Sunday School | Red Letter Finale

Introduction

This class has been so weird lately. First, I was gone for, like, I don't even know how long, a month or something. And then Bob Blecksmith's class overtook the topic, and it was a long time ago that we were doing red letters. So here's the plan for those of you that like to know what the heck is going on. Today is going to be our final day in red letters. I didn't want to just let it fade away, but what we're going to do is I went through all the questions, and I picked a whole slew of them, and I'm going to try to do a semi-speed round and we'll see how that goes. We might get stuck on the first one and that'll be the end of that. But if so, that's the end of it. And then next week, we're going to start a new series that I hope you love. I think I'm going to love it. And so that's really what counts. But what we're going to do, we're going to do — I'm planning to walk through the entire New Testament doing essentially like a book, like what I did in Titus in the sanctuary two or three weeks ago. We're going to do that for every book in the New Testament.

The Next Series

Okay? So if you were here when I preached on Titus and I kind of gave you the high-level view, here's the key to it. And the reason I want to do that is a real deep desire, honestly, is that you would just be self-feeders. And, of course, many of you are like, I've been nourishing myself from the Scriptures for decades, and that's fantastic. So I don't assume that you're not doing that, but I want to facilitate that. So either to deepen that habit or to begin that habit for others. And so what I hope to do is we'll here cover one book in one day. Maybe I'll do, like, two weeks for one book if it's just too long. And then I hope what you might choose to do is, in the intervening week, that you would actually be reading that yourself.

For example, next week we're going to begin with the Gospel of Luke. And so I'll study — I mean, we'll talk about Luke. I'll try to give you the high-level view of what's going on with Luke, maybe how it's different from Matthew or Mark or very different from John, some of the key things to look for, and then I'll cut you loose. So Luke's 24 chapters. So if you read 14, it's like three chapters a day over the course of the week. And then maybe, if you want to, you don't have to do that. You can do what you want. But over the course of that week, if you just choose to study Luke or read Luke, you might be like, Oh, oh, oh, I see it. I see that now. That makes sense and I understand that.

And then the following week, we'll do something else and we'll walk through it. And again, sometimes we'll do maybe two weeks on a — maybe we'll stretch it out — but I don't mean to be, like, some slog through Romans or something. We'll be like, we're gonna hit them and go on. And I'll explain more about what we're going to do.

We’re going to go the first three — if you want to know, we're going to go Luke, Acts, Romans. And the reason is I think that's the best way. I'll explain to you next week a little bit more of the thinking behind that, of how you can get through the whole New Testament. But Luke, Acts, Romans, we're going to do a week at a time, looking at those. And then we'll run through all 27 books of the New Testament.

I hope so — that's going to take us, what is it? Twenty-seven weeks? That'll be at least thirty-five weeks, maybe in reality. Over the course of half the year, three-quarters of the year, hopefully you guys will have a pretty firm sense of what's going on in each one of these New Testament books. We want you to be familiar and comfortable and be able to just kind of know, I know what's going on in Colossians, and I know what's different between one Peter and two Peter. I just wanted you to get all that. So that's the plan. That's where we're going to go.

Alright? So if you want to pre-read, Luke's the place to go. But today we're going to try to close up a whole slew of questions from your red letter questions about things that Jesus said. Ready? Okay. Start the clock.

Get Behind Me, Satan

Here's the question. Get behind me, Satan. The question is, what is up with that? Matthew 16 and Mark 8 have this commentary that says that Jesus was speaking to Satan. I can understand that Jesus was speaking to the lie that Satan may have made Peter believe in his head, but was Satan actually there? It feels like Satan may have been — for Jesus — to erupt in that way instead of using another parable to perhaps describe the spiritual powers in this world. But if Jesus was speaking to Satan, then why didn't Peter convulse or seize upon, leading up to Jesus casting Satan himself out of Peter?

The answer is probably more boring than the first one I mentioned, but I thought I'd ask to see if there was any other meat to this case. So what we're going to do is we'll look at this. There's a couple of places we can see this happen. We're just going to go to Matthew.

So go to Matthew 16. And again, I'll try to give this a relatively brief treatment. The text is in Matthew 16. Does anybody happen to remember, even before you turn there, what had Peter done that compelled Jesus to say to Peter, get behind me, Satan? Do you remember what precipitated that? Do you know, Fetz, what's going on there?

Peter said he's going to fight till the end. Yeah, basically. And Peter's essentially saying we're not going to go through this crucifixion thing, essentially. Peter's like, no, no, no, let's not do it that way.

So take a look at it. Go to Matthew 16, verse 21. From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Never, Lord, he said, this shall never happen to you. And Jesus turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.

Anybody have a sense of what's going on here? One theory in the question is that Satan was Peter possessed by a demon and not just a demon but like the demon of demons. Was he possessed, or is there something else going on? So you want to give me a quick sense of what you think is going down?

Lily? He's using the title, the term Satan, one who is opposed or the adversary, and saying he's it goes along with your hindrance meter, a stumbling block, in another translation. Like, you're trying to get in my way. Stop getting in my way. Stop opposing me.

What Lily is observing is that the word, the name Satan, is not really his name. Like his mama didn't name him Satan. It's not a name. It's really the satan, if you were reading this originally. The satan, the accuser, the opposer. And so Lily's suggesting that maybe he's not really, maybe it's like lowercase Satan, if you will, right? That he's saying, stop getting in the way, Peter, rather than you're the devil of hell, Peter. You're kind of the distinction.

And so you will find commentaries that suggest that. And I think there's something to that: that Peter is coming in the spirit of opposition. I think that's excellent as a baseline. I think there's a little more going on. So anybody else have a sense of what's happening? Anybody think that he's possessed? Yeah, I don't think that what we're seeing here is like an exorcism per se. I don't think so.

Bill? I think Peter is just in the world. Okay. So he's saying that Peter is just in the world. He's thinking of this in a worldly way. So when Jesus rebukes him, he's basically casting — he's not exercising a demon but he's saying, Peter, you're thinking about this the way the world thinks about this. Stop doing that. Start thinking about it the way that I would. You're thinking about the things of man rather than the things of God.

Right? Okay, I think there's much to that too. Yeah, Darren? Along the same lines, I think it's pride. I think Peter's speaking from a place of pride, both in himself as a follower of Jesus and then trying to encourage Jesus to have some sort of false pride.

I think there's something to all of that, that Peter doesn't like this plan, and it's not a bad thing that he doesn't think Jesus should be crucified. That's not — I can get behind that argument. But where I think Peter goes off the rails a little bit is where it literally says Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. Think of the audacity, Jesus, you're at it again. Can you just, you know, like, there's something presumptuous for Peter to think that he can, kind of, get away with this.

Here's where I think I want you to — where I would, Kelly, and then we'll go to Matthew four. Kelly? Sue? That's Matthew four, very good. Yes. Okay. So you may not have heard everything that Kelly said, but she said exactly what I was going to say, and we didn't coordinate this. Okay?

So if you go to Matthew four, what you'll find is Jesus and the temptation, Jesus' temptation in the desert, in the wilderness. I think that what's happening in Matthew 16 is you are to see it as an echo of what happened in Matthew four. Okay?

So in Matthew four, the very essence of Jesus' temptation is Satan is saying to Jesus, Hey, guess what? I can make you king without the cross. Right? That is the very core of the thing, that Satan is saying, Hey, listen. Take a look at this. Will command — verse six. He'll command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone, meaning nothing bad will ever happen to you. You can throw us off a cliff and angels will catch you in the last minute because if God really loves you, he won't let anything bad happen to you, and you'll be safe. And Jesus rebuffs that. And Satan comes and he says in verse eight, "The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me."

That is what Jesus is heading towards. Full dominion, complete reign, absolute rule over the cosmos, and Satan is saying, tell you what, I know the Father is offering you that at the cost of a cross. I'll give it to you for free. Well, not for free exactly. Just bow down and worship me. Right? But there won't be a crucifixion in it. And in both of these, what Jesus is being offered here in the temptation is a pain-free life. What is more tempting than that? I'll give you everything you wanted, and it won't hurt a bit. And Satan is baiting him with that. And in all of those instances, Jesus says, Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to do that.

And then, a few chapters later, when Jesus is talking about the fact that he has chosen the path to the cross, Peter is like, no, no, no, no, no. Let's do this pain-free. And Jesus is like, this reminds me of something. Do you feel it? And that's what's going on here. So he is functioning in the sense of opposition here. It's so presumptuous of Peter to do this. But I think ultimately, you want to see this, that this is really what's going on — is there's this continued presence of Satan to tempt him. Now, one thing that Matthew doesn't say but Luke does, because the synoptics kind of give us parallels to this, Luke adds this really interesting little statement in Luke 4:13. It says, "When the devil had finished all this tempting," Luke 4:13. "When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him, until an opportune time."

The idea is that Jesus wasn't only tempted in the wilderness and not only tempted by the direct physical manifestation of Satan, but there were other times and other times and other times. And I think that Jesus was experiencing Matthew 16 as just one more of those opportune times. And he's like, just stop it. Get away from me. He's fleeing from this call to a pain-free life. Does that make sense? Okay. Kelly? Yeah. That's exactly right. The word Jesus uses, Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat. Right? Which is to say that the devil, in his stratagems, he knows who Jesus is. There's something going on here. And he also knows some of his high-level lieutenants. And so he is targeting Peter for sure and trying to use him for an evil purpose and succeeds to a certain extent, but then Jesus redeems that. Anyway, think those are some of the things that are going on here if we connect all the dots. Good enough? Speed round, baby. Okay, Jason. This might be a stretch, but it made me think of the dichotomy in Genesis 3 with the head and the heel. The dichotomy with what? Bruising the head versus bruising the heel. Oh, yeah. Sure. Behind me is Satan. It made me think of the heel portion. Right? Satan is healed. Yes. So that might be a stretch that that is an allusion to it, but it's an interesting connection. Yeah. So what Jason was talking about, what we call this the proto euangelion, if you want to be fancy. The proto evangelion, the proto gospel is what these words mean, in Genesis 3 is the first depiction that Satan will be defeated by defeating someone. Or rather, Jesus will be pierced while piercing the snake. There's this sense that this prophecy is given to the snake. It's all in the whole Adam. It's Genesis 3. You can place it in Adam and Eve. And the statement is made that someone will come that will crush the head of the snake but himself will be crushed. And this has been understood for centuries and centuries that this was the earliest hint of the gospel, that Jesus will destroy Satan by himself being killed. And Jesus knows that there will be no means to kill the snake apart from his own killing. That's how this thing's going to play out. And it would be lovely if there was another way, but there is no other way, and Jesus won't succumb to the temptation to falsely pursue one. So Matthew 16, let's go to the next one. How about this? This one's going to be from John. It says, Jesus says three times in the Gospel of John that believers will never die. It's John 8:10–11. Does this mean that for Christians, death is an illusion, like we don't really die?

I'll read you those three passages here and then we'll see what you think that means.

For God so loved the world... — John 3:16

I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. — John 8:51

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one could snatch them out of my hand. — John 10:28

And I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies. — John 11:25

And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? — John 11:26

The third one, John 11, gives us a little bit of a hint. He says, "If you believe in me, even though he dies, he'll live," and then says that he will never die. So all of those, taken at face value, could leave you with the impression that there's some promise that Christians won't get cancer, and die, that Christians won't get in car accidents and die, that Christians won't get old and die. That would be a reasonable inference from at least the first two of these, but I think we've been alive long enough to know that's not true.

Does that feel okay for you guys? Okay. This is why sometimes people will take pride in taking the Bible literally, and it may trouble you to know, but I hope it won't trouble you to know that I do not take the Bible literally. I read it reasonably. And it's usually obvious when it's using metaphorical language and when it's using literal language. And you do the same thing in your life all day long. You'll say all sorts of things that should be taken literally, like, you know, whatever. You tell your child, Please clean up your room. You probably mean that literally, right? But you might not mean it literally when you say Today. Okay, good.

That's good. You can say, Today is the best day ever. That doesn't mean literally in all of human history this is the pinnacle to which all has been marching. It just means that you found five dollars in your jeans or something. And we phase in and out of this all the time. But sometimes it's not as clear. We can tell when it's being just didactic, straight, literal meaning, but we also know the words have enormous semantic range. If I told you the Red Sox killed the Yankees last night, you wouldn't even just enter your mind to think that anybody was bleeding to death on the field. You would just know that they won. It's just effortless.

But sometimes it's confusing. And this could be one of those things. So what does it mean when Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Whoever believes in me will never die." What does that mean? Catherine? It means you won't be separated from God ever. Okay. So you're defining death there as separation from God. So maybe the body dies, but your soul will never be separated from him. This is possible. You're right.

Okay. So there's a conditioned statement to believers. That's possible. We can work with this as a theory. Don? First, and then we'll come to Chris. It's not unusual for the word sleep to be used for this death thing that we're talking about. Yes. And I think it may be for that very reason that we realize that when you sleep, you end up waking up at some point. Well, this death that we're talking about is like sleep because the one Jesus is talking about, you do wake up again.

Yes, okay. This is good. So let's stay here for a second. It's a strange thing. Certain conventions in the New Testament we have adopted, certain language that we've picked up, and that we will use, but there are certain phrases that for whatever reason we just don't ever do. And one of them is that the overwhelming majority of times that the Bible talks about the death of a Christian, they don't use the word death. Overwhelmingly. This is by a very, very wide margin. It describes Christians as being asleep.

I'll just rattle through a bunch of these for you. So Matthew 9, "The girl is not dead but asleep." Mark 5, "The girl is not dead but asleep." 1 Corinthians 11, "This is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep." 1 Corinthians 15, "After that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, although some have fallen asleep." 1 Corinthians 15 again: "Those who have fallen asleep in Christ will be lost apart from the resurrection." 1 Thessalonians 4: "Brothers, we don't want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or grieve like the rest of men." We believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not perceive those who have fallen asleep. Verse 5, "He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him."

Overwhelmingly, for some reason, we don't use this as a convention to talk about dead Christians, but the New Testament does over and over and over and over and over again. And the reason, which Don already set up, is the reason that we call Christian — we don't say that Christians are dead but they are asleep — is that they're going to wake up again. That we believe you say it every time we say the creeds. We believe in the resurrection of the dead. When we say that language, when we talk about the resurrection from the dead, we are not, we are emphatically not talking about Jesus' resurrection. That happened. We affirm this. But in the creeds, we are not talking about Jesus' resurrection. We're talking about Jennifer's resurrection. That the day is coming. Well, maybe Jesus will come back before she falls asleep. But if Jennifer falls asleep before the return of Christ, she will wake up. And this is the whole game, you guys. For us, the central promise of the Gospel without question is that we will be with him. God is the Gospel. He is the prize. He is the treasure that we receive.

The Promise of Eternal Life

Okay? But setting that aside as the chief, primary, uncontested good of the gospel is that you get God himself. I think the thing that is mentioned the most often in the New Testament is that you will live forever. Eternal life, which is a gift. You are not fundamentally immortal beings, but you will be granted immortality in Christ. That's what I think Jesus is going after here. That some will die and they will stay dead forever. Well, let me back this up. All will be raised. All will die, fall asleep. All will be raised. Some will die again, a death from which there is no waking, and some will live forever. And so when Jesus is saying things like that there is that you will never perish, I really think that he's talking about what John calls the second death. If you go to Revelation 20, verse 14 — and we can unpack it — it would take a little longer to fully unpack Revelation 20, but just to get to the punchline of that, Revelation 20:14 says, "Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." The lake of fire is the second death. He's saying that death will die, and those that are hidden in Christ will never die and will live forever with him. That's ultimately what's going on here.

So will you get cancer? Will you be in a car accident? Will something befall you? Yeah. Yep, probably. But I hope not yet. And maybe Jesus comes back first and will spare you of it. He's coming sometime. Maybe soon. That would be lovely. But if not, yeah, you will face the first death. But if you're hidden in him, you will not face the second death. You will be granted eternal life that you might enjoy him, who is the primary prize, forever and ever and ever and ever — an endless, increasing joy. You will not perish. You'll be made alive.

Kelly? Yeah.

The Conscious Experience After Death

Okay. So Kelly's asking a question of what's sometimes been called soul sleep. So let me show you one of these. We'll just go back to that list. The one that I read, 1 Thessalonians 5:10. Hear this: "He died for us so that whether we are awake, which and if we're going to be literal, whether you are alive like Landon is alive or asleep like my father who died ten years ago," okay, so we're saying whether you're awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

It seems to me that that suggests that those whose body has already broken down completely but are hidden in Christ, that are in him, that have placed their faith in him, are having a conscious, wakeful, if we can kind of use this metaphor, experience in his presence. Now it is possible that I'm mistaken about that. There is some ambiguity in the Biblical text about whether or not there is a conscious experience in what we call the intermediate state. Martin Luther, who's got pretty good chops, believed in the doctrine of soul sleep. He thought that when a person dies, i.e., falls asleep, their body goes into the grave and their soul goes into some state of suspended animation, waiting for the return of Christ and the resurrection from the dead. And I'm with Luther on this. We are waiting for the resurrection and to be with Christ. We will be raised from the dead when he returns. It's the three R's: his return, our resurrection, and the restoration of all things will be a concurrent moment. Right?

Luther thinks that the experience from when you die to when that happens is like boom, boom. You know, you fall asleep and you wake up and everything is better. He didn't think there was a conscious interval in between. And it's possible that he's right. But I think that he's wrong because there are chiefly three texts that seem to me to suggest a conscious experience in that intervening time:

Number one, Jesus is on the cross, and he's talking to two criminals crucified with him. At the beginning of it, they were both giving him grief. One of them watches the way that he's suffering and dying, and he comes around and he says to Jesus, "Will you remember me when you come into your kingdom?" And Jesus says to him,

"I tell you the truth. Today you will be with me in paradise." — Luke 23:43

That seems to suggest an immediate, conscious presence with him.

Second, Paul says in Philippians, "I desire to depart and be with Christ," which again seems to suggest a conscious presence. And third, Paul says, "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." All of those seem to me to make the case that there is some conscious but, hear this, disembodied experience. You don't get your body until he comes again and raises it from the dead. Right? So something is going to change. Whatever's going to happen in the five years, five hundred years, or whatever it is, between your death and his return, it will be something, and I think that you'll be awake for it. You'll be mindful. You'll experience it. But it is not, definitively — no, it's not the final state when he raises your body from the dead at his return to restore all things.

So yes, I think there's something here. Some very, very smart people have disagreed with me about that, and I might be wrong, but I think the case leans towards a conscious experience in the meantime. Okay? Good enough? Michael?

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

So the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? Yes. Do you see that as, you know, one side of the history of life? Yeah. Okay. So Michael is asking about Luke 16, which is often called the rich man and Lazarus. You get the opposite side of the story. So just as there is, like, there's life, the afterlife, and then the after-afterlife, right? There's like you die, Jesus comes back. And so we've — everything before you die, everything after Jesus comes back, and then we have this middle phase. There's really three phases. So far, so good? And Michael is saying, does Luke 16 suggest the same might be true for the lost? Right? That there's life and then there's a return of Christ. And when he returns, there's the misery of this final judgment, but then in the intervening period are they also awake during this time? And the answer is to that I know even less than I know about the top line.

Okay? Because Luke 16, no question, that Luke 16 seems to be painting a picture of yes, there is a conscious experience, and it's just really awful in Luke 16's story. Don't lose sight of the fact that Luke 16 is unambiguously phase two, not phase three. We know it can't be phase three because his brothers are still alive. Life is still happening up on the earth. It is not after the return of Christ at the end of all things. It's like, it's in this weird intermediate zone. And if you just take it at face value then it would suggest, yes, a conscious experience of suffering in the intermediate state.

Possibly true. The reason I'm uncertain about it and unconfident in it is that, number one, that story, Luke 16, is a parable. It has all of Luke's markers of a parable. It's not a historical event that has happened or will happen. It's a fictional story. Therefore, it might not be relaying — he might not be relaying what actually will happen. What undermines my confidence in the fictional story aspect is that Jesus told stories about real things. There's really such a thing as fish. There's really such a thing as wheat. So even though it's a fictional story, it might still be relaying something true.

But the point of the story is not to tell us what happens in the immediate state. If you read the story, it's not meant to be about the fate of the wicked and their judgment. It's really about how we treat the poor during our lives. So I’m like, yes, and no. Oh, no, it doesn't. I don't know. And once I'm done doing all the work to really understand Luke 16 and then I go to find my second data point, there is no second data point.

There is literally nothing else anywhere in the Scripture that describes the fate of the lost between death and resurrection. And I don't like drawing lines off a single point. There's simply nothing else anywhere in the Scriptures that tries to answer that question. So all that I have is a parable that kind of goes up one, down one, up one, down one. I don't know. I just don't know. I have no other data points.

The closest you can get is to look at Jude and maybe 2 Peter 2, which discuss that intermediate state for demons. It's not about human beings, so it's also a dangerous thing to extrapolate from what is true for, like, from a very — and not even all demons, just a very particular subset of demons, the ones we've talked about from Genesis 6, you remember that, which we will not do today. And so how do we draw from that? So all it leaves me at a place of, like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe, but I just — I don't know. So that was a long way. I could have just said I don't know, but I have a very informed sort of ignorance. All right. India?

The Descent of Christ and Abraham's Bosom

So I think what you're doing is you're probably drawing out of 1 Peter where it talks about Jesus going to preach to the spirits that were imprisoned during the days of Noah. Maybe? Is that what you're thinking?

The Abraham's bosom language, that's coming out of Luke 16. Yeah. So that's okay. So in Luke 16, the King James translation of Luke 16 talks about Abraham's bosom as if that's like a place, like Roanoke. Abraham's bosom is like the name of the town. And that's not accurate. What Luke 16 is really saying is that he was at Abraham's side. And I think that's a way to say that he is among the community of the righteous. And that's the Luke 16 passage. This idea that he's waiting for that Lazarus is in this place surrounded by, like, righteous believers. He's hanging out with the other dead Jewish believers, waiting for the restoration of all things. It's not like there's a town named Abraham's bosom. Okay? And the other thing, people will go to 1 Peter that talks about Jesus going to preach to the spirits in prison from the time of Noah. That's a whole big long thing that would be complicated to teach. But I will just say there that they're not human beings. Those spirits are demons. And it's the same thing that we were talking about with Michael.

Speed round is going off the rails. Okay. Yep. And as long as we're talking about data points, for the Christian: when Stephen dies, it doesn't describe him falling asleep. He sees heaven open. So it sounds like that’s describing sort of a conscious experience for Stephen. Yes. Well, okay. Yes, I think that's fair, although he's still not dead, right? So while Stephen is alive, see — famously he sees the Lord standing at the right hand of God, which I think is meant to picture that Jesus is honoring him. And I think you could extrapolate that there will be some conscious experience there, although we don't see anything once Stephen is actually dead. The camera stops rolling and we don't see what happens once Stephen is actually asleep. We don't see the camera keep rolling. Okay? So good enough for the moment. I'm going to keep moving because I want to try to at least hit as many of these as we can here. So you're going to die. And then you'll be made alive. And then you will never die forever and ever. And you will be his and he will be yours. That's what Jesus is saying in those passages. Okay?

Conclusion and Next Steps

Alright. Let's see. How about this? We'll go to this one. Jesus speaks of sending the Helper, the Advocate, the Spirit in John 15:26. But hasn't the Holy Spirit always been present since the beginning, like Genesis 1:2, which is pretty close to the beginning?

So that's a good question. So when Jesus says, "I will send the Spirit," how can he send the Spirit if the Spirit has always been present? What do you guys think about that? Anybody want to take a swing at that one?

The Spirit's going to fill us, but did he not fill anybody in the Old Testament? He was with them? What's that? It was intermediate in the New Testament. The language, they said, God, the Spirit of God came upon them, and then evidently, like Saul, he clearly left.

Yes, okay. So Michael's given the classic example in the Old Testament that Saul was filled with the Spirit until he wasn't. David sings, I think it's Psalm 51, I might be wrong. He says, "Take not your Holy Spirit from me." And that was a live threat. There was a real risk that the Holy Spirit could be taken from him because there wasn't a permanent indwelling presence.

So the Spirit of God, he was alive. He was there in the waters. He was doing all manner of things, but that doesn't mean that he was here. There is a passage — there are a couple of passages, maybe three, but maybe the most important one is in Ezekiel 36. So if you want to go to Ezekiel 36, I think what Jesus was talking about was he was saying Ezekiel 36 is coming. So go to Ezekiel 36 and you could start that passage. Really, it starts around verse 24, but I’m just going to start it in 26.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And then hear this: I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." — Ezekiel 36:26-27

And then Ezekiel 37 is going to unpack the enormity of this all. What you know of as the Valley of Dry Bones is really about the coming of the Spirit of God. And so yes, he has always been present. He was there hovering on the water. But there was a prediction made that someday, he would not just be among us but he would be in us. He would indwell us. And not only that, but as he indwells us, if we would yield to him, he would fill us.

And I think we've talked about that in this room. You can think of the metaphor of what wind gives to a sail on a boat. That wind is going to fill the sail, just like the Spirit of God will fill you. And when he fills you, he's going to give you power and direction, just like wind gives to a sail. As he fills you, giving you power and direction, he enables you to live his life. He is living in you to be and do what you are.

And the Old believers did not have that. The Spirit of God was there. I think the Spirit of God is active in the world, but he had not moved into us until Christ came to accomplish redemption.

Kelly? Just the word "consumption" helps. Because the Holy Spirit consumes you. Wouldn't they explain it that way? Yeah. You know, it takes over. Yeah, so he comes in, and so we absolutely have access to a different level of control, power to be consumed by him than we ever did, than they ever did in the Old Testament.

So what Jesus' offer here in — where are we at? — in John 15 is a real offer. Like, you know, you go to some stores and they're like, "Hey, everything's 30% off." And you're like, "It's Kohl's. It's always 30% off. You're lying." This was not that. This was new. This was different.

And it is probably the most significant thing that happens after the resurrection. That's the biggie. But from that point to this, the most important thing that happened in the world from the resurrection to today was the coming of the Spirit. It is, you cannot overstate the significance of it. It was massive, world changing, life altering phenomena.

Katherine? What interests me is that Jesus said, "If I go, then I will send the Holy Spirit to you." And I don't know, this is just me, like, beforehand it was the Father. Just — my father is always at work, and I don't say anything that the Father doesn't say. But this sort of pinpoints to me his abhorrence.

So what Katherine is kind of, like, what you're hitting on here is one of the oldest and most consequential theological debates. It's known as the Great Schism. But we think of the church splitting in two between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. But several hundred years prior to that, there was another split between the Western Church and the Eastern Church. The Orthodox Church is the Eastern Church. And they argued that the Spirit came from the Father, full stop. And the Western Church argued that the Spirit came from the Father and from the Son, that Jesus and the Father together are both, and you get into all your weird Trinity stuff here. But that the Spirit in some sense proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and that he is sent by both the Father and the Son.

And so it is both of the other two persons of the Godhead are sending the Spirit, which is why sometimes the Spirit of God is called the Spirit of Christ because he is his Spirit. But there is the idea, and I think the Western church happened to get that right, but of course I do, because I grew up in the West, so you can take that for what it's worth. But I think the textual evidence supports that the Spirit of God is not only ontologically, meaning in his very being, from both the Father and the Son. But the Father and the Son are both the givers of this gift to us, which perhaps you don't care about that. But that has been a huge, huge, massive debate in history.

Final Question: Church Wealth

Here's the last one. We'll do this really quick. If our church is rich, what does Jesus say about staying small and personal rather than large and rich? What threshold does Jesus give about church wealth? And I would say we are — our church is absolutely rich. Everyone in this room, you guys are the wealthiest people that have ever lived in the history of the world, by an incredibly wide margin. This is true for those of you that are like, "Have you seen my bank statement?" Yes. Well, no, I haven't. But nevertheless, you live in the land of the greatest opportunity, the greatest luxuries, the greatest wealth. We are absolutely wealthy, incredibly wealthy. And even here in this particular zip code — yes, there's a great deal of money, although we all exist on a bell curve. Are families here where there's multiple physicians in a family? And that's going to produce a greater level of income than someone who's, like, a teacher and a full-time parent. So there's a range. But across the spectrum, yeah, we're an incredibly wealthy people.

The question goes on to ask, what does the Bible say about saying small and personal rather than large and rich? And my answer to that is, I don't think that it says, be small, per se. The opposite of wealthy isn't small, and the way to be a good rich person isn't to be isolated or small. It's not our size, right? But rather that we would recognize, however much we have, whatever degree of wealth has been entrusted to us — given that it's a lot, no matter how you slice it — that all that we have is his. It's all from him, and everything that he's given us is to be turned back over to him to use for his good purposes.

You're allowed to pay your mortgage. You're allowed to go out to dinner. You're allowed to go on vacation. You're allowed to spend your money. But as you buy a house, and as you go on vacations, and as you eat your food, we are to do that endlessly conscious of his provision. He is the one. Deuteronomy 8: "He is the one who gives us the ability to produce wealth," and so confirms the covenant.

And there is a risk — I think the biggest risk, well, I'm not smart enough to know that this is exactly the biggest risk — but one of the biggest risks of being as wealthy as we are, and this is what Deuteronomy 8 talks about, is that we would forget the Lord. That's the threat. It is certainly an enormously big threat because it's easier to remember the Lord when you need him, when your circumstances are desperate. And the good news, bad news about money is that you can turn it into so many things. You can be in so many situations where you're like, well, you know what, we'll just write a check, and that will get better. And then we don't need him anymore.

And that is lovely except for how deceiving that function is because you do need him. I don't care how much money you've got, what your capacities are. There are things in your life that you might be blind to your neediness because you're able to forestall the bad things by writing a check. And you know this feature. Right?

And here's two outcomes. Number one, if you fail to see how much you need him, there's two really big risks. One, you might not cultivate the ability to have him. You just depend on your money to solve all your problems, and you're not cultivating this relationship. You're not seeking his face. And so all these things that are relatively insignificant and relatively temporary blind you from your deeper and your more eternal needs. And you're not cultivating this relationship which will meet our bigger needs, which might not be so obvious quite yet. That's a huge risk.

Second, that could become very haughty and arrogant toward those who don't have your financial means. They know how much they need him. It's obvious to them because they're not able to protect themselves with a wall of cash, like perhaps some of you are. So you look down your nose at these ones. And this is why God builds a church and he puts us together with hopefully multiethnic, multigender, multi-socioeconomic, all these things— because we need each other. Right?

It's perhaps more obvious why poorer people need wealthier people because maybe the wealthier people can buy me something that I need. That's more obvious. But you guys, if you understand that dynamic, do you understand the other? Where people that don't have the financial means, you need them too because they can help you see the true condition of your soul. They can help you see your true poverty that you're blinded to by your wealth.

So the great risk of being in a body that's wealthy is that we just make us dumb. We forget that we need him, and that has a number of different implications upon us. I think that's well. Okay? Fred? I'll give you one shot, and then we've got to get out of here.

I just want to say, one of the saddest parts — yes — is having concerts, no congregation, and no social. That’s right. Can all this wealth and all this beauty? And it's probably the case that once upon a time, these congregations were filled with people alive in Christ who built those cathedrals to his glory, right? That his name would be proclaimed. But eventually, what happened in many circumstances is the real heart left, and the trappings remained — and that's one of the great risks of being wealthy.

Conclusion and Next Week

Okay. All for now. Next week, we're going to start our "Through the New Testament" series. We're going to start in Luke. If you want to read that, thank you.