Sermon June 17, 2018 Agape

I’d like to talk today about love, but I don’t want to talk about mushy love; I don’t want to talk about the kind of love that’s fun.  I want to talk about the kind of love that’s work.

The Greeks had three different words they used that are all translated into the English word “Love”.  This makes it interesting when we study the Bible because it’s helpful to know WHICH word is being used when the Bible says “Love”.  The first word was “fileo”.  Phileo is a word that describes a love as between brothers.  Most folks know that Philadelphia is called the “City of Brotherly Love”.  Well, “Adelphia” is the Greek word for city and “Phileo” is the Greek word for brotherly love so Phileo-Adelphia… Philadelphia… is the City of Brotherly Love.  The second word was “eros”. Eros describes a love between a husband and wife, and is the source of our word “Erotic”.  The third word is “agape”.  Agape was a word rarely used in Greek literature, but a word that abounds in the Bible.  Agape describes a selfless love, a love that always thinks of others first and self last.  It is agape love about which I wish to speak today.  Most of us are familiar with the words of 1Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.  This is a description of the love that God has for us.  But don’t forget, Jesus calls us to love as He loved, so really, it’s a description of what OUR love for others should look like as well.

I think it’s a human tendency to love in levels.  Our first level is our immediate family; those to whom we are closest.  These are the ones for whom our love is greatest.  There is little we wouldn’t do for them, little we wouldn’t give them, little that we wouldn’t sacrifice of our own needs or comfort in order to make sure that they had everything they needed.  Our second level is our extended family, and some of our closest friends.  We love them deeply, but being honest, the list of things that we would go out of our way to do for them is not as abundant as the list of things we would do for those in our innermost circle. In the next circle are our friends, some of our co-workers, possibly more distant relatives, and for these folks we may choose to go out of our way to do something for them every now and then when the mood suits us, maybe we will take the time to pray for them if we are burdened by their needs, but more often than not, these people are outside the circle of those for whom we would be willing to make sacrifices.  In the next level come acquaintances, and those in this level are even less likely to elicit our concern.  Then comes the level of those that we don’t know, or don’t particularly like… for whatever reason; followed by the level of those that we dislike.  It’s probably safe to say that at this level, to go anywhere out of our way for these folks would be pretty unusual.  But this isn’t the love that God describes at all, is it?  We are called to love everyone with the same agape love that we instinctively reserve for our inner circle, we are called to have the same gracious, self-sacrificing, impetuous, extravagant, love for everybody; even our enemies.

A few years back I heard a story that really brought this home to me and I’d like to share it with you, but I have to warn you… this will be difficult for me because telling this story is outside of my comfort zone.  It’s all good when I’m being an amateur historian or an armchair theologian but talking about people and life and tragedy and emotion doesn’t come easily to me, so please bear with me.  It’s not an easy story.

I have a friend, a good friend actually, who had a sister who married a man with a substance abuse problem.  As is so often the case, they had a difficult life, because food and housing and creature comforts took a distant back seat to his next fix.  Several times over the years they found themselves living in their car, or even on the street.  The man’s parents were good people, believers, and they did what they could.  They bought them groceries and clothes.  More than once they rented an apartment for which they paid months of rent in advance and filled the apartment with furniture.  They even paid for a few tries at rehab, to no avail.  They really did try to get their son back on track, and they were wonderful to their daughter in law.  But their son was unappreciative.  He sold the furniture his parents had bought him and used the money for drugs.  They would live in the apartment his parents rented for him until they were thrown out for non-payment and then were right back on the streets again.  The longer this went on, the more animosity the son displayed towards his parents, until one day, the parents came to his apartment to bring some groceries and the son refused to open the door.  He screamed at them through the closed door “Go away, I never want to see you or talk to you again”.  As a parent, I can’t even imagine the agony of hearing this from your child.  But they honored his wish and left him alone.

A few months after this incident, the son overdosed and died.  During the funeral, my friend spent a good deal of time with her sister at the funeral home.  Over the years, my friend had also become friends with her sister’s in laws and she knew them to be good people who had tried to take very good care of her sister.  At one point during the day my friend noticed the man’s mother standing in front of her son’s casket and she was crying softly.  My friend went up to her and put her arm around her and just hugged her.  The mother turned to my friend and said, pointing to her son “You know, it’s not him that I’m crying for.  I’m crying for the little boy that the devil and his angels stole from me”.

Before I heard this story, I was completely perplexed as to how God could possibly expect us to love our enemies.  Even more so was I perplexed at how Jesus could pray for forgiveness for those who mocked Him, shamed Him, and murdered Him, but now I kind of think I get it.  We mostly like to think of ourselves as being mature and sophisticated adults, but I don’t think that’s how God sees us at all.  “Suffer the little children to come unto me” Jesus said, “For” … For What??  “For of such is the Kingdom of God.” Right?  Every Sunday Rev. Rack quotes Psalm 24: “The Earth is the Lord’s and all who dwell therein”.  To God, every single person on this planet belongs to Him and every single person on this planet is, or at least was, His precious, loved, and honored little boy or little girl.  Such is God’s love that this is how He sees us, each of us.  And He calls on us to do the same.

Our life’s work is to learn to love as God loves.  Our job is to take those in our outer circles and move them as close to the center as we can possibly get them.  Our mission is to have the same concern for those in our outer circles that we have for those in our inner circles; to have the same passion for their well-being, the same commitment to seeing them well fed and well housed, and well cared for, the same desire to see them happy, healthy, and fulfilled.  We need to work towards developing a heart where that which would be completely unacceptable for our own children, whether in how they are fed, or how they live, or how they are cared for, would, to us, be completely unacceptable for any of God’s children, anywhere.  We need to work towards developing a heart where that which would be completely unacceptable for our own children in terms of their security, or their safety, or their health, or their well-being, would, to us, be completely unacceptable for any of God’s children, anywhere.  And the minute that we stop caring in this way for those in our outer circles, the minute that we stop advocating for fairness, justice, and equality for those in our outer circles, that’s when we stop loving as Jesus loved.

This will be a lifelong struggle for us all, because truly, it’s not easy.  Even when we know that we need to learn to see people as God’s beloved children, let’s face it… people can be aggravating sometimes.  (Have you been on the Parkway lately?)  And time and time again we are going to find ourselves falling on God’s grace as we fail, once again, to live up to our calling.  But there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years.  I’ve learned that God’s Law isn’t intended to be a list of rules and regulations to be followed.  God’s law is actually a description of what the human heart is supposed to look like.  There’s no scoreboard; God isn’t keeping score.  He’s just asking us that, when we fall, we seek His forgiveness, pick ourselves up, and resume the task of striving to love as Jesus loved; resume the task of striving to make our hearts look like God’s heart.  And when we do that, that’s called faithfulness.  And when we’re faithful, that when God looks at us, gets a big smile on His face, points to us, and says “That’s MY kid!”

 

Heaven on Earth?

When I was first asked to cover for Rev. Rack this week, I, of course, agreed. I have a sort of running, informal agreement with Hope Church where I will gladly substitute for Rev. Rack whenever he is away; unless someone else wants to do it. I don’t want to be hogging the pulpit, after all. And so today I have another opportunity to bring the message, and you have another week of Amateur Hour. Now, the thing is, I usually have a sermon idea or two brewing most of the time, but this time I had no idea of what I wanted to talk about. Week before last though, Rev. Rack spoke about how Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t something that was intended only to be something in the future, but should be a reality for believers here, and now. His sermon brought to mind one of the best books I’ve ever read, which was a book by Dallas Willard called “The Divine Conspiracy”. Dallas devotes his entire book to the subject of God’s plan to have his children live as citizens of heaven, while they are here on Earth. So hopefully Rev. Rack won’t mind if I piggy back off of his sermon from two weeks ago and talk a little more about this subject.
The Bible teaches us that in heaven there will be no more poverty and no more hunger. Everyone will be filled and there will be plenty for everyone. For believers, this is a wonderful thought. The idea of an end to poverty and desperation; an end to the ills that follow from the ravages of poverty… hunger, discouragement, despair, crime, all of these will go away. God will personally wipe away every tear and usher in a Kingdom of joy, and fairness, and equality, the likes of which this world has never seen. And we delight in the knowledge that this is a part of every believer’s future, but we can’t quite wrap our minds around the fact that it is the responsibility of the believer to work to make this Kingdom of joy and fairness and equality a part of each of our lives now… right here.
Poverty is not the result of a lack of resources. Yes, there are economic downturns and there are famines and there are absolutely times when parts of the world suffer through very difficult circumstances, but still, the world’s resources in total are greater than the needs of every individual. I used to have a garden and I planted zucchini once. I had never planted zucchini before but I like zucchini, so I decided to plant some. I think I planted about a dozen plants. Now, I did follow the instructions on the package with regard to spacing of the plants… sort of. But I had no idea how big those plants get, and within a month or so I had a veritable foot tall forest of zucchini plants. And not only did I have no idea about how big they get, I also had no idea of how many zucchini you get from just a single plant; much less twelve plants. By midsummer I was up to my elbows in zucchini and I was giving them away to everyone.
God has created this miraculous world that has the capacity to feed everyone, even the nearly 8 billion people who live on this planet today. No, the problem is not one of supply, it’s one of distribution. When some horde resources, others will suffer without; that is how you create poverty.
I’ve lived my entire adult life in a house that’s slightly less than 700 square feet. I’ve never really had much financial comfort and there have been times in my life that my wife and I have struggled to make ends meet, not that that’s anything unusual, I would imagine pretty much most of us have experienced that somewhere along the line, but I am grateful that we’ve always had a roof over our heads and have never missed a meal due to lack of funds. And even though I’ve never really lived close to the poverty line, I’ve certainly never thought of myself as being even remotely wealthy. But a few years ago I read a story that had a profound impact on my perception of wealth.
The story was of a woman in Africa who lived in a tribal area. She was pregnant and her family was working hard at saving some money. The thing for which they were saving their money was, they wanted to buy a new razor blade. You see, when the time came for the baby to be born, they would have to have something with which to cut the umbilical cord. And if they didn’t have their own new razor, they would have to use a used one, and using a used one would mean that they were running the risk of their baby getting an infection that could kill him, so using a new razor was important. But buying a new razor was putting a financial strain on the family. We are blessed live in a country where poverty at this level is unimaginable; we are insulated from the fact that nearly half of the world’s population lives on $2.50 a day or less, (That’s $912.50 a year) and 80% of the world’s population lives on $10 a day or less. I once heard a comedian comparing famine in Africa to having a fender bender in a 1970 Lincoln Continental. He said “I mean it’s tragic, but it’s SO far away”.
As believers, we are called to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, and part of that responsibility is to work towards the alleviating of poverty and hunger. A small part of that we can accomplish by sharing a portion of our own resources, and most of us do that; but it’s just not enough. We also need to become advocates for fairness. We need to call out the hoarding of resources and we need to call out the mindset that blames the poor for their poverty, and uses that as an excuse to withhold the Kingdom of Heaven from them because somehow they have been deemed unworthy.
Psalm 24 says: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. The Earth, and all who dwell therein”. I actually really like the Good News Bible translation of this Psalm: “The world and all that is in it belong to the LORD; the earth and all who live on it are his.”
This is God’s world, it’s not ours. The resources of this world belong to God, not to us; we have merely been entrusted with them. I have two grandchildren who are toddlers, and I think that generally they are very good to each other and get along really well, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t the occasional clash over ownership of a particular toy. Every now and then an argument ensues when both want the same toy at the same time and invariably, one will claim ownership of that toy. The interesting thing about this is that the toy in question doesn’t always belong to the one claiming ownership, in fact, I’ve seen this happen where the toy being claimed actually belongs to the other child, and I’ve also seen toddler friends of my grandchildren who are visiting my son’s house, claiming my grandchildren’s toys as their own. When humans jealously claim God’s resources as their own, they are mistaken.
When they hoard those resources for themselves, they are denying resources to those in need; possibly desperately in need. “This is mine”, they say. “I’ve worked hard for this, why should anyone else be entitled to any of it?” This is something that we hear endlessly, but the Bible asks… “What do you have that you haven’t received? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you didn’t?”
If we’ve been born at a certain time, in a certain place, and we’ve been given an intellect and skills and an opportunity to develop that intellect and to hone those skills and we’ve been given the opportunity to put those skills to use and every single one of these circumstances is the gift of a loving and gracious God, then what would ever make us think that the purpose behind this shower of blessings that we have received would be for us to hoard our earnings to the exclusion of others? This world is populated by God’s beloved children, and as believers we are called to love them with the same devotion and the same passion with which we love God Himself. Selfishness and love are mutually exclusive. We can’t have both in our hearts at the same time; if we have one, we will not have the other. To have God’s love in our heart will cause us to despair over the suffering of others. To have God’s love in our heart makes poverty and hunger anywhere in the world completely unacceptable. To have God’s love in our heart should move us to become a strident voice for change; a voice that cries out for justice and fairness and compassion.
Ultimately, the goal of the believer is to have our hearts look like God’s heart; to view the world through the same lens with which God does; to care about the things that He cares about, to grieve over the things over which He grieves, and to rejoice over the things over which He rejoices. There are three essential components to learning how to do this. We must spend time in prayer, learning to listen to the Holy Spirit. (Remembering that it would be incredibly unusual for the Spirit to speak to us in an audible voice) The Spirit speaks to us in ideas, and notions, and inclinations.) We need to spend time immersed in the Word because the Word introduces us to Jesus. This is why Karl Barth said “In the church of Jesus Christ there should be no non-theologians.” Lastly, we need the influence and tutelage of mature believers, who can help guide us in our understanding.
In coming to know Jesus in these ways, we come to know a man who loved extravagantly, who was filled with compassion, and who accepted people without regard to their status, their gender, or their worldview. Don’t forget that among His inner circle were a zealot (someone who was an avid Jewish nationalist), a tax collector (someone who was a collaborator with the hated Roman occupation), women (Who had absolutely no social standing in His day), and some very decidedly blue collar fisherman.
We meet a Jesus who didn’t get angry at the people who tried Him on false charges, mocked Him, beat Him, and crucified Him (In fact, He prayed for these people). But he responded angrily when the Pharisees accused Him of violating the law on the Sabbath (You brood of Vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? Jesus said.) And He became enraged at the money changers and merchants in the temple, overturning their tables and chasing the merchants out with a whip he made of cords. Has anyone ever wondered why He did that?
The Jewish faith required that everyone come to Jerusalem for the high Holy days. When you came to the temple was when you paid your tithe and when you came to the temple was when you offered your sacrifices. Now, first of all, the tithe couldn’t be paid with the standard Roman coinage of the day. The standard Roman coins had pictures of the Roman Emperor and of Roman Governors; in the Jewish faith, these were graven images, and they weren’t acceptable in the temple. No, the temple tithe had to be paid in temple shekels. But not to worry, there were plenty of money changers at the temple who would gladly exchange your Roman coins for temple shekels, especially since they were permitted to keep a hefty exchange fee. In fact, the exchange fees were shamefully high and the money changers tended to be quite wealthy. When you brought your sacrifice, it had to be unblemished. A priest would inspect your sacrifice and if it was determined to be blemished (Which it probably always was) you could not offer it as a sacrifice. But not to worry, you could purchase a pre-approved unblemished sacrifice… for an exorbitant fee. The problem Jesus had with the money changers and the merchants wasn’t so much with the fact that they were doing business in the temple. It was with the fact that the businesses were run with the intent of fleecing the people for as much money as they could get out of them. Then with the money they took from those least able to afford it, they were able to live lavish lifestyles as part of the upper crust of Jewish society. Jesus wasn’t enraged by the operation of the businesses; He was enraged by the injustice.
What DOES the Lord require of us? In Micah 6 we find the answer: “To live justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”.
When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart, the injustices of the world will enrage us as well. When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart the suffering of the poor will break our hearts too. When our heart looks like Jesus’ heart, for people to go hungry will be out of the question. In the second chapter of Acts we see how the first century church reacted to those in need. “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”
Let’s face it… not many people are going to drop everything and go live in a monastery. Not many people are actually going to sell all they have. But the more our hearts look like God’s heart, the more we will be able to discern what is our calling and how is God calling us to make heaven real in our little corner of the earth. Amen

My Two Cents

I’d like to make a theological observation about abortion.  Let me please begin by saying that I am not a professionally trained theologian.  I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ with a healthy curiosity and a penchant for reading… a lot.  I believe Karl Barth was right when he said “In the church of Jesus Christ there should be no non-theologians” so I have put a lot of time into reading and studying the Bible with the help of a myriad of books and commentaries.

 

By the time I am done, I will probably irritate both the pro-choice AND the pro-life crowds so I humbly request the following:  1. Please do not bother to comment if you haven’t read the entire essay.  2. I welcome thoughtful theological comments, whether or not they agree with my position but I have taken great pains to limit this essay to theological thought.  As such, I have no interest in political rhetoric.  Partisan comments will be summarily deleted.

 

Shortly after becoming a Christian I attended classes and became certified as a lay speaker in the United Methodist Church.  Over the years I have enjoyed the occasional turn in the pulpit and my agreement with my current (Presbyterian Church USA) church is that I will gladly fill the pulpit any time the pastor is away as long as someone else doesn’t want a turn.  I generally preach 4-5 times a year.

 

One of the first sermons I ever preached was from the book of Habakkuk.  As a young Christian the book appealed to me as a rather tidy lesson about God’s ways not being our ways.  In a nutshell, Habakkuk complained to God about injustice in Judah.  God replied that He was about to use Babylon to judge Judah.  Habakkuk, aghast, asks how God could possibly use Babylon “That ruthless and impetuous people” to judge God’s chosen.  God essentially answers Habakkuk by saying  “Who do you think you are to question me”.  The book ends with Habakkuk singing a song of praise to God.  Babylon carries Judah into captivity, 70 years later a faithful remnant returns, rebuilds Jerusalem and the temple, and sets the stage for the coming of Christ.  Nice, right?

 

This year I preached on Habakkuk for the second time.  This time my sermon was informed by a great deal more study, including reading the work of Habakkuk’s contemporary Jeremiah.  The book of Lamentations is the only book in the Bible that I have read and studied only once.  I couldn’t bear to study it again.  The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem was horrific, and without going into the ugly details, suffice it to say that many good and faithful Jewish people suffered… horribly.  The lesson to be learned from Habakkuk goes much deeper than God’s ways not being our ways.  In the book of Habakkuk, God is calling us to completely change our perspective and look at the world through heavenly eyes, rather than looking at the world through earthly eyes.  Habakkuk, and we, are called to trust God when, from a worldly standpoint, He appears to be the least trustworthy.  How am I supposed to trust in God’s goodness when the Bible says “Compassionate women cooked their children, who became food” (Lamentations 4:10)?  How can I trust a God who allows such a thing to happen?

 

Our earthly eyes tell us that the suffering and death of the righteous is an abomination; it’s something that should never happen.  But you and I both know that it does, and it does so with regularity.  Are we to assume that, because this happens, God is not good?  How are we to interpret events when the outcome is inconsistent with our concept of “Good”?   The believer interprets these events not with earthy eyes, but with heavenly eyes.  We learn to view events from God’s perspective.  Francis Chan has this wonderful message where he has this enormous piece of rope that he carries out onto the chancel.  There is a little short piece of tape on the end of the rope, and he uses the short piece of tape to represent our lives here on earth with the huge length of rope representing the eternity that we can’t see.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_x8dsvb_4)   Our lives are not about this earth.  We are foreigners here; ambassadors.  Our kingdom and our destiny is the eternal Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ.  As such, we are called to view the events of this life according to their eternal significance and to view death not as an end, but as a transformation, and for the believer, a joyous one at that.

 

To the person looking at a crisis pregnancy with earthly eyes, there are two possible outcomes.  Either the baby lives or the baby dies.  If we look at the crisis pregnancy with earthly eyes, for the baby to die is an unspeakable tragedy and for the baby to live is success.

 

Look at a crisis pregnancy with heavenly eyes however, and we see that there are not two but four possible outcomes.  In the worst case scenario, the baby dies and the mother is so adversely affected by the experience that she never finds God’s grace and forgiveness.  This is truly the greatest tragedy, because now we are dealing with an event that has eternal consequences.   With our heavenly eyes we know that the baby, unborn and innocent, has a secure place in God’s Kingdom, but the mother is lost. Without somehow finding God’s forgiveness, she will be eternally separated from God’s love and care.  In what might be a better scenario, the baby lives, but the mother is still adversely affected by the experience and never finds forgiveness.  Bearing in mind the uncomfortable fact that a mother, antagonistic to Christianity, is highly likely to pass that antagonism on to her children, and you understand why I say it MIGHT be a better scenario, because now we are possibly dealing with two events of eternal significance.  In the third scenario, the baby dies but the mother, cared for with grace and compassion throughout her ordeal, finds God’s grace, finds God’s forgiveness, and becomes a child of God’s Kingdom.  With our heavenly eyes, we see that we now have two people who have entered into God’s eternal Kingdom.  In the perfect scenario, the baby lives and the love of Jesus, exemplified by those who have ministered to the mother in her time of need, leads her to a saving faith, and hopefully to her child as well.

 

Let me be clear.  More than once in the Bible God says “Before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you”.  Every living being is ordained by God and there can be no theological question in my mind that an unborn child is an ordained part of God’s kingdom.  To take the life of an unborn child is, theologically speaking, taking a life… period.

 

But as one looking at the world through heavenly eyes, we know that free will is a central part of God’s eternal plan.  Each of us has been given the capacity to choose whether we will love God, or whether we will reject Him.  CS Lewis once said “Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  Only through the expression of our free will can we truly love God.  As believers we must understand this.  The Bible says that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  As emulators of Christ, it is our responsibility not to tell others how to behave, but to tell others about the riches to be found in a saving relationship with Christ Jesus.

 

There are two people who were mass murderers who went to prison.  Our earthy eyes tell us these people are the dregs of humanity, but in prison both became Christian and both have borne tremendous fruit for the Kingdom.  God forgave them and God used them and our heavenly eyes rejoice in their salvation and the fruit they have borne.  Mark 3:28-29 says  “Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”  Of course without repentance there is no forgiveness, but when one repents, God is willing and indeed eager to forgive ANY sin.  Only the sin of rejecting Him is unforgivable.  Forgiveness of all other sin, however, is a private matter between the individual and God.  Each of us is called to “Work out our own salvation with fear and trembling”  (Phil 2:12b) If God is willing to forgive any sin, should we, who have been blessed with forgiveness and given a set of heavenly eyes, be any less willing?  Our focus needs to be not on items of earthly significance, but on items of eternal significance.  Uncomfortable though it may be, we must allow each of God’s children to make their own choices in this world and we must make our focus the heavenly focus of being God’s voice and bringing the Gospel to an unbelieving world.

 

I believe that the church should take a stand against evil.  But I believe our stand should be one of offering an alternative of love, compassion, and forgiveness; a stand that uses heavenly eyes and produces results of eternal significance.

Ooh, Ooh, Call Me

 

I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t a very good student in high school.  I pretty much did the minimum amount of work that I needed to do to get by, and for the most part, my grades showed it.  The one exception to that was music.  My music grades were pretty much all “A’s”.  Most of you have probably already heard the story about how I hated band and seriously hated practicing and wanted nothing more than to quit.  One day when I was in 7^th grade, my mom, in what I am convinced was a Spirit inspired stroke of genius told me that I was no longer required to practice.  She said that I could be “As bad as I wanted to be” (That’s a direct quote) and that I was welcome to quit band; but only after I had finished my freshman year in high school.  It was during 7^th grade that I was semi-willingly coerced into joining the school stage band (Actually a jazz ensemble that played big band music).  It was jazz that led me into a lifelong love of big bands, playing the trombone, and music in general.  By the end of my freshman year quitting band was the furthest thing from my mind.

 

I was never the type of student to skip classes so I did spend the requisite amount of time attending them but to me, school was not an opportunity to improve myself, it was just something to be endured.   I did homework only when absolutely necessary and I counted on having been blessed with a pretty good memory for what I heard in class to get me through the tests… more or less.  Studying was out of the question (Hey, I was too busy practicing music anyhow!) and to this day I still have nightmares about being called on by a teacher to answer a question to which I have no clue what the answer is.  Many were the times that I would shrink into my seat and try to make myself as invisible as possible.  Let me ask you a question… How did you respond when the teacher asked a question?  Were you like me, hiding behind the person in front of you hoping not to be called?  Or were you the kid who waved your hand in the air “Call me!  Call me”.  I actually went to school with a kid who had a routine for this; three “oohs”, followed by the teacher’s name three times, all while madly waving his hand and leaning forward half sitting and half standing in his seat.  “Ooh, ooh, ooh, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith”.  I guess there is a lot to be said for confidence.

 

Our willingness to raise our hand and answer the question is directly related to the confidence we have in being able to answer the question correctly.  In music classes I saw students shrinking behind their music stands when the question was asked “Who wants to play the solo?”.  Now it was my turn to be that annoying kid.  Ooh, Mr. Hoffman!  So many people in band or choir were paralyzed by stage fright, but I learned early on that stage fright is caused by the fear of being caught making a mistake, and that if I was thoroughly prepared and knew the music inside and out, not only did I not get stage fright, but I really enjoyed making music for others.

 

Here’s the thing…  Long before I became a Christian, God was preparing me to be a musician, and preparing me for the privilege of serving Him through music.  Yes, I was raised in the church, I attended worship regularly with my parents and I even suffered through the Lutheran confirmation classes, but my relationship with God consisted only of an intellectual assent to His existence.  There were no feelings of attachment, no knowledge of His presence, no inclination to shape the course of my life based on His calling.  And yet in my ignorance (And in my arrogance) God, in His grace, chose to love me, and chose to teach me to serve Him.  I can look back on my life and see a myriad of times when I KNOW that God had a hand in things that happened.  I can see times where He took me by the hand and led me to places that I would not have gone on my own.  These experiences have been a powerful and irrefutable witness to me of God’s power and God’s presence, but I owe the fact that I was able even to see God’s invisible hand working in my life to the work of two very faithful friends of mine. Their persistent witness to me, their overflowing love for me, and their relentless faithfulness to tell me the Good News of the gospel, broke through my ignorance and my arrogance, taught me the truth of God’s love and grace, and led to my choice to become a servant of Jesus Christ.  And now, I am charged with the same task of being a bearer of the Good News to others.

 

If you were a person who had followed this journey of mine closely, my experiences might have influenced your belief as well, but only a few people have known me that long.   A few more people have known me long enough to have seen the way God has changed my life and it’s possible that those having seen the changes might be more inclined to believe my witness, but for those who haven’t known me that long, they have only my word; and they may choose to believe me or not.  For these folks, the effectiveness of my witness will depend on what they see in the here and now.  The impact of my witness will depend on how loving I am, and on how prepared I am to answer the inevitable questions.  1 Peter 3:15 says “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,”

 

My friends, we’ve been given a job to do, and a very important job at that.  We are the latest in the long line of apostles who have been called to bring the Good News of the gospel to the world.  And so my question to you this morning is…  Are we prepared?  Are we prepared to live a life of extravagant love for others so that the light of Christ shines through our lives?  Are we prepared to let the Holy Spirit speak through us so that we can boldly proclaim the message of healing and forgiveness?  Are we prepared to answer the questions that will arise when we do share our faith?

 

I wanted to focus a little bit this morning on some of the questions that are common and how to address them.

 

There are many people who believe (Or like to believe) that Jesus is only a myth:

 

The fact is: there are 21 separate, non-Biblical, late first or early second century references to Jesus.  Several of these references were openly hostile to Christianity and the fact that none of these hostile witnesses denied Jesus’ existence is very powerful evidence indeed.  Jesus is mentioned by all three of the preeminent historians of His day, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus.  He is mentioned by the vehemently anti-Christian satirist Phlegon.  He is mentioned in a correspondence carried on between the Roman Governor Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan.  He is mentioned in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud.  And finally, my personal favorite, He is mentioned in the Graecae Magicae, a book of spells and incantations for healers, as a name by which people could be healed.  The fact is, no serious historian would deny the fact that Jesus was a real person who lived in first century Palestine.

 

There are many people who believe (Or like to believe) that the Bible was written hundreds of years after the disciples had died.  They believe (Or like to believe) that the Bible is full of legends and myths, that it was produced by a backwards people living in a backwards time and that superstition substituted for fact and logic:

 

The fact is:  There is an avalanche of evidence to support the fact that the New Testament was indeed written during the lifetime of the original disciples at a time when eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ life would still have been plentiful.  A scrap of paper 2.5” by 4.5” found in northwestern Africa in the 1930’s contains fragments of the Gospel of John.  This document, though there is some dispute over the dating, is generally considered to date from before the year 130 CE.  Assuming this to be the case, for John’s gospel to be in circulation 1500 miles from where we know John spent the last years of his life, we would have to presume authorship some 10-20 years prior to the dating of this fragment.  Since John’s Gospel is the last one to be written, the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) would have had to precede this date by another 10-20 years, and the letters of Paul would have preceded the synoptic Gospels by another 10-20 years.  This timeline places authorship of the Gospels and the letters of Paul exactly where conservative Bible historians and the Church Fathers have been saying they belong for 2000 years.  Not only do we have this physical evidence, we also have the witness of the Church Fathers.

 

I’m going to try to summarize this without getting into a really convoluted discussion about the church fathers.  John, Peter, and Paul each had followers who personally heard their stories and passed them on.  John’s church father followers were Ignatius who lived from 35 to 117 and Polycarp who lived from 69 to 155.  Said to have been one of the children blessed by Jesus, Ignatius wrote 6 letters that are extant.  (For those unfamiliar with archaeological terminology, extant means an original item that survives to this day).  In these letters he either quotes or mentions Matthew, Luke, and John’s gospels and several of Paul’s letters.  His writings do not vary from the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the NT.  Polycarp wrote a well attested letter identifying 14 NT books as scripture.

 

Ignatius and Polycarp taught Irenaeus (120-202), who taught Hippolytus (170-236).  Both wrote important works and both recognized 24 NT books as scripture.

 

Paul was mentor to Linus and Clement of Rome (2 of the first 4 Bishops of Rome).  Clement wrote “The 1^st Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians” which is the oldest surviving non-Biblical Christian document.  Presumably written between 80 and 99 the letter quotes or mentions 7 NT books.

 

Peter referred to John Mark as “My Son”.  John Mark is the presumed author of the gospel of Mark. Mark taught Justus, who taught Pantaenus, who taught Clement of Alexandria.  Clement quoted or mentioned as scripture every NT book except Philemon, James, 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John.  Clement of Alexandria taught Origen who wrote a commentary on every book of the modern NT.  Origen taught Pamphilus, who taught Eusebius, who’s “Church History” is extant and identifies 24 of the NT books as scripture.  Eusebius died in 339 which brings us into the time frame of the writing of the Codex Siniaiticus which contains the entire text of the modern NT.

Though the story of the church fathers is a long and complicated one, following the story shows the continuous chain of apostolic authority, shows how the Gospel message was transmitted with consistency, and shows the books of the NT being identified, quoted, and cited at a very early date. These multiple 2^nd and 3^rd century references to the New Testament make the claims that the New Testament wasn’t written until the 4^th century seem somewhat foolish, don’t they?

 

For anyone wishing to dig deeper into the answers to questions of the faith, I’d like to recommend a few books.  First of all, for outstanding answers to the more philosophical questions about the faith, Leonard Keller’s “The Reason for God” is the best book I’ve ever read.  I’ve bought this book six or seven times.  I keep having to buy it because I keep giving my copy away to people.

 

For answers to the more physical evidence there is J. Warner Wallace’s “Cold Case Christianity”.  Detective Wallace is a police detective who received special training to work cold cases.  He began to use his detective training to examine the claims of Christianity, becoming a Christian in the process.  He documented his experience in this book and teaches us a lot about detective work along the way.

 

In a similar vein, Lee Strobel was a reporter assigned to cover the Chicago police homicide division.  He also became a Christian while using his investigative reporter skills to examine the claims of Christianity.

 

Probably the best of the books informationally is Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”.  It’s not an easy read because it’s organized like a textbook, but it is terrific as a resource because the organization of the book makes individual subjects easy to find and research.

 

For a deeper understanding of the faith we have authors like CS Lewis, AW Tozer, Francis Chan, Dallas Willard, and others.  Tozer’s works are available for free on the internet, as are the sermons of Charles Spurgeon.  There are lots of opportunities to help grow our faith through the work of these faithful authors.

 

Finally, there is no substitute for the original source material.  We need to be spending regular time reading and studying the Bible itself and we need to take advantage of Bible Study opportunities as they arise.

 

God has a plan for me.  He has a plan for you too.  Ultimately His plan is for us to rejoice in His presence forever, but right now, we have a job to do.  God has called us to be His voice.  He has called us to be the bearers of the gospel, literally the Good News of Jesus Christ.  It’s a call we need to be prepared to answer.  Are we going to shrink into our seats?  Or will we wave our hands in the air and say “Ooh, God, Send me”?

 

 

Broken Records & Scratched CD’s

Sermon From 2016.07.10:  Broken Records & Scratched CDs
1. I have a character flaw…
a. It’s not a secret
b. Everyone who follows me on Facebook knows about it.
c. When I see a post that’s inaccurate, or misleading, or untruthful, I just can’t move past it and get along with my life.
d. I feel compelled to reply, usually with thorough and often well researched rebuttals.
e. In theory this is a good thing, because I believe there is value in truth.
f. In actual practice though, maybe not so much.
2. A month ago or so, a friend of mine, who is agnostic, liked a meme. (For those who are unfamiliar, a meme is a picture with a caption, usually humorous, and often sarcastic, designed to make a point.
a. When he liked the meme, it came up on his page, which caused it to show up on my news feed.
b. Now I don’t remember the exact wording of the meme, but the essence of it was that the Bible is unreliable because it’s just a collection of stories that were told for a thousand years before being written down.
c. In typical Carl fashion, I couldn’t let it go.
d. I posted a rather long and thorough explanation of why, for the New Testament at least, this is completely inaccurate…
e. I ummm… I didn’t realize at the time that I was responding to the post on an atheist Facebook page.
f. What ensued was a large number of people responding to a post that eventually reached nearly a thousand responses; twenty of which were mine, and several of mine were quite long.
g. I was surprised that, for the most part, the conversation was quite respectful. But there are a few things that I learned from this exchange and I wanted to share them with you today.
3. Our word “Gospel” is derived from the Greek word “Euaggelion” (yoo-ang-ghel’-ee-on) which means “Good news”.
a. It is also the root for our words “Angel” (Bearer of Good News), “Evangelist”, and “Evangelism”.
b. As I said two weeks ago, each and every one of us is called to be a bearer of Good News, an evangelist.
c. 1 Peter 3:15 says “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”
d. We need to know that certain questions are going to be asked of us, so it is advantageous for us to know the answers beforehand.
4. I’d like to begin with the meme itself. I’d like for us to think critically for a moment, and to facilitate that, I’m going to rephrase the meme:
a. Jesus was born, lived among us, and gathered a group of a dozen close followers.
b. His followers claim to have seen Him:
i. Turn a few hundred gallons of water into wine (A little unusual, right?).
ii. Heal the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, a voice to the mute, mobility to the lame.
iii. Cure incurable skin diseases.
iv. They claimed that He walked on water, that He calmed a storm simply by rebuking it.
v. They claim that He raised at least two people from the dead.
vi. His followers claimed that He was crucified, died, and was buried, and that three days later He appeared among them, alive and well, and still bearing the marks of His crucifixion.
vii. Oh, and He said He was God.
c. His followers took this history changing, life altering message, dropped everything, and went out and told everyone who would listen.
i. They bore this message through trials and persecutions.
ii. They bore this message even though it cost 7 of the 12 their lives.
iii. Then those to whom the story had been told, told everyone who would listen to them, and they told all who would listen to them, many of them suffering persecution as well, and some of them being martyred.
iv. And then, three hundred years later, someone said “Hey, maybe we should write this stuff down.  Does that sound reasonable to anyone?
d. Now let’s dig a little deeper.
i. Luke was the author of the gospel bearing his name, and also the book of Acts. In all, these two books comprise nearly a third of the New Testament.
1. Luke was a physician, and as such was highly educated. He could not possibly have become a physician without having been able to speak, read, and write both Greek and Latin.
2. Luke, though he never personally met Jesus, dropped everything, including a very lucrative career, to become a follower of Paul, accompanying Paul on some of his missionary journeys, and eventually giving his life for his testimony.
3. Can we find ANY reason to believe that Luke wouldn’t have written down this life changing message himself? Especially when he begins his Gospel with the statement “With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, mostexcellent Theophilus”, and begins Acts with “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach”
e. Paul for certain wrote 7 of the books of the New Testament and is thought either to have written, or to have had a hand in writing up to 7 more.
i. Paul was a Pharisee, and as such was highly educated. He would absolutely, for certain have been able to speak, read, and write Hebrew, and since the priests used the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that was already 300 years old by the time Paul was born, he would absolutely for certain have been able to speak, read, and write Greek as well. In addition he most likely spoke, read, and wrote Aramaic, as this was the common language of first century Palestine.
ii. Paul was a persecutor of the Christians, who had an encounter with the risen Christ.  He was blinded by the encounter, lived with a Christian family, learning until his sight was restored.  We are told that he visited Peter, James, and John in Jerusalem, but the English translations fails us here because the usage of the Greek word we translate “Visit” would best be translated “Interrogated”  Paul went to Jerusalem to learn all he could about Jesus from those who were closest to him.  Then he dropped everything and become the Apostle to the Gentiles.
iii. Paul was imprisoned multiple times, beaten multiple times, stoned, shipwrecked twice, and ultimately executed for his testimony.
iv. Can we find ANY reason to believe that Paul wouldn’t have written down this life changing message himself; especially when he said in Galatians 6:11 “See what large letters I use as I write this in my own hand”?
f. When you stop to think about it, the idea that it took three hundred years to write this all down is ludicrous. Couple this with the fact that there is an existing fragment of the Gospel of John, the last of the gospels to be written, that is dated to around the year 130, and the thought that the story wasn’t committed to paper for three hundred years becomes exactly what it is… An old wives tale.
5. I told you that I learned a few things during the exchanges on this post and one of the things that I discovered is the fact that the word “Sin” produces an effect similar to that of a broken record or a scratched cd.
a. I know that at least a few of us are old enough to have owned a vinyl record or two that had a scratch that cause the record to constantly return to the same place. You’d hear the “pop”, then the song would play on for a moment, and then “pop” you’d hear the pop again and the song would restart itself from the moment of the pop. This would continue to happen until you went over and moved the tone arm past the scratch so the song could continue.
b. For those not old enough to have had this experience, you’ve probably had a similar experience with a scratched CD that would hang in the same place and keep repeating the same fraction of music, but the broken record is a better analogy.
c. No matter what I would say, no matter how carefully I would explain, no matter how non-judgmental I was, once the word “Sin” was uttered, the conversation was incapable of getting past it.
d. The question that was asked of me over and over again was “How can such and such be a sin”?
e. It’s nearly impossible for people to shed the idea that the word sin means to do something evil or hurtful and nearly impossible for someone to shed the idea that being a sinner means being an evil or hurtful person.
f. Now it’s true that sin is a critical issue, but if sin isn’t understood in its proper context, you may never get past the word, which is why, even though it seems counterintuitive, it’s probably best to avoid the word or the issue initially.  When the seeker is ready you can return to the issue.
6. More important is the second thing I learned.
a. Almost every question that I was asked was rooted in a lack of trust in God.
i. “Why does God allow evil to happen?”
ii. “Why does God call me a sinner when this is the way I am?  Didn’t He make me this way?”
iii. “If God was really a loving God he wouldn’t (Or would) fill in the blank…
iv. The fact is, if someone is able to believe that our God is a loving and benevolent God, then these questions will eventually answer themselves.
b. When I answered the questions these folks were asking (And to be completely honest, though claiming to be atheist, most of these folks were earnestly seeking answers to their questions about God) their questions revolved around a desire to understand the nature of God.
i. They wanted to know why God didn’t run the world the way they think He should run it. They see ample evidence of unfairness, inequality, pain and suffering, and evil, and want to know why God doesn’t just step in and put an end to it.
ii. And these are actually really GOOD questions, aren’t they?
iii. The truth is, it’s not possible to understand the answers to these questions without being willing to accept the basic fact that God is good, and it’s hard to accept that fact when the evidence appears to contradict it.
7. So how do we reach these people???
a. That’s the million dollar question, but the answer is right in front of us.
b. Jesus’ first commandment is the one to love.
c. In the mid second century, there was a devastating plague in Rome that killed nearly 30% of the population.
d. So virulent was the plague that anyone who exhibited even the slightest symptom was avoided like… well… like the plague. Even family members were left to fend for themselves.
e. But to everyone’s shock and surprise, the Church of Jesus Christ stepped in and began caring for the sick, costing many of the Christians their lives. This loving act caused an enormous spread of Christianity among those who witnessed it.
f. Now I’m not advocating going out and doing something that is life threatening… but I AM advocating doing something that is life altering! Love extravagantly! Let God’s love so shine through your life that others can’t help but wonder why you are the way you are.
g. St. Francis of Assisi once said “Spread the Gospel, use words if necessary”.
h. When people do ask questions about your faith, focus on the fact that God is good, and worthy of our love. If they ask why you are so kind or so loving or so helpful, tell then outright that it is because of God’s love living in you.
8. The third thing that I leaned is that the church of Jesus Christ is under attack.
a. I expected there to be some anger or resentment, but I was totally taken aback by the amount of vitriol pointed towards God and particularly towards Christians.
b. Yes, the Church of Jesus Christ is indeed under attack, but…
i. It’s not under attack from atheists or agnostics.
ii. It’s not under attack from other religions or denominations, at least not in the US
iii. The church is under attack from within.
c. The church is under attack from people claiming to be Christian, most of whom don’t know Christian theology from a hot dog.
d. My wife Jackie was watching a video on her phone the other day; it was a video of someone from a very famous church that has made a name for itself by telling people that God hates them.
e. The woman in the video had cornered some unfortunate soul and was screaming at him at the top of her lungs, telling him how much God hated him and telling him that he was going to burn in hell.
f. As she railed on and on for an interminable amount of time, nine words kept repeating themselves in my head:
i. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
g. Jesus explained that you would know a tree by its fruit. You know when you see apples on a tree that it’s an apple tree and if you see oranges then you know it’s NOT an apple tree. So it is with Christians.
i. When you see a Christian, you should see the fruits of the Spirit in ample evidence: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
h. Now it’s not my place to judge, my place is to love; but I didn’t see any of these fruits of the Spirit evident in this woman’s tirade, and I guarantee the person being screamed at didn’t either.
i. If those who are seeking, or if those who are claiming to be atheist or agnostic, were able to see Christians whose lives and actions were abounding in these fruits of the Spirit, the process of explaining the goodness of God would be so much easier than trying to explain the goodness of God when the seeker looks at the Christian church and sees this woman screaming hatred and judgment.
j. John 3:17 says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” If we are called to emulate Christ, which we are… Then we also are not in the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through our witness to Him who saves.
k. Let us fill ourselves with the knowledge of the Word
l. Let us be prepared in every circumstance to answer questions about our faith and our hope.
m. But above all, let us live lives of extravagant love.

Koinonia: Sermon 6/26/16

Koinonia

1. Most of us have probably heard the Greek word “Koinonia” at some point or other.
   1. Koinonia is the Greek root from which we derive our word “Communion” but, contrary to popular belief, the word does not mean “A small meal consisting of a morsel of bread dipped in a cup of wine (Or grape juice)”.
   2. Koinonia IS translated into the English word “Communion” in the New Testament, but it is also translated into the English word “Fellowship”.
   3. Does anyone find it a little odd that a single word could be translated into two such seemingly different meanings?
2. I’d like to spend a little time today talking about “Koinonia”.
   1. Strong’s Concordance defines koinonia as “That which is shared in common as the basis of fellowship”.
   2. In classic Greek use, the word koinonia was used to indicate the sharing of a common goal or purpose.
   3. In Luke 5 we read that Peter was a fisherman, and that James and John were his partners. The word here translated “Partners” is actually “Koinonia” because Peter, James, and John were united in a common purpose, which was fishing.
   4. While discussing the offering that was collected by Paul in Corinth to support the believers in Jerusalem, the word “Koinonia” is translated in 2 Corinthians 8 as “Participation” and in 2 Corinthians 9 as “Contribution”, again, sharing in the common purpose of the sharing of resources for the support of the community of believers; koinonia.
3. So apparently there is more to “Fellowship” than just friendship. We are not so much being called to be friends as we are called into fellowship with each other with a common purpose in mind; that purpose being the sharing of the gospel.
   1. But, not only are we being called into fellowship with each other, we are being called into fellowship with God Himself.
   2. And we are being called, not just to be God’s friends, but to align ourselves with Him in a common purpose.
   3. We read in this morning’s New Testament lesson “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard,so that you also may have fellowship (koinonia) with us. And our fellowship (koinonia) is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ”.
   4. Us… Sharing in the community of believers, with Jesus, and with God Himself, in the common goal of showing the world who God is, in Jesus, in order that others may come to share our faith, and to join in our fellowship as well.
4. Now, I’d like to give you an interesting little piece of information.
   1. The word “Koinonia” does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. Not at all.
      1. This wouldn’t be surprising, given the fact that the Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew, and koinonia is a Greek word. But when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek by a group of 70 Hebrew scholars, sometime in the third century BCE, the Septuagint, as this translation was called, avoided the use of the word “Koinonia”, because God was not thought to be someone with whom humans could have fellowship
   2. I know I’ve explained this before, but it bears repeating.
      1. Every now and then we run into a reference to the veil in the temple being torn. In Paul Baloche’s praise song “Jesus Messiah” the second verse reads “His body, the bread His blood, the wine
         Broken and poured out all for love
         The whole earth trembled and the veil was torn”.  What?
      2. The Hebrew Temple was arranged in concentric squares. On the outside was the Court of the Gentiles, where everyone was welcome.  Inside that was the Court of the Women, where only Jews were permitted.  Next came the Court of the Israelites, where only Jewish Men were permitted, and then you had the Court of the Priests, where only the priests were permitted.  Inside that was the sanctuary, where only working priests were permitted.  And then finally at the center of it all was the Holy of Holies.  The Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of the temple by a curtain that extended from floor to ceiling.
      3. Let me read a short couple of paragraphs from “The Tabernacle Place” website that explains.
   3. The word “veil” in Hebrew means a screen, divider or separator that hides. What was this curtain hiding? Essentially, it was shielding a holy God from sinful man. Whoever entered into the Holy of Holies was entering the very presence of God. In fact, anyone except the high priest who entered the Holy of Holies would die. Even the high priest, God’s chosen mediator with His people, could only pass through the veil and enter this sacred dwelling once a year, on a prescribed day called the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.
   4. The picture of the veil was that of a barrier between man and God, showing man that the holiness of God could not be trifled with. Habakkuk 1:13 says “God’s eyes are too pure to look on evil and He can tolerate no sin”. The veil was a barrier to make sure that man could not carelessly and irreverently enter into God’s awesome presence. Even as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, he had to make some meticulous preparations: He had to wash himself, put on special clothing, bring burning incense to let the smoke cover his eyes from a direct view of God, and bring blood with him to make atonement for the sins of the nation.
   5. To the Jewish mind, having fellowship with God was unthinkable, and yet at the moment of Jesus death, the veil in the temple was torn in two. Through the atoning death of Jesus, all of the barriers between God and us have been removed.  No more curtains, no more smoke, no more blood of atonement.  Through Jesus, we are able to have fellowship (koinonia) with the Father.
      1. Joining in fellowship with Jesus means aligning ourselves with Him. It means sharing His goals, His purpose, His mission.
      2. Karl Barth is considered by many to have been the greatest Protestant mind of the 20^th Century. His seminal work was a fourteen volume, 6 million word study of systematic theology called “Church Dogmatics”.  One of Barth’s best known quotes is “In the Church of Jesus Christ, there should be no non-theologians”.
      3. Barth was right. It’s not possible to join with someone in a common purpose if you don’t know what that person’s purpose is.
         1. Joining in fellowship with Jesus means having a clear understanding of His mission. It means understanding and emulating His methods
         2. If we fail to have a clear understanding of Jesus’ plan and purpose, we have the capacity to do far more harm to the Gospel than we have to do good.

• Unfortunately, these days we are seeing far too many believers who have spent too little time in the Gospels and too much time listening to people who speak to their worldview without regard for how their teachings fit with the Gospel or the actions of Jesus.

1. We see far too many people spewing hate when that which we are actually called to is love. The Bible tells us as plainly as can be that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  In joining in fellowship with Jesus, His mission becomes our mission.  We are not in this world to condemn the world, or to condemn individuals or groups for that matter.  We are in this world to love.
2. We are called to follow the example of Jesus, who’s harshest words were always reserved for the religious elite of His day. People who He referred to as a “Brood of Vipers” and people who He said were “White and beautiful on the outside but inside filled with the bones of the dead and everything unclean”.
3. Jesus spoke these words to them because they were using their religion to build themselves up by demeaning and excluding others.

• Jesus command to us to love contains no exclusions. Jesus didn’t tell us not to love people of other nations, He didn’t tell us not to love people of other faiths, nor did He tell us not to love people who are different from us.
• Here is what Jesus actually taught about love:
  1. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

1. If we want to be in fellowship with Jesus it means learning to love the unlovable. We need to love the rude, the arrogant, the mean, the hateful, and the spiteful.  We need to love those who don’t believe as we believe, who don’t live as we live.  We need to love those who don’t share our values, who live alternative lifestyles, and who disagree with our worldview.
2. We need to love because God choose to love us when we were unlovable. We need to love because loving others is the very definition of koinonia with God.  We need to love because the world desperately needs to witness God’s love in action, and there is no one capable of showing it to them except for us.
3. This is hard… This is REALLY hard.  It’s something that takes commitment, and perseverance, and lots and lots of practice; but if we want to have fellowship, if we want to have koinonia with Jesus, this is what we have to do.

9. When we join Jesus in the common purpose of making His name known, we join with Him in fellowship. And joining in fellowship with Jesus, means joining in fellowship with the Father, it means joining in fellowship with each other, and it means joining in fellowship with all believers throughout the ages.
10. (Move behind the communion table) Contrary to what some may think, this is not an altar.  This is a communion table.  The elements of our communion are distributed from this table, and when we have communion, we are, figuratively speaking, joining with each other in koinonia.  Not just the sharing of a small meal, but the joining with each other, with Jesus, and with God the Father in the common purpose of making Jesus known to the world.
    1. And it’s not just believers in the here and now, because when we walk over here (Stage right) we are sharing this table with our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, and beyond. We are sharing this table with all of the believers who came before us; and if we walk far enough, we end up at the Last Supper, sharing fellowship with Jesus and the disciples themselves.
    2. And when we walk over here (Stage left) we are sharing with our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, and with all of the believers who will follow; and if we walk far enough, we will end up at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, sharing fellowship with all believers throughout all of time.
11. Fellowship, communion, participation, contribution, partners, working together in pursuit of a common goal, koinonia.
    1. To have fellowship with Jesus is to understand His goal, and to immerse ourselves in it; to emulate His kindness, His gentleness, and His compassion; To care about people as He cared about people, to witness as He witnessed, and to love as He loved.

Knock, Knock. Sermon 4/24/16

Though written in an outline format, this sermon is mostly a complete text.  I just use the format to help me keep my place.

1. I’d like to talk about heaven today.
2. 1. First of all, I’d like to assure you that I have no insider information.
   2. I’ve had no special visions or revelations
   3. What I know about heaven is just what I know from what I have learned reading and studying the Bible
   4. This morning I’d like to ask you to take some time to think critically with me to see if we can piece together a picture of what heaven looks like.
3. First: Imagine you are in love and that your love is such that all your thoughts and all your energies are consumed with the needs and wants of your beloved; no thought of yourself.  Everything is directed towards your partner.  Now your partner’s love for you is such that they never think of themselves either, but they expend all of their thoughts and energies on seeking the fulfillment of your needs and your wants.
   1. Here is my question: Who in this relationship has their needs filled?
   2. Both of you, right?
   3. And in fact, is it possible that your needs and wants may be filled BETTER than they would be if each of you were seeking your own needs and wants?
   4. And is it possible that, in devoting your life to one who means so much to you that you might find a depth, and a joy in that totally giving relationship than you would ever hope to find in a give and take relationship?
4. I’d like to read a little passage from Acts 4. Actually, I’d really appreciate it if you would read it along with me.  It’s Acts 4:32-35.
   1. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them allthat there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the salesand put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
   2. In this picture of the first century church we see the early Christians living pretty selfless lives, wouldn’t you say?
   3. Now, I’d like for you to imagine a place where EVERYONE lives the same way. No one has any concern for themselves or their needs or wants, but everyone directs their energy entirely to the needs and wants of others, and in turn, untold millions of others are living exactly the same way; finding joy in serving others; including you.
   4. As we begin to piece this picture together I believe we can get a rather primitive vision of what living in heaven will be like.
5. Now I need to ask another question: Now that we have this rudimentary vision of heaven, let me ask you: what would ruin it?
   1. What would ruin heaven?
   2. In our Old Testament lesson today we read that he who was cast down from heaven (Any idea who that may be?) He who was cast down from heaven said “I will be like the Most High”
   3. You see, God has a plan, and there are a few very central parts to that plan. One of the essential components is free will.  God will not coerce anyone.  We choose to follow Him, or not, of our own free will.  Of course He calls us, He guides us, and He knows all who will eventually turn to Him and who won’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that the choice itself is still entirely ours.
   4. Another essential part of the plan is completely selfless love. Heaven won’t work without it.    Every person in heaven needs to follow God’s commands implicitly, completely, and without reservation.  In order to do this, we must TRUST God implicitly, completely, and without reservation.  If we have even the slightest doubt in our minds or in our hearts about whether or not God always has our best interests in His heart, it would be impossible for us to follow Him completely.
   5. Sin entered into the universe when Satan chose to live according to his own plan, and not according to God’s plan. Rather than focusing his attention on others, Satan chose to be selfish.  He chose to focus his attention on himself.  It is this selfishness that is at the very heart of all sin.
6. Now, let’s talk about sin for a minute.
   1. I’ve spoken multiple times about sin. If you’ve heard me preach before you’ve doubtless heard me talk about hamartia, which is a Greek word that we translate into the English word sin, and that we could appropriately translate imperfection, but I’d like to expand on the thought just a little bit more.
   2. Everyone who knows me knows I have a year and a half old granddaughter and a three, soon to be four year old grandson. Everyone who knows me also knows how much these little ones mean to me.  I’m sure every grandparent here understands that, and probably most parents also.  My grandson is a wonderful, sweet, loving, intelligent, inquisitive boy.  He’s the kind of kid that will walk up to me and, for no reason at all, give me a giant hug and say “Pop Pop, I love you to the moon and back”.  He really is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I absolutely adore him, but I have to admit that I have seen this wonderful sweet boy fly into a complete tantrum because someone gave him the green cup instead of the blue one.
   3. My grandson is a picky eater and his parents have taken to trying to give him some control over things by offering him a choice of what he wants to eat. So, say tonight he is offered either macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly (Two of his staples).  He chooses the peanut butter and jelly, but by the time you make the sandwich, cut it into quarters… triangular, never square, trim the crust from the bread, and give it to him, he has decided he wants the macaroni and cheese; and heaven help us if we try to make him eat the peanut butter and jelly.
   4. Now, thinking about this for a minute… none of this is done maliciously. My grandson doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.  This is just my grandson being a three year old.
   5. Selfishness is something that is with us from birth. Along the way we may learn to think of others, we may find the joy of giving, we may discover the joy of being in love and turning our attention outward, but the selfishness never completely goes away, at least not in this lifetime.
   6. Usually when we think of sin we define it as someone making a choice do something that’s evil or hurtful, but sin isn’t always something that is done maliciously. Sometimes sin is just about not trusting God.  It’s about us looking out for our own needs because we don’t think anyone else will do it for us.
   7. God created paradise to be perfect, then He put Adam and Eve in paradise knowing that it would be ruined, but choice to retain it or ruin it was entirely our own.
   8. God will create heaven to be perfect too, but heaven will not be made to be ruined. Only those may enter who have learned to trust God implicitly, to place their faith in Him entirely, and to follow Him unquestioningly; which brings us to the question about who may and who may NOT enter.
7. One of the questions most commonly asked by seekers, agnostics, and atheists is “If God is a loving God, how can He condemn people to hell?”
   1. The answer to this question can be found and understood through our discussion today.
   2. Some people never lose their selfishness. Some people never find the joy in loving, or giving.  They find joy only in taking and consuming.
   3. For the person who finds no joy in giving or loving, heaven would be torture; torture. They wouldn’t enjoy living there; they wouldn’t understand why they would be expected to give anything too anyone.  “This is MINE, I worked for it and I earned it”. The entire makeup of heaven would make absolutely no sense to them, and ultimately, their selfishness would ruin heaven, just like selfishness ruined paradise.
   4. My friends, God doesn’t send ANYONE to hell; it is a choice that is made by the individual. My friend, Rev. David Cotton once very wisely said “Ultimately, God gives each of us exactly what we want.”
8. Understanding all of this helps us to understand what Jesus meant when He said “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”
   1. Our opening praise song this morning really does a great job of explaining Jesus mission:
      1. He came from heaven to earth to show the way. To teach us by example exactly who God is in order that we may learn to trust Him implicitly.
      2. From the Earth to the cross, our debt to pay. God understands completely the nature and the pervasiveness of our sin.  He doesn’t expect from us what He knows we are unable to give, so He paid the debt for our sin in order to give us an opportunity to enter His presence.

• From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord I lift Your Name on high. In discovering the fact that God is indeed worthy of our trust, we can give ourselves completely to Him in order that we may become citizens of heaven.

8. I’d like to close by talking about one more passage from the Bible, probably one of the three most well known passages, 1 Corinthians 13.
   1. Now I think that most people who read this passage interpret it as a description of the love with which we are called to love others, and while there is some truth to that, I honestly don’t think it’s possible for anyone on this earth to love anyone in this way, not as long as selfishness is an integral part of who we are.
   2. Rather I believe that, in an effort to teach us that God is worthy to be trusted implicitly, this is a description of the love that GOD has for us.
      1. Love is patient, love is kind
      2. Love is never jealous, or boastful.

• Love is never proud or rude

1. Love is never selfish, and not easily angered
2. Love keeps no record of wrongs
3. Love cries over evil, but always takes delight in what is true

• Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
• Love never ends.

1. Only by understanding the completely selfless nature of God’s love can we come to the point where we are able to trust God.
2. Only by understanding the fact that nothing is more important to God than our happiness are we able to put our lives in His hands and choose to live exactly as He calls us to live.

9. This past week I was in a bakery with my grandson and granddaughter. There was a package of small, flower shaped sugar cookies, covered with sugar of all different colors and they just looked just wonderful and inviting and delicious, and of course, my grandson made a beeline to them.  Then he picked up the package, but instead of asking me if I would buy them for him (Because he knows I would!), he said to me “My sister would really like these, may I have them to give to her?”
   1. God is in the process of teaching us to discover the joy of giving, because He knows that learning to find joy in giving is an essential part of our future.
   2. God is in the process of teaching us to discover the joy of loving others selflessly because He know that learning to love selflessly is an essential part of our future.
   3. And as we are learning these things, we all need to make sure that we allow some of God’s love to shine through our lives, so that God’s love becomes apparent to others, in order that THEY may learn to trust in God too.

Earthly Eyes (Sermon from 9/6/2015)

Most people who know me know that I am a history buff; they may also know that I am an archaeology buff.  Now this is a dangerous combination because whenever I have an opportunity to preach on a subject that requires a little historical background…..  Well, I always worry because I know that not everyone shares my passion for history and so I really do try to keep the history lessons as short and as interesting as possible, because I know the alternative is to have the sermon become, as my dear friend Bill Heller would say, “A snoozer”.  But a little historical background will be necessary in order for us to understand today’s story so I promise to try to keep that history lesson to a minimum.

The prophet Habakkuk lived during the time leading up to, and including the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.  Habakkuk was one of the twelve Minor Prophets and also a contemporary of Jeremiah.  Interestingly, while most prophets’ ministries are all about carrying God’s word to the people, Habakkuk’s prophetic ministry was all about bringing questions to God.  Habakkuk was concerned about injustice in Judah and he was perplexed by God’s apparent lack of action.  In today’s Old Testament lesson we heard Habakkuk ask “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?  Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?  Judah was, for the most part, not the faithful nation that God had called them to be.  Habakkuk had witnessed the worship of the gods of other nations; he was seeing what the Bible diplomatically refers to as “Doing evil in the eyes of the Lord”, and then there was the little matter of the slaves, but that’s a story that requires a little explanation.

Judah had been severely threatened by the Babylonians twice before the time of Habakkuk’s prophecy, the first time being in 605 BCE when the Babylonians invaded Judah and King Jehoiakim ended the siege by agreeing to pay a heavy tribute.  As part of the agreement the Babylonians carried away to Babylon about 10,000 of Judah’s best and brightest citizens and the story of this first diaspora is told in the book of Daniel.  Four years later Jehoiakim allied himself with the Egyptians and refused to pay the tribute, thinking that Egypt could protect Judah from Babylon.  They couldn’t.  The Babylonian army first defeated the Egyptians, and then turned their attention to Judah for a second time.  King Jehoiakim was killed in the subsequent siege and was replaced as king by his son Jeconiah, but the Babylonians attempted to insure Judah’s compliance by taking Jeconiah and Jeconiah’s sons back to Babylon and installing Zedekiah as king in his place.  And just as an aside, I have to say that as an archaeology nut, there is a collection of ancient tablets called the Babylonian Chronicles that were found in modern Iran and translated in 1956, the chronicles tell this whole story from the Babylonian point of view and as a Christian I take great delight in the fact that the chronicles confirm a significant part of the Biblical record in the process.

Now Zedekiah, who was supposed to be Babylon’s obedient vassal, also decided not to pay the tribute and we read in Jeremiah 34 that when King Zedekiah realized that his actions had placed Judah in imminent danger, King Zedekiah declared a time of repentance and one of the things he did was to declare that all Hebrew slaves were to be set free.  Now this is all part of that Year of Jubilee thing that you may have heard about somewhere along the line.  People were often enslaved when they owed a debt they could not repay and according to Jewish law, every seven years the Israelites were supposed to free all of their Hebrew slaves.  In addition, every 49 years, all land that had been purchased was supposed to revert back to its original owner and all debts owed were supposed to be cancelled.  But in the 800 plus years since Israel first entered Canaan, this had NEVER happened.  So at this time when Judah was in dire trouble King Zedekiah declared that all slaves were to be freed, but when the danger had passed, most of the wealthy Judahites reclaimed their slaves, re-enslaving them; some repentance huh?

So Habakkuk had seen all of this injustice and he cried out to God for an answer, but the answer that God had for Habakkuk was probably worse news that Habakkuk could possibly have imagined.  “Watch what I am about to do and be amazed” God said.  “I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people”…..  Now any historian will tell you that the Babylonian army was one of the most vicious and cruel armies that has ever existed on this planet.  The people of Judah had already experienced the wrath of the Babylonian army, and the prospect of another Babylonian attack was just terrifying.  Habakkuk was now even more perplexed by the fact that the instrument by which God would judge Judah was much less faithful and much less righteous than those upon whom God’s judgement was falling.  God’s answer to Habakkuk was to assure him of the ultimate judgment of Babylon and to say that “The righteousness person will live by his faithfulness”.  God was calling Habakkuk to take God at His word; to trust that God knows what He is doing, and to believe that ultimately, God will make all things right.

And so Babylon did attack Judah, and when Babylon attacked this third time, there was no opportunity for diplomacy; twice Judah had refused to pay the tribute and now Babylon was going to make an example of them.  Now I have no desire to belabor the misery suffered by the people who endured the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, or the horrible things that happened during that siege; nor do I wish to talk about the ways in which the tens of thousands of Israelites, both military and civilian were tortured and murdered by the Babylonian army after Jerusalem fell.  The story of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem can be found in the book of Lamentations. It’s not a happy book.  Additionally, for those who follow archaeology, there was an extremely well-documented account complete with rather graphic carvings of the fall of Jerusalem’s sister city Lachish that was found in the Library of Ashurbanipal that was discovered by archaeologists in 1849.  This text and the accompanying pictures teach us much about the methods of the Babylonian army.

Finally, God’s judgement on Judah was complete.  Jerusalem was besieged and fell.  The entire city, Solomon’s Temple and all, was burned to the ground and nearly every surviving inhabitant was carried off and dispersed throughout the vast Babylonian empire.  But our story doesn’t end here…..

Some 70 years later a new empire arose in the Middle East and the Persians under Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians.  In a brilliant move probably orchestrated by Cyrus’ PR department, Cyrus invited any of the Jewish people living in Babylon who so chose, to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls and the temple, a story you will find in the book of Ezra.  During their 70 years in exile, most of the people who had actually lived in Judah had died and their families had been born and lived their entire lives in Babylon, so when the offer was made to return to Jerusalem, most of the people were unwilling to endure the hardship that returning to a derelict land and rebuilding a city promised.  Those who did return were, for the most part, faithful Jews who had continued to worship, to follow the law, and to teach their faith to their children.  While the Jews who were carried away 70 years earlier were not the faithful people that God had called them to be, the remnant that returned to Jerusalem were a dedicated people, faithful, committed to God’s law, and seeking to rebuild the Holy City and the Temple.  It was their work that set the stage for the birth, life, and ministry of Jesus.  Watch what I am about to do and be amazed……

Our call to worship today quoted a passage from Isaiah “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”.  The book of Habakkuk begins with a prophet, looking at the world through earthly eyes, and questioning God because God appeared to be inactive and uninvolved.  As God helps a faithful Habakkuk to see the sweeping majesty of His plan, Habakkuk stops looking at events with earthly eyes and begins to see God’s big picture with heavenly eyes.  The book of Habakkuk ends with Habakkuk singing a wonderful, chapter long song of praise to God.

Standing here today some 2500 and something years after the fact it may be easy for us to forget the terrible human cost of these events and the suffering endured by the people who lived through this time.  When we do force ourselves to remember them, there are no explanations that make it right, or even that make it make sense, there are no platitudes that smooth over the difficulties, and the simple fact is that facing the truth is no easier for us than it was for Habakkuk.  A whole lot of people suffered terribly and many of them died and somehow, just like Habakkuk, we can’t make sense of that.  We wonder, as did Habakkuk, how could God possibly allow something like that to happen, but we need to remember that we are all hopelessly stuck with a pair of earthly eyes.  Our minds are composed of the library of our experiences and our experience tells us that this life is all that we can count on, and the prospect of the finality of life without having confirmed knowledge of a life beyond is quite honestly more than we can bear.  And so our earthly eyes tell us to hang on to this life with all that we have.  Our earthly eyes tell us that there is finality in these tragedies.

But our earthly eyes are wrong.  In Habukkuk God says “The righteous person will live by his faithfulness.  To look at the world through heavenly eyes is to have faith that God is right, that what He says is true and will really happen.  It’s been wisely said that “Christians are people who do not live by explanations but by promises”.  We have to learn to be satisfied with knowing that all of this will, at some point, make perfectly good sense.

There was a heartbreaking, heartbreaking picture that was all over the news this week.  Of course there are heartbreaking pictures in the news just about every day, but being the grandfather of a three year old grandson who I absolutely adore, this picture of a refugee toddler’s body laying in the surf just hit WAY too close to home.  I would have preferred not to see this picture at all, ever, but the news being what it is the pictures were plastered over all of the networks and internet and after the N’th time seeing it I got to thinking to myself, why can’t medical science just fix this?  Why can’t there just be some way to bring this little child back to wholeness……  But then that’s exactly what God is promising to do, isn’t it?  God IS going to bring this little child back to wholeness.  In fact, He’s going to bring EVERYTHING back to wholeness; back to the way everything was intended to be in the first place.  Those of us who have grown up in the church have been hearing these words since we were little children and we know in our heads that it’s true.  We’ve read God’s word and we believe it, but just like the man who said to Jesus “I believe Lord, forgive my unbelief”, it is so, SO hard to take what we know in our heads and implant it firmly in our hearts.  But that, my friends, that is what living by faith is all about.

In our Gospel lesson today we heard Jesus talk about entering the kingdom of God like a child.  If we are to begin to be able to see our world with heavenly eyes, then we must indeed begin as a child, knowing nothing; emptying ourselves of all that we think we know and allowing God to fill us with a knowledge of a life that transcends our senses, a life that is more than that which we can hear, see, taste, touch, or feel.  We must forget everything we think that we know about religion, and morality, and faith, all of the things that have been learned through our earthly eyes, and we need to begin to view God’s Kingdom with heavenly eyes, with eyes that view events not in finite terms, not in mortal terms, but in eternal terms.  We don’t need to be asking ourselves the question “How does this event affect my life”.  We need to be asking ourselves the question “How does this event affect eternity”.  Our difficulty in making this transition is exactly why Paul said “If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless”.  The resurrection is what gives us hope, but the resurrection also gives us the ability to look at events with heavenly eyes; to interpret events based not on how they affect the individual, but on how they affect the Kingdom.  And when we begin to view the world in this way, our priorities begin to change dramatically. Our focus shifts from what is important in this life to what is important to the Kingdom.

7 of the original 11 disciples remaining after Judas departed are thought to have been executed by the Romans.  At great personal cost they gave their testimony, and their testimony, along with the testimony of many, many other 1^st through 3^rd century martyrs has been given enormous weight by their willingness to die for what they believed, and in the case of the disciples, that which they had personally witnessed.   During the two plagues that struck Rome Christians tended to plague victims, often at the cost of their own lives.  The love that they showed in this act caused many Romans who had despised the Christians to come to faith.

Now please understand that I am not advocating that we all go out today and do something that costs us our lives, but I AM advocating a faith that shares the certainty of those first century Christians that followers of Christ ultimately lay down their life only to pick it right back up again.  I am advocating a faith that is absolutely certain that God will keep His promise to make everything right and whole.  I am advocating a faith that is certain that God Himself is going to wipe away every tear.  I am advocating a faith that allows God’s promises to permeate our being until our belief resides not in our heads, but in our hearts, and our eyes see not that which is earthly, but that which is heavenly.  Amen.

The Image Part II

1. Last week I spoke of instructions where the pictures did not accurately portray what the finished product was supposed to be.  We spoke about the first 2 chapters of John’s first letter and how John addresses the issue of making our walk match our talk, or making our image portray what the finished product is supposed to be.  This week we will pick up where we left off and listen as John explains for us the difference between “The World” and “The Kingdom”
2. Explain “The World”
   1. In the Bible “The World” is Satan’s system for opposing the work of Christ on Earth.
   2. It is a world characterized by selfishness and greed and those who are a part of this world system will hate anyone or anything that gets in the way of their acquiring the desires of their hearts. It is a world that is upside down relative to the Kingdom.  In the World, people are used and things are valued.  In the Kingdom things are used and people are valued.  The World is “Every man for himself”, “Get while the getting’s good”, and “He who dies with the most toys wins”.  The Kingdom is selfless.  Love your neighbor, pray for those who persecute you, and place the needs of others ahead of your own.
   3. The World doesn’t understand Jesus and doesn’t want to understand Jesus. “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.  (John 1:11-12)
   4. Because the World doesn’t understand Jesus, they don’t accept Him either. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means when He speaks. (1 Cor. 2:14)
   5. Because the World doesn’t accept Jesus, they will not accept you either. “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.  The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. (John 15:18-19)
   6. Ultimately, what the world is about is a rejection of God’s sovereignty. God designed this world to work in a particular way and prescribed the way that humans should behave in order for the world to work according to His plan.
   7. Remember the word koinonia from last week? It means to agree with someone. If God sets the rules and we agree with Him that His rules are right then we have fellowship with the Father because we are agreeing with Him.  Even if we should slip and occasionally disobey the rules, in confessing our sins we are agreeing with God and restoring our fellowship.
   8. Unfortunately, the World does not like to have anyone tell them what to do. If following God’s law is inconvenient, or comes at personal cost the World will find excuses and justifications for their choice to break the law, but what they are really doing is disagreeing with God.  This law doesn’t work for me so I am going to ignore it.  Now that they disagree, fellowship is no longer possible
3. John has given us four reasons not to love “The World”
   1. Because of what the world is
      1. In John 12:31 Jesus called Satan “The Prince of this World”. The way the world works is completely contrary to the way God planned for it to work.  John makes it clear that we cannot have fellowship with the world and fellowship with God at the same time.  We must choose one or the other.
   2. Because of what the world does to us.
      1. God created the world to be a wonderful place, full of good things; in fact, the Bible describes the world before the entry of sin as “Paradise”. The many pleasures of this world were created by God to bring joy to His beloved children and when these things are enjoyed within the context of God’s plan they are good and right and holy, but the world takes these things out of the context of God’s plan and overindulges, or hoards, or twists them into something else until they are no longer good and right and holy, then they become a stumbling block.  Believers are not immune to the removing of the good and the right and the holy from the context of God’s plan and when believers choose to love the things of the world, then the love of the Father is not in them, because they have chosen to break fellowship by deciding that this rule doesn’t work for them.  Satan uses the joys that God Himself designed to entice us away from God and into the world.
   3. Because of what a Christian is
      1. Note the forms of address John uses to his audience: Little Children, Fathers, Young Men, Little Children.  Little Children (Literally “Born ones”) refers to all believers.  When we place our trust in Jesus we become part of God’s family, but we are as little children.  A new believer doesn’t have the benefit of years of experience with the Holy Spirit guiding, leading, and teaching.  A new believer is unlikely to have spent much time studying God’s word or being mentored by more mature believers.  The new Christian should NEVER be satisfied living at this stage.  Just as falling in love fills us with a desire to develop a deeply personal relationship with our beloved, so should the discovery of God’s love for us move us to a desire of a deeper personal relationship with Him.  This involves time spent in the Word, time spent in prayer, and time spent learning from other believers.
      2. The Fathers are the mature believers, those who have spent time in communion with God through prayer and study of the Word.

• The Young Men are those who are not yet mature believers but who are learning to use God’s Word to overcome the world.

1. Unlike the “Born Ones” teknia of verse 12 the Children of verse 14 is neaniskoi or youths, and implies a level of immaturity.
2. These represent the Christian family but how important it is to be one who is reaching for spiritual maturity!
3. Wiresbe says “No Christian who has experienced the joys and wonders of fellowship with God, and of service for God, will want to live on the substitute pleasures that this world offers.”

1. Lastly, because of where the world is going. Those who have no fellowship with the Father are lost.  For those who never turn to the Father, their loss will be sadly permanent.
2. I’d like to interject a thought here because one of the great sticking points of the Christian faith is the idea that a perfectly loving God could condemn people to an eternity of misery. There are two things that I would like for us all to remember.  The first is that a person choosing to live according to the ways of the world, who chooses to live a life of selfishness and greed, would NEVER be happy living in God’s kingdom.  As Rev. David Cotton once said in a brilliant sermon on this subject:  “Ultimately God gives every person exactly what they want.”  The second thing I would like for us to remember is strictly my opinion, but I believe the Bible supports my opinion.  On the day that God reconciles the world to Himself we will all stand in open mouthed astonishment at the rightness of His judgements and the depth of His grace.  Ultimately God will be completely fair, and there will be no one who will be able to say otherwise.

4. The author now turns his attention to the conflict between truth and error.
   1. “Faith in a lie always has serious consequences; faith in the truth is never misplaced… A person who is real builds his life on truth, not superstition or lies.” -Wiersbe
   2. He introduces “The Antichrist” and uses the term to describe three things
      1. A spirit in this world that opposes or denies Christ
      2. The false teachers who exemplify this spirit
      3. The actual person who will be empowered by Satan to lead the final world rebellion against God

1. There are two forces at work in the world today
   1. The spirit of truth as taught by The Holy Spirit
   2. The spirit of evil working by the energy of Satan
2. Three identifying features of the false teacher
   1. He departs from the fellowship
      1. 1 Jn. 2:19 “These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.”
      2. Real Christians are in fellowship. They share the same Holy Spirit and the same divine heart and there is a desire to share with one another.  Even though we may be very different, the desire for fellowship is still paramount.  Most people who know me well know that I am fascinated by politics and that I have very strong opinions that are the polar opposite of the opinions of some of my closest friends, but friends we remain because the bond that we have in Christ is so much stronger and so much more important than all of that worldly stuff.
   2. He denies the faith
      1. When the message begins to skew from that which the Spirit teaches us it true it may be time to take a very careful look at what the teacher is teaching
      2. I once read a paper that was written by a man who was an expert on counterfeit money. When the Secret Service taught him about counterfeit money, they didn’t use any counterfeit money!  They used only real money because only when a person is thoroughly familiar with the real thing is he or she able to recognize the fake.  So it is with believers that having a solid knowledge of Jesus that comes from study of the word, time spent in prayer and communion with God through the Holy Spirit, and learning from other believers will make it possible to spot the phony.
      3. There is no shortage of false teachers today. There are people preaching hateful words, people teaching us to denigrate others, people teaching us that God wants us all to be millionaires.  These may be messages that some people want to hear, they may be messages that some people would like to believe, but one thing they are not is the Gospel.
      4. Which leads us to the third thing, They try to deceive the faithful  Another great Wiersbe quote, though not from the 1^st John book:  “If Satan can keep a Christian ignorant, he can keep him impotent”
         1. If Satan can succeed in breaking our fellowship with the Father, then we lose His power to identify error and to resist sin. This is why maintaining fellowship is critical for the Christian

5. Reasons for Holy Living
   1. God’s love for us is so great that he reached out to us while we were His enemies and called us to His side. He gives us the right to be His beloved children for no reason other than the fact that He has chosen to love us.
   2. Our forgiveness was not cheap. It came at the awful cost of Jesus’ death on the cross.  He suffered horribly, but did so willingly and gladly because He loves us so much.
   3. He gives us the Holy Spirit to guide and instruct us. This is actually God becoming a part of our everyday life.  He is always there.  If we can’t feel His presence it’s because of us, not because of Him
6. Yes and No
   1. Have you ever been so excited about something or so happy about something that you just jumped up and let out an exultant “Yes”. My son Joe and I have both been known to scare the living daylights out of Jackie with a resounding “Yes” when the Mets do something good.  Unfortunately for us Mets fans but fortunately for Jackie, that doesn’t happen often.  The day that Joe and Caitlyn invited Jackie and me to their house to break the news that Caitlyn was pregnant with Jackson I raised both hands in the air in exaltation and let out a jubilant “Yes”.
   2. On the flip side of things, 2 summers ago Jackie and I lost a good friend, someone we’ve known since we were kids. I read the Facebook post from his sister that he had passed and shouted NO pretty much as loud as I possibly could!  Jackie asked me what was wrong and I had to break the news to her resulting in the same response from her.
   3. Yes and no can be much, much more than just agreement or disagreement. Yes or no can actually be something felt deep within our hearts.
   4. Jesus isn’t looking for a lukewarm, uninspired “yeah, I guess so” from us. He wants that arms raised, exultant, emphatic, resounding YES that comes from deep within our souls. He wants a yes that’s more than just intellectual assent.  He wants a yes that comes from our hearts, our minds, and our will.
   5. And when that is the yes that we give Him … that is when we become real. That is when our walk begins to truly match our witness, and when our witness begins to becomes truly effective.  That is when our image begins to portray faithfully what the finished product is supposed to look like.
   6. The praise team started learning a song at Thursday’s rehearsal and I really wish we had been ready to sing it today. These are the lyrics to the chorus of Chris Tomlin’s “Your Heart”:
      1. At the end of the day I want to hear people say My heart looks like your heart, My heart looks like your heart. When the world looks at me, let them agree, that my heart looks like your heart, My heart looks like your heart.
   7. How does your heart look today?

The Image Part One

Rev. Rack is off this week and next week so I will be filling in.  Looks like y’all get amateur hour for the next two weeks.  I’m going to do something just a little different this morning.  I’m going to forgo the reading of the Epistle lesson before the sermon and actually have the reading as part of the sermon.  I hope that’s OK with everyone.  Now if you’d please join your hearts with mine in a much needed prayer.

Gracious Father:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.   Amen

I have worked in retail for a LONG time.  I started out in the electronics industry, first working in a stereo shop and later working with tv, video, and eventually computers, and one of the things that I used to do (Geek that I am) was, when new merchandise came out,  I would read the owner’s manual…  all of it.  I found it productive because it helped me to remember the important facts associated with the piece and also helped me to understand its capabilities.  Now in those days virtually all of the owner’s manuals were written and printed in the USA.  Eventually the Japanese, I guess to save money, started writing and printing the manuals themselves, but it is entirely fair to say that the majority of the folks that were beginning to write these manuals were not native English speaking people and this resulted in varying degrees of fractured language in the manuals.  As time went on, manufacturers began using more and more pictures in their instructions and fewer and fewer words.  As most of you probably know, today’s instruction manuals and installation guides may possibly be ALL pictures and no words.  Take this thing that looks like this and attach it to that thing that looks like that with this little thingy that looks like this….

A few years back I had to assemble a very large and very expensive display for some vinyl flooring.  Fairly early in the assembly process I came to a piece….  Both sides were finished, it fit into the display both ways, but the piece was asymmetrical so clearly it mattered which way it went in.  I looked in vain for a picture that showed how it was supposed to fit but not one picture in the entire manual, from start to finish, showed clearly how it was supposed to be installed, not one.  I had a 50/50 chance, so I guessed….. wrong.  I didn’t realize it though, until the rack was completely assembled and I was ready to add the samples.  Now the samples were supposed to turn like pages in a book, but the place on the top of the rack where the pages were supposed to be attached weren’t at the top of the rack, they were at the bottom.  I had to take almost the entire display apart and reassemble it.  By the time it was done and the samples were added this two and a half hour job had taken me six hours to complete.

The reason that I had so much trouble with this was that the images in the manual did not accurately portray exactly what the final product was supposed to be.

Have you ever spoken to a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, a neighbor, or a co-worker about Jesus?  How’s THAT for a segue?  Sorry, I never took the segue class for preachers.  I’ll make it all make sense in a minute; I promise.

If you have, have you ever noticed that the first thing that happens is that people’s eyes glaze over?  Then they think to themselves with a thought that’s so loud that YOU can hear it “Oh boy, here we go”.  Then there’s this mystical, invisible substance that plugs the ears so they can’t hear a thing you say, and even if a word or two does make its way through the mystical, invisible substance, a fog envelopes the brain so that they can’t understand a word that you say.

I believe that there are two reasons why this happens.  The first reason is I believe that absolutely everyone has a fairly well defined idea of who it is that they think that God is supposed to be, or not supposed to be, and since there is no actual concrete, empirical evidence of the fact that God is real, they believe that their opinion is every bit as valid as yours.  “I’ll respect your beliefs if you’ll respect mine”.  Sound familiar?  It doesn’t matter whether or not their belief is rooted in historical fact.  It only matters that they believe it.  It doesn’t matter whether or not their belief is confirmed by personal experience with the miraculous.  It only matters that they believe it.  It doesn’t even matter if their belief makes sense.  They could believe that aliens came from the planet Ding Dong and told them that god is a Labradoodle named Ralph. Hey, I’ll respect your beliefs if you’ll respect mine.

The second reason that it happens is because people have lived, they’ve learned, and sometimes they’ve even paid attention, and when they see that there are hateful people that are preaching love. When they see that there are violent people that are preaching peace. When they see that immoral people are preaching purity, and that liars are preaching truth, well, they may not really know what the truth actually is, but what they do know is: this ain’t it.  They know this because the image that they are seeing is not accurately portraying what the finished product is supposed to be.

I’m a big fan of Warren Wiersbe.  Warren Wiersbe has a series of commentaries on the Bible that he calls the “Be” series.  Each book bears the title Be something:  “Be Patient” for the study of Job, Be Joyful for Philippians, Be Mature for James.  When I am leading a Bible study, or preaching on a particular passage, Wiersbe’s Be series book will be the first thing that I purchase in preparation, if I don’t own it already.  For the First Letter of John, Wiersbe named his book “Be Real”.  The First Letter of John addresses directly the issue of making the image accurately portray what the finished product is supposed to be.  It gives practical advice on how to live for Jesus in a way that will bring YOU joy and make your life an irresistible witness to the love and the grace, and the compassion of Jesus.   The wonderful Christian author Keith Miller once referred to this as “The music of the Gospel”.  Just as music draws the listener in with its beauty, so will a life that is striving to live faithfully draw people in with its beauty.  Francis of Assisi once said “Preach the Gospel, use words if necessary”.  If we are going to reach people with the Good News of Jesus Christ it’s nowhere near as likely to happen with our words as it is with our actions.

And so we are going to spend the rest of this week and next week looking at the First Letter of John, examining what we can do to make our image accurately portray what the finished product is supposed to be.

It all begins with Jesus!  John begins his letter by identifying himself as an EYEWITNESS to the life of Jesus.

1^st John 1:1 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify 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.”

John is not rendering his opinion here.  He’s not waxing philosophic about life and love.  He is teaching what he personally learned from a Jesus that he heard, and touched, and knew.

John teaches that God is light and that in Him there is no darkness.  Now darkness and light cannot exist in the same space because light drives out darkness.  Every person has the freedom to choose whether to walk in light or to walk in darkness, but only those walking in the light have fellowship with the Father.  So what does it mean to walk in the light?  The word “Fellowship” used twice in verse 3 is the Greek word koinwnia (Koin-a-nia) which actually means to agree with or to have in common.  As sinners humans have nothing in common with God, but God in His grace sent Jesus to have something in common with us. When we trust in the work that Jesus did on our behalf on the cross, we then have something in common with God.  A starting point from which to build a life that is pleasing to God.

John then shares with us five reasons why we want to share in this fellowship, this koinwnia.

First we share God’s nature.  In sharing God’s nature His Holy Spirit becomes a part of us.  As we learn to hear the leading of the Holy Spirit we discover that He helps our minds to know and understand truth, He helps our hearts to love, and he leads our will towards obedience.  Not obedience out of fear of reprisal, not obedience out of seeking some sort of personal gain, but obedience that comes from AGREEING with God; obedience that comes from the fact that for us to defy God would be completely foreign to our nature.

Second, that we may have JOY!  Joy is not related to circumstance.  On the very night that Jesus was betrayed, a night that His anguish was so great that he literally sweat blood, this is what he said to His disciples “These things I have spoken to you that MY JOY might remain in you, and that your joy might be full”.  Sin promises joy, but ultimately sin is the cause of all of the world’s miseries.  The only real joy comes from walking in fellowship with a loving and gracious God.

Third, that we might not sin.  John is bluntly honest about sin.  “If we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  God’s answer to our sinfulness is the continual forgiveness of our sins as a result of the prayers of Jesus, our advocate before the Father.  In Jesus our sins are forgiven, but better even than that is the fact that by fixing our attention on Jesus, and walking in obedience to His Word, we have a power to resist sin that would never be possible without His help.

Fourth, that we will not be deceived.  Satan seeks to mislead us with half-truths and false promises.  He offers a substitute faith and a substitute salvation but the Holy Spirit is our teacher and those who learn to follow the Spirit’s leadings will learn discernment.  Wiersbe says “(The Spirit) is our protection against ignorance, deception, and untruth”.  A faithful life is characterized by Spirit led discernment.

Fifth, that we may know that we are saved.  2^nd Peter 1:16 says “We have not followed cunningly devised fables”.  Through the eyewitness of the disciples we are following what they KNEW to be true.  Again Wiersbe says “These men, almost all of whom died for their faith, did not give their lives for a clever hoax of their own devising as some critics of Christianity will assert.  They KNOW what they have seen”.

The three great themes of the first half of John’s First Letter are Obedience, Love, and Truth.  Being made in God’s image, we were given a mind, with which to think, a heart, with which to feel, and a will, with which to make decisions.  If we are to live a life that’s real; if our lives are to be an image that portrays accurately what the finished product is supposed to be; then we must involve all three of these things; our intellect, our emotion, and our will.

1^st John 2: 3-11 “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.  But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.”

In the Greek, the word “New” is not neos (Neos) which means chronologically new, but kainhn (Kai-nain) which means “fresh”, or as modern advertising would say “New and improved”.  This passage is not saying that there is a new commandment that we didn’t know.  It’s saying that the commandment that we already know is enhanced by the understanding that we obey the commandment not out of obligation, but because of who we are in Christ.

Now let me just say that this whole loving your brother and your sister thing is not as easy as it sounds.  Oh sure, it’s a wonderful thing to love your family and friends, at least most of the time.  When someone loves you, when people are pleasant and friendly and share your views and opinions it’s easy to love them, but when people are rude and arrogant, argumentative and unlovable, loving them becomes a real challenge.  So how do we love these people?  This isn’t something that we can do on our own.  We need to focus our thoughts on Jesus and we need to love others because we love Him, because He first loved us.  We need to find ways to be loving even when we don’t feel particularly loving.  A few years back I learned a prayer that I began repeating to myself every time I felt like having an unloving outburst (Or sometimes AFTER having an unloving outburst), but the point being to fix the mind on Jesus and allow His love to become my love.  The prayer is

“Father, if this person does not know you, please help them to understand the nature of your love and the depth of your grace, and if they do know you then please fill them with a sense of your presence”.

This is a prayer I’ve said A LOT, and I mean A LOT!  And how am I doing loving my brothers and sisters?  Well, it’s hard to tell because I live on the Jersey Shore, and every summer…….. every summer we are inundated with rude, arrogant, unlovable people.  But I work on fixing my mind on Jesus and I work on making this a part of who I am.  And when I fail, which is often, I fall on God’s grace because I know that He is faithful, even when I’m not.

But please understand that my faithfulness here is important; it matters, and so does yours!  It matters because it’s only by fixing our eyes on Jesus that we won’t be the hateful person preaching love.  It’s only by fixing our eyes on Jesus that we won’t be the violent person preaching peace, or the immoral person preaching purity or the liar preaching truth.

Here’s the deal…  We have found an impossibly extravagant love in Jesus.  We have found grace and compassion beyond our wildest expectations.  We have found undeserved forgiveness and we have found a friend who is transforming our lives bit by bit and struggle by struggle into a people who are capable of living lives that reveal the music of the Gospel.

If we are truly walking in the light, then our lives will reflect our words and the image that we live will begin to portray that which we have been called to be.  Amen.