Acts 13:16-23

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In one of his missionary journeys, Paul found himself preaching in a synagogue, and here’s what he had to say to the listeners. We read from Acts chapter 13,

“Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about forty years he put up with[a] them in the wilderness. And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. (Acts 13:16-23 ESV)

Man, what’s fascinating about Paul’s preaching here is that in just several verses, he covers this wide swath of Israel’s history. Now Paul shows himself again and again to be just a master rhetorician. He’s able to construct a compelling argument to drive his audience to think and feel in a certain way, and ultimately in his preaching, to get them to behold with the greatest clarity: Christ.

So when he’s talking about all these Old Testament figures and events, we shouldn’t think the listeners are sitting there saying, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard all this before. No, these were the people and events, chiefly the works of God, that gave them and their entire culture meaning. The Old Testament was their story of salvation, where God was working through them not only to be a blessing, but to ultimately deliver the Messiah, the Savior of the world. So all of the meaning of their lives comes rushing forward as Paul recounts these events and these people. And where does Paul say this mountain of God’s work leads to? It leads to Jesus. Man, what an impact. What a place to land for him.

Now, you may be a little intimidated by the Old Testament. You may hear some of those names and not really know what they’re associated with. But we are the true continuation of the Old Testament people of Israel. We are God’s people, the New Testament church. The Old Testament really is a cliffhanger. It doesn’t find its completion. The promised Messiah has not come. The final atonement for sin, that all those animal sacrifices depicted has not been made. The king who had ruled over David’s house forever, over God’s people, has not yet taken his seat on his throne. All of this was waiting for Jesus. Now the Old Testament believers were just like us. They had faith in a Savior who would come. Just as we have faith in the Savior who has come. But they trusted in him in his blood and his righteousness no less than we do.

So, dear friends, these are your spiritual ancestors. If you’re a Christian like me who doesn’t ethnically come from the Jewish people. These are your heroes of faith. These are proof that as God was faithful to them, he will be faithful to you. That as God could use people, then as sinful and weak as they were to accomplish his great purposes so he can work through sinful and weak people just like us. And let me end with a very practical tip. If you’re new to the faith, unfamiliar with the Bible, maybe you’ve been a lifelong Christian, but the Old Testament seems difficult because it’s so long and complex and the history is unfamiliar. Get yourself a Bible written for children, or maybe teenagers. Something that kind of boils the stories down, still gets the substance across, and introduces you to all the main characters and events, but get one with pictures. I’ve gone through a lot of education, read a lot of dense material. Sometimes I love nothing more than sitting down with like, an illustrated atlas and looking at the pictures as I read the captions. There’s no shame in using a book with pictures.

And let this be your gateway into the Old Testament, that when you hear these names and think about how God has orchestrated all things for your salvation and for the salvation of the world, that you also would be swept up in this history, swept up in this meaning and purpose, and that it would land you as it landed Paul’s hearers right at the feet of Jesus.

Ephesians 5:15-16

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Saint Paul writes in Ephesians five, verses 15 and 16.

Look carefully, then, how you walk not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15-16)

Three quarters of a second, three quarters of a second at best, is how fast it takes, studies suggests, to react to something in front of your car. Something runs out in front of your vehicle, an animal, maybe there’s an accident up ahead. It takes a half second for your brain to process 2/10 of a second for your foot to move. Now, in the course of our lives, three quarters of a second seems like nothing. But what a difference that can make. What a life can be changed in three quarters of a second in that situation depending on which way it goes.

This time of year we think about Jesus at Christmas, his birth, New Year, which coincides with his circumcision this first time when he’s really explicitly obeying the Law of Moses and shedding his blood as a human in the flesh. We think about his life as so small, so limited. Even the 33 years of his life is less than half of what many people live today. But we claim that this life has reconciled us to God. That there is an infinite treasure of righteousness to cover our lives of sin and make us acceptable to God. So we have to conclude that Jesus’ life, every moment of it, has this kind of compressed, overrated importance to redeem us. And that word redeem, remember, means to buy back, to pay a ransom for someone, to secure someone for yourself. And this is what Jesus has done, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.

Your sins of the past year, those three quarters of a second when a wrong word was spoken, a wrong, hateful glance was given. A decision was made that you came to regret. All of those moments have Jesus’ righteousness over them. Have his blood to buy you back from the domain of sin, and to purchase you for God. To call you righteous and forgiven, and now one of God’s children.

But the sense of redeem also can be to take something off of a bad path and claim it for a good path to change the direction of a life. And this is also what Jesus has done. You look at the next year, and without faith in Jesus it would be nothing but sin. It would be nothing but displeasing to God. Isaiah says, even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) Paul says, anything that does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23) But with faith in Christ and with His Spirit, this new year is given into our hands to redeem something that could be used for evil is now able to be used for good.

Paul says, look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. Intentionally living in line with your faith to redeem the time and bend it towards God’s purposes. I mentioned how Jesus’ life, and the moments of it seem to have this compressed importance and power. I want you to consider how the moments of your life have more of a compressed importance and power than we would give them credit for. How maybe the momentary interactions you have have a much greater impact on the people you’re interacting with than you would think. Of course, the patterns and decisions of each of our days and moments ends up becoming the pattern and example of our entire lives. So sure, the days are evil, but dear friends, our risen Lord Jesus has overcome evil. And now he gives this year, with all of its seconds back into your hands to redeem for good.

Luke 13:6-9

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I hope your year is full of manure.

That’s not something you’re going around wishing people as New Year comes up, or maybe has just past. You might even expect a more colloquial version to be something enemies lob at each other. But this is what we find in God’s Word. There’s a tree that has unrealized potential and what’s prescribed to it? Stinking, smearing, filthy manure with flies buzzing around it. This is what’s going to make the tree grow. Here’s what our Lord says in Luke chapter 13.

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

In this parable, the tree is the human individual, you or I. And the question is, have you lived up to your potential? No matter how bold or confident you are, the fact that you have nagging regrets and insecurity, says you have not lived up to the standards you set for yourself, the standards the world sets for you. And God puts a sharper point on this. He says that there is a more basic fatal flaw that has impacted every aspect of our human nature. This is sin that keeps us from attaining the level of holiness, perfection that God demands in line with his will, but also from attaining this level of wholeness, right relationship with other people, and a flourishing life in the world as we were intended to.

Now the owner and the gardener, I would say, represent these two characteristics of God. The owner represents God’s justice, and this is communicated to us in what we call God’s law, his commands, his standards for us, and his threats that there are going to be consequences and punishments if we don’t measure up. Here’s what the owner said. For three years now I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree. There’s the standard. And I have found none. It’s failed to measure up. Cut it down. There’s the consequence. Why even let it use up the soil? But there is another impulse in God the gardener who shows patience. And you could even say mercy toward the tree. Sir, leave it alone this year also until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it produces fruit next year, fine. But if not, then cut it down. The owner agrees with the gardener’s plan, at least implicitly.

The gardeners plan is borne by what resources they’ve committed to the tree already. So what do they do? They commit even more to make it bear fruit. God has given his Son to offer up his life, to shed his blood, to give his human righteousness to us so that we could be his beloved children, cleansed of our sins by his blood, covered in his righteousness. We could say that we are in this vineyard of God’s church. I don’t believe the vineyard is the world, throughout Scripture almost exclusively, the vineyard is representative of God’s people, people in God’s kingdom. Here we have the rain of God’s Word that does declare us forgiven of all of our sins. Here we have the sunshine of Jesus’ righteousness, always there to bring new life where we have lived in defiance of God’s will.

But what about the manure? Well, Scripture is also very clear that God allows afflictions and sufferings, sometimes even persecution, to discipline and train us. Now like manure, this stuff is not pleasant. Sometimes it’s repulsive to us and to the world, but it might be just what we need. Keep in mind those regrets and insecurities from the past, and connect them to the challenges and suffering you may face in this new year. That suffering and challenge may be, in part, God’s answer to the regrets and unrealized potential of the past. That these afflictions, as difficult as they are, are fertilizing our compassion, our empathy, our wisdom, our insight, our humility, the fervency of our prayer.

Finally, I don’t want you to be afraid when you hear the owner threatening to chop down the tree after a year, it’s not as if you don’t get your act together in your Christian life in this year, God’s going to cut you off from his grace. No. The entire time of our lives in this perpetual patient year. And I pray that this year would be not only laden with grace, but with all the manure that you need to grow.