Acts 16

It doesn’t matter if you’re contesting a speeding ticket, if you’ve been framed for murder – If you need a lawyer, you want a good one. But how can you tell if the lawyer you’ve hired might not actually be that great? Over time, maybe you notice that they aren’t very honest. They make you question if they actually care about the truth, or if they just want to win the case. Or, you notice that they’re not very competent. They’re always late to appointments with you. When they show up, they haven’t showered, and there’s alcohol on their breath. When you find out that your lawyer is neither ethical nor competent, you have to terminate their services. It doesn’t matter what the type of case is, you don’t want a bad lawyer representing you! Last week, we talked about the need for Prophets – stand-ins, whose job it was to represent God and speak his Word to the people. This was necessary, because no one can hear the holy voice of God and survive (Exodus 20:19). But who will plead our case before God? Who will be our stand-in before the Almighty Judge? The good news is: there are plenty of options; plenty of lawyers willing to stand in for you. That is, there are plenty of methods people suggest on the best way to appear before God. Be a good person, mind your own business, do no harm to others, and you should be good. Come before God with receipts to show that we are making progress – like you’re on probation that has to show you’re making positive strides by showing up to counseling appointments, taking care of our families, volunteering, etc. Otherwise, God will be mad with us. Whether we are getting this message from the outside world, or have settled upon it for ourselves, this is a lot like a lawyer who barely passed law school – they have the general idea right, but fall far short of what the law actually says. And if we follow them, we’ll realize their incompetence when the jail cell door slams shut. We don’t understand the charges – we have fallen short of the glory of God. We incompetent lawyers neither understand the law or the Judge. It’s not just general goodness that will get the charges off, it’s total holiness. Anything else will get us laughed out of court, right to our own condemnation. This was the purpose of the Old Testament priesthood. Men from the Israelite Tribe of Levi were chosen to represent the people before God – not in court, but in worship. Through sacrifice and prayer, the priests of the Tabernacle and Temple presented the people’s case to God, begging him to relent on his charges. Through the priestly system, God was teaching the human race the true letter of the law: total holiness, or condemnation. Total perfection, or blood would have to be shed. There are no other options. And a lawyer that presents a different way to win God over is either intentionally lying, or just incompetent. So, Jesus had to be born. Jesus’ birth is like our first meeting with a new lawyer, one unlike any we’ve seen. As we watch Jesus walk and talk, we’re getting to know who this guy who will represent us is. He’s talking about the Judge like he knows him. Have they worked together before? Has this lawyer presented other cases before this judge? It seems deeper than that. When you hear this lawyer talk, you can tell that he is on very good terms with this judge. You flat out ask, “Do you two know each other?” This lawyer says, “Know him? I’m his son!” Now, that could fill you with dread. Is the lawyer going to collaborate with his dad to send you right to jail? Is this system rigged against you? Quite the contrary. This Lawyer (this Priest) and his Father, the Judge (God) are working together to get the charges dropped. There is only one way that you will be allowed to go free, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do for you. But they’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t violate the truth. This is not shady business, after all. They will work together to uphold justice, but bring you mercy. Paul explains how Jesus did this in Galatians (4:4-5): Jesus was born under the Law to redeem those under the law. Since God requires righteousness, the charges would not be satisfied unless righteousness were offered. So, Jesus became our righteousness, representing us as if we had truly obeyed the Law (which Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21). He had to be born a complete human being, full of weakness and humility, to embrace and live out the law of righteousness that God requires of all of us. This was a choice Jesus made. As God himself, Jesus had all of the holiness and none of the sin. He had nothing to gain for himself by becoming one of us. But if we were going to escape the condemnation we deserved for not being the righteous beings we were meant to be, that righteous obedience had to come from somewhere! So, as a human being, Jesus rejected temptations of lust. He served his neighbor. He loved his human mother and father. He cherished time in prayer and in his Father’s house of worship. He honored and respected his human leaders. He gave his body and soul rest. He was content with what he had, even when it was very little. He did all this as a human being, storing up the perfect righteousness to deliver on our behalf before the judge. Then, he died. He chose death. Just as Jesus didn’t need to come, be born, and live under the Law, he most certainly did not need to die as if he were a guilty sinner. Just as Jesus chose a human life to provide the righteousness you lack, he chose a brutal death and the condemnation of hell to take away what you deserved. The Judge and Lawyer are indeed working together – God the Father and God the Son are indeed in cahoots – not against you, but for you. Throughout eternity, the three persons in the Trinity devised this plan to save you from your own unrighteousness. Other theories of how you can be saved – other lawyers’ methods of representing you – fail, where God has succeeded. Some suggest that God will just forget about your sin because he’s merciful and doesn’t care anyway. But this falls far short of the holy justice of God who hates sin and cannot abide it. God can’t violate his own character. He remains just. In Jesus and on his cross, God’s justice is satisfied, because the righteous requirement of the Law is met, and the wrath against sin is poured out on Jesus instead of us. Some suggest that you really can do what God’s law requires, and you can represent yourself. Not only is that impossible because we are too sinful (it minimizes God’s justice!) but it discredits God’s mercy. Jesus has dispensed God’s mercy to you completely and fully by his life, death, and resurrection. You can’t count on your own obedience to get for you what Jesus has already won and given to you freely! So, take it from Jesus: he is the only one who can properly represent us in God’s courtroom, as both the one who offers his righteousness for ours, and his atonement for our sins. The priests of the Old Testament were effective at teaching us how badly we need representation before God. They taught us that only by sacrifice can sin bet atoned for. But the sacrifices themselves never effectively atoned for any sins (Hebrews 9:9). Nor were the priests effective lawyers in the courtroom of God. They were sinful themselves! They couldn’t truly stand in for the worshippers they represented, because they had their own sins to answer for. And each priest passed away. Jesus comes along with no sins of his own, only with righteousness, and the sacrifice he offers for you is his own precious blood. Jesus is our true representative. He responds to every demand of the Law, “I did it for him / her. I have made restitution for them myself.” He says to the condemnation sin deserves, “I will serve it. I take it upon myself.” And because he came back to life, is resurrected and ascended, his redemption hasn’t gone away. It never will. The blood he shed continues to speak on your behalf. As your risen and ascended Lord, Jesus continues to represent you in God’s court – speaking of the righteousness he has given to you as his gift through faith. You will never have to worry about how God feels about you again – it’s Jesus who has redeemed you, and he lives. The question is, who else would you want representing your case before God? This is God’s own Son. Who else would you want pleading your case than the one who intimately knows what it’s like to be human? Who else would you want approaching the Father than the one who intimately knows the Law and its requirements? Who else would you want in the front of that courtroom, as your great High Priest, than the one who chose to be born, chose to be subjected to the Law, chose to die so that he could rise – all for you?

A boyfriend and girlfriend enter a church. After a ceremony, they leave husband and wife. What happened? Words happened. A soldier enters a change of command ceremony, but leaves with a whole new set of responsibilities and honors conferred upon her. What happened? Words happened. When a pastor pronounces a couple man and wife, or an officer pronounces a soldier as the new leader, a new reality is being constituted – and simply with words! Words clearly have tremendous power. But sometimes they fail, don’t they? You told your son to finish his game and come sit at the table. He did not. What happened? Were your words not enough? You poured out your feelings with words to your best friend, hoping he would give you sympathy, but instead reacted coldly. Was there something wrong with your words? Not necessarily. But sometimes words fail because of the hearer. And no one knew this better than the prophet Moses. As God’s chosen leader for the Israelites, time and again he saw them listen to God one minute only to abandon God in the next. At the base of Mt. Sinai (aka Mt. Horeb) Moses watched the Israelites fling themselves headlong into disgusting idolatry only moments after receiving instruction straight from God’s mouth. God did not overlook that incident. He punished the idolatrous Israelites swiftly and terrifyingly – so terrifyingly that they begged Moses to stay between them and God like a scrawny kid hiding behind a bigger kid. Moses stayed in his position as mediator between God and Israel, as a prophet whom God would give his words to bestow. So Moses led with words. Words were the tool that God gave Moses to guide Israel. That’s the job of a prophet, after all. Moses tells the Israelites to expect this situation to continue: 15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” 17 The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. Like Moses, God would send more prophets. You may know some of their names: Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Daniel, Ezekiel. Each of them came with powerful words. Each of them came with the message God had given them to speak. Just like Moses, each of them experienced the bitter disappointment of their countrymen despising the message. They were laughed at, threatened, beaten, pursued within an inch of their lives – and many of them martyred for that powerful word. Time and time again, the hearers are the weak link. Is that the way it’s going to be this Christmas? Are we going to be the weak link in communication again? I say “again,” because even in my most earnest moments of wanting to hear God’s Word and take his message to my heart, that same heart struggles to understand and put it into practice. Each year, you and I both struggle to take home the true meaning of Christmas – that it is more than just a busier time of year and a weirder time at church. With how hard-headed the human race can be, it’s surprising that God keeps “trying” with us; keeps speaking to us. If the Christmases before are any indication, this Christmas is going to be just as much of a challenge to my hardheadedness to hear the meaning of it all. However, consider this: in a wedding, if the groom-to-be is daydreaming during the pronouncement of marriage, does he leave that church a single man? No. If a soldier sneezes during the words that confer her new command upon her, does she leave unemployed? No! The power of the words remain, because in that moment, their power doesn’t depend on the hearer. It’s when you’re commanding your kids to get off the Xbox that they can choose not to listen. When words are used to declare a new reality, though… that’s different. These verses aren’t just speaking about the long line of prophets to come. They are ultimately true, and true in the fullest sense, in Jesus Christ. As the Son of God in human flesh, Christ was set apart as a prophet. God the Father “raised him up” from the same stock as the rest of the human race. He is like us in every way, yet without sin. He is our empathetic Savior, in the trenches with us. But unlike Isaiah, Amos, Elisha, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel – men called out of other occupations in order to become prophets of God – this prophet is born into his prophetic ministry. Even the circumstances of his birth declare a powerful prophetic message: Your God comes to you not in rage or vengeance, but in gentle humility. This is a message worth listening to. And the way that we “listen” is both by hearing what Jesus has to say and watching what he does, since his actions bear witness to his message. His actions speak just as loudly as his words. And his message is not, “Do better,” or “Get your act together.” We already had that message! And we already terrified by its implications: “We can’t do better, we can’t get our act together, so what will happen to us?” But Jesus arrives in the manger on Christmas Eve as the Living Word, to communicate a new reality – one better than a pastor pronouncing over a couple that now they are married, or even that a soldier now has her dream job. Jesus arrives as a prophet, as a living and breathing prophetic message that, “God and sinners are reconciled.” He declares it with his words, speaking “Your sins are forgiven.” He proclaims it with his actions. Jesus did not come only to command. Jesus came to declare: good news to the poor; freedom for the captives; release from darkness for the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor; to comfort all who mourn (Isaiah 61:1-2). He came to speak the new reality of grace and peace into being. And while Jesus’ living messages of our need for salvation, and the certainty of God’s grace are not fully different from the prophets of the Old Testament, he does speak in a unique way. Instead of a man given the words by God to speak to us, he speaks as God himself. He says things like, “Truly I say to you…” He speaks not just about human kingdoms but a heavenly kingdom, revealing to us through many parables what the kingdom of heaven is – speaking as someone who personally knows! Jesus comes to show us why we really matter to God, why we know he is truly with us, and how we know we’re saved. In the end, we are saved by his ultimate declaration from the cross, “It is finished.” Those powerful words sealed your fate for all eternity. You are his, he has declared it. He was born so that he could speak these words. With the power of God himself, speaking through a human mouth, he has declared to you the everlasting peace of God’s unconditional grace.  That means that any other human mouth that declares the same thing does the same thing. You have in your possession this powerful word. You have in your heart, mind, and soul the powerful declaration to forgive sins. Jesus even says that when you proclaim the same message of grace and peace, he is declaring it through you. When you forgive sins, he forgives them. When you proclaim comforting release from the darkness of guilt and shame, he proclaims it through you. Who wouldn’t want to listen to a sweet message such as this? And why wouldn’t we celebrate the moment the eternal God was born into our human race in order to speak to us this blissful comfort of the gospel? So maybe remembering the reason for the season won’t be that hard at all. In fact, Jesus’ word has a way of powerfully piercing through our stubbornness and getting into our hearts. Rest assured he can and will do so again through the gospel this Christmas. Pastor Mike Cherney

We share Jesus in order to leave an impact. After all, he is not only our Savior, but he is the Savior of our conversation partner as well!

20 Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

The following blog post was written as part of Pastor Cherney’s master’s studies in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Can you already notice the irony? When you read the title of this post, I’m sure your mind swarmed with every piece of advice you’ve gotten about how to parent teens through their use of screens.