It is Finished!

As we come to celebrate Easter this month, I thought that it would be good for us to explore the most significant word ever uttered in human history. Granted, if it was said by anyone else in any other context, it would nowhere near carry the same weight as it does when coming from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross that Good Friday. The word that I am talking about is the Greek word tetelestai. It is rendered in most English translations as It is finished. This is the next to last saying that Jesus cried from the cross before His death and is recorded for us in John 19:30.

The term literally means bring to an end, finish, complete, accomplish. It conveys the idea of carrying out a task. It is what one would say triumphantly after laboring hours or days at something and now having finished it. In fact, Matthew and Mark indicate that Jesus said this with a loud voice or cry. This served as a cry of victory and not defeat.

Notice too that Jesus did not say I am finished but it is finished. He was not simply indicating that His life was over or that His end had come. The it referred to His mission, not Himself.

What was this mission? It doesn't take long for us to go through the Gospels to find out. In the opening chapter of Matthew's gospel, we read about the angel who appeared to Joseph tell him regarding Mary that She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). His mission was to save His people from their sins. In fact, Jesus' very name indicates this mission. In Aramaic, Jesus is Yeshua, which means Yahweh is Salvation or Yahweh Saves. Jesus Himself stated that He did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). His mission was to save His people from their sins by giving His life as a ransom; a price paid to purchase someone’s freedom. He came to live the obedient life that Adam didn't live and to die to experience God's full wrath on the cross in place of those who would trust in Him. A wrath that He did not deserve because He was sinless but that everyone of us does deserve because of Adam's sin and our many sins. He came to serve as a substitute. This was the mission that He declares accomplished. The ransom had been made and the substitution complete.

This Greek word communicates a full completion of the task at a specific point in the past with ongoing results into the present of its writing. This was something fully and completely done in the past with ramifications for years following. Like an earthquake or a hurricane that strikes fully but leaves results felt for years to come, what Jesus did on the cross was fully accomplished, leaving results felt far into the future. It could be translated as “It is finished, it stands finished, and it always will be finished.” There is a finality to Christ's work of redemption that He accomplished on the cross which we still benefit from today. In fact, this Greek word was often used in the marketplace during the time of Christ's life and would be stamped upon a receipt after a purchase of a good to indicate that the transaction had been "paid in full." Our debt of sin has been "paid in full" by Christ's death on the cross and remains paid for all those who put their trust in Him. And that would include all of our sins, whether they were past, present, or future.

This means that nothing more needs to be done pertaining to our redemption. There is nothing that we can add to Christ's already completed work. We cannot add our own works. In fact, to do so would be to say that the cross was meaningless and that Christ's work had not been sufficient. This truth is communicated well by the author of Hebrews when he writes Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins of all time, sat down at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:11-12). The Old Testament priests were never allowed to sit down when they were doing their duty of offering the annual sacrifice for their people. This was symbolic of the fact that their work was not done. The sacrifice offered would only symbolically cover the sins of the previous year. They would have to enter into the "holy of holies" once again the next year for the sins of that year. However, Jesus is said to sit down as His work was finished when He offered Himself as the perfect and final sacrifice. No other sacrifice for sin was needed after His death. His cry from the cross communicated this. It was a declaration that those Old Testament priests could never have made since their work of offering sacrifices was not finished but our Lord could because His work was done. Everything needed to bring us into a right relationship with God had been fully accomplished.

For us, Easter is a specific celebration of the finished work of Christ. We celebrate the work of redemption that He has accomplished that Friday on Calvary and the His victorious defeat of death itself in His resurrection. And as I have heard it said, “The resurrection is the Father’s ‘amen’ to the Son’s ‘It is finished.’ ” Praise God that Christ's work is finished! Let's make sure that we trust the One whose work has been accomplished and live as if it has been complete by not trying to add our own works to the salvation equation.

Love In Christ,
Pastor Lee

The Indispensable Place of Women in Ministry

Women have an indispensable, invaluable, and irreplaceable role to play in the ministry of the church and of the home. Just as an important and necessary one as men do. Without women, there would be no human population as they are the ones who bear and give birth to the next generation. A child would be deprived without the nurture and influence of his or her mother (and some unfortunately have been through circumstances which they had no control over). And where would we be without women missionaries such as Elizabeth Elliot and the numerous areas in the church in which women faithfully serve for its edification and to bring glory to God? How many younger women in the church would be hurting without those older ones teaching them what it means to be a godly wife and mother (Titus 2:3-5)? The home and the church need faithful men and women serving within them to flourish and to fulfill God's calling for both.

However, while God has an important place for men and women to serve in the home and in His church, Scripture is clear that He has not designed them to serve in the same way but has called them to different roles in both. God in His good wisdom, for the glory of His name, has determined for men to serve as leaders in their homes and in His household, the church, and for women to serve as the men's helpers in these areas. This is evident form God's very creation of man and woman. He explicitly said to Adam that He was designing this woman that He was going to make to be a helper corresponding to him (Genesis 2:18). And when they both disobeyed God in the Garden, it is significant to note that God approaches Adam first instead of Eve, even though she had taken the first bite (Genesis 3:9). The man was summoned to give an account for his family as a leader is to give an account for those who submit to and follow his leadership.

 We see these differing roles play out in both the home and the church. As a husband and father, man has been called to be the head and leader of his home (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23). If you will, we could say that the man is to be the pastor, protector, and provider of and for his family. (You can't tell that I'm a preacher who likes to alliterate, can you?) And the wife and mother is called to submit to and respect her husband's leadership (Ephesians 5:24, 33). This in no way makes the wife and mother less important or inferior to her husband. No more than it does the husband and father to the wife and mother due to him not being designed to bear and give birth to his own children. He has a very crucial indispensable role himself to play in the process of that child being formed but certainly not the same role that the woman has. Both are needed with their distinct roles and a family as God has designed is not possible without one or the other. The different roles that God has designed for men and women to have in the home are equally important and needed, although the roles themselves are not equal.

The same thing is true in the church. And here is where I am about to get even more controversial because this flies flat in the face of our current culture. We can always expect the values of God's kingdom to run counter cultural to those of man's kingdom. In fact, I think that we should find it problematic whenever any of our views line up with the way the world is heading. Though unpopular, even within some areas of the church today, I see no way of getting around the clear and plain teaching of Scripture that God has intended men to occupy the primary leadership roles in the church. We notice this prescribed with the office of pastor or elder limited to qualified men (1 Timothy 2:12-15; 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 14:34-36) and the practice of Jesus and the early church in the appointing of 12 men to serve as apostles (Luke 6:12-16) and 7 men to lead in the distribution of the food for the widows (Acts 6:3). Just as women submit to the leadership of their husbands at home and valuably contribute with their own work, so women do in the church under the leadership of the elders or pastors. 

Now, the only way that this could be seen to be degrading of women or devaluing of them would be for the pastorate to be elevated to a greater status than other areas of service in the church, which Scripture does not do. Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 12 that every member of the church has an important, indispensable, and distinct role to play in the work of the church. Hence why, in the analogy of the body that he uses, the ear cannot say to the eye that it has no need of it. If the body consisted of nothing but eyes, it could never hear or walk. The body cannot function as it has been designed without all of its parts. It would be lacking in some sense if it was missing just one part as anyone who has ever lost the use of an arm, leg, or eye can attest to. And if one of the parts decided that it would serve as a different part than designed, the body also would be hurting and not able to function fully.

Likewise, in the church, every member is needed with whatever role that they have been graciously given to play. If all would be pastors, the church would severely be lacking and much work would not get done. Which is why we need women to come alongside to teach other women how to faithfully serve their families at home (Titus 2:3-5 again). Something no pastor or elder can do since they do not have that experience. And the same can be said for so many other areas in the church women have been called to serve as well.

So, don't let anyone ever tell you that women do not have an indispensable role to play in the home or in the church because they have not been called to lead in these areas. The fact of the matter is that they have an invaluable role to play in contributing to God's work as helpers and we would not be able to function without them. I am so thankful for the women who currently are faithfully serving with the role that God has designed for them to have and pray that He would raise up more since our families and churches greatly need them!

In Christ,

Lee

Soli Deo Gloria!!!

God at the Center

One of the hardest things for us to grasp is that life is not about us. We do not serve as the center of the universe. Everything does not revolve around us but far too often we falsely think that it does when the reality is that everything exists for God and it is all about Him.

 

The very reason why God created the world was to bring Himself glory. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psalm 19:1). As our Good Shepherd, He guides us in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). David knew that his pleas for God’s mercy must be grounded in who God is and not in himself (Psalm 25:11; 79:9). God’s salvation of Israel and us was ultimately for His glory (Psalm 106:8; 106:8; Isaiah 48:9, 11; Ezekiel 36:22-23; Ephesians 1:4-6). As we read through the Old Testament, we find over and over again God saying that He does or doesn’t do such and such for the sake of His great name or so that His name would not be dishonored or shamed among the nations. So, God is all about God. His chief concern is to bring Himself glory. 

 

We want it to be all about us though, don’t we? We often seem to think that God’s sole desire is to please us and grant our wishes. (This can be seen in our prayers many times. Hence, why we can so easily get upset when He doesn’t answer the way that we would like Him to or find ourselves disappointed in the way that He chooses to respond.) Or we entertain the idea that God sent Jesus to the cross on account of Him thinking that we are so great. But the truth of the matter is that God sent Jesus to the cross ultimately to bring glory to His name. Jesus’ aim was to glorify His Father through the redemptive rescue of rebel sinners. He even prayed right before the cross, Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You (John 17:1).

 

One thing that the Holy Spirit seeks to do through the words of Scripture is to bring about what we could call a “Copernican Revolution” in our lives. Nicolaus Copernicus was the one to discover that the sun actually served as the center of the universe with all of the planets revolving around it. Up until that time, everyone had believed the earth to be at the center of the universe and that the sun and the rest of the planets revolved around it. Such a discovery was shocking to the established view of the time but necessary for us to understand the reality of the universe that we live in. It may be shocking for us to come to realize this truth that everything ultimately centers around God but necessary so that we can understand what our life must be about. Or, better put, Who our life must be about. It helps us recognize our place as well. As God’s creature with Him as our Creator whom we owe everything to. That we were made for Him and not for ourselves to live as we please.

 

We will never live our lives rightly if we fail to view God as the center of it. Things just do not function as they ought to whenever we try to usurp the place that God Himself occupies. If the earth would one day decide that it would no longer desire to revolve around the sun but would just remain still and wait for everything to begin circling around it, it would not be able to function because it was designed to be in orbit around the greater sun, and in such an orbit, functions and is sustained. The world in which we live simply does not have the ability and strength to pull and hold everything in orbit around it. Likewise, things will not be in the right place in our lives if we consistently fail to view and treat God as being in the center of all of it. True joy can never be found with us in the center but with God because God alone is qualified to serve as that center of everything due to the very nature of Him being God. 

 

And the fact that God is all about God with His main goal being His glory is good news for us. The very grounds of our eternal assurance of our salvation can be said to be found in it. If God’s saving and preserving of us was centered on who we are rather than who He is, we would be in a heap of trouble. We would have every reason to fear God giving up on us on account of our sins. Even our faith can be fickle at times and the Puritans were right that our repentance needs to be repented of. We provide God with a number of reasons to give up on us. But if His saving of us and preserving of us is ultimately based on who He is and for His glory, then we have no reason to ever be fearful that He will ever abandon us. This was the case for the Israelite's after their many sins. God said to them following the rejection of Him as king that they could be assured that He would not abandon them on account of His great name, because the LORD has been pleased to make you a people for Himself (1 Samuel 12:22). Not based on their name and who they were but on account of God’s greater and supreme name. It was all on account of God’s reputation and His pleasure or desire to make the people His own. If it wasn’t for such a desire to exalt His great name in the purchasing and keeping of such sinful rebels, none of us would have any hope to be saved. Aren’t you glad then that God ultimately is all about His own glory?

 

So, let’s be sure that the One who is the center of the universe serves as the center of our lives. That we make it our goal to, as Paul instructs us, whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). May God continue to grant us the grace for us not to view and act as if everything is about us but to rightly have everything in our lives revolve around Him, as it has been designed to do.

  

Love in Christ,

Pastor Lee

Grace in the Family Tree of Jesus

 

             Have you ever taken the time to explore Jesus’ family tree? To go through the list of his relatives that Matthew puts together for us in the opening chapter of his Gospel? Too often we want to skip these long hard to pronounce names and just move on to the next section where the action starts. But if we do that, I fear we will miss some exciting and necessary things God has to say to us through them. This specific genealogy for instance actually is a very fascinating study full of several interesting characters and quite a few surprising ones as well. And it reveals for us one of the greatest pictures of God’s grace. Sometime we would miss if we do not take the time to study it.

 

            One of the most surprising things for us to see in this genealogy is the mention of the names of five women. Now, we have to realize that it was very unusual for a woman to be named in any genealogy at this time due to the focus always being on the man who would carry on the family name to the next generation. And not only is the fact that these women can be found in this list surprising but the specific women that he chooses to include are even more so. After all, these weren’t ones with the most squeaky clean reputations. Not the usual Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah that were focused on. Every Jew who first read through this genealogy would have recognized the names of these ones but not necessarily for the best of reasons. They have been said to be “among the most notorious women in biblical history.” Four of them were outsiders and could be described as shady ladies with sinister sins and provocative pasts.

 

            The first of these ladies that we discover in this list is Tamar (Matthew 1:3). We read about her back in Genesis 38. She was the one who dressed up as a prostitute in order to sleep with her father-in-law, Judah. He had promised her his third son in marriage but after losing the previous two that he had given her, never followed through on that promise. Her one night with her father-in-law resulted in the conception and birth of twins. One of which became the next chain in the line of the Messiah. Not only was a woman who was involved in a scandal of deceit chosen to become a part of Jesus’ family tree but that scandal itself was used as the means to bring about the succeeding branch of that tree! 

 

            The next of these shady ladies that we come to didn’t play a prostitute on one occasion but rather was one by profession. In fact, many of the times that she is referenced in Scripture she is known as the harlot. Even where her faith is commended and held up as an example, we are reminded of her former shameful career (Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25). I’m talking here about Rahab (v. 5). The Canaanite woman who hid the Israelite spies in Jericho and whose life was graciously spared on account of it. (See Joshua 2 for more of the story.) Who would have ever thought that a foreign prostitute could be engrafted into the sinless Savior’s family tree?

 

Immediately following Rahab is Ruth, who married Rahab’s son, Boaz (v. 5). Unlike the previous two shady ladies on this list, Ruth doesn’t have any direct sexual scandals that she was involved in but her people certainly did. Ruth was a Moabitess. Another outsider. The nation of Moab originated from the child produced by the act of incest between Lot and his daughter when the latter got the former drunk so that she could sleep with him and bear children (Genesis 19:30-38). This group of people were not allowed to join the Israelites in worshiping the Lord for a number of years (Deuteronomy 23:3). And before committing to go where her mother-in-law Naomi goes and to worship her God, Ruth would have worshiped the false gods of the Moabites. But even with such a provocative past, God had her marry one of Naomi’s sons, and then after his death, to remain loyal to her, and find her kinsman Redeemer, Boaz, who in turn would give her a son named Obed, the grandfather of King David and forefather of the Messiah. 

 

The fourth woman that we come to in this list isn’t even named but is simply referred to as “the wife of Uriah” (v. 6). A subtle reminder of the fact that Bathsheba did not originally belong to King David but to his servant Uriah instead. Yet, after noticing her bathing on her rooftop, the King had her brought to him and following his affair with her resulting in a pregnancy, eventually had Uriah killed (2 Samuel 11). This has gotten Bathsheba forever associated with David’s adultery and murder. Amazingly, God used what began as an unholy union to continue His plan for the Messiah to be a descendant of kings. And there is a chance also that she could be classified as another outsider due to the fact that her husband is identified as being a "Hittite" instead of an Israelite (2 Samuel 11:3).

 

Now, what are these shady ladies with such sinister sins and provocative pasts doing in the family history of the King of kings and Lord of lords? Why would God ever choose such to be included in the lineage of His sinless Son and why would Matthew go out of his way to highlight them for us? Would it not be to show us the very kind of people that Christ came to save? Outsiders who originally are not a part of His people (Hosea 2:23). Shady sinners with provocative pasts. All to point out to us that God extends His grace to even the vilest of sinners and to the worst of outcasts. Which is good news since many of us could fit in such categories ourselves. J. C. Ryle put it well when he wrote: "We should always read this catalogue with thankful feelings. We see here that no one who partakes of human nature can be beyond the reach of Christ's sympathy and compassion. Our sins may have been as black and great as those of any whom St. Matthew names. But they cannot shut us out of heaven, if we repent and believe the gospel. If Jesus was not ashamed to be born of a woman, whose pedigree contained such names as those we have read today, we need not think he will be ashamed to call us brethren, and to give us eternal life."

 Let’s be sure that this Christmas we celebrate God’s grace. The grace that is shown to those like these four ladies. The grace that has been shown to us.

  

Love in Christ,

Pastor Lee