Welcome to lesson 35. I'm really excited. This is a whole another section of scripture. But before I dive into that we have to consecrate our time in prayer, which will always pray the prayer Lord taught us.
And name the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but to live rest from evil, Amen. And name the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Alright, well what is this new section here of Salvation History? It's really the final section of Salvation History. After finishing the life of Christ, we could call this whole next series of Lectures the Life of the Church, which I really like. We're going to be looking at Acts of the Apostles starting now for the next number of lectures.
And it's kind of nice because on the one hand it focuses on how the church begins through the Holy Spirit. We'll talk about all that Pentecost next lesson. But really we are in the life of the church now. So on the one hand it's cool to have the life of Christ and in the life of the church in these lectures.
But the other reason why I like that is because we are still in the life of the church. And this whole course has been on Introduction to Salvation History, which of course is an introduction to the scriptures. But I'd like to have you start thinking about the reality that we are still in Salvation History. The history of Salvation is still in place and continues throughout the end of time.
So although we have the Canon of Scripture, the Bible, the Table of Contents, right, is closed. The scriptures are what we have in our hands now, given to us by the authority of the church. Nevertheless, Salvation History does continue and the life of the church does continue. So that's kind of why I'm excited about this whole section of our program here.
Of course, it is the life of the church. We are still in it and it begins here with Acts of the Apostles. So with that point, let's look at some other introductory remarks that I have for you here in the notes. If you have the notes open, otherwise, of course, just listen and enjoy.
The first thing to talk about here is that the church continues the mission of Jesus Christ. So the life of Christ flows into the life of the church and what that mission is to save souls. Jesus didn't come just to teach us how to be nice. Jesus didn't come to teach us some moral platitudes about getting along with people.
Jesus came to save our souls. So as Jesus goes, so too goes the church because the church is a continuation of Jesus Christ himself. Jesus works through his church, which is his own mystical body. So the church as an extension of Jesus extends his life, his ministry, his authority, that's really, really important.
The church is going to proclaim the name of Jesus to all nations to save them from their sin. To forgive them of their sins, to save their souls, the church must obviously have his authority. And also, I should really point out at this point, as Jesus goes to the church, it's not just extending his ministry and his authority, but the church will identify with Jesus also in his suffering and the cross, the crucifixion, his death in order to participate with him in his resurrection. So there is that too, not to forget that element.
It's not just all the better roses. The church will suffer like her Lord does. So you've got to put that on the side. It's very profound.
We can't forget that. But for our purposes here, we're talking about extending his mission and his authority. So we've seen plenty of times in the past couple of lectures here, how Jesus gives his authority to the apostles and also to their successors. So for example, John chapter 20 verse 21, we looked at this before, when Jesus says, as the Father has sent me, even so I send you.
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit, if you forgive the sins of any of their forgiven, if you retain the sins of any of they are retained. Right. So as the Father sent me, I send you in the exact same way. The purpose is to save souls.
And that's why Jesus gives the apostles here, the authority to forgive sins, because that is the ministry of reconciliation. And the church forgives the sins of all human beings who seek forgiveness, who repent of their sins, in the authority of Jesus Christ, because that authority came ultimately from the Father through Jesus and extends into the church. So it's a powerful verse to have highlighted in your Bibles and underlined, circled, whatever you want to do, put little star stickers, whatever it is you do with your Bible. Another really important verse we looked at before last lecture actually was the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 through 20.
Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me by the Father. So therefore, the consequence, he says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commended you and behold, I am with you always, even at the close of the age. So because all authority has been given to Jesus, Jesus then establishes his church, which is the new kingdom of the new kingdom of heaven.
And he invests this authority to the apostles, to do what? To make disciples of all nations, to baptize them, to forgive their sins as we saw in John. So that's sacramentalized them, and to catechize them, teaching them to observe our Lord's teachings. This is what the church does.
Okay. So that's really, really important. Now related to this, is the fact that Jesus makes a very bold claim. He says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but by me. Now in all honesty, that's a really shocking claim. There's a very black and white claim. You cannot get to the Father according to Jesus.
You cannot get to the Father. In other words, you can't get to heaven. You cannot be restored to that covenant peace with God, right relationship with God, friendship with God without Jesus. You have to go through Jesus.
He is the way to the Father. And that really is shocking. It's like, wow, what about all these other great moral teachers out there? There's so many people in our culture and it's nothing new to our cultures, maybe more amplified, I suppose, where people say, hey, so long as you're a nice person, I'm nice, I'm good.
You know, I don't kill people. I don't cheat on my spouse or so I'm going to heaven, right? Because I'm nice and I'm tolerant and I just kind of go along to get along. Well, that's not enough.
It's not just being a nice person without Jesus is going to get you to heaven. You have to go through Jesus. It's not just, you know, if you're following Muhammad or you're following Confucius or you're following, I don't know, you fill in the blank who your, your latest teacher, your generic teacher might be your moral leader might be. They're not going to get you into heaven according to Jesus.
And over the past eight lectures, we've been talking about the authority of Jesus as the Son of Man. He is divine. He makes radical claims because he truly is God. And so if he, we did all this work before, if he truly is who he says he is, we owe him our loving obedience.
So when he says, I am the way that you're in life, no one comes to the Father book by me, that's the path to salvation. Now, as I was saying before, the church is an extension of that. So you probably know, if you don't actually the apostles, chapter 9 verse 2, 19 verse 9 and others, Christians and early Christians were called as members of the way. That's kind of like their little nickname, right?
They're members of the way. What does that reveal? It reveals that the church is an incorporation of the body of Christ. The church is the body of Christ and extends precisely that mission of reconciling all peoples, all nations to the Father.
So to get to the Father, you got to go through Jesus and the church is the body of Christ, has the authority of Christ. So therefore, you must also go through the church that he established. Okay, that's a very, very important point here, the authority of the church of Jesus as being the means of salvation to get back to the Father, because Christ acts through his church. So that's important.
And I also want to point out the Exodus themes. I mean, I don't know if you're sick of hearing, sick of hearing me say the Exodus all the time, but I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it in this lecture and probably throughout the rest of these lectures here in this course, the Exodus is the quintessential paradigm of salvation. So even this expression, the way is Exodus language. Okay, so if you go to Exodus 1321, you got this little simple verse where it says, the Lord went before them by day in the pillar of cloud, that's the glory cloud, the Shekina to lead them along the way by and by night a pillar of fire, okay, which also is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the glory cloud and fire.
That's going to be really important, by the way, for the next lecture on Pentecost. Well, so this Exodus language is really, really important. The way to the Father is truly an Exodus event because we're passing from spiritual bondage towards freedom, and we're able to enter into the Promised Land of heavenly Promised Land. Okay, so after Israel had fallen into sin, we've covered all this before in the Old Testament lectures, they are exiled, they're scattered to all nations, God really wants to restore them, we saw many passages and we'll review some of these later on passages on how God wants to regather all of his children back to himself.
Well, the way he's going to do that is through a new Exodus as we've seen. So one of the greatest verses, and I have some other verses for you here in your notes, but Isaiah 35 verse 8 is really beautiful. It says, a highway shall be in the wilderness and it shall be called the Holy Way. Now the whole context here is bringing people back to God, and this whole concept of in the wilderness, and that's the context of Isaiah 35 here, is really awesome too when you think about the ministry of John the Baptist.
Remember John the Baptist goes in the wilderness we saw in order to prepare the people to receive the Savior, the Messiah, to all those wilderness themes that echoes back the Exodus and Mount Sinai in the wilderness, how God wants to bring his bride to himself. That's kind of the place where he first betrothed his bride in the wilderness. And so the way back to the Father, the way back to covenant reunion or re-establishment with the Father is going, is called the way, the Holy Way back to God. So when Jesus says, I am the way, what is he saying?
I'm going to bring about the new Exodus, right? I'm going to restore all people to myself. Yeah, then when Christians are called members of the way, that's an extension of Christ's mission and his identity, because the new Exodus is being accomplished in the ministry of the church. So I hope you're tracking with me on all of that.
It's really, really important to keep salvation in the context of this Exodus as we are trying to make our way back from exile, from spiritual exile to the Father. Okay, so the miracles really demonstrate this. The actually apostles record many miracles by Peter, by Paul, and by others and the deacons there. These miracles, the signs and wonders is what they're called.
They prove their authority to act in Christ's name to accomplish this new Exodus. For the many of the same reasons we said that Jesus approved of his divinity was that he performed these incredible miracles that no one could do except for God. And so those are motives of credibility in the same way. The miracles of the apostles are motives of credibility that they say who they, that proves their identity as the apostles of Christ and it proves that Jesus truly is God working through them.
Okay, motives of credibility, motives of credibility for the authority of the church. Now the miracles themselves, it's very interesting. In the Bible, there are three main cycles or periods of miraculous events. Now oftentimes you kind of have the stereotype that you can open up any page of the Bible and there's all these miracles scattered throughout it's just all of these unthinkable impossible things that everybody does.
Well that's actually kind of a stereotype. It's an exaggeration. There are three main cycles of miracles that take place and guess what? They all revolve around the Exodus theme.
Alright, so you're the first to cycle is Moses and Joshua. Moses, it says, performs signs and wonders in the first original Exodus from bondage in Egypt. Do you have all the plagues? You've got the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna, the water from the rock, all of these different things.
They're signs and wonders that Moses performs demonstrating his authority, yes, but also demonstrating the authority of God and his love for his people to deliver them from bondage. And then so Joshua continues that when they get to the promised land, Moses dies, they cross over the waters of the Jordan River under the leadership of Joshua. You have the fall of Jericho, which is this miraculous event as well. So Joshua completes that whole cycle as we discussed in many lectures ago.
So that's the original Exodus. Then you have a renewed Exodus, so to speak, from spiritual bondage during the time of Elijah and his successor, Alicia, because what had happened as we looked at, meaning many lectures ago was the people have fallen back into spiritual bondage. They're now worshiping Baal and various other Canaanite gods. And the Lord, Yahweh, is calling them back like you're in bondage.
And I want to bring you back out of bondage to myself to renew the covenant, right? Just he begs them, just ask for forgiveness and I will forgive you over and over and over again. Alright, so they are in a very real sense in spiritual bondage again, and God wants to bring them out of that through a renewed Exodus. And so Elijah is depicted in many instances as a new Moses figure, right?
So Elijah performs signs and wonders as well. And then Alicia after him performs double the signs of the wonder and wonders because he has a double portion of his spirit. Okay, then of course, you've got the definitive Exodus. The definitive Exodus from true spiritual bondage, Satan sin and death.
This of course occurs through Jesus and now through the ministry of the apostles and the church. If you remember, we talked about the transfiguration pretty quickly. We talked about how when Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, who is he talking to Moses and Elijah, and what are they talking about? According to Luke, they're talking about his Exodus that he would accomplish in Jerusalem.
So the true Exodus from sin will be accomplished through the Paschal ministry of the mysteries of Jesus Christ. And the apostles are going to continue that until the end of time. Any time anybody converts from sin is received into the church of Christ through valid baptism. They have now gone through a real Exodus event.
That's what's so amazing. Every time someone converts and they're in spiritual bondage, their sins are forgiven. Now they come into the unity of the church. They have experienced their own Exodus.
In the apostles, no successes of apostles. The ministry of the church perpetuate that. Even so you find signs and wonders performed by the apostles as well. In fact, Jesus says in John 14 verse 12, he who believes in me will do the works that I do and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father.
It's actually kind of a cool parallel because just as Alicia did twice the miracles as Elijah, now Jesus is saying to the apostles, you're going to do works that I never did. Sign the wonders that I never did. And as we're going to see, the apostles do some pretty amazing miracles that Jesus never did. Some pretty fun stuff is coming up here in the future lectures.
Okay, so I hope that makes sense, everybody, as I'm talking about these introductory remarks as we kind of set the scene or tee up our next number of lectures. The church continues the ministry of Jesus. It is a ministry of the Exodus from sin and the apostles, miracles demonstrate their authority, okay, just to kind of wrap all that up. So the signs and wonders of the apostles, therefore, is going to be a huge theme.
So watch out for that as it comes in the next couple of lectures. Okay, well, that being said, let's move and look at the... All right, this is Dr. Nick Leibich.
Thank you so much for listening. If you like access to my complete courses, please visit www.scriptchurch.com. God bless.