Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20050918.htm

JOHN: TRUSTING IN JESUS AS MESSIAH AND GOD
Part XVIII: Fully Heeding Christ To Enjoy God's Compassionate Grace Versus His Severe Judgment
(John 5:45-6:15 with Deuteronomy 18:15-22)

Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

Hurricane Katrina has deeply affected lots of people in lots of ways, particularly in the spiritual realm:

(1) When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a lot of people in its wake clearly lacked God's inner peace. We have seen and heard about it from the numerous media reports about distraught storm victims who vented their inner unrest to reporters and various government officials.

(2) Now, to be honest with you, and to fulfill the Lord's clear directive that I share this testimony with you, I myself felt strangely VERY uneasy over the storm! This is very unlike my usual experience, for I have long taught we are to trust the Lord to handle inner unrest, and, at the time, I was convinced I was relying upon Him!

It all began early in my summer vacation back in late August when I had first prayed for a soaking rain. We in Connecticut were in a bit of a drought, so I asked God for a good rain. About then I had heard a weather report tell of a tropical storm named Katrina that was located in the Bahamas of the Atlantic, so I assumed God was getting ready to answer my prayer and send the storm near us to supply rain. However, Katrina violated all the projections of the meteorologists and ran ominously zigzag west by southwest to cross Southern Florida and turn northwest to head up into the dangerously warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico! I then earnestly asked the Lord that the then Hurricane Katrina would not bring heavy devastation to the Gulf States!

By now you very well know that just the opposite occurred! Katrina was one of our nation's most destructive storms, and it left Connecticut without a drop of rain and only a few very muggy days!

After that, two seasoned believers independent of each other told me they believed this storm's destruction was a warning from God for people to repent! I knew their words mimicked Jesus' teaching in Luke 13:1-5 on such disasters, so I then began to feel uneasy about my walk with God! After all, the OPPOSITE of my prayer request had occurred, and that in the realm of judgment , and 1 John 3:22 teaches a lack of answered prayer can mean we are not pleasing the Lord!



Well, WHY can even we CHRISTIANS have a lack God's peace in the wake of disasters -- what are we to DO about it?!



(We turn to the sermon "Need" section . . . )

Need: "I or a friend lacks God's peace following a terrible event [like Hurricane Katrina]! Why, and what does God want?!"
  1. God showed He PREFERRED to give us His SETTLED PEACE VERSUS His TERRIFYING JUDGMENT by sending us Jesus:
    1. God led Moses to predict the coming of Jesus to ease the fear Israel felt over the terrifying show of God's wrath in his own ministry:
      1. When Moses gave the Law, he did so with terrifying displays of God's wrath so Israel would be afraid to disobey it, Ex. 20:18-21.
      2. Accordingly, the people asked Moses to mediate between them and God so they could avoid the terrifying wrath displays, Deut. 5:22ff.
      3. God replied their request was good; He would send them a prophet like Moses Who would give His Word unto them, Deut. 18:15-18.
    2. That Prophet of grace was Jesus Christ, a fact testified in John's Gospel and typified in His miracle of the feeding of the five thousand:
      1. In John 1:17, the Apostle John claimed that the Law had come by Moses, but that God's truth and grace had come by Jesus Christ!
      2. Then, in John 5:45-47, Jesus said Moses wrote of Him, and He illustrated this in His feeding of the five thousand that followed:
        1. Christ illustrated He fulfilled Moses' prediction to come as a prophet like Moses in that He miraculously fed Israel in the wilderness like Moses had long before Him, Ex. 16; Jn. 6:1-13.
        2. Thus, those who witnessed this feeding recognized Jesus to be that prophet about whom Moses had written, John 6:14-15 with Deut. 18:15; Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978 ed., ftn. to Jn. 6:14.
  2. Thus, the TERRIFYING ministry of God's JUDGMENT under Moses CONTRASTS with God's KINDNESS in JESUS' ministry, a CONTRAST we NOTE in HOW BOTH of them FED ISRAEL:
    1. Under Moses, the people spoke of their hunger, and then God fed them, Exodus 16:3-4; under Jesus, He initiated the feeding before the people spoke of their hunger, John 6:5; Matthew 14:15.
    2. Under Moses, the people of Israel were afraid, Deuteronomy 5:23-27; under Jesus, He had the people peacefully sit down so He could miraculously feed them, John 6:4, 10.
    3. Under Moses, the people ate a previously unknown, strange food called "manna", Exodus 16:15; under Jesus, He fed the people familiar bread and fish portions that relaxed them, John 6:8-9, 11.
    4. Under Moses, the people ate a rationed amount of food, Ex. 16:12-13; under Jesus, the people ate all they wanted to eat, John 6:11b.
    5. Under Moses, the people first ate meat, and then the manna rations, Exodus 16:12-13; under Jesus, they ate the bread (carbohydrates) and/or the meat (protein) in accord with their own desires, John 6:11.
    6. Under Moses, there was no food left after dining, Exodus 16:18-19; under Jesus, there was a large amount of meat and bread left after the people had eaten, John 6:12-13; Mark 6:43:
      1. The word for "basket" in John 6:13 in the Greek text is kophinos, and it was a wicker basket that carried around 15 lbs. of food, U. B. S. Grk. N. T. , 1966 ed., p. 343; Moult. & Ged., Vocab. of the Grk. N. T., p. 357 with Thayer's Grk.-Eng. Lex. of N. T., p. 358, 378.
      2. As 12 of these baskets were needed for the leftovers, 180 lbs. of food remained after the miracle, a large surplus, cf. John 6:13!
    7. Under Moses, the people were far off from God's presence (Ex. 20:19-21) and He in a FORMAL way put the manna on the ground for them to go out and pick up to eat (Ex. 16:13-16); under Jesus, though He was humanly tired to the point of trying to break from His ministry to the throngs (Mark 6:31-37), and though grieving over the recent atrocity done to John the Baptizer (Matt. 14:10-18), His second cousin (Luke 1:36, 60, 80), Jesus as God incarnate graciously and WARMLY led the throngs to repose on the soft spring grass in socially fitting order, then blessed a young boy's lunch and broke it into edible parts with His hands to give to His disciples to serve the people as their personal dining waiters, John 6:10-12; Mark 6:39-41.
  3. YET, to EXPERIENCE God's KINDNESS over His WRATH, we must do what Moses told us to do -- we must FULLY HEED Jesus!
    1. Moses' prediction about the Prophet to come was accompanied by a charge for the people to heed Him when He arrived, Deut. 18:15-18.
    2. Failure to heed Him would be met by God's wrath that had been the terrifying emphasis in Moses' ministry, Deut. 18:19 with Heb. 2:1-4!
Application: If we LONG to know God's PEACE and GRACE in our lives, me must (1) first TRUST in Christ as Savior from sin to become a child of God, John 1:11-12 (2); (a) then, we must rely on the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16-22) for the power and will to (b) trust and heed Scripture. (c) To the DEGREE we HEED that Word, we will enjoy God's peace, Matt. 13:18-22, 23; Psalm 1.

Lesson: God MUCH PREFERS to bless us in the kind, peaceful expressions of His grace RATHER THAN level His judgment upon us; yet, we must TRUST and HEED Christ to the FULL for that to occur!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the sermon lesson . . . )

 You recall in the introduction I shared God has directed that I give my testimony on how uneasy I became over Hurricane Katrina. Opposite my prayer in August that it not bring ruin, but rain, Katrina left the Bahamas for Florida before turning northwest to devastate much of the Gulf Coast and leave us no rain! Then two seasoned Christians reminded me of Christ's Luke 13:1-5 words that such events are God's call to repent! Also, 1 John 3:22 teaches a lack of answers to prayer can be due to sin, so my uneasiness with God only grew!

It got worse! A variety of other unusual events arose, leaving me even MORE uneasy! Finally, I saw these events all fit a pattern: they made me recall an old, familiar temptation! I have often been lured (a) to cut back on time spent in Bible message preparation or (b) to relax stands I have taken that were based on my interpretation of Scripture (c) or to get involved in ministries besides studying Scripture just to please other believers and keep them in the Church! Yet, the Revelation 3:14-22 passage I hold to be God's words to our Church era I have taught tells pastors like me (in Revelation 3:21) to resist such temptations and faithfully, gently focus on Bible exposition!

At that point, I understood God was correcting me! You see, early in my vacation I had started to doubt if my interpretation of Revelation 3:21 was right: I found it hard to think God would really give a pastor like me the right to sit on Christ's throne of influence! Yet, God had made me face unnerving events to convince me I had not only been right in that interpretation, but I was to HEED it and KEEP Bible exposition my priority or experience God's discipline! I also realized I had fallen into a familiar trap to doubt my capacity to be sure I knew the right interpretation, a trap the pastors who ordained me to the ministry in 1976 signaled might be a weakness I was to overcome!

So, in the fear of the Lord, I quickly recommitted myself to a Bible exposition priority in the ministry, and so pushed away those old temptations. I even ceased reading theologically errant Christian e-mail news items or Christian magazines to guard my mind further from error, and God's peace settled in! That done, God sent Hurricane Ophelia to bring us the soaking rain for which I had first prayed!

So, how about YOU? Are YOU feeling uneasy over Hurricane Katrina or some other crisis, and you realize the Lord is behind it? If so, repent like I did to enjoy God's great peace!