"Doctrine Matters: The Work of Christ"
November 25, 2007

Pastor David Dunaway

Date:   Nov. 25, 2007

Sermon Title:  Doctrine Matters:  The Work of Christ

Text:  Luke 2:22-35

Whidbey Island Evangelical Free Church, 874 Plantation Drive, Greenbank, WA 98253, 360-678-4612, office, Pastor David Dunaway

Last weekend was our church Thanksgiving potluck and congregational meeting – thanks again to all of you who brought food and helped make the meal possible…I look forward to that meal all year, but this year I needed to be somewhere else.  I needed to be in Colorado.  The previous Wednesday, my Dad went to the hospital for minor surgery, and by Thursday afternoon it was clear that things were not going well.  Hospitals have this really bad term called “Code Blue,” and they called it on my Dad.  The chaplain came, put his arm around my Mom and gently walked her out of the room while doctors and nurses tried to bring my Dad back to life.  They did revive him, but they could not stabilize his blood pressure, and then his temperature got much hotter than it should have been as an infection set in. 

I heard that news and got on the first plane to Denver that I could catch.  I went to bed at about 2 in the morning, then decided to get out of bed when the third phone came through…I had no idea what time it was, but I thought Mom might need help answering phone calls.  I looked at the clock and it was just before 7 a.m.  People from all over the country were calling because they were worried.

We had trouble handling all of the people who came to visit, and we finally had to instruct the hospital to keep out visitors so my Dad could get some rest.  But, we couldn’t stop the phone calls.  I would answer one call and three more messages would be waiting. 

I thought of the people who were calling, and I remembered why they were concerned.  Some were extended family, but most were friends who remember Mom and Dad as people who were active in their times of deepest need.  For many, their lives had been a mess with no solutions.  These people had been in deep need, facing a predicament they could not solve.  And, into their lives my parents poured out their time, love and resources…and now these people were expressing their love for my Dad.  It was one testimony after another of how Mom and Dad had given and given...I talked with one person after another who spent the time reflecting on Dad’s other-centered life. 

Later in the morning, we went to the hospital, and I was able to be with him again.  I looked down on his broken body and marveled at how he had willingly poured out his life for others.  His life could have been very different.

My Dad is retired now, but he was a doctor.  He ran a very successful family practice clinic and served as the medical director of the hospital where he was now laid up.

There was a long-standing joke in my home about rich doctors.  I’d heard that doctors had a lot of money, but I never saw any evidence of it. 

It seemed like every financial decision that he made was carefully weighed to make sure that it did not create awkwardness with people who had less than he did.  Where we lived, how we lived, the cars he drove, the vacations we took...  Everything was weighed as to how it might make people feel welcome in his life.  He did not want to shut the door on people who were so down that they might not feel as if they belonged.  A child does not understand that…it was confusing to me living in that environment.  I just wanted to know where the money was.  We never had much stuff, but we were rich in relationships.

Email from Iraq

One of the inquiries was an email from Iraq.  A Muslim man was worried...news had reached him in Iraq that my Dad was ill and he was checking up on him. 

I’ll never forget how he became involved with my parents.  In 1995, Saddam Hussein said that he would kill all Iraqis who had worked with western relief organizations.  Turkey gave those agencies 24 hours to get their workers and families out…then Turkish troops shut the border.  I don’t know what happened to those who were left, but I do know that this man had helped bring relief to his people, so now he and his family were refugees in Boulder, Colorado looking for a home.  My parents welcomed them in…and none of us were prepared for the comedy of errors that followed.  We lived next door at the time, so Linda and I watched all this happen.

White sheets and a pellet gun

Mom set up the entire lower floor of her home for them…I was there when they got there…a 49-year old mother with six grown children ranging in age from 27-15.  Mom made it as homey as she could…that meant buying enough sheets to make seven beds, so she went and bought new sheets.  They were white sheets. 

What Dad failed to tell this Iraqi family was that he was battling a woodpecker problem.  Every morning, he would go sit on a chair outside the basement door and shoot woodpeckers with his pellet gun.  What the Iraqi family failed to tell my Mom was that Muslims only use white sheets to bury their dead…they would have thought that we knew.  In the morning, they got out of bed to do their morning prayers, looked outside, and saw my Dad sitting at their door with a gun.  So, they took the sheets off their beds, neatly folded them and carried them upstairs to my Mom and let her know they were not planning to have to use them.    

It would have been easy to be offended by the cultural taboos we violated, but over the years, they came to see that Mom and Dad loved them and were pouring out their lives for them because Jesus had done the same for them.  Before he left for Iraq, the young man told my parents that he knew he would be okay because “Mom and Dad were praying for him.”  He went back to Iraq to be a translator for our troops, and he was grateful that so many Americans from this “Christian Nation” were pouring out their lives for his people. 

Why?

As a child growing up in their home, I didn’t always understand their behavior.  Quite frankly, I only thought that we were supposed to have a lot of money and look like it since my Dad was a doctor…but we never seemed to have much.    

For me it boiled down to a simple question:

“Dad and Mom, you have the ability to live differently, why don’t you?”  “Our lives could look totally different…why do we live this way?”  “I don’t understand.”

Lives pointing to Jesus

Their answer was as simple as the question:  They remembered that at one time, they too were in a predicament for which they had no solution.  But, they found the answer in Jesus who was broken and poured out for them. Every sacrificial act of theirs always pointed to Jesus as the one to whom they owed everything. 

There is a story that tells their own tale.  It’s the story of two criminals who were being executed for rebelling against the established governmental authority.  The good of the people was at stake…they were dying for the preservation of the public welfare.  These men engaged in robbery as part of their campaign against the Roman authority, so they were being executed.  

They were guilty and deserved what they got.  But at the same time, another person was being executed who did not deserve it.  He was a man whose life could have looked very different.

Transition to Jesus:

We read in Luke 23:32-43 “Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with Jesus (him) to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there the Roman soldiers (they) crucified Jesus (him), along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left.  Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’  And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.  The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him.  They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’  The soldiers also came up and mocked him.  They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’  There was a written notice above him, which read:  THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

The bloody conversation

The scene now turns to a conversation between the three men who were dying…a man on either side of Jesus who deserved the pain and death; and, Jesus who did not were talking. 

It’s a horrible, bloody, and obscene picture, but it’s a beautiful picture of salvation in the worst situation in which you could ever find yourself.  It’s a reminder to never give up on a person, because Jesus’ arm is never too short to save.  One of the men is angry and scared because he knows it is going to keep getting worse and more painful and then he will die.  So he lashed out at Jesus.  Luke wrote, “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him:  ‘Aren’t you the Christ:  Save yourself and us!’ 

But the other criminal rebuked him.  ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what we deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong.’  Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

What a statement by that second criminal! 

He saw it clearly.  He understood the meaning of his execution.  There were two implications.  One was physical, the other spiritual…The physical implication was that the Roman authority deemed them such a threat to the public good that they needed to die.  The spiritual implication was that they had been rejected by God (Gal. 3:13).  The Jewish people believed that those who were hung on a tree or impaled on a pole had been cursed by God – their rebellion wasn’t just against the Roman authority.  God himself had sentenced them to die because their hearts were against him.  God sentenced them to be pushed out of his presence forever.  For a Jew, to be hung on a cross meant to be rejected by men and rejected by God.

So when the second criminal said, we are getting what we deserve, he was saying, “Before God and man, I deserve to die.”  I have sinned against God, and I have sinned against man.  I deserve this physical death, and I deserve to be pushed out of God’s presence forever.”  It was a deathbed confession of sins…and it was made on a cross. 

“God’s justice and man’s justice will be served by my death…and I deserve it.”  He understood the gravity of his sin.

We are a threat to the public welfare when we sin against God.  When we chose to worship and follow the creature rather than the creator, we put God’s creation at risk…and we are subject to being punished by what God has made.    Not only this, but God pushes out of his presence those who choose against him.  And, like the criminal, we deserve to be cursed by God and hung on that cross. 

The man hanging there recognized that…

And, my parents recognized it too.  They would confess, “Jesus, you don’t belong on that cross, but we do.”

They know that God’s justice would be served by their death…they deserve just like each of us deserve it. 

But, that’s not the way the story ends.  It doesn’t have to end that way because of the work Jesus did on his cross:

Let’s go back to the story in Luke.  Luke wrote that the man said, “We are punished justly, for we are getting what we deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong.’  Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

Let me explain:

When he said that Jesus had done nothing wrong, he was confessing Jesus’ sinlessness.  Jesus had done nothing against God and done nothing against humanity.  He was sinless – and yet he was bearing God’s curse by being hung on a tree.  It made no sense to the criminal other than to conclude that though Jesus was bearing God’s curse, God would not abandon Jesus to the grave.  He believed that God would raise Jesus back to life and restore Jesus to his rightful place.  That rightful place was as king of the universe…king of all creation.

So he asked him:  “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Jesus responded, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”

The man confessed his sin, acknowledged Jesus as God and Lord, and placed his hope in a resurrected Jesus.  In response to that, God saved him.

It was the path of salvation played out right there between two people dying on crosses…one consumed by sin and in need of forgiveness…and the other God himself - the only one in the world able to forgive sin. 

The scene is so stark that anyone who reads of it has to wonder why Jesus would submit himself to that torture and death.  He was innocent and could have saved himself, why did he let himself be crucified?

The work of Jesus explained in our Doctrinal Statement:

Our doctrinal statement answers that question: 

The Work of Christ:  “We believe that Jesus Christ, as our representative and substitute, shed his blood on the cross as the perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins.  His atoning death and victorious resurrection constitute the only ground for salvation.  (From the proposed revision to the EFCA Doctrinal Statement)”

Of course, our doctrinal statement is rooted in the Bible which gives us an even better explanation. We were under a penalty that we could not pay.  We were in a predicament with the King of this universe, guilty of treason, deserving of death.  The penalty is to be separated from God.  But because he loves us, Jesus provided the solution.  He became our substitute…he served the sentence for us.  The criminal saw that.

He was saying, “I deserve this, you do not.  God who is just will restore you to your rightful place in heaven.  You are paying a penalty for me that I owe but cannot pay.  I want to be with you where you are going.”  And Jesus accepted his faith. 

We find this in Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 3:23-26  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (made right with God) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.  (Jesus satisfies God’s wrath towards our sin when we place our faith in Jesus like the second criminal did.)  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

John 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Doctrine matters because today, you are in the same position that those two criminals found themselves.  If you are like the first criminal, you are facing a forever in Hell separated from God you rejected.  Or, if you are in the position of the second criminal, you are looking forward to heaven with Jesus who was broken and poured out for you.   

The crown of thorns

I had lunch with one of the men in our church who told me a funny, but tragic story.  He had been attending another church on our island; in one of the sermons, the pastor said that he did not believe there was only one way to be saved.  “How narrow-minded that Jesus would really mean that faith in him and his atoning work on the cross was the only way to be saved.”  So, after church, our friend went outside to the thorn bush that grew by the front door of the church.  He cut some branches, went home, and made a wreath of thorns.  He put the wreath in a paper bag then scheduled a meeting with the pastor.  He asked him for clarification about what he had heard.  “Do you really believe that faith in Jesus and his atoning work on the cross is not the only way of salvation?”  The pastor answered, “Yes.”  Our friend then took out his crown of thorns, laid it on the pastor’s desk and asked, “Then why did he wear this?”  “If there was another option, why did he not save himself?” 

That is the question the Roman soldiers should have been asking:  “You who made the blind see, made the lame to walk, healed those with leprosy, made the deaf to hear, raised the dead (Matt. 11:5), walked on water, fed 5,000 with a handful of fish and a couple loaves of bread, made a raging sea storm stand still…you who could quite easily have avoided capture and prevented our nails from entering your skin, why are you submitting yourself to death on this cross?”  “You obviously can save yourself…why don’t you?”

He didn’t save himself because there was no other way for God to be a just God but also make right those who had sinned against him.  Because he is a God of justice, the penalty of sin had to be paid.  But, because he is a God who loves, he paid that penalty himself.

Doctrine Matters:

There is a church on our island full of people who are now suffering from the mistaken teaching that anything goes with God…they have been told that whatever path they choose is just fine. 

But, that pastor’s church is full of people who went there because they sensed their shortcomings.  Hearts that were pricked by the reality of sin and separation from God are more confused now than they’ve ever been.  (John 16:8-11)…those people went there to get right with God, because what they were trying did not work.  They knew they could not reach him with their own solutions…and their pastor told them that they could.  Fortunately, that pastor is no longer preaching on our island.

I am grateful that the Evangelical Free Church is so clear in its doctrinal statement. 

“Jesus Christ’s atoning death and victorious resurrection constitute the only ground for salvation.”  (From the proposed revision to the EFCA Doctrinal Statement)”

The truth is that there was no other way for us to be saved than for God the Son to give his life.   

To that man I say, “thank you for caring so much about these truths.”  If you are going to be run out of a church, what a way to go!

So, how should you respond?

1.  Do what the second criminal did…Accept the gift.  Confess your sins, acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and put your trust in him.  Receive Jesus as your savior. 

2.  Love each other with the same love.  Pour yourself out for others as Jesus poured himself out for you.  Be a living testimony of Jesus’ own sacrifice for you.  Jesus did not discriminate with his love…he gave his life to save anyone who would believe.  So, we should see others with that same love.

The Apostle Paul said it well:

2 Cor. 5:16-21  “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ’s behalf:  Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.”

Doctrine Matters: 

Doctrine does matter.  Have you been saved by faith in the work of Jesus on the Cross?  Do you pour yourself out for others as a living testimony of Jesus who was poured out for you? 

An other-centered life demonstrates God’s own heart towards us.  An other-centered life expresses God’s own heart towards his creation.  We should live that way as a testimony of who God is.  It matters:

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