Sunday Night, Nov 5, 2017

Yes, Miss Beth. So, there are, I guess, roughly two types of people who ask God questions, and you can see that in the ministry of Jesus, even, that some would question Jesus out of their sincere struggle in their faith, and then others would question Jesus out of their skeptical rebellion, and they did not want Jesus to be who he was claiming to be.

They wanted to disprove him, and so I suppose that there are those who are believing in their questioning, and then there are those who are skeptics. Another way you might say it, and this is, I think, the model we have in Jeremiah from our passage this morning with confessional questions, meaning I'm confessing the truths about who God is while I ask him questions.

I'm not doubting that he is who he is, but I'm asking you to try to understand how he could be who he is, and how does that manifest in the situation that I'm experiencing? My personal experience is not the final say.

What I personally experience, my own personal perception of the world around me, that's not absolute truth, and I could be confused about how my personal experience and perception, how that will comport with the truth of who God is objectively and truly and eternally, and we live in that tension, but those are questions that are confessional questions versus questions of rebellion, questions of skeptics, so I think that would be one way to say it.

If there is somebody who has questions that they're asking in skepticism, if you successfully answer their question, and they immediately come out with another one, they're not necessarily interested in learning something new.

They're not trying to grow in faith. They're throwing up defensive shields, questions, or trying to hide behind the questions. There's a story of an apologist who was on a college campus and was talking to a graduate student and gave her all the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, irrefutable evidences about witnesses and just the dearth of information, and he knew it all by heart.

He gave it all to her, and she finally said, okay, you've convinced me. You've convinced me that this Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead, but I don't believe he's God, so even if you can get a skeptic to be convinced of information, just because they agree to facts doesn't mean that then they entrust their lives to Christ, that they believe and they become worshipers.

There was another question asked of a rancorous atheist who said, if all that who God is could be proven to your satisfaction, and you ask many skeptical questions, but if all of your answers could be satisfactorily, all your questions be satisfactorily answered, that this God is the true God and the only God, would you worship him?

He said, no. It's a heart issue. It's a heart issue. Yes, Joel.

It goes on to say, don't have to say it, don't doubt. Does that mean, hey, I can ask God anything I want, and then I'll still be, I can ask God anything I want, if I believe he's going to give it to me, he'll give it to me.

Well, let's look at what James says in verse 5 of James chapter 1. The context begins really in verse 2, when James says, consider it all joy. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you will be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

And then verse 5, but if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for he who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

Let not that man expect that he would be, receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways. So, in the context, as you pointed out, it's about the trial and the need for wisdom.

As I was talking about earlier this morning, in the sermon, that if any of us lack wisdom, let us ask of God, let's ask in faith. God gives to all generously, and it says without reproach, meaning he does not reproach us for asking.

Now, when we're asking, Joel, your question was, you were saying, does this mean that I can ask God for anything, and if I ask in faith, then since he gives to all generously and without reproach, should I ask with the right kind of faith, and I would receive it?

Is that your question? Right, yeah. James is also the one who, back in chapter 4, in chapter 4 and verse 13, says, come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit, yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.

You're just a vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

I think, James, when we take these two passages together, James is very concerned about the heart of the person who is making these plans and setting these priorities, and very often we pray about our plans, and we pray according to our priorities, and James is saying, you should be saying, as the Lord wills.

Now, if the Lord wills that you have a million dollars, if he puts that on your heart, that you need a million dollars and a Learjet to go do something for the kingdom, you're going to get it, if that's what God wants you to do.

There's nothing wrong about praying large, bold prayers. If there is a clear course of action, and we want to see something done for the kingdom, and we believe that this is good, this is according to God's character, this is according to his word, we believe it, pray for it.

Pray for it, and he will not reproach you. Now, maybe it's not the Lord's will, maybe it's not the Lord's will, but he will give you wisdom to understand what it is that he wants you to be about and to do, and I think that can become trite if we keep, you know, if you will, if you will, if you will.

It needs to be a matter of the heart, but who's he praying? Who are we supposed to be praying? We're supposed to be praying to God, ask of God, ask in faith. Faith is not the determinism, the level of self-determinism that we have in our heart.

Faith is not the level of certainty and sincerity that we have in our heart. That's not what faith is. It's a gift from God, it's a grace from God that puts our trustful attention upon God, that we know who he is, and we, from our own souls, give the amen of who he is, that we delight in who he is, we agree with who he is, we fear who he is in reverence, and that we find ourselves in absolute agreement with him, and that, and if we're asking in faith, we're not going to be asking in something that's going to be contrary to his character, like, I'm covetous, I want more money.

I'm envious, I want that kind of car. If I have enough sincerity in my soul, enough self-determinism, God must give it to me. That's not what scripture is talking about. In Romans 8, verse 31, it says that, that, what should we say to these things?

You know, he who has given us his own son, how will you not with him also freely give us all things? The son, Jesus Christ, is the best gift of all, and he's the defining gift, and the all things are the all things that come with Christ, not those things that are opposed to Christ.

He wouldn't be, whatever he gives to us with Christ would be in agreement with his primary gift. So, there's commands in the Bible to pray, and to pray boldly, to pray impertinently, even Jesus's parable about the man knocking, I need bread, I need bread, and if your annoyed neighbor will give you bread, God is much better than your annoyed neighbor.

So, pray with importunity, but if there's something that you need, I think someone once said that we should see prayer as our wartime walkie-talkie. You get on the walkie-talkie in wartime to call up what you need, and sometimes you're asking for something rather huge, but God has called us, we are the church militant, we are not the church at rest, we have duty to do, we have a goal in mind that we are to be on the march for God.

What do we need to do what he calls us to do? Do we need wisdom? Ask in faith. Do we need more funds? Ask in faith. Do we need more opportunities? Ask in faith. You see, and God is a God who is generous and gives to all, and that without reproach.

So, I would say that that's the tenor of it, that we would ask, yes, even big bold things, if we know it's according to the will of God. And of course, sometimes we don't know his, most times we don't know his secret, determinant of will.

We don't know how it's all going to turn out. We do know his revealed will, okay. We can't go around saying, I don't know the will of God. Yes, we do. It's right here. Pray according to his will. And I remember one time there was, the church I interned at, there was a series of families, two couples right in a row lost infants soon after birth.

It was terrible. And then there was a third infant at risk of death. And she was, you know, it was bad news, as bad as the other two news. And we had this group, we'd get together and pray before the morning service.

And this was the topic of our prayer time. And I could sense that there was, we just didn't know how to pray, you know. It feels disheartening that we've lost two of our little ones. And what about the third?

You know, and I realized this is, you know, God is big enough to handle our impertinent requests. And we just beg God for mercy for this family, for this child. And we left the question of what was actually going to happen, we left that alone.

Just leave that to God. And we prayed for life. We prayed for blessing, for joy, for healing. Because we know that those are things that God delights in. So we prayed for that. And God was merciful. And God did answer our prayers in a positive way.

And we could rejoice in that. There are people all over the world trying to serve Christ, and they have very, very little. They don't have hardly any resources at all. And they pray big, amazing prayers, and God answers and gives them what they need to do the work that they have to do with very little to do it with.

I think your question is a good one. And I think maybe we're accustomed to leaning on our resources, leaning on our abundance. And the kind of prayers we should be praying are those that confess our dependence and neediness.

Anything else? All right, let's turn to Genesis chapter 9, is where we left off. We've been talking about the flood, the worldwide flood. And we are at the beginning of chapter 9. We have seen that Noah is a reminder, a picture of Jesus Christ, in that those who were saved from the flood, from God's judgment, were those who were with Noah.

Noah who had found favor in God's eyes. Noah who had obeyed God in building the ark according to what God had told him to do. And all those who were with Noah were saved in the ark. And they come out of the ark.

And God, in chapter 9 verse 1, God blessed Noah. God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Does this sound familiar? It should sound familiar. If we were privileged to sit with the early Levites, read what Moses had written down, sitting there in the Acacia Grove next to the Jordan River, we would hear them read continuously from chapter 1 all the way through.

And our ears would perk up. Just a few minutes ago, we heard in chapter 1 and verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let him rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. God blessed them. God blessed Noah. God blessed them. He blessed mankind. And God said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

So do it and rule over all of the creatures. This is God saying the same blessing again, the same commission again. He's reminding Noah of the arrangements that he has made with humanity, that he has made us in his own image, which means that we exist to image forth God, to reflect the glory of God.

And we do that in the way that we relate to God and one another in the created order. Love God supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly. That's the summation of what God told Adam and Eve in the garden.

And it is the summation of what God told Noah after the flood. It is even the summation of the Ten Commandments to love God supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly. It's the essential agreement that God has made with his special creature man.

And time and again, it is these concerns that are primary in the way that God deals with us. Now verse two introduces something a little bit new. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky, with everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand, they are given.

This was not something that God said in the garden. He did not say to Adam and Eve that the creatures that he made, the lower creatures, that they would be afraid, that they would be standoffish and concerned, skittish around people.

Why the change, do we think? Obviously, this wasn't happening on the ark. Kind of hard to take care of those animals if everyone was terrified of Noah on the ark. Something changed after the flood, after the ark.

What has changed, do we think? We discover in the next verse that animals are made out of food. And that is something that we have not heard previous in Genesis, that all the green trees, all these flourishing fruiting plants were given to Adam and Eve to eat.

Every green thing was given to them to eat. And not much was said about the animals as food for them. But now we see that in verse three, every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you. That's something new.

He says, I give all to you as I gave the green plant. That's some interesting things there. I think that Brother Jerry has pointed out the most practical reason. They are now food and so obviously they're going to be frightened.

A lot of commentators say, this is to protect and preserve the eight humans against the vast array of creatures. They're kind of outnumbered. I don't know if that's a good way to look at it or not. This may perhaps be a further consequence of the curse, order breaking down, the lack of shalom, the lack of peace and righteous order in the earth.

Animals aren't sentient, obviously. If they were, they might be a little nervous being around humans and all the disaster they bring upon the planet. Of course, they're not sentient. So there is obviously a new relationship given here.

But there's something similar. God says, I give all of these animals as food for you. So we're not to the dietary laws of the Jews yet. I give all of them to you to eat as I gave the green plant. Now, how did God give the green plant?

He says to Adam, you may eat of every tree in the garden. You may eat of all of them freely. But then he said something else. That was, yeah, in verse chapter 216, he says, eat all of them freely. And then 217, he says, except one, you may not eat of this particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve failed to obey that prohibition. Well, in the same manner, God gives a prohibition. And that is in verse four, he says, only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. As we talked about in the Garden of Eden, when God gave all of the trees to Adam and Eve to eat from freely and generously, except for this one over here, this follows a description of the beauty of the Garden of Eden.

An abundance of water, precious stones just lying everywhere, all the beauties and the glories of creation. But when God gives Adam and Eve his prohibition, he's saying something very important to them.

He's saying, I am greater than these things. The giver is greater than the gifts. You must worship me supremely. You must look to me ultimately, rather than give yourself over to these things. God has told Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over the creation, over the creatures.

But if they begin to worship the creation and the creatures, they will be dominated by the creation and the creatures, rather than worshiping God. Now he has another prohibition, and it's just as meaningful.

It has a teaching moment. You shall not eat the flesh with its life, that is, its blood. So this is the requirement. I give all of these animals to you to eat, but you're not going to eat them with the blood still in the meat.

You're going to drain it. You're going to cook it thoroughly, is the idea. Why? Why is that so? It's not in the text a practical matter of good health concerns. There's something else. You shall not eat the flesh with its life, in other words, that is, its blood.

We are receiving this. Noah and his sons are receiving this prohibition after the fall, after sin has come in. One of the reasons cited for God flooding the earth was because of the violence that had filled the earth.

There was so much violence and chaos and sin that God was sorry he made man, and he flooded the earth. One of the word plays in the Hebrew is that the earth was filled up with violence, and so he filled it up with his judgment, with the waters of the flood.

But at this point, God is drawing attention to something significant, that he's going to be talking to his people time and time again. The significance of the blood. Now, if we go over to Leviticus, everyone's favorite book in the Bible, Leviticus chapter 17 and verse 10.

It says, and any man from the house of Israel or from the aliens who sojourn among them who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and I will cut him off from among his people.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement. So, there's some things here that we must understand.

First of all, God owns all the animals. He's letting the humans eat of the animals, but he gets to decide how they eat, and he sets aside the blood as very important to him as a symbol, as a signal of something far more grand.

It's talking about, look, you all know that if a creature, animal or human, loses their blood, they lose their life. That's a very close, understandable, one-to-one, you don't have to be a doctor to know that.

You lose too much blood, you lose your life. And so, he says, okay, we're thinking of the blood as the life of the creature, and later on, he begins to show that there is the need for atonement, for sin.

The soul that sinneth shall die. This is God's way of dealing with sin. And when he talks about that his people deserve death, they are to look to a substitute sacrifice, that the blood has to be shed and poured out, the life has to be a life for life, because of the crime that we have committed against God, we deserve to die, but then there must be a substitute offering.

And he begins to put that pattern into the life of his people, which is ultimately fulfilled in Christ, who shed his blood, and as Leviticus says, the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I've given it to you on the altar.

Make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement. We have hymns which appropriately point us to the blood of Christ, but it's not as if Jesus could have pricked his thumb and shed a few drops of blood, and thereby every drop atoned for somebody's soul.

It was the blood by reason of the life. He gave his life for us. He died a bloody death as God's lamb, who satisfied God and satisfies us. So at this point, it's very interesting that when God gives this restriction, he says, you're not going to ingest the blood.

Don't do it, because it's to be set apart and sacred. You're going to be using that as a sign of atonement. This is supposed to stir up their faith in the promises of salvation that God has given. Now, there's somebody who took up this verse and surprisingly turned it on its head and told people to drink blood.

Do you remember who that was in the Bible? Who told people to drink blood in the Bible? Ken knows the answer. Jesus did. Whoa, what a shock in John 6. No wonder John 6, 66 says, many turned away from him and were following him no more.

For Jesus, this is something back to Genesis 9. Don't drink blood. Don't eat blood. But why? Because it was set aside for atonement, and Jesus arrives and says, I am your atonement. The fulfillment of the reason why we have this prohibition, the fulfillment of that is Christ.

That's the whole point of the Jews not eating the blood in the meat. The descendants of Noah and Shem and all the way down the line, they don't eat the blood in the meat, and they kept that, and then they always would shed the altar for their sacrifices, and they did that over and over and over again, generation after generation, until Jesus came and said, I'm the whole point of that.

I'm the whole point of that. It was all to direct your attention to me, which is why, I mean, if it's a matter of conviction, don't do it, but you can eat a rare steak. It's okay. Miss Patty wants hers cooked a little bit better, but it's not wrong because Christ has fulfilled the sign.

He's the whole reason. Now, if you feel like you shouldn't do it, then don't do it, but he's fulfilled the meaning of it, and I was kind of curious, and we'll talk more about this next time, but I was kind of curious because this passage about eating meat and don't eat it with the blood is very closely connected to these instructions that come next about what we call capital punishment.

Now, verse 5, surely I will require your lifeblood from every beast, I will require it from every man, from every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.

So, God is answering the chaotic violence that was going on before the flood, illustrated by Lamech, who killed a young man for wounding him, and then boasts to his wives, Ada and Zillah, you know, I've killed this man.

If Cain should be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech 77-fold, and that was the attitude of the people of the day, and it was chaos, and it was violence, and it was murder everywhere, and now God, after the flood, is answering this issue, and he's speaking to the new human society, Noah and his sons and their wives, and he's saying to them, this is what we're going to be doing for human society.

Every single person, every single human is made in the image of God. If any of them are killed by an animal, you kill that animal. Makes sense, right? And if any person should act in the fashion of an animal, and kill another human being, then that person must be put to death, even as you would do the animal.

Now, Trump gets a lot of things wrong, but he got it right the other day when he called the terrorists an animal, because he was acting like one, and that comes from the Bible. Trump doesn't know that.

He was just trying to be strong with his words, but there's a point in saying, if an animal kills a human, kill the animal, and then if a human does it, well, then same treatment of the animal goes for the human being who acted that way.

This is not the way God made us. He didn't make us to be killing one another, to be murdering one another in anger and vengeance, and so he says, we're going to infuse some order here, and this is a very small beginning seed for the need for government, for the need for humans to congregate together and say, here's how we're going to order our society.

How do you do this rightly? Whoever shed man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed. How do you do that well? How do you do that to maintain order and not further the chaos? So you can see it since the beginnings of something here, and then verse 7, God says again, as for you, be fruitful, multiply, populate the earth abundantly, and multiply in it.

So we'll look more at how that begins to turn out next time we get together. Any questions or thoughts before we close? Yes, Ms. Starley. Thank you, Ms. Starley. If Ms. Starley recommends a movie, you know it's good, so you may want to go see it.

All right, well, let's close by singing the doxology.