Remsen Bible Fellowship Sermons

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Remsen Bible Fellowship Sermons

Sermons from Remsen Bible Fellowship in Remsen, Iowa remsenbible.substack.com

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Faith in a Fallen World

Remsen Bible Fellowship; 02/23/2025 Introduction If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in the book of Genesis again, marching right on through until we stop for a while, but a couple more weeks here in Genesis. Genesis 23 is the chapter we're going to look at this morning. It's not a long chapter. It's 20 verses. I want you to imagine living with someone for at least 62 years. We know that Abraham and Sarah were married for at least 62 years from the point when they are called out of the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to the point when Sarah dies is a 62 year time span. Very likely they were married much longer than that. Probably a hundred to 110 years. These two people are married. Now imagine being Abraham and losing your wife at that point. Some of you can relate to that grief. Some of us aren't there yet in terms of having lost a spouse or having been married. None of us are going to make it to a hundred years of marriage, but we can sense sort of what that would be like. We often read chapter 22 with Abraham being called to sacrifice his son Isaac and the Lord miraculously intervening at the last moment. We think of that as the great test of Abraham's faith, and that's true. It absolutely is a great test of Abraham's faith. When the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote about Abraham's call in Genesis 22, he titled his book Fear and Trembling. It is a great test of Abraham's faith, but I wonder as I observe the lives of people around me and observe the way people walk through the valley of the shadow of death, if the test of Genesis 23 is not at least almost if not just as great when Abraham loses his wife. It's a great test of faith and it's one losing a spouse that where I have watched it derail the lives of many people, Christians included. It's derailed the faith of more people than I can count. But Abraham, our father in the faith, is a model here, a model here of trust in God through all circumstances. How does a faithful Christian live in a fallen world? The chief mark of living in a fallen world is the reality of death. Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death. Death is introduced by God in Genesis chapter 3 as a consequence of human sin. So the fact that we are fallen creatures means that there will be death in this world. So we must ask how does a faithful Christian live in this fallen world? There are four principles we see in this passage. Number one, faithful Christians mourn in a time of loss. They mourn in a time of loss. We see that in verses one and two. Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Abraham's life hits a stopping point here. He goes in, he's probably out in the field, still guarding his flock, still working, 137-year-old man, and his wife dies. And he comes in from what he's doing. He comes in from his work to mourn for his wife. He acknowledges the significance of this occasion. And that might seem obvious. It's a significant moment when your spouse dies. But many times I have heard Christians talk about death in a way that minimizes the significance of it, minimizes the pain, minimizes the sorrow. We misconstrue a passage that we're going to read later, 1 Thessalonians 4, where it talks about we do not grieve as those who have no hope. And we misconstrue that as we don't grieve. Christians should be happy all the time. We shouldn't acknowledge the sorrow and the pain of loss and of death. I think even some of the language that gets used around death speaks to that. We talk about someone passing away, or we have a celebration of life or a memorial service instead of a funeral. A celebration of life is something we should do when people are alive. When someone is dead, they're gone. That's an important reality for us to face. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 says it's the heart of wise goes into the house of mourning. The heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Do not trivialize the significance of genuine loss. The separation of the spirit from the body is profoundly unnatural in God's created order. In his providence, he has allowed human sin to come into this world and he has punished it with death. But God's original design is for human beings to not be a spirit disembodied from a physical body. We are by God's creation, made in his image. We are body spirit unities. Some theologians use psychosomatic unity. I don't think that's maybe the most helpful term, but I like to say it. That's what we are. When the Hebrew word soul is used in the Old Testament, it's not talking about an immaterial part of the person. It's speaking about the whole person. Your spirit and your body together is what constitutes your soul, you. And so when we face physical death and that's separated, you walk up to the casket and you see that's them, but it's not. It both is and isn't. That's an unnatural experience. And we need to recognize that. And especially when that someone is close to us, the right way to recognize it is tears. It's sadness. It's sorrow. We should do nothing to trivialize the weight of that moment. First Corinthians 15 refers to death as an enemy. It's so, so easy to think of death as something, well, it happens for everybody. So it must be natural. It must be okay. We've just got to kind of come to grips with that and not think about it. But it's not real stoicism, but there's a pop stoicism that's become very popular in the last 10 years. You can read all kinds of books or listen to podcasts about your daily stoic. And you look at life and you just kind of grit your teeth and work on through, just keep grinding. Don't worry about those things you can't control and you can't control death, so don't worry about it. That's not what the Bible says. Abraham is far from the only person who stands at the grave of a loved one and weeps, no less than the Lord Jesus himself. In John chapter 11, he hears about his friend Lazarus being sick and the disciples are there with him. Interestingly here, Jesus says to them, he's asleep. And they thought, well, he went to sleep, he's going to get better. But what Jesus was speaking of was his death. And when Jesus goes then to visit a few days later, he encounters Lazarus's sister, Martha, and she comes to him and says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And then he goes and he talks to Mary and she says to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And Jesus then goes with Mary to the grave and he stands at the 1136 shortest verse in the English Bible. It says, Jesus wept. When Jesus stood at the tomb of his dear friend, he wept, knowing that he was going to call him out of the grave. Still, the reality of death brought Jesus to tears. We need to acknowledge the place and importance of weeping in a fallen world, in the life that the Lord has called us to live here. Do not try to hide those emotions. There is nothing wrong with experiencing and expressing sorrow in the face of loss. But for the faithful Christian, emotions do not tell the whole story. Faithful Christians feel, but they are not governed by their feelings. That's what we see in the second point here. Faithful Christians act even in sorrow, even under adversity. We see that in verses three and four. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight. Abraham did not allow his grief to overwhelm him. He recognized that there was a task at hand. His wife needed buried. Now Abraham is confident at various points in his life story to delegate tasks. In the next chapter, he sends his servant to go find a wife for his son. He's not above saying somebody else can do this job. And here we would understand if when he is weeping at the bedside of his dead wife, he said, Isaac, you go take care of this. Or servant, you go take care of this. He's a powerful man. He has many people working for him. They could have figured this out. But Abraham says, no, I'm going to take care of this task myself. I need a burying place for my wife. And so he approaches the Hittites who ruled the area where he was. It's area of Hebron. And he goes to them and he says, give me a burying place. I'm a sojourner among you. I've been traveling for many years, walking around with just tents. And he says, I would like to purchase a piece of property to bury my dead. The principle we see here is that though you have lost someone you love, you are still alive. And if you are still alive, that means God still has things for you to do here. You still have duties. And this is where grief derails so many people. They allow grief to make them self-absorbed. They turn in and it all becomes about me and my pain and my sorrow and my loss. And those things are true. Like you have those feelings and those experiences, not questioning that. Just spent the point of the sermon saying you should feel those things and express those things. You're not the only one. Proverbs 14 in verse 10 says soul knows its own bitterness. There is a real sense in which no one knows what you're going through when you lose someone. You also don't know what they're going through. You don't know what they've gone through in the past and you still have duties and responsibilities that you need to execute. So there are seasons when sorrow is appropriate and expressing that sorrow is appropriate, but it cannot stop you from living. Do not allow grief to become an excuse for self-centeredness or for ignoring the jobs that God has given you in your family, in your work, in your life. When we face loss, we ought to grieve. We ought to express and experience sorrow, but we must keep our eyes focused on the land of the living. We remain here and God still has things for us to do. The Lord often wi

32 min
APR 7

A Test of Faith

If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in Genesis chapter 22. There is nothing, nothing more precious to God in your life than your faith. There's nothing that matters in your life to God more than your trust and your confidence in him. In the book of first Peter, the apostle writes these words in chapter one, verses six and seven in this, you rejoice though. Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And so what Peter is saying there is that the thing that we consider most precious gold, it's, it's smelted, it's passed through the fire so that all the dross is taken away. And it's this pure metal that has lasting value. Just ask all those commercials on TV. The gold has this lasting value in our perception in this life. And, and Peter says it's worth nothing compared to the tested genuineness of your faith. Your faith passes through trials, which are like the smelting fire that God uses to get rid of the dross, to get rid of all of the things that hinder our faith. And at the end, what is left is something more precious in God's sight than anything else in this world. One of the most common tests God uses, one of the most common fires, which he passes us through is for us to lose for him to remove something or someone that we love. Be that a job or a parent, a spouse or a child, your health. The question that comes to us in these moments, when we lose that which we love or which we depend on is, can you lose this thing or this person and still trust God? Abraham in Genesis 22 is going to face an extreme form of this test as he is called not only to be okay with losing, but to himself sacrifice literally that which is most beloved to him, his beloved son. In verses one and two of Genesis 22, we see this test of faith. Genesis 22, beginning in verse one says, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He, God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall tell you. There at the beginning of verse one, it says after these things, and we don't know what the time period is, but based on other things we see in this story, a number of years have passed since chapter 21. Isaac is no longer an infant. He's at least a boy of enough age that he can carry the wood for a sacrifice up a mountain. So probably bare minimum, we're looking at an eight or nine-year-old kid, very likely a teenager. And in these years, remember Abraham, this is the child of his old age. Isaac is a hundred years old, or Abraham is a hundred years old when Isaac is born. And Abraham, who thought he was never going to have a son by Sarah, has now been able to watch this young boy, this young man, grow and mature. And they assuredly have a deep and warm relationship. He's been able to watch his wife, who I'm sure Abraham loved Sarah before, but to watch his wife become a mother, and that changes a relationship. And he's been able to watch this, and his family, it goes from the waiting expectation of, will God ever give us a son, to now they've had a decade plus of enjoying this good gift, this taste of the fulfillment of the promises that God made to Abraham to make him into a great nation. All of that hope is wrapped up in this boy. All of the hope, not just for Abraham's own happiness, but for the fulfillment of God's promises to him, is tied up in Isaac's life. And here, God speaks to Abraham and he says, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him. Now, a question that often arises when people read this verse, especially in the last 200 years, has been, is God doing something morally unacceptable in this request? Is God being just like the gods of the Canaanites, the gods like Molech, who are demanding blood sacrifice? And we know that the answer to that is no, because God himself condemns child sacrifice. In Leviticus 18 and verse 21, God prohibits the people of Israel from sacrificing their children like the gods of the nations do. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of God. I am the Lord. God says to sacrifice children, to offer a blood sacrifice to mollify the anger of a deity, is offensive to God. Some of the kings of Israel fall into this sin. Manasseh, most notoriously in 2 Kings chapter 21 and verse 6, he offers his children as a sacrifice to these pagan gods. And that's used by the author as like the capstone of his argument about what a horrible king this man was. So is God asking for that? No. Two things are happening here. First, God is not asking for child sacrifice to satisfy his anger against Abraham or his family. What he's asking Abraham to do, he says, sacrifice him, offer him as a burnt offering. But what he's asking Abraham to do is to trust him with the gift that God himself has given. God saying, Abraham, trust me. I gave you Isaac in the first place, and now I'm asking you to trust me with his life again. The second thing that God is doing is setting in motion one of the clearest parables of what is necessary for salvation. Now, back in Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve sin, God speaks to the serpent, and when he curses the serpent, he says that there's going to arise one who would crush his head, though the serpent would bruise the heel of the savior. Now, that's the clearest indication we have in Genesis 3 through 21 of what the nature of salvation is going to be. But here, when we come to Genesis chapter 22, we see a living picture of what it requires for God to save us. And I think one of the principles that we learn from this is that when you're looking at your own life, God is up to more than you see. In Ephesians chapter 3, the apostle Paul says that in the saving of individuals and the formation of the church, God is putting on display his power and his majesty for the angels, even the demonic powers, the rulers and the principalities. He's not talking there in Ephesians 3 about he's showing how great he is to earthly powers. He's saying that God, through his working in saving human beings and forming the church, what God is doing is showing the angels how powerful he is. And then, what we also see is that God is at work in Abraham's life teaching us. First Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 11 says that these things are written down for our instruction. So, Abraham can't see all of this. Abraham doesn't know that 4,000 years later, we're going to be reading about his life and seeing how did he respond when God called him to offer this sacrifice. He has no idea what's going on, but God does. God knows how Abraham is going to respond. God knows what he is. He knows the picture that he's about to set in place, and we'll talk about that picture here shortly. God tested Abraham's faith, his confidence that God really knows best. How would Abraham respond? We see that in verses 3 through 8. So, Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. And they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, my father. And he said, here I am, my son. He said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went both of them together. I think we should probably sit for a minute just with the drama of that story. Here they immediately, it's worth knowing, immediately, Abraham obeys God. We always tell our kids, and we borrowed this phrase from someone else, but delayed obedience is disobedience. That's exactly right. And Abraham does not delay his obedience to God. It says, first thing the next morning, he gets up, he gets his servants ready. They saddle the donkeys, they load up all they need, and they head off to obey God. And as they travel, they come to the place that God shows Abraham. And he leaves the servants, and he says, the boy and I are going to go offer sacrifice to the Lord, and we will return together to you. But as they start marching up the mountain, Isaac is putting two and two together going, okay, we've got wood. We've got fire. You've got a knife to kill a lamb. Where's the lamb, dad? Where's the lamb? And here is Abraham who for 25 years has waited for the lamb. And I imagine he probably can't even look at his son. And he says, God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Abraham's faithful action, his obedience in this scenario flows from his confident trust. That's what faith is. It's a confident trust that God could provide everything that was needed here. In verse five, notice that he tells the servants he and the boy will both return to them. I don't think Abraham's just putting them on. I firmly believe that Abraham believes that they are both coming back down this mountain. In the book of Hebrews chapter 11, when the author there recounts this story, he tells us how that's possible. Hebrews 11 verses 17 through 19 says, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be named. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead from which figurat

35 min
MAR 31

God is Faithful

Genesis 21, let me pray again real quick before we get going. Father God, thank you for the opportunity to gather as your people this morning. And Father, we ask that just as Scott did just pray, that you would help me to clearly articulate your word to your people. Father, we ask that as we gather under your word that you would instruct us by it, conform us to the image of your son, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Do you ever feel forgotten by God as if God doesn't know what's going on in your life, or if he does know, he doesn't care. He doesn't see it's not important to him. Even King David in Psalm 13 and verse one cries out, Oh Lord, how long will you forget me forever? I think what we're going to see in chapter 21 of Genesis is that God has not forgotten you. God has not forgotten his promises to you. God is faithful and he remembers his people and he remembers his word. If you feel forgotten or forsaken, trust the faithful God. He will transform your morning into joy. Luke chapter six and verse 21 says, blessed are you who mourn now for you will be comforted. Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh. First thing we see in Genesis chapter 21, we'll read the first seven verses. What we'll see here is that God is the faithful laugh giver. It's not how we normally think of God, a laugh giver, but that's exactly what we see here. Genesis 21 beginning in verse one says the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son, Isaac, when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son, Isaac, was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me. And she said, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age. So we remember where these people are coming from. 25 years earlier, God had called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of the land of his forefathers, where they were moon worshipers. And he said, I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make you a great people. I'm going to give you a land. And through you will all the nations of the earth be blessed. And of course, at that time, this is a remarkable thing for God to say to Abraham, who's 75 years old, has a 65 year old wife who is barren. And over the years, this has been tested. And so about 11 years after they left Ur of the Chaldeans, Sarah is ready to give up on God's promise and says, well, maybe we can help him out. And so she offers her maid servant, Hagar, to Abraham to have a child with her. They do. Child's name is Ishmael. And God says, no, Ishmael is not going to inherit. You will have a son through Sarah. But then still another 14 years pass before this moment. And back in chapter 18, we had seen God had come once again to Abraham and had said to him about this time next year, your wife will have a son. And Sarah is standing in the tent and she overhears this conversation and she laughs. And it seems to be like a sarcastic, almost sad and bitter laughter. Now that I am old here in my age here past the age of childbearing, and then some will, will I have pleasure? Will I have a child? It's hard for her to believe. And yet we come to this moment and here is exactly what has happened. She has had a son. God specializes in the impossible. Three times in these seven verses, it is reiterated how old Abraham is. In verse two, Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. Verse five, Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Verse seven, Sarah says, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children yet I have borne him a son in his old age. You know, it seems like at places it's her old age that makes it impossible. And yet it is remarkable that even in Abraham's old age, he has waited and waited and waited, and God has fulfilled this impossible seeming promise. As you read this this morning, I wonder what impossible seeming promises has God made to you? And I go, God's never like opened up the clouds and spoke to me. Well, so, but I would submit to you that nearly every promise, certainly all the promises concerning salvation on their own are impossible promises apart from God. In the New Testament, Jesus says to the disciples, it is harder, is easier, rather is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I don't know if you've ever seen a needle or a camel. They don't fit like that. Jesus says, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of heaven. And in their society, like ours, you would look at a rich person and you would go, that's the person who has all the resources. That's the person who must have the favor and the blessing and the pleasure of God. And if they can't get into heaven, who can? And Jesus says, with man, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. Salvation itself is an impossible promise if you take God out of consideration. And he promises things like 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To have my sins paid for, forgiven, I can't accomplish anything. I can't earn that. That's an impossible gift, promise. He promises in Romans 8, 28, to work all things together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. I don't know if you look at your own life and ever think, how could good come from this? We just had a situation yesterday. I was like, well, this is God's will because it happened, but I don't know how it's good. And it was a pretty minor thing, but major things happen all the time. We see a relationship disintegrate. Our parents get divorced. A child dies. Tragedy strikes constantly. And we ask, how could God bring good about? And sometimes we get to see that happen. Like we see a good result, but oftentimes we don't get to see it. So how do we trust? How can we know? Hebrews 13 and verse 5, when the author to the Hebrews is encouraging the believers to whom he is writing to keep trusting God, he says, he will never leave you or forsake you. That's a hard thing to believe. It's a hard thing to see. Jesus in John chapter 14 tells his disciples that he is going away, but that he's going away to prepare an eternal home for them. These, these promises in scripture are all for things that we can't actually see them happen, right? We can't observe them the way we would if we were trying to prove something scientifically. We don't get the evidence right in front of us. We have to take God at his word that all of these things are true. All of these promises seem unseen. And oftentimes they feel unreal, but God gave Abraham and Sarah their son as a down payment as future of the future fulfillment of all the other promises he made. I said, Genesis 12, God promised them to make them into a mighty people that all the nations of the earth will bless to them, that they would have this land. Abraham gets to see none of that. He doesn't, he doesn't see Isaac become a mighty nation. He doesn't see all of the nations of the earth blessed through his family. He doesn't even possess anything in the land of Canaan. He moves there, but he doesn't possess anything except his tents and his household that travels around. Hebrews chapter 11 verses eight through 12 says this, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out of the place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going by faith. He went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob heirs with him of the same promise where he was looking forward to a city that has foundations whose designer and builder is God by faith. Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised therefore from one man and him as good as dead. That's how old he was. We're born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. Somewhere Sarah goes from disbelieving laughter in chapter 18 to deciding, I do trust that God is able to give me this power to conceive. And God responds to that faith by blessing her by giving her what he had promised. Brothers and sisters trust the faithful God to fulfill his promises. All of them. He turned Sarah's laughter of sarcasm and pain into laughter of joy. Even the name of the child, Isaac means he laughs. God turns sorrow into laughing and joy. We also see in this chapter that God is the faithful son saver. So verses 18 through 21, it's really one of the more painful stories in Genesis, at least for Abraham. It says, as the child grew, Isaac grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. That's probably two, three, maybe four years later. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian whom she had born to Abraham laughing. And she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac. I think it was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy. And because of your slave woman, whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you for through Isaac, shall your offspring be named. And I will make you a nation. I will make rather, I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder along with the child and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. So there's this celebration, like they're joyfu

33 min
MAR 24

How God Deals with Sinners

If you want to take your Bibles, we'll be in Genesis chapter 20 this morning. The question I want to ask as we get started is, how does God deal with sinners? Specifically, how does God deal with sinners who do not yet trust him for salvation? That's a crucial question when we consider the nature and the character of God. Now, until the last few weeks, most of our sermons for the last few months have focused on Abraham and his life. He's the main character in Genesis chapters 12 through 25, the main human character. But the last two sermons we had out of Genesis, as we came into chapter 19, the focus shifted off of Abraham temporarily, and we looked at Lot and his tragic life. But now in chapter 20, the focus turns back towards Abraham. But the drama of chapter 20 is not centered on Abraham himself, rather, the drama is centered on how God deals with this pagan king, Abimelech of Gerar. How does God deal with this man, this unbelieving sinner? So verses 1 and 2 of Genesis chapter 20 say this. From there, Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur, and he sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. And Abimelech, the king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah. So as we begin chapter 20, it's almost a repeat of the story in Genesis chapter 12, where then Abram and Sarai, now Abraham and Sarah, at that point in chapter 12, they sojourned down in Egypt, and they said, hey, she, Abraham said, she's my sister. And Pharaoh took Sarah to himself, added her to his harem as a wife. It's also a preview of what's going to happen in chapter 26 when Abraham's son Isaac and his wife Rebekah sojourn in this same land, the land that's called in chapter 26 the land of the Philistines, and interact with another man named Abimelech, probably the son or grandson of this Abimelech. That name Abimelech, the etymology of the name just means my father is king. So it was probably like a throne name that passed on from father to son. And the same kind of situation is going to happen where they aren't forthcoming with the nature of their relationship because Isaac is afraid of what would happen to him. So here, Abraham and Sarah, they traveled to Gerar, which is a city. These kings, most often, not always, but usually kings in the Old Testament are kings of city states. They're not kings of what we would consider nations. That doesn't happen until several hundred years later, but they're kings over cities. And so Abimelech is the king of Gerar, which is just south and east of modern Gaza in a region that would come to be inhabited by the Philistines. At this point, it is remarkable. I mean, it was remarkable 25 years earlier when they were in Egypt. Sarah's 65 years old and Abraham's like, yeah, she's really pretty. She might get me killed. Here, she's 90 and the same thing is happening. She's still apparently very attractive and he's concerned for his life. If you remember in chapter 18, God had just reiterated his promise to Abraham and to Sarah that they were going to have a son. And at that point, God puts a timestamp on it. He says, within a year, I will come back and your wife, Sarah, will have a child. And this is in between that promise and the fulfillment of the promise in the next chapter. That's important for the drama of this story. She's probably pregnant, and if not, she's going to very soon be pregnant. And yet when they sojourn in Gerar, Abraham is willing to let go of his wife and not focus on the promises of God or on protecting his wife. But instead, he's concerned with taking care of his own hide, saving his own skin. This story does not reflect well on Abraham. Thankfully, Abraham is not the hero of the Bible. Abraham is not the model that we look to to find all of the answers to all of our questions. And this story does reflect well on the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of God to not only Abraham, he is faithful to Abraham in this story, but he's also faithful in his dealings with a man named Abimelech. We're going to consider in this story four characteristics of God's dealings with sinners. The first is that God holds sinners accountable. We see that in verses three through five. So Abimelech's just taken Sarah to himself, brought her into his harem. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is a man's wife. Now, Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Didn't he not himself say to me, she is my sister. And she herself said, he is my brother in the integrity of my heart and in the innocence of my hands. I have done this. So God warns Abimelech that he has sinned by taking Abraham's wife to himself. And he is now under the sentence of death. Abimelech protests. He pleads his ignorance and his innocence. God acknowledges his ignorance, but that does not absolve him of guilt. That's an important principle. It shifts greater blame to Abraham for the deception. We'll touch on that later. But God's message is clear. Ignorance does not equal innocence. Abimelech remains guilty of violating God's standard, regardless of whether he actually knows that what he's doing is against God's standard. If he had had relationships, relations with, if he had approached, as the text says, Sarah, it would have been adultery, whether he knew she was Sarah, Abraham's wife or not. And there's an analogy to that principle in the New Testament when often the New Testament letters are written to address particular problems in churches and Jude and Paul especially will criticize believers for falling prey to false teaching. They're not the ones perpetrating the false teaching. They're not the ones who are saying things that are untrue, but they are held responsible. They are held guilty. They are criticized for believing things that aren't true. Paul makes a similar distinction in the New Testament between Adam and Eve. Adam knows what God had said. Adam is not deceived when he takes of the fruit in Genesis chapter three. He's not deceived by what the serpent is saying. He's just openly rebelling against God. That holds a different level of responsibility than Eve, who was deceived and in sin, but even though she was deceived, she's still guilty of sin. So ignorance or being deceived can keep your conscience clean. It can make you feel like you're doing okay, like you haven't done anything wrong, but your conscience, as important as it is, is not the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. It's not the ultimate standard. If you're counting on your conscience alone to keep you right with God, you're in a bad place. In first Corinthians chapter four and verse four, the apostle Paul himself says, I've got nothing on my conscience that could condemn me, but that does not make me just. God is the only real true judge. No one can stand before God on our own merits. God holds sinners accountable. So, so here, even though a Bimalek thinks he hasn't done anything wrong, God says, yes, you have. And you're under the sentence of death for it, but God sovereignly chooses to extend mercy though he's under no obligation to do so. God often intervenes on behalf of sinners, even restraining them from their sin. Verse six, here we see this principle. God mercifully restrained sinners. God said to him, to a Bimalek in a dream. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. God sometimes mercifully restrained sinners as we see here in verse six. And he doesn't argue with what a Bimalek simply declares. Instead, God says, I know you acted in your integrity and I kept you from sinning against me. That's an interesting phrase. Can God really keep someone from sinning? That statement challenges the very common notion. Not that, I mean, most people aren't using philosophical language like this, but an idea that is pervasive in our society and even in churches is the idea of absolute or libertarian free will. The idea that we can make any choice we want whenever we want. You'll often hear even pastors or Christian apologists argue that the reason evil exists in this world is that in the beginning, God gave human beings this absolute free will and that this was necessary for God to do in order to make love possible, but the downside is that it means he can't control our actions. He can't control our choices. And so according to this view, when Adam and Eve sinned, God could do nothing about it. When you sin, God can do nothing about it. That's just the price of freedom, the risk of love. But is that what the Bible teaches? It's not. Here, God explicitly tells Abimelech, I prevented you from sinning. While God does often allow us to make foolish choices, sinful choices, wicked choices, rebellious choices. He, as the sovereign creator and Lord of the universe, retains the right to restrain sin. Every choice you make or I make, or anyone makes, they don't all please God. If they're in rebellion against him, they don't please him. But you can only make that choice if he allows you to. God holds ultimate rights over us in a way that does not violate our own responsibility and our true volition. We do make real choices. But God retains the right to restrain sin. He will ultimately judge all sin, but even now he actively prevents the world from descending into the complete depravity that it could. The Bible teaches that humans make real choices and that we are responsible for those choices, but we are not choosing from an infinite buffet of options. Especially this side of the fall, our will is actually bound by sin. Jesus says, whoever practices sin is a slave to sin. We cannot desire righteousness on our own, nor can we replace sinful inclinations with righteous and holy and God honoring ones apart from his divine intervention. To repent and turn to God r

30 min
MAR 17

Implications of Image, IV

Implications of Image: Part IV Transgenderism; 01/07/2024; Remsen Bible Fellowship Text Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Introduction That verse from Genesis one has served as the basis for this mini series considering the implications of the image of God. How does this truth, that human beings are created, male and female, in the image of God, come to bear on some of the questions and controversies of the 21st century, of today? That’s what we’ve spent most of the past month considering. First, we saw that being made in God’s image means that each human life is of immeasurable value and worth. We thought last week about how that inherent dignity of humanity, along with God’s intention for marriage to be a fruitful union, should shape how we think about questions of abortion, birth control, and technologies like IVF. Human life is valuable and a gift - we should act accordingly. Second, a clear implication of being made in God’s image is that God determines who we truly are - life is not about determining your “true” self for yourself. True life comes from embracing who God created you to be. And part of who God made us to be is expressed through our biological sex - through the very form of our bodies. “Male and female he created them.” We considered how this should shape our understanding of sexuality a few weeks ago: God's word restricts sexual activity to the monogamous marriage of one man and one woman. Homosexuality in particular is called a sin, not because it crosses an arbitrary line, but because it contradicts the very shape of how God ordered the human body and human relationships. But here is another question: what if you don’t feel at home in your own body? Most of us have heard some form of the following statement, either in person or through the media we consume: “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” In his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, historian Carl Trueman seeks to help his readers understand how our society went from a place where that sort statement would seem like complete nonsense - it wouldn’t have been comprehensible 100 years ago - to being a statement that, whether you agree with the truthfulness of it or not, you have mental categories for understanding. You know what someone who says, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is trying to communicate. How did that come to be? The short answer is this: we have come to believe that we are our own gods. We think we can transform our bodies in any way our minds desire. While 100 years ago those concepts would have been laughable to nearly anyone, medical technology in the form of surgeries and hormone therapy has made these beliefs at least plausible. If I feel like a woman, why shouldn’t I pay a doctor to make me look like a woman and pump me full of estrogen? But following over half of a century of human experiments, the plain truth is beginning to make itself clear: the mental problems and false teaching about human nature that can lead to gender dysphoria and a real sense of not “feeling at home” in your body, are not solved by mutilating bodies or pumping people full of hormones that don’t serve a genuine medical purpose. Countries in Europe are realizing the lasting and irreversible damage caused by this fool-hardiness and are starting to scale back on so-called “affirming care” - even as we in the United States keep plowing ahead at full speed. The Truth doesn’t move But you’re not here for social commentary. What does the Book say? How do Christians respond to a world that has gone mad? Do we scream at the darkness? Do we give into despair, thinking there is nothing we can do? No. This sermon makes one central assertion, and suggests two clear consequences of that assertion for how Christians ought to live. Here’s the central claim: reality does not change. Truth does not change. No matter what craziness any given society embraces, the truth as we find it in God’s two books: the created world and the written word, does not change. Biology is stubborn and immovable. XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes really do determine who is male and female. Your gender really is tied - permanently - to your biological sex. The world may embrace the idea that we have become gods and have ultimate control over our bodies, but our bodies know better. God has made himself known in his creation. So don’t feel crazy when you look out at the world, and all you see are men and women - not 74 different genders. There really are just two. And be comforted: God didn’t stutter when he said the same thing in writing. “Male and female he created them” really is as simple as it sounds. God created our bodies to conform to a gender binary. Are there, this side of the fall, birth defects and abnormalities that can cause confusion? Of course. But those are exceedingly rare; and one good rule of thumb in life is to not build principles based upon exceptions to the rule. So, if the truth on this subject, “male and female he created them”, is really as simple as it sounds - and that truth is unchanging - how do Christians respond to a world which is running away from that truth? Tell the Truth The first thing to Christians should do in response to the world’s craziness is pretty straightforward: tell the truth. That doesn’t mean be arrogant, and it doesn’t mean be a jerk. It does mean, though, to refuse to participate in lies. So if someone hands you a list of preferred pronouns that contradict their biological gender, politely refuse to use them. If Harry wants you to start calling him Sally, tell him you cannot in good conscience do so. This is pretty easy for me to say standing here right now. It’s harder when Harry is your nephew or your cousin or your brother. When standing for the truth runs the risk of offending someone it becomes much more difficult to believe and act on the truth. But if what’s True bends according to each situation, is it really true? There are many situations in life - not just around the issues of pronouns and the LGBTQ+ movement, but in all parts of life - where you can be tempted to soft-peddle the truth in order to maintain the peace. You may know that xyz is wrong, but it will just be easier to not say anything, or to pretend to agree with something that you know is offensive to God. This is what our society describes as “affirming.” That is, whatever someone says, does, or claims, you have the obligation to “affirm them” in “their truth” or “their reality.” But brothers and sisters, that’s not love. There is no such thing as “truth” modified by a possessive pronoun. “My truth”, “your truth”, “his truth”, “her truth”, “their truth” - those are all fictions. There is only the Truth. To pretend otherwise is not a way to be loving, it’s an act of giving up on the other person. It’s a refusal to help them see the truth. I’d say it’s hatred, but might be worse than hatred: because hatred at least implies you care. It may be simple indifference: and how can we be indifferent about the destiny of eternal souls? Refuse to conform to lies. Don’t ever compromise on the truth. Again, this doesn’t mean you need to go out of your way to pick fights or be a jerk. But when topics come up, don’t be afraid to say what God’s word says. You’re not always required to speak. But when you speak, always make sure that it’s truthful. Embrace the Biblical Pattern Openly the biblical pattern of male and female. Part of why the androgyny of our age is so plausible is because we don’t understand the real and substantial differences between men and women. We also fail to understand that these differences mean that we very much need one another. So this can take one extreme in the progressive gender-flattening of the LGBTQ movement, especially the T part of that. But, on the other hand, there has been an extreme reaction among both modern feminists and uber-macho “male influencers” who are probably the dictionary definition of what gets called “toxic masculinity.” These folks understand that men and women are different (a fact which is apparent to everyone but still not p/c to say), but they take that to an extreme and make it seem like men don’t need women or women don’t need men. And again, what the Bible has to say here is going to stand in pretty stark contrast to those voices. Men and women have distinct and complementary roles in God’s creation design. At the risk of repeating myself, I just want to drill home again what Genesis 1 & 2 reveal to us about the relationship of man and woman. Genesis 1:27-28: ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’ The garden of Eden was the first temple, and Adam and Eve, the image bearers of God, were to represent him - together - in that temple. But then their commission was to extend the borders of that temple to the ends of the earth - to both multiply and fill the earth with image bearers of God, exercising his rule over all of creation. Adam could not do this alone. Chapter two of Genesis makes clear that among all the other creatures there was no “helper fit” for the man. So God put him to sleep, took a rib from his side, and fashioned the woman. She was unique. She was like Adam - made in God’s image, equal to him in value, worth, and dignity - and yet she was unlike him, fashioned for a unique role. The basic pattern set in place by Genesis two is the man having a fundamentally outward focus, toward the mission God had given him: the cultivati

30 min
MAR 10

Implications of Image, Part III

Implications of Image: Part III Abortion and Birth Technology; 12/31/2023; Remsen Bible Fellowship Introduction In Matthew 2:12-18, directly after the Christmas story, we read of a devastating set of circumstances. The wise men, or Magi, had searched out the Christ child. Upon leaving Herod’s court, they had been instructed to bring news of the child back to him. But God had other plans. 12 And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. 13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” 16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” Herod felt as if he’d been “had” by the wise men. In his fury, instead of searching for the One Child himself, he decided to just play it safe: kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding region. This is a heartbreaking scene to read. Now imagine living it as a parent, sibling, or other family member. But why does this scene break our hearts? Herod’s hatred obviously seems pretty bad, but why should we care if a child dies? The topics we touch on this morning could well be sensitive - they are certainly sensitive in nature - and could be especially so for you. I don’t know everyone’s story here. My aim in this sermon, as every week, is to help you think through things with God’s perspective as he gives it to us in the Scriptures. If these things lead you to further questions, or concerns, I always welcome those conversations. We want to be guided by God’s word: not our emotions, nor our mere human thoughts (mine, yours, or anyone else’s). We will all pass away like grass, but the word of the Lord abides forever. We do well to bring our lives into conformity with what it says. Abortion The ancient world considered the practices of abortion and infanticide to be normal. Even Judaism had conflicts about whether abortion was morally permissible, though infanticide was clearly seen as a violation of the sixth commandment, “you shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). We, like the ancients, live in a day and society where abortion is seen as morally acceptable. Unlike the ancients, we also live in a time when you can readily access providers and pills to make ending the life of an unborn child relatively easy. We also have so-called moral philosophers like Peter Singer arguing that infanticide should be acceptable as well, considering the fact that infants are dependant upon others, don’t yet have an independent sense of personhood, and cannot provide for themselves. That’s pretty hard to argue with, isn’t it? Well, not really. As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the value and dignity of the human person is not determined by your abilities or capacities. It comes from being made in the image of God. There is dignity and value inherent in simply being a human. Genesis 1:27 says, “in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” This is true of every person who has ever existed. The implication is fleshed out further in Genesis 9:5, where God says that for the taking of any human life there will be a reckoning. The reason? Verse 6 grounds the value of human life in the image we each bear: God’s image. Though we are not told explicitly when human life begins, the biblical perspective seems pretty clear that life in the womb is indeed human life. In Exodus 21:23, unborn life is considered life worthy of restitution. If men are fighting and accidently hit a woman and cause her to miscarry, they are liable for that death. In Psalm 139:13, David speaks of God knitting life together in his mother’s womb - “fearfully and wonderfully made.” In Luke 1:44, John the Baptist responds to the voice of Mary, leaping in the womb of Elizabeth, his mother. And as medical technology advances and we have a better understanding of how life comes to be, it becomes increasingly clear: from the moment of conception, this is a human child. It’s not “just” egg+sperm. It’s not a potential human life. This is a child; albeit, one in embryonic form. So what are our moral duties to this child? First of all, do not intentionally do harm. As we discussed before, the prohibition on murder goes beyond just premeditated killing, it also banned carelessness in regards to life. So Christians oppose abortion in all its forms. And this doesn’t change if the circumstances of a child’s conception were wrong or even evil. Cases of rape or incest are often brought forward as when “maybe we should be okay” with abortion. But is it the child’s fault that their father committed some great wrong? No. So we should not approve of executing a child for the sins of his or her father. But to carry this further, such a stance means we also ought to provide strong support to women who are pregnant - especially if the circumstances are difficult - to help them have healthy pregnancies and the support structures they need in order to not simply carry and deliver, but raise children in a safe setting. Principle: Children are a Blessing Abortion, throughout church history, has been clearly seen as a grave moral wrong. It is only in the past 100 years that some bearing the name of Christian have tried to justify the practice, and they simply do not have the biblical arguments to sustain their positions. But part of why abortion seems plausible in our society is due to a mindset prevalent even among people in the church, including those with children: we see children as a burden. Should we? Psalm 127:3-5, 3 Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. 5 Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. Children are a heritage “from the Lord.” “Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.” This does not sound like the fairly constant drumbeat of statements like: “do you know where they come from?” “Why would you want more than two kids?” “Just you wait until they’re older, then you’ll know how hard it is.” “I just need to get away from my children, they’re ruining my life.” But God calls them a blessing. This used to be understood at a more intuitive level, back when economies were primarily centered around the home. Many hands to help on the farm, or in the bakery, or in the carpentry shop were all seen to be good things. But as the world became more industrialized, and mouths to feed simply meant more hours away at work in order to afford feeding and clothing and housing those mouths - as children became, in a real sense, less productive members of the household - this sense has been harder to realize. Then with the advent of the pill and the sexual revolution, having children became a completely optional byproduct of sex, rather than a necessary factor to account for. And so the “burden” took on a new aspect in people’s minds. Why would you sign up for all the work which children are, if you could just take a pill and avoid it? So people have, for decades now, thought about children not as the normal byproduct of a fruitful marriage union, but as an optional accessory to their self-fulfillment projects. How many kids do you want? “I’ve always imagined having three” or “I liked being an only child, we’ll just have one.” “I’ve always dreamed of a big family.” We tend to think about children the way we think about everything else: as expressions of ourselves. A means to fulfill our own happiness. Birth Control But this is not the biblical understanding. Man and woman are given the responsibility, by God, to be fruitful and multiply. His enabling them to accomplish this task, not least through the having of children, is seen throughout scripture as a sign of his blessing. Now, the topic of birth control, per se, is not directly addressed by the Bible. There is no “thus says the Lord” on this topic, so you won’t hear any from me. But there are a few principles to understand and take to heart. * Any form of birth control which is abortifacient in nature must be rejected by Christians. This includes not only direct abortions, but drugs like the “morning after pill”, and technologies like intrauterine devices which create an inhospitable climate for fertilized eggs to implant. * We should be exceedingly cautious about permanent alterations to the human body - like sterilization. Again, there is no specific biblical prohibition here, but to prevent our bodies from carrying on their natural reproductive functions is a major choice which should not be undertaken without serious consideration and prayer. Remember what the apostle Paul says to the Corinthians - your body is not your own. * Be careful of the other ditch: some Christians read Psalm 127 and create a whole theology of “children are a blessing” out of it, and believe that the desire to have a quiver full of arrows means to just have as many kids as possible. But notice what Psalm 127 actually says: “like arrows in the hands of a warrior.” A warr

30 min
MAR 3

Implications of Image, Part II

Implications of Image, Part II Introduction I went through a phase in high school where I listened to Josh Turner’s song What it Ain’t all the time. The hook in that song goes like this: “It ain’t bold faced lies or alibis that cannot be explained - I might not know what love it, but I know what it ain’t.” The poor hapless protagonist of the song had gone through a whole lot of relationships that sure weren’t love. He isn’t sure what love is, but he’s got a firm handle on what it ain’t. Many people today would - if they were honest - have to confess that their ideas of love, marriage, and sexuality are just as confused as those of the man in that song. What is marriage? Our society isn’t sure. Is there a purpose and a meaning behind marriage? What is this thing? But we know what it ain’t. And by “know”, I actually mean we all have our own ideas about what it ain’t. How many people can be involved in a marriage? Does it have to be two? Or can it be three, five, ten, or more? Does marriage really need to be restricted to humans? If marriage is mainly about love and companionship, some people feel more connected to animals - or maybe, soon, artificial intelligences - than they do with humans. Maybe we should be able to marry pets or robots. And why are there restrictions about age in marriage? What about the rules around marrying relatives, those don’t make sense in the modern world, do they? Some of those hypotheticals just made you say, “yuck.” And “yuck” is a useful feeling. It prevents you from doing those things which are repulsive to you. So, as long as your “yuck” feelings match up with right and wrong, that’s okay. But what about those generations whose “yuck” factor has been completely skewed? What about those areas of your life where what you consider to be repulsive is actually in contradiction with what God’s word says is repulsive? Do we simply accept the fact that sensitivities change, and since the times they are a-changin’, our attitudes ought to as well? Does the fact that biblical principles around marriage and sexuality strike modern ears as offensive mean that we ought to pitch those values out the window? No. We do need to acknowledge where our cultures values and confusions lie. We need to have eyes in our head. But we needn’t simply accept what everyone else swallows as normal. Because we have the book. We have what God says. His word has the answers. So if we will be diligent enough to listen and study, and humble enough to obey, we can rise above what the world accepts as normal and normative. This series, remember, is called “Implications of Image.” Last week we talked about the two most basic implications of God making us in his image: one, your life is immeasurably valuable. And two, your life does not ultimately belong to you. So as we come to the topics of marriage sexuality we need to start with this realization: God, the maker and designer of humanity, by making us in his image, has designed marriage and sexuality for specific purposes which, if we submit to and embrace those purposes and patterns, will lead to human flourishing. I want to emphasize that last sentence. Pursuing God’s pattern isn’t the white-knuckled conformity to a pattern we hate and don’t understand. We need to understand and embrace the pattern, with the faithful belief that God will do good in and through our obedience to his design and instructions. He is a good God, not a cruel dictator. So as I say things that may be hard to hear, or contrary to what everyone else in your orbit says, do this: weigh it against the word, and then joyfully submit to God in faith that he loves you more than the world loves you. Marriage is the Pattern When it comes to the ordering of human life together, the basis of society, the most basic unit is the family. Remember our North Star text for this series, Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” And that statement doesn’t just hang out there in space, it is followed immediately by a commission in verse 28: ‘And 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’ When we looked specifically at that text I spent a good portion of the sermon talking about what it means for humanity to have dominion - we are to rule over the earth as God’s representatives. The garden of Eden was the first temple, and Adam and Eve, the image bearers of God, were to represent him in that temple. But then their commission was to extend the borders of that temple to the end of the earth - to both multiply and fill the earth. But, to make an obvious point, the man could not do this alone. And so in chapter two when we get a more detailed look at the sixth day of creation, we see that the man was made first and given dominion - and also brought to a point where he realized the lack of any helper suitable for him. He was not able to fulfill God’s commands alone. But in creation there was no other creature suitable to help him. And so God put him to sleep, took a rib from his side, and fashioned the woman. She was unique in that she was like Adam - made in God’s image, equal to him in value, worth, and dignity - and yet she was unlike him, fashioned for a unique role. “The basic pattern set in place by Genesis two is this: the man has a fundamentally outward focus, toward the mission God has given him [the cultivating and keeping of the garden and world]. The woman has a particularly relational focus, toward those persons God has called her to help [especially her husband, and then, children]. These two dynamics are not mutually exclusive - the man’s role as keeper is going to require the wisdom of his wife and will require him having enough focus on the relationship to make sure that she is kept and cared for. And the woman will need to understand that the relationships she is focused on need to be strong in order that the mission God has given to humanity, and to her family, can be accomplished… [all this to say] The Image of God and purpose of man cannot be fully expressed and accomplished in just one sex. God designed the complementarity of man and woman, and the marriage covenant, to express something about himself that could not be seen or experienced alone.” Paul develops the relationship this has to the gospel in Ephesians 5, which we’ll look at later. But we should note that what this means for the institution of marriage is that its primary purpose, in Genesis and throughout the Bible, is the bearing and raising of children. Marriage was meant, in the words of God, to be fruitful. Husband and wife were to multiply. And this gives marriage its shape: one man, and one woman, in lifelong covenant together. It must be heterosexual for the obvious physical reasons. And it is intended to be one man and one woman for reasons which become obvious as soon as that pattern is deviated from: the introduction of others leads to jealousy, hatred, and divisions within the family. The raising of godly offspring does need the input of more than two, but the bedrock framework which God designed for the raising of such offspring is a home structured by the covenant of marriage. This is what God says in Malachi 2:15, “Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.” It’s important to note here that monogamous heterosexual marriage bears witness to this, even when the couple is childless, or has their children by adoption, or gets married beyond the age of childbearing. The having of children is not the only purpose of marriage; companionship is an important part, as is what Hebrews 13 calls the “honorable” marriage bed. But the purpose of childbearing fruitfulness remains foundational. And every one man one woman marriage points to this reality, by its very shape. The shape testifies to the design. And this understanding of Adam and Eve’s union provides our foundation not only for all following human behavior, but for our understanding of the gospel itself. In Ephesians 5:31, Paul quotes Genesis 2:24. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Here, in his marriage instructions for the church in Ephesus, Paul reaches back to the beginning. But then he takes an unexpected turn in verse 32, when he says that the profound mystery of the man-woman union in marriage is not ultimately about the man and the woman. It’s about the gospel. When we come to Christ, we are brought into the covenant body of his church. And the church is taking part in a divine drama, with the role of: the wife. The church, corporately, is to submit to the Lordship of Christ. Jesus’ role, we learn earlier in Ephesians 5, was to sacrificially love - to the point of death - his bride, laying his life down for hers. He leads her, first of all by gladly assuming responsibility for her sins. What is Sexual Sin? So, if that’s the pattern of marriage - and in Scripture, such marriage is the only legitimate context for any sexual activity - how should we understand straying from that standard? How should we view sexual sin? Fundamentally, a denial of the gospel. Further, because it is a denial of the gospel, blasphemous. This is part of what makes sexual sin different from other sins. Some sins are things we do based on lies about God (Eve took th

34 min
FEB 24

Implications of Image, Part I

I'll begin by reading that question. New City Catechism, question 50, that's there in your bulletin. It says, what does Christ's resurrection mean for us? And the answer is that Christ triumphed over sin and death by being physically resurrected so that all who trust in him are raised to new life in this world and to everlasting life in the world to come. Just as we will one day be resurrected, so this world will one day be restored. But those who do not trust in Christ will be raised to everlasting death. Essentially, that's just a summary of Revelation 19 through 22. I'm going to start a short, well, Lord willing, we'll see where it goes, short topical series on the image of God. The first thing you can pray for is that I can find my notes somewhere in this Bible. Oh, there they are. Before I do that, I'm going to explain why I don't normally preach topical series. I mean, if you've been here very long and pretty much everybody here has long enough to know that normally we're preaching, like I'm working through a particular section of scripture or a whole book of the Bible. And the reason for that is, is because we want to hear from God. Like the whole point of gathering to worship is to, to gather together, to go to God, to hear what he has to say to us. And, and if you. I don't mean to cast aspersions on people who do things differently but when it's up to the preacher every week to decide like what are we going to look at in the sense of whatever his whims are or I came up with this really creative sermon series idea and if you do that consistently there's just going to be holes in what we hear as a church because my knowledge is limited my interests are limited so even if it's not you get There are people who are crafting series specifically just to tickle people's ears and draw them in so they can fill seats. But even if it's not, even if there's no bad intentions, just if it's up to me to have the creativity to decide how, what should we address, there's going to be big holes in our knowledge. And the Apostle Paul, when he was speaking to the Ephesian elders in the book of Acts, said he had declared to them the whole counsel of God. And I think the most consistent and Ready, reliable way to do that is to simply pick a text of scripture and as we encounter things in that text, teach them. We're going to come across things that way that I wouldn't have thought to or that I would be uncomfortable with and would shy away from. But if we're moving through the text consecutively, God is going to confront us with unexpected things that comfort us and unexpected things that challenge us over and over again. And I think it's the The Healthiest Way, the easiest way to grow deep in our knowledge of the Lord. And as he blesses and does give growth in terms of the number of people coming, that it will be healthy growth, not just something that's a flash in the pan. All that to say, that's not what we're doing right now. There are things that come up in the life of the The Church or The Life of the Community or Our Nation that sometimes trigger in my mind, like, we need a series on that. So last year, I felt like it was really important to do a series on the topic of what does a healthy church look like? And so we did eight or nine weeks on that. And then this summer, I was just personally struggling with hope. And so we spent four or five weeks, whatever it was, looking biblically at the subject of hope. This particular series, as we were working through the book of Genesis, at the end of chapter one back in October, we had a sermon on verses 26 through 31 of chapter one, where God creates man in his own image, male and female, he created them. And I had like one paragraph towards the end, just trying to connect that to some of the current issues of our day, transgenderism, homosexuality, things like that. As I reflected after that sermon, I had a really strong impression that we probably need to go deeper just on that subject. There are so many things that are going on in our world and we have a gut reaction to them maybe of that's good or that's bad or that's okay or that's not okay. But do we know what scripture says, how scripture speaks to these things? And I want us as a congregation to have confidence that no matter what situation we're facing, no matter what's going on in the world, God's word either directly speaks to it or gives us a sufficient foundation and the tools to engage with those questions in a way that we can come to a God honoring conclusion and chart a path forward. As I was starting to put that outline together and think about what I was going to talk about this week, then Friday happened. If you're not aware, there was a young man in our community Friday evening, freshman in high school, who took his own life. I spent several hours at the school after that and obviously spent a lot of yesterday talking to people. It made me think where we need to start when we think about the implications of this doctrine, the doctrine of the image of God, humanity being made as a reflection of who God and what he's like, is not to jump straight to the controversial, how does this affect these thorny issues in our day? We're going to get there. But the first place to start is the most basic implications of God's image. And it's these two things. Number one, every life, because it's made in God's image, every life has immeasurable value. And number two, your life does not belong to you. Every life has immeasurable value and your life does not belong to you. So Genesis chapter one, verse 27, So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. The first thing to notice about that is that this is an objective statement. This is not something that the man and the woman achieve for themselves. This is not something that they become over time. They do not become the image of God. In the Image of God, He Created Them. This is something that is declared by God. It's authoritative. It is true no matter what. Every human life is made in God's image. It's one of the main dangers, I think, of our social media age is that people live a large portion of their lives online looking for transient Approval. Transient validation. A passing sense of, did what I post get likes? Did I get affirming comments? Especially, this is a big temptation for younger ladies. They'll post pictures of themselves looking for validation from the outside. Oh, you're so beautiful. Oh, that's a great picture. And if you're living your life looking for that kind of approval, that passes away, you're always chasing your own tail. And we can do this in other areas of our life. It's not just online. We can do that in our, in our work life. We can do that in our relationships with other people, rather than thinking, what is the right thing to do? We think, how can I do this in a way that they're going to like me better in a way that they're going to approve of me and always be living for the approval of others. But, but if we understand this bedrock truth. that our value and our worth doesn't come from other people. We're going to have a much more stable life. Now as a dad, like how we interact with our children has a big impact on them, right? And so I want to, I probably don't do a good enough job of this, but I try to with my boys say to them, just quote the words of God, the father, you are my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased. And I tell my girls, you're, you're my little girl. I love you. I treasure you. But when I'm doing that, I'm not giving them value, right? They are valuable and they do matter whether I say anything or not. That value is already there because God created them with value. As a father, my job is to recognize that and call that out so that they understand it, so that they know it. But it's already there. We see that this value is intrinsic, that this is an implication of God's image. This is where my notes start to get really bad, but we're, trust the Lord to walk us through this. We see it initially in Genesis chapter four. It's interesting. I was thinking about Genesis chapter four. I mean, we just preached a sermon on it a couple of weeks ago. Nowhere in that text does it explicitly tell us that Cain was wrong to murder his brother. There's no verse in Genesis 4 that says, and Cain sinned by killing Abel. Now you read the passage and it's pretty clear that he's not doing what's right. Sin is crouching at his door. God warns him. Sin's trying to master him. And then we see that sin does master him when he gives into his passions and his emotions and kills his brother rather than obeying the voice of God. So the narrative is is in verse 6, or we'll start in verse 5. God, essentially he's instituting the death penalty here. The death penalty for capital crimes. Verse 5, for your life blood I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever Excuse me, sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. So God is explaining to Noah there that every time someone is killed, the person who killed them, the person who's responsible for their lifeblood being shed, their blood shall be shed by the blood of man. And this gets explained later on in Exodus and then even in the New Testament where Paul says in Romans 13, that the state carries the sword. And they carry the sword, we can think of that in a military context, but also in a civil order context where there are penalties for certain crimes. And the standard that we see in the Old Testament explicitly is that punishment is meant to fit the crime. And it's always geared towards restitution. But in the case of murder, there is no restitution. Because what you have done is take a life and you can't replace that life. Because that life is made in the image of God. And so the cost,

35 min

Sermons from Remsen Bible Fellowship in Remsen, Iowa remsenbible.substack.com

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© Will Dole
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Remsen Bible Fellowship Sermons