Cor Chmieleski: Well, good morning. My name is Cor. I'm on the pastoral staff here at Hope, and if you're new, I'd love to meet you after the service.
Cor Chmieleski: I'd love to just hear more about you. Before we go any further, though, I feel like I just need to say, skull.
Cor Chmieleski: Way too many haughty 2-0 Packer fans.
Cor Chmieleski: No pack no wow i wear i wear this purple polo twice a year in honor the vikings and pastel colored easter eggs that's uh that's what i represent this morning um we uh over the course of the next two weeks between services want to invite all of you to participate in a community art project, art at hope some of you artists you feel overlooked too many engineers in the crowd We are going to be putting paintbrush to canvas. Is that what we do?
Cor Chmieleski: And this is part of our God is Moving campaign. If you remember last year, we did kind of come down, grab a carpet tile, scroll on the back, and then we glued your carpet tile to the floor.
Cor Chmieleski: This is just another way to just collectively remind ourselves we're part of a church that's doing a God is Moving campaign so that we can have projectors.
Cor Chmieleski: Can you tell the difference? This was like, I wish we had planned this.
Cor Chmieleski: It was just like, we ran out of time. I'm like, no, this is perfect.
Cor Chmieleski: This is, in a nutshell, what we're trying to do with our God is Moving campaign. To go from this to this.
Cor Chmieleski: And that takes $1 million.
Cor Chmieleski: So, just trying to update everything to this century.
Cor Chmieleski: Okay, let me pray. And then we're going to open up God's word and see what he has for us this morning.
Cor Chmieleski: God, right now, I'm cognizant of the different people that come into this room.
Cor Chmieleski: We're at different places in our faith journey.
Cor Chmieleski: We're at different places as far as our upbringing. We're at different places in how we view the world.
Cor Chmieleski: Many of us are in different places in how we think we should be called to live in this moment in time.
Cor Chmieleski: And so, Lord, rather than a pastor sharing his opinions, may all of us,
Cor Chmieleski: God, right now seek to come underneath your word and your gospel.
Cor Chmieleski: Holy Spirit, will you come and speak to hard hearts?
Cor Chmieleski: All of us need a reminder and a refresher of your goodness and your grace.
Cor Chmieleski: So soften hearts, open ears, and let us all, God, hear from you that we might walk in your ways, walk in light of your gospel, live in light of what you have done for the sake of your church, that we might trust in you, God.
Cor Chmieleski: We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Cor Chmieleski: So, a quick little Hansel and Gretel metaphor for us this morning.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to use a well-used trope of breadcrumbs to frame out today's message.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to leave on the cutting room floor so much of this story.
Cor Chmieleski: If you know this story, friends, it is horrible.
Cor Chmieleski: The fact that you're not aghast, that I would actually use it as a metaphor shows you might not know the full details of this story.
Cor Chmieleski: This is like a stepmom.
Cor Chmieleski: No offense to you that are stepmoms. This is not a talk about stepmoms.
Cor Chmieleski: It's about the stepmom says, hey, you know, husband, we need to get rid of these kids.
Cor Chmieleski: And so essentially, father, take them out in the middle of nowhere and leave them.
Cor Chmieleski: And it's like, what? And so Hansel's like, he overheard something.
Cor Chmieleski: He's like, not going to happen. I'm smarter than you. And so he's going to lay some shiny rocks so that they can find their way back to the house. And it works.
Cor Chmieleski: Then it's going to happen again. And this time, stepmom locks the door so that he can't go get shiny rocks.
Cor Chmieleski: His idea is, I'll just leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: Not knowing that animals, birds, are going to swoop in and eat the breadcrumbs and they're going to lose their way.
Cor Chmieleski: And in that, they find this enchanted house with a wicked witch, and in that, there's all sorts of shenanigans that we don't have time to go into, but essentially, the wicked witch is out to do those two no good, and it ends with them defeating the wicked witch and.
Cor Chmieleski: Finding their way back to the house some other way, I guess.
Cor Chmieleski: That, like, that's not what I expected. That's not the nursery rhyme, cute, feel-good story of dad just kind of abandoning kids in the woods and them eventually coming back, and then they have this happy reunion.
Cor Chmieleski: I'm like, I'd have some words with dad. Like, what up, dad?
Cor Chmieleski: But, so I want to leave all that and just grab onto the breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: The breadcrumbs trope. Is that, can we do that now that I've shared all this horrific side information about this?
Cor Chmieleski: So trail of breadcrumbs is going to be our metaphor.
Cor Chmieleski: And if we can understand the trope, if we can understand this well-used literary device, we can understand God's word.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to make sure that we understand that God's word is clear and sufficient and accessible for you and for me.
Cor Chmieleski: Are there things that we might read in the Bible that we don't understand? Yeah.
Cor Chmieleski: Might it prove difficult and we might want to spend the rest of our lives looking into the Bible, looking into things? Yeah.
Cor Chmieleski: But yet, friends, it's not so beyond us that we can't just follow these breadcrumbs that will lead us to God, lead us back to our heart's true home, lead us to the source of hope and joy in life.
Cor Chmieleski: And so that's what I want to have us consider this morning. a quote to along those lines, get us started here.
Cor Chmieleski: It says this from David Garland's commentary, only the reader has this information, these breadcrumbs, so to speak, which is vital for evaluating Jesus' identity.
Cor Chmieleski: The point of these opening scenes is therefore to let the reader know from the start who Jesus is and to stress that he comes to fulfill divine promises and his divine commission.
Cor Chmieleski: And as Mark puts these breadcrumbs down one by one, and as we go to pick up one, we'll look up and see he's already laid five more breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: He does not wait for us to examine these breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: He is just onto the next thing, onto the next thing, onto the next thing.
Cor Chmieleski: Now, if you're reading, he is trying to get you somewhere fast.
Cor Chmieleski: He's trying to get you to that point in Mark's gospel of like, who do you say that I am? Like that's, that,
Cor Chmieleski: Yes. It's so important that it comes with noise. Who do you say that I am?
Cor Chmieleski: That's where we're going. And it's breakneck speed for eight chapters.
Cor Chmieleski: And then the rest of the book fills that out about what it means.
Cor Chmieleski: What our response to that question of who do you say that I am?
Cor Chmieleski: What does that mean? What consequence does it have? But he goes at breakneck speed.
Cor Chmieleski: What are we doing? We're going after the gospel of Mark this fall.
Cor Chmieleski: We could, because of that quickness to get to chapter eight, we could preach all eight chapters on a Sunday, but we're not.
Cor Chmieleski: We're going to take the fall and next spring to slow it down, examine some breadcrumbs. It's okay.
Cor Chmieleski: But as Davis got us started last week, the question, who is Jesus, is right.
Cor Chmieleski: It's just throughout this book, it's just facing the reader at every turn.
Cor Chmieleski: Who is Jesus? And then ultimately, like I said, who do you say that Jesus is?
Cor Chmieleski: That's where it's not just this abstract, philosophical, theological, who is Jesus?
Cor Chmieleski: It's not giving Jesus to kind of these different cultural stereotypes like Davis unpacked for us last week.
Cor Chmieleski: Ultimately, this question of who is Jesus becomes who do you say that Jesus is?
Cor Chmieleski: And that's where it hits home at the heart, hits home personally in our faith for you and for me.
Cor Chmieleski: We will use this slide to help orient us to all of the Bible, but so many of the things that come before the Gospels come before our New Testament.
Cor Chmieleski: The first three quarters of your Bible, some 750, 800 pages of your Bible is Old Testament.
Cor Chmieleski: And there are promises and allusions to a coming Messiah. Messiah means anointed one.
Cor Chmieleski: I always thought Christ, which means anointed one, was Jesus' last name.
Cor Chmieleski: I thought it was like Jesus, first name, Christ, last name. No, that just means Jesus, the anointed one.
Cor Chmieleski: They have, if you see Jesus the Christ or Jesus Christ, they are making a claim that he is the anointed one.
Cor Chmieleski: He is the fulfillment of those promises in the Old Testament.
Cor Chmieleski: And then our New Testament so often reflects back. It reflects back on Jesus in his life and death.
Cor Chmieleski: And this idea of a Messiah, an anointed one, a coming one, we get to look at in further detail.
Cor Chmieleski: So today, just five verses. We're going to look at it, and you'd be surprised how many breadcrumbs Mark can spread in just these five verses.
Cor Chmieleski: So let me read for us, and then we'll spend some time digesting.
Cor Chmieleski: Ooh, that wasn't planned. That's not in the notes. Digesting breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: Some of you didn't even pick it up. You're still a little sleepy, stayed up late for the gopher game. It wasn't worth it. All right, here we go.
Cor Chmieleski: In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Cor Chmieleski: And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the spirit descending on him like a dove.
Cor Chmieleski: And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son.
Cor Chmieleski: With you, I am well pleased.
Cor Chmieleski: The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
Cor Chmieleski: And he was in the wilderness 40 days, being tempted by Satan.
Cor Chmieleski: And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Cor Chmieleski: So that is our passage for this morning.
Cor Chmieleski: Three stops on this journey today. Breadcrumbs of humanity, breadcrumbs of divinity, and then where does this trail of breadcrumbs lead?
Cor Chmieleski: Breadcrumbs of humanity, of divinity, where they, you're smiling, you know, is that a good breakdown? Is that good? Is that all right?
Cor Chmieleski: All right, all right. This is me. This is not AI.
Cor Chmieleski: This is tough work over the course of the last week for me.
Cor Chmieleski: All right, breadcrumbs of humanity. One verse, we get breadcrumbs of humanity.
Cor Chmieleski: In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Cor Chmieleski: In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John the Jordan. You might be thinking, breadcrumbs of humanity, where?
Cor Chmieleski: Where exactly are you looking? So let's take some time to look at three breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: I think I could go for five, but we're just going to try to tackle three this morning, okay?
Cor Chmieleski: Just three breadcrumbs. First one, in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth.
Cor Chmieleski: Nazareth is highlighted. Now, why might that be consequential?
Cor Chmieleski: Why might that speak to Jesus' humanity?
Cor Chmieleski: I think that's a worthwhile question to ask. Two comments on that.
Cor Chmieleski: One is just the commentary of one of Jesus' own followers, one of his own disciples.
Cor Chmieleski: If you remember a different account, it says this, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
Cor Chmieleski: Essentially, he's saying, we think we found Messiah. We think we found the anointed one.
Cor Chmieleski: And what's his response? joy, excitement, just bounding out of bed and following after Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: No, he says, can anything good come from Nazareth?
Cor Chmieleski: Just so we're clear, like Nazareth is not where Messiah is expected to come.
Cor Chmieleski: That's not where we expect this great victory, this great anointing of God to come out of.
Cor Chmieleski: It's looked down upon. It's like, actually, can anything good come from there?
Cor Chmieleski: Additionally, look what it says here from Donald English. He says this, it's not that it was a particularly wicked place.
Cor Chmieleski: It was simply unheard of, never mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in those other Jewish sources where you might expect to read about the Messiah's home.
Cor Chmieleski: We have to try to imagine the shock of this on first century hearers of the gospel.
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus is from Nazareth. Big deal. Nothing good.
Cor Chmieleski: Can anything good come from that place?
Cor Chmieleski: This is a way of saying earthly origin.
Cor Chmieleski: Seeming of no great consequence Really just A person From a town That maybe you've not heard of.
Cor Chmieleski: Humanity.
Cor Chmieleski: Second one, Galilee. This is a picture of the Sea of Galilee.
Cor Chmieleski: Another breadcrumb of his humanity. How so?
Cor Chmieleski: I want to quote from David Garland again.
Cor Chmieleski: He says, Jesus appeared as unpowerful as a powerful one could get.
Cor Chmieleski: One might also assume that the Messiah, the Son of God, would cut a more imposing figure who would immediately capture the attention of the crowds.
Cor Chmieleski: Instead, this Messiah, the one who comes from nowheresville and rustic galley seems indistinguishable from the rest of the crowds.
Cor Chmieleski: He does not come with some special aura or halo, right?
Cor Chmieleski: So many of the pictures of Jesus that we look up on Google has that little aura, that little halo, right? It's like, that one's Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: He's got the special circle behind his head, right?
Cor Chmieleski: Like scripture goes to great lengths to say common, ordinary, right?
Cor Chmieleski: Some of you looked at that picture of Jesus and you're like, he's not as handsome as Jonathan Rumi who plays Jesus in The Chosen, right? Like, right.
Cor Chmieleski: This guy would just fit in, fall in, not be exceptional in such a way that he would stand out from the crowd.
Cor Chmieleski: Even Jonathan Rumi is like, I think he's too tall to play Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: He like stands above everybody else, right? Like going to great lengths, just this nowheresville, common earthly Jewish man, his humanity being depicted there.
Cor Chmieleski: And then the final one, the final one, I did get a picture. This is not AI.
Cor Chmieleski: This was an actual picture of Jesus at his baptism.
Cor Chmieleski: I always imagine John the Baptist in the water with him, not on a rock.
Cor Chmieleski: I baptized last week. I was in the water, not on a rock. Maybe I need to get myself a rock.
Cor Chmieleski: Why would this speak of Jesus' humanity? I think we have a theological problem with Jesus getting baptized. Why?
Cor Chmieleski: Why is that a problem? Because baptism at this time and John going around baptizing and saying, I bring forth a baptism of repentance, which is a fancy way of saying of turning away, turning around, turning away from sin.
Cor Chmieleski: And so it's like, why would Jesus undergo that ritual?
Cor Chmieleski: Why would Jesus undergo a baptism that symbolizes repentance?
Cor Chmieleski: Don't we believe that he's sinless? Don't we believe that he's perfect?
Cor Chmieleski: Yes, we believe he's sinless.
Cor Chmieleski: We believe he's perfect. is why would he undergo this rite, this ritual?
Cor Chmieleski: And this is for sure where commentators spill the most ink on our passage for this morning.
Cor Chmieleski: Let me just give you two, two that I find compelling and speak to his humanity.
Cor Chmieleski: Number one, to demonstrate that he is one of us, not above us.
Cor Chmieleski: But one with us, alongside us. There is solidarity with sinners in undergoing this right, this ritual, even though he is without sin.
Cor Chmieleski: So there's a certain solidarity, unity, peace just with other human beings, with humanity.
Cor Chmieleski: Secondly, and this comes from one of the other gospel accounts, this is so that he might fulfill all righteousness.
Cor Chmieleski: In that account, John the Baptist is approached by Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: And John the Baptist is like, no, I like baptizing everybody that I can, but Jesus, no, I know there's something different about you.
Cor Chmieleski: You're not getting baptized. And Jesus is like, no, no, no, no.
Cor Chmieleski: This is to fill all manner of righteousness.
Cor Chmieleski: There's something about Jesus putting himself under the law, under the religious requirements and kind of doing and going forth through these experiences, just like God's people of the Old Testament were called to go through these experiences, and yet Jesus will go through them perfectly, righteously.
Cor Chmieleski: That he actually will be that true Israel, a true and better Adam, a true and better Moses, where all of them faltered and all of them failed.
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus is going to come through these same rituals and fulfill all righteousness.
Cor Chmieleski: Breadcrumbs of his humanity. The fact that he is just from an actual town, in an actual region, undergoing human rights and ceremonies.
Cor Chmieleski: This screams, this speaks to us of his humanity.
Cor Chmieleski: Breadcrumbs leading us to conclude what Mark wants to lead us, which is he's a guy.
Cor Chmieleski: He's a human. He's a dude.
Cor Chmieleski: Real flesh and blood, just like you and me.
Cor Chmieleski: Secondly, there are breadcrumbs of divinity in our passage for today.
Cor Chmieleski: It says, when he came up out of the water, immediately, which Mark loves all the time, he's just going immediate, immediate, immediate, 41 times, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
Cor Chmieleski: And a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased.
Cor Chmieleski: Because I went with three for humanity. I seemed right to do three for his divinity here.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to look at the Jordan River. I want to look at the heavens being torn open and this dove in tandem with some words here.
Cor Chmieleski: So three breadcrumbs that lead to us concluding that there is divinity in Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: About the Jordan River, it says, David Garland says this.
Cor Chmieleski: The Jordan River was evocative. When I read the Jordan, did any of you think, man, that's evocative?
Cor Chmieleski: Ah, we need help sometimes, right? The Jordan River was evocative.
Cor Chmieleski: It was more than simply a river to Jews. It represented the border between the wilderness and the promised land.
Cor Chmieleski: When John refers to a more powerful one who is coming, his audience would naturally understand it to refer to God. God, since God is the mighty one in the Old Testament who comes in judgment and pours out the Spirit.
Cor Chmieleski: So there is intentionality. I know sometimes with certain details, they'll get lost on us just because we're not clued in to think the Jordan River is evocative.
Cor Chmieleski: It's consequential. It's significant.
Cor Chmieleski: It separates wilderness from promised land, just like we separate Wisconsin from Minnesota with an important river. It's evocative to have that river flow between.
Cor Chmieleski: So in that, we need to realize that when John the Baptist says, somebody's coming behind me, that's more powerful.
Cor Chmieleski: And you and I go, oh, there's that Jesus figure.
Cor Chmieleski: The original audience would be like, God's about to show up. God's coming.
Cor Chmieleski: And for this to happen in that river, that spot between wilderness and promised land, that is consequential.
Cor Chmieleski: It's not just Jesus identifying with humanity or with the nation of Israel.
Cor Chmieleski: He's now identified with a consequential event in which God's power was displayed.
Cor Chmieleski: So then you and I should be like, oh, maybe something is going to happen.
Cor Chmieleski: And then it's confirmed when the heavens are torn open. Don't exactly know what that is like.
Cor Chmieleski: This is the best Google has to offer on heavens being torn open.
Cor Chmieleski: Two points of note on this. One is if you were here during the cloud of witnesses, we did that this summer.
Cor Chmieleski: One of the witnesses that I grabbed onto was Tornvale. Any of you guys remember that? You were here for that?
Cor Chmieleski: Some of you weren't. But essentially, torn veil happens at the moment of Jesus' death, that in the temple, there is a veil that separates kind of common areas and even holy areas from one specific area, the holy of holies.
Cor Chmieleski: That is to be symbolic of God's very presence in the holy of holies. Who gets to go in there?
Cor Chmieleski: Well, historically, it was the chief priest, and the chief priest could go in there once a year. That's it.
Cor Chmieleski: That's all the access that was afforded to go behind that temple veil until
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus dies on the cross and the temple veil is torn in two from top to bottom to signify that this is God's action.
Cor Chmieleski: This is not man's, this is God doing something significant, that the temple veil is torn from top to bottom, torn in two to provide access, fresh access, new access for the people to come into his presence.
Cor Chmieleski: Same word is used here for the heavens being torn open.
Cor Chmieleski: There's something of that word that's not used very often to say this is consequential.
Cor Chmieleski: This is reality. God is in-breaking.
Cor Chmieleski: Something new is about to transpire. This is a divine engagement.
Cor Chmieleski: It's as though God the Father and God the Spirit were like, Oh yeah, today's the day.
Cor Chmieleski: The ministry of the son is getting kicked off. We need to go join him.
Cor Chmieleski: And so the heavens are torn open and we get this image, the presence of the spirit as identified by a dove here descending.
Cor Chmieleski: And this is consistent with kind of along par with the words being spoken that this is my beloved son.
Cor Chmieleski: In him, I am well pleased. Where do we see those words?
Cor Chmieleski: We see them in Psalm 2. We see them repeated in Hebrews chapter 1.
Cor Chmieleski: We see them in this context of Psalm 2 as like a coronation psalm in which the king is going to kind of be enthroned.
Cor Chmieleski: In Hebrews, it's utilized to show Jesus' superiority to every other created being.
Cor Chmieleski: He's superior to Moses, Melchizedek, the high priest, angels.
Cor Chmieleski: He is superior to all of them.
Cor Chmieleski: And so the supremacy of Jesus...
Cor Chmieleski: The fact that he's being installed as a king, but not just a king, a messianic royal king in the line of David, that he truly is that anointed one, that Messiah, that expected one, the coming one.
Cor Chmieleski: And so there are breadcrumbs of divinity sprinkled just even in those couple verses.
Cor Chmieleski: So where do these breadcrumbs lead? I think it's fascinating to just do a quick compare and contrast.
Cor Chmieleski: Nazareth, of no great consequence. Not even mentioned in our Old Testament.
Cor Chmieleski: But yet, this baptism happens in the Jordan. Evocative. Place of huge significance.
Cor Chmieleski: That some event would bring forth a new deliverance. A new rescue.
Cor Chmieleski: A new bringing out of the wilderness into the promised land.
Cor Chmieleski: That Galilee, referred to as kind of nowheresville.
Cor Chmieleski: Yet the heavens are torn open.
Cor Chmieleski: To greet this moment of Jesus and then kind of a baptism of carried out by the hands of man, the hands of John the Baptist.
Cor Chmieleski: And yet not without divine appointment, not without God's spirit and God, the father making this grand declaration.
Cor Chmieleski: This is my son in who I'm and well pleased.
Cor Chmieleski: Where do the breadcrumbs lead to his humanity and his divinity?
Cor Chmieleski: In 2007, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and introduced the world to an Apple product.
Cor Chmieleski: He didn't start there. He built up to it.
Cor Chmieleski: He was so excited to share with the crowd of tech gurus, those who were excited to be there, gather for this grand announcement.
Cor Chmieleski: He was excited to share that Apple was bringing forth three different technological devices for their benefit.
Cor Chmieleski: And he went off about all the gidgets and visual appeal of the iPod and this kind of state-of-the-art phone and this internet communication device.
Cor Chmieleski: And he kind of goes off about each of those. And he keeps speaking of them independently.
Cor Chmieleski: And then the big twist is like, I'm not talking about three devices.
Cor Chmieleski: I'm talking about one iPhone and the crowd erupts. You know, this is what made for exciting, thrilling things back in 2007.
Cor Chmieleski: For us, it's just kind of normal, right? At this point. But in somewhat similar fashion.
Cor Chmieleski: In Mark's gospel, he has given us breadcrumbs of just Jesus as a human.
Cor Chmieleski: Of Jesus as God.
Cor Chmieleski: And there might be just this temptation, just kind of like, okay, so that's two beings? Are we talking about two individuals?
Cor Chmieleski: And it took church history, years, decades and decades of years to figure out we're not talking about two individuals, we're talking about one individual.
Cor Chmieleski: And that's where we get this theological doctrine of the incarnation, that we talk about at Christmas, that Jesus is fully God, fully man.
Cor Chmieleski: Not two, but one. That's a historical understanding.
Cor Chmieleski: This is what one theologian says.
Cor Chmieleski: This is a really staggering Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth, human, just this guy from Nazareth, just from that old town that doesn't have any consequence, was God made man.
Cor Chmieleski: That he took humanity without loss of deity.
Cor Chmieleski: So that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.
Cor Chmieleski: It's here in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie.
Cor Chmieleski: The word, the divine word, the second person of the tree, God, the son was made flesh. God became man.
Cor Chmieleski: And this is one of those doctrines that we have to have as foundational remaining what he was, God. He became what he wasn't, man.
Cor Chmieleski: Yet we worship him as one, not distinctly two, but one, Jesus the Christ.
Cor Chmieleski: Where does that lead us to our final set of verses here? Let me read for us and then we'll spend some time, I think, I want to challenge us to reflect on what these might mean for us in our cultural moment.
Cor Chmieleski: So the spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. What's happened?
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus, the man, Jesus, God, right? We got this incarnation, this idea that he is one.
Cor Chmieleski: He's driven out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. Not going to spend time on that last sentence.
Cor Chmieleski: So much speculation. Are the wild animals good or bad?
Cor Chmieleski: Did Jesus snap his fingers and they were all lying in peace and attending to him like the angels?
Cor Chmieleski: Or are they beastly and operational in the work of Satan?
Cor Chmieleski: Don't know. Not sure. Neither are they sure, but they wrote a book, so they have to say something about it.
Cor Chmieleski: But I think where I'm going to put my chips in is that this is a way of saying in all of heaven and earth,
Cor Chmieleski: I'll mix the angels and the animals to some of the highest, most glorious things, kind of these angelic beings that are there just tending to God at all times, worshiping him to just average, ordinary, beastly people.
Cor Chmieleski: Those who are for him, those who are against, I think just in all kind of every, in every situation and circumstances is how I'm going to take that. Okay.
Cor Chmieleski: The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
Cor Chmieleski: And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan.
Cor Chmieleski: That second line there, in the wilderness for 40 days, ties him to Moses, ties him to parts of Adam's story, parts of Elijah's story.
Cor Chmieleski: And I went down that rabbit trail so far and it was so fun.
Cor Chmieleski: And I can't share any of it, Rob, with you due to time. But the 40 days, 40 is significant within God's story.
Cor Chmieleski: And I think it's a way of Mark saying, tie Jesus back to those figures.
Cor Chmieleski: He is the true and better Moses. He is the true and better Elijah.
Cor Chmieleski: He is the true and better one of those other accounts.
Cor Chmieleski: And in this, he's driven into the wilderness and he's tempted by Satan.
Cor Chmieleski: The spirit immediately drives him out into the wilderness. There's a way of dispelling this idea of like, did Jesus get lost?
Cor Chmieleski: Did he make a wrong turn? No, this is a part of God's plan because most people would have saw that baptism that got really excited. He's going to go into Jerusalem.
Cor Chmieleski: He's going to go into the promised land. He's going to bring his victory.
Cor Chmieleski: And so this would have surprised like, oh, you're choosing to go back through the wilderness.
Cor Chmieleski: Choosing to be tempted by Satan.
Cor Chmieleski: That's probably not how those watching would have written the story.
Cor Chmieleski: They would have expected something different.
Cor Chmieleski: So what are we to make of this? I know what Matthew and Luke make of this.
Cor Chmieleski: You can go read their accounts about this.
Cor Chmieleski: They share just kind of this blow by blow, like Satan tempts them with this, and then Jesus responds with that, And then Satan brings this verse and Jesus counters him with the right hook.
Cor Chmieleski: And you got kind of this account and there Matthew and Luke are like, no, Jesus won the argument.
Cor Chmieleski: We see none of that in Mark's gospel. Isn't that intriguing? It's just fascinating.
Cor Chmieleski: Like this is all we get is like, there's a battle happening.
Cor Chmieleski: And then Jesus is going to like show up preaching next week in the verse there.
Cor Chmieleski: Like, what do we make of this? And I think this is where we're going to start to bleed into how we might think about these things and apply these things in our lives, in our hearts.
Cor Chmieleski: Consider Garland again. He says this, according to Mark's gospel,
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus does not order Satan to leave.
Cor Chmieleski: And the devil does not run off, tail between his legs.
Cor Chmieleski: This could signify that the desert sojourn is only the first round in Jesus' struggle with evil.
Cor Chmieleski: The battle is not over. The decisive victory is yet to come.
Cor Chmieleski: The confrontation with the foremost of the demonic forces will therefore extend throughout his ministry.
Cor Chmieleski: And I love that as a concluding remark as to why didn't Mark, like Matthew and Luke, make clear that Jesus wins?
Cor Chmieleski: It's as though Mark's like, no, no, no, that's not the victory I want to highlight.
Cor Chmieleski: We'll get to the decisive victory at the cross later. But for right now,
Cor Chmieleski: I just need you to know that everywhere Jesus goes, wilderness or otherwise, there's spiritual battle, there's spiritual forces, there's enemies, dark forces that are going to confront him in his earthly ministry.
Cor Chmieleski: And ultimately seek to take his life.
Cor Chmieleski: That's not just true of Jesus. That's true of you and me. This world is a wilderness.
Cor Chmieleski: You and I are in that wilderness called life right now.
Cor Chmieleski: As soon as you come to faith in Jesus Christ, You're not instantaneously transported from this world to the next, from this broken world into perfect glory.
Cor Chmieleski: That's not, we're in this intermediate stage. We have faith in Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: We have faith in his decisive victory at the cross. And yet we're not home.
Cor Chmieleski: We're not in glory.
Cor Chmieleski: We're still here. And this could signify to you and to me that Satan still wants to mess with us.
Cor Chmieleski: With temptations, with trials, with testing, even though the decisive victory of the cross has been achieved, we're still here in the wilderness, in this fallen world, this broken world, this conflicted world.
Cor Chmieleski: I don't think I have to convince any of you of that reality.
Cor Chmieleski: If I were to dedicate one slide to the realities of this week, what would I want you to hear?
Cor Chmieleski: There's no doubt in my mind that you have heard a lot this week.
Cor Chmieleski: What would I, as a pastor over Hope Downtown, what would I want those who call
Cor Chmieleski: Hope their home, where this is your faith, what would I want you to hear?
Cor Chmieleski: How would I want you to be discipled, to be catechized?
Cor Chmieleski: Catechism, old school church where you're just practices and learning about the faith and ingraining those into heart and mind.
Cor Chmieleski: What would I want you to hear in one slide?
Cor Chmieleski: It's a principle that I feel like was lost.
Cor Chmieleski: And I'm not thinking of anybody specifically within this body.
Cor Chmieleski: But as I saw the public discourse, I feel like there's a principle that was lost.
Cor Chmieleski: That's one of the most important for Christians regarding unity within the body of Christ and prophetic voice outside of our walls.
Cor Chmieleski: What is this principle? The principle is differentiating timely from timeless.
Cor Chmieleski: Timely from timeless.
Cor Chmieleski: I saw so many people rush into the public space in order to put out a timely message.
Cor Chmieleski: And in that, I have no desire to differentiate one from another, no desire to push on this political ideology or push back on that belief system.
Cor Chmieleski: But I want to call us as Hope Downtown.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to call us maybe away from the fray, that we might be a people who's quick to listen and slow to speak, that we wouldn't feel this cultural compulsion to get there first, to say it loudest.
Cor Chmieleski: But we actually might draw from a timeless faith.
Cor Chmieleski: That you and I have something that we believe to be timeless.
Cor Chmieleski: You know what that means? Timeless.
Cor Chmieleski: As important to share today as last week.
Cor Chmieleski: Important today as to preach next week.
Cor Chmieleski: Throughout history, around the globe, that what I preached this morning about the divinity and humanity of Jesus, that he is the incarnation, that he is God with us, is a timeless message that is intelligible in the West as it is the Far East, as it is in Africa, as it is in Europe.
Cor Chmieleski: We want the Middle East to hear about God with us through Christ in faith.
Cor Chmieleski: That ultimately our timeless message is there for every peak and valley, every season, in response to every cultural event.
Cor Chmieleski: When God says in his word, there's nothing new under the sun.
Cor Chmieleski: Details change, circumstances change, and yet the events of this last week,
Cor Chmieleski: There's nothing new under the sun.
Cor Chmieleski: And we get to be a people who draw on a timeless faith, a timeless gospel, that this actually for the Christian is our way to make it through times.
Cor Chmieleski: This is our response to time and timely.
Cor Chmieleski: It's not actually picking up the different words, ideologies, soundbites.
Cor Chmieleski: Is Christ our hope and stay through thick and thin, through up and down, through times of discord and unity?
Cor Chmieleski: Are we grabbing onto that timeless gospel? That's our hope. We say it's our hope.
Cor Chmieleski: Is it our hope downtown? The timeless truth and gospel of Jesus Christ for life, for goodness, for justice, for joy, amidst anxious times.
Cor Chmieleski: That is our most timely word.
Cor Chmieleski: And so many of the words that happen in our culture have a short expiration date.
Cor Chmieleski: They're not timeless. At least, not according to the standards of the Bible regarding timelessness.
Cor Chmieleski: Only our gospel.
Cor Chmieleski: About such things. Peter Bolt says this, Jesus calls his followers to reject all the things that bring security and identity to normal human life so that they might find their security and identity and following him wherever he may lead.
Cor Chmieleski: Insofar as they have heeded this call, they demonstrate the life of faith.
Cor Chmieleski: Is that your hope? Is that your boast?
Cor Chmieleski: Is the timeless gospel sufficient to meet the demands of this hour and our current cultural moment?
Cor Chmieleski: I believe it is.
Cor Chmieleski: And it's why at Hope Downtown, what are we about as a community?
Cor Chmieleski: Unburdening ordinary people by pointing each other to an extraordinary Savior.
Cor Chmieleski: Are we all walking in here this morning burdened? I believe we are.
Cor Chmieleski: What do I want to do? I want to point you to Jesus. I want to point you to Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to point you to Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: Throughout time and space around the world, I want to point you to Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: It is timeless. And I think it is timely, friends. looking to Jesus, trusting in Jesus.
Cor Chmieleski: I don't think it's a coincidence that the manna, fed the Israelites in the Old Testament, that Jesus led his disciples to pray, give us this day our daily bread, that we will come and take communion, which is bread.
Cor Chmieleski: It's not just these bread crumbs lead to life, friends.
Cor Chmieleski: The bread is life. It is Jesus for us as the bread of life, spiritual life, spiritual renewal, able to satisfy, timeless and timely.
Cor Chmieleski: Again and again and again, we point one another to him.
Cor Chmieleski: Jeremy did so last Sunday out at a lake in South Minneapolis, kind of fluorescent-y green lake.
Cor Chmieleski: If you were there, you know what I'm talking about. Jeremy shared a little bit of his story.
Cor Chmieleski: Consider these words. He says, hi, everybody. My name's Jeremy.
Cor Chmieleski: I've been coming to Hope for about seven years now, originally from Vietnam, actually, and I was adopted.
Cor Chmieleski: And it's funny, growing up, I never really thought anything about being adopted except for the fact that my brother is 6'2 and white.
Cor Chmieleski: And I always thought maybe if I kept eating, I'll get like him. I was very wrong.
Cor Chmieleski: But listen to this. But one of the cool things about adoption is that it's being selected, not because of anything that I've done, or any merit that I have, but by the innate love of the selector.
Cor Chmieleski: And I've had the unique experience of knowing that through my parents, but also being adopted into the family of Christ and the family of hope.
Cor Chmieleski: So I'm excelebrated to sight and to be with you all today.
Cor Chmieleski: Do you hear that? Innate love of the selector.
Cor Chmieleski: Nothing that i've done or any merit that i have and then we got a picture of his baptism here.
Cor Chmieleski: That's actually the moment uh in which he's symbolizing his union with jesus in his death but then raised up out of the water friends to new life right celebrating.
Cor Chmieleski: The father speaking of the son, the father speaking of Jeremy, you are my beloved.
Cor Chmieleski: In you, I am well pleased. Because you did stuff? No.
Cor Chmieleski: No merit of his own, just the love of God.
Cor Chmieleski: Friends, that's our timeless and timely message.
Cor Chmieleski: The love of God exhibited through
Cor Chmieleski: Christ, experienced by his spirit and in relationship to the church.
Cor Chmieleski: I hope we never tire of that message.
Cor Chmieleski: I want to invite the worship team forward we're going to close with a couple songs of worship through song like I mentioned we're going to take communion the cracker represents Jesus' body broken for you and the cup represents his blood shed for you, if you'd like to be prayed for we'll have people available if you want to give financially there's a box in the back or you can go do that online but as we close with these two songs and as we reflect on God's word for us this morning the timeless gospel, the love that God has for you. You are his beloved.
Cor Chmieleski: If Christ wanted to abandon you, he would have on the cross, but he did.
Cor Chmieleski: He demonstrated the full love of God by going to the cross for us.
Cor Chmieleski: And so wherever you're at in your life, as you're experiencing the wilderness, how does it change things to know that Jesus isn't just showing you the way via breadcrumbs.
Cor Chmieleski: He actually himself is the way. He is God with us, friends.
Cor Chmieleski: That's our hope. That's our boast. That's our worship. That's our prayer this morning. Let me pray for us.
Cor Chmieleski: Jesus, thank you for being the bread of life, not just leading the way, but being our way.
Cor Chmieleski: God, if we can understand breadcrumbs feeding us, nourishing us guiding us, being our hope and rock and stay.
Music: