As the church year draws to a close, the three appointed readings for the 3rd Last Sunday in the Church Year are Daniel 12:1-3 (the Last Day); Hebrews 10:11-16 (the new covenant) and Mark 13:1-13 (Hated for His sake). The passage chosen to apply in the sermon is Daniel 12:2 which reads, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
At first reading, this passage sounds like every other religion in the world that speaks of some going to eternal life and others to eternal death. In verse 2 those who go to hell are described as receiving everlasting shame and contempt. The reason is obvious. The shame and contempt is in light of their countless sins. But who of us have not sinned by thought, word or deed? What hope is there for any of us?
Verse 1 speaks of those who are delivered as those who are “found written in the book.” Note that it does not read those who write themselves into the book. No, their names are found in the book because they were written by someone else. And that someone else is none other than God Himself. How though could He be blind to the fact that all are sinners and fall short of the glory of God?
The answer is found in Hebrews 10:17 in which the new covenant reveals that “their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.” So God isn’t blind; He’s just forgetful? How can the all-knowing, omniscient God forget anything? However, we jump to the wrong conclusion if we imagine that “forgetting” in this verse has something to do with the memory. It rather has to do with an action.
Two five-year olds are wrestling on the floor. One hits the other who responds, “I’m not going to forget that!” What does he mean? He means that he is going to get even. So also, if God remembers your sins, He holds you accountable for them; if He forgets your sins, you are forgiven. How can that happen? It happens because of the sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ Who took upon Himself the punishment you and I should have received.
Through faith in the work of our Savior, Christ Jesus, God no longer regards believers as sinners. We are justified in His sight which means we are accounted as righteous. The righteousness is not that of our own but that from Jesus Christ Himself. As verse 14 of Hebrews 10 reveals, “For by one offering (that of Christ) He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” Salvation is a gift including the faith that God implants in our hearts to cling to Jesus and Him alone for eternal salvation.
Name:Tom Baker
You know, something just occurred to me when I read this Law/Gospel sermon with its example of the five year olds fighting and one remembering. The biggest reason we struggle with just justification by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone and ALWAYS want to slip a post “but yea you need works to prove…” is not because we are trying to be more holy but just the opposite. We really don’t like the free-ness of grace that much and the scandal of the cross. Because if the scandal of the cross is that scandalous, Jesus died for my sins that re-occurred yet again today and tomorrow, even the worst of them in my estimation, which is malfunctioning at best (my assessment of what are my worse sins), then we REALLY have to see the sinfulness of ourselves and THAT’S what we hate and THAT’S why we keep throwing “you need to be getting better” back up there. Think about that for a minute. Let’s say there’s this sinner professing faith and he just simply is a rough cut character. Here I am relative to him more “clean cut” and I think to myself, “how in the world is his faith real, surely he is a hypocrite”. But really what am I saying in that scenario? What is underlying, “yea but he needs some good works to prove…”, is really the old man in us all saying, “If he gets into heaven, they’ll let anybody in.” When we re-foist works back up under sanctification we end under cutting justification through the back door, rather than simply letting faith produce its due works naturally and without our aid. When we are assessing “post conversion” good works, ours or another’s, we are comparing ourselves, sizing each other up. And this is what James himself seems to be warning against, THAT kind of faith, is really dead faith, it believes in God, it affirms to a degree Jesus died, even to a degree for me, but in the end it always ADDS something to the Cross and this adding to it “nullifies it” and thus arises this arrogant and boastful kind of faith as it raises itself up above another. But this dead faith can use Christian labels and names while its essence is dead.
The main reason we foist works back up under the guise of sanctification is we really don’t want a Jesus Who really bore my deepest and darkest evils because we don’t really 1. Like to see our evil as THAT evil, and 2. We don’t want a Jesus, the Son of God, the God so scandalized Himself. That is the tripping stone to the religious mind. We don’t mind “seeing our sin” in a “past tense” reflection, hence all the pietistic “conversion testimonies” I use to hear. We like the “I use to ____ but the Lord took that away from me…(implication, I’m better than before)”. But we NEVER want to hear what horrid sin we are NOW and TODAY still struggling with. We like the “I once was a sinner but now, I’m not so bad and oh it’s by the way of “grace” mind you”. We really have lost the reality of simultaneously sinner and saint in its true meaning.
This really struck me this weekend. Because we were around my wife’s family and home town visiting. To put a short summary on it, they are pietistic to the hilt. Rome would be an easier path to heaven than what is preached in that area all the time. There’s always talk about “others” in the church that don’t “walk the walk” or some similar pithy statement that is really a measuring stick of judgment. A kind of loose works yard stick if you will. They spend 100% of their time trying to figure out who is and who is not “saved”, and Christ as Christ on the Cross for you is utterly vacant from the place in sermons or speeches. Oh, if you questioned them, “how are we saved”, they could muster up a good protestant answer. However, their words say something else. What they ‘practice’ in what the teach and preach is entirely different.
In a way it is truly a blessing to NOT see one’s self as “getting better” or NOT to see “one’s own good works arising from faith”. That is a blessing, I think. Why? Because the old man can NEVER get food for his life and must slowly starve to death seeing no good works arising under the guise of “grace”, “Christian”, and post conversion “piety”. And as he starves to death the new man arises for only faith, that is naked trust in the Cross is ALL YOU HAVE. It is truly a blessing to NOT see the fruits of faith because the old man seeing it so grand a thing would surely cease upon it. To me this seems to be part of God’s hidden-ness under contraries. He seems to work no good works in me (I use “me” universally here for all), thus I seem forsaken, but He is more close to me than I understand. Not seeing any fruit that I can trust, it seems I’ve been forsaken of God and not just of God in a general sense but of that grace I hear so much about for the Christian. There could be no worse forsakenness than that! Yet, it is His very grace operating within me that He makes me repulse at myself and look back to the Cross, for I find no other hope.
When we ask for “grace” we tend to ask for “more power” to subdue our sins. But what we get is a grace utterly foreign to our thinking and nature and hidden to our reasoning. A grace that is hidden under contraries. For it is not a grace that aids in the subduing but a grace that makes us repugnant of our sins and fleeing to Christ. It is like this: the old man thinks he smells food and life in something he does either before or after conversion, thus, it has the odor of life to him (the way to God he smells thus). And the Cross of Christ is “too good” to really be THAT true, thus to the old man addicted to works the Cross smells like death (no way to God that purely gracious and merciful). For to SO nakedly trust is dangerous (death) to him, “surely something post conversion is needed of me…if nothing else as proof.” So he fears the danger in the end of not having something lest it be eternal death to him. However, to the new man, the naked truster, ALL works stink of rotting death. He is repulsed by them at every turn. Even when he would pursue them a bit, God graciously makes them stink as rotting flesh to him. Not in a pietistic humility way, but he literally sees nothing in them so as to bring them before God, rest, trust or hope in. He is ashamed of them all, before or AFTER conversion. They, thus, stink of death for no life can be found in them or their value. Thus, he turns to the Cross for it NOW is the true satisfying, pleasing and sweet odor and aroma of life. The contraries “flip-flop” for each man. What one “smells” as death the other “smells” as life and vice versa.
L. Hughes, KY
Pastor Baker,
I am so pleased you are on earlier in the day on KFUO. I always miss the program during the winter months. I appreciate you willingness to do this work it has been very helpful for a former modern evangelical.
I am also so glad the Law & Gospel podcast is back! It’s great. THANK YOU PASTOR BAKER AND KFUO!!!
Yes, boht unhingedsquare and l&g fan are correct. As of the beginning of this week, Monday, November 13, my radio program “Law and Gospel” has been changed from the 6:05 pm evening hour to the 2:05 pm afternoon hour. Because KFUO is a daytime radio station, it goes off the air when darkness descends. That means for the past 10 years I have been off the air during the months of November, December, January and February. However, with the new time, it looks like “Law and Gospel” will be on year round. You can listen by tuning in at AM 850 if you are in the Saint Louis, MO area of you can listen on the Internet by going to kfuo.org and then clcking on Law and Gospel to listen to any program during 2006. You can also download by wam, mp3 or I-pod to listen in your car.