Church Sermon - April 30, 2006

STAKE YOUR CLAIM

Rev. Bernt P. Tweit

Historical Lesson; Acts 4:8-12
Epistle Lesson; 1 John 1:1-2:2
Gospel Lesson; Luke 24:36-49
Sermon Text; 1 John 1:1-2:2

It is a right of summer. It is your desire to go to Rhythm and Booms. Or, it is your desire to go and see Concerts on the Square. So, what is it that you do? Well, as early as you are allowed, you go to Warner Park. You bring your tarp, or your blanket, and you lay it down, staking your claim, saying, "This is my spot from which I am going to watch the fire works."

Or, you go up to the Capitol Square, as early as you can. You lay down your tarp, or your blanket. You stake your claim saying, "This is the spot from which I am going to watch the concert this Wednesday evening."

As you look at the picture, and you look at the middle right hand side you see a man with his arms crossed behind his back. He had laid out his tarp earlier in the day, staking his claim saying, "This is the spot from which I am going to watch the concert."

But your eyes drift a little bit to the left. You see a man sitting on the ground. He has intruded on the first man’s claim. He is saying, "No, this is the spot where I am going to sit." You can see his back is turned to the man who is standing with his arms crossed.

This picture is really what was happening in the early Christian church. The believers in the early Christian church had staked their claim on Christ. They confessed that Jesus is true God. Jesus is true Man. He is our Savior. Some of the confessions that they made were words like this: "We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that believing we may have live in His name." (John 20:31) Or, they made confessions, (from our lesson from Acts today) where they would say, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under Heaven, given to men, by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) That name is Jesus. Or, they would make a confession and say something like this: "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. Jesus is the Word." (John 1:1)

They had staked their claim. They had staked that claim on Jesus Christ, our risen Savior from the dead. They were like that man, who was standing there with his arms folded behind his back, in our picture.

But, unfortunately, there were others who came in and were intruding on the claim that had been staked. There was a group who was beginning to bring in other teachings that did not match with scripture. The group of people that I am talking about is a group called the Gnostics. Here are some of the tenants of gnosticism that they put forth, that they wanted people to believe and stake their claim in. The basic tenant of gnosticism is that matter is bad, while spirit is good. Our bodies, being matter, are therefore inherently evil, while God, being a spirit being is inherently good.

They continued by saying some false things about Christ. They said that Christ did not have a real body. It was not human. (Remember, body is matter, which is bad.) It only appeared as if Christ had a body. They went on to say that Christ joined Jesus at His baptism and then left Him, when He died on the cross. Therefore, gnosticism denied salvation through Christ.

They said you could have salvation without Christ. It is just a separation of your soul from your body and you get that through a special knowledge you have. Therefore, it does not matter how you live, because your body is evil. You can live however you want to live. You can live a licentious lifestyle if you want to, because your body, which is evil, and your soul or spirit, which is good, is separate from one another.

That group came in trying to stake a claim other than Christ, risen from the dead. That is the very reason John wrote the section of scripture that we are looking at this morning. John wrote this section of scripture, because he personally staked his claim on the risen Christ. He was an eyewitness of what had taken place in Jesus Christ’s life. Think about some of the things that John saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears.

That then is how John begins his appeal to us this morning to stake our claim on the risen Christ. Look at verses 1 – 4, with me, if you will. John says,

"That which was from the beginning, (here talking about Jesus Christ) which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - (There, talking about Thomas feeling Jesus’ hands and His side. We’re eyewitnesses. We have seen these things, heard these things, touched these things.) - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testified to it and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete."

Here John is asking us to also stake our claim on Christ, as he has done. And he is asking us to declare our fellowship with God. As we stake our claim on Christ, we are confessing that we are in fellowship with God. That is a vertical relationship that we have with Him.

Now, why is it important for us to declare to have that fellowship with God? It is important because we are born dying in a dying world. In its simplest form, the easiest way to say that is we are sinners. It is nothing that we have done to be saved, but it is all of what God has done for us. Thanks be to God, we can declare a fellowship with Him, because of what He has done.

But, it doesn’t just stop there, with our relationship with God. It continues with our fellowship that we have with one another, our brothers and sisters in Christ. And so, as we come together, staking our claim on Christ, it is not "I believe this, and you believe that." Rather, we can say together, "We believe and we stake our claim on the risen Christ."

And so, we stake our claim on Christ and declare fellowship with God and one another. Notice I didn’t say there, that we claim to be without sin, something that John touches on. We don’t claim to be without sin, but rather we claim to be in fellowship with God through Christ’s work.

Now, here is where I am going to turn things on its head, because the logic John would have used in his day, is just the reverse of how we would use out logic today. So, let’s go from the end of the lesson, to the middle of the lesson now. As we stake our claim on Christ and declare fellowship with God, not because of what we have done, but it is because of what God has done for us. And here is where John says, "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone who does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense - Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sin of the whole world."

Right here, that is the central teaching in scripture. That is the doctrine known as Objective Justification, that God has declared the whole world to be not guilty of its sin.

As I back up, John becomes a little more pointed as he says in verses 8 – 10, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar, and His Word has no place in our lives."

John gets more pointed there, as he talks about how not only has God declared the whole world to be not guilty, because of its sin, but John here, is pointing at each and every one of you, including me, and saying, "You personally are not guilty, because of your sin, through your faith in Christ." That is the Bible’s teaching on Subjective Justification. Which gets to the heart of the matter. Knowing that God has declared the world to be not guilty of sin, and knowing that God has declared you to be not guilty of your sin, it changes the way we live our lives.

We have staked our claim on Christ. God has declared us to be not guilty, for Christ’s sake. That plays itself out in the way that we live. And, that is scripture’s teaching on sanctification. God has declared us to be holy. What God has done for us is a done deal. It is a completed act. It was finished when Jesus said, "It is finished."

But, our life of sanctification is a growing process. We know what God has done for us. We know how it is that we want to live. And yet, there are times when we slip and we fall. We pray that with the help of the Holy Spirit, He would help us back up, so that we continue to grow in our life of sanctification.

It is a right of summer, to watch the fireworks at Warner Park, to watch a concert down on the Capitol Square. In order to get a good seat, we might be willing to get there early, in order to lay a tarp down, or to lay a blanket down, and stake our claim. As Christians, we don’t stake our claim on grass, though. Rather, we stake our claim on Christ. By doing so, we confess that Jesus is true God, Jesus is true Man. Jesus is our Savior, who went to the cross for us, forgives us of our sins, and gives us eternal life and salvation. Then, we confess, just like John did in our text for today that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, but not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Having staked our claim on Christ, having declared fellowship with God, let us also go forth and demonstrate it. Our lives of faith then are evidence of a living faith that brings us to our living Savior.

Amen.

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