In Jesus Holy Name November 6, 2022
Text: Acts 20:22,27-28 Redeemer Lutheran
“Paul’s Farewell Sermon”
“Life Redeemed”
When it comes to Christianity, there are two things the people of the world cannot understand. First, they cannot understand the Resurrection. It is a miracle which baffles the mind. Secular man cannot deal with it. Second, because they can’t deal with the Resurrection, they do not understand the teachings of Jesus and His promise of forgiveness for broken ethics and the gift of eternal life.
But in the words of Paul: “What we believe is both true and reasonable. This resurrection event was not done in the corner.” The evidence is there for all to see. The empty tomb is still empty. No one has ever found the bones of Jesus. No one ever will. Therefore Paul said: “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” (V 21) The Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands as the best-attested fact in all human history.
Regarding “facts: In 1951, during the golden age of television, Jack Webb brought a show to television from the radio entitled Dragnet. At the beginning of every show the announcer would come on and say, "The story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."
Those who remember the program can recall how Webb's character, Sergeant Joe Friday, walked without swinging his arms and spoke in a monotone voice. When investigating a crime he would question witnesses, victims, and perpetrators as he searched for, 'Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."
Dragnet did well in the ratings throughout its run during the 1950s. In 1967, the program was revived, and although ratings were all right, the public didn't seem quite as interested in getting 'the facts, just the facts.
It’s election time. Whom do you trust? Truthful facts are needed about candidates, about propositions. All we want are just the facts. Just the facts. We live in a cynical age…We don't trust. We don’t trust our politicians to tell us the whole truth. We think they give us bits of the truth, or partial truths, or truth with a spin on it? So this morning, let me ask you: whom do you trust?
Today, more and more police find themselves having to justify their actions before doubting community members. Growing numbers of individuals have come to believe college professors and teachers, once accepted as the ultimate purveyors of wisdom and truth, are now promoting their own agendas. Can your student trust His/her professor, his/her teacher. What are the facts that bear truth?
In Acts chapter 20 Paul asked all the leaders of the various house churches to come to Ephesus. In his farewell sermon he gave a warning that false teachers will come and “distort the truth” regarding the resurrection of Jesus. “Be on your Guard”. Luke writes: “He preached until midnight.”
Candles in the room slowly took all the oxygen out of the room. People were dozing off, one young man fell 3 stories out of a window, to his death. Paul rushes down stairs, throws his body and arms around the young man and brings him back to life. They all go back up stairs and Paul preaches from midnight till morning.
My friends that is a long sermon.
Paul reminds them that he is compelled by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem. He knows prison awaits him. Yet he will go. He is urging the new Christians to remain loyal to Jesus even in the midst of persecution. They are to live a life worthy of their calling, practicing the values of Jesus in a secular culture of Rome.
Then, in his encouragement and warning to the “shepherds of the flocks” I believe that in verse 28 Paul speaks one of the most radical theological truths, often overlooked. “Keep watch over the flock which God bought with His own blood.” Paul did not use the name Jesus. It is a shocking phrase. It caused me to pause and reflect. So how can Paul use this phrase? Why not, “The flock which Jesus bought with His own blood.” It is not an accident that Paul chose the word “God”. He has honed in on a the deep theological truth of the doctrine, “Trinity”.
First God’s essential being is immortal, therefore God the Creator can not die, so He became a man in order to do so. The author of Hebrews writes: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy Him who holds the power of death. That is the devil.” (Heb. 2:14) He became a man, as Paul writes in Philippians… “Jesus Christ, who being in the very nature of God,…made himself nothing…being made in human likeness, He humbled Himself to be come obedient to death even death on a cross…” The person who died was not the Father but the Son. This is the mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity. This is the mystery of God’s divine plan to save humanity.
What did the angel tell Mary? Your child shall be called “Emmanuel” which means God with us, for He will be born …. to save His people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21-23) How can the Creator God be both eternal “Judge” and “Redeemer”? How can a holy God forgive the gravity of sin and complete selfishness of humanity?
God acted first to create Adam and Eve. When they disobeyed. God acted first to forgive them. God acted to redeem humanity by sending His Son Jesus, whose blood on the cross was the perfect sacrifice. This was the Divine Plan.
Paul’s phrase means that God is able to simultaneously be holy in His judgment and demonstrate His love in pardon. He provides a divine substitute for the sinner, so that the substitute receives the judgment and the sinner the pardon. (“The Cross of Christ” Rev. Jon Stott p. 134)
We have seen this heroism in our own human experience. In 1941, Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan, in the Auschwitz concentration camp became a substitute for a fellow prisoner. Whenever a prisoner escaped the Nazi prison camp, the normal practice was to select 10 men for execution by slow starvation. One of the men selected, in tears, shouted that he was a married man with children.” Father Kolbe stepped forward, broke ranks and made a plea of his own, and in perfect German said: “I am a Catholic priest. I want to die for that man; I am old; he has a wife and children.” His offer was accepted. He was placed in an underground cell where he was left to die of starvation, with nine other men. (story in Charles Colson’s book “The Body” p 312)
For two weeks the camp could hear singing from the cell. Each day the singing was weaker as men died. Soon only a whisper of a hymn could be heard. After two weeks Father Kolbe had not died of starvation, so he was injected with a fatal dose of phenol (fee-nol) on August 14, 1941. The fact that the blood of his God shed on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus gave him and the men with him hope in the midst of impending death.
The night before Moses was to lead the children of Israel out of Egyptian slavery to freedom, God demonstrated both His holiness in judgment and His love for sinful human beings. God revealed Himself as Judge through the plagues in Egypt. Then Moses warned Pharoah that God would pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn. No discrimination between human and animals. There would be only one escape, the blood of a Lamb.
God then reveals Himself as Redeemer. Each family was to take a lamb and on the 14th day kill it. Some of the lamb’s blood would be sprinkled on the door frames of their homes. That night the angel of death would Passover every blood marked house. It was God who passed through Egypt to bring judgment, and the same God who would Passover Israelite homes. It is the one and same God through Jesus who saves us from the judgment we deserve for our broken commandments.
In the gospel of John, Jesus is called the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And in the Book of Revelation Jesus is worshipped as the slain Lamb who by His blood has purchased men for God.
The stories of Paul’s missionary journey’s are about the greatest question of life; who is Jesus Christ and what is your relation to him, there are only two possible answers. Either you believe Him for who He is or you reject Him and His claims. Yes or no. Life or death. You believe or you don’t. There is no middle ground.
In life there is such a thing as truth. Real, absolute truth. I don't want to go into an operating room when my truth says the surgeon is going to take out my inflamed appendix …..and his truth is to give me a kidney transplant. I insist on my truth which says the dentist should fix the cavity in my molar;….. not his truth which says it's easier to drill a tooth closer to the front of my mouth. I want my car's mechanic to stop my car's engine from knocking, not rotate the tires.
In your conversations with your unchurched or dechurched friends someone might ask, "Tell me about your truth," then our answer is: Truth is a Person: it is Jesus, the Son of God. He is the One and Only Truth; the only Way to the Father, to experience forgiveness and salvation. When our Savior was with us, He said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). He did not say that He was One of many truths; He did not say He had come to share the truth or be an Example of the truth. Jesus said: “I am the Way, The truth and the life.”
What Paul is saying is this: in the Trinity we have a real God, who sent a real Redeemer into a real world to really die so we might really be forgiven and really be released from damnation and condemnation, by His resurrection.
If you're looking for the facts, just the facts, there is little doubt that a Man named Jesus lived in Palestine during the first century. Most scholars, even most detractors, will concede He was crucified by the Romans. That information you can get from Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived shortly after the Savior left the earth.
We know Jesus was dead. Because the Romans never left anyone on a cross alive. They speared Jesus, blood and water came out. That only happens when someone is dead. If Jesus didn't rise, why didn't the authorities roll out His body, show it to the people and let them see Jesus was still dead. That would have ended Christianity right there. (Sermon Rev. Ken Klaus January 25, 2015 )
After the resurrection of Jesus, He appeared to Mary Magdalene, to Peter, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the ten disciples, the eleven disciples, to James, to 500 at one time, to the disciples at the Sea of Galilee, and when He ascended. People saw Him, touched Him, listened to Him, ate with Him, felt His breath upon them.
This is why on this Sunday of the celebration of “All Saints Day” we are reminded that the cemetery is only a resting place until the Day Jesus returns in glory. (read I Thessalonians 4:15-18)
