Podcasts about jaroslav pelikan

QUOTE FOR REFLECTION “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”~Jesus, as recorded by John (11:25-26) “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” “Did the resurrection happen? Yes! But, you will be able to confront it only if you let it convince not only your reason and head, but also the commitments of your heart.”~Timothy Keller  “The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe... He is the trailblazer of life... He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so.”~C.S. Lewis “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”~Jaroslav Pelikan “...Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!”~Clarence W. Hall  “With Jesus, even in our darkest moments the best remains and the very best is yet to be…”~Corrie Ten BoomSERMON PASSAGE1 Corinthians 15:1-10, 17-19, 30-34, 58 (ESV) 1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 30 Why are we in danger every hour? 31 I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! 32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”  34 Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Fr. Darryl, Adam, and Michael look into making a "good heretic." As they dissect popular ancient heresies, they realize the shocking similarities to modern beliefs and discuss how to avoid the same pitfalls. For questions or comments, please email darryl@ascensionwv.org. Books Referenced: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), by Jaroslav Pelikan.

We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ~1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 It's finally here—our 300th Anniversary. We will celebrate with several special events during May, including our worship service this Sunday. There will be special music, and greetings, and guests. It will be a wonderful day! I hope you will be here in the meetinghouse for this great celebration. As we celebrate, we will remember what counts. According to Paul, the great apostle who started the church in Thessalonica to which he wrote the letter I quoted above, what count are your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Yale University history professor Jaroslav Pelikan once said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” On Sunday we will celebrate the living our 300-year history, but we will not worship it—it is not an “ism.” Rather we will celebrate how our tradition points us fully in to a future where God is still speaking and dream about how we, the First Congregational Church in Southington, will continue to evolve into an inclusive community of faith that will be a beacon of light in Southington and beyond for the next 300 years!

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries.... It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.”~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), historian at Yale University “…never in the gospels do the disciples catch a single fish without help from Jesus.”~Reynolds Price (1933-2011), poet, novelist, and English professor at Duke “Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you.”~Chadwick Boseman (1976-2020), award-winning actor “‘You are enough' is a message that enslaves people to the false idea that they are responsible to be the mastermind of their current circumstances and future realities—even when they feel overwhelmed. It burdens them with the obligation of being the source of their own joy, contentment, and peace.” “You are not enough, but when your trust is placed in Jesus, his enough-ness is transferred to you.”~Alisa Childers, singer, songwriter, and author “Pride combined with wealth leads to idleness because you falsely feel that God just wants you to have fun…. [I]f unchecked, we become bold in our sin and feel entitled to live selfish lives fueled by the twin values of our culture: acquiring and achieving.”~Rosaria Butterfield, former Women's Studies professor at Syracuse “We desperately need the church for love, for maturity and preparedness, for spiritual care. It is arrogant, rebellious, self-reliant, God-indicting pride to conclude that the church is an optional extra to the Christian life. We need everything God designs for us. Everything. To reject what God designs for His glory and our good is spiritual suicide.”~Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor and writerSERMON PASSAGEJohn 21:1-14 (ESV) 1 After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 4 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. 8 The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. 9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

All of us have certain traditions which are meaningful to us. When it comes to our faith, there are traditions surrounding Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Christmas, our devotional habits, and weekly worship too. Jaroslav Pelikan distinguishes between tradition and traditionalism: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” What is he talking about and why is this difference important in a time when many people feel un-tethered, empty or adrift? This sermon explores Psalm 118, a key background text for the events of Palm Sunday when Jesus parades into Jerusalem as King. How do traditions tether us to the things that matter most in a world which feels increasingly chaotic?

E se a Reforma for mais católica do que estamos acostumados a pensar? Neste segundo episódio da minissérie sobre a relação entre Reforma e secularização, damos palco a autores que contestam a narrativa de Brad Gregory e até a de Charles Taylor, apresentada no episódio anterior. Mostrando precedentes medievais para práticas modernas que a Reforma tentou corrigir, bem como sua continuidade com a igreja medieval e patrística, tentamos descobrir o que realmente deu errado para que a secularização viesse à tona na modernidade. Veja uma transcrição deste episódio em nosso blog. Na Pilgrim você também pode ver mais detalhes a excelente resposta de Kevin Vanhoozer a críticas contemporâneas à Reforma. _____ PARA SE APROFUNDAR Brad Gregory. The Unintended Reformation. Charles Taylor. A Secular Age. Brad Littlejohn. “The civil magistrate” em Protestant Social Teaching. Carl Trueman. “Taylor's complex, incomplete historical narrative” in Our Secular age. Richard Cross. “'Where Angels Fear to Tread': Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy, Antonianum 76 (2001) Richard Muller. “Not Scotist”. Reformation and Renaissance Review. 2012. Kevin Vanhoozer. Autoridade bíblica pós-Reforma. Peter Harrison. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Dru Johnson. Filosofia bíblica. Ensaios de Mark Noll, Karin Maag e John Witte em Protestantism after 500 years. Paul C. H. Lim. “Not Solely Sola Scriptura, or, a Rejoinder to Brad S. Gregory's The Unintended Reformation” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies46:3, September 2016 Pieter Vos. Longing for the good life: virtue ethics after Protestantism. Jaroslav Pelikan. 'The Tragic Necessity of the Reformation', Christian Century, 9 September. 1959, 1017. Ephraim Radner. The Reformation Wrongly Blamed. First Things. _____ JÁ CONHECE A PILGRIM? A nossa plataforma oferece acesso a conteúdos cristãos de qualidade no formato que você preferir. Na Pilgrim você encontra audiolivros, ebooks, palestras, resumos, livros impressos e artigos para cada momento do seu dia e da sua vida: https://thepilgrim.com.br/ _____ SEJA PILGRIM PREMIUM Seja um assinante da Pilgrim e tenha acesso a mais de 9000 livros, cursos, artigos e muito mais em uma única assinatura mensal: https://thepilgrim.com.br/seja-um-assinante Quais as vantagens? Acesso aos originais Pilgrim + Download ilimitado para ouvir offline + Acesso a mais de 9.000 títulos! + Frete grátis na compra de livros impressos em nossa loja _____ SIGA A PILGRIM No Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pilgrim.app/ no Twitter: https://twitter.com/AppPilgrim no TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pilgrimapp e no YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy1lBN2eNOdL_dJtKnQZlCw Entre em contato através do contato@thepilgrim.com.br. Em suma é um podcast original Pilgrim. Todos os direitos reservados. O ponto de vista deste texto é de responsabilidade de seu(s) autor(es) e colaboradores diretos, não refletindo necessariamente a posição da Pilgrim ou de sua equipe de profissionais.

••• Bible Study Verses: Matthew 17:19-21, Romans 10:17, Joshua 1:8, Revelation 12:11, John 1:12,14, Psalm 89:34 . ••• “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living”, Jaroslav Pelikan”, Jaroslav, Christianity Historian and Scholar, (December 1923 – May 2006). † ••• “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” 1 Timothy 6.12, NKJV . ••• What are the Requirements for a Working Faith? ••• What is a Prerequisite for a Working Faith? ••• What is a Conditions for a Working Faith? ••• What are 3-reasons Why Our Living Faith Makes Demands on Us? ••• Why Must We Understand The Demands of Our Living Faith? ••• Why did the disciples' Faith not Deliver the Desired Result? ••• Why is our Faith not Delivering as Promised? ••• What are 4-negative consequences of Ignorance of Faith's Demand? ••• What are the 5-important Demands of Our Living Faith? ••• What always happens to characters in the bible before they do anything worth talking about? ••• What are 4-extremely important life actions with The Word that Faith Demands? ••• Is Your faith willing to submit to the Demand of an Encounter with the Word of God? ••• Pastor Godwin Otuno expounds on this and much more on the exciting journey of Fresh Encounters Radio Podcast originally aired on June 18, 2022 on WNQM, Nashville Quality Ministries and WWCR World Wide Christian Radio broadcast to all 7-continents on this big beautiful blue marble, earth, floating through space. Please be prayerful before studying The Word of God so that you will receive the most inspiration possible . ••• This Discipleship Teaching Podcast is brought to you by Christian Leadership International and all the beloved of God who believe in it's mission through prayer and support. Thank you . ••• Study Guides at - https://shows.acast.com/fresh-encounter-radio-podcast/episodes . ••• Exceeding Thanks to Universe Creator Christ Jesus AND photo by anonymous photographer and Chong Wei, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, https://mobile.twitter.com/cwei4fun, art direction by gil on his mac . ••• † https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/4954-jaroslav-pelikan . ••• Broadcaster's Website - www.lifelonganointing.com/ . ••• RESOURCE - www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/kjv/john.1%20 . ••• RESOURCE - www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/ . ••• FERP220618 Episode #229 GOT220618 ep229 . ••• The Mystery of Our Living Faith - The Demands of Our Living Faith . Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/fresh-encounter-radio-podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION “The popular mind has grown so confused that it is no longer able to receive any statement of fact except as an expression of personal feeling.” “The heaviest restriction upon…freedom…is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.” ~Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), writer and literary critic “…political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.” ~P. D. [Phyllis Dorothy] James (1920-2014), English novelist Solzhenitsyn “asserted that the ideological Lie was worse than violence and physical brutality, ultimately more destructive of the integrity of the human soul.” ~Daniel J. Mahoney, college professor and author “Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant; then it tries to silence good.” ~Charles J. Chaput, former bishop, member of the Potawatomi Nation “The trick is not to be isolated…. In fact, the whole tradition of popular control has been…to keep people isolated, because if you can keep them isolated enough, you can get them to believe anything.” ~Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, and professor at M.I.T. “If the church is to prosper and mature, she will need faithful men to lead and care for her…men who are sound in doctrine, whose lives are guided by the Word of God, and who are willing to defend the truth. The church will need to hold up as its ideal those who model fidelity and love toward God, men who will pour themselves out for the benefit of the Lord's sheep. Men of this mold are gifts to the church from her Lord.” ~Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833), first black person to be ordained a minister in the United States and 30-year pastor in Rutland, VT “The church is always more than a school. But the church cannot be less than a school.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), scholar and professor at Yale SERMON PASSAGE Ephesians 1:3-23, Ephesians 4:1-16 (ESV) Ephesians 1 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. 15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 4 1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” 9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

WHO IS THIS MAN? WHO IS THIS MAN? PART 10 – HIS UNBELIEVABLE IMPACT JAKE STIMPSON | HISTORY | JESUS | IMPACT | CHANGED THE WORLD | JORDAN PETERSON | LITERATURE  In the words of Jaroslav Pelikan, “Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant […]

This is a re-upload of our second episode, Rev. Andrew Christiansen discusses natural theology and its sub-topic of natural law. We cover many years and many figures in this episode: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Hooker and more! There is no guest tonight, we just had some free time and some paid for podcast hours... so enjoy! For further reading on your own, we briefly referred to some excellent writings by scholars in this episode: *Jaroslav Pelikan's book Christianity and Classical Culture *Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica *D.A. Degnan's article "Two Models of Positive Law in Aquinas" from the Thomist journal *Siegbert Becker's book The Foolishness of God *Gifford Grobien's article "What is Natural Law? Medieval Foundations and Luther's Appropriation" as found in the book Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal *Torrance Kirby's chapter on natural law from the Cambridge Companion to Richard Hooker *David VanDrunen's excellent book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

A sermon by Jamie Howison from Sunday October 31, 2021, which we marked as the Feast of All Saints'. The readings for the week were Isaiah 25:6-9 and John 11:32-44. The sermon also references a book by Richard Coles called Lives of the Improbable Saints, about which you can read more by clicking here.Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to audio and recommend this episode to your friends. We invite you to rate us or write a review of what we are doing on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help others join the conversation.* * *This podcast is created at saint benedict's table, a congregation of the Anglican Church of Canada in Winnipeg, where we've been making great audio since 2006. Listen to other recent episodes on our website and see our entire catalogue of well over 500 shows on our hosting page.Our MissionTo provide rich and stimulating audio resources to the wider church and engage topics and issues relevant to the concerns and questions of the larger culture in which we live.

In this second of two episodes, Pastor John and Pastor Tim continue their discussion of a very important question - "Was Jesus raised from the dead?" As the religion scholar Jaroslav Pelikan once put it, "If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen, nothing else matters." Enjoy!

In our second episode, Rev. Andrew Christiansen discusses natural theology and its sub-topic of natural law. We cover many years and many figures in this episode: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Hooker and more! There is no guest tonight, we just had some free time and some paid for podcast hours... so enjoy! For further reading on your own, we briefly referred to some excellent writings by scholars in this episode: *Jaroslav Pelikan's book Christianity and Classical Culture *Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica*D.A. Degnan's article "Two Models of Positive Law in Aquinas" from the Thomist journal *Siegbert Becker's book The Foolishness of God*Gifford Grobien's article "What is Natural Law? Medieval Foundations and Luther's Appropriation" as found in the  book Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal*Torrance Kirby's chapter on natural law from the Cambridge Companion to Richard Hooker *David VanDrunen's excellent book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode with Dr. David Buschart, Professor of Theology and Historical Studies at Denver Seminary, we discuss Jaroslav Pelikan and the development of doctrine. We also discuss the tensions in denominationalism in a consumeristic age. The episode closes with a discussion on ecclesiology and why evangelicals don’t care about it. Exploring Protestant Traditions - https://amzn.to/38WTANtTheology as Retrieval - https://amzn.to/3krOuL2

Jaroslav Pelikan, teológ, historik náboženstva a dekan Yale univerzity. Hovorí o ňom reverend Dušan Tóth z Kanady.

Ascultați podcast-ul ”Pași spre viață”, o emisiune dialog cu Cristina Olariu și pastorul Ghiță Mocan. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rvetm-pasi/message

In this lecture, I cover the many notes from the classic scholarly work from Jaroslav Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, vol. 1. Pelikan's history of the development of ideas is a standard work for historical theology and provides an excellent introduction to the first 6 centuries of the Christian Church, the major heresies, the Creed and Trinity, Nicaea and more! The second half is for paid subscribers to JaysAnalysis.

Generally you should run screaming in the opposite direction when someone starts talking about her dissertation, but we promise this is a good one. French Orthodox theologian Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005) knew pretty much every important Orthodox theologian of the 20th century, pioneered Russian hagiography, co-edited a journal, was active in the ecumenical movement, and supported the possibility of the ordination of women in the Orthodox church. Wait, what? Yes—but not until she was 75! And she kept at it until her death at the age of 98. We review her atypical support for women in ministry (atypical in many ways) and draw out some larger lessons for thinking about sex and gender in light of the Christian faith today.   Support us on Patreon!   Notes: 1. Some useful background to this episode was already covered in our earlier episode on What Is a Person? 2. Among the books by Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, check out: The Ministry of Women in the Church, The Place of the Heart, Discerning the Signs of the Times, The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (with Kallistos Ware), and Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church. 3. Olga Lossky has written a wonderful biography of Behr-Sigel entitled Toward the Endless Day, which I reviewed here. 4. My book is entitled Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel; there’s an interview with me about it here. I co-edited a collection of essays about Behr-Sigel entitled A Communion in Faith and Love, which includes Elisabeth Parmentier’s essay about Behr-Sigel’s education at the University of Strasbourg and one from me on “Behr-Sigel’s ‘New’ Hagiography and Its Ecumenical Potential.” I’ve more recently contributed to Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church with the essay “Elisabeth Behr-Sigel’s Trinitarian Case for the Ordination of Women.” I created an archive of my collection of Behr-Sigel’s books and articles at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. 5. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols) 6. Among the other Orthodox theologians mentioned in this episode are Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware, John Meyendorff, and John Behr. 7. Our friend Michael Plekon is the author of (among other things): Living Icons, Uncommon Prayer, Saints as They Really Are, The World as Sacrament, and Hidden Holiness 8. Paul Evdokimov’s main books on women are Woman and the Salvation of the World and The Sacrament of Love 9. See Dad’s essay “Whose Church? Which Ministry?” in Lutheran Forum 42/4 (Winter 2008): 48–53 10. For further detail on some of the topics discussed here, see my contribution to the Lutherjahrbuch 2017 and also the Lutheran Forum essays “The Epistle of Eutyche,” “The Face of Jesus, Part One” and “The Face of Jesus, Part Two,” and “Where Have All the Women Gone?” More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!

Last time we covered two corrected corruptions (1 Timothy 3.16 and 1 John 5.7).  This time we’ll consider two uncorrected corruptions, including the long ending on Mark (16.9-20) and the passage about the adulterous woman that Jesus saves (John 7.53-8.11).  Although these two texts are not found in the earliest and best manuscripts and translators Read more about 341 Bible 12 – Two Uncorrected Corruptions (Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11)[…]

Last time we covered two corrected corruptions (1 Timothy 3.16 and 1 John 5.7).  This time we’ll consider two uncorrected corruptions, including the long ending on Mark (16.9-20) and the passage about the adulterous woman that Jesus saves (John 7.53-8.11).  Although these two texts are not found in the earliest and best manuscripts and translators Read more about 341 Bible 12 – Two Uncorrected Corruptions (Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11)[…]

We remember the year 2006 and the death of historian Jaroslav Pelikan. The reading is from Steve Brown "A Scandalous Freedom." — Questions? Comments? Show Ideas? Send them to us at CHA@1517.org. And, of course, share us with a friend or two! Please subscribe, rate, and review us on the following Podcast portals and apps: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Overcast Google Play You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. This show was produced by Christopher Gillespie, a Lutheran pastor (stjohnrandomlake.org), coffee roaster (gillespie.coffee), and media producer (gillespie.media). We’re a part of 1517 Podcasts, a network of shows dedicated to delivering Christ-centered content. Our podcasts cover a multitude of content, from Christian doctrine, apologetics, cultural engagement, and powerful preaching. Support the work of 1517 today.

Hear now the word of the Lord from 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, ESV This is the word of the Lord, given to us in love. When I began last year preaching through 1 Corinthians, I looked forward to preaching the passage that I'm about to preach to through today. We celebrate the Lord's Supper weekly and although we do give sort of a little table meditation when we receive the Lord's Supper, we don't often have time for extended teaching and preaching about the Lord's Supper. Because we preach consecutively through books of the Bible, the Lord's Supper doesn't come up explicitly all that often. So, I was looking forward to getting into teaching, not only about what we are doing when we receive the Lord's Supper, but why we are doing it. The last thing I expected, the last thing any anyone expected was that we would come to this passage on a week when we cannot come together much less celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Yet in God's providence here we are. In God's providence, this week I was teaching twice on the Westminster Standard's teaching on the doctrine and the practice of the Lord's Supper. This week, in God's providence, we're coming to this text where I will be preaching on the Lord's Supper and I want to say that I'm still excited about preaching about this. There's a sorrow in the loss that we're going to talk about. It's something that we cannot taste but as we study this passage it's nevertheless important because in this passage, as we just think about the Lord's Supper and study it we get the gospel this morning. Let us find our hope in Christ, our hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we study his word but await his sacrament. Our big idea this morning in this passage is this, Christ delivers himself to us in the Lord's Supper. This morning as we look at this a relatively short passage we'll look at three parts. 1. The tradition that was delivered to us 2. The tradition is namely that Christ was delivered up for us 3. The tradition is delivered through us We'll see why I'm making such a big use of this word delivered here shortly. The Tradition That was Delivered to Us Well let's look at our first section which is just part of verse 23, “delivered to us”. Look what Paul says in verse 23, 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that 1 Corinthians 11:23a, ESV This language of receiving and delivering is the language of passing down traditions. A tradition is literally something that is delivered, what is a given over. So actually the word for tradition that we see back in 1 Corinthians 11:2 is from the same root word as the word delivered. So look what Paul wrote in verse 2, 2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 1 Corinthians 11:2, ESV So, Paul is saying I delivered these traditions, these delivering overs to you. Well again Paul had some things to commend and now again as we looked at last week in verses 17 through 22, he's not commending them how they are remembering the Lord's Supper. So, now in verse 23 this is so significant that Paul has to remind them of precisely what the tradition, what he received from the Lord Jesus, and what he delivered to them; what the tradition of the Lord's Supper is. Now as we think about this idea of traditions as Bible believing Protestants, we probably have a couple of issues that we need to deal with here when we think about traditions. Sometimes we think about traditions that are just sort of manmade, that men created and passed down and they become sort of law even though they're outside the Bible. We also worry about traditions in worship; are we really worshipping if we're just going through the motions of traditions when we worship? We want to worship as our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ instructed us to worship. In John chapter four he said that God is looking for worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth. So we have to ask whatever Paul is saying about traditions here, how does it line up with worshipping as Jesus taught us in spirit and in truth? Well as we think about the spirit aspect, are we believing these things, are these real to us or are we just going through the motions? I think the theologian Jaroslav Pelikan quotation is really helpful to think this through. He wrote, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living and I suppose I should add it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.” Well as a tradition, what Paul is talking to us here about the tradition of the Lord's Supper, we have a practice and words and teaching surrounding that practice that links us to the past. We share real, vibrant, living, faith with those who have gone before us, so many of them who have already died and entered into their eternal reward. What we need to beware is not a tradition that links us to Christians who have gone by for us, what we need to be worried about is this traditionalism, where we're just going through the motions without any serious reflection on what we are doing. That would be as Jaroslav Pelikan, writes the dead faith of the living. So we've got to recover the tradition while rejecting the traditionalism and that's how we make sure that we are worshiping in spirit. What about truth? Again we can't just worship however we want. We can't worship according to the minds and devices and imaginations of men, so is this tradition that Paul is giving us authoritative? Does it actually come from God? Paul says, yes this tradition comes from the Lord. In verse 23 he said, “for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” The tradition that Paul is talking about is the testimony of the Scriptures, the testimony of the eyewitnesses who were there at the very first Lord's Supper, at the Last Supper of Jesus. Tradition here is the faithful witness to the eyewitnesses of the Apostles and that's recorded for us in the testimony, the witness, of Scripture. So again, while Paul commends them in many ways for maintaining traditions back in verse 2, here he has to restate this tradition again because they're missing it. They'd forgotten about it, they'd began divided among themselves, and they're not remembering the Lord's Supper or celebrating it in a way they ought to. So then what is this tradition that has been delivered to us? It's been given over, delivered, to us? Well look at what Paul writes. He continues and says 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 1 Corinthians 11:23, ESV We translate this word betrayed, and that's a very good and faithful translation of this word. Betrayed, this is exactly what it means. For example in Matthew 26:21 when Jesus is gathering all of his disciples on the night when he was betrayed and telling them and he says, “Truly I say to you one of you will betray me.” That's the same word there, but this word for betrayed is the word for forgiving. It's also the same word for delivered that we see here in verse 23 and back in verse 2. It's the word that's closely associated with tradition. The idea is that tradition is to hand something on, but this idea of betrayal is to hand someone over like when Judas handed Jesus over to the authorities. Actually, this is not only true in Greek, it's also true in Latin. We get our words for traitor and tradition from the same root Latin word. Both mean either to hand over someone falsely, to betray them, or to hand it down a tradition that has been kept for us that we received and then to pass it on. Here this word for delivering is important in other contexts. Richard Hayes, in his commentary in this passage, points out that when Paul uses this word, he doesn't often use it to describe Judas' betrayal, Judas' is handing over of Jesus. Rather in Romans 8:32 and elsewhere in Romans that Paul uses this word to refer to God's giving over of Jesus to be crucified. So in Romans 8:32, “he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.” That word “gave him up” that's the word of giving over, it's the word of delivering Jesus up. So here in verse 23 when we translate this word betrayed, that's true, it certainly could mean that. The tradition is that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed by Judas, that doesn't that phrase “by Judas” doesn't appear there but that could be what this means. Or this could be a reference to the Father's work of sending, of delivering, Jesus over to be crucified. Or this actually could be a reference to both sides of this, both the wicked action of Judas and betrayal of Jesus and also the Father's gracious love plan to give over his Son to be sacrificed for us. That's actually captured for us in Acts 2:23. Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, says this 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. Acts 2:23, ESV “Jesus delivered up”, there the word is not given over but given out. It's a very close synonym, not given over but given out. Lawless men did this and God delivered Jesus, gave Jesus out, for this purpose. It wasn't outside the sovereign control of God, but it was also very much the culpability, the guilt, of the lawless men who crucified Him. There's one more note that we should make about this word. Paul also uses this word to talk about the willing, loving, sacrificial giving over of Jesus of himself. It's his personal active role in this. So, in Galatians 2:20 that Paul writes, 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20, ESV You also see this in Ephesians 5:2 and 5:25, not only did the Father give his Son over, not only did Judas betray his Son, but Jesus willingly gave himself over in love for us. What Paul is saying is this is the tradition, this is what I received from the Lord, and this is what I delivered over to you. It's not a human tradition developed in the minds and imaginations of men, this is the very gospel of God announcing the good news of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's good news for sinners, handed down from generation to generation. Linking us directly all the way back to our Lord's original institution of this sacrament. So, when we receive and maintain this tradition in our worship, we are doing so in spirit and in truth, or worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth in this tradition. Well why though do we need to reflect upon the fact that the gospel is a tradition? Why not just call this the gospel? Well it's worth noting if you flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 when Paul has this great passage on the gospel, in chapter 15:1-11. 15 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11,ESV Notice how he starts, he says, “Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preach to you.” There is why don't we just talk about that the gospel preached. Why do we have to get into this idea of traditions? Well look what he goes on to say, “which you received.” There's that language of receiving a tradition, “in which you stand and by which you were being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain” Now look at verse 3, “for I delivered to you”, there's that same word again, gave over to you. Well what Paul is saying is that this gospel is the tradition. There isn't a division about the traditions over here and the gospel over here, the tradition is the gospel and the gospel is the tradition. The reason it's important to think about this as a tradition is because this reminds us that the gospel, the tradition that Christ was delivered up for us, is bigger than us. This tradition came before us, this tradition will outlast us, this tradition is independent of us it doesn't depend in any way on us, this tradition stands outside of us. As much as this tradition is this objective big thing, it does not at all dependent upon us or what we do or what we believe. It's true whether or not we believe it, whether or not we practice it. Even so this tradition must be ours if we would be saved by it. Though this tradition is independent of us, standing outside of us, it can't remain outside of us. Like a river flowing through time, we must be carried along in the stream of this tradition of the Gospel personally. We must appropriate it personally, by faith. The Lord's Supper not only delivers to us the tradition that Christ was delivered up or delivered over, but specifically the Lord's Supper is a very intimate personal way of communicating to us that the Lord Jesus Christ was delivered up or delivered over for us. The Tradition is that Christ was Delivered Up for Us That brings us to our second point, from the end of verse 23 all the way through verse 25, that Christ was delivered up for us. Look what Paul goes on let's start kind of midway through verse 23, 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, ESV Well as we think about our own practice of for serving the Lord's Supper, notice that Paul talks about the fact that Jesus took bread, we'll talk about the bread itself in just a moment. Then he goes on to say, “and when he had given thanks”. Well if Jesus gave thanks for the Father's loving, gracious plan toward miserable guilty sinners like you and me, how much more should we give thanks that Jesus willing endured the agonies and curse of the cross for us? We must give thanks to the Father who sent the Son to accomplish this work for us, to the Son who endured and accomplished this work for us, to the Spirit who sanctified this work and who ongoingly seals and confirms and ratifies this work to us. We give thanks because of what God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done to accomplish our redemption through delivering up Jesus Christ on the cross. When he had given thanks, the next element is that he broke it, he broke the bread. Now notice here that when Paul talks about the bread, the only emphasis here, the only description we have about the bread, is the emphasis on the breaking of the bread. Not on the recipe of the bread. Now as there have been a lot of questions throughout church history about what kind of bread would have been used here. Was this leavened bread or unleavened bread? As we look at the original Lord's Supper, at Jesus's Last Supper, we have to recognize that Jesus would have certainly used unleavened bread in that original Lord's Supper because that original Lord's Supper took place during a Passover meal. We also should recognize that not all the details of the very first administration of the Lord's Supper where Jesus institutes it, not all of those details are ongoingly practiced today. So for example, here when we are reminded that the Lord Jesus gave and instituted this Lord's Supper on the night when he was betrayed, that doesn't require that the Lord's Supper must be administered at night. It doesn't mean that we have to somehow betray someone as a part of doing this, even though this was the night when Jesus was betrayed. We don't reenact those elements. We don't do this only with men; the original Lord's Supper only had men in attendance and in fact in the whole Scripture we never see any example of a woman receiving the Lord's Supper. Yet we know by the nature of this sacrament this is given for all God's people, men and women alike, so we have women included. We don't do this reclining or lying on the floor around a table in sort of a Jewish style of eating a feast. We don't repeat any of those elements. What we have here in 1st Corinthians 11 is a distillation, a summary, of the elements that not only were part of the background, just a couple of those, but primarily the elements that we need to ongoingly repeat. So then we have to ask the question again, what kind of bread is this? Is this leavened bread, is this unleavened bread? Well though the Greek language has a word for unleavened bread, Paul used it back in 1st Corinthians 5:8, the word that Paul uses here and the word that the Gospel writers use when they're recording the story of the institution of the Lord's Supper, they never used the word unleavened bread. Always we see only the common word for bread. Now why is this? Well I don't know precisely, but I would draw this observation that in the Old Testament the details of the ceremonial law were critical. There were so many details, just an abundance of details, of exact recipes and exactly how things had to appear, and the timing of them. They were so important for giving a precise, even though it was both shadowy and veiled, revelation of the of who Jesus would be. By those shadows of the ceremonial law God built up the faith of his people in the promised Messiah. The purpose of the picture given in those ceremonial details was always to point to a person, but in the New Testament when we read the passages about our worship there's a much lower emphasis on those ceremonial details. We are not given a recipe for the bread, leavened or unleavened. We should keep in mind that when we eat that what we eat is usually not leavened bread, but its bread made with yeast. Yeast and leaven are not the same thing. If you think this has to be leavened bread, understand most of what you eat would not qualify because it's not made with leaven. We're not told that it has to be leavened. We're not told whether it should contain gluten or be gluten-free, whether the grain should be wheat or rye or millet or something else. We're not told those details, they're unimportant. Similarly, we're not told the details of the cup. We know from Matthew, Mark, and Luke that it should be the fruit of the vine. We need grapes but we're not told whether this should be red or white wine. We're not told whether the wine should be alcoholic or sweet freshly pressed wine without alcohol. We're not told any of that information because the emphasis of the New Testament sacraments are not on the ceremonial details but on the substance beyond which the details of the sacraments point us. In comparison to the Old Testament, all the ceremonial details of the Old Testament in the various sacrifices, sacraments, types and shadows, what we have in the New Testament the sacraments we have are fewer in number, we only have baptism and the Lord's Supper. They are administered with more simplicity and less outward glory. However in our sacraments the substance Christ Himself is held forth in more fullness, more evidence, and more spiritual power because the bread is not the point. Christ is the point. We don't need a recipe, we don't need an abundance of ceremonial details to paint us a picture, because we have the person. We know the work that this person accomplished and therefore the only ceremonial detail we have is not about the recipe of the bread, but the fact that the bread is broke. Whatever bread you use, it must be broken to testify to the history we know that Christ's body was broken. His bones were not broken, the Gospel of John in John chapter 19 it tells us the bones were not broken to fulfill also other aspects of the prophecy that the Old Testament gives us. Yet Christ's body was broken as a sacrifice. Not only as a sacrifice, but a sacrifice that is for you. Jesus says this is my body which is for you. It's fact, it's history that Jesus Christ's body was broken; that's true, that's independent of you. Nevertheless, it must be appropriated by you, received by you in faith. Not only was Christ delivered up, but that he was delivered up for me, he was delivered up for you if you receive him by faith. So, Jesus says finally do this in remembrance of me. Now this phrase here is not just sort of a reminder of Jesus, oh yeah Jesus. No this isn't a bare calling to mind of Jesus, that's such a minimization of what this text means, this is more than that. Charles Hodge captures what this would mean to be a remembrance of Jesus he says, “This means that we profess faith in Him as the sacrifice for our sins, that we receive him as such, that we acknowledge the obligations which rest upon us as those who have been redeemed by his blood, and that we recognize ourselves as constituent members of his church, and all believers as our brethren.” This is what we do with the bread. Paul then goes on here to talk about the cup verse 25, 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 1 Corinthians 11:25, ESV Well again as I mentioned earlier, there's no recipe, no description of this wine. We don't know if it's red or white or anything like that. It's described, in fact, the cup is described not according to its contents but according to its container. Do you notice that we don't read about the wine itself, we read about the cup in which that the wine is contained? So again, there's that there's a huge downplaying here of the exact recipe for the wine itself. The details are not important, what is important is what Jesus tells us, “In the same way he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Now elsewhere, for example in Matthew 26:28 we have not only that Jesus says this is my body but also, he says this is my blood. But here Paul is quoting a slightly different version of this, it's possible Jesus gave both interpretations, both sayings, this is my body let me tell you what that means, or this is my blood let me tell you what that means. That means that this is the new covenant in my blood. What we find here in 1st Corinthians chapter 11 clarifies how we are to interpret Jesus's statements, “this is my body” and “this is my blood”, but not as though this means literally that the body and blood of Jesus Christ are in the bread and in the wine, that they replace the bread or the wine or that they are in with and under the bread and the wine. Rather that the bread and the cup exhibits, it confers to us the blessings of the new covenant, which were acquired for us in Christ's blood. Well notice that Christ calls this not just a covenant, but the new covenant. In what sense is this a new covenant? Well you've probably heard this before in Greek there are two words for new, one means new in the sense of something that did not exist previously, something that didn't exist at all. So, if that word were used, which it's not, that would mean that this new covenant does not have continuity with what came before it. There was an old covenant and now that's been abolished entirely and now there is a new covenant that is totally independent of that that older covenant. However, the word here is new, in the sense of being renamed. That what was old, there is continuity. So, we might think about this as when Jesus says this cup is the new covenant in my blood, he's actually quoting covenant language from Exodus chapter 4, “behold the blood of the covenant by which God has sanctified you.” So, Jesus says this cup is the new covenant in my blood. The way we might understand the newness of this is to say, so the blood of animals promised something, the old covenant was a promise. But now we have the blood of Jesus, not in the cup, but the blood of Jesus shed on the cross which the cup commemorates, which the cup points us to, which the cup gives us a participation in, 1 Corinthians 10:16. What the blood of animals promised the blood of Jesus now provides, its new in that sense. As the accomplishment and the confirmation and the sealing of what the old covenant pointed forward to. Well this is how we understand the Lord's Supper, that it confirms and ratifies more than truth simply that Christ was delivered up, but it also confirms and ratifies the truth that Christ was delivered up for us. We have the message of this gospel in the word, that's why we preach from God's Word every week, to declare the mystery of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We also have the message of the gospel Christ crucified for us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but as we receive the bread and the cup it seals that Christ's body would and was broken and his blood was shed for us in the new covenant. In the Lord's Supper the precious promises of the gospel are personally applied to us. I mentioned last week, it's worth mentioning again, the ideas are quoted from Robert Bruce a Scottish pastor who lived from 1554 to 1631 AD, where he says that, “In the Lord's Supper we do not gain a better Christ than what we have in the word, but in the Lord's Supper we gain the same Christ better.” So for this reason we can worship with the word alone, but what we have in the word, Jesus Christ and him crucified, we gain better a stronger, a clearer way when we receive the Lord's Supper. So far then in this passage we have seen that the tradition of Christ has been delivered to us. That it has been handed down through the ages of the church by the preaching of God's Word. Then we also have seen what the tradition of Christ is; Christ delivered up for us. A gospel message that we received by faith. The Tradition is Delivered Through Us Now here in this last and third section in verse 26, we must see our part in the ongoing growth and extension of the church through history. As we receive the tradition of Christ in the Lord's Supper, we become the means through which God delivers the tradition of Christ in the Lord's Supper to the next generation. Christ's gospel, the tradition of Christ, delivered through us that's our third point. Paul writes in verse 26, 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:26, ESV Now what does Paul mean by this? Well in part, when you talk about the proclamation of the Lord's death, he's referring to the ministers, proclamation of Christ's death. First in preaching of the word. Remember that what the Lord's Supper does is not to give us something different from the word, the Lord's Supper is to confirm and ratify and authenticate what we have in the word. The sacrament however never stands on its own, it is dependent upon what the word declares. So, first that the preaching of the word. Secondly, it proclaims the Lord's death in the presiding minister's proclamation of the words of institution that we read from this passage every week when we receive the Lord's Supper, to remind us of the fact that Christ's body was broken, and his blood shed for us. The third way we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes is by each and every person who communes, who receives the bread and the wine by faith. To eat this bread and to drink the cup is functionally a profession of faith. You are declaring that this is real for you, true for you. Now that's why we often confess creed's or confessions of faith right before the Lord's table, to proclaim what we mean in the gospel of the Lord's death until he comes. So, when inquirers come to see what we're doing and why we're doing it, they should never miss the fact that as we come, we're not getting a snack. They should never miss the fact that as we come, we're doing something, so different from that. We are individually professing our faith and proclaiming through the merit and the value and the glory of Christ's death until he comes. The gospel of Jesus this is the tradition that was delivered from the Lord to his apostles, those at the Last Supper, as well as Paul. This is the tradition that Christ delivered to the Corinthians and by this passage of Scripture to all churches, all the way down to us. This is the tradition that we deliver on to the next generation as our children see us eating and drinking and ask what does this mean? Our children are born and baptized into the church. As community members they're included in the covenant by God's own promises that he will be God to our children after us, but they cannot at first do what God requires communicants to do before receiving the Lord's Supper. We'll look at this next week in verse 28. We read about how that we must examine ourselves, that we must discern the body, verse 29, and then we must judge ourselves before we eat and drink of the Lord's Supper. Well children at first can't do these things, therefore they cannot at first receive the Lord's Supper. Now this doesn't mean though that the Lord's Supper has no benefit for them. When they see us taking the Lord's Supper week after week, they recognize that while they are members of the church by birth, there is more to gain than simply their great inheritance that they have by birth. When they ask questions they give their parents opportunities to explain the gospel and by asking, “Why am I held back from the table?”, God provokes them to think and he begins to strengthen and deepen and confirm their personal faith until they too may give credible profession of personal faith in Christ in order to come to the table. When that happens it's such a joy that this isn't just something that children are parroting to us, this is something that is personal to them. So, we relentlessly pray with and for our children that they will never remember a day when they did not know Jesus. This is a tradition not only that we have received, not only that we pass on, but we're also recognizing that in this great stream of the tradition of the gospel of Jesus Christ that God is flowing like a river through history. This is the tradition that will carry on, that they will deliver when we are gone, after we die, in generation after generation until the Lord comes. It's not just that we're delivering it to them, we are entrusting it to them, delivering it to them with the expectation that they will deliver it on after us. This tradition is delivered to us, it's a tradition about Christ delivered up for us, and it's a tradition that is delivered on through us. Application With all this in mind I have three applications. 1. Receive the tradition of Christ. By receive, I partially mean simply learn it. That is I'm talking about dedicating yourself to learn the objective information about what Jesus Christ has done in history. The tradition that has been passed down through the ages of the church in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The tradition is not something that is carefully guarded as a secret by cloistered clergy, at which they sometimes reveal in bits and pieces. We reject the Roman Catholic idea that the church possesses oral traditions that go beyond the Scriptures. Rather what we see in this passage of Scripture is that the tradition we have is the scripture, which proclaims to us the gospel of Jesus Christ, who was delivered up by Judas according to the hands of wicked man, who was delivered up according to the sending of the Father, who was delivered up out of love of the Son, and who's delivered up by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. Wherever the church faithfully proclaims what the Scriptures teach, there the church is faithfully passing on the tradition of Jesus Christ. This is the sense in which the church is a pillar and buttress of the truth, as we see in 1 Timothy 3:15. That we exist for passing down the gospel from generation to generation. Right now we're experiencing an unprecedented crisis that inhibits our ability to gather together fully and freely and safely, but even so our mission doesn't change. Therefore, I commend you, receive, learn the tradition of Christ. 2. We have to do more than learn it and we must receive this tradition, but as we receive this tradition it's not just intellectually understanding what it means. We must partake of this tradition, don't just learn it, partake of it. Personally, apply it to your life. Appropriate this for yourself by faith. Christ was not merely delivered up, he was delivered up for you if you'll receive him by faith. Do you know this? If so, do you possess this as your only comfort in life and in death? Is the tradition of Jesus Christ the treasure that you would sell everything in this world to gain? “O taste and see that the Lord is good”, Psalm 34:8. As we continue to wait for the next time that we can taste physically of the Lord's Supper, the goodness of God in the Lord's Supper, prepare your hearts to receive what Christ has given to us. As we study this word prayerfully meditate on it and receive it by faith. 3. We must pass on this tradition of Christ's. Parents do you teach your children these things? Do you ask and answer questions about the Lord's Supper that your children see week after week? Do you pray with and for your children with a view to their embracing Christ and thus possessing personally all benefits of the covenant? Do you pass on the gospel when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise with your children, as we're commanded in Deuteronomy 6:4-7? I'm a parent of young children, I know there's sometimes a fear that they're not getting if they're not listening now. You do family worship together and it seems like no one's getting anything out of this; they're distracted and wriggling and screaming and fighting. Let me encourage you continue faithfully. Children pick up more than we realize and over the course of time as we faithfully pass down this tradition, God works in them as we scatter an abundance of seeds in their lives. God uses those seeds to bring up a harvest that's what we're praying for. It's not just by doing it we have to look to Lord to accomplish in us what we are scattering the seeds to do, praying that he will bring about fruit when all we can do is to scatter the seeds. For all of us, do we share these things with unbelievers, with unbelieving people we know, with our unbelieving family members, friends, neighbors, fellow students, or coworkers? We have to remember Acts 2:39 that the promise is not only for us. We need to partake of this personally. The promises are for our children, we need to pass it on to them, hand down those traditions of them. Also, the promises are also for all those who are far off whom the Lord calls to himself. We need to pass this tradition on to others. We are passing on this tradition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have in this passage one of the most profound statements about one of the most important traditions that has been passed down through all the ages of the church, that has come now to us. The tradition, the practice of the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of Christ's own body and blood that he gave for us to be broken and shed, and we might receive it and participate in the blessings of the covenant that he purchased for us by faith. Friends let's look to Christ in faith this morning and ask that he would prepare our hearts all the more for every week that we have to wait, until the day when we can receive again the sacrament the Lord's Supper. Pray with me now. Lord we pray that as we cannot receive this now, that you would nevertheless be working in our hearts. Use your word to strengthen our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, transform us, give us faith and hope in Christ, especially through a very difficult time in our history. We pray God that you would root and establish us in Christ for his glory and for our good. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

REFLECTION QUOTES “The country's idols are being exposed.” ~Ekemini Uwan, writer, speaker and public theologian “There is no equality. The only thing people all have in common is that they are all going to die.” ~Bob Dylan, legendary singer-songwriter “…a Christian is not so much a person who has solved the problem of pain, suffering and the coronavirus, but one who has come to love and trust a God who has himself suffered.” ~John Lennox, professor at the University of Oxford Surround me with your boundless love Confound me with your boundless love I was drowning in the sea, lost as I could be When you found me with your boundless love You dumbfound me with your boundless love You surround me with your boundless love ~John Prine (1946-2020), singer-songwriter “This non-event, this thing that nobody noticed except his friends and family turned out to have the power to transform the entire Roman Empire and the course of human history more profoundly than any other single event over the past 2,000 years.” ~Henry Louis Gates Jr., author and Harvard professor, speaking of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ “…the majority of New Testament scholars today, not conservatives, not fundamentalists, concur with the facts of Jesus' honorable burial, his empty tomb, his postmortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief in his resurrection. This is a surprising truth, not widely appreciated by non-specialists.” ~Dr. William Lane Craig, American philosopher and professor “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), Yale professor and scholar SERMON PASSAGE Romans 8:31-39 (ESV) 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hvem er denne mannen? Med talen i dag ønsker vi å si noen ord om hvem Jesus er. Hva han har betydd i generasjon etter generasjon og enda betyr den dag i dag. Hvem var denne mannen og hvem er Han i dag? Kilde til inspirasjon: Evangeliene, Alphakurs boken, Menneskeverd, John Orteberg, Jaroslav Pelikan. Kirken […]

REFLECTION QUOTES “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), history professor at Yale University “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity…from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.” ~Antony Flew (1923-2010), British philosopher and arguably the foremost academic atheist in the latter half of the 20th century “Precisely because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now.” ~ N.T. Wright, scholar, theologian and retired Anglican bishop “The definition of hope is that you still believe even when it's hard.” ~Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States of America “Human beings are hope-shaped creatures. The way you live now is completely controlled by what you believe about the future.” ~ Tim Keller, NYC-based pastor and author “…people assumed that increased education would lead to decreased religious belief. Turns out that's not true and actually, interestingly, if you look at the history of education, Christianity has been an incredible driver of educational progress, ranging from essentially inventing the university to evangelism globally pouring fertilizer on global education and literacy rates because we are effectively ‘people of the book.' [Many also assumed]…the idea that science is somehow incompatible with Christianity, or has discredited Christianity, so the more scientific people got, so the reasoning went, the less religious they would be. Again, this is a misconception and if we look back at the history of science, it turns out that the modern scientific method was actually invented by Christians as well, not as an alternative hypothesis to belief in a Creator God, but because they believed in a Creator God who was both rational and free.” ~Rebecca McLaughlin, (PhD, Cambridge University) author and activist SERMON PASSAGE 1 Peter 1:3-9, 13-21 (ESV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls…. 13 Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1%3A3-11&version=NRSVACE (Acts 1:3-11) He's like no other. Sometimes we will use that line as we're describing someone by whom we're absolutely impressed. The star struck lover, for example, who is head over heels over a young lady – She's wonderful! I've dated so many women but this one! She's like no other one I have ever met. Or the sports broadcaster commenting on a promising young ballplayer – I've been at this for many years, and this kid is the most amazing athlete I've ever seen! He's faster. He's got great instincts, quick hands, power. He's got all the tools, and he's different. He's like no other ballplayer I've ever seen! In the Christian faith, we say this about Jesus Christ – He is like no other. He is the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to a relationship with God but through Him. The world is filled with ideologies, theologies, choices, decisions, and options making various claims, but as a person who has met and lived with Jesus Christ, I'm convinced that He is like no other. Jesus is above and beyond all other options. One's eternity depends on following Him. Just think of His impact on the world. It is like no other. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan said, “Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about Him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries.” We have been doing a close examination of this Jesus – Who is like no other – during the past few weeks. We've seen He was promised like no other. Prophets, hundreds of years prior to His arrival, talked about Him, and Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. His birth was like no other. He was born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was true God and true man. He taught like no other – with such authority – as if He knew God's mind. He spoke truths that struck many as absolutely upside down and like no other from worldly thinking. His death was like no other. It was not a martyr's death but an atoning sacrifice to pay for the sins of people like you and me. Jesus was resurrected like no other. He was dead, but three days later the tomb was empty, and He began to appear to many – the women, the disciples, to five hundred at one time. Muhammad is dead, Confucius is dead, Buddha is dead, Moses is dead, but Jesus is alive. He is like no other. Today we are looking at one last earth shaking thought about Him. Jesus ascended like no other. Our text tells us Jesus appeared up out of nowhere, here, there, and everywhere for forty days. Wherever the disciples turned, it seemed, Jesus showed up. They were locked in an upper room, and there He was. It probably got to the point where they were afraid to even look around the corner; they were expecting to see Him. It was as if He was trying to teach them, I told you I'd never leave you. During that time, Jesus is teaching them about the kingdom of God, which was His main message. God's major project is to turn this world around, and He was the one who was bringing it. He taught about the Holy Spirit, who was to come, saying, Stay in Jerusalem. Power will come upon you. John the Baptist baptized you with water for repentance but the Holy Spirit will bring you power. With all this talk about the kingdom and the Spirit, one day the disciples asked, Is this the time the kingdom of Israel will be restored? They were still thinking politically, establishing His role as a world power. Jesus just shakes His head and says, “Those things are not for you to know the times and places, but listen, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall be my witnesses unto Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria – all the way to the ends of the earth. You will make a difference for the kingdom of God.” Then the Ascension happened, and Jesus disappeared. He was lifted up, and disappeared into a cloud. The modern church tends to not make a big deal...

REFLECTION QUOTES “Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.” ~P.J. O'Rourke, American satirist and journalist “Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries… It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), scholar and professor at Yale “Commitment is not a trap. It is not a prison. Commitment is an escape from prison—the prison of selfishness.” ~Ray C. Ortlund, Jr., American pastor “You can destroy freedom as much by abusing it as you can be taking it away.” ~Attributed to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh “You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.” ~Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), famed London preacher “He that is down needs fear no fall; He that is low no pride; He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide.” ~John Bunyan (1628-1688), English preacher and writer “…Persecution has purged the church. If you attend a church that is being persecuted, you do so only for the sake of truth—you cannot have other motives…. Because of the persecution of our church community, our bond of brotherhood is really strong.” ~Yu Jie, Chinese dissident intellectual who has become a Christian SERMON PASSAGE Selections from the Gospel of Mark (ESV) Mark 1 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” Mark 8 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

REFLECTION QUOTES “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” ~André Malraux (1901-1976), French novelist and Minister of Cultural Affairs “The Holy is too great and too terrible when encountered directly for men of normal sanity to be able to contemplate it comfortably. Only those who cannot care for the consequences run the risk of the direct confrontation of the Holy.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), history scholar at Yale University “The person with a secular mentality feels himself to be the center of the universe. Yet he is likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because he knows he's but one human among five billion others—all feeling themselves to be the center of things….” ~M. Scott Peck (1936-2005), American psychiatrist and best-selling author “God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community…” ~John Stott (1921-2011), English pastor and writer “I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc…. I had better allot two hours or an hour and a half daily. “Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean. But all may be done through prayer– almighty prayer, I am ready to say– and why not? For that it is almighty is only through the gracious ordination of the God of love and truth. O then, pray, pray, pray!” ~William Wilberforce (1759-1833), English politician, credited with ending the slave trade in Great Britain “Until you believe that life is war, you can not know what prayer is for.” ~John Piper, American pastor and author “Let those who love this present world have it, but Christ is a more worthy and noble portion; blessed are those who have him.” ~Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), Scottish theologian and author SERMON PASSAGE Luke 18:1-17 (NASB) 1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, 2 saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. 3 There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.' 4 For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; 7 now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? 8 I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” 9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.' 13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” 15 And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them. 16 But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” Luke 12:32 (NASB) 32 Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.

The idea of reciting an unchanging creed sounds suspicious to modern ears. But the late, great historian Jaroslav Pelikan illuminated ancient tradition in order to enliven faith in the present and the future. He insisted that strong statements of belief will be necessary if pluralism in the 21st century is to thrive. We take in his moving, provocative perspective on our enduring need for creeds.

Jaroslav Pelikan was professor of history at Yale University for four decades. He authored many books “Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” and “Credo.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jaroslav Pelikan — The Need for Creeds.” Find more at onbeing.org.

REFLECTION QUOTES “The true penitent, though he dreads punishment, much more dreads sin…” ~Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) “…over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness. Children are raised amid a chorus of applause. Politics has become less about institutional restraint and more about giving voters whatever they want at that second. Joe DiMaggio didn't ostentatiously admire his own home runs, but now athletes routinely celebrate themselves as part of the self-branding process.” “So, of course, you get narcissists who believe they or members of their party possess direct access to the truth. Of course you get people who prefer monologue to dialogue. Of course you get people who detest politics because it frustrates their ability to get 100 percent of what they want. Of course you get people who gravitate toward the like-minded and loathe their political opponents. They feel no need for balance and correction.” ~David Brooks in “The New York Times” Summarizing central false themes battled by the early church: “Discontinuity was the theme of the relation not only between creation and salvation, the law and the gospel, the Creator and the Father, man and Christ, but also between the Old Testament and the New and between the apostolic community and Paul.” ~Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), famed professor at Yale “Modern secularism (which insists on keeping faith private) and modern pietism (which keeps Jesus safely contained in the hearts of individual believers) are usually assumed to be adversaries. But this feud is ultimately a battle between brothers. They share conceptual DNA with Marcion and the Gnostics.” ~Ken Myers, contemporary Christian thinker “It is not a question of whether we worship, but what we worship…We are what we love. And love takes practice.” ~James K. A. Smith, Canadian-born contemporary Christian thinker “Create a culture by design, not by default.” ~Walt Disney (1901-1966) SERMON PASSAGE 1 John 3:1-12 (NASB) 1See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. 7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. 11 For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; 12 not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother's were righteous.

In this episode, Matthew discusses, among other things, some influential early convert priests, the Romanian Bishop Polycarp Morusca, a 1940s attempt at jurisdictional unity, and the renowned church historian Jaroslav Pelikan.

Introduction One of the greatest issues of the human soul stands before us in the text that we're studying this week and next week. One of the greatest issues of the human soul is genuine, heartfelt worship. That's what's in front of us in Matthew 15:1-20. That's what the issue is here, and it comes at that incredibly important topic negatively. We actually have three enemies that are arrayed against pure worship in this text, and they are legalism, traditionalism and hypocrisy. These are the enemies of genuine worship. Legalism is the belief that God accepts our worship based on how well we obey rules and regulations, that God accepts us based on how well we keep the law. That's legalism. Traditionalism is the idea that the worship of Almighty God can be captured in a set of behavior patterns which are then passed on from generation to generation, and the better you conform to those patterns, the more acceptable your worship is. That's traditionalism. Hypocrisy is the most dangerous of all, essentially, it's acting, it's putting on a show, and the audience is not really God, the audience is other people. It's acting righteous when you're really not. These are the three enemies of genuine worship that are in this text. Now, what is the setting? Jesus has just fed the 5000; 5000 men plus women and children. He's displayed his power in an awesome way there, and then by walking on the water, He displays his supernatural power and control over the natural elements. He gets across the water and lands at Gennesaret. There He basically banishes illness with his supernatural wonder-working power so that even sick people who touched the hem of his garment are made well. In the face of such awesome divine power, there's a delegation of Jews who have come from Jerusalem to investigate him, basically to find fault. He's already guilty in their mind, they're just looking for evidence with which to condemn Him. The Danger of Traditionalism So that's why they're there. And as they observe Jesus and His disciples, they come up with something. They watch Him as He eats a meal. I don't like to be observed while eating meals. I like other people to be eating with me or not watching me, okay. I don't know how you are, but I don't enjoy that. Can you imagine the Scribes and Pharisees, this delegation from Jerusalem, observing Jesus. They say, "Aha, there it is." He and his disciples have violated the hand-washing law, and they're going to bring them up on charges. It has to do with the ritual hand washing that was supposed to be done, according to the tradition of the elders, before every meal, and Jesus and his disciples didn't do it. Now, where did the tradition come from? I have no idea; you're not going to find it in scripture. More about that later. It's not coming from the Bible, it's not a command of God. Where did it come from? I don't know. My guess is, so many of these traditions have a good origin, a good intention, something good that then gets encrusted in something permanent as traditionalism. So it could be that they read the scripture that was written a thousand years before Christ by King David who was a man after God's own heart, who yearned for a heart relationship with God and so things would be displayed in his life connected to that. But David said this concerning worship. In Psalm 24:3-4 it says, "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord and who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart." So, someone after reading that would say, "Well I want to do that, I want to stand in the holy place, I want to ascend the hill of the Lord, so I must have clean hands and a pure heart. I don't know what to do about the pure heart aspect” — that's next week's sermon — “but I can certainly make my hands clean. So let's start doing the hand washing and maybe we'll work our way toward a pure heart." Maybe some legally-minded people after that said, "You know, that's a good idea. Let's do it every meal,” and so it gets established as a tradition. It's on the basis of this tradition that these legalists, the Scribes and Pharisees, come and bring charges against Jesus. Look at verse 1 and 2, "Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 'Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat.'" Now The Pharisees and Scribes are professional legalists. They're there at this moment, in Matthew 15, which marks the beginning of a great escalation of hostilities between Jesus and the religious authorities in Jerusalem that will ultimately lead to His crucifixion. It starts here, in Matthew's gospel. It's where it begins. There'd been issues up to this point, but this is where they're starting to investigate him. They're building a case against Jesus. The Pharisees and Scribes were religious leaders who made a careful meticulous study of the law of God their full-time business. That, and then teaching what they had found. They weren't just studying, however, the law of God, they also studied the tradition of the elders, and on the basis of the tradition of the elders and their personal study of the law of God, they instructed the people. They also established themselves somewhat as the religious and ethical police of the Israelite nation. They were there to blow the whistle on anything that was done contrary to the traditions. The Origin & Danger of Legalism What is the origin of their legalism? Simply, we could trace it back at this point to the return from exile in Babylon. The Jews had been evicted from the Promised Land because they violated the commands of God. They broke the covenant established through Moses, so they were sent out of the Promised Land and were in exile for 70 years. Daniel underscores this as the reason in his incredible prayer in Daniel chapter 9:11, where Daniel prays to God saying, "All Israel has transgressed Your law and turned away, refusing to obey You. Therefore, the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us because we have sinned against you." Daniel underscores the fact that the Jews violated God’s law, and that's why they were kicked out. Now, after 70 years, a very, very small delegation of Jews, the remnant, forty thousand plus people, not many people, came back under Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, and established themselves again in the Promised Land. They resolved that they were not going to do that again. They were going to adhere to the laws of God, they were going to keep close to the laws of God, so they wouldn't lose their place. It's bad enough they have to kowtow to the Gentile leaders at this point, but they are not going to violate the law. They have Godly teachers of law with them, like Ezra, for example. In Ezra 7:10 it says that Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of the Lord, to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. That’s all well and good, that's all fine, but after Ezra came a generation of people who sought to establish a different kind of rules and regulations for the people of God. Schools of religious lawyers developed who spent their full-time debating this or that law, trying to nail down exactly what they're supposed to do in every case. The legal mindset grew and grew until it covered every single detail of their public and private lives. Everything was covered. That's the simple answer to the origin of legalism. I think there's a deeper answer still. I think it comes from within the heart of a sinful human race who desire to work its way back to God by their own religion and their own good deeds. Basically, what we would like to do is make it right with God by following our own religion, our own way. That's what we want to do, so we're going to make the religion up and then we're going to follow it as best we can. Then God will be very pleased to accept us on that basis, so we think. It goes all the way back, in my opinion, to Cain's offering of vegetables instead of the animal sacrifice that God prescribed. He said, "I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to humble myself and go to Abel and ask for some of the firstlings from the flock. I'm going to take what I want to God, and He better accept it because I'm being generous to God." It's the religion of Cain. I think if you take this and move it all the way through the ages, you're going to get to that, ultimately, with the Scribes and Pharisees. Look at Matthew 15: 9, "They worship Me in vain. Their teaching are but rules taught by men." This is a man-made religion, and it has its origin all the way back in the time of Cain. Now the highest value of the Scribes and Pharisees was outward conformity to the legal tradition. They had a whole tradition of Rabbis that had given their comments on the law. Rabbi so-and-so said such and such about this or that law and then Rabbi this and that and the other commented on what the first Rabbi said, and this is a whole school of back and forth debate over the laws of God. These verbal traditions were erected, somewhat like a safety fence against the law of God, keeping a safe zone around the commands of God, so the theory went, so that if you keep the tradition of the elders, God has to accept you because you're doing more than He told you to do. It's like 20 feet back from the precipice, they'll put up a fence. That was the whole mentality. Now after the second century AD, after Christ, a Rabbi Judah took all of these kind of Jewish traditions and wrote them down in a book called the Mishnah. In time there came many debates about the Mishnah, and those debates, back and forth, were gathered together in another book called the Gemara. And the Mishnah and the Gemara together make up the Talmud, and the Talmud is the basis of the Jewish religion up to this present day around the world. Jesus, way back at the beginning here in Matthew 15, points to the flaw in all of it. It has to do with arrogance concerning the Word of God. Eventually, the Talmud was openly put, clearly put above scripture itself. There are open statements in the Talmud like this. "The sacred scriptures are like water, the Mishnah is like wine, but the Gemara is like aromatic wine." So there's a hierarchy, scripture at the lowest, and then the Mishnah, and the Gemara is highest of all. Or this one, "My son, give heed to the words of the Scribes, rather than to the words of the law." Well, that's very clear, isn't it? It's better to listen to the Scribes than it is to listen to the law of God. Or this one, "He transgressed the words of the Scribes sins more gravely than the transgressors of the words of the law." There are many such statements like this in the Talmud. Jesus circled it right from the very beginning, here in Matthew 15. It's astonishing that the opinions of human beings can actually take the place of the perfect and inspired Word of God. This legal mindset is ultimately what led to Jesus's death. You see it in His encounters with the Jews, again and again. In John chapter 5, Jesus heals a man that had been paralyzed for 38 years. So 38 years, there's this paralyzed man, and Jesus heals him. He did it on the Sabbath. I can say with full confidence He did it on purpose on the Sabbath, because He did it on the Sabbath. Everything Jesus did was on purpose. Why did He do so many healings on the Sabbath? He was challenging their traditional understanding. Well, what happens when the religious and ethical police see this man miraculously healed. They don't see a miracle, a walking miracle, they see a mat carrier. He's a mat carrier, and so they're going to go after this guy and say, "Who gave you the right to carry your mat? It's the Sabbath." They want to bring the penalty down on him. Eventually they bring them to Jesus, and Jesus has to stand accountable for what he's done on the Sabbath. The ultimate example of this is in Jesus's own death trial before Pontius Pilate. The Jews are seeking to kill the only begotten son of God, the only perfectly innocent pure man that has ever lived. They want to kill Him. This is their goal, this is their plot. It's what they've been trying to do all along. They go to Pilot's house, the Roman procurator, but they will not enter the house. Why? Because they want to be able to eat the Passover and according to the tradition of the elders, if you go into a Gentile house, you will be defiled and not be able to eat the Passover. Where did that come from? It's not in the Word of God. So here it is, they're killing God in the flesh and they're trying to obey God's laws, so they think by not entering Pilot's house. There's a whole chapter of this in Matthew 23: the sevenfold woe. "Woe you Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are like blind guides, you're like white-washed tombs. You look good on the outside, but inside you're full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." That's what's going on. Their accusation here is ceremonial defilement. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat.” Nowhere in the Law of Moses are you going to find this requirement. If you're going to find it anywhere it would be there, and it's not there. Priests had certain washings that they had to do. There is a law in Deuteronomy, concerning the dealing with an unsolved murder. If there's a dead person found and nobody knows who did it, there's just no information, there's no lead. There's a certain pattern that they follow, and the elders would wash their hands over the sacrifice offered concerning that sin. But there's nothing anywhere that the people of God need to wash their hands ceremonially and ritually before every meal. This is a tradition and they even acknowledge it. They do not say that Christ had broken the law of God, they're not even troubled by that. He's broken the tradition of the elders and that's worse in their mentality. Now don't misunderstand, we are not here talking about hygiene, okay? Don't think of Jesus as basically a dirty person. When we say you should wash your hands before you eat, you do it for hygiene reasons. We are living after the time of Louis Pasteur and the germ theory. We know that we ought to wash our hands. So, ought to be done, but we're not talking about hygiene here. We are talking about ceremonial defilement, ritual uncleanness. Where did that come from? It came from human tradition, so Jesus makes a counter charge. Look at verses 3-6, "Jesus replied, 'And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might otherwise have received for me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to honor his father with it. Thus you nullify the Word of God for the sake of your tradition.’” This is a serious attack on the Word of God according to Jesus. Notice the clear contrast. "For God said, 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say," etcetera. God said, but you said. That's the issue here. Jesus is heightening the conflict. The whole system of legalism and traditionalism was a serious attack on the word of God. Legalism is adding to and subtracting from the Word of God. That's what it is. It's going beyond what the Word of God says, or overturning or taking away from what God has commanded. These folks added requirements that God did not give and thus they overturned clear requirements that He did give. The case that Jesus brings forward is the issue of, what's called in Mark's gospel, Corban. It's got to do with money that you can designate as a gift given to God. The tradition of the elders cropped up that if any Israelite wanted to devote a gift to God, that that took priority or precedent over any and everything that they could have done with that money, including helping their aged parents with it. Well you know what happens. It's like "Well, all I have to do is just declare everything in my house Corban and I don't have to take care of my parents." You see the legal mindset there. So there's a loop hole and they just drive trucks through the loop hole. That's what's going on. The fundamental issue in Jesus's mind isn't just the case study of honoring your parents. We get to that in a moment, but it has to do a scripture itself, and human response to scripture and how that feeds into worship. This is an attack on the sufficiency and the clarity of scripture. The legalist adds new laws because God hasn't given enough laws, you see. We need more laws than God gave. Or because he feels that God's existing laws aren't clear enough. God means well, but He's not a very good writer. And so what you need to do is you need to kind of help Him out by adding some extra laws and clarify what God really intended. We know what He really intended from the Word, we have to have help. This is the mentality. Do not see how arrogant this is? God needed more laws to achieve the righteous life He was seeking to achieve. He didn't make it clear. So He needs some additional help from us. This arrogance is precisely why God clearly forbade the doing of this, the adding to and the subtracting from. He does it again and again. Deuteronomy 4:2 says, "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God, that I give you." That's not the only warning like that in Deuteronomy. This one in Proverbs 35:6 says, "Every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words or He will rebuke you, and prove you a liar." Then there's the most famous of all, and that's at the end of the entire Bible, at the end of the Book of Revelation. Revelation 22:18-19 says, "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book and if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy God will take away from him his share in the Tree of Life and in the holy city which are described in this book." This is very, very serious. If you add to or take away from the Book of Revelation, dire consequences come. Look what Jesus does. Jesus instead, perfectly upholds the law of God. He cites this as an example, this idea of Corban. The issue of honoring your father and mother. It's the fifth of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are broken in two categories, two tables of the law. There's the vertical, our relationship with God, and then there's the horizontal, our relationship with other people. This is the first and the most significant of the horizontal relationships, because God in His wisdom set children into families and He commanded the children that they should honor and obey their parents. If they don't honor and obey their parents, they will not honor and obey God. This is the foundation of all ethics: children honoring their fathers and mothers. So Jesus picks this one. What does it mean to honor? I think it's important to do a word study on the word “honor.” Get a concordance, or a Bible search, and just look up the word “honor” and go through the whole Bible and you'll learn what it means to honor. I think we ought to do it because I don't think we know it very well. We're a very informal culture, and we don't do honor very well. There's an awful lot of informality, if not open rebellion, even in families these days.I think children don't really know what it means to honor their parents. I don't know that the parents know what it means, so that they can properly instruct their children. I found one as I went through the whole Bible. Now understand what I'm saying, this is an example of honor. The king of Persia brings in his evil councilor Haman and said, "What should be done for the man whom the King delights to honor?" Haman, in his arrogance, thinks, "Well, who does he want to honor more than me? I mean, after all... " So he figures it’s going to be him, and he says, "Well here's an idea, King. For the man the King delights to honor, have them bring a royal robe the king has worn and a horse that the king has ridden, one with a Royal Crest placed on its head, and let the robe and the horse be entrusted to one of the king's most noble princes, and let them robe the man whom the King delights to honor and lead him on the horse through the city streets proclaiming before him: 'This is what is done for the man whom the King delights to honor.'" Parents, would you like that done for you? Children, would you like to do it? I think very few of us would actually like to be paraded through the streets of Durham, yet, look at the core of what's going on here. There is a yearning to take an individual and elevate him, so that it's obvious to everyone around that this is an honorable person. So, all humor aside, God commands children to do this for their parents. And based on Matthew 15, He intends it to the end of life. Honor your parents right to the end. Find out what it means to honor, children. I'll speak to the youth. Don't get sucked into the pattern of this world of dishonoring parents. So many young people do this, the rolling of the eyes, the sighing, questioning parents, wondering if they really know what they're talking about. Isn't it a good thing that the teenagers have come along and help the parents, because they didn't know anything until they came? I don't think that's the idea, okay? The idea is, instead, no, they're not as perfect as you thought they were when you were four, and they're not like what you're thinking now, but actually these are established by God as leaders and spiritual guides. Honor them. Jesus actually went beyond that and brings in a verse from Leviticus, says, "Anyone who curses his father and mother must be put to death." Do not think that Jesus would ever coddle or wink at children disobeying or rebelling against their parents? He doesn't. It's a very, very serious matter. Jesus sites this as an example, but there's a deeper charge here that Jesus is getting at. It's not just the attitude of children to the parents. It's not even just the attitude of tradition and all of that. It really just ultimately has to do with worship. We were created by God to worship Him in spirit and truth. That's why we're here. Anything that comes and perverts or pollutes that worship has violated the very reason why we're here on Earth. Jesus goes to the deepest issue of all and it has to do with worship. Look at verses 7 through 9. He says, "You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain, their teaching are but rules taught by men." Jesus is here quoting Isaiah who had written, seven centuries before him, about a problem, an ancient problem, that was still with him in His day and is still with us in our day, and that is the issue of hypocrisy in worship. Isaiah 1:11-14, the prophet Isaiah speaking for God says, "The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and of the fat of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of My courts? Stop bringing meaningless sacrifices. Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, Sabbaths and convocations. I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts My soul hates. They have become a burden to Me. I am weary of bearing them." This is what the Lord said about the machinery of religion back in Isaiah's day. It is so easy for the machinery of religion to cover over a heart that is actually far from God. Very, very dangerous. We live in a nation dominated by churches. You can't drive far, especially more suburban and into urban, you can't drive far without passing a church. They are everywhere. A large percentage of the American population goes to church every Sunday. There is an outward show of religion in our country, but the real danger here is hypocrisy in worship. What is hypocrisy? The Oxford English Dictionary says a hypocrite is one who falsely professes to be virtuously or religiously inclined, one who pretends to have feelings or beliefs of a higher order than his real ones, hence, generally, a dissembler or a pretender. A simpler definition is, a hypocrite is somebody who says one thing and lives another. The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs which your own behavior doesn't line up with. Those are all fine working definitions. I prefer a much simpler one. The word hypocrite is actually a Greek word brought straight over, letter by letter, into the English language. It means an actor. You remember the ancient Greek tragedies and comedies and the actors would wear masks made of clay. Either the faces would be sad, if it was a tragedy or it would be happy if it was a comedy, depending on the role that the actor was playing. It didn't matter at all what the actor was feeling at that moment. What mattered was the performance. The performance had to be winsome and believable. This was acting. This is the word hypocrite. It's an actor. Now, some of our culture's greatest heroes are actors and actresses. We may applaud the range and the skill of their acting. Maybe one man could play a president and then in the next role, a homeless street person and then in the next role, Napoleon and then the next role, an idiot savant institutionalized, but able to do amazing things. We look at this one actor and we applaud the range by which they can believable portrays of all these different emotions and attitudes. They're acting. Now, all of that's fine, but it's terrible when you bring it in here on Sunday morning, when you bring it to your worship life. Jesus said in John chapter 5, "I know you, I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts." He is the one with eyes of fire who searches our hearts and knows what's inside. We can't fool Him and we know it. The audience isn't God anyway, for the hypocrite. The audience is other people. Jesus said, "Everything they do is done for men to see." [Matthew 23] Jesus also said in John 5, "How can you believe, if you accept praise from one another and yet you make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God." This is the danger of hypocrisy. Ritual hand-washing is just an outward show. It shows everybody how religious you are, but there's nothing inside, your heart is far from God. What is true worship? The essence of true worship, is a heart inflamed by the Spirit of God, based on God's character and actions as revealed in the Word of God. That's true worship. God, by His Spirit, takes some aspect of His character, or some action of His in the past, and presses it home to your heart by the power of the Spirit of God so that your heart is inflamed with that truth. You love God. You yearn for Him. You're moved within. You want to see Him, you'd give anything to be with Him right now, but since you can't be you'll go ahead and speak and sing and cry and laugh and rejoice and be sorrowful, depending on what God is revealing of Himself and your situation too. That is genuine worship, and it is pleasing to God. It is actually delightful to God, it's a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to the living God. He cannot be fooled and He will not accept a counterfeit, and that's the real danger going on in this text. True worship versus hypocrisy. True worship versus traditionalism and legalism. When I speak of traditionalism, do you understand what I mean? It's so important that we don't make a mistake here. Traditionalism is different than tradition. Do you understand that? Jaroslav Pelikan, a teacher of theology and church history at Yale, made it a vital distinction. It's this: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." I think what happens is, the Spirit of God moves powerfully at a particular moment and everybody notes it and everybody senses it. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound. The spirit of God has moved, and people say, "What an incredible time that was! Now, what happened? What songs did you use, what technique did you use, what approach did you take? Let's do that again." I read about one church over 50 years ago, where a revival broke out right about the time they played the hymn "Spirit of God Descend Upon My Heart." So they made a commitment that they would play that song at the end of every single worship service from then on. Well, I don't need to tell you that the Spirit of God didn't move equally the same every single time from then on. And after decades of this song, one of the most courageous figures in church history stepped forward and just didn't choose that as the closing hymn. What a moment that must have been for everybody. Some greatly relieved, others, greatly shocked, and that is the issue of traditionalism rearing its head. The Spirit moves in a powerful way, but He doesn't move the same way every single time. And to try to capture the wind in some behavior pattern, some human behavior pattern, it cannot be done. Woe to us, if we try. It's one thing to note it, say, "God did this, this is what He chose to do at that moment. Let's learn from it," etcetera. But to try to legislate it now, that's traditionalism. I don't want you to misunderstand. There's an essential place of tradition in our faith. I hope you don't think that we are responsible to reinvent Christianity every generation. We're not starting from scratch. Brothers and sisters have gone before us and have lived faithful God-honoring lives and we ought to learn from them. Even more significantly, the Word of God itself has been passed on to us and that is tradition. It's literally the Greek, the passing on of something from one to another. It's essential to our salvation. It says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, "What I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried. And that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." So we have to have tradition is the foundation of our gospel. We are a people who are in love with the new and fresh and exciting. We have to be told the tradition is going to continue to be part of our faith. Walmart has almost 4000 stores. They study the shelf life of an object based on how well it's doing in sales. A new object has about a week or two to prove itself and then it's gone and the shelf space goes another place. USA Today prints lists of what's hot and what's not, alright, and you can read and find out what's hot and what's not. That's really exciting and interesting, find out what's in. Some things are moving so fast that even a traditional website can't keep up, you got to have the blog and the blog is going to tell you what was hot three days ago. True Worship A church should not try, nor can it keep up with this bewildering change. We have the word of God which has never changed. Jesus said, "Heaven and Earth will pass away, My words will never pass away." But it is churches, above all, that need to be told not to embrace traditionalism, because it's so easy for something to get captured and say, "God wants us to do it this way." There's a balance. What then is true worship? Well, three key observations. First of all, it is not man-made, but it's initiated by God. It is revelation, then response. Jesus asked the disciples, "What about you, who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by My Father in Heaven." That is the foundation of true worship. worship is a revelation of jesus christ to the individual heart by the spirit of god It's a revelation of Jesus Christ to the individual heart by the Spirit of God, by the heavenly Father. He reveals Christ to you. You realize you need a Savior, that you're a sinner and that you cannot be saved by tradition or by your good works, or your own approach. You know it's not going to survive Judgment Day and so you come to the cross, you kneel in your heart and say, "Jesus, save me." Maybe you're not a Christian, you've come here today, because you're invited by someone. You say, "Oh, church is just full of hypocrites." Well, so it is. There's not one of us that perfectly lives up to our standards, but a healthy church is where you go get healed of your hypocrisy. Let me say to you, as an unbeliever you will not survive Judgment Day. You will not survive based on how well you keep your standards. Be honest. Do you keep your standards perfectly well? You need Jesus. Trust in Him, believe in Him for the salvation of your soul. That's the foundation of true worship, the revelation of Jesus Christ directly to the heart by the Spirit of God. worship is not based on human rules Secondly, it's not based on human rules, but based on the Word of God. We don't need a bunch of people telling us rules and regulations on how to worship, rather they flow from the word of God. worship is not hypocritical Thirdly, worship is not hypocritical, but it's from a heart drawn close to God. But what to do if your heart isn't drawn close, if you know your heart is cold toward God? By way of application, I wanna ask you a simple question, whether you're Christian or non-Christian. You came here today, came into this place, First Baptist Church in Durham. Were you acting today? Are you acting now? Acting interested in the sermon. Were you acting in worship? Who's the audience? What's going on, really, in your life and in your heart? Don't worry about the hypocrites out there, worry about what's going on in your heart. Are you putting on a mask? Is your life genuinely controlled by the Spirit of God or are you leading a double life, sucked away by the allurements of the world, but you know you need to maintain the religious outward appearance for some human reasons. Are you acting? Can I urge you to take the mask down and get honest with God? He already knows you. John 5:30, "I know you. I know you do not have the love of God in your heart," Jesus said. If it's not the way it should be, I urge you to repent, I urge you to get right with God, I urge you to say, "Lord, I don't want to be an actor, an actress. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want to be genuine in my worship of Almighty God."

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Daniel B. Clendenin. Essay: *Subtle as a Sledge Hammer: Jesus 'Cleanses' the Temple: Lent 3B*, for Sunday 19 March 2006; book review: *Acts; Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible* by Jaroslav Pelikan (2003); film review: *Saints and Soldiers* (2003); poem review: *Mercy* by John F. Deane.

Weekly JourneywithJesus.net postings, read by Daniel B. Clendenin. Essay: *Show Me The Money: Unconditional Allegiance to the Unconditioned God*, for 16 October 2005; book review: *Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages* by Jaroslav Pelikan (2005); film review: *The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill* (2003); poem review: *God's Grandeur* by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Introduction This morning we are looking at Matthew 9: 14-17 at the issue of change. Christy and I have relatives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and we love to go up there. It's a beautiful area; very rural, very attractive, farmland, it's a peaceful place. And if you go and drive around there any length of time you might chance upon a black buggy or two drawn by horses and driven by an interesting group of people called the Amish. The Amish are different than us in so many ways. They still speak the language of their ancestors; they wear clothing something like from the 17th century almost — wide-brim hats, straw hats, beards without mustaches, clothes without buttons. The women don't wear jewelry. They have no church buildings; they worship in their homes, and they've been doing that for generations. Now, what many of you may not know, is the ancestry of the Amish goes way back to the Reformation with the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were called by some, the Radical Reformation. The word radical means they'd sought to get back to the roots; they sought to get back to what Christianity really was. Not all the accretions that had come under the Roman Catholic system but rather the true New Testament faith, and so they held dear some doctrines that we as Baptist now hold dear. For example, regenerate church membership, the desire that everyone in that fellowship be truly born again, which they would testify to by baptism by immersion after a profession of faith in Christ. They believed in separation of church and state, and those early Anabaptists were passionate about missions and about evangelism. They were willing to suffer; they were willing to be persecuted. But somewhere from the genesis of that group to the Amish, something went awry. Something went amiss. They started to pull in and one can guess it was probably because of the suffering and persecution as they were abused by one group after another, by one government after another, and they fled to America and just wanted to be left alone; they started to pull inward. Many of them lost their zeal for evangelism and for missions, and they started to basically encrust their religion in a set piece kind of way that would be handed on from generation to generation to generation. They became traditionalists. Change is a constant reality we have to face. Probably our generation and the generations that immediately preceded us have seen more change than any of the other generations that came before. After the industrial revolution took people off the farm and put them in the factory, one invention after another came just reeling in and changing the way everyone lived. Since then, we've also gone through the technological revolution, and things are changing even faster. Change is a fact of life, and we know as Christians that nothing that you can see with your eyes or interact with, with your senses in any way is permanent. Everything changes. Relationships change, churches change, nations and cities change. Durham has gone from being a rural community of tobacco farmers and tobacco factories to being the City of Medicine and a place in the Research Triangle Park, where there’s cutting edge of pharmaceutical research and other forms of electronic research. There's been big changes in this area, and some of you who have lived here for longer than I have can testify to the fact that when you first lived in your homes there were dirt roads and now it's a major city area. Changes have happened and change is a fact of life, and it's very unsettling. And in times of changes, change just rolls in. We begin to wonder, "What can we hold on to? What's stable? What can we grab on to?" Some people do that by looking backward; they look back into memories, and those memories are comforting. All of us, for the most part, take photos of important parts of our lives, and we like to look at them. We like to remember the way that things were, and there's nothing wrong with that. Memory is a great gift of God. One of the things that we do in looking backward to memories is to have traditions, and traditions are good things. We use our traditions to give meaning to holidays and to life itself, and those are good things as well. I would like to stand up and say to you that tradition has an absolutely indispensable role in the advance of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Tradition versus Traditionalism You might say, "What am I talking about?" In 1 Corinthians 15: 3-4, the Apostle Paul said, "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." So he received something and transmitted it or passed it on. That is a tradition. But the problem comes when traditions become traditionalism and that's a very different matter. Traditionalism seeks stability in unchanging external forms that are not mentioned in the Bible. Unchanging externals that are not mentioned in the Bible rely on old methods because they've worked in the past, whether missionary or evangelistic traditionalism. Just doing it the way it used to be done because it worked back then. Jaroslav Pelikan said this, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." There's a difference between tradition on one hand and traditionalism on the other, and that's the issue that Jesus is dealing with here in this question about wineskins. I think, rather than looking primarily backward, we need instead to look upward to our King, the King of the Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus Christ. He's basically saying, "Watch me, follow me through all the changes. If I go left, go left. If I go right, you go right. If I stop, you stop. If I accelerate, you move. Follow me through all the changes." He is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven and he's leading us through change, but he's leading us in specific ways. I think in that way we find our stability, an unchanging King, an unchanging Word of God, but an advancing Kingdom of Heaven following him through all the changes. That's what I want to give you today, a sense of confidence that our king is leading us through all of these changes. The whole issue came about when John's disciples saw Jesus celebrating at Matthew's house. In the last sermon we talked about how Matthew the tax collector had given his life to Jesus Christ; he'd trusted in Christ. Jesus walked by and he said, "Follow me." And Matthew left everything, got up and followed him. And so he became a Christian; he followed Jesus Christ. Then he decided to have a celebration, a feast, a party at his house, and invited all of these people to come and Jesus... The celebration, the feast was in Jesus' honor, he was his Lord, his Savior, and he wanted to give a celebration of feast in Jesus' honor. Many people came and they were categorized by the Pharisees standing on the outside as tax collectors and sinners. Who would want to eat with them? But Jesus did. We talked about that last time, how Jesus would seek to transform that situation and make it an opportunity to evangelize for the Kingdom of Heaven. Change for the Disciples: The differing roles of John the Baptist and Jesus John the Baptist's disciples are standing out there too, and they were puzzled. They were curious. In order to understand this, you have to understand John the Baptist and his ministry. A little bit of background is helpful here. John the Baptist preceded Jesus Christ by a little. He came, he was probably about six months older than Christ. The story of his birth is recorded in Luke 1, and Matthew 3:3 speaks of John the Baptist and said, "This was he of whom it was spoken through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the desert, 'prepare the way for the Lord.'" John's coming had been prophesied by Isaiah, and he came to do this great work. John McArthur said that John the Baptist came for three reasons: Number one, to prepare the way. Number two, to proclaim the way. And number three, to get out of the way. Now, what do we mean by that? First he came to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. Now how did he do that? He did it by setting an example by the way he lived. What kind of lifestyle did he have? He had a rough austere lifestyle, much like that of Elijah. He lived out in the desert; he had camel hair garment and he had a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. He fasted and he prayed, and he preached out in the deserts. And he baptized. Now that was shocking by the way. Baptism was a ritual that only Gentiles had to go through, a kind of a ceremonial cleaning in order to become Jews. And in effect, John was saying, "You all need to be cleaned. All of you need to be washed; you all need to be cleansed. You're so far from the original faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're so far from what you should have been; you're disobeying the Law of Moses." So he's baptizing anyone upon repentance for their sins; and so, he came to prepare the way. He also came to proclaim the way. How did he do that? By taking his finger and pointing at Jesus Christ, and saying, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." That was a key moment when Jesus came to where John was baptizing, and he pointed at him and he said, "I have seen and I testify that that man right there is the Son of God." He came to proclaim the way. He also came to get out of the way, and what does that mean, "get out of the way"? What it means is that John the Baptist was a wildly popular preacher. Many people... Everyone came to hear him preach; everyone came to watch the baptisms. He was incredibly popular, and his disciples were immensely loyal to him. John had to get out of the way and let Jesus take center stage because it was not John's role to take what Jesus had come to have. And what is that? One day John's disciples heard that Jesus was baptizing and actually it wasn't Jesus himself who baptized but his disciples were, but more people were going to Jesus than were going to John, and John's disciples were jealous about that. Earlier, the next day after John had first pointed his finger and said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," his disciples were there again with John, and John saw Jesus passing by and he said, "The Lamb of God." His disciples left John and followed Jesus. Isn't that what John wanted? He's saying, "Don't follow me anymore; follow him, follow Jesus." John's disciples didn't quite get the message, some of them, and they were distressed that Jesus was becoming popular, distressed that he was baptizing more people than John had been; very upset about it and they came to John ask him about it. "Rabbi," they said, "that man who is with you on the other side of the Jordan, the one you testified about. Well, he is baptizing and everyone is going to him." They're frustrated; they're not happy about this. To this John replied, "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven." Oh, is that so true? You can only get what God gives you. "God hasn't given that to me. I had my role. A man can only receive what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said I am not the Christ, but I'm sent ahead of him. The bride belongs to the bridegroom; the friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must increase, and I must decrease." That means get out of the way. He said, "The bride isn't mine. That's the bridegroom right there, and the bride belongs to him. How wrong would it be for me on the bridegroom's wedding day to interpose myself and take the bride. The bride belongs to Jesus." Now, what is the bride? It's the disciples, the followers; it's the believers who are streaming to Christ and believing the bride is being put together. John is saying that the bridegroom is going to get married to the bride someday, and he’s glad to hear his voice. “I’m glad to stand, but he must become greater, I must become less.” Some of John's disciples missed the boat. They were lingering, they were loyal to John, they did not follow. They did not go after Jesus at that point, they stayed with what they knew. They knew John and they knew he was a man of God, so they did not follow Christ. There are some disciples in Acts 19, who only knew the baptism of John; they'd never heard of Jesus, like Apollos in Acts 18. He'd heard faithful teaching about Jesus, but didn't know actually about what had happened after John. These disciples, though, knew very well about Jesus, but they were, I think, beginning to be repulsed away from Jesus. And the problem is this issue of fasting. Look again at Verse 14. "Then John's disciples came and asked him, ‘How is it that we, John's disciples, and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?'" John led a strict ascetic life. He fasted regularly. He just got enough nourishment to keep him going; he wasn't there to eat, that wasn't his purpose. He was called specifically in that way. His father Zechariah had been told that he must not take any alcoholic beverage from the day he was born which was a Nazarite vow. John's disciples followed his strict regimen of fasting and asceticism, perhaps even living in the desert though we don't know for sure. But Jesus' calling was different; he was called to do different things than John. Certainly Jesus fasted. As a matter of fact, I think, Jesus' fasting was even more intense than that of John the Baptist. Forty days out in the desert without eating or drinking with direct assaults from Satan himself. Now, that's a fast. But Jesus also feasted, didn't he? He was feasting here; he was celebrating. He was eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, and John's disciples stood outside and said, "We don't get it. Are you really a man of God? This is not what we understand a man of God would do." I think that they may have even affected John himself. John is in prison waiting to die, and he sends his own disciples later on in Matthew 11: 3 and asks Jesus, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" So John himself begins to waver because he doesn't really know and understand how Jesus' calling is different from his. John's disciples come with deep doubts and with a strong loyalty to the way of life learned from John. Jesus gives them a message, a message from the King, and it is "It is time to change. It's time to leave John, and it's time to come over to the bridegroom." Look what he says in Verse 15, “Jesus answered, ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, then they will fast.’” Do you see how Jesus borrows John's language? He uses John's phraseology. “I am the bridegroom, these are my friends. This is a time of celebration; it's not a time for fasting. It's a time for celebration because Matthew has left his tax booth and he's following me; it's a time to celebrate.” Someday Matthew and all the disciples would fast; they would mourn when the bridegroom is taken away from them. What does this refer to? Well, at least it refers to his death. Jesus gathered his disciples together in John 16 and says, "I'm going away, and where I am going you cannot follow." He's referring to his death on the cross. "You can't follow me there, and I'm going to be separated from you. Strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. And in that day, you will mourn." He said, "You will mourn and grieve while the world rejoices, but then you will rejoice and no one will be able to take away your joy." That must refer to the resurrection. At the least the bridegroom is going to be taken away from them by his death, but I think it actually refers also to his ascension into Heaven. Jesus was with them during those days eating and drinking; he was carrying on an ongoing ministry. But the time would come when that would be finished, and then they would have to face a world that needed conversion; they'd have to face the devil whose kingdom they were trying to take over. They would have to face their own fleshly lust and temptations, and in those days many, many times they would need to fast and they would need to mourn. Notice in the text the connection between fasting and mourning. Fasting is really a form of mourning. It's a form of grieving, I think, primarily over sin. James, in James 4:8-9 commands mourning for sin. He says, "Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom." There's a time for that, and I think fasting is a way of showing seriousness in the issue of sanctification. Perhaps you've been convicted of sin, and you need to turn away for a time from food and drink and give yourself in seriousness to prayer. But sometimes it's also just a way of clarifying your calling, where you fast and pray and seek the Lord's will. Anyway, Jesus said the time for that is not now. Now is a time of celebration. Pharisees and Traditionalism We also have mentioned the Pharisees; now that's a different matter than John's disciples. Look again at verse 14. "Then John's disciples came and asked him, 'How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?'" The Pharisees were the quintessential examples of religious traditionalists. They were constantly importing new man-made things and establishing them as God's law and God's way; that's traditionalism. Because of this bent they had imported many fasts throughout the year. There's only one fast mentioned in the law of Moses, and that's connected with the day of atonement, but the Pharisees were getting to the point where they were fasting twice a week. In Luke 16, the Pharisee stands and prays and thanks God and he says, "I thank you that I'm not like other men. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all of my possessions." That's how the Pharisee prayed and fasted. We know from Matthew, Chapter 6, that when they fasted, they would disfigure their faces and get all dirty and look horrible, so that everyone would know they were fasting. And Jesus said, "I tell you the truth. They have received their reward in full. I don't recognize that kind of fast." But they were traditionalists, they had imported these fasts. The Word of God said nothing about them. It was something the Pharisees wanted people to do. This is just one of the many traditions that the Pharisees made equal to God's law. Mark Chapter 7: 3-9 says, “The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial religious washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions such as the washing of cups, and pitchers, and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of law asked Jesus, 'Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders, instead of eating their food with unclean hands?' And Jesus replied, 'Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites. As it is written, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teaching are but rules taught by men.'" That's traditionalism, folks. Mark 7:8, Jesus says, "You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men." That is traditionalism. Where you put something man-made in the place of the Word of God. He said to them, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions." Well, along with traditionalism comes religious authoritarianism. What do we mean by that? They were in charge, and if you didn't follow their traditions, you were out; you were rejected. They wanted you to dance to their tune. Jesus spoke of that in Matthew 11, when he said, "To what can I compare the children of this generation? They're like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others. 'We played the flute for you and you didn't dance. We sang a dirge and you didn't mourn.’” Now, if you don't understand, when we play the flute, you need to dance, that's happy time. And when we do the dirge and the fasting you need to mourn, that's fasting time.'" Jesus didn't have anything to do with any of that; he did not follow their ways. Note the hypocrisy by the way. John the Baptist did almost nothing but fast and they said he had a demon. Jesus came feasting and they said, "He's a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners." Why? Because neither John nor Jesus fit into their traditionalism box. They weren't doing it their way. Christ was totally independent from all of that. He did most of his healings on the Sabbath. Why? One might say, to tick them off. I would say, to put it positively, he did it on the Sabbath, so that he could provoke change, so that he could teach them about what the Sabbath is for. Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man. It's a different approach, and he would teach on that after healing on the Sabbath. He didn't do those ceremonial washings because the Scripture said nothing about them, and here he would not join them in their man-made fast. There are modern traditionalists too, aren't there? I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church. Every week we celebrate the Mass, and I still don't understand all of the rituals connected with the Mass. When you first walk in, you're supposed to dip your fingers in a bowl of holy water and you're supposed to cross yourself. At certain parts of the service you do a different kind of sign of the cross. I was an altar boy and was trained to ring bells and do other things at certain times. I didn't understand what it was all for, but we were told, "You don't need to really understand, just do what you're supposed to do in the way you're supposed to do it." This was a set piece thing, so that anywhere in the world, any country in the world you went to, that's what you would observe. The languages would be different since Vatican II; it used to be just Latin. The languages were different, but the Mass was the same everywhere. It's traditionalism because the word of God doesn't mention any of these things, and yet they've been elevated up to the level of the Word of God. But Southern Baptists have their traditions too, don't they? Over 150 years ago, there was a man named Charles Finney who was a powerful revivalist preacher. Everywhere he would go, people would flock to listen to him preach, and he invented something new called the "Anxious Bench.” H’d put it right in the front and anyone who was concerned about their soul after his preaching would come forward. Have you heard that phrase before? They would come forward and as they're sitting on the "Anxious Bench", people would go over and counsel with them. Never been done before. It was part of Finney's new measures. Does that sound vaguely familiar? Have you seen anything like that in any Baptist church you've ever been to? At the end of the sermon, you have the invitation. I'm not saying it's bad, I don't think ceremonial washing is bad, either, but when you elevate it up to the level of the Word of God, it can become traditionalism. So that you say, "Without the coming forward, no one can be saved." Is that true, without the coming forward no one can be saved? I know this, without faith no one can be saved. Abraham didn't come forward, he came out of a tent, looked up at the stars, and saw and believed. Now, “coming forward” some people say is a way of publicly demonstrating your faith. As Baptists we believe water baptism is a way of publicly declaring to the world that we are believers in Jesus Christ; be careful of traditionalism. I heard of another Baptist church that had a revival. The Holy Spirit was poured out in a mighty, in a powerful way. People came to faith in Christ, families were reunited, sins were confessed, people were weeping. It was a powerful time of outpouring of the Spirit, and the hymn they were singing during that time was, "Spirit of God Descend upon my Heart." The next week, they thought it might be good to sing that same hymn again. And the week after that, they sang it again, and again and again and again, month after month, year after year, decade after decade until some courageous pastor said, "It's time to choose a different hymn to close the worship service." Now what's going on there? It's holding on to something, some external form that God chose to use one day and say, "This must be elevated to equality with the Word of God." This is a problem. Jesus addressed this in Verses 16 and 17. "No one sews a patch of un-shrunk cloth on an old garment. For the patch will pull away from the garment making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wine skins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out, and the wine skins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wine skins, and both are preserved." He's illustrating his principle in two different ways, and it's very, very important that you see the difference between the patch and the wine skin. I've thought a lot about this, and it's only recently that I've come to understand it. The patch is a piece of un-shrunk cloth. What does it mean? It's never gotten wet before. What happens to that patch when it gets washed the first time? It's going to contract. However, the coat around it has already done that; it only does it once. And so it's set in its shape, set in its way, one could say. The patch is there and it needs to move, but the garment is not going anywhere. As the patch contracts, the tear is worse; it's worse than it was at the beginning. And what about wine skins? The Jews kept their wine in the skins of goats or calves, and they would put them into these skins and they'd block them off. The wine would be allowed to ferment and as the fermentation process went on, gases were given out, and as a result, the wine skin would need to expand like a balloon. If the wine skin could not expand, if it was old, if it was hard, if it was brittle or dry, it couldn't move, but that gas kept building up. In the end, the gas would win. Actually, they both lose because once that skin is ruptured, it pours out on the ground, the wine skin is ruined, everything's lost. Why am I talking about these details? I think you need to understand the essence of discipleship is followship. If Jesus says, "Contract," then contract. If Jesus says, "Expand," then expand. He's the king. He's in charge. He rules over change. The issue is that the Kingdom of Heaven involves change, sometimes in, sometimes out, who gets to decide? Jesus does. He's the king. He rules. He's in charge. And so, if you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, you need to follow. He's walking by the sea and he sees some fishermen says, "Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." In Matthew 8:22, Jesus said to one man, "Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead." He said to Matthew at the tax booth, "Follow me," and Matthew got up and followed him. Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." What does “follow me” mean? Where I go, you go. When I stop, you stop, when I go, you go. The old garment cannot follow inward. It is set in place and so it's ripped. The old wine skin cannot expand outward; it is set in place, and so it's ruptured. The basic principle then is that the Kingdom of Heaven is all about change; it is about transforming a lost and rebellious world. The status quo is the Devil's; the advancement is God's. The Kingdom of Heaven is advancing. Satan always wants us comfortable with the way it is. We need to be willing to advance, to march. Now, I want to clarify something about this principle. Liberals, those that reject the authority of the Word of God would say "Amen" to this, that Jesus is a radical wanting to change all kinds of things. They like that idea, but what they neglect is that Jesus would say, "Yes, but there are some things that never change, never." For example, the character of God never changes. He can't improve, and he can't get worse. "I, the Lord, do not change," Malachi 3. James 1:17, says, "The Father of the heavenly lights does not change like shifting shadows." God never changes. Secondly, God's eternal Word never changes. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words," [plural,] "My words will never pass away." It is the eternal Word of God and it never changes. God's Gospel message never changes. The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 1:8, "Even if we or an angel from Heaven should preach a Gospel, other than the one you believed let him be eternally condemned." The Gospel message must not be changed. The unchanging doctrines of Christianity must never be changed; nor will they ever change. However, it is the external trappings, not mentioned in Scripture, that change all the time. And Jesus says, "Follow me, as I navigate through those changes." How are we going to apply this principle? Well, first of all, let's realize how Jesus applied it to the first century Jewish nation. To John's disciples, what is he saying? "The time for following John is over. Soon John will be dead. Follow me, I'm the bridegroom. Leave that ministry behind. The time has come to follow the bridegroom, Jesus Christ.” What would he say to the Pharisees? "Follow me and leave behind your man-made traditions, your traditionalism. Follow me. I'm the Messiah. I'm the king." Even more significantly though, what does he say to the whole Jewish nation? "The Old Covenant is over; it's finished. When I give my blood, the sacrificial system will end, and so, the time has come for a new covenant in my blood. Follow me." Application What does he say to individuals today? Basically, the status quo belongs to the Devil. You must be changed in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You can't stay the way you are and be saved. It says in Matthew 18:3, "Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." He said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again." He's going to take the wine of the Holy Spirit and he's going to pour it into a new one. So, you also must be made new. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.” You must be regenerated; you must be born again. Secondly, you must be sanctified; you must grow step-by-step, following Jesus. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "We are being changed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory." You know what's the key to that? The key to that is how you listen to the Word of God. How you read it, how you hear it preached and taught, how you respond at that key moment. Do you have a stiff neck? Remember He spoke of the Jews as being stiff necked. What does that mean? Unyielded. They won't move, set in their ways. Or are you rather yielded to the Spirit? Do you say basically, "Teach me what I need to know from the Spirit, and I will follow you." Finally, there's coming a great change for you individually, it's called glorification. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a flash, in a twinkling of the eye at the last trumpet. “For the trumpet will sound, the dead in Christ will be raised and we be changed.” There will be a transformation because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You've got to be transformed by the power of the resurrection. Well, that's individually. What about to churches today, is he's speaking a word of change to churches? Absolutely. First of all, if a church is healthy, it's going to be constantly growing. And if it's going to be constantly growing, it’s going to be constantly confronting issues of change, all the time. Therefore, we have to have a constant assessment. We have to keep constantly weighing the changes against the unchanging Word of God. We must keep bringing it back again to the touchstone of Scripture. Is this matter covered in Scripture or not? If not, then it's a matter of discussion about strategy, mission strategy, worship styles, other things. But if, however, the matter is covered in Scripture then it's unchanging, and so, we need to be Bereans, constantly re-assessing our ministry, constantly taking it back. And why? Because there's constant truths, aren't there? We just told you what they were. The unchanging nature of God, the unchanging nature of his Word, the unchanging Gospel, and even some methods are unchanging. Preaching is permanent, folks because it's covered in the Word. It's through the faithfulness of proclamation that people come to faith in Christ. I want to tell you again that tradition is essential to the advance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Speaking a word to you parents, if you have young children in your home, you must pass on the tradition of your living faith to them; you must share with them day after day. It is primarily your responsibility to evangelize your children. Sunday School has a role, the church has a role, the pastor has a role, but it is your primary responsibility to lead your children to Christ, pass on your faith to your children. Psalm 78 said, "He commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn, would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds, and would keep his commands." Generation after generation, like a relay race. You receive this faith, you cherish it, you walk with it, and you pass it on to your children, yes, but also to your disciples. I hope you have some. Lead some people to Christ and then share the Gospel with them, transform them, work with them. What does Jesus say in Matthew 28? "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you." That's tradition. But please, watch out for traditionalism, where external trappings become elevated to the level of the Word of God. The Book of Revelation is a book of new things, isn't it? If you're a child of God, you're going to be given a new name. How will my friends know me? I won't know what to call myself. It's written on a white stone and it'll be given to you, a new name. You'll be singing a new song, you'll be dwelling in the new Jerusalem, and you'll be surrounded by the new heavens and the new earth, because God the one who's seated on his throne says, "Behold, I'm making everything new." Let's follow Jesus Christ, our King, through all the changes he has in mind for you individually, for this church, until you finally see him face-to-face.