You see, the former slave had rarely handled money in his life, and so he had no comprehension of what $50,000 was.  He had no idea how much money was available to him, and so as a result he was asking for fifty cents when in reality he had enough money to comfortably live on for the rest of his life. 

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul writes this incredible prayer:  “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:17-19).  Notice that one of the things Paul prays for is that we would wake up to the glorious inheritance we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I’m not talking about money here, nor do I believe is Paul, who was not rich in the things of this world.  I am talking about all of the power and love and peace and joy that is available to us if we would only truly believe the gospel, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). 

This past Sunday, I began a new sermon series I am calling “Practical Christianity.”  My goal for you in this series is that you would, as Paul said in Philippians 2:12-13, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”  We have been saved from sin and death and meaninglessness in life completely by the grace of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  We did nothing to earn that favor – it was a completely undeserved gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9).  And now, as God is at work within us, we partner with him in working out that salvation into every aspect of our lives, applying the gospel of salvation by grace to our love life, our work life, our friendships, our church, our world, and every other corner of our life.  Over the next couple of months, I plan to focus on how to work out the gospel into all of those areas of our life.  Click here for a list of the upcoming sermons.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.  I believe this has the power to be a life-changing series for you as you learn to look at your world through the lens of the gospel.  Many of us have been like that former slave, drawing on our limited resources to deal with the stresses, fears, and other challenges that we face in life, when all along we have the $50,000 gospel (so to speak) available to us that speaks directly to our deepest desires, fears, and anxieties surrounding our love life, work life, money issues, etc.  The gospel is not “five principles to a happy marriage” or “seven steps to reducing your debt,” and therefore neither will these sermons be that type of sermon.  No – the gospel is the answer to the deepest emptiness in our heart, the most heartfelt dreams we have, and the fears and anxieties that keep us from living life to the fullest. 

We have so little understanding of all that is available to us through the gospel, but I pray along with Paul that the eyes of our hearts might be opened, so that we might see it clearly and find life.

My baptism holds a special significance in my life.  I had been baptized as a child, but soon after becoming a believer in college, I began to see the significance of being baptized as a professing Christian.  I was part of a college ministry called InterVarsity, and every summer I went on a weeklong retreat called Chapter Camp.  At the camp after my sophomore year, I remember one of the speakers talking about how she had never understood the Christian emphasis on “sin,” that she had always considered herself a pretty good person.  Something in what she was saying struck a real chord with me, as I realized that I saw myself as a good person who Jesus had saved, but definitely not as someone who was a sinner in need of salvation.  Even my prayer of salvation at age 18 was “I know where I belong, God, and it’s with you.”  I know that this is when God saved me, as I can see the immediate changes He began to make in my life, but I can also see how there was no mention of my sin or my need for a Savior, because I did not truly understand that part of my relationship with God.  That summer, I began to realize that I did not really understand what it meant that I was a sinner, and so I asked God to show me the depth of my sin.

During my junior year, I met with my InterVarsity staff worker and told him what I was praying, and he recommended that I keep a journal.  That proved to be very helpful as I started to get more real with God, and ask Him to show me more of my heart.  Then, at Chapter Camp after my junior year, I decided to be baptized.  That evening, I remember being in a time of prayer with our group, and I remember formulating in my mind what I was going to pray.  I remember another member of the group praying essentially what I had wanted to pray, and I recall saying to myself, “that’s what I was going to pray.”  I felt a wave of jealousy:  I wanted the spotlight, and it had been taken from me.  And suddenly it was as if God had lifted the veil and allowed me to see into my own soul.  I saw how, even in the most sacred things, like prayer and worship, I was so filled with a desire for the attention and praise of others, so self-focused and eager to steal glory from God.  I can’t explain the feeling, but all I know is that I could not stop crying during that prayer meeting, as God revealed to me just a snapshot of the depth of my sin.  It was just like Isaiah said so many years ago: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).  Even my righteous acts were so stained with sin and self-centeredness.  I was beginning to understand at a heart level how I had done nothing to deserve the salvation I had in Jesus, how it truly was a free and undeserved grace.

I don’t know if my baptism had anything to do with God answering that year-long prayer, but the events of that evening made my baptism a special experience.  For some of you, it may seem odd to want to understand the depth of one’s sin, but I believe you truly can not be transformed by the love of God until you understand just what he saved you from.  I had always considered myself a pretty good person who God had saved, but it wasn’t until that summer that I began to really experience the love and gratitude that comes from the salvation I have in Jesus.  As Jesus put it after his feet had been anointed by the sinful woman at the house of Simon the Pharisee, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven — for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47).  When you don’t see much for God to forgive, there is little love for God, but when you understand the depth of your sin, the result is not self-condemnation but greater love for God, greater joy at His salvation, and greater freedom in life, for you truly realize that your self-worth is not based at all on your performance, but on His undeserved love and salvation that has been given to you in Christ Jesus.

As we approach Easter, I’ve been reading the passages describing the last days of Jesus’ life. This scene from Gethsemane is, for my money, the most moving of all the stories, and even as I sit down to type my thoughts on the passage, I feel like Jesus’ disciples in v. 40, where it reads “They did not know what to say to him.” The gut-wrenching magnitude of what is taking place here in Gethsemane is simply beyond words.

There are some who see the story of the cross as some kind of “cosmic child abuse”, where a vengeful Father violently sacrifices his innocent but unwilling Son in order to pay the penalty for the sins of the world. The account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane shows a Savior who has been given a horrific taste of what He is about to experience, but chooses willingly to go forward to the cross. Look briefly at what happens in Gethsemane:

(1) Jesus’ is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death (v.34) – As he comes to the Father in prayer, v. 33 says that “he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.” Jesus, who already knew that He had come into this world to die, experienced something so terrible as He came into the garden that it caused him to feel like he was dying, even to the point of sweating blood (Luke 22:44).

(2) Jesus prays that the cup would be taken from him. More than a simple figure of speech, the cup throughout the Bible is a metaphor for God’s judicial wrath on human evil and sin. Read the following passages, and I believe you will understand why Jesus was sweating blood:

• Psalm 75:7-8 – But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another. In the hand of the LORD is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs.

• Isaiah 51:17 – Awake, awake! Rise up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, you who have drained to its dregs the goblet that makes men stagger.

• Jeremiah 25:15-16 – This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.”

• Revelation 14:9-10 – A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb

(3) As Jesus turned to the Father in prayer in Gethsemane, he found not the friendly face of the one with whom He has shared blissful intimacy for all eternity, but instead he found nothing – the Father was turning away from Him, giving Him a taste of the cup He was being asked to drink. No wonder Jesus prayed that the cup would be taken from Him. His agony was not because of the physical pain he was about to endure, but because of the agony of experiencing Hell, separation from His Father.

(4) And just to drive home the truth of what Jesus was about to do – he brings his three closest earthly friends with him, just to be with him in his hour of greatest need, and THEY FALL ASLEEP ON HIM. That just drives me to tears, because it is such a picture of me. I am sure Jesus didn’t ask his disciples for much, but at this moment he wants his friends near him, and they can’t even stay awake for moral support. That just cuts me to the heart. It’s as if the Father is saying, “This is who you are dying for. Do you still want to go through with it?”

Given all of that – the cup of wrath, the loss of the Father, the abandonment of His friends, the impending physical torture – I believe Jesus still could have chosen to say “no thanks,” to abandon the mission. But here in Gethsemane, Jesus chose to go forward to the cross, willingly, to drink the cup down to the bottom for you and for me, so that we might instead drink the cup of eternal life (remember that the next time you celebrate communion). If the cross did not convince you of God’s love for you, then watch Jesus in Gethsemane. He willingly endured Hell, the cup of wrath, the abandonment of His Father, all out of love for you. Believe, as Paul said in Romans 8, that if you there is absolutely nothing you could do to cause Him to give up on you, to reject you, to remove His love from you.

Whether or not a person believes that Jesus was God in the flesh, one thing should be apparent from reading the stories of his life – Jesus would have been impossible to make up.  Over and over we see Jesus saying things that do not seem to make sense and acting in ways that no man-made god or savior would be expected to act.  Jesus is above all else completely unpredictable, rarely behaving like the religious men of his time – which, of course, is just what we might expect from someone who is Holy, separate, different than us.

Case in point – check out Luke 23:26-31.  As we approach Easter, I’ve been reading some of the passages describing the last days of Jesus’ life.  In Luke 23, Jesus is carrying the cross towards Golgotha, where he will soon be crucified.  As Luke puts it:

As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”‘ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

Here is Jesus, fresh off being beaten and whipped to within an inch of his life, stumbling so badly on his way to his death that the Romans pull a man out of the crowd to help Jesus carry the cross.  Some women who obviously loved Jesus are mourning and wailing for him as they watch this good man, who had done nothing to deserve punishment, being led to his death.  You might expect Jesus to turn to them and say, “I know, right?  Pretty bad, huh?” or to at least bless these women for their compassion.  But no – Jesus turns to them in his agony and says, “Don’t cry for me; cry for yourselves.”

Huh?  What is that, Jesus? 

Many of you have probably seen Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ.  That movie powerfully communicated the intense agony that Jesus suffered during the time leading up to his death, and certainly left many people like those women, mourning for Jesus as he suffered such an unjust death.  Imagine Jesus, up on the screen, turning and looking at the audience in the theater and telling them, “Do not weep for me.  Weep for yourselves.”  What could Jesus have possibly meant by saying those words to those devoted women?

To answer that question, I want you to first consider these words by Charles Spurgeon, a 19th century British pastor who is considered one of the greatest preachers of all time.  They are not simple to understand, but they are profound, so listen carefully to them:

You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Saviour is to wet the surgeon’s knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading polyps which that knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known; your tears are scarcely needed there; they are unnatural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law which He thus painfully vindicated; let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty which He even to the death was made to endure … O brethren and sisters, this is the reason why we souls weep: because we have broken the divine law and rendered it impossible that we should be saved except Jesus Christ should die.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Are you starting to understand why Jesus said, “Weep not for me; weep for yourselves”?  Yes, it was terribly sad that Jesus died such an unjust death, just as it was sad when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, when a young woman in the prime of her life dies suddenly, and when any number of good people suffer for things they do not deserve.  But if that’s all Jesus’ death was – a sad ending to the life of a good man that should rally us to want to live like him and honor him – then in the end he is not so different than other good men and women who died unjustly.  When Jesus says, “Weep not for me; weep for yourselves,” he is telling those women that his death is not just an unjust atrocity, but something that was necessary in order to deal with a far greater horror. 

You see, ultimately, it was not the Romans or the Jews who nailed Jesus to the cross.  It was those women, weeping by the side of the road.  It was his disciples, running and hiding as Jesus was brought to the cross.  It was the audience in the movie theater, watching The Passion of the Christ.  It was you.  And it was me.  Jesus Christ carried the cross to Golgotha and allowed himself to be crucified there because the ones he so deeply loved were lost in their sin, separated from God, headed for eternal damnation, and there was no other way to rescue them than for the Son of God to carry that cross and die a sacrificial death in their place. 

Do not weep for the man on the cross.  Weep for yourself, for it is your sin, your self-centeredness, your rebellion that made it necessary for Jesus to die.  You are responsible; you are guilty.  The blood is on your hands.

And as you lay there weeping, look up, beloved, for the Holy One whom you have offended, the God-man who you are responsible for crucifying, is carrying the cross willingly out of His love for you.  He is headed for Golgotha, where He will experience His Father forsaking Him, turning His back on Him as the sins of the world are visited upon Him, as He experiences Hell for you.  As Jesus hangs there, arms outstretched, nailed to the cross, hear Him say to you, “This is how deeply I love you.  To the very depth of your self-centered, rebellious, doubting, stubborn heart, I love you enough to die for you.”

Do not weep for Him, for He willingly chose this death out of love for you.  Weep for yourself, that your sin made His death necessary.  And then let His majestic love wash you, cleanse you, save you, transform you, and raise you to new life.

Romans 5:6-8 – You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Arno was inseparable from Mr. Penguin. The little Haitian boy was almost three years old, and the plush penguin with the word “love” inscribed upon it was his most treasured object. The orphan and his penguin were always seen together.

The boy had been given the penguin just after his birth. A Dutch couple was in the process of adopting him almost from the start of his life — they had been matched to him when he was only two months old. The penguin represented a promise.

The process of adoption took two years — the length of time considered adequate to determine that no living relatives might claim him. According to official estimates, there were over 50,000 parentless orphans in Haiti before the earthquake came and orphaned many thousands more.

Richard and Rowena Pet were the young Dutch couple who wanted so badly to be Arno’s mother and father. They had struggled with infertility for years before deciding to adopt. As they awaited the adoption of Arno, Rowena became pregnant. Last August she gave birth to Jim, who was left in the care of relatives as Richard and Rowena flew to Haiti in January to claim Arno and complete the adoption process.

The story of Arno’s adoption is movingly told by reporter David Charter of The London Times (you can read it online here).  As he reported, “Arno was shy at first but within 30 minutes of meeting his adoptive parents he reached for Rowena’s hand and took the Dutch couple on a tour of the orphanage in Port-au-Prince where he had spent most of his short life. He began to call them Mummy and Daddy.”

Richard had shared their joy with a friend in an e-mail:

“We got to the orphanage feeling a bit strange. We went around a corner and immediately saw Arno walking towards us. He was OK until he was about half a meter away, but then he panicked. The woman from the orphanage helped out and half an hour later he took Rowena’s hand for the first time. I’m sorry but I can’t help crying at the moment as I type this. Arno has been showing us everything in the orphanage. He showed us an old car they have for the children to play on. He was holding a birthday card we sent for his second birthday.”

According to Charter, adoptive parents often stay at the Hotel Villa Therese in the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince. That is where Richard and Rowena took Arno. That is where they were when the earthquake came. And that is where they died together.
David Charter tells the story, with comments by Chris Spaansen, the friend to whom Richard had sent the e-mail:

Dutch TV cameras were on hand during the frantic search by an international rescue team with members from the Netherlands, Britain and Canada. . . . Lying there amid the rubble was the unmistakable blue and yellow toy bird, Mr Penguin, marked with the word “Love”, that went everywhere with Arno. “That toy helped them to make their first contact with the little boy. It had a really special place in the family. It was a very emotional moment for all of us,” Spaansen says.

Then this:

What the cameras did not show were the three bodies, found intertwined together, as if Rowena and Richard had tried to put protective arms around Arno as the masonry began to fall. The disaster cruelly destroyed the new family, creating its own orphan back in the Netherlands. Jim, just five months old, will be brought up by Rowena’s sister, who already has her own three-year-old boy.

The bodies of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet were taken to the Netherlands together, just as they had been found together in the rubble of the Hotel Villa Therese. They had been a family for a few hours, but a family all the same. Arno had a tragically short life, but he ended that life in the arms of a mother and a father.

Who can read this account without heartbreak . . . and a heart warmed? Is there a heart so cold that it does not feel the pathos of this report, and sense the sentiment of this family’s tragedy? At the same time, this is not a tragedy in the classic sense. The love of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet transcends tragedy. That is why The Times published this report, and why it stays with you so long after you read it.

Of course, for the Christian there is far more to this story. In the story of Arno Pet we find a picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians:

But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a virgin, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. [Galatians 4:4-7]

Adoption is perhaps the most powerful depiction of the Gospel found in the Bible. We are all orphans, born under the curse of sin. By the sheer grace and mercy of God, those who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are adopted as sons. Redeemed sinners are adopted as sons “through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise and glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” [Ephesians 1:5-6]

Arno Pet began life as an orphan, but he ended life as a son. He was abandoned at his birth, but he died in the arms of his parents. He did not die as Arno, he died as Arno Pet.

In the rubble of the Hotel Villa Therese the film crew found the bodies of Richard and Rowena and Arno Pet. In that same rubble, we find a picture of the Gospel of Christ. He who has eyes to see, let him see.

The second reaction, however, is just as important:  how do we test ourselves?  How do we figure out whether or not our faith is genuine?  Is it because we go to church?  Because we do a lot of good things?  Because our parents are Christians, or because we grew up in the church?  Because we were baptized, or confirmed, or “prayed the sinner’s prayer”?  What evidence would you point to if you were asked to prove that your faith was real?

As you consider your answer, keep in mind these two challenging verses:

“You believe that there is one God. Good!  Even the demons believe that– and shudder.” (James 2:19)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”  (Matthew 7:21-23)

The first verse makes it clear that believing that Jesus is Lord and Savior, believing that God forgives, or believing anything else is true does not mean that you have saving faith.  All it does mean is that you are on par with the demons of Hell, for they also believe that there is a God and that Jesus is Lord.  So whatever saving faith is, we can be sure that it is not merely believing something is true.

The second verse makes it clear that there will be those who think they know God, who have even done great things in His name, like prophesying, driving out demons, and performing miracles, who in the end will hear those terrible words “I never knew you.  Away from me, you evildoers.”  If the first passage does not make you tremble, certainly the second one should, for it seems that not even calling Jesus Lord or doing great things in His name means that you have genuine, saving faith.

So how do you know you are saved?  How do you know your faith is genuine?  Are you sure that you know God, that when you die you will be in heaven? 

This Sunday, I am beginning a five week series called “Test Yourself” where I will try to answer that question Biblically.  We’ll be spending the majority of the time in 1 John, John’s first letter, which is full of “test questions” that help us discern whether or not our faith is genuine, saving faith.  As John writes near the end of his letter about the purpose of 1 John, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13)  There is no more important question you could be asking yourself than that one – do I really have eternal life?  Or is my “faith” not the real thing at all?  I would encourage you to come this Sunday and find out.