Genesis 2:15-3 & Romans 5:11-17. Back to the Garden

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, Port Alberni BC, 28 July 2019 by Captain Michael Ramsay

Doctrine 5: We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience, they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall, all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.

Doctrine 6: We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.

Doctrines 5 & 6 are an important expression of our understanding of Salvation and what Salvation is all about… getting back to the Garden. Last weekend we were blessed to be a part of the Summer Rain Evangelistic Crusade here. Reinhart, Krista, Maryanne and others worked very hard and long on this event. Thank you. It was a great success. We had 6 people ‘saved’ this weekend.

In the last session of the weekend, Major Stephen Court led us in some great little tracts from www.the4points.com that give us in point form what salvation is and why we need to be ‘saved’. This corresponds nicely to Doctrines 5 and 6 of The Salvation Army.

Point 1: God loves me: God loves us: he created us innocent, happy and pure (Doctrine 5)

Point 2: I have sinned: this is true, Doctrine 5, as a consequence of the actions of our first parents, Adam and Eve

Point 3: Jesus died for me. Doctrine 6, the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.

Point 4: I need to decide to live for Jesus. It is neat that last weekend when we were all practicing sharing the gospel with each other in the stands that one person did decide to live for Jesus – so these are proven to be a good aid.

Today, like I said, we are going to look at doctrines 5 and 6. Doctrine 5 again:

We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience, they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall, all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.

This is our doctrine of Original Sin (or more precisely originating sin) and that concept goes back at least to Irenaeus and Augustine, based upon our text today. Reading again from Genesis 2:15-18:

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

¹⁸ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 3:1-6

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it

And Genesis 3:21-24:

²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Some people have explained salvation in terms of trying to get back to the Garden. The idea of Salvation is certainly about people and even all of creation returning to our full and proper relationship with God our creator. In Revelation Chapter 22 it speaks about us being restored to the presence of the Tree of Life and of God Himself.

Some people have asked do we need to be restored. Why do we need to get back? Why are we punished for what Adam and Eve did? I never ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge; how come I suffer the consequences? I look at the consequences of Original Sin like this: Our lives are affected by the choices of Adam and Eve, our original parents, in much the same way that our lives are affected by the choices of our actual parents and their parents before them. Adam and Eve were evicted and moved from the Garden of Eden; therefore Cain, Abel, and Seth weren’t born in the Garden of Eden. I was born and Susan and I were raised on Vancouver Island here – like Adam and Eve were raised in the Garden. However Heather was born and our eldest two daughters were mostly raised off the Island. We left the Island before Sarah-Grace was one year old for our work with The Salvation Army. It wasn’t sin that caused us to move away – like it was with Adam and Eve –but our children had no more say over the fact that they were born and raised off the Island than Cain, Abel, and Seth did that they were born out of the Garden. As our children live with the results of our actions –both good and bad: a life of serving the Lord but also growing up without family nearby – so we all live with the results of our ancestors actions – not just moving from one place to another – but the results of all kinds of choices they made: our parents, our grandparents, and their parents, all the way back to our original parents. That is why and how we are suffering the consequences of originating sin.

Walter Bruggemann, one of the foremost OT scholars today, has noted that Adam and Eve’s perfect fear here cast out love (Genesis 3:10) and notes that as Jesus sets everything right, perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18-20).[1]          

The Bible also speaks about the way that we and our parents can return to perfect love, to the Garden. In Genesis 15, through the ceremony of the smoking firepot and the covenant with Abraham we are shown that God will give up His Life (through Jesus Christ) as a consequence of our transgressing our covenant with God and as this will lead to our salvation insofar as Jesus will take the punishment for our sin. [2]

Doctrine 6 of The Salvation Army reads: We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.

In The New Testament we are told a little bit about this. A few people today have some scriptures to read for us:

·        Galatians 3:13: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”

·        1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

·        Romans 5:6: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

·        Romans 5:17-18: For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.

·        1 John 2:2: He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Again:

§         Galatians 3:13 says he became a curse by dying on the cross

§         1 Peter 2:24 says that he bore our sins and we are healed

§         Romans 5:6 says that he who was righteous died for the unrighteous

§         Romans 5:17-18 says that Jesus’ death and resurrection reconciles us all; undoing Adam’s death and banishment.

§         1 John 2:2 says that his atonement was for the whole world, all of creation.[3]

And let me read from near the end of the Book of Books here. Let me read from close to the conclusion of the concluding book in this more than a Devine anthology. Revelation 22:1-5 speaks about at the end of our age when God will come down with/from Heaven in the New Jerusalem and there once again will be the Tree of Life, freely available to all of us:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse [like Paul said in Galatians]. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night [Jesus is the Light]. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

Even though sin and death entered into the world through Adam and Eve and we have been living life outside of the garden,  Jesus is the light and he is returning and bringing in the new city, back with Him the Tree of Life from the Garden.

Do you want to reign with God forever? Do you want to be in this city, with the Tree from the Garden with no sin, no hate, no death, no deceit; where everyone is honest and loving and serving our Lord? Do you want to? You can. Salvation starts today and lasts forever.

Today, as you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and leader, you can be in the Garden, in the City of God. If you would like to live forever in this place, where there is no more pain, no more suffering, no more sin, no more hate, no more death, no more deceit; where everyone is honest and loving and serving our Lord, you can. All you need to do is ask. Jesus has done the rest.

Let us pray.

www.sheepspeak.com

https://www.facebook.com/Salvogesis/

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[1] Walter Bruggemann, Genesis (Interpretation: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), p 53

[2] Captain Michael Ramsay, Praise The Lord For Covenants: Old Testament wisdom for our world today, (Vancouver, BC: Credo Press, 2010. (c) The Salvation Army). Available on-line: http://www.sheepspeak.com./ptl4covenants.htm

[3] Cf. Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 369.

Romans 1:14-17: Tomatoes

Presented to the SUMMER RAIN CRUSADE at BOB DAILY STADIUM in Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island, 20 July 2019, by Captain Michael Ramsay

What do you know about The Salvation Army?

·     Did you know that God used The Salvation Army in 1890 to create one of the first labour exchanges to help unemployed people get back to work?
·         Did you know that in the 19^th Century people were actually dying working in match factories – the chemicals or something would rot their jaws away until they died. The Army actually took over a match factory, paid people a living wage and invented matches, like the wooden ones we still use today, that don’t kill people!
·         And did you know that the Army actually ran one of the world’s first sting operations to break up a human trafficking ring?
·         In Canada, The Salvation Army provided the first probation officer.
·         And who has ever gone to a movie? Who has ever liked a movie with an Australian in it: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Hugh Jackman, the Wiggles…? In Australia, The Salvation Army started their whole movie industry.

All of this is true and some people loved the Army for all of this and people were joining the Army but still when people stood on stage like this some people would take tomatoes like these and actually throw them at the Salvationist who would be standing on the stage speaking like I am today. They would try to shout them down and drown them out. They would rush the stage. And the Skeleton Army that would follow the Salvation Army around would throw the fruit, call out the comments, physically assault them and even kill some – but the Army kept doing and the Army kept preaching. So I ask you: when the Army did all the great stuff why would they attack the Army preachers? And why would the Salvation Army keep preaching when they were risking their lives to do this?

we have been serving God by working to rescue people from since our very beginning: we rescue people from addiction, prostitution, homelessness, and more; and we try to help people to a future where we can instead be saved from all of the bad things for eternity if we just know the way, the truth, of that life. Doesn’t that sound great? No more tears; no more pain; no more suffering? That is our message!

It is fundamental to who we are: we can be saved to Heaven from hell and from hell on earth -but some people didn’t like that and so they would follow the Salvation Army around and they would throw the fruit, call out the comments, physically assault them and even kill some of us.

In my time in the Salvation Army I have seen many people saved from this and I have seen some lives really transformed. I have seen people healed of addiction; I have seen people cured of AIDS; I have seen people cured of cancer; (Now God is not going to heal all of us all the time; at some point He wants to call us home to heaven in Heaven) and I have also seen people succumb to terrible ailments albeit in peace as they are comforted by the Lord in their time of need. Just after I moved here from Toronto one of my close friends there died from AIDS – but he knew the Lord and I believe he is with Him now. I have seen people whose whole lives have been transformed, now experiencing heaven on earth and/or looking forward to heaven in Heaven. I have served God and the Army not only here but also Vancouver’s DTES, Winnipeg’s North End, Stoney Mountain Penitentiary, Inner City Toronto. I know and have known people still trapped in very real hells. It breaks my heart. What breaks my heart even more is that they are missing out on the safety and joy of the Lord in the midst of all life’s struggles. Life can be hard. When brutal things happen, wouldn’t you like help and comfort to get through it from the Creator of the whole universe, if you could get it?

It is our desire to see people saved from all this stuff even if trying to help people causes some to scream at us, throw tomatoes at us, attack us and kill some of us. Really, if you believe with me that there is a way for people to be saved from all of this, wouldn’t you tell them? Wouldn’t you want them to be saved?

In The Salvation Army, as well as pointing people to eternal salvation with Jesus and helping people  through addiction, helping trafficked people, helping homeless people and hungry people, we also do a lot of work helping people in natural disasters: forest fires, house fires, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.

I was able to be in Texas shortly after a hurricane struck Galveston Island in September 2008: more than 1 million people were evacuated from Texas but probably more than 100 people were found dead as a result of the Hurricane and flood. I was on the first deployment with the relief team and bodies were still being found when I left.

Food and water: this was a big part of The Salvation Army mission. We had 30 food trucks from which we served around 75 000 hot meals every day, and gave people water and ice. Ice was very important. It was around 90 F. And the food: many people told me that without The Salvation Army they wouldn’t have eaten at all. Even though they lived through the flood, they wouldn’t have continued to survive.

When we were serving down there, I heard more than one account of a contemporary miracle paralleling that of the fish and the loaves. Our food trucks were instructed to make sure that they gave away all of the food before they came in for the night. They did not want food returned when people were going without. It was getting late and one truck was seeking someone to give its last container of food to. They prayed. One person then saw a line of about 12-18 tired and hungry looking construction workers so they headed over to offer them their food. They were really appreciative.

As they were feeding these men, a number of school buses filled with people pulled up. It is my understanding that they served over 800 meals at that location – no one went away hungry. Feeling blessed by what the Lord had done they started to clean up. (Now there was a non-believer, a Red Cross worker on their canteen with them that day). Someone picked up the container from which they fed the 800 meals and read from the side of it, ‘serves 90 meals’. The Lord fed more than eight times that number and no one went hungry. The Red Cross worker who was helping them on the truck that day began to cry. He said that he had never believed in God – until now.

God provided for the salvation of not only those He spared from the flood but God also provided for the Salvation of those left behind without food or anyway of making food and God also provided for the salvation of the Red Cross worker.

No one needed to die when the hurricane struck. There was lots of warning and it was easy to get the bus out of town. However, some people chose not to be saved. There is a story of one 19 or 20 year-old who stood on the waterfront, intentionally defying the storm. He was swept away to his death. I met a man who lost his home and his business and praised the Lord for his insurance but he wondered why his brother chose to stay behind and die. How does he deal with the fact that his brother rejected salvation?

This is really the same for us today here. We can all be saved; we can all escape eternal peril. This warning was sounded 2 millennia ago – through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord! He gave his life so that anyone, everyone can be saved.

Jesus died on the cross and rose again so that no one needs to perish. The sad thing is that some refuse to take the bus to heaven. Some ignore the early warning system. Some defy God. Some refuse to be saved. Some friends and family are like that man’s brother. Some friends and family are like that 19 or 20 year old – defying God and awaiting eternal death. It is sad. It is tragic. It is heart-breaking. It is for these friends that we received the tomatoes and it is for these friends that Christ was nailed to the cross.

I want to share some good news though: the story of Scott and the story of Paul. Scott was a food truck worker who had accepted the Lord not too long before coming to Galveston to help out with the flood relief and Paul was a 12 year-old boy.

Scott was working on of one of our food trucks. Paul lived in a small apartment with 10 other people and was familiar with the neighbourhood activities of gangs and drugs. This boy saw our canteen near his home and wanted to help. He approached Scott and volunteered to help. Scott welcomed him with open arms and very quickly made an impression on Paul - he kept coming back. Scott even gave him T-shirt and hat. The look on Paul’s face was worth a million dollars or more.

The evening before Scott was to return home from his deployment, I had the opportunity to give him his debriefing. During this exit interview we began speaking about Paul. Scott told me that he had prayed with Paul on a number of occasions and that Paul was asking about Jesus. I asked if Paul had asked the Lord into his heart. Scott said ‘not yet’ and asked me to help him do that.

The next day, Sunday, Scott, Paul, and a number of other volunteers working on the canteen eagerly awaited our arrival – Paul was ready to ask the Lord into his heart. We arrived and I encouraged Scott to lead Paul in the ‘sinners’ prayer’. After a simple confession of sin and profession of faith, Paul was welcomed into the family of God. We then sang a verse of Amazing Grace and Scott presented Paul with a Bible.

While we were celebrating Paul’s proclamation of salvation, two apparent ‘good-ole boys’ rolled up in a pick-up truck with their radio blaring Hank William’s “I Saw the Light.” They were angels. They were messengers of God who had come to celebrate with us, then they were gone.

In the midst of all the turmoil and all the suffering God was there just like in the midst of all our troubles and all our sufferings, God is here. He offers this very same salvation to us that he offered to Galveston, Texas in 2008.

Today we have the same choice as the people of Galveston Island. We can either defy the impending storm and perish like the nineteen year-old boy or we can heed the warning; we can see the light, accept salvation, and celebrate with the Angles sent from God in Heaven. I know that I will never be able to hear Hank William’s, ‘I Saw the Light’ again without being reminded of God’s glorious Salvation on that day.

For those of us who have already experienced the salvation that Scott, that Paul, and that so many others have experienced, for those of us who know we are going to heaven where there is no more pain or suffering and for those of us that know that we can turn to God in our pain and suffering until then, it is my hope that every time we hear the song ‘I Saw the Light’, that indeed we might turn to Lord thank the Him again for His glorious Salvation.

Those who are Mercy seat counsellors I will have you come forward in a moment.

For those of us here who haven’t experienced salvation yet; for those of us maybe who are still living through hell on earth and who would really like to be free of the pain of suffering and instead feel God’s comfort both now and forever. In the midst of the real storms of our lives, for those of us who would like God to save us and keep us from the very real everlasting storms, for those of us who would like to experience heaven in our hearts now and a home in heaven in our future, I invite you to come forward now.

Let us pray.

John 1:1-18: The Life-Filled Word that Created Everything and More

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, 14 July 2019. (Based on ‘Word Puzzles’ Presented to Swift Current Salvation Army, 10 April 2011) [a]

   

Doctrines 2-4 of TSA read as follows:

2. We believe that there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.

3. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory.

4. We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.

John 1:1-45 reads:

 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [or even understood] it.

These words open the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John is a letter probably written by the Apostle John sometime between 60-90 CE,[1] and as much as any other passage in the Bible speaks to one of the divinity of Christ and the Trinity through references to the ‘Word’ and the ‘Light’. Now John’s writing about the light and the Word here can be a little puzzling; so I thought that I would begin today with some word puzzles [2]:

Here are some one sentence clues to discover six mystery words:

1.      This word has every letter in our language in it; what is the word?

2.      This word contains many words but just one letter;

3.      This word is both queen and a capital;

4.      This word refers to both a Canadian citizen in general and a professional Vancouver hockey player in particular;

5.      This word is both a sharpened poll and a fish;

6.      This word is both an RCMP constable and a Salvation Army Captain;

7. Here is a ‘Who am I?’ word puzzle. There are 6 clues to find 1 word. Figure out the word if you can:

a.       It is in Port Alberni here,

b.      It is all over the world,

c.       You are it and you are in it,

d.      It is both people and a building,

e.       It is where people go on Sundays.

f.       It rhymes with perch.

This is the same sort of thing John is doing here at the beginning of this letter here…

a.                         In the beginning was this word, and

b.                         This word was with God, and

c.                         This word was God.”

He wants us to track with him closely as he reveals to us that Jesus is this ‘Word’. And he does give us a big clue right in the beginning…The hint is the phrase “In the beginning” This is neat. This letter, the Gospel of John, was written in Greek. Now, there is a very common ancient translation of the Old Testament with which the disciples were very familiar called ‘the Septuagint (LXX)’ which was also written in Greek. And the first Greek words of the creation story in Genesis are ‘En arche’/ ‘in the beginning’.[3] These are the very same words, in the very same language, that John chooses to start his book with.

I am going to play some theme songs and let me know if you can tell me what shows they are associated with…

1)      Suicide is Painless (Johnny Mandel and Michael Altman):

2)      I’ll be there for You (Rembrandts):

3)      William Tell Overture (Gioachino Rossini):

Now like we recognize theme songs to certain TV shows or movies, when the readers of John’s letter would encounter the words ‘in the beginning’, they would hear the theme song of Genesis 1:1 running through their heads again and again. And this is important – the WORD is there at creation and the WORD is with the creator, creating. John then goes on to make it abundantly clear that, Verses 3, ‘Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Verses 4: “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” This WORD gave light to, created all of humanity. Not only that, but the psalms (104:29) even tells us that if He (that Spirit of God) is removed from us then we will all die. And Verse 5: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [or even understood] it. [5]” This light that comes from God cannot be overcome or even understood by darkness.

Verses 6-8: Now as we are reading this in Church today, we are all well aware that Jesus is the Word, Jesus is the Light of the World but in the first century some people who were even in and around the new growing Christian communities were not yet convinced. One such person that some may have thought this applied to was John the Baptist, thus Verses 6-8 and Verse 15 of Chapter 1:

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.  He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light… John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

John, the author of this book tells us that John the Baptist who –even though he was dead long before the composition of this book, still had a lot of his own followers around- was not the light.

So John, the author has established a couple of things for us:

1)      The WORD was with God and is God who created and gave Life and the Light to all humanity [4]; and

2)      This Word, this Light is not John the Baptist; it is someone else.

Verses 9-11:

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Here as John reveals to us that the Light and the Word is Jesus, he tells us some important things about Him. Even though he made the whole world when he came to visit it, the world did not recognize him.

Next weekend Stephen Court is coming here. He is The Salvation Army’s Territorial Evangelism Consultant. We served with Steve and his wife Danielle Strickland when God used them to start 614 Vancouver, a corps in Vancouver’s DTES around the turn of the 21^st Century. Imagine if he poked his head in there unannounced on this visit and no one recognized him. That could happen. I have met many Officers who don’t have many at their old corps who remember them. Can you imagine if you invest all the time, heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears, into starting something (like a church or a business) – sacrificing much of or your whole life for it - and that something no longer recognizes you? Or more than this: we know many people who were taken from their parents when they were very young or who had their children taken from them. Can you imagine if you invested in your own child until they were a certain age and then you were separated and when you were able to return they didn’t know you? This is the scene painted before us today. Jesus, the Word who made the world and the Light who sustains the world, walked into the world and the world for the most part had no idea who he was.

Verses 14 and 12-13

John, the author then tells us some good news, Verse 14,

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. [And Verses 12 & 13:] “Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Though the greater world did not and does not even yet recognize Jesus; some of us do, just as some of us did. And for those of us who do recognize our creator and sustainer and rely on Him to recreate and continue to sustain us, He gives us the honour of being children of God. Like an earthly father returning home from a war, long journey, or for some other reason a long time away, to a child who may not at first remember him, but when reintroduced loves and accepts his dad; so, the same with God; the same with Jesus.

  

Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God; He is the Word and He is the Light and each and every one of us, John 1:16, “Out of his fullness we have all received grace.” So then the question for us today, 2000 years after the light came into the world, is ‘what do we do about it?’ If we know that the Word is Jesus and if we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and if we understand that Jesus Christ is God, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it? I think in that we only have two options after we realize that Jesus is God [6]:

1)      We decide this is 'fake news' nonetheless and still deny His divinity and His oneness with God and so sadly miss out on that amazing intimacy with God which He is offering to us; or

2)      We accept Jesus as our Saviour and we serve Him with our whole lives, experiencing forever the fullness of life that comes only from the grace and love of God

We can serve God forever and always and if any of us haven’t made that decision yet, what is stopping us? Next weekend is the Summer Rain Evangelism Crusade.  If you have any friends or family who are not yet experiencing the joy of life with Christ, bring them out; maybe as they hear the gospel, it will get ahold of their lives and transform them as only the Spirit of God can do.

And today here, at The Salvation Army, we have a Mercy Seat, where we can come and make our choice public to serve our Lord and Saviour forever or we can come and pray for the salvation of a loved one. If you –or a person close to you- have never made that commitment before or if you have any questions and would like to reaffirm that commitment to serve God today I invite you, in these next few moments as the piano continues to play, to come here, to the Mercy Seat, to pray.

Let us pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Salvogesis

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[a] Michael Ramsay, “John 1:1-18: Word Puzzles.” John 1:1-18: Word Puzzles, Sheepspeak.com, 8 Apr. 2011, 10:40am, sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-11-18-word-puzzles.html.

[1] Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 4), S. 24, 31

[2] Alphabet; Envelope; Regina or Victoria; Canuck; Pike; Officer; Church. The final answer is located near the end of the preach.

[3] Gerard Sloyan, John (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1988), 14.

[4] Cf. Martin Luther’s comments on this phrase. Cited in R.C.H. Lenski, ‘The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel’, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), p. 33.

[5] Either translation is equally valid and neither translation alters the intent of the passage significantly. Cf. Gail O’Day, NIB IX: The Gospel of Luke, The Gospel of John. ‘John’, p.520.

[6] Doctrine 10: We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; Doctrine 11: We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked

Exodus 12:24-28: Remember.

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, 30 June 2019; Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 06 July 2014. Based on an earlier version presented 01 July 2012 by Michael Ramsay

This is the 2019 version, click here to read the 2012 version of this homily: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2012/06/exodus-1224-28-remember.html

I am a Rotarian and this week I am speaking at one of the Rotary clubs in town. While thinking about this I was reminded of  a harrowing story I heard at the Swift Current club about a family vacation that Dave, one of the members, took in Acapulco in 1968:

Dave and his wife are on holiday down in Mexico. They check into their hotel. They are near the ground floor and there are these little lizards - Geckos or something else – climbing all up the walls; so they speak to the hotel and ask to be moved as far away from the lizards as they can, up to the top floor. They do move up to the top floor. This turns out to be a mistake. In the middle of the night, they are woken up as people are running through the halls screaming. Some girls from Quebec tell them what is happening: the hotel is on fire. The stairs, they are concrete for the top few floors and then wood beneath and the wooden stairs are ablaze. The girls from Quebec jump over the railing from the 10^th storey or more up and plunge all the way down. Dave and his wife and his two sons, aged six and nine, are trapped. Without thinking they run to the elevator but the door closes with people inside it just before they get there. Actually I think Dave may have even gotten his hand in the closing door but they don’t catch the elevator, which is good because we know what happens to people in elevators in a fire. Dave and his family are trapped. They try to tie sheets together to scale down the outside of the building but as Dave is heading over a balcony, it is good that he has an arm linked through the railing because someone unties the sheets. He then climbs down the side of the balcony and swings onto the balcony below. His wife then drops one of his children for him to catch and then the other and then she scales down as far as she can, then falls and Dave catches her legs and pulls her in. They do this until the third story or so of the building when they run out of balconies. Dave then throws one child down onto a straw thatched roof, hoping that will break his fall. He sees the boy fall through the roof and run away; so he throws the other son down who makes a new hole as he crashes through the thatched roof. He runs to safety. His wife jumps next and Dave is able to scale a palm tree to the bottom. They are injured but they survive. It was quite a tale to hear recalled. They survived by the grace of God but others on their floor who leapt over the railing or who took the elevator did not.

What had happened was, apparently there was a dispute between two ownership groups – one local and one foreign – the foreign group was residing in the hotel on that day and some local people had attacked the hotel with Molotov cocktails – hoping to collect insurance, I believe.

It was quite something to hear this story. There is more to his story here too. One of  Dave’s sons had a piece of the thatched roof he fell through stuck into his foot. The other had a twig protruding from his neck with blood spurting out. They were okay though. There was another miracle in this story. (Dave and his wife recognize this as a miraculous salvation.) When Dave and his wife were climbing down the balconies to escape the flames, they left somewhere her straw purse with their passports, money, plane tickets, and the like. The next day Dave went back and began looking in this burned out hotel building for this straw purse. God saved it for them. It was on a balcony on a burned out floor but this straw purse with its contents was still there. It was fine. God protected it and God protected them. God was there for them in the midst of this ordeal.

It is the same with the Hebrews in our text today. A few months ago Sarah-Grace preached a sermon for us here on the stories of the plagues in Exodus. They are quite something with each one becoming more awe-inspiring than the previous one.[1]

1. The Nile turning to blood (7:14–25)
2. Plague of frogs (7:25–8:11)
3. Plague of lice or gnats (8:12–15)[2]
4. Plague of flies or wild animals (8:20–32)
5. Plague of pestilence (9:1–7)
6. Plague of boils (9:8–12)
7. Plague of hail (9:13-35)
8. Plague of locusts (10:1–20)
9. Plague of darkness (10:21–29)

I still remember vividly the closest thing to a plague of darkness that I have ever experienced and that was in Swift Current in 2017. I can still recall the dread that came over us all as at noon, in the middle of the day, this darkness just swept over a corner of the city: it was really quite something. I have not seen anything like that before. It was an ominous, fear-provoking experience as that blackness approached: you could see blue skies fleeing from its presence. There was a tornado warning. When it came, we were driving to pick up Rebecca, who was in her elementary school, for lunch. The school had announced that the children were not to go outside. Some students, of course, were pressed up against the windows to see what was happening, others were in tears hiding safely under their desks. These feelings of fear and awe, of terror and wonder, that we were experiencing on that day are probably a reflection of the intensity of the emotions that would have been swirling around the Israelites through the first nine plagues of Exodus, as they are experiencing the power of God in a metaphorical funnel cloud of awe and terror preparing for the final plague, the tenth plague: The Angel of Death (11:1–12:36).

It is in the context of the children of Israel huddled in their houses preparing for Death’s arrival that our pericope today is found. In the opening 13 verses of this chapter, God tells Moses and Aaron exactly what is about to happen. Just like Tsunami alert, like we still hear tested here: ‘Get ready’, God warns them, ‘the Angel of Death is coming’.

Now there has already been a lot of flooding and states of emergency declared across this country and here we have been very thankful for the rain as we prepare for fire season. And just like we have emergency disaster plans that we are to follow in the city and in The Salvation Army when disaster strikes, God here is giving Moses and Aaron their instructions as to how to save themselves and their families when the Angel of Death strikes at Goshen, in Egypt. I don’t know if anyone here remembers the Tsunami of 1964 or if you have ever huddled in a storm cellar or was forced to take shelter or head beneath deck on a boat being tossed about in a storm but I imagine that it is the same feeling. The people take all the right steps and now they are just waiting and hoping, and praying for Death to pass.

I have binders and binders full of the Army’s and others’ plans of what we need to do in the event of a major disaster:  flood, fire, tsunami. God in Exodus here gives Moses and Aaron a disaster preparedness plan to share with the Hebrews in Egypt for the impending strike by the Angel of Death. It looks like this. Picture with me - you and your family – you have received your disaster preparedness plan from your leaders. Disaster is going to strike, you are fearful (like the school children hiding under their desks awaiting a tornado) and you are in awe as you await the Angel of Death who is coming to claim many from your country on this very night. On this very evening as Death is approaching; this is the plan:

1. You are to take a lamb or a kid to share as a meal with everyone in your household. If there aren’t enough of you in a household to eat a whole lamb, you must share it with your closest neighbour (12:3-4);
2. The animal must be 1 year-old and without defect (v.5);
3. You have already been taking care of the animals for 14 days in preparation for this day – now everyone in town is to go and slaughter the lamb at twilight (v.6);
4. You will then – this is important – take some of the blood and put it on the sides and the tops of the doorframes of the houses where you will eat the lambs (v.7);
5. Then you will eat the meat roasted over a fire with bitter herbs and bread without yeast and you must eat it all. You may not leave any of it until morning! If there are leftovers, you must burn them (vv. 8-10);
6. When you are eating this meal, you are to eat it with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on, and your staff in your hand (v. 11). In our language today: you are to have your coats, hats and shoes on and your car keys in your hand. You are to be ready to go. You are to eat it in haste because it is the LORD’s Passover.

God tells Moses and Aaron that as the people follow this plan they will survive the impending strike by the Angel of Death. Then God tells them, ‘You must never forget this night. You must remember how I saved you.’ I imagine this evening must be as clear to those who experienced it as the images were to Dave and his wife of that night climbing down the side of the building – and Dave’s wife, she is afraid of heights. I imagine that every time they think about this night, they remember every feeling that was racing through their heart and mind and I imagine that they’ll never forget it.

I remember when I was in Nipawin and the building exploded right behind The Salvation Army Ministry Centre downtown. My office shook. It felt like a truck had struck it. With others, I headed outside to see what had happened, I saw injured or dead or dying people lying on the ground as the flames began to engulf part of the downtown. My children and everyone else around on that day have stories surrounding those moments. I imagine each of us have had times like these that will never leave our minds.

The thing with events like these is that as real as they are to us, they are not as real to people who don’t actually experience them and as time passes people tend to forget the important lessons that come from them. We recently marked the 75^th anniversary of D-Day. I had the honour of speaking at the 70^th D-Day memorial on the prairies five years ago. For those hundreds and thousands of soldiers present on June 6, 1944, as long as they live, D-Day is a day they will never forget; but if I were to guess I would say that less people across this country officially attend ceremonies to remember the anniversary than lost their lives on the beaches on that day in 1944. Remembrance Day and the Legion remind us of the horrors of war, lest we forget. It is no coincidence that as the Cold War ended and more and more of our veterans pass away, that there are more wars in our world than ever before. Did you know that from end of the cold war -1989 or 1991, until the end of the twentieth century there were more wars in that one decade than there were in the whole rest of the century prior. People forget and then another generation experiences the same horrors. 

As the Israelite families of our pericope today are sitting in their houses awaiting the impending calamity, God tells Moses that they are never to forget this day.[3] They are to remember it forever. They are to tell their children and their children’s children. This should a permanent feature in the school curriculum, so to speak. It is to be like our annual Remembrance Day ceremonies in that there are some elements that must be observed. As far as the Passover remembrance ceremonies for the Israelites, they are to incorporate some of their Emergency Disaster Preparedness Plan into a ceremonial dinner and they are not have any yeast in the house at all for seven days prior and they are to eat only unleavened flat breads. Then God tells them, Exodus 12:24-27:

“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped.

One reason that the people were to remember this was so that they would not forget what the Lord had done for them in the past. This is so important: a people that forget their past forfeits their future.

We were in Ottawa for Canada's 150th Celebrations. We met friends there which made it quite fun but the official events were a really big disappointment. They made Canada seem like a country with no culture, no history, no past. A recent Canadian survey shows that we Canadians know little and care less about our accomplishments, history and traditions. These seem to be increasingly removed from the things that we direct the greatest value at… Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely to take pride in the Toronto Raptors, who recently won the [US based] NBA Championship, than [Canadian] Confederation… [The Raptors] They've given us something to celebrate," The survey conclusion stated about the team. "They're champions, so they're more current.” The monarchy, Confederation, and noted Canadians are neglected and forgotten.[4]

One reason Canadians need to remember our past is so that we will continue to exist in the future. One reason that the people of God were to remember the Passover was so that they would not forget what the Lord had done for them in the past and another reason is to wait for a future deliverance. As this Passover ceremony developed over the generations, it came to incorporate an act of ceremonially ‘looking for Elijah’. This is because tradition later stated that Elijah must return before the Messiah is to come.

Now Elijah does return and Jesus the Messiah does come and when he does and as Jesus is celebrating this very important Passover remembrance with his disciples, Jesus the Messiah utters the very important words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” This is, I think, a big reason why God wanted the Passover ceremony etched so deeply in the minds of humanity for so long because just as when the Egyptians gave up their firstborn sons, God saved His people through the blood of the Passover lamb; so when God gives up His firstborn son –Jesus Christ – He also saves us; His people, all His people, He saves through the Blood of the Lamb.[5]

This is the most important event in the whole history of the world: The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God, through the giving of His only begotten son has made it – just like with Exodus and the Angel of Death – so that none of us need to perish but all of us can have salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is important to remember.

This is why we come to church, this is why we go to Bible studies, this is why we pray and this is why we read our Bibles; this is why we have our Mercy Seat and this is why we commemorate Good Friday and Easter Sunday/Monday every year. That is why we are here today: because just as God offered salvation to all His children from the passing over of the Angel of Death and the preceding plagues; so too He offers salvation to all of us, this very day, from Sin and Death and from everything that is plaguing us. As that is the case, it is my hope and my prayer that if any of us have not yet implemented our eternal disaster preparedness plan, that you would delay no longer and that we would all experience that salvation both today and forever more.

I am going to invite everyone up to the Mercy Seat or Holiness Table on this Canada Day Eve to take a card with a verse on it, in remembrance of Christ and what He has done for this nation and what He has done for us. There are three cards (you can take 1, 2, or 3 of them):

·        One with John 3:16 –the ultimate Passover verse- on it,  “For God so loved the world, that He gave his Only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

·        One with Hebrews 11:16, the verse from the Order of Canada, “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.”

·        And one card with the verse from Canada’s Motto, Psalm 72:8, “He [The LORD] shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

These are God's promises for us as Canadians that we are not to forget. Of the Passover, Jesus says, “do this in remembrance of me.” God asks us to remember what He has done for us: how God has saved us all from Death, just like He saved the Hebrews so many years ago. Our Lord tells us not to forget, so I encourage each of us to come forward to the Mercy Seat, take a card back to your seat, mediate and pray about it and today when you leave put it in your wallet or somewhere else and every time you see it this week, I encourage you to remember what the Lord has done.

 thank the Lord for His mercy and for the price He paid on our behalf.

In Jesus’ Name, Come.

---

[1] Cf. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/E. The Passover (12:1-28)/1. Preparations for the Passover (12:1-13), Book Version: 4.0.2. for more detailed list.

[2] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 113: In the evening: literally ‘between the two evenings’. Jewish scholars are not agreed as to the exact meaning. The phrase is also used of the time for the regular evening sacrifice (Exod. 29:39) and of the time for lighting the lamps in the meeting-tent (Exod. 30:8). The orthodox piety of Pharisaic Judaism understood the meaning as being between the time in the afternoon when the heat of the sun lessens (say 3 or 4 p.m.) and sunset. Other groups preferred the time between sunset and dark, or other similar explanations.

[3] Thomas W. Mann, “Passover: The Time of Our Lives.” Interpretation 50, no. 3 (July 1, 1996): 240-250. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 241-242: The Passover narrative is arguably the most important section of the entire book because it is primarily here that the experience of exodus is communicated not simply as a moment in historical time (in the past) but as a perennially recurring moment in the present life of those for whom the story is sacred.

[4] Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press. Published Friday, June 28, 2019 4:27AM EDT. Cited from CTV News: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-more-likely-to-take-pride-in-the-present-than-history-poll-1.4486436

[5] Norman Theiss, "The Passover Feast of the New Covenant." Interpretation 48, no. 1 (January 1, 1994): 17-35. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 17: In the eyes of the first three evangelists and Paul, Jesus construed his last supper with the twelve disciples as the fulfillment of God's plan to inaugurate a new Passover meal. In this new meal, Jesus interpreted his death as a new Exodus in which the new people of God were liberated from all that enslaves them and freed to serve God in holy living.

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