Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship
Sabbath, January 29, 2011
Here is a list of some of the things I know about you. You are:
Saints,
Faithful.
Holy and blameless.
Heirs of God, chosen by him even before you were born.
Marked by the Holy Spirit.
You have already been assigned a place in heaven with Jesus (Your name is on one of the seats on the judgment bench beside Jesus—see Rv. 3:20, etc.),
You are destined to do good works.
You are free to approach God with freedom and confidence.
You are in possession of an astonishing secret about the love of God.
You are filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
What do you think? Does this describe you? Does this describe your friends?
I didn't just dream these words up. I've taken these descriptions from Paul's letter to Christians in the town of Ephesus. Paul wrote similar things to many other groups of Christians as well. Christians are God's people and God's people are
Saints, 1:1
Faithful. 1:1
Holy and blameless. 1:4
Heirs of God, chosen by him birth. 1:5
Marked by the Holy Spirit. 1:13
Already assigned a place in heaven with Jesus. 2:6
Destined by to do good works. 2:10
Free to approach God with freedom and confidence. 3:12
In possession of a magnificent secret comprehension of the love of God. 3:19
Filled with the fullness of God. 3:19
This is who we are. This is what we are. This is our identity. This privileged identity imposes some obligations on us. We are nobility and we carry the burden of noblesse oblige. Paul is just as emphatic about the nature of the obligations our privileged status imposes on us as he is about the status itself.
He challenges us to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. 4:1
We are to be completely humble and gentle; 4:2
Patient, bearing with one another in love. 4:2
Habitually speak the truth in love. 4:15
Live “in the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” 4:24
Put off falsehood and speak truthfully. 4:25
Let no unwholesome talk come out of our mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 4:29
Be imitators of God as dearly loved children. 5:1
Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 5:2
Utter no obscenity, foolish talk or coarse jokes. 5:4
Practice giving thanks. 5:4
There are a couple of ways to put these ideas of Paul to work in our lives.
First, cultivate our awareness of our identity, of our privileged status. This is one of the primary functions of worship. In our music we celebrate what God has done for us. We celebrate God's love for us. Our musicians lift our hearts. Their words and tunes and rhythm help us experience the facts of our faith. In our sermons, we assert the truth that is sometimes contrary to the apparent meaning of events in our lives.
The stronger and more vivid our awareness of our identity, the it will shape our words and behavior.
A second way to put Paul's words to work is to examine our lives. Especially our speech. Does it line up with the character of our Father? If not, maybe we need to do more to deepen or refine our awareness.
So how does your speech measure up? How does the speech of the people you voluntarily listen to?How about the words in the emails you forward?
Paul's ultimate goal for the words that come out of our mouths:
17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.
18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.
Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord,
20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Law and Spiritual Life
Sermon at Gig Harbor Adventist Fellowship, Sabbath, January 22, 2011.
Text: Psalm 1
Beautiful Bones
The most beautiful shape in the world is the female body. When we think of feminine beauty, we think of graceful curves and soft, warm touch. We do not think about the skeleton that lies beneath the skin. However, the reality is that human beauty is utterly dependent on a a sturdy, functioning skeleton.
When I was a Bible worker in New York, I gave Bible studies to a girl named Linda. She, her mom and her sister Gloria lived in a dingy apartment in Brooklyn. Linda was tall and thin and pretty. But Gloria had the magic personality. She was funny, cheerful, bright. She was fun to talk to. But in contrast to Linda, Gloria was not fun to look at. In fact, it hurt to look at her. She was just over four feet tall. She got around the apartment on crutches. She used a wheel chair for excursions away from the apartment. Her shoulders were terribly slumped. Her hands were twisted and gnarled. Gloria didn’t come from a family of short people. Her sister Linda was five feet six or seven. Gloria was so short because her skeleton was inadequate.
They told me it was called brittle bone disease. Medical people tell it's called Osteogenesis imperfecta. In this syndrome, the bones don’t form properly. They’re not strong enough to do their job. They are always breaking from just the normal activi. When Gloria was born she looked like a normal baby. But as she grew her deformity became more and more obvious. By the time I met her, when she was in her twenties, her body was peculiarly misshapen. Her life expectancy was short.
Gloria's defect highlights the obvious truth: human beauty, even the soft, gentle grace of the female form is absolutely dependent on strong, rigid bones, a sturdy skeleton.
In spiritual life law plays the role of bones and the skeleton. Without an appreciation for the order and structure of law we will be ineffective in our life with God.
What do I mean by “law?'
I mean the moral order, the notion that there are some things that are right to do and some things that ought not be done. Regardless of how I feel.
I mean practicing doing right. Lawful living includes the discipline of doing right, the habits of prayer, meditation, Bible reading, going to church, giving money, speaking courteously, telling the truth.
Healthy spiritual life does not exist apart from a belief in the moral order and a commitment to the practice of spiritual habits.
In his sermon on the mount Jesus outlined the wisdom of the kingdom of heaven. He warned us against anger, lust and greed. He challenged us to imitate our heavenly Father in mercy. He urged us not to worry and to practice the golden rule.
Then Jesus comes to the punch line, the grand climax of the sermon. It is the story of the two builders. One builds on sand, the other on rock. When a flood comes, one house stands, the other collapses.
The key to avoiding disaster, Jesus says, is putting into practice what he says. It's not enough to know what he says, to be aware of it. If we are going to avoid disaster, we have to put it into practice.
That's the way life works. Law is not some arbitrary overlay on life. It is a description of how life works.
If I want to do a hundred pushups, I will have to get up from the keyboard and start doing pushups. Merely reading the app on my Iphone will not bring me any closer to my goal.
The law of increasing my strength is that I have to do something. I have to exercise.
If I want to make music that will charm people and move them, I'm going to have to practice. No matter how much talent I have, unless I practice, I will never make the kind of music I can hear in my head.
If I hope some day to be a National Merit Scholar. I will have to engage in school work before my senior year in high school.
If I want to enjoy an effective spiritual life, I am going to have to put into practice the “laws,” the instruction, that Jesus gave.
No amount of “faith” will substitute for actually doing the practice.
Law and Love
What about love? Can't we just love and forget about law? Isn't Christianity all about relationships. What do we need law for?
Law, in the sense of a morality that is greater than any human authority is a powerful protector of love. It helps to distinguish true love from dangerous and false counterfeits.
The world is heavy with abuse–battered wives, children who are assaulted, harangued, sexually used by their parents or other adults, employees misused by employers, parishioners subjugated by clergy and citizens by tyrants. This abuse happens because of failures to appreciate law. Notice these kinds of evils happen inside relationships. They may be sick relationships, but they are relationships nevertheless. Law—morality, duty, conscience—stands above the relationship and judges it.
Persons with power often attempt to impose on subordinates by claiming the prerogatives of relationship: Lie down, girl; I’m your father. Don’t question me, church member; I am your shepherd. Don’t challenge me, citizen; I am your leader. Tragically victims often comply because they feel obligated by the relationship. Children are especially vulnerable because they are so relationally oriented they don’t have the mental capacity to clearly differentiate between what an authority figure requires and what is truly right.
.
The truth is, no matter who you are, if what you want is wrong, it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if you are Mom or Dad or Pastor or Teacher or President. It’s wrong because the law is greater than any person. Law is capable of giving authoritative judgment about any relationship. “Love” does not make everything all right. “I’m doing this because I love you” does not justify capricious or cruel discipline. Assurances of affection and admiration do not justify sexual violations. Relational connections are not everything. Healthy relationships do not violate boundaries set by law. (Please note, I am not referring to law in the sense of something legislated by human governments. I am referring to law as the deep principles that permeate the universe.)
Love cannot flourish where moral law is violated. We cannot build better families or better civic or ecclesiastical communities by diminishing people’s regard for law.
Law cannot create love. Law cannot create meaningful, intimate relationships. But law builds the fence that protects the garden of love from the assaults of competing lovers, restless hormones, boredom, and the exhaustion that comes from the relentless pace of modern life. Law provides the skeleton of duty and faithfulness that supports the warm beauty of love.
Law and God
Beyond its utility as a guardian of children, vulnerable teenage beauties, long-term marriages and effective government and business operation, the Adventist concept of law can be a tremendous aid for people who struggle with doubt about God.
Some people have an instinctive, deep confidence in God. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Their faith is simple and untroubled. But for many, the question, can God be trusted? is intensely problematic. Is God good? Is God fair? What right does God have to give orders? What right does he have to act as judge of all the earth?
One of the major projects of Adventist theology has been to address this question. Historically, it was a major theme in the writings of Ellen White. More recently this has served as a dominant theme in the theology of Graham Maxwell.
Adventists believe that law in its most fundamental form is not an arbitrary imposition of rules by God upon humans, rather law is a description of the habits of God, or in the language of Ellen White, “law is a transcription of the character of God.”
God is not right merely because he says so. God is right because there is an absolute congruence between what he requires and what he is/does. The very structure of the universe is a reflection of God. Our inescapable human sense of right and wrong is a reflection of God. God himself operates within boundaries, within limits. God must do right. Not simply in the sense that if God does it, it is right, but in the sense of that God himself is bound by the norms which he expressed in creation and which govern our best thoughts and sensibilities.
This conviction connects with multiple points of our doctrinal statements–creation, salvation and hell, judgment, the nature of humanity, the Bible. It distinguishes us from the theology of the reformation. Martin Luther embraced a philosophical view called Nominalism. The effect of this theology was to reduce human questions about divine justice to irrelevance. If God called something right, it was right just because God said so. There was no objective, universal criteria by which the Creator could be evaluated. Adventists, on the other hand, have insisted that human questions matter. Every human question about justice and fairness will be dealt with before history is finished and we enter the eternity of bliss. Law may be a divine creation, but having created it, God himself is defined in part by law and will not violate it.
Escaping the Tyranny of Law
As I entered my teen years, I began to try my hand occasionally at cooking. I began with really complicated things like oatmeal. I’d carefully read the directions on the oatmeal box, then carefully measure the ingredients into the kettle, adding them in just the order listed.
Other mornings, I watched Mother make oatmeal. She didn’t measure anything. She held the kettle under the faucet for a moment or two, added salt by pouring it into her hand before dumping it in. Then once the water boiled, she picked up the round Quaker Oatmeal box and poured. She stirred the oats a couple of times, sometimes added a bit more, put the lid on and a little later served breakfast.
She had much the same approach to biscuits. Dump in some flour. Dump in some sugar. Pour a bit of salt into her hand and dump that in. She did use a spoon for the baking powder, but did not use a measuring cup for the milk or oil.
Now, when I made biscuits, I got out the cook book and read the directions a dozen times. I used a knife to level off each cup of flour as I measured it. I used measuring spoons for salt and sugar and baking powder. I used a glass measuring cup for the milk and oil. Then I carefully counted the number of times I turned the dough. (Betty Crocker says to knead it fifteen times.)
As a teenager in Memphis and later a bachelor in my own apartment in Times Square, I dreamed of escaping the tyranny of the cookbook. I wished I could dump and stir like Mother. So I tried. And I threw away pots of oatmeal too salty to eat and trays of biscuits that even the dog couldn’t chew. So it was back to the recipes.
But over time, amazingly, it has happened. I can now cook oatmeal without reading the directions on the side of the box, and my kids will eat it. (Most of the time.) I can make pretty good biscuits without pulling down the cookbook. I even serve them to company.
I’ve been delivered from the tyranny of recipes.
Which is a silly thing to say. If you cook at all, you know what’s really happened: the law of teaspoons and cups has moved from the side of the oatmeal box into my head and hands. Whether I use a teaspoon or my hand to measure the salt, whether I use a measuring cup or estimate as I pour the oats from the box, edible oatmeal results from getting the proportions right.
It is certainly more convenient to have the proportions in my mind than to be a slave of the words and numbers on the side of the box. I prefer dumping and stirring to measuring. And having internalized the proportions, I’m free to innovate. I can add raisins to the oatmeal or apple slices and dates. I can make sweet biscuits for strawberry shortcake. But the only way to make good oatmeal or delicious biscuits is to approximate the proportions printed on the box or in the book.
So with life. The only way to build a good life is to approximate the laws written in the Book. Sure, slavish attention to the details of law is not the mark of a mature Christian. And the law works better as internalized principles, than as a collection of specific rules. But those who think they can make a better life by escaping the tyranny of the law will probably end up with oatmeal salty as Fritos and biscuits hard as rocks.
Text: Psalm 1
Beautiful Bones
The most beautiful shape in the world is the female body. When we think of feminine beauty, we think of graceful curves and soft, warm touch. We do not think about the skeleton that lies beneath the skin. However, the reality is that human beauty is utterly dependent on a a sturdy, functioning skeleton.
When I was a Bible worker in New York, I gave Bible studies to a girl named Linda. She, her mom and her sister Gloria lived in a dingy apartment in Brooklyn. Linda was tall and thin and pretty. But Gloria had the magic personality. She was funny, cheerful, bright. She was fun to talk to. But in contrast to Linda, Gloria was not fun to look at. In fact, it hurt to look at her. She was just over four feet tall. She got around the apartment on crutches. She used a wheel chair for excursions away from the apartment. Her shoulders were terribly slumped. Her hands were twisted and gnarled. Gloria didn’t come from a family of short people. Her sister Linda was five feet six or seven. Gloria was so short because her skeleton was inadequate.
They told me it was called brittle bone disease. Medical people tell it's called Osteogenesis imperfecta. In this syndrome, the bones don’t form properly. They’re not strong enough to do their job. They are always breaking from just the normal activi. When Gloria was born she looked like a normal baby. But as she grew her deformity became more and more obvious. By the time I met her, when she was in her twenties, her body was peculiarly misshapen. Her life expectancy was short.
Gloria's defect highlights the obvious truth: human beauty, even the soft, gentle grace of the female form is absolutely dependent on strong, rigid bones, a sturdy skeleton.
In spiritual life law plays the role of bones and the skeleton. Without an appreciation for the order and structure of law we will be ineffective in our life with God.
What do I mean by “law?'
I mean the moral order, the notion that there are some things that are right to do and some things that ought not be done. Regardless of how I feel.
I mean practicing doing right. Lawful living includes the discipline of doing right, the habits of prayer, meditation, Bible reading, going to church, giving money, speaking courteously, telling the truth.
Healthy spiritual life does not exist apart from a belief in the moral order and a commitment to the practice of spiritual habits.
In his sermon on the mount Jesus outlined the wisdom of the kingdom of heaven. He warned us against anger, lust and greed. He challenged us to imitate our heavenly Father in mercy. He urged us not to worry and to practice the golden rule.
Then Jesus comes to the punch line, the grand climax of the sermon. It is the story of the two builders. One builds on sand, the other on rock. When a flood comes, one house stands, the other collapses.
The key to avoiding disaster, Jesus says, is putting into practice what he says. It's not enough to know what he says, to be aware of it. If we are going to avoid disaster, we have to put it into practice.
That's the way life works. Law is not some arbitrary overlay on life. It is a description of how life works.
If I want to do a hundred pushups, I will have to get up from the keyboard and start doing pushups. Merely reading the app on my Iphone will not bring me any closer to my goal.
The law of increasing my strength is that I have to do something. I have to exercise.
If I want to make music that will charm people and move them, I'm going to have to practice. No matter how much talent I have, unless I practice, I will never make the kind of music I can hear in my head.
If I hope some day to be a National Merit Scholar. I will have to engage in school work before my senior year in high school.
If I want to enjoy an effective spiritual life, I am going to have to put into practice the “laws,” the instruction, that Jesus gave.
No amount of “faith” will substitute for actually doing the practice.
Law and Love
What about love? Can't we just love and forget about law? Isn't Christianity all about relationships. What do we need law for?
Law, in the sense of a morality that is greater than any human authority is a powerful protector of love. It helps to distinguish true love from dangerous and false counterfeits.
The world is heavy with abuse–battered wives, children who are assaulted, harangued, sexually used by their parents or other adults, employees misused by employers, parishioners subjugated by clergy and citizens by tyrants. This abuse happens because of failures to appreciate law. Notice these kinds of evils happen inside relationships. They may be sick relationships, but they are relationships nevertheless. Law—morality, duty, conscience—stands above the relationship and judges it.
Persons with power often attempt to impose on subordinates by claiming the prerogatives of relationship: Lie down, girl; I’m your father. Don’t question me, church member; I am your shepherd. Don’t challenge me, citizen; I am your leader. Tragically victims often comply because they feel obligated by the relationship. Children are especially vulnerable because they are so relationally oriented they don’t have the mental capacity to clearly differentiate between what an authority figure requires and what is truly right.
.
The truth is, no matter who you are, if what you want is wrong, it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if you are Mom or Dad or Pastor or Teacher or President. It’s wrong because the law is greater than any person. Law is capable of giving authoritative judgment about any relationship. “Love” does not make everything all right. “I’m doing this because I love you” does not justify capricious or cruel discipline. Assurances of affection and admiration do not justify sexual violations. Relational connections are not everything. Healthy relationships do not violate boundaries set by law. (Please note, I am not referring to law in the sense of something legislated by human governments. I am referring to law as the deep principles that permeate the universe.)
Love cannot flourish where moral law is violated. We cannot build better families or better civic or ecclesiastical communities by diminishing people’s regard for law.
Law cannot create love. Law cannot create meaningful, intimate relationships. But law builds the fence that protects the garden of love from the assaults of competing lovers, restless hormones, boredom, and the exhaustion that comes from the relentless pace of modern life. Law provides the skeleton of duty and faithfulness that supports the warm beauty of love.
Law and God
Beyond its utility as a guardian of children, vulnerable teenage beauties, long-term marriages and effective government and business operation, the Adventist concept of law can be a tremendous aid for people who struggle with doubt about God.
Some people have an instinctive, deep confidence in God. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Their faith is simple and untroubled. But for many, the question, can God be trusted? is intensely problematic. Is God good? Is God fair? What right does God have to give orders? What right does he have to act as judge of all the earth?
One of the major projects of Adventist theology has been to address this question. Historically, it was a major theme in the writings of Ellen White. More recently this has served as a dominant theme in the theology of Graham Maxwell.
Adventists believe that law in its most fundamental form is not an arbitrary imposition of rules by God upon humans, rather law is a description of the habits of God, or in the language of Ellen White, “law is a transcription of the character of God.”
God is not right merely because he says so. God is right because there is an absolute congruence between what he requires and what he is/does. The very structure of the universe is a reflection of God. Our inescapable human sense of right and wrong is a reflection of God. God himself operates within boundaries, within limits. God must do right. Not simply in the sense that if God does it, it is right, but in the sense of that God himself is bound by the norms which he expressed in creation and which govern our best thoughts and sensibilities.
This conviction connects with multiple points of our doctrinal statements–creation, salvation and hell, judgment, the nature of humanity, the Bible. It distinguishes us from the theology of the reformation. Martin Luther embraced a philosophical view called Nominalism. The effect of this theology was to reduce human questions about divine justice to irrelevance. If God called something right, it was right just because God said so. There was no objective, universal criteria by which the Creator could be evaluated. Adventists, on the other hand, have insisted that human questions matter. Every human question about justice and fairness will be dealt with before history is finished and we enter the eternity of bliss. Law may be a divine creation, but having created it, God himself is defined in part by law and will not violate it.
Escaping the Tyranny of Law
As I entered my teen years, I began to try my hand occasionally at cooking. I began with really complicated things like oatmeal. I’d carefully read the directions on the oatmeal box, then carefully measure the ingredients into the kettle, adding them in just the order listed.
Other mornings, I watched Mother make oatmeal. She didn’t measure anything. She held the kettle under the faucet for a moment or two, added salt by pouring it into her hand before dumping it in. Then once the water boiled, she picked up the round Quaker Oatmeal box and poured. She stirred the oats a couple of times, sometimes added a bit more, put the lid on and a little later served breakfast.
She had much the same approach to biscuits. Dump in some flour. Dump in some sugar. Pour a bit of salt into her hand and dump that in. She did use a spoon for the baking powder, but did not use a measuring cup for the milk or oil.
Now, when I made biscuits, I got out the cook book and read the directions a dozen times. I used a knife to level off each cup of flour as I measured it. I used measuring spoons for salt and sugar and baking powder. I used a glass measuring cup for the milk and oil. Then I carefully counted the number of times I turned the dough. (Betty Crocker says to knead it fifteen times.)
As a teenager in Memphis and later a bachelor in my own apartment in Times Square, I dreamed of escaping the tyranny of the cookbook. I wished I could dump and stir like Mother. So I tried. And I threw away pots of oatmeal too salty to eat and trays of biscuits that even the dog couldn’t chew. So it was back to the recipes.
But over time, amazingly, it has happened. I can now cook oatmeal without reading the directions on the side of the box, and my kids will eat it. (Most of the time.) I can make pretty good biscuits without pulling down the cookbook. I even serve them to company.
I’ve been delivered from the tyranny of recipes.
Which is a silly thing to say. If you cook at all, you know what’s really happened: the law of teaspoons and cups has moved from the side of the oatmeal box into my head and hands. Whether I use a teaspoon or my hand to measure the salt, whether I use a measuring cup or estimate as I pour the oats from the box, edible oatmeal results from getting the proportions right.
It is certainly more convenient to have the proportions in my mind than to be a slave of the words and numbers on the side of the box. I prefer dumping and stirring to measuring. And having internalized the proportions, I’m free to innovate. I can add raisins to the oatmeal or apple slices and dates. I can make sweet biscuits for strawberry shortcake. But the only way to make good oatmeal or delicious biscuits is to approximate the proportions printed on the box or in the book.
So with life. The only way to build a good life is to approximate the laws written in the Book. Sure, slavish attention to the details of law is not the mark of a mature Christian. And the law works better as internalized principles, than as a collection of specific rules. But those who think they can make a better life by escaping the tyranny of the law will probably end up with oatmeal salty as Fritos and biscuits hard as rocks.
You will show me the path that leads to life;
your presence fills me with joy
and brings me pleasure forever. Psalm 16:11 TEV
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Lantern of God
Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, Sabbath, January 15, 2011.
Ephesians 1:22-23; 2:19-22; 5:8
We were camped in an informal camping area some distance off a remote gravel road. It was cold. There was snow on the ground and snow in the air. After we finished supper, Karin crawled into the tent. I helped get the sleeping bags zipped together and hung around until she was all snuggled in. Then I went for a walk. It was magic. Because of the snow, the road was obvious, even in the dark. The longer I walked the heavier it snowed.
After half an hour I turned around. The darkness was deeper. The snow fall was heavier. I began to wonder if I might walk right past our camp.
It was not a real worry, though, because before I left I had lit a hurricane lantern and set it on a large rock at our campsite.
Sure enough fifty yards from the turn off to our campsite, through the snow and the trees, I was beckoned by the warm light. The yellow glow of the lantern advertised a snug shelter from the freezing wind, a cozy, pre-warmed sleeping bag. Ease.
Hurricane lanterns live up to their names. They work in extreme conditions. A candle works fine inside a draft-free room. A bowl of kerosene with a wick draped over the side will work in some settings. But a hurricane lantern works outside when the wind is blowing and it's pouring rain. And on snowy nights in eastern Oregon. It even works on the wintery plains of Wyoming. You can hang a hurricane lantern on a nail outside the log cabin door to serve as a beacon for a cowboy finding his way in from tending the cattle.
The lantern makes possible the magic of light from the combination of flame and kerosene. Flame is not enough. Kerosene is not enough. Of course, a lantern without flame and kerosene is not worth much. It's when we bring together lantern, kerosene and flame that we have life-saving light.
The church is God's lantern in the world. It is in the church that God's presence and grace become visible and effective.
With all this affirmation of Jesus' role as the light of the world, it is surprising to read Jesus' words in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world.” You—disciples, believers, Christians, people like you and me. We are the light of the world!
Jesus is the light of the world. We are the light of the world.
Which connects strongly with several passages in the book of Ephesians.
Now the words of chapter 2:19-22
The church is the body of Christ, the very fullness of Christ! The church is the dwelling of God. We are God's temple. The church is the lantern which houses and displays the glory of God's presence and grace.
If a person is looking for God, God's intention is that they can find him by coming to church. God's intends the church to be a place, a community, where people can renew their connection with him. We can revive our faith by participating in the life of the church. And those who have never made a connection with God can begin their walk with God by connecting with the church.
The church is the medium through which God is most powerfully present in the world. It radiates hope in a hopeless world. It promises safety, security and belonging.
The church is the light of the world. Paul writes that God intends that his wisdom is to be evident “in the church.” (Ephesians 3:10). Paul prays that God will be glorified in the church (3:21). That's a wonderful affirmation. God has amazing confidence in us. It's a daunting challenge. I find myself wondering, “God, are you sure about that? Are you sure you want me to represent you?” The answer is yes. He does want me and you to serve as his representatives.
That's our job. When people meet us they are meeting God.
Going back to Paul's words about the church being the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way, it's natural for us to ask ourselves what we can do to make sure we are living up to this privileged status. What can we do to make sure we are truly The Light in the dark world?
In the current Adventist climate, the “proper answer” is, “We need the Holy Spirit.” Which, of course, is true. In fact, Paul says that God lives in the church through the Holy Spirit. (2:22). But this answer misses Paul's point. Paul does not say that seeking for and receiving a new measure of the Holy Spirit is the key to being filled with all the fullness of God. The key to radiating the glory of God is mentioned in several places in the book of Ephesians.
Then in chapter 4:
In both of these passages, the key to being filled with God, filled with Jesus is knowing God. When we know God we will radiate his presence and grace in a dark world? Knowing the height and depth and breadth of God's love.
Beware of strategies that focus over much on the Holy Spirit. Human effort to “acquire” the Holy Spirit is not a major theme in the Bible. The presence and work of the Holy Spirit are promised in John 13-16. What we are called to pursue is a full, rich, true knowledge of God. The key to being filled with God is knowing God. And this is something we can actively pursue.
The first thing we can do to deepen, enrich, purify, intensify our knowledge of God is to practice daily reinforcement of the good things we already know. Most of us are Christians. Many of us have been Christians for a long time. If someone were to give us a quiz we could give the right answers to questions about God. But often this knowledge gets swamped by all the knowledge we have from elsewhere in our lives—TV, radio, the internet, friends, bosses, coworkers, family.
We can make our factual knowledge more potent, more effective in our lives by daily refreshing our awareness of the good news. Some ways we can this are:
A second way to deepen and purify our knowledge of God involves more in depth exploration. We can do this through:
In addition to filling our lives with positive reinforcement, we can avoid things that erode or obscure our knowledge of God.
Limit our exposure to talk radio and TV news.
The world is actually safer than it was years ago. Children are less likely to be abducted. Fewer people are starving. I don't mean to imply the world is a safe happy place for all six billion of us, but if you are more aware of the threats and disasters than you are of the beauty and glory of the world, you need to reduce your consumption of negative input. Do not listen “to be informed.” Listen for the purpose of taking action. Listen and send money. Listen and contact your legislators. Listen and pray. But do not listen merely so you can be aware of the evil in the world. This kind of listening erodes our effective knowledge of God.
Listen to yourself. Do you speak more frequently about the trouble in the world or the blessings. Do you speak more passionately and enthusiastically about the gloom or the light? Do you celebrate goodness or decry badness more frequently and intensely?
In John 17, Jesus said, “This is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” We do not find eternal life for ourselves or others through the pursuit of an experience with the Holy Spirit. The function of the Holy Spirit is connecting us with God. The Spirit is not seeking to win our hearts to himself. Rather he acts on behalf of the Father and Jesus.
So please, let us give ourselves to enriching and purifying our knowledge of God. Let us build on the connection God has given us and continually seek even greater intimacy with him. Let us seek to replace the defective elements in our understanding that come from our families of origin, faulty education, our own brokenness and frailty. Lets refine our knowledge through prayer, meditation, reading, worshiping, and serving.
Let's do everything we can to make our congregation a community of light. Let's be the hurricane lantern of God, the indestructible, inextinguishable light in a world haunted by darkness.
Ephesians 1:22-23; 2:19-22; 5:8
We were camped in an informal camping area some distance off a remote gravel road. It was cold. There was snow on the ground and snow in the air. After we finished supper, Karin crawled into the tent. I helped get the sleeping bags zipped together and hung around until she was all snuggled in. Then I went for a walk. It was magic. Because of the snow, the road was obvious, even in the dark. The longer I walked the heavier it snowed.
After half an hour I turned around. The darkness was deeper. The snow fall was heavier. I began to wonder if I might walk right past our camp.
It was not a real worry, though, because before I left I had lit a hurricane lantern and set it on a large rock at our campsite.
Sure enough fifty yards from the turn off to our campsite, through the snow and the trees, I was beckoned by the warm light. The yellow glow of the lantern advertised a snug shelter from the freezing wind, a cozy, pre-warmed sleeping bag. Ease.
Hurricane lanterns live up to their names. They work in extreme conditions. A candle works fine inside a draft-free room. A bowl of kerosene with a wick draped over the side will work in some settings. But a hurricane lantern works outside when the wind is blowing and it's pouring rain. And on snowy nights in eastern Oregon. It even works on the wintery plains of Wyoming. You can hang a hurricane lantern on a nail outside the log cabin door to serve as a beacon for a cowboy finding his way in from tending the cattle.
The lantern makes possible the magic of light from the combination of flame and kerosene. Flame is not enough. Kerosene is not enough. Of course, a lantern without flame and kerosene is not worth much. It's when we bring together lantern, kerosene and flame that we have life-saving light.
The church is God's lantern in the world. It is in the church that God's presence and grace become visible and effective.
Jesus' ministry brought light to those in darkness (Matthew 4:16).
He called himself the light of the world. (John 8:12)
The Gospel of John says that Jesus was the light of humanity, that he lit up every person who comes into the world. (John 1:4, 9)
With all this affirmation of Jesus' role as the light of the world, it is surprising to read Jesus' words in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world.” You—disciples, believers, Christians, people like you and me. We are the light of the world!
Jesus is the light of the world. We are the light of the world.
Which connects strongly with several passages in the book of Ephesians.
Ephesians 1:22-23. God placed all things under Christ's feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.Notice the words, “The church is the fullness of Christ!
Now the words of chapter 2:19-22
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens,
but fellow citizens with God's people and
members of God's household,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
The church is the body of Christ, the very fullness of Christ! The church is the dwelling of God. We are God's temple. The church is the lantern which houses and displays the glory of God's presence and grace.
If a person is looking for God, God's intention is that they can find him by coming to church. God's intends the church to be a place, a community, where people can renew their connection with him. We can revive our faith by participating in the life of the church. And those who have never made a connection with God can begin their walk with God by connecting with the church.
The church is the medium through which God is most powerfully present in the world. It radiates hope in a hopeless world. It promises safety, security and belonging.
The church is the light of the world. Paul writes that God intends that his wisdom is to be evident “in the church.” (Ephesians 3:10). Paul prays that God will be glorified in the church (3:21). That's a wonderful affirmation. God has amazing confidence in us. It's a daunting challenge. I find myself wondering, “God, are you sure about that? Are you sure you want me to represent you?” The answer is yes. He does want me and you to serve as his representatives.
That's our job. When people meet us they are meeting God.
Going back to Paul's words about the church being the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way, it's natural for us to ask ourselves what we can do to make sure we are living up to this privileged status. What can we do to make sure we are truly The Light in the dark world?
In the current Adventist climate, the “proper answer” is, “We need the Holy Spirit.” Which, of course, is true. In fact, Paul says that God lives in the church through the Holy Spirit. (2:22). But this answer misses Paul's point. Paul does not say that seeking for and receiving a new measure of the Holy Spirit is the key to being filled with all the fullness of God. The key to radiating the glory of God is mentioned in several places in the book of Ephesians.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
may have power, together with all the saints,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--
that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 3:17-19
Then in chapter 4:
to prepare God's people for works of service,
so that the body of Christ may be built up
until we all reach unity in the faith and
in the knowledge of the Son of God and
become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 4:12-13
In both of these passages, the key to being filled with God, filled with Jesus is knowing God. When we know God we will radiate his presence and grace in a dark world? Knowing the height and depth and breadth of God's love.
Beware of strategies that focus over much on the Holy Spirit. Human effort to “acquire” the Holy Spirit is not a major theme in the Bible. The presence and work of the Holy Spirit are promised in John 13-16. What we are called to pursue is a full, rich, true knowledge of God. The key to being filled with God is knowing God. And this is something we can actively pursue.
The first thing we can do to deepen, enrich, purify, intensify our knowledge of God is to practice daily reinforcement of the good things we already know. Most of us are Christians. Many of us have been Christians for a long time. If someone were to give us a quiz we could give the right answers to questions about God. But often this knowledge gets swamped by all the knowledge we have from elsewhere in our lives—TV, radio, the internet, friends, bosses, coworkers, family.
We can make our factual knowledge more potent, more effective in our lives by daily refreshing our awareness of the good news. Some ways we can this are:
Bible reading. There are all sorts of ways to do this.
Online devotionals. There are a variety of sources of emailed daily devotionals.
Christian music.
Books on tape or CD. Great for commuting.
A second way to deepen and purify our knowledge of God involves more in depth exploration. We can do this through:
Sermons can challenge and question our present ideas and instinctive convictions, pushing us to consider things we might not have otherwise.A third way to enrich our knowledge of God is to engage in behaviors that reinforce our faith such as:
Books can open our minds and hearts. Both topical books and biographies and memoirs of people of faith can feed our own faith.
With both sermons and books, it is important to seek out input that builds our faith and confidence. Avoid input that increases your fear or your condemnation of other people and churches.
Attending church—the mere fact of attending, quite apart from the content of sermons or the words of the music, just going to church—tends to reinforce our faith in God.
For some of us, spending time in the out of doors will build our faith.
For nearly everyone, participating in acts of service will have a reflexive positive effect on our faith. As we participate with God in responding to human need, our own confidence in God will grow.
In addition to filling our lives with positive reinforcement, we can avoid things that erode or obscure our knowledge of God.
Limit our exposure to talk radio and TV news.
The world is actually safer than it was years ago. Children are less likely to be abducted. Fewer people are starving. I don't mean to imply the world is a safe happy place for all six billion of us, but if you are more aware of the threats and disasters than you are of the beauty and glory of the world, you need to reduce your consumption of negative input. Do not listen “to be informed.” Listen for the purpose of taking action. Listen and send money. Listen and contact your legislators. Listen and pray. But do not listen merely so you can be aware of the evil in the world. This kind of listening erodes our effective knowledge of God.
Listen to yourself. Do you speak more frequently about the trouble in the world or the blessings. Do you speak more passionately and enthusiastically about the gloom or the light? Do you celebrate goodness or decry badness more frequently and intensely?
In John 17, Jesus said, “This is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” We do not find eternal life for ourselves or others through the pursuit of an experience with the Holy Spirit. The function of the Holy Spirit is connecting us with God. The Spirit is not seeking to win our hearts to himself. Rather he acts on behalf of the Father and Jesus.
So please, let us give ourselves to enriching and purifying our knowledge of God. Let us build on the connection God has given us and continually seek even greater intimacy with him. Let us seek to replace the defective elements in our understanding that come from our families of origin, faulty education, our own brokenness and frailty. Lets refine our knowledge through prayer, meditation, reading, worshiping, and serving.
Let's do everything we can to make our congregation a community of light. Let's be the hurricane lantern of God, the indestructible, inextinguishable light in a world haunted by darkness.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Enriched with All Spiritual Blessings
Sermon preached at North Hill Adventist Fellowship, January 8, 2011.
Text: Ephesians One and Two
There is a note at the end about the relationship of this manuscript and the sermon as it was actually preached.
Ravi Zacharias travels the world as a Christian writer and speaker. He has spoken at presidential prayer breakfasts in Washington, D.C. And addressed the United Nations in New York. He's successful. But it didn't always look like his life was going to turn out that way.
For some reason his dad never liked him. As he got into his teen years, he gave his dad good reasons not to like him. His dad and granddad and greatgranddad before him had been highly respected scholars in India. Ravi did not take to studying. He got very, very poor grades in school. One when he was fifteen, his father called him in after reading his report card. “You're a complete failure,” his dad said. “You're an embarrassment to the family. You'll never make anything of your life.”
The words cut deep. In that culture shaming one's family was about as low as a person could go. What made it worse was that Ravi knew his dad was telling the truth. He knew he was failing in school. He knew that it was unlikely to change. He was never going to get good grades. He was never going to earn a degree that would open the doors for him professionally. So he was never going to be able to earn the kind of money his family expected.
He was worthless, hopeless and helpless.
And his dad continually reminded him of the fact. “Why are you such a failure?” his dad would demand.
When Ravi was younger, several times a week a Hindu holy man appeared at the end of the little lane in front of their house. The street was filled with people and animals and bullock carts, the teeming life of urban India. The holy man would lie down in the middle of all this activity and roll down the lane. People would make way for him. He would roll through the cow manure and dog poop and dirt. The man never washed. His face was scarred.
Why did he do this? It was his attempt to connect with his god. The more suffering and dirt he experienced, the closer he felt to his deity.
Ravi's dad beat him on occasion because of his worthless study habits and mischievous pranks, but Ravi would never have tortured himself in an attempt to please his dad. As stern and sometimes even cruel as his father was Ravi would never have imagined that inflicting pain on himself would have brought pleasure to his father. [Ravi Zacharias tells his story in Walking from East to West with the help of co-author R. S. B. Sawyer.]
None of us would roll down a poop-littered street in a loin cloth in an attempt to connect with God. We hear stories about people torturing themselves to earn God's favor and we recoil in horror. How could they even imagine such a thing. But many of us have heard messages of rejection like Ravi did. For some of us, the words of rejection, condemnation and scorn are carved deep in our souls.
Those words may have come from parents or from teachers. From brothers or sisters. From lovers or children. Preachers.
These words from people are turned by our minds into our own opinions. We find ourselves thinking of ourselves in the same kind of language we have heard from others. Ultimately, these human words become God's word in our minds. We hear God condemning us, rebuking us, scolding us, ridiculing us in the same language we have heard from people.
It's against this kind of background that the words of our scripture passage today are especially relevant.
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first two chapters of the book of Ephesians offer wonderful affirmations of God's love.
Paul, an apostle. An apostle is someone who has been sent. Paul had a commission from God to carry good news. This wasn't just Paul's idea.
And right at the beginning of this book, Paul gives away the heart of the good news: He says he's writing to the SAINTS in Ephesus. What does the word “saint” mean? Holy one. A holy person is someone who has been claimed by God. That is the primary meaning of the word. The word is also used to refer to the kind of character you would expect of someone connected with God. A holy person tells the truth, is compassionate, wise, good, generous, noble. But all those nice attributes are secondary to the first meaning of the word: claimed by God. Paul assures the people he's writing to that God claims them.
As if calling the people saints—claimed by God—wasn't good enough. Paul calls them the faithful ones. These are not spiritual losers. Paul is not writing to a church full of failed Christians. He calls them saints and faithful ones. And wishes them grace and peace.
Paul does not begin by scolding them or telling them how screwed up they are. Paul does not berate them for being less than perfect or for conforming to the world or for being lax in their spiritual life. Grace and peace to you. You guys are the saints. You are faithful. Good on you!
According to Christian theology, these words are not just for the people who lived in a city called Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia 2000 years ago. These words are for us, too. We are the saints. We are the faithful ones. You are the faithful ones. That's the message God is sending through Paul.
Grace and peace to you.
3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul writes, because he “has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Imagine being given a gift card to REI or Walmart or Costco or Nordstroms or Home Depot—fill in the name of your favorite store. Imagine that the gift card has no expiration date and is for an unlimited amount of money. Paul is saying that God has made available to us every spiritual blessing carried by the heavenly warehouse.
God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
You are rich. I am rich.
For most of this, this statement could almost produce a yawn. We say, yes, of course. But for some of us this is a daring assertion. It may even be troubling. How could it possibly be true that God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, because our life is full of pain and darkness.
I was talking earlier this week someone about spiritual warfare. He wanted to know how to think about the experiences of darkness, temptation and weariness that invade his life. Were these attacks by evil angels?
What did I think about spiritual warfare?
Great question. The book of Ephesians is the premier book in the Bible about spiritual warfare. And the first two chapters present the most important information we need to think wisely about spiritual warfare. Before we get to talking about “principalities and powers,” before we start talking about “armor,” we need to make sure we have deeply inhaled the truth expressed in these first two chapters.
We are saints—claimed by God. We are the faithful ones—that is we claim God. God sends grace and peace our direction. We have been enriched by all the resources of heaven. That's where we start.
Verse 4: 4 God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
You were God's idea. God was not your idea. God chose you. You did not initiate the relationship. God has been dreaming about you for a long time. As I have said a number of times before, God was not “stuck with you.” You were not a problem that was thrust uninvited into God's life. You are a problem that God eagerly embraced. (If you are reading this instead of listening to it, please hear the smile in my voice when I say the previous sentence. Sure, you cause problems for God sometimes. What of it? Everything and everyone we love sometimes interrupt the smooth flow of our lives.)
God chose us. God chose you. You are valued and desired and prized and treasured by God. (Did I get enough adjectives in there?)
In case you didn't get it, Paul says the same thing again using different words.
“In love God predestined us to be adopted as his sons.”
God predestined us. What does that mean? God made plans. God had every intention of making it happen. God was moving on it. He wasn't waiting to see if we were worth it, if we were interested, if it was going to be fun. God knew way back that he really wanted you in his life. He knew way back that he wanted you as part of his family.
He predestined you to be his son, his daughter.
What did he have in mind when he chose you, when he predestined you? He saw a future in which you would be with him holy and blameless. Not groveling and begging for mercy, not tolerated in spite of who you are, not endured. God sees you as admirable and successful. That's where he's taking you.
Verse seven: 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Our screw ups do not astonish God. They don't leave him scrambling to cover the problem. He anticipated the problem and already had a remedy in works ready to go. And notice the last part of this sentence. “in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.” There was nothing meager or minimal about God's response to our predicament. He lavished grace on us. His forgiveness is rich and abundant. It is more than enough.
Chapter Two takes to more familiar territory. Paul refers to being “dead in trespasses and sins.” Ah, now we feel better. Paul is finally getting back to where we are comfortable. Paul is saying the same thing as those parents, teachers, preachers, lovers, husbands and wives who have told us what jerks we are. Sinners. Miserable scumbags. Ah, that's better. Now Paul is telling the truth. Is that your reaction?
When you think of people what adjectives come to mind? Selfish? Wicked? Treacherous? Careful. When we describe people this way, we're taking the part of Satan who is known as the accuser.
Certainly there is a place to recognize human evil. But we don't need the New Testament to know something about evil. The good news of the New Testament is that evil is not the last word. It is not even the most significant word to be said about humanity. Humans are God's children, chosen by God to be holy and blameless. They have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. God has wonderful dreams for our future.
As we come close to God we will not be more and more impressed with human evil. We will find ourselves more and more sympathetic toward human frailty and failure. We will be come better at imagining sweet and good futures for even the most obnoxious people.
I am amazed at how Christianity has been hijacked by the devil. We are far more comfortable accusing and condemning people than we are affirming and blessing people. If Paul could call the Christians in Ephesus saints and faithful ones, why can't we call each other saints and faithful ones? In fact, we can. And we should.
Paul can never get too far away from the profound remorse he feels for having spent time persecuting Christians. He had blood on his hands. He was responsible for making wives into widows, children into orphans. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus, he was truly dead in trespasses and sins. But even for Paul, who had been a professional Christian-killer, God's grace was the number one reality. The most important message was that God had chosen him and all the believers in Ephesus to be his children.
They were the people God wanted in his family. We are the people God wants in his family. God was not waiting for Paul or others to prove their worth, to earn their way into the family.
For by grace (that is divine initiative) you have been saved.
Verse 19: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household,
We are fully included. We share the full privileges and responsibilities of citizenship and family connection. We expected to cooperate with God in his work in the world.
Verse 22. In him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Where does God prefer to hang out? Among us!
Knowing our lives personally and corporately are a temple, residence for God is a call to be intentional and deliberate about our lives. We are constructing the environment of God. So let's build with that in mind.
What to do?
First, fill your mind with the truth: God would rather die than live without out you. God wants you. He has blessed you with all spiritual blessings. He intended from way back before you were born to include you in his family. His forgiveness is larger than any screw up you are capable of pulling off.
Second. Choose not to feed the darkness. So avoid drugs and alcohol. Avoid talk radio and right wing TV and anything else that specializes in the cultivation of fear, anxiety and outrage. (How many efforts for the amelioration of human suffering have been initiated by the work of Rush and Glenn?).
Third, feed the light. Practice generosity. Practice charitable judgment. Listen to uplifting music. Read uplifting books. Watch uplifting movies. Talk to uplifting friends.
Then come back to the bedrock truth.
God likes you. God wants you. God has blessed you. Pass it on.
Amen.
This is the manuscript as I prepared it prior to preaching. When I preached, a metaphor came to mind that I thought was very helpful. Maybe I'll get around to writing it and posting it here. Maybe not. One of the ideas was this: We rescued a dog years ago. She had been abused. At first at our house she was "perfect," a perfection that was rooted in fear. She has lost her fear, and as a result has adopted an annoying habit of getting on the bed when we are not watching. We have never been able to train her to stay off the bed. She has trained us to close our bedroom door. Similarly, God has altered his existence to make sure that we are part of his eternal future. The Bible pictures God changing just as dramatically as the change it calls for and predicts in us.
Text: Ephesians One and Two
There is a note at the end about the relationship of this manuscript and the sermon as it was actually preached.
Ravi Zacharias travels the world as a Christian writer and speaker. He has spoken at presidential prayer breakfasts in Washington, D.C. And addressed the United Nations in New York. He's successful. But it didn't always look like his life was going to turn out that way.
For some reason his dad never liked him. As he got into his teen years, he gave his dad good reasons not to like him. His dad and granddad and greatgranddad before him had been highly respected scholars in India. Ravi did not take to studying. He got very, very poor grades in school. One when he was fifteen, his father called him in after reading his report card. “You're a complete failure,” his dad said. “You're an embarrassment to the family. You'll never make anything of your life.”
The words cut deep. In that culture shaming one's family was about as low as a person could go. What made it worse was that Ravi knew his dad was telling the truth. He knew he was failing in school. He knew that it was unlikely to change. He was never going to get good grades. He was never going to earn a degree that would open the doors for him professionally. So he was never going to be able to earn the kind of money his family expected.
He was worthless, hopeless and helpless.
And his dad continually reminded him of the fact. “Why are you such a failure?” his dad would demand.
When Ravi was younger, several times a week a Hindu holy man appeared at the end of the little lane in front of their house. The street was filled with people and animals and bullock carts, the teeming life of urban India. The holy man would lie down in the middle of all this activity and roll down the lane. People would make way for him. He would roll through the cow manure and dog poop and dirt. The man never washed. His face was scarred.
Why did he do this? It was his attempt to connect with his god. The more suffering and dirt he experienced, the closer he felt to his deity.
Ravi's dad beat him on occasion because of his worthless study habits and mischievous pranks, but Ravi would never have tortured himself in an attempt to please his dad. As stern and sometimes even cruel as his father was Ravi would never have imagined that inflicting pain on himself would have brought pleasure to his father. [Ravi Zacharias tells his story in Walking from East to West with the help of co-author R. S. B. Sawyer.]
None of us would roll down a poop-littered street in a loin cloth in an attempt to connect with God. We hear stories about people torturing themselves to earn God's favor and we recoil in horror. How could they even imagine such a thing. But many of us have heard messages of rejection like Ravi did. For some of us, the words of rejection, condemnation and scorn are carved deep in our souls.
Those words may have come from parents or from teachers. From brothers or sisters. From lovers or children. Preachers.
These words from people are turned by our minds into our own opinions. We find ourselves thinking of ourselves in the same kind of language we have heard from others. Ultimately, these human words become God's word in our minds. We hear God condemning us, rebuking us, scolding us, ridiculing us in the same language we have heard from people.
It's against this kind of background that the words of our scripture passage today are especially relevant.
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first two chapters of the book of Ephesians offer wonderful affirmations of God's love.
Paul, an apostle. An apostle is someone who has been sent. Paul had a commission from God to carry good news. This wasn't just Paul's idea.
And right at the beginning of this book, Paul gives away the heart of the good news: He says he's writing to the SAINTS in Ephesus. What does the word “saint” mean? Holy one. A holy person is someone who has been claimed by God. That is the primary meaning of the word. The word is also used to refer to the kind of character you would expect of someone connected with God. A holy person tells the truth, is compassionate, wise, good, generous, noble. But all those nice attributes are secondary to the first meaning of the word: claimed by God. Paul assures the people he's writing to that God claims them.
As if calling the people saints—claimed by God—wasn't good enough. Paul calls them the faithful ones. These are not spiritual losers. Paul is not writing to a church full of failed Christians. He calls them saints and faithful ones. And wishes them grace and peace.
Paul does not begin by scolding them or telling them how screwed up they are. Paul does not berate them for being less than perfect or for conforming to the world or for being lax in their spiritual life. Grace and peace to you. You guys are the saints. You are faithful. Good on you!
According to Christian theology, these words are not just for the people who lived in a city called Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia 2000 years ago. These words are for us, too. We are the saints. We are the faithful ones. You are the faithful ones. That's the message God is sending through Paul.
Grace and peace to you.
3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul writes, because he “has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Imagine being given a gift card to REI or Walmart or Costco or Nordstroms or Home Depot—fill in the name of your favorite store. Imagine that the gift card has no expiration date and is for an unlimited amount of money. Paul is saying that God has made available to us every spiritual blessing carried by the heavenly warehouse.
God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
You are rich. I am rich.
For most of this, this statement could almost produce a yawn. We say, yes, of course. But for some of us this is a daring assertion. It may even be troubling. How could it possibly be true that God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings, because our life is full of pain and darkness.
I was talking earlier this week someone about spiritual warfare. He wanted to know how to think about the experiences of darkness, temptation and weariness that invade his life. Were these attacks by evil angels?
What did I think about spiritual warfare?
Great question. The book of Ephesians is the premier book in the Bible about spiritual warfare. And the first two chapters present the most important information we need to think wisely about spiritual warfare. Before we get to talking about “principalities and powers,” before we start talking about “armor,” we need to make sure we have deeply inhaled the truth expressed in these first two chapters.
We are saints—claimed by God. We are the faithful ones—that is we claim God. God sends grace and peace our direction. We have been enriched by all the resources of heaven. That's where we start.
Verse 4: 4 God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
You were God's idea. God was not your idea. God chose you. You did not initiate the relationship. God has been dreaming about you for a long time. As I have said a number of times before, God was not “stuck with you.” You were not a problem that was thrust uninvited into God's life. You are a problem that God eagerly embraced. (If you are reading this instead of listening to it, please hear the smile in my voice when I say the previous sentence. Sure, you cause problems for God sometimes. What of it? Everything and everyone we love sometimes interrupt the smooth flow of our lives.)
God chose us. God chose you. You are valued and desired and prized and treasured by God. (Did I get enough adjectives in there?)
In case you didn't get it, Paul says the same thing again using different words.
“In love God predestined us to be adopted as his sons.”
God predestined us. What does that mean? God made plans. God had every intention of making it happen. God was moving on it. He wasn't waiting to see if we were worth it, if we were interested, if it was going to be fun. God knew way back that he really wanted you in his life. He knew way back that he wanted you as part of his family.
He predestined you to be his son, his daughter.
What did he have in mind when he chose you, when he predestined you? He saw a future in which you would be with him holy and blameless. Not groveling and begging for mercy, not tolerated in spite of who you are, not endured. God sees you as admirable and successful. That's where he's taking you.
Verse seven: 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.
Our screw ups do not astonish God. They don't leave him scrambling to cover the problem. He anticipated the problem and already had a remedy in works ready to go. And notice the last part of this sentence. “in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us.” There was nothing meager or minimal about God's response to our predicament. He lavished grace on us. His forgiveness is rich and abundant. It is more than enough.
Chapter Two takes to more familiar territory. Paul refers to being “dead in trespasses and sins.” Ah, now we feel better. Paul is finally getting back to where we are comfortable. Paul is saying the same thing as those parents, teachers, preachers, lovers, husbands and wives who have told us what jerks we are. Sinners. Miserable scumbags. Ah, that's better. Now Paul is telling the truth. Is that your reaction?
When you think of people what adjectives come to mind? Selfish? Wicked? Treacherous? Careful. When we describe people this way, we're taking the part of Satan who is known as the accuser.
Certainly there is a place to recognize human evil. But we don't need the New Testament to know something about evil. The good news of the New Testament is that evil is not the last word. It is not even the most significant word to be said about humanity. Humans are God's children, chosen by God to be holy and blameless. They have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. God has wonderful dreams for our future.
As we come close to God we will not be more and more impressed with human evil. We will find ourselves more and more sympathetic toward human frailty and failure. We will be come better at imagining sweet and good futures for even the most obnoxious people.
I am amazed at how Christianity has been hijacked by the devil. We are far more comfortable accusing and condemning people than we are affirming and blessing people. If Paul could call the Christians in Ephesus saints and faithful ones, why can't we call each other saints and faithful ones? In fact, we can. And we should.
Paul can never get too far away from the profound remorse he feels for having spent time persecuting Christians. He had blood on his hands. He was responsible for making wives into widows, children into orphans. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus, he was truly dead in trespasses and sins. But even for Paul, who had been a professional Christian-killer, God's grace was the number one reality. The most important message was that God had chosen him and all the believers in Ephesus to be his children.
They were the people God wanted in his family. We are the people God wants in his family. God was not waiting for Paul or others to prove their worth, to earn their way into the family.
For by grace (that is divine initiative) you have been saved.
Verse 19: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household,
We are fully included. We share the full privileges and responsibilities of citizenship and family connection. We expected to cooperate with God in his work in the world.
Verse 22. In him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Where does God prefer to hang out? Among us!
Knowing our lives personally and corporately are a temple, residence for God is a call to be intentional and deliberate about our lives. We are constructing the environment of God. So let's build with that in mind.
What to do?
First, fill your mind with the truth: God would rather die than live without out you. God wants you. He has blessed you with all spiritual blessings. He intended from way back before you were born to include you in his family. His forgiveness is larger than any screw up you are capable of pulling off.
Second. Choose not to feed the darkness. So avoid drugs and alcohol. Avoid talk radio and right wing TV and anything else that specializes in the cultivation of fear, anxiety and outrage. (How many efforts for the amelioration of human suffering have been initiated by the work of Rush and Glenn?).
Third, feed the light. Practice generosity. Practice charitable judgment. Listen to uplifting music. Read uplifting books. Watch uplifting movies. Talk to uplifting friends.
Then come back to the bedrock truth.
God likes you. God wants you. God has blessed you. Pass it on.
Amen.
This is the manuscript as I prepared it prior to preaching. When I preached, a metaphor came to mind that I thought was very helpful. Maybe I'll get around to writing it and posting it here. Maybe not. One of the ideas was this: We rescued a dog years ago. She had been abused. At first at our house she was "perfect," a perfection that was rooted in fear. She has lost her fear, and as a result has adopted an annoying habit of getting on the bed when we are not watching. We have never been able to train her to stay off the bed. She has trained us to close our bedroom door. Similarly, God has altered his existence to make sure that we are part of his eternal future. The Bible pictures God changing just as dramatically as the change it calls for and predicts in us.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
What to Do in 2011
Sermon preached at North Hill Adventist Fellowship, Sabbath, January 1, 2011
What are you going to do in 2011? My first thought is I would like a little inside information to help me make wise decisions. Some possible relevant questions:
How long before the economy collapses?
How long before the gold bubble collapses?
How long before my health fails?
When will my company downsize again?
When will Muslim terrorists stage a successful attack on U.S. Soil?
When will the Sunday law happen?
When will Jesus return?
That last one is especially important. If Jesus is coming within the next two years, I don't need to put any more money in my retirement plan. I don't need to worry about my arteries. I don't need to get out of debt. I can drop out of school. We don't need to keep pouring money into health research. If we knew time would last two years or less there are any number of long term investments we could ignore.
There would be some other short term investments that might make lots of sense.
We are naturally curious about the future. As we plan our lives, it makes sense to try to understand how much time is available to us.
Near the end of Jesus ministry, he and his disciples were leaving the temple ground in Jerusalem. The disciples remarked to Jesus about the magnificence of the temple buildings. To their astonishment, Jesus said, “You see all this? It's all going to be demolished. Completely. Razed to the ground.” The disciples were speechless. How could this be?
Jesus and his entourage continued out of the city, down across the Kidron Valley and up the other side to the Mt. Olives. Sitting there with a full view of the temple buildings and walls, the disciples asked Jesus about his prediction. “When is it going to happen? What signs will there be that it was about to happen?”
They were all ears as Jesus began answering their question.
Jesus first words were a caution: “Don't get snookered.” [That's my translation.] “There are going to be a lot of charlatans, false Christs and false prophets. There will be trouble—wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, persecution. But don't get buffaloed by people claiming special knowledge, special power or special insight.”
Wars, famines, earthquakes: Sound like any place you know? Yep. Sounds like our world. And it has sounded like “our world” to every generation of believers from A.D. 33 till now. This is the normal condition of the world as we know it. These words offer the first hint that Jesus is going to throw his disciples a curve. They asked “When?” Jesus' answer offered not even a hint of chronology. The so-called “signs” that Adventist evangelists love to preach reveal nothing about how many months or years remain between “now” and the second coming. They are merely the characteristics of all time before the second coming.
The last sign in verses 1-14 is the one Adventists often point to with the greatest confidence. “This gospel of kingdom will be preached in all the world and then the end will come.” When I was younger we carefully counted the number of countries the Adventist Church had an organized presence in (however small). Now, I'm not sure how we justify clinging to this verse as a help in figuring out the chronology of the second coming. The notion that “the end will come” immediately following the completion of the gospel going to the whole world raises some interesting problems. The first and most dramatic problem with this view is that Paul believed the gospel had already gone to the whole world in his day (Romans 1:8, Colossians 1:6). That was about 2000 years ago. In more modern times, with the advent of short wave radio, the gospel was demonstrably available world wide. People had short wave receivers even in remote villages untouched by electricity. Recently I read a novel challenge to this kind of calculation. If the gospel going to the whole world means the message of Jesus must be presented to every person in a way that could reasonably be expected to be understood, then the birth of every infant delays the second coming by a few more years. Because until that infant becomes old enough to understand the gospel, then we cannot say the gospel has gone to the whole world.
If we turn from these kinds of quibbles and ask what did Jesus plainly teach about the time of his coming in Matthew 24 and 25, the answer is unequivocal.
Jesus assures us the end will come. “as lightning flashes from the east and is visible all the way to the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” The end is going to come. Dramatically. For sure. The angels “will gather his elect from one end of heaven to the other.” Good news. And when will this happen? (How effective will the “signs” prove to be in working out the calendar?) “No one knows about that day or hour . . . you do not know on what day your Lord will come . . . you must be ready because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (24:36, 42, 44).
At this point in the sermon Jesus switches to telling stories. Which signals he is coming to the punch line, the climax, the grand conclusion. [Matthew 24 and 25 form a single teaching unit. In form they are reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) and the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13).
In the first story, Jesus tells about a servant who is put in charge of a household while his master is gone. The Master tells the servant to be sure everyone receives their food in a timely manner. After the Master leaves, the servant says to himself, He'll be gone practically forever. I can do whatever I want. The servant acts like a jerk mistreating the rest of the household, assuring himself all the while that he has plenty of time to cover up all evidence of his wrong doing before the Master returns.
The Master returns. The servant has not destroyed the evidence. What happens to the servant is not pretty.
The moral of this story: Don't think you have all the time in the world. There will be a day of reckoning. And if you are acting like a jerk, that day is bound to come “too soon.”
What does the food in this story represent? Some preachers historically have linked the food in this story with the words of Matthew 4, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” So food is the Word of God and the way we prepare for the second coming is to provide food, i.e. the Word of God, to the world.
It's a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but it obviously is not the meaning of the parable. The point Jesus is making has to do with our attitude toward time. While it is true we ought to share the good news, that is not the point of this parable.
The next parable is about the ten virgins or to put it in modern idiom, “The Ten Bridesmaids.”
There is a wedding in the offing. The ten bridesmaids are waiting for the bridegroom's party to come and fetch them for the wedding. The girls are all dolled up. They have lamps because it is going to be an evening affair. The groom is late. The girls all fall asleep. Hours later the girl's are awakened. The groom is coming! The girls fix their hair and straighten their gowns and trim their lamps. Oops. The lamps are out of oil. (The groom is really, really late.) No problem. Five of the girls have brought along little flasks of oil. They fill their lamps and are ready to go. The other five however, did not bring any extra. They go to the store to get some but by the time they return from the store, the bridal party has already reached the venue and the door to the wedding is shut.
What is the point of this story? The foolish girls are those who “knew the groom was coming soon.” In the previous story, the fool was the servant who knew his Master was going to be a long time in coming. In this story, the fools are those who know the groom is coming soon. The common element in these stories: People who think they have figured out God's calendar. Long or short, if you are living your life on the basis of what you “know” about God's calendar, you are a fool.
The wise bridesmaids did not know they were going to need the extra oil. They expected the groom at the same time the foolish girls did. They brought extra oil "just in case."
When I travel around Western Washington, I do not carry a gas can in my car. But when I go on vacation across eastern Oregon, I not only carry a gas can. I carry a gas can with gas in it. I don't plan to run out of gas. I take the extra gas just in case, because gas stations in Oregon's outback can be very far apart. On my last trip (and my wife was along on this trip) for the first time, I ran out of gas. In the middle of nowhere. At least fifty miles from the nearest gas station. Fortunately, since my wife does not like hitchhiking, I had the extra gas. Saved.
So with the wise virgins. They had the extra oil just in case the groom did not meet their expectations. The foolish virgins "knew" they didn't need any extra oil because they knew when the groom was coming.
What does the oil represent in this story? Oil. It does not represent anything. It does not represent the Holy Spirit. This parable is not about the Holy Spirit any more than the previous parable was about preaching. Both parables address the question originally asked by the disciples at the beginning of chapter 24: When? And both parables drive home the point: “when?” is a distracting question. Pursuing the question of when will never bring you to wise action as a Christian.
Those who use this parable to teach about the Holy Spirit need to be honest that what they are doing is a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but they are not working with the plain meaning of what the Bible actually says. There is nothing in the context of Matthew 24 and 25 that supports the idea that the oil in this parable represents the Holy Spirit or that the overall meaning of this parable is somehow a message about “the reception of the Holy Spirit in Latter Rain fullness.” The use of this parable in this connection is at best sweet, holy fiction. It has nothing to do with exegesis or the proper interpretation of the text of the Bible.
So if “signs” don't give us a calendar for the second coming, if “when?” is a distracting, unhelpful question, just what are the relevant issues in view of the fact that Jesus will come again? What kinds of questions should we be asking?
Jesus addresses this in the final two stories of Matthew 25.
The Parable of the Ten Talents.
A rich man called in three servants. He gave the first one fifty thousand dollars, the second twenty thousand and the third ten thousand. Then the Master took off on a journey. After awhile he returns and calls the servants in to see what they've done with their money. The first two have doubled their money. The master is pleased and commends them. The third guy comes in and says, “You are an unreasonable man. I was afraid of you. So I risked nothing. I buried my money. Here is, all ten thousand.”
The Master blew up. “What? You knew I was demanding? Why didn't you at least put my money in the bank where it could have earned a few percent.” What happened to the servant was not pretty.
What is the issue in the story? What makes the difference between being ready for the end and being condemned in the end? What one thinks of the Master. The first two servants trusted their master and went to work. They did the best they could. The master was happy. The third guy buried his gift because he was afraid of the Master.
We prepared for the end by trusting God and taking risks. By really living. Serving others. Making a difference. Attempting to love like Jesus did. There is actually no risk in doing this, because in this story the servants are not graded on their productivity but their willingness to risk based on their confidence in their master.
The Parable of the Sheep and Goats
The final story is written especially for theologians, for those who become infatuated with their theories of the character of God.
At the end God will separate humanity into two groups like a shepherd separates sheep and goats. God will say to the sheep, the people on the right. “Welcome to the heavenly party. When I was hungry you fed me. When I was in prison, you visited me. When I needed stuff, you provided it.”
The sheep are amazed and protest. “Excuse us, but we never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff.”
Jesus smiles and says, “That's true. You never saw me. But you fed me any way. Because when you fed the least of these, you fed me.”
God says to the goats, “Out of here! Because when I was hungry you refused to feed me. When I was in prison, you never visited me. When I needed stuff, you refused to provide it.”
The goats begin protesting, “Wait a minute. We never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff. And in fact we cast out demons in your name and worked miracles. We're your people. You can't boot us.” (See Matthew 7:22)
Jesus agrees with them. “You're right you didn't see me. All you saw was lazy bums and irresponsible people. Weaklings and losers. Unfortunates. Crazy people. But when you refused to serve the bums and irresponsible people, the weaklings and losers, the unfortunates and crazy people, you refused me.”
The relevant issue for us to address in view of the end of the world is this: What do we think of God? Then those who think have gotten that one figured out can turn their test over and address the final question: How does your view of God impact the way you treat people?
Here at the end of the sermon, Jesus makes it crystal clear: figuring out time lines, prophetic charts and heavenly calendars are at best idle curiosities. The job of “last day Christians” is exactly the same as “first day Christians.” The call to holiness in the first century A. D. is the same as the call to holiness in the last century A. D. It is simply this: Trust your Master and take care of his kids.
Debates about “a perfect final generation” or how we can engineer a revival that will bring on the Latter Rain or attempts to figure out just how close we are to the end are all distractions. They never lead to wise living.
Even when people avoid setting a date in their minds, those who focus on “the time” end up setting a date in their hearts. And that date is always wrong. Either it puts off the second coming. (Jesus can't come in the next six months because our prophetic scenario for the end times requires more than six months to play out!) Or it puts the second coming too close. (I know I will see the second coming in my life time.) Either way, we are distracted from the central mission of the church: To love God and neighbor.
So what is our mission in 2011: Trust God and take care of his kids. (Let God take care of the calendar. He's going to, anyway.)
What are you going to do in 2011? My first thought is I would like a little inside information to help me make wise decisions. Some possible relevant questions:
How long before the economy collapses?
How long before the gold bubble collapses?
How long before my health fails?
When will my company downsize again?
When will Muslim terrorists stage a successful attack on U.S. Soil?
When will the Sunday law happen?
When will Jesus return?
That last one is especially important. If Jesus is coming within the next two years, I don't need to put any more money in my retirement plan. I don't need to worry about my arteries. I don't need to get out of debt. I can drop out of school. We don't need to keep pouring money into health research. If we knew time would last two years or less there are any number of long term investments we could ignore.
There would be some other short term investments that might make lots of sense.
We are naturally curious about the future. As we plan our lives, it makes sense to try to understand how much time is available to us.
Near the end of Jesus ministry, he and his disciples were leaving the temple ground in Jerusalem. The disciples remarked to Jesus about the magnificence of the temple buildings. To their astonishment, Jesus said, “You see all this? It's all going to be demolished. Completely. Razed to the ground.” The disciples were speechless. How could this be?
Jesus and his entourage continued out of the city, down across the Kidron Valley and up the other side to the Mt. Olives. Sitting there with a full view of the temple buildings and walls, the disciples asked Jesus about his prediction. “When is it going to happen? What signs will there be that it was about to happen?”
They were all ears as Jesus began answering their question.
Jesus first words were a caution: “Don't get snookered.” [That's my translation.] “There are going to be a lot of charlatans, false Christs and false prophets. There will be trouble—wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, persecution. But don't get buffaloed by people claiming special knowledge, special power or special insight.”
Wars, famines, earthquakes: Sound like any place you know? Yep. Sounds like our world. And it has sounded like “our world” to every generation of believers from A.D. 33 till now. This is the normal condition of the world as we know it. These words offer the first hint that Jesus is going to throw his disciples a curve. They asked “When?” Jesus' answer offered not even a hint of chronology. The so-called “signs” that Adventist evangelists love to preach reveal nothing about how many months or years remain between “now” and the second coming. They are merely the characteristics of all time before the second coming.
The last sign in verses 1-14 is the one Adventists often point to with the greatest confidence. “This gospel of kingdom will be preached in all the world and then the end will come.” When I was younger we carefully counted the number of countries the Adventist Church had an organized presence in (however small). Now, I'm not sure how we justify clinging to this verse as a help in figuring out the chronology of the second coming. The notion that “the end will come” immediately following the completion of the gospel going to the whole world raises some interesting problems. The first and most dramatic problem with this view is that Paul believed the gospel had already gone to the whole world in his day (Romans 1:8, Colossians 1:6). That was about 2000 years ago. In more modern times, with the advent of short wave radio, the gospel was demonstrably available world wide. People had short wave receivers even in remote villages untouched by electricity. Recently I read a novel challenge to this kind of calculation. If the gospel going to the whole world means the message of Jesus must be presented to every person in a way that could reasonably be expected to be understood, then the birth of every infant delays the second coming by a few more years. Because until that infant becomes old enough to understand the gospel, then we cannot say the gospel has gone to the whole world.
If we turn from these kinds of quibbles and ask what did Jesus plainly teach about the time of his coming in Matthew 24 and 25, the answer is unequivocal.
Jesus assures us the end will come. “as lightning flashes from the east and is visible all the way to the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” The end is going to come. Dramatically. For sure. The angels “will gather his elect from one end of heaven to the other.” Good news. And when will this happen? (How effective will the “signs” prove to be in working out the calendar?) “No one knows about that day or hour . . . you do not know on what day your Lord will come . . . you must be ready because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (24:36, 42, 44).
At this point in the sermon Jesus switches to telling stories. Which signals he is coming to the punch line, the climax, the grand conclusion. [Matthew 24 and 25 form a single teaching unit. In form they are reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) and the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13).
In the first story, Jesus tells about a servant who is put in charge of a household while his master is gone. The Master tells the servant to be sure everyone receives their food in a timely manner. After the Master leaves, the servant says to himself, He'll be gone practically forever. I can do whatever I want. The servant acts like a jerk mistreating the rest of the household, assuring himself all the while that he has plenty of time to cover up all evidence of his wrong doing before the Master returns.
The Master returns. The servant has not destroyed the evidence. What happens to the servant is not pretty.
The moral of this story: Don't think you have all the time in the world. There will be a day of reckoning. And if you are acting like a jerk, that day is bound to come “too soon.”
What does the food in this story represent? Some preachers historically have linked the food in this story with the words of Matthew 4, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” So food is the Word of God and the way we prepare for the second coming is to provide food, i.e. the Word of God, to the world.
It's a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but it obviously is not the meaning of the parable. The point Jesus is making has to do with our attitude toward time. While it is true we ought to share the good news, that is not the point of this parable.
The next parable is about the ten virgins or to put it in modern idiom, “The Ten Bridesmaids.”
There is a wedding in the offing. The ten bridesmaids are waiting for the bridegroom's party to come and fetch them for the wedding. The girls are all dolled up. They have lamps because it is going to be an evening affair. The groom is late. The girls all fall asleep. Hours later the girl's are awakened. The groom is coming! The girls fix their hair and straighten their gowns and trim their lamps. Oops. The lamps are out of oil. (The groom is really, really late.) No problem. Five of the girls have brought along little flasks of oil. They fill their lamps and are ready to go. The other five however, did not bring any extra. They go to the store to get some but by the time they return from the store, the bridal party has already reached the venue and the door to the wedding is shut.
What is the point of this story? The foolish girls are those who “knew the groom was coming soon.” In the previous story, the fool was the servant who knew his Master was going to be a long time in coming. In this story, the fools are those who know the groom is coming soon. The common element in these stories: People who think they have figured out God's calendar. Long or short, if you are living your life on the basis of what you “know” about God's calendar, you are a fool.
The wise bridesmaids did not know they were going to need the extra oil. They expected the groom at the same time the foolish girls did. They brought extra oil "just in case."
When I travel around Western Washington, I do not carry a gas can in my car. But when I go on vacation across eastern Oregon, I not only carry a gas can. I carry a gas can with gas in it. I don't plan to run out of gas. I take the extra gas just in case, because gas stations in Oregon's outback can be very far apart. On my last trip (and my wife was along on this trip) for the first time, I ran out of gas. In the middle of nowhere. At least fifty miles from the nearest gas station. Fortunately, since my wife does not like hitchhiking, I had the extra gas. Saved.
So with the wise virgins. They had the extra oil just in case the groom did not meet their expectations. The foolish virgins "knew" they didn't need any extra oil because they knew when the groom was coming.
What does the oil represent in this story? Oil. It does not represent anything. It does not represent the Holy Spirit. This parable is not about the Holy Spirit any more than the previous parable was about preaching. Both parables address the question originally asked by the disciples at the beginning of chapter 24: When? And both parables drive home the point: “when?” is a distracting question. Pursuing the question of when will never bring you to wise action as a Christian.
Those who use this parable to teach about the Holy Spirit need to be honest that what they are doing is a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but they are not working with the plain meaning of what the Bible actually says. There is nothing in the context of Matthew 24 and 25 that supports the idea that the oil in this parable represents the Holy Spirit or that the overall meaning of this parable is somehow a message about “the reception of the Holy Spirit in Latter Rain fullness.” The use of this parable in this connection is at best sweet, holy fiction. It has nothing to do with exegesis or the proper interpretation of the text of the Bible.
So if “signs” don't give us a calendar for the second coming, if “when?” is a distracting, unhelpful question, just what are the relevant issues in view of the fact that Jesus will come again? What kinds of questions should we be asking?
Jesus addresses this in the final two stories of Matthew 25.
The Parable of the Ten Talents.
A rich man called in three servants. He gave the first one fifty thousand dollars, the second twenty thousand and the third ten thousand. Then the Master took off on a journey. After awhile he returns and calls the servants in to see what they've done with their money. The first two have doubled their money. The master is pleased and commends them. The third guy comes in and says, “You are an unreasonable man. I was afraid of you. So I risked nothing. I buried my money. Here is, all ten thousand.”
The Master blew up. “What? You knew I was demanding? Why didn't you at least put my money in the bank where it could have earned a few percent.” What happened to the servant was not pretty.
What is the issue in the story? What makes the difference between being ready for the end and being condemned in the end? What one thinks of the Master. The first two servants trusted their master and went to work. They did the best they could. The master was happy. The third guy buried his gift because he was afraid of the Master.
We prepared for the end by trusting God and taking risks. By really living. Serving others. Making a difference. Attempting to love like Jesus did. There is actually no risk in doing this, because in this story the servants are not graded on their productivity but their willingness to risk based on their confidence in their master.
The Parable of the Sheep and Goats
The final story is written especially for theologians, for those who become infatuated with their theories of the character of God.
At the end God will separate humanity into two groups like a shepherd separates sheep and goats. God will say to the sheep, the people on the right. “Welcome to the heavenly party. When I was hungry you fed me. When I was in prison, you visited me. When I needed stuff, you provided it.”
The sheep are amazed and protest. “Excuse us, but we never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff.”
Jesus smiles and says, “That's true. You never saw me. But you fed me any way. Because when you fed the least of these, you fed me.”
God says to the goats, “Out of here! Because when I was hungry you refused to feed me. When I was in prison, you never visited me. When I needed stuff, you refused to provide it.”
The goats begin protesting, “Wait a minute. We never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff. And in fact we cast out demons in your name and worked miracles. We're your people. You can't boot us.” (See Matthew 7:22)
Jesus agrees with them. “You're right you didn't see me. All you saw was lazy bums and irresponsible people. Weaklings and losers. Unfortunates. Crazy people. But when you refused to serve the bums and irresponsible people, the weaklings and losers, the unfortunates and crazy people, you refused me.”
The relevant issue for us to address in view of the end of the world is this: What do we think of God? Then those who think have gotten that one figured out can turn their test over and address the final question: How does your view of God impact the way you treat people?
Here at the end of the sermon, Jesus makes it crystal clear: figuring out time lines, prophetic charts and heavenly calendars are at best idle curiosities. The job of “last day Christians” is exactly the same as “first day Christians.” The call to holiness in the first century A. D. is the same as the call to holiness in the last century A. D. It is simply this: Trust your Master and take care of his kids.
Debates about “a perfect final generation” or how we can engineer a revival that will bring on the Latter Rain or attempts to figure out just how close we are to the end are all distractions. They never lead to wise living.
Even when people avoid setting a date in their minds, those who focus on “the time” end up setting a date in their hearts. And that date is always wrong. Either it puts off the second coming. (Jesus can't come in the next six months because our prophetic scenario for the end times requires more than six months to play out!) Or it puts the second coming too close. (I know I will see the second coming in my life time.) Either way, we are distracted from the central mission of the church: To love God and neighbor.
So what is our mission in 2011: Trust God and take care of his kids. (Let God take care of the calendar. He's going to, anyway.)
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