Dr. Stephen Dempster, guest preacher

Join us as we welcome our guest preacher, Dr. Stephen Dempster.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, uh uh it's good it's a pleasure for me to be here with you. Um and uh and of course uh I've got uh my two brothers here to keep me in line. And uh my uh I I told my one of my brothers what I was speaking on, and uh and then he asked me what I was doing, coming down to do, and he was uh he was saying I was telling him that I'm gonna be speaking a week uh for two students at Heritage, and he said, Oh, I feel so sorry for those students. Um but you know he's really he's really an encourager. In fact, uh when I spoke in chapel recently at Crandall University, um uh they gave they put this slide up and uh because of the connection with Dempster's bread, and and my brother uh told me, look, you only have a little bit of time here this morning, so don't loaf around. And I said, Well, I said, well, uh I hope I can give you some crumbs from the master's table. Uh and uh so here we are um speaking about uh encouragement, and uh and all I would simply say is uh encouragement is so so important. Um let me uh I better stick to my notes. My wife is always telling me that uh my notes are very, very important because I go off on tangents. Um a few years ago uh my f uh before my father died, I was uh driving home with them to Kingston at the time, uh where they lived, from my brothers Sam and Jackie's place. And um uh he was uh this was a few uh years before he passed away, so it'll be in the early 90s. And I asked him if there was anything he would do to change his ministry if he had the chance to live over. And he said uh he said, I will uh he said, with all the problems people have to face today, uh they are coming at them from all angles. I would try to build people up more by being encouraging. And uh people need to be encouraged, he said. They need that extra oomph to be able to live for the Lord. And encourage to encourage someone means to instill courage into them so that they can deal with life, uh, because life brings a lot of troubles, and uh to discourage is to take that courage away from them. And you can think of the uh the expression that's sometimes used in slang, to diss someone. Well, think about that with discourage. To discourage, and that's what you have, uh that's to take away courage. Um so my father, uh, when he started his ministry, he uh he started it in um Delhi. Uh and he founded this uh particular church there. It's called Bethesda Baptist, and I I was talking to uh uh Jalen and uh Jay Lynn was born in Simcoe. I was born in Simcoe, actually. And Dwight and J. Lynn worked near there uh in a church and uh grew up there, and uh so I was born in, but this I always love the name of this church. Um it's in Hebrew, it's Beth Hesed, it's the house of mercy, the house of covenant love. Uh it's a place of encouragement, and that's what a church should be in many ways. And so there's an incredible need for encouragement that we have in our culture. Uh life can be so discouraging, especially if you look at things like the mass shootings which have taken place in the United States since January 1st. We have 151. And uh and that's in 116 days. We have also in our situation in Canada in a place that probably no one knew very much before it happened, in Tumblr Ridge. Uh we have the Ukraine war going on, we have the Sudan War. Uh we have October 7th and its aftermath. Uh we have unrest in many parts of the world. Uh we have 70 million people uprooted and exiled. Um, and so we have the blight of human trafficking, uh, we have attempts to redefine reality in our own Western culture, such as MAID, which is really a euphemism for assisted suicide. Uh, and we have just suffering from many situations uh in every area of life. We have loss, we have divorce, we have death, we have disease, we need encouragement. Uh my father was very right. Uh we need encouragement as we walk to, particularly as people of faith. And recently one of my students has written a book I taught her a few years ago, quite a few years ago, um, and she wrote this book, You Have No Idea. And essentially, you have no idea of the kind of situations that people go through. Uh, she wrote this book because she had to look, she was looking after a severely autistic child. Uh and uh so the encouragement from her church community and many other people resonate with her in that book, and that's one of the reasons why she wrote it. But what particularly struck me as I read her book was her quote from Mark Twain, and uh in that he said, kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see. And her final words in the book are dedicated to the individuals in the church and other sectors who were seeking to help her family and her son through these situations. And that was what she said is essentially, I recognize that despite your best intentions, the task before you is a complex one, not easily undertaken. I'm thankful for every one of you for the part you continued to play in Jonathan's life and in our situation. Be encouraged as you pressed on. And one of the things that she did as a result of her situation was she went and got her doctorate in sociology so that she could go out and help in the uh in New Brunswick children and parents and families that live with severely autistic children. Um but uh the passage that was read this morning was from uh Matthew 11. And Matthew 11 is the story where John the Baptist is dealing with, or Jesus is dealing with a very discouraged in many ways, a depressed John the Baptist. Uh you remember that John the Baptist was the great prophet. Uh he was uh the one who announced the coming of the day of the Lord. He appeared by the Jordan River dressed in an ascetic garb, a cloak of camel's air, and he ate wild locusts and camels. Uh I was gonna say wild locusts and camel's honey, sorry. Uh uh locusts and uh and and camels and wild honey, sorry about that. Uh from probably from dates. But his preaching was like a magnet, uh drawing people from all over, telling everyone that it was time to get ready for the end as the world they knew was coming to an end. God was coming. Uh, the Old Testament prophets had spoken about the last days in the coming kingdom when there would come a time of great judgment for sinners and a great salvation for the righteous. Thousands were lining up to be baptized by John. Uh they were confessing their sins and they were going under the water as a means to wash away those sins. They wanted to get ready for the coming of God. Uh John said, You've got to get ready because there's someone coming whose shoes I'm not even worthy to tie. And he has a great winnowing shovel in his hand, and he's going to separate the wheat from the chaff, and he's going to put the wheat in barns, and he's going to burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. God is coming. You need to get prepared. And then it happened. John saw this someone coming to him to be baptized. He knew immediately who he was, and he protested that he should be baptized by this someone, not the other way around. But Jesus said, No, I have to. You will understand later. And after Jesus went under the waters and came up, John saw the Holy Spirit descending upon him as he merged, he emerged from those waters and he heard the divine voice. John was elated. John was absolutely sure that Jesus was the Messiah, and now the last days were to be ushered in. Months later, John was persecuted for speaking out against immorality. The ruler of Judea, Herod, had committed adultery with his brothers Philip's wife, and he just basically displayed that all by starting to live with her, and it was a scandal in Judea. In Rome, it wouldn't have been a scandal at all, but it was a scandal in Judea. In some ways, Herod was probably someone like Jeffrey Epstein on steroids. And John spoke out against the relationship. And for that act of righteousness, John was imprisoned in one of Herod's notorious prisons. We know, and he's probably been in there for a year at this time when he sends his disciples to Jesus. We know that when John heard that his cousin, Jesus heard that his cousin John was imprisoned, he began his ministry. So Jesus has been preaching for about a year. And he's been preaching the good news that God's kingdom has finally come. The last days are here. He announced forgiveness for the penitent. He healed the sick, the crippled, he made walk, and the blind were given sight, and even lepers were healed, and the dead were raised. Meanwhile, John is languishing in prison. And as the months wore on, he's getting more and more discouraged. Where was the kingdom? Where was God putting Herod in his place? I didn't sign up for this. This shouldn't be the way it should be. Where's the judgment, Lord? Where's the winnowing shovel? Where's the barn and where's the unquenchable fire? Where's the fairness? Was I wrong about him? Now here's a man who sacrificed and labored so much. And look where it got him. In prison. And guess what? In a few months he would be beheaded. John didn't know that soon he would lose his head, but he probably could see the writing on the wall, because Herod wasn't really a friend, and certainly his new wife wasn't a friend. And the writing was not what he thought it should be, so he complained and he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him a simple question. And that simple question is this are you really the one, Jesus? Are you really the one, or do we have to look for another? He who had been so sure, saying of Jesus that you are the one was now having serious doubts. It would be an understatement to say in many ways that he was depressed. Now I don't know what your person is going through right now, but you may be asking the question too. Lord, I've tried to do things right, but life is hard, and I just don't think I can cope right now. I know a person whose wife recently died, and he's mad about God for that. When Tim Keller started writing a book on the resurrection of Jesus, he found out as soon as he almost got started that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And that same cancer took him from a very fruitful ministry a few years ago. Jerry Zitzer, a Christian professor of history, lost his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter in a car accident to a drunken driver. And he wrote a book about his trial and he questioned God. The great John the Baptist had his doubts and he voiced him. It's not wrong to voice them. Read the Psalms. One interpreter has written a book about the Psalms and he calls it out of the depths from Psalm 130. Out of the depths, I've gone down to the depths, and I'm crying to you from the depths, O Lord. Now, Jesus does answer John. And uh he doesn't attack John. What he does is he just points to his own ministry, Jesus' own ministry. The things that John's disciples can see and hear about, he says, the blind see, the blind see, the lepers are cured, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the dead raised, and the good news is being preached to the poor. But Jesus is not just telling the disciples to relay to John what they see. He's pointing John to the scriptures, the Old Testament, which is really the only Bible at this time, to give him encouragement. For these hacks are happening in Jesus' ministry, and they're all predicted by the prophet Isaiah, at least most of them are. They are part of a code that John would know because he knew his Bible cold. Jesus is citing scripture from Isaiah 35, which speaks of the last days and the coming of the kingdom of God. John knew his Bible cold. And remember, that's the only Bible that he had, and that's the only Bible that Jesus had. And it's from a very encouraging context, Isaiah 35. The prophet is speaking to a very discouraging situation in which his people are incredibly down, thinking they've been abandoned by God. He tells them, don't be discouraged. There's a new world coming of judgment and salvation. Now, Israel is discouraged and thinking that it's been abandoned by God, and God says to them in Isaiah 35, words of encouragement, he's through the prophet, he says, strengthen the feeble hands. The feeble hands are a sign of discouragement. Steady the needs that are about to give way. Say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, do not fear. Your God will come, he will come with vengeance, with divine retribution, he will come to save you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, then the lame will leap like a deer, and the mute tongue will shout for joy. Basically, Jesus is probably combining this scripture, Isaiah 35, with Isaiah 61, which talks about the Messiah coming to preach good news to the poor. But Jesus is also adding things in the scriptures which aren't there. He says that he's healing lepers and even raising the dead. John would have known his Bible and he would hear this passage as one of incredible encouragement. And Jesus is basically saying, it's better than you ever dared dream, John. Yes, I'm the one doing this, but it's better than you ever dared dream. In addition to this, lepers are being raised, are being healed and cleansed, and the dead are being raised. I'm not only the one you're looking for, John, I am even better, far beyond your dreams. But notice Jesus omits one issue in Isaiah 35 and also in Isaiah 61. The point about divine justice and retribution. John, that's not on the timetable right now. If it were, there may not be many people left here, maybe not even you, but have patience. Then Jesus adds a slight rebuke to John. He says, Blessed is the one who does not take offense at me. He could have said, Cursed is the one who takes offense at me, but he doesn't. He says, Blessed is the one who does not stumble or fall away because of me. John, trust me. Trust me. I have this. I have it. You just have to adjust your timetable. Justice will come, but first will come mercy in order that there can be mercy for all. Now, just to see what John's problem was, uh when you look at the Old Testament, you will see the predictions of the prophets about the coming of a new world. And it's like looking at the mountain ranges at uh straight on, and you see those mountain ranges, and you see justice and judgment, and you see mercy and salvation, you see them, and they're all blended together. And so if you looked at it this way, you would see this, and it seems like it's all together. But if you looked at it sideways, it would be very different. You would have a gap between the mountain ranges. You'd have salvation and then judgment. And this is exactly what John uh uh John's timetable uh didn't see. He thought it all had to come together, but no, there's a gap between them. Yes, the new age has come, but what what it means is that God wants to extend uh his salvation to as many as possible before that final day. And this is what you have when you look at it in the Old Testament. Um so it's very important to see this. And then what Jesus does uh is he's going to uh, as the disciples of John leave, he's going to give make some comments about John. But all I want to say to you is this here we are 2,000 years later, and many of you may be discouraged about the problems in the world and your own personal situation. We wonder about the truth of the gospel and the reality of this second phase of the one coming. All I can say is this that you can trust Jesus. He never said that there would be world peace until he comes again. And what's his reason? Do you know in June 6, 1944, uh we know what that was, it was D-Day. The war was essentially over then, and Hitler's generals knew it. That's why they made an assassination plot in July 20th, 1944, to kill Hitler and try to strike a peace. Why did Hitler not uh give up? Because he wanted to delay the end, to destroy as much as possible. Well, here is Jesus with a very different thing. Uh here is Jesus in his ministry. That's D-Day, in a way. Now we are 2,000 years later. Why is that? He delays because it says in Peter, it says, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. The delay is caused by mercy. Then John, as we get back to the text, John is commended by Jesus. His disciples have left, and Jesus says, What kind of person did you go out when you went out to see John? Did you go to see a wishy-washy person, a reed blown in the wind? In other words, someone who was so wishy-washy he couldn't even take a stand for anything. No, you went out to see a tower of strength and certitude, and he could even call out the king without even flinching. On the other hand, Jesus said, did you go out to see someone who was in royal garb and silk clothes? Did you go out to see that per people like that? No, no. You went out to see someone who was an ascetic in camel skin eating locusts and wild honey. That's what you went out to see. And then he says, just think, uh, and then he and then he says this look, when you look at all the saints in the Old Testament, from the very beginning, Enoch all the way down, Moses, Miriam, uh, down through the roll call of faith, uh, there are Great people there, but there was none greater than John the Baptist. There's none greater than he. And now here's a guy that's in prison for standing, and Jesus says there was none, he says, there's no one born greater, uh no one born of women greater than he. Now, I don't know how else you're born, but but uh but but he's the greatest of them all, uh and basically he is someone who is doubting too. And so don't be afraid to share your doubts with Jesus. He can take them, he's got big shoulders. Then Jesus says something that's absolutely mind-blowing. This is absolutely mind-blowing. Uh, and I hear when I think about it, I just can't believe you gotta pinch yourself. Jesus says this. He he says this. I tell you he was more than a prophet, but this is incredible. He shocks his audience by telling them of a great privilege and status they have and they can have than John. In other words, John is the greatest, but the one who is least in the kingdom of God, that now period is greater than he. Uh Jesus is basically saying, Jesus uh John is the is the one who prophesied about the kingdom to come, the dawning of the new age, and that means now everybody has the ability to go into that kingdom to which John only looked forward. It's like a political reformer, a slave that's fought for the abolition of slavery and died before it was abolished. Everyone who came after him enjoys the benefits. Then Jesus describes the reality of the in-breaking kingdom in a very difficult text. And I've wrestled with this, and I still am not sure about it, but this is the best I can deal with it. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you're willing to accept it, he is the Elijah to come. It probably means this: that from the days of John, about a year ago, uh, the kingdom of God has been forcefully advancing and being subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. That is, since John the kingdom has been making inroads in the world, pushing back the darkness, and now the darkness is fighting back. After all, John is now in prison, and soon he will be beheaded. And uh and people are now starting to oppose Jesus, and you can see it in chapter 10, where he talks about uh I came not to bring peace but a sword. A few verses later in this chapter, uh, they people said John was a demoniac because he was an ascetic, uh, and Jesus is a glutton and a drunkard because he's spending time with sinners and drinking. Uh the stakes are being raised. He refers to the towns of Beth Seda and Khorusan as examples of growing hostility. They didn't repent when great works were done in them, and Jesus says they're going to be in a worse situation than Sodom and Komorah. But Jesus adds always something practical to his audience, which demands a response. Now that you've heard all about John, Jesus is telling his audience in no uncertain terms, the kingdom is here. Believe it. That is why he calls John Elijah, who is to come. For every Jew would know that Elijah was to come before the great day of the Lord, the final day of salvation, to prepare the way for Messiah who would usher in a new world. And when I was welcomed in here, I was welcomed in by Malachi. And I thought, what a great way to be welcomed in, because Malachi was the one who said that Elijah would come before the great day of the Lord. What this means is, hello, people, the kingdom is here. God is preparing, um uh, God is get ready for the kingdom. Prepare yourself. If you accept this, you must repent. And then he who has ears to hear, let him hear. You know, uh, I'm looking at my watch here and I uh uh uh I'm I'm careful about I'm I should be more careful about time. But the best definition of repentance I've ever heard was from my brother John uh outside the scriptures. And he was trying to explain the gospel to he was a police officer, and they were driving down the highway, and he was trying to explain the idea of repentance to uh this police officer, and he says, You see that U-turn sign? That's what repentance means. You're going away from God. Now you turn back to God and go towards him. That's what it is. That's what it is. You're now living for God as opposed to living for yourself or someone else. Jesus is saying, essentially, do you know what time it is, people? You are immensely privileged. This is the time before the end. God is showing up and has shown up, you're living in an unprecedented time of privilege. You know what time it is. The final judgment has been delayed, and in the meantime, you have the possibility of investing in the best growth front there is, the kingdom of God, which is eternal. If you're a gem dealer, this is the greatest gem of all, and you should consider nothing to sell everything that you have to buy this gem. Jesus says also in another place, it's like walking in a field, stumbling on a treasure, then going and selling everything you have to buy that field to get this treasure. Don't miss out. Can you really imagine what you're missing? To be content with the pleasures of the world than with the offer of the eternal life is the uh equivalent, one writer says, to eat cardboard when you're offered a gourmet dinner. Or as C. S. Lewis once said, is to play in a mud puddle when you're offered to go to the beach and frolic there. Um I vividly remember the story of uh Spartacus. I don't know if you remember the story of Spartacus, but the story is he was a slave that led a revolt against the Roman Empire, and then he was betrayed, and all these slaves that were with him were all crucified on the Appian Way, leading out of Rome. And they were looking for Spartacus, who had just had a son with a slave girl, and uh and they were trying to find her and find the child to kill both of them. But she was spirited out of Rome and she came out onto the Appian Way, and uh Spartacus was on the cross on the cross, and uh she held up her son to him, his son to him, and said, Spartacus, this is your son. He is born free. And that is a beautiful illustration of the incredible privilege that you have in many ways in the kingdom of God. You are in a new era, you're in a new world. Um, the reason we can enter into the kingdom and the fact that we can have a higher status than John is because Jesus would take the judgment of God on himself that we were merited for. And uh and so we we get that forgiveness because of him when we trust in him. We can have good news preached to us, and then we can experience the incredible good news of life with God rather than to look forward to the judgment of God. You see, for what John did not know was three years later, his cousin would be crucified. He would go down into the waters of the baptism of judgment and be raised to newness of life for John and for all of us, so that we could have the hope of forgiveness with God and life forevermore, so that even death, which is going to come to us all, um could be deprived of its sting. A few years ago I lost one of my students at the age of 55 to a debilitating disease. I was slated to do the internment at the seminary with the family present, but it was postponed to May, to later, because of the weather, a snowstorm that happens a lot down east. I guess you've had a few here too. Debbie loved life and suffered a lot, but Christ had taken the sting of death from her and from her family. And I was planning to say at the funeral this, and I and I said it later at the internment. We are not saying a final goodbye, which we would do at a secular funeral. Uh we are not saying darkness, you are victorious, victorious, defeat, you are victorious. Uh there's a finality about this. No. George Herbert, the great English poet, said, listen, he said, before Christ, death was an executioner. But for uh the Christian, Herbert said, death has become a gardener. Uh we are engaged in planning. The decaying body of Deborah Slater will be planted in hope, was planted in hope. As 1 Corinthians 15 says, this the corpse that is planted is no beauty. But when it's raised, it's glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural, the seed grown is supernatural. Same seed, same body, but oh what a difference between what goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised in spiritual mortality. I hope this encourages you. John knew his scriptures, and that's how he was encouraged by Jesus. Read your scriptures. Don't think of them so much as a book to be read, but as a set of lenses to be put on, so that you can look at life in a completely different way. They give you hope. Uh that's what the the Paul said. Read the scriptures, they give you hope. They give you a new way of looking at life. You see yourself differently. And also remember that this world is coming to an end in many ways. Uh there is a final judgment which is ahead. There's a final destiny. We need to look forward to that, and we need to look at our lives in a way that we are going to someday meet God. We need to have a sense of expectancy. But let me give you two final notes of encouragement, and I realize I'm begun as a professor often goes over time, but here I have the uh you all know this woman. Uh this was the uh this was the um the picture of the 20th century. Uh she was napalmed in Vietnam by American helicopter, and uh she's running, and uh and the photograph uh uh was taken. Uh someone put um bandages over and took her a few miles away to a morgue, uh to actually a hospital. They could they said we can't do anything, we're gonna put you in the morgue. They they put her in the morgue because they they thought she was just as good as dead. Um she uh survived, she later became a Christian in Vietnam, found the peace of God, and then she ended up in Canada as a refugee with her husband. They live here nearby in in uh Oshawa, and she has two sons in her in ministry. Just talk about discouragement leading to incredible hope. Anyway, uh, she often wondered why. I read this book, The Fire Road, I recommend it to you, but she often wondered why uh those wounds, why, because she suffered all these wounds, why they put her in a morgue, and she could never understand why that happened. Uh, until she gave a little talk down south and was a burn specialist there, and he said, Kim, he said, he said, the reason you're alive today is because they put you in the morgue, because they had wrapped you in bandages. You see, if they had unwrapped those bandages, that napalm needed oxygen and it would have just burnt you up. But two days later, when her mom came looking for her and found her, they she was able to get those bandages off, and the napalm had evaporated. And she realized that there was a reason for everything. And the last one is this. Uh we talked at the beginning of my dad, back to him, and this is Bethesda Baptist Church. Uh House of Kindness, a lamb, uh uh uh the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. Well, my dad was married to my mother in September 3rd, 1945. And in that situation, um, there was a man who was a missionary who did the the the uh the marriage. His name was Reverend Finley, and he was a missionary to Columbia, South America. And so what happened was uh what what happened was um uh he so I was talking about encouragement, and he said, Dr. Finley told this story of going to uh a home in uh uh South in Colombia and uh leaving his bike outside, and then he came out and it was stolen. And this was probably the fourth time it was that he had a bike stolen in a few months. And uh so he was walking across the bridge home, uh this river going out into the uh into the uh Atlantic Ocean, and he's walking on he's looking down at the uh the river and then out at the ocean, and he says, Drown them, Lord, drown them, drown them. And then he thought about the gospel, and he said, In the ocean of thy love. Let us pray. Oh Lord, thank you for the ocean of your love. We just pray that these words today might encourage and help. We pray in Christ's name.