Sojourners and Strangers

First Baptist Church Leominster

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It's lovely to be back in New England. We have some change of season where we are, indeed, near Washington, D .C.,

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but not the beautiful colors. And I'm glad that your fall was late this year, otherwise we would have missed it.

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So it's beautiful to see the colors, but it's wonderful to be among the saints, a couple of beautiful days spent with them at the conference, an opportunity to hear

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Lars and see some faces we hadn't seen in a long time. So it's a real joy to be back up here again with you this morning.

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I want to speak on this subject of sojourners and strangers. And I'd begin by saying that there are a number of ways in which the

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Bible describes the life that pleases God. Or in this case, the way the

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Bible describes the reality of everyone's life. Because every one of us here, regardless of our age, is on a journey.

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Some of us have come farther on this journey than others in terms of years. We're older.

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We feel it. We know it. And we look back and we see experiences.

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And hopefully we've learned from those experiences. Others of you are very young, certainly by comparison with some of the rest of us.

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And you may well expect that you have many years ahead of you. In fact, you have no idea how many years you have ahead of you.

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You have no idea how many minutes you have ahead of you. And the fact is, all of us are on a journey this morning, whether you're a

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Christian and you're headed toward the celestial city, and Bunyan's wonderful story of journeying in life as a pilgrim, conscious that this is not your home, that in fact it's very temporary.

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Some of you may have lived in the same house almost all your life. Others of you may have moved around all over the place.

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I meet folks that have been the offspring of people in the military, and you ask them where they're from, and it's really a question of, where am

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I from? I've been traveling from all over. It's far less important where you're from than where you're going.

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And to realize you are in fact on a journey that could end at any moment, at any time, you are subject to God's mercies, all of us are, that we live it all, and we need to be ready for the end of that journey, because the end is not death.

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The end is physical death, if in fact Christ does not return before we die, but that's not the end of our journey.

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There is a vast eternity before us. As we heard about at the conference yesterday, compared to which this life the

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Bible describes as a vapor, a mist that appears for a moment and vanishes away.

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And it may not seem that, life may seem very long, it may have seemed very tedious to you, it may even right now seem very tedious, wearying, burdensome, with problems that you have or decisions to make, financial matters, health matters, but in reality, no matter what it is we experience, it's exceedingly short.

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It's interesting that the Bible talks about life as a walk, but the

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Apostle Paul and in other places, it's spoken of as a run, because with the appearance of Jesus, time is now even shorter than ever, because before he came, before Messiah came, in the mind of the

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Jew, the righteous Jew, that was the definition of the end. When Messiah comes, that's the end.

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Well in the New Testament we understand that it's the beginning of the end. The appearance of Christ is the beginning of the end, but it's not the end yet, because until the last person who's living or will live has been brought to Jesus Christ through repentance and faith, the end cannot come.

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And so here we are, we're on this journey, everybody is on it, and there are only two types of people in the world, as you know, or if you don't, let me tell you.

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There are those that belong to God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they're pilgrims with a purpose, and they know where they're going, the

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Bible tells them, and they believe that, and simply by believing it, by the power of God, to take that simple faith and make it a reality in their lives, they are made new by the

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Holy Spirit's power. And so their goal is not a better job, more money, more physical pleasure, all those things are fine if God provides them.

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Better access to my kids, better relationships at home or in the neighborhood or at work, those are excellent goals, but that's not the

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Christian's goal. Christian's goal is to be made more like Jesus, to look more like him, that is, not physically, we don't know what he looked like, all we know is he had a beard, it was said of him in Isaiah 50 that he would have his beard plucked out, speaking of him in that third servant song of Isaiah, but to be like him, to think like him, to speak like him.

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So that's the Christian's pilgrimage. The other pilgrim in the world, and it's the whole other class of pilgrims, they don't know where they're going.

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Proverbs 16, the way of the wicked is like deep darkness, they do not know what makes them stumble, their walk is a series of trips, falling, rising again, putting hope in things that cannot satisfy them, and always, always putting off, facing the reality that I'm going to die.

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And then what? I'm going to meet God, oh

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I don't want to think about God, I will create my own God, and oh do we have them today, don't we?

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Gadgets, gizmos, things in our pockets can distract us, the things we watch, the things we want to think about, sports, entertainment, various sorts, any kind of distraction, not to think about the end of the journey.

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In fact, the scripture says the wicked are like the waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame, wandering stars,

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Jude calls them, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept forever.

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And if that sounds negative, it's the reality. The book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 7 begins by telling us that better is the day of our death than the day of our birth.

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It doesn't mean it's better to die than to live, it means it's better to think about the day of your death than the day of your birth.

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Because that's the end of everybody, says the preacher. That's where we're headed, so you need to think about it.

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We think it's, well, somebody's sort of out of their mind if they get in the car and they start driving and they have no idea where they're going.

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I don't know that people do what sometimes happened when I was a kid. Let's go for a drive on Sunday afternoon, but even then they knew where they were going.

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They wanted to go down this street or go see this place or whatever. It was not aimless. No, the wicked often are like their master.

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They're under the dominion of the devil, this fallen angel, Satan, the accuser.

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And what does he do? He never rests. He's always on a journey.

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And what is that journey? Malice, deceit, to make people believe false things, to keep them from believing the truth, to bring about death and destruction and mayhem.

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That's his pilgrimage. You remember in Job, there's that assembly that God had with the heavenly beings, those he had created that are in a higher order than we are, and Satan was among them.

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Where have you been, Satan? Oh, I've been on a pilgrimage. I've been going up and down throughout the earth.

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He doesn't say what he was doing other than that. Peter tells us he's roving around like a lion seeking prey.

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This morning, my friend, if you're here and you're not on the pilgrimage to the celestial city and you don't love the

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Lord Jesus Christ, you're under the dominion of the devil. You're his slave.

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Jesus said, he who sins is a slave of sin, and John says at the end of 1 John, the whole world lies in the evil one, like John who lay in the arms of Jesus at the

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Last Supper. What a beautiful figure that is, with his head upon his chest, and those moments before they would go out into the garden and before Jesus would be betrayed, he lay in Jesus' arms, but John says about the whole world, the lost world, it lies in the evil one.

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That's where you are this morning, my friend. If you're outside of Christ, and you don't know where you're going, and that's true of so many, it's true of the world at large, apart from their abilities, apart from their gifts, their money, their achievements, their ambitions, they lie in the arms of the enemy.

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And this was so typical from the beginning, wasn't it? What happened to the firstborn of Adam and Eve?

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He murdered his brother, and because of that, God sent him away.

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He sent him out to travel, and Cain left fearful.

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He said, anybody who finds me will kill me, and so God, in mercy, in being good to Cain, even as a rebel against him, put a mark on him and protected him, but it was a fearful thing for Cain to leave and to be sent off.

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And so his offspring, restlessness characterizes them, dissatisfaction, discontentedness, while they hasten toward the grave and eternal banishment, even though, as Psalm 49 says so eloquently, they think that their homes will last forever.

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And don't we see that in the advertising? It's sad to be now a senior citizen and see so much attention directed to perpetrating the body.

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Now, it's good to take care of yourself, it's good to be disciplined, to eat well, all of those things, but how long can we live?

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Let's see if we can live another five minutes, five days, months, years, and then what?

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My dear mother died two weeks short of 102. We know it's coming.

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It will not be forever. Robert Louis Stevenson, brought up in a godly home by a godly father, author of Treasure Island, turned away from that faith he was raised with, became a dissolute, a moral man drunkard, died at age 44.

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His words, life is a pilgrimage from nothing to nowhere.

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And that's really the end of the unbeliever, from nothing to nowhere.

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But what a contrast with the righteous, who also have been on pilgrimage ever since our first parents were banished from the garden, from Abel on.

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And why are we on a pilgrimage? Why is the believer also on a pilgrimage? Because we're living in an earth that is under God's wrath and curse.

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This is not our home. You heard that, didn't you, in the passage read from Hebrews, listing these persevering saints.

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Abraham, who was told to leave home.

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Okay, where am I going? Well, God didn't tell him where he's going. And so Hebrews says he went out not knowing where he's going.

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That doesn't make sense. That's crazy. Well, that's what a person does when they believe God, because they believe in God as the goal of their pilgrimage.

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He is the end of all things. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever is the chief end of man, says the

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Catechism. So Abraham obeyed, going out, not knowing where he was going, but believing in the one who was calling him to go.

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What a picture of the pilgrimage. And when he comes toward the end of his life, after Sarah has died, in chapter 23 of Genesis, Abraham uses two words that, in the

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Greek version of the Old Testament, are so common to describe exactly our subject this morning.

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He says to them, I am a stranger and a sojourner among you. He's talking to the

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Hittites, because Abraham had no home in the land of Canaan when he went there.

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The only thing he ever owned was what he was about to purchase at this moment with his dead wife.

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He says, I am a stranger and a sojourner among you. Give me a property among you for a burial place so that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

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What a picture in the beginning of the use of those words in a formal way to show why we are sojourners and strangers.

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Because this is not an eternal city. We are going to die. We are not going to stay here, and our bodies, too, will be committed to the ground.

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No, the righteous are on pilgrimage. They are traveling because they are living in a cursed earth, subject to all the pains and afflictions of this life.

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And they are subject to the afflictions of life as a Christian, as a righteous person. I posted something on Facebook that really moved me, and it was a brief video about a pastor in Germany who is preaching the truth, namely that there's only one way to the true

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God and of salvation, which is through Jesus Christ. And because of the pluralism, the ideas of his fellow pastors, apparently that there are many ways to God, and we don't want to offend our

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Muslim residents or others who would not agree with this, but his stand is on the

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Scripture. It sounds like a modern Martin Luther as he speaks about it's the Word of God, and it's only by Jesus Christ that people are brought to salvation, not any other way.

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And this we must proclaim. And he asks us to pray for Germany so the righteous on their pilgrimage suffer.

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People here in this room, I'm sure, have suffered because of your testimony with unbelieving family members, perhaps a spouse, children.

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It's hard. We spent time with folks yesterday and on Friday with godly people whose children have turned away from the faith.

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It's very painful. They know this isn't their home, and they grieve for these children, as children who believe and their parents don't, grieve for their parents.

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They love their parents, but they know they're headed to a Christless eternity, to horror if they don't repent, and so this is painful for believers.

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It's part of the affliction that we bear. I think one of the most remarkable series of verses in the

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Bible is over the chapter division between Romans 8 and Romans 9.

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The Apostle Paul, you know in Romans 8, closes by saying, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, nothing, and he lists all those things, life, death, persecution, all these things that he suffered.

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And three verses later in chapter 9, he says, my pain and my anguish for my fellow

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Jews who are lost is so great that if possible, I could wish myself separated from Christ for their sake, if that would save them.

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He knew it wasn't possible, but that's how much pain he had on behalf of his unbelieving fellow

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Jews. I ask us even now, do we have, Christian, that kind of pain for the lost, or do we think of them like those around us who are pilgrims to nowhere, coming from nothing, who don't see the people around us as either in Christ and needing encouragement, or out of Christ and needing to be captured and brought to him in that marvelous service to the master?

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Oh, that God would give us hearts to see people differently and not think like the world. No, it's painful to be a

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Christian. What we might say, as we look at the Old Testament, weren't the

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Jews, at least before the exile, weren't they heading to a permanent place, to Canaan?

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Wasn't that what God had brought them out of Exodus to do, and to fulfill promises made to Abraham way back in chapter 15 of Genesis when he said, your descendants, there are going to be many of them, are going to be slaves for 400 years, and then

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I'll bring them out, and I'm going to give them a heritage because I've promised this to you, it has to happen.

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Well, indeed it did happen, and God fulfilled his promise, and so those descendants of Abraham and then

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Isaac and then Jacob and the 12 boys who all came to Egypt, and Joseph, the means of their conversion, the very one they had rejected and drove away from home, sent away as if you're no part of us, they settled in Egypt and they stayed there, and then they were enslaved, and they were then finally brought out after those 400 years, and God gave them

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Canaan, and they went in under Joshua, and that perhaps finest generation in the history of Israel conquered so much of Canaan, but there was work to be done, and they didn't really finish the work, and they started, well, they started looking at the peoples around them, and it seemed unreasonable to do what

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Moses had told them God said to do, for you knew it, they were intermarrying with these people, they were worshiping their gods, and they polluted the land of promise.

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They forgot the Word of God, they refused to obey it when they knew it, and so therefore they were driven out.

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And when they were driven out, it might seem like there is no possibility of carrying on in life as we've known it.

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How can we be righteous people and away from Jerusalem? That's our home. That's everything.

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That's where the temple is. That's where the true and living God is worshiped as nowhere else on the face of the earth as far as they knew.

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How could they sing the Lord's song in a foreign land, says Psalm 137?

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How can we do this? Well, Jeremiah wrote them a letter, and that's why I wanted us to hear this letter.

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And the letter was, as you recall, you're going to be here a while. Don't let those false prophets convince you that you're going to be brought back to Jerusalem right away.

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No. God's serious. He told you what would happen if you turned away from Him, and it's happened, and you're going to be there 70 years.

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My land is going to get back its Sabbath rests. You didn't take the rests over 490 years, and now for 70 years it's going to rest.

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It was a promise of bringing them back. But in the meantime, he's saying, you pray for the land that you're in.

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You settle down. Go ahead and marry. Have children. Raise them in the faith.

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Learn to be exiles. I am with you. And God, through the promise of the prophets, had made promises to them of being with them and strengthening them in exile.

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And what a beautiful prologue that is to the way that we are to live, because we are in exile.

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You see, it doesn't matter whether you live in the United States, Mexico, Columbia, like lots of my friends that I've gotten to know as I go down there and minister, it doesn't matter what country you're from, you're in exile if you're

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Christian. This is not your home. Oh, we have houses, hopefully, or apartments.

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We're now in a condo. Multiple living, it's great. But this is not our home.

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Our home is in the new heaven and in the new earth. We are pilgrims.

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And my point this morning to you believers is it is extremely dangerous to not think this way, to think that this really is our home, whether it's

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Lemonster, Worcester, wherever you live. And that's not to say we should not be thankful for what the

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Lord has given us, or good stewards of what the Lord has given us. Absolutely, we need to be good stewards.

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But we need to be stewards as pilgrims with the pilgrim mentality that what we have, if God has blessed us, as the pastor was praying, if he has blessed us, we have resources by which to advance the kingdom of God and to move ourselves and others in the mentality that we want to use our resources for the kingdom, for the church of Jesus Christ to advance, to bring others into it, and to be kept into it, and to pray for it and look forward to the presence of the kingdom of glory.

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That's why we have resources. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 18, that tremendous,

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I mean Luke 18, that tremendous chapter about, Luke 16, excuse me, that chapter about using resources.

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Make for yourselves, he says, friends with the mammon of unrighteousness.

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What does he mean by that? He means money or property, mammon, it's hard to know what exactly that means.

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I remember one brother telling me who's a Hebrew scholar, he said, mammon is what every man says amen to, that is unbelieving man.

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And of course, how many people don't worship money? They don't bow down to it, but it is what they want the most.

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It is the means by which they can get what they think is going to give them pleasure and happiness, and certainly it is nice when we have it.

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We need it. It's a tool. It's a means. And so Jesus says, make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, which normally produces unrighteousness, so that when you no longer can be doing what you're doing, you may be received into eternal dwellings and welcome and be welcomed by those people that you've made friends with through your means.

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What's he saying? Use your resources for the kingdom of God to advance the kingdom.

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So when you get to heaven, there'll be people that are there because you gave, because you spoke, because you opened your home and you brought people into that home to speak about kindness, and righteousness, and the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and how they will welcome you. Oh, what a different way of thinking, isn't it?

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And all the backbiting and griping and complaining we may do about taxes and this thing happening and that thing happening in society, oh dear friends,

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Christians, we live in a time of great opportunity to use the resources we have to advance the gospel.

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That's pilgrim thinking. You can't keep it, you can't take it with you, and think very carefully about what you will do with it when you're gone.

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No, Jeremiah is telling them, you work, you settle down here, you have kids, you get ready for the coming back, because there's far more to the promises than you've realized already.

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Far more. So the apostle Paul picks that mentality up, doesn't he, in Romans 13 when he's writing to the

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Romans, living in the citadel of darkness, of paganism, of idolatry, vastly beyond where we are, thank

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God, and may he preserve us and restrain the evil that is around us, something we as pilgrims need to pray for all the time, not only for the

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United States and Mexico and Canada and North America, but every other country on the face of the earth, so that the gospel can spread.

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But Paul says in Romans 13, and Peter picks it up in 1 Peter 2, that we're to be subject to the authorities, these pagan authorities.

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Paul's writing to people in Rome about the Roman government. He's not telling them to sin, he's not telling them that if the government tells you you must do something that's sin, or that you can't do something that you must as a righteous person, that you should obey them, but in everything else you're to be subject to them.

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Peter is very specific, pay your taxes, render honor. I'm so struck by Paul at the

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Council of Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, as you may remember that. He's there and he said, when he's called in to speak to them, he's been arrested, he was almost beaten to death, the

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Romans rescued him, he gave a speech. They listened very carefully until he said the word

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Gentiles, and as soon as he mentioned Gentiles these

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Jews went crazy, set away with him, because they hated the Gentiles, there was no love for them, there was no desire by these

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Jews in Jerusalem at the time of the Apostle Paul to see

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Gentiles come to know the true God. They wanted to destroy them. Well he had to be rescued by the

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Romans, and the next day the Romans bring him in to appear in order they can find out what's the matter, why are these people so upset?

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So Paul's first comment to the Sanhedrin, the gathered Jewish leadership is, I have lived all my life with a good conscience.

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What he meant by that, he didn't mean as a Christian that I've been a perfect man, he meant that I have lived up to what

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I thought was right all my life. As a Pharisee, Paul lived in the strictest manner as a

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Pharisee. When he was persecuting Christians, it was his conscience misinformed by a wrong understanding of the

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Old Testament, but from what he understood of it, these people were imposters, they must be removed if righteousness is going to prevail.

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He had the wrong idea of righteousness, but with a clean conscience that's what he's doing, and so he speaks to the

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Sanhedrin, I've lived with a good conscience. The high priest, Paul didn't know he was a high priest, the high priest says, hit him on the mouth, so somebody steps up and socks him in the face.

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Well Paul was non -meek and mild -mannered at times, and I don't know who would be under those circumstances, and so he says,

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God will smite you, he doesn't take vengeance, he just understands the Scripture, God will smite you, you whitewashed wall, sitting here judging me and acting contrary to the law, because you're not supposed to hit a person who's got a clean conscience.

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I'm not accused, I'm not, have not been tried, I'm not guilty, but then what happens?

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It's striking, isn't it? Person says, do you speak that way, do you call the high priest of your people a whitewashed wall, which means he's a complete phony and a hypocrite, and then

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Paul says this, I did not know that he was the high priest, and then he quotes the

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Scripture, you shall not speak evil of your leaders. I think that convicts probably everybody in the room, how easily we speak evil of our leaders.

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Now, we may say, no, I'm just speaking about what they do that's bad, but it is so easy to transgress that commandment, and especially if we've not prayed for those leaders.

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Pray for those who persecute you, says Jesus, and particularly of our leaders, so what am

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I saying? We are pilgrims. Yes, we want the best for the country we live in, as long as we live here, this is our country, we want to pray for our leaders, we want to pray for righteousness to prevail, but what's the principal purpose of that peace that we want to have on our land and righteousness?

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So that Jesus Christ is honored, so that the gospel goes forth. In our very short time here, to do as much good towards that gospel as possible, because we are pilgrims, we are sojourners, we are strangers.

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This is very temporary where we are. Well, Scripture bears witness everywhere to this temporary nature of our life here.

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Hear my prayer, O Lord, and listen to my cry for help. Do not be silent in my tears, for I am a stranger with you, a sojourner, as are all my fathers,

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Psalm 39. And your statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage, says the psalmist, again in another place.

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The law of God being that which she sings about. Now, the earth is a hostile place for everyone in varying degrees.

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Everybody needs guidance, and God's servants alone have a proper guide in the

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Word of God, the Spirit of God, the law of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the

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Lord has always seen to it from the beginning that He gave His people a light to follow.

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Your Word is a light unto my path, a lamp unto my feet.

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But I want to focus with you in the few moments that remain on some words from Psalm 119, and they are these.

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I want you to just listen, not turn and watch, but listen. Hear the words. Uncover my eyes, and I will gaze at wonders from your law.

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A sojourner am I on the earth. Do not hide me from your commandments.

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My soul is crushed with longing for your judgments at all times.

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Now, sometimes the verses in Psalm 119 can just seem like, how do they relate to one another?

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There's this verse and that verse, and sometimes we can feel perhaps about Psalm 119 as Matthew Henry described the book of Proverbs.

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He said some passages in the Bible are golden chains, and we begin with a book and we follow the reasoning of the writer, write along in a linear manner.

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He said others are a basket of golden nuggets, and that's what

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Proverbs is. They're picking out golden nuggets from the book of Proverbs, and of course, parts of Proverbs are golden chains, particularly those earlier chapters.

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So we can wonder, how do these verses relate to one another in Psalm 119? Listen to them again.

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Uncover my eyes, and I will gaze at wonders from your law. A sojourner am

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I on the earth. Do not hide from me your commandments. My soul is crushed with longing for your judgments at all times.

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The psalmist is obviously saying, I need your law, your word, and all the other words that Psalm 119 uses for the word of God, like ordinances, judgments, statutes, precepts.

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He's all talking about the Torah, the word of God, particularly the law of God, the first five books of Moses.

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He needed it. He's saying I'm a sojourner on the earth. I'm here temporarily. He's a righteous man.

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He's thinking about death. He's realizing I won't be here forever, and what

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I need is your truth to guide me, so you must open my eyes.

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That's why I translated it uncover. It's really the basic heart meaning of this Hebrew verb, uncover my eyes, otherwise they're shrouded over in something.

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Take the, take the visor off. Let me see the wonderful things in your law.

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Do we approach the Bible this way? Very often, even in consistent

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Bible reading, we can just open and start reading, and we haven't really done what will greatly help us.

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First, Lord, this is your word. Blessed Holy Spirit, you wrote it through the prophets and the apostles.

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Now come and uncover my eyes so I can see the wonders in here, the wonders here.

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Ask him. If we don't get much out of reading the Bible, perhaps it's because we're not talking to the author.

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We need to speak to him. Uncover my eyes, because I'm a sojourner on the earth.

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Do not hide from me your commandments. Don't let it be that I will think in such a way that I know how to live apart from your word, your direction, your restraints, your purposes for me that are found in that word.

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And then this tremendous verse, verse 20, my soul is crushed.

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It's the only place this verb occurs. It's not usually translated this way.

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My soul is overwhelmed, or other words, but it's really that strong, with longing for your judgments at all times.

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And the word judgments is sometimes translated as precepts or rules, I don't particularly like that translation, but it's

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God's judgments, it's his decisions, and I need those, and my soul is crushed for longing for them.

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What's he mean? Unrighteousness prevails, and I want to see righteousness, and it overwhelms me that there's not righteousness.

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Well, I want to suggest to you that whatever the psalmist thought when he was writing this and felt that these words are particularly true of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, and as he is our model in all other things, he is the supreme model of the sojourner and the stranger on the earth.

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Just think about it. He comes to the earth as Lord of heaven and earth.

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He comes as the king. He will be a king, the angel told

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Mary. He's going to reign. His name will be Jesus. He'll save his people from his sins, but he's a king.

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And yet, when he comes into the world, he more resembles graceless in Pilgrim's Progress in the beginning than he does a king.

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You know, graceless was in rags. He had a huge burden on his back, and he was very much distraught.

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Jesus was called a man of sorrows, and his beginnings, the very beginnings of his life are testimony to the nature of the kind of sojourn he would have on this earth.

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Even before he was born, what a scandal it was for Mary to be pregnant. No wonder she wanted to spend those months with her kinswoman,

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Elizabeth, out of sight, pregnant before the marriage was consummated.

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When Joseph found out she was pregnant, you remember, he wanted to divorce her. He was going to do it privately until the angel told him, oh no, no.

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This is a divine act. This is glorious. This is beyond you.

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And so, they make their way to Bethlehem so that Scripture can be fulfilled through the

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Roman edict that everybody had to go back to their place of birth to be taxed, the glorious providence of God, as the pastor was reading that marvelous section from the

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Heidelberg on the providence of God. And it's that providence which brings them to Bethlehem, but they're there, and it's no place for them to stay.

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And so, the king of glory, the savior of sinners, the second person of the

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Godhead comes into the world as man in a barn and is laid in a feeding trough for animals, with animals being his companions.

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He was misunderstood universally from the beginning. We have only one incident in the life of Jesus as a child, but it's very clear from that that his mother had no idea, really, who he was.

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He answers her when she's upset about him staying back in the temple, don't you realize

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I have to be in the matters of my father? This is what I have to be doing? And he wasn't talking about Joseph because Joseph wasn't his father?

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He was talking about his heavenly father who was talking about God the Father? And just think about growing up in a family where he never sinned, he never talked back to his parents, he never aggravated, because of something in him done wrong, his siblings.

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But they would have been aggravated at him many times because he always did what was right. He wouldn't do what was wrong.

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In that family, he grew up in Nazareth, about which Nathaniel said, you remember, can anything good come out of that place?

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Horrible. And then he begins his public ministry, stranger, sojourner, and he's baptized by John, and the only people going on to John were sinners, people who were convicted of their sin because that's all

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John was preaching. He was preaching, come out and get baptized, repent, show that you're sorry for your sins because the

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Messiah's coming. He'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. You need to get ready for him, and so Jesus shows up to be baptized by John, what a scandal.

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And John's afraid, I shouldn't baptize you, you should baptize me. No, no,

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Jesus says, we have to fulfill all righteousness, and that means I have to be identified in my sojourn on this planet with sinners because I came to save them.

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And so he ate with them. He ate with publicans, tax collectors who were Jews working for the cursed and hated

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Gentiles. He had prostitutes come to him. He had people shamelessly showing acts of adoration to him.

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It's a stranger. He was a sojourner. He was misunderstood. They followed him, they watched him, they wondered at him.

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Very often it says they wondered and marveled, but it doesn't say they believed. People still can wonder at Jesus.

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The wonder of Christmas, we hear about it, don't we? And where is the Christ of Christmas, where is the

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Jesus who came into the world to save sinners? Well, he's where he always was, but not understood by so many.

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His family, early on in Mark's Gospel, we read that they thought he was out of his mind, and they came to get him, and a little while later when they showed up, they said to him

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He was surrounded by people. Your mother and your brothers are here. He said, who are my mother and my brothers?

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This is a stranger and a sojourner. No wonder it was strange what he was about to say. Those who do the will of my

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Father in heaven, they are my mother and my brothers and my family. They didn't understand him.

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He was a stranger. And, of course, all this had been predicted that it would happen.

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So striking what is said in Psalm 69 about him. He says, more in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.

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Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies. Let not those, he prays, who hope in you be put to shame through me,

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O Lord God of hosts, let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me,

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O God of Israel. For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face.

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I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons.

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Psalm 69, words spoken of Jesus as the rest of the psalm shows us.

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And it only got worse as he came closer to the end of his life. He chose 12 very different men to be disciples.

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They didn't understand him. They were waiting for him to bring the kingdom.

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They were waiting for him to bring in this overthrow of Rome and the establishment of the supremacy of the

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Jews in Jerusalem, even in Acts chapter 1 when he's about to go back to heaven.

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Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? No, our

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Lord Jesus was, and after a life of perfect obedience to his

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Father, never saying an inappropriate, unkind, wrongful word, doing only that which was good as Peter describes it to Cornelius.

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He went about doing good everywhere. The scrolls of all the world, says

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John, could not contain the works of Jesus. And what was the end?

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He was condemned by the Jews and by the Romans, falsely accused, falsely put to death in terms of any guilt in himself.

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And so, what an end to that journey. If it stopped there, we would really say about Jesus, if we don't believe in the resurrection, we must say about Jesus, he was a fraud.

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He was out of his mind, and that's the options that we have.

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He was either utterly deceived, he was a madman, or he was who he said he was.

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And the resurrection proves that he was who he said he was. So the cross was not the end.

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Oh, for the believer, it's the end of the penalty of sin. It's the beginning of the end of the power of sin.

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It's the hope of the believer of the end of the presence of sin. No, it's the triumph of Christ.

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It's the beginning of the end for the believer who looks towards the resurrection of Jesus as the pledge and certainty of his own resurrection.

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And so, dear friends, because of Jesus and his pilgrimage, Paul can say about us as Gentiles, and maybe there's some

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Jewish people here, still Jewish, we want you to come to know

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Jesus as your Messiah. But I suspect there are not a lot of Jewish, former Jewish people here.

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We're mostly Gentiles. And so Paul says, you Gentiles who are way off, you're way away from the promise of the

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Scriptures and of the Messiah's coming. You've been brought near. You've been invited to come.

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We don't want to kill you. We want to receive you. We want you to receive us. You may have been near.

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How have you been made near? By the cross of Jesus Christ, by the end of his earthly pilgrimage, in that disaster in what looks so hopeless and wretched.

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That's the salvation of sinners. It's the cross. It's what you and I deserve, dear friends, this morning, and you know it if you're a

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Christian. It's what your sins deserve and mine. In fact, Paul says we've been crucified with him.

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When he died, we died. When he was buried, we were buried, if we believe. When he rose, we rose.

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When he ascended, we ascended, and in Ephesians he says we're seated with him. That's our position. That's the end of our pilgrimage in five faiths.

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We're already there, though we must live out our days here, and we live them in faithfulness.

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So, Peter addresses the pilgrims, and he says, conduct yourselves with fear during the time of your sojourn, and beloved,

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I urge you as sojourners and strangers, abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against the soul.

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And again, I mention in closing, John Bunyan, what a beautiful picture and narrative of the pilgrimage.

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I hope you all have read Pilgrim's Progress, and I would encourage you to read it at least every two or three years.

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Get it out and look at it again. It is so helpful to encourage us to think as pilgrims.

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That marvelous picture of the Christian life as a journey, it's absolutely correct. And it's true, whether we physically have traveled more than a hundred miles from where we were born, or we've lived all over the world, we are on this pilgrimage, we are heading to the end.

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So, I say to us, these four things as we close, we have a universal biblical command to be kind to strangers.

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All the way through the Old Testament, God reminds Israel, you be kind to the stranger. You be kind to the sojourner.

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Oh, if they come among you and they want to participate, they must be, the males must be circumcised before they can have the

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Passover and be brought into the people of God. But you be kind to them, because you were sojourners, you were strangers in Egypt.

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And so often we can think, not about the fact that we are Christians on a pilgrimage to heaven, but that we are citizens and everybody else, or anybody else, however we may characterize them who come in, either among us in the church as new people, or into our town as foreigners and become hostile, instead of saying, here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity for the gospel.

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So let us pray for them, let us seek to be kind to strangers, for that is what we all were before God in Christ by the

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Holy Spirit made us members of God's household, fellow citizens of the kingdom.

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That's what's happened. Our citizenship is in heaven. Oh yes, we're citizens here, we have our responsibilities, but oh, it's passing, oh, it's so brief.

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Citizenship is in heaven where our affections need to be. So be kind to strangers.

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Pray for them. Pray for opportunities to meet them, to speak with them, to bring them to Jesus.

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Bring them into the church. Secondly, pray for and respect all human authority.

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And I remind you that the Lamb of God submitted himself, subjugated himself completely to the false authorities of the

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Jewish council and the Roman governor, who twice pronounced him innocent, but he submitted himself to that.

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The unjust death of Christ, let it never get out of our minds, unjust in human terms, planned by God before the foundation of the earth, our only means of salvation, but he suffered utter injustice in his death.

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So when we get on our horse about what justice is and what we deserve and what we ought to have, and it may be true, let us remember our

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Savior. And let us be willing and prepared, dear saints, to suffer whatever it may come into our lives to be faithful to our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because, brothers and sisters, as your pastor prayed for them, around the world are suffering unrighteously as righteous people for the sake of Jesus.

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Why should it not come here? We don't desire it, but we need to be prepared and be willing to submit ourselves to lawful authority even to the point of shedding our blood.

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Thirdly, guard the character of being a sojourner and a stranger.

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Get that into your mindset. It was a sort of a not terribly deep song,

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This World is Not My Home, I'm Just a Passing Through. And the way it was sung, it was almost like a dance tune, but it's true.

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This world is not our home. We are just passing through, and if heaven were not our home,

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Lord, what would I do? Are we heavenly -minded?

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Are we seeking that city? Are we like Abraham and the others in Hebrews 11 who were not putting their roots down here?

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They were not going back to where they were called from. They were looking for a new city, a heavenly city.

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And dear saints, we're looking for a new earth and a new heaven wherein only righteousness resides, and it never will be here by human means.

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And whenever it is here, in some degree, it's by divine means, by the grace of God poured out on a people.

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So guard the character of being a sojourner and a stranger in our