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How to Give Your Testimony

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INTRODUCTION

The message today is on being ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you, and in particular, being ready to give your testimony. By God’s grace we are seeking to live together in this place and time such that we provoke questions and accusations, and we want the center of our answer to be a testimony of Christ in us.

THE TEXT

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: having a good conscience; that whereas they speak evil of you, as of evil doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ” (1 Pet. 3:15-16).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The first task of preparing to give your testimony is to sanctify the Lord God in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). You most revere God there. You must honor Him as Your Lord and Master. It is that reverence that drives you readiness to give an answer (1 Pet. 3:15). Notice that the center of our answer is a “hope” that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). Christian hope is not light and fluffy optimism. Rather, Christian hope is a joyful, gritty patience expectant for glory (Rom. 5:1-5, 15:4, 13). The answer we give is to be done with meekness and fear, which is what grows when you set the Lord apart in your heart (1 Pet. 3:15). Having a good conscience doesn’t mean sinless, but it does mean forgiven, clean, and put right (1 Pet. 3:16). And you know you’re doing this correctly when their accusations only fall back on themselves in shame (1 Pet. 3:16). If you are feeling shame, either you don’t have a clean conscience or else you don’t understand how God makes you clean (1 Jn. 1:9). And remember “a good conversation in Christ” has never stopped people from making false accusations (1 Pet. 3:16). Jesus said that the false accusations come precisely because you follow Christ (Mt. 5:11, Jn. 15:18-21).

SANCTIFY GOD IN YOUR HEART

As you know, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). It is holy space because God lives there. But our bodies are not generic temples, they are unique and varied. And think about your body as the shape of your entire life. That shape comes from God working particular stories of grace in each one. This is Paul’s testimony: “And last of all he [Jesus] was seen of me also, as one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:8-10, cf. 1 Tim. 1:14-16). The first task of sanctifying God in your heart is simply submitting to Him as a holy God, admitting your sin, and turning to Christ in principle. But then you have to do the same thing in particular with everything in your life: your parents, your childhood, your vocation, your spouse, your children, and everything else, including your failures, weaknesses, trials, and sin. Your testimony is telling how the holy God has been at work, how you have contributed sin, how Christ has forgiven and restored, and all by His grace in order to display His grace in you.

IN PRAISE OF BORING TESTIIMONIES

You have heard us say before that we are aiming for boring testimonies for our children in our community. What we mean by that is that by the grace of God, we want our children growing up in the faith of their parents and embracing it, with faithfulness passing from generation to generation like runners in an Olympic relay race. By faith and God’s great grace, we want our children growing up in Christ, which will often mean that they don’t remember the exact moment when they first trusted in Him. And by that same grace, we pray that our children will never know a time when they were not walking with God. It is glorious to always walk with God, to have no rebellious phases. Some Christian traditions so emphasize the dramatic conversion story (biker gang rebellion followed by Damascus Road experience), that it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And kids who grow up only hearing those kinds of conversion stories wonder how they could possibly be a Christian since they haven’t even started selling drugs yet. But Scripture is full of ordinary covenant conversions: John the Baptist was filled with the Spirit in his mother’s womb (Lk. 1), David learned to trust God on his mother’s breast (Ps. 22:9), Samuel came to know the Lord as young boy (1 Sam. 3), and Timothy was taught the scriptures from his youth (2. Tim. 3:15). We want a culture of cultivating and encouraging faith.

BUT NOT REALLY BORING

Nevertheless, and even celebrating the ordinary “boring” testimonies of our children, we really must run back around the other side and insist that there are no boring testimonies. This is because amount of sin is not what makes a testimony amazing or powerful, but rather, the amount of grace. How much grace was needed for your salvation? Every son or daughter of Adam deserved death and Hell, and therefore, every Christian was purchased with the infinite price of the blood of Jesus. There is nothing boring about that. And when we say “grace,” we mean the presence of the Father beaming at the work of His Son in you, sealed and secured by the Spirit. The Triune God is the most extravagant, adventurous, creative, brilliant, gracious Being of all. If He is present, nothing is boring, nothing is ordinary. To sanctify this God in your heart is to see the presenceof this God in your life. Every salvation is also a salvation to an unspeakable glory. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9). The process of a Red Wood sapling growing up into a towering tree may not look explosive, dramatic, or glorious in any given snapshot, but if you could see the whole thing from God’s perspective – all the atoms firing over decades, it would make you close your mouth with awe. And that is the hope that is in you.

CONCLUSION

Everyone in this room who knows Jesus has a testimony of His grace. For many of you, it is a testimony of growing up surrounded by the grace of loving parents, sibling, teachers, and friends. But do not take that grace for granted. Perhaps you do not remember when you first believed, but you should absolutely remember times when you have believed more. Maybe you don’t remember the first time you were forgiven, but you absolutely should remember many subsequent times when you were convicted of sin, confessed, and were cleansed. Maybe you don’t remember the first answered prayer, but do you remember the many others? Maybe don’t remember the first time His word encouraged you or helped you during a trial, but do you remember many others? That is your testimony, that is the hope that is in you. Christ is in you.

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Truth & Lies (Good Friday 2021)

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Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? (Jn. 18:37-38).

And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free (Jn. 8:32).

Freedom and truth go together, hand in hand. Freedom is not merely lack of constraint or the power of choice. Because it if were, truth would have no bearing on freedom. You wouldn’t need truth to be free. But Jesus says that you cannot be free apart from the truth. The truth is what makes a man free. And therefore, lies are what enslave. Lies are captivity. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge…” (Is. 5:13).

The truth is what makes people free because then they may act and live in a way that corresponds to reality – the world as God actually made it. Truth is solid ground. Truth is true all the time, everywhere. Truth is granite. It holds fast. Truth reaches all the way to heaven. If something is really true, it is even true to God. Francis Schaeffer called this “true truth.” It’s true all the way the down, all the way up, all the time, everywhere, absolutely. So we may build on it. We may live in light of it. In this way, we may say that freedom is simply living honestly before God.

But a lie wants the world to be different than it actually is. If you lie about what happened yesterday, you are lying about history. If you lie about who you are, what she said, what he did, what you have done, what belongs to you, you’re attempting to twist the world into your control. A lie lays claim to rule the world. It may be a very small lie, a very small part of the world. But in that one place, a lie declares war on God and His world. And you cannot start only a very small war with the Ruler of the Universe because to declare war, any war against God is fundamentally to declare war on all of it.

A lie is also a false claim to absolute truth. It’s false, but it necessarily collides with God and His truth. Therefore, lies divide. And lies divide in the same way that truth divides. Either you believe or you do not. A lie makes an objective claim that people will either live according to it or not, just like the truth. But a lie hobbles you, hampers you, and ultimately enslaves you. In this way, a lie is always necessarily violent and coercive and full of malice.

“A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin” (Prov. 26:28). While God often restrains the impact of many lies, they all fundamentally are at war with God and His world and therefore are always ultimately attempts to ruin everything.

You may have seen the story on CNN this last week reporting on Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive orders in South Dakota prohibiting biological males from playing in women’s athletics. Quite apart from whatever is going on in South Dakota, in the article, the CNN reporter wrote: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” And as far as I know the writer still has his job at CNN, as do his bosses.

There are of course the surface lies about whether it’s possible to know someone’s gender identity at birth and whether there has been any consensus on assigning sex. But there are other lies underneath those lies: the assumption that a gender “identity” is even a thing to be discerned or that sex is something that is “assigned.” But underneath those lies are additional lies about the glory of male and female, the glory of the image of God. And beneath it all is a seething hatred of God, His image, and His world. But what is ironic is that all of these lies are begging for submission, begging for consensus. There is not consensus about whether someone is a boy or a girl, he claims, beckoning everyone to agree with him.

Lies always invite belief. The truth invites belief and freedom; every lie invites belief and slavery. But of course lies do not advertise the slavery part. Lies are almost always full of flattery. If you eat this fruit, you will become like god, knowing good and evil.

“For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue” (Ps. 5:9). Speaking of Israel, Psalm 78 says, “Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues.” Flattery and lies go together. But the flattery and the lies are always a set up: “A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet” (Prov. 29:5).

The set up is this: if you don’t go along with my lie, there will be consequences, maybe initially just awkwardness, no friendliness, no compliments, no flattery. And if it’s just one person, that can be odd or challenging, but what we are witnessing in our day is the multiplication of lies on such a massive scale and widespread belief in them, such that now, to not believe the lies is to be considered a threat to the peace and unity of society. If you don’t believe that a man can put on a dress and become a woman, if you don’t believe that two men can be married, you are now a threat. You are a threat to the attempt to remake the world with lies. You are a threat to the consensus.

And many Christians say, why won’t they just leave us alone? You can do your thing over there, and we will do ours. But this is to radically misunderstand and underestimate the claims of truth and lies. And as the lies multiply, the liars frequently understand far better than the truth-tellers, that lies are absolute claims. Lies are necessarily absolute claims because they contradict God’s absolute truth.

This is why Christians must hate all lies. All lies, all deception, all falsehood is an attack on the living God, His world, and His people. Liars may not be consciously aware of the full extent of their rebellion, but it is there, all the same. Lies aim at the destruction of everything. To put up with a little bit deception is like putting up with a little bit of poison, a little be of nuclear fallout, a little bit of murder.

So tonight, we gather with Christians throughout the world to celebrate and proclaim the truth. We gather to sing and pray and hear once more the Truth of the crucifixion of the Son of God. But this is not just a small truth. It is the Truth, the truest Truth of them all. That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And that Son, who is the Truth of God, willingly laid His life down for the sins of the world. The Truth became a Man so that the lies of men might condemn Him, slander Him, mock Him, beat Him, and kill Him. And that True Man let them do it because He intended to take all their lies, all our lies and crush them.

If you are a descendent of Adam and Eve, you have been born into a world full of lies. And you have trafficked in them from time to time, whether in the world around you, whether in your own heart, or in your words, or in what you have been willing to think or do or believe. And that world of lies is not freedom. It is only chains, and snares, and threats, and ruin.

But Jesus came to set you free. He came to set this world free. He did not come to flatter you. He did not come to tell you lies. He came to tell you the honest truth, which is that you are the problem, your sin and rebellion are the problem, and you have committed treason against God and you deserve to die. But the truth is also that God is love. He is not the love of Hallmark movies or Disney. He is not the fake love that is only sentiment and feeling and emotion. He is not the fake love of mask mandates only wanting everyone to feel good or look like He was doing good. No, He is true love, truthful love, honest love, and He came to actually do good. He came to do what needed to be done, not what anyone thought He should have done. He came to take to the penalty for your sin. He came to bear God’s wrath against your rebellion. He came to tell the truth about your lies. He came to suffer what you deserved.

And so He did. And it is finished. If you look to the Truth on the Tree, the Lamb of God, you can see your sins there. You can see all of your lies there. You can see your guilt and shame there, dead on the cross. And you should also notice that Jesus is no longer there. He is alive. All of this is true. It is true all the way down, and all the way up, and all the way into the throne room of God, now, and every day, and forever. And all the lies in the world cannot change it. Nothing can take it away. Nothing can separate you from that love.

And so, all of this is why Christians must not put up with lies: whether pronouns, or history, or creation, or sex, or marriage, or money, or Christ. Christians may not go along with any lies. Lies are at war with God. Lies are at war with His Cross, with His Christ, with His church. And so we are at war with all lies because we have been made free by the truth.

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Forgiveness for All Nations (Palm Sunday 2021)

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INTRODUCTION

What’s wrong with this world? What do we really need? The central answer of the Bible is that our problems all flow from the problem of sin, and therefore, what the world fundamentally needs is forgiveness. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He went straight into the temple. And then over the next few days, He keeps returning to the temple: first clearing it out, then preaching and teaching in it. Jesus insists that the point of His life is to fulfill what the temple always pointed to: forgiveness for sins.

THE TEXT

And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.

12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: 13 and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. 14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; 16 and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. 17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves. 18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. 19 And when even was come, he went out of the city.

20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. 21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. 24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses (Mk. 11:11-26).

Summary of the Text

Having ridden into Jerusalem on palm branches and shouts of ‘Hosanna!’ Jesus went directly into the temple and looked around (Mk. 11:11). The next day, Jesus is on His way back into Jerusalem, sees a fig tree without any fruit, and pronounces a curse on it (Mk. 11:12-14). The cleansing of the temple comes next: driving everyone out, overturning the tables of the money changers and pigeon-sellers, and not allowing anyone to walk in the temple for most of the day (Mk. 11:15-16). He was also preaching and teaching on Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7 during much of this time and held a rapt audience of many, such that the chief priests and scribes were powerless to do anything (Mk. 11:17-19). Coming back into Jerusalem the next morning, the cursed fig tree has withered to its roots, and Peter points it out (Mk. 11:20-21). To which Jesus replies that Peter should have faith in God, and he may even command this mountain to be cast into the sea. In fact, whatever any disciple asks in prayer will be granted, particularly forgiveness for others, so that God will also forgive all their sins (Mk. 11:22-26).

The Problem

Beginning at the end of our text, the problem is forgiveness of sins. In the Old Testament, God established a system of sacrifice by which God promised to forgive the sins of Israel (Lev. 4:20ff, 1 Kgs. 8:30ff). And when this system was fully functioning, it was to be the kind of light that would draw the nations, so that they might also receive forgiveness (Num. 15:26, 1 Kgs. 8:41-43). The temple was supposed to be a “house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7), and specifically keying off of Solomon’s temple dedication prayer, prayers for forgiveness. The sacrifices of the tabernacle and temple were a sign to Israel and the whole world that God forgave sins. But what was happening at the time of Jesus was what had happened in the days of Jeremiah: people went through the motions of going to worship, chanting slogans about the temple of the Lord (Jer. 7:4). The problem was not with the temple, the problem was with the people sinning up a storm and then going to the temple as an act of empty ritual and formalism. They turned the temple into a “den of thieves” because they brought their sins with them like stolen treasure – with no intention of giving them up, much less seeking forgiveness for any of it (Jer. 7:11). God says that when this happens, He will destroy the temple because it’s become a place where sin is being spread instead of forgiven (Jer. 7:12-14).

Leprous Houses & People

Wound through this episode is a fair bit of Old Testament allusion and symbolism. The fact that Jesus looks around the temple the first evening and then returns the next day refusing to let anyone do anything in the temple is reminiscent of the duties of a priest for a leprous house (Lev. 14:34ff). Leprosy in the Old Covenant wasn’t just a skin disease, it seems to have been a fairly broad category of things that made people and objects ceremonially unclean, which usually just meant they needed to wash and wait until evening before they could offer any sacrifices (although some forms of uncleanness could last longer). The general point of the ceremonial system was to teach Israel that their entire lives mattered to God, and they needed to give thought to how every detail needed to honor Him. Every detail is either pleasing to God and under His blessing and growing life, or else it isn’t pleasing to Him and in some way it’s actually spreading death. In the Old Covenant, washing could make you clean, but you were constantly becoming unclean again. Uncleanness was always contagious. The really striking thing about the New Covenant is that Jesus comes and He’s constantly touching or being touched by unclean people, but instead of becoming unclean, Jesus cleanses the unclean (cf. Mk. 5:27-34, Mt. 8:2-3). In Jesus, cleanness has become contagious. But here Jesus is essentially declaring the temple “unclean”.

This brings us to the cursed fig tree. Fig trees were among the signs that the land of Canaan is a good land (Dt. 8:8), and so the phrase “every man under his own fig tree” became a common expression in Israel for the good life (1 Kgs. 4:25, 2 Kgs. 18:31, Is. 36:16). And in the prophets, the fig tree became a common image for the people of Israel (Jer. 8:13, Hos. 2:12, Joel 1-2). In context, the fig tree in our passage represents Israel and is parallel to the temple. Just as Jesus “inspects” the temple and finds it unclean, so too, when Jesus comes looking for fruit on the fig tree, He is displeased. The curse is also the same: an empty, destroyed temple is the same as a withered, fruitless tree of Israel. And given all of this, it does not seem likely that Jesus changes the subject when He tells Peter that believing prayer will uproot “this mountain” and cast it into the sea. Which mountain? They are on their way to the temple on Mount Moriah.

Conclusions & Applications

And this brings us back to the central problem: if that temple mount is removed and destroyed, how will Israel and the nations be forgiven? Without the sacrifices, priests, and temple, how can they know if they are actually forgiven? Jesus tells Peter and the other disciples: forgive others. But how does that help us?

We sometimes hear these commands/warnings and wonder if Jesus is veering somewhat close to some kind of works-righteousness (e.g. if we do our part, God will do His…?), which can sometimes make us doubt (e.g. Have I really forgiven…? Am I really forgiven…?) But this radically underestimates the task of forgiving sins. To forgive is to release, to set free, to erase the debt of sin. But how can any mere human actually release another human from sin, which properly speaking requires death? Remember, this was one of the great objections of the scribes and Pharisees: no one can forgive sins except God alone (Mk. 2:7). And they were right. Only God can forgive sins. And that was only possible through the shedding of blood (Heb. 9:22). But even the blood of bulls and goats couldn’t actually take away sins; it had to be the blood of a perfectly obedient man, who could truly represent us (Heb. 10:4, 10-22).

Christian forgiveness is a promise not to hold the sins of another against them on account of the blood of Christ. In other words, whenever a Christian forgives someone, they can only do so by holding up the blood of Jesus, which is your forgiveness as well. If you say you cannot forgive someone, you are in effect saying, “there is no bled shed for this.” But if there is no blood shed for their sin, there is no blood shed for your sin. If you do not forgive, you cannot be forgiven. But when you see the blood of Jesus shed for you, there can be no doubt that it is enough for them. But no one has ever forgiven or been forgiven by humanistic good will.

We live in a sin infested world. And having rejected the blood of Jesus, we have turned to all manner of schemes and theories to try to wash away our sin, like trying to use soap on tattoos, and so our culture is quickly becoming a foul cesspool of guilt and shame and uncleanness. But we proclaim the blood of Jesus that cleanses every stain. We proclaim the blood of Jesus which is more potent that the most heinous sin, and His righteousness which is more contagious than all the filth in the world.

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