Peter had been with Jesus long enough to have absorbed quite a bit about him… his attitudes, his responses to things, his wisdom and his mission. Perhaps we are afraid for our children as they attempt to spread their wings. Maybe we think we know better than someone else how they should live their lives. We may speak words of death, not life, if we, even for a moment, forget who we really are before God. The cross we take up with him is one he helps us to carry.
Giving up our evening libation for Lent is one thing; giving our lives as a living sacrifice Romans Bonhoeffer reminds us that when Christ calls a man or woman , he bids him come and die. We do tend to learn more from our struggles than our easy wins. The hard times are what separate the pilgrims from the tourists! When the harsh winds of change begin to blow, the pilgrim who is committed to The Way has the necessary gear to withstand whatever forces swirl along the pilgrim path.
The tourists will merely change their destination. Lent reminds us that the path to resurrection runs right through the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus told us he gave his life in exchange for ours. And our call is to do the same. One will tarnish, the other will transform. Our scriptural journey of faith has brought us from the distant pinpoint of a guiding star all the way to the magnificent radiance of a mountaintop transfiguration! Light abounds, guiding us on our way as we seek to follow our Savior.
Considering their terror at this dazzling sight, they probably thought it would be a very good idea not to tell too many people…especially since words were failing them anyway! And who among us would not want to build a lean-to and continue to breathe that rarified air as long as we possibly could?
The Transfiguration was the way God chose to make abundantly clear to Peter, James and John that Jesus was not just the latest and greatest in a long line of pseudo-saviors, rebel rabbis or political poseurs. Jesus was on an equal human footing with the likes of Moses and Elijah, those pillars of Judaism. God announced that Jesus was his beloved Son and they were to listen to him. The disciples, perhaps still stumbling a bit from the change in light, had to come down from their mountain as well.
But that does not mean that, like Mary, they - and we - do not ponder these things in our hearts forever. In 2 Peter 1: Hikers know it is more difficult to descend than ascend a trail, much harder on the legs, for sure. As we spiritually and emotionally descend the mountain of holidays and epiphanies to enter into the darker regions of Lent and Good Friday in fact, the darker regions of our lives , we can find deep comfort in the fact that God descended not just from a mountain, but from heaven itself to be with us in our darkest places and offer to light our way, lighten our loads and give us the candlepower, if you will, to enlighten our world!
In the process, we might just catch a glimpse of our fellow sojourners transfigured before us to add joy and strength to our days. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Truly, we have mostly lost sight of the concept of boundaries inherent in any social contract which in simplistic terms presumes that my freedom is limited precisely at the point where it intersects with your freedom.
Freedom and obedience can only work together in a sentence that includes Christ! Paul, in this wonderful teaching epistle to the young Corinthian Christians, is attempting to form their spiritual character and conscience amidst a diverse set of cultural norms and expectations, which we can surely identify as similar to our society today. What is juxtaposed in this passage is our freedom in Christ with our responsibility toward others or, better said, the knowledge we have with the love we share.
As any parent knows, you love your children more than those things you give up for their sakes. Never, in my lifetime at least, has it seemed more imperative that Christians act with forbearance and forgiveness to those others in the faith community with whom we have profound disagreements. If we cannot serve the world from a position of unity and hospitality, I fear the voice of Christ will continue to be dangerously muted and unintelligible to those he came to save.
We are not called to give up our convictions but to truly listen to the convictions of others and devise a path where each may walk with integrity, without becoming a stumbling block Romans May our only goal be to do the sometimes hard work to clear the path for others to come near to God. Is there anyone in the world who feels adequately loved and appreciated? Augustine, alas, had it right: As soon as Adam and Eve ate that fateful fruit, they hid from God and abandoned the intimacy they had experienced with the Almighty. We, in fact, often hide the truth of ourselves from ourselves!
The Samaritan woman called for everyone to come and see the Man who told her everything she had ever done. From the first stanza: Luther wrote that whatever we fear or love or trust the most is, de facto , our god. And if that is not God himself, inevitably, it will fail us.
The very thing we fear most intimacy with God is also the thing we most need. God knows us down to our fundamental particles—all the quarks and the quirks of us—from the first moment of our conception and before. And still he loves us with an all-surpassing, all-encompassing love we cannot even pretend to understand or fully apprehend. How freeing it is to know that we cannot hide from God! Psalm is a declaration that we are never alone, never unloved, never unknown and never misunderstood.
The sanctity of life has been under attack since Cain murdered Abel. Before abortion, capital punishment or euthanasia became pitched battles in the culture wars, the Psalmist David was extolling the preciousness of human life… each one of us, unique as a snowflake, beloved of God. What self-esteem issues can stand in the face of such honor? Paul was convinced that absolutely nothing on earth or in heaven could separate us from the love of God Romans 8: I am guessing that not one of us skated through childhood without a few bumps from the sidewalk where our parents were concerned.
If we were most fortunate, those bumps did not leave lasting scars but, instead, became touchpoints on our journey to maturity. Many of us, however, were not so fortunate. How nervous, uncertain or fearful that makes us is a touchstone for us in the ongoing healing of our souls.
If you were blessed with children, you know that they need give you nothing more or other than themselves. That is all our Abba wants from each one of us. Daddy, they are making fun of me. Daddy, do you love me? Daddy, thank you, thank you, thank you! How did you know this was what I always wanted? Daddy, I love you. We kids are now neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free Galatians 3: Christ has come to clean the slates and gather us all back together as one. The fulfillment of the law made possible by Christ, comes down to just this: That is what family does.
This passage reminds me of my mother calling out to us kids as we were getting ready for school: Here, the Apostle Paul is giving us a bullet-point list of exhortations on the activities of the faithful life: In this short book, we are given great insight into precisely how it is that we can fulfill the exhortations delivered above by Paul. Suddenly, we find that we have been transformed, by the renewing of our minds. We will know what is right and want to do it! Here is vintage Br. This focus begins a process whereby the dividing walls that compartmentalize our lives begin to crumble.
Our love for our Lord not only demands it, but makes it possible! We are helping God write the next pages of the salvation saga. May this Advent season be also the advent of a new faith-born activity in our lives! American Christianity has experienced some hard knocks in the past couple of years. There is a vast array of opinions and proof-texts on whether we should focus on the kingdom of God to come or the kingdom of God that we might legislatively create in America during any given election cycle.
Where we fall on that spectrum affects everything from our politics to our family relationships. The number of memoirs being written about believers who have exited one denomination for another, traveled from the conservative end of the faith to a more moderate or liberal group, or even said goodbye to us altogether has grown noticeably. One would think, considering the issues Paul was confronting with this group of early Corinthian Christians, his praise and thanksgiving for them would have been tempered a bit.
In fact, when you begin to list out the issues he addresses in this epistle, it could just as easily be addressed to the contemporary church… divisive loyalties to competing leaders within the community, notorious sexual misconduct, Christians suing Christians, contention over the use of spiritual gifts, unequal treatment of people depending on social status, and heterodox practices in worship.
As Paul tells the Philippians 2: That is our legacy and promise from God. In these contentious times, this may be one of the big mysteries to ponder as we seek to repair the jagged rifts in our church and culture. One of the errors Paul set out to correct in this letter is the complacency that is all too easily acquired when it feels as though everything we need has been provided—and in abundance. Paul is challenging the Corinthians and us as their successors in the faith to live lives faithfully in a culture that makes that exceedingly difficult. God is faithful v.
God has called us out from the culture into a community of the faithful, and it seems we need that very community to reinforce our faithfulness. Dwight Peterson Eastern Univ. Then he went away. Here you have what is yours. You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Faith, patience, trust, hope and dedication are all attributes that either thrive or wither in this meantime that we all share. Jesus continues to beckon from a far distance asking me to risk traveling a very narrow road that will end up with the best view EVER!
But sometimes fearing the Lord actually means being afraid of him! Too many of us carry that lingering image of the father who perhaps abandoned the family or the father you might have wished had abandoned the family, which makes it precious difficult to follow that father God into unknown, risky territory! Our primary image of God often, if not almost always, determines how we see God working in the world and in our lives.
A judgmental God is constantly putting stumbling stones in our path. A loving God is giving us a whole lot of leeway. A vengeful God just makes you want to stay in bed all day! And in this parable, the idea of God apparently leaving the vicinity and bequeathing all the hard work and tough decisions to his employees is anxiety-inducing indeed! What image of God might be determining your response to his call? Faith evaporates and fear reigns when anyone hunkers down and hoards not only their goods but themselves. That is when judgment falls see 1 Thessalonians 5: Doing the will of God carries the invitation to enter into the joy of the Lord.
Setting off on our own path is a bit like hiking off-trail in the Himalayas. It may be a good time for a while, but it will not end well. Our faith must be tested so that we ourselves know who we are. Is the God of your thoughts and feelings, a God worthy of your worship and service?
If not, it might be time to eschew the false messiahs created out of our imaginations and fears and seek the living God who loves us more than life itself and proved it by giving his life for ours! These are our pantheon of gods and goddesses against whom we measure our own successes. These are our idols and these are our role models and these are our saints—even when their flagrant transgressions are proudly on display! I am with Luther and 1 Peter 2: The young girl whose answer to her cancer is to start a foundation; the young man who befriends the elderly in his neighborhood, mowing their lawns and making sure they are okay.
The successful professional who decides that philanthropy is integral to true success. Saints are often among us as surprises and in disguises! In this passage, Jesus is teaching us about the be attitudes of his kingdom to which we must aspire as we continue to live and grow in our relationships with God and each other. This is what saints look like! And these are ways of living and being that make us happy! Could it be that the framers of our country had this kind of happiness in mind when the Declaration of Independence called happiness a right we should pursue?
Life might be rough now, but just wait! It is intriguing that this passage crafts the promises of the beatitudes in the future…you will be comforted, filled, you will obtain mercy, see God. Not every person who is poor would buy that line for a minute, although many are more in tune with their need for God than those of us with more cushions against temporal disaster. But if we are poor in spirit, it means we are not so full of ourselves that we ignore our primary need for God in our lives.
Minus God, we are, each of us, ultimately destitute. We can be enamored of the rich and famous, envious of their lifestyles, their manufactured beauty and lush surroundings. The salt and the light emanating from the lives and actions of all the saints is, to turn the phrase, the leaven in the loaf, the catalyst that shows the world that it is good to follow Christ.
Indeed, it makes us supremely happy! Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? The Pharisees have double-teamed with the Herodians in an attempt to entrap Jesus by asking him another seemingly impossible-to-answer question: But in this instance, they came together, conniving to foil Jesus. He asked them whose image was depicted on said coin and then suggested that they give it to the one to whom it was due. We may contribute our money, our stuff and even some of our time and effort into temporal and political concerns, but in the realm of God we owe absolutely everything that we are and have toward the worship of God.
We worship by serving those he most especially cherishes: In these fraught political times, what we pay out to Caesar can come back to haunt us! As we all learned last year, the one thing they never do is encourage cooperation, consensus or Christian charity! God has never rescinded his commandment that we have no other gods before him. We do not actually own anything; we are stewards entrusted by God to manage and tend both ourselves and our world. If we try to own something, it eventually and inevitably owns us instead.
We have been bought with a price 1 Corinthians 6: As citizens of heaven Philippians 3: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. The Old Testament lesson Isaiah 5: This story works as an allegory, i. During their ongoing tenancy, the tenants read: What kind of tenants are we? Do we know for whom we labor? Are we producing the fruits that God requires?
Or have we settled in and decided that instead of stewards, we are the owners, entitled to the vineyard and thus able to run it however we want? And, furthermore, any servants prophets, pastors, parents, friends who dare to say differently will be dealt with appropriately! The sad and desperate truth is that when we feel entitled to something we can justify going to any lengths to have it. It appears they feared the crowds much more than they feared the Lord. God does not easily give up on the tenants in this story; nor does he give up on us. God expects a harvest of righteousness from each of us.
And we cannot produce fruit if we cut ourselves off from the vine Christ , as though a branch off by itself will do anything other than die! See John 15 for an elegant description of Christ as vine and we as branches. Or are you envious because I am generous? Do your kids or perhaps, you?
Some kids never make peace with how their parents apparently loved their siblings more or differently than they were loved. No one would have been the wiser about the fact that he paid everybody the same amount of money whether they worked 12 hours or one! Instead, the story makes sure that everyone sees exactly what the generous heart of God is all about. It is entirely up to the grace, mercy and generosity of God whose upside-down kingdom where the last are first and the first are last is repeatedly displayed in scripture… where the least of these are chosen to sit at the head of the banquet table.
Do not be envious, God says, because God is generous. One day we will all have eyes to see and hearts to fully know how much he loves us all. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. What happens when people stop paying attention to one another?
When subdivisions build walls instead of front porches? When we erect barriers rather than promote gatherings? Various statistics exist, but it is estimated that only about half of us know our neighbors by name and only about one-third of us know our neighbors at all. I remember the day we had a fire down the street. That event got us out and talking to one another but the connection lasted only as long as the flames!
Right now in Houston we are watching with joy as strangers become neighbors. Here, Jesus puts into place a modus operandi for reconciliation, restoration and accountability. This may be what prompted G. Even if that person never repeats the offending behavior, community and relationships have been ruptured. The point of these instructions on forgiveness is not to win a battle but to regain a soul.
When we lose the ability or desire to hold each other accountable in our ongoing discipleship, community suffers and eventually disappears. Our greatest comfort and treasure on earth is authentic Christian community. It is no accident that Jesus sets the attendance bar low here: There is no way to be patronizing in our approach to another when we are the offenders! Jesus taught us this holy exchange—the only petition in his prayer that comes with a condition—Forgive me, Lord, just as I forgive others.
Are we ready for that challenge? Our neighbors are waiting for us. In our ongoing love affair with the natural beauty of Southern Utah, we explored the canyons and vistas at Capitol Reef National Park this summer. On our last day, I decided to take off alone on a walk through Capitol Gorge. I was stopped in my tracks repeatedly as I gazed upon the grand expanse of rocks and rock formations.
In that profound quiet, those rocks cried out to me Luke I felt the solidity of God, the everlastingness of God and the stability and surety of my place in the family of God. It was quite a nature walk! On those kinds of theological reflections, entire denominations are birthed. But there is a transition moment or a slow realization when you arrive at the awareness that someone else is your rock.
And at that moment, everything changes. Making verbal this kind of proclamation validates what we are thinking and feeling, brings it into the external world and makes all the difference. So it was for Peter and the disciples. This is no longer about Jesus being an earthly king or even an earth-bound savior as we so often want our politicians to be! The keys to the kingdom- keys of authority and purpose- were verbally presented to Peter and, two chapters in Matthew later, to all the apostles Matthew We, who make the same claim that Peter made, are all a royal priesthood 1 Peter 2: We too must allow this realization of who Jesus is to descend from our minds to our hearts and ultimately out into our worlds in salvific ways.
So, following this miracle meal, He sent the disciples to sea, dismissed the crowd, and retreated to a mountain spot to pray. Soon, the disciples were caught up in a bad storm and the fishermen among them would be the first to exclaim that this is not the kind of water they wanted to be near, let alone in! Jesus would have known in the depths of his being that this storm was going to happen. But remember… He sent them into danger, and he went into prayer, no doubt for their safety during the tumult.
So, Jesus let them be buffeted about for most of the night. Finally, they perceived someone apparently walking effortlessly on the water! Peter, never taking his eyes off Jesus, climbed out of the boat and took a few tentative steps. I remember a sermon from many years ago, only because of its clever tag line: Even as it appears that Peter was asking God to prove himself, God was giving Peter the same chance.
As long as we live our lives focused on Christ, we will be amazed at the stormy seas we too will tread. In both stories featuring Jesus, the disciples, wobbly boats and bad storms, it is notable that Jesus ended up in the boat with them. His very incarnation is his way of getting into our boats and helping us row our way to shore! Jesus was actually inviting Peter and each of us out into the swirling uncertainties and knock-you-over tidal waves of life so that, whether we begin to sink or are able to swim, God will keep us afloat and, in that process, we will finally know who Jesus is with and for us.
When we reach our own limitations, that is when God bids us walk with Him. Mustard seeds…miniscule little seeds from which bushes appearing as trees can sometimes reach ten feet or so I have read. Most of us know about small beginnings, but at the same time, we have been schooled in the predictable results. Imagine when Jesus first spoke these words concerning the mustard seed. Scholars say those hearing it were ones who had already committed themselves to following Jesus. They had no reference points from which to measure kingdom growth. Many times, as I observe what goes on in our culture, I cannot believe Christianity has made the impact it set out to make.
The time of uncertainty between the planting of the seed and the appearance of the tree is the in-between time of our earthly existence. The parables of the Pearl of Great Price and The Hidden Treasure provide two more ways to approach this earthly ambiguity.
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However, the one who found the pearl of great price was, in fact, a diligent seeker. When this pearl was found, its ultimate value was recognized and all good stewardship was put in place for its protection and care. With both the one who fortuitously falls into his inheritance and the one who tries everything until he finally finds it, the Spirit seems to work in a hidden way as the kingdom grows. Ours is not to yearn for the ten-foot tree so much as it is to plant, nourish and tend the seed from which it will grow.
A sower went out to sow. One of several surprises I had when I moved to the desert Southwest was the color of the soil. Having grown up with the rich, black soil of Iowa, I was unprepared for our dusty, beige caliche-ridden soil that always seems to triumph over any non-weed plant that attempts an appearance! Jesus not only delivered this parable, but in an unusual move, explained it as well, thus emphasizing the importance that his hearers prepare the soil of their hearts for his message.
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Soil is easier to analyze than the human heart. Not even a DNA test will unearth all the soils we embody. The sadness in this story is how much soil remains unprepared, untilled and neglected, thus sloughing off the seeds of new life. We live such frantically busy lives that the seeds snatched up by the birds of our neglect are fairly easy to imagine.
No one can successfully treat Scripture as though it were a divine news crawl at the bottom of a screen or a particularly lilting sound-byte from above. Paul assures his readers in 1 Corinthians 2: If the seeds hardly reach the ground before we are off to the next thing, there can be no grounding in God. There are those who immediately hear comfort and joy in the message of Christ and happily embrace the good news…until the good news becomes the serious news, the difficult news or the impossible news or, these days, perhaps the alternative news!
The stirring of a powerful preacher will fade if the hearer is only beguiled by words instead of convicted by truth. The image of soil actually choking the word reminds me again of caliche. Finally, Jesus described the good soil where the seeds are nurtured so that a harvest of faith and righteousness results. And the harvests vary in size, which is great comfort to those of us whose fields are small. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it will only be a seed. When we turn the soil of our hearts, what emerges?
Do we find the hard caliche of sin, the asphalt of worldly ambitions, empty seed pods dried to dust from utter neglect? Or do we find tender growth nourished in love and faith? Time for a soils test? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. The end of those things is death. The end is eternal life.
In , the Emancipation Proclamation provided another level of freedom in our land. These days, we find ourselves trying to mend a fraying social order, even as the right and the left of both church and state! Paul understood this need for law because he understood fallen human nature. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. With the Holy Spirit residing within us, we have all we need to shed our old life of sin and put on a new life of obedience to God.
Our salvation from sin and death does not mean that we can freely live our lives however we want. Paul warns more than once. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Our salvation means our allegiance, loyalty, commitment, priorities and love have been transferred from death to life! For us, that authority is Christ who is God.
But there remain many other seductive voices, many words and many calls for obedience. Some of these lead us closer to God; other siren songs call us to obey voices that can mask or distort what God says to us. And that is where we find true freedom. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son. Wisdom says that what we become while we wait for something may be just as important as the thing we await.
Some churches who join us in following the Common Lectionary will be reading this Genesis passage on Sunday. There is some truth to that as things that were funny in our youth might now call forth something closer to wistfulness than laughter. On the other hand, with age comes an added lens to see the absurdity and the humor in so much of what those lacking the perspective of longevity still take so very seriously.
So, hearing this visiting stranger reiterate the promise of a son within the year, Sarah is transported out of her usual cycle of grief and right into the world of bittersweet humor! Now that it is apparently too late, grace arrives? Have any of us ever asked that question, either through laughter or through tears? The way we respond displays whether we really believe God will act in our lives.
She is laughing the laugh of despair that will not see anything but the ultimate incongruity of her life. Her long waiting has sapped her of her humor. Take surprise away from your sense of the incongruous, and all that remains is a bitter chuckle. He invites us to do the same. The harsh laughter of bitterness became the lilting laughter of grace and faith and surprise. The feast of Pentecost is the day we celebrate the manifestation of the Church in the world through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all believers.
The Holy Spirit is the one who creates one body out of all of us. Without the empowerment and guidance of the Holy Spirit and our willingness to be empowered and guided, the work God intends us to perform has no chance. Verse 7 provides a key to understanding the essence of the Church.
Christians participate first in a baptism of water, but at Pentecost we remember that we will grow up in the faith through various baptisms of fire! Both our triumphs and our sorrows can only be mediated and moderated by the Spirit of God operating in our lives. Thus the world has seen too many ruined churches and crushed followers as the bureaucracy of one church group or another appropriated and sought to control the work of the Spirit.
Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good. As Jesus began his ministry, his Pentecostal words echoed the prophet Isaiah. And, oh, what burdens of meaning that one word has to bear! We can love a bean burrito and, in the same breath, we can proclaim our love for our children.
And so it is that Jesus tells us exactly how he will know of our love. And just as important for our fragile earthly selves, we can gauge our love for God by this same index. What have we done for God lately? If our love has grown cold or complacent, we should be able to read by our actions, decisions and intentions just what our spiritual temperature is.
Do we need to fan the Pentecostal flames? Jesus says here that, as we do that, he will provide the Holy Spirit to abide with us forever. With intent toward finding and loving God, we begin to act in Godly ways. God, in turn, blesses and strengthens us with the Holy Spirit who empowers us toward more Godly acts. They will know we are Christians by our love and we will know we are Christians because God will make himself known to us as we love others. Jesus summed up all the commandments in Mark Perhaps you will find it helpful as well as we each continue to participate in all that Love is and does.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Several months ago, I decided to have my DNA tested. I was fairly certain of the results although there were a few family tales that I wanted either validated or put to rest.
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It was fascinating to read about the many places on the globe that have gone into the creation of me! There is something about this passage from Acts that reminds me of genealogy because here we have a snapshot of the earliest community of Christians gathered around the leadership of the apostles.
It was a heady time indeed! This is the church of our dreams, right? What this snapshot leaves out is also part of the church. Rather than being the counter-cultural phenomenon it was at its beginning, today we find much of that sense of community has been lost as we live individually in a buffet-style world. We pick and choose what aspects of community appeal to us. Sadly, we also have our favorite approaches to the words of Jesus, letting us live more comfortably than God may actually require.
And that has become our great loss because what this passage of Acts is describing is the work of the Spirit among believers. To the degree that we avoid or deflect the urgings of the Spirit of God, to that degree we miss out on the activity and the joy of living in the Spirit of God, the will of God, and the community of God.
Living in a bubble of like-mindedness stifles growth and suffocates joy. In this short passage we are given a glimpse of what an encounter with the risen Christ can do to ordinary expectations of human community. As John reminds us And God promises us that he will never give up on his bride, his church Philippians 1: How will embracing this Reality change us today? By the same token, we also live in a very credulous age where we are willing to believe anything that tantalizes or reinforces our favorite opinions. By that measure, Thomas is a realist who is longing as we all are longing for something we can see and feel, and hear and touch—something or someone who will make us new!
Many of us had Mother Teresa of Calcutta on our spiritual radar screens for decades. She served even non-Catholics and non-Christians as an exemplar of a holy life and one which must have been filled with great certainty…or so we thought. How else could she have done the rugged work with the poor and dying that she did for so many years? And yet, not very long after she died, we began to learn that Mother Teresa was a consummate doubter!
She is known as a Christian saint who doubted, but persevered, whose dark night of the soul was not a complete blackout but a backdrop to the faith that she maintained and lived out. She is a contemporary example of how a Christian can doubt in the midst of a commitment to living a faithful life. Doubt is actually a boon companion to faith.
Mindless faith is what cult leaders promote and what Nazism required. Being unable or unwilling to doubt, question, evaluate and hesitate makes everyone a possible candidate for any seductive group or charlatan that crosses our paths! Without doubt in our repertoire, we all become fundamentalists, trapped in a certainty no longer grounded in the whole truth, losing track of God whose ways are not our ways and, most assuredly, surpass our understanding.
In that merciful darkness, what we thought we knew of God is gone and in that abject absence, we come before God, finally empty of our beliefs and assumptions and ready for the real God to speak to our real selves. And to believe is to see and experience reality in a brand new way. And, being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
Jesus spent a lot of effort trying to disabuse his followers about the sort of king and ruler he was going to become. As he rode into Jerusalem on that donkey, it is hard not to see this as an ironic send-up of the triumphant arrival of royalty. The reading this week from Philippians offers us a description of what Jesus did, which is at the core of what Jesus wants each of us to do. And it is all about humility; fundamental self-forgetfulness. He could have entered the world stage as a great and glorious king which he plans yet to do, in fact.
But we would have missed the main point of this arrival. But in order to do it the way God wanted it done, Jesus humbled himself in effect, put completely out of mind for a while who he was , took the form of a servant and became perfectly obedient even unto death in order to undo death! This is our model even today.
Scripture reinforces this for us more than once see, for instance, Matthew Jesus arrived to restore the friendship with God we so foolishly threw away in our attempt to be God rather than to be with God. Jesus is asking us to empty ourselves of our futile attempts at self-fulfillment so that he can fill us to overflowing with his grace and truth.
He cannot fill us up with him if we are full of ourselves. Jesus is asking us to use his power to empower others. If we are to imitate Jesus, we know our career path—it is strewn with palm fronds—and we need to hold each other close as we follow him all the way to Easter. As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
Then I washed, and now I see. It was your eyes he opened. How then does he now see? Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself. We know that this man is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. How did he open your eyes?
Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples? You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. Tell me, so that I may believe in him. A game the whole family can play! To listen to the voices of our culture today, nobody is really responsible for their own situations.
We enjoy our free will, but in our fallen-ness, we are ever ready to question how others use theirs! Truth be told, we are all outliers and rebels from the perfection God desires and we will be to a greater or lesser extent until we see God face to face. It is all about God who loves us completely and does not inflict pain as punishment! Can we honestly say we have never participated in that same social dimness of vision?
Since we faithful ones are now light bearers see Ephesians 5: As Lent draws us ever closer to a celebration of the resurrection, I would like to ponder, as pastor Suzanne Guthrie does, how to pay better attention. And looking forward to the stories after Easter, perhaps, like his friends after the resurrection, I might learn to recognize him in more obscure forms.
No one can see Jesus through our eyes, but they just might be drawn to him by seeing how we live our lives. Jesus told us in Matthew 5: So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dead of night, that in-between time when we often have our sleepless struggles with ourselves and with God. Nicodemus was a practical, logical man, a man on his way up and with authority to make things happen. In the church of my youth, his questions would have been answered in formulaic terms…trying to fit cosmic questions into a one-size-fits-all response.
Nicodemus asked questions that he and we hoped would be answered with clear achievable steps. Nicodemus thought he was going to have a theological discussion and instead was faced with incomprehensibles! Jesus responded with heavenly words only received as much by the spirit as by the mind and lived out by grace and faith sometimes with uncertain steps on unfamiliar terrain.
As with Nicodemus, God still asks us to set aside what we think we know and listen again to what he wants to tell us. Luther was right, of course, that John 3: Dysfunctional families spend an enormous amount of time manipulating each other, setting up quid pro quos.
God has already saved us. Instead of setting boundaries based on our fallen perceptions, we need to remember John 3: In the face of this glorious love how can we not pay forward this great salvation? Being born from above is to be made part of a family for whom dysfunction is not the defining adjective! Being born from above means getting to do life differently, based on unbounded love rather than puny anxieties. Who would not leap at a second chance to be not just a better person, but a brand new one? Seek and you will find out! It must have been very hard to be impetuous, shoot-from-the-hip Peter.
It cannot have been easy for any of them to be disciples of Jesus even though we sometimes envy them. After all, they were walking and talking face-to-face with the Jesus we can only summon in our imaginations and our spirits. Dear Peter often provides a cautionary tale about our human foibles! As with any spiritual experience that pushes credulity, we are liable to do just what Peter did. We can use even the holiest string of words to garble and blunt the ineffable. Those are the places where we are most able to see God for who God is and to be transfigured ourselves in the process!
With Moses representing the law and Elijah the prophets, Jesus stands with them as the ultimate fulfillment of their missions. And placed where it is in our readings, it is a clear bridge between the light of Epiphany and the dark road of Lent we are about to travel with our Lord. After their time of being still and listening, Jesus finished the message to his disciples, then and now: Even though he knew he was descending only to arrive at a hill named Golgotha to be lifted even higher, he enjoined his friends and followers to walk with him… down to the valley where his work - and ours - is waiting.
The moments of transfiguration God graces us with are lights for the journey through our valleys. And we will shine like the children of light that we are, trailing clouds of glory as we go. If the Israelites thought the Ten Commandments were difficult to obey, what about the uber-obedience of the heart that Jesus requires? It is not all that difficult to appear righteous, upstanding and obedient, as long as no one can listen to our thoughts or suss out our true intentions, right? From a Christian perspective, we know that no amount of good legislation will accomplish what only the redemptive power of God can work in the human heart.
Jesus came not to abolish the law Matthew 5: Its fulfillment is abundant life for all, even for those who may not be seeking God see Matthew 5: No one is capable of perfect adherence to the law, but God is concerned with the intention of the heart, even when we sometimes miss the bar. That sort of duplicity did not end with the last living scribe or Pharisee!
It continues in some way or another in each of us. In , when the Amish folks in Pennsylvania extended almost immediate forgiveness to the man who shot ten of their children killing half of them , the entire country was taken aback, as much by the forgiveness as by the atrocious act that called it forth. How different from the usual cries for vengeance. But they are the first to tell you that they work on this forgiveness each and every day. They extend it by faith and live courageously into the promise of restoration.
And that is how our hearts are converted. Micah, Old Testament prophet that he was, still nailed the essence of the gospel: We have allowed it to be taken over by political parties and pundits who have become ersatz theologians, instructing the rest of us on how to define justice in the world. We may have to actually become those who mourn, who are powerless, who hunger and thirst and are poor in order to find out exactly what the blessing is that God is offering in Matthew 5: It is a bit more obvious to perceive the blessings derived from mercy, purity and peace because we expect to be rewarded with righteousness when we seek and live it.
But very few of us actively seek the experiences associated with grief, poverty, persecution or injustice. The answer contained within the question is the kingdom of heaven. This is the gospel that turns everything we expect upside down so that we can actually feel deeply blessed even as we mourn, sense our kinship with Love itself as we seek peace with ourselves and everyone else. He knew we would be as well if we were faithful. These blessings or declarations of our good fortune were given to us before we had a chance to earn or achieve these states of being.
We are not being exhorted to do anything to earn a blessing, but to be something that only God by his grace can empower us to be—and therein lies the blessing. Jesus proclaims blessing on everyone, whether we are mourning right now or not…poor or rich, meek or full of ourselves—however we find ourselves in any given moment. In fact, God probably wants to bless us more than we want that blessing!
But once we experience God, we will have a great desire to share God with someone else. Williams Sloan Coffin once invoked this blessing; may we take it as our own:. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. Grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.
Throughout my career, I have been impressed with how important titles are. They determine salary, responsibilities…even whether you get a window cube or an office! And we all know that, from the outside at least, titles and perks can sometimes seem inconsistent or undeserved. Pretty intimate question, actually, and not the first thing we ordinarily ask a new acquaintance.
I think this spirit-inspired question was weighted with a lot more than an inquiry about his local address. There are few more basic requirements to sustain life than a place to stay… to be. So, when these folks asked him where he was staying, I think they were asking for an address for themselves, hoping they would find a true home there. This is the kind of God we truly want, right? He did not exact correct doctrinal adherence before they could see where he lived; there was no hint that perhaps they should put on better clothes before their visit.
All he offered was and still is an open invitation to come and see. Knowing Jesus, he was hoping that, after they saw, they would stay. We have created all sorts of ersatz abodes…titles, achievements, serial relationships…all in an effort to find our true home. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. And yet, this is the very time God had in mind to bring his salvation into the world. This season can still be the most difficult season of the year. Many remember those dear to them who have passed away; others realize that they are completely alone during this oh-so-family-oriented holiday time.
It is no wonder the suicide rate peaks even as most of the rest of us are wrapping packages and receiving guests. But this is precisely where Jesus belongs; the holiday season is a season of grief as well as joy, both in his day and in ours. We still have our slaughter of the innocents, whether it happens in Newtown, Connecticut, or Darfur in the Sudan. And in a very short time after we merrily receive the infant Jesus, we will see him nailed to a cross—the very slaughter a power-mad Herod so desired.
Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. The journey home was in sight! For us too, every principality and power that seeks our life has also been rendered just as powerless by the power of Christ. The path we are on with God—the path that is at times so bewildering—is the only way to get to our true home, the one from which our fallen nature has exiled us! And he guides us every step of the way.
He will never leave us nor forsake us Hebrews We may face our dreaded version of Herod, but we can join the writer of 1 Chronicles When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. The fate of us all turned on—of all things—a dream! An angel appeared to Mary while she was awake, and Joseph had to rely on an angelic dream visit to help him decide the fate of Mary, the child and the world itself! The secular world looks upon all of this as a myth and, by myth, they mean fiction.
It was precisely this view of myth that brought C. Lewis to faith in Christ! Tolkien instructed his friend Lewis that the use of myth was perhaps the best, if not the only, way to begin to communicate otherwise inexpressible truth. Angelic visitations, whether they occur during sleep or during the day, are foundation-shifting occurrences that not all of us have had the honor of experiencing.
And that certainly includes wild, improbable happenings like those we encounter throughout scripture! Our faith is not so easily divided into the every-day rationalist, materialist slog from Monday till Saturday and then sixty minutes of other-worldly super-reality on Sunday morning. By one count, there are twenty-one different stories in scripture where a dream is the main vehicle in a story with major consequences!
Who needs dreams or angelic messages about children if you have the entire internet universe to guide you? Imagine going to bed one night convinced of a course of action, only to awaken the next morning after a very troubling-but-convincing dream that radically changed your mind. Joseph chose to adopt a stance of faith and patience as he waited, first for nine months for Jesus to be born and, then, for years after as Jesus grew up and began to live into his mission. Two parents—each bearing a dream—came together to birth and nurture their dreams and ultimately ours as well!
Because Joseph believed his dreams, our whole world is being made new. Can you believe them? Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? It is amazing what a mere punctuation mark can do to a sentence. We are accustomed to hearing Matthew 3: As long as we remain on this parched and fallen landscape called earth, we will be wandering and navigating in and out of wildernesses, geographical, relational and spiritual. And everyone to whom we share the love of Christ will be receiving our words from a wilderness of their own.
John was the lone billboard in this ancient wilderness, announcing the arrival of the one who would bring at once great judgment and great joy. To follow him and experience that joy, there must be heartfelt, soul-deep repentance and a metanoia , a turning around on our path to head in an entirely new and divinely-appointed direction. But we need help to see our new path. It is a perilous thing to become a pew-warmer in the house of God!
Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. Jesus the Christ comes with open arms and a winnowing fork. Justice tempered with mercy. We are the ones who decide whether we fall into his arms or onto that fork! As we traverse and seek to leave our wildernesses, be encouraged by the fact that Christ walks beside us and, if we reach for his hand and listen to his voice, he will lead us on a safe path out. Someday, every wilderness will be a place of absolute peace as the vision in Isaiah In our Advent time filled with shopping, eating, drinking and partying, try to find an empty, wild, perhaps untended place in our hearts where hope for our deliverance can flourish, even as a flower in the desert…or a shoot from the stump of Jesse.
The choir director leads us in a chorus of affirmation and hope by reminding us of the promised mercies and raising our voices to a God who is still on the throne. Psalm We live in a generation of me, now, and self indulgence. If it costs me anything, requires me to focus on someone other than myself, or if I have to wait for it I am not willing to deny myself.
There is very little thought of self denial in our culture. As with most things in our culture if it is popular in culture sooner or later it makes its way into the church. Generally it is brought in by the leadership of a church in order to do a better job of attracting people to Jesus.
These efforts negate the power of the Spirit by giving the desire of the culture preeminence over a desire of the Church to please God through obedience to His Word. A church is an organization of people pulling the same load in the same direction under the yoke of Jesus.
Today I would like to look at four counter cultural worship tactics that may lead to a more full experience of all that God designed a community of faith to be. Apologies for the audio issues this week. The problem has been rectified for next weeks service. Psalm The second Song of Ascent is one of the best known and best loved songs from the Psalms. In the first instance the Psalmist looks around in anguish but here he looks up in hope.
The preceding Psalm is one of complaint and frustration, the present Psalm is one of comfort and consolation. Following that conclusion the Psalmist begins a worshipful litany of the incredible attributes of God, the Keeper of the Soul. Often our struggles in life come from the fact that we choose to dwell in the atmosphere of the world rather than to sojourn there. Our pilgrimage as followers of Jesus Christ has a specific beginning point: He spoke of training people in discipleship and traveling together on a pilgrimage as no easy task. These songs provide a way for us to remember who we are in Christ and where we are going on this pilgrimage called life.
The assumption is that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. We want instant discipleship! We, as Christians, cannot mature under such circumstances. The development of Christ-likeness in our lives demands that we learn to run strong and run long! A life that is filled with prayer to the point that his concerns become his concerns.
The values of his kingdom become the values of your life, family, work, and interaction with your neighbors. This is what Jesus was showing us in the incarnation. When the second member of the Trinity took on flesh He maintained the values and concerns of His Father while living in and among the world. The prayer life of Jesus was two things as near as can be discerned from scripture.
It is a lifeline of connection and flow of power and provision from the Father and it was a plumb bob keeping Him in line with the desires of His Father. For us it is designed to be the same thing. This is why Jesus taught us to pray this way. He was hoping not that it would become a ritual for us rather that it would transfer a set of values to us. We have no control over illness, or accidents, and family crises so we wring our hands. Perhaps no other area of our life contains as many unknowns and unseens as the area of spiritual warfare.
As such it has the potential to create massive amounts of fear and worry in our lives. Perhaps in part due to the fact that we as Christians know that there is nothing in this world with greater significance and cost that becoming a casualty of spiritual warfare. In order for us to experience fulfilled and productive lives as followers of Jesus we must maintain some postures in our life. We exist to declare the truth about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Where ever you set your feet is a mission field. Missionary is not an identity reserved for those who leave their homeland. We are all separated from our true home and family.
Missionary is a title given to all people who identify themselves with Jesus. To identify ourselves with him means that we walk as he walked 1 John 2: As such we must make our lives about what matters to Him, declaring to the world his characteristics by loving like He did. Today we will discuss five of those declarations related to the petition of forgiveness Jesus taught us to make.
Because many of our most basic provisions are so automatic it is easy for us to forget that our provision comes not from the callouses on our hands but from the breath in our lungs which God has entrusted to us. We may have earned the money we use to pay our grocery bills, mortgages, utilities, and car payments but we must always go back up the river to see where we find our source of energy and health and breath.
If we get this basic idea down it transforms the rest of our lives. Jesus teaches us to pray for the most basic of necessities because he knows it will lead to many transformations in our life. Three of which we will touch on today. He has just finished warning against offering long prayers with fancy words so that other people know just how smart and spiritual we are. He is instructing his disciples to pray in a simple way. We tend to pray about what matters to us and Jesus is instructing the disciples in what should matter to us. The Glory and Holiness of God were in the first petition.
The Kingdom of God and the Will of God are in this petition. We are called to place a high priority on these things. Knowing that they we will never see that fully realized until we are with Jesus in The Kingdom. To answer that rhetorical question let me ask you another question. Do you feel like you have nailed this thing called prayer? Is there room for improvement in how you pray? Do you wish you prayed more? Do you wish you were better at prayer?
I think many of us wish there we were more prayerful. Jesus has given us a model. He really meant that this should be our model of prayer. There are many angles from which to view this prayer but for our purposes in this series we will look at each of the individual petitions. In our first look we will see three traits of God our Heavenly Father. It is worth noting once again the Paul does not ask for material blessings or for something that we do not have.
Our first prayer Ephesians 1: The Spirit-provided inner power has its source in the indwelling of Jesus Christ in the human heart v. The progressive inward control of the believer by Christ leads to outward expressions of that inward work. Our daily attitudes, decisions and deeds will all serve to bring honor and glory to God in Christ. With emphasis on our redemption and relationship in Jesus Christ, Paul has presented to the church the incredible spiritual blessings available to every believer. She was wealthy beyond measure but chose to live like a pauper!
The Passover had not been kept in full accordance with the Mosaic Law since the early days of kings David and Solomon. His adherence to the Word of God is notable v. This revival during the days of King Josiah B. God refers to himself as a father. If we grew up in church or were influenced by our culture read: For others of us there is an added layer of complexity as our experience of a father was either negative or AWOL and sometimes we can transfer those thoughts onto God.
God paints himself in scripture as a loving father who loves to give good gifts to his children. One of the primary places we see this idea brought to light is in John 14 where Jesus expands on these Grace Turths. We will look at Six of them today. Josiah, like Hezekiah, is the son of an extraordinarily wicked father and yet he had risen above the influence of his environment. As the spiritual successor and only king over Israel, Hezekiah is confronted with disunity, idolatry, cultic ritual, and unfaithful people who had forsaken the Lord v. Hezekiah immediately steps out to bring unity and restoration to the Temple worship, first, and then calls the nation to a unified worship and a renewed zeal for the Lord.
Different transitions bring different levels of clarity. Graduation from high school will bring the clarity of knowing that we are just a little bit more on our own than we were before. Subsequent transitions bring higher levels of clarity. Getting married clarifies a little bit more our responsibilities and our need to provide for and protect someone other than ourselves.
Having children adds to that each child bringing a new personality and dimension to the family. Choosing a career, living paycheck to paycheck, the death of a parent, and watching your own children go through their own stages of life all can cause moments of clarity. There is however a higher and more productive moment of clarity that we all must come to. If they are not they can begin to offer more and more erroneous measurements.
If you start out with an incorrect measurement everything you do after that will be incorrect. As we live and move and have our being in the world if we are not recalibrating how we do relationships and how we do family and finances and sex and life our lives will become more and more erroneous representations of Jesus. How do we experience this recalibration? With the word of God.
We must become people shaped by The Word into the image of Jesus in our communities, homes, work and church. The stakes could not be higher. Whole industries are based on self-improvement and self-empowerment. For us in the church it is hard for us not to be the frog in the water unaware that we are being cooked and changed by the culture we are living in. This morning I want to equip us to ask a couple of questions about the practices we engage in as a gathered church.
It appears that there were skeptics in the Corinthian church v. In response, Paul seeks to demonstrate the validity of the bodily resurrection vv. His preaching is crystalized in a creed that is based in scripture and eyewitness accounts. Our focus today is on the Implications. The implications of unbelief are enumerated and lead us to realize that without the resurrection of Jesus Christ we would be miserably lost and living without hope.
Sometimes we could benefit with being alone with the ugliness of our thoughts. If that sounds curious to you. Think of it this way. Getting familiar with your own depravity makes the Cross of Jesus Christ that much more glorious and sweet. There is definite cause for me to be humiliated because of my thoughts. These are thoughts that must be battled and captured and beaten into obedience to Christ to paraphrase Peter letter to the Diaspora.
Jesus had no cause to be humiliated and yet accepted humiliation in order to complete the mission his father imparted to him. As we consider this event we find several things that are not as they appear. It is important to understand that we live by faith and not by sight. Remember that things in your life are not always as they appear. To think of a cross as glorious would have been totally foreign to those of previous centuries. A crucifixion would have been identified as bloody and with a loss of control of bodily functions and painful and horrific.
Generally those being crucified would have had a list of their crimes nailed to their cross. Jesus was falsely accused, illegally tried, brutally beaten and hung on the bloody cross. Our word excruciating was invented to describe the pain associated with crucifixion. So for the Christians to come to the conclusion that the cross was a glorious victory as opposed to abject defeat would have been ludicrous to anyone on the outside looking in on the theology and teaching of the early church.
Jesus was not crucified in defeat. Rather he was crucified in victory. Let us look at some Crucifixion Victories from Colossians 2: This was a detailed and specific plan. This plan was prefigured in many passages of the Old Testament. But in all these examples there are some glaring inadequacies. Those inadequacies are a topic for another sermon. Today I would like to examine this ancient plan specifically as it relates to the shadows in the Old Testament of the New Testament reality.
We, as believers, cannot eliminate the Cross from any of our thinking or living. Paul indignantly repudiated their contentions — he said that there is no other gospel apart from the Cross of Jesus Christ. As we consider the Gospel — the accomplishments of the Cross — let us ask ourselves these questions… What effect has the Gospel had in my life? Have I been rescued from this world which will ultimately pass away?
Do I live according to the will of God and do I live to fulfill His eternal purpose? Consider with me these striking affirmations of the Cross of Jesus Christ and their influence in your personal life. They finished the second and third floors of a local church. These areas are to be used among other things for Children's Ministry. We are lacking a powerful witness in the church today because we are not all that different.
We have not experienced a transformation through the renewing of our mind. There are over imperatives in the New Testament. Our live should not be confused with the lives of our neighbors who do not love, worship and follow Jesus. If we will avoid neglecting these commands we can assure the opportunity to have a powerful witness and more importantly we can be assured that we are not grieving The Spirit.
These are questions I hope to answer in our time together today. Over the past six weeks we have been examining the who and what of the Holy Spirit. Who is the Spirit? What role did He play in the life of the Jesus? What role has He played in the life and the expansion of the church? What were His differing roles in the unfolding narrative arc of the scriptures? These are some questions we have sought to answer over the last six weeks. Now I would like to look at what a life that has been impacted by the Holy Spirit looks like.
The work of the Holy Spirit is of great importance to the believer for it is particularly through this work that God is personally involved and active in the life of the believer. The work of the Holy Spirit is a broad matter covering a variety of areas and activities that have accomplished the will of God both generally and specifically.
We will cover the broad spectrum of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testament and we will explore His work in the life of Jesus Christ and in the life of the believer. One is that the Holy Spirit is the point at which the Trinity becomes personal to the believer. We generally think of the Father as transcendent and far off in heaven; similarly, the Son seems far removed in history and thus relatively unknowable.
The Holy Spirit is active within the lives of the believer; He is resident within us. The Holy Spirit has occupied the center stage from the time of Pentecost on, that is, the time covered by the Book of Acts and the Epistles, and the ensuing period of church history. If we are to be in touch with God today, then, we must become acquainted with the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. The third reason for this doctrinal study of the Holy Spirit is that we primarily experience God through the Spirit.
It is vital for us to know and experience the Holy Spirit if we are to live a productive and meaningful Christian life. We have confused the safety of the community that makes up the church with the safety of the message the church is to herald. As Mark Batterson said "The Church should be a safe place with dangerous message. A place for pretenders. Rather than raw and real.
A place for sinners. A museum for saints or hospital for sinners? In my opinion this is in large part due to our ignoring of the Holy Spirit. If we look at the life of Jesus and the Acts of the Apostles we don't see a bored church waiting for Jesus to return. Generally we see them moving forward and running for their lives. The ancient Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit that might explain this dichotomy. This name indicates that the Christian Life will be a participatory wild ride that will leave you breathless.
The more I examine the scriptures the more I believe that Jesus' power in His life and ministry has as much to do with his dependence as it does his deity. That is to say that Jesus' power in His life and ministry came from his dependence on the power, direction, wisdom and discernment of the Holy Spirit as much as it did from his position as the second member of the Trinity.
We cannot undersell the importance of his position as God in the Flesh. However it is possible and I would say common to understate the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of Jesus. If the presence of the Holy Spirit was that important of part of Jesus' ministry how much more important is that presence for us to complete the mission for which we have been commissioned. It is only when we have climbed the foothills that we realize how really high the mountain peaks are. Striving to live the godly life can be discouraging and we often lose heart.
We can do this best by forgetting past failures, past sins, and past successes and pressing toward the goal. The goal will be an eternity in the presence of Jesus, Himself, and our aim is to be transformed into His very image. In our first three messages, we have explored the purpose of God in the manifestation of Jesus Christ in His First Advent. The Cross of Jesus Christ is a finished work and a complete victory over sin and death, but there are still prisoners of war to be rescued and released. Those that still wander in darkness and the shadow of death need the light and life that is offered to us by God through the saving work of Jesus Christ, His Son.
In the last message we identified the revelation of the Father and the various manifestations of His attributes and gifts to us. One major purpose in the manifestation of Jesus in the Advent was to both manifest and accomplish the will of the Father.
Let us celebrate, rejoice together, in the salvation that is ours through the manifestation of His Son, Jesus, in our hearts. I John ; I Timothy 3: Over 24 times, the Apostle Paul describes a manifestation or revealing that came about through the birth of Christ. The mission, message, and ministry of Jesus Christ that destroyed the works of the devil also demonstrated the character and nature of God. All that we know and love about God we, first, saw in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ.
Ironically, a great persecution serves as the impetus to drive the followers of Jesus Christ into Judea and Samaria v. Anyone can be an idol. Idolatry is prevalent in our culture. In fact we even have a very popular TV show centered around helping us find our next idol. Here are a few things we tend to idolize; exercise, entertainment, control, sports, Facebook, food and family. How do you know what an idol is? Anything that takes the place of God in your life?
Anything you give an inordinate amount of time or money to. How do you spot an Idol? Generally you can follow the money. Jesus said where your treasure is there your heart will be also. So typically we find idols in our lives by tracing our spending habits. It is not just money though. If we invest too much time even time spent dwelling on something mentally can show that thing to be an idol. The issue is worship and worship is a sacrifice. What do you find yourself sacrificing for?
We will see Stephen through the power of the Holy Spirit prick the hearts of these leaders. But since the church is not a building it is a people group. It is impossible for the church not to have problems. Today in our text this fledgling church faces a problem. The worst kind of problem. A problem from within.
Problems for the church from the outside tend to bind the church together. Problems from the inside by their very nature cause division in the church. In this instance the division was from within. Unity is a major theme of the Gospel. It is important for the church to be united for a multitude of reasons.
Disunity stems from conflict. Conflict can arise for doctrinal reasons, practical reasons or in the case of our text today we see an issue rising from an administrative oversight. In this case there needs to be a decision made by leadership. We see the leadership of this early church make a decision to delegate responsibilities to see things done more efficiently.
A healthy church is a church where reverent fear and purity of life exist. You cannot serve God and mammon. Really this comes down to an issue of faith. In our text today we have examples of this dichotomy. A man who was trusting his Provider and generous toward seeing the mission of Jesus moved forward. A couple who wanted the credit that went with generosity. They wanted the glory for themselves. In our text today we will see three requirements of a Generous Life on Mission. Where do you pray? With whom do you pray? Why do you pray? We come to God to make a request of him because we cannot accomplish x,y or z on our own.
But it is more than that. More often than for any other reason we see people praying in the book of Acts as an act of worship. By dependence I mean that we are admitting that we are unable to accomplish something. So we are actually worshipping through our dependence. Whether or not God undertakes on our behalf is completely up to His Sovereign decision.
All we can do is align our hearts with His will Psalm The early church prayed. We have one of those prayers recorded in our text today. Peter, we remember, had made himself scarce just a few weeks before this incident when friendship with Jesus constituted a danger to his life and health. Peter and John were not trained for such an erudite theological debate like that in which they were so obviously engaged.
What then will be the outcome and effect upon us, if we live in close fellowship with Jesus? Our lives will reflect His beauty and purity and the ancient prayer will be answered: Ignore, Deny or Worship. They usually fall into this ditch because they do not want to be made to feel uncomfortable.
Or maybe even more damnable as a leader they do not want to make anyone uncomfortable. There can be a number of reasons people deny Miracles. Some people misunderstand scripture to say that there was no further purpose for signs and revelation after the scripture was completed. Last time I checked people are still sick, hurting and in need of a touch from Jesus. In the ditch on the opposite side of the road are those who worship miracles. Both can be avoided by making their culmination Jesus, who is the rightful end of all theology.
It is illustrated as a field in 1 Corinthians 3: In 1 Corinthians We also see the church illustrated in multiple places as a marriage of Christ to His Bride including Revelation All of these illustrations have one thing in common they are organic systems that grow and multiply. These illustrations employed by the Author of Scripture seem to indicate that the same can be said of healthy Christians and Churches.
In our text today we see six commonalities between healthy Christians and Churches. This audio come in at the 2: The first two minutes mostly consisted of the reading of Hebrews This required the people of this fledgling and fragile organization to return to the city of Jerusalem and… WAIT! It is filled with ordinary men and women who obayed, endured and trusted. Today we will look at an example of them trusting Jesus as they return and wait for the promise of the father. During that time they had some business to attend to.
Observing how they went about handling this business can be a lesson for us.
De l'ange à l'archange
It is a book of active transition: Acts covers the period between the Gospels and the Epistles. The history can also be divided according to Acts 1: In little more than ten years the Apostle Paul pioneered churches in four Roman provinces and left behind thriving churches in the key cities of each province.
Pastor Clay has given us the challenge to live our lives on mission with Jesus Christ and to continue the incredible history of building the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In sharing this introduction I pray that we can be inspired to greater personal devotion, a better understanding of the church and its mission and a greater involvement in the mission to which we are called.
We find a Supernatural Jesus that was fully aware of all that was around Him and he addressed those needs with His miracle power. Today we face the challenge of becoming a partner in mission with Jesus Christ in living a Supernatural Life. In our text we discover committed people who serve as an example to each of us of those who are aware of the supernatural power of Jesus Christ and chose to participate with Him in living a supernatural life.
These same qualities ought to mark the life of every believer as we endeavor to participate in the ministry of Jesus Christ and serve our family, our church, and our community. Acts 4, 5 You cannot change your DNA. You cannot rewrite the code upon which you are built. You can disobey it, misuse it, or ignore it but you cannot change it. Jesus is the progenitor of the church and He has set the DNA of his church. Jesus lived a supernatural life and he intended for his church to live a supernatural life.
According to Ephesians 3: Are we making known the wisdom of God to our city much less Satan and his demons? Without him we have no hope. With him all situations can become hopeful. Through him we have a hope that does not disappoint and supersedes this life. It is not dependent on our victory here. This hope is not affected by our defeats here. It comes from and because of Jesus.
He has earned it and he will dispense it. However we must walk in it to benefit from it. Over the next four weeks we would like to invite you into a life that is characterized by the Supernatural. We will start where all things start with an examination of the Supernatural nature of Jesus. Today we will look at the Victories Jesus gives us as seen in the Gospel of Mark. Beginning with James 4: James then calls our attention to the dangers of wealth that is derived from self-centered, unjust means James 5: It is also is an indictment against those who abuse their employees.
We are to be careful with our words — avoiding the temptation to grumble or swear. James emphasizes the fact that the Judge is standing at the door and taking our conduct in to account. The concluding portion James 5: He has mentioned some of the lowest uses of the tongue: In the text today he names some of the highest and most holy uses of the tongue: Prayer is a high and holy privilege.
In view of the accountability and judgment for our words vv. In times of trouble suffering we should patiently pray; in times of joy we praise God and sing which is indeed prayer ; in dealing with sin and sickness we pray for healing; in times of national crisis vv. It not only meets the needs in our lives and the lives of others but it also does a deep and lasting work within us. This message as well as the rest of the Word of God could really be considered a continuation of that theme. The Word of God was written as a collection of essential truths for Living out a Life in the Jesus way.
It is vitally important to our success in living a life of holiness. Without its input and our submission by the power of the Holy Spirit we are desperately fruitless in our efforts to live under the Favor of God's Face shining on us. When we talk about the input of the Word of God we do not simply mean sitting under the teaching of the word of God. While that is and important part of it we must also find ways to feed ourselves. In our text today we will see Three impacts made by the Oncoming Train of Eternity. Knowing that eternity is eminently approaching can't help but change the way we conduct ourselves in this life.
Maybe a tire adjustment. Maybe an insurance adjustment. Maybe a back adjustment. All of these adjustments must be done at the hands of a trained professional for them to be successful and productive. Constantly we need another kind of adjustment. An adjustment at the hands of Truth. This too must be done by a trained professional. The trained professional we are talking about is the Holy Spirit. He is the only who brings change. He brings the conviction that births repentance. This repentance is required for us to change in such a way that brings fruit that remains through eternity.
If you are here today and in need of an adjustment that can bring freedom as you open your spirit to the work of the Holy Spirit you can experience that. This event is the exact fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies predicting the coming of the Messiah [Zechariah 9; Psalm ] and Jesus readily accepts this acclaim. It is a flash of brightness and triumph as the crowds lift up their praise to Jesus as He enters the city of Jerusalem.
At the same time, it is a picture of ineffable sadness as we see the surrender and resignation of the True Passover Lamb entering the Sheep Gate in preparation for the sacrifice. It is both a picture of sadness merging into gladness; ineffable sorrow, preparing the way for unutterable and final joy.
With careful study, we will see this event as the fulfillment of three of the celebrations of the Jewish faith. Not where your heart is but the posture of your heart. In what stream have you placed your heart? Are you drawing your water from the well of Jesus or from the well of the flesh which has as its source Satan? This determines the fruit you will produce. If you desire to produce fruit that is eternal and righteous you must place your heart in an eternal and righteous stream. Our natural tendency is to align ourselves with the demonic way of this world.
It takes a conscious decision to remove yourself from that stream and place yourself in the Jesus stream. When you do certain fruits will result. Let us look at our text and examine these fruits so that we might discern the position of our hearts. He introduces his topic by first warning people not to be too anxious to become teachers 3: James does not want to discourage those who have a calling and a gift for teaching, but he did want his reader to understand the heavy responsibility involved in teaching others about spiritual matters Matthew 5: One of the reasons the teaching ministry is difficult is that it makes use of the most dangerous, untamable member of the body: The power of the tongue is highlighted in two illustrations that point to the ability of a small object to exert great power bit, v.
So also the tongue, though a small member of the body, possesses great potential for good or for evil. It can be used to encourage, evangelize, and endear; it can also be used to criticize, mock and curse. James points to the duplicity of the tongue and emphasizes the difficulty in taming the tongue v. In order to impress on us the importance of controlled speech and the consequences of our words James gives us six pictures of the tongue and three classifications that reveal the great power of the tongue.
How, one might ask, does all this square with the crucial role given to faith throughout the New Testament and by James himself 1: Is James replacing faith with works? James begins with two questions that address the person who claims to have faith with out the deeds to affirm it and that faith, James states, cannot save him from the Judgment of God. He goes on to say that the real test of our words is the actions that back them up. Following the words of Jesus in Matthew Racial divisions, social divisions, religious divisions, financial divisions, national divisions, geographic divisions, cultural divisions.
This world is full of these divisions and more. The Gospel destroys these divisions. It brings together people for every tribe tongue and nation under the Lordship of Christ. The Gospel dignity value to every human based on the image of God which they carry. The Gospel gives value to every human showing them their worth in the Cross. The Church as a community of people shaped by the cross should put on display these facts, namely that every human has dignity, value and worth.
It should not just be reflected in our programs and in the way we target outreach but also in our gatherings. Radical comes from a Latin word which means root. When we call something radical we mean that they are on the fringe or they are pushing the acceptable limits. Radical Christians sell all their stuff and move to Africa. Jesus said that if you want to be his disciple you must hate your father, your mother, your brother and your sister. Jesus said that if we want to follow him we must take up our cross daily and follow him.
That means that we die to our preferences, our comforts, our priorities, our families and our aspirations. We submit to him and his wishes for our life. That may mean that you sell everything and move to Africa. If that is what it means for you and your family that does not make you radical it makes you obedient.
Today as we continue our study of the book of James we will look at Six Markers of the Radical Christian. In meaning, however, they need to be carefully distinguished. A trial is an outward circumstance that can pose difficulties to our faith. A temptation is an inward enticement that leads directly to sin and death.
Scripture indicates that that God will test us or allow us to go through trials to bring us to maturity. But James emphatically asserts that God never tempts us v. God never entices us to sin or desires that we fail in the trial He may allow. James points out that we must look within ourselves for the problem of dealing with temptation. A terrible process by which temptation, acted upon, becomes sin and leads to death: If we do nothing to cut off the growth and maturation of sin, death will be the inevitable result v. After his greeting James asks the reader to consider those things that pose a threat to our faith in God.
Whatever the trial test James commands the believer to rejoice 1: Trials which test us, when allowed to work in us will refine us as fire refines the ore. This perseverance will be able to finish its work of producing strong, mature, unshakable believers. Right from the beginning James sounds a note that he will repeat in different ways: Christians must take a distinctively Christian Biblical perspective on life. Favor with God is unconditional and is based on what Jesus has accomplished for us. We have a place of favor in our relationship with God because of our relationship to Jesus.
Friendship with God comes from obedience and is conditional. Obey the commands of God and be called a friend of God. Disobey or be passive in the things of God and while you will maintain favor with God you will lose friendship with Him. Favor is about resting in what is done for us in Jesus. Friendship is about participating in what God is doing in the world through the Holy Spirit. We have been afforded an amazing opportunity. We can experience the favor of God through Jesus and friendship with God through obedience. Favor from God is only half the story. Friendship with God comes through joining Jesus in his mission through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about a good example is our inability to accomplish the same achievements in our own lives. It takes more than an example on the outside; it takes power on the inside. Paul is not rebuking the Philippians here; he is exhorting them to pursue and practice the principles that they have learned regarding their salvation.
We must understand the biblical concept of our salvation. Regeneration initiates the believer into a life of obligation! We are faced with a challenge to develop a New Practice for our everyday lives. There are many reactions to Jesus in our world. He can be your buddy. He can be your Homeboy. He can be your life coach. He can be your guru. All of these reactions are false interpretations of who He is.
All of these are perversions that try to cast Jesus in an image that is more palatable. This is nothing new people from the very beginning of his life have been looking for ways to marginalize and relegate Jesus to the fringes and obscurity. A more proper reaction to Jesus is worship, thanksgiving, love, devotion. Jesus is THE Lord. Jesus is THE Savior. Jesus is the beginning and the end. Our reaction to him determines our place in His kingdom.
He will not be marginalized. He will not be forgotten. We must choose how we will react to him. Many people live in the land of compromise where we are not as bad as we used to be but not as good as we hoped to be. It is a work of the Holy Spirit calling from within our hearts to a change that occurs deep within our souls Romans The transformation begins and continues as the Holy Spirit patiently works until the results begin to show on the outside. Our text today is the record of just such a transformation in the life of the Apostle Paul.
Even for the Apostle the life change was not an instant work. These three canticles are read or sung as devotional exercise in the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit had already revealed to Simeon that he would not die before he would see the Messiah or Saviour born.
Heroes Legion
After his positive oracle, Simeon moves on to prophecy of more ominous matters. He speaks of Salvation Jesus v. He includes the fact that it will even affect Mary. The song is made up of two main parts: Praise to God for His miraculous messianic deliverance vv.
Luke makes an editorial comment before opening the hymn v. With at least 16 Old Testament parallels or prophecies fulfilled, Luke makes the connection between our New Testament Gospel and its Old Testament roots. As you and I celebrate this Christmas season - pause for a moment and worship the ever faithful God who always keeps His promises and has brought us salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I think we have typical ways of thinking about and understanding this event - ways that are familiar to us. I think it is important for us to avoid becoming familiar with this earth shattering and history rewriting entry of God's Kingdom into the Kingdom of man. Rather than frosted window panes and awestruck camels we should concentrate on what God was doing when he brought to a climax the redemption of mankind through the entrance of his own DNA into the story of his fallen creation.
What is our proper response? How do we participate in the unfolding drama that was set in motion two millennia ago in Israel? When Jesus came into this world he dramatically reordered everything. However sometimes when we celebrate this season it doesn't seem that anything has changed. Within the church it is just as much about giving and getting material items.
This should be a time of increased longing for Jesus and his fully realized Kingdom rather it is a time of hurry and focus on things that a few months from now will be gathering dust. So what was the focus of Christmas not just on the night Jesus was born but even before. Six hundred years before when Isaiah was penned. Let's look at three focuses of Isaiah 9: The witness of the risen Lord Jesus Christ to His followers had been completed, and they were ready to undertake the responsibilities of discipleship.
Consequently, we should view this concluding chapter as an example of how our belief should be translated and transformed into terms of daily activity. The trying and confusing period of the death and resurrection of Jesus had been hard on His disciples, and they retreated to the familiar and comfortable tasks they used to.
This manifestation of Jesus was a call to a new reality. Jesus met His disciples in a familiar way and reminded them of His power a miracle while fishing. Most often when the writers of the New Testament want to refer to someone who names Jesus as their Lord and Savior they refer to them as a disciple. This word simply means learner. A disciple is someone who is learning - ultimately from Jesus but also from someone else who is learning from Jesus.
A disciple is someone who is learning to live in the new Kingdom that Jesus is building through his learners and his church. We never stop learning. If we want to name Jesus as our Lord and Savior we must take his yoke upon ourselves and learn from him. We must also do the same for those around us, helping them to learn to follow Jesus as we do.
As we continue our miniseries on Transformation, we look at the Post-Resurrection transformation that takes place in the life of the disciples learners by observing three promises made to the disciples by Jesus. The presence of Jesus made the difference between the skepticism of despair and the worship of God which brought certainty and hope. The doors were shut and the place was filled anxiety and fear v. The resurrection body passed through the grave-clothes vv. The first transformation came about with the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus had made to bring them peace vv.
His peace came and took away their fear! Jesus, then, affirmed His resurrection life with empirical evidence v. We typically have some response that runs from immediate defensiveness to melting into a puddle. Most of us probably land somewhere between the two extremes. A better question is what do you do when your faith is challenged or shaken? I ask because nearly everyone will experience that at some point. Do we hide and withdraw, look to the world for answers, or do we go to the one who gives us our faith?
How we respond to a challenge to our faith is probably a pretty good indicator of how our walk with the Lord is progressing.
We all have doubts, and we all get shaken, but do we choose to live there or regress, or quickly run back to Him who gives us our faith? I think that there are many who have grown up in the church and are now adults, and they realize that going to church is good. It is a good social thing, it is a good place to learn how to be a moral person, a good influence on their kids, and, if their church is really active, it may be a good place to give back to the community. The problem is, I can do all of those apart from Jesus. They have surveyed Christianity all their lives. They have observed and chosen to belong.
The big question with eternal consequences is, have they surrendered their lives to Jesus, or are they just playing church? We have the options as to how we will respond to different circumstances and different kinds of people we encounter. In our text today, we see six witnesses of Jesus' crucifixion. Some reacted in a way that served self. Some reacted in a way that honored Jesus. The question that we are left with as we examine this text is, "In which group do I find myself? The answer to this question will determine what kind of life you will live; a full and selfless life focused on participating with God in his mission or an empty selfish life focused on building the wrong kingdom.
What happened is important but equally important is why it happened and what benefits are derived for those who embrace the finished work of Jesus Christ for their salvation. The consequences of the cross can be simply summed up in three basic achievements: The Christian church is essentially a community of the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ has radically altered all of our relationships and has empowered us to live productive and fruitful lives. Its psychological portrait of Pilate is comparable to that of the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar John 4 or that of the blind man John 9.
As John narrates it, the judicial aspect of the occasion becomes less prominent and the character of Pilate becomes more important. We have a tendency to give it lip service and not surrendered hearts. We certainly have to place our faith, trust and hope in Jesus alone and His completed work. However, we must surrender our lives to Jesus so that He can work through us. When we say we desire to live the Spirit filled life, that is not a life where we just feel good in our relationship.
It is a life that still may be filled with disappointment and heartache sometimes, but we walk through those with Jesus. I have often said that the Spirit filled life is a life that looked like Jesus lived. What does that mean?