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"Law & Prophet" - Sermon by Caleb CampbellI don't know how they count these things, but I've heard that the Bible is the most sold book in the West. I didn't go around and count. I've just heard that many times right in a couple of spaces, but what I do know is that here in North Phoenix, it is very popular. A lot of people own Bibles. But even for those of us that are still trying to figure out what we think about Jesus, odds are you've seen a Bible. You've been around the Bible. Maybe you even own a Bible. Some of us, we've bought Bibles for ourselves or we've gone to like bible.com and downloaded the Bible. Some of us have like inherited a family Bible. Do you guys anybody have a family Bible that's been passed down for generations? I've got one. It's this big and it has a wood cover with all these etchings on it. It's that thick, and when I'm upset with my children, I tell them I'm going to give them the Word. Actually, I don’t, because it's a family heirloom and that would ruin it. So, we don't do that. For others of us, people have bought us Bibles because they felt like we needed it, and those people need to mind their own business. If you guys know what I'm talking about, right?By the way, if you don't own the Bible and would like one, please, feel free to take one of the Bibles off the table in the back, as our gift to you. The Bible is popular. It's one of the most popular books, but it's also one of the most like underused. And here's what I mean. Usually in our community or in our culture, when the Bible gets used, it's usually a verse here and there. Maybe it's embroidered on something nice. Or a politician or someone giving a speech will reference something. Still others may have even have a tattoo or something. But usually, it's like one or two verses, and we kind of take it and then we do what we want with it. For many of us, we find that it's difficult to really have a steady diet of engaging with the Bible, and one of the reasons why, I think, is because oftentimes we're not even sure how it's supposed to work, what it's supposed to do. In fact, for those of you that are familiar with the Bible, have you ever found it to be confusing? Yeah, like very confusing. Yeah, very confusing. OK? There's a lot of stuff that's confusing about the Bible.Also, have you ever been disappointed in the Bible? Here's what I mean. Maybe you've had a problem that you're trying to solve, or you've had a deep feeling, or you're really confused about something. You think, “I know what I'll do. I'll go read the Bible today.” Then you read the Bible and can’t find the answer. Has that ever happened to you?I remember being a young man, and I was thinking “Should I get married to my (now) wife? So, I was you know, praying, “Lord, should I ask Lori to marry me?” You know the Bible, tell me if I should marry Lori. “When you are encamped against your enemies, be careful to avoid anything offensive.” Not helpful, right? So sometimes we're just not even sure how the Bible is supposed to work.Some of us think it's like a car manual, where we look when there's the little light on the dashboard and we're like, oh, there's a problem. So, I going to read the car manual, but then you read the Bible like a car manual. It doesn't work that way. Then you think, well, the Bible is kind of like history. It’s a history book. Then you read the Bible and you realize that a ton of it kind of sounds like history, but there's a lot of weird stuff going on. And also, there seems to be this overarching theme. When we approach the Bible, we want to have a sense of what it's supposed to do.Here's what an early Jesus follower said. His name was Paul, and he wrote a letter to a guy named Timothy. This is what he says about the scriptures. He says the scriptures Bible are designed to make one wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus. There are multiple parts to that, but I just want to notice that the Bible is designed to make us what? Wise. The Bible is wisdom literature, and the Bible is going to shape us in ways that maybe we don't even expect. So, if we're approaching the Bible, we want to make sure that we're not projecting onto the Bible our own expectations of what it ought to do. Rather, we're going to receive what it wants to do to us or what God, through the scriptures, wants to do to us. And one of the things that God wants to do to us through the scripture is to make us wise. The Bible is ancient wisdom literature, and one of the things that we're going to say may sound confusing to many of us. We may be like, “OK, what I don't even understand this”So let me just give you a frame to think about not only the Bible but also the whole world, yourself and God, OK? If you've ever had glasses … I wear contacts. But when I take my contacts out, I wear glasses and the glasses have frames on them, right? And within the frame, there are lenses, right? OK, very good. You guys are winning at the trivia game. So, the lens frame -- whatever metaphor you want to use -- I see the world through that lens. The glasses go on, and I can see things more clearly, if the prescription is correct. And so, when I put on the lens, I see the world in a certain way. Hopefully it's adding clarity and fidelity. So, the lens that we're going to look at today in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 9 is what I think is the critical lens that the Bible points to. All the Bible points to help us to frame the world, to frame our understanding of God, to frame our understanding of ourselves.And then what we're going to do is, I'd like to argue that from this text in Mark Chapter 9, then I want to try to apply it, or at least share with you how I've been applying it this week, especially over the last couple weeks. So, so let's get into the text.This is the gospel of Mark Chapter 9. Before this particular section of Scripture, the end of chapter eight of the Gospel of Mark, there was this pinnacle, powerful moment in Jesus’s life where he says to his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter says, “You are the Messiah, you're the Christ. You're the chosen one. You're the Redeemer. You're the savior, the one who's going to save your people. You're the chosen one, you're the Messiah.” Then Jesus says, look, we're going to Jerusalem, and from this point in time on in the Gospel of Mark, they're headed towards Jerusalem.So, he says, look, we're going to Jerusalem and I'm going to be turned over into the hands of evil people, and they're going to crucify me. They're going to bury me, and then three days later I will rise from the dead. OK, so Jesus says we're going to Jerusalem, and what's going to happen to Jesus? He's going to die. Now, here's the deal. Peter does not like that. Remember, Peter was the one who said you're the Messiah, you're the chosen one. And Peter takes Jesus aside to say, “Jesus, no. May it never be.” Then Jesus says these really like hard, hard words to Peter. He says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” Right, get behind me, Satan. You're thinking about the things of this world, not the things I've got. So that's literally just happened.If you want to know more about that, just go on our website dot church and listen to or read last week's sermon. So, at this point you get Jesus taking just a few of his disciples, and we're going to pick up the text. If you're following along, you should have it in your handouts. If you're joining us online, you just go to bible.com and again, we're in the Gospel of Mark Chapter 9.OK, so here's what we want to do. Remember that we're looking at a lens or a frame through which to see all the scripture, to see God, to see ourselves, to see the world. And I believe that in this text Jesus is going to frame this up for us as well, as well as tell us what the Bible is all about. Think we can do that in the next few minutes? Your confidence is inspiring.After six days, Jesus took Peter, James and John and LED them up to a high mountain by themselves to be alone. *** (Verse 2)*** TV timeout. Have you guys ever been to a concert and then the band starts playing another band’s song? Just ever have you guys gone to concerts? Yeah, OK, maybe you don't go to concerts. Again, you know when you're at the club, and the DJ is laying down some fresh beats. The DJ is going to take music from different musicians. He is going to take the backbeat from one musician, lyrics from another, the singing from another, and he's going to mix it all up. And he's going to mix in a bunch of different samples of other artists’ material. That's now being presented in a fresh way. You guys know about this idea. Whether it's like a cover band or a cover song -- where a new band covers old material, or it's a DJ, mixing different musicians, different artists’ pieces together -- they are taking old work and presenting it in a fresh new way for our delight and enjoyment. That's what musicians are doing.Authors will also do this. Biblical authors are doing this all the time, especially in the newer testament. They're mixing, they're sampling, they're riffing. They're taking these little bits and pieces and they're putting them into their whatever they're writing, not only for our enjoyment, but also to help us. So, sometimes there's going to be details in the text and you're thinking, “Why is that detail there?” And it's actually a little linked to a deeper story or to an older story, and we're supposed to read the current thing that we're reading in light of all the connections that it makes to the previous story. OK, watch this.After six days, six days after Jesus proclaimed said he was the Messiah? After Peter did what? You know – he tried to lead him -- and Jesus says get behind me, Satan. You're thinking about the things of this world, not the things of God. It was six days after that, and Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up to a high mountain. Now here's the deal. When you’re playing Bible trivia, and the question is “What is the location?” What’s the location that is most often mentioned as places where people meet God? Is it the valley? Is it the pub? Or is it a high mountain? Throughout scripture, people meet God on high mountains.Now here's the other thing, too. Has there ever been a time where somebody has ascended a high mountain? And six days has been a corollary feature of it. Yes, I knew you guys already know the answer. So let me just remind us that when Moses went up the mountain to meet with God, there was a period of six days where he goes up to meet God.Now here's the other thing too. This is all taking place in the Book of Exodus. I think that the author Mark is bringing in and riffing on the Exodus account, and I'd like to prove it even more.Check this. They go up the mountain by themselves to be alone. By the way, who are they going to be with? It was just the four of them. They were going to be alone. But they aren’t going stay alone. Watch this.“He was transfigured in front of them, and his clothes became dazzling – extremely white as no launderer on earth could whiten them.” (Verse 3)*** TV time. I love how brief Mark is with his descriptions. He's like, yeah, Jesus was transfigured. And we're like, “What? Transfigured? What does that mean? Well, there's the hint in the text. ***Something has changed about his figure. His clothes became dazzling, extremely white as no launderer on Earth could whiten them. What is Mark saying? He's saying that something has happened to Jesus’s person, to his body, to his being. Something has changed, so much so that it's become glorious. How glorious? It's like beaming white.So, Jesus is like beaming. Has there ever been a time in Scripture where someone meets God and they're beaming? Yes, actually. Moses in the Book of Exodus, after he meets God, the Bible says that his face is beaming. So here you've got this other riff. Remember that Moses went up the mountain to meet with God. Here Jesus himself is transfigured in front his three disciples. I think that he's taking on the figure of Moses.“Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus.”(Verse 4)So, it happens in front of them. This is going to be crazy. And remember they were going to go up, and they were going to go up and be alone. Guess what? Elijah appeared to them along with Moses. Elijah and Moses -- these two people are dead. So, if you go camping to be alone with three of your friends, and two dead dudes show up, how do you feel? Delighted? Wondering did we bring enough hot dogs? How do you feel you feel? Terrified? Absolutely terrified.So, Elijah – a real quick little bio on Elijah. Elijah is a prophet. The job of a prophet was to speak God's truth to people. And often times -- more often than not -- call them to repentance. A lot of people think prophecy is all about fortune telling. It's not. It's not primarily about telling the future, in fact. The telling of the future was always corollary to a call to repentance. Here's what I mean.Prophets would come into town, and they would say things like this. “Hey, you people, if you don't turn from your wicked ways, if you don't repent and follow God, if you don't turn from your wicked ways, you're going to be destroyed. If you if you don't stop being greedy. If you don't stop abusing the poor. If you don't stop worshipping other gods. If you don't repent and turn, you will be destroyed.”Now let me ask you a question. Do you think people liked hearing that? Prophets, by the way, were rarely invited to join people for dinner. In fact, a lot of times they got run out of town. And a lot of times they got killed.Elijah here is kind of the boss status. He's like the pinnacle prophet, right? In your Bible, there's a section of what we call the older testament or the Hebrew scriptures. There are all these different prophets in the first part of the Bible, with stories of the different prophets and the words that they spoke to people. The interesting thing about Elijah is we don't have a death narrative. In fact, the only thing we know is that he was carried up away into the heavens, as the way that his end is described. So you don't have a death narrative.At least for us, a little more popular figure is Moses of the Ten Commandments fame. Moses was the giver of the instruction, or the Torah, or the law. The Torah is usually what we call the first five books of the Bible. So, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Moses is the one who led the people of God out of Egypt, out of captivity in Egypt. And so here you have the law and the prophets now. Jesus would never have used the word Bible, which is a modern western word. Jesus used the word scriptures, and only rarely did Jesus use the word scriptures. The popular way to refer to the Bible at that time would have been the scriptures or the law and prophets. So the first five books of the Bible represent the law, and rest of is the prophets.Let me ask you a question. What's your Bible about? When you read the law -- Genesis Exodus, Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy, when you read a book like Jeremiah or Isaiah, what are they pointing to? I think that in Mark we're supposed to see the law and the prophets here talking with Jesus. Just notice the scene.“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it’s good for us…
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