Jews Grafted In

The Passover

Exodus 12:21-30

Hebrews 9:11-22

Four hundred years had passed from the time of Joseph to Moses. The promise that had been given to Jacob, Joseph’s father, was likely just faint folklore by the time the people of Israel were indentured into slavery in Egypt.

You might wonder why God would have allowed His chosen people to labor in Egypt without benefit of either nation or leadership (Moses had been out of the loop for forty years). In order to galvanize the Jews as a people, they had to be in one place and set apart, or clearly distinguishable, from the people around them. Longing for deliverance was a necessary pre-condition to the Exodus.

There were over two million Jews in Egypt by the time Moses was called to lead them out. Pharaoh enslaved them because he feared there were too many foreigners in his country. That was a big mistake because it set them apart as a people and prepared them for what God had in store for them.

By the time Moses came back to Egypt to demand of Pharaoh that he let God’s people go, the Egyptians were insisting that they make bricks even though they had run out of straw. Moses was distressed and came before the Lord. Here is what the Lord said to him:

I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant…I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. Then will you know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the yoke of the Egyptians.

Two things are about to happen. God is revisiting His covenant with Abraham. In order to honor that covenant, He must first take the people of Israel and make them His own. Then He must make Himself known to them, not only as God Almighty, but also as their Lord. Their plight in Egypt was the prelude to a covenant that is about to be honored. The plight would lead to flight.
Egypt was hit with nine plagues in the attempt to force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. Moses stretched out his staff over the Nile River, and it turned to blood. The fish died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink from the river. Still, Pharaoh refused to let the people go.

The plague of frogs was inflicted on Egypt, and we are told that frogs covered the entire land. Pharaoh promised to let the people go, and the frogs went back into the Nile. As soon as he got relief, he refused.

Then there were gnats. Then there were flies. Then the livestock of the Egyptians died, while those of the Israelites lived.

The next plague was the plague of boils on the people and their animals.

The next plague was hail that rained down on Egypt and destroyed crops and animals.

The next plague was locusts that devoured everything green and covered the ground until it was black. The next plague was total darkness for 3 days.

Nine plagues and none of these were sufficient to force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. There was to be, however, one more plague. And that plague was the very sign that has stretched through redemptive history into our day – the plague of death.

The people of Israel were to get ready to leave. They were to ask for silver and gold from their Egyptian neighbors, who, in their desire to get rid of them, readily complied. Each Jewish household was to sacrifice a lamb, paint the doorframes of their houses with the blood, eat the lamb – all of it – and retire for the night.

The Angel of Death came to Egypt that night and slew the firstborn of every household in Egypt that did not have the blood over the door. Here is the way God told it to Moses:

On that night, I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn – both men and animals – and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

In future generations, children would ask of their parents, “What does this service mean? Why do we take all this care about eating the lamb and the unleavened bread? What is the difference between this meal and other meals?”

Parents were to tell their children, “It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover. Even though there was grievous sin in our own camp – sins against the Lord our God, God graciously appointed and accepted the family sacrifice of a lamb, instead of the firstborn.” God Almighty, you see, would have killed the firstborn for their sin. But God as Lord showed mercy.

Just as the patriarchs had erected altars to the Lord to mark times of deliverance, the Passover was another Ebenezer monument for the people of Israel. The people were to look back and remember the mercy and loving-kindness of God. And they were to look forward to the times of fulfillment, when the Lord God would sacrifice Himself as the last lamb – the Lamb of God.

Christians, as well, were obnoxious to the sword of the Angel of Death, but Christ became our Passover lamb – His death for ours. Always, from the Exodus onward to our day, there was the blood: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

It is not difficult to understand how the people of Israel soon forgot, in the uncertainty of the desert. the significance of their ceremonies. We Christians, in our own wasteland, are inclined to forget the significance of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. As we have wandered in the Promised Land of the Kingdom of God, we forget what it cost God to grant us life. Things begin to look dim with time, and though our Passover service is referred to as Communion, we become so caught up in day-to-day living that we forget what it cost. And yet, through it all, the Angel of Death cannot be raised against those who have put the blood of the Lamb of God over their earthly temple.

Jesus said it this way, “I am the resurrection and the life…He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever believes in me shall never die.” That is our Passover promise.

As the Jews look back to the Exodus and forward to the Messianic Age, Christians look back to Calvary and forward to the Resurrection.

The events in Egypt that year signaled a long and bloody trail of remembrance. The writer of Hebrews summarizes it this way: “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.”

Lately, I have been visiting a number of blogs on religious web sites. A blog is a place where anyone can express his or her feelings in writing with little recourse except for an occasional accusation by some stranger of being an idiot.

What I have come to understand is that there is beneath the surface of this country a lot of hostility toward God. It is a hostility that has always been there, but it is kept quiet within the folds of religion or unbelief. The blog gives vent to this hostility, and some of it is pretty vile.

Christians are rightly accused of being hypocrites because the Christian community in America is pretty hypocritical.

But the accusation of hypocrisy is nothing but a red herring to justify anger against God. At the core of the anger is a refusal to accept the blood. This comes out in various ways. There are those who refer to Jesus as a wise prophet, but human. That is a refusal to accept the blood. I read of a group of nationally known Christians who formed a speaker’s bureau called “Red Letter Christians.” They are Red Letter Christians because they adhere to the words of Jesus, sometimes written in red in the New Testament.

Not enough! To be a Red Letter Christian is nothing different from being an OT Christian. It is to select a portion of Scripture as a moral code. It is a way of evading the blood. Moral codes, however nice they are, don’t cut the mustard.

Others will rant and rail against Christians as living in fairyland – believing in hocus/pocus magic. What gives them away is the hostility that emotes as they accuse. That kind of hostility is not reserved, you will notice, for neighbors who live in the self-designed fairyland called suburbia. It is reserved for those who claim the blood.

In the history of the ancient Jewish church, you would see traces of blood everywhere. Sometimes there were bowls of blood at the foot of the altar. The place must have been a shambles to the natural taste. Not only was the slaughter of animals part of the worship, their blood was sprinkled on the curtains, the vestments of the priests, all over the altar and on the people.

Here is an important point. The only way anyone could take delight in the blood offerings was if he had a lively faith and felt the need for purification. Otherwise it was repulsive and an ordeal that had to be endured for the sake of ritual. To the unbeliever in our culture as well, the shedding of blood for the remission of sins is repulsive. There are some, however, who endure the ritual, hoping that somehow the ritual can bring forgiveness.

Under the law, there were exceptions to the sacrifice. Each person was to bring the finest of his flock to be sacrificed. But if a person were too poor, he could bring a two turtledoves or a couple of pigeons. If he were too poor for that, he might offer a tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering, to be cast on the fire. That was the sole exception – poverty. In all other instances, blood must flow; life must be given.

With the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, all exceptions expired, even for the extremely poor. It was the final statement of our condition – that we are all spiritually bankrupt. The days of bringing offerings for our sin expired at the Cross. Instead, we come to accept an offering – one that already has been presented. There is now no exception for any person, nor shall there ever be again, either in this world or the one to come.

Can you imagine, then, how foolish it is for Christians to be praying for and hoping for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem? The renting of the temple veil was the end of sacrifices.

The word remission means the putting away of debts. God set the bar too high for us. His standards of righteousness were too high for any of us to reach. But at the core of His plan was to set aside for Himself a people. It began with national Israel and continues to this day with spiritual Israel, grafted into the root of Jesse, David’s father.

It was to be a people who stood in the favor of God, which meant that His justice had to be satisfied. God would not be holy unless He maintained His standard of righteousness for His people. The resurrection of the OT saints who looked forward to the coming of the Christ was on hold until the final sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which Christians believe has already occurred. Those saints could not receive remission, nor have their debt paid to God, until the blood of the Lamb of God was shed.

When you consider the consistency of this work of grace from the Exodus to the Resurrection, how could any of us claim to be a Red Letter Christian? There is no such thing. For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.

The debt, we believe, is not one paid over time on the installment plan. It is paid at once. The sinner is received into the Father’s love as if he never had sinned. We are not partially forgiven. We are altogether forgiven. The corruption of our natures is still a disease, and the sin that is within us must be daily and hourly mortified. But as for the guilt of our sins before God, and the debt incurred to his Justice, the payment for them is complete – not a thing that progresses with time and experience.

These are not matters of mere hope. They are matters of faith, conviction and assurance. Know that “…as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God’s ways above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts.” It is ours to err; it is God’s to forgive.

But it doesn’t end just there. The blood is an offense to the properly religious, who want to earn their salvation, and an insurmountable obstacle to the wise who find the whole thing too messy and untidy and unreasonable.

“Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” There is in this verse a great hope but also a sweeping indictment. Those who are trusting in repentance for the pardon of their sin may be disappointed. Those who, in our culture, think they have secured their eternal destiny by repeating the so-called Sinner’s Prayer may be in for a rude shock.

All the repentance in the world cannot erase the smallest sin. Where repentance is the work of the Spirit of God, it is a precious gift and a sign of grace. But there is no atoning power in repentance alone. For “…without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” For those who insist that you can couple the Sinner’s Prayer with a reformed life, they may also be in for a rude shock. Reformation is a good thing, but a debt already incurred is not settled by not getting further into debt. To reform can make no atonement to God for the sins that were in the past, or those yet to be committed, albeit unknowingly.

For those who are mighty in prayer and make much of public praying, they also may be in for a rude shock. All the prayers of all the saints on earth and heaven combined could not blot out a single sin. There is no detergent power in prayer.

Self-denial, fasting, prayer, baptism, first communion, Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah – all those things, while good, cannot get rid of a single sin. For “…without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.”

There are those who are so engrossed in the Second Coming of Christ that they seem to have fixed their faith on the future – too much of Christ on the throne, and not enough of Christ on the Cross.

Look away from all other securities and confidences and hopes, and rely on the sufferings and death of the Incarnate God who lives today to plead our case before the Father’s throne. For there will come a day when He will stand with us and plead our case: “I have kept them, Father – those you have given to me.”

And the answer from the Father rings down through history: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

Pressing Forward

Philippians 3:4b-16

Each of us has raised our Ebenezer monument, our stone of help, to remind us of that point in our life when we came to the definitive point of a serious walk with Christ.

It may have been a specific moment when we fell to our knees and cried out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” It may have been a less definitive time when we became conscious that a great change had taken place within us to confirm God’s presence there. We may not know exactly when the moment was that we trusted Jesus Christ as Lord. But we can remember when it dawned on us that something was different.

The seed was perhaps planted by a Godly mother or father. Maybe a grandmother or neighbor. It might have been a sermon that you recall from this very pulpit at some time in your life. Whatever triggers your memory, your Ebenezer marks the time and the place of realization that things became different.

If this resonates with you, I would ask you to consider what other memories you have about your walk with Christ. You may have disappointed yourself and worried that God would reject you. Those memories may have brought doubt to your mind and heart about your standing with God. Can you remember those wrenching moments when you cried out, “God, how can I possibly be a Christian and have behaved like that?” Those are the times when you subject yourself to the same condemnation that the non-believing world brings in accusation of the people of God: “How can they say they are Christians and behave like that?”

There is a big difference, though, between those who have raised their Ebenezer in memory of the love and help of God and those who have chosen to go it on their own. The difference is that the memories of the Christian are of his sin and human failure and act as a confirmation of the depth of God's great love and mercy. The memories preferred by the non-believer are of his good deeds that he hopes will open heaven’s door.

Along with the memories of a halting Christian walk are also memories of times when God seemed to signal you that He was still with you, despite your doubt and despair. I am certain that each of you has had memories like that. Those are the markers that propel you onward. Those are the evidences of God’s grace that drive you to press forward for the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Those are the signs that point the way from your Ebenezer to the prize that lies beyond the pale.

I can think of two instances that happened to me in MY erratic walk with Christ. The first was when I was walking into a temptation over which I seemed to have had no control. It was as though the Holy Spirit were hollering at me to stop and turn around. I didn’t, and I wondered if I had committed the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Spirit.

There was another time, however, maybe 8 years later. I was out of sorts at that time, as well – in the throws of a divorce, which from my fundmentalist background was the worst of all possible sins. I was at a Sunday service listening to a visiting evangelist preach on Romans 7. While he was preaching, I was reading. I had to restrain myself from jumping up when a bolt of lightening hit me that he was preaching false doctrine. He was preaching that we could lose our salvation by committing sin, and Paul was telling me that there is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What a memory that was! It was the beginning of a long journey that brings me here in this pulpit this morning. For if there is anything that stirs my soul it is that God's people are safely beyond condemnation. That is the only hope we have, you see. For if we are capable of picking up our own salvation at will and setting it down at will, we have LOST it already. For the sins in our lives is not just the biggies. The sins of our lives are the little sins that lead to the biggies.

The Apostle Paul has something to say about memories and how to sort them out so that they don’t discourage us but propel us to higher ground as disciples of Christ. He begins with his résumé. He has credentials to die for. If his confidence and hope are in the flesh, then the Apostle Paul is all set.

From the time of Abraham, all baby boys born into the line of Abraham were circumcised on the 8^th day of life. The thinking goes that because God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7^th, the 8^th day is symbolically the day when God began to assemble His people – back to work! Paul was a direct descendent of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin, a tribe held in high regard by the Jews, not only because it was one of the southern two tribes of Israel but because it had produced Israel’s first king, Saul.

Paul was a Pharisee. To be a Pharisee required that you be a person of great self-discipline. Not only were you to keep the Mosaic law; you were to keep all the numerous other laws that had been handed down over the centuries. Pharisees were highly honored people among the Jews.

Paul claims to have been faultless in his zeal for the law and in persecuting the church. His was a system of legalistic righteousness, and he was good at it. Paul had it made! If he could have preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God from that position of authority, it would have been very effective politically, perhaps. But in order to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, Paul had to surrender his credentials. The Gospel and legalistic righteousness were completely at odds with each other. One was about citizenship in the Kingdom of God; the other was about citizenship here on earth.

That is an important point. Legalism and the Gospel do not mix. You cannot live the Gospel and be a legalist. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is intended to save us from the hopelessness of legalism. If you live by the law, you do not live by the Gospel. Paul had to walk away from all that gave him stature among the Jews. In fact, his Roman citizenship was now more important to his survival than was his well-earned status as a leader of the Jewish church.

Paul was able to beat the best of Judaizers at their own game. No matter how righteous they thought themselves to be, Paul had been higher on the ladder and gave it all up. In v. 7, Paul makes a value statement. Everything that he had accomplished that he once held to be worthwhile, he threw out as you would the rubbish because he would have been in danger of having it destroy his relationship with Christ. The KJ refers to Paul’s accomplishments as “dung.” I suspect that is about as low as you can get.

His desire was to be found in Christ alone. In order to avail himself of that potential, he had to get rid of everything for which he might be tempted to give credit to himself rather than to God. He did not want to be tempted to step back from faith into self-reliance. So he gave it all up – threw it out.

He wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. The only way to do that was to get rid of his own power and live by faith alone. He wanted fellowship with Christ by sharing in His sufferings. The only way to do that was to leave himself vulnerable and without political clout. He wanted to become like Christ in His death. The only way to do that was to be willing to die without exercising one bit of self-preservation. He voluntarily went back to Jerusalem knowing that he was going to die for the Gospel’s sake. The very letter that we are considering was written from a prison in Rome.

Paul lived his testimony. He not only talked the talk; he walked the walk. When brought before the magistrates, he did not plead his credentials as proof of his credibility. He pleaded the cause of Christ. The magistrates were free to react to Paul in whatever way they wished, and they did. He was whipped, stoned and imprisoned. And every time God rescued him, it was a clear demonstration of God’s power and might, and souls were saved.

I think this is the kind of vulnerability that Christ wants of His church. It is a vulnerability that survives by faith and not by design. It is a vulnerability that lives day-to-day and not through a trust fund or a fundraising project. It is a vulnerability that makes it look and seem impossible to survive, but God seems always to give grace in the nick of time.

The 11^th v. is a particularly important one. Paul keeps himself vulnerable so that, “…somehow" he might attain to the resurrection from the dead. This ought to be an encouragement to us. Paul, with all his experience in the desert, being caught up into the heavens, was unsure of how God was going to do the resurrection thing. Compare that with many of today’s evangelical Christians, who are very certain not only of how it is going to be done, but when. For Paul, it was enough to know that God was going to do it, even though he did not know how or when.

He is not perfect, v. 12. He has not attained all that he hoped to attain of the kinship with Christ. Things remain a mystery to him, and faith fails him from time to time. Even though he has walked away from his power and credentials, his sacrifice has not been enough to erase all the uncertainties and the mysteries.

So he presses on toward the perfection that he yet seeks, because Christ has made him His own. Christ has claimed him as His own through His blood, and Paul finds that alone is enough to urge him onward toward perfection.

Is what Christ has done for us at Calvary enough for us to press forward toward perfection as Christians? Have we anywhere near reached the point of understanding that suffering with Christ and fellowshipping with Christ and becoming like Him in His death and Resurrection leads to perfection?

The text is the law of progress: “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Behind Paul is Saul of Tarsus – the scenes of boyhood, the eagerness of his awakening intellect, his affection for the religion of his fathers. Behind him, also, was his Ebenezer in the City of Damascus under the anointing of Ananias: “Brother Saul, receive your sight.”

The agony of that moment some 26 years before is behind him now, as he passes from the protective bosom of Judaism into the Church of Jesus Christ. Behind him are all the sufferings and agonies and misunderstandings and separations and disappointments and triumphs and victories. Behind him as well are his failings in the flesh and his inner struggles. These signposts of God’s presence were not forgotten but have fallen into the background because Paul is pressing forward.

He is no longer on a predetermined career path. He is pressing forward in uncertainty because pressing forward is more important than where he is going. Those are words to consider this morning for those of us who want to know where we are going and what is the right path to get there. Paul would consider such thinking to be a stumbling block to his relationship with Christ.

What were those things before him? What was his goal? He saw spiritual heights that had yet to be scaled. He saw enemies that had not yet been conquered. He saw graces that had not been won in his secret soul. He saw love that had not been completed – the deepening, purifying, strengthening personal love for the Lord who brought him out from bondage and death.

He saw ahead of him only the possibility of a small window of opportunity and desired to be enriched with a secret strength that would be inexplicable except for the grace of God.

Maybe Paul saw before him the future of the church and the vast Kingdom of God. Maybe he saw the urgency of giving you and me the tools with which to tackle this thing called faith.

We live in a time much faster than that of the Apostle Paul. Things are moving very fast. This is an exciting time to be alive. But this restless, struggling, seething mass of life is also fraught with peril. It calls us who claim Jesus as Lord to be vigilant and to be discerning as to what occupies our time and our devotions, that we not be found so self-sufficient that we need little of faith to make it through this veil of tears.

Just as believers are in danger of insulating themselves by relying on their wit and wisdom, so the church is in danger of being defined by human ability and energy. Human progress, however wonderful it may be, and it certainly is, carries with it the dangers of distraction. Praise God that He always retains a remnant within the confessing church. And the church rises again and again through the ashes of persecution and suffering.

Today in many parts of the world, people are suffering for the cause of Christ. Just when the political pundits are about to pronounce its death, the church rises victorious. It rises on the sure knowledge that, despite our foolish attempts to do for God what He is patiently waiting to do through us, we share the conviction that this Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Are we striving with a view toward a future that is unknown, or are we plotting a course that takes us where we want to go? Are we longing, struggling, praying to conquer in ourselves everything that keeps us from progress in the faith? Are we waging war on selfishness, idleness, sensuality, indifference, frivolity, unbelief? Are we dissatisfied with small thoughts of the Creator? Are we discovering in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments the treasures that will help us press forward toward the mark of our high calling?

Do we desire to dwell on thoughts of God, thoughts of death and thoughts of eternity?

In other words, are we anxious beyond anything else to be humbly, earnestly, fervently and intensely Christian?

"Mine Ebenezer"

1 Samuel 7:7-13
Acts 8:9-23

There is a movement underway for the Evangelical community to stand behind Israel. This movement is in the face of mounting Antisemitism in Europe and increasing pressure within the US to review its pro-Israel policies and support a homeland for the Palestinians.

Politically, the Jewish people have a grim history of being persecuted in Europe. The primary nation to consistently stand behind a Jewish homeland has been America. Today that position is under attack by both the liberal elite and the mainline Protestant denominations.

Politically, as well, it is unclear from history that Palestinians do really want a homeland. They have been brought to the table many times and have been given opportunity to bargain for a homeland, but they seem not to have made it their No. 1 priority. What they want is incomprehensible to the Western mind and obviously very complex. Whatever it is, it keeps them in a state of turmoil.

The Christian Right is emerging as the darling of Israel. As that takes place some raise the question as to whether the Christian Right really does love the Jews, or whether the Jews are a pawn in their eschatology, or doctrine of things to come.

Premillennial Dispensationalism (PD), a predominant doctrine in Evangelical circles, is the teaching behind such books and movies as the Left Behind series. It teaches that the world is getting increasingly worse and that because of that, Jesus is coming soon. Due to the imminence of His coming, Evangelicals are notorious for minimizing long-term national goals such as environmental stewardship.

PD teaches that the saints will soon be taken up in what is known as the Rapture, escaping a worldwide purge under the leadership of a world leader referred to as the Antichrist. After the great persecution, there will follow a great battle, the Battle of Armageddon.

At that battle, Jesus will defeat the enemies of the Gospel, and the blood of the dead will flow to the horses’ bridles in the Plains of Zesreel.

Jesus will then bring the saints back to Jerusalem and set up his throne to reign for 1,000 years.

Biblically, I don’t buy this teaching for a whole range of reasons that I have neither the time nor space to get into here. Suffice it to say that, if you want to know my position on the subject, read my book, “Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship.”

Those who adhere to this belief are focused on the Middle East. They admit to not caring much about anything else because they are certain that Jesus will return soon. The danger comes when foreign policy is driven by this theology. The teaching requires the destruction of the Moslem Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.

This thinking , by inference, suggests that the Kingdom of God is away and that somehow God's people have a role in accelerating its return to earth. I focus on the Kingdom of God in my teaching because I believe it to be a present reality in the life of the Christian but not yet fulfilled – a construction project in process. This Kingdom is a spiritual kingdom that cannot and will not, in my reading of Scripture, be set up in Jerusalem. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” and consistently rejected any offer of worldly power.

The problem with this doctrine of Premillennial Dispensationalism is that it makes the Kingdom of God a replacement nation for Jewish Israel. Its objective is to flow with a misreading of redemptive history that insists that God's primary purpose is to make Christians out of the Jewish people.

Paul made it clear in his writings, however, that we who claim Jesus Christ as Lord have not taken up a new national identity but are grafted in to God’s covenant people, Israel. Ours is not a replacement kingdom. We are invited guests to be grafted in to God’s chosen people, the Jews. The Christian is, then, a completed Jew. God’s ultimate plan for the Jewish people cannot be divined by any one of us, but it must be accepted that He has a plan for Jews as well as for non-Jews.

What is alarming about this doctrine is that there is a very real danger that we as a nation can become so obsessed with this thinking that we turn the Mid-East into a self-fulfilling prophecy – into a Battle of Armageddon of our own making.

I do not see this as love for the Jewish people and their nation, Israel. I see this as a reckless strategy to turn the Mid-East into an inferno, killing millions. The agenda is to get as many Jews as possible saved, and to Hell with those who fail to buy the program. This is, instead, a patronizing form of Antisemitism. The Jewish people become a pawn in a scheme to force God to act.

At the root of this thinking is a dumbing down of four basic orthodox Christian beliefs – the authority of Scripture, the sovereignty of God, the Lordship of Christ and the presence of the Kingdom.

Because Scripture is employed by the Christian Right as a book of rules rather than an inspired account of God’s overarching love for His people, it is stripped of its authority. Once you take select verses of Scripture and force them into a previously-adopted doctrine, you are now engaged in Bibliolatry – the worship of the Bible – rather than the worship of the God of the Bible. The Bible becomes a book of ethics, or problem solving, rather than the written revelation of the nature of God.

Once you begin to weave together what you think God is going to do next and when you think He is going to do it, you strip Him of His sovereignty. Once you begin to manipulate events to verify your theology, God is shoved out of the picture. You are left to build your Tower of Babel, or in this case the Temple in Jerusalem.

As for the Lordship of Christ, once you begin to put Jesus into some distant galaxy except in some mythical way in your heart, you strip Him of His sovereign reign over God’s people and take over that position yourself, or in this case substitute nation, creed or denomination for King Jesus.

And of course, if Jesus is away and we are just groaning souls waiting between His first and second Advents, the Kingdom becomes totally future rather than present, and God’s people take it upon themselves to get the earth ready for the Kingdom to descend. In order to do that, there has to be a lot of bloodshed and suffering.

It is a sign of hope this morning that the Prophet Samuel and the Apostle Philip did not buy it either.

The people of Israel are about to be invaded by the Phillistines. What do they do? They lament, or become sorrowful, before the Lord. For twenty years, the Ark of the Covenant had been in storage, so to speak – away from the holy of holies of the tabernacle. Without the Ark of the Covenant, God’s direct presence in battle would be uncertain.

Spiritual decay had set in with God’s people, and they find themselves about to be overrun by the Philistines. The symbol of God’s presence, the Ark, was missing. So they sought out the Prophet Samuel.

Samuel lays two conditions on the people of Israel to incur the protection of the Lord. He does not open the Scriptures and foretell what is going to happen and how they can play a role. He does not point to a ritual or a prophecy to tell them what they should do next. He lays on them two conditions to invoke the Lord’s presence – repentance and getting rid of their idols.

“Repent and put away your strange gods.” Those are the conditions that Samuel placed on the nation of Israel for their divine protection. “It was because you forsook God and served other idols that God has delivered you into the hand of the Philistines.”

Repent and abandon your idols. That is the condition of God’s presence and blessing on His people. To repent means to humble yourself before God and confess your sin. To abandon your idols means to do away with all that detracts from the sovereignty of God.

Those are the rules of the Kingdom, are they not? Repent and abandon your idols! The problem with God’s people is that they want their cake and eat it too – their idols and their God. In our case, the primary idol is money. This doctrine of Premillennial Dispensationalism is a doctrine that brings in the money. If our money comes to life it must be worthy of our worship!

I read this past week a comment by a well-meaning Christian lady to an orthodox Jewish rabbi: “Don’t worry about any Holocaust; we are going to take care of you.” To that I say, ‘Repent and abandon your idols – your particular interpretation of Scripture, for example.’” You want God to establish His Kingdom? Repent and abandon your idols, and you will find God’s Kingdom coming to life within you.

It would do us good, I think, to take inventory to see what our idols really are!

The people of Israel smashed their idols, gathered at Mizpeh, fasted and made a public confession of their sin. The Philistines went up to Mizpeh against them.

As Samuel was offering a burnt offering before the Lord, the Philistines appeared. God terrorized them with thunder, drove them into confusion, and the Israelites chased and slew them. But that was not the end of the story.

Samuel raised an altar to the Lord and called it Ebenezer, saying, “The Lord has helped us thus far.” Sounds conditional, doesn’t it? It is conditional. The arm of the Lord is stretched out all day long for his people. It is the people's responsibility to reach out to the arm of the Lord. There are two conditions – that God’s people repent and abandon their idols – their false beliefs and their worship of power and money.

If you ask me, God’s people in our day are a far cry from either. They have put the doctrine of the Gospel of the Kingdom into storage, hoping for God’s protection without holiness.

I received an email this past week including an article by a hymn writer by the name of Gary Parrett. I have no idea who Gary Parrett is. He laments the efforts of hymn writers to change the words to the song, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” written by Robert Robinson in 1758. Instead of “Here I raise my Ebenezer,” suggested revisions include, “Hitherto thy love has blest me,” or “Here by grace your love has brought me,” or “Here I raise to thee an altar.”

Parett says he thinks they miss the point because of the tendency to conjure up that old curmudgeon, Ebenezer Scrooge. The biblical grounds on which he protests these efforts are that it refers to a great delivery by God of His people.

The stone, Ebenezer, translated from the Hebrew as the stone of help, is at the very point
where God’s mercy is poured out on His people. Samuel dedicated that stone as a landmark monument to God’s help, God’s faithfulness and God’s eternal covenant. As the people got on with their lives, the stone stood there, visible to all who passed by, a reminder of judgment and repentance; mercy and restoration.

The monument was conditional. God has helped us thus far and will continue to do so. But always there is a condition – repent and abandon your idols.

The Kingdom, then, takes on a fluid state. When God’s people set about making idols of their doctrines or religion or money, the enemy moves in against them. When God’s people repent and abandon those idols, the enemy is vanquished. We don’t have to go to war to win, then, do we? We don’t have to manipulate events so that we can tear down the Moslem Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and put the Temple in its place, do we? Our job is to repent and tear down our idols. The victory is God’s.

Would to God we would set up our Ebenezer stone as a continual reminder that we are forgiven, that we have chosen a new direction and that God has made a permanent covenant with all who have put their faith in Jesus Christ instead of America or our eschatology.

Philip has the courage to go down to Samaria to preach Christ. You will remember Samaria as the place that devout Jews tried to avoid in their pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem. They had to go through Samaria in order to get to Jerusalem, and they were taunted by people throwing rocks and insults at them. The Samaritans, you see, were what was left of the 10 tribes of Israel. They had merged with the Gentiles and were jealous of the Temple worship. It was their position that they could effectively worship God on the mountain. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other.

There was great joy in Samaria at the preaching of the Gospel because, at last, God had expanded his covenant to include the Gentiles. We are told that evil spirits came out of many, and many paralytics were healed. Then we come to Simon the Sorcerer, a magician who had billed himself as a divine power from the Great Power.

What turned both Simon and the people of Samaria around was the new teaching of good news. We are told specifically in Acts 8 what that good news was. It was not the good news of salvation by grace. It was not the good news of a New Jerusalem. It was the good news of the Kingdom God and the name of Jesus Christ which included salvation by grace alone and the announcement of the New Jerusalem.

Philip preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God – a gospel with which you have become familiar in this church. What is significant about this is that if we restrict the gospel to repeating the sinner’s prayer, it loses its vitality – its fluidity; its power. The Sinner’s Prayer is only the repentance part. The Kingdom part is abandoning our idols and living in the community of the righteous – traveling on Isaiah’s Highway of the redeemed.

The gospel is not a static moment in time. There is traveling involved; there is learning involved; there is surprise involved; there are miracles of grace involved; there is a monument involved called Ebenezer. That monument reminds us of where we were when we were delivered. It is a benchmark of the beginning of God’s movement on our lives, grafting us into His divine plan.

If the gospel of the kingdom of God was Philip’s gospel, we can come to no other conclusion but that the Kingdom and Jesus are synonymous terms. Last week we visited the proclamation that it is in God that His people live, move and have their very being. That is about motion – progress. But also, it is about repentance and abandonment of our idols.

Simon the Sorcerer did not abandon his idols. He tried to buy from Peter the power to lay hands on people so that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Peter’s answer was this: “May you and your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money. You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God.”

Money buys respect, status, protection and power. Money can even buy a good seminary education at the finest universities in the world. But money cannot buy a calling from God, nor can it buy gifts of the HS. Simon should have raised his Ebenezer to remind him that in Christ Jesus he had been forgiven his previous greedy lifestyle.

We have raised a church building here as our Ebenezer. When we approach it, is it an object of pride, or does it remind us of God’s help? That same help is at our disposal today. But the same two conditions remain that got us this far – repentance and abandonment of our idols.