From The Great Physician To The Great Commission (Part 1)

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (Mark 2: 15-17)

Jesus is often called the Great Physician because of this claim.  He took a common experience (doctors are trained to help the physically ill) to describe a spiritual reality (Jesus came to help the spiritually sick).

The Pharisees were angry because Jesus was more focused on the “sinners” or the “sick” than he was on them, the healthy non-sinners (or so they thought). It was as if the Pharisees were saying, “Look, we are all cleaned up. Wouldn’t you rather hang out with us?”  And Jesus said by his actions and his words, “Oh, well, if you’re that fine without me, carry on. I will find those who see themselves honestly – they are the ones who are ready for me.”

We, the followers of Jesus, came to him as the Sick.

• We accepted His diagnosis (sin), cure (salvation), and ‘after care’ plan (sanctification), and we celebrate our health by promoting the doctor (evangelism).

• We became part of the Fellowship of the Healed (once for all for the eternal punishment for our sin) and the Healing (the good work Jesus has begun continues).

• Now, we have the privilege of paying forward what happened through the presence of the church, in which more of the sick in desperate need of The Great Physician can find healing and hope. 

This is an image that has guided CLG over the last number of years: when people follow Jesus here, we want them to experience our church as a place where the spiritually sick find healing through the work of Jesus, the power of his Word and Spirit, and the presence of His people. I want to revisit that over the next several weeks.

Assuming that Jesus was very purposeful with that analogy, what can we learn from our experiences with medical hospitals as we help to participate in the spiritual hospital that is our church?

We must decide to trust. We have to have confidence that our doctor cares about us and knows what he or she is doing. Jesus is the doctor for the spiritually sick, and it’s important that we understand that he is the spiritual doctor in whom we have every reason to place our ultimate allegiance. We do this by embracing the person and understanding the purpose of Jesus.

“For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  (John 3:17)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew11:28-30)

A medical doctor desires to bring health, stability and hope to those who are hurting. Jesus offers to save us in ways a medical doctor never can: to bring stability and rest to our souls and to take even those who are dead in their sins and bring them back to life (Ephesians 2:5). It is CRUCIAL that the Jesus to whom we cling and whom we present to the world through our words, attitudes and actions is the trustworthy Jesus of Scripture.

We must give and accept an honest diagnosis. If you go to a doctor, you can’t say, “It hurts here” when it actually hurts “there” and expect the appointment to work. You shouldn’t lie if the doctor asks you background information. You have to tell the doctor what the problem is – which means honesty and humility. In our case, when we come to Christ for healing, we have to be honest about the problem: we are in the kind of trouble that will land us in hell if we continue our current path. Yes, we bear the scars of what others have done to us, but we are deeply sick people whose mortal wounds come from ourselves.

“I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night…I have done what is evil in your sight.”  (Psalm 51:1-4)

“People who conceal their sins will not prosper...” (Proverbs 28:13)

Sin “reigns in our mortal bodies” (Romans 6:12)

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - -of whom I am the worst.” Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:15)

Nobody makes us sin. We are ‘drawn away by our own lusts. We so easily deflect the blame:

• “I’m sorry I snapped. Bob, at work, was such a jerk today…” 

• “I can’t help how sarcastic I am. My family was sarcastic.”

• “Sure, I’m judgmental and critical, but my parents…”

No, what you do is on you. Your history forms you but it doesn’t finish you. YOU finish you. We must be honest about the heart of our sin – our heart.

This is not meant to bring despair. Once the problem is identified, healing can begin.  There is hope to be found on the other side of honesty.  Typically, this involves a medical doctor saying something like, “I know what you have. I can offer you this. I can make you better.” Once again, Jesus, the Great Physician, offers us so much more:

“Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit.” (Ezekiel 18:31-32)


”Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord…” (Acts 3:19)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

That’s good news, but what does this mean, exactly? Does it mean suddenly all the accumulated baggage of my life disappears? In a spiritual sense, yes.  When we engage in honest repentance, God does supernatural work in which the eternal penalty for our sins are wiped out.  He breaks the dominating power of sin and takes upon himself what would have been our eternal punishment.

But we have established patterns, habits, ways of thinking and living that require “after care.”  There will be follow up appointments – not because the physician has failed, but because God has allowed us to keep our free will, and we tend to undermine our own spiritual health. We reap what we sow, not because God hates us, but because that’s the way the world God has created works. This kind of “after care” happens best in an environment where the following things are in place:

The church embraces the spiritually sick with the compassion of Jesus. Jesus’ critics mockingly called him a friend of sinners because he seemed to be where sinners were. The NT writers embraced that: indeed, sinners knew that Jesus was their friend. He didn’t enable their sin – look at what he told the woman caught in adultery – but he loved them in the midst of it. When you walk into a hospital, they aren’t shocked that you need help: they expect it. They don't hear your problem and despise you. They hear and they respond with compassion.

Christians offer ongoing diagnosis carefully but honestly (“speaking the truth in love”). Those in the health care business do no one any good if they refuse to diagnose. There must be truth, and it ought to be offered with grace.

Christians must be honest about the work Jesus has done and continues to do in our life. We haven’t “arrived” just because we left triage. We are a healing project. We must share our stories of how the Great Physician continues to work in our life. It’s one way we build trust in Jesus at times when trust is hard. 

Christians walk patiently and hopefully together as we “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). There’s nothing worse than being sick alone. We may not want someone hovering over us, but we want someone nearby. Church community is meant to be a place of proximity for all of us. Someone pushed us in our spiritual wheelchair or helped us hobble up and down the hall or held a conversational bucket while we puked our guts out. The least we can do is return the favor for someone else.

3) We must embrace a change of life (discipleship). Often, after a doctor makes you whole, you are given a set of instructions: “If you would like to enjoy this new health, you will need to participate with me in your new life.” This could include diet, exercise, medications, support groups, etc. After Jesus brings in the new to replace the old, we, too, are told that there will be a change of direction in our lives.

We will need to participate in our new-found spiritual health. The Apostle Paul wrote: “I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:27)

Think of the example of the woman caught in adultery, where at the end of story Jesus says, “Go now and do what you want!” No…. "I don't condemn you either. Go! From now on don't sin." (John 8:11).

If we want to fully participate in this new life in the Community of the Healed and Healing, we must participate in the after care program.

4. We must recognize that we are all now part of the hospital staff. That’s a slightly different conclusion than what happens after you visit a medical hospital. They might actually frown on that J But in the church, the hospital where the spiritually ill are nursed back to health, we are all staff.  And what does hospital staff do, exactly? The Code of Ethics for Nurses (American Nurses Association) includes the following principles:

Respect for others, commitment to the patient, advocacy for the patient , accountability and responsibility for practice, duty to self and duty to others, contribution to healthcare environments, advancement of profession/ promotion of health

I wonder if the code for a church is that much different?

Compassion for others, Commitment, Advocacy, Accountability and Responsibility, Duty to God and Others, Contribution, Advancement/Promotion of the Kingdom of God

If we at CLG want to fully participate in this new life in the Community of the Healed, we must realize we –all of us - are on call. The original Florence Nightingale Nursing Oath closed with the following: “With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.”  

 Once again, a slight modification gives us a goal for our church:  “With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the Great Physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to His care.” 

How will this happen?

We must take it upon ourselves to engage people. If you walk into the ER, someone will come up to you immediately and ask how you are doing. You are there for a reason; something has not gone well. You are aware you are in need of the doctor.  If someone walks into our church, God forbid that no one greets them – and I don’t mean just greeters. Just…people. You and me. It’s such a basic way of showing that you see them, that you want to connect with them. A handshake and a smile is value laden. It matters. Then there’s lunches, and an evening of games, and potlucks, and fire pits…

We must be willing to talk about what the Physician has done for us. It’s not polite to ask someone in a waiting room, “So, what bring you here today?” That might not be what we want to lead with here either (though there is a time for it). Rather, why not lead with stories about the Great Physician’s work in our life?

Yes, we will have to explain why we need Jesus: addiction, pride, lust, adultery, theft, anger, violence, greed, meanness, selfishness. The symptoms and the cause aren’t always pretty, but I can’t talk about the doc who fixed my shoulder without telling you what my shoulder was like, and I can’t talk about the cardiac doc who saved my life without talking about the state of my heart before and after the heart attack.

I can’t talk about the state of my heart before and after the work of Jesus without talking about my heart before and after the work of Jesus. The doctor is glorified through his patients. The Great Physician is too (Isaiah 48:9–11;  Ezekiel 36:21–32.; John 15:8; Romans 15:9)

This is why our church needs to be a hospital – so that the spiritually sick find a place of healing and hope, and so the Great Physician is glorified.

The Days We Celebrate (Easter 2017)

1 Corinthians 15The Voice (VOICE)

 Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I preached to you when we first met. It’s the essential message that you have taken to heart, the central story you now base your life on; 2 and through this gospel, you are liberated…. 3-4 For I passed down to you the crux of it all which I had also received from others, that the Anointed One, the Liberating King, died for our sins and was buried and raised from the dead on the third day. All this happened to fulfill the Scriptures; it was the perfect climax to God’s covenant story. 

5 Afterward He appeared alive to Cephas (you may know him as Simon Peter), then to the rest of the twelve. 6 If that were not amazing enough, on one occasion, He appeared to more than 500 believers at one time. Many of those brothers and sisters are still around to tell the story, though some have fallen asleep in Jesus. 7 Soon He appeared to James, His brother and the leader of the Jerusalem church, and then to all the rest of the emissaries He Himself commissioned.  8 Last of all, He appeared to me…

13 Friends, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then even the Anointed hasn’t been raised; 14 if that is so, then all our preaching has been for nothing and your faith in the message is worthless. 15 And what’s worse, all of us who have been preaching the gospel are now guilty of misrepresenting God because we have been spreading the news that He raised the Anointed One from the dead (which must be a lie if what you are saying about the dead not being raised is the truth)…

Friends, 17 if the Anointed has not been raised from the dead, then your faith is worth less than yesterday’s garbage, you are all doomed in your sins, 18 and all the dearly departed who trusted in His liberation are left decaying in the ground. 19 If what we have hoped for in the Anointed doesn’t take us beyond this life, then we are world-class fools, deserving everyone’s pity.

20 But the Anointed One was raised from death’s slumber and is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. 21 For since death entered this world by a man, it took another man to make the resurrection of the dead our new reality. 22 Look at it this way: through Adam all of us die, but through the Anointed One all of us can live again. 

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We live in a world in desperate need of peace.

Terrorism, rumors of wars, persecution, genocide, human trafficking, tension between police and citizens, political fighting, social media frenzies of name-calling and insults. It hits closer to home, too: our families, our workplace, our friendships, our church. Then there is the lack of peace deep inside – the depression, anxiety, despair and shame. We live in a world in desperate need of peace.

I want to talk about how Jesus’ death and resurrection makes peace possible.

There is a Hebrew word, Shalom,that refers to peace with God, within, and with others. In many ways it takes us back to the Garden of Eden, at a place and time when everything was good. We have wandered far from that place of peace and rest, and the history of the world shows that we do a terrible job re-creating peace on our own. The prophet Jeremiah lamented the people who say, “’Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace”; Luke records that Jesus wept for Jerusalem: “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace.”

The prophet Isaiah said that one day there would be a Prince of Peace; Paul wrote that Jesus is our peace; Jesus said he came to bring a peace that was unlike anything the world could give. When he appeared to the disciples after his resurrection, one of the first things he said was, “Be at peace.”

This promise of peace through Jesus Christ is our hope in a fallen and broken world, and that’s our focus today.

Peace With God

We were created to be at peace with God – pure, holy, unstained by sin. Genesis talks about the close communion of God and Adam; it’s that kind of peace that is the goal. Unashamed, guiltless, not covering or hiding our sins or ourselves.

But sin ruined that kind of peace. And lest we blame Adam, we all contribute. We all choose to do that which appalls a righteous and holy God. Everyone is directed by their conscience; Christians are directed by the Bible and empowered by the Holy Spirit – and yet we still at times choose to willfully choose a path of spiritual, emotional, relational and sometimes physical destruction that we know offends  the God who created and loves us and hurts those around us. We don’t just ignore God or make mistakes; we are rebels. Some of us are just more obvious about it than others.

It not that we are totally unaware. If nothing else, our stories betray us. We want a line between good and evil, a really clear demarcation: “There are evil people and things; there are good people and things.” We want Sauron vs. Gandalf; the Lion vs. the Witch; Captain America vs. the Red Skull; Ohio State vs. anyone else, really.

While those stories are instructive and good, it’s not what we experience in real life. Even the writers of Scripture knew this. Look at any primary character in the Old Testament and find one whose life was a pure as snow. They don’t exist. The line between good and evil runs right through the center of our hearts. It’s why we are awesome parents one day and horrible parents the next. It’s why one day I’m the husband my wife dreamed about when she was a kid and the next day I’m not even close. It’s why our friendships struggle, and our families fight, and even church can feel like a battleground.

The whole world is in a war between sin and holiness, and at times the epic heroes arise and defeat the classic villains, and we cheer (as we should), but more often than not we see that murky middle battleground where the Boromirs and the children who visited Narnia and the Tony Starks struggle to embrace the good and reject the evil. And even then that just reminds us that the epicenter of this battle is in our heart.

We see in the Old Testament how God instituted a plan to begin a restoration project that pointed toward Jesus. It starts with Abraham.

God made a covenant, an agreement with Abraham,  that Paul alluded to in the passage we read today (“ the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus was the climax to God’s covenant story”). God promised that he would bless the world through Abraham and his descendants, who would become the children of Israel. Abraham just needed to be obedient and follow God. To seal the covenant, it was typical at that time for the two parties to kill an animal, dismember it, and walk through the middle as a way of saying, “If I break the covenant, may this be done to me.” In a vision, God appeared to Abraham and walked through this dissected animal alone. In other words, God said, “If either one of us breaks the covenant, may this be done to me.”

Eventually, God renewed this covenant relationship through Moses (the 10 Commandments and all the extra details), and gave his people an incredible amount of instruction on the kind of life that pleases God.

So all the Israelites were now in a covenant with God – they occasionally re-read the Law publicly and reaffirmed that yes indeed, this was the plan. This covenant was a little different in that there were some conditions: if they did good, they would be blessed. If they did bad, they would not. This led to trouble, because the Jewish people were terrible at keeping the Law.  

God initiated a temporary substitute through the sacrificial system, but they had to keep repeating this (for good reason.) It didn’t matter how much or how often the rabbis added more and more laws to try to make sure they could live perfectly. They couldn’t. If anything, the more detailed they got, the more it became clear how far they were from holy.

To make it worse, the cause-and-effect penalties of their sin caught up with them. The conditions of the covenant had to be honored and they were. The wages of their sin were conquest and enslavement. One Old Testament prophet recorded that they sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept as they remembered what they have lost – and what they could have.

They longed for a Messiah, a deliverer, and bringer of hope and peace. It appeared that these people - who were supposed to be the means by which God blessed the world -  had sold their spiritual birthright in exchange for their sin. They had failed to live up to God’s standards even when God had made them clear through Moses.

Now they were scattered, dying, convinced God has abandoned them.

But God had not.

God did bless the world through Abraham’s descendants – but not in a nationalistic sense like the Israelites expected. It was through the lineage of the Jewish people  that Jesus was born. That was the plan all along.

Enter Jesus, God in the flesh, sent to earth to fulfill the demands that God made on himself in his covenant with Abraham. God did not break the covenant; Abraham did. Yet God would pay the price for that sin by taking upon himself the penalty. He would be killed. He would also offer one sacrifice once and for all to fulfill the obligation of the sacrificial system under the law of Moses. On the cross, Jesus was torn for the sins not just of the Israelites, but of the world. Jesus satisfied the requirements of both those covenants while establishing a new one, one that all of us can be a part of.

Why is this important? Because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Without Jesus, we are dead in our sins. Our peace with God is broken, and without Jesus there is nothing between us and His wrath. No matter how good we think we are, we have shaken our fist at the heavens and said, “Not your will, but mine be done” over and over again.

But on the cross, the justice and mercy of God meet. God initiates a covenant fulfillment with us even before we are aware of the need for it. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, our war with God can end, and we can be at peace with Him. Our sin does not have to condemn us or separate us from God.

We can be forgiven, loved, embraced, even adopted into God’s family so that we are called ‘children of God.’ We are offered forgiveness and hope in this life and an eternity of joy in the presence of God in a New Heaven and New Earth, a reality in which, as Tim Keller says, all that is bad will be undone.

Peace Within

I mentioned a number of things earlier that rob us of peace within: depression, anxiety, shame. We could add anger, bitterness, jealousy, hopelessness, unforgiveness…

Some of those things can be caused by medical issues that a doctor can help (our biology is fallen too). Some of those things we can bring on ourselves because of our sinful choices. Some of things can arise because of sin that has been done to us. I believe the presence of Jesus gives us hope in the midst of all of those things, but there is one primary reason Jesus died and rose again when it comes to peace within. That is to address our guilt and shame for our sin.

Here’s the reality.

On this side of heaven, I will sin because I am not perfect. With the help of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of God’s word and the community of God’s people, I will be remarkably better than I would be without those things. God miraculously frees us from the overwhelming power of sin. Because of Jesus, I am not doomed to be chained by the power of sin. However, the cross and the empty tomb don’t remove the presence of sin. Not yet. I am no longer enslaved to sin, but I can still choose it.

And I do. I’m not perfect. Ask anybody. Neither are you. If you aren’t sure if that’s the case, ask your family. They will fill you in. So what do I do with that?

I could become consumed with perfection and working on my own power – and run myself into the ground trying to achieve the impossible. Then, I will become either insufferably arrogant the more I am successful or sadly self-loathing the more I fail. That’s the kind of righteousness the Bible says is filthy rags. It’s gross. Self-righteousness is not pretty.

Or I can turn to Jesus, the “author and finisher of my faith,” who sees me in my imperfect sinfulness and loves me anyway – and that love includes not letting me stay where I am, but changing and renewing me so that I increasingly become like Jesus. 

Because I have Jesus, I will have a strength I would never have on my own. In my times of doing good, I am driven to worship God, not my own willpower and work, so I avoid arrogance. In my times of failure, I am driven to throw myself at the mercy of a God who is faithful even when I am faithless, and that reminder of the love and tenderness of Jesus moves me out of my self-loathing as I remember that that Jesus knows and loves me, gave His life for me, and is transforming me into His image.

With Others

This changes everything is our relationships. The more we understand how the love of Jesus brought about peace with God, the more determined we will be to pass on that love. And when we see how his death and resurrection show His love – truly see it – we will love Him in return, and it will change us.

What kind of love is that? A radical, self-sacrificing commitment to the good of those around me. It’s what the Bible calls agape love. Jesus died so that I could live; why would I not in some way choose to ‘die’ to myself so that those around me can live? It’s how I honor my Lord. It’s how I pass on the legacy of Jesus.

 In some ways we commemorate this during communion: “This is my body which was broken for you …do this in remembrance.” We can’t die and bring salvation for our sins or the sins of others – we must have Jesus for that. But we can honor what Jesus has done by being broken and spilled out as we show the love of Jesus.

 As followers of Jesus, we ‘die’ to jealousy, envy, anger, pettiness, meanness, pride, selfishness. The Bible insists that we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, that we climb up on the altar and sacrifice everything in us that needs to die. We could never do this on our own power, but we are not alone. We have God’s spirit inside us, his Word in front of us, and His people around us.

 We can do this, because God is with us.

 This is the peace the Resurrected Lord offers to us.

• Through Jesus, our relationship with God can been repaired so that we are no longer rebels. We are servants, friends, children, kings, priests. As a church we are the bride of Christ, and the bride will be made glorious in preparation for the glorious return of Jesus.

• Through Jesus, our peace within can be restored as we surrender and then commit our lives to the love and grace of a Risen Savior who is greater than all of our sins. We do not have to live in shame and fear; we can be transparent, bold and loved.

• Through Jesus, our peace with others flows from this reality. We will want to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples. We will  want everyone so see how the love of a Risen Savior transforms our lives, not for our glory but for the glory of the One who makes this possible.

The Days We Wait (Easter 2017)

I mentioned last week that the Bible is full of ‘three day stories”[1]: Jonah in the big fish; Joseph’s brothers in jail in Egypt; the plague of darkness in Egypt; Rahab hid the spies for three days. Jesus was in the tomb for three days. On the third day is when the bad stuff ends. That’s the day we celebrate, and rightly so. But Third Day stories aren’t clear until the Third Day. On Day One and Day Two, it’s not yet clear how the story will end. The First day of Third Day story is often a brutal one.

Crucifixion Friday was the First Day of a Three Day story.  We talked last week about how Jesus understands our First Days. His entrance into the human condition showed that God is not a distant, uncaring and cold God. God understands us. But there is still Saturday before Sunday. It’s not the day when the tragedy occurred; it’s not the day that Resurrection brings hope and life. It’s that troublesome (and often very long) middle day. Here’s what the Bible records the followers of Jesus were doing between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday. (This is a combination of the details as they appear in Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20).

At the rising of the sun, after the Sabbath on the first day of the week, the two Marys and Salome came to the tomb to keep vigil. They brought sweet-smelling spices they had purchased to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. Along the way, they wondered to themselves how they would roll the heavy stone away from the opening…

[They encounter the Risen Jesus]

They brought this news back to all those who had followed Him and were still mourning and weeping. They recounted for them—and others with them—everything they had experienced. The Lord’s emissaries heard their stories as fiction, a lie; they didn’t believe a word of it until Jesus appeared to them all as they sat at dinner that same evening (Resurrection Sunday).

 They were gathered together behind locked doors in fear that some of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were still searching for them. Out of nowhere, Jesus appeared in the center of the room and said, “May each one of you be at peace.”

What do we see the closest followers of Jesus doing?

• Keeping a vigil of mourning

• Planning how to perfume the body of the dead Messiah

• Hiding in fear

• Mourning and weeping

• Refusing to believe that Jesus was alive

It’s not a great resume builder, really. You would think that the biblical writers might want to put a better spin on what happened here. “As the disciples were praying and rejoicing over Jesus’ impending Resurrection, Mary returned and told them the good news. And they said, “Of course! We knew it all along!”

No, they were mourning the death of their long awaited Messiah. They thought he was gone. They thought he had failed – and in that failure shown that he was not, after all, the promised deliverer. As far as they knew, he was never coming back.

Crucifixion Fridays are hard, but Silent Saturdays may be even harder. Funeral days are hard, but they are at least full of adrenaline and crisis management and we are surrounded by support. But then the next day, when family drifts back home, and friends go back to their routine…that’s when Silent Saturday sets in. The loneliness and the emptiness…

It’s hard enough when it involves earthly things. But what about when our relationship with God is best described as a Silent Saturday kind of relationship? What if there is a spiritual loneliness and emptiness, a sense that God is aloof at best and gone at worst. What about the times when the heavens seem empty, and our prayers just seem to drift off into a void? What about the times when God is silent?

John Ortberg tells the following story:

“From the time she was a young girl, Agnes believed. Not just believed: she was on fire. She wanted to do great things for God. She said things such as she wanted to "love Jesus as he has never been loved before." Agnes had an undeniable calling. She wrote in her journal that "my soul at present is in perfect peace and joy." She experienced a union with God that was so deep and so continual that it was to her a rapture. She left her home. She became a missionary. She gave him everything. And then he left her.

At least that's how it felt to her. "Where is my faith?" She asked. "Deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness …. My God, how painful is this unknown pain … I have no faith." She struggled to pray: "I utter words of community prayers—and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give. But my prayer of union is not there any longer. I no longer pray."

She still worked, still served, still smiled. But she spoke of that smile as her mask, "a cloak that covers everything." This inner darkness continued on, year after year, with one brief respite, for nearly 50 years. God was just absent. Such was the secret pain of Agnes, who is better known as Mother Teresa.

So what do we do with the Silent Saturdays of our lives? I want to offer a number of suggestions not so that you will be immediately aware of God’s presence, but so you can be purposeful and grow from this kind of season of your life.

1. Be honest with God. The Bible gives us permission to voice our hearts during Silent Saturday. Look at a few of the Psalms:

• Psalm 6:2–3  “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long?”

• Psalm 13:1–2 “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?”

• Psalm 90:13–14 “Return, O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.”

• “I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.” (Job 30:20)

A friend sent me a psalm of lament, full of anger and frustration, that she had written as part of her process of coming to grips with why God had allowed what He did in her life. It was raw and beautiful, and it was bold. Those are good things. God knows your heart and mind; he already knows your deepest internal struggles. Voice them. God is big. He can handle it.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw9Fp6XWq7w[/embed]

2. Keep the vigils

In the spite of the pain of their loss, the Marys did what they had always done, which was part of the ritual life of living in Jewish community. What Jewish people believed and what they did in almost every aspect of life were so intertwined that it’s hard to imagine that the vigil was not considered part of what God called them to do. There is something to be said for keeping the faith through an active commitment to obedience and faithfulness. I would like to offer four vigils I believe are helpful.

A. Pursue Church community. Don't forsake gathering together (Hebrews 10:25). The disciples did at least one thing right: they hung together in the midst of their grief. It’s important that we remain connected and not withdraw. In community, others came back and reported their experiences with the Risen Christ. Even in the midst of doubt, there was hope. We stay in community so that we can be challenged, encouraged, and held close. We need to feel the nearness of God’s people when God feels distant. We need the hope that lives in others when our sense of hope is gone.

B. Pray and Read Scripture. I don’t know that there is a formula for the best way to do this. There are all kinds of cool ideas about how to read through the Bible or how to pray. I don’t think they are bad; I just don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all kind of approach.

• Listen to or read the Bible.

• Pray alone - or get together with others.

• Pray for a block of time - or throughout the day.

• Sing. There are theologically rich songs that are good reminders of the hope we find in Jesus.

C. Dive Into Devotionals (podcasts, books, teachings). This is one way to experience the community of the church. It’s also a good way to find clarity about the Scriptures and to hear the testimonies of others. What did they do when they were in the First and Second days of their stories?

D. Practice Obedience. One of the greatest dangers we face is giving up and saying to God, “You know what? If I can’t feel your presence, I am going to live as if you’re not there.” We shake our fist at the heavens and begin to sow sinful things that can be forgiven and healed but will nonetheless be harvested (Galatians 6:7).

The Bible describes the way of obedience as “the path of life” (Psalm 16:11). There is something about faithful obedience that is not just healthy; it is wise and stabilizing. This, too, is sowing actions that you will one day reap – but this time it won’t be the wages of sin. It will be the fruit of righteousness.  Also, I believe obedience is one of the ways we are conformed to the image of Christ – and in that conforming – as we begin to see what it means to ‘be like Jesus’ -  we begin to appreciate the wisdom of the One who guides our life.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6csM0TLZIs[/embed]

3. Learn to wait

• Psalm 37:7  “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way.”

• Psalm 27:14  “Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.”

I’m not good at waiting. I want problem resolution. Give me a task! Sometimes that is what God calls us to do, but many God does not work that way. I like what Jon Bloom wrote in an article entitled, “When God Is Silent.”

Why is it that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” but “familiarity breeds contempt”? Why is water so much more refreshing when we’re really thirsty? Why am I almost never satisfied with what I have, but always longing for more? Why can the thought of being denied a desire for marriage or children or freedom or some other dream create in us a desperation we previously didn’t have?

Why is the pursuit of earthly achievement often more enjoyable than the achievement itself? Why do deprivation, adversity, scarcity, and suffering often produce the best character qualities in us while prosperity, ease, and abundance often produce the worst?

Do you see it? There is a pattern in the design of deprivation: Deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens desire. And the more heightened the desire, the greater its satisfaction will be. It is the mourning that will know the joy of comfort (Matthew 5:4). It is the hungry and thirsty that will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6). Longing makes us ask, emptiness makes us seek, silence makes us knock (Luke 11:9).

Deprivation is in the design of this age. We live mainly in the age of anticipation, not gratification. We live in the dim mirror age, not the face-to-face age (1 Corinthians 13:12). The paradox is that what satisfies us most in this age is not what we receive, but what we are promised. The chase is better than the catch in this age because the Catch we’re designed to be satisfied with is in the age to come...

It’s the desert that awakens and sustains desire. It’s the desert that dries up our infatuation with worldliness. And it’s the desert that draws us to the Well of the world to come.

Sometimes, the best way to hand over the weight of the world is to wait on Christ.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcRMNiZtj5s[/embed]

4. Don't confuse what you feel from what is real

I heard a wise man say once, “You will either judge truth by your feelings, or you will judge your feelings by what it true.” What is true is that God may feel absent, but He is not. God is with us always. Why does He feel absent? I don’t know. It could be that you are in rebellious sin. It could be that you are tired. It could be that God has removed the sense of His presence as part of transforming you into the image of Christ. It could be that you are distracted. I don’t know.

But I know that God is near and faithful no matter how we feel.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RL42uub19E[/embed]

___________________________________________________________________________________

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

• “Three Lessons to Learn When You’re Stuck in the Hallways of Life”  - Sarah Coleman


• “When God Seems Far Away”  - John Ortberg

• “When God Seems Silent” -  Jon Bloom

[1] I got this idea from a brilliant teaching called “Saturday: Living Between Crucifixion and Resurrection,” posted by Richmont Graduate University on youtube. I don’t know who the speaker was. You can access the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90EKNZPKCU

A Sunday Of Prayer And Worship

Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, issued March 30, 1863. The context is the middle of the Civil War, so some of the language reflects specifically the challenges of that situation. However, the content is applicable to us still today.

….Whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is Lord: And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness…

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be hard on high and answered with blessing no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

This will be a morning of musical worship interspersed with prayer for our nation, followed by communion. I didn’t know who will be elected on the 8th, so this is not a partisan response. I’ve just been thinking that we as a church need a time of refocusing on Christ, gathering together in unity as we pray for the peace of our nation and remember our Savior’s love for the world. 

•Prayer for Political Leaders 

1 Timothy 2:1-4 “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

• Prayer for Military/Law Enforcement

Psalms 18:31-36 “For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?—the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me, and your gentleness made me great.”

• Prayer For Families/Youth 

Joshua 24:15 “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

• Prayer For The Marginalized and Downtrodden 

Psalm 146:5-7 “But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the LORD their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever. He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners.”

•Prayer For Peace and Justice 

Proverbs 21:15 “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.”

Psalm 106:3 “How blessed are those who keep justice, Who practice righteousness at all times!”

• Prayer For The Mission of the Church 

Romans 10: 13-14 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

• Prayer For The Health of the Church 

Acts 2: 41-47  “So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added.  They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Reverential awe came over everyone, and many wonders and miraculous signs came about by the apostles.  All who believed were together and held everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need. Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts,  praising God and having the good will of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.

CLOSING PRAYER

Show us your mercy, O Lord;

And grant us your salvation.

Clothe your ministers with righteousness;

Let your people sing with joy.

Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;

For only in you can we live in safety.

Lord, keep this nation under your care;

And guide us in the way of justice and truth.

Let your way be known upon earth;

Your saving health among all nations.

Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;

Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.

Create in us clean hearts, O God;

And sustain us by your Holy Spirit. 

--- Book of Common Prayer 1979

Reflecting The Glory Of The Lord

“A glass can only spill what it contains.” - mewithoutyou

That’s not bad insight into life. We often hear the phrase, “garbage in, garbage out,” but that’s true of good things as well. Jesus taught this clearly:

"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” (Luke 6:45)

You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize this. What we pour into our lives is what will eventually pour out of it in some way. It’s one reason people are increasingly talking about the power of entertainment.  There are ways to filter it – there’s a lot to be said about learning how to read, listen and watch as a Christian who listens and sees through the eyes and ears of Jesus – but in some fashion, what comes in will come out.

• CNN’s Health section online featured an article entitled “Should Smoking Trigger an R rating?”  The author noted, “For every 500 smoking scenes a child saw in PG-13 movies, his or her likelihood of trying cigarettes increased by 49%.” [1]

• The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics reported: “Youths [12-17 years old who viewed sexual content on TV] in the 90th percentile of TV sex viewing had a predicted probability of intercourse initiation that was approximately double that of youths in the 10th percentile... Exposure to TV that included only talk about sex was associated with the same risks...”[2]

What we dwell on matters. There is a reason Paul wrote to the Philippian church to focus on things that were good, true, and lovely (Philippians 4:8).  The idea of this verse is not that we retreat from anything bad – we would have to live in a bubble – but that we actively pursue a mental and emotional diet made up of predominantly wholesome things.

We all fill our glass with something. The words and actions and attitudes that overflow will reflect the abundance of images and ideas with which we have filled ourselves.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul makes a similar claim:  We will become what we see. He uses the analogy of a mirror reflecting, but the idea is the same.  

“As we see and reflect the glory of the Lord, we are transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendor into his own image.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

In essence, we are mirrors that reflect the things at which we look. It’s another way of saying that what flows out of us will be an indicator of what’s been filling us. Before we talk about that more, I need to give a context to this sentence. Paul was talking to the early Christians about the Old Testament Law. 

2 Corinthians 3:7-18

7-11 The administration of the Law which was engraved in stone (and which led in fact to spiritual death) was so magnificent that the Israelites were unable to look unflinchingly at Moses’ face, for it was alight with heavenly splendor. Now if the old administration held such heavenly, even though transitory, splendor, can we not see what a much more glorious thing is the new administration of the Spirit of life? If administering a system which ends in condemning men was a splendid task, how infinitely more splendid is administering a system which ends in making men good! And while it is true that the former temporary glory has been completely eclipsed now, we do well to remember that is eclipsed simply because the present permanent plan is such a very much more glorious thing than the old.

12-17 With this hope in our hearts we are quite frank and open in our ministry. We are not like Moses, who veiled his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing its fading glory. But it was their minds really which were blinded, for even today when the old agreement is read to them there is still a veil over their minds—though the veil has actually been lifted by Christ. Yes, alas, even to this day there is still a veil over their hearts when the writings of Moses are read. Yet if they turned to the Lord the veil would disappear, and they would understand how their Scriptures point to Christ. For the Lord to whom they could turn is the spirit of the new agreement, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom and boldness to proclaim His message.

18 But all of us who are followers of Christ do not have veils on our faces as we see and reflect the glory of the Lord. We are transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendor into his own image.

This passage raises some questions for me: Why is the Law glorious even as it brings death? Why didn’t Moses want them to see his fading glory? How does our being unveiled reflect the glory of the Lord? Since all of this sets the table for verse 18, let’s try to work our way through these questions.

Question #1: How is the Law glorious even though it brings death? Because it was a teacher, a guide to show us how God wants us to live (Romans 15; 1 Corinthians 10). In Galatians 3, Paul wrote,

“Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.” (from The Message’s commentary)

If someone asked, “What does God want me to do?” the Israelites had an answer – 613 answers, in fact. If you had asked a follower of Baal or Molech what their God wanted them to do, they would not have known.  They just hoped they were doing the right thing, and if something went wrong, they offered increasingly gruesome sacrifices to appease a mysterious, unknowable, and petty god.

When God gave His Law, He gave something of Himself to His people.  Now the will of God could be known. Do this, not that.  And if you keep God’s laws, all will be well. We tend to think of the Law as oppressive; the Israelites were grateful that God made himself known. [3]

You can fill up with God’s law, and if you do that well, good things will overflow….

God’s covenant with His people through the Law of Moses was a conditional covenant; that is, if they kept it, good things would follow. If they didn’t bad things would follow. In some ways obedience to the law was a case study in spiritual cause and effect. That’s an idea we can wrap our minds around because we see it all the time. If we practice, work, use self-discipline – good things happen. We can lose weight or build muscle or make money or hit a softball or graduate or expand our vocabulary or play an instrument or get really good at Wii bowling if we know the rules and try hard enough….

But through his prophets, God warned over and over again: “This is not going to go well.” And it didn’t. The Law made it official that we the people (as seen in the Israelites) are never good enough.  God can tell us exactly what He wants us to do, and on our own we will just not do it. On our own, we will inevitably fill ourselves with sin even though we know it will eventually spill out of us and onto others. This is in line with how Paul describes the Law:

“The Law’s purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time.”  (Galatians 3 as written in commentary by The Message)

The law unfortunately answers one of life’s most important questions: Can I be good if I try hard enough?  No.  It shows you the path of life,  and if you stay on that path it will give you life, but… you will wander off of it. [4]

Question #2: Why didn't Moses want them to see his fading glory?

A glory that is so obvious to everybody – and then fades -  is a problem. To all the people watching, apparently Moses was tight with God – and then he wasn’t.  I suspect Moses was ashamed of this. Pride makes us hide the parts of our life that shame us.  Ron Ritchie writes (I think correctly):

“He realized that as long as he wore the veil, the people showed him respect because they believed that he was still visiting God; otherwise, why would he keep the veil on? But when Moses had not been in the presence of God, the glory of God began to fade underneath the veil…. For Moses the veil represented a false sense of competence, power, authority, glory, and pride. He used it to cover his fear and inadequacy… he sought in his own strength to compensate for the glory that had faded from his face.”[5]

That veil couldn't hide the fact that God’s glory was leaking out through the cracks made by sin. If I understand this passage correctly, Moses couldn’t keep God’s glory, and he was ashamed.

Question #3: Why are we unveiled now?

Because a) we do reflect an ever increasing splendor as we are transformed into the image of Christ,  and b) we don’t need to be ashamed when we fail.  And perhaps – much to our surprise – even in our failure the glory of God does not fade.

Let’s look more closely at Paul’s claim.  He expands the symbolism of hiding behind the veil and writes that followers of Jesus are not meant to hide.  They are meant to be on display; in his image with a mirror, they look at the glory of God without shame, and they fully reflect the permanent, ongoing transformative presence of the glory of God in their life.

Our life with Christ is meant to be an ongoing transformation in which we increasingly behold the person and work of Christ, increasingly become changed deep in the core of who we are, and increasingly become filled in such a way that we display the glory of God by His presence and work in our lives.

We remove the veil because it’s not about us. When we have the glory of Christ in our lives, it won’t be because we were awesome. It will be because “we are transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendor into his own image.”

It’s an ongoing process. There’s no way we can escape being sinful and flawed – and that’s okay. After all, who can deny that we still have our ups and downs? We all have times when our reflection wavers, when what spills out of us when we go over the rough roads in life is just not anything we are proud of.

So what is the glory of Christ in our lives that does not fade and should never be hidden? I believe it is the grace and forgiveness that accompanies Christ’s salvation.

The way in which Jesus intends for the world to see his glory is not through our ability to live perfectly. We don’t need to be a crystal clear glass filled with AquaFina.  We can be a bottle from the trash filled with muddy rain water and still show God’s glory, because it is through God’s strength in our weakness that His glory is seen.

Let’s revisit last week. I made the point that people will reach conclusions about Jesus by looking at the people of Jesus.  That’s daunting. Here’s where we are relieved of the pressure to be perfect.

When we offer Christ to others, we don’t need to wait until we are perfectly clear of mud and junk, and we don’t need to wait to “unveil” who we are until we can present ourselves just right. We aren’t offering us to other people. We are offering a Savior who takes us with all our impurities and makes us new.

We are meant to, with uncovered lives, without shame over the visible gauge of our ability to be good or bad on full display, let God display what real glory is like in the person and work of Jesus.

___________________________________

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/10/health/smoking-trigger-rating-movie/

[2] For more info on this issue, go here: https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7022283827.pdf

[3] For a longer look at the content, context and purpose of the Old Testament law, check out the series at TC Apologetics. Here is a link to the first post in the series: http://tcapologetics.org/old-testament-law-an-introduction/

[4] “If people in our Christian fellowships today were to announce that they had decided to keep God’s law, we would probably be skeptical and alarmed. We probably would take them aside for counseling and possibly alert other responsible people in the group to keep an eye on them. We would be sure nothing good would come of it. We know that one is not saved by keeping the law and can think of no other reason why one should try to do it. This leaves us caught in a strange inversion of the work of the Judaizing teachers who dogged the footsteps of Paul in New Testament days. As they wanted to add obedience to ritual law to faith in Christ, we want to subtract moral law from faith in Christ. How to combine faith with obedience is surely the essential task of the church as it enters the twenty-first century.” ― Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

[5] https://www.pbc.org/system/message_files/8276/4337.html

Aliens and Strangers

John 15:18-19 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”

John 17:16 "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Philippians 3:20 “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Hebrews 11:13-16 “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

1 Peter 2:12 “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Ephesians 2:19 “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhPVOyzZBqk[/embed]

There is no escaping the idea that followers of God should not feel at home in this world. That doesn’t mean the world is not meaningful, beautiful or enjoyable. It just means that there must always be a godly discontent with the cultural status quo; a holy conviction that this world is broken and in desperate need of redemption; an abiding sense that we are what Moses referred to himself as: ‘a stranger in a strange land’ (Exodus 2:22).

When I was raised Mennonite, this tension was obvious all the time.

• We dressed differently.

• We didn’t have TVs or go to movies.

• We didn’t listen to secular music.

• We didn’t celebrate Halloween, and the cultural trappings of Christmas and Easter were very carefully monitored.

• We were pacifists, and every President is the Commander-in-Chief. All who pay taxes give money to the military. There is simply no way a historically grounded Mennonite can participate in the political process without a deep awareness of being a stranger in a strange land.

I’m not saying this made us holy or better. There are reasons you don’t see this list replicated in my home. My point is that we were different, and we felt it all the time. There was a constant reminder that our ultimate loyalty was elsewhere, and that awareness fundamentally shaped our lives. It might have been poorly expressed, and it had a lot more to do with tradition than the Bible, but the message was clear.

I was recently talking with a Mennonite friend who said that this election causes him no more angst than he normally feels when an election nears. He’s well aware that this world is not his home, and that the candidates are not the answer the world needs. From his perspective, this election quandary is in some ways a blessing. Now the whole church has to face this reality, because the United States feels less and less like home for Christians. And the more we are reminded that our citizenship is in Heaven, that’s not a bad thing.

I have another Mennonite friend who teaches at a Christian college in the Bible Belt. He recently spoke sadly of the lack of students really passionate about their faith. There could be lots of reasons, but the bottom line is that he thinks his students are too comfortable. They've never felt different enough. They are too comfortable in an American Kingdom that is often very much at odds with the Kingdom of God. At best they lack passion; at worst they are leaving their faith.

But it’s not just college students who are losing their sense of alienation and exile. The church in general is struggling with this.[1]

"Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change." We have very little time, he believes, to reverse these trends... African Christian and famous missions scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh told Christianity Today recently that "the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete.”[2]

While I was reading the news last week an example caught my eye.

“Overall, the economy is the top concern for Americans regardless of religious affiliation (30%). National security (17%) and personal character (17%) also are significant issues. Supreme Court nominees (10%), immigration (5%), religious freedom (2%), and abortion (1%) are less important. ‘For churchgoers and those with evangelical beliefs, their pocketbook and personal safety are paramount,’ said McConnell. ‘Moral issues aren’t a priority for many of them.’”

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/october/most-evangelicals-not-voting-trump-beliefs-identity-lifeway.html

It’s not that Christians desiring economic health or safety is a problem. It’s just hard to see how to make an argument that the Bible tells us to prioritize money and safety over the protection of human life, just immigration policies or religious freedom. I’m trying to envision Paul being handed this list and asked with what things the church should be most concerned

I want us to wrestle with the idea that there is something about being a committed follower of Christ that will inevitably and inescapably reveal the chasm between our earthly and heavenly kingdom. It should be clear to us.

• Every time we go through the checkout line at Meijers and see the magazines that objectify women and thrive on vicious gossip, that should feel strange to us.

• When we drive past billboards that use sex to sell products, that should feel strange, not normal.

• When we turn on the radio or TV and listen to or watch the celebration of sin, that should feel strange.

• When we hear language that is casually vulgar and demeaning, that kind of conversation should feel strange.

• When we see commercials that insist things will bring us happiness

• When see the racism that still exists

• When we vote this year, we should feel like strangers who inhabit a strange land, exiles not at home in this foreign land.

But we have to be careful. If this lingering feeling of alienation drives us inward or makes us retreat or causes us to lash out in anger, we are missing the purpose of this holy dissatisfaction. I believe God puts this reminder in us to motivate us to engage and redeem our culture for our good and His glory.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9gfNW5otE[/embed]

First, our hearts are meant to be broken by the fallen state of the world.

David wrote: “By the waters of Babylon, we sat and wept as we remembered Zion.” (Psalm 137:1) That was a proper response for living in Babylon. It’s not that Babylon wasn’t beautiful. It had the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders Of The World. It was a cultural marvel. It’s just that the worldview, the vibe, the moral climate was terrible. It broke their heart to see Babylon in contrast with a land characterized by the things of God.

How often do we weep for our American Babylon as we think about how far we have wandered from the goodness of the Kingdom of God? It’s easy to see the latest celebrity who makes terrible life choices and jeer. It’s easy to see political candidates and just get mad. It’s easy to read articles about how the world is descending into madness and get hardened and cynical. It’s easy to muster arguments for why the last natural disaster was clearly a judgment by God against some group of exceptionally bad sinners.

But that’s not the biblical call (and the last one’s just not biblical)[3]. We should be broken. We should be praying; we should be weeping for the cycle of sin that unfolds in so many lives including our own; we should be begging God for the salvation, healing and restoration of everyone.

Our hearts are meant to be broken by the fallen state of the world.

Second, our broken hearts should motivate us to engage.

When the Jews were in exile, the prophet Jeremiah wrote:

“This is what the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies and God of Israel, says to those He exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses—make homes for your families because you are not coming back to Judah anytime soon. Plant gardens, and eat the food you grow there. Marry and have children; find wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, so that they can have children. During these years of captivity, let your families grow and not die out. Pursue the peace and welfare of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to Me, the Eternal, for Babylon because if it has peace, you will live in peace.” (Jeremiah 29: 4-11)

That’s a very specific order for the Israelites, so let’s consider how this command has played out over church history in other situation. In the early church, Christians were very good at redeeming things within their cultures, moving in and bringing with them the peace of God.[4]

• The New Testament Christians sang; they tithed; they ate ‘love feasts’ together; they listened to speakers. This wasn’t a new idea; every other follower of a religion did this at that time.

• The church took the iconic kriophoros, or lamb bearer, and used it to portray Christ as the Good Shepherd.

• The church used the praying figure of the pagan orant to symbolize Christian piety.

• The classic image of Jonah under the withered vine was based on the story and popular pictures of Endymion, a young man who fell in love with a goddess.

• A fresco of Christ as Orpheus in the Catacombs of Peter and Marcellus in Rome dates from the 4th century. Clement wrote, “Orpheus pacified wild beasts by the power of his song…Jesus’ new song tames ‘the most intractable of all animals – man.’”

Modern Christianity has done this as well.

• Christmas, Easter and Halloween have a mixed history, but the church has always found ways to take cultural celebrations and direct them toward God.

• We move into entertainment, entering into popular music and popular forms of storytelling and using that vehicle for the glory of God. How many times has the Matrix been mentioned from this pulpit?

• We enter into the flow of art and fashion and make things that reflect biblical values.

• We are politicians, businessmen, students, teachers, lawyers, laborers…

We don’t retreat from our culture. We embed ourselves in it. The first Christians didn’t move out of the neighborhood once they became disciples of Christ. They were just aware in ways they weren’t before that all around them was a broken and dying world that in some ways was terribly at odds with their new citizenship – and it broke their hearts, and they stayed there and sought to bring the reality of new life in the Kingdom of Heaven to earth. They prayed, “Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” - and then they did His will.

So our heart should be broken, and that should motivate us to engage.  

Third, we must remember the power of public witness.

Here’s the big question: what do people learn about Jesus from Christians? They can’t see him, obviously, but they can see us. And when they see people who claim they are being transformed so that they increasingly reflect Jesus, they reach conclusions about what Jesus must be like.

• People will assume that what we celebrate, Jesus would celebrate.

• People will assume that what we mourn, Jesus would mourn.

• People will assume that the stands we take are the stands Jesus would take; that the things we call virtues or vices are the things Jesus would call virtues or vices.

• They assume that the language we use online is Jesus approved.

• They assume the signs we carry and the things we shout are a reflection of the gospel message.

• They assume our attitude, our actions, and our speech reflect our Savior.

So how has the past month been going? If one of your friends was asked right now, “What did you learn about Jesus last month from ___”, what would they say?

Has our public witness strengthened or weakened the reputation of Christ and His Kingdom? We may be strangers, but we are called to be loving, truthful, and gracious strangers. Do we bring peace to the city? I don’t mean through compromise, but through our presence: our integrity, our words, our actions, our attitudes, the proper ordering of our loves as we model what ought to matter most. Has God been glorified in Traverse City because our lives can’t help but point others toward our glorious Savior?

Here’s my challenge to you this week.

• Develop and awareness of being a spiritual exile, a foreigner, a stranger.

• When this becomes clear, let your heart be broken for this strange land.

• When your heart is broken, let that engage you; become even more involved in our community as you work and pray for peace to come to our land as we bring the presence of Jesus to all those around us.

• Let your witness point toward the fullness and the hope of life in the Kingdom of God.

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[1]http://www.christiantoday.com/article/american.study.reveals.indulgent.lifestyle.christians.no.different/9439.htm

[2] http://www3.dbu.edu/jeanhumphreys/SocialPsych/evangelicalmind.htm

[3] http://empiresandmangers.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-frankenstorm-judgment-from-god.html

[4] “Borrowing From The Neighbors.” http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-near-eastern-world/borrowing-from-the-neighbors/

Christian Character In Three Easy Steps! (You Won’t Believe #2!!!)

There is a tension in the Christians life between what God does for us and what God expects us to do. God is always at work doing something in us and for us that we can’t accomplish on our own power, but the Bible is also clear that God expects us to participate in the building of our lives. 

“Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand; and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on the house; and it fell.  And great was its fall.”(Jesus, in Matthew 7:24-27) 

Jesus is the rock on which we build a foundation of life that will stand in the midst of storms. But we build. Whether on sand or stone, we will build something. After talking about people who were commended for their faith, Paul wrote,

“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...” (Paul, in Hebrews 12)

Jesus is the author of our faith and the finisher of our faith. There is no righteousness we can earn or attain on our own merit. God does all the heavy lifting when it comes to salvation. However, we were not saved for complacency. We throw off everything that hinders. We lay aside every weight. God may have built the stadium, equipped it with every good and perfect gift, and put us on His own team, but we've still got to put our phone to the side, strap on the shoes and run. 

____________________________________________________________________________

I was recently watching a documentary on Rich Froning, multiple winner of the Crossfit Games, aka “the fittest man on earth.” Most people see him for three days on ESPN once a year when he obliterates the competition. But it’s what he has done relentlessly for years that got him to the top of the podium. He didn’t build muscle and stamina a couple weeks before the games.

There are other areas of life where we can observe commitment and then see output. Certainly natural strengths or weaknesses, past experiences and opportunities (or the lack of them) have an impact on what we accomplish, but generally speaking, we get what we give. No matter who you are and whether or not life has been good to you or hard for you, there is no substitute for faithful, committed hard work to take you to a better place than you are now.

From what I can see in the Bible, it is no different with character building. God has given us the privilege and responsibility of being what theologians call “significant moral agents.” In other words, what we do matters. Reaping and sowing is a principle God himself embedded in the world.

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap corruption;  whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:7-10)

 Jesus offers to take upon himself the eternal punishment for all the corruption we have sown into our lives. But whenever we plant something of spiritual or moral significance in our life, an appropriate crop begins to grow. This is the building or undermining of our character. Our training matters. Our sowing matters.

Here is a biblical truth that can be hard to accept: God does not gift character. God saves us from the eternal consequences of our sinful failure through his justification; God radically changes our identity through salvation (we are now children of God – Galatians 3:26); and through sanctification he continually transforms us into a Christ-likeness (think of the imagery of the vine and the branches in John 15)  But we still have the freedom to build or undermine our character in the ordinary moments of days, months, and years.

Now, God does not wait until we are perfect until He can accomplish something good with us. The Bible is loaded with stories of deeply flawed people that God uses for the good of the world and for His glory.  This is not about becoming good enough so God will choose you or use you. If that were the standard, none of us would ever be chosen or rise to the occasion. This is not about God noticing us because of how awesome we are. This is, however, about how the Bible shows discipline and character developing by God's grace in the slow, ordinary, plodding times of life.

 It’s not a popular thought. We live in a society that encourages us to see life not as a walk of baby steps, but of huge leaps and bounds 

• If I am going to lose weight, I want to be the biggest loser.  20 pounds over a year is hardly worth my time.  I want to win the show on TV by dropping 100 in a week.

• If I want a makeover, I don’t have time for small improvements over time.  I want an extreme makeover now while I am on vacation.

• I shouldn’t have to be a singer who works my way to the top through hard work and fortitude.  I want to be an idol with a big contract.

• If I want to learn to use the Force, now I can just close my eyes and really want to use the Force instead of train in the middle of nowhere with a little cryptic green guy (apologies, Star Wars fans).

• And dare I say, I want God to finish working in my life now, and be done teaching me now, to get me past my struggles with sin now, to fix my marriage now, and to answer my prayers now. I don’t have time to just do the next thing.  I want the next big thing !!!!  

This past week I was reading some prophecies or predictions for 2016. Most of them were full of exciting, grand, sweeping visions of how God is going to mightily move in nations, kingdoms, and the church. That may be true - God can do that kind of work in the world, of course.  But you know what I didn’t see?

 “God has revealed to me that this next year will be full of countless times when ordinary moments of faithfulness will build His people and His Kingdom. The Holy Spirit will move powerfully and help you not snap at your kids so that overtime what you plant as a parent will lead to a good relational harvest. You will face temptation, and you will need to train: humble yourself, seek accountability, and do the hard work of resisting temptation. You will be overlooked, under-appreciated, ignored and demeaned, but God’s faithful presence will be active in the midst of this to build your character for the good of the Kingdom and for His glory.”

I haven’t seen that yet. 

___________________________________________________________________________

Eugene Peterson once said:

“There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”

There are no three easy steps – which is why you won’t believe #2. Anyone who tells you there are shortcuts to character are lying to you. There is no escaping this Godly practice of doing the next thing: Being faithful in the walk of life, in little things when there is no apparent inspiration, no applause, no crowd, no obvious, immediate payoff to myself.  This is the means through which God so often does His restorative work of grace in us and around us.

As I look back, as meaningful as our marriage ceremony was, the vows my wife and I gave each other offered an inaccurate view of what we would face. There is poverty and wealth, there is sickness and health, there is joy and there is pain, there is passion and there is coldness, and there is arguing and there is making up, but more often than not the majority of our lives are lived somewhere in between, not leaping from momentous event to momentous event, but taking a Tylenol and doing the next thing. And the ‘next things’ become momentous. I like how Alexander Maclaren put it:

“If our likeness to God does not show itself in trifles, what is there left for it to show itself in?  For our lives are all made up of trifles.  The great things come three or four of them in the seventy years; the little ones every time the clock ticks.”

I’m sure God can make us mature in a moment if He wants to, but if the Biblical record (and all of church history and the lives of everyone I know) is any indication, He apparently does not.. He wants us to grow up moment by moment, relying on His Spirit, reading and obeying His Word, and living in a community of His people.

Let’s go back to Jesus’ parable in Matthew 7. When the storms of life arrive, we as follower of Christ will stand not because we were strong suddenly, by surprise, contrary to all expectations. We will stand because 1) God provided a foundation for our lives, and 2) we have built our character by hearing what Jesus has to say about holiness - and doing it. 

This is how discipleship works. After God saves us from ourselves and fills us with His spirit, we commit to being disciples: following Christ, learning what it means to walk in holiness and integrity, putting one foot in front of the other day after day after day, for the good of His Kingdom and the glory of God. 

The Importance of Remembering

The past can be a tricky thing: it clearly forms us, but how much? Do we need to remember in order to move forward? Do we need to forget?  Is our history control our destiny or does it merely influence it? And most importantly, whatever has happened in our lives up to this point, is there hope?

Bob Kelleman, a Christian counselor, author, and speaker (http://www.rpmministries.org/blog/), has a great perspective on this. His claim is that the Bible reveals to us not only the importance of remembering our past, but making sure we grow in Christian maturity as we do so.

Remember (humbly)

“Remember” is used 167 times in the Bible (at least in the NIV), reminding us of the importance of remembering. We see it both in the Old Testament and the New. Usually, it has to do with remembering events in order to remember that God was at work in the midst of those events 

• “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.  Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock.  He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”  But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.”  Deuteronomy 8:11-18

• In Deuteronomy 32, God warns Moses that the Israelites will break their covenant with him. He tells Moses to write down a song of God’s presence (with all the interaction, faithfulness, and blessings and cursing of the covenant) and teach it to all the people so it will be a witness. One portion of the song says, “Remember the days of long ago; think about the generations past. Ask your father, and he will inform you. Inquire of your elders, and they will tell you.” Deuteronomy 32:7

• When Jesus and disciples participated in what we call the Last Supper, Jesus said, “Keep doing this to remember me” (Luke 22:19).

 There are times we read about forgetting the former things, but this idea is often misunderstood. Here are the two verses I hear quoted the most:

•  After citing all the ways He has redeemed or saved the Israelites, God says through Isaiah, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (NIV) Isaiah 43:18-19

• Paul writes in Philippians that “…forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (NKJV) Philippians 3:13-14

The writers were not urging people to develop amnesia. In both cases, it means not being distracted by success and blessing. Isaiah was referring to good things, not bad ones (and actually tells them several verses later to “review the past for me”). Philippians is referring to good things in Paul’s life that could lead to self-righteousness, pride in personal accomplishments, and complacency. Bruce Springsteen was right: Glory days really will pass you by. Remembering the past is important for at least two reasons: our past clearly forms or informs who we are today, and God was present (and He is worth remembering).

Reflect (honestly)

Trying to suppress bad memories can become a refusal to face and deal with life. We talk a lot about “coping mechanisms” such as drinking and drugs and food, at least when they are used to numb our pain, emptiness, or guilt. But what about when we simply refuse to be honest about the things that have formed who we are?  Is that not an unhealthy coping mechanism too? Here’s a daunting verse: “Remember and never forget how angry you made the LORD your God out in the wilderness.” Deuteronomy 9:7 

Never forget how angry they made God!?  This is not a verse we see on coffee mugs or taped on bathroom mirrors. That’s a reference to the whole Golden Calf Episode, though Moses promptly lists four more places where they really made God angry because of their disobedience ( “You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah…Kadesh Barnea.” 22-23). This was hardly a shining moment in Israelite history, but there it was. Nobody was allowed to dodge it.

We should be honest with ourselves, God and others regarding our past.  Can you remember times when you angered God – or your spouse, kids, parent, boss, friends – because of your sin? If this principle holds true, don’t forget how it impacted those around you. It can be a great incentive to stop your drifting back into that part of your life, and it can give clarity about what kind of person you are striving to be. Reflecting on the devastation of sin also reminds us of the grace of a God who forgives us even after the worst of our sins, as well as the forgiveness people around us have offered to us.

Repent (sincerely)  

In Revelation, after John gives props to the church in Ephesus for their perseverance and godly deeds, we read an admonition as well: “You have forsaken the love you had at first. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Revelations 2:5). 

I am more and more convinced that true, life-changing repentance can only happen after honest acknowledgment of who we are and what we have done. The goal – at least when it comes to memories of things we have done wrong – is not shame but repentance and then renewal and restoration. In Psalms 51, written after his disastrous affair with Bathsheba, David modeled what to do after falling from the heights: remembering and repenting of his heart and his actions – and then receiving God’s renewal:

“Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight… Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” (Psalm 51:1-4; 10-12)

Notice how David adds repentance to his recollection of events, then anticipates the forgiveness and mercy of God on the other side of the chaos that resulted from his sin. Remember….reflect, repent….God will be faithful.

Reinterpret (carefully)

Reflecting and repenting have a lot to do with looking at our choices and our lives. There are also plenty of times when things are done to us that greatly impact our lives as well. Joseph makes this comment to his brothers, who sold him into slavery: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)

The language in Hebrew captures both a physical or symbolic weaving together, like a tapestry with a good or evil plan. Joseph looked back at his life and found where and how God intervened in his story to create some type of beauty and life where there would have been none. In this situation, Joseph was able to see in a very practical way that God had brought a good result (“the saving of many lives”) from a bad situation.

I preached on this a number of years ago, and in looking back at my notes I think I got something wrong. I said this was about Joseph. It’s not. It involves Joseph, but it’s about “the saving of many lives.” Joseph wasn’t saying, “They intended harm for me and now God has intervened by my good.” He’s saying, “They intended harm for me and now God has intervened for the sake of the world.” The story of Joseph is rightly highlighted as pointing toward the arrival of Jesus, [1] so I am not going to tell you that you are Joseph. Joseph was Joseph, and God used his life uniquely. 

However, his story highlights an important point: God can take a life that has absorbed a lot of harm and bring about good - for the sake of the world. Many times we look at our lives and assume we are worthless in the overall scheme of things. (“Do you know what has been done to me? Do you know how I have been betrayed and used?”) But God is not stumped by sin and chaos. Just read the Bible – God is very, very good at taking broken, sinful, messed up lives and redeeming them for His glory and for the good of the world.

Reinterpret does not mean lie, ignore or make up stuff to make the story better. It just means that we should not give up on a God who is very, very good at taking situations or people that have been harmed and using them in the healing of the world (think of all the people whose past makes them such good ministers of the hope of the gospel now).

Reinterpret is a challenge to see how your past experiences allow you to minister to others for their good and God’s glory.  

Retell (boldly)

We engage in an act of worship by retelling our stories in a way that shows how God weaves goodness into the world. Our testimony of God’s involvement in our life is never meant to be just about us – it must honor and glorify God and His role in redeeming our past, and it is meant to give hope to the world. Look at how David wraps up Psalm 51 (the one about Bathsheba): “Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
so that sinners will turn back to you... Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.”  (Psalm 51:13)

 Really? How will David teach this?  Well if the previous verses in chapter 51 are any indication, he will tell his story. He speaks as a transgressor and sinner in whom God was at work even in the midst of his sin. It is often in the retelling where we see that even the worst parts of our past can be reclaimed and retold for the glory of God. We don’t remember to wallow in our past sin and shame, but to remind ourselves and others of a God who present, faithful, and redemptive. 

[1] http://jewsforjesus.org/publications/newsletter/july-1985/08_joseph_jesus

Jesus: Redeemer and Savior

 "O Come, O Come Immanuel" is a classic Christmas carol about ransom, or redemption. While there is a lot of biblical language (Dayspring and Rod of Jesse), the dilemma is timeless: Without Christ, we are captives to sin, we live under the shadow of death and the grave, we are the lonely exiles. We are in need of someone who will save us.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for redemption is gaal. It can mean a number of things: 

• being freed from a bond

• buying back something that was lost or sold. (Think today of extreme debt – college loans, money owed to a hospital or to the IRS).

• the paying of a ransom to save someone from slavery or captivity.  We hear a lot today about the international slave trade – Christian Solidarity International is redeeming slaves for $50 to $100 in the Sudan right now. [1]

In the Old Testament, Goel is the term for the person who was the "redeemer." God is called Israel's goel numerous times (Deuteronomy 9:26 2 Samuel 7:23 1 Chronicles 17:21 Isaiah 52:3). He redeemed them from national misfortune (Isaiah 52:9; Isaiah 63:9) plague (Psalm 78:35, 52) disaster, (Genesis 48:16 Numbers 25:4, 9), and captivity (Egypt and Babylon). Isaiah wrote how those mourning in exile and darkness would one day see the arrival of redeemer to save them from all these things:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

 For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called
“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,
upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom to establish it, and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and for evermore.” (Isaiah 9:2-8)

 Isaiah adds later, 

“ I am the Lord. Beside Me, there is no savior. There is no other redeemer. Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. I am He.” (Isaiah 43:11)

 All the practical, physical ways that Israel’s God redeemed them was simply a foreshadowing or representation of the ultimate salvation that God was promising: redemption from sin or the results of sin (Psalm 130:8). The penalty of sin was death (as we see in the sacrificial system in the Old Testament). Yet God steps in as a Redeemer here as well.  Isaiah (once again) wrote:

 “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions (rebellion), he was bruised for our iniquities (sin); upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity (guilt) of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4–6)

In Jesus, the long-awaited redemption from sin arrived. We see this referenced again and again in the New Testament: 

• Matthew 1:21
 "And [Mary] will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus: for he will save his people from their sins."

• Acts 10:43
 "To him [Jesus] all the prophets witness that, through his name, whoever believes in him will receive remission of sins."

• Hebrews 9:11-12
 "…not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."

• Ephesians 1:7 
"In him [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his [God's] grace…"

• Colossians 1:14
 "In whom [Jesus] We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins…"

• Titus 2:14 “He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people for His own possession, eager to do good works.”

• Romans 3:24: “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in His blood…”

Jesus arrived to redeem people from the alienation brought about by sin, and he did so through his death and resurrection (Romans 4:25 ; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 ). The darkness and gloom over the land we sang about in “O Come Immanuel” was not primarily because life was hard. It was primarily because sin was wreaking havoc in the souls of those in the land. So God – through Christ – brought a great light. The joy and rejoicing and healing and life happen because Christ took the initiative to offer himself as a ransom on behalf of those enslaved to sin and death.[2]  So what does this redemption look like? How are our lives made beautiful? 

We are redeemed from sin, into life in Christ, with God’s people, for the glory of God.

Redeemed from sin. Once we have given ourselves to sin, we immediately incur a debt we cannot satisfy.  There are small ways in life where we can “save ourselves” – I paid off my college debt, for example. If I fail to do what I told my wife I would do to help clean up on Saturday morning, there’s always Saturday afternoon J  But the daunting nature of SIN is that we incur a debt that we cannot pay – “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)  In order to pay our own ransom, we would have to die. We need a redeemer, someone who will pay the price and ransom us, and that someone is Jesus Christ. We are delivered from ‘the law of sin and death’ by his life, death and resurrection. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.” (Romans 6:23)

Redeemed from sin, into life with Christ. This is the positive movement of a soul away from sin and toward peace and reconciliation with God. Christ didn’t just cancel our debt; He brought us into new life.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit." (I Peter 3:18) 

" God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." (Romans 5:6-10)

When we talk about the hope and peace of advent, this is what we are talking about. Peace on earth – goodwill toward those on whom His favor rests.” (Luke 2:14) “He is our peace.” Why? “You who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:13)

Redeemed from sin, into life with Christ, with God’s people. God does not redeem us into isolation. He intended to create a community of people would live in covenant community of commitment, obligation, and responsibilities with God and each other. When that happens, Christians increasingly demonstrate what it genuinely means to be God’s people. This is what Jesus meant when he said he would build his “church” not as a building, but as a community of people from all nations (Matthew 16:18; 28:19). This involves truth, repentance, forgiveness, grace, love, justice, mercy and holiness.

Christopher Wright has noted, “The people of God in both testaments are called to be a light to the nations. But there can be no light to the nations that is not shining already in transformed lives of a holy people.” It’s not just about you, or just about me, or just about any one individual. We are redeemed – and now I am talking about every way – to become ambassadors of Christ’s redemption. (Maybe “pay it forward” is the phrase is the phrase I am looking for?)

Redeemed from sin, into life with Christ, with God’s people, for the glory of God.

“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” (John 15:8) 

“For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:15)

“What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much patience those who are destined for destruction: and that He might make known the riches of His glory on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.” (Romans 9:22-23)

Ultimately, we aren’t redeemed for our glory (though we have been prepared for it). We aren’t redeemed to build the church (though that’s part of it).  We are redeemed so that the Redeemer is glorified. I like how David Vandrunen summarized this idea:

“Despair would seem to be the only logical response if all we knew about ourselves was our sinfulness and consequent condemnation before God’s judgment. But humility grounded in the gospel enables us to understand that we do have true worth and that we are, in fact, called to glory. It is not a worth that derives from our own efforts and not a glory we can achieve by our own strength. Rather, the gospel reveals our worth as those renewed in the image of God through Christ, empowers us to do works that are truly good and honorable, and gives us hope of a coming glory bestowed by Christ at his second coming…. 

God glorified himself in all his works, but is especially pleased to glorify himself through the glorification of his saints in Christ – whose glorification thus redounds back to the glory of God… May we fear and glorify him especially for doing precisely what it took, at such great cost to himself, to redeem lowly sinners and make us glorified citizens of a kingdom that can never be shaken.”   (God’s Glory Alone: The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith And Life)

God is not glorified in my life because I’m awesome. Those of you who know me well can vouch for this. God’s not glorified in any of our lives because we are awesome. God’s glorified in our lives because of His desire and ability to redeem even me – even you -  in spite of the cost, and because He has taken our broken lives and patiently been patching them back together.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUP3iNSw1kU

[1] “Redeeming Sudan’s Slaves,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1999/august9/9t9029.html?start=2

[2] http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/redeem-redemption.html