Transcript [i]
This is the transcript for the sermon I preached at Saint Simons
Community Church (SSCC) on July 29, 2013 (Watch sermon here). I actually wrote the transcript after
the sermon so that I might adapt it for reading and study. Therefore, it is not
the exact wording I used in the sermon, but it is a close approximation,
expanded somewhat for the sake of study clarity. Moreover, this sermon is part
of a much larger project that I am working on tentatively called, “Surprised By
Purpose: The Story of Our Identity.” I want to extend a special thanks to SSCC
for allowing me the opportunity to share what God has placed on my heart.
All Jason has in his possession
is a bag with a few items from his past, and, as he looks them over for clues
to his identity and reflects on the fragments of things that he can actually
remember, he cannot help but feel a sense of dread, as if something is not quite
right, beyond having amnesia of course. When we meet Jason Bourne, he is
unconscious, set adrift in the Mediterranean Sea and left for dead. He is
pulled aboard a fishing vessel. Upon being revived, he quickly realizes that He
does not know who he is.
At this point, Jason is left with
one of two options. He can take Marie’s advice, his newly found friend that we
see him speaking with in the clip we just watched. She suggests that he is just
paranoid; perhaps his amnesia is the result of an accident. He could just calm
down, stop concerning himself with the past so much, and just get on with
living life. Perhaps Jason could have gone back to the boat captain of the
fishing vessel that saved his life, asked for a job, and perhaps he could have
figured out his life in time, or even just started over.
This is not what Jason does.
Instead, he chooses another option. He stays on his guard and fights to find
out who he is, and, as the story unfolds, we find he makes the right decision.
If he had convinced himself he was being paranoid and tried to forget about his
past, his past would have soon caught up with him and ended his life. It turns
out that Jason was a secret agent, and it was a botched mission that left him
in the predicament he now found himself in. The agency that had sent him on the
mission was out to wipe Jason Bourne from the scene of history, so that they
might cover their tracks.
If you have ever heard the story
of humanity told from the Christian worldview, you might hear something of
Jason’s story echoed in ours. This is especially true when you are familiar
with common testimonies of converted Christians. It goes something like this:
“I awoke one day to realize that I did not know who I was, but there was
something wrong.” As a matter of fact, the question, “Who am I?” is a question
that humans have been asking as far back as our histories can remember.
However, the Christian story does not stop with just this strange sense of a
lack of identity. Instead, as I already noted, the question is coupled with a
fear.
We awake to realize that we have
a hole in our chest. We feel as if we are as good as dead. Even though we are
not quite sure who we are, as we reflect on the fragmentary clues we do have,
we end up feeling that sense of dread, and like Jason, we are faced with a
choice. We can say to ourselves: “The past does not matter. I am my own man or woman.
I can make my own identity. I’ll just start over.” And what does the Christian
story say will happen? Soon enough our sin will catch up with us and drag us
down. That agency, Sin, that has left us lost, is out to finish the job.
Now, this is really where our
story diverges from Jason’s. Jason has no help, and he has to go fight for his
identity alone. Sure, he has met Marie, but she is just as lost as Jason. She
is having an identity crisis of her own. She might not have amnesia, but she is
a drifter that cannot even get her visa straightened out. To know what happens
to Jason and Marie, you will have to watch the movie. For us looking at the story
of humanity from the Christian perspective, the Bible story tells us that we
cannot fight for ourselves. In fact, sin has not simply left us for dead, like
Jason was left for dead. In a real sense, we are already dead in our sin. But,
there is still a fight for your identity, and that is the story the Bible tells
us.
The Bible is not merely so, but
it is the story of us, the story of the fight for our identity. It informs us
about our past and how we got to where we are now. One of my favorite theologians,
John Wesley, once said, “If I were to write the story of my life, I should
start before I was born,” and that is where the Bible begins: in the beginning,
which is a good place to start if you ask me. So, that is going to be our task
for the rest of this message, to tell the story, but, in order to be able to do
so, we must get over what I like to call Sunday School Syndrome.
Sunday School Syndrome is not
limited to those programs that are explicitly labeled “Sunday School.” It can
be any program that is dedicated to bringing a small group of believers
together for a limited amount of time to discuss the Word of God. If you have
ever been a part of such a program, and even more so if you have ever been a
leader or teacher of such a program, you might get a better sense for what I am
about to say.
Teachers and leaders of such
programs often feel obligated to have a succinct and comprehensive message that
wraps up by the end of the talk. You don’t want to leave the group feeling as
if they did not get anything out of the study. So, we rush over to stories in
Scriptures like David and Goliath, and we pull out some moral nugget and say,
“Now, go and live it out.” After years and years of this, we end up with a
bunch of stories in our head. We know about Noah and Jesus and Adam and Eve and
Lazarus and Moses and Paul and Gideon and Elisha and Elijah and Rahab. The list
goes on.
I got very good at telling the
stories of Scripture, but I realized one day that I could not tell the story of
Scripture. How did all these people impact each other, or did they? Is the
Bible just a collection of Ancient Near Eastern fables or is it a bigger story.
I began to ask myself this question as I was leaving for seminary, and it was
not some sort of moral quest for me. I just thought to myself, “You know,
you’re going to be in ministry one day. You better learn this stuff so you
don’t get caught with your pants down.”
You know what I found out? I
found out that it was a bigger story, and it was not just a story of an ancient
past. It was my story, a story that has defined my life, and it is the story we
are now going to tell. But, since this is such a big task, we will have to give
ourselves some boundaries boundary, lest I wander down every rabbit trail there
is. To keep us on task, we are going to end our conversation by answering a
question about Matthew 28:18-20. How this relates to the story of our identity
will become apparent in a moment. This is, as you are already probably very
aware, the Great Commission:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and
teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am
with you always, to the end of the age.”
Notice what Jesus does not say here. He
does not say, “Now behold my Great Commission: All authority in heaven and on
earth…” No. It is the Church that has through the ages called this passage,
“The Great Commission,” and we have to ask ourselves, what makes it so great?
Another question that we must ask that
goes along with the first is this: “How do we go from waking up one day with
that hole in our chest, realizing we are as good as dead, to the place where we
can believe such a calling from Christ is possible?” Indeed it would have to be
a great commission if it implies what it seems to imply: that we can be His
disciples, that we can be God’s right-hand men and women.
In order to answer that question, we go
back to the beginning, specifically that part of the creation account when God
begins to create us, Genesis 1:27 and 28. I am often humored by the modern
usage of these two verses. These are two very well known passages in the Bible,
but they are seldom told together as they are written.
Verse 27, naturally enough, is used to speak
about our identity. In essence, you were made in the image of God. The text
says, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created
them; male and female he created them.” Of course we all know the caveat of
the fall, but we use this verse to speak about what God did in the beginning.
However, we never seem to ask the question, “Why?” God created many other
things, but humans He made to bear His image. Why?
The answer to that question we should get
by moving quickly over to the next verse, but often we just end the discussion
there. Genesis 1:28 says, “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish
of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves
upon the earth.’” There is our answer, but v 28 shows up in a different
discussion altogether. Of course we love that first part about being fruitful
and multiplying. That sounds fun, but we then take the discussion to some
strange places, like population control.
Something to this effect is said: “The
world is filling up with people. Should we keep having babies?” To which the
reply comes: “Well the Bible says, “be fruitful and multiply,’ so keep it up.”
Now, this verse might have something to say to this modern conversation. I
don’t know, but I do have to imagine that when the writer was inspired to write
this those thousands of years ago, he wasn’t thinking, “You know what? People a
few thousand years from now will be wondering what to do when the world starts
to fill up with people, so I better write this now.”
Let’s do ourselves a favor and place this
verse in the context in which it was written, that is in conjunction with v 27.
What happens when we pull them together? What does the text say? Verse 27 says
that you were made in the image of God, and, then, in v 28, God commands you to
be fruitful and multiply. In other words, God in essence says, “You are made in
my image. Now, go and fill the earth with my image.” This is where the story of
our identity starts. We are called to fill the earth by being image bearers,
and what is God’s image: Among other things, it is goodness. We were meant to
fill the earth with God’s goodness.
Soon enough we get to Genesis 3, the story
of the fall. We all know the story. It is another story affected by the Sunday
School Syndrome. Out of context it is simply a story with an apple—at least
that is the fruit we have chosen to depict—a snake, a tree, and two naked
people that whenever a snapshot is taken of them, they are in perfect alignment
with tree limbs and bushes to have their private bits covered up. It all seems
sort of silly. We want to laugh at it. But, when you place this story into the
context of the bigger story, it is so frightening that it can take your breath
away.
Paul commenting on sins entrance into
human history said in Romans 3:23: “…all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.” Scholars tell us that, especially when speaking about God, the
word glory can be interchanged with the world image, since God’s image is
glorious. So, what is Paul saying? He is saying that we have all fallen short
of the image of God, that image we were meant to carry out into the world. In
other words, we have all fallen short of our privilege as image bearers. Like
any good story, there is conflict, and this is where the story of our identity
becomes the story for the fight for our identity.
At this point in the story, I am going to
need a favor from you. I know that you probably already know much more is going
to happen before we get to a solution for sin. You know we have to meet Jesus
before we get close to a solution, but you also probably know how to suspend
what you know to enjoy the tension of the story being told. You know how it is
when you are watching that movie with that great car chase scene you have seen
a thousand times. You know what happens, but you are still on the edge of your
seat, worried for the hero, asking yourself, “Will he make it?” You are able to
do this, because you are able to suspend what you know to enjoy the story.
So, for the rest of this discussion, as
you watch the story of the Bible unfold on the theatre screen of your mind,
pretend that you do not already know the end of the story and enjoy the story
as it is meant to be heard. We are now at Genesis 6. Here we are introduced to
Noah, but before we talk about Noah, let’s talk about the world in which Noah
lived. The Bible tells us that humanity did begin to multiply (see v 1), but
that humanity was wicked (v 5). Do you see the literary awe here? Now, what we
have been studying so far is surely real history, but it is artfully and
frighfully told.
In Genesis 1:28, we are told to fill the
earth with God’s goodness, and only five chapters to follow, what have we done?
We have filled the earth with wickedness. Do you see the juxtaposition here? Do
you see the sheer magnitude of the conflict that the Bible is telling us about?
We are so broken, so fallen, that we are doing the exact opposite from that for
which we were created. We need a hero, and onto the scene of history walks Noah,
a man that the Bible says was a righteous man (v 9). In fact, compared to all
other people of his time, Noah was seen as blameless. Perhaps he is the key,
right? God wipes the earth clean from all others, save Noah and his progeny.
Maybe he can raise children that will raise children that will fill the earth
and glorify God.
We now turn to Genesis 11:1-9. By this point in Scripture, much time
has passed between Noah’s story and the story being told here. It is the story
of Noah’s offspring. By this time, the world has repopulated, enough to have
the amount of people needed to begin civilizing yet again, and are they filling
the earth with God’s glory? Genesis 11:4 tells us that while humans were indeed
busy with projects to shape the world, they were trying to create for their own
glory, the glory of fallen and selfish man, not God. Can you feel the tension
build? Even from the most righteous of men come a people that are falling short
of their calling. If the most righteous of men cannot raise up a people to
fulfill God’s task, has God’s plans failed?
In Genesis 12 we meet Abraham for the
first time, at this point called Abram, and this is were the story starts to
turn towards hope. This is were God steps in and becomes a controlling
character in the story of the redemption of our identity. Upon calling Abraham
out to follow Him, Yahweh reveals why He has chosen this man:
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country
and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will
bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who
curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed.” (vv 1-3)
While in Genesis 1 God had called humanity
out to ensure the earth was blessed with His glory, here He begins to proclaim
how He will ensure the success of that mission. Notice that God does not scrap
the human project. Instead, He enters it as the insurance for its success.
Notice the echoes of Genesis 1: In Genesis 1:27 and 28 God plans for humans to
multiply, and upon doing so they will bless the world. Here Abraham’s seed will
become many and through this nation, all the nations of the world will be
blessed, and any one who tries to get in the way of this mission, God will see to
it that they are dealt with.
Moreover, God does not just make any
promise with Abraham; He cuts a covenant with Him. In Genesis 15, Abraham is
looking for some assurance, and God tells Abraham to gather some animals.
Abraham does so. He cuts them in half, and awaits God. Time does not permit me
to go into great detail, but what happens here is a covenant ritual. A covenant
is the entering into of relationship, and the covenant itself stipulates what
is expected from each party. As we see in this ritual, it is God, not Abraham,
that is the main participant, as he, represented by a torch and oven, passes
through the blood of the sacrifice. This was a sign that said: “I will die to
keep my promise.” In other words, God binds His very life to Abraham’s, and Abraham’s
children. His willingness to die is a foreshadowing of the cross, but we are
getting ahead of ourselves. (For further understanding of covenant,
specifically the covenant with Abraham, click here.)
So, again, suspending what we know, if we
were reading this for the first time, we might be able to sit back and relax,
especially after that whole big wait for Abraham to start having children. When
he does, we must let out a sigh of relief, right? God says Abraham’s children
will be the ones to right the ship, right? We would think so, but when the book
of Exodus opens, Abraham’s children are enslaved in Egypt. The story quickly
picks up in Exodus with Moses (Exodus 2 cf), who delivers God’s people out of Egypt.
Moses leads the people of God to Mount
Sinai, and starting in Exodus 19, Yahweh begins to reveal His law to Moses and
consequently the people of Israel. Perhaps this is the answer. Perhaps this is
how God is going to bind Himself to Israel, through the revelation of the law,
His revealed will. Noah, he was a good man, but He had no guideline, no way to
teach His children the righteousness that seemed to come so easy to him. He
just wasn’t a good teacher. That’s the real issue, right? But, now we have the
law. Now we can just go through our checklist and do A, B, C, and D, and
presto, we will usher in the glory of God upon the earth.
Is this what happens to Israel after the
giving of the law? Sadly, it is not. Instead, we simply fast-forward to Numbers
14. Here those who have received the law are called to trust in the Lord, and
instead they rebel, and in their rebellion, they are punished by having to
wander the wilderness for forty years. And this is sort of the story for Israel
that repeats time and time again. They are given grace. God picks them up. They
are excited and do well for a time, and then, they fall into rebellion.
Now we get to I Samuel 16, the anointing
of King David. Sure they had the law, but they were a loose confederation of
tribes with no real oversight. They had the judges for a time, but no central
head. Now comes a king, David. Now the tribes of Israel are unified. We have
someone to uphold the law, to oversee. And, in David’s day, things seem to go
pretty well. A monarchy is born, but even David is concerned that this might
not last forever, so we get to the conversation that God has with David in II
Samuel 7:1-17. This is actually another covenant, made with David this time.
David had asked God if he could build him
a house. You see, David was thinking to himself, “We need to ensure God stays
put.” We have a land now; now all we need to do is keep God here and we are
good. So, let’s build a temple. God chastises David and in essence is saying,
“David, you are not the one to ensure the success of Israel. I am, and I tell
you what: I will build you a house.” Now God is playing with terms here. David
was talking about a physical house, but Yahweh is speaking of a household, a
lineage. In vv 12-17, God speaks of one to come who will rule forever, one who
will bring peace.
Now, again, we should be able to sit back
and relax. God promises David right here that His dynasty will be an
everlasting one, and, since David is on the throne, well, does it not stand to
reason that it can only go up from here? David’s rule goes pretty smoothly. His
son, Solomon, does a decent job. After that, Israel is in civil war. David is
not gone for anytime before his nation is split in two, and it never fully
recovers.
By the middle of II Kings at chapter 17,
the Northern nation, called Israel, is conquered and exiled under the
Assyrians. Judah in the south is still there. Perhaps they will be able to hold
it together. But, by the end of II Kings at chapters 24 and 25, they too are
conquered, this time by the Babylonians, and exiled. Forget the Davidic monarchy.
There is no nation, let alone a throne. God has failed, has he not?
In this dark time arises men called
prophets, and they are still talking about this one to come from David. If you
are an Israelite looking over your past and you hear these men talking about
the one to come, you have to be thinking to yourself, “These prophets have been
out in the sun too long. They have lost their minds.” How is one to come from
David if there is no real monarchy? And, have we not seen men called out, and
each time they seem not quite able to do it. But, the prophets continue the
foretelling of this one to come.
The prophecies abound, but there are a few
that I wish to highlight, because they reveal something of the Messiah that is
especially important in the context of this discussion. The first two come from
Isaiah. In chapters 11 and 61 the prophet tells of one to come who will carry
with him the Spirit of God. In chapter 11 the prophet continues the theme of
the lineage of David (v 1). The
Spirit of God will direct his life (vv2-5). This one to come will bring peace
(vv 6-9). Finally, he will be a blessing to the nations through his glory (v
10). Can you hear the echo? God
plans through this man to bless the nations through His glory. Chapter 61 is
like 11. Here the Messiah speaks of his purpose for being anointed with the
Spirit of God. He will bear the Spirit so that he might bring peace.
Daniel 7: 13 and 14 is another interesting
prophecy of this one that is to come. The Scripture says that he comes like “a
Son of Man” (KJV). In other words, this Messiah comes as a human being, and he
goes before the Ancient of Days, God, and to him is given “glory;” we’ve heard
that word a few times now. In other words, he will bear God’s image, right? He
is given power and “dominion.” We have heard that word too, right. In Genesis 1
we are given dominion. Here now is one who is supposedly going to come and lead
the right way (as we see in the NT, Jesus’ mode of leadership is service). What
is God thinking? Yet, another human being… Haven’t we seen that we cannot seem
to get the job done?
The Old Testament ends with no real
resolution. The prophets’ voices drop off the scene of history, and this
Messiah is nowhere in sight. When the Old Testament comes to a close, the
Israelites are back in their homeland, but they are not in control. Other
empires rule over them. It would seem that if they were ever to resurrect the
monarchy, a revolt must take place and succeed. A Messiah must rise up to lead
the people yet again out of captivity. But, for 400 years, nothing…
Nevertheless, onto the scene of human history
walks Jesus of Nazareth, and the last of the Old Testament prophet types, John
the Baptist, introduces Christ’s ministry by speaking of Christ as the one who
baptizes with the Spirit (Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). Now
this adds a new dimension to the discussion. Not only is Christ the one that
bears the Spirit, He plans to pour His Spirit out, to wash us in the Spirit, to
baptize in the Spirit. In case there is any confusion about Christ’s thoughts
upon His own mission, He quotes Isaiah 61, now speaking of Himself (Luke 4:18).
He sees Himself as Messiah, the one with the Spirit of God.
But, there is a problem: Every time Christ
has the opportunity to raise up an army in revolt of the powers that be, He
doesn’t. He claims that this is not why He is here, even though that was the
explicit expectation of Messiah, and He certainly saw Himself as Messiah.
Perhaps He should have read His Bible. Paul comments on Christ’s strange
behavior in His first advent in Philippians 2:5-8. Here Paul states that while
Christ was (and is) fully God and fully man, when He came in His first advent,
He gave up His divine power for a time, and He subjected Himself to human
limitations. He became a slave.
If you are still with me, and you are
enjoying the story as it is being told, watching it on the theatre screen of
your mind, you might want to stand up and scream, “Jesus, don’t do it. Don’t be
like me. Don’t come as a human. Haven’t you read the Old Testament? Every time
God calls out humans, we either drop the ball, or we just can’t quite get
there. How does He respond? He comes to tie all these seemingly loose ends
together. Jesus says, in essence, “I am going to show you that it can be done.
I am going to show you how to live the human life as it is meant to be lived.”
And how does He live? He lives in
full submission to God.
What does He say? He says in John 5:19
that He does nothing on His own. He only does what He sees the Father doing.
Moreover, notice how He says He performs miracles, such as exorcism. In Matthew
12:28, He does not say, “If I by my own divine powers do this.” Instead, He
says, “If I by the Spirit of God…” Remember, He gave up His divine rights to
live like us, to be like you and me, so that He could show us a better way.
And how do we respond? We say, “Yes,
Jesus. We see, but, you are without sin. We have to bear its weight.” And Jesus
says, “I know, and that is why I am going to die for you. I am going to take on
your sin so that you might bear my Spirit. I am going to die so that I might
pour out my image upon you. We are now approaching the answer to our question
that we asked nearer the beginning of this discussion: “How can the Great
Commission be so great? How can we go from lost, as good as dead individuals,
who are then called to be God’s right-hand men and women in His mission?”
Hebrews 1:3 tells us something of what
Christ accomplished once He died and was resurrected. It tells us that after He
had defeated sin, He once again sat at the right hand of the Father. There is
now a difference in Christ’s work and all the other works God did through men
to lead to this point in time. No longer are we looking forward to a promise to
come, a “One day, it will come to pass” scenario. Instead, we are now looking
back. Christ has won. He has defeated sin. So, now He is no longer the Messiah
who is going to do something. He is the Risen King that has done it.
So, we can return back to Matthew 28:18-20
and understand what Christ means when He says of Himself that He has been given
all power and authority. He has guaranteed our victory. He has made it possible
for us to bear His image again through the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is
what He means when He says that He will be with us always. He is calling us out
to be disciples, and what is a disciple? Let’s look to John 15:8: “My Father is
glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
We bring God glory? Do you hear the echo? We are those that bear the fruits of
the Spirit. In other words, we bear the image of God.
The Great Commission says to us: You are
disciples, those who bear the image of God, therefore, make disciples. Again,
do you hear the echo? Genesis 1:27 and 28 says we are image bearers made to
multiply that image in the world. Here Jesus says, you are disciples, image
bearers, now multiply. Here we are, being restored to our image through Christ,
and He gives us a call to “Go,” and make His image multiply yet again. What are
we to do when we are called to go? Hebrews 11:8 tells us that when Abraham was
told to “go,” in faith He went. You are called to go, what will you do?
The Scripture tells us that the canon is
closed. In other words, the Scriptures will not have anything else written in
them, but, while the canon is closed the story it tells is still open. In fact,
it is a story that you are invited into. How will you respond?
-TM
[i] All
Scripture cited from NRSV unless otherwise noted:
The New Revised
Standard Version. Division of
Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. 1989
[ii] The Bourne Identity. Dir. Doug Liman. Perf. Matt Damon,
Franka Potente. Universal, 2002. DVD.
