I Believe in Jesus (More Than I Believe in Me)
Notes
Transcript
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a Word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
We live, in an age that has been impacted by what philosophers call the “Age of Enlightenment. In that age, humans moved from understanding that knowledge comes from God, who reveals it to us in His Word, the Logos, to understanding that knowledge comes from human Reason, which uncovers it through observation and interpretation. As René Descartes wrote in his book Principles of Philosophy, “Cogito, ergo sum,” translated as “I think; therefore I am.” That brought us into the Modern Era, where knowledge was valued primarily in terms of what it enabled us to accomplish, rather than in its affirmation of truth. The seeds sown are now bearing fruit in the Post-Modern Era, where the idea that we can know anything to be certain is being challenged on a fundamental level. It’s birth was “prophetically” expressed in 1882 in a parable entitled, “The Madman,” by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book, The Joyful Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding or, The Gay Science (from the German Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (dee froh-leekeh vissen-shahft):
“Whither is God,” he [the madman] cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? . . . Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? . . . Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? . . . I come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of man.”
Sire, James W.. The Universe Next Door (p. 203). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
Why do people, especially young people, seem to be so empty, so casual about living and dying, not only as it relates to others, but as it relates to themselves?
I think that the reason relates to our opening Scripture. There is a saying, “You are what you eat.” There are too many people today who are not eating the Bread of Life. They are not being nourished by the Word of God who loved us enough to move out of the realm of thought and became tangible.
The late Dr. Eugene Peterson presented it this way in his translation of Romans 1:21 (The Message):
21 What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.
This is the world in which we live, our children live, and their children live. If it is “a ball of confusion” now, what will it be like in the fourth generation?
5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
We look at the teenage or young adult boy - or girl - who callously sprays bullets into a house or a back-yard gathering, as happened two weeks ago in Chicago, or forces law-abiding residents to give up their vehicles for their joy-riding pleasure, as happened last Tuesday morning across from the Meadows Mall in Hobart. We have vigils, marches, speeches, elections, coalitions, create non-profits, more non-profits, and alphabet soup lists of community organizations, but the pure preaching of Law and Gospel has been sidelined for a form of godliness that denies the power of godliness:
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
It might not be your child or grandchild, but it really doesn’t matter, because it might end up being your backyard, your car, that becomes the backdrop for somebody else’s wickedness, and it’s your community that bears the scourge of being labeled a God-forsaken city. Is there a solution, a way out of this madness?
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
We know that, in the end, “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, and the one who does not believe will be condemned,” but in the meantime, what are we to do? We understand that the times and seasons are in the Father’s hands, but what about now? Should we just do our best and hope that it’s blessed?
That’s what some suggest - that we try a hodge-podge of earthly wisdom with some divine revelation sprinkled in for flavor, “tools that will help us understand” why sin entwines itself in every aspect of human existence. It is systemic, it is entrenched, and it is in all of us, if the Holy Spirit is not. But just like you can see my eyes, but cannot see your own without a mirror, you can point out my sins but are oblivious to the sinfulness of your own heart without the mirror of the Word of God which not only shows each of us our sin, but instructs us in the deliverance that is ours in Christ.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Maybe the solution lies, not in what we are trying to do, not in our plans and our petitions, our pundits and our politicians. Maybe the solution lies, as it always has, in God’s hands:
45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—
Maybe the promise of the Father is the answer after all:
13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Instead of arguing about vaccinations and masks, mandates and restrictions, God’s Church should be filled with people pleading for God’s mercy, seeking God’s face, desiring God’s cleansing.
James 1:27 (ESV)
27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
That is so contrary to the way our natural wisdom directs us to make connections with influential people, rather than wasting time with people who have neither influence nor finances. Widows and orphans are resource intensive, they pull upon you rather than push you, says the wisdom of the world. The early church understood it better, and so did those who watched them. Others could see it, even if they were afraid to come near it, as we read in Bible study last Monday in Acts 5:13. And even then, in the midst of that fear, God continued to do His awesome work:
Acts 5:14–15 (ESV)
14 And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, 15 so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them.
I love celebrating what God did then, but we need Him now! We need people to experience the forgiveness of their sins, in the way that the Bible talks about, today! If Holy Communion is Holy, then coming to this rail to eat His Body and drink His Blood should inspire such a reverence that no one would dare to come to this rail without a repentant heart.
Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (Ignatius to the Ephesians 20.1–21.2; Closing and Farewell)
All of you, severally and in common, continue to come together in grace, as individuals, in one faith and in Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh was of the family of David, the son of a human and son of God, that you may obey the bishop and the presbytery with undistracted mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote preventing death, but leading to life in Jesus Christ forever.
40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Next Sunday, we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion. I am preaching a message on the Eucharist. For now, we need to plead with the Triune God to have mercy on us, on our community, on our land. We need Him to confirm His promises in this generation. There is a difference between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean, and it shows itself in every element of worship. God has given us pure worship, rooted and grounded in His Word - do we dare to replace it with vain imaginations, to replace the reverent kneeling before a holy God with the dance of Herodias’ daughter?
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
“It’s just bread,” many, both within and without the Evangelical Church of Christ would say. Science would confirm their assessment, which, as it pertains to the natural elements, we confess the same. It’s what you can’t see with the eyes of the flesh, what you can’t detect with human technology, what Jesus declares to be so - that is where I put my trust.
6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
As the old song goes, “There’s not a Friend like the Lowly Jesus, no not one - no, not one.”
The peace of God, which passes understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, Amen.