THE POWER OF SYMBOLISM
12-04-11
Pastor Dan Little
AdFontes.djl@gmail.com
This morning after the baptism service, we will come to the Communion Table. That being the case I want to talk to you about the power of symbolism.
Communicating by symbols is a very powerful form of communication. Think about it in terms of the signs such as you might see along a road or at an intersection. An octagonal shaped sign with a red background and large white letters is enough to stop a 25 ton Mack Truck. Signs not only tell you what to do but what to watch for. A railroad crossing sign for example (the one with the yellow “caution color" background with the X across the face and the letters R and R place to the left and right of the axis of the X) tells you to be watchful for the possibility of find a moving train blocking your path.
There are many signs that have no letters or spelled words on their face at all, just a silhouette of some animal as in a “watch out for dear” sign, or signs that have only a design of some kind that tells you “No Left Turn”, or “No U Turn,” or “Caution—Hard left or hard right turn.”
Do you know why so many signs communicate by means of symbols? There are two reasons;
1) symbols can be understood at a distance,
2) and once you become familiar with what the symbol recognition of the message is almost instantaneous.
But here is a question; why obey these symbolic communications? I offer another two-part answer;
1) for our own safety. It’s really good not to drive into a moving train)nice to be hit by a train), and
2) behind many of these signs is the force of law.
Thus these signs bear a great deal more importance and power than the sum and value of their component parts. Let me explain.
If you are caught taking down a railroad crossing sign you will be arrested and go before the judge. He may want to know why you doing that.
What will you say? Will you say to the judge, “My college bedroom décor needed a sign like that, and when I looked into the matter I discovered that the sign was nothing but a small bit of metal and some yellow with some black paint. So what is the big deal in taking a small piece of metal with some paint on its face and removing it to my room?”
What do you think the judge would say? Wouldn’t he say that the message conveyed by the symbols on that sign was far more importance than the value of its component parts? He might even suggest that you (the sign stealer) are worth little more than $4.50 when reduced to your component parts and maybe YOU will look good hanging on his library wall.
So think with me how often God communicates by means of symbols and how He feels about them.
Why does God communicates through symbols?
Perhaps it is because symbolic language is so strong and clear, and because unlike words such as “CHARITY” for example, that shift in their meaning over time, symbols retain their meaning and clarity over time, and the are more universally understood. And, after all the Gospel is for ever tribe, kindred and tongue as well as culutre and social stata.
Let me illustrate what I mean by universally understood.
No matter where I have traveled in this world when I am in places where people have been reduced to begging for food, the symbolic communication they use is always the same—a longing look, one hand extend asking for help and the other lifted up with fingers going to their lips or open mouth. I can neither read nor speak their language but they have spoken to me with perfect clarity. That’s the power of communicating with symbols.
Let’s look at three examples of the use of symbols in the Old Testament.
1. MOSES’ WALKING STICK
Moses carried a staff—a stick for walking. God chose to use it as the symbol of His own power and authority as it rested upon Moses.
God commanded Moses saying;
Exodus 4:17 And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs." ESV
The materialist’s view of this staff (the view held by so many in the West) says “It’s just a dead stick.”
• But with this dead stick Moses opened and closed the Red Sea and Israel realized a miraculous victory over Egypt’s military might. (Exodus 14).
• It brought forth water from a rock (Exodus 17:6).
• It brought forth great victory in the battle with the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-13).
• So much did that stick symbolize the power of God that it is twice referred to as THE STAFF OF GOD.(Exodus 4:20, 17:20)
Looking at the stick from an elemental view it was nothing more than a wood stick, but behind it was the force of God’s own authority and power.
God was so serious about the message of this symbol that when Moses used it to express not the glory of God but his own common human frustration, that common use of the Staff of God became the reason why Moses was never allowed to enter into the promised land. “But it was just a stick.” Not to God it was His the symbol, the message, the symbol and sign of His glory and power.
2. THE SERPENT ON A POLE.
The bronze serpent is another example of the strong and simple and highly effect language of the symbolic.
Numbers 21:7 Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. ESV
Speaking of its elemental (or component parts) this symbol of healing was nothing but a piece of metal (bronze) fashioned into the likeness of a serpent wrapped around a wooden pole. But behind the elements you have what? You have the power of the very Word of God saying LOOK AND LIVE.
Why would looking at this piece of bronze mounted on a piece of wood heal anyone? Because in looking as per God’s instructions they were honoring God’s Word. Like the force of law behind certain traffic signs, and the force of authority behind Moses’ staff, so the force of the very Word of the Lord was behind this symbol.
But when the people began to use it as a form of religious control, a means by which to manage God, turning the symbol of grace into a common idol, God, through Hezekiah, ordered it destroyed.
2 Kings 18:4 He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). ESV
3. THE TABERNACLE
In assembling all the components of the tabernacle Moses was told;
Exodus 25:7 And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 9 EXACTLY AS I SHOW YOU CONCERNING THE PATTERN OF THE TABERNACLE, AND OF ALL ITS FURNITURE, SO YOU SHALL MAKE IT. ESV
Why such caution, so exact? Here is why! Because, as Hebrews 8:5 says the tabernacle and its furnishing were symbolic of—shadows of heaven realities.
Hebrews 8:5 They serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain." ESV
God wanted the symbol (the message) to accurately represent heavenly realities.
How serious was God about the tabernacle and all its furnishings? So serious that no one was ever treat or use the tent of any of the things pertaining to it for common purposes and if they did they would die as did Nadab and Abihu;
Leviticus 10:1 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. ESV
Why did these two fine young men die? How unfair! It was only incense and only bronze censors? Why?
For the same reason (in type but much greater in magnitude) that the law says we cannot remove STOP signs and RAIL ROAD CROSSING signs by claiming that they are just metal and paint. God was speaking so powerfully and so clearly of heavenly truths through these symbols that to treat them in terms of their components—treat them in a materialist’s way, is tto profane the very oracles (message) of God—to deface the revelation God meant to convey through the symbols.
TWO NEW TESTAMENT SYMBOLS
The Lord has given to His church two highly visible and very powerful symbols of Christ own life and power in our midst.
The first is Baptism. The second is Communion (the Lord’s table).
1. BAPTISM
What does Baptism say?
• “In baptism the candidate says, Watch as my surrendered life is baptized into Christ. See how His whole life engulfs me, and pours over me by the grace of my Heavenly Father.
• Watch as my old life is buried in death with Jesus and they raised up anew in His resurrection.
• Watch as I repent of any means of methods of saving myself, and watch as my sins are washed away simply by trusting only in the salvation that come through Jesus Christ.
• See how Jesus came forth from the grave healed of the damage that sin and death had visited upon Him? Watch as I am healed from the damage that my sin has done to me.
• But watch even closer and understand this, that in Christ I am not only healed of the damage caused by my own sin, but also of the damage done to me by the sins of those who have sinned against me. Was I sexually abused and damaged by an adult? Was I slandered and betrayed and therefore damaged by one I called a friend? No matter how long the list of my own sins, or sins against me, and no matter how sever the damage my baptism says that I am now in Christ and all the healing I need from all the damage done is mine by the grace of God in Christ. How do I know this?
I know it because when Jesus died a beaten and unrecognizable bloody mess, no part of that damage came from His own personal sin. He was without sin. That means that all the damage that was poured out upon Him was entirely because of the sin of others. He was bruised and damaged beyond recognition under the weight of the sins of others. And yet!!!! And yet!!!!, He rose up healed from the grave so totally healed that his own close disciples could hardly believe it was Him.
The symbolic message of my baptism says; by the redemptive power that God has released in and upon my life through faith in Christ
o I am healed.
o I am being healed and
o I will be healed. In fact, ultimately I will be unrecognizably real, totally recovered and alive and perfect when in the great awakening day my body awakes from its rest and I find myself bearing the very likeness of Jesus Himself. Is that a miracle or what?
Psalms 17:15 As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. (Darby)
All that that Psalm conveys (and so much more) is communicated through Baptism.
2. COMMUNION
Every time we come to the communion table we are affirming our faith afresh in what Jesus has provided through His broken body and shed blood.
2 CORINTHIANS 5: 21 FOR OUR SAKE HE MADE HIM TO BE SIN WHO KNEW NO SIN, SO THAT IN HIM WE MIGHT BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. ESV
2 CORINTHIANS 8:9 FOR YOU KNOW THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, THAT THOUGH HE WAS RICH, YET FOR YOUR SAKE HE BECAME POOR , SO THAT YOU BY HIS POVERTY MIGHT BECOME RICH. ESV
Again and again we remember His death and refresh our transformed minds in believing that just as baptism was the symbol of a way into Christ, so now Communion says that I now live as a moment by moment partaker His life, and all by the grace of God.
And what we saw the staff, and with the brass serpent, as well as with the tabernacle, so we also see in the case of communion. It is not to be treated in a profane way, or materialistic way. Something powerful is being conveyed to our understanding.
1 CORINTHIANS 11:27 WHOEVER, THEREFORE, EATS THE BREAD OR DRINKS THE CUP OF THE LORD IN AN UNWORTHY MANNER WILL BE GUILTY OF PROFANING THE BODY AND BLOOD OF THE LORD. 28 LET A MAN EXAMINE HIMSELF, AND SO EAT OF THE BREAD AND DRINK OF THE CUP. 29 FOR ANY ONE WHO EATS AND DRINKS WITHOUT DISCERNING THE BODY EATS AND DRINKS JUDGMENT UPON HIMSELF. 30 THAT IS WHY MANY OF YOU ARE WEAK AND ILL, AND SOME HAVE DIED . 31 BUT IF WE JUDGED OURSELVES TRULY, WE SHOULD NOT BE JUDGED. 32 BUT WHEN WE ARE JUDGED BY THE LORD, WE ARE CHASTENED SO THAT WE MAY NOT BE CONDEMNED ALONG WITH THE WORLD.
33 SO THEN, MY BRETHREN, WHEN YOU COME TOGETHER TO EAT, WAIT FOR ONE ANOTHER - 34 IF ANY ONE IS HUNGRY, LET HIM EAT AT HOME - LEST YOU COME TOGETHER TO BE CONDEMNED. ABOUT THE OTHER THINGS I WILL GIVE DIRECTIONS WHEN I COME. RSV
Others may look and see nothing but components—just a cracker, just grape juice, but believers are to see what the symbol is indicating—the blood and body of Christ and the remembrance of Christ’s death until He comes. And if we will rightly discern we will be strengthened, made whole and live a full and meaningful life. It was for lack of discerning what the symbol meant that among the Corinthian believers some were weak, some were sick, and some had died.
In Christ Alone every relentless truth that God conveys in Baptism and Communion and in All His Word is being made and will be made a stark raving reality to each believer for all eternity.
In Christ Alone lyrics
Stuart Townsend, Keith Getty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLy8ksqGf9w
Lyrics:
In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
this Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
when fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
here in the love of Christ I stand.
In Christ alone! who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied -
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave he rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine -
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.
No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand
