Quote from Forum Archives on May 20, 2002, 9:29 am

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

RENEWAL AS A WAY OF LIFE #6/8
EXPERIENCING V-E DAY
(THE MESSIANIC VICTORY)
May 19, 2002

TEXT: 1 Corinthians 15:20-28

On May 8, 1945, many parts of the world joyfully and exuberantly
experienced V-E day; that is, Victory in Europe day. That was the day
that the Allied forces received the unconditional surrender of Germany.
It was the day that most people could say that the terrible fighting of
the World War II European Theater was over.

But not everyone saw V-E Day as the joyful end to the long war. There
were many who had been living under tyranny and fighting tyranny for so
long that they forgot what freedom was like. There were many who lived in
the lands devastated by war who were so overwhelmed by the magnitude of
destruction that they were still in shock after the war ended. Even
though V-E Day had happened, they were unable to experience it.

Happily, though, the Western European victors of the war - and the
Americans in particular - were as serious about winning the peace as they
were the war. They quickly set about doing what they could to rebuild
lives and property still reeling from the years of war. In one program
designed to replace tyranny with ideologies of freedom and prosperity,
college-age Germans, Frenchmen, and Americans met in Munich. Sergeant
Henry Halstead, a Bronze Star recipient, was one of the participants in
that 1948 program. Years later, Halstead received a card from a French
participant: “In 1950 France was in ruins. I saw only a world marked by
war, by destruction, by the shadow of war, and by fear. I believed it was
not finished, that there would be a next war. I did not think it would be
possible to build a life, to have a family. Then came your group of young
Americans, attractive, idealistic, optimistic, protected, believing and
acting as though anything was possible. It was a transforming experience
for me.” (Stephen E. Ambrose, “The Lasting Legacy of World War II,” One
of Freedom’s Finest Hours, Hillsdale, Michigan: Hillsdale College Press,
2002, p. 7).

In some respects, Christians experience a similar reaction to their
liberation. Even though V-E Day has been declared - that is, Victory
Everywhere Day and Victory in Everything Day - we still fail to grasp the
magnitude of what the Messiah has done. After having been in the bondage
of tyranny to our sinful nature, the world, and the devil for so long, we
are still in shock. We do not know or understand what our spiritual
freedom means. We fail to comprehend how complete the victory for our
very souls has been. No, we cannot comprehend these things until we allow
Jesus to teach us. Richard Lovelace writes, “…it is essential for us to
look outside ourselves to see the splendor of God’s plan of deliverance.
Salvation is not so much a matter of doing as of appreciating what God
has done… At the beginning of my Christian life, when I was still nervous
and unsure about my relationship with God, I remember driving across one
of the great bridges of America. I was looking at the strength of the
pylons and the cables, and in my mind I saw a picture of the greater
bridge that Jesus has made between a fallen world and God’s perfect
holiness. In the back of my mind, under all the doubts and fears, a voice
said firmly, ‘The Bridge will hold.’” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal As a Way
of Life, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, pp. 115-116).

The Bridge will hold because Jesus the Messiah is our prophet. In the Old
Testament, prophets were raised up to point the people back to God’s
ways. They proclaimed God’s holy requirements to a wayward people. This
was usually done at great risk to them, since the prophets typically
confronted even the kings of Israel and Judah who had wandered away from
God’s will. But time and again, God commissioned and sent his prophets to
proclaim the word of God and to call for repentance.

Thus it was with Jesus. He clearly pointed the way to God. His ministries
were marked with miraculous signs. In response to the imprisoned John the
Baptist’s question concerning his Messiahship, Jesus told John’s
disciples to tell him what they had heard and seen: “The blind receive
sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear,
the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed
is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matthew 11:5-6)
Likewise, Jesus pointed to the holiness of God and called for repentance.
Turn to Matthew 5:20, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the
scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” My,
what a sobering proclamation! And, in several high profile acts, Jesus
invaded the realm of the religious leaders themselves with his
demonstrations against false righteousness. He confronted them with words
of warnings and even entered the temple area twice to overturn the tables
of the moneychangers and others. In so doing, Jesus made no friends with
most established religious leaders, but he did get the message of God
across. One result was that Jesus became the object of suspicion as he
moved among and ministered to the moral and religious outcasts of his
day. But Jesus the prophet was concerned to minister to human need and go
where there was a sense of sin instead of a false righteousness. Jesus
the prophet rang in the Messianic era, an age, writes Lovelace, where
“people will be reborn by the Spirit, will understand the kingdom of God
(John 3:3), and will have its principles written on their hearts instead
of locked up in teachers and texts (Jeremiah 31:33).” (Richard Lovelace,
Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, p.
118). Jesus the Messiah is our prophet.

The Bridge will hold because Jesus the Messiah is our priest. Alongside
Moses, who was raised up by God as prophet, the priesthood was
established with his brother Aaron. “In order to balance Moses’ clear
articulation of the Law, which brings conviction of sin,… God regularized
a variety of sacrificial offerings. These reminded Israel that although
the penalty of sin is death, God can transfer that penalty from us to
others if he chooses.” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of Life,
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, p. 118). Those designated as
priests in the Hebrew assembly became, then, the community’s
representative to God. He was in the position to be the bridge from God
to the community and from the community, via sacrificial offerings, to
God.

In John 1:29, John the Baptist recognizes and declares the priestly role
of Jesus. “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
“In a most remarkable way, Jesus sums up the Old Testament tradition of
law and sacrifices by being himself both the priest and the sacrificial
victim. He took on himself the penalty of death for sin, which God
transferred to him from all those who believe in him.” (Richard Lovelace,
Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, p.
118). So it is that the writer of Hebrews was able to categorically
declare the impact of Jesus the priest in Hebrews 7:23-27. “Now there
were many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in
office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.
Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through
him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest
meets our need - one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from
sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he
does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins,
and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once
for all when he offered himself.” Jesus the Messiah is our priest.

The Bridge will hold because Jesus the Messiah is our king. Turn to 1
Samuel 9:15-16. From the outset, the king of Israel was chosen by God.
“Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel:
‘About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of
Benjamin. Anoint him leader over my people Israel; he will deliver my
people from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked upon my people,
for their cry has reached me.’” From that time to their final dispersion
recorded in the Old Testament, Israel was led by a king. It was through
the lineage of their second king, David, that the ultimate deliverance
for Israel, the Messiah, was promised. Turn to Isaiah 11:1-2, one of the
places where the prophet declares that the Messiah will come from the
household of Jesse, David’s father. “A shoot will come up from the stump
of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord
will rest on him - the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of
counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord
- and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”

Even though our culture, society, and government do not gear us toward
what it means to have a king, Jesus is king. Ultimate deliverance for
Israel, and subsequent deliverance for us all, was not promised through
prophets and priests, but only through the coming of the Messiah, the
anointed king. This means that Jesus is the authority to whom we owe
allegiance. It means that Jesus is the ruler in the Kingdom of God. The
prophecies concerning the Messiah are filled with language about the
establishment of governments of justice and peace and prosperity. This is
the kingdom which the prophets looked forward to. Jesus is the king of
this prophesied kingdom. The first chapters of Matthew and Luke are
filled with the genealogies of Jesus, tracing his lineage back to the
house of David. He is, without argument, the “shoot from the stump of
Jesse.” He is, then, our king in a dominion without end. We owe
allegiance to only one ruler, Jesus our King.

The Bridge will hold because Jesus the Messiah is the second Adam. The
familiar story from creation, about which I have spoken often, tells us
of Adam’s disobedience to God. Adam sinned. As a result, we are all born
into sin. That is, none of us naturally seeks to obey God. In Ephesians
2, Paul writes to the Ephesians concerning their nature before their new
life in Christ. Beginning with verse 1, “As for you, you were dead in
your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed
the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the
spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also
lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful
nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by
nature objects of wrath.” And, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, “For as
in Adam all die…”

Jesus the Messiah is the second Adam. “[T]he good news of Scripture is
that God has set about creating a whole new humanity in his Son.”
(Richard Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1985, p. 126). Jesus, who is both God and man - fully
human and fully divine, is united with humanity in his birth. What Paul
went on to write in 1 Corinthians 15:22 is, “For as in Adam all die, so
in Christ all will be made alive.” This is what is meant by the Messianic
victory. This is V-E Day in the fullest sense: Victory Everywhere and
Victory in Everything Day. When Jesus died on the cross, our union with
the Messiah was made complete. Turn to Romans 6:6-7. This union with the
Messiah is the reason those who believe in him are freed from the
compulsive power of sin. “Our old self was crucified with him so that the
body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be
slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”

“In the crucifixion, therefore, the old nature and the bent and broken
world of fallen humanity went down into the grave. And when Jesus, the
second Adam, was raised from the dead, with him rose a new humanity no
longer crippled with the curse inflicted on Adam and his descendants…
Thus in Jesus’ death and resurrection, all the ‘dynamics of spiritual
death’ were disarmed and destroyed. Our distance from God and apathy
toward him, our compulsive egoism, our selfish manipulation of others,
our crippling attitudes and habits, all the shackles of our flesh are
dissolved and released.” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of Life,
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, pp. 126-127).

This is some kind of victory! It is total victory! As Paul has written,
“Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father
after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.” Yes, this is
complete victory, this V-E Day. But not unlike our ancestors, we sometime
stand in shock not knowing how to respond. Having lived in bondage to the
tyranny of satan and sinful nature, we do not know what to do with the
life-giving freedom we receive from the Messianic victory. Let us not be
encumbered by fear, however, for a large part of living lives of daily
renewal is similar to those programs following World War II for assisting
those who had lived in bondage to learn how to live in freedom. As we
allow the Holy Spirit to be our guide and teacher, we discover the new
life unfolding. And the new life is far better than the old.

Turn to Revelation 1:12-18. John describes at the outset of this
revelation the powerful presence of Jesus in the midst of his people. “I
saw seven golden lamp stands, and among the lamp stands was someone ‘like
a son of man,’ dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a
golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as
white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like
bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing
waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came
a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its
brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he
placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First
and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for
ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Concerning these
verses, Richard Lovelace writes, “Remember that the weapons and the
strength of this figure are not directed against us. They are aimed at
our enemies. When your life seems filled with unbelief and other forms of
sin and weakness, get your eyes off yourself and fix them on the
Messianic Victor, who once and for all has defeated the flesh, the world
and the devil.” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985, p. 128). And that is exactly how we
experience V-E Day.

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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