The Pattern of Down and Up

The Pattern of Down and Up

Hello, my name is Ben. I am one of the elders at Kerith, and it's a privilege to be speaking with you today.

This Sunday, some of our sites are watching people getting baptized and hearing their stories. It's one of my favourite kinds of meetings. When we baptize people, we baptize them fully — they go down under the water and then come back up again. We do that partly because it's a picture of what they've already experienced spiritually.

As they go under the water, it symbolizes not just Jesus's death for them, but a death to their old way of life — living life their own way. Then as they come back up, just as Jesus was raised to life on the third day, they're saying, I am living a new life with him.

This movement — down and then back up again — is what I want you to consider today. Theologians have noticed this pattern throughout the Bible. It's not just what happens in Jesus's death and resurrection; it's the whole story arc of humanity with God.

Creation, Fall, and the First Glimmers of Hope

Things started out pretty good in creation. We were the pinnacle of it — given an identity as sons and daughters of God, not something earned but who we were made to be, made in God's image to reflect him to one another and to the world. We were created to rule and represent him in the world. It was a pretty good start. We were up pretty high.

But it didn't stay that way. Very soon after, there's a steep downward section of humanity's story — what we call the fall. Sin — the willful decision to go our own way rather than trust and obey God — corrupted our sense of identity and marred every relationship: with God, with one another, with ourselves, with creation, even with work and rest. We were separated from God in anxiety, shame, and fear. That was the low point of our story arc.

But God did not want to leave us that way. Today we find the first glimmers of something brighter — the origin of hope and the seeds of God's redemption plan.

Creation is like our old life. The fall is like a death. Redemption is like the new life.

We heard last week about the flood and Noah, how the ark was a hint at the redemptive work still to come — pointing toward what Jesus would go on to fulfil through his death and resurrection. But even this massive flood event did not solve humanity's sin problem. After the earth was repopulated, things were no better than before.

Babel: Rock Bottom

In Genesis, people came together to build a great tower at a place called Babel. Whatever it actually looked like, it probably had impressive engineering and beautiful architecture for its day. But the people had a bad motive: the Bible says they built it to make a name for themselves. God scattered them over the face of the earth as a result.

We still have that problem today. Think of the Eiffel Tower (named after its designer), the Chrysler Building (after the family that funded it), the Burj Khalifa, and the Trump Tower — all named after the people who funded them.

At Babel, humanity is at rock bottom. What hope is there? How do we get ourselves up the other side — the redemption side of the curve? It will come as no surprise: we can't get ourselves out of this mess at all. Our only hope is in God himself.

Abraham: The Origin of the Hope Story

The origin of that hope was revealed first through the life of a man named Abram, who came ten generations after Noah. In Genesis 12, God speaks to him:

The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Abraham is given a threefold blessing: a land, a great nation from his offspring, and through them, a blessing to the whole world. Who wouldn't want a blessing like that?

But this call has a down built into it, right at the start — "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household" — to a land God doesn't even name. The future is bright, says God, but to get there we don't just go up and to the right from where we are. Abraham must go through something of a death before it turns to blessing.

Abraham's death isn't physical — it's a death to his old way of life. He has to leave his wider family and the land he knows. He has to die to every father's desire to know where he's going and how he'll get there. Even with the best maps available today, God doesn't tell him the destination. All Abraham can say to his family is, "I don't know. I just believe when the time is right, God will tell us where to turn and when to stop."

The Temptation to Be in Control

Remember how Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden? By the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — the desire to be in the know, and so, presumably, in control. Now God says to Abraham, I want to bring blessing back into humanity through you, but you must resist that same temptation to be in the know and in control.

Whenever God's will is different from our will, there's a choice to be made. God's will is always intended to bring blessing, but we can't experience that blessing without dying to our own will first.

Jesus: The Perfect Pattern

We're in good company here. Jesus, the only perfect human to walk the earth, faced this too. The Bible says he learned obedience as a son. He wrestled with it in Gethsemane before his crucifixion, falling with his face to the ground three times, praying:

"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Jesus's human will, which naturally wanted to live, wrestled with God's divine will, which knew the only way to blessing was through death. You cannot have resurrection without crucifixion. Jesus submitted to his Father's will, trusting that dying to what is temporary would bring blessing and redemption for eternity.

Paul, one of the most transformed early church leaders, wrote about this:

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Paul is saying that through Jesus's death and resurrection, God's original plan of blessing — given to Adam and Eve and repeated to Abraham — comes to all humanity. And the substance of that blessing is the promise of the Spirit: God himself dwelling in intimate relationship with his people once more.

Two Deaths We Must Face

If we want in on God's blessing, the old life has to die first. There are two deaths to consider — one once for all, and one every day.

The Once-for-All Death

This is how we enter God's blessing plan for humanity. We must die to the idea that we can somehow redeem ourselves, or that some other human being will figure it out for us. We must give up any plan that relies on us or anyone else to bring about the new life God offers. The only way in is to accept that God has made it possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that we need his death and resurrection to count for us.

Jesus was clear about this:

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."

The Everyday Death

Once we're in on God's plan, the extent to which we experience that blessing is set by how willing we are to die daily to our own desires and follow God's will instead.

Here's a small, silly example: I recently had an electrician replace some old fluorescent lights in our garage. To get the blessing of working lights, I first had to endure some inconvenience — the power turned off, and then the invoice. I had to die a little to what I would have preferred: holding onto that money and avoiding the interruption. The direction had to go down before it went up.

The same is true of our daily walk with the Holy Spirit. Every time God nudges us to act in a way that's contrary to what we'd prefer, we face a choice: cling to our old way, or trust that this small death leads to greater blessing. It's a daily decision — facing that mini-death to our ego, our desire for control, our need to be right, or our grip on a grudge — in order to experience more love, more goodness, more blessing for ourselves and others.

Just as God asked of Jesus, he is asking us to leave what is temporary in order to receive what is eternal.

Response

If you want in on God's plan and will for your blessing, take a moment now to name your specific situation and choose God's blessing for your life — even though it starts with a death to your own way first.

Dear Heavenly Father, I want in on your grand blessing plan for humanity. I don't fully understand it, but I trust that your plan is better than any plan I can come up with. Thank you that you did not design us to live independently from you, but to enjoy the closest, life-giving, blessed relationship with you possible. Thank you that you made a way for it through your Son, Jesus. I choose to die to my own efforts and ideas to make that happen, and I receive this as a gift from you instead.

Father, we also want in on your day-to-day blessing plan for our lives right now. Help me to stop settling for what's familiar, for second best, and to trust what you are offering — that it is far more blessed. I ask for your Spirit's power to fill me, to help me die to my own way and live in your way, that the blessing of Abraham may come to me and spread through me, in Jesus's name. Amen.