It's simply this:  The blessing of the Bible is that God came in Christ, it's always been his plan, it wasn't Plan B, to save and to bless his children.  He specifically chose to do that.  The Bible word is the word election.  Please don't ever run from that word.  Don't ever think some contemporary theological argument should make you shun the word, election.  That's one of the sweetest words to you as a Christian you can ever read in the Bible.  What that means is God loves you.  What that means is he came to you.  What that means is he was going to come after you until he got you.  What that means you didn't deserve this, he came after you because he is love.  That's the blessing of the Bible. 

And then, well, let's go back to Genesis 12:12.  You can find Genesis quickly. Excuse me, Genesis Chapter 12, verse 2. I want to show you where it starts.

Remember this God is Lord of history so he works through history. And if you work in human history, you have to work through humans, right? And as best I can tell, every one of you in here are humans.  You might be wondering about me, and I can see a couple of you I'm wondering about, but most of you look like humans.  That's where God does his work and that's for whom God does this gospel work. But if he's going to do that, he's got to pick people to work through.  He doesn’t just throw it out there and say, "Hey, here's a great idea.  Why don't you pick it up and take it?" He picks somebody and he started out with Abraham.  Look at Chapter 12, Verse 1, Genesis:

Gen 12:1  Now the LORD said to Abram [this was before he changed his name to Abraham], "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

LISTEN CLOSELY….

Gen 12:2  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great,[WHY?] so that you will be a blessing.

THAT is the blessing and the burden of the Bible and we need to feel the burden of the Bible.  We have camped far too long on the side of the blessing. The gospel to us, how much God loves us, how we can rest in who we are in Christ.  That's not for us alone.  It's so that we have the equipment then to take that and go and feel the burden of that mission and take it to the people around us who don't know Christ.  Can you see it in Abraham's life?  Do you know what Paul called this in the book of Galatians? You need to see it.  If you're fast, go to Galatians 3.  You just have to see this.  I want to show you how the Bible is such a unity: The book of Galatians.  It's not a hodgepodge, it's put together well with God's purpose and mission.  The book of Galatians Chapter 3, Verse 8:

Gal 3:8  And the Scripture [speaking of Old Testament] , foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles [that's us] by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."

That is the blessing and the burden of the Bible. Our God is on a mission. And our God's mission is to get the gospel of his son to the nations and the agents of his mission, you got it right, it's you and me.

I'm going to ask you to turn to one final place in your Bible.  John 15.  New Testament book, Gospel of John, Chapter 15, Verse 16.  Just one more little illustration of the blessing and the burden of the Gospel. This is how Jesus today is still doing, did when he was here on earth, did what God did with Abraham, and is doing it for people today.  John 15:16

Joh 15:16  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide….

Can you see the blessing? I wasn't looking for Jesus when he found me. I wasn't out on a hunt to get myself saved.  I was out on a hunt to enjoy life!  God sought me out.  Jesus chose to save me, and when he chose to save me, he appointed then that I would go and bear fruit.  That's the blessing and the burden of the gospel. 

In our culture, not only has the burden of the gospel been lost, I'm convinced the blessing of the gospel has been lost because it is human nature that we only share that which we enjoy.  You don’t go tell people about a restaurant that served you a bad meal unless you want to complain, but you enjoy spreading the news of a great steak at a great restaurant.  You don't like telling when your football team loses, but you love to tell it when they win.  We're going to sit down one day at the table spread for a banquet a the marriage supper of the Lamb.  And this is the Lamb though he was slain as the Lamb before the foundation of the world is now the victorious Lion of the tribe of Judah. And it will be a sweet meal for eternity and we will be serving one who is victorious always.

What about today? Do you know the blessing of the Bible? Some of you don't and you need to simply bow your knee to this one who is LORD and say, "Yes, I trust you."  Many of you know it and you've started on your journey, but your journey has kind of sputtered.  You haven't looked at the Bible in a long time.  You don't feel like God is close to you at all.  You don't talk about him, except when tragedy comes.  It's kind of sad, isn't it? When our hearts grow stale, and the God who once was the thrill of our heart, now his love letter to us has dust all over its cover.  You're not enjoying the blessing of the gospel in which you are to rest.  Jesus said, "Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest." Some of you are just flat worn out.  Why don't you come rest for awhile?  Because when you get a flavor of the rest, you know what he's going to ask you to do? He's going to ask you to run!  We’re supposed to run the race set before us. We're supposed to run to reach the finish line and get the prize.  But if you never rest in the gospel, if you never taste its goodness, it's hard to want to go share it with somebody else, so we're going to dive into this word, we're going to see the beauties of Christ, we're going to taste the wonders of God's goodness in the gospel and we are going to put the gospel shoes on our feet and we're going to go.  If God is on mission and he has called us to be on mission, then this community needs the sense to smell, to taste the salt and see the light of God in the world through God's people, so I close with two things:

1.                 What's your aim in life?  What is your aim in life?

2.                 What is the aroma around you as you pursue that aim?