A better symbol of the Incarnation, I can hardly imagine.
-by PHILIP YANCEY
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Once when I was dining with a group of writers, the conversation turned to letters we get from readers. Richard Foster and Eugene Peterson mentioned an intense young man who had been seeking spiritual direction from both of them. They responded as best they could, answering questions by mail and recommending books on spirituality. Foster had just learned that the same inquirer had also contacted Henri Nouwen. "You won't believe what Nouwen did," he said. "He invited this stranger to live with him for a month so he could mentor him in person."
Most writers jealously protect their schedules and privacy. Nouwen, who died of a heart attack this past September, broke down such barriers of professionalism. His entire life, in fact, displayed a "holy inefficiency."
Trained in Holland as a psychologist and a theologian, Nouwen spent his early years achieving. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, averaged more than a book a year, and traveled widely as a conference speaker. He had a résumé to die for-which was the problem, exactly. The pressing schedule and relentless competition were suffocating his own spiritual life.
Nouwen went to South America for six months, scouting a new role for himself as a missionary in the Third World. A hectic speaking schedule on his return to the United States only made things worse. Finally, Nouwen fell into the arms of the L'Arche community in France, a home for the seriously disabled. He felt so nourished by them that he agreed to become priest in residence at a similar home in Toronto called Daybreak. There, Nouwen spent his last ten years, still writing and traveling to speak here and there, but always returning to the haven of Daybreak.
I once visited Nouwen, sharing lunch with him in his small room. It had a single bed, one bookshelf, and a few pieces of Shaker-style furniture. The walls were unadorned except for a print of a Van Gogh painting and a few religious symbols. A Daybreak staff person served us a bowl of Caesar salad and a loaf of bread. No fax machine, no computer, no Daytimer calendar posted on the wall-in this room, at least, Nouwen had found serenity. The church "industry" seemed very far away.
After lunch we celebrated a special Eucharist for Adam, the young man Nouwen looked after. With solemnity, but also a twinkle in his eye, Nouwen led the liturgy in honor of Adam's twenty-sixth birthday. Unable to talk, walk, or dress himself, profoundly retarded, Adam gave no sign of comprehension. He seemed to recognize, at least, that his family had come. He drooled throughout the ceremony and grunted loudly a few times.
Later Nouwen told me it took him nearly two hours to prepare Adam each day. Bathing and shaving him, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, guiding his hand as he tried to eat breakfast-these simple, repetitive acts had become for him almost like an hour of meditation.
I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of the busy priest's time. Could not someone else take over the manual chores? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed me that I had completely misinterpreted him. "I am not giving up anything," he insisted. "It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship."
All day Nouwen kept circling back to my question, bringing up various ways he had benefitted from his relationship with Adam. It had been difficult for him at first, he said. Physical touch, affection, and the messiness of caring for an uncoordinated person did not come easily. But he had learned to love Adam, truly to love him. In the process he had learned what it must be like for God to love us-spiritually uncoordinated, retarded, able to respond with what must seem to God like inarticulate grunts and groans. Indeed, working with Adam had taught him the humility and "emptiness" achieved by desert monks only after much discipline.
Nouwen has said that all his life two voices competed inside him. One encouraged him to succeed and achieve, while the other called him simply to rest in the comfort that he was "the beloved" of God. Only in the last decade of his life did he truly listen to that second voice.
Ultimately Nouwen concluded that "the goal of education and formation for the ministry is continually to recognize the Lord's voice, his face, and his touch in every person we meet." Reading that description in his book ¡Gracias!, I understand why he did not think it a waste of time to invite a seeking stranger to live with him for a month, or to devote two hours a day to the menial care of Adam.
I will miss Henri Nouwen. For some, his legacy consists of his many books, for others his role as a bridge between Catholics and Protestants, for others his distinguished career at Ivy League universities. For me, though, a single image captures him best: the energetic priest, hair in disarray, using his restless hands as if to fashion a homily out of thin air, celebrating an eloquent birthday Eucharist for an unresponsive child-man so damaged that many parents would have had him aborted. A better symbol of the Incarnation, I can hardly imagine.
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Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today International/Christianity Today Magazine. December 9, 1996 Vol. 40, No. 14, Page 80
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Light of Prophecy (Hebrews 1:1)
Do we believe the prophetic words we constantly sing? Does the light of ancient biblical prophecy startle and shock us as it properly should? Do we expect people to believe Almighty God has been continuously speaking, in one way or another, from age to age? Do we believe that amidst the despair and turmoil of this world that there is one anchor that will hold us fast?
At the very beginning of the book of Hebrews, the writer began his extended and very involved explanation of the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ by saying, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” Do we honestly believe that? Has God really spoken through the prophets at many times and in various ways? Has God spoken so clearly through the prophets that we can actually go check out what His prophets supposedly said against what we know happened historically? Is there truly anything verifiable or remotely scientific about this Christianity business or is all this following Jesus stuff just some cultural thing we have to blindly and naïvely accept by faith?
On this first Sunday in Advent, it is church tradition to set aside a few moments to think about the importance and spiritual ramifications of prophecy, especially the prophecies relating to Jesus. I believe this discussion matters enormously. I believe Almighty God never intended us to check our brains at the door when we come to faith. I believe God spoke and still speaks truthfully through the light of His ancient prophets because He wants you and I to know beyond any shadow of doubt exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth was, is and always will be.
But we have a hard time with prophecy sometimes, don’t we? Have you ever looked up the over 300 prophecies supposedly having something to do with Jesus the Messiah in the Old Testament and found yourself scratching your head? Have you ever found yourself wondering how in the world anyone could ever believe this or that obscure reference could be about Jesus? I’ll admit sometimes many of the prophecies the ancient Jews believed to refer to their coming Messiah were sort of obscure and difficult for us to understand. Granted; but a whole lot of ancient prophecy about Jesus wasn’t obscure at all. Let’s review some of it today…
Beginning right at the beginning in Genesis 3, as God was prophesying to the serpent about what was going to happen in the future as a result of the evil he had helped to bring into the bliss of the Garden, God said: "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Her descendents will produce a boy that will one day be wounded, but crush you anyway! And yet biblically, women were almost never said to have their own offspring; men had offspring through women. The ancient world was sexist in its descriptions of these genealogical things. So why does Almighty God here say Eve’s offspring and not Adam’s? I think I know. I think the only woman in our spiritual history ever said to have her own offspring, apart from a man, was a girl named Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus.
And in Isaiah 7:14, we are told very clearly that one of the signs we are to be looking for is exactly that: a virgin giving birth. The prophet said: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
And in Micah 5:2, we are told very specifically the obscure little town in which that virgin birth will one day take place. The prophet said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” When we read this verse in the much more literal New American Standard Bible, the ancient prophecy is even more startling. It reads: “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” Pretty cool, huh?
In Zechariah, a prophetic book filled with ancient Hebrew references to the Messiah, we find the prophet describing very clearly the way in which Jesus would one day enter Jerusalem. The prophet said, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Could a prophetic picture of our Palm Sunday Jesus be any clearer?
And yet these often neglected and maligned prophets also seemed very aware that the Messiah would not always ride victoriously among the people. Several of them describe a time in which Messiah would be abandoned by His followers. In Zechariah 13:7, we read: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!” declares the Lord Almighty. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.” The prophets knew Messiah would face pain, difficulty and rejection.
In Zechariah 11:12-13, we learn through the ancient prophet that the thirty pieces of silver used to betray the Messiah would eventually be thrown into the temple and used to buy a potter’s field of all things. The prophet said, “So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter"--the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.” That’s pretty strange and interesting phrasing, isn’t it? Throw them into the house of the Lord to the potter? It sort of sounds like exactly what Matthew told us Judas did in Matthew 27:3-10.
In Zechariah 12:10, we learn the Messiah would eventually be pierced by the very people He came to save. The prophet Zechariah said the people would eventually mourn the terrible things they will do to God’s chosen salvation. The prophet said, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” The Messiah will be pierced and yet also mourned by the people.
I suspect one of the most important things we must understand about ancient prophecy is that our LORD Jesus absolutely believed in it and regularly referred to it. Jesus wanted us all to understand these prophetic things. In Luke 4, Jesus stood up and read one of the most famous, familiar prophecies about the coming Messiah to his hometown crowd and, after telling them they had just heard the prophecy fulfilled, the people were so enraged they tried to throw Him off a cliff for blasphemy. They didn’t have any doubt about what Jesus was claiming!
All four Gospels repeatedly record instances of Jesus claiming to be the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. In John 5, Jesus said “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life…if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” Jesus wanted all people to check the prophecies out because He knew that checking these things honestly and fairly would inevitably lead to one thrilling, glorious conclusion!
Even on the terrible night in which Jesus was betrayed in the Garden, He again referred to prophecy as He worked to calm down His confused disciples. Do we remember exactly what He said after the high priest’s slave got his ear cut off? He spoke to both His disciples and the people gathered in the garden. In Matthew 26:52-56, we hear Jesus say to his sword-grabbing disciples, “Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" At that time Jesus said to the crowd, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then [in direct fulfillment of several prophecies] all the disciples deserted him and fled.” Jesus was constantly referring back to the ancient prophecies even as He was in the act of fulfilling those prophecies! Jesus wanted people to understand exactly who He was and what was going on. Jesus wants us to understand; our brains fully engaged!
In Luke 24, after the resurrection, after proving Himself to be gloriously alive, Jesus sat down with His disciples over a meal to explain things. And how did He begin the conversation in verse 44? He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” If you would only study the ancient prophecies, if you would drink deeply of the Scriptures, if you would only use your bloomin’ heads about all this, you would understand what is going on here! Let the light of prophecy lead you to the one inescapable Truth! Hallelujah!
Perhaps one of the most tender and yet most misunderstood prophetic moments in the life of Jesus was that final, painful moment of suffering on the Cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All sorts of theories abound on why He said that. Some people even blasphemously speculate that this is a moment of doubt in the life of Jesus. Some folks even tragically argue this was the moment Jesus realized He was not the promised Messiah. They see this as the ultimate expression of disappointment and despair.
Yet still others of us, who don’t believe in a doubting or despairing Jesus, just write this comment off to the terrible suffering and sin-bearing of Jesus. We explain to our children that this was the moment at which God had to officially turn His back on the sin of the world that Jesus Christ was carrying to the Cross. And while this is a much better explanation than that of a doubting or despairing Jesus, I think many of us get so caught up in our tidy theological protectionism, we forget Jesus was just quoting the first line of a well-known, prophetic victory song. In His agony, Jesus was quoting the ancient, famous first line of a psalm of King David well-known for its almost eerie description of a person suffering crucifixion. Medical folks have even studied this psalm as a clinical description of the effects of crucifixion. So listen carefully to Psalm 22 and listen particularly to the way this prophetic victory song finishes and then tell me if you think Jesus was abandoned, disappointed or despairing on the Cross. David sang…
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.
In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: "He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
But you, O Lord, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
Almighty God has not despised or disdained me! The LORD has not abandoned his afflicted one! He has not hidden his face from me! He has listened to His cry for help! This awful cross is just the very first note of Almighty God’s constantly prophesied victory song!
Folks, remember the song! Remember the prophetic songs telling us everything was going to be this way! Remember the songs so you will recognize and remember your Savior!
May Almighty God overwhelm us today with the stunning realization that, inasmuch as we can know anything of a certainty, we can certainly know for a fact that the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, was in fact our long-prophesied, long-awaited Savior! He is the One and the Only! He is the prophesied way, truth and life! May Elim Church be exhilarated by the great cloud of witnesses; by the fact that the prophets have spoken many times and in many ways! If history is history at all, if we are truly and honestly fair with the facts at all, we can know clearly and confidently that these prophesied words are true! It is my prayer that our realization of the stunning and absolute truth of these prophesied words would shock us into a renewed desire to follow our Savior this Advent season as He deserves to be followed! May this long prophesied baby we celebrate this month become fully, wonderfully and truthfully our Messiah!
Amen.
At the very beginning of the book of Hebrews, the writer began his extended and very involved explanation of the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ by saying, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” Do we honestly believe that? Has God really spoken through the prophets at many times and in various ways? Has God spoken so clearly through the prophets that we can actually go check out what His prophets supposedly said against what we know happened historically? Is there truly anything verifiable or remotely scientific about this Christianity business or is all this following Jesus stuff just some cultural thing we have to blindly and naïvely accept by faith?
On this first Sunday in Advent, it is church tradition to set aside a few moments to think about the importance and spiritual ramifications of prophecy, especially the prophecies relating to Jesus. I believe this discussion matters enormously. I believe Almighty God never intended us to check our brains at the door when we come to faith. I believe God spoke and still speaks truthfully through the light of His ancient prophets because He wants you and I to know beyond any shadow of doubt exactly who this Jesus of Nazareth was, is and always will be.
But we have a hard time with prophecy sometimes, don’t we? Have you ever looked up the over 300 prophecies supposedly having something to do with Jesus the Messiah in the Old Testament and found yourself scratching your head? Have you ever found yourself wondering how in the world anyone could ever believe this or that obscure reference could be about Jesus? I’ll admit sometimes many of the prophecies the ancient Jews believed to refer to their coming Messiah were sort of obscure and difficult for us to understand. Granted; but a whole lot of ancient prophecy about Jesus wasn’t obscure at all. Let’s review some of it today…
Beginning right at the beginning in Genesis 3, as God was prophesying to the serpent about what was going to happen in the future as a result of the evil he had helped to bring into the bliss of the Garden, God said: "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Her descendents will produce a boy that will one day be wounded, but crush you anyway! And yet biblically, women were almost never said to have their own offspring; men had offspring through women. The ancient world was sexist in its descriptions of these genealogical things. So why does Almighty God here say Eve’s offspring and not Adam’s? I think I know. I think the only woman in our spiritual history ever said to have her own offspring, apart from a man, was a girl named Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus.
And in Isaiah 7:14, we are told very clearly that one of the signs we are to be looking for is exactly that: a virgin giving birth. The prophet said: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
And in Micah 5:2, we are told very specifically the obscure little town in which that virgin birth will one day take place. The prophet said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” When we read this verse in the much more literal New American Standard Bible, the ancient prophecy is even more startling. It reads: “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.” Pretty cool, huh?
In Zechariah, a prophetic book filled with ancient Hebrew references to the Messiah, we find the prophet describing very clearly the way in which Jesus would one day enter Jerusalem. The prophet said, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Could a prophetic picture of our Palm Sunday Jesus be any clearer?
And yet these often neglected and maligned prophets also seemed very aware that the Messiah would not always ride victoriously among the people. Several of them describe a time in which Messiah would be abandoned by His followers. In Zechariah 13:7, we read: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!” declares the Lord Almighty. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.” The prophets knew Messiah would face pain, difficulty and rejection.
In Zechariah 11:12-13, we learn through the ancient prophet that the thirty pieces of silver used to betray the Messiah would eventually be thrown into the temple and used to buy a potter’s field of all things. The prophet said, “So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, "Throw it to the potter"--the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.” That’s pretty strange and interesting phrasing, isn’t it? Throw them into the house of the Lord to the potter? It sort of sounds like exactly what Matthew told us Judas did in Matthew 27:3-10.
In Zechariah 12:10, we learn the Messiah would eventually be pierced by the very people He came to save. The prophet Zechariah said the people would eventually mourn the terrible things they will do to God’s chosen salvation. The prophet said, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” The Messiah will be pierced and yet also mourned by the people.
I suspect one of the most important things we must understand about ancient prophecy is that our LORD Jesus absolutely believed in it and regularly referred to it. Jesus wanted us all to understand these prophetic things. In Luke 4, Jesus stood up and read one of the most famous, familiar prophecies about the coming Messiah to his hometown crowd and, after telling them they had just heard the prophecy fulfilled, the people were so enraged they tried to throw Him off a cliff for blasphemy. They didn’t have any doubt about what Jesus was claiming!
All four Gospels repeatedly record instances of Jesus claiming to be the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. In John 5, Jesus said “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life…if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” Jesus wanted all people to check the prophecies out because He knew that checking these things honestly and fairly would inevitably lead to one thrilling, glorious conclusion!
Even on the terrible night in which Jesus was betrayed in the Garden, He again referred to prophecy as He worked to calm down His confused disciples. Do we remember exactly what He said after the high priest’s slave got his ear cut off? He spoke to both His disciples and the people gathered in the garden. In Matthew 26:52-56, we hear Jesus say to his sword-grabbing disciples, “Put your sword back in its place…for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" At that time Jesus said to the crowd, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled." Then [in direct fulfillment of several prophecies] all the disciples deserted him and fled.” Jesus was constantly referring back to the ancient prophecies even as He was in the act of fulfilling those prophecies! Jesus wanted people to understand exactly who He was and what was going on. Jesus wants us to understand; our brains fully engaged!
In Luke 24, after the resurrection, after proving Himself to be gloriously alive, Jesus sat down with His disciples over a meal to explain things. And how did He begin the conversation in verse 44? He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” If you would only study the ancient prophecies, if you would drink deeply of the Scriptures, if you would only use your bloomin’ heads about all this, you would understand what is going on here! Let the light of prophecy lead you to the one inescapable Truth! Hallelujah!
Perhaps one of the most tender and yet most misunderstood prophetic moments in the life of Jesus was that final, painful moment of suffering on the Cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All sorts of theories abound on why He said that. Some people even blasphemously speculate that this is a moment of doubt in the life of Jesus. Some folks even tragically argue this was the moment Jesus realized He was not the promised Messiah. They see this as the ultimate expression of disappointment and despair.
Yet still others of us, who don’t believe in a doubting or despairing Jesus, just write this comment off to the terrible suffering and sin-bearing of Jesus. We explain to our children that this was the moment at which God had to officially turn His back on the sin of the world that Jesus Christ was carrying to the Cross. And while this is a much better explanation than that of a doubting or despairing Jesus, I think many of us get so caught up in our tidy theological protectionism, we forget Jesus was just quoting the first line of a well-known, prophetic victory song. In His agony, Jesus was quoting the ancient, famous first line of a psalm of King David well-known for its almost eerie description of a person suffering crucifixion. Medical folks have even studied this psalm as a clinical description of the effects of crucifixion. So listen carefully to Psalm 22 and listen particularly to the way this prophetic victory song finishes and then tell me if you think Jesus was abandoned, disappointed or despairing on the Cross. David sang…
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.
In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: "He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
But you, O Lord, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
Almighty God has not despised or disdained me! The LORD has not abandoned his afflicted one! He has not hidden his face from me! He has listened to His cry for help! This awful cross is just the very first note of Almighty God’s constantly prophesied victory song!
Folks, remember the song! Remember the prophetic songs telling us everything was going to be this way! Remember the songs so you will recognize and remember your Savior!
May Almighty God overwhelm us today with the stunning realization that, inasmuch as we can know anything of a certainty, we can certainly know for a fact that the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, was in fact our long-prophesied, long-awaited Savior! He is the One and the Only! He is the prophesied way, truth and life! May Elim Church be exhilarated by the great cloud of witnesses; by the fact that the prophets have spoken many times and in many ways! If history is history at all, if we are truly and honestly fair with the facts at all, we can know clearly and confidently that these prophesied words are true! It is my prayer that our realization of the stunning and absolute truth of these prophesied words would shock us into a renewed desire to follow our Savior this Advent season as He deserves to be followed! May this long prophesied baby we celebrate this month become fully, wonderfully and truthfully our Messiah!
Amen.
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Light of Gratitude (Isaiah 12:1-6)
Open your Bible to the 12th chapter of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah is arguably one of the most important, valuable documents in all of human history. It includes some of the most amazing, most specific and well documented prophecy anywhere. It prophesies the destruction and exile of ancient Judah and also its restoration and return. Most importantly, it prophesies the coming Messiah with stunning precision. Shockingly, when the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, the book of Isaiah was the only manuscript preserved virtually in its entirety. It was found wrapped in protective linen inside a pottery jar and among the seven scrolls first discovered and first published. It almost seems as if God made a special point of protecting this particular scroll! I suspect He did so because this scroll almost single-handedly destroys the foolish argument that our Bibles can’t be trusted. This most ancient scroll (1,000 years older), is almost a verbatim copy of the Isaiah we read today! This scroll taught us that the scribes were very good at their jobs and that good archeology is a very good friend of our faith. But it isn’t scribes, archeology, the reliability of Scripture or even prophecy I want to focus on this morning. All that stuff is fun, but that’s for another time.
This morning we (sort of) begin this year’s Advent celebrations. I know Thanksgiving week isn’t the official beginning of Advent, but it has always been to me. Our Advent theme this year is very simple – the Light of Christmas. We will focus on the individual light each precious aspect of the traditional Advent calendar sheds on our eternal hope. And it seems only fitting we begin our Christmas party with the light of eternal gratitude burning in our hearts.
In the first part of Isaiah, terrible, awful judgment against Judah was prophesied. But in chapter 11, Isaiah went on to prophesy that even though Judah would be cut off and destroyed by the Assyrians, out of the stump of their broken nation would come the One who will one day restore them. And in chapter 12, Isaiah excitedly broke into a prophetic psalm of praise as he described the grateful way the people of God will assemble to sing in that glorious day. I like the way the New Living Translation phrases the passage. Listen closely to Isaiah as he said…
In that day you will sing: “Praise the LORD! He was angry with me, but now he comforts me. See, God has come to save me. I will trust in him and not be afraid. The LORD GOD [Yah Yahweh, God Himself, Very God of Very Gods!] is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!
In that wonderful day you will sing: “Thank the LORD! Praise his name! Tell the world what he has done. Oh, how mighty he is! Sing to the LORD, for he has done wonderful things. Make known his praise around the world. Let all the people of Jerusalem shout his praise with joy! For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you.”
The light of gratitude glows from this passage, doesn’t it? Isaiah said when Messiah comes, the people of God will gratefully do two simple things; drink deeply and shout loudly.
Look again at the first three verses of the passage. Do you see the light of gratitude shining through; the reasons Isaiah prophesied we would gratefully drink deeply?
Isaiah said God was angry with His people; justifiably disgusted with sin and adulterous behavior. He had every right to be! But now He comforts and saves us and, because of that, we trust Him to the degree we are no longer afraid of anything. God is not only our strength, He has not only made a dry path for us across the river just as He did for Moses crossing the Red Sea and Joshua skipping across the Jordan, but He is also our song. He is our joy! He is our pleasure in life. He is not just brute and blinding force, but the brilliant, loving Light of Life! And so we drink deeply of the overflowing fountain of His salvation. We gratefully enjoy the same cool, living waters Jesus offered the Samaritan woman; waters welling up to eternal life.
How deeply are we drinking of the delicious and lightly shimmering Living Waters? How is our gratitude shaping us and enlightening us as a community? Are we intentionally bathing ourselves in the brilliant, refreshing waters of life God offers us or are we just barely keeping ourselves alive; contenting ourselves with polite, powerless, religious, little Sunday sips? While anything is better than nothing, we weren’t designed for just anything. Almighty God designed us to gratefully drink deeply! Gratefully drink deeply of His Word, His Son, His Spirit and His Body, the community of believers. Allow the light of gratitude to glow in our hearts.
Let’s prayerfully stop right now and drink deeply...
Fill my cup, Lord – I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul.
Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more;
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!
Isaiah prophesied we would drink deeply of the salvation of our Lord simply because we are so very grateful to be able to! Where once we were thirsty, where once we wandered in a dry and thirsty land, where once we ourselves were condemned and carried away into a blind, abysmal Assyrian exile of sin and suffering, we have now been found and brought home again. Our cup has been filled to overflowing and we are sloppy grateful for that. Our gratefulness enlightens us; it is always the first light shining out of any genuine Christmas community.
Isaiah says we are so sloppy grateful we not only drink deeply, we shout loudly. We don’t just enjoy this wild and wonderful spring, we employ it! This wonderful spring of Living Water we have discovered, this spring of Living Water that has wonderfully discovered us is flowing so constantly and so boldly we couldn’t keep it to ourselves if we tried. Interestingly, my African Bible Commentary says any tribal person living in an arid land, discovering a flowing spring or deep well of water would never think to keep it to themselves. There are some things just too important for all of our survival to keep to ourselves.
Just look at the colorful, noisy second half of this passage. Isaiah prophesied the people of God would do a bunch of wonderfully noisy and grateful things. We won’t sit around church buildings sniping and backbiting each other. Isaiah said the truly enlightened and truly grateful church will sing thanks and praise to His Name. We will gratefully tell the nations everything He has done. We will always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is within us! We will make sure everyone around us knows exactly how mighty our Lord is. We will shout His wonders to the world. We will announce to everyone that the Holy One of God is among us!
And if you look carefully at the original language of this passage, you discover very something interesting and wonderful going on. The singulars in the passage become plurals. When we get to the “you” of verse 4, we see plural pronouns in the Hebrew. Isaiah prophesies we will enter our salvation individually, but we will enjoy our salvation communally! Each one of us must enter the salvation of our Lord as individuals, but we are intended to enjoy that watery, wonderful light of salvation communally. We come into the Light alone, but we enjoy the Light together. And even more interesting, in verse 6, where “the inhabitant of Jerusalem” is mentioned, the Hebrew language there switches into a feminine form, which some scholars take as perhaps a tender allusion to the bride of Christ, the body, the church. All these cheerful little lights say we become part of something enormously bigger and more wonderful than ourselves. We are gratefully joined into a refreshing, brilliant, shining star genuine community of Christmas light! Not only do we drink deeply and shout loudly, but we do it all together!
How loudly does your life shout or shine out your gratitude? How many people around you are finding their way to the Living Water because the brilliant Light of gratitude in your life has gratefully pointed the way? How wonderfully sloppy and overflowing is the gratitude of your heart and that of this church? Jesus is calling us to come drink deeply and shout loudly!
Henrietta Mears, one of the most famous and effective Sunday School teachers ever, was well known for asking herself some questions before teaching. She would say, “Henrietta, are you proving your Christian life is a joyful, happy thing? Do you honestly look glad you are a Christian? Does your life radiate joy, gratefulness and enthusiasm? Check yourself carefully on this before you teach it. Make sure your Christian life is contagious.”
Let’s prayerfully stop and ask God for help to shout loudly and shine brightly…
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.
See, on the portals, He's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home. Ye who are weary, come home.
Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling, calling, "O sinner, come home!"
Drink deeply! Shout loudly! Let the light of your gratitude reveal your participation in the community of Christmas; the community of Christ. In the coming weeks, we will add all the other, more traditionally Advent lights into the conversation, but I submit to you that we won’t be ready to enjoy those pretty Christmas lights if we don’t fully embrace this grateful one first. So drink deeply of God this Thanksgiving week! Drink so deeply you can’t help but shout and shine loudly this Advent!
May our LORD open our minds and hearts to see all He has graciously done for us! May we both drink deeply and shout loudly our gratitude for all He has done! May the intensity of our gratitude lay a foundation for our LORD to build the Christmas community He desires!
Amen.
This morning we (sort of) begin this year’s Advent celebrations. I know Thanksgiving week isn’t the official beginning of Advent, but it has always been to me. Our Advent theme this year is very simple – the Light of Christmas. We will focus on the individual light each precious aspect of the traditional Advent calendar sheds on our eternal hope. And it seems only fitting we begin our Christmas party with the light of eternal gratitude burning in our hearts.
In the first part of Isaiah, terrible, awful judgment against Judah was prophesied. But in chapter 11, Isaiah went on to prophesy that even though Judah would be cut off and destroyed by the Assyrians, out of the stump of their broken nation would come the One who will one day restore them. And in chapter 12, Isaiah excitedly broke into a prophetic psalm of praise as he described the grateful way the people of God will assemble to sing in that glorious day. I like the way the New Living Translation phrases the passage. Listen closely to Isaiah as he said…
In that day you will sing: “Praise the LORD! He was angry with me, but now he comforts me. See, God has come to save me. I will trust in him and not be afraid. The LORD GOD [Yah Yahweh, God Himself, Very God of Very Gods!] is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!
In that wonderful day you will sing: “Thank the LORD! Praise his name! Tell the world what he has done. Oh, how mighty he is! Sing to the LORD, for he has done wonderful things. Make known his praise around the world. Let all the people of Jerusalem shout his praise with joy! For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you.”
The light of gratitude glows from this passage, doesn’t it? Isaiah said when Messiah comes, the people of God will gratefully do two simple things; drink deeply and shout loudly.
Look again at the first three verses of the passage. Do you see the light of gratitude shining through; the reasons Isaiah prophesied we would gratefully drink deeply?
Isaiah said God was angry with His people; justifiably disgusted with sin and adulterous behavior. He had every right to be! But now He comforts and saves us and, because of that, we trust Him to the degree we are no longer afraid of anything. God is not only our strength, He has not only made a dry path for us across the river just as He did for Moses crossing the Red Sea and Joshua skipping across the Jordan, but He is also our song. He is our joy! He is our pleasure in life. He is not just brute and blinding force, but the brilliant, loving Light of Life! And so we drink deeply of the overflowing fountain of His salvation. We gratefully enjoy the same cool, living waters Jesus offered the Samaritan woman; waters welling up to eternal life.
How deeply are we drinking of the delicious and lightly shimmering Living Waters? How is our gratitude shaping us and enlightening us as a community? Are we intentionally bathing ourselves in the brilliant, refreshing waters of life God offers us or are we just barely keeping ourselves alive; contenting ourselves with polite, powerless, religious, little Sunday sips? While anything is better than nothing, we weren’t designed for just anything. Almighty God designed us to gratefully drink deeply! Gratefully drink deeply of His Word, His Son, His Spirit and His Body, the community of believers. Allow the light of gratitude to glow in our hearts.
Let’s prayerfully stop right now and drink deeply...
Fill my cup, Lord – I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul.
Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more;
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!
Isaiah prophesied we would drink deeply of the salvation of our Lord simply because we are so very grateful to be able to! Where once we were thirsty, where once we wandered in a dry and thirsty land, where once we ourselves were condemned and carried away into a blind, abysmal Assyrian exile of sin and suffering, we have now been found and brought home again. Our cup has been filled to overflowing and we are sloppy grateful for that. Our gratefulness enlightens us; it is always the first light shining out of any genuine Christmas community.
Isaiah says we are so sloppy grateful we not only drink deeply, we shout loudly. We don’t just enjoy this wild and wonderful spring, we employ it! This wonderful spring of Living Water we have discovered, this spring of Living Water that has wonderfully discovered us is flowing so constantly and so boldly we couldn’t keep it to ourselves if we tried. Interestingly, my African Bible Commentary says any tribal person living in an arid land, discovering a flowing spring or deep well of water would never think to keep it to themselves. There are some things just too important for all of our survival to keep to ourselves.
Just look at the colorful, noisy second half of this passage. Isaiah prophesied the people of God would do a bunch of wonderfully noisy and grateful things. We won’t sit around church buildings sniping and backbiting each other. Isaiah said the truly enlightened and truly grateful church will sing thanks and praise to His Name. We will gratefully tell the nations everything He has done. We will always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is within us! We will make sure everyone around us knows exactly how mighty our Lord is. We will shout His wonders to the world. We will announce to everyone that the Holy One of God is among us!
And if you look carefully at the original language of this passage, you discover very something interesting and wonderful going on. The singulars in the passage become plurals. When we get to the “you” of verse 4, we see plural pronouns in the Hebrew. Isaiah prophesies we will enter our salvation individually, but we will enjoy our salvation communally! Each one of us must enter the salvation of our Lord as individuals, but we are intended to enjoy that watery, wonderful light of salvation communally. We come into the Light alone, but we enjoy the Light together. And even more interesting, in verse 6, where “the inhabitant of Jerusalem” is mentioned, the Hebrew language there switches into a feminine form, which some scholars take as perhaps a tender allusion to the bride of Christ, the body, the church. All these cheerful little lights say we become part of something enormously bigger and more wonderful than ourselves. We are gratefully joined into a refreshing, brilliant, shining star genuine community of Christmas light! Not only do we drink deeply and shout loudly, but we do it all together!
How loudly does your life shout or shine out your gratitude? How many people around you are finding their way to the Living Water because the brilliant Light of gratitude in your life has gratefully pointed the way? How wonderfully sloppy and overflowing is the gratitude of your heart and that of this church? Jesus is calling us to come drink deeply and shout loudly!
Henrietta Mears, one of the most famous and effective Sunday School teachers ever, was well known for asking herself some questions before teaching. She would say, “Henrietta, are you proving your Christian life is a joyful, happy thing? Do you honestly look glad you are a Christian? Does your life radiate joy, gratefulness and enthusiasm? Check yourself carefully on this before you teach it. Make sure your Christian life is contagious.”
Let’s prayerfully stop and ask God for help to shout loudly and shine brightly…
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.
See, on the portals, He's waiting and watching, watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home. Ye who are weary, come home.
Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling, calling, "O sinner, come home!"
Drink deeply! Shout loudly! Let the light of your gratitude reveal your participation in the community of Christmas; the community of Christ. In the coming weeks, we will add all the other, more traditionally Advent lights into the conversation, but I submit to you that we won’t be ready to enjoy those pretty Christmas lights if we don’t fully embrace this grateful one first. So drink deeply of God this Thanksgiving week! Drink so deeply you can’t help but shout and shine loudly this Advent!
May our LORD open our minds and hearts to see all He has graciously done for us! May we both drink deeply and shout loudly our gratitude for all He has done! May the intensity of our gratitude lay a foundation for our LORD to build the Christmas community He desires!
Amen.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Crashing The Bike, Pt 3 (Psalm 37:1-9)
In Luke 12, while Jesus was warning his disciples and large crowds of followers against the hypocrisy and religious superficiality of the Pharisees, he made a very pregnant statement. He said, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” Folks, don’t think any secret will remain a secret for very long. Don’t think you can hide what you truly are for very long. Don’t think revelation won’t happen to you.
As we close our “crashing the bike” conversation this morning, I go back to something my friend Paul DeWeese said. As I said last week, a little over five years ago, Monica and I were in a serious motorcycle accident. My friend big Paul DeWeese, who also just happened to be Ely’s resident mortician at the time, was riding his big, beautiful blue Honda Goldwing right behind me. Big Paul’s description of the accident will always stick in my mind. As I heard him describing the accident to the rest of the church later, he said, “Well, first I saw my pastor’s motorcycle go end over end and then I saw my pastor go flying through the air and land on his head. I was completely certain I was going to do my pastor’s funeral and then, to my surprise, I saw how much my pastor loved his wife.” Apparently, even before my flying body came to a complete stop, I was up and stumbling back to where Monica lay by the bike. It didn’t even occur to me to check myself for injuries – my love for Monica overwhelmed me.
And in the next months as she recovered, I did a lot of things for my Monica without thinking about it. I had a friend from church build a ramp over the stairs in the front of the house and, because I knew how much my Monica still wanted to be outside walking, I took her for longer walks in her wheelchair than we had ever taken on foot. I got a little bedside table and fast internet connection set up for her and served as her messenger boy taking her office paperwork back and forth while she worked at home. I did all sorts of things for her because our accident revealed to me how terribly close I had come to losing her. My love for her was revealed to me in that accident as nothing else in 23 years of marriage has ever revealed it.
There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed. What are we when all our bikes crash and revelation suddenly happens? What are we when all the polished words and polite, religious speech are stripped away and we are left exposed for all to see? What are we in a genuine crisis – when things go terribly wrong? What are we when evil people treat us badly?
I spent a couple days home sick this week. Out of sheer boredom, I had opportunity to channel-surf a lot of daytime television. Eew! If ever there was an incentive to get out of bed and go immediately back to work, it is daytime television. I was amazed by the amount of pain, ignorance, perversion, anger, broken and miserable people. If daytime television is any sort of defining revelation of our culture, our culture is very diseased indeed. It was almost nothing but one angry crashed bike story after another; nothing but sad people lashing out.
I don’t want to be like those angry, nasty, broken people. I don’t want to be like them. When my bike crashes, as it occasionally and inevitably will from time to time, I don’t want painful, despairing and angry nastiness coming out of me. I want love and grace coming out.
But unless I prepare myself, unless I intentionally choose to fill my mind, heart and life with all the right things ahead of time – all the good and godly stuff will not be there to come out of me when the bike crashes and I am revealed for what I truly am. I will be just as awful, nasty, and angry as anyone. King David, in Psalm 37, gives us some very healthy instructions in how to prepare ourselves to live in a world filled with crashed motorcycles and angry people.
Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
If we want to be the kind of people who bleed grace when we are struck, who respond with love whenever the bike crashes, this passage gives us several ways to prepare ourselves.
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, David tells us to trust and delight in God. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you your desires. Don’t just recite some rote, sinner’s prayer or agree to some doctrinally correct religious creed. Get in the habit now of trusting and delighting in God! Trust Him so much you will act on that trust. Trust Him so much you will constantly want to do good in His Name. Trust Him so much you will delightfully settle down in whatever land He plants you and allow Him to give the safe pasture He’s always wanted for you. In order for each of us to stand as our Heavenly Father wants us to, we’ve got to trust and believe exactly what the old evangelist D.L. Moody used to say, “God never made a promise too good to be true.” The promises God makes to us all in His Word are really true. They can be trusted! We will not be able to stand against the bike crashes and genuine forces of evil buffeting us in this world unless we really and truly trust God and demonstrate that trust in our actions.
I love the well-known story Bill Hybels told on an old Preaching Today sermon about a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls. It seems that “a famous tightrope walker once strung a cable across Niagara Falls from the American side all the way to the Canadian side. To the applause of thousands of people, he would walk across that tightrope right on the very edge of the falls, the rushing, cascading waters thundering underneath him. He would walk back and forth, people applauding wildly. Then to further wow the crowds, he would put a blindfold on and go back and forth. Then he would ride a bicycle back and forth, and then he would push a wheelbarrow back and forth. Every day, people came out to watch him. He was quite simply the greatest. As the story goes, one day while pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, he called out to the crowd on one end, inquiring whether or not they thought he could successfully push the wheelbarrow across with a human being riding in the wheelbarrow. The crowd went berserk: “Surely you can. You're remarkable. We've watched you for days. We understand and appreciate your skills. We believe in your abilities. You are the greatest.” On and on they went, to which he responded, “Then someone volunteer. You come right up here, single file, form a line, and get in the wheelbarrow to prove your trust in my ability.” A deafening silence overtook the crowd. There were no takers.”
Get accustomed to climbing into His wheelbarrow! Unless we are in the faithful habit of trusting God and delightfully climbing into His arms and making Him our refuge, we won’t have a reservoir of trust when the bike crashes. We won’t trust when evil does its worst. Trust God.
The second preparatory element is also enormous. If we ever hope to truly trust and delight in God, if we ever hope to truly stand strong in the bike crashes and everything this world will inevitably throw at us, then we’ve got to commit to Him now above all else in life. David says that we must “commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
But what does it mean to commit your way to the Lord? Pastor Dale Hays told a great, but strange story years ago of how, on a recent trip to Haiti, he heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total and absolute commitment to Christ. He told a parable that explained commitment in a rather unique way that each Haitian in the room clearly understood. He said: “A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one uniquely Haitian stipulation: he would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the front door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So first the owner went out and found the nasty carcass of a smelly dead dog, and hung it from the nail on the house that he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. The Haitian pastor then concluded: “If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will always return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation.”
Committing our way to the LORD means all sorts of very important things, but one of the single most important things it means is that we don’t leave the devil anything in our house he can hang his rotten, smelly stuff on. Committing our way to the LORD means sweeping and keeping the house so completely clean and filled up with goodness, Almighty God will be able to make our righteousness shine like the dawn when the crashes and the revelations come.
Closely related to a call to commitment is the third and final element. We are called to trust and delight in God. We’re called to commit our way to Him. But even if we do these things, there are going to come times when the temptation to despair, rage and anger will still be very severe. There are going to come times when the injustice and evil will become so very severe we will feel completely justified in our anger, wrath and hatred. The closer and closer we come to the end of the age, the more difficult it will become to love as we should.
But God tells us to refrain; don’t succumb to the temptation to rage! Come what may, whatever the crash; we must train ourselves to refrain from anger; turn away from wrath.
If we want the love of God to come out when we are abused, if we want the love of God to flow out of us when things all go wrong, when the accidents and the ugliness of all sorts happen, then we have to make the daily, conscious and constant decision to turn away from all temptations to anger, rage, hatred and bitterness. We must make intentional choices to not coddle anger any place in our hearts, even when the anger might feel justified.
Jesus told us in Matthew 24 that in the end times “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” It is going to be increasingly difficult not to be angry and unloving at the sin, brokenness and wickedness around us. It is going to be difficult not to feel like we’re entitled to our disappointment and discouragement when the bike crashes. It is going to be harder and harder all the time. And so we prepare ourselves now. Refrain!
There are a lot of crashed bikes in this room this morning, aren’t there? Some of us have been badly crashed by health issues, some by workplace or economic stuff. Some of us may well have been crashed by things done to us by angry, evil and broken people around us in the world. Some of us may well have even crashed ourselves in one way or another. And some of us might even broken-heartedly feel God Himself has crashed our bike. There is a lot of twisted steel and confusion in every grouping of people like ours…
But it isn’t the crash that matters, folks. It is our response. Sooner or later, we’ll all be crashing the bike. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. And those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
What are we preparing ourselves to reveal at the scene of the accident? What will people see in us when our bike goes end over end? What land are we preparing to inherit?
Amen.
As we close our “crashing the bike” conversation this morning, I go back to something my friend Paul DeWeese said. As I said last week, a little over five years ago, Monica and I were in a serious motorcycle accident. My friend big Paul DeWeese, who also just happened to be Ely’s resident mortician at the time, was riding his big, beautiful blue Honda Goldwing right behind me. Big Paul’s description of the accident will always stick in my mind. As I heard him describing the accident to the rest of the church later, he said, “Well, first I saw my pastor’s motorcycle go end over end and then I saw my pastor go flying through the air and land on his head. I was completely certain I was going to do my pastor’s funeral and then, to my surprise, I saw how much my pastor loved his wife.” Apparently, even before my flying body came to a complete stop, I was up and stumbling back to where Monica lay by the bike. It didn’t even occur to me to check myself for injuries – my love for Monica overwhelmed me.
And in the next months as she recovered, I did a lot of things for my Monica without thinking about it. I had a friend from church build a ramp over the stairs in the front of the house and, because I knew how much my Monica still wanted to be outside walking, I took her for longer walks in her wheelchair than we had ever taken on foot. I got a little bedside table and fast internet connection set up for her and served as her messenger boy taking her office paperwork back and forth while she worked at home. I did all sorts of things for her because our accident revealed to me how terribly close I had come to losing her. My love for her was revealed to me in that accident as nothing else in 23 years of marriage has ever revealed it.
There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed. What are we when all our bikes crash and revelation suddenly happens? What are we when all the polished words and polite, religious speech are stripped away and we are left exposed for all to see? What are we in a genuine crisis – when things go terribly wrong? What are we when evil people treat us badly?
I spent a couple days home sick this week. Out of sheer boredom, I had opportunity to channel-surf a lot of daytime television. Eew! If ever there was an incentive to get out of bed and go immediately back to work, it is daytime television. I was amazed by the amount of pain, ignorance, perversion, anger, broken and miserable people. If daytime television is any sort of defining revelation of our culture, our culture is very diseased indeed. It was almost nothing but one angry crashed bike story after another; nothing but sad people lashing out.
I don’t want to be like those angry, nasty, broken people. I don’t want to be like them. When my bike crashes, as it occasionally and inevitably will from time to time, I don’t want painful, despairing and angry nastiness coming out of me. I want love and grace coming out.
But unless I prepare myself, unless I intentionally choose to fill my mind, heart and life with all the right things ahead of time – all the good and godly stuff will not be there to come out of me when the bike crashes and I am revealed for what I truly am. I will be just as awful, nasty, and angry as anyone. King David, in Psalm 37, gives us some very healthy instructions in how to prepare ourselves to live in a world filled with crashed motorcycles and angry people.
Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
If we want to be the kind of people who bleed grace when we are struck, who respond with love whenever the bike crashes, this passage gives us several ways to prepare ourselves.
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, David tells us to trust and delight in God. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the LORD and he will give you your desires. Don’t just recite some rote, sinner’s prayer or agree to some doctrinally correct religious creed. Get in the habit now of trusting and delighting in God! Trust Him so much you will act on that trust. Trust Him so much you will constantly want to do good in His Name. Trust Him so much you will delightfully settle down in whatever land He plants you and allow Him to give the safe pasture He’s always wanted for you. In order for each of us to stand as our Heavenly Father wants us to, we’ve got to trust and believe exactly what the old evangelist D.L. Moody used to say, “God never made a promise too good to be true.” The promises God makes to us all in His Word are really true. They can be trusted! We will not be able to stand against the bike crashes and genuine forces of evil buffeting us in this world unless we really and truly trust God and demonstrate that trust in our actions.
I love the well-known story Bill Hybels told on an old Preaching Today sermon about a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls. It seems that “a famous tightrope walker once strung a cable across Niagara Falls from the American side all the way to the Canadian side. To the applause of thousands of people, he would walk across that tightrope right on the very edge of the falls, the rushing, cascading waters thundering underneath him. He would walk back and forth, people applauding wildly. Then to further wow the crowds, he would put a blindfold on and go back and forth. Then he would ride a bicycle back and forth, and then he would push a wheelbarrow back and forth. Every day, people came out to watch him. He was quite simply the greatest. As the story goes, one day while pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, he called out to the crowd on one end, inquiring whether or not they thought he could successfully push the wheelbarrow across with a human being riding in the wheelbarrow. The crowd went berserk: “Surely you can. You're remarkable. We've watched you for days. We understand and appreciate your skills. We believe in your abilities. You are the greatest.” On and on they went, to which he responded, “Then someone volunteer. You come right up here, single file, form a line, and get in the wheelbarrow to prove your trust in my ability.” A deafening silence overtook the crowd. There were no takers.”
Get accustomed to climbing into His wheelbarrow! Unless we are in the faithful habit of trusting God and delightfully climbing into His arms and making Him our refuge, we won’t have a reservoir of trust when the bike crashes. We won’t trust when evil does its worst. Trust God.
The second preparatory element is also enormous. If we ever hope to truly trust and delight in God, if we ever hope to truly stand strong in the bike crashes and everything this world will inevitably throw at us, then we’ve got to commit to Him now above all else in life. David says that we must “commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
But what does it mean to commit your way to the Lord? Pastor Dale Hays told a great, but strange story years ago of how, on a recent trip to Haiti, he heard a Haitian pastor illustrate to his congregation the need for total and absolute commitment to Christ. He told a parable that explained commitment in a rather unique way that each Haitian in the room clearly understood. He said: “A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn't afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one uniquely Haitian stipulation: he would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the front door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So first the owner went out and found the nasty carcass of a smelly dead dog, and hung it from the nail on the house that he still owned. Soon the house became unlivable and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail. The Haitian pastor then concluded: “If we leave the Devil with even one small peg in our life, he will always return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making it unfit for Christ's habitation.”
Committing our way to the LORD means all sorts of very important things, but one of the single most important things it means is that we don’t leave the devil anything in our house he can hang his rotten, smelly stuff on. Committing our way to the LORD means sweeping and keeping the house so completely clean and filled up with goodness, Almighty God will be able to make our righteousness shine like the dawn when the crashes and the revelations come.
Closely related to a call to commitment is the third and final element. We are called to trust and delight in God. We’re called to commit our way to Him. But even if we do these things, there are going to come times when the temptation to despair, rage and anger will still be very severe. There are going to come times when the injustice and evil will become so very severe we will feel completely justified in our anger, wrath and hatred. The closer and closer we come to the end of the age, the more difficult it will become to love as we should.
But God tells us to refrain; don’t succumb to the temptation to rage! Come what may, whatever the crash; we must train ourselves to refrain from anger; turn away from wrath.
If we want the love of God to come out when we are abused, if we want the love of God to flow out of us when things all go wrong, when the accidents and the ugliness of all sorts happen, then we have to make the daily, conscious and constant decision to turn away from all temptations to anger, rage, hatred and bitterness. We must make intentional choices to not coddle anger any place in our hearts, even when the anger might feel justified.
Jesus told us in Matthew 24 that in the end times “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” It is going to be increasingly difficult not to be angry and unloving at the sin, brokenness and wickedness around us. It is going to be difficult not to feel like we’re entitled to our disappointment and discouragement when the bike crashes. It is going to be harder and harder all the time. And so we prepare ourselves now. Refrain!
There are a lot of crashed bikes in this room this morning, aren’t there? Some of us have been badly crashed by health issues, some by workplace or economic stuff. Some of us may well have been crashed by things done to us by angry, evil and broken people around us in the world. Some of us may well have even crashed ourselves in one way or another. And some of us might even broken-heartedly feel God Himself has crashed our bike. There is a lot of twisted steel and confusion in every grouping of people like ours…
But it isn’t the crash that matters, folks. It is our response. Sooner or later, we’ll all be crashing the bike. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. Sooner or later, all will be revealed. And those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
What are we preparing ourselves to reveal at the scene of the accident? What will people see in us when our bike goes end over end? What land are we preparing to inherit?
Amen.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Crashing The Bike (Pt 2) (Galatians 3 & 5)
On Sunday afternoon, July 27th, 2003, after a beautifully serene baptismal service in a crystal clear pool near the bottom of the Bass Lake waterfalls, my sweet Monica and I went for a motorcycle ride down curly Highway One with some friends. Since I had never driven that road on a motorcycle, much less driven it with a passenger, I was being scrupulously careful to follow the rules. We weren’t speeding or doing any sort of crazy stunt driving. I was trying to keep myself properly distanced and staggered from the other bikes. I tried so hard to follow all the rules, but I just couldn’t follow them well enough. Either I didn’t know them well enough or I was trying to follow the wrong rules at the wrong time but, whatever the case, curly highway 1 didn’t care about the rules I was trying to follow. To make a long story short, as I was trying to safely take the bike off the road to avoid just the tiniest bit of loose gravel on a curve, I hit a hole hidden in some tall grass and sent our motorcycle end over end at full highway speed. I flew the farthest and landed on the back of my head, but my little Monica somehow got hit by the flipping motorcycle, hospitalizing her with a broken femur and collarbone. While the motorcycle sustained less than $50 in damage, my attempt to follow the rules failed horribly.
Rules have failed me a lot. As a new pastor here, I’ve spent most of this year trying to learn and play by the curly rules of Elim Church. That isn’t easy when most of those rules are not written down. This church, like every church, is a curly, confusing highway filled to the brim with the most frustrating and difficult rules imaginable. Every time I enter this building, I must very carefully remember to play by the rules of proper egalitarianism. I must be diligent and constantly aware of church management, seeker sensitivity and church growth rules. I must be sensitive to the convoluted, often strange rules of political correctness and diversity. Then there are the often completely contradictory worship rules, fellowship rules, friendship rules, sociability rules, and historical rules of Elim. There are email rules and Facebook rules and voice mail rules and technological stuff. There are the rules of the modernists and now the post-modernists in the house. Chase all this with the myriad hermeneutical and exegetical rules I need to scrupulously follow whenever I prepare to teach something from the Bible here and you’ve got a very difficult situation. You’ve got an end over end in the ditch situation.
And yet there is no release from rules when I walk out these doors. I obey traffic rules, marital rules and parenting rules. Monica and I are now relearning the costly and frustrating rules of real estate and economics. All of these rules often leave me feeling like gory William Wallace, disemboweled at the end of Braveheart, near death but still screaming, “Freedom!”
I sincerely believe this is how the Apostle Paul could well have been feeling as he wrote his letter to the church in Galatia. After a glorious, powerful and genuine experience of the Holy Spirit, some very legalistic people moved into the fellowship and began to convince these mostly Greek, Gentile Galatian converts that they needed to follow the rules of Judaism if they were going to be good, genuine Christians. They encouraged them to be circumcised and to obey all sorts of other religious rules. And this made Paul angry. Paul was so frustrated by all this, he was calling down curses on people before he even got to the tenth verse of the letter! At one point in his letter, the Apostle sarcastically even wishes aloud that all these circumcision teaching opponents would go the whole way and castrate themselves completely!
Freedom! My dear Galatian friends, this following Jesus thing is supposed to be about joy and power, miracles, faith and freedom! We’re supposed to be zooming down the curly highway after our baptismal service, fully enjoying every moment of this gorgeous day. We’re supposed to be enjoying this trip. We’re supposed to be enjoying the muscular sound of the engine beneath us, happily focused on getting somewhere and very excited about it all.
You foolish [poor, silly, thoughtless, unreflecting and senseless] Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish [senseless and silly]?
After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by your observing the law, or by your believing what you heard?
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised [fall back into empty rules and legalism], Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
But Paul, rules are easier. I like rules. Rules make everything simple and clear. I don’t need to wonder and wander around in the dark. If I can simplify all of life down to an essential list of rules, I won’t have to live with doubt and uncertainty. I won’t have so many unanswered questions or ambiguous life situations. All I need to do is learn the rules and obey the rules.
But Kevin, that’s precisely the point.
That is why you’ve crashed the bike in this ditch today!
You can’t make up enough rules to keep pace with the changes you’re now constantly facing in life. Even though you cannot live without rules and structure, even though the rules themselves aren’t necessarily evil or bad, even though rules do help to clearly define the playing field, rules are not the answer. You can’t possibly apply all the old rules appropriately to all the new situations. This is not the same old highway.
Don’t you see, Kevin? Rules cannot get you where I intend for you to go.
We live by faith. We look into the legal mirror of the Ten Commandments, we listen to the endless list of Levitical laws, we hear Jesus explaining the heart of that Law in the Sermon on the Mount and we realize our utter inability to clean ourselves up by rules and human effort.
Our relationship with God only begins to be restored when we, by faith, accept the true Gospel story of the crucified and risen Christ. It is only when we realize the utter futility of our legalistic living that we are able to reach out in faith. This following Jesus thing isn’t about me agreeing to a laundry list of better ideas and newer rules. It is about me loving Jesus back for loving me anyway. It is about me coming to genuinely believe Almighty God loved me so much He sent His Son to die for my sins, for all my legalistic failures, so that I wouldn’t have to. And once that simple, genuine faith wells up in my heart, once I truly and faithfully believe, I will find myself energized by the rules instead of overwhelmed by them. Instead of being burdened and oppressed by all the rules around me, my heart will be so completely changed and charged by faith I will start obeying the rules without even realizing I’m doing so. My righteousness will begin to faithfully exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees and I won’t even notice! The rules will remain, not a jot will disappear from the Law, but my heart will be faithfully and forever changed. My obedience will no longer be driven by duty, drudgery and despair, but delight!
My first few years of Army physical fitness tests were awful. I could do push ups and sit ups all day, but I’ve never been much of a runner. I was always obsessively worried about my 2 mile running times. But then some older sergeants changed my attitude. They helped me to see my shallow, legalistic focus. They encouraged me to stop thinking about the rules and the minimum standards and start believing in what was truly possible. And once I started doing that, I never again worried about passing my tests. If you’re routinely enjoying 7 minute miles, you just stop worrying about your ability to run 8 minute ones. Once we begin to trust and faithfully believe in what God proclaims to be possible, all the rules become inconsequential.
We live by faith. As Paul said, we saw Jesus portrayed as crucified for us. We believe the Bible when it tells us Almighty God loves us and believes in us. We believe Jesus when He tells us it is possible to live miles above the minimum. We believe Him when He says we can run faster and jump ever so much higher if we’ll just let Him help us do so. We live by faith.
In chapter 4 of Galatians, Paul shared an allegorical application from the days of Abraham. He retold and reapplied the story of Hagar the slave woman and Sarah the elderly bride. After being told to faithfully believe in God’s promise of a child, Abraham took measures into his own hands and had a child with Hagar the slave woman. But that wasn’t God’s plan. That wasn’t the wonderful, faithful miracle God had planned for Abraham and Sarah. And just as Abraham was eventually told to “send away the slave woman,” Paul argued we too must send away any legalistic ideas we might have about taking this thing into our own hands.
Almighty God is not asking us to finally get off the stick and take this thing into our hands. God is asking us to finally release the stick and let Him take this thing into His hands. Do you see? Almighty God is not interested in producing “ordinary kids” and Ishmaels. God wants to give us Isaac; He wants to powerfully bring us laughter. Our God wants us to faithfully believe in His promises and His truly amazing possibilities. God wants us to leave all the legalistic minimums behind and trust Him for something spectacular; something truly beyond all we can ever ask or imagine. God is calling us to live by faith, not by sight.
But we also live spiritually. We not only live by faith, we live by the ever present Holy Spirit working within us. And we didn’t receive that Holy Spirit by learning and obeying a list of rules laid out for us. We didn’t receive the Holy Spirit because we heard some great sermon, followed a ten-step DVD training program or prayed the right words. We didn’t do anything to work or deserve the Holy Spirit in any way. We received the Holy Spirit because we faithfully believed what Jesus told us about the Holy Spirit and His on-going work in our lives.
And now the Holy Spirit guides us in all we do. The laws once written on cold, hard tablets of stone have now been peacefully and beautifully etched across our hearts. The terrible treaty has now become our tender tattoo. Where once we legalistically labored to satisfy some scary, angry, distant God hidden away in some stormy cloud on the mountain, now that powerful, personal God has come down from the mountain and entered our hearts. Now He leads us to faithfully want to obey. Now we hear His tender voice steering us down the highway, whispering to us instructions about the sharp curves coming up in the road ahead. Instead of our having our hard won rules and religion buffeted and blown about by the wind, now we are an integral part of that wind. Now we get to ride on and enjoy that wind.
While I’ve never had the opportunity to ride a hot air balloon, one comment I’ve always heard from people having done so relates to the lovely stillness of it all. Because you are riding the wind, supposedly you don’t experience it as you would almost anywhere else. I wonder if that isn’t a pretty good metaphor for our spiritual existence. Because the Holy Spirit indwells us, because we are riding the wonderful wind, because we are intimately connected to the true Source of all things, we shouldn’t struggle as hard with the rules affecting the earth dwellers. We’re not religiously taking life into our own hands; settling for Ishmael when we’re supposed to be faithfully waiting for Isaac. We’re not constantly working overtime, feverishly working, desperately trying to create new and better rules for ourselves to somehow help us keep pace with the spiritual balloon we see peacefully and rapidly moving across the sky. We’re already supposed to be in the basket, Paul says. We’re in the wind. We’re living spiritually.
And because we live by faith, because of this indwelling Spirit, we also live powerfully. Look again at verse 5 of chapter 3: “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by your observing the law, or by your believing what you heard?” In Acts 15:12, during one of the great Jerusalem councils where these difficult, controversial issues of circumcision and legalism were openly discussed, the whole conversation came down to power. Luke tells us “everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.” And because of these very obvious displays of God’s power, the leaders of the early church were convinced to embrace what the Apostles were teaching about our faithful, spiritual, powerful freedom in Christ.
Folks, there is supposed to be enormous power in our lives. There is supposed to be glorious, obvious power flowing out of our lives that cannot possibly be created by rules and religion. No amount of rules and religion will ever bring Isaac to Abraham and Sarah. Do you see? Only the genuine power of God can ever do something like that. We’re not supposed to be legalistically taking Hagar to the dance and religiously trying to make things happen on our own; we’re supposed to be faithfully, spiritually, powerfully holding out for the good stuff!
What sort of powerful surprises are we honestly expecting to see around here at Elim Church? What sort of powerful stuff is routinely happening in our personal lives? What things are happening here at Elim or in our individual lives that couldn’t happen without the power of God making it so? Are we faithfully waiting for the miracles and the laughter or are we still dancing with Hagar and religiously settling for Ishmael?
Folks, don’t be surprised if Jesus crashes the bike of your careful legalism or religiosity. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Do not settle for empty rules and religion; do not settle for more and more sad little Ishmaels! Do not think we’re ever going to be able to figure out, apply or obey enough rules to get us successfully through this very curly and difficult patch of spiritual roadway! It won’t happen. It can’t happen. We’ve never travelled this particular way before…we can’t possibly be ready to face everything this road is going to challenge us with.
I carry something a little strange in one of the many small pockets of my briefcase. You may think this a little odd or gruesome, but I carry around with me the $25,000 screw once used to help hold the rod in place inside Monica’s broken leg. I always carry this now sterilized little screw everywhere I go as a reminder to me of many things. It is a reminder that all my decisions have consequences. It is a reminder that I am not simply risking myself by the things I do in this life, but those I love. But perhaps more important than anything else this morning, it is a simple reminder to me that, even at my most careful best, I am not ultimately in control of this motorcycle. It is a reminder that all my careful rules and religion will only get me so far.
Almighty God is calling you and me to trust Him; to believe Him when He tells us how much He loves us and has plans for us. Trust Him when He tells us He has already forgiven us for all the stupid, sinful things we’ve done. Trust Him enough to not try to handle or Hagar this thing on our own. Trust Him not only with our eternity, but with our today. Trust Him enough to open ourselves completely to the presence, power and leading of His Holy Spirit. Trust Him enough to relax and enjoy the laughter He longs to bring us. Trust Him enough to reach well beyond the superficial rules and minimum standards of this world into the freedom of the next.
May we trust God today! May we allow the Holy Spirit to fill and guide us completely today! May we experience the full power and pleasure of God today!
Amen.
Rules have failed me a lot. As a new pastor here, I’ve spent most of this year trying to learn and play by the curly rules of Elim Church. That isn’t easy when most of those rules are not written down. This church, like every church, is a curly, confusing highway filled to the brim with the most frustrating and difficult rules imaginable. Every time I enter this building, I must very carefully remember to play by the rules of proper egalitarianism. I must be diligent and constantly aware of church management, seeker sensitivity and church growth rules. I must be sensitive to the convoluted, often strange rules of political correctness and diversity. Then there are the often completely contradictory worship rules, fellowship rules, friendship rules, sociability rules, and historical rules of Elim. There are email rules and Facebook rules and voice mail rules and technological stuff. There are the rules of the modernists and now the post-modernists in the house. Chase all this with the myriad hermeneutical and exegetical rules I need to scrupulously follow whenever I prepare to teach something from the Bible here and you’ve got a very difficult situation. You’ve got an end over end in the ditch situation.
And yet there is no release from rules when I walk out these doors. I obey traffic rules, marital rules and parenting rules. Monica and I are now relearning the costly and frustrating rules of real estate and economics. All of these rules often leave me feeling like gory William Wallace, disemboweled at the end of Braveheart, near death but still screaming, “Freedom!”
I sincerely believe this is how the Apostle Paul could well have been feeling as he wrote his letter to the church in Galatia. After a glorious, powerful and genuine experience of the Holy Spirit, some very legalistic people moved into the fellowship and began to convince these mostly Greek, Gentile Galatian converts that they needed to follow the rules of Judaism if they were going to be good, genuine Christians. They encouraged them to be circumcised and to obey all sorts of other religious rules. And this made Paul angry. Paul was so frustrated by all this, he was calling down curses on people before he even got to the tenth verse of the letter! At one point in his letter, the Apostle sarcastically even wishes aloud that all these circumcision teaching opponents would go the whole way and castrate themselves completely!
Freedom! My dear Galatian friends, this following Jesus thing is supposed to be about joy and power, miracles, faith and freedom! We’re supposed to be zooming down the curly highway after our baptismal service, fully enjoying every moment of this gorgeous day. We’re supposed to be enjoying this trip. We’re supposed to be enjoying the muscular sound of the engine beneath us, happily focused on getting somewhere and very excited about it all.
You foolish [poor, silly, thoughtless, unreflecting and senseless] Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish [senseless and silly]?
After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by your observing the law, or by your believing what you heard?
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised [fall back into empty rules and legalism], Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
But Paul, rules are easier. I like rules. Rules make everything simple and clear. I don’t need to wonder and wander around in the dark. If I can simplify all of life down to an essential list of rules, I won’t have to live with doubt and uncertainty. I won’t have so many unanswered questions or ambiguous life situations. All I need to do is learn the rules and obey the rules.
But Kevin, that’s precisely the point.
That is why you’ve crashed the bike in this ditch today!
You can’t make up enough rules to keep pace with the changes you’re now constantly facing in life. Even though you cannot live without rules and structure, even though the rules themselves aren’t necessarily evil or bad, even though rules do help to clearly define the playing field, rules are not the answer. You can’t possibly apply all the old rules appropriately to all the new situations. This is not the same old highway.
Don’t you see, Kevin? Rules cannot get you where I intend for you to go.
We live by faith. We look into the legal mirror of the Ten Commandments, we listen to the endless list of Levitical laws, we hear Jesus explaining the heart of that Law in the Sermon on the Mount and we realize our utter inability to clean ourselves up by rules and human effort.
Our relationship with God only begins to be restored when we, by faith, accept the true Gospel story of the crucified and risen Christ. It is only when we realize the utter futility of our legalistic living that we are able to reach out in faith. This following Jesus thing isn’t about me agreeing to a laundry list of better ideas and newer rules. It is about me loving Jesus back for loving me anyway. It is about me coming to genuinely believe Almighty God loved me so much He sent His Son to die for my sins, for all my legalistic failures, so that I wouldn’t have to. And once that simple, genuine faith wells up in my heart, once I truly and faithfully believe, I will find myself energized by the rules instead of overwhelmed by them. Instead of being burdened and oppressed by all the rules around me, my heart will be so completely changed and charged by faith I will start obeying the rules without even realizing I’m doing so. My righteousness will begin to faithfully exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees and I won’t even notice! The rules will remain, not a jot will disappear from the Law, but my heart will be faithfully and forever changed. My obedience will no longer be driven by duty, drudgery and despair, but delight!
My first few years of Army physical fitness tests were awful. I could do push ups and sit ups all day, but I’ve never been much of a runner. I was always obsessively worried about my 2 mile running times. But then some older sergeants changed my attitude. They helped me to see my shallow, legalistic focus. They encouraged me to stop thinking about the rules and the minimum standards and start believing in what was truly possible. And once I started doing that, I never again worried about passing my tests. If you’re routinely enjoying 7 minute miles, you just stop worrying about your ability to run 8 minute ones. Once we begin to trust and faithfully believe in what God proclaims to be possible, all the rules become inconsequential.
We live by faith. As Paul said, we saw Jesus portrayed as crucified for us. We believe the Bible when it tells us Almighty God loves us and believes in us. We believe Jesus when He tells us it is possible to live miles above the minimum. We believe Him when He says we can run faster and jump ever so much higher if we’ll just let Him help us do so. We live by faith.
In chapter 4 of Galatians, Paul shared an allegorical application from the days of Abraham. He retold and reapplied the story of Hagar the slave woman and Sarah the elderly bride. After being told to faithfully believe in God’s promise of a child, Abraham took measures into his own hands and had a child with Hagar the slave woman. But that wasn’t God’s plan. That wasn’t the wonderful, faithful miracle God had planned for Abraham and Sarah. And just as Abraham was eventually told to “send away the slave woman,” Paul argued we too must send away any legalistic ideas we might have about taking this thing into our own hands.
Almighty God is not asking us to finally get off the stick and take this thing into our hands. God is asking us to finally release the stick and let Him take this thing into His hands. Do you see? Almighty God is not interested in producing “ordinary kids” and Ishmaels. God wants to give us Isaac; He wants to powerfully bring us laughter. Our God wants us to faithfully believe in His promises and His truly amazing possibilities. God wants us to leave all the legalistic minimums behind and trust Him for something spectacular; something truly beyond all we can ever ask or imagine. God is calling us to live by faith, not by sight.
But we also live spiritually. We not only live by faith, we live by the ever present Holy Spirit working within us. And we didn’t receive that Holy Spirit by learning and obeying a list of rules laid out for us. We didn’t receive the Holy Spirit because we heard some great sermon, followed a ten-step DVD training program or prayed the right words. We didn’t do anything to work or deserve the Holy Spirit in any way. We received the Holy Spirit because we faithfully believed what Jesus told us about the Holy Spirit and His on-going work in our lives.
And now the Holy Spirit guides us in all we do. The laws once written on cold, hard tablets of stone have now been peacefully and beautifully etched across our hearts. The terrible treaty has now become our tender tattoo. Where once we legalistically labored to satisfy some scary, angry, distant God hidden away in some stormy cloud on the mountain, now that powerful, personal God has come down from the mountain and entered our hearts. Now He leads us to faithfully want to obey. Now we hear His tender voice steering us down the highway, whispering to us instructions about the sharp curves coming up in the road ahead. Instead of our having our hard won rules and religion buffeted and blown about by the wind, now we are an integral part of that wind. Now we get to ride on and enjoy that wind.
While I’ve never had the opportunity to ride a hot air balloon, one comment I’ve always heard from people having done so relates to the lovely stillness of it all. Because you are riding the wind, supposedly you don’t experience it as you would almost anywhere else. I wonder if that isn’t a pretty good metaphor for our spiritual existence. Because the Holy Spirit indwells us, because we are riding the wonderful wind, because we are intimately connected to the true Source of all things, we shouldn’t struggle as hard with the rules affecting the earth dwellers. We’re not religiously taking life into our own hands; settling for Ishmael when we’re supposed to be faithfully waiting for Isaac. We’re not constantly working overtime, feverishly working, desperately trying to create new and better rules for ourselves to somehow help us keep pace with the spiritual balloon we see peacefully and rapidly moving across the sky. We’re already supposed to be in the basket, Paul says. We’re in the wind. We’re living spiritually.
And because we live by faith, because of this indwelling Spirit, we also live powerfully. Look again at verse 5 of chapter 3: “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by your observing the law, or by your believing what you heard?” In Acts 15:12, during one of the great Jerusalem councils where these difficult, controversial issues of circumcision and legalism were openly discussed, the whole conversation came down to power. Luke tells us “everyone listened quietly as Barnabas and Paul told about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.” And because of these very obvious displays of God’s power, the leaders of the early church were convinced to embrace what the Apostles were teaching about our faithful, spiritual, powerful freedom in Christ.
Folks, there is supposed to be enormous power in our lives. There is supposed to be glorious, obvious power flowing out of our lives that cannot possibly be created by rules and religion. No amount of rules and religion will ever bring Isaac to Abraham and Sarah. Do you see? Only the genuine power of God can ever do something like that. We’re not supposed to be legalistically taking Hagar to the dance and religiously trying to make things happen on our own; we’re supposed to be faithfully, spiritually, powerfully holding out for the good stuff!
What sort of powerful surprises are we honestly expecting to see around here at Elim Church? What sort of powerful stuff is routinely happening in our personal lives? What things are happening here at Elim or in our individual lives that couldn’t happen without the power of God making it so? Are we faithfully waiting for the miracles and the laughter or are we still dancing with Hagar and religiously settling for Ishmael?
Folks, don’t be surprised if Jesus crashes the bike of your careful legalism or religiosity. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Do not settle for empty rules and religion; do not settle for more and more sad little Ishmaels! Do not think we’re ever going to be able to figure out, apply or obey enough rules to get us successfully through this very curly and difficult patch of spiritual roadway! It won’t happen. It can’t happen. We’ve never travelled this particular way before…we can’t possibly be ready to face everything this road is going to challenge us with.
I carry something a little strange in one of the many small pockets of my briefcase. You may think this a little odd or gruesome, but I carry around with me the $25,000 screw once used to help hold the rod in place inside Monica’s broken leg. I always carry this now sterilized little screw everywhere I go as a reminder to me of many things. It is a reminder that all my decisions have consequences. It is a reminder that I am not simply risking myself by the things I do in this life, but those I love. But perhaps more important than anything else this morning, it is a simple reminder to me that, even at my most careful best, I am not ultimately in control of this motorcycle. It is a reminder that all my careful rules and religion will only get me so far.
Almighty God is calling you and me to trust Him; to believe Him when He tells us how much He loves us and has plans for us. Trust Him when He tells us He has already forgiven us for all the stupid, sinful things we’ve done. Trust Him enough to not try to handle or Hagar this thing on our own. Trust Him not only with our eternity, but with our today. Trust Him enough to open ourselves completely to the presence, power and leading of His Holy Spirit. Trust Him enough to relax and enjoy the laughter He longs to bring us. Trust Him enough to reach well beyond the superficial rules and minimum standards of this world into the freedom of the next.
May we trust God today! May we allow the Holy Spirit to fill and guide us completely today! May we experience the full power and pleasure of God today!
Amen.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Daddy Like Very Much!
Okay, sure, I know this isn't exactly the "quiet and simple" life, but I can picture myself cruising up the shore at stupid speeds.
Big sigh...
Big sigh...
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