Sunday Night, February 25, 2018 PM

The Gospel Preached by the Twelve in Luke 9

Okay, so in chapter nine of Luke, it says that he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.

And he said to them, take nothing for your journey, neither a staff nor a bag nor bread or money, and do not even have two tunics a piece. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city.

And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. Departing, they began going throughout the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

And then it goes on to talk about Herod's reaction, the impact of the proclamation and the ripple effect it had in the countryside, in the community. And then the apostles came back. And so the question is, what gospel are they preaching?

If the gospel essentially, as we talked about in first Corinthians, at the heart of the gospel is Christ crucified. So what in the world are they preaching? So I think if we go back to go look at Mark, for instance, Mark chapter one.

Of course, Mark's, the initial story that Mark gives is not as protracted as Matthew and Luke. They give the birth narratives and Luke even goes so far to talk about part of the childhood of Christ. Mark moves very quickly and says in verse 14, after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. So James, I think, you know, here we have another passage where even Jesus is preaching the gospel and we also hear tell of the kingdom of God. And so that's a phrase also that we see in Luke.

And so if we hear that, we also remember that in Luke, Jesus, we also have the story of Jesus being baptized, that John the Baptist comes and is the forerunner to the Messiah and trying to get everybody ready for the coming of the one who, whom John says, I'm not even worthy to stoop down and untie his sandal.

And when this one comes, he will baptize you with fire or he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. There's this promise of the Holy Spirit to come. There is the Jesus Christ comes and he's baptized as he comes up out of the water, the heaven's part, the spirit in the form of a dove alights upon him.

And the father says from heaven, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And connected with that, Jesus, as he approaches, says the kingdom of God is at hand. Why is it at hand? Why is it drawn near?

Because Jesus himself has come near. So I say all that to say that the gospel, one way of talking about the gospel is to simply sum it up this way, the person in the work of Jesus Christ, the person in the work of Jesus Christ, who is he and what has he come to do?

And to that degree, what the disciples were preaching was this is Jesus Christ. This is who he is. And he has come to bring the kingdom of God. And they're going to be saying something very similar to what John has been saying in terms of repent and believe.

So you're right in the sense that they're not preaching a crucified Messiah, risen the third day, ascended the right hand. They're not preaching that, but they are in this transition period preaching Christ.

He is the beloved of God. God is well pleased in him. He's the king. He's the king of the kingdom of God. Look at all these signs. You see his power at work in the world around you and drawing their attention to Christ, to believe in him and to trust in him.

And so in that sense, they're preaching good news, the good news of Jesus, who he is and what he's about, even if they don't have the full picture yet. And so in that sense, if you back up even further, Paul says that the scriptures preached the gospel to Abraham.

So he's in Galatians. The scriptures preached the gospel to Abraham so that what would be known, what was known, what God had revealed up to that point of who the seed was and what his mission was, that this was preached to Abraham.

And he believed and it was counted as righteousness for his faith in the revelation of the gospel to him. And so you're right. I mean, the fullness of everything that the clarity that we live with on this side of the cross, on this side of the resurrection, is remarkable and at such a much elevated level compared to what was known before then.

Before you see Christ crucified, before you see him raised from the dead, before he descended the right hand, the comparison between the gospel in bloom and the gospel in bud is incredibly distinct. But no less true, it was still the gospel, just not yet fully in bloom.

Does that help? We certainly see anticipation in the disciples, especially in James and John, goaded along by their mother to ask for the best positions in the kingdom. The Roman general would give the best positions in his empire to those on his right and left hand.

The emperor would general number one and general number two, you get the best seats in the house. And James and John were aiming for that. Peter, you can have seat number three. And that caused some friction and Jesus constantly had to clarify.

But certainly, as Jesus is discipling his disciples, as he's teaching them, he wants them more focused on... We've already had many encounters already in Luke where the emphasis is being put on spiritual deliverance, far and above over some sort of political manifestation.

That they were slow to accept that is, well, it's common to our experience too. It's hard to, if we're stuck on an idea, it's hard to be sanctified away from it if it's in error. But I suppose that's the best way I can come at it.

I think I also think of as much as we know now on this side of the cross and resurrection, that compared to what we'll know on the other side of Christ's return, what's the comparison? But it's no less true now, even if we don't see it as clearly as we will.

Brian, Ken, Dwight, what do you think? Anything to add? That's right. Good news. That's a technical term. Yeah, I think it's a good point. You said it was... What chapter was it where he read the... Right.

Luke's Nazareth Sermon and the Rejected Messiah

So, what has... It's an interesting thing to track through. And Luke, of course, has set down an orderly account of the person and work of Christ. And so, he's very interested in chronology. So, it's interesting to see what has been included so far in the storyline about what Jesus has been preaching and saying.

What has he told his disciples? And what then would they be repeating and conveying as far as his message? And so, in Luke chapter 4, we see that he came to Nazareth, verse 16, where he had been brought up.

And as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And he opened the book and found a place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the unfavorable year of the Lord. Now, he is in the synagogue in Nazareth, proclaiming this.

And you may imagine that if those in attendance were listening to this and anticipating a political manifestation of this passage, so that good times are here, okay, no more Roman oppression, no more bad economy, right?

And we're going to set free the oppressed. It's like the year of Jubilee. Everything is reset. We get all our land back, so on and so forth. They're going to be sorely disappointed and very confused when Jesus then says, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Because they're looking, what do you mean, what are you talking about? Because all the conditions you just read are still in effect as far as we're concerned, as far as our experience is determined. For Jesus to read that and then to say this is a very clear indicator.

He wants to change their expectation of what kind of Messiah they should be looking for, right? What kind of oppression did he come to set them free from? Roman oppression or satanic oppression? What kind of blindness did he come to cure them from?

The kind of blindness of the physical side or the kind of blindness of the spiritual side, right? So on and so forth, right? So, I think he's laying down the gauntlet right away, calling them to faith, to believe it.

This is so, in a way that they did not initially suspect. And to follow the story afterwards, where there are several stories in a row of him casting out demons again and again. A focus, I think, on spiritual deliverance.

They're waiting for him to cast out Romans. He's casting out demons. Well, hang on a second, what are you doing? You know, I think they would rather get rid of the Romans than the demons. The demons we can handle, but the Romans we want out of our land.

And he's resetting their expectations. And even really, you come along to chapter six and he begins to redefine the Sabbath for them. You talk about hitting a raw nerve. What's more Jewish than the Sabbath?

Possibly, maybe, only circumcision. This is incredibly Jewish. And for him to begin to redefine it, of course, made them angry, made the people angry again. So what kind of gospel would these twelve be preaching?

Maybe part of the gospel is going to be a redefinition of expectation. And then there'd be the challenge, would they believe or not? Would they accept these heralds of the king? Or would they reject them?

And so Jesus gave instructions concerning that. Now, if they reject you, here's what you do. If they accept you, here's what you do. And there's some extensive instructions about that. But that's helpful to what David pointed out, is looking back and reading and trying to see what has been said so far.

What is the cumulative message thus far that the disciples have at their disposal to preach? Right. Well, I think Jesus' promise in when you're trying to interpret a passage of scripture, scripture interprets scripture, and it's good to move from what is clear to what is unclear.

So which is clearer, this passage here that gives you five different ways to read it, or Jesus' promise to the thief on the cross? You see, so the instinct is to move from what is clear to what is unclear, and at all times have a Christ-centered interpretation.

The thing with the Apostles' Creed is that's a very helpful statement of faith that has been handed down for many, many generations. Unfortunately, there was, we would say, some transmission issues, so that all of the textual evidences, all of the extant manuscripts that we have of the Apostles' Creed, the best ones and the earliest ones don't have that line in it.

And there was a couple that began to have it, and for whatever reason, those are the ones that began to be copied, and that's what was retained. But there's a great article on it, a little section on it, in Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology that explains all the different textual evidences and so on and so forth.

I don't think the early church was confessing that. It just got brought in and then retained and then moved on. So that's why some people don't have it in the Apostles' Creed, and I don't think it's helpful, so I don't think it's accurate either.

1 Peter 3, Noah, and the Spirit of Christ

The passage in 1 Peter 3 is one of those that, it's a can of worms. You pull one worm out, they all come with them. But it's a good passage for us to try to do our best to understand. So when you look at 1 Peter 3, and we begin in verse 18, "...for Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also he went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water.".

Paul sometimes gets pegged as someone who writes run-on sentences, but Peter gives him a good run for his money. And so sometimes we'll lose the thread of thought. Like, you know, you're talking with somebody and they have this kind of convoluted, and then you say, say that again?

I'm sorry. Let's do that again. So Peter has this hinge idea of the term Spirit. He's been made alive in the Spirit. The resurrection is given, the power of the resurrection is given credit to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And in the Spirit, by means of the Holy Spirit, he also, Jesus Christ, verse 19, went and made proclamation to spirits who are now in prison, but they weren't at the time that he preached to them. So, proclaimed a word to spirits.

Peter is holding on to this term as kind of a key term he's moving through. But Jesus Christ in the Spirit went and proclaimed a message to people, to their spirits, to their souls, at this particular time, but they are now in prison.

They weren't at the time that he preached to them, but they are now. The point Peter's making is that Jesus Christ went and preached this message to these people, and they didn't listen, they didn't repent, and now look where they ended up.

So, he made proclamation to the spirits now in prison who once were disobedient. That was when he preached to them because they were being disobedient. He was preaching to these disobedient people, these disobedient, these rebellious souls, when they were still alive on the earth, but now they're in prison.

When did he preach to them? When did these disobedient souls live? When did he go and preach to them? What time frame? What does it say in the text? During the days of Noah. During the days of Noah, Jesus Christ went by the Spirit to preach to these.

Well, who did he preach through? Who was his servant? Who was his prophet? It was Noah. It was Noah. And this now is the transition, now talking about Noah, Peter moves on to more cans of worms, which we've talked about before, but we can talk about again.

But I think to answer your question, did Christ descend into hell when he died? No, no, there's no reason to believe that. So, to help us understand what is going on here in 1 Peter, if you will look back just a little bit in verse 10 of chapter 1.

In verse 10 of chapter 1, as to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you make careful searches and inquiries seeking to know what person or time. Look, the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating.

The prophets proclaim the truth of God by the Spirit of Christ who was within them and guiding them. And the word of eternity was bearing them along as they proclaimed and eventually wrote down the word in scripture.

So, we have the superintended truth of every word of God. It's God-breathed. So, it's perfect. It's an errant, infallible word. Well, it's the Spirit of Christ within these prophets proclaiming these things.

And they're amazed at what they're proclaiming. And they're like, what in the world? This is just too wonderful. It's too high for me to understand. But Peter's already talked about this concept of the Spirit of Christ within the prophets proclaiming.

He just picks it up again when he gets to chapter 3 and says it again. And that Jesus Christ in the Spirit was proclaiming truth through Noah. And they just have to follow the tenses of when it was and what it is now.

Yeah, I don't think it was originally understood that way. And thus, it wasn't in the original Apostles' Creed in a way of, you know, this is what we believe. And so, but for some reason, it began to be read that way, but it was inaccurate.

They're replacing the word hell for Hades as it's understood in the Old Testament translations as the place of Sheol, the place of the dead, which is an attempt to retain the line without stating theological error.

I think, and more interesting, and again, if you want to, I think we have Wayne Greer and Systematic Theology in the library. If not, you can borrow it from me. You'll have to kind of go through there and find it.

But there's a great discussion. I know the elders, everybody's been through Timothy School has a copy. So the deacons and elders have copies of this work. And you just look in there, and there's a great discussion in there about how it is that we ended up with the versions we did.

But I don't remember the details of it. I'm sorry, Norm. Devon had his hand up first. He beat you. Okay. Oh, Devon says go ahead. You're embarrassing me. Well, the thing that... Well, what we're given as far as the description of Sheol in the Old Testament of the place of the dead is a very real sense that death is not natural.

It's because of sin. And death is seen as foreboding because of its sting, of its death, because of its teeth, because there is... Though there's the hope of the resurrection, even in the Old Testament, we don't have Christ defeating death yet.

As we come into the New Testament, Hades, for the most part, is a synonym of hell, of punishment. And it's not always exclusively used that way. So we have to let the context determine what it means. Abraham's bosom is an expression that Jesus uses in his story of Lazarus and the rich man to describe the privileged place of this deceased beggar who had faith in God, and that he is given the prime place.

Whereas the one who lived in the place in life and was a rebel ends up in Hades, ends up in eternal torment because of his rebellion against God. And this is to expressly put down the belief in Jesus' day that the rich were closest to God.

And that's what they believed. Remember when Jesus, after the rich ruler went away, Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. They said, well, then who can be saved?

Because they believed that the people who were rich were the closest to God. And if they can't be saved, then how can we poor ones get saved? And he is trying to completely reverse that understanding.

Abraham's bosom is literally Abraham's bosom. Who had the best place at the Last Supper? John, didn't he? Why? Because he laid his head where? On the bosom of Jesus. He had the best seat in the house.

That's the only point Jesus was making in that story in Luke, was that the leper, the despised poor one whom everybody thought God hated, actually had the best position in paradise, in heaven. He had the best place in the house.

And what was the best place in the house for the Jew? To put their head on Abraham's lap. Oh, man, that's the best place. You're right next to Abraham. How honored is that? That's the only point Jesus ever made about that.

We don't have that particular expression anywhere else in Scripture, and there's nothing else to hang a theological construct on it. So it's best to understand it simply. Jesus wasn't creating a new place in the afterlife.

He was simply making a point that just because somebody is poor and wretched, that doesn't have anything to do necessarily with their position in the afterlife. But we as human beings tend to associate status and blessings in this life with status and blessings in the afterlife, and that's a fallacy that continues to this day.

So again, we can talk more about that next time, and Norm's question next time. I'm about five minutes over, so we're going to go ahead and close by singing the doxology. After we do so, remember Truth Group, we are meeting.

We'll go ahead and meet back here.