First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Evening Service

Please turn with me in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Judges, Judges chapter 8. This summer on Sunday nights we’re in a sermon series in the book of Judges, and tonight we are looking at the conclusion of the narrative of Gideon. It’s a sad story; it’s a tragic story, this pathology of decline. It’s an all too familiar story, and so we’ll be considering Judges chapter 8, verses 22 to 35.

Judges chapter 7 is about weakness, and the truth is, whether we feel it or not, we are all weak. All of us. We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that money and training and status will get the results that we desire. But that’s not how God works, is it? Instead, God works through unlikely men and women, unlikely boys and girls, to accomplish unlikely purposes in unlikely ways. And He does that so that He may demonstrate His own power, His own strength, and that He receives the glory that is due to His name. And we’ll see God working in those very same ways in the story of Judges chapter 7, the story of Gideon, as he goes up against the Midianites. And we’ll consider two points from this passage as we study tonight. We’ll consider the weakness that pursues and the strength that prevails.

Well we’re carrying on in the book of Judges tonight as we’ve been marching through it all of these Sunday nights lately and we’ve come up to, as Wiley mentioned, chapter 6, which is the story of the call of Gideon. And it’s a little bit of a longer reading tonight, so I just want to dive right into the text. So I’m going to pray and then we’ll read verses 1 to 27 in Judges chapter 6.

And tonight, we’re going to look at Judges chapters 4 and 5 and I want to do it in two acts. So first, act one, Judges 4, which gives us the narrative; it gives us what everyone could see. And then act two, we will look briefly at Judges chapter 5, which gives us the song. And it tells us that more was happening than anyone could see, that more was happening than meets the eye. “The Stars Fought From Heaven.” Another way to say this - act one, we will look at the great story and act two, we will look at how through this great story we learn something about how to read our own stories. And so act one and act two.

There is some graphic and potentially offensive material in Judges chapter 3, but do you know what is the most offensive part of this chapter? The most offensive part of this chapter is sin. It is Israel’s turning away from God and turning to idolatry and doing evil in the sight of the Lord. All sin is repulsive, it is ugly, and it deserves God’s anger and discipline. And that’s exactly what we find in this chapter in the book of Judges. But we also find good news. We also find good news about God’s deliverance and good news about God’s gift of rest.

What we just read, commentators typically call the cycle of the Judges, and this pattern, it’s a pattern or a cycle that makes Judges really easy to outline. First, in the book of Judges there’s always peace in the land, peace in Canaan, and then the Israelites sin against God through idolatry and God judges them and gives them over to those sins and they are oppressed by a foreign nation, a different people group. But then God unexpectedly comes in and sends a judge, a rescuer to save them. There’s a brief peace in the land again and then it starts over.

So we’re looking tonight at a half-hearted people and a whole-hearted God. And because starting a sermon series in the book of Judges is kind of like picking up The Chronicles of Narnia halfway through. It’s like starting to watch the “Star Wars” movies in the middle of the story. You start reading or you start watching and you think, “How in the world did we get here? What is going on in this story?” Because that’s the case, we’ll consider first the place of Judges in the story of the Bible. And so how did we get here? So first, the context, the historical context of the book of Judges. Second, a half-hearted people. And then third, a whole-hearted God.

We’re going to look in our Bibles tonight at Jeremiah chapter 9, and we’re going to look at verses 23 and 24 together tonight. And when I was in my teens, I had a couple of different jobs, but whether it was packing bolts and screws or selling shoes, the thing that nobody really wanted to do was to take inventory, was to take a count of the things that we already had. Taking inventory is time consuming. It’s tedious. And it doesn’t seem to accomplish anything tangible. It would be easier to stay busy doing anything else other than taking inventory. But taking inventory is very important; it’s essential for running a good business.

So I want to come back to Proverbs tonight and look again, because we didn’t cover in that series something that’s treated pretty regularly and specifically throughout the book, and that’s that Proverbs over and over again talks about the human heart, and specifically talks about the heart in the condition, or the fact that the heart is broken; that we have broken hearts. We’ll talk about the human heart, it's importance, why it breaks, the cure, and seeking a wise heart.

Friends, if ever there was a day that reminds us and gives us hope it’s Resurrection Sunday, isn’t it? It’s a celebration that Jesus is alive, that in Him we have hope both in the here and now but also hope in the life hereafter. It’s the hope of forgiveness. It’s the hope of peace with God. It’s the hope that we have assurance that what God has begun He will bring to completion. It’s the hope of heaven and being with Jesus Christ, seeing Him face to face. And you see, all of our hope is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ Himself.

We’re going to focus on the three crosses that we see in the passage, these three figures on Calvary, because each of them shows something to us, something important about how we respond to Jesus and about what Jesus offers to us. Hanged upon the first cross is an unrepentant thief. The first cross shows us the tragedy of a resistant heart. The tragedy of a resistant heart. Hanged on the second cross is a thief who turns from his sin, who seeks for mercy. The second cross reminds us of the necessity of a repentant heart. The tragedy of a resistant heart and the necessity of a repentant heart. And of course hanged upon the third cross, with these two criminals on either side, is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And the third cross shows us the love of Christ’s redeeming heart.

Well tonight we’re doing something a little different from the usual sermon that we have. It is going to be a message, a sermon from God’s Word, but rather than the regular exposition of a single text, we invited you over the last several weeks to submit questions about theology or the Christian life or about the Bible or about the present crisis.

Well we’re going to look at another miracle that Jesus performs in Matthew chapter 8. Five short verses in 23-27. It’s a short story, it’s a great story, and it has an enormous point. And that is found by answering the question, really the question of all the gospels, the question at the center of all of Christianity. And it’s what the disciples ask in verse 27. They say, “What sort of a man is this?” And during the time that we’re living in of coronavirus, of isolation, of fear, it is important that we ask, “What sort of a man is this that the gospels is presenting to us?” And the answer of this passage is, “Look at the man who sleeps.”

The psalm is organized around these two interlocking illustrations. The first, and the most famous, and really the governing illustration, is the shepherd in verses 1 to 4. This psalm is known as “The Shepherd’s Psalm.” But there is also in verses 5 and 6 this illustration of God being our generous Host. He is the host in hospitality as He invites us to His table. And so these two illustrations, the Good Shepherd and the generous Host, this is where David is drawing his confidence. And so we’ll look tonight as these two illustrations - the Good Shepherd, that you are a sheep in His care, in verses 1 to 4. And the generous Host, that you have a seat at His table, in verses 5 and 6.

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 93 as we face a unique time in our country and our culture; a time in which our fear is elevated and in which there is a great threat against our friends, our families, our neighbors and our nation. It’s important to turn to God and to His Word. And in this psalm we will see the psalmist address the issue of the peril of God’s people by pointing to the person of God. If I were to give this sermon a title, it would be, “God is King: Remembering God’s Providence in Scary Times.” And before we read God’s Word, let’s look to Him in prayer and ask for His help and blessing.

You understand, of course, Paul says “if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Over and over again, the Gospel writers tell us that there’s something about the resurrection that changes everything. And we have to understand the difference that it makes, not just to our own personal lives but also to mission. I’d like us to consider what difference does the resurrection make when we think about mission work going on, on campuses where RUF campus ministers and interns work, where church planters are plowing hard ground, where missionaries are learning new languages and new cultures in order to make Christ known where He’s currently not known. What difference does the resurrection make to all of that? My desire this evening is to just tell you the story, the event that you find in John chapter 20, unpack a few details, show you some things you may have missed, and then draw some conclusions and applications.

The same God who condescended to redeem us in Christ, the One who has promised and told us in Scripture that He prepares a home for us, He is the same one who calls and who burdens and who sends His church - local congregations, ordinary men and women in local congregations - into the world to bear witness to His grace, making the Gospel of Christ clear and compelling to those who have not yet heard this good news. And what we’re going to see in these verses as we look at verses 9 through 12 is that Peter tells us that a church on mission thinks consistently, speaks consistently, and acts consistently.

We have been working down the Beatitudes on Sunday nights. And the Beatitudes, we said the very first week, is the description of the blessed life found in Matthew chapter 5. The blessed life is a life of beauty, and a life of beauty is where truth and goodness meet together. In other words, it’s what life looks like for the citizens of the kingdom of God. It’s how the citizens of the kingdom of God act into the world; that’s the Beatitudes. It’s describing, really, just the Christian life. And we have come to the Beatitude about mercy, about the merciful.

And so we’ll work this evening just section by section looking at this single verse, verse 6, and we’ll look first at our appetites, our spiritual appetites - that we are hungry and we are thirsty. Second, we’ll consider the righteousness that Jesus has in view here. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” What is Jesus talking about? And then third, we’ll close and consider what it means to be satisfied in Him. What it means to be satisfied in Him.

In terms of the Beatitudes themselves, they are the character qualities of those who are part of the kingdom of God. These are the virtues that describe all believers and all believers give evidence of all of these. They’re a whole. Through them, we really view fundamental Christian character from eight different angels. None of them points to a natural tendency. Each of these virtues is produced by grace and they are the Spirit’s work within us. This is who Jesus is making us to be.

We’re starting a new series tonight for the next several weeks on the Beatitudes. And you can find the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. And tonight we’ll not only look at the first beatitude about being poor in spirit, but also the second, about a life of mourning and sorrow. You’ll find the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5; you won’t find the word “beatitude” anywhere in the Beatitudes. The word “beatitude” is a Latin term from the Latin translation of this passage and it means “the state of blessedness” or “the state of happiness” - of living a blessed life or a truly happy life.

So I want to turn us to a passage, to a verse tonight that deals with the topic of patience, wisdom in the area of patience, from the book of Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiastes chapter 7. I want to look at this verse along three points tonight. One is - questions without answers. Two - wisdom without answers. And then three - hope without question.

If Psalm 90 is for pilgrims - they don’t have a home but God is their home. If Psalm 91 is for danger - you’re in danger but God is your shelter. Then Psalm 92 is a psalm for worship - your delight is not in the world considered apart from God, but your delight is in the God who created the world and everything in it. And so you delight in Him and His works on His day.

Are you sad or lonely or lacking in hope? Then this is a psalm for you. Are you so content with this life that you have not learned to count your days, to contemplate eternity? Then this is a psalm for you. In this psalm, Moses points us to God as the solution to our plight. He teaches us that God is home and eternal and just and gracious.

The title of our brief meditation is at bare minimum a paradox - weeping in heaven. How can that be? Weeping in heaven? Is it possible that we would find weeping there?

So we are in a little series on Christmas in the mind-bending book of Revelation. This is the vision of the apostle John at the end of his life on the Isle of Patmos in the 90s, the last decade of the first century. We’re in Revelation 21 tonight, the first six verses. And that chapter addresses one of the age old questions of Christmas; a very old question that David Strain brought up this morning. And that is, “Why has the Son of God become a human? Why the God-man?”

And so I’d like us to think about the victory of Christmas this evening, and to do that, we really need to think about that victory from the lens of the Old Testament. Because to understand the book of Revelation, you really need to think about it from the lens of what the Old Testament has first said. The clues to understanding all the symbols and all the imagery in this enigmatic book are found in the Old Testament.

Well we’re going to look at Christmas from that same perspective over the next few weeks. To view Christmas, to view Christ’s birth not as it was promised in the Old Testament, not from the shadow of the cross as the Gospel writers present it to us, but from the spotlight, the spotlight of Christ’s return and what that means for the Christmas message. What that means is that there is an urgency to hear this message. There’s an urgency to fully embrace Christ and to rejoice in Him.

Please turn with me in your Bible to Luke chapter 18; Luke chapter 18. Tonight we are concluding a Sunday night mini-series looking at the parables of Jesus. Tonight we will be in Luke chapter 18, verses 9 to 14. And so the question for us tonight is this. “Who gets to be in the kingdom of heaven?”

Let me invite you to take up God’s Word and to turn with me to the gospel of Matthew this evening as we read from Matthew 25:14-30. In our evening services, many of you will remember, over the last few weeks we’ve been studying a number of the parables. And the one we’re going to be looking at this evening is a parable that encourages us to faithfully improve that which has been entrusted to us. And in the midst of the encouragement, there’s also a very stern warning, and it’s a warning that ought to cause us to stop and to assess our life before God this evening once again.

And I wish we had the time this passage really deserves to dwell on those details, but we simply don’t. All we can really do is pick out a few of the prominent details and meditate on them. Let me mention three for your consideration this evening. First, I want you to see that the Father delights in His servant. The Father delights in His servant. Secondly, the Father ordains His servant. The Father ordains His servant. And thirdly, the Father empowers His servant. The Father empowers His servant. The Father delights in, ordains, and empowers His servant. Now before we consider those themes, let’s pause and pray together.

Well tonight I want to address a subject with you of following God fully. Following God fully. I want to look at the meaning of it - by grace, what it means that Caleb followed God fully. Second, I want to look at the root of it - in grace, why Caleb could follow God fully. And third, I want to look at its reward - a reward of grace, the promise that God granted to Caleb for following Him fully.

Luke 12:35-48 really is not just one parable; it’s three mini-parables. And there’s one unifying theme. Each one of these mini-parables points to the certainty of the return of Christ. And that should give us pause because scholars, as they talk about these three parables, say that these are among the weightiest parables in the New Testament. They deal with the dominant New Testament doctrine repeated more often than any other doctrine in the New Testament. You understand that, right? The doctrine of the return of Christ is the most often repeated doctrine of any other of our doctrines in the New Testament.

What does Jesus give us here that might actually change us, that might wake us up and motivate us to pray? Well He gives us in verses 5 to 13 these two brief parables and they focus on the identity and the character of the One hearing our prayers. First in verses 5 to 10, to motivate you to pray you have to see that God is your friend and you are a beggar. God is your friend and you are a beggar. And then second in verses 11 to 13, to motivate you to pray, you have to see that God is your Father and you are His beloved child. And so God is your friend and God is your Father and you are a beggar and you are His child and He is the best friend and He is the best Father that you could imagine.

And we’re looking at another one of Jesus’ parables tonight. This is not a dramatic parable. There’s no joyful embrace at the reunion of a father and his wayward son. There’s no beaten and bloody traveler left for dead on the side of the road waiting to be rescued by a stranger, an enemy even. No, it’s just a man, a master of a house, and he brings out of his treasure what is new and old. It’s very simple. There’s not a lot of detail there, and yet the teaching of this parable is foundational for how we live the Christian life.

We’re starting a new series at nighttime in October looking at some of the parables in the gospels, and we’ll look tonight at Matthew 13:44-46. Parables are simple stories that Jesus was taking daily life experiences that people had all the time in the first century and telling a very simple story but teaching a cosmic lesson from a normal life happenstance that people would have experienced all the time.

We really want to look at two things tonight. We want to look at Timothy’s charge and we want to look at the something better. Not a very pretty outline, but I think serviceable. Timothy’s charge, and then what is the something better.

So what I want us to look at this evening is three things from the passage; three things. Three things that Paul gives thanks for. The first one is the evidence of saving grace. The evidence of saving grace. The second is the bedrock of grace. And thirdly it’s the impact of grace.

We’re continuing in our study of the three primary Christian virtues - faith, hope and love - looking at how they work together, how they are fueled, what their goal and target is, why they are critical for us. This evening I’d like us to think about the freedom that is ours in those Christian virtues. And in that freedom, how do we not abuse that freedom, how do we not lose that freedom, and at the core, how do we live a life of love that we in the Holy Spirit are freed to live? Particularly, how do we love people who are difficult to love? How do we love people that are impossible, humanly speaking, to love?

And we hear about love a lot. “All you need is love.” “What the world needs now is love.” “In the name of love.” “What’s love got to do with it?” We think we know what love is. Love is so basic, it’s so elementary; it’s timeless and universal. The need for love is undeniable and so we think about love and we read about love and we write about it and we talk about it and we sing about it. But how often, and how well do we actually practice love? Well 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is the definitive chapter on love in the Bible.

This evening we begin a short series looking at various texts that speak to us about the familiar New Testament triad of Christian virtues that sort of together sum up so much of the Christian life - faith, hope and love. And to kick things off tonight we’re looking at Romans chapter 5 and we’ll think about verses 1 through 8 together. A brief glance at the text will immediately demonstrate this is an extraordinary paragraph, so full of riches. The distinct work of each of the three persons of the blessed Trinity is mentioned here. Our past - “we have been justified.” Our present - “we now have peace with God; we now have access into this grace in which we stand.” Our future - “the hope of glory; a hope that does not put us to shame.”

So we’re finishing our mini-series tonight on the story of Abram and we’re in Genesis 14. And at the center of Genesis 14 is the story of Melchizedek. And one popular Old Testament scholar today says that “Melchizedek is the most complex subject in all of Biblical studies.” And so it’s kind of silly to do thirty minutes on Melchizedek, but that’s what we have. And we’re going to do - dip our toe into the water a little bit and highlight some of the main ideas. Melchizedek shows up in five chapters of the Bible - Genesis 14, Psalm 110, Hebrews 5, 6, and 7. And it’s no secret that the New Testament connects Melchizedek to Jesus Christ in some way. He’s a successor, that’s the word that’s used, after the order of Melchizedek. And so like going into Isaiah and looking at the Servant songs in Isaiah, like Isaiah 53, you can actually go back to the Old Testament, go back to Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 and learn new things about Jesus Christ, even from the Old Testament.

We are in a mini-series on the life of Abraham and tonight we will be in Genesis chapter 13. Well what do we have here? What’s going on in this passage? And it might not seem like it, but you can actually peer here into the very essence of human sin, into the very essence of our sin, of humanity’s sin. So we’re going to look at three things tonight - the wrong garden, the sin of the garden, and hope found in another garden.

So this story is about Abraham going down to Egypt at the beginning and then getting kicked out of Egypt at the end. And in the middle, God steps in, God intervenes, God imposes, God comes to fix Abram’s mess. And so we’re just going to think about two lessons tonight. The first is that God intervenes, and the second is that God intervenes for a purpose, for a reason.

There are times, there are times for all of us aren’t there, when what gets out, where what gets found out, where what you were hiding that was a secret that was kept in the dark, there are times where those things are exposed and you’re unglued. And it’s not fun and light, but it’s heavy and there are real consequences. This psalm is written after that happened to King David. So Psalm 32, “Singing our Failure.” We’ll consider the journey home in verses 1 to 5. And second, verses 6 to 11, the joy of home. And so the journey home and the joy of home. The journey home, verses 1 to 5, and then the joy of home in verses 6 to 11.

Charles Spurgeon called Psalm 23, “the pearl of the Psalms.” And so long before Michael Jordan, long before LeBron James and long before David Beckham and long before Ryne Sandberg, King David had his own number 23. And this is a psalm that maybe for you is the most beloved psalm in the Psalter. Maybe this is your most favorite passage in all of Scripture. Maybe this is a passage that was cross-stitched at your grandmother’s house. Maybe this was a psalm that was read or a psalm that was prayed at the funeral of someone that you dearly loved. This maybe is a text that was read to you or read to someone that you love in the hospital. Maybe before a baby was born or maybe in deep fear, this was a passage that was maybe a balm for your soul, medicine for your soul in the dark night. Whatever way God has used it in your life, it’s certainly a passage that can bring with it a flood of memories.

That’s the beginning of the book, Lament for a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff who was a former philosophy professor at Yale University. But he writes the book not as a scholar; he writes the book as a loving father. He writes the book for his twenty-five year old son who died mountain climbing in Austria. And he calls the book his lament - Lament for a Son. His expression of sadness, this prayer of mourning for his late son, Eric. And as you continue reading you can hear the sadness in this father’s words. He says, “There is a hole in the world now. In the place where Eric was, there is now just nothing. There is nobody who saw just what he saw, who knows what he knew, who remembers what he remembered, who loves what he loved. My son is gone. Only a hole remains.”

And before we jump in and read, something to orient us to our text tonight. The New York Times bestseller, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, is the story of the rowing team at the University of Washington in Seattle and their quest for gold at the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin, Germany. And it’s these college guys from working and middle-class families, the sons of loggers, the sons of farmers, these college guys who beat the odds in the most desperate of times, on the heels of the Great Depression and just before WWII. It’s the story of how they beat the odds. And they rowed their way into Berlin, into the Olympics; they raced in front of Hitler and the Nazis and 75,000 Germans. And after the Germans dominated on the water winning five gold medals and one silver in the six races preceding the 8-oar final, the 8-man competition at the end, these college guys beat the favorites. They beat the Germans on their home turf and they won gold.

This past year at First Presbyterian Church we have been immersed in our theme of “Rooted.” What does it mean to be in union with Jesus Christ? More specifically, we’ve been looking at some of the questions - How do I get into union with Jesus Christ? How does our union impact our identity and our ongoing transformation into the likeness of Jesus? And on top of that, what are the right covenant blessings that are ours as a result of our union with the Lord Jesus? And one of the great benefits, one of the great benefits that does arise from our union is the beautiful if not magnificent doctrine of the believer’s adoption into the family of God - a doctrine which teaches us that we are no longer enemies but we are now friends; more than friends, we are sons and daughters of the Most High, never to be discarded into exile once again. At the same time, it also teaches us and reminds us that we have received the Spirit of Christ and we are recipients of every spiritual blessing in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And it’s out of our adoption into the family of God that we are able to confidently cry out, “Abba, Father!” knowing full well that He hears us, He assures us, and He will respond to us as His children according to His perfect plan in His perfect timing.

Let’s read together from 1 Kings chapter 18:17-45. This is the story of Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and Elijah’s confrontation of the gods, the false gods, at Mount Carmel. And it unveils really the big theme of the whole book of Kings, the first and second books of Kings, and that’s that in every story throughout the books of Kings there’s a choice to be made, and that choice is often based upon the first commandments - “You shall have no other gods,” only the one true God. And this is one of the epitomes of that motif throughout the books of the Kings, that there’s a choice here between gods to discern and differentiate the gods, to discern between the spirits, to choose life or death, to choose here the desert or the vineyard is the choice that’s being given. So, let me pray and then we’ll read it together. Let’s pray.